THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE JEWS AND MUSLIM IN THE WEST

Relationships between people from different religions throughout history have always involved an aspect of intergender communication: men and women belonging to different faiths fell in love with each other, entered into unions, had sexual contact, both long-term and casual. This kind of relationship has, at all times, had a very different character, taken on different forms, and was regulated differently in different periods of history by both morality and law.

The regulations and especially the forms of their implementation depended first on the level of culture. In this course of lectures on discriminatory laws, we are interested in those regulations that in one way or another related to sexual relations between people who professed Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

It must be said that the Jewish tradition, the oldest among the three Abrahamic traditions, of regulating sexual relations with Gentiles was inherently isolationist, designed to strictly and unambiguously restrict Jews from marrying foreigners. Thus, Deuteronomy (Devarim) reads:

‘Do not intermarry with them (the seven numerous peoples). Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods…’ (Deuteronomy 7:3–4).

This rule, born in a monotheistic community surrounded by pagan peoples, was strictly maintained for centuries and was periodically reiterated, especially during periods of history when the Jews found themselves in foreign territory. Since the time of Ezra, when the Jews began to marry Egyptian, Moabite, and Ammonite women who worshiped many gods, mixed marriages began to be strictly prohibited and perceived as contrary to the law.

‘They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness’ (Ezra 9:2).

Ezra, who was engaged in rebuilding the community in Jerusalem after Babylonian captivity, encouraged Jewish men to voluntarily leave their non-Jewish wives.

This prohibition is also recorded in the Talmud (Avoda Zara 36b; Kiddushin 68b; Yevamot 45a), which states, among other things, that marriage with a non-Jew has no legal standing, and a woman in such a union does not have the right to material support.

Although Christians, and the Muslims after them, were not pagans, they were still not Jews, and marriages with them also fell under these ancient regulations that were never revised. The essence of this kind of restriction was that women brought their customs and beliefs into the family, taught them to their children, and they were no longer so strong in their faith. This was how true faith was eroded, religious rules ceased to be observed, and the dispersion of the community began. Isolationism in the field of marital relations had a pronounced protective function here.

In Christianity, marriage became a church sacrament quite early on, and unions with pagans and people of other faiths began to be condemned and often prohibited outright. However, through the Middle Ages in Western Europe, so-called civil marriage unions—that is, unions that were not sanctified by the church and were based on a contract—were common; mixed marriages were not the norm in this case either.

Islam interpreted the issue of mixed marriages more flexibly. Of course, marriage with polytheists was impossible from the very beginning of the doctrine, but the attitude toward the ‘People of the Book’ was more lenient. Thus, although Islam allowed marriages between a Muslim man and a Christian or Jewish woman, it gave them a special status. Many theologians and lawyers devoted many pages of their writings to convincing Muslims that this kind of family relationship could not be good. They wrote about how unpleasant it must be to kiss lips that have drunk wine or eaten pork. But the Muslim legal tradition has never prohibited such marriages or outlawed children born to a non-Muslim mother. On the contrary, a Muslim woman had no right to marry a non-Muslim man.

Obviously, all these regulations, sanctified by tradition and religious rules, were not at all difficult to observe, and they did not raise any questions or conflicts in those parts of the world or in periods of history when people of one or another religious community lived independently for the most part, having little contact with people of other faiths. For example, it is difficult to imagine that the issue of mixed marriages became a serious topic of discussion in medieval Scandinavia and vice versa—in the lands where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side for many generations, there was no way of avoiding a conflict between norm and practice. For example, in medieval Spain, the question of mixed marriages and, more broadly, sexual relations between Christians and people of other faiths was raised many times, not only in theological or legal treatises, but also in royal ordinances, episcopal letters, city regulations, and finally, which is of particular interest to us, in court documents reflecting real-life cases.

Thanks to these historical documents, we have the opportunity to look at the segregation laws of the Latin West from yet another angle. Referring to our previous lectures, in which we tried to specifically draw attention to the fact that the instructions of various councils and kings reflected a particularly painful attitude toward the physical intimacy of Christians with people of other faiths, it becomes clear that the topic of sexual contact acquires the utmost importance. Indeed, papal bulls, royal decrees, and episcopal letters made it clear that Muslims should be easily distinguishable from the rest of the population so that no harmful mixing of communities, dangerous to the purity of Christians, would occur. Therefore living together, sharing meals, and sexual contact should be avoided. For Christian society, it was the physical proximity of religions that became a real obsession, and from the thirteenth century, the Latin civilization has returned to this issue over and over again without much success but with noticeable regularity.

Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, people started recording local customs in Spanish towns. This was done by lawyers who knew both the Roman law and royal laws. These customs also covered mixed sexual relationships. In the case of extramarital sexual contact between a Jewish or Muslim man and a Christian woman, the customs of Tortosa prescribed that the man be tied to an animal so that it would keep dragging him until he died, and the woman be burned. This is one of the most severe regulations in this area of ​​law. Similarly, according to the fuero of Valencia, both culprits were to be executed by death at the stake. Not all city institutions punished such crimes so severely, but we know that in Spain the norm of being put to the stake for adultery with a non-Christian was actually implemented. Moreover, women—Muslim or Jewish—who were guilty of sexual contact with Christians, as a rule, were not burned. Instead, they were turned into royal slaves. After this, they could be left to serve the king or one of his household, they could be sold or given, or they could be sent to a brothel to earn money. Such a woman had the right to buy herself out if she and her family had the means. Alternatively, she also had the right to receive a royal license that allowed her to beg in order to raise money for the payout.

However, no leniency was shown to Muslims accused of sexual contact with Christian women. In 1311, a particularly sad case occurred in Daroca, Aragon. The Saracen Ali Matalon was accused of cohabiting with the Christian Prona Garzon. It was believed that a child had been born of this love relationship and that it was ongoing. Ali was captured and, after a short trial, burned at the stake. Prona managed to escape from the city, but was soon found and also brought to justice. She insisted that she was innocent and was able to prove this by undergoing an examination that confirmed her chastity and ‘intactness’. The unfair court verdict passed against Ali was found to be erroneous, which cost the official his post after a case was brought against him. But it did not return the Muslim’s life.

Of course, medieval law was undoubtedly harsh regarding extramarital sexual relations, that is, illicit relations between married people, which was considered adultery, or between those free from marital ties, which would then classify the crime as debauchery. Both adultery and debauchery were considered serious crimes even if people of different faiths were not involved in the affair. However, in the Latin legal system, the issue of extramarital affairs with non-Christians acquired special significance. It was allocated to a special section and was interpreted in such a way that the punishment was not just more severe than for the same crime committed by Christians, but with a didactic public element. Moreover, it is important to note that it was not only debauchers and adulterers who were subject to severe punishment, but also those Muslims who used the services of Christian women for a fee. This is a very important distinguishing feature of the Christian worldview.

We should briefly note here that brothels in the Middle Ages had a slightly different status than they do in modern times. The women who worked there received a professional license, and part of their income was paid to the treasury. The practice itself of visiting such public institutions was not regulated by secular legislation, but serving people of other faiths by Christian women was prohibited. Let us recall the letter from the bishop or the papal bulls that we discussed in the lecture on wearing distinctive badges or special clothing. They all indicated precisely that segregation norms were necessary so that ‘there would be no dangerous mixing out of ignorance’ between Muslims and Christian women who were engaged in prostitution.

It must be said that such prohibitions naturally gave rise to a black market. The fee at brothels was higher for non-Christians since the risk that the woman took by violating the prohibition was being paid for. One day, on Christmas night in 1389, a Christian woman who made money through prostitution received a client who, apparently, looked no different from a Christian. Since this woman was a newcomer and not from among the locals, she did not recognize him as a non-Christian. His name was Lop, and according to the woman’s testimony, she learned that he was a Muslim from the owner of the inn where the events took place only after Lop had left. In all likelihood, the owner was counting on his share of the increased fee, but the woman did not want to share it with him, and so the matter came to light. In any case, as soon as morning came, the woman went to the house of the local judge and began loudly knocking on the gate, calling for justice. It is noteworthy that the judges were primarily interested in what Lop paid for the night and whether he left the woman any additional gifts.

Accusations of intercourse with a Christian woman were very dangerous for a Muslim also because local authorities perceived such cases with greater sensitivity and attention.

They often conducted judicial inquiries in such a way that men had to fight to ensure that their right to a defense was respected. In 1344, Salema, who lived in the prosperous city of Lleida, was accused of adultery with Arnoldona, a married Christian woman. Salema was a blacksmith and belonged to a wealthy and prominent family holding important positions in the community. At the trial, which was conducted by a royal official, and was most likely initiated through a denunciation, Arnoldona's husband represented her. He defended her good name and denied any possibility of his wife's connection with Salema, and yet, the Muslim only managed to prove his innocence through a royal letter. This letter, composed in the royal office with a hanging seal and the royal badge of the red horseman, was obtained by Salema's brother and cost the family a lot of money. The letter itself, drawn up in response to the request submitted to the king, merely said that the judges should comply with all the rules and procedures of inquiry, giving Salema the opportunity to defend himself according to the law. Forty years later, in Lleida again, two other Muslims were captured, who were also from the richest and most influential families of the city, and accused of having relations with Christian women, though this time, the issue was likely concerning paid services. The entire community came to their defense, fearing that these unfortunate people would be tortured during the investigation and sentenced to death at the stake. And that concern was not for nothing.

