Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  The King's vigorous action against the Catalan authorities is an indication of his deep anxiety about the course of events. As he himself later realized, the action was unwarranted: there was no breath of heresy among the Catalan governing class. But the situation seemed sufficiently dangerous to make action essential. The Protestant peril was growing hourly, and it was growing at moment when the danger from Islam seemed also to be mounting to a climax. For Catalonia was not the only region of Spain where revolt and heresy threatened. On Christmas night of that terrible year 1568 – the year of the danger in Catalonia, of the cutting of the sea-route through the Bay of Biscay, and of the arrest and death of Philip's son and heir, Don Carlos a band of Morisco outlaws led by a certain Fárax Abenfárax broke into the city of Granada, bringing with them the news that the Alpujarras had risen in revolt. Although the rebels failed to seize the city, their incursion signalized the outbreak of rebellion throughout the kingdom of Granada. Spain, which had surrounded itself with such strong defences against the advance of Protestantism, now found itself endangered from within; and the threat came not, as was expected, from the Protestants, but from its old enemies, the Moors.

  5. THE SECOND REBELLION OF THE ALPUJARRAS

  (1568–70) 4

  While the converted Jews had for long been the object of inquisitorial attention, the Holy Office had been a good deal less worried about the converted Moors. This was largely because it despised them. The Moriscos were, by and large, humble men, occupying no positions of importance in the State; and while there was every reason to doubt the sincerity of their conversion, their beliefs no longer seemed likely to lead the faithful astray. On the other hand, there could be no doubt that the Morisco communities in Spain presented a difficult problem, both because they were an unassimilated racial minority, and because they were closely associated with Spain's greatest enemy – the Turk.

  The savage outburst of racial and religious strife in Andalusia between 1568 and 1570 is an indication of the long-standing bitterness that had prevailed in the relationship between the Moors and the Christians of southern Spain, and of the deep resentment of the Moriscos at the treatment they had received. This revolt was, in fact, perfectly predictable, and had indeed been predicted, although the King chose to ignore the warnings he received. It was also a revolt that might have been avoided, if Philip II's own agents had not behaved with such folly. For the rebellion of the Alpujarras, although partially prompted by grievances that had for long been festering, was essentially a response by the Moriscos of Granada to a recent and drastic change for the worse in the conditions under which they lived.

  For half a century after the first revolt of the Alpujarras in 1499 an uneasy balance had been preserved between the Old Christian authorities and the ‘new Christian’ population of Andalusia. Although pragmatics had been issued in 1508 prohibiting Moorish dress and customs, they had not been enforced, and the Moriscos had succeeded in preserving unbroken their links with their Islamic past. Few of them spoke any language but Arabic; they continued to wear their traditional dress, investing much of their wealth, as they always had, in the silks and jewellery worn by their women; they refused to abandon such practices as regular bathing, which the Spaniards regarded as a mere cover for Mohammedan ritual and sexual promiscuity; and they pursued with their customary savagery their family vendettas, although Spanish attempts at repression forced the participants to seek refuge in North Africa or to take to the mountains as outlaws.

  The Spanish civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Andalusia continued to tolerate this state of affairs partly because there seemed to be no alternative, and partly because they were so at loggerheads with each other that combined action was impossible. Indeed, over the years a new balance of power had been evolved in Andalusia, to the very considerable advantage of the Moriscos. Throughout the early sixteenth century there existed a bitter feud over questions of jurisdiction between the audiencia of Granada and the Captaincy-General. The Captaincy-General had come in practice to be a hereditary office in the hands of a branch of the Mendoza family, and was held in turn by the first, second, and third Marquises of Mondéjar. The Mondéjars, in their struggle to maintain their position, had struck up a special relationship with the Moriscos, who found in them their most effective protectors against Church, audiencia, and Inquisition. As a result, the position of the Moriscos had become closely dependent on the ability of the Mondéjars to maintain themselves against an increasingly formidable array of enemies.

