[193] The protection of virtuous women was an early priority at a new community, but in time it became necessary to take heed of an assortment of wicked and even dangerous women within the urban populace. Not all the desperadoes, vagrants and fortune hunters attracted to Reconquest towns were men, and townswomen were not invariably the meritorious citizens whose persons and property rights municipal communities defended with care and determination. Indeed, the women who broke the law loomed alarmingly among the perilous obstacles encountered by townsmen in organizing and governing their communities, whether the women were residing there permanently or merely passing through town. Quite a few of them were resourceful individuals, but their presence exposed fundamental weaknesses in the sustained effort to establish and maintain community harmony, municipal prosperity and orderly lives for the citizens of a town. First were those whose misdemeanours and more serious transgressions fell within the spectrum of characteristically masculine wrongdoing. They, however, were sometimes subject to special judicial procedures because they were women, like the female debtors of Cuenca whose jailers were not permitted to restrain them unnecessarily. Female delinquents, however, most commonly caught the eye of public authorities when they misbehaved in ways considered distinctively blameworthy in women. Every town had its share of rowdy females, and few communities failed to take notice of opportunities for open discord between quarrelsome women and other citizens, but far more insidious was the female component of the municipal underworld. These professionals, typically urban rather than country folk, were sometimes temporary residents who must have resided for a time among the artisans and workers in the less privileged suburb of Sepúlveda or, as at Ledesma, up against the walls and the bridge, less desirable residential districts than the centre [194] of town. At Alarcón, as was doubtless characteristic of communities with a history of previous Muslim settlement, prostitutes and other hustlers congregated in dwellings that abutted some of the town's dead-end courtyards (adarves) at the ends of narrow streets. These distinctive features of peninsular urban geography provided ideal quarters for unsavoury characters who shunned the limelight of the plazas and observation by nosy neighbours. Not a few of the women in that company catered to a final group of troublemakers, the previously reputable daughters, wives and widows of responsible town residents who broke the law. Townswomen were not the professionals' only clients, but it was widely supposed that an ordinary woman who got into serious difficulties with municipal authorities had received, in all probability, assistance from another woman who specialized in a particular service that was illegal. ⁽¹⁾

When a woman was tried and sentenced for assault, battery, carrying forbidden weapons and similar crimes of violence against persons or property, she was usually punished the same as a man. Female thieves not infrequently drew the wrath of municipal citizens and, when convicted, were commonly hanged just like men. Twelfth-century Daroca substituted female oath-helpers for the duel to substantiate the innocence of a woman accused of stealing, and at Oviedo and Avilés she was to undergo the hot-iron ordeal when she had no husband or relative to fight for her acquittal. At Cuenca and many other towns a woman suspected of theft, murder or arson could hire a champion to validate her denial, a most significant substitution since, as we shall see, these same communities demanded a different proof for other types of female offender. ⁽²⁾ For theft female oath-helpers were to be called to acquit a woman at Guadalajara when an inquest had failed to establish her guilt. This investigative procedure was also required for female suspects at Coria and other Extremaduran towns, perhaps because women tended to be sneaks. ⁽³⁾ They were especially commonplace in the north along the road to Santiago where, in the early thirteenth century, one Doña Florencia admitted to purloining property at the inn she operated with her husband. In order to avoid a threatened lynching, she by burning and he by hanging, she was advised by other women to confess. Here in Old Castile the liability of both the innkeeper and his wife for items stolen in their establishment was a fundamental protection for travelers since pilgrims' and merchants' property was a natural magnet for thieves of both sexes. A wife, however, was presumed innocent when her husband had stolen [195] property discovered in their house, perhaps contrary to the opinion of those who regarded theft as a family occupation like innkeeping and many others. ⁽⁴⁾ It was not at all unusual, however, for a woman to be suspected of stealing, sometimes for filching grapes, a petty misdemeanour which, together with notices of female trespassers, is more revealing of women's participation in agriculture than of their criminal bent. ⁽⁵⁾ Lacking sustained series of court records, it remains a mystery to what extent women joined men or acted alone in breaking many of the laws protecting municipal citizens and their property, but it was widely believed that women were most likely to need correction for distinctively female practices, many of which landed other citizens beside themselves in difficulty.

Some of the women subject to trial and punishment were the natural companions of male rogues and malefactors, the sort of man who might have found sanctuary at a new outpost town but was an opportunist rather than a dedicated colonizer. Growing military security and residential stability heightened community awareness of habitual troublemakers who, staying on in town, put law-abiding citizens and their property in jeopardy. At Coria, Cáceres and Usagre the justices and their assistants had responsibility to patrol the streets to check on behaviour and cite individuals for illegal activities. Villagers of these and other townships were bound to report thieves and outlaws who attempted to hide in the alfoz, an excellent place to lie low temporarily. Large communities appointed mounted patrols to police the countryside since suspicious and potentially dangerous criminals, as well as poachers and vagrant herdsmen intent on avoiding grazing fees, arrived with merchants, friendly visitors and new colonizers at a town. ⁽⁶⁾ Gamblers were high on the list of undesirables. Hanged at Salamanca, they were merely fined at Alcalá de Henares, as was any keeper of a gambling den. At Llanes such an establishment was to be torn down. Gambling, especially dice playing, was censured at Zamora which made wagering grounds for withholding a daughter's or son's inheritance and excused widows from liability for their late husbands' gambling debts. ⁽⁷⁾ Soria named a multitude of odious riff-raff who were to be excluded from the witness box as infamous. The list included traitors, convicted criminals and slaves, but also heretics, the excommunicated, disobedient clerics and those who disrupted church services. Thieves, robbers and poisoners were also banned, as were liars, false witnesses, bearers of grudges and amnesiacs. Derelicts were suspect but so were fortune tellers, wizards, [196] bi-sexuals, transvestites and procurers. All were unreliable if not also contemptible, and law-abiding citizens certainly had to be on guard against the slick operators in this rabble. ⁽⁸⁾

The leading female denizen of this medieval underworld was the prostitute, an unfailing companion especially of gamblers. If she were a rough and hardened recruit at siege camps, she must have had some of her better days at a new town before settlers' wives and families began to arrive. She was not usually treated like a hardened criminal, for she provided an expected service at a town, but she rarely merited the protections extended to a reputable townswoman. She was known as inconstant, lewd, malicious and untrustworthy, but most of all as bad (mala). When a notorious strumpet had the gall to insult a respectable citizen, especially a woman she classed deliberately among her own ilk, she could be beaten without penalty, although it was sometimes said that she was not to be gravely injured. Slander, theft of clothing, assault and rape were to be feared by the prostitute, especially at public bath houses which provided convenient places for soliciting, either on days set aside for men or in the evenings when the facilities had closed. Coria fined the attendant who admitted a woman on a day reserved for men, while at Cuenca or Sepúlveda one who deliberately visited the baths then or at night was automatically regarded as debauched and consequently subject to violence for which her assailant would not be prosecuted. Only at Toledo and a few other towns was a man to be punished for raping a muger mala. She was naturally excluded from creditable social circles by townswomen who disdained free and easy women and was subjected to mistreatment by men who did not shrink from abusing her. ⁽⁹⁾

The harlots of Ledesma, in return for a weekly donation of partridges, received the protection and supervision of the town's judge. ⁽¹⁰⁾ To the south, at the livestock centres of Cáceres and Usagre, a prostitute received no such consideration and she was most particularly irksome to leaders of the bands of men and animals which left town for long periods of winter pasturage. The man who introduced this distracting baggage was fined, with part of the amercement going to the man who found her. ⁽¹¹⁾ Men in the towns were never penalized for patronizing a harlot, but she could increase the difficulty of managing those hazardous treks. All the violence she readily attracted in town points to frequent fights between men over women and to habitually rough treatment of common whores by their customers. Unless the profession remained totally clandestine, a [197] prostitute would need allies to continue in the life since the vigilance of Ledesma's judge was rare indeed.

