Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

The Jewish community of medieval Spain was the largest and most important in the West for more than a thousand years, participating fully in cultural and political affairs with Muslim and Christian neighbors. This stable situation began to change in the 1390s, and through the next century hundreds of thousands of Jews converted to Christianity. Norman Roth argues here with detailed documentation that, contrary to popular myth, the conversos were sincere converts who hated (and were hated by) the remaining Jewish community. Roth examines in depth the reasons for the Inquisition against the conversos, and the eventual expulsion of all Jews from Spain. “With scrupulous scholarship based on a profound knowledge of the Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish sources, Roth sets out to shatter all existing preconceptions about late medieval society in Spain.”—Henry Kamen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History “Scholarly, detailed, researched, and innovative. . . . As the result of Roth’s writing, we shall need to rethink our knowledge and understanding of this period.”—Murray Levine, Jewish Spectator “The fruit of many years of study, investigation, and reflection, guaranteed by the solid intellectual trajectory of its author, an expert in Jewish studies. . . . A contribution that will be particularly valuable for the study of Spanish medievalism.”—Miguel Angel Motis Dolader, Annuario de Estudios Medievales The Jewish community in Spain was the largest and most important in the West for almost a thousand years, participating fully in cultural and political affairs with Christian and Muslim neighbors. Norman Roth traces the chain of events that led to mass conversions of Spanish Jews to Christianity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the rise of animosity against them, the establishment of the Inquisition, and finally, the 1492 Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Citing evidence from his extensive research of medieval documents, he firmly refutes the traditionally accepted story of "crypto-Judaism," which contends that the conversos were forced publicly to abandon their faith, while continuing secretly to maintain their Jewish traditions. Roth argues persuasively that the conversos were, in fact, sincere Christians.