Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

Norman Roth

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780299142346, 9780299142308
• eBook ISBN: 9780299142339
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The Jewish community of medieval Spain was the largest and most important in the West for more than a thousand years, participating fully in cultural and political affairs with Muslim and Christian neighbors. This stable situation began to change in the 1390s, and through the next century hundreds of thousands of Jews converted to Christianity. Norman Roth argues here with detailed documentation that, contrary to popular myth, the conversos were sincere converts who hated (and were hated by) the remaining Jewish community. Roth examines in depth the reasons for the Inquisition against the conversos, and the eventual expulsion of all Jews from Spain.

"With scrupulous scholarship based on a profound knowledge of the Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish sources, Roth sets out to shatter all existing preconceptions about late medieval society in Spain."—Henry Kamen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"Scholarly, detailed, researched, and innovative. . . . As the result of Roth's writing, we shall need to rethink our knowledge and understanding of this period."—Murray Levine, Jewish Spectator

"The fruit of many years of study, investigation, and reflection, guaranteed by the solid intellectual trajectory of its author, an expert in Jewish studies. . . . A contribution that will be particularly valuable for the study of Spanish medievalism."—Miguel Angel Motis Dolader, Annuario de Estudios Medievales

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Information for the Reader
• Preface to the paperback edition
• 1. Marranos and Conversos
• 2. Early Phase of Conversions: Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
• 3. Conversos and Crisis: The Fifteenth Century
• 4. Conversos and Political Upheaval
• 5. Conversos in Service of Church and State
• 6. Converso Authors, Chroniclers, and Polemicists
• 7. The Inquisition
• 8. Expulsions of the Jews
• Afterword
• Appendix A. Critical Survey of the Literature
• Appendix B. Jewish and Converso Population in Fifteenth-Century Spain
• Appendix C. Major Converso Families
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Works Frequently Cited
• Glossary
• Bibliography of Norman Roth's Writings
• Index