By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
J.M., a reader from Florissant, Mo., writes to stress the need for Catholic educators to give their students perspective on the distortion of Catholic Spain’s history, what has been called the “Black Legend.” Recent examples are the campaign to vilify the life of Fr. Junipero Serra and the impact of the Spanish missions in California. One cheap shot after another.
The historian Philip Wayne Powell in his 1985 book The Tree of Hate describes the Black Legend as “an image of Spain circulated through late sixteenth-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries.”
Spain’s Catholic identity was part of the image that was disparaged, everything from its role in the Inquisition to the treatment of indigenous people in Spanish colonies.
At first, it was 17th and 18th century Protestant British historians who led the effort to portray Spain in this way, a reflection of the many years of struggle between Spain and England. In more recent history, secular liberals have come to the fore, as witnessed by the aforementioned campaign to revise our image of Junipero Serra and the Spanish missionaries in California.
J.M. was prompted to write to us on this matter because of a column written by Thomas Sowell, cited in the July 28 issue of The Wanderer, about the damage done to Spain’s economic development by the vast fortunes in gold and silver that were brought into the country from its Latin American colonies. J.M. contends that Sowell’s column, though well-intended, may contribute to the perpetuation of the Black Legend.
Writes J.M., “The Black Legend about Spain was manufactured by Protestant England and the Netherlands because of their hatred of Catholicism and Spain’s magnificent role in defending the true faith.” He contends that Spain, “in the 16th and 17th centuries, from a God-centered viewpoint as well as a truly human one, stood head and shoulders above any of the European nations. In Spain there was sanity, moderation, and a balance scarcely to be found elsewhere. Why? Because it was solidly Catholic.”
What of the horrors of the Inquisition that we hear so much about? J.M. asks us to keep in mind that “Spain had suffered for seven and a half centuries (think of how long a period of time that is) under the Muslim yoke, which ended only with the reconquest of the country when the Muslims were driven out in 1492. Spain was trying through the Inquisition to restore itself as a Catholic people after those years of foreign control. The country was seeking to root out what we would call a ‘fifth column’ in modern times. The Spanish had a realistic fear that traitors remained living within their national borders.”
Were heretics executed during the Inquisition? They were. But J.M. asks us to keep the issue in perspective: “During the 16th century the Spanish Inquisition executed 182 heretics (fewer than two per year). In contrast, Protestant persecutions, mainly of Catholics in England, Ireland, and the Netherlands, together with the wars of religion, took tens of thousands of lives. It was also exclusively Protestants who executed many thousands of those deemed guilty of witchcraft. Queen Elizabeth’s famous ‘Sea Dogs,’ memorialized by Hollywood in the 1940s, were in reality ruthless pirates who preyed on Spanish shipping and plundered Spanish colonies, mostly in the New World, pillaging, killing, and enslaving.”
What of the gold and silver confiscated from Spain’s colonies? “Seeking gold was not the primary intent of Spain in its colonization,” J.M. continues. “Queen Isabel made that clear and her perception remained permanent. The first thing Spanish explorers did was to plant the cross on newly discovered lands, symbolizing Spain’s number one priority — conversion.”
J.M. agrees, “Yes, some conquistadores were cruel, but they were few, and, yes, gold and silver were extracted from New World mines, but much of it was needed in military campaigns defending Catholicism against Protestant encroachment and Ottoman Turk forays. We should not forget that Spain was almost the sole bastion in defending Catholic Europe.”
But is not the effort to convert indigenous peoples, as our children are told in many modern textbooks, a shameful thing, an ethnocentric display of disrespect for the cultures of Native Americans? J.M. does not buy that line:
“Take Mexico as an example. The Aztecs were a bloodthirsty Indian nation that terrorized neighboring tribes and engaged in massive human sacrifices. Shortly after Cortes and his conquistadores conquered the Aztecs, he established the first hospital for Indians in 1534, followed by schools for girls, orphanages, trade schools, and even in 1551 a university.”
We hear much in recent days of how Junipero Serra and the Spanish missionaries “forced” Native Americans to live in their missions, against their will and in disregard for their native cultures. Is that what was going on?
Not according to J.M.: “Spain sought to end Indian nomadic life and settle them into missions or pueblos (towns) with the intent of civilizing and evangelizing them and teaching them notions of self-government, work, dress, nourishment, family life, agriculture, cattle raising, manual schools, and handcrafts. And, of course, religious instruction, moral formation, and basic culture, especially music and even architecture.”
To underscore this point, J.M. cites the prominent, early 20th-century American historian Herbert Bolton, who wrote, “We must admit that the accomplishments of Spanish America was a force which made for the preservation of the Indians, as opposed to their destruction so characteristic of the Anglo-American frontier.” In J.M.’s words, “In simple terms, Spain gave far, far more to the Indians of the New World than what they took out.”
To underscore J.M.’s point, I offer a scenario for your consideration: What if, rather than pressuring Native Americans in California and Mexico to live in pueblos and to adapt to what the Spanish considered “civilized” ways, the Spanish had built prosperous towns and ranches for themselves in the New World, while at the same time insisting that the indigenous people remain out of sight in the hinterlands in the nomadic way of life central to their culture?
What do you think the modern critics who chastise missionaries such as Junipero Serra would be saying in that event? I would wager serious money that their analysis would focus on the comfortable lifestyles of the conquistadores — and how they refused to share it with the poverty-ridden Indian tribes roaming the countryside in search of game and berries.
In other words, the critics of the Spanish missionaries are not seeking to be accurate or fair, but to smear Spain and Catholics, with whatever storyline serves that purpose. We are witnessing revisionist history with a secular and left-wing bias, not a pursuit of the truth.
J.M. closes with the following: “What the Spanish missionaries achieved in the New World in uniting the various Indian tribes into a God-centered cohesive unit is one of the truly great accomplishments in the annals of history,” a far cry from the story being pushed by the forces that are seeking to remove all traces of Spain’s missionary presence from the public square in modern California.
“The Spanish considered the Indians as children of God. We Anglo-Americans didn’t.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, “Wallingford CT 06492.
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