"Not a Christian motive" - Remembering the Murder of Medieval Spanish Jews
Medieval Religion Matters, and isn't something we can just shrug off
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
It was never easy to be a Jew during Holy Week in late medieval Iberia.
Christian communities routinely performed ritualized acts of violence as part of their celebrations. Clerics, youths, and especially clerical youths would throw stones at the walls of Jewish quarters as a kind of "game." Good Friday Passion plays not only depicted Jewish complicity in the death of Jesus, but followed it with narratives of the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans and the massacres of most of the Jews who lived there. The latter told the story of diaspora, the story of why there were Jews in Iberia. The former violently marked the boundaries on where Jews could and could not live within their communities.
In his classic book Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, the historian David Nirenberg writes:
On the one hand, this clerical reenacting of foundational historical narratives, reinforcing of boundaries between groups, and ritualization of sacrificial violence all contributed to conditions that made possible the continued existence of Jews in a Christian society. On the other, Holy Week stonings can be read as a clerical gloss on convivencia, a warning that the toleration of Jews in a Christian society was not without its dangers and costs...There would be moments (such as the advent of the Black Death and the massacres of 1391) when these alternatives achieved momentary and tragic dominance. Most of the time, however, they would only be adumbrated year after year by technicians of the sacred hurling stones at the walls of the [Jewish quarter].1
One of Nirenberg's arguments is that it's as important to pay attention to periods in which violence doesn't erupt as to when it does. In part, this is because those moments of spectacular violence arise from more mundane (or everyday violence), ritualized violence. But also it's important to be clear about why specifically violence happens, when it arises from religion, but also when it comes from tensions between local elites and the king, or local clerics vs local secular elites, etc. as well.
Iberian Christian kings (and outside Iberia too, but let's stay in the peninsula for now) often took religious minority communities under their protection. This often put a target on these communities' backs, allowing rivals to monarchical power to attack those minorities in ways they couldn't directly challenge the king, or to use ritual violence to challenge the king's agents who were protecting the minorities. Therefore, how violence emerges against minorities requires close reading of what is and isn't said by our sources, of the cultural and political contexts (Nirenberg emphasizes that plural) on the ground. This is part of the work of the historian.
But also let's remember, as Nirenberg absolutely does, that real people got hurt. Around 1310 in the Kingdom of Aragon:
It was reported to the bailiff that during the holiday of Easter, a group of youngsters was playing next to the castle of the Jews of Daroca, and that Pero Xomonez, son of don Xomen de Palagio, who was with them, threw a rock over the wall of the castle that injured a Jewish woman, from which injury the woman died." (Nirenberg, 208).
Nirenberg, here, wants to point out that this is not a pogrom, not the generalized, rampaging destruction of a Jewish community.
But also, a Jewish woman died.
During Holy Week in city of León, a city in Northern Spain, Christians like to go out and drink something they call "matar judíos" or "kill Jews." The name of the drink isn't a new revelation, but a new story about the tradition from this year's Holy Week, published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has been making the rounds on social media.
Here's the critical bit:
“Semana Santa,” or Holy Week, is the most important religious period in Spain....One fixture of these frenzied days is a Leonese cocktail made from red wine, lemons, cinnamon and sugar, sometimes with oranges and figs. Here it is called “limonada,” and virtually every bar in Barrio Húmedo, the city’s nightlife-packed medieval quarter, is plastered with signs advertising their version. It’s local tradition to drink 33 limonadas during Holy Week, representing the age of Jesus when he was crucified.
It’s also a centuries-old tradition for revelers seeking limonadas to say they are going out to “kill Jews.”
“It’s an expression here,” Margarita Torres Sevilla, a professor of medieval history at the University of León, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “For example, you tell me, ‘Have a drink with me? Okay, let’s go kill Jews.’ Another typical sentence of Holy Week is, ‘How many Jews have you killed? Three, four, five [limonadas]? Oh, you have killed a lot.’”
Antisemitic language lingers everywhere -- David grew up in Nashville where it was common to hear people refer to bargaining as to "jew you down."
But that language especially lingers in Spain. In an article about the complications around descendants of expelled Jews claiming citizenship, scholar (and Sephardic descendant) Kiku Adatto writes:
Querub, a longtime leader of Spain’s Jewish community, told me he believes that “Spain is no longer an anti-Semitic country; however, anti-Semitic prejudices persist, fed by dark legends, lies, and ignorance.” He added in an email, “There are still anti-Semitic expressions in the Spanish language which, unfortunately, are used quite frequently in the media, among the political classes, and of course, in the street—perro judío [Jewish dog], judiada [a dirty trick, cruel act, or extortion], and judío [associated with usurers].”
