Tamquam domino proprio: Contesting Ecclesiastical Lordship over Jews in Thirteenth-Century Castile

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15700674-12342151

Medieval Encounters 19 (2013) 534-566 brill.com/me

MedievalJewish, Christian and Muslim Culture

Encountersin Confluence and Dialogue

Tamquam domino proprio: Contesting Ecclesiastical Lordship over Jews in Thirteenth-Century Castile

Maya Soifer Irish*History Department, Rice University, School of Humanities—MS 42,

Houston, TX 7251-1892, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

AbstractBishoprics and monasteries in many parts of Western Christendom possessed various com-binations of jurisdictional and fiscal rights over Jewish communities. Prelates placed high value on their rights as the Jews’ temporal lords for the same reason secular rulers did: hav-ing Jews under one’s protection brought substantial benefits. Yet, with the growth of lay institutions—royal as well as communal—many of these prelates found their jurisdictional rights disputed by secular powers eager to wrest control over Jewish communities from the church. Anchoring the argument in two case studies from Northern Spain (Sahagun and Palencia, in Castile), the present study suggests that of far greater concern to local ecclesias-tical leadership than any ideological program directed at the Jews was the growing competi-tion for Jewish services and revenues between church authorities, royal governments, and municipal councils.

KeywordsIberia, Spain, Castile, Jewish-Christian relations, ecclesiastical attitudes toward Jews, Castil-ian church, Castilian monarchy

Introduction

It was fairly common for bishoprics and monasteries in many parts of medi-eval Western Christendom to possess various combinations of jurisdic-tional and fiscal rights over Jewish communities. Prelates placed high value on their rights as the Jews’ temporal lords for the same reason secular rulers did: having Jews under one’s protection brought substantial benefits. The Jews paid various levies to their ecclesiastical lords and served them as tax collectors, creditors, administrators of their estates, and physicians. The relations between the church and the synagogue in the Middle Ages thus

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M. S. Irish / Medieval Encounters 19 (2013) 534-566 535

had practical aspects that have gone largely unexplored because of the scholars’ predominant focus on the churchmen’s ideological attitudes toward the Jews, as expressed in religious writings and canon law.1 It has been argued that starting in the thirteenth century the church took advan-tage of the new mendicant orders’ missionary zeal to mount an increas-ingly aggressive campaign aimed at converting the Jews.2 The present study suggests that of far greater concern to local ecclesiastical leadership than the Jews’ conversion to Christianity was the growing competition for Jew-ish services and revenues between church authorities, royal governments, and municipal councils. In Northern Spain, where this study is anchored, as well as in other parts of Europe, maturing secular institutions challenged the church’s hold on Jewish communities, threatening to cut off a valuable source of revenue that for centuries had helped sustain fiscal health of ecclesiastical institutions.

The struggle of the abbot of Sahagún and the bishop of Palencia in North-ern Castile to preserve their authority in their respective towns’ aljamas (Jewish communities) underscores the importance of local political con-texts in shaping Jewish-Christian interaction during the thirteenth century, but also exemplifies a broader phenomenon. The evidence from across Latin Europe showing the Jews being drawn into jurisdictional battles between competing groups in towns demonstrates that the events in Sahagún and Palencia were not isolated incidents. Just as the papacy inten-sified its efforts to enforce conciliar legislation concerning religious minor-ities, the time-honored institution of ecclesiastical lordship over Jews, which gave local prelates tangible power in Jewries, was facing fresh

1 See, among others, James Parkes, The Jew in the Medieval Community, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Hermon Press, 1976); Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa, eds., Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996); Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA: Uni-versity of California Press, 1999); Dominique Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion: Cluny and Christendom Face Heresy, Judaism, and Islam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Anna Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (New York, NY: Rout-ledge, 1995). Jonathan Ray calls for a different approach in “The Jews Between Church and State in Reconquest Iberia: The Evidence of the Ecclesiastical Tithe,” Viator 38, no. 1 (2007), 155-165.

2 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), and Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).

536 M. S. Irish / Medieval Encounters 19 (2013) 534-566

jurisdictional challenges.3 The most sweeping claim to jurisdiction over Jews, articulated in secular legal writings, and endorsed by the pope, was that of kings and emperors, who were increasingly making good on their assertion of being the Jews’ exclusive lords. As part of their challenge to ecclesiastical authority in towns, municipal councils, too, were clamoring for a share in Jewish revenues and seeking a greater say in the affairs of their non-Christian neighbors. But the cases from Northern Castile also show that ecclesiastical control of Jewries was not necessarily moribund everywhere. Local contexts exerted strong influence over the course of the events. As we are going to see, despite the similarities between the two cases, variations in local power configurations and the prelates’ abilities to negotiate with the municipal councils (consejos) and the king led to very different outcomes for the prelates in Palencia and Sahagún and their mas-tery of the local Jewries.

Jews in the Service of the Church

By the early thirteenth century it was widely recognized among the ecclesi-astical and lay leadership that the Jews’ fortunes during their sojourn in Christendom were intrinsically linked to secular princes, under whose pro-tection they lived and whom they were obligated to serve. Innocent III began his 1205 letter to the king of France, Philip Augustus, by stating that “it does not displease God, but is even acceptable to Him, that the Jewish dispersion should live and serve under Catholic Kings and Christian princes until such time as their remnant shall be saved. . . .”4 A vehement critic of “Jewish perfidy,” Innocent is credited with coining the phrase “perpetual servitude” (perpetua servitudo), which he argued had been inflicted upon the Jews for their role in the crucifixion, and which he linked to their de facto condition as “slaves” to Christian princes.5 In the decades leading up

3 The pontificate of Innocent III, and the edicts of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) marked the beginnings of the papacy’s more active involvement in regulating the status and behavior of religious minorities—Jews and Muslims. See Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, vol. 7: History (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 18; Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (New York, NY: Hermon Press, 1966), 307-313 (Documents IX-XIII).

4 Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 104-105.5 In the bull Etsi judeos. See Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 114-155. On the argument

that the Jews were condemned by God to live in slavery to Christians was of course a topos


to Innocent’s pontificate, Christian princes began taking steps towards for-malizing their relationship with Jewish communities under their protec-tion by claiming that they were a special royal “possession.” First in the royal charters given to the towns of Teruel (Aragon, 1177) and Cuenca (Castile, ca. 1190), and soon in the charters of the Holy Roman Empire (beginning in 1236), the terms servi regis, servi regiae camerae and their variants aimed to establish a regalian right to Jewish taxes and services.6 In the areas outside of royal control, such as in many parts of France, and wherever it was too weak for the claim of royal proprietorship to be effec-tively enforced, Jews resided under the jurisdiction of counts, dukes, and other secular lords.7

Yet there were important exceptions to the general rule, as a significant number of Jewish communities owed their services not to secular, but to ecclesiastical lords. The oldest and arguably the most stable ecclesiastical power in medieval Europe to exercise temporal lordship over Jews was the papacy. In their dominions, which included the city of Rome itself and the Papal States in Italy, as well as the French territories of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin, the popes pursued fairly moderate policies towards their Jewish subjects, protecting their legal status and economic interests, charging them customary levies, employing them at the papal court, and even toler-ating their moneylending.8 Elsewhere in Christian Europe, prelates typi-cally, but not always, had in their possession an imperial or royal charter that transferred to them a full or partial jurisdiction over the Jewish com-munity located in a town or towns where they exercised temporal author-ity. This need to have an ecclesiastical lord’s guardianship of Jews recognized

in anti-Jewish polemics since late Antiquity. See, for example, Tertullian’s commentary on Gen. 25:23 (“Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger”): “. . . major popu-lus, id est Judaicus, serviat necesse est minori; et minor populus, id est Christianus, superet majorem.” Patrologia Latina 2, 598.

6 Gavin Langmuir, “Tanquam Servi’: The Change in Jewish Status in French Law about 1200,” Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 167-194; David Abulafia, “ ‘Nam iudei servi regis sunt, et semper fisco regio deputati,’ see David Abulafia, The Jews in the Municipal Fuero of Teruel (1176-1177),” in Jews, Muslims and Christians In and Around the Crown of Aragon, essays in Honour of Professor Elena Lourie, ed. Harvey J. Hames (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 97-123.

7 William Chester Jordan, “Jews, Regalian Rights, and the Constitution in Medieval France,” AJS Review 23, no. 1 (1998), 1-16.

8 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 402-461.


and confirmed by a holder of an imperial or royal title dated to the Carolin-gian times, and is documented since at least the tenth century. One of the best known early charters (1084) granted to a group of Jewish settlers was the work of Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer, who had decided that the Rhineland town’s honor “would be augmented a thousandfold” if Jews were to settle there. In exchange for an annual payment of “one half-pounds in Speyer currency,” the bishop settled a group of displaced Jews from Mainz on epis-copal property, encircling the area with a wall, and granting his new sub-jects internal autonomy along with a number of economic privileges.9 In 1090, he had representatives of the newly minted Jewish community appear before Emperor Henry IV, who confirmed and extended the Speyer Jews’ privileges. The emperor also conceded the bishop important judiciary pow-ers, specifying that pecuniary fines for harming a Jew went to the bishop’s treasury, and that inter-faith litigation and “difficult disputes” among Jews were to be decided in the episcopal court.10 The situation in Speyer was characteristic of Rhineland’s cathedral cities, where bishops traditionally acted as surrogates for imperial authority. For exercising their role as pro-tectors of Jews, bishops received the right to collect miscellaneous fines and levies in the Jewish communities, although the nature and extent of their powers varied depending on local circumstances.11 Even though the emperors claimed lordship over all the Jews of Germany, with Frederick I Barbarossa famously stating in his 1157 confirmation of the Worms charter that the Jews “belong to our treasury,” the bishops’ authority was more tan-gible and immediate.12 In Worms, members of the Jewish council and their leader (described as “bishop”) were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the bishop and make a payment to the episcopal treasury when being installed to office. The archbishop of Cologne issued his own charters of protection to the local Jewish community.13

9 Robert Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1980), 57-59; Werner Transier, “Speyer: The Jewish Community in the Middle Ages,” in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries). Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002, ed. Christoph Cluse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 426.

