How does a Morisco enter the Spanish nobility? This book reveals the cultural strategies through which a family of converts from Islam to Christianity overcame limpieza de sangre laws, rose in social status, avoided King Philip III’s Morisco expulsions of 1609-14, and achieved a noble title. Drawing on archival sources from both Spain and Italy to re-create the original family archive, this book follows the Granada Venegas family from Granada, to Madrid, to the dusty Andalucían town of Campotéjar, of which they became Marquises, and finally to Italy. Their descendants would serve as Doges of Genoa in the eighteenth century.

How does a Morisco enter the Spanish nobility? This book reveals the cultural strategies through which a family of converts from Islam to Christianity overcame limpieza de sangre laws, rose in social status, avoided King Philip III’s Morisco expulsions of 1609-14, and achieved a noble title. Drawing on archival sources from both Spain and Italy to re-create the original family archive, this book follows the Granada Venegas family from Granada, to Madrid, to the dusty Andalucían town of Campotéjar, of which they became Marquises, and finally to Italy. Their descendants would serve as Doges of Genoa in the eighteenth century.