[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-38847-en":3,"doc-seo-38847-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},38847,1099513958762,"Logic","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/1000023916a998db790?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1782109480056885918",8,"Research & Report","Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain","Early modern Spain and the Sephardim expressed an unusually intense focus on lineage, genealogy, and inherited status. The Spanish pursuit of hidalguía, Gothic ancestry, and purity of blood functioned as a social boundary, echoed in polemics about Moorish or Hebrew descent. Jewish exiles were similarly judged and criticized for claims to noble pedigree, while communal rules and burial statutes regulated identity and intermarriage. Scholarship debates the origins and ideological purposes of these “blood” narratives.","MASS CONVERSION AND GENEALOGICAL MENTALITIES:  \nJEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SPAIN*  \nIt is both well known and worthy of note that Sephardim (that is, the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain) and Spaniards shared an unusually heightened concern with lineage and genealogy in the early modern period. The Spanish obsession with hidalguı´a, Gothic descent, and purity of blood has long constituteda stereotype. Think only of Don Juan’s father, mockingly portrayed by Lord Byron: ‘His father’s name was Jos — Don, of course, / A true Hidalgo, free from every stain / Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source / Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain’.1  \nThe Sephardim, too, were criticized on this score almost from the moment of exile. The (Ashkenazic) Italian David ben Judah Messer Leon, for example, ridiculed the eminent exile Don Isaac Abarbanel’s claims to royal pedigree, scoffing that Abarbanel‘made of himself a Messiah with his claims to Davidic descent’.2 That the exiles’ emphasis on lineage flourished nonetheless is evident, not only in the splendid armorial bearings of Sephardic  \n* I took up this topic in response to an invitation from the History Department of the University of California, Los Angeles. Its revision was stimulated by comments from the audience there, as well as at Indiana University, at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, and at Maurice Kriegel’s seminar at the ´Ecole des Hautes ´Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Sara Lipton urged me to rethink my arguments, Eliezer Lazaroff and Talya Fishman helped me navigate the seas of rabbinics, and a Mellon Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford provided the calm in which to do so.  \n1 Lord Byron, Don Juan, I.v.9.  \n2 On Abarbanel (1437–1508), see B. Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher, 5th edn (Ithaca, 1998); the Davidic claims are discussed at p. 3 and p. 266, n. 6. On David, see Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (Albany, 1991). For this passage, see Israelitische Letterbode, xii (1886–7), 88; Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds, 269. Lawee’s recent study of Abarbanel has a thoughtful discussion of the issue of lineage in Abarbanel’s thought: Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (Albany, 2001), chs. 1–2.  \n© The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2002  \n4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 174 tombs in Venice or Livorno,3 but also in the communal statutes of congregations in Italy and the Netherlands.4 And just as Spaniards asserted that their unstained nobility set them above other nations, so Isaac de Pinto could attempt to counter Voltaire’s negative portrayal of Jews by arguing that Sephardic nobility made ‘[a] Portuguese Jew of Bordeaux and a German Jew of Metz appear two beings of a different nature!’5  \nThe historical ‘origins’ of this emphasis on lineage are among the most polemical issues in the scholarly literature on Spanish and Sephardic identity. Rather than multiply examples, consider only that of Marcelino Menndez y Pelayo, a writer so central to Spanish historiography that the Royal Academy of History is named in his honour. When he wrote in 1887 that ‘the fanaticism of blood and race, which we probably owe to the Jews . . . was then hideously turned against them’,6 he was reiterating an already ancient claim: that the Jews were the inventors of the  \n3 On the tombs, see Mair J. Bernardete, Hispanic Culture and Character of the Sephardic Jews (New York, 1953), 44, 79, 82. Not all Sephardic tombs, however, were so ornate: those of Salonica are relatively unadorned. And tomb style may owe as much to local Christian practice (the tombstone carvers were often Christian) as to any ‘Sephardic style’.  \n4 In Amsterdam, for example, offspring of mixed Sephardic–Ashkenazic marriages were barred from burial in the communal Sephardic cemetery. The burial statutes are dis","cbCaivAiX9Xt51AI","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaivAiX9Xt51AI","pdf",212410,1,39,"English","en",105,"# Lineage and genealogical concerns in early modern Spain\n## Spanish purity of blood and noble descent\n## Critiques and claims among Sephardic exiles\n## Scholarly debates on the origins of “blood” narratives","[{\"question\":\"Why did lineage and genealogy become a major concern in early modern Spain and among Sephardim?\",\"answer\":\"Sephardim and Spaniards shared heightened attention to genealogy as a marker of identity and status. This concern appears through ideas of nobility, ancestry, and purity of blood.\"},{\"question\":\"How were Sephardic exiles criticized regarding their claims to royal or noble pedigree?\",\"answer\":\"Criticism followed exile, including ridicule of claims to Davidic descent. Examples include attacks on the pedigree assertions of figures such as Don Isaac Abarbanel.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of institutions or practices reinforced genealogical identity?\",\"answer\":\"Communal statutes and burial regulations in congregations restricted access and shaped identity, including rules affecting those from mixed Sephardic–Ashkenazic marriages. Ornate tombs also served as visible expressions of status.\"}]",1783073952,98,{"code":4,"msg":30,"data":31},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":32,"title":13,"keywords":33,"description":14,"schema_data":34,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":27},"mass-conversion-and-genealogical-mentalities-jews-and-christians-in-fifteenth-century-spain","",{"@graph":35,"@context":85},[36,53,68],{"@type":37,"itemListElement":38},"BreadcrumbList",[39,43,47,50],{"item":40,"name":41,"@type":42,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":44,"name":45,"@type":42,"position":46},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":42,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":42,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/mass-conversion-and-genealogical-mentalities-jews-and-christians-in-fifteenth-century-spain/38847/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":40,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-07","2026-07-03",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"Why did lineage and genealogy become a major concern in early modern Spain and among Sephardim?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"Sephardim and Spaniards shared heightened attention to genealogy as a marker of identity and status. This concern appears through ideas of nobility, ancestry, and purity of blood.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"How were Sephardic exiles criticized regarding their claims to royal or noble pedigree?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"Criticism followed exile, including ridicule of claims to Davidic descent. Examples include attacks on the pedigree assertions of figures such as Don Isaac Abarbanel.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"What kinds of institutions or practices reinforced genealogical identity?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"Communal statutes and burial regulations in congregations restricted access and shaped identity, including rules affecting those from mixed Sephardic–Ashkenazic marriages. 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