CHAPTER XXVI

THE MORISCOES

1492–1609

State of the Kingdom after the Conquest--Superiority of

the Moors--Policy of the Crown--Introduction of the Holy

Office--Administration of Talavera--His Popularity--He is

superseded by Ximenes--The Two Great Spanish Cardinals--Their

Opposite Characters--Influence on Their Age--Violence of

Ximenes--He burns the Arabic Manuscripts--Insurrection

of the Moriscoes--Rout in the Sierra Bermeja--Bigotry

of Isabella--The Moors under Charles V.--Persecution by

the Clergy and the Inquisition under Philip II.--War

in the Alpujarras--Ibn-Ommeyah--Operations of Don John

of Austria--Removal of the Moors of Granada--Death of

Ibn-Ommeyah--Ibn-Abu becomes King--Siege of Galera--Atrocities

of the Campaign--Fate of Ibn-Abu--Condition of the Moriscoes in

Spain--They are Exiled by Philip III.--Their Sufferings--Effect

of their Banishment upon the Prosperity of the Kingdom.

The close of the Reconquest left the Spanish monarchy in a condition

of physical and financial collapse. The maintenance of a great army

for ten years, with the resultant casualties of battle, exposure, and

disease, had sensibly diminished the population. The treasury had

long been depleted. The Queen had pawned her jewels to the bankers of

Valencia and Barcelona. Wealthy subjects had been induced to advance

funds to the government by methods equivalent to confiscation, and

which held out but slender hopes of ultimate reimbursement. National

credit was practically destroyed. The absence of the more industrious

citizens in military service, the incorrigible idleness of those who

remained, had impaired the pursuit of agriculture, upon which the

resources of the kingdom depended. Had it not been for the taxes

and extraordinary contributions levied upon the Jewish and Moslem

tributaries, the war could not have been prosecuted to a successful

conclusion. These two sects, which occupied an anomalous position in

the body politic, numbered over two million. Although so inferior in

numbers, they engrossed the trade and controlled the personal property

of the Peninsula. The Jew, who practised with enormous profit the

congenial but unpopular profession of usury, converted his gains into

money and jewels. The Mudejar, who, after the Conquest, gave place to

the Morisco, mindful of the Koranic precept which inculcates industry

as a virtue and stigmatizes idleness as a crime, was the most laborious

and successful of agriculturists, the most skilful of artisans.

Representatives of these two classes directed the operations of the

largest mercantile houses in the principal cities, and the commerce of

the entire country was practically in their hands. Their prosperity was

regarded with an evil eye by their Castilian masters, and the Moslem

was especially the object of this animadversion. For generations the

former had pursued the glorious but brutalizing calling of arms. With

them, every occupation that implied or necessitated the performance

of manual labor was considered undignified and degrading. Centuries

of unremitting warfare had impressed upon the whole nation a military

character, with its inevitable concomitants of pride, tyranny, and

insolence; and these sentiments were intensified a hundred-fold by

racial hatred and sectarian prejudice. From the earliest times the

Moors had been regarded as interlopers, scarcely entitled to the

ordinarily indisputable rights of conquest. The acquisition of their

domain by Spanish prowess was always considered as the recovery of

former inalienable possession, not as new territory wrested from an

adversary by dint of superior strength and valor. The establishment

of the Catholic faith was, in the opinion of adroit casuists, an

additional argument in favor of their title, for it was held that

the consecration of altars to Christianity conferred rights which

could never be abrogated through occupation by infidels. With the

inconsistency of ignorance, the Castilians asserted their title both

by inheritance and prescription. They forgot that Spain had ever been

the rich prize for which almost every warlike nation of the ancient

world had contended. The Visigoths overran and ravaged it in the fifth

century, and their occupancy, derived solely from conquest, lasted

three hundred years. Then came the Saracens, whose domination, obtained

in precisely the same manner, required about the same length of time

for the conquest, but endured for more than twice as long. It was

evident, therefore, to every mind not obscured by prejudice, that the

title of the Moslems, even from the Spanish point of view, was better

than that of their conquerors. In more than one respect, indeed, had

the followers of Mohammed claims upon the country of their adoption as

well as upon the gratitude and admiration of mankind. Their industry

and enterprise had developed beyond all precedent the wonderful

resources of the Peninsula. Its prosperity had never been so great, its

people so happy, its sovereigns so renowned, as at the meridian of the

Moslem power. In intellectual attainments, and the skilful adaptation

of scientific principles to the practical affairs of life, the

subjects of the khalifate far surpassed all their contemporaries. The

civilization--if it is worthy of the name--which the Saracens overthrew

was infinitely inferior to the one that they created. The Visigoths had

scarcely emerged from barbarism. Their monarchs attempted to emulate,

in their magnificence and luxury, the brilliant court of the Eastern

Empire, and to supply, by the splendor and richness of the materials,

the glaring deficiencies in skill and workmanship which characterized

the productions of their artisans. They never discarded the savage

customs engendered and perpetuated by ages of violence and injustice.

Sedentary and industrial occupations were repugnant to the genius of

a people whose national traditions from time immemorial had breathed

a spirit of truculence and war. And yet, even in their chosen field,

they at once demonstrated their inferiority to an enemy who had hardly

completed his apprenticeship in arms.

After the Conquest, the insignificant number of Christians saved by the

inaccessible fastnesses of the Asturias from Mohammedan subjection had

little left but their swords and their independence. Their previous

habits had unfitted them for labor. The ungenerous nature of the soil

and the severity of the climate offered few inducements for tillage.

They had, therefore, no resource but war by which to maintain their

existence and repair their broken fortunes. Their children were reared

in ignorance and under conditions favorable to the development of the

highest degree of ferocity and fanaticism. They were taught to regard

their enemies as monsters, unworthy of the name and attributes of

humanity, and having nothing in common with the remainder of mankind

but an erect form and the capacity of speech. In the course of time,

greater familiarity with their adversaries insensibly produced a

change of feeling, and many of these absurd and unjust prejudices

were modified or entirely discarded. Numerous Mohammedan customs

were adopted, especially by the nobility of Castile, whose inherent

profligacy especially inclined them to the forbidden and unorthodox

license of the seraglio. Moslem kings were not infrequently appointed

arbiters of disputes between Christian princes of the blood. In

arms, in manners, in costume, in amusements, the despised infidel

furnished models to the proud and boorish descendants of Pelayus and

his mountaineers. Even the language was contaminated. Thousands of

terms familiar to the reader of the Koran were incorporated unchanged

into its comprehensive vocabulary, and the noble and sonorous Castilian

idiom remains to-day almost one-third Arabic. The system of warfare,

the evolutions of cavalry, the adoption of lighter armor, all exhibited

the effect of the pervading Moorish influence. Architects from Granada

were employed by Castilian monarchs in the construction of palaces,

and even by orthodox prelates in the ornamentation of cathedrals.

It was the custom of many sovereigns in those turbulent times to

intrust their safety to a body-guard of Saracen mercenaries, who could

neither be intimidated nor corrupted. The honors paid to deceased

Castilian royalty by the Moslems were not inferior to those with which

the obsequies of the greatest emirs were celebrated. The court of

Granada went into mourning for Ferdinand III., and a guard of Moorish

nobles escorted his remains to the tomb. Henry IV. gave audience to

ambassadors seated upon a divan and supported by cushions, in the

traditional Saracen fashion. The tilt of reeds and the bull-fight,

the exercises of the grand arena, which, requiring the greatest

address and agility, were so popular with the Spanish chivalry,

superseded the ruder and more dangerous exhibitions of the tournament.

In innumerable examples, in every phase of the public and domestic

life of the Christians, the influence of Mohammedan association was

manifested. It is a curious fact, as already stated, that, in spite of

this, the deep-seated prejudices of the two races, so far from being

eradicated, were scarcely even perceptibly modified. Notwithstanding

intermarriages, the formal and elaborate display of public courtesy,

the frequency of appeals to royal arbitration, the adoption of official

ceremonials by one people, the voluntary solicitation of protection

by the other, all appearances of amity were fallacious, and a feeling

of irreconcilable hostility constantly prevailed between the two

races. Both reduced their prisoners to slavery, a condition which

generally implied the most inhuman treatment. The captives taken by

the Castilians were branded upon the forehead, a mark of degradation

which could never be erased; the slaves of the Moslems were confined

in damp and unwholesome dungeons, and compelled to labor daily in

the construction of mosques and fortifications. It was no unusual

occurrence, when a place had provoked the animosity of either by an

obstinate resistance, for the entire population, irrespective of age

or sex, to be ruthlessly put to the sword. In the heat of conflict,

quarter was seldom expected. Despite the omnipresent and irrefutable

evidences of superior knowledge, refinement, and culture, the arrogant

and conceited Castilians always stigmatized their adversaries as

barbarians. With them, implicit belief in and attachment to the Roman

Catholic faith was the infallible touchstone of civilization. Whatever

they did not understand they attributed to magic. The mysterious

accents of the Arabic language, and the intricate manner in which

its characters were combined in the inscriptions which adorned the

public edifices, aroused in the minds of the ignorant suspicions of

sorcery, with its accompaniments of talismans, amulets, charms, and

incantations. The magnificent architectural works of Arab genius were

attributed to infernal agency, as beyond the efforts of unaided human

power; an opinion still entertained by the Spanish peasantry, who not

only firmly believe that the Moslem palaces were constructed by evil

spirits, but also ascribe the origin of the gigantic, and apparently

eternal, monuments of classic antiquity to the hands of the devil

himself.

Besides the inveterate prejudices arising from antagonistic faiths

and protracted warfare, other circumstances intervened to preclude

the fusion of the two races after the Conquest. The Spaniard, with

characteristic pride, asserted the superiority and predominance of

his race and origin, and the slightest suspicion of Moorish blood

constituted a blemish which no political or military distinction was

ever able to eradicate. The industry of the Mudejares, their frugality,

their clannishness, the seclusion of their women, aroused unfavorable

comment among a people whose prejudices associated these practices

with the name of an hereditary and implacable enemy. It had long been

a subject of universal complaint that the larger proportion of the

wealth of the kingdom was possessed by these unpopular tributaries.