  During the 1540s and 1550s, it became increasingly clear that the position of the Mondéjars was being undermined. Don Íñigo López de Mendoza, fourth Count of Tendilla, who had taken over the Captaincy-General in 1543 on the appointment of his father, the second Marquis of Mondéjar, to the viceroyalty of Navarre, found himself beset by enemies both in Andalusia and at Court. He had an influential ally at Court in the secretary Juan Vázquez de Molina, who kept him informed of his enemies' intrigues, and he gained additional support from the appointment of his father to the Presidency of the Council of the Indies in 1546. But in spite of this, his enemies gradually succeeded in reducing his power at Court by building up the position of the second Marquis of los Vélez, the head of the rival house of Fajardo.

  During the 1550s, therefore, the decline in Tendilla's standing at Court left the Moriscos in an increasingly exposed position, while at the same time the whole administrative machine in Granada was so paralysed by the feuds and rivalries between Tendilla's supporters and enemies that it was in imminent danger of grinding to a standstill. But the most unfortunate feature of this breakdown of government was that it came at a moment when the Moriscos found themselves in increasing difficulties, both economic and religious.

  The Morisco economy was based on the silk industry. This was badly hit, first by a ban on the export of woven silks in the 1550s, and then by drastic increases in the taxes on Granada silk after 1561. The decline in the prosperity of the silk industry occurred at a time when a land commission was busy investigating titles and recovering Crown property, and when the Inquisition of Granada was becoming increasingly active. Established at Granada in 1526, the Holy Office had been partially held in check by the Captains-General, who feared that the despoiling of the Moriscos by the Inquisition would make it impossible for them to pay the taxes that in turn were used to pay the troops. But during the 1550s, as the power of the Captain-General weakened, and negotiations between the Moriscos and the Holy Office for a general pardon finally broke down, the Inquisition intensified its activities, and confiscated an increasing amount of Morisco property in the course of ‘reconciling’ suspects.

  In addition to the Inquisition, the unfortunate Moriscos found themselves confronted also by the Andalusian Church. Since the time of Archbishop Talavera, the clergy of Granada, left during long periods to their own devices as the result of episcopal absenteeism and the vacancies in the see, had merely succeeded in alienating the people they were supposed to convert. At once neglectful of their duties and intolerant in their attitude, they represented a major obstacle to the Christianization of the Moors. It was only in 1546 that Granada found, in Pedro Guerrero, a new Archbishop who appreciated that it was impossible to win over the Moriscos until he had first reformed his clergy. When he returned from the Council of Trent in 1564, he prepared plans for the implementing in his diocese of the Tridentine reforms, and summoned a provincial council in 1565 to consider his proposals. But, as might have been expected, the council's reaction was distinctly tepid, and it was only Guerrero's suggestions for a more effective policy towards the Moriscos that won immediate acceptance. Although, as Guerrero himself was the first to realize, any attempt to change the ways of the Moriscos without first changing the ways of the clergy was certain to lead to disaster, the recommendations for the reform of Morisco customs were duly embodied in a pragmatic, which was drawn up on 17 November 1566 and published on 1 January of the following year.

  The pragmatic of 1566–7, which was the
immediate prelude to the rising of the Alpujarras, was not, in fact, a particularly novel document. It tended, rather, to resume earlier decrees which had never been enforced: the prohibition of the use of Arabic, the orders that Moriscos should wear Castilian dress and abandon their traditional habits. This time, however, there was a real danger that the pragmatic would be enforced, and the Moriscos sent a deputation to Madrid to plead for its suspension. Their pleas were supported by the Count of Tendilla, who warned that enforcement of the pragmatic would have disastrous results; but his warning was ignored, and a lawyer called Pedro de Deza was appointed president of the audiencia of Granada to undertake the work of enforcement. The results were exactly as Tendilla had prophesied. The attempts to enforce the pragmatic were the immediate cause of the revolt.

