by Henry Kamen
Infiltration of the aristocracy was, already in the fifteenth century, a known and accepted fact. In the wake of the anti-converso riots in Toledo in 1449, a royal secretary, Fernán Díaz de Toledo, wrote a report or Instruction for the bishop of Cuenca, in which he argued that all the leading noble lineages of Castile, including the Henríquez (from whom Ferdinand the Catholic descended), could trace their descent from conversos. The issue had, as we shall see (see chapter 12 below), considerable repercussions on Spanish society. Two sixteenth-century publications continued the controversy. In Aragon an assessor of the Inquisition of Saragossa drew up what became known as the Green Book (Libro verde) of Aragon,19 a genealogical table tracing the origins of the nobility, from which it became clear that the most prominent families in the kingdom had not escaped converso infiltration. The document, set down in manuscript in the first decade of the sixteenth century, became a source of major scandal, for copies were passed from hand to hand, added to and distorted, until the government decided it could not tolerate the slander. In 1623, all available copies of the Libro verde were ordered to be burnt.
But already a far more powerful libel had been circulating in secret. In 1560 Cardinal Francisco Mendoza y Bobadilla, angered by a refusal to admit two members of his family into a military order, presented to Philip II a memorandum, later to be known as Tizón de la nobleza de España (Blot on the Nobility of Spain), in which he claimed to prove that virtually the whole of the nobility was of Jewish descent.20 The proofs he offered were so incontrovertible that the Tizón was reprinted many times down to the nineteenth century, almost always as a tract against the power and influence of the nobility. At no time was even the slightest attempt at a rejoinder to these two publications made.
Questions of genealogy and blood could come to the fore in political life, where it was common to seek reasons for discrediting rivals. In an important memoir presented by the historian Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal to the emperor Charles V, it was reported that several of the most important members of the royal council were of converso origin. Among the exceptions, however, was Dr. Palacios Rubios, “a man of pure blood because he is of laboring descent.”21 Purity (limpieza) from Jewish origins became, in a few towns of central Castile and Andalucia, an issue on which status struggles often chose to focus.
The controversies over genealogy in the fifteenth century highlight the prominent role in Castile of converso intellectuals.22 A handful of upper-class Jewish converts made, by the quality of their writing, a contribution to intellectual life out of all proportion to their numbers. Converso officials who wrote histories included Alvar García de Santa María (d. 1460), Diego de Valera (d. 1488), and Alonso de Palencia (d. 1492). Other conversos were well-known poets, among them Juan de Mena (d. 1456) and Juan del Encina (d. 1529). Several of the converso writers entered into the controversy over blood origins, but their purpose was to defend genuine converts against Jews who refused to change their faith. Among them was Bishop Pablo de Santa María, with his Scrutinium scripturarum, written in 1432 but published posthumously. Another was the former rabbi Joshua Halorqui, who adopted the name Jerónimo de Santa Fe, founded a powerful converso family and produced his anti-Jewish polemics in the form of a work called Hebraeomastix. A member of a third great converso family, Pedro de la Caballería, wrote in 1450 the treatise Zelus Christi contra Judaeos. These three converso productions, based on a solid knowledge of Jewish culture, resorted to polemic at a learned level. The anti-Jewish strain could, of course, also be found in the writings of many who were not of converso origin.
By contrast, there were polemics that appealed to popular prejudices. The most significant of these was the Fortalitium fidei contra Judaeos, published in 1460, of Alonso de Espina. Espina, a well-known Franciscan friar and confessor to Henry IV of Castile, used his position to stir up hatred against Jews and conversos. Though described by most historians as a converso, he was almost certainly not one,23 since the deliberate distortions and fabrications in his work betray a complete ignorance of Semitic society. In the 1450s he was exceptionally busy in a campaign to bring about the forced conversion of the Jews, and his tract helped by its themes and language to contribute to race hatred. For Espina, the crimes of Jews against Christians were all too well known: they were traitors, homosexuals, blasphemers, child murderers, assassins (in the guise of doctors), poisoners and usurers. What differentiates Espina from the converso apologists is the fact that his accusations were clearly racialist in character and purpose, whereas the anger of Santa María and the others was more explicitly directed against the stubborn unbelief of their unconverted brethren. Espina’s tract has been viewed as a draft proposal which influenced the structure of the Spanish Inquisition,24 but in reality his ideas had no part to play. The Spanish Holy Office, when eventually founded, was based—as we shall see—on the concept of the medieval French Inquisition.
