Read Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain Online
Authors: Matthew Carr
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Spain & Portugal, #Religion, #Christianity, #General, #Christian Church, #Social Science, #Emigration & Immigration, #Discrimination & Race Relations, #Islamic Studies
Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (23 page)
BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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Spain made some attempts to improve its coastal defenses, from the creation of permanent garrisons of cavalry to the construction of defensive walls and fortresses known as
torres vigias
(watchtowers) by Italian military engineers. In 1561 the renowned military architect Giovanni Batista Antonelli was commissioned by Philip to devise a system of fortifications along the Valencian coastline, but no number of watchtowers could ensure complete protection and security. Even after Spain had rebuilt its fleet, the Barbary corsairs remained a constant threat to Christian settlements near the Granadan and Valencian coast, and the sudden appearance of unknown ships off the coast could send the inhabitants fleeing inland or into the local fortress. In the Christian imagination, “Barbary” was synonymous with terrifying disappearances and the horrors of the
baños
of Algiers.
torres vigias
(watchtowers) by Italian military engineers. In 1561 the renowned military architect Giovanni Batista Antonelli was commissioned by Philip to devise a system of fortifications along the Valencian coastline, but no number of watchtowers could ensure complete protection and security. Even after Spain had rebuilt its fleet, the Barbary corsairs remained a constant threat to Christian settlements near the Granadan and Valencian coast, and the sudden appearance of unknown ships off the coast could send the inhabitants fleeing inland or into the local fortress. In the Christian imagination, “Barbary” was synonymous with terrifying disappearances and the horrors of the
baños
of Algiers.
Such terrors were not limited to Spain. Muslims near the North African coast also lived in fear of attacks and slave hunts by Christian corsairs. In Valencia and Granada, dread of the corsairs was often directed at the Moriscos, who were suspected of helping them. Such suspicions were not without foundation. During the corsair raid on Tabernas, hundreds of local Moriscos participated in the sacking of the town and fled afterward to North Africa. Some corsairs included Moriscos in their crews, who used their local knowledge to gain intelligence information and to facilitate raids. In some cases, Morisco fishermen met corsairs at sea and gave them information on the state of Christian defenses. The extent of such collusion was easily exaggerated by rumors and assumptions, as people tended to imagine what they were unable to prove.
In a phenomenon that is not entirely unlike the security emergencies of our own era, actual incidents of Morisco collusion were often regarded by the authorities as the most visible expression of a wider tendency. In addition to possible links between Moriscos and corsairs, Spanish officials were increasingly concerned by a potential convergence of interests between the Moriscos of Aragon and French Protestantism. With the emergence of the French principality of Béarn as a Huguenot enclave from the 1550s onward, the Inquisition of Aragon often suspected Aragonese Moriscos of plotting rebellion with Béarnese assistance. Moriscos and Huguenots shared a common experience of Catholic persecution, and Moriscos periodically sought refuge in Béarn, while Béarnese rulers also flirted with the possibility of an alliance with Aragonese Moriscos that might help them recover Navarre from Castile.
In the summer of 1559, a sensational incident took place in the Morisco village of Plasencia del Monte, near Huesca, Aragon, when three Inquisition familiars were found cut to pieces at the bottom of a well and a local priest who served as an Inquisition official was found nearby with his throat cut. These officials had been on their way to arrest a Morisco
alfaqui
named Juan Zambarel, who was eventually caught and tortured to death. But thirteen other Moriscos who allegedly carried out the murders escaped across the Pyrenees to Béarn. When the Moriscos were arrested by a group of passing Spanish travelers, the Béarnese authorities secured their release, refused requests to extradite them, and the assassins went free.
alfaqui
named Juan Zambarel, who was eventually caught and tortured to death. But thirteen other Moriscos who allegedly carried out the murders escaped across the Pyrenees to Béarn. When the Moriscos were arrested by a group of passing Spanish travelers, the Béarnese authorities secured their release, refused requests to extradite them, and the assassins went free.
Incidents like these brought the ambivalent religious loyalties of the Moriscos into increasingly glaring focus, as Spanish officials tended to interpret any expression of cultural and religious difference as evidence of disloyalty or seditious intent. Such perceptions gave a renewed urgency to the goal of assimilation. The more Spanish officials regarded the Moriscos as an internal enemy with links to Spain’s foreign enemies, the more inclined they were to regard their continued separation from Christian society as a potential threat to the security of the state. Evidence of such deviance was not lacking. In May 1568, the bishop of Tortosa conducted an extended visitation to Morisco parishes in Aragon and Valencia and was not impressed by what he found. On the estates of the Duke of Segorbe in the Uxó Valley, the local Moriscos openly complained to the bishop that they had been converted to Christianity by force and told him that they wished to make representations to Philip and the pope. “These people have me fed up and exasperated,” the bishop complained. “They have a damnable attitude and make me despair of any good in them.... I have been through these mountains for eight days now and find them more Moorish than ever and very set in their bad ways.”
6
6
Inquisition officials often expressed similar frustration and claimed that Moriscos were not only failing to assimilate, but were becoming more openly defiant and intransigent. In 1560 the Valencia Inquisition issued a damning
relación
(report), which claimed that Moriscos throughout the kingdom were continuing to preserve their Islamic customs and traditions and publicly proclaiming the heretical belief that “they can be saved in their damned sect and each one in his own law.” The inquisitors depicted the Moriscos of Valencia in the most alarmist terms, evoking images of lawless Morisco enclaves that lay entirely outside the jurisdiction of church and state in “rugged, mountainous and dangerous lands” that priests and constables were afraid to enter. Not only were these Moriscos resisting the king’s own officials, the inquisitors claimed, but they were also rumored to be planning an uprising with Turkish support .
7
relación
(report), which claimed that Moriscos throughout the kingdom were continuing to preserve their Islamic customs and traditions and publicly proclaiming the heretical belief that “they can be saved in their damned sect and each one in his own law.” The inquisitors depicted the Moriscos of Valencia in the most alarmist terms, evoking images of lawless Morisco enclaves that lay entirely outside the jurisdiction of church and state in “rugged, mountainous and dangerous lands” that priests and constables were afraid to enter. Not only were these Moriscos resisting the king’s own officials, the inquisitors claimed, but they were also rumored to be planning an uprising with Turkish support .
7
Reports like these reinforced the consensus among Spanish ecclesiastics and statesmen that the Moriscos had been treated too leniently and that more forceful measures were required to transform them into Christians. In 1561 the Inquisition commissioner for Valencia, Gregorio de Miranda, asked Philip to send troops to disarm the entire Morisco population. Despite protests from the Valencian nobility that disarmament would deprive them of the use of Moriscos in their private militias, the king agreed to this request. In February 1563, the Moriscos of Valencia were ordered to hand in their weapons on a town-by-town basis, and the king’s officials confiscated or received some twenty thousand lances, crossbows, swords, harquebuses, and muskets. The following year, the Valencia Inquisition set out to reassert its authority with a stern proclamation that ordered all Morisco adults and children over the age of seven to attend mass regularly and obliged parish priests to test their Morisco parishioners on their knowledge of the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Credo, and other rote passages.
In December 1564, Philip convened an ecclesiastical convention in Madrid to assess the progress that had been made in evangelizing the Moriscos in Valencia. The convention was presented with a dismal picture of the corruption, neglect, and decay in the parishes established in the
lugares de Moriscos
(Morisco places) during the 1530s. One Valencian cleric lamented that the Moriscos “have not been taught any Christian doctrine either publicly or privately.” Inquisitors told the convention that many of these parishes were so starved of funds that some mosques had not even been reconsecrated and still retained their trumpets, Korans, and implements of worship, while the newly created churches lacked communion cups and crucifixes.
lugares de Moriscos
(Morisco places) during the 1530s. One Valencian cleric lamented that the Moriscos “have not been taught any Christian doctrine either publicly or privately.” Inquisitors told the convention that many of these parishes were so starved of funds that some mosques had not even been reconsecrated and still retained their trumpets, Korans, and implements of worship, while the newly created churches lacked communion cups and crucifixes.
