Another way people pulled off identity fraud was by using sumptuary laws, laws and customs of various lands which required certain dress for certain religions. One could easily \u201cdress up\u201d as a member of a given religion would. Therefore, these laws were instead often used in fraudulence. \u201cPeople only pretended to be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim,\u201d says Dr. Hussein Fancy, author of The Mercenary Mediterranean <\/em>and the upcoming book The Impostor Sea: The Making of the Medieval Mediterranean<\/em>.1<\/sup> But his bold if not hyperbolic argument depends on the convoluted workings of identity, authority, and illicit traffic in the medieval Mediterranean. Of course, the dangers of dissembling one\u2019s identity so flippantly included the ever-present possibility of being accused of deception, and one could also easily go too far while playing dress up. Since many sumptuary laws were ignored, following them too closely could reveal one\u2019s falsehood. The trick was not to look like you were trying too hard lest someone accuse you of deception. The line was thin, permeable, and ever-shifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Fancy argues that the very fact that merchants could assume a different religious identity suggests the unstable nature of religious categories. Religion did not sit apart from but was tied up in law and trade. The presence of impostors presumes that religious differences were simultaneously legible enough to be forged and flexible enough that many merchants felt few qualms about their deceptions and could easily pull off cons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why did traders commit identity fraud, especially religious identity fraud? One motivation was the common religious restriction that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all shared: traders could not sell coreligionists. However, \u201cslave traders did not inquire too closely into the religious identities of the enslaved men and women they purchased,\u201d explain O\u2019Connell and Dursteler in their comprehensive The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon.<\/em>2<\/sup> In order to get around laws restricting the selling of slaves of particular religious backgrounds merchants would pass themselves and\/or enslaved people off as an adherent of whatever religion let the transaction be legal. “People were faking it all the time,\u201d explains Dr. Fancy, and records tell of innumerable counterfeiters.1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n While some women engaged in trade and fraud alongside men, the harsh reality is that the main role women had in trade at this time was as slaves. One source condemns a certain Romeo di Lapo of Florence who was caught selling coreligionists. He \u201ccajoled\u201d them, \u201c[k]nowing that they were free and Christian women\u201d and \u201cdepriving them of their liberty.\u201d3<\/sup> He even forged documents that claimed the women were \u201cheretics and unbaptized\u201d so he could sell them to a Christian Florentine.3<\/sup> If this was the fate of coreligionists, those whose religion differed from the slave traders\u2019 fared even worse and were more easily captured and sold for a gross profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This fraudulent practice is the centerpiece of a Mediterranean folk tale, cited by Dr. Fancy. A woman is sold as a Christian to a Muslim. When she reveals herself to be Muslim, she demands that he sell her off again as a Christian and split the profit with her. This story is just one example of how these kinds of frauds challenged boundaries. But the ugly truth of the matter was that the slave trade consisted often of young girls without the power to negotiate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the commercial boom that motivated such fraudulence, the crusades continued to wage on, primarily between Christian and Muslim groups. Papal bans limited in law much of Christian Mediterranean trade along religious lines. In response, merchants raised questions on what exactly constituted illicit trade. One such complaint in the early 13th century arose from Venice, a hub for weapons smugglers and licit traders alike. The trading bans had injured their economy, so they reached out to Pope Innocent III to ask for an exemption. His response was probably not what they were hoping for.<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cIn support of the eastern province [that is, the crusading states]\u2026 we have renewed the decree of the Lateran council, which excommunicated those Christians who shall furnish the Saracens with weapons, iron, or timbers for their galleys,\u201d the pope declares in one source.4<\/sup> He implies that trading in such items would be a betrayal against Christendom itself. He even continues in the letter to ban \u201canything to do with the Saracens either directly or indirectly,\u201d especially trading in \u201ciron, flax, pitch, sharp instruments, rope, weapons, galleys, ships, and timbers.