Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality [1 ed.] 0367439565, 9780367439569

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgments
List of contributors
Introduction
Notes
PART 1: Race
1. The space between Borno and Palermo: Slavery and its boundaries in the late medieval Saharan-Mediterranean region
The margins: Palermo and Borno
The space between the two seas
Reconfiguring Palermo
Notes
2. Race and vulnerability: Mongols in thirteenth-century ethnographic travel writing
John of Plano Carpini and knowledge production
Conversion in William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium
Notes
PART 2: Geography
3. Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety: The impact of conversion on the margins of Europe
Notes
4. Malory’s Sandwich: Marginalized Arthurian geography and the Global Middle Ages
Notes
5. The past and future margins of Catalonia: Language politics and Catalan imperial ambitions in Guillem de Torroella’s La Faula
Notes
6. Why kings?
Notes
PART 3: Gender
7. Measuring the margins: Women, slavery, and the notarial process in late fourteenth-century Mallorca
Introduction
The top of the page – women in the marketplace
The top of the page – networks of widows, wives, and single women
The bottom of the page – leaving their “weakness” behind
The bottom of the page – women behind the scenes
The bottom of the page – pay no attention to the woman behind
the curtain …
Conclusion
Notes
8. The marginality of clerics’ concubines in the Middle Ages: A reappraisal
Clerical concubines between church reform and modern scholarship
Concubines in Italy
Conclusion
Notes
9. Reviled and revered: The importance of marginality in the pastoral care of beguines
Beguines, religious movements, and reform
Robert of Sorbon: man at the center
Marginality and the poor masters of the Sorbonne
“No name is more despised”: beguines and marginality
Notes
PART 4: Law
10. How marginal is marginal? Muslims in the Latin East
Disciplinarity and the current model
Muslims in the Frankish legal sources
Muslims in the political sphere
Condominia/Muna.afat
Conclusion
Notes
11. Pirates as marginals in the medieval Mediterranean world
Notes
PART 5: Body
12. Marginality and community at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in late medieval Marseille
The Hospital of Saint-Esprit: a marginal element
Incorporation and the hospital
Notes
13. Disabled devotion: Original sin and universal disability in the Prik of Conscience
The impairment of man’s kynde
Disabling likeness: Adam, animals, and analogy
The knowing of man’s kynde: stratifying disability
Notes
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality

Marginality assumes a variety of forms in current discussions of the Middle Ages. Modern scholars have considered a seemingly innumerable list of people to have been marginalized in the European Middle Ages: the poor, criminals, unorthodox religious, the disabled, the mentally ill, women, so-called infidels, and the list goes on. If so many inhabitants of medieval Europe can be qualified as “marginal,” it is important to interro­ gate where the margins lay and what it means that the majority of people occupied them. In addition, we scholars need to reexamine our use of a term that seems to have such broad applicability to ensure that we avoid imposing marginality on groups in the Middle Ages that the era itself may not have considered as such. In the medieval era, when belonging to a community was vitally important, people who lived on the margins of society could be particularly vulnerable. And yet, as scholars have shown, we ought not forget that this heightened vulnerability sometimes prompted so-called marginals to form their own communities, as a way of redefining the center and placing themselves within it. The present volume explores the concept of marginality, to whom the moniker has been applied, to whom it might usefully be applied, and how we might more meaningfully define marginality based on historical sources rather than modern assumptions. Although the volume’s geographic focus is Europe, the chapters look further afield to North Africa, the Sahara, and the Levant acknowledging that at no time, and certainly not in the Middle Ages, was Europe cut off from other parts of the globe. Ann E. Zimo is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of New Hamp­ shire. Her research focuses on cultural interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the crusades. Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher has published articles on priests, women, and ecclesiastical regulation in Speculum, Journal of Medieval History, and Bulletin of the History of Medicine. She is currently an independent scholar as well as project manager at Beu­ tler Ink, a digital marketing agency. Kathryn Reyerson is Distinguished University Teaching Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and founding director of the Center for Medieval Studies. She has published widely on merchants and trade, and on women and gender. Her current research focuses on medieval Mediterranean piracy. Debra Blumenthal is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her publications explore the history of slavery and race, as well as gender and cross-cultural relations in the medieval Mediterranean.

Studies in Medieval History and Culture

Recent titles include The Charisma of Distant Places Travel and Religion in the Early Middle Ages Courtney Luckhardt The Death Penalty in Late Medieval Catalonia Evidence and Signification Flocel Sabaté Church, Society and University The Paris Condemnation of 1241/4 Deborah Grice The Sense of Smell in the Middle Ages A Source of Certainty Katelynn Robinson Travel, Pilgrimage and Social Interaction from Antiquity to the Middle Ages Edited by Jenni Kuuliala and Jussi Rantala Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality Edited by Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson and Debra Blumenthal

Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality Edited by Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson and Debra Blumenthal

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson, Debra Blumenthal; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zimo, Ann E., editor.

Title: Rethinking medieval margins and marginality / edited by Ann E.

Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson and Debra

Blumenthal.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |

Series: Studies in medieval history and culture | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019049125 (print) | LCCN 2019049126 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780367439569 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003006725 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Marginality, Social–Europe–History–To 1500. |

Europe–Social conditions–To 1492. | Europe–History–To 1492.

Classification: LCC HN380.M26 R48 2020 (print) | LCC HN380.M26

(ebook) | DDC 306.0940902–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049125

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049126

ISBN: 978-0-367-43956-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-00672-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Times

by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Contents

List of figures and tables Acknowledgments List of contributors Introduction

viii ix x 1

ANN E. ZIMO, TIFFANY D. VANN SPRECHER, KATHRYN REYERSON, AND DEBRA BLUMENTHAL

PART 1

Race 1 The space between Borno and Palermo: Slavery and its boundaries in the late medieval Saharan-Mediterranean region

9

11

LORI DE LUCIA

2 Race and vulnerability: Mongols in thirteenth-century ethnographic travel writing

27

SIERRA LOMUTO

PART 2

Geography 3 Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety: The impact of conversion on the margins of Europe

43 45

JEREMY DEANGELO

4 Malory’s Sandwich: Marginalized Arthurian geography and the Global Middle Ages MEG ROLAND

57

vi Contents

5 The past and future margins of Catalonia: Language politics and Catalan imperial ambitions in Guillem de Torroella’s La Faula

70

NAHIR I. OTAÑO GRACIA

6 Why kings?

91

LISA WOLVERTON

PART 3

Gender 7 Measuring the margins: Women, slavery, and the notarial process in late fourteenth-century Mallorca

109 111

KEVIN MUMMEY

8 The marginality of clerics’ concubines in the Middle Ages: A reappraisal

129

ROISIN COSSAR

9

Reviled and revered: The importance of marginality in the pastoral care of beguines

146

TANYA STABLER MILLER

PART 4

Law

165

10 How marginal is marginal? Muslims in the Latin East

167

ANN E. ZIMO

11 Pirates as marginals in the medieval Mediterranean world

186

KATHRYN REYERSON

PART 5

Body

205

12 Marginality and community at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in late medieval Marseille

207

CALEY MCCARTHY

Contents vii

13 Disabled devotion: Original sin and universal disability in the

Prik of Conscience 226

SAMANTHA KATZ SEAL

Select bibliography Index

243

251

Figures and tables

Figure 12.1 Patient counts at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, 1449–1450

214

Table 12.1

Places of origin

212

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank the reviewers who kindly read and commented on individual chapters, as well as the anonymous reviewers of our proposal for their invaluable suggestions. We would also like to thank Joëlle Rollo-Koster for providing the idea of putting the volume together in the first place. Of course, none of this would be possible without the authors themselves and the editors and staff at Routledge and Integra.

Contributors

Debra Blumenthal (editor) is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara whose publications explore the history of slavery and race as well as gender and cross-cultural relations in the medi­ eval Mediterranean. Her first book, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth Century Valencia (Cornell University Press, 2009), examines the lives of Muslim, Greek, Tartar, Circassian, and Black African slaves at a key moment of transition: when slave status increasingly became associated with black skin color. The book was awarded the Premio del Rey by the American Historical Association in 2010. Her cur­ rent book project focuses on the construction of maternity in late medieval Iberia; it explores interactions between midwives, wet nurses, and birth mothers as well as the circulation of infants between them. Roisin Cossar (contributor) is Professor of History at the University of Mani­ toba. Her research interests include the social history of the Christian church in the fourteenth century as well as archives and historiography. Her recent book, Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy (Harvard University Press, 2017), explores how fourteenth-century parish clerics in northern Italy represented their domestic worlds in written records. Her current research projects include an essay on the women who lived with parish clerics in Italy during the fifteenth century and an exploration of how seasonal cycles shaped Christian life at the end of the Middle Ages. Jeremy DeAngelo (contributor) is a lecturer at North Central University in Minneapolis. He previously taught at Carleton College, and has held fellow­ ships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis. Having received his doctorate from the University of Connecticut, he has published articles in Scandinavian Studies, Anglo-Saxon England, and Peritia, and has recently published his first monograph, Outlawry, Liminal­ ity, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic (Amsterdam University Press, 2018). Lori De Lucia (contributor) is a PhD candidate in history at UCLA who researches early modern slave trades of the Mediterranean, with a focus

Contributors

xi

on enslaved West Africans in Palermo, Sicily, and early formations of racist ideologies on the frontiers of the Mediterranean. She received funding from the Council for American Overseas Research Centers and the Andrew Mellon Foundation for her current research in Palermo. She has also lived and worked in Niger, West Africa, for over two years and has helped produce Hausa language curriculum for Boston University. Nahir I. Otaño Gracia (contributor) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. Her theoretical frameworks include transla­ tion theory and practice, the global North Atlantic, and critical identity studies. She has published a number of articles on literature from the Global North Atlantic, including “Towards a decentered Global North Atlantic,” Literature Compass (2019); “Presenting Kin(g)ship in Medieval Irish Literature,” Enarratio (2018); and “Vikings of the Round Table,” Comitatus (2016). She is working on her monograph, The Other Faces of Arthur: Medieval Arthurian Texts from the Global North Atlantic. Sierra Lomuto (contributor) is Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College, where she also holds a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoc­ toral Fellowship (2018–2020). Her teaching and research interests focus on medieval histories of global contact and the literature they engendered; the formation of racial ideologies in the Middle Ages; and contemporary appro­ priations of the medieval past. She is currently working on her first book, Exotic Allies: Race, Literature, and the Construction of Mongols in Medieval Europe. Her public writing has appeared in In the Middle, Public Books, and Medievalists of Color. Her scholarly articles have been published or are forthcoming in Exemplaria and postmedieval, and she is a contributor of The Chaucer Encyclopedia. She has a PhD from the University of Pennsyl­ vania, an MA and BA from Mills College, and is a former community col­ lege student. Caley McCarthy (contributor) is a PhD candidate at McGill University. Her research focuses on late medieval healthcare, particularly at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in late medieval Marseille, and its function in the urban landscape of this port city. Kevin Mummey (contributor) has most recently been a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has published on medieval prostitution, gender, and slavery in the Medi­ terranean and is the co-author of several publications on pedagogy. His monograph Women in Chains: Mallorcan Slavery after the Black Death is slated for publication in 2019. He teaches courses in medieval gender and medievalism in cinema and has also been a faculty member in St. Olaf ’s Great Conversation program. Kevin is also a musician and composer, having recorded and toured widely across the United States and Europe. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his partner Lynn and son Cecil.

xii

Contributors

Kathryn Reyerson (editor, contributor) is Distinguished University Teaching Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and founding dir­ ector of the Center for Medieval Studies. She has published widely on merchants and trade, including The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier (E. J. Brill, 2002) and Jacques Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar (Longman, 2005). Recently, she published two books on women: Women’s Networks in Medieval France: Gender and Community in Montpellier 1300–1350 (Palgrave, 2016) and Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Her current research focuses on merchants and pirates in the medieval Mediterranean world. Meg Roland (contributor) is Associate Professor at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. She writes about romance and geography and is a recent contributor to the forthcoming New Companion to Malory (“Malory and the Wider World”). Her chapter “After Poyetes and Astronomers: English Geographical Thought and Early English Print” was published in Mapping Medieval Geographies (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and her essay “The Rudderless Boat: Time and Geography in (Hardyng’s) Chronicle and (Malory’s) Romance” was published in the journal Arthuriana (2012). Her current book project, Mirror of the World, explores literature and geographical writing in late medieval and early modern England. Samantha Katz Seal (contributor) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of Father Chaucer: Gen­ erating Authority in The Canterbury Tales (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the co-editor (with Nicole Nolan Sidhu) of two special issues on feminism that were published in 2019 for The Chaucer Review and postmedieval, respectively. She will be an ACLS fellow for 2019–2020, working on her second book, Chaucerian Dynasty, a biography of the Chaucer and de la Pole families. Tanya Stabler Miller (contributor) is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of The Beguines of Medi­ eval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and several essays and articles on lay religion, gender, and urban culture. Miller’s research has been supported by a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Medieval Institute at Univer­ sity of Notre Dame (2011–2012) and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (2015–2016). She is currently working on a new book project tentatively titled Men, Women, and Religious Networks in Medieval France. Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher (editor) has published articles on priests, women, and ecclesiastical regulation in Speculum, Journal of Medieval History, and Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Her research has been funded in

Contributors

xiii

part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Bilinski Educational Foundation. She is also a recipient of the Olivia Remie Constable Award from the Medieval Academy of America. Dr Vann Sprecher has served as faculty at Kingsborough Community College, ranked among the top ten community colleges in the nation by the Aspen Institute, and at Wayfinding Academy, an alternative 2-year college in Portland, Oregon. Dr Vann Sprecher is active in public outreach, having taught medieval history in prisons and community organizations across the country. She is currently an independent scholar as well as project manager at Beutler Ink, a digital marketing agency. Lisa Wolverton (contributor), Professor of History at the University of Oregon, concentrates her research on the Czech Lands in the early and central Middle Ages. Her books include Hastening Toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (University of Pennsyl­ vania Press, 2001), a translation of Cosmas of Prague’s Chronicle of the Czechs (Catholic University of America Press, 2009), and Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Catholic University of America Press, 2015). Her current projects include a study of Czech involvement in the German civil war of the late eleventh century, monographs on the Deeds of Wiprecht and Lampert of Hersfeld’s Annals, a book of essays on the Slavic frontier in the Ottonian era, and, with Jonathan Lyon and Chris Halsted, a website dedicated to Slavs and Germans along the medieval Elbe. Ann E. Zimo (editor, contributor) is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of New Hampshire and a medieval historian. Her research focuses on cultural interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the crusades, which has been supported most recently by an NEH Fellow­ ship at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (2020). She has published on topics related to interaction and identity in the crusader states in al-Masaq and Crusades. Her book project, tentatively titled In Plain Sight: Muslims of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, explores how Muslims fit into the geographic, economic, legal, political, and cultural spheres of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Introduction

Ann E. Zimo, Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher, Kathryn Reyerson, and Debra Blumenthal

Modern scholars have considered a seemingly innumerable list of people to have been marginalized in the European Middle Ages: the poor, criminals, unorthodox religious, the disabled, the mentally ill, women, so-called infidels, and the list goes on. If so many inhabitants of medieval Europe can be qualified as “marginal,” it is important to interrogate where the margins lay and what it means that the majority of people occupied them. In addition, we scholars need to reexamine our use of a term that seems to have such broad applicability. In particular, we must be careful to avoid designating people as “marginal” on the basis of our own modern assumptions, rather than perceptions evidenced in medieval sources. The present volume explores the concept of marginality, to whom the moniker has been applied, to whom it might usefully be applied, and how we might more meaningfully define marginality based on historical sources. Although the volume’s geographic focus is Europe, the chapters look further afield to North Africa, the Sahara, and the Levant acknowledging that at no time, and certainly not in the Middle Ages, was Europe cut off from other parts of the globe. The 1960s and 1970s saw the first modern focus on marginality. Michel Foucault propelled this trend with statements such as, “The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the ‘outlaw’, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.”1 In 1962, Michel Mollat launched the Annales ESC investigation into poverty that bore fruit in the 1970s in Les pauvres au moyen âge.2 Bronisław Geremek brought the marginals of Paris to prominence, first in Polish (1971), then French (1976), and then in English as The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris.3 Later explorations of medieval marginality have been informed by theoretical works by scholars such as, to name only a few, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, and Tovi Fenster. Bourdieu’s multivalent concept of capital as encompassing the social, economic, political, and symbolic, enriched our understanding of power, specifically in terms of who had it and who did not.4 Likewise, studies of medieval marginality have broadened the definition beyond criminals and the poor, to include, for example, categories such as sexuality and gender as sites where margins are delineated and defended.5

2

Ann E. Zimo et al.

De Certeau’s essay, “Walking in the City,” in The Practice of Everyday Life argued that urban spaces are produced through use in ways that marginalized some of its inhabitants.6 Folding cultural analysis into an examination of the city, Tovi Fenster emphasizes that the city is governed by “patriarchal power relations, which are ethnic, cultural and gender­ related.”7 She takes issue with H. Lefebvre’s vision of citizenship as “the right to the city” and argues that “the denial of the right to the city is a daily practice for many women and men.”8 In a similar vein, medieval scholars have blended examinations of culture and space to complicate a clean division between margin and center. For example, Sharon Farmer has shown that, when belonging to a community was vitally important in the city of Paris, people who lived on the margins of this society could be particularly vulnerable. But they could also be empowered to form their own communities, redefining the center and placing themselves within it.9 The concept of marginality has been extensively explored but there is still much room for added nuance. The genesis of this book project was a panel for the 22nd annual Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference co-organized by Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Kathryn Reyerson. The theme of the conference that year (2016) was “Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and Renaissance.” In the lively Q&A that ensued at the conclusion of the panel, Rollo-Koster articulated an insight inferred in many of the papers presented: “We assume that the Middle Ages marginalized when, in many cases, it is we who want to see that marginalization.” The overarching aim of this volume is to take up Rollo­ Koster’s implied challenge and problematize the “marginal” label that has often been affixed to the communities under analysis in this volume, largely in the wake of the publication of the enormously influential book by R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250.10 Moore contended that, as a consequence of the intellectual and institutional developments of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a general thrust to designate and marginalize “the other” best characterizes late medieval Western Europe. Even so, there is need for caution here, as we do not wish to argue that people in the Middle Ages were not marginalized. Rather we wish to critique the use of the concept and to refine its application. We wish to push the category of marginal in a way that has been inspired by scholars who have pushed and refined the category of race in recent years. Often presented as developing during the Enlightenment and thus serving as a marker of “modern time,” the concept of race has been examined by medievalists who have demonstrated the ways in which medieval people did and did not think in racialized terms. For example, Robert Bartlett’s work has shown that, like the modern concept of race, medieval race involved a conflation of biology, culture, and religion.11 But unlike the modern tendency, people in the Middle Ages conceived of race as mutable.

Introduction

3

Since then, scholars like Peter Biller have investigated scientific treatises to understand how race was situated in understandings of the body, and Steven Epstein has argued that, based on his research on slavery in Italy and in overseas colonies of Italian city-states in the Eastern Mediterranean, racism, very much approaching modern forms, existed in the medieval period.12 In the last decade, Geraldine Heng has been on the forefront of incorporating post-colonial theoretical frameworks into the examination of race in the European Middle Ages to argue that racial thinking was fundamental to medieval constructions of power.13 The following collection of essays seeks to similarly problematize marginality as a concept through an acknowledgment of the mutability of labels, a reexamination of medieval sources, and an interrogation of our own modern assumptions. The overall purpose of this volume is to highlight that marginality was often a question of perspective. People labeled as marginal by some might be regarded in wholly different terms by others; perceptions varied significantly depending on the context. Essays included in this volume also expose the impermanence of an individual’s or group’s so-called “marginalization.” Marginalization was sometimes temporary or conditional as individuals were marginalized only at certain times or within particular communities. By the same token, people were rarely marginalized in any essential way; embodying multiple identities simultaneously, people might be considered marginal in some facets of their self while not in others. We would put particular stress on the push–pull dynamic here, the desire to expel perpetually contending with the desire to assimilate. We have divided this volume into five thematically distinct sections: Race, Geography, Gender, Law, and Body. We acknowledge that, as with any category, these sections do not adequately describe or circumscribe the richness of that contained within. Many of the essays incorporate one or more of the volume’s themes in their analysis. For example, Lori De Lucia’s contribution, “The Space Between Borno and Palermo: Slavery and Its Boundaries in the Late Medieval Saharan-Mediterranean Region,” blends race and geography in an examination of how the definitions of both shifted in concert with contemporary political and economic changes. In particular, De Lucia demonstrates how slaves trafficked from Borno were increasingly redirected to markets in the Western Mediterranean after the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople. Also shared along these trajectories were racial ideologies that defined blackness in opposition to the Abrahamic religions due to Christian and Muslim injunctions on enslaving coreligionists. The primacy of a slave market undergirded by religious codes prompted North African and European writers to define “black Africa,” not according to geographical features, but as areas inhabited by pagans, and therefore, peoples who they believed could be justifiably enslaved. Similarly, Sierra Lomuto’s contribution, “Race and Vulnerability: Mongols in Thirteenth-Century Ethnographic Travel Writing,” highlights how the medieval Latin European sense of marginality was imbricated with the construction of race. Her chapter challenges previous scholars’ characterizations of medieval

4

Ann E. Zimo et al.

ethnographers as somehow innocent of, or lacking in, racial bias. Indeed, she points out that the process of making Mongols objects of study became part of a long-term colonial project, one that was only successful in the Early Modern period. She argues that a close reading of ethnographies/travelogues produced in the mid-thirteenth century by Franciscan and Dominican friars reveals that Latin Christian fear and vulnerability vis à vis the Mongols prompted the production of a racialized discourse that constructed the Mongols not only as threatening and brutal anti-Christians, but also as physically distinct, barbaric, and inferior. Lomuto argues against those who may dismiss these friars’ works as inconsequential – citing the adverse power dynamics between the Mongols and western Europeans and emphasizing how the thirteenth-century “mission” to the Mongols bore little fruit – by outlining how this thirteenth-century racialized discourse would be cited and quoted by much later authors, such as Richard Hakluyt, engaged undeniably in devastating colonialist endeavors. Concepts of marginality and the colonial impulse are likewise examined in Jeremy DeAngelo’s contribution in the Geography section. His chapter, “AngloSaxons, Evangelization, and Cultural Anxiety: The Impact of Conversion on the Margins of Europe,” outlines Anglo-Saxon adoption of Christianity and its aftermath. Utilizing the theories of post-colonialist scholars such as Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, DeAngelo argues that conversion involved a tacit acceptance of a broader ethnocentric criticism of the converted people’s own culture. Converts internalized narratives of pagan inferiority, prompting them to accept religious conversion into a Christian community, which they perceived as superior and as the mainstream counterpart to their own marginality. DeAngelo sees Anglo-Saxons as embracing their geographic marginality, differing in their approach to conversion efforts from the Carolingians. Whereas the Franks depended on a narrative that emphasized their cultural superiority in order to advance their imperialist motive of empire building through conversion efforts, Anglo-Saxons recognized, and embraced as a mark of their Christian humility, an awareness of their locus on the margins of Europe. In contrast, Meg Roland indicates that Thomas Malory rejected England’s marginality and placed it at the center of European Christendom through his telling of the Arthurian legend. In “Malory’s Sandwich: Marginalized Arthurian Geography and the Global Middle Ages,” Roland describes how our contemporary Arthurian geographic imagination has eschewed the town of Sandwich in favor of a nostalgic, delocalized nonurban geographical setting. In the fifteenth century, however, Malory made the palpably real town of Sandwich the point of departure and return for Arthur, giving it a prominent place in his Le Morte Darthur. Re-claiming the port town of Sandwich as central to Arthurian geography serves to remind us that Malory’s Arthur embodied English military and commercial ties to an increasingly globalizing Europe. Via Sandwich, Arthur established England’s international connections and its status as the new center of Europe and of Christendom.

Introduction

5

The Arthurian legend is considered as well in Nahir I. Otaño Gracia’s chapter “The Past and Future Margins of Catalonia: Language Politics and Catalan Imperial Ambitions in Guillem de Torroella’s La Faula.” Gracia writes that, for the most part, Arthurian legends advocate for imperial expansion by imagining the European margins in peril – often presenting this peril in the form of imaginary enemies and then claiming the lands of these opponents. In this way, the margins become central to the depiction of an idealized European chivalric system. The textual production of Aragón/Catalonia often uses Arthuriana in this way to present Catalonia as the furthest point of the margin that is defending and conquering the borders against Islam. This self-representation works for the benefit of the Crown of Aragón that uses Arthuriana to compete against other European courts for European supremacy. The fourteenth-century La faula by Guillem de Torroella embodied these tendencies. The text claims Catalan chivalric superiority over that of France and England, in essence making space for Catalonia within European politics. La faula, in novas rimadas (1370–1374) following the style of troubadour poetry, is a fantastical autobiographical poem written in Catalan and a Catalan–French dialect. The narrator, a narrative version of the author, speaks Catalan, and King Arthur and Morgan le Fay respond to the narrator in French. The diglossia, as well as the Mediterranean setting of the poem (the narrator travels from Mallorca east to Sicily), creates a liminal space within the poem for Arthur to claim Catalan chivalry as the future of European supremacy. Contributing to the volume’s discussion on the negotiation of geographical margins, Lisa Wolverton questions the normative status of kings and kingdoms in the historiography in “Why Kings?” She highlights the implicit denigration of societies and polities lacking a central authority figure that tacitly defines certain people and places as marginal, not just in Slavic lands but in Iceland, and elsewhere within the former Roman Empire, where dukes, counts, margraves, kings, or otherwise designated leaders held negligible power. In place of teleologies linking kings to state formation – as well as coins to monetized economies – she argues for comparative political analysis that bridges “peripheral” and “core” regions of Medieval Europe. Wolverton suggests adopting the designation “prince” for rulers including kings, dukes, etc., so as to permit marginalized regions to be considered along with canonical ones. A more nuanced understanding of the intersections of human agency and geographic constraint can help us better understand the impressive diversity of political communities from Iceland to Bohemia to Wales. The volume’s sections on Gender, Law, and Body also ask us to reconsider how scholars can resist ascribing marginality where it may not belong, through a rereading of their historical sources. In “Measuring the Margins: Women, Slavery and the Notarial Process in Late FourteenthCentury Mallorca,” Kevin Mummey focuses on women slaveholders and evidence of their activity found in notarial protocols. Mummey describes

6

Ann E. Zimo et al.

how record keeping often obscured women’s commercial activities, reflecting cultural biases that perceived and portrayed them as economically marginal. Even so, he demonstrates how attentive reading of these sources can reveal the ways in which women built economic networks, and forged economic authority and independence, within and in spite of laws and customs that ostensibly circumscribed their influence. In “The Marginality of Clerics’ Concubines in the Middle Ages: A Reappraisal,” Roisin Cossar undertakes a related reexamination of the supposedly marginal status of clerical concubines whom, historians have emphasized, could not be willed property, whose children were illegitimate, and whose position in the clerical household was precarious. These women, generally reviled by ecclesiastical authorities who condemned their sexual and servile natures, have often been marginalized in the historiography and historical documents on which it depends. Yet, Cossar demonstrates through an examination of their participation in local communities, that concubines’ marginal status was by no means fixed or even assumed. Indeed, concubines were central to the survival of the clerical household and fully integrated into, and sometimes acknowledged as leaders in, their social, religious, and economic communities. By broadening the historical context through which beguines are typically studied, Tanya Stabler Miller sheds new light on the dynamics of male–female spiritual friendships in thirteenth-century Europe. In “Reviled and Revered: The Importance of Marginality in the Pastoral Care of the Beguines,” Miller argues that the beguines, though marginalized by some as suspiciously ostentatious in their active piety, were actually central to the intellectual and spiritual formation of scholars trained at the Sorbonne. She shows how Robert of Sorbon integrated the idea of their marginality for the sake of Christ into his own program for educating secular clergy. Through an analysis of his sermons, we can see how Robert held up their example to students at his new college for them to emulate in a program of pastoral care. Robert and his students not only drew upon the beguines as models of humility and marginality, but also forged career-long friendships with beguines as part of their commitment to pastoral ministry. In the thirteenth century, therefore, there was a period in which the very marginality of the beguines was made central to clerical education. Ann E. Zimo also encourages a broader reading of the sources as a way of understanding the positionality of people in the Middle Ages. In “How Marginal is Marginal? Muslims in the Latin East,” Zimo reevaluates both medieval and modern representations of Muslims living in the Frankish Crusader States as having been systematically excluded from Frankish society. Noting how the “foundational scholarship” on Frankish administration relied almost exclusively on Frankish legal treatises, which barred Muslims from holding fiefs or serving as jurors, Zimo demonstrates how a much more complex reality emerges when these treatises are read alongside the Arabic sources. Indeed, we discover Muslim elites leasing lands from Franks and

Introduction

7

bringing cases before the High Court. More striking still is the evidence for shared administration of lands (condominia), including policing and punishment for crimes, as well as tax collection. Detailing how, through the mechanism of the condominia, the Mamluks managed to insert themselves more deeply into the remnants of the Frankish polities and closer to their seats of power. Zimo convincingly argues that the enactment of laws attempting to restrict and impose legal disabilities on Muslims likely was “a reaction against what had happened on the ground”: namely that elite Muslims were “exerting judicial and administrative power in Frankish spaces.” Kathryn Reyerson and Caley McCarthy invite us to consider marginality as a transitional state. In “Pirates as Marginals in the Medieval Mediterranean World,” Reyerson stresses that, rather than being a fixed occupational category, piracy was but a temporary state. “Pirates” tended to be periodically reintegrated into mainstream society. Therefore, engaging in disreputable and dishonorable piratical acts did not permanently mark someone as irredeemably marginal. Most notably, however, Reyerson – through a fascinating discussion of letter of marque proceedings – significantly complicates the picture of whether pirates were marginal by raising the question of who, in actuality, was “marginalized” in retribution for piratical activity. Reyerson illustrates how the “pirates” themselves evaded punishment for their crimes and that, instead, “innocent,” non-offending compatriot merchants paid the price. In “Marginality and Community at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in Late Medieval Marseille,” McCarthy tracks the daily expenses and income of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit while caring for the sick poor, pilgrims, prostitutes, and mariners as well as abandoned infants, exemplifying the municipalization of institutional caregiving. Such individuals fell outside the urban social networks that might have provided care but within the category of the “deserving poor.” While marginal to urban social networks, they were incorporated into the community of the hospital, both physically and spiritually. Samantha Katz Seal challenges the idea that marginality is an exception to the rule of centrality. In “Disabled Devotion: Original Sin and Universal Disability in the Prik of Conscience,” Seal provides a close reading of the fourteenthcentury Middle English devotional poem, in which the author portrays human frailty as a degradation of the perfect human form embodied by Adam and Eve and lost to them through their rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Parents to all of humanity, Adam and Eve passed on both their sin and their impaired bodies to every person. In the Prik of Conscience, human impairment represents not only a degradation of the body but also of the prelapsarian cosmic hierarchy. By turning away from God in the Garden of Eden, humans collapsed divinely sanctioned hierarchies by becoming equal in sinfulness and debased below animals who never wavered in their loyalty to God. Thus, the imperfection of the human form is a result of and constant reminder that all of humanity occupies the margins of God’s creation in its purest form. Collectively, these essays do more than demonstrate how medieval societies cannot be easily broken down along a divide of “center” and

8 Ann E. Zimo et al. “margin.” Not only was the delineation of true centers and margins inconsistent, depending as they did on the eye of the beholder, but they were also strategically constructed. Many people defined and defended the spaces they occupied – physically and culturally – as the center, as a way of privileging their identities and claiming power over others. Some claimed power by upending the negative connotations of the margin, embracing an ostensible position of vulnerability as a strategic way to justify aggression or expressing humility as a way to assume a position of superiority. Acknowledging the elusiveness and complexity of the concept of marginality, the studies in this volume emphasize that it is necessary to consider context and subject matter very carefully before labeling medieval inhabitants as marginal. The demarcation of center and margin is inextricably linked with the assumption and assertion of power. The ways in which medieval people and modern scholars label the margin and the center has the potential to privilege, and thus, empower some at the expense of the others. It is important, therefore, to apply the term carefully in order to describe, but not reify, medieval power structures.

Notes 1 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 2012), 301. 2 Michel Mollat, Les pauvres au moyen âge (Paris: Hachette, 1978). 3 Bronisław Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris. Translated by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 4 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press), 241–58. 5 Barbara A. Hanawalt and Anna Grotans, eds., Living Dangerously: On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 6 Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 7 Tovi Fenster, “The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belong­ ing in Everyday Life,” Journal of Gender Studies 14 (2005): 217–31, here 217. 8 Fenster, “The Right to the Gendered City,” 218. 9 Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). 10 Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). 11 Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Conceptions of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 1 (2001): 39–56. 12 Peter Biller, “Black Women in Medieval Scientific Thought,” Micrologus 13 (2005): 477–92; Steven Epstein, Purity Lost: Transgressing Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000–1400 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Ibid., Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). 13 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Part 1

Race

1

The space between Borno and

Palermo

Slavery and its boundaries in the late medieval Saharan-Mediterranean region1 Lori De Lucia

In 1510, thirty-two people listed as black Africans were sold in a public auction in Palermo; they would join thousands of other enslaved Africans living on the island.2 Italian historian Salvatore Bono hypothesized that by the sixteenth century there were one hundred and fifty thousand slaves in the European Christian world, with one hundred thousand on the Iberian Peninsula and anywhere from fifty to one hundred thousand in Italy.3 The unreliable estimates for sixteenth-century Sicily range from twelve to fifty thousand slaves in any given year, with the majority being black Africans.4 This was a stark difference from the early medieval period in Sicily, during which the majority of its slave population was Caucasians from Eastern Europe.5 Yet, scholarship on slavery in Sicily rarely focuses specifically on this African population. More recently Sicily has been incorporated into studies of slavery on the Iberian Peninsula, as an export market of the wider Atlantic-European slave trades growing at the same time.6 I approach the example of these thirty-two Africans sold in Palermo as Atlantic Historian Lara Putnam’s telling example; one that “points to unsuspected social networks and flows of information that cut across or swam against fundamental currents.”7 The terminology used to document Africans in Sicily revealed that they were arriving from an ancient trans-Saharan slave trade route that extended from the Lake Chad region into present-day Libya. Both the spread of Islam across the Central Sahel and changing alliances in the Mediterranean impacted the increase in this trade.8 This chapter aims to reconnect the Sicilian slave trade to its source in the Central Sahel and examine the trans-Mediterranean construction of the archetype of an inherently enslavable black African. The analysis of marginality is twofold in this chapter. The first is by repositioning Sicily at the margin of a trans-Saharan trade route that originated in Borno, rather than at the periphery of the Mediterranean slave trade connected to the Iberian Peninsula. Many enslaved Africans in the Central Sahel were exported northward to Mediterranean shores. For the medieval period,

12 Lori De Lucia there is a paucity of scholarship on the volume of these trans-Saharan slave trades, resulting in only rough estimates of the export trade across the Saharan desert, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 slaves per year for the centuries before 1600.9 The numbers of enslaved people moving specifically from the Central Sahel into North Africa are even more difficult to estimate. It is however clear that the trans-Saharan slave trade continued to grow with the expansion of the Atlantic, and during the sixteenth century exports of enslaved people from Songhay and Borno to the North reached their peak.10 There were four major trans-Saharan trade routes in West Africa that could carry enslaved people to Northern markets; the route initiating in Borno was the shortest distance to the northern coast in Tripoli and had been used to transport captives as early as the eighth century.11 Historians have argued that from the fifteenth century Iberian Peninsula exports replaced North Africa as the main supplier of slaves into Europe. This chapter counters with key indicators that the expanding trans-Saharan trade remained Sicily’s primary source at least through the early sixteenth century.12 The second analysis of marginality focuses on how blackness was being mapped and defined along the shores of the Mediterranean. In recent scholarship, the increase of enslaved black Africans along the European coasts of the Mediterranean is often treated as a shared phenomenon, and in many ways this was true. Africans were entering into a new category of blackness when they arrived in Europe. In both Iberian and Sicilian markets, there was a distinction being made between enslaved Moors and black Africans that reflected a general knowledge of the northern frontiers of the Bilād al-Sudān, or the “Land of the Blacks.” These borders were borrowed from Muslim scholars. In North Africa, Sahelians had already entered into a new category of blackness that was also increasingly systemically marginalized. By the seventeenth century in Tripoli, freed black Africans were restricted to their own neighborhood and were legally only allowed to marry other black Africans.13 In seventeenth-century Morocco, during Mulay Isma’il’s invasion of Songhay, Muslim judges and notaries systemized techniques to classify black Africans that marked them as different from all other free Moroccans, and made them susceptible to enslavement.14 This chapter connects the two spaces enslaved Sahelians crossed to enter Palermo, the Sahara and Mediterranean, as two heuristic seas in which an archetype of a black African was being constructed in opposition to both whiteness and Abrahamic religions.15

The margins: Palermo and Borno Periodic census collections in Palermo from 1479 to 1501 show that slave ownership was common among households in urban environments. In 1479, Palermo was divided into six neighborhoods. Kalsa and Albergheria were the two largest neighborhoods, nearly twice the size of the four other neighborhoods.16 A 1480 census from Kalsa showed that 20% of the population

The space between Borno and Palermo 13 was slave owners, and they represented diverse social classes.17 The enslaved community composed 12.6% of its population. Twenty years later, a census taken in Albergheria in 1501 showed similar numbers to that of Kalsa. Of the 801 households, 129 owned slaves or 16% of the households.18 The enslaved community was 10.5% of the entire population. In the wealthy Alliata household, there were two enslaved black males who were working in the fields.19 A treasurer, Giovanni Ribesaltes, owned six black males.20 There were also court trials that revealed black Africans were loaned as day laborers and even accused of practicing witchcraft in their households.21 With ongoing corsair warfare, a consistent factor was that enslaved black Africans were often living in servitude alongside Jews, North Africans, and Eastern Europeans. The census records were inconsistent with terms describing Africans ranging from “blanco di Africa,” “moro,” and “nigro.” There were also often two geographic descriptions that help in discerning the journey many Africans traveled prior to their arrival in Sicily: “Borno,” in the Central Sahel, and “Monti di Barca” on the Libyan coast. European accounts of the slave trade conducted in the town of “Monti di Barca” – or to Arabic authors Barqa – did not suggest a large-scale system.22 Fifteenth-century Portuguese traveler Zurara wrote of this trade that to their land (of the Berbers) come some Moors and they sell them of those Negroes whom they have kidnapped or else they take them to Momdebarque (Monti di Barca), which is beyond the kingdom of Tunis to sell to the Christian merchants who go there and they give them these slaves in exchange for bread and some other thing.23 Zurara’s depiction of a few Christian merchants trading small items for slaves was probably a deliberate downplay of this trade. The recognition of Castilian merchants participating in an African slave trade would have threatened the Portuguese monopoly that was based on their discovery of “Guinea.”24 Twentieth-century historian Charles Verlinden observed that in the medieval period there was a small number of black Africans in both Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula marked as being from “Monds de Barca.” When the trade in African slaves increased in Sicily in the sixteenth century, he attributed it to Sicily’s role as an export market for the growing Portuguese trade, via the port of Valencia.25 But by the sixteenth century in Sicily, common terms from the Iberian records such as “jollof” or “nigro de Guinea,” that reflected regions of the African Atlantic coast, did not appear.26 Verlinden’s observation of small numbers of Africans from Barqa during the medieval period was likely because during this period it was primarily a hub for trans-Saharan trade routes into the Muslim Middle East.27 Later, in a census from 1565 in Palermo half of the total Africans were described specifically as “nigro di Borno.”28 This suggests that starting in the fifteenth century, contrary to Verlinden’s conclusions, Barqa had grown in importance as an export market into Sicily.

14 Lori De Lucia This reconfiguration of the strengthening of Sicily’s trade connections to North Africa corresponded to larger political shifts in the Mediterranean. Following the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1452, Sicily lost its main source of slaves from the Eastern Mediterranean, forcing it to look elsewhere.29 In 1510, Spain gained control of Tripoli and sent officials from Sicily, which was part of the Spanish monarchy, to govern the city. Diego de Obregon, a known slave trafficker, was sent from Sicily to be the secretary of the customs office in Tripoli in 1512.30 In the same year, Borno sent a mission to Tripoli to assure it would continue its trade in European commodities.31 As part of the outcome of this meeting, the Spanish were reported to have made a “great trade in black slaves in Sicily which they had likely received by way of Fazzan.”32 The Fazzan was a major trade hub along the route from Borno.33 Alliances along the Mediterranean shores were not the only factors determining the increase of enslaved Africans in Sicily. Borno had recently gained exclusive rights of the ancient slave route that originated in the Lake Chad region, and its growth in power directly impacted the increase in trade northward. Additionally, beginning in the fifteenth century there was a shift to a more institutionalized practice of Islam across the Central Sahel, in which rulers were declaring themselves divinely ordained. Islam had been adopted as early as the seventh century in Egypt and had a strong hold across North Africa by the ninth century.34 In Borno, the first Mai, or ruler, listed in the Diwan had paternal ties to Saif Ibn Dhī-Yazan of the Beni Himyar of Kuraish, from the same family of the prophet Muhammad.35 In the Legend of Daura, the origin of the Hausa states was attributed to the trans-Saharan trek of prince Bayajidda, the son of the king of Baghdad.36 As rulers in Borno and Hausaland fortified the frontiers of an Islamic Sahel, they were simultaneously creating a pagan “other.” According to Islamic law, slaves could only be acquired through Jihad, so the frontiers of Islam also signified the frontiers of enslavable populations.37 In Borno, the consolidation of power in N’gazargamu occurred after its split from Kanem and its capital in Njimi to the East of Lake Chad. Njimi, subsequently, became pagan lands and was frequently raided by the Islamic rulers of Borno – likely resulting in the enslavement of the Bulala and Teda ethnic groups residing there.38 In oral histories from Hausaland, the first Muslim leader “drove out the pagan Hausa, and they fled to the bush.”39 These rural areas became sources of slave raiding, while power became centralized in Kano where King Muhammad Rumfa established an Islamic sultanate from 1463 to 1499.40 For both Hausaland and Borno, the institutionalization of Islam coincided with the rise of importance in enslaved people for the expansion and maintenance of their power in the Central Sahel. Slave labor was used in the long-standing salt industry in Kawar and Fachi, in present-day Niger, that supplied Sahelian markets.41 In both places, enslaved men supported the Islamic state; they were used as bodyguards, in royal entourages and armies. During Abdullah Burja’s rule from 1438 to 1452, there were supposedly

The space between Borno and Palermo 15 thousands of enslaved men and women who lived in Kano and worked on the King’s agricultural estates.42 There were also hundreds of enslaved women in Muhammad Rumfa’s palace who, in addition to serving as concubines, were responsible for the threshing of grain and the grain tax collection.43 Muhammad Rumfa had the first formal all-male state council, all of whom came from slave lineages, and he also employed eunuchs in his treasury.44 In addition, enslaved Africans sustained trans-Sahelian hierarchies through their circulation as diplomatic gifts and tribute payments. For example, Katsina, in Hausaland, paid an annual tribute of 100 enslaved individuals to N’gazargamu, the capital of Borno.45 As a result of both raiding and economic competition in the Sahel, many enslaved Africans also entered the trans-Saharan slave trade bound for North Africa.46 From its new capital on the west of Lake Chad, Borno controlled both the natron trade of the Kawar region that supplied Sahelian markets and the slave trade route that led through the Fazzan to Tripoli.47 Part of its ability to maintain this monopoly was due to its political alliances with North African rulers. From 1475, the Mais of Bornu were in touch with the Bannu Makki and Banu Ghurab shayhks of Tripoli, then the temporary Spanish occupiers, and later the Ottoman Turks.48 As a result of these Northern alliances, Borno’s Mais traded enslaved men and women in return for horses, chainmail, and Turkish fighters.49 This simultaneously increased the amount of enslaved Sahelians in the North and strengthened Borno’s military strength in the Sahel. As Borno rose in power, other Sahelian states attempted to secure alternate routes to trade northwards. The Tuareg took control of Air between 1438 and 1500, an alternate trans-Saharan trade route hub connected to Egypt and North Africa with access to salt mines.50 Hausa merchants maintained ties to both of these hubs, and subsequently increased their raids and trade in horses for slaves to the south of Hausaland in order to supply both markets in Borno and Air.51 Later, under Muhammadu Kanta, the growing Kebbi state in Hausaland also directly challenged Borno’s power though military strikes, and its own expansion into the Agadez region.52 One outcome of this frequent raiding and conflict in the Sahel was an increase in slaves sent northward.53 Another important point here is that the term Borno assigned to many Sahelians in Sicily likely lacked any significant meaning as an ethnic identity, but rather signified the origin point of enslavement for diverse Africans. At the same time that Sicily lost an important source of slaves in the Eastern Mediterranean, there was also an increase of the number of enslaved Sahelians arriving in North African ports. From 1400 to 1499, it has been estimated that there was an annual average of 5,000 slaves traveling across the Sahara, a number that would fall to 1,413 by the eighteenth century.54 In addition to the aforementioned growth of Borno’s state sanctioned trade and increased conflict in the Sahel, there was also ongoing nomadic raiding along the Saharan edges that contributed to this growth. In the fourteenth century, the Sultan of Borno wrote a letter to the

16 Lori De Lucia Sultan of Egypt complaining that polytheist Judham Arabs “have seized our free men and our relatives, who are Muslims and sold them to the slave dealers of Egypt and Syria and others; some they have kept for their own service.”55 Later in fifteenth-century Agadez, a town connected to the Air trans-Saharan trade route to Ghadames and Ghat in Libya, a Muslim Fulani cleric wrote a letter to the Egyptian scholar al-Suyūtī, in which he lamented that the inhabitants, most likely Tuareg, “care not for the Qur’an and Sunna, except when there is a dirham or dinar to be had, otherwise not” and that they were raiding and enslaving free Muslim men.56 One motivation for this raiding seems to have been the high profit margins. It is hard to estimate prices, but the value of slaves increased exponentially in Northern markets with one later example showing that a person who was bought for 9 piastres in Borno, resold for 24 piastres in Fezzan, and 40 to 60 piastres in Tripoli.57 Eunuchs potentially garnered ten times the amount because of the high risk of the operation.58 The motivations for these raids become more complicated, however, when we consider the archetypes of blackness being activated in North Africa.

The space between the two seas The Ottoman takeover of Constantinople in 1453 had two significant influences on the slave trade originating from Borno.59 The first has already been discussed; it cut off an important source of slaves for Sicily and redirected some of the people trafficked along this route into the Western Mediterranean. Secondly, it led to increased exchanges between North Africans and Europeans through which racial ideologies were shared. Historian Olivia Remie Constable noted, during the Holy Wars, “the most convenient slave was a pagan, whose servitude need not interfere with religious conscience.”60 For both Muslims and Christians, blackness was increasingly being defined in opposition to the Abrahamic religions.61 That an archetype of a pagan black African would develop in unison across the shorelines is not surprising. The rise in corsair warfare produced many captives. Historian Daniel Hershenzon estimated that between 1530 and 1780, there were 1,000,000 to 1,250,000 European Christians enslaved in Morocco and the Ottoman Maghrib.62 These captives were important sources of knowledge because they spent on average five years in captivity, and often learned the host country’s language, cultural and religious traditions.63 In addition, European rulers began funding travelers’ exploratory missions along the African coastlines in an attempt to expand their commercial reach and challenge Ottoman power. And when Spain briefly took control of North African coastal cities, it stationed its diplomats in them. During this time in North Africa, Muslim scholars were defining both where black Africa began and what it signified and this information was transmitted, and transformed, across the Mediterranean through European travelers, diplomats, and captives.

The space between Borno and Palermo 17 The idea of sub-Saharan Africa being a separate geographical region from North Africa existed in ancient times. Greeks divided the world into seven climes, which separated Africa south of the Sahara from the North.64 Some medieval Arab scholars, who had little to no first-hand knowledge of West Africa, adopted this Greek climatic model. These geographical frontiers carried with them cultural and religious interpretations. The fourth zone, located at the center of the world in the Mediterranean, unified North Africa and Southern Europe as being the “most moderate in its climate and the most civilized in its inhabitants.”65 When Ibn Khaldūn, a fourteenthcentury Tunisian scholar, placed the Bilād al-Sudān, or Land of Blacks, as part of the first and second clime at the extremes of the world, he described blacks as savages, uncivilized and unintelligent and their skin color a result of being too close to the sun.66 Al-Dimashqi, a Syrian geographer, similarly described black people from the equatorial zone like “wild animals and cattle” and went even further to say “they cannot live in the second clime, let alone the third or the fourth.”67 The latter statement lent a biological slant to the definition of blackness – not only were these authors describing blackness as inferior, but also as an immutable characteristic that rendered them fundamentally different from people living in the fourth clime. This type of definition was fortified by religious doctrine through the Hamitic theory, or Noah’s curse, which originated in the Old Testament. It was employed in Islamic scholarship as early as the tenth century in such a way that attributed certain physical characteristics to black people, such as “crinkly hair” and “broad faces,” and cursed them to a life of servitude for their sins.68 From the eleventh century onward, as Islam spread across the Sahel, a tension arose in how to justify previous claims that black people could be inferior when they were also Muslim. From the standpoint of Muslim clerics, with the spread of Islam across the Sahel, it was important to accurately define the frontier of the Bilād al-Sudān, in order to ensure just practices of enslavement. Ibn Khaldūn, who worked for rulers across North Africa and recorded oral histories from Malian scholars, delineated an irq, or fence, across the Sahara that separated the Land of the Blacks from the Maghrib.69 While he still employed the climatic theory for explaining blackness, he made an exception for the Hausa, Tuareg, Songhay, and people of Borno, as part of the land of Blacks but also Islamic.70 Another fourteenth-century diplomat Al-ʿUmarī spent time in Cairo and Damascus, and gathered his information from Sahelians residing in Cairo.71 He mentioned the Yazani heritage of the Borno rulers and noted that they followed Islamic law. He did not include Borno when he specifically noted three independent white Muslim kings in the Bilād al-Sudān, suggesting that he also considered the people of Borno to be both black and Muslim.72 Whereas some of these scholars made exceptions for a black Islamic Sahel, others described these communities as white in order to rationalize their being Muslim. In the fourteenth century, Ibn Said described Muslims in Mali as acting as whites, and in the fifteenth century,

18 Lori De Lucia Syrian scholar Ibn Mājid also described people from Borno as Muslim and white.73 In North Africa whiteness was not necessarily being used as a physical marker but as an indicator of whether someone was Muslim or not. This logic imitated the climatic theory – but the idea of the fourth zone being “civilized” was replaced with it being “Islamic,” and in turn “white.” European explorers were adopting the boundaries of black Africa and what it signified through their interactions with North Africans. During this time period, Europeans remained along the African coastlines while North African merchants controlled trans-Saharan slave trades, forcing them to rely on secondhand information about inland Africa. Portuguese Gomes Eanes de Zurara and Venetian Alvise Cadamosto, two men sponsored by the Portuguese to travel along the Atlantic coast of Africa in the mid-fifteenth century, described West Africa as having a division between the “Land of the Negroes” and the “Land of the Moors”; Zurara described the beginning of the land of negroes at the sight of two palm trees after the Sahara and Cadamosto used the Senegal river to make this divide.74 This frontier was simplified from those of the Muslim scholars, who made exceptions for the Islamic belt across the Sahel. These travelers also learned about the relationship between North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans through their observations of African slave trades. Zurara wrote that in the land of the Negroes there is another kingdom called Melli, but this is not certain; for they bring the Negroes from that kingdom and sell them like the others, whereas tis manifest that if they were Moors they would not sell them so.75 He drew two important conclusions from this observation of the Moor’s slave trade: that black Africa must be pagan, and that this lack of religion also implied a lack of civilization. Mali could not be a kingdom if it was not Muslim. This was confirmed when he noted that North Africans employed the Hamitic curse as a justification for their enslavement of black Africans.76 Zurara also learned the lower commercial value of black Africans in his direct interaction with the slave trade, in one example he traded one captive Moor for numerous black captives.77 Captives from Mediterranean corsair warfare were another important source of information because they spent a significant amount of time living in their host countries, learned the host languages, and often wrote of their experiences. In both Christian and Muslim captives’ accounts, there was a growing divide between North Africa and black Africa. In the sixteenth century, Leo Africanus, born in Granada as Wasan ibn Muhammad alWazzan, was a captive of the Pope in Rome.78 In his geography, he wrote that all of “Barbary” was the most noble part of Africa, where white men ruled with reason and law.79 He contrasted this region to the Bilād al-Sudān, which he described as base, uneducated, and barbaric.80 His depiction was similar to that of Ibn Khaldūn’s of the first and second clime, in which Khaldūn wrote

The space between Borno and Palermo 19 “their manners, therefore, are close to those of the dumb animals … they have the habits of beasts not those of men and eat each other.”81 Khaldūn, however, made an exception for Borno and other Sahelian states whereas Leo Africanus wrote specifically of some people from Borno that “they are men without any faith, not Christian nor Jewish nor Muslim, like animals.”82 For Leo Africanus, the depiction of an enslavable black African evoked both an uncivilized nature and the lack of an Abrahamic religion. The archetype of black Africans being uncivilized carried into a telling comment from a seventeenth-century French captive in Tripoli who wrote that while some Europeans confused Moors with blacks “the inhabitants of Barbary are not black, but dark skinned and some are even as white as the French. Moors are the bourgeois and the merchants of town.”83 By the seventeenth century, the redeeming qualities that determined North Africans could not be black were their wealth and status, suggesting that the signs of a civilized community had become less attached to faith and more to economic behaviors. This was reflected in North African markets, where one Moroccan scholar complained that both merchants and buyers were less concerned with an enslaved person’s religious status, and more about their price and flaws.84 While religion may have become less important in determining enslavability, if skin color had become an immediate visible marker of a slave status, it not only put a Sahelian more at risk of entering the market under unlawful conditions, but it also marked a more permanent state of slavery. The heightened flow of information traveling from North Africa into Europe contributed to the shared archetype of an enslavable black African, but differing practices of slavery between these regions created distinct translations of black African phenotypes. In some countries in North Africa, the description of enslaved Sahelians as being uncivilized and animal-like fit into their demand for labor in the military. By the seventeenth century, the Moroccan ruler, Mulay Isma’il, formed an army of 150,000 mainly black slave soldiers.85 Eunuchs from the Sahel were highly valued for their character and loyalty and served both in armies and as state functionaries in Egypt, Syria, and later the Ottoman Empire.86 In slavery systems in the Christian Mediterranean, there were different racialized divisions of labor. North Africans, Turks, and Middle Eastern men tended to be preferred for their skills in corsair warfare while black Africans were primarily used in the domestic sphere. Moors were often described as dangerous and therefore not suitable for labor in households. Captive Jean Marteilhe described men from the Maghrib as “thieves, savages, liars”87 and Spanish writer Cristobal Suares de Figueroa described “Turks” and “Barbarians” as “unfaithful, bad-intentioned, thieves, drunks, hyper-sexual and guilty of many sins.”88 Black Africans, on the other hand, were often described as ill suited to physical labor. In regards to rowing, an Italian captain wrote that “blacks are the worst of all and the majority of them die of melancholy.”89 Instead, they were described as “better educated,

20 Lori De Lucia easier to handle, and once trained, very productive. They demonstrate more loyalty and affection to their masters.”90 According to Zurara, because they were pagan they “were not hardened in the belief of the other Moors.”91 Similarly, in Valencia most purchasers preferred a slave directly from Africa, because they described them as uncivilized, and more “malleable.”92 This difference in interpretation suggests that while late medieval stereotypes had shared origins across the sea, how they were activated depended on the regional context of their host society. Along the European coasts of the Mediterranean, “dangerous” Moors were destined for difficult or skilled physical labor on the galleys whereas “malleable” black Africans were better suited for domestic settings.

Reconfiguring Palermo Sicilians had various interactions with the North African hubs of transSaharan slave trades, as diplomats stationed in Tripoli, captives in Tunis and Tripoli, and as active participants in corsair warfare. Sicily did not have a standardized practice of slavery, instead its laws varied across the three different administrative regions of the island.93 Because of these two factors, the varying individual practices of Sicilian slaveholders offer insight at a micro-level of the different Mediterranean influences coinciding on the island. If we turn back to the telling example from the beginning of this chapter, there was one patron that highlights distinctly North African influences. Antonio Fardella of Trapani was a prominent purchaser at the 1510 auction in Palermo. He was one of the many Sicilian families that both participated in and funded corsair activity along the North African coast.94 As a privateer, Fardella likely observed firsthand North African practices of slavery, and this was reflected in his own practices. He was one of the largest owners of enslaved black Africans in western Sicily; in 1516, he owned one hundred enslaved black Africans.95 Counter to dominant European ideas of black Africans as docile, he described his enslaved Africans as notable for their force, courage, and loyalty.96 These were the same characteristics used to describe Sahelian eunuchs across North Africa. It is not surprising then that Fardella also purchased the only two black eunuchs at the auction.97 Fardella’s translation of African phenotypes into one of physical strength did not only impact who he purchased, but also how he used them. At the same time that exclusively black armies were being created in North Africa, Fardella had created his own personal militia of enslaved men to fight for him in personal feuds.98 “Telling examples” are often the symptom of a larger systemic problem in Western historiography. In this case, to examine these histories along national lines creates an artificial frontier between European and African histories. Employing a Braudelian approach in the Saharan-Mediterranean region links together what are often presented as disconnected histories and creates a new interpretative framework in which Africans were dynamic

The space between Borno and Palermo 21 agents of shaping global intellectual and commercial exchanges at the same time that they were being marginalized and enslaved. Historian Bruce Hall defined race as an argument, a moral ordering of the world with real consequences.99 One of the consequences of the construction of a monolithic black Africa was the erasure of West African actors in trans-regional histories such as this one. Within Borno and Hausaland, the ruling class that consisted of sultans, scholars, and merchants was constructing frontiers between Islamic and pagan communities that corresponded to who was enslavable. Enslaved individuals, in turn, became essential to supporting Islamic states and trans-Saharan economies. Braudel’s oceanic approach allows us to expand the margins to include the Central Sahel as an important actor in the history of this trans-Saharan trade route. It also creates the opportunity to examine the importance of the space between the two margins of this slave trade. In doing so it becomes evident that the idea of a black Africa had roots in regions across the shores of Mediterranean but manifested itself in different ways. In the sea, movement coexists with boundaries; multilayered currents either collide or blend to shape the movement possible on the surface. Sicily was at a crossroads of currents between the Atlantic Mediterranean and the Sahara, and the collision of ideas on the surface of this island offers insights into how both Africans and Europeans were forming relationships between ideologies of race and practices of slavery.

Notes 1 I wish to thank all of the editors of this volume, and in particular Dr. Debra Blu­ menthal for her early encouragement. I’d also like to thank both the Council of American Overseas Research Centers for the Mellon Mediterranean Regional Research Fellowship and the Middle Ages in the Wider World project for supporting this research. I am grateful to my advisors, Dr. Ghislaine Lydon and Dr. Andrew Apter for their feedback. Any errors that remain are my own. 2 Conservatoria di Registro, 1510, F. 99, 47v. Archivio di Stato Palermo, Catena. 3 Salvatore Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo: cristiani e musulmani fra guerra, schia­ vitù e commercio (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1993), 194. 4 Salvatore Bono, “Schiavi in Italia: Maghrebini, neri, slavi, ebrei e altri (secc. xvi– xix),” Mediterranea Ricerche Storiche 7, no. 19 (2010): 239; Matteo Gaudioso, La schiavitù domestica in Sicilia dopo i Normanni (Catania: Galàtola, 1926), 25. The most common terminology is “scavo nigro” or “scava nigra.” 5 Charles Verlinden, “L’esclavage en Sicile au bas Moyen Age,” Bulletin de l’Insti­ tut historique belge de Rome 35 (1963): 32. 6 Avelino Texiera da Mota, “Entrée d’esclaves noirs à Valence, 1445–1482: le remplacement de la voie saharienne par la voie atlantique,” in Le Sol, la parole et l’écrit: 2000 ans d’histoire africaine: mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny, ed. Jean Devisse, Claude Hélène Perrot, Yves Person, and Jean-Pierre Chrétien (Paris: Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer: diffusion, L’Harmattan, 1981), 579–94; Charles Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970). 7 Lara Putnam, “To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World,” Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (April 1, 2006): 616.

22 Lori De Lucia 8 Throughout this chapter, I will be using Central Sahel to refer to the region that has historically been referred to as the Central Sudan. Because of the historical motives for defining a black Africa discussed in this chapter, I have opted to follow the more recent trend in scholarship to use Sahel and will primarily be focusing on Hausaland and Borno (present-day northern Nigeria, Chad, and Niger). 9 Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 25. 10 Lovejoy, Transformations, 27. 11 Bradford G. Martin, “Kanem, Bornu, and the Fazzan: Notes on the Political His­ tory of a Trade Route,” The Journal of African History 10, no. 1 (1969): 16, 18. 12 Maurice Aymard, “De La Traite Aux Chiourmes: La Fin de l’esclavage Dans La Sicile Moderne,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome XLIV (1974). His­ torian Verlinden and da Mota proposed the shift to Iberian markets, whereas in this article Aymard also points to the continued importance of trans-Saharan trade. 13 Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly de Barbarie, 1685, MF 12219, 36r, Bibliothèque nationale de France. 14 Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 103–4, 162. 15 Ghislaine Lydon, “Saharan Oceans and Bridges, Barriers and Divides in Africa’s Historiographical Landscape,” The Journal of African History 56, no. 1 (March 2015): 3–5. In this article, Lydon places the use of heuristic seas in a historiographical perspective. 16 Armando Di Pasquale, Aspetti storico-demografici di Sicilia (Palermo: Ediprint, 1994), 140. Kalsa started from the Chiesa della Catena, near the port of Palermo, and ended in Loggia di Pisa, whereas Albergheria was further inland from the port and included the Cathedral and the Norman Palace. 17 This census included convents but did not include Steri, Palazzo dei Chiara­ monte, or the viceroys; some of the wealthiest and most influential households that likely held larger numbers of slaves. 18 Di Pasquale, Aspetti storico-demografici, 142; Numerazione, 1502–1503, Vol III, Ind VI, Fondo Sancta Sanctorum, Archivio Storico Comunale Palermo. 19 Numerazione, 1502–1503, Vol III, Ind VI, Fondo Sancta Sanctorum, 69v, Archi­ vio Storico Comunale Palermo. 20 Ibid., 86v–87v, Archivio Storico Comunale Palermo. 21 Antonino Giuffrida, “Schiavitu e Mercato Del Lavoro Nella Sicilia Rinascimen­ tale,” Nuove Effermeridi, Schiavi, corsari, rinnegati, Anno XIV, no. 54 (2001): 40–1. 22 Barqa was located in present-day Cirenaica. 23 Gomes Eanes de Zurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Translated by Raymond C. Beazley and Edgar Prestage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1896, 2010), 2:233. Words in parentheses are my own. 24 Zurara, Chronicle, 2:347. Zurara used Guinea as a term to denote all of black Africa. 25 Charles Verlinden, “L’esclavage en Sicile au bas Moyen Age,” Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome 35 (1963): 91; Beginnings of Modern Colonization, 115. 26 Avelino Texiera da Mota, “Entrée d’esclaves noirs à Valence, 1445–1482: le rempla­ cement de la voie saharienne par la voie atlantique,” in Le Sol, la parole et l’écrit: 2000 ans d’histoire africaine: mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny, ed. Jean Devisse, Claude Hélène Perrot, Yves Person, and Jean-Pierre Chrétien (Paris: Soci­ été française d’histoire d’outre-mer: diffusion, L’Harmattan, 1981), 581–4. 27 K.P. Moseley, “Caravel and Caravan: West Africa and the World-Economies, ca. 900–1900 AD,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 15, no. 3 (1992): 533. 28 Antonio Franchina, “Un Censimento Di Schiavi Nel 1565,” Archivio Storico Sicili­ ano, Nuova Serie, XXXII (1907): 374–420. In this census there was a total of 645

The space between Borno and Palermo 23

29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

45

slaves. There were 234 total enslaved men from Africa, with 117 specifically noted as being from Borno. In his analysis, Franchina incorrectly translates this as Borneo. da Mota, “Entrée d’esclaves noirs,” 580. Nadia Zeldes, “Un Tragico Ritorno: Schiavi Ebrei in Sicilia Dopo La Conquista Spagnola Di Tripoli (1510),” Nuove Effermeridi, Schiavi, corsari, rinnegati, anno XIV, no. 54 (2001), 48. Rémi Dewière, “L’esclave, le savant et le sultan: Représentations du monde et diplomatie au sultanat du Borno (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)” (PhD diss., Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 2015), 74; Ahmad Ibn Furtū, History of the First Twelve Years of the Reign of Mai Idris Alooma of Bornu (1571–1583) by His Imam. Ahmed Ibn Fartua; Together with the “Diwan of the Sultans of Bornu” and “Girgam” of the Magumi. Translated by Herbert Richmond Palmer (Lagos: Printed by the government printer, 1926), 57. Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly de Barbarie, 1685, MF 12219, 108v, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Martin, “Kanem Bornu,” 16. Jacob Festus Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., Historical Atlas of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 22. Furtū, History of the First Twelve Years, 84. Ousmane Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016), 73–74; Dierk Lange, “The Bayajidda Legend and Hausa History,” in African Zion: Studies in Black Judaism, ed. Edith Bruder and Tudor Parfitt (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 138–139. There is dispute over the historical accuracy of this account, but it is worth noting as part of the larger Sahelian trend to establish clerical lineages. John O. Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterra­ nean Lands of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002), 53. Furtū, History of the First Twelve Years, 4–5; Dierk Lange, “Ethnogenesis from within the Chadic State. Some Thoughts on the History of Kanem-Borno,” Pai­ deuma 39 (January 1, 1993): 269. Mervyn Hiskett, “The ‘Song of Bagauda’: A Hausa King List and Homily in Verse–II,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 28, no. 1 (January 1, 1965): 116. Heidi J. Nast, “Islam, Gender, and Slavery in West Africa Circa 1500: A Spatial Archaeology of the Kano Palace, Northern Nigeria,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86, no. 1 (1996): 69. Paul E. Lovejoy, “The Borno Salt Industry,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 11, no. 4 (1978): 648. Mahdi Adamu, “The Hausa and Their Neighbors in the Central Sudan,” in General History of Africa, ed. Djibril Tamsir Niane, Vol. IV (London: Heine­ mann, 1984), 296; Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, 110. This number may be allegor­ ical, but represented the importance of slave labor. Heidi J. Nast, Concubines and Power: Five Hundred Years in a Northern Nigerian Palace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 31. Nast, “Islam, Gender, and Slavery,” 55; “Kano Chronicle,” in Herbert Rich­ mond Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs: Being Mainly Translations of a Number of Arabic Manuscripts Relating to the Central and Western Sudan (London: Cass, 1967), 109, 112. Nast notes that this was similar to Murat II in Ottoman empire, who had a eunuch-run treasury. Mahdi Adamu, “The Hausa and Their Neighbors in the Central Sudan,” in Gen­ eral History of Africa, ed. Djibril Tamsir Niane, Vol. IV (London: Heinemann, 1984), 279. Again, this number may have been more figurative than factual.

24 Lori De Lucia 46 Paul E. Lovejoy, “The Borno Salt Industry,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 11, no. 4 (1978): 659–60; Herbert Richmond Palmer, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London: J. Murray, 1936), 33. 47 Ahmad Ibn Furtū, History of the First Twelve Years, 4–5. 48 Martin, “Kanem, Bornu, and the Fazzan,” 18. 49 Robin Law, “Horses, Firearms, and Political Power in Pre-Colonial West Africa,” Past & Present, no. 72 (1976): 131; Martin, “Kanem, Bornu, and the Fazzan,” 25. 50 Nast, Concubines and Power, 60. 51 Adamu, “The Hausa and Their Neighbors,” 284, 288; Nast, “Islam and Gender,” 50. 52 Adamu, “The Hausa and Their Neighbors,” 278. 53 Ibid., 280, 286. 54 John Wright, The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London: Routledge, 2007), 39, 53. 55 Abu ‘l’Abbas Ahmad Al-Qalqashandi, “Subh al-a’sha,” in Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, ed. J.F.P. Hopkins and Nehemia Levt­ zion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 347. 56 John O Hunwick, “Notes on a Late Fifteenth-Century Document Concerning ‘AlTakrur’,” in African Perspectives: Papers in the History, Politics and Economics of Africa Presented to Thomas Hodgkin, ed. Christopher Allen and Richard William Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 14, 17. 57 Michel Fontenay, “Routes et Modalités Du Commerce Des Esclaves Dans La Méditerranée Des Temps Modernes (XVI e, XVII e et XVIII e Siècles),” Revue Historique 308, no. 4 (640) (2006): 817. 58 Jan Hogendorn, “The Hideous Trade. Economic Aspects of the ‘Manufacture’ and Sale of Eunuchs,” Paideuma 45 (1999): 144. 59 Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee: corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009), 3–12. Fiume offers a description of the more general impact of this event on Mediterranean corsair warfare. 60 Olivia Remie Constable, “Muslim Spain and Mediterranean Slavery: The Medieval Slave Trade as an Aspect of Muslim-Christian Relations,” in Chris­ tendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh, and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 265. 61 El-Hamel, Black Morocco, 58. In his study on slavery in Morocco, Historian Chouki El-Hamel made a similar observation that “Isma’il’s pursuit to legalize the enslavement of black Moroccans at the same as European leaders adopted legal measures to justify black enslavement represents an amazing independent development, stemming from common roots in a Mediterranean concept of slav­ ery and Abrahamic traditions.” 62 Daniel Hershenzon, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl­ vania Press, 2018), 18. 63 Giovanna Fiume, “Lettres de Barbarie: Esclavage et Rachat de Captifs Siciliens (Xvie–Xviiie Siècle),” Cahiers de La Méditerranée 87 (2013): 230. 64 John O. Hunwick, “A Region of the Mind: Medieval Arab Views of African Geography and Ethnography and Their Legacy,” Sudanic Africa 16 (2005): 107. 65 Hunwick, Region of Mind, 126. 66 Ibn Khaldūn, “Muqaddima,” in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 321. 67 Al-Dimashqī, “Nukhbat al-dahr fī ‘ajā’ib al-barr wa al-bahr,” in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 205. 68 James H. Sweet, “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,” The William and Mary Quarterly Third Series, 54, no. 1 (January 1, 1997): 149. 69 Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 317.

The space between Borno and Palermo 25 70 Ibn Khaldūn, “‘Kitāb al-‘Ibar’ in Hopkins and Levtzion,” Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 325, 332; Hunwick and Powell, 38. He also claimed that some blacks were descendants of Ham, combining some of the previous mentioned theories. 71 Levtzion, Corpus, 252–3. 72 Ibn Fadl Allāh al-‘Umarī, “Masālik al-absār fī mamālik al-amsār,” in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 274. 73 Ibn Mājid, “Kitāb al-Fawā’id fī usūl ‘ilm al-bahr wa-al-qawā’id,” in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus, 367; Ibn Said in Corpus, 192–3. 74 Alvise Cà da Mosto, The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on West­ ern Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Antonio Malfante, Diogo Gomes, and João de Barros. Translated by Gerald Roe Crone (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1937), 34; Gomes Eanes de Zurara, The Chron­ icle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Translated by Raymond C. Beazley and Edgar Prestage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1896, 2010), 2:176. 75 Zurara, 2:234. 76 Ibid., 1:54. 77 Ibid., 1:57. 78 Crofton Black, “Leo Africanus’s ‘Descrittione Dell’Africa’ and Its SixteenthCentury Translations,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002): 262. 79 Giovan Lioni Africano, “Della Descrittione Dell’Africa,” in Primo Volume e Terza Editione Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Raccolto Gia Da M. Gio. Battista Ramusio, ed. Giovanni Battista Ramusio (Venetia: 1563), 1. 80 Ibid., 77–81. 81 Ibn Khaldūn, “Muqaddima,” in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 321. 82 Giovan Lione Africano, 80. “Sono huomini che non tengono fede alcuna ne christiana ne giudea ne maomettana ma stanno senza a modo di bestie.” 83 Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly de Barbarie, 1685, MF 12219, 36v, Bibliothèque nationale de France. 84 Hunwick and Powell, The African Diaspora, 47. 85 El Hamel, Black Morocco, 188; Carl F. Petry, “From Slaves to Benefactors: The Habashis of Mamluk Cairo,” Sudanic Africa 5 (1994): 58. 86 Hogendorn, “The Hideous Trade,” 139; Petry, “From Slaves to Benefactors,” 58, 62. 87 Bono, Corsari, 113. “ladri, crudeli, spergiuri.” 88 Salvatore Bono, Schiavi: una storia mediterranea (XVI–XIX secolo) (Bologna: il Mulino, 2016), 70. 89 Pantero Pantera, L’armata Navale Del Capitan Pantero Pantera (Rome: Egidio Spada, 1614), 131. “I negri sono peggiori di tutti et muoiono la maggior parte di pura malinconia.” 90 Bono, Schiavi, 70. The full quote is originally from Cristobal Suares de Figueroa’s Plaza Universal de todas las ciencias Madrid, 1615. It is as follows: “Gli schiavi o sono turchi, o barbareschi, o negri: I due primi generi risultano di solito infedeli, mal intenzionati, ladroni, ubriaconi, pieni di mille sensualita e autori di mille delitti … i negri sono di miglior literatura, piu’ facili di trattare e, una volta addres­ trati, di buon rendimento. Si dimostrano piu’ leali e piu’ affezionati ai padroni.” 91 Zurara, 1:84. 92 Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in FifteenthCentury Valencia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 60. 93 Anastasia Motta, “La Schiavitu a Messina Nel Primo Cinquecento,” Archivio Storico per La Sicilia Orientale, 70 (1974): 310. 94 Carmelo Trasselli, Da Ferdinando il Cattolico a Carlo V: l’esperienza siciliana, 1475–1525 (Soveria Mannelli, CZ: Rubbettino, 1982), 235.

26 Lori De Lucia 95 Salvatore Bono, “Schiavi in Italia: Maghrebini, Neri, Slavi, Ebrei e altri (secc. xvi–xix),” Mediterranea Ricerche Storiche 7, no. 19 (2010): 239. 96 Salvatore Bono, “Selon l’arrivage Sur Le Marche. La Multiplicite Ethnique Des Esclaves En Italie (XVI–XIX),” in Couleurs de l’esclavage Sur Les Deux Rives de La Méditerranée (Moyan Âge-XXe Siècle), ed. Roger Botte and Alessandro Stella (Paris: Karthala, 2012), 201. 97 Conservatoria di Registro, 1510, F. 99, 47v. Archivio di Stato Palermo, Catena. One was listed as nigro and the other moro nigro. 98 Trasselli, Da Ferdinando il Cattolico, 679. 99 Bruce S. Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 9, 14.