These reports were a damning indictment of the Church’s achievements in Valencia, but not for the first or last time, the recognition of such failures rebounded negatively on the Moriscos themselves. In February 1565, the Madrid convention proposed a new crackdown on Moorish dress and customs, together with a systematic attempt to root out “
alfaquis
, dogmatizers, circumcizers, and others who come from Algeria or elsewhere.” At the same time, the Moriscos were to be treated “with all Christian kindness and charity” and provided with religious instruction by competent priests and rectors who would be specially appointed for this task. Corrupt officials and priests would be punished, and ecclesiastical rents and tithes were to be used for the upkeep of churches and the payment of local priests, while the Moriscos were to be relieved from the range of “tyrannical” taxes that applied only to them since, the convention argued, not unreasonably, it was unfair to expect them to “live as Christians and pay as Moors.”
alfaquis
, dogmatizers, circumcizers, and others who come from Algeria or elsewhere.” At the same time, the Moriscos were to be treated “with all Christian kindness and charity” and provided with religious instruction by competent priests and rectors who would be specially appointed for this task. Corrupt officials and priests would be punished, and ecclesiastical rents and tithes were to be used for the upkeep of churches and the payment of local priests, while the Moriscos were to be relieved from the range of “tyrannical” taxes that applied only to them since, the convention argued, not unreasonably, it was unfair to expect them to “live as Christians and pay as Moors.”
This was not the first time such worthy proposals had been made, but as on many other occasions, the ecclesiastical and secular bureaucracy once again devoted more energy and resources to repression than reform, as Moriscos found themselves subjected to increasingly harsh punishments from the Inquisition, from floggings and imprisonment to fines or a fixed period of service as rowers in the Spanish navy. Executions were still comparatively rare in the first decade of Philip’s reign, though “unpaid penance at the king’s oars” often amounted to a death sentence, since conditions were so harsh that many rowers died of exhaustion or committed suicide by throwing themselves overboard or hanging themselves with their own chains.
The new emphasis on repression served various agendas. Morisco galley slaves provided essential manpower for the Spanish Mediterranean fleet, while fines and confiscations helped pay the salaries and running costs of the Inquisition itself, at a time when the Holy Office was in financial difficulties. The disciplining of the Moriscos was also part of a broader attempt by the Hapsburg monarchy to reassert its political authority, particularly in the restive kingdom of Aragon. From its headquarters in the Aljafería, the former Moorish palace-fortress in Zaragoza, the Aragon Inquisition prosecuted a higher percentage of Moriscos than in any other part of the country, sending so many Moriscos to galley slavery that Philip recommended in 1560 that the same punishment be extended to Moriscos elsewhere in Spain “as is customary in Saragossa.”
8
8
The repression in Aragon was partly based on the belief that Aragonese Moriscos were particularly intransigent and seditious, but it was also intended to undermine the Christian “lords of Vassals,” who, according to the Zaragoza Inquisition in 1565, “are so free, since they already oppress the royal and ecclesiastical Judges, they would like to do the same with the inquisitors if they could.” Zaragoza inquisitors frequently claimed that their attempts to exert their authority over the Tagarinos, as the Moriscos of Aragon were known, were being thwarted by Christian lords, and they pestered Philip to enact a disarmament similar to the one carried out in Valencia, but the king was not yet ready to risk destabilizing the kingdom at a time when his Aragonese subjects were even more resentful of Castilian rule than usual. In a letter to the Supreme Council in June 1557, Inquisition officials at Zaragoza made it clear that their hands were tied, and referred to a previous letter from their superiors, which declared “that as these are dangerous times, we should for the present suspend hearings of cases against the Tagarinos.”
