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

6 introduction

conceptions of the relationship between divine and human authority, be-

tween theology and law, circulated within and across Christian and Islamic

contexts. As the case of the jenets will demonstrate, these ideas overlapped

to such a degree that to say Christians and Muslims met in the medieval

Mediterranean begs the question. Christianity and Islam were already in-

extricably intertwined there. Abandoning stable conceptions of politics

and religion does not mean casting one’s hands up in surrender, collaps-

ing into relativism or confusion. Instead, it enables and has enabled more

capacious and faithful versions of analysis.^16 When we remove these tired

lenses, the history of the jenets comes into focus.

Imperial Desire

The dynastic union between the counts of Barcelona and the kings of

Aragon in the twelfth century began the process of transforming a loose

assemblage of archaic counties and administrative units into the central-

ized confederation that would eventually be called the Crown of Aragon

and become a Mediterranean empire (map 2 ). The medieval kingdoms of

Aragon and Catalonia occupied the diverse terrain of northeastern Ibe-

ria, extending from the high Pyrenees southward to fertile Ebro Valley

in Aragon and the coast of Catalonia. From these shores, a thriving mer-

chant class shipped wine, wood, wool, and other wares across the middle

sea. Taking advantage of their economic and demographic strength, as

well as the political disorder in al- Andalus, the first “count- kings” pushed

their borders southward and aggressively settled new lands. Their efforts

at unifying these disparate realms, however, were less than successful. In

promulgating a new law code, the Usatges of Barcelona, Ramon Beren-

guer IV (r. 1131 – 1162 ) spoke of himself in Roman imperial terms, as

“Prince ( princeps),” and claimed for himself absolute jurisdiction. Such

grandiose rhetoric provoked tensions both at home and abroad, tensions

that foreshadowed the events of the following century. On the one hand,

these kings faced resistance from powerful Aragonese and Catalan noble-

men. As they would when later confronting the alliance of the Crown with

the jenets in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these noblemen

blended complaints of overreaching royal authority with accusations of Is-

lamophilia (and indeed, of Philo- Judaism).^17 On the other hand, this mag-

niloquence heightened competition with the French and Castilian kings.

In a subtle but telling indicator of an emerging anti- Frankish sentiment,

after 1180 , the Aragonese began to date their charters according to the