Purity of Blood (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

Purity of blood (pureza [limpieza] de sangre) was an obsessive concern that originated in mid-15th-century Spain, on the basis of the biased belief that the unfaithfulness of the “deicide Jews,” (god-killing Jews) not only had endured in those who converted to Catholicism but also had been transmitted by blood to their descendants, regardless of their sincerity in professing the Christian faith. Consequently, Old Christians “of pure blood” considered New Christians impure and therefore morally inadequate to be members of their communities. This judgment was primarily applied to the politically and economically influential group of Iberian conversos (Catholics of Jewish origins) but was extended also to moriscos (Catholics of Muslim lineage) and consequently to the natives and slaves in the colonial contexts. As a result, various civil and ecclesiastical institutions and communities issued discriminatory and segregation laws (known as estatutos, or statutes) against them. These statutes were often employed with more rigidity than certain canonically sanctioned impediments for descendants of Protestant heretics. A heated discussion over their implementation that subsequently spurred left an abundant written track that has been studied in a growing number of scholarly works.

General Overviews

Even though we are still missing a comprehensive monograph discussing the concept of purity of blood and its application in various European and colonial contexts in a fully comparative fashion, the following titles provide a quite ample picture of recent studies in the field. Sicroff 1960 (originally in French but translated into Spanish) is a classic to start with. Hering Torres 2011 (in German) complements the latter. The most recent studies are represented in Carrasco, et al. 2011 (in French and Spanish) and in Martínez, et al. 2012 (in English). Yerushalmi 1982 and Kamen 1996 testify to the ongoing discussion that followed the publication of Sicroff 1960 and that is present in almost all other studies cited here on the degree of pervasiveness of the blood mentality in Iberian societies and their link to modern anti-Semitism. Friedman 1987 is an attempt to revise the traditional understanding of Luther’s anti-Semitism, and Kaplan 2012 is an example of a scholarship that studies the impact of the concept of purity of blood on Spain during the process of its nation-state building.

Carrasco, Raphaël, Annie Molinié, and Béatrice Perez, eds. La pureté de sang en Espagne: Du lignage à la “race.” Paris: Presse Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2011.
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Collection of essays in French and Spanish on purity-of-blood laws in early modern Spain. Contributions discuss the role of blood, lineage, and nobility in the French and Spanish imagination, including the colonial contexts.
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Friedman, Jerome. “Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism.” Sixteenth Century Journal 18.1 (Spring 1987): 3–30.
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Argues how the 16th-century transition from medieval anti-Judaism into a racial anti-Semitism laid the foundation for the modern hatred of Jews, including that of Luther, which was rooted in the resentment of the “Jewish contamination” that the conversos allegedly spread in the Church. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Hering Torres, Max-Sebastián. Rassismus in der Vormoderne: Die “Reinheit des Blutes” im Spanien der Frühen Neuzeit. Frankfurt: Campus, 2011.
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Based on the author’s dissertation, traces the origins and the expansion of the principle of purity of blood in early modern Spain from 1391 to 1674 and discusses the bibliography on the topic. Argues that the Spanish concept of the purity of blood was a form of racial anti-Judaism and was not an antecedent of modern anti-Semitism.
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Kamen, Henry. “Limpieza and the Ghost of Américo Castro: Racism as a Tool of Literary Analysis.” Hispanic Review 64.1 (1996): 19–26.
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Challenges as erroneous and unreliable the analysis of Golden-Age Spain by Castro and his followers, who argued that the cult of purity of blood, which Castro associated with the Inquisition, had a negative influence on the intellectual life of the Spanish nation. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Kaplan, Gregory B. “The Inception of Limpieza de Sangre (Purity of Blood) and Its Impact in Medieval and Golden Age Spain.” In Marginal Voices: Studies in Converso Literature of Medieval and Golden Age Spain. Edited by Amy Aronson-Friedman and Gregory B. Kaplan, 19–41. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2012.
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Pointing out some precedents in Visigothic legislation, argues that the conception of purity of blood, which gained momentum in the mid-1450s, cast a suspicion on conversos, but it became the foundation of an obsession that extended upward through Spanish society.
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Martínez, María E., David Nirenberg, and Max-Sebastián Torres Hering. Race and Blood in the Iberian World. Zürich, Switzerland: Lit, 2012.
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Collection of essays addressing the topics of race and blood in the Spanish Atlantic world (and in Portuguese India), and asking whether it is historically appropriate to apply the concept of race to early modern Spanish and Spanish American contexts.
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Sicroff, Albert A. Les controverses des status de “pureté de sang” en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Didier, 1960.
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First comprehensive treatment of the origins of the purity-of-blood statutes and their application in Spain from the 15th through the 17th centuries. Argues how the blood mentality became an obsession and a stigma of the Spanish nation.
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Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism: The Iberian and the German Models. Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture, 26. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1982.
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Arguing that the traditional mistrust of the Jew as outsider gave way to an even more alarming fear of the converso as insider, this brief yet influential lecture draws a connection between the racial laws in early modern Spain and in modern Germany.
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Primary Sources

