Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations

ISSN: 0959-6410 (Print) 1469-9311 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cicm20

Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal

Perspectives from the Middle Ages
John Tolan
To cite this article: John Tolan (2016) Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal
Perspectives from the Middle Ages, Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations, 27:1, 35-50, DOI:
10.1080/09596410.2015.1087671
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2015.1087671

Published online: 22 Feb 2016.

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Download by: [John Tolan]

Date: 23 February 2016, At: 05:22

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS, 2016

VOL. 27, NO. 1, 3550
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2015.1087671

Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal Perspectives

from the Middle Ages
John Tolan

Downloaded by [John Tolan] at 05:22 23 February 2016

History Department, University of Nantes, Nantes, France

ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions have all attempted to

dene and prohibit blasphemy: insult or verbal attack against their
religion, against its rites and symbols, against God and his human
representatives. Such laws could be internal (prohibiting blasphemy
by members of the faith group) or external (prohibiting insult by
those outside the faith). This article will rst briey trace the former,
looking at how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions from
Antiquity and the Middle Ages dene and prohibit blasphemy. The
second part of the article will then focus on the second issue,
looking at how Christian and Muslim legal traditions attempted to
prohibit insults to the faith by adherents of other religions. We shall
look, for example, at various Christian laws dealing with what was
perceived as Jewish mockery of Christian ritual and sacred objects:
from mock crucixions allegedly practiced by Jews as part of Purim
celebrations in the fth-century Roman Empire to Jews who
supposedly derided the Eucharist during thirteenth-century Corpus
Christi processions. We shall in parallel examine prohibitions in
Muslim legal texts (including the so-called Pact of Umar) of
dhimms insulting the Prophet Muhammad or the Quran. This
comparison will show that, while blasphemy was illegal and could
be harshly sanctioned and there were lines that religious minorities
must not cross, these lines were often not clearly delimited, and
became the object of conict and negotiation.

Received 11 July 2015

Accepted 20 August 2015
KEYWORDS

Blasphemy; law; insult;

religion; Islam; Christianity;
Judaism

In the context of this special issue on blasphemy and apostasy, which focuses primarily on
contemporary societies that have Christian and Muslim heritage, let us rst look at the
development of the concept of blasphemy and related concepts (even when the authors
involved do not use the term blasphemy itself). The concept meant different things to
different authors within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, and can be found,
mutatis mutandis, in other traditions as well.1

1. Laws against blasphemy as means for internal regulation of religious

community
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have long legal traditions of prohibition of blasphemy.
Insulting the name of God is an affront to the doctrines of the faith and to both clerical
and secular authority.
CONTACT John Tolan

john.tolan@univ-nantes.fr

2015 University of Birmingham

36

J. TOLAN

The Ten Commandments prohibit insulting Gods name. The third commandment
(Exodus 20.7), which the King James Bible translates
reads:
as Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. In the Hebrew, it is specically the name of the tetragrammaton, at-shem-YHWH, that must not be abused. Indeed,
according to Leviticus, blasphemy is punishable by stoning:

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Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and
a ght broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite. The son of the Israelite woman
] the Name with a curse; so they brought him to Moses. They put him in
blasphemed [
custody until the will of the Lord should be made clear to them. Then the Lord said to Moses:
] outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their
Take the blasphemer [
hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: Anyone who
] the name of the
curses their God will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes [
Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or
native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death. (Leviticus
24.1016).

The verb used,

, means to perforate or injure, used with the direct object name of
the Lord (
). The crime of piercing the divine name here occurred in a ght
between two men, one of whom uttered a curse. God himself, according to Leviticus,
orders Moses to have all those who have heard the proffered blasphemy put the blasphemer to death. Khillul Hashem (
), desecration of the Holy Name, is the Hebrew
term subsequently used in Jewish law to designate the crime of blasphemy. In this
passage of Leviticus, we see two themes that will recur in medieval and early modern
Europe: blasphemy is associated with male bravado (in this case, ghting), and it is
often particularly problematic when it involves those on the borders of the faith group:
here, the son of a mixed marriage; in medieval Europe, converts and their offspring.
While Leviticus dictates death by stoning as the appropriate punishment for blasphemy, the Mishna issues important restrictions limiting the application of the death
penalty: the blasphemer must have used the divine name (the tetragrammaton), must
have proffered a malediction, must have spoken clearly and audibly and must have
been clearly heard by at least two witnesses, who have submitted the case to a rabbinical
court. In other words, the rabbis took care to render inoperative the punishments prescribed in Leviticus without, of course, explicitly annulling the biblical text (see Gergely
2012). In the Babylonian Talmud, the sages discuss the profanation of the divine name
as the ultimate crime against God. Yet at the same time it becomes a metaphor for lack
of zeal in devotion to God:
What constitutes profanation of the Name? Rab said: If, e.g. I take meat from the butcher
and do not pay him at once. Abaye said: That we have learnt [to regard as profanation] only
in a place wherein one does not go out to collect payment, but in a place where one does not
go out to collect, there is no harm in it [not paying at once]. R. Johanan said: In my case [it
is a profanation if] I walk four cubits without [uttering words of] Torah or [wearing] tellin.2

The Greek word occurs several times in the Septuagint to designate insult to
things sacred (though not limited to profanation of the divine name).3 In classical Greek,
the noun and the verb were used (for example, by Democritus
[d. 370BC]) to mean slander against persons, but they also carried the meaning of
offense given against gods.4 While it was natural for the translators of the Septuagint to
reach for these words to describe the profanation of Gods name, the classical Greek