A major defense for the prostitute was discretion, maintained most readily by a conspiracy of silence among her clients. Were a woman accused of being a harlot, proof of her licentiousness and status as a woman outside the protections of the law had to be established. This was accomplished chiefly by her notoriety or by the fact that she had catered to a fixed number of men, usually five, although at Alfambra the number reached seven, sinking to 'two or three' at Sepúlveda. ⁽¹²⁾ Any woman who met the standard of proof by number in a particular town could be branded a whore. Since these few are scarcely meaningful from the professional or economic standpoint, it is plain that a woman subject to the disabilities of the prostitute would be recognized chiefly by loose living. Her certification was never delegated, however, to townswomen. Such a decision about a woman of questionably wanton habits, but nonetheless serviceable, could hardly be trusted to the earnest and studiously respectable wives and daughters who were not infrequently called upon to report on other of their colleagues in a town.

An idle, malicious or even merited charge of harlotry might be levelled by a woman, but it could also serve as a convenient legal manoeuvre for a man accused of assaulting a townswoman or perhaps stealing her clothes. If he succeeded in garnering the necessary supporters of his charge in the hope of escaping prosecution, the woman who denied his accusation could, at Cuenca and other towns, set all suspicions to rest by submitting to the ordeal of the hot iron, a method of proving innocence required only of women at these communities. It was necessary not only for one accused of prostitution but also for certain other female suspects until 1285 when it was banned in favour of a sworn jury. It was not an optional or alternative procedure at Cuenca, and elsewhere it was not a usual substitute for the duel except at Oviedo and Avilés when a woman was accused of stealing. Moreover, at the towns which required it only of certain women, other suspects could call on female witnesses for support, while a woman accused of theft, murder or arson, was allowed to hire a champion whose skill in the duel might give the accused some hope of establishing her innocence. Divine intervention was of course assumed to be present in any such ordeal, but the ordeal of the iron was notably intimidating. ⁽¹³⁾

The suspect was first examined to see that she carried no charm [198] (malfecho, maleficio) against the divine proof. She then washed her hands and carried a four-foot iron rod heated in a fire and blessed by a priest, for a distance of nine paces. The town judge waxed and bandaged her hand and kept her in his house for three days after which her palm was examined for the signs of charring that would convict her. Several assumptions seem to underlie the need for this ordeal, used only when women were accused of particular offences. Importantly, it would serve to deter others henceforth from committing the specific transgressions for which it was required. This may be deduced from the gravity of the diverse accusations but also from the determination of present-day medical opinion that even where the woman's palm failed to show the charring signs of guilt which a third-degree burn would produce, the iron, if red hot, would still leave her with a clawed hand. ⁽¹⁴⁾ This proof, moreover, was demanded only of women whose questionable innocence of particular perfidies made them unworthy of legal protection, whether provided by witnesses of their own sex or by a man who might fight a duel to defend them. These women were in fact dissociated from the high-minded citizenry of their town even before guilt had been established. The purported harlot was one such woman.

Most of the towns that called for the hot-iron procedure did not punish a prostitute beyond her loss of protection as a woman worthy of masculine and judicial aid, but thirteenth-century Consuegra, Alcázar de San Juan, Plasencia and other communities in the central Peninsula determined that she should be flogged and banished, also recommended by the Fuero Juzgo. In this way these towns sought to root out the more costly corruption caused by the prostitutes' dissolute companions. Gamblers, blasphemers, thieves and slave traders were the worst of these night stalkers who preyed on town residents and enticed municipal sons and daughters into a life of crime, thus necessitating their expulsion and high pecuniary fines for town residents who harboured them. Blaspheming gamblers aroused such indignation that any players who invoked divine help at the games were not to be expelled like the others, but hanged immediately. ⁽¹⁵⁾ At Plasencia it was said that prostitutes attracted all such men to town in the first place, squandered their money and prodded them to steal when it was spent. Worst of all, prostitutes reputedly lured the daughters of town residents to follow them into the profession. Anyone who discovered a harlot abroad in the daytime could strip her and keep her garments, while her defender was [199] saddled with a heavy fine. Here the prostitute was blamed as the chief culprit in the town's criminal population since she incited her disreputable male companions to sharp practices and enticed the virtuous women of Plasencia into debauchery. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Expulsion would of course shift the harlot elsewhere, but it could scarcely combat the vice that thrived in large Andalusian cities like Seville and Murcia where, in late thirteenth-century royal decrees, the city fathers were directed to punish men for beating or raping prostitutes. They were not to be arrested for patronizing them, provided they were not married women, but openly commercial so-called 'warehouses' purveying 'bad women' were henceforth forbidden, establishments which had evidently enjoyed police protection and seem to have been adjacent to the public gambling houses whose proceeds the crown was then taxing there. ⁽¹⁷⁾ In the smaller towns of the central Peninsula stews were less apt to flourish and require regulation, but harlots and their confederates could nevertheless become serious nuisances. Even if a prostitute evaded being run out of a town where expulsion was deemed necessary, she must have been a relatively transient woman. The swindlers and roughnecks she ordinarily needed to shield her from violence were sure to be men on the move, and it is improbable that any woman seriously accused of harlotry would remain to submit willingly to the dreadful ordeal at one of those towns that required it.

There were other women in towns who abetted vice, immorality and certain types of crime. The best known, from her appearance in medieval literary works, was the alcahueta, an ordinary procuress but more particularly a go-between whose invaluable talents were dramatized, praised and condemned in the Libro de buen amor, La Celestina and other well-known Spanish writings of the later Middle Ages. The skills of an alcahueta were indeed marketable in Reconquest towns since access to the most desirable women was made difficult. Aside from her functions as an ordinary pander, she provided two essential services. First, as a medianera she practised so-called 'stealthy seduction' (socacamiento) on behalf of men seeking contact with women they coveted but who were legally, socially and physically beyond their immediate grasp, whether married or not. Then, as a covigera, a cover woman and none too scrupulous innkeeper, she arranged assignations for her employer and the woman she had successfully blandished. Incensed parents or husbands might invoke abduction, seduction or adultery laws to dispense with him, but only [200] Alfonso X's Fuero Real saw fit to punish a man for hiring an alcahueta to evade the wardens of a townswoman's chastity. ⁽¹⁸⁾

From early thirteenth-century Bilforado comes a legal precedent about an alcahueta named Mari Garcia. The wife of Varrio de Vinna, she was indicted for arranging a tryst for the cleric Diago and the wife of Giralt. Once convicted, Mari was flogged through the town, while the adulterous wife was placed in the stocks. Giralt, having seized the cleric's house and possessions, then asked the town officials to burn his wife, an action they refused on the grounds of insufficient cause. Shortly we shall see what fates might befall the adulteress, but here the alcahueta was flogged, the penalty preferred at Brihuega and Zorita de los Canes, although she was then also banished from Zorita. ⁽¹⁹⁾

The procurers and procuresses of Zamora were said to associate with soothsayers and fortune tellers and, like prostitutes at many Castilian towns, they were liable to insult and injury by respectable citizens but forbidden to press the same charges against them. At Llanes both men and women were heavily fined for beguiling and sequestering town residents, especially vecinas. At Coria, Cáceres or Usagre a man who had lured a municipal daughter or wife on behalf of someone else had all his goods confiscated and was then hanged, but an alcahueta was burned to death for hatching such a plot, the customary penalty for this woman at many communities. ⁽²⁰⁾

In Castile, unlike León, we hear nothing of men hired to seduce townswomen but only of the alcahueta, medianera or covigera. If accused she was subjected to the ordeal of the iron at those towns which demanded it of the prostitute and, if convicted, burned to death. ⁽²¹⁾ At Soria her guilt was established by inquest or other 'unmistakable signs'. For successfully snaring a girl or widow here, she lost a quarter of her goods or was jailed for three months. Only when her quarry had been a wife or betrothed woman did she deserve the death penalty, probably on the pyre. If her scheming were uncovered before the salacious rendezvous, she and all her property were to be placed at the mercy of the husband or betrothed but with the stipulation that she not be killed or injured. ⁽²²⁾ Such a woman obviously needed camouflage, primarily to mask her identity but also to concoct an ambush.

