The different aspects under which the same things appeared, during the sixteenth century, to people of a common nationality, living under the same laws and professing the same doctrines, are remarkable. During the bitter persecutions in Castile, the Aragonese Moslems retained their privileges unimpaired. Not only that, but while the spirit of fanaticism was driving the tributaries of Isabella by thousands to simulated conversion, Ferdinand issued a decree granting to the Moors of Valencia the enjoyment of their religious and social rights in perpetuity. On the one hand, therefore, was the most radical suppression of individual thought and action; on the other, a toleration worthy of the most enlightened statesmanship, and, it must be added, little to be anticipated under the circumstances. But the sagacity of Ferdinand never willingly countenanced the employment of force in matters of religion. His jealousy of power caused him to resent the encroachments of the priesthood; and he secretly discouraged the oppression of a race which he recognized as controlling the material resources upon whose maintenance depended the preservation of his dignity and prestige.
During the twelve years that intervened between the death of Isabella and that of Ferdinand, the Moors enjoyed comparative peace and immunity; and the advent of Charles V. brought at first no unfavorable changes in their political or social conditions. That prince was scarcely seated upon the throne which he had inherited, and by whose acceptance there devolved upon him responsibilities of the greatest moment and the government of a people of whose disposition and character he was profoundly ignorant, when serious internal disturbances began to menace his authority. In Castile, the Comuneros, a conspiracy of nobles and municipalities, arose to assert their ancient privileges, impaired by foreign influence; and, at the same time, the Valencian populace banded together under the name of Germania, or Brotherhood, to repress the growing insolence of the aristocracy. The encroachments of the latter had long been a serious grievance in the kingdom of Valencia. Its members, ever since the Conquest, had maintained an insulting deportment with their inferiors, which had exasperated the latter beyond all endurance. They borrowed money of wealthy merchants and repaid them with curses and ridicule. The establishment of a regency had weakened the administration of the laws; the nobles were not slow to observe the advantages which a virtual interregnum afforded the development of private ambition; and, in the assertion of obsolete feudal privileges, every wrong which avarice or hatred could suggest was inflicted upon the citizens of a rich and defenceless community. The Moors, who were the vassals of the Valencian nobles, were not infrequently the instruments of their malevolence, and shared with their masters the general obloquy which attached to their conduct. The organization of the Germania had an important and disastrous effect upon the fortunes of the former. Their lot was cast with their lords, and the predominance temporarily acquired by the rebels through the incapacity of the Viceroy proved fatal in the end to the liberties of the vassal. The popular cry of infidel was raised by the insurgents, who numbered many ecclesiastics in their ranks, and sixteen thousand Moslems submitted to the infliction of compulsory baptism. The Emperor, who seems to have inherited with his dominions a taste for persecution, was not satisfied while a single Mohammedan remained within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Crown. With great difficulty he extorted a bull from the Pope which absolved him from the oath he had taken to observe the ancient laws and treaties of the kingdom, and expressly authorizing the reduction to slavery of every Mussulman whose scruples or obstinacy might prevent him from renouncing the belief of his fathers. Secure of Papal sanction, Charles now issued a proclamation requiring the Moors, under mysterious but unspecified penalties, to become Christians within ten days. The latter, who did not manifest the submissive spirit of their brethren, maintained a sullen demeanor, and, disposing of their personal effects for whatever they could obtain, prepared to go into exile. The publicity of their intention, however, defeated it; the authorities forbade the sale of their property as well as their departure, and nothing remained for them but apostasy or armed resistance. The former alternative was embraced by far the greater number. With such a multitude individual aspersion was impossible; the water of regeneration was sprinkled over kneeling thousands with branches of hyssop, and more than one unrepentant infidel, who had submitted with secret disgust to an obnoxious ceremony, was heard to mutter, “Praise be to Allah! Not a drop defiled me!”
