WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

into their own hands. Thus in 1391, the populace began a systematic attack on Jewish
communities with the object of conversion or extermination but also with a desire to end the
State’s harsh taxation; these movements, despite their revolutionary rhetoric, were not geared
against the hierarchical structures of the State but against the symbols which the State, in its zeal
for change, had demonized. The Pogroms of 1391 were a way of finishing Enrique’s revolution
without him: a way of ending centralized economic dominance and the figures which were
symbolically linked to political liquidity of capital—the Jewish communities. 296
During his regency, Enrique himself took steps to slow the anti-Semitic zeal and will to
self-governance that his rhetoric had inflamed. This can be seen in the censoring of the popular
preacher Fernand Martinez: “Nos el Rey fassemos saber a vos Ferrant Martines…quell Aljama
de los judíos de la muy noble çibdad de Sevilla se nos enbiaron querellar, e disen que vos que les
fassedes mal e dapno e que andades predicando contra ellos…que non ossedes nin vos
entremetiessedes de judgar pleyto que tañiesse a judío cualquier manera.” ‘We the king make
known to you Ferdinand Martinez…that the Jewish ghetto of the very noble city of Seville, have
complained to us, and tell us that you do them harm and evil and that you are preaching against
them…[we order] that you do not dare nor mettle to judge a matter that harms a Jew in anyway’
[My emphasis]. 297 As Enrique’s order makes clear by condemning Martínez’s “mettling,” the
discourses put in motion by the Revolution did more than ignite the masses: they helped separate
the praxis of authority away from the traditional ways in which it was justified, allowing
common citizens to take the rule of law away from the elite and into their own hands. To put it in
296 This explains why the chronicles refer to the leaders of the violence as “omes rusticos” ‘rustic men’ and why the
opportune moment of such uprisings was a lapse in the system of government coupled with an increase of economic
hardships for the lower classes (Ibid. 258-261). Such tie of intolerance with class struggles was not unheard of in the
late Middle Ages, notably in England in 1381 where popular revolts against taxation also were occasions of violence
against immigrants, particularly the Flemmish.
297 Qtd. in Ibid. 246.
175