by Henry Kamen
Even while the confrontation developed, in some parts of Spain there was peace between Christians and Muslims. In many communities, the continued coexistence of both cultures was accepted. In the area of La Sagra (Toledo), where Moriscos were some 5 percent of the population, during the late sixteenth century there was “a peaceful and fruitful coexistence.”54 In the province of Cuenca, coexistence was positive.55 In parts of Aragon, there was even occasional intermarriage between the communities.56
Some Moriscos had over the years made their own contribution towards creating a sympathetic attitude among the majority population. In 1588 when workers were demolishing a part of the former mosque in Granada in order to build a third nave of the cathedral, they found in the rubble a leaden box with a parchment in Arabic. Two prominent Morisco leaders, Alonso del Castillo and his son-in-law Miguel de Luna, were called in to decipher the document. Their conclusion (there was nobody at hand to contradict them) was that it was an early version of the Gospel of St. John, written in Arabic. A few years later, starting in 1595 but continuing through to 1600, the surprising discovery was made in the caves of Valparaiso (later named Sacromonte, or “sacred hill”), outside Granada, of over twenty leaden sheets engraved in ancient Arabic, which Luna also helped to translate. His conclusion, which he communicated to the expectant (and credulous) Church authorities, was that they added further information to the Christian revelation. The tablets were judged to date from very early Christian times, and depicted a form of religious practice in which features offensive to Muslims did not exist.57
A big controversy ensued, with the authorities of the Church in Granada insisting on their authenticity, while the very few Spanish experts who knew Arabic—among them the scholar Benito Arias Montano—had little doubt that they were forgeries. The tablets were taken to Rome in 1642, examined and eventually pronounced to be a fraud (perpetrated almost certainly by Luna and Castillo in an attempt to fuse together Islamic culture and Christian faith). It was a notable attempt to claim a place for Arabic Christianity within the framework of Iberian Catholicism. But the tablets also helped to reinforce the special sense of identity that the civic leaders of Granada, whatever their ethnic descent, claimed for themselves. If Christianity could trace some of its origins to the caves of Sacromonte, they felt, Granada could claim a special place in Christendom. In 2000 the papacy returned the tablets to Granada, where they can be seen today in a museum.
Despite continuing signs of coexistence, there were events that aggravated confrontation between Christian and Islamic civilization in Spain. In Granada Moriscos were now, after the expulsions, less than a tenth of the population;58 and the center of tension moved to the huge Morisco community of Valencia.59 Here the military threat from the Ottoman empire, backed up by piracy and coastal raids, made the authorities take steps to restrict and disarm Moriscos. The Alpujarra crisis of 1568–70 was followed opportunely by victory over the Turkish fleet at Lepanto in 1571. But Lepanto did not end fears of invasion.60 Morisco banditry in the south worsened after the 1570s. From this decade French Protestant leaders were in touch with Aragonese Moriscos. Street riots between the communities took place. In Córdoba there were serious incidents in August 1578, provoked in part by open Morisco rejoicing at the destruction of the Portuguese army in the battle of Alcazar el Kebir.61 In 1580 at Seville a conspiracy abetting invasion from Morocco was discovered. In 1602 Moriscos were plotting with Henry IV of France. In 1608 the Valencian Moriscos asked for help from Morocco. The threat was powerful and real. “Fear entered into the heart of Spain.”62
By the 1580s official opinion had moved in favor of a solution similar to that of 1492. In Lisbon in 1581 Philip II convened a special committee to discuss the matter. In September 1582 the council of State formally proposed a general expulsion. The decision was approved by both Church and Inquisition. It was warmly supported by Martín de Salvatierra, bishop of Segorbe, who had in 1587 drawn up a memorial favoring expulsion,63 and by Archbishop Ribera who, seeing the failure of his zealous attempts to convert the Moriscos, turned into their most implacable enemy. He wrote to the king, urging that the entire Morisco population be expelled, “as was done with the Jews, though it is more necessary that the Moriscos leave.”64
When Philip III came to the throne in 1598 it became clear that at all levels there were many who disagreed with the proposal of expulsion. No opinions in favor were expressed in the Cortes of Castile or in those of Valencia. Both the duke of Lerma and the king’s confessor in 1602 opposed expulsion since “it would be terrible to drive baptized people into Barbary and thus force them to turn Muslim.” As late as 1607 the crown’s highest ministers preferred a policy of preaching and instruction. The publicists (arbitristas) of the period were uniformly opposed to expulsion. González de Cellorigo in his Memorial (1600) denounced the idea. The nobility of the crown of Aragon were solidly against any measure that would deprive them of their labor force.
However, by 1609 the duke of Lerma had changed his mind. He presented to the council of State a decision that the lords in Valencia—where his own estates lay—should be compensated by being given the lands of the expelled Moriscos. Opportunely, the lords were coming round to support expulsion. For years, their costs had been rising while the fixed rents from their Morisco vassals stagnated.65 There were, moreover, fears for security. Morisco population growth seemed uncontrollable. Between Alicante and Valencia on one side and Saragossa on the other, a huge mass of 200,000 Muslim souls advanced into the flesh of Christian Spain. In Granada there were further expulsions to counteract the rise in numbers. In Aragon there had been 5,674 Moriscos in 1495, but in 1610 they numbered 14,190—a fifth of the population. In Valencia the results of censuses made in 1565 and 1609 suggested that the Old Christians might have increased by 44.7 percent and the Moriscos by a remarkable 69.7 percent. “Their aim was to grow and multiply like weeds,” claimed a writer in 1612.66 Castration as a method of control was recommended in 1587 by Martín de Salvatierra.
Were all Moriscos without exception, even if they were good Christians, to be expelled? What about those whose families had been Christian for centuries? What about husbands and wives in mixed marriages? Or their children? The questions troubled many in the royal council,67 but the rigorists won the day. The inquisitor general, Bernardo Rojas de Sandoval, who happened to be uncle of the chief minister the duke of Lerma, insisted that “all are apostates.” The man whom the king put in charge of the operation, the count of Salazar, was also firm that no exceptions be made. The expulsion was eventually decreed on 4 April 1609, and took place in stages up to 1614.
Since the country had few naval resources, the operation was made possible only through the help of hundreds of English, French and Italian merchants who agreed to charter their trading vessels.68 The first act of expulsion took place at nightfall on 2 October 1609, when seventeen galleys from Naples and a dozen foreign merchant ships sailed out from the port of Denia in Valencia, with five thousand Moriscos on board, destined for the Spanish colony of Oran in North Africa. For the next five years, in all the villages where they lived, the soldiers systematically rounded up and escorted to points of embarkation tens of thousands of Spaniards of Islamic origin. Some villages rebelled and were duly castigated; in Valencia alone over five thousand Moriscos died as a result. Hundreds took to flight and lived in the mountains as outlaws, but they were slowly rooted out. Thousands of children “under the age of reason” (that is, less than twelve or fourteen years) were retained in Spain against the wishes of their distraught parents. The inhabitants of the totally Morisco village of Hornachos in Extremadura, agreed in 1610 to accept expulsion to Africa on one condition: that they could take their children with them.
In all, about 300,000 Moriscos were expelled, from a peninsular total of some 320,000.69 Although the human losses of the expulsion represented little more than four percent of Spain’s population, the real impact in some areas was very severe. Where Moriscos had been a large minority, as in Va
lencia and Aragon, there was immediate economic catastrophe. But even where they were few in number, the fact that they had a minimal inactive population with no gentry or clergy or soldiers meant that their absence could lead to dislocation. Tax returns fell and agricultural output declined.
The Inquisition also faced a bleak future. In 1611 the tribunals of Valencia and Saragossa complained that the expulsion had resulted in their bankruptcy, since they were losing 7,500 ducats a year which they had formerly received from ground rents. The tribunal of Valencia at the same time acknowledged receiving some compensation, but claimed that a sum of nearly 19,000 ducats was still payable to it by the government to make up for what it had lost.70 A statement of revenue drawn up for the tribunal of Valencia just before the expulsion of the Moriscos shows that 42.7 percent of its income derived directly from the Morisco population. A similar statement drawn up for the Inquisition of Saragossa in 1612 showed that since the expulsion its revenue had fallen by over 48 percent.71
The authorities had carried out a radical surgery to excise from Spain two of the three great cultures of the peninsula.72 The contemporary French statesman Cardinal Richelieu in his memoirs described the Morisco expulsions as “the most barbarous act in human annals.” Cervantes in his Quixote makes a Morisco character, Ricote, applaud the heroic act of Philip III “to expel poisonous fruit from Spain, now clean and free of the fears in which our numbers held her.”73 Writers then and later closed their ranks and attempted to justify the operation. Many of the Valencian nobility had opposed expulsion, but Boronat, the leading historian of the Morisco question, glosses over their opposition and praises those few lords “of pure blood and Christian heart” whose religion overrode their self-interest and made them support the measure. For the historian Florencio Janer the expulsion was the necessary excision of an “enemy race” from the heart of Spain.74
These uncompromising statements do not necessarily reflect the real opinion of all Spaniards. When the mass ejection was first being mooted, an official of the Inquisition spoke up and opposed the move, “because after all they are Spaniards like ourselves.”75 Time and again, officials and intellectuals spoke up for the Islamic minority, defended them and opposed any extreme measure such as expulsion. A well-known theologian of the time, Pedro de Valencia, condemned the proposed move as “unjust”;76 a government official, Fernández de Navarrete, stated that it was “a mistaken policy decision.” Even Philip III’s chief minister, the duke of Lerma, who eventually directed the measures of 1609, admitted that it was “terrible to drive baptized people into Africa.” Given the enormous controversy aroused within Spain by the expulsions, it is not surprising that as late as 1690 the Moroccan envoy in Madrid could report hearing officials denounce the duke of Lerma’s responsibility for the act.77
The Spanish Inquisition took no active part in the decision to expel, which was arrived at exclusively by a small group of court politicians. It continued, however, to act with severity against Moriscos accused of offenses against religion, and after 1609 those still in its cells were given the unenviable choice of punishment or exile. Almost in its totality, Muslim Spain was rejected and driven into the sea: thousands for whom there had been no other home were expelled to France, Africa and the Levant.78 It was the last act in the creation of an orthodox society and completed the tragedy that had been initiated in 1492.
Few exceptions on religious grounds were allowed. In 1611 when it was proposed to expel the Moriscos of the valley of Ricote, a community of six towns in Murcia, a special report pointed out that the twenty-five hundred inhabitants were truly Christian.79 But the expulsion still went ahead. Even so, the realm was not as cleansed from Islamic heresy as the zealots would have wished. A small proportion of Moriscos managed to obtain special permission to remain: they consisted in part of the wealthy assimilated elite, in part of slaves, and thousands of children, who were put into care to be brought up as Christians. Also included were adults who had married non-Moriscos, could demonstrate that their parents were non-Moriscos or had the local bishop’s certificate saying they were authentic Christians.80 The inquisitors themselves allowed groups of Christian Moriscos to remain behind.81
The vast majority of expelled Spaniards had to settle for a new life in the Muslim territories of North Africa.82 Others managed to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities of Eastern Europe in order to migrate to the Balkans. Many of those expelled also yearned to return home. An agent of the English government in Morocco in 1625 reported that the Moriscos in exile were offering to supply men for an invasion of Spain. “Many have confessed to me that they are Christians. They complain bitterly of their cruel exile, and desire deeply to return under Christian rule.”83 Many who were expelled simply made their way back and tried to carry on their lives as before. For decades afterwards, Moriscos could be found throughout the peninsula. A typical returnee was Diego Díaz, a butcher by profession who explained how in 1609 “they put us on a ship to take us out of Spain. We put into port in Algiers, where I was for six months. After that, I got into another boat, a fishing boat. When I saw the Spanish coastline I jumped into the water and swam ashore at Tortosa. From there I went to Valencia, where I learnt my trade.”84 He managed to carry on his life without incident, quite publicly, for over twenty years, until quarrels with his neighbors got him into trouble with the authorities.