The idle Castilian, whose ancestors had for twenty-three generations

subsisted by rapine, could not regard with indifference the plodding

industry that conferred upon a subjugated and misbelieving race those

substantial benefits which he had always been taught to regard as

the birthright of a Christian. It was also publicly stated, to the

prejudice of the tributary Moors, that even when they renounced their

faith they still adhered to their former laborious habits; that none of

them ever entered convents or monasteries; and that their contributions

to the Church were not of the value to be expected from the zeal and

generosity of sincere proselytes. Their conversion did not bring

with it that indulgence and those privileges to which their ghostly

instructors assured them they would be entitled; it did not even confer

immunity from insult. Until the reign of Henry II. the Mudejares were

exempt from the inconvenience of wearing a distinctive mark indicative

of their social condition, which, long before imposed upon the Jews,

was justly considered a badge of ignominy. After that time, however,

they were required to wear upon their caps and turbans a blue crescent

“of the size of an orange,” which constantly brought upon them the

affronts of children, and not infrequently the taunts and violence of

a fanatical populace. In spite of the serious restrictions imposed

upon the Mudejares, and the enormous contributions levied upon their

industry, they continued to prosper, and at the time of the surrender

of Granada they were the most valuable subjects of the Spanish Crown.

Policy, based upon a sense of weakness, had long repressed the avarice

and envy of the Castilian sovereigns in their relations with a class

whose skill and labor were the principal sources of the opulence of

the realm. The time had now come when all restraint could be cast

aside without danger, and royal aggression, not only sanctioned but

suggested and encouraged by ecclesiastical authority, could violate

every obligation, human and divine, that had been entered into with

a conquered people, whose principal crime was their prosperity, and

whose independence had been voluntarily relinquished under solemn

treaties which had absolutely guaranteed their personal safety and

the unmolested exercise of their civil and religious rights and

privileges. A most pernicious maxim, but one entirely consonant with

the prevailing sentiments of the age, had been recently adopted,

and declared by the highest ecclesiastical authority susceptible of

unlimited application. This was that, the original conquest of the

Peninsula by the Moors partaking of the nature of an usurpation, or

rather of a theft obtained by violence, all treaties or engagements

entered into with the descendants of the invaders were valid only so

long as the Christians chose to observe them, as having been dictated

by necessity and contracted with persons outside the pale of the law.

The peculiar casuistry, which deduced from Biblical precedent and the

exterminating wars of the Jews analogies whose application wrought

such havoc among the conquered nations of Spain and the New World,

found no difficulty in the acceptation of the broader, and consequently

even more atrocious, principle that no faith whatever was to be kept

with infidels. Ecclesiastical ingenuity has never invented more potent

weapons for the attainment of absolutism than these two maxims, which,

rigorously applied, demonstrated their temporary and apparent efficacy

by the utter extermination of millions of nominal enemies of the

Spanish monarchy.

By the union of Castile and Aragon and the Conquest of Granada national

unity had been secured; it now remained to place the religious

establishment of the kingdom upon the same advantageous footing.

The Inquisition, an engine of tremendous power, whose operations

were attended by the most gratifying results, had, for more than two

centuries, been employed in subduing recalcitrant heretics, procuring

conversions, and replenishing the exhausted coffers of Church and

State. First introduced into Aragon from France, its efforts were

mainly directed against the Jews, whose wealth had brought upon them

a convenient suspicion of heresy. The main objects of the Inquisition

were in reality secular and political. That hideous institution aimed

at the establishment of unquestioned sovereignty by the instruments of

persecution. Religious dogmas, while nominally of vital importance in

its procedure, were but pretexts by which the clergy, and indirectly

the orthodox monarch, profited in the acquirement and consolidation of

irresponsible authority. The stifling of human thought, the suppression

of every branch of knowledge, the prohibition of the exercise of

private judgment, the infinite multiplication of offences against

religion, the minute gradation of penances, many of them of barbarous

and incredible severity, were all means to the accomplishment of one

base and ignoble end. The theological aspect of the Inquisition has

engrossed the attention of historians to the exclusion of its genuine

but concealed objects. That the punishment of heresy was not the real

mission of its tribunal is proved by the fact that its sentences

were frequently suspended, commuted, or abrogated by the sovereign,

conditional on the payment of money. The rich were the especial objects

of its hostility; the denunciation of a wealthy person was equivalent

to conviction; and if a Hebrew or a Moslem, he could hardly escape

the extreme penalty. The mystery of its organization, its unexpected

arrests, its secret procedure, its frightful dungeons, the fiendish

cruelty of the tortures it inflicted, and the atrocities of its public

exhibitions--which partook of the nature of religious festivals, and,

with shocking inconsistency, were supposed to be devoted to popular

recreation--struck terror into every community and every family.

The successful prosecution of heresy by the Inquisition, as well as the

financial advantages it promised, and the increase of ecclesiastical

and royal power which followed its establishment, appealed forcibly

to the bigoted and arbitrary mind of the Spanish Queen. Not so,

however, with Ferdinand, whose experience with that dread tribunal

had caused him to regard its operations with disfavor, and who had

rendered his orthodoxy liable to suspicion by intrusting to Jewish

bankers the administration of the finances of the Crown of Aragon. His

remonstrances were, however, unheeded by his obstinate and despotic

consort. The Kingdom of Castile had always enjoyed an unquestioned

preponderance of authority and prestige in the affairs of the

Peninsula. The compact which consolidated the two great realms into

one empire expressly conferred upon Isabella the exclusive control

of all matters relating to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The right

of presentation to benefices--long asserted by Castilian princes as

a royal prerogative, and whose exercise, denounced by the Papacy as

an usurpation, had repeatedly brought upon them the censures of the

Holy See--invested the Queen with a power of vast and indefinable

extent over the members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who owed

their offices to her generosity, and whose revenues were largely

dispensed in accordance with her advice. Her policy and her apparent

interest induced her, therefore, to consent to the introduction of

the Holy Office; and its tribunal was established at Cordova, under

the direction of Tomas de Torquemada, first Inquisitor-General of

the kingdom, a name of awful prominence in the history of Spanish

persecution.

The capitulation of Granada had been concluded with every indication

of sincerity, and with the most solemn assurances with which it is

possible to invest the provisions and confirm the faith of treaties.

The unsuspecting Moslems did not long remain in ignorance of the

duplicity of their conquerors. Excesses were publicly committed by

licentious cavaliers, who, instead of undergoing the penalty of death

adjudged for such offences, escaped with a gentle reprimand, and were

even conspicuously distinguished by the favor of their royal mistress.

The seclusion of domestic life, so jealously guarded by Mohammedan

custom, was unceremoniously invaded upon the most frivolous pretexts

by the rude and insolent soldiery. The mosques, whose possession had

been especially guaranteed by the articles of the treaty, were one

after another seized and consecrated to the Christian worship. For

these flagrant breaches of trust, the stupid and remorseless bigotry

of Isabella was largely responsible. The city had hardly passed into

the hands of the conquerors, before the advisability of forcible

conversion began to be seriously discussed, and the Queen listened

with pleasure to suggestions of indiscriminate and compulsory baptism.

The efforts of priestly avarice and intolerance, secure in the royal

support, began to encroach more and more upon the acknowledged rights

of these unfortunate victims of persecution, until a revolution broke

out, which threatened the integrity of the newly acquired dominions,

and required the entire resources of the kingdom to suppress it. The

government of Granada had been left in the hands of three men, whose

excellent qualifications, previous experience, and inborn sense of

justice rendered them eminently qualified for the difficult task

to which they had been assigned. The famous Count of Tendilla was

appointed Captain-General of the province. The interests of the Church

were committed to Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, a

prelate in whose mind fanaticism never attained predominance over the

noble impulses which assert the dignity of human nature; and whose

liberality, rare in his age and profession, never refused indulgence

and compassion to those of different blood or hostile faith. To these

two representatives of royal and ecclesiastical authority was added as

an adviser, and an interpreter of the treaty of capitulation, which

he himself had drafted, Hernando de Zafra, secretary of the Catholic

sovereigns, a man of talent, intelligence, and spotless integrity, who

enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, and who, while conspicuously

devout, was far less tinctured with the prejudices of the time than his

theological education and previous associations would seem to imply.

Under the administration of these three dignitaries, the territory

of Granada once more assumed an appearance of prosperity. Their

probity won the confidence of the Moors, which had been shaken by the

arbitrary and indefensible proceedings following the surrender. The

capital, fallen into neglect and decay during years of insurrection and

war, was repaired; new streets were opened, sanitary regulations were

enforced, the markets were again crowded with traders; the Vega, long

the scene of desolation, began to blossom once more under the patient

hands of the industrious laborer. While a high sense of honor and an

unusual diplomatic tact obtained for the Count of Tendilla the respect

of his dependents, it was upon the disposition of the Archbishop that

the security of the government and the pacification of the Moslems

principally depended. The first great difficulty was, in reality, not

with the latter, but with the Christian colonists, who had received, in

recompense for real or fictitious services, establishments in the city,

and whose licentious conduct provoked the animosity of the vanquished,

and rendered the streets unsafe at night for wayfarers of every

description.

The conduct of the Archbishop was beyond all praise. He endeavored by

every conceivable means to improve the condition of his diocese, to

revive decaying industry, and to promote the friendly relations of the

two races whose previous traditions made complete fusion impossible.

He dispensed at all times the most unbounded and discerning charity.

