Exiles in Sepharad

Argues against excessive focusing on "convivencia" in the history of medieval Spain - the short periods of peaceful coexistence between Christians, Muslims, and Jews that gave way to longer periods of antagonism between them. The Jewish millenium in Spain, from the late 5th century to 1492-96, was marked by anti-Jewish laws under the Visigoths, and by repressions, violence, and expulsions under the rule of both the Muslim and Christian monarchies. Focuses on the period from the 1360s (when a dynastic conflict in Castille put an end to convivencia) to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Navarre in 1496. The anti-Jewish riots of 1391 in Castille and Aragon were followed by a wave of forced conversions of Jews, and the conversions brought about the emergence of the large community of Conversos, who became a target of hatred on the part of "old Christians". Dwells on the Toledan rebellion against the Conversos in 1449 and on the partially successful attempt to introduce the "purity of blood" statutes in Spain. These "limpieza de sangre" rules affected the thinking of Spaniards for centuries and were a direct progenitor of modern racism. The distrust of the sincerity of the Conversos' Christian faith led to the establishment of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews. Shows that the anti-Jewish measures of this period and the expulsion itself had political, social, and pecuniary motives. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)