"I Will Make the Inquisition Burn You and Your Sisters": The Role of Gender and Kinship in Accusations against Conversas
2000; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2615-2282
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Linguistic Studies
ResumoThis preliminary study seeks to generate a few relevant questions about under-used or misunderstood sources regarding the Spanish Inquisition and the role of gender in accusations of judaizing against women who converted from Judaism to Christianity. The role of women within kin groups in these Converso communities, in both Old and New Spain, is a neglected area of study, while it is clear that many of the accusations which were generated within Converso communities had women at their center. The cases examined here derive from Spain and Mexico, one each from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.Despite geographical and chronological differences, it appears that similar questions may be asked of these cases. It must be asked why these women were denounced before the Spanish Inquisition. Was it really adherence to Judaism that brought these women to the attention of the Inquisition?Could it have been conflict within families? Might these accusations have been politically motivated? These and other reasons which account for the persecution of Converso women by the Spanish Inquisition are areas which beg to be explored.The Evolution of Medieval Anti-JudaismThe subject of medieval attitudes towards marginalized groups including women, Jews, heretics, witches, and lepers has generated a wealth of scholarship. A brief background on the development of medieval anti-Judaism will provide context for the study of eventual persecution of Conversos by the Spanish Inquisition.There are several chronological signposts in the development of medieval anti-Judaism, beginning with the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290, from the kingdoms of France in 1306 and 1394, and from Castile in 1492.(1) Several scholars have attempted to trace the rise of anti-Judaism during the Middle Ages. R.I. Moore links Crusading fervor with attacks on Jews in Europe, while Jeremy Cohen attributes growing hostility towards the Jews to the preaching of the friars.(2)Cohen asserts that prior to the thirteenth century Catholic theology had demanded that the Jew be tolerated in Christendom, largely due to Augustinian tenets which had instructed that God had ordained the survival of the Jews...that their presence...might aid the Church in its mission to the Gentiles...so they might convert at the end of days.(3) David Nirenberg critiques these approaches by arguing that such generalized theories ignore the specific phenomenon in a given geographical area at a particular historical moment.(4) Moore and Cohen have focused on stereotypes of the other, ignoring actions of groups or individuals in a particular historical context. Robert Bonfil argues that if Christians had coherently translated their traditional cultural ideas and symbols into practice, they would doubtless have expelled the Jews from christendom long before the end of the fifteenth century.(5)Nirenberg argues that there was a shifting interplay of tolerance and violence towards marginalized groups, including Jews, during the Middle Ages, and that micro-studies, taking into account local stresses and strains, provide better answers than generalized theories.(6) It is Nirenberg's approach which can be applied to examining the persecution of Conversos in Spain and the New World. Micro-studies examining the interplay of gender and the Inquisition in Converso communities would be much more fruitful than the studies which have revolved around generalized arguments that Conversos remained true Jews or had been fully Christianized by the time the Inquisition acted against them.New Christians, Conversos, Crypto-Jews, Judaizers, Marranos, and AnnusimThere are a variety of designations for those Jews who were forcibly baptized or chose to convert to Christianity. Many of the terms are used interchangeably, but they have different connotations and may signal an author's approach to the subject.(7) Converso is the most common contemporary academic term used to designate Jews who had converted to Christianity. …
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