History Skills Workshop Reader

Fall 2013

History 201 (European History to 1789)

Edited by Shannon McSheffrey and Ted McCormick

Contents History Skills Workshop Syllabus Primary Source Readings 1: Gregory of Tours on the Conversion of Clovis (c. 496) 2: Life of Christina of Markyate: Christinas rebellion (12th century) 3: Las Siete Partidas: Laws on Jews (1265) 4: Secondary source: Chris Lowney, from A Vanished World (2005) 5: Martin Luther on the Peasants War in Germany (1525) 6: Secondary source: Patrick Collinson, from The Reformation (2004) 7: Samuel Pepys on the Plague (1665) 8: Voltaire, Candide (1759) 9 13 17 22 40 49 58 63 2

Cover image: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Librarian, c.1570. Oil on canvas. Original in Skokloster Castle; image accessed via Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arcimboldo_Librarian_Stokholm.jpg)

HIST201: European History to 1789 All Sections (X, XX, Y) History Skills Workshop Syllabus Fall Term 2013 Faculty Coordinator Dr. Ted McCormick Office: LB-1001.01 [email protected] Office hours by appointment Head Teaching Assistant Kris Archibald TA Office: LB-1007.00 [email protected]

Contact information (read with care) Questions about lectures should be directed to your lecturer (Dr. Leddy for section X; Dr. Wilson for sections Y and XX). Questions about History Skills Workshop meetings or assignments should be directed to your Teaching Assistant (TA). Questions about the administration of HSWs should be directed to the Head TA (Kris Archibald). Contact the Faculty Coordinator (Dr. McCormick) only if no-one else has been able to address your concern about the course. History Skills Workshop (HSW): description, aims, and relation to lectures The HSWs are small classes (or conference groups) whose purpose is to develop a set of skills crucial for history and the humanities: critical reading, coherent writing, and persuasive argument. Each HSW is taught by a graduate Teaching Assistant. All HSWs are attached to one of two lecture courses taught by professors: History 201: Europe to 1789 (Fall Term); and History 202: Europe from 1789 (Winter Term). Both courses are required for all undergraduates in History. Although the two courses complement one another, non-History students can also benefit from either course. The practice of history involves the analysis of two basic types of sources. The first is direct evidence from the past, usually called primary sources. These are documents and artifacts that originate in the time and place being studied. All history depends upon primary sources; in the HIST201 HSW, you will be introduced to six primary sources (plus two recent historians arguments about two of them) drawn from two particular historical fields: medieval Europe, from about 4001400; and early modern Europe, from about 1400-1789. Making sense of texts from distant times and places, created by people with different experiences, ideas and values from our own is a complicated task. Apart from its intrinsic interest, however, learning to analyze and interpret sources and to express your interpretation convincingly hones critical, analytical, and communication skills. HIST202 deals with another field of history modern Europe (this usually means Europe since the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789) and the HIST202 HSWs focus more on another set of skills. Here, you will read and analyze secondary sources. These are historians arguments about past events and processes, based on their interpretations of primary source evidence. Reading secondary sources is challenging in its own way: it requires you to develop a

scholarly vocabulary, to detect interpretive arguments behind what may look like statements of fact, and to compare how different scholarly approaches shape the way primary sources are interpreted and thus what history looks like. (This is often referred to as historiography, i.e. the study of historical writing.) The HIST201 HSW should familiarize you with primary source analysis and enable you to construct persuasive interpretations of primary evidence; the HIST202 HSW should teach you to read secondary-source arguments and to assess their interpretations of the past in other words, it should give you an awareness of historiographical questions. These are the basic tools of the historians craft. Your ability to use them, however, depends upon other kinds of historical knowledge. Interpreting a primary source requires knowing something about where it came from (its context); criticizing a historians argument requires some knowledge of the subject matter (the field of history) that he or she is addressing. This is where the lectures and associated textbook readings matter: HIST201 introduces the key events, processes, and defining features of medieval and early modern Europe; HIST202 does the same for Europe since 1789. Assignments and Late Policy for the HIST201 HSW In the HIST201 HSW, students will submit four short papers over the course of the term. Each paper will analyze a primary source in the HSW Reader. (Sources from the HSW Reader may also be used in exam questions for HIST201.) Each paper will be short, with a word limit of about 600. Please respect the word limit: papers of more than 650 or fewer than 550 words will lose 5% of the mark. All essays must be submitted in class in the week following the class in which the relevant reading is discussed. Late work will normally receive a zero (0). Required Texts for the HIST201 HSW Please note that textbooks required for your lecture sections are not listed here; consult your lecture syllabus or your professor about these. The HSW Reader is available for download from the course website (on MOODLE): McSheffrey, Shannon, and Ted McCormick (eds.). The HIST201 History Skills Workshop Reader, Fall Term 2013 This writing guide (required for HSW assignments) is available from the university bookstore: Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 7th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012)

Conference Group Readings and Assignments Conference Gp. Meeting (by Discussion Topics and Assignments Due at Start of number and week; individual Assigned Readings Meeting HSW schedules will vary) 1: Week of Sept. 9 Introduction: What is a document analysis? Rampolla, chs. 1 and 2 2: Week of Sept. 16 Discussion of Reading 1 (Gregory of Tours) HSW Reader, reading #1 3: Week of Sept. 23 Workshop on exam essay Document analysis paper on preparation Reading 1 (600 words) Rampolla, ch. 3 (part 3) 4: Week of Sept. 30 Discussion of first paper; discussion of Reading 2 (Christina of Markyate) HSW Reader, reading #2 5: Week of Oct. 7 Discussion of Reading 3 (Las Siete Partidas) HSW Reader, reading #3 6: Week of Oct. 14 How Historians Work, pt. 1: Document analysis paper on Lowney on Alfonso X Reading 3 (600 words) HSW Reader, reading #4 7: Week of Oct. 21 NO GROUP MEETING; meet individually with TA to discuss second paper 8: Week of Oct. 28 Discussion of Reading 5 (Martin Luther) HSW Reader, reading #5 9: Week of Nov. 4 How Historians Work, pt. 2: Document analysis paper on Collinson on Luther Reading 5 (600 words) HSW Reader, reading #6 10: Week of Nov. 11 Discussion of third paper; Discussion of Reading 7 (Samuel Pepys) HSW Reader, reading #7 11: Week of Nov. 18 Discussion of Reading 8 Document analysis paper on (Voltaire) Reading 7 (600 words) HSW Reader, reading #8 12: Week of Nov. 25 Discussion of fourth paper; evaluation of Conference gps. [Make-up classes on Dec. 2 for classes missed on Thanksgiving Day (Oct. 14)]

Grading Distribution and Attendance Please note: an explanation of grading norms is available on the Department of History website and has been included as an appendix below. Together, the four essays are worth 75% of the final mark for the HSW (i.e., each essay is worth 18.75%). During Weeks 2-11 inclusive, you will be also graded on your participation in HSW meetings and discussions. This participation is worth 25% of the HSW final mark. Attendance at HSW meetings is mandatory. If students miss a meeting for a serious reason, such as an illness (doctors note required), they should inform their teaching assistant at the earliest possible opportunity. Work is not a valid excuse. At the end of the semester, the final HSW grade will be transmitted to your professor in History 201, where it will count for 30% of your final mark in that course. General Instructions for Assignments All four essays to be written for the History 201 Skills Workshop take the form of a primary document analysis. One week before each assignment is due, several questions to guide your thinking and writing will be posted on the History Skills Workshop website. You may access this website through your myconcordia portal. Additionally, you will find supplementary readings from the Rampolla text which should help you in the preparation of your essays. Below is a general introduction to the type of essay you will be preparing for the Skills Workshop. Writing a Document Analysis This is an exercise to allow you to think about how historians use primary sources (that is, direct historical evidence) to understand the past. The most persuasive historical arguments are those based directly on this sort of evidence. Accordingly, your job is to build an argument using the documents themselves as your basis. For background, use the lectures and the textbook; you should, however, rely primarily on the documents themselves for your essay. Your job is not to summarize or write an abstract of the documents, but rather to analyze the material with which you are presented. Interpreting historical documentslike any kind of analytical thinkinginvolves asking questions. Coming up with appropriate questions is the most difficult part of this process. The most effective way to organize this sort of essay is usually thematic. A thematic approach must start before you begin to write, indeed right from the time you pick up the documents to read. While reading, be alert for themes or issues that arise. These will form the basis of your paper. You do not have to cover the whole document: your job in the paper is to write an analysis, not the analysis of the document. Pay attention particularly to the questions for discussion you will receive in advance of each weeks readings as well as any suggestions in the introductory notes to the documents; they will give you some guidance about the sorts of issues that would be a fruitful focus for your short paper. When using historical evidence, you must always think about where the evidence comes from: who wrote it? when? why? what was the documents purpose? You will not be able to answer

all of these questions fully, but you should take advantage of the lectures and your textbook to try to understand the context. Appendix I: Grading Norms in the Department of History A = Superior work in both content and presentation. This is a student who appears, even at an early stage, to be a potential Honours student. The work answers all components of a question. It demonstrates clear and persuasive argument, a well- structured text that features solid introductory and concluding arguments, and examples to illustrate the argument. Few, if any presentation errors appear. B = Better than average in both content and presentation. This student has the potential for Honours, though it is less evident than for the A student. Student's work is clear and well structured. Minor components of an answer might be missing, and there may be fewer illustrations for the argument. Some minor but noticeable errors in presentation may have interfered with the general quality of the work. C = Student demonstrates a satisfactory understanding of the material. Ideas are presented in a style that is at least somewhat coherent and orderly. Occasional examples are provided to support arguments. Presentation errors that affect the quality of the work are more apparent than in B work. Some components of a question may have been omitted in the response. D = Student has only a basic grasp of the material. Sense of organization and development is often not demonstrated in the response. Few, if any, examples are provided to illustrate argument. Major components of a question might have been neglected; and major presentation errors hamper the work. F = Shows an inadequate grasp of the material. Work has major errors of style; and provides no supporting illustration for argument. Ideas are not clear to the reader. Work lacks a sense of structure. Percent 90-100 85-89 80-84 77-79 73-76 70-72 67-69 63-66 60-62 57-59 53-56 50-52 0-49 Grade A+ A AB+ B BC+ C CD+ D DF, FNS Grade Points 4.30 4.00 3.70 3.30 3.00 2.70 2.30 2.00 1.70 1.30 1.00 0.70 0

Appendix II: Code of Conduct (Academic) Plagiarism: The most common offense under the Academic Code of Conduct is plagiarism, which the Code defines as the presentation of the work of another person as one's own or without proper acknowledgement. This could be material copied word for word from books, journals, internet sites, professors course notes, etc. It could be material that is paraphrased but closely resembles the original source. It could be the work of a fellow student, for example, an answer on a quiz, data for a lab report, a paper or assignment completed by another student. It might be a paper purchased through one of the many available sources. Plagiarism does not refer to words alone - it can also refer to copying images, graphs, tables, and ideas. Presentation is not limited to written work. It also includes oral presentations, computer assignments and artistic works. Finally, if you translate the work of another person into French or English and do not cite the source, this is also plagiarism. In short: DO NOT COPY, PARAPHRASE OR TRANSLATE ANYTHING FROM ANYWHERE WITHOUT SAYING FROM WHERE YOU OBTAINED IT! (Source: Academic Integrity Website: http://provost.concordia.ca/academicintegrity/plagiarism/) Appendix III: List of Concordia Services for Students History Departments Academic Advisor: Dr. Alison Rowley ([email protected]) History Undergraduate Program Assistant Darleen Robertson ([email protected]) Concordia Counselling and Development offers career services, psychological services, student learning services, etc. http://cdev.concordia.ca/ The Concordia Library Citation and Style Guides: http://library.concordia.ca/help/howto/citations.html Advocacy and Support Services http://supportservices.concordia.ca/ Student Transition Centre http://stc.concordia.ca/ New Student Program http://newstudent.concordia.ca/ Access Centre for Students with Disabilities http://supportservices.concordia.ca/disabilities/

Student Success Centre http://studentsuccess.concordia.ca/ The Academic Integrity Website http://provost.concordia.ca/academicintegrity/ Financial Aid & Awards http://web2.concordia.ca/financialaid/ Health Services http://www-health.concordia.ca/

