THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

One Holy Catholic and Apostolic : Nationalism and the Rejection of the “Other”

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

School of Arts and Sciences

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

©

All Rights Reserved

By Kathleen E. Bartels

Washington, DC

2013 One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Spain: Nationalism and the Rejection of the Morisco “Other”

Kathleen E. Bartels, Ph.D.

Director: Lourdes M. Alvarez, Ph.D.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, Spain’s Catholic rulers faced a problem of their own making: having forced Spain’s remaining Muslim population to convert to

Christianity, these rulers now suspected that these converts, known as , were not faithful to the crown or to their newly-adopted Catholic faith. Decades of political and theological debate concerning the Moriscos’ ensued, only to be resolved when King

Philip III, in 1609, finally determined to expel the Moriscos, aiming to rid the Iberian

Peninsula of their purportedly destabilizing influence. The decision was not universally popular, and out of concern that the expulsion could be undone, several clerics and men of political influence became apologists for the massive deportation campaign, justifying the expulsion and glorifying its results. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how the treatises of the apologists Pedro Aznar Cardona (Expulsión justificada de los

Moriscos españoles), Damián Fonseca (Justa expulsión de los moriscos de España),

Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier (Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro de los

Moriscos de España and Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla hasta la Valle de ), and Jaime Bleda (Crónica de los Moros de España) provide a foundation for the formation of a Spanish national identity based on a shared Catholic faith. This study specifically examines the apologists’ rhetorical strategies and goals, exploring the ways in which they seek to establish Morisco otherness as a means of reinforcing the institutional hegemony of the Catholic faith. The apologists hope to persuade their

Catholic audience of the risks to their physical and spiritual safety if Moriscos were to return to the Peninsula, thereby safeguarding their ideal Spanish Catholic nation from future contamination. This dissertation by Kathleen E. Bartels fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Spanish approved by Lourdes M. Alvarez, Ph.D. as Director, and by Bruno M. Damiani, Ph.D. and Peter Shoemaker, Ph.D. as Readers.

Lourdes M. Alvarez, Ph.D., Director

Bruno M. Damiani, Ph.D., Reader

Peter Shoemaker, Ph.D., Reader

ii Table of Contents

Acknowledgements...... v Introduction...... 1 Chapter One: Parameters for the Faith...... 17 Why Apologize? ...... 17 The Moriscos in Scholarship ...... 27 and the Catholic Apologists ...... 31 The Islamic Threat ...... 41 Construction of an Essentially Catholic Spain ...... 49 Catholic Under Siege ...... 60 Chapter Two: Cultures in Contact ...... 74 Arguing Against a Hybrid Space ...... 74 Francisco Núñez Muley and the Argument for Cultural Hybridity...... 77 Cultures in Contact and Anxiety in the Wake of ...... 84 Chapter Three: Delimiting Sacred Space...... 109 Perceived Threats to Catholic Sacred Structures, Objects, and Rituals...... 109 Debating the Legitimacy of Religious Symbols ...... 113 Delimiting Sacred Space...... 118 Sacramental Activity...... 120 Sacred Structures ...... 139 A Threat to National Identity...... 153 Chapter Four: A Culture of Fear...... 162 A Difficult Decision...... 162 Economic Distress ...... 167 A State of Fear: East vs. West and La Turbación Quotidiana ...... 183 Fear of the End of Days ...... 199 Antichrist on Spanish Terrain ...... 206 Unity Threatened ...... 226 Conclusion ...... 228

iii Bibliography ...... 241

iv Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my dissertation committee members and readers Dr. Peter

Shoemaker, Dr. Bruno M. Damiani, Rev. John T. Ford, and Dr. Enrique Pumar for their insightful comments and encouragement. I am especially grateful for the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Lourdes M. Alvarez, who stuck with me until the end of the project even though a job opportunity relocated her to another state. I also appreciate the generous support of the Lee Hatzfeld Dissertation Guidance Scholarship, awarded by the

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of Amerca.

Many CUA professors provided me with invaluable support throughout the dissertation-writing process. I am especially thankful to Dr. Mario A. Ortiz of the

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and to Dr. Shawqi Talia of the

Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures for their assistance and encouragement as I conducted my research.

My family has always supported me in my educational pursuits. I am especially grateful for my mother, Casey Hanley, who traveled to DC countless times to care for

Jack while I was sick. Without her patience, encouragement, and willingness to do whatever I asked at whatever hour, I would not have even started writing this dissertation let alone finished it. Likewise, I remain eternally grateful to the surgeons who cared for me in my recovery and who also always inquired about my research, Dr. Luis Sanz and

Dr. Othon Wiltz.

v I am also grateful to have had the endless support of friends throughout the process. I especially thank Elena Gutiérrez, Rebecca Crisafulli, David Barkley, and June

Wai for their humor, wit, support, and chocolate that made the project infinitely easier. In particular I want to thank Elena, who offered a shoulder to cry on more than once, and who became a “library character” with me. I also thank Dr. Rose McEwen, who planted the seed for this crazy idea in the first place and who continued to offer wisdom and guidance along the way.

Above all I thank David Bartels, who, as perhaps the world’s most supportive husband, made this dissertation emotionally and financially feasible. Words simply cannot express my gratitude for all that he has done to help me achieve this goal. He even formatted the manuscript.

vi Introduction

O Católica España, que alabanza tan única y digna de estima alcanzas en este particular, que con haber habido en sus tiempos, Arrianos, Judíos, y Mahometanos, tus moradores (con el favor del Cielo) tan puros en la Fe Cristiana, tan firmes, tan sin mezcla de secta alguna, tan Católicos, y tan obedientes a la Iglesia Romana, como si jamás infiel alguno hubieras visto.1

Throughout the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown led an effort to forcibly convert Spanish to Christianity, with the converts becoming known as

“Moriscos.” The conversions were intended to quell a perceived threat to the nation, but at the end of the century, King Philip III remained unconvinced that the conversions were sufficient. Consequently, in late 1609, the King issued the first of several edicts that would result in the expulsion of the Moriscos from the . This decision found support among the many Spanish Catholics who regarded the Moriscos as the most persistent in a line of heretics that had threatened the purity of Spain’s Catholic faith. The supporters included many clerics, such as Pedro Aznar Cardona, the author of the quote above, who sought to provide the expulsion with moral authority. These clerics viewed the nine-century Muslim presence on the Peninsula as an unwelcome menace to a homogeneous Christian ideal, as a long chapter in Spain’s history that deserved to be erased and forgotten.

1 Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles y suma de las excelencias cristianas de nuestro rey Felipe el Católico Tercero: dividida en dos partes (Huesca: Pedro Cabarte, 1612), 2:141.

1 2

The decision to expel the Moriscos, however, was not as easy or as straightforward as the most fervent supporters would have hoped. King Philip II had been hesitant and, during his reign, was too overextended in political matters elsewhere to force the matter. His son, Philip III, understood that, once executed, the policy of expulsion would force into exile a significant portion of the kingdom’s workforce, and one with specialized skills not common to its Christian counterpart. It is therefore unsurprising that landowning nobles, who relied heavily on the Moriscos for economic prosperity, opposed the policy. In addition to fiscal concerns, the expulsion incited theological debate. Because the Moriscos had been baptized as Catholic Christians, many clerics believed it was the Church’s responsibility to further their spiritual conversion, turning nominal converts into genuine believers. In their view, if the Moriscos were sent abroad to Muslim lands, the king and the Church would effectively condemn Christian souls to eternal damnation.

Many prominent figures waded into the debate over the expulsion, but the most influential Spanish cleric among the supporters was Juan de Ribera. Named Patriarch of

Antioch by , Ribera was installed as Archbishop of in 1569, a post he held until his death more than four decades later. As a young Archbishop, Ribera was initially optimistic that the Moriscos could be brought into the Christian fold and dedicated a great deal of time and resources to pastoral endeavors. Over time, however, he became increasingly disillusioned. He found the Moriscos to be obstinate in their faith and customs, unwilling to seize what he believed to be the gracious conversion 3 opportunity afforded them by a benevolent king and Church. Through a series of fiery sermons and memoriales to the king, the Archbishop began to advocate for immediate expulsion, calling the Moriscos “wizened trees full of knots of heresy.”2 Ribera lamented that, if the Moriscos were not forcibly removed from the Peninsula, he would see Spain lost in his lifetime. Ribera’s efforts finally bore fruit in the summer of 1609, when Philip

III authorized the expulsion. Ribera did not, however, live to see the expulsion through to completion.

As a man whose theological authority provided critical support to a controversial policy, Ribera’s legacy provides a striking illustration of the role this remarkable episode in Spanish history has played in the development of a Spanish national identity. Upon assuming the Archbishopric in 1569, Ribera’s reputation as a dedicated reformer in the spirit of the was already firmly established. Following his elevation, he went on to found the Colegio Seminario de Corpus Christi and made significant donations to the Church from his personal riches. Ribera’s reputation, together with his accomplishments and his purported miraculous healing of young children, served to justify his subsequent beatification in 1769 and his canonization in 1960.3

2 Quoted in Benjamin Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568-1614 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006),134. 3 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 156. Ehlers traces Ribera’s formation as a Catholic bishop in the spirit of Trent, discussing how his pastoral efforts evolved as he became increasingly acquainted with the Valencian community, their strong regional allegiances, and their relationship to the Valencian Morisco workforce. He argues that throughout his tenure as Archbishop, Ribera continually adapted his originally Trent-derived policies and practices to conform to needs unique to his 4

Continued attention over the last four centuries to the details of Ribera’s life and works suggests that, for devoted to him, San Juan de Ribera represents a critical force in the defining of an era. Throughout this time, Ribera has been regarded as a man of honorable vision, committed to the religious cleansing of Spain and its unification in one culture and faith. For his 1960 biographer, Ramón Robres Lluch, the

Archbishop is the great hero of an interminable national epic begun in the eighth century in which two opposing worlds, Christian and Muslim, clashed.4 What Robres calls

Ribera’s “ascética austeridad, riqueza de valores humanos traducidos en arduas empresas,”5 must have resonated with a twentieth century Spanish regime still dedicated to the universalizing mission of the Spanish Catholic State in the era of General Francisco

Franco. Ribera’s ideas represented the spirit of a nation determined to erase many chapters of its past in order to present a unified front.

Ribera is still admired in the twenty-first century, decades after the collapse of

Franco’s regime. Some four centuries after his passing, and a half-century since his canonization, the Archdiocese of Valencia continues to celebrate Ribera’s legacy. For

congregation. Ehlers states that “Ribera succeeded—or failed—to implement this vision of reform according to his ability to integrate these ideas within the broad range of devotional practices that characterized the Valencian people. Ribera took an active role in promoting the cult of the Eucharist, the veneration of Agullona and Ferrer, and the expulsion of the Moriscos, but these were not changes that he dicated from above; in all of these cases he adapted his goals and views to the situation as he encountered it.” 4 Ramón Robres Lluch, San Juan de Ribera: Patriarca de Antioquia, Arzobispo y Virrey de Valencia 1532-1611: Un Obispo según el ideal de Trento (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1960), 364. 5 Robres Lluch, San Juan de Ribera, v. 5 example, the Archdiocese marked the fifty-year anniversary of his canonization with a solemn Mass sung in Gregorian chant.6 In January 2012, Diario Crítico de la Comunitiat

Valenciana reported that El Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana (the governing body of the autonomous community of Valencia) along with Estil Concertant, an ensemble that specializes in eighteenth-century music, gave a concert commemorating not only the four-hundred year anniversary of the Archbishop’s death, but also the centenary of

Antonio Montesinos, the musician who composed a Mass in honor of Ribera’s beatification in 1769.7

Ribera’s legacy, it would seem, is still visible in contemporary Valencian culture.

The man who, in the name of God and country, advocated for the systematic deportation of some 300,000 people is today a fondly remembered saint. His role in the expulsion has been cleansed from memory – reports of celebrations commemorating Ribera, for instance, make no mention of his prominent role in supporting the expulsion. The omission of such a critical detail demonstrates how Spanish culture has managed to mythologize its emergence as a purportedly homogenous Catholic nation by glossing over the human cost. In celebrating San Juan de Ribera, the expulsion of the Moriscos becomes an unspoken, and yet critical, component in the formation of Spanish Catholic identity, even centuries later. At moments when this purportedly homogenous culture

6 “La canonización de San Juan de Ribera por el Papa Juan XXIII cumple hoy 50 años,” accessed July 26, 2012, http://www.europapress.es/sociedad/noticia-canonizacion-san- juan-ribera-papa-juan-xxiii-cumple-hoy-50-anos-20100612084838.html. 7 “El Cor de la Generalitat y Estil Concertant clausuran la conmemoración del centenario del Patriarca,” accessed July 26, 2012, http://www.diariocriticocv.com/cultura/cor-de-la- generalitat/estil-concertant/centenario-del-patriarca/404987. 6 feels threatened, Ribera’s legacy resurfaces to further perpetuate the myth of the ideal

Catholic nation.

Ribera’s influence in his own day on the political discourse concerning the

Moriscos was no less important than his modern legacy. As perhaps the most vocal explusion proponenet of the highest political standing, Riber was the chief spokesman for the campaign, influencing over the course of decades the many clerics with whom he cam in contact. In the wake of the expulsion, several of these clerics and men of political influence assumed the role of apologists for the campaign of ethnic cleansing,8 justifying the expulsion and glorifying its results. Among the champions of the expulsion were

Pedro Aznar Cardona (Expulsión ivstificada de los Moriscos españoles, y suma de las excelencias cristianas de nuestro Rey Don Felipe el Católico Tercero), Damián Fonseca

(Justa Expulsión de los Moriscos de España),9 Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier

(Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro de los moriscos de España and Prodición y destierro de los Moriscos de Castilla),10 and Jaime Bleda (Crónica de los moros de

8 While the expulsion of the Moriscos predates 20th-century Serbian episodes of violence in which the term “ethnic cleansing” became widely used, I use it here to refer to the systematic removal of a cultural and religious group from the Iberian Peninsula. 9 Damián Fonseca, Justa expulsión de los moriscos de España: con la instrucción, apostasía, y traición de ellos: y respuesta a las dudas que se ofrecieron acerca de esta materia (Roma: Giacomo Mascardo, 1612). 10 Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro de los moriscos de España (Pamplona: Nicolás de Assiayn, 1613); Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla hasta la Valle de Ricote: con las disensiones de los hermanos Jerifes y presa en Berbería de la fuerza y puerto de Larache (Pamplona: Nicolás de Assiayn, 1614). 7

España, dividida en ocho libros).11 These apologists drew heavily on Ribera’s rhetoric, borrowing from his moral authority and extending his views to develop a wide-ranging rationalization of the expulsion.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the rhetoric of the expulsion’s apologists. Chief among the expulsion apologists was Jaime Bleda, a Valencian cleric who composed his Defensio fidei12 in 1603. Bleda knew Archbishop Ribera personally and championed the expulsion from his initial appointment to a Morisco parish in 1585, even before Ribera’s shift from Morisco evangelist to expulsion advocate. In the years that followed publication of Bleda’s initial tract, Aznar Cardona, Fonseca, and

Guadalajara y Javier followed his lead, composing treatises in the vernacular that likewise defended Morisco expulsion as the primary means of protecting Catholicism from heretical threats. Bleda read all of their works and referenced them repeatedly in his enormous Crónica, which attempts to incorporate all such opinions in favor of Morisco expulsion into a larger narrative of a Christian battle with dating back to the

Prophet Muhammad. To all of these apologists, Archbishop Ribera embodied the title of

Patriarch13 to a degree that reached beyond his commitments to the Church, speaking to

11 Jaime Bleda, Crónica de los Moros de España, Dividida en Ocho Libros (Valencia: Felipe Mey, 1618). 12 Jaime Bleda, Defensio Fidei in cavsa neophytorvm (Valencia: Chrysostomum Garriz, 1610). 13 James-Charles Noonan, Jr. The Church Visible: The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Roman (New York: Viking, 1996), 125. In discussing contemporary Assistants to the Papal Throne, Noonan notes that such titular patriarchates “have their roots in the Renaissance Church when political strife required a firm bond between Rome and the far-off patriarchates.” 8 his role as the father of the ideal Spanish nation that was so critical to the apologists’ imaginations. This nation, the apologists would come to argue through their texts, could only be fully realized in the fulfillment of Ribera’s vision of a Spain cleansed of its

Morisco taint. Perhaps fearing that the dream would die with the Patriarch’s passing in

1611, the apologists assume responsibility for seeing Ribera’s ideal nation brought to fruition.

While the apologists’ treatises are mentioned in the vast majority of works dealing with the Moriscos from the nineteenth century to the present, they remain largely unstudied for their role in actively contributing to the formation of a national consciousness. In the nineteenth century, when the apologists’ treatises were rediscovered in the archives, scholars used the texts primarily as evidence to support their own positions on the Morisco role in Spanish history. Conservative scholars saw admirable patriotism in the clerics’ tracts, evidence of how Spain’s history, culture, and character were improved by removing alleged seeds of sedition. Other scholars of the era were more critical of the apologists’ position, citing their texts as examples of religious zeal that resulted not only in economic losses for Spain, but also in human tragedy. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, the Moriscos themselves, rather than the effects of their expulsion, became central to academic discourse. Scholars became increasingly interested in studying the Moriscos’ faith and culture as preserved in texts and their influence on cultural production in the Peninsula on the whole. In this regard, the apologists’ texts were less relevant, serving only as evidence of an active campaign to 9 stamp out cultural practices interesting to contemporary scholars. My study of the apologists’ treatises examines the purpose and rhetoric of these works as a corpus, highlighting the inner-workings of a propaganda machine determined to define Spanish national identity.

In this light, perhaps the most critical detail of the apologists’ treatises that remains unnoticed in contemporary scholarship is the significance of their publication dates. All of the treatises under consideration were written after the policy debate had subsided, and yet the apologists tout the benefits of expulsion as if the king had not himself signed the expulsion edicts, or as if shiploads of exiled Moriscos were not already meeting their fate across the Mediterranean. In this respect, the apologists betray their anxiety concerning a project they see as at risk of failure. The apologists’ project, therefore, was aimed at keeping a newly-cleansed Spain free of Moriscos, rather than arguing in favor of the policy in the first place. I argue that by enumerating after the fact the risks inherent to Catholic Spaniards while the Moriscos resided within Spain’s borders, the apologists hope to highlight for their readers the danger to Spanish Catholic identity if the Moriscos were to somehow return. The apologists’ works are, therefore, an attempt to commit to writing their ideal account of the expulsion, hoping to make the expulsion permanent by the act of recording their accounts and warnings.

The apologists’ rhetoric aims, paradoxically, to keep Spanish Catholics from truly forgetting the events that the apologists themselves want struck from the official record.

They warn Catholics never to become so complacent or so desperate as again to allow 10 heretical others to stain Spanish Catholic identity. By issuing these warnings against forgetfulness, the apologists hope to wipe out any alternate versions of the official history they aim to author and eliminate the possibility of a future contaminated with Morisco contributions and influence. In this sense, the Moriscos become essential to shaping

Spanish Catholic identity by standing as the archetype for what the Spanish Catholic is not. Majid notes a similar paradox in Spanish identity formation, commenting that

[s]o indispensable were Jewish and Muslim minorities to the nascent Castilian state that it instituted what amounted to racial safeguards against assimilation. Almost fifty years before was taken by Catholic forces, a new law stressing purity of blood () was promulgated in Toledo to avoid integrating converted into the main professions and occupations. In this way, the state could unite the nation around a faith that would never, in theory, be accessible to descendants of Jews and Muslims. Minorities in this new scheme (which the church rejected, at first, because it undermined the redemptive powers of baptism) would serve as a rallying point for consolidating national unity, but these very useful minorities would also have to suffer permanent exclusion and harassment. The modern nation that was emerging in Catholic Iberia both depended on and deliberately punished its Others. This double contradiction, in some ways, has been the defining fate of nations ever since.14

I argue that the apologists see themselves as the consolidators of this national unity, their treatises the literature of the emergent Spanish Catholic nation. The focus of my study, therefore, is to demonstrate how they executed their role as definers of a national consciousness and how they crafted their propaganda to exclude from their definition of the Spanish nation any person who did not subscribe to their prescribed ideal.

14 Anouar Majid, We Are All : Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities (Minneapolis: University of Press, 2009), 6. 11

In the first chapter of my dissertation, “Parameters for the Faith,” I explore the backgrounds of the apologists and of their muse, Archbishop Ribera. Written after the policy of expulsion had been established but while the expulsion campaign was still in full swing, the apologists’ treatises are laden with anxiety in regard to what they see as viable physical and spiritual threats to the true Catholic faith. A universally popular and praised decision would certainly not inspire copious volumes of justification, and the apologists therefore seek to place themselves within a debate they see as largely still undefined, and one whose official outcome still lay undetermined. The apologists feared that the unpopularity of the expulsion decision, fueled to a great extent by the Moriscos’ economic contributions to the Spanish economy, left Spain’s policy makers vulnerable to what they saw as dangerous concessions. The treatises, therefore, reveal a larger anxiety that the boundaries of the clerics’ sacred faith may not be as certain and as immutable as they imagine them to be.

After exploring the apologists’ backgrounds, I go on to illustrate the process by which the apologists set out to construct a series of parameters to define the Catholic faith in order to exclude from its realm the newly-converted Moriscos. The clerics begin constructing their narrative by arguing for Catholicism’s exclusive claim on Spain, a heritage they argue dates back to the Old Testament and is further substantiated by Saint

James’s alleged and unique role in Christianizing the Iberian Peninsula. In this way, the apologists’ tightly-scripted polemics go beyond physical dismissal of the Moriscos in an effort to create a Spain ideologically unified in both faith and culture from its roots, a 12

Spain in which dissenters have never been welcome nor ever will be. To the apologists,

Islam represents a spiritual and physical threat and the complete antithesis of Christianity.

They attempt to prove that Islam aimed to corrupt Christian Spain from its initial arrival on the Peninsula, its adherents impervious to true conversion to Christianity and hell-bent on destroying the Christian faith from within. So long as Muslims reside within the physical borders of the Peninsula threatening the ideological boundaries of the Catholic faith, Catholicism will remain vulnerable to attack. The expulsion, therefore, becomes to the apologists the latest battle in a war between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, with Philip III leading the army to a final victory in eliminating Islam.

The second chapter, “Cultures in Contact,” builds on the theme of the first chapter and shows in detail the ways in which the apologists betray their greater desire to desemitize Spain in order to more effectively mold it into what they see as the Catholic and European ideal. Forcible conversion of the Moriscos did not satisfy the apologists’ basic goal of eliminating heresy because baptism and catechesis had failed to expunge all traces of Islamic influence. In the apologists’ view, Christians and Muslims existed in stark black and white categories, and any convert exhibiting signs or tendencies toward engaging Muslim faith and culture was certainly a crypto-Muslim whose presence within the Peninsula threatened Spanish Christian national identity. From dress to ritual washing, from food choice and manner of dining, the apologists characterize all facets of

Morisco daily life as antithetical to the true Christian path. While evidence of hybridity and cultural exchange between Muslims and Christians abounds, the apologists deny the 13 existence of inadvertent cultural comingling and instead advance the idea that Morisco cultural expression is an example of the converts’ overt defiance and rejection of the

Christian lifestyle.

In this way, the apologists’ treatises engage in a process of actively transforming cultural practice into heresy, arguing that a blended culture is undesirable and impracticable given the alleged strict theological, moral, and even physical characteristics that separated Muslims and Christians. If a Morisco eats seated on the ground, she is as heretical as one who refers to Muhammad as God’s messenger. If a Morisco eats couscous or dances a zambra, he is as Muslim as the Prophet himself. Expulsion of these transgressors, the apologists argue, is the only way to fully rid Spain of heretical Muslim contamination, and they, therefore, praise the process already underway for its potential to liberate Catholic Spain from its purported oppressors.

In the third chapter, “Delimiting Sacred Space,” I argue that the apologists attribute to the Moriscos physical and spiritual ravaging of Catholic sacred structures, objects, and rituals further threatening Spanish national identity. The apologists argue that, beginning with their initial arrival to the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century, immigrant Muslims and their descendants have engaged in a steady process of annihilating Spanish Catholicism as an institution. To do so, the apologists claim, people of Muslim heritage actively defame the Church’s sacramental activity, including the liturgy, and desecrate sacred physical objects, such as churches, holy relics, and Christian images. For example, the apologists accuse Morisco churchgoers of crude gestures during 14 the Mass, wearing filthy clothing, and pinching their children so that they cry and disrupt the liturgy. The apologists likewise accuse Moriscos of denying the validity of the sacraments while at the same time desecrating them, washing off the baptismal Chrism, having one Morisco child baptized repeatedly to stand in for other Morisco babies, and staining the sacrament of marriage with sexual promiscuity. This criticism extends to physical objects, with the apologists accusing Moriscos of burning crosses and churches and hanging pictures of saints upside down. In the apologists’ view, Morisco scorn leaves no symbol of Christianity untouched.

This alleged Morisco attack on Christian images is a war that, the apologists argue, seeks to not only destroy objects but to annihilate the faith it targets, paradoxically affirming the power of the image. And this destruction, they claim, is orchestrated to make impossible the practice of the true Catholic faith, which incorporates sacred space into the very fabric of its dogma. They claim that in resisting Christian conversion efforts, the Moriscos actively choose to exist outside the universal Christian kingdom. In so doing, they position themselves as a very visible threat to Spanish identity and will remain as such until they are, once and for all, excluded from the sacred space. In this chapter, I also argue that the apologists use descriptions of purported attacks on Christian imagery to garner support for the defensive position they believe all Spaniards must take in the face of Morisco destruction. The apologists assert that Morisco dissent and destruction of Catholic spaces wages war on Catholicism, victimizing the national faith.

They therefore advocate for a defense of this Spanish Catholic sacred space against 15 further Muslim and Morisco assault. The need for active defense, they argue, should be obvious to Christian Spaniards whose daily lives bear witness to such physical and spiritual threats. According to the apologists, as sovereign, Philip III is leader of the defense, but his expulsion efforts will only succeed if his fellow Spaniards recognize the need to maintain a defensive position.

The fourth chapter, “Culture of Fear,” provides a framework for analyzing the anxieties discussed in the previous chapters, arguing that the apologists ultimately aim to inspire fear of a potential Morisco return to the Peninsula. The sixteenth century was wrought with financial hardship in Spain and, as a result, the bankrupt monarch permitted

Jews to return to the kingdoms, undermining Ferdinand and Isabel’s 1492 decision. I argue that the apologists, who had witnessed varying degrees of public outcry in the wake of the Crown’s decision to expel the productive Morisco workforce, feared not only increased social unrest, but also a similar right of return for exiled Moriscos. Therefore, instead of entertaining popular opinions that expulsion further devastated the Spanish economy, I demonstrate that the apologists reverse those claims entirely, arguing that the

Moriscos were intentionally bankrupting the Peninsula, hoarding cash and infusing into the economy counterfeit currency. With economic concerns waylaid, the apologists then argue that the real issue at hand is the state of fear in which all Christian Spaniards reside while Moriscos remain in their midst.

In order to most effectively inspire fear of the devastating consequences of

Morisco return, I argue that the apologists first appeal to basic instincts for physical 16 safety. They assert that Spain remains in constant danger of Muslim attack from outside the Peninsula, aided by support of dissenting Moriscos within. Fear of Ottoman advance was common in the Mediterranean of the Early Modern era, but the apologists saw

Christian Spaniards as in a particularly precarious position, given the Moriscos’ alleged desire to collude with Ottoman Turks and North African pirates and their intimate knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula and its weaknesses. Assistance from Ottoman forces, the apologists argue, gave Moriscos increased confidence in their power to rebel and reclaim Spain for their Muslim ancestors. The ease with which they were expelled from

Spain and their apparent joy in departing convinced the apologists that the Moriscos were simply gearing up to join forces abroad and re-enter the Peninsula, armed and dangerous.

Furthermore, I argue that the apologists compound these day-to-day fears for physical safety with warnings that Morisco presence in Spain is a virtual gateway to eternal damnation. To do so, the apologists harness an early-modern fear of the apocalypse, arguing that the Moriscos are living representations of the Antichrist

Muhammad. They provide various examples of evidence of apocalyptic doom in the form of ominous signs and portents, hoping that a fear of the end of the world will inspire impassioned support for the expulsion campaign amongst citizens of political power and influence. The ultimate result, in their view, will be a permanent sealing of Spain’s borders, leaving one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Spain pure, clean, and united. Chapter One:

Parameters for the Faith

Why Apologize?

On Saturday evening, March 17, 1571, it is likely that the city center of Granada was bustling with last-minute preparations for a display of fear-inspiring spectacle, the next day’s auto de fe.1 A public sentencing of heretics, blasphemers, witches, and hypocrites, the auto of the early modern era was everything but the sterile procedure endemic to the contemporary courtroom. An exercise in pomp and pageantry, the auto was designed to attract large crowds in need of a powerful reminder to follow the

Catholic Church’s teachings, lest one find himself in the group of the accused rather than among the throngs of spectators. The month leading up to the costly event would have involved preparations for elaborate feasting and celebration of Mass in addition to the building of substantial scaffolding on which the inquisitors and their prisoners would sit throughout the proceedings. On the morning of the event, inquisitors and accused alike would have attended Mass followed by breakfast (if the anxious prisoners awaiting sentencing could have stomached it) and taken their places on the dais.

1 For a description of the pageantry of the auto de fe, see Henry Kamen, and Society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985),189-97.

17 18

In Granada on that particular Sunday, the eighteenth day of March, Lady

Constança Lopez2 would have sat among several Morisco prisoners on the platform, all of whom were accused of joining fellow Moriscos in armed rebellion in the

Mountain region of the Sierra just east of the city of Granada. The Second

Alpujarras War, which ended shortly before the celebration of this particular auto de fe, began some three years earlier in response to Philip II’s prohibitions on Moorish forms of cultural expression including dress, dance, and music. The decision of the accused to support and participate in the rebellions while also engaging in ritual prayer and washing was, to the inquisitorial authorities, a clear indication of their continued adherence to

Islam.

Having been forcibly converted to Christianity through a series of edicts beginning in the early sixteenth century, communities of Muslims throughout the

Peninsula were forced to abandon the practice of Islam in favor of the religion of the

Crown and of Rome. The validity of the baptisms was hotly debated among theologians, but when the dust settled, it was agreed that the Moriscos were legitimate members of the

Christian fold, and members who were now, as the Jewish before them, forced to answer to the Holy Office of the Inquisition for any transgressions against the Catholic

Church. While Morisca Constança Lopez did not take up arms and join in the fighting herself, she stood on trial for having praised the rebels’ efforts, saying, “What do you

2 A transcript of this particular auto de fe can be found in José María Garcia Fuentes, La Inquisición en Granada en el siglo XVI: Fuentes para su estudio (Granada: Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Granada, 1981), 114. Homza offers an English translation in Lu Ann Homza, The , 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 245-46. 19 think? That the world is always going to be yours? And because you dress us in a certain way, we have to be Christian? Underneath it all, we have done and will do what we want, because we were Moors, and Moors we shall remain.”3 For this offense, as well as for engaging in Muslim ritual prayer and burning wood that purportedly belonged to a

Christian altarpiece, she was sentenced at the auto to wearing the Sanbenito and to perpetual, irremissible prison.

The circumstances surrounding Lopez’s trial and its outcome were not unique.

She and the Alpujarras rebellion participants and sympathizers who accompanied her at the auto were accused of similar crimes and received comparable sentences, serving as examples to the Moriscos who may have had similar leanings assembled in the audience.

And it would appear, at least based on the evidence and testimony available to us, that

Lopez did indeed consider herself a practitioner of the Muslim faith; in other words, she would have supported the accusation made against her that she “believed the sect of

Muhammad was good”4 and that she might attain salvation through it. (The sentencing notes also claim that she professed belief in one God and that Muhammad was His messenger, leaving little doubt in the inquisitors’ minds of her .) It should be noted, however, that the transcripts from various sixteenth-century autos like the one that relates the fate of Constança Lopez, are filled with murkier evidence of what Inquisitorial

3 Homza, The Spanish Inquistion, 249. This is translated from the original Spanish, “y dixo delante de muchas personas christianas viejas que pensaba de vosotras que el mundo avia de ser siempre vuestro y que por vestirnos aquellos…aviamos de ser christianos pues debajo de ellos hizieramos y haziamos lo que queríamos porque moros eramos y moros aviamos de quedar.” García Fuentes, La Inquisición en Granada,114. 4 Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 249. 20 authorities saw as Morisco transgression. For example, Ysabel Xuaya was a Morisca slave accused by one witness of having bathed frequently;5 Maria, a Morisca from

Benalguaziles, was similarly accused of washing “muchas vezes desnuda en cueros todo el cuerpo y echarse agua por las espaldas.”6 Here the Christian authorities make no allowance for the possible secularization of a habit rooted in religious ritual. Damian

Perez from Málaga was accused of dressing in the Moorish style and calling himself by the name of Jafe after having been imprisoned in .7 Another Morisco was tried for singing Moorish-style songs and dancing the zambra,8 and Lea relates the tale of a

Morisca who faced trial for bringing to her daughter’s house on the occasion of her wedding “sweetmeats and cakes to be thrown in the mattresses according to an old

Moorish custom.”9 The overwhelming characterization of instances like these as heretical and blasphemous fails to take into consideration the gray area where religious ritual and custom intertwine, or where religious rite can assume a pragmatic and necessary quality.

Also tried on grounds of heresy was a Morisco named Gonçalo Lopez Gualit, accused of having doubted Mary’s virginity to an Old Christian acquaintance, saying, “no puede ser que pariesse siendo virgen sino para por la boca o por las narizes.”10 An example of this sort attributes to Moriscos alone an ignorance or a skepticism of

5 García Fuentes, Inquisición, 203. 6 García Fuentes, Inquisición, 294. 7 García Fuentes, Inquisición, 279. 8 Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 107. 9 Henry Charles Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, Their Conversion and Expulsion (: Lea Brothers & Co., 1901), 129. 10 García Fuentes, Inquisición, 201-2. 21 complicated Church doctrine. Evidence suggests, however, that Old Christians were likewise tried for similar delitos menores, or “lesser offenses” of superstition, blasphemy, and general crimes against the Holy Office of the Inquisition.11 While instructing lay people in the tenets of the Catholic faith in an effort to eliminate pagan practice and

“Christianize” even the Christian-born masses had been among the chief concerns of the

Spanish clergy in the early modern period,12 admitting a lack of Catholic dogmatic understanding on the part of the alleged Old Christian stock would certainly weaken the apologists’ argument that such ignorance was particular to the heretical Moriscos.

Therefore while many Old Christians may have likewise doubted Mary’s virgin conception or professed similar doubts in regard to the Church’s teachings, clerics critical of the Moriscos dismiss this possibility altogether, insinuating that the Moriscos were uniquely and defiantly ignorant.

The question of Constança Lopez’s guilt and intentions aside, her commentary on the futility of Christian efforts to eradicate Islam through the elimination of Morisco cultural practice is of particular interest to my study because in it she unintentionally critiques the Holy Office’s assumption of clear binary divisions between Old Christian and Morisco. These notions, held by the Catholic orthodoxy and repeatedly expressed by

11 For an interesting examination of such delitos menores, see Gustav Henningsen, “The Archives and the Historiography of the Spanish Inquisition,” in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods, ed. Henningsen et al. (Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 54-78. 12 For more information on catechesis in Spain in the sixteenth century, see Jean Pierre Dedieu, , “‘Christianization’ in New Castile: Catechism, Communion, Mass, and Confirmation in the Toledo Archbishopric, 1540-1650” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 1-24. 22 so many Catholic polemicists of the expulsion era, are the subject of this chapter. The specific texts by clerics Jaime Bleda, Pedro Aznar Cardona, Damián Fonseca, and

Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier13 for the most part appeared in the midst of the expulsion campaign, between the years of 1612 and 1618.

First, these polemicists held the view that Morisco cultural practice was inextricably linked to Islamic religious belief and practice and second, they asserted that controlling cultural expression was essential in order to effectively reduce the minority to more hegemonic beliefs. This insistence on the diametrical opposition of Christian and

Morisco served to deny the validity of regional differences that were cultural, lacking a religious dimension altogether. It also negates any possibility of the blurring of cultural and religious practice into common daily practices that may have given up their religious significance over time.

This implicit direct and unbreakable relationship between culture and creed in the

Christian mind remained a powerful hindrance in accepting the converted Moriscos into the Christian fold. At a time when Catholic Spaniards were attempting to permanently establish their political and ideological control over the Iberian Peninsula, they feared

13 Jaime Bleda, Crónica de los Moros de España, Dividida en Ocho Libros (Valencia: Felipe Mey, 1618); Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles y suma de las excelencias cristianas de nuestro rey don Felipe el Católico Tercero: dividida en dos partes (Huesca: Pedro Cabarte, 1612); Damián Fonseca, Justa expulsión de los moriscos de España: con la instrucción, apostasía, y traición de ellos: y respuesta a las dudas que se ofrecieron acerca de esta materia (Roma: Giacomo Mascardo, 1612); Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro de los moriscos de España (Pamplona: Nicolás de Assiayn, 1613); Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla hasta la Valle de Ricote: con las disensiones de los hermanos Jerifes y presa en Berbería de la fuerza y puerto de Larache (Pamplona: Nicolás de Assiayn, 1614). 23 that Muslims—genuine and those who were now Christian in name but whose faith seemed intertwined with cultural specificity—could pose a physical threat to the consolidation of power in Catholic hands. The trial of individual Moriscos for apostasy

(which included accusations ranging from bathing regularly and eating couscous to praising the Prophet Muhammad and observing Ramadan) and the subsequent decision to banish the group as a whole from Spanish reflects a process on the part of the Spanish Catholic orthodoxy to define its own criteria as a faith and ultimately as a nation.

In this chapter I aim to illustrate the process by which members of the Spanish

Catholic clergy constructed a series of parameters to define the Catholic faith in order to exclude from its realm, both spiritually and physically, the newly converted Moriscos.

This propaganda is especially evident in several apologetic treatises written just after the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. The treatise authors were all members of the Catholic clergy who used their experiences with the Morisco community as evidence for glorifying the results of the expulsion. These apologists occupy a unique space in the great debate regarding the Moriscos and their place within Spanish society—a debate in which the previously described auto de fe served as the most public example of Morisco denunciation, only to be upstaged by their dramatic and tragic expulsion between 1609 and 1614. While Jaime Bleda argued in favor of expulsion for most of his career as a priest, the other apologists wrote and published their anti-Morisco tracts after the expulsion decree had been issued. Their opinions, therefore, formed no part of the decisions that emerged from the various juntas convened throughout the decades leading 24 up to the expulsion to come up with a solution for the “Morisco problem.” The question raised, therefore, in considering this curious group of voluminous treatises (Bleda’s

Crónica is over 1100 pages) is what precipitated their writing?

The most likely response is that the expulsion of the Moriscos was economically devastating, and the Spanish monarchy may have endured recrimination as citizens lamented the loss of their neighbors, the loss of the services those neighbors provided, and the economic collapse left in the expulsion’s wake. Expulsion had not been a fast and easy decision for the . During Philip II’s reign, theologians wavered considerably between supporting increased efforts at conversion and catechesis, advocating for dispersal of the Moriscos throughout Spain’s more Christian kingdoms, and promoting their wholesale expulsion to . The king himself, however, never followed through with any plan other than to carry on with the evangelical mission in spite of the myriad recommendations he received advocating for expulsion. Some attribute this to his numerous political engagements including skirmishes in the

Netherlands, his newly acquired kingdom of upon the death of the sovereign, and the defeat of his Armada by England in 1588. As Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent suggest, however, the king’s inaction with regard to the expulsion debate more likely indicates a prudent unwillingness to force into exile such valuable assets to Spain’s economy who were also baptized Christians.14 Tueller cites the king’s devotion to the

14 Antonio Domínguez Ortiz and Bernard Vincent, Historia de los moriscos: vida y tragedia de una minoría (: Editorial Revista de Occidente, 1978), 159. “Los que sostienen la visión de un Felipe II inflexible y fanático tendrían que explicar porqué trató 25 writings of Botero and Lipsius, who advocated the following of a higher moral purpose in preserving the state, as an explanation for his reluctance to expel the Moriscos. These men would have favored dedication to the true conversion of Morisco souls to

Christianity before more drastic measures were considered.15

A turning point in the urgency with which the king’s advisors sought a remedy to the Morisco situation, however, occurred in March of 1577 when the king and his

Council of State received intelligence of a looming uprising of Valencian Moriscos, supported by the Ottoman Turks. Not even a decade after the War in the Alpujarras, rebellion was fresh in the minds of the clergy throughout Granada and Valencia. While the king’s counselors thought this particular threat had some merit, they were largely concerned with the cost of mounting an offense. They also considered accessibility to

Ottoman assistance unlikely, given the lack of available ports.16 Philip II proceeded to convene a series of juntas to debate the course of action that should be taken with regard to his Morisco subjects. Next to continued evangelization, expulsion was one of the perhaps least fatal of the possible solutions suggested, and for that reason it was touted among polemicists such as the Catholic apologists as a benign and merciful gesture toward people who deserve death and damnation. From forced sterilization to abandoning

a los moriscos con menos dureza que su hijo, a quien se atribuye un carácter más benévolo.” 15 James. B. Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians: Moriscos and Catholicism in Early Modern Spain (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2002), 101-2. 16 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians,94-5. 26 the Moriscos at sea on ships without sails, there appears to have been no limit to the brutalities considered.17

The Catholic apologists believed that Philip III’s 1609 expulsion decree would become the most critical event in the development of the Spanish nation to date. To them, he followed in the footsteps of his ancestors, the Reyes Católicos and Charles V, and accomplished what his father could not do in an attempt to unify the Spanish kingdoms under one, holy Catholic faith. Highlighting the physical and spiritual dangers to the stability of the nation that were eliminated with the expulsion, these apologists argue in their treatises for Catholicism’s exclusive claim on Spain, justifying first the forcible conversion of the Muslims to Christianity and later their expulsion when said conversions failed to bear fruit. Arguing that the opposition of Christian to Morisco in the sixteenth century was binary and absolute, the apologists also set out to define an authentic Spanish

Catholic culture by drawing parameters regarding what is considered acceptable in

Spanish Catholic orthodoxy and rejecting cultural expression they see as tainted by

Semitic influence.

In my analysis of the apologists’ treatises that justify the Morisco expulsion, I rely on Alain Milhou’s18 theory that in an effort to legitimize itself as part of the European cultural sphere and the “City of God” on earth, Catholic Spain had to renounce Jewish

17 Matthew Carr, Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (New York: The New Press, 2009), 211-12. 18 Alain Milhou. “Desemitización y europeización en la cultural española desde la época de los reyes católicos hasta la expulsión de los moriscos,” in La cultura del Renaixement: homenatge al pare Miquel Batllori, ed. Miquel Batllori and Manuel Fernández Álvarez. (Barcelona: Bellaterra,1993), 35-60. 27 and Muslim cultural influence. This argument, later expounded on by Barbara Fuchs,19 suggests that the apologist treatises represent only the latest of a many centuries-long process of Peninsula-wide desemitization. (This idea will be explored in greater detail in

Chapter 2, Cultures in Contact.) The arguments that the apologists make in this regard, however, have gone largely untreated in contemporary writings about the Morisco community.

