Recent Works on the Early Modern History of Spanish Muslims

Abstract

RECENT WORKS ON THE EARLY MODERN HISTORY OF SPANISH MUSLIMS Between Christians and Moriscos:Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568-1614. By Benjamin Ehlers. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 124th series (2006), volume 1.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 241. $45.00. ISBN 0-8018-8322-9.) Muslims in Spain, 1500 1614. By Leonard Patrick Harvey. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 448. $25.00 paperback. ISBN 0-226-31964-4.) From Muslim Christian Granada:Inventing a City's Past in Early Modern Spain. By A. Katie Harris. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 125th series (2007), volume 1.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2007. Pp. xxiv, 255. $50.00. ISBN 978-0-8018-8523-5.) These three books tell us that Spain's Muslim remnants were conquered three times: first militarily, with the fall of Granada in 1492, then theologically when rebellions led policies of forced conversion (1500, Granada; 1526, rest of Spain), and finally macro-politically, after the 1568-1570 Alpujarras rebellion proved neither military control nor parish reform were defeating crypto-Islam. Harvey's broad chronological coverage of the Muslim side is complemented by the younger scholars' detailed analysis of Christian perspectives. Harris's analysis of the Sacromonte lead tablets forged between 1588 and 1595, for example, illustrates their role in Granada's self-Christianization, while Harvey understands them as strategies for Christian/crypto-Muslim survival, attempts raise the self-esteem of a downtrodden elite, and an effort to salvage something from the shipwreck of Spanish Islam (p. 267).Taken singly, each work makes a necessary Moriscological addition; together, they testify the sophistication of an important subfield in early modern Iberian history. Ehlers's is a complex study of Valencian archbishop Juan de Ribera's transformation from enthusiastic advocate of Christian lay spirituality confirmed enemy of the newly converted Moriscos. He concludes that antiIslamism did not cause the archbishop adopt expulsion; but rather, he was influenced by a combination of missionary frustration, episcopal cynicism, and a nationalist conviction that Spain could ill afford a fifth-column presence (Ribera conflated religious and political loyalty). The more Ribera achieved success in promoting a renewed Tridentine emphasis on the Eucharist amongst Old Christians, the more crypto-Muslim ridicule drew lines in the sand. Ribera's initial position also succumbed anti-Castilian Valencian rejection of Habsburg centralization (Harvey concurs, p. 258). Old and New Christians originally hoped that Ribera would rule with benign neglect rather than leadership (Ehlers, p. 39), but when the regional nobility blackmailed Moriscos by turning a blind eye their Islamism, they scuppered Ribera's initial plans tolerate slow conversion. Subnational regionalism also played a significant part according Harris in the mostly immigrant Granadan city council's promotion of the Torre Turpiana tablets and Sacromonte relics as authentic, in the face of persistent challenges from Madrid and Rome (p. 133). However, unlike the Valencian nobility, who acquired no legitimacy by supporting Moriscos, Harris's council acquired some of the historical continuity the city lacked as a Muslim capital, a feat accomplished for them by the tablets revealing that Granada's firstcentury Christian converts had been Arabs (p. 135). The differences between Granada and Valencia explain why Philip III did not reject the tablets (precisely in 1609, the year of expulsion) and why Granadans refused accept their condemnation as forgeries by Pope Innocent XI in 1682. Additionally, the Morisco problem in Ehlers 's Valencia was ruralized, whereas Harris's Granada tablets were deeply imbedded in the urban politics that contemporary Latin civic panegyrics fostered. …