A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

In spite of these restrictions on exiles suddenly cast adrift, penniless in strange places, their indomitable industry and thrift soon carved out careers which aroused the envious hostility of the indolent populations among whom they were thrown. Cervantes, in his Colloquio de los perros, stigmatizing them as a slow fever which slew as certainly as a violent one, gives expression to the feelings with which the Spaniard, whose only ambition was a position in the army, the Church or the service of the State, and who was a consumer, looked upon the producer and grudged him the product of his toil.[924] Already, in 1573, the Córtes took the alarm and petitioned Philip that they should not be allowed to act as architects or builders, or to hold public office or judicial positions.[925] In truth, only ten years after the exile, an official report complains that the numbers of the deported Moriscos are increasing, because none go to war or enter religion, and they are so hard-working that, after coming to Castile ten years before, without owning a handsbreadth of land, they are now well off and many are rich, so that, if it continues at the same rate for twenty years, the natives will be their servants. This grievance only increased with time. In 1587, Martin de Salvatierra, Bishop of Segorbe, in an enumeration of the evil deeds of the Moriscos, includes the fact that the exiles from Granada had already become farmers of the royal revenues in Castile, depositing cash as security in place of giving bondsmen; that there were individuals worth more than a hundred thousand ducats in Pastrana, Guadalajara, Salamanca and other places and that, if the king did not devise some remedy, they would soon greatly surpass the Old Christians in both numbers and wealth.[926] This jealousy found official utterance in the Córtes of 1592, which represented to Philip that previous ones had asked him to remedy the evils of the Granadan exiles scattered through Castile. Those evils were constantly increasing; they had obtained possession of trade, and were becoming so rich and powerful that they controlled the secular and ecclesiastical tribunals and lived openly in disregard of religion. The response to this was an edict ordering all magistrates to enforce rigidly the restrictive legislation of 1572.[927] This effected nothing for, in 1595, the Venetian envoy describes them as constantly increasing in numbers and wealth, as they never went to the wars and devoted themselves exclusively to trade.[928] In 1602, Archbishop Ribera bears the same testimony; they were hard-working and thrifty, and as they spent little on food or drink or clothing, they worked for what would not support an Old Christian, so that they were preferred by employers and consumers; they monopolized the mechanic arts and commerce, as well as daily labor.[929] The envious prejudices which thus found expression were a factor not unimportant among the causes leading to the expulsion.

All the exiles however were not thus peacefully laborious. About 1577, there arose complaints of seven or eight bands of Moriscos who lived by robbery and murder and terrorized the districts in which they operated. There was also a noted centre of lawlessness in Hornachos, near Badajos, populated by Moriscos. For thirty thousand ducats they bought from Philip the privilege of bearing arms; they had a regular organization and a treasury and a mint employing thirteen operatives for the coinage of counterfeit money, while, by judicious bribery of the courts, they protected their criminals when caught. In 1586 the Llerena tribunal made a raid on them with such success that it was obliged to hire houses to accommodate its prisoners, but the effect of this was temporary and, in October 1608, an alcalde of the court, Gregorio López Madera, was sent there to investigate and punish. Alcaldes of the court were noted for unsparing justice, and Madera did not belie this reputation. His inquest resulted in finding eighty-three dead bodies in the vicinity; he hanged ten members of the town-council and its executioner; he sent a hundred and seventy men to the galleys, scourged a large number, and left the place peaceful for the short interval before it was depopulated by the expulsion.[930]

ARAGON

In the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon the position of the Moriscos was different from that in Castile. They were mostly vassals of the nobles, settled on lands of which they held the dominium utile, while their lords owned the dominium directum. For these lands they paid tribute in money, in kind, or in service, and we are told that these imposts amounted to the double of what could be exacted from Christians.[931] It is easy to appreciate the old proverb “The more Moors the more profits,” and also that the nobles were vitally interested in protecting their vassals from external interference. Their ability to do this was largely owing to the sturdy independence with which the ancient fueros and privileges were maintained.

Alarm was taken early for, in 1495, the Córtes of Tortosa obtained from Ferdinand a fuero that he would never expel or consent to the expulsion of the Moors of Catalonia and, after the occurrences in Castile, the Córtes of Barcelona, in 1503, represented the destruction which it would cause and obtained a repetition of the pledge.[932] At the Córtes of Monzon, in 1510, he renewed this, with the addition that he would make no attempt to convert them by force, nor throw any impediment in the way of their free intercourse with Christians and, to the observance of this, he took a solemn oath, a repetition of which was exacted of Charles V, on his accession in 1518.[933] Under these guarantees, both the Moors and their lords might well imagine themselves secure.

