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1350–1550 Looking Back / Looking Ahead 73

include the remaining land held by Arabs in southern received baptism generations before. In response to con-
Spain. The victorious entry of Ferdinand and Isabella versos’ statements, officials of the Inquisition developed
into Granada on January 6, 1492, signaled the conclu- a new type of anti-Semitism. A person’s status as a Jew,
sion of the reconquista. Granada was incorporated into they argued, could not be changed by religious conver-
the Spanish kingdom, and after Isabella’s death Ferdi- sion, but was in the person’s blood and was heritable, so
nand conquered Navarre in the north. Jews could never be true Christians. In what were known
There still remained a sizable and — in the view of as “purity of blood” laws, having pure Christian blood
the majority of the Spanish people — potentially dan- became a requirement for noble status. Ideas about Jews
gerous minority, the Jews. When the kings of France developed in Spain were important components in Euro-
and England had expelled the Jews from their king- pean concepts of race, and discussions of “Jewish blood”
doms, many had sought refuge in Spain. During the later expanded into notions of the “Jewish race.”
long centuries of the reconquista, Christian kings had In 1492, shortly after the conquest of Granada, Isa-
recognized Jewish rights and privileges; in fact, Jewish bella and Ferdinand issued an edict expelling all prac-
industry, intelligence, and money had supported royal ticing Jews from Spain. Of the community of perhaps
power. While Christians borrowed from Jewish mon- 200,000 Jews, 150,000 fled. Many Muslims in Granada
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
eylenders and while all who could afford them sought were forcibly baptized and became another type of New
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Jewish physicians, a strong undercurrent of resent- Christian investigated by the Inquisition. Absolute reli-
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
ment of Jewish influence and wealth festered. gious orthodoxy and purity of blood served as the theo-
In the fourteenth century anti-Semitism in Spain retical foundation of the Spanish national state.
was aggravated by fiery anti-Jewish preaching, by eco- The Spanish national state rested on marital pol-
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
nomic dislocation, and by the search for a scapegoat itics as well as military victories and religious courts.
during the Black Death. Anti-Semitic pogroms swept Following their own example, the royal couple made
the towns of Spain, and perhaps 40 percent of the Jew- astute marriages for their children with every coun-
ish population was killed or forced to convert. Those try that could assist them against France, their most
converted were called conversos or New Christians . powerful neighbor. In 1496 Ferdinand and Isabella
Conversos were often well educated and held prom- married their second daughter, Joanna, heiress to Cas-
inent positions in government, the church, medicine, tile, to the archduke Philip, heir to the Burgundian
law, and business. Numbering perhaps 200,000 in a Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. Philip and
total Spanish population of about 7.5 million, New Joanna’s son Charles V (r. 1519–1556) thus succeeded
Christians and Jews in fifteenth-century Spain exer- to a vast inheritance. When Charles’s son Philip II
cised influence disproportionate to their numbers. joined Portugal to the Spanish Crown in 1580, the
Such successes bred resentment. Aristocratic grandees Iberian Peninsula was at last politically united.
resented the conversos’ financial independence, the poor
hated the converso tax collectors, and churchmen doubted NOTES
the sincerity of their conversions. Queen Isabella shared 1 James B. Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, eds., The Portable
.
these suspicions, and she and Ferdinand had received per- Renaissance Reader (London: Penguin Books, 1953), p. 27 .
mission from Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 to establish their 2 . Ross and McLaughlin, The Portable Renaissance Reader , pp. 480–
own Inquisition to “search out and punish converts from 481 , 482, 492.
,
Judaism who had transgressed against Christianity by 3 . Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince trans. Leo Paul S. de Alvarez
(Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1980), p. 101 .
secretly adhering to Jewish beliefs and performing rites of 4 . Machiavelli, The Prince , p. 149 .
8
the Jews.” Investigations and trials began immediately, 5 Quoted in F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London: J. M.
.
as officials of the Inquisition looked for conversos who Dent & Sons, 1867), p. 256 .
showed any sign of incomplete conversion, such as not eat- 6 Quoted in Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in
.
ing pork, a dietary practice followed by Jews and Muslims. Renaissance Italy (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), p. 253 .
Recent scholarship has carefully analyzed documents 7 . Stuttgart, Württembergische Hauptstaatsarchiv, Generalreskripta,
A38, Bü. 2, 1550; trans. Merry Wiesner-Hanks.
of the Inquisition. Most conversos identified themselves 8 Quoted in Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in
.
as sincere Christians; many came from families that had Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 921 .
LOOKING BACK LOOKING AHEAD

he art historian Giorgio Vasari, who first called architecture, educational ideas, social structures, and
Tthis era the Renaissance, thought that his con- attitude toward life of the Renaissance with those
temporaries had both revived the classical past and of the Middle Ages: in this view, whereas the Mid-
gone beyond it. Vasari’s judgment was echoed for dle Ages were corporate and religious, the Renais-
centuries as historians sharply contrasted the art, sance was individualistic and secular. More recently,

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