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8. The Archbishop and the Church in Saragossa

 

Throughout the sixteenth century, the Archbishop of Saragossa was charged with supervising the parishes in the Jiloca valley. We have seen previously that, in the late sixteenth century, the metropolitan Church became increasingly concerned about the presence of outsiders in the villages. Did the archbishop begin to view the nuevos convertidos of Burbaguena as outsiders as well?

 1

Visitas

 

One way to investigate the Church's perception of rural communities like Baguena and Burbaguena is through the records of episcopal visitas. Visitas were the periodic, on-site inspections conducted by the bishop, or his representative, in each of the parishes of the diocese. These visitas afforded an opportunity to administer the sacrament of confirmation; they also permitted a financial and administrative audit of each parish. In Baguena and Burbaguena, visitas, or inspections, occurred regularly throughout the century. The visitador, or his assistant, would enter orders from the archdiocese directly into the parish registers.

 

Visitas had several purposes, one of which was ceremonial. We might take the inspection by Andres Sanctos, Archbishop of Saragossa, of Baguena in June 1581 as an example. Sanctos was "welcomed with honor, walking in procession under a canopy to the parish church of this village." 1 In the heat of June in Aragon, the canopy would have been utilitarian as well as ceremonial. Sanctos performed "the customary ceremony," blessing the village and preaching a sermon. One reason for the archbishop himself to visit was that a bishop (or someone of higher rank) customarily administered the sacrament of confirmation. In both Baguena and Burbaguena, parish priests recorded the names of hundreds of children confirmed during a visit from the archbishop. For example, during this visit Sanctos confirmed 150 souls in Baguena, including Bernat, a shepherd and a stranger to the town. Bernat was the only confirmand whose parents were not listed. 2 In 1567, in Burbaguena, "the most reverend Lord Don Antonio Garcia," the Bishop of Utica, stood in for Don Hernando of Aragon, Archbishop of Saragossa, and confirmed 328 souls. The list of those who were confirmed included names we now recognize as newly converted, as well as those of old Christians, but the list itself (as with the marriage registers) did not identify any parishioner as a new Christian. 3 In 1581, Sanctos confirmed 107 in Burbaguena ; in 1604, 349 were confirmed in the village, and in 1609 another 177. None of the lists of those confirmed in Burbaguena identified any parishioners as newly converted.

 

For his 1581 visita to Baguena, in addition to administering the sacrament of confirmation, Sanctos "stated particularly the specific reasons and purpose for which he had made the said visit." 4 These reasons and purpose included an examination of the financial records of the parish. Sanctos requested a complete inventory of church property, 5 along with an accounting of the limosnas, or funds for the poor, the benefices and the chapels of the parish church, and the ecclesiastical rents. 6 Sanctos, concerned about the parish's finances, entered the following order into the parish books:

 

Item: we order that no request from outside the village be honored except with a license from our Vicar General and that the Vicar keep a book in which he records all the requests and donations which take place in the said church for hospitals, hermitages and any other houses of devotion. 7

 

The archbishop, a businessman as well as a spiritual leader, wanted a record kept of all collections within the parish. Moreover, money being dispensed was to be kept track of, and receipts were to be signed at the time funds were handed over. If the individual didn't know how to write, the receipt was to be signed for him. While part of the archbishop's time was spent in ceremony and spiritual care for his flock, another purpose of the visit clearly was to audit the parish financially.

 5

The Sacred and the Secular

 

Just as the archbishop oversaw the funds administered by the parish church, it was also his duty to see that church property was well maintained. The Baguena registers contain few orders in this regard, although they do include a 1581 order from Sanctos to repair the floor of the choir in the church. 8 But orders for the upkeep and maintenance of church property appear far more frequently in the Burbaguena records. In 1550, for example, Don Lope Marco, the abbot of the monastery of Verzula, as visitador for the archbishop Don Hernando, 9 ordered the parish to provide new covers for the altar, to hang doors for the church within six months, to repair the window in the choir (a full year was permitted for this repair), and to purchase three new missals. 10 In 1554, the church in Burbaguena was reminded to repair the hermitas 11 and to construct a wall around the cemetery. 12 In some cases, the archbishop's concern was for the disappearance of church property. Thus, parishioners were cautioned that it was inappropriate for them to take the candles used by the church during Holy Week home with them afterward. Since candles, as every historian knows, 13 are not a fixed asset but are instead consumed, we should look more closely at this particular mandate. The church clearly was not attempting to preserve these expendables; part of the complaint on the part of the bishop seems to have been that a religious object was being converted to a secular purpose. If so, this was an early indication of a trend in which the metropolitan church insisted upon a distinction between the secular and the sacred. In 1610, for example, Don Antonio Gonzales de Aguerco, canon of the church in Saragossa, 14 wrote in the Burbaguena parish register that "it is a most indecent thing for a lay person, especially one who is married, to handle the sacred things of the church as if they were corporal —chalices, patens, reliquaries and the rest. . . ." Since all of these things (unless the church in Burbaguena was quite exceptional) were in fact corporal, the choice of words is interesting. Don Antonio went on to explain that this sort of behavior was "contrary to the purity [ honestidad ] and reverence which is praiseworthy in regard to such things. . . ." 15

