Papal pressure at Trent helped trigger harsh Morisco conversion measures

Evidence

By the late 1560s, then, Granada, both city and kingdom, were again smoldering hotbeds of discontent. General conflagration came as a consequence of new measures implemented at the local level by the lawyers of both the Chanciller´ıa and the Inquisition. The aim of the administrators was to turn the nominal converts at last into true and observant Christians. Pressure in favor of taking more energetic measures to extirpate Islam had originated in the Church at the highest level. There is a report of conversation between Pope Pius IV and Archbishop Guerrero that the latter took care to pass on to the king: In 1560 as the sessions of the Council of Trent were being drawn to a temporary close the archbishop had gone to see the pope to take his leave, and the pontiff had been insistent that a solution must be found to the Morisco problem. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 989

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Tridentine rigor theme in Western church history, and to any reading on how council canons drove state persecution policies.