Communities of Violence

In David Nirenberg’s narrative monograph, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages Nirenberg examines the meaning and function of violence in fourteenth century southern France and in the Crown of Aragon. Nirenberg’s thesis is that violence towards minorities (Jews, Muslims, and lepers) was neither irrational nor a result of intolerance, instead violence towards minorities was contextual and part of the everyday function of society. Nirenberg argues that there is a difference between “systematic violence” and its function and “cataclysmic violence.” Nirenberg focuses on how those of the time maintained a society by using everyday violence to enforce boundaries and propel negotiations among minorities. Nirenberg not only discusses violence in the literal sense but also as “judicial and accusational violence.” He also argues that there was a “strategic value” in violence that the monarchy employed to fill their coffers, that the majority used to resist the monarchy, and that minorities used to gain power against other minority groups.
The first chapter of the monograph presents a general comparison between the roles of Jews and Muslims in “Christian society,” and the violence that was directed towards each group. This chapter is written to give the reader a synopsis of the divergence between the two minority groups which is pertinent to Nirenberg’s later arguments. After the first chapter Nirenberg divides the book into two parts. The first part is titled “Cataclysmic Violence: France and the Crown of Aragon.” The cataclysmic events that Nirenberg uses are the “Shepherds’ Crusade of 1320 which began as a Crusade against Islam but quickly focused instead on Jews,” and the “Cowherds’ Crusade, which began by attacking lepers in 1321 but also came to encompass Jews and Muslims.” Part one of the book is dedicated to “cataclysmic violence” and the importance of putting violence in context in order to understand the “cataclysmic