The Moriscos of Spain; their conversion and expulsion

Front matter

^t^mRiMai^

\mii i t mi ii

THE

Preface

The material od which this volume is based was collected for a chapter in a general history of the Spanish Inquisition which I hope in due time to prepare. On reviewing it the subject has seemed to me to possess interest and importance deserving fuller treatment than it could receive as a mere episode in a larger narrative^ for it not only embotlies a tragedy commanding the deepest sympathy, but it epitomizes nearly all the errors and tendencies which combined to cast down Spain, in little more than a century, from its splendor under Charles V. to its humiliation under Carlos II.

The labors of modern Spanish scholars have made public a mass of documentary evidence which throws much light on the inner history of the movements leading up to the final catastrophe, but this has been mostly drawn from state papers and unconsciously minimizes the part taken by intolerance and embodied in the Inquisition. To some extent I have therefore been able to supplement their researches and to make more prominent what was perhaps the most efficient agency in rendering vi PREFACE.

impossible the amalgamation of the races essential to the peace and prosperity of the land. I have also been able to present in some detail the repeated efforts made to give religious instruction to the so-called converts^ and the causes of their failure.

In the collection of inedited material my thanks are largely due to Seiior Don Claudio Perez y Gredilla^ the accomplished chief of the Archivo General of SimancaSj and to Seiior Don Ramon Santa Maria^ formerly in charge of the Archivo Central of Alcala de Henares.

Philadelphia, January, 1901.

Contents

CHAPTEE I.

THE MUDEJARES.

Character of the War of the Eeconquest

Chapter I. The Mudejaees

It has been the fashion to regard the war of the Reconquest^ through which Spain was gradually won back from the Moslems, as a war of religion. During its progress at times it suited the purpose of the Christian princes so to represent it, when they solicited the aid of crusaders and proclaimed themselves as champions of the Cross. It was so regarded in Rome, where service against the Spanish Saracens v/as frequently considered as the equivalent of service in Palestine and the knights of the Temple and of the Hospital were allowed to expend their military ardor on their infidel neighbors. In fact, however, the medieval history of Spain shows that in the long struggle there was little antagonism either of race or religion. At the Moorish conquest the populations willingly submitted to the invaders, who were no harsher masters than the Goths had been, and the conquerors made no attempt to interfere with the religion of their new subjects who maintained their faith and their ecclesiastical organization until the irruption of fresh hordes of fanatic barbarians, known as Almoravides and Almohades, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, caused their gradual disappearance. Similarly as territory was won by the Christians the peaceable population was left undisturbed ; prisoners taken in war without conditions were enslaved, but the conquests were mostly the result of formal surrenders in which the inhabitants were guaranteed the possession of their property and the enjoyment of their religion and laws. They came to be known by the name of Mudejares — the corruption of Mudegelin, an opprobrious term bestowed upon them by the Moors, derived from the word Degel which we are told was equivalent to Antichrist.^ Enslaved prisoners could acquire liberty by various acts of public service, but baptism did not enfranchise them unless the owner were a Moor or a Jew. No forcible conversion was allowed, but only persuasion, and the convert had all the rights of the Old Christians save eligibility to holy orders ; he was never to be insulted but was to be held in honor.^

The toleration which thus became the national policy was strengthened by the habitual alliances with Moorish neighbors of Christian princes involved in mutual civil

^ Luis del Marmol Carbajal, Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos de Granada, p. 158 (Biblioteca de Autores EspanoleSj Tom. XXI. ). Ample evidence of the nullity of tlie religious factor in the war of the reconquest will be found in Dozy, Recherches sur V Histoire et la Litterature de r Espagne ( Leipzig, 1881 ), and in Francisco Fernandez y Gonzales, Estado de los Mudejares de Castilla (Madrid, 1866). The ballads of the Romancero afford abundant proof of the absence of popular religious acerbity, even down to the capture of Granada.

2 Las Siete Partidas P. i. Tit. v. ley 23 ; P. iv. Tit. xxi. ley 8 ; Tit. xxiii. ley 3 ; P. yii. Tit. xxv. 11. 2, 3.

It is evident that the Moorish slaves were often men of trained intelligence, highly trusted by their masters for another law (iv. xxi. 7) provides that the latter are bound by any contracts made by slaves whom they have placed in control of a shop or ship or any description of trade. The Spanish disinclination to labor and the monopoly of industry by Moors and Jews is readily intelligible from medieval conditions.

