Limpieza de sangre

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Limpieza de sangre ( Spanish for " purity of the blood ", " blood purity ") is a pro-racist concept that was used by the Spanish so-called old Christians (Spanish: cristianos viejos ) from the new Christians (Spanish) from the 15th to the 19th century . : cristianos nuevos ) or conversos who had Muslim or Jewish ancestors. These were suspected of Judaizing and were often persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition . Higher church and state offices were closed to them and they were not admitted to certain respected institutions.

background

The background to the concept of the limpieza de sangre was the Reconquista , in which the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in conquering Muslim domains by 1492 . As a result, since the 11th century, more and more Jews and Muslims, so-called Mudejares , came under Christian rule, who were initially assured of religious tolerance and, in some cases, protection of the kings and autonomy. Since the 13th century, however, these communities have increasingly been victims of pogroms and forced conversions, such as the persecution of the Jews of 1391, which, starting from Seville , spread across the entire Iberian Peninsula.

After the fall of the last Muslim state, the Emirate of Granada , the Catholic kings Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Alhambra Edict on March 31, 1492 , according to which all remaining Spanish Jews were either baptized or had to emigrate. Many emigrated as Sephardim to the Ottoman Empire , to northwestern Europe or to Portugal , where however, due to the personal union with Spain in 1580, they were again faced with the alternative: forced conversion or emigration. In order to stay in Spain, a large number of Jews were baptized. They were called Marranos (Spanish: “pigs”): the Christian majority accused them of judaizing, that is, of continuing to practice their Jewish faith secretly even after baptism. After the expulsion or forced conversion of the Spanish Jews, there was crypto-judaism on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries , that is, Jewish communities that outwardly preserved the Roman Catholic facade, but continued to practice Jewish customs in the private sphere.

It was similar with the Mudejares, who were initially allowed to continue practicing their religion after conquering the territory they inhabited. In 1501 they were also required to be baptized or to emigrate. The baptized were called Morisken (Spanish moriscos for Moors ). They, too, were assumed to have only pretended to have embraced Christianity in order to avoid deportation to North Africa, which in some cases was the case.

Creation and implementation

Proof of purely early Christian descent was made mandatory as early as 1414 and 1418 as a requirement for entry to the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé of Salamanca . As a prerequisite for state and church offices, the limpieza de sangre was first written as a statute in 1449 in Toledo . This happened after a revolt against the royal minister, which broke out over a new tax and was directed primarily against Conversos. These had provided the king's most important tax farmers . Around 1460, the Franciscan Alonso de Espina , the confessor of King Henry IV of Castile , put all conversations under general suspicion in his work Fortalitium fidei ("Fortress of Faith"): Because he believes that faith is inherited by biological means , the conversions of Jews and Muslims never be real. One of the main concerns of the Spanish Inquisition , established in 1478 at the insistence of Tomás de Torquemada , the confessor of Queen Isabella, was to check whether the forced baptisms had actually led to real conversions. In the following years, the idea spread that only blood purity guaranteed true faith, and it became more and more binding legal norm, which prevailed in corporations such as orders of knights , cathedral chapters and university colleges (Colegios Mayores) in particular in the 16th century and thus gave access to almost regulated all high offices and important institutions. A genealogical evidence of early Christian descent was required as an entry requirement. It was also required of the wet nurses at the royal court. Anyone who could not prove this blood purity was stigmatized as "impure" or "stained" (Spanish: maculado , notado , manchado ) .

Against this background, the concept of the limpieza de sangre is widely interpreted as a means of uniting the heterogeneous parts of the empire in terms of religious policy. It was mainly directed against Marranos, as they lived in the cities in closer contact with the early Christian majority, where many achieved considerable social advancement , while most of the Morisks remained visibly foreign through clothing and language and they were far less likely to be able to integrate and advance . The historian Stefan Rinke therefore suspects that, in addition to the fear of crypto-Jewish infiltration, social envy was a motive for the anti-Semitic demands for limpieza de sangre . The desired exclusion of all people with not exclusively early Christian ancestors did not succeed because there were also noble families who descended from Conversos. In addition, the historian Henry Kamen is of the opinion that after a particularly intensive observation in the first half of the 16th century, the statutes were applied significantly less frequently, especially since they were never designed as permanent regulations; Until the 1560s, a few witnesses named by the candidate were sufficient in the Inquisition to prove blood purity, which was only then more formalized, but could be circumvented through bribery or royal favor.

In Spain, as in the Roman Curia , there was repeated violent criticism. Just a few weeks after the adoption of the Toledo Statute in 1449, Pope Nicholas V and three bulls , including Humani generis inimicus , declared its provisions to be inadmissible and justified this with Paul's letter to the Romans 2: 10-11 LUT , according to which there was no respect with God of the person. Also Ignatius of Loyola , founder of the Jesuit order , which some conversos in its ranks, had put in principle to the statutes, and King Philip II. - among his closest advisers, some of unknown origin were - apparently tried in the late 1580s, the statutes to weaken.

Procedure

In order to be accepted into a religious community , to receive a state office or to be enrolled in a university, the candidate had to demonstrate three qualities or qualities (calidades) , of which the limpieza de sangre was only one: besides the early Christian descent, that is In order to have no Jews, Muslims or heretics among his ancestors, proof was required to come from a legitimate marriage and to be morally impeccable, that is, to not pursue a lower occupation, for example physical labor, and not have a criminal record at the Inquisition be. The candidate, his family or any opponents who wanted to prevent his admission to the order, university or office could apply for such information . The applicants bore the costs of the sometimes very lengthy procedures. The alkali of the community, the bishop of the local diocese or the governor of the respective province were responsible. For this purpose, a family tree and other documents on the family history had to be presented, witnesses were asked about the origin and reputation of the candidate, and if necessary, an informador was sent to the candidate's place of birth to obtain further information. At the end there should be the license to practice medicine , the auto de posesión .

Spanish colonial empire

Mexican representation of the caste system

The concept of the limpieza de sangre was also carried over to the Spanish colonial empire . In 1501 Queen Isabella forbade Marran and Moriska to travel to the New World . Marran families, who emigrated to Lisbon in 1492 and were now considered "Portuguese", were not prevented from building up trading empires in America. The Leyes Nuevas ("New Laws") issued in 1542 stipulated the limpieza de sangre as a prerequisite for inheriting an encomienda . In 1573 Philip II in his Ordenanzas de Nuevas Poblaciones transferred the concept of a corporation, which implied evidence of blood purity, to the colonies.

There the demand for limpieza de sangre was initially directed against Conversos. After the American "Portuguese" communities were crushed by the Inquisition in 1636–1649, the concept was increasingly stripped of its religious background and now applied to indigenous peoples , African American and mixed race. The legal norms and the theological-university discourse on blood purity were not adapted to the special circumstances in the colonial empire. In practice, Indians were initially viewed as “of pure descent”, but soon they too were stigmatized as maculado , “tainted”. The phenotype , i.e. facial features and skin color, was added as an important element for demonstrating blood purity . At the beginning of the 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt remarked :

"In Spain it is a kind of title of nobility if you are not descended from Jews or Moors , in America the color of your skin shows what social rank you have."

Initially, the Spaniards tried to separate the three population groups in their colonial empire from one another: White Hidalgos , Indians and slaves of African descent each had a different legal status and were supposed to live separately from one another. This segregation was ordered in repeated Ordenanzas reales in 1563, 1578, 1580 and 1623 , but could not be enforced. Mestizaje , the ethnic and cultural mix of the population , was more typical of the colonial society in Spanish America . The result was a classification system based on Castas , racial attributions, for which evidence of descent was decisive, but always negotiable.

The concept of the limpieza de sangre was now mainly used to exclude people of African descent. Mulattos have been associated with slavery, vice, and illegitimate ancestry. Some of those affected then constructed a defiant counter-identity by making sure that their children also only married mulattos, others infiltrated the system by trying to marry into supposedly better, "whiter" castas. The Inquisition responded to this strategy in the 18th century by increasing the suspicion of bigamy on mulattos. Overall, questions of parentage, blood purity and assignment to a casta in the highly mobile , multiethnic society of Spanish America proved to be largely negotiable: Because family trees were mostly not obtainable for several generations, the authorities often simply abandoned the candidate's appearance on his self-statements and on his social position: The wealthier a candidate was, the more likely he was to be assigned to an upscale, “whiter” casta. In addition, evidence of limpieza de sangre was available for sale in the colonies. There are reports of cases in which the same person was assigned different castas on different occasions .

abolition

The Cortes of Cádiz , who drafted Spain's first liberal constitution , abolished blood purity as a prerequisite for entry into the military and navy in 1811, which King Ferdinand VII reversed after the Restoration in 1824; he made the examination a general requirement for entry into civil service. Loosened by the constitution of 1837 , this requirement was only generally and finally abolished by a law of May 15, 1865.

racism

In contrast to anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages , the early modern concept of the limpieza de sangre discriminated not only according to purely religious criteria, but also according to those of descent. In this respect, it is regarded today in research as a preliminary stage of racism and as an early parallel to the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. In the scientific literature, the term "pro-racism" is used in this context. A direct line of continuity in the sense that the National Socialists oriented themselves to the Spanish concept of the limpieza de sangre or referred to it, as the German-Colombian historian Max Sebastián Hering Torres argues, but not. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that premodern ideas of ritual purity and infamy played a major role and could also affect Christians and their descendants who had been condemned by the Inquisition. This was often done to maintain the exclusivity of the growing stratum of the new, university-educated elite of lawyers, the so-called letrados , who formed the backbone of early modern Spanish state formation.

literature

  • Nikolaus Böttcher: Genealogy in Hispanoamerica. "Blood Purity" and the Castas Society in New Spain. In: Michael Hecht (Ed.): Selection - Initiation - Representation. The ancestral test in the premodern. Rhema, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-86887-006-0 , pp. 387-414.
  • Max Sebastián Hering Torres: Racism in the Premodern. The “purity of blood” in early modern Spain . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-593-38204-3 (also dissertation at the University of Vienna 2006; discussion at H-Net ).
  • Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre. Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389.
  • Stefan Rinke: Limpieza de sangre [purity of blood]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin / Munich / Boston, MA 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 191 f. (On behalf of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin in collaboration with Werner Bergmann and others).
  • Ute Luig (Ed.): Historical Anthropology. Culture - society - everyday life. Vol. 15, 2007, Issue 1: Topic: Conversions. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-21006-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida: In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 1: Countries and Regions. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023510-4 , p. 345.
  2. ↑ Joseph Perez: Ferdinand and Isabella . Callwey, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7667-0923-2 , pp. 394 (from the French by Antoinette Gittinger).
  3. ↑ Nikolaus Böttcher: The rise and fall of an Atlantic trading empire . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 12 f.
  4. ↑ This derivation is the most likely, contemporary and later repeatedly disputed: Robert A. Maryks: The Jesuit Order As a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Brill, Leiden 2010, p. 36 f., Especially fn. 125 .
  5. ↑ Gerd Schwerhoff : The Inquisition - persecution of heretics in the Middle Ages and modern times . 3. Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-50840-0 , p. 65 ff .
  6. ↑ Gerd Schwerhoff : The Inquisition - persecution of heretics in the Middle Ages and modern times . 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-50840-0 , p. 71 .
  7. ^ Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2002, p. 230.
  8. ↑ Stefan Rinke: Limpieza de sangre [purity of blood]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 191 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  9. ^ Nicholas Round: La rebelión toledana de 1449. In: Archivium. Vol. 16, 1966, pp. 385-446 (PDF) ; Rosa Vidal Doval: “Nos soli sumus christiani”. Conversos in the Texts of the Toledo Rebellion of 1449. In: Andrew M. Beresford, Louise M. Haywood, Julian Weiss (Eds.): Medieval Hispanic Studies in Memory of Alan Deyermond. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2013, pp. 215-236 (preview) . Basically Eloy Benito Ruano: Don Pero Sarmiento, repostero mayor de Juan II de Castilla. In: Hispania. ISSN  0018-2141 , Vol. 17, 1957, pp. 483-504, and ders .: Toledo en el siglo XV: Vida política. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid 1961, chapter 2 (PDF) .
  10. ↑ Linda Martz: A Network of Converso Families in Early Modern Toledo: Assimilating a Minority. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2003, ISBN 0-472-11269-4 , p. 24 .
