Abstract
This article argues that proselytising across the Iberian Atlantic during the early modern period occurred in three historical phases. The first such phase is one of expansion, in which many mass conversion took place without much attention to catechising (1492–1539). The second phase is reforming in nature, as debates on how best to educate the converted in their new faith developed (1540–1579). The third and final phase is homogenising, as the ways in which all the newly converted groups were expected to behave were consolidated around the image of the Old Christin nobility (1580–1640). The sources used in this article include papal bulls, royal decrees, and catechisms, which have been analysed alongside the current historiography.
1 Introduction
Building upon histories of conversion which have analysed the phenomena either individually, or comparatively,1 this article looks to follow Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo’s idea of a “connected”2 history of the many conversions to Catholicism by arguing that such a history can be structured across three historical phases during the early modern period of the Iberian Atlantic. The first such phase was one of expansion, in which many mass conversions took place without much prior attention to catechising those that were to be baptised (1492–1539). And whilst there were some individuals who opted for a different approach, on the whole, those in favour of coerced or rapid baptisms largely won out; a reflection of the rapidity in which these empires were expanding geographically, as well as the loose hold on power maintained by these kingdoms, both within the Iberian Peninsula, as well as more broadly across the three continents of the Iberian Atlantic. The second phase is reforming in nature, as debates regarding how best to educate the converted in their new faith developed (1540–1579), alongside more broader shifts in regards to reform within and without the Catholic Church, and the nascent Iberian Atlantic empires themselves. Finally, the third phase was one of attempted homogenisation and consolidation, as the ways in which the different newly converted groups were expected to behave were meant to harmonise around an idealised image of the Old Christian nobility (1580–1640).3
2 Antecedents
The pogrom of 1391, and the coerced conversions this violence provoked, as well as other similar events through to the second decade of the fifteenth century,4 created a large group of newly converted Catholics in the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon—no comparable violence occurred in the Kingdom of Portugal until much later.5 These New Christians, or Conversos, were for the first time permitted to ascend into the upper echelons of Iberian Catholic society, for they were no longer barred entry on account of their Jewish faith. Within a half-century, the success of some Conversos had begun to manifest in widespread resentment amongst certain sectors of Old Christians.6 So much so, in 1449 in the city of Toledo—the seat of the primate of the Kingdom of Castile, as well as the home of the realm’s largest Converso population—a decree was drawn up which declared all converted Jews, as well as their descendants, as being permanently ineligible for public office and municipal appointments.7 Following on from this, the establishment of the Inquisition in 1478 saw the beginnings of the surveillance apparatus that would be constructed to monitor the recently converted.8
Concurrently, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the wider rise of the Ottomans, reinvigorated a crusader mentality across the Catholic Kingdoms and within the Papacy.9 This sentiment was perhaps most clearly manifested in the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex, promulgated in 1455. This text permitted the Portuguese King Afonso V (1432–1481) to conquer and enslave any and all “enemies of Christ”10 encountered during his kingdom’s exploration of the African continent on the way to Asia.11 The rationale behind this decision was that the selling of the enslaved would act as form of financial recompense for the expenses incurred discovering uncharted seas and lands, and the subsequent spreading of the Catholic faith.12
In the Atlantic territories of the Kingdom of Portugal, a large-scale conversion project arose in a different manner to that of Castile. Save for uninhabited archipelagos like the Cape Verde islands, and a few costal outlets, the Portuguese were unable to establish a foothold on the African continent in anyway way comparable to the early years of Castilian colonisation of the Canary Islands, or what was to unfold later on in the Americas.13 Indeed, the way in which the trading fort of São Jorge da Mina was founded in 1482 is perhaps the clearest example of these differences. Desirous of the gold in the interior, the Portuguese wished to establish a trading post on the coast, but unable to secure one through military force alone, due to the strength of the West African polities there, a deal was reached in which the Iberians paid a yearly some to rent the land.14 Similarly, the Portuguese were only able to proselytise successfully through negotiation, not conquest. Indeed, it was Kongolese nobles, who had gone to Portugal in 1483 after initial contact between the two kingdoms had been made, who first introduced their king, Nzinga a Nkuwu (c. 1440–1509), to Christianity.15
Also, over the course of the fifteenth century, the belief that judgement day was soon coming had taken root amongst many members of the Mendicant Orders. Thus, there was an anxiety to save as many souls before this date as possible through the performance of baptisms, often at the behest of extensive catechising.16
3 Phase One—Expansion
The year 1492 saw the first of the expulsion decrees which were to begin the process through which the Iberian Peninsula was transformed from a land of practising Catholics, Muslims, and Jews, to an ostensibly homogenous Catholic territory. After decades of persecution at both a popular and institutional level, as well as a regionalised expulsion in Andalusia in 1483,17 an expulsion decree addressed to the Jews of the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon was promulgated. The rationale behind this decision, according to the document itself, was the desire to protect those New Christians of Jewish ancestry from being tempted back to their former faith by those who continued to practise Judaism.18 Thus, despite the expulsion decree implicitly acknowledging the inefficacy of at least some of the conversions brought about in previous mass baptisms, a conclusion reinforced by Conversos having already been brought before the Inquisition,19 the solution was deemed to be more mass conversions, via the threat of expulsion, rather than improving catechising efforts.
Most of the Jews who opted to leave the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, rather than remain and convert to Catholicism, decided to cross the land border into the neighbouring Kingdom of Portugal.20 Despite having a long-established Jewish community, which had been quite well protected by the Crown and the nobility, within five years the Kingdom was to enact its own expulsion decree.21 Thus, by October 1497, all the Jews and Muslims in the Kingdom of Portugal had to either convert or leave. Measures were brought in an attempt to facilitate the new converts’ transition into Catholicism—they were promised immunity from prosecution for twenty years, a measure which had not been explicitly stipulated elsewhere in the Peninsula. However, specific measures in regards to teaching the Catholic faith to the newly converted were not passed.22
Yet, in this context of mass conversions, the treaty signed after the surrender of the City of Granada in 1492 outlined that no Muslim was to “be forced to become a Catholic.”23 Indeed, under the leadership of Hernando de Talavera (1430–1507), the first Archbishop of Granada, steady but slow progress was made in regards to the spreading of the Catholic faith in the city, without upsetting the Muslim population.24 However, by 1499, Queen Isabella I (1451–1504) had become frustrated by the lack of progress in regards to converting the Muslims, and as a result promoted the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), who quickly embarked on a forced conversion campaign. By December of that year some of the Muslims in the city rose up in violent protest against the new measures, with the unrest soon spreading out to the surrounding Alpujarra Mountains.25 The initial response of the Catholic Monarchs was to summon Cisneros from Granada; they did not want a return to the early days of their reigns when their power was disputed or under threat from internal attacks.26 Yet, Isabella and Cisneros proved determined to continue on with their policy of forced conversions, and the uprising was shortly supressed. As a result, the measures contained within the surrender treaty of 1492 were not to be re-established, and further mass baptisms took place across the former Muslim Kingdom.
