Parallel Histories

Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain

James S. Amelang

• Editorial: LSU Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780807154120
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia europea

The distinct religious culture of early modern Spain -- characterized by religious unity at a time when fierce civil wars between Catholics and Protestants fractured northern Europe -- is further understood through examining the expulsion of the Jews and suspected Muslims. While these two groups had previously lived peaceably, if sometimes uneasily, with their Christian neighbors throughout much of the medieval era, the expulsions brought a new intensity to Spanish Christian perceptions of both the moriscos (converts from Islam) and the judeoconversos (converts from Judaism). In Parallel Histories, James S. Amelang reconstructs the compelling struggle of converts to coexist with a Christian majority that suspected them of secretly adhering to their ancestral faiths and destroying national religious unity in the process.
Discussing first Muslims and then Jews in turn, Amelang explores not only the expulsions themselves but also religious beliefs and practices, social and professional characteristics, the construction of collective and individual identities, cultural creativity, and, finally, the difficulties of maintaining orthodox rites and tenets under conditions of persecution. Despite the oppression these two groups experienced, the descendants of the judeoconversos would ultimately be assimilated into the mainstream, unlike their morisco counterparts, who were exiled in 1609.
Amelang masterfully presents a complex narrative that not only gives voice to religious minorities in early modern Spain but also focuses on one of the greatest divergences in the history of European Christianity.

I

THE MORISCOS
AND THE END OF
MUSLIM SPAIN

CHAPTER 1

THE DECLINE
OF COEXISTENCE

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN the Catholic majority and the Islamic or formerly Islamic minority in early modern Spain ran a lengthy gamut that ranged from episodes of extreme hostility and violence to an impressive degree of coexistence. This was as true of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as it was of the Middle Ages, during most of which Islam was the religion of the majority of Spaniards.

Not surprisingly, much of this history has been shrouded in myth. For centuries, the medieval era was uniformly depicted—and by many celebrated—as a “Reconquest,” an ongoing crusade during which the various Christian powers drove southward in an unceasing effort to expel the Muslims who had conquered the Iberian peninsula from the Visigoths beginning in 711. More recently a countermyth has appeared. It extols medieval Iberia as a paragon of convivencia, the one place in Europe where the three religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism thrived together amid peace and prosperity. As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle and is more complex than either of these myths would allow for. The war logic of crusading was only one of the ways in which Christians dealt with Muslims—and vice versa—in medieval Iberia. Much more common over the long run was some sort of coexistence. It was wary and watchful, to be sure. It was also for the most part pacific, with a wide range of economic, social, and cultural interactions holding it in place. While it would be stretching the truth to refer to this coexistence as the fruit of a deliberate policy of mutual toleration, elements of such an attitude occasionally made their presence felt. Public recognition of the right of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to practice their religion even when their members were conquered minorities subject to disabilities and discriminations was certainly forthcoming. And it was precisely such recognition that distinguished the Middle Ages from what was to come.

This limited but very real policy of accommodation came to an end following the defeat in 1492 of the last remaining Muslim power in the peninsula, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. Forced conversions began in the newly conquered territory in 1500–1501. They extended to the rest of Andalusia and the kingdom of Castile in 1502, Navarre in 1515–16, Valencia in the early 1520s, and the rest of the crown of Aragon in 1525–26. While at first official policy closed an eye to the continued use of the Arabic language and a variety of traditional customs, from 1526 onward there was no formal toleration of Islam anywhere within the Spanish kingdoms. By the mid-sixteenth century, escalating pressure on the moriscos—the term by which converts from Islam were known—to relinquish their distinctive language, dress, festivities, and other cultural practices led to the second act of this tragedy, open revolt in Granada. The so-called War of Granada, a desperate and merciless conflict waged from 1568 to 1571 in the Alpujarra mountains south of the city, ended in defeat for the moriscos. Thereafter followed their collective exile from the kingdom of Granada beginning in 1569. The finale was the expulsion of the entire morisco population of Spain, ordered by King Philip III beginning in 1609. This drastic measure brought the so-called morisco problem to a definitive end.

When reconstructing this history one needs to avoid reading earlier phases in light of the traumatic finish. While official prejudice against the moriscos was always in evidence, there was no clear long-term state or Church policy toward the converts, nor was there much consistency in legislation and administrative practice. Public handling of these relations evolved in piecemeal fashion, with many of its twists and turns deriving from local initiatives on the part of inquisitors, bishops, lay lords, and others. The interests of these powerful individuals and the groups and institutions they represented did not always coincide. Aristocrats and monarchs alike derived substantial resources from the Muslims: the crown in the form of special taxes—not by accident Muslims were known as the “king’s treasure” during the Middle Ages—and the nobles from the ample supply of docile labor which they extracted from those who depended on them for patronage and protection. This important source of income led aristocrats and even on occasion rulers to obstruct the Inquisition’s campaigns against what it regarded as crypto-Muslim practices. Many bishops and clerical reformers also rejected harsh measures against the moriscos. Their preference for greater missionary and pastoral efforts to effect peaceful acceptance of Christianity among the converts often put them at loggerheads with the hard-liners in their own camp. Despite its dramatic end, the history of the moriscos meandered along, among false starts, lost opportunities, and puzzling mistakes of perception and policy. Endowed with more than its share of enigmas, it needs to be examined with care.

CHAPTER 2

RISE AND FALL OF
THE MORISCOS

A POLITICAL HISTORY

AS THE NORTHERN kingdoms gradually extended their control over the peninsula, particularly beginning in the eleventh century following the collapse of the formidable Caliphate of Cordoba, ever-greater numbers of Muslims fell under direct Christian rule. The victors allowed the continued practice of Islam and officially recognized their Muslim subjects as mudéjares (from the Arabic mudajjan, “permitted to remain”). Worship tended to be more private than public—discretion was advisable at all times. The faithful gathered in small centers and households, since the larger and more prominent mosques had been converted to use as churches. Still, Muslims were allowed to go about their spiritual business, and their communities included ritual butchers, clerics (known in Spanish as alfaquíes), religious schools, and the other personnel and institutions of collective life under their creed.

With the conquest of Granada in 1492 the balance between Christianity and Islam shifted irrevocably to the side of the victors. Seen in retrospect, it was only a matter of time before a militarily triumphant Christianity would put an end to the Islamic spiritual autonomy that it had grudgingly conceded in the past. Yet the conversion of mudéjares into moriscos was not a foregone conclusion, nor was the story a straightforward one. Medieval coexistence had never ruled out the exertion of pressure, much less the exercise of violence, against religious minorities. In fact the Muslims had a long history of paying the price for many of the tensions and conflicts within the society in which they reluctantly found themselves. Thus even before the last of the Granada wars Muslims in more settled areas such as Valencia had been involved in disputes over, for example, boundaries and jurisdictions, irrigation rights, and other bones of contention between towns and rural nobles. While on occasion, as in the city of Valencia in 1455, these conflicts led to the use of force against the Islamic minority, there was little here that departed from medieval patterns of coexistence—a coexistence that by its very nature included sporadic acts of violence among members of different religious groups. The fall of Granada changed not so much the nature of this conflict, as the terms in which it was cast. Clashes for whatever reasons between adherents of different religions soon became contained within a single faith, in the form of disputes over the means and ends of conversion. For after 1492 Queen Isabel and, to a lesser extent, King Ferdinand did not hesitate to favor one among the many available precedents from the Middle Ages: forced baptism of their Muslim subjects. And in the Inquisition, which they had already created in 1480, they now had at their disposal an instrument ready to control and punish backsliders among the newly made Christians.

When the Nasrid rulers of Granada finally surrendered to the besieging Christians in January 1492, they and their subjects were granted liberal terms. The treaty known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe explicitly protected the Muslims’ right to practice their religion without hindrance from the Christian authorities. Such generosity on the part of the victors did not last long. Isabel had named as the first archbishop her own confessor, the Hieronymite friar Hernando de Talavera. Talavera, a descendant of converted Jews, was one of the most famous and respected churchmen in Castile. Renowned for his mystic asceticism, he advocated peaceful evangelizing of the Muslim population within his vast archdiocese. In fact, Talavera seems to have bent over backward to respect the sensibilities of his new flock; generations later moriscos still remembered him warmly for his rejection of violent approaches to Christianization. Such a flexible spirit was not unique, and Talavera’s gradualist approach found other backers, most notably Iñigo Hurtado de Mendoza, count of Tendilla and the first captain-general of Granada following the conquest. Their policy of accommodation did not last long, however. Talavera soon ran into trouble of his own with the Inquisition, and even before his death in 1507 Church policy in Granada was decided by the new spiritual leader in the royal court, Fray Diego Jiménez de Cisneros. Cisneros was of a different and much harsher temperament, at least in regard to the Islamic remnant. One of his most notorious acts as royal agent in Granada was to organize the public burning of Muslim books and manuscripts in 1500. Much of the rich cultural as well as spiritual legacy of medieval Andalusia perished in this bonfire. It also inaugurated a new and far less benevolent policy, one that refused to wait patiently for the right moment to usher the Muslims, willing or not, into the Christian fold.

This opportunity was not long in coming. Armed conflict between new and old Christians first broke out in the Albaicín, the heavily populated Muslim quarter of the city on the hill opposite the Alhambra palace, and later spread to the Alpujarra mountains to the south. This “revolt” gave Cisneros the political excuse he needed. Between 1501 and 1502 Isabel presented the Muslims of the kingdom of Granada and then the rest of Castile with a stark choice: convert or leave. While an untold number left Granada for North Africa, most chose to stay. The loyalty to Islam of the small, dispersed, yet locally rooted mudéjar population of Castile had clearly attenuated over time. Centuries of life among their Christian neighbors had led many to resign themselves to what they saw as inevitable. The reasons for conversion of the Granadans differed, but they also reflected a pragmatic wish to avoid the heavy costs of moving overseas. The fragmentary evidence that survives suggests that exile was the option preferred above all by lay and especially clerical elites. The former expected to receive support from their kinsmen and allies elsewhere, while the latter found all professional future in their land of origin closed off forever.

The situation differed somewhat in the territories of the crown of Aragon, even if the winds were blowing in the same direction. In Valencia—which housed the largest concentration of mudéjares after Granada—Muslims lived in larger, more compact, and often isolated communities, usually working as agricultural laborers on the large estates of feudal lords. In the past their dependence on the aristocracy had proved a source of protection. It now meant their undoing. The Christian middle and lower classes had long resented them as competitors who worked for lesser wages, and when they rose up against the crown and nobility during the so-called Germanies or “revolt of the brotherhoods” of 1519–22, they obliged many members of the Islamic communities to convert en masse. Additional pressure for conversion came from millenarians who in the European-wide turmoil of the early 1520s looked to mass baptisms as a means of ushering in a new kingdom of the spirit. As in the later Middle Ages, popular resentment of elite exploitation mixed with intense hopes for spiritual reform. The confluence of socioeconomic and religious radicalism resulted in the violent conversion of most of Valencia’s Muslims. And after the Inquisition ruled that the baptisms were valid, in 1525 Charles V ordered the conversion of all remaining Muslims in the crown of Aragon. Last-ditch resistance in the inland Sierra de Espadán and elsewhere in 1526 only briefly postponed the day of reckoning. By the end of that year Muslim Spain had officially ceased to exist.

The question now was what to do with these cristianos nuevos, or “New Christians.” More specifically, how were they to be brought fully to accept the faith they had not embraced of their own will? While open adherence to Islam was not to be accepted, many royal and ecclesiastical officials realized that patience and time would be needed to make effective Catholics of the newly minted moriscos. At least at the beginning, official policy thus discouraged too much activity by the Inquisition. (Large payments by the moriscos also helped buy time.) Meanwhile the Church and the state promoted the same system of fixed parishes that regular clergy on itinerant missions would soon make the norm in dealing with the Amerindian peoples of the New World. Religious rigorists such as the well-known writer Antonio de Guevara, along with fellow clerics and future bishops such as Gaspar de Avalos, Martín de Ayala, and Pedro de Guerrero stood at the forefront of this policy of energetic but noncoercive persuasion. Guevara in fact traveled far and wide throughout the diocese of Guadix in the eastern reaches of the kingdom of Granada to make sure that his orders for making true Christians of the moriscos were obeyed. Yet in the end, few within the Church showed the same eagerness to devote time and above all resources to the task of evangelization. Disinterest on the part of a lax and corrupt parish clergy whose tithes often wound up in the hands of lay patrons or cathedral chapters was more the order of the day. That, and the unassailable reality of stubborn morisco resistance to assimilation, led crown and Church largely to abandon “popular” evangelization. They focused their attention instead on those remnants of the formerly Islamic elites who had not left Spain for northern Africa.

The Jesuits eventually took the lead in pushing this much less demanding strategy. They established several schools solely for moriscos, including one (the “House of Doctrine”) within the Albaicín itself. This was largely successful on its own terms, as many members of the morisco upper class did indeed effectively absorb Christianity, for reasons that were not entirely spiritual. (Hence the observation by the chronicler Luis de Mármol that the “stain” of lingering commitment to Islam “was found among the common people, while some nobles who knew what was what—de buen entendimiento—came over to the faith, and were willing to become and show themselves to be Christians.”)¹ The strategy was nevertheless widely regarded as a failure, in that it did not produce the miracle of bringing the much more reluctant morisco masses over to the Christian side. Both majority and minority could agree on one thing: that the problem was not just one of theology. It was also a larger battle over deeply ingrained customs and behavior. Nowhere was this more visible than in the uniquely conflictive context of Granada.