1: Gregory of Tours on the Conversion of Clovis (c. 496)1

In about 496 C.E. Chlodowech (Clovis, or Louis), the founder of the Frankish power which was to develop into modern France and Germany, was converted to Catholic Christianity from paganism. This was an event of high historical importance. If, like other Germanic kings, he had become an Arian heretic, he would have been hopelessly estranged from his subject Roman population. As it was, the Franks and the provincials coalesced as in none other of the new barbarian kingdoms. The story of Cloviss conversion is told by a number of chroniclers and historians of the age, but most notably by the leading historian of the early Franks, Gregory of Tours (539-594). Gregory was of a Roman family (i.e. he was not a Frank himself) and served as the bishop of Tours (a city in what is now central France). His massive History of the Franks is a landmark in early medieval writing. When considering Gregorys work as a historian, remember that the discipline of history itself has a history. The notion that historians should try to write impartially and objectively about the past, for instance, is a relatively recent concept, developed in the nineteenth century. Early medieval Christian historians like Gregory of Tours had a rather different motivation behind their writing: to show readers the importance and strength of Christianity. For them, the depiction of the past was a vital tool for the shaping of their own present. Because the concept of historical objectivity had not even been invented when they wrote, it makes little sense to blame Gregory for what might seem inaccurate or even fictitious about his accounts of conversion. Instead, it is much more interesting and appropriate for you to focus in your paper on precisely how Gregory chose to present the conversion of Clovis. Remember that Gregorys readers shared his views of what history was about: his agendathe promotion of Christianitywas not a hidden one, but an entirely open one. History of the Franks , Book 2, chapters 28-31, 42-43 28. The king of the Burgundes was called Gundioc: he was of the family of that King Athanaric who persecuted the Christians and about whom I have told you. He had four sons: Gundobad, Godigisel, Chilperic, and Gundomar. Gundobad killed his brother Chilperic and drowned Chilperics wife after tying a stone around her neck. He drove Chilperics two daughters into exile: the elder, whose name was Chroma, became a religious [a nun], and the younger was called Clotild. Clovis often sent envoys to Burgundy and they saw the girl Clotild. They observed that she was an elegant young woman and clever for her years, and they discovered that she was of blood royal. They reported all this to Clovis and he immediately sent more messengers to Gundobad to ask for her hand in marriage. Gundobad was afraid to refuse and he handed Clotild over to them. They took her back with them, and presented her to their king. Clovis already had a son called Theuderic by one of his mistresses, but he was delighted when he saw Clotild and made her his wife. 29. The first child which Clotild bore for Clovis was a son. She wanted to have her baby baptized, and she kept on urging her husband to agree to this. The gods whom you worship are no good, she would say. They havent even been able to help themselves, let alone others. They are carved out of stone or wood or some old piece of metal. The very names which you have given them were the
Introductory section Shannon McSheffrey, 2007. Text from The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), 140-45, 156-58.
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names of men, not of gods. Take your Saturn, for example, who ran away with his own son to avoid being exiled from his kingdom, or so they say; and Jupiter, that obscene perpetrator of all sorts of mucky deeds, who couldnt keep his hands off other men, who had his fun with all his female relatives and couldnt even refrain from intercourse with his own sister, Jovisque Et soror et coniunx,2 to quote her own words. What have Mars and Mercury ever done for anyone? They may have been endowed with magic arts, but they were certainly not worthy of being called divine. You ought instead to worship Him who created at a word and out of nothing heaven, and earth, the sea and all that therein is,3 who made the sun to shine, who lit the sky with stars, who peopled the water with fish, the earth with beasts, the sky with flying creatures, at whose nod the fields became fair with fruits, the trees with apples, the vines with grapes, by whose hand the race of man was made, by whose gift all creation is constrained to serve in deference and devotion the man He made. The Queen, who was true to her faith, brought her son to be baptized. She ordered the church to be decorated with hangings and curtains, in the hope that the king, who remained stubborn in the face of argument, might be brought to the faith by ceremony. The child was baptized; he was given the name of Ingomer; but no sooner had he received baptism than he died in his white robes. Clovis was extremely angry. He began immediately to reproach his Queen. If he had been dedicated in the name of my gods, he said, he would have lived without question; but now that he has been baptized in the name of your God he has not been able to live a single day! I give thanks to Almighty God, replied Clotild, the Creator of all things, who has not found me completely unworthy, for He has deigned to welcome to his kingdom a child conceived in my womb. I am not at all cast down in my mind because of what has happened, for I know that my child, who was called away from this world in his white baptismal robes, will be nurtured in the sight of God. Some time later Clotild bore a second son. He was baptized Chlodomer. He began to ail and Clovis said: What else do you expect? It will happen to him as it happened to his brother: no sooner is he baptized in the name of your Christ than he will die! Clotild prayed to the Lord and at His command the baby recovered. 30. Queen Clotild continued to pray that her husband might recognize the true God and give up his idol-worship. Nothing could persuade him to accept Christianity. Finally war broke out against the Alamanni and in this conflict he was forced by necessity to accept what he had refused of his own free will. It so turned out that when the two armies met on the battlefield there was great slaughter and the troops of Clovis were rapidly being annihilated. He raised his eyes to heaven when he saw this, felt compunction in his heart and was moved to tears. Jesus Christ, he said, you who Clotild maintains to be the Son of the living God, you who deign to give help to those in travail and victory to those who trust in you, in faith I beg the glory of your help. If you will give me victory over my enemies, and if I may have evidence of that miraculous power which the people dedicated to your name say that they have experienced, then I will believe in you and I will be baptized in your name. I have called upon my own gods, but, as I see only too clearly, they have no intention of helping me. I therefore cannot believe that they possess any power, for they do not come to the assistance of
2 3

Virgil, Aeneid, 1, 46-7: at once sister and wife of Jupiter. Psalms 146:6.

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those who trust in them. I now call upon you. I want to believe in you, but I must first be saved from my enemies. Even as he said this the Alamanni turned their backs and began to run away. As soon as they saw that their king was killed they submitted to Clovis. We beg you, they said, to put an end to this slaughter. We are prepared to obey you. Clovis stopped the war. He made a speech in which he called for peace. Then he went home. He told the Queen how he had won a victory by calling on the name of Christ. This happened in the fifteenth year of his reign. 31. The Queen then ordered Saint Remigius, bishop of the town of Rheims, to be summoned in secret. She begged him to impart the word of salvation to the king. The bishop asked Clovis to meet him in private and began to urge him to believe in the true God, Maker of heaven and earth, and to forsake his idols, which were powerless to help him or anyone else. The king replied: I have listened to you willingly, holy father. There remains one obstacle. The people under my command will not agree to forsake their gods. I will go and put to them what you have just said to me. He arranged a meeting with his people, but God in his power had preceded him, and before he could say a word all those present shouted in unison, We will give up worshipping our mortal gods, pious king, and we are prepared to follow the immortal God about whom Remigius preaches. This news was reported to the bishop. He was greatly pleased and he ordered the baptismal pool to be made ready. The public squares were draped with coloured cloths, the churches were adorned with white hangings, the baptistry was prepared, sticks of incense gave off clouds of perfume, sweet-smelling candles gleamed bright and the holy place of baptism was filled with divine fragrance. God filled the hearts of all present with such grace that they imagined themselves to have been transported to some perfumed paradise. King Clovis asked that he might be baptized first by the bishop. Like some new Constantine4 he stepped forward to the baptismal pool, ready to wash away the sores of his old leprosy and to be cleansed in flowing water from the sordid stains which he had borne so long. As he advanced for his baptism, the holy man of God addressed him in these pregnant words, Bow your head in meekness, Sicamber.5 Worship what you have burnt, burn what you have been wont to worship. Saint Remigius was a bishop of immense learning and a great scholar more than anything else, but he was also famous for his holiness and he was the equal of Saint Silvester6 for the miracles which he performed. We still have an account of his life, which tells how he raised a man from the dead. King Clovis confessed his belief in God Almighty, three in one. He was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and marked in holy chrism with the sign of the Cross of Christ. More than three thousand of his army were baptized at the same time. His sister Albofled was baptized, but she soon after died and was gathered to the Lord. Another sister of Clovis, called Lanthechild, was converted at the same time. She had accepted the Arian heresy, but she confessed the triune majesty of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and received the holy chrism.

A reference to the Roman emperor Constantine, the first emperor to convert to Christianity. Sicamber: another name for the ruling house of the Franks (usually now called the Merovingians). The phrase bow your head (in Latin: mitis depone colla) is sometimes also translated as Take off your necklaces, i.e. amulets symbolic of adherence to paganism. 6 Silvester or Sylvester was pope 314-335 and, according to legend, baptised Constantine.
4 5

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42. There lived in Cambrai at this time a king called Ragnachar who was so sunk in debauchery that he could not even keep his hands off the women of his own family. He had an adviser called Farro who was given to the same filthy habits. It was said of Farro that when food, or a present, or indeed any gift was brought to the king, Ragnachar would say that it was good enough for him and his dear Farro. This situation roused their Frankish subjects to the utmost fury. Clovis gave a bribe of golden arm-bands and sword-belts to the leudes7of Ragnachar, to encourage them to call him in against their king. These ornaments looked like gold, but they were really of bronze very cleverly gilded. Clovis marched his army against Ragnachar. Ragnachar sent spies to discover the strength of the invaders. When the spies returned, he asked them just how strong the enemy was. Strong enough for you and your dear Farro, they replied. Clovis arrived in person and drew up his line of battle. Ragnachar witnessed the defeat of his army and prepared to slip away in flight. He was arrested by his own troops and with his arms tied behind his back he was brought before Clovis. His brother Ricchar was dragged in with him. Why have you disgraced our Frankish people by allowing yourself to be bound? asked Clovis. It would have been better for you had you died in battle. He raised his axe and split Ragnachars skull. Then he turned to Ricchar and said: If you had stood by your brother, he would not have been bound in this way. He killed Ricchar with a second blow of his axe. When these two were dead, those who had betrayed them discovered that the gold which they had received from Clovis was counterfeit. When they complained to Clovis, he is said to have answered: This is the sort of gold which a man can expect when he deliberately lures his lord to death. He added that they were lucky to have escaped with their lives, instead of paying for the betrayal of their rulers by being tortured to death. When they heard this, they chose to beg forgiveness, saying that it was enough for them if they were allowed to live. The two kings of whom I have told you, Ragnachar and Ricchar, were relatives of Clovis. At his command their brother Rignomer was also put to death in Le Mans. As soon as all three were slain, Clovis took over their kingdom and their treasure. In the same way he encompassed the death of many other kings and blood-relations of his whom he suspected of conspiring against his kingdom. By doing this he spread his dominion over the whole of Gaul. One day when he had called a general assembly of his subjects, he is said to have made the following remark about the relatives whom he had destroyed: How sad a thing it is that I live among strangers like some solitary pilgrim, and that I have none of my own relations left to help me when disaster threatens! He said this not because he grieved for their deaths, but because in his cunning way he hoped to find some relative still in the land of the living whom he could kill.

Leudes: nobles who had sworn a special oath of loyalty to the king and from whom his personal bodyguard was formed.

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2: The Life of Christina of Markyate: Christinas rebellion (12th c.)8

Christina of Markyate (c. 1096-1160) was born to a noble Anglo-Saxon family in the period following the Norman Conquest of England, after which the status of the Anglo-Saxon nobility was cast into shadow by the new Norman elite. Christinas biography was part of a particularly popular genre in the twelfth century and forward, the lives of saints, in which the narrative celebrated the interesting and miraculous events of a holy persons life. In reading this excerpt from her life, consider the complications that Christian precepts and practices introduced into aristocratic life and politics, and how a young woman such as Christina might employ Christian authority as a counterpoint to a daughters duty to obey her father. In the town of Huntingdon there was born into a family of noble rank a maiden of uncommon holiness and beauty. Her father's name was Autti, her mother's Beatrix. The name which she herself had been given in baptism was Theodora, but later on, through force of circumstance, she changed it to Christina. ... Autti and Beatrix brought their daughter Christina with them to our monastery of the blessed martyr St. Alban, where his sacred bones are revered, to beg his protection for themselves and for their child. When the girl therefore had looked carefully at the place and observed the religious bearing of the monks who dwelt there, she declared how fortunate the inmates were, and expressed a wish to share in their fellowship.... Thenceforward she lost all interest in worldly ostentation and turned to God with all her heart, and said, "Lord, my desire is before Thee, and my groaning is not hid from Thee.... Grant me, I beseech Thee, purity and inviolable virginity whereby Thou mayest renew in me the image of Thy Son: who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit God for ever and ever, Amen." After she had returned to Huntingdon she revealed to Sueno [her spiritual advisor] what she had vowed and he, who was considered in those parts as a light of God, confirmed the virgin's vow before God. ... After this the aforesaid young man [Burthred] called on her father and mother to arrange his betrothal with the girl who they had promised should be his wife. When they spoke to her about preparations for the wedding, she would not listen. And when they asked the reason, she replied: "I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity. On hearing this, they made fun of her rashness. But she remained unmoved by it: therefore they tried to convince her of her foolishness and, despite her rejections, encouraged her to hurry on the marriage preparations. She refused. They brought her gifts and made great promises: she brushed them aside. They cajoled her; they threatened her; but she would not yield. At last they persuaded one of her close friends and inseparable companions, named Helisen, to soothe her ears by a continuous stream of flattery, so that it would arouse in her, by its very persistence, a desire to become the mistress of a house.... But she was quite unable to extort one word signifying her consent even though she had spent a whole year trying out these stratagems. Some time later, however, when they were all gathered together in the church, they made a concerted and sudden attack on her. To be brief, how it happened I cannot tell. All I know is that by God's will, with so many exerting pressure on her from all sides, she yielded (at least in word),
Introductory text Shannon McSheffrey, 2007. Text source: reprinted from The Life of Christina of Markyate, a TwelfthCentury Recluse, edited and translated by C. H. Talbot (1959); reprinted in Emilie Amt, Womens Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1993), 136-42.
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and on that very day Burthred was betrothed to her. After the espousal the maiden returned once more to her parents' home whilst her husband, though he had houses elsewhere, built her a new and larger dwelling-place near his father-in-law. But although she was married, her former intentions were not changed, and she freely expressed her determination not to submit to the physical embraces of any man. The more her parents became aware of her persistence in this frame of mind, the more they tried to break down her resistance, first by flattery, then by reproaches, sometimes by presents and grand promises, and even by threats and punishment. And though all her friends and relatives united forces together in this purpose, her father Autti surpassed them all in his efforts, whilst he himself was outclassed by the girl's mother, as will become evident later on. After they had tried out many methods without result, they finally hit on this subterfuge. Putting her under strict and rigorous guard, they prevented any religious God-fearing man from having any conversation with her: on the other hand they freely invited to the house people given to jesting, boasting, worldly amusement, and those whose evil communications corrupt good manners. ...[And] they took her with them, against her will, to public banquets, where divers choice meats were followed by drinks of different kinds, where the alluring melodies of the singers were accompanied by the sounds of the zither and the harp, so that by listening to them her strength of mind might be sapped away and in this way she might finally be brought to take pleasure in the world. But their wiles were outwitted at all points and served but to emphasize her invincible prudence. See finally how she acted, how she behaved herself at what is called the Gild merchant, which is one of the merchants' greatest and bestknown festivals. One day, when a great throng of nobles were gathered together there, Autti and Beatrix held the place of honour, as being the most important among them. It was their pleasure that their daughter Christina, their eldest and most worthy daughter, should act as cup-bearer to such an honourable gathering. Wherefore they commanded her to get up and lay aside the mantle which she was wearing, so that, with her garments fastened to her sides with bands and her sleeves rolled up her arms, she should courteously offer drinks to the nobility. They hoped that the compliments paid to her by the onlookers and the accumulation of little sips of wine would break her resolution and prepare her body for the deed of corruption. Carrying out their wishes, she prepared a suitable defence against both attacks. Against the favours of human flattery she fixed in her memory the thought of the Mother of God. ... Against the urge to drunkenness, she opposed her burning thirst. ... But as her parents had been outwitted in this, they tried something else. And at night they let her husband secretly into her bedroom in order that, if he found the maiden asleep, he might suddenly take her by surprise and overcome her. But even through that providence to which she had commended herself, she was found dressed and awake, and she welcomed the young man as if he had been her brother. And sitting on her bed with him, she strongly encouraged him to live a chaste life, putting forward the saints as examples. ... When the greater part of the night had passed with talk such as this, the young man eventually left the maiden. When those who had got him into the room heard what had happened, they joined together in calling him a spineless fellow. And with many reproaches they goaded him on again, and thrust him into her bedroom another night, having warned him not to be misled by her deceitful tricks and naive words nor to lose his manliness. Either by force or entreaty he was to gain his end. And if neither of these sufficed, he was to know that they were at hand to help him: all he had to mind was to act the man. When Christina sensed this, she hastily sprang out of bed and clinging with both hands to a nail which was fixed in the wall, she hung trembling between the wall and the hangings. Burthred

