A converso (; ; feminine form conversa, ) was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of their descendants.
To safeguard the Old Christian population and ensure that the converso New Christians were true to their new faith, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Spain in 1478. The Catholic Monarchs of Spain Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the remaining openly practising Jews by the Alhambra Decree of 1492 following the Christian Reconquista (reconquest) of Spain. However, a significant portion of these remaining practising Jews chose to join the already large converso community rather than face exile.Alicia Gojman de Backal, "Conversos" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997, vol. 1, p. 340. As a result of the Alhambra Decree, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled.
Conversos who did not fully or genuinely embrace Catholicism but continued to practise Judaism in secrecy were called judaizantes "Judaizers" and pejoratively as marranos.
New Christian converts of Muslim origin were known as Moriscos. Unlike Jewish Conversos, Moriscos were subject to an edict of expulsion even after their conversion to Catholicism, which was implemented severely in Valencia and in Aragón (and less so in other parts of Spain).
Conversos played a vital role in the 1520–1521 Revolt of the Comuneros, a popular uprising in the Crown of Castile against the rule of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
History Ferrand Martínez, Archdeacon of Écija, directed a 13-year anti-Jewish campaign that began in 1378. Martínez used a series of provocative sermons through which he openly condemned the Jews with little to no opposition. He rallied non-Jews against the Jews, creating a constant state of fear through riots. Martínez's efforts led to a series of outbreaks of violence on 4 June 1391, when several synagogues in Seville were burned to the ground and churches were erected in their place. Amidst this outbreak, many Jews fled the country, some converted to Christianity in fear and some were sold to Muslims. Martínez engineered the largest forced mass conversion of Jews in Spain.
Both the church and the crown had not anticipated such a large-scale conversion stemming from Martínez's unplanned antisemitic campaign. The new converts represented a new problem, because although their conversion temporarily resolved the friction between the Christian and Jewish populations, it led to the creation of a new group that was neither completely Catholic nor Jewish, and new tensions resulted.
Conversos, who were now fully privileged citizens, competed in all aspects of the economic sphere. This resulted in a new wave of racial antisemitism that targeted conversos. This antisemitism evolved into small and large riots in Toledo in 1449 that now oppressed not Jews by Christians, but New Christians (conversos) by the Old Christians. The crown established an office of the Inquisition in 1478 and monitored the religious loyalty of newly baptized Christian conversos. Such religious surveillance continued to the descendants of converts.Bodian, Miriam. "Men of the Nation": The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern Europe." Past & Present, No. 143 (May, 1994), pp. 48–76 Faced with continued oppression, some Jews and conversos fled Spain to Portugal, but when the Portuguese crown instituted similar anti-Jewish policies, these Jews migrated primarily to the Netherlands. Others created crypto-Jewish communities to ensure the survival of Judaism in the Iberian peninsula, although outwardly practicing Christianity.
In 1485, Pedro de Arbués, an inquisitor in the Kingdom of Aragon, was assassinated while praying in Zaragoza's cathedral. The attack was attributed to a conspiracy involving conversos. Among those implicated were prominent figures, including a grandson of the well-known convert Gerónimo de Santa Fe, who committed suicide in prison. Others, including high-ranking officials and converso elites, were arrested, tortured and executed. Their hands were nailed to the cathedral door before they were beheaded and quartered. Some suspects fled to Navarre and escaped punishment, while others were condemned posthumously. Though contemporary accounts blamed the conversos as a group, records also indicate that “old Christians” were involved, although few faced prosecution.
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Conversos were subject to suspicion and harassment from their former and new communities alike. Both Christians and Jews called them tornadizos (renegades). James I, Alfonso X and John I passed laws forbidding the use of this epithet. This was part of a larger pattern of royal oversight, as laws were promulgated to protect their property, forbid attempts to convert them back to Judaism or the Muslim faith and regulate their behaviour, preventing cohabitation or even dining with Jews to prevent their return to Judaism.
Conversos did not enjoy legal equality. Alfonso VII prohibited the "recently converted" from holding office in Toledo. Although they had both supporters and bitter opponents in the Christian secular community, they became targets of occasional pogroms during times of social tension (as during an epidemic and after an earthquake).
While those considered to be of pure blood (called limpieza de sangre) with undisputed Christian lineage enjoyed privilege, particularly among the nobility, in a 15th-century defence of conversos, Bishop Lope de Barrientos listed what historian Norman Roth calls "a veritable 'Who's Who' of Spanish nobility" including converso members or those of converso descent. Roth has also written that given the near-universal conversion of Iberian Jews during Visigothic times, "[W]ho among the Christians of Spain could be certain that he is not a descendant of those conversos?"Roth, p. 93
According to a widely publicised December 2008 study in the American Journal of Human Genetics, genetic DNA tracing has revealed that modern Spaniards and Portuguese have an average admixture of 19.8% of ancestry originating in the Near East (Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Jews and Levantine Arabs) during historic times, compared to 10.6% of North African or Berber admixture. This proportion could be as high as 23% for Latin Americans, according to a study published in Nature Communications. This potentially higher proportion of Jewish ancestry in the Latin American population could stem from increased emigration of conversos to the New World to avoid persecution by the Spanish Inquisition.
