The adelantamiento of Cazorla, converso Culture and Toledo Cathedral Chapter's 1547 estatuto de limpieza de sangre (original) (raw)
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Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain
Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain, 2018
This well-written and thoroughly researched book is an important contribution to our understanding of Spanish social and religious identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By means of a lengthy and absorbing series of case studies of individuals, it points up the importance of a Jewish background to understanding many great figures in Spanish life and, as such, has wide, interdisciplinary appeal."-John Edwards, University of Oxford, UK "This book provides a much-needed reassessment of the impact of the bloodpurity obsession on Spanish society. Combining original research into Velázquez's roots with penetrating analyses of the character of Spain's humanist and reform movements, Kevin Ingram's outstanding study reopens debate on the conversos' importance to early modern culture. His examination of race-based discrimination and its social effects also makes the work of great relevance to our own time."-William Childers, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA "Kevin Ingram's trenchant, persuasively argued book makes a major contribution to the cultural and social history of early modern Spain, and, needless to say, to the sub-field of what one might call "converso studies" … Although there are many works on conversos, the Spanish Inquisition, and related matters, there is nothing out there that draws on the lives and works of so many New Christians and pulls them all together in a cogent, compelling, and original argument as this does.
Defining "Conversos" in Fifteenth-Century Castile: The Making of a Controversial Category
Speculum, 2022
This article recovers a fifteenth-century debate over the meaning of the category "conversos." Departing from the standard account, in which "conversos" is seen as a neutral category designating Jewish ancestry, we demonstrate that in fifteenth-century Castile, the question of "who is a converso?" had a much less certain answer. Rather than a consistent view of how Jewish converts and their descendants should be classified, contemporary discourses reveal a myriad of options and a deep sense of consciousness about the implications of terminological choices. Drawing on a large range of historical sources, we analyze this terminological struggle, while paying special attention to the debates that followed the revolt of Toledo of 1449. We examine the arguments made by those who sought-or resisted-labeling the descendants of Jews as "conversos" or "neophytes." Furthermore, we explain how debates over such labels were linked to broader interpretations of the meaning of conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Finally, we demonstrate that although the descent-based interpretation of "conversos" eventually prevailed, the problem of classifying Christians of Jewish descent continued to haunt political discourses well into the reign of Isabel I and Fernando II (1474-1504).
Before "Purity of Blood": Elements and Metaphors in the 1449-1450 Converso Debate
Philologia Hispalensis, 2023
This study pays careful attention to the ways in which Latin and Castilian terms for ‘blood’ and ‘flesh’ are employed in the converso debate centered on the anti-converso uprising at Toledo in 1449. It considers how those terms are used —or not used— to conceive of human relationship to one another and to Christ as well as how they convey moral and spiritual status in terms related to purity and impurity. This microscopic look at a particular moment in Castile will enrich telescopic studies that aim for synthesis across disciplinary, chronological, and geographic boundaries. In the more immediate term, this essay demonstrates that, although Iberian historiography has tended to frame the exclusion of conversos from religious and civic life in terms of blood criteria, purity of blood was not a central category in the converso debate of 1449-1450. Rather, the dominant concerns whose relationship to blood and flesh, purity and impurity, faith and heresy, class, king, and country was at stake were honor and lineage itself. Este estudio presta especial atención a las formas en que los términos latinos y castellanos para “sangre” y “carne” se emplean en el debate converso centrado en el levantamiento anticonverso en Toledo, en 1449. Considera cómo se usan o no esos términos para concebir la relación humana entre sí y con Cristo, además de cómo transmiten el estatus moral y espiritual en términos relacionados con la limpieza y la impureza. Esta mirada microscópicaa un momento particular de Castilla enriquecerá los estudios telescópicos que apuntan a la síntesis a través de fronteras disciplinarias, cronológicas y geográficas. En el plazo más nmediato, este ensayo demuestra que, aunque la historiografía ibérica ha tendido a enmar- car la exclusión de los conversos de la vida religiosa y cívica en términos de criterios de sangre, la limpieza de sangre no fue una categoría central en el debate converso de 1449-1450. Más bien, las preocupaciones dominantes que estaban en juego eran el honor y el linaje mismo, pese a la relación de estos con la sangre y la carne, la limpieza y la impureza, la fe y la herejía, la clase, el rey y el país.
