Moriscos were Iberian Muslims converted to Catholicism and their descendants. The Spanish monarchy, Inquisition, and clergy implemented many religious and political strategies to fully convert the Moriscos, who had mostly been baptised under coercion and were suspected of keeping their Islamic beliefs and practices in secret. The Moriscos were expelled from Spain in 1609–14, a decision justified with Islamophobic arguments depicting Moriscos as inherently incompatible with Catholicism because of their Muslim bloodlines. In this talk, I examine the kinds of spiritual, social, and legal conversions that were required of Moriscos throughout the sixteenth century. This research relates to my forthcoming book, Morisco Conversions: Belonging, Status, and Legal Action in Early Modern Valladolid, which explores how Moriscos in this Castilian city used legal action to defend their families, properties, and statuses in response to policies aimed at their conversion. I discuss the problem of Morisco conversion — their baptism, but also the policies of assimilation and control implemented to enforce the conversion of generations of Moriscos — and ask what it can teach us about forms of belonging and exclusion in early modern Spain.
Speaker
Dr. Stephanie M. CAVANAUGH
Sir John Elliott Junior Research Fellow in Spanish History
Exeter College, University of Oxford
Conducted online via ZOOM
(Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183)
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183