Talk:Converso

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Judaism Portal
Converso is part of WikiProject Judaism, a project to improve all articles related to Judaism. If you would like to help improve this and other articles related to the subject, consider joining the project. All interested editors are welcome. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Judaism articles.
Project Judaism To-do:
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

[edit] Categories

We already have the area under the Inquisition Category category, why should it also be under the Catholic Church Category and the Spanish Jewish History Category as the Inquisition is beneath both of them? (In fact beneath the Catholic history Category in the former case).

For such a small category this seems overkill.

JASpencer

What's wrong with having all relevant links? The article is relevant to all these categories. Jayjg 14:54, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
With that attitude categories become less useful. Why not make sure that the European History, History, Jewish and other categories are included? With using subcategories the categories become far less cluttered and far more useful. JASpencer 30 Sept 2004

[edit] Gomez de Guzman (Ayala) family offsprings in America

I wrote this part of article because I think it is important to show how widely descendants of Jewish converso spread even outside of Iberia and former Iberian colonial empires. User: Tracadero, 3.16.07

I'm concerned that we need amazingly good evidence before we say eg George Bush has Jewish ancestors. Secretlondon 07:10, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Why do you think it is important to show how widely descendants of Jewish converso spread even outside of Iberia and former Iberian colonial empires? I suggest removing whole section as marginal to the Article. Pavel --80.95.254.1 06:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Ii is important, Pavel, that there is no so called ethnic purity n the world. You never know who your ancestors were, all mixed. User: Fernando.

Is the existence of ethnic purity an issue that needs addressed in an article on Jewish conversion in medieval Spain? If racial/ethnic purity is the issue, then there are better places to discuss it, such as Racism. As laudable as the broader sentiments may be, articles in an encyclopedia need to address the issue at hand.
The article as it stands has numerous problems. Roth does not say what the article credits him as saying. Specifically, the first person mentioned, "Gome Perez" is NOT said by Roth to be a converso, nor are the Ayala, which Roth calls "Old Castillian". (And while we are at it, nobody in the entire descent ever bore the name "de Guzman", nor was Gomez Perez "Mayor" but alguacil mayor - the civic officer in charge of law enforcement, the bailiff.) As to his conclusion that Horabuena was a conversa, his evidence is slight, and he is in disagreement with numerous other published sources which show her to have been of Christian parentage (including some of the cites given later in the article) - in other words, the entire thing may well be bogus. This type of issue could be discussed, if it was relevant to the article, but it is not. The patterns of descent are not unique to conversos. George Bush and all the others would descend from these Spanish noblemen and -women whether they are conversos or not, so this expedition into 800-year genealogies is not directly relevant to the subject of the article. Just as we do not show George Bush as a descendant of Normans on the Norman page, of Bretons on the Breton page, of Poles on the Poland page, etc., it is out of place here. Further, George Bush has about 4.2 billion ancestral lines to the time in question. That one of these may lead to someone who may once have been Jewish is hardly noteworthy, and is of no significance to the individuals in question (one does not understand more about either conversos or GWB by knowing that one may descend from the other). Finally, it is quite excessive. The list of people said to descend from this one woman who may have been a conversa is over twice as long as the entire description of what a converso/a is: the historical relevance of conversos is overwhelmed by this historical irrelevancy. This listing in no way makes the question of what is a converso more clear, and as such it has no place in an article on conversos.
Roth spends 400 pages talking about conversos and their role in their contemporary Spanish society - he even addresses your issue of interest, relating how a 15th century Bishop raised the issue that, "since virtually all of the Jews in Visigothic Spain converted to Christianity, who among the Christians of Spain could be certain that he is not a descendant of those conversos?" (p. 93). The Bishop, in one sentence and in a more relevant context, has made the same point as all those lines of names are apparently meant to convey. With insight like this, it is too bad all Roth is being used for is as capstone to a genealogical distraction. Agricolae 04:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

What Roth did Agricolae red? Read his book once again, pp. cited in Wiki's article. Concerning Ayala see Roth's book, Appendix C "Major Converso Families: Ayala, p. 333. User: BGH.

