THE FATE OF THE MORISCOS.*
DR. LEA has little need of commendation to those who are acquainted with his writings. He is one of the most laborious and accurate of historical students. If he does not attain complete impartiality, he at least strives after it. He approaches it, perhaps, as nearly as any one can who writes from strong conviction of the full justice of his own point of view. Right as that may be, yet the intensity of conviction cannot but to some extent restrain sympathy, and hinder the perception of some of the truth which is always latent even in the worst error. We cannot help seeing this in some of his works in which, writing from a strongly Protestant stand- point, he deals historically with the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Such are his elaborate volumes on The History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church and An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. These volumes are indispensable to the student; tLey are no mere compilations, they are storehouses of facts and references to original documents, they are quoted with respect by some of the first Roman Catholic writers ; and yet we think that Dr. Lea is ever at his best when dealing with Spain and with Spanish subjects. There is an attraction to Spain for the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere which cannot be wholly overcome. Their desire to learn her past history, apart from mere literary curiosity, is keener than ours. They are as fully aware as we of the faults and errors of the people and their rulers, but they deal with them tenderly, there is no contempt nor arrogance, the follies and crimes which they deplore are still to them in some sort like the misdoings of an erring parent.
We feel this tone throughout this last work of Dr. Lea. The book is excellent. The only thing which we should wish changed is the arrangement. How this came to be vitiated is explained in the preface. The material was originally collected for a chapter in a general history of the Spanish Inquisition, and apparently the first half of the book was thus written. But such treatment could not exhaust either the facts, or explain the full causes or the results of the expulsion of the Moriscos, and therefore to the earlier chapters have been added several others dealing with the political, economic, and social aspects of the history. As usual with Dr. Lea's works, there is a valuable appendix of unpublished documents, chiefly from the archives of Simancas.
Our author rightly insists on the earlier toleration of Mudejares and Moriscos in Spain. The earlier fueros and capitulations were often most favourable to them. They
• The Morisco, of Spain their Conversion and Expulsion. By Henry Charles Lea, LL.D. Loudon: Bernard Quaritch. [Ss.]
served the Aragonese Monarchy as light auxiliary troops well nigh as loyally as the Sikhs or Ghoorkas serve us now in India. They were the best of tenants to the great land- owners. They were the trusted carriers and muleteers of commerce through the greater part of Spain, men whose honesty could be implicity relied upon. Yet after the fall of Granada all this seems to be reversed. What were the causes which changed this toleration and mutual loyalty into inveterate hatred and incurable suspicion? Undoubtedly one great cause, perhaps the greatest single cause, was the action of the Inquisition. Dr. Lea has dealt so fully and sa fairly with this that we need only refer the reader to his pages. But there were other contributory muses. It was not until the South of Spain was conquered that the advance of the Turks in the Mediterranean and on the Con- tinent became a pressing danger to Spain. Put the dates side by side and this is evident. The Morisco period was from 1500 to 1610. The Barbary States rose into a piratical Power about 1518. Malta was besieged in 1551 and in 1565. Lepanto was fought in 1571, Vienna was besieged in 1523 and again in 1683. Through the whole period the Turkish power was a real danger, though less than it seemed. But the damage wrought by the Barbary corsairs was immense. The whole of the Mediterranean coast of Spain was continually ravaged, its commerce crippled, not a war transport could go with relief of soldiers to or from the Italian dominions of Spain without risk of capture. The pleading of the Redemptorist Fathers for ransom for the captives was heard in every village. What wonder, then, that the votaries of Islam, whose position on the Mediterranean coast almost invited them to hold out their hands to their co-religionists, should fall under suspicion. The only way effectually to relieve the tension would have been the conquest of North Africa. However mistaken the policy of Ximenes was in other respects, he was right in advocating this. Another cause was soon added. The tide of religious intolerance was fast rising, but how much was it quickened by the fatal in- heritance of the Low Countries, by the election of Charles as Emperor, by the League in France, by the contest with England, by the establishment of the little Protestant kingdom of Beam on the frontiers of Navarre ? All these events tended to inflame religious passion, and to give religion a far greater prominence in Spanish politics than it would have had if her dominions in Europe bad been limited to the Peninsula. Moreover, after the fall of Granada religion was the only real bond of unity among Spaniards. The conquered South was under the absolute dependence of the King; Castile was not so until after the war of the Comuneros ; Aragon and Navarre were still constitutional States; the Basque Provinces were really a Republic. There was no united Spain, no real national patriotism, apart from religion; it was the sole bond of unity in the land. Hence the popularity of the Inquisition, even when men dreaded it, and shuddered at its name.
To these add the economic causes. The difference between productive and unproductive wealth was scarcely understood in those times. The Moriscos were the most productive class over large districts of Spain. The unproductive wealth of America and the Indies kept flowing into Spain, but the nation got only the poorer for it. Spain was living on its capital : its capital of money, of men, of resources of every kind ; it was engaged in enterprises beyond its strength. One class alone got steadily more and more wealthy, more and more numerous, the indus- trious and productive Moriscos. So the bitter complaints against them became more and more bitter as the nation became inflated with pride, but sank in prosperity. Spain was overburdened by a celibate clergy, monks, and nuns; the armies were a constant drain on their young men. The Moriscos became neither clergy, nor monks, nor nuns; they did not go into the Army. They were thrifty, and lived on what would not support an Old Christian; they drank no wine ; they did not make their children students, or place. hunters, or parasites of the rich; they all laboured: the artisan trades and all husbandry were in their hands. The idler Spaniard said : "They become rich with living on the fruits of our lands, and then sell them back to us !" And all this was aggravated by the incurable maladministration of Spain. As Dr. Lea observes, the Government of Philip U. united the
worst evils of s despotism and of an irresponsible bureaucracy. Everything had to be referred to the King, yet nothing-was decided ; there were endless consultations, commissions, delays, vacillations, and contradictions, no consistency or settled policy; till at last the Moriscos lost all faith in Spanish justice and honour. So the matter proceeded to its inevitable close.
The next century saw a like fate overtake the French Pro. testants. And now again it seems as if the twentieth century would have to deal with similar problems, but on a larger scale. The old Anti-Semitic cry is rising again; there is the question of the Red Indians and the negroes in the United States, the Chinese in California and Australia, the Indian coolies in Natal How can these lower races, able to live with less economic resources and more prolific, dwell happily side by side with a dominant race, who hate and yet need them, who will not allow their claim to equality and yet can- not justly deny it; where there is but distrust and suspicion on either side P It is this which gives a profound interest to Dr. Lea's history of the conversion and expulsion of the Moriscos in Spain.
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