No dedicated collection of primary sources dealing with the concept of purity of blood has been yet published, let alone their translations into English, but Sentencia-Estatuto de Toledo, 1449, and Büschges 2000 can serve in the English-speaking classroom as a good beginning. Díaz y Díaz 1979 and Verdín-Díaz 1992 are fundamental texts for the understanding of the development of the concept and its relation to the converso situation in 15th-century Castile. Ferreiro 2000 testifies to the continuity of the issue among the Spanish Franciscans in the late 16th century, as does Sigüenza 1907–1909 for the Hieronymites and Maryks 2010 for the Jesuits. Velásquez 1573 represents the pro-pureza side of the animated discussion and Hernández 2011 a critical voice against it. Given the limited number of publications in regard, students in this field must include in their research consultation of archival resources of the various tribunals of the Inquisition (procesos de limpieza), especially in Iberia and in Ibero-America.

Büschges, Christian. “Don Manuel Valdivieso y Carrión Protests the Marriage of His Daughter to Don Teodoro Jaramillo, a Person of Lower Social Standing (Quito, 1784–85).” In Colonial Lives: Documents in Latin American History, 1550–1850. Edited by Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, 224–235. Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Illustrates how the Spanish Crown used the notion of purity of blood, among other criteria, to regulate marriages in its colonies in the late 18th century (Real Pragmática). Available online.
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Díaz y Díaz, Luis A., ed. Alonso de Oropesa: Luz para conocimiento de los gentiles. Madrid: Universidad Pontificia de Salamaca, 1979.
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Spanish translation, with introduction and footnotes, of the very important 15th-century treatise on the converso question by the superior general of the Hieronymites, Alonso de Oropesa. Available online.
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Ferreiro, Elvira Pérez, ed. El Tratado de Uceda contra los Estatutos de Limpieza de Sangre: Una reacción ante el establecimiento del Estatuto de Limpieza en la Orden Franciscana. Madrid: Aben Ezra Ediciones, 2000.
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The first critical edition of the original Spanish treatise from 1586 against the purity-of-blood statutes in the Franciscan order, by Gaspar de Uceda, a Franciscan theologian from Salamanca.
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Hernández, Franco J. “Memorial de don Gerónimo Zevallos, acerca de los estatutos [1635].” In Sangre limpia, sangre española: El debate sobre los Estatutos de Limpieza (siglos Xv–Xvii). Edited by Franco J. Hernández, 269–278. Madrid: Cátedra, 2011, Appendix.
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A critical edition of one of the most vocal 17th-century criticisms of the statutes by a Spanish political theorist Jerónimo Zevallos. The text is to be found also in Domínguez Ortiz 1955, pp. 245–247 (cited under Spain).
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Maryks, Robert A. The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004179813.i-282Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Contains a critical annotated edition of a crucial manuscript held at the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus; the manuscript led in 1593 to the establishment of the so-called impediment of origins, i.e., prohibition for candidates of Jewish (and Muslim) ancestry to become members of the Jesuit order.
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Sentencia-Estatuto de Toledo, 1449. Translated from the Spanish by Kenneth Baxter Wolf.
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The first historical document expressly defining the difference between Old and New Christians on the basis of “purity of blood.” The document was issued by the mayor of the capital of Spain.
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Sigüenza, José. Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo. Madrid: Bailly-Balliére, 1907–1909.
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A modern edition of the history of the St. Jerome order, which was written by its illustrious member, José de Espinosa (alias Sigüenza), b. 1595–d. 1605. As Albert Sicroff has shown (see Sicroff 1960, cited under General Overviews), the Hieronymites were known for their initial openness toward conversos, and this work is an important source of information about their status in this community.
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Velásquez, Didacus. Defensio Toletani Statuti. Antwerp, Belgium: Plantin, 1573.
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An influential defense of the Toledan Purity-of-Blood Statutes (1449), written by a Spanish inquisitor and bishop, Diego de Simancas, under the pseudonym Didacus Velásquez.
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Verdín-Díaz, Guillermo, ed. Alonso de Cartagena y el “Defensorium Unitatis Christianae.” Introducción histórica, traducción y notas. Oviedo, Spain: Universidad de Oviedo, 1992.
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A critical edition, with an introduction and footnotes, of an important 15th-century pro-converso treatise by one of the foremost Spanish intellectuals of his time, and a converso himself, Bishop Alonso de Cartagena (1384–1456), a son of a Burgos rabbi turned bishop.
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Legislation and Practice

The implementation of the pureza de sangre statutes was by no means uniform and consistent—it varied by regions, institutions, and times. For the reasons explained in the Introduction, this legislation has been discussed in historiography predominantly in connection with the status of conversos in Iberia. This section reflects the regional scholarship on this subject and is divided in four parts: Spain, Spanish Empire, Portugal and Portuguese Empire, and Beyond Iberia and Ibero-America.

Spain

Naturally, most scholarship on the subject deals with the Spanish monarchy, but there is no fully comprehensive comparative study of it yet. Domínguez Ortiz 1955 is the monographic study of the subject in Castile. Franco 1998–1999 deals with Murcia, Martz 2003 with Toledo, and Unzué 2005 with the Basque region. Two studies are dedicated to the reign of Philip II—an ambiguous figure in terms of his politics of purity of blood: Poole 1999 and Franco and López 2012. Da Costa Fuentes 2005 is one of many examples of scholarship approaching the topic from a literary perspective. Nykwest 2010 is one of a few studies approaching this topic from an angle of gender, while Pike 2000 is a fascinating story of a Spanish office of genealogists.

Da Costa Fuentes, Manuel. The Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain: Rojas and Delicado. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005.
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An analysis of Celestina and La lozana andaluza in light of limpieza de sangre in the context of the “converso question.”
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Domínguez Ortiz, A. La clase social de los conversos en Castilla en la edad moderna. Madrid: Instituto Balmes de Sociología, Departamento de Historía Social, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955.
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Studies the Castilian conversos as a social class—the conditions of their economic and political rise and the subsequent resentment against them in the form of purity-of-blood statutes.
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Franco, Juan Hernández. “Limpieza y nobleza en las ciudades de Castilla: Pretensiones y consecución del estatuto por parte de Murcia (1560–1751).” Revista de Historia Moderna 17 (1998–1999): 249–262.
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Analyzes the purity statutes and their changing social and political character in the Spanish city of Murcia in the context of similar legislation in other cities of Castile.
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Franco, Juan Hernández, and Antonio Irigoyen López. “Construcción y deconstrucción del converso a través de los memoriales de limpieza de sangre durante el reinado de Felipe III.” Sefarad 72.2 (2012): 325–350.
DOI: 10.3989/sefarad.012.010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the reform of the purity statutes in the 1620s under Philip III of Spain in order to change the perception of the converso in Spanish society.
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Martz, Linda. A Network of Converso Families in Early Modern Toledo: Assimilating a Minority. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
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Analyzes the impact of the purity-of-blood statutes on the commercially eminent converso families of Toledo between the 15th and 17th centuries.
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Nykwest, Rebecca Clark. “Purity of Blood and the Cultural Politics of Women’s Education in Sixteenth-Century Toledo.” PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2010.
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Analyzes the employment of the purity statutes in the dowry politics of the famous archbishop of Toledo, Silíceo (1486–1557).
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Pike, Ruth. Linajudos and Conversos in Seville: Greed and Prejudice in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Spain. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
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Archival research-based account of the role of a special group of clerks, known as linajudos (from linaje, lineage), specifically dedicated to provide proofs of purity of blood. Naturally, this sort of office became quite lucrative because of the Spanish obsession with pureza.
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Poole, Stafford. “The Politics of limpieza de sangre: Juan de Ovando and His Circle in the Reign of Philip II.” The Americas 55 (1999): 359–389.
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Discusses the employment of the concept of the purity of blood in the decisions for promotion by the president of the Council of Indies in the second quarter of the 1500s. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Unzué, José Luis Orella. Las raíces de la hidalguía Guipuzcoana: El control de los judíos, conversos y extranjeros en Guipúzcoa durante el siglo XVI. San Sebastián, Spain: Universidad de Deusto, 2005.
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A study of the presence of Jews, conversos, and foreigners in the Basque region of Spain in the 1500s, challenging the myth of the lack of influence of these groups on the Basque nobility.
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Spanish Empire

This section gathers some representative studies discussing the ramifications of the blood mentality that traveled with Crown officials and missionaries to Spanish colonies in the Americas and Asia. While De la Rosa 1989 and Caillavet and Minchom 1992 embrace the entire continent of Latin America, other studies are more geographically circumscribed: Coello de la Rosa 2008 discusses Peru, Martínez 2009, Mexico; Zúñiga 2002, Chile. Woods 1991 deals with the Philippines. Domínguez Ortiz 1971 is the most comprehensive monograph of the role of conversos in Spanish America, including, of course, the impact of the statutes on them. Mazur 2013 is a study of the same topic in a more local context of Spanish Naples.

Caillavet, Chantal, and Martin Minchom. “Le Métis imaginaire: Idéaux classificatoires et stratégies socio-raciales en Amérique latine (XVIe–XXe siècle).” L’homme 32 (1992): 115–132.
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Analyzes socio-racial categories employed in the historical documents and scientific literature in Latin America from the 16th century onward.
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Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre. “De mestizos y criollos en la Compañía de Jesús (Perú, siglos XVI–XVII): Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.” Revista de Indias 68 (2008): 37–66.
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Analyzes the politics of the Society of Jesus in regard to the sacerdotal ordination of mestizos and Creoles in Peru in the 1500s and 1600s.
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De la Rosa, Rolando V. “Purity of Blood: A Forgotten Factor in the Study of Indigenous Clergy in Spanish Colonies.” Unitas: Quarterly Review of the Arts and Sciences 57.4 (1989): 5–29.
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Discusses the impact of the purity-of-blood concept on the admission of native candidates to priesthood and religious orders not only in colonial Mexico but also elsewhere in Spanish America.
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Domínguez, Ortiz A. Los Judeoconversos en España y América. Madrid: ISTMO, 1971.
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Based on the thesis of his earlier book (see Domínguez Ortiz 1955, cited under Spain), analyzes the place of the social class of conversos in Spanish civil and ecclesiastical society not only in Spain but also in its American colonies.
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Martínez, María Elena. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
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Built on a number of earlier articles, shows connections between race, gender, and religion in early colonial Mexico, as well as between discourses about Jews (and, to a lesser extent, Muslims) in the Iberian Peninsula and those that followed in New Spain, about colonial populations, especially blacks.
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Mazur, Peter. The New Christians of Spanish Naples, 1528–1671: A Fragile Elite. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137295156Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues how conversos of early modern Spanish Naples achieved a level of prestige and stability that calls into question stereotypes about the Spanish imperial politics of purity-of- blood concept against the converso minority.
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Woods, Damon. “Racial Exclusion in the Mendicant Orders from Spain to the Philippines.” UCLA Historical Journal 11.0 (1991): 69–92.
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Analyzes the policy of exclusion of the Filipinos from priesthood in the mendicant orders on the basis of the concept of purity of blood.
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Zúñiga, Jean-Paul. Espagnols d’outre-mer: Emigration, métissage et reproduction sociale à Santiago du Chili, au 17e siècle. Paris: Editions de l’École des Hautes en Sciences Sociales, 2002.
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Demonstrates the depth of the impact of the aristocratic ideology on Spanish migrants as well as on Creoles in 17th-century Santiago de Chile, addressing the questions of the purity of blood and the symbols of nobility.
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Portugal and Portuguese Empire

This section mirrors the previous two on Spain and the Spanish empire—it contains some representative studies discussing the role of the purity-of-blood mentality in Portugal and its transplantation to Portuguese colonial societies in Brazil and India. Whereas Boxer 1969 discusses the subject for the entire empire and Figueirôa-Rêgo 2008 for Portugal, Carneiro 2005, Gorenstein 2012, Mattos 2006, Mello 2009, and Wadsworth 2007 concentrate on colonial Brazil in its different regions. Analyzing the racially complex Luso-American society with different foci, these studies provide together a broader panorama of how pervasive the concept of purity of blood had become—it expended from Jews and Muslims to other ethnic groups of Brazil. Dutra 2006 is a more specific study of the topic in the military orders.

Boxer, C. R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
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A chapter of this multi-edited monograph is specifically dedicated to “purity of blood” and “contaminated races,” which shows how the Portuguese empire focused on forms of racial hierarchy and racial prejudice.
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Carneiro, Maria Luiza Tucci. Preconceito racial em Portugal e Brasil-Colônia: Os cristãos novos e o mito da pureza de sangue. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2005.
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Discusses the myth of purity of blood as a theological fundament of traditional anti-Semitism in Portugal and in colonial Brazil.
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Dutra, Francis A. Military Orders in the Early Modern Portuguese World: The Orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
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Selection of essays on early modern Portuguese military orders (which expended also in India and Brazil), whose membership was highly prized as status symbols and because of their employment of purity-of-blood statutes.
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Figueirôa-Rêgo, Joao de. “Family Genealogical Records: Formation, Cleansing and Social Reception (Portugal—16th to 18th Century).” e-Journal of Portuguese History 6.1 (2008).
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Shows the significance of genealogical knowledge in early modern Portugal and how vital it was to prove purity of blood for the sake of social and economic preeminence.
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Gorenstein, Lina. “Cristãos-novos, identidade e Inquisição (Rio de Janeiro, século XVIII).” Capa 4.1 (2012).
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Analyzes the question of the “purity of blood” as fundamental to the formation of the converso identity in 18th-century Brazil.
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Mattos, Hebe. “‘Pretos’ and ‘Pardos’ between the Cross and the Sword: Racial Categories in Seventeenth Century Brazil.” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 80 (2006): 43–55.
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Discusses the meaning of “race” in the context of the Portuguese statutes of purity of blood, especially in relation to the peoples of African descent. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Mello, Evaldo Cabral de. O Nome e o sangue: Uma parábola genealógica no Pernambuco colonial. 3d rev. ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.
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Shows how the most prominent families of colonial Brazil manipulated their genealogies in order to erase any trace of Jewish, Muslim, African, or Amerindian ancestry, so that they could receive privileges restricted to those proving purity of blood.
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Wadsworth, James E. Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
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Based on wide archival research, discusses the Inquisition in colonial Pernambuco as a powerful tool for exclusion and promotion in Brazilian society, which was deeply affected by the concept of purity of blood in association with honor and prestige.
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Beyond Iberia and Ibero-America

Early modern obsession with purity of blood has been traditionally associated with Iberia and Ibero-America, but the following few studies reveal also that other European and colonial societies were concerned about “race.” Boulle 2006, Spear 1999, and Aubert 2004 study France and its colonies; Cuart 1991 studies a Spanish college but in the Italian context; Adelman 2008 and Weissbourd 2011 represent literary studies: the former analyses a Shakespeare play, the latter—more generally—compares English and Spanish literature. Even though this section testifies to the fact that Iberia was not the only region concerned with the concept of purity of blood, the bibliography provided in this article shows the uniqueness of the Iberian obsession. Arguably, it was a result of the uniqueness of the Iberian societies, in which a significant number of descendants of converted Jews achieved an unparalleled political, social, and economic preeminence prior to the process of nation-state building.

Adelman, Janet. Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
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By an analysis of the figure of Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who remains racially bound to her father, Shylock, after her conversion, offers a picture of tensions between Jews and Christians in Renaissance England on the basis of blood relations.
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Aubert, Guillaume. “‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World.” William and Mary Quarterly 61.3 (July 2004): 439–478.
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Studies efforts in the French Atlantic world to forbid racial mixing, arguing that whereas such intermixing was commonly considered as a threat to social order, it was also perceived as a threat to a pure French race. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Boulle, Pierre. “Racial Purity or Legal Clarity? The Status of Black Residents in Eighteenth-Century France.” Journal of the Historical Society 6.1 (2006): 19–46.
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Discusses the legislation concerning the residence of nonwhites in 18-century France, showing an increasing concern with racial purity on the part of the elite. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Cuart, Baltasar. Colegiales mayores y limpieza de sangre durante la edad moderna: El Estatuto de S. Clemente de Bolonia (ss. XV–XIX). Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1991.
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Discusses the debated role of purity-of-blood statutes in the admission policy at a Spanish college in Bologna, in comparison with other major colleges in Spain.
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Spear, Jennifer M. “Whiteness and the Purity of Blood: Race, Sexuality, and Social Order in Colonial Louisiana.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1999.
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Recounts official efforts to regulate marriage and reproduction in this North-American French colony, driven by the concept of purity of blood.
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Weissbourd, Emily. “Transnational Genealogies: Jews, Blacks and Moors in Early Modern English and Spanish Literature, 1547–1642.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011.
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Comparative study of early modern English and Spanish literature and historical documents, analyzing representations of blackness, purity of blood, and intersections of theories of purity of blood with those of rank, gender, and inheritance.