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The Hispanic-Converso Predicament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Angus MacKay
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Extract

The hispanic-converso predicament developed over a considerable period of time and was the consequence of intolerance. It affected both Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity, frequently under extreme pressure. The former are generally known as conversos and the latter as moriscos. The rise of intolerance involved a reclassification of notions of purity and danger, most notably during the reign of Henry IV of Castile. It also eventually entailed the establishment of an Inquisition. But intolerance was not simply a matter of religion, for both conversos and moriscos found that their habits, customs, and styles of life were viewed with suspicion and hostility. This, then, was their predicament. This paper will consider the predicament in the light of developing intolerance, and brief attention will also be devoted to the possibility that conversos encoded secret predicament messages in literary works. The emphasis is on the kingdom of Castile but, where apposite, examples have been used relating to Portugal, the Crown of Aragon, and Italy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 35 , December 1985 , pp. 159 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1985

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References

1 For a recent survey of this subject, see Highfield, R., ‘Christians, Jews and Muslims in the same Society: The Fall of Convivencia in Medieval Spain’, Studies in Church History 15, ed. Baker, D. (Oxford, 1978), 121–46Google Scholar.

2 MacKay, A., ‘Popular Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-Century Castile’, Past & Present, 55 (1972), 33–67Google Scholar; and ‘Climate and Popular Unrest in Late Medieval Castile’ in Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man, eds. Wigley, T. M. L., Ingram, M.J., Farmer, G. (Cambridge, 1981), 356–76Google Scholar; and Money, Prices and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Castile (1981), 101–2.

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4 Le ‘Coplas de Mingo Revulgo’, ed. Ciceri, Marcella in Cultura Neolatina, XXXVII (1977). 75–266Google Scholar.

5 For what follows, see Hatton, V. and MacKay, A., ‘Anti-Semitism in the Cantigas de Santa María’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXI (1983), 189–99Google Scholar.

6 The texts of the poems are in Alfonso, X, O Sabio, , Cantigas de Santa María, ed. Mettmann, W. (4 Vols., Coimbra, 1959–1972)Google Scholar. The miniatures which correspond to the poems are reproduced in Lovillo, J. Guerrero, Las Cántigas. Estudio arqueólogico de sus minaturas (Madrid, 1949)Google Scholar. Subsequent references will be to cantiga numbers.

7 Cantiga 3.

8 For example cantigas 4, 6, 12, 348.

9 For example cantigas 85, 89, 107, 108.

10 Siete Partidas, Part VII, Tit. XXIV, Ley, VI, in Los códigos españoles concordados y anotados (12 Vols., Madrid, 1847–1848), IV. 430–1Google Scholar: ‘Force and violence should not in any way be used on any Jew in order to convert him to Christianity. On the contrary Christians should convert them to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ by good example, quotations from the Holy Scriptures, and friendly persuasion. For Christ does not want or love any service which is done on his behalf by force’.

11 See the text of the Instrucción del Reiator which is reproduced in de Cartagena, Alonso, Defensorium Unitatis Christianae, ed. Alonso, P. Manuel (Madrid, 1943), 345Google Scholar.

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17 Ibid., 253: ‘…although they could see exile and ruin in front of their eyes, and although they were pressurised and admonished by the said sermons and admonitions, the Jews continued to remain obstinate and unbelieving. And although they were forced to listen, they never willingly took to heart anything that would benefit them…’.

18 MacKay, , ‘Popular Movements’, 46–8Google Scholar; Villanueva, F. Márquez, ‘Conversos y cargos concejiles en el siglo XV’, Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, LXIII (1975), 503–40Google Scholar.

19 Instructión del relator, 342–3

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22 The examples cited are taken from a recent study which suggests that such attitudes were more widespread than has been thought: Antón, M. Monsalvo, ‘Herejía conversa y contestación religiosa a fines de la edad media: Las denuncias a la Inquisitión en el obispado de Osma’, Studia Historica, II (1984), 109–38Google Scholar: ‘Do not let them persuade you that there is a heaven or a hell, and do not let them make you believe in anything else save being born and dying and having what is necessary’, or ‘Do not worry, you do not see me suffer in this world, and you will not see me burning in the next’.

23 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 99–100Google Scholar: ‘he was a famous Rabbi, and it seems that he died like a Christian’.

24 Ibid., 97, 260.

25 del Castillo, Diego Enríquez, Crónica del rey don Enrique el cuarto de este nombre (Biblioteca de autores españoles, Vol. LXX, Madrid, 1953), 130Google Scholar.

