Table of Contents

Contents



Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Forced Conversion and the Reshaping of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Tradition, Interpretation, History

 Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan



Part 1: Visigoth Legislation on Forced Conversion and Its Afterlife

 1 Uses and Echoes of Visigothic Conciliar Legislation in the Scholastic Controversy on Forced Baptism (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries)

 Elsa Marmursztejn

 2 “Qui ex Iudeis sunt”: Visigothic Law and the Discrimination against Conversos in Late Medieval Spain

 Rosa Vidal Doval

 3 Theorizing Coercion and Consent in Conversion, Apostasy, Ordination, and Marriage (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)

 Isabelle Poutrin



Part 2: Eschatology, Radical Universalism, and Remembrance: Forced Conversion during the Almohad Rule

 4 Again on Forced Conversion in the Almohad Period

 Maribel Fierro

 5 The Intellectual Genealogy of Almohad Policy towards Christians and Jews

 David J. Wasserstein

 6 Medieval Jewish Perspectives on Almohad Persecutions: Memory, Repression and Impact

 Alan Verskin



Part 3

Rethinking Will: The Forced Conversion of Jews
in 1391 and Beyond

 7 On the Road to 1391? Abner of Burgos / Alfonso of Valladolid on Forced Conversion

 Ryan Szpiech

 8 The Development of a New Language of Conversion in Fifteenth-Century Sephardic Jewry

 Ram Ben-Shalom

 9 Incriminating the Judaizer: Inquisitors, Intentionality, and the Problem of Religious Ambiguity after Forced Conversion

 Yonatan Glazer-Eytan

 10 The Coerced Conversion of Convicted Jewish Criminals in Fifteenth-Century Italy

 Tamar Herzig



Part 4: Between Theology and History

 11 “Neither through Habits, nor Solely through Will, but through Infused Faith”: Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Conversion

 Davide Scotto

 12 Remembering the Forced Baptism of Jews: Law, Theology, and History in Sixteenth-Century Portugal

 Giuseppe Marcocci

 13 Theologies of Baptism and Forced Conversion: The Case of the Muslims of Valencia and Their Children

 Mercedes García-Arenal

 14 Epilogue: Conversion and the Force of History

 David Nirenberg

Index

About the Author

Mercedes García-Arenal is Research Professor at the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), and historian of religion and culture. She is the PI of ERC Advanced Grant CORPI (Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics and Interaction).



Yonatan Glazer-Eytan is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently completing a dissertation on the crime and cult of sacrilege in early modern Spain.

Reviews

"Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam is an immensely rewarding collection of essays, every paper stimulating, well written, and of the highest quality. It provokes the reader to ask further questions connected withthe phenomenon."


- Alastair Hamilton, The Warburg Institute, London, UK, Church History and Religious Culture 100 (2020).



"This collection is a timely and strong addition to a growing field of scholarship on conversion, in which the work of Mercedes García-Arenal is already central. It will be of great use to scholars and students working on themes of religion, violence, and the relationships between people of different faith communities from social, legal, and theological perspectives, as well as on themes of memory (see especially Vidal Doval, Verskin, and Marcocci), childhood (notably Marmursztejn and García-Arenal), identity, belonging and exclusion."


- Stephanie M. Cavanaugh, Exeter College, University of Oxford, UK, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 8 (2021).



"Based on a conference in Madrid 2016, the volume is dedicated to topics and theories in the history of forced conversions in medieval and early modern Iberia. (...) the introduction is a noticeable summary of illuminating thoughts, and a remarkable effort to integrate the different chapters of the volume into one research programme. (...) the impact and importance of forced conversions in medieval Iberia go far beyond the geographical scope and time limit of the actual events and that they need to bother all historians and scholars of religion up to the present day – independently of our respective research foci and interests."


- Sina Rauschenbach, University of Potsdam, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 72 (2021).



"In sum, this volume is an important contribution not only for the analysis of conversion but for the study of the history of religion and how religious identities are created and shaped."


- Javier Albarrán Iruela, Sehepunkte, Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, 21.6 (2021).