Blood and Faith

by Matthew Carr

  6 Las Casas, Brevísima relación, p. 68.

  7 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, p. 153.

  8 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada (folios 32–36R), extract in García Arenal, Los moriscos, pp. 227–35.

  9 Cited in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, p. 95–96.

  10 Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable expulsión, folio 158.

  11 Verdú, Engaños y desengaños, book 3, p. 137.

  12 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, p. 170.

  13 Report of Cortes of Castile, September 13, 1607, in García Arenal, Los moriscos, p. 220.

  14 Cited in Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, p. 344.

  15 See, for example, the studies of Morisco Seville in Pike, Aristocrats and Traders, pp. 154–70. See also Casey, “Moriscos,” pp. 19–41.

  16 Bleda, Crónica, p. 896.

  17 Lope de Obregón, Confutación del Alcoran y secta Mahometana (1555), cited in Bunes Ibarra, La imagen de los musulmanes, p. 236.

  18 Quoted in Wilson, Pirate Utopias, p. 161. As Wilson notes, the same qualities that some European travelers—and captives—found offensive were also extremely attractive to others, so much so that they sometimes preferred to remain in North Africa and “turn Turke” than return to Europe.

  19 Cited in Bunes Ibarra, La imagen de los musulmanes, p. 239. Haedo’s treatise was largely intended to highlight the plight of Christian captives in Algiers, a city that he himself had probably never visited. It is also doubtful that he actually wrote the book himself. See Garcés, Cervantes in Algiers, pp. 33–34.

  20 Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid, Inquisición, legajo 1953, cited in Barrios Aguilera, Granada morisca, p. 243.

  21 The writings of the “Exile of Tunis” were first unearthed in Spanish archives by the literary scholar López-Baralt, who published extracts under the title Un Kama Sutra español.

  22 Francisco de Quevedo, Premáticas de aranceles generales, cited in Bunes Ibarra, Los moriscos, p. 19.

  23 Quevedo, The Swindler, p. 107. Alpert translates “Morisco” as “half-Moor.”

  24 Cervantes, Exemplary Stories, pp. 295–96.

  25 Historia del Abencerraje y la Hermosa Jarífa, in Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain, vol. 2, p. 129.

  26 Janer, Condición social, p. 98.

  27 Fray Alonso Fernández, Historia de Plasencia, book 3, chap. 25, cited in García Arenal, Los moriscos, p. 68.

  28 For a more complete account of this episode and the complex local politics that shaped its outcome, see Berco, “Revealing the Other,” pp. 135–59.

  29 Cited in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, p. 95.

  30 Miguel José Hagerty, Los libros plúmbeos del Sacromonte (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1980), cited in Woolard, “Bernardo de Aldrete,” p. 45.

  31 Cited in Harvey, Muslims in Spain, p. 278.

  32 For a well-researched account of the enigmatic Alonso del Castillo’s checkered career that goes into some detail about Miguel de Luna as well, see Cabanelas Rodríguez, El morisco granadino.

  Chapter 16. Toward Expulsion

  1 Cited in Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, p. 193. By all accounts, Hornachos was an exceptional example of Morisco insubordination, whose population were not only defiantly and openly Muslim, but generally indifferent to the authority of the state. Its collective ethos was summed up by one local resident who told a local priest, “Father, stay in your monastery and don’t come out to preach, because we’re absolutely sick of it. We don’t need priests, infirmaries, or cures.” Ibid., p. 93.

  2 AGS, Cámara de Castilla, legajo 2196, Bishop of Badajoz report on Moriscos, October 28, 1589.

  3 Alonso Gutiérrez, report on the Morisco question, September 6, 1588, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 1, pp. 634–38.

  4 Lisbon Junta recommendations for the conversion of the Moriscos, December 4, 1581, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 1, pp. 291–94.

  5 Full text of Reinoso’s recommendations, ibid., pp. 595–692.

  6 Cited in Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, p. 100.

  7 Ibid., p. 105.

  8 Ibid., p. 110.

  9 Ibid., p. 118.

  10 Bleda, Crónica, p. 938.

  11 From Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State, cited in Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, p. 103.

  12 Doctor Estevan, Bishop of Orihuela to King Philip II, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 1, pp. 638–56.

  13 Martín González de Cellorigo Oquendo, “Memorandum to the King on the Homicides, Offenses and Irreverences Against the Christian Religion, Committed by the Moriscos,” in Zayas, Los moriscos, pp. 387–407.