He caused public works to be inaugurated, by which the needy poor were

provided with employment. His apostolic zeal never stooped to the

violence of persecution; his appeals were made to reason alone; and

his subordinates, for the effectual performance of their duties, were

compelled to learn the Arabic language, in which he himself, although

far advanced in years, became sufficiently proficient to employ it

successfully for the noble purposes of religious instruction. From the

printing-presses, established by his munificence, issued sumptuous

volumes printed in Castilian and Arabic, whose perusal might not only

arouse the interest of old believer and recent proselyte, but could

not fail to alike confirm the faith and facilitate the intercourse of

both Christian and Moslem. Under his direction schools were founded;

rituals and works embodying the doctrines and discipline of the Church

translated; and regular conferences organized, wherein, at stated

intervals, the comparative merits of the Christian and Mohammedan

creeds were publicly discussed by learned theologians of both religions.

This excellent prelate, whose virtues are the more conspicuous and

admirable when contrasted with the generally dissolute character of

the ecclesiastics of the Spanish court, voluntarily renounced the

larger portion of the emoluments of his office, reserving only what

was sufficient for his immediate necessities, and dispensing with

the pomp which the dignitaries of the hierarchy were accustomed to

assume in the exercise of their calling. Two hundred and fifty persons

shared daily the hospitality of his table; his bounty was enjoyed

alike by officials of the highest rank, by Moors of every degree, by

pilgrims and travellers soliciting alms. In his visits to the sick and

the unfortunate he permanently impaired his health. Recognizing the

importance of a consistent example, he instituted extensive reforms

among the clergy. Their luxury was repressed, their intemperate zeal

restrained, the systematic observance of their duties compelled, and

those vices which had long been the scandal of the pious were either

entirely checked, or, driven from public view, were forced into

seclusion for their indulgence. In every possible manner he attempted

to relieve the oppressive burdens imposed upon his parishioners by the

fiscal regulations. His notaries were forbidden to collect the fees,

which formed an important part of the revenues of the archiepiscopal

see. He interposed his authority to prevent illegal and oppressive

exactions by the tax-collectors. In his sermons, and by the exertion of

his authority, he discouraged the practice of professional mendicity,

the scourge and the disgrace of both Catholic and Mussulman countries.

With the secular and the ecclesiastical power vested in the hands

of such men as the Count of Tendilla and Hernando de Talavera, the

greatest results could not fail of accomplishment. The manners of the

Spaniards were insensibly reformed. Such was the public tranquillity,

that a mere handful of soldiers sufficed for the garrison of the

Alhambra and the guard of the captain-general. The pious and unselfish

example of the Archbishop soon bore fruit. Great numbers of Moors

voluntarily signified their desire to become Christians. In one

day three thousand were baptized, not one of whom ever afterwards

recanted. These conversions were not obtained through suggestions of

temporal advantage or the influence of fear; nor were the proselytes

admitted to communion without previous instruction in the doctrines

they were expected to profess or the duties they would be required

to perform. The affection and respect of the Moslems for their

instructor and friend were unbounded. They called him the “Holy Faqui

of the Christians.” The churches were found unable to accommodate the

increasing numbers of converts, and altars and pulpits were erected in

the three principal squares of the city; the nightly brawls excited

by the turbulent soldiers of fortune, domiciled by the Conquest in

the Moorish capital, became more and more infrequent; a sense of

security began to prevail in the community; the relations of noble and

vassal were modified, to the decided advantage of the latter; ancient

prejudices, confirmed by the enmity of centuries, were softened; and

the political union of the two peoples, which could only be effected

by a just and conciliatory policy, and upon which, in fact, depended

the future prosperity of the Peninsula, seemed at length to offer a

flattering prospect of realization.

Under these favorable auspices, for the space of several years, order,

tranquillity, and contentment reigned in Granada. The courteous and

equitable, but firm, administration of the governor; the blameless

life, the humble piety, the sympathetic interest of the Archbishop had

awakened the love and compelled the obedience of the tributary Moslems,

who compared with wonder and gratification the operation of a system

of kindness and justice with the arbitrary and violent measures of the

despotism to which they had heretofore always been accustomed. During

that period many important and tragic events transpired. Al-Zagal,

oppressed with years and calamities and broken in spirit, had gone

into voluntary exile. Boabdil, by means of an ignoble and treacherous

device, whose adoption was alike unworthy of a monarch and a Christian,

had been deprived of the principality for which he had bartered his

crown and forced to retire into Africa. Every important provision of

the capitulation had been repeatedly violated, and only the tact of

those who controlled the government of Granada had prevented the most

serious consequences. The Jews, under circumstances of unspeakable

cruelty, had been expelled from the kingdom. In the hierarchy changes

had taken place which boded no good to the heretic and the suspected

apostate. Cardinal Mendoza, Primate of Spain, had died, and Francisco

Ximenes de Cisneros, a Franciscan friar and the confessor of the Queen,

had been promoted to that exalted dignity, whose power and emoluments

rivalled those of the crown. The life, the associations, the studies of

this man had developed a mind whose feelings were in perfect accordance

with the narrow and intolerant spirit of the age. Without indulgence

for the inherent weakness of human nature, without patience to await

the effect of the deliberate and rational methods of discussion which

promote religious conviction, absolutely devoid of generosity, of

tenderness, of sympathy, he regarded unquestioning obedience to the

Church as the most imperative of all obligations and mortification of

the flesh as the most meritorious of virtues. He had recently secured

the appointment of Diego de Deza, one of his creatures, to the place of

Inquisitor-General, which gave him absolute control of the operations

of the Holy Office.

The characters of the two great churchmen who in succession dictated

the policy of the crown, though widely different in many respects, in

general faithfully represent the prevalent ideas and aspirations of

every class of society in the kingdom. The aim of both was religious

unity, which during the long crusade against the infidel had usurped

the place and depreciated the worth of patriotism. Both governed the

sovereign, and with the sovereign the monarchy. Both filled the highest

ecclesiastical office in the Peninsula, an office second in dignity and

power only to the Papacy. Both were zealous patrons of the Inquisition.

One recommended the expulsion of the Jews. The other inaugurated the

persecution of the Moriscoes. Both commanded armies. Both founded

institutions of learning. Both were regarded at Rome as the most

valuable servants of the Holy See. Here, however, all resemblance

ends. Mendoza belonged to the haughtiest of the Castilian aristocracy;

he traced his lineage in a direct line to Roman patricians on one

side and to the Gothic Dukes of Cantabria on the other; the Cid was

his ancestor, as were also the Lords of Biscay; the blood of royalty

coursed in his veins; he was the cousin of Ferdinand and Isabella; he

was nearly related to the princely house of Infantado, whose duke

took precedence of all Spanish grandees; more than seventy titles of

nobility were in his family, which was the first in the Peninsula and

one of the most celebrated in Europe.

Ximenes sprang from the people. His ancestry, while respectable and

deserving recognition as of the hidalgo class, was not noble. He

renounced his baptismal name for that of the founder of his order, the

Franciscans. He had no relatives, a fact which afterwards obtained for

him the Regency.

The dignities of Mendoza were the most eminent in the hierarchy and the

kingdom, and were all conferred before he had reached the meridian of

life. He was Bishop of Calahorra and Siguenza, Archbishop of Seville

and Toledo, Primate of Spain, a Prince of the Church, Patriarch of

Alexandria, Legate of the Pope. He became Chancellor of Castile. He was

appointed Captain-General under both Henry IV. and Isabella. He was

most prominent in all the events of the civil and the Moorish wars. He

won the battle of Olmedo for Juan II. He defeated the King of Portugal

on the field of Toro. At twenty-four he was practically minister of

state. At sixty-four he planned the last campaign before Granada as

commander-in-chief of the besieging army. His hands raised upon the

Tower of Comares the archiepiscopal cross of his diocese, the symbol of

Christian supremacy and ecclesiastical power.

In habits, tastes, demeanor, and personal appearance a marked contrast

existed between the two most famous prelates of the fifteenth century.

Mendoza was epicurean, Ximenes ascetic. The table of the Great Cardinal

was furnished with every luxury. His garments were of the finest

quality, as befitted his rank. Jewels sparkled upon his fingers. His

cleanliness excited the wonder and often the disapprobation of the

pious, as savoring of heresy. None but youths of distinguished birth

were admitted to his household. His morals partook of the laxity of

the time. The ladies honored with his attentions were members of the

aristocracy, daughters of noble houses, maids of honor to the Queen.

His three sons were legitimatized by Pope Innocent VIII. in 1486 and by

Isabella in 1487. Through their matrimonial connections, the blood of

this famous ecclesiastical grandee has been mingled with that of many

of the proudest families of Castile.

While the promotion of Mendoza to the highest offices of Church

and State was due partly to his illustrious ancestry and partly to

his eminent talents, that of Ximenes was derived entirely from his

reputation for piety and wisdom. Honors were literally thrust upon

him. With real or affected humility, he attempted to evade the search

and disobey the commands of those who wished to raise him to absolute

power. He loudly protested his unworthiness. He declared his preference

for the duties and the seclusion of a private station. Even while at

the height of his greatness, he never abandoned the habits of the

monastery. He carried into the splendid archiepiscopal see of Toledo,

the highest post in the ecclesiastical system of Europe, the practices

of the penitent and the anchorite. Under his cardinal’s robes of

scarlet and gold he wore constantly the cowl and knotted girdle of

the Franciscan friars. A haircloth shirt, which was never changed,

irritated his flesh. His diet was frugal to excess. “He only ate

enough,” says his biographer, “to sustain the little life that penance

had left him.” His food consisted principally of herbs, his only drink

was water. His virtue was impregnable,--even St. Anthony himself might

have envied him his constancy under temptation. To him was never

imputed the reproach of frequent ablution, the stigma of the Moslem

heretic. The constant use of a haircloth undergarment, while not

conducive to personal purity, is readily productive of those physical

conditions which, in the Middle Ages, were almost infallible signs of a

good Christian.

The early life of Mendoza was passed amidst the atmosphere of the most

dignified and punctilious court in Europe. His experience from boyhood

fitted him for any service to which he might be assigned by the order

of his king. He was thoroughly familiar with the arts of diplomacy.

