This book examines forced conversion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly, but not exclusively, in the Iberian Peninsula. Some of the issues addressed in this volume are the mechanisms of accommodation and the new articulation of faith developed by the different religious traditions in order to deal with forced conversion; the new affirmation of foundational categories of religious identity; the role played by intention and compulsion; the production of legal and theological rationalizations to justify coercion in conversion; and the appearance of tensions between external practice and inner beliefs. Moreover, this volume shows that these phenomena are attested in various religious traditions at different times and places.
Likewise, and moving away from the attempt to determine whether conversion was the outcome of inner conviction or a pragmatic change, the aims of the volume are to historicize the categories of will and compulsion, to study the process through which coercion was legitimized by a certain conception of faith, and to analyze how conversion created broader identity categories. The introduction to the volume is quite useful in contextualizing the different essays. However, a more critical and detailed analysis is missing for some episodes, such as the voluntary martyrdoms of Cordova. It is also striking that the Messianic and Crusader ideology of the conquest of Granada (1492) is not related by the editors to previous Crusader experiences, something that could be misunderstood as an exclusive Iberian development.
The first part of this book is dedicated to Visigothic legislation, showing the complexity of the relationship between a historical precedent and later events. Marmursztejn traces the complex history of the Visigoth legislation in the Scholastic controversies over forced conversion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Vidal Doval analyzes how the rebels of Toledo (1449) drew on the Visigothic legislation as a precedent to advance their cause. Poutrin analyzes the validity of baptism in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century canon-law debates about the meaning of consent and coercion.
The second part studies the forced conversion policies of the Almohads. Fierro states that the original reason for the forced conversion was the influence of both eschatological and Ismaili beliefs regarding the appearance of a Messianic figure. She also argues that the anxiety of the Almohad caliphs concerning the converts was related not only to the impossibility of knowing the true beliefs of those forced to convert, but also to the fear of contamination from the original beliefs. Wasserstein outlines how the work of Ibn Ḥazm could have provided an intellectual background for the Almohad policies of conversion. It is difficult to understand his animosity toward Fierro's previous work, especially considering that he develops a hypothesis already proposed by the Spanish researcher. Verskin, through a discussion of the Jewish responses to the Almohad policy, argues that Jews used their experience to rethink ideas of Jewish-Muslim relations.
The third part of the book addresses the problems related to the violent attacks on Jewish quarters that spread throughout Castile and Aragon around 1391. Szpiech questions the role attributed to the writings of Jewish convert Abner of Burgos. In Abner's view, forcing the Jews to convert would have offered Jews a salvation that they did not deserve, questioning God's salvific plan. Ram Ben-Shalom explores the new language coined by Jewish authors to react to, but also shape, the new religious boundaries brought about by forced conversion. Glazer-Eytan analyzes how the Inquisition was transforming religious ambiguities into heresies and how this process contributed to the production of the image of the New Christian—a confessing subject—as a relapsing Judaizer. Herzig examines cases from fifteenth-century Italy in which Jewish criminals converted to Christianity in order to have their death sentences commuted, and how this was used by the ruling elites as a religious legitimation of their rule. The fourth and last part of this volume is dedicated to the link between theology and history in the events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Scotto challenges views that anachronistically depict Hernando de Talavera as a tolerant man. Marcocci studies the overlapping of memories between New Christians and the rest of the society caused by the policies of forced conversion against the Portuguese Jews in 1497. García-Arenal focuses on the issue of the forced conversion of Morisco children, the increasing tendency to link religion to lineage—and the role of the Virgin Mary in this idea—and how this challenged baptism.
In sum, this volume is an important contribution not only for the analysis of conversion but also for the study of how religious identities are created and shaped. Moreover, and as Nirenberg states in the epilogue, this book also speaks, in a broader sense, about the tension between the power of conversion, of approaching a new order, and the weight of history and habit. The only criticism that can be made is that, despite the volume's title, a certain comparative perspective between religions is lacking.
