The
Black Legend (
Spanish:
La Leyenda Negra) is a term coined by Julián Juderías in his 1914 book
La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica (
The Black Legend and Historical Truth), to describe the allegedly unfair and biased depiction of
Spain and
Spaniards as "cruel", "intolerant" and "fanatical" in anti-Spanish literature starting in the 16th century. The Black Legend propaganda is said to be influenced by national and religious rivalries as seen in works by early
Protestant historians and Anglo Saxon writers, describing the period of
Spanish imperialism in a deliberately negative way. Other examples of the Black Legend are said to be the
historical revision of the Inquisition, and in the villains and storylines of modern fiction and film.
The Black Legend and the nature of
Spanish colonization of the Americas including contributions to civilization in Spain's colonies have also been discussed by Spanish writers, from
Gongora's
Soledades until the
Generation of '98. Inside Spain, the Black Legend has also been used by regionalists of
non-Castilian regions of Spain as a political weapon against the central government or Spanish nationalism. Modern historians and some political parties have countered with the
White Legend, in an attempt to describe Spain's history in a more neutral and balanced way. The White Legend is sometimes mistakenly associated with Spanish
Nationalistic politics and with the regime of dictator
Francisco Franco.
Definition
The creator of the term, Julián Juderías, described it in 1914 in his book
La Leyenda Negra[1] as
| the environment created by the fantastic stories about our homeland that have seen the light of publicity in all countries, the grotesque descriptions that have always been made of the character of Spaniards as individuals and collectively, the denial or at least the systematic ignorance of all that is favorable and beautiful in the various manifestations of culture and art, the accusations that in every era have been flung against Spain.[2] | |
The second classic work on the topic is
Historia de la Leyenda Negra hispanoamericana (History of the Hispanoamerican Black Legend),
[3] by Rómulo D. Carbia. While Juderías dealt more with the beginnings of the legend in Europe, the Argentine Carbia concentrated on America. Thus, Carbia gave a broader definition of the concept:
| Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks. | |
After Juderías and Carbia, many other authors have defined and employed the concept.
Philip Wayne Powell, in his book
Tree of Hate, also defines the Black Legend:
| Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks. | |
One recent author, Fernández Álvarez, has defined a Black Legend more broadly:
| "the careful distortion of the history of a nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation, whose supremacy must be fought in every way possible.[4] | |
Elements of the Legend
Expulsion of the Jews and Muslims
The
expulsion of the Jews and Muslims in 1492 has often been quoted as an example of the Spaniards' religious
intolerance, but Jews had been
expelled from other European countries before (including
England in 1290.) Indeed recent scholarly research such as by Henry Kamen estimates that at least half converted and stayed and the numbers involved was a fraction of those traditionally claimed by Spain's enemies.
The Spanish Inquisition and religious intolerance, Catholic Spain
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 Holy 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.
Legally, the inquisition only had jurisdiction over Catholics - as pointed out by its apologists both at the time and later. It never claimed authority over openly practicing Jews or Muslims, and hence never persecuted them. The problem was and remains who should be defined as being "A Catholic" in this context.
In the view of the inquisition - and of the Church in general - any person who had been baptized was a Catholic, once and for all; the sacrament of baptism was irreversible, even if enacted under duress and the threat of death (as was the case, for example, with numerous baptisms during the anti-Jewish riots of
1391). A baptized person secretly practicing Jewish or Muslim customs was a Catholic culpable of a grave
heresy and punishable as such, under Spanish law as it stood at the time. Legally, the inquisition was indeed doing nothing more than the task entrusted to it, namely keeping guard over Catholics' orthodoxy and rooting out heresy; a secret Jew was just as culpable as a secret Protestant or a secret holder of any doctrine contrary to the Church's teachings, no more and no less.
However, from the Jewish point of view - as still expressed, for example, in the school curriculums of contemporary
Israel - such persons, the
Marranos, were Jews who had been forced to adopt the outward seeming of an alien faith, who courageously maintained secretly their true identity, and whose persecution by the inquisition was therefore a persecution of Jews by Christians. Muslims, too, hold a similar view of the matter.