2

Race and vulnerability Mongols in thirteenth-century ethnographic travel writing1 Sierra Lomuto

Medieval Europe held a marginal position on the global stage, particularly in relation to the expansive geographic reach and influence of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. From 1236 to 1241, Batu Khan, Chinggis Khan’s grandson, and his famed general Subetei successfully expanded the Mongol empire into northwestern Russia, Poland, and Hungary.2 They conquered Kiev on 6 December 1240, marched through the Verecke pass into Hungary in March of 1241, and burned Krakow on Palm Sunday that same year. After the conquest of Kiev, Archbishop Peter of Russia wrote a letter in which he warned that Latin Europe would be the next target of the Mongols’ military expansion.3 In reality, the Mongols never attempted to advance farther west, but the leaders of Latin Europe were nonetheless on high alert.4 Pope Innocent IV called upon Peter to read his letter at the Council of Lyon in 1245, where the protection of Latin Europe from potential Mongol invasions was a primary concern. As a method of defense, the Pope dispatched several missionaries to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire, to acquire as much information as they could about this new and unknown enemy.5 From this vantage point of fear, Latin Europeans wrote about and disseminated information about the Mongols, including their history, cultural practices, religion, and methods of warfare. This process of knowledge production, wherein the epistemological capture of Mongols could empower Latin Europeans, relied on a discourse characterized by a rhetoric of vulnerability and a racial framework that denigrated Mongol difference. As this essay will show, we can interpret this discourse as a colonial project that turned Mongols into an object of knowledge – knowable, seen, and understood – thus revealing how Latin Europeans attempted to produce power from the margins. The earliest Latin records about the Mongols are found in the ethnographic travel writings of the Franciscan and Dominican missionaries of the 1240s and 1250s. In these accounts, the authors perform a production of knowledge that purports to be objective. However, what they present as either neutral curiosity or objective facts, which will later populate European encyclopedias, “obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced,”

28 Sierra Lomuto as Edward Said has famously put it.6 As with any colonial project, these writers transformed the cultural, religious, governmental, and physical differences of the Mongols into racial alterity. They consistently represented the Mongols as despotic rulers and cannibalistic barbarians who delighted in terrorizing their enemies. Simon of St. Quentin, for example, writes that they drink the blood of their enemies. These travelers also noted that when Mongols would run out of food during long battles, they would choose one out of every ten men to eat.7 These authors express a desire to dominate the Mongols, both epistemologically and culturally: their curiosity within this context racialized a people different from themselves, transforming them into others who were not merely oppositional to the dominant Latin European subject, but constituted by differences and similarities that are all held in a discursive system that buttresses that subject’s supremacy. Although Latin Christianity was a marginal religion in the thirteenth century and medieval missionaries never succeeded in their aims of global conversion, these thirteenth-century texts produced a cultural discourse that informed the period’s imaginative and encyclopedic literature, shaping ideologies that would eventually influence colonialist endeavors that were successful. Richard Hakluyt notably included the narratives of John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck in the second edition of Principal Navigations (1598–1600).8 Hakluyt – who was listed on the original charter of the Virginia Company of London and was an investor for the second charter, as well as an advisor for the East India Company – was a fierce and effective proponent of England’s colonization of North America: his work played no small role in the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Principal Navigations was a colonial project that curated medieval and contemporary texts for the aim of demonstrating the greatness of English travel and conquest. Although medieval travel writing was certainly distinct from that of later periods, for geopolitical contexts shift over time and thus so too does the way in which travel occurs and informs ethnographic knowledge, these early writings nonetheless racialized their subjects and consistently expressed orientalist attitudes within a context of medieval, not modern geopolitics. The success or failure of medieval missionaries matters less than how they understood and wrote about the Mongols, as well as the long­ term effects their writing had on later periods. If the aim of studying these texts is to enrich our understanding of European cultural history, then we are compelled to focus on the role these texts, and the racial discourses they produced, played in the longue durée of European history – not whether their authors themselves succeeded in converting their missionary objects. Scholarly engagement with these writings, however, often looks past their racial ideologies and markers of a larger colonial project. For example, in the last decade of the twentieth century, Gregory Guzman made the case that these authors’ tendency to falsely represent Mongols as cannibals came not from their own racialized perspectives, but from a passive and neutral engagement with biblical and classical literary traditions.9 Guzman asserts that it was

Race and vulnerability 29 the literary tradition of medieval Western civilization, and not the six individual authors [under study], [that] was at fault for seeing the rest of the world through the framework of the classical and biblical legends, myths, and literary accounts. The six reporters merely saw and wrote what they were expected to see, hear, and report.10 As he draws on his analysis to exculpate the missionary authors, he betrays his own desire to move “fault” from the individual to a de-personalized “tradition.” Over twenty years later, Kim Phillips’s Before Orientalism reflects a similar investment in the racial innocence of these missionaries.11 Phillips argues, where authors denigrated particular Asian cultures their attitude can be explained by the motives of authors and expectations of their audiences. […] [M]ost medieval writing on China was full of admiration and appealed to audiences’ desire to revel in descriptions of natural bounty and civilized pleasures.12 Noting that these texts were motivated by a “desire for information and for pleasure,” she limits curiosity, desire, and admiration to an allophilic multiculturalist framework incapable of producing or participating in racial discourse. However, orientalism and racial ideologies are not constituted only by overt displays of denigration, but by a much more complex framework of alterity that includes these attributes we would deem “positive.” For example, even as John of Plano Carpini admires Mongol governance for its efficiency, he also suggests that they don’t deserve to be so successful and undermines them through depictions of despotism. Medieval travel narratives that produced ethnographic knowledge often did so through racial discourses that combined denigration with admiration. Modern scholarship on these texts, as represented by Guzman and Phillips, has often excused the past to the detriment of our present, impeding our ability to recognize the complex, even contradictory, ways that racial ideologies operate and influence our worlds, from the medieval to the modern. The influence of the Alexander romances, apocalyptic biblical traditions, and Greek and Roman myths on medieval travel writers – rather than excuse the misrepresentation of Mongols – exposes how racial ideologies are borne and perpetuated, regardless of authorial “fault.” Individual authors’ fantasies about monsters shaped how real people were racially constructed, regardless of direct intention. These authors came to represent Mongols as cannibalistic because they first and foremost did not recognize their humanity; thus, they could readily turn to the Plinian monsters and legends about Gog and Magog to flesh out and secure a perspective in which Mongols were monstrous. The dehumanization of Mongols had to have preceded the notion that monstrous figures of legend – “the literary tradition of medieval Western civilization” – were relevant and appropriate figures of comparison.

30 Sierra Lomuto Further, if individuals are never responsible, then their passivity ensures that the racialized systems under whose influence they act will persist, for who else but individuals can shift prevailing perspectives? Since the construction of race is never a neutral act that can be decontextualized from a hierarchy of power, the racialization of Mongols invites us to consider not whether these authors intended to dehumanize them, but rather how they did so and what they gained in the process. Latin Europe’s marginal position was not necessarily one of powerlessness; in fact, one particular example – the writing of John of Plano Carpini – reveals how the adoption of a vulnerable perspective could produce an epistemology of power.

John of Plano Carpini and knowledge production The fear and anxiety felt by the Europeans at the 1245 Council of Lyon drove them to seek knowledge about the Mongols, to arm themselves with information about this unknown enemy and to transform them into a known entity. The pursuit to intellectually grasp who the Mongols were effected their epistemological capture within the discourse engendered by Innocent IV’s papal missions. The earliest account was from the Franciscan friar John of Plano Carpini, whose Historia Mongalorum (c. 1247) became one of the most influential sources on the Mongols because of its inclusion in Vincent of Beauvais’s encyclopedia, Speculum Historiale (c. 1260).13 A report outlining the information he had acquired about the Mongols during his travels, the Historia apprehends the history and culture of the Mongols for a Latin Christian audience who are presented with a totalizing perspective of who the Mongols are, one that will circulate in not only the most copied and consulted encyclopedia of the late Middle Ages, but also in the widely redacted Chronica Majora (c. 1250) by Matthew Paris. It will have great influence on Plano Carpini’s intended audience and, as mentioned above, in the early modern period when Richard Hakluyt publishes it (along with Beauvais’s version) in the first volume of his 1598 Principal Navigations. Plano Carpini was one of the leaders of Innocent IV’s papal missions, for which he departed from Lyon in April of 1245. By way of Kiev, he travelled first to the camp of Khan Batu, which he reached the following April. With Batu’s permission, he proceeded on to Syra Orda, the imperial camp right outside the Mongol capital of Karakorum, where he witnessed the election of the Great Khan Guyuk in July of 1246. He composed the Historia Mongalorum in 1247 or 1248; and as he made his return journey, he and his companions lectured at various monasteries about their experience. Notes from one of these lectures is thought to constitute The Tartar Relation, attributed to C. de Bridia.14 Another missionary dispatched by Pope Innocent IV at Lyon, as part of Friar Ascelin’s embassy, was Dominican friar Simon of St. Quentin, who wrote the Historia Tartarorum in 1248. No complete manuscript is extant, but it was incorporated alongside Plano Carpini’s account into Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum

Race and vulnerability 31 Historiale, where it survives in the last three books. As the Speculum Historiale increased the dissemination and influence of these early travel accounts across Latin Christendom, it also engrained their descriptions of Mongols as encyclopedic knowledge: factual, credible, and ripe for repetition. While Vincent used both Plano Carpini and Simon’s accounts for his encyclopedia, by his own admission Plano Carpini provided him with more thorough material, presented in a form commensurate with knowledge production. The Historia Mongalorum is less recognizable as a travel narrative. It is not merely a European traveler’s description of his journey, or even recording of the Mongols’ history (as it was told to him by both Mongols and non-Mongols living within their territories); it is a meticulously organized ethnographic account of everything its author could collect about the Mongols, his object of study. It is structured and orderly with a clear blueprint of each chapter’s content neatly laid out. Plano Carpini explains that there will be nine chapters, the first seven each detailing a different category of knowledge: the country, the people, their religion, their customs, their empire, their wars, and the countries under their dominion. The eighth, toward which all the preceding chapters build, is about how to wage war against them, a narrative progression that reveals Plano Carpini’s investment in linking an apprehension of knowledge with military strategies. The ninth and final chapter is devoted to a description of Plano Carpini and his retinue’s journey, including eyewitness accounts, a conclusion that serves to assure readers of the veracity of the report. Each chapter is similarly organized with the provision of a structural blueprint. In the first chapter, for example, Plano Carpini notes that he will discuss, under the main topic of the country: its position, its physical features, and its climate. The narrative is thus structured not as a sequential relation of Plano Carpini’s journey from Lyon to Syra Orda, but rather around particular areas of research with a rhetorical program in mind. The Historia places the powerful Mongol Empire under the gaze of an official ambassador from the West, an official representative of Europe reporting back to all of Latin Christendom. This gaze thereby catalyzes the first step of any colonial project: constructing the target as an object of knowledge. This project of knowledge-power is itself an act of colonial-orientalist violence.15 In the prologue, European fear and vulnerability emerge as an undercurrent of this particular process of knowledge production. They serve as the driving forces that compelled Plano Carpini’s journey, his research, and its collection in the ensuing report. The knowledge he presents throughout the Historia is contextualized and framed by this introduction, in which he emphasizes that Christendom itself is under threat of attack by the advancing Mongols and that he is prepared to serve as a martyr for its defense. Explaining that he has been ordered by the Pope to “go to the Tartars and other nations of the orient (iremus ad Tartaros et ad nationes alias orientis),” Plano Carpini links his mission’s expedition – and its results, the Historia itself – with a defense of the Church.16 He writes,

32 Sierra Lomuto we decided to go to the Tartars first, for we feared that if we did not pass through their territory, the Church of God would be threatened by danger (elegimus prius ad Tartaros proficisci; timebamus enim ne per eos in proximo Ecclesie Dei periculum immineret).17 According to Plano Carpini, it is urgent that they travel into Mongol territory and equip themselves with as much information as possible in order to defend Christendom from a Mongol invasion: Although we feared we would be killed by the Tartars or other people, or imprisoned forever, or afflicted with hunger, thirst, cold, heat, abuses, and forcefully cast down almost beyond our ability to resist […], nonetheless we did not spare ourselves, so that we could carry out the will of God as it followed in the Lord Pope’s mandate, and to some extent help Christians: at the very least, indeed, knowing the truth about the desire and intention of the Tartars, would enable us to reveal it to the Christians; then if by chance they made a sudden attack, they would not find the Christian people unprepared […] and would not inflict a great slaughter on them. (Et quamvis a Tartaris vel ab aliis nationibus timeremus occidi vel perpe­ tuo captivari, vel fame, siti, algore, estu, contumeliis et laboribus nimiis quasi ultra vires affligi […] non tamen pepercimus nobis ipsis, ut volunta­ tem Dei secundum domini Pape mandatum adimplere possemus, et ut proficeremus in aliquo christianis, vel saltem scita veraciter voluntate et intentione ipsorum, possemus illam patefacere christianis, ne forte subito irruentes invenirent eos impreparatos […] et facerent magnam stragem in populo christiano.)18 Plano Carpini presents a long and specific list of all of the terrors he and his missionaries are prepared to face: everything from harsh weather conditions and hunger to life imprisonment and death; he thus conveys their deep vulnerability and the validity of their fear, as well as the risks they are willing to take in order to defend Christians and Christendom against the Mongols. This expression of fear and the assertion of martyrdom activates Plano Carpini’s auctoritas, or authorial legitimacy. He invites readers to be cautious as well (“vobis scribimus ad cautelam”), that is, to share his perspective of fear and vulnerability.19 As he does so, he asserts the credibility of his narrative by citing both his motivations and eye-witness sources (his own and that of other Christians) while employing a rhetorical maneuver that further appeals to Christian vulnerability and Mongol terror: Therefore whatever, with your welfare in mind, we shall write to you to put you on your guard, you ought to believe all the more confidently inasmuch as we have either seen everything with our own eyes, for during

Race and vulnerability 33 a year and four months and more we travelled about both through the midst of them and in company with them and we were among them, or we have heard it from Christians who are with them as captives and are, so we believe, to be relied upon.20 (Unde quecumque pro vestra utilitate vobis scribimus ad cautelam, tanto securius credere debetis, quanto nos cuncta vel ipsi vidimus oculis nostris, quia per annum et quattuor menses et amplius ambulavimus per ipsos pariter et cum ipsis, ac fuimus inter eos, vel audivimus a christianis, qui sunt inter eos captivi, et ut credimus fide dignis.)21 While assuring his readers that his narrative is a reliable source of information, he reminds them that Christians are held as prisoners in Mongol territory, which immediately signals that they are not safe there, again emphasizing his vulnerability – and his readers’ if the Mongols reach them – as well as his bravery. As the Historia Mongalorum emphasizes European vulnerability, it concomitantly produces ethnographic knowledge about Mongols wherein they are constructed as inferior to Latin Christians with essentialized physiognomic, cultural, and religious features. The production of their alterity emerges consistently through Christian fear, which buttresses the Historia’s orientalism and racial discourse, rather than evacuates it of them. While the inferiority of the Mongols is drawn throughout the Historia in a number of ways, including in regard to their eating habits, marriage customs, and legal practices, Plano Carpini’s discussion of their religion entrenches their degraded status more deeply than at any other moment in his ethnography, and it does so specifically by constructing a narrative of despotic monstrosity. The section about religion is structured into four parts: (1) worship of God, (2) what they believe is sinful, (3) divinations and purifications of sin, and (4) funeral rites. The significance of this section on religion is that it says very little about their religion and focuses almost entirely on how threatening the Mongols are. Indeed, it reads as though Plano Carpini is using this section to make an active case for why the Mongols are so threatening. He gives an anecdote about the horrific treatment of Michael of Chernigov, a pious Christian duke from Russia who was beaten and then beheaded when he refused to bow in the direction of Chinggis Khan’s burial in the south, saying that it was against Christian law. Plano Carpini moves through the anecdote quickly and without much critique or comment, but it has deep rhetorical impact on the construction of the Mongols as brutal anti-Christians at the precise moment of their religious description. Although he says they don’t persecute based on religion, he gives this very poignant example of when they did, which drives home the point that they are threatening. He writes, “we understand that they forced no one to deny his faith or law, except Michael, of whom we have just spoken (neminem adhuc quod intelleximus coegerunt suam fidem

34 Sierra Lomuto vel legem negare, excepto Michaele, de quo dictum est supra)”; however, he then immediately says that if they were the sole rulers of the world, they would impose their religion on everyone (notably, an historically inaccurate claim given the Mongol practice of integration rather than forced conversion).22 He then proceeds to give another anecdote about the cruel punishment of another Russian duke, Andrew of Chernigov, who is put to death after being accused of stealing horses even though his guilt was not proven. The Mongols’ ruthless brutality is conveyed not just through Andrew’s unjust death sentence, but also through the story about his brother who was forced to marry the widow and consummate their relationship despite her “crying and weeping (clamantem et plorantem).”23 Their brutality is here expressed through women’s suffering and the abuse of women’s bodies. Highlighting these examples of brutality in a section marked as about religion does epistemological work. Their brutality is related to their religious difference, which suggests that the Mongol threat could be mitigated by religious conversion. Constructing them as monotheistic opens up this possibility in the same way that it did for Rashid al-Din’s audience who wanted to see the Mongol ancestors as on the trajectory toward Islam even if they were still pre-conversion. Just like Rashid al-Din, Plano Carpini represents the Mongols as monotheistic, but here their monotheism is twisted because they worship idols. So while they are primed for conversion through their monotheism, they are at the same time degenerate in their current religious practices. Further, when Plano Carpini discusses “what they believe is sinful,” his condescension is glaring. He presents these beliefs as though they are absurd, contextualizing them as invented and lawless: Although they have no law concerning the doing of what is right or the avoidance of sin, nevertheless there are certain traditional things, invented by them or their ancestors, which they say are sins; for example, to stick a knife into a fire, or even in any way to touch fire with a knife, or to extract meat from the cauldron with a knife, or to chop with an axe near a fire; for they believe that, if these things were done, the fire would be beheaded.24 (Quamvis de iusticia facienda, vel peccato cavendo nullam habeant legem, nichilominus tamen habent aliquas traditiones, quas dicunt esse peccata, quas confinxerunt ipsi vel antecessores eorum. Unum est figere cutellum in igne, vel etiam quocumque modo tangere ignem cutello, vel cum cutello extraere de caldario carnes, iuxta ignem incidere cum securi; credunt enim quod sic auferri debeat capud igni.)25 After listing a few of the actions that are considered sinful, including those that could potentially lead to the death penalty – such as passing water inside a house or treading on a chief ’s doorstep, he dismisses further explanation by describing the list as “tedious.” Casting the Mongols as tyrannical, he compares what they do consider sinful to that which he

Race and vulnerability 35 claims they do not, namely, murder and theft, which he contextualizes as prohibitions specifically under Christian laws: On the other hand, to kill men, to invade the countries of other people, to take the property of others in any unlawful way, to commit fornica­ tion, to revile other men, to act contrary to the prohibitions and com­ mandments of God, is considered no sin by them.26 (Sed homines occidere, aliorum terras invadere, res aliorum accipere quo­ cumque iniusto modo, fornicari, aliis hominibus iniuriari facere contra prohibitiones et Dei precepta, nullum est peccatum apud eos.)27 Plano Carpini willfully misinterprets the Mongols’ particular legal frameworks and perspectives on sin. At no point does he convey a neutral attitude toward their religious and cultural practices; rather, he paints them as both inferior to Christianity and a threat to Christians. Mongol despotism and inferiority throughout Plano Carpini’s narrative provide the framework in which his description of their physical features appears. He says that their body distinguishes them from all other men (“forma personarum ab omnibus hominibus aliis est remota”) because they have more space between their eyes and cheeks than other people, and their cheeks are quite prominent above the jaw (“Inter oculos enim et inter genas sunt plus quam alii homines lati. Gene etiam satis prominent a maxillis).”28 They have flat, small noses; little eyes; eyelids raised up to the eyebrows; slender waists; small feet; they are of medium height; and hardly any of them have beards except a little hair on their upper lip and chin, which they don’t trim. He also gives a very elaborate description of their hair style and how they shave it, saying that they do so like the clerics with a tonsure, providing a cultural reference point for his readers. In fact, he has a keen self-awareness of wanting to describe them in very minute detail so that his audience understands who they are: there’s an explicit strategy here that through capturing their physical bodies with description, they can be known to this very distant, European Latin Christian audience. Further, gender constructs aid the racialized essentialism. He says it’s difficult to tell young women from men because they dress the same and that the men keep their hair long like women.29 The need to offer a cultural reference point has the effect of effeminizing the men and de-feminizing the women. The men and women are indistinguishable from one another in dress and appearance. What makes this description racial is not that he details their physical features, but that it is part of a larger discourse about Mongol barbarity and inferiority in which this description is a strategy for knowing who they are and that – above all – through their epistemological capture, Plano Carpini and his audience can acquire power over them. Race is not a neutral category for organizing difference. It is a functional category that leverages differences to produce and sustain the supremacy of a dominant subject; and here, Plano Carpini’s Historia demonstrates how race becomes

36 Sierra Lomuto imbricated within a process of transforming vulnerability into power. Racial ideologies are not merely the product of systematized institutions, such as colonialism or slavery, but rather a mechanism of these institutions’ production. They help systems of power come into being and sustain themselves. Plano Carpini’s medieval world was not one of Mongol subjugation to European institutions of power, and certainly his travel account and those of his contemporaries did not in itself lead to later projects of colonialism. Yet, precisely through a perspective of vulnerability, the Historia Mongalorum produced a racial discourse that pulled Mongols into an epistemology that would shape a way of seeing and constructing European power on a global scale.

Conversion in William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium The travel account of William of Rubruck, another Franciscan friar, offers a useful comparison to that of Plano Carpini because of a crucial difference in the context of both his journey and the composition of his travel narrative, the Itinerarium (c.1255).30 While Plano Carpini was a papal missionary, officially dispatched by Innocent IV, Rubruck’s journey was not sanctioned by the pope or a monarch. Even though he addresses his letter to King Louis IX of France, his was an unofficial mission. The Itinerarium demonstrates how racial ideologies are constructed and circulated beyond institutionalized power structures, and are not only products of but also architects of those institutions. The principal aim of Rubruck’s journey, as reflected in his report, is the conversion of the Mongols, something Plano Carpini and his fellow papal missionaries were only peripherally interested in; his focus on conversion thus also fleshes out how conversion operates as a colonialist tool specifically within the context of Latin European representation of Mongols. William of Rubruck travelled through the Mongol empire nearly a decade after John of Plano Carpini. He left from Constantinople in 1253 and travelled through the Kipchak Khanate to Karakorum where he met with Mongke Khan. He began his return journey in July 1254, arriving in Tripoli in August 1255. His Itinerarium is a letter he composed to Louis IX, detailing his journey and encounters with the peoples of the Mongol empire. It has been preferred by modern scholars because its descriptions are considered more eloquent than those of Plano Carpini and others in the preceding decade; it has also been deemed a more reliable portrayal of the Mongols, due in part because it does not represent them as cannibals. The only mention of cannibalism in Rubruck’s report is of the Tibetans, which significantly distinguishes his account from those of Plano Carpini and Simon of St. Quentin. However, the Itinerarium had relatively low circulation during the medieval period. It may not have circulated at all if it weren’t for Roger Bacon, who included parts of it in his Opus Maius (c. 1267). It is extant in six manuscripts, the earliest of which is bound with the Historia Mongalorum.31 Its most significant impact on European cultural history is perhaps its inclusion in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations.32

Race and vulnerability 37 In the Itinerarium, conversion is both the motivation for the journey as well as integral to what Shirin Khanmohamadi has described as Rubruck’s ethnographic practice of intersubjectivity.33 In Khanmohamadi’s study of the poetics of medieval ethnography, she argues that Rubruck’s authorial subjectivity is one that expresses a destabilization of the self, which thereby opens a space through which Mongol subjectivity can emerge in tandem with Latin subjectivity. She suggests that as Rubruck “others” himself, he disorients his own subject position, which allows him to create an intersubjective ethnography that does not employ a perspective of superiority or produce an epistemology of power. According to Khanmohamadi, “the cosmopolitan practice of stepping outside of one’s own shoes into those of racial, cultural, or religious others comes at considerable risks – of humiliation, of self-objectification – to the self.”34 For example, as Khanmohamadi notes, when Rubruck appeared before the court of Khan Batu in 1253, he did so “with bare feet [nudis pedibus]” – as was customary for Franciscans – and in his report he remarks that he and his retinue “were a great spectacle in their eyes [eramus spectaculum magnum in oculis eorum],” that is, in the eyes of the Mongols.35 In this self-reflective moment, Rubruck steps away from his own perspective to explain how he and his fellow Franciscans appeared to the Mongols. He describes a similar submission to the gaze of the Mongol court when he is received by the Great Khan Mongke in Karakorum in 1254. Appearing barefoot there as well, he writes: People gathered round us, gazing at us as if we were freaks [tamquam monstra], especially in view of our bare feet, and asked whether we had no use for our feet, since they imagined that in no time we should lose them.36 William expresses a self-conscious awareness of the alterity of the Franciscans in the Mongol court, of the nearness of their own dehumanization by the Mongols. Khanmohamadi argues that William’s travel account reveals the deep discomfort that comes with a cosmopolitan ethos of travel, where the traveler experiences an estrangement from his own worldview.37 However, we may also interpret the instability of Rubruck’s authorial subjectivity as serving the narrative’s primary focus on conversion. In the Itinerarium, it is only Mongol conversion to Christianity that offers a route toward restabilization of the self. Certainly, as a whole, Rubruck represents Mongol difference without recourse to stereotypes or dehumanization, but this representation is framed by a desire for Christian conversion. For example, despite his consistent disdain for the Nestorian faith, he helps two Nestorian priests restore Mongke’s wife Qotai back to health over several days, noting how she teaches him the language as he does so; however, his interest in learning the language does not reflect a moment of benign cross-cultural exchange.38 Rather, it points to a resolution for his

38 Sierra Lomuto oft-repeated concern that the language barrier is the reason he has found such little success converting Mongols. In one of the more well-known scenes of the Itinerarium, Rubruck describes his public theological debate, in which he presents himself as respectful of religious differences even as he asserts Latin Christianity.39 But of course, the point of the debate is not to merely teach Mongke Khan and those in attendance about his faith: the point is to convince them all to convert. Precisely because Rubruck’s primary goal is to convert the Mongols, his encounters throughout the Itinerarium reflect strategies for reaching that goal. An underlying aim of converting Mongols to Latin Christianity scaffolds the entire narrative, a point that suggests it is not difference itself that is respected, but the extent to which the Mongols affirm the superiority of his faith and a promise of conversion still lingers. Rubruck laments that no one converted that day, and he later says they only converted six people during their entire stay.40 He recommends to Louis that they not send further missionaries to the Mongols, as the effort is hardly worth it.41 When he is frustrated, he even goes so far as to suggest a crusade so that they may destroy the Mongols.42 In the event that conversion can’t be achieved, violence becomes the alternative. To think one has the right to destroy another because of a refusal to conform is to believe in one’s superiority and right to dominate. This perspective is not changed by merely documenting one’s circumstantial discomfort of being away from home, subject to the gaze of those one deems inferior. Rubruck’s discomfort, his sense of vulnerability and powerlessness, drives him to assert the superiority of Latin Christendom and thus the value in conversion. Geraldine Heng makes a similar argument as Khanmohamadi about the destabilization of the gaze in Rubruck, but her analysis points precisely to how Rubruck’s authorial subjectivity draws on vulnerability to produce a perspective of superiority.43 Heng argues that his “ability to visualize himself through Mongol eyes increases as his understanding of his own powerlessness also increases.”44 Understanding one’s powerlessness is a tool of empowerment. As Rubruck becomes more aware of his vulnerability, he becomes more equipped to see himself as the Mongols do. For him to recognize how the Mongols “other” him is not the same as othering himself, or estranging himself from his own worldview, as Khanmohamadi puts it. In fact, it is an empowering maneuver to come to occupy the position of the gazer under whom one has been gazed, an important feature of Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of autoethnography, as defined in her influential essay “Arts of the Contact Zone.”45 An autoethnography is not simply a narrative in which one represents one’s own experiences, but a particular form of ethnographic writing in which the author, speaking from a marginalized position, represents themself as they have been represented by the dominant culture. They claim ownership over (and thus the ability to alter) that representation and, by way of this narrative maneuver, reclaim – or stabilize – their own subjectivity. ***

Race and vulnerability 39 The point of Rubruck’s Itinerarium, Plano Carpini’s Historia Mongalorum, and the other thirteenth-century expeditions and narratives were not to conquer the Mongols or the lands under their rule; enslavement and land conquest would characterize later European travel in the fifteenth century. Rubruck wished to bring the Mongols into the Christian fold, and Plano Carpini wanted to learn about them as a method of defense: for both, Europe’s position was one of marginality and vulnerability in the face of an increasingly powerful Mongol empire. This difference in context and motivation is one reason that has led some scholars to claim that orientalism and colonizing desires were not present in thirteenth-century travel narratives such as these. However, this perspective implies that only an already powerful Europe has the ability to colonize already disempowered societies, as though power is not produced by the very process of its acquisition. This perspective thus essentially ascribes Europe with a global dominance before they claimed it, and divests of power the global societies over which they made this claim before it was made. It also narrowly defines the various ways in which colonial projects occur and manifest. While these texts may not constitute an overt project of colonization, they demonstrate precisely how fear and vulnerability operate as mechanisms for producing ideologies of racial alterity, which, in this case, created an epistemological framework upon which colonizers (such as Richard Hakluyt) would later rest their claims of colonialist entitlement over and against indigenous peoples in North America.

Notes 1 I am hugely grateful to Geraldine Heng, Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, and Debra Blu­ menthal for their generous feedback and support throughout the writing of this article. 2 Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora is the primary English source for these events, but there are also accounts of the invasions in other contemporary English chronicles such as the Waverley Annals, the Tewkesbury Annals, and the Burton Annals; see Zsuzsanna Papp, “Tartars on the Frontiers of Europe: The English Perspective,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 11 (2005): 231–46. For more on Latin Europe’s early encounters with the Mongols, see Denis Sinor, “The Mongols in the West,” Journal of Asian History 33, no. 1 (1999): 1–44; Jacques Paviot, “England and the Mongols (c. 1260–1330),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 10, no. 3 (November, 2000): 305–18; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410 (New York: Routledge, 2005); and Colleen Ho, “Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century European-Mongol Relations,” History Compass 10, no. 12 (December, 2012): 946–68. 3 The letter, believed to have been composed between 1241 and 1244, is in: 1) R. Pauli, “Ex annalibus Burtonensibus,” in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXVII (Hanover, 1885), 474–5 and Henry Richards Luard, ed., “Annales Monasterii de Burton, 1004–1263,” in Annales Monastici, Vol. I (London: Longman, 1864), 271–5; and 2) Henry Richards Luard, ed., Mat­ thaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, Vol. IV (London: Longman, 1877), 386–9. The latter assigns the letter to 1244, the former to

40 Sierra Lomuto

4 5 6 7

8

9

10 11

12 13

14

1245. The letter is only extant in these chronicles, not independently. See Zsuz­ sanna Papp, “Tartars on the Frontiers of Europe: The English perspective,” Annual of Medieval Studies at the CEU 11 (2005): 231–46, page 242. See also Peter Jackson, “The Testimony of the Russian ‘Archbishop’ Peter Concerning the Mongols (1244/5): Precious Intelligence or Timely Disinformation?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, no. 1–2 (January, 2016): 65–77. Ogodei Khan died in December 1241. His death meant there would soon be an election for a new great khan, which prompted Batu to return to Karakorum. Franciscans and Dominicans became trusted messengers of the papacy and of secular rulers. From 1234, they were employed to preach the crusades. And they were afforded the same absolution of sin as the crusaders themselves. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 18. For more on thirteenth-century chronicle depictions of Mongols as cannibals and monsters, see James Ross Sweeney, “Thomas of Spalato and the Mongols: A Thirteenth-Century Dalmatian View of Mongol Customs,” Florilegium 4 (1982): 156–83. For Hakluyt’s edition of Plano Carpini, as well as Rubruck, see C. Raymond Beazley, ed., The Texts and Versions of John de Plano Carpini and William de Rubruquis, as Printed for the First Time by Hakluyt in 1598 Together with Some Shorter Pieces (London: Hakluyt Society, 1903). Gregory Gutzman, “Reports of Mongol Cannibalism in the Thirteenth Century Latin Sources,” in Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, ed. Scott Westrem (New York: Garland, 1991), 31–68. For another case for why mythology would have factored into these depictions of the Mongols, see Sophia Menache, “Tartars, Jews, Saracens, and the Jewish-Mongol ‘Plot’ of 1241,” History 81, no. 263 (July, 1996): 319–42. Her argument focuses on how myth offered a psychic escape from confronting the inadequacy of Christian leaders. See also Anna Czarnowus, “The Mongols, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe: The Mirabilia Tradition in Benedict of Poland’s Historia Tartarorum and John of Plano Carpini’s Historia Mongalorum,” Literature Compass 11, no. 7 (2014): 484–95, where she shows how the Alexander romances and the Wonders of the East trad­ ition informed these texts. Conversely, Noreen Giffney has suggested that these medieval authors may have intentionally constructed these particular representa­ tions of Mongols to elicit an affective response in their audiences that would stir defensive action among them. See Noreen Giffney, “Monstrous Mongols,” Postme­ dieval 3, no. 2 (2012): 227–45. Guzman, “Reports of Mongol Cannibalism,” 53. Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). For more on Phillips’s study, see Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Karl Steel, “Race, Travel, Time, Heritage,” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2015): 98–110; and Sharon Kinoshita, “Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 1 (February, 2015): 202–3. Ibid., 7. See Beazley, Texts and Versions for a discussion of Historia manuscripts. For the Latin edition, see John of Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” in Sinica Fran­ ciscana, Vol. I: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, ed. Ana­ stasius Van den Wyngaert (Quaracchi: Franciscan Press, 1929), 27–130. For a modern English translation, see Christopher Dawson, ed. and trans., “History of the Mongols,” in The Mongol Mission (London: Sheedd and Ward, 1955), 3–72. Yale, Beinecke Library MS 350A. The Tartar Relation is the title given to these notes in 1965 by the editors of The Vinland map and the Tartar Relation; see

Race and vulnerability 41

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965). See Said’s original discussion of the violent relationship between knowledge and power in Orientalism. For a more recent theorization of epistemic violence that draws from this foundational postcolonial concept, see Jeffrey Guhin and Jona­ than Wyrtzen, “The Violences of Knowledge: Edward Said, Sociology, and PostOrientalist Reflexivity,” Political Power and Social Theory 24 (2013): 231–62. Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” 27. Author’s translation. Ibid. Author’s translation. Ibid. Author’s translation. Ibid., 28. Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” 28. Author’s translation. Translation from Dawson, Mongol Mission, 3–4. Ibid., 39. Author’s translation. Ibid. Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” 40. Translation from Dawson, Mongol Mission, 11. Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” 41. Translation from Dawson, Mongol Mission, 11. Plano Carpini, “Historia Mongalorum,” 32. Dawson, Mongol Mission, 6. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 7. For the Latin edition, see William of Rubruck, “Itinerarium,” in Van den Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, 164–332. For a modern English translation, see Peter Jack­ son, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990). Corpus Christi Cambridge MS 181 contains Plano Carpini’s Historia and the earliest of the surviving copies of both the Historia and Rubruck’s Itinerarium (dated to last quarter of 13th c.). It originally belonged to St. Mary’s Abbey at York, and this is the manuscript that was used for A. Van den Wyngaert’s printed text, Sinica Franciscana. Three more of the surviving manuscripts have English provenance: CCC MS 66A, CCC MS 407, BL Royal MS 14 C. XIII (this latter is the source text for Hakluyt’s 1598 edition). The fifth is Leiden, Vos­ sius Lat. F. 77, likely a copy of Cambridge, CCC 181. For a discussion of five of the Itinerarium manuscripts, see Beazley, Texts and Versions, xviii–xx. The sixth manuscript (Yale, Beinecke Library MS 406) has only recently been identified, in Sumithra J. David, “Looking East and West: The Reception and Dissemination of the Topographia Hibernica and the Itinerarium ad partes orientales in England (1185–c.1500),” PhD thesis, St. Andrews, 2009. In addition to Hakluyt, Samuel Purchas also published (in its full form) a copy in 1625, and the five manuscripts were published by the Société de Géographie of Paris in 1839. Shirin Azizeh Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnog­ raphy in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Ibid., 111. Rubruck, “Itinerarium,” 213. Jackson, Mission of Friar William, 132. Ibid., 245. Ibid., 173. For self-estrangement in cosmopolitanism, see Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melan­ cholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), which Khanmohamadi uses in her formulation of cosmopolitanism here. Jackson, Mission of Friar William, 198–9. Ibid., 233–5. Rubruck, “Itinerarium,” 312. Jackson, Mission of Friar William, 253. Ibid., 326 and 331. Ibid., 271 and 278.

42 Sierra Lomuto 42 Ibid., 244 and 331. Jackson, Mission of Friar William, 173 and 278. 43 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 44 Ibid., 308. 45 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991): 33–40.

Part 2

Geography

3

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety The impact of conversion on the

margins of Europe

Jeremy DeAngelo

“Most of the spiritual Christianity in the world is found among AngloSaxons and their converts,” wrote the American Protestant reverend Josiah Strong in 1885, “for this is the great missionary race.”1 Such sentiments are not surprising coming from this period, the height of Western colonialism abroad and of its racial justification at home. In Great Britain and America, arguments for these nations’ own exclusive superiority often took the form of “Anglo-Saxonism,” an identification of English genius deriving from a (typically incorrect) understanding of pre-Norman government, religion, and culture.2 As Strong’s opinion demonstrates, the missionary efforts of this time were also animated by similar beliefs in “Anglo-Saxon” superiority over those whom they would convert. Unsurprisingly, therefore, missionary activity has often been understood as an arm of the larger colonial and imperialist projects of the era, an effort to establish hegemony in the realm of the spirit just as other Europeans and Americans sought to monopolize earthly power and resources. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. points out instances in which missionaries’ duties and ideals clashed with the goals of governmental or economic representatives, but he outlines additionally all of the ways in which their activities and prejudices paralleled and complemented the larger imperialist project.3 No matter the denomination, it was a triumphalist Christianity which evangelized to the world in the 1800s, which in Anglophone countries and colonies derived at least some of its pretensions from Anglo-Saxonism. Although modern Anglo-Saxonism was mostly divorced from an accurate understanding of pre-Norman Britain, it is true that the medieval AngloSaxons occasionally expressed the opinion that they made good missionaries. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, for example, provides them with a privileged place among the Christian people, much of it demonstrated through their promulgation of the faith. However, while the proponents of the British Empire and American Manifest Destiny grounded their opinions in presumptions of racial superiority, one does not find a similar sentiment in Anglo-Saxon works of the seventh and eighth centuries. The reasons for this go beyond the anachronism of modern racial theory to the early Middle Ages, for indeed, when the Anglo-Saxons express

46 Jeremy DeAngelo feelings of kinship in the context of the missionary project, it is almost always to ostensibly humble themselves. Kathy Lavezzo identifies the same difference in self-conception in English maps of the world from both the medieval and modern eras. While maps of the modern British Empire place Great Britain in the center of the map, medieval mappamundi usually placed Britain at the edge of the known world.4 As Lavezzo’s work demonstrates, the Anglo-Saxons and later English writers often encouraged the idea of themselves as marginal, as having come belatedly to Christianity and civilization owing to their position on the globe. This chapter will explore how this perceived belatedness contributed to the Anglo-Saxon characterization of their evangelical mission among the Germans of the Continent, particularly in how, when the Anglo-Saxons compared themselves as a group to those they sought to convert, they emphasized their commonalities rather than the superiority of their faith. This lies in contrast to later missionary ideologies, such as Anglo-Saxonism, which consider a sense of superiority, rather than humility, to be the justification for their mission; it also was quite distinct from the attitudes of contemporaries such as the Franks, for whom missionary activity was more obviously part of a larger imperial project. Outside Britain, the focus of Anglo-Saxon missionaries lay on the Continent, in areas settled by Germanic societies that were being opened to missionary activity by the expansion of the Frankish Empire. It was a logical, practical choice for evangelical efforts, but the decision to minister there was rarely defended on these grounds. Instead, Anglo-Saxon churchmen framed their interest in the Continent on grounds of kinship. The idea was not restricted to any one place or person, making it difficult to explain its motivation. Both the Northumbrian Bede and the West Saxon Boniface advance the argument, even though the two do not seem to have operated in the same circles – Boniface does not garner a mention in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, while we know from Boniface’s letters that he searched in vain for Pope Gregory I’s letter to Augustine of Canterbury, the Libellus Responsionum, which is included in the History. They appear unaware of each other. According to Bede, the first churchman to perceive a relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans of the Continent, and to use this as a pretext to evangelize them, was the abbot Egbert: Quarum in Germania plurimas nouerat esse nationes, a quibus Angli uel Saxones, qui nunc Brittaniam incolunt, genus et originem duxisse nos­ cuntur; unde hactenus a uicina gente Brettonum corrupte Garmani nun­ cupantur. Sunt autem Fresones, Rugini, Danai, Hunni, Antiqui Saxones, Boructuari. Sunt alii perplures hisdem in partibus populi paganis adhuc ritibus seruientes.5 He knew there are many peoples in Germania from which it is known that the Angles and Saxons who now live in Britain had drawn their origin and birthplace; up to today they are called Garmani [Germans]

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety 47 through an error by their neighbors the Britons. They are instead the Frisians, the Rugini, the Danes, the Huns, the Old Saxons, [and] the Bruc­ teri. There are many other people in these parts similarly devoted to pagan rituals. Egbert had spent much of his career in Ireland, and his desire may have derived from the Irish tradition of missionary work on the Continent. Yet the Irish, as far as we know, were not inspired to evangelize these areas due to a perceived common heritage. Egbert never made the journey to proselytize among the Germans, but he inspired another generation of missionaries, including Willibrord.6 Willibrord had also been a pupil of Wilfrid at Ripon, and if Egbert had been the first to conceive of a mission to the Continent, Wilfrid had been the first in a position to carry it out. Yet Wilfrid’s motivations for travelling to Frisia are left unclear. It is, in any case, an undeveloped aspect of his biography.7 Willibrord, of course, connects this circle with that of Boniface, but it was not he who initially inspired Boniface to evangelize. In any case, it is not only Boniface who expresses kinship with the Continental Germans in his own circle. In fact, in reading his own references to the relationship, one gets the impression that he is playing upon public sentiment rather than introducing a novel framing of the evangelical mission. Most of it is confined to one letter, dated to 738 and addressed the Anglo-Saxon people as a whole, in which he asks for their prayers for the conversion of the Continental Saxons. His rhetoric plays heavily upon the ethnic and cultural bonds between not only the Anglo-Saxons and the Old Saxons, but between him and his audience as well. He addresses the letter to “omnibus catholicis Deum timentibus de stirpe et prosapia Anglorum” (“all God-fearing Catholics from the lineage and race of the Angles”) and introduces himself as “eiusdem generis … Bonifacius qui et Uuynfrethus” (“of the same race, Boniface who is also Winfred”). His appeal for support begins by reminding the reader of the universal mission of the Church to convert all people, but soon returns to advocating for the Old Saxons on account of their common heritage. “De uno sanguine et de uno osse sumus”8 (“we are of one blood and one bone”), he reports the people of Saxony beseeching the people of England. Surely the Anglo-Saxons would pray for their brothers and sisters still mired in heathendom. Such sentiment was enthusiastically echoed by Bishop Torthelm of Leicester, perhaps writing in response. In referring to Boniface’s goals, he agreed that the Old Saxons were “gens nostra” (“our people”).9 How literally should we take these declarations of fellow-feeling? As James Palmer notes, Bede’s list of “Germanic” people is so broad as to rouse skepticism in his accuracy – did Bede really think of himself as related to the Huns? Of course, the question of how early medieval people conceived ethnicity is a difficult one, which can both undermine or support Bede’s inclusive list.10 Boniface’s invocation of common heritage, in

48 Jeremy DeAngelo contrast, is much narrower, applying only to the Anglo-Saxons and Old Saxons. This seems more reasonable, but comes with its own problems. Boniface’s letter appears to be inspired by Charles Martel’s moves against Saxony in the 720s, which would have opened the area up to Christian missionaries. Saxony’s defeat would not come in that generation, however, which means that Boniface’s hopes for the region were never fulfilled, restricting his (considerable) missionary efforts to Frisia, Thuringia, and Hesse.11 Are we to suppose that his motivations for ministering there were different than for Saxony? Or was the invocation of common heritage only a rhetorical device for Boniface rather than a personal inspiration? It may be useful to consider these Anglo-Saxon expressions of humility in the context of the Irish missions that preceded and inspired them. In the generations before Willibrord and Boniface, the primary energy in evangelizing the Germans came from Ireland. The Anglo-Saxons were often quite up front about how they were following in the footsteps of the Irish. We have already seen how Egbert’s desire to travel to the Continent was likely an indication of Irish influence on his thinking. Wihtberht, Willibrord, and Willibrord’s early companions are further examples of early Anglo-Saxon missionaries with Irish connections.12 The Irish missions were an outgrowth of a particularly Irish approach to asceticism, known as ailithre. Ailithre emphasized hardship, and especially encouraged practitioners to pursue the discomforts of travel. This could lead to extreme actions such as letting oneself adrift on the ocean with no supplies or means of steering,13 but it also acted as an impetus to missionary activity. Ailithre was the principal driver behind the Irish efforts to evangelize not only on the Continent, but in Northumbria as well.14 It is not surprising, then, that their influence in England would be extensive, even after the Synod of Whitby.15 Ailithre characterized itself as a primarily penitential act, so one’s missionary work within the tradition was meant as a mark of one’s need for atonement rather than one’s righteousness.16 Given these sentiments, it is not surprising that the missionaries the Irish inspired would express a similar humility. What the Irish could not do, however, was express their humility through a shared kinship with their charges, and it is worth examining why this mind-set would be attractive to Anglo-Saxon Christians. Given that these statements are found mostly in works meant for circulation, it makes more sense to consider whether they should have been effective among the Anglo-Saxons as a group rather than serve as inspiration for an individual such as Boniface (they were also, presumably, intended for a secular or mixed audience rather than the clergy exclusively). Anglo-Saxon law and society were rooted in kinship structures, and so invoking a common heritage framed the missionary effort in ways that would be familiar and potentially persuasive to an Anglo-Saxon congregation. For this to work, however, the kinship must be recognized. Anglo-Saxon missionaries and their supporters would have to identify and

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety 49 sympathize with their charges, and it is here that the Anglo-Saxon missions demonstrate their utter distance from the attitudes and rhetoric of the AngloSaxonism of later centuries: instead of approaching potential converts with condescension and an assured confidence in their own multifaceted superiority, Anglo-Saxons such as Bede and Boniface sought to collapse the distinctions between them. Unlike so many conversion efforts, the Anglo-Saxons’ Continental missions were characterized by a rhetoric of humility – of a relatively undeserving evangelical force ministering to a population whose system of belief was the only distinction or disadvantage they held. This way of framing the Anglo-Saxon missions does not necessarily reflect reality. Much of their success, after all, depended on Frankish territorial and political expansion, making them, like the modern missions, adjuncts of an imperial project. Yet this position toward the people of Saxony evidently had currency among the Anglo-Saxons and stood in contrast to Frankish attitudes toward the same population.17 The discrepancy lies in the cultural confidence, or lack thereof, among the Anglo-Saxons at this time. They were, after all, a people only recently converted themselves. As Rosamund McKitterick notes, “Any missionaries leaving England for the continent at the end of the seventh or at the beginning of the eighth centuries … were not coming from a secure, well-established church with clearly-defined institutions, rules of conduct or forms of worship.” Nor did they have the political unity and expansionary goals of the Franks (or the British Empire).18 Politically, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were free, but as a people only recently converted, they were a population undergoing the effects of a different type of cultural imperialism. Their missionary effort, in other words, derived from recently inculcated feelings of cultural inferiority rather than superiority. Examining the mind-sets of the converted in the early Middle Ages of northern Europe is difficult, given the paucity of sources. In most cases, literacy followed the Bible, meaning that we have few if any former pagans’ views on the transition; most descriptions come generations later. Heathens like Bede’s priest Coifi, who cannot wait to abandon his religion, probably do not represent the reality of conversion.19 Some likely conclusions can be made, however, by observing better-attested conversions from similar contexts elsewhere and noting where they correspond with modern critiques of missionary activity. In all cases, after all, religious conversion entails changes at all levels of one’s experience – how one acts, the perception of one’s relationship with the divine, and the understanding of the makeup and ordering of the universe.20 Given this, the gradual shift of the early medieval Church’s evangelizing activity into areas further from the influence of Rome presented fresh challenges for both the expanding faith and its new converts. As Christianity claimed the allegiance of an ever more diverse body of believers, some of its cultural – as opposed to theological – assumptions were thrown into relief. As a system of belief that originated and grew primarily within the Roman Empire, and one which was in the process of replacing it and adapting its imperial apparatus to its own ends, the Western Church was

50 Jeremy DeAngelo culturally Roman. This led to complications when it sought to minister to populations whose cultures diverged from conventional Roman practice, as greater adjustment was asked of these new converts. As Richard Fletcher has noted, in reference to the Germanic conversions: The conversion of “barbarian” Europe to Christianity brought Roman and Mediterranean customs and values and habits of thought to the newcomers who were the legatees of the Roman empire. These included, for example, literacy and books and the Latin language with all that it opened up; Roman notions about law, authority, property and govern­ ment; the habits of living in towns and using coin for exchange; Medi­ terranean tastes in food, drink and costume; new architectural and artistic conventions. The Germanic successor-states which emerged from the wreckage of the empire…accepted Christianity and in so doing embraced a cultural totality which was Romanitas, “Roman-ness.”21 To be sure, there was opportunity in these changes as well. Nevertheless, that did not keep them from being extensive or intrusive, and so consequently challenging. Recognizing this increased burden, some evangelizers interrogated the demands they placed on the converted and urged modification. Gregory I, most famously, advocated keeping as much that would be familiar to converts that conscience could allow – repurposing temples, preserving festivals, and the like.22 Any amount of consideration, however, could not obscure how big of a cultural transition Christianization represented. This was the case for the twelfth-century Pomeranians, for example, whose conversion is described by Robert Bartlett as an “abandonment” of not only their previous faith but also of “the ancestral lex,” something which “involved a new orientation to outside powers and a restructuring of internal relations of power.”23 Conversion often impacted societies’ conception of themselves, coming as it so often did from outside pressure and carrying with it, consequently, the suggestion of outside critique. An underlying assumption of a conversion effort is the implied inferiority of the older way to the one promulgated, and a conversion which necessitates wide-ranging cultural change expands its criticism to the whole of the ministered society. Acceptance of these innovations, therefore, can easily be interpreted as an admission of inferiority, by both those pushing the changes and those adopting them – an acceptance of “sa propre condemnation” (“one’s own condemnation”), as Albert Memmi puts it.24 Such an acknowledgement was particularly galling when change came from without. Such a perception has serious psychic consequences for the converted, and if anything, it is worse that they accepted their new path of their own volition, since it makes them complicit in their degradation. “La défaite culturelle est la plus accablante de toutes les défaites,” observes Jean-François Revel, “la seule que l’on n’oublie jamais … A la certitude intime de sa faiblesse, le vaincu ajoute l’humiliation de n’attendre son salut que des leçons du vainqueur”25 (“cultural defeat is the

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety 51 most crushing of all defeats, the only kind one never can forget … it holds within it the confirmation of one’s inadequacy, [as] the vanquished adds to the humiliation by looking for one’s salvation solely from the lessons of the conqueror”). When the losing party recognizes this state of affairs, according to Frantz Fanon, the logical conclusion is that “God is not on his side.”26 This view is anything but self-actualizing. By acknowledging the superiority of the other group through its acquiescence, the efforts of the subsumed group to adopt the qualities of the ascendant culture serve only to validate its inferiority for both.27 We can see this process play out among the Danubian Bulgars in the ninth century, for whom we have contemporaneous records from their own perspective.28 The change in their fortunes after adopting Christianity, and its roots in a shifting perception of their potency, makes clear the implications of conversion: [T]he conversion process suddenly deflated the Bulgars in the opinion of both the contemporary world and the Bulgars themselves. Whereas before 864 the Bulgars had been treated as formidable warriors, desirable allies, and skilled diplomats, after 864 and the coming of Christianity they were universally treated as ignorant, crude suppliants who needed guidance in extracting themselves from their helpless state. In their own eyes they had committed themselves, by their choice to become Christians, to a course which forced them to admit their inadequacies and their former sins of omission and commission. Indeed, the Bulgars actually possessed about the same order of strength and power after 864 as before, but neither the world around them nor they themselves viewed the situation in this per­ spective after 864. The introduction of Christianity revealed their cultural backwardness, and it set the Bulgars the monumental task of making themselves culturally worthy of the new religion.29 Accepting conversion from an outside power crippled the Bulgars’ perception of themselves, placing them in a position subservient to their neighbors with no actual change to the facts on the ground. The Bulgars were not conquered in actuality, but the psychic effect was the same. Conversion carried with it an implication of failure, and within an aggressively evangelical Christianity so closely allied to Roman cultural imperialism such as that of the early Middle Ages, it was not enough that a people accept the new faith. They accepted, together with conversion, “the monumental task of making themselves culturally worthy of the new religion.” Nothing so dramatic happened with the Anglo-Saxons, who unlike the Bulgars were not a single political or cultural unit during their conversion, nor did their converters represent such an existential political threat as Constantinople did the Bulgars. There is some indication, however, that submitting to baptism was taken as a sign of subservience in Anglo-Saxon England,30 and in line with this we can see a similar dynamic affecting AngloSaxons’ perceptions of themselves. At no point in their history were the

52 Jeremy DeAngelo Anglo-Saxons in danger of being overthrown by the emissaries of Christianity who came to them, yet they have internalized the interlopers’ attitudes toward themselves as thoroughly as any colonized people.31 And it is a definition of self that persisted for generations. In the opening of his Ecclesiastical History, Bede borrows from the British churchman Gildas a description of their island at the edge of the known world. They describe their home from the vantage point of Rome rather their own – the seat of Christendom and Latin learning is the center, not their own standpoint.32 Britain, therefore, is peripheral, and its distance from the center makes adopting and maintaining Christian practice and the standards of civilization there difficult.33 While such a negative view of his environs makes sense for Gildas, excoriating as he is the Britons’ loss of faith, for Bede the reflexive internalizing of an outsider view of his culture reveals his society’s preoccupation with its inferiority and marginality relative to the rest of the world. Nicholas Howe claims that there is no shame in this orientation, and that by locating Britain on the periphery he places it where the real Christian glory lay, in missionary activity.34 Yet in associating themselves with the mission and characterizing their land as within the sphere of activity for evangelization efforts, rather than at the center, the Anglo-Saxons perpetuate the image of themselves as unperfected participants in Christian expansion. While this attitude may, in a general sense, be seen as the proper Christian posture, it still stood in contrast to the contemporary Frankish view.35 Yet the Carolingian Empire was fashioning itself as a successor to Rome at this time, and its interests in the faith of the Germans on the frontier was as much a pretext for territorial expansion as it was a concern for their souls. Unlike the Irish with their emphasis on penance, or the Anglo-Saxons with their sense of peripherality, the Franks were trying to reorient the center of the known world for their own glory. For the Franks, missionary activity was a method of empire building, while for the AngloSaxons it was a way to demonstrate their value to a new Christian realm. As in Fanon’s construction, they sought to make themselves as good as their perceived betters by imitating their acts.36 Such imitation, at times, could be almost exact. A good example of this is Boniface’s pursuit of Gregory I’s correspondence with Augustine of Canterbury, the Libellus Responsionum, in which the pope lays down principles for evangelization among the Anglo-Saxons. In several letters, Boniface inquires whether he could obtain a copy to consult, convinced that he can apply its lessons with equal success in Germany.37 Despite never having laid eyes on the document, Boniface is quite right that he is contending with many of the same difficulties as Augustine had been.38 Yet to Howe, Boniface’s desire to consult Gregory I went beyond the practical: To read Gregory’s words to Augustine would be to make himself into a disciple, however belated, of the apostle of the English. More power­ fully than any other work, the Libellus would allow him to immerse himself in his people’s past and reenact the signal event in their spiritual

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety 53 life. He need not limit himself to the counsel of Popes Zacharius or Gregory II or III; he could draw directly from the original apostle of the Germanic peoples.39 This attitude described can be taken simply as an act of self-glorification, an effort to equate a present struggle with a glorious one of the past. However, it is predicated upon an Anglo-Saxon identity that takes the correction of its people as its “signal event” rather than any affirmation of its inherent good or rightness. In contrast to their interpretation of their own conversion – that it was an admission of their inferiority and dependence upon an outside power – Anglo-Saxons saw their own missions as ongoing exercises in humility rather than evidence of their own cultural ascendancy over the benighted charges they evangelized. Elsewhere, Howe identifies the Anglo-Saxons’ arrival in Britain as another kind of signal event, one which defined their identity for centuries afterward.40 That the Anglo-Saxons should always be looking backward to express their cultural character is borne out as well in their preoccupation with their former fallen status. It is seen as well in the frequent repetition of the story of their salvation, which hinged not on any grand beginnings but rather on the unluckiness of these people to find themselves enslaved and on a future pope’s love of puns. The story of Gregory I’s encounter with the Angle boys in the slave market in which he equates their ethnicity with the Latin angeli (“angels”) is well known, in no small part because the English retold the story frequently. As Lavezzo has demonstrated at length, there were multiple ways in which this tale flatters the English – such an attractive, angelic people surely deserve to be Christian!41 Yet by the time Ælfric of Eynsham was recounting this story in the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxons had not only the carefully curated history of Bede and the achievements of Boniface and his contemporaries to define them as a Christian people, but centuries more of triumphs and accomplishments to boast of – the martyrdom of Edmund, the educational program of Alfred, the defeat and conversion of the Danes, the reforms of Dunstan. Despite these, however, their humble beginnings on the margins of Europe remained a large part of their self-conception, a spur to further validation through performative Christianity, just as the effort to redeem the Old Saxons and other Germans had served generations before. Prior to conversion, as Bede puts it, the Anglo-Saxons were “gentem eatenus idolis mancipatam” (“a people for so long enslaved by idols”). Gregory, the catalyst for their salvation, would eventually be able to boast, “Ecce lingua Brittaniae, quae nihil aliud nouerat quam barbaram frendere, iamdudum in diuinis laudibus Hebreum coepit alleluia resonare”42 (“Behold the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing but how to gnash barbarously; long ago it began to chorus the Hebrew ‘alleluia’ in divine praises”). In contrast to Latins like Gregory running the Church, the Britons who in Bede’s telling haughtily refused to evangelize the English, the Franks who opened the mission fields to

54 Jeremy DeAngelo Willibrord and Boniface, or the modern British and Americans who would claim their ancestry destined them to convert and rule the world, the Anglo-Saxons kept close reminders of their former status, which shaped their religious rhetoric and activity in the eighth century and beyond.

Notes 1 Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1885), 160. For the background of this piece and the develop­ ment of Strong’s ideas, see Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, “Forging an Ideology for American Missions: Josiah Strong and Manifest Destiny,” North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 163–91. 2 For the roots of this concept, see Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Des­ tiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 9–24. 3 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Imperial­ ism,” The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 336–73. See also George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Geno­ cide (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 93–94. 4 Kathy Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and Eng­ lish Community, 1000–1534 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 1–7. 5 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 476–7. 6 Ibid., 480–7. 7 Eddius Stephanus, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), 52–3. See also Douglas Dales, Light to the Isles: A Study of Missionary Theology in Celtic and Early AngloSaxon Britain (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 1997), 127; and Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1000 (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001), 44. 8 Boniface, Epistola 46, Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH epist. select. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), 74–5. 9 Torthelm of Leicester, Epistola 47, Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH epist. select. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), 76. 10 James Palmer, “Saxon or European? Interpreting and Reinterpreting St Boni­ face,” History Compass 4, no. 5 (2006): 854. 11 Wilhelm Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 77; Timothy Reuter, “Saint Boniface and Europe,” The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton, ed. Tim­ othy Reuter (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1980), 81; Dales, Light to the Isles, 148–50; Palmer, “Saxon or European?” 856–7; and Henry Mayr-Harting, “St. Boniface: Mirror of English History,” Religion and Society in the Medieval West, 600–1200, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 264. 12 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 474–85; Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi Archiepiscopi Traiectensis, ed. Wilhelm Levison, MGH, SS rer. Merov. 7 (Hanover: Weidmannos, 1970), 118–19; Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, 44 and 55–56; James Campbell, “The Debt of the Early English Church to Ire­ land,” Irland und die Christenheit, ed. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Rich­ ter (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 332–46; and Michael Richter, Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 144–52.

Anglo-Saxons, evangelization, and cultural anxiety 55 13 See, for example, the three Irishmen who washed up on the shore of Cornwall in 891. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A, ed. Janet M. Bately, ASC 3 (Cam­ bridge: D.S. Brewer, 1986), 54. 14 See, for example, how both Columba and Columabanus’ decisions to go abroad are characterized in Betha Coluim Cille, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lis­ more, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), 21; and Jonas, Vita sancti Columbani, Vitae sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis, Iohannis, ed. and trans. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1905), 156. 15 See Kathleen Hughes, “Evidence for Contacts between the Churches of the Irish and English from the Synod of Whitby to the Viking Age,” England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 49–67; and Joseph F. Kelly, “Irish Influence in England after the Synod of Whitby,” Éire 10 (1975): 35–47. 16 See, for example, Cormac mac Cuilennáin, Uga Corbmaic meic Cuilendáin, The Early English and Celtic Lyric, ed. and trans. P.L. Henry (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1966), 54 and 59; Adomnán, Vita Sancta Columbae, ed. Joseph Thomas Fowler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), 35; and Vita sancti Mochoe­ mog, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, Vol. 1, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 173. 17 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni/The Life of Charlemagne, ed. and trans. Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1972), 46–53. 18 Rosamund McKitterick, “Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany: Personal Con­ nections and Local Influences,” The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Rosamund McKitterick (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), 4 and 13. 19 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 182–5. 20 The necessary transformations in the first Anglo-Saxon missions to the Contin­ ent are explored in Ludovicus J.R. Milis, “Monks, Mission, Culture and Society in Willibrord’s Time,” Willibrord, zijn wereld en zijn werk: voordrachten gehouden tijdens het Willibrordcongres, Nijmegen, 28–30 September 1989 (Nijmegen: Cen­ trum voor Middeleeuwse Stu, 1990), 82–92. 21 Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 2. 22 Gregory, “Gregorivs Mellito abbati in Franciis,” Registrum Epistularum (XI, 56), 2 vols., ed. Dag Norberg, CCSL 140A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), 961–2. 23 Robert Bartlett, “The Conversion of a Pagan Society in the Middle Ages,” His­ tory 70 (1985): 191–3. 24 Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé précédé du portrait du colonisateur (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1957), 159. 25 Jean-François Revel, Ni Marx Ni Jésus (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1970), 155. 26 Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture,” Présence Africaine 8 (1956), 127. Fanon is of course writing about a very different type of cultural imperialism, one much more closely allied to imperialism in actual fact. As such, he speaks of racist attitudes where we would place religion. For the imperialist implications of mis­ sionary activity, and the applicability of Fanon’s work to this topic, see Schle­ singer, “The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Imperialism,” 364–71. 27 Fanon, “Racism and Culture,” 127. 28 Richard E. Sullivan, “Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria: A Case Study of the Impact of Christianity on a Barbarian Society,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 56–7. For a brief background of the Danubian Bulgars’ conversion (used comparatively), see Thomas S. Noonan, “Why Ortho­ doxy Did Not Spread among the Bulgars of the Crimea during the Early

56 Jeremy DeAngelo

29 30 31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Medieval Era: An Early Byzantine Conversion Model,” Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 20–1 and 23. For further examination of the suitability of juxta­ posing Anglo-Saxon England and the Danubian Bulagrs, see Henry MayrHarting, “Two Conversions to Christianity: The Bulgarians and the AngloSaxons,” Religion and Society in the Medieval West, 600–1200, ed. Henry MayrHarting (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 3–29. Sullivan, “Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria,” 121. See also page 72. Barbara Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (New York: Routledge, 1992), 160. This tendency has already been noted and explored by Nicholas Howe in Writ­ ing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 75–100, though he attributes the attitude more towards a memory of the Roman occupation of Britain rather than to the later conversion. He in fact ascribes causality of the latter to the former, arguing that “the Anglo-Saxons entered Christendom because the island had once been a colony of Rome” (93), since their understanding that Britain had once been part of the Empire col­ lapsed the period of time between the two events, making it entirely natural that the Anglo-Saxons should adopt the Romans’ faith and ways since their land was once subject to them. To me this rationalization seems to arise from the feeling of inferiority itself rather than being the cause of it. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 14–15; and Gildas, De Excidio Britonum, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 89–90. The implications of this attitude have been extensively examined by Lavazzo in Angels on the Edge of the World, 1–26. Lavazzo, Angels on the Edge of the World, 30; and Howe, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England, 104–9 and 132–7. Howe, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England, 107–9 and 136–7. As a representative example, see Einhard’s stance towards the Saxons. Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni/The Life of Charlemagne, 46–53. Sullivan, “Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria,” 121; and Fanon, “Racism and Culture,” 127. Boniface, Epistolae 33 and 54, Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. Michael Tangl, MGH epist. select. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), 56–8 and 96–7. Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 131–3. Ibid., 131. Ibid., 8–32. Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge of the World, 27–45. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 122–3 and 130–1; and Gregory, Moralia in Iob, ed. Marci Adriaen, CCSL 143 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1974), 1346 (bk. 27, ch. 21).

4

Malory’s Sandwich Marginalized Arthurian geography and the Global Middle Ages Meg Roland

Glastonbury, Tintagel, Salisbury, and especially, Camelot are the iconic place-names in the imaginative geography of Arthurian literature today. In this geographic lexicon, however, the name of the port town of Sandwich does not register. And yet, Sir Thomas Malory in his great compilation and synthesis of Arthurian tales selects the international gateway town of Sandwich, located on the coast of southeast England, as a significant location in his expansive geographic romance. This chapter considers the geographical register of the bustling port town of Sandwich (not lunch) in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and, in so doing, suggests that our contemporary Arthurian geographic imagination has marginalized Sandwich in the Arthurian legend because it represents a realistic, working town that figured in England’s participation in the Global Middle Ages.1 Sandwich has been marginalized in the mythos of Arthurian geography precisely because it is commercial and international; and yet, to Malory this port town served his rich symbolic geography in shaping the Arthurian legend for fifteenth-century readers interested or engaged in pilgrimage, trade, travel narratives such as Mandeville’s Travels, or the developing Ptolemaic influence on geographic and cartographic practices – that is, in geographic writing and representation regarding the linearization of space and time. Jon Whitman has observed that as romance develops into one of the leading narrative forms in the Middle Ages, “it becomes a critical literary site in which questions about the historical state of imaginative events are negotiated.”2 I would suggest that this is as true in terms of changing geographic knowledge as it was of historiography across the restless and varied landscapes of the romance genre. Critical literary geography, a practice or strategy that Andrew Thacker has defined as “the process of reading and interpreting literary texts by reference to geographical concepts,” informs a cluster of emerging practices referred to as the GeoHumanities.3 This multidisciplinary field includes the consideration of the nuances of spatial practices in literary and historical texts, the structuring of geographical thought via literature, the production of cultural and historical spaces, and the fluid geographies of both reader and writer, both pragmatic and imaginative.4 In light of intersecting literary and geographical structures in

58 Meg Roland Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, I propose a geo-spatial inquiry into the role of the historic town of Sandwich in Malory’s text as indicative of a modern marginalization of a globally inflected medieval site, and that this marginalization is the result of the reception and production of Arthurian geography today. Medieval Sandwich’s role as a vital conduit of trade, military embarkation, and global exchange functioned as a critical literary site in Malory’s romance precisely because, as Whitman argues, it elicited a negotiation regarding the historical state of imagined events. In Le Morte Darthur, events set in Sandwich evoked a certain authenticity regarding the plausibility of King Arthur, a historiographical question we know was of keen importance to Malory and to his publisher William Caxton. Caxton addresses the question of Arthur’s historicity in his Prologue to the print edition of 1485: “I could not wel denye but that there was suche a noble kyng named Arthur, and reputed one of the nyne worthy, and first and chyef of the Cristen men.”5 But the very historicity and international association that Sandwich produced for Malory’s King Arthur in the fifteenth century has served, over time, to marginalize Sandwich from the cultural geography of Arthurian literature in the contemporary imagination. Contemporary cultural tourists and readers imagine a mythical Arthurian geographic space and seek the mists of Avalon, the Salisbury Plain, or the “foreste of aventures.”6 Working towns such as Sandwich disrupt this modern nostalgia for a dis-embodied or de-localized geography of the past. As Kathleen Coyne Kelly has observed, the iconic events that make up much of the Arthurian legend for contemporary readers “connect Arthurian legend closely to landscape and nature.”7 The legend, we might say, suggests to modern readers an aura of an extra-urban, uniquely English space, devoid of urban continuities and international exchanges. This nostalgia for “natural” Arthurian spaces persists despite the tremendous interest in the fifteenth century in place-names and urban spaces in geographic narratives, in visual representations such as portolan charts, and in maps produced as part of The Geographia, a text based on the work of the second-century mathematician Claudius Ptolemy. Kelly notes that Arthurian topographies such as the coast near Tintagel, Merlin’s Cave, Dozmary Pool are now perceived as “untouched and unspoiled by human hands, a piece of the past miraculously persisting into the present.”8 In contrast, built spaces become “stranded objects,” urban artifacts that complicate a twenty-first century geographic imaginary of an Arthurian literary past, now defined as wild spaces or sweeping vistas, untouched by urbanism or cosmopolitanism.9 One of England “Cinque Ports,” five port towns along the coast of Kent in southeast England (Romney, Dover, Hythe, Hastings, and Sandwich), the maritime town of Sandwich is the site both of Arthur’s departure and return in Malory’s version of Arthur’s campaign against the Roman emperor in his tale of Arthur and Lucius in Le Morte Darthur. Together with his postponement of the traditional disastrous outcome of the Roman

Malory’s Sandwich 59 War campaign found in his sources (in which Arthur is mortally wounded), Malory also shifts the site of Arthur’s return to that of Sandwich, creating, instead, a successful campaign and full-circle return. Such a return draws upon the association of the nearby Roman fort at Richborough and is suggestive of an inverse Roman conquest. Drawing on tourist and mobility studies, Kelly has noted that, “in Britain, the development of Arthurian legend made just about every fifth hill, valley, body of water, rock formation, and unusual topographical feature in the United Kingdom, from Arthur’s Seat and Inglewood Forest to Merlin’s Cave, special.”10 But as a working port connected to international trade and military conquest, Sandwich defies the mythos of an unspoiled landscape stretching back to Arthurian times. Since Malory’s time, Sandwich’s coastal access has been silted in, leaving the town now two miles from the sea.11 Its place in the geographic lexicon of Arthurian legend has similarly been obscured. Even the town itself makes no mention of its connection with the great Arthurian legend – not in the town’s historic plaques, river boat tour, historic walking tour, medieval guildhall, or information center. A walking tour of the town covers Sandwich’s maritime history, the proximity of the Roman garrison at Richborough, and the well-preserved medieval buildings. Despite its role as the fictional site where Arthur’s international prowess and stature are made manifest as a unifying force for England in Malory’s Morte, the town of Sandwich is silent on matters Arthuriana. This erasure mirrors contemporary popular geographic thought: despite brief listings in the Arthurian Name Dictionary and the MORROIS database,12 no mention is made in the extensive Wikipedia site on Arthurian geography13 or in recent travel guides to Arthurian sites.14 Perhaps this erasure is due to the fact that the Roman War portion of Malory’s great tale has itself become “silted-in,” no longer a popular part of the legend in the twenty-first century. Both the symbolism and realism that Malory sought to portray in setting Arthur’s departure and return in this site of international contact have marginalized Sandwich from contemporary Arthurian geography. Malory’s Sandwich posits an Arthur that is international and moving through an urban space rather than an Arthur that is localized and solely in enigmatic natural spaces. The thriving port town of Sandwich, however – together with the other urban spaces in the tale such as Winchester or London – reveals Malory’s unique geographic and emotional cultural geography and that of his fifteenth-century readers while also providing a space for the very human experience of leave-taking and the closure of safe return.15 The Middle Ages of our geographic imagination resides partly in a dreamscape of village and wood, disconnected from global cultural routes and exchange. But this image of arboreal isolation has come under increasing pressure, as indicated by the theme of this collection of essays, suggesting a more networked medieval Europe. By the fifteenth century, a vigorous book trade in London,16 the commercial activities of the Hanseatic League and

60 Meg Roland English merchants,17 the deployments of the Hundred Years’ War, pilgrimages along the route of the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome, the wine trade,18 and diplomatic envoys all contributed to England’s exchange with the Continent, and many of these activities were centered in Sandwich and others of the Cinque Ports. There was not a superhighway, to be sure, but neither was there an impassable sea. With an increasing interest in place names, cartographic toponyms, portolan charts, and geographic distances that mark the fifteenth century,19 even that most English of stories – King Arthur and his Round Table – was not isolated from the globalizing and cartographic developments of the late Middle Ages. But in our contemporary reading of Arthurian geography, a phenomenon noted by Daniel Weston is at play in which “self­ perpetuating literary tropes marginalize practical engagements” with landscapes or urban spaces.20 The practical trade-based town of Sandwich does not fit the trope of windswept Arthurian landscapes. At Sandwich, Malory depicts Arthur’s troops loading horses and armaments onto warships, but there is no Merlin, no grail quest, no marvel other than that of sweat and horses and men and hard work, all focused on military conquest. The international scope of Arthur, suggested by his passage through Sandwich, has been replaced in our modern Arthurian geography with a domestically focused king, untethered from the realities of global commerce and international politics. However, a reader such as Henry VIII, certainly read this section of Malory’s Arthuriad with great interest and an eye to Anglo-Roman power structures. The very real maritime town of Sandwich dates back to trading activities of Roman Britain; in the twelfth century, the “wic” trading towns of the Anglo-Saxon period subsequently became part of a royal charter establishing the “Cinque Ports” with certain rights and duties regarding trade.21 The French phrase itself serves as lexical evidence of cross-channel importation and mercantile exchange between England and continental Europe. As Neil Middleton points out, the port towns on the southeast coast were long “markets and centres for international exchange” and that “collecting tolls, maintaining law and order, and gaining privileged access to imported goods was a central concern of medieval rulers.”22 Further, Middleton identifies the southeast coastal ports as part of “a common international trading environment” that shared practices with coastal trading cities of Northern Europe.23 By the fifteenth century, Sandwich had long been associated with trade, departures, foreigners, and returns. Malory’s Roman War tale has its origins in the twelfth-century work of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in which Arthur receives a demand of “truage,” or tax payment, from Rome via twelve ancient ambassadors. Not only does Arthur refuse to pay Rome but he mounts a vigorous counter-campaign across Western Europe where he eventually slays the Roman emperor Lucius. In Geoffrey’s version, this treasonous act is set in the context of the inexorable creaking of the wheel of fortune, upon

Malory’s Sandwich 61 which the mighty are brought low by the workings of fate. Arthur returns to England, battles Mordred, but suffers a mortal blow. The Round Table is undone, and Arthur’s kingdom passes into history. In the mid-1460s, incarcerated in London’s Newgate Prison, Malory writes a new version: Arthur’s continental campaign is made an unqualified success, and he returns to England to begin a long reign in which court feasts, tournaments, and grail quests will all transpire before the adulterous relationship, now shifted to Lancelot, will play into Mordred’s treachery. In addition, Malory connects his Arthur to the military and mercantile realities of the port city of Sandwich. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, Arthur “made his way with the army to Southampton, where he set out across the sea amid stormy winds,”24 headed for Normandy and, ultimately, Rome. The port city of Southampton is southeast of Caerleon, where Geoffrey situates the court of King Arthur at the outset of the Roman War tale, and a logical port of embarkation for a Continental foray. In Caerleon, Geoffrey writes, “the gold-painted gables of its roofs were a match for Rome,”25 underscoring Arthur’s counterclaim to the emperorship of Rome. Months later, on the outskirts of Rome, Arthur hears news of Mordred’s treason and his adulterous liaison with Guinevere. On the brink, and yet never achieving the crown of emperor, Arthur calls off the campaign, making a hasty return to England. Geoffrey notes that Guinevere “had broken the vows of her earlier marriage” but of that he “prefers to say nothing.”26 Amid the chaos of the uprising, Arthur makes landfall at the Roman fort of Richborough, near to Sandwich, symbolically linking Arthur with the Roman imperial authority, and where Mordred’s forces awaited the returning king. By the early 1400s, the story of Arthur’s fateful campaign to Rome forms the central narrative of the alliterative Morte Arthure, Malory’s direct source. This poetic but geographically realistic version prompted Lee Patterson to argue that its realism allows the reader to follow the Arthurian campaign to Rome “on both map and calendar.”27 In the alliterative account, Arthur’s departure is shifted to Sandwich, but the landing site of his return is set in Southampton, a geographic swap from Geoffrey’s tale, perhaps connected with the poem’s location of Arthur’s court location in the northern city of Carlisle. Upon making the decision to make war on the Roman emperor, we learn that: Within sixteen dayes his fleet was assembled, At Sandwich on the se, sail when him likes (634–5).28 In contrast to the battle-hardened geography of Geoffrey’s Historia, the alliterative Morte infuses the departure and return with great emotion. Before Arthur’s departure, while the court is at York, Arthur attempts to comfort Guinevere who

62 Meg Roland … Weep[ing,] him kisses, Talkes to him tenderly with teres ynow; (696). At the prospect of Arthur’s impending departure, she declares: All my liking of life out of [this] land wendes (701). Arthur also shows great tenderness to his queen: Thy wandrethes and thy weeping woundes mine herte; I may not wite of this wo for all this world rich (708). And yet the “world rich” beckons, and Arthur departs. He and his men “Sought toward Sandwich” and, we are soberly told, Guinevere “sees him no more” (720). In the alliterative Morte Arthure, when Arthur hears of Mordred’s treason, he quickly returns to England and “Sheeres with a sharp wind over the shire waters” (3600) toward a rocky shore near Southampton, there to meet Mordred on the day of destiny. In Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, the initial court feast is located in Winchester and the site of departure follows that of the alliterative Morte Arthure, with Arthur setting sail from Sandwich. Following his source, prior to Arthur’s departure, Malory’s Arthur directs the Roman ambassadors that they must leave England by a very specific route: Now ye have your answere … frome this place to the porte ye shall passe over and I shall gyff you seven dayes to passé unto Sandwyche. Now spede you, I counceyle you, and spare nat youre horsis and loke ye go by Watlynge Strete and no way ellys … And may ony be founde a spere-lengthe oute of the way, and that ye be nat in the water by the sevennyghtes ende, there shall no golde undir God pay for youre raunsom.29 The ambassadors, understandably, were “so bythe where they never” when they safely reached Sandwich, that “the same nyght they toke their shyppyng and passed into Flaundres and Almayne.”30 But Malory shifts the spatial parameters of the tale such that Arthur returns to the very port from which he set out, heightening the sense of successful completion and return. The young king Arthur has been crowned Roman emperor and will wield his international power as further testament of his sovereignty as both political and spiritual rule of “all Crystendom.”31 In Malory’s version, the traditional civil war that marks the end of the Roman War is forestalled, but not indefinitely. As James Simpson argues, “Malory’s own deployment of Arthurian material is … profoundly pessimistic about the possibility of sustaining political power in a treacherous world.”32 A claim of “mission

Malory’s Sandwich 63 accomplished,” as history shows is often the case, ultimately yields only a tenuous peace.33 Malory’s version, like the alliterative Morte Arthure, portrays a similarly emotional Guinevere at the impending departure of the campaign. She makes “grete sorrow that the kynge and all the lordys sholde be so departed, and there she fell doune on a swone.”34 There is interpretive space in this description of Guinevere’s sorrow open to speculation that her grief might not be for Arthur alone. Perhaps Lancelot is included in her sorrow that “all the loryds” will be departing. But at this point in Malory’s narrative, the affair with Lancelot has not yet manifested and, indeed, in just the previous passage, Lancelot is described as “passing wrothe” that Tristan has chosen to eschew the campaign “for the love of La Beale Isode.”35 Guinevere’s sorrow, albeit less verbally demonstrative than in the alliterative Morte Arthure, offers a genuine sense that Guinevere mourns Arthur’s departure for the long and dangerous campaign. Still, despite such emotion, Arthur heads for Sandwich. As Arthur arrives in Sandwich, “he founde before hym many galyard knyghtes, for there were the moste party of all the Rounde Table redy on tho bankes for to sayle whan the kynge liked.”36 Malory, perhaps recalling his own military deployment, describes the bustling seaport: Than in all haste that myght be they shypped theire horsis and harneyse and all maner of ordynaunce that fallyth for the were, and tentys and pavylyons many were trussed, and so they shotte from the bankes many grete caryckes and many shyppes of fore-stage, with coggis and galeyes and spynnesse full noble, with galeyes and glayottys rowyng with many ores. And thus they strekyn forth into the stremys many sadde hunderthes.37 The multitudinous vessels of varied shapes and sizes stream across the channel to Barfleur in Normandy, laden with supplies for war, and on to Rome. They form a micro-history of sailing vessels and international mercantile exchange fostered by the lure of the sea: the English cog, Portuguese carrick, and Mediterranean galley and galiot.38 In Malory’s version, after the long campaign across continental Europe, Arthur’s slaying of Lucius, and his eventual coronation in Rome, Arthur’s men, tired of the war and longing for their wives, urge him to return to Britain: “we have wyffis weddid. We woll beseche youre good grace to reles us to sporte us with oure wyffis, for, worshypt be Cryste, this journey is well overcome.”39 When Arthur gives the go-ahead, he tells his men, “make you all redy and turne we into Inglonde.”40 With this command, one can imagine the wave of energy that filled the ranks, and Malory, in a scene similar to the departure from Sandwich, tells us that “Than there was trussynge of harneyse with caryage full noble.”41 The geography of the journey home is not provided in detail but, after retracing the long, 1,000-mile-plus journey back to England, Malory writes: “And so Kyng Arthure passed over the see unto Sandwyche

64 Meg Roland haven.”42 “Sandwich haven” was a common term of reference to the natural harbor and port town, but Malory’s use of it for Arthur’s return, and not the departure, is resonant with the reassurance of safety, the journey’s end, and an England that embraced his return. In Malory, unlike his sources, a reunion between Guinevere and Arthur can occur in the resultant pax Arthuriana, whereas in the earlier versions Arthur is immediately engaged in battle with the treasonous Mordred. For Malory, Arthur’s return to a unified country affords him the honors and emotions of a returning hero: Whan Quene Gwenyvere herde of his commynge she mette wyth hym at London, and so dud all other quenys and noble ladyes. For there was never a solempner metyng in one cité togedyrs, for all maner of rychesse they brought with hem at the full.43 Andrew Lynch notes the way in which Arthurian emotions are often “enjoined on the king’s subjects”44 such that, in this case, a kind of communal solemnity stands in for the personal joy of Arthur’s and Guinevere’s reunion. Helen Cooper suggests that Malory is “a master … at suggesting a deep imaginative hinterland” where “emotions are both strong and undefined.”45 The restrained, yet deep emotions of this “solempner” reunion, after more than a year overseas, is understated yet still potent, suggesting that Guinevere rushes to London when she hears the news. As readers, both medieval and contemporary audiences know the ending that will eventually come to pass in Malory’s book. But for now, Guinevere comes to meet Arthur in London, who has returned home from the Roman War to Sandwich haven. The geo-spatial pattern of the text reinforces and reveals the emotion of reunion and the promise of wealth. The large-scale continental space of the Roman War campaign telescopes to a domestic and national space – a space where romance can reassert itself in the tales of the adventures and grail quest to come. In his edition, Caxton further amplifies the role of Sandwich and the spatial pattern of departure and return, such that the royal reunion takes place in Sandwich itself. In Caxton’s version, Arthur came ouer the see and londed at sandwyche ageynste whome Quene Gweneuer his wyf came and mette hym and he was nobly receyued of alle his comyns in euery cyte and burgh and grete yeftes presented to hym at his home coming to welcome hym with.46 The palpable emotional register and centrality of the noble London reunion amongst the king, queen, and the other “noble ladyes,” found in the manuscript version, is exchanged in Caxton’s edition for a more public, civic Arthurian return. Arthur’s return is for every city and burgh in Britain and the role of the “comyns” is again invoked, as it had been in the sword and in stone episode of the opening tale, as the ratifying principle of

Malory’s Sandwich 65 Arthur’s position as king and emperor. Caxton’s Arthur is reinscribed as a political and public subject in contrast to the Winchester manuscript’s more intimate, though still ceremonial, reunion between Arthur and his queen. In both the manuscript and print versions of Malory’s tale, however, the wealth of war spoils bespeaks the worthiness of Arthur to the title of emperor and king of England. As a director of a study abroad program to London and Rome, I’d like to suggest that, then as now, Arthur is a successful model of the benefits of study abroad: he gains confidence and maturity, learns to speak Italian, remembers to bring gifts for his family, and, most important, comes home with the capacity to integrate his international experience successfully. Malory’s decision to place Arthur’s return in Sandwich, holding as it does “composite articulations of place,”47 may reflect the growing influence and prosperity of the Cinque Ports as trading towns during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, long after Geoffrey wrote the Historia. Malory’s details of troop mobilization on the banks of the River Stour in Sandwich may recall his presumed military service during the Hundred Years’ War,48 where troops regularly embarked from and returned to Sandwich. Further, with the solidification and exponential growth of London as the nation’s capital after the 1300s, the route between London and Sandwich via the Roman Watling Street was a direct and expedient trade route. Of course, as the story is set in the mid-sixth century, these geo-perspectives of late medieval Sandwich are anachronistic as the setting for a late fifth-century Arthur, though well within Malory’s narrative practice. Certainly, the town’s association with the ancient Roman site of Richborough, first landing site and fortification of the Roman legionnaires in 43 CE, provided an imaginative geographical space that evoked the post-Roman rule of Arthur’s fictional era. More important, in returning to the site where Rome first conquered England, Arthur recalibrates the conquest and asserts the international stature of England as a world power. Arthur’s symbolic return to the place he began his sojourn not only successfully concludes his foreign endeavors and announces a Pax Arthuriana, but also inverts the legacy of military and cultural subordination to Rome. Thus, in marginalizing Sandwich from our contemporary Arthurian cultural geography, we miss an important assertion of Malory’s narrative: that Arthur needed to prove himself in an international context of which the town of Sandwich was a part. Via the gateway port town, the mantle of Roman imperialism and Christianity now belongs to England. Sandwich figures in another key location in Malory’s text: near the tragic conclusion of the “whole book,” Lancelot entreats Arthur and Gawain to forgive him his inadvertent slaying of Sirs Gareth and Gaherys as he freed Guinevere from Arthur’s sentence that the Queen be burnt. By now, the fellowship of the Round Table is shattered, yet Lancelot passionately argues for a reverse itinerary, one that leads into the kingdom rather than toward Rome. Lancelot pleads with Gawain to relent in his steely revenge:

66 Meg Roland “But this much I shall offir me to you,” seyde Sir Launcelot, “if hit may please the kyngis good grace and you, my lorde Sir Gawain. I shall firste begyn at Sandwyche, and there I shall go in my shearte, bare­ foote; and at every ten myles ende I shall founde and gar make an house of relygious, of what order that ye woll assygne me … and thys I shall perfourme from Sandwyche unto Carlyle.”49 Here, Lancelot offers to reverse the military trajectory of the Roman War account, from one of the centers of Arthur’s court to Rome, via Sandwich, and to perform a public penance and pilgrimage back to the kingdom’s center, physically restoring, mile by mile, the values of forgiveness and prayer to the court. Lancelot argues that this transformation of the route from Sandwich to Carlisle will be “more holyar and more perfyte to their soulis … than to warre upon me.”50 At this point in the narrative, as the Round Table fragments and Arthur’s kingdom spirals into violence, the reference to Sandwich poignantly reminds the reader of Arthur’s earlier triumphant departure from and return to Sandwich. But Gawain refuses Lancelot’s offer to spatially overwrite Sandwich from a space of military embarkation to one of pilgrimage. With this refusal, the latent military hubris and violent excess of the Roman War campaign, previously invoked in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia and the alliterative Morte Arthure, are now made manifest in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Despite the conventional image of medieval England as geographically isolated, a “sceptered isle,” Malory presents an Arthur whose triumphant return announces a new political center of Europe: London as the New Rome, an assertion that will be taken up with ferocity by the Tudors in literature, maps, and public processions.51 For Malory, Sandwich is a site of transformation, a liminal space that negotiates national sovereignty, international aspiration, intimate emotion, supplication, and penitence. Sequestering a commercial, global site such as Sandwich from contemporary Arthurian geographic representation has reinforced the mythos of the nonexistence of premodern global histories. Reclaiming the town of Sandwich as part of Arthurian geography serves to remind us that Malory’s Arthur embodied English military and commercial ties to an increasingly globalizing Europe, as well as a deep emotional register of returning home, to whatever brief haven awaits us.

Notes 1 For a discussion of premodern forms of global history, see the research network “Defining the Global Middle Ages,” http://globalmiddleages.history.ox.ac.uk, and a special volume of the journal Past and Present, 238 (November 2018). 2 Jon Whitman, “Romance and History: Designing the Times,” in Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jon Whitman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 4.

Malory’s Sandwich 67 3 Andrew Thacker, “The Idea of a Critical Literary Geography,” New Formations (Special Edition: The Spatial Imaginary) 57 (Winter 2005): 60. 4 For the seminal works on culture and space, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (New York: Wiley, 1992) and Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (London: Penguin, 2014; first published in English 1964). I have adopted the phrase “passionate geography” from the work of Iain Chambers, Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke Univer­ sity Press, 2008), 72. See also Meg Roland, “The Rudderless Boat: Fluid Time and Passionate Geography in (Hardyng’s) Chronicle and (Malory’s) Romance,” Arthuriana (Special Issue in Honor of Edward Donald Kennedy) 22, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 77–93. 5 William Caxton, Prologue to Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, Vol. II, ed. Peter Field, (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 855. 6 Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Vol. 1, ed. Peter Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 128, 12–13. All subsequent Malory citations are from this edition and volume. 7 Kathleen Coyne Kelly, “The Eco-Tourist, English Heritage and Arthurian Legend: Walking with Thoreau,” Arthuriana 23, no. 1 (2013): 22. 8 Kelly, “The Eco-Tourist,” 21. 9 See Eric Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film in Postwar Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) and Kelly’s discussion of how ruins both “disrupt and complete” natural environments, 31. 10 Kelly, “The Eco-Tourist,” 22. 11 Susan Rose, The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000–1500 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 106. 12 Christopher W. Brooks, The Arthurian Name Dictionary (New York: Garland, 1999); the digital humanities project, Mapping of Romance Realms and Other Imagined Spaces (MORROIS), lists lines from the Alliterative Morte Arthure that reference Sandwich: “Sandwich,” MORROIS: Mapping of Romance Realms & Other Imagined Spaces. Accessed March 26, 2019. www.morrois.mun.ca/items/show/8061. 13 See, for example, “Locations Associated with Arthurian Legend,” Wikipedia. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locations_associated_wi th_Arthurian_legend. 14 See, for example, “Locations Associated with Arthurian Legend,” Wikipedia. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locations_associated_ with_Arthurian_legend. For popular tourism guides, see Sally Coffey, “King Arthur in Britain: Wwhere to Find the Truth Behind the Legend,” Lonely Planet. Accessed Marh 26, 2019. www.lonelyplanet.com/great-britain/travel-tips­ and-articles/king-arthur-in-britain-where-to-find-the-truth-behind-the-legend/ 40625c8c-8a11-5710-a052-1479d276e4c9, and “Camelot: Discovering the Legend of King Arthur around Britain,” The Telegraph. Accessed March 26, 2019. www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/8561756/Camelot-discovering­ the-legend-of-King-Arthur-around-Britain.html. 15 Dorsey Armstrong and Kenneth Hodges argue that the oscillation between “real” and “natural” spaces in Le Morte Darthur creates “conflicted and conflicting geo­ graphic sensibilities – its ‘(il)logic of space’.” While I disagree with the assessment of this geographical ethos as illogical, they are right to point out the two registers of realistic geography and the necessary natural spaces in which the “deep structure” of medieval romance takes place. See Mapping Malory: Regional Identities and National Geographies in Le Morte Darthur (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 114. For a counterview that contextualizes the Ptolemaic context of Malory’s geography, see Meg Roland, “Malory and the Wider World,” in The New Companion to Malory (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2019).

68 Meg Roland 16 See The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. IV: 1557–1695, ed. John Barnard and Donald McKenzie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 17 David Wallace points out that “Arthur was a revered figure along trade routes of the Hanseatic League” in “Imperium, Commerce, and National Crusade: The Romance of Malory’s Morte,” in Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate, ed. Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith (London: Routledge, 2013), 322. 18 André Louise Simon, The History of the Wine Trade in England (London: Wyman and Sons, 1906), 286–7. See also Rose, The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe. 19 See David Woodward’s extensive essay, “Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The His­ tory of Cartography, Vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 286–320. 20 Daniel Weston, Contemporary Literary Landscapes: The Poetics of Experience (New York: Routledge, 2015). 21 Neil Middleton, “Early Medieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade,” Early Medieval Europe 13, no. 4 (2005): 313–58; see also Christopher Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150: A Comparative Archeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 22 Middleton, 313, 315. 23 Ibid., 315. 24 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. and trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1966). 25 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 226. 26 Ibid., 257. 27 Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 212. 28 Alliterative Morte Arthure, ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. Edward E. Foster (Kalama­ zoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994). All line numbers quoted are from this edition. 29 Field, 149:16–25. 30 Ibid., 149:34–150:1. 31 Ibid., 100:6. 32 James Simpson, The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. 2: 1350–1547: Reform and Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 111. 33 The oft-quoted and disparaged background banner that accompanied a speech by George W. Bush on May 1, 2003 in which he implied the military campaign in Iraq was successfully completed. The conflict continued for years. 34 Field, 152:18–20. 35 Ibid., 152:16–17. 36 Ibid., 152:28–31. 37 Ibid., 152:31–153:2. 38 For a discussion of the symbolic power of ships depicted on maps beginning in the late medieval period, see Richard Unger, Ships on Maps: Pictures of Power in Renaissance Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 39 Field, 188:33–35. 40 Ibid., 189:3. 41 Ibid., 189:4. 42 Ibid., 189:13–14. 43 Ibid., 189:14–17. 44 Andrew Lynch, “What Cheer? Emotions and Actions in the Arthurian World,” in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), 51.

Malory’s Sandwich 69 45 Helen Cooper, “Afterword: Malory’s Enigmatic Smiles,” in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), 183. 46 See Caxton’s version of this passage in The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. by Peter Field (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 246–7. 47 Weston, 1. 48 Peter Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993). 49 Field, 900:29–901:1. 50 Ibid., 900:6–8. 51 For the cultural appropriation of Rome in London, see Neil MacGruder, Shake­ speare’s Restless World: Portrait of an Era (London: Penguin, 2012). See espe­ cially the chapter, “London Becomes Rome,” 242–57. In addition, see the map legends on the Agas Map (1561) that proclaim London as the New Troy, The Map of Early Modern London. Accessed January 10, 2019. https://mapoflondon. uvic.ca/agas.htm.

5

The past and future margins

of Catalonia

Language politics and Catalan

imperial ambitions in Guillem de

Torroella’s La Faula

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia

On 1 October 2017, the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia voted in favor of Catalan independence. Although the vote was declared illegal by the Constitutional court of Spain and was voided by the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (on 7 September 2017 and 17 October 2017, respectively), the referendum demonstrates the strong national identity of Catalonia. Catalonia’s identity is directly related to its medieval history and its position as both a geographically marginal European kingdom and a Medieval European empire. This chapter uses La faula by Guillem de Torroella to demonstrate how Catalonia was constructed as both the margin and the contested-margin of Europe in order to enhance the standing of Catalonia within European politics, which in turn, enhanced its standing as a chivalric European empire. La faula (1370–74) is an example of fourteenth-century language politics in the Crown of Aragón.1 The text uses Arthurian literature to claim Catalan chivalric superiority over that of France (and England),2 in essence making space for Catalonia within European politics. Guillem’s poem is part of a larger Catalan corpus that was helping create and uphold the Catalan empire and the superiority of Catalan chivalry. As Vicente LledóGuillem demonstrates, Catalan texts use Catalan and Occitan to construct the Crown of Aragón by stressing either the continuity or discontinuity in the relationship of both languages. Ultimately, the relationship or lack of relationship between Catalan and Occitan is used to demonstrate the “intimate connection between the Catalan language and identity.”3 The linguistic nationalism and linguistic imperialism presented in Catalan texts helped to construct and justify the medieval Catalan empire.4 La faula participates in the enterprise of creating a Catalan identity and a Catalan linguistic empire by marking Catalan as a kingly language that represents the Crown of Aragón. Written in novas rimadas (1370–74), following the style of troubadour poetry, the fantastical autobiographical poem is written in Catalan and a Catalan-French dialect instead of Occitan. The author creates a narrative

The past and future margins of Catalonia 71 version of himself in the form of the narrator. As a Catalan from Mallorca, the narrator speaks Catalan, but King Arthur and Morgan le Fay respond to him in Catalanized French. These linguistic choices distance the narrator from the Arthurian characters – they do not belong to the same world, the same time period, nor the same culture – creating a contested-space in which Arthur names Catalan chivalry the future of European supremacy, creating a contested-margin for the Catalan language to become the main vernacular language of the Crown, and to show support for the power of the King.5 I would like to define the concepts contested-margin and contested-space through their relationship to medieval European Arthuriana in order to move my analysis to a historical account of Catalonia vis-a-vis its textual production, especially the use of Arthuriana in Jaufré and the gran crónicas, to demonstrate that Guillem de Torroella situates Catalonia within an Arthurian political system that favors Catalan knights over French (and English) knights in order to place Catalonia in the contested-margins of Europe, and thus argues that the Crown is a chivalric medieval empire in its own right. The purpose of this volume is to delve deeply into, expand, and critique the notions of the margins in the Middle Ages in order to understand marginalization from different perspectives. I would like to define the margins from a geographical and political perspective. As my work on Arthurian texts from the Global North Atlantic demonstrates, the borders of “Europe” were being defined and redefined throughout the Middle Ages, and Arthuriana helped to delineate these borderlands.6 Medieval Arthuriana helped construct the margins by creating literary borders that defined where Europe ended and “the Other” began, and these borders were constantly shifting to accommodate and expel different groups of people.7 In this sense, the margins are the places to which “the Other” is expelled, and Europe is what the texts argue belongs within the borders.8 Moreover, instead of using “contested” to imply that there is a dispute between two groups or ideologies, I use “contested” to describe the act of competing to gain power. The contested-margin becomes a liminal space in which the emerging European courts and empires would ideologically compete for power.9 To be in the contested-margin was to create and recreate the borders of Europe in order to gain power over other European courts as well as Africa, the East, and the Islamicate. By constructing a contested-margin, these European courts described themselves as the center of an ideological Europe, a Europe that they were trying to turn into a reality. As I have argued elsewhere: These texts are part of a movement that is creating the European Self by obscuring European diversity, dehumanizing Muslims, and framing these tactics through religious terms and in some instances, racial terms. The dismantling of European diversity that underlies Arthuriana ironic­ ally highlights that the presence of Muslims, Moors, and people of color was the status quo within the European communities that wrote and listened to these texts.10

72 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia In this way, the courts use Arthuriana to be part of Europe, and to present themselves as a racialized Christian European empire with the intent of expanding the borders of Europe for self-gain and stature. Catalan textual production relied on Arthuriana and language politics to construct itself in the contested-margin and within the borders of Europe by distancing itself from the French language and an Arthurian French milieu in order to exalt the Catalan-Aragónese Crown.11 This tactic places the Crown of Aragón front and center in European affairs by claiming that the Catalans are the creators and the protectors of the borders of Europe and therefore they hold power in Europe.12 Guillem de Torroella’s La faula was part of this movement that defined the Crown of Aragón within the contested-margins of Europe. The text creates the contested-margins by situating Guillem the narrator as well as Arthur and Morgan in a contested-space, a place within the contested-margins but that is also defined as outside of time, in order to have Arthur call for a new chivalric order that will be led by the Catalans, making the Catalans the heirs of Europe. The contested-space and the use of Catalan and a Catalanized French create “the possibility of a common space in the form of a diglossic reorganization in which the two languages could be considered as the same.”13 This diglossic reorganization opposes the French threat to the Catalan Empire.14 La faula narrates the otherworld voyage of Guillem to an enchanted island (the l’ilh anquantea [ll.182]) in which he meets Arthur. Consisting of 1270 verses narrated in the first person, the poem tells the story of Guillem the protagonist who on the night of St Jaume (James in English) travels on a fish to an island. A French-speaking serpent leads Guillem to Morgan the Fay who takes Guillem to a young-looking, well-fed Arthur. Arthur seems devastated as he sighs and cries while staring at his sword, Excalibur. Guillem asks “Are you, sir, King Arthur, the one the Bretons wait for?”15 Arthur responds in the affirmative and explains why and how he is alive. He gives an overview of the ending of the Mort Artu and says that his tomb in the Black Chapel was placed there by Morgan so that the knights, including the knights of the Round Table, do not search for him. He explains to Guillem that he is lamenting the decay of the chivalric code because those in power are not always those that deserve power. Although scholarly research on La faula is scarce, the main arguments center on either reading the text as an allegory that favors Jaume IV of Majorca over Pere III of Aragón in their dispute over the kingdom of Majorca,16 interpreting La faula as an anti-Catalan story, or reading the text as a story that simply follows Arthurian protocol;17 these readings are central to any study of La faula. Although the narrative was written in Mallorca, most of the extant manuscripts are available in the mainland Crown of Aragón.18 The Crown of Aragón did not treat La faula as an anti-Catalan story; instead, the tale was well regarded in elite Aragón circles. Historically, Catalan writers with connections to Mallorca do not define themselves or their texts as separate from texts from the mainland

The past and future margins of Catalonia 73 Crown. In fact, writers from Mallorca tend to position themselves as Catalan. The dispute between Jaume IV of Mallorca and Pere III does not adequately explain the main event of La faula. I take a different approach by considering the pan-European aspects of La faula, which are tied to the use of Arthuriana, and the relationship of the Crown of Aragón to this pan-European context. The poem turns the Mediterranean, especially the island of Sicily, into the otherworld, a contested-space, to enhance the Catalan monarchy. Keeping in mind that Aragón-Catalonia had a long historical animosity toward the French courts, which constantly fought against the Crown of Aragón for territories throughout the European Mediterranean, including Sicily, La faula seems to lament the good fortunes of the French (and English) courts and the paucity of the Aragón-Catalan Crown, and implies that Catalan chivalry is the future of chivalric conquest. This interpretation ties the text to Catalan literary production and the ways that production helped construct a Catalan identity that presented the Catalans as a chivalric European enclave in the contestedmargins. The action of the poem turns Sicily into the otherworld in order to show (metaphorically and literally) Catalan chivalry as superior to that of France, England, Castile, and so on. The Catalan Crown becomes the contested-margins of Europe by being on the side of the margin that exemplifies chivalry and thus “Europeanness.” To support my argument and to contextualize it, an in-depth account of the history of the crown of Aragón and its literary production using Arthuriana is necessary to explain why La faula distances Guillem from Arthur, his men, and the French language. I will return to La faula specifically in the last third of this study. The Crown of Aragón became an increasingly important court throughout the Middle Ages and grew into a powerhouse and an emerging nation-state by the fourteenth century, in part, by constructing a strong Catalan identity. They begin to do so as early as 985 when the Cordoban al Manṣūr sacked the city of Barcelona, the twenty-third attack against the city in nine years.19 The count of Barcelona, Borrell II (+993), used the attack to distance himself from the Frankish court which did not help protect the city. By the late eleventh century, the Catalans began to expand toward Al-Andalus. In 1082, Count Berenguer Ramon II and his men fought alongside Castile, Aragón, Navarre, and the taifa states of Lleida and Tortosa against Zaragoza,20 and in 1085, the Catalans participated in the conquest of Toledo.21 The Catalans’ participation in the events that we now call la Reconquista also point to their increasing connection to the Peninsula instead of the courts of the south of France. The twelfth century also brought another important change to Catalonia. In 1137, Count Ramon Berenguer IV (1131–62) gained control of the kingdom of Aragón because of his betrothal to Petronilla of Aragón (1136–76). Their child, Alfonso II (1162–96), became the first king of the Crown of Aragón, which combined the territories of the counts of Barcelona and the kingdom of Aragón.22 The newly formed Crown began to redefine itself based on their

74 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia newly acquired central position within Occitania, the Peninsula, and the Mediterranean.23 By 1180, Catalan kings began to use written texts to validate the Catalan courts. The Gesta Comitum Barcinonensium, a foundational text of medieval Catalan historiography, was written as a response to the Catalan need to establish a genealogy, and was produced at a time in which the Catalan kings were gaining power.24 The literary value of the material was not in question, only its capacity to legitimize the Catalan kings.25 The Albigensian Crusades, however, prevented the “trans-Pyrenean designs of the Aragónese-Catalan dynasty.”26 In 1212, Pere of Aragón (1178–1213) lost the battle of Muret fighting against Simon de Montfort.27 Frankish aggression against the south of France and the Catalans was possible because the Crown of Aragón, al-Andalus, and the south of France held a similar status within the Frankish imaginary.28 The Crown of Aragón was a target of the Crusades of the twelfth century, but was also a participant in the Crusades of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The defeat at Muret became a catalyst for the expansion – political, territorial, and commercial – of the Catalans into the Mediterranean in the first half of the thirteenth century.29 Although the colonization of Mallorca, for example, was a long-term goal that began in 1113 with Pope Paschal II (papacy 1090–1118) granting papal privileges to the siege of the Islands, it was not until 1229 that Jaume was able to conquer Mallorca. The conquest helped define Jaume as a capable leader.30 La faula as well as other Catalan texts turn these events into chivalric achievements and describe Catalan kings as chivalric kings by depicting the conquests of the Crown as chivalric adventures. I would like to step back from my narrative to point out that the siege of Mallorca was devastating to the native Muslim population, the majority of which was killed or enslaved by the Catalans.31 Jaume continued to conquer the Balearic Islands; in 1235, he conquered both Menorca and Ibiza. The Muslim population of Menorca agreed to “recognize the overlordship of the king of Aragón,”32 a decision that saved the Muslim population from having the same fate as Mallorca. The acquisition of the Balearic Islands was a first step in a longer project of expansion. In 1238, the Catalans acquired the city of Valencia, and by 1248, they had conquered the entire kingdom of Valencia. Catalan became the main language of Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Pere el Gran or Peter the Great (1239–85) followed in his father’s footsteps. Pere was celebrated by Catalan writers because of his victory against the French army that led to the conquest of Sicily (1283).33 By the fourteenth century, the Catalan Crown had become an important Mediterranean enclave, and had solidified its position as part of a Chivalric European system.34 Nevertheless, the Crown understood itself and was described as a “poor” kingdom.35 In fact, the kingdom of Majorca was a wealthy enclave of the Crown,36 and the Crown of Aragón had a reputation for both poverty and avarice. The Catalan-Aragón elite understood their position within Europe as that of a poor dynasty that needed conquest and commercial

The past and future margins of Catalonia 75 trade to succeed. Therefore, by the time La faula was written, the Crown of Aragón was a staple within medieval European politics, but continued to be perceived and to understand itself as having a marginal position because of its history and its finances.37 The literary production of the Crown of Aragón, especially the materials that use Arthuriana, tends to respond to these events in order to place the Crown at the contested-border and therefore as the center of European affairs. Texts such as Jaufré, Jaume’s Llibre del Fets, Ramon Muntaner’s Crónica, and La faula, among others, create a strong unified Crown by arguing for the superiority of the Catalan knight and the Aragonese empire in contrast to other European empires such as the French. Nevertheless, these texts also respond to their time period of creation. Jaufré, for example, which was written in the twelfth century, distances the Crown of Aragón from the Albigensian Crusades and the French courts by placing Aragón within the borders of Christian Europe. La faula, however, does not need to make that differentiation and, therefore, the linguistic tactics used to demonstrate Catalan superiority are different. Jaufré begins with a dedication to the king of Aragón and mentions that the king just conquered the north of Spain from the Saracens. The story itself tells the adventures of Jaufré, a young knight who is trying to prove his valor to King Arthur and his men. Jaufré has many adventures that prove his worth as a knight. At the end of the text, he marries Brunissen and becomes the protector of Monbrun. Jaufré is written in Occitan, the language of dissent during the time of Jaume I because it was the language associated with “the enemies of the faith,”38 but Occitan was also the language of courtly culture and troubadour poetry.39 It was a language well established and praised throughout Europe, and it had linguistic and cultural affinities with the courts of the Crown of Aragón. In fact, Lledó-Guillem demonstrates that Occitan becomes increasingly important to Catalan writers who use Occitan to turn Catalan into the language of the Crown by either creating continuity or discontinuity with Occitan.40 Occitan was associated with the kingliness of the Crown of Aragon throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Drawing from Lledó-Guillem’s finding, I would argue that Jaufré creates a strong continuity with Occitan to enhance the standing of the Kings of Aragón. The poem also borrows from the romance tradition of the Franks in order to undermine French traditions. The text mocks and becomes critical of chivalry and the Arthurian court by recalling Chrétien’s texts through the lens of the burlesque and the comic.41 Two scenes in particular differentiate the poem from other wellknown Arthurian romances and exemplify these comic undertones. First, the text begins with Arthur being dragged by a bull toward a cliff. The only solution that Arthur’s men can come up with is to take off all their clothes to make a bed for Arthur to fall on because they are afraid for Arthur’s life. As Arthur is falling with the bull, the bull turns into a magician knight and it all turns out to be a joke. The second scene happens close to the end of

76 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia the poem at the wedding of Jaufré and Brunissen. A giant bird carries Arthur away from the guest, and the knights and ladies of the court tear their clothes off because they are frightened for Arthur’s life. The bird turns out to be the same magician knight from the bull-scene, and Arthur gets new clothes for all the guests. Both scenes have Arthur’s court behaving in a ridiculous manner that ends with everyone being naked. The poem breaks away from courtly customs and constantly subverts the readers’ expectations.42 Jaufré’s depiction of Arthur is in direct contrast to the depiction of Arthur in La faula, which describes Arthur as a messianic figure who asks that Guillem save chivalry from unworthy kings. Although both texts demonstrate a different version of Arthur, they both use Arthuriana to exalt Catalan chivalry and give power to the Catalans over the French. Jaufré highlights the discrepancies between ceremonial and practical knighthood, and, in the process mocks the French Arthurian tradition. This act, exemplified by the scenes mentioned above, combined with the use of Occitan, and the fact that the text begins by praising the Crown of Aragón for their role in winning over Muslims in Spain, distances the Crown of Aragón from its own problematic history. The narrative helps the Crown to break with earlier Catalan kings, especially Pere of Aragón,43 and to establish their own chivalric tradition, distancing their lineage from the failure of the Albigensian Crusades and praising Catalan efforts against the Saracens of the Peninsula. The text thus places the Crown of Aragón in the contested-margins. Llibre dels fets, a chronicle of the life of Jaume I in which he dictates his life from childhood to his conquest of Mallorca and Valencia, has similarities with both Jaufré and La faula. The Llibre distances the reign of Jaume from that of his father, promotes conquest in the Mediterranean, and exalts Catalan chivalry. Jaume is believed to have dictated most of the Llibre dels fets when his territories and his courts were becoming political and cultural centers.44 The account emphasizes the importance of knighthood,45 and bears a striking resemblance to other accounts about the Crusades, a popular genre in early thirteenth century.46 The scenes of his conception and his naming are framed to construct Jaume as a child of God who would become a knight of legend. The Llibre dels fets, available shortly after Jaume’s death, initiates an important move toward writing historical chronicles. The chronicles that follow, the Llibre de Rey En Pere de Aragó e dels seus atecessors passats (Book of King Peter of Aragón and of His Ancestors) or Crònica by Bernat Desclot (1283–88), Crònica de Ramon Muntaner (1330–36),47 and Crònica de Pere el Ceremoniós (1375–83),48 together known as the grand chronicles, also turn Jaume I and his children into exemplars of chivalry. Both Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner rewrite the conception of Jaume I, by associating it with the conceptions of Arthur and Galahad found in the Vulgate and the Lancelot en prose, respectively.49 Desclot in particular describes King Pere, son of Jaume, as the greatest king because in 1283, he defeats the French and gains Sicily for the Crown of Aragón.50 Moreover,

The past and future margins of Catalonia 77 Muntaner was familiar with Arthurian romance, including the Vulgate Lancelot, the Tristan en Prose, and Jaufré,51 and he lists several Arthurian characters in his crónica.52 In fact, he compares the deeds of the Catalan kings with the deeds of Arthur’s men, concluding that the Catalans are superior. Muntaner writes: For what [Peter the Great] did was not knight’s work but truly the work of God. For not Galahad, nor Tristan, nor Lancelot, nor the other knights of the Table Round, if they had been with as few followers as the Lord King, could have done as much in one day as the Lord King and those with him did against four hundred knights as expert as these were, who were the flower of the French host.53 Arthur and his men, and the texts that define them, are displaced in favor of Catalan knights and in favor of the cronicas. Therefore, the Crónica continues the trend of questioning other established kingdoms such as France.54 Muntaner’s Crónica and the Llibre dels fets create a relationship among language, literature, kingship, and chivalry that legitimized the Crown of Aragón. The cronicas are able to use the language of chivalry to legitimize the process of expansion of the Crown of Aragón, especially Jaume’s success in expanding Catalan territories. Jaume ruled over Aragón, Valencia, and the Balearics (Mallorca, Menorca, and Ibiza) as the King of Aragón, and he ruled Catalonia as Count of Barcelona. Jaume decreed that his territories would be divided between his two legitimate children. David Abulafia explains that Jaume offered Peter Aragón, Valencia, and those parts of Catalonia that lay to the west of the Pyrenees. Jaume would have the Balearics, the lordship of Montpellier, a prized possession in Languedoc, and those parts of the Catalan lands that lay mainly to the east of the Pyrenees.55 Although dividing the kingdom in two became a source of conflict for the Catalans, the written accounts of both Mallorca and Catalonia construct a relationship between both territories that is deeply intertwined by their Catalan language, Catalan customs, and their ideologies of expansion – in essence a Catalan identity. The Balearic Islands have been crucial for the creation of a chivalric European cultural imagination which was fully taken advantage of by the Crown. From Jaume’s first accounts of the conquest of Mallorca to Ramon Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria, Majorca’s textual production and its representation cannot be underestimated. Jaume I understood the conquest of Mallorca in the Llibre dels fets as a “chivalric adventure par excellence.”56 Moreover, some of the most important Catalan writers are intimately tied to the island of Mallorca. Bernat Desclot and Ramón Muntaner had familial connections to the islands,57 and Ramon Llull, whose Llibre de l’orde is

78 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia a European best-seller, was born in Mallorca in 1232 to newly settled Catalans.58 Llull’s Llibre de l’orde was translated into Occitan, French, English, Italian, and Spanish and was considered the chivalric book par excellence of the later Middle Ages. These texts position the Crown in a contested-space, highlight Catalan chivalry, and place Catalan and the Catalan Crown as the center of Europe. The Catalans use language and literature, including Arthuriana, to promote, explain, support, and expand their cultural and political agenda within the borders and expanding borders of Europe. Important Catalan texts, such as Jaufré (c. 1225–74), the Llibre dels fets (c. 1244–76), and La Crónica, participate in the enterprise of validating the Aragonese-Catalan Empire,59 and help define the Crown of Aragón as the contested-margins of Europe. The strong cultural identity of the Crown of Aragón as a chivalric Empire, the historical relationship between France and the Crown, especially the Albigensian Crusades and the conquest of Sicily, and the image of the Crown as poor are all important topics for a reading of La faula. La faula brings up similar motifs as earlier Catalan texts with the ultimate goal of turning the Crown into an empire and Catalan into an imperial language. Ledó-Guillem, in his analysis of Muntaner’s Crónica, remarks that “a very codified, specialized language like poetic Occitan becomes the exclusive language to represent the King and his power”60 which is used in order for Catalan to become “the text of the performance of the ceremony whereas Occitan is the language of the actual performance that supports the power of the King, ….”61 La faula, unlike most of Catalan poetry which was written in a highly stylized Occitan, is written in Catalan. The poem, however, uses the highly stylized poetic system of the troubadours through the use of the novas rimadas. The poem turns Catalan to the language of both the symbolic and actual performance. Therefore, Catalan represents the language of the Crown and the King. Moreover, by keeping the troubadour tradition but using Catalan instead of Occitan helps to distance the materials from a French ideology and setting because Occitan was also connected to France. Ledó-Guillem explains that the process of standardization of the Catalan language is particularly inter­ esting ideologically because, from a political point of view, the Occitan lan­ guage, which was and still is very similar to Catalan, was one of the languages of the Kingdom of France. It was thus important to stress that Catalan was different from the Occitan so that Catalan could become the main vernacular language of the monarchy and Occitan could be iconized as one of the different languages of France that prevented the existence of a pure French identity based on a single and uniform language.62 (61–2) By keeping the highly stylized system of the poetry but writing the text in Catalan helps to stress that Catalan is the vernacular language of the monarchy.

The past and future margins of Catalonia 79 The poem continues to tie the text to the Crown. The poem begins in the morning of Saint Jaume (maytí de Sant Johan, ll. 4), when a big fish, like a whale, carrying a parrot, takes the fictional Guillem away from the Port of Santa Caterina in the northern part of Mallorca. The whale-like fish takes Guillen out of the waters of the Balearic Islands in the West toward the East (“entrey en les mars de Monorcha / e lexey a destra Malhorqua, / vers les ensenyes d’occident”).63 Guillem arrives at an island in the evening where he meets a talking serpent that shows him the splendors and riches of the island such as fruits of unimaginable flavor (“lo fruyt fora de tal sabor com vós àgretz smaginatz”).64 The serpent speaks to Guillem in French and explains to him that he is in the enchanted island where Morgan le Fay and Arthur reside (“qu’enysi tu poues apercevoyr/que tu es en l’ilh anquantea, on repayra Morguan la fea/e misire lo roys Artus”).65 Not only does the Serpent speak in French but the poem makes sure to tell us in Catalan that the serpent is speaking French (ll. 196). Guillem sleeps between the flowers (“durmén entre les fresques flors”), continues to marvel at the natural beauty of the island, and washes his hands and face in beautiful and clear waters (“En la pila m’aney levar/mantinent les mans e la cara;/ab l’aygua qui fon belha e clara”).66 A richly saddled enchanted horse takes Guillem to a palace.67 Guillem finally meets Morgan who tells him in French that Arthur is suffering from a strange malady that is making him sad (ll. 524–30). She takes him inside to King Arthur, but instead of finding Arthur, he first sees stained glass windows decorated with the adventures of the knights of the round table including Tristany, Lancelot del Lach, Pelomides lo fortiu, Ivan, Arech, Galvany, Baorç, Percaval, Galeà, and so on (ll.560–599). Guillem is not able to see Arthur until Morgan passes a ring in front of his eyes. He finally sees Arthur lying ill on a bed dressed sumptuously with his sisters Amor and Valor kneeling in front of him. Guillem questions if the man is truly Arthur by recounting the end from the Mort Artu. Arthur explains that Morgan took him to the enchanted island where he is fed by the Holy Grail in order to keep his youthful appearance. Arthur shows Guillem why he is sad, mainly that chivalry is in peril. Arthur wants Guillem to help bring back chivalry to its former glory. Guillem is asked to go back and to tell everyone what he saw on the island and what Arthur told him. Guillem returns to Mallorca aboard the whale. The setting of the story is intimately connected the Crown of Aragón. The story begins on the day of St John, a feast day associated with the Catalans. The setting is also connected to the Catalan islands of the Mediterranean, moving the story from Mallorca to the enchanted island, from the west to the east. The choice to describe Guillem’s movement in this way makes Guillem travel the whole of the Mediterranean. The text follows the tradition of connecting Avalon and Sicily seen in texts such as Otia imperalia (ca. 1212) and Floriant et Florete (ca. 1250).68 The poem uses the well-known motif of the standard trip to the otherworld,

80 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia but in order to turn Sicily, a well-established island in the Crown of Aragón, into the “enchanted island,” the poem is able to make the connection between Sicily and Avalon. The liminal positionality of the islands of the Mediterranean turned them into enclaves and gave the Catalans and other Europeans access to Africa. Sicily, in particular, was considered Pere’s greatest victory because the Catalans won the island against the French but also because they managed to keep the island even after making a treaty to give it back to the French. To have Arthur reside in Sicily is another way to place the Catalans front and center in European affairs by alluding to the position of the Catalans as the protectors of the borders of Europe. Moreover, the description of the island as a sumptuous paradise is a way to tie the island with conquest and with the type of wealth that the Catalans were in search of but found elusive. Therefore, Guillem travels from Mallorca to Sicily, both controlled by the Catalans, turning the Mediterranean into a Catalan Mediterranean that encompasses both the East and the West.69 La faula also uses language politics to depict Catalan as a kingly language. The tale has Guillem speaking in Catalan and Arthur, Morgan, and the serpent speaking a Catalanized French.70 The diglossia marks Catalan as a kingly language because the narrator speaks in Catalan with confidence that Arthur and Morgan will understand him and will not take offense. Moreover, Arthur and Morgan both understand Catalan, marking the language as courtly and pointing to the idea that Catalan is a wellknown language. It is important to point out that the diglossia of La faula is not found in Jaufré, which is written in Occitan. Although both Jaufré and La faula enhance the standing of the Catalan Crown within a panEuropean setting, Jaufré mocks Arthurian themes and uses Occitan and La faula maintains the poetic system of Occitan, has the speaking inhabitants of the enchanted island speak a Catalanized French, and has the narrative version of Guillem speak Catalan. The diglossia, in combination with the representation of the island as simultaneously being the otherworld, Avalon, Sicily, and the Mediterranean as well as the ritualistic/performative aspects of Guillem’s meeting with Arthur, Morgan, and the Serpent help to turn the island and the text itself into a liminal space, a disglossic reorganization, which makes both Catalan and French equal within the liminal space but opposes any claim that the French may have had to the island, in essence, arguing that any claims of the French are unrealistic and a fantasy. The linguistic choices follow those of earlier Catalan texts in that they distance the narrator from the Arthurian characters, presenting Catalan kings and knights as better than Arthurian knights in order to depict the Crown as part of the contested-borders of Europe and thus supporting Catalan expansion in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. After all, Guillem is alive, upholding chivalry and having an aventure, and Arthur’s knights are only displayed in blankets and stained-glass windows.

The past and future margins of Catalonia 81 Arthur’s claim, that chivalry is dying and must be brought back, is worth analyzing closely. In the text, Guillem is shown a vision through Excalibur in which poor, great kings are not able to succeed while ignorant, rich kings fare well: Those with their faces covered beautiful friend, are the rich kings; but you do not know why they are like that, happy and beautiful. Avarice, which has no value, has them full and satiated with their doings, but [they are] poor of valor and merit, because they don’t remember Merit, my friend, because today Ignorance, [just] like that, has them blind, and even less they know the truth; that is why they are happy straying. Now I will tell you of the other people, that you see bounded tightly these are the ones that enjoy valor; and even if you see them tightly bound they wear Hope and it is theirs to do what they want to do; [they don’t] lose hope in their heart, when they sigh over their situation;71 The scene is not describing the vision; instead, Arthur is explaining the vision to Guillem, and by extension to the reader, in French. Arthur describes rich kings that should be ashamed of their lack of valor but are content because they are rich. These kings misunderstand what it means to be kings. The other kings, who are tightly bound, presumably by their lack of monetary riches, carry valor and hope with them despite their inability to rule properly. The text uses the word valor (valour) to define the different kings, making the claim that valor should be the trait that brings you merit (pritz) and wealth. After showing and explaining to Guillem the vision, Arthur tells him to return to his own country (pays vostre) and tell of what Arthur showed him.72 The scene ties kingship to chivalry and honor, and describes dishonorable kings with the word riche (ll. 1163). The representation described above fits neatly with the ideology that Catalonia is a poor but Chivalric kingdom, in effect mourning for kings that have a similar profile to the Catalan kings. La faula continues to tie Arthuriana with Catalonia and Catalonia with the Mediterranean through the Arthurian sources that inspired the text. The sources include the Mort Artu, possibly from a Catalan translation;73 the narrative lais, which were also important sources for the Castilian

82 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia Zifar;74 Sicilian Arthurian legends, including the Otia imperialia (early thirteenth century);75 and Floriant et Florete, a French text based on a Sicilian legend set in Sicily with Sicilian characters (c. 1250).76 The intertextual components of La faula exemplify the pan-European transmission of literature within the Catalan-Crown of Aragón, representing a cosmopolitan Catalonia. The use of Mort Artu in particular exemplifies this tendency. Mort Artu is rewritten so that Arthur is alive. The death of Arthur in the Mort Artu was both a French and English strategy: for the French, the death of Arthur squelched British hegemony and was used against England, and in England, the death of Arthur was used to deter Welsh and Scottish uprisings. Reviving Arthur in La faula goes against the political needs of both the French and the English courts. Although the poem lightly hints of tensions between Catalonia and England, La faula’s main arguments are against France. From this perspective, describing Arthur as the one the Britons are waiting for and connecting him to the French language continues the trend already seen in Jaufré of using language and chivalry to enhance the standing of the Catalans who wished to be seen as an Empire. Avalon-Sicily then becomes a Catalan conquest in the protection of Europe and the Catalans are the successors to the Angevin French whom the Aragonese oust. The poem continues the trend of using the Catalan language to create a Catalan identity and a Catalan empire. La faula, following a Catalan textual tradition, aims to demonstrate that Catalonia is the contested-margins of Europe, and thus the borders that will carry on the chivalric enterprise. I will like to end my chapter by returning to my introduction, in which I tie Catalan ideologies of independence with the history of the Crown of Aragón. Medieval Catalan textual production helped create a Catalan identity that depicted the Crown of Aragón as the future of chivalry and thus the future of Europe. Although the Crown of Aragón was subsumed into the Castilian Crown in 1716, a long process that began as early as the fifteenth century, the Catalans continue to use their heritage, their language, and their Catalan ideological identity, which positions them as the contested-margins of Europe, to reject the condition of being part of modern-day Spain.

Notes 1 When discussing the Crown of Aragón, it is important to differentiate among the concepts of the Crown of Aragón, the kingdom of Aragón, and the House of Barcelona-Aragón. Vicente Lledó-Guillem defines them in this way: “The Crown of Aragon refers to the different political units that fell under the direct dominion of King James II of Aragon (r. 1291–1327): the Principality of Catalonia, the King­ dom of Valencia, and the Kingdom of Aragon. The Kingdom of Aragon was only one part of the Crown of Aragon. The House of Aragon or the House of Barce­ lona-Aragon refers to the different dynasties that descended from the same root. When James II was King of the Crown of Aragon in 1322, at the time of the Sermó, there were two other dynasties: Sancho, King of Mallorca (r. 1311–24),

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and King Frederic III of Sicily (r. 1296–1337). The latter two Kingdoms did not belong to the Crown of Aragon but were rather dynasties of the House of Barce­ lona-Aragon” (65). It is also important to define the Crown as a concept in and of itself. Ernst Kantorowicz’s defines the Crown as a “composite body, an aggregate of the king and those responsible for maintaining the inalienable rights of the Crown and the kingdom. As a perpetual minor, the Crown itself had corpora­ tional character–with the king as its guardian, though again not with the king alone, but with that composite body of king and magnates who together were said to be, or to represent, the Crown” (381). See Vicente Lledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan Linguistic Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Times (Hempstead, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, 7th ed., 1957 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) respectively. Although I will mainly be concentrating on the ways La faula rejects French ideals, it is worth noting that the text is also subtly rejecting English ideals. Lledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan, 10. Lledó-Guillem defines Linguistic imperialism and Linguistic nationalism in the following way: “Linguistic imperialism defends the idea that a language may rep­ resent diverse identities. A unique, anonymous language could substitute for other less anonymous languages while maintaining the identities of those who spoke those languages. On the other hand, linguistic nationalism asserts that a different language represents a different identity and that language substitution implies the end of the identity that the substituted language represents” (The Making of Cata­ lan 14). See also Lledó-Guillem, “La obra de Bernardo de Aldrete en el contexto catalanohabalante,” Hispanic Research Journal 16, no. 3 (2015): 191–207. Lledó-Guillem shows that the Catalan language can symbolize “support of the power of the King, obedience towards the King, and generosity towards the other regions of the Crown of Aragon” (The Making of Catalan, 82). My own forthcoming work on Medieval Arthuriana from the Global North Atlantic discusses these issues in depth. My research on Arthuriana and my discussion of who gets to be included and excluded are deeply guided by Geraldine Heng’s research on race in the Middle Ages. Heng writes that: “‘race’ is one of the primary names we have – a name we retain for the strategic, epistemological, and political commitments it recognizes – attached to a repeating tendency, of the gravest import, to demarcate human beings through differences among humans that are selectively essentialized as abso­ lute and fundamental, in order to distribute positions and powers differentially to human groups.” Racemaking thus operates as specific historical occasions in which strategic essentialisms are posited and assigned through a variety of prac­ tices and pressures, so as to construct a hierarchy of peoples for differential treatment. My understanding, thus, is that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive con­ tent (27). See The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). The “Other” is an established term in postcolonial studies. I define the “Other” as those placed in a subordinate position by the feudal structures of the middle ages. The term “Other” can refer to Jews, Muslims, and Pagans, among others. In medieval Arthurian texts, the “Other” tends to be a male giant who must be subjugated, killed, and he’s lands incorporated to the Arthurian milieu. I am using the term contested in one of its most basic definitions. To “engage in competition to attain (a position of power)” or “an attempt to win power or control.” See the definition of “contest” in the Google dictionary and the Cam­ bridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org) respectively.

84 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia 10 Nahir Otaño Gracia, “Towards a Decentered Global North Atlantic: Blackness in Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd,” Literature Compass, forthcoming. See also Ger­ aldine Heng, The Invention of Race and Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); and Maghan Keita, “Saracens and Black Knights,” Arthuriana 16, no. 4 (2006): 65–77 at 70–2. 11 For more information on the role of Arthuriana in defining Catalonia, see chap­ ter III of my forthcoming monograph on Arthurian texts from the Global North Atlantic. 12 My work on Arthuriana shows that the texts use a similar ideology throughout the Global North Atlantic but for different purposes. For example, my work on Old Norse-Icelandic Arthurian texts demonstrates that the Arthurian sagas are using these tactics to insist that Crusading in the North is as important as Cru­ sading in the Peninsula and the East, and that the Norwegian Kings have as much right to expansion as England, France, and the Peninsula. See Otaño Gracia, “Vikings of the Round Table: Kingship in the Islendingasögur and the Riddarasögur,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 47, no. 1 (2016): 69–101; and “Towards.” 13 Lledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan, 90. 14 Lledó-Guillem is discussing how Catalan and Occitan were used against the Aragonese language. He is not discussing the French language. Nevertheless, the diglossia that he is discussing functions similarly to the diglossia found in La faula. See The Making of Catalan, 90. 15 Translation mine; “ets vós, senyor, lo rey Artús, aycelh qu’enténdon li bretó” (ll.924–25)? See Guillem de Torroella, La faula, eds. Anna Maria Compagna and Perrone Capano (Barcelona: Edicions UIB, Publications de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2007), ll. 924–5. 16 It is important to note the difference between Mallorca, an island in the Balear­ ics, and Majorca, a short-lived Catalan kingdom. The essay discusses both the kingdom of Majorca and the island of Mallorca at different sections. 17 Anton M. Espalader and Albert Hauff i Valls argue that the allegory describes the relationship between Jaume IV of Mallorca and his attempt to restore the Mallor­ can dynasty to power. The text would then correlate the treacherous acts of Mor­ dred against Arthur with the acts of Pere III against Jaume IV and the return of Arthur with the return of Jaume IV to Mallorca. Nevertheless, Maria Toldrà and Lola Badia remark that there is not enough evidence to assume that the allegory is about Jaume IV and Pere III. Instead, the text is following chivalric Arthurian protocols (Badia, 100), and is a moralizing tale that follows the trends of other Catalan texts of the time (Toldrà, 475). Sara Vicent Santamaria has an excellent review of the debate. See Anton M. Espalader, “El meravellós com a luxe i pedagogía,” in El món imaginari i el món meravellós a l’edat mitjana (Barcelona: Fundació Caixa de Pensions, 1986), 144; Albert Hauff i Valls, “Artús, aycell qui atendon li bretó: La Faula, seducció o reivindicació políticomoral?” Butlletí de la Societat Arqueológica Lul•liana 56 (1990): 21; Maria Toldrà, “Notes sobre la suposada lectura ‘sebastianista’ de La Faula,” Llengua & Literatura 5 (1992–93): 471–8; Lola Badia, Tres contes meravellosos del segle XIV (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 2003), 100 and “De La Faula al Tirant lo Blanc, passant pel Llibre de Fortuna e Prudència,” in Tradició i modernitat als segles XIV i XV (Valencia: Publica­ cions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana, 1993), 93–128; and Sara Vicent Santamaria, “La faula de Guillem de Torroella: ¿Literatura o política?” Res publica 17 (2007): 347–52. 18 There are four manuscripts that include verses from La faula. The most com­ plete manuscripts of La faula is held at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, known as

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manuscript A. Manuscript U is at the National Library of Madrid and is missing the final 128 verses. Manuscript M is at the Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana in Mallorca, and it includes very Catalanized fragments of the tale. The Bibliothèque Inguimbertine (Carpentras, France) holds manuscript C, which includes 202 verses. For more information see Vicent Santamaria, “La faula de Guillem,” 343. Adam J. Kosto writes that “an early and strong tradition sees in the events of 985 a formative step in the creation of a Catalan national identity” (1). See Adam J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Kosto, Making Agreements, 7–9. A nuanced framing of what many call La Reconquista is beyond the scope of this essay. Alejandro García-Sanjuán makes a note that the historical memory of La Reconquista in many academic texts from the nineteenth-century to the pre­ sent has been to reject al-Andalus as part of Spain. Similar to Arthuriana, the representation of the movement of the Hispanic kingdoms into al-Andalusian territory has been to reject the diversity inherent in the European Middle Ages by presenting Al-Andalus as distinct from Spain. See “Rejecting al-Andalus, Exalting the Reconquista: Historical Memory in Contemporary Spain,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 10, no.1 (2018): 127–45. For more information on the expansion of the Aragón court see Jaume Aurell, Authoring the Past: History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 21–38; and Martin Aurell, “L’expansion en Occitanie,” in Les noces du Comte. Mariage et pouvoir en Cata­ logne (785–1213) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995). Kosto, Making Agreements, 8; and Aurell, Authoring the Past, 22. Jaume Aurell, “From Genealogies to Chronicles: The Power of the Form in Medieval Catalan Historiography,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 36 (2005): 238. Stefano Maria Cingolani argues that in early Castilian historiography “all that matters is to assert legitimacy, not reason it out. If the counts had passed down stories/histories of their ancestors from father to son, these were not perceived as something public, of exemplary value, or even literary” (Translation mine). “Lo único que interesa es afirmar una legitimidad, no razonarla. Si los condes han transmitido de padre a hijo historias de sus antepasados, éstas no eran per­ cibidas como algo público, como un valor ejemplar, ni siquiera literario” (54). See Stefano Maria Cingolani, “De historia privada a historia pública y de la afirmación al discurso: Una reflexión en torno a la historiografía medieval cata­ lana (985–1288),” Talia Dixit 3 (2008): 51–76. Thomas N. Bisson writes that “the old houses of Toulouse and BeziersCarcassonne together with the trans-Pyrenean designs of the Aragónese-Catalan dynasty collapsed in the Albigensian crusades. As early as 1212 Simon de Montfort organized a quasi- colonial government for lower Languedoc based largely on the baronial custom of ‘France near Paris’; the county of Toulouse was to suc­ cumb more gradually but no less inevitably to the rule of ambitious Frenchmen in the next generations; while the fiscal insolvency of Peter of Aragón, followed by his untimely death on the battlefield of Muret (1213), obliged his successor James the Conqueror to found his new imperialism against less dangerous Mediterra­ nean neighbors upon an improved politics and finance” (290). See Thomas N. Bisson, “The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia, ca. 1140 – ca. 1233,” The American Historical Review 82, no. 2 (1977): 290–311. The Crusades against the Albigensians were part of the Christian civil wars of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. María Rosa Menocal aptly explains the ramifications of the Crusades to Provençal poetry. She writes that they

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“decimated the social and political structures of the once flourishing courts of Provence, the same courts, with intimate ties to those of Spain and al-Andalus, where the troubadours had wrought the first canonical secular literature of the modern Western tradition” (45). See The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Back Bay Books, 2002). Ross G. Arthur notes that Pere el Catòlic “was engaged in a war to assist his own beleaguered and mistreated vassals, but his defeat and the fact that he was fighting against forces that had approval for their actions were both problems and embar­ rassments for later Catalan writers” (252). See “The Roman de Jaufre and the Illu­ sions of Romance,” in The Rusted Hauberk: Feudal Ideals of Order and their Decline, eds. Liam O. Purdon and Cindy L. Vitto (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida), 245–65. See Aurell, Authoring the Past, 40; and Marta Vanlandingham, Transforming the State: King, Court and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragón (1213–1387) (Leiden: Brill, 2002). David Abulafia explains that for Jaume “a Catalan assault on Mallorca would not just be a holy war, but also an opportunity to show his unruly vassals in Catalonia that he was a decisive and capable war-leader” (7). A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). In only a few occasions were Muslims from Mallorca given the “choice” to con­ vert to Christianity. These events are intimately tied to the process of European feudal expansion with the result that the native populace was killed and dis­ placed. Soto Company and Mas Forners remark that the “success of coloniza­ tion could only be guaranteed by the immigration of Christian settlers in sufficient quantities to replace all or part of the conquered Muslim society. From this it follows that the Catalan conquest of Majorca should be seen as a manorial frontier expansion followed by a process of settlement by peasant colonizers” (342). See Soto Company and Mas Forners, “Feudal Colonization and Socio-ecological Transition in Mayûrqa (Muslim Majorca) in the Thirteenth Century,” Continuity and Change 30, no. 3 (2015): 341–66. For more information of the devastation brought to the Muslim community of Mallorca because of the Catalan siege see also Soto Company, “La situació dels andalusins (Musulmans i Batejats) a Mallorca després de la Conquesta Catalana de 1230,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 30, no. 1 (1994): 167–206. Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 9. The conquest of Sicily exemplifies the internal entanglements of the Crown of Aragon as well as the Crown’s entanglements with the French. In 1295, Jaume II signed the treaty of Anagni and renounces “control of Sicily in exchange for a dynastic alliance with the Angevins and the suppression of French claims to his own crown in Spain” (Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 111). The treaty gave Jaume control of Sardinia and Corsica and he was crowned King of Sardinia and Corsica in 1297. Frederick III, younger brother of Jaume II, refused the terms of the treaty, keeping Sicily under his command. In 1302 a new treaty was created (the treaty of Caltabellota) in which Frederick would stay King of Sicily until his death, but then the island would be in the control of the Angevins. Nevertheless, Sicily was never given to the Angevins and the island became an important symbol for the Catalans. See Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 111–16; and Lledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan, 52–3. My historical overview provides foregrounding information that explains how La faula functions within a Catalan and an Arthurian system. Any more infor­ mation is simply beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that the Crown of Aragón had many internal conflicts that I am

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unable to touch upon and that these internal conflicts are also part of the reason the texts function the way they do. The texts also want to present a unified Catalonia even if that was not always the case. For example, the nobles of the kingdom of Aragón did not always agree with the Crown’s expansions into the Mediterranean. These differences would play out linguistically since the nobles spoke Aragonese, which is a different language than Catalan. See, for example, Lledó-Guillem’s chapter on the use of Catalan and Occitan languages to exalt the Crown of Aragón and silence the Aragonese language and by exten­ sion the nobles of the kingdom of Aragón in “Catalan and Occitan Versus Ara­ gonese,” in The Making of Catalan, 73–105. Felipe Fernández Armesto explains that “a constant anxiety of members of the House of Barcelona was their own conviction of the paucity of the patrimony. Pedro III complained that neither he nor any of his ancestors possessed treasure. Catalan poverty and avarice were mocked by Dante and were proverbially notorious. From the political consequences of poverty – the overwhelming trucu­ lence of noble leagues or ‘unions’ in Aragón and Catalonia, the threat indeed of oligarchy – kings sought to escape, whenever their strength permitted, either by conquering lands with which to boost their resources of patronage or by stimu­ lating commerce in order to generate alternative sources of wealth” (36–7). See, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 150–64. A great example of the paucity of the Catalans is Ramon Muntaner’s account. He writes that “And let no one imagine that Catalonia is a small province; rather do I wish everyone to know that Catalonia has, in general, a richer popu­ lation than I know of or have seen in any other province, though most people in the world imagine it to be poor. It is true that Catalonia has not those large fortunes in money made by certain particular men, as there are in other coun­ tries; but the commonality is more prosperous than any other of the world, and they live better in Catalonia and in a more orderly manner in their houses with their wives and their sons, than any other people there is in the world” (61). “E nengú no es pens que en Catalunya sia poca província, ans vull quesàpia tothom que en Catalunya ha comunament pus ric poble que negú poble que jo sàpia ne haja vist de neguna província, si bé les gents del món la major part los fan pobres Ver és que en Catalunya no ha aquelles grans riqueses de moneda de certs hòmens senyalats, que ha en altres terres: mas la comunitat del poble és lo pus benanant que poble del món, e qui viuen mills e pus ordonadament en llurg alberg ab llurs mullers e llurs fills, que poble qui e’l món sia” (68). See Ramon Muntaner, Chronicle. Translated by Lady Goodenough (Ontario: In Parentheses Publications, 2000); and Ramon Muntaner, Les quatre grans Cròniques. III. Crò­ nica de Ramon Muntaner, 1328 (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2011). Arthur, “The Roman de Jaufre,” 252. For a succinct explanation of the ways that Jaufré uses and diverges from the poetic system of the Troubadours, see Caroline D. Eckhardt, “Reading Jaufré: Comedy and Interpretation in a Medieval Cliff-Hanger,” The Comparatist 33 (2009): 40–1. For a detailed discussion on the system of the troubadours, see María Rosa Meno­ cal, “The Etymology of Old Provençal ‘trobar, trobador’: A Return to the ‘Third Solution’” (with an Editorial Postscript: ‘Old Provençal “trobar,” Old Spanish “fallar”’, by Y.M.),” Romance Philology 36, no. 2 (1982): 137–53. Lledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan, for a nuanced reading of the relation­ ship between and among the Crown of Aragón, Catalan, and Occitan. See Alfred Jeanroy, “Le roman de Jaufré,” Annales du Midi 53 (1941): 374–8, www.persee.fr/doc/anami_0003-4398_1941_num_53_212_5534; Tony Hunt, “Texte

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and Prétexte: Jaufré and Yvain,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, Vol. II, eds. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988): 125–41; and Eckhardt, “Reading Jaufré.” Jaufré also has parallels with both Yvain and Perceval, see Hunt, “Texte and Prétexte,” 127; and Alberto Limentani, “Due Studi de Narrativa Provenzale II. Il problema dell’umorismo nel Jaufre e una contraffazione del Perceval,” Atti del R. Instítuto Veneto de Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 121 (1962–63): 101–2. Caroline D. Eckhardt writes that “Jaufre generates confusion, potentially for both protagonist and reader, because the banal co-exists with the courtly, gross­ ness is mixed with graciousness, warm goodwill suddenly turns into outrageous hostility, and quotidian contingencies such as the ordinary need to eat or sleep are cross-cut by intrusions of the occult or supernatural. It would repeatedly be sensible to ask, ‘what’s going on here?’ Yet, at several crucial moments, the hero Jaufré will be physically punished (beaten up) precisely for asking that question” (“Reading Jaufré,” 42). Arthur, “The Roman de Jaufré,” 252. Jaume Aurell explains that “The feudal model of the rural world was being abandoned and the court was established as the political and cultural center; chivalric values were spreading; an urban patrician class increasingly committed to expansion was on the rise; cities were growing physically and demographically, strengthening their juridical and fiscal autonomy; and, last, the monarchy was being definitely consolidated as the political backbone of Catalan society” (Authoring the Past, 40–1). The text owes much to oral narrative, as it is believed that Jaume dictated the book to be copied down. The text did not receive much attention in medieval times and it seems that few people knew of the text outside of the royal court of Aragón. See Josep M. Pujol, “The Llibre del rei En Jaume: A Matter of Style,” in Historical Literature in Medieval Iberia, ed. Alan Deyermond (London: Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1996), 35–65. Aurell, Authoring the Past, 42. The Crònica de Ramon Muntaner is a highly ideological narrative about Munta­ ner’s accounts, deeds, and battles, and is a form of propaganda calling for dynastic unity in order to maintain Aragónese-Catalan control. A citizen of Valencia, Muntaner wrote late in his life (c. 1325–28) about the kings of Aragón. His chron­ icle begins with the accession of Jaume I in 1207 and ends in 1328 with the coron­ ation of King Alfonso, covering the most important events of thirteenth and early fourteenth-century Cataluña. The chronicle of Muntaner ends with the Aragónese dynasty securing the largest domain in its history and Aragón becoming one of the first “modern European states” (Aurell, Authoring the Past, 78), but it is pre­ cisely at this moment that Aragón also begins to separate as the house of Barce­ lona was divided into three kingdoms, namely Aragón, Majorca, and Sicily. I am omitting any discussion of the Crònica de Pere el Ceremoniós due to space. See Pere Bohigas, “La Matière de Bretagne en Catalogne,” Bulletin Biliographi­ ques de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 13 (1961): 82–5, http://bbsia.cellam. fr/bulletins/1961/1961_013_0001/; Lourdes Soriano Robles, “The Matière de Bre­ tagne in the Corona de Aragón,” in The Arthur of the Iberians: The Arthurian Legends in the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds, ed. David Hook (Cardiff: Univer­ sity of Wales Press, 2015), 166; and Nahir Otaño Gracia, “Catalan Reception of Geoffrey,” in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, eds. Joshua Byron Smith and Georgia Henley (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Jaume Aurell explains that the Llibre de Rey En Pere de Aragó e dels seus ateces­ sors passats (Book of King Peter of Aragón and of His Ancestors) was “written from 1283 to 1288, after the great Catalan victory in Sicily in 1282. It narrates the

The past and future margins of Catalonia 89

51

52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

history of the county of Barcelona and the principality of Catalonia from the first conquest of Mallorca at the beginning of the twelfth century to the death of King Peter the Great (Pere el Gran) in 1285, focusing on the deeds of this king, one of the most celebrated of the Aragónese dynasty because of his victory against the French army and the conquest of Sicily” (Authoring the Past, 12). Jon-Pau Rubiés explains that “[Muntaner] displays great familiarity with the French chivalric romans in verse and in prose (especially the Arthurian cycle), as well as the poetry of the troubadours, which remained important practice in the various courts of the Catalan kings. One of Muntaner’s explicit models for his own account of the great deeds of Catalans and Aragónese in the wars of Sicily was the Book of Jaufré, a chivalric novel in Provençal verse particularly popular at the Aragónese court” (7). See “Rhetoric and ideology in the Book of Ramon Muntaner,” Mediterranean Historical Review 26, no. 1 (2011): 1–29. Josep Izquierdo, “Traslladar la memòria, traduir el món: la prosa de Ramon Muntaner en el context cultural i literari romànic,” Quaderns de filologia. Estudis literaris 8 (2003): 189–244; and Aurell, Authoring the Past, 192–3. Ramon Muntaner, Chronicle. Translated by Lady Goodenough, 284. Accessed 2019. www.yorku.ca/inpar/. Lledó-Guillem reaches a similar conclusion through a linguistic reading of the text. He writes: “In fact, the Catalan text is questioning, from a linguistic point of view, the identity of established Kingdoms such as Castile and France. More­ over, the Crònica denies the linguistic identity of the Germans, and with it of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Byzantines, because their respective lan­ guages are not uniform or homogeneous” (The Making of Catalan, 60). Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 9. This division created the kingdom of Majorca which lasted from 1276 until 1343 when Pere IV of Aragón invaded Mallorca. Jaume III, the last king of Majorca, died in battle in 1349 trying to regain his territories. Fernández Armesto, Before Columbus, 12. Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium, 27. Ibid., 13. Jaufré, the only Provencal Arthurian Romance, is dedicated to the King of Aragón. Therefore, its possible date of composition varies with the dates of the reigns of the Aragón kings. Kings include Alfonso II (1169–70 or ca. 1180), Pere II (ca. 1205), or Jaume I (1225–74). I agree with Anton Espalader and Arthur who date the tale to the reign of Jaume I. See Anton M. Espalader, “El final de Jaufré i, novament, Cerverí de Girona,” Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 47 (1999–2000): 321–4, www.raco.cat/index.php/Boletin RABL/article/view/194384/270184; and Arthur, The Roman de Jaufre, 252. Ledó-Guillem, The Making of Catalan, 76. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 61–2. Guillem de Torroella, La faula, ll. 75–8. Ibid., 140–1. Ibid., 180–3. Ibid., 201, 212–14. Guillem even describes the saddle blanket as sumptuous. It tells the love stories of “Floris e de Blanchaflors,” “Isolda bronda e de Tristany,” “Titus e de Pramús,” “Serena e d’Ellidus,” and Paris and Elena. See La faula, ll. 238–44. Vicent Santamaria, “La faula de Guillem de Torroella,” 343; and Harvey L. Sharrer, “The Lancelot-Grail Cycle in Spain and Portugal,” in The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin TX, University of Texas Press, 1994), 175–90 at 183.

90 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia 69 Lledó-Guillem points out that the coronation of Alfonso IV as described by Muntaner borrows heavily from the coronations of the emperor of Byzantium in order to question “the process of linguistic standardization in the western Medi­ terranean” and thus showing that the Catalans were trying to use the Catalan (and Occitan) language to turn Catalan into the language of the whole Mediter­ ranean. See The Making of Catalan, 89–96. 70 Arthur and Morgan are understood as Breton but they speak French, the lan­ guage of the English courts in the fourteenth-century. It is important to point out that despite the increasing importance of the English language, for Guillem and his contemporaries, English courts were seen as French speaking. 71 Translation is mine: “Aycests qui soun ab vis bandé,/biaus amis, sont les riches roys;/Mais tu ne ses mie pour quois/ilh sount emsi jolis e bau:/avaressa, que riens no vau,/los tient d’avoir plens e’nsayzitz,/et paubres de valours et pritz,/car de pritz ne han il recordança,/amis, car hui manys conoysança;/e si los tenon en sagés,/menys conoyscen tan verités;/pour ce sount jolis devoyant./Or te diray de l’autra gant,/que tu voys cuyssi fourt liée/se sount ilh que valour agrée;/e car les voys si fort liés/pourten spuoir e luyés/de fayre se qui’s veudron fer;/ne un depoyr, segons le cuer,/quant se souspirent la lur moya” (Guillem de Torroella, La faula, ll. 1162–81). 72 Guillem de Torroella, La faula, ll. 1208–17. 73 Júlia Butinyà, “Una nova font del Tirant lo Blanc,” Filología Románica 7 (1990): 191–6. 74 See Joan Ors “De l’encalç del cérvol blanc al creuer de la balena sollerica: la funció narrativa del motiu de l’animal guia,” in Studia in honorem prof. M. de Riquer (Bar­ celona: Quaderns Crema, 1986), 565–78; and Dolores Corbella Díaz, “La caracter­ ización del viaje iniciático en los textos medievales. El viaje al ‘más allá’ desde San Brandán de Benedeit a La faula de Guillem de Torroella,” in La parodia. El viaje imaginario: Actas del IX Simposio de la Sociedad española de Literatura general y comparada, Vol. II (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 1994), 331–7. 75 Arturo Graf, “Artù nell’Etna,” in Miti, leggende e superstizioni del Medio Evo, Vol. II, ed. Arturo Graf (Torino: Ermanno Loescher, 1803), 301–59, https://arch ive.org/details/mitileggendeesu03grafgoog; and Isabel de Riquer, “Lo ‘maravi­ loso’ y lo cotidiano en La faula de Guillem de Torroella,” Revista de Filología Románica 22 (2005): 177–8. 76 Soriano Robles, “The Matière de Bretagne in the Corona de Aragón,” 176.