10 Chazan, Church, State, and Jew, 61-62.11 Alfred Haverkamp, “Jews and Urban Life: Bonds and Relationships,” in Cluse, ed., The

Jews of Europe, 63-64.12 Chazan, Church, State, and Jew, 64; Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medi-

eval Latin Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 275.13 Gerold Bönnen, “Worms: The Jews between the City, the Bishops, and the Crown,” in

Cluse, ed. The Jews of Europe, 454; and Matthias Schmandt, “Cologne, Jewish Centre on the lower Rhine,” in Cluse, ed. The Jews of Europe, 369.


A cluster of episcopal Jewries also existed in Southern France: Langue-doc (Narbonne, Beziers and Carcassonne) and Provence (Arles and Mar-seilles). The jurisdiction exercised by the Archbishop of Arles over the town’s Jews must have been one of the oldest in Christian Europe. The priv-ilege was originally granted to the prelate by Louis the Blind of Provence in 921 and confirmed by several subsequent Holy Roman emperors, including Frederick Barbarossa, in 1164.14 The bishop of Marseilles received a confir-mation of his authority over local Jews from Barbarossa the same year.15 In Narbonne, where the jurisdiction was split between ecclesiastical and lay powers, the archbishop controlled only part of the Jewry, but still exercised considerable influence there in the thirteenth century.16 Further north, despite the escalating claims of royal supremacy forcefully articulated in the Ordinance of Melun (1230), the weakness of royal power outside of the king’s own domain ensured that the Jews continued to reside under the jurisdiction of multiple lords, some of them ecclesiastical.17 When in 1182 Philip Augustus drove the Jews from the royal domain, many churchmen not only refused to follow the king’s suit by expelling “their” Jews, but they may have welcomed refugees from the royal lands. Financial consider-ations were the main factor in these decisions. Among these prelates were the abbot of Saint-Denis and the abbot of Tours, whose jurisdiction over Jews was the result of royal patronage.18 Located within the royal domain, near Paris, the abbey of Saint-Denis had received five Jewish families in 1111

14 Louis Stouff, “Chrétiens et juifs dans l’Arles du bas Moyen Âge: leurs relations,” in Les Sociétés urbaines en France méridionale et en péninsule ibérique au Moyen Age: actes du colloque de Pau, 21-23 septembre 1988 (Paris: CNRS, 1991), 520.

15 Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. X, On the Empire’s Periphery, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1965), 341 (no. 39); Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 105.

16 Similar situations existed also in Carcassonne and Beziers. See Baron, A Social and Religious History, 10: 56, 84-85; Robert Chazan “Anti-Usury Efforts in Thirteenth Century Narbonne and the Jewish Response,” American Academy for Jewish Research Proceedings 41-42 (1975), 50.

17 Jordan, “Jews, Regalian Rights, and the Constitution,” 2-7; The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsyl-vania Press, 1989). Jordan mentions the rights possessed by the monks of Saint-Florentin over the Jews at Bonneval, near Chartres (The French Monarchy, 162). See also Esther Ben-bassa and M.B. DeBevoise, The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 13: “Jews were . . . subject to ecclesiastical lords in Picardy and Champagne.” The archbishop of Sens claimed jurisdictional rights over Jews, which became the subject of a dispute with the countess of Champagne. See Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 106-107.

18 Jordan, The French Monarchy, 34, 6.


as a gift from King Louis VI, and its abbots, including the formidable Suger, considered this Jewish community to be of great economic importance for the monastery.19

While ecclesiastical lordship over Jews was fairly common within the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire and in France, an early flowering of royal authority in some parts of Christian Europe inhibited the accumulation of such jurisdictional and fiscal rights by the church. In England, where the Jews seem to have first arrived after the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Crown was particularly successful at gathering all Jews under the guardian-ship of the monarchy. Robert Stacey has argued that the English monarchy did not possess a monopoly on Jews uninterruptedly since the Conquest. During the turbulent times of King Stephen, many Jews probably sought protection under local barons and ecclesiastical lords.20 The Laws of Edward the Confessor, compiled in the 1140s, stated rather tentatively that the Jews “ought to be (debent esse) under the guardianship and protection of the liege king,” and cannot subject themselves “to any wealthy person without the license of the king,” because they “are the king’s.”21 Corroborating evi-dence is scarce, but the wording of the clause suggests that there was at that time a gap between theory and practice. King Henry II, however, made considerable progress in asserting exclusive royal jurisdiction over the Jews, and by the 1190s many formerly seigniorial Jewries disappeared. In some instances, the Jews had to leave a place because as “king’s men” they could not live under the jurisdiction of a local lord.22 Thus, in 1190, accord-ing to the chronicler of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Abbot Samson “asked the king for written permission to expel the Jews from St Edmund’s town, on the grounds that everything in the town and within the banleuca

19 A. Graboïs, “L’Abbaye de Saint-Denis et les Juifs sous l’abbatiat de Suger,” Annales: Économies, sociétés. Civilizations 24 (1969), 1187-1195.

20 Robert Stacey, “Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century England: Some Dynamics of a Changing Relationship,” in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Michael Signer and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 348. See also Robin Mundill, The King’s Jews: Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England (London: Continuum, 2010), 1-20.

21 Bruce O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor (Phila-delphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 184-185, 197, 248 (no. 203).

22 Stacey, “Jews and Christians,” 350.


belonged by right to St Edmund: therefore, either the Jews should be St Edmund’s men or they should be banished from the town.”23

While the Jews’ status in Iberian Christian kingdoms mirrored in many ways that of their northern European counterparts, it was also shaped by the realities of the ongoing wars with Muslims. Like the king of England, the heads of Castile-León and Aragon-Catalonia laid an early and strongly worded claim to exclusive authority over their Jewish subjects, even though, as we shall see, this claim came with several significant caveats.24 The extant evidence indicates that Alfonso II of Aragon and Alfonso VIII of Cas-tile were the first European rulers to employ the term servi regis in describ-ing the Jews’ status vis-à-vis the Crown.25 The emergence of this term, as well as the affirmation of the underlying principle of the Jews’ possession by the royal treasury (“the Jews are servi of the king and they are entrusted to his treasury”) in Iberia is linked to the successes of the reconquest in the late twelfth century. It is no accident that the innovative language first appeared in the fueros (charters) granted to the newly Christian cities of Teruel, taken in 1171 by Alfonso II, and Cuenca, captured by Alfonso VIII in 1777.26 In Castile, after the closing of the old frontier along the Duero river with the capture of Toledo in 1085, the kings took a more direct and system-atic control of populating and organizing the conquered lands of the Castil-ian Extremaduras (the lands between Duero and Tajo, also known as las Comunidades de Villa y Tierra). In fact, these tasks became royal preroga-tives that helped augment the power and influence of the Crown. The lands captured from the Muslims were typically claimed for the royal domain

23 Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, trans. Diana Green-way and Jane Sayers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 41-42.

24 On other lords’ jurisdiction over the Jews in Iberia, see Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 82-88. See also Maya Soifer Irish, “The Castilian Monarchy and the Jews (Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries),” in Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan, ed. Katherine L. Jansen, G. Geltner, and Anne E. Lester (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 39-49.

25 David Abulafia, “The Jews in the Municipal Fuero of Teruel,” 98-99. 26 The fuero of Cuenca states: “In calumpnia iudei, iudeus nullam habet partem, tota

enim regis est. Nam iudei serui sunt regis et fisco deputati.” D. Rafael de Ureña y Smenjaud, ed., El Fuero de Cuenca: formas primitiva y sistemática: texto Latino, texto castellano y adapt-ación del fuero de Iznatoraf. Facsimile reproduction of the first edition (1936) (Cuenca, 2003), 633-634. Trans. James Powers, The Code of Cuenca: Municipal Law on the Twelfth-Century Castilian Frontier (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 165.


(realengo), with some of the territories and their revenues distributed among retainers, church institutions, and military orders.27 The claim of exclusive royal jurisdiction over the Jews, first discernable in the second quarter of the twelfth century, should be seen as part and parcel of the efforts to delineate and promote the regalian rights of the newly confident warrior-kings.28

This nascent intent to secure Jews, as well as Muslims, for the Castilian Crown and to counteract potential rival claims to the Jews by other lords helps explain why ecclesiastical lordship over the Jews never took root in New Castile.29 Alfonso VIII’s actions in Cuenca in the wake of its conquest can serve as a good illustration. According to James Powers, “the king deter-mined at the outset to set up a bishopric in Cuenca, as a suffragan of the archbishop of Toledo.” To support the new see, Alfonso granted to the bishop a number of castles and towns near Cuenca and in the Upper Tajo

27 Manuel González Jiménez, “Frontier and Settlement in the Kingdom of Castile (1085-1350),” in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay (Oxford: Claren-don Press, 1989), 52-54; Jean Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana de León y Castilla en la edad media (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1979), 31-33. On the distinctions between Old Castile (or la Tierra de las Merindades) and las Comunidades de Villa y Tierra, see Gonzalo Martínez Díez, Las comunidades de villa y tierra de la Extremadura castellana (Madrid: Edi-tora Nacional, 1983), 9-22. On the thirteenth-century repartimientos, see Thomas F. Glick, “Reading the Repartimientos: Modeling Settlement in the Wake of Conquest,” in Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change, ed. Mark Meyerson and Edward English (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 20-39. On the Jews’ participation in repartimientos, see Ray, The Sephardic Frontier, 20-22.

28 Alfonso VII’s 1141 extension of the fuero of Toledo to Calatalifa asserted that the prop-erty (hereditatem) of Jews and mudejars settled in the town belonged to the king’s palace (sit de palatio). See D. Tomás Muños y Romero, ed., Colección de fueros municipales y cartas pueblas, vol. 1 (Madrid: Imprenta de don José María Alonso, 1847), 532-533.

