A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

All this could only seem to them a wanton interference with habits that had become a second nature and when, on January 1, 1567, the edict was published it created indescribable excitement. As an earnest of its enforcement, all baths were forthwith destroyed, commencing with those of the king. The aljamas throughout the kingdom consulted with the leaders of the Albaycin, or Morisco quarter of the city, and it was agreed that, if relief was not to be had by entreaty, resort must be had to rebellion, for life was insupportable under such tyranny. Even Deza recognized the threatening prospect and wrote to the court that precautions should be taken against a rising; during 1567, he mitigated, in some degree, the enforcement of the law and inflicted no punishment under it. The Moriscos appealed to Philip, but, when he referred the memorial to Espinosa, the latter replied that no suspension could be considered; religious men had charged the king’s conscience, telling him that he was responsible for the souls of the apostates. In the Council of State, the Duke of Alva and the Commendador of Alcántara were in favor of suspension, and the Council suggested the gradual enforcement of one article a year, but Espinosa and Deza had more influence than soldiers and statesmen—it was a religious question with which the latter had nothing to do.[913]

GRANADA

On January 1, 1568, orders were issued to abandon all Moorish silken garments, and the priests were instructed to take all Morisco children, between the ages of three and fifteen, and place them in schools, where they should learn Castilian and Christian doctrine. This increased the agitation and a deputation was sent to remonstrate with Deza, who gave assurances that their children were not to be taken from them, but that the king was resolved to save their souls and enforce the pragmática.[914] The naked alternative was before them of submission or rebellion.

Desperate as rebellion might seem, it was not wholly hopeless. The Moriscos estimated that they could raise a hundred thousand fighting men, lamentably deficient in arms, it is true, but hardy and enured to privation. They counted largely on aid from Barbary, hoping that the rulers there would not miss the opportunity of striking a deadly blow at their traditional enemy. Their brethren, too, in Valencia, who were equally oppressed, might reasonably be expected to rise and throw off the Spanish yoke. They could not, moreover, be ignorant that the imposing Spanish monarchy was in reality exhausted—that its internal strength in no way corresponded with its external appearance. All the Venetian envoys of the period, in fact, describe the absence of military resources in Spain, the difficulty of raising troops and the unfamiliarity with arms of those who made such splendid soldiers when disciplined and trained. It was in this very year that Antonio Tiepolo, when commenting on the strange neglect which exposed the southern coast to the ravages of the Barbary corsairs, expresses apprehension that an invasion from Africa, supported by the Moriscos, might expose Spain to the fate which it experienced of old.[915] It had been bled to exhaustion by Charles V and Philip was continuing the process. As with men, so was it with money. Charles had left such an accumulation of debt that Philip, on his accession, seriously contemplated repudiation, and he staggered under an ever-increasing burden, from which the treasures of the New World afforded no relief. His revenues were consumed in advance, and during the rebellion it was with the utmost difficulty that moderate sums could be furnished for the most pressing necessities. It was most fortunate for the monarchy that the hopes of the insurgents as to external aid were disappointed, for a united effort of the Crescent against the Cross might have changed the destiny of the Peninsula. As it was, the Moriscos of Valencia were kept quiet; the Sultan held aloof; the Barbary princes only gave permission for adventurers to go as volunteers, and some five or six hundred straggled in small bands across the sea. Yet the resources of Spain were strained to the utmost in subduing the isolated rebellion thus heedlessly provoked.

Arrangements were made for a rising on Holy Thursday (April 18, 1568), but the secret was betrayed and the design was postponed. Even this failed to induce the precaution of placing Granada in a state of defence and, when the rebellion broke out, December 23d, it found the Christians wholly unprepared. Mondéjar met the crisis with great vigor and ability. Raising a hurried force of a few thousand men, he marched out of the city on January 2, 1569 and, in a difficult winter campaign amid the mountain snows, by the middle of February he had virtually crushed resistance. Deza, however, backed by those who thirsted for rapine and plunder, poisoned the mind of the king; Mondéjar’s agreements for the submission of the insurgents were set aside; Philip sent his half-brother, Don John of Austria, then an inexperienced youth, to take command, assisted by a council of war, each member of which had his own plan of campaign, while no action was to be taken without the approval of the king. This opéra bouffe method of making war had its natural result. The rebellion revived and grew stronger than ever, making raids on the Vega, almost to the gates of the city, in which Don John and his council were virtually beleaguered.