9
9
The Inquisition found similar opposition in Valencia, where its officials complained in 1566 of Christian seigneurs who “daily persecute the commissaries and familiars that the Holy Office has in their lands, expelling them and telling them that in their territory they want no Inquisition.” Such opposition limited the ability of the Crown to impose its will on the Moriscos of Aragon and added to the frustration of Spain’s rulers regarding
la cuestión morisca
. In the upper echelons of the Spanish government, it was now taken for granted that the Moriscos had failed to willingly integrate into Christian society and that something needed to be done to quicken the pace of assimilation, and with its room for maneuver limited in Aragon, the Crown turned its attention to the troubled kingdom of Granada.
la cuestión morisca
. In the upper echelons of the Spanish government, it was now taken for granted that the Moriscos had failed to willingly integrate into Christian society and that something needed to be done to quicken the pace of assimilation, and with its room for maneuver limited in Aragon, the Crown turned its attention to the troubled kingdom of Granada.
By the time Philip returned to his Spanish inheritance, Granada had been part of Spain for nearly seventy years. In that time, the former Moorish kingdom had undergone substantial changes. Many of its towns and cities had been steadily Christianized; mosques and minarets had been replaced with churches and public buildings that reflected Castilian architectural tastes; the narrow Moorish streets had been widened, and in some cases the buildings lining them had been knocked down. With the establishment of the Audiencia y Chancillería (Royal Audience and Chancellery) in 1505, the second highest appellate court in Castile after the Valladolid chancellery, Granada was firmly embedded in the Castilian administrative system. Though Moriscos still constituted an overall majority in the kingdom as a whole, Christian immigrants outnumbered the Morisco population in the city of Granada itself. These immigrants were drawn from many sectors of Spanish society, from the middle-class lawyer-bureaucrats, or
letrados
, who worked at the Audiencia to humbler settlers from Andalusia, Old Castile, or the Basque country.
letrados
, who worked at the Audiencia to humbler settlers from Andalusia, Old Castile, or the Basque country.
The attitudes of these new arrivals toward the Moriscos were very different from those of the Granada war veterans and settlers who had controlled the kingdom in the aftermath of the conquest. Whether they were careerists seeking advancement within the Hapsburg bureaucracy or fortune hunters and rural farmers, the new arrivals often regarded the Morisco presence as an obstacle to their economic advancement and resented the paternalistic tolerance shown to the Moriscos by the Christian veterans of the Granada war who had preceded them. Aristocratic tolerance was epitomized by the Mendoza family, whose members occupied the post of captain-general as a hereditary position and frequently used their influence to protect the Moriscos from the Inquisition and intercede on their behalf in their dealings with the Church and government.
The amicable relationship between the Mendozas and the Moriscos was increasingly at odds with the lawyers and judges who filled the Granada bureaucracy. The career path of the
letrado
typically straddled Spain’s secular and ecclesiastical institutions, and these officials often combined personal ambition and religious zeal with an unquestioning loyalty to the monarchy that was to prove fatal for the Moriscos of Granada. Throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, a covert political struggle unfolded between the Mendozas and an alliance of city councillors,
letrados
, inquisitors, and hard-line clerics, by which the Moriscos were increasingly affected. At the time of Philip’s coronation, the office of captain-general was held by Iñigo López de Mendoza, the third count of Tendilla. A competent soldier with an aloof and irascible personality, Mendoza continued the family tradition of pro-Morisco advocacy, supported by his father, Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, the second Marquis of Mondéjar, as president of the Council of Castile.
letrado
typically straddled Spain’s secular and ecclesiastical institutions, and these officials often combined personal ambition and religious zeal with an unquestioning loyalty to the monarchy that was to prove fatal for the Moriscos of Granada. Throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, a covert political struggle unfolded between the Mendozas and an alliance of city councillors,
letrados
, inquisitors, and hard-line clerics, by which the Moriscos were increasingly affected. At the time of Philip’s coronation, the office of captain-general was held by Iñigo López de Mendoza, the third count of Tendilla. A competent soldier with an aloof and irascible personality, Mendoza continued the family tradition of pro-Morisco advocacy, supported by his father, Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, the second Marquis of Mondéjar, as president of the Council of Castile.
BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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