Juan de Torquemada's Defense of the Conversos

JUAN DE TORQUEMADA'S DEFENSE OF THE CONVERSOS BY Thomas M. Izbicki' InJanuary of 1449 the city ofToledo rose up against an attempt byAlvaro de Luna, the favorite of the reigning king of Castile, Juan II, to impose a heavy tax on the city.This levy was intended to help Don Alvaro to defend his position against the hostility of certain noble families, including the king's cousins. The insurrection led to the burning of the house of the appointed tax collector, Alonso Cota, a "New Christian," one of those descendants from converts to Judaism who had made a career for himself as a royal official. There followed a wider attack on the conversos, a sign that baptism, even voluntarily received,would not win for Jewish converts or their Christianized descendants full acceptance in some "Old Christian" circles.1 Men who themselves had abandoned Judaism or whose families had received baptism, often during upheavals at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, were deprived of official posts in the city. An ecclesiastical trial of converts accused of "judaizing" also was held, leading to some "Dr. Izbicki is the Collection Development Coordinator at Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University. The original version of this article was read as a paper at the twenty-ninth International Congress on Medieval Studies held at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in 1994.The author wishes to thank Professor Norman Roth for his insightful critique ofthe manuscript and Professor Richard Kagan for his reading of an earlier draft of it. 'Disputes over the sincerity and depth of these conversions have been fierce, especially since the publication ofBenzion Netanyahu, The Marranos ofSpainfrom the Late XlVth to the Early XVlth Century according to Contemporary Hebrew Sources (New York, 1966), which argued that the converts were sincere Christians. More recently, see idem, The Origins of the Spanish Inquisition (New York, 1995); Norman Roth, Conversos , Inquisition, and the Expulsion ofthefewsfrom Spain (Madison, Wisconsin, 1995). For a review of these debates which favors Netanyahu's views, see Allan H. Cutler and Helen E. Cutler, Thefew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots ofAnti-Semitism (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1986), pp. 205-248. See, however,José Faur,"Four Classes of Conversos: A Typological Study," Revue des Étudesfuives, 149 (1990), 113-124; Kristine T. Utterback, "Conversi Revert: Voluntary and Forced Return to Judaism in the Early Fourteenth Century ," Church History, 64 (March, 1995), 16-28; David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion ofthe Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia, 1996). 195 196JUAN DE TORQUEMADA'S DEFENSE OF THE CONVERSOS executions, and much property was confiscated. Led by a disgruntled royal official, Pedro Sarmiento, the Old Christians of Toledo issued the Sentencia-estatuto, which forbade New Christians to hold offices and benefices in the city and its surrounding territories. The same document declared conversos infamous and unable to testify in legal proceedings .2 Polemics, the most important written by the lawyer Marcos Garcia de Mora, called Marquillos, denied that Jews could become true Christians and accused them of a propensity for evil. Old Christians, treated as the only true adherents to the faith, were described as threatened by Jewish machinations.3 (Part of his case against the converts was grounded on local laws, including a statute of Alfonso VII issued during the twelfth century, which forbade converts from Judaism to hold office in the city.4) At first Alvaro de Luna made feeble efforts to help the conversos of Toledo, and then he abandoned them. King Juan made efforts to coerce the rebels, but he abandoned them when his son and heir, Don Enrique, took Toledo under his wing. Thereafter, he was more interested in conciliating than punishing his rebellious subjects.5 The New Christians in the city were not without friends. Fernán Díaz de Toledo, the king's relator and a prominent convert, worked to enlist Lope de Barrientos, the Dominican bishop of Cuenca and a leading member of the royal entourage , among the opponents of the rebels. Alonso de Cartagena, bishop of Burgos, also a New Christian, wrote a detailed critique of this "sentence." He also described the Jews as a nation ennobled by God, not lost in infamy.6...