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nglo-Saxon law and custom so thoroughly informs our culture that we can occasionally forget how other nations developed different practices. In medieval Castile, situated in the heart of present-day Spain, the Christian monarchs’ plan of Reconquista—the process of reclaiming the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, by force or by cultural influence—created an ever-changing frontier. Miles of territory remained contested for centuries. Towns fell to the Christians and were reclaimed by the Moors, then back again.

This state of cultural flux diminished the Catholic Church’s ability to remain rigid with regard marriage, inheritances, sexual taboos, and relations with Jews. To the Christian kings and their subjects, locked in a centuries-long struggle against their contentious Islamic neighbors, every law existed to further Reconquista; little else mattered.

Men greatly outnumbered women in frontier towns, and bachelor knights were considered as great a threat as Moorish invasion. Itinerancy and irresponsibility would not promote Reconquista, neither militarily nor culturally. Thus towns enacted fueros, or laws, to promote stability among these rogue, potentially dangerous knights, namely time off from military service after marriage, financial rewards for bearing children, and even the social acceptance of illegitimate sexual relations.
A knight’s official mistress was called a barragana andwas afforded almost all of the rights of a wife. If the affair came to an end, the woman was not ruined. Frontier fathers wanted their daughters to secure reputable matches, and frontier suitors did not want the (relatively) small issue of an affair to remove a possible mate from the market. Maintaining a mistress, although not ideal, at least meant that bachelors would behave as more stable guardians of frontier society. Any children born to such unions were legitimate.

Numerous records exist of so-called kidnappings, where an amorous knight would abduct a willing woman from her home and spend the night out on the frontier. These kidnappings did not hold the official status of a barragana arrangement, so families relented and let the young couple wed. In some communities were fueros were most lenient, a couple needed only to declare their state of marriage—no priest, no banns, and no witnesses required. Again, this returns to the issue of stability. If the young knight actually volunteered to enter into matrimony, no matter how dubious, who should try to deny him? However, this unspoken tradition also made proving charges of rape incredibly difficult.
Because the ultimate goal of Reconquista was to take back Iberian lands from the Moors, the most heinous crime a Christian could commit was to engage in sexual relations with a Muslim. Islamic women were executed for having sex with Christians, and Christian women with Muslims. Even prostitutes had to stay with men of their own religion. Men were generally given a warning—the removal of a hand, for example—but they were also put to death after repeated transgressions.
But even these harsh laws could be mediated in the name of Reconquista. Because the need to secure tenuous Christian bloodlines was of paramount interest, and with Christian women so scarce on the frontier, provisions were made for mixed-race children. If a Christian man fathered a baby on a Muslim slave, and then that baby was baptized, the man could name the child as his heir—anything to continue at least nominal control over acquired lands.

The other class to suffer under these customs were known as covigeras: illegal matchmakers. On occasion, a man developed a fancy for a married woman. He sought a convigera to make contact with the woman and aid in his seduction. The matchmaker would act as a go-between to present gifts and secret notes, and would arrange a place for their tryst. The last thing these Christian communities wanted was to destabilize marriages through arranged adultery. Unstable marriage meant divorce. Divorce meant a knight’s return to itinerancy and unpredictability. As such, convigeras, if caught and convicted, were sentenced to death.

 

 

Sexual relations with Jews were not banned. After all, such a ban would do nothing to further Reconquista. In fact many aspects this, the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, were relatively beneficial to Jews in Iberia. For example, when Christian kings began to make substantial territorial advancements during the 11th century, they employed Jews as spies. Christians did not become spies because it was thought to be immoral. More than 2,000 Jews, or roughly 7% of the population, lived in Toledo under Alfonso VIII of Castile, and Jews were awarded juderias, or Jewish-controlled estates in the north of the Peninsula. Some were even awarded daughters as political alliances.

Also, because Jews had lived in Moorish-occupied territory throughout the centuries-long Christian expulsion, they knew a great deal about the Islamic tribes. Jews had performed the same function in the 8th century when they advised invading Moors about the habits and weaknesses of the conquered Visigoths. This pattern of adaptation—finding usefulness within an incoming regime—helped the Jews survive multiple invasions and re-conquests, but it added to the suspicions about their people and way of life.

Although Jews enjoyed these advantages in the heyday of Reconquista, the need for their expertise waned as Christians began to re-occupy more and more land and become acquainted first-hand with their Moorish enemies. Eventually, in the early 13th century, Jews were expelled from their juderias, replaced in royal courts, and forced to wear identifying clothing. The taboo of marrying a Jew reappeared in good society, although their integration into Christian bloodlines in Spain was already greater than in any other medieval kingdom.

Thus iron-clad societal rules in medieval Iberia were not so iron-clad. The demands of Reconquista moved with the times, according to the kings in power, their aims, and the status of their campaigns against an Moorish enemy. The higher dictates of the Catholic Church only reappeared in full once the goal of Reconquista—a process that claimed more than eight centuries—culminated in 1492, when the last Muslim leader of Granada surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella.

 

Reconquista_soliders

Reconquista Soldiers

 

 

Born in California and raised in the Midwest, Carrie Lofty found the love of her life in England. Since earning her master’s in history from The Ohio State University, she’s been devoted to raising her family and writing romance. Her January 2010 release, Scoundrel’s Kiss, featuring a Spanish warrior monk and the troubled woman he’s sworn to protect, is the sequel to her Robin Hood-themed debut, What a Scoundrel Wants. Visit Carrie at www.CarrieLofty.com.

 

 

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