Parallel Histories: Muslims and Jews in Inquisitorial Spain

10. Vigilance through Violence

80 chapter 10 VIGILANCE THROUGH VIOLENCE I t is a common irony of history that the best information about a social group often comes from its bitterest enemies. That certainly is true of the conversos. By far the most voluminous record of their activities can be found among the trial papers of the Inquisition. These sources give a richly detailed, if consistently deformed, view of a category of Spaniards who otherwise left few documentary traces, at least relating to what most interested both their contemporaries and present-day readers: their alleged or real Judaism. More will be said about the possible distortions of these records below. For the moment, the task is to chart the contours of Inquisitorial attention to the New Christians, along with the long-term rhythms of vigilance on the part of the Holy Office. There were four main stages in the prosecution of conversos suspected of judaizing: 1. The initial period comprised the first four decades of the Inquisition’s history, beginning with the early mass trials in Seville in the 1480s. This was by far the most brutal period of persecution, in terms of the numbers of individuals investigated , the proportions judged guilty, and the harshness of sentences imposed. It was also almost exclusively centered in cities, where most conversos lived. Vigilance through Violence 81 2. A perceptible decline in the prosecution of converts followed beginning in the third decade of the sixteenth century. This was in part thanks to the thoroughness with which the Holy Office had made its destructive way through the New Christian strata of Spain’s cities. But there was also another factor. New heresies were claiming the inquisitors’ attention: Protestants and the alumbrados, that is, illuminist and often antinomian mystics. This second period, which lasted roughly to the end of the century, saw numerous episodes of Inquisitorial action . Its overall intensity did not, however, match that of the opening stage, which suggests that the tribunal was settling down to a routine that, as far as the conversos was concerned, was only occasionally interrupted by major spurts of activity. It was also becoming increasingly preoccupied with Old Christians, and this meant novel—indeed, unprecedented—attention to Spain’s rural population. 3. What brought the issue of crypto-Judaism back to life—and the Holy Office back to the cities—was the growing influx of Portuguese New Christians into Castile and, also to a considerable extent, to the New World colonies. Some converso merchants and artisans had already immigrated prior to Philip II’s absorption of Portugal in 1580. But after that date far greater numbers of Portuguese New Christians moved to Castile to take advantage of the ample economic opportunities that awaited them there. This gave rise to the third, and what might be called the “Portuguese period,” of the Inquisition’s pursuit of judaizers. It lasted roughly from the 1570s to the 1660s. What proved most distinctive here was not just the foreign birth of the conversos. It was also the fact that many of them were indeed genuine crypto-Jews who had been much more willing and/or successful than their Spanish brethren in remaining attached to their ancestral faith. The larger numbers and greater visibility of these potential suspects were offset in part by the growing economic difficulties the Inquisition faced on an operational level. Also, during the central decades of this period the more influential of these conversos enjoyed some degree of political protection, as the monarchy found them—for a while—quite useful as financiers and administrators of customs and other governmental functions. 4. The final stage of the Holy Office’s struggle against New Christian “apostasy” covered the seventy or so years from the mid-seventeenth century to the 1720s. Diminishing intensity marked this period as a whole. Nevertheless, it did see a number of trials against alleged judaizers of Portuguese extraction in several cities. It in fact ended with a sweep of conversos in Madrid, Mallorca, Seville, and Granada during the 1720s. This unusual outburst—which featured over 82 Parallel Histories one hundred executions—turned out to be the last significant campaign against crypto-Jews in Iberian history. It is difficult to estimate the numbers of individuals involved. Minimally accurate records of Inquisitorial activity do not survive for the six decades prior to 1540—precisely the period of the greatest (and most lethal) persecution of conversos. From 1540 to 1700 a minimum...