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An Urban Minority: The Moriscos of Seville1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Ruth Pike
Ruth Pike
Affiliation:
Hunter College, City University of New York
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Extract

Spain in the sixteenth century was far from presenting the racial and spiritual homogeneity that the Spanish monarchs from Ferdinand and Isabella had sought to attain. That uniformity was the common aspiration of Spanish society during this period cannot be denied, but this was an ideal that bore little relation to reality. Regardless of the efforts put forth by the forces of racial and religious purity, there existed in Spain throughout the sixteenth century both social dissidents and unassimilated classes whose survival was considered an affront to the Spanish government, church and people. The largest of these non-conformist groups was the Moriscos (converted Moslems), who were scattered about the country in their own communities, each with its distinctive features and problems. In Valencia and Aragon, for example, the Moriscos were a rural people gaining their subsistence from the land; in Castile, on the other hand, they were concentrated in the towns, where they lived a ghetto-like existence on the fringes of society. Large numbers of these urban Moriscos lived in Andalusia and especially in Seville, a town that became as a result of its monopoly of the Indies trade, the most famous and important city in Spain at that time. The size and cosmopolitan atmosphere of this ‘new Babylonia’, as it was called by the literary figures of the period, naturally attracted all kinds of dissident elements; it was, in the words of Cervantes, ‘the asylum of the poor and the refuge of the outcast’.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , October 1971 , pp. 368 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

page 368 note 2 Miguel, de Cervantes Saavedra,Coloquio de los perros in Novelas ejemplares, ed. Francisco, Rodríguez Marin, vol. II (Madrid, 1957), p.235. For Seville as a ‘new Babylonia’Google Scholar see F.Lope de Vega Carpio La Dorotea, ed. Morby, E. (Berkeley, 1958), act II, scene 2, p. 133,Google Scholar and Vélez de Guevara, L., El diablo cojuelo, ed. Marín, F. Rodriguez (Madrid, 1951), p. 144.Google Scholar In fact this same term ‘Babylonia’ eventually found its way into thieves' jargon (germanía) of the period as a synonym for Seville. See Romancero de Germania, ed. J., Hesse (Madrid, 1967), p. 138.Google Scholar

page 369 note 1 For a description of the Adarvejo seeMartínez, C.López, Mudéjares y Moriscos sevillanos (Seville, 1935), p. 12.Google Scholar

page 369 note 2 AMS, Varios Antiguos, nûm. 334. ‘Padrón de los Moriscos del Reino de Granada que residen en esta ciudad de Sevilla.’Google ScholarGuillén, C. noted the existence of this document in his ‘Un Padrón de los conversos sevillanos (1510)’, Bulletin Hispanique, vol. 65 (1963), pp. 49–89, but he did not use it.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 370 note 1 Figures for the total Morisco population of Seville in 1580 represent an estimate based on those given by Lapeyre for 1589. See Lapeyre, H., La Géographie de l'Espagne morisque (Paris, 1959), p. 135.Google Scholar

page 370 note 2 In the five parishes covered by the census of 1580 there were 148 slaves as compared with 572 free Moriscos. Nine years later a similar situation existed with 381 slaves out of a total Morisco population of 6,655. The majority of the slaves in Seville were Negroes. See Pike, R., ‘Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century: Slaves and Freedmen’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 47 (08, 1967), pp. 344–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 370 note 3 In 1590, for example, the Council of State seriously considered a plan to force all able-bodied Moriscos to serve a period of paid service in the galleys so as to reduce their prolificness. Braudel, F., La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1966), p. 128.Google Scholar

page 371 note 1 For a discussion of family size among Old Christians see Ortiz, A. Domfnguez, La sociedad española en el siglo XVII (Madrid, 1963), pp. 63–5.Google Scholar

page 371 note 2 After studying a census of Segovian Moriscos of 1594, C. and J.-P. Le Flem concluded that the average Morisco family consisted of four persons. In Segovia there were 2.04 children per family, 2 in Salamanca, I.99 in Valladolid and 1.77 in Avila. Claude, and Jean-Paul, Le Flem, ‘Un censo de Moriscos en Segovia en 1594’, Estudios Segovianos, vol. 16 (1964), p. 437.Google Scholar

page 371 note 3 In 1588 a Sevillian official Alonso Gutiérrez had a clear understanding of the problem ‘Ansi considerando que como no ay saca de esta gente tienen en grandísima multiplicación lo qual es en los cristianos viejos por la ordinaria que hay de ellos para Ytalia, Flandes, Yndias y jornadas hordinaria’, Gutiérrez, A., ‘Informe acerca de Ia cuestión morisca’,Google Scholar 6 de septiembre de 1588, as quoted in P., Bornat y Barrachina, Los Moriscos ecspañoles y su expulsión (Valencia, 1901), p. 634.Google Scholar

page 371 note 4 C. and J.-P. Le Flem found a similar situation in Segovia where out of a total Morisco population of 1,049 there were only II Old Christian men married to Morisco women, and 4 Old Christian women married to Morisco men. (Le, Flem, ‘Un censo de Moriscos’, p. 439.)Google Scholar

page 372 note 1 It is a constant theme in the reports of the common councilmen (jurados). AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos. A. Gutiérrez also held this view. See A., Gutiérrez as quoted in Bornat y Barrachina, Los Moriscos españoles, p. 635.Google Scholar