European Judaism, 2010
This article deals with a famous work on philosophy written by Alonso de la Torre and its fate in the Western Sephardi diaspora. Torre most probably was a converted Jew; he wrote his book half a century after Spanish Jewry underwent a dramatic transformation due to the terrible massacres of 1390 and 1391 in the major cities of Spain and the ensuing conversions of many persecuted Jews. The intolerance that would ultimately lead to the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews of 1492-and so to the origin of the Judeo-Spanish speaking communities in North Africa and the Ottoman Empireprofoundly changed Spain's cultural landscape, ending a centuries-long period of mutual cultural interaction. Yet, paradoxically, with the massive influx of the so-called Conversos into Spanish society, Christian culture also underwent changes, absorbing new experiences and influences. The Visión deleitable y sumario de todas las ciencias by Torre is a didactical work on philosophy and religion that had enormous success in Christian Spain, in spite of its large debt to the Guide of the Perplexed by the Jewish sage Maimonides. Reprinted many times in Catholic Spain, this work was also published in Italy and the Dutch Low Countries, in the communities of those Iberian Conversos who returned to Judaism. There has been huge speculation as to how the Vision deleitable was interpreted by both Christian and Jewish readers. Through a hitherto unstudied report by the Spanish Inquisition and an examination of the editions printed in the Western Sephardi diaspora (Ferrara and Amsterdam) I will offer some fresh reflections on the fascinating reception of this text in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. * Harm den Boer is Professor of Iberoromanic Literature at the University of Basel. His research focuses on Iberian Early Modem Literature and Culture, with special interest in the cultural history of Iberian Jews of Converso origin on which he has extensively published. Den Boer is author of a monography on the Spanish and Portuguese Literature by the Amsterdam Sephardim (La literatura sefardí de Amsterdam, 1995), a Bibliography of Spanish and Portuguese Printing in the Northern Netherlands 1584-1825 (Leiden: IDC, 2004, CD-Rom) and has coauthored studies and editions of several Golden Age Sephardi writers, preparing an edition of the poetry by Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios together with Dr. Francisco Sedeño Rodríguez. 2 On this aspect García López (1991), Salinas Espinosa (1997) and Girón-Negrón (2001) seem somewhat unconcerned. The Ferrara edition is reported untraceable by García López (in fact there are at least three extant copies, two of them in major libraries-see below), and the latter have apparently taken for granted the former's assertion. The same goes for Francisco/Josepho de Cáceres' 1623 edition, mentioned by all three as printed in
Blood, Land and Power. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Nobility and Lineages in the Early Modern Period, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021
The analysis of land management, lineage and family through the case study of early modern Spanish nobility from sixteenth to early nineteenth century is a major issue in recent historiography. It aims to shed light on how upper social classes arranged strategies to maintain their political and economic status. Rivalry and disputes between old factions and families were attached to the control and exercise of power. Blood, land management and honour were the main elements in these disputes. Honour, service to the Crown, participation in the conquest and ‘pure’ blood (Catholic affiliation) were the main features of Spanish nobility. This book analyses the origins of the entailed-estate (mayorazgo) from medieval times to early modern period, as the main element that enables us to understand the socio-economic behaviour of these families over generations. This longue durée chronology within the Braudelian methodology of the research aims to show how strategies and family networks changed over time, demonstrating a micro-history study of daily life.
Imago temporis: Medium Aevum, 2023
In medieval Castile, language and propaganda were key aspects of political disputes. Some chroniclers and poets contributed to legitimisation and delegitimisation processes by representing both sides in their works. This paper presents a comparative view of the discursive strategies used to discredit the nobles who questioned whether Henry IV of Castile and, later, his successor, Isabella I, were rightful monarchs. The tactics of two chroniclers in particular will be examined, both of whom were solid defenders of the royal authority: Diego Enríquez del Castillo and Fernando de Pulgar. Their texts, as with other coetaneous chronicles, have never been compared in depth from the perspective suggested above; as such, an analysis could offer some interesting conclusions on the matter. Corral Sánchez, Nuria. «The Delegitimisation of Rebel Nobles around the War of the Castilian Succession: Discursive Strategies in Enríquez del Castillo’s and Pulgar’s Chronicles». Imago temporis: medium Aevum, 17, 2023, p. 105-129, https://doi.org/10.21001/itma.2023.16.05.