Order and Resistance in the Polemical and Catechetical Literature of Early Modern Spain (1515–1599): Christians, Muslims, and Moriscos

This article addresses four works written for the instruction of Muslims and Moriscos in early modern Spain within the framework of negotiation of power and identities. Through Juan Andrés’s Confusión (1515), Juan Luis Vives’s “Contra sectam Mahometi” (1543), Pedro Guerra de Lorca’s Catecheses mystagogicae (1586), and Juan de Ribera’s Catechismo (1599), it asks how these texts attempt to impose order in an Iberia characterized by heterogeneity. It also asks how the tension between the goals of the corpus and its cultural context surfaces within their pages. The article argues that these texts are not simply an elitist literature reflecting a desire opposed to reality (i.e., religious and cultural homogeneity), but a reflection of their religious and cultural circumstances.