#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #SPAIN #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #France, UCL AL #333 - Story, 1492: Limpieza de sangre, #Spain invents modern racism (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The end of the 15th century in Spain, in the context of the Catholic reconquest,

will see the birth of a new concept of social segregation which will affect the
Jewish and Muslim populations as well as their descendants: the Limpieza de
sangre , the purity of blood. It constitutes the matrix of contemporary
biological racism. ---- On March 31, 1492, less than three months after the
capture of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula, and
which marked the end of the Reconquista , the Catholic Monarchs signed a decree
at the Alhambra in Granada instituting the expulsion of Jews from Spanish
kingdoms. "  We further order by this edict that Jews of all ages residing in our
domains or territories depart with their sons and daughters, their servants and
their parents, small or large, of any age at the end of the month of July from
this year and that they dare not return to our lands and step forward to intrude
upon them, so that if a Jew who does not accept this edict is found in these
dominions or returns there, he will be liable to death and confiscation of his
property.» .

200,000 Jews go into exile in four months
The new Spain that was built in 1492 is a Spain that wants to be united under the
banner of the Christian faith. The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand
II of Aragon in 1469, constitutes, by the union of the Crowns of Aragon and
Castile, and later of the Kingdom of Navarre, the genesis of what will become the
Kingdom of Spain . This Spain, whose population is in fact multicultural, wants
to be exclusively Christian, thus the title of Catholic Kings which is given to
Isabella and Ferdinand by Pope Innocent VIII after the capture of Granada.

This Granada decree obliges Jews to choose between conversion or exile: "  los
llamados judíos si no son contridos deberán ser expulsados del Reino  "
(so-called Jews, if they do not convert, must be expelled from Kingdom). A
majority of the 200,000 Jews of the Spanish kingdoms will choose exile. But in
fact it is much more, it is a blank check given to the generalization of a
racialist policy instituted for the first time in Toledo half a century earlier:
the Limpieza de sangre , the purity of blood.

Half of the text of this Decree of the Alhambra goes back to the "  misdeeds  "
of the Jews against the Catholic religion and the need to go beyond the spatial
segregation already in effect since 1480: "  This is why, in 1480, We ordered
that the Jews be separated from the towns and provinces of our domains and that
separate sectors be assigned to them  " . Support for "  true converts  " by
permanently removing Jewish influence, necessarily underhanded or racist decree ?
The context, however, is that of a profound anti-Judaism which has been raging
since the end of the 14th century, and in particular the bloody episode of the
anti-Jewish persecutions ( Revuelta antijudía) which, starting from Seville in
1391, extended to a large part of Castile and then to the territories of the
Crown of Aragon. Following these pogroms, conversions, forced or not, were
numerous. But these converts ( conversos ) are suspected of continuing to
practice their religion in secret. Thus a distinction is quickly made between "
new Christians   " ( cristianos nuevos ), who are called marranos ( marranos ),
and "   old Christians   " ( cristianos viejos ), understood as "   pure
Christians   ", those whose veins do not carry Jewish blood.

The decree goes even further by praising the work of the Inquisition. This
religious tribunal responsible for investigating, instructing and judging facts
of heresy was established in the Spanish kingdoms in 1478, by a bull from Pope
Sixtus IV at the request of the Catholic Monarchs. The Spanish Inquisition (
Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición ) was primarily active in hunting
down conversos. "  We have ordered that the Inquisition be established in these
dominions ; and in the term of twelve years it worked and the Inquisition found
many people guilty.[....]And so, based on the confessions of these Jews, it is
clear that they have perverted these confessions, which has caused great damage
and prejudice to the holy Catholic faith. » .