CO-OPERATION OF MOORS AND CHRISTIANS, 3

war. There never was the slightest hesitation in invoking the aid of the infidel^ whether to foment or suppress a rebellion. When, in 1270, Alfonso X. excited disaffection by releasing Portugal from its vassalage to Leon, his brother, the Infante Philip, took advantage of the situation and organized a conspiracy with a number of the more powerful ricosomes. Their first thought was to solicit assistance from Abu Jusuf, King of Morocco, who willingly promised it ; the Castilian prelates lent their influence to the movement ; the conspirators established themselves in Granada as their head-quarters and there was prospect of desolating war with the Moors of both Africa and Spain when Queen Violante intervened and the rebellious nobles were bought off with concession^. Twelve years later, when Sancho el Bravo revolted against his father Alfonso with the support of all the nobles except the Master of Calatrava and of all the cities except Seville, Alfonso thus abandoned sent his crown to Abu Jusuf as security for a loan. The IMoor at once furnished him with 60,000 doblas and came himself with large forces ; Sancho made alliance with Granada, and the ensuing war, with Christians and Moors on both sides, raged until the death of Alfonso.^ Instances such as this on a large scale could be multiplied, but a trivial occurrence will perhaps better illustrate the Christian spirit of the time. In 1299 certain knights of the military-religious Order of Santiago seized some castles of the Order on the Moorish border, filled them with Saracen troops and threatened to give them over to the enemy unless the

^ Cronica de Don Alfonso X., cap. xix.-lviii., Ixxvi. — Barrantes, Illustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. i. cap. vi., ix. (Memorial Historico Espauol, IX. 72-9, 92-8).

4 THE MUDEJABES.

Master and Chapter would grant them in perpetuity certain properties of the Order. Their terms were accepted ; the lands were made over with solemn legal assurances that they would never be reclaimed^ in spite of which complaint was made to Pope Boniface VIII. ^ who promptly ordered the Archbishop of Toledo to compel restitution under ecclesiastical censures.^

The Churchy in fact^ had long regarded with disfavor the careless indifference which led Alfonso VI. to style himself imperador de los dos cultos ^ — which was satisfied to allow subject Moors to enjoy their religion in peace. When^ in 1212, Alfonso IX., at the head of a crusade, won the great victory of Las JSTavas de Tolosa and advanced to Ubeda, where 70,000 Moors had taken refuge, they offered to become Mudejares and to pay him a ransom of a million doblas. He accepted the terms but the clerical chiefs of the crusade, Rodrigo of Toledo and Arnaud of Narbonne, forced him to withdraw his assent, with the result that, after some further negotiation, the Moors were all massacred except such as were reserved as slaves.^ In a similar spirit Innocent IV.^ in 1248, ordered Jayme I. of Aragon to permit no Moors, save as slaves, to reside in the Balearic Isles which he had conquered in 1229.^ It is not likely that he paid any attention to this command, for when, in 1238, he added Valencia to his dominions he allowed the Moors to remain as Mud6jares. In 1266 Clement IV. returned to the charge in a brief urging upon him the expulsion of all

^ Digard, Kegistres de Boniface VIII. No. 3334. 2 Fernandez y Gonzales, Mudejares de Castilla, p. 39. ^ Mondejar, Memorias de Alonso YIII., Cap. cv., cviii. — Roderici Toletani de Rebus Hispanicis Lib. viii. cap. xii. ^ Villanueva, Viage Literario, XXI. 131.

COMMANDS OF THE CHURCH. 5

Saracens from the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon. The pope told him that his reputation would suffer greatly if in view of temporal profit he should longer permit such opprobrium of God^ such infection of Christendom as is caused by the horrible cohabitation of Moors and Christians^ while by expelling them he would fulfil his vow to Godj close the mouths of his detractors and show his zeal for the faith. It was probably in return for a tithe of the ecclesiastical revenues that Jayme had pledged himself to the pope to expel the Moors, but he was too worldly wise to do so and as late as 1275 he invited additional Moorish settlers by the promise of a year's exemption from taxation. In 1276, however, on his death-bed, in consequence partly of a dangerous Moorish revolt and partly of the awakened fears shown by his taking the Cistercian habit, he enjoined his son Pedro to fulfil the promise and in a codicil to his will he emphatically repeated the injunction, but Pedro, like his father, was too sagacious to obey.^

. In fact, obedience to the commands of the Church involved consequences to the welfare of the State which no ruler could contemplate without dismay. Except for military purposes the Mudejares formed the most valuable portion of the population, and even in war their services were relied upon, for we find Pedro, when gathering his forces to resist the invasion of Philippe le Hardi, in 1283, summoning his faithful Moors of Valencia to

1 Kipoll Bullarii Ord. FF. Pr^dicator. I 479.— Danvila y Collado, La Expulsion de los Moriscos, p. 24. — Swift, James the First of Aragon, pp. 140, 253, 290. — King Jayme is said to have made a vow, when about to undertake the conquest of Valencia, not to permit any Moors to remain in the land.