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27 Baer, , A History of the Jews, II. 289–91Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., II. 283, 287; Beinart, , Conversos on Trial, 12Google Scholar.

29 For the text of the Coplas del Provincial, see Puértolas, J. Rodríguez, Poesía crílica y satirica del siglo XV (Madrid, 1981), 233–62Google Scholar.

30 For the text of the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, see above, note 4.

31 Palencia, Alonso de, Crónica de Enrique IV, trans, and ed. Melia, A. Paz y (3 Vols., Madrid, 1973–1975), I. 68, 167Google Scholar: ‘…to base their accusation on the crime of heresy. Not only were his many misdeeds committed against religion well known or, rather, not only was it impossible to detect in him any sign of the Catholic Faith, but there were other more secret testimonies. These were provided by the Marquis of Villena, who was present, and by the Master of Calatrava, who was absent. According to them, the king had secretly tried to persuade them to embrace the Muslim religion, with promises of greater riches and status’.

32 Archivo Municipal de Burgos, Actas Capitulares of 1465, ff. 71 R–71 V: ‘the sins of heresy, sodomy, and blasphemy, which were as prevalent as they were notorious in the reign of my predecessor Henry, will be uprooted and destroyed by me from my kingdoms…’.

33 Ibid., ff. 81 V–82 V: ‘sustaining the Moors, enemies of our Holy Catholic Faith, and bringing them in his company and having them in his house and palace and giving them double pay…and continuing to commit with his own person and ordering to do and commit in his house and court and palace the enormous sins which corrupt the air and destroy human nature…with the result that the loss and destruction of these kingdoms is nigh’.

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35 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 487–8Google Scholar. ‘such a Catholic and indispensable queen’.

36 In this, of course, Spain was not exceptional. See, for example, Barber, M., ‘Lepers, Jews and Moslems: The Plot to Overthrow Christendom in 1321’, History, 66 (1981), 1–17CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Forms of punishment may have helped to group ‘deviants’ together. A thirteenth-century Castilian law stipulated that sodomites be hung upside down by the legs until dead: Boswell, J., Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago and London, 1980), 288Google Scholar. Jews condemned to death suffered the same fate, and Kriegel has noted that, during the 1449 uprising in Toledo, ‘la foule massacra des Nouveaux Chrétiens, traîna leurs cadavres jusqu' à la grande-place de la ville, et pour bien manifester la véritable identité religieuse de ses victimes, les pendit à la manière des Juifs’: Kriegel, , Les Juifs, 32Google Scholar. The same fate awaited the conversos who fell victim to the Toledan massacres of 1467. Indeed in this case the cry of the pregonero explained the punishment: ‘Esta es la justicia que manda facer la comunidad de Toledo a estos traidores, capitanes de los conversos hereges; por cuanto fueron contra la Iglesia, mandalos colgar de los pies cabeza abajo: quien tal face, que tal pague’. See Ruano, Benito, Toledo en el siglo XV, 98Google Scholar.

37 Little, L. K., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (1978), 52–3Google Scholar.

38 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 94, 96Google Scholar: ‘the foul-smelling synagogue’; ‘the foul-smelling Jews’.

39 For the full text of the sentencia, see Memorias de don Enrique IV de Castilla (2 Vols., Madrid, 1835–1913), II. 355–479Google Scholar.

40 de Montalvo, Garci Rodriguez, Las sergas del muy esforzado caballero Esplandián (Biblioteca de aulores españoles, Vol. XL, Madrid, 1953), 505Google Scholar: ‘dirty leprosy’.

41 Little, Religious Poverty, 53.

42 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 97, 102–3Google Scholar: ‘And even if some of them were baptised, the nature of this baptism being cancelled by nullity and by judaizing, they still smelt foully like Jews’. ‘This depraved heresy’; ‘leprosy’.

43 Ibid., 97–8.

44 This view, which became widespread, might have been current as early as the reign of John II. See the alleged ‘carta de privilegio que el rey don Juan II dio a un Hijo dalgo’ in Martínez, N. López, Los Judaizantes castellanos y la Inquisición en tiempo de Isabel la Católica (Burgos, 1954), 385Google Scholar: ‘dirty and stain clean blood’.

45 Cardaillac, L., Morisques et Chrétiens: Un affrontement polémique (1492–1640) (Paris, 1977), 20, 44–6Google Scholar: A ‘vile, dirty, sodomite’.

