Pre-publication version - available in Journal of Family History, vol. 42, issue 3 (2017) pp. 250-270 The Ties that Bind: Intermarriage between Moriscos and Old Christians in Early Modern Spain, 1526-1614 Max Deardorff “It is well-known that Aragon, Valencia, and the greater part of Castile, both New and Old, are filled with the descendants of Muslims, who are commonly referred to as Moriscos. These communities can be divided between converts in Castile and Aragon, [on the one hand] and the Moriscos of Granada and Valencia [, on the other]. These four groups differ significantly between themselves…but because they recognize their common descent from Muslims, they love each other…and when they cannot find someone from their own nación to marry, they prefer to marry with anyone from one of the other three groups rather than an Old Christian. In that they are a united community.” 1 In 1606, as he drafted an informational relación for the Pope, the Jesuit Ignacio de Las Casas reflected on the state of the integration of Moriscos into Spanish Christian society. It was a topic with which he—as a Granadino native born into a convert family—was exceedingly familiar. 2 The tone of the relación was not merely informative, but also geared toward countenancing policy changes. Amongst a host of other recommendations, most notably a heavier investment in Arabic-language catechesis, Las Casas advised the Pope to persuade the Spanish Crown to offer special privileges to Moriscos who married into Old Christian society. Such a measure, he deemed, was absolutely necessary to encourage the process of integration that, though initiated more than a century before with the first wave of forced baptisms and emigration, had crept along at a disappointingly slow pace. Beginning in the 1520s, and increasingly throughout the decades, the Crown encouraged ecclesiastical authorities to devise new policy for encouraging the integration of the formerly-Muslim New Convert community. 3 Bishops, statesmen, and theologians met in a multitude of congregations and juntas throughout the sixteenth century, and especially in the years following the completion of the Council of Trent (1563). Ignacio de Las Casas’ proposals fit in near the end of this policy tradition. Only three years after Las Casas drafted his relación, the Spanish Crown would begin a 1 This quote is taken directly from a 236-folio memorial written by the Jesuit Ignacio de las Casas to the Pope, edited and transcribed in: Youssef El Alaoui, Jésuites, Morisques et Indiens: étude comparative des méthodes d'évangélisation de la Compagnie de Jésus d'après les traités de José de Acosta (1588) et d'Ignacio de las Casas (1605 - 1607) (Paris: Champion, 2006), 514. 2 For background on his life, see El Alaoui, Jesuites, Morisques,et Indiens; Francisco de Borja Medina, "La Compañía Jesús y la minoría morisca (1545-1614) " Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 57 (1988): 3-136. 3 See Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, "La política de Carlos V hacia los moriscos granadinos," in Carlos V y la quiebra del humanismo político en Europa (1530-1558), ed. José Martínez Millán (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la conmemoración de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2001), 415-46.