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Black legend
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The anti-Spanish '''Black Legend''' (in
Spanish language Spanish, '''''leyenda negra''''') is the
depiction of
Spain and
Spaniards as bloodthirsty and cruel, greedy and fanatical. The term was coined by
Julián JuderÃas in his
1914 book ''La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica'' (''The Black Legend and Historical Truth'').
Main topics
Expulsion of the Jews and Muslims
The
History of the Jews in Spain expulsion of the Jews in 1492 has often been quoted as an example of the Spaniards' religious intolerance. However,
Anti-semitism#The expulsions from England, France, Germany, and Spain many other expulsions took place in Europe during the Middle Ages. Though the expulsion from Spain of at least 200,000 Jews was by far the largest and most significant, this was due to the fact that Spain had the largest Jewish community.
[[http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/8815/chrono.html A Brief Chronology of anti-semitism] (accessed 23 Jan 2006), which in turn cites ''Anti-Semitism'' (1974) Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem ISBN 0-7065-1327-4.]
{|border="1" cellspacing="0"
!Country
!Date of expulsion
!Comment
|-----
|
France
|
1182
|Expulsion and confiscation of goods ordered by King
Philip II of France
|-----
|
England
|
1290
|Ordered by
Edward I of England, first great expulsion of the Middle Ages
|-----
|
France
|
1306,
1321/
1322 y
1394
|
Philip IV of France ordered the first one of these
|-----
|
Austria
|
1421
|The expulsion took place after a persecution in which 270 Jews were burned, goods were confiscated and children were subjected to forced conversion.
|-----
|
Castile and
Crown of Aragon
|
1492
|Ordered by the
Catholic Monarchs
|-----
|
Sicily
|
1492
|Ordered by
Ferdinand II of Aragon
|-----
|
Lithuania
|
1495
|
|-----
|
Portugal
|
1496/
1497
|Ordered by the king
Manuel I of Portugal Manuel I, under pressure of the Spanish Crown.
|-----
|
Brandenburg (
Germany)
|
1510
|
|-----
|
Tunisia
|
1535
|
|-----
|
Kingdom of Naples
|
1541
|
|-----
|
Genoa
|
1550 and
1567
|
|-----
|
Bavaria
|
1554
|
|-----
|
Papal States
|
1569/
1593
|
|}
The Spanish Inquisition and religious intolerance, Catholic Spain
:''See also:
Inquisition Inquisition and
Spanish inquisition.''
The
inquisition has always been one of the main parts of the '''Black Legend'''. Its origin dates from the
16th century, when it was first criticised by, amongst others, two Protestant authors: the Englishman
John Foxe, who published the ''Book of Martyrs'' in
1554, and the Spaniard
Reginaldo González de Montes, author of ''Exposición de algunas mañas de la Santa Inquisición Española'' (''Exposition of some methods of the Spanish Inquisition'') (
1567).
The '''legend''' depicts the
Spanish Inquisition as cruel and bloodthirsty. The image of moats, chains, cries and rooms of torture is inseparably attached to it. Thousands of Jews, Muslims,
protestants and anyone who had fallen from favour would then have been cruelly tortured and finally murdered in the dungeons of a Catholic institution by
Dominican friars.
Nevertheless, the historical context shows that the Inquisition already existed in many European countries before it was established in Spain in
1480. It appeared in
1184, and torture was first used in
1252. That was a usual method in the medieval legal system, but its application was much more violent in the secular justice
[3].
In fact, all the methods of torture resulting in bloodshed, mutilation or death were forbidden, and a doctor must be present. In contrast to most
witch-hunts and other medieval processes, the accused had the right to a lawyer and a trial. However, like in many medieval -and non-medieval- institutions, rules were not always followed to the letter, and it has come to public knowledge that the Pope was obliged to reproach the inquisitors several times for being "excessively zealous".
European colonization of the Americas
Origin
From the
13th century, the Crown of
Aragon (then a kingdom including
Catalonia, with
Barcelona as the kingdom's leading city) dominated
Naples and
Sicily, laying the grounds for a hatred of
Catalonia Catalans. The
Valencian pope
Pope Alexander VI Alexander VI became an almost mythical
villain, and countless legends and traditions attached to his name. Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere called Pope Alexander VI "Catalan,
marrano and
circumcision circumcised". According to
Sverker Arnoldsson, the Italians' criticisms of the Spaniards were cultural and racial, not only economic and political: "age-long mixture of Spanish with Oriental and African elements, plus the
Jewish and
Islamic influence upon Spanish culture; this motivated the view of the Spaniards as a people of inferior race and doubtful orthodoxy."
The classic sources
Exaggerated and lurid accounts of the Roman Catholic
Inquisition in Spain were, in the
16th century and still today, principal sources for the anti-Spanish Black Legend. The Inquisition had existed in many European countries before it came to Spain. It had existed in the Kingdom of Aragon for some two centuries but not in Castile until the year 1480 when the Catholic Monarchs,
Isabel I of Castile and
Ferdinand II of Aragon, approved its establishment throughout Spain with the
converso and Dominican friar,
Tomás de Torquemada, as its first Inquisitor General, primarily to investigate and punish Judaizing ''
conversos'', Jews who had converted to
Roman Catholicism but had continued practising their religion in secret.
Some of the strongest and earliest support for the Legend came from two Protestants: the
England Englishman John Foxe, author of the ''
Foxe's Book of Martyrs Book of Martyrs'' (1554), and the Spaniard
Reginaldo González de Montes, author of the ''
Exposición de algunas mañas de la Santa Inquisición Española'' (''Exposition of some vices of the Spanish Inquisition'', 1567). Another early source from which the Black Legend drew support was
Girolamo Benzoni's ''Historia nuovo'' (''New History''), first published in
Venice in 1565.
Even today major support for the Black Legend comes from the misuse by Spain's enemies of published self-criticism generated from within Spain itself. As early as
1511, some Spaniards criticized the legitimacy of the
Spanish colonization of the Americas. Then in
1552, the
Dominican Order Dominican friar
Bartolomé de las Casas published his famous ''BrevÃsima relación de la destrucción de las Indias'' (''
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies''), a polemical account of the abuses that accompanied the colonization of the island of
Hispaniola (now home to the
Dominican Republic and
Haiti), in which he compares the natives with tame ewes and blames Spaniards for the "murder" of 30,000 to 50,000
Arawaks on the island of Hispaniola. The work of Las Casas was first referred to in English, with the publication in 1583 of ''The Spanish Colonie, or Brief Chronicle of the Actes and Gestes of the Spaniards in the West Indies'', at a time when England and Spain were preparing for war in the Netherlands.
The
Fernando Ã?lvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva Duke of Alba's actions in the
United Provinces (Low Countries) United Provinces contributed to the Black Legend. Sent to a part of Europe where printing presses were a constant source of heterodox opinion to stamp out heresy and political unrest in August
1567, one of Alba's first acts was to gain control of the book industry. In a single year, several printers were banished and at least one was executed. Book sellers and printers were raided in the search for
banned books, many more of which were added to the ''
Index librorum prohibitorum''. In
1576 Spanish troops attacked and pillaged
Antwerp, over three terrible days that came to be known as "
The Spanish Fury". The soldiers rampaged through the city, killing and looting; they demanded money from citizens and burned the homes of those who refused to (or could not) pay.
Plantin's printing establishment was threatented with destruction three times but was saved each time when a ransom was paid. Antwerp was economically devastated by the attack, and Plantin's business suffered. Such facts similar to German rampages in the
sack of Rome (
1527) were enlarged upon to enhance the Black Legend.
Other critics of Spain included
Antonio Pérez, the fallen secretary of King
Philip II of Spain Philip II of Spain. Pérez fled to England, where he published attacks upon the
Habsburg#Kings_of_Spain_of_the_House_of_Habsburg Spanish monarchy under the title ''Relaciones'' (1594).
These books were extensively used by the Dutch during their
Dutch Independence War fight for independence from Spain, and taken up by the
England English to justify their piracy and wars against the Spanish. Foxe's book was among Sir
Francis Drake's favourites; Drake himself was and is regarded by the Spaniards as a cruel and bloodthirsty pirate. The two northern nations were not only emerging as Spain's rivals for worldwide colonialism, but were also strongholds of
Protestantism while Spain was the most powerful
Roman Catholic country of the period.
Comparison with Portugal
Most telling is that other similar Roman Catholic nations, such as
Portugal, have never been subjected to Black Legend type treatment to the extent that the Spanish have been.
The Inquisition was also active in Portugal, the Portuguese Jews were also expelled, slavery was more important in the Portuguese colonies than in the Spanish colonies, there were violent conquerors like
Afonso de Albuquerque and brutal governors like
Mem de Sá. Perhaps the long strategic alliance between
England and Portugal explains why these events and practices were not seen through the same lens as similar matters in Spain.
