Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines. Simon Barton
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Furthermore, the mid-thirteenth-century laws of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem warned all colonists not to marry “heretics,” by which they meant non-Christians.55 Be that as it may, numerous chroniclers of the Crusades lamented the sexual licentiousness of the participants and the frequency with which they had recourse to prostitutes or engaged in extramarital affairs with local women. The likelihood is that sexual encounters between Christian men and Muslim prostitutes or slaves occurred with some frequency, whatever the jurists of the kingdom had to say on the matter.56
In the Christian-dominated regions of the Iberian Peninsula the legal position regarding such sexual liaisons was notably less clear-cut. While there is ample evidence from legal and other sources to demonstrate that the authorities deplored interfaith sex where Christian women were involved, intercourse between Christian men and Muslim or Jewish women was only rarely singled out in the secular legislation of the age. According to the laws of Valencia, if a Christian man was caught sleeping with a Jewess both parties were to be burned at the stake, but in the case of a Christian man who slept with a Muslim woman, the couple would be compelled to run naked through the streets. However, whether this law was consistently implemented is doubtful, and John Boswell has observed that it “was clearly a dead letter by the midfourteenth century.”57 In 1276, the Infante Peter of Aragon commanded the justices of the Kingdom of Valencia that they should not allow Muslims and Christians to cohabit, on the grounds that it was “neither honest nor just.”58 The following year, Peter, now King Peter III of Aragon (1276–85), undertook before the Jews of Calatayud that any Christian man caught in flagrante delicto with a Jewish woman would be fined to the tune of 300 maravedís.59 For his part, Sancho IV of Castile warned the Christian men of his kingdom not to commit sin with Jewish or Muslim women, “for they are women of another law and another faith.”60 He was particularly critical of his ancestor, Alfonso VIII, whose sinful seven-year relationship with a Jewess of Toledo supposedly led to his defeat at Almohad hands at Alarcos in 1195.61 Aragonese records demonstrate that it was not unknown for prosecutions against men to be brought on such charges, and that the women in question were liable to confiscation of property and enslavement.62 Those who denounced a Muslim woman who had engaged in interfaith sex stood to earn half her value if she were subsequently enslaved and sold. In one notorious case, in 1356, Peter IV of Aragon granted to the monks of the abbey of Rueda the right to profit from the sale of any Muslim women within its domains who had been enslaved for sleeping with Christian men, only to revoke it in September of the following year when it became known to him that it had been the monks themselves who had been engaging in sexual relations with the women in question.63 What is abundantly clear is that legal opinion on such matters was far from consistent. In 1294, a Muslim woman of Ablitas in Navarre who was found guilty of having slept with a Christian man was merely fined the sum of thirty solidi.64
It is also worth emphasizing that the Muslim and Jewish communities of the Peninsula were equally horrified by the phantom of sexual mixing, and patrolled the social boundaries between the faiths zealously in order to protect their own women from pollution by men of another religion. The perennial fear was that if such interfaith sexual intimacy went unchecked, it would not only bring shame upon the women’s families, but would also be a prelude to apostasy among their coreligionists. The late thirteenth-century Toledan rabbi Asher b. Yeḥiel decried Jewish men who carried out “harlotry with the daughter of a foreign God,” and declared that those who did so were to be denounced before Jewish courts.65 In the popular song of the beautiful Jewess Marisaltos, which is preserved among the Cantigas de Santa María, the young woman is thrown from a cliff by her own coreligionists, probably because she had conducted extramarital relations with a Christian man, only to be saved by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin.66 For their part, Islamic judges regularly sentenced women found guilty of having interfaith sex or engaging in other sexual misdemeanors, such as fornication or adultery, to flogging or stoning to death, but they were not permitted to do so without the permission of the king, and such penalties were normally commuted to slavery to the Crown. Take the case of the Muslim woman Axia, who had been condemned to be stoned to death for adultery with Christians and Muslims by the qadi of Valencia, only to be enslaved instead by command of James II of Aragon and granted to one of his nobles.67 Even so, in 1347, in response to lobbying by the Muslim officials in Valencia, King Peter IV of Aragon ruled that any Muslim woman convicted of pursuing an adulterous relationship with a Christian or Jew was to suffer the death penalty rather than pay a fine.68 But such pronouncements were rare. For the most part, the execution of Muslim adulteresses remained the exception rather than the rule.
By the same token, it is apparent that on the Christian side social attitudes and legal procedures on such matters could vary substantially from region to region. Canon lawyers might have denounced the practice, but the reality was that the taking of minority women—the majority of them slaves—as concubines (barraganas) was widespread.69 The Siete Partidas allowed a man to take a free woman or a slave as a concubine, with the proviso that he was not already married and she was not a virgin, or under twelve years of age, “or a widow who lives honourably and has a good reputation.”70 There is no indication in the code that the taking of a Jewish or Muslim woman as a barragana was outlawed. Similarly, no objection was raised by the lawgivers of Sepúlveda if a Christian man had a child by a minority woman; however, we have seen that a Christian woman who bore a child to a minority man was to be considered a woman of ill repute, whipped, and driven out of town.71 The Costums of Tortosa contain numerous sections on the rights of minority concubines and their offspring, ruling that if the father were the owner of a slave concubine any child born to them would be considered free; if he were not the owner, the child would also become a slave, but could not subsequently be sold to a Muslim or Jew.72 For its part, the fuero of Cuenca also gives the impression that such interfaith liaisons were commonplace:
If someone has a child with another’s Moorish woman, this child should be the servant of the señor of the Moorish woman, until his father redeems him. Also, we say that such a child should not divide with his siblings that which corresponds to the patrimony of their father, while he remains in servitude. Later should he become free, he should take a share of the goods of his father.73
What especially concerned some lawgivers was that any child born to a minority barragana should be brought up as a Christian: the laws of Soria were a case in point.74 Similarly, the Fuero Real issued by Alfonso X of Castile in 1256 required a Christian man who fathered a child by a Muslim or Jewish woman to take responsibility for its upbringing and maintenance.75 However, such children did not enjoy the same protection under the law as those of Christian barraganas, and if a mixed couple separated the woman might lose custody of her offspring.76 From the fourteenth century, moreover, there is evidence to suggest that that the legal rights of such concubines and their offspring were gradually eroded.77
Christian men also frequented Muslim prostitutes. In Aragon the sex industry was subject to strict regulation by the Crown, which issued licenses and gleaned substantial tax revenues as a result.78 Religious institutions, such as the Military Orders, also had a significant economic interest in Muslim prostitution, such as the Templars of Tortosa, who levied taxes on local Muslim prostitutes.79 Municipal authorities subjected brothels to careful supervision, with premises often being walled in to prevent women from plying their trade in the public highway and to protect them from being kidnapped.80 According to Mark Meyerson,
Prostitution … was more than tolerated; it was encouraged. For why should a Christian king concern himself with the morality of Muslim women, who were, in any event, irredeemable on account of their profession of Islam? Since, according to the contemporary Catholic theological position, all Muslims were damned, the Christian authorities had no qualms about treating Muslim women as essentially soulless and exploitable objects.81
Many of these Muslim prostitutes were slaves, some of whom had fallen into servitude after having been condemned by local Islamic courts for sexual impropriety, or by royal or seigneurial officials for exercising prostitution without a license.82 Others had gravitated toward prostitution after