6 THE MUDEJABES.

swell his ranks and in 1385^ when levies were made in Murcia for the war with Portugal each aljama^ or Moorish organization^ had its allotted quota.^ It was on their industry moreover that the prosperity of the land reposed. None of the resources of the State were more relied upon than the revenues which they furnished and assignments on these were in request as the safest security for appanages and dowers and for the income of prelates and religious corporations.^ They were virtually indispensable to the nobles on whose lands they were settled, for they were most skilful in agriculture and unwearied in labor. They carried these characteristics into every department of industry, science and art. As physicians they ranked with the Jews, and when, in 1345, the Prior of the Order of Santiago built the church of Nuestra Senora de Ucl6s, we are told that he assembled '^ Moorish masters ^^ and good Christian stone masons who erected the structure.^ They were equally skilled in marine architecture and the Catalan power in the Mediterranean was largely due to their labors. The wonderful system of irrigation by which they converted Valencia into the garden of Europe still exists, with its elaborate and equitable allotments of the waters. They introduced the culture of sugar, silk, cotton, rice and many other valuable products and not a spot of available ground was left untilled by their indefatigable industry. The Mahometan law which prescribed labor as a religious duty was fully obeyed and every member of a family contributed his

^ Fernandez y Gonzalez, pp. 221, 286. — Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VI. 157, 196. 2 Ibid. VIII. 53.— Memorial Historico Espanol, I- 239, 263 ; III. 439. ^ Fernandez y Gonzalez, pp. 382, 386.

THEIR USEFULNESS. 7

share of work to the common support. In all the mechanic arts they were unexcelled. The potteries of Malaga, the cloths of Murcia, the silks of Almeria and Granada, the leather hangings of Cordova, the weapons of Toledo were renowned everywhere and furnished the materials for profitable foreign commerce, which was stimulated by the universal reputation of their merchants for probity and strict fidelity to their engagements, so that it passed into a proverb that the word of a Granadan and the faith of. a Castilian would make an Old Christian, or, as Hernando de Talavera, the saintly Archbishop of Granada used to say '' They ought to adopt our faith and we ought to adopt their morals.'^ They were temperate and frugal ; they married early, the girls at eleven and the boys at twelve, without fear of the future, for a bed and ten libras or ducats were considered sufficient dowry. There were no beggars among them, for they took affectionate care of their own poor and orphans ; they settled all quarrels between themselves and held it to be unlawful to prosecute each other before a Christian tribunal.^ In short, they constituted the most desirable population that any land could possess, and we shall have occasion to note hereafter the curious perversity with which these good qualities were converted into accusations against them by their Christian persecutors.

It is easy for us now to see what might have been the prosperity of Spain had a population thus gifted been gradually interfused with their vigorous conquerors, to

^ Janer, Condicion social de los Moriscos, pp. 47-50, 161. — Fonseca, Giusto Scacciaraento de' Moreschi, pp. 87, 89 (Roma, 1611). — Pedraza, Historia eclesiastica de Granada, fol. 187 (Granada, 1638).

8 THE MUDEJABES.

whose religion they would have been won over in time through friendly intercourse. To the conscientious medieval churchman, however, any friendship with the infidel was the denial of Christ ; the infidel was not to be forcibly converted, but it was a duty to lay upon him such burdens that he would himself seek relief in conversion. Accordingly the toleration and conciliation, which were the basis of the Spanish policy, were vigorously opposed in Rome, where the effort was to keep the races as far apart as possible, through the somewhat humiliating fear that Christianity would lose more than it could gain in the intercourse between them. Even the freedom of ordinary commercial dealings, permitted by the Spanish laws, was discouraged and in 1250 the Order of Santiago felt it necessary to represent to Innocent IV. that it held numerous Moorish vassals, wherefore it asked for licence to buy and sell with them, which he granted accordingly.^ Another device to keep the races separate, on which the Church persistently insisted, was prescribed by the Lateran council of 1216 — that all Jews and Saracens should wear a distinctive garment or badge. This was not only humiliating but dangerous, as it exposed the wearer to insult and maltreatment, especially in the case of travellers, such as muleteers and merchants, on the notoriously insecure highways. A long struggle ensued between the Church and the Spanish monarchs over the enforcement of this canon. At length in Aragon an attempt in that direction was made, in 1300, by an ordinance requiring the Mudejares to have the hair cut in a peculiar fashion, and in Castile, at the request of the cortes of Toro in 1371, Henry II. ordered all Jews and Moors to wear a

