In reaction to the criticism of the ideology of blood purity, which was essentially shaped by prag-matic and economic interests, the apologists of the statutes composed texts based on new argumen-tative focal points. In his exposé, Juan de Quiñones focused on the strategy of supporting classical theological arguments with ones based on natural philosophy and medicine.
Diego Gracia Guillén, a scholar in the fields of the history of medicine, medicinal anthropology and bioethics, divided this new Old Christian strategy of argumentation into three steps. Step 1 is the determination of the bad morality of the New Christians, who according to the Old Christians pursue immoral habits and often deny the truth of the Christian faith. Step 2 consists of the view that this inferior morality is not due to the environment and education, but rather primarily to physical preconditions, i.e. above all their complexion, meaning the composition of the four bodily fluids. Finally, in early modern medicine, Galen’s dominant Humoralism, with the four fluids (blood, mucus, black and yellow bile) or, to put it more precisely, their interaction, determined the health or illness of the body. Depraved morality is determined here by biological traits, that is, physical preconditions. In this context, Gracia Guillén also speaks of the “race” or the “racial characteristics”
attributed to the Conversos. Step 3 ends with the conviction of the Old Christians that this physically conditioned depravity is hereditary and is thus passed down from generation to generation.88The biological direction of this strategy of argumentation is clearly demonstrated in these three steps introduced by Gracia Guillén.
This three-step argumentation can be exemplified by a story from Torrejoncillo’s work about an orphan of unknown origin. This narrative can be defined as symptomatic of the mindset of the ideologists of blood purity:
87 In regard to thearbitristassee Anne DUBET: Los arbitristas entre discurso y acción política: Propuestas para un análisis de la negociación política, in: Tiempos Modernos 9 (2003), 1 – 14, URL: http :/ / www. tiemposmodernos . org/viewarticle.php?id=36. (visited on 27/02 /2019); Javier MÁRQUEZ: Un mercantilista español: Pedro Fernández Navarrete, in: Investigación económica 1,3 (1941), 341 – 376.
88 Diego GRACIA GUILLÉN: Judaísmo, Medicina y “Mentalidad Inquisitorial” en la España del siglo XVI, in: Ángel AL-CALÁ (ed.): Inquisición española y mentalidad inquisitorial: Ponencias del Simposio Internacional sobre Inquisición, Nueva York, abril de 1983, Barcelona 1984, 328 – 352, here 334.
“I have heard some persons worthy of credit say that in Moron, a town in Portugal, they abandoned a new-born girl at the doorstep of the house of a distinguished man named Pedro de Mendoza. Although it was never possible to determine whose daughter she was, he looked after her and raised her in his house and she became very beautiful. A page in his household took a fancy to her and, one night, secretly entered the house. He hid in the bedchamber of the girl with the evil intention of having his way with her. When the girl went to sleep, the page witnessed that the first thing that she did was to take an image of Holy Christ from a chest and whip it. The boy, bewildered and astounded, exited with the same secrecy and caution with which he had entered. He proceeded to tell his master what he had seen, confessing both his evil intention and the wicked deed of the girl, to which she was inclined because of her bloodline and nature.”89
Interestingly, Torrejoncillo never mentions in the course of the story that the girl, by his logic, had to be of Jewish descent or a daughter of Conversos. He left this conclusion to his readers. Here, once again, we see the element of an implicit ability to understand, which is a criterion for a master narrative, as already discussed above. Another significant factor is the intention of the story since Torrejoncillo clearly shows that even education in an important Old Christian household without any contact to Jewish roots cannot do anything against the heredity, the blood and the temper, as Torrejoncillo refers to it. In addition, a fascinating hierarchy of moral values is seen here: The rape planned by the page is implicitly classified as less reprehensible than the desecration of the statue of Christ by the young girl. The trivializing vocabulary that Torrejoncillo uses with regard to the page’s intentions is proof of this.
