It has been customary to view the Conversos, Spanish Jews converted to Christianity and their descendants, as a large minority, successful economically, professionally and socially, but at the same time resented and vulnerable, victims of investigations by the Inquisition and of the racial discrimination of the estatutos de limpieza de sangre, the ‘statutes of purity of blood’, which closed to them the doors of many religious and military orders and could impede a career in the Church, army and government administration. On the face of it this assessment still holds good, but the number and the ubiquity of the Conversos, as we see from some of the papers in the fourth volume of The Conversos and Moriscos in late medieval Spain and beyond, meant that matters were often far more complex.

One of the reasons for the complexity was the attitude of the authorities. Certainly, they were divided. Many of them wished to enforce the statutes. But many others hoped, above all, for a total assimilation of the Conversos and an end to any problem this may once have posed. In his superb article on the Council of Basle, with which this book opens, Carlos Gilly discusses the decree passed by the council in September 1434, ‘De neophytis’, concerning the rights of the New Christians and their descendants. However harsh the measures prescribed against practising Jews may have been, the decree stipulated that the Conversos ‘should enjoy all the privileges and immunities and exemptions of the cities and places where they received holy baptism which the other Christians enjoy and should enjoy for reason of their birth’. And it went still further, strongly recommending mixed marriages, urging ‘the ordinary people of every place to ensure that … these Conversos join in marriage with old or original Christians’. Over the centuries the decree, almost certainly produced in the Converso circle of Cardinal Juan de Cervantes and Juan de Segovia, met with a mixed reception. It was attacked by Diego de Anaya Maldonado, archbishop of Seville, who promptly excluded Conversos from his own foundation, the Colegio de San Bartolomeo in Salamanca, and many other prelates followed suit. But it was also staunchly defended, and one of its most ardent champions was Ignacio de Loyola, the Old Christian founder of the Society of Jesus. He wanted the new order to include Conversos and persuaded the pope, Paul iii, to reproduce the Basle decree in his bull ‘Cupientes Iudaeos’ of 1542.

The other enlightening article on the assimilation of the Conversos is by Enrique Soria Mesa. Its subject is the so-called linajudos, a sordid category of men who blackmailed the Conversos endeavouring to circumvent the estatutos de limpieza. The estatutos, as Soria Mesa has established over years of research, gave rise to innumerable forgeries, a phenomenon with which the Iberian peninsula was fully familiar at a time when ever more attempts were being made to provide histories of Spanish towns proving their Christian origins. The linajudos, frequently accomplished genealogists, would study the records of the Inquisition, purchasing the services of the secretaries, and examine the san benitos or penitential habits suspended in the churches, to find proof not only of Jewish ancestry but also of ancestors condemned by the Holy Office. For some time their trade flourished, but in the course of the sixteenth century the Spanish state decided to intervene. The venal secretaries of the Inquisition and the blackmailing linajudos were duly chastised; the libros verdes or ‘green books’ containing unwelcome genealogical details were destroyed; and the forged genealogies proving racial purity were accepted without too close an inspection. The authorities, Soria Mesa writes, ‘encouraged forgetting. Otherwise the State would have been left without servants, given the enormous degree of mixture between Old and New Christians’.

The situation of the Moriscos, converted Muslims and their descendants, was also more complex than is usually suspected, as we see from the excellent survey by Luis Bernabé Pons. The Moriscos have often been presented as a minority, smaller than that of the Conversos but substantial in some areas, embittered, harassed and longing to return to Islam. Although this might apply to certain communities, there are countless examples of the very opposite, of a complete assimilation into Spanish society and a deep commitment to the Catholic Church. A few may have had some sympathy for the Reformation, but they were exceptional. Possibly more may have inherited a tendency towards mysticism, once Islamic, which they introduced into their Catholic beliefs. The documentation, however, is far less abundant than in the case of the Conversos. What is documented, on the other hand, is the expulsion of the Moriscos by Philip iii betwen 1609 and 1614, one of the most ignominious deeds in the history of Spain. In her interesting paper Stephanie Cavanaugh shows how the pleas for exemption of perfectly integrated Moriscos were ignored and how the many voices of illustrious churchmen who opposed the decree fell on deaf ears. Yet efforts were indeed made to keep in Spain the children of the exiles, to separate them from their families and to provide them with a Catholic education, while Morisca wives of Old Christians were also exempted from expulsion. A small proportion of the Morisco population remained, fully integrated in local society.

The twelve papers in the fourth volume of The Conversos and Moriscos in late medieval Spain and beyond, originally given at a conference held in 2017, bring out various aspects of Converso culture, including artistic patronage in the circle of Pablo de Santa María, the Converso bishop of Burgos, the theme of divine compassion in Constantino Ponce de la Fuente's Doctrina cristiana, and the humanism of Juan de Malara. The essays are somewhat uneven, but some of the contributions are of such high quality that the book is most welcome. One might have expected a collection of essays such as this to provide some information about the contributors, but unfortunately there is none.