Christendom over Islam. Previously, the specter of Islam as a more powerful
force than Christendom deterred the mass of Jews from defecting to
Christianity; after all, why join the weaker of two sides in a conflict? As the
Reconquistaapproached ultimate victory at the end of the fourteenth century,
with the heretofore seemingly invincible Moors pinned down in Granada,
a surge of Christian confidence made conversion to Christianity a more attrac-
tive option for beleaguered and besieged Jews.
Among the Jewish converts was Joshua ha-Lorki. In 1412, in order to
demonstrate his Christian conviction and to induce other Jews to convert, he
persuaded Pope Benedict XIII to convene a disputation in Tortosa in 1412.
Although the Jews had capable scholars arguing on their behalf, this disputa-
tion was, from the outset, designed more along the lines of its precursor in
Paris rather than the one in Barcelona. It lasted more than two years, during
which time the Jewish scholars were subjected to relentless interrogation.
When the disputation finally ended in 1414, another wave of conversions fol-
lowed. The conversions continued well into the fifteenth century. It is
estimated that by 1450, 60,000 Jews had converted.
By the mid-fifteenth century, a growing concern among the Catholic
clergy emerged regarding the sincerity of these conversions, resulting in a
division within Spanish Christendom between Christians and conversos. A con-
versowas any Christian whose religious pedigree did not predate 1391 – in
other words, a Jew who had converted after the riots, presumably for prag-
matic reasons rather than as a matter of true conviction. The growing
suspicion that the conversoswere not sincere Christians led in 1449 to a series
of restrictions placed on them, Limpieza de Sangre(literally, purity of blood
laws), which barred them from holding public office, engaging in certain
occupations, and cohabiting too intimately with Christians – reminiscent of
the restrictions placed on Jews by Las Siete Partidas.
Three decades later, shortly after the unification of Aragon and Castille
into Spain, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand authorized the creation of a
Spanish branch of the Papal Inquisition under the direction of Tomás de
Torquemada. Unlike the Papal Inquisition, which had been created to combat
Christian heresy, the Spanish Inquisition was created to combat converso
heresy. Hundreds of conversossuspected of heresy were brutally interrogated by
the Inquisition on the pretense of saving their souls from eternal damnation.
Many were executed as heretics immediately upon confessing.
Historians debate as to how to interpret the results of these interrogations,
particularly about how many of these conversoswere crypto-Jews, conversoswho
practiced Judaism in secret (also called marranos, a derogatory Castilian word
for swine). Some historians, taking the claims of the inquisitors at face value,
have argued that the confessions of heresy reflected widespread crypto-
Judaism among the conversos. Others have suggested that the inquisitors
exaggerated and that not many conversoswere crypto-Jews.
100 The Jews of medieval Christendom