10 - ‘Nos soli sumus christiani’: Conversos in the Texts of the Toledo Rebellion of 1449

Summary

‘Intonant nubes caelorum per totum orbem terrarum aedificari domum Dei; et clamant ranae de palude: nos soli sumus christiani.’

Augustine of Hippo (1956: 1350)

‘The clouds of heaven thunder out throughout the world that God's house is being built; and the frogs cry from the marsh, “We alone are Christians”.’

(1888: Psalm 96.11)

Late medieval Spain witnessed a series of religious, social, and political controversies following the mass conversion of Jews in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. While at first these conversions had been regarded as eminently desirable, even miraculous, by the 1450s there was a growing sense in some Christian circles that their effects had been deleterious, and they were the source of many grave problems (Nirenberg 2003: 137). The attempts to eradicate these perceived difficulties led to the establishment of the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews, and a division of the Christian community on the basis of blood, seeking to distinguish Old Christians (cristianos viejos or de natura) from New Christians of Jewish descent (cristianos nuevos or conversos) (Anidjar 2005: 120). The latter were accused of judaizing by persisting in Jewish beliefs and customs, and had applied to them many of the negative characteristics traditionally ascribed to Jews, in particular an ancestral enmity towards Christians.