Such prejudice was not restricted to Inquisitorial officials and embittered country priests. Moriscos often featured in the literature of the Spanish “Golden Age,” generally as figures of mockery, ridicule, or contempt. Some of Spain’s greatest writers, from the Córdoban poet Luis de Góngora to the playwright Lope de Vega made fun of their pronunciation of Spanish and their aversion to pork and other foods, often using the stock Morisco figure of the
buñolero
. Francisco de Quevedo contemptuously mocked the Christian surnames that “whores and Moriscos have usurped,” ignoring the fact that the latter usually had such names imposed upon them.
22
In Quevedo’s picaresque novel
The Swindler
(1626), the roguish protagonist stays at an inn whose “owner and landlord was one of those who believe in God out of good manners and not sincerely; Moriscos they’re called by the people. There’s no shortage of those people or the ones who have long noses and only need them to smell out bacon.”
23
Some of the most bigoted portrayals of the Moriscos in Spanish literature are contained in Miguel de Cervantes’
Dialogue of the Dogs
, wherein the dog Berganza weaves his description of his Morisco master in Granada into a general indictment of Morisco Spain:
It would take a miracle to find a single man among so many who truly believes in the Holy Christian laws; their sole intent is to make money and hoard what they make, and to achieve this they work and do not eat . . . they are amassing and accumulating the largest cache of money in Spain. They are money-boxes, moths, magpies, and weasels; they acquire, hide and swallow it all. Just think how many of them there are and that every day they earn and hide away some quantity of money, and bear in mind that a slow fever can be as fatal as a sudden one, and as they increase in number, so the number of those who hide money away also increases and will surely continue to grow ad infinitum, as experience shows. They do not exercise chastity, nor does any man or woman among them take holy orders; they all marry and they all multiply because sober living favors the propagation of their race. War does not weary them, nor do they overtax themselves in the work they do; they steal from us with the greatest of ease and from the fruits of our property, which they sell back to us, they make themselves rich.
24
A veteran of the battle of Lepanto, in which he lost the use of one of his hands, Cervantes’ five harsh years as a captive in the
baños
of Algiers undoubtedly influenced this litany of Christian stereotypes. Yet his attitudes toward Muslim Spain were more complex than Berganza’s condemnation of the “Morisco rabble” suggests, and he subsequently included a more nuanced portrayal of the Moriscos in the second part of Don Quixote, which was written after the expulsion. In the late sixteenth century, however, sympathetic literary depictions of the Moriscos were rare. Apart from Gínes Pérez de Hita’s Granadan chronicles, one of the few positive cultural descriptions of Morisco Spain was contained in the anonymous novel
The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa
(1561).
This delicate tale of love, honor, and chivalry was a fictionalized account of an episode from the Granadan-Christian conflict of the fifteenth century, in which a Granadan Moorish nobleman, Abindaraez, a member of the ruling Abencerraje clan, is captured by the Christian
alcaide
(commander) of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narvaez. Abindaraez is taken prisoner in the course of an ambush laid by a group of Christian soldiers.
He was tall and handsome, and looked a fine figure as he rode.... On his right arm was stitched a beautiful lady and in his hand he carried a thick and handsome two pronged lance. He wore a dagger and scimitar and a Tunisian turban wrapped various times around his head, for defense and beauty. In these clothes the noble Moor came singing a song that he had composed in sweet memory of his loves.
25
Attacked by the waiting Christians, Abindaraez kills four of his attackers, confirming himself as a worthy adversary for the Christian gentleman Rodrigo de Narvaez, who defeats and wounds him in single combat. On being led to captivity, Abindaraez tells Narvaez of his passionate love for Jarifa, a beautiful Moorish princess, whose father has been accused of complicity in a plot against the Moorish king of Granada. Narvaez is so moved by this story that he allows Abindaraez to visit and marry Jarifa, on condition that he return to captivity in three days time.
