Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (22 page)
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Authors: Matthew Carr
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BOOK: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain
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By the mid fifteenth century, many Spanish officials were beginning to doubt whether either objective could be achieved. To some extent, the de facto truce between the Moriscos and the Spanish authorities that followed the conversions in Valencia was made possible by Charles’s frequent absences from Spain. But if the emperor was preoccupied with more pressing matters of state, the Moriscos had not been forgotten entirely. In 1555, Charles took the unusual step of abdicating his throne and handing the crown to his son Philip. In his political testament to the new king, Charles instructed Philip to wage unrelenting war against heresy, to support the Inquisition, and to “throw the Moors out of your kingdoms.” Physically ruined by diabetes, gout, insomnia, and his years of campaigning, Charles withdrew from worldly affairs to spend his last days at his monastic retreat in Yuste. In 1558 he died, disillusioned at his failure to unite Christendom. For much of his reign, the confrontation between the Moriscos and the Spanish authorities had been intermittent and relatively low-key. But all this would soon change, when Philip II returned to Spain from Flanders to take up permanent residence in the Hapsburg Spanish kingdoms.
10
Dangerous Times: 1556–1568
With the coronation of Philip II (1527–1598), Spain entered a turbulent period of history that was to have dramatic consequences for the Moriscos. Unlike his father, Philip was born and brought up in Spain and had already ruled the country as regent on two occasions, and his definitive return in September 1559 signaled a new emphasis by the Hapsburgs on their Spanish possessions. This reorientation coincided with a period of intensifying political and religious crisis in Europe, in which the schism between Protestantism and Catholicism appeared to be permanent and religious fissures were opening up between states and within them. Faced with looming religious conflict and fearful of the potentially seditious impact of Lutheranism inside Spain itself, the Spanish government introduced a range of repressive measures to seal the country off from foreign religious influences, including censorship of foreign books and restrictions on Spanish students studying abroad.
The same period saw an intensification of Inquisitorial terror. Philip had hardly returned to Spain when he watched the burning of twenty-nine Lutherans in a huge auto-da-fé in Valladolid that followed the discovery of alleged Protestant cells in that city and also in Seville. The “most potente monarch in Christendome” was known to be an enthusiast of such spectacles. A warm and affectionate father, a lover of music, and a connoisseur of Flemish painting, Philip was also a pitiless opponent of heresy who famously informed Pope Pius IV in 1564, “Rather than suffer the slightest thing to prejudice the true religion of God I would lose all my States, I would lose my life a hundred times over if I could, for I am not and will not be a ruler of heretics.”
Philip’s determination to uphold Catholic religious orthodoxy would lead Spain into a series of debilitating wars against an array of enemies, from Protestant England and Dutch Calvinist rebels to French Huguenots. Where his father had worn himself out on the battlefields of Europe, Philip was a warrior-bureaucrat who fought his wars from behind a desk, but he was no less militant in his defense of Catholicism. Religion was not the only cause of the incessant warfare that marked the reign of the “prudent king,” nor was Spain uniquely responsible for these conflicts, but Spain’s self-appointed role as the blunt instrument of the Counter-Reformation provided a compelling justification for its military campaigns in Europe and beyond.
These wars also heightened the mood of messianic religious nationalism and xenophobia within Spain’s borders, as its rulers attempted to present Spain as a lone bastion of the pure faith. “Of the whole of today’s world there is no part where our true God is not persecuted and ill-used, save only for this little corner called Spain, where in refuge from the world, He has deigned to seek a welcome for His great mercy’s sake,” wrote Fray Antonio Baltasar Alvarez in 1590.
1
The early years of Philip’s reign coincided with the final session of the ecumenical Council of Trent (1545–1563), in which leading Catholic theologians and clergymen from across Europe elaborated a common response to the Protestant challenge. In the course of these complex deliberations, the council issued 156 decrees or “chapters,” which delineated the essential components of Catholic doctrine and ritual, from its sacraments and prayers to its saints, hymns, and feast days. The council’s decrees also included a series of proposals to ensure that these norms were observed, including regular inspections by bishops of their dioceses and closer monitoring by parish priests of the religious observance of their parishioners, such as their attendance at mass, confession, or baptism ceremonies.
