Black Legend

For other uses, see Black Legend (disambiguation).

The Black Legend (Spanish: La Leyenda Negra) is the depiction of Spain and Spaniards as bloodthirsty and cruel, intolerant, greedy and fanatical. The term was coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica (The Black Legend and Historical Truth). The Black Legend is evident in works by early Protestant historians describing the period of dominant Spanish imperialism; many also see its influences, including the Inquisition myth, in the villains and storylines of modern fiction and film.

The nature of Spain and its policies at home and abroad has also been a cause of contention amongst Spaniards themselves, from Gongora's Soledades until the Generation of '98. Traditionally, the Black Legend has been used by the left and the nationalists of non-Castilian regions as a political weapon against the central government or Spanish nationalism, which the conservative parties have countered with the White Legend. To avoid causing offense, the Seville Expo '92 (during a PSOE Government) celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America as the beginning of the Age of Discovery, and not of colonization or conquest.

Elements of the Legend

Expulsion of the Jews and Muslims

The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 has often been quoted as an example of the Spaniards' religious intolerance. However, 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 can be explained by the fact that Spain had the largest Jewish community. ^[1]

The Spanish Inquisition and religious intolerance, Catholic Spain

See also: Inquisition and Spanish Inquisition.

The Inquisition has always been one of the main parts of the Black Legend. Its incorporation into the legend dates from the 16th century, when it was first criticised by, amongst others, two Protestant authors: the Englishman John Foxe, a polemicist 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.

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. 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

Main article: European colonization of the Americas

In general, the European colonization of the Americas was a disaster for the indigenous peoples of the Americas and for the Africans trafficked in the Atlantic slave trade. The Spanish, as early colonizers, were involved in all aspects of the conquest and slave trade. Propagandists for their British and Dutch rivals emphasized the differences between approaches the northern countries' preference for settler colonialism and the more military Spanish colonialism, although there is little reason to believe that either was any better for the natives or plantation slaves. In this, they were aided somewhat by being able to cite Spaniards' own critiques of colonialism colonial policies, particularly the works of the School of Salamanca and the dramatic, probably exaggerated, first-hand account of Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas.

Origin

From the 13th century, the Crown of Aragon dominated Naples and Sicily, laying the grounds for a hatred of Catalans. The Valencian pope Alexander VI Borgia became an almost mythical villain, and countless legends and traditions attached to his name. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere called Valencian Pope Alexander VI "Catalan, marrano and circumcised". According to Sverker Arnoldsson, the Italians' criticisms of the Spaniards were cultural and, ironically, 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 (a time of great Protestant-Catholic strife) 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 Englishman John Foxe, author of the 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 use 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 friar Bartolomé de las Casas published his famous Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies), a polemical account of the abuses that accompanied of the colonization of New Spain, and especially the island of Hispaniola (now home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti). In the section regarding Hispaniola, Las Casas compares the indigenous Arawaks to tame ewes and writes that when he arrived in 1508, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it." [1]The work of Las Casas was first referenced in English with the 1583 publication 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. Many scholars agree that Las Casas's population figures are exaggerated.

The Duke of Alba's actions in the United Provinces contributed to the Black Legend. Sent in August 1567 to stamp out heresy and political unrest in a part of Europe where printing presses were a constant source of heterodox opinion, 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. Pérez fled to England, where he published attacks upon the Spanish monarchy under the title Relaciones (1594).

These books were extensively used by the Dutch during their fight for independence from Spain, and taken up by the 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

Other Roman Catholic nations, such as Portugal, have not been subjected to Black Legend-type treatment to the extent that the Spanish have been. This is so, despite the fact that the Inquisition was also active in Portugal, that Portuguese Jews were also expelled, that slavery was more important in the Portuguese colonies than in the Spanish colonies (see Atlantic slave trade), and that a number of explorers and rulers who used violent means, such as Afonso de Albuquerque and Mem de Sá, served under the Portuguese flag. 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. Another reason for this could be the different scale of the events (and countries) in question.