29 However, some Jewish communities in Castile, as well as in Aragon, came under the jurisdiction of military orders. The knights of the Order of Santiago were the lords of Usagre, to whose residents (among them, Jews), the Master granted a fuero between 1242 and 1275. See Rafael de Ureña y Smenjaud, Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín, eds., Fuero de Usagre (Madrid: Hijos de Reus, 1907). In the 1270s, the Order employed Jews as administrators of its estates. The Master’s letter, dated 1273, addresses “don Samuel, nuestro judio de Montiel.” See Yit-zhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publi-cation Society, 1992), 123, and Baer, Die Juden im Christlichen Spanien, vol. I: Urkunden und Regesten (Berlin: Im Schocken Verlag, 1936), 62-63.


Valley, as well as other revenues from fortified towns across the region.30 Cuenca itself, however, like most other larger urban centers in the frontier regions south of the Duero, became a royal city. Cuenca’s Jews, as servi regis, were assigned to the royal fisc. It is only in the kingdom’s heartlands, especially in Old Castile, where some cities were ruled by bishops and abbots, that we find Jewish communities under direct ecclesiastical jurisdiction.31 But even there, wholesale transfers of Jews from the royal to episcopal authority were rare and done under special circumstances.32

Before the end of the twelfth century, the abbot of the monastery of San Benito de Sahagún and the bishop of Palencia both became lords of sizable Jewish aljamas, and in each case special considerations may have played a role in the decision to grant jurisdiction to the prelates. In Sahagún, the burgesses were engaged in a drawn-out struggle with their ecclesiastical lord that dated back to the early twelfth century. Its causes were economic as well as social, ranging from the burgesses’ objections to the abbot’s many seigniorial bans that strangled their livelihood, to the consejo’s aspirations for greater political autonomy.33 In 1152, Alfonso VII personally came to Sahagún and promulgated a new fuero that did away with the abbot’s monopolies and forced him to share the governance of the town with the consejo.34 On the same occasion, Alfonso VII awarded the abbot jurisdic-tion over the Jews residing in his city. The royal charter proclaimed all the Jews residing in Sahagún to be “the abbot’s vassals” (uassalli abbatis) and

30 James F. Powers, “The Early Reconquest Episcopate at Cuenca, 1177-1284,” The Catholic Historical Review 87, no. 1 (January 2001), 1-16 at 5, 8.

31 Teofilo Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Philadel-phia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 177; Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 33.

32 The lack of studies on the subject of episcopal jurisdiction over Jews in the Crown of Aragon may indicate that alienation of jurisdictional rights over Jewish communities to the church was rare or non-existent in eastern Iberia. Further research is needed on this subject.

33 Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 214-221; José M. Fernández del Pozo, “Razones económicas de un conflicto en el Camino de Santiago,” in El Camino de Santiago: la hospi-talidad monástica y las peregrinaciones, ed. Horacio Santiago-Otero (Junta de Castilla y León, 1992), 211-216. Bisson rejects the labeling of the revolts between 1111 and 1117 in Sahagún as “communal” and “anti-feudal,” and sees the “growing pains” of a society dealing with the rise of new lordships as the root cause of this conflict and other crises in twelfth-century Europe. See Thomas Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Ori-gins of European Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 243-259.

34 Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 242.


ordered them to pay their pecuniary damages directly to their new lord.35 It is possible that the gift of jurisdiction over the town’s Jews was intended to mitigate the abbot’s loss of other privileges.36 Palencia was another ecclesiastical town in Northern Castile, an episcopal see held in the last quarter of the twelfth century by Don Raimundo, a close relative of King Alfonso VIII.37 In 1175, to reward the bishop for his military and diplomatic service to the Crown, the king granted him jurisdiction over forty Jewish families—probably the entire Jewish population of Palencia.38 The Jews, and after 1177, the town’s Muslims as well, were to serve the bishop, pay him taxes, and obey him “as their own lord” (tamquam domino proprio).39

Another known case of an outright concession of jurisdictional rights over a Jewish community to an ecclesiastical institution also comes from Northern Castile. The convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Bur-gos enjoyed special royal patronage and privileges, and served as the burial place for members of the royal family. In 1221, Fernando III issued a charter that transferred all the Jews settled on the monastery’s estate in the village of Dueñas to the lordship of the abbess of Las Huelgas.40 A document dated about 1230 listed twenty-five Jewish names—probably heads of house-holds—who had to obey the fuero of Las Huelgas and pay taxes to the

35 Madrid, Acrhivo Historico Nacional (hereafter AHN), Clero, Sahagún, San Benito, car-peta 898, No. 9; another draft states that “thirty Jewish families” (XXX casatos de iudeis) were passing under the abbot’s jurisdiction—probably the total number of Jewish families living in Sahagún at the time. See José Antonio Fernández Flórez et al., eds., Colección diplomática del monasterio de Sahagún (hereafter CDMS), vol. IV (1110-1199) (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación “San Isidoro,” 1991), 230-233. Also see Fátima Carrera de la Red, “Huellas de las culturas árabe y hebrea en torno al monasterio de Sahagún,” Archivos Leoneses 46 (1992), 375-390, and Fátima Carrera de la Red, “Árabes y judíos en la documentación del monasterio de Sahagún,” in Proyección histórica de España en sus tres culturas: Castilla y León, América y el Mediterráneo, vol. I (Junta de Castilla y León, 1993), 45-51.

36 Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 242.37 D. Antonio Alvarez Reyero, Crónicas episcopales Palentinas (Palencia, 1898), 79-86;

León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia (Palencia, 1967), 9.38 Teresa Abajo Martín, ed., Documentación de la catedral de Palencia (1035-1247) (Palen-

cia: Ediciones J.M. Garrido Garrido, 1986), 153-154 (hereafter DCP). 39 DCP, 158-160.40 “. . . concedo quod omnes illi iudei qui uoluerint uenire populare ad uestram sernam

quam habetis in Duennas iuxta domos uestras sint uestri et uestro tantum dominio sint subiecti uobisque faciant forum et seruicium et nulli alii teneantur.” José Manuel Lizoain Garrido et al., eds., Documentación del monasterio de Las Huelgas de Burgos (hereafter DMHB), Vol. I (1116-1230) (Burgos: J.M. Garrido Garrido, 1985), 242-244; Baer, Die Juden, 26.


convent.41 Later in the century, Alfonso X added more Jews to the Cister-cian convent’s dominium. In 1270, seven Jews from the barrio of Santa Ceci-lia in Briviesca and their descendants were assigned to the monastery’s service. Presumably trained as physicians, the seven were to pay taxes to the convent and take care of sick nuns.42

Even though such wholesale transfers of jurisdiction to ecclesiastical lordships were relatively rare, the church also gained fiscal shares in the royal income from individual Jewish communities. Nearly every Castilian king from Alfonso VI (1065-1109) to Enrique II (1369-1379) donated a part—traditionally, one-tenth—of the taxes he received from specific Jewish aljamas to church institutions. In the provinces of León, Palencia, and Burgos alone, during the period between the eleventh and fourteenth cen-turies, at least twelve ecclesiastical institutions laid fiscal claims to Jewish communities.43 The earliest documented grant of such nature dates to the reign of Fernando I of León (1035-1065), who gave the bishop and the Church of León five hundred sueldos of pure silver from the “Jewish rent” (de censu judeorum).44 Other royal donations followed. In 1085, Alfonso VI gave to the Hospital del Emperador a daily tribute from the Jews of Burgos of two solidos and one denarius, and a portazgo (toll) on wood, coal, and salt.45 The Cathedral of Ávila began collecting one-tenth of the taxes from the city’s Jews in 1144, thanks to a grant from Alfonso VII, and the monas-tery of Santa María de Aguilar de Campóo received a similar gift from

41 “Beniamin Zac, alfayath; el rabi Coxo; suo filio Abraam; Zac Marroqui; Daui Zapatero; Ridales; Aozac, et al.” DMHB Vol. I, 357-358. José Manuel Lizoain, Juan José García, El mona-sterio de Las Huelgas de Burgos: historia de un señorio cisterciense burgalés (siglos XII y XIII) (Burgos: Ediciones J.M. Garrido Garrido, 1988), 291.

42 DMHB, Vol. III (1263-1283) (Burgos, 1987), 51-54; Baer, Die Juden, 61-62. José María Escrivá, La abadesa de Las Huelgas (Madrid: Editorial Luz, 1944), 29.

43 No one has endeavored to calculate the total number of religious communities in Cas-tile receiving Jewish revenues. See Jose Monsalvo Antón, Teoria y evolucion de un conflicto social: El antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla en la Baja Edad Media, (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1985), 72-73. A special case is Toledo, where Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada negotiated a pact with Pope Honorius III and King Fernando III, according to which the Jews of Toledo were exempted from paying the ecclesiastical tithe on most properties, but every adult Jewish male was to pay Rodrigo an annual head tax. See Lucy K. Pick, “Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and the Jews: Pragmatism and Patronage in Thirteenth-Century Toledo,” Viator 28 (1997), 208.

44 Baer, Die Juden, 4; José Amador de los Ríos, Historia social, política, y religiosa de los judíos de España y Portugal (Madrid: Aguilar, 1960), 99-100.

45 Burgos, Archivo de la catedral de Burgos (hereafter ACB), No. 40.


Alfonso VIII.46 In 1254, Alfonso X gave one-tenth of Jewish and Muslim taxes in the bishopric of Jaén to the Bishop of Jaén.47

Further research may shed more light on the extent and frequency of such donations, in Castile and elsewhere, but even this brief survey makes evident the Castilian kings’ efforts to subsidize the church, in part, by let-ting it partake in the Crown’s income from the Jews.48 The Jews’ taxes formed an integral and valuable element of church revenues in Castile, and were collected, in some cases, over a span of many decades. A document (ca. 1230) from Las Huelgas provides a glimpse into how some of this money was spent. It contains a short list of Christian names—the convent’s servi-tors—who were paid with the money collected in taxes from some Jews of Dueñas, whose names were also included in the document.49 But it was not just a question of money. For any given ecclesiastical institution, fiscal and jurisdictional rights in a Jewish aljama were part of a bundle of traditional privileges and exemptions that served as a buffer against the encroachment of the often-hostile secular world.

Whose Jews?

