Season 1, Episode 59

Violant orders a halt to the confiscation of property from Jews in Alcañiz.

Episode 59

Today’s Document

Sourcing: Violant’s purpose in this document was to bring the authority of the queen to improve the defenses of the Jewish community of Alcañiz against marauding Christians; the audience, royal authorities in Alcañiz, would likely consider the consequences of defying the queen’s authority, but Benajamin Gampel has demonstrated that many municpal leaders were adept at obfuscating and dodging directives from the monarchs¹

Contextualization: the centuries-long context for the Iberian peninsula is one of interfaith encounter that could at times look like multicultural tolerance but often involved competition and conflict; the first documented presence of Jews in Alcañiz dates from 1280 and by 1370 records indicate about sixty Jewish families in the town, what was probably about 600 people²

Corroboration: this document corroborates Benjamin Gampel’s interpretation of Violant’s orientation toward elite Jews and Jewish communities in the Crown of Aragon; other episodes have helped to outine aspects of interfaith encounter in the Crown of Aragon examined in Episode 19, Episode 29, Episode 30, and Episode 49
Close-Reading: the identification of the recipients of this letter is not the usual ‘locumtensi’ but possibly closely related to that concept

This document attempts to leverage the power of the queen to change the dynamics of interfaith conflict in a faraway town.
The document refutes Christian concerns about the economic relationship they had with Jews in Alcañiz.

What preciiptated the current conflict in Alcañiz?
Who are Berengario Eximeno and Petri de Calumada?
How many Christians participated in the effort to confiscate property from Jews?
Did the Jewish leaders of Alcañiz make a complaint to Violant? Had they complained to Queen Sibilla in 1386?
Would the Christians in Alcañiz likely respond to Violant’s actions by changing their behavior?

In this episode, I mentioned the Amaranth Digital Humanities Studio at the University of New Mexico.

I used Gemini for transcription and translation help with this document.

Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961.
Boswell, John. The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century. Yale University Press, 1977.
Gampel, Benjamin R. Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Laliena Corbera, Carlos. “Orígenes y extinción de una aljama judaica: Alcañiz, 1280-1414.” Destierros Aragoneses : Ponencias y Comunicaciones. 1988, 115–26.

Benjamin R. Gampel, Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) ↩
Carlos Laliena Corbera, “Orígenes y extinción de una aljama judaica: Alcañiz, 1280-1414,” Destierros Aragoneses : Ponencias y Comunicaciones, 1988, 115–126, at 115 and 120. ↩