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Abstract
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Muslim corsairs carried out near-constant raids of Spain’s coast and returned to North Africa with captured Spaniards to either ransom or sell as slaves. However, Muslim corsairs and slave-masters also frequently offered their captives a chance to convert to Islam in exchange for their freedom. Meanwhile, Spanish theologians, religious scholars, the Crown, and Inquisition, hotly debated the nature of conversion as it related to the kingdom’s Morisco and Converso population. By analyzing captivity chronicles, Inquisition records, and letters written by captives to their families in Spain, this thesis examines how Spanish captives in North Africa depicted their offers of conversion and how they articulated their own faith and religious identities. Ultimately, because they believed that internal faith – the supposed authentic religious beliefs of an individual – could not be altered through the practice of religious customs for even Spanish Christians who converted to Islam, the confessional experiences of Spanish captives capture the futility of Morisco evangelization.