The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms_ The Struggle for Dominion, 1200-1500

THE WESTER!\ MED!TERRANEAJ\ KIJ\GDOMS 1200-1500

as a hammer of heretics. In his relations with the Jews, there
is a similar ambivalence. James was a keen supporter of the
acerbic friar Ramon de Penyafort, who directed his cam-
paigns against Jews, Muslims and usurers, all ofwhom existed
in embarrassing plenty in James's realms. The king who in
1263 presided over the damaging confrontation between
the Girona rabbi Nahmanides and the zealous friar Paul the
Christian, a convert from Judaism, on the subject of whether
the Messiah had come, extended his protection to his Jewish
subjects, rapidly revoking the requirement that they should
listen to conversionist sermons, and he licensed ample Jewish
settlement in M~jorca.^1 ~ His private life, replete with a succes-
sion of mistresses, and his brutish treatment of churchmen
for whom he conceived a dislike (such as the confessor who
lost his tongue for revealing what he had heard), only made
him more aware of his need to placate God by serving Him
in war, and only made the pope more aware of his moral tur-
pitude. Twice excommunicated, he took more easily his loss
of the Church's favour than did his contemporary Frederick
II; but then he was not also emperor and was not engaged in
war with the papacy's allies. The truth was, as Catalan chron-
iclers emphasised, that under James thousands of masses were
now being recited in lands that had once resounded (and
actually still did so) to the call of the muezzin.

THE RISE OF BARCELONA

The most startling development under James I was, argu-

ably, the emergence of Barcelona as a major port, whose

merchants were able to compete with those of Genoa and

Tuscany not merely in the western Mediterranean but even

as far afield as Alexandria and Constantinople. There are

many possible explanations: the town's role as a capital city,

attracting to itself not just trade but tribute from Muslim

borderlands, populated by a mixed business community of

42. ]. Cohen, The friars and thefews (Ithaca, NY, 1982); but cf. R. Chazan,
    Daggers of Faith. Thirteenth-century Christian missionizing and jewish response
    (Berkeley /Los Angeles, 1989), which is a preferable interpretation of
    the evolution of anti~Jewish sentiment; also R. Chazan, Barcelona and
    Beyond. The disputation of 1263 and its aftermath (Berkeley /Los Angeles,
    1992).