Soon after Barchilón’s appointment, the King revoked a significant part of his commission. The sources show that the alienation of royal lands, a matter of great concern to Sancho and to all subsequent Castilian monarchs, was at the heart of the matter. Alienation of royal lands either to lords (señoríos) or to the Church
(abadengos) was addressed in the Cortes at Haro in 1286, even before Barchilón’s appointment.
55 Ibid.,’el judío del Conde fuese para el Conde e dijole muchas razones e tantas palabras que le metió en saña contra el Obispo en guisa que el Conde se ovo á mover de ir á la posada del Obispo ….e con grand saña que ovo con el denostólo de denuestos malos e feos’. See also Ballesteros, vol.1, Historia de Sancho IV, vol.1, p. 165.
56 Rosell, Don Sancho Cuarto, V, p. 79.
57 See Chapter I, p. 36.
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Such grants resulted in loss of income to the treasury and repeated attempts were made in charters and ordinances of the Cortes to reclaim the lands (bienes raíces) for the Crown. 58 The Jewish arrendadores were commonly charged with this mission as was the case in a charter of 1286 that recorded the mandate given to Abraham Abenxuxen, the almoxarife of Sancho’s queen, María de Molina. He was to collect from the Archbishop of Santiago:
All those revenues due from estates that had passed over to the
magnates, the knights, the Orders, the abadengos, the clerics and others and in whatever manner.59
Abenxuxen is interesting firstly because, as son-in-law of the almoxarife Meir Abenxuxen (whose name he adopted) he illustrates the familial nature of such
appointments. Secondly, he was brother-in-law and associate of Zag de la Maleha and appeared in the cuaderno of 1276 discussed in the previous chapter.60 Unaffected by Zag’s execution, his ability to survive and to continue in his profession of arrendador testifies to his value to the Crown. His length of service is also noteworthy: his name appears in letters as late as 1294, together with those of three other Jewish officials, Mose Falcón, Todros el Levi and Abraham el Barchilón.61
Although the disgrace and death of the Conde did not seem to affect the fortunes of his protégée or that of other Jews at court, Sancho conceded in the Cortes of 1288 that no Jews would, in future, be either a collector or a farmer of the King’s taxes.62 Such a categorical statement by the Crown to exclude Jews from the court occurred repeatedly over the next half-century but was hardly ever implemented.
Repeated royal promises about the Jews, since they were mostly not kept, seem to say more about the attitude of the estates to the economic situation than it does about a genuine expression of royal intent. As we have seen, the King was petitioned again over this in the Cortes of 1295 and his son Fernando’s response in 1302 to the same demand explains the royal expediency of ignoring it. He reminded his petitioners of
58 Cortes, vol 1, XVII , Haro, 1286, 11, p. 98 and see Ladero Quesada., ‘Las transformaciones’, p. 382.
59 Baer, Die Juden, vol. 2, p.73, S.183 (1286): ‘en como mandava el Rey recabdar el regalengo e las heredades pecheras que pasavan a los ricos omnes e los cavalleros e a las ordenes e a los abadengos e a los clérigos de religión….. en qual guisa quier’.
60 See also Nieto Soria., 'Los judíos de Toledo (conclusión)’, p. 88, n.68.
61 Ibid., 1982, doc. 5, p. 97.
62 Cortes, vol 1, Haro, 1288, XVIII, 21, p. 104.
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the state of his revenues and the security of his frontiers. He needed to consider both and implied that these priorities would take precedence over their complaint.63
Subsequent grants to Barchilón, either alone or together with other Jewish officers, confirm his continuing presence at court and the amount of revenue he
collected. In December 1288 he received several commissions in a cuaderno, sealed by the King and co-signed by the arrendador himself in Hebrew. The commissions he was given included all of the revenues of Murcia (140,000 mrs.), of the chancellery (80,000 mrs.), of gambling houses (tafurerías) together with the debt incomes of the Jews and Muslims (100,000 mrs.), of the export of forbidden goods (cosas vedadas, 100,000 mr.) and of the pesquisas of the frontier (80,000 mrs.) with a few smaller items totalling a total sum of 547,000 maravedís of the moneda blanca over a two year period.64
Collaboration between Jewish arrendadores was not uncommon and often occurred between members of the same family. It is harder to explain when apparently unrelated individuals are mentioned in the same charter. In 1290 the King was
petitioned by his chancellor, the Archbishop Gonzalo, over the impounding of property in the archdeaconry of Talavera. The intended pesquisa and seizure of royal lands (realengo) deemed to have been appropriated as church land (abadengo) were
overseen by Barchilón and by a colleague, Todros el Levi. It is unknown whether such collaboration was a purely commercial enterprise or whether bonds of friendship or kinship ties were involved. In this case, Sancho decided in favour of the clerics though with a caveat: ‘other than those (lands) that the Orders and the Church purchased in which I may lose my rights’.65
A document of 1294 shows yet more extensive collaboration in the rendering of accounts by these men, joined by both Abenxuxen and Mose Falcón.66 The account listed revenues collected to a total of 116,990 mrs. of which 25,000 were from the aljamas though this constituted only one quarter of the 100,000 that were owing. It
63 See Chapter 1, p. 38.
64 Pilar León Tello, Judíos de Toledo (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciónes Científicas, 1979), vol 1, doc 12, p. 380. For debt income (entregas de los judíos) see chapter III of this dissertation.
65 Ballesteros, Historia de Sancho IV, vol.3, doc. 319 (1290), p. CCI ‘salvo ende sobre aquellos que las órdenes o la iglesia compraron de que yo pierda mio derecho’; Nieto Soria.,’ Los judíos De Toledo (conclusión)’, p. 83.
66 Ibid., doc. 5, p. 97 (AHN, 985B, f.81v).
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also records the sum collected by the arrendador don Samuel, almoxarife of the infante don Fernando. This is the same don Samuel de Bilforado whose quarrel with Barchilón had been arbitrated by the Bishop of Astorga. Samuel later obtained more extensive powers under his patron once he was King, but his unpopularity and dismal fate would reflect a less favourable social climate for the Jews at the start of the fourteenth century.