46 García-Arenal, M., Inquisición y moriscos: Los procesos del Tribunal de Cuenca (Madrid, 1978), 50–1Google Scholar.

47 Edwards, , ‘Religious Belief’, 126–7Google Scholar.

48 Beinart, , Conversos on Trial, 279–80, 290Google Scholar; Beinart, , ‘The Spanish Inquisition and a Converso Community in Extremadura’, Medieval Studies, XLIII (1981), 460Google Scholar; Cardaillac, , Morisques et Chretiens, 27–8Google Scholar; Garcia-Arenal, , Inquisicióny moriscos, 56–7Google Scholar.

49 Cardaillac, , Morisques et Chrétiens, 31Google Scholar.

50 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 97Google Scholar: ‘Since you have never sinned, I want a bit of your clothing as a relic to cure the ill’.

51 Records of the Trials of the Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real, ed. Beinart, H. (3 Vols., Jerusalem, 1974–1981), II. 78, 80, 84, 88, 96, 104, 119–20Google Scholar: ‘does not make the sign of the cross; instead she only motions from the forehead to the shoulder, so that she does not make the sign of the cross’; ‘she said “in the name of the Father” and never said “in the name of the Son” or anything else’.

52 Ibid., I. 92–132: ‘ate everything that any other Old Christian ate or should have eaten, without exception’.

53 Cardaillac, , Morisques et chrétiens, 19, 27Google Scholar: ‘and it is assumed that they did this in order to observe the sect of Muhammad’; ‘of the said sect of Muhammad’.

54 See Burgos, M. Espadas, ‘Aspectos sociorreligiosos de la alimentatión española’, Hispania, no. 131 (1975), 547Google Scholar: ‘But in order that your conversion should not scandalise the national Christians and make them feel that you still have the sect of Muhammad in your hearts, it is necessary that you conform completely to the good and honest conversation of the good and honest Christian men and women, and this is also necessary in your clothes and shoes, and in shaving, and in your food, and in eating at tables, and in cooking food in the way that it is normally cooked…’.

55 Bernáldez, , Memorias, 399Google Scholar: ‘and they were never loyal’.

56 For what follows, see Goytisolo, Juan, ‘Supervivencias tribales en el medio intelectual español’, in Estudios sobre la obra de Americo Gastro ed. Entralgo, P. Lain (Madrid, 1971), 141–56Google Scholar.

57 See Linehan, P., ‘Religion, Nationalism and National Identity in Medieval Spain and Portugal’, in Studies in Church History 18, ed. Mews, S. (Oxford, 1982), 163–4Google Scholar.

58 Gaibrois, M. Ballesteros, La obra de Isabel la Católica (Segovia, 1953)Google Scholar. The introduction was by the Gobernador Civil and Jefe Provincial del Movimiento de Segovia. In it Ballesteros Gaibrois, Professor at the University of Madrid, is lavishly praised for his falangist historical interpretation, and Franco, identifying his ‘mission’ with that of the Catholic Kings, is quoted at length. Ballesteros, for his part, indulges in a shoddy manipulation of history. Referring to the case of the Santo Niño de La Guardia, for example, he states that ‘hoy no cabe la menor duda acerca de su certeza’ (p. 157), and José Antonio Primo de Rivera is approvingly quoted with respect to Isabella's great legacy of the ‘criterio supremo de unidad’ (p. 307).

59 See Reina Catódlica. Boletín de la causa de beatificación de la reina Isabel I de Castillo, no. 1 (1964)Google Scholar.

60 Villanueva, F. Márquez, ‘El encuentro con la obra de Américo Castro’, in Estudios sobre la obra de Américo Castro, ed. Entralgo, P. Laín (Madrid, 1971), 157–69Google Scholar; Castro, Américo, España en su historia (Cristianos, moros y judíos) (Buenos Aires, 1948)Google Scholar. Lack of space prevents me from discussing the polemic to which Castro's publications gave rise, but it should be noted that its most bitter manifestations involved historians in exile. For a succinct survey and bibliography, see Glick, T. F., Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 1979), 314–16Google Scholar.

61 Andrei Sinyavsky, ‘The Literary Process in Russia’, in Kontinent: The Alternative Voice of Russia and Eastern Europe, ed. Maximov, V. and Golomshtok, I. (1977), 73–110Google Scholar.

62 For what follows, see Goytisolo, Juan, ‘De la literatura considerada como una delincuencia’, in the newspaper El Pais, published on 29 04 1979Google Scholar, ‘Arte y Pensamiento’ section, pp. IV–V.

63 Mandelstam, Nadezhda, Hope against Hope (Harmondsworth, 1975), 97Google Scholar; Goytisolo, , ‘De la literatura’, p. IVGoogle Scholar: ‘a pen-wielding gangster’.