The Moriscos in Scholarship

While the apologists’ names are well-known and their most vitriolic characterizations of the Moriscos widely quoted, their larger nation-building project on the whole goes unnoticed in favor of a focus on the general effects the expulsion produced on the Spanish nation. While the apologists were by no means the final word on the subject, and celebrated writers of the era like Lope, Quevedo, and Cervantes continued to offer their own conflicted assessments of the expulsion,20 the Morisco question practically disappeared from print until the debate was taken up again in the nineteenth century. This more contemporary treatment of the subject used the apologists’ testimony as proof of what more conservative writers would call their exemplary patriotic

19 Barbara Fuchs, Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 20 See, for example, Thomas E. Case, “Lope and the Moriscos,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 44(1992): 195-216; Richard Hitchcock, “Cervantes, Ricote and the Expulsion of the Moriscos,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and America 81 (2004): 175-85; Vincent Barletta, “Notes on Morisco Speech and Quevedo,” Alhadith, last modified March 21, 2010, http://www.stanford.edu/dept/span-port/cgi-bin/alhadith/2010/03/21/notes-on-morisco- speech/ (17 October 2011). 28 zeal, and those of a more liberal leaning, their narrow-minded xenophobia. To writers like Manuel Dánvila y Collado, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, and Pascual Boronat y

Barrachina,21 the apologists’ condemnatory characterizations of the Moriscos merely served as evidence of a larger point that Spain’s cultural and political situation was improved by their removal. For them, the stronger race had prevailed over the weaker one, and Spain was once again united in its Catholic faith. Other scholars of the era, including Florencio Janer, Modesto Lafuente, and Henry Charles Lea22, took a more sympathetic view, arguing that the Moriscos were valuable contributors to the Spanish economy forced from the only land they had ever called home. They claimed that their expulsion had been devastating to Spain’s finances. Lea, for example, introduces his study by referring to the larger narrative of the expulsion as “embod[ying] a tragedy commanding the deepest sympathy, but it epitomizes nearly all the errors and tendencies which combined to cast down Spain, in little more than a century, from its splendor under

Charles V to its humiliation under Carlos II.”23 Twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship shifted away from economic analyses of the expulsion and strove to study the

21 See Manuel Dánvila y Collado, La expulsión de los moriscos españoles (Madrid: Librería de F. Fé, 1889); Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Madrid: Librería católica de San José, 1880-1881); Pascual de Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión. Estudio histórico-crítico (Valencia: F. de Vives y Moro, 1901). 22 See Florencio Janer, Condición social de los moriscos: causas de su expulsión y consecuencias que esta produjo en el orden económico y político (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1857); Modesto Lafuente, Historia general de España desde los tiempos primitivos hasta la muerte de Fernando VII (Barcelona: Montaner y Simón, 1887-1891); Henry Charles Lea, Moriscos. 23 Lea, Moriscos, v. 29

Morisco community in its own right. Such contemporary studies have paid particular attention to Morisco literature and culture and its influence on Peninsular thought on the whole. In addition, scholars have discussed the community’s marginalized status and covert practice of Islam as integral components to the formation of Morisco cultural identity before the expulsion.24 The apologists’ treatises justifying the expulsion, however, occupy a curious and neglected spot in the great corpus of works dealing with the Moriscos. Studied as a whole, these texts prove to have a very specific agenda, seeking to persuade a bankrupt and indecisive Philip III to stay firm in his resolve to expel the Moriscos. By inciting fear of economic collapse, the death of the Spanish

Church, and the apocalypse, the treatsies set in motion a propaganda machine whose primary purpose went beyond the dismissal of the Moriscos in an effort to create a Spain unified in faith and culture. While we see the nation-building project still hard at work in the nineteenth century and the very conscious rewriting of the cultural myth in twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship, the culture-constructing project of the Catholic apologists has received little critical attention. Grace Magnier’s study of Pedro de

Valencia,25 a cleric who argued against expulsion in favor of continued evangelization, is

24 For example, see Vincent Barletta, Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier Society, 1492-1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Luce López Baralt, Huellas del Islam en la literatura española: de Juan Ruiz a Juan Goytisolo (Madrid: Hiperión, 1985); Mary Elizabeth Perry, The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain (Princeton: Press, 2005). 25 Grace Magnier, Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apologists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Visions of Christianity and Kingship (Boston: Brill, 2010). 30 perhaps the most comprehensive overview to date of the apologists’ contributions to the

Morisco debate, but the author characterizes Pedro de Valencia’s position as heroic in comparison to the expulsion apologists. She fails to see the similarities in the very scripted rhetoric of all of the treatises—that of Pedro de Valencia included—that invalidates Morisco culture in favor of the more hegemonic ideal. Matthew Carr’s recent book Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, is closer in approach to my own study in that he very openly critiques the apologist propaganda machine as an instrument of ethnic cleansing, but he relies entirely on citations of the treatises in other scholarly work and therefore cannot offer a comprehensive study of the treatises on the whole.

Carr’s goal, as he very plainly states, is to make available to a contemporary audience a story long confined to academic circles. For my own part, I intend to pay particular attention to the incendiary preaching of the apologists’ treatises as they craft the propaganda that would fuel historical debate on the Moriscos for centuries to come.

To accomplish their nation-building project the early seventeenth-century apologists formulate their justification of the wholesale expulsion of the Moriscos by arguing in favor of Catholicism’s exclusive claim on the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the faith as the original and rightful “owner” of the kingdoms. They warn that a Spain that admits dissenters and heretics renders Spanish Catholics vulnerable to seduction away from the true faith and consequently threatens the sovereignty and unity of the

Spanish nation. In addition, the apologists feared that harboring alleged Muslim infidels only increased the threat to national security, as the marauding Turks continued to threaten territories around the Mediterranean. 31

In regard to Constança Lopez’s outburst for which she was convicted in 1571, the apologists do indeed believe that they, as Spanish Catholics, lay rightful claim on Spain.

To them, the Spanish world has always belonged to Catholic Christendom. Eight centuries of Islamic presence within their territory was merely an aberration that needed to be managed and contained through active construction of perimeters surrounding the

Catholic faith. They therefore argue that those who fail to conform to the prescribed cultural ideal have no place in Catholic Spain and should therefore be expelled.

Archbishop Juan de Ribera and the Catholic Apologists

Critical to understanding the ideological framework surrounding the Catholic apologists’ justification of the expulsion of the Moriscos is becoming better acquainted with a powerful man whose political and theological opinions guided the clerics in their endeavor: Juan de Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia. A native of born in 1532,

Ribera was ordained a priest in 1557 during the height of Tridentine Catholic Reform and the Protestant Reformation, and he was appointed bishop of Badajoz by Philip II five years later. Committed to the Council of Trent’s vision of a renewed Church with bishops at the center of the movement, Ribera took his powerful position seriously and began a campaign of reform during his six year tenure in Badajoz that earned him a favorable reputation with the king and the pope. A mere ten years after ordination and at only thirty-six years of age, he was named Patriarch of Antioch by Pius V and

Archbishop of Valencia by Philip II, positions that he would hold for the remainder of his 32 life.26 Ribera’s predecessors had advanced through the clerical ranks more slowly and consequently were named bishops much later in life. The king realized that complex institutional reform could hardly be carried out if momentum were lost each time the pontiff succumbed to old age, so his appointment of Ribera in 1567 was a tactical move intended to bring about results over the long term.27

Ribera initially attempted to turn down the promotion, perhaps understanding that his successful reform efforts on the Portuguese border were less likely to attain results in a more heterogeneous area heavily populated by Moriscos. The Moriscos, whose compulsory conversion to Catholicism had come about in a series of edicts in the early sixteenth century during the reign of Charles V, were largely Christians in name only.

Conversion efforts had been significantly lacking in direction and organization, and Old

Christian nobles, primarily in Valencia, whose prosperity depended in large part on the

Morisco labor force, worked to secure Morisco religious independence in appeasement.

As a result, many of the Moriscos continued to practice their Islamic faith openly, increasingly exposing themselves to Inquisitorial pressures. When Archbishop Juan de

Ribera arrived in Valencia in 1569, Moriscos in the nearby province of Granada were in the midst of the Alpujarras rebellion, violently protesting prohibitions on forms of

Moorish cultural expression. Fearful that Morisco refugees would seek asylum in

Valencia and inspire local Moriscos to rebel in a similar manner, Philip must have known that he was sending the young Ribera into a hotbed of contempt.

26 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 7-8. 27 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 7. 33

The Archbishop felt that the Moriscos’ faulty conversion was the result of lack of qualified priests to instruct the neophytes, especially in outlying areas, so he quickly committed himself to reorganizing the Morisco parishes and outfitting them with men equipped for the job. Jaime Bleda, author of one of the apologist treatises justifying the expulsion under consideration in this chapter, is a prime example of a priest whose assignment to a particular parish included the missionary obligation to work toward authentic Morisco conversion. In supplementing official funds with personal wealth

Ribera had inherited to fund such projects, the Archbishop demonstrated a real optimism that true conversion was reachable, at least in the first decade of his tenure as archbishop.28 In Ribera’s conversion model, priests were to serve as examples for the people, and likewise, the archbishop used his skills as an orator to demonstrate the utility of preaching sermons in educating the masses and converting the Moriscos. But as he became increasingly discouraged with the failures of his evangelizing mission, his sermons began to take on quite a different tone, and the optimism of the early sermons gave way to fiery diatribes that advocated removing poisonous elements from God’s house. In the early 1580’s, Ribera became an ardent supporter of Morisco expulsion, urging then Grand Inquisitor Quiroga to communicate his recommendations to the king.29

The archbishop characterized the Moriscos as traitors and conspirators whose presence in

Christendom not only contaminated the Catholic faith but put the Spanish kingdoms in peril with dangerous connections to the Islamic world abroad. He also criticized

28 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 86. 29 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 103. 34

Valencian seigneurs who, in protection of their own economic interests, failed to support the archbishop’s conversion campaign while secretly assisting their Morisco vassals.30

Ribera’s efforts to procure immediate expulsion of the Moriscos did not bear fruit during the reign of Philip II, who was too preoccupied with political instability in the

Netherlands and the economic interests of the nobility at home to pay the archbishop much heed. Ribera’s oratory, however, certainly did not fall on deaf ears, as his sermons are copied and discussed at length in each of the apologist’s treatises justifying the expulsion. For men like Bleda, Aznar Cardona, Guadalajara y Javier, and Fonseca, Juan de Ribera’s sermons and personal example serve as the foundation of a successful and ultimately laudable step in a great nation-building project. His arguments provide the apologists with essential theological justification for the decision to expel the Moriscos, removing any blame that might have been placed on the Crown for subjecting baptized

Christians to the evil forces of Islam abroad.31 When Philip III assumed the throne in

1598, Ribera hoped to gain his attention quickly in regard to the expulsion of the

Moriscos, but the new king instead entertained an opponent of the expulsion, Don

Feliciano de Figueroa, Bishop of Segorbe.32 In spite of the lack of attention, Ribera persisted, sending seemingly unsolicited advice to the new king, emphasizing the

Moriscos’ apostasy and further highlighting the danger they posed in matters of national security. Ribera described the Moriscos as “sponges” who suck up all of the riches in

30 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 101. 31 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 7. 32 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 7. 35

Spain, undercutting the wages of their Christian neighbors while greedily hoarding cash and spending little.33 He characterized the New Christians as inherently violent, given to rapidly populating in an effort to overthrow the Old Christians in rebellion.34 It is in one of his letters to the king that Ribera penned perhaps his most well-known line: “If Your

Majesty does not order a resolution in this matter, taking advantage of these inspirations,

I will see in my days the loss of Spain.”35 The apologists, who not only see themselves as defenders of the Faith but also as patriots, aim to prove that Spain, in all of its glory, was indeed saved due to one powerful and magnificent decision of the Catholic monarch

Philip III that came to fruition in 1609.

Of these Catholic apologists, Jaime Bleda was perhaps the most well-known and most outspoken. His close relationship with Juan de Ribera and his frequent trips to

Rome to advocate for expulsion in front of the pope gave him more access to the limelight than Aznar Cardona, Guadalajara y Javier, and Fonseca, and for that reason, more is known about his life and works than of the other apologists. Bleda joined Ribera in actively promoting expulsion to the king by sending him his Defensio Fidei36 in 1603, and all of the other apologists under consideration here repeatedly cite this defense of the faith, praising his initiative in advocating expulsion. A Dominican from the small

Valencian Morisco town of Algemesí, Bleda also served as an Inquisition censor. His intimate knowledge of the Tribunal and consequent confrontation with purported

33 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 130. 34 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 137. 35 Quoted in Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 128. 36 transgressions must have fueled his enmity against the Moriscos, coloring his judgment before he was ever assigned to missionary tasks. In 1585, Archbishop Ribera sent him to the Morisco parish of Corbera, and the priest’s first impression of the town is recorded in his lengthy Crónica de los moros de España, dividida en ocho libros, published in 1618.

Disguised as an everyday parishioner, Bleda attended mass in Corbera and was disgusted by what he viewed to be the outward blasphemy of the Morisco churchgoers. He claims to have ridden back to Valencia without speaking to anyone, dramatically throwing himself at Ribera’s feet and begging for a new assignment. At this point in time, Ribera’s favored solution for the “Morisco problem” was still that of peaceful evangelization, so he sent the disgruntled Bleda back to Corbera to assume his post. Bleda’s first impression of the Moriscos never softened over time and only worsened as he continued to work among the New Christians. Instead, he cultivated what Carr refers to as an “obsessive loathing” of the New Christians and began ardently advocating for their demise.37

Expulsion, in fact, was the least extreme of the measures Bleda promoted: he would have been satisfied to see the Moriscos killed in Barbary or devastated by plague. In addition to his Defensio Fidei, personally presented to the king in 1604, and his copious Crónica of the next decade, Bleda also wrote several collections of miracles with a decidedly anti-

Semitic tone.38 The Catholic apologists who followed Bleda attributed to him much of the success of the expulsion project.

37 Carr, Blood and Faith, 208. 38 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 120-1. Bleda’s Libro de la cofradia de Minerua: en el qual se escriuen mas de dozientos y cinquenta milagros del Santissimo Sacramento del Altar (Valencia: 1600) is available as an electronic book at 37

Over the course of the rest of his life, Bleda worked closely with the Archbishop, traveling to Rome three times, promoting the expulsion cause in front of three pontiffs. In addition, he traveled frequently to Madrid to gather support for his mission. Bleda’s trips to Rome, however, did not prove as productive as he might have hoped. Pope Paul V continued to advance the softer methods of persuasion and education already espoused by

Ribera and the Court and gave no official papal support to expulsion. In 1599, Bleda was given the opportunity to meet with Philip III when the king spent ten months in Valencia after marrying Princess Margaret of Austria. Bleda, therefore, was able to directly influence Philip’s decision, further endearing him to the apologists who would follow.

In spite of Ribera and Bleda’s enthusiastic support, lack of papal backing for the expulsion decree worried Philip III, and as a result he sent Damián Fonseca, a Dominican of Portuguese descent, to Rome to pick up where Bleda’s efforts had left off. Fonseca’s justification of the expulsion, therefore, was first published in Rome in Italian (1611) and translated the next year into Spanish (Justa expulsión de los Moriscos de España: con la instrucción, apostasia, y traición de ellos: y respuesta a las dudas que se ofrecieron acerca de esta material). In an earlier version of the manuscript, Fonseca claims to have had Pope Paul V’s support. The pontiff, however, wanted nothing to do with the expulsion mission and, as Tueller points out, he insisted that any indications of his

http://books.google.es/books?id=wghORc9XQ7gC&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false, and his Vida y milagros del glorioso S. Isidro el Labrador can be found at http://books.google.es/books?id=3ycSxkhOrJ8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f= false. 38 support be removed from Fonseca’s treatise prior to its printing.39 He was later honored by pope Clement VIII, but beyond this information, few details of his life are known.40

That Bleda and Fonseca were both members of the is important to understanding the significance of their religious vows in their mission to expel the

Moriscos. Dominic de Guzmán (b.1170-d.1221), founder of the Order of Preachers, hailed from Castile. Since the founding of the order, Spain, and later her colonies, remained the center of Dominican learning. As Benedict M. Ashley notes, in the sixteenth century, no Dominican could earn the title Master of Theology without having spent four years as a teacher in one of the approved universities scattered throughout

Spain and the New World.41 The Dominicans were extremely influential during the reigns of both Philip II and Philip III, due largely to their roles as expert inquisitors and royal confessors.42 Wright notes that the opinions of Philip II’s conservative Dominican confessor are evident in the king’s unwillingness to espouse some of the Council of

Trent’s reforms.43 In the evangelical mission, perhaps no Dominican is better known than

Bartolomé de Las Casas (b.1474-d.1566) who dedicated his career to the conversion the indigenous of the New World through education. As Boyarin notes, success stories from abroad in regard to conversion provided a model of sorts for the religious seeking

39 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 135-6. 40 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 122. 41 Benedict M. Ashley, The Dominicans (Collegeville: Litrugical Press, 1990), 129-30. 42 A.D. Wright, Catholicism and Spanish Society Under the Reign of Philip II, 1555-1598 and Philip III, 1598-1621 (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1991), 130-1. 43 Wright, Catholicism, 130-1. 39 conversion of the Moriscos.44 Bleda and Fonseca, therefore, belonged to a greater tradition of court influence and evangelization, and Bleda tips his hat to the Dominican legacy repeatedly: “que el gran Patriarca Santo Domingo mi padre representó al Sumo

Pontífice para que le confirmase su nueva religión, fue para defender la Fe, impugnar las herejías, y alumbrar con doctrina Católica el mundo…que los frailes de vuestra orden han de ser defensores de la Fe, y unas verdaderas lumbreras del mundo.”45 He considers himself to be one of a long line of religious men committed to eliminating heresy beginning with St. Dominic. The saint purportedly fought heresy during his lifetime and continued to do so through his legacy as “inventor del santo tribunal de la Inquisción.”46

When speaking of fellow apologist Fonseca, Bleda proudly claims him as one of his own:

“de este Convento de Predicadores de Valencia, es varón muy doctor, y en mi orden tiene eminente lugar,”47 praising Fonseca for bringing to light many of Bleda’s ideas from his

Defensio Fidei by incorporating them into his own anti-Morisco tract.

In addition to the biographical data gleaned from the prefatory pages of their treatises, details about the lives of Aznar Cardona and Guadalajara y Javier are rather sparse in comparison, perhaps because neither cleric aspired to championing his cause in such a public forum as the Holy See. The little information that is known about them is

44 Jonathan Boyarin, The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 41. 45 Bleda, Crónica, 969. 46 Bleda, Crónica, 932. 47 Bleda, Crónica, 946. 40 contained within Nicolás Antonio’s Biblioteca hispana nueva,48 composed in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Pedro Aznar Cardona was not in fact responsible for the authorship of the Justa Expulsión de los Moriscos Españoles (1612); he served as a scribe for his uncle, Jerónimo Aznar, an Augustinian friar and prior of the monastery of

St. Augustine in Huesca. Jerónimo Aznar is also said to have composed a book on the

Immaculate Conception entitled, De la Concepción de Nuestra Señora, also published in

Huesca in 1620. Marcos de Guadalajara y Javier was a much more prolific writer than

Aznar and was from Zaragoza. Antonio describes him as Carmelite who spent day and night engrossed in his studies, adding considerably to the corpus of historical investigations on pontiffs. He was named Superior of his order in 1606, and his treatises on the Moriscos appeared shortly thereafter: the Memorable expulsión y justísimo destierro de los Moriscos de España in 1613, and his Prodición y destierro de los

Moriscos de Castilla hasta el Valle de Ricote con la disensión de los dos hermanos

Jerifes, y presa en Berbería de la fuera y puerto de Larache the following year.

In the introduction to their modern edition of Juan Ripol’s Diálogo de Consuelo por la expulsión de los moriscos de España,49 Talavera Cuesta and Moreno Díaz give brief characterizations of the apologists—contemporaries of Ripol—highlighting the differences in their approaches. For them, Bleda, in his radicalism, is the prelude to a debate that would then be repeated in every other apologist tract. Aznar Cardona (or rather, Jerónimo Aznar) is seen as the most propagandistic of the apologists and the one

48 Nicolás Antonio, Biblioteca hispana nueva (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones, 1999). 49 Santiago Talavera Cuesta and Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, Juan Ripol y la expulsión de los moriscos de España (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2008). 41 who relies most heavily on scriptural quotation and anecdote. Fonseca’s exposition is the most juridical of the apologies, dedicated to countering arguments against expulsion, and

Guadalajara y Javier relies on legends and prophesies more than any of his contemporaries.50

In spite of slight differences in content and style, the apologists’ treatises are very similar. All four exemplify what Thomas F. Glick refers to as the “tightly scripted” religious polemic characteristic of Medieval and early modern times. Devoid of what

Glick describes as epistemological modesty, or “the willingness to entertain the validity of someone else’s epistemology,”51 the apologists’ treatises justify the expulsion of the

Moriscos by describing the Muslim faith as the antithesis of Christianity. One of the overarching themes of these tightly scripted polemics in particular is the portrayal of

Islam as a non-native invading force, inherently corrupt and highly dangerous in its ability to lure Christians away from the truth faith. It is through this characterization that the apologists frame their justification for the expulsion of the Moriscos, arguing for

Christianity’s innate goodness and rightful claim on the Peninsula.

The Islamic Threat

Estos son el , la ponzoña, la apostema, la corrupción pestilente, de que nuestro Católico Galeno de Galenos ha purgado el cuerpo místico, de la Cristiana republica Española. Estos son la sarna, la lepra, el cáncer, la gota

50 Talavera Cuesta and Moreno Díaz, Juan Ripol, 26-9. 51 Thomas F. Glick, “‘My Master the Jew”: Observation on the Interfaith Scholarly Interactions in the Middle Ages” in Jews, Muslims and Christians in and Around the Crown of : Essays in Honour of Elena Lourie, ed. Harvey J. Hames. (Boston: Brill, 2004), 158. 42

coral, y el mal de costado peligroso de que nuestro poderoso Rey Católico, nos ha separado para siempre. Estos son los no solo inútiles, sino señaladamente malas yerbas.52

The apologists’ anxiety in regard to the stability of their Spanish Catholic identity is evident in their assertions of Spain’s vulnerability to Islam’s corruption, particularly in the light of centuries of failed efforts to bring the Moriscos into the Christian fold. They view Islam as a spiritual threat—a force whose presence within the Iberian Peninsula threatened the stability and hegemony of the Catholic faith with its influence, painting the

Islamic faith as the very antithesis of Catholic Christianity. Arguing that Spain has been

Catholic since the beginning of time, the apologists claim that it is the monarch’s duty, as inheritor of an unbroken genealogical connection to Rome, to reclaim Catholicism as

Spain’s sole and rightful faith. After establishing that conversion efforts failed to yield results for centuries, the apologists justify the expulsion as the only practicable resolution to restoring Spain’s unity.

The apologists consider Islam to have been corrupt since its foundation. To Bleda,

Muhammad’s teachings serve to intentionally undermine Christian doctrine, beginning with a crafty salesman-like approach of getting to know his competition thoroughly before creating a doctrine most attractive to potential subscribers:

Y siendo de astuto ingenio, ambicioso, y amigo de cosas nuevas, procure entender los modos, y formas de vivir de las gentes, y vino a tener Amistad, y particular conocimiento con hombres de diferentes leyes. Con esto Mahoma quedó instruido, y enseñado medianamente en todas las leyes, que entonces había en el mundo: en la idolatría, como queda dicho: de su tío Baheyra fue también enseñado, que era Judío: y de Sergio

52 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:62-3. 43

aprendió la ley de Cristo, lo que él le quiso enseñar, y así urdió de todas tres leyes la tela, con que después engañó al mundo.53

Utilizing details from Muhammad’s life story, Bleda characterizes his understanding of

God as the result of a conscious religion-building process in which he uses his knowledge of other more established faiths to model the structure of his own invented religion. In contrast to the belief in Islam that Muhammad’s knowledge is perfect, God-given, and outside his control, to Bleda, a conscious procuring of religious authority served

Muhammad’s goal to lend credibility to his preaching. He notes that as Muhammad set out to attract converts, he rejected other religions’ notions of appetite-repression, making his doctrine more palatable and attractive to potential converts:

Con haber Mahoma soltado las riendas a toda sensualidad: habiendo sido un legislador tā Epicúreo, y enemigo de la templanza Cristiana; habiendo querido engañar al mundo, dado a entender, que Dios le había enviado, para que moderase, y templase el rigor de la ley de los cristianos: con todo para dar color de religión a su falsa secta, mandó un mes entero de ayunos, que llaman Ramadán…54

The apologists view Muhammad’s plan to trick the world with his false teachings as

Lucifer’s handiwork, and Guadalajara y Javier warns of the necessity amongst the faithful of recognizing such deception: “será necesario en el presente, tener noticia clara de los medios que tiene, para conducir gente, en detrimento de la virtud y santidad, y de algunas señales de los herejes, para huir de su trato y comunicación, como nociva y peligrosa.”55 Muhammad begins the task of disseminating his message with the first of

53 Bleda, Crónica, 7. 54 Bleda, Crónica, 54. 55 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 8. 44 his wives, Khadijah, and her naïve willingness to accept his claims sets off a chain reaction of conversion among the people: “Así lo creyó su mujer, y lo hizo creer a otras amigas suyas, y de ellas manó esta fabula a muchos hombres plebeyos.”56 In this scenario, Muhammad is a sort of serpent tempting his Eve, and her willingness to be duped opens the figurative garden gates for mass damnation. Khadijah is only the first of many ignorant people who succumbed to Muhammad’s black magic and trickery. Bleda attributes this trend to feminine weakness and desperation, noting “[y] considera un autor, que en esta flaqueza caē algunas veces las mujeres, y aun señoras, y de ello se alaban en

España algunos viles lenceros. Y como el maldito Mahoma era mago, y hechicero, fácilmente recabó con ella, pues era viuda, que se casase con él.”57 Likewise, Bleda’s fellow apologists describe Muhammad’s efforts to create a plausible religion as a process of fiction-writing designed to appeal to an ignorant and gullible audience who lacks the intellectual tools to evaluate it for what it is worth.

The fear that common people in the Iberian Peninsula are vulnerable to the

Islamic seductions that converted the Middle East and North Africa in the seventh century permeates the apologists’ treatises. They note, however, that Scripture gives fair warning of Islam’s efforts to devastate Christianity, and the Christian community must prepare itself to take defensive action. For example, Aznar Cardona refers to Muhammad as a false prophet whose teachings condemn countless souls to hell, describing him as a lascivious beast prefigured in John’s Gospel. He observes,

56 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 57 Bleda, Crónica, 6. 45

por el modo de vida bestialísima, que usó personalmente, y enseñó a los suyos, fundada, no en razón, ni en gozos de la virtud, y verdaderos bienes del alma, ni en cosas, que de suyo son de estima, quitada la necesidad, o la costumbre dañada de ellas, ni en obras que sean propias de aquello, que en nosotros es verdaderamente ser hombre, sino en bienes brutos del cuerpo, de comer, o refocilarse, y en riquezas, y pompas y vanidades caducas, y en torpezas, y deleites de ardores deshonestos.58

Calling Muhammad the Epicurean captain of brute appetite and a slave to filthy passions, Aznar Cardona contrasts what he views as an Islamic ideal of searching for human happiness in earthly pleasures with the truth of rational Catholic faith that teaches that the body and soul tire of such pleasures, ultimately seeking fulfillment in Christ’s salvation.59 Specifically, he explains that the Muslims focus all of their attentions “en dulzura de comidas, en suavidad de manjares sabrosos, y delicados; en preciosidad de vestidos; en deleites del cuerpo; en abundancia de riquezas; en pompas y honras mundanas: en galas curiosas; en fuerzas, salud, y dones corporales; en aplausos de amigos: en paseos de jardines y prados.”60 To a true Catholic Christian, suffering ends with death and admittance into the eternal heavenly kingdom where souls exist

“perfectamente gozosos, sin comida, ni bebida, ni sueño, no otras cosas que presupongan cansancio, o necesidad.” 61 In this regard, he accuses Muhammad of trying to convert his soul into flesh, or corrupt God’s people in an attempt to undermine the Divine plan. He states, “[q]ue fue tan dado a lo corporal, y tan materializo, su voluptuoso capitán,

Mahoma; que deseará convertir su alma en cuerpo: y la razón, en sentido, y trocar el

58 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:22-3. 59 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:28-9. 60 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:27. 61 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:31-2. 46 sino por el hierro; y tan idiota, que confundió, y perturbó (cuanto fue de su parte) el orden natural y divino.”62

The threat to seventeenth-century Spanish Christianity inherent in prioritizing pleasures of the body over spiritual aspirations is that such choices are viewed as potentially irresistible temptations to a Christian whose faith promotes temperance and as a certain source of corruption of Christian purity. It is precisely because of this temptation, as Bleda states, that Islam has lasted for so many centuries in spite of

Christian resistance. In the apologists’ opinions, it is easier and more pleasurable to be a

Muslim than it is to be a Christian “porque esta secta no manda creer a los hombres cosa que exceda los sentidos, ni la capacidad de qualquier mediano entendimiento: Es ley carnalaza, que concede todo lo que pide la sensualidad, y los apetitos terrenos, y sobre todo favorece la ambición de mandar, e Imperar de cualquier manera, y por cualesquier medios, que ello se alcance.”63

The danger to Christian Spain lies in the fact that it may appear that a Morisco who engages in such hedonistic behavior does not suffer consequences on earth, leading the casual observer to believe that earthly pleasures need not be eschewed. After

Muhammad gives what Guadalajara y Javier calls “licencia…general y absoluta para robar y lujuriar (vicio y natural inclinación de Barbaros Arábigos),”64 and Moriscos of this persuasion continue living in the Iberian Peninsula for centuries abiding by these

62 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:42. 63 Bleda, Crónica, 102. 64 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 32. 47 provisions, the apologists insist that leading such a life is attractive to weak-willed

Christians who see no obvious consequences. But as Aznar Cardona points out, outward appearances are deceiving, and Christians should be forewarned that Moriscos certainly suffer in the afterlife: “que su torpe secta, en lo exterior es deleitosa, pero en lo secreto, azota con muerte eternal.”65

The apologists see Muhammad’s religion, therefore, with its focus on bodily pleasures and multiple wives, as most attractive to the ignorant campesinos who are highly vulnerable to Morisco hedonistic influence. The apologists cite as their forebearers the ignorant country-folk and Bedouin tribes who fell victim to Muhammad’s proselytizing in the seventh century, noting,

Fingió que era Apóstol, y Profeta. Yua enseñado sus embelecos a gente idiota, ignorante, que vivían en el campo en caserías, y aldeas, a pastores, a bandoleros, y salteadores, a hombres que el fácilmente podía engañar con su astucia de zorra, por ser gente del todo ajena de la sabiduría, que carecía de toda prudencia humana, y de toda urbanidad y policano sabían conocer, ni discernir entre la verdad, y la mentira, entre la necesidad, y la sabiduría: y a cada uno empleaba en su oficio.66

Bleda considers these commoners so isolated from civilized life that they lack the intellectual capacity to differentiate between genuine truth and fictional creation.

Muhammad’s easy conversion of a multitude of people and the rapid expansion of his sect inspires anxiety in the apologists who view Spain’s ignorant commoners as a group as vulnerable to the risk of defection as the early inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant who followed Muhammad’s teachings centuries before. Bleda refers to

65 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:24. 66 Bleda, Crónica, 16. 48

Muhammad’s early practitioners as being “tan fácil en creer novedades, al cual mas agradan las cosas fabulosas, y las invenciones mentirosas, que la doctrina de la verdad,”67 and fears Spain’s gente popular will follow suit. As Aznar Cardona suggests, they are apt to latch onto the vestiges of Muhammad’s “pestilential” preaching that live on in the

Iberian Peninsula eagerly, blindly, and without evaluation, “al modo de los que beben con botija, sin ver, ni saber lo que beben.”68 Bleda reiterates “cuán dañosa era a los Cristianos simples la compañía de aquellos infieles escandalosos,” reminding his reader that it is never a good idea to leave a wolf among the sheep, nor Cain alone with his brother

Abel.69

But the threat of losing the Christian populace to the temptations of Islam is even greater when considering that the more educated cosmopolitan citizens are also given to moral weakness, leaving no Christian immune to contamination or seduction. Bleda notes that

Para los hombres ciudadanos, y mas entendidos, dados a los vicios de la carne, y amigos de toda libertad, tomo el engañoso Mahoma otro medio…para rendir los a su secta Escondido el anzuelo de su falsa ley, y doctrina en el cebo dulce de los deleites mundanos, permitiéndoles el ayuntamiento carnal a rienda suelta, y todos los regalos, y pasatiempos de la sensualidad: hasta darles la bienaventuranza de la otra vida en deleites carnales, haciéndoles creer, que después desta vida mortal se habían de ir con el a gozar de una vida regalada, llena de banquetes, y de fiestas, como las que aquí se usan: y así eran muy amigos de ellas los Moros.70

67 Bleda, Crónica, 15. 68 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:24-5. 69 Bleda, Crónica, 873. 70 Bleda, Crónica, 18. 49

The apologists fear that it is hard to deny the attractiveness of Muhammad’s teachings and lack of moral fortitude, and Morisco presence within the Iberian Peninsula therefore will always mean constant confrontation with Lucifer’s temptations. Therefore, the apologists first argue in favor of the moral superiority of Catholicism, claiming its right to souls destined for eternal life.

Construction of an Essentially Catholic Spain

In terms of life on earth, they then set out to argue that Catholicism also lays rightful claim on the Peninsula itself. Predicated on the notion that Spain was fundamentally and originally Catholic, the apologists’ continual emphasis on the dangers of corruption is directly tied to Christian fears of a loss of Spain to other faiths that had persisted for centuries. The apologists argue that innately Catholic Spain remains vulnerable to dissenting influence if adequate measures are not taken to ensure her religious homogeneity.

A critical component to the argument for Spain’s innate Catholicism, the apologists appropriate the myth of Saint James (Santiago in Spanish) and his role as bringer of Christianity to Iberia. While scriptural evidence for the saint’s journey to the

Peninsula is lacking, the mythology surrounding this particular disciple’s missionary work suggests that Spain had been Catholic since the earliest Christian era, after the apostle gathered a community of believers in Spain.71 The legend of Santiago’s

71 For further study of the Cult of Santiago, see Louis Cardaillac, Santiago apóstol: el santo de los dos mundos (Jalisco: Fideicomiso Teixidor, 2002), Louis Duchesne, “Saint 50 prominent place in Catholic Spanish culture took root in the ninth century when the saint’s supposed remains were found in the Peninsula. After being martyred in the Holy

Land, Santiago’s relics came to their final resting place in . The subsequent dedication of a chapel to house the remains, later replaced by the famous cathedral, drew pilgrims from all over Europe. As Rowe notes, the discovery of Santiago’s supposed remains in the Peninsula established for the Spanish church unique and enduring connection to the apostle.72

More important to the apologists’ endorsement of the myth is that Santiago later became patron saint and intercessor during the . His image as a crusading saint is associated primarily with the Medieval as the Crown worked to restore Christianity through the reign of Isabel and Ferdinand. However, critical to

Rowe’s understanding of Santiago’s position as patron saint of Spain, rather than of

Castile alone, is the idea that Santiago’s significance as founder of Christianity in the

Peninsula predated the territorial fragmentation of the Middle Ages.73 His image, therefore, was not only contemporarily salient for its crusader implications, but was also reminiscent of Roman and Visigothic glory days.74 As Rowe remarks, “the term ‘Spain’ immediately invoked this idealized period of unity and Christianity, before the darkness

Jacques en Galice” in Annales du Midi 12 (1900), 145-79, and R.A. Fletcher, Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). 72 Erin Kathleen Rowe, Saint and Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Avila and Plural Identities in Early Modern Europe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011). 73 Rowe, Saint and Nation, 30-1. 74 Rowe, Saint and Nation, 30-1. 51 and chaos of 711.”75 Santiago is for the apologists, therefore, a symbol of Spain’s essential Christianity and the Peninsula’s continued bond with Rome even in the face of

Muslim conquest. In this vein, Aznar Cardona notes that all corners of the earth had experienced the Gospel, suggesting that Spain’s Christianity is not unique. However his reference to Muhammad’s birth some six centuries after Jesus’ death and the lands that succumbed to his influence emphasizes Catholic Spain’s response to invasion and her unyielding efforts to reclaim her people:

[T]odas las provincias, y naciones del mundo recibieron nuestra san ley Evangélica, y que perseveraron en ella por la mayor parte, hasta la raya de los seis cientos años cumplidos: y ello es así, que un hubo parte en el universo, ni gente, ni lengua, ni pueblo, donde no llegase la publicación del Evangelio, por la voz de los Apóstoles, o de sus sucesores Mártires, Confesores, y Doctores…76

To further reject Islam and substantiate Santiago’s exclusive Catholic claim on Spain,

Bleda seeks to discredit sources that attest to Muhammad’s supposed visit to the

Peninsula. He notes that Alfonso X’s Crónica general de España, in addition to several other works, makes a claim for Muhammad’s visit to Iberia, but Bleda chooses to focus on evidence that discounts the claims:

Y Vaseo refiere, que lo mismo halló en el Brevario de Eurora, y que en Córdoba quiso enseñar sus errores: mas quesiendo de ello avisado S. Isidoro, procure, de prenderle, y el, o porque el Diablo su familiar le avisó, o algún mal hombre, se fue huyendo. Ambrosio de Morales dice, que tiene esto por cosa tan manifiestamente falsa, que no tiene necesidad, que ninguno la contradiga.77

75 Rowe, Saint and Nation, 30-1. 76 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:137. 77 Bleda, Crónica, 47. 52

Bleda therefore construes from the outset a Christian Spain in which there is no place for

Muslims and never has been, where Christianity claims the territory and its people.

Santiago becomes a symbol of Spain’s authentic faith and serves as protector of its connection to the mother church in Rome.

As noted earlier, there is lack of evidence in the scriptures supporting the idea that

Santiago had personally Christianized Spain. However, the subsequent mythology—the tradition from which the apologists draw—was substantially augmented by the saint’s appearances in literary sources dating from the sixth century.78 For the apologists, such historical sources not only serve to bolster Santiago’s importance as Christian founder and protector of Spain, but also to discredit competing foundational myths, as in the above example of Muhammad. This idea of using a literary tradition to establish dominance and rightful possession based on which group arrived to the Peninsula first is interesting with respect to famous archeological findings of the late sixteenth century. A mere decade before the Moriscos were expelled, religious relics and lead tablets of dubious authenticity were found in and around the city of Granada. Written in , the parchment from Granada’s Torre Turpiana,79 discovered in 1588, and the lead books

(plomos) recovered on the nearby Monte Valparaíso between 1595 and 1599, told the story of Spain’s martyred first bishop, San Cecilio, and his fellow martyr and brother

Tesifón. According to the texts, these men were who traveled with Santiago to

78 See Fletcher, St. James’s Catapult, 54-7. 79 David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 189. The Torre Turpiana was the former minaret of Granada’s Great Mosque. After its consecration as a Catholic Cathedral in 1501, the tower served as the church’s bell tower. The parchment and relics were found in the rubble produced by the tower’s demolition in 1588. 53

Iberia after having been converted to Christianity by Jesus himself. Santiago purportedly said Spain’s first Catholic Mass on the holy mountain outside of Granada from which the tablets were excavated (referred to in the texts as the Sacromonte), and the men in his company became the Peninsula’s first Christian martyrs in that same location.80 These texts were the source of much theological controversy over the next century, and even though several prominent theologians were skeptical of their authenticity from the outset, the plomos were not officially declared to be forgeries until 1682. The narrative of the plomos posits an interesting alternative version of the Santiago legend, positioning people of Arab descent as first and rightful Christian inhabitants of the Peninsula. The plomos therefore allegedly include the Moriscos’ ancestors in the foundational myth of the

Spanish Catholic nation in a way in which the apologists would find in conflict with their notions of blood purity and their experience of the practice of Islam in the Peninsula. The narrative of the plomos is one of “an uncommonly heroic Christian antiquity that all but erased the embarrassing historical stain on eight centuries of Muslim domination,”81 as

Coleman puts it, striving to appeal to tentative Muslim converts to Christianity through a sort of hybrid doctrine that eliminates those facets of the Catholic faith most offensive to

Muslims. (For example, Coleman observes that the plomos refer to Jesus as the “Spirit” of God rather than the “Son” of God because to Muslims, the Christian conflicted with the concept of monotheism.82)

80 Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 192. 81 Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 193. 82 Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 193. 54

Acceptance of the lead books’ treatment of Santiago as bringer of Christianity who worked in close proximity with the Arab descendants of Granada’s Moriscos, however, would certainly not have complemented the apologists’ construction of their crusading patron. In contrast, critical to the apologists’ conception of the myth of this essentially Catholic nation is Santiago’s association with Christian reconquest efforts. In this regard, Santiago Matamoros (the Moor-Slayer), becomes a sort of mascot of the apologist polemic. The saint’s reputation as such began to emerge in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as legends began to circulate widely relaying the power of Santiago the warrior-saint to intercede on the Christian forces’ behalf.83 The foundational intercession, so to speak, on which much of the lore is based, occurred in the ninth century battle of in which King Ramiro I of and Leon prayed for

Santiago’s assistance on the battlefield. 84 The saint appeared to Ramiro in a dream

83 Rowe, Saint and Nation, 26. “Thus the ascendancy of Santiago as a military saint occurred only after the First Crusade and the spread of crusading rhetoric throughout western Europe. Iberia was particularly ripe for the adoption of crusading ideology, as its Christian leaders began renewing their assaults on their Islamic neighbors with increased vigor and success during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” 84 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 303. “Santiago, y mueran los perros!” Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 25. “Don Ramiro primero, hijo del Rey don Bermudo, hallándose desocupado de ciertas guerras civiles, armado de celo grande, y deseo de dilatar la Fe Católica, juntó sus gentes, y corrió la tierra de los infieles, haciendo por ella notables estragos. Rebolvieron contra el los Moros, con un poderosísimo ejército, y tan formidable, que con razón temió el Rey (midiendo sus fuerzas con las del contrario) y se retiró como pudo hacía Clavijo. Conocida por los Moros su flaqueza, le apretaron de manera, que se dio por destrozado, muerto, o preso. Estando en estas congojas, le apareció aquella noche el Apóstol Santiago, y le amonestó, diese sin temor la batalla, porque favorecido del cielo, sería suya la victoria. Al punto del amanecer ordenó el Rey sus banderas, presentó la batalla, y embistió al enemigo gallardamente, y en lo hervoroso de ella le apareció el Apóstol santo, peleando a caballo, con que cobrando animo los fieles, rompieron a los enemigos, y les mataron mas de sesenta mil hombres. Este milagro 55 assuring him of the Christian army’s victory. The following day, the skies opened up and

Santiago emerged brandishing a sword that terrified the Muslim army, causing their defeat. From that point forward, invocation of Santiago became the Christian battle cry,85 and the apologists cite numerous examples in which soldiers continue to summon the apostle during the Morisco rebellions seven centuries after Clavijo.86 In a similar manner, the apologists continually refer to various soldiers “de hábito de Santiago,” highlighting the saint’s enduring legacy through Spanish military orders. Guadalajara y Javier claims dio principio a los Españoles, para que en sus empresas, acometimientos, y asaltos, invocasen el glorioso nombre de Santiago.” Also Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 19, relates a contemporary sighting of a similar intercession, reminiscent of Santiago’s assistance in centuries past: “Porque vistos estos prodigios, pareció, que desmayaba la gente Cristiana, sin entender sus misterios, y se animaba más la Morisma, interpretándolo todo en su favor y modo: con resplandor de luz extraordinaria, y señal conocida, el año 1606: a media noche, por un día del mes de Mayo, refieren muchos de los que lo vieron, hallándose en el campo, y en partes donde lo pudieron ver y apercibir: que se abrió el cielo, y arrojó por los aires una Espada de fuego resplandeciente, de color de sangre; la cual tendiendo la punta hacia las partes de África, estuvo así hasta el alba, que desapareció, a vista de los que la miraban, sin que la pudiesen mas ver. Prodigiosa y admirable señal fue esta, y digna de hacerse mención de ella, por sus muchos y ciertos significados: pues cuando los Príncipes estaban en la mitad del sueño, olvidados de lo que tanto importaba remediar (como lo avisaban las cosas y personas arriba dichas) y tan despiertos y cuidadosos los Moriscos, y con tanto secreto, armado su pertinaz conjuración: entonces desenvaina Dios la espada de sus divina justicia (creo por intercesión del Protector de España Santiago) y la muestra a los que velan en el medio de la noche; como a aquellos que mas y mejor fauorecen sus derechos. Dando a entender a todos que con ambos filos auia de castigar y triūphar de los Mahometanos, como otras veces.” 85 Rowe, Saint and Nation, 22. 86 For example, Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 309, portrays the battle cries of the the opposing sides almost like weapons, causing chaos and destruction as they mix with the sounds of war: “Se trabó en efecto la batalla con grande animo de una, y otra parte, tocando al arma los dos campos, invocando el Cristiano Santiago, y el Agareno Mahoma, moviendo un ruido, y alboroto tan grande, que mezclado el estruendo de los mosquetes, y arcabuces con el ruido de las cajas, y pisaros, y respondiendo los ecos en las concavidades del valle, parecía hundirse toda aquella montaña.” 56 that a mysterious voice echoing in Santiago’s church “Arma, Arma, España, España,” inspired Philip III to undertake a campaign via “los ejecutores y principales los Caballeros de su benditísimo hábito.”87 Among them was the king’s favorite, the

Duke of Lerma, whose chief accomplishment in the eyes of the apologists was securing the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. To Bleda, these orders were faithful companions to the monarchs “en las santas guerras contra los Moros, en las conquistas, y restauración de España.”88

This evidence for Spain’s authentic Christian lineage, however, begins much earlier than Santiago’s evangelical mission to the Iberian Peninsula and even predates the birth of Christianity itself. Presented in the apologists’ treatises as the contemporary continuation of ancient battles waged for the triumph of good over evil, Spain’s

Reconquista is merely the latest battle in a war between the descendants of Isaac and of the descendants of Ishmael. Fonseca, for example, views Felipe III’s great expulsion decision as the most recent in a list of Old Testament triumphs of the chosen people over the infidel, noting,

que fue particular favor del cielo el querer reservar esta empresa heroica, para nuestro gran Monarca Felipe tercero, en premio de las virtudes singulares, que con real, y Cristiano pecho ejercita: como también reservó la libertad de su pueblo para Moisés: la entrada de la tierra de promisión, para Josué: la venganza de la injuria Antigua de los Amalequitas para Saúl: la Victoria de los Filisteos, y la expulsión de los Jebuseos de la tierra santa, para David: y finalmente la Gloria de su temple para su hijo Salomón.89

87 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 21. 88 Bleda, Crónica, 978. 89 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, prologue, n.p. 57

Bleda makes a very similar statement, claiming that God has reserved so great an act for

Felipe III in the same way “que reservó a Mosén la libertad de su pueblo, Josué la entrada de la tierra de promisión, a Saúl la venganza de la Antigua injuria de los Amalecitas idolatras, a David la victoria de los Filisteos.”90 Critically, however, he adds to the list by stating, “al don Pelayo el principio de la restauración de España, al Rey don

Jaime la conquista de estos Reinos, al rey don Fernando el santo la de los de Córdoba, y

Sevilla, a los Reyes Católicos la de el de Granada, que fue el último refugio de los

Moros.”91 In this manner, Bleda seamlessly interweaves Old Testament conquests and a series of battles for Catholic supremacy in the Iberian Peninsula, suggesting the

Christians’ continued lineage from Biblical times and validating the expulsion of the

Moriscos as God’s triumph prefigured in Scripture. The apologists view Abraham’s dismissal of his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael as a telling act of God with future implications for the chosen people. They interpret the subsequent separation of Isaac and

Ishmael as moral validation of Felipe III’s expulsion decree, noting, “[d]e todo este discurso se saca, que la expulsión de los moros de España figurada en la de Agar, y

Ismael, fue muy justa: porque ellos no quisieron obedecer ni oír a la Iglesia, antes trazaban de enseñorearse de estos reinos, y establecer en ellos la secta idolatra de

Mahoma, por lo cual eran dignos de mayores penas.”92

90 Bleda, Crónica, 956. 91 Bleda, Crónica, 956. 92 Bleda, Crónica, 909. 58

This separation of races, so to speak, insinuates a genetic partitioning of the sects that creates an inherited right to God’s kingdom on one side of the family tree and an indelible stain of unworthiness on the other. Much as the apologists characterize Islam as unavoidably inherited in the womb and a symbol of impure blood according to the limpieza de sangre doctrine, so too do they characterize Catholic Christianity, implying that the burden to rid the realm of infidelity is also passed on genetically from one

Spanish king to the next:

De la misma suerte los principales, que se honran de auer sido regenerados por Jesuchristo, que les dio sobre natural ser, y que se sustentaron de su sangre, convertida en [ ] leche, de sobrenatural doctrina, la cual chuparon en los pechos de la Iglesia Católica, su verdadera y única madre spiritual, obligación tienen, de volver por Jesuchristo, y procurar el descanso, seguridad, y tranquilidad de su esposa la Iglesia Romana, maestro de todas las Iglesias, tomando la vara de la Justicia, y las armas contra los que andan tras inquietarla y perturbarla como los Mahometanos Moriscos. En fin es Rey con título preclarísimo de Católico, de que nuestros Reyes meritisimamente gozaron y gozan, por una cierta eminencia: de fuerte, que con decir el Rey Católico, se entiende el Rey de España…y significandonos ese nombre universalidad, con cierta significación de unidad, cual es nuestra santa Fe, y la Iglesia romana.93

The rulers he refers to are not only born deserving of the title of “Catholic,” but they further prove their worthiness through actions designed to uphold the tenets of the faith.

These rulers, as Aznar Cardona highlights, promote a universality and unity amongst their Catholic subjects that does not admit division and difference. Guided by God in their kingships, rulers like Felipe III inherit their Catholic legitimacy, “engrandecido por el mismo sumo Pontífice con que insigne blasón, igual con los que heredó de sus

93 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:84. 59 antepasados, que quedara eternizado para siempre, llamándolo Firmamento de la

Republica Cristiana.”94

Embodying the same divinely-inspired faith and zeal as their prophetic predecessors, Aznar Cardona sees these rulers as contemporary manifestations of great

Biblical prophets and kings who labored tirelessly to eliminate heresy. Among them he cites the eminent prophet Elijah, King David, and King Josiah, establishing Felipe’s inherited link to these figures and equating his decision to expel the Moriscos with the magnitude of their Biblical deeds. 95 Felipe, therefore, like these kings and prophets, is an instrument of God’s will on earth. Aznar Cardona notes, “[y] así este supremo señor

Jesuchristo, tiene su vara y cuchillo de justicia secular, que son los Reyes y Príncipes seglares pero a mas de ese, quiso tener otro mas penetrante chuchillo spiritual de penitencia, que es mas noble sin comparación.”96

94 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 72. 95 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:10. “Se dirá con toda verdad, de cualquier verdadero fiel Cristiano, que con fe viva, y caridad perfecta, desearse de todo corazón y procurare, con toda el caudal de sus obras, el servicio y honra de Dios, sobre todas las cosas, que es un Elías, un David, otro cualquier esclarecido Santo, cuyo espíritu, y justo obrar, resplandeciere muy al vivo, en el tal verdadero Cristiano.” Also, Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2: 66. “O Católico Felipe águila de Reyes, Atlante deste cielo Eclesiástico, a quien tan santo objeto tan gloriosos fin ha movido. O Rey magnánimo de profundos pensamientos, y de claros y altos hechos, de quien nadie podrá decir, la grandeza de su pecho, la constancia de su ánimo, y las empresas de su valor sin segundo, mayor que sus heroicas obras, semejantes a las del santo Rey Josías, de dulce memoria a quien dio el cielo rectitud enderezadora para enmienda de la gente y perdición de las idolatrías.” 96 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:156. 60

Catholic Christianity Under Siege

The apologists’ constant references to Biblical and historical examples of the God of Israel triumphing over heresy demonstrate that no kingdom can avoid altogether a threat on its spiritual identity. What is important in the aforementioned scenarios is the response of the ruler to such a threat—a chosen ruler meets the challenge by eliminating infidelity and defending God’s word and people. A critical example of Spain’s vulnerability in the face of what the apologists view as Islamic seduction is the devastation of Catholic Visigothic reign in the eighth century. To them, a breakdown of

Christian morality on the part of the purportedly Catholic rulers caused a breach in their line of defense so severe that its repercussions were still not fully managed some nine centuries later. Bleda pays particular attention to the role of licentiousness of this sort in the Iberian Peninsula’s past, citing weaknesses of the flesh on the part of the Visigoth rulers as the root cause of Spain’s Moorish conquest. Referring to the sins of the Visigoth kings Vuitiza and Rodrigo, and the poor example they set for their people,97 Bleda calls the former “indigno de la Corona de España, y de la Francia Gótica”98 for his public display of the vices of the flesh. Bleda comments that the Muslim invasion caught the

Visigoth rulers by surprise because they were until that point entirely accustomed to reigning victorious and consumed by immoral deeds.99 For the apologist, moral

97 Bleda, Crónica, 117. 98 Bleda, Crónica, 118. 99 Bleda, Crónica, 126. “Del mal ejemplo de vida, y costumbres deste Rey, y de Vuitiza nacieron tantos vicios, maldades, y traiciones entre sus súbditos, que no se trataba verdad, ni podían vivir sino con grade trabajo, sobrevinieron tantas maldades (como dice don Rodrigo) que por el discurso del tiempo cubrieron la tierra, y la Fortaleza, y potencia de 61 weakness in the rulers of the late seventh and early eighth centuries is a symbolic prefiguration of the present situation of alluring Muslim pleasure-seeking on Spanish territory nine hundred years later. A once powerful, united, Christian kingdom led astray by the bad example of a monarch consumed by what the apologists view as Muslim-like licentiousness. In his opinion, the Visigoths’ commitment to “desviar el pueblo de la

Antigua disciplina Cristiana”100 should serve as a warning to the present king that he and his subjects are equally vulnerable to such weakness. The once noble quality of the

Visigoths is now vile and debased, opening the floodgates to continued devastation not only in Spain but across the globe:

La nobleza de los Godos, la devoción de los Sacerdotes, la honestidad, y limpieza de las mujeres, todo se volvió en una horrible fealdad. Llegó a tanto en esto su abominable desorden, que contra lo establecido por derecho natural, divino, y humano, no contento de una mujer, tomó muchas, siguiendo en ello la descomulgada secta de Mahoma, que en estos días andaba poderosa sobre todas las naciones del mundo, como se ha visto.101

These moral vices, if left unabated, will destroy Christianity in Iberia completely, just as it weakened the Visigoths to invasion at the time of the Arab conquest. Here the apologist seems to highlight noble qualities of the ruler that he might associate with the much-praised Philip III, warning the current king that even the devout Visigoths whose era represented for many sixteenth-century Spaniards a Catholic legacy and cultural ideal, succumbed to moral weakness. In that vein, Bleda observes that los Godos, que estaba acostumbrada a triunfar de otros reinos, y gentes, encenegada y a en la profundidad de los vicios estuvo a punto de rendirle a todas las abominaciones.” 100 Bleda, Crónica, 117. 101 Bleda, Crónica, 118. 62

[e]stos vicios enflaquecieron los ánimos, y los cuerpos de los Godos, y aquella fuerza, y valor, que solía ser espantable a los enemigos en la Guerra, ahora rendida, y sujeta al vicio se debilitaba, y consumía con la blandura de este feo deleite, sin advertirse de su daño, y destruición. Estas fueron las verdaderas causas de la perdición de España…102

To the apologists, Spain had been oblivious and complacent during periods of relative peace and prosperity prior to the arrival of the Muslims in 711. Guadalajara y

Javier spends much of his Prodición y destierro de los Moriscos de Castilla enumerating the many terrible and ignored signs that announced the destruction of Christian Spain as it was known—earthquakes, famines, serpents, a baby who returned to his mother’s womb, clouds that rained milk and blood. However, these signs, no matter how malevolent they seemed, were merely intended by God to serve as a warning to the beloved Spanish, the people upon whom he had bestowed his faithful apostle Santiago.

He remarks, “y hallaremos que no son tan siniestras las interpretaciones y discursos: sino que notoriamente quiso Dios prevenir con ellos a su querida España, y despertarla del profundo sueño en que dormía, entre sus mortales enemigos; para que se previniesen contra la conjuración.”103

God’s initial warnings were not enough, however, and He then sent Muhammad’s invaders into the Peninsula to punish first the Visigoth kings for their sins, and then continued to punish all of Christian Spain until she repented. As Bleda notes, “la última causa, y mas principal, porque Dios permite tanto tiempo esta secta, es para castigar los pecados de los malos Cristianos: y así durará todo el tiempo, que será Dios servido, que

102 Bleda, Crónica, 118. 103 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 16. 63 sean los perfidos Mahometanos verdugos de los Cristianos.”104 As Bleda observes, Islam would continue to be a constant threat to Spain’s Christian identity until the realm could be restored to its former glory.

Physical battles had favored the Christian side through Ferdinand and Isabel’s

1492 conquest of Granada but ideological warfare proved more difficult as the wholesale efforts aimed at converting the Muslim masses to Christianity appeared to fail miserably.

The apologists, desiring to put an end to this nine-century conflict, argue that conversion efforts would never succeed in bringing the Muslims into the Christian fold. To the apologists, outward signs of conversion on the part of the Moriscos were not to be trusted, and they base their arguments on their own observations of various Morisco communities as well as on the testimony of important historical figures.

Perhaps the earliest example of a celebrated leader who distrusted the Moors and whose opinion Fonseca believes is evidence of inevitable truth was Jaime I of Aragon

(b.1208-d.1276). Fonseca quotes the thirteenth-century leader of Reconquista battles against the Muslims as having said “que esta gente jamás había de ser fiel a Dios, ni a sus

Reyes. Y por esta causa determinó echarlos a todos,”105 suggesting that Philip’s 1609 expulsion decree was indeed justified and long overdue. Apparently King Jaime saw infidelity as permanently entrenched in the Moors’ hearts.106 Bleda echoed this sentiment centuries after forced baptism of the Muslims ensured that the new converts were

104 Bleda, Crónica, 105. 105 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 2-3. 106 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 5. 64

Christian in name, noting “[y] daban algunas apariencias de ello, según les dio licencia aquel su embaidor, por véase el poco amor, y obediencia, que tenían a los preceptos, y costumbres de la Iglesia, y la grande atención con que guardaban su abominable secta.”107 Massive forced conversion, in the eyes of the apologists, had been necessary unite all citizens under one faith.

The conversion process, however, ultimately resulted in confusion, uniting people in Christian name whose true intentions and beliefs were often unclear or consciously obscured. Conversion efforts were not as organized or as efficient as religious zealots like the apologists might have hoped, and nominal conversion of the Peninsula’s Moriscos spanned several decades in which some descendants of the Moors had been baptized, others not, and it was difficult for authorities to determine the overall status of the project. When the Catholic monarchs originally conquered Muslim Granada in 1492, the province’s inhabitants were permitted to abide by their own laws and customs. A few short years later, however, archbishop Jiménez de Cisneros broke the pact and began intimidating Granadan Muslims to convert. He converted the local mosque into a

Catholic church and burned scores of books in Arabic, including the Qur’an.108 Isabel in turn issued a decree in 1502 demanding baptism or exile for Muslims in Castile. Those

Muslims wealthy enough to afford passage overseas left for North Africa while the remainder were forced to submit to conversion.109 In Aragon and Valencia where

107 Bleda, Crónica, 655. 108 James M. Anderson, Daily Life During the Spanish Inquisition (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), 105. 109 Anderson, Daily Life, 106. 65

Muslims made up a valuable percentage of the workforce, Old Christian lords protected their Muslim vassals from unfavorable legislation in exchange for their labor. Many were forcibly converted as a result of a class struggle in Valencia in 1520, effectively freeing them from their vassal obligations while jeopardizing the profits of the estates.110

By 1526, Charles the V had decreed the conversion to Christianity of all remaining inhabitants of Muslim descent. Fonseca observes that as a result of what proved to be incomplete and ineffective conversion in Valencia during Charles V’s reign, the kingdom was in in fact in a state of tumult with some descendants of the Moors claiming to have been baptized, others not, and all of them mixed together in an inseparable jumble. In order for the Christians to maintain the upper hand, it became “absolutamente necesario, o que se bautizasen los que quedaban, o que fuesen apartados totalmente del trato y comunicación de los recién bautizados. Por esta causa comenzó à tratar el Emperador de expeler estos Moros no bautizados de sus estados, o que se bautizasen, y fuesen

Cristianos como los demás.”111

But to the apologists these forced conversions only gave the illusion of Christian control for a short time, and in truth, unconverted Muslims “living as Christians” survived in their midst, deceiving their neighbors, having converted out of fear, intimidation, and obligation alone. Fonseca observes that a false and short-lived sense of peace descended upon Spain after the forced baptisms, but that it was fear of being put to

110 Anderson, Daily Life, 106. 111 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 13. 66 death that led the Moriscos to choose Christ’s path.112 Their actions from that point forward suggest nothing more than an inept effort to live according to Christian dogma while inwardly conserving Muslim practices. This notion leads Aznar Cardona to refer to the daily activities of the Moriscos as examples of “su fingida Cristiandad,” intended to one day hand over Christian Spaniards to Muslims overseas.113

Fonseca explains why the Moriscos are given to dissimulation, noting that Islam itself permits disguising true beliefs in an effort to save a Muslim from persecution.

Calling Morisco observance of Christian ritual “ficción permitida en su ley,”114 Fonseca describes Muslim taqiyya115 practice as an inherently heretical means of promoting

Morisco hopes of being one day reunited with the Muslim brotherhood at large and the reason that Christians should not be tricked into thinking that true spiritual conversion had taken place. Many Christians may have indeed been fooled, but according to the

112 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 12. 113 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:38. 114 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 112-3. 115 Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “taḳiyya,” also tuḳan, tuḳāt, taḳwā and ittiḳā’, “prudence, fear” (see L‛A, s.v. w-ḳ-y, Beirut 1956, xv, 401-4; T‛A, x, 396-8), and also, from the root k-t-m, kitmān “action of covering, dissimulation”, as opposed to idhā‛a “revealing, spreading information”, denotes dispensing with the ordinances of religion in cases of constraint and when there is a possibility of harm. The Ḳur’ān itself avoids the question of suffering in the cause of religion in dogmatics by adopting a Docetist solution (sūra IV, 156) and in everyday life by the hidjra and by allowing in case of need the denial of the faith (XVI, 108), friendship with unbelievers (III, 27) and the eating of forbidden foods (VI, 119; V, 5). This point of view is general in Islam. But, as Muḥammad at the same time asserted the proclamation of his mission to be a duty and held up the heroic example of the ancient saints and the prophets as a model (V, 71; III, 40; etc.), no definite general rule came to be laid down, not even with the separate sects. Minor questions, which are very fully discussed, are whether taḳiyya is simply a permitted alleviation through God’s indulgence (rukhṣa) or a duty, if it is necessary in the interest of the community.” 67 apologists, the truly competent and exemplary spiritual leaders were not. Ribera, for example, cites his long tenure as Archbishop of Valencia and the lack of results his conversion efforts had produced as evidence of the unlikelihood of true conversion of the

Moriscos and the impossibility of ever being truly able to discern who was Christian and who was not. Ribera’s conversion efforts only convinced him that the Moriscos were stubborn and fundamentally flawed in their religious constitution. Fonseca quotes the

Archbishop’s correspondence with the king in which he states, “Cuarenta años estuve al lado desta generación, y siempre dije que iban errados en su corazón.”116 He is later quoted to have said, “De estos ejemplos me vienen cada día a las manos, y el haberme engañado algunas veces, me sirve para no creerles hasta haber tomado prendas de su verdad, las cuales dan pocas veces, antes pidiéndoselas, descubren su ficción, y engaño,”117 highlighting his own susceptibility to trickery in spite of wisdom, power, and experience as Archbishop. This experience he translates into a harsh and direct warning for the king:

Quiero acabar con referir a Vuestra Majestad el consejo del Espíritu santo en las divinas letras. No te fíes jamás de tu enemigo, porque así como el orín va secretamente labrando, y gastando el hierro, así su malicia le va gastando el corazón, y aunque lo veas pobre, y se finja humilde, no por eso te descuides, antes está sobre ti, y no le pongas en buen lugar, porque sin duda te quitara a ti el tuyo, y se sentará en tu silla, y entonces conocerás, que te aconsejaba bien, y te afligirás sin provecho de no auer tomado mi consejo.118

116 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 35. 117 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 137. 118 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 154, 68

Like rust that slowly overtakes iron, consuming it bit by bit, so too will Catholic Spain see itself conquered both spiritually and physically if the king fails to take the necessary drastic measures.

Catholic clergy in Spain were not the only religious leaders frustrated by an insubordinate or skeptical congregation. At the same time that Christian clerics were working and failing to convert Spanish Muslims to Christianity, they also found themselves in the midst of an ideological predicament within the Christian sphere. The anxious apologists were writing at a time when Reformation movements throughout

Europe were challenging the authority of Rome. Such divisions within Christianity were certainly not novel. In fact, Guadalajara y Javier cites Arian trickery as the principal cause of Visigothic internal division that led to Muslim invasion and the Visigoths’ subsequent demise.119 Likewise, he also provides an example of fourth-century heresy in

Priscillian, demonstrating how Spain’s short memory and failure to learn from past experiences only increases vulnerability to invasion, noting, “[t]ambién nuestra España segunda vez, no acordándose del daño recibido de Prisciliano, y haciéndose sorda a los

Concilios de Toledo, y a los demás celebrados por diferentes ciudades, y a las voces y

119 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 21. “Los Godos (según Carlos Sigonio) al principio fueron Católicos, y un Obispo dellos llamado Ulsillas, se hallo en el Concilio Niceno, y después por engaño de algunos Arrianos, se pervirtió e inficionó a los demás. Entrando la herejía, comenzó luego la división y Discordia entre ellos, y vinieron los Hunos, que los guerrearon, vencieron, y echaron de las tierras, que habían conquistado y poseían.” 69 amonestaciones de los Doctores y Prelados Católicos: abrió ancha puerta, para que la sujetarán (como veremos) los Moros Africanos.”120

The Reformation’s increasing momentum in combination with internal and external Muslim threats added to a feeling of unrest and anxiety. They therefore hoped to combat the heresies creeping up throughout the rest of Europe while at the same time eliminating Islamic heresy in their own realm. In a way, these alleged Christian heretics were quite similar to the Moriscos in that they were professed Christians, or as Aznar

Cardona states, “todos profesaban ser seguidores de Cristo, que es lo que dice este nombre de Cristiano.”121 Aznar Cardona continues by arguing “pero los Católicos, son los que verdaderamente le siguen, como miembros suyos y de su Iglesia, incorporados en la unidad y obediencia de ella; y los demás, son los apartados de esta unidad, y secuaces de los errores, que han elegido,” noting that their rupture with Catholic dogma betrays an inevitable distinction between them and the apologists’ idea of the true Catholic faith.122

Altering the ceremonies, doctrine, and cultural practices of the true faith undermines the perimeters the apologists have delineated in their definition of Catholicism.

It is easy for the apologists to see how Muhammad’s ideals, when viewed in light of these characterizations, would be attractive to tentative Catholics—it is also easy for them to envision Catholic Christians succumbing to the modifications proposed to their faith by Reformers when said changes purportedly reflect the same ideologies that the

120 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 22. 121 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:84. 122 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:84. 70 apologists see as inherent to weak-willed Islam. For example, Bleda draws a direct link between Muhammad’s teachings and the ideologies of such Reformers as Luther, Beza, and Calvin, noting that Luther imitated Muhammad “en sus torpezas, y lascivias toda su vida, y lo mismo Beza. Y es muy parecida la doctrina Luterana, y Calvinista a la secta de

Mahoma, en particular en la libertad de consciencia, que conceden, y en la secta de políticos, que guardan: en la soberbia, y ambición son todos unos,”123 concluding, “[h]ay cosa mas parecida que Mahoma, y Lutero?”124 Bleda accuses both men of falsifying the

Bible and perverting the words of the holy Gospels to serve their own particular ends, eliminating sacred feasts and sacraments and permitting holy leaders to marry. He claims that Luther, as a true follower of Muhammad’s lead, protects the interests of the menacing Turks and ensures Islam’s survival, teaching “que no era licito hacer guerra a los Turcos, ni resistirles, aunque viniesen con ejércitos, a infestar a los Cristianos: por que esto sería repugnar a Dios, que por medio de ellos visita nuestros pecados, pues los envió por flagela de los cristianos, y por eso permite, que dure tanto tiempo aquella secta.”125

It is in this light that Fonseca portrays Philip III as a Spanish Hercules, slaying a seven-headed beast whose various heads represent all of these interconnected brands of heresy: Simon Magus, Mani, Arius, Pelagius, Luther, Cavlin, and Muhammad, the final of whom he deems the worst of the lot, who, unlike the others, “generalmente blasfema

123 Bleda, Crónica, 54. 124 Bleda, Crónica, 54. 125 Bleda, Crónica, 106. 71 de toda la Religión Cristiana.”126 And much as the Archbishop Ribera feared he would see in his days the loss of Spanish Catholicism to Morisco machinations, Bleda laments that the problem is much greater in scope, stating that Christianity the world over is “en muy miserable estado.”127 He continues by calling on his true Christian brothers to uphold his cause:

Y así nos corre grande obligación a los fieles, en particular a los Eclesiásticos, derogar continuamente nuestro Señor, que aumente en nosotros su santa fe, quede a los Príncipes Cristianos celo en su defensa, que les comunique el grande hervor, en que ardían los corazones de los antiguos fieles, de amplificar la religión cristiana, de cobrar la tierra santa, de pelear con los Turcos, y de derramar su sangre a honra de nuestro Señor Jesuchristo, y de su santo nombre.128

In Bleda’s eyes, true Christians across Europe are steadily decreasing in number, and

Spain represents only a small part of the problem with its Morisco contamination. It is therefore the obligation of the faithful to uphold the tenets of the faith and close their doors to further heretical influence. Bleda notes that even in the lands where Christians survive, their ideology is so contaminated with the seeds of heresy that it is difficult to know how many true Christians endure. He states,

[p]ues vemos que muy grande parte del mundo guarda la secta de Mahoma, y a los cristianos les queda poca parte, y esa tan llena de herejías, de sismas, y de costumbres depravadas, que a la verdad viene a ser muy poco el numero de los fieles verdaderos: verdaderamente fieles llaman, a los que profesan la fe de Cristo con palabras, y hechos….En Francia, en Alemania, y otros Reinos de Europa a crecido tanto la diminución de la fe que jamás fue tenida en tampoco, ni estimada por tan

126 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, prologue, n.p. 127 Bleda, Crónica, 111. 128 Bleda, Crónica, 111. 72

vil, y contentible, por el poco celo que de ella hay comúnmente en los Príncipes, y Prelados de aquellas tierras…129

Catholic Christendom on the whole, therefore, is seen as contaminated with heresies that range from highly visible to quite difficult to distinguish. This anxiety in regard to the parameters of true Catholicism led the apologists to feel threatened physically as well as spiritually. The impossibility of conversion and the inability to distinguish true converts from those who might seek to undermine Spanish Christian authority altogether reflects the apologists’ chief anxiety. Their preoccupation with physical attack from other

Muslims outside Spain’s borders will be discussed further in Chapter 3.

Having established the Morisco as an exploiter and corruptor of Catholic Spain— an invasive poison, as Aznar Cardona claims—and having revealed the essential characteristics that identify him as such, the apologists seek to justify the expulsion as the only possible way of preserving Spanish Catholic identity. Framing it as the glorious end to the Muslim “other’s” corruption of a pristine Catholic state that traces its Christian roots to Christ’s Disciples and their endeavors to spread His perfectly authored holy doctrine, the apologists argue that in order to preserve this privileged and original state, difference must be identified and eliminated. This idea of reducing diversity to unity, a critical component of Boyarin’s discussion of conversion efforts in medieval and early modern Spain,130 has only two possible trajectories in the eyes of the apologists— bringing Moriscos into the fold through genuine conversion, which the clerics and apologists deemed impossible, or removing them from the Christian sphere completely.

129 Bleda, Crónica, 44. 130 Boyarin, Unconverted Self, 2. 73

With his 1609 decision to expel the Moriscos from Spain, Philip III’s name is added to the apologists’ long list of triumphant monarchs deserving of the title “Catholic,” who, as they demonstrate, uphold the tenets of the faith by ridding their realms of ideological and cultural impurities. Chapter Two:

Cultures in Contact

Arguing Against a Hybrid Space

The European conquest of the Americas is in some area separated from our present day by a mere one-third of the chronological gap that stretched between the Spain of the Expulsion and the Arab conquest. Yet the Americas as we know them are felt as a firm fait accompli of history, an omelet that nobody ever expects to see unscrambled.1

As examined in the previous chapter of this study, Archbishop Juan de Ribera and the expulsion apologists set out to eliminate heresy in the Iberian Peninsula and designate a set of perimeters for the Spanish Catholic nation. Their desire to eliminate heresy was not satisfied, however, by the Moriscos’ forcible conversion to Christianity in the sixteenth century because baptism and catechesis, as they discuss at length, proved ineffective at eliminating all traces of Islamic influence as well as instances of blasphemy. In their drive to condemn what they view as dangerous seeds of sedition and examples of blatant blasphemy, the apologists instead betray a larger desire to desemitize

Spain in an effort to mold it into what they see as the Catholic and European ideal. Too willing to proffer a black-and-white concept of Morisco versus Christian, the apologists reveal their anxiety in regard to any evidence that might reflect a hybrid space and

1 L.P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain:1500 to 1614 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 291-2.

74 75 indistinct boundaries between the two. They fail to take into consideration that the Islam they criticize, as practiced in Iberia over eight centuries, had certainly taken on a life of its own, divorced geographically from its epicenter in the Middle East, isolated on a far- off western peninsula overflowing with Christians and previously including Jews. This

Muslim faith in Iberia intertwined with cultural practices from North Africa and the

Middle East had percolated in Spain’s various geographical regions over the course of centuries. When the apologists criticize food or dress as intrinsically Morisco and therefore necessarily Muslim, they fail to acknowledge that practices developed over time in varied regions with distinct climates and resources might in fact take on the aspect of regional difference, separate from ideological or religious points of view. Consequently, faith and religion become only a partial component of their attacks as they attempt to rid the Peninsula of Morisco cultural presence as a whole. In this chapter I therefore argue that the apologists of the Morisco expulsion want to convince their readers that, despite centuries of comingling, the creation of a persistent blended culture in the Iberian

Peninsula – the scrambling of the omelet, as Harvey would describe it – would be both undesirable and impracticable given the strict theological, moral, and even physical characteristics that separated the Moriscos from their Old Christian neighbors.

In spite of the apologists’ desire to equate cultural practice with religious belief, contemporary scholarship provides ample evidence of cultural exchange among Jews,

Muslims, and Christians in Iberia beginning with the Arab invasion in the eighth century and enduring beyond the expulsions of the first two groups. Articulating for the Iberian 76

Peninsula Homi Bhabha’s concept of a hybrid “third space”2 that exists when cultures interact and their original defining characteristics become obscured, twentieth and twenty-first-century scholars refute the notion of the pure-blooded Christian monolith of the apologists’ imagination.3 For example, in Exotic Nation: Maurophilila and the

Construction of Early Modern Spain, Barbara Fuchs describes a quality of “unwitting

Moorishness” in the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, noting that from the Christian conquest of Muslim Granada in 1492 to the expulsion of the Moriscos, it had become nearly “impossible to separate what had become by that point hybridized and local forms.”4

2 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994). 3 See Lourdes M. Alvarez, “Beastly Colloquies: Of Plagiarism and Pluralism in Two Medieval Disputations Between Animals and Men,” Comparative Literature Studies 39 (2002): 179-200.; Vincent Barletta, Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); María Judith Feliciano and Leyla Rouhi, introduction to Interrogating Iberian Frontiers, ed. Barbara F. Weissberger, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 317-328.; Barbara Fuchs, “Virtual Spaniards,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 2(2001): 13-26.; Kamen, The Disinherited: Exile and the Making of Spanish Culture, 1492-1975 (New York: Harper Collins, 2007); Luce López-Baralt, Huellas del Islam en la literature española: de Juan Ruiz a Juan Goytisolo (Madrid: Hiperión, 1985).; Lucas A. Marchante-Aragón, “The King, the Nation, and the Moor,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8(2008): 98-133.; María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, 2002).; María Teresa Narváez Córdoba, “Writing Without Borders: Textual Hybridity in the Works of the Mancebo de Arévalo,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 12(2006): 487-497.; Dwight F. Reynolds, “Music in Medieval Iberia: Contact, Influence and Hybridization,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 15(2009): 236-255.; María del Mar Rosa-Rodríguez, “Simulation and Dissimulation: Religious Hybridity in a Morisco Fatwa,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 16 (2010): 143-180. 4 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 1-2. 77

The Iberian Peninsula had been ripe for comingling, enjoying many centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence among three faiths. Evidence suggests that a great deal of cultural sharing took place throughout the centuries before the Jews were expelled in

1492 and before the mass campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Moriscos took root with

Philip III’s decree in 1609. Fuchs comments that Charles V’s 1526 legislation intended to curb Morisco cultural practices

may have repressed circumcision or the use of Arabic, but building in what Europeans would consider a Moorish style, sitting Moorish-style in the estrado, and a whole host of other practices continued intact. In some cases, these persisted because they were not even identified as Moorish by Spaniards—they were simply Spanish ways. In other cases, such as the juego de cañas5, they continued even when their Moorish origins were abundantly recognized.6

According to Fuchs, because such daily practices were commonplace, foreigners came to identify them as obligatory elements of Spanish identity.7

Francisco Núñez Muley and the Argument for Cultural Hybridity

Fuchs also addresses the undoing of binary oppositions between Muslim and

Christian in her analysis of certain Morisco writings, including those of Francisco Núñez

5 Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo americana, s.v. “caña”: “Antigua fiesta, juego, o ejercicio caballeresco en que tomaban parte dos bandos o cuadrillas corriendo a caballo, caracoleando gallardamente y arrojándose cañas de las que se resguardaban con la adarga. Este juego, que se consideraba como propio de la nobleza y que se celebraba con ocasión de alguna solemnidad, fue introducido en España por los árabes, con el nombre de correr o jugar cañas.” 6 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 23. 7 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 30. 78

Muley.8 Born around 1490, Núñez Muley was a Morisco descendant of Granadan and

Moroccan nobility who, in his youth, had served as a page to Granadan archbishop

Hernando de Talavera (1428-1507). Immersed in both Morisco culture and the Christian faith of his employer, Núñez Muley had intimate experience with the practice of both faiths. As Morisco cultural practices increasingly came to denote apostasy in the eyes of

Inquisitorial authorities, Núñez Muley used his knowledge and experience to separate them from essential facets of the practice of Islam. When Philip II issued decrees in 1567 prohibiting traditional Morisco dress, music, festivities, and the like, Granadan Moriscos selected Núñez Muley, then in his seventies, to petition the court in response. His ensuing

Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada9 argued that these practices were specific to the Grenadine community and were in no way essential to Islam. Núñez Muley acknowledges, for example, unique styles of dress and musical instrumentation in Granada—which had been repeatedly observed by the apologists in an effort to dichotomize Muslim and

Christian cultural practice. Both the apologists and Núñez Muley cite similar examples of

8 Fuchs, “Virtual Spaniards,” 14. 9 Here I use Vincent Barletta’s recent English translation of the Memorandum, in addition to his introductory material. (See Francisco Núnez Muley, A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada. Ed., trans.Vincent Barletta. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). The Memorandum can also be found in Madrid BN MS 6176. It was first edited by Raymond Foulché-Delbosc in 1899 (see Raymond Foulché-Delbosc, “Memoria de Francisco Núñez Muley,” Revue hispanique: Recueil Consacré á L’étude des Langues, des Littératures, et de L’histoire des Pays Castillans, Catalans et Portugais. (1899): 205- 39.) It was later edited by Kenneth Garrad (see Kenneth Garrad, “The Original Memorial of Don Francisco Núñez Muley. Atlante 2 (1954): 199-226.) 79

Morisco cultural expression, including typical garb and festivities. However, whereas the apologists argue that these cultural conventions are innately linked to religious belief and a clear indication of Morisco apostasy, Núñez Muley separates cultural practice from religious observance. He notes that the style of dress in Granada is specific to that particular kingdom, much as Castilian dress is unique to that region.10 Consequently, he argues that if the Morisco trappings were fundamentally Islamic, Muslims throughout the world would dress the same way, yet clothing styles across the Middle East differed substantially from those of southern Spain. Furthermore, he states in his petition that the language and dress of Castile are hardly essential elements of Christian observance, a position that Fuchs refers to as more radical than his earlier assertion regarding dress,

“for it suggests that those who appear most foreign by virtue of their language, culture, and geographical provenance may in fact be ‘the same’ where it matters most to Christian

Spain; that is, in the profession of Christianity.”11

Likewise, Núñez Muley demonstrates the non-denominational nature of the traditional Granadan zambra, a musical performance that developed during the Naṣrid period, when he describes the archbishop Talavera’s trip to the Alpujarras during the time that Núñez Muley was serving as his page. According to Núñez Muley’s account, a zambra followed the archbishop’s every move when he arrived in the town of Ugíjar. He notes,

10 Fuchs, “Virtual Spaniards,” 15. 11 Fuchs, “Virtual Spaniards,” 16. 80

And it was a zambra that waited for him at his door; and a zambra that accompanied him as he left the house to walk to mass, with all of the instruments playing and the people walking ahead of him, and even entering into the church with him. And when His Holiness said mass in person, there was a zambra in the choir with the clerics. At the moments when the organ would normally be played, because they didn’t have one, they responded with the zambra and its instruments. And some words of Arabic were even spoken in mass.12

The presence of the zambra within the confines of Catholic rite and ceremony suggests a celebratory cultural practice devoid of religious significance—so much so that it can be appropriated to religious rituals at will. In addition, when Núñez Muley cites the use of the Arabic language during the Catholic Mass, he further supports an argument he makes throughout the Memorandum that use of the Arabic language is not indicative of Muslim faith. He refers to communities of Arabic-speaking Christians that exist in Jerusalem and other parts of the Middle East, noting that the authenticity of their faith is not called into question for their use of Arabic. Emphasizing the proximity to Spain of what he refers to as the “not-so-distant island of ” in the Mediterranean, Núnez Muley states that he

“believe[s] that they say mass in Arabic, as is also the case in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, and neither of these groups knows how to read or write in Castilian. If using Arabic were truly something that went against the Holy Catholic faith, then these priests and philosophers in Malta and Jerusalem would not use it, as they are

Christians.”13

12 Núnez Muley, Memorandum, 80. 13 Núnez Muley, Memorandum, 92. 81

Use of communal baths in Granada was also prohibited by the 1567 decrees because it was believed that the Moriscos used these baths to perform Muslim ritual ablutions. Núñez Muley argues that the communal baths were too filthy and too public for a Muslim ritual that relies on purity and privacy for its observance. He instead cites examples of various groups of people whose professions require frequent washing, such as blacksmiths, fishermen, coal and oil suppliers, butchers and skinners. He notes that

“[a]ll of thse people come to the baths, particularly when they have need to clean themselves of the aforementioned forms of filth and relieve themselves,”14 juxtaposing the religious interpretation of bathing rituals with the sheer practicality of washing.

Barletta states that while Núñez Muley may very well have exaggerated his description of the filthy baths in order to prove his point, there is no doubt that public baths in Granada were essential elements of social life and served the functional practice of keeping the community cleaner and healthier.15 Barletta also characterizes Núñez Muley’s framing of the Morisco debate as a colonial problem, evident in the Morisco’s continued reference to his fellow community members as “naturales de este reino,” or “natives of this kingdom.”16 To the author of the Memorandum, Granadan Morisco culture is under threat of extinction, particularly at the time of the 1567 decrees, by a usurping imperial power determined to strip it down and force it to assimilate with the mainstream.

14 Núnez Muley, Memorandum, 83. 15 Vincent Barletta, introduction to A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada. Ed., trans.Vincent Barletta. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 43. 16 Barletta, introduction to Memorandum, 28. 82

In addition to music and dress, architecture and agriculture in the Iberian

Peninsula were permanently altered as a result of cultural comingling. All three religious groups figured into the preservation of a rich Islamic cultural heritage: Christian rulers commissioned buildings from Arab architects, Arabic-infused music played a part in

Christian church ceremonies, and prominent Jewish philosophers wrote in the Arabic language. In terms of agriculture and the production of foodstuffs, the culinary practices in the southern part of the Peninsula prove to be a complex interplay of elements from across the globe. Incorporating elements indigenous to Iberia into their unique cuisine, the Moorish inhabitants of al-Andalus also relied heavily on agricultural products brought from the Middle East.17 As returned from the New World throughout the sixteenth century with products unfamiliar to Europeans and Middle Easterners alike

(including tomatoes, potatoes, and chili peppers), the cuisine of southern Spain continued to evolve.18 The Moriscos, therefore, took with them into exile unique recipes that were perhaps neither “Spanish” nor “Moorish” but a hybrid concoction particular to the

Peninsula. 19

17 For discussion of culinary practices and agriculture in al-Andalus, see David Waines, “The Culinary Culture of al-Andalus” in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. (New York: Brill, 1994), 725-738; Expiración García Sánchez, “Agriculture in Muslim Spain,” in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. (New York: Brill, 1994), 987-999. 18 Kamen, Disinherited, 62-63, citing Susan T. Rivers, “Exiles from ” in Saudi Aramco World 42 (1991): 10-17. 19 Kamen, Disinherited, 62-63. 83

In her introduction to Exotic Nation, Fuchs comments that travelers to the Iberian

Peninsula from other parts of Western Europe remarked on the odd setting in which

Spaniards dined, describing “Arab-derived domestic practices, such as sitting on cushions among braziers, so commonplace that they are not even recognized as such by Spaniards themselves.”20 Kamen would support such an observation, noting an instance in which the duke and duchess of Alba paid a visit to the queen of England, Mary Tudor, in 1555.

A clear indicator that the aristocracy had incorporated Moorish-style seating customs into their daily habits, “the duchess automatically seated herself on the ground, and the horrified queen made haste to raise her up and direct her to a chair, as befitted her rank.”21

The scrambling of the cultural omelet, as it were, seems undeniable. However, by the sixteenth century, Christian Spaniards had come to view the seamless incorporation of cultural elements they considered foreign into the fabric of Spanish daily life as a threat to their Christian national identity. As Boyarin points out, Medieval Christendom had long struggled with the uncomfortable presence of the “Other” within its realm. In the same way that Muslim difference continued to challenge Catholic hegemony in Spain in the late sixteenth century, prior centuries had witnessed “[t]he stubborn survival of

Jewish otherness [that] spoke constantly to the limits of the Catholic Church’s effort to include all of humanity within the spiritual and juridical body of Christ.”22 Boyarin refers

20 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 12. 21 Kamen, Disinherited, 70. 22 Boyarin, Unconverted Self, 2. 84 to conversion efforts throughout the Middle Ages as an effort to reduce difference to unity.23 Where such conversion efforts were seen to have failed, more drastic measures, such as Spain’s 1492 expulsion of the Jews, were employed. Such actions served to further delineate firm boundaries around Christianity rather than to promote its mantra of inclusivity.

Cultures in Contact and Anxiety in the Wake of Forced Conversion

While Spanish Muslims had been forcibly converted to Christianity beginning not long after the expulsion of the Jews, uncertainty about the authenticity of their conversions soon produced an anxiety amongst Christian authorities that led to contemplation of wholesale expulsion. An administrative failure to eliminate Morisco cultural practices led many Christian Spaniards to believe that all Moriscos were underground Muslims whose possible ties to the Muslim world at large put Christian

Spain in grave danger of takeover. This process of equating cultural practice with religious observance and the consequent anxiety is clearly visible in the apologists’ writings. Aiming to justify expulsion decrees that had already been put into effect, their treatises are characterized by a desire to point out cultural conventions—whether they had seeped into the cultural milieu or not—identify them as “Other”, reject them, and thereby define the true parameters of Christianity. They had taken up the cause of missionizing their homeland, working hard to reestablish Catholic supremacy by means

23 Boyarin, Unconverted Self, 2. 85 of complete religious cleansing. This is a process that Mann would refer to as a “unique bridge to modernity” and one that necessitated wholesale identification and rejection of cultural and religious elements that threatened Christianity’s homogeneity. 24 In this regard, Marchante-Aragón observes that

the construction of Spanish nationhood left no room for the negotiation of identity proposed by those who defended the inclusion of the Morisco in the fabric of the nation. Their presence in Spain, even as late as 1609, undermined the narrative of the Reconquista’s completion, and compromised royal claims for the success of a Christian alliance that was the foundation stone of Castilian identity. From early in the sixteenth century, it was necessary to make the Morisco difference evident. (Marchante-Aragón 105, my empasis)

Blended as the cultures were, the sixteenth century is an era in which the dominant

Catholic Christian group engaged in a process of active cleansing of cultural elements identified with Moriscos and Moorishness as a means of streamlining and purifying a contaminated Christian consciousness. In consciously making the Morisco difference evident, Catholic Spaniards like the apologists attempt to unscramble the cultural omelet, betraying an anxiety regarding what Marchante-Aragón calls their “mongrel ancestry.”25

He states that the cultural conventions highlighted above served as “an uncomfortable reminder that the Castilian ‘race’ had a Semitic component; that Castile’s own hybridity was undeniable.”26

24 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 48. 25 Marchante-Aragón, “The King, the Nation, and the Moor,” 103. 26 Marchante-Aragón, “The King, the Nation, and the Moor,” 105. 86

Alain Milhou’s 1993 article on what he refers to as the “desemitization” of

Spain27 points to a conscious effort on the part of Catholic rulers in the Peninsula to reject eastern influence in order to become accepted in the larger Christian European community. Milhou points out that even monarchs such as Alfonso VI and Alfonso X, whose policies favored freedom for Jews and Muslims and even celebrated their unique contributions to the Spanish cultural sphere, made decisive moves toward integration with the larger European community.28 Milhou notes that the whole of Christian Europe congratulated Isabel and Ferdinand after their 1492 expulsion of the Jews, symbolizing the greater continent’s role in glorifying the desemitization process. Following Milhou’s observations that Spain came to be viewed by the rest of Christian Europe as marked by its “maldita mancha semítica,”29 Fuchs later highlights the process of active rejection of eastern cultural elements as Spain came to define itself as a nation during the early modern period.30

27 Milhou,“Desemitización.” 28Milhou, “Desemitización,” 37. “Ese mismo rey Alfonso [VI] que garantizó la libertad de culto a judíos y musulmanes, que ratificó la permanencia de la liturgia específica de los cristianos mozárabes de Toledo, fue el que abrió su reino a la influencia francesa, a la liturgia romana y a la escritura carolina. Ese monarca que prolongó, bajo la autoridad cristiana, que ya existía en Al Andalus, fue el instrumento de la aculturación europea.”; “En el siglo XIII, Alfonso X, tan celebrado como rey de las tres religiones, que tanto aprovechó el acervo cultural de judíos y moros para mayor bien de España y toda Europa, fue quien reflejó en las Partidas las medidas segregacionistas con respecto a los no cristianos que recomendaba el Concilio de Letrán de 1215.” 29 Milhou, “Desemitización,” 42. 30 See Barbara Fuchs, Exotic Nation; Barbara Fuchs, “The Spanish Race” in Rereading the Black Legend: the Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. Greer and Mignolo. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 88-98. 87

The Catholic apologists’ texts are prime examples of this process of cultural rejection as they aim to define Catholicism by identifying the Moorish aspects of life that it is not, concentrating heavily on many of the quotidian elements mentioned above. First, the apologists point out cultural conventions of Moorish ancestry, clearly aiming to draw a line of separation between the dominant Christian and the antithetical Morisco. In matters of dining, for example, the apologists desire to remove Morisco conventions from popular practice and keep them from further contaminating Christian cultural hegemony.