In the thirteenth century, there was no shortage of ascendant powers seek-ing to wrest the Jews and their taxes from ecclesiastical lords. The oft-repeated claim that the Jews were “the king’s” had taken hold in royal

46 León Tello, Judíos de Ávila, 6. At least such was the claim put forward by the monastery in 1311 and validated by Fernando IV a year later. In 1311 the monastery petitioned Infante Pedro, the king’s brother, complaining that it was being denied some of its privileges, includ-ing 1/10 of the Jews’ pechos. Infante sided with the monastery, as did Fernando IV. Madrid, AHN, Clero, Palencia, Aguilar de Campóo, carp. 1666, No. 18 (deteriorated) and No. 19 (“. . . Por que uos mando acada unos de uos que ffagades al aljama delos judios de y de Aguilar que dan cada anno al abbat e al conuento ssobredicho de y de Aguilar todo el diezmo delos dineros del pecho [torn] an a dar bien e cumplidamientre en guisa queles non mengue ende ninguna cosa segunt sse contienen en las dichas [torn] assi commo el infante don Pedro mio hermano manda quelos dades por sus cartas. . . .”) See also Luciano Huidobro y Serna and Francisco Cantera, “Los judíos en Aguilar de Campóo,” Sefarad 14 (1954), 337; Baer, Die Juden, 117; León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 107-108.

47 José Manuel Nieto Soria, Iglesia y poder real en Castilla: el episcopado (1250-1350) (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1988), 100.

48 To the best of my knowledge, no comparable study exists on donations of Jewish rev-enues to the church in the lands of the Crown of Aragon.

49 DMHB, Vol. I, 357-358.


chanceries and in the minds of rulers, who were becoming more protective of this “regalian right” and assertive in exercising it to advance the cause of royal jurisdictional supremacy.50 Prelates and cathedral chapters faced challenges in their own backyards as well. Brimming with wealth but hun-gry for more political influence, resentful of seigniorial impositions and eager to end tax exemptions enjoyed by ecclesiastical establishments in their towns, municipal councils also disputed the church’s jurisdictional rights in local Jewries. The prospect of losing the Jews to kings and towns was probably a more serious concern to ecclesiastical leaders than any ide-ological program directed at the Jews.51

Judging from the evidence, such challenges to ecclesiastical control over Jews were quite common in thirteenth-century Europe. In France, the push for royal monopoly on the Jews clashed with the de facto jurisdictional par-ticularism and political disunity. Through the Ordinance of Melun (1230) and other acts, King Louis IX tried to get his barons to recognize that even the Jews living under baronial jurisdiction in private domains were subject to royal regulations.52 When royal control was extended to Languedoc, home to several important ecclesiastical Jewries, the king expected the region’s prelates to help with his pious program by banning Jewish usury in their domains. Robert Chazan has called King Louis’ pressure on the arch-bishops of Narbonne to cooperate “almost irresistible.”53 In the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick II now used the terms servi nostri, and servi camere nos-tre to affirm his supreme authority over all the Jews of Germany.54 Accord-ing to the complaints that reached pope Gregory IX, Frederick tried to confiscate the revenues that some church institutions in Italy had been receiving from the Jews, including the monastery of Monte Cassino’s income from the Jewish community in San Germano.55 The pressure from the monarchs could be palpable, but attacks on ecclesiastical privileges in towns were a greater threat because they happened in the ecclesiastics’

50 Jordan, “Jews, Regalian Rights, and the Constitution in Medieval France,” 5-8.51 Cf., Ray, “The Jews Between Church and State,” 165.52 Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 132-133.53 Chazan, “Anti-Usury Efforts,” 57. Salo Baron mentions jurisdictional disputes between

the French kings and local bishops in Béziers (1230, 1278), and Carcassonne (1284). See Baron, A Social and Religious History, 10:84.

54 Alexander Patschovsky, “The Relationship between the Jews of Germany and the King (11th-14th centuries): A European Comparison,” in England and Germany in the Middle Ages, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 201.

55 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 105.


own stamping grounds and were sometimes accompanied by physical vio-lence. Tensions between burgesses and ecclesiastics had a long history, and in the thirteenth century conflicts flared up once again.56 For example, the Jews were drawn into the long conflict between the townsmen of Montpel-lier and the bishop of Maguelonne.57 Episcopal rule suffered serious set-backs in the cathedral cities of the Rhineland, where municipal councils, led by wealthy and influential burghers, intensified their attacks on the prelates’ authority. In Cologne, after the archbishop suffered a defeat in the battle of Worringen in 1288 (in which the Cologne citizen militia fought against the archbishop), the balance of power began to shift in the city council’s favor, and after the first quarter of the fourteenth century it con-trolled the Cologne Jews jointly with the archbishop while collecting a lion’s share of the Jews’ taxes.58 In Speyer and Worms, the Jews were caught in the jurisdictional conflicts between the weakening authority of the bish-ops and the emperor, and the growing power of the city councils.59

The events in Castile fit this broader European pattern, with some added Iberian flavor. The Reconquista continued to dominate the peninsula’s political affairs. The high expenses associated with conquest and coloniza-tion made the Castilian monarchs especially reluctant to grant the church any broad rights to revenues from the Jews, although, as we have seen, they were willing to make donations of Jewish taxes to individual religious institutions.60 Jonathan Ray and others have argued that the slowing down of the war against Muslims in mid-thirteenth century added to the frustra-tion of the ecclesiastical elites, whose unequivocal support for crusader-kings was being severely tested by the kings’ blatant violations of ecclesiastical immunities, appropriation of church revenues for royal needs

56 Charles Petit Dutaillis, The French Communes in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978), 51.

57 Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 108; Baron, A Social and Religious History, 10:85.

58 Schmandt, “Cologne,” 371.59 Transier, “Speyer,” 441; Bönnen, “Worms,” 453-454. 60 One exception was the royal grant to the church of the “thirty dineros” tribute,

intended to symbolize the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas for betraying Christ. See Javier Castaño, “Una fiscalidad sagrada: los “treinta dineros” y los judíos de Castilla,” Studi medievali 42, no. 1 (2001), 165-204. But even in this case, the kings did not extend this grant to the Castilian church as a whole; the privilege was granted to individual bishops and cathedral chapters: Fernando III gave it to the archbishop of Toledo in 1238, and the metro-politan church of Burgos in 1240.


without consent, and refusal to enforce the payment of tithes by Jews on the lands purchased from Christians.61 It may simply be the case that the relations between church and state in Spain were becoming more like those in other parts of Europe, where royal trespasses on ecclesiastical liberties and takings of church revenues were not exactly uncommon.62 Iberian monarchs were guided by the same considerations as their royal counterparts north of the Pyrenees. Royal monopoly on the Jews could help the kings expand their authority and ensure a healthy flow of revenue needed for the success of their military and political designs.

In Castile, starting in the later part of the reign of Alfonso X el sabio, monarchs began to question the wisdom of sharing “the king’s” Jews and their taxes with the kingdom’s ecclesiastical establishment. The signs of the new attitude are present in the language of Alfonso’s transfer of the seven Jews from Briviesca to the jurisdiction of Las Huelgas in 1270. Only the Jews’ direct descendants would enter the nuns’ service; any other Jews who set-tled in the town’s barrio of Santa Cecilia would still be attached to the king and pay him taxes “like all the other Jews of our kingdoms.”63 Alfonso’s motivations are easy to guess, for at that time, more than ever, he needed the revenues from the Jews to help fill the royal coffers. After 1257, his quest for the Imperial throne demanded greater and greater expenditures that strained the resources of the entire kingdom.64 The ascent to the Castilian throne of Alfonso’s rebellious son, Sancho IV, in 1284, did not mean a return to the earlier policies. On the contrary, while Sancho confirmed some old

61 Ray, “The Jews Between Church and State,” 159-161; Peter Linehan, The Spanish Church and the Papacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 154-161; Joseph O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 161.

62 On the disputes over non-payment of the tithe by the Jews, see Simonsohn, The Apos-tolic See and the Jews, 180-185.

63 “E si algunos otros iudios ha agora en aquel logar o uinieren morar daqui adelante en aquel barrio sobredicho, que finquen pora nos e que ayamos dellos nuestros pechos e nues-tros derechos, assi como de todos los otros iudios de nuestros regnos.” DMHB, Vol. III, 51-54.

64 Joseph O’Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 205. Nieto Soria also notes the drop in royal subsidies to the Church in the latter part of Alfonso X’s reign; the leveling off of donations during the reigns of Sancho IV and Fernando IV, and their virtual absence under Alfonso XI. See his Iglesia y poder real in Castilla, 100-101.


privileges, he made no new grants of Jewish taxes.65 In making a donation to the bishop of Cartagena and Murcia of el diezmo (one-tenth) of the royal income from the bishopric, he pointedly excluded the tributes of Jews and Muslims.66

This change in policy meant that the money that would have gone to support the traditional ecclesiastical establishment instead went to the king’s servitors, the military orders, and even to the bishops’ and the cathe-dral chapters’ new competition in towns—the mendicant orders.67 Even more worrisome, some church institutions were in danger of losing the Jewish revenues already in their possession. For example, Alfonso X reclaimed the taxes that the Jews of San Martín de Albelda had been paying to the bishop of Calahorra and the church of San Martín de Albelda. Sancho IV later reversed his father’s decision.68 Early in the fourteenth century, king Fernando IV swapped the revenues received by the Las Huelgas con-vent from the aljamas of Dueñas and Briviesca for a comparable income from the diezmos de la mar tax in the port of Castro Urdiales.69 It appears that king was seeking to consolidate the revenues from the Jews in the royal hands.

But nothing better encapsulates the prelates’ struggles to preserve their fiscal and jurisdictional rights in the Jewish aljamas, and the Crown’s attempts to reclaim them, than the events in Sahagún and Palencia. In both towns, a new round of hostilities in the drawn-out conflicts between the

65 In 1285, Sancho confirmed the Las Huelgas monastery’s jurisdiction over the Jews set-tled in Dueñas. DMHB, Vol. IV (1284-1306) (Burgos, 1987), 67-70; as well as Alfonso X’s 1270 donation to Las Huelgas of the seven Jews of Briviesca. DMHB, Vol. IV, 70-72.