Alcahuetas conceivably devised, like the later Celestina, pretexts for visiting townswomen within their houses. In the eleventh century the Andalusian Ibn Hazm had listed the professions of woman physician, [201] pedlar, hairdresser, mourner, singer, soothsayer, schoolmistress, spinner and weaver. ⁽²³⁾ It would be rash to infer any particular disguises for the alcahuetas of twelfth- and thirteenth-century towns, but the commonplace dealings among townswomen in the market place and their habitual gatherings at various municipal spots, both in their houses and abroad, made it relatively convenient for one woman to importune another, certainly less suspiciously than a man. Whatever ploys the alcahueta may have used to cloak the purpose of her errands on behalf of Don Juans, matrimonially minded abductors or married lovers, a town was an excellent place for a woman to ply this trade, but it was a hazardous one. The alcahueta, unlike the prostitute, threatened to subvert hearth, home and the arranged marriage, the very foundations of municipal settlement. Thus she, unlike the prostitute, frequently merited the death penalty, often a most ignominious execution on the pyre.

Within the gates, however, were other women whose professions likewise undermined the social stability of urban communities. Such was the hechicera, the sorceress by trade, who dealt in sympathetic, incantatory and pharmacological magic. She was known under various guises, depending upon her methods, all ancient lore in the Peninsula but denounced by the Church. As a fortune-teller or soothsayer (adeuina, sortorera) Zamora deprived her of rights as a citizen. As a spellbinder (ligadora) who cast enchantments to impede fertility in crops or animals she was condemned at Cuenca and other communities. Far more serious would be a spell designed to bring about sterility or impotence in a human being, especially since impotence caused by enchantment was acknowledged by canonists as grounds for annulling a marriage. ⁽²⁴⁾ The herbalist (herbolera) was another woman to beware most scrupulously, for she was a dealer in potent drafts, often enchanted substances. Men might come to trial as soothsayers and spellbinders or even as herbalists, but herbal magic above all was a preponderantly feminine speciality among those who practised sorcery in the towns. At Ledesma it was a slanderous calumny for a woman to be called 'herbalist', and at many communities we hear only of women in this line. It was not improbable, moreover, that this medicine woman might also be a soothsayer, spellbinder or even an alcahueta versed in amatory magic. Whatever their particular speciality, it was widely acknowledged, especially at towns in the Castilian Extremadura, that women were adept at certain of the black arts. Any woman suspected of practicing [201] one of them had to submit to the ordeal of the hot iron at Cuenca and the other towns that required it, and all were burned if convicted. ⁽²⁵⁾ These were not the only women so punished, but they were counted, together with the prostitute and the alcahueta, among the most insidious women in a town. All defied exemplary standards of female conduct, but they could also provide assistance to other men and women bent on harming someone else and breaking the law. The herbalist in particular bore watching since she possessed very practical knowledge and skills, apart from her supernatural gifts, to assist ordinary townswomen who became criminally inclined, hitherto reputable citizens who found themselves in serious trouble with family members, neighbours and municipal authorities.

Killing her husband was an offence for which a woman could lose her life. At Alcalá de Henares she lost her property as well, but so did a man who killed his wife. At Brihuega the husband paid a double murder fine and was banished, while at Soria he was drawn and then hanged. The wife who murdered her husband was to be burned in both of these communities, as was also true at Cuenca and many of the towns with similar customs. Here, moreover, this alleged murderess had to take the iron to prove she was innocent. At these communities, as opposed to Alcalá, Brihuega and Soria, the orders were sandwiched between laws that demanded the same proof and penalty for a herbal sorceress and then an alcahueta. This arrangement cannot have been accidental. The wife who killed her husband was surely conceived here as a likely poisoner, possibly an adulteress, rather than as a woman who bludgeoned her husband to death. ⁽²⁶⁾ The husband who murdered his wife was ignored here, and the same towns provided for the common murderess differently, with a substitute duellist to establish her innocence and fine and exile as penalty. This crime, then, was no ordinary murder, but the ordeal and death by fire need not be attributed to the wife's use of magic and her administration of an enchanted poison. A supposed harlot was subjected to the proof, and wives were often punished more severely than husbands for desertion. Moreover, a wife was to be burned at other towns which did not suggest a likely method. The probable poisoner, however, was regarded as one who obtained the venom on the sly from the herbal sorceress who, like an alcahueta or perhaps one herself, undoubtedly purported to earn her living by some legitimate means that made her accessible to a female clientele. The trials and incineration of two such guilty women must have been expected to succeed one another in short order.

[203] As with the husband's actual murder by his wife, his social death caused by her adultery could bring harsh penalties. Nevertheless, she was treated in a very different manner from the criminals considered thus far, especially in light of the Castilian's evident fixation on his wife's fidelity. The Fuero Juzgo transmitted much harsher rules against the adulterous wife than the husband, and they are by any standards excessively severe. A man could kill both his wife and her lover when he found them committing adultery (in flagrante), and he would not be punished for homicide. If her unfaithfulness were later discovered and established in court, on the basis of 'presumptions and acceptable things', both the wife and her lover, together with their goods, were at the disposition of the husband who could then punish both as he pleased, presumably by death, enslavement, repudiation of the wife or even forgiveness, all of which are foreseen as alternatives in the Fuero Juzgo. The husband was the punisher in both cases, whether he killed the lovers in flagrante or dealt with them afterwards. Adultery was an offence of which a married man was capable, but he was not punished by his wife. She took the other woman into her hands, but she did not punish him. ⁽²⁷⁾ The Fuero Juzgo, moreover, acknowledged that unfaithful wives commonly attempted to cover their tracks by administering 'the little cup', a magic potion the adulteress dispensed to fog her husband's mind and blind him to her deception, rendering him incapable or unwilling to have her convicted. The fabricator of the potion was not necessarily a woman, but the client was a treacherous wife. ⁽²⁸⁾

Although this tradition remained influential during the Reconquest, there is no sign that municipal citizens thought that an adulteress was likely to have any use for potions or magic. Late eleventh-century Miranda de Ebro permitted the legal killings and ordered burning for the adulteress and her lover if either escaped apprehension by the husband in flagrante, but towns later became more wary of the jealous man. It was widely conceded that a man was justified in killing his wife and her lover when he caught them committing adultery, but custom was careful not to exonerate him if he did not kill both, or, at the least, kill the wife and seriously injure the lover as he made his getaway. Nor could the husband kill the lover and spare his wife. Most particularly, he could not kill his wife at some other time and place. The justification for the killings was the humiliation he had suffered, and to redress his honour both had to die, but he would not be vindicated unless he was able to apprehend them in the act. Doubtless finding them alone together in some [204] unmistakable hideaway would gain him acquittal, but unless he observed the restrictions, he was punished for the killings. ⁽²⁹⁾ Frequently he was also exonerated for castrating the lover, again under the conditions of discovery, and his daughter's lover might be similarly mutilated. At Plasencia, moreover, it was said that when any woman was caught fornicating with a man, he ought to be castrated and she have her nose slit. Other towns banned this disfigurement, but it was evidently widely regarded as an appropriate chastisement of shameless women. ⁽³⁰⁾

Of course it was not always possible for a man to apprehend his wife and her lover in the flagrantly compromising position, but in that case his freedom of action was even more circumscribed. At many communities the distrustful husband would have to obtain her conviction in court in order to exact punishment. At Cuenca and the other towns which preferred the iron ordeal for some female suspects, a wife accused of adultery was spared this maiming proof and could instead call eleven other townswomen to support her denial on oath. At Cáceres and Usagre married women were stipulated, but their supportive testimony certified beyond question the wife's innocence. Here, as at Coria, a wife might take the first step by going before the alcaldes, declaring that she and her husband were not getting along well, and make them extract from him an oath of safety vowing that he would not harm her. He might perhaps break the oath justifiably, but she was protecting herself against his groundless suspicions of her unfaithfulness. ⁽³¹⁾

Proven adulteries not punished by vengeance extracted on the spot were nevertheless harshly punished. At Cuenca and other communities a guilty wife was to be flogged and run out of town, although the adulterous husband and his barragana were merely flogged. This was considerably less severe than the death penalty meted out to bigamists at most of these towns, a woman by burning but a man by hanging. Soria, following the Fuero Real, ordered the bigamist lashed and banished, but he was to die for returning to his second wife. If she had knowingly married him, she and her children were denied any marriage property and everything went to the first family. When the conspiratorial second wife was childless, the first 'could do as she pleased with her and her property, provided she did not kill her. ⁽³²⁾ It was evidently conceded that a wife who did not actually run away with a man was more likely to attempt adultery than bigamy, but Cuenca and other towns considered burning appropriate just for the [205] latter. Only Teruel and the neighbouring town of Albarracín preserved the burning penalty for adultery, but solely for double adultery when both the man and woman were married to others. ⁽³³⁾ It was manifestly rejected at Cuenca and other communities, as by the alcaldes of Bilforado although Giralt had plainly wanted his wife sent to the stake. At Cuenca and some of the communities where she would have been flogged and run out of town, a husband was further entitled to repudiate her, and he was evidently then free to marry again, as was the departed former wife. This ancient penalty of repudiation for the adulteress, permitted at some thirteenth-century towns, was anachronistic and most contrary to the new canon law although earlier the Hispanic Church had condoned it. ⁽³⁴⁾

In some communities the adulteress might expect harsher penalties than flogging, expulsion or repudiation. At Alcalá de Henares a husband was free to kill an unfaithful wife at any time, provided three of her relatives agreed she was guilty. At Coria or Sepúlveda a husband could expect his wife's kin to help him apprehend and kill her with her lover since they, too, took offence at the couple's treachery. ⁽³⁵⁾ At Coria and several other communities, moreover, relatives were entitled to beat or kill any kinswoman for fornication, although at many towns the murder of a daughter or other unmarried relative was usually justifiable only when she and her lover were surprised in the girl's house, unlike an adulterous pair whose love nest might be anywhere. ⁽³⁶⁾ At several Leonese towns the adulteress was to be executed publicly since the offence was conceived here as immorality rather than solely as a private injury suffered by her husband. This public execution took place at Soria after an inquest had convicted the woman and her lover. Both were sentenced to death, but the investigation was initiated only at the request of the husband, and he might, instead, choose to ignore and forgive the crime which was not to be acknowledged as having been committed at all unless he took the steps to get his wife and her lover convicted. ⁽³⁷⁾

It is plain that townspeople readily acknowledged that a wife's adultery was far more serious than a husband's, even though a guilty husband was sometimes to be punished with equal severity. Even if not blameless, however, she was not the only guilty party and had perhaps been captivated by her lover. Above all, she was not to be burned, although visibly over husbandly objections. It was vital, however, to restrain the unjustifiably jealous husband by limiting his freedom of action and permitting him to kill both wife and lover only [206] when he found them committing the deed. It was necessary above all to prevent later violence against the wife. Quite conceivably husbands killed both faithful and unfaithful wives without faltering at the legal obstacles set up to curb their suspicious rage and then, perhaps, paid the price. A wife's ability to ruin her husband by infidelity and his evident obsession with her chastity were highly sensitive matters, but towns nevertheless set forth ways to promote fair and orderly justice for the women of a town in order to prevent the untimely death of innocent victims.

Married women were necessarily circumspect in their dealings with men, but any Christian townswoman had to be exceedingly cautious with Jews and Muslims. At many communities she would be burned if caught in fornication with either one, and so would he. At Soria their guilt could also be rooted out by inquest. ⁽³⁸⁾ Coria recognized that this was an offence only when the Christian woman's partner was a Jew, but another Jewish man, in addition to Christian witnesses, would have to testify against them. Sepúlveda required this corroboration by Muslim or Jew, a certain safeguard for the suspect couple. Here a Christian woman who lived among the minorities or gave birth to a child of mixed blood was branded a 'bad' woman who deserved to be flogged and expelled. ⁽³⁹⁾ She was plainly an outcast, although not because the father was unknown. Such a woman had defied a fundamental standard of morality which decreed that she remain unavailable to Muslim and Jewish men. Jewish law was extremely severe towards the Jewish man or woman who had intercourse outside marriage, especially with a gentile, while Muslim law punished only the woman. In Reconquest towns a double standard prevailed which was coincidentally similar to Muslim rather than Jewish law. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ No stigma attached to the Christian man who consorted or cohabited with Jewish or Muslim women. On the contrary, a Christian man was allowed to ransom his bastard of mixed blood, even when its mother was a Muslim slave belonging to another man, and the child was then eligible, following baptism, to become its father's heir. ⁽⁴¹⁾ Soria allowed a father to acknowledge his Jewish and Muslim bastards and further permitted him to marry a former slave, meaning a converted Muslim, but the possibility was denied to Christian women. 'Let freed women marry wherever they can', ran the adage here, but a former male slave was explicitly prohibited from marrying into the family that had owned him, especially when he contemplated matrimony with his owner's widow. [207] Here marriage between a Christian woman and her former slave was thought to merit the burning penalty for both, as for fornication between a Christian woman and a man 'de otra ley', that is, a Jew or Muslim. ⁽⁴²⁾

In 1258 the Cortes of Valladolid prohibited Christian women from becoming nurses to Jewish and Muslim children and barred women of the minorities from nursing Christians, an order repeated by the same body at Jerez ten years later. ⁽⁴³⁾ A harsher climate of intolerance was abroad, but segregation at the domestic level aimed at Muslim or Jewish women was new in the last half of the thirteenth century. Instead custom had sanctioned and continued to condone a double standard of sexual conduct which prohibited contact solely between Christian women and Jewish or Muslim men. Minority women were fair game for Christian men, mothered their children and doubtless became their barraganas, but these women were necessarily on the fringes of Jewish and Muslim society in their own aljamas. The double standard rewarded the conquerors, but it inevitably produced women in both the dominant and minority groups, outcasts from their own communities, whose position was at best uncertain. Christian society naturally reproached most vehemently its women who ignored injunctions to remain aloof from Jewish and Muslim men.

Castile's penalty of the stake for these lovers was more rarely assigned to a man than a woman, but at Cuenca and other towns both men and women were to be burned for selling a Christian into slavery, that is, into the markets of Al-Andalus. Here again was an offence for which a woman might establish her innocence only by resorting to the ordeal of the iron. At these communities the selling of a Christian was regarded with such gravity as to be the only crime for which a person who had counseled it was to be indicted along with the actual criminal. At Brihuega men were to be hanged for selling a Christian, women burned, while Sepúlveda ordered them hanged, and reserved burning for the person who sold himself into slavery. At Consuegra, Plasencia and those other towns which demanded expulsion for the prostitute, slave dealers were named among the more dangerous individuals known to keep company with whores and gamblers. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Their illegal contraband did not of course compare with captivity in war as a significant source of Christian slaves in the south, but this commerce was plainly lucrative for some who frequented the municipalities. The dealers, whether men or women, undoubtedly [208] moved in and out of towns on the sly, staying among native blackguards, but some of their clients were evidently townswomen who, if they were caught, could expect to be burned at many communities. So would the dealer and any other citizen who advised or arranged for the woman to become involved in this shady business, not improbably for the purpose of ridding herself of an unwanted child.

When a woman contrived to sell her child to a slave dealer, she arranged to be rid of it but also to realize material gain. There were, however, other means for a woman to dispense with a child. Of course the Church condemned her, but she also repudiated one of her major functions in Reconquest society by renouncing the imperative to be fruitful and multiply the population of a medieval colonial community whose very survival depended upon the fertility of its women. Custom was indeed solicitous of expectant mothers and both the life and inheritance rights of an unborn child. Its birth and vulnerable early years were matters of particular concern. A woman was sometimes excused from court proceedings for the duration of pregnancy or her sentencing was postponed until after delivery. At Soria a pregnant woman was not to be executed although she might be imprisoned for debt. Alcalá de Henares observed an obscure custom, seemingly based on some lost precedent, which laid down the principle that a pregnant woman ought not testify in court during Lent and until twenty days after Easter, but the injunction to keep her out of the public eye during holy seasons cannot have been a significant restriction in the early years of a settlement or even for most townswomen later. At Cuenca and other towns she was to be allotted a double portion of game whenever dogs drove a wild animal into the vicinity of the town and residents who found it divided the carcass. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ Here and in other communities the person who injured a pregnant woman so as to kill both the mother and the foetus paid a double homicide fine and, if the mother was injured and the child did not survive, the guilty assailant was punished for both assault and murder. Any woman who deliberately harmed her child was simply courting trouble. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

The killing of infants by exposure and infanticide were of course the gravest of ecclesiastical concerns, but townspeople seem to have been less inclined to kill their children in the centuries of the Reconquest than earlier in Visigothic times. Aside from effects which Church doctrine may have had in preventing these murders, municipal [209] children were highly valued members of a community, and parents and other relatives even contended for custody of them. Manpower was in short supply relative to the wealth available to many colonizers, and extra hands were desirable in municipal households. Soria, drawing on Visigothic and Hispanic canon law, sentenced men and women to death for exposure and infanticide, but these problems did not attract widespread attention elsewhere. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ A child, however, although an asset to a widow, might be a burden, nuisance or disgrace to a young unmarried woman. Sale probably remained a widely available if hazardous option, and it was conceivably less disturbing to the mother. Neglect was a safer strategy, and it might be mistaken for accidental death, especially since infant mortality was certainly high. At Cuenca and other towns the professional nurse had to pay the homicide fine and was then banished whenever she gave an infant contaminated breast milk which, according to expert medical opinion of the time, might have become polluted by sexual intercourse, bad diet or some other nutritional fault. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ If an infant died of deliberate maternal negligence or suffocation, the mother would doubtless be thought irresponsibly careless, but the child's death could appear to be accidental systemic poisoning and not deliberate, provided she managed to keep suspicious neighbours from reporting her in time to save its life. The traditional nursing period of three years was the critical span, and at many communities a neglectful mother, notably one of an illegitimate child, was to be flogged and admonished to raise her child. At Brihuega, additionally, she was chained in the judge's house for nine days, while Baeza allowed her to hire a wet nurse if she refused to nurse it herself. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Mothers of illegitimate children were understandably the targets of this supervision. Virtually no effort was made to uncover the identity of a bastard's father when he did not voluntarily admit it, although the towns which used the ordeal of the iron allowed a woman to undergo this proof to establish that a particular man had fathered her child. If it vindicated her, he was obliged to pay her the wage of a nurse for three years and then support the child himself. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ Since fathers had no such responsibility for bastards they did not acknowledge, the decision as to whether to dispose of a child born out of wedlock rested primarily with the mother or the families of such women, but only nursing mothers could do so without arousing suspicion.

Far less hazardous than sale or even a purportedly accidental death would be preventive steps taken before birth, especially since the [210] concealment of a pregnancy must have been most difficult to manage in a close knit municipal community. At Cuenca and other towns a woman accused of deliberately aborting her child had to submit to the ordeal of the iron if she did not freely confess. Like other grave female offenders here, she was burned if found guilty. ⁽⁵¹⁾ She probably had a female accomplice. Ancient tradition had long associated both abortion and contraception with herbal medicine and magic. Potions popularly thought to gain strength through magic were credited in sixth-century canons of the Hispana with abortifacient and contraceptive properties. Although both men and women were shriven as penitents for using them, the Second Council of Braga in 572 emphasized pregnant women as the worst offenders. The anti-abortion laws of the Fuero Juzgo immediately follow those on sorcery, and its infanticide provision aimed at both men and women, the one copied later into legislation at Soria, also refers to potions that caused abortion. ⁽⁵²⁾ The manufacture and use of magical abortifacient drugs were repeatedly condemned in Spanish penitential texts of the ninth through eleventh centuries and, like similar compilations from northern Europe, they punished women for infanticide, abortion and acting as abortionists for other women. Again we find references to "the little cup" as agent, and the periods of penance were longer than for any other type of abortion, undoubtedly owing to the potion's association with magic. ⁽⁵³⁾  All these ecclesiastical strictures were reenforced by learned medical tradition which supported the idea that remedies of various kinds, both natural and enchanted, could induce abortion and control fertility by contraception. Soranus had noted but deplored the effectiveness of herbal, balneal, athletic and surgical methods for inducing abortion, and he listed all kinds of contraceptives. Avicenna's medical writings contain a veritable catalogue of abortifacient and contraceptive substances, both herbal and metallic. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ This Graeco-Arabic medicine, source of the popular medieval conceptions about contaminated breast milk, was full of such lore, and lay practitioners must have dispensed it to women along with other popular cures more heavily mixed with superstition. One thirteenth-century compendium by Petrus Hispanus, the Portuguese empiric educated in France who briefly occupied the Holy See as Pope John XXI (1276-7), set forth a wide variety of popular cures, all readily publicized treatments. He was greatly interested in herbal medicine and the therapeutic use of the sex organs of animals, ground bones, dog's milk, bird blood, the teeth of dead men and other exotic [211] specifics. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ His strong interest in quack remedies and magical medicine had adherents in Reconquest towns, especially in the person of the herbal sorceress. Although Brihuega executed a man or woman who maliciously gave herbs to another, only convicted women were to be burned for doing so, just as for other capital crimes for which this town explicitly punished both men and women. Here, however, Brihuega's customs were elaborated further to punish the abortionist, a criminal who was conceived solely as a woman. Her methods were said to be herbs and enchantments and, like all the other Castilian herbalists, overwhelmingly female malefactors, she too was to burn to death unless she could summon a jury of eleven other citizens, men or women, to support her denial. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The herbal sorceress might provide a wife with poison with which to kill her husband, but a townswoman was more likely to seek her help in obtaining an abortion. In a Reconquest town, however, reproduction was far too vital a matter to be controlled arbitrarily by two such women.

Sorceresses, alcahuetas and prostitutes were the most characteristic of the female professionals condemned in the towns. Both as companions of despicable men and freelance tradeswomen, they purveyed marketable services to men and women and must have found it profitable to work in a municipality, largely at the expense of its leading citizens. All of them portended trouble for townswomen. Although the prostitute served male convenience, she exemplified wickedness and unrestrained licence in women. The alcahueta was equally useful to men, but a menace to fathers and husbands. The sorceress might at times assist a man, but she was evidently a figure more helpful to the criminally inclined townswomen. The harsh proofs and punishments deemed appropriate for female criminals may have deterred some from contemplating a particular course of action, but not all ordinary women shrank from committing grave illegalities deliberately. The worst were likely to implicate an accomplice, most readily a female confederate with a criminal speciality and not infrequently a woman with magical skills. Equally severe punishments, however, prevailed for women who perpetrated abominable offences lacking implications of sorcery or magic, and penalties for the male villain who joined with a townswoman to break the law were inclined to be as harsh as those given his otherwise law-abiding female companion in crime. The foulest partnership, however, linked a purportedly worthy woman with one of the female professionals. Their harsh fates and the sharp contrast between [212] worthy and wicked women, a commonplace in medieval writings about women, was less a judgment of the female sex than recognition of their ability to threaten colonization at its primary level, the established and prolific household. They, more than men, were expected to uphold the domestic integrity, continuity and moral fabric of an established town's society. Those who rebelled were punished with proportionately greater severity than men. These colonial communities always needed and attracted brave and able-bodied soldiers to support a town's important military purpose. The desires and even prurient proclivities of such men had to be accommodated. Clearly the soldier was not displeased by the prospects of fast women and quick riches available in a town, but these concurrent objectives of the rootless male conflicted with the aims of settled colonizers, responsible householders who were loath to tolerate open fleshpots for the adventurer at their own expense. Not all townswomen had an interest in rooting out vice, but those who promoted it were more blameworthy than the men whom it indulged. Of course virtuous women conformed to male expectations of meritorious conduct, but direct male supervision was rarely necessary since conspicuously respectable women would surely be the first to chide a restive daughter, denounce a hussy or come to the defense of a falsely accused neighbour. The fountain or riverbank served to cement ties between women of established households. It could also become the scene of disputes between families, with women in the vanguard of the competition. Equally important, the gathering spots for the women of a town were as suited to generate gossip uncovering a guilty townswoman and her accomplice as to promise concealment for two women meeting to plot some forbidden scheme.

1. FSepúlveda 211-13. FLedesma 265. FAlarcón 811. For the adarves of Toledo and several other towns, see Torres Balbás, 'Los adarves en las ciudades hispano-musulmanes', Al-Andalus 12 (1947), 164-93.

2. FDaroca, MC, p. 540. FAvilés 26; FOviedo, p. 126. FCuenca 11.46; FIznatoraf 268; FAlarcón 254; FAlcaraz 4.47; FBaeza 268; FZorita 270; FTeruel 495; FBéjar 347. Cf. FViguera 157. For the hiring of a champion, FCuenca22.20, inter fora alia, and cf. FCoria 25, FCáceres 29 and FUsagre 28.

3. FGuadalajara 102. FCoria 347, 373; FCáceres 339, 362; FUsagre 360, 385. Cf. FAlba 22, 23 and, more generally, cap. 25-36.

4. LF 2, 22, 55, 158, 228, 265.

5. FMiranda 25. FVillafranca, Alfonso IX, vol. 2, p. 80. FSalamanca 344. LF 112. Women are frequently named as suspects in the theft provisions of Aragonese codes.

6. FCoria 319; FCáceres 303; FUsagre 322. And, e.g., FPlasencia 731, FCuenca 23.13, and FSoria 1-26.

7. FSalamanca 289. FAlcalá 297. FLlanes 32. FZamora 24, 92. For gaming priests, seeFPlasencia 330. Cf. FMontalbón (1208, Aragon), ed. A. Fernández Arroyo, Hispania 3 (1943), p. 131; and the hard line of the Cortes of Jerez of 1268, pet. 35 (Cortes, vol. I, p. 78). Gambling as a vice is distinct from the games that promoted it, as shown in Alfonso X's Libro de ajedrez, dados y tablas (1283), a work recommending chess, dice and backgammon especially to women who, not given to horseback riding, were often indoors; see J. E. Keller, Alfonso X, el Sabio (New York, 1967), p. 148.

8. FSoria 282, differing somewhat from FReal 2.8.9. The shorter LV and FJuzgo 2.4.1 identify only fortune tellers as women.

9. E.g., FBéjar 324 ('liuiana'). FBrihuega, p. 145 ('refez'). FAlcalá 114 ('malvaza'). FMedinaceli, MC, p. 440 ('mala'). FGuadalajara 39 ('mala'). FSepúlveda 235 ('mala') and cf. cap. 111. FAlfambra 12 and F Viejo 2.1.9 ('sabida'). FLedesma 188 ('falsa'). FCuenca, Cod. Val. 2.3.35 ('paladina'); FBéjar 324 ('publica'). FCuenca 11.29,32, 43 and FLTeruel 321, 369, 380 ('meretrice publica'); cf. FTeruel 482. FCoria 118; FCáceres 126; FUsagre 127. FToledo 31. Garcia Ulecia, Los factores, pp. 290-5; and above, Ch. 6, notes 9, 10, and Ch. 7, notes 2-9, 60.

10. FLedesma 303, 'moyieres de siegre', probably akin to the 'blinding' adulteress of Leonese towns (above, Ch. 7, n. 8). For other medieval terms see Menéndez Pidal, Poesía juglaresca y orígines de las literaturas románicas: Problemas de historia literaria y cultural, 6th edn rev. (Madrid, 1957), pp. 32-5, 58-9, 78, 155, 166-72, 197-8; Corominas, Diccionario crítico, vol. 3, p. 987.

11. FCáceres 419; FUsagre 461. For the harsher penalties assigned by canon law to the prostitute's clients, procurers and brothel keepers, in contrast to those given the woman herself, see Brundage, 'Prostitution in the medieval canon law', Signs 1 (1976), 835, 840-5.

12. Five in FCuenca 11.43, 46; FIznatoraf 265, 268; FTeruel 492; FAlarcón 251, 254; FAlcaraz 4.44, 47; FBaeza 265, 268; FBéjar 342, 346; FZorita 267, but FZorita 270 specifies six. FAlfambra 12. FSepúlveda 235 ('de dos a tres'). But, 'Meretrix dicta eo quod pretium libidinis mereatur' (Isidore, Etymol. 10.182).

13. FCuenca 11.45, 46; FIznatoraf 267, 268; FAlarcón 253, 254; FAlcaraz 4.46, 47; FBaeza 267, 268; FBéjar 344-6; FZorita 269, 270; FTeruel 494, 495. Elsewhere the iron ordeal appears rarely (e.g., FViguera 157, FSalamanca 242) but not solely for women except in paternity suits (above, Ch. 5, n. 9). The iron and battle ordeals were banned by Sancho IV in 1285 (Meyoría, ed. Ureña, Fuero de Cuenca, pp. 837, 839), all but the duel by the Conc. of Leon in 1288 (TC, vol. 3, p. 408) although several towns had previously abolished ordeals, as FLogroño (1095, MC, p. 336) and FBrihuega, p. 139. See esp. Puyol, Orígenes, pp. 412-14; J. W. Baldwin, 'The intellectual preparation for the canon of 1215 against ordeals', Speculum 36 (1961), 613-63; E. Benz, 'Ordeal by fire', Myths and symbols: Studies in honor of Mircea Eliade, ed. J. M. Kitagawa, C. H. Long, et al. (Chicago, 1969), pp. 241-64; J. Gaudemet, 'Les Ordalies au moyen age: Doctrine, législàtion et pratique canoniques', La Preuve, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour l'Histoire comparative des Institutions, vol. 17 (2 vols., Brussels, 1965), vol. 2, pp. 99-135, esp. pp. 116, 122.

14. I am grateful to Dr Anthony Shaw, Professor of Surgery, University of Virginia, for explaining the physical effects of the proof as described in these texts. The clawed hand caused by incineration of the sensitive tendons in the palm, unlike fingernail lacerations of the face, was a permanent injury.

15. FAlcaraz 12.56; FAlarcón 811; FAlcázar 603 (ed. Roudil, Les Fueros d'Alcaraz et d'Alarcón, vol. I, p. 547); FConsuegra, fol. 168 (cit. Ureña, El fuero de Zorita, p. 374 n.); FPlasencia 680. LV and FJuzgo 3.4.17. Cf. FLa Novenera 145.

16. FPlasencia 681.

17. Privilegio (1272), MHE, vol. 1, p. 284. For later medieval attempts to control the prostitute and her disreputable companions, see 'Ordenamiento dado a Toledo por el infante Don Fernando de Antequera, tutor de Juan II, en 1411', ed. Sáez, AHDE 15 (1944.), 543-5 (leyes 57, 58); extended to Seville in the same year (ibid., p. 500).

18. FReal 4.10.7, with the same punishment as she, below, n. 22. In the Libro de buen amor no courtship is pursued without the aid of an intermediary, and all but two involve a woman in this capacity. In La Celestina she is the main character, an alcahueta with other meretricious talents as well. The literary figure goes back to Ovid, Lucan, Apuleius and even the Kama Sutra; see, e.g., E. R. Curtius, European literature and the Latin middle ages, trans. W. R. Trask (New York, 1953), pp. 386-7; M.J. Ruggerio, The evolution of the go-between in Spanish literature through the sixteenth century, Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 78 (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 4-23, 72-5.