He had led his vassals in many a bloody encounter. With the skill of

a successful general he had directed the movements of large bodies of

troops in action. In every conflict he had fearlessly exposed himself

to danger. He was indulgent to the faults of his ecclesiastical

inferiors. For the glory of the Church he built and endowed the College

of Valladolid. The Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo was a superb

monument to his munificence. He expended great sums in charity. The

debasing vice of bigotry was far from dominating his character.

The person of Mendoza was tall, erect, and commanding; his features

handsome; his bearing that of a soldier and a gentleman; his manners

affable and unaffected; in all respects he was the model of dignity,

of gentleness, and of courtesy. His influence in the government was so

great that he was everywhere known as “The Third King of Spain.” It was

said of him as of Cæsar, “Quicquid volebat, valde volebat.”

Ximenes brought to the management of a great empire none of that

familiarity with public affairs so essential to the statesman. His life

had been bounded by the narrow horizon of the cloister. His reading

had been confined to the homilies and polemics of the Fathers. At the

assault of Oran, instead of leading his troops, he retired to pray

in his tent. The university he established at Alcalá, as a rival to

that of Salamanca, was far from realizing his hopes. His appearance

disclosed his obscure lineage and his plebeian associations. His form

was bent, his face emaciated, his manners shy and awkward. He possessed

none of that winning grace which is the common birthright of his

countrymen. In the administration of his office he was arbitrary and

irascible. His obstinacy was only exceeded by the severity with which

he enforced his decrees; his pursuit of heresy and monastic license,

only by the vigor with which he encountered and crushed all opposition.

His reputation for ability, for learning, for sanctity, for every

attribute that evokes the admiring applause of mankind, far surpassed

that of his predecessor among all ranks of his contemporaries.

Such were the two churchmen, both of whom had obtained the finest

education afforded by their age and country; both founders of great

colleges; both gifted with extraordinary talents; both clothed with

despotic power; to whose agency is to be principally attributed the

absolute annihilation of Jewish and Moslem science and literature in

the Spanish Peninsula.

It is impossible for us at this distance of time to fully appreciate

the enormous influence wielded by a prelate who dispensed the wealth

and patronage of the ecclesiastical establishment of the Spanish

monarchy. His capacity for good or evil was practically unlimited.

He was the keeper of the royal conscience. The sentiments of every

community, the decision of important questions of diplomacy, the

adoption of measures vital to the permanence of national existence, the

prosecution of war, the negotiation of peace, all depended upon the

opinions and advice which emanated from the throne of the metropolitan

see of Toledo. When to the prestige and revenues of the primacy were

added the mysterious procedure and dreadful energy of the Inquisition,

the formidable character of the power possessed by Ximenes may be

conjectured. His will was law in every parish in the kingdom. Through

the fears and mistaken devotion of a superstitious queen he was already

the virtual ruler of Castile. His zeal was the more dangerous from

the fact that it was sincere; no element of hypocrisy discredited the

motives or impaired the supremacy of this uncompromising fanatic. The

sweeping reforms he instituted among the clergy, and the rigor with

which all disobedience was punished, awakened the resentment of every

ecclesiastic whose lax morality or religious indifference had rendered

him the object of official admonition or discipline. Those who appealed

to the Pope were thrown into prison. Petitions for indulgence were

treated with contempt. Remonstrances were chastised by suspension from

functions and deprivation of benefices. The energy of his measures,

the rudeness of his manners, the arbitrary, almost brutal, defiance

of precedent and custom with which he treated his inferiors, his

well-known control over the infamous tribunal whose public sacrifices

in the name of religious unity had already terrorized the kingdom, his

incorruptibility and self-mortification, invested the office of Ximenes

with more than imperial authority. Isabella congratulated herself on

her discernment. Her pious ambition was excited. In the hands of this

active prelate the Moors of Granada might be speedily Christianized.

The slow and pacific methods of Talavera had frequently aroused the

displeasure and invoked the censures of the impatient Queen. Her

partiality for the eccentric and determined churchman whose enforcement

of long-neglected monastic regulations and whose condemnation of

the luxurious habits of his subordinates had procured for him the

open homage and secret execration of bishop and friar alike, whose

inflexible decision, whose disregard of humanity and justice whenever

he conceived the interests of the Church were involved, rendered him

so offensively conspicuous, suggested him at once as a pre-eminently

suitable instrument for the extermination of Moslem heresy and

the rapid propagation of the Faith. He was, therefore, ordered to

Granada, nominally as the adviser of Talavera in the work of spiritual

regeneration, with the secret understanding, however, that his superior

rank would exempt him from even the apparent exercise of official

duties in a subordinate capacity. His first step, and one of which it

is scarcely possible that Isabella could have been ignorant, was to

procure a formal authorization from the Holy Office to investigate and

punish the crime of heresy.

Armed with this document, and confident in the support of the Queen,

Ximenes arrived at Granada in October, 1499. His conduct from the

beginning was marked by unflinching audacity and resolution. The

prestige of his dignity and the arrogance of his manners at once

overawed the gentle Archbishop, who, renouncing the means which had

achieved such great success, henceforth abandoned himself blindly to

the merciless impulses of his distinguished superior. The latter was

not long in profiting by the ascendency he had obtained. He claimed

for himself supreme and dictatorial authority in matters not only

ecclesiastical, but in questions often affecting the jurisdiction of

the civil power. His first measures evinced none of the unrelenting

severity of the inquisitor; they were corrupt, politic, conciliatory.

The faquis and santons, whose influence with their countrymen was

supposed to be the greatest and whose mercenary character had been

notorious in the evil days preceding the surrender, were enlisted in

the service of conversion by magnificent gifts of silken garments,

jewels, and gold. With their zeal quickened by these potent arguments,

the new missionaries had no difficulty in securing multitudes

of proselytes. Their ardor was further stimulated by forcible

representations of the inconveniences and trials which would inevitably

be visited upon all who persisted in their adherence to error. Great

emulation was excited by these extraordinary inducements to Mohammedan

apostasy; each faqui reckoned with pride the number of converts he

had conducted to the altar; the unprincipled populace welcomed,

with feigned and interested enthusiasm, a religious compliance

purchased with the mammon of unrighteousness; the Great Mosque of the

Albaycin--in which quarter the Moors had, by a highly impolitic decree,

been concentrated after the Conquest--was consecrated to Christianity,

and within its precincts more than four thousand alleged penitents

received the rite of baptism. This ceremony was effected without

previous examination or instruction; and the candidates were equally

ignorant of their duties and of the dreadful consequences involved in

the sin of recantation. From that moment their moral responsibility

was fixed. No excuse could be pleaded for the unconscious maintenance

of heretical opinions or even for involuntary infractions of

ecclesiastical discipline; the voice of the informer was ever ready to

denounce, the hand of the inquisitor to punish.

This triumph of the Faith, while exceedingly gratifying, was

proportionately expensive. The entire available revenues of the See

of Toledo, amounting to seventy thousand ducats, were expended in its

accomplishment. Even this great sum proved insufficient, and Ximenes

was forced to pledge his private credit to appease the demands of the

crowd of mercenary sycophants and spurious converts who claimed the

reward of their abasement and dishonor. Among the sincere disciples

of the Prophet, and there were many in Granada, the course of

their perfidious brethren was regarded with unconcealed abhorrence.

The more earnest and devout of these endeavored to counteract the

growing inclination to religious defection by public exhortations and

remonstrances. It was not in the imperious nature of the Primate to

brook such opposition. The offending faquis were thrown into prison.

History has not revealed the nature of the arguments employed to

shake their constancy, but the persecuted Moslems were evidently not

of the stuff of which martyrs and saints are made. One after another

recanted and were baptized; many of their fellow-sectaries profited

by their example; resistance was for the time effectually suppressed;

and Ximenes pursued, without molestation, his favorite and inexorable

method of wholesale conversion. To his narrow and arbitrary mind the

employment of the most radical measures seemed to promise the greatest

assurances of success. In the furtherance of this idea, and with a

view to eradicating the apparent cause of the evil, he now planned

what he considered a master-stroke of policy. Without previous notice,

a diligent search was made of every house throughout the entire city,

and every manuscript in the Arabic language which could be found was

seized. The number thus secured amounted to nearly a million. Among

them were not only superb copies of the Koran, but relics of the great

Ommeyade body of literature, which had been the pride of the imperial

court of Cordova, and had been cherished as priceless through many

generations; the contents of the public libraries, whose preservation

and increase had been the especial care of the enlightened Alhamares;

treatises on history and science, which described the events and

pictured the intellectual advancement of what had been the most

learned and polished of nations; and the literary treasures of every

scholar and philosopher in the capital. The works on chemistry,

botany, astronomy, and medicine, subjects which had always engaged the

diligent curiosity of the Spanish Arab, predominated. There, too, were

doubtless to be found many translations of the classics, inheritances

from the Grecian school of Alexandria,--henceforth forever lost,--which

had found their way into the Peninsula from the distant banks of the

Nile. These volumes exhibited in the beauty of their calligraphy and

the magnificence of their adornment all the pomp, the pride, the

luxury, of Saracen art. Beautiful arabesques in gold, silver, and many

colors, embellished pages written with a delicacy and regularity which

equalled that of the finest type. The bindings were of inlaid leather;

some were embroidered; others were incrusted with tortoise-shell,

mother-of-pearl, ivory, and jewels; the clasps were of solid gold. All

of these inestimable stores of learning were heaped in one immense

pile in the centre of the Plaza de la Babal-Rambla, set on fire, and

consumed. The importance of this sacrifice to bigotry may be inferred

from the fact that there was probably in the entire world no collection

of equal extent and value as that destroyed by Ximenes in this historic

square, where, in the time of the emirs, national festivals had been

celebrated, and the emulation of distinguished warriors in the martial

sports of the tournament excited by the presence of the beauty and

the gallantry of the Moslem court; where the differences of Castilian

princes had been settled by a chivalric appeal to arms; where cultured

audiences had witnessed the friendly rivalry of Moorish poets and

troubadours, and the reward of the victor had been bestowed by the hand

of royalty, all little suspecting that on the scene of their pleasures

would one day be exhibited such a melancholy spectacle.