66 Sancho also excluded the tercias (third of the ecclesiastical tithe): “. . . saluo el diezmo del pecho delos Judios et delos Moros de los nuestros Logares e las tercias.” Mercedes Gai-brois de Ballesteros, Historia del reinado de Sancho IV de Castilla, vol. 3 (Madrid, 1928), 170 (no. 279).

67 See Sancho IV’s partitions of Jewish taxes in Francisco J. Hernández, Las rentas del rey: sociedad y fisco en el reino castellano del siglo XIII, vol. I: Estudio y Documentos (Madrid: Fundación Ramón Areces, 1993), 138-388. In 1308, Fernando IV gave 800 maravedís to the Dominicans of Toro from the revenues of the judería of that town (Baer, Die Juden, 114).

68 Baer, Die Juden, 74-76. José Manuel Nieto Soria, “Los judíos como conflicto jurisdic-cional entre monarquia e iglesia en la Castilla de fines del siglo XIII: su casuistica,” in Encuen-tro de las tres culturas: Actas del II Congreso internacional, 3-6 Octobre 1983 (Toledo: Ayuntamiento de Toledo, 1985), 247.

69 José Manuel Garrido Garrido et al., eds., Documentación de la catedral de Burgos, Vol. V (1294-1316) (Burgos: Ediciones J.M. Garrido Garrido, 1984), 197-201; DMHB, Vol. V (1307-1321) (Burgos, 1987), 68-69.


burgesses and their ecclesiastical lords created a perfect opportunity for the king to extend royal authority deep into the abadengo territory (church-controlled lands), to the detriment of ecclesiastical privileges. Among the townsmen’s grievances, which centered on the prelates’ seigniorial rights and ecclesiastical tax exemptions, the matter of control over the Jewish aljamas was a relatively minor one. But it put into question the very exis-tence of ecclesiastical Jewries in a kingdom whose rulers had long been claiming an exclusive authority over religious minorities, and where the overwhelming majority of the Jews lived on royal lands (realengo). While in both cases the king stepped in to delimit the prelates’ authority in their subordinate aljamas, different outcomes awaited the Jews of these two important communities in Northern Castile. The bishop of Palencia was able to preserve most of his power intact, but the influence of the abbot of Sahagún in the local aljama was diminished.

Not much is known about the nature of the prelates’ lordship in the Jew-ish and Muslim aljamas. The 1177 charter granted to the bishop of Palencia ordered the Muslims and the Jews of the city “to always serve only the bishop, to pay him taxes, and to obey him in all things as their own lord.”70 Determining exactly what kind of power this firm but vague mandate placed in the bishop’s hands is largely guesswork, although there is little doubt that in addition to the Jews’ taxes, the bishop of Palencia and the abbot of Sahagún were allowed to collect fines for offences committed by or against their Jewish vassals.71 By all appearances, the lords of Palencia and Sahagún provided their Jews with protection and encouraged their economic pursuits. In 1171, Don Gutierre, the abbot of Sahagún, intending to “show indulgence to our men, even though they are hostile to our reli-gion and faith,” granted the town’s Jewish community some land “for the purpose of burying their dead.”72 One of his successors, Don Guillermo, sounded far less charitable when he stated flatly that the vineyard the abbacy acquired from the Jews around 1229 was “much better” (multo meliore) than the land the Jews had received to expand their cemetery yet again.73 According to the papal legate passing through Palencia in 1229, the

70 “. . . absque omni alio domino episcopo tantum palentino semper seruiant, pectent et, tamquam domino proprio, in omnibus et per omnia hobediant.” DCP, 158-160.

71 DCP, 159; Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 898, No. 9; CDMS, Vol. IV, 231-232. 72 Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 901, No. 8. Published in CDMS, Vol. IV, 334-335. 73 Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 313, No. 3; CDMS, Vol. V (1200-1300) (León, 1994),

167.


Jews there were doing so well that he felt compelled to complain to the pope about their arrogant and provocative behavior. The Jews, he charged, erected new luxurious synagogues to replace the old ones, contra generalis concilii statuta, and buried their dead in such proximity to Christian cem-eteries, that the holy water sprinkled during Christian rites accidentally landed on Jews.74

But despite their apparent prosperity, the Jews of Sahagún and Palencia seem to have supported the municipal councils (consejos) in their struggle against ecclesiastical control, and shared the townsmen’s goal of bringing the aljamas under the royal jurisdiction. Direct Jewish voices are missing from the extant record, and we can only speculate on the reasons for their dissatisfaction with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They may have shared the civic consciousness of the Christian vecinos and sympathized with their concerns about the lords’ financial impositions and a lack of judicial auton-omy. As vassals of ecclesiastical institutions, the Jews were in theory exempt from most royal taxes that other burgesses were obligated to pay. But in practice they often ended up submitting payments to both the king and their immediate overlord. This problem seems to have been particularly aggravating to the Jews of Palencia. Even though the 1177 charter exempted them from any royal tax, including the fonsadera (tax payable in lieu of military service), in 1192 Alfonso VIII acquiesced to the demands of the town council and ordered Jews and Muslims to join the burgesses in the payment of fonsadera and other taxes (pectis), as well as to contribute to the maintenance of the city’s fortifications.75 The king’s edict in effect split the authority over Jews and Muslims between the consejo and the bishop, putting the city’s religious minorities under a double burden of taxation.

The Trouble in Sahagún

An opportunity to change the situation in Sahagún arrived in the third decade of the thirteenth century, when the burgesses, sensing the abbot’s

74 “. . . Idem quoque sinagogis dimissis antiquis, alias multo maiores et pretiosiores edifi-cant et in locis inquibus nunquam fuerant de novo construere contra generalis concilii sta-tuta presumunt, et juxta christianorum cimiteria sua faciunt ita vicina et cum quandoque christianum et judeum eadem hora sepelire contingat per clamores Judeorum impediuntur exequiae Christiani, et vitari non potest, quin aqua benedicta qua ibidem Christiani asper-guntur de more perveniat at Judeos.” Madrid, RAH, ms. 9-24-5/4558, f. 194v. Gregory IX’s 1229 letter is cited, in part, in Linehan, The Spanish Church and the Papacy, 147.

75 Palencia, Archivo Municipal de Palencia (hereafter AMP), Pergaminos No. 2; Baer, Die Juden, 22.


weakness, once again challenged the monastery’s seigniorial rights. Allying themselves with some of the monks, in 1224 and then again in 1232, the townsmen refused to pay homage to the abbot, accusing him of simony and other crimes. For several years in the mid-1230s, there were two rival bishops of Sahagún, one supported by the burgesses and the other officially appointed by the pope.76 The only glimpse into the burgesses’ intentions with regard to the Jewish aljama during these tumultuous years is found in one of the concessions the consejo secured from the abbot in the late 1230s. The 1238 agreement appears to give the consejo some judicial control over the aljama, to the detriment of the abbot’s authority. According to the agreement, if a Jew or a Muslim were to be accused of murder, violent assault, or any other transgression, his guilt or innocence could be proven by the propertied citizens of Sahagún (buenos omnes), even if there was no Jew or Muslim taking part in the inquiry.77 No mention was made of the abbot’s officials, or of his right to collect pecuniary damages. Since the Jews’ or the Muslims’ participation was also declared unnecessary, the consejo in essence asserted its exclusive right to judge all criminal cases involving reli-gious minorities.

Whether the Jews thought this declaration violated their autonomy is unknown, but when in 1255 they finally complained to the king, it was not the consejo, but the abbot who became the target of their accusations.78 The complaint was occasioned by a new outbreak of hostilities between the abbot and the vecinos of Sahagún, when Ruy Fernández, a judge in the royal court, accused the abbot of infringing on the king’s rights by naming his own alcaldes and merinos. He also persuaded several groups, including the Jews, to send their representatives to the king with a list of complaints.79

76 Evelio Martínez Liébana, El dominio señorial del monasterio de San Benito de Sahagún en la baja edad media (siglos XIII-XV) (Ph.D. Dissertation: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1990), 611-617; Augusto Quintana Prieto, “Guillermo de Taillante, abad de Sahagún y cardinal de la iglesia romana,” Anthologica annua 26 (1979), esp. pp. 15-30. The main source on the history of San Benito de Sahagún is a two-part chronicle written by the monks of Sahagún, Crónicas anónimas de Sahagún, recently edited and published by Antonio Ubierto Arteta (Zaragoza, 1987). There is also Romualdo Escalona’s eighteenth-century Historia del Real Monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782).

77 “El iudio o el moro que ferire o matar o ficiere otro fecho malo duedado, se prouado pudier seer por buenos omnes complidamientre, maguera iudio o moro non sea en la pesquisa, peche la calomnia e sofra la pena qual y ueniere o qual hi cobiere.” CDMS, Vol. V, 222.

78 Justiniano Rodríguez, “Judería de Sahagún,” Archivos Leoneses 7/14 (1953), esp. pp. 40-49.

79 Crónicas anónimas de Sahagún, 150. Martínez Liébana, El dominio señorial, 621-625.


According to the Anonymous chronicler of Sahagún, when the Jews arrived in Alfonso X’s presence, they asserted the following: “. . . that in no way did they belong to the jurisdiction of the abbot, but that they were servants [siervos] of the lord King, and were obligated to serve the royal power in all things. They also said that the lord Abbot had oppressed them without rea-son and in various ways.”80

The Jews’ open denial of the abbot’s long-standing jurisdiction could only have one justification: they were already paying most of their taxes to the king and therefore considered him, and not the abbot, to be their right-ful lord. From the Jews’ point of view, any customary payments submitted to San Benito were unfair impositions—evidence of the abbot’s “oppres-sion.” The Jews’ plea was not entirely unwelcome at the royal court. In fact, Alfonso X’s response to the Jews’ petition attempted to balance the monas-tery’s indisputable rights to the aljama against the king’s desire to assert a greater control over the Jewish community of Sahagún. The 1255 fuero per-sonally promulgated by the king in Sahagún addressed the aljama’s affairs in minute detail. On the one hand, the king bolstered the abbot’s claim to lordship by requiring the Jews to pay him an annual tribute of 100 mara-vedís, in yantar (purveyance) and other servicios, in addition to the head tax of 18 dineros they had already been required to submit.81 The Anony-mous hails the king’s order as a victory for the abbot, emphasizing that none of his predecessors enjoyed this tribute.82 The king also confirmed the abbot’s right to collect pecuniary damages if any of his Jews were killed.

