Many violent riots have begun over matters that seem almost absurd. In 1325, the rival cities of Modena and Bologna went to war over a wooden bucket, an episode remembered as the War of the Bucket. In 1355, tensions between townspeople and scholars at the University of Oxford erupted into bloodshed after a quarrel over bad wine, in what became the St Scholastica Day riot. The Mutiny of the Trout, as its name suggests, belongs to this curious tradition—an outbreak of violence sparked, improbably enough, by a single fish.
A dish of baked trout is tempting enough to start an argument, if not a mutiny. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In the middle of the twelfth century, the city of Zamora, Spain, occupied a position of considerable strategic importance. It stood on the shifting frontier between the Kingdom of León and the Muslim powers of al-Andalus, first the Almoravid dynasty and later the Almohad Caliphate. At the same time, Zamora lay along key commercial routes, including the road leading south toward Camino de Santiago, and was an important centre in the trade of silver. These advantages fostered a thriving urban economy, a growing bourgeoisie, and a busy, crowded marketplace.
It was in this marketplace, in the year 1158, that the incident occurred. A shoemaker had just purchased the last remaining trout from a fishmonger when he was abruptly confronted by a servant of the knight Gómez Álvarez. The servant insisted that he required the fish for his master and argued that, by virtue of his lord’s status, he should have it. Both the shoemaker and the fishmonger refused, maintaining that the trout had already been sold.
The disagreement quickly grew heated and before long a crowd gathered around the disputants, some siding with the shoemaker, others with the servant. Unable to secure the fish, the servant eventually withdrew and returned to his master empty-handed.
When the knight learned what had happened, he gathered a number of fellow nobles and armed retainers and marched back to the marketplace. There they sought out the shoemaker, the fishmonger, and those townspeople who had most openly supported them during the quarrel. Several of these plebeians were seized and placed under arrest. The arrests inflamed the townspeople, and anger quickly spread through the city. What had begun as a dispute over a single fish now escalated into open unrest.
A group of local knights assembled in the church of Church of Santa María to decide how to respond. Gómez Álvarez argued that such defiance could not be tolerated. To prevent further insolence, he proposed execution by hanging of those involved in the disturbance.
While the nobles debated inside the church, the townspeople, many of them from the emerging bourgeois class, gathered in force. They barricaded the doors of the church with firewood and set it ablaze, trapping those inside. The building became an inferno, and the men within perished.
Fearful of the reaction of Ferdinand II of León and of reprisals from the relatives of the murdered nobles, many of the mutineers fled to nearby Portugal. From there, they wrote to the king and to the Pope, recounting the events of the trout mutiny and the long series of grievances they claimed to have suffered at the hands of the dead nobles. They begged forgiveness for the burning of the church and the deaths it had caused. If pardon were denied, they warned, they would remain in Portugal and become subjects of Afonso I of Portugal.
The young king of León now faced a difficult dilemma. Only twenty-one years old and scarcely a year on the throne, Ferdinand could not risk alienating his nobility. Granting pardon to the exiles might provoke powerful lords to withdraw their support, perhaps even to back rival claimants within the kingdom. If the exiles remained in Portugal, they would strengthen a neighbouring power whose interests did not always align with León’s. In the end, Ferdinand recognized that the unrest had deeper causes, and that allowing the mutineers to remain in Portugal might pose a greater threat than forgiving them.
According to tradition, Pope Alexander III intervened and laid down the conditions for absolution. The exiles were required to rebuild the destroyed church of Santa María, which thereafter came to be known as Santa María “the new.” In addition, they were to commission an elaborate altarpiece, adorned with numerous silver panels and precious stones.
These conditions were eventually fulfilled. The church was built in the 12th century and expanded in the 13th. There is still a street named after the "Mutiny of the Trout" next to it.
References:
# The Mutiny of The Trout. Fascinating Spain
# Mutiny of the Trout. Wikipedia
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