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ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

37

concept is in fact quite different. As Cheyronnaud and Lenclud (1992) explain : Le blasphme grec est un faux-ami du blasphme chrtien. La permanence linguistique, du grec
au latin dglise, est un obstacle la traduction culturelle, une invite au faux-sens. We can
take the example of Euripides Ion, where a plot to poison the wine of the eponymous hero
is foiled when a slave inadvertently utters an ill-omened word (
, Ion 1189); subsequently, all are obliged to pour out their wine (which saves
Ions life). We are very far from Exodus and Leviticus. Socrates, in Platos Republic
(381e), says that no poet should be allowed to utter falsehoods about the gods, citing
(as examples of ideas to be banned) verses from Homer and Aeschylus that related how
gods disguised themselves as humans and moved among us. Mothers, he concludes,
should be prohibited from relating such tales to their children, from (blaspheming against the gods).
In the synoptic gospels, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of blasphemy when he heals a paralytic and tells him that his sins are forgiven (Matthew 9.3; Luke 5.21; Mark 14.64). In John
10.33, the Jews wish to stone Jesus for his blasphemies () because he
afrms that he is God. As Thomas Gergely has pointed out, there is little probability
that Jesus was guilty of khillul hashem in the restricted legal sense; indeed the gospel
accounts are anachronistic in having Jesus appear before the Sanhedrin, an institution
that did not exist in 33 CE (but which would be created after the destruction of the
Temple in 70) (Gergely 2012). The gospels have Jesus afrm that blasphemy against
himself (the Son of Man) may be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
(Matthew 12.3132; Mark 3.29; Luke 12.11). Jews accuse Jesus and his disciples of blasphemy and, according to Acts 8, punish Stephen with death by stoning, with the complicity of Saul. Yet with Sauls conversion (as he becomes Paul), the accusation of blasphemy
changes sides: Paul who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor (1 Timothy 1.13)
confesses: I punished them [Christians] often, in every synagogue, and compelled
them to blaspheme (Acts 26.11) (see Lawton 1993, 49).
In the early Christian centuries, various Christian authors accused other Christians
(who did not share their views on, say, Christology or ecclesiology) of being
blasphemers: their deviant doctrines were seen as so many insults to God. Thus,
blasphemy and heresy were for authors such as Augustine almost synonyms (see
Levy 1987). It is the Emperor Justinian (r. 52765) who rst provides civil legislation
prohibiting blasphemy. Novel 77 prohibits unnatural sexual liaisons alongside blasphemy: both of these crimes, the emperor fears, may provoke divine wrath and
punishment.
Since some men use blasphemies and swear oaths by the Deity, thereby inciting the wrath
of God, we also call upon them to abstain from such blasphemies and from taking oaths by
the hairs and by the head and by similar words. For if maledictions upon men do not
remain unavenged, much more is he who blasphemes God himself worthy of punishment.
We therefore exhort all such men to abstain from the sins mentioned, to have in mind the
fear of God and to imitate those who live uprightly. For famine and earthquakes and pestilences are caused by such sins, and we therefore admonish them to refrain from the crimes
mentioned, lest they lose their souls. And if there are any who persevere in such iniquity after
this, our admonition, they in the rst place show themselves unworthy of the clemency of
God, and they will, in the next place be subjected to the punishment xed by law. For we
have ordered the glorious prefect of this imperial city to arrest those who after this, our
warning, persist in such unlawful and impious acts, and inict the punishment of death

38

J. TOLAN

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upon them, lest by disregarding such sinners, the city and the republic may be injured by
reason of their impious acts.5

Here, blasphemy is not associated with heterodoxy: there is no suggestion that these blasphemers ascribe to deviant doctrine. Nor is there any sense that these men deliberately
insult God. The problem is with oath-taking: men swear by the hairs or head of God,
no doubt, from their point of view, to lend solemnity and credibility to their oaths. Yet
for Justinian this is blasphemy, and the perpetrators are to be severely punished, lest
God in wrath send punishment on the empire in the form of earthquake or disease.
This law is the rst in a long series of European laws that, as we shall see, associate blasphemy with swearing, imprecations, and oath-taking.
In Islamic law, the common term for blasphemy is shatm, a word that does not appear
in the Quran, though a word with a related meaning, sabb, appears once.6 The basic
meaning of shatm is insult or vilication. To insult God or Muhammad (or for some
jurists, Muhammads Companions), was a crime equivalent, for some legal scholars, to
apostasy (ridda) or unbelief (kufr), each of which could warrant the death penalty in
certain cases.
The absence of this issue in the Quran and its presence in a number of texts from the
second/eighth and third/ninth centuries (including Hadith collections) suggests that by
then the place of Muhammad and his Companions had become a potentially explosive
issue, and ending up on the wrong side of a theological dispute could provoke condemnation and execution. Such was the case of Muh ammad b. Sad b. H assn al-Urdunn, who
had written that Muhammad was the seal of the prophets if God does not intend otherwise.7 While this was a dispute within Sunni Islam, at times Sunni authorities punished
Shiis for insulting Companions of Muhammad in particular the early caliphs. Insult
proffered to Muhammad or the Quran by non-Muslims was also considered a serious
crime, as we shall see in the second part of this article.8
In medieval Europe, there is little specic legislation concerning blasphemy before the
thirteenth century. Blasphemy is mentioned as a sin in various early medieval penitentials,
where it is generally associated with perjury and excessive oath-taking (Leveleux 2001,
6570). The same is true of the canon law compilations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where repeated discussion of penance to be imposed on those who swear by the hair
or head of God shows how Novel 77 continued to be the standard reference (7078).
It is in the Liber extra, the decretal collection put together under the direction of
Raymond of Penyafort (11751275) for Pope Gregory IX (r. 122741), that we rst see a
clear prohibition of blasphemy as a sin and a crime independent of the issues of perjury
and oaths.9 Titulus 26 is de maledicis, a term meaning slanderers or those who speak
ill; it consists of two chapters. The rst is a bull of Clement III (r. 118791) prohibiting
insulting the pope or the papal ofce: He who speaks ill of the pope is to be punished, so
that others may be deterred from doing so and that he may be imprisoned. It is the
second, longer chapter that uses the term blasphemia: here punishment is imposed on
those who blaspheme God or any saint, especially the most glorious Virgin. What
follows is the text of Gregory IXs own bull Statuimus, which both provides a denition
of blasphemy and mandates specic punishments. To incur punishment, the blasphemy
must involve a publicly proffered insult against God, one of His saints, or the Virgin. The
punishment is dual, involving rst of all public penance: the blasphemer is to stand at the