page 372 note 2 ‘Estos moriscos poseen grandes riqueças, aunque no lo muestran exteriormente por ser como son generalmente mezquinos, y el real que una vez entra en su poder no saven trocarle. …’ Gutiérrez as quoted in Bornat, y Barrachina, p. 635.Google Scholar This same idea is expressed by Cervantes in similar words. See de Cervantes Saavedra, M., Coloquio de los erros, p. 317.Google Scholar

page 372 note 3 AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos; ibid., Escribanía del Cabildo, siglo xvi, tomo 4, no. 45; Gutiérrez, as quoted in Bornat, y Barrachina, p. 635.Google Scholar

page 372 note 4 Gaviria, J. Matute y, Noticias relativas a la historia de Sevilla que no constan en sus anales (Seville, 1886), p. 53; BNM, MS 18735−53, ‘Informe de Sevilla para su magestad sobre los moriscos que ay en élla’.Google Scholar

page 372 note 5 This was the opinion of the city council. AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos. See also BNM, MS 18375−53 and Gutiérrez, , as quoted in Bomat, y Barrachina, Los Moriscos españoles, p. 635.Google Scholar

page 373 note 1 AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos; Gutiérrez, as quoted in Bornat y Barrachina, Los Moriscos españoles, p. 635.Google Scholar For Morisco artisans see Perez, J. Gestoso y, Historia de los Barros vidriados sevillanos (Seville, 1903),Google Scholar and by the same author, Ensayo de un diccionario de artifices que florecieron en Sevilla desde elsiglo XIII al XVIII (3 vols., Seville, 1899–1900).Google Scholar

page 373 note 2 Lapeyre, , p. 151.Google Scholar

page 373 note 3 Their feelings of repugnance toward pork and wine became a frequent pun in the literature of the period as well as the distorted Spanish that many of them spoke. A good example of their typical speech can be found in the Entremés del Gabacho, Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles vol. XVIII, p. 185 b.Google Scholar

page 373 note 4 Gutiérrez, ,Google Scholar as quoted in Bornat, y Barrachina, Los Moriscos españoles, p. 635.Google Scholar

page 373 note 5 Statistics for the Morisco population in 1609 have been taken from BNM, MS 9577. ‘Sumario general de los moriscos que habían en las distintas colaciones de Sevilla (1609).’ This document has also been published by Sanz, M. Serrano y, ‘Nuevos datos sobre la expulsión de los moriscos andaluces’, Revista Contemporànea, vol.90 (1893), p. 120.Google Scholar

page 374 note 1 The total number of victims of this, or any other plague of this period can never be determined, but we do have some estimates. The chronicler Cabrera de Córdoba calculated that in the initial period of the contagion from the beginning of May to mid- June 1599 around 8,000 persons had been taken ill, and that 5,000 of them had died. Another account claims that at its height in 1599 the plague caused some 200 deaths a day. See Luis, Cabrera de Córdoba, Relaciones de las Cosas sucedidas en la corte de España desde 1599 hasta 1614 (Madrid, 1857), p. 32,Google Scholar and DomínguezOrtiz, , La sociedad española, p. 141.Google Scholar

page 374 note 2 This incident is described in López, Martínez, Mudéjares, pp. 64–6.Google Scholar

page 375 note 1 AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos.

page 375 note 2 In the Seville auto de fe of 1559, for example, there were three Moriscos burned and eight reconciled with sanbenito and prison; of these, six were also scourged, including three women. Lea, H. C., The Moriscos of Spain: their conversion and expulsion (London, 1901), p. 109.Google Scholar

page 375 note 3 Ortiz, A. Domínguez, Orto y Ocaso de Sevilla (Seville, 1946), pp. 57–8.Google Scholar

page 375 note 4 AMS, Varios Antiguos, Moriscos.

page 375 note 5 López, Martínez, MudéJares, p. 64.Google Scholar

page 375 note 6 The Count of Villar, Asistente of Seville in 1580, mentions this conspiracy and the dangerous situation it created in Seville in his ‘Relación de sus servicios y méritos’, BNM, MS 9372-Cc-42.Google Scholar

page 376 note 1 Serrano, y Sanz, p. 119.Google Scholar

page 376 note 2 Pérez, J. Gestoso y, Curiosidades antiguas sevillanas, serie segunda (Seville, 1910), p. 307.Google Scholar

page 376 note 3 Francisco, de Ariño, Sucesos de Sevilla de 1592 a 1604 (Seville, 1873), p. 112.Google Scholar

page 376 note 4 BNM, MS 3207, ‘Cartas del Marqués de Montesclaros, Asistente de Sevilla’, pp. 658–9, 618.Google Scholar

page 377 note 1 Bleda, J., Coronica de los moros de España (Valencia, 1618), p. 1042. Figures for the expelled Moriscos come from BNM, MS 9577.Google Scholar

page 377 note 2 Rúa, J. Hazañas y La, Vázquez de Leca, 1573–1649 (Seville, 1918), pp. 254–6.Google Scholar

page 377 note 3 See Pike, , ‘Sevillian Society’, pp. 353–6.Google Scholar

page 377 note 4 Matute, v Gaviria, Noticias, p. 53; BNM, MS 18735.Google Scholar