american-holocaust

208 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTthat many of their purchased slaves were Christians. This greatly upset theChurch and led to various methods of discouraging trade in Christian captives,including efforts to cut off all trade of any sort with Muslim countriesand the excommunication of Christians caught buying or selling theirreligious brethren as bondsmen. (At that time it generally was agreed thatfree Christians could not be enslaved by other Christians except as punishmentfor certain crimes.) However, since the Church remained devoted toits evangelical mission and to supporting the slave trade in general, a difficultyof potentially major proportions soon developed: what to do withthe legally enslaved infidel who saw the light and converted to Catholicism?To order the manumission of such a person might rapidly underminethe lucrative trade in captive infidels, but to fail to free him or herwould be to condone the enslavement of Christians. It was on the hornsof this dilemma, writes David Brion Davis, that the Church made ao ominousdecision:In 1366 the Priors of Florence, who had previously given their sanction tothe import and sale of infidel slaves, explained that by "infidel" they hadmeant "all slaves of infidel origin, even if at the time of their arrival theybelong to the Catholic faith"; and "infidel origin" meant simply "from theland and race of the infidels." With this subtle change in definition the Priorsof Florence by-passed the dilemma of baptism by shifting the basis of slaveryfrom religious difference to ethnic origin. 36It may have been a subtle change in definition, but the larger meaningof this declaration would signal an alteration in consciousness containingenormous and far-reaching implications. From this point forward the "raceof the infidels" would be sufficient to justify their enslavement, and notransformations of any sort-including conversion to the faith of Christwouldhave any bearing on their worldly condition. Less than a centurylater a functionally similar declaration was imposed upon Spain's Jews. Inthe wake of the anti-Jewish riots of 1449 in Toledo, Jews were barredfrom holding public office in the city; only those citizens who could demonstrateChristian "purity of blood," said the first decree of limpieza desangre, were eligible for such positions. Conversion to Catholicism wouldno longer suffice, for oneself or even for one's descendants. Blood-in effect,race-was now the fundamental criterion.The conceptual underpinnings for this ominous shift in consciousnesshad been building for a very long time. As early as the ninth century inAragon and Castile the general term for nobility, caballero hidalgo, wasreserved for those of specified "blood" and lineage; achieved economic orother influence was insufficient to overcome the genetic exclusivity of theinstitution. At issue was the nobleman's allegedly unique possession of verguenza-thesense of honor-that was bestowed solely through genealogicalinheritance. As Alfonso X of Castile explained: