The Ties That Bind

Abstract

This article examines the question of intermarriage between Moriscos and Old Christians in early modern Spain, largely through the analysis of more than two dozen applications made by members of mixed couples who sought to return to their homes in Granada after the conclusion of the devastating War of the Alpujarras (1568–1570). It argues that royal judges tasked with deciding the fate of the applications had already begun to develop the criteria that would govern the regulations on general expulsion (1609–1614) decades later and that these criteria were linked to specific considerations arising from the medieval legal history of Iberia.