  11. ^ Susanne Zepp: Jewish Hispanicity. Forms of hybrid textuality. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Synchrone Welten. Periods of Jewish History. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, pp. 256–261.
  12. ↑ In the documents of the cathedral chapter of Toledo, which adopted a particularly strict statute in 1547, over 3,500 cases are documented in which the statute was applied: Ángel Fernández Collado: Grupos de poder en el Cahildo toledano del siglo XVI. In: Francisco José Aranda Pérez: Sociedad y élites eclesiásticas en la España. Cuenca 2000, pp. 149–162, here p. 158 , see also ibid., P. 153, on the case groups.
  13. ^ A b Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389, here p. 363.
  14. ^ A b Michael Studemund Halévy: Blood purity laws. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025514-0 , p. 56 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  15. ^ Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389, here p. 361.
  16. ↑ Stefan Rinke: Limpieza de sangre [purity of blood]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 191 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  17. ^ Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389, here p. 367.
  18. ^ Joseph Pérez: History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Translated from Spanish by Lysa Hochroth. Introduction by Helen Nader. University of Illinois Press, 2007 (original 1993), p. 54 ; Robert A. Maryks: The Jesuit Order As a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Brill, Leiden 2010, pp. 25–28 , theological counter-arguments from Spain et al. Pp. 36–39 and the text of the bull from p. 257.
  19. ^ Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389, here pp. 364, 367 and 370.
  20. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Genealogy in Hispanoamerica. "Blood Purity" and the Castas Society in New Spain. In: Michael Hecht (Ed.): Selection - Initiation - Representation. The ancestral test in the premodern. Rhema, Münster 2011, p. 387 ff.
  21. ^ Stefan Rinke: History of Latin America. From the earliest cultures to the present day. CH Beck, Munich 2010, p. 38 f.
  22. ↑ Nikolaus Böttcher: The rise and fall of an Atlantic trading empire. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  23. ^ Christian Büschges : Limpieza de Sangre on the website of the Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin .
  24. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Genealogy in Hispanoamerica. "Blood Purity" and the Castas Society in New Spain. In: Michael Hecht (Ed.): Selection - Initiation - Representation. The ancestral test in the premodern. Rhema, Münster 2011, p. 388.
  25. ↑ Nikolaus Böttcher: The rise and fall of an Atlantic trading empire. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  26. ^ Christian Büschges: Limpieza de Sangre on the website of the Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin.
  27. ↑ Quoted from Barbara Potthast-Jutkeit: From mothers and machos. A history of the women of Latin America. Hammer, Wuppertal 2003, p. 61.
  28. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Genealogy in Hispanoamerica. "Blood Purity" and the Castas Society in New Spain. In: Michael Hecht (Ed.): Selection - Initiation - Representation. The ancestral test in the premodern. Rhema, Münster 2011, pp. 390–395.
  29. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Continuity and breaks in Hispanoamerica. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, p. 33.
  30. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Continuity and breaks in Hispanoamerica . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, p. 34.
  31. ↑ Stefan Rinke: Limpieza de sangre [purity of blood]. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-24074-4 , p. 192 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  32. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Genealogy in Hispanoamerica. "Blood purity" and the Castas Society in New Spain in: Michael Hecht (Ed.): Selection - Initiation - Representation. The ancestral test in the premodern. Rhema, Münster 2011, pp. 407-410.
  33. ↑ Helen Rawlings: The Spanish Inquisition. Blackwell, Malden MA 2006, p. 144 .
  34. ↑ Frederick Schweitzer: Persecution of Diaspora Jews. In: M. Avrum Ehrlich (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora. Origins, Experiences, and Culture. Vol. 1. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2008, p. 100.
  35. ↑ Michael Grüttner : The expulsion of the Spanish Jews 1492. In: History in Science and Education , 47, 1996, p. 188.
  36. ^ Max Sebastián Hering Torres: Racism in the premodern. The “purity of blood” in early modern Spain. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 238–246.
  37. ↑ See for example Francisco José Aranda Pérez (Ed.): Letrados, juristas y burócratas en la España moderna. Edición de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2005, ISBN 84-8427-381-4 .
  38. ^ Stafford Poole: The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II. In: The Americas. Vol. 55, 1999, No. 3, pp. 359-389, here p. 369.