Further notices on the Morisco-Spanish literature may be found in an account by the Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, of two manuscripts in France, like those just described (Ochoa, Manuscritos Españoles, 1844, pp. 6-21); but a more ample and satisfactory discussion of it occurs in a learned article in the British and Foreign Review, January, 1839.
It should be remembered that Morisco was substituted for Moro, after the overthrow of the Moorish power in Spain, as an expression of the contempt with which the Christian Spaniards have never ceased to pursue their old conquerors and hated enemies, from the time of the fall of Granada to the present day.
Encouraged by the expulsion of the Jews, in 1492, and by that of the Moors, in 1609-11, Don Sancho de Moncada, a professor in the University of Toledo, addressed Philip III., in a discourse published in 1619, urging that monarch to drive out the Gypsies. But he failed. His discourse is in Hidalgo, “Romances de Germania,” (Madrid, 1779, 8vo,) and is translated by Borrow, in his remarkable work on the Gypsies (London, 1841, 8vo, Vol. I. chap. xi.). Salazar de Mendoza, at the end of his “Dignidades de Castilla,” published in 1618, says he had himself prepared a memorial to the same effect, for driving out the Gypsies; and he adds, in a true Castilian spirit, that “it is being over-nice to tolerate such a pernicious and perverse race.”
[264] Comentario de la Guerra de España, por el Marques de San Phelipe, Genova, s. a., 4to, Tom. I. Lib. II., año 1701.
[265] Tapia, Hist. de la Civilizacion Española, Madrid, 1840, 12mo, Tom. III. p. 167.
[266] The details—disgusting enough—are given by L. F. Moratin, in the notes to his edition of the “Auto da Fé de Logroño, del Año 1610,” a work originally published for general edification, by one of the persons concerned in the auto itself, and certified to be true by others; but reprinted (Cadiz, 1812, 12mo) by Moratin, the comic poet, to show the ignorance and brutality of all who had a hand in it. There is a play on the subject by Gil y Zarate, 1837; but it does not respect the truth of history.
[267] Tapia, Hist. de la Civilizacion, Tom. III. p. 77 and p. 168. Sandoval, Hist., Tom. II. p. 657.
[268] Llorente, Hist., Tom. II., 1817, p. 239.
[269] Ibid., Tom. II. p. 385, Tom. IV. p. 3.
[270] Tapia, Hist., Tom. III. p. 88.