64 Ibid., IV–V: ‘Rojas and Fray Luis, Huarte de San Juan and Cervantes fulfilled their work aware of the future guilt which they incurred, aware of their possible status as criminals. Since state power monopolised language, the only way they had of expressing themselves was by looking for holes, pin-pricks, and cracks in the hostile wall of official discourse through which they could sieve a reality which was not contaminated by official ideology… They were literally playing with fire, and they knew it: the pyres of the Holy Office were there to remind them of the fact’.

65 The leading exponent of the converso interpretation is Gilman, S., The Spain of Fernando de Rojas: The Intellectual and Social Landscape of ‘La Celestina’ (Princeton, 1972)Google Scholar. For a sceptical reaction to this interpretation, see the important review article by Russell, P. E. in Comparative Literature, XXVII (1975), 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 See Macedo, H., Do significado oculto da Menina e Moça (Lisbon, 1977)Google Scholar. Pullan, B., The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (Oxford, 1983), 229–41Google Scholar provides a great deal of information on the Portuguese converso family of the Ribeiros to which Bernardim Ribeiro might well have belonged.

67 Macedo, , Do significado, 14Google Scholar.

68 Ribeiro, Bernardim, Menina e Moça, eds. Ribeiro, Aquilino and Braga, M. Marques (Lisbon, 1972), 58–9Google Scholar.

69 Macedo, , Do significado, 84Google Scholar.

70 I would like to thank Mr Philip Hersch for suggesting this hebraic interpretation of the name to me.

71 Macedo, Do significado, especially chaps. VI and VII.

72 Ibid., 83: ‘a work of resistance, written from the point of view of a persecuted minority’.

73 Beinart, H., ‘The Converso Community in 15th Century Spain’, in The Sephardi Heritage: Essays on the History and Cultural Contribution of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, ed. Barnett, R. D. (2 Vols., 1971), I. 438Google Scholar.

74 Burgos, F. Cantera, ‘Fernando de Pulgar y los conversos’, Sefarad, IV (1944), 295–348Google Scholar not only gives the texts of the letters but provides an exhaustive commentary.

75 Ibid., 308: ‘there are in Andalusia ten thousand girls, between ten and twenty years of age, who, from birth, have never left their homes and have never heard or learned of any doctrine save that which they have seen their parents perform inside their homes’.

76 Ibid., 309.

77 Ibid., 308–9: ‘To burn all these people would be an enormously cruel thing to do and also very difficult, because they would in desperation flee to places where no hope of correcting them could ever be expected. I also know for certain that some of them have fled because of the hate of the judges rather than because of their con-sciences’.

78 Delicado, Francisco, La Lozana Andaluza, ed. Damiani, Bruno M. (Madrid, 1969)Google Scholar.

79 For further details, see Damiani, Bruno M., Francisco Delicado (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

80 For examples of scholars' views on Delicado's realism, including comparisons with cinematographic techniques, Ibid., 9, 21, 42, 45, 121; Foley, A. E., La Lozana Andaluza (1977), 26–7, 29Google Scholar.

81 Indeed Delicado went out of his way to stress that the low life and corruption of Rome set the scene for the Divine Judgement which took the form of the Sack of Rome in 1527. However the book was written between 1513 and 1527, and the ‘Divine Judgement’ interpretation of it could not possibly constitute an explanation for Delicado's original aims and intentions. What happened was that Delicado revised his text before publication: a text which described low life was now endowed with characters who cunningly foresaw the disaster of 1527, and the epilogue of the book confirmed the prophecies.

82 See Villanueva, F. Márquez, ‘El mundo converso de La Lozana Andaluza’, Archivo Hispalense, LVI (1973), 87–97Google Scholar.

83 Delicado, , La Lozana Andaluza, 54–5Google Scholar: ‘My lady, we have been here since the year in which the Inquisition began its work’.

84 Ibid., 51–3.

85 Ibid., 56.

86 Ibid., 247–8.

87 Ibid., 45, 248.

88 See the curious mixture of elements–astrology and a dream involving Plutón, Mercurio, and the árbor de la vanidad—which precedes Lozana's decision to leave Rome and gives rise to Delicado's judgement that Lozana ‘se apartó con tiempo’: Ibid., 243–5, 248.

89 Ibid., 34: ‘And as the chronicler Fernando del Pulgar says, “In this way I will forget my grief”’.

90 Cardaillac, , Morisques el Chrétiens, 24–5Google Scholar.