Read Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain Online
Authors: Matthew Carr
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Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (50 page)
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Bleda’s most expansive praise was reserved for Philip himself, whom he hailed as the “last and ultimate conqueror of the Moors of Spain.” Other chronicles of the expulsion were equally effusive. Aznar Cardona hailed “our angelic Philip, our king, guardian, and protector of the Spiritual Paradise of the Christian Church, tutor and pacifier of the Republic, defender of the oppressed, custodian of divine and spiritual laws.” Blas Verdú paid tribute to the “Lion of the House of Austria” who had miraculously pacified and purified his realms “without weapons, without violence.” The illustrated cover of Damián Fonseca’s chronicle of the expulsion depicted Philip as Hercules, slaying a Hydra-headed dragon symbolizing the “seven heresies,” whose seventh head was Muhammad. In 1619, according to the court chronicler Father Baltasar Porreño, Philip visited the Lisbon docks, where he was flattered with an allegorical masque drawn from classical mythology, entitled
Fable of the War of Titans
, which depicted the king as a victorious Jupiter who repels the “frightful intentions” of the Titans from Mount Olympus.
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Fable of the War of Titans
, which depicted the king as a victorious Jupiter who repels the “frightful intentions” of the Titans from Mount Olympus.
1
A number of writers based their depictions of Philip on the millenarian prophecies of the period and described him as the Emperor of the Last Days, the Hidden One, and the Lion of Judah, who was destined to unite Christendom in a cosmic conflagration that would usher in the Golden Age. Aznar Cardona urged Philip to follow his “victory of victories” by leading the “Sagittarian Spaniards” in the reconquest of Jerusalem, while Bleda exhorted the king to invest the treasures of the Indies in a holy war with the Ottoman Empire.
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These panegyrics tended to magnify the stature of an indolent ruler whose experience of warfare was largely limited to watching “naval ballets” and jousting tournaments. Nor did the representation of the expulsion as a heroic “battle” reflect the brutally unequal confrontation between a largely defenseless Morisco population and the armed might of the Spanish state. Such representations to some extent followed the conventions of court flattery, but they also constituted a form of seventeenth-century spin and propaganda, which was intended to orchestrate public approval for an expulsion whose legitimacy was always questionable and whose consequences were rarely as positive as its supporters claimed.
Even the most despotic monarchies have to be responsive to some extent to public opinion, and there is no doubt that the expulsion was not as popular as the Hapsburg court expected or wanted it to be. It generated an equally divided international response. The English Catholic convert Sir Tobie Mathew, a regular visitor to the Spanish court, declared that the “Moors” deserved to be expelled “for their damnable and inveterate and universal hypocrisy in matters of religion, and for their daily and desperate practices against [the] Crown.” In 1611 the Venetian ambassador to Spain also expressed his approval of the expulsion and described the Moriscos as the “worst of people.”
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Other foreign statesmen were less approving. The English ambassador in Madrid, Lord Francis Cottingham, called the expulsion “a Cruelty never heard of in any age,”
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while French Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu condemned what he called “the most fantastic, the most barbarous act in the annals of mankind.”
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3
Other foreign statesmen were less approving. The English ambassador in Madrid, Lord Francis Cottingham, called the expulsion “a Cruelty never heard of in any age,”
4
while French Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu condemned what he called “the most fantastic, the most barbarous act in the annals of mankind.”
5
The response of the Papacy was also more tepid than the Hapsburg court desired. In 1610 the Portuguese Dominican monk Damián Fonseca was sent by Philip to Rome specifically to garner support for the expulsion from Pope Paul V, and Fonseca’s own apologetic was published in Italian before it was translated into Spanish in an attempt to mobilize approval for the king’s decision outside Spain. Even before the expulsion, Philip had been anxious to secure the Papacy’s approval, and a letter on September 16, 1614, to the Spanish ambassador to Rome, Francisco de Castro, suggests that he failed to achieve it in the aftermath. The letter appears to have been written in response to criticisms from Pope Paul that it had been a “hard thing” to expel Morisco children. To disabuse the pontiff of this notion, Philip instructed his ambassador to inform him of recent reports that “more than eight thousand Valencian Moors” had been well received and given employment in Algiers and Tunis, whose presence constituted firm evidence that
If the precise diligence of the expulsion had not been realized in time, I would have found myself in the pitiful state of never being able to uproot the Sect of Muhammad from my Kingdoms. It was Divine Providence that assisted me and gave me the vision and firmness to follow it through. If those children had grown up, within a few years they would have increased the number of enemies of our Holy Catholic Faith.