1 Fernandez y Gonzalez, pp. 294, 321, 367.

CONTINUED TOLERATION. 9

badge; but the injiiDction had to be frequently repeated and received scant obedience^ and when enforced we are told that it led to innumerable murders on the high roads.^ The Church was succeeding in gradually awakening the spirit of intolerance^ but its progress was slow. The council of Vienne in 1312 complained that Saracens dwelling in Christian lands were permitted to have priests who; from the minarets of the mosques^ invoked Mahomet and sounded his praises^ and further^ that the people were allowed to gather around the grave of one whom they adored as a saint ; these practices the council declared to be insufferable ; it ordered the princes to suppress theni; with the alternative of winning salvation or of enduring a punishment which would render them a terrible example.^ This was directed especially at Spain^ but the princes were unmoved^ and in 1329 the council of Tarragona complained of their disobedience and ordered them to enforce the canon within two months^ under pain of excommunication and interdict.^ Nothing came of this and a century later^ in 1429^ the council of Tortosa supplicated the King of Aragon and all prelates and nobles^ by the bowels of divine mercy, to observe the canon and all other conciliar decrees for the exaltation of the faith and the humiliation of Jews and Moors and to see to their observance by their subjects if they wish to

^ Concil. Lateran. lY. ann. 1216, cap. Ixviii. (Cap. 15, Extra, v. vi. ). — Eaynald. Annal. ann. 1217, n 84. — Amador de los Eios, Historia de los Judios de E^pana, I. 361-2, 364, 554 ; II. 116, 329, 565. — Partidas, P. Yii. Tit. xxiv. ley 11. — Fernandez y Gonzalez, p. 369. — Ayala, Cronica de Enrique 11. aiio vi. cap. vii.

See also Eobert, Les Signes cV Lifamie au Moyen Age (Paris, 1891).

^ Cap. 1, Clementin. Lib. v. Tit. ii.

* Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1329 (Aguirre, Concil. Hispan. VI. 370).

10 "tSE MUDEJARE8.

escape the vengeance of God and of the Holy See.^ This was equally ineffectual and it was reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella^ about 1482^ to enforce the canon of Vienne with a strictness which brought a remonstrance from Constantinople.^

The council of Vienne had likewise enacted a canon directed against the privileges accorded to the Jews in Spain. Evidently the Spanish bishops who attended the council must have been deeply impressed with the spirit which they found among their fellow prelates and they doubtless were given to understand the indignation with which Spanish tolerance was regarded elsewhere. The Spanish church hitherto had been singularly independent ; it was now brought into more direct relations with the rest of Christendom and it cast off the tolerant spirit which had thus far distinguished it, but its efforts were chiefly directed against the Jews^ although it strove impartially to create popular antagonism against both Moors and Jews and to put an end to the pernicious habit of these infidels frequenting divine service in Christian churches and of Christians participating in their weddings and merry-makings.^ Already^ moreover^ the final policy of expulsion was suggested^ in ] 337^ by Arnaldo^ Archbishop of Tarragona, in a letter to Benedict XII. imploring the pope to order the King of Aragon to adopt it. The material objections to it, he said, had been disproved by the Abbot of Poblet, who had recently expelled the Mud^jares from the possessions of the abbey without impairing its revennes, and the resistance of the nobles

^ Concil. Dertusan. ann. 1429, cap. xx. (Ibid. V. 340). 2 Eajnald. Annal. ann. 1483, n. 45.

^ Concil. Vallisolet. ann. 1322, cap. xxii. ; Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1329 (Aguirre, V. 250, 371).

