by Matthew Carr
Moriscos were often imagined by Christians to be miserly and richer than they appeared on the outside, and these beliefs were sometimes accompanied by accusations that they were secretly accumulating Spain’s reserves of gold and silver. The idea that the Moriscos were “the sponge of all the wealth of Spain” to some extent provided a pseudo-explanation for the economic crises and bankruptcies during the last years of Philip’s reign. Like the Conversos before them, anti-Morisco sentiment was sometimes fed by envy and resentment, albeit on a lesser scale. At a meeting of the Council of Castile in September 1607, a councillor named Pedro de Vesga called for Moriscos to be banned from attending medical lectures as unregistered students or oyentes, on the grounds that Morisco medical practitioners were using the knowledge they attained to murder Christians. Vesga argued that medicine and other professions of “honor” should be exclusive to Christians. To support these arguments, he informed the Council of a Morisco doctor in Madrid known as the Avenger, who had supposedly murdered three thousand Christian patients with the use of a “poisonous ointment,” and another doctor who mutilated his Old Christian patients so that they would not be able to use weapons. With so many unregistered Morisco students attending Spanish universities, Vesga warned, Morisco doctors would soon be able to kill “more people in this kingdom by themselves than the Turks, English and other enemies.”13
These fantasies may have been motivated partly by the desire to eliminate economic competition, but anti-Morisco prejudice was rarely consistent enough to be reduced to socioeconomic interpretations. Bigotry and hatred generated their own assumptions, which were often contradictory and illogical. If Moriscos were deliberately working too hard in order to undermine Christian society, they could also find themselves accused of parasitism and laziness and amassing their imagined fortunes through undemanding jobs such as gardening and shopkeeping.
All these allegations rested on the assumption that the Moriscos were united in their ultimate desire to destroy Christianity and take over Spain. Once this framework was accepted, even the humblest Morisco shopkeeper or the most ruthlessly exploited Morisco peasant could soon pose a danger to Christian society. This threat was magnified by fears that the Morisco population was multiplying inexorably at Christian expense. It was widely believed that Moriscos were marrying younger and having larger families, while the Christian population was declining, partly because Christians were fighting and dying in the king’s wars and also because Christians were entering the Church and placing a higher premium on celibacy and restraint in their sexual relations.
In his homage to Don John of Austria, the Austriada, the poet Juan Rufo y Gutiérez depicted Spain heroically fighting off “homicidal waves” of enemies, while the Moriscos remained at home “out of harm’s way / Having four children in three years.”14 In 1571 a correspondent of the German Fugger banking dynasty in Seville criticized the deportation of Granadan Moriscos to other parts of Spain, arguing that “in this way Spaniards become more tainted and intermixed with Moors than heretofore. Thus they and the Jews will be the noblest and strongest races, for they multiply like royal rabbits.”
The specter of racial or ethnic minorities breeding their way toward cultural domination is a recurring historical phenomenon, which tends to be based more on subjective impressions and worst-case scenarios than on verifiable facts, and Christian attitudes toward the Moriscos were no exception. Modern scholarly research has not found that Moriscos were marrying at a much younger age than Christians, nor does the available evidence support the belief that their families were growing at a faster rate than those of Christians in the last years of the century.15 In Castile the total number of Moriscos during Philip’s reign probably never reached more than 70,000 out of an overall population of some 6,600,000, yet Inquisitorial reports from cities such as Toledo, Seville, and Avila routinely predicted that the Morisco population would soon outnumber Christians. Even in Valencia, where the Morisco population was larger, it remained at roughly a third of the overall population throughout the sixteenth century.
