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

the unpaid debt 111

local justice — Petrus Sancii — convicted Puçola’s murderers and seized

their property.^67 In the second attack, just a few days later, the same al-

mogàvers turned their sights on three of Abenadalil’s jenets— Masset, As-

sager, and Alabes — attacking them and making off with their horses.^68

Did anything link these two moments of violence?

If not for a letter, another complaint from King Alfons to Petrus San-

cii, the fact that the same men perpetrated these attacks would only be a

coincidence. Alfons explained that at the time of his death, Puçola owed

a debt to Abenadalil. Puçola and his troops had agreed to pay Abenadalil

in return for the privilege of raiding alongside his jenets. On the eve of

the second attack on the jenets, Alfons had ordered Petrus Sancii to use

Puçola’s goods to pay that debt “so that [Abenadalil] should not have to

complain of defective justice.”^69 In other words, the goods seized by Pe-

trus Sancii from the almogàvers had made their way into the possession

of Abenadalil’s jenets, providing a material link between the two episodes.

The Crown’s response to this outburst of violence is telling. While it ap-

pears that King Alfons supported the jenets, his privileged agents, against

the almogàvers, he, in fact, played both sides. Indeed, after the initial at-

tack on Puçola, Alfons wrote to the Petrus Sancii, insisting that the Chris-

tian almogàvers — however guilty — should have their goods returned and

moreover, be sent back into service in Valencia, which is to say, to fight

the Marīnid Ghuzāh, their traditional Muslim enemies, who were actively

raiding the frontier at this moment.^70 One could argue that Alfons’ deci-

sion to exculpate the almogàvers precipitated the second act, not only in

giving them a sense of immunity but also legitimacy in attacking the jenets.

Demonstrating that his response was not unique, Alfons responded to

the second attack even more equivocally than the first. Caught between

his jenets and almogàvers, he ordered Petrus Sancii to return the jenets’

horses but not to arrest the almogàvers.^71

Perhaps then to call Puçola’s death a murder obscures more than it re-

veals. The Aragonese king let his almogàvers attack Abenadalil’s associate

with impunity, which, to put it differently, is to say that Puçola was killed

but not exactly murdered. The king, who embodied the law, was indifferent

to the matter. Similarly, these Christian raiders received a slap on the wrist

for attacking the jenets, making Alfons’ complaint against Petrus Sancii for

“defective justice” appear absurd. Did Alfons, one must then ask, similarly

abandon justice in the case of the Calatayud villagers once Abenadalil’s

troops had moved on? Better yet, did these frontiersmen know that the

king’s threats were only that, rhetoric and nothing more?