History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by S. P. Scott

This triumph of the Faith, while exceedingly gratifying, was proportionately expensive. The entire available revenues of the See of Toledo, amounting to seventy thousand ducats, were expended in its accomplishment. Even this great sum proved insufficient, and Ximenes was forced to pledge his private credit to appease the demands of the crowd of mercenary sycophants and spurious converts who claimed the reward of their abasement and dishonor. Among the sincere disciples of the Prophet, and there were many in Granada, the course of their perfidious brethren was regarded with unconcealed abhorrence. The more earnest and devout of these endeavored to counteract the growing inclination to religious defection by public exhortations and remonstrances. It was not in the imperious nature of the Primate to brook such opposition. The offending faquis were thrown into prison. History has not revealed the nature of the arguments employed to shake their constancy, but the persecuted Moslems were evidently not of the stuff of which martyrs and saints are made. One after another recanted and were baptized; many of their fellow-sectaries profited by their example; resistance was for the time effectually suppressed; and Ximenes pursued, without molestation, his favorite and inexorable method of wholesale conversion. To his narrow and arbitrary mind the employment of the most radical measures seemed to promise the greatest assurances of success. In the furtherance of this idea, and with a view to eradicating the apparent cause of the evil, he now planned what he considered a master-stroke of policy. Without previous notice, a diligent search was made of every house throughout the entire city, and every manuscript in the Arabic language which could be found was seized. The number thus secured amounted to nearly a million. Among them were not only superb copies of the Koran, but relics of the great Ommeyade body of literature, which had been the pride of the imperial court of Cordova, and had been cherished as priceless through many generations; the contents of the public libraries, whose preservation and increase had been the especial care of the enlightened Alhamares; treatises on history and science, which described the events and pictured the intellectual advancement of what had been the most learned and polished of nations; and the literary treasures of every scholar and philosopher in the capital. The works on chemistry, botany, astronomy, and medicine, subjects which had always engaged the diligent curiosity of the Spanish Arab, predominated. There, too, were doubtless to be found many translations of the classics, inheritances from the Grecian school of Alexandria,—henceforth forever lost,—which had found their way into the Peninsula from the distant banks of the Nile. These volumes exhibited in the beauty of their calligraphy and the magnificence of their adornment all the pomp, the pride, the luxury, of Saracen art. Beautiful arabesques in gold, silver, and many colors, embellished pages written with a delicacy and regularity which equalled that of the finest type. The bindings were of inlaid leather; some were embroidered; others were incrusted with tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and jewels; the clasps were of solid gold. All of these inestimable stores of learning were heaped in one immense pile in the centre of the Plaza de la Babal-Rambla, set on fire, and consumed. The importance of this sacrifice to bigotry may be inferred from the fact that there was probably in the entire world no collection of equal extent and value as that destroyed by Ximenes in this historic square, where, in the time of the emirs, national festivals had been celebrated, and the emulation of distinguished warriors in the martial sports of the tournament excited by the presence of the beauty and the gallantry of the Moslem court; where the differences of Castilian princes had been settled by a chivalric appeal to arms; where cultured audiences had witnessed the friendly rivalry of Moorish poets and troubadours, and the reward of the victor had been bestowed by the hand of royalty, all little suspecting that on the scene of their pleasures would one day be exhibited such a melancholy spectacle.

The pecuniary loss entailed by this vandalism was of itself immense, but the destructive effect it produced upon society was incalculable. By it perished unique literary monuments which it was impossible to replace; it offered a premium upon ignorance, for through such deeds alone was the favor of the all-powerful sacerdotal order to be secured; it discouraged learning to such a degree that from that time forth no Moslem writer of distinction appeared to illustrate the annals or depict the manners of his race; and it annihilated in a single hour the precious accumulation of ages, from which the modern historian might have collected data relative to Moorish civilization elsewhere unattainable in the world of letters. The intellectual degradation resulting from this intolerant act of Ximenes was most deplorable. All knowledge was thereafter filtered through the narrow channels of ecclesiastical inspection and thoroughly cleansed of every suspicion of heresy; the missal and the breviary supplanted the works of Arabic annalists and philosophers; and the enduring results of this crime against learning and of its pernicious example are still apparent in the remarkably illiterate and fanatical character of the inhabitants of Granada. Three hundred volumes on the science of medicine were saved from the flames, for the library of the University of Alcalá; but no entreaties or remonstrances from his companions could move the ferocious bigot to exempt from the sacrifice volumes whose jewelled covers and clasps of gold represented in themselves a princely fortune.

The destruction of Arabic manuscripts was the first step towards the employment of violence. With characteristic energy, the Primate availed himself of the authority with which he had been armed by the Holy Office. Persons suspected of heresy were summarily seized, imprisoned, tortured; and those who for the moment escaped experienced all the indignities which could be inflicted by the hands of ecclesiastical malice strengthened by boundless power. These outrages, and the repeated violation of the rights granted in their treaty with the crown, aroused the populace to desperation; and the arrest of a widow, whose wealth had attracted the cupidity of the authorities, was the signal for a dangerous revolt. The gates of the Albaycin were closed and guarded. The streets were barricaded. The towers were occupied, and Ximenes, whom the indignant threats of the people openly devoted to death, was besieged by an armed multitude in his palace, from which perilous situation he was with difficulty released by the Count of Tendilla. The news of the insurrection called down upon the tyrannical prelate the wrath of his sovereigns, but the singular credit he enjoyed and the vast influence he was able to wield soon restored him to royal favor.

It was now resolved to carry matters to extremes, and the choice of baptism or death was offered to the Moors, whose rebellion, although provoked by the oppression of their masters, was declared to have caused a forfeiture of all their privileges. The disaffection spread rapidly to the provinces; the mountaineers of the Alpujarras and the adjacent rugged country, which were the resorts of bands of desperate outlaws who entertained intimate relations with the Barbary corsairs, became involved; and the Catholic monarchs, so far from the religious triumph which they had anticipated, saw themselves suddenly confronted by a war which promised to assume formidable proportions. Space will not permit a detailed description of the repeated insurrections and final subjugation of the Moriscoes, and only the more important events of that memorable struggle can be touched upon. The mountain ranges of Southern Spain were admirably adapted to the desultory tactics in which they excelled, and the prolongation of the struggle was the natural consequence of the difficulties of the ground, of the boldness and activity of the insurgents, of the incapacity of the Castilian commanders, and of the proverbial want of discipline and fatal recklessness of the Christian soldiery. The general disarmament of the Moors had deprived them of the greater part of their weapons, but this disadvantage was eventually repaired by the spoils of battle and by the enterprise of Aragonese and Castilian traders, who, undismayed by the prospect of detection and punishment, were always ready, for an extravagant compensation, to furnish the enemies of their king with arms of the most approved pattern and workmanship. The operations of the contending forces were prosecuted with a cruelty hitherto unknown, even in the bloody annals of the Peninsula; and the ultimate triumph of the Spaniards was signalized by acts of such merciless vengeance that the foreign soldiers of fortune, enlisted for plunder and long seasoned by bloodshed, were appalled by their dreadful atrocity. The massacre of the population of a place taken by storm was the rule and not the exception; the wounded remaining on fields of battle were exterminated; prisoners were subjected to horrible tortures; every crime suggested by the incentives of lust, rapine, and hereditary aversion was perpetrated; and the most desirable fate of a captive was to be consigned for life to the tyranny of an unfeeling master dominated by every vice, inaccessible to mercy, and unrestrained by any law either of God or man.