14

meanwhile approached the bed and, not finding what he expected, he immediately gave a sign to those waiting outside the door. They crowded into the room forthwith and with lights in their hands ran from place to place looking for her, the more intent on their quest as they knew she was in the room when he entered it and could not have escaped without their seeing her. ... Then the maiden of Christ, taking courage, prayed to God, saying: "Let them be turned backward, that desire my hurt;" and straightaway they departed in confusion, and from that moment she was safe. . . . Whilst her parents were setting these and other traps for her they fixed a day for the marriage with their son-in-law several times. For they hoped that some occasion would arise when they could take advantage of her. For what woman could hope to escape so many snares? And yet, with Christ guarding the vow which his spouse had made, the celebration of the wedding could nohow be brought about. Indeed, when the day which they had fixed approached and all the necessary preparations for the marriage had been arranged, it happened first that all the things prepared were burned by an unexpected fire, and then that the bride was taken with a fever. In order to drive away the fever, sometimes they thrust her into cold water, at other times they blistered her excessively. ... Her father brought her [to the priory of Huntingdon] another time, and placing her before Fredebertus, the reverend prior, and the rest of the canons of the house, addressed them with these words: "I know, my fathers, I know, and I admit to my daughter, that I and her mother have forced her against her will into this marriage and that against her better judgement she has received this sacrament. Yet, no matter how she was led into it, if she resists our authority and rejects it, we shall be the laughing-stock of our neighbours, a mockery and derision to those who are around about. Wherefore, I beseech you, plead with her to have pity on us: let her marry in the Lord and take away our reproach. Why must she depart from tradition? Why should she bring this dishonour on her father? Her life of poverty will bring the whole of the nobility into disrepute. Let her do now what we wish and she can have all that we possess. When Autti had said this, Fedebertus asked him to leave the assembly and with his canons about him he began to address the maiden with these words: We are surprised, Theodora, at your obstinacy, or rather we should say, your madness. We know that you have been betrothed according to ecclesiastical custom. We know that the sacrament of marriage, which has been sanctioned by divine law, cannot be dissolved, because what God has joined together, no man should put asunder . [He quotes several passages from the Bible about marriage and about childrens duty of obedience to their parents.] Nor should you think that only virgins are saved: for whilst many virgins perish, many mothers of families are saved, as well we know. And since this is so, nothing remains but that you accept our advice and teaching and submit yourself to the lawful embraces of the man to whom you have been legally joined in marriage. To these exhortations Christina replied: I am ignorant of the scriptures which you have quoted, father prior. But from their sense I will give my answers thereto. My father and mother, as you have heard, bear witness that against my will this sacrament, as you call it, was forced on me. I have never been a wife and have never thought of becoming one. Know that from my infancy I have chosen chastity and have vowed to Christ that I would remain a virgin: this I did before witnesses, but even if they were not present God would be witness to my conscience continuously. This I showed by my actions as far as I was allowed. And if my parents have ordered me to enter into a marriage which I never wanted and to break the vow which I made to Christ which they know I made in my childhood, I leave you, who are supposed to excel other men in the knowledge of the scriptures, to judge how wicked a thing this is. If I do all in my power to fulfill the vow I made to Christ, I shall not be disobedient to my parents. What I do, I do on the invitation of Him whose voice, as you say, is heard in the Gospel: Every one who leaves house or brothers or sisters or father

15

or mother or wife or children or possessions for My names sake shall receive a hundredfold and possess eternal life. Nor do I think that virgins only will be saved. But I do say, and it is true, that if many virgins perish, so rather do married women. And if many mothers of families are saved, which you likewise say, and it is true, certainly virgins are saved more easily. Fredebertus, astonished at the common sense and answers of Christina, asked her, saying, How do you prove to me that you are doing this for the love of Christ? Perhaps you are rejecting marriage with Burthred in order to enter a more wealthy one? A more wealthy one, certainly, she replied. For who is richer than Christ? Then said he, I am not joking. I am treating with you seriously. And if you wish us to believe you, take an oath in our presence that, were you betrothed to him as you have been to Burthred, you would not marry even the kings son. At these words the maiden casting her eyes up to heaven and with a joyful countenance replied: I will not merely take an oath, but I am prepared to prove it, by carrying red-hot iron in these my bare hands.9 For, as I have frequently declared, I must fulfil the vow which through the inspiration of His grace I made to the only Son of the Eternal King, and with the help of this same grace I mean to fulfil it. And I trust to God that the time is not far off when it will become clear that I have no other in view but Christ. Fredebertus then called in Autti and said to him: We have tried our best to bend your daughter to your will, but we have made no headway. We know, however, that our bishop Robert will be coming soon to his vill [estate] at Buckden, which is near this town. Reason demands that the whole question should be laid before him. Let the case be put into his hands after he comes and let her take the verdict of the bishop, if of no other. What is the point of tearing your vitals and suffering to no purpose? We respect the high resolution of this maiden as founded on impregnable virtue. To which Autti replied, I accept your advice. Please seek the bishop on this affair. He agreed, and so Autti brought back his daughter and placed her under the usual restraint. In the meantime he heard that the bishop had come out to Buckden. Fredebertus immediately sought him out, being sent by Autti: and with him went the most noble citizens of the town, who thought that, as the marriage had already been performed, the bishop would immediately order the betrothed woman to submit to the authority of her husband. Hence they laid before him in detail and without delay all the facts which they knew pertained to the business at hand, namely what Christina had done, what others had done to her, beginning with her childhood and bringing it up to the present day. At last they brought forward the proposal . that since neither adversity nor prosperity could bring her to it she should be forced to accept her marriage at least by episcopal authority. After weighing the evidence minutely, the bishop said: I declare to you, and I swear before God and His blessed Mother that there is no bishop under heaven who could force her into this marriage, if according to her vow she wishes to keep herself for God to serve Him freely and for no man besides. Christinas struggle did not end with the episcopal decision described below after this bribe from Autti caused the bishop to reverse his ruling, and Christina eventually had to run away from home to enter the religious life. She died sometime between 1155 and 1166.

The ordeal of the hot iron was a common procedure for determining guilt or innocence in Germanic law. If the burn heals cleanly, the subject was judged to be telling the truth.
9

16

3: Las Siete Partidas: Laws on Jews (1265)10

Las siete partidas, the Seven-Part Code, is one of the most remarkable law codes of medieval times. The code, written in the Castilian vernacular, was compiled about 1265, under the supervision of Alfonso X, the Wise (1252-1284), of Castile. Its laws, however, did not go into effect until 1348, and then only with certain reservations. From Castile they spread to all of Spain and thence into the Spanish possessions in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Florida, and Louisiana. The sources of this code are largely Visigothic, later Roman, and Church law, all of which were hostile to the Jew. This hostility did not, however, deter the Castilian state from protecting scrupulously the Jewish religion as well as the person and property of the Jews. The Jews and Moors, national minorities, were too numerous and too important to be mistreated as yet by the new Castilian state. TITLE XXIV: CONCERNING THE JEWS Jews are a people, who, although they do not believe in the religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet, the great Christian sovereigns have always permitted them to live among them.... LAW I. WHAT THE WORD JEW MEANS, AND WHENCE THIS TERM IS DERIVED A party who believes in, and adheres to the law of Moses is called a Jew, according to the strict signification of the term, as well as one who is circumcised, and observes the other precepts commanded by his religion. This name is derived from the tribe of Judah which was nobler and more powerful than the others, and, also possessed any other advantage, because the king of the Jews had to be selected from that tribe, and its members always received the first wounds in battle. The reason that the church, emperors, kings and princes permitted the Jews to dwell among them and with Christians, is because they always lived, as it were, in captivity, as it was constantly [a token] in the minds of men that they were descended from those who crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ. LAW II. IN WHAT WAY JEWS SHOULD PASS THEIR LIVES AMONG CHRISTIANS; WHAT THINGS THEY SHOULD NOT MAKE USE OF OR PRACTICE, ACCORDING TO OUR RELIGION; AND WHAT PENALTY THOSE DESERVE WHO ACT CONTRARY TO ITS ORDINANCES Jews should pass their lives among Christians quietly and without disorder, practicing their own religious rites, and not speaking ill of the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which Christians acknowledge. Moreover, a Jew should be very careful to avoid preaching to, or converting any Christian, to the end that he may become a Jew, by exalting his own belief and disparaging ours. Whoever violates this law shall be put to death and lose all his property. And because we have heard it said that in some places Jews celebrated, and still celebrate Good Friday, which commemorates the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by way of contempt: stealing children and fastening them to crosses, and making images of wax and crucifying them, when they cannot obtain children; we order that, hereafter, if in any part of our dominions anything like this is done, and can be proved, all persons who were present when the act was committed shall be seized, arrested and brought before
Introductory text: from Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791 (New York: JPS, 1938), 34, accessed at Paul Halsall, ed., The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/jewssietepart.html. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. (c) Paul Halsall Feb 1996.
10

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the king; and after the king ascertains that they are guilty, he shall cause them to be put to death in a disgraceful manner, no matter how many there may be.11 We also forbid any Jew to dare to leave his house or his quarter on Good Friday, but they must all remain shut up until Saturday morning; and if they violate this regulation, we decree that they shall not be entitled to reparation for any injury or dishonor inflicted upon them by Christians.12 LAW III. NO JEW CAN HOLD ANY OFFICE OR EMPLOYMENT BY WHICH HE MAY BE ABLE TO OPPRESS CHRISTIANS Jews were formerly highly honored, and enjoyed privileges above all other races, for they alone were called the People of God. But for the reason that they disowned Him who had honored them and given them privileges; and instead of showing Him reverence humiliated Him, by shamefully putting Him to death on the cross; it was proper and just that, on account of the great crime and wickedness which they committed, they should forfeit the honors and privileges which they enjoyed; and therefore from the day when they crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ they never had either king or priests among themselves, as they formerly did. The emperors, who in former times were lords of all the world, considered it fitting and right that, on account of the treason which they committed in killing their lord, they should lose all said honors and privileges, so that no Jew could ever afterwards hold an honorable position, or a public office by means of which he might, in any way, oppress a Christian.13 LAW IV. HOW JEWS CAN HAVE A SYNAGOGUE AMONG CHRISTIANS A synagogue is a place where the Jews pray, and a new building of this kind cannot be erected in any part of our dominions, except by our order. Where, however, those which formerly existed there are torn down, they can be built in the same spot where they originally stood; but they cannot be made any larger or raised to any greater height, or be painted. A synagogue constructed in any other manner shall be lost by the Jews, and shall belong to the principal church of the locality where it is built. And for the reason that a synagogue is a place where the name of God is praised, we forbid any Christian to deface it, or remove anything from it, or take anything out of it by force; except where some malefactor takes refuge there; for they have a right to remove him by force in order to bring him before the judge. Moreover, we forbid Christians to put any animal into a synagogue, or loiter in it, or place any hindrance in the way of the Jews while they are there performing their devotions according to their religion.14 LAW V. NO COMPULSION SHALL BE BROUGHT TO BEAR UPON THE JEWS ON SATURDAY, AND WHAT JEWS CAN BE SUBJECT TO COMPULSION Saturday is the day on which Jews perform their devotions, and remain quiet in their lodgings and do not make contracts or transact any business; and for the reason that they are obliged by their religion to keep its no one should on that day summon them or bring them into court. Wherefore we order that no judge shall employ force or any constraint upon Jews on Saturday, in order to bring them into court on account of their debts; or arrest them; or cause them any other annoyance; for the remaining days of the week are sufficient for the purpose of employing compulsion against them,
Christians already believed that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children for religious purposes. Christians were prone to commit violence on Good Friday, the anniversary of the crucifixion of Jesus. 13 Nevertheless, Alfonso entrusted his body and purse to Jewish physicians and financiers. 14 Moors, however, were not allowed to have mosques; Jews were not at the bottom of the social scale.
11 12

18

and for making demands for things which can be demanded of them according to law. Jews are not bound to obey a summons served upon them on that day; and, moreover, we decree that any decision rendered against them on Saturday shall not be valid; but if a Jew should wound, kill, rob, steal, or commit any other offense like these for which he can be punished in person and property, then the judge can arrest him on Saturday. We also decree that all claims that Christians have against Jews, and Jews against Christians, shall be decided and determined by our judges in the district where they reside, and not by their old men.15 And as we forbid Christians to bring Jews into court or annoy them on Saturday; so we also decree that Jews, neither in person, nor by their attorneys, shall have the right to bring Christians into court, or annoy them on this day. And in addition to this, we forbid any Christian, on his own responsibility, to arrest or wrong any Jew either in his person or property, but where he has any complaint against him he must bring it before our judges; and if anyone should be so bold as to use violence against the Jews, or rob them of anything, he shall return them double the value of the same. LAW VI. JEWS WHO BECOME CHRISTIANS SHALL NOT BE SUBJECT TO COMPULSION; WHAT ADVANTAGE A JEW HAS WHO BECOME A CHRISTIAN; AND WHAT PENALTY OTHER JEWS DESERVE WHO DO HIM HARM No force or compulsion shall be employed in any way against a Jew to induce him to become a Christian; but Christians should convert him to the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ by means of the texts of the Holy Scriptures, and by kind words, for no one can love or appreciate a service which is done him by compulsion. We also decree that if any Jew or Jewess should voluntarily desire to become a Christian, the other Jews shall not interfere with this in any way, and if they stone, wound, or kill any such person, because he wishes to become a Christian, or after he has been baptized, and this can be proved; we order that all the murderers, or the abettors of said murder or attack, shall be burned.16 But where the party was not killed, but wounded, or dishonored, we order the judges of the neighborhood where this took place shall compel those guilty of the attack, or who caused the dishonor, to make amends to him for the same; and also that they be punished for the offence which the committed, as they think they deserve; and we also order that, after any Jews become Christians, all persons in our dominions shall honor them; and that no one shall dare to reproach them or their descendants, by way of insult, with having been Jews; and that they shall possess all their property, sharing the same with their brothers and inheriting it from their fathers and mothers and other relatives just as if they were Jews; and that they can hold all offices and dignities which other Christians can do. LAW VII. WHAT PENALTY A CHRISTIAN DESERVES WHO BECOMES A JEW Where a Christian is so unfortunate as to become a Jew, we order that he shall be put to death just as if he had become a heretic; and we decree that his property shall be disposed of in the same way that we stated should be done with that of heretics. LAW VIII. NO CHRISTIAN, MAN OR WOMAN, SHALL LIVE WITH A JEW
15 16

Jewish courts had no jurisdiction if one of the parties was Christian. This law was first issued by Constantine the Great in 315.

