Gitanos - History Lab

Expulsion of the gypsies from Tortosa in 1716

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:33:11 +0000

Document by which the Marquis of Castelrodrigo, Captain General of Catalonia, informed the Royal Court of the decision to expel the gypsies from the Castellanía de Amposta and Tortosa. This measure was in line with the dynamics of the Principality of Catalonia, which expelled them in 1715.

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The fortune teller of Buenaventura

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

Jan Cossiers (1600-1671), a painter of Flemish origin, produced several versions of the same subject of the gypsy fortune-teller. The present situation can be traced back to the two paintings on the same theme by Caravaggio (1571-1610) at the end of the 16th century, but with a more complex scheme involving various figures. In this image, a languid, confident-looking boy has allowed himself to be persuaded to be read by a gypsy woman with two children in tow, who uses a second to steal his hand. The exuberant and even luxurious costumes of the gypsies of Nicolas Regnier (1591-1667) or Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) have been dispelled here, leaving room for ragged clothes at the ends, this gives them a ragged appearance that can be explained by the demographic reality and the poverty that plagued much of Europe in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), but which also finds its raison d’être in the implementation of harsh anti-Gypsy legislation, which classified them as marginalised and even criminal beings. Despite this, such circumstances do not prevent the women in Cossiers’s work from wearing one of the most striking and unique elements of their clothing, the bern, that circular hat with a wicker frame made by interweaving different coloured fabrics. The scene is completed by two other figures, namely a girl with her hand held out in a gesture of silence and a large-mustached gypsy wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a sword in his hand. This leaves open the possibility that we are dealing with a group in which everyone, through their gestures and movements, is linked to the action.

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Stop of gypsies in a rural inn

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

The image of the Gypsies projected by Pieter van Laer, known as “il Bamboccio” (1599-1642), can be better understood if we understand the situation of the Roma who inhabited Italy. As early as the mid-16th century, their expulsion had become widespread throughout the country. The reasons given by the governor of the Papal States in 1552 for “scandal, disorder and robbery” may serve as a justification. Various projects of assimilation to “Christian” ways of life were attempted in various states, especially in Rome in 1631 because of the moral obligation that came with being the head of the Catholic world. As none of the attempts were successful, the custom of lumping them together with “idiots and vagabonds” became widespread. The Gypsies were expelled by legislation, persecuted as criminals by the various police forces and despised by society as a whole, but this does not mean that they had disappeared. As far as possible, they persisted in their ways of life and tried to remain unnoticed. They became part of the lower classes and a kind of osmosis generated by their miserable living conditions unified their outward appearance. Tattered shoes, worn or tattered clothes, lack of colour, utensils on their backs: they represent the spitting image of begging. One of the initiatives that were legislated from the beginning to achieve their social dissolution was thus achieved: the prohibition of identifying clothing. And probably an incipient sedentarisation was also achieved, which led them to inhabit the most humble places in the towns.

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Gypsy family

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

The persecution of gypsies in Spain had a fateful chapter in the mid-1700s, during the reign of Ferdinand VI. Given that the various punishments and levies ordered by the authorities were not enough to tackle the problem caused by their existence, the solution that emerged in enlightened circles was to draw up a plan for a General Prison that would include the separation of men and women in order to prevent the generation of gypsies. The promoter of this idea was the Marquis de la Ensenada (1702-1781), who had previously ensured the neutrality of the Church so that the gypsies could not be held sacred and escape justice. Although the disgrace of the Great Raid had been capitalised on, he had the favourable opinion of many enlightened people. The measure was well conceived, poorly executed due to insufficient financial and human resources, and ended in such a disaster that the authorities soon became aware of it. Executed in two operations between July and August 1749, it involved the imprisonment of nine to ten thousand Gypsies for the sole crime of being Gypsies. There was total confusion because, among other reasons, it was not clear who or what a Gypsy was, since the word had been forbidden by previous legislation. The exceptions for the detention of Gypsies were so varied and the escapes from the detention centres so frequent that the plan ended in total failure, as recognised by the late law of 1763, in the time of Charles III, and a later law of 1765. The sense of ridicule was so great that in 1722, in the preamble to a new law on gypsies, all mention of the Great Raid was removed at the express request of Charles III.