\u201d But he does allow a small concession: the Venetians may trade in certain non-military merchandise \u201cwhenever it shall be necessary,\u201d so long as they vow to aid the crusader states when they are called upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But how effective was this law, and was it ever as absolute as it sounds on paper? An important series of documents known as smugglers\u2019 confessions provide some clarity on this issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Dr. Fancy\u2019s research, smugglers of illicit merchandise and other impostors could plead for a certificate of absolution from the papacy.1<\/sup> These records show that individual merchants, entire families, clerics and, astonishingly, kings received certificates of absolution, and some more than once. The reality of repeat offenders returns us to the question of the law\u2019s degree of intended efficacy. Did they confess only out of secular self-interest? Records of anonymous merchants imply that some confessed for no objective purpose, only moved by their conscience. It must be taken into account, however, that even these smugglers\u2019 confessions are far from perfectly reliable. Clerks were known to counterfeit records, bringing to light an important aspect of Dr. Fancy\u2019s argument: no one was above fraud, not even those who served the law. Due to this, the documents and sources that historians have access to today must be considered with a grain of salt large enough to purchase a medieval kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone from humble traders to royal leaders committed fraud for monetary gain, and this habit was not limited to individual actions\u2014sometimes entire movements became fraudulent. In such a manner, at times, the line between crusading efforts and mercantile interests blurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of a \u201ccrusade\u201d had been since its conception difficult to define and full of fraudulent activity, almost to the point that crusading could be called an impostor itself. Therefore, when Pope Clement V formed a Christian and Muslim joint \u201ccrusade\u201d against Granada in 1308 he was hardly redefining crusading so much as leaning into the indefinable concept of what a crusade could conceivably look like. During this complex crusade, the Crown of Aragon eventually took the port of Almeria near Granada on the southwestern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Iberian Peninsula itself was no stranger to shifting rule, and its trade continued on with vigor, as did smuggling, despite the crusades. Port custodians could order inquisitions for suspected contraband. Such accusations sometimes lead to violence by smugglers as they resisted. Several documents implied that these impostors\u2019 \u201cfailure to fake it,\u201d as Dr. Fancy puts it, is what doomed them.1<\/sup> They were expected to pull off their con with a series of good lies in order to avoid detection.<\/p>\n\n\n From Iberia, the Crown of Aragon set its sights on North Africa. The Hafsids had taken control of northwest Africa from the Almohads in the mid-13th century, continuing their tradition of welcoming foreign merchants.2<\/sup> Eventually, once the Crown had spread into the weakening Hafsid Kingdom, Aragon ruled from Tunis through Hafsid puppet rulers. \u201cThey invoked the memory of the Almohad caliphs to justify their authority in North Africa,\u201d explains Dr. Fancy.5<\/sup> This legitimizing technique is often used by conquerors, allowing them to engage in a kind of fraud by claiming a legacy that is not theirs to claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTunis remained central to the Crown of Aragon\u2019s unfolding ambitions in the Mediterranean,\u201d explains Dr. Fancy.5<\/sup> And its trade was an integral part of that. Take, for example, its funduk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Funduk<\/em> means \u201chotel\u201d in modern Arabic, but its roots stretch back to the classical Greek word pandocheion, <\/em>a hostel, as does the Italian fondaco<\/em>.6<\/sup> Funduks <\/em>were heavily fortified medieval trading compounds and merchant hostels, usually walled off and build like a fortress to protect the merchandise inside. They also functioned as embassies, with priests and doctors. For example, many contained a mosque for prayer, even in distant western lands where funduks<\/em> were more rare. At these trading locations, religious impostors could commit identity fraud to avoid heavy port duties, and religious identity was particularly fluid despite, or perhaps due to, an increase in religious segregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The study of these merchant hostels, especially during the crusades, offers an example of shared heritage in the Mediterranean in contrast to a long historiography of division. \u201cAs the institution shifted from one realm of political, religious, and linguistic dominance to another\u2026 it was both a point of common understanding across cultures and mediation between them,\u201d explains Olivia Remie Constable in her book about trading hostels, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World.<\/em>6<\/sup> These hostels are proof of continued trade, connections, and a certain cross-Mediterranean culture during a period of identity anxieties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Constable, Dr. Fancy argues that past Mediterranean historiography has often been too focused on binary conflict. For example, French historian Fernand Braudel took a broad stance of connectivity while the earlier Belgian historian Henri Pirenne believed in the importance of strict boundaries and the divisions they produced. But Dr. Fancy claims that both wrongly assume an automatic conflict between trade and religion. He suggests instead that trade and religion were treated in tandem in the middle ages because both relied on how individuals presented their identities. The boundaries between Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other religious communities were often crossed.