and joyfully went home.73
Tales of Domingo’s interventions continued to appear throughout the Middle Ages. Pero Marín, a monk of Silos, collected and recorded a series of the miracle stories over a long period from 1232 to 1293. An early one, dated 1232, told of the Muslim commander in Córdoba who rode out with an armed party to raid Christian lands. At the Alcolea bridge, two leagues from Córdoba,
he met in the middle of the bridge a man surrounded by an intensely bright light. The Moor asked him in Spanish “Who goes there?” The bright light replied: “I am St. Dominic of Silos.” The Moor then asked: “Where are you going?” St. Dominic replied: “I am going to Cordova [sic] to rescue prisoners.” Then the Moor ordered his soldiers to turn, and he got back to Cordova before dawn. In one prison in which he kept fifteen Christians, he shackled them all by the foot and throat and hand, and together with his men lay down to rest on the cover of the entrance to the prison. He sent messages to other Moors who had captives telling them to guard them well, for St. Dominic was in the city: and they put strong shackles on all of them. When day came they inspected the prison where the Moor’s fifteen captives had lain, and found no trace of them, nor of the shackles. The Moor alerted the others, who then inspected their prisons, finding no captives in them. It was said that day 154 prisoners were released by St. Dominic and found to be missing.74
A story of 1277–79 related how a group of mariners from Santander received the saint’s assistance to escape from their captivity in Arzila in North Africa, and another told of a soldier’s escape with the saint’s help from Granada, just as his captor was about to send him to North Africa.75
Accounts circulated about the assistance of other saints who rescued captives. One story about Santiago (St. James), the patron of Spain, provides a convenient overview of the slaving markets of the whole Muslim world.
In . . . 1100 a certain citizen of Barcelona is said to have come as a pilgrim to the cathedral of St. James in Galicia. He prayed to the Apostle only that he should free him from captivity by his enemies, if perchance he should suffer that. Then he went home, and later, while sailing to Sicily on business, he was captured at sea by Saracens. What next? He was bought and sold thirteen times at marts and markets. Those who purchased him were unwilling to keep him, because St. James always broke his chains and shackles. First he was sold in Kurashan, the second time in the city of Jezirah in Slav lands . . . , the third time in Blasia [unidentified], the fourth in Turkish lands . . . , the fifth in Persia, the sixth in India, the seventh in Ethiopia, the eighth in Alexandria, the ninth in North Africa, the tenth in Barbary, the eleventh in Bizerta, the twelfth in Bougie, the thirteenth in the city of Almería. In this last place, when he was shackled by a certain Saracen by a double chain drawn tightly round his legs, as he was praying to St. James on high, the Apostle himself appeared to him, saying: “Since, when you were in my church, you prayed only that I would set your person free, and not for the salvation of your soul, you have been cast into all these perils. But because the Lord has taken pity on you, He sent me to you in order that I should free you from this prison.”76
Redeemed captives, no doubt willing to believe they had received miraculous aid in their successful escapes, spread tales such as these that later coalesced into canonical miracle accounts.
The Christian captives who were taken to North Africa were held, at least initially, in special prisons known as “baños” before they could be ransomed and returned to Spain. While awaiting ransom, they could be employed in a variety of occupations that in certain cases mirrored those in which the Muslim captives worked in Spain. They could be put to work as rowers on galleys and other corsair vessels. On land, they worked, often in chains, in the mines and stone quarries or on public works projects. As one example, when the Moroccan sultan established a new capital at the city of Meknes early in the eighteenth century, he employed some two thousand Christian captives among the thirty thousand construction workers. Some captives worked as domestic servants and artisan helpers, and those with specialized skills and occupations often worked in their accustomed trades.77
Among the most famous of all Spanish captives was Miguel de Cervantes. He and his brother Rodrigo were traveling by sea from Naples to Spain in September of 1575 in the galley El Sol. Muslim pirates, led by two formerly Christian renegades, fell upon the Christian ship as it passed along the coast of Catalonia and took the Cervantes brothers along with the other captives to Algiers. There Cervantes would remain for five years. Though not of particularly exalted status, Miguel was a former military officer and carried letters of recommendation from two of Spain’s highest figures: the admiral don Juan de Austria and the duke of Sessa. That caused the Muslims to view Cervantes as an important figure himself and to set a high ransom of 2,000 ducats for him and his brother. Though his father exhausted the family fortune, he was only able to ransom Rodrigo. Four years later, the widowed mother finally was able to raise the money for Miguel and arranged for the Trinitarians to negotiate his release. His experiences can be seen in the statements that he obtained from twelve principal Christians in Algiers about how he had comported himself as a captive and, fictionalized, in several of his literary works. His captivity appears prominently in two of his plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel, and the chapters known as “The Captive’s Tale” in Don Quijote.78 The plays and the novel contain realistic descriptions of life in captivity and romanticized accounts of flight and escape (Cervantes attempted to escape four times), enlivened by depictions of remorseful renegades eager to return to the Christian fold, Muslim maidens seeking conversion to Christianity, and the inspirational guidance of the Virgin Mary. Cervantes was wise to secure written evidence of his bona fides. Some captives chose to convert to Islam to buy their freedom. This brought them condemnation from the Christians back at home, who branded the converts as renegades. The humbler ones blended into the local Muslim societies. Others rose to high military or naval ranks, often leading raids against their former homelands or serving as well-informed guides or scouts during raids. Enough of them tried to return to Christian lands and Christianity that all returning captives had to face a degree of suspicion and to prove or at least to swear that their faith had not faltered while in captivity. Many captives, like Cervantes, took the trouble to obtain written statements that they had remained steadfast Christians during their captivity.79
Some captives returned home, but they were likely few out of the many originally captured. The two sides frequently exchanged prisoners after the battles, as we have seen. Treaties between Christian and Muslim states frequently specified mutual repatriation of prisoners,80 and public and private exchanges took place periodically. By the fifteenth century, Christian raids on Muslim territory were almost always followed by truces whose terms included provisions for the Muslim rulers of Granada to turn over hundreds and even thousands of captives.81 The prime responsibility for securing the release of long-term captives devolved on the families of the prisoners. In the Muslim parts of the Mediterranean, the mechanisms for ransoming captives remained rudimentary and less developed than in the Christian parts, where both church and state devised means to help Christian captives to return to their homes. Up to about the thirteenth century, Muslims most often redeemed their coreligionists by prisoner exchanges. Thereafter, with Muslims more frequently on the defensive, the task of redemption fell on Muslim communities with support of local magnates. Often this meant that Muslims in places such as the Christian kingdom of Valencia redeemed local captives more readily than captives from North Africa.82
As early as the tenth century in Catalonia, church officials aided Christian captives. By the twelfth century, similar procedures were in place in both Castile and Aragon for those who wished to ransom a prisoner from the Muslims. The municipal law code of the town of Calatayud in the early twelfth century stated that the relatives of a Christian captive in Muslim hands could buy a locally held Muslim captive for the price the owner had paid and then take that person to exchange for their relative. If the exchange failed for any reason, the original owner could buy back the Muslim captive for the same price.83
This practice was general, though the details could vary.
