Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (42 page)

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Authors: Matthew Carr

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Spain & Portugal, #Religion, #Christianity, #General, #Christian Church, #Social Science, #Emigration & Immigration, #Discrimination & Race Relations, #Islamic Studies

BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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Printed copies of the decree were circulated throughout the kingdom and promulgated in every locality, so that within a few days there were few people in Valencia who were unaware of its contents. While Ribera instructed his priests to pray for a “good and brief end to this business,” soldiers and militiamen began patrolling the main towns and cities in a show of force, and workmen began constructing gallows by the roadsides as a warning to Moriscos considering resistance. In the city of Valencia, ironsmiths, swordmakers, and powdermakers manufactured weapons and ammunition throughout the day and night to a constant rumble of militia drums and rifle shots as soldiers practiced their marksmanship.
The king’s orders appear to have been greeted with widespread acclaim among the Christian population. Nobles and churchmen alike praised Philip for his prudence, wisdom, and piety, including Antonio Sobrino, who that same year had argued so forcefully against expulsion.
3
Such praise was not universal, and some of it may have been less than sincere. If there was jubilation, there was also fear at the prospect of a Morisco rebellion and despair among the Christian lords who now faced economic ruin. In these first days, neither the king nor his ministers could feel confident that the expulsion would unfold smoothly, nor could they take the cooperation of the nobility for granted.
On September 27, in the midst of this tension and uncertainty, Juan de Ribera delivered what was probably the most significant sermon of his career to a packed congregation at the main cathedral in Valencia. At the age of seventy-seven, with less than two years to live, Ribera fused biblical quotations, politics, and the full panoply of anti-Muslim prejudice in a passionate attempt to rally his flock behind the king’s decision. Praising Philip, Lerma, and the “Valencian nation” for at last taking action against the “domestic enemies who wish to drink our blood and take over Spain,” Ribera warned his congregation of the “dishonor and ignominy” that resulted from continued contact with infidels and lavished praise on the Valencian seigneurs who had so often resisted his efforts to convert the Moriscos in the past for their “heroic” support of an expulsion that ran contrary to their material interests.
Many of these barons were in Ribera’s congregation that day and were unlikely to have been consoled by his assurances that it was “the work of the Apostle, to see oneself rich today and poor tomorrow.” More than any of his previous pronouncements on the Morisco question, Ribera’s visionary sermon demonstrated how expulsion was seen as a means to the unification and renewal of Christian society itself, in his invocation of a sick and defiled Valencia that would soon be restored to spiritual health, beginning an era of material abundance, security, and social harmony. The archbishop’s private pronouncements suggest that he himself did not believe in this outcome, but he nevertheless promised his flock that Valencia would “see these churches that were filled with Dragons and wild beasts filled with Angels and Seraphins” once the “Moors” were expelled.
4
Not surprisingly, this representation of the expulsion received the enthusiastic approval of the Spanish court. Lerma congratulated Ribera on a sermon that was “designed for our edification and for the general public” and ordered hundreds of copies printed for general circulation, as Valencia braced itself for one of the most decisive episodes in its history.
 
