Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (40 page)
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Authors: Matthew Carr
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BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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Ribera’s explicit tilt toward expulsion was supported by his remorselessly anti-Morisco adviser Jaime Bleda. On three occasions, Bleda visited Rome in an attempt to solicit papal approval for expulsion, without success. The indefatigable Dominican also made numerous journeys to Madrid to promote what he called his Morisco “cause” to the court and government. In 1603, Bleda sent Philip a summary of his sprawling anti-Morisco text
Defensio Fidei
(Defense of the Faith), which cited a formidable range of religious authorities and historical precedents to support the theological legitimacy of expulsion, from the Roman emperor Theodosius to Seneca and Saint Augustine. Bleda also rejected the economic objections to expulsion and claimed that the Morisco labor force would swiftly be replaced by Christian settlers who would provide even greater income to their Valencian seigneurs.
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Defensio Fidei
(Defense of the Faith), which cited a formidable range of religious authorities and historical precedents to support the theological legitimacy of expulsion, from the Roman emperor Theodosius to Seneca and Saint Augustine. Bleda also rejected the economic objections to expulsion and claimed that the Morisco labor force would swiftly be replaced by Christian settlers who would provide even greater income to their Valencian seigneurs.
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Like Ribera before him, Bleda’s arguments were intended to appeal to the vanity of the impressionable young king by presenting expulsion as a glorious and pious act that would bring honor to those who carried it out. Other contributors to the Morisco debate also argued strongly in favor of expulsion. In 1602, a courtier named Gómez Davila y Toledo proposed that all Morisco children aged between two and fourteen should be taken from their parents and brought up as Christians, while male and female Morisco adults would be dispersed separately across the world so that “the entire damned descent of the Hagarenes would eventually be extinguished.” Echoing Ribera’s depiction of the Moriscos as a “fever,” Gómez Davila described them as an “intrinsic pestilence” that threatened to contaminate and destroy Spanish society unless they were removed, for “Just as when a human body has an illness in a foot, leg or arm, the entire body must be purged, in the same way it is necessary to purge all Spain of this bad seed.”
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The Council of State also considered a set of “Propositions” on the Morisco question from Father Pedro Arias, the provincial of the Augustinian monastic order in Aragon, who argued that the “Hagarenes” deserved the death penalty for their religious transgressions and that “there would be no injustice in putting them all to the knife.” At the very least, Philip “had the obligation, on grounds of conscience and good government, to banish them from his kingdoms” and uproot the “trunk from which these infernal shoots spring forth.”
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The Council of State also considered a set of “Propositions” on the Morisco question from Father Pedro Arias, the provincial of the Augustinian monastic order in Aragon, who argued that the “Hagarenes” deserved the death penalty for their religious transgressions and that “there would be no injustice in putting them all to the knife.” At the very least, Philip “had the obligation, on grounds of conscience and good government, to banish them from his kingdoms” and uproot the “trunk from which these infernal shoots spring forth.”
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The argument that the Moriscos “deserved” death for their religious transgressions was often used to present expulsion as a magnanimous alternative. Not all churchmen favored such extreme measures, however. In a memorandum to the king in 1604, Feliciano de Figueroa, the bishop of Segorbe and Ribera’s former personal secretary, contradicted the archbishop’s pessimistic assessment of Philip’s amnesties in Valencia and insisted that there had been a “notable reformation” among the Moriscos of his diocese as a result of the recent edict of grace, many of whom appeared to be no different from Old Christians. In an indirect criticism of Ribera himself, Figueroa argued that “the prelates should not have lost patience and confidence so quickly” in their ability to proselytize the Moriscos and urged Philip to make up for the “remiss instruction” that had previously been provided with a new program of evangelization that would not entail “unleashing armies or spilling blood.”
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Other leading Spanish and foreign churchmen advocated a similar policy of moderation. The English Jesuit Joseph Creswell, who represented the interests of English Catholics at the Spanish court, urged Philip to make a new effort to win the Moriscos over and rejected the views of Spanish clerics who “think this damage is irremediable,” arguing that these churchmen “have not seen what can be done with heretics, no less difficult to convert.”
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Pope Paul V also declared himself in favor of evangelization, despite Bleda’s efforts to persuade him that it was futile, and issued a papal brief in 1606 instructing Ribera and his bishops to debate ways of evangelizing the Valencian Moriscos.
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Pope Paul V also declared himself in favor of evangelization, despite Bleda’s efforts to persuade him that it was futile, and issued a papal brief in 1606 instructing Ribera and his bishops to debate ways of evangelizing the Valencian Moriscos.