Conversos and the Spanish Golden Age Conversos played a prominent role in shaping Spanish intellectual and literary culture, particularly during the period commonly called the Spanish Golden Age. Their influence began to emerge as early as the 15th century, well before the height of this cultural flourishing. One of the most striking examples of this influence is the authorship of La Celestina, a 1499 book by Fernando de Rojas that is considered the first modern play in any language. Conversos were central contributors not only to poetry and fiction but also to historical chronicles, anti-Jewish polemics, philosophical texts, and other literary forms.
Religious identity and assimilation According to historian Norman Roth, many conversos possessed only limited knowledge of Jewish religious practice, particularly beyond the most visible customs known even to Old Christians. While some converso polemicists displayed varying degrees of familiarity with Jewish sources, converso poets generally lacked such religious knowledge. Claims that Hebrew or Talmudic influences shaped converso literature, such as in the works of Juan de Mena or Juan Álvarez Gato, have been dismissed by scholars such as Roth as speculative and unsupported.
Some prominent converso figures exhibited notable ignorance regarding Jewish heritage. Pedro de la Caballería, for instance, mistakenly called Maimonides "Moses the Egyptian," assuming that Maimonides had lived in Egypt rather than in Spain. He also misattributed advice to the Catholic Monarchs to Vicente Ferrer, who had died decades earlier. Even those conversos with formal Jewish education, such as Pablo de Santa María, ultimately rejected Jewish sources in favor of Christian interpretations, sometimes based on misreadings. In his writings, de Santa María presented biblical narratives through a Christian lens, depicting the serpent as Lucifer and Eve as the corruptor of Adam, despite lacking textual basis in the Hebrew bible.
In Burgos, conversos were generally regarded as devout Christians, especially those from the influential Santa María family, whose example was considered representative across Spain. Allegations of religious insincerity, known as "infamy," existed in cities such as Calahorra, Osma and Salamanca, although more serious criminal accusations were recorded in Toledo and Seville. Some conversos are known to have supported religious and charitable foundations, forming or joining confraternities (cofradías) such as Santa María la Blanca in Toledo, established in 1478. Founding members of this cofradía included physicians, merchants, craftsmen and officials, many of whom were conversos. In 1488, another group of Toledo conversos founded a chapel in the monastery of San Agustín.
Some conversos retained messianic expectations traditionally associated with Judaism. In the 15th century, chronicler Alonso de Palencia reported that many conversos in Andalusia continued to believe in the coming of the messiah, interpreting unusual natural events (such as the sighting of a whale off the coast near Setúbal, which they identified with the biblical sea monster Leviathan) as signs of its imminent arrival. However, it is unclear whether such beliefs referred to the Jewish messiah or to Christ's second coming.
Perpetuation of Jewish heritage Conversas played a pivotal role in keeping Jewish traditions alive by observing many Jewish holidays such as Shabbat. They prepared traditional Jewish dishes in honor of the Sabbath (starting on Friday at sundown), Yom Kippur and other religious holidays. During festivals such as Sukkot and Passover, conversas participated by giving clothing articles and ornaments to Jewish women, attending a seder or obtaining a baking matzah. Conversas ensured that their households maintained similar dietary regulations as their Jewish counterparts by consuming only kosher flesh. These women also financially contributed to the growth of the combined Jewish/converso community and the synagogues.
The Jewish community and conversos exchanged books and knowledge. Jews taught conversos how to read to ensure constant growth of their Jewish heritage. To take a stance against the church and its principles, some conversos worked on Sundays in violation of church policy.
The traditional Jewish Purim was preserved by conversos still adhering to Jewish observances under the guise of a Christian holiday that they named the Festival of Santa Esterica.
Spanish Inquisition discipline The Spanish Inquisition operated in close collaboration with secular authorities to impose a range of penalties on those accused of heresy. Canon law prohibited the church from directly executing individuals; instead, those convicted were "relaxed to the secular arm," a euphemism for the transfer of alleged heretics to state authorities for administration of capital punishment. One of the most infamous methods of execution was death by immolation, a practice not found in traditional secular law but devised within ecclesiastical circles. It was justified theologically as a way to save the heretic's soul from eternal damnation through worldly suffering. If the condemned repented just before execution, he would be allowed to be killed by garrote, a method that was believed to spare the soul.