6

Why kings?1 Lisa Wolverton

The impetus for this chapter comes from a story related to me a couple of years ago by a prominent colleague while we were chatting at a conference. In his undergraduate course, he said, he explains how, everywhere but in Iceland, medieval Europe was ruled by kings. He teaches this with a mnemonic: “Vikings! Why kings?” Evidently this is delivered with considerable flair because, he said, former students frequently hail him across campus by shouting “Vikings! Why kings?” There was great humor in the story told to me, as plainly there is in this professor’s classroom. But ever since our conversation, at the back of my mind has been the question: why kings? Why were medieval people in many parts of Europe ruled by kings? And what of those who were not? For Iceland is not the only exception, even of the collectivist type; as I will argue, there were other acephalous polities of comparable vitality. In other regions, moreover, rule by a king was merely nominal – either because the king who claimed authority had little effective power, which was exercised de facto by others, or because the man sporting the title held sway amidst others who likewise styled themselves “king,” all ruling over comparatively small territories or populations and with limited prerogatives, thus seeming hardly to have been kings at all. Even where the particulars are well-studied and well-known, such cases are marginalized, not seen as central to our understanding of what was normative in the Middle Ages. In other words, the question that nagged at me, “Why kings?,” really concerns the historiography. Modern scholars unselfconsciously privilege kings, defaulting to this one form of government among many in the Middle Ages, whenever the occasion demands synthesis – in lecturing to undergraduates, writing textbooks, or compiling reference volumes, and indeed in more advanced scholarly genres.2 Modern assumptions about the normativity of kings, kingship, and kingdoms undergird other marginalizing paradigms of normative social, political, and economic development. I argue here that we need to acknowledge and embrace pluriform medieval polities, with and without princes (a word I suggest as preferable to “kings”), and engage in comparative analysis with the methodological potential to integrate marginalized peoples and regions into our depictions of what medieval Europe looked like.3 To do this, we must frankly dispense with the notion that “the highest, most honourable, and most perfect of all secular communities was the kingdom.”4 ***

92 Lisa Wolverton “Vikings! Why kings?” Iceland is by far the best-known example of a medieval polity governed communally, in the absence of one-man rule in any form. Unlike the Italian communes, it was a rural polity, confounding the assumption that sophisticated self-government is a feature reserved to more advanced, urban societies. Iceland is also very well-documented, thanks to a treasure trove of primary sources, both legal and literary.5 From them we understand how every aspect of daily life was shaped by the complex body of laws by which Icelanders committed themselves to be governed. We know as well about the division of the island into districts, the role of chieftains (goði) in each, their annual legislative and judicial gathering, the Althing, and the lawspeaker, the only remunerated government official. We know how justice was pursued, both formally in legal proceedings at the Althing and through feuds, themselves perpetrated within and reinforcing social norms grounded in law. The logic – and at times, illogic – of the sagas and the law codes has been analyzed by William Ian Miller and others. Through their efforts, we have a compelling and thorough portrait of Iceland as a self-governing community from the tenth through thirteenth centuries; it is little wonder that, as an exception to the rule of kings, it should capture our attention. But it is also an exception that proves that rule, because so much else about Iceland seems merely to reinforce its peculiarity: its isolation as an island, its settlement by people who found it genuinely empty, the vernacular of its sources, the uniqueness of the saga as a genre. It is easy to assume that its lessons have little relevance to other times and places. But there are at least two other examples of medieval government without kings, both known to scholars but the object of less scrutiny. One is early Saxony, which came to my attention via Eric Goldberg’s essay on the Stellinga revolts of the 840s.6 The first life of St. Lebuinus, an eighthcentury Anglo-Saxon monk who evangelized among the Saxons, reports: The ancient Saxons did not have kings, but “satraps” established throughout districts. And it was their custom that once a year they held a general council in the middle of Saxony beside the Weser river at a place called Marklo. All the satraps were accustomed to come together there as one, as well as, from each of the districts, twelve elected nobles and the same number of freemen and of “lidi.” There they renewed the laws, adjudicated special cases, and established by common counsel whether during that year they would be at war or in peace.7 The first line of this passage derives from Bede’s report, a century older: “The ancient Saxons do not have a king, but many ‘satraps’ appointed over their people.”8 It makes reference also to the tripartite division of Saxon society – nobles, freemen, and servile folk – described by Nithard almost a century later, using the native Saxon terminology.9 Otherwise, the annual gathering at

Why kings? 93 a central location to reaffirm the law and hear cases sounds rather like the Icelandic Althing. Nithard indeed emphasizes the Saxons’ determination to live according to their ancestral laws as one of the factors animating their revolt.10 Their former socio-political order, in which representatives of all social classes participated, had been swept away by Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony. But before then, it had apparently prevailed for at least two centuries. Regarding a second group, the Liutizi, who were Slavs living east of the middle Elbe, the sources speak less of law but still emphasize collective decision-making in the absence of a single ruler. The canonical description comes from Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon: There is no individual lord who presides over all of these people who are collectively called the Liutizi. When important issues are discussed at an assembly, there must be unanimous agreement before any actions can be undertaken. If one of their countrymen opposes such a decision during an assembly, he is beaten with rods. If outside the assembly, and openly, he must either lose everything through burning and immediate confiscation, or he must come before the body and, in accordance with his status, pay compensation for his sin.11 This, and additional remarks about their religious beliefs, appear in the context of events circa 1006; Thietmar himself was writing about a decade later. Scholars usually refer to the Liutizi as a “confederation” and understand them as a composite of other Slavic tribes that coalesced in tandem with the great Slav rebellion against Ottonian overlordship in 983, and then collapsed in the face of German frontier lords in the years before and after 1125. This acephalous polity was long lasting and resilient, like the early Saxons. Although the ultimate fate of both was conquest – and, for the Liutizi, complete assimilation – neither was easily overthrown and both vigorously, and for a long time successfully, resisted the military incursions and Christian missions launched by their powerful neighbors. These were not, in other words, either ephemeral socio-political orders, nor inherently weak by comparison to others, nor unstable or inadequate to local circumstance. To be sure, the abundance of written sources that facilitates a nuanced appreciation of Icelandic society seems lacking in these cases. For even the most rudimentary understanding of the early Saxons and the Liutizi, of their social life and fundamentally oral culture, we depend on isolated paragraphs like these, reflecting – in Latin – an outsider’s perspective, distinctly tinged with Christian missionary attitudes. For Saxony, as for Iceland, a temporal gulf further separates the extant texts from the preconquest social order they purport to describe. Such texts may appear trustworthy only as testaments to the very processes of assimilation – conquest and Christianization – that eradicated the indigenous culture and social order of these peoples. These methodological obstacles all too often tempt scholars into deeming them unknowable and (implicitly) unworthy of analysis before their subjection to

94 Lisa Wolverton a neighboring ruler. The distinctive political and social orders of the early Saxons have thus recently come to be effaced as no order at all, as mere “disunity,” their religious beliefs, economy, and social institutions cast implicitly as insignificant, even backward, before the imposition and subsequent adaptation to Carolingian and Christian norms regarded as inherently progressive.12 Equally problematic are current efforts to determine whether peoples designated by group labels in the sources (“the Saxons”) indeed shared an “identity” that accords with the terms.13 A slippery concept at worst, identity suggests a developmental milestone, a sign that a group of individuals or communities has achieved – or failed to achieve – notional unity; at best identity is understood as a construct, a product of the texts themselves, never fixed but invariably shaped to meet contemporary circumstance and/or authorial agendas. In all these efforts, the best methodological instincts of medievalists to exploit the sources qua texts (for instance, by emphasizing elements of intertextuality) ultimately work instead to detach their contents from the lived world of nonliterate peoples, distancing us even further from understanding them on their own terms.14 To some extent, their very devastation through conquest – the Saxons transformed, the Liutizi eliminated – accounts for the marginalization of such people and their societies. Let me suggest here, though, that such neglect is also licensed by an unmarked paradigm: that it is both natural and right to take rule by kings as normative, as the defining characteristic of socio-political order qua order. The problem is as much a persistent fixation on kings as it is the difficulties of learning about non-kingly polities. Thus, to return to the example of the early Saxons, even in research that directly seeks to understand the pre-Carolingian period on its own terms, if by means of these same flawed sources, every effort is made to mold them to later norms. Thus Bede’s “satraps” become redescribed as “sub-kings” – on the presumption that this term better approximates Bede’s intention in appropriating Biblical vocabulary – and territorial units are then identified as the realms over which each reigned.15 Yet this interpretation constitutes an imposition upon the evidence – one in flat contradiction to Bede’s report (“they had no kings, but satraps…”) – in the guise of interpretation. Plainly, though, one could just as easily read the “satraps” as comparable to the chieftains (goði) of Iceland, where too representatives of individual districts gathered at a central location to make a wide range of decisions significant to the functioning of the community, both locally and across the whole island. To persist in finding kings even where there were none – albeit somehow inferior, subordinate, “little kings” (reguli) – is the corollary of failing to acknowledge at all peoples and political orders without kings. Iceland, again, stands as the exception. Is it because the district headmen, and the social dynamics that both accorded them power and limited it, are so thoroughly illuminated by the sagas as to thwart any impulse to describe them as “little kings”? Is it because we know them as goði, because their

Why kings? 95 whole world is depicted for us in the vernacular – not Latin, whether Biblically inflected or classically Roman, opaque and imperfect to a wholly different society – thus creating different interpretive opportunities for scholars of their history? Is it because their subjection to the kings of Norway – which preceded the commitment to writing of the sagas and law codes – is understood as less tranformative, less disruptive, perhaps because unaccompanied by Christianization, a process already completed by then? Is it because the conquerors of Iceland were of a comparable culture, linguistically and even genealogically, thus seeming to bridge the temporal distance between the manuscripts of the sagas and the society they purport to describe? Or is it because their conquerors, the Norwegians, are themselves marginalized in medievalist scholarship, in the post-Viking period at least? Finally, is it simply the sheer, undeniable literary brilliance of the sagas themselves that draws us to admire and attend to Icelandic society on its own terms? Whatever answers we give to these questions, I would stress that to be regarded as atypical, as standing alone, is itself a form of marginalization. Resisting the tendency to reckon the Icelanders’ distinctive social order, including the absence of governance by kings, as simply unique allows for comparative analysis of its many facets, some of which – unlike the sagas – may be found among other medieval peoples. Ceasing to treat them as the exception that proves the rule opens the way to questioning the rule itself. Regions where collective decision-making flourished without reference to a king are not the only ones marginalized by the scholarly privileging of kings. A wide variety of medieval peoples were guided by a single leader or governed by an individual ruler who bore a title other than “king.” These fall broadly into two categories: regions situated beyond the boundaries of the former Roman empire, where writing was not prevalent and scholars rely heavily on Latin reports penned by outsiders; and regions within those same limits governed de facto – in the ebb and flow of Germanic successor kings through the age of Charlemagne and long after – by a lord nominally subordinate to a king of negligible power. In both sets of circumstances, the local ruler might be known by a Latin title other than “rex” (king), such as “dux” (duke), “comes” (count), or “marchio” (margrave). Each of these terms originates etymologically in a generic sense. “Dux” derives from the perfect stem of the verb “to lead” (“duxit”), and in its earliest forms usually indicates a military leader. “Comes” means “companion,” and one can readily imagine how a ruler’s inner circle of friends (“comites”) came to be entrusted with formal responsibilities, and thus the term itself became a title for a government official, the one we translate as “count.” Well into the twelfth century the abstract noun derived from “comes,” “comitatus,” was still used for a group of companions (a “retinue,” for instance) even as it also meant “county,” that is, the authority held by a count. “Marchio” has a Germanic root in the term “mark,” a border region, and thus indicates

96 Lisa Wolverton someone charged with the military defense of a frontier.16 I belabor all this because, in practice, the terms are treated as rigid markers of status, as if part of an established and accepted hierarchy that pertained equally across the whole of the Europe during Middle Ages. In this way, forty years after scholars declared feudalism an irrelevant construct, its vestiges tacitly prevail.17 They persist even in the face of canonical examples of weak kings and powerful dukes, or of communities thriving under effectively independent counts, or of local lords who governed unconstrained by neighboring rulers’ boasts of suzerainty – as well as of a considerable body of sophisticated scholarship on specific regions, rulers, periods, and conflicts that undermine the veneer of kingly predominance. They are embedded, most especially, in published maps, where colors and lines are often used to show hierarchical relationships among rulers and regions that might be more fluid or simply quite different than they imply – and which seem to have a scholarly trajectory all their own, rarely examined.18 The presumption of a hierarchy of titles and power with kings at the pinnacle – in ideal if not reality – works powerfully to abet the marginalization of both super powerful feudatories within medieval Europe’s ostensible core and autonomous indigenous rulers on its supposed periphery. Let me illustrate this with the example of the Czech Lands, Bohemia and Moravia, my own area of expertise.19 Bohemia was ruled from the tenth century onward by a single ruler, based in Prague, a man drawn from a lineage scholars designate as the Přemyslids. From the outset, it seems, the Latin title these leaders adopted was “dux”: it appears on the silver pennies they minted, beginning in the mid-tenth century; at the head of charters they issued, first extant from the mid-eleventh; and on their seals, which survive from the mid-twelfth. Their lands, therefore, appear on maps, labeled as a “duchy”; conventionally, they appear in a different color than the neighboring regions of Germany, but are encompassed within the dotted line (or whatever other marking) that delimits the Empire. Thus, they are rendered visually distinct from and yet part of the Empire, implicitly, as a mere duchy, subordinate to its rulers, comparable – one is to presume – to the duchies of Bavaria or Swabia. The scholarship often makes passing mention of the Czechs’ tributary status, or to their “integration” within the Empire – depending on the circumstances – but, in fact, whether as kings or emperors, whether Carolingian, Ottonian, Salian, or Staufer, no German ruler exercised meaningful authority in Bohemia or Moravia.20 They possessed no lands or rights there, even to delegate; chose neither dukes nor bishops, nor any lesser lay or ecclesiastical office-holders; issued no charters; and never visited except with the safe conduct of the duke or at the head of an invading force (a rarity). The duke of Bohemia and his lands, Bohemia and Moravia, were de facto independent, one might even say sovereign. And the duke’s lordship – over land, tolls, mints, castles, taxes, taverns, labor obligations – was vast. His power, then, was broadly comparable to that wielded in other regions by a king, even if he styled himself “duke.”

Why kings? 97 So misleading are the connotations of the term “duke” that we might eschew them altogether in favor of the more generic “prince.” Indeed, the convention in the Czech scholarship is to refer to the Přemyslid duke of Bohemia as “kníže” rather than “vévod,” a more literal translation of “dux,” originally indicating a military leader. Quite honestly, I have never seen this practice explained, but it accords with Old Church Slavonic sources originating from Bohemia, in which the martyred duke and saint, Václav, is described as “kъnęзь.”21 “Princeps” is used interchangeably with “dux” in Latin texts of Bohemian provenance, if rarely as a formal title. “Principatus” and “ducatus” alike designate the Czech ruler’s office and authority – not the territory over which he reigned, called either his “terra” or “regnum.”22 The latter is used freely in the sense of “realm” and with no claims to “kingdom” implied – as was the norm also in pre-Carolingian Bavaria, where “ducatus” and “regnum” stood interchangeably for either “realm” or “reign.”23 Meanwhile, the problem of rendering in Latin vernacular honorifics or terms for rulers affects not only the Slavonic “kъnęзь.” Scholars have grappled with it for Wales too. In the earlier medieval centuries, Latin sources freely style Welsh rulers “rex,” but in ways that suggest considerable flexibility, an imperfect correspondence with contemporary vernacular terminology, and change over time.24 For the central Middle Ages, scholars have tended to settle instead on “princes.”25 The widespread adoption of “prince” as a generic analytical term merely indicating primacy, and intended to include kings alongside dukes, counts, and various vernacular designations, would facilitate the comparative study of political orders dominated by a single individual regardless of title – and thus level the playing field so that marginalized regions can be analyzed next to more canonical ones absent teleological or other pejorative assumptions. As important, adopting more neutral terminology would undermine the tacit expectations that scholarly usage reflects authentic medieval practice and that the latter was straightforward, fixed, and unquestioned. For peoples and regions marginalized by a lack of indigenous written evidence, the genuinely medieval terms for their rulers often derive from outsiders – who might be ill-informed, even actively hostile. Their word choices might be shaped by expediency, expertise, or ideology, and it can be difficult to tell from a thousand years’ hindsight. When a Frankish chronicler refers to the “duces” of a neighboring people, is this a title or a descriptive term?26 When one such author calls a Slavic ruler “duke” and another styles him “rex,” who is correct?27 What does “correct” even mean? Are either of them meant to be titles? What are these authors grasping to express? In rendering their Latin in English, modern translators routinely grapple with such conundra, which they have no choice but to resolve, with or without publishing an explanation. In aggregate, their decisions often contribute unwittingly to assumptions about the society beyond the text, whether brought to bear on the text or derived from reading it. If Latin vocabulary inherited from antiquity can seem alternately opaque or inappropriate from

98 Lisa Wolverton a modern perspective, medieval authors may have felt something of the same. Cosmas of Prague regularly uses both “satrap” and “comes” for a man of high rank and/or administrative responsibility;28 perhaps he was endeavoring to translate the Czech word “župan” – but we cannot be certain, nor understand better the substance of its meaning, in the absence of any contemporary vernacular texts. We would do better, I think, simply to acknowledge the flexibility in Latin usages around both titles and abstractions for authority, territory, office, and status; to remain sensitive to the distortions that translation from the vernacular to Latin introduces per se; and to adopt neutral terminology for the purposes of analysis. The deeper problem, in any case, lies in the assumptions brought to bear on any title, whether Latin or vernacular, self-styled or assigned by contemporaries, consistent or variable, long-standing or contested, or generic and intentionally scholarly. Efforts to overcome the obscuring of non-royal rulers in the canonical heart of medieval Europe have lately given rise to new terminology grounded in specific regional circumstances and historiographical debates. Yet these may result in concepts of limited use to broadly comparative research. “Territorial principality,” for instance, currently employed to designate lands governed in near-complete autonomy by dukes and counts ostensibly subordinate to the king in Paris – Flanders, Normandy, and so forth – embeds in its definition that very subordination.29 It therefore cannot encompass kings, nor rulers with non-kingly titles who acknowledged no king as overlord (as in Bohemia). Furthermore, it embeds notions of territorial lordship – implicitly dynastic lands and rights – almost as a sine qua non. However unintentionally, this marginalizes by comparison regions where the source base does not allow for the drawing of sure territorial limits to a prince’s power or for the enumeration of his lordly assets, or where power was exercised altogether differently. Furthermore, as an explanatory concept, “territorial principality” is deeply intertwined with historiographical debates of long standing about the post-Carolingian order in France and Germany.30 Outside of this literature, other solutions to comparable problems have been devised: in northwest Iberia, it is now common scholarly practice to refer to the wealthy and powerful counts of Barcelona, who by marriage became also kings of Aragon, as “count-kings,” to reflect the imbalance between their lesser title and the greater significance of Catalonia to their power in the region.31 But the uniqueness of this appellation is necessarily isolating. The terminology with which modern scholars describe medieval political orders can be so burdened by particularist baggage as to stymie transregional comparisons that do not depend on problematic concepts, kingship among them.32 The Christian liturgical aspects of medieval kingship might seem to rationalize the view that kings were simply different in kind from all other medieval rulers: only they were anointed with sacred chrism and thereby likened to David in the Old Testament; only they bore, therefore, both God’s special sanction and a unique responsibility for the community of

Why kings? 99 Christian believers; only they, among laymen, enjoyed a quasi-clerical status.33 But not all those who claimed the title of king in the wake of the Roman Empire’s collapse were anointed. The practice only became widespread after the Carolinginians adopted it, beginning in the mid-eighth century with Pippin, the usurper who sought to legitimize his ouster of the Merovingian king he had previously served, an effort the pope in Rome sanctioned toward his own ends.34 It continued under Pippin’s successors, from Charlemagne onward, even after new dynasties emerged in the western and eastern parts of the Frankish empire – and perdures in the United Kingdom still today. But its spread to other medieval rulers was by no means immediate, automatic, or uniform. Many kings on the islands of Britain and Ireland, in Scandinavia and Iberia, and elsewhere across the continent deployed the ritual, language, and ideology of Christian kingship only when and in ways specific to local political necessity. Christianizing rulership was but one maneuver among a series, part of the unceasing give and take between stakeholders in a society. To retain political potency, it had to be reasserted, revitalized, or renovated as circumstance changed and societies evolved.35 Some political relationships and procedures might be enshrined in institutions, in laws, in religious ideals or historical precedent, but invariably they provided only the framework within which politicking occurred, offering constraints and opportunities for the exercise of power, or the seeking of advantage or protection, at all social levels and by individuals of every rank. In this regard, the scholarly recourse to abstractions, to -isms and -ships, or for that matter to the “state,” renders static what are unceasingly active processes. So too does heavy reliance on intellectual discourses among Christian clerics that modern scholars construe as political theory. In this way, Europe’s literate regions are privileged as representing a single medieval perspective, narrow intellectual circles are accorded a monopoly on “political thought,” and abstract or idealized formulations are privileged over deeds and words contingent in the moment. Schooled in Latin by means of ancient Roman authorities and steeped simultaneously in the Biblical and Christian theological traditions, medieval intellectuals found the vocabulary of power – “dux,” “princeps,” “rex,” even “satrap,” also “res publica” – ubiquitous in their core texts and reached for them often to describe, explain, or shape the vernacular conditions of most concern to them (whatever the reason). Within Christianity, to be sure, the language of “kings” was the most heavily freighted from the earliest times – and long remained so.36 But preponderance is not exclusivity. In allowing intellectual elites and their writings alone to give voice to medieval ideals, we obscure both the politics of their words and the discursive resonance of the deeds of others. Kingship was simply less monolithic in practice than it appears in medieval writing. Even the Carolingians treated the title of “king” flexibly, experimenting with its utility and potency and deploying it strategically vis-à-vis other elites, including intrafamilial ones.37

100 Lisa Wolverton It is a commonplace that the West Slavic words for “king” – for instance, Czech král or Polish król – derive from Karolus, that is, from Charlemagne himself. Yet “duke” was the primary Latin title applied to or adopted by their leaders from the ninth through twelfth centuries. Thus, while “král” testifies seemingly to the powerful influence of Charlemagne, the Franks, and their successors, its very status as a neologism also reflects its inherent foreignness among them. “Why kings?” was not a rhetorical question to them, it seems. “Why a duke or prince?”; “why one and not many?”; “why not avoid them altogether and make decisions collectively?” These were real questions, and various West Slavic peoples answered them diversely. So too did people in other regions of Europe. Some individual rulers plainly also asked “why should I not be ‘king’ too?,” even as the reasons they were asking this, of whom, and the answers they received varied.38 They took in the examples of neighboring rulers and their own traditions, and adopted a form of governance suited to their particular circumstances: not merely their cultural inheritance but the geography they inhabited, their economic constraints and opportunities, the pressures felt across the social strata from within the community and from outside.39 So too did peoples like the early Saxons, Icelanders, or Liutizi, who declined to grant any one man, by any title, authority over them. With this in mind, let me suggest that it would be most beneficial for scholars to look below the “prince” – or alongside the “chieftain” or “satrap” – and focus on the whole political community. Rulers ought never to be divorced from the societies of which they are a part. The kind of leadership the people in a territory acknowledge – how much or how little power they accord their leaders, and of what kind, and why – always depends on conditions particular to them: their location, inherited social and cultural norms, available resources, and neighboring influences. So too does the degree to which they territorialize power. Each individual community in medieval Europe is unique in these regards. We understand them all poorly if we box them into categories: equating the kings and kingdoms, separating out dukes and counts, or suggesting ethnic typologies of rule. The Czech Lands under the rule of the Přemyslid dukes exhibit many exceptional characteristics with regard to their political order: the duke was not itinerant but ruled from Prague as his capital; castles were not enfeoffed, or otherwise delegated with hereditary expectations; enthronement constituted the formal installation ceremony; and succession to power was understood to proceed by seniority among all Přemyslid males, brothers and cousins alike.40 Such conditions – distinct as they are from, say, England or Bavaria, even Poland – suggest differences as well in the social and economic order in the Czech Lands, whether as cause or consequence of distinct characteristics of the political order. In place of kings and kingdoms, even of “princes,” I would therefore suggest we focus on “polities,” recognizing that rulers were as often formed by communities as, by their rule, they were able to mold them.

Why kings? 101 If we let go our assumption that polities ruled other than by kings fell short of some imagined ideal, then we open the door to a wide range of analyses connecting what we narrowly consider “political” to the everyday world in which people lived. Take, for example, a particular question: the relation between currency and polity. Here again the Icelandic example is instructive. The people of Iceland, treeless and with a short growing season that limited the production of cereal crops, mostly subsisted on sheep. Miller conjectures that only a tenuous demographic balance on this nearly barren land staved off famine, which must nonetheless have loomed perennially.41 It seems entirely congruous with such radical scarcity that chieftains levied no significant exactions. Their authority – and indeed the well-being and day-to-day functioning of the whole island community – was based instead upon “reciprocal support.”42 All individuals were encompassed by the various networks that bound householders to goði, dependents and servants to households, and kin to kin along both maternal and paternal lines. Economic exchange as well took place within such networks of support, and was rarely a straightforward affair of buying and selling.43 Moreover, the Icelanders minted no coin. In dealing with outsiders, whether visitors to the island or on their own travels abroad, the medium of exchange for Icelanders was cloth. Measured in ells, often specified as vadmál, a home-spun wool, this money had literally to be “made,” as Miller emphasizes, and was more readily available later in the summer.44 Its exchange value depended upon its price as a usable commodity in Norwegian or comparable markets. The Icelanders were not a pre-commercial people, not unfamiliar with currency, not excluded from wider circuits of exchange. But their economy, like their political order, served their particular needs, and was suited to specific Icelandic conditions. Turning back to the West Slavs, again we confront both dearth and bias of sources. Nonetheless, describing events circa 1120, Helmold of Bosau makes this interesting statement in his chronicle regarding the Rugiani, a Slavic people living along the Baltic, near the Abodrites and the Danes: Now among the Rugiani there is no coined money, nor is it customary to use coins in reckoning things but you will get whatever you wish to buy in their market for bands of linen. The gold and silver which they chance to get by their pillaging and their kidnapping of men or in any other way they devote to ornaments for their wives or put into the treasury of their god.45 Unlike Icelandic vadmál, which facilitated exchange as a commodity, these strips of linen seem intended to function exclusively as tokens, thus constituting what economists term “fiduciary money.” In the mid-tenth century, a Jewish traveler from Muslim Iberia was more explicit in describing a comparable situation in Prague:

102 Lisa Wolverton In Bohemia are made small lightly-woven kerchiefs like nets, embroi­ dered with crescents, which are of no practical use. The value of ten of these kerchiefs is always equivalent to one qinshar. They trade and exchange them, and have receptacles full of them. They constitute wealth, and the most expensive things can be purchased with them, wheat, slaves, horses, gold and silver, and everything else.46 Though separated by two centuries and hundreds of kilometers, this too was either a fiduciary or perhaps a fiat currency made of cloth of no intrinsic value or practical application. Here, explicitly, it circulated at an established, fixed value; it was widely accepted, could be amassed in quantity, and used to purchase even high-cost items. What kind of local economy, and what kind of political order, sustains such a system of exchange? And what conditions gave rise to change? For locally minted silver pennies replaced these kerchiefs in Bohemia very soon after Ibrahim ibn Ya’qub returned home. Under the auspices of the duke, who monopolized minting in Bohemia from the beginning, coin circulated in the Czech economy unceasingly from the mid-tenth century onward. Among the twelfth-century Rugiani, however, strips of linen functioned as a medium of exchange apparently without the backing of any political authority. How? For how long? And how would we even know, given the low chances of survival for such pieces of fabric in the archeological record and the absence of locally produced written records? Above all, what links can be drawn between polity and economy in these unusual cases? Is there a meaningful correlation between the use of fiduciary money not backed by a central authority among the Rugiani and the rejection of one-man rule among other nearby Slavic peoples? Under what circumstances did coin circulate among the Czechs? Such questions – when asked with an open mind, absent modern teleologies, or medieval ethnic and religious biases – can move the political history of the Middle Ages forward as a field. They push past the ideologies promulgated by rulers and social elites, or disputed among religious and intellectual ones, to the daily intersection of politics and economics across all strata within a community and across the boundaries between communities. They allow for a more dynamic understanding of the relationship between ruler and ruled than a static, top-down concept like “lordship.” But they can do so only if we avoid working from generalities either superficial or teleologically loaded. It does not suffice, for instance, merely to note that in both Scandinavia and many Slavic lands, the introduction of native coin correlated temporally with the adoption of Christianity, nor to characterize coins as a comparably foreign import that, like Christian practice, either did or did not “take” locally.47 Not least, such a formulation reduces the use of coin to a benchmark – implicitly, a developmental stage – and in this way forecloses a wide range of analyses (but for those that reinforce the underlying premise).

Why kings? 103 At the other end of the economic spectrum, and wholly unrelated to narratives of Christianization, the most commercialized economies of this period developed non-regnal political orders as well. They might have an individual ruler with a title other than king, as with the “doges” elected in Venice. They might adopt communal self-government, as famously in various north Italian cities, vesting power in temporary leaders with fixed terms in office. Although we know a great deal about how the latter developed into city-states in the later Middle Ages and eventually inspired Machiavelli’s famous The Prince, and before then grappled with the various advantages and disadvantages of communal and one-man rule, and of narrow and more broadly inclusive oligarchies, the sources are opaque about how the communes came initially to be formed.48 There is little question, however, that kings were largely irrelevant to the process at the outset, whether the absentee overlordship of the German Emperor was its cause or correlation. In other regions, kings and local lords might thwart the formation of communes or, as in London, encourage the selfgovernment of towns under their own legal aegis. In urban communities all across Europe, economic conditions, both needs and opportunities, inspired innovations in government. Applying “consul,” a title with classical connotations but also ample and flexible medieval usages, to designate communal leaders in northern Italy exemplifies such creativity.49 All these – with or without individual rulers, and of whatever title – were polities, both influencing but also influenced by various geographic, economic, social, and political circumstances. In Florence, in Bohemia, on the islands of Britain or Iceland, on both sides of the Elbe River, people made their political worlds differently, under different pressures, with different resources. We ought not to measure them against each other, imposing hierarchies, teleologies, or litmus tests, least of all through terminology that subtly imports its own preconceptions. Comparative analysis, emphasizing agency and negotiation over institutions or abstractions and within a holistically conceived society, is the antidote to marginalization. All peoples have politics, just as they have economics. A barter economy is no less an economy, a fiduciary money is no less a currency than commodity money, chieftains and counts and kings and bishops and consuls are no less political authorities. Differing, yes, but neither inherently deficient nor retrograde – whether judged from an evolutionary or devolutionary perspective. Nor is difference disorder. An oral culture, scholars have long since conceded, is no less worthy a culture. People who come together without fixed nomenclature for themselves as a community might no less constitute a community. Humans live across our globe in a variety of social orders and have throughout the course of time. To impose developmental teleologies upon this diversity, to deny legitimacy to societies about which our understanding is only partial, to perpetuate the silences of the sources, to adopt the perspective of conquerors and colonizers, all these are antithetical to the values of twenty-first century scholarship. In their place, we need new paradigms of medieval politics that work aggressively to counter not only the

104 Lisa Wolverton marginalization of particular peoples but, more deeply, the marginalizing tendencies of our present assumptions, many of which we inherit from the nineteenth century. Rejecting as normative kings, kingship, and kingdoms helps move us further from the older privileging of nation and state – for which kingdoms are sometimes a transparent proxy.50 Leveling the playing field works not only to redeem Iceland from the prison of exceptionalism, but to make spaces for the Liutizi, Czechs, or Rugiani in our picture of medieval Europe, as well as for count-kings in northeastern Iberia, for Celtic princes under various titles, for urban communes in northern Italy. “Why kings?” indeed.

Notes 1 I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to contribute to this volume, David Bachrach for including me in the conference that spurred the first version of this paper, and Ian McNeely for unstinting encouragement and incisive editing. 2 To give but one example, see Janet L. Nelson, “Rulers and Government,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume III: c. 900–c. 1024, ed. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 95–129. 3 Chris Wickham has put this eloquently, in offering “two main reasons why com­ parison is so necessary. The first is cultural solipsism: if you don’t compare, you end up believing that one type of historical development is normal, normative, and that every other is a deviation. People who don’t compare almost always study their own country, and their focus on it creates a Europe – a world – of islands, with no relationship to each other, in each of which not only are the patterns of social change wholly distinct, but so even the questions historians ask. Worse, these insularities in nearly every case match up with national teleolo­ gies … The second … comparison is the closest that historians can get to test­ ing, attempting to falsify, their own explanations.” (“Problems in Doing Comparative History,” in Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, ed. Patricia Skinner [Turnhout: Brepols, 2009], 6–7). 4 Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984; 2nd ed., 1997), 250. 5 A useful orientation appears in William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemak­ ing: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 43–51. 6 Eric Goldberg, “Popular Revolt, Dynastic Politics, and Aristocratic Factionalism in the Early Middle Ages: The Saxon Stellinga Reconsidered,” Speculum 70 (1995): 472–3. 7 Vita Lebvini Antiqua, MGH SS 30.2, 793. 8 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 5:10, trans. mine. He further notes that, should they decide to engage in war, a leader (dux) would be chosen by lot; but that when the war is over, they revert to equality of status: “Non enim habent regem iidem Antiqui Saxones, sed satrapas plurimos suae genti prae­ positos, qui ingruente belli articulo mittunt aequaliter sortes, et quemcumque sors ostenderit, hunc tempore belli ducem omnes sequuntur, huic obtemperat; peracto autem bello, rursum aequalis potentiae omnes fiunt satrapae” (Bede, in Opera His­ torica, Vol. 2, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930], 242). 9 “Nithard’s Histories,” in Carolingian Chronicles. Translated by Bernhard Walter Scholz (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1970), 167. 10 He says the Stellinga were motivated to return to the law “which their ancestors had observed when they were still worshipping idols,” that “they desired this law

Why kings? 105

11 12

13

14

15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

above all,” and that, during the brief period before the revolt suppression, “each lived as his ancestors had done according to the law of his choice” (Ibid.). Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg. Translated by David Warner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 254. Ingrid Rembold, Conquest and Colonization: Saxony and the Carolingian World, 772–888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 2–3, 8. In fact, throughout a later section that argues that the passages by Nithard and others, concerning social stratification and collective decision-making among the early Saxons, not only post-date the Stellinga rebellion of the 840s but arose in reac­ tion to it, Rembold consistently places the words “order” and “ordering” in scare quotes (134–9). The socio-political order described in these texts – “literary characterizations,” as Rembold views them – is thus reduced to a pretense. By comparison to the early Saxons, the methodological obstacles to an understand­ ing of the Liutizi have barely been scrutinized; assumptions about their “lack of unity” nonetheless comparably prevail in the scholarship. See, for instance, Robert Flierman, Saxon Identities, AD 150–900 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); also, Matthias Becher, “Non enim habent regem idem Antiqui Saxones … Verfassung und Ethnogenese in Sachsen während des 8. Jahrhun­ derts,” in Sachsen und Franken in Westfalen, ed. Hans-Jürgen Hässler with Jörg Jarnut and Matthias Wemhoff (Oldenburg: Isensee, 1999), 1–31. This is how I understand the influential article by Ian Wood on the early Saxons: “Beyond Satraps and Ostriches: Political and Social Structures of the Saxons in the Early Carolingian Period,” in The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. Dennis H. Green and Frank Sigmund (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 271–97. Becher, “Non enim habent.” Andrea Stieldorf, Marken und Markgrafen: Studien zur Grenzsicherung durch die fränkisch-deutschen Herrscher (Hannover: Hahnsche, 2012). They form part of the “language of feudalism” that Susan Reynolds decries as “impeding our view of the Middle Ages” – although she herself does not identify the language of feudal hierarchy as such: “Still Fussing about Feudalism,” in Italy and Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham, ed. Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow and Patricia Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 94, cf. 91. The dismantling of feudalism began, as is well-known, with Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” American Historical Review 79 (1974): 1063–88; it was significantly fur­ thered by Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). An exception is David Mengel, “A Plague on Bohemia? Mapping the Black Death,” Past and Present 211 (2011): 3–34. Lisa Wolverton, Hastening Toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvanian Press, 2001). Wolverton, Hastening, 228–34. This usage appears, for instance, throughout the so-called “First Slavonic Life,” in Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum, Vol. 1, ed. Josef Kolář (Prague: Nakladatelství Musea Království českého, 1873), 127–34. Again, Wolverton, Hastening, 91–2. Carl I. Hammer, From Ducatus to Regnum: Ruling Bavaria under the Merovin­ gians and Early Carolingians (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 9. Wendy Davies, Patterns of Power in Early Wales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 10–13; also, Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 319–32. Roger Turvey, The Welsh Princes, 1063–1283 (London: Pearson, 2002), 15–18.

106 Lisa Wolverton 26 For instance, the Annals of Fulda on the Bohemians: The Annals of Fulda. Translated by Timothy Reuter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 24, 38, 39. 27 Widukind of Corvey and Flodoard of Rheims both consistently refer to Boleslav I of Bohemia (929–67) as “king,” although, in the literature, both medieval and modern, he is generally known as a “duke” like all of his successors. Widukind of Corvey, Deeds of the Saxons. Translated by Bernard S. Bachrach and David Bachrach (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 103, 143; The Annals of Flodoard of Reims, 919–966. Translated by Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 55, 61 (where he also calls him “princeps”). 28 On the difficulties of nomenclature for elite Czechs, see Wolverton, Hastening, 46. 29 David Defries regarding Flanders: “The Emergence of the Territorial Principality of Flanders, 750–1150,” History Compass 11 (2013): 619. 30 See Charles West, “Count Hugh of Troyes and the Territorial Principality in Early Twelfth Century Europe,” English Historical Review 127 (2012): 523–48. 31 For an example of this usage, without remark, see Brian Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), passim. 32 A comparable point made by Chris Callow regarding Iceland: “Comparing Medieval Iceland with Other Regions,” in Italy and Early Medieval Europe, 427–8. 33 The classic study is Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in

Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

34 Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, The Carolingian

World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–3, 31–4. 35 See, for instance, the argument made recently by James Naus regarding the twelfth-century kings of France; Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), encapsulated 3–4. 36 See Francis Oakley’s three volume synthesis, The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, 2012, 2015). 37 Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, Carolingian World, 208–13. 38 For the Bohemian case, Hastening, 247–56. The Polish case, especially regarding the events at Gniezno in the year 1000, has generated a literature too vast to be encapsulated here. 39 For an example, a brief comparative analysis of medieval polities in mountain­ ous regions, see Chris Wickham, “Medieval Wales and European History,” Welsh History Review 25 (2010): 204–8. 40 Wolverton, Hastening. 41 Miller, Bloodtaking, 15–16. 42 Ibid., 22. 43 Ibid., 78. 44 William Ian Miller, Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largess in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 22–3. 45 The Chronicle of the Slavs by Helmold, Priest of Bosau. Translated by Francis Joseph Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), 131. I am grateful to Rachel Gerber for bringing this passage to my attention and to Timothy Duy for advice on monetary economics. 46 “Ibrahim ibn Ya’qub on Northern Europe 965,” in Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. Translated by Paul Lunde and Caro­ line Stone (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2012), 165.

Why kings? 107 47 As suggested by Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 82–3. 48 Chris Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 49 Ibid., 83–4. 50 Among a number of review articles concerning the application of the term “state” to medieval political orders, see Rees Davies, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?” Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003): 280–300.

Part 3

Gender

7

Measuring the margins Women, slavery, and the notarial

process in late fourteenth-century

Mallorca

Kevin Mummey

Introduction In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the streets of la Ciutat (modern-day Palma de Mallorca) – choked with building materials, transport, and domestic animals, living and dead – as well as its plazas, workshops, and homes were colored by the bump and jostle of Catalans, foreigners, and the enslaved.1 The latter were brought to the island from the greater Mediterranean world, as far away as the plains of central Asia, as near as Sardinia, Sicily, and the coasts of North Africa. Disembarked into the hands of auctioneers and middlemen or sold directly to merchants, artisans, and a variety of middling and upper-status Mallorcans, slaves could be found everywhere in and around the medieval Ciutat. They toiled in gardens and fields on the outskirts, helped build the churches, baked bread at the ovens, cleaned homes, nursed children, drew water, carted wood, quarried stone. The public presence of slaves was made possible by the private business of the dominant population, among them women – widows, wives, and daughters – who bought, sold, leased, and borrowed human property. Women utilized slave labor in public and private spaces, in homes, fields, and workshops. They used slaves as investment properties, gave them away in testimonial bequests, committed them to years of service, and manumitted them, unconditionally and after fulfillment of work-release (setmaner) contracts. Their relationships to their slaves ranged from essentially exploitative to apparently familial. Occasionally, enslaved women entered into freed status and faced many of the same decisions as their former masters. The system of slavery illustrates the difficulty of defining what constitutes marginalization. While some middling and upper-status women were able to use human capital to extend their economic resources and personal authority throughout la Ciutat, they were also limited by social, political, and economic constraints. Others, especially the enslaved and newly freed, were trapped within the system.2 The pages of notarial protocols reveal the complex network of relationships, which often simultaneously illuminate female economic and social power and points to their marginal status. The sinew of the public and private bonds

112 Kevin Mummey between the dominant population and their slaves was the notarial paper trail of buying and selling, borrowing and collecting, bequests and donations, wills and testaments, marriage contracts, and inventories in which private decisions drove public consequences. All forms of financial obligations were recorded by notaries, who were virtually everywhere in la Ciutat. They brought their instruments of literacy to the salty hubbub of the municipal wharf, where they joined carters, merchants, and auctioneers, waiting for goods and human cargo to be unloaded. They occupied the key public plazas of the city, and the scales where olives, grain, fish, and meat were weighed, bought, and sold. They also visited people in their homes, recording disputes, loans, real estate deals, the bargains of those about to be married, and the wishes of those about to die. Their protocols – volumes of thick paper typically bound by used parchment in which copies of the transactions were stored – are one of the few, and for late medieval Mallorca certainly the most abundant, spaces where day-to-day economic activities, intentions, and personal and commercial networks were recorded. Consequently, they are a particularly valuable resource for middling and lower-status women, who are ill-served by the rest of the surviving written evidence. Unlike royal, civic, and ecclesiastical records, which, broadly speaking, tend to focus on the behavior, rather than the commercial, or social, concerns of women, the pages of notarial protocols were a relatively value-neutral space in which the concerns of anyone with a couple of shillings could be recorded.3 A significant portion of notarial records in which women are included involve small- to medium-scale financial dealings; the buying and selling of human beings; and agricultural commodities, real estate transactions, loans, and pious bequests, among others. In the absence of banks and other financial institutions, women used their economic resources to raise capital, acquire labor power and goods, and provide for the financial future of their families and the spiritual future of their souls. In so doing, women of every status forged commercial and personal ties with one another, inside and outside of their families. As Mallorcan women participated in the market for human beings, they undertook a wide range of economic and social activities; they invested capital in human property, established personal and financial relationships with others in the trade, and transformed public and private spaces through the acquisition and exploitation of slave labor. The most common form of exploitation of enslaved labor in the late fourteenth century was the setmaner contract. By the late fourteenth century, many slaves were working toward their freedom under the tallia or setmaner system. The two terms refer to a kind of debt-based servitude; tallia generally means a debt burden slaves contracted with their masters in return for their freedom upon full payment. Setmaner, from the Catalan setmana (week), refers to an agreement for daily repayment of this debt, but was also used interchangeably with tallia in notarial protocols. Commonly, slave owners promised slaves who were in tallia wages for their service, especially at the public ovens. They also often promised to donate a small amount of money, usually a penny or two, each time a slave contributed a fixed

Measuring the margins 113 amount, usually three to four pounds, toward his or her own release. Although there were differences in the terms of these contracts, as Antoni Mas i Forners observed, they shared the common trait that they fixed a price for the liberation of the slave, and placed him or her in a state of semi-liberty.4 The streets of la Ciutat and the surrounding countryside teemed with enslaved people attempting to work off their debts, a quotidian dance of work, sweat, and small coins that was set in motion by the ubiquitous notarial contracts. Notarial contracts provide the framework for the present discussion. I begin at the “top of the page” where the first few lines of notarial contracts customarily list the buyer, the seller, and the property, human or otherwise, being sold. This is where it is possible to find evidence of widows, wives, and single women who bought and sold slaves individually and in concert with one another. I then move to the “bottom of the page,” a discussion of types of notarial evidence that are not always explicit, but reveal the extent and character of women’s involvement in the slave trade. This section of the document contains pro forma language, special clauses, and the names of people whose resources served to guarantee the transaction. Here one finds evidence of women renouncing their legal protections, their role as guarantors, and their “hidden” involvement in transactions, where for a variety of reasons their participation was obscured. The commercial energy of the women in these transactions had consequences for the objects of their business, that is, the slaves themselves, and for the community in which they lived. The discussion concludes with a consideration of the “off the page” consequences of women’s activity, namely, the effect that their economic energy had on the lives of slaves through manumissions, a process through which they transitioned from bondage to a conditional freedom, and began to make decisions on their own as low-status freed persons. We can see that despite the commercial and social acumen women exhibited, they were marginalized by certain patriarchal constraints reflected in the structure of the notarial page.

The top of the page – women in the marketplace Among the most abundant evidence of women and slavery are contracts of the sale and purchase of human beings, where women appear in the first person at the top of the page, initiating transactions and otherwise participating in the slave market. While these contracts were drawn up to record agreements and to protect the parties involved, between the lines they reveal a world of concerns and circumstances affecting women and men of every status and life cycle stage. They also illustrate the networks of people involved in human traffic; widows, wives, and single women cooperated with each other and with other family members and business partners. In acquiring and selling slaves, women not only flexed their financial muscle, but were able to exercise a considerable amount of leverage over the lives of lower-status individuals. Despite that power and

114 Kevin Mummey leverage, even at the top of the page women did not enjoy equality with men of the same status. Women were almost always identified as the widow, wife, or daughter of a man whose occupation may or may not have been included, making it extremely difficult to discern her natal family or any other familial or social connections she may have had to other participants in the transactions. Widows appear frequently among the women listed at the top of the page. They enjoyed the relative financial freedom of movement that resulted from being neither wife nor daughter, and were prominent in the slave market, actively harnessing slave labor throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century.5 The Black Death ushered in a new era of slaveholding in the Mediterranean, and Mallorcan widows bought and sold slaves in the wake of the epidemiological crisis.6 Shortly after the plague arrived in Mallorca in 1350, Guillemina, the widow of notary Buguet Borrassi, sold the Greek slave Arena to Ponç Malferic for a substantial 60 pounds.7 The next entry in the protocol shows Ponç selling the Turkish slave Aramis, albi coloris, whom he had purchased from Antonia, the heiress of the late Francesc Oliveri, back to Guillermina.8 While the transaction reveals how quickly money and human property could change hands, and the role that women played as buyers and sellers, it does not disclose why Guillemina would exchange her female slave for a male one, though the abrupt shortages of physical labor caused by the plague may have been the cause. This must remain a matter of conjecture, as the notarial record does not provide the kind of information about women that would connect them to an economic motive, either as a manager of labor or a merchant, for buying or selling a slave. This transaction also affords a glimpse of the life conditions of the enslaved – the Turk Aramis was subjected to at least three different masters, and if indeed he had been brought to Mallorca from Asia Minor, these were probably not his first captors. Europe was battered by a second wave of the plague in the early 1360s, and the effects of underpopulation and increasing labor costs were felt throughout the continent.9 Responding to these issues and the accompanying economic instability, Mallorcan women continued to acquire slave labor, and their entrepreneurial efforts, could, and did, reach beyond Mallorcan shores. Near the end of the decade, Francesca, the widow of the ship’s captain Pere de Furno, was able to invest a thumping 100 pounds – the highest price for a slave I have located – for the Greek Maria. Despite the size of the investment, the notarial record reveals frustratingly little about the women involved. It is impossible to tell why Maria garnered such a sum; she may have been valued as a wet nurse or a sex worker, or the 100 pounds represents a purchase price plus the repayment of a disguised loan or other debt. Another possibility for the extraordinary sum is that Francesca, as a ship captain’s wife, had access to information about slave prices abroad, and was anticipating a profitable resale.10 The plague left some women widowed relatively early in their life cycle, without husbands but with investment capital. In 1362, Francesca, widow of merchant Pere Garbi, bought the Greek Manuel from the magister

Measuring the margins 115 11

medicina Bonanat Julian. In addition to promising to pay 54 pounds, Francesca admitted that she was twenty-three years old, two years younger than the age at which Mallorcans could assume unqualified legal responsibility. The fact that Francesca could complete a transaction on her own speaks to the fact that cash in hand tended to trump legal formalities, and legal minors could buy and sell human property without guarantors, if they had the money to do so.12 Women continued to be active in the slave market despite, or perhaps because of, periods of epidemiological, environmental, and economic stress. In the early 1370s, a time of scarce grain supplies compounded by another plague outbreak, women raised capital by selling slaves, and occasionally contractual details provide evidence of how profitable the slave business could be.13 In 1373, Mariana, the widow of merchant Bernat Baseya, sold her Greek slave Nicolau to the legal professional (in legibus licentiate) Guillem Geraldi.14 In a rare disclosure, the contract includes the fact that she purchased him in 1365 from Bartolomeo Onistrago for 26 pounds. On the one hand, Mariana had benefited from Nicolau’s labor for seven years and recouped 26 pounds, on the other hand, Nicolau had been enslaved for more than seven years without hope of manumission, and there is no evidence that he had entered into a work-release (setmaner) contract with his new owner. The plague and famine crises of the fourteenth century drastically changed the supply and demand for labor, and widows joined others in responding to the volatility of the market. The impact of their decisions went beyond the economic, and affected the lives of the human beings they bought, sold, and put to work in the community.

The top of the page – networks of widows, wives, and single women In addition to revealing the presence of women as buyers and sellers, information at the top of the page also discloses that, through the slave market, women of a variety of circumstances and statuses established informal commercial networks throughout la Ciutat through which they circulated labor power and money. Given what we have seen so far, it might not be surprising to find widows generating transactions on their own, and conducting slave and other business with other widows. In a widow-to­ widow slave sale involving work-release contracts, Francesca, the widow of Guilelm Gunerd, sold the Greek Georgius to Caterina, the widow of Jaume Hainach, for fifty pounds. The sale is a good example of how intra-female economic cooperation had an impact beyond a simple exchange of money and labor. Georgius was in a work-release contract at the time of his sale, and Caterina sent him to work the ovens, with a promise of a generous 16 penny per visit contribution toward his release.15 Georgius’ contract not only placed him in a public work site, making foodstuffs for his widowed owner, it also prompted him to enter into private financial dealings. In the next document, he acknowledged a ten-pound debt to Clemente Terres,

116 Kevin Mummey civis. While it is not clear whether Georgius owed Terres from a previous work-release arrangement, or was borrowing money from Terres toward his release from servitude to Caterina, it is clear that his owner Caterina’s initiative had public and private consequences for her slave and the community.16 Widows’ interactions reverberated throughout la Ciutat, as their slaves went out into the streets and fields, working and conducting business of their own. Not all Mallorcan women could set these private and public wheels in motion by themselves. Women pooled their resources to buy slave labor, perhaps from a lack of resources or an undisclosed need to share the risks and obligations of financial commitments. Some had family connections; others appear to have known each other because their husbands were associates in some way. For an example of the latter case, in March of 1386 Francesa, the widow of Bernat Marc, and Saurine, the widow of Ferrar Mersoll, bought the Tartar Johanna from Simon Joan, butcher, and his wife Laurencia, who also acted as guarantrice for the contract.17 Bernat Marc and Ferrar Mersoll had been curritores (intermediaries for auctions and other commercial transactions who received a brokerage fee, and almost certainly worked at the Porto Pi and the municipal wharf, handling the cargo of incoming ships). Since curritores frequently dealt in slaves, it is likely that the widows were no strangers to the slavery business. Widows also sold jointly held slaves. Elisenda, the widow of Joan Humbert, and Magdalena, the widow of Bernat Belluen, sold the Greek Cali to Maria, the wife of the venerable Joan de Portillo.18 Apparently seeking stable, long­ term slave labor, Maria promised Cali freedom after ten years’ service, an arrangement on which Cali signed off in the first person. Given that slaves commonly signed shorter-term work-release contracts, Cali’s ten-year agreement with his master is unusual. He may have felt that he would be unable to pay off his work-release debt in the customary manner, or he may have had a familial or personal attachment to his owner, but this remains speculation.19 While Onofre Vaquer has suggested “access to liberty was easy,” in that slaves could save money and pay for their release, Cali’s ten-year commitment serves to temper this conception of conditions facing the enslaved, as well as providing an example of a man held in long-term servitude by a succession of female masters.20 While the much-discussed economic independence and economic facility of widows makes them likely participants in the slave trade, Mallorcan evidence reveals a surprising number of married women involved in slaving within, and especially outside of, their families. Wives forged commercial and personal ties with other women, including widows, in the slave market. At the end of January, 1360, Magdalena, the wife of Berengar Vandrelli, joined with Geralde, the widow of Celestí Deuslosal, to buy Anna from Tomás Vincent.21 In a case illustrating commercial cooperation and the multi-religious nature of the Ciutat and the slave trade, Caterina, the wife of Ramon de Berga and Blanche, the widow of Pere Ferrar, bought the Saracen

Measuring the margins 117 Abraffim [sic] from the Jew Nachlis Abraham for 50 pounds.22 The partnerships were not always, or necessarily, equal. Sibila, the wife of Arnau Cerdom and Sibila, the widow of Bernat Asserin, shared the 40-pound cost of the Greek Maria.23 The former Sibila paid 28 pounds, while the widow Sibila paid 12. Typically, the document does not explain how the women intended to exploit the slave’s labor, or why the women split their investment in such a manner, but their transaction is an example of the many ways in which women combined their resources to buy and sell human property, in the process reinforcing financial and personal ties with other women in the dominant community.24 The fact that wives were able to devote their own resources to the buying and selling of human beings is evidence that while the pater familias may have been the nominal head of all in the household, he was not necessarily the owner of all the human property in the house. Cilia, the wife of Joan Bennasser, sold the Greek Teodora to the goldsmith Martin Mayoll. While Gabriel do Roils acted as guarantor, Bennasser is not described in the document as either quondam (the late husband), or physically present at the transaction, and Cilia is not recorded as acting in his absence.25 Wives did not apparently need the explicit permission or financial backing of their husbands, among them Domina Pole, who bought the Greek Maria for 45 pounds without mention of her husband Jaume Rossell.26 Married women held slaves independently of their husbands, a fact confirmed by the postmortem inventory of the merchant Real Pere. He held ten slaves – making him a significant slaveholder – though the last slave is described as “a certain Sardinian slave, called Johannes, who Domina Nicoleta, the wife of the late Real Pere, claims to be her own.”27 Nicoleta’s claim to ownership begs for speculation. She may have been protecting her slave against claims by her husband’s heirs, owned her own slave for domestic and public work, or was engaged in a separate profession from her husband for which she needed his labor. Whatever the case, the presence of human beings under the same roof, owned by different masters, clouds standard conceptions of household hierarchies and opens up possibilities for complex relationships within households. Women also partnered with other women in their natal and marital kin, extending their influence with the present and future generations of the family. Widows transacted with their children, combining and exchanging resources. Early in September, 1367, Caterina, the widow of Stephan de Fraxio, partnered with her daughter Margisia and sold the Greek Armina to the cloth preparer Johannes Omberti.28 Saurimonda, the widow of Romeu de Casanova, sold a Greek female, Aram, to her son Pere and Agnes, the widow of Guillem de Casanova.29 Saurimonda appears to have been raising capital while at the same time keeping the Greek slave’s labor power within the family. In a case of a family jointly participating in the slave trade, Guillem de Bacs, his wife Benenguta, and their daughter Angelina, the wife of Berengar Ovillani, sold the Tartar Cotholo for 20 pounds and 10 shillings.30 What the document does not reveal is why all

118 Kevin Mummey three family members were listed as sellers, and what percentage of the slave’s body and labor did or did not belong to the women involved. Occasionally, single women (solteras) can be found in the slave market. In the spring of 1371, domina Valego, described only as the daughter of the late Bernat Gremola, bought a male Tartar for a substantial 68 pounds.31 Caterina, the daughter of the late Guillem Castellar, purchased the Tartar Caterina for 57 pounds. The space for the guarantor’s name was left blank, and no other men appear to have been involved in the transaction.32 Slaves were not only a source of labor, but a means by which women could exchange and invest property and money, independently of and in cooperation with males, inside and outside their families.

The bottom of the page – leaving their “weakness” behind Beyond the prominence of the names at the top of the notarial transactions – the buyers, the sellers, and those being sold – are the nuts and bolts of the contracts, where notaries attached pro forma protections, special conditions of the sale, and the names of guarantors and others providing surety for the affairs. Among these “bottom of the page” protections were the Senatus Consultum Velleianum (SCV) and the Si Qua Mulier, an irony of Mallorcan notarial acts involving women as buyers and sellers, in that they had to formally renounce their customary protections as women. The SCV was a Roman legal decree from 46 CE that women should not intercede on behalf of anyone (ne pro ullo feminae intercederent) in legal affairs, following earlier Augustinian and Claudian edicts forbidding wives from interceding on behalf of their husbands.33 As Marie Kelleher has summarized, the first century legislation aimed at shielding women from their husband’s debts took on a “different gendered meaning” during the centuries of the early Christian emperors: “not merely was it unseemly for women to be involved in masculine obligations, but the weakness of their sex actually prevented them from doing so.”34 In the sixth century, the Justinianic piece of legislation Si Qua Mulier declared null and void any wife’s intervention in the affairs of her husband, unless she received an advantage.35 Rena Van der Bergh has noted, “these two enactments passed on through the centuries, and many exceptions were admitted: usually when a woman renounced the benefit of both laws provided she fully understood what she was doing.”36 However renounceable the SCV may have been, its medieval inclusion was based on long-held assumptions of the inherent financial and personal incapacities (imbecilitas) of women. Linda Guzzeti has opined that the prohibition to intercede had a practical and symbolic significance, in that it “reduced a woman’s chances of acting as guarantors and proxies, and confirmed their limited responsibilities as participants in economic and social life.”37 The SCV was revived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was reintegrated into the ius commune, the legal system in which notaries were trained.38 It was more than an echo of the Roman past, its

Measuring the margins 119 frequent appearance in protocols is an indicator of the increasing complexity and speed of economic transactions in the late medieval period, simultaneously affirming the activity of women in the economy and long-held patriarchal assumptions about their limited abilities to fully participate. Interpretations of the SCV differed in the various legal systems of the Crown of Aragon, and Aragonese jurists in particular filtered it through the lens of customary practice.39 The Costums of Tortosa, for example, required only merchant women to renounce the SCV, refusing that option to all other women.40 Despite the local differences in interpretation, Kelleher has observed that the SCV required women to “exchange the legal protection that the law considered appropriate to their sex for the ability to act with the full legal agency that their male counterparts enjoyed as a matter of course.”41 Frequent renunciations of the SCV in Mallorcan protocols were multivalent – they were a confirmation of female vulnerability and a practical concession that women possessed the necessary resources to conduct commercial activity, the volume of which would have been severely reduced without them.42 The SCV was pro forma, but it was also a formal allowance of legally constructed women into a male sphere, and highlights the changing economy of the late fourteenth century and the deeper integration of women within it. Even as part of the notarial ritual it was symbolic of the malleable construction of women’s space, facilitated by an echo of Roman practice that was just audible enough to be useful to late medieval Mallorcan community.43

The bottom of the page – women behind the scenes Examples of renunciations of the SCV are not only useful in highlighting the formal vulnerability and the practical economic facility of women, they can also shed light on the variety of roles that women played as partners and backers of their husbands’ affairs. Women often renounced their legal protections when some of their capital was involved in the transaction. Anna, the wife of the venerable Pic Binugen, acted together with her husband’s brother Jaume Beyla to sell the Greek Nicolau to Berengar Massagner.44 Anna not only renounced the SCV, but, unusually, was the sole guarantrice of the boiler-plate section of the contract, in which the quality and price of the human merchandise was guaranteed, and she acted as financial guarantor for the sale. It is not clear whether Anna was using dotal funds, was in charge of some marital assets due to her husband’s incapacity, or was doing business on her own initiative. Whatever the case, Anna’s involvement was unusually comprehensive, guaranteeing all aspects of a sale in which, at least nominally, three other men were involved. Like Anna, Jacmeta apparently provided financial backing for her husband’s affairs, as she signed off as guarantor for her husband Jaume Amat’s sale of a fifteen-year-old Greek male to Jordi Miquel.45 In Anna’s case, the first line of the contract indicates that she was a partner in a slave sale, and it is only upon further reading that it is clear that she made the sale happen. In Jacmeta’s case, her name does not appear at the top of the contract

120 Kevin Mummey at all, and at first glance her transaction appears to be a slave sale between two men. Often, female involvement was below decks – invisible from a distance, but essential to the operation. Women not only financially backed their husband’s transactions, but were given legal control over them as procuratrices and executrices of their affairs and their estates. Antonio Ortega Villoslada has pointed out that women acted in accord with the traditional freedoms and privileges of the island that allowed wives “or other honest women” to act as procuratrices in the commercial affairs and property management of their absent husbands.46 These roles were often played in the absence of husbands or other male family members who were away from the island on account of mercantile affairs or were otherwise incapable of doing business due to imprisonment, sickness, or death.47 In their absence women stepped into the breach. In the winter of 1369, Benenguta sold the Greek slave Arena to Pere Susto in her role as procuratrice for Lorenç Flandrina, absentis ab insula, and as guarantor for the transaction renounced the SCV.48 Women also appointed other procurators in their husbands’ absence, as when Calda, the wife of Bartomeu Pasoris, “who is now being held captive by the King of Granada” put Stephan Ballester in charge of their affairs.49 Some widows acted as executrices for their husband’s estates. Margarita, the widow and universal heir of Pere Raffanti, sold the enslaved Francesc, “also called Bonviatge” to the bootmaker Francesc Rovire, in accord with her late husband’s testamentary wishes.50 Caterina, acting in the same capacity for the estate of her husband Bernat Baulo, facilitated the gift of her husband’s Tartar slave, Joan, to the butcher Pere Guars and his son Pericon.51 The customary permission given to women to act as proxies is illustrative of the practical nature of mercantile society, which recognized the ability and necessity of married women to act in place of their husbands. As guarantrices, fideiutrices, and procuratrices, women were able to extend the scope of their fiscal authority into the lives of others, via their backing of loans, commodity sales, real estate, municipal bonds, and so forth, as well as through the slavery business. In a transaction involving the resources of three widows, Magdalena, the widow of Bernat, sold the Greek Georgius to Sibila, the widow of Arnau Serdoni. Another widow named Magdalena acted as the financial guarantor and renounced her legal protection.52 Unfortunately, the transaction does not indicate how the three women were connected, or why the buyer and the seller turned to another widow for financial backing. Despite these uncertainties, the transaction is an example of the many possible configurations of women involved in the slavery business and other commercial affairs. Women’s influence over others was not limited to direct control over their slaves, as their capital allowed them a certain amount of leverage within their families. At the end of 1369, Francesquina, the wife of Bernat Arrado, guaranteed her husband’s sale of the Tartar Caterina to Guido de Riminis.53 On the same day, Jaume Galiani sold the Tartar Spert to the skinner Pere Tororilla, a forty-pound transaction for which Jaume’s widowed mother

Measuring the margins 121 Angelina acted as fideiutrix. Widows also acted as guarantors for minors. Antonia, the wife of Francesc de Comellis, acted as guarantor for a slave sale by Antonia, the wife of Mateu de Brullio. The latter Antonia, who was sixteen years old, was selling the work-release contract of her Greek slave to another married woman.55 Women’s role as behind-the-scenes agents was manifested in their dealings with their “extended” families, that is, their former slaves, particularly when it concerned the marriages of former female slaves. In a third-party action that highlights both the personal and financial ties factoring into a woman’s role as fideiutrix, early in 1369 Caterina, emancipated Greek slave of the late Pere Res, placed herself in marriage to Joan Colombi and offered him a forty-pound dowry. Clistendis, Pere’s widow, gave Caterina some bed clothes, clothing, and ten pounds, and served as the fideiutrix for the dotal arrangement.56 Women also exercised postmortem influence over their former slaves. Geraldona, the wife of Nicolau Coroni, provided a forty-pound dowry in her testament. The dowry was for the marriage of Francesca, the daughter of Nicolau’s slave Arena, to the freed Greek shepherd Jordi Roses. While the notarial record is characteristically mute as to the motives of masters’ involvement, Debra Blumenthal has justifiably warned that it should not be assumed that these marital gifts were made out of “affection” for their former slaves, or that the affection was welcomed by their former slaves. “Rather,” she continues, “their [the master’s] participation likely served to underscore the enduring power and influence that they wished to exercise over their former slaves’ lives.”57 By providing for “honorable” futures of their present and former slaves, women could extend the honor of their family, and their personal and financial influence, beyond their natal families. As guarantrices, fideiutrices, and as the financial support for a variety of transactions, women were a motive force behind the slave system and the society that resulted from it. 54

The bottom of the page – pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain … In the cases of women buyers, sellers, and guarantors, the notarial record is relatively explicit, but in many other cases the extent of female involvement is obscured. In the middle of 1365, Romania, the widow of Guillem Nec, sold a Greek slave to Benengute, the widow of Pere de Cos, for 30 pounds.58 While Nicolau Ruberti was listed as the guarantor, in the next entry in the protocol Romania absolved him of any financial liability. Why Romania was not simply the guarantrice of the first transaction is unknown – women could, and did, guarantee their own transactions – but it points to the financial authority of women, which is often obscured in the notarial evidence. Clearly an arrangement had been made for surety between Ruberti and Romania, and one can only guess how many arrangements like this were made that did not make it into the notaries’ protocols.

122 Kevin Mummey Women’s involvement in notarial transactions may have also been obscured by the linguistic and cultural bias, if not the mere sloppiness, of the scribes. On 5 October 1386, notary Andreu de Plandolit recorded the sale of the Greek female Arena from Tomas Jacobi to his fellow tailor Guillem Serra, a typical example of a male-to-male slave sale. However, in the next entry both Guillem and his wife Guillermona acknowledged receipt of the slave, indicating that she had been part of the original sale, but had not been named in the introduction. One wonders if Guillermona had been with her husband while the notary was drawing up the original contract, and was, in a sense, invisible to him, and thus absent from the record.59 In a similar case, earlier in the spring of 1386, the bootmaker Francesc Rovire sold the enslaved Frances Bonviatge to the tanner Guillem Pont. In the next document, Pont and his wife Simona acknowledged receipt of the Tartar Bonviatge, and a postscript indicated that the couple finished paying off his purchase price in October, 1387.60 Another case where a woman’s involvement lay beyond the transaction is that of Brunisendis, the wife of the fisherman Francesc Axida. Francesc was recorded as buying the Sard Antonio from Stephanus Villa for 16 pounds, but the previous transaction records that Axida and his wife Brumsendis borrowed 16 pounds from the widow Jacme Castelli.61 The above should be sufficient warning that inventorying slave transactions based on the buyers and sellers at the top of the page will not tell the complete story, especially where the role of women is concerned. Women were not only excluded by omission, but also by misidentification. Benenguta, the wife of Martí Martini, borrowed 25 pounds from the tailor Antoni Seluani, and as collateral, she handed over her servant Eulalia. The guarantor was Caterina, the wife of Pere Marti, probably Benenguta’s sisterin-law. Tellingly, the scribe described Caterina as responsore [sic] and fideiussore [sic], crossing them out and replacing them in the margin with their feminine forms.62 Despite the fact that one woman was involved as a borrower, another as human collateral, and a third as a financial backer, the scribe had defaulted to the masculine forms for surety. It may have been a simple mistake, but it also may have been an error that points to cultural attitudes about gender and commercial transactions. The number of these errors that went uncorrected is impossible to discern, as is the extent of female participation they masked. Other evidence of women’s involvement likely has been lost due to the condition of the surviving protocols. On 2 September 1367, Sibila acted as procurator for her husband Joan Matheu, who was not on the island. She sold the Tartar Xerxe to Jordi Palmer of the coastal village of Andratx for 35 pounds and renounced her legal protections. She was not done with her business with the notary De Casis, as the next entry in his protocol she sold Toloxa (probably a Tartar), to Joan Garbini for 32 pounds. The record of this sale is incomplete, and frustratingly the next two pages of the protocol are blank, except for five entries that contain only her name.63 Clearly Sibila was there to do more business; that business, unfortunately, never

Measuring the margins 123 made it to the pages of the surviving protocol. While the incomplete state of the protocols and the deterioration of the evidence do not necessarily affect evidence of women’s activities disproportionately, it provides tantalizing hints that the record of much of the female participation in the economy and social structure of the Ciutat has been lost.

Conclusion The evidence presented is a core sample of what the notarial record holds of women and slavery, how it did so, and what can be imagined of the late fourteenth-century Ciutat from its pages. There is abundant evidence of the commercial energy of Mallorcan women, whose activity extended into the lives of their families, their slaves, and their peers. The consequences of these decisions influenced the flow of capital and the organization of work in public and private spaces. The evidence of this activity is subject to the limitations of the notarial page which, though crimped by formulas and narrowed by the vision of the participants, provides far greater depth and detail of the circumstances and desires of women and slaves than any other extant for late fourteenth-century Mallorca. As Daniel Smail has pointed out, the notarial record was essentially egalitarian (I find it to include even more social categories in Mallorca than Smail has found for Marseille), and throughout the later Middle Ages, the scale of notarial activity – concomitant with “the demographic, economic, monetary, political, and legal-juridical transformations of the high and later middle ages” – increased dramatically.64 The notaries, the “professional witnesses,” were everywhere in the Ciutat, and their protocols hold the record of the daily movement of slaves, property, credit and debt, and family arrangements, and occasionally hint at the personal ties within, and among, the dominant and enslaved communities. The structure of the notarial page provides conclusive evidence of the commercial vigor and social leverage of Mallorcan women. At the top of the page, widows, wives, and daughters can be witnessed engaging in the slavery business. Widows were prominent in the slavery business, and while historians have debated for several decades on whether medieval widowhood was characterized by its relative freedom or vulnerability, Mallorcan evidence points in the direction of the former, with the caveat that the notarial record underrepresents women with limited or no resources. Widows were joined by a surprising number of wives, daughters, and single women. These women not only acted alone, but in concert with one another. Ubiquitous networks of intra-female cooperation were created in the slavery business. Widows partnered with one another to buy and sell slaves, and did the same with wives. Wives could, and did, hold slaves in their own right, which has implications for our understanding of the existing hierarchies within households. Women also extended their personal power through their families, facilitating the purchase and sale of slaves of

124 Kevin Mummey husbands, children, and other family members. The presence of slaves in the streets was the consequence of networks of social and economic cooperation of the dominant class, among the women. The notarial evidence may be enticing, but it also reflects the biases of those that produced the documents. The behind-the-scenes activities of women are customarily relegated to the bottom of the page, where they can be seen acting as guarantrices, procuratrices, and financial backers in the slave market. This kind of involvement is easily missed if slaves and their owners are simply counted, as women acted as guarantors for male-to-male slave transactions. Their names do not appear at the top of the page, obscuring their essential involvement in the process. Women guarantors were obscured in other ways, as occasionally they are omitted from the original slave transaction, only to have their involvement revealed in a separate entry. Even when a woman’s name does appear at the top of the page, the formula describes her as daughter, wife, or widow of a male. Women are very rarely identified by their occupation, despite extensive circumstantial evidence that they were involved in, or had taken over, the family business. (An exception to this is with commercial sex workers, who are identified as such in the public tax rolls.) By omission, misidentification, and gendered language, the social and economic facility of women in the notarial protocols was marginalized. This marginalization is reinforced by the fact that women were excluded from the public sphere. Royal letters, ecclesiastical records, and evidence of civic politics, which can be used to deepen our understanding of the political and economic motivations of the men involved, tend to marginalize women, who were assumed to be confined to the domestic sphere. The notarial record is paradoxical, at once illuminating and refracting. While this paper has demonstrated the centrality of women of all statuses to the economic and social structure of the medieval Ciutat, the notarial record at best reflects a limited range of female activity, and at worst obscures their identities with the pro forma language of a long-established patriarchal legal and commercial system.

Notes 1 Margalida Bernat i Roca pointed out the character of Mallorca’s choked streets in her discussion of the maintenance of public health in the fourteenth and fif­ teenth centuries, “El Manteniment de la salubritat pública a Ciutat de Mallorca (segles XIV–XV),” Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia 19 (1998): 92–125. I use the term la Ciutat, or its English equivalent “the City,” for modern-day Palma de Mallorca, in keeping with medieval usage. 2 Medieval Mallorcan women remain a seriously understudied population. To my knowledge, there is no monograph devoted to the study of Mallorcan women before the nineteenth century. Of the articles that address women’s economic and social activity in the fourteenth century, Josep Fc. López i Bonet’s “Un fruit de l’ex­ pansio mediterrànea. Esclaves Gregues a Mallorca a mitjan segle XIV i la triple mutilació juridical: nació, estat i gènere,” XVIII CHCA (2004): 1500–84 remains the only paper specifically addressing issues of status and gender in the period. See also, Maria Barceló Crespí, “La Dona com a subject fiscal (segles XV–XVI),” Mayurqa

Measuring the margins 125

3

4 5

6

7

8

9

22 (1989): 49–56; Antonio Ortega Villoslada, “El trabajo femenino en Mallorca. La labor de la mujer en la actividad marítima de la primera mitad del siglo XIV,” Espa­ cio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, H. Medieval, t. 17 (2004): 461–9; Anna Rich Abad, “Able and Available: Jewish Women in Medieval Barcelona and their Economic Activities,” Journal of Medieval Studies 6, no. 1 (2014): 71–86. Notaries were important to la Ciutat from the inception of the Christian con­ quest in the 1230s, and are mentioned in La Carta de Franquesa de Mallorca, which limits their membership to “capable and suitable lay persons.” Álvaro Santamaría, “La Carta Franquesa de Mallorca,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 17 (1987): 219. See also Antonio Planas Rosselló, “La Creación notarial en el reino de Mallorca (ss. XIII–XVIII),” Memòries de la Reial Acadèmia Mallor­ quina d’Estudis Genealògies, Heràldics i Historics 15 (2005): 101–13; and Antonio Planas Rosselló, “La condición estamental de los notarios en la Mallorca del Antiguo Régimen,” Memòries de la Reial Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis Genealògies, Heràldics i Historics 14 (2004): 77–92. For an excellent discussion of the function of the public notariate see Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary Carto­ graphies: Passion and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), esp. 27. Antoni Mas i Forners, Esclaus i catalans: Esclavitud i segregació a Mallorca durant els segles XIV I XV (Palma: Muntaner, 2005), 49. Studies of widowhood in Iberia reflect the difficulty in discerning the freedom of, or dangers facing, widows. In her study of notarial documents in Zaragosa, Huesca, Teruel, Calatayud, and Daroca, Maria del Carmen Garcia Herrero noted that widows were one of the most deprived social groups, and yet were often recognized in the law as “powerful women” (señoras poderosas). “Viudad foral y viudas Aragonesas a finales de la Edad Media,” Hispania LIII/2, num. 1984 (1993): 431–50. Marie Kelleher points out that widows in the Crown of Aragon were “legally assumed to be poor and miserable persons,” and her dis­ cussion of widows serves as an important corrective to assumptions that their status afforded them personal freedom and economic facility. The Measure of Woman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 62. For an essay placing the post-Black Death era of slavery in a broad chrono­ logical context see Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, “Empire, Monotheism and Slavery in the Greater Mediterranean Region from Antiquity to the Modern Era,” Past and Present 205 (November 2009): 3–40, esp. 33–4. ARM 2417 143v–144r. Unfortunately, Ponc’s sale to Guillermina is incomplete, and does not include the price for Aramis. Francesc Oliveri was a broker/auc­ tioneer (curritoris rerum de collo), a profession which would have put him in con­ tact with slaves and slave owners. Ponc was described as habitator of the Ciutat. A small number of slaves in Mallorcan protocols are described by color, espe­ cially from the 1360s, but there is not yet enough data to draw any conclusions about race and servitude on Mallorca. The color of slaves, like the color of live­ stock and cloth, seems to be more a description of the merchandise than a marker of the inherent qualities of the enslaved person. As A.R. Bridbury noted, it was not until the second wave of the Black Death that labor shortages and under population began to be keenly felt in England, an observation that can be applied to the Crown of Aragon. A.R. Bridbury, “The Black Death,” Economic History Review 2nd Ser., 26 (1973): 557–92. Roser Salicrú i Lluch has called for a rethinking of the cause-and-effect relationship of plague and slave acquisition, arguing that slave owners may have been reacting more to the salary demands of the free labor force than the shortage of labor itself. “L’esclau com a inversió? Aprofitament, assalariament i rendibilitat del tre­ ball esclau en l’entorn català tardomedieval,” Recerques 52, no. 53 (2006): 56.