One of the most thoughtful arguments in favor of assimilation was written by the renowned biblical scholar and intellectual Pedro de Valencia in his
Tratado acerca de los moriscos de España
(Treatise on the Moriscos of Spain, 1606). Valencia’s depiction of Morisco Spain was steeped in many of the prejudices and assumptions of the period, such as his description of the Moriscos as “declared and manifest enemies of the whole Christian Church” whose numbers consisted of “not ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, nor a hundred thousand, but many more spies and soldiers that the Empire and Sect of the Ishmaelites have in Spain,” all of whom were equally “inflamed by bellicose hatred” toward Christianity.
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At the same time he rejected the image of the Moriscos as an alien and extraneous population, writing that “all these Moriscos . . . are Spaniards like the others who live in Spain, who have been born and bred in her for nearly nine hundred years,” and attributed the failure of integration to the fact that they had not been given “equality of honor and esteem” with Old Christians.
Tratado acerca de los moriscos de España
(Treatise on the Moriscos of Spain, 1606). Valencia’s depiction of Morisco Spain was steeped in many of the prejudices and assumptions of the period, such as his description of the Moriscos as “declared and manifest enemies of the whole Christian Church” whose numbers consisted of “not ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, nor a hundred thousand, but many more spies and soldiers that the Empire and Sect of the Ishmaelites have in Spain,” all of whom were equally “inflamed by bellicose hatred” toward Christianity.
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At the same time he rejected the image of the Moriscos as an alien and extraneous population, writing that “all these Moriscos . . . are Spaniards like the others who live in Spain, who have been born and bred in her for nearly nine hundred years,” and attributed the failure of integration to the fact that they had not been given “equality of honor and esteem” with Old Christians.
Valencia rejected expulsion on the grounds that “a Republic must conserve all its parts” and pointed out that “Kings and Republics should not become enraged with the great cruelty that would be required to kill entire peoples.” Instead, he recommended a concerted national program of evangelization that would be inaugurated with a period of fasting and prayer “in all the churches of Spain” and accompanied by “gentle not rigorous” punishments for Morisco transgressions. Valencia even argued that the Moriscos could be enlisted into the Spanish army, since their frugality and capacity for hard work made them natural soldiers. Just as Rome had once incorporated non-Roman citizens into its legions and deployed them at the “limits of the Empire,” so the Moriscos could be sent to bolster Spain’s undermanned North African garrisons.
This innovative suggestion does not appear to have received any more consideration than Valencia’s other proposals, but his treatise was another indication of the range of opinions even in this late stage of the Morisco debate. It was admittedly a debate that took the Morisco “problem” for granted, but there was nevertheless a real divergence between extremists like Bleda and Ribera, who were prepared to contemplate the physical removal and even extermination of the Moriscos, and those who believed that they could—and should—be allowed to remain in Spain. Ultimately, the choice of options would be decided by a relatively small group of powerful men, and it is to these individuals that we must now turn our attention.
Official policy toward the Moriscos was decided by the king himself, but Philip’s opinions were influenced by his powerful favorite. As a former Valencian viceroy, whose ancestral estates were located in the seaport of Denia, Lerma was intimately acquainted with Valencian affairs and sensitive to the negative economic impact that expulsion might have in the kingdom. He was also closely tied to the Valencian nobility through his family connections. These ties may explain why in 1582 he rejected the expulsion proposals made at Lisbon and recommended the improvement of Valencia’s defenses as an alternative. The establishment of the Valencian militia in 1599 was largely due to his efforts. Yet that same year, at a meeting of the Council of State on February 2, Lerma espoused a more hard-line position. Declaring that “the Moriscos were as Moorish as they were before and deserved death,” he proposed that all able-bodied Morisco males be despoiled of their property and condemned to the galleys, while women and old people would be sent to Barbary and their children brought up in Christian seminaries.
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The reasons for this change of heart are not clear, but Lerma and the king continued to pursue more moderate policies in the short term. In February 1600, Philip’s counselors called for the Moriscos of Valencia to receive religious instruction from “zealous, virtuous, and learned” preachers who would treat them “with much gentleness and kindness and without coercion in regard to their language and clothing.” So committed were Philip and his ministers to this goal that Archbishop Ribera was reprimanded when he instructed his priests to warn the Moriscos that they faced expulsion if they failed to respond to these efforts. These more conciliatory gestures were always tentative and conditional, however. On January 3, 1602, Philip convened yet another junta to examine the Morisco problem, whose members included Lerma and the veteran statesman Juan de Idiáquez, Philip II’s former secretary and the only remaining member of the original Lisbon Junta.
The committee met just as the edict of grace was about to run out in Valencia, and Ribera’s blistering memorandum the previous year was still fresh in the minds of its members. The ministers discussed new reports of contacts between Aragonese Moriscos and French Protestants and also between the Moriscos of Valencia and Morocco, where a deputation of fifty Moriscos had allegedly tried to persuade Sultan Muley Zidan that the time was right to “regain Spain” and promised him the support of two hundred thousand fighters if he made the attempt. This was a fantastic figure, assuming it had ever been suggested, but Philip’s counselors appeared to take it seriously, quoting reports from Spanish spies that the Moroccan ruler had agreed to this request and promised the Moriscos that Dutch princes would provide a “bridge of ships” to facilitate an invasion.