 

Don Antonio's language here is revealing. On the one side we have the lay person, who is unworthy, particularly if he or she is married; on the other hand we have the church, in which even physical things are not "corporal," and which ought to be treated with honestidad —with chaste reverence. Of course, the church itself was not above conflating the sacred and the secular when it served a worthy purpose. So, in 1592, the parish priest in Baguena was advised to deny communion to those who owed the church money, inflicting a spiritual punishment for a secular transgression. 16 But, in general, the comments entered in the parish records during these inspections reflect an increasing desire to keep church property and ceremony separate from day-to-day life in the villages.

 

We have mentioned previously that both Baguena and Burbaguena were on the main road from Saragossa to Teruel, and thence to Valencia. The archbishop's representative, who came from a larger metropolitan center 17 where the church was somewhat removed from main thoroughfares, was shocked that, on holy days, people were known to pass by "with loaded carts and animals with pack-saddles"; he warned the priest to be on the lookout for such individuals. 18 Such secular activity, in the eyes of those from Saragossa, was entirely inappropriate on a religious holiday, especially so close to the church. The church building itself, while not exactly a den of thieves, had become a convenient place for gambling, even while services were being conducted; the parish priest was to "man the ramparts" so that Mass and vespers would not be disturbed by this gaming. 19 Equally worrisome were the young men of the village, "irreverent and vain," according to the visitador, who might attempt to smuggle a drum into the church during Holy Week and initiate the traditional drumming. The word from Saragossa was quite clear: such popular celebrations of religious sentiment were to be discouraged, and the parish priest would do well to secure the church windows and doors against such attempts by the local percussionists. 20 That Holy Week celebrations, and the associated customs, were problematic for the Church hierarchy in Saragossa can be seen in the comments made during an earlier visita to Burbaguena. While the visitador wanted to "bring back the very ancient customs of the closing of Lent," and in particular the processions of Holy Week, he cautioned that he wanted these ceremonies performed as they were in the old days, "without laughing or scandal among the people, but with all the reverence and attention which they ought to exhibit." 21 There seems to have been a certain type of behavior that the archbishop deemed proper for Holy Week celebrations; in both Baguena and Burbaguena, Santa Semana must have been celebrated with more heart and spirit—and enjoyment—than he liked to see.

 

Both of the problems that concerned the visitors from Saragossa in Baguena —gambling and Holy Week drumming—are indicators that the church building may well have functioned as a gathering place in the village for secular and traditional activities as well as for Mass and vespers. We know that, in both Baguena and Burbaguena, the villagers considered the church to belong to them, rather than to the Archbishop of Saragossa. In Baguena, this meant that the town council took it upon themselves to keep the church in good repair, as we saw in the previous section. In Burbaguena, the care of the church was manifested in the ornamentation and arrangement of the altars of the various chapels. Capas, or capes, were part of this ornamentation. Throughout Aragon, it was not unusual for women to leave favorite articles of clothing at their death to a particular chapel. For example, an "accurate transcript" (transcriptum bene et fideliter factum) of the will of Catalina Cardona, made in Teruel in 1507, gives a fur cape and a camel-hair scarf to the Virgin Mary of Teruel. 22 This type of gracia especial, or special gift, in women's testaments was not limited to religious donation; favorite articles of clothing were often left to a daughter, sister, or friend. 23 Since inventories of women's property 24 carefully listed clothing, along with household goods and furnishings and livestock, we may assume that these articles were both costly and important to the women donors. But, in Burbaguena in 1610, Antonio Gonzales, who had also cautioned the parish priest about the impropriety of having married parishioners touch the chalice and paten, now warned that the parishioners should not be decorating the altars with gifts of clothing or other cherished possessions, nor arranging and attending to the minor altars within the church: ". . . they ought not to place capes or other decorations on the altars of the chapels. . . ." 25 Don Antonio pointed out that attending to the chapel altars during services might upset and disturb the faithful in attendance. For Don Antonio, it was clear that the parishioner's place was in the pew, not at the altar. That this was an issue of to whom the church belonged becomes clearer when we consider an earlier visit. In 1608, parishioners were ordered to remove the coat of arms on display within the church. It was to be taken out of the church within eight days, and the parish was cautioned that it needed permission before it displayed such things. This permission, presumably, would have come from Saragossa. 26 If we consider these comments, we see a pattern of separating the sacred from the secular; we also see a pattern of the archbishop's laying claim to the realm of the sacred, presuming, for example, to dictate which forms of celebration were appropriate for Holy Week and which were not.

