Celebrating the Divine Feminine: Moriscas as Healers, Intermediaries, and Wombs of Christian-Muslim Cohabitation

“Celebrating the Divine Feminine: Moriscas as Healers, Intermediaries, and Wombs of Christian-Muslim Cohabitation” reads moriscos’ depictions of powerful Muslim and Jewish women like ‘Amin and Mary, the mothers of Muhammad and Jesus, in correspondence to the historical role of moriscas as curanderas (curers) and sanadoras (healers).  I contend that aljamiado tales read orally to crypto-Muslims subvert 16^th-century Spanish Christian devotional texts’ representations of women as the kingdoms’ reproductive sites of evil.  In contrast, morisco tales like El Nacimiento y Concepción de Jesus (The Birth and Conception of Jesus) as well as Leyenda de nacimiento, infancia y casamiento de Muḥammad (The Legend of the Birth, Infancy and Marriage of Muhammad), celebrate the feminine as a divine site used by Allah to work supernaturally in the natural world. This paper proposes to analyze these positive portrayals of women’s wombs as portals between heaven and earth by building on Mary Elizabeth Perry’s research, which has asserted that moriscas became powerful centers of resistance to the pressures of inquisitorial politics that attempted to physically and psychologically coerce crypto-Muslims to abandon any linguistic, cultural or religious vestiges of their previous Muslim identities. Going a step beyond Perry’s reading of moriscas as wombs of resistance, I argue that these powerful wombs were envisaged by moriscos to heal, negotiate and harmonize disparate Christian and Muslim linguistic, religious and cultural subject positions. Juxtaposing El Nacimiento y Concepción de Jesus as well as Leyenda de nacimiento, infancia y casamiento de Muḥammad with inquisitorial documents that portray moriscas as curanderas, sanadoras and comadronas (midwives), I assert that the wombs of these powerful women birthed more than resistance to their cristiana nueva (New Christian) status, but produced life and strength to heal the rift between Islam and Christianity, attempting to harmonize Christian-Muslim identities.