The responses of the Moriscos themselves covered a wide spectrum. In the more isolated Morisco settlements in the Valencian interior, where rumors of the king’s intentions had not penetrated, the expulsion order fell like a bombshell, and Moriscos reacted with shock and despair. Some defiantly declared their intention to “live as Moors” in Barbary and began to worship openly as Muslims for the first time in years. Others believed that the military activity in Valencia was the prelude to a general massacre and refused to leave their homes. There were also Moriscos who insisted that they were good Christians and petitioned frantically for exemptions. According to the court chronicler Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, some Moriscos refused to go, even under threat of death, preferring “to die as Christians.”
5
Some wealthy Moriscos offered to contribute special taxes toward the fortification of the coast if they were allowed to remain; others promised to pay the ransoms of Christian captives in Barbary. Such appeals were mostly rejected on the king’s orders.
Whatever their feelings about the expulsion, most Moriscos accepted it with resignation and began to frantically prepare for their departure. In towns and villages across Valencia, Moriscos began selling their houses, crops, and goods and gathering their possessions for the journey. Cattle, sheep, beasts of burden, flour, raisins, honey, silk, and jewelry were all sold off in what was always a buyers’ market. If some Christians profited from these transactions, others complained that the Moriscos were selling “even the nails of their houses” and that they were being deprived of property that had been promised to them as compensation. Some Christians complained that the Moriscos were leaving as victors rather than defeated infidels—including Ribera, who wrote to Lerma, “I cannot be content that these enemies of God and His Majesty leave rich, when they deserve to have all their goods confiscated, and the faithful vassals of His Majesty are left poor.”
6
These complaints resulted in attempts to limit the sale and purchase of Morisco property, but the authorities were always wary of provoking rebellion, and these restrictions were not generally enforced.
Within a few days of the promulgation of the expulsion order, the first Moriscos began to arrive at their designated ports from the settlements nearest the coast. It had been arranged that ten passengers from the first embarkation to North Africa would return to announce their safe arrival, but some Christian lords provided further guarantees by accompanying their vassals themselves. On September 28, one of the richest landowners in Valencia, the Duke of Gandía, told Philip that a member of his family would accompany five thousand of his vassals from Denia to North Africa. Though Gandía feared that the loss of his Morisco laborers during the forthcoming sugar harvest might presage the “destruction of this House,” he assured Philip that “I live very content without them, thereby realizing the good and holy intentions of Your Majesty.”
7
Gandía would be generously rewarded for his loyalty, as he undoubtedly knew, and his public compliance convinced others to follow his example. On October 10, Philip received a plaintive letter from a Valencian seigneur named Joan de Vilagrut, who declared his willingness to lose his vassals but nevertheless appealed to the king for compensation so that his children would be able to “live and remain honored in accordance with their status.”
8
On the night of October 2, 3,803 Moriscos sailed from Denia for Oran. Three days later, another 8,000 were transported from Alicante on a mixed fleet of Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian galleys and chartered ships. From across the plains and mountains of Valencia, Moriscos abandoned their homes and trekked along the dusty roads to the coast escorted by royal commissioners and soldiers. They left behind them a scene of chaos and desolation, as Christian looters plundered their deserted villages and rounded up the unsold livestock and domestic animals that had sometimes entered the houses of their former owners. Some Moriscos rode on horses, mules, and cows, others in carts and carriages piled high with clothes, food, furniture, and cooking utensils. But most traveled on foot, carrying their bundles of possessions on their shoulders and their money and jewelry sewn into their clothes in order to hide them from robbers.
These columns included men and women of all ages. Some were carried on the shoulders of their relatives or transported in chairs and makeshift litters, such as the 103-year-old woman who arrived in the port of Valencia on a wooden door carried by four of her grandchildren. On arrival at their designated ports, the Moriscos were led directly onto the waiting ships in batches of two hundred or taken in smaller boats to those anchored farther offshore. When ships were not available, the new arrivals were obliged to wait on the docks and beaches. Valencia, Denia, Alicante, Viñaroz, and the small port of Mancofa were soon teeming with deportees, soldiers, and militiamen, with sailors, officials, and royal commissioners overseeing the embarkations, as well as onlookers who had come to watch this unprecedented exodus and in some cases to profit from it. At Alicante, one Christian resident described how “the streets and plazas were almost impassable” on the days of embarkation. The “grau” or port, of Valencia became a giant flea market, in which elegantly dressed Christian ladies arrived in smart carriages accompanied by gentlemen in plumed hats to watch the embarkations and bargain-hunt for Morisco jewelry and embroidered silks and clothes.