It was from this position of renewed strength and confidence that Isabella announced the edicts of conversion for all of the Kingdom of Castile in 1502. The justification being that it was necessary to forcibly convert the rest of the Muslims in the kingdom in order to prevent the newly converted in Granada from being led astray by those who continued to follow Islam—the identical rationale used to justify the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.27 The edicts of conversion in Castile meant that the Kingdom’s recently converted Muslims fell under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition for the first time, and within fifteen years suspicion around their adherence to the doctrines of Christianity abounded, and Inquisitorial investigations were begun. Although, no clear initiatives were implemented in regards helping the converted come to terms with their new faith.28 Soon after, the independent Kingdom of Navarre—which had not expelled its Jewish populations in 1492, or converted its Muslims in 1502—was to undergo a sea-change. In 1513 the Navarrese Cortes pledged loyalty to King Ferdinand II (1452–1516) after a joint invasion by the Kingdom of Castile and Crown of Aragon. As a result, the Inquisition was established there and the Kingdom’s remaining Jewish and Muslim communities were forced to convert to Catholicism, as the territory became a part of the Kingdom of Castile, and thus adopted the earlier expulsion decrees.29
Yet, unlike in the rest of the Peninsula, Ferdinand continued to adopt a more pragmatic approach to the Muslims of the Crown of Aragon.30 So much so that it was not until his eventual successor Charles V (1500–1558) ascended to the throne that things changed.31 And yet, the reasons for the Crown’s Muslims eventually facing conversion were unique: an uprising known as the Revolt of the Brotherhoods was the event which initiated everything.32 Whilst tension between the landed nobles and the urban guild members was long standing, by 1521 pitched battles had begun, and in the ensuing fighting, mass baptisms took place as the religious minority became associated with the nobility. By 1522 the leadership of the uprisings had collapsed and the monarchy had regained control of most of the areas previously in dispute. Yet, whilst those responsible for the unrest were punished, the conversions they performed were deemed legitimate, despite the evident coercion. Thus, whilst there were still many Muslims in the Crown of Aragon, Charles V was to write to Pope Clement VII (1478–1534) in order to get permission to go back on his promise to protect the followers of Islam. By November 1525 Papal permission had been given to convert all the Muslims of the Crown of Aragon to Catholicism, and an edict of expulsion was duly published. Nevertheless, the measures passed in 1526, following the conversion decree, were left largely unenforced during the reign of Charles V, in order to avoid further antagonising the New Christians of Granada and elsewhere, and in the hope that with time they would further assimilate to the accepted customs of Castilian Old Christians.33
In the Americas, the Mendicant Orders, and in particular the Franciscans, were claiming to have converted millions of Amerindians to Catholicism since their arrival to Tierra Firme in 1523, and the other Orders began to raise concerns in regards to the efficacy of their conversion methods. In response, the Papal bull Altitudo divini consilii was propagated by Pope Paul III (1468–1549) in 1537.34 Importantly, the Pope did not accuse the Franciscans of having committed any sins, nor did he question the validity of any of the baptisms performed, instead acknowledging the difficulties they faced by being based so far from Rome. Nevertheless, the Pope did state that going forward mass baptisms were not be permitted, unless in cases of extreme urgency; an acknowledgement that the methods of this expansionary phase were far from sufficient.35 Yet, until the arrival of the Franciscans, and the other mendicant orders soon after, proselytising in Castile’s portion of the Americas had been even more haphazard,36 despite the fact that the Papal Bull Inter caetera of 1493 had made proselytising amongst the people of the islands of the Caribbean a formal goal.37
Seven years earlier, in 1486, Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) granted Isabella and Ferdinand the right of universal patronage over all the lands they presently ruled over in the Kingdom of Granada, as well as any future lands they may go onto to conquer there. On top of this, the Crown of Castile was to receive the tithes to be paid by any and all Muslims converted to Catholicism. In 1492, Pope Alexander VI extended the above privileges, allowing the monarchs to collect the tithes of the entire realm, including the newly found lands across the Atlantic.38 This control enabled the Kingdom of Castile to determine the individuals who were to rise through the Church’s hierarchy, meaning it could be shaped in their image: what some scholars see as the beginning of the Royal Patronage for the Kingdom of Castile. In and around this time the Portuguese equivalent can also be said to have come into existence, and the systems can be loosely defined as follows: an assortment of rights, privileges, and duties granted by the Papacy to the Iberian Monarchs as patrons of the Catholic missions and ecclesiastical establishments in their overseas possessions.39
Even still, progress was slow, with the Franciscans only beginning to work in the Caribbean from 1500 onwards.40 The creation of the Laws of Burgos in 1512 and the Requerimiento in 1513, outlined some clearer provisions for the conversion of Amerindians, especially the latter, which stated that any and all who refused to recognise the sovereignty of the Castilian monarch and all the measures outlined in said document, including the necessity of converting to Catholicism, would be met with swift justice in the form of warfare, or enslavement.41 Yet, it was not until the aforementioned Franciscans arrived that mass conversions began to occur: between 1524 to 1536 close to five million baptisms were attested to have taken place.42 Indeed, in 1536, a year before the Pope propagated the aforementioned Altitudo divini consilii in response to the mass baptisms of performed by Franciscans, Charles V gave the bishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548), permission to establish an Episcopal Inquisition. This tribunal was aimed principally at Amerindian leaders, and their perceived adherence to their pagan beliefs, despite having been baptised. Revealingly, the Inquisition was established with the support of the Franciscans, who had converted so many of the Amerindians in the first place. Yet, the Franciscans did not blame their conversion methods for the failings found by the Inquisition, but rather the Amerindians themselves.
Nevertheless, after seven years and nineteen trials, these inquisitorial powers were revoked in 1543 by Charles V, out of fear that continuing the trials might bring instability to the region and place the fledgling colony at risk. So much so, when a permanent tribunal was established in the Vice Royalty of New Spain in 1571, the trial of Amerindians was prohibited.43
Elsewhere, in an attempt to assert some control over the development of the Kongolese church, King Joao III (1502–1557) reemphasised Portugal’s Papal rights of patronage, and placed its ecclesiastical establishment under the See of São Tomé in 1534. Whilst this was a largely a symbolic and administrative move, as the Portuguese could no directly affect Kongolese decision making, they were able to prohibit the number of ordained clergy travelling to the Kongo from Portugal, and thus exasperate the already limited number of individuals who could administer the Catholic sacraments.44 Alongside these developments, the emergent trade in enslaved individuals from West Africa led to the first nascent measures being created in regards to their conversion. In 1513 King Manuel I of Portugal (1469–1521) obtained permission from Pope Leo X (1475–1521) to enable captains of slaving ships bound for Lisbon to administer baptism to the mortally ill; Manuel was also given permission to build a font in Lisbon, to be used exclusively for the baptism of enslaved individuals in the city. Starting in 1514 until the end of his reign in 1521, Manuel also began to pass laws in an effort to regulate the trade, including measures for the correct baptism of enslaved individuals. These included baptisms having to have been administered within six months of purchase, but only with the consent of an enslaved individual over the age of ten; those ten and under were all to be baptised. Nevertheless, none of the above measures made any explicit reference to catechising per se, rather they focused on the administration of baptisms and the resultant saving of souls, in keeping with the wider logic of this phase of expansion.45
Finally, the Kingdom of Portugal established its own Inquisition in 1536, although its efforts were to remain within the Iberian Peninsula until the formation of a permanent tribunal in Goa in 1560.46 As such, with the creation of the Portuguese Inquisition and the Episcopal Inquisition in Mexico City, the nascent period of expansion can be understood as having come to a close. For roughly half a century, Iberian Catholicism had provoked the mass conversion of all the Peninsula’s religious minorities, as well as millions of non-Catholics across the Atlantic. However, as has been shown, the rapidity at which these conversions took place, as well as the coerced nature of many of them, led some to question the sincerity of the converted, and as well as the validity of the methods used. From these doubts emerged many of the ideas and motivations behind the movements for change which were to take place in the coming phase of analysis, one of reform. A period in which there was greater attention given to catechising more effectively amongst the recently converted and those to yet to be converted, as well as the ways in which these same New Christians were to be monitored and controlled.
4 Phase Two—Reform
The second phase has been labelled as one of reform because over the forty-year period dramatic shifts occurred within and without the Catholic Church, alongside developments to the ways in which religious conversions were expected to occur. Indeed, the Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 with the education and training of its members a central element of their mission, so that they might more effectively proselytise.47 Initially, they also believed that nothing, including a potential convert’s ancestry, or their purity of blood, could invalidate a baptism, which in turn informed their proselytising efforts in the Iberian Atlantic.48 In 1546 the Jesuits were invited to the Kingdom of Kongo, in what was the society’s first mission outside of Europe, by King Diogo I, who reigned from 1545 to 1561.49 Three years later, in 1549, the Jesuits arrived in the Americas for the first time after receiving permission from the Portuguese monarch to travel to Brazil, and they began work on converting the Amerindians immediately. King Philip II soon asked the Jesuits to establish themselves in both his American Viceroyalties, with the view that they would establish colleges and help with conversion efforts. They duly arrived to the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1568 and the Viceroyalty of New Spain 1570.50
In the American territories of the Habsburgs, Charles V, like his predecessors, had to intervene in order to try and determine how the Amerindians were to be treated, as well as brought into the Christian faith. He referred the issue to the Dominican theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) at the University of Salamanca who by 1541 supported the argument that the inhabitants of the Americas needed to be exposed to the teachings of the faith before baptism, as opposed to being forcibly baptised like the Jews and Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. Vitoria had concerns regarding the authenticity of the latter’s’ conversions, as well as their knowledge of their new faith.51 As a result of the arguments put forward by Vitoria, Charles V promulgated the New Laws, in 1542. These were established in an attempt to correct the excesses of the encomenderos which had been brought to the attention of the monarch and his advisors by individuals like Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) who travelled back to Iberia petition the king.52
Out of these petitions emerged the drive to hold the Valladolid Debate, and the question of whether it was it right to use force in order to convert Amerindians to Catholicism. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), a humanist philosopher, argued that it was, whilst las Casas did the opposite. More broadly, las Casas was also looking to invalidate the claim that Amerindians were slaves by nature, in the Aristotelian sense, and thus inferior to the Castilians, which in turn justified their enslavement. This was an argument purported by Sepúlveda and many other Iberian intellectuals at the time. And whilst the debate took place over many sessions, spanning the years 1550 and 1551, there was an ambivalent outcome. On the one hand it was agreed that waging war against the Amerindians was wrong, for even though they were not Catholics, neither were they infidels like the former Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. On the other hand, the conclusions reached at Valladolid consolidated the argument that it was the Kingdom’s of Castile’s obligation to proselytise, as long as this was done by peaceful means. The conclusion of the debate also importantly meant that the Habsburg control of the Americas was never again to be questioned, at least not internally, for it had been justified by the expectation that it would continue to spread Catholicism amongst the Amerindians.53 More broadly, the debate’s conclusion can also be seen as another bookend to the expansionary phase, as the American colonies were reorganized more closely to the Crown, as opposed to the Church and the colonisers, and conquest was no longer as tacitly encouraged as before. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this shift towards the Crown was the strengthening of the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, after their establishment in 1532 and 1534 respectively, the aforementioned founding of Inquisitions in both realms, and the reigning in, to a certain degree, of the freedom previously enjoyed by the Mendicant Orders during the first decades of their arrival.54
