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Book by Mayte Green-Mercado

Early Modern Prophecies in Translational, National and Regional Contexts, 2021

In recent decades, ideas of connectivity, exchange, and a productive and at times conflictive int... more In recent decades, ideas of connectivity, exchange, and a productive and at times conflictive interface between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, have dominated the scholarship on the early modern Mediterranean. One of the phenomena that best embodies these themes is apocalyptic thought and practice. In a recent article, Ottoman historian Cornell Fleischer proposed the idea of a discrete Mediterranean apocalyptic phenomenon in the early modern period.1 Tracing the entangled nature of Muslim and Christian apocalyptic beliefs that circulated after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Fleischer argued that in the Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry for recognition as legitimate claimants to the world empire of the last age of history, prophecies became central to contemporary understandings of history and politics. Fleischer's analysis centred primarily on the mid-fifteenth to the first three decades of the sixteenth century, after which he sees the apocalyptic phenomenon wane (at least in the Ottoman context). Drawing from Fleischer's proposition, this introduction delineates the main contours of apocalyptic beliefs and practices in the different geographic, cultural, and political areas around the early modern Mediterranean basin: a shared and competing idea of universal empire to which all Mediterranean powers aspired, the conversion of infidels before the End Times, messianism as a political ideal in the figure of a Hidden King, among others, to argue for a veritable Mediterranean apocalyptic phenomenon between the fifteenth (and one could even extend it as far back as the thirteenth century) and the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. While it is impossible to cover all aspects of early modern apocalypticism in this essay, this introduction aims to provide a general Mediterranean context in which the apocalyptic texts presented in this volume are to be located.

In Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado traces the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim... more In Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado traces the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts known as jofores through formal and informal networks of merchants, diplomats, and other channels of diffusion among Muslims and Christians across the Mediterranean from Constantinople and Venice to Morisco towns in eastern Spain. The movement of these prophecies from the eastern to the western edges of the Mediterranean illuminates strategies of Morisco cultural and political resistance, reconstructing both productive and oppositional interactions and exchanges between Muslims and Christians in the early modern Mediterranean.

Papers by Mayte Green-Mercado

Visions of Deliverance. Moriscos and the Politics of Prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 2022

Christian Visionary or Muslim Prophet?

Visions of Deliverance

This chapter analyzes the relationship between prophecy and the delineation of the contours of Mo... more This chapter analyzes the relationship between prophecy and the delineation of the contours of Morisco identity after the forced conversion of Muslims in the Kingdom of Castile that began as a result of the rebellion of Granada in 1499. The uprising was sparked by the intervention of the archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros. The arrival of the archbishop in Granada in the summer of 1499 quickly saw the forced conversion of “elches,” former Christian converts to Islam. This had taken place in contravention of the Granada Capitulations that regulated the rendition of the Muslim Naṣrid Kingdom to Ferdinand and Isabella after its final conquest on January 2, 1492. The conversion of “elches” was met with the resistance of the Muslim populations in the city of Granada, which then extended to the countryside.

A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance, 2018

This introduction delineates the contours of early modern apocalyptic thought and practice among ... more This introduction delineates the contours of early modern apocalyptic thought and practice among Christians, Muslims, and Jews by discussing specific themes explored in the five articles included in this special issue. It also situates the articles in the expansive scholarship on apocalypticism, highlighting the contribution of this collection of essays to the field. Paying close attention to and problematizing the importance of the terminology that expressed early modern notions of sacred history and political authority—in a context of intense inter-confessional contact and conflict—this introduction calls for a contextual examination of apocalyptic thought and practice.

This article presents a case study of a rebellion conspiracy organized by a group of Moriscos—Spa... more This article presents a case study of a rebellion conspiracy organized by a group of Moriscos—Spanish Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism—in the early seventeenth century. In order to carry out their plans, these Moriscos sought assistance from the French king Henry IV (r. 1589-1610). Analyzing a Morisco letter remitted to Henry IV and multiple archival sources, this article argues that prophecy served as a diplomatic language through which Moriscos communicated with the most powerful Mediterranean rulers of their time. A 'connected histories' approach to the study of Morisco political activity underscores the ubiquity of prophecies and apocalyptic expectations in the social life and political culture of the early modern Mediterranean. As a language of diplomacy, apocalyptic discourse allowed for minor actors such as the Moriscos to engage in politics in a language that was deemed mutually intelligible, and thus capable of transcending confessional boundaries. Keywords Moriscos – Henry IV – Ottomans – prophecy – diplomacy – rebellion conspiracies – Mediterranean

Prophecies and apocalyptic prognostications circulated widely among the Moriscosforcedly baptized... more Prophecies and apocalyptic prognostications circulated widely among the Moriscosforcedly baptized Muslims in sixteenth-century Iberia. Messianism, however, is a phenomenon which had hitherto never been attested in traditional sources of Morisco history. This article studies the interrelated phenomena of apocalypticism and messianism among the Moriscos of the Crown of Aragon in the second half of the sixteenth century. Through a case study of a 1575 inquisitorial transcript, it analyzes an obscure messianic fĳigure named Abrahim Fatimí, who was accused of attempting to lead the kingdom to rebellion, casting himself as the expected deliverer of Morisco tradition, el moro Alfatimí. The discovery of this case sheds light on the political and social implications of apocalyptic and messianic ideas among Moriscos in the late sixteenth century.

Book Reviews by Mayte Green-Mercado

Conference by Mayte Green-Mercado