An army of nearly a hundred thousand men assembled, at the summons of the Spanish sovereigns, for the suppression of the insurrection, at Alhendin near Granada. Formidable in numbers alone, this great host was composed of materials very different from the soldiery that had achieved the Conquest. It was indifferently equipped, unorganized, and absolutely deficient in discipline. The flower of the Castilian youth, inspired by the discoveries of Columbus, had sought new scenes of adventure on the shores of mysterious lands beyond the ocean. Commercial pursuits had weakened the military spirit; a peace of many years had impaired the energy of the nation and incapacitated, for the exposure of a perilous service, a people who had been reared and nurtured amidst the din of arms. The blessings of internal tranquillity, almost forgotten in the conflict of centuries, had once more permitted the unmolested exercise of the mechanical arts and the practice of agricultural industry. The better class of citizens, in the full enjoyment of security, were loath to resume, for the sake of a religious principle, whose enforcement promised much danger and trifling advantage, the hazards of the uncertain game of war. The army was therefore mainly composed of the retainers and vassals of the nobility, whose duty required their presence, and an innumerable horde of penniless adventurers, who sought, in the excitements and vicissitudes of a campaign against the infidel, an opportunity for the improvement of their desperate fortunes. Aided by a smaller force operating from Almeria, the rebellion was, after some fighting and much cruel retaliation, put down; the insurgents, impelled by the promise of immunity or the menace of death, consented to embrace the Catholic faith; the ancient chroniclers relate with becoming pride that during a single day ten thousand proselytes were baptized in the Sierra de Filabres alone; and through material inducements, or from the contagion of example, the inhabitants of Baza and Guadix, of the Alpujarras, and of the mountain regions to the south as far as the sea, were reckoned among those who acknowledged the authority of the Church and accepted the doctrines of Christianity.

With the advent of the sixteenth century, a royal decree was promulgated, establishing at Granada the same civil jurisdiction which obtained in the other provincial capitals of the kingdom. The magistracy was nominally divided between the Spaniards and the Moors, but the equality was only apparent, and the preponderance of power virtually remained with the conquerors. Allured by the delusive prospect of a voice in the affairs of the government, and despairing of assistance from their brethren in Africa, whose good offices they had repeatedly but vainly solicited, the Moors of the Albaycin finally consented to baptism. They required, as a condition of their compliance, permission to wear their national costume and to use the Arabic language, privileges which were subsequently made pretexts for oppression. It was also agreed that the Holy Office should not be established at Granada for the space of forty years; a provision which ecclesiastical acumen readily evaded by placing that city under the jurisdiction of the Inquisitorial tribunal of Cordova.

Still dissatisfied with the slow progress made by her ministers in bringing the obdurate Moors within the pale of Christianity, Isabella a second time ordered Ximenes to Granada. Instructed by his prior experience, he conducted himself with more discretion than before; but his proselytes, driven into the Church by hundreds, without previous instruction, remained, like their predecessors, profoundly ignorant of its doctrines and of the responsibilities imposed upon them by their enforced conversion. This time the stay of the Primate was short; his ascetic habits had impaired a constitution never extremely robust; and a pulmonary affection of a serious character, whose symptoms were aggravated by unremitting excitement and toil, speedily developed. The available resources of medical science were unable to relieve his malady, and, abandoned as hopeless by regular practitioners, in the hour of his extremity he was induced to submit to the treatment of a venerable Moorish woman, who combined with Arabic science the mysterious and uncanny ceremonies of the witch and the empiric. Under her ministrations the distinguished sufferer improved with a rapidity which, under other conditions, would have been deemed miraculous; and he was soon able to leave the scene of his labors, owing his life to the skill of a member of that race which he had relentlessly persecuted,—after a career which, however short, had made a more profound and fatal impress upon the policy of the Spanish Crown than that of any other dignitary of his time, and which was destined subsequently to exert a powerful influence upon the political fate and the future civilization of Europe.

