«Y delibero de vivir como judío. Y se fuesse donde no lo conociessen y viviesse como judío». Exilios y conversiones en el Mediterráneo en la segunda mitad del siglo XV y principios del siglo XVI, a través de la documentación inquisitorial

Abstract

This paper analyses the routes to exile and the religious conversions of Spanish Jewish converts between the second half of the 15th and the early 16th century, through a study of testimonies given to the Valencia Inquisition Court. Scrutiny of the inquisition documents has made it possible to verify religious phenomena such as Messianism and the desire of some Jewish converts to convert back to Judaism, which resulted in a need to move to other cities where they could indulge their religious beliefs and concerns. Some of the Jewish converts who fled the Iberian peninsula and took the path to exile, were disappointed to find that their expectations were not fulfilled, and on disembarking in the city of Valencia, they gave detailed confessions to the Inquisitors of the story of their exile, in addition to denouncing other converts from Judaism who managed to flee and set up in different Mediterranean cities. Based on those witness accounts, we were able to reconstruct the routes of exile and the religious transformations that developed in the Mediterranean at the end of the Middle Ages.