SEPARATION OF THE UACES. H

might be overcome by empowering them to seize and sell the persons and property of the Moors, as public enemies and infidels, while the money thus obtained would be serviceable for the defence of the kingdom^ — an inhuman proposition which we shall see officially approved by the Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This constant ecclesiastical pressure began in time to produce its effect on the ruling classes and the fatal policy was adopted of separating as far as possible the races and reducing to a minimum the necessary intercourse between them. In the cortes of 1385 and 1387 laws were adopted, and in the council of Palencia in 1388 canons were decreed, punishing with heavy penalties all unnecessary conversation between them and requiring Jew and Moor to kneel when the sacrament was carried through the streets and to observe all Christian feasts by abstaining from working publicly. Moreover their employment as officials and tax-collectors was forbidden, as it had frequently been before, and the old custom in the towns of separate quarters — Morerias and Juderias — ^for them was insisted on and rendered more absolute.^ In the restrictive legislation of 1412 this matter occupies the first place; Morerias and Juderias were ordered to be established everywhere, surrounded by a wall having only one gate ; any one who within eight days after notice should not have settled

^ Cortes de los Antiguos Eeinos de Leon y de Castilla, II. 322, 325, 363, 365, 369 (Madrid, 1863).— Amador de los Eios, 11. 331.— Ordenanzas Eeales, Yiii. iii. 6. — Concil. Palentin. ann. 1388, cap. v., vi. (Aguirre, V. 300).

It is worthy of note that in the proceedings of the cortes there is vastly more antagonism manifested towards Jews than towards Moors, arising from their greater activity as money lenders and usurers and their employment as farmers of the revenue and tax-collectors.

therein forfeited all his property, with personal punishment at the king's pleasure, while severe penalties were provided for Christian women entering the forbidden precincts. It was easier to enact than to enforce such laws and in 1480 Ferdinand and Isabella state that this had been neglected, wherefore they renewed it, allowing two years for the establishment of these Ghettos after which any Jew or Moor dwelling outside of them was subjected to the prescribed penalties and no Christian woman should be found within them.^ Under Ferdinand and Isabella laws were no longer neglected and these were enforced with their accustomed vigor.

In all this legislation Jews and Moors were included together, but clerical abhorrence was more particularly directed against the former, with the consequence that popular antipathy followed in the same direction, especially as the Jews made themselves largely disliked by their practice of usury and their efficiency as tax-gatherers. That it was difficult to arouse antagonism towards the Mudejares would seem to be shown when Ferran Martinez, the Archdeacon of Ecija, succeeded in starting the dreadful massacres of 1391. The Jews were the objects of his inflammatory harangues, and for three months, from June to September, in one city of Castile and Aragon after another, the populace rose on the Juderias, with slaughter and rapine, only sparing those who sought safety in baptism. The Morerias escaped, though in some places we are told the people only refrained from attacking them through fear of reprisals on the Christians in

^ Ordenamiento de Yalladolid, i., xi. ( Fortalicium Fidei, fol. 176). — Fernandez y Gonzalez, pp. 400, 402. — Ordenanzas Keales, viii. iii., 10, 19.

PEOGEESS OF INTOLEEANCE. 13

Barbary. That the Mud6jares^ in fact^ felt themselves exposed to imminent danger in the savage fanaticism of the time would appear from the statement that some ten thousand of them were added to the innumerable multitude of converts from Judaism made by San Vicente Ferrer who was the apostle of militant Christianity throughout this terrible uprising.^

Although the Mudejares thus escaped pillage and massacre^ the event exercised a sinister influence on their ultimate fortunes. The immense number of forcibly converted Jews created a new class in Spanish society known as Marranos^ conversos or New Christians^ the solidity of whose faith was not unreasonably regarded as doubtful. Released from all disabilities, their superior business aptitude speedily raised many of them and their descendants to commanding positions in Church and State, intensifying the dislike and envy with which they had previously been regarded. Antagonism which had before been almost purely religious became racial, while religious antagonism became heightened and Spain, which through the earlier middle ages had been the most tolerant land in Christendom, became, as the fifteenth century advanced, the most fanatically intolerant. It was impossible for the conversos wholly to abandon the multifarious rites and customs of rabbinical Judaism in which they had been trained for so many generations ; these were regarded as indubitable evidence of apostasy in those who by baptism had become subject to the Church ; fiery preachers, like Alonso de Espina, were not lacking to point out the dangers to which Spanish

^ I have treated in some detail on the massacres of 1391 in the American Historical Eeview, Vol. I. p. 209.