The rural communities of Valencia regarded the prospect of conversion with even more disfavor than did the inhabitants of the capital. The ecclesiastical commissioners sent to enforce the royal edicts were excluded from the dwellings of the peasantry, who refused to hear their exhortations. In some localities open violence was manifested; the Baron of Cortes, who had urged submission, was killed by his retainers, and his body left to be devoured by swine. Resistance to royal authority was soon followed by organized revolt, and the Sierra de Espadan became the seat of a formidable insurrection. Including the banditti who habitually infested the mountains, and the African freebooters who hailed every disturbance as a source of plunder and profit, the army of the rebels amounted to more than four thousand well-armed men. A farmer named Selim Carbaic was elected their general, whose natural abilities and the valor of whose followers maintained for months an unequal struggle with the combined resources of the monarchy. Overcome at last, two thousand of the insurgents with their leader perished in a single battle; and a general amnesty was declared, under the sole condition by which any Moslem was now permitted to retain life or liberty. The Moors of Catalonia and Aragon were tendered the same alternative. Without hesitation they preferred hypocrisy to martyrdom; and by the year 1526 there no longer remained within the limits of the Spanish Peninsula a single individual who dared to openly acknowledge his belief in the creed of Mohammed.
This flattering result having been finally accomplished, it was now considered advisable to reform the proselytes. In nearly all localities where the Moriscoes predominated they occupied an anomalous position, so far as their spiritual welfare was concerned, for they were practically living without any religion. They neglected to conform to the ordinances or to observe the canons of the Church whose pale they had entered under compulsion. The evasion of their duties was connived at by the priests, who, so long as their parishioners were quiet and regularly paid their contributions, closed their eyes to all formal irregularities, and never troubled themselves with the instructions which it was their office to impart. This indulgence was further secured by donatives that exempted unwilling sinners from penance, whose vexatious performance might always be commuted for a pecuniary consideration. In the sight of the clergy, spiritual duties were thus entirely obscured by the more palpable advantages to be derived from worldly benefits and the maintenance of their flocks in ignorance,—a policy which at the same time confirmed their authority and increased their revenues. But the Moriscoes, while they shunned the mass, could not with safety resort to any other source of religious consolation. They were more than suspected of practising the rites of Islam in secret; but the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. In the eyes of devout Christians, who did not fail to notice and reprobate their shortcomings, they were regarded as something worse than Pagans. Although they possessed all the requisites of good citizenship, and their intercourse with their neighbors was marked by every evidence of honor and probity, these qualities were ignored when their religious consistency was called in question.
The visit of Charles V. to Granada in 1526 was made the occasion for a strenuous appeal for the reform of the Moriscoes. Petitions and remonstrances without number, reinforced with all the arts of sacerdotal eloquence, were presented to the Emperor, urging that radical measures be taken to correct an evil which was seriously affecting the credit and the discipline of the Church. A commission of thirteen members, most of them high ecclesiastical dignitaries, and presided over by Don Alonso Manrique, Grand Inquisitor of Spain, was therefore appointed, and began an investigation. There was no difficulty in anticipating the decision of such a tribunal. That its decrees might be properly executed, the Holy Office was brought from Jaen and formally established in one of the palaces of the city. Ten sessions sufficed to determine a question in which were involved matters of the greatest consequence to the welfare of the kingdom, the maintenance of national honor, and the justice and integrity of the crown. Every accusation against the Moriscoes was received and considered, but they were not permitted to be heard in their own defence. The determination of the commission was published in a royal edict, which prohibited the Moriscoes the use of their family names, their dress, their language; which compelled the exposure of the faces of their women to the insulting gaze of the loungers in the streets; which required the abandonment of the peculiar ceremonies employed in the slaughter of animals for food; which sanctioned by domiciliary visits invasion of the privacy of their homes; and forbade them to ever lose sight of the Inquisitorial palace, whose officials were directed to henceforth exercise careful supervision over their conduct, and to punish with their customary rigor all infractions of religious discipline.
