Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain

2. Rise and Fall of the Moriscos: A Political History

10 chapter 2 RISE AND FALL OF THE MORISCOS a political history A s the northern kingdoms gradually extended their control over the peninsula, particularly beginning in the eleventh century following the collapse of the formidable Caliphate of Cordoba, ever-greater numbers of Muslims fell under direct Christian rule. The victors allowed the continued practice of Islam and officially recognized their Muslim subjects as mudéjares (from the Arabic mudajjan, “permitted to remain”). Worship tended to be more private than public—discretion was advisable at all times. The faithful gathered in small centers and households, since the larger and more prominent mosques had been converted to use as churches. Still, Muslims were allowed to go about their spiritual business, and their communities included ritual butchers, clerics (known in Spanish as alfaquíes), religious schools, and the other personnel and institutions of collective life under their creed. With the conquest of Granada in 1492 the balance between Christianity and Islam shifted irrevocably to the side of the victors. Seen in retrospect, it was only a matter of time before a militarily triumphant Christianity would put an end to the Islamic spiritual autonomy that it had grudgingly conceded in the past. Yet the conversion of mudéjares into moriscos was not Rise and Fall of the Moriscos: A Political History 11 a foregone conclusion, nor was the story a straightforward one. Medieval coexistence had never ruled out the exertion of pressure, much less the exercise of violence, against religious minorities. In fact the Muslims had a long history of paying the price for many of the tensions and conflicts within the society in which they reluctantly found themselves. Thus even before the last of the Granada wars Muslims in more settled areas such as Valencia had been involved in disputes over, for example, boundaries and jurisdictions, irrigation rights, and other bones of contention between towns and rural nobles. While on occasion, as in the city of Valencia in 1455, these conflicts led to the use of force against the Islamic minority, there was little here that departed from medieval patterns of coexistence—a coexistence that by its very nature included sporadic acts of violence among members of different religious groups. The fall of Granada changed not so much the nature of this conflict, as the terms in which it was cast. Clashes for whatever reasons between adherents of different religions soon became contained within a single faith, in the form of disputes over the means and ends of conversion. For after 1492 Queen Isabel and, to a lesser extent, King Ferdinand did not hesitate to favor one among the many available precedents from the Middle Ages: forced baptism of their Muslim subjects. And in the Inquisition, which they had already created in 1480, they now had at their disposal an instrument ready to control and punish backsliders among the newly made Christians. When the Nasrid rulers of Granada finally surrendered to the besieging Christians in January 1492, they and their subjects were granted liberal terms. The treaty known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe explicitly protected the Muslims’ right to practice their religion without hindrance from the Christian authorities. Such generosity on the part of the victors did not last long. Isabel had named as the first archbishop her own confessor, the Hieronymite friar Hernando de Talavera. Talavera, a descendant of converted Jews, was one of the most famous and respected churchmen in Castile. Renowned for his mystic asceticism, he advocated peaceful evangelizing of the Muslim population within his vast archdiocese. In fact, Talavera seems to have bent over backward to respect the sensibilities of his new flock; generations later moriscos still remembered him warmly for his rejection of violent approaches to Christianization. Such a flexible spirit was not unique, and Talavera’s gradualist approach found other backers, most notably Iñigo 12 Parallel Histories Hurtado de Mendoza, count of Tendilla and the first captain-general of Granada following the conquest. Their policy of accommodation did not last long, however. Talavera soon ran into trouble of his own with the Inquisition , and even before his death in 1507 Church policy in Granada was decided by the new spiritual leader in the royal court, Fray Diego Jiménez de Cisneros. Cisneros was of a different and much harsher temperament, at least in regard to the Islamic remnant. One of his most notorious acts as royal agent in Granada was to organize...