History, Persecution, and Protest: Fernando de Pulgar and the Conversos

Abstract

Abstract: This article explores the tension between Fernando de Pulgar's personal identity as a converso and his official role as the royal chronicler of the Catholic Monarchs during the earliest stages of the Spanish Inquisition. It argues that, in addition to supporting most of the political positions of the Catholic Monarchs, Pulgar also developed a defense of the converso community within his personal letters, literary works, and official history. The presence of this argument within the last text is particularly significant. By embedding a protest of the Inquisition into his Crónica de los reyes católicos , Pulgar subverted the genre of official history—normally used to support and justify the actions of the monarchy—to articulate a defense of a marginalized and persecuted community. In doing so, this article claims that Pulgar gave a voice to a converso community that had been forcibly silenced by the Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Monarchs.