  14 Letter from Pedro de Franquesa e Esteve to King Philip II, February 7, 1598, in de Zayas, Los moriscos, pp. 353–60. Most of de Zayas’s book consists of an important series of documents pertaining to the Moriscos in the author’s private possession, from a collection of manuscripts brought back from Spain during the Peninsular War by a British aristocrat, known as the Holland collection.

  15 Council of State memorandum, February 2, 1599, in de Zayas, Los moriscos, pp. 369–70.

  16 Full text of Martín de Salvatierra paper in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 1, pp. 612–34.

  17 Cited in López-Baralt, “Legacy of Islam,” p. 551.

  18 Juan Bautista Pérez, Bishop of Segorbe to King Philip II, January 10, 1597, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 1, p. 364.

  19 Braudel, Mediterranean, p. 797.

  20 Francisco Vendramino, “Relación de viaje 1595,” in García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros, p. 1489.

  21 For these and other similar examples, see Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians.

  Chapter 17. “An Imminent Danger”: 1598–1609

  1 Cited in Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, p. 161.

  2 Cited in Casey, Kingdom of Valencia, p. 213.

  3 Fernando Niño de Guevara to King Philip III, August 11, 1599, in Zayas, Los moriscos, p. 473.

  4 Cited in Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, p. 128.

  5 Ibid., p. 134.

  6 Text of Bleda’s summary in Zayas, Los moriscos, pp. 411–65.

  7 Gómez Davila y Toledo, Discursos, cited in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 2, p. 64.

  8 AGS, Estado, legajo 212, extract, ibid., pp. 91–92.

  9 Full text of Figueroa’s memorandum, ibid., pp. 431–43.

  10 Joseph Creswell, undated memoir, cited in Hillgarth, Mirror of Spain, p. 208.

  11 Valencia, Tratado acerca.

  12 Cited in Danvila y Collado, La expulsion, p. 240.

  13 Janer, Condición social, p. 276.

  14 Cited in Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, p. 170.

  15 Council of State minutes, January 30, 1608, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos , vol. 2, pp. 457–74.

  16 AGS, Estado 209, September 23, 1608.

  17 Sobrino exchanged letters with Feliciano de Figueroa, bishop of Segorbe, who shared his perspective, even going so far as to declare that “the King Our Lord cannot in good conscience order baptized Moriscos to be expelled from Spain” and that it was “Catholic and obligatory to conserve the religion in them.” Figueroa to Sobrino, March 10, 1609, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 2, p. 505.

  18 AGS, Estado, legajo 218, Council of State consulta, April 4, 1609.

  19 AGS, Estado, legajo 218, letter from Don Pedro de Toledo to Andrés Prada, June 7, 1609.

  20 “Carta de D. Manuel Ponce de León a Su Majestad,” August 28, 1609, in García Arenal, Los moriscos, pp. 237–46.

  21 Ribera to Andrés de Prada, August 23, 1609, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos , vol. 2, p. 167.

  22 Ribera to Lerma, August 30, 1609, ibid., pp. 169–70.

  Chapter 18. The “Agreeable Holocaust”

  1 A full text of the expulsion edict can be found in García Arenal, Los moriscos, pp. 249–55.

  2 The king and his ministers did consider the expulsion of Morisca women married
to Old Christians as well, but rejected this option during the final pre-expulsion Council of State meeting held on September 15 in King Philip III’s presence. At the meeting, ministers expressed fears that expelled Morisca wives might be tempted to adultery in Barbary and give birth to “adulterous children and Moors.” See Council of State minutes in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 2, pp. 544–48.

  3 See “Memorandum on the Expulsion and the Measures That Should Be Put into Practice to Ameliorate the Ruin of the Kingdom,” September 1609, in García Arenal, Los moriscos, pp. 248–50. Though Sobrino described the king’s decision as an “inevitable” product of “reason of state,” and celebrated the coming removal of “such an insufferable and ugly abomination,” he remained painfully aware of the “ruin and desolation” that it was likely to bring to Valencia.

  4 For Ribera’s sermon, see Márquez Villanueva, El problema morisco, pp. 295–318.

  5 Cabrera de Córdoba, December 20, 1609, in Relaciones. A veteran soldier, courtier, and author, Cabrera de Córdoba wrote a history of Philip II’s reign and his indispensable journal of Philip III’s court is filled with telling glimpses of the expulsion from the perspective of the government in Madrid.

  6 Letter from Ribera to Lerma, October 7, 1609, in Janer, Condición social, pp. 304–5. Ribera’s concern for Valencia’s impoverished Christians may not have been driven exclusively by compassion—or resentment of the Moriscos—but also by guilt, since he was undoubtedly aware that he was as responsible as anyone for their losses.

  7 AGS, Estado, legajo 217, letter from Duke of Gandía to King Philip III, October 1, 1609.

  8 In Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 2, pp. 199–200.

  9 “Brief Relation of the Expulsion from Valencia,” in Lea, Moriscos of Spain, pp. 439–44.

  10 Cited in Epalza, “Caracterización del exilio musulman,” p. 220.

  11 Cited in Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, p. 356.

  12 AGS, Estado, legajo 217, Caracena to King Philip III, October 3, 1609.

  13 Cabrera de Córdoba, October 24, 1609, in Relaciones, p. 385.

  14 “Statistics of Moriscos Embarked from the Grau of Valencia,” October 23, 1609, in Lapeyre, Géographie, doc. 3.

  15 AGS, Estado, legajo 217, Caracena to King Philip III, December 9, 1609.

  16 This horrendous episode is related in Fonseca, Justa expulsion, book 5, chap. 3. Fonseca was in Barcelona when Ribera arrived with his stolen merchandise and described how “all Barcelona came to see and buy the spoils.” Ribera was executed on December 12, 1609.

  17 al-Maqqari, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 392.

  18 Verdú, Engaños y desengaños, p. 144.

  19 AGS, Estado, legajo 217.

  20 Corral y Rojas, Relación, p. 36.

  21 Ibid., p. 38.

  22 Ibid.

  23 AGS, Estado, legajo 217, letter from Juan de Córdoba to Mejía, December 10, 1609.

  24 Ribera to King Philip III, February 10, 1610, in Janer, Condición social, p. 338.

  Chapter 19. Secrecy and Deception

  1 Murcia town council to King Philip III, October 17, 1609, in Janer, Condición social, p. 318.

  2 The town council’s appeal was sent to the Council of State with an accompanying letter from a local Murcian chaplain, who insisted that the Moriscos of Murcia were engaged in seditious contacts with corsairs and warned that “His Majesty will be served in not giving credit to the officials and councilors of this city” ( Janer, Condición social, p. 319). These conflicting claims in themselves obliged the king and his ministers to conduct an investigation or make their own decision as to which one to believe—a dilemma they had not encountered in Valencia.

  3 For text of this edict, see Harvey, Muslims in Spain, pp. 402–4.

  4 AGS, Estado, legajo 2745, Duke of Arcos to King Philip III, February 13, 1610.

  5 AGS, Estado, legajo 220, letter from the Duchess of Cardona, Marquesa of Comares, to King Philip III, January 18, 1610.

  6 AGS, Estado, legajo 220, letter from Don Pedro Vaca de Castro to King Philip III, January 24, 1610.

  7 Cited in Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, p. 189.

  8 Agustín Durán, “On How and Why King Philip III Expelled the Moriscos from Spain,” cited in Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, p. 353.

  9 AGS, Estado, legajo 2745, letter from Duke of Pastrana, undated.

  10 AGS, Estado, legajo 2745, Council of State consulta to King Philip III, September 4, 1610.

  11 Cited in Tapia Sánchez, La comunidad morisca de Ávila, p. 356.

  12 Cited in Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia, p. 327

  13 AGS, Estado, legajo 241, information on Moriscos of Tortosa district from Don Pedro Manrique, Bishop of Tortosa, August 29, 1610.

  14 AGS, Estado, legajo 220, undated letter to King Philip III.

  15 Ahmad Bin Qassim al-Hajari, “Selections from Kitab Nasir al-Din ala al-Qawm al-Kafirin (The Book of the Protector of Religion against the Unbelievers),” in Matar, In the Lands of the Christians, p. 14.

  16 Cited in López-Baralt, “Legacy of Islam,” pp. 540–41.

  17 Full text of this letter in Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia, p. 339.

  18 Diego Luis Morlem, November 10, 1611, in ibid., p. 980.

  19 Licenciado Molina to Jerónimo de Loaysa, July 25, 1611, in Janer, Condición social , pp. 350–51.

  20 AGS, Estado, legajo 2754, memorandum from Fray Jaime Bleda Valenciano, December 23, 1610.

  21 AGS, Estado, legajo 235, Council of State, December 29, 1610.

  Chapter 20. A Perfect Conclusion? 1611–1614

  1 Caracena’s letter cited in Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia, p. 337. This was not a possibility that was likely to appeal to King Philip III, and there was no attempt to implement either of these options.

