The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain

The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain
Author: Benzion Netanyahu
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 1432
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780940322394

The Spanish Inquisition remains a fearful symbol of state terror. Its principal target was theconversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier. Since thousands of them confessed to charges of practicing Judaism in secret, historians have long understood the Inquisition as an attempt to suppress the Jews of Spain. In this magisterial reexamination of the origins of the Inquisition, Netanyahu argues for a different view: that the conversos were in fact almost all genuine Christians who were persecuted for political ends. The Inquisition's attacks not only on the conversos' religious beliefs but also on their "impure blood" gave birth to an anti-Semitism based on race that would have terrible consequences for centuries to come. This book has become essential reading and an indispensable reference book for both the interested layman and the scholar of history and religion.

Toward the Inquisition

Toward the Inquisition
Author: Benzion Netanyahu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN:

B. Netanyahu revolutionized accepted belief concerning the causes of the Spanish Inquisition in his volume of 1995, The Origins of the Inquisition. Toward the Inquisition is another major contribution to this historiographic revolution. Made up of seven of Netanyahu's essays, published over the last two decades and collected here for the first time, it further illuminates Jewish and Marrano history from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. Forming as they do a unified whole, the essays are provocative and boldly interpretive, yet meticulously documented from a wealth of sources. The essays throw light on such long-obscured phenomena as the rise of the Nazi-like theory of race which harassed the conversos for three full centuries, or the abandonment of Judaism by most conversos decades before the Inquisition was established.

The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews

The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews
Author: Stephan Wendehorst
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2004
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Drawing on ongoing research in the archive of the former Roman Inquisition, this volume presents new perspectives for research on the relations between the Catholic Church, Jews and Judaism and places them within the context of the extant scholarship on papal policy, censorship and the Marrano milieu.

Between Christian and Jew

Between Christian and Jew
Author: Paola Tartakoff
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2012-07-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812206754

In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next twenty months. Between Christian and Jew closely analyzes these events, which Paola Tartakoff considers paradigmatic of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews in the period. The trials also serve as the backbone of her nuanced consideration of Jewish conversion to Christianity—and the unwelcoming Christian response to Jewish conversions—during a period that is usually celebrated as a time of relative interfaith harmony. The book lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain. Tartakoff's research reveals that the majority of Jewish converts of the period turned to baptism in order to escape personal difficulties, such as poverty, conflict with other Jews, or unhappy marriages. They often met with a chilly reception from their new Christian brethren, making it difficult to integrate into Christian society. Tartakoff explores Jewish antagonism toward Christians and Christianity by examining the aims and techniques of Jews who sought to re-Judaize apostates as well as the Jewish responses to inquisitorial prosecution during an actual investigation. Prosecutions such as the 1341 trial were understood by papal inquisitors to be in defense of Christianity against perceived Jewish attacks, although Tartakoff shows that Christian fears about Jewish hostility were often exaggerated. Drawing together the accounts of Jews, Jewish converts, and inquisitors, this cultural history offers a broad study of interfaith relations in medieval Iberia.

Secret-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition

Secret-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition
Author: Michael Alpert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

From the end of the 15th century until the 18th, Spanish Jews carried on Jewish practices in the shadow of the Inquisition. Those caught were forced to recant or be burnt at the stake. Drawing on their confessions and trial documents, this book tells their story.

The Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition
Author: Henry Kamen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300075227

Thirty-five years ago, Kamen wrote a study of the Inquisition that received high praise. This present work, based on over 30 years of new research, is not simply a complete revision of the earlier book. Innovative in its presentation, point of view, information, and themes, it will revolutionize further study in the field.

The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550-1670

The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550-1670
Author: Brian S. Pullan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1983
Genre: History
ISBN:

The policy of the Inquisition in Venice regarding Conversos was an expression of its willingness to compromise with the state in order to avoid conflict. The Venetian Inquisition acted merely as an extension of the state. It was restricted to preserving public order and morals and dealt with offenses against conventional civil behavior. The state was interested in punishing heresy only if it also involved betrayal or rebellion, and this attitude set the political context for Inquisitional policy. Describes the Inquisition's organization and methods, and deals with the legal status of the Jews and Conversos in the city.

Inquisitorial Inquiries

Inquisitorial Inquiries
Author: Richard L. Kagan
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2004-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801879241

On the first day of Francisco de San Antonio's trial before the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo in 1625, his interrogators asked him about his parentage. His real name, he stated, was Abram Rubén, and he had been born in Fez of Jewish parents. How then, Inquisitors wanted to know, had he become a Christian convert? Why had a Hebrew alphabet been found in his possession? And what was his business at the Court in Madrid? "He was asked," according to his dossier, "for the story of his life." His response, more than ten folios long, is one of the many involuntary autobiographies created by the logic of the Inquisition that today provides rich insights into both the personal lives of the persecuted and the social, cultural, and political realities of the age. In Inquisitorial Inquiries, Richard Kagan and Abigail Dyer have collected, translated, and annotated six of these autobiographies from a diverse group of prisoners, five tried in Europe and one in Mexico. Each of the autobiographies has been selected to represent a particular political or social issue, while at the same time raising more intimate questions about the religious, sexual, political, or national identity of the prisoners. Among them are a politically incendiary prophet; a self-proclaimed hermaphrodite charged with having violated the sacrament of marriage for having married a woman; a female convert to Catholicism who betrayed her Jewish origins by serving as a rabbi and preaching heretical doctrine in the New World; and a morisco, an Islamic convert to Catholicism who claimed to have been circumcised against his will. In their introduction, Kagan and Dyer stress the "collaborative" nature of these texts, stressing the coercion involved and the purpose of the interrogations that solicited them. Making these invaluable primary sources available for the first time in English, Inquisitorial Inquiries will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of early modern Europe, colonial Latin America, gender studies, and religious history.