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 (49 page)
BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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The Morisquillos were a scource of obsessive concern to Philip and his senior officials, who were often torn between their religious obligation to bring these “innocents” up as Christians and a residual prejudice and suspicion that regarded even the youngest children as “bad seed,” with the potential capacity to “reinfect” Spain. Adolescents and older children were particularly suspect because they were considered more likely to have imbibed the customs and beliefs of their parents and more capable of reproducing them in the future. Such children were often watched closely by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities for telltale signs of the Islamic virus, such as aversion to pork. In March 1610, even the mighty Duke of Lerma expressed concern at reports of Morisco boys in Valencia who had been found wearing “half-moon medallions.”
These suspicions were not necessarily related to the length of time these children had spent with their parents. To the more bigoted sectors of Spanish society, who believed that Islam was an inherent quality of Moorish “blood” or “spirit,” even children who had not reached the “age of reason” constituted a potential threat to Spain’s hard-won religious purity. Even babies might not be as innocent as they appeared. Because their origins and background were often unknown, it was impossible to know whether they had been baptized or whether the sacrament had been correctly administered. And even if the Morisquillos had been baptized in accordance with Catholic ritual, there was always an element of doubt that these children might carry the “memory of their sect” into adulthood.
Would a Christian education be sufficient to ensure that these children “forget their birth and become perfect Catholic Christians who love our religion,” as Philip described it? How should they be looked after? Were the authorities morally obliged to provide these children with care, or was it more expedient, from the point of view of preventing “reinfection,” to expel them all to Barbary, regardless of their fate? These questions were given careful consideration by the clerics, theologians, and royal confessors from whom Philip sought guidance on this issue. In the spring of 1610, a council of theologians in Madrid concluded that Morisco children below the age of seven should not be expelled except for those who were already “so perverted in their sect” that their souls could not be saved. The council nevertheless reminded Philip that this outcome would be tantamount to a death sentence and that such an outcome “would not be in conformity with the holy zeal of Your Majesty.” Instead, they proposed that all the Morisquillos be given to Christian families who would bring them up as good Catholics and “make use of them afterward as servants” to pay for their upkeep and education. In March of that year, the Council of State proposed that the Morisquillos be pressed into the service of Castilian “prelates and gentlemen” and recommended that boys and girls be separated in order to prevent them from “marrying and multiplying”—a prospect that often preoccupied Spanish clerics and statesmen during these discussions. The council’s endorsement of slavery was not seen as appropriate by the king, but Philip himself often appeared unable to make up his own mind about the Morisquillos. The following month, he declared instead that Morisco children would be bought up and educated by Christians until they had reached the age of twelve, after which time they would serve their adopted families for an undetermined number of years “in compensation for the work and cost involved in bringing them up and educating them.”
The difference between this form of domestic servitude and slavery was not entirely clear, yet barely a month later, Philip reversed his decision and announced his intention to expel all Morisco children over the age of seven from Valencia. But these orders do not appear to have been executed. In August, Archbishop Ribera ordered the rebaptism of all Morisco children in Valencia, regardless of their age, in order to resolve any residual doubts over the validity of their original baptisms. Ribera was widely criticized for what was seen as a breach of Catholic doctrine, but these rebaptisms were not necessarily intended to incorporate the Moriscos into Christian society. Some Christians appeared to have entertained what Jaime Bleda called the “simple hope” that these baptized children would die afterward—an outcome that would have allowed the Church to save their souls and eliminate any threat that these children might have posed in the future. Bleda himself was unconcerned about the spiritual salvation or physical survival of these children and advocated sending all of them to Barbary regardless of whether they lived or died.
Whether or not Ribera shared the “simple hope” that these children would not survive, he was certainly reluctant to grant even rebaptized Morisco children the same status as Christians. In November, he proposed that Morisco children be “sold into slavery at moderate prices.” To ensure that they did not become “highway robbers and prostitutes” or run afoul of the Inquisition, Ribera recommended that their masters “correct them, whip them, and shackle them, to punish them, as well as love them and teach them useful skills.” Ribera also saw enslavement as a means of preventing these children from marrying and thereby ensuring that “the propagation of this evil breed in these realms will cease.”
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We do not know whether these proposals were enacted, and the fate of the Morisquillos remains one of the mysteries of the expulsion. In the end, there was probably no single coherent policy. Some were undoubtedly hustled onto ships and sent to an uncertain fate. Some were enslaved or died in the care of the authorities before their fate was decided. Others, perhaps the majority, were brought up by Christian families and forgot, or never even remembered, their banished parents and the impurities in their blood that had once inspired anxiety and disgust among theologians and statesmen.
