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

sovereigns and slaves 59

rational thought and, as such, promoted violence. In short, they dismissed

belief as blind adherence. Thus, in the alliance of the Crown of Aragon

with the Muslim jenets, Giménez Soler saw a welcome turn toward politi-

cal secularization, away from superstition and toward self- interest, away

from medieval ways of thinking and toward modern ones.^37 Not surpris-

ingly, Spanish Catholics vigorously objected to these interpretations.

They saw these kings and soldiers as traitors and transgressors, as men

whose greed had undermined the authentic religious and national spirit

of the Spanish people.^38 They saw religion as an absolute and necessary

commitment without which community could not survive. These compet-

ing interpretations of mercenaries were part of the bitter and deadlocked

twentieth- century convivencia debates, debates between Spanish liberals

and conservative Catholics about the nature of religious coexistence in

Spain’s medieval past and the value of secular tolerance for the present.

Medievalists now view these disputes as a scholarly embarrassment.^39

They have criticized both the liberals and the conservatives for distorting

the past in the service of the political extremes that provoked the bloody

Spanish Civil War. They have challenged the empirical value of tolerance

for understanding religious interaction.^40 And most assuredly, they have

rejected the essential contention, shared by both liberals and conserva-

tives, that religious beliefs were inflexible commitments which impeded

and opposed peaceful interaction. But how have they made sense of fig-

ures like the jenets?

Privilege

The relationship of the Crown to the jenets was not limited to a finan-

cial transaction. In addition to regular salaries, the Crown also conferred

upon the jenets numerous gifts and privileges — small and large — that, in

fact, distinguished them from other soldiers on the battlefield and thus of-

fer a different perspective on how the Aragonese kings might have viewed

these foreign Muslim soldiers.

To begin with the smallest and least significant of such privileges, all jen-

ets regularly received basic clothes (vestes) and cloth ( pannus) for making

clothes.^41 In 1290 , for example, King Alfons II reminded his tax collectors

not to assess a port duty (lezda) on cloth destined for his army of jenets in

Valencia precisely because it was a privilege and not a sale.^42 Nothing indi-

cates that the jenets wore or were made to wear uniforms or distinguishing