Before this, in 1545, the Council of Trent began, and amongst the many issues it discussed, improving the standard of preaching, by both bishops and the wider clergy, was of central importance. By the time the Council was concluded in 1563, it had been decided that preaching was to be improved by bettering the general quality of clerical education—which was accepted as being poor—through the founding of more seminaries. Bishops were to be compelled to visit the institutions of their diocese, which they had supervisory rights over, in an effort to combat absenteeism and lethargy. As such, by the start of early decades of the seventeenth century, the Catholic clergy were preaching on a scale unapparelled in the Church’s history—although the effectiveness of this preaching is much harder to determine.55 Additionally, the Roman Catechism published under Pope Pius V (1504–1572) in 1566 was also firmly grounded in Trent’s preaching ethos, with a particular emphasis on improving the theological understanding of the clergy by standardising the Catholic doctrine for the first time.56 This standardisation of the tenants of the Catholic faith in turn fed into the efforts of the Iberian monarchs to produce a more uniform and orthodox Catholicism, and thus uniform Catholics, in spite of their varied ancestries.57 Also, the fact that the Council of Trent did not make any resolutions regarding the issue of forced or coerced conversions to Catholicism, nor make any direct mention of the Americas, further emphasised the central role of the Iberian Monarchs in regards to policies of conversion.58 As did the Council’s aforementioned attempts to bring the Mendicant Orders under greater episcopal control, alongside increasing the role of secular clergy members in the Americas.59
As a result of all this, a two-pronged approach to conversion was adopted going forward. The first was the reconfirmation that all who had been baptised were Catholics, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the baptism, or the ancestry of the converted. The second was the increased attention placed on the monitoring and regulating of the outward manifestations of the faith of all New Christians: how they ate, how they danced, how they behaved behind closed doors, and so on.60 As Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo have argued, by the middle of the sixteenth century, “different strategies were deployed aiming to control orthodoxy and spread doctrine and moral norms.”61 This became particularly apparent when Philip II (1527–1598) assumed the throne in 1556 and his advisors began their own religious program; one in which the relative flexibility that had occurred during his father’s reign was to become viewed increasingly as suspect. The mechanism with which this heterodoxy was to be combatted was the Inquisition—which was to be expanded through the establishment of permanent tribunals in Peru and Mexico City, as well as Portuguese Goa—and the image held up as the embodiment of Catholic orthodoxy was that of the Old Christian nobility. Through this archetype it was possible to link together ideas of noble lineage with religious faith, neither of which were tarnished by the stain of heresy.62 And whilst there had long been measures in place within Catholicism prohibiting the ascension of recent converts to certain positions within the Church, it had tended to be implemented on an ad-hoc basis, rather than via legislation. As such, the codification of the concept of blood purity from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, first in the City of Toledo, before being adopted elsewhere across the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, marked a key turning point.63
Indeed, the decision to hold up the image of the Old Christian nobility as the template of a Catholic ideal helped promote a sense of social stability across the Iberian Peninsula and its overseas territories. This was desired because the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were beset with social upheavals, a tumultuous period which the creation of New Christians after the mass baptisms of the expansionary period merely added to.64 Yet, the new converts to Catholicism were not the sole focus of this period, for it also saw the catechising of the mass of the Iberian population who, despite their undoubted Old Christian heritage, often held views which were far from orthodox, causing them to regularly fall foul of the Inquisition.65 So much so, missionaries working within Iberia often declared that the need of elemental religious instruction within the Iberian Peninsula was almost as urgent as the need for proselytising in the Americas.66
And whilst Philip II did not oversee the total exclusion of Iberia’s New Christians—the Moriscos were to be expelled by his son—the search for a more homogenous Catholicism did result in the suppression of many of the cultural manifestations of the Moriscos’ Islamic past which had until then been tolerated, as well as the continued suspicion of the Conversos.67 Indeed, by 1566 Philip II began to more stringently enforce measures which had only previously been loosely applied to the Moriscos, if at all, as well as the implementation of new points.68 Within two years an uprising had begun as a response; the Moriscos joining a wider theatre of rebellion against the Habsburgs and their Catholicism.69 Yet, by 1571 the Morisco resistance was quashed, after the monarch’s half-brother, John of Austria (1547–1578), was drafted in to take charge of the defence. With the victory came the enslavement of tens of thousands of the combatants and those deemed responsible for the violence, and the dispersal of the rest, across the Kingdom of Castile and Crown of Aragon, forcing them to live amongst Old Christians and thus prevent another uprising from taking place.70
As a point of contrast to the suppression of the Morisco uprising, as the Portuguese had become increasingly frustrated by what they deemed to be unorthodox behaviour amongst the Catholics of Kongo, they were not able to legislatively or militarily to bring about the change they wanted. Indeed, when the Jesuits repeatedly clashed over various issues in the Kingdom, including the structuring of the Kongolese Church, the continuation of polygamy, and the relationship with the Kingdom of Portugal more broadly, King Diogo I had them expelled. This occurred in 1555, and the Jesuits did not come back to establish a mission there until 1619.71 Indeed, due to this inability to dictate matters on their own terms in Kongo, the Portuguese decided to found the Kingdom of Angola in 1571, which would sit alongside the other realms of Portugal, like the Algarve and the Estado da India, as a sovereign Portuguese territory. It was hoped that establishing Angola in this fashion, as opposed to previous endeavours in the Upper Guinea region and Kongo, would give the Portuguese greater oversight over the trade in enslaved people, the stewardship of any future Angolan church, and the general running of the realm, all of which had remained impossible thus far across the African continent.72
To summise, as a result of the conclusions made by the Valladolid Debate and the Council of Trent, the creation of the New Laws, the conclusions of Francisco de Vitoria, and the application of the Purity of Blood statutes, amongst other such developments in this period of reform, some clarity was brought to the Iberian Atlantic following the unrest provoked by the many conversions of the expansionary period.73 Although the idea of achieving a homogeneity of sorts amongst all the Catholics of the Iberian Atlantic was far from set during this phase of reform, the image of the Old Christian elite had begun to be viewed as a template to which all New Christians could be expected to follow. As such, any cultural or religious or manifestations deemed as falling outside of these parameters were to be supressed, either by Inquisitorial proceedings or, as the case of the Alpujarras Revolt made clear, military force.74 Indeed, the final phase under investigation was one in which this process of homogenisation reached its zenith, as the entire Iberian Atlantic came under Habsburg rule, before succumbing to some of the divisions wrought by so vast and varied an empire.