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We do not know if these representations succeeded, but Philip’s anxiety was another indication that the Crown’s version of the expulsion was not always shared by its target audience. This discrepancy partly accounts for the strange sense of anticlimax that was already becoming evident even before the expulsion was officially terminated. As early as 1611, the archbishop of Granada suggested the introduction of an annual public holiday to commemorate the expulsion, and this possibility was mooted by Philip and his ministers on various occasions, yet no such holiday was ever inaugurated. There is no record of why the Crown chose not to do this, but the most plausible explanation is that Spain’s rulers privately recognized that it would not be popular and that many of their subjects had little reason to celebrate the expulsion.
On the contrary, in many parts of Spain, the departure of the Moriscos had left gaping holes in the local economy that would take a long time to repair. In Ciudad Real, the capital of La Mancha, the population fell from twelve thousand to less than one thousand in the aftermath of the expulsion. In Seville, the Morisco exodus deprived the port of much of its labor force of carriers and dockworkers. Across the country, churches, convents, monasteries, and secular landowners had lost the silkworkers, agricultural laborers, and horticulturists on whom their income depended, and town councils had lost a vital source of taxation. In Valladolid, the local cathedral chapter appealed to Philip to make up the contributions that the former Morisco barrio of Santa María had once made to its revenues. Similar appeals emanated from other parts of Spain for many years afterward.
The economic impact was particularly severe in Valencia, which lost an astonishing 30 percent of its population. Writing in 1611, the historian Gaspar Escolano described how the Morisco exodus had transformed “the most florid kingdom in Spain into a dry and desolate wasteland.”
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Many Morisco settlements remained abandoned and their lands untended for years, plunging their lords into poverty and ruin. Nor were the barons the only ones to suffer. The Inquisition lost the income it had once obtained through fines and confiscated Morisco property. The Church lost tithes from Morisco parishes, and the Crown itself was deprived of taxes.
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Many Morisco settlements remained abandoned and their lands untended for years, plunging their lords into poverty and ruin. Nor were the barons the only ones to suffer. The Inquisition lost the income it had once obtained through fines and confiscated Morisco property. The Church lost tithes from Morisco parishes, and the Crown itself was deprived of taxes.
This picture of devastation was not universal or permanent, however. Valencia did not experience the general economic collapse that Juan de Ribera had once feared. Some “Morisco” crops, such as sugar and rice, fell into permanent decline, but others, such as wine, wheat, and silk, recovered and even underwent a resurgence.
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Some lords were able to renegotiate more favorable tenancy agreements with the Christian settlers who took the place of their departed Morisco vassals, so that a report to Lerma observed that “many lords have suffered . . . others have gained.” A number of lords used bankruptcy as an opportunity to evade their creditors or obtain lower interest rates on their debt repayments. Others profited from the sale of Morisco land and property, including Lerma and his family, according to a malicious satirical verse circulating at the court, which asked
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Some lords were able to renegotiate more favorable tenancy agreements with the Christian settlers who took the place of their departed Morisco vassals, so that a report to Lerma observed that “many lords have suffered . . . others have gained.” A number of lords used bankruptcy as an opportunity to evade their creditors or obtain lower interest rates on their debt repayments. Others profited from the sale of Morisco land and property, including Lerma and his family, according to a malicious satirical verse circulating at the court, which asked
One hundred thousand Moriscos left,
These houses that remained,
To whom were they distributed?
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These allegations were probably well founded. In May 1610, the English ambassador, Lord Cottingham, reported that Philip had distributed some of the proceeds raised from the sale of Morisco property to Lerma and his relatives, and the duke also had a network of agents in Valencia who bought land and property on his behalf. Other barons also profited from such transactions or received new titles and grants of land to compensate them for their losses. The Duke of Gandía, who had previously feared for the destruction of his household, was so well rewarded for his loyalty that he was eventually able to restore the Borgia family seat to its former greatness.
Not everyone benefitted from the Crown’s largesse in the post-expulsion settlement. In 1614 a royal commissioner was sent to Valencia to address the complicated economic issues pertaining to the expulsion, particularly the conflicting demands of the
censalistas
, whose loans had helped finance the Valencian landowning aristocracy for so many years, and who now complained that their debtors were using the Morisco expulsion as a pretext to evade their obligations. After two years of tortuous negotiations, these disputes were resolved at the expense of the urban-based creditors, who were obliged to accept a lower interest rate in exchange for repayment, while the landowners who owed them money retained their estates and the possibility of economic recovery. Nevertheless, many of these estates remained stagnant and unproductive for years. Despite the optimistic predictions that Christian settlers would quickly replace the Moriscos, Christians were often reluctant to work in the arid interior where many Morisco settlements had been located, and many were unwilling to accept the high rents and onerous conditions that the Valencian barons attempted to impose on their new vassals.