Fortune favored the Saracen Mahomet of Tarrasona (1317) to a much lesser extent than Salema. He was accused of ‘wanting and trying to have carnal knowledge of a certain Christian harlot’. Local judges ruled against him, sentencing him to be burned, and then he appealed to a higher authority, the procurador of Aragon. The latter, however, also found him guilty and confirmed the verdict, after which the Muslim appealed to the sovereign.

Jaime II (1291–1327) rejected Mahomet’s request, ordering ‘the said Saracen to be burned so that his punishment would be an example to other Saracens’.

In 1510, the Aragonese Cortes in Monzón handed down the death penalty for both the woman engaged in prostitution and her client if the guilt of both parties was fully proven, and the Saracen was to be burned at the stake. This was a later ruling that was hardly observed at the time; in any case, there is not a single document available that attests to the application of this rule in practice. However, the very insistence with which Latin law records such regulations suggests that there was a clear idea behind the legal norm.

The question then arises about why such a harsh measure—burning at the stake—is recorded in Spanish legal sources. Latin law rarely applied it, and it is quite clear that there was a sense of religious purification in it. For example, as we know, a heretic or a witch could also be sentenced to death at the stake.

The answer to this question should be sought in the mentality of medieval Europe, in how people of that time thought and what cultural and religious attitudes influenced their perception of reality. Undoubtedly, these ways of thinking were the reason why ‘Christian harlots’ appeared in papal bulls. Vincent Ferrer spoke about them in his fiery sermons too, calling on his flock to avoid Jews and Muslims. He pointed out how harmful it could be for the entire Christian community if even one harlot opened her body to an infidel, for through her everyone else would be in danger. In the most intimate intercourse of physical bodies, Christian clerics saw a mystical threat to the integrity and purity of faith. Gradually, metaphors of the body and physicality, through which spiritual categories were conveyed, acquired independence and additional meanings in the minds of both the preachers and their listeners. While the clergy cherished the purity of faith, the people far removed from deeply educated religiosity focused on the physicality itself and were inclined to suspect that there was some kind of bodily impurity in Jews and Muslims that they did not understand.

The same approach can be found in the texts compiled by court officials. For example, in the protocols in the case of Salema, accused of having relations with Arnaldona, it was written:

‘The Saracen of Lleida, to the greatest dishonor and humiliation of the entire faith of the faithful, has united and carnally known ... a Christian. Truly, for what is done is horrible and corrupts the Catholic Faith, we should not turn a blind eye and allow it to go unpunished…’

Such an approach gave rise to superstition, and superstition gave rise to fear. We can see how this fear manifested in specific life situations and in the documents of trials initiated on accusations of Muslim men having intercourse with Christian prostitutes. But as has often taken place in history, the norms and prohibitions on paper did not always reflect what happened in real life.

It is known that Muslims ignored this prohibition. In 1304, for example, Aitola the Saracen, whose name clearly indicates his origins, went to Alisenda of Tolva, who had come to offer her services to those working in the pastures. Not long before, Llorenç the Shepherd, a Christian, had visited him as a friend and asked if he wanted to have intercourse with Alisenda. Aitola replied that he was a Muslim, and besides, he had no money. Llorenç offered to lend him the required amount and advised him to pretend to be a Christian. To do this, he had to call himself Joan, speak as Christians do, and say that he had come from the port. These simple tricks, both men believed, should have opened the way. It is interesting that neither one nor the other paid any attention to the Saracen’s clothing or hairstyle, which means that his appearance was not remarkable in any way and likely had things in common with both Christians and Muslims. Aitola passed the ‘face control’ quite successfully and was accepted, but soon the deception was exposed. At the trial, Alisenda claimed that she ‘recognized him as a Moor by his penis’. As soon as she discovered this, she began to call for help, and later she personally filed a lawsuit against both men, the Muslim and the Christian.