126 Kevin Mummey

10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Fernando Zulaica Palacios’ study tends to support Salicrú’s assertion. He described the last quarter of the fourteenth century as a “golden age” for labor in the Crown of Aragon, where rising wages kept ahead of raising prices. “Evo­ lución de los precios y salarios Aragoneses entre 1300–1430,” Aragón en la Edad Media 12 (1995): 133–7. ARM 2415 243v. Francesca bought Maria from Pere Verell. Wet nurses were becoming increasingly valuable during the plague, and sex workers could create income for their owners. Both forms of exploitation are discussed in Kevin Mummey, “Women and Chains: Women, Slavery, and Community in Late Four­ teenth-Century Mallorca” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2013). ACM 14590 141v. The fact that minors could conduct transactions without guarantors may have been a by-product of the plague which left younger people without the kin that would customarily have acted in that capacity. Cormac Ó Gráda, alternatively notes that in some instances, historically, selling slaves was a means of reducing expenses by ridding their households of unwanted mouths to feed. Famine: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 56–7. From my sources, there are a few examples in the protocols of women acquiring infants in what very much appear to be adop­ tions, but the personal motives of the actors are not outlined. My thanks to the reader for bringing Ó Gráda to my attention. ACM 14687 168v–169r. While contracts varied, 8 to 10 pennies per work day was a more typical pay rate. ACM 14590 159r–160v. ARM P142 132r–132v. ARM 2415 254v. Cali’s case raises the question of how slaves learned about work-release arrange­ ments. Were they imposed on them by masters, or did they learn about them from other slaves? Onofre Vaquer Bennàssar, L’Esclavitud a Mallorca, 1448–1500 (Mallorca: IEB, 1997), 79. ACM 14596 28r-v. It is possible in these instances of cooperation between wid­ owed and married women that they are related, but these contracts do not indi­ cate family ties. ACM 14604 194r. ACM 14604 161v–162r. Also see ARM 254v (above, 189), where the widows Elisenda and Magdalena received 32 and 20 pounds, respectively, of a 52-pound price for their slave. ACM 14606 6v. ACM 14590 67v. Gabriel Llompart Moragues, “El albergue de Real Pere en la Ciutat de Mallor­ ques (1383),” BSAL 50 (1994): 121. unum servum sardum vocatum Iohannes quem domina Nicholaueta uxor dicti quondam Regalis Petri asserit esse suum. ARM 2415 109r. Also see ARM 2420 7v–8r, where Hanina, the widow of Isaach Hatheu and her daughter-in-law Flor, bought the Saracen Missouda from the slave trader Berengar Ferrar for 28 pounds. ARM 2415 196r. Saurimonda and Agnes may have been sisters-in-law, though this is not explicit in the contract. Pere was obligated to pay forty pounds, and Agnes the other twenty. ACM 14609 19v–20r. ACM 14607 22v. Women also acted in concert with siblings. In the summer of 1385, Caterina, the wife of Jaume sa Coma, and her brother Nicolau Siurana sold the Tartar Magdalena for 50 pounds. Magdalena had come to the siblings from the

Measuring the margins 127

32 33

34

35 36 37

38

39

40 41 42

43

44 45 46

estate of their mother Estefania, the widow of Antoni sa Coma. ARM P143 70 r-v. The sisters Agnes and Guillemina, daughters of the late Arnau Botin, pooled their capital to buy the enslaved Xorane from Bernat Oliver. ARM 2415 251 r-v. ARM 2420, 27r. Rena Van der Bergh, “Roman Women: Sometimes Equal and Sometimes Not,” Fun­ damina: A Journal of Legal History 12, (2006): 1. See also J.A. Crook, “Feminine Inadequacy and the Senatus consultum Velleianum,” in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1986), 86. Kelleher, The Measure, 58. In contrast, Crook has concluded the SCV “can be seen as part of a continuous and uninterrupted line of Roman male attitudes about the infirmitas sexus muliebrus that resulted in the continuous and conspicuous lack of emancipation of Roman women,” Crook, “Feminine Inadequacy,” 90. Kelleher, The Measure, 58. Van der Bergh, “Roman Women,” 113n 4. Linda Guzzetti, “Women in Court in Early Fourteenth-Century Venice,” in Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property, and Law in the Wider Mediterra­ nean (ca. 1300–1800), ed. Jutta Gisela Sperling and Shona Kelly Wray (New York: Routledge, 2010), 51–66. Marie Kelleher argues the revival of the SCV can be traced to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when civilian and canonist jurists “affirmed a wife’s implied claim on her husband’s personal goods equal to the amount of her dowry, trous­ seau, and dower, along with the general principle that she was her husband’s pri­ mary creditor.” “Hers by Right: Gendered Legal Assumptions and Women’s property in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 44. The Siete Partidas required women to “waive the defense which the law permits to women not to have the power to bind themselves to others … otherwise men might hesitate to do business with her,” Las Siete Partidas, Vol. Four, ed. S.P. Scott and Robert I. Burns (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), Title 16, Law 4, 1285. All women are grouped with “vile persons” and minors under twenty-five as those who cannot sign for others. Costums de Tortosa, ed. J. Massip i Fonollosa (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 1996), 388, Book 8, Rubric 6. Kelleher, The Measure, 77. Martha C. Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1350 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), vii. Also cited in Grace Coolidge, “‘Neither dumb, deaf, nor destitute of understanding’: Women as Guardians in Early Modern Spain,” The Sixteenth Cen­ tury Journal (2005): 675. Jewish widows in the Crown of Aragon seem to have been different. In her study of Jewish guardianship in thirteenth-century Perpignan, Rebecca Lynn Winer suggested “the Christian community seems to have trusted its women to act independently, whereas the Jewish community circumscribed its widows’ actions by encouraging them to function as part of a group.” “Family, Community, and Motherhood: Caring for Fatherless Children in the Jewish Com­ munity of Thirteenth-Century Perpignan,” Jewish History 16, no. 1 (2002): 26. It should be noted that the SCV did not always accompany a woman’s participation as a guarantrice. The tailor Pere Ginestar acknowledged a 56-pound debt to Domina Bondo, widow of the Jew Cassim Solomon. She pledged her goods, but there is no mention of the SCV, nor is she explicitly mentioned as fideiutrice. ACM 51v–52r. ACM 14596 63r. ACM 14607 32r. Antonio Ortega Villoslada, “El trabajo femenino en Mallorca,” 462. Women acting as proxies for their husbands appears quite frequently in the protocols.

128 Kevin Mummey

47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63

64

See for example ACM 14589 91v, where Ramón Marti named his wife Bartolo­ mena as procuratrice for his affairs. In some cases, it is not made clear why the woman is being given legal authority, as when the magister Jaume Aymit transferred legal competence to his wife Francolina. She was given authority over his real and movable property, his debts and credits, and was ordered to sell his slaves for “whatever price she sees fit.” ARM P142 125v. For the role of women as proxies see Guzzetti, “Women in Court,” 52–3. ACM 14606 101r. ARM P142 129r–129v. Bonviatge appears in the notarial record four years after he was sold to Rovire (see below). ACM 14640 369v–370r. As per Berengar’s testament, Caterina absolved Pere Guars and Pericon from any legal or financial responsibility regarding the acqui­ sition of the slave’s services. ACM 14596 38r. ACM 14604 98v–98v. ACM 14604 98v–99r. ARM P142 135v–136r. ACM 14604 177v and 205r–v. Clistendis gave Caterina unum ralpertorium de burdo, unum parlintiaminum, uno transuperio, una pau massiun et una pau [man­ terperos?] Freed Greeks were also involved in the marital affairs of their family members. In the fall of 1370 Joan Casseli borrowed 30 pounds from his fellow freed Greek Nicolau Serra for the dowry of Caterina, who is described as Joan’s consanguine. ACM 14606 189v. Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth Century Valencia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 146, and for her discussion on slave marriages 143–7. While I agree with Blumenthal, notarial protocols provide circumstantial evidence that some of these relationships were characterized by genuine affection. ACM 14596 51v–52r. ARM P143 183v–184v. Arena was sold for sixty pounds, a surprising sum given that Greek slavery was becoming problematic in the late 1380s. ARM P143 143v–144v. For Bonviatge, see above, 198. The postscripts were cus­ tomarily added to the protocol in a miniature cursive, in order to fit them between the spaces of previously made entries. ACM 14607 111r. ARM P143 192v–193. Earlier in the decade Caterina leased a domos in Ste. Eulalia parish. ARM 132r–v. Blank pages are 133r–v. There are many examples of incomplete entries in the protocols that have obscured the extent of female activity. ARM 142 129v, for example, contains the enticing header “Sit omnibus notum q[uod] ego Caterina olim serva Constantia,” at which point the entry stops. Smail, Imaginary Cartographies, 25.

8

The marginality of clerics’ concubines in the Middle Ages A reappraisal Roisin Cossar

The women who lived as “concubines” with supposedly celibate clerics in medieval Western Europe have long been considered marginal, reflecting both their social and legal vulnerability and their obscurity in the historical record.1 From the eleventh century onward, such women did not have the legal standing of wives within the Latin Christian church. Ecclesiastical commentators also treated the women with increasing contempt in that period. Furthermore, records of episcopal visitations and priests’ testaments from the later Middle Ages tend to conceal the women’s individual identities, often labeling them simply “the priest’s concubine.” But scholars have too often enabled the marginalization of clerics’ concubines by ignoring or downplaying their significance in the clerical household. Critical engagement with descriptions of the women in medieval ecclesiastical records, along with careful reading of both scholarship and historical sources in which the women appear, suggests that they were both less vulnerable and more visible within their communities than has been assumed. Questioning conventional narratives about the marginality of clerical concubines in Latin Christendom rehabilitates the women as historical subjects, denaturalizes the concept of marginality, and underlines the role of archives as active participants in shaping scholarly understandings of the past. This chapter has two parts. In the first, I examine and evaluate how medieval ecclesiastical authorities drew on marginalizing language to break intimate ties between clerics and women, and I explore how modern scholarship has contributed to a view of clerical concubines as marginal. In the second part, I model an alternative view of concubines as active members of their households and communities, drawing on research from northern and central Italy to trace the complex roles for women living in clerics’ households during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Clerical concubines between church reform and modern scholarship A growing emphasis on the need for clerics to remain “continent,” that is, to avoid sexual relationships, marked the development of the Latin Christian church in the first millennium. This model permitted clerics to

130 Roisin Cossar live with women, including their wives, sisters, and mothers, as long as they avoided sexual activity.2 After 1000, when the papacy embarked on “reform” of Christian institutions, including a more heightened emphasis on the separation of clerical and lay status, church officials made the oftenambiguous relationships between clerics and their female cohabitants a focus of their concern. When viewed closely, the content of these reforms was never completely congruent. The decrees of church councils and synods and the writings of church reformers targeted women in two main ways. First, these sources employed ever-harsher labels to refer to them. Second, church officials sought to enact stricter regulations on the women’s behavior and activities. A look at the fragmentary records from before 1000 suggests that women were a frequent, but controversial, presence in clerical households.3 For example, during the early Middle Ages, unmarried women sometimes lived in the households of male ascetics. These women, known as agapetae or subintroductae, prayed alongside their spiritual mentors within their households.4 They were not always welcome there. The 325 Council of Nicea “absolutely” forbade women “brought in to live with” priests unless they were closely related or “above suspicion.”5 As well, many of the women living in cleric’s households were their wives, but these couples were expected to cease their sexual involvement upon ordination. Living chastely, both members of these couples could celebrate the sacraments.6 After the turn of the first millennium, women’s roles in clerical households became a subject of greater interest to some theologians. For instance, in some of his eleventh-century writings, the monastic moralist Peter Damian emphasized the women’s sexual power over their clerical companions. Historians have been drawn to Damian’s writing against clerics’ female partners, perhaps because it was so dramatic and colorful.7 For instance, Anne Llewellyn Barstow discusses passages in which Damian accused women of sexual depravity and of luring priests away from the right moral path. Barstow notes how Damian described the women who lived with priests as “vipers full of madness” who “snatch away the unhappy men from their ministry of the sacred altar … that [they] may strangle them in the slimy glue of [their] passion.”8 Other moralists, in sermons and treatises, similarly described the women married to or living with clerics as sexually depraved and materialistic. Historian Hugh Thomas describes the words of Gerald of Wales, who feared that women’s desires for material objects for the comfort of their homes and raising of their children would cause priests to direct ecclesiastical property away from the church and toward their dependents.9 Instead of sexualizing the women, as Peter Damian did, bishops in the eleventh and twelfth centuries continued to describe them using the traditional labels of “wives and concubines.”10 But while a label such as concubina was certainly less poisonous than “viper,” its meaning was far from neutral, since those identified with this term had access to fewer

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 131 freedoms than legitimately married women.11 The strictures placed on concubine altered from one time and place to another, but for centuries, lay concubines were required to be faithful sexual partners while being denied the status of a wife (uxor).12 That is, identifying a laywoman as a concubina established expectations on her moral life, especially the wifely requirements of sexual fidelity and constancy, while allowing her only a limited version of the legal protections enjoyed by an uxor. During the twelfth century, canonists took an active role in seeking to change the structure of clerical households by requiring the expulsion of women who were not their blood kin from those households. Canon 7 of the First Lateran Council in 1123 forbade clerics in major orders – that is, priests, deacons, or subdeacons – from sharing their homes with their own “wives and concubines.”13 Followed literally, this decree would require priests to expel women from their homes. The punishments for cohabitation between priests and women were extended further at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Canons 6 and 7 of the Council required clerics who had taken wives or concubines to set them aside and perform penance for the sin of marrying. No member of the faithful was to hear them say masses, and they would lose their benefices if they did not comply.14 Helen Parish argues that the sixteen years between the two Lateran councils marked “the real turning point in the history of clerical marriage,” since by the later date a man’s ordination dissolved his previous marriage, turning that relationship into an illicit union and potentially making children born to the couple illegitimate.15 Seen from the point of view of the clergy this was so, but the first Lateran council had already placed the women’s living situations under threat. The statements from the Lateran councils were notable for their increasing harshness, but at this stage in the history of the church, the church as an institution had not agreed on one set of attitudes to clerical concubines. Importantly, unlike monastic writers, the first two Lateran councils had not portrayed women living with priests in overtly sexual terms. However, a more coherent attitude to clerical concubines emerged in the later twelfth-century church, when ecclesiastical officials began to mimic earlier monastic reformers by using language referring to women living with priests as sexual temptresses. By the third meeting of the Lateran council in 1179, canonists used the term mulierculae (“little women”) to refer to the women living with priests.16 This pejorative diminutive had long been used to refer to prostitutes or women in illicit sexual relationships and is often translated as “mistress.” The use of such terminology was not likely a response to real change in women’s behavior; that is, they had not suddenly started behaving more immorally. Instead, by defining the women’s previously acceptable lives as immoral, church officials defined their presence in the household as less acceptable to the community as a whole.17 In the early-thirteenth century, canonists continued to bewail the problem of clerical immorality, but their tactics with regard to the women living with the clergy changed again. Officials ceased naming the women at all. In the

132 Roisin Cossar canons of the large and influential Fourth Lateran Council, from 1215, we find penalties for “clerical incontinence” which do not name the groups with whom clerics practiced that incontinence.18 While a shared general attitude to clerical concubines as a group was evident in these records, regional synods and individual jurists in the thirteenth century sometimes proposed even harsher penalties for clerical concubines. For instance, some sought to have both the women and any children born to them placed in servitude once they had been expelled from their households, despite the fact that Justinian had earlier banned such penalties for lay concubines.19 Several contemporary commentators argued against the imposition of such a harsh penalty.20 Others considered treating concubines in the same way as excommunicates or heretics. For instance, a few bishops proposed requiring clerical concubines to wear identifying clothing, like prostitutes, Jews, and those accused of heresy.21 Marjorie Plummer notes that the thirteenth-century German preacher Berthold von Regensburg mooted the idea that clerics’ female companions should wear the same yellow ribbon on their clothing as Jews and prostitutes.22 And Michelle Armstrong-Partida describes the midfourteenth-century Cortes at Valladolid, where officials stated that concubines should be identified by a “red linen clasp on their veils.”23 The attempt to physically marginalize clerics’ companions can also be seen in the actions of an episcopal official in France, who sought to restrict access to the purification ceremony of “churching” for the women who lived with and bore children to priests across the West. Paula Rieder examines how churching in France during the thirteenth century was designed to mark out “legitimately married women” from their peers who were not “proper wives.” As a part of this development, she writes, the bishop of Rouen sought to deny the purification rites of churching to the female companions of priests in statutes from the 1230s. His actions placed the women visibly outside the ranks of their female contemporaries whose marriages were defined as legitimate.24 Just as heretics and sometimes excommunicates were marked out in life with identifying clothing and by limited access to conventional church services, in death they were restricted from burial alongside their Christian contemporaries.25 A few enthusiastic proponents of church reform similarly called for the burial of priests’ concubines in unconsecrated ground. In his reforming zeal, the energetic early-thirteenth-century cardinal-bishop and papal legate to Spain, John of Abbeville, wrote that the deceased concubines of the clergy should be buried in a “grave of asses.”26 This practice, also called “donkey burial,” was probably linked to a tradition first described in Jeremiah 22:19. That passage describes the burial of heretics, who were either to be thrown out of the walls of the city or buried upright so that their souls could not rest. In both instances, their bodies were not to be placed in coffins.27 While such burial practices for clerics’ concubines are rarely noted in records from individual dioceses during the

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 133 Middle Ages – John of Abbeville’s enthusiasm for reform was not universally shared among the clergy – Christopher Daniell notes that the one set of statutes from Winchester in the thirteenth century similarly stipulated that concubines could not be buried in consecrated ground.28 And just as individual theologians and church officials proposed a range of solutions to the “problem” of clerical concubines, the language some officials used to refer to the women living with priests also became more varied in the period after 1200. Notably two terms, focaria and ancilla, can be found in the records of some thirteenth- and fourteenth-century inquisitors and episcopal visitors to refer to the women in priests’ households. Both had their origins in servility. Focaria had been formerly used to refer to the kitchen maids of Roman soldiers, who were often assumed to be the soldiers’ sexual partners, and accordingly the term associated the women with the most lowly domestic servants.29 Ancilla was the name for a female domestic servant or slave, and its evocation of enslavement and domestic drudgery in reference to priest’s companions was likely intentional.30 Many unmarried women seeking to make a living turned to domestic work, and priests often employed women to do these jobs. Just as Roman focariae were understood as servile and sexual, so too were the servants of priests described with this label by those seeking to minimize the women’s legal status.31 The linguistic and legal strategies implemented at the highest levels of the Christian church put powerful pressure on clerics to set aside their female companions. But the relationship between these strategies and the actions of bishops in their dioceses after 1200 merits consideration, since bishops had to manage relationships with their clerics over long periods of time and therefore might have been inclined more to moderation than their superiors.32 Here, too, we find clerical concubines treated in a variety of ways. Certainly bishops often followed their superiors in seeking to restrict the women’s legal status, ensuring that they could not be treated as priests’ legitimate wives. The most common action that episcopal officials visited on women was expulsion from their households. Episcopal officials often threatened to expel women from priests’ households as the punishment for the “discovery” of illicit relationships. For instance, bishops’ registers from the Italian cities of Padua and Treviso in the fourteenth century, and Ferrara and Como in the fifteenth century, contain records in which concubinary clerics were instructed to expel women from their houses, towns, or even dioceses.33 While the instruction to expel the women was common, it is not often clear that clerics acted on these instructions and forced their domestic companions to leave their residences. And if they did, they might welcome the women back again. James Palmer has identified ceremonies in Rome in which priests’ female companions were expelled from their residences at the instigation of bishops. He questions whether those highly public ceremonies were a “sincere act” or “pro forma theater,” since in several cases women expelled as concubines could later be found

134 Roisin Cossar working in the clerics’ houses as servants.34 Those women who were subject to actual expulsion also experienced that differently. In Catalunya and parts of Italy, concubines might marry laymen once their relationships had ended.35 In other places, the women fade from view in the records and their fates are less well-known. Still, even if expulsion was more for show than real, there was a difference between overly enthusiastic reformers’ calls to bury unnamed women in unmarked graves (a practice which likely never took place) and threats of expulsion leveled at individual women from their homes. The latter punishment was enacted to the extent that specific individuals were identified for expulsion in visitation records after they were “discovered” to have been living in illicit relationships. Even if they were never actually forced to leave their homes, or if, as Palmer suggests, they were allowed to return, the vulnerability and fear that these acts would have caused can be easily imagined. These were powerful and dramatic attempts to isolate clerical concubines, but despite the claims of modern historians that attempts to treat the wives in priests’ houses as entirely distinct from their contemporaries in the lay community were a “remarkable” success, they did not result in the large-scale disappearance of women from priests’ households.36 In recent decades, historians have identified significant numbers of women living with priests in England, Iberia, Italy, and elsewhere. To date, no record from any of these sites indicates that the women were actually forced to wear identifying clothing or denied churching or conventional burial rituals, and it is certainly possible that in many communities they lived quietly and happily with their long-term clerical companions. But this does not mean the women were not vulnerable. Within the Christian community, the women who lived with priests as their intimate companions were subject to significant legal pressures. Even if they did not argue for their enslavement, by gradually embracing labels for the women that were usually used to describe sexually deviant, servile, or heretical groups, and by destabilizing their domestic relationships with threats of expulsion, Christian officials and jurists created a chilly climate for the women living with priests and other clergy. The late-medieval Christian view of concubines as a problematic and annoying aspect of clerical culture was paralleled by scholarly attitudes to the women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars in that period declined to engage with the women’s lived experience, framing this attitude as either a problem with sources or the correct definition of historical enquiry. For instance, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, influential historians who emphasized the vulnerability and lack of autonomy of clerics’ concubines regularly ignored or downplayed women’s contributions to clerical households. The American scholar Henry Charles Lea’s venerable study of clerical celibacy is an example of such work.37 Lea presented the women who shared priests’ residences as victims of the “artificial … system of morality” of the medieval church.38 He saw the institutional church as particularly adept at containing and discrediting

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 135 the women after the reforms of the eleventh century.39 But while he was sympathetic to the plights of clerics’ female companions, Lea largely ignored their experience as historical subjects. This neglect was in part a reflection of the types of sources he employed in his work; these comprised prescriptive materials such as statutes and the records of church councils and synods, documents that were not concerned with specific women’s experience.40 Since he apparently did not read sources in which women were named, Lea rarely discussed individual women in his work. Scholarship in the twentieth century continued to elide the lived experience of clerics’ concubines as a subject for historical study, while developing the investigation of clerical marriage as a facet of church reform. For instance, in a widely cited 1956 article on clerical marriage in England, the church historian Christopher Brooke declined to investigate women’s roles in those marriages, suggesting that they consisted of “what would be regarded in any age as immorality …” and thus were not a subject for serious historical enquiry.41 Brooke’s neglect of women’s experience was the result of a confluence of factors: first, his definition of history as a discipline concerned with institutions and not with what he saw as the unchanging activities of human beings, and second, his seeming lack of interest in the lives and experiences of women, both in the past and the present.42 Brooke instead framed his study as an investigation of the issue of ecclesiastical “discipline.” In a final paragraph on “the lady’s point of view,” he acknowledged and lamented the absence of women from his study, as he pondered the “misfortune that we know so little of the class known in happier days as the ‘priestesses.’” In that paragraph he named only three women, one of whom was Heloise.43 Brooke’s scholarly and political perspectives shaped his view of the women living in clerical households and made them marginal to his analysis and thus to the historical narrative. Such perspectives continue to shape some ecclesiastical history today, as we see in a recent erudite study of the clergy in the medieval world which defines the “immediate families” of clergy as their natal families, consisting of their fathers, mothers, and siblings. While the study notes the possibility that clerics themselves could also be fathers, it barely mentions the women who gave birth to those cleric-fathers’ children.44 These approaches to the history of the clerical family sideline the experience and the contributions of women. More recent historiography on the clergy has challenged earlier scholarly views by drawing on a wider range of sources and thus making more room for women and indeed a more broadly defined clerical household and family.45 This scholarship is influenced by the approaches of social history, that is, a focus on specific people in their regional contexts and the use of a range of source material that allows a view of society from the “bottom up.”46 Some modern studies of clerical households and women have also responded to Marie Kelleher’s early call to investigate concubines not as “secondary elements in questions of clerical discipline,” but as historical subjects in their

136 Roisin Cossar own right.47 For instance, in several recent publications, Michelle ArmstrongPartida has made detailed examination of clerics’ relationships with women in Iberian communities, describing individual examples of women living peaceably with their clerical companions.48 She also argues that the women’s work played an essential role in allowing the clerical household to survive.49 Armstrong-Partida explains the phenomenon of Spanish clerical concubinage as the result of the independence of the church on the Iberian Peninsula, arguing that it was a “custom entrenched in Iberian society.”50 While a wider variety of sources can bring new historical figures to light, scholars still need to be aware of the potential pitfalls that accompany empirical readings of such sources. For instance, newer scholarship often marshals information about clerics and their companions from records of pastoral visitations, in some cases working from relational databases to manage the large volume of data extracted from these records.51 Such an approach gives us a broad view of the possible numbers of domestic relationships involving clerics. Michelle Armstrong-Partida acknowledges the problems with analyzing visitation records in this way, including a lack of information about how carefully visitors worked and the irregular nature of visitations, especially to areas outside urban centers.52 In addition, such analysis can elide factors behind the creation of visitation records which might shape the presentation of figures within those records. Descriptions of clerical couples in visitation and court records were not designed to depict the clerical household “as it really was.” The desire of bishops and other officials to appear both powerful and merciful played a role in shaping the content of such records. For instance, in Italian visitation records, bishops advocated for the use of harsh measures to discipline concubinary clerics and their female partners, and in those same texts, they used pejorative language to refer to the women themselves. However, in practice, many Italian bishops allowed their local clerics to cohabit with women as long as the couples lived quietly. Showing mercy after having articulated such displeasure allowed bishops to express the power of their office.53 We should not therefore assume that visitation records, or any other text in which women appear, simply depict the “real” lives of women in their communities. Since descriptions of women as morally threatening or disorderly allowed officials to articulate their power, the status of women described in these records might be more a function of the type of record in which they appear rather than their actual experience.

Concubines in Italy In the second section of this chapter, I turn to examples of individual women who were identified as the concubines or companions of clerics in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exploring changing facets of their lives over time. Aspects of these women’s experiences certainly made them among the more vulnerable and thus apparently marginal members of their communities.

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 137 For instance, they were likely poorer than their clerical companions, and they were always at the mercy of neighbors and others who might denounce them to episcopal authorities. However, in other ways, these women were neither vulnerable nor isolated. For example, they could be well-known figures who enjoyed strong connections to community networks, particularly of other women. Their involvement in their local economies is particularly noteworthy. In addition, if the women were ostracized from their communities for their sexual involvement with priests, that status was not necessarily permanent. Notably, their status could improve in their older age. The women’s documented activities reinforce the notion of the archive as memory maker, since in crucial moments their legal and archival identities diverged from their social experiences.54 The origins and background of women who came to live with clerics in Italy as their companions is difficult to ascertain, since in many records the women were simply identified as a priest’s “concubine” or “servant.” In northern Italy, perhaps the best records for women’s identities are priests’ testaments and episcopal court records created in the Venetian republic during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The women’s first names were commonly recorded in these documents, but their origins and other family connections tended to be obscured. For instance, of the more than 50 women living with priests whose names are given in Venetian clerics’ testaments from the later fourteenth century, 37 were identified simply with their first name and their work in the priest’s house, as in the case of a woman called “Dona Catherina” who “served” the priest Marcus of the church of S. Marina in 1382.55 By contrast, only 14 of the women in this group were identified with more than one name. The absence of recorded surnames for many of the women also suggests that they were of low social status.56 A few of these records indicate that some of the women living with priests in Venice came from outside the city, particularly from regions to the east, including Venetian-held areas like Mothoni, a port in the Peloponnese.57 Their status as immigrants working in domestic service also suggests that these women were of comparatively low social status, on a par with domestic servants in cities such as Florence during the same period.58 These forms of identification demonstrate that some clerics’ concubines were not from high status backgrounds and were therefore socially less powerful than their companions. But if we move beyond these documents to examine records that describe the women’s activities in their communities, we find that many occupied visible and sometimes influential roles. Some, like the women in Catalunya Michelle Armstrong-Partida describes living openly with their priestcompanions, would have been considered priests’ wives by their neighbors.59 In Italy, too, just as the wives of artisans or even professionals in their communities shared in their husbands’ work duties, the women who lived with priests might fulfill some of the responsibilities of church life. Magdelena, a fifteenth-century woman living with a Venetian archpriest (called piovano in Venetian dialect) even boasted that her companion called her the “archpriestess” (piovanessa) because of all of the assistance she provided him.60

138 Roisin Cossar Some of the women identified as clerics’ companions also engaged in income-producing work that would have both supported their households and made them prominent figures within their communities. In Venice, a woman called Marta, the former companion of a local priest, worked as a pawn broker and had professional and personal ties to women involved in medical care to the city’s inhabitants.61 Other women rented out property for income; a woman called Francesca was both the companion of a Venetian archpriest and rented rooms to tenants in a house adjoining the church.62 Clerics’ concubines in Italy and Spain also kept taverns, which served wine and food and provided convivial space for gambling, dancing, and socializing. Tavern keepers also performed other services, including moneylending and exchange or pawnbroking. The women who ran these businesses could thus be prominent figures in their local economies.63 But their domestic work would have occupied most of the women’s time and energy. Buying food for the priest’s table, washing his linen, and serving him and his companions would also have brought the women to the attention of the community at large. A dispute between a Venetian archpriest and his former servant-companion about unpaid salary saw witnesses for the woman listing the many duties that she had performed within the archpriest’s residence and church over several years. They stated that she had acted as the manager of both house and church during his absences in Rome. Some asserted that she rang the bells of the church and served as its custodian. They also described her collecting offerings from parishioners after church services and even lending money to them and to the priest himself when he came back destitute from Rome.64 Her domestic activities both inside and outside the priest’s house were well-known to her neighbors. Even those women who lived quietly with their clerical companions could be known to the community, and those who lived elsewhere but still served the priest would have been even more visible.65 In the mid-fourteenth century, several canons from the cathedral of Udine, in north-east Italy, admitted to the bishop’s representative that they had children with women who did not share their houses.66 Living apart from their companions, women would have some autonomy, even as they often continued to cook for the priests and raise their children, who could come and go from the clerical household.67 Relationships between laywomen and priests could be short or long-lived. Some women likely lived for just a few years with their companions, such as Marta, the Venetian pawnbroker, whose relationship ended when her child was still very young.68 Others stayed for decades, such as the woman from Bergamo who lived with a priest in that city for at least twenty-five years.69 In many cases, no matter how long their relationships lasted, priests often expected their companions to marry once they had been “widowed.” In preparation for this event, some priests left their companions testamentary legacies that amounted to dowries. Others made gifts of property to the women during the relationships themselves.70 A few surviving records allow

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 139 us to see that women did marry after their clerical companions died. Marta the pawnbroker, whose relationship had probably lasted only a short time, eventually married a sailor from the parish of San Vitale.71 Women with children, like Marta, might marry for financial and perhaps social support. In another instance, a Venetian woman called Agneta had a long domestic relationship, including two children, with the archdeacon Iohannes Rizzo in the 1460s. The relationship between the couple was protective. Several witnesses described how when Agneta became visibly pregnant, she would leave the cleric’s house “to protect his honor.” Despite the presumed intimacy between the pair, almost immediately after Iohannes’ death in 1470, Agneta married Ser Lucianus, son of the late Gasparus, from the contrada of San Cassiano. Her husband then attempted to retrieve from her brother a large cash settlement that the archdeacon had left for her.72 Both Marta and Agneta’s cases indicate that the women who had lived as clerics’ companions were not ostracised by their communities and could find marriage companions even later in life. Scholars have tended to focus on concubines in their child-bearing years, but attention to the women’s experience of aging provides valuable information about their status in their communities. As they aged, most couples expected that their sexual involvement would dwindle and eventually stop, even as they might continue to share a home and intimate life.73 Aging also conferred specific benefits on those women who had given birth to sons with priests. Many of those sons themselves entered the priesthood, and a woman whose son was ordained as a priest might find a new and honorable status as the “priest’s mother.”74 While most women were identified in written records as daughters or wives, and rarely in relation to their children, women identified specifically as priests’ mothers can be found in the membership lists of religious fraternities, in testaments, and in records of almsgiving in Italy and beyond.75 The status of such women was the envy of other Christian women, and they were thought to have access to a special role in Paradise.76 A woman who had been previously denigrated as a concubine might therefore find herself honored in later life alongside legitimately married women as a mother who had brought a priest into the world. Priests’ mothers often lived with and served their cleric-sons, and by and large their presence in the household was acceptable to church officials and clerics alike, no matter what the women’s previous life experience might have been. Perhaps this was in part because priests’ mothers rarely lived alongside the men’s concubines. In fact, a priest in Cortona expelled his mother from his house at the instigation of the woman who became his concubine and the mother of his child.77 Priests’ mothers were normally expected to serve as their household managers. Thus, a Venetian archpriest, describing the work performed by an older female servant in his household, told friends that she was “like a mother” to him (although admittedly he described her this way in an attempt to avoid paying her a salary).78 Priest’s

140 Roisin Cossar mothers could also act as church custodians. One Venetian woman, Agnes, worked as the custodian of the church of S. Matteo Apostolo (San Maffio di Rialto), while her adopted son (figlio d’anima) Donatus served as priest of the same church.79 But these women’s lives did not revolve entirely around their cleric-sons. Some former concubines identified as priests’ mothers in fourteenth-century Venetian testaments can also be found making independent plans in their older age. For instance, Franciscina, mother of the priest Bartolomeus Coroso, who seemingly had no husband, alive or dead, created a testament in 1370 in anticipation of undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome, apparently by herself.80 The shift in women’s status that came with their evolution as priests’ mothers suggests that while clerical concubines faced significant challenges over the course of the Middle Ages, their status was not fixed at the bottom of a social hierarchy. Instead, those women who bore children to priests could eventually move up the social ladder to a position above that of many ordinary Christian laywomen. For these women, at least, marginality was not a permanent experience.

Conclusion Revisiting both past and present attitudes to the weak and disempowered in the Middle Ages is an important project for twenty-first-century scholars. Analysis of the lived experience of clerics’ concubines serves as a striking reminder of the complexity and fluidity of the notion of marginality in the medieval past. Furthermore, contrasting what we can learn about these women in medieval records with their portrayals in modern historical analysis demonstrates that our understanding of their status has been shaped by the needs of medieval authorities, the form and content of our archives, and the perspectives of modern historians. If medievalists are to retain marginality as a category of analysis, we must interrogate the origins and development of that category in our archival records and our scholarship.

Notes 1 This chapter is inspired by recent work in which scholars reevaluate conventional ideas about marginal status in the Middle Ages. In particular, see Geraldine Heng’s discussion of Jews as “intimate aliens” on which much of the apparatus of Christian authority was based. Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 56. 2 On the important distinction between continence and ceibacy, see Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100–1700 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 3–4. Also see Michel Dortel-Claudot, “Le prêtre et le mariage: Évolution de la législation canonique des origines au XIIe siècle,” Mélanges offerts a Pierre AndrieuGuitrancourt, Tome XVII (Paris: Faculté du Driot Canonique, 1973), 319–44.

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 141 3 Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 52 and Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 33. 4 On these women in the Celtic church, see Roger Reynolds, “Virgines Subintroductae in Celtic Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 61 (1968): 547–66. 5 Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 7. Also see Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 98 n. 41. 6 On female ordination in the eastern Christian church in its early centuries, see Valerie A. Karras, “Priestesses or Priests’ Wives: Presbytera in Early Christian­ ity,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51, no. 203 (2007): 321–45. 7 See Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 95–106. 8 Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh Century Debates (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), 61. Also see Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 110–11. 9 Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2014), 32–3. Thomas also points out that some chronicles and biographies of saints created by monastic writers showed sympathy for the women. See Thomas, The Secular Clergy, 168. 10 Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 92. 11 In the words of Jennifer Thibodeaux, concubina was a term drawn from “the lan­ guage of reform.” Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 63. 12 James Brundage notes that in the Roman definition of concubina, the women had “most of the obligations, but none of the rights, of a legitimate wife.” Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 43. 13 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1: 191.

14 Ibid., 1: 198.

15 Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 104.

16 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1: 191, 217.

17 Michele Maccarone, “‘Cura animarum’ et ‘parochialis sacerdos’ nelle costituzioni

del IV concilio lateranense (1215): Applicazioni in Italia nel XIII secolo,” Pievi e Parrocchie in Italia nel Basso Medioevo (sec. XIII–XV) (Roma: Herder, 1984), 85. 18 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1: 242. 19 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 117–18. 20 On enslavement, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 475, n. 295 and 476. 21 Parish, Clerical Celibacy, 109. 22 Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation (London: Routledge, 2012), 43. 23 Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church,” Viator 40, (2009): 236. Also see Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (London: Williams and Norgate, 1907), 1: 382. 24 Paula Rieder, “The Implications of Exclusion: The Regulation of Churching in Medieval Northern France,” Essays in Medieval Studies 15 (1998): 72. Also see Paula Rieder, On the Purification of Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).

142 Roisin Cossar 25 Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 38–9. 26 Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Marriage,” 237–8; Peter Linehan, The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 30; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 476. 27 Yechiel Y. Schur, “The Care for the Dead in Medieval Ashkenaz, 1000–1500” (PhD diss., New York University, 2008), 63 argues that these burial places were in unconsecrated ground, outside churchyard, and the postures described would not allow the soul to rest. 28 Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550 (London: Routledge, 1997), 94–5. Also see references to this effect in the work of Henry Charles Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott and Co., 1867) 1: 350, and the list of legal texts on the subject in Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 476, n. 298. 29 On the use of focaria in medieval Castile, see Marjorie Ratcliffe, “Adultresses, Mistresses, and Prostitutes: Extramarital Relationships in Medieval Castile,” Hispania 67 (1984): 347. The term was also used to refer to the women living with priests in France. See Jennifer Thibodeaux, “Man of the Church or Man of the Village? Gender and the Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy,” Gender & History 18 (2006): 388, and Françoise Autrand, “Naissance illégitime et service de l’Etat: les enfants naturels dans le milieu de robe parisien XIVe–XVe siècle,” Revue Historique 267 (1982): 301. On its use in northern Italy, see Roisin Cossar, Clerical Households in late medieval Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 104. Also see the discussion of the term in Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy, 181–2 and Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 134–5. On focaria in a Roman context see Sara Elise Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 204–7. 30 Charles Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, Vols. 2–3 (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887), 532. For discussions of the meaning of ancilla, see Susan Mosher Stuard, “Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery,” Past and Present 149 (1995): 3–28. 31 On the sexual exploitation of poor women and female servants in particular, see Ruth Mazo Karras, “‘Because the Other Is a Poor Woman She Shall Be Called His Wench’: Gender, Sexuality and Social Status in Late Medieval England,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, eds. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 216–8. Elsewhere I have argued that these terms were not used in written records by clerics or the women themselves. See Cossar, Clerical Households, 105–6. 32 Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Marriage,” 223. 33 Archivio di Stato, Treviso, Notarile (ASTv), Busta 81 (de Arena), 24 July 1350. Archivio di Stato, Padova (ASPd), Notai di Curia Vescovile, Register 2, 10, 1385. On demands to expel women from priests’ houses in Ferrara during the fifteenth century, see Enrico Peverada, ed., La visita pastorale del vescovo Fran­ cesco dal Legname a Ferrara (1447–1450) (Ferrara: Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, 1982), 302, in which a woman called Lucia, the sup­ posed concubine of a cleric, was told to leave her village and the diocese of Fer­ rara and not to return there under threat of excommunication. On Como, see Elisabetta Canobbio, ed., La visita pastorale di Gerardo Landriani alla diocesi di Como (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), 146, 151 (where a priest was threatened with “perpetual imprisonment” if he continued to house a woman), 161, 166, 175, 179, 181, 186.

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 143 34 James Palmer, “Gold, Grain, and Grace: Piety and Community in Late Medieval Rome” (PhD diss., Washington University in St. Louis, 2015), 190–1. 35 Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives: The Role and Acceptance of Clerics’ Concubines in the Parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88 (2013): 210–11. On women in Ferrara marrying laymen after their relationships with clerics ended, see the records in Archivio storico diocesano di Ferrara, Doc­ umenti episcopali, Stato del clero, Clericorum disciplina (1421), 11r–23r. 36 Dyan Elliott argues that “it is uncanny how the wives contemporary with the Gregorian Reform seem to have melted away.” Elliott, Fallen Bodies, 83. 37 Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 1: 140. For work that draws on Lea’s conclusions, see, for instance, Augustin Fliche and Victor Martin, Histoire de l’Église depuis les origins jusqu’a nos jours (Bloud & Gay, 1950); Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination, 79. 38 Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 212. Also see Lea’s discussion of changing meanings of term “concubine” from medieval to modern period on pp. 230–231, n. 1. 39 Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 350. 40 The historian Edward Cutts followed Lea in showing sympathy to the women involved in these relationships, calling them “the poor wives” of the clergy, but limiting any study of the women’s specific experiences. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages in England (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1898), 412. 41 Brooke, “Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England, 1050–1200,” Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1956): 6. 42 Brooke’s unwillingness to give women a spotlight extended to the acknowledg­ ments of the essay, where he thanked his wife for her contributions to the piece but did not give her name. Her contributions included critique of an early draft of the essay and provision of “her transcripts of unprinted Norman material” to bolster the argument. See Brooke, “Clerical Marriage,” 1, n. 1. Brooke’s wife, Rosalind Brooke, was herself a medieval historian who later published important works on the Franciscans and co-authored a work with her husband on popular religion. It is notable that elsewhere in the essay Brooke gives more explicit thanks to male academics for less onerous work (in one case identifying by name the historian Richard Southern as he who “kindly lent me photostats” of a document). Brooke, “Clerical Marriage,” 17, n. 56. 43 Brooke, “Clerical Marriage,” 20. 44 Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 10, 117, 135–47. 45 Among other examples, see Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 164–171; Daniel Bornstein, “Parish Priests in Cortona,” in Preti nel medioevo, ed. Maurizio Zangarini (Verona: Cierre, 1997), 165–93; Janelle Werner, “Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 159–85, Janelle Werner, “‘Just as Priests Have Their Wives’: Priests and Concubines in England, 1375–1549” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009); Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages, esp. 115–64. 46 Postcolonial models of analysis could play a more prominent role in this work. Comparative studies such as those of Ann Laura Stoler contain valuable insights into the significance of the domestic sphere. See, for instance, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colo­ nial Studies,” The Journal of American History 88 (2001): 1–41.

144 Roisin Cossar 47 Kelleher, “‘Like Man and Wife’: Clerics’ Concubines in the Diocese of Barce­ lona,” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002): 350. But see Michelle Armstrong­ Partida’s argument that many new studies place women in the background. Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 168. 48 These include “Priestly Wives,” “Priestly Marriage,” and Defiant Priests: Domes­ tic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth Century Catalunya (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). 49 Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 168. 50 Ibid., 234, 245. 51 Ibid., 169, “Priestly Marriage,” 228–9, and Defiant Priests. 52 Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 170, and “Priestly Marriage,” 230. On gaps in time between visits, see Armstrong-Partida, “Concubinage, Clandestine Marriage, and Gender in the Visitation Records of FourteenthCentury Catalonia,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 26 (2017): 213. 53 See Krista Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 16 for an application of this concept in an early-modern context. 54 See Cossar, Clerical Households, 39–60 for more on this concept. 55 Archivio di Stato Venezia (ASV), Cancelleria Inferiore (CI), Notai, Busta 36 (Campion), 31 August 1382. 56 For a similar argument, see Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 179–80. 57 For instance, see the testament of one domina Lucia de Mothoni, a former ser­ vant of the priest Michael of S. Polo, ASV, Notarile Testamenti (NT), Busta 545 (Giuliano), #1, 8 February 1378. Another woman, Antonia de Mothoni, also served a cleric of the same church in that period. ASV, NT, Busta 832 (G. de Castiglione), 1390. 58 On Florentine servants’ origins outside the city walls, see Piero Guarducci and Valeria Ottanelli, I Servitori Domestici della Casa Borghese Toscana nel Basso Medioevo (Firenze: Salimbene, 1982), 19. 59 Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 189. 60 ASPV, Causarum ordinariorum, Busta 4, 1472–1475 (Magdalena de Iadra vs Antonio Longo, pievano S. Eustachii). 61 Marta left several bequests to these female friends and relatives in her will. See ASV, Notai, Testamenti, Busta 361 (Orlando), #5 (26 February 1379/80). 62 ASPV, Causarum ordinariorum Busta 1, 1450 (Francesca Valerio vs commissar­ ios quondam Plebani S. Moysii). 63 For an example of a cleric’s concubine keeping a tavern in Udine see Visitatio Ecclesie Capituli Utinensis, 98, 99. On a tavern kept by a cleric’s companion in Catalunya where the priest himself also worked, see Michelle ArmstrongPartida, “Priestly Wives …,” 166 and 180. Taverns not only sold food and drink and provided rooms, but were also central sites of exchange. The theo­ logian Regino of Prüm named the tabernarius as the individual who might accept liturgical (and other) objects in pawn. Roberto Bellini, “Il vino nelle leggi della Chiesa,” La civiltà del vino. Fonti, temi e produzioni vitivinicole dal Medioevo al Novecento (Brescia: Centro culturale artistico di Franciacorta e del Sebino, 2003), 414. 64 ASPV, Causarum ordinariorum, Busta 4, 1472–1475 (Magdalena de Iadra vs Antonio Longo, pievano S. Eustachii). 65 On these arrangments in England, see Werner, “Promiscuous Priests,” 169. On Catalunya, see Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly Wives,” 175. 66 As a result, the bishop forebade clerics from keeping concubines not only in their houses but elsewhere as well. For examples, see Visitatio Ecclesie Capituli Utinensis (Udine: Istituto Pio Paschini, 1984), 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51. On financial

Marginality of clerics’ concubines 145

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

support or maintenance as a commitment in records concerning Parisian clerics and their companions, see Karras, Unmarriages, 159. For a letter prohibiting concubines from living with clerics or in other houses, see Archivio di Stato Udine, Notarile, Busta 5125 (Articuzio), 15 July 1377. Visitatio Ecclesie Capituli Utinensis, 85. Cossar, Clerical Households, 116–8. Ibid., 121. Ibid., 106, 111–2, 142. Ibid., 116. ASPV, Causarum ordinariorum, Busta 4, 10 July 1470 (domina Agneta soror venerabile viri domini presbiteri Iacobi Berengo plebani SS Apostoli vs Iacobo Berengo). Some priests appeared to believe that these intimate but not sexual relationships were no longer sinful. Certainly they reported them freely to bishops during vis­ itations. Cossar, Clerical Households, 90. On dispensations for the illegitimate sons of priests entering clerical orders in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Cossar, Clerical Households, 76. Cossar, Clerical Households, 121–2. Antonio Rigon, Clero e Città: Fratalea Cappellanorum, parroci, cura d’anime in Padova dal XII al XV secolo (Padova: Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Pado­ vana, 1988), 98–9. Noemi Meoni, “Visite Pastorali a Cortona nel Trecento,” Archivio Storico Ita­ liano 129 (1971): 196. ASPV, Causarum ordinariorum, Busta 1, 1450 (Domina Francisca Valerio vs commissarios quondam Plebani S. Moysii). In her 1366 testament, she named him as one of her two fideicommissaries. ASV, CI, Notai, Busta 186 (S. di San Giacomo dall’Orio), 6 April 1366. Adop­ tive parents were quite common in Venice, with another priest, Philipus from the church of Santi Gervasio e Protasio (San Trovaso), naming his adoptive mother Clara as one of his fideicommissaries in his 1376 will. ASV, NT, Busta 541 (Ferro), 24 July 1376. ASV, Notarile Testamenti, Busta 793 (D. Peresemollo), #85, 11 February 1370.

9

Reviled and revered The importance of marginality in the pastoral care of beguines Tanya Stabler Miller

In the early 1270s, the secular cleric and founder of the Sorbonne, Robert of Sorbon, paid a visit to the beguinage of Paris, a house for lay religious women founded by his friend King Louis IX sometime before 1264.1 Addressing the beguines as “mulieres sanctae,” Robert compared the beguinage to a field in which God hid his treasure (the Kingdom of Heaven).2 Here, Robert defined the beguinage as both a residence for beguines (the location of Robert’s preaching) and a “beguine” way of life or set of behaviors. According to Robert, the beguines and their male counterparts (beguins), lived lives of penance, confession, and pious exhortation. By those standards, anyone, male or female, could enter the beguinage.3 Yet, as Robert warned his audience, no one was more reviled than the beguines. Chief among the beguines’ detractors were the “great masters” who declared “Fi de beguinage! I want to be a prud’homme (or respected man) but never a beguin.”4 Quoting Matthew 11:25 (I confess to you, because you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to the little ones), Robert rebuked his fellow university masters for their ignorance of the value in the beguinage, accusing his colleagues of being too preoccupied with reason and academic debates.5 The “little ones” in the Gospel passage, Robert asserted, are the beguines, who see little value in human reason. In a series of paradoxes, Robert declared that just as the fire of caritas may mix with the waters of tribulation, the beguin, the focus of earthly derision, is esteemed in heaven while the prud’homme is despised.6 Signaling his personal preference, in spite of his status as a university master, Robert concludes by saying that he considered himself among these “little ones,” since he would rather strive to be a beguin than to be king.7 Robert’s sermon at the beguinage chapel conveys the assumption that beguines are objects of derision, but that this position, paradoxically, made them worthy of praise. In keeping with the Christian ideals of humility and self-abnegation, the term “beguine” itself, Robert claimed, was deliberately given to the women in order to spur their spiritual progress.8 Indeed, in Robert’s view, acceptance of such degradation was an essential aspect of the beguine life. Robert illustrated this point by referencing merchants who frequently covered expensive cloth with cheap, coarse coverings in order to hide its value from potential thieves. Likewise, Robert observed, God

Reviled and revered 147 obscured the value of the beguinage with contemptuous names, since if its value were well known, the women might become arrogant.9 The key to the beguines’ value was their ostensibly marginal position, a position that Robert claimed to wish upon himself and his fellow university clerics. By praising, and even embracing, beguine marginality, Robert was engaging in a kind of “symbolic reversal,” a renunciation of male power noted by Caroline Bynum in her work on medieval gender and religion.10 Indeed, Robert’s sermon at the Paris beguinage was far more than an attempt to ingratiate himself with his female audience; it was arguably aimed at his own students. Sorbonne scholars frequented the beguinage of Paris, copying sermons preached there, including Robert’s sermon comparing the beguinage to the field where God hid his treasure.11 In his sermons and treatises, Robert encouraged his students to emulate the patience and integrity of beguines, tying the secular clergy’s success as pastors to their ability to connect with female communities and capitalize on the women’s pastoral zeal. Central to Robert’s pro-beguine stance was the notion that these women patiently endured ridicule and social ostracism on account of their relentless work to convert others to a more authentically Christian life. In other words, the image of beguines as marginal for the sake of Christ was what made them crucial to the developing spiritual program of Robert’s college. By examining these relationships, this chapter will shed much-needed light on the dynamics of male–female spiritual friendships in thirteenth-century Europe, while exploring the complex notion of “marginality” in western medieval thought.

Beguines, religious movements, and reform The beguine life emerged out of the surge of lay religious enthusiasm of the late-twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Inspired by the apostolic ideals of preaching, poverty, and imitation of Christ, men and women all over Western Europe sought to enact these ideals in a range of contexts and communities.12 Charismatic lay preachers increasingly vocalized popular discontent over the clergy’s inadequate preaching and pastoral care, taking particular aim at what they viewed as their worldliness and greed. Such critiques spawned groups some clerical authorities regarded as dissident or heretical, prompting concerns over the proper religious instruction and pastoral guidance of the laity, concerns that went hand in hand with reforming efforts at the Paris schools in the 1180s and 1190s, as well as the formation of new religious orders modeled on Christ and the Apostles.13 As participants in this spiritual renewal, women looked for opportunities to live lives of piety and service. These religious women – mulieres religiosae – lived in a range of settings, formal and informal, as anchoresses, canonesses, hospital workers, or nuns. Some of these women came to be identified by the term beguina.14 A largely urban phenomenon, beguines organized into formal communities with the help of local authorities. While early scholarship on beguines claimed that the status emerged as a result of

148 Tanya Stabler Miller a male monastic-driven moratorium on female orders, recent research has demonstrated that official resistance to the incorporation of nuns did not stop women from affiliating with religious orders in practice.15 Still, not all spiritually ambitious women found a place in these orders, whether out of choice or prohibitive circumstances.16 Individual motivations being impossible to ascertain, the beguine life nevertheless offered women a flexible, and thus possibly more appealing, alternative to the cloister. Women who needed or desired to remain in the world (for religious, familial, or economic reasons) could live religious lives as beguines. Certainly, as we will see, Parisian clerics assumed that the adoption of the beguine life was a personal choice. Clerical opinion on the beguine life was clearly divided from the very beginning. According to James of Vitry (c. 1160/1170–1240), the term “beguine” was one of several “nicknames and insults” that “worldly prelates and malicious men” leveled at holy women to dissuade them from pursuing a religious life in the world.17 Based on its first appearance in medieval sources, the term beguine seems to have denoted a woman who, in spite of social disapprobation, pursued a religious life in the world.18 As self-appointed “religious” women, beguines took no formal vows and typically did not give up their personal property.19 Since they did not belong to a recognized religious order, beguines did not meet canonical definitions of properly “religious” in the strict sense of the word.20 What was essential to their beguine-ness, so to speak, was self-identity as a beguine and public recognition, in other words highly subjective and discretionary criteria. In fact, the central problem some thirteenth-century observers had with the beguine life was that women could conceivably float in and out of the beguine status via their choices, behaviors, and clothing: markers that accorded too much independence to their female wearers. The Parisian jongleur Rutebeuf (d. 1285) frequently lampooned the beguine life, noting that, to be a beguine, all one needed to do was to don a wide habit.21 What these women did beneath these habits, Rutebeuf suggestively invited observers to guess.22 In his poem “Li diz des beguines,” Rutebeuf claimed that whatever the beguine did, however mundane, one was expected to interpret her actions through the lens of piety. Moreover, by slipping between Mary (the contemplative life) and Martha (the active life), the beguine seemed to benefit unfairly from the ambiguity of her status. Worse, since her vows were not permanent, the beguine could potentially leave at any time to marry, again benefitting from the unofficial nature of her religious profession. After laying out these points, Rutebeuf hints at the resentment some Parisians may have felt toward these women, warning “But do not speak ill of her. The king will not tolerate it.”23 As Rutebeuf ’s criticisms suggest, beguines seemed to defy gendered expectations about female spirituality by their adoption of an “active” religious life that was, by its nature, publically performed.24 Beguines thus served as easy targets for clerics critical of the proliferation of religious lifestyles in the thirteenth century. The Parisian secular cleric William of

Reviled and revered 149 Saint-Amour (d. 1272), for example, referred to beguines as “silly little women” who, although able-bodied, shamefully begged for alms, deceitfully wore humble clothing, and scandalously pursued sexual relationships with their mendicant confessors.25 Beguines served as convenient weapons against William’s real targets: the mendicant orders, about whose pastoral relationships with women he hoped to raise suspicion.26 In fact, in medieval Paris, clerical observers discussed beguines within a broad range of positive comparisons and negative associations, demonstrating the multivalent purposes to which the image of the beguine could be put.27 Although many defenders of the beguine life sought to mitigate criticism by obscuring the “irregular” aspects of the status, Robert deliberately drew attention to those very qualities.28 The image of the beguine as a willingly marginal figure also found appeal in circles of clerical reformers looking to implement the pastoral aims of the Fourth Lateran Council.

Robert of Sorbon: man at the center29 Born in the Ardennes sometime around 1200, Robert possibly studied in Reims before arriving in Paris in the mid to late 1220s. Robert’s scholarly career thus coincided with the institutional growth of the university.30 Robert studied under a generation of reformers who, influenced by Peter the Chanter and his circle in the 1180s and 1190s, sought to expand the church’s preaching mission, looking to the schools to create a trained, professional clergy. In Paris, Robert gravitated toward these pastoral reformers, particularly Guiard of Laon (c. 1170-d. 1249), who was likely Robert’s master in Paris.31 Guiard’s career, while attracting relatively little attention from medieval scholars, was representative of this atmosphere of pastoral engagement. Guiard’s exceptionally lengthy regency in Paris (12 years) demonstrates his commitment to the university, in particular as a preacher and teacher.32 This commitment was matched by his pastoral work in Cambrai, where he served as bishop after a brief stint as chancellor of the university in 1236. Guiard’s diocese was at the center of a region particularly associated with the “women’s religious movement.” This was the region in which Paristrained clerics like James of Vitry (d. 1240) and Thomas of Cantimpré (d. 1272) sought, as Walter Simons has observed, to “put moral theology into practice through pastoral work,” particularly in their associations with women, who validated their teachings and served to vindicate their broader goals.33 Significantly, sermon manuscripts, hagiographic texts, and devotional treatises reveal that there existed a lively network of clerics, recluses, monks, and beguines tying this region to Paris.34 Robert secured a position as canon of Cambrai in 1238, most likely due to Guiard’s influence. There, he must have become familiar with stories of the region’s mulieres religiosae, which circulated in sermons, exempla, and spiritual treatises.35 Like his mentor Guiard, Robert embraced the idea of women as useful partners to the clergy. In a sermon preached sometime in

150 Tanya Stabler Miller the mid-1260s to a university audience, Robert praised the role that beguines could play in the pastoral care of the broader laity by relating a story about a beguine who traveled to Paris to acquire preaching aids.36 While in Cambrai, Robert spent a great deal of time at the beguinage of Cantimpré, mentioning the mistress of the Cambrai community, Isabelle of Flesquières, in several of his sermons to his students.37 It was also during Robert’s time as canon in Cambrai that he made the initial steps to establish a college for secular clerics in Paris. The Sorbonne, as Robert’s college came to be known, was a creative and original solution to the problem of the intellectual and moral formation of the secular clergy. Prior to the Sorbonne, secular clerics seeking to pursue theological study were obliged to fund their studies with an ecclesiastical benefice. Yet the practice of utilizing the funds from a benefice in another region to pursue study in Paris, while widely recognized as a necessity, left the secular clergy open to charges of absenteeism and pluralism. Although moralists at the University, including Guiard of Laon, consistently decried the practice, before the Sorbonne, there existed no easy way to resolve the inherent tensions between the need to finance theological training through parish income and the need to be resident in one’s own parish to provide pastoral care. The secular clergy were particularly eager to resolve this issue in the midthirteenth century, when conflict between the mendicant and secular clergy reignited for the second time since the friars’ arrival in Paris in 1217 (Dominicans) and 1219 (Franciscans).38 In addition to butting heads with the secular clergy over preaching authority and university membership, the friars criticized their secular colleagues as worldly, ambitious, and career-minded. With their overt commitment to poverty and preaching, moreover, the friars seemed to embody more fully the spiritual ideals of the time. As preaching orders, the mendicants also developed an effective system for training scholars, soon outcompeting secular clerics in the race for resources, students, faculty positions, and the alms of the laity. Invoking monastic critiques critical of the university, the friars accused the secular clergy of neglecting the moral formation of their students in addition to their parishes.39 Robert was not blind to the mendicants’ critiques. The nature of university life required the negotiation of different social circles and encouraged competition with other men. Students were exposed not only to the temptations of the city but were also surrounded by men who measured success in terms of personal advancement, such as ecclesiastical appointments, faculty positions, or positions in the royal court, rather than the achievement of concrete results in the parishes. University life socialized students pursuing advanced degrees into a group defined by values that were fundamentally contradictory (humility and virtue at the pulpit versus pride and dominance over others in the disputation).40 Moreover, just as the secular clergy developed requirements – such as exams and oaths – to integrate new members into the community and to determine who qualified as a “master,” it was also contending with critiques from monastic and

Reviled and revered 151 mendicant competitors, with the result that university scholars continually grappled with defining their position and the basis of their authority. These were certainly the same pressures that Robert experienced himself as a young man from the Ardennes who ended up as a clerk of King Louis IX. Robert’s sermons as well as contemporary sources provide some clues as to Robert’s efforts to negotiate the desire to fit in with the need to present himself authentically and virtuously. Significantly, Robert associated the latter position with the beguine life, which he defined as a set of observable behaviors rather than entry into a recognizable beguine community. Drawing on local perceptions of the beguines in the diocese of Cambrai as well as his own personal interactions with beguine communities, Robert developed a broad, working definition of the term “beguina” that served the pedagogical, professional, and practical goals of his college, on the one hand, while encouraging existing associations between real-life beguines and pastoral activity on the other. As we have seen in the sermon preached at the beguinage of Paris, Robert enjoyed employing multiple definitions of beguinage, which he described as both a physical location and a way of life that was open to both men and women. Such a broad definition of beguinage served as a poignant reminder that his students, like the beguines in their midst, were called to live humble lives devoted to the spiritual conversion of others, in other words, to adopt the life of the beguin. Drawing on older, negative definitions of the term beguin, Robert encouraged his students to appropriate the beguines’ image as humble and marginalized for the sake of Christ, a position, it should be said, the friars currently monopolized.41 Yet this position was ill-suited to the life of a scholar, whose claims to intellectual authority depended on his reputation and privileged position.42 Probably the best-known example of this tension between worldly esteem and humility is recorded in Jean Joinville’s Life of Saint Louis, in which Joinville relates a debate between himself and Robert of Sorbon over this very issue. Joinville reports that King Louis prompted the discussion, saying “Seneschal, give me the reasons why a preudome is better than a beguin.”43 In this debate, the “prud’homme” represented someone of esteem and good reputation.44 The beguin, while not dishonorable, was someone who eschewed honor, embracing instead an ostentatious, penitential piety that would inevitably draw criticism. As Nicole Bériou has observed, both terms refer to a way of being judged by others.45 In the debate before the king, Robert defended the beguin and Joinville advocated for the prud’homme. Without recording the details of either side’s argument, Joinville reports that the king, after hearing both men, responded Master Robert, I would dearly love to have the name of being a preudome, so long as I deserved it, and you would be welcome to the rest. For a preudome is so grand and good a thing that even to pro­ nounce the word fills the mouth pleasantly.46

152 Tanya Stabler Miller Although Joinville claims that Louis opted for honor over disdain, the many accounts of his life, especially after returning from his failed first crusade in 1254, suggest that he did not maintain that position throughout his life.47 In Robert’s view, beguines lived religious lives in the world in spite of the ridicule they attracted for their humble appearance and pious behavior. The prud’homme, on the other hand, was excessively concerned with preserving his good reputation. The beguin’s publicly observable piety, deemed immoderate or sanctimonious, attracted disdain, yet the beguin steadfastly endured mockery in order to bring about the conversion of others. To the beguin, the Kingdom of Heaven – for himself and for his fellow Christians – was far more important than earning and preserving the admiration of others. As suggested in various accounts of King Louis’s life, several observers – including his wife – regarded the king’s devotional practices with some embarrassment.48 As king, Louis may have been a prud’homme. As a would-be saint, however, Louis adopted the manner of the beguin. Indeed, Louis’s personal affinity for the “marginal” image of the beguine life, as well as his friendship with Robert of Sorbon, may have inspired him to establish a court beguinage just inside the northeastern walls of Paris sometime in the early 1260s.49 In fact, the Paris beguinage seems to have coalesced as an institution in tandem with the Sorbonne.

Marginality and the poor masters of the Sorbonne Identifying the lack of institutional support as the root of the secular clergy’s problems, Robert’s goal for his college was to promote the interrelated virtues of collegiality, morality, and effective preaching, which he enforced through the college’s statutes and reinforced via sermons and collations given at the college.50 In his sermons to students, Robert expressed deep concerns over peer pressure, as well as the significant familial and social expectations that shaped young men who came to Paris seeking personal advancement and social mobility. Describing his foundation as a house for “poor masters” (magistri pauperes), Robert emphasized humility, poverty, and collegiality, pushing a clerical model of masculinity centered on pastoral care rather than mastery of others in academic exercises such as the disputation.51 In his many sermons and treatises aimed at students, Robert drew on his own experiences navigating the contradictory pulls of personal professional advancement and the broader needs of the church in order to construct a clerical masculinity that would garner respect for the secular clergy in the parishes. It was not a masculinity concerned exclusively with chastity (although he did address the topic in his penitential treatises), but it was defined by self-control more broadly in that it put a premium on courage and integrity in the face of social pressures to pursue worldly ambition, honor, and status.52 For Robert, beguines exemplified steadfast acceptance of social marginalization for the sake of Christ.

Reviled and revered 153 The tension between worldly regard and inner virtue is a consistent theme in Robert’s sermons and treatises. Concerned with pastoral care, Robert asserted that a man showed his true commitment to his work by shunning the flattery of others. Flatterers were those who sought to curry favor with others for the sake of their own personal advancement, despite the dangers posed to their own soul and those of others.53 Indeed, Robert frequently criticized the reluctance with which men were willing to show their religious commitment via externals because they feared the loss of status or social admiration. This contempt for lack of resolve is evident in one of Robert’s frequent complaints about those who behave piously around beguines but then shift into secular pursuits, dress, and demeanor when they find themselves around worldly folks.54 Such people, Robert observed, might receive praise for their ability to get along with all types of people, but they are not to be trusted. Students ought to let their virtue shine through at all times, wear humble clothing, and not to be ashamed to attend sermons, confess their sins, and exhort others to do the same. Indeed, the good secular cleric should not shrink from ostentatious, public displays of piety, even if such displays might attract ridicule and charges of showboating or attention-seeking. In one amusing anecdote, Robert relates the story of a man who was so determined to stick to his resolve to live a virtuous life that he dramatically shaved off all of his hair. When reprimanded by a cleric for making such a show of his conversion, the man explained that the visible sign of his conversion – that is, the shaved head – served as a solid wall (murum fortem) between himself and any future temptation to go back to his old life, since if he failed to live up to his resolve, his friends and acquaintances would recount the drama of his conversion and shame him for his relapse.55 Responsibility for others was an essential component of Robert’s pastorally oriented program. Recognizing that many students were embarrassed to call out their sinful comrades, Robert declared in one sermon that, when a brother’s house is on fire, it is not “debonair” to look the other way.56 Likewise, men should not hesitate to call one another out on a lack of virtue, even if it meant a loss of popularity. Robert’s sermons and treatises shed light on some of the peer pressures experienced in the schools of Paris. In one sermon, Robert notes with disapproval that students hail their friends who go along with the crowd to the local taverns and brothels as “good friends.” The truly “good” friends are those who reprimand their colleagues for such wickedness. Yet these men, Robert laments, receive only social ostracism in return for what we might call their “tough love.”57 Significantly, many of Robert’s sermons and moral treatises focus on the need for students to not only resist peer pressure to sin but proactively take the unpopular position of goading others toward reform. In a sermon preached sometime in the 1260s, Robert berated those who hide their virtue for the sake of fitting in with the crowd, likening this behavior to spiritual theft (furtum spirituale).58 In another sermon, Robert

154 Tanya Stabler Miller responds to those who express fear of mockery for public displays of virtue by reminding them that Christ also suffered ridicule. Like Christ, all good Christians should be willing to endure the hatred and scorn of the crowd.59 In all of these sermons, Robert offered beguines as the ideal model of piety since they worked assiduously for the conversion of others in spite of ridicule and social ostracism. Not content with being humble, beguines invited public scorn through their efforts to convert others to live lives of virtue. Secular clerics, seen the other hand, were particularly sensitive to social pressures. Without what Robert perceived as the protective bubble of the religious order – with its rules, papal protections, and reputation – secular clerics needed to forge their own networks, patrons, and communities. Throughout his career, Robert worked to build a network of reform-minded secular canons spanning north from Paris into the Franco-Flemish borderland cities of Cambrai, Amiens, and Liège. Invested in the continuity of their pastoral and ecclesiastical work, northern French canons funded scholarships for clerics from their home regions to attend the Sorbonne, which provided these clerics with an institution with specific rights, privileges, and protections.60 One of Robert’s principle challenges in the formation of his students was creating a communal life for men who were not bound together by monastic vows. This was achieved primarily through the statutes of the institution, which required members to take their meals in a refectory where they would listen to a lector and participate with their colleagues in all common services and disputation exercises. Residents shared responsibility for the running and management of the college, fostering, in Robert’s view, a concern for one another and the common good.61 The availability of common spaces for discussion and disputation, and – importantly – the college library, which soon outranked those of mendicant orders, was essential. In his discussions of this ideal, Robert again frequently referenced beguine communities, which drew its members from a range of backgrounds into a life of mutual support. As Robert was fond of claiming, the beguines were an Ordo Caritatis, or Order of Love. In a sermon to university clerics, preached probably in the early 1260s, Robert emphasized collegiality, mutual love, and support, encouraging his students to live, like the beguines, as an Ordo Caritatis. The first rule of the order, Robert explained, is patience, a virtue most regular orders lacked. Monks grumbled about their abbots, but the beguines honored their detractors as their teachers in patience.62 In a lengthy discussion of the second rule (“caritas benigna est” or love is kind, which Robert altered to read caritas begina est), Robert alludes to the criticisms that lay religious women and secular clerics alike faced when they adopted a visibly religious life without entering a recognized religious order. For the Sorbonne, comradery, in Robert’s view, would serve as a check on bad behavior in tempting situations. In fact, Robert had harsh words for the solitary life, which not only left men open to temptation but also was of

Reviled and revered 155 little service to the church. The eremitic ideal, which medieval monks frequently emphasized as the most significant expression of self-abnegation, seemed self-serving to Robert. Rather than retreat from society, Robert believed that the truly virtuous, like the beguine, let their light shine on all, even if this public display of virtue only led to social marginalization. Implicitly questioning the value of the cloistered life, Robert peppered his sermons with observations such as “a burning coal left alone will soon extinguish,” noting that when placed among dead coals, a burning coal spreads its fire to others.63 Beguines, Robert claimed, were named after the fires of virtue they kindled in others (bene igne) and thus constantly had to endure the waters of derision flung by jealous, evil men.64 Noting that fire converts everything it consumes into itself, beguines likewise convert others into beguines through their example.65 In this clear allusion to the beguines’ participation in the pastoral mission of the secular clergy, Robert demonstrated how important beguines were to the secular clergy both as exemplars of humility as well as auxiliaries to the religious instruction of the broader laity.66

“No name is more despised”: beguines and marginality As we have seen, Robert took pains to emphasize in his sermon to beguines that their name evoked skepticism at best and derision at worst. These observations were not only intended to encourage beguines, but they were also part of Robert’s larger goal to encourage humility and resilience among those who wished to live a religious life in the world. Fears of hypocrisy and ridicule, Robert believed, could discourage those without the protective reputation of a religious order. In a sermon to his students, Robert noted that no matter how sinful a life a man had led, as soon as he joined one of the regular orders, he was universally admired for his adoption of the regular life. Those who led lives of virtue in the world, however, are subjected to ridicule. In pointing out this paradox, while finding a silver lining, Robert immediately turned to the beguines, arguing that such ridicule was the essence of the beguine life, since those willing to endure criticism were more authentically religious than those who received honor and praise for their entry into the regular orders.67 Indeed, Robert frequently pointed to the beguines’ patience in the face of adversity and the tendency of detractors to emphasize the sins of one beguine and apply them to the whole. Robert seemed keenly aware that the adoption of the beguine status or acceptance of the label constituted a public claim to lead a religious, perhaps even saintly, life. Such claims were often met with distrust. As we have seen, some Parisian writers viewed the beguine status as self-serving and inherently dishonest. Moreover, the informality of the status made it impossible to distinguish between “true” and “false” beguines. Because the beguine identity in many ways depended on outward dress and behavior, some clerical observers warned that women could imitate the beguine status in order to benefit from local patronage.

156 Tanya Stabler Miller Such concerns meant that the reputation of a beguine community depended on the behavior of individual women, who had to maintain their claims to sanctity “on an on-going basis.”68 Yet, ostentatious expressions of piety, as Robert of Sorbon observed, also drew criticism. Several sermons preached to and about beguines in thirteenth-century Paris express concerns about impious women concealing their sinful behavior behind the walls of the beguinage. Some preachers warned the beguines that even one bad beguine in their midst could ruin the reputation of the entire community, claiming that, because the beguine life represented a choice, beguinages should be held to higher standards than monasteries. Others argued that beguines who failed to live up to the sanctity that the name announced weakened the entire estate. In a sermon excerpt on the beguine life, a certain “Abbot Nicholas” claimed “if I were a beguine, I would not want to be of great name, nor less, because less causes scandal, more is occasion for vainglory.”69 The abbot’s observation categorized under the heading hypocrisis, indicates that beguines walked a fine line. The admiration of others, as Robert observed in his sermons to beguines and clerics, fostered pride. Sinful behavior would defame not only the individual sinner, but all women known by that name. Thus, while Robert and his students could assume the persona of the beguin from the relatively riskfree position of the university cleric, the flesh-and-blood women they upheld as models were always vulnerable. Robert’s students, for their part, took to heart their teacher’s emphasis on marginality, humility, the proper ends of university training, and collaboration with religious women. While secular theologians, as William Courtney has shown, tended to have longer teaching careers than regular clerics, many, if not most, of Robert’s students broke with that norm and did not pursue academic careers in Paris.70 Others stayed to provide pastoral care to women in Paris. Bernard Pailly, for example, a student of the Sorbonne in the late-thirteenth century, served as parish priest at the church of Saint-Eustache, located on the western edge of Paris’s Right Bank. The church was affiliated with a small hospital, over which Bernard presided as governor. The extant tax registers of Philip the Fair (spanning the years 1292 through 1313) show that the streets surrounding Bernard’s church were a magnet for women who self-identified as beguines.71 These beguine households may have developed organically as a consequence of the hospital, or there might be some connection with Bernard’s position as parish priest. It was probably Bernard Pailly’s connections with the Sorbonne and Paris’s lay religious communities that later recommended him to the wealthy draper Stephen Haudry and his wife Jeanne. Naming Bernard as an executor of their estates, Stephen and Jeanne Haudry also named Bernard as the governor of their new community of bonnes femmes, or as they were more popularly known, the Haudriettes.72 The only student of Robert’s to stay on as a regent master of Paris was Godfrey of Fontaines, best known for his theological works. A closer look at his career, however, reveals that he was equally committed to pastoral

Reviled and revered 157 care. At least 18 of the 27 manuscripts he left to the Sorbonne at his death (around 1309) were sermon collections or pastoral works. Godfrey is a striking example the pastoral networks between Sorbonne scholars and lay religious women. Godfrey came to Paris from Liège, where he may have participated in the promotion of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (d. 1258) and her proposed feast of Corpus Christi.73 After studying and teaching in Paris, Godfrey later returned to Liège where he served as canon. This travel back and forth may have been the context for his connection with Marguerite Porete, for whom he wrote a cautious endorsement of her book, known to Anglophone scholars as the Mirror of Simple Souls. As imagined (but occasionally actual) objects of contempt, beguines exemplified a penitential piety that was not only acceptable in women, but useful models for Robert’s college. Nevertheless, even as sermons, vitae, and prescriptive texts emphasized the women’s image as outsiders who could legitimately critique the church and the laity for their failings, at the local level, most beguines lived, worked, and prayed in relative peace. Indeed, in reality, most beguines were not objects of scorn; rather, the women living in the beguinage of Paris were important recipients of Capetian patronage and symbols of its piety.74 Many of the residents of the beguinage were from Parisian families connected to the highest echelons of power. The socioreligious niche beguines occupied, far from being marginal, was central to many influential constituencies in medieval Paris. The “contemptuous name” and its association with penance and selfabnegation fit medieval ideas about appropriate expressions of feminine piety. Portrayed as a novel phenomenon, James of Vitry emphasized the marginality of the mulieres religiosae, specifically referencing the label “beguine” in his praise of what he viewed as a new expression of apostolic piety appropriate for women. As in the case of Robert and his students, the idea that beguines were humble was the key to their piety. Praise and blame of the beguine life were typically not about the women themselves but rather part of broader discussions of church policy, canon law, property disputes, or academic rivalries. Still, the ideas about beguines formulated in Robert’s sermons and communicated to his students shaped contemporary perceptions of beguines in potentially harmful ways. Legal and social questions about the beguine status came to a head in Paris in the early-fourteenth century with the trial and execution of the beguine Marguerite Porete (d. 1310). The following year at the Council of Vienne, ecclesiastical officials made several specific connections between Marguerite’s ideas and deeds and the beguine status in general. One of the council’s decrees, Cum de Quibusdam, claimed that beguines “dispute and preach about the highest Trinity and the divine essence and introduce opinions contrary to the catholic faith concerning the articles of the faith and the sacraments of the church.” It goes on to say that, in doing so, the beguines led the simple laity into error.75 It is worth noting that Cum de quibusdam attempted to grapple with two major, interrelated issues medieval

158 Tanya Stabler Miller observers had with the beguine life. The first was the scope of activity appropriate to women (a question that centered on the beguines’ assumption of a kind of lay ministry) and the second was their status (that is, the legal standing of beguines). These two issues went to the heart of what constituted an authentically religious life for women, issues that Robert repeatedly raised in his praise of beguines as marginal. In the context of sermons intended to encourage humility and pastoral engagement among privileged male intellectuals, such praise might be seen as complementary to women. Indeed, Robert no doubt intended it as such. Yet, the image of the beguine as a pastoral ancillary to the cleric was untenable by the late-thirteenth century when Marguerite Porete wrote and circulated her book. The response at Vienne was to carve out a new, clearly defined and limited space for lay religious women – a space represented by the term “bonne femme” or good woman. Whereas the beguine, particularly in Paris, evoked action in the world – particularly moral exhortation – action that could easily crossover into teaching (as it did in the case of Marguerite) – the term “bonne femme” assured observers that the woman in question was of good reputation and had made a permanent commitment to poverty, chastity, and obedience in effect, if not officially, within the context of a recognized religious order. Asserting its members’ upright and innocent behavior during a time when the term “beguine” signified active exhortation and the circulation of doctrinal errors, communities of bonnes femmes represented an effort to deal with the tricky problem of labels while modifying and limiting the scope of activity permissible to lay religious woman. Shifting from models of active piety in Robert of Sorbon’s sermons to objects of urban charity, the bonne femme movement compelled women to model the monastic life; to live a life assessed not by action and effect but by reputation and prominent patrons. During the first years of the Sorbonne, however, Robert and his students actively initiated relationships with beguines. Moreover, they did so not only out of a sense of duty to care for religious women, but as part of their own connection to a growing, wide-ranging religious reform movement that emphasized pastoral ministry. Beguines also offered secular clerics a model of humility and marginality that they could praise and claim to emulate from their relatively privileged positions as university clerics. As Sorbonne clerics forged relationships with beguine communities, individual women were emboldened to step out of the margins, a move that later led to the official condemnation of the beguine status and the women’s re-marginalization as bonnes femmes.

Notes 1 On the beguinage of Paris, see Tanya Stabler Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 2 Robert refers to Stephen as a guardian of “mulieres sanctae et religiosae,” a reference to Acts 6: 1–5, in which the apostles entrust Stephen with ministering to widows. BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 322, edited in Nicole Bériou, “Robert de

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Sorbon: Le prud’homme et le béguin,” Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des inscrip­ tions et belles-lettres 138, no. 2 (1994): 488. Indeed, as we will see, Robert often used the terms beguin/beguina interchangeably. “Et iste thesaurus in predicto agro in tantum est absconditus quod pauci aut nulli possunt ibi illud inuenire, etiam magni magistri, immo dicunt: Fi de begui­ nagio. Dicunt enim: Bene uolo esse probus homo, sed nequaquam beguinus.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 322, ed. Bériou, “Robert de Sorbon: Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 490. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. “Et tamen aliqui illum thesaurum bene cognoscunt et in predicto agro bene inue­ niunt, unde uerificatum est ellud euuangelii dictum a Domino (Matthew 11:25): Confiteor tibi, Pater celi et terre, quia abscondisti hec a sapientibus et reuelasti ea paruulis. […] Et que est causa quare isti magni magistri et sapientes mundani hoc non possunt cognoscere nec istum thesaurum in beguinagio inuenire ? Hec est ratio, quia non per studium nec per rationem potest iste thesaurus inueniri, sed per gratiam.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol.322, “Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 491. “Et tamen, ut iam prius dictum est, plus ceteris uilipenduntur, et ideo sunt ibi quasi contraria simul, scilicet esse probum hominem et esse despectum. Item ibi inuenitur ignis, scilicet karitatis et dilectionis, in aqua, scilicet tribulationum ut derisionum et uituperiorum, unde quantumcumque fuirit homo honoratus, si intrat beguinagium et fiat beguinus uilipenditur plus ceteris.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 322, “Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 491. “Vnde aliqui simplices qui in hoc se cognoscunt non uellent esse reges et non esse beguinos, uel uoluntatem et propositum non habere ut essent. Pro me dico, dicebat predicator.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 322, “Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 491. Et quia inter alios plus deridentur beguini et beguine, vnde per despectum sic uocantur ideo paululum transeunt et inueniunt Christum. BNF 16507, 322, “Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 492. “[N]e forte si tegeret nomine honorifico uel aliquibus honoribus superbirent illi in quibus absconditur ille thesaurus” BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 323, “Le prud’homme et le béguin,” 493. Caroline Walker Bynum, “…And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Fragmentation and Redemp­ tion: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 151–79. As Nicole Bériou noted, Godfrey of Fontaines copied this sermon as it was preached into one of his personal manuscripts. Moreover, the sermon itself includes exhortations clearly directed at university students and masters, indicat­ ing that the sermon was preached before an audience of beguines and university clerics. For the edited version of Godfrey’s copy, see “Robert de Sorbon: Le prud’homme et le béguin,” Appendix I, 486–95. On this phenomenon, see the still influential study by Herbert Grundmann, Reli­ gious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thir­ teenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism. Translated by Steven Rowan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). On the reform efforts among the Parisian clergy, see John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, with Special Emphasis on the Belgian scene (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1954) is probably the best known synthesis after Walter Simons’ more recent Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadel­ phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Local studies, in particular the

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hundreds of publications on beguine communities in German-speaking lands, have contributed several important insights regarding the composition of beguine com­ munities but, according to a recent summary of beguine scholarship, have produced “little broad geographical synthesis or diachronic interpretive analysis.” See Jennifer K. Deane, “Beguines Reconsidered: Historiographical Problems and New Direc­ tions,” Monastic Matrix (2008) Commentaria 3461. http://monasticmatrix.org/com mentaria/article.php?textId=3461. See also Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris. On other manifestations of female piety, see Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). On Cistercian nuns, see Anne E. Lester, Creat­ ing Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). For an overview of this scholarship, see Constance H. Berman, The White Nuns: Cistercian Nuns for Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). See also Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns. It is of course impossible to know if women who lived as beguines did so out of personal preference or because prohibitive circumstances offered no other option. It is significant, however, that Parisian clerics assumed that the beguine life was a deliberate choice, whereas life as a nun was likely due to family pres­ sure. See Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, 130–1. Josef Greven, “Beginenwesens Der Ursprung des Beginenwesens,” Historisches Jahrbuch 35 (1914): 46–7. See also Walter Simons, “Beginnings Naming Beguines in the Southern Low Countries, 1200–50,” in Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe, eds. Letha Böhringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and Hildo van Engen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 12–13. For a thorough discussion of the origins of the term, see the useful discussion in Walter Simons, “On the Margins of Religious Life: Hermits and Recluses, Peni­ tents and Tertiaries, Beguines and Beghards,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 4, eds. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 309–23. Beguines could take simple vows, but these were not canonically binding. See Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, 128. On the distinction between formal, “solemn” vows and “simple” vows, see Alison More, Fictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200–1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 19–20. On the ways in which medieval thinkers equated religio with the adoption of formal vows, see John Van Engen, “Illicit Religion: The Care of Friar Matthew Grabow, O.P.,” in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: Univer­ sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 103–16. “L’Ordre aus beguines est legiere,/Si vous dirai en quel maniere:/L’en s’en ist bien por mari prendre./D’autre part, qui besse la chiere/Et a robe large et ple­ niere/Si est beguine sanz li rendre.” Rutebeuf, “Les ordres de Paris,” in Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols., ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Garnier, 1989), 1: 227. “Beguines avons mont/Qui larges robes ont;/Desouz les robes font/Ce que pas ne vous di.” Rutebeuf, “La Chanson des ordres,” in Oeuvres completes, 1: 332. Beguines were a frequent target in French literature; see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Satirical Views of the Beguines in Northern French Literature,” in New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact, eds. Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 237–49. “En riens que Beguine die, N’entendeiz tuit se bien non: Tot es de religion, Quanque hon treuve en sa vie. Sa parole est prophecie; S’ele rit, c’est compaignie; S’ele pleure, devocion; S’ele dort, ele est ravie; S’ele songe, c’est vision; S’ele ment, nou creeiz mie. Se Beguine se marie, C’est sa conversacion: Ses veulz, sa prophecion, N’est pas a toute sa vie. Cest an pleure et cest an prie, Et cest an pannra baron: Or est

Reviled and revered 161

24

25 26

27 28

29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36

Marthe, or se Marie, Or se garde, or se marie; Mais n’en dites se bien non: Li roix no sofferoit mie! Rutebeuf, “Li diz des beguines,” in Oeuvres completes, Vol. 1, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Garnier, 1989), 240. Women signaled their adoption of the beguine life via behavior, dress, and simple vows or promises. Thus, beguines enacted their religious “conversion” publically, inviting close scrutiny and skepticism that a woman could keep such promises without outside enforcement. See Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, 17–18. On these claims, see Miller, The Beguines of Medieval Paris, 19–20. Tanya Stabler Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul: Thinking with Beguines in the Colleges of Medieval Paris,” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks, and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Genders and Sexualities in His­ tory), ed. Jennifer Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 238–64. Tanya Stabler Miller, “What’s in a Name?: Clerical Representations of Parisian Beguines,” Journal of Medieval History 33, no. 1 (2007): 60–86. Alison More discusses the ways in which clerical defenders of beguines encouraged the women to adopt outward signs of “religion,” namely statutes, clothing, and forms of enclosure. They also invented fictive histories and institutions to monasti­ cize women’s lay religious communities. See Fictive Orders, especially Chapter 1. I borrow this phrase from William Jordan, Men at the Center: Redemptive Gov­ ernance under Louis IX (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2012). On Robert of Sorbon and his college, see Palemon Glorieux, Aux origines de la Sorbonne, volume 1, Robert de Sorbon, l’homme, le college, les documents (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965–1966); Astrik L. Gabriel, The Paris Studium: Robert of Sorbonne and His Legacy: Interuniversity Exchange Between the German, Cracow and Louvain Universities and that of Paris in the Late Medieval and Humanistic Period: Selected Studies (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); and, most recently, Denis Gabriel, La “Maison des pauvres maîtres” de Robert de Sorbon: Les débuts de la Sorbonne (1254–1274) (Classiques Garnier, 2014). On Guiard’s life and career, see Petrus Cornelis Boeren, La vie et les oeuvres de Guiard de Laon, 1170 env-1248 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1956). Spencer Young, Scholarly Community at the University of Paris: Theologians, Educa­ tion and Society, 1215–1248 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 85–6. Walter Simons, “Beginnings,” 22. It is worth remembering, for instance, that James of Vitry heard about Mary of Oignies’ piety while he was still a student in Paris. Indeed, he seems to have cor­ responded with Mary for years before leaving the city around 1210 to be closer to this “handmaid of Christ.” Hugh Feiss OSB, “The Supplement to James of Vitry’s Life of Mary of Oignies by Thomas of Cantimpré,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, ed. Anneke Mulder Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 140–1. In the 1230s, a certain Theophania, a “religious woman” and magistra at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, likewise started up a long-distance spiritual friendship with the lay brother Arnulf of Villers. Theophania apparently heard about Arnulf through students in Paris. Godwin of Bossut, “The Life of Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers,” in Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of la Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut. Translated by Martinus Cawley, and preface by Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 183–4. Suzan Folkerts, “The Manuscript Transmission of the Vita Mariae Oigniacensis in the Later Middle Ages,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 221–41. Exemplum de begina quae venit Parisius emptum Summam de viciis et virtutibus; quae cum monraretur in quadam civitate ad quam saepe veniebant presbiteri

162 Tanya Stabler Miller

37

38

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

51 52

53 54 55 56 57

subditi illi civitati, accommodabat eis per quaternos huiusmodi Summam, prae­ quirendo si erant ociosi, ante quam missam celebraverant, ita quod per totam regionem illam multiplicavit eam. BNF, Lat. 15955, f. 307 va-307 vb. Tanya Stabler Miller, “‘More Useful in the Salvation of Others’: Beguines, Reli­ gio, and the Cura Mulierum at the Early Sorbonne,” in Between Orders: Rethink­ ing Medieval Religious Movements, eds. Jennifer K. Deane and Anne E. Lester (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). On this conflict, see Michel-Marie Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polém­ ique universitaire parisienne, 1250–1259 (Paris: J. Picard, 1972) and “Le roi Louis dans la querelle des mendiants et des séculiers,” Septième centenaire de la mort de Saint Louis: Actes des colloques de Royaument et de Paris (21–27 mai 1970) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), 281–9. Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 2012). Ruth Mazo Karras, Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). and Antoine Des­ temberg, L’honneur des universitaires au Moyen Âge: Étude d’imaginaire social. (Le Nœud Gordien.) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2015). Miller, “Mirror of the Scholarly (Masculine) Soul,” 244–7. Destemberg, L’honneur des universitaires, especially Chapter One. Jean of Joinville, Life of Saint Louis. Translated by Margaret R.B. Shaw, in Chronicles of the Crusades (New York: 1982), 30. Nicole Bériou, “Robert de Sorbon, le prud’homme et le béguin,” 474–7. Nicole Bériou, “Robert de Sorbon, le prud’homme et le béguin,” 469. Joinville, Life of Saint Louis, 30. See William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), “The Case of Saint Louis,” Viator 19 (1988): 209–18, and more recently “Etiam reges, Even Kings,” Speculum 90, no. 3 (July 2015): 613–34. Jordan, “The Case of Saint Louis,” Viator 19 (1988): 209–18. Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, especially 25–34. The term could also be used to refer to a type of sermon but all the evidence suggests that Robert intended for his students to participate in plenty of both types of collation. Olga Weijers’ article on the vocabulary of the Sorbonne sup­ ports this point. “Le vocabulaire du collège de Sorbonne,” in Olga Weijers, ed. Vocabulaire des collèges universitaires (XIIIe – XVIe siècles): Actes du colloque, Leuven 9–11 avril 1992 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 19. Ruth Mazo Karras discusses expressions of scholarly masculinity in Boys to Men, Chapter Three. On clerical masculinity and self-control, see Karras, Boys to Men, Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Robert de Sorbon, De Consciencia et de Tribus dietis, ed. Félix Chambon (Paris: Picard, 1903), 15. De Consciencia, 15–16. BNF Lat. 3218, fol. 175rb, cited in Frans N.M. Diekstra, “Robert de Sorbon’s ‘De Conscientia’: Truncated Text and Full Text,” Recherches De Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 70, no. 1 (2003): 115. “Sic sit tu vides socium tuum vel quemcumque cadere in ignem infernalem, cum scilicet luxuriatur et huiusmodi facit, et non aportas aquam sancte monitionis vel orationis … crudelis es.” BNF Lat.15971, fol. 72vb. BNF Lat 15959, fol. 222v.

Reviled and revered 163 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71

72

73 74 75

BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 218ra. BNF Lat. 15971, fol. 186va. Gabriel, “La maison des pauvre maitres,” 189–95. Ibid., 100. BNF 16507, fol. 237r. “Carbo enim mortuus inter multos uiuos cito accenditur uiuus autem solus relic­ tus cito moritur. Carbo etiam bene accensus multos mortuos carbones reaccendit et uiuificat,” BNF 16507, 236vb. “[M]ulti latrant derisionibus et detractionibus aduersus istos carbones uiuos uolentes mortuos suscitare et uiuificare et extinguere uolunt uiuos carbones per aquam derisionis.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol. 236vb. “Item caritas benigna est id est bene ignita. lgnis combustibile in suam naturam conuertit. Sic beguinus alios exemplo sui beguinos facit pro posse suo.” BNF Lat. 16507, fol.237v. Robert’s support of beguines is in line with what Fiona Griffiths has recently argued for nuns’ priests, whose service to women was not just of benefit to women but central to their own spirituality. See Fiona J. Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). BNF 16507, fol 323ra. Mary Suydam, “Women’s Texts and Performances in the Medieval Southern Low Countries,” in Visualizing Medieval Performance, Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. Elina Gertsman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 148. Si essem begina, non vellem esse pluris nominis nec minoris, “de plus de num ne de meins,” quia minus importat scandalum, plus est occasio vane glorie. (BnF 16482, fol. 64rb). William Courtenay, Teaching Careers at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, Texts and Studies in the History of Medieval Educa­ tion, 18 (University of Notre Dame, 1988). I established the existence of this cluster by tracing individual households of beguines through the seven extant tax rolls, three of which remain unpublished. The database available at the IRHT, while essential for tracking occupations and personal identifiers, cannot show clusters by location, necessitating a close analysis of the manuscripts themselves. See The Beguines of Medieval Paris, Chapter Three. Michael Connally, “Les ‘Bonnes Femmes’ de Paris: Des communautes religieuses dans une societe urbaine du bas Moyen Age” (Doctoral thesis, University of Lyon II, 2003). Connally was apparently unaware of the earlier part of Bernard Pailly’s career at the Sorbonne. For the argument that Godfrey of Fontaines was the author of Juliana of Mont­ Cornillon’s vita, see Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses, 235–6. Sean L. Field, Courting Sanctity: Holy Women and the Capetians (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). The decree Cum de Quibusdam claimed that beguines “as if being led into insan­ ity, dispute and preach about the highest Trinity and the divine essence and introduce opinions contrary to the catholic faith concerning the articles of the faith and the sacraments of the church.” In doing so “they lead many simple people … into various errors.” Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I – Lateran V, 1: 374.

Part 4

Law

10 How marginal is marginal? Muslims in the Latin East Ann E. Zimo

In his biography of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars al-Bunduqdari, his one­ time private secretary (kātib al-sirr) and head of chancery (ṣāḥib dīwān al-inshā’) Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir recounts the time in 1268 when he was sent as an ambassador to finalize a treaty with King Hugh (d. 1284) of Cyprus and Jerusalem.1 The Sultan instructed him and his fellow ambassador, the emir Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Shīth to not show humility before the Frankish king either in seating arrangements or speech. Arriving at the de facto capital of Acre in July, Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir and his fellow ambassador were warmly received. However, when it came time for the oath swearing, the king and the barons were seated together and the ambassadors apparently were expected to sit elsewhere. Keeping their sultan’s instructions in mind, the ambassadors refused to sit until they were given places before the king. When one of the king’s officials reached for the treaty, the Mamluk diplomats again refused to give it to anyone but the king himself.2 Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir goes on to describe the discussions he had with the king who voiced a desire for a separate peace for Cyprus, and wanting exclusions should another crusade be called. In the end, the embassy left Acre without the king having sworn to the treaty. Although this diplomatic episode ended without the conclusion of a treaty, it exemplifies the access and privilege Muslims had in elite spaces of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As the surviving assises attest, the kingdom’s nobles endeavored to minimize access to the High Court, and yet here we see not only that Muslims were present, but also that they demanded recognition from Latin officials of their high rank. Here, we see them insisting that they be treated as functionally equal to the monarch and his barons. That Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir and his colleague were able to enforce this equality by refusing to be seated anywhere but before the king and by refusing to hand over the treaty to anyone but the king himself, in the very heart of crusader political power, demonstrates that the idea of a segregated High Court as envisioned in the contemporary Frankish legal sources was pure fantasy. That the crusader sources are biased in such a way should not be surprising and yet the current

168 Ann E. Zimo historiography on crusader governance is built almost exclusively upon such sources.3 *** For nearly 200 years, from 1099 until 1291, there existed a kingdom in the Levant ruled by people of European descent, called Franks, on land that today includes Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. This Kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the crusaders in the wake of the First Crusade, was and is in some important ways the very definition of marginal. Hugging the margins of the Eastern Mediterranean and situated in a diversely populated area, it has often been presented as the Christian frontier with Islam in the East. The Muslims of this land similarly live on the margins of the modern conceptualization of Frankish society. For various practical and historical reasons, the scholarship until recently has focused on the Frankish, European inhabitants over local Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Moreover, a fundamental premise of how we conceptualize Frankish society is that Europeans only settled in areas still inhabited by a Christian majority. Thus, Muslims in this model were at the literal margins of the crusader polities. In this chapter, I consider the legal and political positionality of Muslims in the crusader states. As exemplified by the passage discussed above, the accidents of modern disciplinarity and the evidence from the contemporary sources have played a part in creating the perception of Muslim marginality in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Structural hurdles to viewing medieval Muslims as fully part of crusader society include the fact that the crusader states exist on the peripheries for both medieval European and Middle East Studies not to mention the diverse linguistic tools necessary to properly contextualize crusader society within its complex socio-cultural environment. Perhaps more than issues of disciplinarity, the surviving Frankish sources themselves have contributed to the false impression of the complete marginality of Muslims in the crusader states. After briefly considering the impacts of disciplinarity, the chapter will analyze how the Frankish legal sources construct the position of Muslims and compare that to their position as constructed in the surviving treaty documents and the Arabic narrative sources. I find that it is the exception rather than the rule to find Muslims of the Kingdom of Jerusalem totally marginal or unimportant to the Kingdom. For the entirety of its existence, although to differing extents, elite Muslims had recourse to and indeed wielded power within Frankish spaces.

Disciplinarity and the current model The study of the crusader states and their society falls at the intersection of two disciplinary boundaries – the study of medieval Europe, and the history of the medieval Middle East. The majority of people who study the

How marginal is marginal? 169 crusades are trained as medieval Europeanists, and so traditionally have approached their work as understanding the role of the institution of crusade in Europe, or the impact of the crusades on Europe, or the relations between the crusader states and Europe. In a sense, they are oriented westward – using the languages and sources generated in Europe or by the Franks. Scholars of the medieval Middle East, on the other hand, traditionally tend to see the 200 years that the crusader states existed as peripheral or even outside of the broader historical narrative.4 Instead they look east to Baghdad or Mosul or south to Cairo as the main nodes of culture. Until recently, neither discipline paid a lot of attention to the totality of Frankish society. The attitude is changing, with scholars of the crusader states incorporating other tools such as archaeology and Eastern languages, and some historians of the Middle East calling to recognize the crusader states as part of the larger regional political scene.5 The model for society in the crusader states has been shaped by the issues stemming from disciplinarity. Joshua Prawer, much of whose work remains as a cornerstone in crusades studies, strongly argued for Frankish society being segregated with Franks living among themselves along the coasts, never mingling with locals.6 Based largely on Frankish sources, the segregationalist model was only revised in the 1990s. Using evidence from archaeology as well as toponomy, Ronnie Ellenblum showed that Franks did settle in the hinterlands and argued that they did so in areas with major Eastern Christian communities. Although dispelling the idea of segregation, the current model keeps Muslims at the periphery of Frankish society communities.7 If Franks settled in areas with major Christian populations, then the areas in which Muslims resided, by implication, formed the margins of the kingdom. In my own work, investigating how Muslims fit into the fabric of Frankish society, I have discovered that the reality was more complicated. There is no doubt that Frankish narrative sources frequently present Muslims as the enemy, but they were not the only enemy. The Byzantines often draw the ire of Frankish authors, for example. William of Tyre, who was archbishop of Tyre and the most prominent Frankish chronicler from the twelfth century, identified the Byzantines as “the enemy” (hostes) when describing the sacking of the Latin Quarter of Constantinople during Andronicus Comnenus’s coup in 1180.8 The thirteenth-century anonymous author known as the Templar of Tyre narrates the War of Saint Sabbas, a form of civil-war waged between the Venetians and Genoese and their respective allies among the Frankish nobility in 1257–1258.9 In his account, the Latins are each other’s enemies and continued to be so until at least 1270.10 Moreover, Frankish authors do not tend to lump all Muslims together; even the chronicles written by participants of the First Crusade usually at least distinguish between Turkic and Arab peoples.11 When investigating the geographical distribution and economic contributions of Muslims in Frankish society, I have found that Muslims lived and worshipped among the rest of the

170 Ann E. Zimo kingdom’s populace and formed its economic backbone.12 The one facet of Frankish society in which one sees an unambiguous attempt to marginalize Muslims is the judicial.

Muslims in the Frankish legal sources From the Frankish perspective, there were three major court systems in operation in the Kingdom: the ecclesiastical court, the High Court, and the Burgess Court with its subsidiary Market Court. Obviously, for the ecclesiastical court, there was very little room for Muslims – why would there be? Canon law sought to regulate the spiritual lives of the flock, and Muslims were not Christian. The earliest laws that we know of generated in the crusader states were the Canons of the Council of Nablus, promulgated in the wake of the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Ager Sanguinis the year before in June 1119.13 The prologue explicitly states that the purpose was to counteract the Frankish sinfulness, which surely resulted in their defeat. The canons only refer to Muslims, or in their terminology, “Saracens,” in canons regulating sexuality. Canons 12–15 define punishments for consensual and non-consensual sex between Franks and Muslims. These typically involve the mutilation of the Frank and the confiscation (probably enslavement) of the Muslim by the state.14 Canon 16 prohibits Muslims from wearing Frankish clothing, presumably in order to help protect Franks from wooing or being wooed by a Muslim.15 Through these canons, we can see Muslims clearly being constructed as sources of spiritual pollution who lure Franks into corruption through sex. By the very existence of these prohibitions, it might be suggested that the canons speak to the reality of sexual relationships between Franks and Muslims; certainly enslaved Muslims at the very least would have been vulnerable to rape. The prevalence of such encounters, however, may have just as easily been imagined by the clergy. The High Court, headed by the king and attended by his vassals, was also constructed as an exclusive judicial site. Because it was the location of governance, the Frankish lords were constantly vying for the privilege to attend it while excluding as many others as they could. Without a doubt, Muslims were in this latter category, with certain specific exceptions. Since one of the distinguishing features of lordship was landholding, disputes or issues concerning land that involved Muslims would be adjudicated in the High Court. Muslims are frequently invoked in the legal material when land was at stake. In the Livre au Roi, a reference work on customary law written at the behest of King Amaury II around the beginning of the thirteenth century, we see as many as three chapters referring to the illegality of selling one’s land to Muslims.16 Such a sale risked the loss of the fief if the Muslim lord decided to transfer his allegiance from the Frankish king to the Sultan or some other regional political rival. While – with respect to the canonical prohibitions – we lack evidence documenting actual Frankish–Muslim sexual

How marginal is marginal? 171 relationships, we do have evidence, from the twelfth century at least, of Muslim landholders in crusader territories. Ḥamdān bin ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al­ Athāribī (ca.1071–1147/48) held villages near Atharib in the Principality of Antioch. He later entered the service of ‘Imād al-Dīn Zangī (d.1146) when Zangī conquered the region, in some ways embodying the fears encapsulated in the later laws.17 Another aspect of the effort to keep fiefs out of Muslim control comes in the chapters from the Livre au Roi dealing with the apostasy of Franks who converted to Islam. If a noble traveled to Muslim-held territority without prior approval or putting his fief under his lord’s protection, his lord could legally seize the fief on his own and the knight would lose it if he did not return to claim it within a year and a day.18 Moreover, if the noble returned within the period of a year and a day, in order to get the fief back he had to prove in court that he had not apostatized while away and was not culpable of treason.19 In the case that the noble “went to the land of the Saracens” and assumed their law (i.e., Islam), the fief transferred automatically back to the lord without a trial, and the land was lost to his family forever.20 Legally, this would have constituted a double transgression against the faith as well as the kingdom since the king would have lost another warrior and would have gained, presumably, an enemy.21 Muslims were not entirely excluded from court proceedings and were allowed to serve as witnesses in certain contexts. John of Ibelin (d.1266), count of Jaffa and Ascalon, outlined a number of contexts in which Muslims could be acceptable witnesses in the legal treatise known as the Livre des Assises that he wrote on the procedures of the High Court.22 For example, if a lord had been summoned to court, but could not make it for some reason, he could send someone to swear that he was held up and the absence would be excused. John of Ibelin allows for that person to be a Muslim, as long as he swore “according to his law.”23 Even so, both John of Ibelin and Philip of Novara, a near contemporary who wrote a similar legal treatise, Le livre de forme de plait,24 delineated a hierarchy of preference for eligible witnesses. In this same situation, John of Ibelin stipulates that the lord should try to send a man “of the law of Rome” to make his excuses and if he does not have a man of the law of Rome, and he countermands his day [in court] by another Christian, it is valid. And if he does not have a Christian and he finds a Jew or a Saracen by whom he counter­ mands his day, it is valid … .25 Philip of Novara went even further. In disputes over the boundaries between fields, the agents of the court were instructed to look for, in order of preference, a Frank, then a Syrian, then a Greek, then any other kind of Christian, and lastly a Muslim to serve as witnesses.26

172 Ann E. Zimo This codification of bias is also exemplified in the penalties for causing bodily harm. Muslims could actually have recourse to justice from the High Court if a noble were to have visibly wounded them. If the noble did not deny the fact, the penalty would be fifty besants to the court and fifty sous to the injured party. However, if the injured party were a Frank who was not a knight, the penalty was double: one hundred besants to the court and one hundred sous to the injured party.27 The Frankish legal space with a legal code that disenfranchised Muslims the least was the Burgess Court (Cour des Bourgeois) and its subsidiary, the Market Court (Cour de la Fonde).28 The Burgess Court of a given city was where free men and women who held property would go for legal satisfaction.29 The Market Court was the arena specifically where commercial dealings took place. It was also the place where all non-Franks had to take their legal business, except in the cases of murder, treason, blood, or theft, which would be heard before the Burgess Court. The texts providing the regulations for these two courts only survive for the city of Acre; however, Joshua Prawer found in surviving Hospitaller documents evidence that there were Burgess Courts in Caesarea (12th c.), Haifa (13th c.), and Jaffa (13th c.).30 Even though the Burgess Court was constructed specifically to handle the legal needs of the populace regardless of faith, Muslims were still marginalized. The jurors who decided cases in the Burgess Court were all Christian, four Syrian, and two Franks, while the bailli who presided was probably only ever a Frank.31 However, the assises do caution that the bailli should “like all kinds of people”32 to ensure their rights and he was to judge “the Saracen like the Syrian, and the Syrian like the Jew, and the Jew like the Samaritan, and all other kinds of people also like the Christians” since they are men “like the Franks.”33 Muslims were also accommodated within court proceedings by being expected to swear their oaths upon the Quran.34 In sum, we can see that the Frankish legal system did marginalize Muslims.35 They had very little power or presence in ecclesiastical court or the High Court, where they were the most disenfranchised. In the Burgess Court, they were also disenfranchised to the extent that they would never pass judgment in cases; however, there was the expectation that under the law they would be treated like everyone else. Because these legal documents have been the most accessible to most of the scholars who have studied the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it is no wonder that little room has been posited for Muslims within it. Produced by the Franks in Latin or Old French, and edited in the nineteenth century, historians of the crusades have long known and studied these texts. Without anything to contradict them, they have had little reason to think that Muslims were anything but marginal.

How marginal is marginal? 173

Muslims in the political sphere The picture of complete Muslim marginalization changes when one brings in evidence from the contemporary Arabic sources. Whereas the surviving Frankish legal sources describe how Franks attempted to construct nodes of power as Frank-only or Frank-dominated spaces, Arabic sources, especially the treaties concluded between Muslim and Frankish powers, present an alternate view of how power was distributed. Typically, Muslims are thought of as the perpetual antagonists of the Franks, working from outside of the kingdom to end it. A narrative of inevitable Frankish decline exists particularly for the thirteenth century, whereby the kingdom, following the conquests of Saladin, is portrayed as teetering on the brink, surrounded on all sides by a monolithic Islam bent on its destruction.36 What this narrative ignores is that the kingdom existed for another century after the death of Saladin, which was due to it being fully integrated into the complex regional political landscape with multiple leaders and shifting alliances. There was an intensive and sophisticated web of diplomacy and treaties, which brought Ayyubid and Mamluk elites into the Frankish kingdom and vice versa. Although there was an attempt, at least in the later legal texts, to exclude Muslims from the proceedings of the High Court, they were regularly present in the form of ambassadors and messengers. As we saw in the example cited at the beginning of this chapter, the idea of a segregated High Court as promoted in the legal texts of John of Ibelin and Philip of Novara seems to have been more of a constructed ideal rather than a direct reflection of reality. Perhaps one of the best-known Arabic sources due to its early translation is Usāma Ibn Munqidh’s (1095–1188) Kitāb al-I‛tibār or Book of Contemplation (as most recently translated into English). Although written as a work meant to inspire contemplation of God’s ineffability and so therefore not to be read as strictly autobiographical, in his writing Usāma drew extensively from his own experience and presented many tales concerning the Franks and his experiences with them.37 Belonging to the house of Munqidh which held Shayzar, a town located on the border with Frankish lands in Syria, Usāma had many opportunities to interact with the Franks and their legal system. His book makes clear that life for inhabitants of this region, whether Frankish or not, was marked by ongoing, intermittent raiding. If the Munqidhs were in a period of truce with the Franks, then they were raiding other, local Muslim lords. The picture of geopolitical relations that Usāma presents in his narrative is that the lords of the area perpetually regarded one another as potential allies and adversaries, regardless of religion. While Usāma’s first military encounter against the Franks came when he was a teenager, the Munqidhs also at one point leased land from the Franks of neighboring Kafartab.38 Such fluctuations between antagonistic and amicable relations illuminates the background behind the prohibitions against granting land to Muslims

174 Ann E. Zimo discussed above. Although the house of Munqidh could be styled as adversaries who at one point held King Baldwin II prisoner, the same family was allowed to become Frankish vassals or at least renters of Frankish land.39 The political sphere was messy, with Muslims and Franks interpenetrating each other’s spaces. Usāma’s text provides even more evidence to undermine the Frankish legal texts’ construction of the High Court as a Frank-only space. He notes how he brought a dispute between himself and the lord of Banias before King Fulk (r.1131–1143). Apparently the Frankish lord conducted raids, which resulted in the Munqidhs losing sheep during a period of truce. In response to Usāma’s petition, the king instructed “six or seven knights: ‘Arise and render a judgement for him.’”40 After consulting among themselves, the knights returned with the judgment that the lord of Banias should pay compensation to Usāma for his losses. What Usāma describes here is clearly the proceedings of the High Court, to which he patently had access. Even if his family was not entitled to attend the proceedings of the High Court as vassals (i.e., by virtue of leasing land, as we do not know precisely when they held the villages from Kafartab), his text suggests that they nonetheless had recourse to the High Court to defend their rights when a Frankish lord violated the truce between Shayzar and the kingdom. Despite the emphasis in the legal texts about denying Muslims access, the very treaties concluded between local Muslim and Frankish lords explicitly granted them such. Indeed, we have quite a bit of evidence for the treaties concluded between Franks and their Muslim neighbors, at least from the thirteenth century. Detailed descriptions of the terms of these treaties, however, only survive in their Arabic copies. Although Frankish narrative sources mention treaties being made, the full texts of these treaties have been lost except for a few from the thirteenth century preserved in Arabic chronicles, including one written by Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, and four contained in an encyclopedia of chancery documents.41 For earlier treaties, we only have brief references in narrative sources. Consequently, we can do no more than speculate as to who exactly concluded them and what their contents were. What we know of these treaties indicates that the construction of the kingdom itself, or how it was conceived, shifted over the two centuries of its existence. When discussing the kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century, Ellenblum convincingly advanced the idea that sovereignty and control were nodal – based on cities, castles, and other points of control extending out in concentric circles, with control decreasing further away from the node.42 The treaty texts from the thirteenth century support the nodal idea to a certain extent. For example, the 1283 treaty between the Sultan Qalāwūn and the kingdom of Jerusalem refers to the kingdom as “the kingdom of Acre, Sidon, and ‘Athlith and their territory,” listing the major centers still held by the king.43

How marginal is marginal? 175 Comparing what we know about treaties concluded between Frankish and Muslim powers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries however, there are important differences that impinge on how we conceive the power dynamics within the kingdom, or even more to the point, how contemporaries conceived them. In the twelfth century, we believe treaties were conducted for the most part between the King of Jerusalem (or his regent) and the rulers of individual Syrian or Egyptian city-states or polities. These regional political powers engaged in what Michael Köhler has dubbed lā maqām or “no place policy,” whereby the Frankish, Arab, and Turkish leaders pursued alliances and treaties that ensured their continued independence and the status quo.44 It was intended to deny the emergence of a unified superpower that could impose its hegemony on the region. The rise of Saladin in the 1170s and 1180s interrupted this policy, as he unified Syria and Egypt, consolidated his power, and nearly annihilated the Frankish presence in the region. The treaties concluded with the Ayyubid dynasty that followed Saladin’s death in 1193 marked a kind of return to the “no place” policy. Although larger, the power blocs of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt were divided among various Ayyubid princes, all of whom sought out alliances with the Franks as a means of checking the power of the others.45 On the Frankish side, however, the number of potential contracting parties in this period expanded from just the king or his regent to encompass a much wider range of individuals, including the various crusade leaders who arrived with the intent of rescuing the territorially diminished kingdom. In addition to the treaties concluded between the Egyptian Sultan al-‘Adil and King Amaury of Jerusalem in 1198 and 1204, there are also treaties like the Treaty of Jaffa in 1229, which was concluded between the Egyptian Sultan al-Kāmil and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. In terms of political outcome, the treaties of 1198, 1204, and 1229 contained considerable territorial concessions to the Franks. A large portion of the reconstituted kingdom, then, had emerged diplomatically with the treaties of 1198 and 1204, which formalized Frankish repossession of the coast, notably Beirut and Jubail (ancient Byblos), and including shared revenues from Sidon, Lydda, and Ramla.46 Turning to the later thirteenth century, we see the situation with the contracting parties radically altered from what it had been in the twelfth.47 Now it was the Mamluk Sultan, ruling from Egypt but controlling most of Syria as well, who concluded treaties with the Franks – not only with the King of Cyprus and/or Jerusalem, but also the Frankish magnates and the heads of the military orders.48 For much of the thirteenth century, the Frankish king was absent, either in Europe or splitting his time between the coast and Cyprus. This period also saw significant internal political unrest among the Franks with several civil wars erupting between the Venetians and Genoese during the 1250s and 1160s, and another, related war between the Embriaco lords of Jubail and the princes of Antioch-Tripoli. Accordingly, the thirteenth-century political field was peopled by a much larger group of Franks who operated independently in

176 Ann E. Zimo contracting agreements with their Muslim peers. In effect, the Frankish lords gained status regionally, both because they took on a role that had apparently been reserved for the king in the twelfth century, and because by the 1260s the only Muslim with whom they contracted treaties was the Mamluk Sultan. This functional state of equality between the Frankish lords and the Sultan manifests itself in the very language used in naming the parties in the treaties. The treaty between King Hugh of Cyprus and Jerusalem and Sultan Baybars in 1268 is roughly comparable with those made with the Frankish magnates in both content and terminology. The treaty identified those lands under possession of each signatory and those which were shared, required Muslim prisoners to be freed as a precondition, and ensured that the truce would not be lifted in the advent of a new crusade. The Arabic chronicler Ibn al-Furāt gives a remarkably detailed presentation of Hugh, with a lengthy explanation of how he became king as cousin and bailli for Hugh II, in addition to naming him in Arabic fashion as “Hugh, son of Henri” mirroring genealogical naming practices among the Arab elites.49 In direct parallel with this, the 1285 treaty between the Sultan Qalawun and Lady Margaret of Tyre refers to her as “al-malika al-jalīla dām mar[g]ārīt bint sīr harī bin al-ibrins bīmond mālika ṣūr” or “her majesty Queen/Lady Dame Margaret, daughter of Sir Henri, son of the Prince Bohemond, Lady of Tyre … .”50 Similarly, in the 1269 treaty with Isabel of Beirut, Isabel is called “the exalted, virtuous, and glorious Lady [Isabel, daughter of John,] the Queen/Lady of Beirut and of all its mountains and lowlands … .”51 The treaties concluded with the military orders demonstrate again this incorporation of transliterated Frankish titles in addition to more traditional Arabic sobriquets. In the 1267 treaty between the Hospitallers and Baybars, Hugh Revel, the Hospitaller Grand Master, is called “the gallant Grand Leader X., Leader of the house of the Hospital such and such in Acre and the lands of the coast … .”52 Later in the 1271 treaty between the two, Hugh Revel was called: “his majesty Leader [Master] Brother Hugh Revel, leader of the entire House of the Hospital of St. John in the land of the coast and all the Brothers of the Hospital.”53 The Master of the Templars, William of Beaujeu, received similar titles in the 1282 treaty with Qalawun.54 There are two ideas I want to highlight from these examples. First, there was a clear effort to incorporate the Franks into Arabic models of naming. Although not nearly as long as the combined names and titles of the Sultan, they certainly were mirroring them, by listing the individual as so-and-so son/daughter of so-and-so, along with a sobriquet like al-jalīl(a) (“majesty”) or al-humām (“gallant”), in addition to their Frankish titles like al-mastar or dam. This suggests an incorporation of these Frankish elites into the Arabic elite political sphere, recognizing them as individuals with power with whom one contracts treaties, and possessing a recognizable dignity. Second, the examples demonstrate that these Frankish elites were seen by the Mamluks, and probably the Ayyubids before them, as functionally

How marginal is marginal? 177 equal, each possessing individual power over his or her own territories, independent of the actual king or regent. The cumulative effect of this fracturing of Frankish power was to bring Muslim powers (or after the emergence of Baybars et al., Mamluk power), into more Frankish spaces. Instead of bringing grievances only to the king, Muslims could seek out the lady of Tyre or the lord of Beirut with whom treaties were also now being concluded. While the extant Frankish legal treatises present the king as the sole authority in the region and his court as the sole venue for filing petitions, adjudicating disputes and/or negotiating diplomatic agreements – and define these spaces as spaces where Muslims were legally inferior – the Arabic treaties show otherwise, and insist upon equality among Frankish nobles and Muslims. Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the geo-political effects of these treaties shifted as well. The majority of the treaties the Mamluks concluded with the Franks served to stabilize land-control, provide for the safe-passage of merchants and others, and establish or confirm revenue-sharing mechanisms. The way land was handled in the later treaties is most likely the greatest difference between the treaties that the Franks conducted with Ayyubids and those that were concluded with the Mamluks. In a way, the Mamluk treaties acted to legalize Frankish territorial losses. For instance, the treaty concluded between the Knights Hospitaller and Baybars in 1267 was initiated a year earlier in the face of Baybars’ ravaging of the area around the castles of Alba (Halba) and Coliath (al-Qulaiʿat) on the approach to the Hospitaller castle of ʿAkkar. When it was finalized, it granted the demolition of a Hospitaller mill near Acre that had already been destroyed by Baybars’ campaign in May 1267.55 Similarly, the treaty the Sultan Qalawun negotiated with Bohemond VII of Tripoli in 1281 served to ratify his predecessor Baybars’ conquest of ʿArqa. Bohemond’s ambassadors traveled to Damascus in 1281 to renew a treaty concluded in 1275 and attempted to argue that ʿArqa should be regarded as having been seized as collateral, to be held only until the lord of Tripoli fulfilled the terms of the earlier treaty, consequently it should still be considered part of Tripoli’s holdings. The young clerk Shafīʿ bin ʿAli, was present and, as he reported in his biography of the Sultan Qalawun, he argued that ʿArqa was not held in collateral but rather had been conquered in legitimate retribution for the breach of the previous truce. He told the Frankish ambassador: Al-Malik al-Ẓahir occupied ʿArqa only as an act of war against you, not as an act of kindness by taking instalments (sic). The oxen in this settlement, the seeds and the peasants belong to him, not to you, through his representatives, not your representatives. Its soil became his possession by the sword, as indeed did everything, since the truce lapsed through your breach of the condition.56

178 Ann E. Zimo According to Shafīʿ bin ʿAli’s logic, the failure to fulfill the terms of the 1275 treaty permitted Baybars to legally conduct war against Tripoli during which campaign he conquered ʿArqa. This new treaty of 1281, therefore, would reestablish the territories now under Tripolitan and Mamluk control, taking that conquest into consideration. The treaty of 1281, in short, acted to recognize the conquest.

Condominia/Munāṣafat The shared Frankish–Muslim political sphere is epitomized by the pervasive institution of condominia in Latin or munāṣafat in Arabic. This was an institution in which lands were shared in some fashion between a Frankish and a Muslim lord, the workings of which we know about primarily from treaties preserved in the Arabic sources. This landholding system was an important factor tying Frankish and Muslim elites together and seems to have distinguished Muslim–Frankish relations in the Levant from those elsewhere.57 Although the most detailed evidence for them comes from the thirteenth century, condominia between Franks and Muslims existed for practically the entirety of the kingdom’s history. For example, income from much of the land bordering the east bank of Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee (including the area of the Golan, the Terre de Suète land west of the Yarmuk river, and the modern Balqa region of Jordan) was shared between Franks and Muslims from perhaps as early as 1108.58 One of the last treaties we have, from 1285 between the Sultan Qalawun and Lady Margaret of Tyre lists as many as seventy-eight villages or lands as condominia.59 What exactly was shared or how condominia were administered varied but many were oriented toward joint sharing of revenues, as those mentioned above were. We know that over the course of his sultanate, for example, Baybars received a share of the revenues from al-Marqab /Margat – territory that belonged to the Hospitallers – as well from Baniyas, and Antartus/Tortosa – territory that belonged to the Templars.60 The treaty of 1267 between Baybars and the Hospitallers went into great detail concerning how the condominia of the area around Homs would work. Here, they were to share evenly “their summer crops and winter crops, the herd-tax and all sources of profit.”61 In fact, most of the treaty dealt with how the herd-tax (ʿidād, ʿadād) would be collected, emphasizing that everybody entering the area, whether peasants, nomadic peoples (Turcomans, Arabs, Kurds), or others entering with animals, should be liable and that no one would seek to prevent anyone from entering the territory with their animals. Moreover, it emphasized that the tax should only be collected if half of it would go to the Sultan and half to the Hospital.62 As should be clear, this herd-tax was seen as a major source of revenue and the two parties were very keen to ensure that it was split evenly between them.

How marginal is marginal? 179 The division did not automatically involve shared sovereignty though. In 1281, the Sultan Qalawun agreed with Bohemond VII of Tripoli to establish the city of Latakia as a condominium belonging to the Frankish lord, but providing revenues to be shared jointly by both (Muslim and Frankish) parties. The treaty reads: Provided that the city of Latakia and what is newly constructed therein shall be established as the Prince’s [Bohemond VII] domain; and the representatives of both parties in the city and harbour of Latakia shall be established for the levy of the dues, taxes, produce and so forth as shared revenue.63 Moreover, these Muslim representatives were to reside within the city. This was not the only example of the Sultan’s agents residing within the count’s territory. The treaty also stipulated that sixteen of the Sultan’s agents were to be posted on the bridge crossing the Nahr al-Barid at Artusiyya on the road between Tripoli and ʿArqa for the purpose of collecting dues and produce. and that “they shall have houses on the bridge in which to dwell as is customary.” At the same time, however, clear limits were placed on their authority. The sultan’s agents could neither prevent the count’s subjects from moving nor do them harm and they could only collect duties on goods crossing from the Sultan’s territory into that of the count, not vice versa.64 In this example, we see that condominia did not necessarily entail a division of sovereignty. Shared revenues and their collection did not preclude Frankish sovereignty over a place. Even so, we see the penetration of Muslim authorities into Frankish spaces. The Sultan had agents, themselves potentially Muslim, inside the city of Latakia, which was explicitly stated to be Bohemond’s domain. Muslims and Franks here worked together to enforce the stipulations of the treaty, in this case by collecting revenues. In some condominia there was also shared administration of justice. The treaty Sultan Baybars and the Hospitallers agreed to in 1271 stipulated that people in their condominia would each be judged according to the dictates of their religion.65 A Muslim who committed a crime in Hospitaller lands or in those held in condominia would be judged according to Islamic law and, in cases of capital crime, be punished by Muslim officials. Consequently, it was stipulated that the Sultan’s representatives would execute a sentence of hanging or mutilation as necessary – though always in the presence of a Hospitaller representative who would be informed of the offense and confirm the judgment and sentence. With respect to non-capital offenses, the treaty further stipulated that any fines extracted were to be divided evenly. The same conditions were included in the treaty concluded between Lady Margaret of Tyre and Sultan Qalawun in 1285. A criminal would be judged and punished by a representative of his religion while witnessed and confirmed by the other party.66

180 Ann E. Zimo Unfortunately, the stark differences in the nature of the evidence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries makes an analysis of how condominia may have changed over time quite difficult. The narrative sources, which provide evidence that such “shared” land holdings existed in the twelfth century offer far fewer practical details for how they were administered. They mostly describe lands from which Muslim and Frankish lords shared revenues. One can maybe assume that there was a system of shared collection as outlined in the later treaties, but perhaps one side collected them and then sent the appropriate share on to their counterpart. In any event, they seem to have been found in areas that no one political power could completely control, as in the areas east of the Jordan river, similarly distant from Damascus and Jerusalem. Sharing these lands as condominia allowed them to continue to be productive and financially benefit multiple powers. The picture is clearer in the thirteenth century from details included in the surviving treaties. While revenues were certainly shared, we also see how sovereignty could continue to exist with one party, even while administrators from the other party were granted limited powers to execute their duties as well as permission to reside within the condominium. Justice likewise could be shared, with multiple legal systems operating simultaneously. While acting to stabilize political centers and ensuring the continued productivity of the lands between them, condominia complicated the political landscape by creating spaces of shared administration, occasionally shared sovereignty, and otherwise shared dominance.

Conclusion When one thinks of marginal figures in medieval European history, Muslims have to be near the top of the list. We think of them living at the expanding frontiers of Europe in Italy, Sicily, and Iberia. Muslims of the Kingdom of Jerusalem are doubly peripheral, both in how they have been studied by modern scholars as well as in the related perception of their marginality to Frankish society as propounded in some of the Frankish material. Although work on perceptions of the other and regional politics based on close reading of Frankish and Muslim sources has flourished in the last decade, the foundational scholarship on Frankish governance written decades ago stands. These works relied heavily on the Frankish legal documents. However, as this chapter shows, those sources unequivocally paint a picture of systematic exclusion of Muslims from Frankish society. They indicate an attempt by the Franks to give Muslims a real disability in the court systems used by the Franks. Under canon law, Muslims were a threat to the spiritual well-being of the faithful. The assises of the High Court present Muslims as the least trustworthy, and least worthy of recompense. They are excluded from

How marginal is marginal? 181 holding fiefs, and by extension, being lords in the kingdom. Even in the Burgess Court they were denied the ability to serve as jurors. When read alone, it is no wonder that great scholars such as Prawer and Riley-Smith understood Muslims to have excluded from political and judicial power in the crusader states. And yet, when read alongside the Arabic sources, we see a much more complicated political reality. In the twelfth century, we have evidence for Muslims leasing lands from Franks and bringing cases before the High Court. In the thirteenth century, we have evidence of shared administration of lands, including policing and justice, as well as tax collection. Political power did not exist within clearly defined borders as they do today in nation states, but rather seems to have radiated from centers as proposed by Ellenblum. It seems likely that the Frankish legal sources were a reaction against what had happened on the ground, and what was potentially continuing to happen. In both the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, therefore, we see elite Muslims having recourse to and exerting judicial and administrative power in Frankish spaces and so they cannot be seen as categorically marginalized in the crusader states. As for Muslims of lesser status, it is harder to say given the inevitable lack of evidence in the sources. There was undoubtedly a shift in the balance of power over the two centuries of the Frankish presence. In the twelfth century, we see condominia as existing only in peripheral regions, far removed from both Frankish and Muslim centers, perhaps benefitting both Franks and Muslims equally in terms of revenue. Even those concluded with the Ayyubids in the early decades of the thirteenth century can be seen in this light. Once the Mamluks emerge as a unified regional power in the second half of the thirteenth century, however, this changed. Condominia were ever closer to the remaining Frankish power centers, bordering fortresses like Crac des Chevaliers or Marqab, and cities like Tyre or Acre. Their perceived advantages also shifted as Franks more desperately needed them for income, while the Mamluks increasingly valued them as an effective means of inserting themselves more deeply into the remnants of the Frankish polities. Regardless of what the Franks might have wished, by the 1270s, Muslims simply could not be treated as marginal figures. Mamluk ambassadors could and did refuse to be treated as of lesser status in the court by the king. The pervasive presence of shared lands that were co-administered renders untenable any assertion that Muslims were excluded from exercising aspects of lordship. Indeed, the reality was quite the opposite. They collected dues. They maintained boundaries. They administered justice. Whatever way the Frankish sources may have wanted to construct them, elite Muslims existed at the very center of Frankish power.

182 Ann E. Zimo

Notes 1 Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, al-Rawḍ al-zāhir fī sīrat al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, ed. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Khuwayṭir (Riyadh: al-Khuwaytir, 1976), 333. The passage in ques­ tion reads as follows in English: “The Sultan had instructed us to show no humility either in how we took our seats or in how we addressed him [the king], and so when we came into his presense and saw him sitting on a chair, as were his officers, we did not sit down until a seat was set for us in front of him.” Ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders: Selections from the Tarikh al­ duwal wal-Muluk of Ibn al Furat. Translated by Ursula and Malcolm C. Lyons, 2 vols (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1971), 2: 130. 2 “The vizier then stretched out his hand to take the letter, but we did not hand it over to him until the King put out his own hand and took it.” Ibid., 2: 130. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir calls this Frank “the wazir” and Riley-Smith suggests this might have been the seneschal who would have been Geoffrey of Sergines at the time. Ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, 2: 233 note 2. 3 For example, Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Government and the Indigenous in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, eds. David Abulafia and Nora Berend (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 121–31. See Christopher MacEvitt’s criticism of the use of these sources with regards to Eastern Christian participation, in Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), esp. 139–42. 4 Paul Cobb provides a succinct overview of this historiographical conundrum in The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 6–8. 5 For example, MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East; Paul Cobb, Race for Paradise, 7; Uri Zvi Shachar, “Dialogical Warfare: Figurations of Pious Belligerence Among Christian, Muslim and Jewish Authors in the Cru­ sading Near East” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014); Jesse W. Izzo, “The Frankish Nobility and the Fall of Acre: Diplomacy, Society, and War in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, c. 1240–1291” (PhD diss., University of Minne­ sota, 2016); Jeremy Pearson, “William of Tripoli and His Eastern Context: Reconsidering the Cultural Milieu of the Latin East” (PhD diss., University of Tennessee-Knoxville, 2017). 6 The Crusaders’ Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (New York: Praeger, 1972). 7 Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 8 Willelmus Tyrensis, Chronicon, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 22.13, 1023. See also Ann E. Zimo, “Us and Them: Identity in William of Tyre’s Chronicon,” Crusades (forthcoming). 9 Paul Crawford, trans., The “Templar of Tyre” Part III of the “Deeds of the Cyp­ riots” (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 25; Laura Minervini, ed. and trans., Cronaca del Templare di Tiro (1243–1314): la caduta degli crociati nel racconto di un tes­ timone oculare (Naples: Liguori, 2000), 64–6. 10 Christopher Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 40–1. 11 Nicholas Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 122–9. 12 Ann E. Zimo, “Muslims in the Landscape: A Social Map of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2016).

How marginal is marginal? 183 13 Benjamin Z. Kedar, “On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120,” Speculum 74 (1999): 310–35. 14 Kedar, “Canons,” 333–4. 15 Ibid., 334. 16 Myriam Greilsammer, ed., Livre au Roi (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1995), ch. 1, 42, 45. 17 Claude Cahen, La Syrie du Nord à l’époque des croisades et la prinicpauté franque d’Antioche (Damascus: Presses de l’Ifpo, 1940), 41–1. http://books.openedition.org/ ifpo/6169; Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-‘Adīm, Bughyat al-ṭalab fī ta’rīkh Ḥalab, ed. Suhayl Zakkar (Damascus, 1988–1989), 2926–32; Yāqūt ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Ḥamawī, Kitāb Irshād al-arīb ilā ma’rifat al-adīb: al-ma’ruf bi-Mu‛jam al-udabā’, ed. David S. Margoliouth (New Delhi, 1982), 1208–10. 18 “S’il avient que un chevalier estraie son fié et s’en vait en terre de Sarasins sans recoumander son fié a son seignor, et il avient que le seignor le saisist, il fait dreit et se qu’il deit faire.” Livre au Roi, 200. 19 “Mais se tant est chose que celuy revint avant l’an et le jor despuis qu’il s’en parti, sans que ja se soit renoié, ou il vint avant, si tost come il post issir dou poer as Sarasins ou il estoit arestés et n’en poet pas venir quant il se volet … la raison juge que se celuy chevalier peut prouver devant son seignor par bones garenties qu’il ne se soit renoiés et qu’il est venus si tost com il poet chaper de la main as Sarrasins, tenus est le seignor de rendre li son fié par dreit …” Ibid., 201. 20 “S’il avaient que un chavalier estraie son fié sans recoumander son fié a son seignor et s’en vait en terre de Sarasins et si renee la lei de Jhesu Crist et s’en prent a cele de Sarasins, la raison juge et coumande ce enci a juger que son fié o can que il avoit si deit estre dou seignor a tous jors mais.” Ibid., 203. 21 See also Greilsammer’s comment on the difference between heresy and apostasy in Ibid. f.n. 93, 195–6. 22 John of Ibelin, Le livre des assises, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 23 John of Ibelin, Livre des assises, ch. 48, 149. “mais que il jure selonc sa loy.” 24 Philip of Novara, “Le Livre de Forme de Plait,” in Recueil des Historians des Croisades: Les Assises de Jérusalem, Vol. 1 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1841). 25 John of Ibelin, Livre des assises, ch. 48 “peut il bien son jor contremander par .i. home de la loy de Rome, et, se il n’a o lui aucun home de la loy de Rome et il contramande son jor par autre crestien, il vaut. Et se il n’a crestien et il treuve juif ou sarazin par qui il le contremande, il vaut …” 26 Philip of Novara, “Le Livre de Forme de Plait,” ch. 62 p. 533.“Et s’il ne treuvent Franc de la lei de Rome, et il treuvent Surien à qui il doignent fei, il le deivent sivre. Et s’il ne treuvent Surien et il treuvent Grec, aussi; et se il ne treuvent Grec et il treuvent aucun autre Crestien de queilque generation que il seit, ainsement; et se il ne treuvent aucun autre Crestien, et il treuvent Sarasin qui jure selon sa lei, et il li doignent fei, si com il est dit dessus, il le deivent sivre et pourchaucher et borner la devise.” Also John of Ibelin, [3.11] p. 671. 27 John of Ibelin, Livre des assises, ch. 101, 265. 28 Livre de la Cour des Bourgeois, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Les Assises de Jérusalem, Vol. 2 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1843). For similar legal administration in Aragon see Brian Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 158–77. 29 The most recent, thorough discussion of this court is Marwan Nader, Burgess Law in the Latin Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1099–1325) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 30 Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions, 284.

184 Ann E. Zimo 31 Cour des Bourgeois, ch. 241, 171. David Jacoby outlines the office of bailli and operation of the court in “The fonde of Crusader Acre and Its Tariff: Some New Considerations,” in Dei gesta per Francos: Etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, ed. Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 280. Jonathan Riley-Smith compared the roles of the raʾis and viscounts in “Some Lesser Officials in Latin Syria,” The English Histor­ ical Review 87 (1972): 3–4. 32 Cour des Bourgeois, ch. 241, 171. “qui aime toutes manieres de gens à dreit maintenir.” 33 Cour des Bourgeois, ch. 241, 171. “Et est tenus, par dreit, de mener auci par raison, si com est establi, le Sarasin come le Surien, et le Surien come le Jude, et le Jude come le Samaritan, et toutes autres manieres de gens, auci come les Crestiens, car ce est dreit et raison par l’asise.” Ibid., 172. “Car encore seient il Suriens et Grifons, ou Judes, ou Samaritans, ou Nestourins, ou Sarasins, si sont il auci homes come les Frans, et sont tenus de paier et de rendre ce que jugé leur sera, tout auci come est establi en la Cort des Borgeis, en ce livre où est establie toutes raison et toutes droi­ tures por toutes gens.” 34 Ibid., 172. 35 Indeed, as did legal systems across the Latin world. See Brian Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 350–419. 36 For example, Jean Richard, The Crusades, c. 1071–c. 1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement, esp. 37–8. 37 See Paul Cobb’s introduction to Usāma Ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contempla­ tion Islam and the Crusades. Translated by Paul M. Cobb (New York: Penguin, 2008), esp. xxxiii–xxxviii. 38 Ibid., 110. 39 Ibid., 132. 40 Ibid., 76. 41 Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, Tashrif al-ayyām wa’l-‘uṣūr sīrat al-Malik al-Manṣūr, ed. Murad Kamil (Cairo: al-Sharika al-‘arabiyya lil-Tiba’ah wa al-nashir, 1961); Baybars al-Manṣūrī, Zubdat al-fikra fī ta’rīkh al-hijra, ed. Donald S. Richards (Beirut: Dar al-Nashr al-Kitāb al-ʿArabi, 1998); Ahmad ibn ʾAli al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, 14 vols (Cairo: Al-Matbaʻah al-Kubra al-Amiriyah, 1964). 42 Ronnie Ellenblum, “Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Examples of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Medieval Frontiers: Con­ cepts and Practices, ed. David Abulafia and Nora Berend (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 105–19. 43 For the English translation see Peter Malcolm Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290: Treaties of Baybars and Qalawun with Christian Rulers (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 69–91. 44 Michael Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades. Trans­ lated by Peter M. Holt, revised, edited and introduced by Konrad Hirschler (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 66. 45 Although Köhler sees this as a departure from “no place” doctrine. Köhler, Alli­ ances and Treaties, 266–70. 46 Köhler, Alliances and Treaties, 269; Stephen Humphreys, “Ayyubids, Mamluks, and the Latin East in the Thirteenth Century,” Mamluk Studies Review 2 (1998): 8; Paul A. Blaum, “Eagles in the Sun: The Ayyubids after Saladin,” The Inter­ national Journal of Kurdish Studies 13 (1999): 122; Jamal al-Din Muhammad

How marginal is marginal? 185

47

48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Ibn Wasil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb fī Akhbar Bani Ayyūb, ed. Jamal al-Din al-Shabbal, 5 vols (Cairo: Matba’at Dar al-Kutub, 1953–1955), 3: 162. The issue of the identity of contracting parties is muddied by the sources since we only have surviving treaties from the thirteenth century and information we have for twelfth century treaties comes from narrative sources. See Yvonne Friedman, “Peacemaking: Perception and Practices in the Medieval Latin East,” in The Cru­ sades and the Near East: Cultural Histories, ed. Conor Kostick (London: Routledge, 2011), 229–57; Nakamura Taeko, “The Concepts of Territory in Islamic Law and Thought,” in Territorial Disputes between Syrian Cities and the Early Crusaders, ed. Yanagihashi Hiroyuki (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000), 101–24. For example, 1269 with Lady Isabel of Beirut; 1285 with Lady Margaret of Tyre; 1267 and 1271 with the Hospitallers; 1282 with the Templars. The texts in English are in Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy. Ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, 1: 164; 2: 129; Baybars al-Manṣūrī in his two short accounts of the treaty rather less respectfully calls him “Hugh son of Henri lord (sahib) of Cyprus and Akka” Baybars al-Manṣūrī, Mukhtar al-akhbar; Baybars al-Manṣūrī, Zubdat, 115–16: ta’rikh al-Dawlah al-Ayyubiyah wa-Dawlat al-Mamalīk al-Bahriyah hattá sanat 702 H, ed. Abd al-Hamid Salah Handam (al-Qahirah: al-Dar al-Misriyah al-Lubnaniyah, 1993), 37–8. For Armenian examples see: Holt, Early Mamluk Diplo­ macy, 97; Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir, Tashrif, 95. Holt translates jalīla here as “exalted”; however, I have chosen to keep “maj­ esty,” which he used for King Leon’s treaty for consistency’s sake. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 109; Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir, Tashrif, 104. al-Qalqashandī does not give the name, so this quotation is a combination of Holt’s translation of the formula with my insertion of the actual names. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 44; Arabic in al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ, 14: 39–42. Holt translates this less literally. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 34; and al­ Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ, 14: 31. The redaction of details as seen in the quote is due to the treaty’s survival in al-Qalqashandī who meant it to be used as a template. The Arabic “al-mubashir” in al-Qalqashandī is a word for a Mamluk bureaucrat instead of the more usual transliteration al-mastar for Master. See Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 49; and al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ, 14: 42. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir, Tashrif, 20. See also Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 66. Peter Thorau, The Lion of Egypt. Translated by Peter M. Holt (London: Longman, 1992), 167–73; Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 32–3; Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir, al-Rawḍ, 182–3. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 61–2. Köhler offers one of the only treatments of the system, Alliances and Treaties, 312–3. Ronnie Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2007), 129 fn.28 (the citation should be to tome 4); Abū Shāma al-Maqdisi, Kitāb al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn al-Nūriyya wa­ l-Ṣalāḥiyya, in Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens orientaux, Vol. 4 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1872–1906), 277. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 112. Ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, 2: 166. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 34; and al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ, 14: 31–9. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 35. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 64; and Baybars al-Manṣūrī, Zubdat, 211. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 64. Ibid., 52. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 39; and al-Qalqashandi, Subh, XIV, 35.

11 Pirates as marginals in the medieval Mediterranean world Kathryn Reyerson

According to St Augustine, a pirate is said to have quipped to Alexander the Great who had seized him and asked “what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea”: “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber [pirate], whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”1 We have here a conundrum driven by a difference in perspective and fueled by the old adage of might makes right. This oft-quoted passage suggests that there is much ambiguity in piracy.2 Such ambiguity continues into the Middle Ages. I am seeking to problematize the status of medieval Mediterranean pirates by examining whether they should be viewed as marginal.3 This question is complicated, beginning with one’s definition of marginality. Does this mean standing outside the law, being illegitimate, exiled, losing honor and fama, being poorly viewed by the social hierarchy or at the very bottom thereof? This chapter will interrogate medieval marginality through an examination of pirates and privateers, with particular focus on law of marque proceedings.4 Letters of marque muddy the question of marginality by authorizing reprisals against compatriots of pirates who were themselves innocent, in essence drawing them into the web of mala fama. There are various complicating factors in addressing pirates and marginality, beginning with their reputation (termed in the Middle Ages fama). Pirates were often the focus of admiration in the Ancient World. Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, 397 BCE, evoked King Minos of Crete who defended his rule over the sea (his thalassocracy) by going after pirates. Thucydides commented that “as communication by sea became more common, [men] were tempted to turn pirate, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy.” He stated further that no disgrace was attached to such activity, “but even some glory.”5 This attitude remained pervasive in the medieval Mediterranean world and beyond where literature has given us Long John Silver, Captain Hook, and now Jack Sparrow, and history has furnished Barbarossa and Blackbeard.6 What could cause marginality in the Middle Ages? The loss of honor is one explanation. The label of mala fama (bad reputation) another. The two are closely connected, and the loss of honor could engender mala fama.

Pirates as marginals 187 There was a kind of honor that reflected the value system of an individual. Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of habitus, the set of unwritten rules that everyone knew, can be useful here.7 If individuals violated accepted norms, they could suffer loss of face and acquire a bad reputation. Merchants had such rules that some merchant manuals – those of Dino Compagni and Francesco di Balducci Pegolotti – put in writing. As Compagni said: A merchant wishing that his worth be great Must always act according as is right; And let him be a man of long foresight, And never fail his promises to keep.8 Of course, the unwritten rules of pirates and merchants might differ, and the targets of honor would vary – for merchants their partners and clients, for pirates it was generally crew and companions, but acts of merchants and pirates created their reputations and faith in their honesty, as the medieval economy and society functioned on trust; hence the use of reprisal in debt cases, a practice examined later in this study. One was expected to repay one’s debts. Incongruous as it may seem, there was a form of honor that existed among pirates. The case of the twelfth-century Pisan ship captain and pirate Trapelicino can illustrate this kind of honor.9 Trapelicino was exiled by Pisa for violating the terms of Pisa’s treaty with the Fatimids. Merchants of Alexandria, who were supposed to travel in safety on Pisan ships, were put to death by Trapelicino on his ship. For the Pisan authorities, he betrayed the trust Pisans had been building with other nationals, in this case Muslims. Exile was the punishment. Thereafter, Trapelicino acted as a corsair for the Genoese, always consulting with his crew and taking no action without their agreement. His actions reflect common maritime practice. The Llibre del Consolat de Mar of Barcelona, a remarkable set of maritime regulations written down from the mid-thirteenth to the midfourteenth century, makes clear that majority rule was the key in decision­ making.10 Later based in Marseille (1176–1177), Trapelicino offered his services to the Aragonese in transporting an ambassador, the Aragonese seneschal Ramon de Moncada, to Constantinople in armed ships. The Pisan historian Enrica Salvatore called Trapelicino “a mixture of corsair, pirate, and merchant.”11 Trapelicino operated independently for over twenty years in Mediterranean seafaring in a collaborative decision-making relationship with his crew that would certainly have included the sharing of booty.12 Trapelicino could be viewed as marginalized. He was a man without a country and proud of it. Some pirates probably reveled in their marginality. Yet honor prevailed in Trapelicino’s actions vis à vis his crew. A code of honor such as this was not uncommon in pirate societies, whether the ancient Cilicians, the early modern Uskoks of Senj, or the

188 Kathryn Reyerson pirates of the Caribbean.13 Were Trapelicino to have violated these norms, he might have been rejected by his own pirate society. Within the larger society, Trapelicino was marginalized by Pisa but respected by Genoa and Aragon, a feat worth underlining as these two powers were often at war. Keeping in mind that there are multiple arenas where the question of whether pirates were marginalized could be addressed, my focus in this study will be on that larger social sphere. If one adopts a definition of marginal that implies illegitimacy or at the margins of society, pirates might be marginal at certain moments of their careers, but they did not necessarily carry that stigma for life. The origins of piracy were many, and there was considerable diversity among pirates. Wherever there was trade, there were pirates. Piracy/corsairing was a business, sometimes financed in ways similar to international trade with contracts that resemble the iconic commenda and societas partnerships.14 Further in the words of Anne Pérotin-Dumon, “The two words ‘raiding’ and ‘trading’ appear over and over in the literature to describe these two modes of operation.”15 Moreover, while treaties negotiated between polities sought to regulate or eliminate piracy or at least establish non-aggression between the signatories,16 most importantly for this study, the medieval phenomenon of reintegration was at work in the realm of piracy. Though I have not been able to locate letters of remission for pirates from French jurisdictions, the Piracy Office (Officium Robarie) in Genoa required perpetrators of piracy to make restitution to victims, considering them contumacious if they refused.17 The punishments of pirates were myriad, ranging from death or physical punishment – loss of a hand – to excommunication and exile, but for some, restitution seems to have sufficed. Genoa did not marginalize pirates, though the Genoese were the most notorious pirates of the Mediterranean world. Its dual motto affirms this: “januensis ergo mercator; januensis ergo pirata.” (“I am Genoese, thus a merchant” or “I am Genoese thus a pirate.”)18 Law of marque proceedings, another attempt at punishment of pirates, sought in principle to provide recompense for piracy but in fact, as will be seen, further complicated the question of marginality as innocents were targeted in reprisal. In the same sense that arbitration was often an extra-legal technique preferred over the court process because it admitted of compromise and reintegration into the social nexus, restitution of losses following a marque procedure, providing one escaped the hangman’s noose, could restore legitimacy and eliminate marginality in a world where merchants floated in and out of piracy.19 Then too, by leaving the area of one’s crimes, one might escape to more welcoming shores or simply be reintegrated into one’s place of origin. It was, moreover, not viewed as a crime by most Europeans to perform piratical acts against the infidel nor indeed were pirates punished for raiding those trading with the infidel.20 Reintegration and ambiguity of status characterize Mediterranean pirates. These facets of the problem of marginality will be considered below.

