Talk:Alfonsine Ordinances

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A fact from Alfonsine Ordinances appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 May 2025 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Alfonsine Ordinances punished Jews and Muslims with enslavement if they disguised their identity with the intention of "sinning with Christian women"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2025/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Alfonsine Ordinances.

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle talk 14:59, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Article history

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... that the Alfonsine Ordinances punished Jews and Muslims with enslavement if they disguised their identity with the intention of "sinning with Christian women"? Source: Soyer, François (2007). The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7). Brill. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004162624.i-330. ISBN 978-90-04-16262-4.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Gustav Conrau

Created by WatkynBassett (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 29 past nominations.

WatkynBassett (talk) 19:32, 5 May 2025 (UTC).[reply]

Article new and long enough with satisfactory referencing. Hook fact confirmed in page 62 of the inline cited source. QPQ has been provided and copyvio has not been detected, Earwig only flagged the book title used as source. Good to go. Juxlos (talk) 11:15, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

clarification questions

Really interesting new article! Some follow-up questions I had after reading:

Does John I's declaration give primacy to royal Portuguese law over Roman law? The article makes reference to Portuguese law being "primarily applicable" and Roman law being "subsidiarily applicable", but it doesn't otherwise seem like that distinction was clarified until the release of the Alfonsine Ordinances themselves.
There are a couple of "it is assumed"s – assumed by whom?

theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 20:48, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Theleekycauldron: Thank you for the feedback on the article and sorry for getting back to you so late. I sometimes think that it is a waste of time for me to work on obscure legal history, but than I see comments like yours and see that somebody actually reads the articles and enjoys them.

On your questions:

a) Your interpretation is correct. I re-read the passage in the Herzog source and it is quite clear on this point. Do you see a way to state this more clearly in the article?

b) I used the "it is assumed"-phrase if the current legal scholarship on this point is stated, but the source itself uses qualifiers or clarifies that it is only an assumption on part of the author.

Best regards WatkynBassett (talk) 06:12, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! So, a few things conspire to make the confusion from (a):

The introduction of John I's declaration reads John I of Portugal (r. 1385–1433) decreed with a carta régia [pt], dated 18 April 1426, that Roman law as stated in the Corpus Iuris Civilis should be applied and, when it contained no answer to the issue in question, its explanation by the glossa ordinaria of Accursius should be used. That makes it sound like the Corpus Iuris Civilis takes primacy.
Then, kind of shoehorned in as adjectives in two different paragraphs, we have the correct interpretation that Roman law is "subsidiarily applicable" (iii don't know if that's a word?) and next that Portuguese law is "primarily applicable" (to which most people reading would say "primarily applicable to what?")
Then, the introduction of the Alfonsine Ordinances states that An important clarification of the Alfonsine Ordinances was the establishment of a clear legal hierarchy in Portuguese law: Firstly, the royal Portuguese laws were supreme. When they contained no answer, a distinction was made between temporal (de ordem temporal) and spiritual questions (de ordem espíritual). In case of the former, Roman law was to be applied, while in case of the later, Canon law was applicable. Taken with the first point and the invisibility of the second, that basically makes it sound like John I's declaration failed to create that hierarchy and that the biggest effect the Alfonsine Ordinances had was to clarify that Portuguese law is supreme, when in reality John I's declaration did already assert that.

As for (b), I think it'd be nice to replace the "it is assumed"s with at least some more specific hedges, "So-so speculates that..." or "Scholars speculate that...". And on the subject of obscure legal articles... i feel ya. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:07, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]