among their subjects, and the influence of the Church, soon led to violations of the treaty. The first Christian archbishop of Granada, Talavera, made some progress in converting the people peacefully. But at the end of 1499 Cardinal Jimenez insisted on adopting coercive measures. A rebellion ensued, and the Mahommedans were suppressed. Want of power, or other obstacles, delayed the final extinction of tolerated Mahommedanism in all parts of Spain, but by 1525 it was everywhere suppressed. The last remains of it were crushed in Valencia, where the Mahommedans were furiously attacked by the Christian peasantry during the great agrarian revolt known as the Germania, 1520–1521. As they were dependent on the protection of the landlords, the Mahommedans were docile tenants, and their competition weighed heavily on the Christians. The same quality of industry remained to the Moriscos, and excited the envy of their Christian fellow countrymen. The feelings with which they were regarded are admirably shown by Cervantes (who shared them to the full) in his “Conversation of the Two Dogs.” In 1568 the government of Philip II. issued an edict, which ordered them to renounce all their Moorish ways of life and to give up their children to be educated by Christian priests. The result was a rebellion in Granada, which was put down with great difficulty. The Moriscos were expelled from Granada and scattered over other parts of Spain. Many fled to Africa, where the more spirited among them took to piracy at Algiers and other ports. They still maintained relations with their kinsfolk in Spain, and the whole coast suffered from their incursions. The Moriscos entered into relations with other enemies of Spain, and notably, with France. Henry IV. included a plan for supporting a Morisco rebellion in the great scheme for the destruction of the Spanish monarchy, which he was about to put into execution when he was murdered on the 14th of May 1610. These intrigues were known to the Spanish government and inspired it with terror. The expulsion of the whole body of Moriscos was decided on in 1608, and the edict was published on the 22nd of September 1609. The expulsion was carried out with great cruelty. The number driven out has been variously estimated at 120,000 or at 3,000,000. In some known cases the expelled Moriscos suffered martyrdom in Africa as Christians. A few were left in Spain as domestic slaves, and some contrived to return in secret. Cases of crypto-Mahommedanism continued to come before the Inquisition till the 18th century.
See The Moriscos of Spain: their Conversion and Expulsion, by H. C. Lea (London, 1901).
MORISON, JAMES AUGUSTUS COTTER (1832–1888), British author, was born in London on the 20th of April 1832. His
father, who had made a large fortune as the inventor and proprietor
of “Morison’s Pills,” settled in Paris till his death in 1840,
and Cotter Morison thus acquired not only an acquaintance with
the French language, but a profound sympathy with France and
French institutions. In later life he resided for some years in
Paris, where his house was a meeting-place for eminent men of
all shades of opinion. He was educated at Highgate grammar
school and Lincoln College, Oxford. Here he fell under the
influence of Mark Pattison, to whom his impressionable nature
perhaps owed a certain over-fastidiousness that characterized
his whole career. He also made the acquaintance of the leading
English Positivists, to whose opinions he became an ardent
convert. Yet he retained a strong sympathy with the Roman
Catholic religion, and at one time spent several weeks in a
Catholic monastery. One other great influence appears in the
admirable Life of St Bernard, which he published in 1863—that
of his friend Carlyle, to whom the work is dedicated, and with
whose style it is strongly coloured. Meanwhile he had been a
regular contributor, first to the Literary Gazette, edited by his
friend John Morley, and then to the Saturday Review at its most
brilliant epoch. In 1868 he published a pamphlet entitled Irish
Grievances shortly stated. In 1878 he published a volume on
Gibbon in the “Men of Letters” series, marked by sound judgment
and wide reading. This he followed up in 1882 with his
Macaulay in the same series. It exhibits, more clearly perhaps
than any other of Morison’s works, both his merits and his
defects. Macaulay’s bluff and strenuous character, his rhetorical
style, his unphilosophical conception of history, were entirely
out of harmony with Morison’s prepossessions. Yet in his
anxiety to do justice to his subject he steeped himself in Macaulay
till his style often recalls that which he is censuring. His
brief sketch, Mme de Maintenon: une étude (1885), and some
magazine articles, were the only fruits of his labours in French
history. Towards the close of his life he meditated a work
showing the application of Positivist principles to conduct.
Unfortunately, failing health compelled him to abandon the
second or constructive part: the first, a brilliant piece of writing
which attempts to show the ethical inadequacy of revealed
religion and is marked in parts by much bitterness, was published
in 1887 under the title of The Service of Man. He died in London
on the 26th of February 1888.
MORITZ, KARL PHILIPP (1757–1793), German author, was
born at Hameln on the Weser on the 15th of September 1757, of
humble parentage. After receiving a scanty schooling, he was
apprenticed to a hat-maker, but was later enabled to study
philosophy at Erfurt and Wittenberg and in 1777 became teacher
in a school at Dessau. While on a tour through Italy in 1786
he became acquainted with Goethe, who interested himself in
him. On his return, he was appointed professor of archaeology
and aesthetics, at the academy of art in Berlin, and in this city
he died on the 26th of June 1793. Of Moritz’s writings on
aesthetic, archaeological and philosophical subjects, the little
treatise Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (1788, reprinted
1888) and Die Götterlehre (1791; 10th ed., 1855, a reprint
in Reclam’s Universalbibliothek, 1878) are important; interesting,
too, are the accounts of his travels, Reisen eines Deutschen in
England (1788; repr. 1903; also trans. into Eng.) and Reisen
eines Deutschen in Italien (3 vols., 1792–1793). As an author he
is best known by his two novels, Anton Reiser (1785–1790; new
ed. by L. Geiger, 1886) and Andreas Hartknopf (1786), which
are mainly autobiographical.
See K. F. Klischnig, Erinnerungen aus den zehn letzten Lebensjahren meines Freundes Anton Reiser (1794); Varnhagen von Ense, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. iv. (1838); and M. Dessoir, Karl Philipp Moritz als Aesthetiker (1889).
MORLAIX, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement
in the department of Finistère, 37 m. E.N.E. of Brest
on the railway to Rennes. Pop. (1906), 13,875. Morlaix lies
between 4 and 5 m. from the English Channel in a narrow valley
where two small streams unite to form the Dossen, the channel
of which forms its port. Below the town the river widens into
an estuary, the mouth of which is commanded by an old fortress,
the Château du Taureau, built in 1542 to protect the town against
the English. The railway from Paris to Brest crosses the valley
on a striking two-storeyed viaduct some 200 ft. above the quays.
Morlaix contains a considerable number of wooden houses of
the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. These have large covered
courts, with huge open fireplaces and carved wooden staircases,
supported on pillars, leading from the court to the upper storeys.
Morlaix has a sub-prefecture, tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, and colleges for boys and girls. The industries include the manufacture of tobacco occupying about 900 hands, tanning, brewing and the manufacture of casks, wooden shoes and candles; there is an active trade in grain, butter, oil-seeds, vegetables, leather, wax, honey and in horses and other livestock, which are exported by sea. The port, consisting of an outer tidal harbour and an inner basin, admits vessels drawing 17 ft. at spring tides and 12 ft. at neap tides.
Judging by the numerous coins found on the spot, the site of Morlaix was probably occupied in the time of the Romans. The counts of Leon held the lordship in the 12th century, but the dukes of Brittany disputed possession with them, and in 1187 Henry II. of England, guardian of Arthur of Brittany, made himself master of the town after a siege of several weeks. During the Hundred Years’ War Morlaix was held by the French and the English in turn, and pillaged by the latter in 1522. Queen