censalistas
, whose loans had helped finance the Valencian landowning aristocracy for so many years, and who now complained that their debtors were using the Morisco expulsion as a pretext to evade their obligations. After two years of tortuous negotiations, these disputes were resolved at the expense of the urban-based creditors, who were obliged to accept a lower interest rate in exchange for repayment, while the landowners who owed them money retained their estates and the possibility of economic recovery. Nevertheless, many of these estates remained stagnant and unproductive for years. Despite the optimistic predictions that Christian settlers would quickly replace the Moriscos, Christians were often reluctant to work in the arid interior where many Morisco settlements had been located, and many were unwilling to accept the high rents and onerous conditions that the Valencian barons attempted to impose on their new vassals.
The central government eventually imposed resettlement charters in an attempt to satisfy both the lords and their vassals, but the pace of resettlement remained slow and uneven. In 1638, 205 out of 453 Morisco villages in Valencia remained empty and some of the more remote Morisco places were never resettled. The expulsion left a similar legacy of stagnation and decay in Aragon, which lost some 15 percent of its population. With the exodus of the Moriscos from the banks of the Ebro River, one of the most fertile regions in Spain went into decline. As in Valencia, many Aragonese lords were ruined or impoverished by the loss of their vassals. Some were able to recover and found Christians to take the place of the departed Moriscos, but these new settlers often struggled to reclaim lands that had become overgrown and neglected since the Morisco exodus. Many fell into debt or gave up the attempt, so that many parts of the kingdom remained unproductive and underpopulated for many years.
The writers who celebrated the expulsion were not oblivious to these negative repercussions, but they tended either to dismiss them as temporary setbacks or minimize their importance compared with the creation of a Spain that was now united in “one Catholic faith, Apostolic, Roman,” as Marcos de Guadalajara put it. Some writers even presented Spain’s supposed willingness to undergo material privation as a testament to its spiritual grandeur. To Blas Verdú, it was “better to have a Spain weakened and discomforted, but cleansed and purged,” while Juan de Salazar praised Philip for “conserving the purity and faith of his kingdoms” and purging Spain of an “incorrigible and vile horde” regardless of the cost to his own revenues.
Some writers claimed that Spanish society had become safer and more law-abiding through the removal of a criminal Morisco subculture. This was largely fantasy and propaganda. Long after the expulsion, Valencia continued to demonstrate its startling proclivity for robbery, homicide, and mafialike vendettas. In 1689, the viceroy reported to the king that the kingdom was plagued by “bands of thieves, highwaymen, murderers, and criminals of every kind, who spare neither the life nor the purse of the traveler, nor the horse which the peasant uses to plough.”
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Nor was there any evidence to suggest that the crime rate in other parts of the country went down after the departure of the Moriscos. In Seville a pullulating criminal underworld of con men, contract killers, and thieves continued to torment the authorities throughout the century. In Madrid, an official report in 1639 observed that “not a day passes but people are found killed or wounded by brigands or soldiers, houses burgled, girls assaulted and robbed.”
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Nor was there any evidence to suggest that the crime rate in other parts of the country went down after the departure of the Moriscos. In Seville a pullulating criminal underworld of con men, contract killers, and thieves continued to torment the authorities throughout the century. In Madrid, an official report in 1639 observed that “not a day passes but people are found killed or wounded by brigands or soldiers, houses burgled, girls assaulted and robbed.”
In 1613 Marcos de Guadalajara painted an idyllic picture of a postexpulsion Spain in which “Merchandise flows freely by land and sea . . . we are free on our coasts and shores from African robberies and insults: the deaths that used to take place every hour no longer occur.”
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This, too, was wishful thinking. Throughout the expulsion, both Muslim and Christian corsairs continued to attack Spanish coastal towns and shipping, and these raids appear to have increased exponentially in its aftermath, according to the English ambassador, Lord Cottingham, who informed the Privy Council in 1616 that “The strength and weakness of the Barbary pirates is now grown to that height, both in the ocean and the Mediterranean sea, as I have never known anything to have wrought a greater sadness and distraction in this Court.”
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This, too, was wishful thinking. Throughout the expulsion, both Muslim and Christian corsairs continued to attack Spanish coastal towns and shipping, and these raids appear to have increased exponentially in its aftermath, according to the English ambassador, Lord Cottingham, who informed the Privy Council in 1616 that “The strength and weakness of the Barbary pirates is now grown to that height, both in the ocean and the Mediterranean sea, as I have never known anything to have wrought a greater sadness and distraction in this Court.”
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BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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