The moriscos of Granada stood out from their brethren elsewhere in several crucial respects, first of all in sheer numbers. As late as the 1560s the moriscos made up over half the population of the kingdom; here, at least, it makes no sense to refer to them as a minority. Everywhere else the presence of bygone Muslims and their descendants was less pronounced, ranging from over 30 percent of the total population in Valencia and 20 percent in the kingdom of Aragon to the much more negligible contingent in Castile proper. A second crucial difference had to do with land tenure and property structures. In Granada, many if not most moriscos owned and worked their own land, as a sort of independent yeomanry. This contrasted sharply with conditions in Aragon and especially Valencia. There the moriscos constituted for the most part a rural proletariat, a heavily exploited contingent of landless laborers (along with a few artisans) who worked for large, aristocratic landowners. Finally, since Granada was the part of the former Al-Andalus most recently incorporated into Christendom, its moriscos had the most recent experience, and thus freshest memories, of Islamic beliefs and practices. This was particularly true of the converts who lived in the mountain villages between the city of Granada and the coast. There difficulty of access permitted an isolation—and by extension an autonomy—that was much harder to preserve under the watchful eyes of urban Christians.

The difference between country and city would turn out to be a deciding factor in the most dramatic confrontation between moriscos and Old Christians in Spanish history. The armed revolt that began in 1568 was the most important domestic upheaval to occur within the Iberian peninsula between the Comunero rebellion of the early 1520s and the Catalan and Portuguese revolts of 1640. It was also, in terms of sheer ferocity, perhaps the most devastating war waged on Spanish soil between the Middle Ages and the Napoleonic invasion of 1808. The conflict itself was deeply rooted in the fate of postconquest Granada as a colonial society, an inland frontier in which a Christian minority lived in continual fear and mistrust of a majority whose subordination could never be taken for granted. The medium-term causes of the war derived from shifts in public policy toward the Christianization of the moriscos. Most royal and Church officials assumed that effective religious assimilation of the ex-Muslims would not happen until they cast aside a host of customs inherited from their Islamic past. Thus, beginning as early as 1508, they decreed the destruction of Arabic-language books and texts, and they limited the use of Arabic itself, first in public venues and later in private ones as well. They also forbade the wearing of “Muslim” dress (including veils for women) and ordered the closure of the public baths where, it was feared, the ritual ablutions of Muslim precept continued to take place. The practice of circumcision was prohibited, along with the ritual slaughter of animals and other dietary prescriptions, and even the traditional music and dances which accompanied weddings and other celebrations. In short, the official point of view was clear: religious assimilation was predicated on the elimination of cultural difference. As long as the moriscos looked and acted in ways that departed from those of Old Christians, they would continue to be Muslims.

Such laws proved impossible to enforce. The crown was the first to recognize the utopian quality of this legislation, and it signed secret agreements beginning in 1526 that assured the moriscos—once again, in exchange for a respectable sum of money—breathing space from the attentions of the Inquisition. Yet the laws remained on the books and could be revived at will. This is indeed what happened in the mid-1560s. In the wake of an archdiocesan synod Philip II issued an order on January 1, 1567, that revived the earlier legislation against morisco dress and other customs. Yet cultural repression was merely one side of the story. The naked economic exploitation typical of colonial societies also played its part in driving the moriscos to revolt. Ever since 1492 the newly conquered population had been subjected to heavy taxation. This contrasted visibly with the experience of the Christian settlers, who were lured southward by a wide range of benefits and exemptions. Four fardas or extraordinary tributes were levied on the moriscos, who shared communal responsibility for their payment. At the same time, many individual converts found that their lands were coveted by the Christian pioneers, who used a wide range of tactics, legal and illegal, to force them off their properties. By midcentury the settlers had stepped up their efforts to expropriate morisco lands. In this they were seconded by willing allies in the Chancillería, the court of appeals that functioned as the preeminent legal institution in the south of Spain. The lack of scruples of an especially notorious judge, one Dr. Santiago, led to the confiscation during the 1560s of a growing number of properties of moriscos who were unable to show proper written title—according to the standards of Christian society, that is—to the lands they worked. Simultaneous with the years of economic expropriation, the silk trade—the mainstay of the morisco economy—experienced a disastrous decline, damaged by government measures such as a 1552 ban on exports and a steep increase in taxes in the years that followed. By the mid-1560s, local conditions reached the tipping point.

The revolt began on Christmas Eve, 1568. A group of armed moriscos slipped into Granada and tried to provoke an uprising among their compatriots in the Albaicín. The plot failed, though, and they quickly returned to their strongholds in the Alpujarra mountains. Leadership of the movement fell into the reluctant hands of Hernando de Córdoba, the head of one of the more prestigious of the traditional lineages from old Nasrid Granada. Proclaimed king...