Nevertheless, the belief that the Moriscos were “breeding like rabbits” was often taken for granted, and it became another reason to hate and fear them. To some extent, these demographic anxieties were shaped by Christian perceptions of overcrowded Morisco ghettos, which gave observers the impression that their numbers were “spilling out” of their neighborhoods. But the fear of Morisco fecundity was also infused with older stereotypes of “the carnal Moor,” which imagined that Moriscos were more promiscuous than Christians because they practiced polygamy and consanguineous marriages, while Christians were supposedly more inclined to celibacy. In fact, polygamy was never as widely practiced as many Christians imagined, partly because few Moriscos were wealthy enough to afford it. But sexuality was a recurring obsession among anti-Morisco polemicists, such as the Dominican friar Jaime Bleda, who described Moriscos as “Vicious and libidinous, symbols of the goat, they gave themselves up to every kind of sin.”16
Such depictions echoed the condemnations of the “carnality” of the Prophet in medieval anti-Muslim polemics. One sixteenth-century Spanish writer described the orgiastic celebrations of Muhammad’s followers at parties and weddings, where they whipped themselves into a state of delirious intoxication and “gave themselves over to the bestial vice of the flesh and without understanding that it was evil, took advantage of the young girls of tender age and as if all their happiness lay in food, drink, and lust.”17 These accusations of sexual debauchery and licentiousness were also directed at particular racial or ethnic Muslim groups, such as Turks and Moors. European travelers to North Africa frequently depicted its inhabitants as promiscuous and prone to sodomy and even bestiality. To the Scottish traveler William Lithgow, the women of Fez were “damnable libidinous, being prepared both wayes to satisfy the lust of their luxurious villaines,”18 while Diego de Haedo insisted of the inhabitants of Algiers that “bestiality is very common among them, in this they imitate the Arabs, who are infamous for this vice.”19
Such imagery was easily transplanted onto the Moriscos and sometimes generated semipornographic fantasies of the type described in a 1594 Inquisitorial prosecution of the female Morisca slave of a Christian cleric in Antequera for magical practices. According to the trial, these practices included “pronouncing certain words” till “the devil appeared to her in the form of a Negro man,” who flew with the Morisca to the countryside to have “carnal access” before returning home at dawn.20
It is not necessary to be a psychoanalyst to detect the same undercurrent of repressed desire in such fantasies that was often found in European witch trials. This disgust and fascination with Morisco sexuality was also a product of the differing attitudes between Catholicism and Islam toward sex. Whereas the Catholic Church venerated chastity and celibacy, Islam was a religion whose founder had married several times and whose sacred text was filled with lyrical descriptions of the sensual delights of heaven. Whereas Catholicism regarded sex as an unavoidable but sinful activity that was necessary for the procreation of the species, Islam saw sexual activity as sacred—provided it was carried out within the confines of marriage. One seventeenth-century aljamiado manuscript attributed to an anonymous author known as the Exile of Tunis contains an erotic manual for married couples, which advises husbands to call out bicmi ylahi (“in the name of God”) on penetration and to delay sexual climax “until he is sure that both partners reach it at the same time: much love is attained when [sexual union] is performed this way.”21
This celebration of matrimonial sexual relations did not mean that unrestricted sexual activity was sanctioned within Islam—far from it. Nor did the Catholic veneration of chastity and celibacy mean that all Christians subscribed to it. The proliferation of brothels in Hapsburg Spain and the large numbers of Christians prosecuted by the Inquisition for bigamy, “simple fornication,” or the “nefarious sin” of sodomy are a testament to the perennial gulf between theory and practice, while the licentiousnes
s of Spanish priests was an ongoing source of scandal to the ecclesiastical and secular authorities—and to the Moriscos. But prejudice tends to construct its own version of reality, which ignores inconvenient facts that contradict its assumptions, and the attitudes of sixteenth-century Spaniards toward the Moriscos contain numerous examples of this tendency.