19. LF 137. FBrihuega, p. 177. FZorita 268. FZorita departs here from FCuenca, et fora alia, which demand her death; it also differs by setting the death penalty for abductors of both unmarried and married women, while the others order it only when the woman was married. Perhaps Zorita therefore blamed male seducers more wholeheartedly than the women they hired to help them.

20. FZamora 79 ('alcayote', 'alcayota'), and cf. cap. 36. FCoria 374 ('ome o muger que sosaca'); FCáceres 363 and FUsagre 385 ('alcuuete o alcauueta'); FCastroverde, Alfonso IX, vol. 2, p. 229. Cf. LV and FJuzgo 3.3.11, embedded in the abduction laws; for solicitation for prostitutes, see 3.4.17.

21. FCuenca 11.43, 44 ('mediatrix seu alcauota'), 46; FIznatoraf 265, 266, 268; FAlarcón 251, 252, 254; FAlcaraz 4.44, 45, 47; FBaeza 265, 266, 268; FZorita 267, 268 (omitting the burning penalty but not the ordeal), 270; FBéjar 342, 343 ('covigera'), 346; FAlcázar ('coujgera'), in Roudil, Les Fueros d'Alcaraz et d'Alarcón, p. 229 n.; FTeruel 492, 493; FPlasencia 109, typically, 'por medianera o por alcayhuta'. Covarrubias, Tesoro, p. 217, 5.V. cobegera, but he knew medianero only as a composer of differences (ibid., p. 796). For alcahuete, alcahueta (Arabic, alqawwad), ibid., p. 70; Corominas, Diccionario crítico, vol. I, p. 93. Partidas 7.22.1 lists five categories of procurer.

22. FSoria 539, and cf. ms B; FReal 4.10.7. Cap. 282 names the pander of either sex ('alcahuete') in its list of the infamous, above, n. 8.

23. The ring of the dove: A treatise on the art and practice of Arab love, trans. A. J. Arberry (London, 1953), pp. 73-5. Cf. Las Celestinas, ed. Criado de Val, 3rd edn rev. (Madrid, 1976), Aucto primera.

24. FCuenca 11.41; FIznatoraf 263; FAlarcón 249; FAlcaraz 4.42; FBaeza 263; FZorita 265; FBéjar 339, 340; FTeruel 492; FPlasencia 104. Men were to be flogged and banished after their heads were shaved; Zorita omits the flogging. See LV and FJuzgo 6.2.1-5. Conc. of Narbonne, c. 14 (589, VC, p. 149), mentions women as magicians, but they are not named in many of the canons of later hispanic councils which condemn magic. For invalidating impotence caused by enchantment, see Esmein, Le Mariage, vol. I, pp. 271-7, 281-3, and cf. LF 39. For a man who cast a spell over a woman who had rejected him, see FLa Novenera 268. Cf. Partidas 4.8.5, 7 and 7.23.3. For magic in several medieval epochs consult J. Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique (2 vols. in 1, Paris, 1959), pp. 453-67; R. Hornet, 'Cultores de practicas mágicas en Castilla medieval', CHE 63-4 (1980), 178-2 17; P. E. Russell, Temas de 'La Celestina' y otros estudios, Del Cid al Quijote, Letras e Ideas, Maior, vol. 14 (Barcelona, 1978), pp. 241-76.

25. FLedesma 188. FCuenca 11.42; FIznatoraf 264; FAlarcón 250; FAlcaraz 4-43; FBaeza 264; FZorita 266; FBéjar 341; FTeruel 492; FPlasencia 105. 'Herbolario' also denoted a respectable pharmacist, and Toledo had a quarter by that name in the thirteenth century; Covarrubias (Tesoro, p. 682) knew only this meaning. The malevolent herbalist is of either sex in FSoria 282 and FBrihuega 146.

26. FAlcalá 71, 73. FBrihuega, p. 136. FSoria 511. FCuenca 11.43; FIznatoraf 265; FAlarcón 251; FAlcaraz 4.44; FBaeza 265; FZorita 267; FBéjar 342. Absent from FTeruel and FPlasencia; the latter orders burning for parricide (cap. 108), not considered elsewhere.

27. LV and FJuzgo 3.4.3, 4, 9, 12 and 3.6.2. D'Ors, El codigo, pp. 144-50.

28. LV and FJuzgo 3.4.13.

29. FCuenca 11.28; FIznatoraf 250; FAlcaraz 4.28; FAlarcón 236; FBaeza 251; FZorita 252; FBéjar 322; FTeruel 479; FPlasencia 68. FSoria 490; FReal 4.7.1. FBrihuega, p. 135. FCoria 59; FCáceres 67; FUsagre 66. FSepúlveda 73. All emphasize different constraints. For a legitimate castration at Ciudad Rodrigo, see LF 116. To all of the above, cf. FMiranda 34 (1099), and consult García González, 'Traición y alevosía en la alta edad media', AHDE 32 (1962), 323-45.

30. FCuenca 12.15, 16; FIznatoraf 343; FAlcaraz 4.68, 69; FAlarcón 272, 273; FZorita 287, 288, omitting the daughter; FBaeza 289, 290; FTeruel 501, 507; FBéjar 370, 371. But FPlasencia 85.

31. FCuenca 11.50, et fora alia, below, n. 34. FCáceres 302 and FUsagre 321 (married women); FCoria 317 stipulates vecinos, not necessarily women. Cf. FLa Novenera 11, 12; short FViguera 11, 12.

32. FSoria 324; FReal 3.6.4. For FCuenca 11.36, 37, et fora alia, see above, Ch. 5, notes 17, 18. Alexander III affirmed a single standard of marital chastity in a letter to the Master of Santiago in 1175 (TC, vol. 3, p. 258).

33. FTeruel 486; FLAlbarracín, p. 470. Cf. FMiranda 34 and LF 137. LV and FJuzgo 3.2.2 impose burning on a woman who had sexual relations with or married her slave or freedman, but it is not a usual Visigothic penalty. It has been supposed that burning for adultery should be regarded as the origin of this particular penalty in medieval and later times; thus J. F. Reinhard, 'Burning at the stake in mediaeval law and literature', Speculum 16 (1941), 186-209, as also Benz, 'Ordeal', pp. 245-8.

34. FCuenca 11.50; FIznatoraf 222; FAlcaraz 4.51; FAlarcón 258; FBaeza 272; FBéjar 353; FPlasencia 135; not in FZorita or FTeruel. LV and FJuzgo 3.6.2, XII Toledo 8 (VC, p. 395), and Isidore (De eccles. off 2.20.11, 12) accept repudiation of the adulteress as lawful, not only from bed and board but also from the otherwise indissoluble yoke; Conc. of Palencia (1129), c. 9 (TC, vol. 3, p. 258), orders adulterers separated but neither confirms nor denies XII Toledo 8. For later canon law, notably attentive to adulterers, see Esmein, Le Mariage, vol. 1, pp. 261-3; 426-34; vol. 2, pp. 84-91; and Dauvillier, Le Mariage, pp. 158-9, 344-6.

35. FAlcalá 70. FCoria 59; FCáceres 67; FUsagre 66. Also FSepúlveda 73.

36. FCoria 58; FCáceres 66; FUsagre 65, and cf. FSepúlveda 73. But FSoria 490, 541; FReal 4.7.1, 6. FLlanes 25. Cf. LV and FJuzgo 3.4.5. See above, n. 30.