 

But the Archbishop of Saragossa's assertion of authority over the sacred did not mean that he had abandoned a claim to secular authority, too. We have already discussed the archbishop's order that citizenship in Baguena not be freely given to strangers. The visitadores were also concerned about the recreational activities of those in Burbaguena. The game of quoits was particularly popular there, and while the visitador 's comments on the game began by mentioning that villagers played on holy days, "offending Our Lord greatly," he quickly arrived at the heart of the matter: villagers played these games to the point of losing their houses and possessions, and the village authorities, not the church, should forbid the game. 27 In 1596, the visitador from Saragossa was equally as concerned about the dances held by the young men and women of Baguena on Sundays. According to his description, during these festivities, the young women and men of the village—the donzellas and manzebos —would dance in the plaza as well as in their houses, would go walking through the streets, and would sit and talk privately. The visitador, very disapproving, leveled a severe penalty—200 sueldos or excomunion —and added that "other arbitrary penalties" might be imposed, so that "no young man or other person would take a young woman or any other woman by the hand, nor would they talk with her alone, nor in a place where others could not see and hear them. . . ." 28

 10

Neither the gamblers of Burbaguena nor the merrymakers of Baguena were engaging in ecclesiastical activity, but the visitors from Saragossa, while they attempted to separate mundane activities from sacred ceremony, continued to believe that they had the right to regulate both. The order in regard to the fiestas in Baguena seems almost to extend the honestidad —the chaste reverence accorded to the chalice and paten used to celebrate Mass—to the women of Baguena.

 

Thus far we have seen that the Church authorities in Saragossa, during their regular visits to the villages of the Jiloca valley, performed a variety of tasks. There was the purely ceremonial function, that of appearing in procession and ceremonies. There was the pastoral function of assisting at services and confirming the young people of the parishes. There was the administrative function of overseeing the property and finances of each church. Successive visitadores from Saragossa not only performed all of these tasks but also, throughout the century, sought to distinguish and separate the secular from the sacred within the villages. Visitadores continued, however, to issue orders concerning secular activities, imposing both financial and religious penalties for non-compliance. The mid-century orders for religious education issued from Saragossa are one indication of an early phase in this delineation of the secular and the sacred.

 

Education and the Nuevos Convertidos

 

Part of the responsibility of the parish was to teach church doctrine. At the most basic level, this meant that, according to the authorities in Saragossa, the children in the parish should know "the prayers of the church": the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Salve Regina. 29 In 1554, during the visitas, both Baguena and Burbaguena were ordered to provide classes to teach the children of the parish these prayers. In Burbaguena, the directions to the parish priest were fairly specific:

 

We order the vicar, on all feast days, to admit all of the children at a set hour and teach them prayers in the church—that is to say, the Credo, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Salve Regina—and the father or mother who doesn't send their children, unless they have a good reason, will pay 6 dineros for each offense, and the town officials will collect this, not the vicar. . . . 30

 

We know that the children, the "mochachos" of the villages, were taught together within the village (see Chapter 3). Here, at mid-century, before the archbishop had begun to define the sacred as a separate realm, the priest was ordered to open the church to the village, not for services, but for school. Moreover, the fine for those parents who did not encourage their children to attend was collected, not by the parish priest, but by the officials of the town council. This earlier, community-centered vision of the church would change, by the turn of the century, to a narrower definition in which secular and sacred, laity and clergy, were two different realms.

