Archbishop Castro pursued gradual assimilation of Moriscos through intermarriage

Evidence

As for the converts themselves, there were mixed motives present too. Many Moriscos were attached to aspects of the material and intellectual culture of the Christian majority. What they wanted was to participate in society on an equal footing. But others clung resolutely to their distinctive heritage. What they wanted was to be left alone. Contradictory processes were at work. With the passage of time, the minority culture, subjected as it was to increasing persecution, became weaker, but then as time passed, many Moriscos, with understandable human stubbornness, became ever more determined to resist the erosion of their traditions. Over the time span that we are studying, Islam did not ever show signs of quietly fading away. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 533 (#complicates, via linked claim)

A remarkable, though little-known, fact is that assimilation as a program led much more frequently to conversion than to mixed marriage. Unfortunately statistics cover up rather than reveal this fact because they consider all unions between converted and nonconverted Jewish partners to be mixed marriages. We know, however, that there were quite a number of families in Germany who had been baptized for generations and yet remained purely Jewish. That the converted Jew only rarely left his family and even more rarely left his Jewish surroundings altogether, accounts for this. The Jewish family, at any rate, proved to be a more conserving force than Jewish religion. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2045 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early Jesuits recruited Morisco converts before hardening into Old Christian exclusivism; Baptized Moriscos remained culturally and religiously attached to Islam; A hereditary noble family sustained gradualist conversion policy in Granada — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 990 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Persecution strengthened rather than extinguished Morisco cultural resistance #complicates (0.80) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 533
• Conversion to Christianity exceeded mixed marriage as assimilation’s dominant path. #complicates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2045
• Baptized Moriscos remained culturally and religiously attached to Islam #complicates (0.78)