37. FLlanes 14. FParga, Alfonso IX, vol. 2, p. 650. FSoria 540, and cf. ms B; FReal 4.7.2, 3. FPlasencia 56 orders immediate castration and death for anyone caught in fornication; see also cap. 85, above, n. 30. Public prosecution for adultery is implied in FSalamanca 326, but the Leonese fueros are uninformative about the crime, implying the persistence of Visigothic precepts; public punishment and the inclusion of women other than wives seem certainly to admit Visigothic influence, more hospitable to aristocratic concepts of vengeance. For the daughter, see above, notes 30, 36, and Ch. 7, notes 34-6. There was wide variety of circumstance and punishment envisioned in customs from the northeast (e.g., FViguera 38, 186, 388), but only FEstella 2.2 1.1-3 resembles, although it is not identical to, the predominant Castilian tradition. FJaca ms A 228 records an attempted public stoning for adultery, the Old Testament punishment.

38. FCuenca 11.48; FIznatoraf 270; FAlarcón 256; FAlcaraz 4.49; FBaeza 270; FZorita 272; FBéjar 350; FTeruel 497; FPlasencia 108. FBrihuega, p. 149. FSoria 543. FSepúlveda 68, where he is hanged. But the joint penalty is imprecise in FCoria 135; FCáceres 373; FUsagre 395. Cf. M. Vallecillo Avila, 'Los judíos de Castilla en la alta edad media', CHE 14 (1950), 72-81, to Y. F. Baer, A History of the Jews in Spain (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1961-6), vol. 1, p. 89; A. A. Neuman (The Jews in Spain: Their social, political and cultural life during the middle ages (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1961-6), vol. 2, pp. 11-12) mistakenly assumes the penalty applies to Christian men and women.

39. FCoria 135. FSepúlveda 68, 215 ('sea dada por mala').

40. Under Jewish law sexual relations with a gentile could be a capital crime; see Neuman, The Jews, vol. 2, pp. 8-12; and the responsa, ed. I. Epstein, Studies in the communal life of the Jews in Spain, as reflected in the Responsa of Rabbi Solomon ben Adreth and Rabbi Simon ben Zemach Duran (New York, 1968), pp. 88, 90. Under Muslim law a woman could be enslaved for intercourse with a Christian, used as a pretext by Christian landlords in Aragon to enslave free Muslim women as their concubines (J. Boswell, The royal treasure: Muslim communities under the Crown of Aragon in the fourteenth century (New Haven, 1977), pp. 343-51).

41. FCuenca 11.22, 23, et fora alia, above, Ch. 7, n. 73. The need for baptism is made clear in FBaeza 246, Paris ms.

42. FSoria 362 (FReal 3.8.3), 544, 159. Most of the anti-Jewish legislation of FReal 4.1, 2 was not incorporated into FSoria, but see cap. 329 (FR eal 3.6.16) and cap. 365.

43. Cortes of Valladolid (1258), pet. 38 (Cortes, vol. 1, p. 62); FReal 4.4.2, (1256), omitting Muslims. Cortes of Jerez (1268), pet. 29-31 (Cortes, vol. 1, p. 77). By fourteenth-century royal legislation women who fornicated with men 'de otra ley' were fined heavily, but now evidently Muslim and Jewish as well as Christian women ('Dos ordenamientos', ed. Cerdá Ruiz-Funes, pp. 453, 458).

44. FCuenca 11.47; FIznatoraf 269; FAlarcón 255; FAlcaraz 4.48; FBaeza 269; FTeruel 496; FPlasencia 106; FBéjar 348, 349; FZorita 271 adds confiscation to criminal exile when the seller successfully fled. For the conspirator, FCuenca 13.1, et fora alia, and FBrihuega, p. 12. FSepúlveda 90 does not name women. For FConsuegra, FPlasencia, et fora alia, see above, n. 15. Verlinden, citing laws from FTeruel which he misreads, dismisses this traffic (L'Esclavage, vol. 1, pp. 162-3).

45. LF 285, and cf. FLa Novenera 9 and the short FViguera 9. FSoria 545; FReal 4.5.2. FAlcalá 102. FCuenca 35.8; FIznatoraf 769; FAlarcón 708; FAlcaraz 11.56; FBaeza 800; FZorita 742; FTeruel 666; FPlasencia 656.

46. FCuenca 11.49; FIznatoraf 271; FAlarcón 257; FAlcaraz 4.50; FBaeza 271; FZorita 273; FBéjar 351, 352; FTeruel 39: FPlasencia 133. FBrihuega, p. 135. By FSoria 502 the double fine was in order only when the foetus was determined to be 'alive', an Aristotelian concept. See LV and FJuzgo 6.3.2; Exodus 21.22; Partidas 7.8.8; LF 198 denies the double penalty and is closer to Visigothic law which, Maldonado asserts, is more solicitous of the life of the mother than of the foetus (La condición, pp. 69-72, 89-107, 109-19).

47. FSoria 537, for the illegitimate child. Cf. LVand FJuzgo 6.3.7. Married criminals, mentioned in III Toledo 17, are stressed by J. Manuel Pérez-Prendes y Muñoz de Arraco, 'Neomalthusianismo hispano-visigodo', Anuario de historia económica y social 1 (1968), 581-3. Fines in cases of infanticide and abortion, where the father of the woman was implicated in the crimes, appear in thirteenth-century Navarrese records: El registro, ed. Zabalo Zabaleguí, nos. 1028, 1372; Documentos medievales antajoneses, ed. J. M. Jimeno Juno (Pamplona, 1968), pp. 288, 291.

48. FCuenca 11.51, et fora alia; see above, Ch. 7, notes 37, 38.

49. FBrihuega, p. 146. FBaeza 258, and cf. FCuenca 11.35; FIznatoraf 257; FAlarcón 243; FAlcaraz 4.34; FZorita 259; FBéjar 331; FTeruel 485.

50. FCuenca 11.38, 40, et fora alia; see above, Ch. 5, n. 9.

51. FCuenca 11.39; FIznatoraf 261; FAlarcón 247; FAlcaraz 4.40; FBaeza 261; FZorita 263; FBéjar 337; FPlasencia 102; FTeruel 490 refers to her unwillingness to take the ordeal, in which case she was still burned.

52. FSoria 502. LV and FJuzgo 6.2.3, which name male and female abortionists, but 6.3.1 specifically punishes a free woman for causing another to abort ('por fuerza, o por alguna ocasion'); see D'Ors, El codigo, pp. 122-4. Conc. of Lérida, c. 2 (546, VC, pp. 55-6) condemns men and women for causing abortion by potion much more harshly than when they used other means. II Braga 74 (572, ibid., p. 103) names herbal magicians of both sexes, while c. 77 (ibid., p. 104), unlike its model (Conc. of Ancyra, c. 21 of 314, which Gratian took from Burchard), condemns only women for abortion. Lérida is curiously ignored and II Braga dismissed by Noonan, Contraception: A history of its treatment by the Catholic theologians and canonists (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 144-9. Both contraception and abortion, for which the specifics were often the same and connected by the Church with magic, were attacked by the later canonists following Augustine's dictum, 'They are fornicators, not spouses, who procure poisons of sterility' (ibid., pp. 9-29, 155-63, 171-99).

53. E.g., Penitencial silense, ed. Gonzalez Rivas, La penitencia, p. 176; Penitencial cordobense, ibid., p. 216.

54. Soranus, Gynecology, pp. 39-40, 62-8. For Avicenna, see Noonan, Contraception, pp. 200-16. Cf. Maimonides, De morbis mulierum, quoted byW. Steinberg and S. Munter, 'Maimonides' views on gynecology and obstetrics', American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 91 (1965), 443-8, based ultimately on Soranus, Gynecology, pp. 45-8.

55. L. Dulieu, La Medicine a Montpellier, vol. 2: Le moyen age (Avignon, 1975), pp. 306-7; K. C. Hurd-Mead, A history of women in medicine from the earliest times to the beginning of the nineteenth century (Haddam, Conn., 1938), pp. 129-30. For peninsular encrustations of the Dioscoridean tradition, to which Rojas' description of Celestina's famous laboratory was indebted, see, A. Laguna, Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo (Madrid, 1733), first printed as De medicinali materia libri quinque (Alcalá de Henares, 1518).

56. FBrihuega, p. 146.