 15

In all of the visita orders we have examined thus far, we have yet to find a single case in which the newly converted of the villages were singled out. We might well expect such a singling out to occur in the context of religious education, since one of the issues contested in the history of the Moriscos in Spain is the extent to which the church failed to provide adequate education in church doctrine to these new converts. Lea tells us that Hernando de Talavera not only established schools for religious instruction in Granada in the late 1400s, but that he also required that instruction be in Arabic. 31 But Talavera was the exception rather than the rule. In 1510, Fernando wrote to Pope Julius II, requesting that those converts from Judaism and Islam who, in the opinion of the Inquisition, had turned away from the Church be treated with leniency, precisely because they had received insufficient instruction in Church doctrine. 32 Seven years later, Charles I, hearing that the Inquisition had convicted 38 Moriscos in Aguilar de Rio Alhama, required that half of the funds confiscated from the Moriscos be used to construct a building where converts could be taught. 33 We have mentioned previously that Philip II arranged for the establishment of a college in Valencia to instruct the sons and daughters of converted Muslims in various subjects, including religion. 34 Given this level of concern from the Crown, we might expect the Archbishop of Saragossa to have been preoccupied with the education of the nuevos convertidos in these villages. It is thus significant that, in terms of education in church doctrine, the newly converted are not mentioned as a separate group anywhere in the archbishop's instructions. Children in general needed to be instructed in the basic prayers of the church but, at least as far as the orders given to Baguena and Burbaguena went, old Christian and new Christian children were identical in this regard.

 

In fact, in all of the visita reports made during the second half of the sixteenth century, new Christians are only mentioned once as a separate category. In 1554, the visita report noted:

 

Item: Because the new Christians do not attend mass on the feast days mandated by the church, so we order that all of the new Christians go to church to hear the Divine Office on the calendar days mandated by the church. . . . 35

 

What was not said in this order is more significant that what was stated. New converts were not being ordered to attend Sunday Mass regularly, to participate in the sacramental life of the church, to have their children baptized—presumably, they were already doing all of these things. The order had to do only with the church holy days. Perhaps these "new" converts, who had actually been Christians for at least twenty years, were not aware of the obligation to attend services on holy days; or perhaps they were aware of the obligation, but chose to ignore it. That the visitor from Saragossa was uncertain about which of these two possibilities was at work was revealed in his suggested punishment for those new converts who failed to attend services: ". . . a fine of 6 dineros for each one for each additional time that they don't do it, and more according to the quality of the sin. . . ." 36 Six dineros was a trifling amount in comparison with other punishments suggested by the visitador, no more than a fiscal slap on the hand, but—if the convert were intentionally wicked, or if the parish priest judged him to be so—more severe punishments could be imposed.

 

Old Christians and New Christians

 

Leaving, for the moment, the question of judging the quality of another man's sin, let us return to Baguena, and to the loaded carts and saddled animals that disturbed the visitador there in 1576. We know that, at this time, none of the parishioners entered in the parish registers in Baguena were identified as new Christians. 37 But we also know from notaries' records (see Chapter 7) that a number of Moriscos from other parts of Aragon were present in the village. Since many of these Moriscos were merchants or carters, was the visitador 's advice to be on guard against those who passed by the church with loaded carts and animals a subtle message of caution against Moriscos ? There is no real justification for reading the warning this way and, in fact, at one point these irreligious businessmen are referred to as estrangeros, as being not from within the village, and thus (unlike the local nuevos convertidos, who regularly appeared before the town notary while conducting business) unknown to it.

 20

The order of 1554, which mandated attendance at services on holy days for Moriscos, was never repeated, unlike some of the orders we have considered; 38 this, on its face, provides evidence that the new converts of Burbaguena were obedient to the original order. If the Archbishop of Saragossa imposed his own view of the villages upon the residents of Baguena and Burbaguena, this metropolitan view had to do more with an increasing tendency to view the sacred as a realm set apart from the secular than it had to do with conceptualizing the villages as communities in which the Morisco contingent could be seen as both different and separate from the rest of the village. In fact, in commenting upon both the sacred and the secular, the authorities in Saragossa made a clear statement about the villages. These were places where Christians, and only Christians, lived; if it were not so, how could the archbishop have justified some of the "secular" orders made by his visitadores ?

 

The archbishop's attitude toward the old and new Christians of Baguena and Burbaguena was all the more remarkable, given some of the attitudes expressed soon after the expulsion of the Moriscos. In 1616, the Franciscan Diego Murillo, with the authorization of Philip III, published a two-part work directed to the residents of Saragossa. 39 Murillo expressed sorrow that, since the expulsion of the Moriscos, the Inquisition had been reduced to celebrating its Saragossa autos da fe at a small patio near the Aljaferia, the building that housed the Inquisition. According to Murillo, "after the expulsion of the Moriscos . . . few penitents are available." 40 These post-expulsion autos da fe were muted celebrations compared to the pre-1610 ceremonies, when "ordinarily (before the Moriscos were expelled from the kingdom) they were celebrated in the marketplace, which is a grand place in this city, well suited for effect." 41 And, Murillo told his readers, because of the formidable labor of the inquisitors, autos da fe had been celebrated with Moriscos almost every year. Note that, for Murillo, it was unnecessary to explain that those Moriscos who participated in the autos da fe were accused of specific lapses, almost as if being Morisco were reason enough to be brought before the Inquisition. Admittedly, Murillo wrote soon after the expulsion; his thinking might have been influenced by that event which, once and for all, divided all Spain into two separate—and separated—groups. This sort of segregation, imposed by the Inquisition and the Crown, was not at all characteristic of the Church in Saragossa, at least as far as its activity within Baguena and Burbaguena. While the archbishop might express concern about the dangers of becoming infected with heresy (see Part II), or about undue levity at Holy Week celebrations, he treated all residents of the villages evenhandedly, as faithful members of his Christian flock.

 

When Andres Sanctos visited Baguena in 1581, after saying Mass and preaching, he performed a ritual that may, at first, seem odd: "later he gave absolution to the souls in the said church and cemetery." 42 Sanctos was forgiving the dead, buried in the church and its cemetery, their sins. In Saragossa some years later, Murillo wrote admiringly of the Inquisition: "That which we may admire the most, is that their jurisdiction extends not only to the living but also to the dead, because the sins of dead heretics remain; when they are found to be culpable, their bodies are burned." 43 Sanctos, concerned that, among the dead of his parishes, there might be a sinner or two—perhaps one who needed forgiveness because of "the quality of his sin"—chose absolution instead of burning.

 

The moment of death, as we pointed out previously, was crucial. At this moment, an individual left his own, earthly village to enter the heavenly City, but his ability to do so might be hampered by sins for which he was still accountable at the moment of his death. Visitadores had cautioned parish priests in Baguena and Burbaguena to be especially vigilant with their parishioners who were dying (Part II). To "die well," it was necessary to confess, and to confess well. This concern with confession may explain the puzzling notation in the death registers of Burbaguena. As we have pointed out, a record of the death of a new Christian indicates that he or she confessed before dying, although, from the 1560s onward, it did not often indicate that the dying person received any other sacraments.

 

The attitude of the Saragossa hierarchy toward death calls to mind a phrase that occurs often in the notarial protocols. Documents which conveyed property in Aragon in the fifteenth and sixteenth century granted rights to a piece of land "with all of its entrances and exits." The Archdiocese of Saragossa was particularly concerned with the entrances and exits of Baguena and Burbaguena. Thus, the baptismal records indicate that some infants are the children of nuevos convertidos, and death records carry the same notation. Once they were part of the community, these new Christians participated equally in its spiritual life, just as they did in its economic life; confirmation records and marriage records 44 did not identify parishioners as old Christians or new Christians. At the moment of death, though, it was particularly important that these "new" Christians exit well, and the archbishop's absolution, given equally to the living and the dead, to old Christian and new, was a final gesture of concern for the "entrances and exits" associated with this piece of spiritual ground.

 25

The archbishop might have described Baguena and Burbaguena as having been divided into residents and strangers, and might have attempted to separate the sacred and the secular, but in the end he did not distinguish between the old Christians and the newly converted living within in the villages. 45 If such distinctions were made, the orders—for instance, the "mandates" that the parish priests of Burbaguena referred to when they listed the Easter duty for new and old Christians separately—came from another source. 46 It is to a consideration of this source, the Aragonese Inquisition, that we will now turn.

 



Notes:

Note 1: AHDT, Baguena I (June 10, 1581), 190. Back.

Note 2: AHDT, Burbaguena I, 1581, 202v-205. Back.

Note 3: AHDT, Burbaguena I (March 17, 1567), 92. Back.

