1,721,025 research outputs found
A Perseguição aos Judeus e Muçulmanos de Portugal - D. Manuel I e o Fim da Tolerância Religiosa (1496-1497)
No full textThe Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal. King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7)
No full textIn 1496-7, King Manuel I of Portugal forced the Jews of his kingdom to convert to Christianity and expelled all his Muslim subjects. Portugal was the first kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula to end definitively Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence, creating an exclusively Christian realm. Drawing upon narrative and documentary sources in Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew, this book pieces together the developments that led to the events of 1496-7 and presents a detailed reconstruction of the persecution. It challenges widely held views concerning the impact of the arrival in Portugal of the Jews expelled from Castile in 1492, the diplomatic wrangling that led to the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews in 1497 and the causes behind the expulsion of the Muslim minority
Muslim slaves and freedmen in medieval Portugal
Full text linkThe study of slavery in medieval Portugal has focused almost exclusively on the status and fate of the sub-Saharan Africans who started to arrive in the kingdom from 1441onwards. The work of A. C. de C. MSaunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal 1441-1555 (Cambridge University Press, 1982) has been particularly important in this respect. In stark contrast to this, the fate of the substantial number of Muslim slaves who lived and worked in Portugal during the medieval period has to a large extent been overlooked. Using documentary evidence obtained from the national Portuguese archives, this article proposes to analyse in detail the origins of these slaves, their economic and social role and the laws that were promulgated to control them and their owners. The status of freedmen and manumission practices are also closely studied
“All one in Christ Jesus”? Spiritual closeness, genealogical determinism and the conversion of Jews in Alonso de Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei
No full textAlonso de Espina’s vitriolic polemic, Fortalitium Fidei (The fortress of faith, c. 1458–1464), includes a ferocious attack upon both Jews and the descendants of converts, who were collectively accused of judaizing. This would seem to set him at odds with the Apostle Paul’s formulation in Galatians 3:28 of a powerful notion of equality between Christians that transcended ethnic divisions. Espina has become notorious among modern historians as an influential “anti-Semitic” writer. In this article, I argue that the significance of Espina’s opus for the wider history of anti-Jewish texts needs to be revised and nuanced since, in stark contrast to many later anti-converso polemicists, he does not seek to undermine the Pauline concept of Christian spiritual closeness by appealing to biological or genealogical determinism; rather, he insists on the generalization of converso judaizing and the exceptionality of genuine Jewish conversions to Christianity
Popularizing anti-semitism in early modern Spain and its empire.: Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Centinela contra Judíos (1674)
No full textThis book charts the history and influence of the most vitriolic and successful anti-Semitic polemic ever to have been printed in the early modern Hispanic world and offers the first critical edition and translation of the text into English. First printed in Madrid in 1674, the Centinela contra judíos (“Sentinel against the Jews”) was the work of the Franciscan Francisco de Torrejoncillo, who wrote it to defend the mission of the Spanish Inquisition, to call for the expansion of discriminatory racial statutes and, finally, to advocate in favour of the expulsion of all the descendants of converted Jews from Spain and its empire. Francisco de Torrejoncillo combined the existing racial, theological, social and economic strands within Spanish anti-Semitism to demonize the Jews and their converted descendants in Spain in a manner designed to provoke strong emotional responses from its readership
The recycling of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory into an anti-Morisco one in Early Modern Spain: the myth of El Vengador, the serial-killer doctor
No full textThis work examines how the study of emotions can help us understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and how they are exploited by governments and elite institutions to provoke fear and forge collective identities. It focuses on a particular conspiracy theory in early modern Spain: that of a vengeful Muslim doctor known as el vengador who systemically murdered Christian patients. It argues that the myth was in fact a clumsy recycling of a well–established anti-Semitic myth and that it also built upon existing anxieties about medical treatment. Sara Ahmed’s research on modern British society has demonstrated the role played by hate and fear in the creation of collective identities by creating boundaries with ‘others’ who are constituted as a ‘threat’ to the existence. Likewise, the libel of medical murder was part of an “affective politics of fear” in which the discourse of hate was instrumentalized by sections of the ruling hierarchy and polemicists to mobilize early modern Iberians against certain groups designated as a threat. Jews and Muslims became negative reference groups, equal objects of fear and anxiety whose role was interchangeable in order to formulate a normative collective identity
The Inquisition and the ‘Priestess of Zafra’: hermaphroditism and gender transgression in seventeenth-century Spain
No full textKing Manuel I and the expulsion of the Castilian Conversos and Muslims from Portugal in 1497: new perspectives
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The Passion of Christ in the Church of San Cristóbal de Rapaz: an example of medieval anti-Jewish iconography in colonial Peru?
No full textThe remote Andean church of San Cristóbal de Rapaz in Peru would seem to be an unlikely place to find anti-Jewish imagery. Amongst the painted murals that adorn the inside of the church since the first half of the eighteenth century, is one representing the flagellation of Christ and another depicting Christ carrying the cross on his way to Calvary. In both of these murals, figures surrounding Jesus Christ are represented wearing unusual headgear. This article analyses the murals and the depiction of the men featured alongside Christ. Comparing the murals with medieval European iconography, it argues that the men are in fact Jews represented wearing the infamous pileus cornutus that was widely used to distinguish Jews in medieval Christian iconography. The article then proceeds to discuss the possible source of inspiration for these Peruvian murals and whether there could be a link with anti-converso sentiments in Peru during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
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