The "converso" Origins of the Sevillian Dramatist Diego Jiménez de Encisco

Abstract

In 1914 Emilio Cotarelo y Mori reconstructed the biography of the seventeenth-century Sevillian dramatist Diego Jimenez de Enciso in an article devoted to an analysis of the author and his work.1 According to that eminent Spanish scholar, the Enciso family was of Old Christian and noble origin despite evidence to the contrary in the documents that he utilized, namely, the inquiries conducted in 1624 and 1626 into the qualifications of two of the dramatist's nephews for entrance into the Order of Santiago. Cotarelo dismissed the seventeenth-century charges against the writer's family as vicious attempts at slander by jealous enemies.2