jews and christians in fifteenth-century spain

14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 174
tion extended far beyond doubts about whether an individual had
been baptized or not, for ambiguity could arise in any number
of settings.
Topographically, for example, converts from Judaism (and
Islam) often remained in the same homes and neighbourhoods
(that is, in Jewish and Muslim quarters) that they had occupied
before their conversion. In this sense St Vincent was right: the
New Christians really were neighbours of Jews.29 The converts’
fiscal status, too, was indeterminate. Because they were made to
assume a proportionate share of the debts and tax obligations of
the Jewish community they left behind (obligations that often
had maturities of several decades), the converts were often
lumped into fiscal groupings separate from both Jewish aljamas
and the ‘Old Christian’ municipalities.30 The result was not only
that the converts would retain close financial ties with their former
coreligionists for at least a generation, but also that they would
form confraternities and tax collectives quite distinct from those
of their adopted brethren in Christ. The meanings of this ‘interstitiality’
were neither clear nor stable. For example, if the formation
of converso confraternities seemed at first a laudable and even
necessary step in the neophytes’ incorporation into the body of
Christ, it soon began to seem a dangerous symptom of separatism,
and by mid-century it had become a primary locus for violent
conflict between Christians Old and New.31 Whatever the shifting
29 Quadrado published an example of an early stage in this process, where shortly
after the massacre the converts were asked whether they wished to remain in their
old homes or move to Christian neighbourhoods; the majority opted to stay: see José
María Quadrado, ‘La judería de la ciudad de Mallorca en 1391’, Boletín delaReal
Academia de la Historia, ix (1886). Authorities soon sought to segregate converts from
Jews, but distinctively converso parishes remained a feature of urban topography in
many Iberian cities (Barcelona, Córdoba, Seville, Toledo, Valencia) up to the sixteenth
century.
30 In the Aragonese archives, documents concerning the creation of institutions for
converso self-government are legion. To cite but two examples, see ACA, Chancery
MS 2186, fo. 55r–v (1408), giving the converso leadership of Barcelona the right to call
all conversos together for the purposes of community business; and ibid., MS 2193,
fos. 116v–117r (1400), which establishes the procedure by which the conversos of
Montblanc are to contribute to their outstanding share of the Jewish aljama’s tax
burden. Numerous individual complaints about indeterminate fiscal identity can be
found in the archives as well.
31 In Valencia the confraternity of St Christopher was founded in 1399 (ACA,
Chancery MS 2191, fos. 143v ff.=Colección de documentos inéditos del Archivo General
de la Corona de Aragón, ed. Próspero de Bofarull y Mascaró, Manuel de Bofarull y
de Sartorio and Francisco de Asís de Bofarull y Sans, 41 vols. (Barcelona, 1847–1910),
xli, no. 92, pp. 117–28); in Barcelona that of the Holy Trinity in 1405 (ACA, Chancery
MS 2915, fos. 47r ff.=Colección de documentos inéditos, ed. Bofarull y Mascaró et al.,
(cont. on p. 15)