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Converso
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Conversos (Spanish and Portuguese for "a convert", from Latin conversus, "converted, turned around") and its feminine form conversa referred to Jews or Muslims or the descendants of Jews or Muslims who converted to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions took place under great governmental pressure.
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Conversos were subject to suspicion and harassment from both the community they were leaving and that which they were joining.
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Conversos (Spanish and Portuguese for "a convert", from Latin conversus, "converted, turned around") and its feminine form conversa referred to Jews or Muslims or the descendants of Jews or Muslims who converted to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions took place under great governmental pressure.
See the main articles:
- Morisco for New Christians of Moorish origin. The term morisco may also refer to Crypto-Muslims, i.e. those who secretly continued to practice Islam.
- Marrano for New Christians of Jewish origin. The term marrano may also refer to Crypto-Jews, i.e. those who secretly continued to practice Judaism.
Conversos were subject to suspicion and harassment from both the community they were leaving and that which they were joining. Both Christians and Jews called them tornadizo (renegade). Jaime I, Alfonso X and Juan I passed laws forbidding the use of this epithet. This was part of a larger pattern of royal protection, as laws were promulgated to protect their property, forbid attempts to reconvert them, and regulate the behavior of the conversos themselves, preventing their cohabitation or even dining with Jews, lest they convert back.
The conversos did not enjoy legal equality. Alfonso VII prohibited the "recently converted" from holding office in Toledo. They had both supporters and bitter opponents within the Christian secular and religious leadership. Conversos could be found in various roles within the Iberian kingdoms, from bishop to royal mistress, showing a degree of general acceptance, yet they became targets of occasional pogroms during times of extreme social tension (as during an epidemic and after an earthquake.) They were subject to the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions.
While pure blood (so-called limpieza de sangre) would come to be placed at a premium, particularly among the nobility, in a 15th-century defense of conversos, Bishop Lope de Barrientos would list what Roth calls "a veritable 'Who's Who' of Spanish nobility" as having converso members or being of converso descent. He pointed out that given the near-universal conversion of Iberian Jews during Visigothic times, (quoting Roth) "[W]ho among the Christians of Spain could be certain that he is not a descendant of those conversos?"
Recent DNA studies (2008) of the Y chromosome among men in Spain suggests that 20% of the population has Jewish heritage and 11% of the population has Moorish heritage. Researchers believe that these percentages reflect the populations who stayed in Spain and Portugal and converted to Christianity in the 14th and 15th centuries.
But, that suggestion and the study have been seriously challenged on the basis there are few reliable sources for the conclusions reached. Critics believe that the breakdown of genetic haplogroups among "Moors", Jews and Basques which were chosen as representative of pre-711 CE populations, was faulty.
One of the study's principal authors stated:
"Sephardic Jewish roots run deep in the peninsula, the researchers found. Nearly 20 percent of men in the study showed evidence of Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
“We think it might be an over estimate,” says Francesc Calafell, a human population geneticist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. Calafell and Mark Jobling at the University of Leicester in England led the study.
The genetic makeup of Sephardic Jews is probably common to other Middle Eastern populations, such as the Phoenicians, that also settled the Iberian Peninsula, Calafell says. “In our study, that would have all fallen under the Jewish label.” (Science News)
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