19

We forbid any Jew to keep Christian men or women in his house, to be served by them; although he may have them to cultivate and take care of his lands, or protect him on the way when he is compelled to go to some dangerous place. Moreover, we forbid any Christian man or woman to invite a Jew or a Jewess, or to accept an invitation from them, to eat or drink together, or to drink any wine made by their hands.17 We also order that no Jews shall dare to bathe in company with Christians, and that no Christian shall take any medicine or cathartic made by a Jew; but he can take it by the advice of some intelligent person, only where it is made by a Christian, who knows and is familiar with its ingredients.18 LAW IX. WHAT PENALTY A JEW DESERVES WHO HAS INTERCOURSE WITH A CHRISTIAN WOMAN Jews who live with Christian women are guilty of great insolence and boldness, for which reason we decree that all Jews who, hereafter, may be convicted of having done such a thing shall be put to death. For if Christians who commit adultery with married women deserve death on that account, much more do Jews who have sexual intercourse with Christian women, who are spiritually the wives of Our Lord Jesus Christ because of the faith and the baptism which they receive in His name; nor do we consider it proper that a Christian woman who commits an offense of this kind shall escape without punishment. Wherefore we order that, whether she be a virgin, a married woman, a widow, or a common prostitute who gives herself to all men, she shall suffer the same penalty19 which we mentioned in the last law in the Title concerning the Moors, to which a Christian woman is liable who has carnal intercourse with a Moor. LAW X. WHAT PENALTY JEWS DESERVE WHO HOLD CHRISTIANS AS SLAVES A Jew shall not purchase, or keep as a slave, a Christian man or woman, and if anyone violates this law the Christian shall be restored to freedom and shall not pay any portion of the price given for him, although the Jew may not have been aware when he bought him, that he was a Christian; but if he knew that he was such when he purchased him, and makes use of him afterwards as a slave, he shall be put to death for doing so. Moreover, we forbid any Jew to convert a captive to his religion, even though said captive may be a Moor, or belong to some other barbarous race. If anyone violates this law we order that the said slave who has become a Jew shall be set at liberty, and removed from the control of the party to whom he or she belonged. If any Moors who are the captives of Jews become Christians, they shall at once be freed, as is explained in the Fourth Partida of this book, in the Title concerning Liberty, in the laws which treat of this subject.20 LAW XI. JEWS SHALL BEAR CERTAIN MARKS IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY BE KNOWN Many crimes and outrageous things occur between Christians and Jews because they live together in cities, and dress alike; and in order to avoid the offenses and evils which take place for this reason, we deem it proper, and we order that all Jews, male and female, living on our dominions shall bear some distinguishing mark upon their heads so that people may plainly recognize a Jew, or a Jewess;
Jewish law also forbade the use of Christian-made wine. Alfonso probably had a Jewish physician the very time he issued this law. 19 I.e., confiscation of property, scourging, or death. 20 However, Christians (including the Church itself) were allowed to own Christian slaves
17 18

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and any Jew who does not bear such a mark, shall pay for each time he is found without it ten maravedis of gold; and if he has not the means to do this he shall receive ten lashes for his offense.21

21

This is an attempt to put into effect the Jew-Badge law of Pope Innocent III, 1215.

21

4: Chris Lowney, A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain (2005), ch. 18: Alfonso the Wise22

A%nish"J

%'1J
M..rlims, Christians

, unJ)ews

in MeJi".^l Spain

Ur
Chtis Lt*ney

OX.FORD

Reading: From Chris Lowney, A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 209-225.
22

22

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18. Al{otrso the L"arrr"J King

lfonsot contemporaries called him El Sabio, Alfonso "the

Learned" or "the \flise." Thanks to the military successes of his illustrious father and storied ancestors, he appended quite an impressive coda

to official pronouncements: Alfonso, Kitg of Castile, Toledo, Le6n,

Galicia, Seville, C6rdoba, Murcia, Jadn, and the Algarve. Yet Alfonso often seemed less absorbed by military campaigns than by his lavish project to gather every bit of astronomical knowledge available in the medieval world. Alfonso aspired to be emperor of all Christian Europe, a dream he chased even as rebellion at home nearly cost him a slice of Spain. He battled Muslim armies, yet later allied with those same armies to attack his own kingdom. He includedJewish scholars among his innermost circles even while reviling the Jews in his poetry. Alfonso's reign was farsighted yet misguided, inspired yet clumsy, and ultimately, in many important respects, world-changing. That Alfonso even dared dream of empire beyond Iberia shows how far Christian Spain had come since the humiliating Muslim invasion of 7t. After all, the last Iberian rulers to pursue territorial expansion weren't Christian, but Muslim warriors giddily confident after overrunning Visigoth Spain. They had raced to within rwo hundred miles of
Paris before they were halted.

That was five centuries earlier. In the interim, Christian rulers gen-

24

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2L0

Chris LowneY

threatening their erally had their hands full warding off Muslim armies takeover of Seville' owrr baclcyards. Yet, thanks to his father's stunning long dorand much of Andalusia, Alfonso could resurrect

c6rdoba, mant d,reams of empire, mounting a rwo-decade, treasury-draining charlemagne had been chase after the Holy Roman emperort crown. to enlist a pious first of these emperors, crowned by a Pope Leo anxious Both pope and monarch mighry enough to intimidate papal enemies. first Rome, charlemrgn. had envisioned as glorious an emPire as the comperfectly with the emperor's temporal sway over all Christendom
plementing the pope's spiritual reign' comIt never quite worked out. The Holy Roman emPerors never unless the manded servile obeisance from christendomt monarchs, to inenough to command armies substantial

emperors also happened the crown' and still respect. Still, European monarchs inevitably chased befell his disasters Alfonso was one of them. In retrospect, few greater backed his claim reign than that unlu cky daywhen a faction of electors crown was not ,o ih. imperial throne. For if the value of the emperor's with the bill' obvious, its cost was ro the noble subjects Alfonso saddled secured though the Roman Empire suPPosedly was, candidates

Holy

maneuvering, douits crown only after thoroughly unholy diplomatic his and bribery. fu Alfonso finagled tax levies to finance

ble dealing,
arch.

profigate moncampaign, sp"irN nobles grew disenchanted with their

oblivious to \rorse, bewitched by his imperial dream, Alfonso was North Africa's conspiratorial stirrings among ,.rtiu. Muslim subjects. tradition Marinid sultan l",r.r.h.d " lih"d into Iberia, following the warriors that proved the metde of so many Almoravid and Almohad ravMoors before him. \xaile North African invaders and Andalusian pope's sourh, Kirg Alfonso was in France beseeching the

aged Spain's son and bl.kirrg for his imperial-candidacy. Alfonso's nineteen-year-old Spains fate heir, Fernando, ,"ili.d Spain's defense, but with Christian

moment in the balance, the prince chose this extremely unpropitious

enemy. to keel over and die before ever actually engaging the that followed' battles the The demoralized christians were routed in heads of The Marinids' gruesome war trophies included the severed Governor Do.r-Nrrfio Gonzilez de Lara and the warrior-archbishop

26

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A Vanish"J WorlJ
Sancho

21r

the hacked-offhand bearing his episcopal ring). The high-profile souvenirs headlined a grisly haul: one Muslim chronicler exaggeratedly brayed that the invaders amassed some t8,ooo severed Christian heads; as if that image alone is not loathsome enough, he further depicts a muezzin clambering atop the piled skulls to sound the Muslim call to prayer. Alfonsot second son, Sancho, stormed into the breach and checked the Muslim advance until the king straggled back to Spain. All in all, this cant have been the happiest trip Alfonso ever took. Already disconsolate that the pope had rebuffed his imperial bid, Alfonso returned home to a full-blown invasion and the death of his heir. Fighting dragged on intermittently for another n4ro years. Alfonso's siege of the Marinid-held Spanish port of Algeciras demonstrates just how imperiled his armies were. Alfonso had underestimated the Algecirans' resourcefulness, and as the siege dragged on his finances dwindled. He scoured Seville for financing while his unpaid troops maintained the blockade throughout the winter of n79-8o with "no renewal of clothes or food when they needed them . . . fthey] became seriously ill . . . their teeth fell out, and they suffered very great hardships." Such were the sufferings of the besiegers, mind you. Algeciras's famished inhabitants had it worse, "falling dead in the streets of the .iry." Alfonsot wasted navy might have outlasted the dying Algecirans, but a Marinid fleet sailed to Algecirast relief and easily scattered Alfonso's demoralized, malnourished soldiers, "so few and injured that not a single one of them thought to defend himself,," Alfonso the \fise's ambitions proved Alfonso the'Wiset folly. Nothing came of his quest for an imperial title or his siege of Algeciras. Instead, his financial resources frittered away and his focus distracted, he found himself frequently on the defensive. Christian Spain ultimately repulsed the Marinids, but the strife cost Alfonso his first-born son and
scores of warrior-nobles.

II of Toledo (and, for good measure,

The strife's aftermath tore apart his family and cost him his crown. He named Sancho heir upon Fernando's death, disappointing the princet relatives, who vociferously argued the claims of Fernandot own sons (Alfonso's grandsons). Alfonso then alienated Sancho, clumsily patching up relations with Fernando's relatives by carving
deceased

28

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212

Chris Lowney

them a slice of Sancho's inheritance. The disgruntled Sancho rebelled, declaring his father mentally incompetent to rule and winning the backing of nobles fed up with Alfonso's erratic reign. Compounding the indigniry yet further, even Alfonso's wife, Queen Violante, supported Sanchot claim. Now age sixry in a society where most were h"ppy to reach forry his
face disfigured by a painful degenerative cancer, rejected by his nobles and family, his treasury all but exhausted, Alfonso cut a tragic figure yet refused to retire and rage in Lear-like impotence on some windy

to turn for suPPort' Alfonso concocted an alliance-unbelievably-with the very same Moroccan Marinid dynasty that had brought him such grief by invading Spain,
expanse

of

meseta. \With nowhere else

occasioning his son Fernando's premature death, butchering hundreds if not thousands of Christian Spaint knights, and (if legend be believed) scaling their skulls at prayer time . He negotiated a massive loan

from the Marinid sultan, tendering his own crown as collateral. (A fifteenth-cenrury Muslim chronicler delightedly crowed that the crown was still being displayed in a Moroccan palace.) Theoretically now Alfonso's allies, the Marinids invaded Iberia at his invitation, rampaging
through southern Spain and gorging themselves on boory while paying little attention to securing Alfonso's strategic advantage. Alfonso, Sancho, and Spains nobility soon enough realized what havoc they had wrought upon their homeland. Father and son recon-

ciled before Alfonso's death tn 1284, although the king overlooked the minor detail of redrafting his will. Sancho remained disinherited, an inconvenient fact that Spain's nobiliry churchmen, and lawyers ignored in recognizing King Sancho IV as Alfonso Xt successor. Alfonso's will instructed that he be entombed at the feet of his parents in Seville's cathedral, though, envisioning greater conquests ahead for Christian Spain, directed that his heart be removed from his body for
eventual burial in the Holy Land.

seemed at times less than \7ise, he reigned alongside Alfonso the truly \fise, whose cultural agenda was every bit as grandiose as his imperial dreams yet, in contrast, was splendidly im-

If Alfonso the politician

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plemented. This wiser Alfonso revolutio nized the arts, sciences, law, and even the very language his subjects spoke. Scholars who routinely disparage Alfonso the politician heap praise on this other Alfonso. He was the master architect of a law code that was consulted across a wider swath of the globe than any other law book in history when

chunks of the Americas, Asia, and Africa began falling under Spains imperial sway. Indeed, Alfonso's visage Peers out from above the gallery doors of the U.S. House of Representatives, appropriately commemorating him as one of world history's most influential lawgivers. That law code was composed not in Latin, but in the vernacular Romance dialect prefiguring today's Castilian (Spanish). By recognizing Spanish as a formal language of government, Alfonso engineered a momentous break from Latin's centuries-long monopoly and accelerated the development of one of humaniry's most widely spoken languages. The spread of Spanish owes much to the explorers who colonized the Americas for Spain, but those sixteenth-century exPlorers owed something to Alfonso. \Well over two centuries after he died, navigators still used his "Alfonsine tables" as their authoritative map of the night sky, and some of them calibrated the position of stars overhead with astrolabes fashioned from instructions laid out in Alfonsot astronomical treatises. Both astrolabe and tables were products of Alfonsot focused effort to consolidate the worldt astronomical knowledge in Spain. This far-flung cultural agenda rnay seem a scattershot product of undisciplined genius, all the more so considering that Alfonsot interests also encompassed literature, poetry, arts, history, comParative religion, and even chess and backgammon. But such varied interests were bound together by a far-sighted vision of a better-unified, more learned,
and fairer Iberia.

Kirg Alfonso had inherited Babel. His chroniclers chronicled and

commoners chattered in an unwieldy hodgepodge of languages: Latin, classic and colloquial Arabic, Berber dialects, Hebrew, Arabic written in Hebrew script, Castilian, Galician, and Basque (to name but a f.*).
Portuguese, Catalonian, French (to name a few others) predominated

along Castilet borders. \(ho knows what dialect amalgams of these still-evolving languages were spoken in myriad isolated towns and villages. Spains kings and chroniclers proudly crowed about the Recon-

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quest that was inexorably unifying Christian Spain, ignoring the uncomforrable realiry that their Latin pronouncements were intelligible

only to the smallest handful of Spaniards. Alfonso's adoption of Castilian for his law codes' histories, and government records helped establish a common tongue for a kingdom coping with more working languages than any other land in Europe. He was one of the very first European monarchs to substitute a vernacular language for Latin, thereby heading a trend that, to say the least,
caught on well. By doing so, Alfonso dignified not only Spanish itself but also the commoners who spoke it. An ever-dwindling Latin-fuent elite of clerics and bureaucrats dominated not only the aflairs of state but even the abiliry to read about them. All others prattled on in vulgar tongues, neither they nor their language worthy
Spain's governmental discourse.

of participation in

To be sure, Alfonso would never have described himself as striking a blow for Castilet common man. Spain, and Europe, remained rigidly stratified, from heredirarily privileged royals on top to chattel slaves at the bottom. Alfonso's embrace of Castilian did not suddenly empower commoners to claim voice in Castile's affairs. They still had no say in choosing their leaders, nor even, to a large extent' in choosing their own furures in a feudal sociery where peasants rarely rose above their
a

birth status. And there remained the minor consideration that the overwhelming majoriry ofAlfonsot subjects were illiterate in any language. Centuries more would slip away before European rulers would even consider public education a worthy goal, much less grapple with making it a reStill, Alfonso had sounded a democratizing note that signaled a "Iiry. mofe open if still distant future. He laid the groundwork for a sociery where citizens could understand and speak the language by which they were governed, a human right now taken so much for granted that no rights charter need even mention it. Another momenrous Alfonsine initiative fostered a human right that unfortunately still cant be taken for granted in much of the world today: the right to be governed by a transparent, consistent law code. Such was the goal ofAlfonso's effort to prune Le6n-Casdlet overgrown thicket of royal, municipal, and religious laws and replace it with one

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definitive code. Alfonso inherited a kingdom cobbled together over centuries, gradually engulfing once independent kingdoms that stubbornly clung to their old law codes and towns that guarded local rights granted by municipalfaero.i (codes of laws and privileges). Le6n-Castile was a mangled jumble of overlapping, confusing, and sometimes contradictory laws, where behavior could be criminal in one village and legal in the next. Most towns, for example, had neither the imagination nor the need ro oudaw one unusual crime that vexed Cuencat civic leaders: "\ftroever puts his backside in the face of another or farts in his face should pay three hundred solidi." Alfonso's scholars not only pruned Castilet unwieldy legal thicket but erected a framework to support it. They drew on Roman and Church canon law to weave through Alfonso's code the principles of consistency, due process, and individual rights that are cornerstones of every advanced legal system. After his death, Alfonso's vision of one uniform code for Spain became realiry when his Siete Partidas (named for the "seven parts" into which it was divided) were promulgated as Spaint law code in the r34os. Though Alfonsot most valuable legal contribution was the big picture of a master code underpinned by a clear philosophy, his Partidas didnt neglect nitty-gritry details. Its laws comprehensively ranged
across contracts, partnerships, relations between lords and vassals, mar-

riage laws, rules of evidence, plaintiff's rights, and more. The Partidas revel in minutiae, and in so doing illuminate the oddities, foibles, and perils of medieval life. One learns when a man can take ownership of a

swarm of bees on his properry (when he builds a hive around it). The laws pronounce the penalry for abducting a nun (excommunication)

and killing a priest (six hundred sueldos, but nine hundred for a bishop). A slave may marry a free woman so long as she understands
her intendeds status.

