Descendants.
Spain is primarily responsible for this mess. They force converted you to Catholic or you either had to leave to the New World or be killed.
Most left to the New World.
You’ve got to love the Catholic church’s nutball rulers.
Yes, and the tradition continues right up until today, via Pope Frankie, the gay caballero, truly a Pope for All Seasons and all sexualities and all Gods and all idols and all Sodomites and all Muslims; whatever it is he's your wild and crazy guy!
And the rest fled to Poland, at the invitation of their King, only to be slaughtered 450 years later by Hitler.
Large Jewish communities in both Venezuela and Colombia.
“They force converted you to Catholic or you either had to leave to the New World or be killed.”
That’s not really true. First, huge numbers of Jews in Spain converted in the 13-15th centuries. Some did so of their own free will because they were converted by disputations (essentially public debates). Some converted of their own free will to advance in society. Some were bullied into converting. A surprisingly large number converted officially but continued to practice Judaism secretly and in some cases deliberately used their status as Christians to subvert Christianity. This sort of thing is documented, if I recall correctly, in Henry A. F. Kamen’s book on the inquisition published in the late 90s. He is a Jewish scholar by the way. It’s certainly documented in Walsh’s old book on the inquisition from decades ago.
Many of the leaders of the Spanish Church were of Jewish background - including members of the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada, who was the first head of the Spanish Inquisition, was apparently of Jewish descent.
People forget that almost all Jews in Spain had already converted to Catholic Christianity during Visigothic times. (There was so many conversions that many of the same problems experienced in the 13-15th centuries were already there in the 7th century as so clearly demonstrated at the Sixth Council of Toledo in the 630s.) Then, when the Muslims invaded in 711, there was a large influx of Jews into Spain again - who would convert in large numbers more than 500 years later.
And after Otranto the Spaniards were not taking any chances.
I suppose you subscribe to the black legend surrounding Spanish history?
If you believe there was a systematic action to force conversions to Catholicism in Spain, you would be stating propaganda.
They had just reconquered Spain from the Muslim occupiers.
Part of the issue was the feeling (with some justification) that the Jews would favor returning to Muslim rule and try to subvert the Christian rulers.
Interesting. I knew Spain was talking about doing it for the past several years. My ex’s Jewish family fled Spain around that time for Russia, then fled for the US during the reign of Czar Nicholas.
You mean, the Catholic-dominated US Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade? Those kind of rulers?
Catholics who got the job done, undoing what mouth-breathing, evil Protestants shamefully brought into existence in Roe v Wade, and 63 million dead babies later: