The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond

Volume 2. the Morisco Issue
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-22859-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 160/2, 278 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Reihe: Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions / Converso and Morisco Studies

Converso and Morisco are the terms applied to those Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity in large numbers and usually under duress in late medieval Spain. The Converso and Morisco Studies publications will examine the implications of these mass conversions for the converts themselves, for their heirs (also referred to as Conversos and Moriscos) and for medieval and modern Spanish and European culture. Volume two of the series focuses on the Moriscos, offering new perspectives on this allusive group's social and religious character in the period leading up to its expulsion from Spain in 1609.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in Spanish history and literature, Jewish studies, Religious studies, national identity and state building.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Ingram, Kevin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Missionswissenschaft, Missionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religiöser Fundamentalismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Series Introduction

Orientation Map

Introduction to this Volume
Kevin Ingram

Chapter One. The Jews and Conversos in Medieval Segovia
Bonifacio Bartolomé Herrero

Chapter Two. The Canary Moriscos: A Different Reality
Luis Alberto Anaya Hernández

Chapter Three. Inquisitorial Activity and the Moriscos of Villarrubia de los Ojos during the Sixteenth Century
Trevor J. Dadson

Chapter Four. The Morisco Problem and Seville (1480-1610)
Manuel F. Ferández Chaves and Rafael M. Pérez Garcia

Chapter Five. Violence and Religious Identity in Early Modern Valencia
Benjamin Ehlers

Chapter Six. On Morisco Networks and Collectives
Luis F. Bernabé Pons

Chapter Seven. An Extensive Network of Morisco Merchants Active Circa 1590
William Childers

Chapter Eight. Morisco Stories and the Complexities of Resistance and Assimilation
Mary Elizabeth Perry

Chapter Nine. The Morisco Problem in its Mediterranean Dimension: Exile in Cervantes’ Persiles
Steven Hutchinson

Chapter Ten. Blindness and Anti-Semitism in Lope’s El niño inocente de la Guardia
Barbara F. Weissberger

Chapter Eleven. Political Aspects of the Converso Problem: on the Portuguese Restauraçao of 1640
Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano

Chapter Twelve. Nowhere to Run: The Extradition of Conversos between the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
François Soyer

Leseproben

Introduction
Kevin Ingram

Segovia

As legend would have it, Esther, a Jewess living in Segovia, was much enamored of Christianity, and especially the Virgin Mary. This interest in the gentile’s faith offended the elders of the community, who falsely accused the young woman of adultery with a Christian—a crime carrying the death penalty. Tried and convicted, Esther was taken to a cliff top on the edge of the city, from where she was hurled to what her accusers believed was her certain death. However, while plummeting she prayed to the Virgin, who delivered her safely to the ground. In response to this miracle, Esther asked to be baptized and changed her name to Maria.
The legend of Maria del Salto (Maria of the Leap) was conveyed to script in Alfonso X’s famous Cantigas de Maria, a thirteenth century codex of verse and beautifully colored illustrations celebrating the many miracles of the Virgin. It occurred to me that one of the six plates depicting Esther’s story would make a fitting frontispiece for the 2008 Segovia Converso and Morisco conference program, and so on a Spring morning, some weeks before the event, I travelled up to Segovia from Madrid to photograph a modern copy of the Cantigas, housed in the Torreon de Lozoya, a fifteenth century fortified palace now converted into a cultural center.
The Torreon de Lozoya, located on the east side of the Plaza San Martin, was built in the fifteenth century by a wealthy wool merchant named Cuellar, who later sold the building to another merchant, named Mercader. The surnames and professions of the two men indicate that they were probably Conversos. This was certainly the case of the next owner of the building, Charles V’s secretary, Francisco de Eraso, who converted the urban castle and tower into a Renaissance palace. Like Diego Arias Dávila, the Converso accountant of Charles V’s great uncle Henry IV, who constructed Segovia’s other famous tower, el Torreon de Davila, Eraso was keen to display his newly acquired wealth and status, burying his “base” provenance beneath a pile of noble masonry. Today the building backs on to a restaurant called Narizotas (Big Noses). I assume the name is a reference to Segovia’s Juderia, which lies just a few meters away. The restaurant’s specialities, I noted, were cochinillo (roasted suckling pig) and judiones (butter bean, or large bean, stew).
The director of the Torre de Lozoya center kindly allowed me to move the Cantigas volume outside onto the Renaissance terrace, where I took a dozen or so photographs of the Maria de Salto illuminations in the spring sunshine. I then re-crossed the San Martin square to the Juderia, where, in the Corpus Christi church (originally the Sinagoga Mayor), another image celebrating Christianity’s triumph over Judaism awaited me. The image was, in fact, an enormous canvas commemorating a fifteenth century tale of Jewish infamy. According to this legend, related by the Dominican Alonso de Espina, a vitriolic Jew hater, in 1410 the Sacristan of the San Facundo church approached two Jews for a loan. The two men agreed to advance the money on condition that the cleric handed over to them a consecrated host. Having gained the prize they then repaired to the synagogue, where they threw it into a cauldron of boiling water. At this point the temple began to tremble and a large crack appeared in one of its walls. The sacrament now rose from the cauldron, flew out of the building and floated above Segovia, coming to rest in the Dominican Monastery of Santa Cruz. The Jewish crime was soon uncovered, and the Bishop of Segovia gave the order to convert the synagogue into a Christian temple named, appropriately, Corpus Christi. The host’s theft is still commemorated each year by the fourteen parishes that were active in Segovia at the time of the “crime.” Each parish takes it in turn to host the annual commemorations, during the first week of September. These end with a solemn procession from the year’s design

Über Autor(innen)

Ingram, Kevin
Kevin Ingram, Ph.D. (2006) in History, University of California, San Diego, is Assistant Professor of Modern History at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus.

Kevin Ingram, Ph.D. (2006) in History, University of California, San Diego, is Assistant Professor of Modern History at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus.