Anti-Judaism and a Hermeneutic of the Flesh

This article investigates the manifestations of anti-Judaism that informed fifteenth-century debates over the religious and civic status of the conversos. Insurgents in Toledo supported the persecution of the conversos and their exclusion from public life by insisting on their continued Jewishness d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tritle, Erika (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2015
In: Church history and religious culture
Year: 2015, Volume: 95, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 182-202
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Spain / Jews / Convert / Antisemitism / Geschichte 1391-1500|
RelBib Classification:BH Judaism
CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations
KAF Church history 1300-1500; late Middle Ages
KBH Iberian Peninsula
Further subjects:B Anti-judaism conversos medieval Spain church history Christianity Pauline hermeneutics
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:This article investigates the manifestations of anti-Judaism that informed fifteenth-century debates over the religious and civic status of the conversos. Insurgents in Toledo supported the persecution of the conversos and their exclusion from public life by insisting on their continued Jewishness despite baptism. Documents such as the “Petition” and the “Sentencia-Estatuto” issued by the rebel regime, the “Appeal and Supplication” written by Marcos García de Mora, and the anonymous “Privilege,” show that the conversos’ opponents developed a hermeneutic of the flesh founded in a reading of the epistles of Paul and informed by their own particular historical context. This hermeneutic afforded the conversos’ opponents a theological basis for shutting certain baptized Christians out of Spanish society based on their carnal descent, weaving race into Christian theology. So useful a conceptual and rhetorical tool was anti-Judaism, however, that even converso defenders employed it as a weapon against their opponents.
ISSN:1871-2428
Contains:In: Church history and religious culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18712428-09502007