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ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

39

entrance to the church for seven successive Sundays after having fasted Saturday. On the last
Sunday, he should wear neither cloak nor shoes and is to wear a rope around his neck.
During this time, he is not allowed to set foot inside the church; at the same time he is to
pay to feed one, two, or three paupers. Completion of this public penance makes him eligible
to be received back into the Church. To this is added a ne varying from 5 to 40 solidi,
depending on his wealth. If he refuses to submit to this penance and ne, he may neither
enter a church nor be buried in a consecrated cemetery.
In the thirteenth century, too, lay rulers impose punishments on blasphemers. Emperor
Frederick II (r. 122050), in his Constitutions of Mel, declares (in September 1231): we
punish those who blaspheme against God and the glorious Virgin with the mutilation of
the ill-speaking tongue (Constitutiones 1996, 450). A harsh penalty indeed, though we
may wonder how often judges really imposed it. We might wonder the same thing concerning the long passage devoted to blasphemy in the vast, encyclopedic Siete partidas,
a law code compiled under the patronage of King Alfonso X of Castile and Len
(r. 125284) but not promulgated during his reign. The twenty-eighth chapter (or
titulo) of book seven concerns blasphemers, or in the words of Alfonsos jurists: those
who offer insults to [denuestan] God, to Holy Mary, and to the other saints (Alfonso
X 2001, 14481449). These insults might be verbal, but might also be acts such as striking
or spitting at a cross or at the walls or doors of a church, or spitting toward heaven. The
punishment, for a noble or knight who owns land, is to lose his land for one year for a rst
offense, two years for a second offense, and permanently for a third. An urban dweller forfeits a quarter of his property for a rst offense, a third for the second offense, and a half for
the third; the fourth time, he is to be banished. A blasphemer of inferior rank with no
property risks having his hand cut off.
In another legislative work, the Libro de las tahureras (Book of gambling, 1276),
Alfonso promulgates laws meant to control the behavior of gamblers. We see a close
association between gambling and blasphemy (see Carpenter 1998). Unlucky gamblers
who blame God or the saints for their losses and utter blasphemies are to be punished
with monetary nes (based on their wealth and status); repeat offenders are to have
part of their tongue sliced off. We nd this same association between gambling and blasphemy in nine of the miracles of the Virgin Mary that Alfonso relates in his Cantigas de
Santa Maria. In one of them, an unlucky gambler hurls a stone at a statue of the Virgin
and child: the baby Jesus arm is shattered and begins to bleed, the virgin miraculously
restores the limb, and devils drag the blasphemer down to hell. Other blasphemers are
luckier in the Cantigas: they repent, make amends, and are forgiven by the Virgin.
The French King Louis IX (r. 122670) legislated concerning blasphemy at least four
times (Leveleux 2001, 297306). On the rst occasion, words of insult or contempt for
God, His Mother and his Saints are prohibited (the term blasphemy is not used) alongside other practices: gambling, fornication, consorting with prostitutes. Blasphemy is one
of the sins that provokes Gods ire, and here it is associated not with heresy but with dissolute male subculture. Louis was famously said to have ordered that a blasphemers lips be
marked with a hot iron. His fourth and nal law on the subject, in June 1270, distinguishes
different levels of punishment based on the severity of the blasphemy and the solvency of
the culprit, with harsher penalties for repeat offenders. As Leveleux (2001) has shown, the
successive laws show how Louis sought more efciently and justly to combat blasphemy:
earlier laws dictating corporal penalties were revised (in part in response to papal concerns

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40

J. TOLAN

about their excessive harshness); the nal law shows close attention to questions of enforceability and distinguishes between gradations of punishment according to the gravity of
the blasphemy proffered.
Delumeau (1978, 400) has characterized sixteenthseventeenth-century Europe as a
civilization of blasphemy. To cite one prominent example, Charles V (Holy Roman
Emperor 151956) issues an ordinance in Flanders in 1517 in which he remarks that
many of our subjects, frequenting taverns, cabarets, and other places of dissolution,
daily indulge in swearing, taking oaths and insulting the name of God and of the
Virgin Mary. Christian princes should not tolerate such behavior, says Charles, but
rather impose major and severe punishment and correction as an example to all, lest
divine ire, malediction and punishment fall on the whole society.10 Various historians
have shown the explosion of anti-blasphemy statutes issued by various European rulers
between the fteenth and seventeenth centuries: Cabantous (1998), Hoareau-Dodinau
(2003), and Leveleux (2001) for France, Schwerhoff (2005) for Germany, Loetz (2002)
for Switzerland, and Villa-Flores (2006) for New Spain, among others. While it is
beyond the scope of this article to trace this legislation in detail, blasphemy is increasingly
seen as a problem of public order and public morals: men who gamble, drink, and frequent
prostitutes are likely to swear and blaspheme.