<\/p>\n\n\n Identity in the Mediterranean had already been in flux for centuries if not longer by the time the crusades began. The 12th century poem The Romance of Floire and Blanchefleur<\/em> is just one literary example of this. The poem was written down during the commercial revolution of the mid-12th to the mid-14th centuries. The crusades had been intensifying the West\u2019s cross-cultural interactions with the rest of the world, so anxieties about identities and opportunities for identity fraud were exacerbated, which the literature of the time proves. In the aforementioned poem, the lover Floire converts to Christianity from paganism to be with his beloved Blanchefleur. But while Floire\u2019s conversion may have been true, his attempts at disguise were less successful\u2014not everyone is built for fraud. When Floire travels across the sea disguised as a merchant to rescue Blanchefleur, his noble nature reveals itself in his sighs of love and beautiful physical features. The author of the poem, which had been told for decades before it was written down, plays with this tension between true and false identities, questioning the amount to which fraudulence can really function and what it means to truly change one\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, fluid identities does not mean that religion held no meaning. Indeed, a perspective that assumes merchants, each perhaps occupying one of three religious \u201cworlds,\u201d would set aside their beliefs for materialism actually reduces the importance of the religious contact that occurred. Truly, the sea was a soup of different approaches. Historians such as Dr. Fancy continue to research religious \u201cimpostors,\u201d but the frauds and deceptions of these \u201ccriminal merchants\u201d were certainly central in the medieval Mediterranean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commercial boom before the outbreak of the Black Death flourished despite, or perhaps in part due to, the violence and connectivity of the crusades. In such an environment, the law and its authorities\u2014even kings and clergy\u2014had to be unafraid to embrace fraudulence. Money is a powerful motivator; rarely can religion or government prevent lucrative trade. With the backing of rulers, the \u201ccontinual shell game\u201d of smuggling and fraudulence in the medieval Mediterranean increasingly blurred the line between falsehood and truth.1<\/sup> Power came from controlling and including, not preventing, the illicit. The law itself, redefining and controlling all, had transformed into an impostor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 <\/sup>Fancy, Hussein. “The Impostor Sea: The Making of the Medieval Mediterranean.” 2022-23 Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies lecture series, The Ohio State University, 9 September 2022, Colloquium Space, 18th Avenue Library, Columbus, OH. Lecture. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2<\/sup> O’Connell, Monique, Eric R. Dursteler. <\/em>The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 3 <\/em><\/sup>Brucker, Gene. <\/em>The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study. Harper and Row, 1971. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 4 <\/sup>Rodriguez, Jarbel. <\/em>Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages. University of Toronto Press, 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 5 <\/sup>Fancy, Hussein. <\/em>The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. The University of Chicago, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 6 <\/em><\/sup>Constable<\/em>, Olivia Remie. <\/em>Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2003. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cover Photo uploaded by Matthew Paris, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:KingHenryIII%26QueenEleanor_ReturnFromGascony_MatthewParis_ChronicaMajora.png<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n a <\/sup>Photo by Drew Dempsey<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n b<\/sup>Photo by Yiheng Du<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n c <\/sup>“Fondaco dei tedeschi 234” uploaded by Abxbay, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Fondaco_dei_tedeschi_234.jpg.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n d<\/sup> “Hafsid1400,” uploaded by Gabagool. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Hafsid1400.png<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n e<\/sup>“Floris ende Blancefloer Lg 68,” https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Floris_ende_Blancefloer_Lg_68.jpg. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Merchants did it, royals did it…Time to dive into fraudulence in the medieval Mediterranean!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2162,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-hi-res","category-medieval"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":113,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2242,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions\/2242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Women & Slavery<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Widespread Fraudulence: Merchants, Clerks, & Kings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Crusades & Conquest: Holy Movements With Monetary Motivations<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Contesting a History of Division<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Conclusions: Authority in a Fraudulent Sea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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