Forbidden Passages. Karoline P. Cook
addition to anyone accused of blasphemy, heresy, bigamy, and witchcraft, among a series of other “offenses” against the sacraments.35 The Granadan tribunal would have been active during Ruiz’s childhood, and she may have had neighbors whose lives were affected by its reach. While sworn to secrecy about their experiences in the inquisitorial prisons, and during interrogations, confessants very likely shared strategies for dealing with inquisitors after their release.
In delineating its jurisdiction, the Inquisition removed from priests the power to absolve sins of heresy, requiring them to direct potential heretics to one of the tribunals. Only the Inquisition had the power to absolve sins of heresy, utilizing preoccupations with salvation to its advantage. Being caught in an ambivalent position between Islam and Catholicism, and the dilemma of choosing the “true” law that would lead to salvation, was not an infrequent anxiety voiced by converts from Islam.36 The Inquisition exploited Morisco preoccupations with salvation by claiming to bestow absolution from sin and salvation by hearing confessions.
The punishments that the Inquisition inflicted on Moriscos for quotidian lapses in Catholic practice reveal the extent of its deployment of the image of the confessional, through its vocabulary of salvation. Spared the harsher penalties incurred by those convicted of outright political dissidence, most Moriscos received the more common sentences of “absolution” and “reconciliation.” These lesser sentences often involved what inquisitors referred to as “spiritual penance” that included reciting certain prayers and receiving religious instruction. Instruction in Catholicism became a way for inquisitors to regulate and impose a self-representation on confessants, which they might not necessarily have shared.
By soliciting confessions, inquisitors were simultaneously involved in producing a body of knowledge about Muslim and Morisco practices, accounts of which they circulated to other tribunals, including those in Spanish America once they were founded in Lima (1570), Mexico City (1571), and Cartagena de Indias (1610). The questions that the tribunals asked of Moriscos reflect similar, albeit subtler, aspects of the Inquisition’s aims to procure a large body of information about them. Inquisitorial inquiries in these trials extended surveillance into the home. Through inquisitors’ questions, the internal space of the home became politicized as a site for potentially subversive activity, where Morisco women could teach their children about Islam and encourage their family to uphold dietary practices and observe holidays.37
To obtain declarations of these practices, inquisitors would demand that those testifying, “scour their memory and relieve their conscience by telling the entire truth of everything they might have done or said, or seen done or said to people, that is or might appear to be against our Holy Catholic Faith and evangelical law.”38 They would also imprison confessants and require them to return to the courtroom during the course of several days or months to continue testifying. In this way, inquisitors would be certain that they had extracted all the information that they could.
The questions inquisitors asked of suspected Moriscos paralleled their interpretation of the Five Pillars of Islam, the steps every devout Muslim was obligated to follow. The Five Pillars include the shahada, or profession of faith, the salat, or praying five times daily, zakah, or almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and making the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.39 In her study of African Muslims enslaved in the Americas, Sylviane A. Diouf demonstrates how they continued to practice their faith despite the challenges of enslavement. Diouf suggests that “despite being far outnumbered by Christians, polytheists, and animists, they preserved a distinctive lifestyle built on religious cohesiveness, cultural self-confidence, and discipline.”40 The Spanish inquisitorial records contain many references to the important prayers professing faith in Islam, as well as almsgiving and fasting. The hajj is the only Pillar that does not appear in the available inquisitorial documentation, and it was not a requirement for Muslims who were financially or otherwise unable to travel to Mecca. However, some evidence suggests that despite travel prohibitions, a few Moriscos managed to undertake the journey.41
When trying Moriscos, inquisitors had at their disposal a lengthy list of practices that they considered evidence of “Islamismo.” This list of thirty-six points against Moriscos, compiled by the fifth Inquisitor General Alfonso Manrique, contains accusations concerning both their perceived religious beliefs and customary practices.42 These points, echoed in the promulgations of Spanish synods and the writings of Spanish theologians depicting Moriscos and Islam, also appear in the early edicts of grace preached across Spanish American towns in the newly established inquisitorial tribunals. Several points on Manrique’s list informed inquisitors’ opinions on the case of Juan de Burgos, a Morisco who was tried before the Toledo tribunal after having held a party for his friends. According to Manrique, “With respect to the heretical mahometanizing Moriscos, let [Christians] be ordered to denounce the following acts and sayings: … If they have circumcised their sons and given them Muslim names or expressed a desire that others participate in their naming…. If they have sung Muslim songs and done zambras or dances, and leilas or songs using prohibited instruments.”43
The trial against Juan de Burgos highlights the inquisitorial prosecution of a number of these practices. In 1538 Burgos, his wife Julia, and a number of their friends gathered together at his house for “the zambra where they were dancing and singing in Arabic, and there they all ate dinner together.”44 The Morisca slave Catalina’s testimony reflects the course of events that night: “Around the time of the Christmas that just passed, there came to this city of Burgos Moriscos from Seville and they went to spend the night in the house of Julia. This witness, having been asleep in her bed, was called by Juan de Burgos…. [They] went to the house of the said Juan de Burgos … and there … [they] did the zambra, playing a cane like a flute, with atabalejos, and dancing barefoot and singing and speaking in Arabic.”45 Catalina added, “The two Moriscos called the said Julia Fatima and the said Julia called her husband Nazar … and this witness was called Fiasea by the said Julia and her husband, and that all these names were spoken there that night, and also they were spoken outside when they encountered each other, talking in Arabic.”46 These images of dancing zambras, conversing in Arabic, and maintaining Arabic names provide insights into the vitality of Morisco social networks. (See Figure 4.) Conflating religious and ethnic diversity with disloyalty and political dissent, Spanish authorities came to interpret social gatherings as underlying a larger subversive trend.
Peninsular officials feared that travel and movement would facilitate communication among Moriscos, allowing religious beliefs and practices to be reignited in communities across Spain, and eventually spread to Spanish America. The spaces created by these encounters could provide opportunities for individuals such as Julia and Juan de Burgos, Catalina, and their Morisco visitors to exchange ideas about religion and politics, and even engage in teaching Islam. Furthermore, slaves in an urban environment like Catalina were often mobile and participated actively in social networks. The policies that authorities put into place in Spain reflected their anxieties about the ability of Moriscos to continue to practice Islam in a variety of new settings. After the expulsion of the alfaquíes from Spain during the first waves of repression in the early sixteenth century, devout Morisco parents often took charge in teaching their children about Islam. Nonetheless, they faced many challenges to the cohesiveness of their families, especially following the second Alpujarras uprising when royal policies enabled the forced resettlement of Granadan Moriscos amidst old Christian communities across Spain. Many women and older children were enslaved during the rebellion, and children too young to be enslaved legally were sent to live with old Christian families until they reached the age of twenty, so that they could be reeducated.47 This larger peninsular context would have an impact on the numbers and lives of the Morisco women who crossed the Atlantic as slaves.
Figure 1. Morisco dance from Christoph Weiditz’s Trachtenbuch.
Some Granadan Moriscos received instruction in Islam from their families before the second Alpujarras uprising. In 1570 Elena, an eighteen-year-old slave of the count of Chinchón captured during the uprising, testified before the Toledo inquisitorial tribunal that while living