1
The early years of Philip’s reign coincided with the final session of the ecumenical Council of Trent (1545–1563), in which leading Catholic theologians and clergymen from across Europe elaborated a common response to the Protestant challenge. In the course of these complex deliberations, the council issued 156 decrees or “chapters,” which delineated the essential components of Catholic doctrine and ritual, from its sacraments and prayers to its saints, hymns, and feast days. The council’s decrees also included a series of proposals to ensure that these norms were observed, including regular inspections by bishops of their dioceses and closer monitoring by parish priests of the religious observance of their parishioners, such as their attendance at mass, confession, or baptism ceremonies.
Spanish ecclesiastical delegations played an important role throughout the Council of Trent debates, particularly in the crucial final session in 1562–1563, when the majority of its decrees were enacted. These churchmen returned to Spain determined to implement the Tridentine (Trent) agenda, which was fully supported by Philip. The intense religious fervor of Counter-Reformation Spain was expressed in many different ways: in the piety and reforming zeal of Saint Theresa, the poetry of Saint John of the Cross, and the mystical visions of El Greco; in the proliferation of new religious orders and flagellant processions; in the holy women known as
beatas
; and in the towering cathedrals and churches that dominated Spanish towns and cities, with their sumptuous gold
retablos
(alterpieces) and their lurid paintings of Christ and the saints that fixed the viewer’s attention on blood, wounds, and martyrdom. Philip’s reign also coincided with the high-water mark of Spain’s obsession with purity of blood and purity of faith. As regent in 1546, Philip had opposed the controversial
limpieza
statute enacted by the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Siliceo, in his cathedral chapter, which barred entry to prospective applicants with Jewish or Moorish ancestry. Ten years later, however, he ratified it as king. In defending his decision, Philip praised Spain’s reliance on such statutes compared with countries like France, which had failed to ensure that “those of the Generation of Moors and Jews were known and differentiated from the rest of Old Catholic Christians” and had therefore “infected the whole Kingdom with their heresies.”
2
beatas
; and in the towering cathedrals and churches that dominated Spanish towns and cities, with their sumptuous gold
retablos
(alterpieces) and their lurid paintings of Christ and the saints that fixed the viewer’s attention on blood, wounds, and martyrdom. Philip’s reign also coincided with the high-water mark of Spain’s obsession with purity of blood and purity of faith. As regent in 1546, Philip had opposed the controversial
limpieza
statute enacted by the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Siliceo, in his cathedral chapter, which barred entry to prospective applicants with Jewish or Moorish ancestry. Ten years later, however, he ratified it as king. In defending his decision, Philip praised Spain’s reliance on such statutes compared with countries like France, which had failed to ensure that “those of the Generation of Moors and Jews were known and differentiated from the rest of Old Catholic Christians” and had therefore “infected the whole Kingdom with their heresies.”
2
This official approval paved the way for a spate of blood-purity statutes enacted in universities, cathedrals, and military orders. It was a period in which ordinary Christians could boast, like Sancho Panza, that their blood was “free of any admixture of Jew or Moor,” while nobles came to dread the appearance of their names in the “Green Books,” which purported to reveal members of the Castilian nobility who carried the “stain” of Jewish or Moorish blood in their ancestry. Philip’s commitment to religious purity was such that he refused to allow French or Morisco workers to participate in his pet project, the Escorial palace-monastery, despite the renowned prowess of the latter as craftsmen and builders. This somber “eighth wonder of the world” was intended as a monument to the Hapsburg monarchy, but it also symbolized the image of Spain that Philip wished to project to the world: an austere and indestructible fortress of the pure faith. It was an image that did not always reflect the reality of Spanish society, and nowhere was this discrepancy more glaring than in the case of Spain’s former Muslims.
