"Con señales en el rostro": Salas Barbadillo's La hija de Celestina and the Apologist Rhetoric of the Morisco Expulsion

"Por cuanto la razón de bueno y christiano obliga en conciencia a expeler de los Reynos y repúblicas las cosas que causan escándalo y daño a los buenos Súbditos y peligro al Estado, y sobre todo ofensa y deservicio a Dios nuestro señor, habiendo la experiencia mostrado que todos estos inconvenientes ha causado la residencia de los Christianos nuevos moriscos en los Reynos de Granada y Murcia y Andalucía, porque demás de ser y proceder de los que concurrieron en el levantamiento del dicho Reyno de Granada cuyo principio fue matar con atroces muertes y martirios a todos los sacerdotes y Christianos viejos que pudieron de los que entre ellos vivían …"

Royal decree for the expulsion of the Moriscos from Andalucía (1609).

"Llamábanla sus amos María y aunque respondía a este nombre, el que sus padres la pusieron y ella escuchaba mejor fue Zara."

Elena, La hija de Celestina (1612).

At the dawn of the seventeenth century, Spain was in the grip of a vigorous debate over the future of the Moriscos, many of whom continued to practice their Islamic faith and traditions and resisted State efforts to assimilate them into the Christian mainstream. This debate over what became known as the "Morisco Problem" (la cuestión morisca) culminated in the Morisco expulsion in 1609 during the reign of Phillip III. This same period also witnessed the rise of the Spanish picaresque novel, which established itself as one of the most popular literary genres of its time. A frequent figure of the Spanish picaresque at the time is the Muslim or Morisco hechicera who practices love magic and alternative forms of medicine. Examples include Sabina, a former Muslim slave turned hechicera in Mateo Alemán's Segunda parte de Guzmán de Alfarache (1604); Aldonza de San Pedro, mother of Pablos and an alcahueta-prostituta in Francisco de Quevedo's Historia de la vida del Buscón (1626); and Zara, a Muslim slave turned hechicera, in Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo's La hija de Celestina (1612). Despite these representations of the hechicera as Muslim, Sánchez Ortega observes that it was the Gypsy community that was most closely associated with hechicería in early modern Spain. She explains that this association was so strong that its presence dominated many works of the period.¹ the Spanish picaresque novel at the time of the Morisco expulsion, however, often depicts the hechicera as Muslim and inherently dangerous. This representation echoes the anti-Islamic State discourse that silenced public debate and dominated the printed word in Spain once the expulsion began.² The royal expulsion decrees drew heavily upon the ideas and words of the Apologists, a powerful minority of clergy and laymen who sought to justify the expulsion. The Apologists argued that the Moriscos were incapable of becoming faithful Christians and described them as a cancer, infection, or deadly weed that must be removed if Spain was to reach its full potential as a Catholic nation. They stressed the Moriscos remained loyal to the Islamic faith and could restore Muslim control of the Peninsula through relations with Muslims in Northern Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

Salas Barbadillo's La hija de Celestina appeared in 1612, during the later stages of the expulsion and height of the Apologist treatises. The novel depicts the Morisco hechicera as a subversive catalyst for death and destruction, echoing the Apologists and royal expulsion decrees. Scholars of the early modern period have valued the Spanish picaresque novel for its social realism and criticism during a period of decline and transformation within the Spanish empire. Maravall, for example, describes the Spanish picaresque as a "testimonio en el que se refleja una imagen mental de la sociedad" and notes that "nos traslada el conjunto de creencias, de valoraciones, de aspiraciones, de pretensiones que se reconocían en el mundo social y aquellas atrevidas negaciones de las mismas en las que se estimaba desmoronarse gravemente el sistema establecido" (13...