Violence and the “virtual Jew” in Castilian Passion narratives, 1490s–1510s

Abstract

The late arrival of Passion spirituality to Castile produced the powerful rhetorical image of the violent Jew, just as actual Jews had been expelled or had chosen conversion. Sylvia Tomasch's postcolonial analysis of the “virtual Jew” in late medieval England can aid in examining the violence attributed to Jews in Passion prose narratives newly published in Castilian after 1492. In Prejano's 1493 Lucero de la vida cristiana and Li's 1494 Thesoro de la passion, both authors reflected the pro-converso side of the debates over New Christians in the 1460s–80s even while importing pan-European anti-Jewish stereotypes emphasizing the bestiality and effeminacy of first-century Jews. Two decades later, the anonymous 1511 Fasciculus myrrhe maximized the portrait of aggression by increasing Mary's anti-Jewish rhetoric and by imagining Jewish violence against the Virgin Mary, contributing to the twin focus on Jesus’ and Mary's pain in the “Passion of Two” narratives unique to early sixteenth-century Castile that predated the rise of Semana Santa processions.