Volume 3 / Book 8 — CHAPTER II. MORISCOS.[867] (continued 2)

This suited the Inquisition as assuring it a settled income; it relieved the Moriscos from the ever-present dread of pauperism and the miseries of sequestration, and it gratified the nobles and churches by securing them from the alienation of their lands and the impoverishment of their vassals. To the rigid churchman, however, it was a compact with evil and an encouragement of heresy. Archbishop Ribera of Valencia protested against it, and Bishop Pérez of Segorbe, in 1595, advocated its revocation, but Philip II resolved that it should continue during the period agreed upon for the instruction of the Moriscos.[983]

The tribunal naturally took care to increase its assured income by exploiting to the fullest its remaining power of inflicting fines, and it did so with little regard to the limitation. In 1595, the aljamas complained of these infractions.[984] That such complaint continued to be justified would appear from the auto de fe of January 7, 1607, alluded to above (Vol. II, p. 395) where there were twenty fines of ten ducats each on Moriscos, of whom only eight were reconciled, besides other fines, one of twenty, one of thirty and one of fifty.

The table in the Appendix shows that, while the activity of the Inquisition seemed to diminish somewhat after the Concordia, towards the close of the century it increased greatly, there being two hundred and ninety-one cases in 1591 and a hundred and seventeen in 1592. The record furnishing these figures ends with 1592 and we have no means of ascertaining the work in the years which immediately follow, but the rigor of persecution continued. In the auto of September 5, 1604, there were twenty-eight abjurations de levi, forty-nine de vehementi, eight reconciliations and two relaxations—all Moriscos, except a Frenchman penanced for blasphemy. In that of January 7, 1607, there appeared thirty-three Moriscos, of whom one was relaxed, besides six whose cases were suspended, and in the trials torture was employed fifteen times.[985] The fluctuations in the number of cases can be accounted for by evidence occasionally enabling the tribunal to make a raid on some Morisco village when, as they were all Moors at heart, the whole community would be gathered in. Thus, in 1589 and 1590 the little settlement of Mislata, near Valencia, furnished a hundred cases and we are told that in the town of Carlet there were two hundred and forty households that observed the fast of Ramadan.[986]

In fact, as the Moorish faith of the Moriscos was notorious, the whole population was at the mercy of the Inquisition, and the comparative moderation shown by the records may perhaps be explained by a system of secret bribery or compositions whereby immunity was purchased. The possibility of this is suggested by a case which throws considerable light upon the manner in which the inquisitorial power was exercised.

VALENCIA

The family of Don Cosme, Don Juan and Don Hernando Abenamir of Benaguacil ranked among the first of the old Moors of Valencia; the brothers were rich and influential; they held licences to bear arms, and Inquisitor Miranda had appointed them familiars—a position which they resigned at the instance of the Duke of Segorbe, on whose lands they dwelt, for he said that they had no need of such protection, as they had only to appeal to him if aggrieved. In May, 1567, during the absence of Inquisitor Miranda, the fiscal presented to the other inquisitor, Gerónimo Manrique, a clamosa against the brothers. Their arrest was voted but, in view of the importance of the case, the Suprema was consulted, which confirmed the vote and, on July 1st, the warrants were issued. The accused could not be found; edicts summoning them were published and, on January 12, 1568, Don Cosme presented himself. It is his trial that has been preserved, but presumably the others took the same course, except that Don Hernando’s name disappears towards the end, probably in consequence of death.

At the first audience Don Cosme said that he presumed he had been baptized when a child, yet he did not consider himself a Christian but a Moor; he had through life performed Moorish rites and had gone to confession only to conform with the edicts, but in future he desired to be a Christian and to do whatever the inquisitors might require. He offered no defence in the various stages of his trial, but on July 15th, in consequence of the crowded condition of the secret prison, he was given the city as a prison on furnishing security in two thousand ducats.

Notwithstanding this he visited Madrid where, for seven thousand ducats, he purchased for himself and his brothers a pardon from the king, the inquisitor-general and the Suprema, and he also exercised important influence in securing the Concordia of 1571. His stay in the capital was prolonged when, after an interval of nearly three years, the tribunal suddenly revived his case, May 25, 1571 and, on June 6th, it summoned his bondsmen to produce him within nine days, a term extended to twelve days on their protesting that it was notorious that he was in Madrid, on business with the Suprema. This action brought from the Suprema a curt letter stating that Don Cosme complained that, after compounding his case, it had been revived, and ordering the tribunal to drop the matter and explain its motives. This it did and received from the Suprema a second order to do nothing, but to send the papers and await instructions. Subsequently Don Cosme returned to Valencia and exhibited certificates of the pardons for himself and his brothers to Juan de Rojas, then inquisitor, who told him to go enhorabuena, for they were pardoned and the Inquisition had nothing further to do with them.

Six years passed away when suddenly, without further evidence being sought for, on September 3, 1577, the Suprema returned to the tribunal the papers in the cases of Don Cosme and Don Juan, and ordered it to summon them, examine them, vote on them and report to the Suprema for its decision. Don Cosme by that time seems to have been impoverished, and was supporting himself by farming the revenues at Genoves; after some delay he was brought to the prison, December 24th and his trial was resumed. At first he refused to be examined, alleging his pardon, but it was elaborately explained to him that it was not intended to interfere with it but to render it operative, for which it was necessary for him to abjure his errors and be reconciled, to which end he must make full confession as to himself and his accomplices; if he refused, it would show that he desired to remain in his old errors and under excommunication. After some fencing, he submitted and described how, about the age of twelve, his mother had taught him to perform the zala and fast the Ramadan and to believe in one God; that Santa María was a virgin and holy, but not the Mother of God; that the Lord Jesus Christ was a son of God and prophet of God, who had ever spoken truth, and it was a sin not to believe in what he had uttered, but that Mahomet was also a prophet of God, whose utterances were to be believed; he had also been taught to commit no murder, not to covet his neighbor’s daughter and not to bear false witness—all of which would seem to indicate that there was developing among the Moriscos an intermediate faith which in time would have become Christian had opportunity been allowed. Don Cosme further declared that, since his first arrest, he had always been a Christian and desired to live and die in the faith of Christ; he repeated all the Christian prayers accurately, in both Latin and Romance, and wished that he had been born among Christians, as it would have been better for him, both in body and in soul. This went on, until February 21, 1578, when he was allowed the city as a prison, under bail, and on March 26th he was permitted to return home, keeping himself subject to summons.

VALENCIA

Then fifteen months elapsed, until July 17, 1579, his case was voted upon in discordia, requiring its reference to the Suprema which, October 2d, ordered torture at discretion for Don Cosme and Don Juan. Preliminary audiences, however, were prescribed in order that they might discharge their consciences and satisfy the evidence, especially as to accomplices, giving them to understand that this was necessary to enable them to enjoy the pardon of 1571. Under this the trial was resumed, but the record ends before the stage of torture was reached, and the archivist, Don Julio Melgares Marin, who copied it, assumes that the case remained suspended. Probably either the two brothers had succeeded in raising a sum sufficient to satisfy the Suprema, or they were recognized as too poor to be worth further prosecution.[987]

From such a case as this, it can readily be conceived how efficient an instrument was the Inquisition in exciting and perpetuating among the Moriscos an abhorrence of the religion imposed on them by force, and scarce known to them save as an excuse for cruelty and exaction. To some extent this was recognized by the governing powers. After the wise toleration had been discarded, which had rendered the Mudéjares contented subjects, the apostasy of the neophytes was the source of grave concern in the spiritual field, and their known hostility was the cause of even greater disquiet in the sphere of statesmanship. For more than three-quarters of a century it was the subject of a constant series of efforts and experiments, alternating between moderation and severity. With an efficient and honest administration, something might have been accomplished by a consistent policy, but vacillation, incompetence and greed resulted only in increasing exasperation. The story is long and intricate and the barest summary must suffice here to indicate its leading features and the causes of the failure to assimilate the races, on which depended the peace and prosperity of Spain. We have seen the mistaken policy adopted in Granada; in Valencia it was less unreasonable in spirit, but failed miserably in execution.

After the Germanía and the edict of 1525, some futile attempts were made at missionary work among the so-called converts, but the situation, in 1526, is correctly described by Navigero, the Venetian envoy, who says that there was so little care about teaching them, priestly gains being the main object, that they either were as much Moors as before or had no religion of any kind.[988] It was self-evident that to Christianize a large population, scattered over the land, for the most part in exclusive communities, would require a complete organization of parish churches with schools and all the necessary appliances. A basis for this existed in the property of the mosques, which Clement VII, in 1524, had ordered to be converted into churches, and in the tithes, which were now imposed as a fresh burden upon the converts. These were spoils which all, who saw a chance for gain, hastened to grasp. To recompense the lords for the expected loss of tribute from their vassals, who were promised to be treated in all things like Christians, the tithes were made over to them, in return for which they were to provide the churches with what was requisite for divine service, while the revenues of the mosques were expected to furnish foundations for benefices, the patronage of which was given to the lords. For this, as we have seen, the requisite papal authority was procured, but the measure was attacked in innumerable suits, some of which were carried up to the Roman Rota, with the consequent interminable delays.[989] In some fashion, two hundred and thirteen mosques were converted into churches in the archbishopric of Valencia, fourteen in the see of Tortosa, ten in Segorbe and fourteen in Orihuela, but the object kept in view was the revenues, and not the religious training of the Moriscos.[990]

