History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

the Christian and the Moor, and a further potent cause is to be found in the horror with which miscegenation was regarded—at least when the male offender was a Moor. Intermarriage, of course, was impossible between those of different faiths and illicit connections were punished in the most savage manner.[194]

      In spite of this natural but impolitic segregation, the Mudéjares gradually became denationalized and assimilated themselves in many ways to the population by which they were surrounded. In time they forgot their native language and it became necessary for their learned men to compile law-books in Castilian for the guidance of their alcadís. Quite a literature of this kind arose and, even after the final expulsion, as late as the middle of the seventeenth century, among the refugees in Tunis, a manual of religious observances was composed in Spanish, the author of which lamented that even the sacred characters in which the Korán was written were almost unknown and that the rites of worship were forgotten or mingled with usages and customs borrowed from the Christians.[195] The Mudéjares even sympathized with the patriotic aspirations of their Castilian neighbors, as against their independent brethren. When, in 1340, Alfonso XI returned in triumph to Seville, after the overwhelming victory of the Rio Salado, we are told how the Moors and their women united with the Jews in the rejoicings which greeted the conqueror.[196] Even more practical was the response to the appeal of the Infante Fernando, in 1410, when he was besieging Antequera, one of the bulwarks of Granada, and was in great straits for money. He wrote “muy afectuosamente” to Seville and Córdova, not only to the Christians but to the Moorish and Jewish aljamas and, as he was popular with them, they advanced him what sums they could.[197] The process of denationalization and fusion with the Christian community was necessarily slow, but its progress gave gratifying promise of a result, requiring only wise patience and sympathy, which would have averted incalculable misfortunes.

      THE MUDÉJARES

      In a financial and industrial point of view the Mudéjares formed a most valuable portion of the population. The revenues derived from them were among the most reliable resources of the State; assignments on them were frequently used as the safest and most convenient form of securing appanages and dowries and incomes for prelates and religious establishments.[198] To the nobles on whose lands they were settled they were almost indispensable, for they were skilful agriculturists and the results of their indefatigable labors brought returns which could be realized in no other way. That they should be relentlessly exploited was a matter of course. A fuero granted, in 1371, by the Almirante Ambrosio de Bocanegra to his Mudéjares of Palma del Rio, not only specifies their dues and taxes, but prescribes that they shall bake in the seignorial oven and bathe in the seignorial bath and purchase their necessaries in the seignorial shops.[199] They were not only admirable husbandmen and artificers, but distinguished themselves in the higher regions of science and art. As physicians they ranked with the Jews, and when, in 1345, Ferrant Rodríguez, Prior of the Order of Santiago, built the Church of Our Lady of Uclés, he assembled “Moorish masters” and good Christian stone-masons, who constructed it of stone and mortar.[200] The industry of Spain was to a great extent in their hands. To them the land owed the introduction of the sugar-cane, cotton, silk, the fig, the orange and the almond. Their system of irrigation, still maintained to the present time, was elaborately perfect, and they had built highways and canals to facilitate intercourse and transportation. Valencia, which was densely populated by Mudéjares, was regarded as one of the richest provinces in Europe, producing largely of sugar, oil and wine. In manufacturing skill they were no less distinguished. Their fabrics of silk and cotton and linen and wool were exquisite; their potteries and porcelains were models for the workmen of the rest of Europe; their leather-work was unsurpassed; their manufactures of metals were eagerly sought in distant lands, while their architecture manifests their delicate skill and artistic taste. Marriages were arranged for girls at 11 and boys at 12; dowries were of little account, for a bed and a few coins were deemed sufficient where all were industrious and self-supporting, and their rapid increase, like evil weeds, was a subject of complaint to their Castilian detractors. Ingenious and laborious, sober and thrifty, a dense population found livelihood in innumerable trades, in which men, women and children all labored, producing wealth for themselves and prosperity for the land. In commerce they were equally successful; they were slaves to their word, their reputation for probity and honor was universal, and their standing as merchants was proverbial. There was no beggary among them and quarrels were rare, differences being for the most part amicably settled without recourse to their judges.[201]