Agricolae read the one entitled Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Which one did BGH read? As to the pages cited in the Wiki article, pp. 94-95 says,
"Of great interest is Diaz's statement that 'D. Juan Gomez,' archbishop of Toledo, was a converso and son of a Jew (judio; read perhaps judia?) of Toledo (246). No such name appears in any list of the bishops of the city, and the only possibility seems to be the archbishop Gutierre Gomez (1310-19), who was in fact the son of Gome Perez, alguacil mayor of Toledo, and his wife Horabuena (Ora buena). [ref. 25] That name is so exclusively Jewish in medieval Spain, and particularly Toledo, that there can be little doubt as to her background. The archbiship's brother, interestingly, was Fernand Gomez, chancellor of Fernando IV and frequently involved with the Jew Samuel who was in the service of that king. It happens that Fernan Alvarez de Toledo (d. ca. 1460), the conde de Alba, was a nephew of Gutierre Gomez and also of Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, which further supports the possibility of the converso background of the archbishop."
Note several things - first, his source says that JUAN Gomez was a converso, son of a Jew, but then decides this may have been someone with a different name, GUTIERRE Gomez. That is the first problem. Second, he says that Gome Perez married Horabuena and HER name is almost exclusively Jewish. He never says that Gome himself was Jewish. Further, his conclusion that the name Horabuena is almost exclusively Jewish is unsourced and flies in the face of its documented use by Toledo Christian families, and by published sources that show her to be daughter of a Christian, Gutierre Armildez. Third, he relates that a son of this couple, an officer to the crown, interacted with a Jew in service to the same king. That hardly adds to the argument. Finally, he says that because Fernan Alvarez de Toledo was nephew of Gutierre Gomez and also of Inigo Lopez de Mendoza this further supports it. The logic of this escapes me. The whole argument is not very strong. On p. 333 he gives a list of names of converso families, but none of these names relate to Gome Perez or his wife. What am I missing on these cited pages?
As to Ayala, he does, in app. C, include the name in a list entitled "Converso families named by Lope de Barrientos and Fernan Diaz de Toledo." Here (in the Mendoza entry, which I missed) he states that "the Mendozas and Ayalas all descend from a certain 'Rabbi Solomon' and his son don Isaque de Valladolid, according to Lope de Barrientos", so clearly the Bishop thought they were conversos, but elsewhere, Roth himself says of Pedro Lopez de Ayala that he "headed the 'old Christian' cause" against the conversos (p. 103). (This 'Old Christian' champion, Pedro Lopez de Ayala, was brother of the Ines de Ayala of the Wiki article.) These are in apparent conflict, but that is not a unique situation in Roth's work - he says of Fernan Perez de Guzman that he was "a non-converso writer who spoke out on behalf of conversos" (p. 162), yet Fernan Perez de Guzman was a male-line great-great-grandson of Gome Perez and Horabuena. As to the Ayala, we do have an independent source, a genealogy of the family, written by the father of Pedro Lopes and Ines de Ayala. This traces the Ayala ancestry, name by name for numerous generations to obscure Basque-derived landholders on the Castile/Navarre borderlands, with not a rabbi in sight. Of course, next comes the argument that it is all a cover-up by the Ayalas, but that misses the bigger point.
Since it is not the job of Wiki editors to determine "truth", such issues would normally be discussed in the relevant article, but that would only compound the problem in this case. This whole Gomez genealogical diversion is not worth debating in the converso article, because, true or false, it contributes nothing to an understanding of conversos. When you add into it the questionable nature of the root claim, it's inclusion is all the more dubious. Agricolae 04:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to Agricolae for expressing my thoughts so eloquently. This really does not ad anything to the Article's subject. Pavel --80.95.254.1 14:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

My response simple: no serious scholar outside of Spain take seriously genealogical works written in Spain whether they from the Middle Ages or from contemporary historians. The social pressure to purify their ancestry from Jewish or Muslim forebears was enormous during the older times and crude anti-Semtism is still strong in Spain. As one astute observer of our days Iberia (he is not Jewish) points out Portuguese a notion that they has an Jewish ancestry is a widely accepted fact, but Spaniards are in denial. I can cite long list of negative opinions about Spanish works and they expressed by non-Spanish historians who are not Jews or Muslims. Your argument that Pero de Ayala was not converso because he led Old Christian party is ignorant. There is a long list of leaders of so called Old Christians who were of converso descent. Among them infamous PACHECO who led anti-Converso Old Christian party under last Castilian kings before rise of Isabella. In genealogical terms there were not truly Old Christians in Iberia, the category was social, created by Spanish society. It is also widely claimed by many scholars now that Spanish society with its obsession about the purity of the blood was the first racist society in the world. Hence all the distortion of family origins. Once mostly nobility and city middle class were considered of converso origin or admixture. Recently researchers discover that converso widely intermixed also with the peasants. Lope de Vega who was considered in his time and until now a "pure Spaniard" provides the celebraty case. Another big problem with Spanish genealogy is that Spaniards in drastic difference with the rest of Europe trace family line both by male and female lines, accordingly, a man can marry into an old family and his children can claim the name of this family, so it is difficult to trace the family trees as we accustomed to do it by the male lines. An original family can be dead in male lines but their female descendants can claim name of the family and its entire family tree including its origin. BGH.