Spanish colonization of the Americas
The European colonization of the Americas disrupted the civilization of
indigenous peoples of the Americas and used African
slaves for their plantations in the
New world. The Spanish conquered vast areas of North, Central and South America, and were initially also involved in the Atlantic slave trade. However, the aims and philosophy of Spanish colonization differed from those of her European contenders.
The Black Legend created anti-Spanish propaganda that ignored the differences between different types of colonization. One of Spain's primary endeavours of colonial expansion was to bring
Christianity to native peoples. Kings such as
Philip II dedicated large resources to sending missionaries and building churches in America and the
Philippines. This religious objective diferentiates Spanish colonial policy from those of the British and Dutch. As early as 1503
Spanish Queen Isabella I ordered that the American natives be treated with respect and dignity, according to her last will. This recognition of native rights also came about due to Spaniards' own critique of their colonial policies, particularly in the works of the
School of Salamanca and in the first-hand account of
Dominican friar
Bartolomé de las Casas. By contrast, British and Dutch colonial expansion almost solely sought trade and natural resources without this religious and moral component.
Important academic work was done by Spanish missionaries and friars on native cultures and languages, very rare in the colonies of other European powers. These works are considered valuable material by modern scholars, as they are the only first-hand sources on native American life and culture described by Europeans.
Another difference is that Spain and Portugal approved and even encouraged
interracial marriages in their colonies in order to support demographic growth, whereas British and Dutch authorities banned such marriages and considered them immoral. As a result, the native peoples in many British colonies were marginalized, expelled and even killed in large numbers. This explains the very small contemporary populations of
American Indians or
Australian aborigines, practically confined to reservations and often excluded from urban life. Despite more liberal attitudes toward intermarriage, the Spanish maintained a
caste system in their colonies which assigned legal rights based on a person's racial heritage, marginalizing the indigenous populations in their colonies as well.
Origin
From the 13th century, the
Crown of Aragon dominated
Naples and
Sicily, laying the foundations for a widespread resentment of
Aragonese dominance. The reputation of the
Aragonese pope,
Alexander VI Borgia, assumed an almost mythical
villainy. Countless legends and traditions attached to his name, and Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere dismissed him as, "Catalan,
marrano and
circumcised".
According to Sverker Arnoldsson, Italian criticisms of the Spanish derived not only from economic and political concerns, but also from prejudices over culture. Sverker Arnoldson also states that with the insults by the Italian pope, Paul IV, the Italians demonstrated an inferiority complex in the face of a victorious, conquering and powerful neighbor nation.
In his book
Tree of Hate, Philip Wayne Powell describes how the Black Legend developed in different European countries, such as Germany, France, Holland and England. This development is put down to the reaction against Spanish supremacy in Europe and the New World, which was influenced by the emergence of Protestantism - and even by the rise of Nordicism - in an effort to counter the power of the Spanish-dominated southern part of the continent.
Sources
16th century
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, requested 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 practicing 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.
Support for the Black Legend comes from published self-criticism from within Spain itself. As early as 1511, some Spaniards criticized the legitimacy of the
Spanish colonization of the Americas. In 1552, the
Dominican friar
Bartolomé de las Casas published his famous
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (
A Very Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies), a polemical account of the abuses that accompanied 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 cited 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, placing the original Arawak population at several hundred thousand. However, despite this disparity, Las Casas's accounts of widespread slaughter are not widely disputed.
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 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.
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.
In classical music,
Georges Bizet with
Carmen (1875) and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov with
Capriccio espagnol (1887) contributed to this theme.