A pure, biologically embodied faith
The notion of Limpieza de sangre , if it is both contemporary and inspiring part
of this text, does not however appear in the decree of Granada. It is a set of
measures taken by civil authorities, a set of measures of social discrimination
on biological and racial bases. These decrees were to constitute the genesis of
racism, in the sense in which we understand it today, and the matrix of modern
racialist policies, whether one thinks of the "  slave trade which will take off
almost two centuries later, the colonization of the African, American and Asian
continents by Western nations or the racial laws of Nuremberg in 1935. If in
Europe the first anti-Jewish measures are much older - expulsion from England in
1290, from France from 1306, then 1315 and 1394 - according to the historian
Jean-Frédéric Schaub, the Limpieza de sangre constitutes an innovation marking "
a before and an after  " .

The Limpieza de sangre was born in Toledo in 1449, following an uprising against
the collection of a tax in the context of the war between the kingdoms of Castile
and Aragon. The city of Toledo then revolts against the Crown and, in a
millennial anti-Semitic scenario, it is a converted Jew who is found guilty of
being at the origin of this tax. Once the city was freed from royal control, the
mayor of the city issued a decree prohibiting "  new converts  " from accessing
local positions of power. This Sentencia-Estatuto establishes for the first time
a statute of purity of blood: " that converts of the line of the Jews, to be
suspect in the faith of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, into which they
frequently pump light, Judaizing, cannot have such public or private offices or
benefices by which they may hurt, harm and mistreat old and good Christians  " .
Offices and privileges are exclusively accessible to "  old Christians  ".

This distinction between Christians is a novelty and creates debates within the
Church. Indeed, the Catholic religion is a religion built on conversion, and this
distinction directly calls into question the sacred and absolute character of
baptism. Thus an appeal is made to the pope who condemns by the bull Humani
generis inimicus the persecutions made to the converts and asks that they be in
all things treated like the "   old Christians   ".

9,000 Jews sentenced to be burned alive
The first anti-Jewish - then anti-Muslim measures against those who were then
called the "  Moriscos  " ( moriscos) from 1526 - enacted locally respond above
all to a desire to sideline competitors, political and matrimonial, within the
framework of a symbolic struggle for the acquisition of offices and positions of
power within a society in full expansion and whose old feudal structures tend to
disappear, making effective new possibilities of social ascent. The statutes of
Toledo will be copied and adopted in many localities and in connection with all
possible charges. They are legal tools, instruments for setting aside competitors
which will constitute themselves in a legal system of generalized discrimination
of a part of the population because of their ancestors.

This legal basis, this rule which will give advantages according to origin will
operate a distinction by blood. Gradually a process of essentialization takes
place. The blood that is linked to faith, to belief, will positively or
negatively mark the genealogy of everyone. Thus it is by blood that good or bad
faith is transmitted, and it must be pure. The Jews having for tens and tens of
generations been in error, not recognizing in Jesus Christ the Messiah, are today
too far from the truth and have become irreformable, unassimilable.

Worse still, their design is to subvert the Christian faith, as we read in the
text of the Granada decree: "  these Jews try by all means to subvert the holy
Catholic faith and try to prevent believing Christians from approach their
beliefs  " . An anti-Semitic axiom was thus created which still persists today: "
  Even when he ceases to be a Jew, the Jew is a Jew  " . The Limpieza de sangre
will therefore become a legal system of social exclusion based on "  racial
purity  ".

It was the Inquisition that came to support and reinforce the decrees
establishing the Limpeza de sangre . Indeed, as a religious institution
responsible for tracking down heresies, the Inquisition has no power over
non-Christians. The conversos for their part fall within the framework of the
religious jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and it is this same Inquisition which
will construct the theoretical discourse of biological and racial separation and
incompatibility between Jews and Christians. The systematic tracking of false
conversions is at the heart of inquisitorial activity, especially after the "
discovery  " of Jewish rituals practiced in secret by conversos within several
monasteries in 1485.

 From then on, it was the "  new Christians  " who were suspected and constituted
the vast majority of those sentenced by the tribunal of the Inquisition. Under
the Ordinances of Torquemada of 1484 (recognized and reinforced by the Catholic
Monarchs in 1

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?1492-Limpieza-de-sangre-l-Espagne-invente-le-racisme-moderne
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