5 Phase Three—Homogenisation
The death of King Sebastian I (1554–1578) at Al-Ksar al-Kabir in North Africa in 1578 produced a succession crisis in the Kingdom of Portugal. After much manoeuvring, Philip II assumed the throne in 1580, uniting the Iberian Peninsula under one monarch.75 And whilst the Portuguese institutions were to remain independent under the terms of his ascension, changes nonetheless occurred. Over time, purity of blood statutes proliferated more greatly in the Kingdom, although never to the same degree as elsewhere in the Peninsula,76 and for the first time, temporary Inquisitorial tribunals were established in both Brazil and West Africa.77 Nevertheless, the Portuguese Inquisition remained far more concerned with the question of crypto-Judaizers for much longer than in the rest of the Iberian realms.78 So much so, Conversos began crossing into the Kingdom of Castile after 1580, where they were ironically met with less hostility, at least initially. Indeed, during the reign of Philip IV (1605–1665), the King’s favourite, the Count-Duke of Olivares (1587–1645), attempted to lessen the severity of the purity of blood statues in as far as they pertained to Conversos in 1623, so that this community’s wealth could become another source of credit for the Crown. Olivares also gave all Conversos under investigation by the Inquisition a three-month absolution in 1629. However, these reforms were short-lived as the Count-Duke was ousted from his position of influence in 1640.79
However, some Conversos were able to be recognised as Old Christians, either through marriage, ascension in the royal court and the military orders, or through the acquisition of noble titles.80 Nevertheless, upon the renewal of hostilities in the seventeen Dutch provinces, Converso correspondence and familial ties to the Jewish communities in the Habsburg Netherlands began to inspire greater mistrust across the Iberian Atlantic, and led to the establishment of the series of autos-de-fe beginning in Lima in 1635, before occurring elsewhere. And when in 1640 the Kingdom of Portugal began its struggle for independence, the position of Portuguese Conversos within Castilian America became even more precarious.81
Turning to the Americas more broadly, the Third Council of Lima was begun by Toribio de Mogrovejo (1538–1606) in 1582 to bring clarity to the running of the Church there. Yet, whilst some conclusions were reached regarding the behaviour of the clergy, there was no definitive statement made regarding the role of coerced conversions, nor the extent to which Amerindians were expected to adopt Iberian cultural norms, alongside merely being baptised. The decrees promulgated by the Council did however bring about the end of the legislative separation of the Church in the Americas; for the first time Amerindians and colonists were addressed by the same measures. Indeed, the measures passed during the Third Council of Lima gave a lasting structure to the nascent Church in the Iberian controlled parts of the Americas, being subsequently used as a template for the Third Council of Mexico in 1585.82 The similarly hesitant approach of the Portuguese Crown, which had only banned the enslavement of Amerindians in 1570,83 meant that there was sufficient room for a range of approaches to be adopted in regards to conversion. Thus, some Amerindians were deemed to be of pure blood by the early seventeenth century,84 whilst successive attempts were made to control their behaviour and limit their role in the Church, establishing “the idea of a permanently unfinished conversion.”85
Yet, there had been even less clarity in regards to the conversion of Blacks up until this point.86 Whilst many jurists and theologians had lamented the horrors of the trade of enslaved Blacks during the second half of the sixteenth century,87 and, as has been shown, some Portuguese missionaries had expressed concerns regarding the faith of those in West Africa during the sixteenth century, it was not until 1613 in the city of Seville that questions were systematically asked about the conversion process of Blacks in the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas. The Jesuit Diego Ruiz de Montoya (1562–1632) began concerning himself with the quality of the baptisms being received by Black converts, as well as the quality of their instruction in the catechism.88 Working under the influence of archbishop of Pedro de Castro y Quiñones (1534–1623), a quasi-census of the Black population of the city was conducted, as well as an analysis of the treatment of the enslaved recently arrived to the city’s ports. After the three-month long investigation, it was determined that on the whole the baptisms given to the enslaved could not be considered valid, as the individuals generally had almost no comprehension of what the sacrament meant, let alone a solid understanding of the tenets of the faith. As a result of these findings a plan of action was instigated, which included methods for teaching the catechism and administering the sacraments.89
During the same period, Alonso de Sandoval (1576–1652), a Jesuit missionary in Cartagena de Indias, came to prominence for his work amongst the Black population of the city. His decades of work, which included the publication of De instauranda Æthiopum salute in 1627, is one of the earliest sources of information on Blacks and their descendants in the American possessions of the Habsburg’s. He was able to accumulate such information by visiting the slaves who had just arrived to the port of Cartagena de Indias, with a team of assistants. This team eventually numbered eighteen individuals and included Blacks interpreters who spoke many of the languages of those onboard the slave ships. Initially Sandoval and his team would tend to the immediate needs of the enslaved, before later exposing them to the catechism in preparation for their eventual baptism.90
One of the results of Sandoval’s analysis, the aforementioned De instauranda Æthiopum salute, made for a damning read. Not only were the enslaved rarely given a level of religious instruction Sandoval believed to be necessary for conversion, but also they were exposed to horrendous conditions from the moment of their capture in Africa, throughout their crossing of the Atlantic, and in their enslavement in the Americas.91 Yet despite these, at times, scathing critiques, Sandoval only ever called for the reform of the slave trade, never its abolition, like so many of his contemporaries. Nonetheless, his text became a missionary handbook of sorts, in particular amongst Jesuits who worked to evangelise amongst the ever-increasing number of Blacks brought to the Americas. Thus, the work by Montoya and Sandoval can be understood as the first attempt to bring the conversion of Blacks in line with the post-Trent emphasis on conversion via improved catechising. Indeed, before the two Jesuits, Blacks had largely been converted in much the same way as everyone else during the period of expansion, with the performance of baptisms taking precedence over any concern for catechising, if they had been baptised at all.92