It is well known from Spanish trial documents that local officials did not consider it shameful to subject Muslims to torture, including in cases where there was no evidence, testimony, or even suspicion against the accused. Note that from a legal point of view, such an approach was categorically impossible in relation to a Christian. In 1387, one of the royal officials in Tortosa explained his attitude toward the infidels in a very remarkable way. He detained Alush, a Saracen from the local community, on charges of ‘carnal relations with Christian women’ and wanted to ‘subject him to interrogation and torture, although there is no suspicion of violence against him nor sufficient evidence for torture’. The official argued that he had every reason to do so, on the grounds that a Muslim is ‘circumcised and alien to the Christian faith’.

It is quite obvious that in the eyes of the officials, the rite of circumcision imparted a certain peculiarity to the body of a Muslim or Jew, changing their physical condition to such an extent that usual interrogation procedures did not need to be followed for them. Following this logic, intercourse with such a body, so changed in a specific way, also required a cleansing execution—burning at the stake, to which both the Muslim and the prostitute desecrated by him had to be subjected.

The desecration was considered on both the spiritual and physical levels. In the eyes of Christians, the ritual of circumcision performed on the body was most directly associated with a physical threat to the body of a Christian woman. From ancient times, this ritual was a completely incomprehensible operation, alien to the Latins. And from Roman times, legislation has sought to prohibit circumcision or curtail the rights of those who had been subjected to it, which were the Jews as there were no Muslims then. Roman law did not have the tools to accept the religious rituals of Judaism. In the Middle Ages, the German mindset, which attached special importance to the bodily integrity of a free person, still refused to accept the rite of circumcision. Combined with the Roman legal traditions and the ideas of the church elders that it was spiritual sacrifice, and not physical, that is made to God in Christianity, this approach remained valid and was enshrined in law. For example, the Visigothic truth also infringed on the rights of the Jews and even prohibited circumcision.

Unlike the Romans and Visigoths, the Christians of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries did not prohibit circumcision, but they still did not understand it and were afraid of it. They began to attach magical meanings to it and suspected that after the ritual, the male body of a non-Christian acquired the ability to cause damage to the physical body and to harm true faith. From that point onward, they were only one step away from the idea of ​​purifying a damaged body through fire. That is why, according to the Cortes of 1510, both the Muslim and the woman engaged in prostitution were subject to death by burning. That is why women who ‘sold love’ so vehemently argued that they had been deceived by their clients and were afraid when they discovered the truth. They started screaming, calling for help, and went to the judge early on Christmas morning.

It must be said that the idea that the body of a Muslim has different characteristics from that of a Christian was not inherent only in the Latin civilization. Among the Muslims who lived in Anatolia in the thirteenth century, for example, there was a widespread belief that baptism cleanses children of an unpleasant odor, that is from the ‘smell of dog’, as the Byzantine canons explained it, and that it also protects against demons. In the Iberian Peninsula, as far as currently known, such practices have not been recorded, but the general Christian idea that washing five times a day—before each time they prayed—speaks for itself because a clean person did not need to wash as often, and this idea was present in the texts of the polemicists there as well. It should be emphasized that we are not talking here about all sorts of mockery and prejudices, which always exist at the grassroots level between members of different faiths.

In tenth-century Baghdad, they used to say that Christians were drunkards, that Jews stank, and that nuns and choir boys had a bad reputation for apparently being readily available. All this is in the realm of folklore, pejorative in nature, but with no existence or development in the texts of legislators or spiritual leaders.

However, the idea of ​​​​the impurity of Muslim men was present in Christian polemical literature and was usually based on the Islamic norm that allowed polygamy, which was interpreted by Christian preachers and theologians as innate promiscuity in sexual contact, intemperance, and licentiousness. However, the fundamental and primary issue that alarmed and led to rejection among Christian authorities, both spiritual and secular, was still the rite of circumcision.

The American researcher David Nirenberg addressed similar subjects, but only in relation to the history of the Pyrenean Jews. Discussing the Latin norms that prohibited physical (cohabitation for example) and sexual contact of Jews with Christians, he emphasized that the threat was not presented by the clergy in religious terms. The rhetoric of the Christians, in both sermons and laws, used the concepts of social and sexual danger, which resulted in a kind of ‘naturalization’ of religious identity that was now expressed through terms of physicality, through a peculiar perception of sexual boundaries.

For the Christians, people belonging to another faith, like the Jews or Muslims, were unconditionally considered strangers due to the ritual transformation of their physicality. The clash of opinions on this issue did not change anything. Of course, even among Christians, the physicality of people of other faiths was treated differently. For example, the king, to whom an official from Tortosa wrote about the case of the Saracen Alush, did not share his own official’s point of view. He did not believe that his Muslim vassals could be tortured without having either evidence or significant suspicions. Moreover, in his order issued in response to the case, he pointed out that the Muslims paid all the taxes imposed on the vassals, including tithes, and the monarch and the church provided them protection.