There were areas where the expelled insisted on returning en masse. In one remarkable case in Castile,85 they kept returning stubbornly, and six hundred returnees had to be expelled again to France; but they came back, and had to be expelled for the third time two years later. Resident Christians colluded in the return of exiles. Between 1615 and 1700 prosecutions of Moriscos made up about 9 percent of cases tried by the Inquisition. The incidence varied from only one case in Valladolid to 197 in Valencia and 245 in Murcia.86 There continued, moreover, to be startling cases in later years, such as the group of wealthy Morisco families brought to trial in Granada in 1728.87
Among the interesting persons detained by the Holy Office in this period was Alonso de Luna, born around 1565 in the town of Linares (near Jaén in Andalucia). He seems to have been a son of Miguel de Luna, taking his first name from his grandfather Alonso del Castillo. He grew up in Granada, was brought up as a Christian, and spoke and wrote Arabic as well as he did Castilian. At the age of twenty he converted secretly to Islam and read the Koran (there must have been many copies accessible) so thoroughly that he claimed later to know it by heart. His unquestionable gifts as a scholar made it possible for him to form part of the team that translated the leaden books of Sacromonte. He studied Latin, philosophy and medicine at college, perhaps one of the colleges set up in Granada by Christian clergy.
At an undisclosed age, he left the city and went traveling through Europe. It was an absence—we do not know how many years in all—that opened his mind to new perceptions of the relationship between Islam and the West. He spent some time in the south of France, then in 1610 (the year, that is, after the final expulsion of Moriscos had commenced) was in Rome, where he made contact with some of the pope’s physicians. In 1612 he was in Istanbul, where he met some of the Moriscos who had been expelled from Spain and also helped the Dutch ambassador, Cornelis Haga, to negotiate an alliance between Turkey and the United Provinces (which were at that date enjoying a truce with Spain, from which they would become independent many years later).88 During all these journeys he managed to pick up sufficient French and Italian to be able to write in these languages, which suggests that his absence was not a short one, and may have lasted for at least a decade. In those fruitful years, he may have put together the ideas which led to the writing of a mysterious document, known to us only in Italian and Spanish originals, called The Gospel of Barnabas, whose authorship has always puzzled scholars and which was probably written in Istanbul.89
The Gospel seems to have first emerged among exiled Moriscos living in Tunis shortly after the expulsion. It became known on the continent of Europe in
the course of the seventeenth century, in an Italian version now preserved in the National Library at Vienna. A version in Spanish certainly existed, for it was consulted by the English scholar George Sale when he was preparing a translation of the Koran (1734), but it later disappeared and only in 1976 turned up in Australia in a partial eighteenth-century copy. The text of this intriguing document90 claims to be an authentic life of Christ, dating from the same period as the gospels of the Christian Bible. The basic difference is that it disagrees at several points with Christian tradition, states that Jesus (who is quoted as saying firmly, “I am not the Messiah”) was a mortal prophet but not the Son of God, that he was not crucified (Judas Iscariot was), and that he foretold the coming of the true Messiah (described as the “Messenger”), Mohammed. The gospel was first printed in English in 1907, arousing such interest that an Arabic version was published the year after.
At several points in the Gospel, Jesus states explicitly that the Savior of the world is not himself but Mohammed.
The disciples asked, “O Master, who shall that man be of whom you speak, who shall come into the world?” Jesus answered with joy of heart: “He is Mohammed; Messenger of God, and when he comes into the world, even as the rain makes the earth to bear fruit when for a long time it has not rained, even so shall he be occasion of good works among men, through the abundant mercy which he shall bring. For he is a white cloud full of the mercy of God, which mercy God shall sprinkle upon the faithful like rain.”
The Gospel was obviously written by a Muslim, and apparently drawn up in Spanish as its original text, for the Italian version has several significant spelling errors. The fact that it has several explicit references to western Mediterranean society, and even to the writings of Dante, suggest a sixteenth-century authorship,91 very possibly Alonso de Luna. The intention of the document, to demonstrate that Christianity is a valid religion but that its focus really points to Mohammed as the Messiah, has fascinated Muslims around the world, and continues to be studied by some of them today as a serious text. The idea of a compatibility, leading eventually to a convergence, between Christianity and Islam, was directly in line not only with the forgeries of Sacromonte but also, remarkably, with Luna’s own direct testimony as given to the Spanish authorities.