Pirates as marginals 189 To address the issue of pirates and marginality, one must first ask who were the pirates? It is useful to establish a typology of pirates that can begin with the Rhodian Sea Law of the seventh or eighth century that distinguished three groups of maritime piratical inspiration: the pirates who captured merchant vessels on the high seas, pirates that wrecked vessels by drawing them into shoals and other hazards close to shore and robbed them, and pirates who raided vessels in port.21 These varieties continue throughout the Middle Ages, and others join them.22 There were admiral corsairs such as Enrico Pescatore and Benedetto Zaccaria, merchants who turned pirate to recoup losses or make a fortune, and outlaws who capitalized on shipping disasters at the mercy of Mother Nature.23 Ruthy Gertwagen speaks of pirates gaining social status when they were hired as corsairs, emphasizing their maritime and leadership skills.24 She also invokes the practice of piracy by anyone with the opportunity.25 One can, in addition, distinguish privateering or corsairing that was considered legitimate piracy, because licensed by a polity, from piracy of an independent form, but the distinctions are difficult to make and there was much slippage from privateering to piracy. Gertwagen remarks on the “alternating terminological use of sailing in cursum or ad piraticum.”26 Privateering usually had a defined sphere: an enemy during wartime, for example. But when opportunity presented itself in the form of a neutral vessel on the high seas, the privateer could easily turn pirate.27 While Genoa produced the most notorious pirates, the Llibre del Consolat de Mar of Barcelona provides for Catalan mariners a detailed treatment of questionable encounters on the seas, ranging from self-defense against pirates to privateering and seizure of enemy cargo that could easily tip over into actions de more piratico.28 The Aragonese governors of Mallorca, aware of the problem, licensed many privateers but required a deposit in case their actions veered from privateering to piracy.29 The circumstances differed for each of the actors in these groups, but they were joined in a pervasive piratical environment that was the medieval Mediterranean. The target of piracy was important. In the case of Trapelicino, it is significant that his crime was directed against the infidel, though he disrupted Pisan–Egyptian diplomatic relations. The Genoese Piracy Office (Officium Robarie) was particularly active in the early fourteenth century at a time of notorious Genoese piracy. But even in these circumstances, complaints brought by merchants against Genoese depredation could be rejected. The Genoese Piracy Office did not reimburse merchants who were robbed by pirates while engaging in illegitimate trade with the infidel.30 A case in point involved trade with Alexandria. Here again, the situation was murky because one could obtain authorization to trade with the Muslims; pontifical licenses were purchased by the Barcelonans from the reign of Pope John XXII (1316–1334).31 Jacques Coeur had such a dispensation for life in the fifteenth century.32 However, Pope Clement V (1305–1314) maintained this prohibition of trade with the infidel during

190 Kathryn Reyerson his papacy, complaining in 1311 that the statute was on the Genoese books but not sufficiently enforced.33 The sons of Benedetto Zaccaria intercepted ships with impunity on the Caffa-Alexandria slave trade route in the early fourteenth century.34 Piracy was permitted when it was directed against those trading with the infidel. Another case demonstrating the ambiguity of pirate status involved the Hospitallers and the conquest of Rhodes.35 The Knights Hospitaller turned to a Genoese pirate, Vignolus de Vignolis, to assist them in conquering the island of Rhodes in the early fourteenth century following the loss of Acre and crusader mainland territories in the Near East in 1291. The Hospitallers were not anxious to remain in Cyprus, their fallback refuge from Acre. A formal treaty bound Vignolus and the Grand Master, Fulk de Villaret, with an agreement that the booty and revenues of Rhodes and other captured Dodecanese islands would be divided 2/3 to the Hospital and 1/3 to Vignolus. Of great interest in this case is that the treaty was endorsed by an impressive list of witnesses, including the marshal, clothier, and admiral of the Hospital, a merchant of the renowned Peruzzi company of Florence, and a member of the famed Boccanegra clan, undoubtedly from Genoa.36 The pope Clement V later approved the conquest of Rhodes, validating, at least indirectly, the actions of the pirate Vignolus. And, of course, in the early modern period the Hospitallers were themselves pirates and privateers on Malta as Molly Greene has demonstrated.37 Their activities on Rhodes might also be construed in that fashion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.38 Political pirates provide yet additional examples of ambiguity. There is a range of piratical activity among the ex-patriot Genoese who flooded the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mediterranean. Exiled Guelfs, the Grimaldi clan that set up in Monaco, were pirates of a rather pure variety, so much so that in the early fourteenth century the Venetians arrested any Genoese with the last name Grimaldi until the doge of Genoa protested.39 There were the noble corsair lords like Enrico Pescatore, who was in the maritime service of Emperor Frederick II of Germany/Sicily. Enrico moved from the status of pirate and privateer to count of Malta and sometime ruler of Crete in the face of Venetian dominance.40 He generally attacked Venetian and Pisan ships, assisting the cause of Genoa. For Genoa, he was legitimate and even a hero while the Venetians considered him a notorious pirate.41 The remarkable Genoese Benedetto Zaccaria was an industrialist and merchant as well as an admiral, corsair, and pirate. His family came to dominate Phocaea, renowned as a source of alum, and the island of Chios, a source of mastic. Zaccaria served the king of Castile in piratical/ privateering actions against Muslims in the Straits of Gibraltar and assisted the Genoese in the eastern Mediterranean.42 There is no question that piracy or the threat thereof was widespread. The maritime population of the south of France expected trouble when it took to the sea. A standard later medieval commenda partnership for long

Pirates as marginals 191 distance maritime trade contained language that was descriptive of the risks of travel on the sea. In a contract of 7 July 1343, drawn up in Montpellier, a Narbonnais investor provided 1,945 livres 10 sous for a trip by traveling merchants of Montpellier and Narbonne to Sicily. Included in the text was a phrase relating to risks: “ad fortunam Dei, ignis, maris, et malarum gentium.”43 Bad men, that is, pirates, ranked with fortune, fire, and the sea as the source of potential danger. In an insurance contract of 24 March 1350, drawn up in Palermo, the coverage was “against every risk, peril, and fortune of God, the sea and [hostile] people.”44 The anxiety created by piracy and the very contradictions raised in the examples above speak to a morality in conflict. The situation becomes more complicated when privateering/corsairing is introduced. Emily Tai identified the late Middle Ages as the moment when, as she said, a distinction was finally made between pirates, corsairs, and merchants: “the slow and painful process by which pirates were distinguished from corsairs, a process that played out on the high seas and in the chancelleries of Europe over the course of the fourteenth century.”45 The distinction was essential because corsairs were engaged in an economic war that was viewed as honorable, and pirates were simply maritime thieves. International law authorized “official piracy.” Specifically, the law of privateering allowed private owners of vessels to sail under a commission of war and thus empowered by the authority of state, “to carry on forms of hostility which are permissible at sea by the usages of war.”46 Privateers were pirates in some cases while they acted legitimately in others with the authorization of the state. Their acts were similar in both contexts. As the political scientist Costas Constantinou commented, “So, in effect, the privateers were allowed to attack any commercial vessel of the enemy or cooperating with the enemy, sharing their loot with the sovereign.”47 Privateers often operated with letters of marque that authorized their legitimate piracy. Marques and reprisals had serious effects on trade and on merchant and piratical activities; contemporary medieval observers, as well as modern scholarship, often viewed them in a dim light. The nature of reprisal through marques contributed to the ambiguity associated with pirates, as those innocent of a piratical deed might find themselves the target of reprisal for it. There was the question of how those subject to reprisal would be defined. What, if any, limitations pertained to the punishment that was meted out? What was the response of merchants to the web of retribution/reprisal? And what consequences did their efforts of evasion of a marque have for the landscape of trade in light of marque mechanisms? As we will see, reprisals were punitive instruments that imposed conditions of mala fama (and thus marginality) on non-offenders.

192 Kathryn Reyerson How could the innocent avoid getting caught in the marque web? Investigation of marque incidents will further complicate the problem of ambiguity associated with piracy. Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq evoked forty years ago the potential paralysis of Mediterranean life from the cycle of marques and reprisals: “reprisals and their infernal cycle, the letters of marque which – at the limit – risked stopping trade.”48 He did not mince words, speaking of crises, perturbations, and economic asphyxia. Dufourcq recounted multiple incidents where unknowing merchants – Catalans, Marseillais, Barcelonans, and Majorcans – were suddenly seized in ports of North Africa – Tunis or Bijaya (Bougie) – without explanation, imprisoned, or enslaved with their goods confiscated. By the same token, Moroccans could be detained on Majorca; all in the name of reprisal. The ships and merchants of a polity that was targeted with a marque avoided those ports where the marque was operative.49 The theoretical limitations of what could be taken in reprisal to the initial amount seized were often violated in practice. According to Marie-Claire Chavarot, who studied the emergence of marque procedure in the Parlement of Paris, marque was a survival of private vengeance in international law.50 She distinguished the marque from reprisals attached to war or to corsairing, that is, when a ruler or polity authorized the arming of ships and the capture of enemy goods. It seems realistic, however, to speak more generally of marques and reprisals in the vein of Dufourcq because in a broader consideration of events in Western Europe and the Mediterranean world, such narrow distinctions are often hard to sustain. In a strict construction, for a letter of marque to be accorded, the victim of pillage/piracy had to have attempted to obtain recompense through a judicial process from the authorities of the perpetrators, sometimes more than once, before appealing to his own jurisdiction for the right to reprisal against the perpetrator and the compatriots of the perpetrator. In marque procedure, there was generally a definition of those against whom victims could proceed in reprisal, a definition of those to be held responsible for piracy. In an early interesting case from the courts of the King of Aragon/Majorca in Montpellier in the mid-thirteenth century, one finds action against Pisans for spoliation at sea of Montpelliérains. The judicial pretext was piracy by the Pisans on the Montpelliérain Guillelmus Cogorla, a linen merchant (canabasserius). A ship with his merchandise was seized by Pisans somewhere near the mouth of the Rhône River.51 In a law of marque hearing in the court of the king of Aragon and Majorca at the request of Cogorla, the king ordered that an agreement be made between the Pisans on the one hand and the lieutenant and bailiff of the king and the consuls of Montpellier on the other, that all who had experienced rapina and injury from the Pisans be compensated by a tax of 1d/l on Pisan goods entering and exiting Montpellier. The rationale behind punishing all Pisans was to encourage

Pirates as marginals 193 collective pressure on the actual perpetrators. But in the process, innocents would be punished. Guillelmus Cogorla, however, did not consent to this settlement, as the documents go on to tell us that he had lost everything in the rapina and had nothing to sustain him, a case for dolendum, for despairing. In a scene right out of a modern soap opera, Cogorla had his five daughters of marriageable age come to court, crying and lamenting that their father had nothing left. Clearly, their dowries were at issue. The lamentation was effective since the king then agreed, as did all the victims of the Pisans, that Cogorla’s losses and expenses should first be reimbursed before anyone else got compensation. The final document resolving the dispute contains a definition of Pisan identity for the levy that includes those “who were from the district of Pisa and who were reputed and held as Pisans or were of the societas partnership of the Pisans.”52 The definition of who was Pisan was quite broad, and many who were not residents of the city of Pisa itself were subsumed for the purposes of reprisal under the identity of Pisan and thus bore the burden of reprisal in the form of taxation, though they were innocent of the crime of piracy. The collective responsibility prevailed, regardless of who committed the crime. Marques sometimes directed the reprisal against merchants of a particular town or trading environment. In her comprehensive study, Chavarot noted the beginning of marque procedures in the Parlement of Paris about 1270. In 1272, merchants of Saint-Antonin in south-central France were robbed at sea by pirates of Albenga, a city that was under Genoese jurisdiction in Liguria. The victims demanded justice from the captain of Genoa, but it was the French royal court of Beaucaire that condemned the Genoese. The captain rejected the sentence, arguing that Albenga was not within his jurisdiction; he did, however, hang one of the perpetrators and restore some of the stolen goods. Finally, on appeal, the Parlement of Paris condemned the city of Genoa, not the pirates or the inhabitants of Albenga or those Genoese in France or specifically at SaintAntonin. Here is an instance of responsibility shifting from the specific wrongdoers to those with overall jurisdictional responsibility.53 Again, the ambiguity of piracy is reinforced by the broad punishment. In another incident of 1308, three merchants of Montpellier were robbed of 1800 gold florins by Genoese pirates, including one member of the Doria family. After failed procedures to obtain recompense from the Genoese, the seneschal of Beaucaire-Nîmes issued a marque against the Genoese living in Nîmes, allowing them a year and forty days to finish their business in the seneschaussée and leave before the reprisal went into effect.54 Only specific Genoese were targeted, perhaps realistic in that the king of France controlled Nîmes, and Philip III had in 1278 ordered all Italians in the south of France to reside at Nîmes with the unrealized aim of establishing a monopoly in French favor, linking the royal port of Aigues-Mortes to Nîmes and thereby controlling Italian trade in France. In the case of 1308,

194 Kathryn Reyerson with such a long delay before implementation of the reprisal, one wonders whether any Genoese remained in Nîmes to provide fodder for recompense. They could easily have transferred their operations to Montpellier. In a broader application of marque, the capture by the Genoese Spinola and comrades of Savona of a ship carrying gyrfalcons off Cyprus in 1330 led the seneschal of Beaucaire and the French king to declare a marque against all those who claimed loyalty to Genoa, since procedures to gain satisfaction from the consuls of Savona had failed.55 Savona was also under Genoese jurisdiction. The towns in Liguria under Genoese hegemony at times took sides in Genoese factional strife. Savona was involved in a Ghibelline revolt, led by the noble families of Doria and Spinola against Guelf leadership, a controversy not formally settled by treaty until 1332.56 Reprisal decisions were thus complicated by political alliances. There emerges a pattern of reprisal that muddies the question of the marginality of pirates. Faced with Dufourcq’s “infernal cycle,” one finds a variety of strategies used to escape the application of letters of marque. Merchants were aware of the operation of marques and sought through various techniques to avoid their consequences. In 1371–1372, a marque in place against Florentine merchants on Majorca and at Barcelona, Perpignan, and Collioure caused certain Florentines to seek letters of dispensation from the application of this marque from the king of Aragon, Peter the Ceremonious.57 People holding safe-conducts were supposedly exempt from the application of a marque, but things were not always clear, nor was a safe-conduct always effective.58 In another tactic to escape marques, merchants dissembled, disguising their real identity through borrowed names, using straw men as buyers, and changing sites of operation. They used intermediaries to trade. Thus, in the early fourteenth century when there was a marque in place at Marseille against merchants of Narbonne, one of the latter chose to trade via a Provençal colleague, using Montpellier for his base of operations.59 In the early fifteenth century, merchants of Marseille avoided the seizure of their merchandise destined on board ship for Genoa by using a neutral vessel and making fictive sales of the goods to merchants of Nice. There was danger in this, however, as pirates and privateers could go after the straw men or the fictive buyers who had acknowledged that their purchases were contrived.60 Sometimes authorities suspended a marque when the need to provision a town or the fate of the trade of a town was at stake. Marseille did this in 1328 in regard to Majorcan ships that could then bring grain to Marseille, though there was a marque currently operating against Majorcans.61 Christopher Beck has made a study of the pretexts for the suspension of letters of marque in fourteenth-century Marseille in cases where the common good outweighed individual rights of recompense.62 Marques were suspended to permit trade and to permit preparation for the visits of

Pirates as marginals 195 powerful figures, kings, and popes. The vicar of Marseille recorded existing marques and calculated the effect of suspensions so that the marques could be resumed after the suspension was over. Early on, merchants were paying attention to wars and marques. Because of a war between Frederick II and the Genoese, c. 1250, contingency plans were written into a ship-chartering contract.63 A group of merchants who were shareholders equipping the nef, “A Great Paradise,” drew up an agreement with other merchants traveling and/or transporting merchandise aboard this vessel on a trip “overseas” to the Levant with the final destination of Acre. They discussed putting in at Monaco or at Antibes: to take on the said cargo, we shall have her fitted out and made ready to hoist sail and to bring to completion the said voyage with the said nef. But if we should hear news that some naval expedition is being organized in the Sicilian territory or in other places – may this not happen – and if because of this we are unable to go safely with the said nef and your merchandise to the territory of Acre, we promise you to go with the said nef and your merchandise to Tripoli, if you, merchants traveling aboard said nef, or the majority among you shall so wish….64 The dispute between Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV, a Genoese, was disrupting mercantile traffic, and Frederick II’s force at Acre could represent a problem for Genoese merchants.65 The participants in this contract were clearly going to monitor the situation. Political alliances played a role in the landscape of piracy and privateering. How did marques affect piracy and the question of marginality? If there was marginality, the marque procedure diffused it (and the mala fama it engendered) across the whole range of compatriots of the pirates implicated in a specific affair. Strategies to ward off the application of marques and information networks that conveyed some knowledge of what was transpiring in war and privateering may have mitigated the disruptive cycle of marques. Whether marques directly curbed piracy is another matter. It seems unlikely that they had that effect, but they did disrupt the trade on which piracy fed. There is little doubt that marques served to complicate the issue of marginality, as the definitions of those targeted were often vague, and the techniques of avoidance were multiple. Here, surely is a morality in conflict that was of concern to people of the time. By the fourteenth century, people were critical of the marque procedure. Philippe de Mézières, former chancellor of Cyprus, noted in his Songe du vieil pèlerin: Under letters of marque a Frenchman may cause the arrest of mer­ chants of the country concerned. But it is to be noted that such notion causes foreign merchants to avoid this realm, to our great loss. First,

196 Kathryn Reyerson you turn friends into enemies and may provoke war, and secondly, mer­ chants and goods of the country against which marque is granted are banished from France. And all of this happens for the sake of one injured person.66 Emily Tai noted Mézières’s emphasis on “the damage to foreign and domestic commerce, when compatriot merchants were arrested abroad, and foreign merchants targeted by the reprisal cut off travel and exchange to protect themselves.” Reprisals and counter-reprisals could also provoke war.67 In the early fifteenth century, Christine de Pizan raised a conundrum regarding marques in The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry, questioning the justness of the marque procedure, all the while making clear the linkage of marque and identity and highlighting the very real damage caused by marques: they led to the punishment of the innocent for crimes of their compatriots: marque occurs when a man from some kingdom, France or some­ place else, who cannot have his due for some injury done him by a powerful foreigner, is given by the king a sort of permission to cap­ ture, arrest, and imprison this foreigner, by virtue of certain letters he has obtained, and also to seize the goods of all others coming from the country and place of residence of the one who has committed this wrong. This could be the case until justice and restitution have been made to the one who has filed the request…. It is a great wonder that a man from the country of another who has caused the trouble, even though he does not know who this other is and is in no way to blame, should for such a reason, if he finds himself where an injured party exercises power, be imprisoned and have his goods for­ feited and be obliged to pay and make restitution for something of which he is innocent.68 Letters of dispensation, safe-conducts, and fictive trade, along with use of the information infrastructure, may not have saved the innocent from reprisals through the application of marques. Marque proceedings could be considered questionable when innocents were targeted. In order to craft a fairer system, as early as the years 1310–1313, there were efforts to put in place funds to compensate victims of losses and thus eliminate marques. The trade between Barcelona and Narbonne was at that time interrupted by reprisals and marques. Commissioners of the king of Aragon and the king of France worked out the details of such a compensation fund supported 50/50 by each side.69 There was some recognition that piracy was no worse than marque privateering.

Pirates as marginals 197 Such compromises were still in the air in the mid-fifteenth century. Jacques Coeur in the 1440s was part of an international commission involving France and Aragon that attempted to put in place taxation to provide funds to reimburse losses from piracy and privateering.70 Their desire was to stop the chain reaction of violence following on violence, not to right the human wrong that Christine de Pizan identified. These fifteenth-century efforts would not be successful – it did not help that Jacques Coeur sometimes siphoned off the fruits of such a fund – but they represent further contemporary recognition of the futility of marque reprisals and the ambiguity associated with piracy. Letters of marque would not go away as they were a means of legitimizing maritime violence and piracy on the high seas as late as the nineteenth century. The ambiguities discussed above complicate the question of whether pirates were marginal. For the ingrained life-long pirate, there may have been limited forgiveness. But the stories told by Boccaccio suggest that merchants turned pirate could reintegrate, and that there was considerable tolerance for young lovers when the man wished to gain a fortune to win his lady, as related in Day 5, Story 2.71 Martuccio Gomiti of Lipari turns pirate against Muslims of North Africa to win sufficient fortune to marry his love Gostanza. Captured by an emir’s forces and then promoted in the emir’s service, he is ultimately reunited with his love who had also taken to sea. The lovers return to Lipari where they are reintegrated into society. In Day 2, Story 4, Landolfo Rufolo of Ravello, after an unsuccessful commercial venture to Cyprus, turns pirate to prey on Turkish shipping until he made back his money and then some.72 After a series of adventures that I have written about elsewhere, he returns home, never to resort again to piracy.73 The point is that the stint at piracy (particularly if directed against infidels) did not necessarily prevent the resumption of a respectable life after the piracy ceased.74 The medieval Mediterranean world had the ability to reintegrate its black sheep and felt it necessary to do so for social cement and the good workings of society. The medieval process of arbitration can shed some light on the reintegration of pirates into respectable society.75 Debtors abounded in the Middle Ages and the laws against them were severe, long before the Dickensian prisons of the nineteenth century. Creditors could imprison debtors in chains and nourish them only with bread and water.76 In Provence, the punishments ran the gamut from the seizure of the person of the debtor, to imprisonment, to excommunication, and to the cession of the goods of the debtor to the creditor. Marques could be proclaimed to deal with debt.77 But there existed a genuine desire on the part of medieval inhabitants to resolve differences otherwise and to bypass the court system, and to institute a process of arbitration and amiable settlement, as the documents of practice state. Honor and fama were endangered by indebtedness, just as they were by piracy. Many a dispute was resolved through arbitration, recorded in the notarial registers of medieval southern Europe: “by reason of a final accounting and amicable

198 Kathryn Reyerson agreement between us” (“ex causa finalis computi et amicabilis compositionis inter me et vos”). Many promises were made to avoid litigation: “I promise to pay in peace and without litigation” (“solvere promito in pace et sine lite”).78 Not all debtors benefitted from this system, nor indeed did all pirates experience the possibility of reintegration. But some, like Landolfo and Martuccio, Boccaccio’s fictional heroes, do enjoy that ending. Frederic L. Cheyette, speaking of piratical violence, had it right: “these acts were as often an excuse for war as for judicial action, and as often settled by a peace treaty as by a criminal court. Violence in the Middle Ages, as in our own day, could be quite respectable.”79 Marginality varied with the type of pirate and might be a temporary state that could be resolved in favor of the resumption of an honorable life. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell remarked that pirates need traders, and that “one season’s predator is next season’s entrepreneur.”80 Piracy could be a means of acquiring capital or a supplement to shortfalls in income. In the end, the problem identified by Saint Augustine holds true. The marginality of pirates is often a function of one’s perspective.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. See Saint Augustine, The City of God, with an introduction by Thomas Merton, translated by Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), Book 4, Part 4, 113. 2 The political scientist Costas Constantinou, States of Political Discourse. Words, Regimes, Seditions (London: Routledge, 2004), 58, has the modern language: “Because I do what I do with a small ship, I’m called a pirate; you, doing the same with many ships, are called a great emperor.” Frederic Cheyette suggested that Augustine borrowed the story from Cicero, De Re Publica, III, 14, 24. See “The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332,” Speculum XLV (1970): 46. See other uses of the quotation in Thomas Heebøll-Holm, Ports, Piracy, and Maritime War: Piracy in the English Channel and the Atlantic, c. 1280–1330 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–9, with a focus on northern Europe, and “Law, Order, and Plunder at Sea: A Comparison of England and France in the Fourteenth Century,” Con­ tinuity and Change 32, no. 1 (2017): 37–58. Heebøll-Holm identifies two para­ digms regarding piracy: a Ciceronian and an Augustinian. The former condemns pirates as enemies of all while the latter admits of ambiguity. See also Anne Pér­ otin-Dumon, “The Pirate and the Emperor: Pirates and Law on the Seas, 1450–1850,” in James D. Tracy, ed, The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 196–227. 3 This article will treat European Christian piracy. For a future study, I am looking at the status of Muslim pirates in Islamic society. 4 I have been inspired to pursue this topic by Emily Sohmer Tai, “The Legal Status of Piracy in Medieval Europe,” History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 838–51. See also her lengthy article, “Restitution and the Definition of a Pirate: The Case of Sologrus de Nigro,” Mediterranean Historical Review 19 (2004): 34–70. 5 Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley (London: Dent, 1874), 306, reproduced in Mediterranean Passages, 49. And fur­ ther, “An illustration of this is furnished by the honor with which some of the

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inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful marauder, and by the question we find the old poets everywhere representing the people as asking of voyagers, ‘Are they pirates?’ – as if those who are asked the question would have no idea of disclaiming the imputation, or their interrogators of reproaching them for it” (49). A useful reference on pirates fictional and factual is Jan Rogozinski, Pirates! An A-Z Encyclopedia: Brigands, Buccaneers, and Privateers in Fact, Fiction, and Legend (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996). Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). Robert S. Lopez and Irving Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 425–6, no. 208. See also Allan Evans and Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. Allan Evans, Medieval Academy Books No. 24 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1936). For details see Enrica Salvatore, “Corsairs’ Crews and Cross-Cultural Interactions: The Case of the Pisan Trapelicinus in the Twelfth Century,” in Medieval Encounters special issue: Cross-Cultural Encounters on the High Seas (Tenth-Sixteenth Centur­ ies), ed. Kathryn L. Reyerson, 13, no. 1 (2007): 43–55. The Llibre del Consolat de mar of Barcelona reinforces this concept of collective decision- making between a captain and his crew. For an English translation, see Stanley S. Jados, Consulate of the Sea and Related Documents (Alabama: Univer­ sity of Alabama Press, 1975). Salvatore, “Corsairs’ Crews,” 53. During the Sicilian Vespers, (1282-13-2) the great Aragonese admiral, Roger de Lauria, Italian by birth, kept his crews content with the sharing of booty from his raids, whether privateering or piratical. See Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Catalan-Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2003), Chapter 7. See also my forthcoming paper at the American Historical Association in New York in January 2020, “The Continuum of Violence in the Mediterranean World: The Sicilian Vespers.” See Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Chapter 4; Catherine Wendy Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas 1500–1750 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); and Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston, MA: Beacon, 2004). Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond make this argument in Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative Documents, see forward and bibliog­ raphy by Olivia Remie Constable (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 221 and document 109 for an example. Lopez published ten examples of such Genoese financing in Su e giù per la storia di Genova (Genoa: Università di Genova, Istituto di paleografia et storia medieval, 1975), “Dieci documenti sulla guerra di corsa,” 313–27. Pérotin-Dumon, “The Pirate and the Emperor,” 35. Further on the economics of piracy see Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). See, for example, the Peace of Turin after the War of Chioggia between Genoa and Venice, 1378–1381, in Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese 958–1528 (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 240–2. See also the collec­ tion of treaties provided by Louis de Mas Latrie, Relations et commerce de l’Afrique septentrionale ou Maghreb avec les nations chrétiennes au moyen âge

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26 27

28 29 30 31

(Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Co, 1886; rpr. Elibron Classics/Adamant Media, 2006). Benjamin Z. Kedar, “L’Officium Robarie di Genova: un tentativo di coesistere con la violenza,” Archivio storico italiano 143 (1985): 331–72. See 332. I am problematizing the diversity of punishments in a future study. See Emily Sohmer Tai, “Honor among Thieves: Piracy, Restitution and Reprisal in Genoa, Venice and the Crown of Catalonia-Aragon 1339–1417” (Diss. Har­ vard University, 1996), Chapter 1. See also my article, “Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates,” Mediterranean Studies 20 (2012, appeared 2013): 129–46. See also Carrie E. Beneš, “Civic Identity” in A Companion to Medieval Genoa, ed. Carrie E. Beneš (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2018), 193, no. 1. See my article on arbitration, “‘In pace et sine lite’: Methods of Resolution of Indebtedness Outside the Court System,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 28 (2001): 315–24. Kedar, “L’Officium Robarie,” for example, 343. The Rhodian Sea-Law, ed. Walter Ashburner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), cxliii: “The dangers to navigation which arise from man fall under three heads. First, there are the pirates who attack the merchantman in the open sea or lurk for it in harbors. Secondly, there are the land-robbers, who cut a ship’s cables or steal its anchors or snap up a merchant or passenger or sailor who happens to go on land. Thirdly, there are the wreckers, and these not merely plunder ships which have been driven on shores, but sometimes lure them to destruction by displaying false lights.” For a discussion of a typology of medieval pirates, see Ruthy Gertwagen, “Is there a Typology of Pirate Crews and Ships across the Byzantine and Medieval Mediter­ ranean? (11th to 15th Century),” in Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum: Piraterie, Korsar­ entum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013), 67–80. See my paper, “Lordship and Piracy in the Medieval Mediterranean World,” Mediterranean Studies Association, Malta, May 2017. Gertwagen, “Is There a Typology of Pirate Crews and Ships,” 70–1. Gertwagen, “Is There a Typology of Pirate Crews and Ships,” 79. She concludes, “The analytical information yielded by this study points to the common practice of piracy by whoever had the opportunity: individuals from all levels of society, polities institutions [sic], such as religious Orders, and even entities with no ori­ ginal marine inheritance like the Bedouins.” Gertwagen, “Is There a Typology of Pirate Crews and Ships,” 70. Tai, “The Legal Status of Piracy,” 840: “The possibility was ever-present that a corsair’s loyalties – and affiliation – might shift, altering his treatment of other captains – and theirs of him – as pirates – in war, and in law.” And further, 839: “Subjective assignment of terms like ‘pirate’, ‘corsair’, and zeerauber, accordingly furnish evidence of the simultaneous operation of competing systems of law that allowed medieval piracy to lie in the eye – or rather, with the law – of the beholder.” See Jados, Consulate of the Sea, passim. Pinuccia Franca Simbula, “Îles, corsaires et pirates dans la Méditerranée médié­ vale,” Médiévales 47 (2004): 17–30. Kedar, “L’Officium Robarie,” 345. Damian Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient. Un siècle de relations avec l’Égypte et la Syrie (ca. 1330 – ca. 1430) (Madrid-Barcelona: Casa de Velázquez – Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, 2004).

Pirates as marginals 201 32 See my monograph, Jacques Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar (New York: Longman, 2005). See also Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient. 33 Kedar, “L’Officium Robarie,” 331–72, see especially 342–5. 34 Kedar, “L’Officium Robarie,” 345. 35 My recent summa student, Raymond Mrozek, studied this event in his thesis, “The Acquisition of Rhodes by the Knights Hospitaller.” For background, see Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070–1309 (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012); Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Of the many articles of Anthony Luttrell, see “The Genoese at Rhodes, 1306–1312,” in The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and its Western Provinces, 1306–1462, ed. Anthony Luttrell (Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 1999), 737–61, and “The Hospitallers and the Papacy, 1305–1314,” in Studies on the Hospital­ lers After 1306: Rhodes and the West, ed. Anthony Luttrell (Aldershot: Ashgate/ Variorum, 2007), 595–622. 36 I translated this treaty for Mr. Mrozek from Arch. de Malta, div. V, Lib. Bull. Magistr., IX, f. 187 bo, copie 1392, reproduced in Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, Les Hospitaliers de Terre Sainte et à Chypre (1100–1310) (Paris: E. Le Roux, 1904), 274–6. 37 Molly Greene, Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 38 On the Knights Hospitaller, see Helen J. Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001); Luttrell, The Hospitaller State on Rhodes; and Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306. On the problem of defining Hospitaller piracy on Rhodes, see Theresa Vann, “Hospitallers and Piracy on Rhodes, 14th–16th Centuries,” in Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum: Piraterie, Korsar­ entum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, eds., Nikolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013), 251–61. 39 Tai, “Honor among Thieves,” 173–4. 40 David Abulafia, “Henry Count of Malta and His Mediterranean Experiences, 1203–1230,” in Medieval Malta: Studies on Malta before the Knights, ed. Anthony Luttrell (London: The British School at Rome, 1975), 104–125. 41 Simbula, “Îles, corsairs et pirates dans la Méditerranée médiévale,” 3, quoted the troubadour Peire Vidal on Enrico: “Larcs es arde e cortes, et estela dels Genoes, e fai per terra et per mar tots ses enemichs tremelar.” (“Ardent and courtly, and the star of the Genoese, he made all his enemies tremble on land and on sea.”) 42 Robert S. Lopez, Genova marinara nel duecento: Benedetto Zaccaria, ammiraglio e mercante (Genoa: G. Principato, 1933). See also Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese 958–1528 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Caro­ lina Press, 1996), 179–80. 43 A. D. Hérault, II E 95/372, J. Holanie et al., f. 52v, transcribed in my monograph, Business, Banking and Finance in Medieval Montpellier (Toronto: Pontifical Insti­ tute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), Appendix I, 135–6. 44 Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 260–61, document 136. 45 Tai, “Honor among Thieves,” 37. 46 Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1994), 22, quoted in Constantinou, States of Political Dis­ course, 58. 47 Constantinou, States of Political Discourse, 58. 48 Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, La vie quotidienne dans les ports méditerranéens au moyen âge. Provence-Languedoc-Catalogne (Paris: Hachette, 1975), 144: “Les

202 Kathryn Reyerson

49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66

67

représailles et leur cycle infernal, les lettres de marque qui – à la limite – risquent d’arrêter le commerce.” Dufourcq, Les ports méditerranéens, 144–7. Marie-Claire Chavarot, “La pratique des lettres de marque d’après les arrêts du parlement (XIIIe-début XVe siècle),” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 149 (1991): 51–89. See 53 for her definition of marque. Alexandre Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier antérieurement à l’ou­ verture du port de Cette (Montpellier: Imprimérie de Jean Martel aîné, 1861), I: 229–36, act XXXI; Jean Baumel, Histoire d’une seigneurie du Midi de la France, Vol 2 Montpellier sous la seigneurie de Jacques le Conquérant et des rois de Major­ que. Rattachement de Montpelliéret et de Montpellier à la France (1213–1349) (Montpellier: Causse and Co., 1971); Enrica Salvatori, Boni amici et vicini. Le relazioni tra Pisa e le città della Francia meridionale dall’XI alla fine del XIII secolo (Pisa: Gisem Edizioni ETS, 2002). See my paper, “Piracy in Medieval Southern France: Victims and Perpetrators,” Mediterranean Studies Association, Pula, Croatia, May 2012. Chavarot, “La pratique des lettres de marque,” 57–8. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 61. See also Actes du Parlement de Paris (1328–1342) (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et C., 1920), act 228, VI, 95v. Chavarot says X, 95v. Italo Scovazzi and Filippo Noberasco, Storia di Savona, 3 vols (Savona: Società Savonese di Storia Patria, 1926–1928), esp. vol. 3; and Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 196–203. Dufourcq, Les ports méditerranéens, 157. Chavarot, “La pratique des lettres de marque,” 56–7. Dufourcq, Les ports méditerranéens, 156. Ibid. Ibid., 157. Christopher Beck, “Common Good and Private Justice: Letters of Marque and the utilitas publica in Fourteenth-Century Marseille,” Journal of Medieval History 41 (2015): 88–106. See also his PhD dissertation, “Seizing Liberties: Private Right, Public Good, and Letter of Marque in Medieval Marseille” (PhD diss. Fordham University, 2012). Frederic L. Cheyette, “The Sovereign and the Pirates,” 40–1, noted nine marques issued by the Parlement of Paris in the early 1330s against Genoese pirates harassing the south of France – a period of grain shortages. Chey­ ette called the Midi a Ghibelline hunting ground (40). Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 239–44, document no. 123. “[the majority being determined] pro rate of tonnage (i.e. their cargo).” On these issues, see Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 96. For the English translation see Philippe de Mézières, “Chancellor of Cyprus,” in Le songe du vieil pèlerin, ed. George William Coopland, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1969), vol. 2: 92. For the original language: Coopland, vol. 2: 421: “… affin que tu cognoisses le grant dommaige qui souvent advient a un royaume quant le roy, legierement conseillie, a un sien subgiet particulier donne la marque sus au autre royaume ou autre seigneurie: Premierement il fait de ses amis ses ennemies et donne matiere de commaincier la guerre; secondement tous les marchans, marchandie et tous les hommes de quelque estat qu’ilz soient de royaume sus qui la marque sera donnee sont banniz du royaume et de la seigneurie du roy qui aura donne la marque. Et tout ce mal et dommage adient pour le prouffit singulier d’une seule personne.” Tai, “Honor among Thieves,” 144.

Pirates as marginals 203 68 Christine de Pizan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry. Translated by Sumner Willard and ed. Charity Cannon Willard (University Park: The Pennsyl­ vania State University Press, 1999), 193. 69 Dufourcq, Les ports méditerranéens, 158–63: “a lou or a dret de marques.” 70 See my article, “Commercial law and merchant disputes: Jacques Coeur and the law of marque,” Medieval Encounters. Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 9, no. 2–3 (2003, appeared 2004): 244–55. See also my book, Jacques Coeur. 71 Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron. Translated and intro. by George Henry McWilliam (London: Penguin, 1972), 417–23. 72 Boccaccio, The Decameron, 136–41. On the political landscape in the eastern Mediterranean in this era, see Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade in Venetian Crete and the Emirates of Mentesche and Aydin, 1300–1415 (Venice: Istituto ellenico di studi bizantini e postbizantini di Venezia per tutti i paesi del mondo, 1983). 73 See “Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World,” 130. 74 The captain of the Weydeh, a pirate ship of the early eighteenth century, was less fortunate as in returning to New England from Caribbean piracy a wealthy man, his vessel foundered off Cape Cod. The Science Museum of Minnesota featured an exhibit on the recovered ship in 2012. 75 On extra-legal dispute resolution, see Shona Kelly Wray, “Instruments of Concord: Making Peace and Settling Disputes through a Notary in the City and Contado of Late Medieval Bologna,” Journal of Social History 42 (2009): 733–60. See also Thomas Kuehn, “Conflict Resolution and Legal Systems,” in A Companion to the Medieval World, ed. Carol Lansing and Edward D. English (Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2009), 335–53. 76 See my monograph, Business, Banking and Finance in Medieval Montpellier (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), 95–8. 77 See Chavarot, “La pratique des lettres de marque,” 51–89, and Pierre-Clément Timbal, “Les lettres de marque dans le droit de la France médiévale,” REcueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 10: L’Étranger (1958): 109–38. 78 See my article on arbitration, “‘In pace et sine lite’: Methods of Resolution of Indebtedness outside the Court System,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 28 (2001): 24. 79 Cheyette, “The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332,” 46. 80 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterra­ nean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 157.

Part 5

Body

12 Marginality and community at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in late medieval Marseille Caley McCarthy

On 1 August 1449, Ranuccio Corsus arrived at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit. Ranuccio was one of sixteen severely burned rowers from the two ships in the harbor, the Galea Rubea and a captured Catalan ship. All were “completely burned” and “severely and gravely suffering.” Like most who passed through the port, the rowers of the Galea Rubea were outsiders in Marseille. Wounded and without community in the city, they relied on the care of the hospital for their recovery. In the weeks that followed, hospital caregivers administered to the physical and spiritual needs of the rowers. By 18 August, Ranuccio must have been very weak; his caregivers administered holy oil. The following day, he died. His body was wound in a shroud and buried in a grave dug that day. The hospital paid for the candles and the chaplain for the burial. The hospital scribe commemorated the event with small crosses in both margins of the register.1 Though Ranuccio, as an outsider to the city and, thus, without an established social network, was socially marginal in Marseille, the Hospital of Saint-Esprit incorporated him into the community of the hospital in life and, through ritual, into a Christian community in death. The Hospital of Saint-Esprit received the sick and wounded, as well as the abandoned infants, of Marseille. As the story of Ranuccio and the Galea Rubea reveals, some of these individuals were outsiders, passing through the permeable borders of the port on galleys from the Mediterranean; with few exceptions, they were poor. They received care from the brothers, sisters, and donats who gave themselves in service to the hospital, and from the barbers, surgeons, and physicians contracted to administer to their needs. These caregivers tended to the physical and spiritual needs of the individuals brought to its doors. They provided diets, medicaments, and interventions that responded to patients’ individual ailments. In death, they performed a Christian ritual of death. Through these provisions, the Hospital of Saint-Esprit provided care and community to those in the city who otherwise lacked it. This chapter explores the marginality of the individuals for whom the Hospital of Saint-Esprit cared and interrogates the spaces – physical and social – demarcated by the margins to which the historiography has sometimes relegated them. It insists on the contextual construction of these

208 Caley McCarthy lines to argue that, although the individuals who received care at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit were marginal to communities of support within Marseille, their marginality granted them an integral role in civic and Christian ideologies. The hospital provided care for those who lacked financial resources or social ties in the city. Sometimes, this lack was incidental, arising from travel, which dislocated individuals from their communities and social networks. But, if these individuals were marginal to local social communities, like families and confraternities, that could have supported them, and if society, at times, viewed their rootlessness as suspect, they served an essential function in the realization of cultural ideologies. As beneficiaries of an institution that embodied a charity rooted in civic aspirations and Christian ideals and located in the heart of the city, the sick of Saint-Esprit occupied a central place – physically, socially, and ideologically – in the context of the hospital and its cultural aspirations. This investigation relies on forty-five account registers from the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, composed between 1306 and 1457. While these registers do not exhaust the evidence from the period under consideration, they do provide a representative glimpse at the nature of the care the hospital provided.2 These registers, composed in the vernacular Provençal, detail the daily incomes and expenditures of the hospital. By the end of the fourteenth century, they contain the names of the individual sick, and the details recorded in each expenditure allow the reconstruction of both general practices and provisions, as well as individual regimens, all of which illuminate the place in Massiliote society of those who received hospital care. This paper uses these registers, first, to construct the social profiles of those who received care at Saint-Esprit and to define – and redefine – their marginal placement within the historiography. It then challenges the fixedness of these boundaries by reconceiving of the physical and social space occupied by the recipients of the hospital’s caregiving.

The Hospital of Saint-Esprit: a marginal element In 1188, Hospinel, a member of the Confraternity of Saint-Esprit in Marseille, donated land for the construction of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit.3 The hospital was built in the heart of what was then the Lower City, in the Place des Accoules, which it shared with the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Accoules and the Great Market. Brothers, sisters, and lay donats served its sick, and the municipal council oversaw its administration. The space was divided into two hospitals: one for women, one for men.4 It also contained a room for infants, likely, those abandoned to its care.5 Inventories from the mid-fourteenth century attest to a dwindling capacity. Between 1357 and 1367, the number of beds in the men’s hospital decreased from sixty-four to fifty-one, while, in the women’s hospital, it decreased from twenty-six to sixteen,6 perhaps, as a result of the foundation of the Hospital of Saint-Jacques de Galice,7 which specialized in the care of sick women, although its building was not completed until 1367.8

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 209 The characters of those who received care at the hospital resist rigid profiling. A plurality, rather than a singular archetype, of profiles emerge from the records. Still, all shared certain characteristics. Although the accounts rarely note the financial status of those within its walls, we know from descriptions of the institution that its vocation was care for the poor. Laurens Aycart, one of the notaries of the Liber del tresaur, a fourteenthcentury inventory of notarial acts concerning the hospital, introduces the institution as “the hospital of the poor of Christ of Saint-Esprit of the city of Marseille” (hospital dels paures de Crist de Sant Sperit de la cieutat de Masselha),9 and it is the paures who appear as the recipients of the charitable donations and bequests in 10/11 acts; only one names the malautes as beneficiaries. In a notarial act from 1396, Jacominus Renelhoni and his wife, Guillmeta, promise to give themselves in service to God, the Virgin Mary, and the healthy and sick poor of Christ in the Hospital of Saint-Esprit.10 Scattered references to the hospital in the municipal council records, located through secondary literature,11 indicate the council who oversaw its administration, likewise, conceived of it as, above all, a space for the poor. According to Mabilly’s inventory, when, in 1359, the city council addressed the hospital’s vocation, for example, they stated that the “Hôpital du Saint-Esprit devant être, comme l’indique son nom, l’hôpital des pauvres du Christ,”12 and, in a meeting in 1390, a scribe for the council noted that they convened in aula domus pauperum sancti spiritus.13 Chapter 76 in Book VI of the municipal statutes states, likewise, that, on 9 April 1396, the council convened in aula domus Hospitalis Christi pauperum Sancti Spiritus, and Chapter 61 of this book refers, in Provençal, to the paures de Sant-Esperit.14 The account registers themselves, by contrast, rarely employ the term “poor” either substantively or adjectively. Scribes referred far more frequently to individuals’ physical states (sickness, injury) than to their social status (poverty) and employed the term “sick” more consistently than any other qualifier throughout the period under consideration. A register from 1398, contains the highest frequency of the term “poor” for the entire period under consideration, where it appears eight times in the entries.15 The term “sick,” however, appears fifty-one times, and “wounded” ten times. “Poor,” thus, accounts for only 11.5 percent of the terms. In a register from 1408, the term “sick” appears 458 times, while the term “poor” appears only five times, accounting for only 1 percent of the terms.16 And, in the register from 1417, “poor” accounts for 5 percent of the terms (6/105).17 When scribes did employ the concept of poverty to describe recipients of the hospital’s care, they provided little indication of the nature of this poverty. Although, as Mollat has demonstrated, by the later Middle Ages, society began increasingly to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor,18 a scribe for the Hospital of Saint-Esprit only once echoed this concern when, in 1397, he referred to the paures gens vergonhas, the “shamefaced poor persons,”19 and this characterized those who received alms outside the hospital.

210 Caley McCarthy Even in the absence of explicit references to the poverty of those within the hospital’s walls, however, the nature of the institution assumes the poor as recipients of its caregiving. As Geremek has noted, … in the ethos of the time, the sick and the poor were indistinguishable; sickness made it possible to benefit from charity, and the term “poor” might describe only the state of health, and not the financial situation. It is, of course, true that the word also applied to material poverty; turning up at the Hôtel-Dieu or elsewhere was in itself a confession of poverty analogous to expecting alms. As soon as material circumstances permitted, people looked after themselves at home.20 Historiography on the poor in the Middle Ages has often placed the poor on the margins of society. At times, it has assumed, rather than defined, the spaces on whose fringes the poor sit. Guy Geltner, for example, draws parallels between hospitals and prisons to suggest that, rather than physically annihilate or otherwise eliminate the presence of social and religious deviants, various regimes created or annexed “mar­ ginalizing” institutions such as leper-houses, brothels, hospitals, and Jewish quarters. The central, municipally run prison was a later but equally ubiquitous expression of such attitudes to social control.21 Despite his assertion that “there is a scholarly consensus … to the role that [‘proto-total’ institutions] played in the reification of social marginality,”22 however, the scholarship reveals an attitude more ambivalent than exclusionary. As Susan McDonough has argued, society vacillated between sympathy for and suspicion of the poor in the later Middle Ages. This vacillation reflects an evolution of attitudes toward the poor in this period. Daniel Le Blevec has illustrated how poverty, a foundational concept in Christianity, received renewed attention in the twelfth century as a fundamental virtue and ideal of religious life that inspired a double spiritual movement. This movement emphasized the virtues of both voluntary and involuntary poverty. The Church upheld voluntary poverty as the ideal of monastics, an ideal that the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century applied to life outside the walls of the monastery. At the same, the mendicant movements idealized the desire to assist the involuntary poor.23 According to Mollat, this was something new: the poor and the afflicted were valued for their intrinsic human and spiritual worth and not as mere instruments for the salvation of the wealthy. In the late twelfth century the phrase vicar­ ius Christi had been applied to the pauper; also significant was the extension to all the afflicted of the phrase pauperes Christi, previously reserved for monks alone.24

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 211 An attitude of compassion for the poor permeated lay society, as well.25 The case of a Massiliote woman who, according to McDonough, selffashioned as poor in an attempt to win the sympathy of the court suggests that secular courts could be compassionate to the poor.26 In Manosque, court notaries sometimes noted that sentences or penalties were mitigated because of poverty (mitigant pena quia pauper).27 At the same time, society expressed suspicion of, as well as sympathy for, the poor. Sharon Farmer has argued that, in Paris, though elites distinguished between the deserving and undeserving poor, “they simultaneously distrusted all of the poor.”28 Mollat, describing the situation in the fourteenth century, notes that “it is a small step from mistrust to fear, from suspicion to accusation. People were afraid not so much of the beggar’s indigence as of his idleness, his rootlessness, and his anonymity.”29 Roman law prohibited the testimony of testes inhabiles and, in the Middle Ages, therefore forbade depositions from the poor for fear of corruption.30 Justinian’s Digest “required judges to ascertain whether witnesses were ‘well off or needy, so that they may readily act for gain,’” and, in the Massiliote courts, at the end of his or her testimony, the court notary asked each witness ‘if [they] were taught, instructed or suborned, and if they testified out of love, fear, favour, hatred or rancour. Also if they were given anything, remunerated, or if they testified as a result of a favour or threat’ …31 To allay suspicion, Massiliote judges often required witnesses to disclose their net worth.32 Although historians have turned, at times, to suspicion of the poor as a marginalizing force, more often, scholarly narratives focus on marginalization relative to production and social norms. Geremek, for example, defines as marginal people or groups who were forced on to, or who situated themselves on, the margins of social life, who played no part in the process of pro­ duction, and whose life remained immune to the norms of behaviour in operation. They did not belong to the society of estates because in the hierarchy of rank, honour and respect they were defined only negatively. They occupied no permanent role in either economic or social life.33 Mollat, likewise, includes the poor among the “marginal groups during the Middle Ages,” arguing that that poverty … had a social dimension. In the Middle Ages, to suffer a loss of status meant literally to fall from one’s estate, to be deprived of its instru­ ments of labor and of the marks of its condition …. Stripped of his social position and excluded from the community, he was forced into emigration and vagabondage. The poor man was uprooted and alone.34

212 Caley McCarthy While the records of Saint-Esprit do not testify to the degree of vagabondage amongst the sick poor, they do speak to the “uprootedness” of Mollat’s narrative, a state that was both physical and social. As a port city, Marseille experienced a high level of transience. Many of the individuals who received care at Saint-Esprit appear to have been outsiders. Places of origin are noted clearly for approximately 20 percent (93/449) of the patients. This figure necessarily excludes cases in which it is unclear whether place names connote places of origin or simply toponymic last names. It also does not reflect the fact that ships originating from a single location often contained individuals of diverse origins. As noted in the introduction, in 1449, for example, two ships that arrived in Marseille – one from Catalonia, the other from an unknown location – contained crew members from Paris, Dauphiné, Burgundy, Majorca, Monte Coppolo, Spain, Florence, Italy, and Tortosa. As Table 12.1 illustrates, individuals originated most commonly from regions in modern day France, Italy, Spain, and Germany.

Table 12.1 Places of origin35 City or country of origin

Number of patients

Antibes Aubagne Auvergne Brittany Burgundy Catalonia Cologne Dauphiné Flanders Florence France Geneva Genoa Germany Grasse Italy Languedoc Lausanne Lombardy Majorca Naples Narbonne Nice

1 1 2 1 1 13 1 5 3 7 8 1 7 10 1 1 1 1 2 1 3 136 1

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 213 Many of the patients who we know were outsiders came to the city through the port, as rowers on galleys. Of the 132 individuals whose occupations are noted, 78 (61%) belonged to maritime occupations (fishing, rowing).37 Visualization of the arrival of sick and wounded oarsmen to the hospital in 1449 (Figure 12.1) illustrates the extent to which the rhythms of the port shaped the nature of the need to which Saint-Esprit responded. Between 1408 and 1458, sick and injured individuals from a total of at least fourteen different galleys received care at Saint-Esprit.38 These figures bring into sharp focus the dangers of the sea.39 Constant threat from weather, warfare, and piracy plagued the Mediterranean, and living conditions on ships allowed sickness and disease to spread rapidly among crews.40 There was a social dimension, also, to this riskiness. The sea dislocated sailors from their communities and social networks. As Le Blévec has argued, voyager est entreprise périlleuse. Privé des protections naturelles qu’ap­ portent la famille, la communauté villageoise ou paroissiale, l’autorité seigneuriale ou municipale, celui qui part vers un pays lointain […] deviant un “pauvre”: la paupertas englobe aussi bien la notion de fai­ blesse que celle de dénuement.41 In the port city of Marseille, the Hospital of Saint-Esprit thus fulfilled a vital function for the poor of the sea.42 For these outsiders, the rowers and travellers who sought care at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, marginality could be temporary and incidental. Theirs was a marginality borne of social dislocation, not just of poverty. Despite the tendency of the historiography to categorize “the poor” – sometimes more carefully distinguished as the “deserving and undeserving poor”43 – as marginal, then, we should not presuppose marginality based on poverty alone. Evidence from the records suggests that informal networks of assistance existed in the city. Registers from 1397 to 1399 contain examples of a sort of “mediated” charity in the community. On 28 June 1397, 8 s. were given to the wife of Antoni Ricau for a “very poor woman” (femena fort paura).44 Ten days later, the rectors gave 9 s., per amor de dieu, to dona Laureta de Rabet and the wife of Antoni Gigo for a paura femena who had been injured by her husband.45 The other three instances transpired the following register year. On 8 April 1398, the rectors gave, per amor de dieu, 8 s. to the wife of Peire Vidal for a paure femena.46 On 7 January 1399, they gave 8 s., per amor de dieu, to the wife of Peire Atos for half the cost of a robe for a paura femena.47 Ten days later, they gave 8 s., per amor de dieu, to dona Micolana de Montolieu for a paura femena.48 These examples of women serving as agents of urban charity echo the organization in Montpellier known as the Ladies of Wednesday. The women of this organization gathered on Wednesdays to collect alms for the poor of the hospitals in the city,49 and according to Reyerson, “functioned as a corporate entity (personne morale), much as a traditional confraternity, with the ability to receive pious donations,

Figure 12.1 Patient counts at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, 1449–1450

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 215 establish chantries, and administer property.”50 There is no indication that, in Marseille, the women who administered charity were organized formally like the Ladies of Wednesday, though the first example, in which two women gave money to an abused woman, demonstrates that even in the absence of such charitable societies, some women still engaged in collective philanthropy. The acts of “mediated charity” in Marseille, considered alongside the examples from Montpellier, suggest that networks of assistance were, at times, formed along gendered lines. To be poor, then, did not necessarily mean to lack access to municipal networks. Often – though not always51 – to receive care within the walls of the hospital, a precondition of which was poverty, however, did. Reyerson has noted that … the Middle Ages were rife with networks that underpinned society and permitted it to function. A network of friends and family to sustain one, at all levels of society, was important, particularly among the poor and sick in a large medieval city.52 In the absence of these networks, individuals’ marginality left them vulnerable. None were as bereft of social support networks as the abandoned infants taken in by the hospital. These infants embodied the “uprootedness” characteristic of the sick and wounded discussed above, having neither family nor community once abandoned to the hospital. The records reveal little about the act of abandonment, though scribes paid careful attention to the details of their care.53 The hospital received such infants in varying numbers throughout the period under consideration. Its workers clothed them and provided temporary shelter before sending them out to wet nurses in the city. Like the sick and wounded poor, the abandoned infants of the hospital existed outside traditional social networks and thus occupied a marginal space in the social context of Marseille. Within the walls of the hospital, however, they were incorporated into a Christian community, in life and in death, and occupied a central space – physically and ideologically – in the civic and religious spheres of medieval Marseille.

Incorporation and the hospital Although the sick and wounded poor and the abandoned infants for whom the hospital provided care were marginal by virtue of their social dislocation, they were not marginalized in Marseille. Their marginality was incidental, not actively constructed. Rather, they occupied physically, socially, and ideologically a central space in the hospital and its civic and religious vocation. In the most literal sense, the hospital was central to everyday life in Marseille. Unlike medieval leprosaria, which sat outside the city walls, on the margins of urban society,54 Saint-Esprit sat in the heart of what was, before 1348, the Lower City, in the Place des Accoules, which it shared with the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Accoules and the Great

216 Caley McCarthy Market. This location was symbolic and pragmatic. The Hospital of SaintEsprit was, in part, an expression of civic aspiration in Marseille and, as such, served an integral role in the civic life of the city. Between the end of the fourteenth century and the mid-fifteenth century seven hospitals operated in Marseille; as Francine Michaud has noted, however, “de loins, l’hôpital Saint-Esprit, creation de la confrérie du même nom, demeure le plus important, blazon de la fierté municipal, première creation laïque qui, pour un temps, se double d’aspiration politique communale.”55 In the absence of an extant foundational charter, historians continue to debate the relationship of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit’s foundation to the emancipatory confraternity of the same name, though the scholarship, generally, concedes that Hospinel and the four men who acquired the land and house for the hospital were members of the confraternity of Saint-Esprit.56 In any event, by 1306, the hospital of Saint-Esprit fell under municipal governance.57 The introductions to every register evince the sustained role of the municipal council in the hospital’s administration: each year, the municipal council and the viguier elected two rectors to oversee the financial management of the hospital.58 The register from 1367, for example, begins, in standard fashion, by stating that, on 23 December, Rolan Aimes and Bertran de las Monegas were elected the rectors of the hospital by the six prudhommes and the general council of the city.59 Laure-Hélène Gouffran has suggested that prominent citizens used the position of rector of Saint-Esprit strategically in their pursuit of sociopolitical distinction.60 And the hospital supported, as well as was supported by, the council. Municipal council minutes from 1397, which note the repayment of 1,000 gold florins to the Hospitals of Saint-Esprit and Saint-Jacques-deGalice for a sum they lent the community, illustrate the rather direct contribution these municipalized institutions could make to the community.61 This municipalization of institutionalized caregiving can be understood as a part of a larger process which, according to Daniel Le Blévec, transpired increasingly over the final two centuries of the Middle Ages. He suggests that such institutions were among the structuring forces of society and, to a large extent, were the anchors of the citizenry’s shared consciousness and identity.62 The use of Saint-Esprit as the space in which civic matters played out further illustrates the role that it played in the civic life of Marseille. Until 1348, the municipal council had always convened in the Hôtel de Ville (the palais de Marseille), located behind the Hospital of Saint-Esprit; from 24 February of that year, onward, however, they assembled in aula domus hospitalis pauperum Sancti Spiritus de Massilia.63 François OtchakovskyLaurens has argued that “ce changement … est d’une très grande importance symbolique”; Saint-Esprit served, in the thirteenth century, as a meeting place for the emancipatory confraternity, and “ce lieu reste, un siècle plus tard, toujours porteur d’une mémoire de l’autonomie politique de la ville.”64 In 1423, the Hospital of Saint-Esprit also became a makeshift court of law for the city, as on 20 November of that year, the Catalans breached the port and attacked and burned much of the city. Counted

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 217 among this destruction were the law courts, which had previously been held in the open air, in the marketplace in front of the Church of Notre-Dame­ des-Accoules. On 5 December, the scribe of Saint-Esprit noted that, lo jorn dich es intrat mossen lo juge de palays en aquest present hostal per far sa demora continua per commandament dels senhos del concel rial e de concentement de sen urban johan rector e fon li assignada la cambra meidana per son dormit.65 Although the choice of Saint-Esprit as the location of a makeshift court was, likely, in part, pragmatic – the building was large and centrally located – the appropriation of the hospital for civic matters rooted it firmly in the civic landscape of Marseille. The centrality – physical and symbolic – of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in the civic life of Marseille nuances the definition of hospitals as marginalizing institutions. But the hospital, which itself resists classification, institutionalized the religious ideals as much as the civic aspirations of the period, and the sick poor whom the hospital served played an integral role in the realization of these ideals. Hospitals, through the enactment of the seven corporal works of mercy, institutionalized the later medieval Church’s emphasis on charitable caregiving as an expression of the active piety which simultaneously assuaged the plight of the poor and allowed individuals to participate actively in the economy of salvation. These acts, which include feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the harborless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, and burying the dead provided a framework to both the clergy and the laity for the performance of charitable acts.66 According to Annie Saunier, l’exercise des oeuvres de miséricorde preside aux principals fondations ou donations hospitalières. Le donateur assure son proper salut, et celui des siens, en les pratiquant, car toute aide apportée à un pauvre, ou à un malade équivaut à une attention directe vers Jésus-Christ humilié et souffrant lors de la Passion.67 The sick poor were, thus, integral to the late medieval economy of salvation. But the sick poor were not simply objects in the religious and civic strategies of the period, though the vulnerability of their marginal status allowed them to fulfill that function. As the focus of an institution that reified these ideals, the infirm poor and abandoned infants were both integral to and integrated into a community of care. In institutionalizing the corporal works of mercy, the hospital of Saint-Esprit, much like confraternities, served as a kind of surrogate family for those who lacked a community or support in the city.68 It offered shelter and tended to the bodies and souls of the sick and socially uprooted, integrating them within its walls.69 At Saint-Esprit, care for the body included shelter, clothing, diet, and therapeutic intervention. Although the records note only the ritualized provision of clothing to the poor outside the hospital walls on major feast

218 Caley McCarthy days,70 they routinely clothed the abandoned infants in their care. Entries concerning the costs of their clothing are frequent and scattered throughout the registers. In 1338, for example, the hospital paid 2 l. 6 s. for two canas, 6 pals of linen (loneda) “for the infants who are in the hospital,”71 and, in 1363, they purchased shoes (sabatas) for lo pitot Pieronet.72 Meals for the sick and members of the regular household, generally, conformed to Christian dietary restrictions: they ate meat, white bread, and seasonal vegetables from Sunday to Thursday, and fish, eggs, and seasonal produce on Fridays and Saturdays. We know from the plentiful entries on alimentary purchases, however, that dietary provisions were often individualized in a manner that reflects the Hippocratic emphasis on the needs of the individual and on the centrality of the non-naturals in health and disease. The vast majority of personalized dietary provisions concerned various kinds of meat. Although the hospital routinely provided meat to the hospital personnel and residents, they also made individual purchases of lamb, goat, and chicken for the individual sick of the hospital. In 1398, the hospital spent 8 d. on goat for Coleta, a sick woman in the hospital and, in 1408, rather exceptionally, they purchased tuna tail for Marguarida.73 In 1431, Paul Bonfilh, who was suffering from dropsy, received melon.74 In addition to the role of individualized diet in the care of patients, the hospital also provided more active therapeutic interventions based on individual need. Saint-Esprit contracted, on an annual basis, a physician, a surgeon, a barber, and, by the fifteenth century, an apothecary to provide regular care for the hospital. The municipal statutes of Marseille required physicians to visit their patients twice a day.75 Thus, when the hospital contracted the physician Guilhem Lonc in 1338, they required that he visit the sick on a regular basis and, when he was not able to, that he find a suitable replacement to visit in his stead.76 The care that these medical professionals administered, while structured, varied based on individual need. In 1365, for example, they paid Johan Johan, a grocer,77 for his care and for sugars, clysters, electuaries, oils, flowers, and waters.78 In 1398, they paid 1 s. 4 d. for the bleeding of a Genoese man.79 Such examples are just a few among many that illustrate the individualized therapy administered at the hospital. Beyond the body, the Hospital of Saint-Esprit equally tended to the souls of the sick and socially uprooted, as well, and these spiritual provisions, in particular, integrated them into a community they otherwise lacked. At times, the dimensions of the spiritual life in Saint-Esprit are difficult to access and depend on interpretive extrapolations of material purchases. The presence, in the inventories, of “oratories” (oratoris)80 and crosses in the men’s and women’s hospitals hints at the importance of prayer and contemplation in the convalescence of the sick and injured. While insight into spiritual provisions for the living sick requires certain interpretative leaps, the performance of rituals of incorporation feature prominently and explicitly in the records and include baptism and mortuary

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 219 ritual. The records from Saint-Esprit reveal that the hospital often baptized the infants in their care, sometimes with urgency. The details that scribes provided suggest that they attached a notable significance to baptism, which ensured an infant’s inclusion not only in a heavenly community in the afterlife, but also a spiritual community in this life. The entries reveal, to varying degrees, the name under which the infant was baptized, the name(s) of the godparent(s), the church at which the baptism occurred, and, less frequently, the time of day. An entry from 1424, for example, notes that, on “Sunday, 18 June 1424, a girl was brought [to the hospital] before dawn, at the hour of Matins, who Mossen. Augustin Pellet, juge du palais, had baptized under the name Augustina.”81 And an entry from 1430 details how, on Monday, 15 May, a girl was brought to the Hospital of Saint-Esprit in Marseille. She was baptized in the church of Notre-Dame des Accoules. The name of the girl is Catarina; the godfather is Maistre Malsan, chaplain of Saint-Esprit, and the godmother is the wife of Alexi Marquean.82 Such entries illustrate the importance of establishing ties of spiritual kinship for these infants with no blood ties; the identification of the godparents and the location of baptism establish them in the physical and spiritual spheres of the religious community in Marseille. Caregivers at Saint-Esprit also performed a ritual of death for the moribund sick. The stages of this ritual were acts of incorporation. They included administration of the sacraments, preparation of the corpse, procession, and burial. On 8 September 1449, Anthonius Johanus from Riparia Jaune, a rower on the galley of Antoni Thomasi, was brought to Saint-Esprit. Though the scribe does not specify Anthonius’ affliction, it must have been grave as, nine days later, he died. On 16 September, one day before he died, the hospital administered extreme unction to Anthonius, as they had to his shipmates in the preceding days, and purchased for him eight blessed candles. They wound his corpse in a linen shroud.83 We know from the Rule negotiated on 15 July 1399 that the sisters and brothers of the hospital would have processed with his body to the cemetery of NotreDames des Accoules,84 where they paid Petro Ispano to dig a grave and the son of Anthonius Nicholini for four large and eight small candles for his burial.85 As in the case of Ranuccio, the scribe recorded Anthonius’ death the following day with small crosses in both margins of the register. The ritual of incorporation continued after death through commemoration. On All Saints’ Day in 1416, hospital officials purchased a torch to illuminate the chapel of Johan de Casels in commemoration of the dead, from Vespers to the following morning and, later that same year, they paid for the absolution of the dead in the cemetery.86 They did similarly on the Day of the Dead in 1435.87 Such actions ensured that individuals who lacked a community in the world of the living were included in a spiritual community after death. In this

220 Caley McCarthy way, too, the rituals of the hospital problematize a blanket notion of marginality and underscore that even those who were beyond the reach of kith, kin, and community found meaningful integration, or at least a form of diminished marginality, through Saint-Esprit. The profile of care that emerges from the Hospital of Saint-Esprit’s accounts thus reveals an institution that, much like confraternities, acted as a kind of surrogate family for the sick and socially uprooted.88 Hospital officials and workers responded to the physical needs of individuals rendered otherwise marginal by diverse circumstances and, in the process, (re)incorporated them into a Christian community rooted in ritual and tradition. *** Ruth Mazo Karras has argued that “we must not lose sight of the fact that marginality, like criminality, is culturally constructed and relative … The process of marginalization … is worth studying; marginal status cannot simply be treated as a given.”89 This chapter has interrogated the marginal status of the poor sick and wounded, the abandoned infants who received care at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, and the dead who passed through its acts into the Christian afterlife. The records from the SaintEsprit underscore the importance of contextual construction and the dependent variability of marginality. The sick and wounded poor and the abandoned infants and dead occupied a marginal space in Marseille due to their social uprootedness. At the same time, however, Massiliote society did not actively marginalize them. Rather, through the institution of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, they were integral to and integrated into the municipality’s civic and religious spheres.

Notes 1 Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhone 1 HD E 43, f. 81r–84r. 2 1 HD E 1–45. These registers are housed at the Archives Départmentales des Bouches-du-Rhone (ADdBDR). The series examined here contains several lacu­ nae, notably, between the years 1307 and 1329. While registers from later in the series fill some of the chronological gaps, many are fragmentary or damaged. 3 For an early institutional history of the Hospital of Saint-Esprit, see Augstin Fabre, Histoire des hopitaux et des institutions de bienfaisance (Marseille: Laffitte Reprints, 1854–1855) and Jean Anselm Bernard Mortreuil, « L’hôpital Saint-Esprit de Mar­ seille: Ses origines, sa première administration intérieure,» in Répertoire des travaux de la société de statistiques de Marseille 28, ed. Sélim-Ernest Maurin (Marseille: Imprimerie et lithographie Arnaud, Cayer, et C., 1866), 135–91. 4 The accounts refer frequently to l’espital de las femenas and l’espital dels homes. 5 The inventory in 1 HD E 13, for example, notes la cambra en que solon jaser los enfans. 6 Some of these beds were fully furnished (lies conplies), others were incomplete (lies inconplis). Registers 1 HD E 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 contain inventor­ ies of the hospital. Bed counts likely do not correspond to average patient counts, a number which is difficult to calculate due to the inconsistency with

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 221

7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

26

which the arrival and departure dates of the sick were recorded. For a comparison of capacity in hospitals in England, see Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 26; in Paris, see Bronislaw Geremek, Margins of Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 175; in Toulouse, see John Mundy, “Charity and Social Work in Toulouse,” Traditio 22 (1966): 25; in Catalonia, see James Brodman, Charity and Welfare: Hospitals and the Poor in Medieval Catalonia (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 62; in Florence, see John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 375–7. Although Fabre argued that, after the foundation of Saint-Jacques de Galice, Saint-Esprit ceased to care for sick women, the records contain continued refer­ ence to them. François Otchakovsky-Laurens, La vie politique à Marseille sous la domination angevine (1348–1385) (Marseille: École Francaise de Rome, 2017), 108, no. 27. Martin-Dietrich Glessgen, “Lo thesaur del hospital de Sant Sperit”: Edition eines Marseiller Urkundeninventars (1399–1511) mit sprachlichem und geschichtlichem Kommentar unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Rechtswortschatzes (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1989), 43. Glessgen’s work provides a transcription and linguistic analysis of this inventory. 1 HD F 1: … dedicaverunt, dederunt et obtulerunt ad serviendum deo et beate ac gloriose virgini marie matri sue ac Christi pauperibus sanis et egris in dicto hospitali. This conclusion is tentative and requires a closer examination of the original records. Philippe Mabilly, Inventaire sommaire des archives communales antérieure à 1790. Série BB, t. 1 (Marseille: Moullot fils aîné, 1909), 87. Octave Teissier, Marseille au moyen âge. Institutions municipales, topographie, plan de restitution de la ville (Marseille: V. Boy, 1891), 5–6. Book VI, chapters 61 and 76, Les statuts municipaux de Marseille, ed. Régine Pernoud (Paris: Librairie Auguste Picard, 1949), 241 and 252. 1 HD E 21. 1 HD E 26. 1 HD E 31. Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History (West Hanover, PA: Yale University Press, 1986), 290. 1 HD E 19, f. 36r. Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, 177. Citing this does not intend to privilege caregiving in the home over caregiving in the institution. For a discussion of this narrative, see Peregrine Horden and Richard Smith, eds., The Locus of Care: Families, Communities, Institutions and the Provision of Welfare since Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 1998). Guy Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 3. Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History, 104. Daniel Le Blévec, La part du pauvre: l’assistance dans les pays du Bas-Rhône du XIIe siècle au milieu du XVe siècle, I, 167. Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, 121. For a discussion of compassion for poor, see Adam Davis, “Hospitals, Charity, and the Culture of Compassion in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe, ed. Sharon Farmer (Turnhout: Bre­ pols, 2016), 23–46. Susan McDonough, “Impoverished mothers and poor widows,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 64–78.

222 Caley McCarthy 27 Steven Bednarski, Curia: A Social History of a Court, Crime, and Conflict in a Late Medieval Town (Montpellier: PULM, 2013), 80. 28 Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor, 10. 29 Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, 251. 30 Bernard Schnapper, “Testes inhabiles: Témoins reprochables dans l’ancien droit penal,” The Legal History Review 33 (1965): 580. 31 McDonough, “Impoverished mothers and poor widows,” 75–6. 32 Ibid. 33 Geremek, The Margins of Society in Medieval Paris, 2–3. 34 Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, 6–7. 35 In one entry from 1430 (1 HD E 37, f.44r), the scribe notes provisions for mul­ tiple sick individuals from Narbonne (los malautz de Narbonna). As he did not specify the number, however, this reference was not included in the table. 36 In one entry from 1430 (1 HD E 37, f.44r), the scribe notes provisions for mul­ tiple sick individuals from Narbonne (los malautz de Narbonna). As he did not specify the number, however, this reference was not included in the table. 37 This was followed by servants, who account for 9/132 individuals whose occupa­ tion or social marker was noted. 38 In addition to the five from 1449–1450, discussed above, and the galley of Antoni Mentier, there also appear references in 1416 to the galleys of mossen Chorrillas and mossen Raymon (Catalan), in 1419 to the galley of Morgue, in 1426 to a galley from Naples, in 1431 to a galley from Narbonne, and in 1444 to an unnamed galley. 39 The Christianization of ship names in the fourteenth century evinces the per­ ceived dangers of the sea. According to Geneviève and Henri Bresc, between 1300 and 1460, all identifiable ships in Provence bore religious names; in naming a vessel after a religious figure, ship owners invoked the patronage of that indi­ vidual. Owners, perhaps surprisingly, did not demonstrate particular favor for saints traditionally associated with the sea, like Saint Nicholas, and, despite the masculinization of names throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, tended overwhelmingly, in the fifteenth century, to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary, “Les saints protecteurs des bateaux, 1200–1460,” Ethnologie fran­ çaise, nouvelle série, 9, no. 2 (1979): 161–78. 40 Maritime codes sometimes regulated situations of sickness aboard ships; the Laws of Oléron (article 7), for example, stipulated that “a sick mariner should be put ashore with a food allowance and a ship’s boy and nurse hired to care for him. If, however, a mariner became injured while drunk or fighting, he could be left ashore with nothing (article 6),” Maryanne Kowaleski, “Sources for Medieval Maritime History,” in Understanding Medieval Primary Sources: Using Historical Sources to Discover Medieval Europe, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (New York: Routledge, 2012), 150. 41 Daniel Le Blévec, La part du pauvre, I (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2000), 305. 42 In other cities, hospitals were founded that specialized in care for sailors. See Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, 287. 43 See Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, 169. 44 1 HD E 19, f. 29r: Plus ai bailat a la molher d’antoni ricau p[er] ia femena fort paura a xxviii juin … s. viii/destos ii s. G[uilhem] de sant gili det ___ con nos. 45 1 HD E 19, f. 29r: Plus ave[m] donat per amor de dieu a a [sic] dona laureta de rabet ez a la molher d’antoni gigo per ia pa[u]ra feme[n]a que fon nafrada p[er] son marit de v___ ___ de conte[m] ___ a viii julh … lib. s. viiii. 46 1 HD E 21, 62v: Item. aquel jort baylien a sen G[uilhem] de cavalhon q[ue] donet a la molher de peyre vidal q[ue] debia donar p[er] amor de dieu a ia paure femena … viii s.

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 223 47 1 HD E 21, f. 90v: Item. aquel jort pagniei a la molher de sen peyre atos q[ue] li doneron los senhors rectos p[er] amor de dieu p[er] la mitat de la rauba de ia paura femena … viii s. 48 1 HD E 21, f. 91v: Item. aquel jort pagniei a dona micolana de montolieu q[ue] li doneron los senhors p[er] amor de dieu a ia paura femena … viii s. 49 Geneviève Dumas, Santé et société à Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 270. 50 Kathryn Reyerson, Women’s Networks in Medieval France: Gender and Commu­ nity in Montpellier, 1300–1350 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 161. 51 Farmer’s analysis of witness testimony in the canonization inquest of St. Louis, for example, includes an anecdote of a poor woman, Jehanne, who was struck by a paralytic illness and sought care at the Hôtel-Dieu, despite having a husband and children. Her pursuit of hospital care, then, stemmed not from a lack of social networks but from an unwillingness of that network “to find that which was necessary for her,” Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, 120–1. 52 Reyerson, Women’s Networks in Medieval France, xxiiii. 53 This will be discussed in greater detail below. 54 Elma Brenner suggests, for example, that “the position of Rouen’s leprosaria out­ side the city, as was the case for other Western European urban centres, undoubtedly signifies the spatial marginality of the residents of these institu­ tions,” though this physical marginality does not equate to social marginality; Leprosy and Charity in Medieval Rouen (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2015), 133. For further discussion of the place of lepers and leprosaria in medieval society, see Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006); François-Olivier Touati, Maladie et société au moyen âge: la lèpre, les lépreux et les leproseries dans la province ecclésiastique de Sens jusqu’au milieu du XIVe siècle (Paris: De Boech université, 1998). 55 Francine Michaud, “Le pauvre transformé: Les hommes, les femmes et la charité à Marseille, du XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la Peste Noire,” Revue historique 650 (2009): 279. 56 See Mortreuil, “L’hôpital Saint-Esprit à Marseille,” 145; Paul Amargier, “La situation hospitalière à Marseille,” Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 13, Assistance et charité (1978): 241; Françoise Durand-Dol, “La confrérie du Saint-Esprit de Marseille: Une nouvelle approche,” Provence Historique 63 (2013): 121–44. 57 Not all hospitals in Marseille fell under municipal oversight at this time; the Chevaliers de Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem, de Saint-Antoine, de Saint-Jacques-des -Épées, for example, were overseen by the religious orders that founded them. The municipal council would, however, gradually extend its jurisdiction over other charitable institutions throughout the fourteenth century, including the Hospitals of Saint-Jacques-de-Galice, Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciade, and Notre­ Dame-de-l’Espérance, as well as the leprosarium Saint-Lazare. See Henry Villard, “La léproserie de Marseille au XVe siècle et son règlement,” Annales de la Soci­ été d’etudes provençales (1905): 13–23. 58 Various registers contain mention of the rectors dining at the hospital during their audit of the accounts. 59 1 HD E 16. 60 Laure-Hélène Gouffran, “Les acteurs d’assistance: hôpitaux et élites urbaines à Marseille à la fin du Moyen Age,” Mediterranea 36 (2016): 88. 61 Mabilly, Inventaire sommaire des archives communales antérieures à 1790. Série BB, 4. 62 Le Blévec, La part du pauvre, I, 290. 63 Registre des délibérations du conseil municipal de Marseille, as cited in Fabre, Histoire des hôpitaux et des institutions de bienfaisance de Marseille, I, 78.

224 Caley McCarthy

64 65 66

67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76

77 78

79 80 81 82

Otchakovsky-Laurens, in his analysis of the municipal council records, has noted that the records contain a large lacuna (August 1340–August 1348) that obscures the reasons for this relocation, La vie politique à Marseille sous la domination angevine (1348–1385), 102. François Otchakovsky-Laurens, La vie politique à Marseille sous la domination angevine (1348–1385) (Marseille: École Francaise de Rome, 2017), 105. 1 HD E 34, f. 64v. Marie-Humbert Vicaire, in “La place des oeuvres de miséricorde dans la pastorale en pays d’Oc,” Assistance et charité, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 13 (1978): 21–44, has examined the centrality of these works of mercy in the pastoral literature of the Languedoc, which encouraged generosity toward the poor by placing it within an eschatological framework. Annie Saunier, “Le pauvre malade” dans le cadre hospitalier medieval. France du nord, vers 1300–1500 (Paris: éditions arguments, 1993), 23. For a consideration of confraternities as surrogate families, see Jacques Chiffo­ leau, “Les confréries, la mort et la religion en Comtat Venaissin à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps moder­ nes 91, no. 2 (1979): 785–825; Rollo-Koster, “Death and the Fraternity. A Short Study on the Dead in Late Medieval Confraternities,” Confraternitas 1, no. 9 (1999): 3–12, and “Forever after: The Dead in the Avignonese Confraternity of Notre Dame la Major (1329–1381),” Journal of Medieval History 25, no. 2 (1999): 115–40. Horden, “A Non-nature Environment: Medicine without Doctors and the Medi­ eval European Hospital,” in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara Bowers (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007), 142. Administrators favored Christmas Day for these distributions; in a particularly symbolic act, on Christmas Eve, 1417, the rectors ordered the purchase of 18 canas of fabric to clothe twelve paupers (1 HD E 31, f. 31v). 1 HD E 7, f. 56r. 1 HD E 13, f. 101v. 1 HD E 43, f. 82r. 1 HD E 37, f. 90r. Book II, chapter 35, Les statuts municipaux de Marseille, ed. Pernoud: … Decer­ nentes insuper ut medici admissi et comprobati, preeunte scrutinio, ut supra dicti­ tur, teneantur speciali sacramento infirmos sive egrotantes quos sub cura sua susceperunt bis saltem in die visitare. 1 HD E 7, f. 22r: Item. avem fag quovinent al maistre Guille[m] lonc mege feze­ sian de la festa de sant andrieu e[n] i an e deu reguardar ii ves o ia lo jorn si tant es que plus non i non ifasa mestier los mallautes que seran en l’espitall o en totas las mazons que aperteran al dig espitall e si va deforas que deu laisar i autre sufi­ sient en son lueg e daiso deu aver d’un an … iii lib. xv s. This Johan Johan is, presumably, the same as Johanet Johan, the espesiare in 1 HD E 7, f. 47v to whom the hospital paid for las quazas della botiquaria que prezem de son obrador per los mallautes del l’espital. 1 HD E 15, f. 69r: Item. que devem a johan johan que preron a l’obrador tan sucres tant saquestz e cresteris e lectuaris e olis e flos e aigas aisi quon apar en ostre quartolari ez en de papier que hes sains que monton de xviiii de novembre en fin a iiii de setembre … lib. xvii s. xviii d. x. 1 HD E 21, f. 61: … per far sanar i malaute ginoes … Likely, moveable altars. 1 HD E 34, f. 89r. 1 HD E 37, f. 46v: l’an 1430 diluns a xv de may fom portada i filha en l’espital de sant sperit de mass. fom bateyada en la gleysa de nostra donna de las acoas la

Marginality at the Hospital of Saint-Esprit 225

83

84

85 86 87 88

89

nom de la filha es catarina la pyrrin es maistre malsan cappellari de sant esperit e la mayrrin es la molher d’alexi marquean. For a discussion of the significance of the shroud in medieval funerary ritual, see Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’Au-Delà: les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age (vers 1320–vers 1480) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1980), 118. This was the only occasion on which they were permitted to leave the confines of the hospital: Item volem que si en lo dich espital a nengun cors que totz quantos son en lespital frayres sores donats donadas e totz autres que per lo sagramental sian tengutz dacompanahr lo cors tro a la seboutura. Fabre, Histoire des hôpitaux et des institutions de bienfaisances, I, 69–70. 1 HD E 43, f. 85r. 1 HD E 30, f. 27r. 1 HD E 40, f. 71r. For a consideration of confraternities as surrogate families, see Chiffoleau, “Les confréries, la mort et la religion en Comtat Venaissin à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 91, no. 2 (1979): 785–825; Rollo-Koster, “Death and the Fraternity. A Short Study on the Dead in Late Medieval Confraternities,” Confraternitas 1, no. 9 (1999): 3–12, and “Forever After: The Dead in the Avignonese Confraternity of Notre Dame la Major (1329–1381),” Journal of Medieval History 25, no. 2 (1999): 115–40. Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7.

13 Disabled devotion Original sin and universal disability in the Prik of Conscience Samantha Katz Seal

Medieval man was born broken into a broken world, his body a frail relic of its intended glory.1 Adam, his forefather, had been created in perfection, shaped in the image of his God. As the character of Adam testifies to his Creator in the York Corpus Christi plays: Mony diveris thyngis now here es Off bestis and foulis, bathe wylde and tame, Yet is nan made to thi liknes But we alone.2 Man’s flesh had been rendered from the dirt of a newly birthed earth, but his shape and soul were in the likeness of the highest form. However, as medieval texts often noted, Adam’s fall from grace had broken the symmetry between his flesh and soul, steeping the material human form in sinful carnality.3 Once exiled from Eden, the human body was condemned to mortality, weakness, suffering, and carnal lust. Moreover, the degradation of Adam’s flesh would be bred into the bodies of his sons, passed between the generations again and again in the precise moment of conceptive lust.4 Medieval men knew themselves to inhabit flesh impaired by Adam’s choice, to participate in a collective impairment shared by all humanity. Impairment and disability are social terms, functioning through their alignment with a fiction of the normal.5 And yet, the normative form of humanity, from which Adam had alienated his descendants, was located deep in an ancient, biblical past. No medieval man or woman had witnessed the original state of their flesh, although they had seen human corporeal perfection re-enacted through religious dramas of the Creation. Thus, when we speak of the fall from Eden as a form of physical impairment, we speak of an impairment whose visibility was severely limited. A man might look at the involuntary erection of his genitals as a visible sign of his fall from grace, since, as Alastair Minnis has noted, many Christian theologians believed that Adam would have been able to control the erection of his own genitals with his force of reason, devoid from the sinfulness of lust.6 But a medieval man would not have experienced that unimpaired state himself, nor known anyone

Disabled devotion 227 who had. Instead, his understanding of his own body as a flawed relic of an earlier moment of carnal perfection depended upon his intellectual absorption of the doctrinal tenets of his faith. The postlapsarian semiotic of impairment and disability also depended upon the public and visual testimony of disabled human beings. Disabled people’s bodies were not only inhabited by the individual, but designated – a medieval Christian might have argued – to spark the imaginative powers of their fellow Christians, those who might otherwise struggle to perceive the disabling (if latent) effects of sin on their own, less visibly distinct flesh. Thus, most scholarship on sin and disability in the Middle Ages has focused on those bodies marked out as explicitly and literally disabled, and therefore notably different from the rest of their society.7 Yet, as Irina Metzler has argued, medieval attitudes to the intertwining of sin and disability were complex and inconsistent, for illness and affliction might be both the mechanisms of spiritual cleansing and signs of universal (and sometimes individual) human sin.8 At times we see a stable association of corporeal suffering with sin in medieval contexts; for example, the omnipresent association of Jews with blindness represented an attempt to blend disability metaphors with Christian doctrine.9 Disability was not always caused by sin, but it could be. And thus medieval Christian society was primed to think in corporeal metaphor, and to treat sin as something that you could (sometimes) see inscribed upon the body. Yet, as I argue in this chapter, medieval treatments of disability as intricately intertwined with human sin did not merely articulate the debilitating effects of original sin as the foundation for earthly impairment. Rather, the carnal impact of original sin itself could be expressed through the language of disability. The human body was not merely subject to material damage during its lifetime upon the earth, but had been born into the world already irrevocably impaired. To follow this logic is to imagine a model of disability that layers the body’s pathologies vertically rather than one that demarcates difference between the normative and marginal members of a community. All medieval men and women were inherently disabled; above that congenital disability further levels of carnal suffering might layer on. This metaphorical picture of disability might appear to overlook those individuals living with more tangible forms of disability, transposing lived experience into semiotic tool. Yet, it is crucial to note that for many medieval men and women, the disability of original sin was also a tangible, lived experience. The sickness of the body, the aging of human flesh – these were carnal tragedies that were inflicted upon the individual only in so far as they were also inflicted upon the aggregate. Man’s flesh was inchoately broken, and so it might be broken further, in a multiplicity of ways through the course of a human life. The individual impact of those subsequent breakings depended greatly on the specific circumstances of specific people, but the general breaking of the human

228 Samantha Katz Seal body – the innate reason why bodies were vulnerable to further forms of disability – was a disability shared equally between the rich and the poor, men and women. The Prik of Conscience, a fourteenth-century Middle English devotional poem, provides one of the clearest medieval expressions of the human state as cursed in its totality by disability. Tasking himself with offering the reader a guide both to the private self and to the cosmological universe, the author of this text describes the nature of humanity at significant length, turning to man’s “kynde” as the source of self-knowledge. And man’s kynde is, the author notes, transformed by the disability of original sin, twisted almost past recognition from its first state. The disability of original sin thus functions to transform even the most privileged of men into only a flawed body, wrestling with the bitter physical punishment first visited upon his forefather, Adam. In this chapter, I use both “impairment” and “disability” to account for the manifold ways in which human difference can negotiate between the material state of the body and its social interpretations.10 While “impairment” has traditionally been held to be descriptive of a physical condition and “disability” to be the social reaction to impairment, many scholars have increasingly argued against such a sharp division, since no impairment exists as a biological reality devoid of society’s interpretations.11 Nevertheless, at times I will utilize the term “impairment” when I wish to emphasize the materiality of mankind’s fallen condition. For the purposes of this chapter, “impairment” also offers a way of representing the medieval Christian belief that original sin was a collective, transhistorical experience of the flesh, while emphasizing the degree to which that belief was socially constructed, deeply dependent upon varying, and often inconsistent interpretations of how that primary condition disabled humanity. Analogy functioned as the tool of history, offering man a tempting retrospective taste of his own unimpaired flesh while, by showing him to have fallen below his inferior species, radically disabling him in the present time. The essential, divinely created hierarchies of the world had been overthrown in the Edenic garden, and man’s continued existence overthrew them again and again in every single second of Christological time. Disability could therefore be egalitarian, shared by all mankind through Father Adam. The English rebels of 1381, for example, supposedly sang, “When Adam delved and Eve span,/who was then the gentleman?”12 With its themes of human unity and the overthrow of hierarchies, postlapsarian disability was a doctrine of chaos with radical implications. Thus, finally, I argue, the Prik of Conscience’s author does not offer his poem as an antidote to the impairment of man’s nature, rather he claims it as a means for men to enforce strict social stratification despite the uniting experience of their disability, a way for them to reinforce the clarity of margins and marginality within even this most disordered, fallen world.

Disabled devotion 229

The impairment of man’s kynde No Middle English poem remains extant in more manuscripts than the Prik of Conscience; the poetic devotional treatise survives in 130 medieval manuscripts, a testament to the wide popularity of the text.13 As James H. Morey notes in the introduction to his 2012 edition of the poem, the erroneous attribution of the poem to the fourteenth-century mystic, Richard Rolle, possibly “lent the poem a prestige and authority which may help to account for the extent of its circulation.”14 The text serves as a pious guide to both the external world and the human self, urging men and women to observe the “facts” of the universe in order to assume the glorious promise of salvation. For this reason, the text combines an encyclopedic range of Christian doctrine with an intimate narrative voice; the good Christian must know not only the breadth of Christian supernatural space, the anonymous author teaches, but also the intimate, private darkness of his own flesh. For the reader must know at all times that the simple human body is inseparably intertwined with the cosmic grandeur of Heaven and Hell, that Christian eschatology is a drama always writ both large and small at once.15 The author therefore divides the poem into seven chapters that move through the competing structures of Christian time and space, playing with the expansion and contraction of the narrative. In all, the topics of the seven chapters include the wretchedness of the human body, the world’s instability, death, purgatory, judgment day, and finally the “joyes of heaven.” The poem therefore offers the reader the voyeuristic pretense that they are following an individual soul (perhaps the reader’s own?) along a journey that has been mapped out for him long before his birth. The reader’s task is to follow the information laid out within the poem, but also to participate in the act of knowledge collection. For knowing is, the poem asserts, an essential aspect of religious devotion: “yif he knowe himself kindly/Thenne may he knowe God almyghty.”16 In this sense, the poem repeatedly directs the reader’s gaze inward, even as it also demonstrates the large-scale workings of the world. Such a method is not uncommon for devotional works of this period. As Jennifer Bryan writes, late medieval vernacular works of spiritual guidance evince an abiding concern with the processes of self-envisioning, self-knowledge, and affective and rational self-transformation. In teaching literate men and women the basic disciplines of contemplation, they encourage them to watch, search, and improve their inner selves.17 The human self provided a paradigm within which the medieval reader was deeply invested, but it also offered a visual focal point through which a reader might more easily comprehend the abstractions of theology. Motifs of brokenness and disability functioned in this way within the poem; the reader turns to look at the impairment of their own flesh (or at the

230 Samantha Katz Seal disabilities of others) in order to understand the foul humbleness of mankind, and the inverse grandeur of its God. However, even compared to its devotional contemporaries, the Prik of Conscience dedicates a remarkable amount of space to denigrating the human condition. The first chapter of the poem, “Of Man and of his Wretchedness,” is a full five-hundred-and-forty-nine lines, moving between Latin scriptural quotation and Middle English glossings. This section of the poem is heavily indebted to Pope Innocent III’s De miseria condicionis humane, a late twelfth-century enumeration of humanity’s flawed state, and perhaps many (but not all) of its excesses in description can be traced to that source.18 The graphic gore of the text’s descriptions of humanity is remarkable. The author does not just offer man a consideration of his inferiority in comparison to his Creator. Instead, he crushes him with the vile, frequently scatological weight of human’s diseased flesh, with lines such as, “for mon seeth of his body come/Fro above and fro bynethe/Miche fylthe and stynkyng brethe.”19 Defecation and vomiting are not themselves a mark of physiological impairment; Adam himself would likely have defecated and perhaps even vomited while still in Eden.20 But the stench and filthiness of those bodily excretions are unique, the poet suggests, to man’s postlapsarian nature. What was once mere purgation has become an exercise in disgust. In this sense, the technologies of the human body remain largely the same as when they had been established in a state of perfection, but their functions have been perverted, twisted, and impaired. God may have shaped man out of humble earth, but the nature of that shaping hid the filth of that earth until man had made himself filthy with sin. Thus, while the poet writes, “mon of foulest matere God wrought/When he maad alle thing of nought,” he also notes (like the author of the York Corpus Christi Plays) that man was made in the likeness of God.21 “In myddellerde mon laste he maade/Lyke hymselfe in fayre stature/To be mooste worthie creature.”22 Man’s eventual impairment lurked within him from the very moment of his creation, but in order for that impairment to be realized, man first had to disable himself by breaking his relationship with God. While typically in the social model of disability, one expects impairment to precede disability, since disability is defined as the social interpretation of that impairment; here, man’s impairment is the consequence, rather than the catalyst, of his disability. Man broke the divine understanding and promise of his flesh when he ate the apple that had been forbidden to him and to his wife, Eve. And so God sees Adam as broken before Adam himself recognizes his condition, before Adam himself even knowingly inhabits his condition. Adam’s impairment comes when God reminds him of the “foul matere” from which man was made, saying, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread til thou return to the earth, out of which thou was taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.”23 Adam was always made of dust, but now he has been returned to

Disabled devotion 231 the knowledge of his body’s composition at the very same moment that his body has been cursed with mortality. In telling of the wretchedness of man’s kynde, therefore, the author of the Prik of Conscience focuses on presenting human physiology as essentially impaired, turned backward from the original, Edenic model. Thus, for example, the maternal womb, source of life, is visualized instead as a terrifying, disgusting place, a “dongyon/In stede of foule fylth and corrupcyoun,” in which the fetal human is nurtured with “noon othur foode/Bot foule glet and lipered bloode.”24 Even worse, the remnants of this anatomical horror follow the child even after he is freed from its imprisoning depths, for he brings its fleshly filth with him into the world when he is born clothed only in: Nought bot a blody skynne That he byfore was lapped inne While he in his modur wombe lay; That is foule thing for to say, And fouler to here seyth the bok And alther foulest on to look.25 This bloody caul that follows the infant on his journey from womb to independent life reminds the reader that he has inherited nothing from his parents except the impairment of his kynde, that his only heritage from the human world has been blood, filth, and degradation. How can one turn in an affective manner to a mother who has imprisoned one in a space of helpless revulsion, who stands as the physical embodiment of that “wrechednesse and caytyfte” into which men are born?26 Women pollute male flesh from the very beginnings of the fetal state. And that impairment radiates out within the later lives of those children. Even the memory of the womb and its relic, the caul, can pervert and corrupt the male senses. It is a foul thing to see, say, or hear; the depths of the female body impair the male senses wherever the two seem to touch. For, like Eve, medieval women represent the mechanisms by which men’s disabilities are borne into them, and the carnal mirrors within which men can gauge the impairment of their human kynde. But if the poem destabilizes the bond between contemporary mother and child, it attempts to replace that human tie by embracing man’s first ancestors, Adam and Eve. Human mothers are the means by which impairment is reinforced, but these biblical parents contribute to the paradigm of disability, for they are the only example of perfect human flesh with which men can compare their own diseased forms. In a medieval version of the contemporary “gender reveal,” the poet reports that all human infants cry at birth either for Adam or for Eve, a behavior that accords exactly with their respective genitals. Male children cry “a” (“that is the first letter of the name/Of oure formoure fadur Adame”), while female children cry “e” (“the fyrste lettre that is of Eve/That bygon us fyrst to

232 Samantha Katz Seal greve”).27 Released from the prison of its mother’s womb, the infant confronts its kynde by calling upon the ancestors who embodied humanity’s transition from health to impairment. This gendered weeping not only calls attention to the child’s entry into the common disability, but it also makes clear that humanity’s disabled state is constructed in relation to its Edenic ancestors. The child has personally experienced only a static and consistent engagement with sin; from the very moment of its creation, it has been gestated in the depths of human physical impairment. To call on Adam and Eve is to call on a time long before humanity endured such a curse, to call upon the memory of wholeness innate in man’s distant past. Yet, in the power of this contrast, the poet also bears the weight of human impairment down upon the reader, confronting him with the extent to which humanity had become almost hopelessly divorced from the flesh of its first parents. It was not enough for medieval man to know that his kynde was full of sin. The author of the Prik of Conscience also required that his medieval readers would understand the inherent deviancy of that state. Mankind had not been meant to inhabit such broken flesh, to be gestated in a bloody prison, nor to smell so foul when he voided his waste. The readers must confront not only the revulsion of their current state, but also the sorrow of humanity’s impairment. Man’s knowledge of his own kynde should be haunted by the knowledge of what his kynde had been, by the fact that once he had been filth made in the image of God and now, through the violent intervention of human sin, his flesh had been turned again to filth and “foule matere.”

Disabling likeness: Adam, animals, and analogy Before the fall from Eden, Adam and Eve had not only possessed perfect, healthy flesh, they had also occupied a stable, superior rank among the creatures of the earth. At humanity’s creation, God granted the first parents the gifts that they needed to maintain authority over the beasts, or rather, as the poet of the Prik of Conscience writes, “Byfore alle creatures of kynde/ He gaf hym wytte, skil, and mynde.”28 Man had been set apart from the other animals according to his cognitive gifts; he was like the beasts within his flesh, but through his mind and his capacity to reason, man had been privileged and distinguished upon the earth, while the beasts were marginalized. It was this precious hierarchy that enabled Adam, after the fall, to exploit benefit from those animals, employing their labor in his agricultural pursuits and consuming their meat to satisfy his appetite. And yet man’s dominance within this earthly hierarchy had been established long before he sinned in Eden, and man’s fall from grace had disabled it, denying man access to his natal gifts. The Prik of Conscience poet reminds his readers that the stable relationships and status hierarchies that they take for granted have been hopelessly disrupted by Adam’s fall, even the simplest, most essential aspect of human superiority to the beasts.

Disabled devotion 233 Man’s flesh was hopelessly impaired by his ancestral sin, but it was through the disintegration of his social relationships (including those with the natural world) that he had become disabled. For disability, as opposed to impairment, requires externalized comparison for its analysis. One can be impaired in relation to one’s previous physical state, but one is disabled by one’s transformed relationship with other people. In this sense, disability enforces a standard of corporeal normativity, measuring one human specimen against another. However, while reinforcing the exclusionary boundaries of the normative, disability also destabilizes the structural hierarchies that exist within a social community, by not only disrupting an individual’s social prestige but also by disrupting it so inconsistently.29 One rich man blinded may retain his wealth and power; another, equally impaired, may lose his authority along with his sight. If individual relationships were undermined in a single, predictable way, then disability would be a threat to the individual, but not to the social order itself. Instead its arbitrary enforcement introduces a note of chaos into even the most rigid of human structures. For the unreliable landscape of disability undermines human self-taxonomization; it folds the normative center again and again until one loses the stable boundaries for the margins. In a postlapsarian world, the analogical comparison so essential to establishing disability (this human is disabled in comparison to this other human) is too chaotic to reinforce or even accommodate social hierarchy. And this is not a bad thing, writes the author of the Prik of Conscience. For worldly stratification stands in opposition to divine law, giving men a false, damning sense of an alternative to Christian eschatology. “Goddes servaunt may he not be/Bot he the worldes manere flee/Ny love God bot he the world despise.”30 The recognition of man’s disabled state, his uncertain, fluctuating relationship even with the dumb beasts of the natural world, reminds humanity of the folly in allowing worldly things to turn them away from those of the divine. For, “this world is fykul and disseyvable/Fals unsikur and fulle unstable.”31 The animal world is an excellent place to turn for this rhetorical point, because animals too occupy an unstable position within the world. Adhering to a medieval tradition that the animals had once possessed a small degree of reason (now lost), the poet inserts variability and uncertainty into both levels (human and nonhuman) of the natural world.32 The animals, having also suffered an impairment, become an ideal mirror for mankind, for, as Susan Crane writes, “With ratio as their distinguishing feature, humans are crucially differentiated from other animals; with ratio even slightly shared out among them, animal difference is shot through with similitude.”33 Humanity can look at the category of beasts and perceive an essential difference between them, but it becomes impossible to categorize the nature and degree of that difference with certainty. And so, in his relationship with the beasts, man must recognize the full extent of his inherited disability, and the chaos which it has brought to the natural

234 Samantha Katz Seal world. He cannot even quantify his position in regards to “these doumbe creatures therfore/That reasonable wit han lore”; how could he hope to understand his relationships with other men?34 Man must look neither to his species nor to his similar creatures for stability. All is disabled except for God. Man’s vacillating state in comparison to the animal world has only been amplified by the animals’ loss of reason. For, although man alone still possesses his cognitive gifts, the animals have nevertheless surpassed him in morality. Sith tho creatures that skil han noon In her kynde loven hym uche oon Man aught that hath skil and mynde To loven his creature in his kynde And not to be worse of condiciouns Then creatures withouten resouns.35 Man’s cognitive powers have not been impaired along with his flesh; he retains the capacity to use that “wytte, minde, and skil” that he was given upon his creation. But man does not use those natural abilities correctly. His disability radiates past where his impairment ends, seizing more from mankind than he needs to give. By failing to employ his cognitive skills correctly, man has disabled himself doubly, overthrowing his natural relationships both with God and with his animal inferiors. His correct function is to love his Creator, and the impairment of man’s flesh offers no excuse to leave this task behind. “He is an unkynde man,” the poet writes, who does not employ “his giftes to usen hem right/To spenden his witte in godde service.”36 The animals too have suffered loss, and have seen their nature change as time passes from their creation. Yet the animals still preserve their function, loving God for making them even if the quality of that making is less than what it was. But man uses his impairment to disable his relationship with God, transforming a source of steadiness into one of unnecessary volatility. And by breaking his duty to his Creator, man destabilizes his bonds with the animals in his midst, allowing the lesser creatures to rise unnaturally above him. The Prik of Conscience poet is no proto-Jacobin; this upending of the world order is meant to horrify and dismay the reader. Part of this disabling revision of the status of men and animals respectively is out of the control of men altogether. Once the flesh is impaired, there is nothing man can do to prevent it from becoming “wormes foode … when he is deed and leyd in grave”; likewise, now humanity has been condemned to death, “foulere careyne myghte never be” than human flesh.37 Men were not meant to be eaten by animals, but the degrading of the human body has meant that eventually even the humblest animals will triumph over humanity. In a similar manner, man’s fall from Eden has enforced new

Disabled devotion 235 measures of assessment for the distinctive gifts of men and beasts. On the lynx’s supernaturally powerful sight, for example, the Prik of Conscience poet writes, For certus whoso myght have sight Or had so clere yghen or bright As hath a beest that men lynx calles That may se thorowe thicke ston walles, Than myght he se withouten doute As wel withinne men as withoute. Man was never meant to have the amazing eyesight of the lynx; man’s other divinely-granted gifts rendered him superior to the lynx despite that sensory advantage.38 But now, with man fallen from his original status, the preservation of the lynx’s corporeal ability must be renegotiated. The big cat’s eyesight, unimpaired from the time of his creation, allows him to dominate fallen man, to perceive the secret filth and worthlessness that man conceals within his flesh. This may not be much of an advantage from the perspective of the lynx – it doesn’t allow him to eat the man, after all – but from the perspective of the devotional text, the lynx has won a moral victory over humankind, forcing man to reveal his secret, humiliating self. Humanity has lost its authority; its shame is naked before the beasts. Man is disabled before his God and before his fellow animal species, for the impairment of human corporeal nature has led humanity away from the performance of its religious duty, and forced mankind to become more humble than the beasts over whom they once ruled. Indeed, even in comparison to insensate forms of life, man should consider himself disabled. Citing a metaphor from Innocent III’s text, the poet creates an extended, arboreal allegory for man’s earthly condition, beginning with the words, “Monnes shap is bot a tre/Turned dounward that up shuld be.”39 The poet continues the comparison at length; the tree roots are “the heer that on hym hengeth,” the human chest and trunk are “the goben of that tree,” and so on.40 Even the trees may look down upon humanity, may consider themselves superior to that creature made in the image of the Creator of all life. And perhaps it is this comparison that most perfectly expresses mankind’s disabled state within the fallen world, for it incorporates the complex multiplicity of man’s layered condition. Man is disabled both in comparison and in quality. He is less than what he himself should be and he is less than what the other inhabitants of his world (plants, animals, etc.) remain. Moreover, unlike the animal analogies, the analogy of the backwards tree emphasizes the intersection of temporality with man’s innate impairment. For man is disabled not only in his present nature, but also in his future generations. With the turn to trees, the poet turns as well to the human body as a site of production. He idealizes trees as the source of fruit and

236 Samantha Katz Seal flowers, the sustenance of other species. In contrast, man’s flesh produces only waste material and parasites: “nytes, fleen, lyus, and vermin sere … urine ordure and spyttyngge … stynke and evel savoures.”41 Children are not enumerated as a form of human product here, but they nevertheless haunt this extended discussion of the topic, the “evel tree may no good fruyt bere” (Matthew 7:18). Human children, however, desired and beloved by their parents, represent but a continuation of human disability within this schema, a congenital perpetuation of mankind’s flaws. Yet man’s disability, while congenital, is nevertheless far from static. For man’s flesh is weakening with every generation, his lifetime shortening, and the disease of death encroaching upon man’s time. While men in biblical time had lived long lives, the lives of medieval men were impossibly short. Bot so greet elde may noon now bere Monnes lyf may becomen shortere For the complectioun of every mon Is febeler now then hit was thon. Bot for hit is nowe worse to se Monnes lyvyng mot shortere be.42 Man’s complexion, the delicate balance of his humors, did not remain as stable as the sin within his seed. For all the universality of human disability, change could nevertheless occur within a temporal frame, as flesh weakened from one generation to the next. And this was not merely a change in comparison with their biblical ancestors. The Prik of Conscience’s author notes that men’s lifespans are becoming shorter even than those of their own, more recent forefathers: “Fewe now fourty yeere con passe,/Fewer fiftye as som tyme was.”43 Men’s bodies are becoming increasingly frail with every generation, the death that waits for them as a result of Adam’s sin, comes quicker now to them. Perhaps one day it will come even quicker to their sons. In this sense, the author does not only establish human disability in comparison to man’s Edenic past or to the other creatures with which man shared his earth. Contemporary man is disabled even in regards to the men of his own recent past. Disability becomes ever amplified as it moves through human history, as each generation of men moves more and more rapidly to its demise. Temporal variance is a particularly interesting aspect of the Prik of Conscience’s theory of disability, because to invoke change in man’s condition over time is to introduce a measure of stratification into an otherwise universalized category. One grandfather is one’s superior in regards to disability; one’s grandson will be one’s marginal inferior. And yet, this is precisely the wrong kind of stratification for a society hoping to renegotiate the egalitarian inheritance of Adam’s sin. To ground stratification in the progression of generations is to level the experience of disability within each generation itself, to allow difference to exist only between men separated by

Disabled devotion 237 time, rather than between men separated by lineage or wealth. Man’s relationship with the nonhuman species of the world marks the unfortunate rebalancing of respective likeness within a postlapsarian world, with previous inferiors rising to new heights, but man’s relationship with others within his own generation enforces an equality of likeness upon a social grouping unaccustomed and unwilling for such equivalence. Man’s likeness has not only been differentiated from the beasts, it has been undifferentiated from that of his fellow man. He is disabled because he is no longer like the beasts in his love for God; he is disabled because he is impaired in just the same way as his neighbor. And finally, medieval man will die, just like his neighbor. Death entered the world of men because of Adam’s sin, an infliction upon a human species reeling from its own impairment.44 In death, man’s likeness with his own self breaks down. Taunting its reader with the fact of his own death, the Prik of Conscience treats death as the culmination of its system of establishing disability through analogical comparison. While mon lyveth he is lyke monne,

When he is deed what is he thonne?

Thenne moun men her lyckenes see

Chaunged as hit had never ben hee.45

The disability of man’s nature breaks down his relationships with the natural world, with his biblical ancestors, and even with his more recent forefathers, in order to establish the primacy of his connection with Adam. Medieval man is “lyke monne” because he is like Adam. Moreover, the nature of that likeness calls attention to the complexities of man’s current state, for Adam fully embodies mankind’s experience of disability. Contemporary man is like Adam because Adam too was subject to death and frailty. Yet, contemporary medieval men can never be Adam because they lack the experience of an unimpaired body, their flesh can never be fully collapsed into that of their original father, for he alone, of all men in history, has lived whole and free of sin. Adam and his sons can at best maintain an analogical relationship, in which disability and the falling away from perfection distinguish one human object from another. And as men fall into death, the text notes, they fall into a disability so profound that even analogy itself must finally fall away. “When he is dead, what is he thonne?” What can men be compared to after they die? Some dead men will be saved and fully healed; some will be condemned to eternal torment. But all men will be subject to a profound renegotiation of their material form, one that seeks almost to erase their previous existence. Medieval man has had to live within his disabled flesh, buffeted by the broken hierarchies of his world. But the fear of what is to follow his disability will shatter him much further. For if disability has destabilized man’s likeness to himself and to his fellow creatures, death, its ultimate manifestation, will destroy all systems of analogy.

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The knowing of man’s kynde: stratifying disability For the amount of time that the author of the Prik of Conscience spends enumerating the comprehensiveness of man’s fleshly impairment and its disabling annihilation of his relationships with all life forms, including himself, one would almost think that the author intends for his reader to despair. One cannot fight against the impairment inherited from Adam, and neither can one persist against the disability of man’s alienation. Yet, the author of the poem offers a subtle gift to those who read him carefully, an opportunity to flee an additional form of disability that may be layered upon that mode of disability innate to the human condition. One must accept the universal state of fallen man, but one may nonetheless distinguish oneself from one’s neighbors, regaining some sense of individual superiority by embracing the comprehensiveness of mankind’s humility. For there are two kinds of people in the world, albeit all universally disabled: those who know their nature and bring themselves back to the love of God, and those who blind themselves still further, as they flee from what they do not wish to know. The author of the Prik of Conscience deliberately describes the latter type of people in a recognizable language of disability, one that borrows from tropes of Jewish blindness by emphasizing the interchangeability of lack of sight and lack of insight. Thus, people who reject the knowledge of their own disabled nature, the poet writes, “con not wele the ryghtwey se,” and so “in greet derkenes goon al tho/Withouten lyght of undurstondyng.”46 Likewise, the poet lists four things “that monnes witte maken ofte blynde,” blaming worldly occupations and interests for “reven mon bothe skil and mynde/To knowe what he is of his kynde.”47 Worldliness makes men the victim of sensory loss, taking both their vision and those cognitive skills given to separate men from beasts. Indeed, the poet argues that those men who refuse to know their own humble states render themselves worse than the beasts. Such men “lyve as an unskillful beeste/That hath no witte skil ny mynde/That mon lyveth ageyne his kynde.”48 Of course, the poet has already compared all of humanity to these dumb beasts, noting how man’s impaired nature renders him morally inferior to these animals. But the man who refuses the knowledge of human sin lowers himself even further, breaking his species’ identification with other humans and consigning himself to a marginal status even if he does not himself recognize that change in social status. Such blind, unnatural men disable themselves far past the innate disability they share with the rest of mankind. And so, while the poet cannot promise his reader a privileged opportunity to free himself from the innate disability of his kynde before the eventual ascent to heaven, the

Disabled devotion 239 poet can offer the reader assurance that he is less disabled than other men within his midst. However marginalized and oppressed the reader may find themselves to be in their daily life, that ordering of the world is merely a mirage; the true stratifications of humanity, the assignation of centers and margins, happens according to man’s acquiescence to his own fallen state, according to man’s hope of redemption. Moreover, the reader is indebted to the poet for his possession of this privileged status, for it is through the reading of devotional texts, particularly the Prik of Conscience itself, that certain men may distinguish themselves from their fellows, and recreate a sense of discrimination within the leveling field of mankind’s sin. As the poet writes, Sum have witte to undurstonde And yit thei are ful unknowande, And som there ben han no knowing That myght hem styre to good lyvyng.49 Knowledge divides humanity where kynde would unite them, triumphing over the universality of Adam’s fall. You are all disabled, says the poet, but within that disability, one can recreate a system of the elite and of the marginalized, can grant distinction and social identity to those who wish to leave the second level of disability behind them. And he will offer this elite model not only to the learned. His book is addressed “to lewed men and unkunnande/That con no Latyn undurstonde.”50 In a world of variable Latinate literacy rates among the aristocratic and wealthy, the poet envisions his reader not as a learned man, but rather as one who craves social distinction, one to be wooed to read (or listen) through the denigration of those who do not engage with the poem. Disability afflicts all men, and there is no cure for that on earth. But men can turn to disability as well for a language capable of reordering and reworking the margins of the world, one that offers the reader a privileged position among the less impaired elite. Accept your impairment, the poet writes, accept your disability, accept even your death. And in that acceptance, you will distinguish yourself from other men; you will find yourself at the true center of humanity. To know one’s kynde is to join an elite group within that kynde, a group characterized by its engagement with devotional texts, and gathered from across the wide panoply of worldly position and rank. Knowledge may no longer be enough to distinguish men from beasts or to induce men to love their God as all creation should. But knowledge remains enough upon the earth to offer men some small distinction from one another, to enforce new social distinctions upon those who have inherited Adam’s sin. And for that, for the special triumph over the egalitarian nature of man’s congenital impairment, the poet writes, one must read his book.

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Notes 1 I use the word “man” to stand in for humanity within this article (and Adam to represent the Edenic parents) as a reflection of the medieval tendency to treat the male sex as the sole normative body. Indeed, the main text of my analysis, the first book of the Prik of Conscience, provides a strong example of this rhetoric, for it is entitled “Of Man and of His Wrechednesse,” although its subject is not men alone, but rather the human condition. 2 “The Creation of Adam and Eve,” The York Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011), Lines 49–52. 3 For a discussion of medieval treatments of Adam’s fallen flesh, see Brian Mur­ doch, Adam’s Grace: Fall and Redemption in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). 4 See, for example, Hildegard of Bingen’s belief (described by Joan Cadden) that “it is pleasure (delectatio) deriving from the serpent and the forbidden fruit that gives rise to a new person, for it is pleasure which agitates a man’s blood … thus at one stroke accounting for the beginning of the reproductive process and introducing the doctrine of original sin.” Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 78. 5 Julie Singer makes a strong argument for the need to conceptualize disability beyond binaries of the normative, to note instead how disability “(re)constitutes and (re)configures other, contiguous social categories” and “redraw[s] boundaries between margins and center.” Julie Singer, “Disability and the Social Body,” Postmedieval 3, no. 2 (2012): 135–41, at 137. However, within the self-conception of medieval Christianity, I would argue that binaries remained crucial, and that therefore the disability of original sin was presented as in direct, constant oppos­ ition to the health of salvation. 6 Alastair Minnis, From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 249. 7 One of the few places that people living with disability are particularly visible in the medieval textual record is in collections of miracles, and thus our analysis of the medieval intersection of disability and Christianity has been particularly focused upon disability as a transitional state, always on the edge of healing. See, for example, Irina Metzler, “Indiscriminate Healing Miracles in Decline: How Social Realities Affect Religious Perception,” in Contextualizing Miracles in the Medieval West, 1100–1500: New Historical Approaches, ed. Matthew M. Mesley and Louise E. Wilson (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2014), 155–76. 8 Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 47. 9 On the blindness of the Jews, see Edward Wheatley, “Blind Jews and Blind Christians: Metaphorics of Marginalization in Medieval Europe,” Exemplaria 14, no. 2 (2002), 351–82; Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), 55–94. 10 The distinction between impairment and disability is a fundamental characteristic of the social model of disability studies, articulated by Irina Metzler as follows. Met­ zler writes, “impairment is seen as the biological ‘fact,’ the bodily manifestation, and describes the purely anatomical, so that impairment lacks social connotations. By contrast, ‘disability’ refers to the social construction of the relationship between the impaired body and the culture and society that body’s owner inhabits.” Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 20. Such a dichotomy, however, fails to acknowledge the lived experience of dis­ abled people as both Tom Shakespeare and Joshua Eyler have pointed out.

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19 20 21 22 23 24

25

Disability cannot be only a social phenomenon nor can the cessation of human pain be effected only through social solutions. Tom Shakespeare, “The Social Model of Disability,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed., ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2013), 214–21; Joshua R. Eyler, “Introduction,” in Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations (New York: Routledge, 2016), 6. Bill Hughes and Kevin Paterson, “The Social Model of Disability and the Dis­ appearing Body: Towards a Sociology of Impairment,” Disability and Society 12, no. 3 (1997): 325–40; Shelley Tremain, “On the Subject of Impairment,” in Dis­ ability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory, ed. Marian Corker and Tom Shakespeare (London: Continuum, 2002), 32–47; Simo Vehmas and Pekka Makela, “The Ontology of Disability and Impairment: A Discussion of the Nat­ ural and Social Features,” in Arguing about Disability: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Kristjana Kristiansen, Simo Vehmas, and Tom Shakespeare (New York: Routledge, 2008), 42–56; Christopher A. Riddle, “The Ontology of Impairment: Rethinking How We Define Disability,” in Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies, ed. Matthew Whappett and Katrina Arndt (New York: Palgrave Mac­ Millan, 2013), 23–39. For a discussion of the class implications of this chant, see Nicola Masciandaro, The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 59–70. James H. Morey, “Introduction,” in Prik of Conscience, ed. James H. Morey (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2012), 1. This edition will be abbrevi­ ated as PC in the subsequent notes. For a more detailed survey of the manuscripts, see Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Mediaeval Lan­ guages and Literature, 1982). Morey, “Introduction,” 2. As an example of this doctrine, Joel Rosenthal notes that the text’s division into the three ages of man (youth, adulthood, and old age) is explicitly Trinitarian in its orientation, and would have been recognized as such by a medieval reader. Joel T. Rosenthal, Old Age in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 182. PC, 15, lns. 211–12. Jennifer L. Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 3. Geoffrey Chaucer was also familiar with this text, and translated several seg­ ments of it within the Man of Law’s Tale. Robert Enzer Lewis, “Chaucer’s Artis­ tic Use of Pope Innocent III’s De Miseria Humane Conditionis in the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale,” PMLA 81, no. 7 (December 1966): 485–92. PC, 26, lns. 238–40. For a discussion of the question of whether Adam would have defecated in Paradise, see Minnis, Creations of Paradise, 34–5. PC, 20, lns. 1–2. PC, 12, lns. 72–4. Genesis 3:19 PC, 22, lns. 84–7. Tory Pearman has argued that we should read the medieval reproductive body as standing at “the intersection of the social construction of monstrosity, disability, femaleness, and femininity,” but in this case, monstrosity is confined to the female body, and the disability resides in the male experience of separation from monstrous female flesh. Tory Vandeventer Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 25. PC, 23–4, lns. 150–5.

242 Samantha Katz Seal 26 PC, 24, ln.157. As Charles Wood notes, the menses were often considered a visual sign of the Fall from Eden; there was thus significant debate among medieval Christian theologians as to whether or not the Virgin Mary had experi­ enced menstrual periods like most human women of reproductive age. Charles T. Wood, “The Doctor’s Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,” Speculum 56, no. 4 (October 1981): 710–27, esp. 718–27. 27 PC, 24, lns. 110–11, 114–15. 28 PC 12, lns. 75–6. 29 As Irina Metzler has argued, medieval people also found disability threatening and chaotic because they understood the disabled body as a microcosm reflective of the macrocosmic order; thus, the disorder of the hierarchies within a disabled body, could spill out into broader society. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 51–2. 30 PC 37, 163–5. 31 PC 37, 155–6. 32 For the history of this tradition, see Anselm Oelcze, Animal Rationality: Later Medieval Theories, 1250–1350 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 33 Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 100. 34 PC, 12, lns. 49–50. 35 PC, 12, lns. 57–62. 36 PC, 13, lns. 112, 114–15. 37 PC, 25, lns.193, 199. 38 Willene Clark traces the belief in the lynx’s supernatural sight to the work of Hugutio of Pisa and Alexander of Neckham. Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Trans­ lation (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), 102, n. 4. 39 PC, 27, lns. 295–6. 40 PC, 27, lns. 298, 301–2. 41 PC, 26–7, lns. 274, 278, 280. 42 PC, 28–9, lns. 361–6. 43 PC, 29, lns. 382–3. 44 For the connection between death and the Fall, see Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 159–62. 45 PC, 30–31, lns. 448–51. 46 PC, 15, lns. 179, 184–5. 47 PC, 16, lns. 232, 241–2. 48 PC, 14, lns. 156–8. 49 PC, 14, lns. 141–2. 50 PC, 18, lns. 324–5.

Select bibliography

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244 Select bibliography Bono, Salvatore. Corsari nel Mediterraneo: cristiani e musulmani fra guerra, schiavitù e commercio. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1993. Bornstein, Daniel. “Parish Priests in Cortona.” Preti nel medioevo (Quaderni di storia religiosa) IV (Verona: Cierre, 1997): 165–93. Brooke, Christopher. “Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England, 1050–1200.” Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1956): 1–21. Bryan, Jennifer L. Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Callow, Chris. “Comparing Medieval Iceland with Other Regions.” In Italy and Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham, edited by Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow, and Patricia Skinner, 416–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Chambers, Iain. Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Charles-Edwards, Thomas M. Wales and the Britons, 350–1064. Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2013. Chavarot, Marie-Claire. “La pratique des lettres de marque d’après les arrêts du parle­ ment (XIIIe-début XVe siècle).” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 149 (1991): 51–89. Cheyette, Frederic L. “The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332.” Speculum XLV (1970): 40–68. Chiffoleau, Jacques. La comptabilité de l’Au-Delà: les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Âge (vers 1320–vers 1480). Rome: École française de Rome, 1980. Cingolani, Stefano Maria. “De historia privada a historia pública y de la afirmación al discurso: Una reflexión en torno a la historiografía medieval catalana (985– 1288).” Talia Dixit 3 (2008): 51–76. Cobb, Paul M. The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Cossar, Roisin. Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Coulon, Damian. Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient. Un siècle de relations avec l’Égypte et la Syrie (ca. 1330–ca. 1430). Madrid-Barcelone: Casa de Velázquez – Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, 2004. Davidson, Clifford, ed. “The Creation of Adam and Eve.” The York Corpus Christi Plays. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011. Davies, Rees. “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?” Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003): 280–300. Deane, Jennifer K. “Beguines Reconsidered: Historiographical Problems and New Directions,” Monastic Matrix (2008) Commentaria 3461. http://monasticmatrix. org/commentaria/article.php?textId=3461 Defries, David. “The Emergence of the Territorial Principality of Flanders, 750–1150.” History Compass 11 (2013): 619–31. Denis., Gabriel. La ‘Maison des pauvres maîtres’ de Robert de Sorbon: Les débuts de la Sorbonne (1254–1274). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. Eckhardt, Caroline D. “Reading Jaufré: Comedy and Interpretation in a Medieval Cliff-Hanger.” The Comparatist 33 (2009): 40–62.

Select bibliography 245 El Hamel, Chouki. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Ellenblum, Ronnie. Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Epstein, Steven. Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. ———. Purity Lost: Transgressing Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000–1400. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Eyler, Joshua R. “Introduction.” In Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, edited by Joshua R. Eyler, 1–10. New York: Routledge, 2016. Farmer, Sharon. Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Fenster, Tovi. “The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life.” Journal of Gender Studies 14 (2005): 217–31. Fiume, Giovanna. Schiavitù mediterranee: corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009. Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997. Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 2012. Friedman, Yvonne. “Peacemaking: Perception and Practices in the Medieval Latin East.” In The Crusades and the Near East: Cultural Histories, edited by Conor Kostick, 229–57. London: Routledge, 2011. Geltner, Guy. The Medieval Prison: A Social History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 2008. Geremek, Bronislaw. The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris. Translated by Jean Birrell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Glorieux, Palémon. Aux origines de la Sorbonne. Vol. 1, Robert de Sorbon, l’homme, le collège, les documents. Études de philosophie médiévale 53. Paris: J. Vrin, 1966. Gouffran, Laure-Hélène. “Les acteurs d’assistance: hôpitaux et élites urbaines à Mar­ seille à la fin du Moyen Âge (fin XIVe-déb. XVe siècle).” Mediterranea Ricerche storiche 36 (2016): 45–62. Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism. Translated by Steven Rowan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Gutzman, Gregory G. “Reports of Mongolian Canabalism in the Thirteenth-Century Latin Sources: Oriental Fact or Western Fiction?” In Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, edited by Scott Westrem, 31–68. New York: Garland, 1991. Hall, Bruce. A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2011. Hanawalt, Barbara A., and Anna Grotans, eds. Living Dangerously. On the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Holt, Peter Malcolm. Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290: Treaties of Baybars and Qalawun with Christian Rulers. Leiden: Brill, 1995.

246 Select bibliography Hopkins, J.F.P., and Nehemia Levtzion. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West Afri­ can History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Howe, Nicholas. Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410. New York: Routledge, 2005. James, I. The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragón: A Translation of the Medieval Cata­ lan Llibre Dels Fets. Translated and edited by Damian J. Smith and Helena Buffery. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. John of Plano Carpini. “Historia Mongalorum.” In Sinica Franciscana, Vol 1: Itinera et Relationes Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, edited by Anastasius Van den Wyngaert, 27–130. Quaracchi: Franciscan Press, 1929. ———. “History of the Mongols.” In The Mongol Mission, edited by Christopher Dawson, 3–72. London: Sheedd and Ward, 1955. Karras, Ruth Mazo. Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. ———. Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages. Philadel­ phia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Kedar, Banjamin Z. “L’Officium Robarie di Genova: un tentativo di coesistere con la violenza.” Archivio storico italiano 143 (1985): 331–72. ———. “On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120.” Speculum 74 (1999): 310–35. Kelleher, Marie. “‘Like Man and Wife’: Clerics’ Concubines in the Diocese of Barce­ lona.” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002): 349–360. ———. The Measure of Woman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. “The Eco-Tourist, English Heritage and Arthurian Legend: Walking with Thoreau.” Arthuriana 23, no. 1 (2013): 20–39. Khanmohamadi, Shirin Azizeh. In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Köhler, Michael. Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades. Translated by Peter M. Holt, revised, edited and introduced by Konrad Hirschler. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Lavezzo, Kathy. Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000–1534. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. Le Blévec, Daniel. La part du pauvre: L’assistance dans les pays du Bas-Rhône du xiie siècle au milieu du xve siècle. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2000. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. New York: Wiley, 1992. Lledó-Guillem, Vicente. The Making of Catalan Linguistic Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Times. Hempstead, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. López, Bonet, and Jose Francisco. “Un fruit de l’expansio mediterrànea. Esclaves Gre­ gues a Mallorca a mitjan segle XIV i la triple mutilació juridical: nació, estat i gènere.” XVIII CHCA 18 (2004): 1500–584. Lopez, Robert S., and Irving Raymond. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. Lovejoy, Paul E. Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Pub­ lishers, 2004. Luttrell, Anthony, ed. The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and Its Western Provinces, 1306–1462. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate/Variorum, 1999.

Select bibliography 247 ———. Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306: Rhodes and the West. Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2007. Lynch, Andrew. “What Cheer? Emotions and Actions in the Arthurian World.” In Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature, edited by Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne Saunders, 47–66. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. MacEvitt, Christopher. The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tol­ erance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Martin, Bradford G. “Kanem, Bornu, and the Fazzan: Notes on the Political History of a Trade Route.” The Journal of African History 10, no. 1 (1969): 15–27. Mas i Forners, Antoni. Esclaus i Catalans: Esclavitud i Segregació a Mallorca Durant els Segles XIV i XV. Palma: Leonard Muntaner, 2005. Memmi, Albert. Portrait du colonisé précédé du portrait du colonisateur. Paris: Buchet/ Chastel, 1957. Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400. New York: Routledge, 2006. Michaud, Francine. “Le pauvre transformé: Les hommes, les femmes et la charité à Marseille, du XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la Peste Noire.” Revue historique 650 (2009): 243–90. Middleton, Neil. “Early Medieval Port Customs, Tolls and Controls on Foreign Trade.” Early Medieval Europe 13, no. 4 (2005): 313–58. Miller, Tanya Stabler. The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spirit­ ual Authority. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Miller, William Ian. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Mollat, Michel. The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History. West Han­ over, PA: Yale University Press, 1986. Moore, Robert I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1990. More, Alison. Fictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Morey, James H., ed. Prik of Conscience. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan Univer­ sity, 2012. Morton, Nicholas. Encountering Islam on the First Crusade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Mummey, Kevin. “Women and Chains: Women, Slavery, and Community in Late Fourteenth-Century Mallorca.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2013. Muntaner, Ramon. Chronicle. Translated by Lady Goodenough. Ontario: In Paren­ theses Publications, 2000. www.yorku.ca/inpar/ Murdoch, Brian. Adam’s Grace: Fall and Redemption in Medieval Literature. Cam­ bridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. Nader, Marwan. Burgess Law in the Latin Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus (1099– 1325). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Naus, James. Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Niane, Djibril Tamsir, ed. General History of Africa. Vol. 4. London: Heinemann, 1984. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

248 Select bibliography Ortega Villoslada, Antonio. “El trabajo femenino en Mallorca. La labor de la mujer en la actividad marítima de la primera mitad del siglo XIV.” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, H. Medieval t. 17 (2004): 461–70. Parish, Helen. Clerical Celibacy in the West: c. 1100–1700. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Pearman, Tory Vandeventer. Women and Disability in Medieval Literature. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Phillips, Kim M. Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Planas Rosselló, Antonio. “La Creación notarial en el reino de Mallorca (ss. XIII– XVIII).” Memòries de la Reial Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis Genealògies, Heràl­ dics i Historics 15 (2005): 101–13. Plummer, Marjorie Elizabeth. From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Mar­ riage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation. London: Routle­ dge, 2012. Rawcliffe, Carole. Leprosy in Medieval England. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2006. Revel, Jean-François. Ni Marx ni Jésus. Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1970. Reyerson, Kathryn L. “‘In pace et sine lite’: Methods of Resolution of Indebtedness Outside the Court System.” Russian History/Histoire Russe 28 (2001): 315–24. ———. “Commercial Law and Merchant Disputes: Jacques Coeur and the Law of Marque.” Medieval Encounters. Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 9, no. 2–3 (2003, appeared 2004): 244–55. ———. “Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates.” Mediterranean Studies 20 (2012, appeared 2013): 129–46. ———. Women’s Networks in Medieval France: Gender and Community in Montpel­ lier, 1300–1350. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. Roland, Meg. “The Rudderless Boat: Fluid Time and Passionate Geography in (Hard­ yng’s) Chronicle and (Malory’s) Romance.” Arthuriana (Special Issue in Honor of Edward Donald Kennedy) 22, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 77–93. Salicrú I Lluch, Roser. “L’esclau com a inversió? Aprofitament, assalariament i rendibilitat del treball esclau en l’entorn català tardomedieval.” Recerques 52–53 (2006): 62–3. Salvatore, Enrica. “Corsairs’ Crews and Cross-Cultural Interactions: The Case of the Pisan Trapelicinus in the Twelfth Century.” Medieval Encounters (Special Issue: Cross-Cultural Encounters on the High Seas (Tenth-Sixteenth Centuries)), edited by Kathryn L. Reyerson 13, no. 1 (2007): 43–55. Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. “The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Imperialism.” In The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, edited by John K. Fairbank, 336– 73. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Simbula, Pinuccia Franca. “Îles, corsairs et pirates dans la Méditerranée médiévale.” Médiévales 47 (2004). http://medievales.Revues.org/document500.html Simon, André Louise. The History of the Wine Trade in England. London: Wyman and Sons, 1906. Simons, Walter. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Singer, Julie. “Disability and the Social Body.” Postmedieval 3, no. 2 (2012): 135–41. Soriano Robles, Lourdes. “The Matière de Bretagne in the Corona de Aragón.” In The Arthur of the Iberians: The Arthurian Legends in the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds, edited by David Hook, 165–86. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015.

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Index

Adam 226, 228, 230, 231–3, 237–9;

English revolt of 1381 228

Agapetae 130

Aging: and disability 227; status of

concubines 139

Ailithre 48

Al-‘Adil, Sultan 175

Al-Andalus 73–4 Albigensian Crusade 74–6, 78

Al-Dimashqi 17

Alexander the Great 186

Alfonso II, King of Aragon 73

Alliterative Morte Arthure 61–3, 65;

depiction of Guinevere in 61

Al Manṣūr 73 Al-Suyūtī 16

Alterity 28, 29, 33, 37, 39

Althing 92, 93

Amaury II, King of Jerusalem 170, 175

Ancilla 133

Anglo-Saxonism 45, 46, 49

Anglo-Saxons 46, 47, 49, 51; cultural

confidence 49; kingdoms 49; kinship

structures 48; missions to Continent

45; religious rhetoric of 54

Arbitration: medieval process of 197

Armstrong-Partida, Michelle 132,

136, 137

Arthur: alliterative Morte Arthure 63;

authenticity of 58; campaigns against

Rome 58, 59; in Catalan literature 71;

Caxton 64–5; Geoffrey of Monmouth

60, 61, 62; in gran cronicas 76, 77, 79;

in la faula 72, 73, 75, 79; Round

Table 60

Arthurian. See Arthur Arthurian Name Dictionary 59

Assises 172; kingdom of Jerusalem 167;

presentation of Muslims 180

Auctoritas (authorial legitimacy) 32

Autoethnography 38

Avalon 58, 79, 80, 82

Ayyubids: diplomacy with Franks

173, 181

Balducci Pegolotti, Francesco di 187

Barbarossa 186

Barfleur 63

Barqa (Monti di Barca): slave trade in 13

Barstow, Anne Llewellyn 130

Barter economy 103

Bartlett, Robert 50

Batu Khan 27

Baybars al Bunduqdari 167, 176, 179;

treaties with Franks 177

Bede 45, 47, 49, 52, 53, 92, 94

Before Orientalism 29

Beguin 1, 151, 152; in Joinville 151;

university clerics and 156

Beguina: working definitions of 147, 151

Beguinage 146, 156; Capetian patronage

157; early definitions of 151; marginal

position of 147; of Paris 151; and

Thomas of Cantimpré 151

Beguines 146–58; crticism of 149, 157;

marginal position of 147, 152, 155;

nickname 148; Ordo Caritatis 154. See

also Beguin; Beguina; Beguinage;

Sorbon, Robert of

Bene igne 155

Bilād al-Sudān (Land of the Blacks) 12,

17, 18

Black Death: and Mediterranean 114

Blackbeard 186

Blackness: and Abrahamic religions. See Race, constructions of Boccaccio 197, 198

Boccanegra 191

252 Index Bohemia 96, 97–8, 102; ducal independence in 96 Bohemond VII of Tripoli: negotiations with Qalawun, Sultan 177, 179 Boniface 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57 Bonne femme 158 Bonne femme movement: re-marginalization of women in 158 Bono, Salvatore 11 The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry 196 Borno 13, 22; Islamic Sahel 14; mission to Tripoli 14; relation with Ottomans 16; slave trade in 11–12, 15; whiteness 17 Bosau, Helmold of 101 Bourdieu, Pierre 1 Brooke, Christopher 135 Bryan, Jennifer 229 Burgess Court 171, 172, 181 Bynum, Caroline 147 Byzantines 169 Cadamosto, Alvise 18 Caerleon 61 Canabasserius 192 Canon law 157, 170, 180 Canons of the Council of Nablus 170 Cantimpré, Thomas of 149, 150 Captain Hook 186 Carolingians 99 Catalan: linguistic 52, 94, 96, 97; relationship to identity 73 Catalonia 73, 212; in Arthurian political system 72; contemporary independence of 70; in gran cronicas 77; in la faula 70, 81–2 Caxton, William 58; role of Sandwich 64 Certeau, Michel de 1 Charlemagne 95, 99, 100; conquest of Saxony 93 Chavarot, Marie Claire 192, 193 Cheyette, Frederic L. 198 Chivalry 76–82; Catalan Arturiana 72 Christ 151, 152, 154, 217; image of beguines 147 Christianity 49, 65, 162; 19th-century triumphalism 45; Anglo-Saxon missionaries 45–6, 52–3; barbarian Europe 50, 51; marginal religion 28; Mongols 35–7; poverty 210; William of Rubruck 38

Christianization 50, 93, 103; in Iceland 95 Christine de Pizan 196, 197 Cinque Ports 58, 60, 65 Ciutat (Palma de Mallorca) 111, 112, 113, 115, 123, 124; multi-religious nature of 116 Clement V, pope 189, 190 Clerical marriage 131, 135 Clerics’ concubines 129, 132, 137, 140; legal status of 133; lived experience of 135; social hierarchy 135, 140; tavern keepers 138 Clothing: marker of identity 132 Coeur, Jacques 189, 197 Cogorla, Guillelmus 192, 193 Colonialism 36, 45 Comes 95 Commenda partnership 188, 190 Compagni, Dino 187 Concubina 131; as descriptor 130 Concubines 129, 131; 19th and 20th century attitudes toward 134; lay concubines 131; legal standing 129 Condominia 178; Frankish power centers 181; Frankish sovereignty 179; legal systems in Levant 180 Confraternity of Saint-Esprit 208, 216 Constable, Olivia Remie 17 Constantinople 14, 36, 51; Latin quarter 168 Constantinou, Costas 191 Consul 103 Contested margin 72, 74 Continental Saxons 47 Conversion 28, 34; Anglo-Saxons 47, 49, 51, 53; Beguines 151–4; of Bulgars 51; societal self-conception 50; in William of Rubruck 36–8 Corsairing 188, 191, 192. See also Piracy Cosmas of Prague 98 Costums of Tortosa 119 Council of Nicea: and clerical households 130 Courtney, William 156 Crac des Chevaliers 181 Crane, Susan 233 Critical literary geography 57 Crónica. See Muntaner, Ramon Crònica de Pere el Ceremoniós 76 Crònica de Ramon Muntaner 76, 77 Crown of Aragón 76, 80, 82; Albigensian Crusade 74; Arthuriana 73; chivalry

Index 77; court politics 73; in European

affairs 72, 75; and Roman

jurisprudence 119; Trapelicino 187–9

Cum de Quibusdam 157

Curritores (brokers) 116

Damian, Peter 130

Daniell, Christopher 133

Danubian Bulgars: conversion to

Christianity 51

De miseria condicionis humane 230

De more piratico 189

Death: and Adam 237; Prik of

Conscience 229, 34, 36; punishment

188; rituals in Marseille 207, 15, 19

Debt: in Middle Ages 197

Desclot, Bernat 76, 77

Diglossia 80

Diplomacy: of Mamluks 167

Disability 228; Christian doctrine 227;

fall of humankind 235; in Middle Ages

227; models of 227; social term 226

Disabled. See Disability Disciplinarity 168–9 Disunity 94

Dolendum 193

Dominican(s) 151; ethnographic writings

of 27

Donats 207, 208

Donkey burial 132

Dozmary Pool 58

Dufourcq, Charles Emmanuel 192

Dux: etymology of 95

Ecclesiastical History of the English

People 45, 46

Eden 226, 230, 232, 234

Egbert 46, 47

Ellenblum, Ronnie 169, 174, 181

Embriaco lords 175

Epistemology: construction of European

power 30, 36, 37

Eremitic ideal 155

European Middle Ages. See Middle Ages Eve 228, 230–2 Executrices 120

Expulsion: of concubines 131, 133, 134

Fama 186; and debt 197

Fanon, Frantz 4, 51, 52

Fardella, Antonio 20

Farmer, Sharon 2, 211

Fazzan 14, 15

253

Fellow-feeling 49

Feudalism: construction of 96

Fictive trade 196

Fideiutrices 120

Fiduciary money 101, 102, 103

First Crusade 168, 169

First Lateran Council: clerical

households 131

Flesquières, Isabelle of 150

Floriant et Florete 79, 82

Focaria 133

Fontaines, Godfrey of 156, 157

Formation of a Persecuting Society 2

Foucault, Michel 1

Fourth Lateran Council 132, 149

Franciscan: ethnographic writings

of 27

Franciscans 151

Franks: in Levant 168

Frederick II 175, 190, 195

Furtum spirituale 153

Geltner, Guy 210

Gender 122, 147; gender reveal 231; in

John of Plano Carpini 37

Genoa: punishment of pirates 188–9;

relationship with Trapelicino 189; war

with Venice 169

Geoffrey of Monmouth 60, 61, 66

Geographia 58

GeoHumanities 57

Geremek, Bronislaw 210, 211

Gertwagen, Ruthy 189

Gesta Comitum Barcinonensium 74

Glastonbury 57

Global Middle Ages 57

Global North Atlantic 71

Goði 92, 94, 101

Gran crónicas 71

Grave of asses. See Donkey burial Greene, Molly 190

Gregory I, Pope 50, 52

Guelfs 190

Guinevere 61–5 Guzman, Gregory 28, 29

Guzzeti, Linda 118

Habitus 187

Hakluyt, Richard 28, 30, 36, 39

Hamitic curse 17, 18

Hanseatic League 59

Haudry, Jeanne 156

Haudry, Stephen 156

254 Index Hausa: conflict with Islam. See Hausaland Hausaland 21; creation of pagan

“other” 14; Muhammad Kanta 15

Heloise 135

Henry VIII 60

Hershenzon, Daniel 16

High Court 167, 170–4, 180–1 Historia Mongalorum 30, 31, 33, 36, 39

Historia Regum Britanniae 60

Historia Tartarorum 30

History of the Peloponnesian War 186

Horden, Peregrine 198

Hospital of Saint-Esprit 207, 209, 216,

218, 220; aid to travellers 213; civic life

in Marseille 217; integration in

Marseille 208

Hospital of Saint-Jacques de Galice

208, 216

Hospitallers 176, 178, 179; relations with

Genoese pirates 190

Hospitals 208, 210, 213, 216, 217

Hugh, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem

167, 176

Hypocrisis 156

Ibelin, John of 171, 173

Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir 167, 174

Ibn Khaldūn 17 Iceland 91–5, 103–4; communal

government in 92; subsistence

practices 101

Identifying clothing 132, 134

Identity: Anglo Saxon 53; Beguines 148,

155; Catalan 70, 73, 77; construction

of 94; Crown of Aragon 78; Marseille

216; Merchant disguise 216

Imitation of Christ 147

Impairment 226, 239; social term 226

Infants 207–8, 218–20, 231; care in

Marseille 215

Innocent III, Pope 230, 235

Innocent IV, Pope 27, 30, 36; dispute

with Frederick II 195

Isabel of Beirut 176

Islam 17, 34, 168, 171, 173;

institutionalization in Sahel 14; spread

across Sahel 11

Itinerarium 36–9, 40, 42, 43, 45

Ius commune 118

Jack Sparrow 186

Jaufré 71, 75–82; crusade context 77

Jaume IV: King of Majorca (Mallorca)

72, 73

Jews 13, 132, 168, 227; in Mallorcan slave

trade 117

John of Plano Carpini 28–30, 36

Joinville, Jean 151–2 Judham Arabs 16

Justinian 132, 211; legislation concerning

women 118

Kamāl al-Dīn 167

Kano: establishment of Islam in 15;

Muhammad Rumfa, Sultan of 14

Karolus. See Charlemagne Karras, Ruth Mazo 220

Kātib al-sirr 167

Kelleher, Marie 118, 119

Kelly, Kathleen Coyne 58, 59

Khanmohamadi, Shirin 37, 38

King Arthur. See Arthur Kingdom of Heaven 146, 152

Kingdom of Jerusalem 167–8, 172,

174, 180

Kings: historiography of 91

Kingship 91

Kinship 219; Anglo-Saxon missionaries 46–8 Kitāb al-I‛tibār (Book of

Contemplation) 173

Kníže 97 Knowledge production 27; John of Plano

Carpini 31

Král 100

Król 100

Kъnęзь 97

La faula 70, 74, 83; Catalan imperialism

80; chivalric achievement 76; language

politics 82

Lā maqām (no place policy) 175

Ladies of Wednesday 213, 215

Lancelot 61, 63, 65–6, 76, 79; Vulgate

Lancelot 77

Laon, Guiard of 149, 150

Lavezzo, Kathy 46, 53

Law of marque 186, 188, 192

Lawspeaker 92

Le Blevec, Daniel 210, 213, 216

Le livre de forme de plait 171

Le Morte Darthur 57; geospatial inquiry

58; Malory 58, 62, 66

Lea, Henry Charles 134

Legend of Daura 14

Index Leo Africanus 18, 19

Leprosaria 215

Letters of dispensation 194, 196

Libellus Responsionum 46, 52

Liber del tresaur 209

Lidi 92

Life of Saint Louis 151

Linguistic imperialism 70

Linguistic nationalism 70

Liutizi 93, 94, 100, 104; political

assembly 93

Livre au Roi 170, 171

Livre des Assises 171

Lledó-Guillem, Vicente 70

Llibre del Consolat de Mar 187, 189 Llibre del Fets 75–8 Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria. See Llull, Ramon Llull, Ramon 77

London 59, 64–6, 103; Virginia Company

of 28

Long John Silver 186

Louis IX, King of France 36,

146, 151

Lucius, Roman emperor 58, 60, 63

Lynch, Andrew 64

Lyon, Council of 27, 30

Machiavelli 103

Magistri pauperes 152

Mala fama 191, 195; cause of marginality

186. See also Fama

Mallorca: Arthurian myth 81; licensing

of privateers 189; and narrator of la

faula 72; slavery in 111–28

Malory, Sir Thomas 57–66

Malta: privateers on 190

Mamluks 176–7; ambassadors to

Frankish courts 181

Mandeville, Sir John 57

Manifest Destiny 45

Mappamundi 46

Marchio 95

Margaret of Tyre 176, 178, 179

Marginality: Bede 52; Beguines 147, 156;

category of analysis 140; clerical

concubines 129, 140; definition of 186;

Mongols 43; mulieres religiosae 156;

Muslims 168, 180; Prik of Conscience

228; Saint-Esprit 213, 215, 220

Marginalization: dynamic condition of 4;

sick in Marseille 215; slavery system in

Mallorca 111

255

Margins of Society in Late Medieval

Paris 1

Market Court 170, 172

Marque: debt 197; effect on piracy 195;

legal procedure 192; legal proceedings

186; letters of 194; linkage to identity

196; suspension of 194

Marque, letters of 186, 195

Martel, Charles 48

Mas i Forners, Antoni 113

Masculinity: clerical masculinity 152

McKitterick, Rosamund 49

Memmi, Albert 4, 50

Mendicants: clergy 150; confessors 149;

orders 154, 210

Merlin’s Cave 58, 59

Metzler, Irina 227

Mézières, Philippe de 195

Micro-history 63

Middle Ages 30, 45, 49, 51, 57, 59, 60,

71, 73, 78, 91, 96, 97, 102–3, 123,

129–30, 140, 186, 189, 191, 197–8,

209–11, 215–16, 227

Middleton, Neil 60

Miller, William Ian 92, 101

Minnis, Alastair 226

Mirror of Simple Souls 157

Mollat, Michel 209, 210, 211

Monastic vows 154

Mongke, Great Khan 36, 37, 38

Mongol Empire. See Mongol(s) Mongol(s) 11, 27, 29–31, 33–9, 246;

dehumanization of 30; expansion into

Europe 27; marginalized by European

discourse 27; physiognomy in John of

Plano Carpini 36; and racial alterity 29

Montpellier 77, 191–3, 215; judicial cases

in 192

Moore, R.I. 2

Moravia 96

Morey, James H. 229

Morgan le Fay 71, 79

Morocco: classification of Africans in 12;

slavery in 16

MORROIS database 59

Mort Artu 72, 79, 81, 82

Muhammad Rumfa: use of concubines. See Kano Muḥyī al-Dīn 174

Mulay Isma’il 12; use of black soldiers 20

Mulierculae (“little women”) 131

Mulieres religiosae 147, 149, 157

Munāṣafat 178

256 Index Muntaner, Ramon 76, 77

Muret, battle of 74

Murum fortem 153

Muslims 167–74; Arthuriana 71; clothing

regulations 171; condominia 178;

constructions of race 16–17;

marginalized in Frankish legal system

171–2; marginals in Crusader states

168, 180; piracy 187, 190, 197;

settlements in Frankish territory 168

N’gazargamu: tribute of enslaved

individuals 14

Natron 15

Nestorian Christians 37

New Rome: Malory’s England

as 66

Newgate Prison 61

Nithard: Saxon political organization 92–3 Njimi: ethnic groups of 14

Norway 95

Notaries: gendered language in records

124; limitations of evidence 124;

notarial protocols 111; women

obscured in record 122

Novara, Phillip of 171, 173

Novas rimadas 6, 70, 78

Occitan 70, 75, 76; relation to French 78;

as marker of identity 70

Occitania 74

Of Man and of his Wretchedness 230

Officium Robarie 188, 189; merchant

complaints to 189

Old Saxons 47, 48, 53

Old Testament 17, 98

Ordo Caritatis 154

Original sin 227–8 Other: literary borders and 71

Otia imperalia 79

Ottoman Empire 19; capture of

Constantinople 14

Pailly, Bernard: pastoral care to

women 156

Palermo: slavery in 11–12, 13, 15

Palmer, James 47, 133, 134

Parish, Helen 131

Parlement of Paris 192, 193

Patterson, Lee 61

Pauperes Christi 210

Paures gens vergonhas 209

Pax Arthuriana 64, 65

Pere el Gran (Peter the Great) 74

Pere III, King of Aragon 72, 73

Pérotin-Dumon, Anne 188

Pescatore, Enrico 189, 190

Peter the Ceremonious 194

Petronilla of Aragón 73

Philip the Fair 156

Piovanessa (archpriestess) 137

Pippin 99; anointed kingship 99

Piracy 184, 190–3, 195–8; against infidels 191; ambiguity of 186; financing 189; and Hospital of Saint-Esprit 213; Piracy Office. See Officium Robarie Pisa 193; relationship with Trapelicino 187–8 Pluralism 150

Poor 207–15, 228; account registers 209;

attitudes toward 211; descriptor of

patients 209; Hospital of Saint-Esprit

213, 215; marginalized population 210;

marginalizing force 211

Poverty 74, 152, 158, 209, 213, 215;

imitation 147; mendicants 150;

penalties for 211; voluntary poverty

210. See also Poor

Pratt, Mary Louise: “Arts of the Contact

Zone” 38

Prawer, Joshua 169, 172, 181. See also

Disciplinarity Přemyslid 97, 100

Priest’s concubine. See Concubines Priests’ mothers 139–40 Prik of Conscience 228–35, 237;

manuscript survival 229

Prince, The 103

Privateering 189–91, 197; marque privateering 196; political alliances 195. See also Piracy

Privateers. See Privateering

Procuratrices 120, 124

Prud’homme 146

Ptolemy, Claudius 58

Purcell, Nicholas 198

Putnam, Lara 11

Qalawun, Sultan 176, 178, 179; land

sharing with Franks 179; treaties with

Franks 177; treaty with kingdom of

Jerusalem 174

Race: Anglo Saxon missions 45; as argument 21; blackness 12; blanco di

Index africa 13; constructions of 30;

functional category 35

Ramon Berenguer IV 73

Rape 170

Rapina 192–3 Rashid al-Din 34

Reconquista: Catalan participation in 73

Reprisal 191–4, 196; debt 187;

marginality 188

Res publica 99

Revel, Hugh: Master of Hospitallers 176

Reyerson, Kathryn 213, 215

Rhodian Sea Law 189

Ribesaltes, Giovanni 13

Richborough 59, 61, 65

Rieder, Paula 132

Rolle, Richard 229

Roman Britain 60

Round Table 61. See also Arthur Rugiani 101, 102, 104; currency

among 101

Rutebeuf 148

Sāḥib dīwān al-inshā’ 167

Said, Edward 28

Saif Ibn Dhī-Yazan: ruler of Borno. See

Borno

Sailing in cursum 189

Saint Augustine 186, 198

Saint-Amour, William of 148–9

Saladin 173, 175

Salisbury 57, 58

Salt 15; industry in Niger 14

Salvatore, Enrica 187

Sandwich 57–66; in alliterative Morte

Arthure 61; in Caxton 64;

marginalization in Arthurian

geography 65; Sandwich haven 64

Saracens 75, 76, 171; in legal canons 170

Sardinia 111

Satrap 92, 98, 100; Biblical source 94

Saxons 94, 100; in St. Lebuinus 92

Saxony 47, 48, 49, 92, 93

Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur 45

Second Lateran Council: clerical

marriage 131

Segregationalist model 169

Senatus Consultum Velleianum 118, 119

Seneschaussée 193

Setmaner contract 111, 112, 115

Sex workers: Mallorcan evidence of 124

Si Qua Mulier 118

257

Sicily 11, 21, 180, 190, 191; Arthurian 82;

in la faula 72–9; trade connections 14

Simon of St. Quentin 28, 30, 36

Simons, Walter 149

Simpson, James 62

Sin 33, 34, 35, 230, 233, 236; Adam 237,

239; children 232; clerical marriage

131; disability 227–8; Robert of

Sorbon’s sermons 153; in Thietmar 93

Societas partnership 188, 193

Songe du vieil pèlerin 195

Sorbon, Robert of 146, 147, 151, 152;

bonne femme movement 158;

intellectual training 150; sermons 152

Sorbonne 146, 147, 150, 152, 156, 157,

158; comradery 154

Spinola 194

Stellinga revolts 92

Stranded objects 58

Strong, Josiah 45

Subetei 27

Subintroductae 130

Symbolic reversal 147

Tai, Emily 191, 196

Taifa states 73

Tallia 112

Taxonomization 233

Territorial principality 98

Thietmar of Merseburg 93

Thucydides 186

Tintagel 57, 58

Torroella, Guillem de 70, 71

Torthelm, Bishop of Leicester 47

Trapelicino 187–9; marginalization as

pirate 187

Tripoli 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 36; Banu

Ghurab, shayhks of 15; Bannu Makki,

shayhks of 15; and Levantine politics

177, 178, 179; piracy 195. See also

Bohemond VII of Tripoli

Troubadour 70, 78

Truage 60

Tuaregs: control of Saharan routes 15,

16, 17

Tyre, William of 169

Usāma Ibn Munqidh 173; Frankish legal

texts 174

Uskoks of Senj 187

Vadmál 101

Van der Bergh, Rena 118

258 Index Vaquer, Onofre 116

Venice: priest’s companions in 137–8;

war with Genoa 169

Vévod 97

Vignolus de Vignolis 190

Vikings 91, 92

Villaret, Fulk de 190

Vitry, James of 149

Widows: in slave trade 111, 113–17, 120,

121, 123

Wilfrid: mission to Frisia 47

William of Rubruck 28, 36

Willibrord: missionary activity 47,

48, 54

War of Saint Sabbas 169

Weston, Daniel 60

Whitman, Jon 57, 58

Wic 60

Zaccaria, Benedetto 189, 190

Župan 98

Zurara, Gomes Eanes de 13,

18, 20

York Corpus Christi plays 226, 230