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

sovereigns and slaves 71

whom commanded more wealth and arms than the king himself, balked.

They complained of “innovations,” of the intrusion of foreign law.^136 They

blamed the preponderance of “legists” and “decretalists,” by which they

meant men trained in Roman law, at the king’s court.^137 These pretensions

to absolute sovereignty and royal jurisdiction as well as conflicts with the

nobility peaked again during the time of King Pere II. Both Sicily and

North Africa became zones in which the king hoped to free himself from

the grip of his noblemen and express a new independence, a full sover-

eignty. Indeed, there may be some truth to the Franciscan writer Fran-

cesc Eiximenis’ (d. 1409 ) record of Pere’s fondness for the radical and

voluntaristic expression “the law goes wherever the king wills (lla va la

llei on vol lo rei).”^138 These pretensions to imperial authority were chal-

lenged not only at home but also abroad. The French and Castilian kings

competed to cast themselves as the heirs of the Holy Roman emperor, as

universal sovereigns.^139

In addition to sharing its extreme political theology, the Aragonese

court took on the appearance of Frederick’s, adapting its institutions,

habits, and rituals in order to elevate the image of the king. Among these,

as I have argued, was the tradition of maintaining Muslim guardsmen.

Beginning with the reign of Alfons III, it should be added, the fourteenth-

century Aragonese kings also adopted the tradition of self- coronation,

mirroring the brashness of Frederick’s own act at Jerusalem in 1229.^140

What, however, did these performances and ideologies of omnipotence

have to do with the employment of Muslim soldiers? Importantly, just as

enthusiastic new readings of Roman law elevated the king to near divine

status, they had profound but opposite implications for non- Christians,

stripping them of all rights. And precisely for this reason, like the Sicil-

ians before them, the Aragonese kings found in religious others not only

skilled agents but also symbolic expressions of their own power.

As John Boswell has explained, from the twelfth century, religious

minorities — Muslims and Jews — enjoyed a consistent if ambiguous legal

status in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon. The Aragonese kings first

referred to Jews and, later, Muslims as well as “their property” or “ser-

vants of the royal chamber (servi camerae regis).”^141 These ideas placed

Jews and Muslims at the whim of kings.^142 Nevertheless, despite this

rhetoric, and as has been noted before, in the early years of the reign of

King Pere II the political status of Jews in particular appeared to improve

dramatically. Several highly educated and influential Jewish families —

including that of Samuel Abenmenassé— came to hold elite positions in