In the decade that followed Philip’s coronation, Spanish foreign policy was dominated by the savage confrontation between the Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean, and from the mid sixteenth century onward, it was a confrontation that appeared to be turning decisively in favor of Constantinople. In 1551, a Turkish expeditionary force expelled the Knights of Malta from Tripoli. Four years later, Saleh Reis, the
beylerbey
(governor-general) of Algiers seized the important Spanish enclave at Bejaïa (Bougie) in Morocco. In 1558 a Turkish fleet ravaged the Balearic Islands, taking four thousand Christians as captives. That same year, Spain launched an assault on the Turkish garrison at Mostaganem from its base in Oran, which ended in a disastrous defeat and the capture of some twelve thousand soldiers. An even worse disaster followed in 1559, when a Spanish-Italian fleet of two hundred ships occupied the strategic island fortress of Jerba in an attempt to neutralize the activities of the corsair admiral Dragut and create a springboard for the reconquest of Tripoli. The following spring, a Turkish fleet under the great Turkish admiral Piyale Pasha trapped the anchored Christian fleet and sank or captured sixty ships. The Jerba expedition was decimated as the Turks retook the island, and Piyale Pasha returned to Constantinople in triumph with thousands of prisoners.
beylerbey
(governor-general) of Algiers seized the important Spanish enclave at Bejaïa (Bougie) in Morocco. In 1558 a Turkish fleet ravaged the Balearic Islands, taking four thousand Christians as captives. That same year, Spain launched an assault on the Turkish garrison at Mostaganem from its base in Oran, which ended in a disastrous defeat and the capture of some twelve thousand soldiers. An even worse disaster followed in 1559, when a Spanish-Italian fleet of two hundred ships occupied the strategic island fortress of Jerba in an attempt to neutralize the activities of the corsair admiral Dragut and create a springboard for the reconquest of Tripoli. The following spring, a Turkish fleet under the great Turkish admiral Piyale Pasha trapped the anchored Christian fleet and sank or captured sixty ships. The Jerba expedition was decimated as the Turks retook the island, and Piyale Pasha returned to Constantinople in triumph with thousands of prisoners.
This chain of defeats effectively left Spain at Suleiman’s mercy. For the next five years, Philip and his court lived in expectation of a full-scale Turkish invasion while Spain frantically sought to rebuild its depleted fleet of galleys with the help of subsidies from the Papacy. In the event, no such assault took place. It was not until 1565 that the Ottomans attempted another major push in the western Mediterranean, when Suleiman launched an expedition against the Knights of Saint John in Malta. By this time, Spain had begun to replace its galleys, and Philip was eventually able to relieve his beleaguered allies after a bloody siege in which the Ottomans suffered huge losses.
The Ottoman retreat from Malta was a humiliation for the Hapsburgs’ arch-enemy, Suleiman, who died the following year, but the struggle for supremacy in the Mediterranean was continued under his less able successor, Selim II. “On land there is peace, and on sea there is perpetual war,” wrote the Valencian chronicler Martín de Viciana in 1564. Turkish power was not the only threat to Spanish interests in the Mediterranean. In the same period, there was an exponential increase in the raids by Barbary corsairs on Spanish ships and coastal towns. These attacks were partly a form of irregular warfare, but they were also driven by a need for manpower. Both Christian and Muslim corsairs needed rowers for their respective fleets, and Christian sailors—including Spaniards—frequently raided the Barbary coast in search of slaves or rowers, while Muslim corsairs carried out similar raids on Christian lands in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Dragut, Barbarossa’s successor as
kapudan pasha
, known as the “drawn sword of Islam,” as well as Ochiali, the
beylerbey
of Algiers, and the two sons of the Barbarossa brothers were among the many Muslim corsairs who plagued Spain’s coasts and navigation in the second half of the sixteenth century.