The rest of the fuero’s promulgations, however, served to limit the abbot’s influence in the aljama. If one interprets the fuero’s regulations as Alfonso’s direct response to the Jews’ grievances, then the aljama of Sahagún had long suffered from lack of judicial autonomy. The new fuero’s unmistakable intent was to give the Jews of Sahagún a model of governance commonly found in the royal aljamas of Northern Castile. Not only were they granted the same fuero as the Jews of Carrión, but also the rabbis of Burgos were

80 “Los judíos aún eso mesmo afirmavan que en ninguna manera pertenesçía[n] a la jurisdiction del abad, ca siervos heran del señor rei e eran thenudos en todas las cosas de servir al poderío real. Deçían aún qu’el señor abad los agraviaba a sin raçón en muchas maneras.” Crónicas anónimas, 152.

81 Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 917, No. 13; CDMS, Vol. V, 326.82 “Sobre todo, aún dio al abbad de nuevo por privilegio sellado con su sello de plomo

tresçientos áureos de marçazga e çiento de los judíos en cada un año, los quales nunca obo ningún su predeçesor.” Crónicas anónimas, 160.


allowed to appoint “elders” (adelantados) to judge cases within the aljama according to the Jewish law (segund so ley). In mixed litigation, testimonies of one Christian and one Jew were now required, in line with the customary law of Old Castile, but in contradistinction to the 1238 disposition of the local consejo. As in the lands of the realengo, a Jewish official, albedi, would represent the lord’s—in this case, the abbot’s—authority in the aljama.83 For all intents and purposes, the Jewish community of Sahagún was now like any other royal aljama. In fact, the abbot’s limited authority notwith-standing, it was a royal aljama. Lest they forget this fact, Alfonso X ordered the Jews of Sahagún to join the consejo in paying yearly mazadga (March tax) to the king.84

Subsequent documentation leaves little doubt as to who was the real lord of the Jewish community in Sahagún. When in 1260 Alfonso X was sending out the cortes’ edicts regulating Jewish usury, it was not to the Jews’ ostensible lord, the abbot, that he directed them, but to the consejo of Sahagún.85 The 1290 Repartimiento de Huete listed the Jews of Sahagún among other royal aljamas that were paying tribute to the king (they owed him 23,203 maravedís), but made no mention of the abbot’s portion (as it did for the bishop of Palencia).86 If these indications are to be taken seri-ously, the authority of the abbot of Sahagún over the Jewish aljama had become largely nominal. In 1345, the abbot of Sahagún obtained from Alfonso XI a confirmation of the fuero granted to the city by the king’s great-grandfather. The portion of the fuero dealing with the Jewish aljama quoted the earlier privilege almost verbatim, with one exception: the two sen-tences securing for the abbot a head tax of 18 dineros and an annual servicio of 100 maravedís had mysteriously disappeared.87 A scribal mistake is a possibility, but it is very likely that the omission was deliberate. For the time being the 1255 fuero continued to be a powerful tool at the monarchy’s disposal to maintain its control over the town of Sahagún in general and over the Jewish aljama in particular. Not until the very end of the

83 See Galo Sanchez, ed., Libro de los fueros de Castiella (Barcelona: Ediciones El Albir, 1981), 113-114.

84 Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 917, No. 13; CDMS, Vol. V, 325-326.85 “ Que los iudios non den a vsuras mas de a tres por quatro, e esto mismo mandamos a

los moros que dan a vsuras; ca tenemos que los christianos non deuen dar a vsuras por ley nin por derecho. . . .” Madrid, AHN, Clero, Sahagún, carp. 918, No. 15; CDMS, Vol. V, 360-362.

86 Francisco Hernández, Las rentas del rey, 140. See also Carlos Carrete Parrondo, “El repartimiento de Huete de 1290,” Sefarad 36 (1976), 130.

87 Madrid, AHN, Codices, 988B, 70r.


fourteenth century and the arrival in Sahagún of a willful and intolerant abbot, did the monastery attempt to recoup some of its lost authority, with disastrous consequences for the Jews.88

The Bishop, His Jews, and the Consejo in Palencia

A very different outcome awaited the Jews of Palencia.89 The ecclesiastical lords of this episcopal city—the only such city on the northern meseta—also faced years of friction and rebellion instigated by the consejo unhappy about the bishops’ interference in the affairs of the council and the exempt status of the cathedral chapter’s many members and vassals (excusados).90 For a period of time in the late thirteenth century, it seemed as if the Jews of Palencia were about to be reclaimed by the monarchy. However, the bishops’ skillful political maneuvering at a time when the monarchy needed their backing all but ensured that the bishop of Palencia would get to keep his Jewish vassals and (half of ) their taxes.91

Alfonso VIII’s 1192 compromise, which ordered the bishop’s Jewish and Muslim vassals to pay certain taxes to the king and contribute to the upkeep of the city’s fortifications, created a situation fraught with tension.92 The consejo was in a state of almost constant rebellion against the bishop, refus-

88 The conflict was precipitated in 1398 by the arrival of the new abbot, don Antón, in Sahagún, and the rekindling of the old tensions between the consejo and the monastery. See Martínez Liébana, “La aljama de Sahagun en la transicion del siglo XIV al XV,” Hispania 53/2, No. 184 (1993), 397-429.

89 The history of the Jewish aljama in Palencia has attracted considerable attention. See Amador de los Ríos, Historia de los judíos de España y Portugal, 293-295; León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia; Julio Valdeón Baruque, “Judios y mudéjares en tierras palentinas (siglos XIII-XV),” in Actas del II Congreso de historia de Palencia. Vol. II: Fuentes documentales y Edad Media (Palencia: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Palencia, 1990); 359-375; Fernando Suárez Bilbao, “Algunas noticias sobre Judíos en la provincial de Palencia,” Actas del II Congreso de historia de Palencia. Vol. II, 609-625.

90 María Asunción Esteban Recio, Palencia a fines de la Edad Media: Una ciudad de señorío episcopal (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1989), 127-129.

91 Works on the history of Palencia in the Middle Ages include Germán Delibes de Cas-tro, Francisco Javier Pérez Rodriguez et al., eds., Historia de Palencia. Vol. I: de la prehistoria a la época medieval (Palencia: Ediciones Cálamo, 2002); Julio González, Historia de Palencia. Vol. I: edades antigua y media (Palencia: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Palencia, 1984); Julián Clemente Ramos, “Estructuras dominales Castellanoleonesas: Palencia en los siglos XII y XIII,” Studia Zamorensia 7 (1986), 433-445.

92 Palencia, AMP, Pergaminos No. 2; Baer, Die Juden, 22.


ing to pay him homage on many occasions, and waiting for a favorable moment to try to challenge the bishop’s right to collect taxes from Jews and Muslims.93 A good opportunity finally arrived in 1282, when the bishop of Palencia, Don Juan Alfonso, decided to abandon the camp of King Alfonso X and join his rebellious son, Sancho. Both sides had something to gain from the alliance. Juan Alfonso hoped that the new king would be more sympathetic to his interests in the on-going conflict with the consejo. San-cho needed the bishop’s political and financial support.94 Apparently it was at this point in time that Juan Alfonso and the Infante came to an agreement that each would receive one-half of the pechos from the Jews and Muslims of Palencia.95 In addition, Sancho confirmed the bishop’s lordship over the city and granted him further privileges.96

The reaction from the consejo was swift and violent. In an attempt to counter the bishop’s growing power, members of the council harassed excusados of the cathedral chapter and even threatened the canons during a religious procession. They also wasted no time in insisting that Jews and Muslims pay taxes to the king together with the other vecinos. The consejo’s 1192 privilege already required the city’s religious minorities to participate in the payments of fonsadera and other, unspecified, taxes. Now that the bishop’s privileges were suddenly boosted by a sympathetic sovereign, the council felt compelled to be extra assertive in defending its right to collect these pechos. If the complaint brought by the bishop Juan Alfonso before the royal court in 1283 is to be believed, the bishop’s rights to the city’s reli-gious minorities were cast aside, as the consejo went about collecting all of the taxes paid by Jews and Muslims in Palencia. The council’s subversive activities were short-lived, however. In a sentence adjudicated, among oth-ers, by the bishop of Calahorra, the council’s actions were condemned and it was ordered to drop the demand for Jewish and Muslim pechos.97

93 Emiliano Gonzalez Diez, “Formacion y desarrollo del dominio señorial de la iglesia Palentina (1035-1351),” in Actas del I Congreso de historia de Palencia. Vol. II: Fuentes docu-mentales y Edad Media (Palencia: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Palencia, 1985), 303-304; Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 285-287.