Aznar Cardona, for example, criticizes what he considers the uncivilized practice of dining while seated on the ground, which, in combination with the other practices he enumerates in his diatribe, serves to paint a picture of the uncouth Moriscos whose inherently slovenly ways threaten the society’s stability on the whole. He argues that the

Moriscos “[e]ran brutos en sus comidas comiendo siempre en tierra (como quienes eran) sin mesa, sin otro aparejo que oliese a personas, durmiendo de la misma manera.”31

Cardaillac, in his 1979 study, takes note of observations like these, stating, “Los menores hechos y gestos que no concuerdan con usos y costumbres de la comunidad cristiana serán interpretados como índice de islamismo, y motivarán investigaciones más amplias,”32 citing more specifically the example of a certain Jerónima la Franca and her family members who “se pusieron en cuclillas” before preparing a meal.33 A lack of

31 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33. 32 Louis Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos: un enfrentamiento político, 1492-1640 (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979), 27. 33 Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 27. 88 separation between the style of dining and the manner of sleeping suggests to the apologists a rude comparison to a barnyard animal. Dadson refers to characterizations such as these as dehumanizing practices utilized by the Spanish government as a means of separating the Moriscos from the Christian population, making them “different, distinct, less than the rest, a people not worth defending.”34

In his treatise justifying the expulsion, Aznar Cardona begins a lengthy diatribe on the “condición y trato de los Moriscos” by commenting on the vile quality of their foodstuffs, implying stark contrast between that and the comparatively salubrious nature of a Christian diet. For example he writes that the Moriscos “[c]omían cosas viles (que hasta en esto han padecido en esta vida por juicio del cielo) como son fresas de diversas harinas de legumbres lentejas, panizo habas, mijo, y pan de los mismo.”35 The apologist views the bland and barbaric diet as Divine punishment for heresy, and while the vile nature of the bread made of millet surely required condiments to conceal its unappetizing flavor, the Moriscos, in his opinion, proved themselves incapable of improving their dishes, seasoning them poorly and choosing to garnish them with small, unripe fruits, gobbling it all up indiscriminately. As he describes it, the Moriscos wildly sought out and devoured foods that Christians considered abhorrent, “[c]on este pan los que podían, juntaban, pasas, higos, miel, arrope, leche, y frutas a su tiempo, como son melones, aunque fuesen verdes y no mayores que el puño, pepinos duraznos, y otras cualesquiera,

34 Trevor Dadson, "Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos," in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain, ed. Richard Pym. (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2006), 15-6. 35 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 89 por mal sazonadas que estuviesen, solo fuese fruta, tras la cual bebían los aires y no dejaban barda de huerto a vida.”36 It should be noted, however, that this description of the vile nature of Morisco culinary tradition is completely contradictory to the emphasis the apologists place on Morisco preoccupation with earthly pleasures, suggesting that the apologists color their descriptions of Morisco practice at will to suit their propagandistic purposes. While Aznar Cardona identifies this diet with the Moriscos, giving it a decidedly negative review, Núñez Muley may have called this cuisine Grenadine— unique to the region but not necessarily unique to the Moriscos themselves, and certainly not a surefire indication of apostasy. To the apologists, however, diet becomes an inherent characteristic of religious cultural groups and serves as an external marker differentiating Christian from Morisco.

The apologists then transition from identifying Morisco cultural elements to drawing a connection between them and Islamic religious practices, suggesting that the two are essentially linked. Striving to imply a stark binary opposition between Christian and Morisco in his description of food preservation, Aznar Cardona begins to describe matters of domestic habit that he then seamlessly equates with Islamic ritual. Any industriousness on the part of the Morisco community Aznar Cardona overshadows with a description of fruits and nuts saved on the verge of rotting, washed down with flavorless water in the religiously-mandated absence of alcohol. He notes, “y como se mantenían todo el año de diversidad de frutas, verdes, y secas, guardadas hasta casi

36 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 90 podridas, y de pan y de agua sola, porque ni bebían vino,”37 gently seguing from a description of “secular” foods generally deemed unacceptable to a Spanish Christian diner to foods expressly prohibited in the Islamic religious tradition.

This tendency to blur distinctions between cultural practice and religious mandate serves to render the practices indistinguishable, establishing proof for the apologists’ claims that a person can be judged a heretic based on his food intake alone. Inquisitorial records of the era support the prevalence of this claim, citing examples in which

Christians handed over to Inquisitorial authorities Morisco heretics, basing their accusations merely on culinary evidence observed when they were invited to dine in

Morisco homes. For example, Cardaillac cites a situation in which a Morisca named

Isabel la Gorda is invited to dine at a neighbor’s house and proceeds to regurgitate the meal when she learns it contained pork.38 He also takes note of records that indicate that women were preparing traditional North African couscous—a foodstuff Aznar Cardona might have included in a list of comidas viles and one that Núñez Muley may have called regional— in a style that evokes Islamic religious ritual for the apologists, inextricably linking food and religious observance. He notes that the cooks “‘…echaron alcuzcuz en una batea, y todas con ésta a la redonda, comían del alcuzcuz con la mano haziendo unas pellizcas como los moros lo hazían por guarda y ceremonia de la secta de Mahoma.’”39

37 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 38 Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 32. 39 Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 27. 91

This description seems to aim to prove the primitive and almost tribal nature of the

Moriscos.

In claiming that cultural practices like eating couscous are inseparably linked to religious observance, the apologists advance the idea that all Moriscos are crypto-

Muslims who threaten the security and stability of Spanish Christian society. In their introduction to Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, Cruz and Perry describe the post-Tridentine era as a period in “which officials exerted greater efforts than before to define culture and set limits on how much cultural diversity would be tolerated,”40 referring to the Catholic Church as “an official organ of cultural production.”41 Therefore, if inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula engaged in any number of Moorish cultural practices that did not conform to the Church’s prescribed notion of

Spanish Catholic identity, they could expect to come under Inquisitorial scrutiny. Aznar

Cardona lists several examples of what Cruz and Perry describe as “deviant forms of private and public expression that threatened cultural homogeneity.”42 For example, he notes that,

Eran muy amigos de burlerías, cuentos, berlandinas y sobre todo amicísimos (y así tenían comúnmente gaitas, sonajas, adufes) de bailes, danzas, solases, cantarcillos, aluadas, paseos de huertas y fuentes, y todos los entretenimientos bestiales en que con descompuesto bullicio y gritería, suelen ir los mozos villanos vocinglando por las calles. Vanagloriábanse

40 Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry, Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), ix-x. 41 Cruz and Perry, Culture and Control, x-xi. 42 Cruz and Perry, Culture and Control, xiii. 92

de bailones, jugadores de pelota y de la estornija, tiradores de bola y del canto, y corredores de toros, y de otros hechos semejantes de gañanes.43

To Aznar Cardona and his fellow apologists, these forms of cultural expression are no different from observation of the religiously-mandated dietary laws discussed above.

Root44 observes that, initially, “[a]t the everyday social level the Mudejars do not seem to have been recognized as deviants, as those who exist ‘outside’ the larger society because of their religion,” but “[i]ncreasingly, infidelity was characterized in social and cultural terms.”45 As the Muslims across the Peninsula were forcibly converted to Christianity, she notes that “infidelity was reinscribed as heresy, as something existing within the

Christian community instead of outside it.”46

In the decades following the forced baptisms, the cultural and religious practices described by the apologists were continually coded as heretical practices within the law to legitimize the Christian positioning of the Moriscos outside the confines of their society.47 In the early sixteenth century, as Morisco cultural practices were outlawed by the Edicts of Faith, ordinary Christians were increasingly expected to police their neighbors and report deviant acts to Inquisitorial authorities, and as Root observes, accused Moriscos “in front of the tribunal had to determine how to ‘speak Christian’ to

43 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:4. 44 Deborah Root, “Speaking Christian: Orthodoxy and Difference in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Representations 23 (1988): 118-34. 45 Root, “Speaking Christian,” 121. 46 Root, “Speaking Christian,” 123. 47 Root, “Speaking Christian,” 123. 93 avoid being convicted as heretics.”48 The boundary between religious observance and cultural practice, as seen in the apologists’ descriptions, is blurred to the extent that custom comes to denote religious deviance almost without question. Kamen observes similarities in the earlier Inquisitorial processes regarding conversos of Jewish origin, stating that “[t]he basic ignorance of Jewish law shown by the inquisitors meant that by default they accused people of offenses that were cultural rather than religious… People were consequently accused for what they were supposed to have done, rather than what they really did.”49

Root describes the process of identifying potentially heretical practices and inscribing them as such as a practically limitless endeavor. The Inquisitorial machine became capable of constantly producing and then reproducing codes in pursuit of the

Morisco heretic, continually adding to the list of infractions considered heretical and proof of apostasy. 50 This process of establishing perimeters around the Catholic faith sought to define true Christians as members of Spanish society who did not engage in any of the aforementioned cultural practices by excluding from the Spanish body politic those who did. In this vein, Morisco counterculture is seen as overt resistance to the dominant cultural apparatus and a conscious effort on the part of the Moriscos to undermine

48 Root, “Speaking Christian,” 128. 49 Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 39. 50 Root, “Speaking Christian,” 128. 94

Catholic identity. This dangerous resistance, in the apologists’ opinions, had to come to an end.

Fonseca highlights this resistance, for example, in his description of Morisco dining habits. While Aznar Cardona’s descriptions of the brutish practices of the

Moriscos imply their inherited inferiority and lack of sophistication, Fonseca’s portrayal of Morisco dining habits is permeated with a greater sense of rebelliousness and intentionality. He states that the Moriscos only chose to dine while seated on the ground when Inquisitorial eyes were turned in the other direction. He observes that the Moriscos

“[s]iempre que se podían esconder de la Justicia, y de los Christianos, comían sentados en tierra.”51 For Fonseca, the Morisco style of dining is a deliberate and defiant act intended to undermine Christian orthodoxy. He continues by describing the act of eating on the ground as an intentional action intended to evoke Islamic religious practice, much like

Cardaillac’s example of Jerónima la Franca. For Fonseca, the Moriscos dined “de la misma manera que los otros Moros, conforme a la ceremonia Arábiga que les mandó guardar Mahoma,”52 suggesting that the conscious choice to eat seated on the ground reflects a form of crypto-Muslim resistance to Christian hegemony. Using this interpretation, the apologists argue that antithetical cultural practices must be eliminated because of their power to undermine Christian identity.

Likewise, the apologists dedicate a great deal of time to describing Morisco dietary practices that specifically conform to Islamic prescription and the manner in

51 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 127. 52 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 127. 95 which the New Christians attempt to give alternate explanations for their behavior that would be less vulnerable to Inquisitorial ridicule. Aznar Cardona, for example, when told by Moriscos in the community that they avoided pork and alcohol because “no todas las condiciones gustaban de un mismo comer, ni todos los estómagos llevaban bien una misma comida,”53 seems willing to accept this explanation as plausible were it true.

However, he questions why the Moriscos make such a fuss over their children accidentally consuming prohibited foods in the presence of Christian children if digestive incompatibility is the chief objection. He asks, “lo que el niño comió, da os pena a vos en el estómago? No.”54 When a Morisco townsperson asks Aznar Cardona if the Moriscos can be saved from expulsion by consuming pork and wine, the priest responds, “el no beber vino ni comer tocino, no os echa de España, sino el no comerlo por observancia de vuestra maldita secta. Esto es eregía y os condena y sois un gran perro, que si lo hicieras por amor de la virtud de la abstinencia, fuera loable: como se alaba en algunos Santos, pero lo hacéis por vuestro Mahoma.”55 Cardaillac cites a similar example from the

Archivo Histórico Nacional in which

Lope Almerique es invitado a compartir la comida de sus vecinos, cristianos viejos, se excusa de no tomar tocino alegando una simple tradición familiar: ‘Mis padres nunca comieron toçino, así haçemos nosotros.’ Pero los vecinos comprenden bien la causa de este rechazo y e fiscal, pidiendo su condena, lo explicará así: ‘lo qual el dicho Lope

53 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 54 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 55 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 96

Almerique dexa de comer por guarda y obervancia de la secta de los moros.’56

Fonseca characterizes the Morisco relationship to pork as “odio y ogeriza al tocino,”57 claiming that Morisco parents cultivate in their children an intense hatred for pork that suggests an almost wholesale rejection of all things Christian and Spanish on the part of the new converts. Bleda, in turn, alludes to the Spanish tradition of raising pigs for food and contrasts this practice with what he views as a superstitious approach to the animal by the Moriscos, stating that

[l]os Cristianos tenían costumbre de criar un puerco, y comérselo entre año: ellos nunca lo criaron, ni comieron: ni en nuevecientos años que duraron en estos Reinos, entró puerco vivo ni muerto en sus casas. Antes tenían tanto horror de este animal, que si yendo por las calles, acertaba a tocarles en la capa, no se la ponían más: luego la vendían a Cristianos.58

Bleda uses this example as a symbol for the greater and irreconcilable differences between Christian and Morisco, commenting that in addition to their contempt for pigs,

“[e]n el gesto, en las costumbres, en el hablar, en todo se diferenciaban de nosotros.

Afrentábanse llamarse Cristianos. Tanto que la mayor injuria que uno podía decir a otro entre ellos, era llamarle Cristianaz.”59 Bleda suggests here that this differentiation is a deliberate choice on the part of the Moriscos who otherwise could have adhered to the

Christian sect, were they to adopt the very Christian custom of raising pigs.

56 Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 91. 57 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 98. 58 Bleda, Crónica, 903. 59 Bleda, Crónica, 903. 97

Aznar Cardona is not alone in his critique of the ways in which the Moriscos attempt to conceal their religiously-mandated dietary practices with everyday explanations. Fonseca also highlights the treatment of children who have accidentally consumed prohibited food as evidence of deeper religious significance attributed to these dietary observances than the Moriscos outwardly claim. For example, he notes, “pues si alguna vez por burlarse los Cristianos les hacían comer esta carne, si venían a averiguar los padres, los azotaban hasta la sangre, guardando por ley irrefragable el no poder sustentar, ni aun mercadear, o comprar estos animales.”60 If eating pork merely caused a stomachache in the consumer, Fonseca wonders why such an offense should warrant physical punishment. He further criticizes Morisco obfuscation by asking if any stomach is truly so sensitive that it can tell whether or not an animal had been killed according to

Halal practice. He states, “[y] aunque concediéramos à la flaqueza de su estomago, que no podían digerir el tocino, y les era asqueroso, yo no sé que haya en el mundo estomago tan delicado que deseche una perdiz, solo por haber sido ahogada en un lazo; ni una liebre, porque la mordió un galgo, ni deje de beber cuando tiene sed, porque este la fuente untada con tocino, como estos hacían.”61 Fonseca later comments that Old Christians used the Morisco pork aversion to their advantage, exerting control over the Morisco community by contaminating their fresh water supply. He observes that “[e]staba en mano de cualquier Cristiano hacerles pasar muchos días sin beber, porque con untar un poco la fuente, ò Fuentes del lugar con tocino, no había remedio que en muchos días

60 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 98. 61 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 99. 98 bebiesen agua de ellas, y de estas burlas eran muchas, y muy donosas las que les hacían cada día."62

Aznar Cardona’s description of the Morisco diet equates Morisco frugality—a trait which the apologists view as an effort on the part of the Morisco community at large to hoard all of Spain’s wealth and use it against them in retaliation—with religiously- prescribed dietary laws. Specifically, he explains that, “ni compraban carne ni cosa de cazas muertas por perros, o en lazos, o con escopeta o redes, ni las comían, sino que ellos las matasen según el rito de su Mahoma, por eso gastaban poco, así en el comer como en el vestir, aunque tenían harto que pagar, de tributos a los Señores.”63 In a land in which

Halal butchering is expressly prohibited by the Christian monarch, an observant Muslim has few options other than to save his earnings rather than spend them on pricey meats and leather, giving him ample opportunity, as the apologists would claim, to hoard his wealth. The economic observations of the Catholic apologists are in contrast sharply with the financial ruin Valencian landowners feared if their most profitable workers were expelled. Here the apologists portray the Moriscos as the economic downfall of the

Peninsula, intentionally hoarding cash and amassing even more in fortune as they liquidated their goods upon expulsion.

Through the above examples we see at work the active process that Root describes of transforming Morisco cultural practice into heresy. Therefore the failure to eat at table—a practice which Fuchs would later refer to as “unwitting Moorishness” or

62 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 98. 63 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:33-4. 99 part of the “Moorish habitus” so characteristic of life on the Iberian Peninsula—is regarded by the apologists as an act as heretical as strict avoidance of bacon, as heretical as referring to Muhammad as God’s prophet, and as heretical as calling oneself a

Muslim.64 If a person committed any such heresy, the apologists felt themselves at liberty to assume that he or she observed Islamic rites in all aspects of life. Fonseca directly elides cultural and religious practice when he notes that observing whether a person eats while seated on the ground or actively rejects pork is an important inquisitorial tool,

“porque de ahí se puede inferir que guardan la secta de Mahoma en lo de mas: de lo cual añade, fueron muchas veces convencidos por su propia confesión en el tribunal de la

Inquisición.”65 He cites a specific example from Spain’s Visigoth past in which Jews forced to convert to Christianity were given a test of sorts to examine the validity of their conversions: “se obligaron a comer de allí adelante tocino, y que cuando su estomago por la novedad no lo llevase que comerían la olla, y carne guisada con el, en pena de ser ò apedreados, o quemados, o cuando quisiesen usar con ellos de misericordia, que fuesen hechos esclavos perpetuos con perdimiento de todos sus bienes.”66 This anecdote reaffirms his belief that Morisco rejection of pork is solid proof of apostasy and suggests that he sees such tests as reliable and acceptable inquisitorial procedures.

The apologists are, therefore, suggesting an absolute binary opposition in matters of religion, precluding any notion of a hybrid space where cultures comingle. For

64 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 5. 65 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 98. 66 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 98-9. 100 instance, they spend a good deal of time portraying Morisco funerary rites as examples of pure heresy and characterize them mockingly with dehumanizing rhetoric. Fonseca gives a rather detailed description of Morisco funeral practices, highlighting ritual washing of the body, burial in virgin soil, and separating male and female bodies in a manner he hopes strikes the reader as antithetical to Christian rites:

También se ha de advertir, que en dejándolos muertos a su disposición, guardaban en sus entierros todas las ceremonias Mahometanas, no con pequeño escándalo del pueblo Católico; lavaban supersticiosamente los cuerpos de sus difuntos; enterrábanlos en tierra virgen, y llevaban el ataúd sobre sus hombros, lo cual entre ellos es ceremonia de su secta, no poco prohibida en los Sínodos de aquella Metrópoli. Al echarlos en la sepultura, iban con mucho tiento por no maltratarlos, creyendo que hacia el anima asistencia al cuerpo, hasta que había entrado en residencia de la observancia de su secta, por aquellos dos demonios negros, ya nombrados, y por esto en espacio de ciertos días acudían con pan, y comida a las sepulturas. No enterraban juntos el varón, y la mujer, sino en distintas cuevas: habían de caer los cuerpos de sus difuntos de lado en la sepultura, y finalmente las acciones que hacían, y las palabras que decían, todo era un vivo Alcorán. Estas ceremonias no podían ellos guardar cuando enterraban sus difuntos en sagrado, y por esto aborrecían grandemente la sepultura Eclesiástica…67

In a similar manner, Fonseca and Guadalajara both relate the tale of a deceased Morisco named Motarri, resident of Valencia, whose secret Morisco-style funeral, complete with

“mucha cantidad de vasos de tierra llenos de aguas de laurel, de naranjo, y de romero,”68 was discovered by the local parish priest on his customary visit to the deceased’s home.

Aznar Cardona, given to more sensational descriptions, seeks to call attention to the ways this ritual differs from a Christian burial, adding: “…lo enterraron entre aquellos

67 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 141. 68 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 141-2. 101 abominables condenados poniéndole oro, higos y pasas en la boca y en el sendo de la mortaja, para el camino”69 and then rhetorically asks,

[p]ues veamos ahora, ¿las pasas y el oro, son para el alma, o para el cuerpo? ¿El alma es espíritu y no tiene dientes ni estómago, como perro, luego no son para ella? Y si el alma se va al paraíso, el cuerpo separado, ¿ha hecho tierra tampoco podrá comer ni comprar cosas con el oro? Eso nos dice como Mahoma, como todo lo más malo de la gentilidad, y lo supersticioso de todas las malas sectas, para sus ciegos imitadores.70

The ritual described here of leaving the dead body with food and gifts, however, is not part of Muslim tradition, nor is it unique to the Spanish Morisco population. For example,

Dedieu relates an example from Inquisition documents in Castile in which Old Christian women prepared offerings for the dead in a similar manner. When María Sánchez was asked by a neighbor in 1550 why she was preparing an offering of wax cakes and wine for the dead with Juana García, she replied, “we couldn’t stop doing what our ancestors had done, that it was a Christian habit to give these offerings to the Church, and that it was bad that some people did it but not others.”71 As Aznar Cardona correctly points out, this tradition, among Moriscos or otherwise, is not Catholic practice, and yet we see no wholesale effort to round up and deport those Christians who repeatedly made such offerings.

69 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:43-4. 70 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:43-4. 71 Archivo Histórico Nacional Inq, leg. 42, exp. 6. Quoted in Jean Pierre Dedieu, “The Archives of the Holy Office of Toledo as a Source for Historical Anthropology” in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe, ed. Henningsen and Tedeschi. (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 158-89. 102

In reference to scenarios such as these, the apologists not only seek to highlight the way these ceremonies differ from Christian ritual but also how the Moriscos fail to adhere to the very prescriptions of the Qur’ān. Inadvertently acknowledging an indefinite boundary that separates culture from dogma and an indeterminate cultural product of comingling, the apologists suggest that the Moriscos not only fail in their attempts to assimilate Christian culture but they also fail to be good Muslims. For example, Fonseca refers to ritual washing of a dead body as rupture with Quranic dogma, referring to the practice as a superstitious “quebrantamiento del Alcorán.”72 It is true that the tradition of washing the dead body in Islam is passed along through the Hadīth, or traditions of the

Prophet Muhammad, and does not appear as part of the Qur’ān itself. This does not make it any less acceptably Muslim, as the Islamic religion is based on both the Qur’ān and the

Hadīth in conjunction. It is therefore possible that Fonseca is criticizing the Muslim faith at its roots, suggesting that Muhammad’s traditions and influence reflect human meddling in what should be divinely-prescribed dogma. Likewise, while Aznar Cardona refers to

Muslim teachers and prophets as “engañosos doctores y Anabíes,”73 he seems to ascribe a certain level of understanding of their teachings in regard to admittance into the heavenly kingdom. When he notes that in Islamic teaching, “los Moros que ayunaren bien el

72 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 101. 73 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:43-4. “Anabies” comes from the Arabic word for prophet, al nabī.. The Arabic plural is al anbiyā, and therefore Aznar pluralizes the word by adding a terminal “-s” according to Spanish system of pluralizing nouns. 103

Ramadán e hicieran el aguadoch, y el zala, y el alquibla, y adoraran la Ampsa74, irán sus almas luego en siendo muertos, al paraíso, y sus cuerpos estarán sin osucridad en la sepultura hasta el día del juicio,” he sees this a reasonable approximation to the prescriptions of the true faith, or something that could be compared favorably to Christian doctrine.75 In the apologist’s opinion, this unadulterated Islamic observance leaves no room for ridiculous rituals such as leaving raisins and gold pieces with a dead body for his journey to heaven. He observes, therefore, that even genuine Muslim doctrine in regard to the afterlife seems respectable in comparison to such superstitions that “Son cosas tan ridículas estas y tan indignas de asiento en juicio humano, que no solamente contradicen a toda razón y verdad católica, mas también a lo que ellos mismos profesan de su Alcorán.”76 It is interesting to note, however, that Aznar Cardona appropriates correct Arabic terminology in this section of is treatise, almost as if the words had entered freely into the Castilian lexicon and therefore required no definition or clarification. The apologists, including Aznar Cardona, repeatedly cite Jaime Bleda’s Defensio Fidei as of utmost significance in exposing the Morisco threat on the Iberian Peninsula. In this defense of the Christian faith, Bleda names and defines the various Islamic traditions under attack in this section of Aznar Cardona’s treatise. Bleda, as we have noted, loathed

74 Ramaḍān, the Islamic holy month observed with fasting; wuḍū, Muslim ritual ablutions; ṣalāt, Muslim ritual prayer; qibla, “direction,” or the direction a Muslim should face while praying (toward ); al-aqsa, mosque in Jerusalem and one of Islam’s three holiest sites. 75 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:43-4. 76 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:43-4. 104 the Moriscos during his years in Corbera. He worked closely with Ribera and most certainly educated himself on the faith he considered the arch-nemesis of his own. To what extent the other apologists had intimate knowledge of Muslim ritual and practice is unclear, but their repeated references to Bleda’s pre-expulsion Defensio indicate that they had, at the very least, learned the basics from the primary champion of their cause.

In a similar manner, Fonseca gives evidence for what he considers Morisco undermining of Christian ritual when he notes that many Moriscos have a Catholic Mass offered for a deceased relative. However, Fonseca characterizes the Morisco use of a

Christian custom as a duplicitous act designed to appease not only Inquisitorial authorities, but also “dos demonios negros, llamados Naquir, y Nucair,”77 or Islamic angels who interrogate souls after death.78 Just as in the examples of Spanish Old

Christians and Moriscos leaving food for the soul’s journey to the afterlife suggests simultaneous participation in folk ritual and Christianity (or Islam), offerings to Islamic angels is also evidence for of a sort of religious syncretism practiced in the Morisco community. It is important to keep in mind that Islam as practiced in the late sixteenth

77 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 92. 78 Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “Munkar wa Nakir,” 576. “The names of the two angels who examine and if necessary punish the dead in their tombs. To the examination in the tomb the infidels and the faithful—the righteous as well as the sinners—are liable. They are set upright in their tombs and must state their opinion regarding Muhammad. The righteous faithful will answer that he is the Apostle of Allāh; thereupon they will be left alone till the Day of Resurrection. The sinners and the infidels, on the other hand, will have no satisfactory answer at hand. In consequence of this the angels will beat them severely, as long as it will please Allāh, according to some authorities till the Day of Resurrection, except on Fridays.” The angels are not mentioned by name in the Koran, but there are several allusions to them. This tradition is also found in the . 105 and early seventeenth centuries had evolved over eight centuries since the original eighth- century Arab invasion as it coexisted with Christian, Jewish, and folk traditions. As Rosa-

Rodríguez notes, scenarios like these are examples of simultaneous participation in two religions, “whether conscious or not, [that] produced a hybrid sense of religiosity that characterized Spain’s religious climate both in the sixteenth century and for generations to come.”79 Rosa-Rodríguez characterizes the experience of religious life for the

Moriscos as one of constant taqiyya in which generations of Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity lived out, so to speak, the prescriptions of the fatwa,80 whether they were fully aware of it or not. This negotiation of Islam from an underground perspective changed the participants’ understanding of the religion, altering the dogma and demonstrating that “religiosity becomes uncontrollable and undefined.”81 For many

Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula, the religion they practiced was neither Christianity nor

Islam, but something of Bhabha’s third space, a hybrid product of fusion in which it seems logical to appease Islamic angels via Christian ceremony.

79 Rosa-Rodríguez, “Simulation and Dissimulation,” 152. 80 Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 60. “The key theological document for the study of Spanish Islam…is a jurisconsultum fatwa—a considered legal opinion provided on request[,] handed down by a mufti in Oran in 1504, that is to say, very shortly after the crisis created by the forcible conversions, first in Granada and then in all the lands of the Castilian Crown as described above. There is no reason to doubt that it is a direct response to them. This fatwa sets out for the benefit of the persecuted Muslims of Spain what modifications might legitimately be introduced in the range of religious obligations incumbent on a Muslim when he is being subjected to oppression.” 81 Rosa-Rodríguez, “Simulation and Dissimulation,” 155. 106

While apologists like Aznar Cardona view some of these cultural practices as errors inherited from the ancient Gentiles and unique to heretical Moriscos, it is unclear to what extent such “pagan” rituals were unique to the Iberian Peninsula’s population, and how many people of Old Christian descent practiced similarly

“unchristian” rites. Kamen, for example, in his studies of the Spanish Inquisition, asserts that

[w]e can be certain of one thing. Spain was not, as often imagined, a society dominated exclusively by zealots. In the Mediterranean the confrontation of cultures was more constant than in northern Europe, but the certainty of faith was no stronger…Though there were confusions of belief in the peninsula, there seems in late medieval times to have been no formal heresy, not even among Christians. But this did not imply that Spain was a society of convinced believers…Religious practice among Christians was a free mixture of community traditions, superstitious folklore and imprecise dogmatic beliefs.82

This “free mixture” of religious rite and folklore is discussed in Knutsen’s recent study on witchcraft in the Peninsula.83 In this study, Knutsen observes, based largely on

Inquisitorial data, that witchcraft practices in Morisco and Old Christian communities had very much in common. He describes spells and charms as cultural practices that crossed the religious-cultural divide in order to bring about practical solutions to common problems.84 While evidence suggests that neither group was any more likely to have

82 Kamen, Historical Revision, 5. 83 Gunnar W. Knutsen, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The Spanish Inquisition’s Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona, 1478-1700 (Belgium: Brepols, 2009). 84 Knutsen, Servants of Satan, 48-9. 107 engaged in witchcraft than the other, Old Christians in Valencia had come to view sorcery as particular to the Moriscos.85

In addition to critiquing Morisco superstitions and insinuating that they were unique to that population group, Fonseca also criticizes the Moriscos’ lack of knowledge of basic prayers and Church customs. He states, “[y] si con todo esto tenían aun ignorancia de todas las cosas pertenecientes à nuestra Religión, y no sabían ni los artículos de la Fe, el Credo, ni los mandamientos de la Iglesia, ni aun el Pater Noster, y el

Ave Maria; no era por no haber sido instruidos, sino por no haberlos querido ser."86

However, as Dedieu suggests, a wholesale operation to Christianize all of the masses in the Peninsula—not solely the Muslims—had been underway for some time due to a general lack of knowledge of Church dogma. In the sixteenth century, at the same time that clerics were working to convert Muslims to Christianity, post-Tridentine reform efforts increasingly gained momentum, ensuring that Old and New Christians alike could recite basic prayers such as the Pater, Ave, and later the Credo.87 Inquisitorial records demonstrate that doctrinal misunderstandings were common among Old Christians, thus validating the mission statement of the Council of Trent and inquisitorial process itself while offering evidence that Moriscos were not the only confused Catholics. The active process of desemitization is therefore evident in both the example of witchcraft and in

85 Knutsen, Servants of Satan, 77-80. 86 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 390. 87 Jean Pierre Dedieu, “‘Christianization,” 14-5. 108 ignorance of Church doctrine in that the Morisco transgressor is singled out over the Old

Christian transgressor and earmarked for expulsion.

Both Kamen’s and Dedieu’s observations again highlight the blurring of Christian culture with cultures it considers “other.” Demonstrating that it is a result of the active will of the Christian majority to point out cultural elements that conflict with their own self-concept and then attempt to forcibly remove them from daily habit, these scholars suggest that many inhabitants of the Peninsula—Old Christian and otherwise—came under such Inquisitorial scrutiny. In this way, the apologists’ treatises were part of a machine working tirelessly to place perimeters around acceptable Christian practice. Chapter Three:

Delimiting Sacred Space

Perceived Threats to Catholic Sacred Structures, Objects, and Rituals

Tú destruiste la Cristiandad de España en los tiempos pasados, tú afligiste los Católicos: derrocaste las Iglesias: profanaste los Santuarios: edificaste tus Mezquitas y levantaste la voz descomulgada, con el dicho escandaloso, Viva Mahoma.1

In 1567, at thirty six years old and with merely a decade of experience behind him as an ordained priest, Juan de Ribera found himself wielding the commanding titles of

Archbishop of Valencia and Patriarch of Antioch. An impassioned reformer in the spirit of Trent, Ribera had captured the attention of fellow clergy members as well as that of

Philip II during his tenure as bishop of Badajoz, a Spanish province bordering Portugal.

This promotion to the archbishopric, which he was initially hesitant to accept,2 entailed a move to the other side of the Peninsula into a region indelibly marked by Islam and eastern culture. Valencia was home to the Peninsula’s largest Morisco population, a group of former Muslims whose forcible to conversion to Christianity had produced mixed and uncertain results. The new Archbishop therefore foresaw clerical and administrative difficulties in Valencia that far eclipsed any struggles he had faced in

1 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:98. 2 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 7. Ehlers attributes Ribera’s hesitation to a combination of false modesty (“to lust after honors and benefices ran counter to the humility expected of a Tridentine bishop”) and fear that he would not succeed in fully converting the Moriscos to Christianity.

109 110

Badajoz. Ribera’s tender age also suggested the potential length of the arduous road ahead: most of his predecessors had succumbed to infirmity and old age after a year or two in the position. Any accomplishments these men may have achieved in genuinely converting the Morisco community to Christianity were interrupted with each change of command. Ribera would have decades in the post for pastoral missions if patience and good health happened to favor him. The task was undoubtedly daunting, and Ribera initially attempted to decline the promotion before finally accepting the responsibility.

The new archbishop quickly set aside his initial doubts, however, and plunged into reform and conversion efforts in Valencia with zeal. True conversion, he believed, was indeed possible if the Morisco parishioners were placed in the hands of capable clergy members who could lead them down the true Christian path. With this catechetical mission in mind, the archbishop assigned the then neophyte Jaime Bleda to the parish of

Corbera in 1585, a town with a large Morisco population in the archdiocese of Valencia.

Ribera most likely saw his own initial lack of enthusiasm with the discouraging task of

Morisco evangelization reflected in an outraged young Bleda who returned to Valencia begging to be reassigned.3 As Bleda tells it, crouched down near the church door in

Corbera and concealed from the group of parishioners during the celebration of mass, he witnessed firsthand astonishing blasphemy on the part of the Morisco churchgoers that inspired him to dedicate his life to protecting the Holy Sacrament from further Morisco

3 Bleda, it should be noted, never shares the archbishop’s initial optimism in the possibility of true Morisco conversion. Rather, he is disgusted at the start by what he sees as Morisco blasphemy, not wanting any part in the evangelical efforts. 111 assault. He describes the moment of the consecration on that particular holy day, stating that he saw

que aquellos infieles en lugar de adorar la Sacratísima Hostia, y Cáliz a la hora de la elevación hacían todos escarnio, y burla de la sacrosanta Eucaristía: las mujeres pellizcaban las criaturas, para que llorasen; ninguno había, que no hiciese sus meneos, y monerías en manifiesta irrisión, vilipendio, y desacato del santísimo Sacramento. Quedé atónito, y muy desconsolado, de ver injuriado a mi Redentor con actos tan notoriamente hereticales.4

Bleda then stresses the profoundly negative effect that witnessing the purported disrespectful heretical acts had on him emotionally, as well as on his career as a priest, when he highlights his rather irrational willingness to abandon the post altogether.

Returning to Valencia on horseback, Bleda allegedly threw himself at the archbishop’s feet, pleading with him to be sent back to his hometown of Algemesí.5 Such a return to his former position would be a certain demotion because the appointment to Corbera, as

Bleda confesses, was a critical step to his ordainment as a priest. He states, “siendo yo acolito, y con este título me ordenó de los órdenes sacros.”6 Ribera denied his request, and when Bleda was confronted with the reality that he had to stay in Corbera on the archbishop’s orders, he became consumed with worry. Rather than embracing the evangelical mission like Ribera, he relates that from that point on, “comencé, a desvelarme, en pensar, de que manera se podría librar el santísimo Sacramento de estas

4 Bleda, Crónica, 938. 5 Bleda, Crónica, 938. 6 Bleda, Crónica, 938. 112 sacrílegas injurias, que padecía generalmente en estos Reinos.”7 These nightmarish preoccupations led him to Rome several times to advocate for complete Morisco expulsion, believing that peace and religious harmony could only be achieved in a Spain liberated from heretical Morisco contamination. It is a cause to which, in spite of initial optimistic conversion efforts, a disenchanted Archbishop Ribera was ultimately drawn, and together with Bleda, the two clerics became the expulsion campaign’s most ardent supporters. On the home front, Bleda addressed King Philip III both directly and through his favorite, the Duke of Lerma, speaking with the king in person in 1599 in Valencia. He composed both his Defensio Fidei and Crónica for the edification of these two men who directly controlled the Moriscos’ future.

Bleda’s characterization of Morisco behavior at mass is not isolated to this one particular exposition in the Crónica, nor is it unique among the treatises of his fellow expulsion apologists. Utilizing every synonym for “disrespect” he can summon to characterize and emphasize Morisco treatment of the Holy Sacrament, Bleda epitomizes the apologists’ obsession with what they see as Morisco devastation of all things

Catholic. From alleged denigration of the sacraments and murder of Christians to the purported destruction of churches and desecration of crosses, the apologists fear that such spiritual and physical ravaging will lead to the annihilation of Spanish Catholicism as an institution, and therefore to the ultimate destruction of the Spanish nation. To the apologists, veneration of images and relics in conjunction with participation in the holy

7 Bleda, Crónica, 938. 113 sacraments binds together members of the religious community into a cohesive national body, which, under continued duress, risks complete devastation. I therefore argue in this chapter that the apologists, through abundant and detailed accusations of Morisco destruction of Catholic iconography and defamation of the sacred structure of the liturgy, propose the defense of sacred ritual and physical space against Morisco assault. To the apologists, an active line of defense will protect the integrity of the holy, Catholic, and apostolic Spanish nation, but in order to secure support, they must first call to the attention of their readers the imminent destruction of Catholic Spain.

Debating the Legitimacy of Religious Symbols

The expulsion apologists of the early modern era had inherited a rich tradition of medieval Christian iconography and devotion. At the time that they composed their treatises, these Christian images were the subject of much debate, intensely scrutinized by

Reformers for their alleged connection to idol-worship and neglect of the truth faith while under reevaluation among Catholics responding to such criticisms. As a consequence of

Reformation critique, the apologists and their mentor, Archbishop Ribera, were steeped in the energy of the Tridentine reform movement that was determined to shore up the legitimacy of Catholic symbols, taking a firm stance in support of both religious icons and sacred rituals subject to Reformation scrutiny. The Council of Trent’s reforms were aimed at rehabilitating religious images or icons, many of which had earned unfavorable reputations among critics as the objects of questionable popular devotion. The Council 114 convened over the course of almost two decades between 1545 and 1563. During that time, several of Trent’s sessions were dedicated to defining and upholding “the most holy

Sacraments of the Church, through which all true justice either begins, or being begun is increased, or being lost is restored.”8 The sacraments, which include Baptism,

Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Order, and Matrimony, were divinely instituted by Christ. To take issue with any of them or to alter them in any form was to the Council “exceedingly detrimental to the purity of the Catholic Church, and to the salvation of souls.”9 Reformation rejection or reinterpretation of certain Catholic sacraments was a further critique of the legitimacy of Catholic symbolic ritual. It questioned the sacraments’ very nature and necessity to salvation, and therefore the various decrees of the Council directly address such challenges. Eire speaks to this point, noting that

[a]s a standardized ritual laden with an awe-inspiring display of spiritual power through very material, and almost mechanical means, the liturgy itself had become the living image of the mystery of salvation. Regarded as the reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary (especially since the time of Gregory I, the Great), the Mass, as a ritual, could not help but become representational in a very concrete manner. Therefore, most worshipers approached the liturgy in the same way they approached images and relics, as an object of veneration and a source of power. Consequently, the Reformers would attack the ceremony of the Mass itself as an “idol.”10

8 H.J. Schroeder, ed., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1955), 51. 9 Schroeder, Council of Trent, 51. 10 Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 17. 115

The Council’s response to Reformation scrutiny of the sacraments was therefore to reaffirm their supreme and essential importance to the true Christian faith. In so doing, the Council also legitimized the position of the expulsion apologists who viewed the sacraments as under direct threat of denigration and destruction in Morisco-inhabited

Spain. The Council’s decision to discuss religious symbols and the strong and absolute wording of its resulting decrees emphasizes the critical and sensitive nature of the debate concerning Catholic religious iconography. Therefore, any physical threat to a priest or monk from a Morisco became a threat to the sacred institution. Crude gestures and blasphemous talk during the celebration of the Eucharist likewise amounted to the same sort of direct attack on the Church.

Scholarship suggests that Christian sensitivity to the treatment of their revered symbols did not go unnoticed by Moriscos. Cardaillac, for example, in his study of inquisitorial records, observes that Moriscos criticized the Catholic Church for having lost sight of essential devotion to God. One Morisco, he says, states “que los cristianos estaban ciegos en creher en una cruz de palo y en una ymagen que llaman de nuestra

Señora, que siendo un bulto de palo conpuesto crían en ella, y que por creer en ella, dexavan de creer en Dios.”11 In comparison to what the Moriscos viewed as the enlightenment of Islam, as Cardaillac notes, Christianity represented for the Moriscos a state of regression to pre-Christian paganism and idol-worship. The Moriscos therefore used such an interpretation and understanding of Christian practice, Ehlers suggests, to

11 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Inq., leg 193, núm. 13. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 301. 116 mock priests or other Christians.12 Cardaillac gives an example of mockery of revered

Christian images when he describes a Morisco who viewed a depiction of the Virgin in a

Castilian church, “y con el dedo pasó por encima del rostro de la dicha ymagen, como que quería borrarla, haciéndolo con el fin de destacar a la dicha ymagen…; lo hizo teniendo y creyendo que aquello era burla porque nuestro señor Dios no tenía madre.”13

The Morisco’s alleged refractory gesture was intended to ridicule the Christian doctrine under which he was forced to live, fully acknowledging the significance of this sacred image to Catholic authorities.

The decrees issued at the Council’s twenty-second session, which convened in

September of 1562, sought to address critiques such as those mentioned above. While the sources of the critiques under examination came primarily from the Reformation, the

Council’s resulting decisions inevitably supported Catholic attack on Morisco opinions of a similar nature. This particular session specifically upholds ceremonies known as sacramentals14 that served to support the holy sacraments as the foundation of the faith.

