History of the Reign of Philip the Second King of Spain, Vol. 3 / And Biographical & Critical Miscellanies

by William Hickling Prescott

They were to be required to exchange their national dress for that of the Spaniards; and, as the Oriental costume was highly ornamented, and often very expensive, they were to be allowed to wear their present clothes one year longer if of silk, and two years if of cotton, the latter being the usual apparel of the poorer classes. The women, moreover, both old and young, were to be required, from the passage of the law, to go abroad with their faces uncovered,—a scandalous thing among Mahometans.

Their weddings were to be conducted in public, after the Christian forms; and the doors of their houses were to be left open during the day of the ceremony, that any one might enter and see that they did not have recourse to unhallowed rites. They were further to be interdicted from the national songs and dances with which they were wont to celebrate their domestic festivities. Finally, as rumours—most absurd ones—had got abroad that the warm baths which the natives were in the habit of using in their houses were perverted to licentious indulgences, they were to be required to destroy the vessels in which they bathed, and to use nothing of the kind thereafter.

These several provisions were to be enforced by penalties of the sternest kind. For the first offence the convicted party was to be punished with imprisonment for a month, with banishment from the country for two years, and with a fine varying from six hundred to ten thousand maravedis. For a second offence the penalties were to be doubled; and for a third, the culprit, in addition to former penalties, was to be banished for life. The ordinance was closely modelled on that of Charles the Fifth, which, as we have seen, he was too politic to carry into execution.[18]

EDICT AGAINST THE MORISCOES.

Such were the principal provisions of a law which, for cruelty and absurdity, has scarcely a parallel in history. For what could be more absurd than the attempt by an act of legislation to work such a change in the long-established habits of a nation—to efface those recollections of the past, to which men ever cling most closely under the pressure of misfortune—to blot out by a single stroke of the pen, as it were, not only the creed, but the nationality of a people—to convert the Moslem, at once, both into a Christian and into a Castilian? It would be difficult to imagine any greater outrage offered to a people than the provision compelling women to lay aside their veils—associated as these were in every Eastern mind with the obligations of modesty; or that in regard to opening the doors of the houses, and exposing those within to the insolent gaze of every passer; or that in relation to the baths—so indispensable to cleanliness and comfort, especially in the warm climate of the South.

But the masterpiece of absurdity, undoubtedly, is the stipulation in regard to the Arabic language; as if by any human art a whole population, in the space of three years, could be made to substitute a foreign tongue for its own; and that, too, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, partly arising from the total want of affinity between the Semitic and the European languages, and partly from the insulated position of the Moriscoes, who, in the cities, had separate quarters assigned to them, in the same manner as the Jews, which cut them off from intimate intercourse with the Christians. We may well doubt, from the character of this provision, whether the Government had so much at heart the conversion of the Moslems as the desire to entangle them in such violations of the law as should afford a plausible pretext for driving them from the country altogether. One is strengthened in this view of the subject by the significant reply of Otadin, professor of theology at Alcalá, who, when consulted by Philip on the expediency of the ordinance, gave his hearty approbation of it, by quoting the appalling Spanish proverb, "The fewer enemies, the better."[19] It was reserved for the imbecile Philip the Third to crown the disasters of his reign by the expulsion of the Moriscoes. Yet no one can doubt that it was a consummation earnestly desired by the great body of the Spaniards, who looked, as we have seen, with longing eyes to the fair territory which they possessed, and who regarded them with the feelings of distrust and aversion with which men regard those on whom they have inflicted injuries too great to be forgiven.

Yet there were some in the junta with whom the proposed ordinance found no favour. Among these, one who calls to mind his conduct in the Netherlands may be surprised to find the duke of Alva. Here, as in that country, his course was doubtless dictated less by considerations of humanity than of policy. Whatever may have been his reasons, they had little weight with Espinosa, who probably felt a secret satisfaction in thwarting the man whom he regarded with all the jealousy of a rival.[20]

What was Philip's own opinion on the matter, we can but conjecture from our general knowledge of his character. He professed to be guided by the decision of the "wise and learned men" to whom he had committed the subject. That this decision did no great violence to his own feelings, we may infer from the promptness with which he signed the ordinance. This he did on the 17th of November, 1566, when the pragmatic became a law.

It was resolved, however, not to give publicity to it at once. It was committed to the particular charge of one of the members of the junta, Diego Deza, auditor of the Holy Office, and lately raised by Espinosa to the important post of president of the chancery of Granada. This put him at once at the head of the civil administration of the province, as the Marquis of Mondejar was at the head of the military. The different views of policy entertained by the two men led to a conflict of authority which proved highly prejudicial to affairs. Deza, who afterwards rose to the dignity of cardinal, was a man whose plausible manners covered an inflexible will. He showed, notwithstanding, an entire subserviency to the wishes of his patron, Espinosa, who committed to him the execution of his plans.

The president resolved, with more policy than humanity, to defer the publication of the edict till the ensuing first of January, 1667, the day preceding that which the Spaniards commemorated as the anniversary of the surrender of the capital. This humiliating event, brought home at such a crisis to the Moriscoes, might help to break their spirits, and dispose them to receive the obnoxious edict with less resistance.