Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain

Introduction: Parallel Histories

1 introduction PARALLEL HISTORIES T his is a rough sketch of two faiths in a specific time and place. Judaism and Islam, and indeed all religions, tend to have two histories . The first is universal, a “great tradition” in which concrete historical situations take second place to the long sweep of spiritual beliefs and practices as they evolve over the millennia. The other history, a “little tradition” in which the same beliefs and practices are examined in local, particular contexts, often comes across as a lesser story. It does, however, have the singular advantage of avoiding the frequent sins of the long-term, confessional approach: the excess of generalization and the invariably pious cast of a history of belief written by and for believers. If the study of Christianity in early modern Spain is far too important a matter to leave it exclusively in the hands of those who profess it, the same can certainly be said of the religious experience of the persecuted faiths of the minorities. Medieval Spain was historically the part of western Christianity whose contact with both Islam and Judaism was longest, closest, and most intense. Early modern Spaniards by and large looked on this contact as a fundamental if undesirable legacy, one that played a crucial role in shaping the country’s fortunes even after the minority religions had been officially extirpated from the body politic. Studying how persons from all backgrounds grappled with this problematic inheritance from the past teaches a great deal about Spanish society, politics, economy, law, and culture as a whole. 2 Parallel Histories The close study of converts—some of whom were crypto-Jews and -Muslims —reveals much not only about these elusive minorities but also about the Christian majority, and its deeper fears and fantasies in particular. No history of Spain would be complete without keeping the unsure and often puzzling interaction of these three groups in mind. That said, it must be pointed out that the two minorities have rarely been studied together. That this has not been undertaken until now reflects in large measure the strength of historiographic traditions that have kept Jews and Muslims separate from each other, especially in regard to the postmedieval era. Yet there are compelling reasons for examining these groups together. Both were confessional minorities that wound up being defined in an ethnic and even racial sense, and in some cases in a manner ominously suggestive of the future of European “scientific” racism. And while both housed a wide range of spiritual experiences, they garnered uncommon repute for the suspicion, justified or not, of crypto-religion, that is, secret adherence to ancestral creeds and rites. Finally, the existence of what the Christian majority feared was an underground counterfaith represented the sole fissure in national religious unity within one of the few major European countries that had not witnessed any significant Protestant movement. The otherwise complete triumph of orthodoxy renders the existence of surreptitious dissent—real or imagined—all the more significant. The two parts of the text follow roughly the same schema. Each opens with an overview of the relations between the majority and the minority in question. Pride of place is given to the more dramatic confrontations that dominated these relations, above all the two expulsions, first of the Jews in 1492 and then in 1609–14 of the moriscos, or Muslim converts to Christianity. The less conflictive encounters of daily life, and in particular the long-term assimilation of the converted Jews, also receive attention. Thereafter follow sections on religious beliefs and practices, social and professional characteristics, the construction of collective and individual identities, cultural creativity, the experience of exile, and finally, the sheer difficulties of maintaining orthodox rites and tenets under conditions of persecution. In regard to certain questions, one group inevitably receives more emphasis than the other. Thus, in terms of high politics the moriscos take pride of place, as for various reasons they loomed much larger among the diplomatic and military concerns of the Spanish Monarchy. When deal- Introduction 3 ing with issues of literary expression and promotion of spiritual reform, though, the converted Jews emerge as protagonists, given their far greater presence in the mainstream of Spanish cultural and artistic life. All the same, despite these and other imbalances—many the result of the more abundant documentation generated by and about the descendants of Jews—the overall aim is to examine both groups in...