The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proclaimed

seventeenth-century life "nasry brutish, and short." Alfonso's code reveals an era yet nastier, shorter, and more brutish. A man who catches his married daughter in an adulterous act should "kill both parties or

neither of them." Anyone who "complains of great hunger and is so poor that he cannot have recourse to anphing else he can sell" may sell

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his own child. This shocking law draws on a precedent that entitled a famished defender of a besieged castle to "eat his son without incurring reproach, rather than surrender the castle without the order of his lord." If the harshness of medieval life is apparent throughout the code, so is the thorough entanglement of religious and secular concerns in a so-

ciery predating the separation of church from state in many modern nations. Anything else would have startled medieval Europeans, just as secular moderns may bridle at finding in Alfonso's legal code a digest of the prayers that every Christian ought to learn. Indeed, though Alfonsot Muslim and Jewish subjects may have thought his Christian faith utterly wrongheaded, they would have tVhen God enlightened Moses atop shared his understanding of law. Mt. Sinai or Muhammad on Mt. Hira, the Almighty hadnt made arbitr^rydistinctions between the affairs of state and those of religion. Both
acJudaism and Islam were total ways of living, and their prescriptions

cordingly regulated the marketplace, kitchen, and bedroom' not merely what transpired in synagogue or mosque. Alfonso and his contemporaries referred to each of the three resPectiYe faiths
as a

"law," and Jewish, Muslim, or Christian culture and identiry were inextricably linked to observance of one's religious law. Outside one's law lay not the
secular mainstream familiar to modern societies but the uncomfortable status of the outcast.

to render to medieval neither is God's, Caesar what is Caesart and to God what churchmen nor lawgivers understood Jesus as intending any precise cleavage berween church and state. And so Alfonso the lawgiver was saddled with a far grearer challenge than either his contemporaries or modern lawmakers. Unlike medieval European monarchs ruling more
Even though Jesus had famously instructed disciples homogeneous populations, he alone legislated both for Christian subjects and for large populations of Jews and Muslims. \X4rile Alfonso's modern counterparrs may govern populations as diverse as medieval Spain, they believe themselves ordained to govern not by God but by

constituents, and mandated to enact and protect not God's law but human laws. Even so routine a practice as swearing in witnesses presented challenges in a medieval multireligious society. \Titnesses in U.S. court-

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rooms pledge to tell nothing but the truth, "so help me God," allowing each to construe God as he or she chooses. Alfonso instead plunged

into the complexiry of multireligious Spain, drafting distinct oaths for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish witnesses. Each was obligedprivileged-ro acknowledge his or her own faith. The Partidas instruct a presiding judge and Muslim witness to "go to the door of the mosque," where the Muslim would swear "by that God than whom
there is no other, he who possesses, knows, and destroys . . . and by the Thuth . . . which God placed in the mouth of Mohammed, the son of Abdallah, when he appointed him his prophet and messenger, according to thy belief," The oath not only reinforced the obligation to testify

truthfully but provided any Christian bystanders a small window into the beliefs of their Muslim neighbors. Alfonsot seventh Partida navigates the dilemma of delineating the rights ofJewish and Muslim subjects in a Christian state. It begins ominously, introducing its topic as "all the accusations and offenses which men commit and what punishment they deserve therefore." Thirryfour subsections examine incest, necromancy, fraud, adultery' larceny, homicide, and all manner of baleful misdeeds. Jews and Moors are lumped in among thieves, murderers, adulterers, and other miscreants. Their crime? Jews insult Godt name by denying "the marvelous and holy acts which He performed when he sent His Son" into the world. Even though this is a law code, it parrots some pretty ghastly hearsay: "\7e have heard" that the Jews celebrate Good Friday by "stealing children and fastening them to crosses." Yet, the laws themselves dont reflect this frightfully prejudicial introduction. Instead, Alfonsot subjects are admonished not to cause Jews any "annoyance" on their Sabbath, nor to deface or loiter around Jewish synagogues. Alfonso goes beyond the grudging tolerance of the

Church law he inherited by emphasizing that synagogues are sacred places, "where the name of God is praised." Jews should live peaceably in Christian sociery "by observing their own law and not insulting ours," a maxim that sums up Alfonso's formula for securing coexistence among the three faiths. Jews and Muslims are entitled to live by their own laws arbitrated by their own judges, provided they dont contravene state laws. Civil disputes between Jews would be settled in the

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Jewish community, though disputes berween Christians and Jews would be brought before Christian magistrates. Conversions ro Christian Lry are encouraged, but forcible conversion is unacceptable, "for no one can love or appreciate a service which is
done him by compulsion," plain wisdom that later Spanish monarchs would choose to ignore. Still, while Jews were encouraged to embrace

Christianiry religious freedom was not a rwo-way street: "\(here

Christian is so unfortunate as to become aJew, we order that he shall be put ro death." Conversion to Islam is likewise a capital offense, the only difference being that Christians choosing Judaism are deemed "unfortunate," while those converting to Islam are regarded as "insane." If the picture seems confused, it is. Condemnation vies with tolerance. The same mixed message leaps from Alfonsok poetry, most strikingly in his groundbreaking Cantigas de Santa Maria (Songs of Holy

Mory). The Cantigas melded poetry, music, and srylized dance into a wholly unique art form that seems a distant precursor of opera. Most of the four-hundred-odd poems recount miracles attributed to the Virgin. Mary revives the dead, saves the drowning, restores sight, cures rabies, and heals battle wounds. She undertakes offbeat interventions as well, helping a man who swallows a spider, restoring a young boy's mule to life, and enabling a Poet to conjure up the missing rhyme to
complete
a verse.

She exerts considerable miraculous energy to reining in wayward priests and nuns. She deters one nun from eloping with a knight; after another successfully elopes, she induces both the nun and her Paramour ro renounce married bliss and enter monasteries. Mary deals with another cleric who seems more fetishist than sexual adventurer; he

in order to have "undergarments made from it with which to cover his sinful parts." \ilho wouldnt applaud Mary's creative vengeance on this rascal: he is jolted from sleep in dreadful pain to find his legs turned completely upside down, "both his heels pressing into his loins so tightly that he could not
steals a beautiful fabric donated to his church

pull them out." Some of the poems depict Spanish Muslims, and they are frequently more pious and honorable than this scurrilous cast of straying clerics. Alfonsot court poets knew how deeply Mary is revered in Islam, cited

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more frequently in the Quran, in fact, than throughout the entire New Testament. The Mary of the Cantigas accordingly works wonders on behalf of reverent Muslims. One Muslim general treasures a statue of the Virgin seized from a defeated Christian army. Holy Mary of Salas revives the dead son of a Moorish woman who has maintained an overnight vigil at her shrine. In another poem, Mary rescues a Muslim mother and child from a burning tower. There is an agenda to these poems: the protagonists all convert to Christianity. Still, the very assertion that there are good, honorable

Muslims recalls the heroic Cid and distinguishes the Cantigas from the harsher Crusading rhetoric more common elsewhere in Christian Europe. Indeed, one striki ng Cantiga is distinctly out of step with the Crusader mentaliry. A Muslim platoon camps for the night beside a church dedicated to Mary. By extraordinary coincidence' an armed Christian conringent bivouacs at the opposite side of the same church. "Both companies . . . led their horses to water at the fountain, but the horses did not whinny at all so that they neither heard nor saw nor took
notice of each other." \fith dawn's first light, the startled soldiers confronted each other and "were greatly amazed.At once they asked truce of each other when they realized what had happened." Here M"ry inspires neither a Chris-

tian onslaught nor mass conversion. Instead, the combatants retire in peace, for "Holy M"ry brings about harmony among those who honor Her, even though they have no love for each other, for She who is full of goodness and holiness loves peace and harmony and love and loyaltyJ'

Unfortun ately, that extraordinary sentiment predominated neither in Spain nor elsewhere in the Cantigas, and most especially not regarding Spaint Jews, branded in one poem as " [Mary's] enemies, whom She hates worse than the Moors." The Jews of the Cantigas are ghoulish, even monstrous figures. One Jew kidnaps a young boy who sang beautiful hymns to the Virgin, and "struck him such a blow with an ax that he split open his head down to his teeth," then buried him in his wine cellar. Another Jew casts his own son into a furnace after learning that the boy has taken communion at mass in innocent imitation of his
Christian classmates. In an especially ProvocatiYe cantiga,
a

Jew steals a

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painted image of the Virgin, and after throwing it into a latrine, " [h.] sat down there and desecrated it shamefully." Still, what Alfonso's laws and poetry said was one thing; what Alfonso did was another. Though the Partidas mandated that no Christian "shall take any medicine or cathartic made by Je*," a sickly ^ Alfonso most certainly heeded the advice of his own Jewish physician. Jews were integral to his court, serving as ambassadors, physicians, tax collectors, translators, scribes, and advisors. \flhile parceling spoils of the Muslim Seville his father had won for Christendom, Alfonso allocated Jewish subjects three mosques to be reappointed as synagogues. Indeed,, one scholar asserts, "Jews enjoyed their greatest freedom and well being under Alfonso X. Every historian, chronicler, and scholar . . . who has treated this subject, has testified that Alfonsot reign was ideal for the Jews." An uncompromisingly hostile attitude often permeates Alfonso the king's laws and poetry, but Alfonso the Learned was torn by conflicting impulses that focused less on how Spaniards worshipped than whether they could help transform Castile into a better, more learned kingdom. Nowhere was this spirit more apparent than the project that won Alfonso the sobriquet "founder of Spanish science." In the early rz6os, Alfonso assembled a multicultural team to translate and update the research of the eleventh-century C6rdoban astronomer al-Zarkah
(Arzachel). Jewish scholars Isaac ben Sid andJehuda ben Moses Cohen labored alongside Italians like John of Cremona and Spanish Christians like Juan Daspa and Garci Plrez. After replicatin g al-Zarkali's comprehensive celestial readings over years of painstakingly precise observations, the scholars produced a celestial map that was reproduced in

edition after edition for centuries. These "Alfonsine tables" were definitively supplanted only in the r6oos; Johannes Kepler trumped Alfonsot thirteenth-century team only by using a relatively new, vastly more sophisticated observational tool: the telescope. The Alfonsine Tables were but one showpiece of Alfonso's inspired effort to bring the world's knowledge and wisdom to Spain. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian translators buzzed away rendering excerpts from the Quran and the Thlmud, philosophical works, mathematical treatises, and even manuals for chess and backgammon. Many of the

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source works were in Arabic and intended for translation to Spanish' making multicultural teamwork essential. Few Christian scholars read

Arabic; Muslims and manyJewish scholars did; the Italians understood Latin but not necessarily Spanish. Thus, Arabic works were often translated first to Latin and then to Spanish by multilingual, multicultural
collaborators. In a sociery harshly divided by religiously motivated Reconquest' with interfaith dialogue nonexistent and interfaith relations uneasy' the very process of interfaith scholarly collaboration was almost as impressive an achievement as the output these collaborations produced. Even

more impressive, however, were many acts of interfaith collaboration that were freely chosen and not spurred by royal patronage. Indeed, such collaboration touched the very touchiest of arenas: the religious belief and worship that defined the fundamental differences separating
Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Still, religious celebration sometime s united Christians and Muslims rather than divided them. Murcias Christians enlivened religious festivals by inviting Muslim jugglers and musicians. Such interfaith merrymaking occurred elsewhere, and apparently thrilled the revelers more

than their pastors: a church council in Valladolid eventually enacted a statute prohibiting Muslim singers from performing in Christian churches; similarly, a rabbinical ruling admonished a cantor fbr chanting Jewish prayers to the rune of popular Muslim melodies. Muslim .l.ri., were likewise vexed to find their faithful celebrating alongside christian neighbors; one c6rdoba jurist reminded Muslims, "[Receiv-

ingl presenrs at Christmas from a Christian or from a Muslim is not allowed, neither is accepting invitations on that day'" Not that such admonitions seemed to do much good. Three full centuries later, an Almoravid jurist condemned similar Practices' complaining that Muslims were incorporating Christian customs into religious festivals: 'At the celebration of alAndara (z4June)' ' ' [pt"chasingJ fried doughnurc (isfanj: churros) and cheese fritters (muabbana),both of which are innovative foods . . ffIen go out mingling with the women, separately or in grouPs' to enjoy spectacles' and they do the same on the days of the Muslim festivals'" When a drought racked Ucl6s in t47o, inhabitants beseeched God's