  2 Zapata’s efforts were hailed in a forgettable poem by Vicente Pérez de Culla, entitled Expulsion de los moriscos rebeldes de la Sierra y Muela de Cortes por Simeon Zapata Valenciano, which praised Zapata for bringing about the removal of “that infidel, barbarous, bestial swine / that was such an insane, inhuman, insolent threat to the Christian.”

  3 Cited in Harvey, Muslims in Spain, p. 329.

  4 Council of State memo, September 9, 1612, cited in Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia , p. 793.

  5 Calderón’s downfall followed the arrest in 1607 of another key Lerma placeman, Pedro de Franquesa e Esteve, on charges of embezzling state finances. This arrest was partly due to the machinations of Queen Margaret, who resented Lerma’s influence at court, and who was keen to bring down the equally corrupt Calderón. Her enmity toward him was so well known that there were rumors at court that Calderón had had her poisoned. See Sanchéz, Empress.

  6 In Cervantes, Don Quixote, pp. 816–22. The nostalgic tone of Cervantes’ depiction of Ricote did not mean that he had entirely abandoned the anti-Morisco prejudices of Dialogue of the Dogs. Apologists for the expulsion, including Bleda, often wrote of the affection of exiled Moriscos for Spain as if it were a generalized phenomenon and took a morbid satisfaction from it. Cervantes goes further, allowing Ricote to praise the wisdom of the expulsion “in pure Castilian” rather than “Moorish jargon,” on the grounds that “it is no good thing to nourish a snake in your bosom and have enemies within your own house. In fact it was with good reason that all of us were punished with exile.”

  7 Inquisitorial trial extracts on Diego Díaz in García Arenal, Los moriscos, pp. 271–84.

  8 Cited in Regla, Estudios, p. 115.

  9 This episode is mentioned in Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia, as another example of what he calls the “superhuman determination” of the population of Villarubia to remain in their homes. In his reconstruction of the impact of the expulsion on the Campo de Calatrava, Dadson suggests that Diego de Silva y Mendoza, the Count of Salinas, was opposed to the expulsion of the Moriscos from his estates and may have been complicit in the “squatting” of his Madrid residence. Dadson makes a strong case th
at Salinas was opposed to the expulsion and did his best to delay it—a phenomenon that he suggests was repeated in other parts of Spain.

  10 Cervantes, Don Quixote, p. 895.

  11 AGS, Estado, legajo 252, extract in Lapeyre, Géographie, doc. 17.

  12 AGS, Estado, legajo 252, Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, secretary of the Count of Salazar to King Philip III, October 1612.

  13 Cited in Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, pp. 147–48.

  14 AGS, Estado, legajo 254, Juan de Pereda report on Moriscos of Murcia, April 1613.

  15 AGS, Estado, legajo 2644, Council of State memorandum to King Philip III, February 20, 1614.

  16 AGS, Estado, legajo 2644, undated.

  Chapter 21. The Reckoning

  1 Baltasar Porreño, Dichos y hechos del señor rey D. Philipe II, el bueno, potentissimo, y glorious Monarca de las españas y las indias, Madrid, in Yanez, Memorias. Written as a hagiographic tribute to King Philip III for his son Philip IV in 1639, Porreño’s purple prose nevertheless provides some fascinating glimpses of the Spanish Hapsburg court. Some of his most extravagant praise is reserved for the expulsion, which he calls “the greatest thing history has ever known”—claims that were already beginning to sound hollow by the time Philip IV took the throne.

  2 For a study of these religious prophecies and the way they were woven into the mythology of the expulsion, see Magnier, “Millenarian Prophecy.”

  3 Cited in Hillgarth, Mirror of Spain, p. 213.

  4 Ibid., p. 211.

  5 Cited in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. 2, p. 316.

  6 Letter from King Philip III to Francisco de Castro, September 16, 1614, in Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos, vol. II, pp. 399–400.

  7 A priest as well as a historian, Escolano was not opposed to the expulsion itself, which he compared to an exorcism. Just as “the devil always leaves a marking on leaving a human body where he has been,” he wrote, “with so many of them [devils, i.e. Moriscos] in the kingdom of Valencia, there would remain not one, but thousands of marks that would cause weeping for many centuries,” in Decadas, book 2, p. 834, cited in Fuster, Poetas, p. 122.