GRANADA

The details of the war that ensued do not concern us here except to say that it was carried on with ferocious greed and cruelty. Military expeditions were frequently mere slave-hunts, in which the men were massacred, while women and children were brought in thousands to the auction-block and were sold to the highest bidders. Nor were the Moriscos the only sufferers, for the Córtes of 1570 complained bitterly of the rapine and excesses of the troops on their way to the scene of action.[916] Hostilities were prolonged until the opening months of 1571 and, when resistance was finally suppressed, Spain was well-nigh exhausted. The pacification was as ruthless as the prosecution of the war. In advance, it had been proposed at the court to remove the whole population to the mountains of Northern Spain, and Deza, the evil genius of Granada, never lost sight of the suggestion.[917] At his earnest solicitation it was commenced with the Albaycin, as early as June, 1569. No distinction was made between loyalists and rebels. The men were shut up in the churches and then transferred to the great Hospital Real, a gunshot from the city, where they were divided into gangs, with their hands tied to ropes like galley-slaves, and were marched off to their destinations under guard. The women were left for a time in their houses, to sell their effects and follow. Some seven or eight thousand were thus disposed of, and even the chroniclers are moved to compassion in describing the misery and despair of those thus torn from their homes without warning and hurried off to the unknown. Many died on the road of weariness, of despair or of starvation, or were slain or robbed and sold as slaves by those set to protect them. It relieved the Christians of fear, we are told, but it was deplorable to see the destruction of prosperity and the vacancy left where had been so much life and industry.[918]

This policy was carried out everywhere, as one district after another was reduced. Final instructions from Philip to Don John, October 25, 1570, ordered the deportation of all and designated the provinces to which they were to be taken, some of them as far as Leon and Galicia. Families were not to be separated; they were to move in bands of fifteen hundred men, with their women and children, under escort of two hundred foot and twenty horse, with a commissioner who made lists of those under his charge, provided them with food and distributed them in their respective destinations. These orders were carried out. Don John writes, November 5th, from Guadix to Ruy Gómez, that the number removed from that district had been large; the last party had been sent off that day and it was the most unfortunate thing in the world, for there was such a tempest of wind, rain and snow that the mother would lose her daughter on the road, the wife her husband and the widow her infant. It cannot be denied, he added, that the depopulation of a kingdom is the most pitiful thing that can be imagined. It was more than pitiful in some districts, where the undisciplined soldiery, entrusted with the task, converted it into pillage, massacre and the enslavement of the women and children.[919] Such was the outcome of the pledges given, eighty years before, by Ferdinand and Isabella, but the object of clearing Granada of its Morisco population was measurably accomplished. In an auto de fe celebrated there, in 1593, there appeared eighty-one delinquents convicted of Judaism and only one charged with Mahometanism.[920]

The sufferings of the exiles did not end with deportation. Leonardo Donate, the Venetian envoy, who was an eye-witness, tells us that many perished through miseries and afflictions, which, in fact, was inevitable under the conditions.[921] Their distribution was entrusted to a special Concejo de Poblaciones, and an elaborate edict, in twenty-three sections, issued October 6, 1572, specified the regulations under which they were permitted to exist. These scattered them among Christians, kept them under close and perpetual surveillance, and reduced them almost to the status of predial serfs, bound to the soil. No weapons were permitted, save a pointless knife, and savage punishments were provided for the enforcement of the prescriptions. Children were to be brought up, as far as possible, in Christian families, and were to be taught reading, writing and Christian doctrine. The pragmática of 1566 was declared to be in force, with added penalties for the use of Arabic; any one writing or speaking it, even in his own house, incurred, for a first offence, thirty days’ prison in chains, for a second double, for a third a hundred lashes and four years of galleys.[922] The severity of this latter provision shocked even the town-council of Córdova, which had shown itself by no means favorable to the exiles. It represented to the alcalde that God alone could enable them to speak a language of which they were ignorant, especially as the alguaziles were constantly arresting and punishing them, and it begged that action should be suspended until schools could be organized for their instruction, but the alcalde replied that he had no choice and must execute the edict.[923]

THE GRANADAN EXILES