Morisco Survival
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Morisco Survival
In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Western Mediterranean, Moriscos were Christians whose ancestors had been Muslims. The term came into use in Spanish following the first forced baptisms in the Iberian Peninsula after the 1492 Spanish conquest of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled kingdom in Spain. Old Christians used "Morisco," often pejoratively, to refer to a group of people whose religious, political, and cultural allegiances were suspect. The Spanish crown finally solved the "Morisco problem" by expelling every Morisco from Spain with a series of edicts between 1609 and 1614. The expelled Moriscos scattered around the Mediterranean and beyond, eventually losing the designation "Morisco" as they assimilated into their new homes as either Christians or Muslims. Previous scholars have approached the Moriscos from a Spanish national historiographical context and have focused on the question of the Moriscos’ "true" religious identity. This dissertation puts new archival evidence in conversation with better-known printed material in both Arabic and Spanish to examine the socio-economic history of Morisco men and women in a transnational context that expands our understanding of who the Moriscos were and the varied strategies they used to survive in a changing Mediterranean world. This dissertation makes three central arguments about Morisco survival from a range of contexts that highlight the variety of Morisco responses to persecution and violence and to emphasize how Moriscos adapted to changing circumstances over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, Moriscos in Granada relied on the centrality of Morisco (and especially Morisca) labor to survive in a changing political world, but their economic leverage only lasted a few generations until they were expelled from the Kingdom in 1570. Second, Moriscos in Valencia increasingly relied on resistance as tension increased during the last decades of the sixteenth century and coexistence became increasingly dangerous and impossible. Third, Moriscos in the Mediterranean diaspora and beyond found survival even more difficult than their predecessors in Spain. Separation from communities and families made Moriscos particularly vulnerable and they relied on increasingly desperate strategies to survive. Throughout, gender and class determined the range of both challenges and opportunities.
Between Christians and Moriscos
In early modern Spain the monarchy's universal policy to convert all of its subjects to Christianity did not end distinctions among ethnic religious groups, but rather made relations between them more contentious. Old Christians, those whose families had always been Christian, defined themselves in opposition to forcibly baptized Muslims (moriscos) and Jews (conversos). Here historian Benjamin Ehlers studies the relations between Christians and moriscos in Valencia by analyzing the ideas and policies of archbishop Juan de Ribera. Juan de Ribera, a young reformer appointed to the diocese of Valencia in 1568, arrived at his new post to find a congregation deeply divided between Christians and moriscos. He gradually overcame the distrust of his Christian parishioners by intertwining Tridentine themes such as the Eucharist with local devotions and holy figures. Over time Ribera came to identify closely with the interests of his Christian flock, and his hagiographers subsequently celebrated him as a Valencian saint. Ribera did not engage in a similarly reciprocal exchange with the moriscos; after failing to effect their true conversion through preaching and parish reform, he devised a covert campaign to persuade the king to banish them. His portrayal of the moriscos as traitors and heretics ultimately justified the Expulsion of 1609–1614, which Ribera considered the triumphant culmination of the Reconquest. Ehler's sophisticated yet accessible study of the pluralist diocese of Valencia is a valuable contribution to the study of Catholic reform, moriscos, Christian-Muslim relations in early modern Spain, and early modern Europe.
Frontiers of Heresy
Author: E. William Monter
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2003-11-13
A significant reappraisal of the Spanish Inquisition, focusing on the lands beyond Castile.