The pecuniary loss entailed by this vandalism was of itself immense,

but the destructive effect it produced upon society was incalculable.

By it perished unique literary monuments which it was impossible to

replace; it offered a premium upon ignorance, for through such deeds

alone was the favor of the all-powerful sacerdotal order to be secured;

it discouraged learning to such a degree that from that time forth

no Moslem writer of distinction appeared to illustrate the annals or

depict the manners of his race; and it annihilated in a single hour

the precious accumulation of ages, from which the modern historian

might have collected data relative to Moorish civilization elsewhere

unattainable in the world of letters. The intellectual degradation

resulting from this intolerant act of Ximenes was most deplorable.

All knowledge was thereafter filtered through the narrow channels of

ecclesiastical inspection and thoroughly cleansed of every suspicion

of heresy; the missal and the breviary supplanted the works of Arabic

annalists and philosophers; and the enduring results of this crime

against learning and of its pernicious example are still apparent in

the remarkably illiterate and fanatical character of the inhabitants

of Granada. Three hundred volumes on the science of medicine were

saved from the flames, for the library of the University of Alcalá;

but no entreaties or remonstrances from his companions could move the

ferocious bigot to exempt from the sacrifice volumes whose jewelled

covers and clasps of gold represented in themselves a princely fortune.

The destruction of Arabic manuscripts was the first step towards the

employment of violence. With characteristic energy, the Primate availed

himself of the authority with which he had been armed by the Holy

Office. Persons suspected of heresy were summarily seized, imprisoned,

tortured; and those who for the moment escaped experienced all the

indignities which could be inflicted by the hands of ecclesiastical

malice strengthened by boundless power. These outrages, and the

repeated violation of the rights granted in their treaty with the

crown, aroused the populace to desperation; and the arrest of a widow,

whose wealth had attracted the cupidity of the authorities, was the

signal for a dangerous revolt. The gates of the Albaycin were closed

and guarded. The streets were barricaded. The towers were occupied,

and Ximenes, whom the indignant threats of the people openly devoted

to death, was besieged by an armed multitude in his palace, from which

perilous situation he was with difficulty released by the Count of

Tendilla. The news of the insurrection called down upon the tyrannical

prelate the wrath of his sovereigns, but the singular credit he enjoyed

and the vast influence he was able to wield soon restored him to royal

favor.

It was now resolved to carry matters to extremes, and the choice of

baptism or death was offered to the Moors, whose rebellion, although

provoked by the oppression of their masters, was declared to have

caused a forfeiture of all their privileges. The disaffection spread

rapidly to the provinces; the mountaineers of the Alpujarras and the

adjacent rugged country, which were the resorts of bands of desperate

outlaws who entertained intimate relations with the Barbary corsairs,

became involved; and the Catholic monarchs, so far from the religious

triumph which they had anticipated, saw themselves suddenly confronted

by a war which promised to assume formidable proportions. Space will

not permit a detailed description of the repeated insurrections and

final subjugation of the Moriscoes, and only the more important events

of that memorable struggle can be touched upon. The mountain ranges

of Southern Spain were admirably adapted to the desultory tactics in

which they excelled, and the prolongation of the struggle was the

natural consequence of the difficulties of the ground, of the boldness

and activity of the insurgents, of the incapacity of the Castilian

commanders, and of the proverbial want of discipline and fatal

recklessness of the Christian soldiery. The general disarmament of the

Moors had deprived them of the greater part of their weapons, but this

disadvantage was eventually repaired by the spoils of battle and by

the enterprise of Aragonese and Castilian traders, who, undismayed by

the prospect of detection and punishment, were always ready, for an

extravagant compensation, to furnish the enemies of their king with

arms of the most approved pattern and workmanship. The operations of

the contending forces were prosecuted with a cruelty hitherto unknown,

even in the bloody annals of the Peninsula; and the ultimate triumph of

the Spaniards was signalized by acts of such merciless vengeance that

the foreign soldiers of fortune, enlisted for plunder and long seasoned

by bloodshed, were appalled by their dreadful atrocity. The massacre

of the population of a place taken by storm was the rule and not the

exception; the wounded remaining on fields of battle were exterminated;

prisoners were subjected to horrible tortures; every crime suggested

by the incentives of lust, rapine, and hereditary aversion was

perpetrated; and the most desirable fate of a captive was to be

consigned for life to the tyranny of an unfeeling master dominated by

every vice, inaccessible to mercy, and unrestrained by any law either

of God or man.

An army of nearly a hundred thousand men assembled, at the summons of

the Spanish sovereigns, for the suppression of the insurrection, at

Alhendin near Granada. Formidable in numbers alone, this great host

was composed of materials very different from the soldiery that had

achieved the Conquest. It was indifferently equipped, unorganized,

and absolutely deficient in discipline. The flower of the Castilian

youth, inspired by the discoveries of Columbus, had sought new scenes

of adventure on the shores of mysterious lands beyond the ocean.

Commercial pursuits had weakened the military spirit; a peace of

many years had impaired the energy of the nation and incapacitated,

for the exposure of a perilous service, a people who had been reared

and nurtured amidst the din of arms. The blessings of internal

tranquillity, almost forgotten in the conflict of centuries, had once

more permitted the unmolested exercise of the mechanical arts and the

practice of agricultural industry. The better class of citizens, in

the full enjoyment of security, were loath to resume, for the sake

of a religious principle, whose enforcement promised much danger and

trifling advantage, the hazards of the uncertain game of war. The

army was therefore mainly composed of the retainers and vassals of

the nobility, whose duty required their presence, and an innumerable

horde of penniless adventurers, who sought, in the excitements and

vicissitudes of a campaign against the infidel, an opportunity for

the improvement of their desperate fortunes. Aided by a smaller force

operating from Almeria, the rebellion was, after some fighting and much

cruel retaliation, put down; the insurgents, impelled by the promise

of immunity or the menace of death, consented to embrace the Catholic

faith; the ancient chroniclers relate with becoming pride that during

a single day ten thousand proselytes were baptized in the Sierra de

Filabres alone; and through material inducements, or from the contagion

of example, the inhabitants of Baza and Guadix, of the Alpujarras, and

of the mountain regions to the south as far as the sea, were reckoned

among those who acknowledged the authority of the Church and accepted

the doctrines of Christianity.

With the advent of the sixteenth century, a royal decree was

promulgated, establishing at Granada the same civil jurisdiction

which obtained in the other provincial capitals of the kingdom. The

magistracy was nominally divided between the Spaniards and the Moors,

but the equality was only apparent, and the preponderance of power

virtually remained with the conquerors. Allured by the delusive

prospect of a voice in the affairs of the government, and despairing

of assistance from their brethren in Africa, whose good offices

they had repeatedly but vainly solicited, the Moors of the Albaycin

finally consented to baptism. They required, as a condition of their

compliance, permission to wear their national costume and to use the

Arabic language, privileges which were subsequently made pretexts for

oppression. It was also agreed that the Holy Office should not be

established at Granada for the space of forty years; a provision which

ecclesiastical acumen readily evaded by placing that city under the

jurisdiction of the Inquisitorial tribunal of Cordova.

Still dissatisfied with the slow progress made by her ministers in

bringing the obdurate Moors within the pale of Christianity, Isabella

a second time ordered Ximenes to Granada. Instructed by his prior

experience, he conducted himself with more discretion than before; but

his proselytes, driven into the Church by hundreds, without previous

instruction, remained, like their predecessors, profoundly ignorant of

its doctrines and of the responsibilities imposed upon them by their

enforced conversion. This time the stay of the Primate was short; his

ascetic habits had impaired a constitution never extremely robust;

and a pulmonary affection of a serious character, whose symptoms were

aggravated by unremitting excitement and toil, speedily developed.

The available resources of medical science were unable to relieve

his malady, and, abandoned as hopeless by regular practitioners, in

the hour of his extremity he was induced to submit to the treatment

of a venerable Moorish woman, who combined with Arabic science the

mysterious and uncanny ceremonies of the witch and the empiric. Under

her ministrations the distinguished sufferer improved with a rapidity

which, under other conditions, would have been deemed miraculous;

and he was soon able to leave the scene of his labors, owing his

life to the skill of a member of that race which he had relentlessly

persecuted,--after a career which, however short, had made a more

profound and fatal impress upon the policy of the Spanish Crown than

that of any other dignitary of his time, and which was destined

subsequently to exert a powerful influence upon the political fate and

the future civilization of Europe.

A sequence of calamities, traceable to royal perfidy and ecclesiastical

usurpation, was now about to descend upon the Spanish monarchy. The

apprehensions of the inhabitants of the Serrania of Ronda had been

aroused by reports of the injustice and violence visited upon their

countrymen of Granada. The Moorish citizens of the ancient capital

and its environs were now all nominally Christians. The persuasive

methods of Talavera and the severity of Ximenes had enrolled upon

the registers of the Church more than seventy thousand proselytes.

Under the circumstances, the professions of a vast majority of these

were necessarily insincere. It was an example of the organization

of hypocrisy upon a gigantic scale, where religious principle was

subordinated to material interests, and an outward observance of

superstitious rites was accepted as an equivalent of earnest devotion

and genuine piety. These reputed converts had not, however, by any

means abandoned the faith of their forefathers. They diligently

celebrated its rites in secret. Their children were early, and with

secrecy, instructed in the doctrines of Islam. In defiance of royal

decrees, they practised many suspicious ceremonies not recognized even

by orthodox Moslems, performed incantations, wore talismans and charms.