Though there was a generally peaceful coexistence between Old Christians and Jews during the fifteenth century, in some townships the presence of powerful converso families gave rise to struggles for power between Old Christians and conversos. Jews, normally incapacitated from office, did not feature directly. The first significant explosion of power struggles was in Toledo, ancient center of Castilian Jewry and Castile’s leading city. In 1449 there were serious disturbances here, directed in part against the minister of King Juan II, Alvaro de Luna, who was accused of favoring Jews. The Old Christian factions held court to determine whether conversos should be allowed to continue holding public office. Their leader, Pero Sarmiento, proposed a special statute (known as the Sentencia-Estatuto) which, despite opposition, was approved by the city council in June 1449. In this it was resolved “that no converso of Jewish descent may have or hold any office or benefice in the said city of Toledo, or in its territory and jurisdiction,” and that the testimony of conversos against Old Christians was not to be accepted in the courts.25
An immediate result was a bull issued by Pope Nicholas on 24 September 1449 under the significant title Humani generis enemicus (Enemy of the Human Race), in which he denounced the idea of excluding Christians from office simply because of their blood origins. “We decree and declare,” the pope went on, “that all Catholics are one body in Christ according to the teaching of our faith.” Another bull of the same date excommunicated Sarmiento and his colleagues for alleged rebellion against the Spanish crown. Other Spanish ecclesiastical authorities followed the pope in declaring that baptized converts were entitled to all the privileges of the Christian community. But the Sentencia-Estatuto represented powerful forces which could not easily be suppressed. The state of civil war then reigning in Castile made the crown all too willing to win friends by conciliation, and in 1450 the pope was asked by Juan II to suspend his excommunication of those practicing racialism. A year later, on 13 August 1451, the king formally gave his approval to the Sentencia-Estatuto. This meant a victory for the Old Christian party—a victory repeated once more when, on 16 June 1468, in the year after the Toledo riots of 1467, King Henry IV confirmed in office in the city all holders of posts formerly held by conversos. The same king, on 14 July of the same year, conceded to the city of Ciudad Real the privilege of excluding conversos from all municipal office.26
It was an issue affecting a limited area of Castile, and in each case the conflict was purely local, reflecting faction rivalries. There had been virtually no agitation since the great riots of 1391, and little outside central Castile. In other cities where conversos were powerful, such as Burgos and Avila, there were for the moment no riots. No immediate danger to the peace of the realm existed. The fact, however, that two Castilian cities tried to exclude conversos from public office was ominous. So was the fact that Old Christian oligarchies deliberately used anti-Semitic feeling to arouse the populace against their enemies. Some clergy were also worried about the effect on the unity of the Christian body. It was after some deliberation, therefore, that in about 1468 the archbishop of Toledo, Alonso Carrillo, c
ondemned the existence in his diocese of guilds organized on racial lines, some of them excluding conversos and others excluding Old Christians. The archbishop stated:
Divisions bring great scandal and schism and divide the seamless garment of Christ who, as the Good Shepherd, gave us a command to love one another in unity and obedience to Holy Mother Church, under one Pontiff and Vicar of Christ, under one baptism, formed under the law into one body, so that whether Jew, Greek or Gentile we are regenerated by baptism and made into new men. From which it is obvious how culpable are those who, forgetting the purity of the law of the gospel, create different lineages, some calling themselves Old Christians and others calling themselves New Christians or conversos. . . . What is evil is that in the city of Toledo, as in the other cities, towns and places of our see, there are many guilds and fraternities of which some under pretence of piety do not receive conversos and others do not receive Old Christians.27
The archbishop therefore ordered the dissolution of the said guilds and forbade any similar racial associations under pain of excommunication. His good intentions bore little fruit, though it is true that for a quarter of a century after the Sentencia-Estatuto controversy died down and little evidence emerged of heresy among the conversos. A problem may certainly have existed, but there was little perception of it.
