"There are no more Jews in Portugal"

orthogonality — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:24:09 -0800

What is a Spaniard?: Forcibly Crossing the Cross, the Crescent, and the Star

"The conversions came at the end of one of the most successful Jewish periods in human history... Their success led them to call their land Sepharad, a name from the book of Obadiah that implied that Spanish Jews were the successors to the Jews of Israel. This world ended in 1391."

"At the appointed time, those children who were not presented voluntarily were seized by the officials and forced to the font.... In many cases, parents smothered their offspring in their farewell embrace. In others, they threw them into wells in order to save them from the disgrace of apostasy, and then killed themselves. Sometimes, even old men were dragged to the churches and forcibly baptized by over-zealous fanatics,... In all other cases, the unwilling neophytes, some mere babies, were distributed throughout the country, as far as possible from home, to be brought up in Christian surroundings."

The first link, above, details a recent genetic study, the second begins in 1391 in Spain, the third jumps forward to 1407 in Portugal. The remaining links, below, attempt to provide context. It's difficult to try to adequately cover over two centuries of the history of the forced conversions and "ethnic cleansing", in two (or more) nation states, of two different minority religions. I've omitted much: the earlier Muslim history of Iberia; motivations for the conversions and expulsions; King Ferdinand's purported Jewish ancestry; the forcible conversions of Jews and native populations in the New World; the Spanish Inquisition as a tool to enforce "sincere" conversions; the use of forced adoption to literally steal a group's future, similarly used in Argentina's Dirty War and in Franco's Spain; later Spanish relations with North African Moors; and, except in the first link, 500 years of the aftermath of the ethnic and religious cleansing in the 14th and 15th centuries. My original intent was just to link the first article, on the genetics of Spain. In an effort to avoid editorializing, I've use block quotes to link to (long) texts giving the basic background of the forced conversions, and later, expulsions, of Jews and Muslims from Spain. The links below follow more or less chronologically, first the forced conversions, then the expulsions, of the Jews and then then Moors. The "New Christians":

"New Christians" is a term applied specifically to three groups of Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants in the Iberian Peninsula. The first group converted in the wake of the massacres in Spain in 1391 and the proselytizing fervor of the subsequent decades. The second, also in Spain, were baptized following the decree of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 expelling all Jews who refused to accept Christianity. The third group, in Portugal, was converted by force and royal fiat in 1497. Like the word Conversos, but unlike Marranos, the term New Christian carried no intrinsic pejorative connotation, but with the increasing power of the Inquisition and the growth of the concept of "limpieza de sangre," cleansing the blood, the name signaled the disabilities inevitably heaped on those who bore it.

Vicente Ferrer:

... the Dominican friar Vicente Ferrer... traveled from one end of Castile to the other, and everywhere zealously urged the Jews to embrace Christianity, appearing with a cross in one hand and the Torah in the other. His impassioned sermons won him great influence, and he accomplished his ends in Murcia, Lorca, Ocaña, Illescas, Valladolid, Tordesillas, Salamanca, and Zamora. He spent the month of July, 1411, in Toledo; he invaded the large synagogue, which he transformed into the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca, and he is said to have baptized more than 4,000 Jews in that city.... At Ferrer's request a law consisting of twenty-four clauses, which had been drawn up by Paul de Burgos*, was issued (Jan., 1412) in the name of the child-king John II. The only object of this law was to reduce the Jews to poverty and to further humiliate them. They were ordered to live by themselves, in enclosed Juderias, and they were to repair, within eight days after the publication of the order, to the quarters assigned them under penalty of loss of property. They were prohibited from practising medicine, surgery, or chemistry, and from dealing in bread, wine, flour, meat, etc. They might not engage in handicrafts or trades of any kind, nor might they fill public offices, or act as money-brokers or agents.... These laws, which were rigidly enforced, any violation of them being punished with a fine of from 300 to 2,000 maravedis and flagellation, were calculated to compel the Jews to embrace Christianity.... ...Ferrer's fanatic zeal succeeded also in Aragon in leading many Jews to pretendedconversion, especially in Saragossa, Daroco, and Calatayud. Besides the places mentioned, he made proselytes in Albacete, Astorga, Avila, Benevent, Burgos, Leon, Mayorga, Majorca, Palencia, Paredes, Toro, Segovia, etc. The total number of Jews converted by him in Spain was, according to Mariana, 35,000; according to Zacuto ("Yuḥasin," p. 225), more than 200,000.... ...One of Vicente Ferrer's most zealous assistants in the work of conversion was Joshua ibn Vives Lorqui, or Geronimo de Santa Fé, who aimed at nothing less than baptisms en masse....

