A prominent church theologian proposed drowning all Moriscos at sea

Evidence

Images of bizarre violence seem to have haunted the minds of those appointed to the think-tanks of those days. Boronat (1901, 1: 24), in a chapter in which he looks at the evolution of policy under Philip III, picks up a version of the proposal to get rid of the Moriscos by drowning them at sea (scuttling them) and defends it as reflecting views widely held. Boronat was referring to papers submitted some twenty years after the initial debates of the 1580s for consideration at the councils of 1601 and 1602, at which point a decision to expel the Moriscos was actually reached but not put into effect. Among these papers on the table were two letters written by Juan Boil de Aren´os, dated August 13, 1601, and January 24, 1602, describing the “obvious danger in which the Kingdom of Valencia finds itself because of the Moriscos.” Boil adds that Doctor Fidalgo, the prior of Calatrava and a “great theologian and man of religion,” advocated “that they should all, without exception, men, women, and children, be sent to sea in boats without oars, steering gear, rigging, or sails, and scuttled, and sent to Africa like that.” Boronat is a historian who gives the impression of not having much of a sense of humor, but in reporting this poisonous outburst he remarks dryly that “surely these scuttled boats would have sunk before reaching their destination.” He goes on to excuse what he grants are “harsh words” by asserting that “public opinion was demanding radical measures,” and even goes on to claim that it would be wrong to blame these ideas on the individual informants, as “the whole nation, with rare exceptions, desired to see coercive remedies adopted.” — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1371

Categorization

• FICTION: A cleric and ‘man of religion’ proposing to scuttle unrigged boats full of men, women, and children — and arguing it as humane pragmatism — is a chilling character beat for a villain or for showing how genocide gets bureaucratized and sanctified.
• XREF: Connects to the ADDENDUM piece on sacrifice/ritual violence: the scuttling proposal shows how elite violence against a minority was framed as necessary state hygiene, echoing the moral-panics framing from the immodesty piece.
• CANDY: A ‘great theologian and man of religion’ advocated casting all Moriscos adrift in unrigged boats to drown — and got a straight-faced defense from a later historian who joked the boats would sink before reaching Africa.