Abindaraez gives his word, and the two lovers are reunited. When he tells Jarifa of his agreement, she begs him to stay and offers to pay his ransom, but Abindaraez refuses to break his promise. Jarifa then declares that “God would never wish me to remain free while you become a prisoner” and accompanies him to captivity. On arriving at Narvaez’ castle, the Christian nobleman is so impressed by this demonstration of honor and love that he releases both his prisoner and Jarifa. He also writes to the Moorish king of Granada to plead the innocence of Jarifa’s father. All ends happily, as her father is reconciled to the king and accepts his daughter’s secret marriage, while Narvaez, Abindaraez, and his wife form “a firm friendship which lasted them all their lives.”
The
Abencerraje
harks back to the romanticized figure of the “noble Moor” who features in Christian medieval balladry. On the one hand, the friendship between its Moorish and Christian adversaries is made possible by their shared concept of chivalry—a symmetry that is only possible between noblemen who share the same noble lineage and the code of honor that goes with it. At the same time, Abindaraez is a
defeated
Moor, overcome by a superior Christian warrior whose magnanimity in victory confirms his nobility and greatness. Like the “good Indian” in post–World War II Western movies, such an enemy could become the subject of nostalgic admiration because he was no longer dangerous. Nevertheless, the happy resolution of the
Abencerraje
at least portrays an imagined reconciliation between Muslim and Christian Spain, and if this outcome seemed increasingly unlikely in the aftermath of Granada, the popularity of the novel suggests that this possibility was not unattractive to sixteenth-century readers.
These literary depictions echoed the medieval fascination with Moorish culture that foreign visitors had once observed among the Castilian aristocracy, a fascination whose residual flashes were still visible in the late sixteenth century. The Christian cavalrymen who welcomed Don John of Austria to Granada wore Moorish silks and flowing shirts. In 1593 Philip sent the Toledan painter Blas de Prado to Morocco, following a request from the sultan to send him an artist to paint a family portrait. On returning from his completed assignment, Prado took to eating his meals on a cushion on the floor in the Moorish style. The court might tolerate the affectations of a privileged artist “gone native,” but such behavior was liable to produce a very different response when it was observed among the Moriscos themselves.
Nevertheless, it was clear that not all Christians regarded the Moriscos as “the vilest of people.” In October 1594, the royal secretary, Francisco de Idiáquez, described the Moriscos as a potential asset to Spain. Recognizing that “Christians were not given to agriculture,” he praised the industriousness, thrift, and cultivation skills of the Moriscos and wrote that “there was not a single corner of the land that could not be given to them, [where] they alone would [not] be enough to bring fertility and abundance throughout the land.”
26
In his history of the city of Plasencia in Extremadura, Fray Alonso Fernández described the local Moriscos in the following terms:
They were diligent in the cultivation of gardens, and lived apart from the society of Old Christians, preferring that their own life not be the object of gazing. . . . They sold food at the best stands in the cities and villages, most of them living by the work of their own hands. . . . They all paid their taxes and assessments willingly, and were moderate in their food and dress.... They had no use for begging among their own people; and all had a trade and were busy at some employment.
27
In February 1585, a young Christian boy named Andresico was found murdered at the bottom of a well in the Toledan village of Yebenes, and three Granadan Moriscos were arrested by the secular authorities on suspicion of the murder. With the case’s overtones of ritual murder and the prevailing fears of the Granadinos in Castile, these Moriscos were obvious scapegoats, whose guilt might have seemed predetermined. Yet the victim’s mother refused to bring charges against the suspects, telling the local judge that she was not certain who had killed her son. In their subsequent trial, various local Christians acted as character witnesses on behalf of the accused, including one witness who described all three suspects as “good men who lead a decent life and enjoy good reputations” and insisted that “the said Moriscos could not have committed the crime for which they are suspected.”