A sequence of calamities, traceable to royal perfidy and ecclesiastical usurpation, was now about to descend upon the Spanish monarchy. The apprehensions of the inhabitants of the Serrania of Ronda had been aroused by reports of the injustice and violence visited upon their countrymen of Granada. The Moorish citizens of the ancient capital and its environs were now all nominally Christians. The persuasive methods of Talavera and the severity of Ximenes had enrolled upon the registers of the Church more than seventy thousand proselytes. Under the circumstances, the professions of a vast majority of these were necessarily insincere. It was an example of the organization of hypocrisy upon a gigantic scale, where religious principle was subordinated to material interests, and an outward observance of superstitious rites was accepted as an equivalent of earnest devotion and genuine piety. These reputed converts had not, however, by any means abandoned the faith of their forefathers. They diligently celebrated its rites in secret. Their children were early, and with secrecy, instructed in the doctrines of Islam. In defiance of royal decrees, they practised many suspicious ceremonies not recognized even by orthodox Moslems, performed incantations, wore talismans and charms. A concealed system of communication was established between them and their brethren in the provinces; and each important event that took place in the city was known within a few hours to every inhabitant of the sierras. The Moors of the Serrania of Ronda did not receive the Gospel with the same docility as their kinsmen of the Alpujarras, whose doubts had been speedily removed by the cogent argument of a hundred thousand armed men. The missionaries, who tried to carry matters with a high hand, were maltreated and driven away. The mountaineers rose; the country was swept by bands of merciless brigands; the corsairs of Africa repaired in large numbers to the scene of booty and adventure; the passes were barricaded; and the region in the vicinity of Ronda assumed the appearance of a fortified camp. Offers of amnesty, conditional on baptism, were received with scorn. An army under Don Alonso de Aguilar, the Count of Cifuentes, and the Count of Ureña then entered the mountains. The Moors, evacuating their villages, slowly retired to the Sierra Bermeja, where they made a final stand. The impetuosity and want of discipline of the Christians lured them into a disadvantageous situation, whence there was no escape. After a day of fighting, they were surrounded in the darkness and routed with frightful slaughter. Don Alonso de Aguilar, Francisco Ramirez de Madrid, chief of ordnance of the Spanish army, and many other cavaliers, were killed; and the mountain slopes were strewn with the bodies of soldiers who had been butchered as they fled. The victory of the Sierra Bermeja was the only important one gained by the insurgents in the long course of the Morisco wars. It was productive of no substantial advantage; and its only permanent effect was to exasperate the Queen, who, now regarding herself as the injured party, devoted henceforth all her energy to the oppression of a heretic race whose existence she considered a blemish upon her piety and a scandal to her dominions.