The issue raised its head again in the next round of anti-converso struggles, when the triggers to conflict were never exclusively religious. Disturbances were also aggravated during the later years of the fifteenth century by more frequent economic difficulties. In 1463 a converso in Andalucia commented that “here, thank God, there are disturbances but not directed against us.”28 There were problems, however, in other parts of Castile, and in 1467 anti-converso riots occurred in Toledo and Ciudad Real. In Seville the aristocracy kept the troublemakers under control, and (reported an official) “the conversos were unharmed.”29 The worst incidents came in 1473, with anti-converso riots and killings in several towns of Andalucia, notably Córdoba.30 In Jaén that year one of the victims was the converso Constable of Castile, Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, cut down at the high altar of the cathedral as he attempted to defend the conversos. These events demonstrated the very serious political situation in the south of the peninsula, and how readily the finger was being pointed at New Christians. In many cases, it has been argued, it was the Old Christian oligarchies who were manipulating the situation against both conversos and Jews.31
It was arguably the political events of those years rather than any perceived heresy that eventually brought an Inquisition into existence. The stage upon which the drama was played was central and southern Castile, roughly defined by the realms of Old and New Castile, and Andalucia. This area, the effective frontier of the medieval anti-Muslim Reconquest, was also that in which the majority of Spain’s Jews lived. Home still to the precarious coexistence of three faiths, it was potentially the zone of greatest social conflict in the peninsula.
The ambiguous religion of conversos raised a crucial question. Were the conversos Jews?32 It is an issue that has concerned and inspired many modern scholars, who have been haunted by the specter of Christians of Jewish origin suffering persecution and holding fast to some elements of the culture of their Jewish ancestors.
The question was inevitably also raised at the relevant time, after the mass conversions of 1391. Of the thousands of Jews who in the course of the preceding century had been forced by persecution and pressure to accept baptism, few could have embraced Catholicism sincerely. Over time, however, the converts settled into their new religion without problems. When the great controversies broke out in Toledo, half a century after the 1391 riots, not a single Christian writer doubted that the New Christians were for the most part orthodox in belief and intention. Claims to the contrary were made at the height of the civic troubles, but never substantiated.
Those who remained in their Jewish faith, however, wanted to know how to coexist with those who had become Christians. In the fifteenth century, long before the great expulsion, the rabbis in North Africa were frequently asked for their judgments on the matter. Their opinions, or responsa, were unequivocal. The conversos must be regarded not as unwilling converts (anusim) but as real and voluntary converts (meshumadim).33 It may have been a hard-line attitude and not necessarily shared by all Jewish leaders at the time, but there was ample evidence to back up the judgments. In many parts of Spain the conversos continued living in some measure as Jews, but with the advantage now of enjoying rights accorded to Christians. In Mallorca, a rabbi commented, the authorities “are lenient with the conversos and allow them to do as they will.”34 From the Christian point of view, the conversos here seemed to be practicing Jews. In practice, however, they were legally Christians. And it was their voluntary Christianity which marked them out in Jewish eyes as renegades, meshumadim.
The spate of conversions throughout Spain during the fifteenth century intensified the controversy. Easygoing Jews who converted for convenience became, naturally, easygoing Christians. In an anti-Jewish polemic of the 1480s, the Alborayco,35 the author described the conversos as being neither practicing Jews nor practicing Christians. Being neither one thing nor the other, they were known in some places as alboraycos, after the fabled animal of Mohammed which was neither horse nor mule (al-buraq). Anti-Semitic writers at the time of the Inquisition were, for their part, unanimous that conversos were secret Jews and must be dealt with firmly.
