Forbidden Passages. Karoline P. Cook
of Christians as a result of their “lineage and nation that has professed … genuine hatred from Ishmael … toward all the children of Sara.”86 Following the biblical narrative, contemporary jurists and theologians traced Morisco genealogies to Ishmael, Abraham’s first son who was cast out of his father’s house alongside his mother Hagar, Sarah’s slave. In a twist on the standard account of Abraham’s wife Sarah’s jealousy, which reveals how writers could recast biblical narratives for their own purposes, Aznar Cardona claimed Ishmael’s expulsion from his father’s home was due to his idolatrous practices. This led Aznar Cardona to specifically list and label Ishmael’s descendants, including Muhammad, as inherently “idolatrous.”87 In contrast, Valencia argued that Morisco assimilation was nevertheless possible if they were permitted entry into honorable public and ecclesiastical offices because they had lived in Spain for nine hundred years: “With respect to their natural complexion, and by consequence their wit, condition, and spirit, they are Spaniards like the rest.”88 If resettled in communities across Spain, adequately catechized, and married into old Christian families, the Moriscos would become Spaniards, and “their lineage would be lost with their name.”89 Otherwise, if Spanish families continued to be “stained by razas, they would never lose the label and name of Moriscos … There would be no more old Christians.”90 To Valencia, customs and education were more important than blood: “Thus, when you take away … infamy, we should not be afraid that Spanish blood is infected by mixture with that of the Muslims; many have had this since ancient times, and it does not harm them … The popular opinion to the contrary is ridiculous and very damaging.”91 However, many jurists failed to share Valencia’s view.
In 1609 the Consejo de Estado moved to expel the Valencian Moriscos, summoning the Italian galleys to Mallorca and sending galleons to patrol the North African coastline to prevent resistance or attempts to aid the Moriscos.92 The expulsion decree for the Valencian Moriscos, made public on 22 September 1609, presented their exile as a merciful alternative to the punishment of what was ruled to be the Moriscos’ collective lèse majesté (lesa Magestad diuina y humana) due to their persistence as “heretical apostates.”93 This decree also provided exemptions for some Moriscos to remain in Spain. Those protected from expulsion included children under four years of age and their parents or guardians, children under six years of age if their father was an old Christian, and Moriscos who had been living “for a considerable amount of time” among old Christians, without returning to their aljamas, and who had obtained a license from their local prelate confirming that they were receiving the sacraments.94
The period of expulsion lasted approximately five years, from 1609–14, as Moriscos from communities across Spain were assembled at port cities and forced onto ships. Parents fought separation from their children, who were to be raised by old Christian families if they were under the age of seven.95 Some Moriscos applied for exemption from exile on the basis of marriage to an old Christian, or having filed a petition for old Christian status.96 The expulsion decrees were publicized at various points during this period, as an increasingly restricted group of Moriscos remained immune while new categories were deemed subject to expulsion.97 Reports of abuses and violence against the departing Moriscos also reached Philip III, but he did not intervene.98
EXILES AND EMIGRATION TO NORTH AFRICA: PATTERNS ON A SPANISH FRONTIER
Why did some Moriscos emigrate to the Americas, rather than to North Africa? Some answers can be found by examining Moriscos’ varying responses to the expulsion decrees. Some embraced exile in the Maghreb while others made every attempt possible to remain in or return to Spain.99 Some Moriscos traveled to France briefly, before recrossing the Pyrenees and hiding out in Spanish mountain towns. Rising suspicion among the French who perceived them to be potentially treacherous Spaniards, led Moriscos in France also to attempt to move to Italy or settle among communities of Spanish Morisco exiles in the Maghreb.100 Evidence that a number of individuals labeled Moriscos practiced Christianity and considered themselves Spaniards suggests that they may have hoped to forge new lives for themselves across the Atlantic, where there was less surveillance, rather than emigrate to North Africa both before and after the expulsion. In the Americas, they could continue to try to identify themselves as Spaniards, by claiming old Christian status, and if they gained honors or encomiendas, they could establish themselves among the local elite. In North Africa, the Morisco exiles received mixed reception. Even those who considered themselves to be good Muslims were perceived by many across the Gibraltar straits as lacking orthodoxy and in need of immediate instruction in Islam. Moriscos formed their own communities in Morocco, Tunisia, and Salé, which became a corsairing republic, and were also encouraged by Ottoman bureaucrats to settle in Ottoman lands to counterbalance more rebellious and malcontent local populations.101 Writings of Morisco exiles in North Africa reflected their regionally divergent experiences. Aragonese Moriscos expressed a desire for religious hybridity, blending Christianity with Islam, whereas many Granadans who had already experienced waves of expulsion and resettlement on the Peninsula reasserted their faith in Islam and retained resentment toward Spain.102 These differences in experience are also reflected in cases of Moriscos in Spanish America following the expulsion.
In 1623 inquisitors in the Spanish American port city of Cartagena de Indias encountered a Morisco slave in the galleys whose case suggests the diversity of Moriscos’ attitudes toward belonging to a community following the expulsion. Francisco Martínez presented himself voluntarily before the Cartagena tribunal, claiming he had been born in Murcia and was a baptized Catholic before he and his parents had been expelled with other Moriscos to North Africa. He described how “upon entering the sea they declared themselves Muslims, and they treated him as such. Within two months of their arrival in Algiers, they made him get circumcised, and although he was a grown boy of sixteen or seventeen years of age, he did not dare to resist. They tried to teach him the suras and the zala, and they made him do them many times, but he was always so firm in the faith, that they did not make him renounce it. He considered the sect of Muhammad as coarse and cruel, and every time he could, he interacted with Christians. After three or four years he left as a corsair with the intention of arriving in the land of the Christians.”103 Martínez claimed he was captured near the Portuguese coast where he tried to appeal unsuccessfully to the Inquisition to allow him to return to Spain and to Christianity but did not have time to make his case. He thus waited to denounce himself until after his arrival in Cartagena de Indias. Inquisitors ruled that he should receive instruction in a local monastery because “it seemed that he spoke from his heart and told the truth in all things.”104
In a contrasting case, on 30 March 1625 the inquisitor Doctor Agustín de Ugarte Saravia addressed a letter to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid. In it, he described how “six or seven Moriscos, of those who had been expelled from Castile” had reached the port of Cartagena de Indias in the galleys.105 They had been captured by the Spanish during a corsairing raid off the North African coast and enslaved on a galley force that was headed for the Caribbean. Ugarte Saravia expressed confusion about the Inquisition’s jurisdiction over them because they had been expelled when they were “young men who were sixteen and eighteen years old. They were circumcised in Berbería, and today they live on the said galleys in the sect of Muhammad and its belief, confessing that they are Muslims and not Christians.”106 Muslims were not subject to the Inquisition, whereas Moriscos—as converts to Christianity from Islam—could be tried as apostates if they were suspected of practicing Islam. Ugarte Saravia wrote that he presumed they had been baptized as children in Spain and should therefore be considered renegades. His argument was complicated by the fact that they were royal slaves, and their removal from the galleys would present a loss to the king. He therefore requested a ruling from higher authorities in Spain. The inquisitors in Cartagena received the Suprema’s reply in 1630, ordering them not to proceed against “the Moriscos who, having been expelled from the Catholic kingdoms of his majesty, were captured as corsairs or who in any other way come to them as slaves or [who] are in his majesty’s galleys professing to be Muslims.”107
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Whether reaching the Americas as the servants of powerful Spaniards, as galley slaves, or as free but