Note 4: ". . . declaro muy en particular las causas y effecto para q[ ue ] se salia la dicha visita." AHDT, Baguena II. Back.

Note 5: The 1592 report of the archbishop's visit contains the property inventory previously ordered. AHDT, Baguena II. Back.

Note 6: While the parish registers do not provide a listing of investment properties owned by the church in Baguena or Burbaguena, evidence suggests that the church did own secular property in the villages. For example, in 1579 Gabriel Pardo the apothecary sold a number of properties to Mossen Miguel Pardo, the racionero of the church in Burbaguena. These properties included a house in the village, a vineyard, and a garden plot; the total value of the properties was 4,500 sueldos. AMC, PN Baguena 78 (January 5, 1579). Back.

Note 7: "Idem mandamus q[ ue ] no has se admitta demanda alguna de fuera del pueblo sin una licencia de nro cario General y que el vicario tenga un libro en que assiento todas las demandas y llegas que ocurre en la dicha igl [ es ] ia para hopitales, hermitas, y otras qualesquieres casas de devocion . . . ." AHDT, Baguena II. Back.

Note 8: The town council in Baguena ordered substantial repairs and elaborations to the organ and choir of the church in the early 1600s (see Part II). It may be that orders from the archbishop were generally unnecessary, since the villagers were caring for the church without being ordered to do so. Back.

Note 9: Don Hernando de Aragon, Archbishop of Saragossa in mid-century, was King Ferdinand's son. Back.

Note 10: AHDT, Burbaguena I, 1550. Back.

Note 11: Hermitas in this part of Aragon were often no more than small statues or devotional objects sheltered in a small "birdhouse" on a post. Back.

Note 12: This was, however, more than an order to maintain church property. See Chapter 5. Baguena was ordered to build a wall around its cemetery in 1576 (AHDT, Baguena, I). Back.

Note 13: As Robert Darnton has argued, "The French attempt to measure attitudes by counting—counting masses for the dead, pictures of Purgatory, titles of books, speeches in academies, furniture in inventories, crimes in police records, invocations to the Virgin Mary in wills, and pounds of candle wax burned to patron saints in churches" ( Darnton, 258, emphasis added). For an alternative discussion of this historical tradition, see "Text, symbol and Frenchness," in Roger Chartier's Cultural History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). Back.

Note 14: Don Antonio made the visit since the archbishop, Tomas de Borja, had recently died. Back.

Note 15: AHDT, Burbaguena II (1610). Back.

Note 16: AHDT, Baguena I, 230v. Back.

Note 17: In "Las Maravillas de Zaragoza," Aragon en la edad media VII. ( Saragossa : Universidad de Zaragoza, 1987), Dolors Bramon and Juan A. Souto consider descriptions of Saragossa drawn from Arabic sources. Maria Teresa Ainaga Andres ' "El fogaje aragones de 1362: aportacion a la demografia de Zaragoza en el siglo XIV," in Aragon en la edad media VIII ( Saragossa : Universidad de Zaragoza, s.f. ), provides a description of the city a century or two later. Back.

Note 18: ". . . con carros cargados y bestias albardadas." AHDT, Baguena I (1576). The evidence is that this was a continuing problem from the archbishop's point of view; the 1596 visita record repeats the order, adding that such activity gives offense to God. AHDT, Baguena II (1596). Pack animals must have been equally offensive to Allah; in the city of Fez, in North Africa, horizontal bars installed across the streets around the main mosque prevented loaded donkeys from approaching it too closely. Back.

Note 19: ". . . no vacasen los murallos." Games of chance were a problem in Burbaguena as well (AHDT Burbaguena II, 1609), but the visitador had concerns other than the "profanation" of the church. See below. Back.

Note 20: The current Bishop of Teruel, Don Antonio, explained to me that in Aragon, the custom of drumming, especially the marathon drumming of Good Friday, recalls the earthquake which is said to have occurred at Christ's death. The origins of the custom are disputed; Bajo Aragon is traditionally considered to be the area in which drumming began. The visita orders I studied indicate that drumming was also popular in the Jiloca valley in the 16th century, at least among the villagers. Back.

Note 21: AHDT, Burbaguena II, 1554, 207v. Back.

Note 22: AIC, pergaminos, 443. Back.

Note 23: The will of Ana Segura, for example (AMC, PN Baguena 76, February 12, 1558) gives to the deceased's sister, "de gracia especial un sayo amarillo y un sayo negro y una cofia." Back.