VALENCIA

Nearly ten years passed away with nothing accomplished. A thorough reorganization was seen to be necessary, and papal faculties were obtained empowering Cardinal Manrique to provide persons to instruct the converts, to erect and unite churches, to appoint and dismiss priests, to regulate tithes and to decide summarily all the suits that were expected from archbishops, bishops, chapters, abbeys, priests and secular lords, thus rendering him and his delegates independent of the bishops who thus far had done nothing.[991] Under this, in 1534, Manrique despatched commissioners with detailed instructions, including provisions to be made for a college to be founded for the instruction of Morisco children, who should in turn instruct their parents.[992] The scheme, however, though well intended, was wrecked on the money-question which, to the end, proved an obstacle frustrating all intelligent work in conversion. The revenues of the mosques, the tithes and first-fruits seem to disappear—swallowed up by noble and prelate and, although they derived their incomes in great part from the labor of the Moriscos, it seemed impossible to wring from them what was necessary to support the new establishment. In 1544, St. Thomas of Vilanova, then Archbishop of Valencia, urged the emperor to place zealous and exemplary rectors in the Morisco villages, with ample salaries to enable them to distribute alms, but it does not seem to have occurred to him that this was part of his duty and that of the Church.[993]

Manrique’s commissioners established a hundred and ninety rectories, endowed with the beggarly stipend of thirty crowns a year. It was impossible to find suitable priests for such livings, and the complaint was general that they were, for the most part, ignorant and depraved, creating repulsion rather than attraction to the religion which they assumed to teach. Many were non-resident and neglected their duties entirely, or found vicars at still lower salaries to replace them. There was no one to inspect them or keep them in order. A pension of two thousand ducats a year had been levied on the archbishopric of Valencia, to maintain the projected college for Morisco youths, but two-thirds of this was diverted to the support of the rectories and the rest was made up from various sources, not always adequate, for some holders of benefices refused to pay the moderate assessments made on them.[994]

It was in vain that one effort after another was made to remedy these deficiencies. The indifference of the ecclesiastical authorities, or their opposition when asked for funds, paralyzed every plan devised. In 1564, the Córtes of Monzon pointed out the failure of all attempts to instruct the converts, who were punished for their ignorance, and they made some remedial suggestions. Philip in response assembled a junta under the presidency of Valdés, the conclusions of which were embodied in a royal cédula. This confided the instruction of the Moriscos to the bishops in their several dioceses, who were to appoint proper persons and keep them under supervision, treating the neophytes with the utmost kindness, rewarding the good according to their deserts, and appointing the more prominent among them to familiarships. Archbishop Ayala, on his return from this junta, called a provincial council, but the bishops took no action to carry out the provisions of the cédula, contenting themselves with inflicting heavy fines on those who did not have their children baptized at birth in the best clothes that they could afford; on alfaquíes who visited the sick, and on secular officials who neglected to denounce Moorish observances. The pious hope was expressed that, by compelling them to attend mass on Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and All Saints, they might be attracted to Christian worship, and their salvation was cared for by ordering them on the death-bed to give something for the benefit of their souls, in default of which the heirs must at least have three masses sung for them.[995]

VALENCIA

This was the spirit in which the prelates conceived their duties towards those whom clerical pressure had made their spiritual children, and to whom they owed great part of their revenues. Juan de Ribera who, in 1568, succeeded to the archbishopric of Valencia was a man of different stamp. He preferred the radical cure of expulsion but, so long as the Moriscos remained, he recognized the duty of laboring for their conversion. In 1575 he held a conference with the Bishops of Tortosa and Orihuela (Segorbe being vacant), when it was agreed that the rectorial stipends were inadequate, as there were no offerings at the altar, which led many to abandon their cures, while those who would accept the position were mostly unfitted, through ignorance and character. It was therefore resolved to increase the stipends to a hundred crowns. The king made a contribution, and a sum of seven thousand ducats per annum (or 7350 libras) was assessed on the bishops and those who enjoyed the tithes of the Moriscos. Ribera’s share of this was thirty-six hundred ducats, levied on the income of his “table,” which was forty thousand ducats, so that the assessment was 9 per cent. The rest fell upon ecclesiastics, except a negligible amount to be paid by five laymen. A brief of June 16, 1576, was obtained from Gregory XIII confirming this arrangement, and Ribera punctually paid his portion into the taula or bank of Valencia, but the other churchmen were recalcitrant. The share of his cathedral chapter was eight hundred libras a year, which it not only refused to pay but organized a league to contest the whole measure; the procrastinating resources of litigation were limitless and, in 1597, Philip sent to Valencia the Licentiate Covarrubias to settle the matter if possible. For three years he labored, and finally induced the chapter to obey the papal brief, but on some pretext it refused to abide by the agreement and the litigation continued. The chapter of Segorbe, although its portion was only seventy libras a year, threatened to raise a tumult if it was forced to pay, and sent its treasurer to Rome to work for the revocation of the brief; in 1604 it procured an inhibition on the execution of the brief, but finally, in 1606, the matter was decided against the chapters. By this time their arrearages amounted to a hundred and fifty thousand crowns, which Philip III forgave them and, for the few remaining years they paid their assessments. Meanwhile, Ribera’s contribution had gone on accumulating with interest until it amounted to 157,482 libras 13 s., 11 d. Of this about thirty-two thousand libras had been expended on the rectories; in 1602, sixty thousand were devoted to the college for Morisco youths and, in 1606, thirty-one thousand were given to endow a girl’s college; part went for expenses and, in 1607, a balance of over thirteen thousand was given to the Collegiate Seminary of Corpus Christi which he had founded.[996] Thus this well-intended plan came to naught, like all other attempts, through the covetousness and indifference of those whose duty and interests alike demanded their earnest co-operation.

What might have been accomplished by zealous Christian prelates can be gathered from the experience of Feliciano de Figueroa, Bishop of Segorbe. He had long been Ribera’s secretary and was thoroughly familiar with the question. Promoted to the see of Segorbe, in 1599, he writes, in 1601, that there were twenty Morisco villages in his diocese; at his own cost he put resident rectors in them, with doctrineros, or religious teachers, and twelve preachers, supervising the whole work himself. Already he reports a notable reformation in the adults, while the children manifested affection and readiness to embrace the faith; moreover, during the past forty years, many Moorish ceremonies had fallen into disuse. Again, in 1604, he describes his continued labors without discouragement, although he complains of the obstacles thrown in his way by the secular authorities, who aided the alfaquíes in opposing his efforts.[997]

This alludes to a serious difficulty which aided in bringing about the catastrophe. The lords of Morisco vassals were actuated by the most purely selfish motives. Exploiting their dependents to the utmost, they feared that, if the latter became Christians in fact as well as in name, they would be unable to extort the imposts and tribute which they exacted almost at discretion, for the Moriscos were helpless and defenceless, and the pledges that they should be treated as Christians were forgotten. The lords therefore discouraged all missionary work and, as far as they could, protected their vassals against the Inquisition. When the latter obtained evidence of this interference with conversion, it did not hesitate to prosecute the highest nobles. In 1570 it condemned Don Sancho de Cardona, Admiral of Aragon, to abjure de levi, to a fine of two thousand ducats and to reclusion in a convent at the pleasure of the Suprema—reclusion which proved perpetual, for he died in the convent of his confinement. He deserved much more if the testimony was true which asserted that he advised his vassals to appeal to the king, to the pope, and finally to the Grand Turk to induce him to threaten to persecute the Christians in his dominions if the Moriscos were not left in peace, and further that he advised them to rise and promised to arm them if they would do so. This was not the only case for, in 1571 the Master of Montesa and two other nobles appeared in an auto for the same offence and, in 1578, two others were the subjects of investigation.[998] The lords further made themselves obnoxious by seeking to protect their 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. These gentry were paid by a half or a third of their collections; their position was not enviable, threatened as they were both by the lords and the Moriscos in the remoter districts, and it was impossible to fill the position with men of fitting character.[999]

These spasmodic and fruitless efforts to convert the so-called converts were accompanied with frequent relaxations of the rigid canons against heresy, interesting because they infer a dim conception that toleration, after all, might be a more practical method of winning human souls than oppression and persecution. Unfortunately, this fluctuating policy was the most irrational that could be devised. The Moriscos had been so sedulously taught to abhor Christianity and to distrust their conquerors that leniency could be regarded only as dictated by fear, and as affording licence to follow more undisguisedly the practices of their ancient faith, while the alternations of severity only increased their hatred of the religion of their oppressors.

VALENCIA

Edicts of Grace were the favorite resort when there was a disposition to show moderation, but these, as we have seen, were, for the most part, nugatory, because they were contingent on recorded confessions and the obligation to denounce accomplices. The recorded confession rendered the penitent liable to the terrible penalties of relapse and, as the latter was sure to occur, the Morisco naturally hesitated to incur the liability. To obviate this objection, the unprecedented concession was made of suspending the canons concerning relapse. This could be done only by papal authority and it was repeatedly tried. The earliest instance seems to be a brief of Clement VII, December 5, 1530, empowering Manrique to appoint confessors with faculties to absolve penitents, even if they had relapsed repeatedly, with secret absolution and penance, and to release them and their descendants from all penalties, disabilities and confiscation, the reason alleged for this liberal condonation of apostasy being the lack of priests in the Morisco districts to instruct the converts in the faith. It was not, however, until 1535 that Manrique transmitted this to the Valencia tribunal with orders to execute it, and even then it does not seem to have exercised much influence on the number of trials, though if honestly put into operation it would have superseded them.[1000] This policy continued to be followed spasmodically and grants exonerating from the penalties of relapse were repeatedly made during the rest of the century.[1001]

There was also, in the Edicts of Grace, the necessity of denouncing accomplices, which the Moriscos, to their credit, could rarely persuade themselves to do. Bishop Figueroa of Segorbe pointed this out to Philip III as a matter of supreme importance, as it required them to accuse their parents, their wives and their children, which even the secular laws pretermitted as a matter so horrible to human nature.[1002] Still it was required by the canon law, and could not be omitted without special papal authority. Philip II was so convinced of its impolicy that, when a crucial effort was to be made to test whether the Moriscos could be converted, as an alternative to expulsion, by an Edict of Grace on the most favorable terms, he endeavored to have this condition removed, but Clement VIII, as we have seen (Vol. II, p. 462) while granting, in 1597, an edict covering relapse and conceding that confession could be made to the episcopal Ordinaries, insisted that confession must include full denunciation of the apostasy of others.[1003]

