Cathedral of the Sea

“I have this too, Mother. A wife who is more concerned with appearances than anything else, except for wanting me to make her a mother too. Should I? She only wants an heir, a son who can guarantee her future.” Eleonor was still kicking his ankles. When Arnau turned to her, she lifted her chin toward the other nobles in Santa Maria. Some were standing; the rest were seated on their pews. Arnau was the only one still down on his knees.

“Sacrilege!”

The cry resounded through the church. The priests fell silent. Arnau got to his feet, and everyone turned to look at the main doorway.

“Sacrilege!” came the cry again.

Several men pushed their way to the altar, still shouting, “Sacrilege! Heresy! The Devil’s work! ... Jews!” They wanted to talk to the priests, but one of them came to a halt and addressed the congregation:

“The Jews have profaned a sacred host!”

A murmur rose from the ranks of the faithful.

“As if they hadn’t done enough by killing Jesus Christ!” the first man cried out again from the altar. “Now they want to profane his body!”

The murmur grew to an uproar. Arnau turned to face the congregation, but Eleonor’s scornful countenance was all he saw.

She scoffed. “Your Jewish friends.”

Arnau knew what his wife meant. Ever since Mar had married, he had found it almost impossible to be at home, and so on most evenings he went to see his old friend Hasdai Crescas, and stayed talking to him until late into the night. Before he could say anything to Eleonor, the nobles and other leading citizens began to discuss what they had heard:

“They want Christ to suffer even after his death,” said one of them.

“By law they are obliged to stay at home with doors and windows shut during Holy Week. How could they have done such a thing?”

“They must have escaped,” another man asserted.

“What about our children?” said a woman. “What if they have taken a Christian child to crucify him and then eat his heart ... ?”

“And drink his blood,” another voice chimed in.

Arnau could not take his eyes off this group of enraged nobles. How could they... ? He caught Eleonor’s eye again. She was smiling.

“Your friends,” she said sarcastically.

Then the entire congregation started to shout, demanding vengeance. “To the Jewish quarter!” they cried, driving one another on with more shouts of “Heresy!” and “Sacrilege!” Arnau watched them all rushing out of the church, with the nobles bringing up the rear.

“If you don’t hurry,” he heard Eleonor hiss, “you won’t get into the Jewry.”

Arnau turned to look at her again, and then glanced up at the Virgin. The noise from the crowd of people was dying away down Calle de la Mar.

“Why so much hatred, Eleonor? Don’t you have everything you want?”

“No, Arnau. You know I don’t have what I want, and perhaps that’s exactly what you give your Jewish friends.”

“What are you talking about, woman?”

“About you, Arnau, about you. You know you have never fulfilled your conjugal duties.”

For a few brief seconds, Arnau recalled all the occasions he had rejected Eleonor’s advances, at first gently, trying not to hurt her feelings, but gradually more roughly and impatiently.

“The king forced me to marry you. He said nothing about satisfying your needs.”

“The king may not have done so,” she replied, “but the Church does.”

“God cannot force me to lie with you!”

Eleonor withstood his rebuff, staring straight at him, then turned her face toward the main altar. They were alone in Santa Maria ... apart from the three priests standing there, openly listening to the couple arguing. Arnau also looked at the three priests. When he confronted Eleonor once more, her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. He turned his back on her and headed for the doorway out of the church.

“Go to your Jewish lover!” he heard his wife shout behind him.

A shudder ran the length of his backbone.

That year, Arnau was once again consul of the sea. Dressed in his robes of office, he made his way to the Jewish quarter. The din of the crowd grew still louder as it advanced along Calle de la Mar, Plaza del Blat, then down Calle de la Presó to San Jaume church. The people were baying for vengeance, and rushed toward the gates of the Jewry, which was defended by a troop of the king’s soldiers. Despite the crush, Arnau had little difficulty pushing his way to the front.

“You cannot enter the Jewry, Honorable Consul,” the captain of the guard told him. “We’re awaiting orders from the king’s lieutenant, the infante Don Juan, son of Pedro the Third.”

The orders duly arrived. The next morning, Don Juan ordered all the Jews to be shut in the main synagogue of Barcelona, without food or water, until those guilty of the profanation of the host came forward.

“Five thousand people,” Arnau growled in his office at the exchange when he heard the news. “Five thousand people shut up in the synagogue without food and water! What will happen to the children, the newborn babies? What does the infante want? What fool could expect any Jew to admit to profaning the host and condemn themselves to death?”