In what pertains to the problem of identity construction among Judeoconversos, I contend that a sound historical interpretation is one that focuses closely on the complexity of historical events and avoids grand, overambitious ventures; for example, trying to determine how Jewish all Judeoconversos “really” were (or were not). As I will discuss in the final chapter, my findings suggest that no sweeping generalization is desirable concerning the social and religious identities of Judeoconversos. In fact, my research indicates that the questions “How Jewish?” and “How Christian?” are based on a fundamental misconception of what religion meant to most converso renegades during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
My specific findings aside, it is clear that with the exception of works about a few educated skeptics and intellectual luminaries, scholarship has paid relatively little attention to the subject of converso renegades.48 The theme and scope of this book are consequently new for all intents and purposes. Ironically, my main challenge has not been to unearth archival documents. Many of the records I have worked with are known to specialists, who have tended to underrate, underanalyze, or simply disregard these sources. My chief methodological task has been to configure a distinct body of material from ostensibly disparate files, and to shed a new light on their content.49 This book constitutes an attempt to interpret the historical experiences and unconventional (though hardly uncommon) choices of ordinary Judeoconversos in a new way.
Terminology
Before embarking upon an examination of the topic at hand, it is crucial to remember that “dissidence,” not to mention being a “renegade,” is in the eye of the beholder. One can easily surmise that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jews, as well as Judaicized50 New Christians, regarded conversos who reverted to Christianity as odious deserters. Of course, these same “deviants” were nothing less than exemplary penitents in the official estimation of the inquisitors, and probably that of orthodox Catholics in general.
For their part, Christianized conversos, who were as vulnerable to denunciation as actual crypto-Jews, concurred with the normative Jewish view that voluntary informers were ruthless and despicable turncoats. Indeed, New Christian lore produced a stereotypically insidious image of “the informer”—the malsin.51
In addition to recognizing colloquial usage, I have tried to avoid lexical monotony. Given the relative dearth of purely descriptive terms such as “border crosser,” “informer” and “returnee,” I have resorted in particular to the less impartial “renegade” (without quotation marks) for purposes of exposition. Whatever stylistic flexibility this and similar non-neutral words afford, it is obvious that they compromise an ideal objectivity: All of them imply an orthodox, thoroughly partisan perspective, be it that of early modern Jews (in the case of “renegade,” “nonconformist,” and the like) or that of Catholics (in the case of “penitent,” “conformist,” and similar terms). However, I believe the findings of this study cancel some of the bias inherent in this value-laden nomenclature. They do this by historicizing the actual or probable behaviors (rather than ideal or putative ones) represented by that same terminology.
To cite but one example: In the context of this study, the word “penitent” refers to a Judeoconverso who returned to the fold of Ibero-Christendom by performing certain actions. These actions were calculated to show repentance for past conduct and to demonstrate the actor’s renewed, heartfelt adherence to the rules and standards of orthodox Catholicism. Accordingly, one may reasonably argue that the term “penitent” connotes reunion, spiritual restoration, and the actor’s essential humility. That is to say, the term itself implies a benign and commendatory view of penitence and, by extension, of the penitent’s spiritual state during the process of his or her reentry into the Christian community of faith. This connotational meaning is obviously consistent with the official judgment of the inquisitorial functionaries who welcomed and guided errant sinners back into the bosom of the Catholic Church during the historical period in question.
Looking at the penitents through the lens of historical analysis allows a different view. In the first place, a comparative reading of inquisitorial documents reveals that not all Judeoconverso penitents exemplified humility or were motivated by a previous desire to embrace a Catholic identity. Some “penitents” feigned reconversion; others could not banish their religious doubts despite undergoing formal atonement; a few remained indifferent toward their “recovered” faith, while others—in my view, the majority—embraced it with sincerity if not always with enthusiasm. In the second place, not every converso émigré who came back to the Iberian Peninsula did so with the aim of repudiating Judaism before an inquisitorial tribunal. An important segment of my research suggests that most conversos who returned to Spain and Portugal did so for economic or personal (non-idiosyncratic) reasons: to buy and sell goods, to collect debts, to visit relatives, to seek a livelihood, to help friends in need, to satisfy a deep nostalgia, and so on.
In the end, historical analysis precludes the blanket endorsement implicit in the word “penitent,” because all relevant data indicate that penitents were not a homogeneous group. More to the point, “penitent,” like “returnee,” is a term that glosses over a wide variety of motivations and behaviors. It is this kaleidoscopic yet ultimately coherent array that now deserves our attention.
Chapter 2
Conversos: The Iberian Context
The history of early modern Spain is the story of several paradoxes. First and foremost, it is the story of a group of small Iberian kingdoms that evolved into a vast and fearsome empire, yet whose rulers and literati became so conscious of its economic weaknesses, that some Spanish critics became convinced that the Habsburg colossus could scarcely support itself throughout the very period when it was Europe’s only superpower. At a sociocultural level, the history of Habsburg Spain is the story of a society obsessed with notions of honor, nobility, and Christian orthodoxy, which nonetheless produced a large subculture of dishonor and impiety known to modern readers through the literary archetype of the picaro. Crucially, early modern Spain was an officially closed and culturally intolerant society that depended considerably on the economic activities of its persecuted minorities. A persistent Spanish preoccupation with the questions of “purity of blood” and “purity of faith” betrayed yet another, more fundamental paradox. This was the fact that early modern Iberian culture, despite its exclusionary bent, had actually incorporated and been deeply influenced by its designated outsiders, first by Jews and Moslems, later by Judeoconversos and moriscos, through centuries of intermarriage, voluntary conversions to Catholicism, forced assimilation, and daily contact.
The seventeenth century, Spain’s era of crisis, brought all of these paradoxes into sharp relief as the country’s economic and political life accentuated discrepancies between the chauvinistic ideologies that often colored Spanish aspirations on one hand, and the complex realities that shaped the larger panorama of Spanish life on the other. The tumultuous Spanish crisis of the 1600s is important to this study not only because it formed the background against which the drama of Judeoconverso “renegades” played itself out, but because the history of the crisis holds some of the keys to an understanding of the renegades’ behavior itself. The purpose of this chapter, then, is twofold: first, to sketch important aspects of a broad historical scenario in order to provide a historical framework for the individual and collective histories of returnees and spontaneous informers, particularly in what concerns these individuals’ fateful encounter with the peninsular inquisitions. Second, the chapter aims to place Judeoconversos (including the renegades) in that larger Hispanic context by highlighting key aspects of the economic and sociocultural roles that New Christians played within the Iberian Peninsula.
Spain,