Various causes delayed the publication of the edict until 1599, after Philip III had succeeded to the throne. Great preparations were made for it as for a final experiment; rectors, preachers and commissioners were sent through the land, under detailed instructions from Ribera, who told them that the work was difficult but not impossible; Ribera’s fund was drawn upon for the colleges; the barons were to found schools for the instruction of young children, and a hermandad was organized to place girls in convents or in the families of Old Christians.[1004] The edict was duly published in Valencia, August 22, 1599; its term was for only one year, but it was extended to eighteen months. Philip III eagerly awaited the result, which was conveyed to him in a report of August 22, 1601, by the tribunal. During the eighteen months of the edict, the inquisitors said, only thirteen persons had come forward to take advantage of it and these had made such fictitious confessions, and had so protected their accomplices, that they deserved condemnation rather than absolution; some of them, indeed, had already been denounced to the Inquisition, so that they had evidently been impelled by fear rather than by the desire of conversion. The inquisitors went on to describe the Moriscos as Moors who would always be Moors and, if the Inquisition did not convert them, it at least compelled them to sin with less publicity and thus diminished their evil example.[1005] This failure may be regarded as virtually deciding the fate of the Moriscos. Archbishop Ribera emphasized it in two strong memorials addressed to Philip III, and expulsion came to be recognized as the only solution of the situation, although the vacillation and irresolution of the court postponed for some years the execution of the measure.

VALENCIA

A glance at the tables in the Appendix will show how little influence the successive Edicts of Grace had on the operations of the Inquisition, which reaped its harvests irrespective of them. Yet those tables reveal that, between 1540 and 1563, there were periods during which the tribunal was idle, at least as to cases of heresy. These intervals represent some remarkable efforts to try the effect of moderation, which, although neutralized by lack of coöperative work in winning over the converts, merit examination as measures without example in the career of the Spanish Holy Office.

The nobles of Valencia complained forcibly of the disquiet caused among their vassals by the operations of the Inquisition, and the Córtes petitioned that thirty or forty years might be allowed for their instruction during which they should be exempt from prosecution. Charles assembled a junta of prelates and theologians, which suggested various plans of moderation and conciliation, from among which he selected that of granting a term of grace for past offences, allowing them to confess sacramentally to confessors, and that a period should be provided for their instruction, during which the Inquisition should not prosecute them. This period was liberally fixed at twenty-six years, with the warning that, as they should use or abuse it, it would be extended or shortened. We have seen the failure to provide them with churches and instructors, and it is scarce surprising that they commenced to live openly as Moors, saying that, as they had thirty years in which to do as they pleased, they would take full advantage of it.[1006] This could not be permitted, and the effort to convert by toleration came to a speedy end. The tribunal which had no cases in 1541, 1542 and 1543 resumed operations and had 79, 37 and 49 in 1544, 1545 and 1546—a portion of which, however were undoubtedly the Judaizers prosecuted for revoking confessions (Vol. II, p. 584).

Then, in 1547, came a reversion to a milder policy. A brief dated August 2, 1546, was obtained from Paul III, of so liberal a character that it virtually superseded the Inquisition, by granting faculties to appoint confessors with full power to absolve in utroque foro—both sacramentally and judicially—even those who had been condemned by the Inquisition, and to relieve them and their descendants from all disabilities.[1007] Unfortunately the faculty to appoint confessors was conferred on Antonio Ramírez de Haro, who had for some years been acting as “apostolic commissioner” in Valencia, with extensive powers over everything relating to the Moriscos, but he had, in 1545, left Valencia, on a summons, as Bishop of Segovia, to attend the Council of Trent—from which summons he succeeded in getting himself excused—and had not subdelegated his authority. According to the Archbishop St. Thomas of Vilanova, this made little difference, because the brief was ineffective, inasmuch as it required abjuration de vehementi, entailing relaxation for relapse, to which none of the converts would expose themselves. He, therefore, suggested that more extensive faculties should be obtained, to absolve and pardon without legal forms, seeing that these people had been forcibly converted, that they had never been instructed, and that their intercourse with Barbary indisposed them to Christianity.[1008]

What followed is strikingly illustrative of the procrastination and neglect that rendered Spanish administration so ineffective. The commission of the Bishop of Segovia superseded both the inquisitorial and the episcopal jurisdiction, and his absence left everything in confusion. Archbishop Thomas wrote, April 12, 1547, to Prince Philip that, since the bishop had gone, the Moriscos had daily become bolder in performing their Moorish ceremonies, as there was no one to restrain them; the bishop had left no one to represent him, and no time should be lost in getting him to subdelegate some one who could come at once. Promises were made that a person should shortly be sent, but the habitual mañana postponed it indefinitely. On November 10th, the archbishop again represented the complete liberty enjoyed by the Conversos, with no one empowered to correct them, but his representations were neglected and, in 1551 and 1552, he was still calling for some one authorized to keep the Moriscos in order. Even when, in 1551, the Bishop of Segovia, who still retained his commission, appointed the Inquisitor Gregorio de Miranda as a delegated commissioner, he granted him no inquisitorial power, and the Valencia Moriscos remained, for ten years longer, free from persecution.[1009]

OPPRESSION

This anomalous condition explains why the tables show only a few cases in 1547, 1548 and 1549, and then an entire cessation up to and including 1562, the former being probably the unfinished work of previous years. In 1561, Paul IV empowered Valdés to grant faculties to the Archbishop of Valencia and his Ordinary to reconcile secretly the New Christians: in those cases which could be judicially proved, the confessions were to be made before a notary and delivered to the tribunal, where they remained of record against both the penitent and his accomplices, while in cases that could not be proved, the penances were to be purely spiritual.[1010] This fresh experiment indicates a revival of interest in the Morisco question, to be necessarily followed by a return to the old methods. In 1562, accordingly, the tribunal began to act in Teruel, where the town of Xea had the reputation of an asylum for malefactors; it was exclusively Morisco, no Old Christian being permitted to reside there. Finally, all restrictions were removed and, in 1563, the Inquisition was vigorously at work, with sixty-two cases, and held two autos, in which appeared nine cases from Xea.[1011] After that there was no further interference with its functions, and it continued to the end to contribute its share to rendering Christianity odious. What Archbishop Ayala thought of its influence in this direction is indicated by his offer, in 1564, to undertake the instruction of the Moriscos at his own expense, but only on condition that the Inquisition should have nothing to do with them, except in cases of open and defiant sin.[1012]

Even without the aggravation of the Inquisition, the condition of the Moriscos was deplorable. They had been promised, in return for baptism, that they should have all the privileges of Christians, but this, like all other pledges, was made only to be broken. Enforced conversion had added to their burdens and had brought no compensatory relief—they were Christians as regards duties and responsibilities, but they remained Moors in respect to liabilities and inequality before the law. In 1525 the syndics of the aljamas pointed out that, in order to enjoy their religion, they had been subjected by their lords to many imposts and servitudes which they could not render as Christians, for they would not be allowed to work on Sundays and feast-days, wherefore they asked to be taxed only as Christians. To this it was replied, in the Concordia of 1528, that they should be treated as Christians and that, to avoid injury to parties, investigation should be made to prevent injustice. Their lords, however, did not admit this and, in the same year, the Córtes of Valencia declared that they retained all their rights over their vassals, who were forbidden to change their domiciles.[1013] The lords accepted the tithes and the first-fruits as a compensation, but merely added these fresh burdens on their vassals, who were powerless to resist.

EXACTIONS

Charles recognized this injustice and his responsibility for it, but he dared not raise a conflict with the nobles, and he sought to shield himself behind the awful authority of the Inquisition. He therefore procured from Clement VII, July 15, 1531, a remarkable brief reciting that, when the Saracens were converted, the barons and knights, in compensation for the loss inflicted on them, were empowered to exact from their vassals the tithes and first-fruits, but they have not only enjoyed these new imposts but have continued to extort the personal services and açofras[1014] and other demands of the ante-conversion period. Thus the converts, unable to endure these accumulated burdens, allege them as justifying their retaining their old customs and disregarding the Christian feasts and ceremonies. As Charles had asked him for a remedy, and as he knew nothing of the matter, he committed it to Manrique with power to hear complaints and render justice, enforcing his decisions with censures.[1015] The rôle of protector of the Moriscos was novel for the Inquisition and Manrique kept the brief until January, 1534, when, in sending Fray Antonio de Calcena and Antonio Ramírez de Haro as commissioners to organize the Morisco churches, he informed them that the king ordered the Concordia to be enforced; the New Christians were in all things to be treated like the Old; they were to investigate secretly and report whether this was the case.[1016] Apparently the Inquisition shrank from the unaccustomed task; there is no trace of its intervention in behalf of the oppressed Moriscos, and its only prosecutions of the nobles were for favoring their vassals against its persecution. As for the Córtes, their sole efforts were directed to increase the burdens of the vassals and, in case of their condemnation, to profit by the confiscations.