The terror experienced by the victims of this atrocious decree, which not only violated the conditions upon which Spanish supremacy depended, but deliberately sacrificed every consideration of justice for which national honor had solemnly pledged its faith, can hardly be imagined. But the Moriscoes, whose experience with their spiritual advisers had taught them the efficacy of certain methods in averting impending evil, had recourse to an expedient which, on a smaller scale, had repeatedly proved successful. It was no secret that the royal treasury was empty; and it was suspected that the depressed condition of the national finances was largely responsible for the proselyting zeal so unexpectedly exerted against a peaceable and inoffensive class. In consideration of a “gift” of eight thousand ducats, the execution of the obnoxious decree was suspended, during the pleasure of the Emperor, as soon as it had been signed; but this indulgence, it was expressly declared, did not affect the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. The parasites who surrounded the throne demanded and received an equal amount for an influence they claimed to possess, but which was probably never exerted. Thus a monarch, who posed as the secular representative of Roman Catholicism, consented to sacrifice the religious interests of a large body of his subjects and to compromise the imperial dignity for a sum equivalent at the present day to nine hundred thousand dollars in gold. No event in Spanish history discloses more clearly than this the true motives which instigated the prosecution of heresy, or the extraordinary wealth of those who were the objects of official cupidity and public malevolence.
The Moors of Granada, who had heretofore been almost exempt from the exactions of inquisitorial tyranny, now experienced for the first time the dire powers of the Holy Office. One of the first acts of Isabella, after the Conquest, was the foundation of innumerable monasteries. The favorite sites of these establishments were the suburban palaces of the Moslem princes, it being considered a peculiarly meritorious achievement to erect on the ruins of a splendid villa, devoted to the pleasures of a votary of Islam, an abode for holy men, who, by a pious fiction, were supposed to employ their abundant leisure in praying for the salvation of heretics. In building these structures the baths were first demolished, on account of the scandal the sight of apartments devoted to ablution and luxury caused every good Christian, as well as for the reason that their use was always considered entirely superfluous in a monastic institution. As a result of the partiality exhibited by successive princes towards the monachal orders, the city swarmed with friars of every description. Their prejudices made them the bitter enemies of the Moriscoes, while their numbers and audacity rendered them both influential and formidable. The fact that the inferior officials of the Inquisition were principally recruited from their ranks augmented the terror which their insolence and rapacity inspired, and no familiar who wore the Dominican or Franciscan garb was ever known to incline to the side of mercy. To such hands was now committed the fate of the Moors of Granada. The compact with the Emperor, by which they had been confirmed for the time in the enjoyment of their customs, was broken. Their property was confiscated. They were subjected to the diabolical tortures adopted by the direst of tribunals for the production of testimony and the confession of guilt. In the famous Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla, the scene of many knightly encounters and of the destruction of Moslem learning by Ximenes, the condemned underwent the final penance, the sacrifice of the auto-da-fé. The annoying restraints imposed upon them by priestly intolerance were the least oppressive of the many evils the Moriscoes were condemned to endure. In the frequent controversies which arose concerning the interpretation of imperial edicts and canonical decrees, the authority of the latter always prevailed. Every official, civil, religious, or military, asserted the privilege of magistracy, and claimed the right to compound an offence or to impose a penalty. In the art of extorting money, as in the direction of all matters pertaining to civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the servants of the Church displayed an extraordinary aptitude. The regular taxes imposed upon the Moriscoes, a grievous burden in themselves, were augmented a hundred-fold by impositions unauthorized by law, and which had no other foundation than the demands of official rapacity. The sums obtained from these enforced contributions were enormous. An idea may be formed of the probable amount they yielded when it is remembered that the legitimate tax paid annually by the silk markets of Almeria, Malaga, and Granada added more than a million dollars to the royal treasury. The irregular means employed were far more profitable in their results than those countenanced by legal authority; and there were few demands, however iniquitous, which a Morisco dared refuse when confronted with the menacing power of the Inquisition.