*Paul of Burgos, mentioned above, first from the Catholic Encyclopedia: ...He was the most wealthy and influential Jew of Burgos, a scholar of the first rank in Talmudic and rabbinical literature, and a Rabbi of the Jewish community. The irresistible logic of the Summa of St. Thomas led him to the Faith of Christ.... Then a different view, from the Jewish Encyclopedia: "...Paul, who even after he had been baptized continued to correspond with several Jews, including Joseph Orabuena, chief rabbi of Navarre, and Joshua ibn Vives, became a bitter enemy of Judaism, and tried his best, frequently with success, to convert his former coreligionists...." The Expulsion of the Spanish Jews: "The King gave them three months' time in which to leave...."

The Jews' expulsion had been the pet project of the Spanish Inquisition, headed by Father Tomas de Torquemada. Torquemada believed that as long as the Jews remained in Spain, they would influence the tens of thousands of recent Jewish converts to Christianity to continue practicing Judaism.... With their most important project, the country's unification, accomplished, the king and queen concluded that the Jews were expendable. On March 30, they issued the expulsion decree, the order to take effect in precisely four months... Throughout those frantic months, Dominican priests actively encouraged Jews to convert to Christianity and thereby gain salvation both in this world and the next.

The conversion and expulsion of the Spanish Muslims:

...Shortly after the start of the sixteenth century, however, the fortunes of Peninsular Muslims in general began to change. Pressured by the Toledan Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros to take measures to bring the Muslims of Granada into the Christian faith, and aware that alleged Christian abuses had provoked an uprising in the Alpujarras, King Fernando and Queen Isabel issued an order in 1502 requiring all Muslims in Castile and Leon to convert to Christianity or leave at once. The same law would reach Navarre in 1515 and Aragon in 1525. The royal order was widely enforced (executed in large part by mass baptisms and coercive tactics), and by the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the official Muslim population of Spain had been reduced from nearly half a million to nearly zero....

"Yesterday they were kings in their own homes":

It is ironic that those same Old Testament passages which have been used to support the theory that Palestine is the Jewish promised land were not only cited by apologists for a policy of mass expulsion for the Moriscos but were cited by anti-Jewish theologians in advocating the need for statutes of purity of blood.

Baghdad Nights

homunculus — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:12:29 -0800

Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military ‘surge’ using nighttime light signatures (PDF). A team of UCLA geographers using satellite imagery to track the amount of light emitted in Baghdad at night found that electricity use in Sunni neighborhoods fell prior to the surge and never returned, indicating that ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias drove the Sunnis away before the surge began and was largely responsible for the subsequent decrease in violence. [Via Passport]

Imagine if this was the life we were living

[expletive deleted] — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:17:46 -0800

Reading the news, the violence in Kenya can feel distant. For Mission in Action/Nakuru Baby Orphanage, located in the heart of the Rift Valley, the violence is all to near, and extremely troubling. (the last link contains images that may be very disturbing) In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should mention that this website was being updated by a former co-worker of my girlfriend[pdf], who left Whistler to volunteer at this orphanage for a second time. When she left, in early December, there was no hint of the violence to come. Kenya was widely considered stable and MIA had every reason to be optimistic about the future for the children in their care. Since then, so much has changed. The orphanage has now committed itself to helping those forced from their homes by the violence, which has emptied the nearby town of Nakuru. The children at this orphanage, some of whom have come to them severely malnourished, abused and HIV positive, were lucky enough to find rescue in a country unable to provide them with a social safety net. Now, if the situation continues to deteriorate, they may have no future.

tpoh.org — Sat, 16 Feb 2002 20:42:01 -0800

Ethnic Cleansing - The Video Game? I don't know what can be said about this. It pushes several hot buttons - violence in video games, "hate speech" and (in the US) the First Amendment, and race relations in a post 9-11 world. Yes, it's reprehensible - but can you play Voltaire and defend the author's right to create it? (Warning: Pro-Aryan website; link contains explicit depictions of race-based violence.) Discuss.

MetaFilter posts tagged with EthnicCleansing

"There are no more Jews in Portugal"

Baghdad Nights

Imagine if this was the life we were living

Israel's founding war