A concealed system of communication was established between them and

their brethren in the provinces; and each important event that took

place in the city was known within a few hours to every inhabitant of

the sierras. The Moors of the Serrania of Ronda did not receive the

Gospel with the same docility as their kinsmen of the Alpujarras, whose

doubts had been speedily removed by the cogent argument of a hundred

thousand armed men. The missionaries, who tried to carry matters with

a high hand, were maltreated and driven away. The mountaineers rose;

the country was swept by bands of merciless brigands; the corsairs of

Africa repaired in large numbers to the scene of booty and adventure;

the passes were barricaded; and the region in the vicinity of Ronda

assumed the appearance of a fortified camp. Offers of amnesty,

conditional on baptism, were received with scorn. An army under Don

Alonso de Aguilar, the Count of Cifuentes, and the Count of Ureña

then entered the mountains. The Moors, evacuating their villages,

slowly retired to the Sierra Bermeja, where they made a final stand.

The impetuosity and want of discipline of the Christians lured them

into a disadvantageous situation, whence there was no escape. After

a day of fighting, they were surrounded in the darkness and routed

with frightful slaughter. Don Alonso de Aguilar, Francisco Ramirez

de Madrid, chief of ordnance of the Spanish army, and many other

cavaliers, were killed; and the mountain slopes were strewn with the

bodies of soldiers who had been butchered as they fled. The victory of

the Sierra Bermeja was the only important one gained by the insurgents

in the long course of the Morisco wars. It was productive of no

substantial advantage; and its only permanent effect was to exasperate

the Queen, who, now regarding herself as the injured party, devoted

henceforth all her energy to the oppression of a heretic race whose

existence she considered a blemish upon her piety and a scandal to her

dominions.

The submission of the Moors, during the gradual subjugation of the

Peninsula, had left large numbers in different conditions of life

scattered through the provinces of the various kingdoms. A few had

early apostatized; many were held in a state of servitude; but by far

the larger portion enjoyed a nominal freedom, and purchased immunity

from molestation by the payment of tribute. All who complied with the

laws regulating their responsibilities to the government were allowed

the peaceful exercise of their religious ceremonies. The principal

wealth of the Castilian nobility consisted in the industry of these

their intelligent and laborious dependents. On what are now known as

the dehesas and despoblados--“pastures” and “deserts”--of Castile and

Estremadura, the Moorish agriculturists produced from an ungrateful

soil the wheat which supplied the population of the entire Peninsula.

These invaluable tributaries of the Spanish Crown had never evinced the

slightest concern for the fate of their fellow-sectaries contending

for liberty and religion on the distant banks of the Genil. Not only

had they failed to manifest their sympathy, but the extraordinary

contributions for the prosecution of the war levied upon the products

of their thrift largely contributed to the successful termination

of a struggle in whose result they naturally must have felt a more

than passing interest. Had their feelings been sufficiently ardent

to have induced active and armed co-operation, the difficulties of

the Reconquest must have been vastly increased. As it was, their

apathetic and selfish conduct was far from securing them immunity

from persecution. The malignant bigotry of the Queen, flinging to

the winds every sentiment of justice, piety, and humanity, had now

usurped over her better nature an imperious and undisputed dominion;

and on the twelfth of February, 1502, she published an edict ordering

the banishment of all the Moors of Leon and Castile. The extraordinary

lack of political discernment disclosed by such a step affords painful

evidence to what dishonorable and injurious expedients a mind of

more than ordinary capacity may be impelled by the fury of religious

passion. These objects of her animadversion were, as a class, her

most faithful, obedient, and valuable subjects. They had always

observed the laws with scrupulous fidelity. Those most prejudiced

against their blood and their belief had never imputed to them the

crimes of sacrilege, of conspiracy, of treason. Under their patient

and skilful hands, the most unpromising regions, heretofore abandoned

by native ignorance and sloth as totally unproductive, now blossomed

with unsurpassed fertility. Their industry filled the granaries of

the kingdom; there was no other available source of supply, and

with their expulsion a famine was imminent; in the future, as was

subsequently demonstrated, there were none competent or willing to

take their place. The slaves of her powerful vassals, serfs who

represented infinite blood and treasure expended in the service of the

crown, were not originally exempted from the force of this sweeping

decree, and the infringement of private rights resulting from the

arbitrary confiscation of this property, without excuse or recompense,

promised disastrous political complications. These considerations

had, however, no weight in the mind of the obstinate Isabella. The

fact that in the midst of a Christian population an infidel community

was suffered to exist, especially after the Moslems of Granada had

declared their adherence to the Faith, was repugnant to her intolerant

nature, and a standing reproach to the religion she professed. In

support of her policy, she coined the atrocious maxim, worthy of the

ingenious casuistry of a Jesuit, “It is better to prevent than to

punish; and it is right to punish the little for the crimes of the

great.” The vicarious sufferings of the Castilian Arabs were now to

atone for the offences of the rebels of Granada, with whom they had

nothing in common but a similar origin and an inherited creed, and

in whose behalf they had never exhibited the slightest indication

of countenance or sympathy. The enforcement of this measure, whose

inhuman provisions subjected the unhappy objects of its severity to the

treatment due outlaws and criminals, was only partially observed. At

the very beginning it was seen that, if carried out to the letter, a

considerable part of the kingdom would become a barren and uninhabited

solitude. The decree was therefore revoked. A compromise, by which the

delicate scruples of the Queen were satisfied, was effected,--baptism

was substituted for exile; the scenes of indiscriminate and wholesale

aspersion were repeated; a large and industrious population bartered

their religious convictions for safety, and, by the force of a royal

proclamation, were transformed from a self-respecting body of colonists

into a nation of hypocrites.

With the death of Isabella, which occurred at this time, the Moriscoes

were relieved from the persecution of a vindictive and persevering

enemy. The permanent elimination of her influence from the politics

of the Peninsula did not, however, improve the condition of the

recent victims of her fiery and unrelenting zeal. The system by

which she governed; the infamous maxims which guided her conduct in

the relations existing between sovereign and subject; the shameless

violation of treaties; the audacious usurpations of the clergy; the

prejudices engendered by years of oppression, were perpetuated by

her successors, and adopted by their ministers as an essential part

of the policy of the crown. The reverence with which her memory is

regarded is to be attributed, not so much to the greatness of her

abilities, eminent as they were, but to their misapplication; not to

the military achievements of her armies, but to the sanguinary revenge

they inflicted upon vanquished enemies; not to the blessings of a wise,

a just, and a stable government,--the most substantial foundation upon

which the fame of a monarch can be erected,--but to the inauguration

of measures which eventually purged the kingdom of misbelievers, who

were the source of its material wealth and of its commercial and

agricultural prosperity. A princess who could deliberately repudiate

the obligations of national honor can scarcely be regarded in the

light of a public benefactor. The patroness of the Inquisition has

but a slender claim to the admiration of posterity. The popularity

of Isabella is based upon the fact that she was the representative

of contemporaneous popular sentiment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries no proceeding was so meritorious as the torture of heretics.

All questions of political expediency were rigidly subordinated to

the claims of what was universally regarded as a paramount religious

duty. The progressive decadence of Spanish power dates from its

very establishment, and is directly traceable to the incessant

intervention of ecclesiastical authority in civil affairs, and to the

awful consequences resulting from the unlimited application of the

atrocious principle that national faith and public honor must be always

sacrificed to the interests of the Roman Catholic religion.

The different aspects under which the same things appeared, during the

sixteenth century, to people of a common nationality, living under

the same laws and professing the same doctrines, are remarkable.

During the bitter persecutions in Castile, the Aragonese Moslems

retained their privileges unimpaired. Not only that, but while the

spirit of fanaticism was driving the tributaries of Isabella by

thousands to simulated conversion, Ferdinand issued a decree granting

to the Moors of Valencia the enjoyment of their religious and social

rights in perpetuity. On the one hand, therefore, was the most

radical suppression of individual thought and action; on the other,

a toleration worthy of the most enlightened statesmanship, and, it

must be added, little to be anticipated under the circumstances. But

the sagacity of Ferdinand never willingly countenanced the employment

of force in matters of religion. His jealousy of power caused him to

resent the encroachments of the priesthood; and he secretly discouraged

the oppression of a race which he recognized as controlling the

material resources upon whose maintenance depended the preservation of

his dignity and prestige.

During the twelve years that intervened between the death of

Isabella and that of Ferdinand, the Moors enjoyed comparative peace

and immunity; and the advent of Charles V. brought at first no

unfavorable changes in their political or social conditions. That

prince was scarcely seated upon the throne which he had inherited,

and by whose acceptance there devolved upon him responsibilities

of the greatest moment and the government of a people of whose

disposition and character he was profoundly ignorant, when serious

internal disturbances began to menace his authority. In Castile, the

Comuneros, a conspiracy of nobles and municipalities, arose to assert

their ancient privileges, impaired by foreign influence; and, at the

same time, the Valencian populace banded together under the name of

Germania, or Brotherhood, to repress the growing insolence of the

aristocracy. The encroachments of the latter had long been a serious

grievance in the kingdom of Valencia. Its members, ever since the

Conquest, had maintained an insulting deportment with their inferiors,

which had exasperated the latter beyond all endurance. They borrowed

money of wealthy merchants and repaid them with curses and ridicule.