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help in church, mosque, or synagogue, but some did more. Herndn Srinchez Castro "set out from the church together with other Christians in the procession, and when they reached the square where the Jews were with the Torah he joined the procession of the Jews with their Torah and left the processions of the Christians." Joy l events occasioned more formally organrzed interfaith processions. Princess Do6a Blanca of Navarre, crossing northern Castile in the mid-fifteenth century en route to her wedding, was greeted in towns like Briviesca: "Following [the artisans] came the Jews with the Torah and the Moors with the Quran fdancing] in the manner usudly reseryed for [the entry of] kings who come to rule a foreign country. There were also many trumpets, tambourines, drums, and fute players." Wrile Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious leaders each zealously defended their respective faiths as uniquely favored through Divine Revelation, those on the ground sometimes saw things differently. The personal beliefs of ordinary Spaniards were rarely recorded during the medieval era, but the elaborate dossiers of "evidence" compiled by Spains inquisitors offer a precious-if sadly ironic-glimpse into the minds of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spaniards from all walks of life. Diego Gonzd.lez, a piest, believed that "the Jew can find salvation in his own faith just as the Christian can in his." He was burned at the stake for such heretical leanings. Another Castilian Christian musr have left inquisitors slack-jawed when he mused, "\[ho knows which is the better religion, ours or those of the Muslims and the Jews?" Another Christian was convinced that "the good Jew and the good Muslim can, if they act correctly, go to heaven just like the good Christian." One peasant woman, described by a universiry graduate who knew her as "simple" and "ignorant," nonetheless spoke with uncommon wisdom: "The good Jew would be saved, and the good Moor, in his law, and why else had God made them?" Some well-educated clerics agreed. The Franciscan friar Alonso de Mella was moved to write Castilet Kirg Juan II after living amid Granada's Muslims, opining that Muslims were not only "sincere believers in the one true God," but worshipped with "faith, fear, humiliry reverence, devotion" greater than sometimes found among Christians. The Franciscant eloquently worded conclusion surely shocked Castile's

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monarch and de Mellas religious superiors: "\7e truly recognized that God is not merely the God of the Christians, but the God of all those who properly believe in Him . . . and is concerned with everybody who tufns his eyes toward Him . . nor does He take any pleasure in the damnation of the dying." Miguel Semeno seems to have endorsed that theory; either that or his family were hedging bets on the afterlife when they erected his tombstone. "In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ," it reads, "he died on Sunday 4 November in the Erau94." Yet bordering the edge of the same gravestone is an Arabic inscription: "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Mikayil ibn Semeno was he who went forth to Allah, with His mercy, from the abode of this life." Similarly, the will of fifteenth-century Alfonso Ferndndez Samuel requested burial with a Christian cross at his feet, the Quran at his breast, and "his life and light," the Torah, beside his head. If such free thinking seems shocking amid the religious wars ravaging Spain, consider the multicultural blood coursing through the veins of these Spanish Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Isidore of Seville had penned his Etymologies for a Spain that was overwhelmingly Christian. After three centuries of Muslim rule, Isidore's Seville and Visigoth Toledo and the rest of al-Andalus had become by some estimates at least three-quarters Muslim. A few centuries later, Spain was once again an overwhelmingly Christian nation, courtesy of Ferdinand and Isabellas r49z victory over Muslim Granada and expulsion of Spaint Jews. Migration accounted for some of each successive transformation, but conversion, pressured or freely chosen, accounted for the greater parr. Sixteenth-century Spain was a country of Christians who traced jagged religious lineages that often included Muslim or Jewish ancestors, or Muslim andJewtsh ancestors. Even those who retained one faith across tumultuous centuries par-

ticipated in Spain's cross-cultural fertilization. Christians and Jews under Muslim rule learned Arabic and adopted Arabic names, dress, and customs. Periodic outbreaks of religious persecution further roiled Spaint cross-cultural ferment by unleashing tidal fows of religious exiles. No century, virtually no generation passed without Muslims, Christians, or Jews either fleeing a region turned inhospitable or reset-

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tling territory newly conquered by coreligionists. Migrants inevitably brought their architectural style, customs, dialect, cuisine, and other cultural beliefs with them. French and German pilgrims to Santiago de
Compostela must have been pleasantly startled by the churches of San

in Sahagdn, their Moorish-sryle bell towers Lorenzo and San reminiscent of the minarets gracing many an Andalusian mosque, erected by masons who presumably learned their trade in the Muslim south before religious persecution or economic opportuniry drove them north. Kirg Alfonso the Learned epitomized the best and the worst of this mixed culture, embodying in one person the contradiction-wracked realiry of Reconquest Spain. Medieval Spain is the nation of Santiago the Pilgrim, embodying a vision of history that journeys forward toward a more hopeful future, "whose kirg is truth, whose law is love, whose measure is eterniry" as St. Augustine wrote. Yet that hopeful vision competes with Santiago the Moor Killer's endless cycle of violence. The medieval era's two great epic poems embody the same contradictory impulses that afflict the schizophrenic Santiago: grim Charlemagne's insistence that "the pagans are wrong and the Christians are right" sits uncomfortably alongside El Cidt embrace of his Muslim friend Abengalb6n.

-firso

These contradictory impulses are married in the one Alfonso. Though his Cantigas proclaim the Jews " fMaryt] enemies, whom She hates worse than the Moors," he eagerly enlisted Jewish subjects in the vast project of reverently translating excerpts from both the Quran and the Thlmud. Alfonso the law giver condemns the Jews for insulting
God's name, yet his same laws stipulate respect for Jewish worship. Alfonso and his subjects had in fact discovered remedies for their schizophrenia, which could have blessed Spain with a peaceful common life. The monarch legislated respect for all houses of worship,

"where the name of God is praised." His commoner subjects often

shopped and worked alongside Muslim, Christian, or Jewish neighbors, engaging in the dialogue and accommodation that proceed from shared daily life. His court scholars set aside theological differences long enough to transform Spain into a more learned land, enriching

their respective religious communities. The Cantigas' poets depicted

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Muslim and Christian armies turning their bacla on battle, showing that peace is possible even among those "who have no love for each other," for the one "who is full of goodness and holiness loves peace and harmony and love and loyalry." Tiagically, Alfonsot kingdom never fully heeded its own wisdom. 'Iod"yt Muslims, Jews, and Christians still share Abrahamb common patrimony and still are divided by irreconcilable doctrinal differences. Our era, suffering the same schizophrenia that afflicted our ancestors, might heal it by embracing the wisdom that Alfonso and his medieval contemporaries uncovered yet never fully grasped. Some historians speculate that Alfonso sank into insaniry late in life. They find themselves otherwise unable to expiain how a king who came to such grief at the hands of Morocco's Muslim dynasry could make common cause with them against his own son. \Thatever Alfonsot mental state, he mirrored the kingdom he ruled, a land torn by contradictory beliefs and passions during the uneasy struggle to transform many Spains into one nation.
As Alfonso reigned, that one Spain had almost taken shape, and (not

coincidentally) the era of coexistence among her three religious faiths was nearing its rwilight. For tolerance may be regarded a value in its own right, a means of securing peace in a mixed sociery or a useful expedient to trade. Medieval Spain's particular recipe for tolerance relied on the latter two ingredients rather than the first. And as an ascendant, ever more dominant Christian Spain turned into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tolerance seemed less necessary and less useful. Spain no longer needed to balance the needs and interests of its religious minorities to secure its peace, prosperiry or borders. Still, though the long-deferred dream of a unified and purely Christian Spain drew closer to hand, Alfonsot Xt thirteenth- and fourteenth-century heirs did little to make that dream realiry. In the late fifteenth century, Ferdinand and Isabella did.

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5: Martin Luther and the Peasants War in Germany (1525)23

Peasants in Germany had long faced severe economic difficulties and had expressed their grievances through the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the form of local uprisings and other manifestations of discontent. Such uprisings had sometimes called upon the radical possibilities in certain interpretations of the Christian gospels the idea of spiritual equality of all, slave or free (as St. Paul put it in Galatians 3:28) in order to justify peasant attempts to overthrow the social, economic, and political order. Luthers message of the priesthood of all believers and the freedom of the Christian man struck a chord with the peasants, who quickly embraced his ideas or at least what they thought were his ideas in the early 1520s. In the fall of 1524, a series of peasant uprisings began in southwest Germany and became more serious in the spring of 1525. The peasant rebels, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, were finally defeated in April 1525. In the course of the revolt peasant leaders printed a number of manifestos which were Lutheran in tone, such as the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants (excerpts from which are below). The Articles were drawn up in March 1525 and printed and reprinted in huge numbers over the following two months. Martin Luther himself reacted to this use and interpretation of his ideas by distancing himself from the peasants. In an initial tract in April 1525, as the uprisings were still raging, Luther published A Friendly Admonition to Peace Concerning the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants. In his Friendly Admonition, he acknowledged the justice of some of the peasants grievances; nonetheless he gently, but firmly, pointed out to the peasants that socioeconomic differences and political hierarchies were divinely ordained. All might be spiritually equal, but that did not mean such equality went beyond the spirit into the worldly realm. The violence of the last stages of the Peasants War, and arguably Luthers own disappointment that the peasants did not immediately drop their demands once he had pointed out the error of their interpretations, resulted in a more angry reaction. His second tract, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, below, was printed in May 1525. The Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants (March 1525)24

23 24

Introductory text Shannon McSheffrey 2009. From: The Protestant Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillberbrand (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), 64-66.

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6. The Twelae Articles of the peasants

The German
peasants' uprising

( t 5t 5) *

of r 52+-1525 had only a tenuous resince the real causes of Protestant Refornration, lationship with the into the preceding century, the peasants' discontent reachcd back vl'here they found expression in periodic uprisings and restlessness. But the Protestant Reformation and its slogans-the freedom of the Christian man, the priesthood of all believers, the repudiation of manrnade laws and regulations-seemed to be tailor-made for the peasants, and it was natural that they should embrace the tenets of the Reforma* Hans J. Hillerbrand, York, ry65), pp. 389-9r.

The

Ref ormation.

Narratizte History (New

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THE GERMAN REFORMATION

Taselae Articles

tion. When the peasants rose in southwest Germany in the fall of The Tq.uelve Articles, the most famous of a large number of similar peasant documents, serves as an excellent illustration; see, for example, the abundant scriptural references, as well as the stipulation that if any demand was contrary to Scripture it would be withdrawn.
LtronerunB
J. S. Schapiro, Social Ref orm and the Ref ormatioz (New York, I9o9). r524, their pronouncements seemed

to

express a Lutheran orientation.

to pay the fair properly. The given to God a minister, we w

church elders, a it, to the sufficie

by the entire
rnand.

rvhole congreg of the place, a

hold us as their

To tn. Christian Reader Peace and the Grace of God through

Christ.

The Third A
that Christ has

There are many Antichrists who on account of the assembling of the peasants, cast scorn upon the gospel, and say: Is this the fruit of the new teaching, that no one obeys but all everywhere rise in revolt, and band together to reform, extinguish, indeed kill the temporal and spiritual authorities. The following articles will answer these godless and blaspheming fault-finders. They will first of all remove the reproach from the word of God and secondly give a Christian excuse for the disobedience or even the revolt of the entire peasantry Therefore, Christian reader, read the following articles with care, and then judge. Here follow the
articles:

the shedding of

Accordingly,

free and we r,vi

rrnd under no lc:rd a disorder rve should live our neighbor.

The Fourth

heretofore that fowl, or fish in

The First Article. First, it is our humble petition and desire, indeed our will and resolution, that in the future we shall have
power and authority so that the entire community should choose and appoint a minister, and that we should have the right to depose him should he conduct himself improperly. The minister thus chosen should teach us the holy gospel pure and simple, without any human addition, doctrine or ordinance. For to teach us continually the true faith will lead us to pray God that through His grace His faith may increase within us and be confirmed in us. For if His grace is not within us, we always remain flesh and blood, which avails nothing; since the Scripture clearly teaches that only through true faith can we come to God. Only through His mercy can we become holy. . . . The Second Article. Since the right tithe is established in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New, we are ready and willing

and unbrotherl

of God.
session

of wrter

that his right ha r,vish to take it cised in a Chris

The Fifth A
member

matter of woo the r.l'oods to

of

tl're

he needs in his purposes he sho

appointed by t

The Sixth A

cessive services

59

RMAN REFORMATION

Taselae Articles oF THE PEAsANTs

6y

many

in the fall of

utheran orientation. number of similar

on; see, for examthe stipulation that

be withdrawn.

to pay the fair tithe of grain. None the less it should be done properly. The word of God plainly provides that it should be given to God and passed on to His own. If it is to be given to a minister, we will in the future collect the tithe through our church elders, appointed by the congregation and distribute from
it, to the sufficient livelihood of the minister and his family elected by the entire congregation, according to the judgment of the rvhole congregation. The remainder shall be given to the poor of the place, as the circumstances and the general opinion dernand.

(New York, I9o9).

e of God through

of the

assembling

nd say: Is this the but all everywhere nguish, indeed kill owing articles will rs. They will first God and secondly

even the revolt of n reader, read the . Here follow the

etition and desire, ure we shall have nity should choose ve the right to deThe minister thus nd simple, without r to teach us cond that through His e confirmed in us. remain flesh and ure clearly teaches God. Only through

The Third Article. It has been the custom hitherto for men to hold us as their own propert/, which is pitiable enough considering that Christ has redeemed and purchased us without exception, by the shedding of His precious blood, the lowly as well as the great. Accordingly, it is consistent rvith Scripture that r,ve should be free and we r,vish to be so. Not that u'e want to be absolutely free rrnd under no authority. God does not teach us that we should lc:rd a disorderly Iife according to the lusts of the flesh, but that rve should live by the commandments, love the Lord our God and our neighbor. The Fourth Article. In the fourth place it has been the custom heretofore that no poor man was allowed to catch venison or wild fowl, or fish in flowing water, which seems to us quite unseemly and unbrotherly, as well as selfish and not according to the word

of God.
session

established in the e ready and willing

Accordingly, it is our desire if a man holds poswrters of that he should prove from satisfactory documents that his right has been wittingly acquired by purchase. We do not r,vish to take it from him by force, but his rights should be exercised in a Christian and brotherly fashion. The Fifth Article. In the fifth place we are aggrieved in the matter of woodcutting, for our noble folk have appropriated all the r.l'oods to themselves alone. . It shoulcl be free to e\,'ery member of tl're community to help himself to such fireu,ood as he needs in his home. Also, if a man requires wood for carpenter's purposes he should have it free, but with the approval of a person appointed by the comnrunity for that purpose. The Sixth Article. Our sixth complaint is in regard to the ercessive services demanded

of us, which increase from day to day.

60

66

THE GERMAN REFORMATION

We ask that this matter be properly looked into, so that we shall not continue to be oppressed in this way, and that some gracious consideration be given us, since our forefathers served only according to the word of God. The Seventh Article. Seventh, we will not hereafter allow ourselves to be further oppressed by our lords. What the lords possess is to be held according to the agreement between the lord and
the peasant.