Nirenberg notes all kinds lingering evidence of antisemitic ritual, writing:
In modern Tortosa, for example, mata judiets, “killing the Jews,” was until recently part of the liturgy of Holy Thursday, with children banging sticks and raising bedlam at certain points in the services. Similar festivities have been customary throughout Iberia. In modern Asturias the children would shake their rattles and sing a song... “Marrano Jews: you killed God, now we kill you. Thieving Jews: first you kill Christ and now you come to rob Christians.” (Nirenberg, 202-03).
It's not hard to look at these customs and think that Spain has a problem, that these phrases and traditions are not ok, to celebrate that some have been abolished, and to work on the rest.
But that doesn't seem to be how Margarita Torres Sevilla, the historian quoted by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, understands the situation:
The expression of “killing Jews” on Holy Week goes back to an episode in the 15th century, according to Torres Sevilla. León was economically devastated by war and the Black Death, leaving many Christian noblemen in debt. One such knight, Suero de Quiñones, owed payments to a Jewish merchant. To avoid paying his debt, Quiñones whipped up a religious fervor against León’s Jews on Holy Week in 1449. He organized a group of knights to attack the Jewish quarter, murdering the lender and several others on Good Friday.
“Quiñones said on Holy Week, our Lord was accused by the Jews and the Jews killed him,” said Torres Sevilla. “So what do we do with the Jews? Kill them. But the real reason was not a Christian motive — the real reason was that he had an important debt to an important merchant of the Jewish community.”
To celebrate their supposed vengeance for the death of Jesus, Quiñones and his allies went to drink wine in Barrio Húmedo. Thus commenced the ritual of downing limonadas to the refrain of “killing Jews,” said Torres Sevilla.
The reason we began this post with the long excursus through the history of ritualized and actual violence against Jews in Iberia during Holy Week is because of this phrase, "the real reason was not a Christian motive." Let that sit for a moment, now that there's some more context.
Such a statement is jarring, staggering. Such a statement tries ultimately to exculpate medieval Iberian Christianity from antisemitic violence. Such a statement tries to find a "real," material reason behind antisemitic violence even when directly confronted with the fact that Christians here were hurting Jewish people simply because they were Jews.
Torres Sevilla is an interesting historian. Recently though, she started moving into popular history (a move we of course know something about) and that's when things have gone off the rails. Her latest book claims to have discovered that a cup held in the local cathedral is ACTUALLY THE HOLY GRAIL. Candida Moss reviewed the book for The Daily Beast, writing:
The documents claiming that the cup came from Jerusalem were written in 1037 CE, more than a thousand years after the object that they verify. Before that the trail runs cold. More important, the 11th century was the height of the relic trade, a period in which every nobleman, monarch, and bishop was willing to pay top dollar for religious relics associated with Jesus... There were hundreds of cups claiming to be the Holy Grail during this period, and the savvy relic trader was not above forging a letter as a guarantee of authenticity to set his product apart. As far as credibility goes, they may as well have picked this up on eBay.
Lots of people write goofy books about history, but the claims suggest something about her own position as a believer, as someone for whom myths need to be true, even if they happen to be factually false.
Moreover, she was an elected member of a center-right Spanish party, one focused on "traditional" values, and she worked for the culture and tourism council. She wants people to come to her city. Celebrate Easter. See the chalice. Buy her book. Kill some Jews/drink some lemonade wine coolers.
This kind of argument, that horrific medieval acts were not actually about religion, so carry no implications for modern believers, is important because it's not just about this one historian. We see similar arguments about the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland and Muslims in Jerusalem during the First Crusade. In England, we know that the blood libel was constructed by someone trying to push a saint cult, but took hold when a local knight used it to defend himself for having murdered a Jewish moneylender.
The key is to understand that culture, that contexts (that plural again), are complicated, as are people. Yes, a single incident of violence may have a specific spark related to secular needs and not religious fervor. Or a boy could throw a rock in a ritual act, directed by his elders, not intending to hurt anyone.
But if that rock was thrown by a Christian and aimed at a Jewish quarter specifically, it has something to do with religion. And more importantly, if that rock strikes a woman on the head and kills her, she's still dead, and she's still a victim of hate.
1.Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 228. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77j55. If you don't have jstor access but want to read the chapter on Holy Week violence, email lollardfish at gmail.
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