This volume presents the fruits of an international conference held in Segovia in 2008 to mark the quatrocentennial of the expulsion of the Moriscos (Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity) from Spain. It is the second in a projected series on conversos (forcibly converted Jews) and Moriscos edited by Kevin Ingram.
It has been over one-half century since philologist Americo Castro suggested that medieval Spanish culture can not be properly understood without acknowledging the central role of Muslims and Jews in the formation of medieval Spanish civilization. Today, the initial opposition to Castro’s theories has been replaced by measured acknowledgment that the medieval coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula and the particularly tragic chapter of forced conversion of Jews and Muslims played an important role in the formation of modern Spain.
Whereas conversos have been studied extensively, publications on the Moriscos are a recent phenomenon as new sources in aljamiado (Castilian and Catalan in Arabic script) are being discovered. Seven of the twelve essays in the present volume are dedicated to Morisco research, forming a welcome addition to the relatively small body of scholarly literature on the subject, while five essays on conversos add new dimensions to our understanding of the converso phenomenon.
A comparison of the converso and Morisco experience reveals many similarities. Both groups faced continuing suspicion and only partial social acceptance after their forced conversions, both endured persecution at the hands of the Inquisition, and both experienced eventual expulsion and/or forced assimilation. Both groups were internally diverse, defying easy description: they were no longer Jewish or Muslim, yet neither were they wholeheartedly Christian. Ultimately their fates differed, however. Whereas the majority of the conversos remained in Iberia after 1492 and were eventually absorbed into the Catholic population, most Moriscos were ousted from Iberia in 1609.
The volume’s time frame stretches from the earliest mention of conversos in thirteenth-century Segovia (Bonifacio Bartolome Herrero’s survey) to the final essay (by Francois Soyer) analyzing the fascinating sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treaties of extradition of conversos contracted between the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, and a study of the role of the converso question in the political breakdown of the union of Spain and Portugal in 1640 (Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano.) The two benighted communities formed far-flung international networks of merchants in their attempts to escape the prying eyes and punishing arm of the Inquisition. While much scholarship on the Portuguese converso mercantile diaspora (the Nacao) exists, the two essays treating Morisco merchant networks (by Luis F. Bernabe Pons and William Childers) are correctives to the widely accepted view that Moriscos formed a largely rural population.
The assimilation of Moriscos was fairly rapid after their forced conversion in 1502 in places such as the “five towns” of La Mancha (Trevor J. Dadson). Initially left to their own devices while the Inquisition was busy hunting down wealthier conversos, the Moriscos only gradually began to feel the full force of Inquisition pressure. In the province of Grenada, armed Morisco resistance to forced assimilation eventually led to outright revolt in the famous Alpujarras Uprising of 1568–69. Like the conversos, the Moriscos were not a homogeneous group. Their varied social backgrounds, multiple forms of religious expression, and geographic dispersion are all analyzed in the volume. While the Moriscos of the Canaries (Luis Alberto Anaya Hernandez) were absorbed fairly smoothly into the Spanish body politic due to their slave origins, those in Seville (articles by Manuel F. Fernandez Chaves and Rafael M. Perez Garcia) manifested greater resistance to assimilation. Despite their high degree of integration, Valencia’s moriscos (according to Benjamin Ehlers) nurtured heretical religious views, challenging the widespread assumption that converso and Morisco social alienation lay at the heart of religious dissidence.
Most reconstructions of the life of conversos and Moriscos are based upon evidence from Inquisitorial tribunals. But popular stories and belles lettres also testify to the persistence of Jewish and Muslim practices. The inclusion of literary studies adds richness and multiple perspectives to the volume’s primarily historical studies. Mary Elizabeth Perry’s sensitive analysis of Morisco popular stories deepens our understanding of Morisco ingenuity while traces of the Morisco expulsion resonate in Cervantes’s Persiles (Steven Hutchinson). Lope de Vega’s dramatization of the infamous blood libel El Nino inocente de la Guardia is the focus of Barbara Weissberger’s essay.
Editor Kevin Ingram’s introductory essay contextualizes the volume’s varied contents and underscores the complementarity of studying the converso and Morisco phenomena in parallel fashion.
