Whatever else was gained or lost, at least the end was virtually attained of eradicating the hated faith of Islam, in Ho far as is revealed by the accessible records of the Inquisition, the exceptions being scarce more than sufficient to show that its vigilance was not relaxed. It is true that for awhile there were Morisco slaves to be looked after—those captured and sold in the risings at del Aguar and the Muela dc Cortes, and those who voluntarily returned from Africa to become slaves. A letter of March 14, 1016, from the commissioner of the Inquisition at Denia to the tribunal of Valencia, asks for instructions concerning some baptized Morisco slaves who had plotted to escape to Barbary, thus showing how carefully they were watched. In the incessant maritime warfare of the Mediterranean, Moorish prisoners were perpetually being brought in and sold as slaves, and there grew to be an objection even to these unless they were baptized. Repeated prohibitions of keeping such in Madrid were issued, and as these were not observed an edict, in 1626, orders all unbaptized slaves to be removed within fifteen days under pain of confiscation. In view of their owners' rights it was impossible to expel them from the kingdom, but they were not infrequently manumitted or purchased their freedom, and their presence then was regarded as obnoxious. An edict of 1712 orders their expulsion within the term that may be allowed by the local magistrates to collect their families and property and transfer them to Africa.2 The unreasoning fanaticism, which had been so sedulously culti 1 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Legajo 372. 2 Autos Acordados, Libro VIII. Tit. ii. Autos 4, 6. vated in these matters, was exemplified by an occurrence in Malaga, June 9, 1637, when a fugitive Moorish slave girl applied to the almoner of the bishop for baptism. He sent for a priest, but before he came she changed her mind, and he went away, carrying the sacrament as usual. Some foolish women, seeing him departing hurriedly, began to cry out that some Moorish friends of the girl had trampled on the sacrament. Immediately the city rose in a tumult; women rushed forth like furies, assailing descrip with sticks and stones all the Moors they encountered, and slaying them without mercy, although they declared themselves to be Christians. A cry arose that the Moors were trying to burn the city; the bells were rung, and bands sallied forth throughout the vicinity, killing all the slaves they could find. A Portuguese vessel was leaving the port; some one said they were Moors, and immediately a brigautine started in chase, overtook her, and massacred the whole crew. The number of slaves of both sexes butchered in the affair was reckoned at sixty.1 In a population animated by such ferocious religious zeal it was not easy for any Morisco or descendant of Moriscos guilty of adhering to the religion of his fathers to escape denunciation to the Holy Office, so that the rarity of the cases in the records proves how thoroughly the land had been purified by the heroic treatment administered. The Inquisition, on its side, kept itself in readiness to deal with such culprits. In a manual of instructions drawn up in Saragossa, about 1625 or 1630, there is a fairly complete list and description of Moorish ceremonies with which it says inquisitors must be familiar 1 1 Cartas de Jesuitas (Memorial Histórico español, XIV. 143). of turmo 1 in order to examine properly those accused of Mahometanism. A few scattering cases occur which may probably be referred to baptized slaves or to the children retained at the time of expulsion—as, for instance, Geronimo Buenaventura, described as a Morisco of Alcaneta in Valencia, condemned to relaxation for pertinacity by the tribunal there and transferred for execution, in December, 1635, to Valladolid, where he was still lying at the end of 1637, awaiting an auto de fe—for these costly solemnities were growing infrequent with the increasing poverty of all departments of the government—and in May, 1638, he was finally sent to Saragossa where he doubtless was duly despatched. In 1649 the Valencia tribunal prosecuted some baptized slaves detected in an attempt to escape to Barbary, which was presumptive evidence of unsoundness in the faith.3 An occasional Christian renegade, captured at sea and handed over for trial to the Inquisition, serves to account for the casual appearance of Mahometanism in the autos de fe. In that of Cordova, December 2, 1625, there were sixty-eight Judaizers but only one Mahometan, Francisco de Luque, a renegade who had sailed as a corsair and had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, of which he gave an account more picturesque than veridical; he was reconciled with two hundred lashes, four years of galleys, and perpetual imprisonment with the sanbenito. In the Barcelona auto de fe of June 21, 1627, there were three renegades who had been brought in by the galleys; of these one was an old man, pertinacious in his faith, 1 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inq" de Valencia. Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Legajo 552, fol. 22, 23. 3 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Legajo 387. who was duly relaxed, but as he was garrotted before burning it shows that he recanted at the last.1 In the Cordova auto de fe of December 21, 1627, there were eighty-one culprits, but not a single Mahometan, while in that of May 3, 1655, out of eighty-seven cases there was but one, Talfa, a Moorish woman slave, who had been baptized and who was reconciled with a hundred lashes for endeavoring to escape to Barbary. So, in the great Madrid auto de fe of June 30, 1680, to which victims were brought from all parts of Spain, there was but one Mahometan, Lazaro Fernandez, alias Mustafa, a native of Cadiz, who had apostatized and sailed as a corsair; he was pertinacious in his adopted faith and was burnt alive. In the Toledo auto de fe of April 7, 1660, there appeared a Moorish slave from the mines of Almaden, named Soliman or Francisco de la Candelaria, for ridiculing the sacraments when taking communion, for which he was punished with a hundred lashes.^ Scattering Parets, Sucesos de Cataluna (Memorial Hist, espanol, XX, 17-18). 2 Matute y Luquin, Coleccion de los Autos de Fe de Cordoba, pp. 37, Go, 189 (Cordoba, 1830). 3 Olmo, Relacion del Auto de la Fee celebrada en Madrid 30 de Junio de 1680, p. 202 (Madrid, 1680). Padre Jeronimo Gracian, the spiritual director of Santa Teresa, who lay a captive in Tunis for two or three years, about 1595, says that he met there many renegades who would gladly have escaped to Spain but for fear of the Inquisition, saying that they would be punished if they did not bring testimony from some well-known person that they came home voluntarily with a desire to return to Christianity. Gracian was supposed to be an inquisitor or an archbishop, and was frequently applied to for such certificates, which he gave, although if detected he would have been burnt alive. He subsequently knew of four of these who had been mercifully treated by the Inquisition in absolving them with secret penance. Escritos de Santa Teresa, II. 464 (Madrid, 1877). 4 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Toledo, Legajo 1. cases such as these show that vigilance was unrelaxed, yet in the reports of the tribunal of Valladolid for twentynine of the years between 1622 and 1662, there is only a single case of Mahometanism, and a record of all the cases decided by that of Toledo from 1648 to 1794 shows only five. In a similar record of cases tried by the Inquisition of Madrid from 1703 to 1820 there is but a single Mahometan, and he was a renegade.2 3 There were still, however, descendants of the Moriscos whose pedigree seems to have been jealously preserved by their neighbors, causing them to be known as such. In the trial at Toledo of Angela Nunez Marquez for Judaism, she confessed that before her arrest, October 24, 1678, she hid a quantity of silk in the house of Isabel de Bernardo, Morisca, of Pastrana. In some places, moreover, these remnants managed to preserve a secret organization for the maintenance of their ancestral faith. Such a one was discovered in Granada, in 1727, leading to profitable confiscations for which the Inquisition rewarded the chief informer, Diego Diaz, with a pension of a hundred ducats a year, continued to his family, and when, in 1769, his daughters, Maria, Francisca, and Luciana, begged for a Christmas gift the Suprema granted them 200 reales vellon. It was possibly one of these Granadans, Ana del Castillo, who had removed to Jaen, who was condemned in the Cordova auto de fe of March 4, 1731, as a hereje Mahometana, to reconciliation, with confiscation and irre 1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Legajo 552.-Archivo Hist. Nacional, ubi sup. 2 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Libro 879. 3 Proceso de Angela Nuñez Marquez, fol. 169 (MS. penes me). Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Legajo 1479, fol. 2. |