Around the same time, the royal court and the monarch had decided that the Moriscos were apostates, and that they could not be made into true Catholics, so the decision was made expel them from the Iberian Peninsula.93 Indeed, in the expulsion decree of 1609, King Philip III (1578–1621) went as far as to state that “we have not seen any of them convert, and they have instead merely increased their stubbornness.”94 Importantly, the expulsion of the Moriscos was at least partly motivated by the humiliating ceasefire signed by the Hapsburg Empire and the rebellious Dutch provinces—known historically as the Twelve Years’ Truce—which acted as a mere pause of the broader Eighty Years’ War between the oppositional Catholic and Protestant forces. With this military failure in mind, the decision to expel the largely pacified Moriscos can be understood as an attempt to re-establish the monarchy’s prestige both at home and abroad. After all, the rebellion of the Alpujarras had been quashed over 35 years earlier, and there had been no major dissent since then.95 In short, the expulsion of the Moriscos occurred because it was achievable. Any equivalent attempt to expel Amerindians or Blacks—despite ample evidence of their religious heterodoxy, if not outright heresy, as well as dissidence and open revolt—was logistically and military impossible to implement. Yet, not all the Moriscos left; some were deemed to have been sincere Catholics, and were thus given permission to stay, whilst others were eventually allowed to return.96 Indeed, marriages between Moriscos and Old Christians did occur across the Kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, although always at a lesser rate than those between Conversos and Old Christians.97
6 Conclusion
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Old Christian majority had “all but completed its task of constructing a national stereotype based on correct (Old-Christian) blood and orthodox Catholic practice.”98 Yet, in the wider Iberian Atlantic, for a variety of reasons, it had proven next to impossible to eradicate unorthodox interpretations of the Catholic faith, amongst Old and New Christians alike. The sheer geographical size of the Atlantic territories under Iberian control, as well as the diversity and relative independence of the people of these lands, prohibited the completion of any such homogenising endeavours; the expulsion of the Moriscos being a failure to make them conform to a homogenised ideal. There was also never any resolution as to whether purity, and thus Old Christian status, was a condition determined by one’s blood and genealogy, or a social one, demonstrated by customs, habits, and rituals.99 Indeed, by the seventeenth century some Amerindian elites had been given pure blood status,100 some Blacks had successfully defended their status as Old Christians in the courts,101 and as had already been discussed, Conversos and Moriscos had both successfully married into Old Christian families. This lack of precision allowed the conversion process to be flexible enough—or muddled enough—to survive the changes brought about by the conversion of millions of New Christians across the Iberian Atlantic during the phase of expansion.102 And despite the reforms of the second phase, an ambiguity remained which, in spite of the undoubted repression and violence present throughout the period under study, also led to the development of “diverse expressions”103 of Catholicism across the Iberian Atlantic. Even still, the drive for uniformity remained, with distinctions between Old and New Christians, and blood purity stipulations, enforced well into the middle of the eighteenth century.104
See Mercedes García-Arenal, “Moriscos e indios: Para un estudio comparado de métodos de conquista y evangelizacion,” Chronica Nova, 20 (1992), 153–175; James S. Amelang’s Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews is Inquisitorial Spain (Baton Rouge, 2013); Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Bad Christians, New Spains: Muslims, Catholics, and Native Americans in a Mediterratlantic World (Oxford, 2020); Karoline P. Cook’s chapter “Linaje, conversión y naturalezas inestables en el Atlántico ibérico: Comparación entre la incorporación y la exclusión de los moriscos y de los pueblos indígenas” in De sangre y leche: Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Felipe Pereda (Madrid, 2021), 105–138; James S. Amelang and Mercedes García-Arenal, “Religious Conversion and Identities in the Iberian Peninsula,” in The Iberian World, 1450–1820, ed. Fernando Bouza, Pedro Cardim, and Antonio Feros (Oxford, 2021), 245–260.
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo, “Religious Identities in the Iberian Worlds (1500–1700),” The Iberian World: 1450–1820, ed. Fernando Bouza, Pedro Cardim, and Antonio Feros (Abingdon, 2020), 79.
For discussions around the image of the Old Christin nobility see Kevin Ingram, Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain: Bad Blood and Faith from Alonso de Cartagena to Diego Velazquez (Cham, 2018), 1–10. and Francisco Bethencourt, “Limpieza de sangre: la batalla por la reforma desde Salucio hasta Quevedo,” in De sangre y leche: Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Felipe Pereda (Madrid, 2021), 139–172.
B. Netanyahu, Toward the Inquisition: Essays on Jewish and Converso History in late medieval Spain (Ithaca, 1997), 194–200.
Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge, 2015), 188–191.
María Elena, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, 2008), 42–46.
Ibid., 42–46.
Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2013), 144–151; Angus MacKay, “Popular Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-Century Castile,” Past & Present, No. 55 (May, 1972), 33–67.
Ana Echevarria, The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain (Leiden, 1999), 1–3.
Frances Gardiner Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648 (Washington, D.C., 1917), 9–26.
Herman L. Bennett has shown that at least some West Africans were not seen by the Papacy as “enemies of Christ,” but rather “pagan peoples … who are entirely free from infection by the sect of the most impious Mahomet.” See African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia, 2019), 101–131.
Ana Echevarria, The Fortress of Faith, 1–3; James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550 (Liverpool, 1979), 119–131.
Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35.3 (1993), 515–543; Eduardo Aznar Vallejo, “The conquests of the Canary Islands” in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge, 1994), 134–156.
Malyn Newitt, The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: A Documentary History (Cambridge, 2010), 90–96; For a broader discussion on the Kingdom of Portugal’s encounters with the different polities of West Africa in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Herman L. Bennett, African Kings and Black Slaves.
Cécile Fromont, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (Williamsburg, 2014), 1–20.
Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El verano del miedo: conflictividad social en la Valencia agermanada y el bautismo de los mudéjares,” Estudis, Revista de Historia Moderna, 22 (1996), 39–41; Mina García Soormally, “La conversión como experimento de colonización: De Fray Hernando de Talavera a ‘La conquista de Jerusalén,’ ” MLN, Vol. 128, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (March 2013), 233–234.
Jon Cowans, Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History,(Philadelphia, 2003), 21.
Ibid., 20–22.
Ibid., 20–22; Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition (Oxford, 2006), 56–65.
A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Volume One: Portugal (New York, 2009), 137.
François Soyer, “King Manuel I and the expulsion of the Castilian Conversos and Muslims from Portugal in 1497: new perspectives,” Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas, No. 8 (2008), 33–62. In this article Soyer stresses the litany of reasons for why the Jews and Muslims of the Kingdom of Portugal were ultimately expelled, rather than focusing purely on the marriage negotiations for Manuel I and Isabella.
A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Volume One, 153–154.
Jon Cowans, 18.
Mina García Soormally, 226–229. This article discusses how the Franciscans who began proselytising in the Central America from 1523 onwards used catechisms modelled on those used by Hernando de Talavera and his contemporaries in Granada. Yet in both cases, mass baptisms were ultimately preferred to slowly spreading the faith amongst voluntary catechumens.
David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier City, 1492–1600 (New York, 2003), 6.
David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 6; L.P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 (Chicago, 2005), 34.
L.P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 34–36.
Ibid., 76; Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition, 72–78.
Brian A. Catlos, 219–221.
For a useful summary as to why the Muslims of the Crown of Aragon did not face forced conversion until the death of King Ferdinand II, from their economic value as tenant farmers, and the taxes they generated more broadly, to the demographic size and significance of the population, see Brian A. Catlos, 221–222.
Ibid., 221–227.
Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, 35–41.
Brian A. Catlos, 295–296; Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, 35–41.
Mina García Soormally, 233–234.
Ibid., 233–234.
Lauren MacDonald, “The Cemí and the Cross: Hispaniola Indians and the Regular Clergy, 1494–1517,” in The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century, ed. Ida Altman and David Wheat (Nebraska, 2019), 3–24; Ramón Pané, Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios (Mexico D.F., 2001).
Frances Gardiner Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648, 56–63; Antonio Rumeu de Armas, La política indigentista de Isabel la Católica (Valladolid, 1969), 127–129.
J. Lloyd Mecham, “The Origins of ‘Real Patronato de Indias,’ ” The Catholic Historical Review, 14.2 (1928), 214.
C.R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770 (Baltimore, 1978), 77.
Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35.3 (1993), 535.
Jon Cowans, 35.
Mina García Soormally, 233–234.
Patricia Lopes Don, “Franciscans, Indian Sorcerers, and the Inquisition in New Spain, 1536–1543,” Journal of World History, 17.1 (2006), 27–28.
John K. Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo,” The Journal of African History, 54.1 (2013), 57–62. King Afonso I of Kongo wrote the following in a letter sent to King Manuel I of Portugal in 1514: “Your Highness should send us some priests and friars to teach us and help us spread the faith,” highlighting the significance of the decision to limit the number of clergy travelling to Kongo. See Malyn Newitt, 117.
António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana: África Ocidental (1500–1569), Volume II (Lisbon, 1963), 62–73, 79–92, 139–145, 159–167; Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London, 1998), 117.
Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge, 2011), 72.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London, 2004), 218–226. John K. Thornton summarises the significance of the Society of Jesus as follows: “The Jesuits were the elite of European intellectuals, created out of the Counter-Reformation and bringing the new concepts of Christianity to the rest of the world as missionaries.” See “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo,” 67.
Thomas M. Cohen, “Racial and ethnic minorities in the Society of Jesus,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester (Cambridge, 2008), 199.
John K. Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo,” 67.
Aliocha Maldavsky, “Jesuits in Ibero-America: Missions and Colonial Societies,” in The Jesuits and Globalization: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Thomas Banchoff and José Casanova (Washington, DC, 2016), 93–95.
Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study of Race and Prejudice in the Modern World (London, 1959), 22.
A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Volume Two: The Portuguese Empire (New York, 2009), 237.
Daniel Castro, Another Face of Empire: Bartolome de las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (Durham DC, 2007), 12, 126–131; for a wider analysis on the 16th century debates surrounding Amerindians see Anthony Pagden’s Spanish imperialism and the political imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513–1830 (London, 1990), 13–36.
Francisco Castilla Urbano, “The Debate of Valladolid (1550–1551): Background, Discussions, and Results of the Debate between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas” in A Companion to Early Modern Spanish Imperial Political and Social Thought, ed. Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp (Leiden, 2020), 245–247.
John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, 2013), 257–262.
Ibid., 263–265.
Jaime Contreras, “Procesos culturales hegemónicos: de religión y religiosidad en la España del Antiguo Régimen,” Historia Social, 35, Iglesia, Religión y Sociedad (1999), 3–4.
Robert Bireley, “Early-Modern Catholicism as a Response to the Changing World of the Long Sixteenth Century,” The Catholic Historical Review, 95.2 (2009), 238.
Francisco Castilla Urbano, “The Debate of Valladolid (1550–1551),” 245–247.
Seth Kimmel, Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain (Chicago and London, 2015), 4–6.
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo, “Religious Identities in the Iberian Worlds (1500–1700),” The Iberian World: 1450–1820, ed. Fernando Bouza, Pedro Cardim, and Antonio Feros (Abingdon, 2020), 80.
Jaime Contreras, “Alderman and Judaizers: Cryptojudaism, Counter-Reformation, and Local Power,” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis, 1992), 93–94. Francisco Bethencourt, “Limpieza de sangre,” 143–166.
María Elena Martínez, 42–46.
Francisco Bethencourt, “Limpieza de sangre,” 139–172. In this article Bethencourt not only lays out the disruptive presence of the Conversos in the Iberian Peninsula, but also the wider instability of the period, not least of such the frequent inability of the Crown to pay its debtors.
Jean Pierre Dedieu, “ ‘Christianization’ in New Castile: Catechism, Communion, Mass, and Confirmation in the Toledo Archbishopric, 1540–1650,” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis, 1992), 1.
C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, 344; Iñigo Arranz Roa, “Las Indias de aquí: Misiones interiors en Castilla, siglos XVI–XVII,” Estudios Eclesiásticos, 82, No. 321 (2007), 389–409.
María Elena Martínez, 55; Mercedes García-Arenal, “Religious Dissent and Minorities: The Morisco Age,” The Journal of Modern History, 81.4 (2009), 889.
Karoline P. Cook, Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America (Philadelphia, 2016), 90.
Andrew C. Hess, “The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” The American Historical Review, 74.1 (1968), 4.
Elizabeth R. Wright, The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain (Toronto, 2016), 11. Mercedes García Arenal makes the argument that the setting up of a permanent Inquisitorial Tribunal in the Viceroyalty of New Spain for the first time in 1571, the year Rebellion of the Alpujarras was definitively quashed, showed the trans-Atlantic element of Iberian policies in regards to religious conversion. See “Moriscos e indios,” 171.
John K. Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo,” 68. Additionally, in a letter written in 1563, the Jesuit perception of the supposed failings in Kongo become clear: “It now transpired that, although these people are docile, it is necessary to subdue them in order to convert them properly, for without being subjected, neither this nor any other barbarian people, however well inclined they may be, can be kept in the faith. This can clearly be seen in the Kongo since Christianity has been so badly maintained there.” See Malyn Newitt, The Portuguese in West Africa, 122.