  Why, then, was the pragmatic issued and enforced? Three men were particularly involved: Cardinal Espinosa (President of the Council of Castile), his henchman Pedro de Deza, and the King himself. As far as Deza was concerned, there were obvious advantages in the publication of the pragmatic. It would increase the jurisdiction of the Granada audiencia, at the expense of the Captain-General. This was something that he had every reason to welcome, for both professional and personal reasons. As president of the audiencia, he was heir to the tribunal's traditional vendetta with the Captaincy-General. In addition, there had apparently been a family feud between the Dezas and the Mendozas, stretching back to the time when an ancestor of Pedro de Deza supported Juana la Beltraneja in the civil wars of the fifteenth century. Deza could hardly fail to appreciate that a little trouble in Granada would redound to the discredit of the Count of Tendilla, whose leniency towards the Moriscos was well known.

  Cardinal Espinosa, as President of the Council of Castile, had every reason to feel deeply concerned about the prospect of administrative breakdown in Granada. He distrusted the Count of Tendilla, partly no doubt because Tendilla's easy-going attitude to the Moriscos conflicted with his own rigorously orthodox views; and he had for some time been carefully placing his own men in the Granada administration in place of those appointed by the Marquis of Mondéjar, his predecessor as President of the Council, and the Count of Tendilla's father. The problem, in his eyes, was both religious and administrative, and the removal of Tendilla and the subordination of the Captaincy-General to the audiencia seemed the best way of solving it. He presumably succeeded in impressing this view on the King, over whom he exercised much influence at this time. The King was also moved by considerations of political and military security. The existence of numerous outlaws in the Alpujarras, the frequency of corsair raids, and, above all, the growing danger from the Turkish fleet in the western Mediterranean, made Granada particularly vulnerable. There was good reason to fear a Morisco rising in conjunction with a Turkish attack. Indeed, three Morisco spies arrested in 1565 had revealed a plot for the seizure of the Granada coast in the event of a Turkish success in the siege of Malta. Unless the situation was brought under control, therefore, Granada could easily become another battlefield in the war with the Turk; the Reconquista would be undone; and the conflict would spread to the heart of Castile.

  The publication of the pragmatic hardly seems in retrospect to have been the best method of preventing these disasters, but the grim picture in Philip's mind of a triumphant Islam raising the crescent once again on Spanish soil was by no means entirely fanciful in the circumstances of 1565 and 1566. The danger seemed very real, and the actual outbreak of the revolt in 1568 (although a surprise in that Philip believed he had successfully forestalled trouble) merely confirmed his forebodings. He was, in fact, more fortunate than he deserved to be, for the Turks unaccountably failed to exploit the Granada rebellion. As it was, the rising proved extremely difficult to crush, and would have been still more difficult if the Moriscos had succeeded in co-ordinating their plans and seizing the city of Granada. It could hardly have occurred at a more unfavourable moment for Philip. Andalusia and Castile had been drained of men by the levies for Alba's army, and recruits had to be brought from as far away as Catalonia. In addition, the terrain was ill suited to a swift campaign. The Count of Tendilla, third Marquis of Mondéjar since his father's death in 1566, knew the country well, and scored some brilliant successes in the opening months of the war. But, as so often happened, Philip's instinctive suspicion of the successful could not for long be held in check. Mondéjar was first ordered to share his command with his rival, the Marquis of los Vélez, and then to hand it over to the King's half-brother, Don John of Austria. The intrigues of Mondéjar's enemies, which had played so large a part in the origins of the revolt, therefore contributed also to the delay and expense incurred in its suppression, and it was not until the autumn of 1570 that the rising was finally crushed.

  The revolt was over, but the problem remained. Philip chose to solve it in a manner that was logical but drastic. Since it was obviously dangerous to leave a defeated and sullen population heavily concentrated in one region of the peninsula, he ordered the dispersion of the Granada Moriscos throughout Castile. Considerable numbers of Moriscos did, in fact, contrive to remain in Andalusia – their numbers are estimated at anything from 60,000 to 150,000 – but much greater numbers were now let loose on the towns and villages of Castile, while 50,000 settlers were brought from Galicia, Asturias, and León to fill the gap left by their departure. In this way, the long-standing danger from Granada was at last removed, but only at the cost of creating a new, and even more complex, Morisco problem for succeeding generations.