Many modern writers, in no way anti-Semitic, have consistently identified the conversos as Jews. An influential school in modern Jewish historiography has likewise ironically insisted that the Inquisition was right to consider all conversos aspiring Jews. Yitzhak Baer stated uncompromisingly that “the conversos and Jews were one people, united by destiny.”36 “Every converso,” writes another historian, “did his best to fulfil Mosaic precepts, and one should regard as sincere the aim they all set themselves: to live as Jews.”37 The main evidence used by these scholars who call in doubt the Christianity of the conversos, is—curiously enough—the documentation of the Holy Office, a huge mass of apparently damning testimony to the errors of thousands of conversos. If this view is accepted, not only does it appear to justify the establishment of the Inquisition but it also contradicts the testimony of many conversos of the late fifteenth century. Unsurprisingly, some other scholars refuse to accept the reliability of the Inquisition’s documents, on the grounds that they are a contaminated source.38 Why, in other words, should the evidence gathered by the accusers be the principal basis for assessing the accused? It is a good question, which makes the religious status of converted Jews an issue of primary importance.
The two conflicting points of view we have mentioned share one clear weakness, a propensity to assume that—a few exceptions aside—all conversos were Jews, or all were Christians. Both approaches appear to be motivated by a deeply rooted conviction that authentic Jews would never make compromises about their faith and culture.39 As it happens, there is abundant evidence that compromises were made, in every epoch, among all social classes and in all generations. There are three principal groups of witnesses to converso religion: the Jews, the conversos themselves and the enemies of the conversos. Nearly all their testimony comes down to us through the Inquisition. As a consequence, the debate has usually been presented to us through the perspective of the Inquisition papers, which should not be unconditionally ruled out of order, since a great deal of their affirmations seems sensible and convincing.40
The question of Jewish identity had been in doubt long before the birth of the Inquisition, and in lands far from Spain. Jews who converted under Muslim rule but remained secretly wedded to their old beliefs could be found in several parts of the Mediterranean.41 In some areas they were known as New Muslims, suggesting that the Muslim authorities were aware they were not true converts. The neo-converts managed to survive for centuries, thanks in part to the benign policy of the Islamic authorities in certain territories. In Christian Spain, it was
the pressure from a special institution, the Inquisition, that brought hidden doubts to the surface. Conversos who hitherto had been satisfied with mere “adhesion” to the official faith were now obliged to consider the option of full “conversion.” In the period before the year 1492, in short, there were from the standpoint of religious belief probably four broad categories among conversos: those who were practicing Christians, those who were nominal Christians but active judaizers, those who were syncretic and mixed both beliefs and those who were skeptical of both faiths.42
Among the Jews there appear to have been few doubts about the Christianity of the conversos. The opinions of religious leaders, cited above, are unequivocal. Jews and conversos might come together for family and social reunions, but always with the consciousness that they belonged to different streams of belief and practice. The most convincing testimony of all can be found after the establishment of the Inquisition. The failure of Jews in those years to make any significant move to help conversos shows that they were conscious of the gap between them.
The converso apologists of 1449, anxious to defend themselves against their critics, insisted on their own unquestionable Christianity. Fernán Díaz asserted that if there were any judaizers in Toledo they could be counted on the fingers of two hands. He pointed out that even the term “converts” was meaningless: “how can one call conversos those who are children and grandchildren of Christians, were born in Christianity and know nothing about Judaism or its rites?”43 Later converso leaders, more realistically, were willing to admit the existence of religious confusion. The chronicler and royal secretary Hernando del Pulgar, a prominent converso, vouched for the existence of judaizers among the New Christians of Toledo. But he also pinpointed a cause: no attempts had ever been made to deal with the problem by missionary preaching rather than persecution. Despised by Old Christians for their race, scorned by the Jews for their apostasy, the conversos lived in a social atmosphere they had never willingly chosen. Many of them lived close to the Jewish quarter, to which they still felt a cultural affinity. They retained traditional characteristics in dress and especially in food that were difficult to shake off. A man named Mayor González in Ciudad Real in 1511 admitted that he “never ate eel nor octopus nor hare nor rabbit . . . until the inquisitors came to town.”44 Several had vivid memories of the persecutions that in the 1440s and then in the 1470s had forced them to abandon their culture. A Jewish doctor in Soria in 1491 recalled an old converso who “told him, weeping, how much he repented having turned Christian.” Speaking of another converso, the doctor communicated the information that “he believed in neither the Christian nor the Jewish faith.”45