The establishment of a regency had weakened the administration of

the laws; the nobles were not slow to observe the advantages which

a virtual interregnum afforded the development of private ambition;

and, in the assertion of obsolete feudal privileges, every wrong which

avarice or hatred could suggest was inflicted upon the citizens of

a rich and defenceless community. The Moors, who were the vassals

of the Valencian nobles, were not infrequently the instruments of

their malevolence, and shared with their masters the general obloquy

which attached to their conduct. The organization of the Germania

had an important and disastrous effect upon the fortunes of the

former. Their lot was cast with their lords, and the predominance

temporarily acquired by the rebels through the incapacity of the

Viceroy proved fatal in the end to the liberties of the vassal. The

popular cry of infidel was raised by the insurgents, who numbered many

ecclesiastics in their ranks, and sixteen thousand Moslems submitted

to the infliction of compulsory baptism. The Emperor, who seems to

have inherited with his dominions a taste for persecution, was not

satisfied while a single Mohammedan remained within the jurisdiction

of the Spanish Crown. With great difficulty he extorted a bull from

the Pope which absolved him from the oath he had taken to observe the

ancient laws and treaties of the kingdom, and expressly authorizing the

reduction to slavery of every Mussulman whose scruples or obstinacy

might prevent him from renouncing the belief of his fathers. Secure

of Papal sanction, Charles now issued a proclamation requiring the

Moors, under mysterious but unspecified penalties, to become Christians

within ten days. The latter, who did not manifest the submissive spirit

of their brethren, maintained a sullen demeanor, and, disposing of

their personal effects for whatever they could obtain, prepared to

go into exile. The publicity of their intention, however, defeated

it; the authorities forbade the sale of their property as well as

their departure, and nothing remained for them but apostasy or armed

resistance. The former alternative was embraced by far the greater

number. With such a multitude individual aspersion was impossible;

the water of regeneration was sprinkled over kneeling thousands with

branches of hyssop, and more than one unrepentant infidel, who had

submitted with secret disgust to an obnoxious ceremony, was heard to

mutter, “Praise be to Allah! Not a drop defiled me!”

The rural communities of Valencia regarded the prospect of conversion

with even more disfavor than did the inhabitants of the capital. The

ecclesiastical commissioners sent to enforce the royal edicts were

excluded from the dwellings of the peasantry, who refused to hear

their exhortations. In some localities open violence was manifested;

the Baron of Cortes, who had urged submission, was killed by his

retainers, and his body left to be devoured by swine. Resistance to

royal authority was soon followed by organized revolt, and the Sierra

de Espadan became the seat of a formidable insurrection. Including

the banditti who habitually infested the mountains, and the African

freebooters who hailed every disturbance as a source of plunder and

profit, the army of the rebels amounted to more than four thousand

well-armed men. A farmer named Selim Carbaic was elected their general,

whose natural abilities and the valor of whose followers maintained

for months an unequal struggle with the combined resources of the

monarchy. Overcome at last, two thousand of the insurgents with their

leader perished in a single battle; and a general amnesty was declared,

under the sole condition by which any Moslem was now permitted to

retain life or liberty. The Moors of Catalonia and Aragon were tendered

the same alternative. Without hesitation they preferred hypocrisy to

martyrdom; and by the year 1526 there no longer remained within the

limits of the Spanish Peninsula a single individual who dared to openly

acknowledge his belief in the creed of Mohammed.

This flattering result having been finally accomplished, it was now

considered advisable to reform the proselytes. In nearly all localities

where the Moriscoes predominated they occupied an anomalous position,

so far as their spiritual welfare was concerned, for they were

practically living without any religion. They neglected to conform to

the ordinances or to observe the canons of the Church whose pale they

had entered under compulsion. The evasion of their duties was connived

at by the priests, who, so long as their parishioners were quiet and

regularly paid their contributions, closed their eyes to all formal

irregularities, and never troubled themselves with the instructions

which it was their office to impart. This indulgence was further

secured by donatives that exempted unwilling sinners from penance,

whose vexatious performance might always be commuted for a pecuniary

consideration. In the sight of the clergy, spiritual duties were thus

entirely obscured by the more palpable advantages to be derived from

worldly benefits and the maintenance of their flocks in ignorance,--a

policy which at the same time confirmed their authority and increased

their revenues. But the Moriscoes, while they shunned the mass, could

not with safety resort to any other source of religious consolation.

They were more than suspected of practising the rites of Islam in

secret; but the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their

domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. In the

eyes of devout Christians, who did not fail to notice and reprobate

their shortcomings, they were regarded as something worse than Pagans.

Although they possessed all the requisites of good citizenship, and

their intercourse with their neighbors was marked by every evidence of

honor and probity, these qualities were ignored when their religious

consistency was called in question.

The visit of Charles V. to Granada in 1526 was made the occasion

for a strenuous appeal for the reform of the Moriscoes. Petitions

and remonstrances without number, reinforced with all the arts of

sacerdotal eloquence, were presented to the Emperor, urging that

radical measures be taken to correct an evil which was seriously

affecting the credit and the discipline of the Church. A commission

of thirteen members, most of them high ecclesiastical dignitaries,

and presided over by Don Alonso Manrique, Grand Inquisitor of Spain,

was therefore appointed, and began an investigation. There was no

difficulty in anticipating the decision of such a tribunal. That its

decrees might be properly executed, the Holy Office was brought from

Jaen and formally established in one of the palaces of the city. Ten

sessions sufficed to determine a question in which were involved

matters of the greatest consequence to the welfare of the kingdom,

the maintenance of national honor, and the justice and integrity of

the crown. Every accusation against the Moriscoes was received and

considered, but they were not permitted to be heard in their own

defence. The determination of the commission was published in a royal

edict, which prohibited the Moriscoes the use of their family names,

their dress, their language; which compelled the exposure of the faces

of their women to the insulting gaze of the loungers in the streets;

which required the abandonment of the peculiar ceremonies employed in

the slaughter of animals for food; which sanctioned by domiciliary

visits invasion of the privacy of their homes; and forbade them to ever

lose sight of the Inquisitorial palace, whose officials were directed

to henceforth exercise careful supervision over their conduct, and

to punish with their customary rigor all infractions of religious

discipline.

The terror experienced by the victims of this atrocious decree, which

not only violated the conditions upon which Spanish supremacy depended,

but deliberately sacrificed every consideration of justice for which

national honor had solemnly pledged its faith, can hardly be imagined.

But the Moriscoes, whose experience with their spiritual advisers had

taught them the efficacy of certain methods in averting impending

evil, had recourse to an expedient which, on a smaller scale, had

repeatedly proved successful. It was no secret that the royal treasury

was empty; and it was suspected that the depressed condition of the

national finances was largely responsible for the proselyting zeal so

unexpectedly exerted against a peaceable and inoffensive class. In

consideration of a “gift” of eight thousand ducats, the execution of

the obnoxious decree was suspended, during the pleasure of the Emperor,

as soon as it had been signed; but this indulgence, it was expressly

declared, did not affect the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. The

parasites who surrounded the throne demanded and received an equal

amount for an influence they claimed to possess, but which was probably

never exerted. Thus a monarch, who posed as the secular representative

of Roman Catholicism, consented to sacrifice the religious interests of

a large body of his subjects and to compromise the imperial dignity

for a sum equivalent at the present day to nine hundred thousand

dollars in gold. No event in Spanish history discloses more clearly

than this the true motives which instigated the prosecution of heresy,

or the extraordinary wealth of those who were the objects of official

cupidity and public malevolence.

The Moors of Granada, who had heretofore been almost exempt from the

exactions of inquisitorial tyranny, now experienced for the first time

the dire powers of the Holy Office. One of the first acts of Isabella,

after the Conquest, was the foundation of innumerable monasteries.

The favorite sites of these establishments were the suburban palaces

of the Moslem princes, it being considered a peculiarly meritorious

achievement to erect on the ruins of a splendid villa, devoted to the

pleasures of a votary of Islam, an abode for holy men, who, by a pious

fiction, were supposed to employ their abundant leisure in praying for

the salvation of heretics. In building these structures the baths were

first demolished, on account of the scandal the sight of apartments

devoted to ablution and luxury caused every good Christian, as well

as for the reason that their use was always considered entirely

superfluous in a monastic institution. As a result of the partiality

exhibited by successive princes towards the monachal orders, the city

swarmed with friars of every description. Their prejudices made them

the bitter enemies of the Moriscoes, while their numbers and audacity

rendered them both influential and formidable. The fact that the

inferior officials of the Inquisition were principally recruited from

their ranks augmented the terror which their insolence and rapacity

inspired, and no familiar who wore the Dominican or Franciscan garb

was ever known to incline to the side of mercy. To such hands was now

committed the fate of the Moors of Granada. The compact with the

Emperor, by which they had been confirmed for the time in the enjoyment

of their customs, was broken. Their property was confiscated. They

were subjected to the diabolical tortures adopted by the direst of

tribunals for the production of testimony and the confession of guilt.

In the famous Plaza de la Bab-al-Rambla, the scene of many knightly

encounters and of the destruction of Moslem learning by Ximenes, the

condemned underwent the final penance, the sacrifice of the auto-da-fé.

The annoying restraints imposed upon them by priestly intolerance were

the least oppressive of the many evils the Moriscoes were condemned

to endure. In the frequent controversies which arose concerning the

interpretation of imperial edicts and canonical decrees, the authority

of the latter always prevailed. Every official, civil, religious, or

military, asserted the privilege of magistracy, and claimed the right

to compound an offence or to impose a penalty. In the art of extorting

money, as in the direction of all matters pertaining to civil and

ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the servants of the Church displayed an

extraordinary aptitude. The regular taxes imposed upon the Moriscoes,

a grievous burden in themselves, were augmented a hundred-fold by

impositions unauthorized by law, and which had no other foundation

than the demands of official rapacity. The sums obtained from these

enforced contributions were enormous. An idea may be formed of the

probable amount they yielded when it is remembered that the legitimate

tax paid annually by the silk markets of Almeria, Malaga, and Granada

added more than a million dollars to the royal treasury. The irregular

means employed were far more profitable in their results than those

countenanced by legal authority; and there were few demands, however

iniquitous, which a Morisco dared refuse when confronted with the

menacing power of the Inquisition.