Christianity was exposed of becoming Judaized by intercourse with these apostates, and finally Ferdinand and Isabella yielded to the apparent necessity of a radical cure by the establishment of the Inquisition in 1480. The unbaptized Jews were not subject to the Inquisition, so long as they abstained from proselytism or sacrilege, but this did not protect them from the ferocious zeal of the people, which seemed to be constantly increasing in intensity, unsatisfied by legislation which oppressed them with so many disabilities. In all this, jealousy of the superior energy of the non-Christian races had its share, for in spite of these disabilities the results of their intelligent industry were a constant source of dread and provocation. In 1453 a decree of the town of Haro forbids Christians to sell their estates to Jews and Moors, giving as a reason that if this were not stopped the Christians would have no ground left to cultivate as the Moors had already obtained possession of all the best of the irrigated lands. ^ It was doubtless this jealousy which prompted the demand made on Henry IV. by the revolted nobles, in 1460, that he should expel from the land all Jews and Moors who contaminated religion and corrupted morals.^ Whatever might have been lacking to stimulate this antagonism was supplied by the Holy See, when Eugenius IV. in 1442 and Nicholas V. in 1447 issued terrible bulls of proscription against the Jews, embodying in the canon law all the most abhorrent features of Spanish legislation,^ and Sixtus IV. in a motu proprio

^ Boletm de la Eeal Academia de la Historia, XXVI. 468-72. ^ Colmenares, Historia de Segovia, cap. xxxi. ^ ix. * Eaynald. Annal. ann, 1442, n. 15. — Wadding. Annal. Ord. Minorum, ann. 1447, n. 10,

PERSECUTION OF JEWS. 15

of May 31, 1484, expressed his displeasure at learning that in Spain, and especially in Andalusia, these bulls were not observed, wherefore he ordered all officials, secular and ecclesiastical, to enforce strictly the canonical decrees concerning the proscribed races.^ Still the popular feeling seems to have been mostly directed against the Jews and Jewish conversos and we hear of no action against the Mudejares in the bloody risings against the former in Toledo in 1449 and 1467, in Yalladolid in 1470 and in Cordova and other towns of Andalusia in 1473.^ It is true that Alfonso de Borja, Archbishop of Valencia (1429-1455), afterward Pope Calixtus III., urged upon Juan II. of Aragon the expulsion of the Mudejares of Valencia, in which he was supported by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, uncle of the celebrated inquisitor-general, and they made such impression on the mind of the king that he appointed a term for their departure, but he thought better of it and abandoned the measure.^ But the greater favor shown to the Moors is observable when, in 1480, Isabella ordered the expulsion from Andalusia, where the Jewish population was most numerous, of all Jews that would not embrace Christianity and when in 1486 Ferdinand did the same in Aragon, although both of these measures Avere probably but financial expedients to sell exemptions and suspensions, for no positive action was taken. ^ Possibly in this allowance must be made

1 Padre Fidel Fita (Boletm, XV. 443).

^ Cronica de Juan II. afio xlii. cap. ii., v. — Cronica de Alvaro de Luna, Tit. Lxxxiii. — Valera, Memorial de diversas Hazaiias, cap. xxxviii., lxxxiii. -iv. — Castillo, Cronica de Enrique lY. cap. xc. , xci., cxlvi., clx. — Memorial Historico Espaiiol, VIII. 507-8.

^ Bleda, Cronica de los Moros, p. 877 (Valencia, 1618).

* Pulgar, Cronica de los Eejes Catolicos, ii. Ixxvii.— Archivo Genfor the fact that the Mud^jares were protected against such measures by the old capitulations to which they could appeal as guaranteeing the right of domicile and the privilege of their religion^ while the Jews had neither rights nor privileges and their domicile was but a matter of sufferance. So it was in the crowning catastrophe when^ in 1492^ the final conquest of Granada from the Moors was signalized by the decree of expulsion of the Jews^ conceived and executed in a spirit of the most arbitrary injustice^ and Spain was deprived of some hundreds of thousands of its most intelligent and thrifty population.^

Human inconsistency has rarely been more conspicuous than in the contrast between this radical measure for purifying the faith of Spain and the politic course adopted by Ferdinand and Isabella in their gradual winning of the kingdom of Granada during the nine years' war between 1482 and 1492. The traditional course was observed of subjecting to the utmost rigor of war places taken by assault or obliged to surrender at discretion^ while the sovereigns were always ready to grant the most liberal terms of capitulation. This is set forth^ in 1487^ in an

eral de la Corona de Aragon, Reg. 3684, fol. 96.-— Padre Fidel Fita (Boletin, XV. 323-5, 327, 328, 330; XXIII. 431).

^ The computations of the Jews expelled in 1492 range from 800,000 down. Isidore Loeb (Revue des Etudes Juives, 1887, p. 182), after an exhaustive examination of all the sources, Christian and Jewish, reduces the number to