reign began in 1556.15 During this early period, bishops oversaw the conversion of the Moriscos in their dioceses, and missionaries such as the Jesuits and Franciscans also actively proselytized among the Moriscos in Granada.16
LEGISLATING EMIGRATION, THE NET TIGHTENS: 1548–1621
During the reigns of Philip II and Philip III, policies restricting the movement of Moriscos intensified across the Spanish world. This was tied to changing peninsular dynamics, from Counter-Reformation politics, to the adoption of the purity of blood statutes, to growing suspicion of the loyalty of the Moriscos. This larger political context played a role in policies affecting emigration to Spanish America and also in how Spaniards were defining their nation and empire.
While the purity of blood statutes appeared in Spain in the late fifteenth century, they gained ground during Philip II’s reign. They required that anyone applying to hold a prestigious post, or to attend university, provide documents testifying to their old Christian ancestry. Applicants for these positions had to prove their limpieza de sangre—that none of their ancestors descended from Muslims or Jews. These statutes delimited the official boundaries of who could hold power and status in the Spanish world. The resulting prevalence of limpieza discourses also produced and reinforced a link between concepts like heresy and faithfulness, and their physical transmission to future generations through bodily fluids.17
The political climate toward the Moriscos in Spain was shifting, and they appeared increasingly in protonationalistic discourses about loyalty and fears concerning the vulnerability of Spain’s Catholic empire. By the mid-sixteenth century some Spanish authorities had become frustrated with the slow progress of the assimilation of the Morisco population. By this time, the growth of the Ottoman Empire, Berber incursions on Spanish outposts in North Africa, and worries that the Moriscos would ally with either North Africans or French Protestants who were active in the Mediterranean, prompted some Spaniards to fear increasingly that Moriscos would become a fifth column in Spain.18 The Crown and local authorities issued further restrictions and enforced them more rigorously. In Valencia anxieties had already taken hold in the 1540s as peace with the Ottomans failed and North African corsairs conducted raids along the coast. Valencian authorities issued laws distinguishing between local Moriscos and those born in Granada, Aragon, and North Africa.19 In 1560 a royal decree barred Moriscos from owning African slaves. In addition, any African slaves who had previously belonged to Moriscos were prohibited from being taken to the Americas.20 In Granada, increasing restrictions on the Morisco population contributed to the second Alpujarras uprising of 1569–72. News of the revolt spread across the Spanish world, and fears of Morisco presence extended with it. Once the rebellion had been suppressed and the remaining Moriscos were expelled from Granada and resettled across Castile, suspicion extended to Morisco communities across Spain. Moriscos were now conflated increasingly with the Granadans and cast as rebels and apostates.21
By the mid-sixteenth century the Crown continued to express concern over the arrival of converts from Islam and their descendants in the Spanish Americas and intensified its efforts. Charles V issued a series of decrees during the 1550s that illustrate the difficulties of enforcing royal policies toward emigration. It is evident from these cédulas that Moriscos and North African Muslims had been able to evade the controls on emigration and disappear across the vast continent. The decrees also reflected ongoing official concerns with the religiosity of indigenous peoples, as they expressed preoccupation with their status as neophytes to the Catholic faith. In 1550 Charles V addressed a royal provision to the judges of the audiencias in the Americas. Drawing from a previous cédula that he issued in 1543 following a meeting of the Council of the Indies to discuss the subject of Muslim presence in the Spanish territories, Charles V further emphasized the need to expel North African slaves from the Americas: “We are informed that there have passed and pass daily to these parts some North African slave men and women as well as free persons newly converted from Islam and their children, although it is prohibited by us. They should in no way pass because of the many inconveniences that have followed … [and] because in such a new land as this in which the faith is freshly planted it is expedient that all opportunity [to pass] should be removed so that there cannot be sown or made public in it the sect of Muhammad or any other … that undermines our holy Catholic faith.”22 By the mid-sixteenth century, shortly after the adoption of the purity of blood statutes, religious restrictions on emigration were increasingly enforced. Ordinances for the Casa de Contratación issued in 1552 specified that no new converts from Judaism or Islam could travel to the Americas without a royal license. Furthermore, anyone convicted by the Inquisition was also barred from emigrating.23 These new regulations required prospective emigrants like the shoemaker Diego Herrador to provide documentation proving their limpieza de sangre or old Christian status in order to obtain a license.
Subsequent royal decrees reveal that the clandestine movement of people continued. In 1559, a new cédula addressed to the bishops and archbishops in the Spanish American dioceses further emphasized the Crown’s need to restrict emigration to the Americas: “Because … the Devil is so solicitous to sow heresies in Christendom, some Lutherans and others who are of the caste of Muslims and Jews who want to live in observance of their law and ceremonies have come to these parts. It is expedient that where our Catholic faith is now newly planted there be great vigilance so that no heresy can be sown…. If any is found it should be extirpated, undone and punished with rigor.”24 In this decree Philip II urged the bishops and archbishops to investigate whether any suspected Muslims, Jews, Protestants, or heretics had settled in their dioceses, and to mete out exemplary punishment to those they found. He also ordered the viceroys, governors, and judges of the audiencias to aid the bishops and archbishops in their search for heretics. Because this decree was issued before the establishment of the Holy Office’s tribunals in the Indies, the king ordered that any Muslims, Jews, or Protestants who were found be sent for trial to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Spain.25
In 1565, Philip II reissued to the judges of New Spain and the governor of Guatemala a 1511 decree of Queen Juana, that children and grandchildren of quemados and reconciliados could not hold offices in the Americas.26 The 1511 cédula extended the restrictions on officeholding that were current in the Spanish kingdoms to the newly claimed territories in the Caribbean. Philip II did not refer to local specificities—he only reissued the cédula—but Juana’s decree stated that she was informed of new Christians on Hispaniola, and the Crown wanted to ensure that the laws restricting officeholding in the Spanish kingdoms also applied to them. During the early sixteenth century, some conversos and Moriscos had gained positions of authority in the Caribbean islands and in New Spain, as recorded in the earlier cases of the Morisco interpreters.27 By the time of Philip II’s decree, conversos and Moriscos continued to represent competition for those without prestigious public offices, and officials moved forcefully to condemn their presence.
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