Re-Reading Conversion in Medieval Spain

In recent decades scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the conversos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Few, however, have studied the Iberian Jews who converted to Christianity during the century-and-a-half prior to the fateful massacres and forced conversions of 1391. This omission is surprising, especially since the thirteenth century has gained a reputation as a period of heightened Christian missionizing fervor. In the absence of research on Jewish conversion during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, scholars have assumed (1) that very few Jews actually converted during the period, (2) that those who did were baptized due to royal and clerical encouragement, and (3) that these converts rose in the ranks of Christian society. Recent research paints a drastically different picture. Well over 200 Jews were baptized in the Crown of Aragon alone between 1243 and 1391. These converts included men, women, and, children, they came from all walks of life, and there is no evidence that their baptisms were direct responses to Christian pressure. Indeed, in spite of the ecclesiastical rhetoric of the period, it is doubtful that Christian missionary efforts were ever very robust on the ground. Far from rising in the ranks of Christian society, the majority of these converts fared miserably. Furnished with official 'begging licenses', they wandered from town to town, subsisting on Christian charity and on money extorted from Jews. New insight into the reality of Jewish conversion in this period raises questions about the internal dynamics of Jewish communities and about the permeability of social and religious boundaries in medieval Sepharad. Indications that contemporaneous Jews in England and France were converting at a similar rate and faring equally poorly suggests that there is much to be gained from placing the Sephardic experience in a broader European cont