A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

France was inundated by the emigration. Henry IV had anticipated it and, in February, had issued an ordonnance permitting those who would profess the Catholic faith to settle in the lands beyond the Garonne and Dordogne, while shipping should be provided for those desiring to sail for Barbary.[1084] Under this the immigration from Castile had been taken care of, but his assassination in May threw everything into confusion, and there was no preparation for the twenty or twenty-five thousand from Aragon, who passed through Navarre, or sought to make their way over the mountains. La Force, after some delay, arranged to admit them in bands of a thousand each, so as not to oppress the population of the sterile district through which they had to pass, and thus they struggled on towards Marseilles and other ports where they hoped to find shipping.[1085]

There was one body, of some fourteen thousand souls, that was refused admission to France, after they had reached Canfranc, the last Spanish town on the mountain road over the Pyrenees. They had paid forty thousand ducats for permission to go to France, besides the export duties on what they carried, and the expense of the commissioners in charge of them. Forced to turn back on the long road to the Alfaques, so many of them sickened and died in the summer heat that it was feared that they would bring pestilence to the ships.[1086] In short the story of the exodus from Aragon is one of heartless greed and reckless inhumanity.

EXPULSION

The dangers which had weighed so heavily on Spanish statesmanship were thus removed, but fanaticism and race hatred were not yet satisfied, and it was resolved to root out all traces of the old Moorish population. An edict of July 10, 1610, banished all Moriscos of Granada, Valencia and Aragon, who were settled in the Castilian kingdoms, and this was followed, August 2d, by a similar provision for the kingdoms of Aragon. These edicts exempted those who had lived as good Christians, but this was a point difficult to establish, and the claims under it were multitudinous and embarrassing. To save the trouble of deciding them an end was put to the matter by banishing all who had thus far been exempted, including even the Moriscos antiguos, descendants of the old Mudéjares. This was effected by orders of March 22d and May 3, 1611, to the corregidores, stating that it was for the service of God and the kingdom that the matter be perfected, wherefore all who had previously been exempted and all who, after expulsion, had returned, were given two months to leave the kingdom, under the irrevocable penalty of death and confiscation, the only exceptions being priests, nuns and the wives of Old Christians with their children.[1087]

This final rooting-out gave infinite trouble. There was often nothing to distinguish these Moriscos from Old Christians, in language, dress or mode of life, and there was no lack of persons to harbor them, whether from compassion or to have the benefit of their services. Commissioners were sent to the different provinces with instructions that no privileges or antiquity should avail them, while the courts were expressly prohibited from interference; it was added, indeed, that those who bore the reputation of Old Christians could appeal to the king, but his representatives soon grew tired of the multitude of perplexing cases thus thrust upon them. The number thus expelled was computed at about six thousand, exclusive of young children, who were given to Old Christians to bring up. The difficulty of effecting this final clearance was increased by the number of exiles who persisted in returning, in spite of an edict of September 12, 1612, which consigned them all to the galleys. The work seemed endless and finally it was confided to the Count of Salazar. In this he labored long and strenuously. At Almagro he found more than eight hundred returned exiles, of whom he consigned some to the galleys, others to the quicksilver mines of Almaden, and the rest he sent abroad at the expense of the magistrates, who had been remiss in detecting and punishing them. His greatest trouble, we are told, lay in deciding the numerous suits of those who claimed that they were not comprised in the edicts and, to cut matters short, on October 26, 1613, he issued, in the name of the king, an edict commanding all Moriscos to leave the kingdom within fifteen days; any person receiving or harboring them was threatened with confiscation and, as he included in this fiefs, castles, vassals and royal grants, it shows that nobles were sheltering them. Finally a reward of ten ducats was offered for information leading to the capture of a Morisco.[1088] In this insane determination to purify the land of all trace of Moorish blood, and in the confusion of the process, many Catholics as sincere as their persecutors must have been consigned to infidel lands.

The time came at last for the Moriscos of Murcia and the Val de Ricote to share the fate of their brethren. Influence had been exercised to procure the suspension of the edict of December 9, 1609, and of a subsequent one of October 8, 1611, but, after the work was completed elsewhere, the Duke of Lerma and the royal confessor, Fray Aliaga, sent investigators who of course reported them to be Christians only in name. Lerma insisted, Philip yielded, and a cédula of October 6, 1613, ordered Salazar to enforce the edicts. He was hurried from Madrid, November 20th, with instructions to lose no time and, in January 1614, some fifteen thousand were deported, although many old people and invalids were allowed to remain. Many women married Old Christians in order to obtain exemption, and numerous husbands and wives of honorable birth entered religion, to the great enrichment of the monasteries, for which the bishops and the superiors of the Orders cheerfully granted licence. Early in February, Salazar returned to Madrid with his work accomplished, although some had escaped to Valencia and had returned on being driven out from there. In 1615 Salazar reported that he had sent his assistant Manrique to Murcia to complete the expulsion, but there were still some Moriscos in Tarragona and the Balearic Isles, and he knew of others in Sardinia and the Canaries.[1089]

EXPULSION

For some years yet the effort was continued to discover and eject those who were concealed among the Old Christians—an effort complicated by the numbers who persisted in returning after experiencing the inhospitable reception accorded to them in Africa. They offered themselves as slaves to those who would receive them, and in this manner many succeeded in remaining. To prevent this, royal orders were repeatedly issued, but they were ineffective, and the Royal Council at length grew tired of reiterating them, so that Bleda, writing in 1618, deplores the fact that he would die without seeing his land purified of this evil seed. Total purification, in fact, was impossible. We are told that, in Valencia, La Mancha, and Granada, there are still communities which in dress, customs and tendencies may be regarded as Moriscos with scarce any trace of Christianity, and Padre Boronat ascribes to this element the growth of modern scepticism and the mingled fanaticism and superstition which afflict certain portions of Spain.[1090]

However this may be, in so far as the Inquisition was concerned, the expulsion was a success. In such of its records as I have been able to examine, the cosas de Moros virtually disappeared, the exceptions being scarce more than enough to show that vigilance was unrelaxed. For awhile, it is true, there were Morisco slaves to be looked after. A letter of March 14, 1616, from the commissioner at Denia, asks for instructions concerning some baptized Morisco slaves, who had plotted to escape to Barbary, which shows how carefully they were watched.[1091] Then the exiles who chanced to be captured in Moorish corsairs, or who were brought to Spain as slaves, or who were in the royal galleys, were subject to prosecution as apostates because they had been baptized, until, in 1629, the Suprema mercifully decreed that they should not be molested unless they gave occasion for scandal.[1092] The scattering cases of Mahometanism, which figure in the autos de fe subsequent to the expulsion, are mostly of Christian renegades, captured at sea, or of Moorish slaves taken in the perpetual warfare of the Mediterranean, who were baptized under legislation of 1626, repeated in 1638 and 1712.[1093] Occasionally, however, we hear of a Morisco, such as Gerónimo Buenaventura—probably one of the children detained in 1609 or 1610—condemned to relaxation by the tribunal of Valencia, transferred in 1635 to Valladolid and, in 1638 to Saragossa, to be burnt for pertinacity.[1094]