      It is not easy to set limits to the prosperity attainable by the Peninsula with its natural resources developed by a population combining the vigor of the Castilian with the industrial capacity of the Moor. All that was needed was Christian patience and good will to kindle and encourage kindly feeling between the conquering and the subject race; time would have done the rest. The infidel, won over to Christianity, would have become fused with the faithful, and a united people, blessed with the characteristics of both races, would have been ready to take the foremost place in the wonderful era of industrial civilization which was about to open. Unhappily for Spain this was not to be. To the conscientious churchman of the Middle Ages any compact with the infidel was a league with Satan; he could not be forcibly brought into the fold, but it was the plainest of duties to render his position outside so insupportable that he would take refuge in conversion.

      DISTINCTIVE BADGES

      The Church accordingly viewed with repugnance the policy of conciliation and toleration which had so greatly facilitated the work of the Reconquest, and it lost no opportunity of exciting popular distrust and contempt for the Mudéjares. We shall see how great was its success with respect to the Jews, whose position offered better opportunity for attack, but it was not without results as respects the Moors. It discouraged all intercourse between the races and endeavored to keep them separate. Even the indispensable freedom of ordinary commercial dealings, which was provided for by the secular rulers, was frowned upon, and in 1250 the Order of Santiago was obliged to represent to Innocent IV that it had Moorish vassals, and to supplicate him for license to buy and sell with them, which he graciously permitted.[202] The most efficacious means, however, of establishing and perpetuating the distinction between the races was that Jews and Moors should wear some peculiar garment or badge by which they should be recognized at sight. This was not only a mark of inferiority and a stigma, but it exposed the wearer to insults and outrages, rendering it both humiliating and dangerous, especially to those, such as muleteers or merchants, whose avocations rendered travel on the unsafe highways indispensable. When the Church was aroused from its torpor to combat infidelity in all its forms, this was one of the measures adopted by the great council of Lateran in 1216, in a regulation carried into the canon law, the reason alleged being that it was necessary to prevent miscegenation.[203] In 1217 Honorius III peremptorily ordered the enforcement of this decree in Castile, but, two years later, consented to suspend it, on the remonstrance of San Fernando III, backed by Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo. The king represented that many Jews would abandon his kingdom rather than wear badges, while the rest would be driven to plots and conspiracies, and, as the greater part of his revenues was derived from them, he would be unable to carry out his enterprises against the Saracens.[204] It was difficult to arouse intolerance and race hatred in Spain, and, when Gregory IX, about 1233, and Innocent IV, in 1250, ordered the Castilian prelates to enforce the Lateran canons, San Fernando quietly disregarded the injunction.[205] His son, Alfonso X, so far yielded obedience that, in the Partidas, he ordered, under a penalty of ten gold maravedís or ten lashes, all Jews, male and female, to wear a badge on the cap, alleging the same reason as the Lateran council, but he did not extend this to the Moors and, as his code was not confirmed by the Córtes for nearly a century, the regulation may be regarded as inoperative.[206] The council of Zamora, which did so much to stimulate intolerance, in January, 1313, ordered the badge to be worn, as it was in other lands, and later in the year the Córtes of Plasencia proposed to obey, but were told by the Infante Juan, who presided as guardian of Alfonso XI, that he would, after consultation, do what was for the advantage of the land.[207] In Aragon, the councils of Tarragona, in 1238 and 1282, vainly ordered the canon to be obeyed, and it was not until 1300 that the attempt was made with an ordinance requiring the Mudéjares to wear the hair cut in a peculiar fashion that should be distinctive.[208] In Castile, at length, Henry II, in pursuance of the request of the Córtes of Toro in 1371, ordered all Jews and Moors to wear the badge (a red circle on the left shoulder), but the injunction