Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [94]
The polemic that the scholar Pedro Aznar Cardona turned on the Moriscos in 1612 was different from any past vituperation against Muslims. Moriscos were
a pestilence, vile, careless and enemies of letters and the sciences; they bring up their children as animals without any education; they are dumb and crude in speech, barbarous in language and ridiculous in dress; they eat on the floor and live on vegetables, grains, fruits, honey and milk; they do not drink wine nor meat unless it is slaughtered by them; they love charlatanry, stories, dancing, promenading and other bestial diversions; they pursue jobs that require little work such as weaving, tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry, and the like; they are peddlers of oil, fish, paste, sugar, eggs and other produce; they are inept at bearing arms and thus, are cowardly and effeminate; they travel in groups only; they are sensual and disloyal; they marry young and multiply like weeds (malas hierbas) overcrowding places and contaminating them.43
Not everyone agreed with him. The complex and often anguished debates recognized the injustice and sinfulness of expelling adult Moriscos who were sincere Christians and sending away innocent children. There were proposals that very young Morisco children should be kept in Spain and raised as good Christians, away from the corrupting influences of their parents. But it was eventually agreed, and as the impassioned historian of the expulsion Pascual Boranat y Barrachina later put it,
the law of providence made its heavy weight felt, not only on the guilty individuals, but upon an entire people, on father and sons, on great and small alike: the sin of descent [pecado de raza], the sin of the whole nation that infused the [obstinate] prevarication of the baptised “Moors,” that could not be exculpated by the punishment of an individual, but only through the punishment of all those guilty of complicity in the crime and of solidarity with the common apostasy … The children were paying for the sins of their fathers.44
He was expressing, centuries after the event, the still-violent feelings of nineteenth-century Catholic Spain toward the Moriscos. Of the decree of expulsion of September 2, 1609, he wrote, “We now come, at last, to the hour when the Moriscos root and branch [la raza Morisca] atoned for the interminable sequence of profanations, blasphemies, sacrileges, apostasies and political conspiracies within the breast of our dear country. Alea jacta est [the die is cast].”45
The final decision was for expulsion to North Africa rather than genocide, and to that degree, humanity had triumphed over realpolitik. In exile, the Morisco resentment of their expulsion continued among their descendants. In the twentieth century, some families could still produce ancient keys and said they would open the doors of their old homes in Spain. In the decree, there were some concessions. Not all those of “Moorish” descent were required to go. Moriscos could leave behind children of up to four years to be brought up as Christians. Children of up to six years born to an Old Christian father and a Morisca mother could remain, and their mother with them; but if their father were a Morisco and their mother an Old Christian, then he would be expelled while they could remain. There were possible exemptions for those Moriscos who had lived only among Christians, and those who could obtain from a bishop and a local priest a certificate of their unimpeachable Christianity. These clauses were to salve the conscience of those who could not bear to punish the innocent.46 No time was allowed for Moriscos to make representations. The expectation was that the expulsion should be total.
So, not all the Moriscos were expelled, although the exodus was as comprehensive as any seventeenth-century government could hope to achieve. The Morisco bandits and highwaymen continued to plague Spain, and they occasionally reappeared in the records of the Inquisition.