28
As a result, all three Moriscos were acquitted. In other parts of Spain, there was evidence that Christian communities and individuals were able to establish relationships with Moriscos that defied the prevailing prejudice and vilification. In Castilian cities such as Valladolid, Ávila, and Toledo, “Old Moriscos” (
moriscos antiguos
) were accepted by Christians to the point where they were allowed voting rights on the local city councils. In Granada in 1585, Christians opposed new royal orders calling for the expulsion of Moriscos who had either remained in the city or returned to it after the rebellion. Philip insisted on their removal, and some three thousand Moriscos were deported in August of that year.
The opposition to these deportations was partly based on self-interest, for many of these Moriscos were slaves of Christians or contributed to the local economy, but self-interest and local necessity could sometimes make coexistence possible even in the chauvinistic climate of Counter-Reformation Spain. Moreover, even the more benign expressions of Christian tolerance did not translate into a positive affirmation of the Moriscos as a permanent and distinctive presence in Spanish society. If some Christian communities were prepared to take a more laissez-faire attitude toward their customs and language than others, the continued survival of the Moriscos as a group was ultimately conditional on their ability to transcend their Muslim origins and become so closely integrated into Christian society that they were no longer distinguishable. But for this process to occur, Christian society was also obliged to overcome its own ingrained prejudices.
All this raised questions that are relevant not only to the sixteenth century. How can a dominant majority absorb into itself a minority group that it regards as inferior, despicable, and dangerous? Is it possible to despise the religious beliefs and cultural practices of a particular group without also hating the people who subscribe to them? If one group attempts to eliminate the beliefs and practices of another by force, how can the former ever be certain that this imposed transformation has become sincere and permanent?
Ordered by Philip to undertake a program of evangelization in 1588, the ecclesiastical writer Alfonso Chacón warned the king to take care “that Spain does not breed such monsters that will one day eat her flesh” and claimed that Moriscos who appeared to be good Christians were only putting on a façade of Christianity in order “to show what they are not and at the same time conceal what they are.”
29
Though Chacón recommended that every effort should be made to integrate the Moriscos into Christian society, he also proposed on another occasion that they be made to wear special marks on their clothing so that their origins would always be recognizable. For Chacón, the integration of the Morisco “monsters” was dependent on keeping them at arm’s length—a proposal that amounted to continued segregation and exclusion of a different kind.
This contradictory proposal demonstrated once again the recurring tension at the heart of Spain’s concept of assimilation, between the determination to eliminate the Moriscos by absorbing them into itself, and a residual suspicion and loathing that lent itself more naturally toward their exclusion and marginalization. All this placed the Moriscos in a difficult and precarious situation. As the living representatives of a despised Islamic past, they no longer had a collective future within Spain unless they ceased to exist as a separate group. They were punished and repressed if they failed to conform to the obligations of their imposed faith. At the same time, they were held in fear and contempt by a church and state whose leaders continued to regard even the most ostensibly Christianized Moriscos as inauthentic Catholics and yet refused to allow the more recalcitrant Moriscos to leave the country.
In the last decade of the sixteenth century, there was an audacious attempt to create a new space for the Moriscos within Spain, which began in 1588 when construction workers discovered a mysterious box while demolishing a former mosque tower on the site of the Granada Cathedral. In addition to a parchment written in Arabic, Castilian, and Latin, the box contained a fragment of the handkerchief into which the Virgin Mary allegedly had wept during the Crucifixion, as well as a bone of the Christian martyr Saint Stephen.
The discovery of a Christian religious text written in Arabic dating back to the arrival of Christianity in Iberia was a remarkable discovery, which seemed to suggest that the Granadan Church was much older than its official establishment in 1492. Clerics in Granada were overjoyed, and the jubilation and excitement in the kingdom was confirmed by the discovery of a series of texts engraved in Latin, Castilian, and Arabic on lead plaques on the hill of Sacromonte (Sacred Mountain) in Granada between 1595 and 1599. Some of these “Lead Books” (
libros plúmbeos
, or
plomos
) appeared to have been written by the martyred patron saint of Granada, Saint Cecilio, and his brother Tesifon; others consisted of reported dialogues between the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, including Saint Peter, with titles such as
Book of the Maxims of Saint Mary
and
The Essence of the Gospel
.