As we have seen, the jurisdiction of the Inquisition did not extend to the unbaptized, so long as they committed no offences against religion. It had little scruple however in disregarding its limitations and, in Valencia as early as 1497, it undertook to prevent the wearing of Moorish costume and sent officials to Serra to arrest some women for disobedience. They were not recognized and were maltreated, while the women were conveyed away. We have seen how the tribunal arbitrarily avenged itself by arresting all residents of Serra who chanced to come to Valencia and that, when appeal was made to Ferdinand, he expressed his displeasure and ordered greater moderation in future—yet the leaders in the resistance at Serra were imprisoned for three years and suffered confiscation and banishment, leading to considerable correspondence in which Ferdinand sought to mitigate the harshness of the tribunal. He showed the same disposition towards the Moorish aljama of Fraga, which was concerned in the confiscation of a certain Galceran de Abella, and also towards the Moors of Saragossa, when involved in trouble with that tribunal by reason of harboring a female slave who had escaped from Borja.[934]

After the enforced conversion of the Castilian Moors, the tribunal of Aragon overstepped its powers by endeavoring, indirectly if not directly, to compel submission to baptism. The Duke and Duchess of Cardona, the Count of Ribagorza and other magnates complained, in 1508, to Ferdinand, who reprimanded the inquisitors sharply for exceeding their jurisdiction, with much scandal to the Moors and damage to their lords. No one, he said, should be converted or baptized by force, for God is served only when confession is heartfelt, nor should any one be imprisoned for simply telling others not to turn Christian. In future, no Moor was to be baptized unless he applied for it; any who were imprisoned for counselling against conversion were to be released at once, and the papers were to be sent to Inquisitor-general Enguera for instructions, nor were arrests to be made without his orders. As it was reported that others had fled in fear of forcible conversion or imprisonment, steps must be taken to bring them home with full assurance against violence.[935] In the same spirit, in 1510, when some Moors in Aragon had been converted, and had consequently been abandoned by their wives and children, Ferdinand ordered the inquisitors to permit them to return, and not to exert pressure on them or to baptize them forcibly.[936] Ferdinand understood his Aragonese subjects and had learned when to respect their fueros.

VALENCIA

These incidents indicate that there was a movement on foot which sometimes overstepped the limits of persuasion. There was, in fact, a process of voluntary conversion, affording hope that in time the wished-for unity of faith might be accomplished without coercion. A Catalan alfaquí, named Jacob Tellez, was baptized and brought several aljamas to embrace Christianity, when Ferdinand to aid him granted him licence to travel everywhere and to have entrance into all aljamas, whose members were required to assemble and listen to him.[937] The Moors of Caspe sought baptism in 1499; in the district of Teruel and Albarracin, in 1493, a mosque was converted into the church of the Trinity and, in 1502, the whole population embraced Christianity.[938] Wholesale conversions such as these were apt to furnish backsliders and, when the Inquisition undertook to punish those of Teruel and Albarracin, Charles V interposed, in 1519; he understood, he said, that many of the children of the Conversos, who had lapsed, desired to return to the faith, but were deterred through fear of punishment, wherefore he granted them a term of grace for a year, during which they could come forward and confess without incurring confiscation, and similar concessions were made in Tortosa and other cities.[939]

Valencia, which had the largest and densest Moorish population, was also the scene of considerable proselyting and of vigorous inquisitorial action. An influential alfaquí, named Abdallah, was converted, took orders as a priest, under the title of Maestro Mossen Andrés, and devoted himself to winning over his brethren. He wrote a work controverting the Koran chapter by chapter, which was printed and circulated.[940] The little town of Manices must have been converted almost in mass, for we happen to have a sentence uttered in the church there, by the inquisitors of Valencia, April 8, 1519, on two hundred and thirty Moriscos, then present, who had come in under an Edict of Grace, confessing and abjuring the errors into which they had relapsed. They were received to reconciliation, apparently without confiscation, and the penances prescribed were purely spiritual, although in addition they were subjected to the customary severe disabilities. There must have been not a little cruel preliminary work for, in the list of these penitents, no less than thirty-two women are described as the wives or daughters of men who had been burnt.[941] It is easy for us now to recognize how powerful an impediment was this method of preserving the purity of the faith by obstructing the wished-for conversion, for the Mudéjares who refused baptism could congratulate themselves that they were not subject to a jurisdiction which visited with such severity the adherence to ancestral habits that had become a second nature.