Prophetic Fabrications of a Morisco Informant

This chapter presents prophecy as a broader political discourse deployed outside the Morisco community for strategic purposes. In this sense, prophecy reveals itself as a language of negotiation and diplomacy. This chapter also centers on the career of a man by the name of Gil Perez, a Morisco double agent who acted as informant of the inquisitors of Zaragoza and spy for the Morisco communities of Aragon and Valencia. His story reveals a great deal about the socioreligious functions of prophecy among the Moriscos who identified as Muslims, and the ways in which prophecies were deployed as political discourses. The Gil Perez affair often has been discussed as a curious case of a Morisco rogue.