La Mala Algaraba: Church, Monarchy and the Arabic Language in 16th-century Spain

What is it about?

This study examines Spanish Catholic attitudes toward the Arabic language of Spain’s Islamic communities in the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While many studies have located the origins of language policy in Spain in the 18th century, we will enumerate and analyze the main royal decrees that address the Arabic language in an earlier period. We will also examine important ecclesiastical legislation on the Arabic language. We depart from the generally-accepted scholarly notion that in the Spanish Church, there existed two positions regarding the Arabic language: first, that Islamic communities should be approached through the Arabic language and, second, that their language should be prohibited in favor of Castilian. In the second part of this article, we examine the attitudes of two Spanish churchmen regarding the Arabic language, highlighting the complexity of their positions, which prevent them from being readily categorized as advocates or opponents of the Arabic language.

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