Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Norman Roth

Abstract

Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. By Norman Roth. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. 1995. Pp. xvi, 429. $50.00.) There are many books on the conversion of Iberian Jews to Christianity, the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, and the Expulsion of 1492. Most scholars, whether Jewish or Christian, have emphasized the forced nature of the conversions, and, as a result of this, the existence of a large number of only nominal Christians, many of them secretly attached to Judaism and therefore persecuted by the Inquisition down to the eighteenth century. While, in his Marranos (1966), Benzion Netanyahu argued that over some decades most conversos became sincere Christians, he accepted the forced nature of the original conversions. In contrast, Professor Roth argues that almost all the conversions were free and that, from the beginning, the great majority of the conversos were sincere Christians. Roth cites many Spanish and Hebrew sources. In a short review it is impossible to discuss in detail how he uses them. There are three main problems with the book: its claims to originality, its selective use of evidence, and, most important, its adamant insistence on positions adopted a priori. Roth claims (pp. xii f.) that his book is the first detailed examination of the role of the conversos in Spanish society and the first to connect the fifteenthcentury Inquisition with its predecessor, founded two hundred years earlier. Given previous scholarship, it is hard to take these claims seriously. To establish them, Roth is obliged to attack his predecessors (see below). Two examples of the selective use of evidence may suffice. Roth accepts (pp. 68 f.) part of a statement of ca. 1490 on the good Christians converted eighty years earlier, while rejecting the reference in the same source to contemporary conversions, impelled by fear. On page 162 (n. 17), citing a text which refers to persons converted by force, he inserts the word few in his source. Roth starts from the unproven assumption that the conversions were free. Discussing the reasons for the conversions of many Jews in 1391 and later, Roth states (p. 8) that in Spain or almost none of the conversions had anything to do with duress or persecution. On page 32 we are told that in 1391, given the forceful reaction of the Kings there was clearly no reason for `fear. These points are repeated many times (cf. pp. 34,115, 217, etc.; a weakness of the book is an excessive tendency to repetition). They are hardly supported by the evidence, only a fraction of which is cited here. (To save space, I refer to my book, The Spanish Kingdoms, II, 139-141.) If, in 1391, Jews freely chose [Roth's emphasis] to become Christians (p. 44), one may ask why they did not do so earlier? The answer is obvious; before 1391 they were not in deadly fear of massacre by Christian mobs. The inescapable question which so far not one single scholar has attempted to address: if Jews were being 'coerced' into convert ting in Spain, why did they not leave the country (pp. 43 f.), is one which could only have occurred to someone living in the twentieth century. In the 1390's simply leaving the country meant abandoning one's roots and one's local community. …