Malyn Newitt, The Portuguese in West Africa, 123–136. Within the donation charter of Angola, it was stated that New Christians were prohibited from entering the kingdom. These additional comments were made in regards to the treatment of the enslaved: “of the slaves that by virtue of this donation he can ransom and despatch to this kingdom [Portugal], he shall make the necessary justifications before they have been enslaved and embarked for this kingdom, in conformity with the regimento and order of the Mesa de Consciência.”
Francisco Castilla Urbano, “The Debate of Valladolid (1550–1551),” 222–251.
Karoline P. Cook, Forbidden Passages, 90.
A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, 16–20.
For a discussion on the how the idea of purity of blood manifested differently in the Kingdom of Portugal compared to the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, see Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2013), 148–151. In addition, Bethencourt also discusses the decision to exclude Conversos from the Jesuits in 1593 after initially allowing them into the society upon its foundation in 1540. See the aforementioned “Limpieza de sangre,” 142.
C.R. Boxer, The Church Militant, 85–86. Also, by 1610 a tribunal was created at Cartagena de Indias, reflecting the ports increasing importance within the Iberian Atlantic, especially as a slaving hub, see Toby Green, “Policing the Empires: A Comparative Perspective on the Institutional Trajectory of the Inquisition in the Portuguese and Spanish Overseas Territories (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries),” Hispanic Research Journal, 13.1 (2012), 15.
Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, 2008), 95.
Claude B. Stuczynski, “Harmonizing identities: the problem of the integration of the Portuguese conversos in early modern Iberian corporate polities,” Jewish History, vol. 25.2, Special issue on Portuguese New Christian Identities, 1516–1700 (2011), 246.
Francisco Bethencourt, “Limpieza de sangre,” 146–148.
Stuart B. Schwartz, “Panic in the Indies: The Portuguese threat to the Spanish empire, 1640–1650”, Colonial Latin American Review 2.1–2 (1993), 168.
Mary M. McGlone, “The King’s Surprise: The Mission Methodology of Toribio de Mogrovejo”, The Americas, 50.1 (1993), 66–73.
A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Volume Two, 237.
Karoline P. Cook, “Linaje, conversión y naturalezas inestables en el Atlántico ibérico: Comparación entre la incorporación y la exclusión de los moriscos y de los pueblos indígenas” in De sangre y leche: Raza y religión en el mundo ibérico moderno, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Felipe Pereda (Madrid, 2021), 133.
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo, 86.
Enriqueta Vila Vilar, “La evangelización del esclavo negro y su integración en el mundo americano,” in Negros, mulatos, zambaigos: Derroteros africanos en los mundos ibéricos ed. Berta Ares Queija and Alessandro Stella (Sevilla, 2000), 190–191. This article discusses a royal decree written by Philip II in 1586 regarding proseltysing amongst Blacks in his American territories, declaring his expectation that all those living within the archbishopric of Quito were to be baptised and learn the tenets of the Catholic faith. These suggestions were later adopted by the Synod of Quito in 1594.
Rafael M. Pérez García, “Christian freedom and natural freedom: An introduction to an archaeology of Catholic controversies over slavery” in Rethinking Catholicism in Renaissance Spain, ed. Xavier Tubau (New York, 2023), 194–198.
Francisco de Borja Medina, “La experiencia sevillana de la Compañia de Jesús en la evangelización de los esclavos negros y su representación en América,” in La esclavitud negroafricana en la historia de España siglos XVI y XVII, ed. Aurelia Martín Casares and Margarita Garcia Barranco (Granada, 2010), 83.
Ibid., 84–94; Larissa Brewer-García placed in the appendix of her book a primary source in which a Jesuit debates the pros and cons of learning the Kimbundu language in aiding the conversion of the enslaved in the Viceroyalty of Peru, written around the year 1635. In the text the author states that “we cannot trust the baptisms that are given in Angola for they are for the whole ship at a time without teaching them anything about the faith such that they think that the water that they are being given is meant to clean their heads.” Thus, the concern regarding the quality of the baptisms being administered to enslaved Blacks continued well after Diego Ruiz de Montoya’s efforts, even though the Jesuits themselves had been based in Angola since the second half of the sixteenth-century. See Beyond Babel: Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and New Granada (Cambridge, 2021), 251–260.
Larissa Brewer-García, Beyond Babel, 124–145.
Alonso de Sandoval, Treatise on Slavery: Selections from De instauranda Æthiopum salute, trans. and ed. Nicole von Germeten (Indianapolis, 2008), 55–59.
Here it is worth revisiting the previously mentioned appendix of Brewer-García’s work. The same Jesuit, in reference to enslaved Blacks, states that “it is necessary to baptize them even in Lima because although they have tried to baptize them in Cartagena, many get through without being baptized because the ships, many of which carry illegal licenses, hide some slaves and do not let them walk about publicly with those who are baptized so that the law does not take them away.” See Larissa Brewer-García, Beyond Babel, 251–260.
Brian A. Catlos, 300–303. For an extensive analysis of the debates concerning the faith of the Moriscos see Seth Kimmel’s aforementioned Parables of Coercion.
Jon Cowans, 145.
Robin Blackburn, 53, Diarmaid MacCulloch, 492.
Trevor J. Dadson, Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern Spain: Old Christians and Moriscos in the Campo de Calatrava (Suffolk, 2014), 234–242, and William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia, 2014), 175.
Max Deardorff, “The Ties That Bind: Intermarriage between Moriscos and Old Christians in Early Modern Spain, 1526–1614,” Journal of Family History, 42.3 (2017), 260.
Kevin Ingram, Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain, 1–10.
María Elena Martínez, 267–270.
Karoline P. Cook, “Linaje, conversión y naturalezas inestables en el Atlántico ibérico,” 133.
Chloe Ireton, “ ‘They are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians’: Old Christian Black Blood in the Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Iberian Atlantic,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 97:4 (2017), 579–581.
María Elena Martínez, 267–270, Karoline P. Cook, “Linaje, conversión y naturalezas inestables en el Atlántico ibérico,” 107.
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Federico Palomo, 77.
Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms, 147–150.