Yeah, didn't see that coming - the great Christian cover-up. Certainly, one can debate the work of Fernan Perez de Ayala (although a blanket dismissal of everything written in Spain is hardly supportable - rather should not all sources be evaluated independently based on their own merits?). One can also debate the work of Lope de Barrientos (did you notice this was also written in Spain, so equally worthless by your criterion, right?). He was no more pure a source, free from criticism, than Perez de Ayala, he just had the opposite position.
We can debate it all until we are blue in the face, and when we are done, we won't know anything more about conversos, except that some became so integrated into Spanish society that you can't tell who is and who is not a converso, which renders the distinction meaningless for these families. This is a point that can be made with a single sentence, (perhaps the Bishop's own) without the tedious listing dozens of Americans who may or may not descend from someone who we can't tell for certain was or wasn't a converso in any line. Agricolae 17:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You made good point, every Spanish authors shall be judged according to his/her own merit Unfortunately and it is not mine opinion but of the most respected international scholars who are English, WASP Americans or Germans, that Spanish writings on genealogy have little value, even including contemporary scholars. I am in part of Valencian and Basque family background myself and I studied this issue in depths. Please do not engage in demagoguery comparing a few good apples with the rotten garden: highly reliable and internationally acclaimed as a source Lope de Barrientos is not in the same league with authors of forgeries. It is said a lot of about state of contemporary Spanish scholarship that converso background of great painter Velasquez was discovered recently by foreign researchers, including Japanese, not by Spaniards who gave him old aristocratic family tree. Once again, negative opinion about the state of Spanish family research and genealogy is not mine. Even if you argue agains such opinion, read for example Spanish biographies of Isabella and Ferdinand and try to find there any mentioning of their Jewish converso ancestry. You will not. But reference to it is almost a staple in foreign works about Isabella and Ferdinand. It is very sad that a capital work on conversos was wriiten by an American scholar Roth, not by a Spaniard.BGH.

Only a fool would dismiss Emilio Saez Sanchez just because Arturo Garcia Carraffa was also from Spain. We have the duality, though - those Spanish writers who disagree are purveyors of forgeries, those who agree are the "few good apples". Convenient. Anyhow, this whole obsession about who does or does not have a converso somewhere among their thousands or millions of ancestors is a separate issue from defining and describing what a converso is, which is the purpose of a Wiki article. Agricolae 19:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


I am leaving this discussion with my advise to Agricolae: when you read books which you do not like, try do not distort what their authors said, like you did with Roth. At beginning I thought you have problem with English language so you failed to understand and misquote the book. The problem is your world view. BGH.

Umm. Here is my advice to BGH - it is OK to disagree without accusing those who hold the opposing viewpoint of acting in bad faith. "My view, or the wrong one" is not a very productive approach to consensus building. As to my world view, in this context it is that the content of Wiki articles should have some relevance to the topic. If this is a problem for you, well, so be it.
Now, unless someone can provide a better rationale than 'world peace' for including Oliver Hazard Perry in an article on Jews and Muslims who adopted Christianity in medieval Spain, I am going to delete the whole section. Agricolae 02:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


(Note: BGH, twice you have significantly altered your previous contributions to this discussion after I responded, without any indication that this has been done, thereby changing the apparent context of my responses. Fixing typos is one thing, but if there is material you wish you would have said and someone else has already responded, then please add the new material as a separate entry. To do otherwise is to distort the discussion. Agricolae 05:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC))

Guzman was a Moore not Hebrew. The Conversos or more Muslim Stop making up History. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 161.98.106.86 (talk) 15:35, August 20, 2007 (UTC)