Now, the focus below will be on the question of the extent to which this biological tendency in the debate on blood purity was also shaped by a corresponding biological tendency in natural philosophy and medicine at that time. Gracia Guillén sees a clear connection here:
“The general conclusion in this first part is that there is a close interaction between the physical and moral traits in 16th century Spain, and they are said to be inherited. […] We can see here how medicine provides powerful arguments for the Inquisition mentality and how Spanish medicine in the 16th century becomes more of a collaborator than a victim of the Inquisition with a view to the task of disciplining the habits of civil society.”90
89 Translation by Soyer: SOYER: Popularizing Anti-Semitism in Early Modern Spain and its Empire (see n. 18), 255;
“En Moron, Villa de Portugal, he oído decir à personas fidedignas, que echaron una niña recien nacida à la puerta de un hombre principal, llamado Pedro de Mendoza; criòla, y creció en su casa, y fue muy hermosa, y nunca se pudo saber cuya hija era. Un page de casa se aficionó de ella, y una noche se entró de secreto, y se escondió en el aposento de la moza con malos intentos de gozarla; y quando la moza se fue à acostar, vió el page, que lo primero que hizo, fue sacar de un cofre un Santo Christo, y azotarle. El mozo confuso, y admirado, con el secreto, y cautela, que entró se bolvió à salir, y dió cuenta a su amo, assi de su mal proposito, como del mal hecho de la moza, que su sangre, y natural le incilinava à aquello.” TORREJONCILLO: Centinela contra judíos, puesta en la torre de la Iglesia de Dios (see n. 18), 192.
90 “La conclusión general de esta primera parte es que en la España del siglo XVI se establece una estrecha correlación entre cualidades físicas y morales y se llega a afirmar que éstas se transmiten hereditariamente. […] Vemos, pues,
As examples of such a biological tendency in medicine with a focus more on the heredity of physical traits and character traits than on their shaping by the environment and education, Gracia Guillén names three Converso doctors: Juan Huarte de San Juan (c. 1529 – c. 1588), Enrique Jorge Enríquez (c. the 2nd half of the 16th century) and Rodrigo de Castro (c. 1555 – 1630). Especially in the case of Huarte de San Juan, it can be seen clearly in his upbringing guideExamen de ingenios para las ciencias(1575)91 what a role heredity played. For the genesis of clever minds that are suited for the sciences, the correct procreation is more important than any later educational measure, in his opinion.92
The writings of Enrique Jorge Enríquez and Rodrigo de Castro, to which Gracia Guillén refers, addressed the issues of medical ethics and the role of the trained doctor in society, however. They belong to themedicus politicusliterature that was heavily defined by the Iberian region.93Their texts also illustrate the assumed close interaction between physical and character traits.
David B. Ruderman, who examines the theses of Gracia Guillén and Maravall, among others, and takes up their theories that Iberianmedicus politicusliterature was essentially based on the ideas of the Inquisition and Baroque culture, comes to the conclusion that the literature of the Converso doctors was influenced more by another concern:
“But, I suggest, the Converso physician’s attempt to stake out a political and moral role for the medical profession is not the result of these general forces [Inquisition and Baroque culture]
alone. It is more directly linked to his quest for cultural identity, his attempt to define his Jewishness by integrating it with the most important factor that made him both unique and critical to Jewish and Christian society alike: his medical acumen.”94
The assumed interplay between the physical and mental plays a relatively subordinate role in the texts of Enríquez and Castro. However, the idea that the physical constitution essentially determines character was generally widespread in the medical texts of the time. This may also be due to the Galenic treatise Quod animi mores, which, according to Luis García Ballester, decisively defined Western medicine and its understanding of body and soul.95 Here, Galen (129 – 216 CE) shows the extent to which character is determined by complexion.
cómo la medicina ofrece argumentos de gran peso a la mentalidad inquisitorial, y cómo, en consecuencia, la medicina española del siglo XVI se convierte, más que en víctima, en colaboradora de la Inquisición en la tarea de disciplinar las costumbres de la sociedad civil.” GRACIA GUILLÉN: Inquisición española y mentalidad inquisitorial (see n. 88), 339.
91 Juan HUARTE: Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, Madrid 1977 (first edition Baeza 1575).
92 In this regard, see chapter2.3.1 Juan Huarte de San Juan.
93 Winfried SCHLEINER: Medical Ethics in the Renaissance, Washington 1995; Jon ARRIZABALAGA: Medical Ideals in the Sephardic Diaspora: Rodrigo de Castro’s Portrait of the Perfect Physician in early Seventeenth-Century Hamburg, in: Medical History, Supplement 29 (2009), 107 – 124, URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC2836222/pdf/medhissuppl-29-107.pdf?tool=pmcentrez (visited on 27/02 /2019), here 107 –124.
94 David B. RUDERMAN: Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, Detroit 2001, 294 –295.
95 Luis GARCÍA BALLESTER: Alma y enfermedad en la obra de Galeno: Traducción y comentario del escrito “Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur”, Valencia and Granada 1972, 17; in regard to the treatise, also see chapter2.1.1 Discussion: Wet nurse’s Milk or Mother’s Milk.
The two components, the emphasis on heredity as in Juan Huarte and the assumption of a correlation between body and mind, as in Castro and Enríquez, collectively led to ethnic theories in medicine that went beyond the classical climate theories of the Middle Ages. Accordingly, the Portuguese-born Converso doctors, Amato Lusitano and Isaac Cardoso, who like many others offi-cially converted to the Jewish faith after their emigration, discussed in their texts the extent to which Jews would suffer from or be spared from certain diseases.96In my opinion, David Ruderman’s in-terpretive approach could also be extended to this case since the Converso doctors’ discussion of specifically Jewish diseases and thus a specifically Jewish complexion was primarily about a search for cultural identity, even if both were certainly shaped by their experiences on the Iberian Peninsula.
Consequently, there is also the question of the extent to which the proponents of the ideology of blood purity took up the discussion of the Converso doctors about a specifically Jewish complexion and instrumentalized it accordingly for their purposes.
Taken together, two different developments can thus be observed at the turn of the 17th century:
on the one hand, the New Christian body becomes the focus of the debate on the ideology of blood purity, and, on the other, there is an increase in biological tendencies in medicine. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to assume that the new biological argumentation found strong support in the debate on blood purity in the new medical trend and drew on it. This hypothesis will be examined in the book.
1. 4 Physical Distinguishing Features
The physical characteristics of apostasy and heresy, attributed by the apologists of the ideology of blood purity to the bodies of the Conversos and in part also to the Moriscos, are suitable for such an examination. Three physical markers prove to be central here.
First, it is necessary to mention the idea of “Jewish male” menstruation, which was transferred to the Converso body. The Moriscos were excluded from this discussion. The proponents of the ideology of blood purity – such as Juan de Quiñones, Vicente da Costa Matos and Francisco de Torrejoncillo – put forward the theory that male Conversos would suffer from periodic blood flow comparable to female menstruation. Quiñones even went so far as to suggest that such male men-struation could serve as an indicator of apostasy and heresy for the Inquisitors in the case of accused men.97
This idea of Conversos’ “male” menstruation was then coupled with the attribution of a bad body odor, which can be traced back to the anti-Jewish topos of the foetor judaicus, which was already common in the Middle Ages. In this case, too, the ideologists of blood purity focused primarily on the Conversos. The Moriscos, however, are not entirely exempt from this stigma of smell because a bad odor was also ascribed to Muslims in the argumentative tradition that refers to the stories
96 In this regard, see chapter3. 4 Male and “ Jewish Male” Menstruation in the Early Modern Eraand chapter4.3 The New Christian Stigma of Smell.
97 QUIÑONES: Memorial de Juan de Quiñones dirigido a F. Antonio de Sotomayor, Inquisidor General (see n. 85), 21r.
about the holy spring of Matarieh.98 The Inquisition files bear witness, above all, to the fact that this stain was also ascribed to the Moriscos. For this reason, I deliberately decided to speak of a New Christian stigma of smell and not of a Converso stigma of smell, even if the texts generally focused far less on the Moriscos.
The last physical marker relates to female Conversas and Moriscas. The apologists in the statutes, for example, repeatedly cite a ban that was laid down for the royal house and stated that New Christian wet nurses should not be employed in the royal household to nurse and raise infants. The reason given for this ban is the danger that the child could be contaminated by the heretical wet nurse’s milk and convert to Judaism. Accordingly, the position of the royal wet nurse would be the only office in which women, who were otherwise fundamentally exempted from all offices and dignities, were also affected by the purity of blood statutes.
Since the discussion about the royal ban on wet nurses is a special case in this respect, because Conversas and Moriscas are equally in focus and because the topic has received very little attention in research so far, I will begin with this physical marker in chapter two. Chapter three will focus on the “Jewish male” menstruation of Conversos, as this physical marker was discussed the most in the texts. I will then examine the New Christian stigma of smell in chapter four and thus consider the argumentative structure in the sources since the topics of “Jewish male” menstruation and bad body odor were usually linked. Furthermore, the ideologists of blood purity were less concerned with the stigma of smell than “Jewish male” menstruation.
I do not examine the body-centered argumentation exclusively in the reference system of the ideology of blood purity or the master narrative, but rather use them only as a starting point. I deliberately go beyond these references in order to clarify the context in which, for example, “Jewish male” menstruation could be discussed in all its various meanings. In this way, it can be shown, on the one hand, that there were also dissenting voices or other opinions that deviated in part. On the other hand, it becomes apparent that not all levels of discussion that existed on the complex of topics were included in the narrow corset of the ideology of blood purity or in the debate as a master narrative.