The confusion surrounding the Morisquillos was another indication of the gulf between the abstract vision of religious purity pursued by Philip and his officials on the one hand, and the complexities and practical difficulties in realizing this objective on the other. By 1613, the expulsion had lost much of its original dynamism, and its administrative machinery had been drastically reduced. Though Salazar continued his attempts to root out Moriscos who had remained in the country or returned, some of Philip’s counselors were now anxious for some kind of closure and suspected that Salazar was dragging out the expulsion process to enhance his personal power.
The last large-scale deportations took place in Murcia, where many Moriscos had gained a reprieve as a result of positive testimonies from the local authorities. The bulk of the Morisco population was concentrated in a cluster of villages in the lush Ricote Valley on the River Segura, which had been given by the Crown to the powerful Military Order of Santiago. Many of these Murcian Moriscos had served as scouts in the armies of Philip II during the War of the Alpujarras, and their proven loyalty to the state and their powerful protectors may explain why they were not removed during the early phase of the expulsion. Nevertheless their presence had not been forgotten. In 1612 the Council of State sent a priest named Juan de Pereda to carry out a full investigation of the remaining Moriscos in Murcia. In a detailed twenty-three-page report based on interviews with some fifty local clerics, Father Pereda wrote that “common opinion” held the “Old Moriscos” of Murcia to be “good Christians and faithful vassals” who complied with all their Catholic obligations.
14
Not only did these Moriscos voluntarily receive the sacraments, Pereda reported, but they also made charitable donations to local monasteries, they engaged in “positive acts against the sect of Muhammad,” and with the exception of a few “old women,” they no longer spoke or remembered Arabic.
14
Not only did these Moriscos voluntarily receive the sacraments, Pereda reported, but they also made charitable donations to local monasteries, they engaged in “positive acts against the sect of Muhammad,” and with the exception of a few “old women,” they no longer spoke or remembered Arabic.
Pereda found striking evidence of their devotion to Christianity in the villages of the Ricote Valley, where Moriscos had evolved their own penitent processions and funeral rites, in which “shoeless maidens dressed in white” carried heavy crosses and “covered their faces in mourning.” The priest was particularly impressed by the nocturnal processions in these villages, where Morisca women attended religious vigils in local churches carrying crosses, religious images, and candles and wept as their menfolk flagellated themselves and subjected their flesh to “disciplines of blood.”
Pereda’s report appeared to bear out previous testimonies of a fully assimilated Morisco population whose Christianity was beyond reproach. Yet, as on previous occasions, the government in Madrid refused to accept conclusions that defied its own assumptions. The more intransigent advocates of absolute purity claimed that Pereda was the victim of an elaborate deception by the Murcian Moriscos and their Christian protectors and urged the king to expel them. The fate of the Moriscos in Murcia was debated on numerous occasions at the highest level, and in the spring of 1613, the Council of State voted to expel all the remaining Moriscos in Murcia, with the deciding vote cast by Lerma’s hard-line uncle, Bernardo de Sandoval. Philip accepted these recommendations, and in October, Salazar was summoned to the royal palace at Aranjuez and presented by the king with the signed edict of expulsion. In it the king claimed to have received “very true and certain information,” which proved that the Moriscos of Murcia “proceed with great scandal in everything” and that he had therefore resolved to expel them all.
These accusations directly contradicted everything in Pereda’s report, and the king offered no new evidence to support them. But evidence was never a significant factor in the king’s attitude toward the Moriscos. Aloof in his gilded world of banquets, palaces, and country retreats, flattered and fawned upon by his courtiers and his favorite, Philip never saw the tens of thousands of men and women who left Spain on his orders, and he was unwilling to consider any version of Morisco Spain that contradicted what he already believed.
On December 18, Salazar entered the Ricote Valley with some 280 soldiers from the Lombardy
tercio
and gave the Moriscos ten days to sell their property and leave. In January 1614, as many as seven thousand Moriscos were marched down to the coast, where the ships were waiting to transport them to North Africa. Some Morisca women managed to avoid expulsion by marrying Old Christians or entering convents; other Moriscos slipped across the border into Valencia and later managed to return. With this dismal and gratuitous exodus, the expulsion had reached its last act. On January 25, Salazar informed the king that “the expulsion of the Moriscos from the Ricote Valley and the kingdom of Murcia has been done as Your Majesty commanded and with this there is nowhere in the whole of Spain where anyone with the name of Morisco remains.” On February 20, in a memorandum to the king that was more weary than triumphant, the Council of State called for a formal halt to a process that its members clearly believed had outstayed its original purpose:
tercio
and gave the Moriscos ten days to sell their property and leave. In January 1614, as many as seven thousand Moriscos were marched down to the coast, where the ships were waiting to transport them to North Africa. Some Morisca women managed to avoid expulsion by marrying Old Christians or entering convents; other Moriscos slipped across the border into Valencia and later managed to return. With this dismal and gratuitous exodus, the expulsion had reached its last act. On January 25, Salazar informed the king that “the expulsion of the Moriscos from the Ricote Valley and the kingdom of Murcia has been done as Your Majesty commanded and with this there is nowhere in the whole of Spain where anyone with the name of Morisco remains.” On February 20, in a memorandum to the king that was more weary than triumphant, the Council of State called for a formal halt to a process that its members clearly believed had outstayed its original purpose:
The council has discussed the great importance to the service of God and Your Majesty that the investigations and jurisdictions relating to the subject of the expulsion should now cease and be taken as concluded. Our efforts should be limited only to preventing those who have left from coming back and punishing those who have done so by means of the ordinary justices.... The Count of Salazar should be ordered to stay his hand in this business and the justices should not admit any further Morisco investigations except those connected with those who have returned.... From today onward those who have not left Spain, even if they have court cases pending, should not be molested nor even spoken about, because if this business is not stopped, it will never end, nor will the injuries and inconveniences that would result from it.
15
It was not until August of that year that Philip was ready to announce publicly that “an end had been reached after expelling all the Moriscos” in a contradictory edict that also ordered that “All Moriscos who have not left or have returned must leave under pain of slavery in the galleys and confiscation of goods.”
16
These instructions suggested that an end had not been reached after all, but Philip and his officials had clearly gone far enough. Only Salazar was reluctant to abandon his bureaucratic fiefdom. Well into 1615, he continued to press the king to allow him to conduct further investigations into the Moriscos who remained in the country, but these requests were not heeded. August 1614 marked the official termination of an expulsion process that had finally exhausted the patience of its progenitors. In less than five years, Spain’s rulers had sent some three hundred thousand men, women, and children to exile or death and eliminated the last traces of the Moorish civilization that had begun nearly a thousand years before, when the armies of Tariq Ibn Ziyad had first come ashore at Gibraltar.
16
These instructions suggested that an end had not been reached after all, but Philip and his officials had clearly gone far enough. Only Salazar was reluctant to abandon his bureaucratic fiefdom. Well into 1615, he continued to press the king to allow him to conduct further investigations into the Moriscos who remained in the country, but these requests were not heeded. August 1614 marked the official termination of an expulsion process that had finally exhausted the patience of its progenitors. In less than five years, Spain’s rulers had sent some three hundred thousand men, women, and children to exile or death and eliminated the last traces of the Moorish civilization that had begun nearly a thousand years before, when the armies of Tariq Ibn Ziyad had first come ashore at Gibraltar.
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The Reckoning
Long before the expulsion was over, its supporters had begun a sustained attempt to proclaim it as a momentous achievement to the Spanish population and the wider world. From the point of view of the Hapsburg court, publicity was crucial to the honor and “reputation” that it hoped to obtain from the expulsion. In 1610, Philip commissioned a series of narrative paintings from Valencian artists depicting key events from the expulsion, which were copied and presented as gifts to the leading officials responsible. Between 1611 and 1618, twenty-three books and manuscripts were published on the expulsion, from prose chronicles and justifications to anonymous poetic narratives, in addition to a plethora of anonymous broadsheets and popular verses known as
literatura de cordel
, “string literature,” so called because these cheaply printed pamphlets were displayed on strings in sellers’ booths at fairs and on street corners. Many of the more imposing books were written with the sponsorship of powerful individuals in the court and government, such as Jaime Bleda’s massive
Crónica de los moros de españa
(Chronicle of the Moors of Spain, 1618), which contained an unctuous dedication to Lerma, praising the duke for the greatness of his blood, for his “love of God and religious ardor in the destruction of the Mohammedan sect,” and for his role in encouraging the king to undertake “great enterprises against the Moors.”
literatura de cordel
, “string literature,” so called because these cheaply printed pamphlets were displayed on strings in sellers’ booths at fairs and on street corners. Many of the more imposing books were written with the sponsorship of powerful individuals in the court and government, such as Jaime Bleda’s massive
Crónica de los moros de españa
(Chronicle of the Moors of Spain, 1618), which contained an unctuous dedication to Lerma, praising the duke for the greatness of his blood, for his “love of God and religious ardor in the destruction of the Mohammedan sect,” and for his role in encouraging the king to undertake “great enterprises against the Moors.”
BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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