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Landscape with gypsies

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

The first Gypsies arrived in Spain at the beginning of the 15th century. Crossing the Pyrenees, they arrived on the peninsula in the form of small bands made up of men, women and children. In 1425, Alfonso V of Aragon granted a group led by Don Juan de Egipto Menor a permit, allowing them to travel through the monarch’s territory for a period of three months. The name ‘Egypt Minor’ was used in the Middle Ages to refer to the present-day area of Cyprus and Syria; since the first Gypsy settlers to arrive in Spain used this name, it can be assumed that they all came from the same place. Towards the second half of the 15th century, another significant group arrived across the Mediterranean, which was nicknamed “Grecians”, as they were believed to be from there. These groups of gypsies justified their journey by presenting themselves as pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, in order to atone for their sins. After an initial warm welcome, in which they were treated with benevolence due to their status as penitent travellers, a series of legal measures against them soon began with the aim of controlling them and making them similar to the rest of the Spaniards. The first measure, issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1499, ordered the expulsion from the kingdom of all Gypsies who were not subject to any trade and lived nomadically. The anti-Gypsy legislation enacted by the following monarchs was practically similar until 1633, when Philip IV annulled the expulsion decree and a period of legal integration of the minority prevailed until 1793. Finally, under Charles III, the Gypsies began to be slowly accepted by the majority society when it was declared that they “did not come from an infectious root” and that, consequently, they could take up any occupation.

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Gypsies on the move: the vanguard

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

This engraving by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) belongs to the series of four etchings known as Les Bohémiens, produced between 1621 and 1625. Classified as number two of the set, the print emphasises the warlike character of the gypsies. Impeccably dressed, heavily armed with firearms, mounted on splendid horses, wearing feathered hats and moustaches, they are the spitting image of the arrogant military man. Numerous examples of Gypsies as mercenaries have been recorded; to Bishop Sigismund, defender of the city of Funfkiirchen, they provided muskets, bullets and war harnesses, displaying their knowledge of the art of metalworking. It is also known that in the 16th century Henry IV of France had a battalion of 400 Gypsies in his service, and that during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) the Swedes had a Gypsy leader among their troops. In 1773, a decree of the tsar ordered the formation of two cavalry regiments by recruiting Gypsy men. Another later example can be found in 1780 in the Hungarian detachments of Orosaish and Jalaish, where there was one Gypsy for every eight soldiers.

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Gypsies in front of the city of Bern

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:21 +0000

Although the Gypsy culture has been and still is largely ungrammatical, the linguistic influences to which the Gypsies were exposed have made it possible to trace their origins to India, specifically to the north, in the Punjab region. Settled in tents on the outskirts of villages, it is quite likely that they were engaged in the manufacture of baskets and iron tools, as members of a lower caste. Although the dates of their departure from India remain unclear today, an early reference to their exodus is found in the testimony of the Persian poet Firdusi (11th century), who said that the Gypsies would have arrived in Persia in the 5th century to serve the Sassanid king Bahram Gur as dancers and musicians. In any case, they must have remained in Persian territory long enough for Semitic elements to be incorporated into their language. Around 750, when Persia was under Arab domination, the Gypsy people split into two distinct groups and headed for Syria and Armenia, where they settled long enough to adopt Armenian words. Attacks by Byzantine soldiers in the 11th century caused them to look for a new location, this time in Byzantine Greece. At the dawn of the 12th century they were taken to be descendants of Simon Magus – a Samaritan race associated with witchcraft and animal poisoning; in the 13th century they were taken to be soothsayers and snake charmers; and during the 14th century they were assimilated with the descendants of Cain, son of Noah, who were characteristically very dark-skinned. Before the end of this century, the Gypsies had already reached the Balkans. The Turkish invasion brought them into Western Europe from 1417 onwards, and they expanded rapidly. In 1485 they reached the city of Bern in Switzerland and stayed at the city gates, as recorded in Diebold Schilling’s Spiezer Chronik. In the picture the Gypsies form a compact group, characterised by their tanned skin and brightly coloured clothing in shades of blue, green, red and yellow. The men, in the foreground, cover their heads with pointed hats, while the women, with children in their arms or attached to their cloaks, wear turbans.