Thus they were mercilessly pillaged. Besides the division of the crops, of which one-third or one-half went to the lord, and besides the tithes and first-fruits, there were innumerable imposts of all kinds and forced loans or benevolences. In 1561, one of the numerous consultas on the Morisco question alludes to the hardship of forcing them to live like Christians and pay like Moors. The king, it added, ought to relieve them from these unjust impositions, but it would throw the whole kingdom into confusion and impede the work of conversion, so the commissioners ought to see how it could be brought about that they should pay no more than the Christians. This continued to the end. In 1608, Padre Antonio Sobrino, S. J., argued that one of the chief obstacles to conversion was the tyranny of the lords and, in addition to the exactions in money and kind, he alludes to the forced labors imposed on them, on meagre wages and still more meagre food, or frequently with no wages.[1017] In fact, they were virtually taillables et corvéables à miséricorde, and their oppression was tempered only by the ever-present apprehension of rebellion and, in the coast districts, by the facilities of escape to Africa. Even their ecclesiastical persecutors were almost moved to pity by the hopeless misery of their lot, but we are told that there was no compassion felt for this, as it was generally deemed advisable to keep them impoverished and in subjection.[1018]

The control of the lords over their vassals was further safe-guarded by a pragmática of Charles V, in 1541, forbidding the Moriscos of Valencia, under pain of death and confiscation, from changing either domicile or lord, and any one accepting them as vassals, without special royal licence, was fined five hundred florins, or was scourged in default of the money. Granadan and Castilian Moriscos were threatened with death for entering Valencia and this, in 1545, was extended to those of Aragon. This ferocious legislation was repeated in 1563 and 1586.[1019]

Akin to this was the suicidal policy of forbidding the emigration of those who were recognized as dangerous domestic enemies. This, as we have seen, was begun by Ferdinand and Isabella and was rigidly persisted in—partly, no doubt, from a pious scruple of allowing the baptized to apostatize in Barbary, and partly to protect the lords from the loss of their vassals. In time this was enforced in Aragon by the Inquisition, which published edicts to that effect, including the guidance over the mountains of emigrants by Christians. In the auto of June 6, 1585, the tribunal punished two who were seeking to leave the country and two who served as guides, with scourging and the galleys for three men and scourging and imprisonment for a woman.[1020] Not only was this a grievous hardship, by depriving the oppressed of all hope of relief, but it was a fatal error for, if the discontented had been allowed to expatriate themselves, the remainder could have commanded better treatment, and the Morisco question which, for half a century, distracted Spanish statesmanship, might have settled itself without the desperate expedient of expulsion.

Disarmament was another precaution entailing a grievance which was keenly felt. We have seen it in Granada, and that in Valencia it was a prudent preliminary to enforced baptism in 1525. In the Concordia of 1528, the Moriscos asked that their arms be restored to them, and were told that they would be treated as Old Christians. This promise, like the rest, was broken. The pragmática of 1541, among its other restrictions, included that of bearing arms. This was not enforced and, in 1545, orders were sent to carry it into effect, but the methods suggested show that it was regarded as a dangerous business, and the purpose was abandoned. In 1552, St. Thomas of Vilanova urged that it should be done, and so did Inquisitor Miranda in 1561. Finally, in 1563, the work was done by a sudden simultaneous action of the lords, when the inventories compiled show that, in 16,377 Morisco houses, there were seized 14,930 swords, 3,454 cross-bows and a long list of other weapons, indicating how industriously the Moriscos had provided themselves.[1021]

DISARMAMENT—LIMPIEZA

In Aragon, the matter was confided to the Inquisition. The tribunal of Saragossa issued a decree, November 4, 1559, forbidding the Moriscos from carrying arms, but the nobles appealed to the Suprema and procured its indefinite suspension.[1022] The question was revived, in 1590, but a quarrel with the archbishop on a point of precedence delayed its consideration, and then the troubles of Antonio Pérez distracted attention. Finally, in 1593, Philip II ordered the disarmament, the execution of which was entrusted to the tribunal. Two inquisitors traversed the land and collected 7,076 swords, 3,783 arquebuses, 489 cross-bows, 1,356 pikes, lances and halberds and large numbers of other weapons. Knives were permitted, but these increased in size until they became formidable; after two or three officials of the Inquisition had been killed with them when making arrests, a royal edict of 1603 limited them to a third of an ell in length and required them to be pointless.[1023] The result of these precautions was seen when the edict of expulsion was enforced and the desperate wretches who essayed a hopeless resistance were slaughtered.

The growth of the absurd cult of limpieza brought another hardship of no little moment. At first there was a disposition to exempt Moriscos from its exclusiveness. When, in 1565, Philip II was trying conciliation he ordered that leading and influential Moriscos should be appointed as familiars, and we have seen that Inquisitor Miranda gave commissions to the brothers Abenamir. Paul IV forbade admission to holy orders to the descendants of Jews to the fourth generation and, in 1573, Gregory XIII extended this to the Moriscos, but the Córtes of Monzon, in 1564, had decreed that those trained in the Morisco college of Valencia should be allowed to hold benefices and the cure of souls among their people, and we are told that it graduated some good priests and preachers and doctors of theology.[1024] Yet in time the exclusion became general, and throughout Spain no distinction was made between descendants of Jews and Mudéjares. In a land where a career in office, secular or ecclesiastical, was the ambition of every man who had a smattering of education, this barrier condemned to obscurity able men who naturally devoted their energies to stimulating disaffection and provoking revolt. Navarrete, as we have seen, even thinks that the necessity of the expulsion would have been averted but for this; that the Moriscos could have been Christianized, if they had had the opportunity to identify themselves with the nation and to share in its public life, in place of being driven to desperation and to hatred of religion by the indelible stigma imposed upon them.[1025]

The baptism of Morisco children furnished a perpetual source of irritation. Rigid regulations were prescribed to ensure the administration of the sacrament, as it was essential to their salvation and to rendering them subject to inquisitorial jurisdiction. No Morisco woman was allowed to act as midwife, but in every village there was a Christian midwife, carefully selected and instructed. She kept watch on all pregnant women, under a fine of a hundred reales for every case she missed. After putting the infant to the breast, her first duty was to notify the priest and alguazil, after which she was not to leave the bed-side save for indispensable household duties. The baptism was performed the same day or the next, and careful registers were kept, so that identification could be secured. There is doubtless truth in the universal assertion that, on returning home, the father scraped and washed the spots touched by the chrism, in the belief that he thereby effaced the sacrament.[1026]

PROHIBITED MARRIAGES

Marriage was the source of infinite trouble. The Church had prohibited unions within the fourth degree of kinship and, by inventing spiritual affinity, it had complicated and enlarged the incestuous area while, by assuming for the pope the profitable power of selling dispensations, it admitted that the restriction was purely artificial. Among the Moors, marriage between first cousins was permitted and, as the Moriscos dwelt confined in their Morerías, or in small, isolated villages, without power to change domicile, intermarriage throughout generations had created such complexity of relationship that unions lawful under the canon law must have been exceptional. We have seen the question raised in the Concordia of 1528, with the result that existing marriages and betrothals were dispensed for, but that future ones must conform to the canons. This was a virtual impossibility; the rectors sought to make their subjects purchase dispensations, but we are told that they rarely did so; that, in some places, they merely told the lord that the parties were of kin and that, if he made no objection, the marriage would take place—an indifference for which more than one noble was prosecuted and publicly penanced.[1027] Under such circumstances, there could have been no Christian marriage-rites, and the union was legally pure concubinage, or at best clandestine marriage, which the Council of Trent, in 1563, pronounced invalid.[1028] It was probably the conciliar definitions that induced the Córtes of Monzon, in 1564, to petition that facilities should be afforded for obtaining dispensations from the Commissioner of the Santa Cruzada, who possessed the requisite faculties, and further that the offspring of such unions should be legally legitimate. To this not unreasonable request the bishops of the Council of Valencia, in 1565, replied by threatening excommunication and other penalties on all marrying within the prohibited degrees, and on all concerned in evasions of the canons.[1029]

The matter was universally admitted to be of supreme importance, but it was treated with the customary negligence and procrastination. At length, in 1587, Philip II represented it to Sixtus V, but he only obtained a brief, January 25, 1588, granting to the Valencia bishops, for six months only, faculties to validate such marriages, legitimate the children and absolve the parents in utroque foro, with salutary penance, for all of which no fees were to be exacted. It is not likely that the officials took much interest in performing this gratuitous labor, or that the Moriscos, even if they chanced to hear of the brief, exposed themselves to the annoyances which it entailed. The last recorded action in the matter is that Philip, in 1595, resolved to apply for another brief of the same nature. He doubtless obtained it with the same nugatory result.[1030]

The Moorish rule, to eat no meat slaughtered by the uncircumcised, was made the pretext for some troublesome intermeddling. In the Granada decree of 1526, Charles V forbade all slaughtering by Moriscos, in places where there was an Old Christian; where there was none, the priest was to designate a person to perform the office.[1031] Little attention appears to have been paid to the matter, until Archbishop Ribera issued an edict prohibiting Moriscos from eating meat that had not been slaughtered by an Old Christian. This was trespassing on the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and, in 1579, the Suprema called upon the Valencia tribunal for a report, including what Bishop Gallo of Orihuela had done with regard to the same matter. The tribunal replied that the edict was obeyed, but that the Moriscos would eat no meat slaughtered by Old Christians, except in a few places, under compulsion by their lords. The edict ought to be perpetuated, for the refusal to eat the meat of a Christian butcher was proof of suspicion, requiring prosecution by the Inquisition. In Orihuela there was doubt whether a cow killed at Aspe had been properly slaughtered; the Moriscos refused to eat of it, for which the Murcia tribunal punished a number of them, leading Bishop Gallo to order that, at Aspe and Nobelda, the butchering should be done by Old Christians. It was probably this which led to general legislation forbidding Moriscos to follow the trade of butchers, or even to kill a fowl for a sick man, a law repeated as late as 1595.[1032]

RAVAGES ON THE COAST

Subjected to the perpetual exasperation of interference with their habits and customs, to the oppression of their lords and the persecution of the Inquisition, denied all opportunity to rise in the social scale, forbidden to enjoy the faith of their ancestors, while sedulously trained to hate the religion imposed on them, and despairing of relief in the future, it is no wonder that the Moriscos were discontented subjects, eager to throw off the insupportable yoke and to rise against their oppressors. They were, however, but little more than half a million of souls, weaponless and untrained, in a population of eight or ten millions—a negligible quantity in the vigorous days of Ferdinand and even in the earlier years of Charles V. The Spanish monarchy, however, had squandered its strength on distant enterprises; even before the fearful drain in the Netherlands, the exhaustive effort required to crush the Moriscos of Granada showed that it was already bankrupt in resources. That episode was a warning which Spanish statesmanship might well take to heart, and, year by year, the fear grew greater of what might be the fate of Spain if internal enemies should unite with external.

