The Mercenary Mediterranean_ Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon - Hussein Fancy

72 chapter three

the royal administration.^143 Against a backdrop of new efforts to convert,

expel, and demonize Jews throughout thirteenth- century Europe, the rise

of these Jewish royal administrators has led some historians to speak of

a “Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry”— a period of toleration and intel-

lectual creativity that belied the language of servitude.^144

Rather than measuring religious interaction in terms of tolerance and

intolerance — which is to say, in modern liberal terms — it might be better

to ask what, if anything, drew together slavery and privilege in this period.

For instance, while speaking of his Muslim soldiers as servi camerae re-

gis, Frederick granted them exceptional privileges such as knighthoods.^145

David Abulafia has suggested that this notion of Jewish and Muslim ser-

vitude in fact reflected the conflation of two traditions: first, a more an-

cient Augustinian tradition that emphasized the debased status of Jews

on account of their rejection and murder of Christ; and second, a German

and Sicilian tradition of privileged Jewish and Muslim cameral servitude,

regularized by Frederick II. Frederick’s use of the ambiguous term ser-

vus, Abulafia has further contended, also reflected a shift away from a

sense of the word as “servant” and toward “slave” or “possessed,” as it

had signified in Roman law.^146 As a whole, the expression servi camerae

regis marked Frederick’s attempt to assert exclusive jurisdiction over non-

Christians, a pointed challenge to the counterclaims of the Church and

the nobility. By this logic, these soldiers’ increased privilege derived from

rather than stood in opposition to their enslavement by the king.

In precisely the same fashion as Frederick II, the Aragonese kings used

non- Christians to challenge the authority of the Church and nobility as

well as assert their exclusive and exceptional right of jurisdiction.^147 Pere

relied upon Jewish administrators to lessen his dependence on the nobil-

ity, to create a body of bureaucrats who were personally dependent upon

him.^148 Similarly, he turned to the Muslim jenets to serve as his personal

protectors and fill his armies. In brief, he used Jews and Muslims not only

to defend but also to articulate his claims to absolute authority.

While this relationship may seem counterintuitive to modern sensibili-

ties, in the wake of his conquest of Sicily in 1282 , Pere’s own noblemen

recognized this pattern and connection. Rising up in rebellion, a large

coalition of Aragonese noblemen, calling themselves the Unions, explic-

itly challenged the king’s claim to sovereignty (merum imperium).^149 They

called for a reduction of royal jurisdiction and a return to respect for cus-

tomary law, rejecting “the imperium... which was never known in the

kingdom... and other new things without following the custom.”^150 More

significantly, they demanded that Pere dismiss “the Jews and foreigners”