The submission of the Moors, during the gradual subjugation of the Peninsula, had left large numbers in different conditions of life scattered through the provinces of the various kingdoms. A few had early apostatized; many were held in a state of servitude; but by far the larger portion enjoyed a nominal freedom, and purchased immunity from molestation by the payment of tribute. All who complied with the laws regulating their responsibilities to the government were allowed the peaceful exercise of their religious ceremonies. The principal wealth of the Castilian nobility consisted in the industry of these their intelligent and laborious dependents. On what are now known as the dehesas and despoblados—“pastures” and “deserts”—of Castile and Estremadura, the Moorish agriculturists produced from an ungrateful soil the wheat which supplied the population of the entire Peninsula. These invaluable tributaries of the Spanish Crown had never evinced the slightest concern for the fate of their fellow-sectaries contending for liberty and religion on the distant banks of the Genil. Not only had they failed to manifest their sympathy, but the extraordinary contributions for the prosecution of the war levied upon the products of their thrift largely contributed to the successful termination of a struggle in whose result they naturally must have felt a more than passing interest. Had their feelings been sufficiently ardent to have induced active and armed co-operation, the difficulties of the Reconquest must have been vastly increased. As it was, their apathetic and selfish conduct was far from securing them immunity from persecution. The malignant bigotry of the Queen, flinging to the winds every sentiment of justice, piety, and humanity, had now usurped over her better nature an imperious and undisputed dominion; and on the twelfth of February, 1502, she published an edict ordering the banishment of all the Moors of Leon and Castile. The extraordinary lack of political discernment disclosed by such a step affords painful evidence to what dishonorable and injurious expedients a mind of more than ordinary capacity may be impelled by the fury of religious passion. These objects of her animadversion were, as a class, her most faithful, obedient, and valuable subjects. They had always observed the laws with scrupulous fidelity. Those most prejudiced against their blood and their belief had never imputed to them the crimes of sacrilege, of conspiracy, of treason. Under their patient and skilful hands, the most unpromising regions, heretofore abandoned by native ignorance and sloth as totally unproductive, now blossomed with unsurpassed fertility. Their industry filled the granaries of the kingdom; there was no other available source of supply, and with their expulsion a famine was imminent; in the future, as was subsequently demonstrated, there were none competent or willing to take their place. The slaves of her powerful vassals, serfs who represented infinite blood and treasure expended in the service of the crown, were not originally exempted from the force of this sweeping decree, and the infringement of private rights resulting from the arbitrary confiscation of this property, without excuse or recompense, promised disastrous political complications. These considerations had, however, no weight in the mind of the obstinate Isabella. The fact that in the midst of a Christian population an infidel community was suffered to exist, especially after the Moslems of Granada had declared their adherence to the Faith, was repugnant to her intolerant nature, and a standing reproach to the religion she professed. In support of her policy, she coined the atrocious maxim, worthy of the ingenious casuistry of a Jesuit, “It is better to prevent than to punish; and it is right to punish the little for the crimes of the great.” The vicarious sufferings of the Castilian Arabs were now to atone for the offences of the rebels of Granada, with whom they had nothing in common but a similar origin and an inherited creed, and in whose behalf they had never exhibited the slightest indication of countenance or sympathy. The enforcement of this measure, whose inhuman provisions subjected the unhappy objects of its severity to the treatment due outlaws and criminals, was only partially observed. At the very beginning it was seen that, if carried out to the letter, a considerable part of the kingdom would become a barren and uninhabited solitude. The decree was therefore revoked. A compromise, by which the delicate scruples of the Queen were satisfied, was effected,—baptism was substituted for exile; the scenes of indiscriminate and wholesale aspersion were repeated; a large and industrious population bartered their religious convictions for safety, and, by the force of a royal proclamation, were transformed from a self-respecting body of colonists into a nation of hypocrites.

With the death of Isabella, which occurred at this time, the Moriscoes were relieved from the persecution of a vindictive and persevering enemy. The permanent elimination of her influence from the politics of the Peninsula did not, however, improve the condition of the recent victims of her fiery and unrelenting zeal. The system by which she governed; the infamous maxims which guided her conduct in the relations existing between sovereign and subject; the shameless violation of treaties; the audacious usurpations of the clergy; the prejudices engendered by years of oppression, were perpetuated by her successors, and adopted by their ministers as an essential part of the policy of the crown. The reverence with which her memory is regarded is to be attributed, not so much to the greatness of her abilities, eminent as they were, but to their misapplication; not to the military achievements of her armies, but to the sanguinary revenge they inflicted upon vanquished enemies; not to the blessings of a wise, a just, and a stable government,—the most substantial foundation upon which the fame of a monarch can be erected,—but to the inauguration of measures which eventually purged the kingdom of misbelievers, who were the source of its material wealth and of its commercial and agricultural prosperity. A princess who could deliberately repudiate the obligations of national honor can scarcely be regarded in the light of a public benefactor. The patroness of the Inquisition has but a slender claim to the admiration of posterity. The popularity of Isabella is based upon the fact that she was the representative of contemporaneous popular sentiment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no proceeding was so meritorious as the torture of heretics. All questions of political expediency were rigidly subordinated to the claims of what was universally regarded as a paramount religious duty. The progressive decadence of Spanish power dates from its very establishment, and is directly traceable to the incessant intervention of ecclesiastical authority in civil affairs, and to the awful consequences resulting from the unlimited application of the atrocious principle that national faith and public honor must be always sacrificed to the interests of the Roman Catholic religion.