12 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 96. 13 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Inq., leg 191, núm. 12. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 302. 14 New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2009, s.v. “Sacramentals,” accessed May 24, 2012, 824-826, http://go.galegroup.com/. “Sacred signs established by the Church to render holy the various circumstances of life. Such signs can take the form of rites, prayers, or objects outside those seven rites properly called sacraments. Sacramentals resemble the sacraments inasmuch as they signify effects—chiefly, although not exclusively, an increase in holiness obtained through the intercession of the Church. Sacramentals dispose those who use them to receive the principal effect of the sacraments. Unlike the sacraments, the number of which is fixed at seven, sacramentals include a wide variety of rites, prayers, and religious objects. The number of sacramental may be increased or decreased as the Church deems fit.” 117

The decree provides for external means of assisting man in meditation on the Divine during the Mass, including “mystical blessings, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things of this kind, whereby both the majesty of so great a sacrifice might be emphasized and the minds of the faithful excited by those visible signs of religion and piety to the contemplation of those most sublime things which are hidden in this sacrifice.”15 The Council later gives its approval of the veneration of sacred images of a broader scope, refuting claims that Catholic dogma condoned idol-worship. The decrees of the twenty-fifth session, which convened in December of the following year, state that

not, however, that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them by reason of which they are to be venerated, or that something is to be asked of them, or that trust is to be placed in images, as was done of old by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which they represent; so that by means the images which we kiss and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear. That is what was defined by the decrees of the councils, especially of the second Council of Nicaea, against the opponents of images.16

This Council decree, following Gregory the Great, asserts that religious images, including paintings, are legitimate teaching tools to assist the clergy in instructing their parishioners. They likewise state that

great profit is derived from all sacred images, not only because the people are thereby reminded of the benefits and gifts bestowed upon them by Christ, but also because through the saints the miracles of God and salutary examples are set before the eyes of the faithful, so that they may give God thanks for those things, may fashion their own life and conduct

15 Schroeder, Council of Trent, 147. 16 Schroeder, Council of Trent, 215-6. 118

in imitation of the saints and be moved to adore and love God and cultivate piety.17

In other words, religious images serve as a reminder to lay people to revere God, heavenly creator of all earthly images. Images and relics therefore become for the apologists a critical component of the sacred structure of the Church. Their destruction reflects a direct attack on the holy sacraments, or on the very the foundation of the faith.

Delimiting Sacred Space

Dice el Apóstol, que el Anticristo se levantará sobre todo lo que se llama Dios, y es honrado portal, de suerte que pondrá su asiento y domicilio en el templo de Dios. Esto hizo Mahoma como queda dicho. En Meca es reverenciado como dios en nuestros días. Y en el templo que le edificó Omar en Jerusalén, reverencían los Mahometanos sus pies y manos. Es reverenciado en el templo de Dios, pues su mala secta ocupa las insignes Iglesias de África, Siria, Arabia, y de otras provincias, las cuales fueron privadas de la Fe y culto divino, y dellas fue desterrado el sacrificio de la Misa, y derribadas las aras sagradas de Dios, y solo Mahoma es adorado en ellas.18

To Bleda and to his fellow apologists, Islam represented a great threat of replacement whereby Muhammad, emblematic of the Antichrist, usurped God’s position in His holy dwelling place, the Church. Even the manner in which Bleda describes the

Mosque of Omar, a temple in which Muslims “worshipped the feet and hands of

Muhammad,” suggests a projection of Christian ritual onto Muslim history. The apologist fears that the Muslim prophet has deceivingly taken Christ’s rightful place on the altar and assumed the honor of His great sacrifice. From Muhammad’s seat with the

17 Schroeder, Council of Trent, 216. 18 Bleda, Crónica, 49. 119 great churches of Africa, Syria, and Arabia, where the true Divine Cult had once taken root and reigned supreme, Islam’s prophet, Bleda argues, was able to systematically destroy the Christian church, both in spirit and in physical substance, in every territory in which his cult had crusaded. Aznar Cardona, for example, speaks of a once Christian- dominated world now confined to tiny pockets after Muhammad’s sect spread across the globe. In reference to the Islamic advance he states that David in the Pslams, “[h]abla de este atroz enemigo Mahoma, que destruyó los fieles, y los redujo, destruyéndolos a quedar de cuatro partes de la Cristiandad, la una de ellas, de modo, que arrinconó la

Iglesia, esparcida sin límite por todo el Orbe, hasta dejar la en solo un estrecho ángulo de

él, en estas partes de Europa.”19 The holy Eucharist, or the sacrifice of the Mass, Bleda claims, had been permanently exiled from its natural home in the symbolic sacred space of Christian places of worship. In other words, the sacred altars of God’s church have been crushed in symbolic destruction of the entire Christian faith.

In arguing that the Eucharist—an essential sacrament of the faith—is under threat of complete annihilation, Bleda succinctly articulates the apologists’ general struggle to preserve through their texts the Catholic Church as an institution of national identity. In the above quotation, he alludes to two facets of the faith he and his fellow apologists consider critical to the constitution of the Spanish Catholic church: sacred sacramental activity and sacred structures. Both of these fundamental components of Catholic

Christian dogma had been expressly upheld in the face of Reformation intellectual

19 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:143-4. 120 challenges in the Council of Trent’s sixteenth-century decrees and were at the forefront of the minds of European Catholic clergy members. The Council supported the solemnity and validity of the holy sacraments as well as the veneration of scared images, vowing to excommunicate any person who abused either. The Spanish struggle to uphold Tridentine reform was somewhat unique, however, and as Bleda suggests, Catholic Christians in

Spain faced Muslim rather than Reformation violation of the faith’s sacred sacraments and structures. The nature of this alleged Muslim threat, therefore, was not an ideological revamping of the Christian faith but a complete annihilation of it.

Sacramental Activity

One of the apologists’ primary goals in defining the Catholic faith is asserting the necessity of the holy sacraments. In so doing, they promote the sacred nature, so to speak, of the Catholic faith, contrasting it with the inferiority of Islam. For example, Aznar

Cardona asserts “[q]ue Mahoma faltó lo formal constitutivoo de Religión, no ordenando cosa para el culto divino, ni tratando del remedio del pecado, aunque ordenó el Zala.”20

The institution of required charitable giving is the only aspect of Islam Aznar Cardona deems worthy of referring to as a formal element of organized religion. Clearly ignorant of many aspects of Islamic ritual and practice himself, Aznar Cardona claims that

Muhammad’s sect lacks the fundamental sacred base and structure of a God-given faith, calling Islam the sterile result of pagan influence:

20 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:42. 121

[y] dejada a parte la esterilidad triste, de que no tienen sacerdotes, ni sacrificios, ni empleo de obras pías, excepto la limosna del afecto natural, con los necesitados; ni celebran festividades de Santos, ni tienen cosa autorizada, con Milagros, ni días consagrados para solemnidad y reverencia de Dios, solo el viernes, entre los otros supersticiosos embaimientos, les decretó por fiesta de guardar, en honra de la Diosa Venus, porque en el punto dela estrella de Venus había sido levantado por Rey.21

Therefore Islam’s apparent lack of Catholic sacramental ritual betrays its lack of belief, making it wholly unacceptable to Aznar Cardona. These rituals that Catholics hold most dear are in fundamental opposition to a Muslim austerity that sees the rites of Catholic

Mass as a superstitious impediment to true reverence of God and submission to His will.

For example, Cardaillac cites Morisco critique of Catholic hierarchy when a Morisco notes, “Y esta misa no la puede decir sino es quien fuere clérigo, de suerte que si en alguna parte poblada o mar hubiera cristianos sin sacerdote, no pueden hacer ese oficio de la misa de suerte que cada Cristiano no puede hacerla cada uno solo, por donde se conoce su ley falsa.”22 In front of God, the Morisco would argue, all people are equal with no one possessing particular religious power over another. Cardaillac quotes another

Morisco who asserts that a Christian is powerless in adoring God without a priest in contrast to “los moros que cada uno de ellos puede hacer su zala solo u acompañado, con sacerdote o sin él.”23

21 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:43. 22 Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, ms. 9074, fol. 58 ro. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 304. 23 Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, ms. 9074, fol. 58 ro. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 305. 122

The apologists therefore refute critiques like these, advancing the idea of several critical components of the sacramental activity of their Catholic faith as the ultimate means of revering God. For the apologists, this necessary component of Catholicism includes the previously mentioned sacraments upheld by Trent, including the Eucharist,

Holy Orders, Baptism, and Matrimony. It also includes the survival of a religious community of believers to partake in the sacraments and the public celebration and actualizing of these sacraments in the Catholic Mass.

The apologists argue that Muslims inherently lack these constitutive elements, and therefore the initial Muslim immigrants to the Peninsula as well as their Morisco descendants have consistently sought to destroy the structural elements so fundamental to

Christian identity in order to eliminate Catholicism and secure a place of power in Spain.

In this manner, Aznar Cardona argues, Muhammad and his followers have wreaked devastation on Christians for generations, condemning to eternal damnation countless souls that could have otherwise been saved. He states, “pues llegan hoy a pasados de mil años, en que contradiciendo ciegamente nuestra única ley Evangélica, lleva millares de almas al infierno, con la impeded pertinaz de su reprobada secta bestial.”24 All religions or sects, Aznar Cardona argues, have the power to open the gateways of perdition. It is through these “puertas metafóricas, por quien tantos desdichados entraron, y entran en la morada eternal de su perdición.”25 However God has vowed to protect the chosen

Christian members of His Church, even though at times “por nuestros graves pecados,

24 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:12. 25 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:12. 123 permita [Dios] que nos acosen y ultrajen.”26 In this way, Aznar Cardona argues that

Christians, albeit innately imperfect, are destined to prevail over other sects. God’s

Church stands as a landmark of His promise to protect his people from whatever temptations or persecutions might lie in their paths. Guadalajara concurs, stating that the

Moriscos represent the very heart and soul of the prototypical heretic in their disdain for

Catholic sacraments. He argues that the Moriscos question the very roots of the sacred

Catholic ritual when they try to “conceder y porfiar con soberbias y afectadas palabras, de las cosas que la Iglesia católica propone como verdaderas: como de la Encarnación, de la resurrección de los difuntos, la necesidad y eficacia de los Sacramentos del Baptismo, y Penitencia, del sacrificio de la Eucaristía, y los demás.”27 This questioning of the very basic foundations of the Catholicism, he argues, destabilizes the faith, “porque su profanidad penetra como cáncer, y pervierte la fe de alguno.”28 It therefore threatens the future of Christian souls on an individual level first, later spreading across population groups, countries, and continents. What was once the fate of the East is now the fate of the West, visible and palpable on Spanish terrain. But Spanish Catholics should not lose hope, Fonseca argues, because even in the remotest and most distant locations, “los predicadores de la verdad Evangélica, afligidos, perseguidos, vejados, y oprimidos, cada día ganan almas para el cielo.”29 The faith, he argues, simply has to be given the best

26 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:12. 27 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 9. 28 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 9. 29 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 82-3. 124 chance for survival and be allowed to prevail. This is particularly possible in Spain where, as I have argued elsewhere,30 the apologists view Christianity as essential and inherent to the Peninsula. Fonseca continues to that effect, stating, “más presto harán esto mismo en España, donde florece la Religión, donde son venerados los siervos de Dios, y sus Justas y loables obras, no solo son aprobadas, sino favorecidas y promovidas.”31 In other words, Spain boasts a deep-seeded Christian legacy and fundamental Catholic structure that will ensure its survival in the future if proper steps are taken to protect it. It is this point of view combined with the apologists’ insistence that that true Morisco conversion was fundamentally impossible that allowed them to advocate for such wholly unchristian measures. They maintained an uncharitable stance in regard to their Morisco neighbors even when Pope Paul V32 refused to support the expulsion campaign and again when Church leaders like Pedro de Valencia followed the Pontiff’s lead in advocating for patient and continued conversion. 33

In terms of the sacraments he sees as vulnerable to attack, Aznar Cardona begins by emphasizing their supreme importance to Catholicism, and then stresses the way in which Muhammad worked—and continues to work through his Morisco followers—to

30 See Chapter 1, “Parameters for the Faith.” 31 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 82-3. 32 As noted in Chapter 1, Fonseca originally claimed in his Justa expulsión that Pope Paul V supported his endeavor. However, as Tueller notes, the Pontiff demanded that any mention of his alleged support be removed from the treatise before it was printed. Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 135-6. 33 For a discussion of Pedro de Valencia’s Tratado Acerda de los Moriscos (1605/1606), in which the author advocates for Morisco conversion through toleration and patience and disputes Spanish purity of blood statutes, see Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 245-365. 125 systematically break them down. He refers to God, “con su poder omnipotente, sobre todo poderío y llave de excelencia,”34 as having instituted the seven sacraments for

Christianity as the base of a perfect religion. The sacraments, he argues, serve “para remedio eficaz de nuestras enfermedades, conseruación y nutrimiento de nuestra vida espiritual.”35 As an instrument of these divinely-created sacraments, God then endowed the clergy with the power and responsibility to put them into effect, “imprimiéndoles carácter sacerdotal, en el alma, en el cual dejó virtud substitutiva de poder hacer y comunicar esos mismos sacramentos, mientras durare la peregrinación de su Iglesia.”36

The priest as witness of these sacraments then leads the true followers to full communion with the Creator in Paradise. Just as without the sacraments there would be no church, without priests, there were be no administering of the sacraments with the Christian fold.

It follows suit to the apologists that Muhammad would attack the sacraments as an institution, targeting their performance by the clergy. As a group, the clergy work to organize the community of believers into a unified body, inviting them to share in the sacraments as a means of initiating themselves into God’s house, the Catholic Church. As such they become “la congregación de los fieles de España,”37 or a national body organized with faith at their foundation. Aznar Cardona accuses the Muslim prophet and

34 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:49-50. 35 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:49-50. 36 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:49-50. 37 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:66. 126 his followers of threatening the integrity of this cohesive unit with “ojeriza desdeñosa”38 in regard to the sacraments, enough so that an entire book could be filled with “las palabradas groseras, y proposiciones hereticas, dichas con typo de infidelidad, que habemos sabido de ellas.”39 Defending the sacraments therefore becomes, according to

Aznar Cardona, a way to protect not only “la barquilla preciosa de san Pedro…la Santa

Iglesia,”40 but also the very lives of Catholic Spaniards. To Aznar Cardona, the idea of

“nuestras propias vidas” includes more than just physical existence, but also all things that contribute to life on earth. It encompasses all facets of life Christian Spaniards hold most dear— “padres, hermanos, parientes, prójimos, amigos, haciendas, casas, villas, ciudades, y todos los Españoles Reinos”41—defended against “la llama cruel, del yerro, y de todo género de crueldad, con que nos amenazaba cercana, la impiedad enemigo, de los

Agarenos y Cedaraenos, homicidas de voluntad y de obra.”42

The apologists pay a great deal of attention to the way in which they see Muslim influence as an undermining of the sacraments of baptism and matrimony. Fonseca, for example, accuses the Moriscos of intentionally undermining Christian baptism, stating that they consciously and deceitfully avoided it. The apologist asserts that Morisco

38 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:49-50. 39 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:49-50. 40 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:138. 41 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:138. 42 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:139. 127 parents attempted to trick Church authorities into believing their children had indeed received the sacrament. He states that they,

inventaron una traza diabólica de rebautizarlos, de manera que si en Buñol lugar de Moriscos, nacían diez, veinte, o mas niños en espacio de ocho días, cogían uno solo de ellos, y este corría todas las estaciones, y lo bautizaban diez, y veinte veces, mudándole cada vez el nombre, y el de sus padres, con que multiplicando solo los nombres, y siendo uno mismo el bautizado, quedaban todos los otros diez y nueve sin el sacramento.43

Here the apologist hopes to spark allegiance from his fellow Christians in a symbolic war between sects in which the Moriscos allegedly seek to undermine Catholic authority. In those cases where the Moriscos could not avoid being baptized, Fonseca claims that that

“lo lavaban después en su casa, enjugándole el Olio santo, haciendo muchas ceremonias

Mahometanas del Alcorán, pensando con esto cuanto era de su parte, desbautizarle.”44

Claims such as these of active avoidance of Christianization as well as attempts at outright undoing of Christian initiation serve to further emphasize the apologists’ opinion that the Moriscos were in no way ignorant of Christian doctrine as many clerics who favored their continued evangelization had argued. It is therefore the Moriscos’ tacit acknowledgement of the potential power and influence of Christian ritual and their subsequent outright rejection of it that fuels the apologists’ anger. In a similar manner,

Morisco avoidance of baptism and subsequent attempts to wash it away speak to the power Christian ritual exerted in the Morisco community even though the Moriscos did not share Christian beliefs. It reflects each community’s fear that the God and creed of

43 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 106. 44 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 107. 128 the other group would ultimately succeed in winning them over, a part of the symbolic war waged between Christian and Muslim iterations of God.

As a somewhat more subtle rejection of Christian initiation, Fonseca notes the

Moriscos’ complete indifference to the Christian names given to them at baptism, noting,

si alguno les preguntaba como se llamaban, antes de responder volvían a preguntar, Que nombre pedís, de Algarabía, o del baptismo? Tanto que muchos de sus padres, ignoraban los nombres Cristianos que en el baptismo les habían puesto, y aun lo que mas es, ellos mismos así hombres como mujeres, no sabían sus propios nombres Cristianos, porque como nunca usaban de ellos, con facilidad se les olvidaban.45

Failure to embrace Christian names, Fonseca would argue, highlights the Moriscos’ desire to remain outside and separate from the Christian community while at the same time actively or rejecting the Christian rite of baptism.

In terms of disrespect for the sacrament of marriage, we have already seen46 the extent to which the apologists consider Muhammad’s views on union to be a direct attack on the Catholic Church’s—and therefore God’s—interpretation of marriage. Aznar

Cardona refers to Muhammad’s allowance of multiple wives (and alleged approval of sodomy) as “injurioso al matrimonio”47 as an institution and as a holy sacrament. He states, “que ningún hombre pueda tener, mas de una sola mujer, y aquella con bendición de Dios, mediante la virtud del sagrado matrimonio.”48 For the apologist, this is a direct and intentional rupture with God’s law on Muhammad’s part and a blasphemous attempt

45 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 107-108. 46 See Chapter 1, “Parameters for the Faith.” 47 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:96. 48 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:96. 129 to assume God-like power. The apologists would also view the Moriscos’ rejection of

Catholic clerical celibacy as an undermining of divinely-inspired faith. Cardaillac cites, for example, a Morisco named Gerónimo Rojas who states that “se condolía mucho de tantos clérigos, frayles y monjas como ay, y deçía que todos se pierden y condenan sin remedio porque impiden la generación y no son casados ni tienen hijos.”49 He also cites

Muhammad Alguazir’s anti-Christian polemic in which the North African physician of

Morisco descent quips that perhaps priestly celibacy is in fact divinely-ordained, “porque de ellos no se engendren otros herejes como de ellos lo son y que en ellos se acabe la material de la idolatría.”50 The apologists therefore view Muslim marital ideology and alleged Muslim permissiveness as a direct affront to Catholic dogma. Likewise, Muslim rejection of Catholic measures to curb such tendencies in accordance with what

Christians believe to be God’s will represent direct attacks on the holy sacrament of marriage.

With respect to the most important sacrament of all, the Eucharist, the apologists portray extreme contempt on the part of the Moriscos, who find the practice abhorrent.

Fonseca describes Morisco disrespect for the Eucharist as hatred in the extreme, “que

49 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Inq, leg. 197, núm. 5. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 305. 50 Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, ms. 9074, fol. 52 vo. Quoted in Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 306. For more information on Alguazir, see “G.A. Wiegers, “The Andalusî Heritage in the Maghrib: The Polemical Work of Muḥammad Alguazir (Fl. 1610)” in Poetry, Politics and Polemics: Cultural Transfer Between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, ed. Ed de Moor, et al. (Atlanta: Rodopoi, 1996), 107-32. 130 cuando alzaba el Sacerdote la hostia, le daban higas por debajo de la capa.”51 These disrespectful gestures during the consecration, he claims, make for gossip across the

Mediterranean. He attests to gathering this information from travelers returned from

Algiers who heard former Morisco inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula say, “[q]ue pensáis vosotros, que cuando el Sacerdote alza allá en vuestra Misa aquella tortica blanca, que nosotros le hacemos oración? Pues engañaos, que cada uno hace debajo de la capa una higa.”52 García Arenal gives evidence of many similar instances of alleged

Morisco disrespect for the Eucharist from the Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca. For example, she notes that certain Moriscos purporedly strug Hosts on a cord and hung them from a tree.53 The archived documents also suggest that a Morisco man expressed outward disdain for the whole idea of the sacrament, stating, “[m]ira que el cuerpo de

Dios no tengo ganas de comer.”54 Another expressed disbelief in the consecration, aruging that, “la hostia no era sino un poco de harina amasada y que allí no estaba Dios,

51 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 90-1. 52 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 90-1. 53 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca, leg. 121, num. 1631. Quoted in García Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 103. 54 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca, leg. 208, num. 2398. Quoted in García Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 104. 131 pues como iba a estar en algo que hace el sacristán.”55 And when Morisco woman was presented with the Host, she allegedly replied, “[d]arselo a mi asno que está malo.”56

Bleda then attributes the same anecdote regarding crude gestures during the consecration to a Valencian Morisco living in Argel named Izquierdo who adds that in

“Elche hacía uno esta higa, y levantaba la mano a la hora, que el Sacredote alzaba la santa Hostia, al mismo compas, y cayéndosele la capa, fue visto de todos.”57 This final detail transforms the interpretation of what at first seems to be an individualized disrespect and protest to a communal gesture in that the participant shared it with all of the onlookers. The Moriscos therefore, Bleda argues, seek unity and solidarity in their desecration of Catholic ritual space. They look to one another to join forces in enacting the assault, hoping to destroy the entire institution.

Fonseca likewise expresses his disgust at what he views as the Morisco assault on

Catholic ritual, shuddering upon imagining the response of a pious person like St. John

Crysostom if he were to enter a church plagued in such a manner by reprobates. He describes the Morisco churchgoers as blatantly disrespectful of sacred space, “unos echados por el suelo, otros vueltas las espaldas al altar, estos riendo, aquellos burlando, y hablando en su algarabía, mofando de los oficios de nuestra Religión Católica.”58 He

55 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca, leg. 240, num. 3142. Quoted in García Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 104. 56 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca, leg. 378, num. 5356. Quoted in García Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 104. 57 Bleda, Crónica, 898. 58 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 91. 132 goes as far as to accuse Morisco parents of pinching their children during solemn moments in the Mass, “y les hacían llorar; de manera que no se podía percibir palabra alguna, dejándole al predicador dar voces en desierto, antes se cerraban algunas veces la orejas, por no oír la palabra de Dios.”59 This particular act of defiance prevents those who want to participate in the liturgy from doing so, thereby depriving the whole congregation of the experience of the sacraments.

While the examples the apologists give of Morisco behavior during Mass seem exaggerated, leading readers to wonder why Moriscos determined to wear soiled clothing and endure children’s screams when they could have chosen to stay home, it is important to note that Moriscos throughout the kingdoms were required to attend Mass or suffer penalty. Ehlers notes that even Archbishop Ribera “complained that the Moriscos had to be bullied into coming to church under the threat of fines and that once they arrived they disrespected the holy water, refused the Host, and plugged their ears during the service.”60 Fines, it would seem, were not the sort of incentives the initially optimistic

Ribera would have applied to entice Moriscos to participate in the faith. Lea similarly refers to Valencian lords who sought “to protect their [Morisco] vassals from the ceaseless exactions of the alguaziles set over them to see that they attended mass regularly, and to fine those who did not, or who worked on feast days.” 61 These

59 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 92. 60 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 102. 61 Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (London: Macmillan & Co., 1907), 3:370. 133 demands, Císcar Pallarés notes, included that Moriscos as young as seven years old attend Mass at their parish church at least once a month, at which time the church rector would take note of absences in order to punish the offenders.62

Fonseca suggests that Morisco disrespect for the holiest of sacraments transcends crude gestures and obvious ridicule, expressed in subtleties of appearance. He asserts that the Moriscos were determined to break the Church’s command that the faithful attend

Mass every Sunday and holy day, avoiding attendance whenever they could. When they did attend Mass, he claims that they arrived in a state of disarray, consciously acknowledging the reverence true believers had for God’s house and sacraments and intentionally undermining that respect with disrespectful attire. He says that “de propósito se ponían aquellos días los vestidos mas andrajosos, las camisas, y cuellos mas sucios que tenían.”63 They stubbornly refused to bow their heads, kneel, or make the sign of the cross with holy water, and instead “enjugaban los dedos en las espaldas, y en lugares mas indecentes.”64

Time and again prelates had argued that the Moriscos were simply ignorant of church laws and customs, lacking instructors and a catechism understandable to them.

The apologists use their treatises to present counterpoint to that argument, backed wholeheartedly by a disenchanted Archbishop Ribera. He and the apologists maintain

62 Eugenio Císcar Pallarés, “Notas sobre la predicación e instrucción religiosa de los moriscos en Valencia a principios del siglo XVII.” Estudis: Revista de historia moderna 15 (1989): 238. 63 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 90. 64 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 90. 134 that despite their own personal attempts at evangelizing the new converts, the Moriscos were steadfast in their apostasy, even in the face of adequate instruction and patience on the part of the clergy. Fonseca’s examples highlighted above, therefore, serve to emphasize the Moriscos’ intentional undermining of church laws. In order to show such blatant disrespect and contempt for ritual space the apologists revere above all else, the

Moriscos must first understand or acknowledge the importance of Catholic sacramental activity in order to intentionally desecrate it. In these instances, the apologists make impossible Morisco ignorance of church custom.

The Moriscos further threaten the Eucharist, the apologists argue, by torturing and murdering the Catholic priests through whom Christ consecrates His own body and blood during the Mass. In targeting Catholic priests, or the sacrament of Holy Orders, the

Moriscos aim to destroy Catholicism at its roots, eliminating the people who make possible the sharing of the consecration with the Catholic community. For the apologists, the priests are the lifeblood of the sacraments: the people who hear confessions, perform marriages and baptisms, and administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Aznar

Cardona speaks of the eminent role of priests when he refers to Exodus 29 and the Old

Testament consecration of priests. Here Scripture details the process by which Aaron and his sons are to be consecrated as priests, offering round loaves “of wheaten flour.”65

Aznar Cardona offers as his interpretation that

así queda probado que no habla allí el Profeta del trigo material, ni de los montes insensibles de tierra y peñas (como lo entienden los ciegos Judíos)

65 Exodus 29:2. 135

sino que cuando dice, In sumis montium, que en las coronitas de los montes, se vería el pan, o mantenimiento vital, fue nombrar claramente a los Sacerdotes, cuyas cumbres son sus cabezas, sobre las cuales vemos el pan del cielo, y sustento de la vida en forma de pan.66

The priests, he argues, are a human link to the Divine, connecting the group of believers with the promise of salvation after death. Guadalajara argues that the Moriscos intentionally tried to sever the people’s link to God by manner of “las crueldades que ejecutaron en los pobres Cristianos, singularmente en personas Eclesiásticas.”67 He proceeds to enumerate the gruesome ways in which the Moriscos allegedly tortured the clergy, stating that the Moriscos “dieron en quemarlos vivos, cortarles los brazos y pies, sacarles los ojos, quitarles con intensísimos dolores los miembros, empalarlos, poníanles pólvora en la boca, y cebando la hacínales faltar las mejillas y sesos, con navajas les hacían cruces en las cabezas.”68

In a similar manner, Aznar Cardona states that “por toda la Cristiandad, por cuyos términos extendidos sin límite, Mahoma, y sus sectarios los Sarracenos, maltrataron, y mataron con exquisitos vituperios y muertes, los Prelados venerados, y ungidos

Sacerdotes, vicedioses en la tierra.”69 He gives as a specific example a priest who noted on a list the names of certain Morisco families who had failed to attend Mass, claiming that the Moriscos “lo mataron en pago de haberles sido buen Cura.”70 In other words, the

66 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:74. 67 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 58. 68 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 58. 69 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:146-7. 70 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:27-8. 136 apologist’s interpretation is that the priest was a man targeted and killed solely for the

(rightful) practice his Catholic Christian faith. In another instance, Aznar Cardona claims that several Moriscos “colgaron un Religioso trinitario en un árbol que había en medio la plaza.”71 He allegedly proceeded to sing David’s Psalms for three straight days before expiring in his state of torture. It seems that the nature of this act of tying the priest to the tree in the middle of the square is so public and so prolonged that it suggests, for Aznar

Cardona, an example of certain individuals in the Morisco community drumming up support for an assault on Catholicism amongst their Morisco neighbors. At the same time, this sort of public punishment gives the sense of warning to the rest of the Catholic community, especially the clergy, that they might be next on the hit list. The apologists harness accusations like these, therefore, to argue that together with defamation of the

Eucharist, the Moriscos’ cruel and grotesque elimination of Catholic clergy72 represents

71 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:27-8. 72 Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 307-8. According to Ehlers, Ribera noted that priests rarely resided in Morisco areas, choosing instead to live among old Christians in neighboring towns. The Archbishop saw this as a significant impediment to evangelization, and Ehlers comments that Ribera was aware of Morisco reputation for hostility toward the clergy. (Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 99.) Similarly, Arroyas Serano and Gil Vicent cite a certain Doctor Frago’s memorandum to the king in1560 that states, “Item se save que estos miserable Moriscos maltratan y aun matan a los que les predican la palabra de Dios y doctrina evangélica, y quando mas no pueden procuran de llevarlos cativos Allende como se sabe por esperiencia.” (Magín Arroyas Serrano and Vicent Gil Vicent, Revuelta y represión en los Moriscos castellonenses: el proceso inquisitorial de Pedro Amán, morisco vecino de Onda (Onda: Ajuntament d’Onda, 1995), 35.) García Arenal gives specific evidence from the Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca of Morisco ridicule of Catholic clergy, quoting a Morisco who referred to priests as beasts, and another who allegedly stated, “que el predicador cuando predicaba parecía un pastor que estava dando bozes en el campo.” (Garcia Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 104.) Cardaillac speaks of more violent resistance to priests, noting that “varios 137 calculated destruction of the entirety of the Mass on which Christian Communion is based.

In this vein, as a further sort of assault on Catholic sacred ritual, the apologists accuse the Moriscos of attempting to destroy the religious community member by member. In Matthew, we read that Christ defines his church for his followers, stating that

“[f]or where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”73 A church without priests and a church without members is, to the apologists, a church defeated, making impossible the gathering of two or three people in the name of

God. The apologists therefore strive to give examples of the destruction of the church’s individual members to demonstrate the Moriscos’ desire to bring about the collapse of the faith from its foundation. For Bleda, this intention on the part of the Muslims to destroy the Christian community had been evident since the very beginning when the first

Muslims arrived on the Peninsula in the eighth century. He notes, “[d]e la otra maldad que entre ellos se usaba, desde que vinieron a España, querían matar a todos los

Cristianos, que podrían a su salvo…si los mataban a cada paso, era en odio de la Fe, y porque los tenían por hombres impíos, infieles, y tan malos que merecían cruel muerte, textos señalan que el morisco obtendrá favores celestiales si mata a un sacredote o a un clérigo.” But here he refers specifically to claims made by Aznar Cardona regarding the Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras and not to actual Inquisitorial documentation. (Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos, 307-308.) In his account of the Morisco rebellion in the Alpujarras published in 1660, Pérez de Hita claims that, “lo primero que los moriscos emprendieron fué quemar las iglesias, hazer pedazos los santos y las cruces, y matar con crueles muertes á los curas y sacristanes.” (Ginés Pérez de Hita, Historia de las guerras civiles de Granada, (Paris: Baudry, 1847), 206.) 73 Matthew 18:20. 138 sino recibían su secta.”74 He also adds that the Muslim invaders savagely “[a]rrebatauan los niños de los pechos de sus madres, y los estrellauan en las paredes,”75 suggesting a cruel destruction that knows no bounds, sacrificing weak and helpless infants. In addition to killing Christians in their paths, Bleda accuses the early Muslim inhabitants of the

Peninsula of raping “las sagradas Vírgenes, imitadoras de los Ángeles, y Esposas de Jesu

Cristo. Hicieron fuerza a las Doncellas: abusaron de las Viudas continentes, y Casadas .”76 In characterizing the raped women in terms of their prized virginity, Bleda stresses that Muslim behavior not only violated the women physically but also stained their virginal status in the eyes of the Creator. This physical violence, therefore, becomes not only an attack on the Christian community but also a direct affront to God Himself and His creation.

In terms of Morisco attempted destruction of the Catholic community by means of torture in their own time, Aznar Cardona gives an example of Moriscos rounding up a group of Christian men, women, and children and confining them to a church where they forced them, naked, “a manera de collera de yeguas,” to thresh abrojos, or thistles. If one fell out of line, he notes, “estauan los perros alrededor con almaradas, o punzones largos y al que salía lo punzaba, y de esta manera anduvieron hasta que pararon los abrojos como una paja muy trillada tanto que hubo testigo de vista que afirmó, ser tanta la sangre

74 Bleda, Crónica, 898. 75 Bleda, Crónica, 173. 76 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:146-7. 139 que coría, qe se pudiera amasar con ella la paja de los abrojos.”77 Fonseca relates that often times instead of killing Christians when they had the chance, Moriscos would capture them, hiding them “en cuevas que ya para este fin tenian hechas en lugares muy desviados, y después los vendían por esclavos a los Moros de Argel.”78 In this regard,

Fonseca warns of the danger of being physically removed from Christian Spain and transplanted into a Muslim world, resulting in the systematic breakdown, bit by bit, of the

Catholic Christian community.

Together these alleged acts of violence to Catholic sacramental activity constitute for the apologists a direct attack on the integrity of the faith and therefore to their identity as Christian Spaniards. Expulsion of the Moriscos, they argue, grants the sacred liturgy and its critical practitioners the security to survive and thrive.

Sacred Structures

Don Felipe el Católico…ha defendido juntamente, la Fe Católica, la Cruz santísima, las imágenes santas, las benditas Iglesias, y todas las cosas sagradas, de la injuria, del escarnio, del vituperio, de la irrisión, de la blasfemia, y del sacrilegio sempiterno, de los hijos de perdición, los herejes Moriscos.79

In addition to defending Catholic sacramental activity from Morisco destruction, the apologists set out to call attention to the ways in which people of Muslim descent have wreaked physical havoc on Spanish Catholic sacred objects and structures since

77 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:27-8. 78 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 128. 79 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:139. 140 their initial arrival to the Iberian Peninsula in 711. Bleda states that from the earliest moments of Arab invasion the entirety of Spain had been marked by Muslim attack of objects of Christian devotion, to the point that “a penas huvo ciudad Episcopal en España, que no fuese quemada, o asolada.”80 He views attempted destruction of the Christian faith as part and parcel to Arab takeover, noting “por que en viéndose los Moros señores de esta tierra, quebrantaron la fe, y juramento, con que habían confirmado las condiciones, que prometieron guardar, cuando les entregaban las ciudades.”81 As such, the Muslim invaders became to the apologists “lobos devoradores y rabiosos,”82 bent on sinking their teeth into any Christian person or object that impeded their wholesale takeover—both political and religious—of the Peninsula. Aznar Cardona attributes destruction in Spain to the legacy of Muhammad, who “guerreó incesablemente, siempre que pudo, aprofanando los templos hacían de ellos Mezquitas execrables.”83 He continues, stating that Muslims had waged such iconoclastic war across their vastly growing empire, in which they repeatedly “asolaron y devoraron la sacra habitación de Dios, y de los suyos, con hachas y segures, u otros fuertes instrumentos, correspondiente al templo penetrante de su rabiosa ira.”84 Armed with heretical documents and issuing death threats, the Muslims

“devoraron a los Cristianos, con estragos mortales, y crueldades atroces, empalando,

80 Bleda, Crónica, 173. 81 Bleda, Crónica, 173. 82 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 10. 83 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:22. 84 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada. 1:145. 141 quemando, despeñando, matando, y de mil maneras horribles los martirizando”85 as they fought to secure political control. With violence they overtook Christian land and

“desterraron de ella el culto Divino, estableciendo la pérfida secta del falso profeta,”86 while at the same time introducing to the people “tan perniciosas supersticiones.”87

With every conquest of a Christian church, he claims, the Muslims replaced

Christ’s cross with their victory flags, “adornadas con sus hincados blasones.”88 This demonstrates the Muslims’ intention to replace God’s legitimate reign and power with the tenets of their own sect, the fruits of Muhammad’s unauthorized creation. The apologists allege that part of this Muslim takeover was the deliberate desecration of objects faithful

Christians venerated and held in high regard, suggesting outward hatred for Christianity and a desire to not only control its adherents politically but also to strip them of their ability to practice their faith. Aznar Cardona, for example, describes Muslim takeover of

Christian churches, claiming that such a process was accomplished by means of complete disrespect for sacred Catholic places, “profanándoles sus Oratorios, haciendo dellos corrales de animales, cabañas de pastores, tugurios de hortelanos.”89 Aznar Cardona notes that the Muslims were likewise disrespectful of the solemnity of Catholic structures, “en medio de las Iglesias consagradas a la solemnidad de Dios, hizieron ellos sus fiestas y

85 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:145. 86 Bleda, Crónica, 878. 87 Bleda, Crónica, 878. 88 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:148. 89 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:148. 142 recozijos, danzando, bailando, riendo, cantando, y ejecutando en las torpezas brutas, y sacrilegos nefandos, adorando allí al maldito Mahoma.”90 However, the Granadan

Morisco Francisco Núñez Muley, who in the sixteenth century argued against Christian prohibition of Morisco cultural practices, would have taken issue with Aznar Cardona’s assertion that Muslim victory celebrations were somehow related to the adoration of

Muhammad. In chapter 2, I comment in greater detail on Núñez Muley’s written response to Christian prohibitions on Morisco cultural expression. In this Memorandum, the

Morisco expressly refutes claims that the zambra, with its unique dancing and instrumentation, was Islamic. Instead, he comments,

how can it be claimed that the zambra and its instruments are in some way linked to the faith of the Muslims? They are not; rather, they are linked only to merrymaking and celebrations. Credible information and proof will not be found to contradict this point, for as I have said, the zambra and its instruments are not related to Islam, but rather are customs rooted in our kingdom and province.91

If such festivities were essential components of Muslim rite and ritual, he argues, they would also be found in Muslim regions across North Africa or in Turkey, but their conspicuous absence from such territories suggests that they are purely cultural in nature, having nothing to do with the practice of Islam. Núñez Muley also suggests that such forms of merrymaking were in fact particular to Granada, perhaps the result of centuries

90 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:148. 91 Francisco Núnez Muley, A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada. Ed., trans.Vincent Barletta. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 77-9. 143 of cultural comingling in the region. As noted elsewhere,92 the apologists take pains to equate Morisco cultural practice with religious rite. It would therefore seem that in this instance, Aznar Cardona’s description of festive church takeover on the part of the eighth-century Muslims may have been an act of projecting current stereotypes onto alleged historical reporting.

After Muslim forces established control of the Peninsula, Catholic Reconquista victories reestablished Catholic churches and Christian control throughout much of

Spain. In spite of the rededication of Catholic structures, however, the apologists argue that Catholic sacred space remained in danger of destruction so long as the converted

Moriscos remained in Spanish territory. The late sixteenth-century miracle of Our Lady of Tobed, for example, in which a statue of the Virgin Mary began to sweat profusely, provides supporting evidence to Aznar Cardona of the Moriscos’ continued “culpas tan ofensivas a la Virgen,”93 As her tears and drops of perspiration indicate, her suffering in the presence of alleged infidels had not disappeared in spite of conversions to

Christianity. Some offenses, Fonseca claims, were so horrendous that he intentionally omits them from his diatribe, “por no ofender con ellas los oídos del pio lector.”94

One of these offenses was alleged Morisco destruction of Christian crosses.

Revered as a symbol of the faith since the crucifixion, the true cross is said to have been rescued for Christendom from Jerusalem in the fourth century by Saint Helena,

92 Chapter 2, “Cultures in Contact.” 93 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:26. 94 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 304. 144

Constantine’s mother.95 Devotion to the cross became increasingly pronounced in the

Medieval Church from the time of Helena’s trip to Jerusalem through the eleventh century,96 and Medieval Christendom was thus decorated with crosses as the faith spread and took root throughout Europe. Bleda relates a prophecy in in 609 as described by St. Theodore Siceotes97 in which many such crosses moved of their own accord, “un movimiento estraño y espantable.”98 To the saint—and likewise to the apologist—such unexplained movement was a symbol of foreboding, a prediction of calamity. Bleda explains that

por aquella concusión de las Cruces, se nos señalan grandes males, muchísimas molestias, y gravísimas calamidades, que habemos de padecer: porque significa que muchos han de dejar nuestra santa Religión: ha de haber bravas incursionas, y venidas de bárbaras gentes, y mucho derramamiento de sangre, incendios, muertes, y sediciones en todo el orbe, y las santas Iglesias quedarán desiertas: y señala el acabamiento del culto divino, y de el Imperio: y que se acerca la venida del Adversario.99

95 Antonio Martínez, El Día de la Cruz en Granada: noticias acerca de una celebración religiosa y popular, (Granada: Ayuntamiento de Granada, 2005), 5-12. Saint Helena’s retrieval of the true cross is commemorated by the Feast of the Holy Cross, originally called the feast of the Finding of the Cross (May 3rd). A similar holy day, the Exaltation of the Cross, marks Heraclius’s retrieval of the true cross from the Persians in the seventh century (September 14th). 96 José Sánchez Herrero, “El origen de las cofradías penitenciales” in Sevilla Penitente, ed. Enrique Pareja López, et al. (Seville: Editorial Gever, 1995), 21. 97 See also the account of Ambrose Lisle Phillips, Mahometanism in its Relation to Prophecy: or, an Inquiry into the Prophecies Concerning Antichrist, with Some Reference to their Bearing on the Events of the Present Day (London: Charles Dolman, 1855), 68-9. 98 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 99 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 145

As the crosses rise up, their “strange and frightening” movement suggests confusion, uncertainty, and possible schism within the faith. This sign, according to the apologists, alerts Christians to the possibility of their impending destruction, a symbol of greater devastation to the faith by means of Muslim—and later Morisco—destruction of Catholic sacred structures. The prophecy warns Christians to make sense out of the confusion symbolized by the cross and take action against Muslim destruction. Bleda sees the end of the Spanish Catholic church foreshadowed in the Saint’s prediction, represented in the

Moriscos par excellence. Fonseca likewise claims that the Moriscos expressed their will to destroy Christianity by attacking the Crucifix, the beginning phase of a campaign that would signify the end of the faith. He states that displaying the cross was a holy symbol the Moriscos simply would not tolerate,

pues no se pueden referir sin lágrimas, las injurias, y contumelias, que cometían contra las cruces que halaban en los caminos, y aun mas en particular, contra las que encontraban en despoblados, adonde no podían ser vistos. Las unas derribaban por el suelo, otras volvían de arriba a abajo, estas escupían, les daban de coces, aquellas acuchillaban, y aun algunas hacían astillas para el fuego.100

This alleged Morisco desire to destroy the Crucifix, particularly in abandoned towns, suggests for the apologists that Christian imagery was so repugnant to the Moriscos and so antithetical to their spiritual being (or lack therefore) that they could not coexist with it. This idea highlights the apologists’ greater mission to portray the impossible cohabitation of Christian and crypto-Muslim, justifying the expulsion for the protection of Christian identity.

100 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 124. 146

According to the apologists, such physical destruction of the cross inspired

Christians to reconsider their production methods, “de suerte que temían los Cristianos labrarlas de madera, y así las hacían de piedra y aún de hierro para que pudiesen resistir a los golpes con que las herían.”101 In her study of archival documents in Cuenca, García

Arenal cites various examples of alleged Morisco disdain for the cross, including an instance in which Morisco prisoners “sacan pajas de sus colchones, hacen cruces con ellas, y las pisotean en el suelo.”102 She also quotes a document that claims that several

Moriscos took the body of a decesased Christian “amortajada y la boca hacía abajo y un aspa en las espalda a manera de cruz sobre las nalgas por hazer escarnio y burla de la dicha cruz.”103 Such treatment of the cross suggests not only a desire to destroy the object but also acknowledges Christian sensitivity to its treatment.

Fonseca similarly claims that the Moriscos could not stand to see crosses painted on walls, and as a symbol of ultimate disrespect and disdain, “las entallaban en los ladrillos del suelo de sus casas, por hollarlas frecuentemente.”104 Bleda gives similar examples of desecration of the cross, stating that “[c]ontra la santa Cruz eran también muy injuriosos estos sus enemigos: perseguían las que estaban en las salidas de los lugares, y por los ánimos apedreábanlas, dábanles de cuchilladas, derribáuanlas,”105

101 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 124. 102 Garcia Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, 103. 103 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca, leg. 290, num. 4068. Quoted in Garcia Arena, Inquisición y moriscos, 103. 104 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 124. 105 Bleda, Crónica, 899. 147 noting that in some places it was necessary “hacerlas de hierro: para que durasen.”106 He also accuses the Moriscos of slashing crosses with their scimitars, lamenting such sacrilegious abuse to the symbol of “el estandarte imperial de Cristo,” calling for its defense on Spanish soil.107 Referring to the cross as Christ’s imperial seal further highlights the apologists’ position that Christianity lays rightful claim on the . The apologist therefore asserts that Christ remains emperor-in-chief of all who reside there, aiming to conquer them once and for all for the Christian faith. The conscious use of the term alfanje for the Moriscos’ weapon of choice is another example of imbuing cultural practice with religious significance, alluding to Muslim destruction of

Christianity. In choosing a weapon charged with ethnic connotations—in this case a decidedly Arabian sword with a curved blade—the apologists seek to link the Moriscos to a cultural and religious tradition independent of the tool’s everyday practical applications in Morisco Spain. To destroy a Christian cross with a scimitar is, in the apologists’ minds, deeply emblematic of the Moriscos’ inherent cultural and religious opposition to Christianity, a further phase in the symbolic war between the sects. In his study of Catholic feasts devoted to the cross and their celebration in Granada, Martínez observes that in this vein, Granadan Christians displayed the cross as a symbol of

Christian victory during moments in history “en que Granada aún tenía abiertas las heridas por la sublevación de los moriscos (1568-1570).”108 Likewise, when Christians

106 Bleda, Crónica, 899. 107 Bleda, Crónica, 899. 108 Martínez, El Día de la Cruz en Granada, 32. 148 feared Muslim contamination of Christian doctrine following the discovery of the Libros

Plúmbeos in the late sixteenth century, they decorated the hillside and path leading up to it with crosses.109 In this way, the cross becomes a symbol of Christian solidarity in defense of the faith against a perceived Morisco threat.

Bleda is so offended by Morisco destruction of crosses that he had initially proposed to the king the creation of “una Hermosa hermandad, y cofradía de la Cruz, y por su industria quedaron las santas Cruzes defendidas, y vengadas de aquellos sacrílegos hereges que las infestaban de continuo.”110 But of course removing the Moriscos from

Spain altogether solved the problem more completely, and he rejoices that “ya hemos sacado la Cruz de las ofensas que le hacían los Moriscos.”111 This proposed brotherhood seems to be a sort of offshoot of the Order of Santiago, a quasi-militaristic defender of the Catholic faith and institution Bleda deems most admirable.112

The apologists accuse the Moriscos of treating other Catholic religious images in similar manners to their alleged disrespect of Christian crosses. Fonseca, for example, describes Morisco display of images of the saints in their homes according to Church mandate as laden with the appearance of purposeful and blasphemous neglect, “mal puestas, unas veces de lado, otras cabeza abajo, llenas de suciedad, de telarañas, y rasgadas: escupíanlas, dábanles nombres de oprobrio, y les hacían otras semejantes

109 Martínez, El Día de la Cruz en Granada, 32-7. 110 Bleda, Crónica, 981. 111 Bleda, Crónica, 981. 112 For further discussion of Santiago, see Chapter 1, “Parameters for the Faith.” 149 afrentas.”113 Similar to the manner in which the apologists characterize Morisco neglect of appearance when attending compulsory mass, Fonseca highlights what he views as crypto-Muslim silent protest of Catholic dogma.

It would appear that destruction of sacred objects by fire offended the apologists more than any other type of physical violence because of fire’s all-consuming nature and resulting total annihilation. They speak of rebellious Moriscos in Granada burning all of the towns

por donde pasaban, en particular los suyos donde eran naturales…Y aunque era este notable atrevimiento, lo que mas nos llegaba al alma, y no se puede escribir sin muy grande sentimiento, es que como herejes perversos, ningún respeto guardaban à los templos, à las imagines santas, ni a los cálices, y ornamentos sacerdotales que hallaban en las sacristías, antes derribaban las Iglesias, acuchillaban las cruces, quemaban los Santos, profanaban las vestiduras sacras.114

These blatant acts of physical destruction, he claims, are more sacrilegious than any acts committed by any crusading Moors of Algiers or Turks from Constantinople, who were more likely, at least in the apologists’ opinions, to steal such items. Burning Christian images rather than claiming them for oneself suggests to the apologists a complete disdain for the church on the part of the Moriscos. It is also important to note that the apologist accuses the Moriscos of burning their own home towns, suggesting that their destruction is cruel, ruthless, and knows no bounds. This destruction, they intimate, is even more threatening to Spanish Christendom than external Muslim advance from the

Ottoman Empire for its desire to completely annihilate Christianity from its roots. It can

113 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 128. 114 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 295-6. 150 be sharply contrasted with, for example, Aznar Cardona’s characterization of initial

Muslim conquest in the Peninsula, whereby crusading forces stole priceless artifacts and profited from them,

habiéndose hallado en Babilonia, la de Caldea, tal copia de ellas, que a penas en todo lo demás del mundo se pudieran hallar otras tantas; y entre ellas pienso había muchísimas de España, robadas, de cuando la ganaron al Rey don Rodrigo. Sin duda que estarían allí juntas, todas las de España, las de África, y de otros Reinos; y así fueron innumerables, y las más preciosas que en el mundo había: porque se sabe que robaron la cama real de los Godos, que estaba en Toledo, de donde llevaron la mesa de Salomón, tan rica, y de tan preciosa material, como la alaban, que era toda de Esmeraldas; y un cántaro de Aljófar, sin los demás ornamentos: y otro cántaro de Esmeralda, que hallaron en Mérida.115

He claims that the Moriscos’ Muslim ancestors had assumed the riches for themselves, thereby assigning to the sacred objects monetary value, legitimizing their significance and importance. The Moriscos, on the other hand, allegedly devastated the images in their entirety, expressly rejecting their value, both monetary and spiritual.

I would also offer that the apologists express a concern—although more indirect—over Spanish Christendom’s ability to continue the practice of revering God through sacred images and objects when they criticize alleged Morisco hoarding of

Spanish wealth. The splendor of Catholic images had been a means of measuring reverence and piety dating back to the Middle Ages when prosperous guilds and religious brotherhoods donated money to fund the production of such items.116 Religious images and objects were costly. Replacing them after alleged Morisco destruction would be

115 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:147. 116 Eire, War Against the Idols, 13-4. 151 difficult, particularly if the Moricos also threatened the Christian community’s finances in other ways. Quoting the Archbishop, for example, Fonseca refers to the Moriscos as

“la esponja de toda la riqueza de España, y así es sin duda que ay grandísima cantidad de oro, y plata en su poder.”117 The Archbishop and the apologists likewise accuse the

Moriscos of fabricating false currency, as discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. These coins made of low-quality metals Fonseca asserts were designed to deceive Christians,

“porque los mezclaban con los Buenos…y como hallaban muchos que ciegos con la avaricia, aceptaban el cambio, íbanse desta suerte apoderando poco à poco de toda la plata del Reino, y llevándolo de moneda falsa.”118 For Fonseca, this machination on the part of the Moriscos was designed entirely “para acabar de destruir el Reino, de plata, y de oro.”119 The Moriscos also purportedly contribute to this destroying the kingdom of its riches in devastating monetarily valuable Christian objects. As a result of Morisco circulation of false currency, the apologists would argue, the kingdoms hardly possess the wealth to replace the items lost to Morisco destruction.

All of these forms of physical destruction of Catholic structures and objects, the apologists argue, are emblematic of an attack on the Heavenly Father and His celestial kingdom. For example, Aznar Cardona gives a list of Morisco crimes against

Christianity, each time equating destruction on earth with destruction of God’s kingdom.

He states that the Moriscos “[a]solaron los Monasterios, vergeles del Paraíso: violaron las

117 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 190. 118 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 263. 119 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 326. 152 sagradas Vírgenes, imitadoras de los Ángeles, y Esposas de Jesu Cristo…[a]rrojaron furiosos las Reliquias de los cuerpos santos, que fueron Templos vivos del Espíritu

Santo.”120 Each act of terrestrial destruction corresponds to a heavenly counterpart, suggesting that destruction on earth is mere devastation in effigy of God’s Paradise, or the future of the Christian community. The apologists argue that the Moriscos receive their comeuppance of a sort for attacks on God’s kingdom when they are exiled to North

Africa. There many of the destructive crimes they allegedly committed on Spanish soil are visited upon them in the . Fonseca notes to this effect that the Moriscos were shocked by the barren land they encountered across the Mediterranean, in comparison to the lush, fertile land they had enjoyed in Spain. He states that “cuando los miserables desterrados, descubrieron bien la aspereza de la tierra donde entraban, aquellos montes fragosos, e infructíferos; los arenales desiertos, e inhabitables por donde caminaban,”121 the Moriscos were thus punished for wreaking havoc and destruction in God’s chosen

Spanish land, forcibly removed from it and forced to endure the hardship of its polar opposite. Bleda refers to their confrontation with North Africa as expulsion from earthy paradise “a la mayor desventura que les podía acaecer.”122 Moreover, the Moriscos found themselves face to face with violent persecution, “sujetos à gente Árabe, y bestial, que era que no matasen a unos, robasen a otros, y deshonrasen sus mujeres.”123

120 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:146-7. 121 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 277. 122 Bleda, Crónica, 981. 123 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 277. 153

Bleda seems to think that the Moriscos should have expected nothing less in being handed over “a crueles verdugos de su misma ley, y crecía.”124 The torture they experience on earth at the hands of other Muslims is a sure sign to the apologists of their ultimate eternal damnation.125

A Threat to National Identity

In Henry Kamen’s recent examination of Spanish identity, Imagining Spain:

Historical Myth & National Identity,126 on the very first page of the first chapter the author states that historians agree

that the myth of Spain as a nation was born around 1808 or 1812. The exact date is not important, for there is general accord about the significance of that decade. The army of revolutionary France had occupied the peninsula and eventually dethroned its king, setting up Napoleon’s brother Joseph as the new ruler. On 2 May—celebrated by some as the beginning of Spain’s “independence”—the people of Madrid and other towns rose against the foreign troops. If a common enemy can help people to bond together and form a nation, then Spain had a good

124 Bleda, Crónica, 1021. 125 There is certainly evidence that this point of view did not resonate with all Christian Spaniards, and several literary accounts of the era suggest a certain sympathy on the part of Old Christians with the plight of their former Morisco neighbors. For a discussion of Cervantes’s character Ricote and sympathy for Moriscos exiled from their homeland, see Hitchcock, “Cervantes, Ricote and the Expulsion of the Moriscos,” 175-85. For a discussion of a curious sympathy for the Moriscos in the Calderon’s drama, see Margaret Rich Greer, “The Politics of Memory in El Tuzaní de la Alpujarra” in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain, ed. Richard J. Pym (Rochester: Tamesis, 2006), 113-130. For a discussion of similar sympathetic leanings in Juan Rufo’s La Austriada, see Elizabeth B. Davis, Myth and Identity in the Epic of Imperial Spain, (Columbia: University of Press, 2000), 61-97. 126 Henry Kamen, Imagining Spain: Historical Myth & National Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 154

opportunity to emerge as one when it faced the occupying French army that kept on the thrown.127

These particular historians ascribe wholeheartedly to a modernist vision of nationalism, taking their cues from pioneers in the study of nation-building and formation as a product of the modern era.128 In this line of thought, the nation is an impossible concept before the nineteenth century when secular revolutionary movements sought to replace religious governing, giving birth to the nation of the modern era. It is a vision of nation formation with which H. Eric R. Olson129 takes issue, suggesting that “episodes of pre-modern

‘patriotism’ suggest that the theoretical insistence on the novelty and modernity of nationalism creates an unjustifiable and unnecessary breach with the past.”130

Like Olson, Liah Greenfeld,131 Adrian Hastings,132 and Anthony D. Smith133 dispute the modernist nation-building paradigm, arguing that a sense of community drives nationalistic fervor, and such sentiment is evident among communities that

127 Kamen, Imagining Spain, 1. 128 See, for example, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 129 H. Eric R. Olson, The Calabrian Charlatan, 1598-1603: Messianic Nationalism in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave, 2003). 130 Olson, Calabrian Charlatan, 21. 131 Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). 132 Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 133 Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 155 imagined themselves as cohesive units long before the dawn of the modern era. These scholars, who believe in the nation’s more primordial origins, shed light on the apologists’ early modern nationalistic sensibilities as they make appeals to their audience’s patriotic spirit. As we have seen in the discussion of the apologists’ construction of Spain as a Catholic nation from its roots in Chapter 1, the apologists begin to assert their vision of the cohesive Spanish Catholic community by designating

Spain as the protected land of God’s chosen people. The destruction of sacred spaces discussed in this chapter represents to the apologists a direct threat to their identity as

Spaniards. Spain is, as Aznar Cardona states, “tierra de Católicos,”134 a chosen people whose mission is to protect God’s kingdom on earth and safeguard Catholicism—the truth faith—from any threat to its integrity. Aznar Cardona claims that in this God- ordained endeavor, Christian Spaniards had hitherto proven themselves worthy of the task. Spain had successfully preserved her Christian faith in spite of numerous threats, protecting her God-granted preeminence. The Morisco expulsion is therefore the final phase in the great Reconquista project, capable of permanently sealing off Spain’s borders and protecting it once and for all as a Catholic nation. Aznar Cardona therefore imagines the Spanish Catholic nation as now pure, untainted, and whole when he praises his homeland’s valiant efforts at defending the faith. He states, “O Católica

España…conservaste no obstante eso, tus moradores (con el favor del Cielo) tan puros en

134 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:59. 156 la Fe Cristiana, tan firmes, tan sin mezcla de secta alguna, tan Católicos, y tan obedientes a la Iglesia Romana, como si jamás infiel alguno hubieras visto.”135

Olson terms this critical component of national identity “chosenness,” observing that the feeling of being a member of a selected group creates “the sense of cultural solidarity, the imagining of community, the willingness to die for that community.”136

For Smith, being selected and forming part of the covenant are part of the “sacred foundations”137 of national identity, a topic which Maginer discusses at length as a means of placing the Spanish apologists within the larger cultural context of their self-concept as

God’s preeminent elect.138 In this vein, Guadalajara refers to the Spanish as “queridos de

Dios.”139 He likewise states that as such,

los mas que dichosos pueblos de España, por la Fe Católica de Jesu Cristo nuestro Señor y Redentor (tan arraigada y bien fundada en ellos) los ha Dios siempre tenido por tan propios suyos. Que los ha regalado con tan extraordinarios regalos, como es notorio: y dado uno de sus mas queridos Apóstoles por Patrón y defensor, y su primo en sangre, por recta línea de aquella insigne y generoso de su Real y divino Profeta; y tan celoso en ensalzar con sus gentes Católicas esta divina Fe en todo el mundo: para que con la espada en la mano, se mostrase siempre en su ayuda y defensa en las batallas, que han tenido con los barbaros infieles a su divina ley.140

Spanish Catholics therefore have at their disposal all of the necessary (and God-given) tools with which to preserve their community. The challenge, the apologists postulate, is

135 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:141. 136 Olson, Calabrian Charlatan, 24-5. 137 Smith, Chosen Peoples, 5; 44-65; 66-94. 138 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 49-84. 139 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 11. 140 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 11. 157 to recognize the need to use those tools in defense of the nation. As they work to demonstrate the extent to which the Church is under duress, they hope to stress to their audience the imminent danger to Spain’s nationhood.

To Smith, the Biblical underpinnings of this mode of self-perception go without saying. He states that throughout the course of his research on national identities,

Old Testament beliefs in chosen peoples and sacred territories were a continual source of inspiration and language for a dynamic providential history among so many Christian peoples in Europe and America; and that in turn was vital for their growing sense of national identity in the early modern epoch. The religious aspect, rooted in the Hebrew Bible, appeared therefore to complement and reinforce their sense of common ethnicity.141

Hastings adds that it was through translations of the Bible into the vernacular that such a sense of community was able to develop. He states that “[o]nce an ethnicity’s vernacular becomes a language with an extensive living literature of its own, the Rubicon on the road to nationhood appears to have been crossed.”142 The apologists appear to see the truths of their own sacred writings in direct competition with the Morisco Other, as Aznar

Cardona observes when he states that the Moriscos “peruirtierō a muchos, con documētos ereticos.”143 The apologists’ fight to preserve Spanish national identity therefore becomes a battle of texts. The winner’s creed will bind the community together in religious unity, forming the basis of national identity.

141 Smith, Chosen Peoples, viii. 142 Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, 12. 143 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:145. 158

Together scholars of nationalism like Smith and Hastings make religion an inextricable component of nation-formation, and the Spanish apologists would certainly agree. Fonseca asserts that unity is essential for nationhood, “[p]rimeramente, oráculo es de la primera verdad, que por serlo, ni puede engañar, ni ser engañada, que cualquier

Reino donde hay división, se perderá, porque así como el cuerpo, cuyos humores se conciertan mal entre si, está muy ocasionada y, muy vecino a la enfermedad, y a la muerte, así el Reino dividido. While any division in the kingdom is dangerous, none is more fatal than that of religion. According to Fonseca, “Y aunque la división en todas materias es muy perniciosa para conservarse una República; pero ninguna mayor, ni más peligrosa, que la división concerniente a la Religión, porque como por la Religión estemos obligados, a perder todo lo por defensa de la Religión que profesa, arrisgará todo lo dicho.144 He states that the kingdom that admits division will be destroyed,145 calling religion “el nervio, y atadura de los Reinos, y Estados, y así dividiéndose, o quebrantándose esta, es fuerza que ellos también se dividían, y acaben: como de hecho se acaban los Reinos, que permiten herejes sin ser castigados.”146

The goal of the apologists’ texts, therefore, is to highlight the peril in which the chosen people of the sacred Spanish Catholic nation find themselves when threatened by religious division in the kingdom. Bleda worries that the immaculate faith cannot survive while under duress in Spain, noting “en cuan grande peligro estaba España, siendo desta

144 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 170. 145 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 172. 146 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 190. 159 manera escarnecido, e injuriado el Santísimo Sacramento en ella, donde tanto floreció siempre la Fe y su devoción: y cuan grande misericordia de Dios fue, no habernos acabado a todos por tan horrendos sacrilegios.”147 With Morisco destruction of its sacred structures and sacramental activity and the threat to Catholicism of Reformation destruction of images, the true faith saw itself relegated to “el Rincón más Católico tan llena de estos apóstatas Mahometanos”148 in Spain. The apologists argue that valiant efforts had been made bring the converted Moriscos into the fold—what Bell149 refers to the universal Christian community that preaches the salvation of all of its members. But the Moriscos, through continued apostasy, had proven themselves to exist unashamedly outside the confines of this Christian community. To the apologists, the Moriscos represent a living threat, committing notorious crimes in the midst of true Christians.

Aznar Cardona states they committed these crimes, “estando entre nosotros con título de

Cristianos, poseyendo nuestras tierras, mantenidos, de los frutos que gozar debiéramos los Católicos.”150 He asserts, therefore, that the Moriscos take away from Catholics the full benefits of the national community entitled to them. Aznar Cardona argues for the

Moriscos’ complete inability to assimilate, stating “ni el más eloquente podría contar, los desconociertos, las torpezas, y conversaciones nacidas del bárbaro modo de criarse sin

147 Bleda, Crónica, 898. 148 Bleda, Crónica, 972. 149 David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism 1680-1800 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 47-8. Bell argues that the nascent French nation of the Revolution retained many such “Catholic” foundational elements that set it apart from the Protestant ideals of early modern England. 150 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:38. 160 disciplina y sin enseñanza política y doctrina de bien vivir.”151 In actively rejecting its embrace, the apologists argue, the Moriscos deserve exclusion. And as the governor of the chosen people, the responsibility for cleansing the realm rests with the monarch,

Philip III.

The king is therefore entrusted with the defense of Spain’s Catholic identity and the protection of sacred space from further assault. Aznar Cardona refers to Philip III as

“Rey escogido, dado de la mano de Dios, por legítima sucesión y herencia, derecho cabal para Reinar legítimamente, ajeno de toda usurpación y tiranía, aproado por la Iglesia

Católica, y por sus leyes justas.”152 He is “legítimo y querido, aprobado por el tribunal del mismo Dios, la Iglesia romana, que aprueba por derecho legítimo para Reinar, la legítima decadencia en el Reino, por línea hereditaria de fieles y obedientes a Dios, que reconocen a la Iglesia romana por cabeza; y en esto excede nuestro Rey Felipe, por antigüedad y nobleza, a todos los Reyes del mundo.”153 As such he is symbolized by the angel guardian of paradise or by Joshua, captain of the Lord’s army.154

Philip’s role is to protect Spain’s borders, to defend it from the entrance of outsiders who contaminate the purity of the Catholic faith, and to protect the Spanish

Catholic nation. Aznar Cardona describes Philip, therefore, as a “cortesano celestial, protector del Paraíso terreno, en cuya potente mano, estaba aquel montante de dos

151 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:38. 152 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:77. 153 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:77. 154 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:80. 161 afilados cortes, para defender la entrada de aquel lugar deleitoso a los malos espíritus, y a los hombres desterrados por indignos del.”155 Philip is “Rey nuestro, Salvaguardia y ampara del Paraíso Espiritual, de la Iglesia Cristiana, Tutor y pacificador de la república,

Protector de los opresos, Conservador de las leyes divinas, y humanas, Guerreador belicoso por las causas al honor de Dios anexas, y Mantenedor de la justicia Enfrenador y domador de los ánimos feroces y bestiales, y de los pueblos, y gentes insolentes, que abusaron de la benignidad.”156 For as Fonseca states, “la mayor honra de todas es la compañía de los fieles.”157

155 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:81. 156 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:81. 157 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 249. Chapter Four:

A Culture of Fear

A Difficult Decision

The apologists’ treatises justifying the expulsion of Spain’s Moriscos are hardly the stuff of street-level political propaganda: pamphlets that fit neatly into pockets, intended for mass circulation. All of the works under consideration here span at least several hundred large-format folios, Bleda’s Crónica tipping the scales at nearly 1200 pages. The works are dedicated to an elite audience of important political figures including King Philip III himself, and all universally proclaim the uncompromised success of the expulsion campaign. While expressing their own unwavering promotion of the decision, the authors praise clergy and royal advisors whose efforts directly affected the king’s decision to formally issue the 1609 expulsion decree. Why, then, did clerics like Aznar Cardona undertake the task of composing such weighty treatises justifying an event they deemed so unequivocally laudable? Some answers to this perplexing question can most likely be found in political debates that preceded the official expulsion decree that continued well into the actual process of deporting the Morisco refugees.

Expulsion was first discussed and entertained during the reign of Philip II, but the monarch’s attention and resources always seemed to lie elsewhere, caught up with political unrest in the Netherlands and armada missions to England. His ultimate decision to see the Moriscos converted and incorporated into the larger Spanish Catholic society,

162 163 however uncommitted he proved to be in procuring actual results, passed along to his son

Philip III. The new king likewise opted to give the Moriscos another chance at assimilation.1 At the beginning of his reign, he gave the Moriscos a grace period in which to mend their ways, later becoming discouraged when complete conversion was nowhere in sight. Over the course of the next decade, as in the final decades of Philip II’s reign, meeting after meeting of royal councilors and theologians failed to bring about a unanimously applauded resolution to the Morisco conundrum. Theologians continued to debate the morality of expelling baptized Christians while royal advisors differed in their opinions regarding the danger the Moriscos represented to Spain’s safety. To further complicate matters, influential people who had once supported the Moriscos’ continued presence in Spain on either religious or economic grounds experienced drastic changes of heart. Archbishop Ribera, for example, the real mouthpiece of the expulsion, had begun his tenure advocating for a true conversion of the Moriscos, welcoming them into the

Christian fold. It was only after years of failed conversion attempts that his optimism began to sour and he started championing wholesale expulsion. In a similar manner, prior to the Duke of Lerma’s appointment as chief advisor to the king, the then Marquis of

Denia initially opposed the expulsion on the grounds that it would devastate Valencia’s economy. Home to his family and his estate, many of his financial interests lay in Denia along the Valencian Mediterranean coast where he was landlord to many Morisco

1 James B. Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 97-8. Tueller notes that when a junta of theologians convened in 1581 recommended concrete measures to further the conversion efforts, including building churches and punishing Morisco alfaquíes who violated regulations, Philip II ignored the recommendations. 164 workers.2 Williams3 and Feros4 suggest that in spite of his land holdings in Valencia,

Lerma took great pride in his Old Castilian heritage, hoping that as his wealth and prestige would increase as a result of his influence at court. His true economic interests, therefore, were intimately tied to his success in Castile, where economic gain would rid him of generations of debt his family accrued. He became the king’s most influential supporter of expulsion, softening his views on the potential impact on Valencia and proposing that lords once reliant on Morisco labor would benefit from purchase of

Morisco estates. Harvey asserts that the Duke of Lerma’s turnaround was the most significant political development of the late sixteenth century with regard to the

Moriscos,5 offering the potential to enslave Morisco males as possible incentive for the avaricious Duke.6

Philip III, greatly influenced by Lerma’s sudden change of heart at the turn of the century, went on to advocate for expulsion, often making marginal notes in government documents recording the discussions that indicated his new resolve.7 Yet time and again expulsion orders were delayed, and it was an entire decade before the first ship set sail

2 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 128. 3 Patrick Williams, “Lerma, Old Castile and the Travels of Philip III of Spain,” History 73 (1988): 379-97. 4 Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598-1621 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 32-47. 5 Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 297. 6 Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 301. 7 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 141. He notes that documents from the Archivo General de Simancas indicate that the king had written phrases such as “den calor a ello, desse mucha prisa, and con todo el calor possible” in reference to Morisco expulsion. 165 with Morisco refugees aboard. Lack of conviction likewise characterized the entire expulsion process. As officials carried out each phase of the expulsion from 1609 to

1614, the king and his advisors began to realize that they had created what Tueller calls a

“governmental nightmare.”8 As early as 1580, a then-tentative Archbishop Ribera had remarked on the logistical difficulties of expelling such a large segment of the population en masse. His fears proved entirely justified as unrest and anxiety increased among Old

Christians and Moriscos alike. Old Christians took advantage of the vulnerable Moriscos, stealing from them, attacking them, and sexually assaulting the women in spite of the king’s command that the Moriscos depart unharmed.9 The huge influx of exiles in Oran led the Spanish commandant to request that new waves of Moriscos be sent elsewhere, as he already had some 22,000 with which to contend.10 Meanwhile, on the home front,

Moriscos in Castile and Granada began to petition the court, hoping to prove their status as faithful Christians before they too were expelled.11 In addition, confusion arose over how to accurately identify Moriscos, with some lords and clergy members claiming that their Moriscos were true converts to Christianity, others claiming that theirs were so wholly integrated into the community that it was impossible to find defining features that set them apart as Moriscos.12 After the Valencian expulsion was deemed complete,

8 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 157. 9 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 157. 10 Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 315. 11 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 160. 12 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians, 159-60, 201-18. 166

Aragonese nobles began to protest, fearing their Moriscos were next on the expulsion agenda.13 The king’s response to the ensuing chaos was bureaucratic backtracking. His resulting series of exceptions to expulsion decrees’ stipulations regarding whom should be expelled and what he or she could bring with along were designed to calm the waters at home, but they confused Old Christians and Moriscos alike, and certainly inspired anxiety in the apologists.14

The apologists, who wholeheartedly backed any decision that would result in the spiritual and ethnic cleansing of the realm,15 wrote their treatises in a climate of upheaval in which no decision seemed easy or final. In writing their tracts while the expulsion was in full-swing, political unrest and wavering on the king’s part suggest that they had reason to fear a large-scale return to Spain of the exiled Moriscos. In this chapter, therefore, I argue that the apologists attempt to effect a permanent sealing of Spain’s borders by employing tactics designed to inspire fear of this potential danger. To accomplish this goal, the apologists appeal to the Christian Spaniards’ very basic instinct for physical safety and survival as well as to Catholic fears of the end of days and eternal damnation that were prevalent in early modern Christian society. In harnessing common secular and spiritual fears, the Catholic apologists aim to inspire their audience into political action—an appeal that we recognize as a staple of politics and governing both in

13 Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 317. 14 Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians,159-63. 15 For further reading on violence and fear of amongst religious and ethnic groups in Spain, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 167 our own time and in the centuries that separate our era from the seventeenth-century

Morisco expulsion.

Economic Distress

Spain’s economic distress lay at the heart of many of the political debates concerning the Moriscos and clearly added to the apologists’ fears of the inevitability of

Morisco return. The splendor of the early sixteenth-century Spanish economy was built, as John Lynch observes, “on the twin foundations of land and silver, Castilian agriculture and American mining.”16 Colonizing endeavors in the New World supplied by agrarian efforts on the home-front had resulted in incomparable wealth for the Castilian court, funding Philip II’s extensive and expensive imperialistic enterprises in Europe. When kingship passed into the hands of Philip’s son in 1598, the new King Philip continued his father’s legacy of lavish spending, only with fewer political ambitions. By the turn of the seventeenth century, the Spanish economy had bankrupted itself several times over, manipulating Castilian currency and borrowing in excess from foreign lenders. As the

Mexican and Peruvian economies evolved, requiring fewer agricultural products from

Spain and more manufactured goods, Spain’s once tightly-controlled and profitable

16 John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598-1700 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 1. For more on the early modern Spanish economy see Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, La Sociedad española en el siglo XVII (Madrid: Instituto Balmes de Sociología, 1963), and J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964). 168 relationship with its colonies became less stable, unable to keep up with the new demands.

At the same time that the once-powerful Spanish economy began to crumble, the

Jewish community in Portugal came under increased scrutiny with the birth of a separate

Portuguese Inquisition in 1547. Even though Philip II had united the two crowns in 1580, the remained distinct entities, its Portuguese incarnation proving ruthless in the trial of Jews and conversos.17 Many of these Jews, whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain in the late fifteenth century, began seeking asylum in the neighboring Spanish kingdoms. Refuge in Spain, however, came at a price, and after numerous costly wars and other expenditures, the bankrupt Spanish court willingly took monetary bribes from displaced Jews in exchange for their safety. Nolan notes that Philip III was so overwhelmed by the debts his father had incurred that the pope authorized him in 1602 to accept a bribe of 1,860,000 ducats from a wealthy Jewish exile. In exchange for this handsome gift, the pope granted general pardon to “Judaizers” who sought refuge in

Spain.18 And so it came to be that the Jews, thought to have been expelled once and for all from Spanish soil, were back. Court bankruptcy had proven a powerful enough force for Church and Crown to reverse an expulsion decree.19

17 Cathal J. Nolan, The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650, vol 1 (Westport: Greenwood, 2006), 279. 18 Nolan, The Age of Wars, 279. 19 For further reading on the influence of Jews on Spain’s finances in the decades following the expulsion, see Julio Caro Baroja, La Sociedad critptojudia en la corte de Felipe IV (Madrid: Imprenta y Editorial Maestre, 1963). For a vitriolic seventeenth- 169

While the apologists make no formal mention of the Jews’ financial role in

Spanish affairs or the pope’s subsequent pardon, I would argue that the potential for future asylum for the expelled Moriscos seems to be at the root of the apologists’ fears.

Throughout their treatises, the apologists repeatedly glorify Ferdinand and Isabel’s efforts in bringing about their expulsion, praising their role in establishing the tribunal of the

Holy Office. Their Reconquista legacy of expelling the infidel from Spanish territory extends hereditarily to Philip III, forming a critical component of his genetic makeup. His issuing of the Morisco expulsion decree represents only the latest and greatest in a series of his ancestors’ noble expulsion projects. Aznar Cardona, for example, praises the king for his expulsion commitment, stating,

que aunque nuestro Rey tiene este supremo renombre de Católico, legítimamente heredado de su singular y clara descendencia, de los altos Reyes de España, fue preclarísimos antecesores y progenitores, pero ahora por el hecho heroico de la Expulsión de los infieles Mahometanos, juntamente con otros hechos religiosísimos, aunque fue Majestad Católica, con eminencia se ha señalado, y se señala de día en día, se le debe de todo rigor de justicia, ese glorioso renombre, no solo por derecho hereditario, sino por exceso de excelencia eminentísima en que excede al ordinario y común obrar de los otros virtuosos Reyes.20

Philip proves his worth as a great Catholic monarch by furthering a commitment to ridding the realm of people of Jewish and Moorish descent. While Ferdinand, Isabel, and

Charles V may have readied the land for Catholic hegemony, it is Philip III who carries out the plan to its fullest potential. The apologists’ characterization of Philip III as a century response to the Jews’ return to Spain, see Francisco de Quevedo, Execración contra los judíos (Barceolona: Editorial Crítica, 1993). 20 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:88-9. 170 triumphant and noble leader seems particularly interesting in light of the monarch’s reputation for indolence and lavish spending. The apologists, I would argue, hope that effusively praise of an otherwise criticzed king as a means of rehabilitating both his reputation and his ego. An appeased monarch, they hope, will prove more amenable to the policies the apologists advance.

Aznar Cardona directly links the Moriscos to the expelled Jews, calling them

“verdaderos judíos en el error”21 who seek salvation in superstitious ritual like circumcision rather than in Christ. He states that while the Jews themselves may believe their name derived from the virtuous Judah, son of Jacob, the name more accurately describes “descendientes de Judas el negativo, ingrato, traidor, y homicida, y capitán sacrílego de los homicidas que mataron a Cristo.”22 Bleda likewise connects the Moriscos to the Jews when he describes Muhammad’s search for followers among the Jews and commoners, “por ser tan fácil en creer novedades, al cual mas agradan las cosas fabulosas, y las invenciones mentirosas, que la doctrina e la verdad.”23 He explains that learned Church doctors, including “san Agustín, san Gerónimo, san Efrén, san Hipólito, y otros muchos santos padres,” 24 had written of the Jews’ likely attraction to Islam, stating,

“que los Judíos han de recibir al Anticristo por su Rey, y Mesías. Moviéronse

21 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:82. 22 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:178-9. 23 Bleda, Crónica, 15. 24 Bleda, Crónica, 16. 171 principalmente los Judíos a seguirle, por ver que aprobaba la circuncisión, y que predicaba entre los Alarbes.”25

Perhaps the most striking of the apologists’ comments regarding the Jews and their history on Spanish soil comes from Bleda’s lament on Visigothic weakness and the vulnerability of Spanish Christendom under Witiza in the eighth century. He notes that in addition to don Julian’s treason that opened the Spanish floodgates for Arab invasion,

Witiza likewise committed a great offense against the Catholic faith when he “mandó volver los Judíos al Reino de las tierras, adonde su padre el Rey Egica con tanta razón los había desterrado: y porqu ese viese, como lo hacía por desacato de la religión, les dio mayores privilegios, que jamás las Iglesias aquí habían tenido.”26 This king, like Philip, reversed a policy designed to safeguard and maintain Spanish Catholic hegemony.

Witiza’s moment of weakness is read by Philip and his advisors as an example of drastic upheaval that destabilizes the state and weakens its borders, making them vulnerable to further physical and ideological attack.

Clearly fearful that Spanish authorities would once again renege on an expulsion decision they consider essential to Spanish Catholic hegemony, the apologists then gloss over negative repercussions in the Morisco expulsion’s wake. In an effort to convince their readership that the expulsion had had nothing but positive results, the apologists take pains to note the ease with which the Spanish soldiers executed their orders and their relative “smooth sailing” across the Mediterranean where management of exiles was

25 Bleda, Crónica, 16. 26 Bleda, Crónica, 118. 172 concerned. For example, Aznar Cardona calls it a marvel “que dos pares de hombres leales, sin otras armas algunas, mas de ser el uno de ellos Comisario Real, sacasen y guiasen por donde dicho es, mil, y tres mil de ellos, sin suceder escandalo, sedición, alboroto, ni muerte de algún Cristiano. Quien lo creyera?27 To the apologist, the expulsion’s tranquil execution is an example of Divine providence, suggesting that the

Moriscos deserved their very justified expulsion. These Moriscos, the apologists argued, were in fact glad to go. Pleased to be reunited with their coreligionists abroad in a place where they were free to practice their faith openly, the Moriscos allegedly expressed little sadness in leaving their homeland, many of them celebrating their departure with festive song and dance. Bleda, for example, comments that the Moriscos awaiting expulsion

“iban con tanta alegría a las primeras embarcaciones, como nosotros fuéramos a la casa santa,”28 later quoting as evidence the statement of an important Morisco alfaquí who claimed that expulsion was preferable to the Moriscos’ habitual clandestine (and dangerous) passage between Spain and North Africa. The alfaquí comments, “[p]ues dándonos ahora embarcación segura, y franca, quién había de perder tan buena ocasión, para ir a la tierra, de donde vinieron nuestros pasados, y debajo el gobierno de nuestro

Rey el Turco, que nos dejara vivir como buenos Moros, y no nos trataran como a esclavos, como aquí nos trataban nuestros amos?”29

27 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:9-10. 28 Bleda, Crónica, 1001. 29 Bleda, Crónica, 1003. 173

The apologists also deny Morisco utility where the Spanish economy is concerned, hoping to dissuade the monarch from granting a similar right of return to the

Moriscos as he did when the Portuguese Jews proved economically indispensable. They remind their readers that the Moriscos had long held power over Spain’s finances by issuing false money and hoarding it, using it against the Crown to commit treason.

Guadalajara, for example, comments, “[v]éase pues, de cuánto inconuiniente sea, que nuestros enemigos declarados se vayan haciendo dueños, de lo que es dinero; consistiendo en el la mayor parte de la conservación, y prosperidad de la cosa pública.”30

This gold, they claim, remained in danger of exportation so long as the Moriscos amassed it and were later expelled. The apologists repeatedly accuse the Moriscos of creating and circulating false currency31 while maliciously hoarding genuine gold and silver with an intent to use the funds in retaliation against Spanish Christendom. The apologists therefore seek to reverse any claims that Morisco expulsion would be economically devastating for Spain, arguing that allowing the Moriscos to remain and continue counterfeiting money presents the true economic danger.

30 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 84. 31 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:52. For example, Aznar Cardona refers to the Moriscos as the first people to practice money laundring on the Peninsula:“Estos fueron los primeros falsarios de estos tipos que secretamente hicieron menudos y también reales cortos, y falsos en dos maneras: En el peso, porque un real, pesaba poco más de medio: y en la plata, porque en aquel medio ponían la mitad de otro bajo metal, y cundió tanto esta falsa moneda, que quando se advirtió estaba llenos de ella, todos estos reinos a donde han padecido por esa causa los ricos y los pobres grandemente, y hasta hoy sirve de capa de paliar esta maldad en los tramposos, mercaderes, ciudadanos, y oficiales, y malos pagadores que con decir corre mala moneda, se tienen la hacienda ajena.” 174

Fonseca is the apologist who perhaps pays closest attention to contemporary objections to the expulsion on economic and other grounds. His Iusta expulsion contains several chapters designed to refute any claims from Morisco sympathizers that the

Moriscos were harmless and incapable of rebellion or that their expulsion would come with damaging economic consequences. In regard to the latter, Fonseca includes a transcript of one of Ribera’s sermons that asserts that God is the ultimate presider over the expulsion enterprise, forever keeping in mind the safety, security, and honor of His faithful Christian Spaniards. The Archbishop states, “[e]sto que Cristo nuestro Señor promote, no puede faltar; porque el que lo promote no solo es verdadero, pero la misma verdad: y así podemos estar seguros, de que en todo se verá cumplida esta promesa; y que han de ser inumerables los bienes que se han de seguir a esta santa obra.”32 In terms of the lords’ financial losses with no more vassals to pay their rents, Ribera champions the safety of the estates over their previous incomes, arguing

porque la calidad de las haciendas, y la seguridad de cobrarlas, son estimables en mayor cantidad de renta, de la que se vendrá a perder. Y quien considerarse de veras, el eminente peligro que todos corríamos con la compañía de estos, de perder haciendas, y vidas, se terna por muy dichoso, y mejorado, con gozar seguramente de lo que le ha quedado.33

This is the same safety, he claims, that the Israelites experienced under Solomon, where men lived in peace, “durmiendo a la sombra de su parra, y de su higuera, sin tener de quien temer.”34 It is a God-granted peace and security akin to the Garden of Eden, and its

32 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 249. 33 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 253. 34 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 253. 175 paradise is achievable only in a Morisco-free Spain. This argument for personal safety is an appeal to common fears designed to frighten tentative lords into submission.

As a means of refuting arguments that expulsion will devastate the Spanish economy, Fonseca aims to prove that Morisco presence in Spain contributes more heavily to the Peninsula’s financial ruin. For example, he insists that the expulsion decrees’ limitation that the Moriscos take with them only what they can carry on their persons resulted in the immediate devaluation of Spanish goods as Moriscos rushed to liquidate these items for portable cash.35 In addition, Fonseca argues that the Old Christian lords lost a great deal when their Morisco vassals decided to sabotage the fruits of their estates, consuming seeds and grains typically reserved for the next planting season,36 polluting genuine currency with counterfeit,37 and refusing to work altogether until the embarkation date.38 He notes the particular tragedy of Morisco obstinate neglect in reference to fields that had already been planted, stating that “había sido aquel año el más fértil, que los naturales jamás habían visto.”39 When the nobles find their lands impossible to cultivate in the absence of the Morisco workforce, Fonseca blames the

Moriscos’ decision to abort the farming mission, even though he mentions that the maestros were already in Berbery and that there were no Christians nearby “que

35 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 261. 36 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 262. 37 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 263. 38 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 263. 39 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 264. 176 entendiesen el arte.”40 He never stops to consider that Moriscos awaiting inevitable expulsion hardly relished the idea of assisting their oppressors in maximizing agricultural profits. Guadalajara dismisses Christian culpability in this regard, stating that the Ricote valley lands were indeed “abundantes de limones, naranjos, y todo género de agrura; pero estériles de pan, y de todo lo demás necesario para la vida humana.”41 To the apologists, in other words, the political and spiritual benefits of expelling alleged heretics far outweighed the negative impact of lost luxuries. So long as staple food crop production was still largely intact, Christian Spaniards could withstand some limited hardship for the nation’s greater good.

In regard to long-term economic consequences of the expulsion, Fonseca later substantiates the Archbishop’s prediction that “[t]odo…nos sobrará”42 in God’s grace when he touts the abundant harvests produced in the expulsion’s wake. Fonseca provides evidence that the Moriscos were not needed for Spanish economic prosperity, claiming that in 1610, “que fue el primero después de la expulsión,”43 various regions in Spain experienced their most abundant harvests to date. He suggests that this is evidence that

“[d]ará Dios a España más salud de la que ha tenido estos años pasados, y purgada de este peste, lo quedará tambien de la otra, que tantas vezes la amenaza, y aún destruye.”44

40 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 264. 41 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 62. 42 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 255. 43 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 332. 44 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 333. 177

In so doing, he rather downplays the fact that much of this rich harvest was lost “por falta de jornaleros.”45 Guadalajara asserts that the above offenses—including the Moriscos’ abandonment of the fields for spite—obviously indicate “que estos enemigos tuvieron trato secreto entre si, para nuestra destruición; y que el castigo fue bien merecido.”46 The

Moriscos, he argues, had it in for Spain, and their punishment was much deserved.

However, as noted above, historical records indicate that the expulsion process was anything but smooth and had difficult consequences. As certain segments of the population expressed concerns in regard to losing the valuable Morisco workforce in addition to the cost of managing their relocation overseas at a time when Spain’s economy was badly damaged, it is reasonable to think that King Philip III and his advisors might have become a bit nervous. As subsequent kingdoms were depopulated and economic devastation became more apparent, the apologists and their contemporaries must have wondered if the monarch ever considered granting his exiled Moriscos the right to return to their native Spain and resume their positions as sugar millers, silk spinners, and, most important, taxpayers.

The apologists also assert that the alleged joy the Moriscos expressed in departing was strategic. In leaving the Peninsula willingly without active resistance, the apologists claim that the Moriscos hoped to facilitate their return to reclaim Spain for Islam after joining forces with other Muslims around the Mediterranean. Guadalajara notes, for example,

45 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 332. 46 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 22. 178

mas como todos tenían generalmente en el pecho mala y traidora intención, todo servía, de ponerles pólvora en los pies y alas en los hombros, para desamparar la tierra, que cuidaba tanto de su Religión Católica, y se oponía tan de veras a la infernal y viciosa secta de Mahoma; y para ponerse en Berbería con sus amigos Valencianos, ò en África con los de Túnez.47

In other words, the Moriscos wasted no time in vacating Spain if it meant the possibility to be reunited with friends and coreligionists.

Aznar Cardona expresses his concern over the possibility of Morisco return, positioning himself48 as first-person observer of the Morisco embarkations. He remarks that the refugees departed in optimistic search of riches they presumed to find among the

Turks. He claims that upon departure, the Moriscos repeatedly threatened to return to

Spain to reclaim their belongings, destroy Christianity, and assume political control. He states, “[y] fueron con ánimo declarado de volver rabiando con el poder del Turco a destruir la Cristiandad, y establecer su secta Mahometana en toda España.”49 They allegedly hoped to return with such haste after expulsion “que aun pensaban hallar vivas las brasas que dejaban cubiertas con la ceniza de sus hogares.”50 Guadalajara similarly warns “que muy brevemente se habían de volver todos los Moriscos antiguos, sin que hubiera tenido efecto la dicha Expulsión.”51

47 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 27. 48 Recall that Aznar Cardona is serving as a scribe for his uncle, the Augustinian friar Geronymo Aznar. 49 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:7. 50 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:8. 51 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 47. 179

Combined with the evidence Guadalajara posits of actual Morisco return mid- expulsion campaign, the treatises suggest a great deal of anxiety on the part of the apologists, however real, imagined, or unlikely the case of Morisco return may have been. To the apologists, Morisco return threatened to undermine the tireless efforts of

Archbishop Ribera and the Crown to purify and unify Catholic Spain. They therefore see it as their mission to maintain the project’s momentum and promote the continuation of a process Fonseca refers to as the “agradable holocausto.”52

Perhaps the apologists were particularly anxious in light of the fact that some expelled Moriscos were returning to their native land, secretly crossing back into Spain from France and North Africa, affirming Guadalajara’s suggestion that “de manera que se volvían muchos, especialmente aquellos, que tomaron ocasión de sentencias de los Jueces ordinarios de sus lugares, que con facilidad se dejaban engañar.”53 Dadson, in his contemporary study of propaganda and the Morisco expulsion, interprets the return of certain Moriscos to Spain, as well as the refusal of others to leave, as fueling propaganda of the sort that we see in the apologists’ treatises. He refers to such documents as evidence “of how official propaganda and self-delusion took over from the reality on the ground; in fact, of how the propagandists came to believe their own propaganda even when everything and everyone was telling them that the opposite was true.”54 According to Dadson, while expulsion had not been enforced in certain areas of the realm, Muslims

52 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 169. 53 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición, 47. 54 Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 3. 180 were sneaking back across Spanish borders, the Duke of Lerma proposed celebrating the completion of the expulsion and dedicating a day on the calendar when the momentous event would be recognized yearly.55 While the apologists position themselves as ardent supporters of an easy decision that hardly required debate, it appears that their texts were designed not only to convince themselves of the expulsion success story, but also to further enforce their position in the face of supporters they feared were now insecure.

It therefore seems critical to note the political figures to whom the apologists address their treatises, for their close connections to the king and his court further illustrate the apologists’ anxiety in regard to a potential overturning of the expulsion decision. Guadalajara y Javier dedicates his 1614 Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla to King Philip III himself, the man upon whose shoulders rested the ultimate decision-making power regarding expulsion. Many historians are of the opinion that

Philip III was an indolent and indecisive king, ill-equipped for the challenges he faced as monarch. John Lynch refers to him as “the laziest king in Spanish history,” ironically praising the king’s own recognition of his incompetence in delegating tasks to a válido, or favorite.56 Philip selected Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, the Duke of Lerma, as his most trusted advisor. Not coincidentally, Lerma is the dedicatee of Bleda’s

Crónica, a tribute to the duke’s influential role in Philip’s court. Philip III gave the duke an unprecedented amount of political power in formally permitting him to sign orders

55 Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 4. 56 Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 18. 181 with the authority of the monarch,57 and in his role as , or master of the horse, he had more access to the royal household than anyone else of his station.58 As noted previously, Lerma’s position on Morisco expulsion changed as he climbed the social ladder in Castile and as he came to see the campaign’s potential for financial profit.

If he were wrong and expulsion proved economically devastating, how would Lerma’s opinion evolve with changing economic circumstances and what effect might his opinions have on royal policy? Decades of extensive debate on the Morisco situation in

Spain, as recorded in court documents,59 demonstrate that neither the king nor his most trusted advisor had been fervent expulsion supporters from the start. The apologists therefore attempt to thwart any royal backpedaling that might undermine the 1609 expulsion decision and threaten Spanish Catholic hegemony.

In a similar fashion, Fonseca makes an appeal to a man of power and political influence, dedicating his 1612 Iusta expulsion de los moriscos de España to Francisco de

Castro, the Count of Castro and Spanish ambassador to Rome. When initial discussions of Morisco expulsion failed to garner papal support, Philip III sent Fonseca to Rome to advocate for the Spanish position. Fonseca first published his pro-expulsion treatise in

Rome in Italian, and his decision to dedicate this treatise to the Count of Castro suggests a desire to convey his sentiments to a person of power and influence who had a more

57 Paul Kléber Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589- 1717 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 133. 58 Carr, Blood and Faith, 216. 59 For extensive analysis of court documents pertaining to the Morisco debate from the Archivo General de Simancas, see Tueller, Good and Faithful Christians. 182 direct line of contact with the papacy. Levin discusses the Spanish ambassadors’ overt mission to influence papal policy in his recent study Agents of Empire: Spanish

Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century . 60 He notes that Spanish ambassadors to Rome eagerly sought out connections in Rome via favors and bribes, hoping to “strengthen the

Spanish faction amongst the College of Cardinals and the Roman court.”61 It seems hardly a coincidence that Francisco de Castro was the Duke of Lerma’s nephew.62

Serving to praise the Duke of Lerma for his role in the “tan heroico hecho”63 of the expulsion, Fonseca acknowledges his dedicatee’s close connection to the decision- makers.

It is therefore in light of the Jews and Moriscos already returned to Spanish territory in addition to economic protests and social upheaval regarding the Morisco expulsion that the apologists see the risk of return of the Moriscos as very immediate.

The apologists therefore see it as their mission to protect Spain’s borders from this threat.

To do so, they incite in their audience a fear of Morisco return, appealing to the

Spaniards’ basic fears for human survival as well as their Christian fears of the final judgment.

60 Michael Jacob Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). 61 Levin, Agents of Empire, 150. 62 Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 3. 63 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, n.p. 183

A State of Fear: East vs. West and La Turbación Quotidiana

“Ya esta inquieta turbación cuotidiana, será acabada.”64

Having established what they consider the certainty of Morisco return if Spain’s rulers and borders remain vulnerable, the apologists remind readers of the general state of alarm that had previously characterized their daily lives, hoping to further instill the fear of return. They then contrast this climate of fear with the perceived “post-expulsion” state of peace and unity in the now Morisco-free territory in an effort to bolster support for maintaining an ideologically pure Spain. As we have seen, however, proclaiming the virtues of a liberated post-expulsion Spain was, perhaps, an example of an attempt on the part of the apologists to convince themselves of a reality contrary to fact, or at the very least, of counting one’s chickens before they had hatched.

The state of fear, the apologists argue, stemmed in large part from the combined threats to Christian Spain’s physical security from Muslims outside the Peninsula and, consequently, from the Moriscos within. The fear is therefore one of a Muslim “other,” in

Spain’s case both internal and external, seen not only as physically dangerous but also as morally and culturally inferior. Here the apologists appropriate part of a larger East-West dichotomy studied by many scholars as a process of Western cultural and ethnic self- fashioning dating back to ancient Greece. Hall65, for example, demonstrates through

64 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:141. 65 Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Paul Cartledge, The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 184

Greek tragedy the Greeks’ developing sense of cultural superiority over the Persians as a xenophobic construction of the self in relation to the eastern “other.” As Blanks and

Frasseto note in their introduction to Western Views of Islam in the Medieval and Early

Modern Europe,66 the spread of monotheistic religions and competing tensions among them only added to the existing “uneasy intercourse between rival civilizations.”

Throughout the Medieval and early modern periods, those who came to define themselves as Western Europeans had encountered the Eastern “other” in a variety of contexts, all influencing their self-perceptions.67

In her recent study Creating East and West, Bisaha devotes the second chapter68 to a discussion of the way in which Italian humanists resurrected classical texts that demarcated “East and West or Europe and Asia as hard and fast cultural and political

66 David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto, introduction Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. David R. Blanks, et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 1-9. 67 For further reading on Western European views of Islam and the eastern “other,” see David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto, Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. David R. Blanks, et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Mustafa Soykut, Image of the “Turk” in Italy: A History of the “Other” in Early Modern Europe: 1453-1683 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2001); Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008); Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); and John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 68 Nancy Bisaha, “The New Barbarian: Redefining the Turks in Classical Terms,” in Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 43-93. 185 boundaries,”69 exemplifying prejudices in regard to “barbarian” easterners. She asserts that Renaissance thinkers then used these documents to redefine the contemporary Turks in such classical terms. Following scholars like Hall and Cartledge, and noting that the word “barbarian” had initially been appropriated by the ancient Greeks in an “East versus

West” dichotomy, Bisaha suggests that the term evolved literarily in the early modern period to denote the Turks. For example, she observes that while the original use of the term was linguistic, and for Homer would have signified a speaker of “bar-bar” in the early eighth century B.C.E., the Persian Wars later inspired among the Greeks a sense of self in contrast to the barbaric “Other.”70 In that vein, she notes that while Herodotus, for example, was distinct in his cultural tolerance, his view of the Persian Wars “as a deeply rooted conflict between Europe and Asia established a sense of geographical and cultural poles that would shape future Western thought.”71

In this vein, Bisaha observes that Petrarch uses the dominance and prowess of

Christianity and Latin culture in the past as means of calling his coreligionists to fight on

Christianity’s side in the Holy Land, painting a stark binary opposition between the forces of “good” Latin Christendom and the inherently sinister Arab culture of Islam.72

69 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 44. 70 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 45. 71 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 46. 72 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 53. She adds that “Petrarch appears to echo a classically based belief in Western cultural and religious superiority predating Islam; this occurs in a reference to Saint Jerome writing about the spread of Christianity through France, Britain, and other Western regions, as well as ‘Africa, Persia, and the East, and all the barbaric lands (omnemque barbariem).’ Petrarch’s use of the term ‘barbarian’ is not 186

The political and religious climate of the medieval period leading up to Petrarch’s comments in Spain—those centuries referred to in terms of convivencia, however idealistically—would certainly have proven less hostile to Eastern cultural influence. The

Iberian Peninsula had long enjoyed the fruits of Arab learning and scientific advance, and as Bisaha states, “[m]edieval thinkers probably sensed the incongruity in designating

Arabs, who surpassed Westerners in learning and cultural achievements, as barbaric.”73

She suggests that it was only in the fifteenth century that the term “barbarian” became routinely applied to Muslims as the powerful threatened Christian sovereignty in the Mediterranean. She comments that Humanists were at the forefront of this trend, stating that “[p]erhaps because so little was known about the Ottomans they were more acceptable targets than the Arabs.”74

In the meantime, the idea of a clear cultural divide between East and West would prove attractive to fourteenth-century thinkers like Petrarch, who appropriated Classical models to his descriptions of crusading Western Christianity75, and Salutati, who

particularly well defined here, but it may point to the beginning of a trend that would mark most humanist discourse toward the Turks and Islam in general.” 73 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 73. 74 Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 73. 75 For example, Bisaha notes that Petrarch uses Julius Caesar as a model for Christian crusaders. She states, “To Petrarch’s mind, Caesar was one of the greatest heroes in history. He was both a brilliant and courageous general and the immediate predecessor of Augustus, who united the world into which Christ was born, thereby paving the way for the spread of Christianity and Latin culture. He is an excellent example for crusaders because of his heroism but also because of his ability to bring East and West together under the rule of Rome.” Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 52-53. In a similar manner, Fonseca utilizes a Classical example as a symbol of contemporary crusading in the 187 described the Turks as “an extremely ferocious race of men with high expectations” who

“trust and believe that they will erase the name of Christ throughout the world.”76 The in 1453 precipitated the more consistent equation of Muslims with barbarians, enhancing claims like Salutati’s, as city after city fell to the seemingly invincible Ottoman forces. Literature of the era gives graphic accounts of raping and pillaging that fueled a Western fear and disdain that we see alive and well in the apologists’ treatises justifying the seventeenth-century Morisco expulsion. The Catholic apologists give ample evidence to support Bisaha’s claim that “the Turks began to occupy a most sinister niche of the European imagination—as cruel and lascivious barbarians.” For example, Aznar Cardona equates Muslims with barbarous actions when he refers to fifteenth-century Ottoman sultan Mehmed II as Mohammedan in name and in deeds, “hombre de invencible corazón, y de feroces hechos, más cruel que el fuego, más fiero que los leones, más belicoso que Alejandro Magno. Abrasó, mató y despojó con grande Gloria suya, innumerables gentes cristianas y gentiles; castillos y fortalezas, particularmente en toda la Asia Menor.”77 In a similar manner, Guadalajara notes that

prologue to his Justa expulsión where he calls Philip III a Spanish Hercules, slaying the seven-headed beast that represents the seven major heresies. Fonseca, Justa expulsión, np. “Y aunque los de mas Reyes de España, han sido valerosos Hércules, que peleando contra esta bestia de tantas cabezas, han alcanzado de ella vitorias gloriosas; señaladamente lo es el invictísimo Rey Felipe tercero, tomando por singular empresa, quebrantar la más perniciosa cabeza deste dragón, que es Mahoma.” 76 Quoted in Bisaha, “The New Barbarian,” 56. 77 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:99. 188 heretics intent upon destroying the world are inevitably “gentes peregrinas, bárbaras, y crueles, para con su ivasión raer de la tierra su memoria.”78

Bleda also links barbarian actions to Islam when he draws a parallel between the long duration of the Islamic faith and the power of the Ottoman Empire. He states, in explanation of Islam’s survival in the face of Christian persecution,

esta secta no se ha introducido por la eficacia de la predicación, ni la persuadieron a los hombres por virtud de milagros, ni prodigios, sino por el terror de las armas, y por tiranías, y violencia: Y por este medio rindieron muchas gentes y provincias, porque no pudieron defenderse por falta de gente de guerra, o por estar desarmadas, y sin presidios.79

To Bleda, Islam persists not because its practitioners believe the tenets it preaches but because they have been recruited through violence and fear for their lives. Likewise, the

Ottoman Empire derives its power through similar tyrannical terror. He cites the prodigious and widespread Turkish mounted army in control of a destitute population with little power to resist as the foundation upon which Ottoman terror is built, stating that the emperor “[t]rata a los súbditos como a esclavos cuanto a las honras, y posesiones de los bienes temporales.”80 Aznar Cardona makes a similar claim when he states that in the absence of Christ in government, there can be no autonomy. He argues,

Preguntémoslo a los Alarbes, y a los Moros Mahometanos, que ellos ni dirán sus injusticias particulares y comunes, y los estatutos irracionales que siguen por leyes justas; y nos contarán el injusto proceder de su gran Turco, cuyo gobierno es despótico: porque de tal suerte es señor de los comprehendido dentro los confines de su dominio, que los vecinos se

78 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 12. 79 Bleda, Crónica, 102. 80 Bleda, Crónica, 103. 189

llaman, no vasallos, sino esclavos…que nadie sea señor, no digo de su hacienda, pero aun de si mismo.81

The apologists therefore paint the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire and its soldiers as uncouth automatons prepared to fight indefinitely against Christianity.

This tyrannical empire, therefore, is a direct threat to Spain in two ways. First,

Spain lies within easy reach of Ottoman forces. As Fonseca warns, an attack from far off

England would be announced in advance once it passed through Galician or Portuguese waters, but an attack from the Mediterranean could happen virtually undetected and within the span of twenty-four hours. He states that such a fleet would “cogernos descuidados, meternos en confusión, y con la ayuda que allí tenían de cincuenta mil soldados enemigos nuestros, que no esperaban para rebelarse,”82 giving inhabitants of the

Peninsula little hope for survival. The apologists note that the potential ease of attack is seen routinely when North African corsairs strike along the coast and “iban, y volvían a

África las veces que querían.”83

Second, because the apologists argue that all Muslims represent barbarian threats, most especially the powerful Turks, they present evidence that Spanish Moriscos are indistinguishable from any other Muslim threat, habitually colluding with the Turks in an effort to bring about Spain’s destruction. The apologists imply that the Moriscos desire to blend in with the forces that oppress Spanish Christendom, therefore becoming a part of

81 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:131. 82 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 175-6. 83 Bleda, Crónica, 890. 190 the threat themselves. Fonseca gives the example of Moriscos who willingly fled to

Algiers, “y vivían allí, más Moros eran que los del lugar,”84 taunting Spanish Christian prisoners “que los engañaban los Moriscos que residan en España, cuando les decían que eran Cristianos, porque lo cierto era ser todos tan Moros como los de Berbería.”85 In this instance, Fonseca expressly states the point that all of the apologists make: the Moriscos are, in essence, Turks, and therefore a Spain in which Moriscos reside is a Spain replete with internal enemies of the State. Failure to prevent the return of these now-expelled enemies risks Spain’s complete annihilation.

The apologists then provide their audience with numerous examples of Morisco treason, showing that over time, the Morisco traitors became “cada dia mas atreuidos, mas orgullosos, y mas desuergonçados en declararse por Moros.”86 In other words, their willingness to declare themselves publicly as Muslims increased the more confident they became in the possibility of Ottoman assistance. Aznar Cardona claims that the Moriscos perpetually conspired with the Turks, traveling between Spain and Ottoman territories frequently and treating the Turks “con grande familiaridad, y recibiéndolos en sus casas y pueblos de la Marina con secreto cauteloso de traidores, y siendo recibidos de ellos con grandes caricias, mayormente en Argel, a donde se yuan…los que sabían oficios de hacer pólvora y escopetas, por ayudar a lo intentado del entrego de España, y a destruir la

84 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 129. 85 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 129. 86 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 91. 191

Cristiandad.”87 This relationship of mutual hospitality, he claims, extended to North

African pirates who routinely captured Spanish Christians and robbed them while granting Spanish Moriscos the professional courtesy of avoidance.88 Bleda gives further evidence that the Moriscos hoped to one day join forces with the Turk against

Christianity,89 noting the extensive written communication in Arabic between the

Moriscos of Spain and the Moors of Africa.90 He states that Moriscos in the Peninsula had made promises to the Turk and to other heretical princes of “cincuenta mil soldados pagados, y otras muchas comodidades”91 for assisting them in bringing down the Spanish

Crown and Christianity. These pronouncements of a homeland riddled with traitors serves to remind the apologists’ audience of danger hiding in plain sight in when

Moriscos reside in Spain.

87 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:104. 88 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:104-5. 89 Bleda, Crónica, 110. 90 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 130. For discussions of the fear of Morisco collusion and evidence to support or refute its legitimacy, see Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Sebastián García Martínez, Bandolerismo, piratería y control de moriscos en Valencia durante el reinado de Felipe II (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1977); Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); James T. Monore, “A Curious Morisco Appeal to the Ottoman Empire,” Al-Andalus 21 (1966): 281-303; Bruce Taylor, “The Enemy Within and Without: An Anatomy of Fear on the Spanish Mediterranean Littoral,” in Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. William G. Naphy, et al. (New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 78-99. 91 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 242. 192

In addition to treason and espionage, the apologists further perpetuate a climate of fear by providing additional examples of the Moriscos’ “notorious crimes” on Spanish soil. Details of these crimes serve to remind the audience of the Moriscos’ destructive potential and innate barbarity, highlighting the inescapable physical danger that comes with harboring dangerous criminals and traitors. For example, in referencing the Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras, Aznar Cardona gives a particularly graphic description of

Morisco destruction, stating that the Moriscos

ejecutaron las mayores crueldades de martirios que en el mundo se oyeron, porque dejado el quemar las Iglesias, profanar los oratorios, buscar diversas invenciones de fuegos para quemar los hombres mayormente Clérigos y Frailes, el hacerlos pedazos, cortarles los miembros, sacarles los ojos, colgarlos delas partes pudendas hasta que morían, meterles estacas agudas por las partes secretas, que todo eso era común, amas desso, había otros géneros de muertes, como era henchirles a los hombres la boca de pólvora, y pegarles una mecha para que así saliese de vuelo cada mejilla por su parte.92

It is interesting to note that these alleged crimes described by the apologist bear striking resemblance to the crimes of purported witches tried by the Inquisition not only in Spain but throughout early modern Europe. Aznar Cardona himself appears to liken the new converts’ crimes to witchcraft, later referring to the Moriscos’ “invocaciones de

Demonios, Zahoras93, supersticiones, hechizerías, y brujerías, matando criaturas humanas

92 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:27-8. 93 Corominas provides several definitions that are beneficial to interpreting this term. First, “zahorar,” defined as the act of celebrating a boisterous feast among friends (“celebrar una comilona bulliciosa entre amigos, sobrecenar) derived from the Arabic saḥûr, or the meal taken after midnight during the month of Ramadan when fasting during the day (‘comida que se hace despues de meidainoche en el mes de ramadán, cuando debe ayunarse durante del dia’) and also “zahorí” from the Arabic zuharî, 193 y animales.”94 This idea plays to the popular fear of witchcraft that Scott and Kosso include in their list of common medieval and early modern fears. Curiously, however,

Knutsen,95 in his study of witchcraft and superstition in early modern Spain, finds that trials for witchcraft (brujería), which he defines as “collective diabolism and murder by maleficium,”96 are wholly absent from Valencia’s Inquisitorial records. Instead, charges of superstition go hand-in-hand with accusations controlling demons to procure wealth or to seek out love. In areas with little notable Morisco presence—and Knutsen uses

Barcelona as his example— witchcraft trials abound. Knutsen attributes the difference in large part to the nature of cultural mixing in different regions in Spain. In the south, the

Moriscos and their understanding of magical rites and demon-conjuring contributed to what Knutsen calls the “magical geography” of the area, altering the nature of the accusations and their trials.97 In his above accusations, Aznar Cardona certainly appears to accuse the Moriscos of witch-like behavior regardless of what the inquisitorial records may suggest about official accusations and proceedings within the tribunal. In light of

Knutsen’s analysis of Inquisitorial trials, the description of alleged Morisco crimes

‘geomántico’, ‘zahorí’, derivado de zúhara ‘lucero, planeta Venus’ (de záhar ‘brillar’), por la semejanza de procedimientos entre los zahoríes y los astrólogos.’ Joan Corominas, Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1954), 4:802-3. 94 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:37-8. 95 Gunnar W. Knutsen, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons: The Spanish Inquisition’s Trials for Superstition, Valencia and Barcelona, 1478-1700 (Belgium: Brepols, 2009). 96 Knutsen, Servants of Satan, 1. 97 Knutsen, Servants of Satan, 8. 194 suggests the apologists’ desire to equate Morisco dissidence with behaviors already condemned in the public consciousness as heretical sorcery and feared by the masses.98

The apologists’ descriptions of Spain create a climate of fear and unrest in which

Spain’s inhabitants are threatened in their daily lives. They therefore assert that just as the king was previously obligated to protect his kingdom from the internal and external threats and did so via expulsion, he must continue to protect his borders because the potential for Morisco destruction is great. For example, with the same ease of attack that

North African pirates enjoy, the Turks could offer Spanish Moriscos still residing in the

Peninsula invaluable assistance in rebelling against Christian Spain. Bleda states that the true objective of the Morisco uprising in the Alpujarras (1568-1571) in response to prohibitions on Morisco dress and customs had been “matar con atroces muertes, y martirios a todos los Sacerdotes, y Christianos viejos que pudieron, de los que entre ellos viuian, llamando al Turco, que viniesse en su fauor, y ayuda.”99 The Peninsula can only be safer, the apologists argue, with “[e]l enemigo fuera de casa, que no dentro de ella.”100

In addition, such rebellions still have the potential to be aided by a Morisco population that has intimate knowledge of the Peninsula and the vulnerabilities of its people. This population, the apologists assert repeatedly, grew unabated before the expulsion, reminding the Archbishop of “malas hierbas.” Referring to Ribera’s sermons,

98 For further discussion of witchcraft in early modern Europe, see Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609-1614) (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980). 99 Bleda, Crónica, 1038. 100 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:67. 195

Fonseca reflects on what he and the Archbishop consider the power of “innumerable enemies” who

[i]ban creciendo en ella mucho mas que el numero de los amigos, y así aunque por aquel tiempo fuesen muchos menos, la buena cuenta dice que dentro de pocos siglos, habían de ser ellos los mas, porque se casaban antes de los 20 años, y no los consumían las guerras, ni las Indias, ni os presidios de Flandes, o de Italia, ni de su había frailes, no monjas, ni beatas, y los clérigos eran muy raros, y todos multiplicaban como conejos, y por esta cuenta no es mucho que se doblase el número cada diez años, y siendo así, de cada mil se harían mas de un millón dentro de 100 años, y aunque hasta aquel tiempo no se había echado de ver tanto la multiplicación, porque en la cuenta, que llaman de la dobladilla, hacen poco numero las primeras multiplicaciones; a la nona, y a la decima, allí es la maravilla, que dicen, de las casas del ajedrez. Pues véase ahora, que potencia seria necesaria para resistirles, señaladamente si nos cogieran descuidados, y poco prevenidos.101

Here Ribera, Fonseca, and the other expulsion apologists who follow them hope to inspire fear in their audiences of an armed enemy population dangerously in control of the country’s finances multiplying limitlessly to the point “que ya no cabian en sus barrios ni lugares.”102 However, Dadson provides ample evidence to the contrary, noting that the Spanish Moriscos were no more prolific than the Old Christian population.103 For

Dadson, depictions of Moriscos who multiply like weeds and rabbits provide another example of the construction of official propaganda, or “what the government of Philip III and Lerma wanted us all to believe.”104 (And certainly the Moriscos, Carr comments,

101 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 174-5. 102 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:36. 103 For a more detailed discussion of Morisco population statistics, see Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 19-21. 104 Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 20. 196 when forcibly confined to the albaicín, gave the appearance of multiplication and overcrowding because they were not permitted as much living space as their Christian counterparts.105) Dadson notes that this official propaganda, as repeated throughout the apologists’ treatises, was then woven rather seamlessly and uncritically into much of the official Morisco historiography.106

This emphasis on personnel of a seemingly limitless quantity aiding the Morisco cause helps the apologists accentuate the multitude of risks presented if the Moriscos were to return to the Peninsula. Some of the dangers they enumerate consist of tasks easily carried out if members of the Morisco community joined forces. If the Morisco population were as uncontrollably large as the apologists claim, the risk of these events had the potential to increase exponentially over time. For example, Fonseca relays from one of the Patriarch’s memoriales the Archbishop’s fear that that the Moriscos could devastate the Spanish food supply. He states, “podrían fácilmente matarlos, quitarles las armas, y señorearse de la tierra; particularmente pudiendo con tanta facilidad quitarnos el trigo, pues era publico que la mayor parte del que el Reino tiene, está en un lugar fuera de la Ciudad.”107 A band of Moriscos could likewise set fire to the fields or storehouses, or

“cortar las azudas, que están en el rio, por donde viene el agua a los molinos.”108 In this section of his plea, the Archbishop repeatedly refers to such agricultural staples and

105 Carr, Blood and Faith, 192. 106 Dadson, “Official Rhetoric,” 20. 107 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 177-8. 108 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 177-8. 197 machinery as existing in public spaces, not only vulnerable to attack but also as pertaining to the community at large. He clearly sees the Moriscos as existing outside of this larger community, making the case for their further exclusion from it.

Ribera’s diatribe likewise preys on fears of Spanish Christian vulnerability when he discusses the Moriscos’ intimate knowledge of the Peninsula. While arguments, he claims, had been made that the Moriscos had little potential for rebellion because they lacked castles and fortresses, Ribera counters that the Moriscos

eran señores de las sierras, lugares montuosos, y peñas tajadas, en las cuales ya de industria los criaban desde niños, que pertrechadas un poco, según eran ásperas, e inaccesibles, les pudieran servir de fortalezas para defenderse, y ofender a sus contrarios, por lo menos por algún espacio de tiempo, hasta que se juntaran todos, o los viniera alguno socorro, como hicieron en otras ocasiones.

He therefore utilizes the image of the marauding barbarian, already ingrained in the

Christian Spanish imagination, giving it weightier implications by exposing Peninsular territorial vulnerability. Aznar Cardona cautions that grown men are hardly the only source of danger to Christian Spaniards, warning that even children are suspicious and should be regarded with caution. He states, “[d]e modo, que los mayores y menores, todos eran unos en el error y apostasía, y en la noticia del crimen de la conspiración: y aun las mujeres leves, y los niños pequeñitos de poco discurso, decían algunas veces, a los niños de Cristianos viejos, Calle que ya dice mi padre, que cuando matemos a los

Cristianos no te matemos a ti.”109 This image of a child participating in armed rebellion attempts to give further credence to characterizations of the Moriscos as barbarians. It

109 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:112. 198 also serves to alleviate any misgivings the clergy or Crown may have had in expelling innocent children, suggesting that Morisco children were as capable as their adult parents of violence, cruelty, and treachery.

To further warn their audience of dangers the Moriscos present on Spanish soil, the apologists then contrast the above images of past and potential Morisco destruction with a current climate they depict as safe and peaceful. Aznar Cardona, for example, describes life in “post-expulsion” Spain in 1612 as safe and secure, in which “podemos discurrir de vnas partes a otros sin sobresaltos ni temores de enemigos sangrientos, por toda España…Porque la purgó destos tan duros y obstinados en el mal, que ninguna esperāça (ni rastro della) había de su cōuersion y enmienda.”110 Not only are citizens safer in their homes now that the Turkish threat has been eliminated and Moriscos no longer reside in the Peninsula, able to harbor enemies, but gone too are Catholic

Spaniards’ fears of a Holy Mass contaminated by blasphemy and sacrilege. He concludes that Catholic Spain should rejoice in her newfound peace, because “[y]a esta inquieta turbación cuotidiana, será acabada.”111 Guadalajara also declares Spain to be free from internal and external threat a year before the expulsion’s official conclusion, stating

[e]stamos libres en nuestras costas y riberas, de los insultos y robos Africanos: cesan tantas muertes como cada hora sucedían, cría nuestra España por los lugares habitados de estos, abundancia de nuevos soldados: compónense con facilidad las inquietudes y diferencias: queda la tierra asegurada y a de prodiciones y leuantamientos: vívese en allá en una Fe

110 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:139 111 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:140-1. 199

Católica, Apostólica, Romana, y finalmente tenemos todos seguridad en nuestras casas.112

United in one holy Catholic and apostolic faith, Christian Spaniards can rest easily, knowing that the Crown has assured their physical and spiritual safety through the expulsion of the Moriscos. These descriptions of a tranquil kingdom free from threat warns against any action that might disrupt the peace now that Spain is entirely Catholic,

“sin excepción ninguno.”113

Fear of the End of Days

En el capitulo undécimo de las revelaciones de S. Juan, habla el espíritu de Dios del Antecristo, y de sus desventurados imitadores, llamados Antecristos, como decíamos ahora, y les dibuja al vivo, a él y a ellos, su monstruosa figura moral, para que tengamos noticia dellos, y nos guardemos de su ponzoña, como de la muerte.114

As is evident in the previous section, the Catholic apologists of the expulsion capitalize on common fears for physical safety in an effort to maintain what they consider to be Spain’s newly-achieved ethnic and spiritual purity. Contributing to basic fears for survival was a medieval and early modern apprehensiveness regarding the Final

Judgment. Therefore the apologists, like Aznar Cardona in the above excerpt, thoroughly harness early modern apocalypticism as means of making sense out of their historical reality and then manipulate the discourse to warn of the vulnerability of a Spain

112 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 158. 113 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:141. 114 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:10-1. 200 threatened by Antichrist and all of his infernal imitators. O’Leary argues that the apocalyptic tradition is, in essence, a collected set of rhetorical tools employed to persuade. Following this idea, I argue that the apologists’ treatises exemplify the conscious appropriation of a rhetorical mode readily available to them and already deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness to influence political decision-making. It is therefore not important to ascertain whether or not the apologists aim to prove that

Muhammad is in fact the Antichrist, or whether they themselves believe this to be the case, so much as it is see their adaptation of apocalyptic discourse as a means of rousing people to political action. As O’Leary115 notes, “[d]issatisfaction with the present and fear of the future are not simply existential facts that the discourse must address; analysis of the discourse itself reveals that much effort is often expended at developing the sense of dissatisfaction and fear.”116 For Pagels,117 John of Patmos’s Revelation itself is just that—

“wartime literature”118 that articulates the author’s political and religious dissatisfaction with the Roman Empire. John’s text calls the community of believers to join forces against cultural influence he views as contaminating and damaging to the integrity of

God’s chosen people.119 We have already noted a similar rhetoric in which the apologists

115 Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 116 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 11-2. 117 Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York: Viking, 2012). 118 Pagels, Revelations, 7. 119 Pagels, Revelations, 47-8. 201 cultivate fear in their audience of daily interactions with Moriscos on Spanish soil. They consequently turn to a fear of more cosmic proportions in their appropriation of Biblical apocalyptic rhetoric, including John’s Revelation, to further position the Moriscos as a threatening force.

As they set out to compose their apocalyptic diatribes, the apologists had at their disposal centuries of apocalyptic images and ideas. From the canon of biblical apocalyptic texts, references to the books of Daniel and Revelation appear most frequently in the apologists’ treatises. The Old Testament Book of Daniel, a foundational text that influenced the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic discourse that followed, appeared at such a time of Jewish persecution in Palestine. The book, most likely composed around the year 165 BCE, speaks to Jews whose culture and customs had been stripped in favor of forcibly imposed Greek traditions that inspired the Maccabean revolt.120 The author narrates the story of Daniel, a Babylonian captive of four centuries earlier whose tribulations in captivity, including his survival in the lion’s den, eventually lead to a symbolic apocalyptic vision of four great beasts. The beasts, representing nations that once ruled the earth, culminate with a beast unlike any other—the Greeks—who devour the world. Cohn states that in this vision we see helpless victims suffer in a world overrun by demonic tyrants, “until suddenly the hour will strike when the Saints of God are able to rise up and overthrow it. Then the Saints themselves, the chosen, holy people who hitherto have groaned under the oppressor’s heel, shall in their turn inherit dominion over

120 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Midle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 21. 202 the whole earth.”121 These ideas continued to resonate with a Jewish population that struggled under Roman rule, issuing waves of Messianic fervor that Cohn describes as the result of apocalyptic propaganda aimed at common people.122 Thompson observes that in the absence of this optimistic thinking in terms of an ideal world to come,

Christianity would not have been possible.123

The New Testament Book of Revelation, or John’s Apocalypse, was written sometime after the year 70 CE. Thompson writes that Revelation serves to address unanswered questions regarding the particulars of the Second Coming, comically noting that “[a]t fist glance, there is something ludicrous about the notion that this surrealistic text is designed to make anything clearer.”124 A barrage of hypnotic dragons, beasts, and horsemen who herald the world’s end, John of Patmos’ beasts have continued to inspire art and literature throughout the centuries. In John’s vision, after Babylon is destroyed,

Christ defeats Satan, the beast whose number is 666, and drives him into hell. Christ reigns on earth for a thousand years before ultimately defeating Satan in a final battle that ends the world, ushering in a new world, a New Jerusalem. Replete with plastic images and numerological symbols, Thompson “wonders whether the author intended to keep

121 Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 21. 122 Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 22. 123 Thompson, The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997), 13. 124 Thompson, End of Time, 21. 203 successive generations of Christians in a state of apocalyptic expectation, and therefore created images with a certain reusable quality.”125

For this reason, Revelation did not win much favor with the early Church fathers who, in an attempt to solidify dogma and promote ideological uniformity, feared the book’s potential to incite schism and panic in awaiting Christ’s Second Coming. Cohn observes that Church opposition to millenarian beliefs became more pronounced as the

Church established increased control over the Mediterranean, stating that men in power

“had no wish to see Christians clinging to out-dated and inappropriate dreams of a new earthly Paradise.”126 One such Patristic theologian was Augustine, whose insistence that

Revelation be interpreted as spiritual allegory rather than as a roadmap to the world’s last day became official church doctrine.127

Doctrinal opposition to the apocalyptic tradition notwithstanding, apocalyptic preoccupations lived on in the religious imagination, their imagery appearing more frequently as Christianity secured its foothold as official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.128 Krisch notes that “John may have intended the book of Revelation to console and exhort the persecuted Christians of his own era, but it was only when

Christianity was both militant and triumphant that the imagery of the Apocalypse began

125 Thompson, End of Time, 21. 126 Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 29. 127 Henry Bettenson, trans. Concerning the City of God Against the Pagan, by Saint Augustine of Hippo (New York: Penguin, 1972), 895-963. 128 Jonathan Kirsh, A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western History (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2006), 132-5. 204 to proliferate across Europe.”129 Throughout the next several centuries, as Cohn describes,

[p]eople were always on the watch for the ‘signs’ which, according to the prophetic tradition, were to herald and accompany the final ‘time of troubles’; and since the ‘signs’ included bad rulers, civil discord, war, drought, famine, plague, comets, sudden deaths of prominent persons and an increase in general sinfulness, there was never any difficulty about finding them. Invasion or the threat of invasion by Huns, Magyars, Mongols, Saracens or Turks always stirred memories of those hordes of Antichrist, the peoples of Gog and Magog.130

A man who fundamentally changed the implications of such signs, however, was the

Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202).131 Convinced that Revelation’s symbols pertained to real-world events, Joachim saw as the result of persecution a reformed

Catholic Church on earth, refuting Augustine’s argument that the ideas of the Apocalypse concerned solely the spiritual realm. While there is much to say about the abbot and his influence on medieval apocalyptic discourse,132 his depiction of the seven-headed dragon representing great heretics (including Muhammad) is the image that resonates most with

129 Kirsch, End of the World, 133. 130 Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, 35. 131 Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964). 132 For in-depth discussions of the Calabrian abbot’s influence on Medieval apocalypticism, see Richard K. Emmeron and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985); Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976). 205 the expulsion apologists who liken all Moriscos to the notorious beasts of Daniel’s and

John’s revelations.

In her study on Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic apologists, Magnier describes the apocalyptic mentality of the early modern era in which the apologists, inspired by the biblical apocalypses, conceived of their treatises. She states that

millenarian prophecies hovered uneasily between spiritual exaltation and political expediency. These prophecies heralded a time of restoration and renewal; the old sinful world would disappear and give way to the new; the forces of the just from all over the world would be commanded by a Universal Emperor of the Last Days, a New David, accompanied by a shepherd or Angelic pope, who would defeat the forces of the Antichrist. Once the Antichrist was dead, the New David would inaugurate the Millennium, a Golden Age of peace and harmony; finally, Christ would return and time would end.133

Critical to Magnier’s understanding of the millennial atmosphere that characterizes the treatises is what she describes as Spain’s perceived preeminence in the dramatic unfolding of the end-time. Citing as evidence details of the millenarian prophecies that circulated in the Middle Ages as well as the widespread acceptance of Santiago the

Moor-slayer as a revered national saint, Magnier argues that the idea of the Spanish as a new Chosen People was already deeply ingrained in the Spanish psyche at the time that the apologists penned their tracts.134

133 Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 51-2. 134 For a detailed description of these prophecies, see Magnier, Pedro de Valencia, 49- 118. 206

The books of Daniel and Revelation offer many of the emblematic components of apocalyptic discourse, as delineated by scholars in that field.135 Collins defines the apocalypse, for example, as “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldy being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”136

The apologists, for their part, do not assert their own unique apocalyptic visions. Rather, they appropriate a preexisting Biblical apocalyptic tradition, mapping onto it their interpretation with respect to historical figures and events. In this respect, the apologists, recognize the rhetorical power of the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition as a reliable and time-tested strategy in garnering support for a cause. It becomes one of many tools the apologists use to persuade the king and his advisors of the danger of Morisco return.

Antichrist on Spanish Terrain

To begin the process of proving the Antichrist’s dangerous presence in early modern Spain, the apologists first assert a typological relationship between Old and New

Testament events. They argue that apocalyptic discourse in both books of the Bible as well as the correspondence between the two validates the apocalyptic warning signs the apologists see in contemporary Spanish Moriscos. This emphasis on the end of days and

135 See, for example, John J. Collins, “Apocalypse: Toward the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia, 14 (1979): 1-20. 136 Collins, “Apocalypse,” 9. 207 the final judgment further contributes to the climate of fear created and intensified by the apologists’ treatises. Aznar Cardona argues that just as Solomon and David prefigure

Christ, and Esther and Judith the Virgin Mary, the apocalyptic images and symbols represented in the books of Daniel and Revelation offer

la luz clara de la soberana profecía, comunicada por la sabiduría divina a quien todas las cosas pasadas y venideras le están presentes, parece que los pinta, y les figura sus inclinaciones y condiciones, y sus dichos y hechos, tan por menudo, y tan en particular, que fácilmente por la figura tan particularizada, y pintura tan al vivo, atendiendo al contexto literal y ajustándolo al discurso temporal de la Iglesia de Cristo.137

Muhammad becomes, therefore, the embodiment of the horrible beasts of the apocalypse and their destructive power, and the apologists then extend this correspondence to include all of Muhammad’s imitators. This brings to life the gruesome creatures of the Biblical apocalypse, transporting their metaphorical and symbolic danger into ostensible peril on

Spanish soil. To further support this point that the danger is literal and immediate, they

137 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:5-6. Aznar Cardona provides as theological justification for his typological beliefs the following: “Para llana y averiguada inteligencia desta verdad, debe ser notada aquella regla usadísima de todos los Doctores positivos acerca de las cosas que en la divinas letras son figura de otras, diciendo: Que aquello que es figura y representación de otra cosa, necesariamente ha de ser algo en si mismo; pues el, nada, y lo que no es, ni tiene ser alguno, no puede representar, ni significar cosa alguna. Por la cual la cosa que por orden del cielo es figura, y significación de otra, en tres maneras notables puede ser considerada. La primera, a solas sin relación ni respecto a otra, no más de tomada precisamente en caunto es tal cosa. La segunda en orden y relación exterior, y cuanto es figura de otra. La tercera, en esas dos maneras, es saber, en cuanto es tal cosa, y juntamente en quanto es figura de otra. Dan esta regla (entre otras) importantísima los Doctores santos, porque siendo entre los sentidos celestiales, de la sagrada escritura, solo el literal el que es fundamento de los otros, y el que hace certeza de Fe (como lo prueba san Agustín, contra Donatistas, y lo confiesan todos los Doctores Católicos) con el tino y modelo desta regla aprobadísima se manifiestan con grande claridad en un solo paso y en un mismo lugar sagrado, dos sentidos literales, y más, si más admitiere.” 208 repeatedly employ the idiom “a la letra” to portray the degree of correspondence between apocalyptic beasts and Muhammad. In arguing that Muhammad’s apocalyptic evil is passed down through generations of his followers, the apologists suggest that the beasts and Muhammad are one in the same and therefore depict an Iberian Peninsula replete with monsters. For example, Aznar Cardona argues, “[q]ue los imitadores, son a la letra, y en figura, aquellos a quien imitan: Y que san Juan habló de Mahoma, de cuya deshonestidad, astucia y maldad de secta se trata.”138 Aznar Cardona likewise reports that

Muhammad is the subject of John’s Apocalypse, stating “Este es aquel irracional monstruo, de quien a la letra dijo san Juan: Et vidialiam bestiam ascendentem de terra, habentem cornua duo, simila Agni, & loquebatur ficut draco. Llama bestia al lascivo

Mahoma, por el modo de vida bestialísima, que usó personalmente, y enseñó a los suyos.”139 To the apologist, Muhammad is the apocalyptic beast who ensures that his legacy is carried out for future generations by teaching his followers to embody the same animalistic, destructive characteristics.