In Valencia also the Holy Office, supported by Papal sanction and imperial duplicity, found a rich and most fruitful field for its nefarious operations. It was in this kingdom, so remarkable for its natural advantages and the industry of its people, that the Spanish proverb, “Quien tiene Moro, tiene oro,” had its origin. The relation of vassalage which the Moors of that kingdom in general sustained to the nobility was far from sufficient to protect them against the effects of secular and ecclesiastical prejudice. The unquestioned orthodoxy of the lord, his generosity to the Church, the antiquity of his family, the prestige of his name, his services to the crown, were swept aside when the question of disciplining his retainers was involved. The slightest suspicion attaching to a Moslem was enough to invite the descent of a horde of familiars and alguazils, who never failed to discover evidences of irregularity sufficient to render their examination profitable. The visitations of these functionaries were doubly offensive by reason of the unfeeling and insolent manner in which they were conducted. They left no corner of a dwelling unsearched; they destroyed property, insulted women, and without color of right or pretence of concealment appropriated such jewels and trinkets as struck their fancy. Spies of the Holy Office swarmed in the Moorish quarter, ever alert for signs of heresy. For these outrages there was no possibility of redress, and the trembling victim gladly purchased, by the confiscation of his effects, temporary security from greater misfortunes, which, if his worldly possessions were sufficient to warrant further interference, he was certain sooner or later to undergo. The intolerable nature of these persecutions impelled thousands of Moriscoes to seek by flight the only available relief from oppression. The Holy Fathers of the Inquisition were horrified by the retaliatory measures adopted by the friends of those who, for the welfare of their souls, were subjected to the salutary restraints of ecclesiastical discipline. Every time that the Moors condemned by that tribunal expiated their heresies in an auto-da-fé, information was promptly sent to Barbary, and an equal number of Christian captives perished by fire.
The African corsairs, under the command of the relentless Barbarossa, at that time held the empire of the Mediterranean, and by their aid multitudes of Moriscoes succeeded in escaping to Morocco. In vain the nobles protested against a policy which depreciated the value of their estates, depopulated their villages, and daily deprived them of laborers whose services could not be dispensed with and whose loss could not be replaced; both royal power and popular sentiment sanctioned the course of the Church, and the material prosperity of a single province was not worthy of consideration when weighed with the perishing souls of thousands of suspected heretics. Pecuniary arguments were then employed, and after several years of negotiation the operations of the Holy Office were suspended upon the payment of a yearly donative of twenty-five hundred ducats. Once more free from the perils of Inquisitorial visitation and punishment, the Moriscoes at once relapsed into their former religious indifference; the clergy viewed with unconcern the unmistakable evidences of apostasy among their parishioners; the nobles welcomed with undisguised satisfaction the relief of their vassals, the increase of their revenues, and the indications of returning prosperity; while the inquisitors, whose treasury had been filled to overflowing with the gold wrung by fines and confiscations from the wealthiest subjects of the kingdom, sought in other quarters new material for the stake and the dungeon, to be condemned to present torture and eternal infamy in the name of an All-Merciful God.
The abdication of Charles V. brought a grateful respite to the harassed and suffering Moors. The mighty interests of an empire which extended over two worlds engrossed the attention of Philip II., and he had, at first, no time to devote to the persecution of a handful of alleged heretics lost in a corner of his vast dominions. The Roman Pontiff, who, perhaps influenced by motives of humanity, but certainly not absolutely free from political bias or resentment for the outrage inflicted by the Emperor upon the Holy See, had always discountenanced his oppression of the Moriscoes, now heartily co-operated with Philip in alleviating the misery of their condition. A brief issued from the Vatican in 1556 empowered confessors to absolve from the offence of heresy without penance, and deprived the Inquisition of the greater part of its jurisdiction and authority. The nature of the young King had not yet been corrupted by absolute power; nor were his actions now controlled by that morose and pitiless spirit subsequently developed by remorse, disease, and bigotry, which, added to the hereditary taint of insanity which afflicted his family, rendered him, during the greater portion of his life, one of the most unfeeling monsters that has ever disgraced a throne.