Converso


A converso, "convert", was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants.
The majority of Spain's Jews converted to Christianity as a result of the pogroms in 1391. To safeguard the Old Christian population and make sure that converso "New Christians" were true to their new faith, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Spain in 1481. The Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expelled those remaining openly practising Jews by the Alhambra decree of 1492, following the Christian Reconquista of Spain. However, even a significant proportion of these remaining practising Jews chose to join the already large converso community rather than face exile.
Conversos who did not fully or genuinely embrace Catholicism, but continued to practise Judaism in secrecy, were referred to as judaizantes and pejoratively as marranos.
New Christian converts of Muslim origin were known as moriscos. Unlike Jewish conversos, moriscos were subject to an edict of expulsion even after their conversion to Catholicism, which was implemented severely in Valencia and in Aragón and less so in other parts of Spain.
Conversos played a vital role in the 1520–1521 Revolt of the Comuneros, a popular uprising and civil war centred on Castile's region against the imperial pretensions of the Spanish monarchy.

History

, Archdeacon of Écija, directed a 13-year anti-Semitic campaign that began in 1378. Martínez used a series of provocative sermons, through which he openly condemned the Jews with little to no opposition. He rallied non-Jews against the Jews by creating a constant state of fear through riots. Martínez's efforts led to a series of outbreaks on 4 June 1391, where several synagogues in Seville were burned to the ground and churches were erected in their place. Amidst this outbreak, many Jews fled the country, some converted to Christianity in fear, and some were sold to Muslims. Martínez set in motion the largest forced mass conversion of Jews in Spain.
Both the Church and the Crown had not anticipated such a large-scale conversion stemming from an unplanned anti-Semitic campaign led by Ferrand Martínez. The new converts, most of whom were forced, due to their large numbers, were victims of a new problem. A problem that temporarily solved the Jewish presence in Spain, however, led to the creation of a new group that was neither completely Catholic or Jewish.
The conversos, who were now fully privileged citizens, competed in all aspects of the economic sphere. This resulted in a new wave of racial anti-Semitism that was targeted at the conversos. This anti-Semitism evolved into small and large riots in Toledo, 1449, that now oppressed not the Jews by the Christians, but the New Christians by the Old Christians. Thus, the Crown established a National Inquisition in 1478, that would test the loyalty and purity of a newly baptised Christian. Due to continued oppression, some Jews and conversos fled Spain, others created a community to ensure the survival of Judaism in the Iberian Peninsula, although outwardly practising Christianity.

Perpetuation of Jewish heritage

Conversas played a pivotal role in keeping Jewish traditions alive by observing many Jewish holidays like Shabbat. Conversas also cooked and baked traditional Jewish dishes in honour of the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, and other religious holidays. During festivals like Sukkot and Passover, Conversas participated by giving clothing articles and ornaments to Jewish women, they also attended a seder or obtained a baking matzah. Conversas also ensured that their household maintained similar dietary regulations as their Jewish counterparts, they did so by eating only kosher birds and other animals. Conversas also financially contributed to the growth of the Jewish/Converso community and synagogue. The Jewish community and the conversos exchanged books and knowledge, Jews taught conversos how to read to ensure constant growth of their Jewish heritage. To take a stance against the church and its principles, some conversos performed professional work even on Sundays.
The traditional Jewish Purim was kept by the conversos in the disguise of a Christian holiday, they named it: "Festival of Santa Esterica".

Description

Conversos were subject to suspicion and harassment from both what was left of the community they were leaving and that which they were joining. Both Christians and Jews called them tornadizo. James I, Alfonso X and John I passed laws forbidding the use of this epithet. This was part of a larger pattern of royal oversight, as laws were promulgated to protect their property, forbid attempts to convert them back to Judaism or the Muslim faith, and regulate their behaviour, preventing their cohabitation or even dining with Jews, lest they convert back.
Conversos did not enjoy legal equality. Alfonso VII prohibited the "recently converted" from holding office in Toledo. They had supporters and bitter opponents in the Christian secular of general acceptance, yet they became targets of occasional pogroms during times of social tension. They were subject to the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions.
While "pure blood", free of the "taint" of non-Christian lineage, would come to be placed at a premium, particularly among the nobility, in a 15th-century defence of conversos, Bishop Lope de Barrientos would list what Roth calls "a veritable 'Who's Who' of Spanish nobility" as having converso members or being of converso descent. He pointed out that given the near-universal conversion of Iberian Jews during Visigothic times, "ho among the Christians of Spain could be certain that he is not a descendant of those conversos?"
With advances in science able to trace individuals' ancestry via their DNA, according to a widely publicised study in the American Journal of Human Genetics, modern Spaniards have an average admixture of 19.8 percent from ancestors originating in the Near East during historic times – compared to 10.6 percent of North African – Berber admixture. This proportion could be as high as 23% in the case of Latin Americans, however, according to a study published in Nature Communications. The possibly higher proportion of significant Jewish ancestry in the Latin American population could stem from increased emigration of Conversos to the New World to avoid persecution by the Spanish Inquisition.

By country

In Italy

Specific groups of conversos left Spain and Portugal after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, in search for a better life. They left for other parts of Europe, especially Italy, where they were inevitably looked at with suspicion and harassment, both in their old and new communities. Subsequently, many conversos who arrived in Italian cities did not openly embrace their Judaism, since they were tempted by the advantages they could seek in the Christian world.
The first three cities to accept the conversos who openly converted back to Judaism, were Florence, Ferrara, and Ancona. Most of these conversos appeared after 1536 from Portugal, and most lived in Florence. In 1549, Duke Cosimo de' Medici allowed the Portuguese conversos to trade and reside within Florence. Most of the re-converted Jews lived in the ghetto of Florence, and by 1705 there were 453 Jews in the city.
Conversos arrived to Ferrara in 1535, and were able to assimilate with their neighbours, perform circumcisions, and return openly to Judaism, due to the Lettres Patentes issued by Duke Ercole II. After the plague in 1505 and the eventual fall of Ferrara in 1551, many of these Jews relocated North towards the economically stable ports in Venice. Venice slowly became a center for conversos who either stopped temporarily on their way to Turkey or stayed permanently as residents in the ghetto Jewish community port. Venetian leaders were convinced to openly accept conversos to practice Judaism because they recognised that if conversos were not welcome in Venice, they would take their successful trades to the country's economic rival of Turkey. A Portuguese converso in Venice, named Abraham de Almeda, connected strongly with Christianity, however, turned to the Jewish members of his family when in need of financial for moral support. As a result, many of the conversos during this period struggled with their Christian and Jewish identities.
Conversos in the city of Ancona faced difficult lives living under the pope and eventually fled to Ferrara in 1555. Portuguese conversos in Ancona were falsely misled that they were welcome to Ancona and that they could openly convert back to Judaism. Their fate was overturned by the succeeding pope, Pope Paul IV. The conversos in Ancona faced traumatic emotional damage after the pope imprisoned 102 conversos who refused to reside in the ghetto and wear badges to distinguish themselves. In 1588, when the duke granted a charter of residence in return for the conversos building up the city's economy, they refused, due to accumulated scepticism.