2. Blasphemy law as protection from external enemies

In sixteenth-century Europe, the explosion of legislation regarding blasphemy was closely
related to the afrmation of the power of states, for which blasphemy was potentially a
challenge not only to God, but to their own authority: an act of lse majest against
both God and the sovereign. Accusations of blasphemy were also a key weapon in the
rhetorical wars between Catholics and Protestants: Protestant attacks on the cult of the
saints, the authority of the Church, and various Catholic doctrines were so many acts
of blasphemy for Catholics, while Catholic polemics against Protestants were blasphemy
for the latter (Weis 2012). A Protestant is ipso facto a blasphemer in the eyes of many sixteenth-century Catholics, and vice versa. The accusation of blasphemy and its juridical
denition could serve as a means to construct barriers delimiting the true religion and
protecting it from hostile outsiders. The same issues are found well before the sixteenth
century in medieval laws (canon and civil) meant to prohibit outsiders from insulting
or mocking the true religion. At times, indeed, a rival religion is portrayed as in its
essence blasphemous: this is particularly the case with Latin Christian portrayals of
Judaism beginning in the thirteenth century. This second part of the present article will
examine the development of laws prohibiting blasphemy by those outside the faith.
The Theodosian code, promulgated by Emperor Theodosius II (r. 40850) in 438,
brings together a large number of laws issued by Christian emperors from Constantine
(r. 30637) to Theodosius II himself. While the term blasphemia does not occur in
the code, one law in particular (issued in 408) addresses the question of Jews insulting
or mocking Christianity:
Emperors Honorius and Theodosius Augustuses to Anthemius, Praetorian Prefect. The governors of the provinces shall prohibit the Jews from setting re to Haman in memory of his
past punishment, in a certain ceremony of their festival, and from burning with sacrilegious
intent a form made to resemble the holy cross in contempt of the Christian faith, lest they

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

41

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introduce the sign of our faith into their places, and they shall restrain their rites from ridiculing the Christian law, for they are bound to lose what had been permitted them till now
unless they abstain from those matters which are forbidden.11

This law suggests that, in their celebrations of the festival of Purim, Jews deliberately
mocked Christianity by burning a crucied efgy of Haman. Not only does the law prohibit this custom, but the Emperors Honorius (r. 395408) and Theodosius II under whose
authority the law is issued, warn Jews to refrain from associating Christian symbols with
Jewish rites and in general from ridiculing Christianity. The implicit threat is that, if they
fail to heed this injunction, they risk losing their privileges in Christian Roman society.
This text testies to the fact that Jews in the fourth-century empire celebrated Purim,
the festival commemorating the defeat of Haman, who had attempted to have Persian
Jews put to death by accusing them of treason, but whose plot was foiled by the Jewish
courtier, Mordecai, and the Jewish queen, Esther: the Persian king nally had Haman
put to death. The festivities, attested in various Jewish and non-Jewish sources in Antiquity
and the Middle Ages, often involved the burning of an efgy of Haman in this case,
apparently a crucied one (see Tolan 2013). We know that on later occasions Jews identied their ancient enemy Haman with their modern (Christian) persecutors; they perhaps
already did so in 408. In the end, it is impossible to say who these Jews were, what exactly
they did in their rites, or with what aims and in what spirit. The law, it seems, tells us little
concrete about the acts and beliefs of these fth-century Jews.
Yet it does tell us something important about how the emperor and his ofcers perceive
the Jews and their place in a Christian Empire. In a period when various church fathers
(such as John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople 398404) attempted to limit
JewishChristian contact (by, for example, prohibiting Christians from frequenting synagogues), we see that Christian authorities seek to separate the two communities, Jews and
Christians. While the Theodosian code frequently qualies Judaism as a superstition, it
nevertheless offers protection to Jews and to their synagogues. Various laws prohibit violence against synagogues, prohibit judges from summoning Jews to court on the Sabbath,
and offer privileges to Jewish religious ofcials (Nemo Pekelman 2010). Here, the emperors afrm that in order to conserve these privileges, Jews must avoid ridiculing Christianity. In particular, incorporation of Christian objects or symbols into Jewish rites, and into
Jewish religious space, is prohibited. So, while Theodosius does not use the term blasphemy, he clearly denes these rites as in contempt of the Christian faith (contemptum
christianae dei) with sacrilegious intent (sacrilega mente). Jews are not allowed to mock
the Christian faith in words or in actions; those who do so risk losing their protection
under the rule of the Christian emperor.
Forcible conversions in seventh-century Spain caused new problems of blasphemy, if
we are to believe the clerics assembled for the fourth council of Toledo in 633, presided
over by Visigothic King Sisenand (r. 63136).12 Recent converts from Judaism are blaspheming against Christ, proclaim the assembled prelates. Between 612 and 616, Sisenands
predecessor, Sisebut (r. 61220), had ordered the Jews of Spain to convert to Christianity.
Many of the Jews who were baptized apparently returned to Judaism shortly thereafter.
Twenty years later, this council issued a series of canons concerning Jews, baptized
Jews, and their children, including one that instructs bishops to correct wayward converts.
It also mandates taking circumcised children from their parents, and manumitting

42

J. TOLAN

circumcised slaves. Insincere converts are a threat to the unity of the Church and their acts
and words are seen as blasphemous.
Muslim texts concerning the protected status of dhimms often contain clauses obliging
dhimms to show respect and deference to Muslims and prohibiting them from insulting
Muhammad, the Quran, or the Muslim faith. For example, al-Sh (d. 820), founder of
the eponymous Sh madhhab, provided in his Kitb al-umm a model dhimma contract
setting out in detail the rights and duties of the dhimms. Among other things, the contract
stipulates:

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If any one of you speaks improperly of Muhammad, may God bless and save him, the Book of
God, or of His religion, he forfeits the protection (dhimma) of God, of the Commander of the
Faithful, and of all the Muslims; he has contravened the conditions upon which he was given
his safe-conduct; his property and his life are at the disposal of the Commander of the Faithful, like the property and lives of the people of the house of war.13

In a ninth-century society in which the adherents of the politically dominant religion,

Islam, were numerically inferior to those of Christianity, such dhimma contracts
attempted to protect Islam from insult and guarantee its ascendency.
Two centuries later, the Sh jurist al-Mward (d. 1058) pens his Al-Ahkm al-sultniyya wa-al-wilyt al-dniyya (Ordinances of government). He too presents the principles of a dhimma contract to be made between the Muslim ruler and the subjected
community. He gives 12 conditions that may be included in a dhimma contract: six of
them optional and six obligatory. The six optional stipulations involve restrictions on
the outward manifestations of dhimm religion and culture: requiring dhimms to wear
distinctive clothing or restricting their rights to ride on horseback, ring church bells, or
to aunt their drinking, their crosses, or their swine. These regulations need to be
respected only if they are explicitly included in the specic dhimma contract. The six obligatory conditions, however, must be respected whether or not they are specically
included in a dhimma contract.
There are two sets of conditions to include in a tribute contract: one obligatory and the other
desirable. The requisite conditions are six in number: rst, to refrain from any defamation or
distortion of God Almightys scripture; second, not to talk of the Apostle, God bless him and
grant him salvation, in terms of denial or disparagement; third, not to talk of the Islamic faith
in derogatory or slanderous language; fourth, not to commit adultery or enter into an
unauthorized marriage with a Muslim female; fth, not to entice a Muslim to renounce
his faith, encroach on his property or assault his religion; sixth, not to assist the enemies
of Islam or maintain cordial relations with their associates. These six conditions are compulsory even if not mentioned in so many words.14

Of these six obligatory conditions regulating the status of dhimms, three involve the
prohibition of verbal insults to the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad, or the Muslim religion. The rst of these prohibitions is of tah rf, distortion of the holy book, an accusation
frequently made against Jews and Christian regarding the transmission and interpretation
of their own scriptures (Lazarus-Yafeh 2000). In order to continue enjoying their status as
protected minorities and their right to practice their religions, Jews and Christians must
refrain from blaspheming against Islam.
In the 850s, a number of Christians in Cordoba insulted Muhammad and the Quran in
the presence of Muslim authorities (in particular, the qd). A number of them were put to

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ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

43

death as blasphemers, apparently having been given the choice between converting to
Islam or death.15 Starting in the thirteenth century, a number of Franciscans also went
to Muslim lands, sought out Muslim rulers or qds, and deliberately insulted Muhammad
in order to obtain the palm of martyrdom (Heullant-Donat 2004; MacEvitt 2011; Rosa
Dias 2009; Ryan 2004).
In Christian as in Muslim society, prohibition of insults against the majority religion is
a key element of the legal restrictions imposed on religious minorities. One of the principal
restrictions on Jews in Christian polities was the prohibition of exercising authority over
Christians, and in particular of holding public ofce and of owning Christian slaves or
having Christian servants in their homes.16 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Jewish blasphemy is commonly invoked as a justication or explanation for such prohibitions. Gratians Decretum (c. 1140) forbids Jews from owning Christian slaves
because it is wrong for a blasphemer of the Christian religion to keep someone in
fetters, whom Christ the Lord redeemed with the spilling of his blood.17 For similar
reasons, the Decretum allows a convert to Christianity to dissolve a previous marriage
with a spouse who remains indel, lest the new Christian have to hear insults against
the creator (contumelia creatoris).18
Pope Innocent III (r. 11981216) frequently equates Jews with blasphemers and repeatedly uses the charge of their blasphemy to promote strict enforcement of rules imposing
separation between Jews and Christians. On January 16, 1205, Innocent sent a letter to
King Philip II Augustus of France (r. 11801223). In this bull, Etsi non displiceat
Domino, the pope complains of the privileged status that the king accords to Jews,
which unconscionably places them above Christians.19 The Jews of the French kingdom
have become insolent, claims the pope. He attacks in particular the practice of
money-lending, which inverses the normal power relationships between Christians and
Jews: Jews abscond with the property of Christians and of the Church. Particularly unacceptable to the pope is the trampling of traditional jurisprudence based on oral testimony
(in which Christian witnesses were accorded more authority than Jews). Here, on the contrary, more credence is given to signed documents (contracts in the Jews possession),
inverting traditional hierarchies. The letter is a bitter if implicit criticism of the aid and
abetment that the king and his ofcers grant to Jewish lenders, to the detriment of Christian debtors. Beyond the question of usury, the pope lambasts what for him are other
examples of Jewish insolence: they construct new synagogues (one of which is taller
than the neighboring church); they have Christian servants, in clear violation of Church
law; they openly mock Christians and make jest of veneration of the cross during Holy
Week. The pope accuses the Jews of being accomplices to thieves and even of killing Christians. Three times in the bull he charges the Jews with blaspheming against the name of
the Lord, and at the end of the bull he exhorts the king to turn against these blasphemers
that the punishment of some should be a source of fear to all.
Innocent sent another bull, Ut esset Cain, to Count Herv IV de Donzy of Nevers
(11731223) on January 17, 1208.20 He here takes up the same themes he had already
addressed in his Etsi non displiceat Domino. He tells the count that blasphemers of the
Christian name ought not to be aided by Christian princes to oppress the servants of
the Lord. He warns him that he should dread divine anger because you are not afraid
to show favor to those who dared to nail to the Cross the only-begotten Son of God,
and to this moment have not ceased to blaspheme (against Him). Jews are blasphemers

44

J. TOLAN

against the Lord whom they crucied, and any Christian prince who helps them oppress
Christians (by, for example, helping them collect the usurious interest they charge to
Christians) will incur Gods wrath.
At the fourth Lateran Council, called by Innocent III and presided over by him in
November 1215, Jewish blasphemy is evoked twice as a justication for restrictive legislation. In canon 68, the council rules that, during Holy Week, Jews and Muslims

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ought not to appear publicly at all, since we understand that some of them do not blush to
parade about splendidly attired, and are not afraid of ridiculing Christians who displaying
tokens of grief observe the memory of the most sacred passion. But, we stringently forbid
this, lest they presume to break out in abuse of the Redeemer in any way. And since, we
ought not ignore the abuse of him who erased our sins, we prescribe that the presumptuous,
lest they presume to blaspheme the one who was crucied for us in any way, be curbed by the
wholly deserved addition of censure from secular princes.21

The following Canon (69) is an explicit reiteration of canons issued at Toledo III in 589
and Toledo IV in 633, which barred Jews from holding public ofces. Like the 633
council, this canon invokes the Jews blasphemy as the justication for this prohibition:
Since it is more than absurd that a blasphemer of Christ should exercise the power of magistracy over Christians, in this general council we renew what the council of Toledo presciently
established on this matter because of the transgressors temerity: we forbid that the Jews be preferred for public ofce, since under such a pretense they are highly inimical to Christians.22

Here, moreover, the prohibition is explicitly extended to pagans (that is, Muslims).
Royal legislation also seeks to prohibit and punish blasphemy, as we have seen, beginning in the thirteenth century. A number of laws seek in particular to prevent Jews and
Muslims from blaspheming against Christ and the Christian religion. We shall examine
two examples from thirteenth-century monarchs Henry III of England (r. 121572),
and Alfonso X of Castile and Len. On January 31, 1253, Henry III issued a mandate
in which Jews were prohibited both from disparaging the Christian faith and from disputing with Christians about it. Once again, these prohibitions are part of a broad effort to
regulate Jewish behavior and in particular JewishChristian relations.23 In this mandate,
the king orders that no Jew disparage the Christian Faith, or publicly dispute concerning
the same as part of a long series of regulations and restrictions concerning the Jews place
in Christian society. The king afrms his authority over Jews while at the same time
lending royal authority to various measures concerning Jews taken by church councils
in Rome (Lateran III in 1179 and Lateran IV in 1215) and in England (Oxford in 1222,
among others).24 The king begins by afrming that no Jew, of whatever age or sex, may
remain in England unless he provide service to the king. This is a strong afrmation of
the direct dependency of Jews on the person of the king. There is a clear desire to limit
expansion of Jewish settlement and to prohibit the building of new synagogues. A series
of stipulations echo measures taken at earlier church councils (notably Lateran IV and
the Council of Oxford in 1222): Jews are prohibited from having Christian servants and
from sexual relations with Christians, are obliged to pay tithes on their lands and
houses to the parish rector, and to the wear a badge in the shape of tablets (referring
to the tablets of the Law that Moses received at Sinai).
As we have seen, Alfonso Xs Siete partidas devoted a section (ttulo) to blasphemy. Its
primary concern is with Christians who blaspheme, but the last of the ttulos six chapters

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

45

concerns Jews and Moors who proffer such insults. The chapter recalls that Jews and
Moors are permitted to live in our land even though they do not believe in our
faith, but that the condition for this permission is that they do nothing to insult
Christ, his mother, or the other saints. Not only is verbal insult prohibited, but also spitting
on crosses, altars, or images of the saints, or striking such a holy object with hand, foot, or
other object, or throwing stones at churches. Whoever acts against this prohibition we
will punish him in his body and in his possessions according to what we judge he
merits for the crime that he committed. Alfonso gives the following justication for
this prohibition:

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If the Moors, in all the places where they have power over the Christians, prohibit them from
insulting Muhammad and from saying anything against his doctrine, and for this offense
they beat them and hurt them in many ways and decapitate them, how much more appropriate it is that we prohibit them (and others who do not believe in our faith) from daring to
criticize or insult our faith.25

If Muslims punish those who blaspheme their religion, we are justied in punishing those
who blaspheme against Christianity, Alfonso argues. Unlike Innocent III, who had portrayed indels (especially Jews) as blasphemers per se, Alfonso sees Muslims as models
in the prohibition of blasphemy. Yet elsewhere, in the introduction to his section on
Islam (VII, 25) he afrms that, because Muhammad did not lead a life of sanctity appropriate for a prophet, his religion is as it were, an insult to God (como un denuesto de
Dios) (Alfonso X 2001, 1438).
The Partidas devote a section to Jews, in which the king afrms:
Jews ought to conduct themselves meekly and without disorder among Christians, observing
their own law and not speaking ill of the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ which Christians
observe. Furthermore, they must take great care not to preach or convert any Christian,
praising their own law and maligning ours.26

Alfonso goes on to say that he has heard that in some places Jews capture and crucify
Christian children on Good Friday in reenactment of the Passion, or that, when they
are unable to procure children, they crucify wax images. This, of course, corresponds to
the charge of blood libel, an accusation that we nd rst in England: William of
Norwich (1144); similar accusations in Gloucester (1168), Bury St Edmunds (1181),
and Bristol (1183); Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (1255; mentioned by Chaucer in the
Prioresss tale, another story of Jews murdering a Christian boy but not strictly a
ritual murder). On the continent: Blois (1171), then, starting in the thirteenth century,
widespread accusations (Empire, Spain ). Various popes, emperors and others
denounce such accusations and try to protect Jews from the ensuing violence (Hsia
1988).27 While Alfonsos law seems to lend credence to the accusations, the king retains
the sole right to try and to punish this crime. In an echo of Lateran IV, this law prohibits
Jews from leaving their quarters on Good Friday.
The blood libel accusation marks the Jew as the absolute enemies of Christ and Christians and in the late Middle Ages we nd the accusation used to justify separation, exclusion, and at times massacre of Jews. One of the most infamous instances is the case of
Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy whose disappearance was attributed to kidnapping
and crucixion at the hands of the small Jewish community of Trent. A number of
Jews were arrested, put on to trial, and, thanks to confessions obtained through torture,

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46

J. TOLAN

put to death (Esposito and Quaglioni 1990; Treue 1996). In the extensive depositions from
the Trent trial, a number of the witnesses testied not only to torturing and killing the
child, but to ritually uttering repeated blasphemies against Christ, making obscene gestures, spitting at the child, and so on. They also confessed to mixing Simons blood
with their wine and incorporating it into bread for Passover. Ritually uttered blasphemies
included referring to the Virgin Mary as a menstruating prostitute and to Jesus as the
son of a prostitute and a hanged scoundrel.28 These testimonies, obtained under
torture, of course reect not the attitudes of the tortured Jews but those of their torturers,
who sought to conrm that Jews were by nature hostile toward Christianity and that the
essence of their cult was an elaborate and violent anti-Christianity. Judaism, for these
Christians, was in essence blasphemy.
Martin Luther was born in 1483, eight years after the Trent trial. While Luthers view of
the place of Jews in the Christian scheme of history is in many respects the same as that
established over a thousand years earlier by church fathers from Eusebius to Augustine, it
is distinguished by two essential elements: rst a keen apocalyptic sense that the end of
history is near, and second a conviction, in his early works, that if the Jews have yet to
see the light of Christian truth, the fault lies not so much with the Jews themselves but
with the papacy and clergy, who have failed both to preach the gospel to the Jews and
to show through their life and works a true example of Christian piety. In his That
Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew (Da Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude sei), Luther afrms
that, if Jews have not wanted to convert, it is largely because they have been so persecuted
by Christians: if the Apostles had treated the Gentiles so poorly, none of them would have
converted either. We treat them like dogs, refuse their commerce, force them into the base
profession of usury, make absurd accusations against them. If I had been a Jew and had
seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have
become a hog than a Christian (Luther 195586, 45: 200).29
Luthers attitude toward Jews hardened later, perhaps because he realized that they were
no likelier to be convinced by Protestant arguments than they had been by those of Catholics. He came to see Jews as the Devils agents who sought to weaken the faith of Christians.
In his later works, Luther comes to the conclusion that Jews should be expelled by Christian princes in order to protect the true Church. The tone is particularly virulent in On the
Jews and Their Lies (Von den Juden und ihren Lgen), a long and rambling diatribe written
in response to a Jewish anti-Christian tract that Luther had read. He lambasts the Jews for
their triple arrogance: they show undue pride in their birth, in their circumcision, and in
the fact that they received the Law from God on Mount Sinai. This pride leads them to
despise the Goyim, whom they believe it is legal to rob, cheat, and kill. Whereas in
earlier works Luther had dismissed the hostile stories of how Jews poisoned wells and
killed Christian children, he now asserts that these stories and worse are probably true.
They curse us Christians in their synagogues every Saturday, Luther asserts, and afrm
that our Lord is the son of a whore. Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are
doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you, he warns his reader: Be on your
guard against the Jews (Luther 19551986, 47:142). Luther proposes burning the Jews
synagogues and schools and razing their houses to the ground. In an age of vehement
anti-Jewish polemics, Luthers stand out as particularly violent.
In late medieval and early modern Europe, blasphemy (or accusations of blasphemy)
played an important role in afrming the authority and legitimacy of rulers. Blasphemy

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ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

47

is often associated with rambunctious, unruly men, whose blasphemy is associated with a
dissolute life of gambling and drinking. Cursing and blaspheming are part of macho
culture for many in sixteenth-century Europe and in its far-ung colonies. In some
ways this is already true in biblical times, if we are to believe the text of Leviticus,
where a ght between men leads to one of them cursing Gods name.
And as we also see in Leviticus, blasphemy can be the marker that separates us from
them: Israelite from Egyptian, Christian from Jew, Protestant from Catholic. Rulers and
men of religion also used blasphemy legislation to help mark the boundaries between religious groups: the faithful on one side and on the other the blasphemers (Jews, Catholics, or
Protestants and later Deists and atheists). In both Muslim and Christian societies in the
Middle Ages, religious minorities were allowed to live and practice their religions, within
certain limits. Blasphemy law was one of the means to dene and regulate those limits, to
make sure that minorities accepted the boundaries of their subservient status. In the fteenth and sixteenth centuries, the limited tolerance that medieval rulers had given to religious minorities gives way, in many parts of Europe, to expulsions of Jews and Muslims
and to violence between Catholics and Protestants. Here, accusations of blasphemy are
used to justify violence and exclusion.

Acknowledgement
This publication is part of the research project RELMIN The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in
the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th15th centuries).

Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
The research leading to this publication has received funding from the European Research Council
under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/RC grant agreement n249416. See www.relmin.eu.

Notes
1. See Levy (1987). See also the critique of Levys article, along with a reection on the use of the
term in ethnology (Cheyronnaud and Lenclud 1992).
2. Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86a, translation online at http://juchre.org/talmud/yoma/yoma4.
htm#86a.
3. For example:

(Isaiah said to them, Say to your master, Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of
the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled
me [2 Kings 19.6; cf. 2 Kings 19.22]);

(Now therefore what am I doing here, says the
Lord, seeing that my people are taken away without cause? Their rulers howl, says the Lord,
and continually, all day long, my name is despised [Isaiah 52.5]);

48

4.
5.

6.
7.
8.

9.

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10.
11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.

17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.

J. TOLAN

(You shall know that I, the Lord, have heard all the abusive speech
that you uttered against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given
us to devour [Ezekiel 35.12]).
See articles and in Liddell, Scott, and Drisler (1897, 284285).
Corpus Iuris Civilis 3:381383, translation by Fred Blume, from http://www.uwyo.edu/lawlib/
blume-justinian/ajc-edition-2/novels/61-80/Novel%2077_Replacement.pdf (accessed August
20, 2015).
See L. Wiederhold, art. Shatm. In EI2; Ernst (1987) and Wiederhold (1997).
Wiederhold, Shatm.
On medieval Mlik law on blasphemy, see Fierro (1991). For an example of a treatment of the
subject in the medieval Maghreb, in the Mukhtasar by the Mlik jurist Sd Khall (d. 1374), see
Bercher (1923).
X, v, 26; the text is available online at http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/
Lspost13/GregoriusIX/gre_5t26.html (accessed August 20, 2015). See Schwerhoff (2005,
118119) and Leveleux (2001, 7882).
Ordonnance de Charles, roi de Castille, contre les blasphmateurs (November 30, 1517), cited in
Weis (2012, 69).
CTh 16.8.18, in Theodosiani libri 16, edited by T. Mommsen and P. Meyer, p. 891; C. Pharr,
trans. The Corpus of Roman Law. I prefer the reading locis to iocis (extant in some manuscripts), and have modied the citations of the Latin text and English translation accordingly.
For the text, commentary and bibliography on this law, see http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/
extrait979/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
See Jessie Sherwood, Concilium Toletanum quartum, c. 59: De iudaeis dudum christianis et
postea in priorem ritum conversis. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait1058/ (accessed
August 20, 2015).
From Ahmed Oulddali, Sh, Moh ammad b. Idrs, The terms of a peace treaty with nonMuslims. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait243424/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
Ahmed Oulddali, Mward, AI b. Muh ammad, Conditions inherent in dhimm status.
http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait136306/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
On the Cordoba martyr movement, see Tolan (2002, 85100), Coope (1995), Wolf (1988), and
Pochoshajew (2007).
For an example of the prohibition of Jews owning Christian slaves, see Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, Codex Theodosianus [16.9.2]. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait103892/ (accessed
August 20, 2015). On the prohibition of Jews holding public ofce, see Jessie Sherwood,
Concilium Toletantum quartum [c. 65: Ne iudaei ofcia publica agant]. http://www.cntelma.fr/relmin/extrait1071/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
Jessie Sherwood, Decretum [D. 54, c. 18]. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait30497/
(accessed August 20, 2015).
Decretum C XXVIII, 2, 2.
John Tolan, Etsi non displiceat Domino. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait30385/
(accessed August 20, 2015); Tolan (2015).
John Tolan, Ut esset Cain. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait30493/ (accessed August 20,
2015).
Jessie Sherwood, Lateran IV, c. 68. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait30326/ (accessed
August 20, 2015).
Jessie Sherwood, Lateran IV, c. 69. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait30331/ (accessed
August 20, 2015).
Latin text and English translation from Rigg (1902, xlviiixlvix). For an online version of the
full Latin text, English and French translations, commentary, and bibliography, see http://
www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait252152/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
On this mandate and the context explaining the adoption by the king of restrictions on Jews
previously issued by English church councils, see Carpenter (2013) and Stacey (2003). For the
Oxford council, see http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/auteur1816/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
Siete partidas 7.28.6; Alfonso X (2001, 1450); see Simon (1987).

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

49

26. Siete Partidas VII.24.2, translated in Carpenter (1986). See Marisa Bueno, Siete Partidas
[VII.24.2]. http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait238333/ (accessed August 20, 2015).
27. For an overview of recent historiography on the subject, see Johnson (2012).
28. See the trial extracts reproduced, translated, and commented by Aleida Paudice, http://www.
cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait254556/; http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait254557/; http://www.
cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait254558/; http://www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait254559/ (all accessed
August 20, 2015).
29. On Luthers attitudes toward the Jews, see Kaufmann (2006) and Probst (2012).

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