The Eighth Article. In the eighth place, we are greatly burdened

by holdings which cannot support the rent exacted from them. The peasants suffer loss in this way and are ruined. We ask that the lords may appoint persons of honor to inspect these holdings and fix a rent in accordance with justice, so that the peasant shall not work for nothing, since the laborer is worthy of his hire. The Ninth Article. In the ninth place, we are burdened with the great evil in the constant making of new laws. We are not judged according to the offense, but sometimes with great ill will, and sometimes much too leniently. In our opinion we should be iudged according to the old written law, so that the case shall be decided according to its merits, and not with favors. The Tenth Article. In the tenth place we are aggrieved that
certain individuals have appropriated meadows and fields which at one time belonged to the community. These we will take again into our own hands unless they were rightfully purchased. The Eleventh Article. In the eleventh place we will entirely abolish the custom called Todfall fheriot], and will no longer endure it, nor allow widows and orphans to be thus shamefully robbed against God's will. . . . Conclusion. In the twelfth place it is our conclusion and final resolution, that if any one or more of these articles should not be in agreement with the word of God, which we do not think, we will u'illingly recede from such article rvhen it is proved to be against the r,r,ord of God by a clear explanation of the Scripture. For tl'ris u,c shall pray God, since FIe can grant all this and He alone. The peacc of Christ abide with us all.

61

Martin Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (May 1525)25

\'IARTIN LUTI'IER

I9I

F. 'Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants',

May r5z5
The Peasants' War had started in June r524. Luther eventually took fright
and

denounced the action of the lower orders at the height of the rebellion. The tract was published after the suppression of the revolt.

In the former book I did not venture to iudge the peasants, since they had offered to be set right and to be instructed, and Christ's command, in Matthew 7[:r], says that we are not to judge. But before I look around they go on, and, forgetting their offer, they betake themselves to violence, and rob ind rage and ait likemad dogs. By this it is easy to see what they had in their false niinds, and that the pretences which they made in their twelve articles,l under the name of the Gospel, were nothing but lies. It is the devil's work that they are at, and in particular it is the work of the archdevil who rules at Miihlhausen,z and does nothing else than stir up robbery, murder and bloodshed; as Christ says of him inJohn 8['++],'He was a murderer from the beginning.; Sin.., then, these peasants and wretched folk have let themselves be led astray, and do otherwise than they have promised, I too must write of them otherwise than I have written, and begin by setting their sin before them, as God commands Isaiah and Ezekiel, on the chance that some of them may learn to know themselves. Then I must instruct the rulers how they are to conduct themselves in these circumstances. The peasants have taken on themselves the burden of three terrible sins against God and man, by which they have abundantly merited death in body rna soul. In the first place they have sworn to be true and faithful, submissive and obedient, to their rulers, as Christ commands, when he says, 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' [Matthew zz:ztf and in Romans I3[:r], 'Let everyone be subject unto the higher powers.' Because they are brealing this obedience, and are setting themselves against the higirer powers, wilfully and with violence, they have forfeited body and soul, 6 frithl.ts, perjured, lying, disobedient knaves and scoundrels are wont to do. St Paul passed this iudgement on them in Romans r3[:z] when he said, that they who resist the power will bring a judgement upon themselve-s. This saying will smite the peasants sooner or later, for it is God's will that faith be kept and duty done. in the second place, they are starting a rebellion, and violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles which are not theirs, by which they have a second time deserved death in body and soul, if only as highwaymen i The Twelve Articles of \{emmingen, formal demands made by the Swabian peasants of their rulers, in March r525. : Thomas N{iintzer, r. i48q-t525, a university-educated priest with a living in Swabia, who originally followed Luther but broke with him in r5zr when he thought Luther had_sold out to thJ po*e6 that be. A genuine revolutionary, he was exiled for preaching inflammatory ,.r-onr. In r5z5 he led th" p.uru.rtry of Franconia against the princes, lost, was tortured and killed.

From: Culture and Belief in Europe, 1450-1600: An Anthology of Sources, ed. David Englander, Diana Norman, Rosemary ODay, and W. R. Owens (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 191-95.
25

62

r92

REFOR\IATIO\

do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others - of a Pilate and a Herod - should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have other men's goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians these! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all
measure.

is, how he has the world in his hands and can throw everything into confusion, when he can so quickly catch so many thousands of peasants, deceive them, blind them, harden them and throw them into revolt, and do with them whatever his raging fury undertakes. It does not help the peasants, when they pretend that, according to Genesis r and z, all things were created free and common, and that all of us alike have been baptized. For under the New Testament Moses does not count; for there stands our Master, Christ, and subjects us, with our bodies and our property, to the emperor and the law of this world, when he says, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.' Paul, too, says, in Romans 13l:r], to all baptized Christians, 'Let every man be subject to the power', and Peter says, 'Be subject to every ordinance of man' [r Peter zt3]. By this doctrine of Christ we are bound to live, as the Father commands from heaven, saying, 'This is My beloved Son; hear him.' For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4. They did not demand, as

and murderers. Besides, any man against whom it can be proved that he is a maker of sedition is outside the law of God and Empire, so that the first who can slay him is doing right and well. For if a man is an open rebel every man is his judge and executioner, just as when a fire starts, the first to put it out is the best man. For rebellion is not simple murder, but is like a great fire, which attacks and lays waste a whole land. Thus rebellion brings with it a land full of murder and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down, like the greatest disaster. Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you. In the third place, they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the Gospel, call themselves'Christian brethren', receive oaths and homage, and compel people to hold with them to these abominations. Thus they become the greatest of all blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy Name, serving the devil, under the outward appearance of the Gospel, thus earning death in body and soul ten times over. I have never heard of a more hideous sin. I suspect that the devil feels the Last Day coming and therefore undertakes such an unheard-of-act, as though saying to himself, 'This is the last, therefore it shall be the worst; I will stir up the dregs and knock out the bottom.' God will guard us against him! See what a mighty prince the devil

Since the peasants, then, have brought both God and man down upon them and are already so many times guilty of death in body and soul, since

63

64

\,IARTI\ LUTHER

r93

they submit to no court and wait for no verdict, but only rage on' I must insiruct the worldly governors how they are to act in the matter with a clear
conscience.

First, I will not oppose a ruler who, even though he does not tolerate the Gospel, will smite and punish these peasants without offering to submit the case to judgement. For he is within his rights, since the peasants are not .ontendinglny longer for the Gospel, but have become flaithless, perjured, disobedient, riu.ttious murderers, robbers and blasphemers, whom even heathen rulers have the right and power to punish; nay, it is their duty to punish them, for it is just for this purpose that they bear the sword, and arO ithe ministers of God upon him that doeth evil'. But if the ruler is a Christian and tolerates the Gospel, so that the peasants have no appearance of a case against him, he should proceed with iear. First he must iut e the matter to God, confessing that we have deserved these things, and remembering that God may' perh-aPs,-hale,thus aroused the devil ai a punishment upon all Germany. Then he should humbly pray for help against the devil, ior 'we are battling not only against flesh and blood, tut"rgritrst spiritual wickedness in the air', and this must be attacked with pray.r.1h.n, when our hearts are so turned to God that we are ready to let his divine will be done, whether he will or will not have us to be princes and lords, we must go beyond our duty, and offer the mad peasants an opportunity to come to terms, even though they are not worthy of it. Finally, ifthat does not help, then swiftly grasp the sword' For a prince and lord musl remember in this case that he is God's minister and the seryant of his wrath (Romans r3), to whom the sword is committed for use upon such fellows, and that he sins as Eeatly against God, if he does not punish and protect and does not fulfil the duties of his office, as does on. io whom the sword has not been committed when he commits a murder. If he can punish and does not - even though the punishment consist in the takingof life and the shedding of blood - then he is guilry of all the murder and all the evil which these fellows commit, b.J"ur., by wilful neglect of the divine command, he permits-them to practise their wickedn.rr, though he can prevent it, and is in duty bound to io ,o. Here, then, there is no time for sleeping; no place for patience or mercy. It is the time of the sword, not the day of grace' The rulers, then, should go on unconcerned, and with a good conscience lay about them as long as their hearts still beat. It is to their advantage that the peasants have a bad conscience and an unjust cause' and that any peasant who is killed is lost in body and soul and is eternally the d-evil's. But

ihe rulers have a good conscience and a just cause; and can, therefore, say to God with all assurance of heart, 'Behold, my God, thou hast appointed me prince or lord, of this I can have no doubt; and thou hast committed to me ihe s*ord over the evildoers (Romans r3). It is thy Word, and cannot lie. I must fulfil my office, or forfeit thy grace. It is also plain that these peasants have deserved death many times over, in thine eyes and the eyes of the world, and have been committed to me for punishment. If it be thy will that I be slain by them, and that my rulership be taken from me and destroyed, so

65

66

r9+

REFORMATIO\

be it: thy will be done. So shall I die and be destroyed fulfilling thy commandment and thy Word, and shall be found obedient to thy commandment and my oflice. Therefore will I punish and smite as long as my heart beats. Thou wilt iudge and make things right.'

Thus it may be that one who is killed fighting on the ruler's side may be a true martyr in the eyes of God, if he fights with such a conscience as I have just described, for he is in God's Word and is obedient to him. On the other hand, one who perishes on the peasant's side is an eternal brand of hell, for he bears the sword against God's Word and is disobedient to him, and is a member of the devil. And even though it happens that the peasants gain the upper hand (which God forbid!) - for to God all things are possible, and we do not know whether it may be his will, through the devil, to destroy all order and rule and cast the world upon a desolate heap, as a prelude to the Last Day, which cannot be far off - nevertheless, they may die without worry and go to the scaffold with a good conscience, who are found exercising their oflice of the sword. They may leave to the devil the kingdom of the world, and take in exchange the everlasting kingdom. Strange times, these, when a prince can win heaven with bloodshed, better than other men with
prayer!

Finally, there is another thing that ought to move the rulers. The peasants are not content to be themselves the devil's own, but they force and compel many good people against their wills to join their devilish league, and so make them partakers of all of their own wickedness and damnation. For anyone who consents to rvhat they do, goes to the devil with them, and is
guilry of all the evil deeds that they commit; though he has to do this because he is so weak in faith that he does not resist them. A pious Christian ought to suffer a hundred deaths, rather than give a hair's breadth of consent to the peasant's cause. O how many martyrs could now be made by the bloodthirsty peasants and the murdering prophets! Now the rulers ought to have mercy on these prisoners of the peasants, and if they had no other reason to use the sword, with a good conscience, against the peasants, and to risk their own lives and property in fighting them, there would be reason enough, and more than enough, in this - that thus they would be rescuing and helping these souls, whom the peasants have forced into their devilish leagUe and who, without willing it, are sinning so horribly, and who must be damned. For truly these souls are in purgatoryi naY, in the bonds of hell and the devil. Therefore, dear lords, here is a place where you can release, rescue' help. Have mercy on these poor people fwhom the peasants have compelled to join them]. Stab, smite, slay, whoever can. If you die in doing it, well for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die in obeying the divine Word and commandment in Romans 13, and in loving service of your neighbour, whom you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and of the devil. And so I beg everyone who can to flee from the peasants as from the devil himself; those who do not flee, I pray that God will enlighten and convert. As for those who are not to be converted, God glant that they may have neither fortune nor success. To this let every pious Christian say Amen! For

67

\IARTI\ LUTHER

r95

this prayer is right and good, and pleases God; this I know. If anyone think this ioo hard, let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the rvorld is to be expected even' hour.

68

6: Patrick Collinson, The Reformation (2004), ch. 10: People26

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7: Samuel Pepys on the Great Plague (1665)27

Thanks to the survival of his detailed, entertaining, and lengthy diary, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is one of the bestknown personalities of seventeenth-century England. As a naval administrator during the height of Anglo-Dutch rivalry, Pepys paid close attention to the state of Englands fleet in peace and war. But while his diary chronicles his daily journeys from home, to office, to court and his dealings with various high officials as well as his sometimes fraught relations with family and servants, and his innumerable conversations at coffeehouses, taverns, and the houses of the great much of its interest lies in the unique window it provides on the politics and society of Restoration England (that is, England after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660), and especially in Pepyss eyewitness accounts of life in London in an era both of rapid growth and occasional disaster. Pepyss account of one major catastrophe, the Great Fire of 1666, is well known, but his more scattered comments on the Great Plague of the year before are no less revealing. The Great Plague of 1665 was one of the largest, and also the last, major outbreaks in England of bubonic plague (yersinia pestis), a disease introduced into Europe in the 1340s and reappearing regularly thereafter. Raging during the summer months, the epidemic is estimated to have killed 100,000 people, or approximately a fifth of Londons population. Pepys attests to the vague ideas about the causes of plague and the variety of measures taken; more poignantly, his account reveals the gradual transformation wrought by the outbreak on the fabric of life in a crowded, commercially vibrant capital city, as his daily comings and goings, professional life and social relations are complicated, and his conversation and thoughts dominated, by the proximity of death. Pepyss preoccupation with the plague bills also reveals a new interest linked to the empirical science championed by the Royal Society (founded 1660), of which Pepys was a member in quantifying the human cost of plague as a way of predicting its course, while also manifesting skepticism about official claims and popular conceptions of the disease. May 24th. To the coffee-house, where all the news is of the Dutch being gone out,28 and of the plague growing upon us in this town; and of remedies against it: some saying one thing, and some another. June 7th. It being the hottest day that ever I felt in my life, and it is confessed so by all other people the hottest day they ever knew in England in the beginning of June. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and Lord have mercy upon us! writ there;29 which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell [see Figure 1], so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension. June 17th. It struck me very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney coach from Lord Treasurers down Holborn, the coachman I found to drive easily and easily, at last stood still, and come down hardly able to stand, and told me that he was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind he could not see. So I alight, and went into another coach, with a sad heart for the poor man and
The following selections are based on the text of John Warrington (ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 3 vols. (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1953), 2:116-165, altered for clarity where necessary. Introduction, footnotes and annotations Ted McCormick (2012). 28 The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67) had begun. 29 The houses of plague victims were often ordered to be marked and boarded up by the municipal authorities, as a measure to prevent the spread of the disease.
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for myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague but God have mercy upon us all! Sir John Lawson, I hear, is worse than yesterday; the King went to see him today most kindly. It seems his wound is not very bad; but he hath a fever, a thrush, and a hiccough, all three together, which are, it seems, very bad symptoms.30 June 26th. The plague increases mightily, I this day seeing a house, at a bit-makers,31 over against St. Clements Church, in the open street, shut up: which is a sad sight. June 28th. In my way to Westminster Hall I observed several plague-houses in Kings Street and near the Palace. I was fearful of going to any house, but I did to the Swan, and thence to White Hall. July 18th. To the Change,32 where a little business, and a very thin Exchange; and so walked through London to the Temple, where I took water for Westminster and did give Mrs. Michell, who is going out of town because of the sickness, and her husband, a pint of wine. I was much troubled this day to hear at Westminster how the officers do bury the dead in the open in Tothill fields, pretending want of room elsewhere; whereas the new chapel church-yard was walled in at the public charge in the last plague-time, merely for want of room; and now none, but such as are able to pay dear for it, can be buried there. Figure 1: A seventeenth-century plague doctor. The heavy, waxed cloak and distinctive mask (which held various July 20th. Walked to Redriffe,33 where I hear scented substances) were designed to keep out the foul air the sickness is, and indeed is scattered almost with which plague was thought to be connected; see Pepyss th everywhere, there dying 1089 of the plague this comments in the June 7 entry. week. My Lady Carteret did give me a bottle of plague-water34 home with me. Lord! To see how the plague spreads, it being now all over King Street, at the Axe, and next door to it, and in other places. July 26th. The sickness has got into our parish this week, and is got, indeed, everywhere; so that I begin to think of setting things in order, which I pray God to enable me to put, both as to soul and body. July 27th. At home met the weekly Bill,35 where above 1000 increased in the Bill; and of them, in all, about 1700 of the plague.

