Newsletter-decembre

The legal status of religious minorities in
the Euro-Mediterranean world
(5th-15th centuries)
December 2012 (n°6)
RELMIN is a five-­‐year research project (2010-­‐2015), which mobilizes an international team of researchers under the direction of John Tolan, professor of history at the University of Nantes. Learn more In brief
From 6 to 7 December, Nadezda Koryakina, Josep Muntané and Ahmed Oulddali presented the RELMIN project to the national congress of the Network of Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme, “Quelles sciences humaines et sociales e pour le 21 siècle ?” (Caen). PUBLICATION of Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to questions
concerning relations between Christians and Saracens:
critical edition and translation
RELMIN has just published a critical edition and translation of a unique and important source in the history of Christian-­‐Muslim relations in the thirteenth-­‐century Mediterranean. Towards the end of 1234, a letter arrived at the papal curia from the Franciscan minister and the Dominican prior residing in Tunis, posing a series of forty questions concerning their ministry to the Catholic community of Tunis—primarily on whether certain sins called for excommunication, or whether they were mortal or venial. From 11 to 12 December, John Tolan The ecumenical councils and pontifical decrees had indeed established the rules in was at the University of Heidelberg, to principle, but they had not imagined all the particular cases that these friars encountered give a lecture to the history department in Tunis. Raymond of Penyafort, confessor and penitentiary to Pope Gregory IX, explains on “Roots of Multi-­‐faith Europe: the that the pope gave his answer to each of these questions and that he, Raymond, wrote legal status of religious minorities in the them down and sent them to the two friars. Questions and answers are preserved in a text Middle Ages” and a seminar to the known as the Responsiones ad dubitabilia circa communicationem christianorum cum Hochschule für Jüdische Studien on sarracenis, dated January 19th 1235. Each section contains first a question posed by the “Jews and the justice system in Medieval friars and then the pope’s response, transmitted by Raymond. The questions concern the England”. legality (or not) of a whole series of transactions with Muslims: from selling them nails to December 14th, RELMIN Seminar “The secretly baptizing their children. This text offers us precious information on the numerous and diverse Latin Christian community of Tunis and more generally on how the Medieval practice of justice in multi-­‐religious Church sought to deal with these issues. Access the text on line. societies II” - Capucine Nemo-Pekelman (Université
Zoom: “Religious minorities, integration
Paris-Ouest, Nanterre), Les incapacités
and the State
judiciaires des juifs et des Sarrasins dans
le droit savant
(Europe, from the Middle Ages to the
- Josep Muntané (Relmin), Beauté
2Oth century)” –
littéraire versus dignité humaine : analyse
RELMIN
& DCIE Workshop,
de la structure du serment des juifs
November
22-24, 2012
catalans (s. XIII)
- Nadezda Koryakina (Relmin) : Les
From November 22nd to 24th, the whole RELMIN documents rédigés par des non-juifs
team participated in a conference in Le Mans on utilisés comme moyens de preuves
“Religious minorities, integration and the State devant les tribunaux rabbiniques (Europe, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century)”. RELMIN organized the conference in conjunction with researchers from the project Dynamiques citoyennes en Europe (DCIE, Pays de la - Juliette Sibon (Centre universitaire
Loire region), the Centre interdisciplinaire d'Étude Jean-François Champollion, Albi), Le juge
des Religions et de la Laïcité (CIERL, Université Libre ou le rabbin: stratégies des justiciables
de Bruxelles) and the Zentrum für juifs en Provence au bas Moyen Age
Mittelmeerstudien o
f t
he U
niversität B
ochum. - Matthieu Tillier (Institut français du
The conference brought together an international Proche-Orient), Des dhimmis dans la
mosquée. Les non-musulmans devant le group of scholars who deal with the themes of cadi à l'époque Umayyade
RELMIN but to reach beyond the Middle Ages—
- Jerzy Mazur (Relmin), Jewish plaintiffs
indeed, to the twenty-­‐first century. 20 presenters and the application of the legal rule of
from 8 countries addressed the themes of “Jewish actor sequitur forum rei
communities of the Middle Ages”, “Jews from the - Youna Masset (Relmin), Échapper à la
Middle Ages to the Age of Emancipation”, “Muslim justice en Catalogne au début du XIVe
Minorities in the State”, and “Islam in Europe siècle today”.
January 18th, RELMIN Seminar “The practice of justice in multi-­‐religious societies III” New arrival in the team:
Anna Matheson
Anna-­‐Maria Machado-­‐
Matheson studied fifteenth and sixteenth-­‐century Portuguese drama at the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies (MA thesis entitled “The Polemics of Conversion: The Representation of the New Christian in Anrique da Mota’s ‘Farce of the Tailor’”). She has a background in Romano-­‐
canonical legal tradition and, after defending her doctoral thesis in Cambridge (2010), she has been working on medieval Irish and Hiberno-­‐Latin legal texts at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher for the RELMIN project, where she focuses on early Portuguese legal sources. www.relmin.eu Contact us : relmin@univ-­‐nantes.fr RELMIN is financed by the European Research Council, under the 7th Framework Programme for Research of the EU