Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain by Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila

Abstract

Reviewed by: Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain by Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila John F. Schwaller Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain. By Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2018. Pp. xix, 351. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-268-10321-7.) With implications in the New World, the Carvajal-Santa María family of early modern Spain ranks as one of the most resilient and in many ways emblematic of the period. The book begins in the early sixteenth century as the family is on the verge of grasping the papacy, in spite of their deep converso roots, with partial origins in the person of Solomon ha-Levi, a leading rabbi in Burgos who became the bishop of that city as Pablo de Santa María in 1415. Martínez-Dávila traces the emergence of a converso family and its dispersal throughout Castille, notably to the western city of Plasencia. There the conversos began a series of marriages and alliances with the Old Christian family of the Carvajals to emerge as leaders in both the political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. From there the family would expand to prominence on the Iberian Peninsula and eventually to the colonial outposts of Mexico and Bolivia. This fascinating tale is written in nine chapters, tracing the family from its origins to his success and expansion to the empire. The first two chapters trace the beginnings of the clan in Burgos and its eventual spread to other communities but focusing especially on Plasencia. The turbulence of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries created the necessary precondition for the blurring of ethnic lines and the ability of some individuals to gain prominence in spite of their ethno-religious background, creating what Martínez-Dávila calls the New Noble houses. While the Old Christian knights (caballeros) had political power, and with it a degree of economic power as well, the Church through its collection of the tithe clearly had access to much of the economic sphere. In the third chapter, Martínez-Dávila explores the wake of the anti-Jewish riots at the end of the fourteenth century. Focused on larger cities, small places like Plascencia emerged largely unscathed. At the same time the Trastámara dynasty began to reward other important New Noble houses, which provided unexpected opportunities in Plascencia. In Plascencia, in Chapter Four, we read of the growing success of the Santa María-Carvajal alliance. On the Jewish side, the family had been royal treasurers, and rabbis; while on the Old Christian side they had been important local caballeros. Combined, they came to dominate the cathedral chapter of the city and create a different kind of local environment for conversos and moriscos. By the fifteenth century two patterns emerged. Some of the New Noble houses pursued virulently anti-Semitic policies, hiding their own origins and joining [End Page 197] in anti-Jewish campaigns. The Plascencia-based Carvajal house continued to encourage a more open society of multi-ethnic populations. Castille, as a whole, turned to a more exclusionary policy with the promulgation of limpieza de sangre requirements for an increasingly large number of offices. This, in turn, required these New Noble houses to emphasize their Old Christian roots and downplay, if not hide, their converso origins. In Chapter Six, Martínez-Dávila explores the methods whereby the Santa María-Carvajal house imbued themselves with all of the hallmarks of Christian piety creating ecclesiastical foundations and other good works to burnish their reputation, while reaching the highest level of Catholic hierarchy with the appointment of Juan de Carvajal as a cardinal. As Spain entered the sixteenth century, the house had come to control the very highest levels of politics, the Church, and the local economy. They had successfully blurred their converso origins, emphasized the Old Christian mantle of the Carvajal clan, and weathered the storm of additional anti-converso and morisco politics with the fall of Granada and the triumph of Castilian Christianity. As the overseas empire became an important feature of the Spanish political and economic world...