IX 



THE ORIGINS OF PROTESTANISM 



IN the year 1609 one of the most atrocious 

 crimes of which history preserves the record 

 was perpetrated by the Spanish government. 

 The Moriscoes, or Christianized descendants of 

 the conquered Moors, had long been objects of 

 suspicion and hatred to the Spaniards, and es- 

 pecially to the Spanish clergy. During the six- 

 teenth century they had been so cruelly treated 

 that in 1568 they had risen in rebellion among 

 the mountains of Granada, and it had taken 

 three years of obstinate fighting to bring them 

 to terms. Their defeat was so crushing that it 

 was no longer possible to regard them as politi- 

 cally dangerous, but their orthodoxy was strongly 

 suspected, inasmuch as the grandparents of the 

 present generation had been converted to Chris- 

 tianity only by brute force. In 1602 the Arch- 

 bishop of Valencia proposed that all the Moris- 

 coes in the kingdom, with the exception of 

 children under seven years of age, should be 

 forthwith driven into exile, that the nation might 

 no longer be polluted by the slightest suspicion 

 of unbelief. The Archbishop of Toledo, pri- 



221 



