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Abstract
This dissertation examines Spanish treatment of subject Muslims (Moriscos) as a model for the assimilation and acculturation of Amerindians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It gives particular emphasis to formal, institutional roles of the government and Church in formulating and executing assimilative policies in the conquered Kingdom of Granada and in the New World (in particular, the Caribbean region, Mexico, and Peru). Thus I examine and compare the role that Spanish law played in prohibiting both Moriscos and Amerindians from speaking their native languages, wearing local dress, worshiping their deities, practicing indigenous medicine, or otherwise maintaining their social and cultural identities. With regard to the Church, I examine the role that ecclesiastical authorities in Granada, Valencia, and Aragon, as well as in Mexico, Peru, and other areas of the New World, played in the Christianization of Moriscos and Amerindians respectively.
Inasmuch as the emphasis here is on institutionalized pressure for assimilation, I examine catechisms, books of Christian doctrine, confessional manuals, spiritual guides, prayers books, and other books produced in Spain for the Christianization of Moriscos and subsequently used in the evangelization of Amerindians.
The Spanish employed parallel institutions to enforce adherence to religious norms and punish apostasy. I examine cases of apostasy brought against Moriscos in the Tribunal of the Inquisition in the decade before their expulsion (the only period in which substantial cases against Moriscos were heard) and compare the Tribunal's procedures to those of a parallel New World institution, the Office of the Provisor of Natives.
I conclude that, with respect to formal pressures for assimilation of religious minorities, institutionalized in civil law and ecclesiastical policy, the model devised for assimilation and acculturation of Moriscos was substantially transferred to Spanish America and applied to Amerindians.
