Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics, Interaction. Early Modern Iberia and Beyond (CORPI) (original) (raw)

In the Iberia Peninsula and Beyond. A History of Jews and Muslims (15th-17th Centuries), 2 vols., UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

This book is the result of two scientific encounters hosted by the University of Évorain 2012, with the theme “Muslims and Jews in Portugal and the Diaspora. Identities and Memories (16th – 17th centuries)”, and co-financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology, and by FEDER, through “Eixo I” of the “ProgramaOperacionalFatores de Competitividade” (POFC) of QREN (COMPETE).Beginning with an analysis of the forced conversion of Iberian Jews and Muslims, this volumeexamines the effects of this on their respectivediasporas and/or permanencies as New-Christians in their original Kingdoms, focusing on a variety of approaches, from language and culture to identity discourses and interchanges between those communities.

Ideas about Conversion in the Aragonese Crown, in The Politics of Conversion: Martin Luther to Muhammad Ali (Chicago, 14-16 September 2017), a conference by The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, Chicago, and The Early Modern Conversions Project - Mc Gill University, Montréal

The paper aims to shed light on the ideas concerning Conversion in the Spanish Levante shortly before the discovery of America and just before the Edict of Expulsion against practicing Jews was issued. Forced religious conversions created new social categorizations in a mixture of feelings ranging from fear to tolerance. While Bermejo was starting to portray Muslims as persecutors in paintings, representing martyrdoms or the scenes from the Passion of Christ, Bernat and Ximénez illustrated the consensual and inspired Conversion of a Jew met in the Holy Land by St. Helen. The paper will focus on the representation of this crucial iconographic subject by analyzing the Blesa Altarpiece (1485), now in the Museum of Zaragoza while formerly in the parish church of Blesa in the Province of Teruel, and dedicated to the History of the True Cross. Here, the conversion to Christianity of the Jew Judas is staged as a collective ceremony as well as it is acted and imparted as if it was an investiture with a political value. The paper reflects on the impact of this image, taking into consideration the fact that it highlights the spiritual and social incorporation of a previous “alien” – apparently without the customary allusions to shame or infamy (and defamation) – and it can reveal the Iberian view about Conversion as a way to control the “others” and hold the Empire together, by imagining and visualizing the conversion not just as a change of mind or a regret, but even as a physical transformation intended to signify (religious and moral) redemption.

We and Them-MUSLIM MINORITY IN CHRISTIAN MAJORITY AND CHRISTIAN MINORITY IN MUSLIM MAJORITY IN XIII AND XIV CENTURY SPAIN

From XIII to XIV century process of reconquest in Spain was in its finishing stages and during that process we encounter two different communities that are trying to live alongside the Other. Community of Christians that are in every cultural aspect more Arabs than Christians but that are living in a changed world where the fabled tolerance of the ages long gone has passed and community of Muslims that were rulers and now are ruled by Christians in two different kingdoms with different stands on their future. The objective of this paper is to analyze the continuity in the discontinuity in the lives of the communities that are living in the time of total dissolution of their cultural and social identities and to observe their usefulness in nation-building plans of Aragonese and Castilian rulers. Following the changes in their jobs, dresses, language and literature we can determine the similarities to their old life, difficulties they encountered in these challenging times and importance they had for the thriving Christian countries stepping into maturity.