Pepys noted Lawsons death just over a week later, on June 25th. A maker of bits for horses. 32 The Royal Exchange, a center of commerce in the City of London. 33 Also known as Rotherhithe, a town on the south bank of the Thames, east of the City (now part of the London Borough of Southwark). 34 A popular concoction meant to prevent plague.
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Figure 2: A 1643 map of London; note the dense housing and narrow streets of the City (center and right, above the River Thames). Pepys lived in the City, close to the Tower of London (far right, on the north bank), but his daily business frequently took him to Westminster (far left), or by boat to various points on the south bank.

July 28th. Set out with my Lady to Dagenhams;36 going by water to the ferry. And a pleasant going, and a good discourse. But, Lord! to see in what fear all the people here do live. How they are afeard of us that come to them, insomuch that I am troubled at it, and wish myself away. But some cause they have, for the chaplain, with whom, but a week or two ago, we were here mighty high disputing, is since fallen into a fever, and dead. A sober and healthful man. August 10th. By and by to the office, where we sat all the morning; in great trouble to see the Bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and of them above 3,000 of the plague. And an odd story about Alderman Bences stumbling at night over a dead corpse in the street; and going home and telling his wife, she at the fright, being with child, fell sick and died of the plague. To Sir G. Smiths to dinner. Captain Cocke was there, and, to our great wonder, Alderman Bence who tells us that not a word of all this is true. Home, to draw over anew my Will, which I had bound myself by oath to dispatch by tomorrow night; the town growing so unhealthy, that a man cannot depend upon living two days. August 12th. The people die so, that now it seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at nine at night all, as they say, that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead out of our ships at Deptford,37 which troubles us mightily. I am told, too, that a wife of one of the grooms at Court is dead at Salisbury; so that the King and Queen are speedily to be all gone to Wilton. So God preserve us! August 13th. (Lords day.)38 It being very wet all day, clearing all matters in packing up my papers and books, and giving instructions in writing to my executors, thereby perfecting the whole business of my Will, to my very great joy; so that I shall be in much better state of soul, I hope, if it should
Mortality bill, a weekly summary of the number and causes of deaths in London, by parish. See Figure 3 for an example. 36 Dagenham, an Essex village 12 miles or 20 kilometres east of London; now part of the London borough of Barking. 37 A town on the south bank of the Thames near London, the site of Royal docks and hence of close professional concern to Pepys, who served on the Navy Board. 38 I.e., a Sunday.
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please the Lord to call me away this sickly time. I find myself worth, besides Brampton estates, the sum of 2,164, for which the Lord be praised! August 22nd. I walked to Greenwich,39 in my way seeing a coffin with a dead body therein, dead of the plague, lying in an open close belonging to Combe farm, which was carried out last night, and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a watch there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come thence: this disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to dogs. ... August 25th. This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is this morning dead of the plague. Poor unfortunate man! August 30th. Abroad, and met with Hadley, our clerk,40 who, upon my asking how the plague goes, told me it increases much, and much in our parish; for, says he, there died nine this week, though I have returned but six: which is a very ill practice, and makes me think it is so in other places, and therefore the plague much greater than people take it to be. I went forth, and walked towards Moorfields to see, God forgive my presumption! Whether I could see any dead corpse going to the grave; but, as God would have it, did not. But, Lord! how everybodys looks and discourse in the street is of death, and nothing else; and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken. August 31st. Up: and, after putting several things in order to my removal, to Woolwich;41 the plague having a great increase this week, beyond all expectation, of almost 2,000, making the general Bill 7,000, odd 100; and the plague above 6,000. Thus this month ends with great sadness upon the public, through the greatness of the plague everywhere through the kingdom almost. Every day sadder and sadder news of its increase. In the City died this week 7,496, and of them 6,102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of dead this week is near 10,000: partly from the poor that cannot be taken notice of, through the greatness of the number, and partly from the Quakers and others that will not have any bell ring for them. September 7th. To the Tower,42 and there sent for the Weekly Bill, and find 8252 dead in all, and of them 6978 of the plague;43 which is a most dreadful number, and shows reason to fear that the plague hath got that hold that it will yet continue among us. September 14th. I did wonder to see the Change so full, I believe 200 people; but not a man or merchant of any fashion, but plain men all. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour all I could to talk with as few as I could, there being now no observation of shutting up of houses infected, that to be sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague upon them. I spent some thoughts upon the occurrences of this day,44 giving matter for as much content on one hand, and melancholy on another, as any day in all my life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate and all safe at London. The hearing of this good news to such excess adding to that, the decrease of 500 and more [in the weekly mortality bills], which is the first decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it begun; and great hopes that the next week it will be greater. Then, on the other side, my finding
A resort town on the south side of the Thames near London; later (in Pepyss lifetime) the site of the Royal Naval Hospital. 40 The parish clerk, one of whose tasks was to report (or, as here, return) plague deaths. 41 A town in the Royal Borough of Greenwich (see note 13). 42 The Tower of London, known today for its role as a prison but at the time a royal palace serving several state purposes. 43 See Figure 2. 44 Pepys had earlier noted the English naval victory over the Dutch at Sole Bay.
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that though the Bill in general is abated, yet the City, within the walls,45 is increased, and likely to continue so, and is close to our house there. My meeting dead corpses of the plague, carried to be buried close to me at noon-day through the City at Fenchurch Street. To see a person sick of the sores carried close by me by Gracechurch in a hackney coach. My finding the Angel tavern, at the lower end of Tower Hill, shut up; and more than that, the alehouse at Tower Stairs; and more than that, the person was then dying of the plague when I was last there, a little while ago, at night. To hear that poor Payne, my waiter, hath buried a child, and is dying himself. To hear that a labourer I sent but the other day to Dagenhams, to know how they did there, is dead of the plague; and that one of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he landed me on Friday morning last. And lastly, that both my servants, W. Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week, do put me into great apprehensions of melancholy, and with good reason. But I put off my thoughts of sadness as much as I can.

Figure 3: A plague bill for the week of 5-12 September 1665, reprinted in John Graunt, Londons Dreadful Visitation: Or, a Collection of all the Bills of Mortality for the Present Year (London, 1665), sig. L1v-L2r. Pepys apparently refers to the original bill in his entry for September 7, but reads 6988 plague deaths as 6978.

That is, the City of London proper (sometimes referred to as the Square Mile), excluding London parishes outside the Roman city walls.
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8: Voltaire, Candide (1759)46

Voltaire was the pen name of Franois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), possibly the most famous and still one of the most widely-read authors of the French Enlightenment. The son of a minor official, Voltaire achieved wide fame, elevated social status and essential to his freedom in a time of tight censorship mobility. He did so not primarily as an academic or office-holder, though at different times he enjoyed the patronage of the French and Prussian crowns as well as various members of the nobility, but rather as an immensely successful writer. His plays, poems, essays, novels, histories, and pamphlets range over all manner of topics and number in the thousands; his personal letters, many later published, number in the tens of thousands. His works were read in French or in translation across Europe and beyond, and were noted for their consistently critical stance towards established religion which Voltaire identified with superstition, dogmatism, fanaticism, and persecution , their promotion of intellectual liberty, and their somewhat more qualified criticism of the abuses of monarchical government (though radical in some respects, Voltaire was no democrat). Candide, certainly his best-known novel today, takes up some of these themes but adds to them another of Voltaires favorite targets: the excessive intellectual pretensions of rationalist philosophies, especially that of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), represented by Dr. Pangloss in Chapter 1 below. While Voltaire does scant justice to Leibnizs complicated ideas, his dismissive summary of the Germans views everything must happen for the best in this best of all possible worlds caught enough of the flavor of Christian natural philosophy, with its search for divine design in the workings of the world, to convince readers at the time (and since) of Leibnizs ludicrous optimism. Indeed Voltaires true target is perhaps not so much any one philosopher as the hubris of such teleological arguments: both the idea that human reason is capable of identifying the purpose of everything in the universe, and the notion that the purpose of everything is to serve humankind. More popular kinds of providentialism the belief in divine oversight of and intervention in the day-to-day world came in for similar scorn; this form of superstition is more evident in the purposes of the auto-da-f in Chapter 6. CHAPTER 1: How Candide Was Brought Up in a Magnificent Castle and How He Was Driven Thence In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition.47 His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, I presume, he had his name of Candide. The old servants of the house suspected him to have been the son of the Barons sister, by a very good sort of a gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady refused to marry, because he could produce no more than threescore and eleven quarterings in his arms; the rest of the genealogical tree belonging to the family having been lost through the injuries of time.48

Text from http://pluto.clinch.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/cand.html; original translation by T. Smollett et al. (London: J. Newbury, 1762) in the public domain. Introduction and notes Ted McCormick, 2013. 47 Westphalia: A German state, internally divided in the eighteenth century into many smaller duchies, city-states and other feudal units, and itself one of dozens of sovereign territories making up the Holy Roman Empire. It was well known as the site of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which brought the Thirty Years War, the last of Europes major religious wars, to an end; Westphalia itself remained religiously divided. 48 threescore and eleven quarterings in his arms: Coats of arms, the emblems of noble families, were often divided, or quartered, into sections, each representing a noble ancestor in the male line; this gentleman could produce
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The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle had not only a gate, but even windows, and his great hall was hung with tapestry. He used to hunt with his mastiffs and spaniels instead of greyhounds; his groom served him for huntsman; and the parson of the parish officiated as his grand almoner. He was called My Lord by all his people, and he never told a story but everyone laughed at it. My Lady Baroness, who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, consequently was a person of no small consideration; and then she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded universal respect. Her daughter was about seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable. The Barons son seemed to be a youth in every respect worthy of the father he sprung from. Pangloss, the preceptor, was the oracle of the family, and little Candide listened to his instructions with all the simplicity natural to his age and disposition. Master Pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology.49 He could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Barons castle was the most magnificent of all castles, and My Lady the best of all possible baronesses. It is demonstrable, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. Candide listened attentively and believed implicitly, for he thought Miss Cunegund excessively handsome, though he never had the courage to tell her so. He concluded that next to the happiness of being Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, the next was that of being Miss Cunegund, the next that of seeing her every day, and the last that of hearing the doctrine of Master Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the whole province, and consequently of the whole world.... CHAPTER 6: How the Portuguese Made a Superb Auto-De-Fe to Prevent Any Future Earthquakes, and How Candide Underwent Public Flagellation50 After the earthquake, which had destroyed three-fourths of the city of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to preserve the kingdom from utter ruin than to
only threescore and eleven (or seventy-one) such quarterings in fact a much larger number than most families would have bothered to display, but here described as a small number in order to satirize aristocratic exclusivity. 49 metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology: Pangloss is a stand-in for Leibniz, whose principle of sufficient reason was the butt of many of Voltaires jokes. The name of Panglosss field of study, however, may also recall Leibnizs fellow-metaphysician and correspondent, the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza (1632-1677), whose most notorious works were his Ethics, organized as a geometrical demonstration, and his PoliticoTheological Treatise. While Voltaire mocked Leibniz for his supposedly optimistic brand of Christian Providentialism, Spinoza was widely reviled as an atheist. 50 Any Future Earthquakes: The Great Lisbon Earthquake of November 1755 was one of the major disasters of the eighteenth century and one of the worst earthquakes in history, killing between 10,000 and 100,000 people in the city and causing damage as far away as the British Isles to the north and Morocco to the south. At the time, earthquakes were popularly seen as divine judgments.

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entertain the people with an auto-da-f, it having been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes.51 In consequence thereof they had seized on a Biscayan for marrying his godmother, and on two Portuguese for taking out the bacon of a larded pullet they were eating; after dinner they came and secured Dr. Pangloss, and his pupil Candide, the one for speaking his mind, and the other for seeming to approve what he had said.52 They were conducted to separate apartments, extremely cool, where they were never incommoded with the sun. Eight days afterwards they were each dressed in a sanbenito, and their heads were adorned with paper mitres. The mitre and sanbenito worn by Candide were painted with flames reversed and with devils that had neither tails nor claws; but Dr. Panglosss devils had both tails and claws, and his flames were upright.53 In these habits they marched in procession, and heard a very pathetic sermon, which was followed by an anthem, accompanied by bagpipes. Candide was flogged to some tune, while the anthem was being sung; the Biscayan and the two men who would not eat bacon were burned, and Pangloss was hanged, which is not a common custom at these solemnities. The same day there was another earthquake, which made most dreadful havoc. Candide, amazed, terrified, confounded, astonished, all bloody, and trembling from head to foot, said to himself, If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? If I had only been whipped, I could have put up with it, as I did among the Bulgarians; but, not withstanding, oh my dear Pangloss! my beloved master! thou greatest of philosophers! that ever I should live to see thee hanged, without knowing for what! O my dear Anabaptist, thou best of men, that it should be thy fate to be drowned in the very harbor! O Miss Cunegund, you mirror of young ladies! that it should be your fate to have your body ripped open! He was making the best of his way from the place where he had been preached to, whipped, absolved and blessed, when he was accosted by an old woman, who said to him, Take courage, child, and follow me....

an auto-da-f: Literally, in Portuguese, an act of faith; in practice, the ritual punishment, often execution, of convicted heretics by the papal or, later, Spanish or Portuguese Inquisition. The University of Coimbra was the major university in Portugal, and its Faculty of Theology accordingly a key authority in religious matters. 52 for marrying his godmother: godparents fell within the proscribed degrees of consanguinity set out by the Catholic church; the Biscayans marriage was thus deemed incestuous. (It may be pertinent to note here that Voltaire himself had had an incestuous relationship with his niece.) for taking out the bacon: the two Portuguese were presumably New Christians of Jewish origin. Since they were avoiding food forbidden by Jewish law, they were arrested by the Inquisition as crypto-Jews, that is, for maintaining Jewish practices in secret while living publicly as Christians. Jews had been forced either to convert to Christianity or to leave Portugal in 1497, though many remained. 53 sanbenito: a robe or apron similar to a priests scapular, but worn by condemned heretics; devils on the sanbenito signify the unrepentant state of the wearer.
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