Poignant and often tragic scenes unfolded as the Moriscos were brought to the waiting ships. One old man arrived in Valencia declaring his wish to be buried on Muslim soil but dropped dead while boarding his ship. Other Moriscos died of hunger and exhaustion before leaving the shore. Some parents became separated from their children in the confusion; others left their children behind with local Christians. In the Valencian artist Pere Oromig’s painting
Departure of the Moriscos from the port of Valencia
, a Morisco father can be seen kneeling to say good-bye to his young daughter, who is standing with a Christian family.
There were many such farewells as the exodus continued. Even as the Moriscos were boarding their ships, priests, monks, and zealous Christians pleaded with them to leave their children behind so that they could be brought up as Catholics. Caracena’s wife, Doña Isabel de Velasco, personally persuaded many parents to leave their children behind—or had them kidnapped—for their spiritual salvation. Some Moriscos gave in to these importunities because they felt unable to care for their children, but others defiantly refused, such as the Morisca who gave birth on the docks and then “embarked with the infant in her arms on a harsh, windy, and very cold day,” according to a report by the Valencia Inquisition, and ignored the Christians who begged her to leave her baby with them.
9
Amid the sadness, there was also a curious gaiety. At Denia, Moriscos passed the time between voyages by staging Greco-Roman wrestling tournaments, and Moriscas danced on the beach to the sound of lutes and tambourines, while Christian ladies copied their steps. At Alicante, groups of Moriscos came clapping and singing prohibited songs and playing musical instruments “as if they were going to the most joyous fiestas and weddings,” according to Bleda. Many Morisca women dressed in their finest clothes and jewelry for the occasion. Some wore the same wide-brimmed hats and black dresses worn by Christian women, others proudly wore their white
almalafas
, while their menfolk sometimes wore red caps or turbans to proclaim their intention to “live as Moors.”
These depictions of a joyous Morisco exodus are a recurring theme in the writings of pro-expulsion apologists, many of whom witnessed the embarkations firsthand. Bleda observed Moriscos who waded into the sea and thanked Allah and Muhammad for allowing them passage to the lands of their ancestors or boasted to Christian onlookers “that they would go where the king sent them, but they would soon return and throw us out.” Blas Verdú saw the “arm of God” in the fact that the Moriscos went willingly to their embarkation points, summoned only by the “sound of a trumpet” that reminded them of the Last Judgment, while Damián Fonseca described the expulsion as “an enterprise more divine than human.” To supporters of the expulsion, this willing exodus was proof of the Morisco duplicity that had justified their punishment in the first place, but such descriptions need qualifying. There is no doubt that many Moriscos celebrated their deliverance from Christian oppression and regarded their religious and cultural survival as a kind of victory. One Morisco song that circulated in Aragon before the expulsion described North Africa as a land of plenty “where gold and fine silver / Are found from one mountain to the next” and declared:
Let us all go there
Where the Moors are many
Where all good is enclosed
 
One
aljamiado
poet in Tunis compared the Morisco exodus to the biblical exodus of the Jews from Egypt and praised God for transforming the Mediterranean into a “meadow of green flowers” that had allowed his co-religionists to escape the “Pharaoh of Spain.”
10
But though some Moriscos celebrated their expulsion, others accepted it out of solidarity with their neighbors or disgust with the society that had expelled them, such as the vassals of the Duke of Gandía who contemptuously rejected his invitation to fulfill the 6 percent quota and stay behind to work on the sugar harvest, declaring that “they would rather be vassals of the Turk than slaves of Spain.” Even among those who appeared to celebrate their expulsion, some must have been trying to put a brave face on what they regarded as inevitable, and not all of them succeeded. The Christian poet Gaspar de Aguilar described how elderly Morisca women left their homes in Gandía “with tears and lamentations . . . grimacing and making faces.”
11
This distress was understandable. For whatever their feelings about leaving Spain, few Moriscos could feel confident at their ability to survive a journey that was fraught with danger from the moment they left their homes.

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