  6. THE FAITH MILITANT AND THE FAITH TRIUMPHANT

  The revolt of Granada was suppressed none too soon. The Turkish fleet was out cruising again in the Mediterranean, and at one moment during the preparations in 1570 and 1571 for a Holy League between Spain, Venice, and the Papacy, the situation looked so menacing that Philip actually ordered the evacuation of the Balearic Islands. This remarkable order, which elicited the most lively protests from the city of Barcelona, was not in the end carried out, either because its execution was impossible or else because it had ceased to be necessary. The fleet of the Holy League was finally assembled at Messina in September 1571 under the command of Don John of Austria, fresh from his triumph in Granada; and, sailing into the Greek seas, it routed the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto on 7 October. Not only the Balearics but the entire western Mediterranean were safe from Islam at last.

  The spectacular victory of the Christian forces at Lepanto in 1571 was to epitomize for contemporaries all that was most glorious in the crusade against Islam. It was an eternal source of pride to those who, like Miguel de Cervantes, had fought in the battle and could show the scar of their wounds, and of grateful wonder to the millions who saw in it a divine deliverance of Christendom from the power of the oppressor. Don John himself appeared as the resplendent image of the crusading hero, a man who had wrought great things in the Lord. The trophies of battle were proudly displayed, and the victory was commemorated in pictures, medals, and tapestries. But, in fact, the battle of Lepanto proved a curiously deceptive triumph, and the attempt to follow it up was peculiarly unsuccesful. Although Don John captured Tunis in 1573, it was lost again in the following year, and the Ottoman–Spanish struggle died away in stalemate.

  The reasons for the strange anti-climax of the post-Lepanto years are partly to be found in the very nature of the Spanish victory. Stirred to their depths by the revolt of the Moriscos, and temporarily relieved by the apparent success of the Duke of Alba in repressing the Dutch, the Spaniards had for the first time committed their full strength to the Mediterranean struggle. This brought them victory at Lepanto; but an attack on this scale was likely by its very nature to elicit from the Turks a response on a similar scale. After Lepanto, the Ottoman Empire gradually mounted its counter-offensive, and this in turn demanded further large-scale preparations from Spain. Already by 1572 it was becoming questionable whether Spain could afford an all-out struggle in the Mediterranean, for on 1 April of that year the Dutch Sea Beggars had captured the port o
f Brill, and it became clear that the revolt of the Netherlands was very far from crushed.

  There were obvious advantages to Spain, therefore, in disengaging in the Mediterranean. Fortunately, the Turks also had preoccupations of their own, and this made it possible to reach a tacit understanding. Slowly the two great empires, locked in combat for half a century, disengaged their forces; the Turks to deploy them eastwards against their Persian enemies, the Spaniards westwards towards the new Atlantic battlefield. The danger from Islam, which had dominated Spanish life for so long, was at last receding; and Spain became free in the 1570s and 1580s to concentrate its attention on the increasingly serious threat presented by the Protestant powers of the north.

  At least the country was by now spiritually prepared for this new, and perhaps more difficult, conflict. All religious deviation within Spain had been successfully stifled. The frontiers had been closed against the indiscriminate entry of foreign ideas. Indeed, it was now possible to allow a certain relaxation. Under Cardinal Quiroga, who became Inquisitor-General in 1573 and replaced Archbishop Carranza as Archbishop of Toledo in 1577, both Church and Inquisition appear to have assumed a more moderate tone. Quiroga ordered the acquittal of Luis de León, who had been arrested by the Valladolid Inquisition in 1572, and he extended his protection to an important group of scholars – Arias Montano, Francisco Sánchez el Brocense, Francisco de Salinas – who had passed through difficult times in their attempts to introduce the methods of modern scholarship into Spanish intellectual life. It was Quiroga's Inquisition which allowed acceptance of the Copernican revolution in Spain – an acceptance so complete that Copernicus's work was recommended for study at Salamanca from 1594.