94 Nieto Soria, Iglesia y poder real en Castilla, 176-177.95 Cabeza del pecho de los judíos—a special tax paid by the Jews. 96 The concession most insulting to the consejo was the bishop’s right to name the alcal-

des of the Hermandad. See Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 156.97 This sentence by the bishop of Calahorra is the first evidence of an agreement between

Infante Sancho and Juan Alfonso regarding half of the Jewish and Muslim pechos. Here is Juan Alfonso’s complaint: “. . . Otrosi señor forçaron nos los iudios y los moros que son


But it was not easy to put the genie back in the bottle. The king’s fateful decision to divide Jewish and Muslim pechos between the bishop and the Crown fueled the consejo’s ambitions for a royal takeover of the aljamas, and even created some doubts in the king’s own mind. Did not the bishop’s claim to the aljamas somehow violate the royal prerogative? During the cortes gathering in Palencia in 1286, the council’s representatives appar-ently did their best to stoke the monarch’s regalian ego until they persuaded him to defend the royal rights being usurped by the cunning bishop.98 In January 1287, Sancho sent a charter to the consejo, asserting that it was never his intention to diminish the rights of the Crown or of the consejo by giving the bishop his privileges. The letter stopped just short of revoking the bishop’s lordship over the judería and morería of Palencia, but it asserted that the consejo’s share in the Jewish and Muslim taxes was not to be denied. If any of the bishop’s letters of privilege, including those concerning Jews and Muslims, infringed on the Crown’s or the council’s rights, they were declared invalid.99

nuestros y deuen seer de todo Obispo de Palencia, por quelos ouiemos por compra y por cambio y por priuilegio del rey don Alfonso de que leuades uos la meatad del pecho, y assi cayeron en la pena privilegio” [emphasis added]. The sentence by the bishop of Calahorra said the following: “. . . Otrosi sobre la contienda que era etre el obispo e los del conceio sobre ffechos de los iudios e de los moros uezinos e moradores en Palencia, et de los pechos que dezien que auien de fazer con ellos mandamos que se parten e se quiten el conceio desta demanda et daqui adelante nunqua los demanden que pechen con ellos ni los embar-guen al obispo en yudicio ni en ninguna manera.” Palencia, Archivo de la Catedral de Palen-cia (hereafter ACP), No. 331. Published in Alonso Fernández de Madrid, Silva Palentina, vol. III (Palencia: “El Diario Palentino,” 1942), 33-41. See also León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 10.

98 Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 158.99 Most scholars understood Sancho’s letter as an outright cancellation of the bishop’s

rights (for example, León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 11). However, the letter’s phrasing is ambiguous: “Otorgamos que non ffue nuestra entençion njn es, por cartas njn por priuile-gios que el Obispo don Johan Alffonso tenga de nos, quell nos ouiessemos dado quando eramos Inffante, njn despues que ffuemos Rey, dele dar el sseniorio njn las alçadas njn el poder que auemos de ffazer alcalles dela hermandad en la Çibdad de Palençia, njn toller al Conçeio dende en ninguna cosa delas Juderias njn delas morerias njn delos pesos njn delos otros derechos que ssolien auer en tienpo del Rey don fferrando, nuestro auelo, et del Rey don alffonso nuestro padre. Et si nos, o el Conçeio algunas cosas perdiemos o menosca-bamos fasta aqui delos derechos que y deuiemos auer por rrazon delos priuilegios o delas cartas que el Obispo tiene en esta rrazon, Reuocamos lo todo et mandamos que non uala daqui adelante.” The bishop’s privileges are revoked insofar as they interfere with those of


Now it was the bishop’s turn to worry. Sancho’s charter could be inter-preted as a royal approbation of the consejo’s plan for a complete takeover of the Jewish and Muslim pechos. The bishop dispatched an urgent com-plaint to the king, and as early as in July of the same year he received a lengthy report on the results of the royal inquiry. After sifting through the charters detailing royal grants to the bishop and to the consejo, the investi-gators confirmed the existence of an agreement between Sancho and Bishop Juan Alfonso regarding the division of the pechos. The bishop and his successors could therefore enjoy half of the Jewish and Muslim pechos “completely” (conplidamientre). In addition, Muslims and Jews had to pay their taxes separately from the council, with the exception of their contri-butions to communal works ( fazenderas).100 This decision was less favor-able to the consejo than the original 1192 charter, which also required Jews and Muslims to pay fonsadera and other pechos jointly with the council. Nevertheless, the council still had Sancho’s January 1287 letter, which could be used at a propitious time to regain the king’s favor.

The opportunity did not arrive until 1296. By then Castile had an under-age king, Fernando IV, whose rights to the throne were being disputed by the Infantes Juan and Alfonso de la Cerda. The city of Palencia lay in the middle of the war zone, and its support was of crucial importance to the young king and María de Molina, his mother and regent. Although both the consejo and the cathedral chapter came out on the king’s side, it was the consejo that could mobilize the vecinos to fight on the king’s behalf.101 After the city’s military brigade had captured the castle of Tariego, at the end of June 1296 the grateful monarch and his council showered the consejo of Palencia with charters of privilege, issuing three grants in the space of two weeks. On June 16 the council was awarded the towns of Dueñas and Fuentpudia, provided the vecinos could capture them from the enemy. On

the consejo—and that is a point open to interpretation. Palencia, AMP, Pergaminos No. 13. Ballesteros, Sancho IV de Castilla, vol. III; 89.

100 “. . . Et tractaron tal compossiçion entre nos que en razon delos moros y delos judios de Palençia sobre que era una delas contiendas entre nos et el Obispo que nos et los que regnaren depues de nos, que ayamos la meetad de todos los pechos et pedidos et seruiçios en qual quier manera quelos den. Et el Obispo et los que vinieren depues deel que ayan toda la otra meetad bien conplidamientre. Et que pechen los moros et los judios apartadamien-tre et non con el Conçeio, saluo en de enlos fazenderas que tienen comunalmientre al Conçeio et a ellos.” Palencia, ACP, No. 335. Described in León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 104.

101 Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 160-161.


June 30 two more privileges followed: the first conceded to Palencia the castle of Tariego with the pechos of all the Christians and Jews living there, and the second exempted all inhabitants of Palencia—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—from portazgo (toll) virtually anywhere in the kingdom. All three charters presented the gifts as a compensation for the losses in lives and property that the vecinos of Palencia had suffered in the king’s service.102

There was never a better time for the consejo of Palencia to secure its recent gains through a royal confirmation of its privileges. In early July, rep-resentatives of the council were already at the royal court in Valladolid, old parchments in hand, to show the king his predecessors’ charters and to ask him for a confirmation. The charters read in the king’s presence on this occasion included Alfonso VIII’s 1192 privilege that required Jews and Mus-lims to pay certain taxes to the king, as well as Sancho IV’s 1287 letter that revoked the bishop’s privileges if they damaged the rights of the consejo. The ostensible reason for the consejo’s request was the difficulty of enforc-ing its privileges in times of trouble, and the fear that the charters could be damaged by water or other elements. The king and his regents found the request convincing and confirmed the old charters on July 6, promising royal protection for the consejo’s privileges.103

The regents may have found the council’s request reasonable, but the real motivation behind it was quite different. The consejo’s representatives acted in haste because they realized that they had to get as much out of the king’s favor as they could, while they could. Given that their recent behav-ior toward the bishop had been less-than-impeccable, it was only a matter of time before the king would receive an angry complaint about the loss of rights from their main adversary. Indeed, a few months earlier the situation

102 Palencia, AMP, Pergaminos, Nos. 8, 9, and 10. Described in León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 105-106; Rafael del Valle Curieses, “Archivo Municipal de Palencia: privilegios y cartas reales concedidos a la ciudad en la Edad Media (regesta y comentarios),” in Actas del I Congreso de historia de Palencia, 121-122.

103 “. . . Los quales priuilegios leydos e mostrados, las personas del conçeio de Palencia dixieron que por muchos peligros que acaesçieron en leuar los priuilegios de unos logares a otros e por temor queles perderien o que selos dannarien de aqua o por otros occasiones que acaesçen muchas de veses mal pecado, pidieron nos que fisiessemos poner nuestro sse-ello dela hermandat en este traslado e que pidiessemos merçed al Rey don Ffernando nue-stro ssennor que gelos guardasse a gelos mandasse guardar. . . .” Palencia, AMP, Pergaminos, No. 13. Described in León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 106; del Valle Curieses, “Archivo Municipal de Palencia,” 122-123.


in Palencia had gone from bad to worse when the men of the consejo and their followers assassinated the bishop’s merino and several servitors of the cathedral chapter, and burned a tower belonging to the bishop.104 The council secured a royal pardon, but Palencia’s Dominican bishop, Fray Munio, worried about the possible implications of the consejo’s newly-found favor with the king, insisted that his privileges, in turn, be confirmed. On August 9, 1296, about a month after the men of the consejo had left Val-ladolid in triumph carrying a new royal charter, the king’s chancery issued a proclamation admonishing the council to respect the bishop’s rights. Less forceful than Sancho’s 1287 privilege to the consejo, but still in essence its “mirror image,” Fernando’s charter declared that none of the recent privi-leges given to the council, including the pardon for burning the tower and the confirmation of the council’s rights in the judería, were intended to harm the bishop’s interests. The Jews were still the bishop’s, just as they had been in the past.105

The bishop of Palencia may have won this round of the “war of the char-ters,” in which every confirmation of one party’s privileges was inevitably interpreted as a diminution of the other party’s rights. However, the bishop of Palencia could not enjoy his victory to the fullest. In July, pope Boniface VIII forced Fray Munio to resign from his post for committing an unspeci-fied “iniquity.”106 Not unexpectedly, in 1297, the consejo refused to pay homage to the new bishop, Alvaro Carillo, and another round of conflict and litigation ensued.107 In May 1298, representatives of the consejo were

104 Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 161. 105 “. . . Otorgo que por los priuilegios que yo di al concejo de Palencia et las mercedes

queles fiz en razon delos judios et del perdonamiento dela Torre del Obispo que fue de maestre Andres que ellos quemaron et delos omnes del Obispo que y mataron, que non entiendo que el Obispo et el cabildo pierdan ninguna cosa delos sus derechos destas cosas, antes tengo por bien queles finque ende en saluo todo su derecho assi delos Judios commo del quemamiento dela Torre et dela muerte delos omnes y dela desonrra que fizieron ala Iglesia de Palencia. Ca yo non los di en los Judios el derecho que el Obispo ouo fasta aqui njn deue daqui adelante. . . .” Palencia, ACP, No. 339. León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 43-44.

106 Sancho IV’s pivotal role in the election of Fray Munio is the reason most often cited. See Juan Francisco Rivera, “Notas sobre el episcopologio Palentino en los siglos XIII y XIV,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 9, 1974-1979, 418; Alvarez Reyero, Crónicas episcopales Palen-tinas, 115-116. Linehan thinks that Fray Munio was the same person as “Munio of Zamora,” who was involved in the sexual scandal more than a decade earlier at the convent of S. María de Zamora. See his The Spanish Church and the Papacy, 224-225; or his The Ladies of Zamora (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).