kapudan pasha
, known as the “drawn sword of Islam,” as well as Ochiali, the
beylerbey
of Algiers, and the two sons of the Barbarossa brothers were among the many Muslim corsairs who plagued Spain’s coasts and navigation in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Some corsairs acted as surrogates for the Turkish sultan or local Muslim rulers, to whom they dedicated a percentage of their profits. Others operated on their own behalf from semiautonomous North African ports such as Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers. Some of these ports became flourishing commercial entrepôts, whose economies were based not only on the traffic in slaves and ransomed Christian captives, but also trade and agriculture. The most successful of these ports, and the most notorious from the perspective of Christian Europe, was the corsair regency of Algiers founded by the Barbarossa brothers. By the mid sixteenth century the “scourge of Christendom” had become something of a boomtown, whose cosmopolitan population included Jews, Moriscos, Christian converts to Islam, and foreign adventurers from throughout Europe and even from the Americas.
In Christian Europe, Algiers was often portrayed as a kind of sixteenth-century “rogue state” whose inhabitants were outlaws and barbarians,
sans foi ni loi
, “without faith nor law,” but corsairing laid the basis for a flourishing cosmopolitan city that also impressed European visitors. In 1551 the French traveler and royal geographer Nicolas de Nicolay described a thriving city with “many faire and pleasant gardens” where “Turkes, Moores and Jewes in great number with marvellous gaine exercise the Trade of Merchandise.”
3
Algiers also housed the notorious slave-pens known as the
baños
, where Christian captives were kept in grim conditions. Cervantes was one of many Spanish prisoners who passed through these converted bathhouses, whose captive population in the second half of the sixteenth century may have been as high as 25,000. Many of these prisoners, like the author of
Don Quixote
, languished for years before their ransom could be paid. Others were sold as slaves in North Africa and the Islamic world or converted to Islam to gain their freedom.
4
sans foi ni loi
, “without faith nor law,” but corsairing laid the basis for a flourishing cosmopolitan city that also impressed European visitors. In 1551 the French traveler and royal geographer Nicolas de Nicolay described a thriving city with “many faire and pleasant gardens” where “Turkes, Moores and Jewes in great number with marvellous gaine exercise the Trade of Merchandise.”
3
Algiers also housed the notorious slave-pens known as the
baños
, where Christian captives were kept in grim conditions. Cervantes was one of many Spanish prisoners who passed through these converted bathhouses, whose captive population in the second half of the sixteenth century may have been as high as 25,000. Many of these prisoners, like the author of
Don Quixote
, languished for years before their ransom could be paid. Others were sold as slaves in North Africa and the Islamic world or converted to Islam to gain their freedom.
4
The activities of the Barbary corsairs would have important consequences for Spain’s former Muslims. After the depletion of Spain’s Mediterranean fleet in the early 1560s, the corsairs became increasingly audacious and often carried out their attacks in broad daylight. Philip himself was made painfully conscious of Spain’s inability to prevent these attacks during a royal visit to Valencia in 1563, where the French ambassador wrote that “All the talk is of tournaments, jousting, balls and other noble pastimes, while the Moors waste no time and even dare to capture vessels within a league of the city, stealing as much as they can carry.”
5
Spanish vulnerability was demonstrated on many other occasions, as corsair chiefs sailed in fleets of up to thirty-five vessels that were often equal to anything that Spain could muster against them. In 1556 Dragut attacked the Valencian city of Denia. In 1565, corsairs landed on the Granada coast and marched unopposed to the town of Órgiva in the Alpujarras, returning to their ships with hundreds of captives. The following year, corsairs sacked the Granadan coastal town of Tabernas and seized hundreds of Christian captives.
5
Spanish vulnerability was demonstrated on many other occasions, as corsair chiefs sailed in fleets of up to thirty-five vessels that were often equal to anything that Spain could muster against them. In 1556 Dragut attacked the Valencian city of Denia. In 1565, corsairs landed on the Granada coast and marched unopposed to the town of Órgiva in the Alpujarras, returning to their ships with hundreds of captives. The following year, corsairs sacked the Granadan coastal town of Tabernas and seized hundreds of Christian captives.
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