Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain

Cover

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Title Page

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pp. iii-

Contents

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pp. vii-

Preface

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pp. ix-xiii

Unlike other European countries, by the end of the Middle Ages Spain had a large number of conversos, Jews or descendants of Jews who, in most instances, had been forced to embrace Christianity. The problem started in 1391, when numerous pogroms devastated the country. Christian mobs...

Chapter One: The Converso Problem

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pp. 1-32

According to Islamic tradition, Christians and Jews are "people of the book" because they are mentioned in the Koran, which includes Jewish and Christian figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Mary, and Jesus. Since Muslims believe that the angel Gabriel transported to heaven the founder of Islam...

Chapter Two: Repression and Artistic Expression

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pp. 33-78

This was the suffocating environment in which Fernando de Rojas and Francisco Delicado had to live. Being conversos, they belonged to a repressed, unwanted minority. Rojas published Celestina anonymously in Burgos, in 1499, seven years after the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews,...

Chapter Three: The Idea of "Limpieza" in Celestina, La Lozana andaluza, and Other Literary Works

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pp. 79-100

"Limpieza de sangre" was particularly vexing to learned conversos, who took inordinate pride in their Jewish ancestry, tending to regard themselves as noble. In the Iberian Peninsula, Judaism reached the greatest heights ever achieved in the history of the Diaspora, to such an extent that medieval Spain...

Chapter Four: Celestina as an Antithesis of the Blessed -Mother

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pp. 101-141

First published anonymously, Celestina was a controversial work from the very beginning. ¹ In the preliminary letter to an unnamed friend, Rojas says that he found the equally anonymous first act, which some attributed to Juan de Mena and others to Rodrigo Cota, already written, and that he decided to...

Chapter Five: Christian Prayer and Dogma in Celestina

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pp. 142-170

In a work entitled The Refutation of Christian Principles (c. 1398), Hasdai ben Judah Crescas (c. 1340-1410 or 1411), chief rabbi of Zaragoza, whose son had been killed in the riots of 1391, listed his philosophical arguments against the principal beliefs of Christianity as follows: "(1) The original,...

Chapter Six: "Sailing," Renaissance Rome, and Exile in La Lozana andaluza

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pp. 171-201

Written by Francisco Delicado, an Andalusian priest who lived in Rome for many years, La Lozana andaluza (Venice, 1530) opens with a prologue (167-70) where the author dedicates his book to an unidentified "Ilustre Senor" ("Illustrious Lord"),l claiming that he is merely describing what he...

Chapter Seven: The Holy Trinity and the Annunciation in La Lozana andaluza

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pp. 202-230

By presenting the capital of Christendom as a whore, Delicado coincided with those Christians who also decried the immorality of Rome and sought to reform the Church. Although they disagreed with Rome, their Christianity was not in doubt. Delicado was not one of those reformers. As we will...

Chapter Eight: Rojas, Delicado, and the Art of Subversion

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pp. 231-257

Delicado's claim,on the very frontispiece of his book, that it contains "munchas mas cosas que la Celestina" ("many more things than Celestina"; 165), may have been an advertising gimmick, for Celestina was an extremely popular, bawdy work with the name of another woman on the title, but it is...

Appendix

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pp. 259-272

Notes

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pp. 273-302

Abbreviations

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pp. 303-304

Works Cited

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pp. 305-338

Index

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pp. 339-346