There had long been a source of humiliation and annoyance, though not in itself of danger, in the ravages of Moorish corsairs along the southern coast, for which the Moriscos were held responsible. Undoubtedly they aided by conveying information, maintaining relations with Barbary, and availing themselves of the razzias to escape thither when they could, but the primary fault lay in the incredible fatuity of a policy, so preoccupied with foreign ambitions and the fatal Burgundian inheritance, that it neglected the protection of the Spanish shores, until it became a proverb that these were the Indies of the Turkish and Moorish sea-rovers.

Complaints of these ravages commence with the Christianization of Granada and continue uninterruptedly for more than a century, while the measures to guard against these attacks were spasmodic and miserably insufficient. Boronat gives a list of thirty-three descents, between 1528 and 1584, but this cannot include the innumerable landings from small vessels to carry away bands of Moriscos and such pillage as could hastily be gathered—little raids such as that picturesquely described by Cervantes, with its characteristic feature of the fortified church, in which the Christians of the sea-coast village defended themselves, while the Moriscos eagerly hurried to embark.[1033] In the larger expeditions, the Moriscos sometimes escaped in considerable numbers. In 1559, Dragut carried off twenty-five hundred; in 1570, all those of Palmera were taken; in 1584, an Algerine fleet removed twenty-three hundred, and the next year another fleet took away the whole population of Callosa, all of which was exceedingly damaging to the lords who lost their vassals.[1034]

These raids were practically unresisted and unavenged, for the coasts were unguarded by land or sea. Occasionally, as in 1519, we hear of a few hundred troops sent, when news was received of an expected hostile fleet: sometimes there were negotiations between the central government and the exposed provinces to maintain a force on the water, but the inadequacy of these precautions is illustrated by the bargaining in 1547, when the Catalan Córtes complained of the irreparable damage inflicted by the Moorish corsairs and asked that six of the Castilian galleys be sent to winter there. Prince Philip would only promise that he would do what was suitable, which brought an offer that Catalonia would equip and man one galley while Valencia promised one or two, and Philip acceded to the request that the Castilian galleys should coöperate with them.[1035] Another expedient was based on the assumed collusion of the Moriscos with the corsairs, and it seemed easier to exclude them wholly from the coast than to guard it effectually. As early as 1507 Ferdinand undertook to depopulate it from Gibraltar to Almería, but the experiment proved a failure.[1036] It was tried again repeatedly, in various savage laws to prevent Moriscos from travelling within prescribed distances from the sea, and from holding communication with the corsairs, but this naturally effected nothing.[1037] In 1604, the Córtes of Valencia even proposed to enlist the coöperation of the Moriscos, by suggesting that they should redeem all Christians captured and enslaved on the Valencian coast, in return for which the rigor of the Inquisition should be relaxed and their evidence against each other should not be required, but it is needless to say that the plan was rejected.[1038]

While this matter of the corsairs was comparatively trivial in itself, it bore a disproportionately large share in the discussions on the Morisco question, and undoubtedly had its influence on the final decision. The result, indeed, showed that there was a connection between the Moriscos and the corsairs, for one of the benefits derived from the expulsion was relief to the coasts.[1039] Vastly greater, however, in the eyes of statesmen, was the impending danger of rebellion, coincident with attack from Barbary or from the Turk or, in later years, from France.

CONSPIRACIES

Even as early as 1512, Peter Martyr, in describing the disturbed condition of Granada, declared that if some daring pirate leader should march into the interior, the population would rise and, as Ferdinand was occupied with the conquest of Navarre, all would go to ruin.[1040] In 1519, there was a scare in Valencia over a report that the Moors of Algiers were coming to seize the kingdom, in concert with the Moriscos.[1041] It is somewhat remarkable that, when a conspiracy was discovered in 1528, the eagerness of the Valencia tribunal to defend its jurisdiction actually led it to protect the conspirators. The authorities had arrested Pere de Alba and his mother-in-law Isabel, as the leaders of the plot. The tribunal claimed them as apostates and, when they were sent to it for examination, it threw them into its prison and refused to surrender them, although the viceroy demanded them as essential to unravelling the details of the conspiracy. Cardinal Manrique was obliged to despatch a special courier with a letter expressing his surprise, as the safety of the state was the first consideration, but even then the tribunal only gave them up with a warning that they must not be made to suffer in life or limb.[1042]

When Philip II returned to Spain, in 1559, he called for a report on the Moriscos, and the information submitted to him comprised an account of a plot with the Turks for an invasion.[1043] In 1565, a number of arrests were made on charges of treasonable correspondence with the Turk, and it was public rumor that thirty thousand Moriscos were enrolled, awaiting only the capture of Malta to rise in aid of an invasion. The French ambassador, who reported this, subsequently added that the story of the conspiracy was contradicted, but the Moriscos were so badly treated by the Inquisition that despair might readily lead them to rise in arms to aid the Turk.[1044] In 1567, the trial of Gerónimo Roldan, by the Valencia tribunal, revealed evidence of envoys from the ruler of Algiers with a letter urging the Moriscos to rise, together with plans to organize and arm them.[1045] It is true that the rebellion of Granada showed that there was no such eagerness to invade Spain as was apprehended, but, on the other hand if, with the aid of five or six hundred Moors and Turks, the insurgents had taxed to the utmost the power of the kingdom, what was the prospect if a powerful fleet, holding command of the sea, should land a heavy force of trained and well-armed fighting men? During the rebellion, the Venetian envoy, Sigismondo Cavalli, pointed out that assistance from Barbary would involve the kingdom in the greatest straits, for there were about six hundred thousand Moriscos to help an invader. So, in 1575, Lorenzo Priuli, estimating them at four hundred thousand, described them as the source of perpetual danger.[1046] The peril constantly increased with time. It was universally recognized that, through the drain to the colonies, the external wars, and the growth of the celibate clergy, the Old Christians were constantly diminishing in numbers, while the Moriscos were rapidly increasing; the material and especially the military resources of Spain were becoming gradually exhausted, and Spanish statesmen looked forward anxiously to the time when, as Fray Bleda tells us, the Moriscos hoped eventually, to reconquer the land with the aid of the Moors and Turks.[1047]

CONSPIRACIES

Nor was this all for, with the pacification of France under the able control of Henry IV, there loomed before them a new and more dangerous enemy. Henry had a long debt of vengeance to pay, and was but awaiting his opportunity. He was in alliance with the Turk and had no conscientious scruple as to Moslem aid. Even as early as 1583, while as yet he was only King of Navarre, there was a scare over an asserted combination between him and the Turk, for an invasion in combination with the Moriscos, which led the Suprema, in January, 1584, to order from the Saragossa tribunal a report on all the evidence in the records as to plots for rebellion.[1048] This was furnished in detail and shows the incessant vigilance and constant anxieties, since 1565, to which the disaffection of the Moriscos had given rise, and their correspondence not only with the Barbary States and the Turk, but with the French Huguenots. A portion of the evidence was undoubtedly manufactured by the spies in the pay of the Inquisition, but there was enough of genuine to show that plots and intrigues were constantly on foot among the Moriscos. Henry IV was quite ready to utilize their disaffection in furtherance of his plans for the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy and, in 1602, he entered into negotiations with them, through the Marshal Duke de la Force, his governor in Béarn and Navarre. They promised to raise eighty thousand men and to deliver three cities, one of them a seaport and, as an earnest of their resolve, they paid to la Force, at Pau, in 1604 or 1605, a hundred and twenty thousand ducats, but Henry decided that the moment was not favorable and the plan was postponed.[1049]

Then, in 1608, there came a fresh alarm through negotiations of the Valencian Moriscos with Muley Cidan, a pretender to the throne of Morocco, to whom they promised two hundred thousand men, if he would bring twenty thousand and seize a seaport, while certain Hollanders agreed to furnish transportation. Philip III was so impressed with this that, in sending the report to the Royal Council, he ordered it to consider the matter to the exclusion of everything else. He admitted the defenceless condition of Spain; Muley Cidan was its declared enemy; Sultan Ahmed I had his hands free from the war with Persia and had suppressed his own rebels; Spain’s Italian possessions were exhausted and ripe for revolt, while at home the Moriscos were impatient for liberation. The Council was therefore ordered to consider the means of preserving peace, short of butchering them all.[1050]

This scare passed away; Muley Cidan rejected the Morisco overtures, and Ahmed sent his fleet against the coasts of Italy. The impression remained, however; the final impulsion had been given, and thenceforth the expulsion of the Moriscos was only a question of means and opportunity. Its execution can scarce be said to have been premature for, although those of Valencia were deported in the autumn of 1609 and those of Aragon in the spring of 1610, Henry IV still relied on those who were left to aid him in his plans for the destruction of Spain. A part of his design was an invasion by la Force with ten thousand men, trusting to the coöperation of the Moriscos, with whom negotiations had been resumed. La Force was in consultation with him, and was in his carriage on May 14, 1610, when, in the Rue de la Ferronerie, the knife of Ravaillac gave Spain a respite.[1051] It was evidently supposed that the expulsion had been imperfect and that Spain was still an easy prey. The Baron de Salignac, French Ambassador at Constantinople, wrote to Henry, May 2, 1610, that no matter how many Moriscos had been banished, enough remained to give the Spaniards trouble; war that elsewhere could cost a crown would not there cost a maravedí, and when it should begin Spain would find it more difficult to raise a maravedí than it would be to raise a doubloon elsewhere.[1052] As events turned out, these were vain speculations, but they have interest as showing how, in the estimation of her enemies, Spain had fatally crippled herself by the mismanagement of her Morisco subjects. To the Spanish statesmen of the time the situation had become one from which extrication was imperative at whatever cost.

It can readily be believed that the matter had long before awakened the earnest solicitude of Philip II and his counsellors. As early as 1581, when in Lisbon consolidating his rule over Portugal, he formed a junta of his chief advisers to formulate a definite conclusion. That which they reached was the merciful one of sending to sea all the Moriscos who would not be catechised or did not desire to remain, embarking them on worthless ships which were to be scuttled, for it was deemed unwise to add to the population of Africa; it was resolved that, when the fleet returned from the Azores, the plan should be executed by Antonio de Leyva but, when the fleet arrived, it was wanted in Flanders, and the project was abandoned. When, in 1602, Philip III was informed of this, he expressed his pleasure because it justified what was then in contemplation.[1053]

DELIBERATIONS

As Fray Diego de Chaves, confessor of Philip II, was a member of the junta, there could have been no conscientious scruples concerning this wholesale murder. The Church for centuries had taught that death was the penalty for heresy; this was past discussion and was accepted as a matter of course, so that anything short of it was a grace undeserved—slavery, the galleys, the mines, castration, were mercies for which the culprits should feel grateful. So all theologians taught and so Fray Bleda learnedly set forth in his hideous book, the Defensio Fidei, which was approved in Rome after careful examination, and was printed at the expense of Philip III.[1054] Yet, for the honor of humanity, it must be said that there were a few rare souls who held that religion should be spread by love and charity—at least we may so assume from a memorial presented to the Lisbon junta, setting forth that the proper means of conversion had never yet been tried; that the cure had failed through the use of violence, for the disease was not incurable and the fault lay in the methods adopted; Christ had sent forth the apostles to convert the world by preaching the gospel, and the effort should be to find teachers of exemplary life, who would preach with love and gentleness. The memorial recited calmly and temperately the mistakes that had been made in the use of coercion and the absence of instruction and persuasion, and it proposed a series of measures which show that the writer was familiar with the difficulties of the task, the essential condition of which was that those entrusted with it should persuade themselves that it was not impossible. The junta contented itself with proposing that, if the king so desired, the memorial could be sent to the prelates of Valencia, Aragon and Granada, for examination and report. It seems to have been so sent, but only two answers are on record. Archbishop Ribera replied with the alternative of immediate expulsion or, what would be better, thinning out the Moriscos by appointing a body of special inquisitors, who should execute speedy justice, until there should be so few left that they could be expelled without trouble, thus calmly proposing to burn men and women by the hundred thousand. A shade less ferocious was the suggestion of the Inquisitor of Valencia, Ximenez de Reynoso, who favored expulsion to Newfoundland, under the guard of soldiers, who should receive allotments of land and vassals, similar to those of the conquistadores in the New World.[1055] Such an expulsion averted the danger of increasing the African population and was recommended, with a characteristically savage addition, by Martin de Salvatierra, Bishop of Segorbe, when, in 1587, his advice was sought by Philip. He responded by a long and brutal attack on the Moriscos, and suggested deportation to Newfoundland, where they would speedily perish, especially if the precaution were taken of castrating all the males, old and young.[1056]

It is to the credit of Philip II and his counsellors that, after the failure of the Lisbon project of 1581, they refused to entertain the inhuman suggestions of their ecclesiastical advisers. The matter continued to be threshed out, over and over again, in repeated juntas and councils, in innumerable consultas, and in the system, which Philip had reduced to perfection, of endless talking and writing, which served as an excuse for inaction. One device after another was discussed, such as reducing all the Moriscos to slavery, or sending the able-bodied to the galleys, but the idea of expulsion gradually forged to the front. In this confused tangle of prejudice, passion and fanaticism, it is refreshing to meet with a more statesmanlike view, expressed in a letter of the royal secretary, Francisco de Idiaquez, October 3, 1594, concerning a paper, submitted to him by the king, from some zealous but unpractical person, who argued that the existing scarcity arose from overpopulation, which would be relieved by the expulsion of the Moriscos. So far from this being the case, said Idiaquez, Spain had less inhabitants than for the last two or three centuries. If the presence of this vile race were as safe as it was profitable, there was not a corner of land that should not be placed in their hands, for they alone would bring fertility and plenty by their skill and thrift, which would reduce the price of provisions and with them that of other products. Cheapness was not caused by scanty population but by dense, if the people would work; the high prices were the result of the vice, the idleness, the luxury and the excessive superfluities indulged in by all classes.[1057]

DELIBERATIONS

The panic fear entertained of the Moriscos is reflected in an elaborate memorial presented to Philip III, on his accession in 1598, by the Marquis of Velada, who had been his tutor and was his mayordomo mayor, seriously urging Sicilian Vespers to prevent them from adopting the same expedient.[1058] Yet the simpler solution of allowing the irreconcilables to depart was not without its advocates, and at one time came near to adoption. In 1598, Don Martin González de Cellorigo submitted to Secretary Idiaquez the suggestion that they should be permitted or required to leave Spain, scattering the rest throughout Castile, on their abjuring their heresies, and subjecting them to the restrictions imposed on the exiles from Granada.[1059] Even as late as 1607, the Junta de Tres, to which the whole affair of the Moriscos had been entrusted, in a consulta of January 1st, favored the plan of allowing all, who would not accept Christianity, to betake themselves to Barbary, pointing out the futility of the objection that this would increase the power of the Moors, and this it repeated, October 29th, adding the suggestion that the Moriscos of Castile should be scattered and confined to agricultural labor, in all of which Philip signified his concurrence.[1060]

This was too sensible and humane to suit the ecclesiastics, who were bent on getting rid of the obnoxious apostates by expulsion or extermination, and Spain was not to be allowed so easy a solution of the difficulties created by a century of fanaticism and wrong-doing. In the irresolute and vacillating policy of the court, a final effort was made, as we have seen, to conciliate and instruct, in the Edict of Grace of 1599, under conditions that rendered it nugatory. Its failure, in 1601, was followed by the memorials of Archbishop Ribera urging expulsion, and any subsequent efforts to convert, such as a junta of bishops held in 1608 and 1609, were merely to keep the Moriscos amused and in ignorance of the more drastic measures proposed, during the years in which Philip III and his advisers discussed and rediscussed the question, pondered over details and avoided an irrevocable decision.

When, under pressure of the alarm about Muley Cidan, Philip called upon his Council of State for an immediate decision, it admitted that there had been too much delay and that the matter must not be left for the next generation, for the Christians, through wars and religion and dissolute lives, were constantly diminishing in numbers, while the Moriscos, through peace and frugality, were multiplying until in time they would be the majority. The alternatives of massacre or slavery, or the galleys, or allowing the discontented to emigrate were barely alluded to, and expulsion was in the minds of all. The external relations of Spain rendered the opportunity propitious and it ought not to be wasted. The work should commence with Valencia, which was the most dangerous centre, and the other kingdoms could be kept quiet with assurances that the expulsion was not to go further. The opposition of the nobles could be bought off by granting them the real and personal property of their vassals, and preparations should be made to have a powerful fleet off the coast by the end of Spring, and sufficient forces on land to crush resistance. As the Inquisition was in the habit of making many arrests, it could readily seize the influential Moriscos, so as to deprive the rest of their leadership. This sketched out the plan eventually followed, and the only partially dissentient voice was that of the royal confessor, Cardinal Fray Gerónimo Xavierr, who pleaded the forcible baptism and the futile endeavors to instruct by ministers, many of whom were of lives so depraved that they wrought harm by their evil example; he asked that efforts to convert should continue and if, by the time set for expulsion, there was no prospect of improvement, the proposed rigor would be justified. A process could then be formed by the Inquisition as to their apostasy, when they could be condemned for treason against God, or, if rebellion were proved, for treason against the king.[1061]

This last suggestion refers to a characteristic scruple. Ribera had alluded to it in his second memorial, to the effect that expulsion would be an invasion of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, depriving it of inflicting the canonical punishments, but this, he suggested, could be removed by application to the pope.[1062] It was doubtless in view of this scruple, and to avoid interference by the Inquisition, which was interested in maintaining the existing situation, that the edict of expulsion represented the measure as purely secular, caused by the treasonable correspondence of the Moriscos with the enemies of Spain, and by the necessity of placating God for their heresies.[1063]

EXPULSION

Still there were irresolution and delay, and the die was not cast until, in April, 1609, the Council of State presented a consulta unanimously agreeing on expulsion and virtually determining that the work should commence in autumn, the interval being employed in organizing the militia, bringing troops from Italy, and assembling squadrons to command the coast. Early in May orders were sent to the viceroys of Sicily, Naples and Milan to have the galleys in readiness and, at the end of June, the squadrons were instructed to rendezvous at Majorca on August 15th. Even after this there were evidences of hesitation and vacillation, but the plan was adhered to.[1064]

Early in August, Don Agustin de Mexia, an officer of high rank, who had distinguished himself at the siege of Ostend, was sent to Valencia, ostensibly to inspect the fortifications, but armed with full powers to carry out the expulsion. He bore a letter from the king to Ribera, expatiating on the influence which the latter had had in leading him to a decision. Ribera had obtained more than he had bargained for. His somewhat selfish theory had been that, by expelling the Moriscos from the rest of Spain, those of Valencia and Aragon could be controlled, and he shrank from the loss and misery to be inflicted on his immediate surroundings. As late as December 19, 1608, he had urged this view in a letter to the royal secretary, arguing that they were an injury to Castile and Andalusia, while their removal would be ruin to Valencia and Aragon, now the most flourishing kingdoms of Spain. The larger cities, he said, lived on the provisions brought by the Moriscos; the churches, hospitals, monasteries, brotherhoods, pious bequests, nobles, gentry and citizens depended on their services and were supported by the censos charged on their communities; he often wished to die rather than to witness such destruction.[1065] So, when Mexia reached Valencia, August 20th, and, after conference with the Viceroy Caracena, Ribera was sent for and read the royal letter, he repeated these arguments and proposed that all three should join in appeal to the king to commence with Andalusia. When the conference ended at 4 P.M., he was still firm and was told that a courier for Madrid would start at midnight when he could write what he saw fit. On reflection he concluded that the king wanted obedience, not advice, and he sent to the palace, in time for the courier, a letter to the king, and word to Mexia and Caracena, setting forth that the royal resolution came from heaven and he would further it with all his power. Still, he could not reconcile himself to the prospect of poverty. On August 23d he wrote to Secretary de Prada repeating his urgency that commencement be made with Castile and Andalusia and, on September 3d, he said to Fray Bleda and the Dominican Prior Alcocer “Padres, we may well in the future have to eat bread and herbs and to mend our own shoes.”[1066]

The secret had been admirably kept, but the mission of Mexia on a duty so incompatible with his rank caused suspicions which grew from day to day. The Moriscos commenced to fortify their houses, to cease laboring and bringing provisions to the city, which suffered in consequence; the nobles brought their families to town to be prepared for the worst, and Ribera’s action in increasing his guard and laying in stores of victuals increased the excitement. The Estamento Militar, or House of Nobles, held two or three stormy meetings, in which it was resolved to send a deputation to the king to represent the ruin which expulsion would bring upon every class in the kingdom, where eleven millions of ducats were invested in the censos charged on the Morisco communities. The envoys went but, when they reached Madrid, they were told by the king that it was too late, for the edict had been already published in Valencia.[1067]

Everything, in fact, had worked with precision. By September 17th the fleet, consisting of sixty-two galleys and fourteen galleons, conveying about eight thousand disciplined troops, had reached their stations at Alicante, Denia and the Alfaques de Tortosa, and had commenced landing the men. Possession was taken of the Sierra de Espadan, while Castilian cavalry guarded the frontiers. When all was in readiness, royal letters to the Jurados, Diputados and Estamento Militar were read and, on the 22d, the edict was published.

EXPULSION

The comparative liberality of the terms and the short notice allowed manifest the sense of weakened power. Under irremissible pain of death, within three days after publication in the several towns and villages, all Moriscos were to depart for the port of embarkation designated by a commissioner. They could take such portable property as they could carry on their backs; they would find vessels ready to carry them to Barbary and would be fed on the voyage. During the three days all must remain at home awaiting the orders of the commissioners and, after that, any one absent from his domicile could be robbed by the first comer and carried to a magistrate or be slain if offering resistance. As the king gave to the lords all real and personal property not carried off, any firing of houses or harvests or hiding of portable things would be punished by putting to death all the inhabitants of the place. In order to preserve the houses, the sugar mills, the rice crop and the irrigating canals, six per cent. of the Moriscos were allowed to remain. The same permission was given to those who, for two years, had lived among Christians without attending the meetings of the aljamas, as well as those admitted to communion by their priests. Children under four years of age desiring to stay could do so, with consent of parents or guardians. Children under six, whose fathers were Old Christians, were to stay, together with their Morisco mothers: if the father was a Morisco and the mother an Old Christian, he was to go and children under six were to stay with their mother. Sheltering fugitives was forbidden, under pain of six years of galleys, and all soldiers and Old Christians were strictly forbidden to insult or injure Moriscos by word or deed. As an evidence of good faith, after every instalment had been carried to Barbary, ten were allowed to return and report to their fellows what their treatment had been.[1068]

The publication was followed by days of anxious suspense. The people, we are told, rejoiced, for they hated both the Moriscos and the nobles, and there were symptoms of a rising against the latter. The lords grieved over the ruin of their lands and the religious communities over the loss of their enormous investments in censos. The Moriscos at first were inclined to resist and, after vainly offering large sums to the viceroy, they sought to arm themselves by forging ploughshares and reaping-hooks into pikes, which with slings were their only weapons.[1069] Then suddenly their purpose changed. They were awed by the large bodies of disciplined troops and by the cavalry on the border. A meeting was held of their alfaquíes and leaders, in which it was agreed that resistance was hopeless and that, in case of defeat, their children would be brought up as Christians, while prophecies were talked of which promised an unexpected blessing. Consequently it was resolved that all should go, including the six per cent. allowed to remain, and that any one who stayed should be regarded as an apostate. This had such an effect that those who had been offering large sums to be included in the six per cent. now refused to stay, although asked to name their own terms. The Duke of Gandía, who had an enormous sugar crop and who could get no other skilled labor to work his mills, vainly offered whatever they might ask. The only condition they would accept was the free exercise of their religion; the Duke applied to the viceroy, but Ribera declared it to be a concession beyond the power of king or pope to grant, for they were baptized.[1070]

The nobles, for the most part, loyally accepted the situation and aided in the execution of the decree. The Duke of Gandía who, next to the Duke of Segorbe, had the largest number of vassals, wrote to the king, October 9th, that on September 28th the Marquis of Santa Cruz had embarked for him five thousand of them, whom he desired to be the first, in order to quiet the apprehensions of the rest as to the safety of the voyage. To protect and reassure their vassals, a number of the nobles—the Duke of Gandía, the Marquis of Albaida and others—accompanied them and saw them safely on shipboard, and the Duke of Maqueda even sailed with them to Oran, the point of debarkation.[1071] All, however, were not thus self-sacrificing. Bishop Balaguer of Orihuela reported, October 31st, that some were retaining their vassals by threats or by force, and that, unless energetic commissioners were sent, many would be kept.[1072]

The Moriscos objected to abandoning their personal effects to their lords and sought to convert what they possessed into money. Gandía and some others permitted this, but many insisted on their rights and, on October 1st, the viceroy issued a proclamation forbidding all sales, but this led to imminent danger of rebellion and was wisely abandoned. The land became a universal fair in which stock, produce and household gear were sold at a fraction of their value, and finally were given away. The Grao or port of Valencia, while the exiles were awaiting fair winds, became a bazaar, in which exquisite Moorish garments, rare embroideries, rich gold and silver laces and the like were bought for a song.[1073]

EXPULSION

As soon as the first shock was over, of abandoning home and possessions, the prospect of reaching a land, where they could openly profess their faith and escape paralyzing oppression, stimulated them to intense eagerness to leave Spain. They contended for places in the first embarkation, and the commissioners had no trouble in assembling and leading them to the designated ports. Troops escorted them to protect them from the savage greed of the Old Christians, who gathered in bands, robbing and often murdering those whom they encountered. Royal edicts commanding swift justice were issued, gallows were erected along the roadsides and executions were numerous, but it was impossible to prevent outrages. In spite of this the Moriscos pressed forward to the shores. At Alicante they came with music and song, thanking Allah for the happiness of returning to the land of their fathers, which suggests how simple a solution of the question it would have been to permit the emigration of the discontented. Many, indeed, distrusting the royal faith, preferred to charter ships and pay for transportation, which was encouraged by providing elaborate regulations to ensure, as far as possible, their safe passage and fair treatment. All the Spanish ports were ordered to send their ships to the Valencia coast, even discharging those which were loaded, and all arrivals were pressed into service. Seeing this eagerness, the promise of free passage was broken after the first embarkation, and the royal galleys charged the same fare as the private vessels—seventy-five reales per head for all over sixteen and thirty-five for those younger. In all there were three embarkations, occupying about three months and including, according to lists kept at the ports, over a hundred and fifty thousand souls.[1074]

This eagerness to go was, however, not universal. There were many who, not unreasonably, felt little confidence in the royal faith and preferred the chances of resistance. Gathering into bands they sought refuge in two easily defensible positions, one on a peak in the Val del Aguar, where their numbers were reckoned at from fifteen to twenty-five thousand, and the other in the Muela de Cortes, where there were said to be nine thousand. Mexia paid no attention to them, until the business of embarkation was nearly concluded, when they were readily reduced. In the Val del Aguar it was a massacre of the weaponless wretches, rather than a battle; three thousand Moriscos were slain and only one Spaniard, Bautista Crespo, who was killed by his own firelock. The survivors, starved, frozen and dying with thirst, surrendered at discretion, November 28th, and were conducted to the port of embarkation, but many perished of exhaustion on the road and many women and children were stolen by the soldiers and sold as slaves, while of those who embarked but few reached Africa. At the Muela de Cortes they surrendered on promise of safety to life and property, provided they embarked within three days, but the soldiery, disappointed at the loss of expected booty, fell upon them. Only three thousand were brought to the sea-ports, and more than two thousand scattered among the mountains, where for a year or two they gave much trouble. They had elected as king Vicente Turixi, who was tracked to a cave and brought to Valencia, where he was put to a cruel death, December 18th. He died as a good Christian and made a most edifying end, for we are told that he had been a most liberal almsgiver and was devoted to the Virgin and to the religious Orders.[1075] This ended the only open resistance to the expulsion throughout Spain.

