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Miriam Bodian's study of crypto-Jewish martyrdom in Iberian lands depicts a new type of martyr that emerged in the late 16th century -- a defiant, educated judaizing martyr who engaged in disputes with inquisitors. By examining closely the Inquisition dossiers of four men who were tried in the Iberian peninsula or Spanish America and who developed judaizing theologies that drew from currents of Reformation thinking that emphasized the authority of Scripture and the religious autonomy of individual interpreters of Scripture, Miriam Bodian reveals unexpected connections between Reformation thought and historic crypto-Judaism. The complex personalities of the martyrs, acting in response to psychic and situational pressures, emerge vividly from this absorbing book.

In the inquisitorial archive of Pedro Onofre Cortés, alias Moixina, we see fellow practitioner protesting his son’s marriage to Clara Sureda because she was an Old Christian. The poor match was blamed on the breast milk that was ingested as an infant, “andaba con cristianos porque había mamado leche de una mujer cristiana” (he went with Christians because of the milk drunk milk from a Christian woman) (Picazo y Muntaner). In early modern Spain, breastmilk was seen as responsible for transmitting virtues and vices, religious expressions of faith and moral traits. Following Galenic medical understanding equating milk with blood, it was women who were responsible for the transmission of purity, impurity (Alexandre-Bidon 175), for contamination and difference (Martínez 47). This brief citation reflects the hybrid environment and the dual practices that deeply informed the lives of the converso Jews. Moreover, the understanding of the hereditary nature of these traits, and the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, so often mixed in unique combinations are clearly demonstrated in the Inquisition trials of Cortés and his Chueta brethren. As regulation over the mother and the female body became increasingly important in controlling Iberian subjects and its empire, conversos complicate the feminization of impurity. This article explores how the conversos known as the Chuetas of Mallorca understood their religiosity and difference as seen through the lens of hybridity, breast milk and maternal care.

Stanley M. Hordes explores the remarkable story of crypto-Jews and the tenuous preservation of Jewish rituals and traditions in Mexico and New Mexico over the past five hundred years. He follows the crypto-Jews from their origins in medieval Spain and Portugal to their efforts to escape persecution by migrating to the New World and settling in the far reaches of the northern Mexican frontier. Drawing on individual biographies, family histories, Inquisition records, letters, and other primary sources, Hordes provides a richly detailed account of the economic, social, and religious lives of crypto-Jews during the colonial period and after the annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. He concludes with a discussion of the reemergence of crypto-Jewish culture and the reclamation of Jewish ancestry within the Hispano community.

This essay explores the Descripción del Virreinato del Perú (c.1620), an anonymously authored account of viceregal Peru attributed to Pedro de León Portocarrero (c.1576–c.1620)—a Spanish New Christian merchant likely of Portuguese background. The analysis reveals that Portocarrero’s text undermines Spanish colonial authority not just by supplying secret commercial and military intelligence to Dutch officials but also by subtly critiquing Spain’s colonial enterprise on a symbolic discursive level. Consequently, the work offers an alternative, non-triumphalist, and dissident perspective on the Spanish colonization of Peru.

In the inquisitorial archive of Pedro Onofre Cortés, alias Moixina, we see fellow practitioner protesting his son’s marriage to Clara Sureda because she was an Old Christian. The poor match was blamed on the breast milk that was ingested as an infant, “andaba con cristianos porque había mamado leche de una mujer cristiana” (he went with Christians because of the milk drunk milk from a Christian woman) (Picazo y Muntaner). In early modern Spain, breastmilk was seen as responsible for transmitting virtues and vices, religious expressions of faith and moral traits. Following Galenic medical understanding equating milk with blood, it was women who were responsible for the transmission of purity, impurity (Alexandre-Bidon 175), for contamination and difference (Martínez 47). This brief citation reflects the hybrid environment and the dual practices that deeply informed the lives of the converso Jews. Moreover, the understanding of the hereditary nature of these traits, and the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, so often mixed in unique combinations are clearly demonstrated in the Inquisition trials of Cortés and his Chueta brethren. As regulation over the mother and the female body became increasingly important in controlling Iberian subjects and its empire, conversos complicate the feminization of impurity. This article explores how the conversos known as the Chuetas of Mallorca understood their religiosity and difference as seen through the lens of hybridity, breast milk and maternal care.

This study of contemporary crypto-Jews—descendants of European Jews forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition—traces the group's history of clandestinely conducting their faith and their present-day efforts to reclaim their past. Janet Liebman Jacobs masterfully combines historical and social scientific theory to fashion a brilliant analysis of hidden ancestry and the transformation of religious and ethnic identity.

This book challenges prevalent assumptions concerning the persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal in 1496-7. It pieces together the developments that led to the events of 1496-7 and presents a detailed reconstruction of the persecution itself.

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

Two groups were persecuted over the course of four hundred years in what is now the southwestern United States, each dissimulating and disguising who they truly were. Both now declare their true identities, yet raise hostility. The Penitentes are a lay Catholic brotherhood that practices bloody rites of self-flagellation and crucifixion, but claim this is a misrepresentation and that they are a community and a charitable organization. Marranos, an ambiguous and complicated population of Sephardic descendants, claim to be anousim. Both peoples have a complex, shared history. This book disentangles the web, redefines the terms, and creates new contexts in which these groups are viewed with respect and sympathy without idealizing or slandering them. Simms uses rabbinics, literary analyses, psychohistory, and cultural anthropology to consolidate a history of mentalities.