Identité et statut minoritaire dans les traditions légales: Deux exemples (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)

From one end of the Mediterranean to the other, in the Middle Ages, there are religious minorities: Jews and Christians in Muslim countries and significant Jewish communities in Byzantium and Latin Europe, as well as in some Muslim Christian kingdoms. While numerous studies have examined the place of minorities within these societies, this article discusses two examples of a less studied subject: how legal authorities for these minority communities see their social inferiority. Our first example focuses on the perspective of a Muslim mufti on residence of Muslims in Norman Sicily. The second example comes from Pope Gregory IX and his confessor, the canonist Raymond Penyafort, who rule on legal issues posed by Christians living in Tunis in the thirteenth century.