EXPULSION

The unexpected ease of the affair in Valencia, regarded as the most dangerous district, quickened the preparations for the other kingdoms. Thus far it had been represented as confined exclusively to Valencia, but the rest felt that their turn was to come, and remonstrances were showered upon the government, which met them with equivocating denials and assurances. The mask was gradually thrown off. Towards the end of October the Marquis of San German was sent to Seville to prepare for the expulsion from Murcia, Granada and Andalusia. Murcia succeeded in obtaining a suspension of the decree, which was published for the other provinces on January 12, 1610, after the galleys and troops had been brought from Valencia. It gave the exiles thirty days—subsequently reduced to twenty—after which they were threatened with death and confiscation without trial or sentence. Their lands were confiscated to the king, for the service of God and the public, but they were allowed to sell movable property and carry away the proceeds in merchandise bought of Spanish subjects, but were forbidden to take bills of exchange, jewels, bullion or money, beyond what was needed for transportation. They could take their children with them, provided they went to Christian lands, which led many to charter vessels, ostensibly for France, but in reality for Africa. In spite of the reports of the cruelties perpetrated in Algiers on the Valencia exiles, they are said to have gone with cheerfulness, and many of them sought Morocco. By April, Andalusia was reported clear of Moriscos and that a few remained on the coast of Granada, waiting for vessels. The whole number was estimated at from eighty to a hundred thousand, besides twenty thousand who had voluntarily gone in advance. They were reported to have carried much wealth with them, which is not improbable, as many, especially those of Seville, were rich and prosperous and held positions of honor. A significant incident was the desire of Córdova to retain six per cent. of them and, when this was refused, it petitioned for the retention of two Morisco saddlers, for the encouragement of horsemanship, especially as they were old and childless. Apparently there were no Spaniards capable of making harness.[1076]

Yet, at first, there were some exceptions made. It had been represented to the king that there were many descendants of Mudéjares, voluntarily converted prior to the enforced baptism, who were Spaniards in dress, language and religion, including many beatas and persons vowed to chastity. Accordingly an order was issued, February 7, 1610, to the bishops to examine all such cases and report to San German those whom they found worthy to be retained. This, however, amounted only to a brief reprieve. Their cases were referred to the Royal Council and those who did not, within the impossibly brief term of thirty or sixty days, obtain favorable decisions were hunted like wild beasts and forcibly carried off.[1077]

Expulsion from Castile had been resolved upon by the Council of State, September 15, 1609, but was deferred to await the result in Valencia. In preparation, an attempt was made in October to organize the militia, by enrolling one in five of the able-bodied men—a measure twice attempted in vain by Philip II—but it met with resistance which forced its abandonment, for there was no military ardor in Spain, even for local service. Then an enumeration of the Moriscos was ordered which, in conjunction with events in Valencia, aroused much excitement. Appeals to the court were unanswered, while orders to the magistrates intended to quiet alarm only increased it. Many commenced to sell their lands, and this diminution of prospective confiscations was met, towards the end of October, by prohibiting sales, but they were continued under various devices.[1078]

On November 3d, the Count of Salazar was appointed to superintend the expulsion from Old and New Castile, La Mancha and Extremadura. From their anxiety to sell their lands he assumed that they mostly would go voluntarily, and he suggested the granting of permission to emigrate. This was adopted, and a royal cédula of December 28th allowed them to leave Spain within thirty days, under the same conditions as those of Andalusia. Such multitudes arranged to pass through Biscay into France that the term was extended for thirty days and, on January 19, 1610, Salazar was sent to Burgos to register them and issue certificates. Under this arrangement 16,713 persons, of 3,972 families were registered up to May 1st, when intimations that further admissions to France would be refused, turned the stream to Cartagena, where 10,642 embarked, nominally for Christian lands, in order to retain their children.[1079]

The prohibition to carry money or jewels was naturally evaded as far as possible and, for infractions of it, more than thirty were hanged at Burgos. There were also at hand obliging Portuguese brokers, who undertook the transmission of the forbidden valuables and who were detected and prosecuted. A safer conduit was found through the French ambassador at Madrid, who received very large sums, to be repaid in various French cities. His steward was despatched with the documents, but the Spanish authorities were on the alert; he was arrested at Buitrago and brought back to Madrid, whereupon the ambassador threatened that, if the letters were opened, thereafter no Spanish courier should pass through France without seizure of his papers. After an angry correspondence, the Spaniards yielded, and the steward was allowed to resume his journey.[1080]

EXPULSION

Aragon and Catalonia were next taken in hand. There had been much disquiet there, which the glozing assurances from the court failed to allay. The Old Christians began to maltreat the Moriscos, who ceased their labors and commenced to sell their movables, while their creditors and holders of censos became alarmed and proceeded to collect their claims with rigor. Envoys were sent to the king from Aragon with an elaborate memorial detailing the enormous damage to result from expulsion, and the impolicy of reducing the diminishing population of Spain. Philip made fruitless efforts to prevent the mission from coming, and when it came it was put off with reassuring generalities.[1081]

The edicts for Aragon and Catalonia were the same as that for Valencia, except in two points. The Catalan one retained children under seven years of age, whose parents were going to infidel lands, which led them to make their way through France to Barbary. The other exception, induced by the expense of the Valencia expulsion, the cost of which had been swelled to eight hundred thousand ducats, threw upon the exiles all the charges, not only of the journeys and voyage, but the wages of the superintending officials and half a real per head as export duty on what they carried with them, all of which amounted to twenty-four reales at the Alfaques de Tortosa. The rich were required to pay for the poor, and the commissioners were unmerciful in their exactions, making them pay for the water in the brooks and the shade of the trees in their long summer journeys, besides exacting from them as wages much more than was due.[1082]

The edicts were published simultaneously, in Saragossa and Barcelona, on May 29, 1610. No resistance was attempted, but there went up a cry of despair which moved even their persecutors to compassion; they protested that they were Christians and would die as such, even though torn to pieces, but it was too late for this, and they were led submissively in bands of from one to four thousand souls, without guards, although they suffered severely from the brigandage of the Old Christians. This apathy of despair was most fortunate for Spain, as resistance would have been overcome with difficulty. The troops, debarked at the Alfaques de Tortosa, had not been paid since they left Italy; after vainly clamoring for their money, they disbanded, leaving none but the officers, who were fain to gather together such raw recruits as they could find. From Aragon the number of exiles was estimated at seventy-five thousand and from Catalonia at fifty thousand.[1083]

France was inundated by the emigration. Henry IV had anticipated it and, in February, had issued an ordonnance permitting those who would profess the Catholic faith to settle in the lands beyond the Garonne and Dordogne, while shipping should be provided for those desiring to sail for Barbary.[1084] Under this the immigration from Castile had been taken care of, but his assassination in May threw everything into confusion, and there was no preparation for the twenty or twenty-five thousand from Aragon, who passed through Navarre, or sought to make their way over the mountains. La Force, after some delay, arranged to admit them in bands of a thousand each, so as not to oppress the population of the sterile district through which they had to pass, and thus they struggled on towards Marseilles and other ports where they hoped to find shipping.[1085]

There was one body, of some fourteen thousand souls, that was refused admission to France, after they had reached Canfranc, the last Spanish town on the mountain road over the Pyrenees. They had paid forty thousand ducats for permission to go to France, besides the export duties on what they carried, and the expense of the commissioners in charge of them. Forced to turn back on the long road to the Alfaques, so many of them sickened and died in the summer heat that it was feared that they would bring pestilence to the ships.[1086] In short the story of the exodus from Aragon is one of heartless greed and reckless inhumanity.

EXPULSION

The dangers which had weighed so heavily on Spanish statesmanship were thus removed, but fanaticism and race hatred were not yet satisfied, and it was resolved to root out all traces of the old Moorish population. An edict of July 10, 1610, banished all Moriscos of Granada, Valencia and Aragon, who were settled in the Castilian kingdoms, and this was followed, August 2d, by a similar provision for the kingdoms of Aragon. These edicts exempted those who had lived as good Christians, but this was a point difficult to establish, and the claims under it were multitudinous and embarrassing. To save the trouble of deciding them an end was put to the matter by banishing all who had thus far been exempted, including even the Moriscos antiguos, descendants of the old Mudéjares. This was effected by orders of March 22d and May 3, 1611, to the corregidores, stating that it was for the service of God and the kingdom that the matter be perfected, wherefore all who had previously been exempted and all who, after expulsion, had returned, were given two months to leave the kingdom, under the irrevocable penalty of death and confiscation, the only exceptions being priests, nuns and the wives of Old Christians with their children.[1087]

This final rooting-out gave infinite trouble. There was often nothing to distinguish these Moriscos from Old Christians, in language, dress or mode of life, and there was no lack of persons to harbor them, whether from compassion or to have the benefit of their services. Commissioners were sent to the different provinces with instructions that no privileges or antiquity should avail them, while the courts were expressly prohibited from interference; it was added, indeed, that those who bore the reputation of Old Christians could appeal to the king, but his representatives soon grew tired of the multitude of perplexing cases thus thrust upon them. The number thus expelled was computed at about six thousand, exclusive of young children, who were given to Old Christians to bring up. The difficulty of effecting this final clearance was increased by the number of exiles who persisted in returning, in spite of an edict of September 12, 1612, which consigned them all to the galleys. The work seemed endless and finally it was confided to the Count of Salazar. In this he labored long and strenuously. At Almagro he found more than eight hundred returned exiles, of whom he consigned some to the galleys, others to the quicksilver mines of Almaden, and the rest he sent abroad at the expense of the magistrates, who had been remiss in detecting and punishing them. His greatest trouble, we are told, lay in deciding the numerous suits of those who claimed that they were not comprised in the edicts and, to cut matters short, on October 26, 1613, he issued, in the name of the king, an edict commanding all Moriscos to leave the kingdom within fifteen days; any person receiving or harboring them was threatened with confiscation and, as he included in this fiefs, castles, vassals and royal grants, it shows that nobles were sheltering them. Finally a reward of ten ducats was offered for information leading to the capture of a Morisco.[1088] In this insane determination to purify the land of all trace of Moorish blood, and in the confusion of the process, many Catholics as sincere as their persecutors must have been consigned to infidel lands.