Aznar Cardona sees Muhammad himself, and therefore his Morisco followers, as

“el Pardo que vio Daniel, y su secta hecha de malos remiendos…mas son también, a la letra, aquella bestia espantosa, erizada con revuelta variedad de pelo, que vio el santo

Profeta Daniel, entre aquellas cuatro malignas que refiere en el cap. 7 de su profecía, y la llama Pardo, nombre correspondiente a su bestial monstruosidad.”140 In Daniel, this

138 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:21. 139 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:22. 140 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:151. 209 pardo, “a quien llamamos en vulgar , Tigre,”141 is said to represent the Persian

Empire that conquered Media. While its four heads may represent notable Persian kings,

Aznar Cardona is more concerned with the beast’s multitude of colors and spots, rather than its appendages. For the apologist, the fierce predator symbolizes the composite of all Satanic sects, accepting and admitting into his fold heretics and enemies to the true faith. He states that the pardo of Daniel’s vision

por ser pardo en el pelo, admite gran variedad de māchas y colores, negro, blanco, morado, azul, amarillo, rojo, y las demás; significando por este confuso Juerguístico, las diversas sectas, de que Mahoma, y Sergio, y sus doce Satanales, ministros suyos, forjaron esta secta de sectas, o suma de errores, o este veneno, apurado de apestadas sectas diferentes, que entonces cuando el comenzó andaban por rincones, y como dicen, a sombra de tejados, ultrajadas, y aborrecidas de los Cristianos.142

Aznar Cardona also views the pardo as the powerful precursor to the last and most dangerous beast of all, Antichrist.143 In the same manner in which he equates Muhammad with the great cat from the Book of Daniel, Aznar Cardona also describes the Muslim

141 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:152. 142 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1: 153. 143 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:152. “Tuvo al contrario también la Iglesia de Cristo otras cuatro diferencias de enemigos, figurados en aqllas cuatro terribles bestias que vio el profeta Daniel, armadas contra ella en el mar tempestuoso dete mūdo. La primera, leona, significando la persecución de los rabiosos Tiranos desenfrenados de toda razón y justifica. La segunda, oso animal con dientes y uñas, y astucia notable, denotado por esta fiereza leonina la persecución de los herejes mordaces, y astutos como zorras. La tercera Pardo, a quien llamamos en vulgar Pantera, Tigre, significando por esta prodigiosa bestia, la perseguidora secta Mahometana, predecesora a la cuarta del Antecristo, bestia desaforada, a la cual no le da nombre esta profecía, para señalarnos, como su crecida maldad de maldades, nunca vistas, ni nombradas, incluirá, y como si dijésemos, embeberá en si, y dejara sin nombres la de sus malísimos inferiores, pequeños en su respecto, por muy grandes que vuieren sido, ejecutando el, lo que ellos, ni pudieron, ni supieron, aunque fueron malos por extremo.” 210 prophet as the embodiment (again, “a la letra”) of the wild boar who appears in psalm

80,144 or “el Puerco montés que vio David, y el verdugo que mató infinitos santos, y el ladrón que hurtó las riquezas mas insignes de España.”145 The text of this particular psalm hears the lament of Israel, repeatedly trampled by brutish foreign nations without relief from God. It likens the chosen people to a vine brought out of only to be ravaged by a wild boar from the forest. It is certainly not coincidental that Aznar Cardona draws a parallel between the barbaric groups who threatened the Jews, symbolized by the unclean wild boar in the psalm, and Muslim takeover in Spain. To refer to Muhammad and his descendants as the garbage-eating animals that they, like the Jews, deem impure and unworthy of human consumption is to once again criticize tenets of the Jewish and

144 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. 2Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy strength, and come and save us. 3Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. 4O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? 5Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure. 6Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies laugh among themselves. 7Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. 8Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. 9Thou prepardst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. 10The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. 11She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. 12Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? 13The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. 14Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; 15And the vineyard which they right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. 16It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. 17Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. 18 So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. 19Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause they face to shine; and we shall be saved. 145 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:144. 211

Muslim faiths that the apologists deem superstitious, meaningless, and inferior to the true faith.146

While all of the Catholic apologists considered here relate Morisco presence in

Spain to the impending apocalypse, Aznar Cardona’s treatment is perhaps most notable for its animal imagery. Each of the later apologists concurs with and cite Aznar

Cardona’s scriptural commentary and equation of the Moriscos with apocalyptic beasts, even if Guadalajara finds his narrative style a bit disjointed and chaotic. He notes that

“[e]l licenciado Pedro Aznar, con su ordinario torrente y digresiones, prueba ser Mahoma el Puerco que vio David, el Jabalí de la Selva, y al Pardo que vio Daniel, y que de esto habla a la letra la sagrada Escritura.”147 Aznar Cardona, therefore, sketches out an apocalyptic discourse the other apologists would adopt in turn, all contributing to the collective image of the Moriscos as brutish, animalistic, and dangerous.

In addition to Old Testament imagery regarding the apocalypse and its prototypical creatures, the apologists also appropriate an image of John’s apocalyptic beast described by the abbot Joachim of Fiore. Fonseca states that this beast, “[v]iene en figura de Dragón, quizá porque la primera aparición que hizo en el mundo fue con la forma de esta cruel bestia: que por eso le llama S. Juan, Serpiente antigua, de la suerte

146 Appearances of animals of the suidae family in the canonical Bible are limited to this one particular psalm (80) where the wild boar from the forest ravages the vine. In 1 Enoch, however, a book from the Apocrypha commonly called the “animal apocalypse,” the black boar symbolizes Esau and his descendants. 147 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 35. 212 que la paloma está aplicada al Espíritu Santo.”148 This dragon, he claims, sported seven crowned heads, and “unos entienden a la letra aquellos siete grandes monarcas, con que

Satanás en tiempo del Antecristo arruinara la tierra: y que otros se persuaden, que significan los siete pecados mortales, los cuales también se llaman capitales, por ser cabezas, y caudillos de los demás vicios.”149 Fonseca, for his part, agrees with the church doctors who, following Joachim’s proposal, view the heads as representative of great heretics and Antichrist’s precursors.150 According to McGinn, in Joachim’s analysis,

“[t]he seven heads are identified with seven evil rulers: Herod, Nero, Constantine the

Arian, Mohammed, Mesemoth (probably a North African ruler), Saladin, and the

‘Seventh King, who is properly called Antichrist, although there will be another like him, no less evil, symbolized by the tail.’”151 Appropriating Joachim’s image for his own political intentions, however, Fonseca alters the relative position of the heads, reserving for Muhammad the dragon’s seventh head, “más perniciosa de todas (que por esto la dejé para lo último)…que generalmente blasfema de toda la Religión Cristiana.”152

148 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, Prologue, np. 149 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, Prologue, np. 150 In Fonseca’s description of the seven-headed beasts, the other six heads symbolize Simon Magus, Manicheaus, Arius, Pelagius, Luther, and Calvin. Fonseca, Justa expulsión, Prologue, np. 151 Bernard McGinn, “Symbols of the Apocalypse in Medieval Culture” Medieval Studies 37 (1975), 279. 152 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, Prologue, np. 213

Bleda follows suit, attributing to Muhammad the destruction following the opening of Revelation’s fourth seal, explicitly following Joachim’s commentary in his

Expositio in Apocalypsim. He states,

Dice el santo Euangelista en el sexto capitulo, que habiendo abierto el Cordero el cuarto sello, oyó una voz del cuarto animal, que le decía: ve, y mira: y vio un caballo amarillo, en el cual yua caballero uno, que tenia por nombre, la muerte, y tras del seguía el infierno, y diosele poder sobre las cuatro partes de la tierra, para matar con cuchillo, con hambre, con la muerte, y con las bestias de la tierra.153

The horseman ushers in “la persecución de los Mahometanos,” following generations of other threats to Christianity represented by the previous seals. Bleda likewise concurs with church doctors like Joachim who see in the yellow horse and his rider a vivid representation of Muhammad,

primeramente porque el caballo es animal atrevido, feroz, belicoso: y los hombres desta secta fueron feroces, audaces, y belicosos: porque esta secta al principio fue introducida a fuerza de armas, y con aparato de guerra, después fue dilatada por armas, y con ellas fue establecida, y conservada. Mas esta secta es irracional, sensual, y bestial, y toda encaminada a los deleites carnales.154

In other words, the fourth seal is particularly threatening for the barbaric physical danger it embodies and the fear it inspires. For Bleda, therefore, Muhammad is the sum of all heresies, the Antichrist in person155 or the Antichrist of all Antichrists.156 He refers to him

153 Bleda, Crónica, 52. 154 Bleda, Crónica, 51-2. 155 Bleda, Crónica, 5. 156 Bleda, Crónica, 1. “Mahoma engañador del mundo, Profeta falso, nuncio de Satanás, el peor precursor del Antecristo, cumplimiento de todas las herejías, y prodigio de toda falsedad, como otro Hieroboam quitó diez partes a la casa de David, esto es, a la iglesia 214 as “aquel deforme monstruo, compuesto de los errores de los Nestorianos, Arrianos, y

Judíos, que se embraveció contra las Cruces.”157 Aznar Cardona similarly describes

Muhammad as a great deceiver,

y un Antecristo y se entiende la verdad de esta letra, que lo es sin duda, no en persona, sino en espíritu perverso de contradicción y error, de perfidia y odio de Dios, y de todo género de maldad y mentira, con que ofenden la divinidad, y humanidad de Cristo, negándola, y contradiciéndola: que eso quiere decir Antecristo, contrario a Cristo nuestro Señor, que le contradice, y le deshace, en cuanto es de su parte, la Majestad de su Divinidad, y la misericordia de su Humanidad, con blasfemo corazón, y sacrílega boca descomulgada.158

For the apologists, Antichrist’s danger resides in his pervasiveness and manner in which he carries off unsuspecting souls into the depths of hell. Fonseca, for example, observes that Antichrist’s power stretches across the globe as a result of the advance of Islam. He states in reference to the Church-devouring beast,

[c]on estas cabezas movió en todos tiempos este dragón tan cruel guerra a la Iglesia, que ya parece se la llevaba entre los dientes, y se coronaba por Rey de la tierra, como se que en la secta de Mahoma, que se ha apoderado de casi toda la África, de la mayor parte de Asia, y de gran parte de Europa: y lo que peor es, que sin sentirse, había metido ya el pie en España, señoreándose, de la mitad del Reino de Valencia, de buena parte de Aragón, y de muchos lugares de Cataluña, cundiendo en Granada, Sevilla, Córdoba, , Toledo, , y en otras tierras así de de Jesu Cristo nuestro Señor. Este tan grande monstruo parió, y crio el Oriente, tan deforme, que en fealdad, y fiereza excede a todos, los que divinamente fueron mostrados a Daniel, y a san Juan Evangelista, para significar algún mal gravísimo. Y así todas las persecuciones mas diabólicas que humanas, las tribulaciones, angustias, y terrores, que les amenazaban antiguamente en los divinos Oráculos, a los que habían de vivir en los siglos venideros: todo lo que de esta materia leamos hasta hoy en el viejo y nuevo testamento, y en otras divinas predicciones, y en figura de horrendos dragones, y bestias.” 157 Bleda, Crónica, 13. 158 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:9-10. 215

Castilla la vieja, como la nueva, en las cuales residían los Moriscos de España.159

As noted in the previous section concerning fear, the apologists establish the Moriscos as emblematic of Islam, stating that their desire to collude with Muslim forces abroad renders them indistinguishable from the persecuting Turks. Fonseca reiterates that the

Antichrist’s presence has gone dangerously undetected in Spain, slowly creeping in across Asia, Africa, and the rest of Europe.160 Without proper precaution, Spain will find its souls in the grips of “el injusto opresor, y verdugo carnicero,”161 Muhammad the

Antichrist, as he carries “millares de almas al inferno, con la impiedad pertinaz de su reprobada secta bestial.”162 Muhammad will bring about the end of the Church and the world by engendering evil through “los otros malos hombres que se le hacen, hijos, por imitación de su mal espíritu, y mal obrar.”163 The Antichrist Muhammad disorients and misleads his followers with fictional scripture as Daniel predicted, employing “un libro de blasfemias, un sermón, o razonamiento entero (como es un Alcorán, que se interpreta,

Epilogo de preceptos) contra el excelso y varadero Señor Jesu Cristo.”164 The vices he promotes, which are “los caminos mas generales, por donde la mayor parte del mundo

159 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, Prologue, np. 160 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:141-51. Aznar Cardona traces the over several continents. 161 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:13. 162 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:12. 163 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:11. 164 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:15. 216 ciego camina,”165 serve as conduits to hell for souls who could otherwise be destined for

Paradise. Aznar Cardona warns that all sinners and idolaters, including Muhammad’s followers, “irán al infierno, y padecerán allí, sin remedio, no algún tiempo limitado, sino eternalmente, en compañía de aquellos Demonios, cuya pena también será eterna.”166 The danger of these vices only increases as the population of Muhammad’s followers grows, and Guadalajara laments

[el] notorio y evidente peligro en que está España, por ser estos tantos, e ir cada día creciendo en número, y ser tan grande el aborrecimiento que tienen a los Cristianos, y tan declarada afición a su secta, y así tener por cierto, que en cualquier ocasión que se ofreciere, serán traidores a su Rey y Señor, y procuraran que España venga en poder de Rey, que les deje vivir en su secta.167

The Antichrist, they warn, will remain alive and powerful and a threat to civilization so long as the Moriscos live on Spanish soil.

The apologists then add to their Scripture-based argument favoring the imminent danger of Antichrist on Spanish terrain, providing copious descriptions of historical and contemporary portents to support their claims. For example, it was during expulsion proceedings in the port of Los Alfaques that a tale apparently circulated concerning a resplendent celestial omen: a glistening white cross that hovered over the ships about to embark, their holds full of Morisco refugees. Aznar Cardona refers to the glowing cross as

165 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:14-5. 166 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:26. 167 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 85. 217

el báculo poderoso de Cristo nuestro salvador…con su virtud insuperable, nos dejaba ya exentos de las asechadas de infieles domésticos, y se quedaba libre de las blasfemias continuas de ellos, llevando los delante de si, a echarlos por esos mares, barriendo nos la tierra de su pestífera contagión, para que libres del mal ejemplo de sus infidelidades y escándalos entibadores, la adorasen todos los fieles con mayor fervor y puridad. 168

He states that Christ had repeatedly brandished this same cross throughout Spanish history as a symbol of justice and triumph over the invading Moors,169 serving as a sort of reassurance to Christians crusading against Islam that their efforts were justified. He therefore gives his audience an example of God’s official seal of approval at this midway point in the expulsion project, giving Spanish authorities the green light with which to continue as planned to further rid the realm of what he regards as Morisco pestilence.

Aznar Cardona also hopes to dissuade the Crown from undoing the 1609 act, regardless of the decision’s fiscal or administrative consequences.

The apologists argue that such signs are obvious and undeniable to the true

Christian. For example, Aznar Cardona states that God gives

tan claros indicios, y tan particulares señas, que a lo menos podamos decir, que vemos por la pintura presente, del verdadero retrato, al ausente en persona: y los indicios y señas, son aquellas tan notorias a todo Cristiano, como es la venida (tan predicada en la doctrina Evangélica) de los dos Santos, Elías, y Enoc, en los años cercanos a la fin del mundo, para efecto de predicar la Ley de Dios, y contrastar al Antecristo.170

168Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles y suma de las excellencias christianas de nuestro rey don Felipe el Catholico Tercero: diuidda en dos partes (Huesca: Pedro Cabarte, 1612), 2:30. 169 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión iustificiada, 2:30. 170 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 1:13-4. 218

Similarly unmistakable signs appeared, they maintain, at the time of Muhammad’s birth, confirming his power to bring about destruction and the end of days. Guadalajara notes that in that year, “que padecía Arabia terrible hambre y cruel pestilencia.”171 Bleda makes the same claim, citing historical references including the Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo,

Génebrard, Geronimo Bardi, and Zonaras, adding that famine stretched all the way to

Italy where it also rained blood. 172 The apologists characterize the era of Muhammad’s lifetime as rich in warning signs of the destruction of the Church. As symbols of “la crueldad monstruosa de Mahoma, y de su secta,”173 Bleda includes historic events, such as Pope Gregory the Great’s death and the appearance of a comet in the same list as events worthy of the front page of a modern tabloid. For example, he claims that in

Constantinople, two children were born with four feet as well as another with “dos colodrillos.” One child was born fishlike, lacking eyes and limbs, and one night the sky was full of bloody spears.174 Bleda relates that in 607, a Christian procession in

Constantinople was interrupted when various crucifixes began to move by themselves,

171 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 31. 172 Bleda, Crónica, 3. “En el mismo año que nació Mahoma, afligió la hambre y gravísima pestilencia aquella Provincia de Arabia la Feliz, en la cual según Genebrardo, hubo tanta falta de mantenimientos, que se sustentaba la gente de hierbas, que cogía por el campo. Lo mismo dice don Rodrigo Arzobispo de Toledo, y Mármol. Y en este año dice Bardi, que aun duraba el hambre en Italia, y en la Toscana llovió sangre. Lo proprio escriben Zonaras el Justino, y Blondo.” 173 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 174 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 219

“que causó horror a todos los que se hallaron presentes.”175 He also comments that St.

Theodore later interpreted the event to foretell a time of great calamity and grave danger,

porque significa que muchos han de dejar nuestra santa Religión: ha de haber bravas incursiones, y venidas de bárbaras gentes, y mucho derramamiento de sangre, incendios, muertes, y sediciones en todo el orbe, y las santas Iglesias quedarán desiertas: y señala el acabamiento del culto divino, y de el Imperio: y que se acerca la venida del Adversario.176

For the apologists, this sign is replicated a thousand fold in the centuries to come, repeatedly warning of the Antichrist’s power to destroy Christianity. These portents,

Bleda argues, frightened even Pope Gregory, threatening an unleashing of “la artilleria, y maquinas con quehabía de acometer, combater, y sugetar la mayor parte del orbe.”177 If such threats rattled even the Sumo Pontifice, surely their ramifications resonated throughout the Spanish kingdoms as Islam took root and spread throughout the Peninsula.

According to Guadalajara, signs like these also resonated with a certain Mossen Per, who in 1392 predicted that in Spain, “la gente Cristiana padecería grandes invasiones y fatigas por los Moros que entre ellos moraban.”178 The seer comments that the Christians will make cruel and terrible enemies of the Moors,

hasta que al cabo aquel pueblo malvado acabaría en España, y serían echados della de raíz con su malvada Secta para siempre jamás: según que ellos mismos lo hallaban escrito en los libros y vaticinios de sus pasados: y que entonces se cumplirían los misterios escritos por san Juan en el

175 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 176 Bleda, Crónica, 8. 177 Bleda, Crónica, 9. 178 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 70. 220

Apocalipsis, mayormente el del Sexto Sello, del libro que el Ángel abrió.179

Guadalajara is the apologist most concerned with contemporary signs that reinforced the validity of earlier Apocalyptic predictions. He devotes large sections of both his

Prodición y destierro de los moriscos de Castilla and his Memorable expulsión to the enumeration of impressive and often grave portents of the Moriscos’numbered days on

Spanish soil, stating that “[t]odos estos prodigios, y otros muchos que pudiéramos referir, fueron avisos de la poderosa mano de Dios; para que los hombres, con nueva y reformada vida evitasen los daños.”180 He gives most importance to the mysterious unassisted ringing of the church bells at Vililla in Aragon in 1601, stating that this sign alerted

Ribera to the gravity of the Spanish Catholic church’s situation and inspired him to continue advocating for expulsion.181 Apparently this bell had a penchant historically for announcing important events by its own devices, including the deaths of prominent figures such as the Emperor Charles V and his wife the Empress Isabel.182 In this particular instance regarding the Moriscos, however, Guadalajara notes that the bell’s mysterious ringing served to the alert the Aragonese of the possibility of Morisco uprising, “y avisarle del peligro eminente que le amenazaba,”183 stating that Bleda affirms this interpretation.

179 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 70. 180 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 16. 181 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 16. 182 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 68. 183 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 68. 221

In a similar manner, Aznar Cardona relates another miracle in Aragon, this time of the Virgin of Tobed, who allegedly “sudó con abundancia una agua clarísima, por espacio de veinte y cuarto, o treinta horas .”184 He argues that the event “denotó, las culpas enormes, las herejías, los sacrilegios, las blasfemias dignas de ser lloradas”185 that the Moriscos had committed against God. He states that the Virgin’s perspiration serves as a warning to the Spanish Catholics that the Moriscos will commit many offences against her. In emphasizing this virgin sweat, Aznar Cardona insinuates a physical threat to the innocent Christian body.186

Guadalajara references a similar example of the importance of the Morisco expulsion as expressed by the miraculous crying image of the Virgin at the Convent of

Our Lady of Carmen in Zaragoza. He relates that she cried for twenty four hours beginning on Holy Thursday, “[y] si como aquellas lagrimas (error notable) que se recogieron en Corporales y lienzos blancos, se reservarán con la curiosidad que en

Tobed, tengo por sin género de duda, que este milagro manifestará la causa y principio de su angustia.”187 Guadalajara gives an example of a religious miracle more explicitly intended to mobilize Christian Spaniards into retaliation against their Morisco neighbors that allegedly occurred at the church of the apostle Santiago, patron of Spain and symbol

184 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:24. 185 Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada, 2:26 186 For a discussion of the ways in which Old Christians inscribed deviance on the Morisco body, see Mary Elizabeth Perry, “The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Making of the Spanish State” in Culture and the State in Spain, 1550-1850, ed. Tom Lewis, et al. (New York: Garland, 1999), 34-54. 187 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 53. 222 of the crusade against Islam. He states that several reliable witnesses were said to have heard a voice emanating from the holy sepulcher, calling Christian Spaniards to rise up against their domestic enemies, “Arma, Arma, España, España.”188 He calls this “uno de los mayores prodigios que se pueden escribir, ni imaginar, y mas en un santo y tan singular lugar, como todo el mundo sabe.”189

Guadalajara incorporates into his discussion of the above religious miracles heavenly signs of more threatening nature when he talks about the clouds that rained blood in the town of Grañon. This town, originally named by the Moors as they conquered Spain “con tanto derramamiento de sangre,”190 is a geographical reminder to

Spain of its native territories taken by force. This freely-flowing blood warns of Catholic-

Morisco miscegenation, tainting the pure and rightful Catholic bloodline with the heresy and deviance upon which the apologists expound at length.191 Spain’s infamous limpieza de sangre laws, as Perry suggests, “institutionalized a belief that difference inherited with the blood at birth was so deviant that it could not be changed or tolerated.”192

Guadalajara states that in many other locations in Spain where the descendants of

African Moors continued to inhabit the Peninsula, calamities likewise occurred as

188 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 21. 189 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 21. 190 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 17-8. 191 For a discussion of sex and violence between majority and minority groups in the Middle Ages, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),127-65. 192 Perry, “Politics of Race,” 38. 223 reminders of the enemy residing within the nation’s confines. Rivers and other bodies of water began to flow against the natural current, “que pareció el universal diluvio, entrando en las ciudades, villas insignes, y otros lugares de España: talado los capos, llevándose los ganados, casas, y haciendas; y derribando muchas puentes, y de otras las acitaras y antepechos.”193 To Guadalajara this sort of disaster is representative of the

Moriscos’ greater mission to demolish and consume “no solamente las haciendas, sino también los Príncipes y Señores, mas poderosos y ricos.”194 He claims that certain sections of the Carrion River dried up, a clear signal that the Moriscos’ crimes were on the rise. The apologist states that God threatened to rescind his grace from a people living among heretics, “representado por las aguas clara de sus dulcísimas Fuentes y ríos celestiales; para que privados del, como en río seco, nos cogiesen nuestros enemigos domésticos: para fin último de la vida y libertad.”195

The apologists also interpret several astrological sightings of the era as signs of heavenly support for the Morisco expulsion. Guadalajara, for example, comments that in

1607, a fiery comet announced the Moriscos’ wicked ways, akin to Jonah’s pronouncements to the Ninevites.196 He claimed that a great astrologer repeated often in

Madrid that the comet was a symbol of God’s displeasure with the Moriscos, stating,

“[v]elad, y mudad vuestras costumbres, castigando los delitos atroces, y pecados

193 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 18. 194 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 18. 195 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 18-9. 196 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 19-20. 224 encubiertos, que hay en el Reino: porque sino Dios tiene determinado de pasarle a otra parte.197 Guadalajara likewise attributes to the conjunction of planets a sign of “total ruina y destruición de la maldita secta de Mahoma,”198and warns that an ominous fire raged in the Pyrenees, converting the night into day, serving as yet another symbol of the

“aumento de la Fe Católica, y destruición de la oscura y denegrada secta de Mahoma.”199

All of these celestial portents he links to the star that guided shepherds and kings to the manger, “la noche que nació en Belen el Verbo Divino: para manifesta a los Judíos, de ella, que estaba el Mesías ya en la tierra: que con la predicación del sagrado Evangelio cesarían las ceremonias de su antigua Ley: y que los invencibles Españoles replanderían siempre en la Nueva, libres de todas tinieblas.”200 Bleda also comments on the significance of the Great Conjunction of 1603, stating that the prominent astrologer

Francisco Navarro de Xátiva had written an entire discourse on the topic, arguing “que aquella conjuncion señalaba como con el dedo la dicha expulsión.”201 Guadalajara notes that many astrologers made similar observations, and that “[t]odos ellos concordaron, en que esta Conjunción pronosticaba la caída y última resolución de la Secta de Mahoma en

España.”202 The very public and conspicuous nature of many of the signs the apologists enumerate serves to call attention not only to the devastation inherent in such disasters

197 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 19-20. 198 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 17-8. 199 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 23. 200 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 23. 201 Bleda, Crónica, 981. 202 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 160. 225 but also to the unmistakable identity, in the apologists’ opinion, of the people who have incurred God’s wrath.

While the apologists would all agree that the Moriscos symbolized Spain’s destruction and that their intentions universally were to devastate the Catholic faith,

Bleda pays particular attention to God’s role in Spain’s destruction. Just as terrestrial disasters and astrological signs signal to the apologists God’s approval of the expulsion plan, Bleda reminds his readers that Spain’s initial invasion from North Africa must also have come at God’s command. For example, he cites as the primary explanation for

Moorish invasion the sins of the last Visigothic kings Rodrigo and Witiza. Their weaknesses as rulers, both in terms of policy and morality, weakened the Spanish state immeasurably, rendering it vulnerable to punishment and divine justice. Bleda states that as a result of these individual actions the entire nation suffered, stating that “lloraron estos Reinos por tantos siglos, y la llaga duró de curar novecientos años, que han corridoro desde la invasión de los Moros, hasta su expulsión.”203 This particular explanation serves as a sort of warning to King Philip and his advisors, reminding them that the political, spiritual, and moral health of the nation rests in large part on the decisions of the rulers. But Bleda also critiques Spaniards on a more pedestrian level when he cites their cruelty as a group as inciting God’s wrath. He states that “ninguna gente fue tenida por tan cruel, y sin misericordia como la Española,”204 referring to general Spanish inclination toward vengeance and hostility, “a tomar satisfacción de las

203 Bleda, Crónica, 117. 204 Bleda, Crónica, 119. 226 injurias que nos hacen.”205 (His diatribe, of course, serves as an ironic prime example.)

The treatises are therefore not only a call to banish Moriscos from Spanish soil but to also eradicate from Spanish hearts and souls the sins that left them vulnerable in the first place. In this endeavor, every Spaniard, king and commoner alike, has a personal responsibility.

Unity Threatened

The apologists argue that the true danger in the above signs, more devastating than dried up rivers and rain clouds filled with blood, is that Spaniards have allowed them to go unnoticed altogether. Guadalajara laments, for example, that even in spite of “tan grandes prodigios y monstruosas señales, de quien se podía tomar alguna luz de esta prodición; dormían los Católicos Españoles, en tan profundo sueño, sin poderlos despertar, ni mover, para destruir esta mala generación.”206 While the planets align and blazing comets whirl through the heavens, Spanish princes continued in a dreamlike state, neglecting their duties. These monarchs, Bleda argues, are entrusted with the peace of the realms, and scripture warns of “los grandes peligros, y daños, que resultan a los fieles, de tener en su compañia infieles.”207 A Spain that ignores the warning signs, both scripturally foretold and literally embodied, consequently risks losing the political and

205 Bleda, Crónica, 120. 206 Guadalajara y Javier, Prodición y destierro, 22. 207 Bleda, Crónica, 873. 227 religious unity it worked so arduously to achieve through the expulsion of the Moriscos.

Spain’s very identity, therefore, is at stake.

In this vein, Guadalajara argues that heresy is poisonous to peace, harmony, and human uniformity.208 He states that discord in matters of faith “engendra discordia en los

ánimos,”209 breeding altercation, war, and civil unrest. Fonseca agrees, arguing that

“cualquier Reino donde hay división, se perderá.”210 He adds that no division is as dangerous as one concerning religion, “porque como por la Religión estemos obligados, a perder todo lo temporal, hacienda, deudos, y la misma vida; cada uno por defensa de la

Religión que profesa, arriesgará todo lo dicho.”211 It is ultimately faith that sets apart the true Christian Spaniards from their Morisco counterparts. Fonseca states that “la Religión es el nervio, y atadura de los Reinos, y Estados, y así dividiéndose, o quebrantándose esta, es fuerza que ellos también se dividan, y acaben: como de hecho se acaban los

Reinos, que permiten herejes sin ser castigados.”212 In other words, in a land where unity of faith is in any way compromised, the entire sovereignty of the nation is at risk of ultimate destruction.

208 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 13. 209 Guadalajara y Javier, Memorable expulsión, 19-20. 210 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 169-70. 211 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 169-70. 212 Fonseca, Justa expulsión, 173. Conclusion

America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear—that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty. But now, there are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear—forces with salt and pepper hair and way more Emmys than they need. They want to replace our Fear with reason. But never forget—“Reason” is just one letter away from “Treason.” Coincidence? Reasonable people would say it is, but America can’t afford to take that chance.1

Stephen Colbert March to Keep Fear Alive October 2010

On January 20, 2009, after swearing an oath to serve faithfully and defend the

Constitution, Barack Hussein Obama became the first black president of the United

States. Many saw this as the realization of a dream, a signal that post-racial America had finally arrived. Others were less enthusiastic. The work of at least one academic suggests that racism is among the most stable of political views and that, “instead of delivering what many suggested would be a post-racial presidency, Obama will have polarized corners of American politics previously untouched by race.”2 In other words, rather than reducing the role of race in American politics, the election of President Obama may have

1 Stephen Colbert, “March to Keep Fear Alive,” accessed July 19, 2012, http://www.keepfearalive.com/. 2 Sasha Issenberg,“Racialization: Michael Tesler’s Theory That All Political Positions Come down to Racial Bias,” Slate, accessed July 19, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/06/racicalization_mic hael_tesler_s_theory_that_all_political_positions_come_down_to_racial_bias_.html.

228 229 caused Americans to realign other, previously stable, political beliefs to reflect their existing views on race.

Of course, the effect of race on contemporary political debates relating to, for instance, health care and same-sex marriage is not at all apparent from the rhetoric. This is because right-wing political pundits, among others, recognized that the black-white dichotomy in American politics is too taboo to discuss as such and that a code was needed. The solution was to exploit the anti-Muslim groundwork that had been laid in the wake of 9/11, together with certain details of the President’s biography, both mundane

(allegedly missing Hawaiian birth certificate) and cosmopolitan (Kenyan patrilineage and

Indonesian schooling). In particular, having earlier in the 2000s reduced the Muslim world to a threatening monolith in the minds of many Americans, the conservative media had a ready tool that they could use to talk about Obama as different and unacceptable while allowing participants in the discourse to plausibly deny accusations of racism.

Seizing on this, certain conservatives began arguing for Obama’s covert Muslim allegiance, sounding the panic alarm about a clandestine Muslim with ties to terrorists inheriting the White House. Conservatives exploiting this code have not necessarily been motivated by racist views, but it is certainly the case that racial prejudice is a useful lever when trying to sell the American populace on one’s position regarding health care or immigration. 230

A five-minute news clip from August 2010 helps to illustrate the rhetorical maneuvers typical of those seeking to link Obama to Islam.3 In the clip, Fox News anchor

Sean Hannity interviews Brigitte Gabriel, a regular contributor to the program and author of They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, a book published in 2008.4 In the interview, Gabriel asserts that President Obama’s actions in office exude sympathy for the Muslim cause as he ignores the opinions of his

American countrymen. She claims that he remains out of touch with his constituency and continues “pandering to the Islamic world, apologizing on behalf of America to the

Islamic world, praising the Islamic world while putting America down.”5 Hannity responds by making passing mention of Obama’s Christian church attendance in the parish of Jeremiah Wright before turning to his other guest, Pat Caddell, stating,

Let’s go through the history of this: remember he said we’re not a Christian nation, he said America is arrogant, he went on the apology tour, his first major speech was on Al Arabiya TV, he gave his next two major speeches were6 in Turkey and Cairo, remember the NASA chief said the top priority was Muslim outreach, the money, 900 million, to Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip, his treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu, his lack outspokenness on the Iranian democracy movement, the refusal to acknowledge the Fort Hood shooter was a terrorist, we can go on and on here!7

3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 4 Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radial Islam and How We can Do It (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008). 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 6 sic 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 231

Although Hannity does not here expressly call the President a Muslim, as Fox News would later assert, he seeks to establish that Obama favors Muslim interests (and, by extension, terrorist interests) while denying the fundamentally Christian character of this nation’s interests. In other words, Obama’s presidency should be viewed from an

“American” perspective as too Muslim-friendly for American Christian comfort.

Hannity then asks Brigitte Gabriel if Americans are drawing the wrong conclusion about the President’s faith. In response she asserts that

finally people are paying attention to things after the fog has been lifted off their eyes as to who did we really elect as president. The signs and the information were all out there. President Obama was born into the Islamic Faith, raised as a Muslim as a child to a father who was a Muslim, he attended Islamic schools.8

Hannity makes an unenthusiastic pass at offering counterpoint to this response, stating that Obama “did spend twenty years in Jeremiah Wright’s church, he did talk about black liberation theology,”9 but Hannity then goes on to criticize even Obama’s apparent brand of Christianity, adding, “by the way, I would never stay in a church with a guy who said

G-D America, America’s chickens have come home to roost.”10 If Obama is genuinely a

Christian, Hannity offers, then his creed clearly reflects the wrong sort of Christianity.

Turning again to Caddell, Hannity recalls, “but you said something to me just moments ago, and that was that the American people have more questions now than they

8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 232 did when they elected him.”11 Indeed, the prevalence of such questions likely owes much to this brand of “fair and balanced” journalism, as the President would later agree. So successful was this rhetoric that a 2010 study from the Pew Research Center found that nearly one out of every five Americans believed Obama to be Muslim, an increase from previous years.12

In a single interview, then, we see the essential steps of the rhetorical turn. First, assert that there is a coherent value system shared among the entire in-group (we’re a

Christian nation). Second, identify a threat to the in-group from a competing value system (the Muslims, who bombed us on 9/11 and are all the same). Finally, show that

Obama is a Muslim or, even if not quite a Muslim, that he at least prefers their value system to ours.

Variations on this rhetoric employ slightly different codes, asserting that Obama generally lacks patriotism or that the President cannot be an authentic American patriot.

For Pamela Geller,13 Barack Obama is a post-American president, one who eschews the idea of American exceptionalism, favoring a mindset in which, according to the author,

“there is no good, no evil, only equivocation and moral relativism.”14 In Geller’s

11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJLVQi1UyI 12 PewResearch.org. “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim.” Last modified August 10, 2010. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1701/poll-obama-muslim- christian-church-out-of-politics-political-leaders-religious. 13 Pamela Geller, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010). 14 Geller, Post-American Presidency, xiv. 233 estimation, Barack Obama, “is missing the DNA of the USA.”15 She claims that “[y]ou have to grow up in America to get America. Or you have to escape tyranny, oppression and suppression and live the dream by emigrating to America.”16 Obama may have the necessary paperwork that accompanies the American birthright, but not the right ethos, not the collective sense of American selfhood necessary, in Geller’s opinion, to governing the people. In her view, Obama may be President, but he is not an American president.

Glenn Beck, like Sean Hannity, has asserted that Obama’s Christian faith is also subject to critique from a quintessentially American Christian perspective. He argues that

American Christians fail to identify with the theology that guides Obama, noting, “[w]hat

Americans can't get their arms around is that for the first time, we have a president that believes in collective salvation. That believes in the U.S. as the oppressor. And Islam in this case is the victim — but just one of many victims from the big bad to oppressor, the

United States of America. That’s what’s happening.”17 How can Obama be a patriot of the greatest nation on earth, they argue, if he fails to understand the United States as the

Christian Pilgrims and the Christian Founding Fathers intended it?

* * *

It was therefore in this political climate that I first encountered the apologists’ treatises justifying the seventeenth-century expulsion of Spain’s Moriscos. Muslims had

15 Geller, Post-American Presidency, xv. 16 Geller, Post-American Presidency, xv. 17 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,600150,00.html Glenn Beck August 24, 2010 234 coexisted with people of other faiths on the Iberian Peninsula for almost eight centuries at the time of their forcible conversion to Christianity. Separated from the Islam of their ancestors across vast land masses and steeped in a conglomeration of faiths and cultures in Iberia, scholarship has suggested that the Spain of the expulsion in many ways reflected a rich and complex hybridity. The Catholic apologists, however, would reject this idea, arguing instead for a stark binary opposition between Christian and other.

Close examination of the treatises is illuminating for the similarities it reveals between this seventeenth-century program of ethnic cleaning in Spain and the current political discourse in America. In spite of the archaic Spanish, the four-century gap, and the Atlantic Ocean that separates men like Aznar Cardona, Bleda, Fonseca, and

Guadalajara y Javier from contemporary American politics, the rhetoric is quite familiar.

The apologists’ texts read like Glenn Beck’s tirades: cynical manipulation of fears and prejudices to support a political agenda.

The rhetorical playbook that the apologists developed is fundamentally similar to that from which modern right-wing pundits are drawing. Perhaps most strikingly, this extends not just to the technique but, to some extent, the substance. Specifically, the apologists begin their works by asserting that seventeenth century Spain has a coherent national identity and that this identity is fundamentally Christian. Next, through a series of descriptions meant to illustrate how different Muslims are in terms of dining, dress, customs, and ritual, the apologists explain how Islam poses a threat to the purity of the

Christian national identify. Finally, the apologists link the Moriscos to the Muslim threat 235 by asserting that the Moriscos remain secret Muslims. Converting these Muslims to

Christianity did nothing, the apologists assert, to eliminate differences that fundamentally separate people of different faiths and create an ideological divide too massive to overcome.

What makes the texts of the apologists fascinating, in part, is their publication dates relative to the dates of the Moriscos’ forced exile. These writings were not contemporary with the formulation of the policy but rather substantially followed the determination to expel the Moriscos. One must wonder why these writers felt compelled to fill volumes with defenses of a decision already being executed. The clerics take pains to paint the expulsion as an irrefutable act with only positive outcomes that had improved the quality of life of every Spanish Christian. In their estimation, the expulsion sang its own praises in the results. It seems odd, therefore, that the apologists go to such great lengths heaping on additional praise and seeking acceptance for an act they deemed so laudable.

The decision to expel the Moriscos had not been an easy one and was unpopular among the Spanish gentry who relied on Morisco labor on their estates. Since Philip III had been willing to allow the descendants of exiled Jews to return to Spain from Portugal so long as their pockets were lined with gold, the apologists feared that the decision would be overturned for practical economic reasons. In addition to economic concerns, the Moriscos were technically baptized Christians, and the decision to expel sheep from the flock was also unpopular in Rome. The apologists, therefore, realized that difference 236 alone would not be enough to convince neighbors living side by side of their inherent incompatibility, particularly if their economic security was at stake. They instead must turn this difference into dangerous deviance that puts Christian safety at risk. The apologists’ then capitalize on their fear of Morisco return as an emotion worth cultivating. Fear, they determined, had the potential to drum up enough public support to put pressure on the King and his advisors and keep the Moriscos (and the Jews, for that matter) where they belonged: elsewhere.

The goal of exploiting everyday fears and inspiring more of them guides all of the apologists’ works. Fear becomes a tool by which the apologists construct their ideal

Spain and the tool by which they attempt to maintain it. Fear that the Catholic faith is under siege leads them to actively construct a perimeter around it, defining the traits essential to Catholicism and excluding from Spain’s borders anyone who does not fit within these specifications. This fear is further manifested in the apologists’ diatribes against purported iconoclasm as they accuse Muslim invaders and their descendants of rampant pillaging and desecration of Catholic images. The Spanish faith, they argue, is under direct threat of spiritual and physical devastation, and with it will come the destruction of each and every Christian Spaniard.

Above all, the apologists hope to ingrain in their readers’ imaginations the suspicion of the enemy hiding in plain sight, the underground Muslim patiently collecting intelligence regarding Catholic Spaniards’ vulnerability, waiting to plan his attack. Every

Morisco neighbor is suspect, even young children. It is this still-undetected and hitherto 237 unmitigated Muslim threat on Spanish soil, they argue, that presents the greatest challenge to maintaining Spanish Catholic purity and national security. Even if the

Moriscos appear to be peacefully minding their business, each is capable of turning on

Christian Spaniards in an instant. To those who say the Moriscos lack fortresses, arms, and organization, the apologists argue that no one should be duped by Morisco cunning.

Moriscos born and raised in Spain know Spanish territory inside and out. Every craggy mountain pass, every inlet, every Christian vulnerability comprises the Moriscos’ wealth of “insider” information. This intelligence, the apologists argue, the Moriscos will certainly share with their Turkish brethren to help assailants from outside the Peninsula.

In the apologists’ minds, the Moriscos were, up to the expulsion, simply biding their time waiting for the Muslim saviors to arrive so that they could reassume political control of the entire Peninsula.

The apologists then amplify the urgency of this threat to national security with fears of ultimate destruction. Arguing that the resulting annihilation of all things Catholic and Spanish is only surface-level destruction, the apologists assert that Muhammad and his descendants are the living embodiment of Antichrist, ready to wreak havoc once and for all on God’s creation. Only a defensive Spain will survive, a Spain that assumes control of its Christian destiny and fulfills the true plan according to the will of the

Creator.

The treatises’ repetition and intertextual back-patting (with each apologist quoting the others favorably to the point that it is no longer clear where ideas originated), is the 238 seventeenth-century equivalent of talking points in the modern opinion media. The treatises appear to usher in a certain style of modern era conservative broadcasting that relies on repetition to create the appearance of truth (or, as one fake pundit calls it,

“truthiness.”18) The same talking points that the media repeats can then be heard from the mouths of everyday citizens, end-products of the conservative propaganda machine that people come to believe as truth.

The apologists’ texts also suggest a great deal of connectedness between one another, giving a reader of the compendium the sense that within the scope of these works the discourse rests in its entirety without room for dissent. The apologists hope to write the final word on the Moriscos, and the sheer weight of the volumes—particularly of Bleda’s, the most vitriolic of the Moriscos’ critics—seeks to add a dimension of authority and testament of almost Biblical proportions to their opinions. Fear-mongering is at the root of all of these techniques, and it is in the purported name of eliminating fear that racial profiling becomes an acceptable means of keeping the peace.

We see this process and all of its accompanying techniques cleanly mapped onto the modern political age. Beginning with the presidency of George W. Bush, post-9/11

American conservatives seized the opportunity to publically identify the same perceived threat in the monolithic Muslim other. The years after the attack on the World Trade

Center and the Pentagon were marked by a stream of rhetoric crafted by the Bush administration to solidify in the American psyche an inherent link between Islam and

18 Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report. 239 terrorism. The administration argued that our nation was at perpetual risk of Muslim destruction, painting themselves the protectors of American national security and justifying a number of expansions of power and encroachments on civil liberties. In 2005, the September 11th Public Discourse Project reported that the United States was still alarmingly vulnerable to terrorist attack, an assessment intended to justify George W.

Bush’s earlier presidential order allowing the National Security Administration to spy on

American citizens without a warrant. The following year, Bush renewed the Patriot Act, reaffirming its mission in “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate

Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,” the official title of the Act. In that spirit, Bush legalized in 2007 government eavesdropping of telephone and email communication of American citizens suspected to be outside the country. In October of

2010, Bill O’Reilly became the mouthpiece for this strategy, loudly announcing on

ABC’s The View, “Muslims killed us on 9/11” before co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy

Behar walked off the set in disgust.19

This is not fear for fear’s sake. Like the apologists, right-wing pundits exploit the speakable in order to talk about the unspeakable, all in support of other political ends. It becomes a case of bigotry masquerading as legitimate political threat, a practice of substituting the thing that cannot be said openly in the media for things that can.

19 The View. “Bill O’Reilly.” The View video, 4:43. October 14, 2010. http://theview.abc.go.com/blog/ground-zero-mosque-spurs-debate-bill-oreilly. 240

It is in this same spirit that Bill O’Reilly attributes to Obama in describing certain characteristics of a “patriot” (as compared to a “pinhead”) in his most recent book.20

Obama only measures on the patriotic scale for Bill O’Reilly when implicitly criticizing his “own kind,” so to speak. He cites examples of Obama’s Father’s Day call on deadbeat dads to get on board with their paternal responsibilities. While he refers to these seemingly generic “American men who father children and leave them,”21 O’Reilly’s message is clear: an Obama who criticizes fellow must have at least something going for him.

In October of 2010, comedians and political pundits Jon Stewart and Stephen

Colbert arrived in Washington for their “Rally to Restore Sanity and / or Keep Fear

Alive.” Colbert’s battle-cry for the fear rally—the quotation that introduces this chapter—could, devoid of intended irony, very easily open any one of the apologists’ treatises. The treatises are a testament to the effectiveness of actively keeping fear at the forefront of the political discourse. This seventeenth-century brand of fear is alive and well in modern American politics, probably because it keeps working.

20 Bill O’Reilly, Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama (New York: William Morrow, 2010). 21 O’Reilly, Pinheads and Patriots, 19-20. Bibliography

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