The Spanish Civil War
While the
Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939 aroused among the international Left and Right strong waves of support and admiration for the corresponding sides in Spain, there was a considerable part of international public opinion that disapproved of both sides in the civil war. For them, the widespread atrocity stories emanating from Spain (and often exaggerated as part of both sides' war propaganda) were taken as a new proof of the supposed inherent brutality of all Spaniards, whatever their politics. This was reinforced by the statements of Spaniards who chose to sit out the war in exile, expressing disgust with both sides.
Other uses of the term Black Legend
The term
Black Legend has been also used outside Spain. It can be referred to any person/organization/situation/period in history presented (according to the user of the term) unfairly in popular culture. Examples can be
Richard III in England,
Cardinal Richelieu in France,
Golden Liberty in Poland and many others.
White Legend
The term "white legend" refers to attempts to describe Spain's history in a more neutral and gentler way, in response to the Black Legend propaganda. The "white legend" is not necessarily an element of counter-propaganda, but an attempt to correct the distortions and often manipulated versions of Spanish history. It is sometimes mistakenly associated with Nationalistic politics and with the regime of dictator Francisco Franco.
Proponents of the White Legend argue that the Spanish Inquisition was no worse than -- or even better than -- practices in other parts of Europe, such as the suppression of Catharism in France, the Inquisition compares favorably with French Wars of Religion, Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, and 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 Spanish command. They explain that Belgian, Italian or German rampages were enlarged upon and attributed to Spanish soldiers in order to enhance the anti-Spanish Black Legend.
Henry Kamen argues that Spain does not deserve blame for all of the actions of the Spanish Empire. According to his book, the Spanish Empire was a multinational enterprise, incorporating armaments from Milan, Genoese and German bankers, foreign sailors, German and Italian soldiers, Native American allies, and English and Chinese merchants.
More neutral versions of history including the "white legend" argue that the conquest of the Americas was not as negative as it is sometimes intentionally portrayed. The White Legend emphasizes that Cortés's army consisted largely of Native American enemies of the Aztec Empire, and credits accounts of Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism. Some historians claim that the demographics of much of Latin America today contradict claims that Spain destroyed or suppresses native populations and cultures. Furthermore, the demographic collapse which occurred in the Americas upon the conquest was mainly due to diseases imported from Europe which would have been transmitted even if the English or French, rather than the Spaniards, had been the first to arrive into the Americas.
The White Legend also emphasizes the role of other European nations in the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. 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.
Critics of The White Legend counter that it downplays the Spanish role as purchasers and users of slaves in the Americas in the
Atlantic slave trade, the treatment of
Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the taking of resources from
New Spain during the period known as the
Spanish Golden Age. They also point out that much of the treatment of indigenous peoples and the disruption of their culture was documented by
Hernan Cortez's and
Francisco Pizzaro's own men, who had no reason to soil the reputation of the Spanish empire by creating false charges of cruelty. Some Conquistadores were likely to exaggerate their accounts of barbaric rituals performed by the indigenous people in order to justify their actions.
[5]
See also
Notes
1.
^ Juderías, Julián,
La Leyenda Negra (2003; 1st Edition of 1914) ISBN 84-9718-225-1
2.
^ "el ambiente creado por los relatos fantásticos que acerca de nuestra patria han visto la luz pública en todos los países, las descripciones grotescas que se han hecho siempre del carácter de los españoles como individuos y colectividad, la negación o por lo menos la ignorancia sistemática de cuanto es favorable y hermoso en las diversas manifestaciones de la cultura y del arte, las acusaciones que en todo tiempo se han lanzado sobre España..."
3.
^ Carbia, Rómulo D.,
Historia de la leyenda negra hispano-americana (2004; 1st Ed. 1943) ISBN 84-95379-89-9
4.
^ La Leyenda Negra (1997) by Alfredo Alvar; p. 5 «
...cuidadosa distorsión de la historia de un pueblo, realizada por sus enemigos, para mejor combatirle. Y una distorsión lo más monstruosa posible, a fin de lograr el objetivo marcado: la descalificación moral de ese pueblo, cuya supremacía hay que combatir por todos los mediossine die''.»
5.
^ [2]
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.
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