Converso in the context of "Crypto-Judaism"

Marranos were Spanish and Portuguese Jews, as well as Navarrese Jews, who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or by Spanish or Portuguese royal coercion, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but who continued to practice Judaism in secret or were suspected of it. They are also called crypto-Jews, a term increasingly preferred in scholarly works over Marranos.

The related term converso was used for the wider population of Jewish converts to Catholicism, whether or not they secretly still practised Jewish rites. Converts from either Judaism or Islam were referred to by the more general term "New Christians".

The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion; Spanish: Decreto de la Alhambra, Edicto de Granada) was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordering the expulsion of unconverted Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. Its primary purpose was to eliminate the influence of the remaining Jews on Spain's large converso New Christian population, converted from Judaism, to minimize the possibility that the latter and their descendants would be able to secretly practice their former faith.

Over half of Spain's Jews had converted as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. A further number of those remaining chose to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra Decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Catholicism in order to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.

The Massacre of 1391, also known as the pogroms of 1391, refers to a murderous wave of mass violence committed against the Jews of Spain by the Catholic populace in the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1391. It was one of the most lethal outbreaks of violence against Jews in medieval Spain, and in medieval European history. Anti-Jewish violence then continued throughout the "Reconquista", culminating in the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The first wave in 1391 marked the extreme of such violence.

Under duress, Jews began to convert en masse to Roman Catholicism across the Iberian Peninsula after the massacre, resulting in a substantial population of conversos known as Marranos. Catholics then began to accuse the conversos of secretly maintaining Jewish practices, and of thus undermining the newly united kingdom's nascent national identity. In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree, which ordered the expulsion of Jews who had not converted to Catholicism. The resulting diaspora came to be known as the Sephardic Jews.

The Altos de Jalisco, or the Jaliscan Highlands, is a geographic and cultural region in the eastern part of the Mexican state of Jalisco, famed as a bastion of Mexican culture, cradling traditions from Tequila production to Charrería equestrianism. Los Altos are part of the greater Bajío (The Lowlands) region of Mexico.

The Altos are primarily a rural or semi-rural region, known for its towns of historic Mexican colonial architecture, deep Catholic conservatism and numerous Mexican traditions such as equestrianism, mariachi music, tequila production, and traditional Mexican dances and festivals. A significant portion of the population consists of Mexicans of European descent, primarily from the criollos of Castillian, Extremaduran, Galician, Basque, and Andalusian origin, but also from early Portuguese, Italian and Sephardic Jews settlers and later immigrants from other parts of Europe.

Luis de León OESA (Belmonte, Cuenca, 1527 – Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Castile, Spain, 23 August 1591), was a Spanish lyric poet, Augustinian friar, theologian and academic.

While serving as professor of Biblical scholarship at the University of Salamanca, Fray Luis also wrote many immortal works of Spanish Christian poetry and translated both Biblical Hebrew poetry and Latin Christian poetry into the Spanish language. Despite being a devout and believing Roman Catholic priest, Fray Luis was descended from a family of Spanish Jewish Conversos and this, as well as his vocal advocacy for teaching the Hebrew language in Catholic universities and seminaries, drew false accusations from the Dominican Order of the heresies of being both a Marrano and a Judaiser. Fray Luis was accordingly imprisoned for four years by the Spanish Inquisition before he was ruled to be completely innocent of any wrongdoing and released without charge. While the conditions of his imprisonment were never harsh and he was allowed complete access to books, according to legend, Fray Luis started his first post-Inquisition University of Salamanca lecture with the words, "As I was saying the other day..."

New Christian (Latin: Novus Christianus; Spanish: Cristiano Nuevo; Portuguese: Cristão-Novo; Catalan: Cristià Nou; Ladino: Kristiano Muevo; Arabic: المسيحيون الجدد) was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction referring to the population of former Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and their respective colonies in the New World. The term was used from the 15th century onwards primarily to describe the descendants of the Sephardic Jews and Moors that were baptized into the Catholic Church following the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, was an anti-Jewish law made by the Catholic Monarchs upon the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. It required Jews to convert to Roman Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos (or in a more derogatory fashion Marranos), while the Muslim converts were called Moriscos.

Because these conversions were achieved in part through coercion and also with the threat of expulsion, especially when it came to the Jews, the Catholic Inquisition and Iberian monarchs suspected a number of the "New Christians" of being crypto-Jews. Subsequently, the Spanish Inquisition and then the Portuguese Inquisition was created to enforce Catholic orthodoxy and to investigate allegations of heresy. This became a political issue in the kingdoms of the Portuguese–Spanish Union itself and their respective empires abroad, particularly in Spanish America, Portuguese America, and the Caribbean. Sometimes "New Christians" travelled to territories controlled by Protestant enemies of Spain, such as the Dutch Empire, the early English Empire, or Huguenot-influenced areas of the Kingdom of France such as Bordeaux, and openly practiced Judaism, which furthered suspicion of Jewish crypsis. Nevertheless, a significant number of those "New Christians" of converso ancestry were deemed by Spanish society as sincerely Catholic and they still managed to attain prominence, whether religious (St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of Ávila, St. Joseph of Anchieta, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Tomás de Torquemada, Diego Laynez, Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suárez, and others) or political (Juan de Oñate, Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, Hernán Pérez de Quesada, Luis de Santángel, and others).

The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, formalized by the Alhambra Decree of March 31, 1492, was a royal edict issued by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile ordering all unconverted Jews to leave their kingdoms and territories by the end of July that year, unless they converted to Christianity. Motivated by a desire for religious unity following the completion of the Reconquista and amid fears that unconverted Jews were influencing conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) to revert to Judaism, the decree brought to an end more than a millennium of Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula. It also ranks among the most consequential events in Spanish and Jewish history.

In the decades before 1492, successive crises had already thinned Spain's Jewish population through violence, forced conversion, and legal discrimination. In the aftermath of the 1391 massacres, large numbers of Jews converted to Catholicism. Continued attacks produced about 50,000 additional conversions by 1415. Authorities suspected that some conversos continued to practice Judaism in secret; concerns over such "Judaizing" helped motivate the creation of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, which investigated cases of heresy and, in some instances, used torture and imposed penalties up to execution for the unrepentant. Growing limpieza de sangre ("purity-of-blood") statutes in the 15th century further stigmatized "New Christians" of Jewish descent.

Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews" (origin from Greek kryptos – κρυπτός, 'hidden').

The term is especially applied historically to Spanish and Portuguese Jews who outwardly professed Catholicism, also known as Conversos, Marranos, or the Anusim. The phenomenon is especially associated with medieval Spain, following the Massacre of 1391 and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. After 1492 in Spain and 1497 in Portugal, officially they no longer existed. The Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition were established to monitor converted Jews and Muslims and their descendants for their continued adherence to Christian faith and practice, with severe penalties for those convicted of secretly continuing to practice their original beliefs. This would have involved the Inquisition paying close attention to the households of suspected converted Jews, since most of the families still practicing Judaism would have done so through the food. Information about secretly observant Jews largely survives in Inquisition cases against individuals.