We have examined in this apparently marginal subject such detail—the prohibition of paid sexual relations with people of other faiths—because this is a specifically Latin invention, and it is directly related to segregation laws. The very fact of the appearance of numerous legal texts dedicated to this subject in the West deserves an explanation. Indeed, nothing like this was created in Muslim lands in the Middle Ages. Neither the Jewish nor Islamic doctrine has ever, as far as is known, approached the issue in this way. Moreover, the Latins themselves, the Franks in particular, when they came to Syria for the crusades, as is well known, behaved very freely and used the services not only of the Christian courtesans who accompanied the army but also of local women.

It should be noted that the Jewish rules discussed at the beginning of our story were aimed at coping with the social consequences of mixed marriages. There was no magic or mysticism in them, only a pragmatic approach based on everyday experience—the women ran the house and raised children, following their habits. Muslim theologians, in turn, cared about the legal protection of the personal interests of spouses and children. They opposed a Muslim woman marrying a man of other faiths not because it would desecrate her, but for the simple reason that a man of another faith could not adequately ensure the protection of all her interests, and that her children should not be raised in another faith. At the same time, Muslim society did not see any problem at all in mixed sexual unions themselves, be it, for example, the marriage of a Muslim with a Jewish woman or his sexual relationship with a Christian concubine.

The Russell brothers, who wrote a description of Aleppo in the eighteenth century, served as physicians in the Levantine Company and knew the life of the city from walks that were off limits to ordinary Europeans. They said, among other things, that the chief eunuch of one of the rulers left the palace at night, after his master went to bed, and spent time with two or three prostitutes in a house nearby. These women could be both Christian and Muslim women, well known to the police. But the Jewish women apparently kept to their own community in Aleppo. From the Russell brothers’ story, it transpires that prostitution here was a legal occupation and was regulated by authorities who were absolutely indifferent to the religious issue.

Only the Latin culture saw in sexual intimacy itself with people of other faiths—which actually is expressed in its paid form—a threat to Christian purity. Thus, the physical body and spiritual integrity, matter, and the sacred became interconnected, and an ordinary person was unexpectedly drawn into an invisible struggle of forces incomprehensible to them.

The magical perception of the incomprehensible and alien, characteristic of the lower religious consciousness, came into contact with the ideas of spiritual vulnerability born among the clergy. However, both the magical ideas and those of the preachers were rooted in one common feeling—fear.

It is curious how a purely medieval story about the vicissitudes of the life of the ‘priestesses of love’, which is seemingly distant from modern history and Nazi ideas, has highlighted a deep historical feature of Western European mentality. In fact, it was in the Middle Ages that this important step was taken in thought, and faith turned out to be tied to the flesh, and perhaps even started to be determined by the flesh in a certain sense. However, in order to get from here to ethnic discrimination and the persecution of Jews, it was necessary to destroy Christianity itself, so that the Jews would have no means left to ‘overcome’ and ‘redeem’ their Jewishness so that the Christian religion itself would be denied, and with it the all-conquering sacrament of baptism. Medieval Latins differed from the Nazis in that they believed in the possibility of salvation for every soul and the cleansing power of divine grace descending on a mortal at the moment of their spiritual birth in Christ. Therefore, interestingly, Muslims accused of adultery with Christian women and sentenced to death at the stake in the fourteenth century could avoid this tragic and painful end by converting to Christianity. By doing this, they saved their lives and property, and sometimes, new social prospects even opened up for them. For Jews in 1939, such a solution did not exist.

Concluding this lecture, I would like to draw attention to one more important circumstance. The segregation regulations regarding sexual relations in the Latin tradition had a pronounced gender connotation. It was men of other faiths who were subject to sexual discrimination. Jewish or Muslim women could be subjected to sexual exploitation, and they could be deprived of their freedom. But they were never accused of physical uncleanness, nor were they seen as a threat of desecration. Even in cases where, according to the law, a Muslim or Jewish woman was subject to the death penalty, Christian officials always replaced this measure with slavery in favor of the royal treasury. And the sovereign's treasurer monitored such matters with all attention in order to prevent damage.

In general, segregation laws affecting marital and intimate relationships were characteristic of all three traditions originating from the Abrahamic religions. This ancient way of preserving group identity is well known today, although it is now rarely supported by public authority or state laws, but is more often found at the level of private choice, family rule, and local customs followed by a religious or ethnic community.