Publication of the second volume completes the translation into English of Baer’s monumental work on the history of Spanish Judaism. This volume covers the period from the reign of James II of Aragon (1291-1327) to the Expulsion in 1492.
According to the author’s statement the present form of his work is in fact a revised edition, embodying the results of long years of research and completed in its basic forms and concepts almost thirty years ago (Preface, p. xi). In this study, which has given its author world-wide recognition among scholars in the field, Baer has presented with admirable diligence and scholarly insight the political and politico-religious events which led to the expulsion and thus to the annihilation of Spanish Jewry. One would only wish that the author had also included the sociological and especially the cultural aspects of Jewish history during this period. Many of the contemporary documents that he has painstakingly examined are studied and translated for the first time in his work. For this reason it is especially regrettable that Baer has often failed to give more information about the sources, so that the reader might have easier access to them (see, e.g., pp. 18, 23, 38, 40, 340, 347, 351, 436, 437).
In regard to the author’s basic attitude and interpretation of the period under study, his underlying definition of a Jew as a person professing the Jewish faith is a legitimate point of view. But it tends to overlook the importance of racial blending in the Peninsula. It also leaves aside the social, cultural, and even linguistic aspects contributing to the “problem” of the Jews in Spain. In fact, many scholars will object to the assumption that a Spanish Jew was simply a Spaniard of Jewish faith. Holding this view, Baer is forced to deal with the Marranos as a problem peripheral to Spanish Judaism and the Jews as a problem peripheral to that of Spain. He is also forced to give only passing mention to such figures as Fernando de Rojas, author of the Celestina, and Judah Abravanel. Thus for Baer the history of the Jews in Spain ends in 1492 with the Catholic Kings’ decree of expulsion. This assumption is difficult to justify and cannot be accepted by those scholars who advocate a more complex definition of a Jew. For these scholars “Marranos,” “converses,” or “New-Christians” are not peripheral but a basic element in both “Spanish Judaism” and of Hispanism “judaizante,” regardless of the faith that they really professed at one time or another.
Baer sees the Inquisition as a religious and political arm of both Church and State, which use and misuse religious fanaticism to the detriment of Spanish Judaism. We must object to this oversimplified judgment of Spanish history in the period under study. The Inquisition grew from a concept of the authority and duty of the Church to protect the unity and purity of its faith, and of the obligation of secular power to enforce and impose its authority toward this end. The opportunity to misuse authority for baser aims is obvious, but nevertheless this misuse was secondary. To ignore this fact leads Baer to misinterpret some historical events. An example is Ferdinand’s reaction when Pope Sixtus IV intervened during 1482 and 1483 in favor of some converses of Andalusia who had directly appealed to him. Baer states merely that the king “favored the fanatics” (p. 330). This was really a case in which secular power was asserting its own rights against what the king regarded as the uncalled-for interference of the Church in the affairs of the State. There was chronic disagreement as to whether the bishops and the Inquisition in their quality as an executive arm were primarily subject to the king or to Rome.
Baer also pays too little attention to the contemporary Christian sources dealing with the problem of Jews and conversos. The word marrano is more than once translated as “swine, a term of opprobrium” (e.g., p. 270), without mentioning the possibility of a two-fold derivation of this word (from the Hebrew mar’e, “apparent,” meaning the crypto-Jews, and from the Arabic muharram, “forbidden,” for swine meat).
The study ends with an appendix intended to disprove the claims of Américo Castro and C. Sánchez Albornoz that the Jews contributed to the development of Spanish racial and religious fanaticism as well as to the policies frequently adopted by the Inquisition in Spain. Baer concentrates on one legalistic point, the use of the pesquisa and informers (malsines) in the inquisitorial processes. He ignores, however, all other more prominent arguments—for example, that Torquemada, the Great Inquisitor, was of Jewish descent, as was the head of the Order of St. Jerome, Alonso de Oropesa.
Thus, because of a certain partial attitude, Baer’s conclusions cannot be regarded as a definitive judgment of this period. The role of the Jews in the development of Spain is far more transcendental and complex than the present study shows.