Such prejudice was not restricted to Inquisitorial officials and embittered country priests. Moriscos often featured in the literature of the Spanish “Golden Age,” generally as figures of mockery, ridicule, or contempt. Some of Spain’s greatest writers, from the Córdoban poet Luis de Góngora to the playwright Lope de Vega made fun of their pronunciation of Spanish and their aversion to pork and other foods, often using the stock Morisco figure of the buñolero. Francisco de Quevedo contemptuously mocked the Christian surnames that “whores and Moriscos have usurped,” ignoring the fact that the latter usually had such names imposed upon them.22 In Quevedo’s picaresque novel The Swindler (1626), the roguish protagonist stays at an inn whose “owner and landlord was one of those who believe in God out of good manners and not sincerely; Moriscos they’re called by the people. There’s no shortage of those people or the ones who have long noses and only need them to smell out bacon.”23
Some of the most bigoted portrayals of the Moriscos in Spanish literature are contained in Miguel de Cervantes’ Dialogue of the Dogs, wherein the dog Berganza weaves his description of his Morisco master in Granada into a general indictment of Morisco Spain:It would take a miracle to find a single man among so many who truly believes in the Holy Christian laws; their sole intent is to make money and hoard what they make, and to achieve this they work and do not eat . . . they are amassing and accumulating the largest cache of money in Spain. They are money-boxes, moths, magpies, and weasels; they acquire, hide and swallow it all. Just think how many of them there are and that every day they earn and hide away some quantity of money, and bear in mind that a slow fever can be as fatal as a sudden one, and as they increase in number, so the number of those who hide money away also increases and will surely continue to grow ad infinitum, as experience shows. They do not exercise chastity, nor does any man or woman among them take holy orders; they all marry and they all multiply because sober living favors the propagation of their race. War does not weary them, nor do they overtax themselves in the work they do; they steal from us with the greatest of ease and from the fruits of our property, which they sell back to us, they make themselves rich.24
A veteran of the battle of Lepanto, in which he lost the use of one of his hands, Cervantes’ five harsh years as a captive in the baños of Algiers undoubtedly influenced this litany of Christian stereotypes. Yet his attitudes toward Muslim Spain were more complex than Berganza’s condemnation of the “Morisco rabble” suggests, and he subsequently included a more nuanced portrayal of the Moriscos in the second part of Don Quixote, which was written after the expulsion. In the late sixteenth century, however, sympathetic literary depictions of the Moriscos were rare. Apart from Gínes Pérez de Hita’s Granadan chronicles, one of the few positive cultural descriptions of Morisco Spain was contained in the anonymous novel The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa (1561).
This delicate tale of love, honor, and chivalry was a fictionalized account of an episode from the Granadan-Christian conflict of the fifteenth century, in which a Granadan Moorish nobleman, Abindaraez, a member of the ruling Abencerraje clan, is captured by the Christian alcaide (commander) of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narvaez. Abindaraez is taken prisoner in the course of an ambush laid by a group of Christian soldiers.
He was tall and handsome, and looked a fine figure as he rode.... On his right arm was stitched a beautiful lady and in his hand he carried a thick and handsome two pronged lance. He wore a dagger and scimitar and a Tunisian turban wrapped various times around his head, for defense and beauty. In these clothes the noble Moor came singing a song that he had composed in sweet memory of his loves.25
Attacked by the waiting Christians, Abindaraez kills four of his attackers, confirming himself as a worthy adversary for the Christian gentleman Rodrigo de Narvaez, who defeats and wounds him in single combat. On being led to captivity, Abindaraez tells Narvaez of his passionate love for Jarifa, a beautiful Moorish princess, whose father has been accused of complicity in a plot against the Moorish king of Granada. Narvaez is so moved by this story that he allows Abindaraez to visit and marry Jarifa, on condition that he return to captivity in three days time.
Abindaraez gives his word, and the two lovers are reunited. When he tells Jarifa of his agreement, she begs him to stay and offers to pay his ransom, but Abindaraez refuses to break his promise. Jarifa then declares that “God would never wish me to remain free while you become a prisoner” and accompanies him to captivity. On arriving at Narvaez’ castle, the Christian nobleman is so impressed by this demonstration of honor and love that he releases both his prisoner and Jarifa. He also writes to the Moorish king of Granada to plead the innocence of Jarifa’s father. All ends happily, as her father is reconciled to the king and accepts his daughter’s secret marriage, while Narvaez, Abindaraez, and his wife form “a firm friendship which lasted them all their lives.”
The Abencerraje harks back to the romanticized figure of the “noble Moor” who features in Christian medieval balladry. On the one hand, the friendship between its Moorish and Christian adversaries is made possible by their shared concept of chivalry—a symmetry that is only possible between noblemen who share the same noble lineage and the code of honor that goes with it. At the same time, Abindaraez is a defeated Moor, overcome by a superior Christian warrior whose magnanimity in victory confirms his nobility and greatness. Like the “good Indian” in post–World War II Western movies, such an enemy could become the subject of nostalgic admiration because he was no longer dangerous. Nevertheless, the happy resolution of the Abencerraje at least portrays an imagined reconciliation between Muslim and Christian Spain, and if this outcome seemed increasingly unlikely in the aftermath of Granada, the popularity of the novel suggests that this possibility was not unattractive to sixteenth-century readers.
These literary depictions echoed the medieval fascination with Moorish culture that foreign visitors had once observed among the Castilian aristocracy, a fascination whose residual flashes were still visible in the late sixteenth century. The Christian cavalrymen who welcomed Don John of Austria to Granada wore Moorish silks and flowing shirts. In 1593 Philip sent the Toledan painter Blas de Prado to Morocco, following a request from the sultan to send him an artist to paint a family portrait. On returning from his completed assignment, Prado took to eating his meals on a cushion on the floor in the Moorish style. The court might tolerate the affectations of a privileged artist “gone native,” but such behavior was liable to produce a very different response when it was observed among the Moriscos themselves.
Nevertheless, it was clear that not all Christians regarded the Moriscos as “the vilest of people.” In October 1594, the royal secretary, Francisco de Idiáquez, described the Moriscos as a potential asset to Spain. Recognizing that “Christians were not given to agriculture,” he praised the industriousness, thrift, and cultivation skills of the Moriscos and wrote that “there was not a single corner of the land that could not be given to them, [where] they alone would [not] be enough to bring fertility and abundance throughout the land.”26 In his history of the city of Plasencia in Extremadura, Fray Alonso Fernández described the local Moriscos in the following terms:They were diligent in the cultivation of gardens, and lived apart from the society of Old Christians, preferring that their own life not be the object of gazing. . . . They sold food at the best stands in the cities and villages, most of them living by the work of their own hands. . . . They all paid their taxes and assessments willingly, and were moderate in their food and dress.... They had no use for begging among their own people; and all had a trade and were busy at some employment.27
In February 1585, a young Christian boy named Andresi
co was found murdered at the bottom of a well in the Toledan village of Yebenes, and three Granadan Moriscos were arrested by the secular authorities on suspicion of the murder. With the case’s overtones of ritual murder and the prevailing fears of the Granadinos in Castile, these Moriscos were obvious scapegoats, whose guilt might have seemed predetermined. Yet the victim’s mother refused to bring charges against the suspects, telling the local judge that she was not certain who had killed her son. In their subsequent trial, various local Christians acted as character witnesses on behalf of the accused, including one witness who described all three suspects as “good men who lead a decent life and enjoy good reputations” and insisted that “the said Moriscos could not have committed the crime for which they are suspected.”28
As a result, all three Moriscos were acquitted. In other parts of Spain, there was evidence that Christian communities and individuals were able to establish relationships with Moriscos that defied the prevailing prejudice and vilification. In Castilian cities such as Valladolid, Ávila, and Toledo, “Old Moriscos” (moriscos antiguos) were accepted by Christians to the point where they were allowed voting rights on the local city councils. In Granada in 1585, Christians opposed new royal orders calling for the expulsion of Moriscos who had either remained in the city or returned to it after the rebellion. Philip insisted on their removal, and some three thousand Moriscos were deported in August of that year.
The opposition to these deportations was partly based on self-interest, for many of these Moriscos were slaves of Christians or contributed to the local economy, but self-interest and local necessity could sometimes make coexistence possible even in the chauvinistic climate of Counter-Reformation Spain. Moreover, even the more benign expressions of Christian tolerance did not translate into a positive affirmation of the Moriscos as a permanent and distinctive presence in Spanish society. If some Christian communities were prepared to take a more laissez-faire attitude toward their customs and language than others, the continued survival of the Moriscos as a group was ultimately conditional on their ability to transcend their Muslim origins and become so closely integrated into Christian society that they were no longer distinguishable. But for this process to occur, Christian society was also obliged to overcome its own ingrained prejudices.