It is difficult to believe that these ministers seriously believed that Muley Zidan intended to invade Spain, let alone that he had the ability to do it. But as in the past, these security fears tended to conflate hypothetical scenarios with real possibilities that magnified the Morisco threat in the eyes of the king’s officials. The tone of these discussions was summed up by one anxious official who cited disaffection with Spanish rule in Italy and the prospect of an Ottoman resurgence in the Mediterranean to warn that Spain faced “enemies who are so many and so powerful, they may move against His Majesty in a way that cannot be resisted, so that everything will be in peril.”
These anxieties influenced the radical proposals discussed by the committee for eliminating the Morisco threat, which ranged from expulsion to the old fantasy of casting them all adrift in ships and scuttling them. The committee appeared to lean toward expulsion, without discounting the other options. But Philip responded to the council’s recommendations with surprising decisiveness and declared, “If they can be expelled with good conscience, I think it is the most convenient, easiest, and swiftest course.”
An undated document, presumably written by one of his secretaries, made Philip’s urgency clear. In it the king reiterated the reports of Morisco complicity with the Moroccan sultan and expressed his fear of “the multitude of Moriscos among whom are men so anxious to throw off their subjection and so stubborn in their adherence to their sect.” As a consequence, “His Majesty’s view is that there is now no time to be lost in seeking a remedy to these enormous evils. He is resolved to finish off these evil people by whatever means seem best and most speedy and he will not shrink from slaughtering them.”
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For the time being, Philip opted to expel rather than slaughter the Moriscos and instructed his ministers to begin preparations “with all possible haste” and deploy ships and troops in Majorca to expedite the expulsion that summer. In the event, no such preparations were made, and it would take another seven years before these instructions were put into effect. This pattern of radical proposals followed by inaction was characteristic of the Morisco debate. In this case, the delay may be partly explained by an awareness of the logistical difficulties at a time when Spain was still embroiled in conflict in northern Europe. There was also the economic impact of expulsion to consider at a time when the royal finances were particularly strained. Nor had the question of whether the Moriscos could be expelled in “good conscience” been definitively resolved.
Once again, Spain’s rulers had peered over the brink and then pulled back from it. In January 1607, yet another junta rejected expelling the Valencian Moriscos and recommended a new attempt to convert them, even though its members recognized that “Archbishop Ribera is of a different opinion and without any confidence whatsoever in the conversion of these people.” In October, an enlarged version of the same committee agreed that it would bring “more charity and service to Our Lord to try and raise these souls to Heaven than destroy them or send them to Barbary.”
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Yet on January 30, 1608, barely three months later, a full session of the Council of State emphatically rejected these conclusions and recommended the expulsion of the Moriscos from Valencia. The session was attended by Lerma, who now declared himself in favor of expulsion on the grounds that the Valencian Moriscos had been “given the chance to be Christians and wasted it.” Other counselors agreed. Even the Duke of Infantado, who generally tended to take a moderate position on the Morisco question, described expulsion as a “great and worthy cause,” while the Count of Alba de Liste repeated the old canard that the Moriscos were worthy of death and that expulsion would be an act of mercy.
The minutes of these discussions do not indicate the reason for this abrupt change of course, beyond the usual allegations of Morisco intransigence, recycled reports of Morisco liaisons with Spain’s Muslim enemies, and claims that the Moriscos would soon outnumber Christians.
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What had changed? There is no doubt that expulsion was more feasible logistically than at any time previously. Spain was now at peace with most of its northern enemies, truce negotiations were under way in Flanders, and the Ottomans were preoccupied with rebellions in Persia and Anatolia. Did Philip’s ministers recognize a short-term opportunity to eliminate the Moriscos once and for all? Or was the expulsion intended to compensate for Spain’s inability to impose its will on the rest of Europe? Lerma later alluded to the latter possibility at a Council of State meeting in 1617, when he proposed that Spain follow the signing of a peace agreement with Savoy by attacking Venice, citing the expulsion of the Moriscos as a precedent that had provided Spain with an “honorable exit” from Flanders.
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What had changed? There is no doubt that expulsion was more feasible logistically than at any time previously. Spain was now at peace with most of its northern enemies, truce negotiations were under way in Flanders, and the Ottomans were preoccupied with rebellions in Persia and Anatolia. Did Philip’s ministers recognize a short-term opportunity to eliminate the Moriscos once and for all? Or was the expulsion intended to compensate for Spain’s inability to impose its will on the rest of Europe? Lerma later alluded to the latter possibility at a Council of State meeting in 1617, when he proposed that Spain follow the signing of a peace agreement with Savoy by attacking Venice, citing the expulsion of the Moriscos as a precedent that had provided Spain with an “honorable exit” from Flanders.
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