The Enlightenment
Guillaume Thomas François Raynal published in
1770 his most important work, ''L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes'' (''The philosophical and political history of the establishments and commerce of Europeans in the two Indies'', that is to say the
East Indies and the
West Indies).
Also during
the Enlightenment, the imprisonment and death of Don Carlos, mentioned above, inspired the blank verse play ''Don Carlos, Infant v. Spanien'' (''Don Carlos, Prince of Spain'', 1787), by
Friedrich Schiller, and later the opera ''
Don Carlos'' by
Giuseppe Verdi.
Romantic travellers
In the
19th Century, many writers, such as
Washington Irving,
Prosper Mérimée,
George Sand, and
Theophile Gautier, invented a mythical
Andalusia. In their writings, Spain is converted into the Orient of the Western World (''Africa begins in the
Pyrenees''), an exotic country full of
brigands, economic delays,
Gitano gypsies,
ignorance,
machismo,
matadores,
Moors,
passion (emotion) passion, political chaos, poverty and fanatical religiosity. From this literature, the figure of the
Latin lover still survives.
In classical music,
Georges Bizet with
Carmen (1875) and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov with
Capriccio espagnol (1887) contributed to this theme.
''Westward Ho!''
Charles Kingsley's popular historical romance of
1855, ''
Westward Ho! (book) Westward Ho!'', draws its inspiration from the black legend: the buccaneering hero sets out from Elizabethan England to defeat the Spanish at sea and on land; the Spanish characters are vain, arrogant and cruel; the Irish too are treated with hostility. Many articles in the early-20th century
Dictionary of National Biography (heavily drawn upon by academic historians in Britain and America) cite ''Westward Ho!'' as a factual source when dealing with Elizabethan figures.
Modern historiography
Marcel Bataillon (1895-1977) revealed the extent of
Erasmus's influence in Spain in ''Erasme et l'Espagne'' (1937). Erasmus was a
humanism humanist, and the popularity of his ideas in Spain goes against the stereotype of the country as being a monolith of fanatical Catholicism.
Black Legend in the United States of America
In his book ''Tree of Hate'',
Philip Wayne Powell wrote that the
United States United States of America inherited the Black Legend from the
British colonization of the Americas. These Anglo-Saxon prejudices toward Spaniards were transferred to
Mexico Mexicans in the
19th century.
The American historian
William S. Maltby says in his book ''The Black Legend in England'' (1982): "As many other Americans, I had absorbed the anti-Hispanism from movies and folkloric literature much before this prejudice was contrasted from a different point of view in the works of competent historians, what was a big surprise for me; When I succeeded to know the work of the
Hispanists, my curiosity had no limits. The Hispanists have always blamed the enemies of Spain for the
Wiktionary:tergiversate tergiversation [deliberate obscuring] of the historic facts and the current worldwide prejudice against Spain."
Some people feel that the United States mass media and government have propagated the legend to justify United States actions against Spain or
Latin American countries, as in the
Mexican-American War, the
Spanish-American War or the colonization of the
Philippines after the
Philippine-American War. They allege that there exists clear evidence of the Black Legend in modern literature, movies, and web sites, such as in
Dan Brown’s ''
The Da Vinci Code'' and
Steven Spielberg's ''
Amistad (1997 movie) Amistad''. On the other side, the pirates of the
Caribbean who used to attack defenseless Spanish merchant ships are turned into romantic and idealistic figures.
White Legend
In contrast to the '''Black Legend''' is the so-called '''White Legend''' (in Spanish, ''"leyenda rosa"'', literally "rosy" legend). Advocates of the Black Legend postulate the existence of a White Legend comparable to the Black Legend in extension, influence and persistence in time. An easily refuted '''
straw man straw-man''' White Legend is then invoked as a rhetorical device in discussions concerning the Black Legend. A White Legend with reference to the history of Spain is argued to have only been prominent during certain limited time periods such as, for example, during the
Falange Falangist regime of Generalissimo
Francisco Franco.
Proponents of the White Legend tend to excuse the Spanish Inquisition, emphasizing that in form it merely copied institutions already in place in the rest of Europe (the suppression of
Catharism in France, Italy, etc.; the already existing Inquisitions elsewhere in Europe), citing the unique situation of Spain as a country recently under Muslim
Moors Moorish domination, and comparing the Inquisition favorably with
French Wars of Religion,
Oliver Cromwell's suppressions of
Cavaliers Royalists in
Ireland or the
witch hunts in many Protestant countries.
Similarly, these advocates tend to excuse the "The Spanish Fury" or the sack of Rome, emphasizing that troops of
Habsburg Spain were composed by many different European nationalities and ethnicities but under “fragile� Spanish command. They criticized the fact that Belgian, Italian or German rampages were enlarged upon and attributed to Spanish soldiers in order to enhance the anti-Hispanic Black Legend.
In an opposite sense,
Henry Kamen used this information to place the Spanish contribution to the Spanish Empire in its proper European context. According to his book, the Spanish Empire was a multiethnic enterprise, with a testimonial and leading role of the Spaniards and including:
#Armaments from
Milan.
#Genoese and German bankers, as the
Fuggers.
#Genoese (
Andrea Doria), Portuguese (Magallanes,
Pedro Fernández de Quirós Quirós,
Luis Váez de Torres Torres) and Venetian sailors.
#German and Italian soldiers, e.g.
Ambrosio Spinola.
#English (in America and
Triangular Trade) and Chinese (in the Philippines) merchants, and
#Native American allies (as in the Conquest of Aztec and Inca Empire)
Kamen is controversial and truistic - no European historical undertaking has ever been accomplished exclusively by a single nationality… or by excluding a single nationality. In that sense Kamen foresaw an early decline of European civilization pending the reintegration of Spain into its rightful place and leading role in European culture and diplomacy.
The White Legend is most notable in portraying Spain as benevolent during the conquest of the Americas. For example, in dealing with
Hernán Cortés's conquest of Mexico, the White Legend emphasizes that Cortés's army consisted largely of
Native American (Americas) Native American enemies (and disgruntled vassals) of the
Aztec Empire and credits accounts of
Aztec#Sacrifices Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Isabella of Castile (Spanish: ''Isabel I de Castilla'') and others involved in the Spanish conquest of the Americas were more than routinely concerned for the welfare of the natives. There is no English or French equivalent of
Bartolomé de las Casas, but this need not mean that the English and French were not engaging in comparable cruelties: it can reasonably be interpreted to mean simply that no one among them shared Bartolomé's concern and eloquent dissent. Spain was the first European colonial power to pass laws protecting the natives of its American colonies as early as
1542 with the
New Laws '''Laws of the Indies''' (Spanish: ''Leyes de Indias'').
As for destruction of populations and cultures, the White Legend claims that the demographics of much of Latin America today favor Spain's claims to benevolence. Today the descendants of the aboriginal Americans constitute the base of the population in many of the countries that comprised the Spanish Empire in America.
Some Amerindian languages have reached rank of co-official tongues in Latin American countries (
Quechua and
Aymará in both
Peru and
Bolivia and
Guaranà language Guaranà in
Paraguay). It is likely that Spanish priests actually spread Quechua beyond its original geographic area. This active spread of a native language by Europeans has no equivalent in the American countries which were originally colonized by other European powers, nor in
Australia. However,
New Zealand, where the
Maori language is a comparable case of co-official status, could be regarded as one exception to this.
The White Legend plays down the Spanish role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade by emphasizing the role of the English but also that of the Dutch, French, Belgian, Portuguese and other Europeans. The defenders of this point of view argue that Spain was prohibited by the Pope from taking part in such activities, together with the fact it would be in breach of the
Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Spanish and the Portuguese, assigning Africa to
Portugal.
See also
*
Anti-Catholicism
*
Bullfighting
*
Colonial mentality
*
Hispanic culture in the Philippines
*
Lucrezia Borgia
*
Philip II of Spain
*
Population history of American indigenous peoples
*
Slavery
*
Spanish Armada
*
Spanish colonization of the Americas
*
Spanish culture
*
Spanish Empire
*
Spanish Inquisition
*
Valladolid debate
Notes
References
*Powell, Philip Wayne, ''Tree Of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations With The Hispanic World''. Basic Books, New York, 1971, ISBN 0465087507.
*Maltby, William S., ''The Black Legend in England''. Duke University Press, Durham, 1971, ISBN 0822302500.
External links
-
The Shadow of the Black Legend in John Smith's ''Generall Historie of Virginia'', by Eric Griffin
-
''Myth and Reality: The Legacy of Spain in America'' by Jesus J. Chao
Category:Spanish Inquisition
Category:Anti-Catholicism
Category:Spanish-American War
de:Leyenda negra
es:Leyenda negra española
fr:Légende noire
sv:Spaniens svarta legend
see
Black Legend
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