I offer the defendant Aldonza Cardoso de Velasco. She testified in 1666 that another woman, Maria Roman, had succeeded in “binding” a man—in other words, rendering him sexually impotent—by tying the laces of his undergarments into knots, by reciting an incantation over the knots, and by stomping on the garments in ritualistic fashion. That Roman’s stratagem had no real power as magic, of course, does not mean that Cardoso was lying when she divulged her own belief in that power.46
Second, and more importantly, I have posited that an item of testimony is probably (though not necessarily) truthful if the declarant did not stand to gain any advantage in offering it to his or her questioners. Along the same lines, a declaration is believable if the declarant was aware (or was probably aware) that rendering it would harm his or her interests. It is a fact that numerous inquisitorial suspects provided basic personal data without which the inquisitors would have found it very difficult to investigate and incriminate them. These data included the suspects’ own names and aliases, places of baptism, genealogies, relationships with convicted Judaizers, and the like. Only a stubborn skeptic would argue that much of these data were inauthentic.
Third, I have posited that an item of testimony is generally trustworthy if those who recorded it had no reason to twist or falsify it in any particular way, even if some unconscious distortions occurred in the recording process. There is no consensus among scholars as to why inquisitors and declarants may have wanted to shape what is recorded in the procesos. For now, suffice it to say that I address possible motives for distortion as my discussion of the cases (and their contexts) progresses.
Fourth, and most obviously, I have posited that a given deposition is credible if reliable, external evidence supports it. Because direct documentary proof of the credibility of inquisitorial informants is usually unavailable, it is often necessary to rely on circumstantial evidence. Such evidence may not yield total certitude, yet a sense of strong likelihood is attainable and can serve as the basis for sound historical interpretations. It behooves me to warn that the study of inquisitorial procesos permits neither perfect reconstructions of historical events nor airtight theories of historical causality. Given this limitation, one must still recognize that a pertinent theory or reconstruction need not be able to repel all possible objections to it in order to be operationally successful; it must simply be able to answer questions that its nearest alternatives cannot.47
In what pertains to the problem of identity construction among Judeoconversos, I contend that a sound historical interpretation is one that focuses closely on the complexity of historical events and avoids grand, overambitious ventures; for example, trying to determine how Jewish all Judeoconversos “really” were (or were not). As I will discuss in the final chapter, my findings suggest that no sweeping generalization is desirable concerning the social and religious identities of Judeoconversos. In fact, my research indicates that the questions “How Jewish?” and “How Christian?” are based on a fundamental misconception of what religion meant to most converso renegades during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
My specific findings aside, it is clear that with the exception of works about a few educated skeptics and intellectual luminaries, scholarship has paid relatively little attention to the subject of converso renegades.48 The theme and scope of this book are consequently new for all intents and purposes. Ironically, my main challenge has not been to unearth archival documents. Many of the records I have worked with are known to specialists, who have tended to underrate, underanalyze, or simply disregard these sources. My chief methodological task has been to configure a distinct body of material from ostensibly disparate files, and to shed a new light on their content.49 This book constitutes an attempt to interpret the historical experiences and unconventional (though hardly uncommon) choices of ordinary Judeoconversos in a new way.
Terminology
Before embarking upon an examination of the topic at hand, it is crucial to remember that “dissidence,” not to mention being a “renegade,” is in the eye of the beholder. One can easily surmise that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jews, as well as Judaicized50 New Christians, regarded conversos who reverted to Christianity as odious deserters. Of course, these same “deviants” were nothing less than exemplary penitents in the official estimation of the inquisitors, and probably that of orthodox Catholics in general.
For their part, Christianized conversos, who were as vulnerable to denunciation as actual crypto-Jews, concurred with the normative Jewish view that voluntary informers were ruthless and despicable turncoats. Indeed, New Christian lore produced a stereotypically insidious image of “the informer”—the malsin.51
In addition to recognizing colloquial usage, I have tried to avoid lexical monotony. Given the relative dearth of purely descriptive terms such as “border crosser,” “informer” and “returnee,” I have resorted in particular to the less impartial “renegade” (without quotation marks) for purposes of exposition. Whatever stylistic flexibility this and similar non-neutral words afford, it is obvious that they compromise an ideal objectivity: All of them imply an orthodox, thoroughly partisan perspective, be it that of early modern Jews (in the case of “renegade,” “nonconformist,” and the like) or that of Catholics (in the case of “penitent,” “conformist,” and similar terms). However, I believe the findings of this study cancel some of the bias inherent in this value-laden nomenclature. They do this by historicizing the actual or probable behaviors (rather than ideal or putative ones) represented by that same terminology.
To cite but one example: In the context of this study, the word “penitent” refers to a Judeoconverso who returned to the fold of Ibero-Christendom by performing certain actions. These actions were calculated to show repentance for past conduct and to demonstrate the actor’s renewed, heartfelt adherence to the rules and standards of orthodox Catholicism. Accordingly, one may reasonably argue that the term “penitent” connotes reunion, spiritual restoration, and the actor’s essential humility. That is to say, the term itself implies a benign and commendatory view of penitence and, by extension, of the penitent’s spiritual state during the process of his or her reentry into the Christian community of faith. This connotational meaning is obviously consistent with the official judgment of the inquisitorial functionaries who welcomed and guided errant sinners back into the bosom of the Catholic Church during the historical period in question.
Looking at the penitents through the lens of historical analysis allows a different view. In the first place, a comparative reading of inquisitorial documents reveals that not all Judeoconverso penitents exemplified humility or were motivated by a previous desire to embrace a Catholic identity. Some “penitents” feigned reconversion; others could not banish their religious doubts despite undergoing formal atonement; a few remained indifferent toward their “recovered” faith, while others—in my view, the majority—embraced it with sincerity if not always with enthusiasm. In the second place, not every converso émigré who came back to the Iberian Peninsula did so with the aim of repudiating Judaism before an inquisitorial tribunal. An important segment of my research suggests that most conversos who returned to Spain and Portugal did so for economic or personal (non-idiosyncratic) reasons: to buy and sell goods, to collect debts, to visit relatives, to seek a livelihood, to help friends in need, to satisfy a deep nostalgia, and so on.
In the end, historical analysis precludes the blanket endorsement implicit in the word “penitent,” because all relevant data indicate that penitents were not a homogeneous group. More to the point, “penitent,” like “returnee,” is a term that glosses over a wide variety of motivations and behaviors. It is this kaleidoscopic yet ultimately coherent array that now deserves our attention.
Chapter 2
Conversos: The Iberian Context
The history of early modern Spain is the story of several paradoxes. First and foremost, it is the story
