Converso evangelisation, funerary practices, and social integration in Valencia, 1391–1482

Abstract

ABSTRACT The religious beliefs of conversos, individuals of Jewish origin who converted either forcibly or voluntarily to Christianity in 1391 and during the following century, have occupied a central place in the history of minorities in late medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Nevertheless, most take their starting point in the establishment of the royal Inquisition by the end of the century or, at the earliest, in the Toledo revolt of 1449. By that time, however, conversos had been living as and among Christians all over the peninsula for at least fifty years. In this article, I examine how the massive conversion of Valencia’s Jewish community, one of the largest in the Crown of Aragon, prompted the monarchy to correct the burial practices of conversos, which may have reflected their religious heterodoxy, through intervention in their confraternities and the Christianisation of their funerary sites. For this case, I investigate unpublished private documentation preserved in notarial records. From a statistical sample of more than 1,850 Old Christian and a 100 converso testaments, I analyse both the aforementioned intervention by the monarchy and its effectiveness until the establishment of the royal Inquisition in Valencia in 1482.