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 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 underdevelopment, Gypsies, ignorance, machismo, matadores, Moors, passion, political chaos, poverty and fanatical religiosity. From this literature, the figure of the Latin lover still survives. This vision had been introduced earlier by Polish Jan Potocki.

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!, 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.

Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene has a strong Black Legend component in Book Five. Arthur and Artegall's joint victory over the cruel Souldan and his forces in Canto VIII can be seen as an allegorical recreation of the English defeat of the Spaniards at the time of the Spanish Armada.

White "Legend"

While the term "legend" is a misnomer since the components of this "legend" consist of facts of history placed into historical context, the term white "legend" has gained popularity in many circles, especially in Spain and hispanic nations. For evidence of the White "Legend" in the history of Spain one need look no further than the Nationalistic regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

Proponents of the White "Legend" explain 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 Moorish domination, and comparing the Inquisition favorably with French Wars of Religion, Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland or the witch hunts in many Protestant countries.

Similarly, these advocates tend to explain the "The Spanish Fury" or the sack of Rome, emphasizing that troops of Habsburg Spain were composed by many different European nationalities and ethnicities under “fragile” Spanish command. They charge that Belgian, Italian or German rampages were enlarged upon and attributed to Spanish soldiers in order to enhance the anti-Spanish Black Legend.

In an opposite sense, Henry Kamen used this information to place the Spanish Empire in what some view as a more universal context. According to his book, the Spanish Empire was a multiethnic enterprise, with a testimonial and leading role of the Spaniards and including:

1. Armaments from Milan.
2. Genoese and German bankers, such as the Fuggers.
3. Genoese (Andrea Doria), Portuguese (Magallanes, Quirós, Torres) and Venetian sailors.
4. German and Italian soldiers, e.g. Ambrosio Spinola.
5. English (in America and Triangular Trade) and Chinese (in the Philippines) merchants, and
6. Native American allies (as in the Conquest of Aztec and Inca Empire)

The White "Legend" also places into perspective 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 enemies (and disgruntled vassals) of the Aztec Empire and credits accounts of Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism. As for Spain's oft cited destruction and suppression of populations and cultures, supporters of the White "Legend" claim that the demographics of much of Latin America today favor Spain's claims to benevolence.

Some Amerindian languages have reached rank of co-official tongues in Latin American countries (Quechua and Aymará in both Peru and Bolivia and Guaraní in Paraguay). This however did not occur until the end of Spanish colonial rule.

The White "Legend" also places into perspective 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
• New Laws
• Philip II of Spain
• Population history of American indigenous peoples
• Slavery
• Spanish Armada
• Spanish colonization of the Americas
• Spanish culture
• Spanish Empire
• Spanish Inquisition
• The Inquisition myth
• Valladolid debate

Notes

1. ^ 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.

References

• Kamen, Henry, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. New York: HarperCollins. 2003. ISBN 0-06-093264-3
• Powell, Philip Wayne, Tree Of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations With The Hispanic World. Basic Books, New York, 1971, ISBN 0-465-08750-7.
• Maltby, William S., The Black Legend in England. Duke University Press, Durham, 1971, ISBN 0-8223-0250-0.
• Julian Lock, How Many Tercios Has the Pope?' The Spanish War and the Sublimation of Elizabethan Anti-Popery, History, 81, 1996.
• M. G. Sanchez, Anti-Spanish Sentiment in English Literary and Political Writing, 1553-1603 (Phd Diss; University of Leeds, 2004)
• Frank Ardolino, Apocalypse and Armada in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Studies, 1995).
• Sverker Arnoldsson, 'La Leyenda Negra: Estudios Sobre Sus Orígines,' Göteborgs Universitets Årsskrift, 66:3, 1960
• Eric Griffin, 'Ethos to Ethnos: Hispanizing 'the Spaniard' in the Old World and the New,' The New Centennial Review, 2:1, 2002.
• Andrew Hadfield, 'Late Elizabethan Protestantism, Colonialism and the Fear of the Apocalypse,' Reformation, 3, 1998.

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

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