In Valencia also the Holy Office, supported by Papal sanction and

imperial duplicity, found a rich and most fruitful field for its

nefarious operations. It was in this kingdom, so remarkable for its

natural advantages and the industry of its people, that the Spanish

proverb, “Quien tiene Moro, tiene oro,” had its origin. The relation

of vassalage which the Moors of that kingdom in general sustained

to the nobility was far from sufficient to protect them against the

effects of secular and ecclesiastical prejudice. The unquestioned

orthodoxy of the lord, his generosity to the Church, the antiquity

of his family, the prestige of his name, his services to the crown,

were swept aside when the question of disciplining his retainers was

involved. The slightest suspicion attaching to a Moslem was enough to

invite the descent of a horde of familiars and alguazils, who never

failed to discover evidences of irregularity sufficient to render

their examination profitable. The visitations of these functionaries

were doubly offensive by reason of the unfeeling and insolent manner

in which they were conducted. They left no corner of a dwelling

unsearched; they destroyed property, insulted women, and without color

of right or pretence of concealment appropriated such jewels and

trinkets as struck their fancy. Spies of the Holy Office swarmed in the

Moorish quarter, ever alert for signs of heresy. For these outrages

there was no possibility of redress, and the trembling victim gladly

purchased, by the confiscation of his effects, temporary security

from greater misfortunes, which, if his worldly possessions were

sufficient to warrant further interference, he was certain sooner or

later to undergo. The intolerable nature of these persecutions impelled

thousands of Moriscoes to seek by flight the only available relief

from oppression. The Holy Fathers of the Inquisition were horrified

by the retaliatory measures adopted by the friends of those who, for

the welfare of their souls, were subjected to the salutary restraints

of ecclesiastical discipline. Every time that the Moors condemned by

that tribunal expiated their heresies in an auto-da-fé, information was

promptly sent to Barbary, and an equal number of Christian captives

perished by fire.

The African corsairs, under the command of the relentless Barbarossa,

at that time held the empire of the Mediterranean, and by their aid

multitudes of Moriscoes succeeded in escaping to Morocco. In vain

the nobles protested against a policy which depreciated the value of

their estates, depopulated their villages, and daily deprived them

of laborers whose services could not be dispensed with and whose

loss could not be replaced; both royal power and popular sentiment

sanctioned the course of the Church, and the material prosperity of

a single province was not worthy of consideration when weighed with

the perishing souls of thousands of suspected heretics. Pecuniary

arguments were then employed, and after several years of negotiation

the operations of the Holy Office were suspended upon the payment of

a yearly donative of twenty-five hundred ducats. Once more free from

the perils of Inquisitorial visitation and punishment, the Moriscoes

at once relapsed into their former religious indifference; the clergy

viewed with unconcern the unmistakable evidences of apostasy among

their parishioners; the nobles welcomed with undisguised satisfaction

the relief of their vassals, the increase of their revenues, and the

indications of returning prosperity; while the inquisitors, whose

treasury had been filled to overflowing with the gold wrung by fines

and confiscations from the wealthiest subjects of the kingdom, sought

in other quarters new material for the stake and the dungeon, to be

condemned to present torture and eternal infamy in the name of an

All-Merciful God.

The abdication of Charles V. brought a grateful respite to the harassed

and suffering Moors. The mighty interests of an empire which extended

over two worlds engrossed the attention of Philip II., and he had, at

first, no time to devote to the persecution of a handful of alleged

heretics lost in a corner of his vast dominions. The Roman Pontiff,

who, perhaps influenced by motives of humanity, but certainly not

absolutely free from political bias or resentment for the outrage

inflicted by the Emperor upon the Holy See, had always discountenanced

his oppression of the Moriscoes, now heartily co-operated with Philip

in alleviating the misery of their condition. A brief issued from the

Vatican in 1556 empowered confessors to absolve from the offence of

heresy without penance, and deprived the Inquisition of the greater

part of its jurisdiction and authority. The nature of the young King

had not yet been corrupted by absolute power; nor were his actions now

controlled by that morose and pitiless spirit subsequently developed by

remorse, disease, and bigotry, which, added to the hereditary taint of

insanity which afflicted his family, rendered him, during the greater

portion of his life, one of the most unfeeling monsters that has ever

disgraced a throne.

The beneficial effects of leniency upon the Moriscoes, as contrasted

with the employment of violent measures, were soon disclosed. They

conformed, with seeming alacrity, to the often vexatious regulations

imposed upon their conduct. They wore the Spanish costume; they

adopted, in all public transactions at least, the use of the Castilian

language. Colleges were founded for their instruction by devout and

enterprising prelates. Their children, male and female, were educated

in the schools, and assumed the ecclesiastical habit of the various

monastic orders within whose jurisdiction they were enrolled. From

Morisco seminaries missionaries went forth to instruct and reconcile

their doubting countrymen. In imitation of their patrons, they

founded and supported religious brotherhoods. Their professions were

apparently sincere; they began to perform their duties with scrupulous

regularity; and it seemed as if at last the hitherto delusive hope of

Moslem conversion was about to be realized. But the spirit of ferocious

intolerance, ever predominant in the Spanish character, and which in

the sixteenth century amounted to a frenzy, regarded with anything

but complacency the indulgent consideration extended towards the

unhappy objects of hereditary aversion. With this sentiment generally

prevalent, fresh pretexts for encroachment were easily invented. In

1560 the assistance of the government was invoked by the Christians of

Granada to restrain the purchase of slaves by the Moriscoes, who, it

was stated, were in the habit of instructing their servants secretly

in the doctrines of Islam and thereby multiplying the number of its

adherents, to the scandal of the Church and the prejudice of the royal

authority. No attempt was made to ascertain the truth or falsity of

this accusation, and the Moriscoes were deprived, by royal decree, of

the right of possessing slaves, a measure seriously affecting the rural

and domestic economy of the entire population of Granada, which was

dependent upon the cultivation of the soil by a multitude of negroes

held by the Moorish farmers in servitude.

In addition to this virtual confiscation of property for no valid

cause and without indemnity, the Moors were compelled to produce the

arms whose possession had already been licensed, in order to have

them stamped by the government, and thus contribute still further to

the gratification of official greed. The penalty incurred for the

possession of a weapon without permission was six years in the galleys;

that for counterfeiting the royal stamp was death. The enforcement

of these regulations, the first of which threatened to paralyze

agricultural labor, the principal occupation of the Moriscoes and

the main dependence of the revenues of the crown, exasperated beyond

endurance those affected by their enactment. The loss of their slaves

impoverished many. Some surrendered their arms and procured others

clandestinely. Others enlisted in the organized bands of outlaws who,

under the name of monfis, roamed through the sierras and levied at

will contributions upon the wealthy Spaniards of the Vega. Many of

these brigands, through the connivance of their sympathizers, entered

the capital by night in force, bore away the wives and children of

their enemies, and left in the squares and highways the mutilated

corpse of every Christian they encountered. The numbers of the monfis

increased with alarming rapidity. Their incursions began to resemble

the operations of an organized army; preparations for an insurrection

were secretly instituted, and the assistance of the rulers of Fez,

Algiers, and Constantinople was earnestly solicited in behalf of those

who represented themselves as persecuted Mohammedans, abandoned without

any other resource to the tyranny of Christian avarice and power.

Untaught by experience and regardless of consequences, the officials

of the various civil and ecclesiastical tribunals pursued their

extortionate policy without pity or restraint. The competition existing

between them, and the adverse claims involving contested jurisdiction

and disputed plunder which constantly arose, often caused serious

conflicts of authority, from which the representatives of the Church

and the Inquisition generally emerged victorious. These quarrels

between these two classes of oppressors embittered them both against

their common victims, and dissension increased instead of alleviating

the sufferings of the latter. To make their situation even more

desperate, the decree of Charles V., promulgated in 1526, was now put

in force by the King. The Moriscoes, unable longer to sustain the

grievous exactions which they well understood were but preliminaries

to the expulsion of their race, now rapidly matured their plans of

rebellion. In the accomplishment of this they displayed extraordinary

tact and shrewdness. A considerable estate had been granted to them

in the neighborhood of Granada for the erection of a hospital. Under

pretence of soliciting funds for its completion, trusty emissaries of

revolt were despatched to every Moorish community of the kingdom. The

collectors employed in this dangerous service visited in their journey

one hundred and ten thousand families. The incorruptible faith of the

Moors and their loyalty to their race were unprecedented; for among

the multitudes intrusted with a secret for which a traitor would have

received a fortune not a single individual abused the confidence of

his countrymen. The entire sum obtained by this means is not known; it

must, however, have been amply sufficient, for the contributions of

those who were fit for military service alone amounted to forty-five

thousand pieces of gold.

Messengers were next despatched to Africa to purchase arms. Secret

and well-organized communication was perfected. The election of a

leader now became imperative. In the old Moorish capital there lived

a young man of amiable disposition and excellent mental capacity,

but of prodigal and licentious habits, named Don Fernando de Valor,

in whose veins coursed the blood of the famous Ommeyade dynasty of

Cordova. A prince by birth, and enjoying the greatest popularity as a

citizen, his prominence in the community had secured for him a place

among the councillors who, under the constitution granted by the

crown, assisted in the nominal government of the city. Although his

dissolute manners and frivolous associations exempted him from the

suspicion of the authorities, and his public observance of religious

ceremonies stamped him as an orthodox believer, he had not forgotten

the glorious traditions of his royal line, and in spite of his apparent

sloth was active, brave, aspiring, and unscrupulous. In the house of

a wealthy resident of the Albaycin, and within a stone’s throw of the

inquisitorial palace, the chiefs of the conspiracy conferred upon this

youth the perilous honor of leading a hopeless insurrection. With all

the ceremonial of the ancient khalifate, he was invested with the

royal insignia; his new subjects rendered him obeisance; he named the

dignitaries of his court, and the assemblage invoked the blessing

of heaven upon the Servant of Allah and the Representative of the

Prophet, Muley Mohammed-Ibn-Ommeyah, King of Granada and Andalusia! The

performance of this farcical ceremony neither inspired confidence nor

awakened enthusiasm among the Moriscoes of the city. The character of

the personage selected to re-establish the glories of Moslem dominion

was too well known in Granada to arouse any other sentiments than those

of ridicule and contempt. Intolerable as their condition was, the

wealthy Moors hesitated to hazard their lives and property in support

of a cause in whose success they had little faith; and the populace,

while ever prone to riot, waited patiently for the signal from their

superiors. For this reason, although several uprisings were projected,

and even the hours of their accomplishment appointed, popular

indecision and apathy rendered all designs abortive.