Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391

2.From Resistance to Surrender: Jewish Responses to Inquisitorial Prosecution

C h a p t e r 2 From Resistance to Surrender: Jewish Responses to Inquisitorial Prosecution With all due respect to the lord inquisitor, he should not have proceeded as he did. —Jucef de Quatorze, 13421 The Jews whom Pere blamed for his misadventures were terrified when they learned that they were suspected of “crimes of heretical depravity.” Jucef de Quatorze fled to Valencia, where he was arrested and put on trial by the inquisitorial commissary fra Berenguer Saiol. Salomon and Miriam Navarro prepared to flee to Castile, where medieval inquisitions never took root. Before they could leave, however, fra Sancho de Torralba sent the justicia of the neighboring town of Ricla, Gosalbo de Grades, to arrest Salomon and escort him to Calatayud for interrogation.2 As Jews who sought to evade inquisitors’ grasp physically, Jucef de Quatorze and the Navarros were not alone. In 1303, for example, a Jew from Valls named Isaach Necim abandoned his property and escaped after he was charged with sheltering a convert who had returned to Judaism. In 1323, King Jaume II lamented that “many of the most terrified [Jews of Lleida] had fled” on account of inquisitorial prosecution. In 1364, a Franciscan inquisitor in Arles named Hugo de Cardillon complained to Pope Urban V that he was unable to prosecute certain Jews who had re-Judaized converts because they had taken refuge abroad. A register kept by the vicar general of the inquisitor general of the Crown in the 1370s records that when a baptized Jewish woman 34 Before the Tribunal who had returned to Judaism was denounced, she escaped “on account of fear of the inquisitors.”3 Other Jews in and around the medieval Crown of Aragon took a preemptive approach to inquisitorial prosecution. In late thirteenth-century Languedoc, for example, Jews requested reassurance from the newly appointed inquisitor of Pamiers, Arnaud Déjean, who promised that he “ha[d] no intention of imposing upon [them] any serious or unusual innovations.” Jews also petitioned popes for protection from inquisitors, with some success. For example, concerned that Jews might be the victims of false accusations, Pope Martin IV specified that the accuser of a Jew was to post a bond, and if the case against the accused could not be proven, the accuser was to receive the penalty that would have befallen the accused. Moreover, on the grounds that Jews—even the wealthy among them—were impotentes, that is, people who lacked the power to harm their accusers, popes repeatedly decreed that inquisitors should reveal to Jewish defendants the names of their accusers.4 As nearly complete transcripts of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews from the medieval Crown of Aragon, the records of the trials of Janto and Jamila Almuli and Jucef de Quatorze afford a unique opportunity to examine in detail a spectrum of Jewish responses to inquisitorial prosecution. These responses included appealing for help to Jewish communal leaders and the king, cooperating with inquisitors in the hope of receiving mercy, attempting to invalidate the prosecution’s witnesses, denouncing inquisitors for procedural irregularities, taking advantage of inquisitors’ attention to harm personal enemies, and breaking down under the stress of torture and prolonged imprisonment . In the pages that follow, we shall see how, by actively trying to shape their fates by drawing on a wide range of resources, the Almulis, the Navarros, and Jucef de Quatorze became key actors in an inquisitorial investigation. Negotiations and Appeals: October 1341–January 1342 After proceedings were initiated against Janto and Jamila Almuli in Calatayud in January 1341, King Pere III transferred the trials to the tribunal of fra Bernat de Puigcercós in Barcelona, on account of the seriousness of the charges. On Wednesday, October 24, 1341, at the Dominican monastery of Santa Caterina, fra Bernat de Puigcercós picked up where fra Sancho de Torralba had left off. He began by interrogating Janto and Jamila Almuli separately, in the presence From Resistance to Surrender 35 of the notary Guillem de Roca and the Dominicans fra Bertran d’Abella and fra Simó Serdina.5 At first, Janto and Jamila professed total ignorance. Both maintained that they had never met Pere, who was from Calatayud, about thirty-five kilometers northeast of La Almunia de Doña Godina. Jamila added that she would not even recognize Pere if she were to see him, and she declared that it would have been impossible for Janto to have...