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

This study provides new fascinating testimonies about the development of a new image of Islam in Southern Europe in the fifteenth century and an approach to ways of acculturation in a mixed society.

Examines early modern Spanish contributions to international relations by focusing on ambivalence of natural rights in European colonial expansion to the Americas.

Fortalitium fidei is one of the central texts in the controversy surrounding the religious and social status of conversos in fifteenth-century Castile. This monograph provides a close analysis of the text itself and contextualizes this study through comparison with pro-converso texts and with reference to Alonso de Espina's career as an Observant Franciscan. After an outline of the development of the converso problem, it offers a biography of Espina and a discussion of the context of production of Fortalitium fidei. There is then a discussion of three works of theology in defence of conversos: Alonso de Cartagena's Defensorium unitatis christianae, Juan de Torquemada's Tractatus contra madianitas et ismaelitas, and Alonso de Oropesa's Lumen ad revelationem gentium. The rest of the work is detailed reading of Fortalitium fidei, with chapters on the image of the fortress, the treatment of Jews and Judaism, and of conversos. This volume addresses the extent and nature of the debate about conversos, the development of models of genealogical exclusion, and the role of Espina and his text in the ending of religious plurality in Spain.

The Spanish Inquisition remains a fearful symbol of state terror. Its principal target was theconversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier. Since thousands of them confessed to charges of practicing Judaism in secret, historians have long understood the Inquisition as an attempt to suppress the Jews of Spain. In this magisterial reexamination of the origins of the Inquisition, Netanyahu argues for a different view: that the conversos were in fact almost all genuine Christians who were persecuted for political ends. The Inquisition's attacks not only on the conversos' religious beliefs but also on their "impure blood" gave birth to an anti-Semitism based on race that would have terrible consequences for centuries to come. This book has become essential reading and an indispensable reference book for both the interested layman and the scholar of history and religion.