107 Esteban Recio, Palencia a fines de la Edad Media, 162.


summoned to the royal court in Valladolid, to answer the charges brought against them by the bishop. Throughout the questioning, which the scribe recorded in detail, the men of the council of Palencia maintained an asser-tive attitude, objecting to the participation in the deliberations of the bishop of Astorga and other clergymen, and reminding the king of the ser-vices the consejo had rendered him in the past. The king’s and the council’s interests were linked, the representatives suggested, as evidenced by the many charters of privilege received by the consejo. When asked if the bishop’s allegation that the council had been collecting the taxes of Jews and Muslims for the past three years was true, the representatives made no effort to deny it. On the contrary, they argued that the royal privileges allowed them to collect pechos from all the Jews and Muslims who qualified as vecinos of Palencia.108

The representatives’ argument at the royal court was an admirable exer-cise in rhetoric, but it soon became clear that the consejo’s finest hour had passed. Fernando IV and his regents finally decided that royal power in Palencia was better represented by the bishop than by the unruly vecinos. Bishop Alvaro, who happened to be the king’s relative, moved quickly to consolidate his power in the city.109 When the royal court issued a judg-ment in the bishop’s case, in January 1300, it was not favorable to the coun-cil. In fact, the bishop had all of his wishes and demands granted. The consejo was ordered to desist from interfering with the bishop’s right to appoint alcaldes, to select excusados, and to collect various taxes, among them, the pechos of Jews and Muslims. Moreover, the vecinos had to restore the bishop’s burnt tower and to beg forgiveness from their lord in a public procession.110

108 “. . . Et alo otro que nos preguntados ssi tomamos el pecho delos moros e delos judios a esto uos dezimos que nos que non leuamos dellos pecho ninguno ssaluo ende que [unless] nos ffazen vesindat segund quelo auemos por priuilegios delos reyes por que non deuen pechar nin ffazer tributo apartado ssinon con el conçeio de Palencia. . . .” Palencia, AMP, Pergaminos, No. 39. Described in León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 107.

109 Nieto Soria, Iglesia y poder real en Castilla, 179-180.110 “. . . Et lo que mandamos sobrello es esto que en esta carta sera dicho, quelo que pidio

el obispo que le diessedes vos el conçeio la martiniega et que le dexassedes los moros et los judios commo los ouieren los otros obispos en tienpo del rey don Sancho et que le dexasse-des fazer los alcalles de la villa et los escriuanos et tomar los escusados a el e alas personas et canonigos de su eglesia et que le desenbargasedes el portazgo commo dizen las cartas de la conpusiçion que auedes en vno, la vna mia et la otra del rey don Sancho mio padre que fue fecha en Çamora. . . .” Palencia, ACP, No. 344. León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 45-48.


As one might have expected, this court decision did not put an end to the consejo’s fight against the bishop’s seigniorial power in the city of Palen-cia. In late 1300 there was another violent confrontation, as the representa-tives of the council threatened to assassinate the bishop and his entourage during a meeting, after the bishop had named the alcaldes without consult-ing the council.111 If the consejo never again obtained a royal decision favor-able to them on the issue of Jewish and Muslim pechos, it was not for lack of trying. In 1305, they attempted a tactic that had worked once before: instead of brandishing the consejo’s charters of privilege, they urged the monarch to protect royal prerogatives. According to the letter Fernando IV later sent to the bishop, “when we were in Palencia . . . some men (algunos omes) told us that the Jews and Moors of this place were ours, as were the Jews and Moors who live in other towns and villages of our domain.” The king was easily persuaded, and ordered to “take” (prender) some of the Jews (algunos de los judios) in the belief that they were his. One Jew taken under the king’s protection—probably the leader of the group—was named in the letter (Çag Nihoray), while the others remained anonymous.

Bishop Alvaro quickly registered his protest, and the king was made to realize his “mistake.” Having no wish to alienate such a valuable ally of the monarchy as Don Alvaro had proved himself to be, Fernando dispatched a new confirmation of his privileges, which reaffirmed the bishop’s domin-ion over Palencia’s religious minorities in no uncertain terms. Echoing Alfonso VIII’s original donation, the charter stated that the Jews and Mus-lims had to answer to the bishop “as to their own lord” (commo a su sennor propio; 1177 charter used the formula tamquam domino proprio). No other lord—not even the king—had the right to retain them in his service. The only valid claim the king had in the judería and the morería of Palencia was spelled out in the agreement between Sancho, nuestro padre, and Bishop Juan Alfonso, nuestro tio, and that was the right to collect one half of all the Jewish and Muslim pechos.112 The bishop and the cathedral chapter could enjoy the other half. Fernando’s charter thus was a deliberate attempt to recreate as close as possible the situation as it had existed at the end of the twelfth century. It was as if the intervening years of complex negotiations and battling charters were erased from memory.

The events that transpired in 1305 were remarkable in several ways. To begin with, Fernando’s purported lack of knowledge regarding the

111 Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 163-164.112 Palencia, ACP, No. 348; Baer, Die Juden, 109-110; León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 107.


situation of the Jews and Muslims in Palencia belies the fact that only sev-eral years earlier his chancery had produced a sentence confirming the bishop’s rights. Perhaps the king was led to believe that as long as he received half of the pechos from the aljamas of Palencia, he had jurisdiction over half of their inhabitants. It is also plausible that the king welcomed the opportunity to claim these taxes for the royal treasury, as his father had attempted to do earlier, and only the strong objections from Bishop Alvaro, an important ally, stayed his hand. Furthermore, the episode shows that the conflict between the two main players—the bishop and the consejo—went beyond one town’s struggle for political autonomy. It touched on such a pivotal issue for the monarchy as the Crown’s jurisdiction over the Jews of Castile. At a time when the flow of taxes to the royal treasury was diminish-ing, any exceptions to the servi regis principle, such as the bishop of Palen-cia’s lordship over the Jews and Muslims in his city, were damaging to the monarchy’s interests. This was likely the essence of the argument made by the vecinos of Palencia in an attempt to persuade the king to take a stronger stance in protecting the interests of the Crown. The fact that they almost succeeded further underscores the point.

Finally, the episode raises intriguing questions about the group whose interests and concerns were never registered in the script of the on-going drama—the Jews of Palencia. It appears that they would have welcomed an opportunity to shed the bishop’s lordship in favor of the king’s. Indeed, when “some men” suggested to King Fernando that the Jews and Moors of Palencia were “his,” a group of Jews—but not of Muslims—immediately materialized under the leadership of Çag Nihoray to accept the king’s pro-tection. One wonders if they acted according to a prior agreement between them and some vecinos. Beyond this curious bit of evidence, nothing but speculation remains. In 1300, representatives of the consejo wanted Jews and Muslims to participate in the communal restitution to the bishop for burning his tower, “because the evil deed was done by all,” but Fernando turned down their request.113 Contrary to what Amador de los Ríos has

113 “. . . Otrosi pidieron los vuestros procuradores que lo que costasse fazer la torre e la carçel demas de la merçet que yo e la reyna vos feziemos para ello e las costas que vos avedes fechas de vn anno a aca que fuesse echado comunalmientre pues el maleffiçio fuera fecho por todos, e que se non escusassen de pechar en ello ningunos christianos nin judios nin moros por ninguna razon, mandamos que pechasedes y todos los christianos e que non


claimed, there is no evidence that the Jews took part in the assault on the tower.114

The drama in Palencia had a brief epilogue. In 1311, Bishop Gerardo, Don Alvaro’s successor, found himself in a difficult situation with the vecinos and was forced to ask Fernando IV for a new confirmation of his privileges, including the right to collect one half of the Jewish and Muslim taxes.115 As far as one can tell from the evidence, there was no other serious attempt to dispute the bishop’s right of jurisdiction over the aljamas of Palencia. Despite the strong challenge from the consejo and the Crown’s diminished appetite for sharing Jewish rents with the ecclesiastical establishment, the bishop of Palencia managed to preserve his episcopal patrimony virtually intact.

Conclusion

The efforts to keep the Jews under ecclesiastical jurisdiction demonstrate the aptness of Thomas Bisson’s observation that “the church was an aggre-gate of landlords.”116 In Northern Castile, and elsewhere in Europe, the church was an amalgam of discrete institutions, whose distinct, local inter-ests produced variegated responses to the Jews’ presence in medieval Christendom. To many prelates determined to preserve their institutional patrimony, the papacy’s ideological program directed at religious minori-ties mattered far less than the competition for power and resources taking place in their own communities. Complex negotiations between municipal councils, ecclesiastical authorities, the king, and the Jews produced differ-ent outcomes in Palencia and Sahagún, but both Castilian cases underscore

fuesse ende ninguno escusado por mi nin por la eglesia mas que non pechassen en ello los moros nin los judios.” Palencia, ACP, No. 344.

114 Amador de los Ríos, Historia de los judíos de España y Portugal, 295. His claim is pro-bably based on an erroneous interpretation of one sentence in Fernando IV’s August 1296 letter to the bishop: “. . . Otorgo que por los priuilegios que yo di al concejo de Palencia et las mercedes queles fiz en razon delos judios et del perdonamiento dela Torre del Obispo que fue de maestre Andres que ellos quemaron et delos omnes del Obispo que y mataron . . .” (emphasis added). The letter refers to the members of the council, not to the Jews. Palencia, ACP, No. 339.

115 Palencia, ACP, No. 367. León Tello, Los judíos de Palencia, 108; Esteban Recio, Palencia a Fines de la Edad Media, 165.

116 Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century, 5.


the difficulties faced by prelates fighting to defend the traditional ecclesias-tical lordship over Jews against the competing claims of rival secular powers. This important chapter in the history of relations between the church and the Jews during the pivotal thirteenth century deserves further investigation.

Tamquam domino proprio: Contesting Ecclesiastical Lordship over Jews in Thirteenth-Century Castile

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Transcript of Tamquam domino proprio: Contesting Ecclesiastical Lordship over Jews in Thirteenth-Century Castile