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The Bonaventure

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:21 +0000

Caravaggio (1571-1610) executed around 1595 a forerunner of genre painting, The Bonaventure. Painted for Alessandro Vittrice and now in the Musée du Louvre (Paris), it depicts two half-length figures in an indeterminate location. There is no indication of where the action is taking place, the scene being illuminated only by a light from the left that falls on the figures: a young man of distinguished appearance wearing a feathered hat and a gypsy woman, recognisable as such by her coppery skin, turban knotted under her chin, black hair and cape draped over one of her shoulders, as well as by the fact that she is engaged in the activity that gives the painting its title. Good fortune was a widespread practice in royal courts during the 16th and 17th centuries and was often complemented by astrology, which had been in vogue along with horoscopes since the late Middle Ages. It was also reinforced by the use of the tarot, a deck of 78 cards depicting various figures, which originated in northern Italy in the first half of the 15th century. In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin reasoned that the tarot came from Egypt, which quickly led people to associate card prediction with the Gypsies, as the Egyptian origin of this ethnic group had been a widespread and accepted belief until well into the 18th century. Gébelin’s theory was exposed to various distortions in the following centuries by authors such as Boiteau d’Ambly, Vaillant and Taylor, who still maintained that the Gypsies were the first connoisseurs and therefore disseminators of cartomancy.

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Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:21 +0000

Chiromancy or fortune-telling was under suspicion until the 15th century, as it was considered a pseudo-science more suited to charlatans; nevertheless, from 1500 it became extremely popular and it was not long before the first treatises were published around the first quarter of the century, including Patricio Tricasso’s La quiromancia, which was republished during the following two centuries due to its notable success. Even more famous was the book by the Jesuit theologian Martín Antonio del Río (1551-1608) entitled Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex, in which he attributed to gypsy women the speciality of reading hands for divinatory purposes. Towards the middle of the 17th century and towards the end of the century, other treatises such as La Chiromance Royale et Nouvelle by Adrian Sicler, La Chiromance, La Physionomie et la Geomance by Peruchio or Les Ouvres by Jean Belot, in which he disserted on fortune-telling and physiognomy, among other disciplines, would become widespread. Although the pretensions of these treatises were scientific, or at least sought to lend a certain credibility to these practices, there were also those who considered them to be superstition. This is the case of Johannes Praetorius and his Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii, whose first pages reproduce an illustration in which some women (probably gypsies, as one of them is carrying her child in her cloak, as was customary, and because they are all barefoot) say good fortune to a man while a child takes advantage of the situation to rob him. Torreblanca must have had a similar opinion of gypsies, since in his treatise De Magia published in 1678 he said that palm reading was a practice of which “the women of that mob of lost and unfaithful people whom the Italians call Cingari, the Latins call Egyptians and we call gypsies” took advantage.

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The gypsies on the move: the rearguard

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:21 +0000

The series of four etchings by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) stands out in the iconography of the wandering life of the gypsies. It is known as Les Bohémiens and was published between 1621 and 1625. The first print is entitled The Gypsies on the March: The Rearguard, and offers a warlike vision of the male Gypsies. This is not the skilled gypsy who works with metal or the shaman who deals with animals, but the fully armed professional warrior who offers himself as a mercenary. They wear jackets, high soft boots and wide-brimmed hats with feathers. Like so many of them, he travels with his family, duly accommodated in a wagon with spoked wheels that largely solved their housing problem. They carried blankets, rugs, barrels, clothes and other kitchen utensils. The image is also a reminder that the Gypsy people are actually made up of many different tribal-like groups that can properly be considered as clans. The leadership they know almost always refers to an older person who is usually, but not always, a man. This picture shows three generations of gypsies, the most comfortable place being for the elders. An old man with no military attributes, perhaps the patriarch, drives the cart mounted on a penco. The oldest woman rides in the carriage while the others are divided up: some on old nags, others on donkeys and the rest, even if they are pregnant, walk. Some of the women are covered with striped cloaks and all are barefoot, surrounded and embraced by countless children on their backs, on their laps or on their chests. The little ones carry animals in their arms, have learned to walk barefoot and are busy playing, either with their father’s hat or some utensil on their heads. The couplet that can be read at the top of the engraving limits itself to saying indulgently what they are, poor beggars, and to making a sceptical statement about what is expected of them, future promises, good fortune: “These poor beggars laden with good fortune/bring nothing but future things”.

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