“You will receive so many stab wounds here”: the role of the cathedral chapter in the 1331 Girona Holy Week riot

Abstract

Holy Week violence was a familiar phenomenon in various towns throughout the Crown of Aragon and elsewhere in Southern Europe. Ritualized forms of aggression and confrontation allowed Christians to reaffirm the inferiority of Judaism and the triumphant superiority of Christianity. This article examines the Holy Week riot in Girona in 1331, which was not only a clash between Christians and Jews but a competition for power within the city between the cathedral community and the lay royal officials posted in Girona. As men of uniformly noble backgrounds, the cathedral canons maintained ties to their families and the world of honor and violent competition for status. Their connection to the military aristocratic lineages of the diocese informed their reaction when confronted by the lay royal officials in Girona on Holy Thursday 1331, leading them to respond with threats, bravado, and violence to defend the honor of the chapter and wider cathedral community. Two cathedral canons and their squires, servants, and other clerics threw rocks at the royal officials, brandished unsheathed swords and knives, and threatened their opponents, alternately retreating into the cathedral and pursuing their opponents throughout the cathedral district. This article explores the reaction of the two participant canons and the rest of the cathedral chapter during and after the events of Holy Thursday 1331, investigating the local context in which these events occurred. In response to a subsequent royal inquiry into the events of the riot, the chapter brought their own lawsuit against the royal officials, reframing the narrative to shift blame on to the royal officials and the Jews themselves. This paper argues that members of the cathedral chapter reacted and reframed the events of Holy Thursday 1331 as an attack by the royal officials on the power and position of the cathedral community within the city and reacted accordingly in defense, using aggressive, violent threats, tools familiar to them as members of the diocesan nobility.