Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines. Simon Barton
the code included the stipulation that a Christian woman caught in flagrante delicto with a Muslim or Jewish man was to be burned at the stake, while her lover was to be hurled from the town’s cliffs.22 It further ruled that a Christian woman who lived among Jews and Muslims and bore a child by one of them, but was not caught in the act, was to be considered shameless, publicly flogged, and expelled from the town.23
Various other collections of customary law, while not drawing directly on the Cuenca corpus, also subscribed to the view that sexual liaisons between Christian women and Muslim or Jewish men were dangerous acts that deserved to be punished with the utmost rigor.24 According to the Costums that were granted to the community of Tortosa on the Ebro in the 1270s, for example, if a Jewish or Muslim man were to sleep with a Christian woman, the male was to be drawn and quartered and the woman burned at the stake.25 The thirteenth-century Furs of Valencia pronounced that “if a Jew or a Saracen is found to lie with a Christian woman, let both him and her be burned.”26 For its part, the Siete Partidas, the voluminous compendium of Roman, canon, and customary law that was compiled during the 1250s and 1260s at the behest of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–84), also promised that Jews found guilty of having intercourse with Christian women should suffer the capital penalty.27 The penalties for Muslim male transgressors were similarly harsh and echo the punishments laid down in the various municipal fueros:
If a Moor has sexual intercourse with a Christian virgin, we order that he shall be stoned, and that she, for the first offence, shall lose half of her property, and that her father, mother, or grandfather, shall have it, and if she has no such relatives, that it shall belong to the king. For the second offence, she shall lose all her property, and the heirs aforesaid, if she has any, shall obtain it, and if she has none, the king shall be entitled to it, and she shall be put to death. We decree and order that the same rule shall apply to a widow who commits this crime. If a Moor has sexual intercourse with a Christian married woman, he shall be stoned to death, and she shall be placed in the power of her husband who may burn her to death, or release her, or do what he pleases with her. If a Moor has intercourse with a common woman who abandons herself to everyone, for the first offence, they shall be scourged together through the town, and for the second, they shall be put to death.28
It is striking that none of these codes went out of their way to prohibit sexual relations between Christian men and Muslim or Jewish women; we will consider the significance of that omission shortly. Even so, it should be emphasized that clauses of this sort were by no means universal, since legal cultures across the Peninsula were far from uniform, and legal approaches toward religious minorities tended to reflect local conditions and priorities. A prohibition on interfaith sex was absent, for example, from major law codes such as the Fuero General of Navarre (1237) or the Fori aragonum (1247). And while numerous collections of municipal law thought it necessary to address the rights, obligations, and protections of Muslims and Jews in the economic sphere, by no means all addressed the issue of intercommunal sexuality.
Since sexual relations between Christian women and minority men were widely considered to be among the most heinous crimes that could be committed in the frontier towns under Christian control, and because of the potential gravity of the consequences for those accused and convicted on such charges, some law codes emphasized that due legal process had to be scrupulously followed. At Castelo Bom and Castelo Melhor in Portugal, as at Coria, Cáceres, and Usagre across the border in León, the local fueros stated that magistrates who apprehended a Jew with a Christian woman were to settle the case with two Christians and one Jew as witnesses, or two Jews and one Christian.29 An identical procedure was followed at Sepúlveda, while in cases where a Muslim man was accused of sleeping with a Christian woman the case could be proved with two Christians and one Muslim as witnesses.30 At Tortosa, a woman charged with conducting sexual relations with a Muslim or Jew would be pardoned if it could be established that she had been forced, or tricked because the man in question had been dressed as a Christian.31 As we shall see, this was a defense that more than one Christian woman would have recourse to when arrested on charges of engaging in interfaith sex.
The importance that was attached to correct judicial procedure was also emphasized in the song Quen na Virgen santa muito fiará, one of the large collection of over 400 hymns composed in praise of the Virgin, known collectively as the Cantigas de Santa María, which was compiled under the patronage of Alfonso X of Castile. The song in question tells of a Christian woman whose hatred of her daughter-in-law is such that she orders one of her Muslim servants to get into bed with the woman as she sleeps, in order to make it appear that they had engaged in illicit sex. The calculating mother-in-law prevents the traumatized husband, her son, from killing the couple on the spot and instead encourages him to summon the local magistrate and others, knowing that eyewitness testimony of the crime would seal the supposed lovers’ fate. The couple are duly sentenced to be burned at the stake, only for the young woman to be miraculously saved from the flames by the intervention of the Virgin; for the blameless Muslim there was to be no such deliverance, however.32 We will return to consider the ideological significance of this episode in Chapter 4.
Although it is undoubtedly true that medieval legal enactments all too often reflected the aspirations of lawmakers as much as the social reality “on the ground,” the prohibitions on interfaith sex which were inserted into the various Iberian collections of customary law that were drafted from the late twelfth century onward were by no means mere theoretical statements of ideal conduct. The rich documentary evidence from the realm of the Crown of Aragon, which has been interrogated skilfully by John Boswell, María Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, David Nirenberg, and Brian Catlos, among others, has demonstrated the zeal with which the sexual boundaries between the faiths were sometimes policed and the thoroughness with which suspected crimes might be investigated.33 To give but one example, in January 1389 the Infante Martin of Aragon instructed the justice of the town of Arándiga, near Calatayud, to investigate whether it was true that the previous month, on Christmas Eve, a Muslim man, Lop “el fustero” (or carpenter), had had sex with a Christian prostitute at a local inn.34 The Infante urged the justice to undertake a thorough investigation of the case, since “we do not wish that such things should pass without due punishment,” and laid out the step-bystep procedure that was to be followed. First, the justice was to interrogate the prostitute in order to establish what day and time the Muslim had come to see her; what words had been exchanged between the couple; whether he had slept with her; whether any money had changed hands; or whether the Muslim had left the woman something as security. Then the Muslim was to be questioned in the same manner, before witness statements were taken from the innkeeper and others. If the judge proved satisfied of the Muslim’s guilt, he was “to do justice to him as should be done.” What that meant in practice is not stipulated. Although the majority of urban fueros specified the capital penalty for such cases, this was by no means consistently enforced, even when guilt was firmly established, and in the majority of cases transgressors escaped by paying a fine.35 The Aragonese Crown may have claimed jurisdiction over its subject Muslims, describing them as “Our Royal Treasure,” but its kings proved notably reluctant to execute such lawbreakers. In 1322, no fewer than eighteen Muslims from the Vall d’Uxó were convicted of having had sex with a Christian prostitute, but the death penalty initially laid down was later commuted for a hefty fine.36 When James I of Aragon issued a charter setting out his policy on interfaith relations in 1242, he allowed any Christian women then living with minority men up to two months to extricate themselves from their illegal relationships.37 Be that as it may, on some occasions the authorities did not flinch from imposing the capital penalty. Thus, in 1311 James II of Aragon (1291–1327) confirmed that a Muslim, Muḥammad, who had been accused of trying to have sex with a Christian prostitute, was to be burned at the stake, in order that it might serve as a warning to others of his faith.38 A similar fate befell the Navarrese Muslim Bursón, who in 1343 was found guilty of maintaining sexual relations with a Christian woman.39
In some cases local officials were painfully aware that they lacked the necessary legal apparatus to guide them in their investigation and sought guidance from the Crown. When, in 1300, the municipal