ethno-religious minorities 375
different strategies and languages, or rhetorical registers, to express their relations
with minority communities. The most potent vector of action was at the corporate
level, where policy was determined by pragmatic concerns, and religious identity was
a secondary factor.
Indeed, although religious identity was the primary pole of self-identification, and
determined one’s legal status in society, in many mundane transactions and exchanges
between individuals or with institutions, it was simply not a consideration. It was only
when transactions carried a “ritual” element (that is, one associated explicitly with
religious identity), or when it offered a competitive advantage, that the actors involved
were forced or chose to take religious identity into account, thereby invoking the
ethno-religious hierarchy, and the marginalization of the minority party that this
would imply (see diagram, Catlos, 2004: 398). Within this world, short- to medium-
term “success” or survival for minority communities depended on their capacity to
dominate key socio-economic niches in larger society. Specialized, high-status voca-
tions provided the greatest leverage, but these ultimately generated tension, as they
tended to attract competition from within the in-group, and endowed minorities with
a status seen to violate the divinely-ordained hierarchy. In the final analysis, the most
successful minority communities may have been those that lived in homogenous, self-
contained and isolated enclaves, the Portuguese crypto-Jews, the Alawites, and the
Druze, who survived innocuously up to the twentieth century.
A Mediterranean phenomenon?The ethno-religious diversity that was a particular characteristic of the Mediterranean
during the Middle Ages had a tremendous impact on Muslim, Christian and Jewish soci-
ety and culture, both within the region and beyond, and was instrumental to the trans-
formations that would be articulated as modernity in each (see further Ben-Yehoyada,
this volume). These collectives came to define themselves to a significant degree as a
consequence of their opposition; however, their very affinity provided the potential for
acculturation, innovation and the transfer of technology, products and ideas, while the
conditions of contact in the Mediterranean—particularly the long-term presence of
significant out-group minority communities in these societies, and the atmosphere of
political-economic competition—provided the opportunity. Whereas this type of ethno-
religious diversity may not have been unique to the Mediterranean, it was particularly
broad, profound and sustained here, and came to define the social, cultural, and economic
character of the region from late antiquity into the early modern era.
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Castro, A. (1948) España en su historia. Cristianos, moros y judíos, Buenos Aires: Losada.
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