Note 24: For example, the memorial de bienes of the widow Juana Soriano (found in AMC, PN Baguena 80) listed small livestock, household linens, cooking utensils, and furniture, along with clothing; the property of young Joanna de Auson, the fourteen-year-old pupilla of Domingo Ximeno, included similar items, although in Joanna's case, many of her outer garments were embellished with terciopelo, or velvet. (AMC, PN Baguena 66, April 26, 1585). Back.

Note 25: ". . . ni ellos pongan las capas ni demas ornamentos en los altares de las capillas . . . ." AHDT, Burbaguena II (1610). Back.

Note 26: AHDT, Burbaguena II (1608). Back.

Note 27: AHDT, Burbaguena II (1609). Back.

Note 28: ". . . ningun mancebo ni otra pers a tome a donsella ni otra muger por la mano, ni se ponga a hablar con ella a solas, ni en parte donde las demas no puedan oyr y entenderlo . . . ." AHDT, Baguena II (January 14, 1596). Back.

Note 29: "Les enseño las oraciones de la yglesia es a saber el Credo, Pater Noster, ave maria, y salve regina." AHDT, Baguena I (1554). Back.

Note 30: "Mandamos al vicario q[ ue ] todos los dias festivas en una hora cierta haga admitar todos los mochachos y les enseñe las oraciones en la yglesia es a saber el Credo paternoster la avemaria y salve regina y el padre o madre q[ ue ] no inviara sus hijos sin tener legitimo impedimiento pague por cada ves seis dineros los quales essecute los jurados y no hiziendo lo el vicario . . . ."AHDT, Burbaguena I (1554). Back.

Note 31: Lea, op. cit., 25. Back.

Note 32: Ibid, 49. Back.

Note 33: Lea, 52. Back.

Note 34: See Part II. Back.

Note 35: "Item por quanto los christianos nuevos no havan missa las dias de fiesta mandados por la yglesia por tanto mandamos a todos las christianos nuevos vayan al yglesia a oyr las divinas officias en los dias calendros mandados por yglesia . . . ."AHDT, Burbaguena I (1554). Back.

Note 36: ". . . pena de seis dineros acadauno por cada mas ves q lo contrario [h] izere y mas segu [n] la calidad del pecado . . . ." AHDT, Burbaguena I (1554). Back.

Note 37: In the 1590s, the parish priest identified one individual and one married couple in Baguena as nuevo convertido in the baptismal registers. In 1604, the record of those confirmed by Bishop Terrer includes Lope and Ana de Agueda, but these children are clearly identified as being from Burbaguena. AHDT, Baguena II (August 25, 1604). Back.

Note 38: For example, the order concerning loaded carts and beasts of burden was issued in the 1570s and repeated in the 1590s. See above. Back.

Note 39: Diego Murillo, Fundacion milagrosa de la capilla angelica y apostolica de la madre de Dios de Pilar, y excellencias de la imperial civdad de Caragoca. Diuidefe en dos Tratados (Barcelona: Sebastian Mateuad, 1616). Back.

Note 40: "Despues de la expulsion de los Moriscos . . . ser pocos los penitentes que se offrecen." Murillo, 190. Back.

Note 41: ". . . de ordinario (antes de salidos los Moriscos del Reyno ) se celebrauan en el mercado, que es vna placa grade desta ciudad, bien acomodada para este effecto . . . ." Murillo, 185. Back.

Note 42: "luego hecho la absolucion a las almas en la dicha iglia y cimenterio." AHDT, Baguena I (June 10, 1581). Back.

Note 43: Murillo, 168. Back.

Note 44: With a few exceptions. See Part II for a discussion of this issue. Back.

Note 45: The only case in which a distinction was made—the 1554 order that new Christians attend mass on holy days—was an order requiring these new Christians to do what the rest of the community was, we presume, doing already, and the order, never repeated, must have been followed. See above. Back.

Note 46: The archbishop's representative entered the orders made during parish visitas into the parish registers. There is no visita order entered requiring separate Easter duty tallies. The parish priest's notation indicates that, in keeping separate tallies, he was complying with the order of the "senior official in Daroca," the nearest Inquisition location. Back.

 

Like Wheat to the Miller: Community, Convivencia, and the
Construction of Morisco Identity in Sixteenth-Century Aragon