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fifteenth century, it became a device to interrogate and control New Christians of Jewish origin. Benzion Netanyahu, in The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York: New York Review of Books, 2001, 2nd ed.), has assembled a mass of evidence and argues fervently that “Judaizers” were largely a chimera, constructed to control the mass of converts and prevent them from taking their place in Christian society. The Inquisition presented the vision of a “Judaizing” conspiracy, but it is much more likely that many converts knew little of Christian doctrine and still lived within a culture that carried a strong resonance of their origins. On this view, see David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” Past and Present 174 (February 2002), pp. 3–41.

56. See the works of Dechado Iñigo de Mendoza, Madrid: Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1902–28, 19:72.

57. See Edwards, Spain, pp. 222–3.

58. Cited in D. Nicolle, Granada 1492: The Reconquest of Spain, London: Osprey Publishing, 1998, p. 16.

59. Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra, Granada: Miguel Sánchez Editor, 1976, p. 19.

60. Ibid.

61. Edwards, Spain, p. 169.

62. Cited by Prescott, History, p. 191.

63. This was a Sufi image. For Shi’ites, each seed represented the tears shed for the murder of Hussein at Karbala. See Malek Chebel, Dictionnaire des symboles Musulmans: Rites, mystique et civilisation, Paris: Albin Michel, 1995, pp. 186–7.

64. See Ladero Quesada, Granada, pp. 171–4.

65. D. Nicolle, Granada 1492: The Reconquest of Spain, London: Osprey Publishing, 1998, p. 47.

66. But Ferdinand and Isabella were fortunate when Mohammed XII, known to the Spaniards as Boabdil, who was the son of Granada’s emir, was captured in a skirmish. They signed an agreement with him and thereafter fostered his growing sense of rivalry with his father.

67. It eventually succumbed in 1486 when an incendiary projectile blew up the arsenal.

68. Prescott, History, p. 258.

69. Ibid., p. 264.

70. “Nubdhat al-asyr,” cited by Harvey, Islamic Spain, pp. 299–300.

71. Prescott, History, p. 269.

72. Ibid., p. 282.

73. Ibid., p. 292.

74. Ibid.

75. Cited in Harvey, Islamic Spain, p. 321.

76. See Dupront, Mythe, vol. 2, p. 791.

77. Cited in Harvey, Islamic Spain, p. 290.

CHAPTER 5: ETERNAL SPAIN

1. Washington Irving, A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, London: John Murray, 1829, vol. 1, pp. 648–50.

2. In El Escorial, the royal figures at prayer face the altar.

3. See John Edwards, The Spanish Inquisition, Stroud: Tempus, 1999, p. 88.

4. The account is by the Genoese Senarega, cited in Prescott, History, p. 322.

5. See Fabre-Vassas, Singular Beast, pp. 131–8.

6. This putative child of La Guardia was canonized in 1807.

7. See Yerushalmi, Assimilation, p. 10.

8. See Sicroff, Controverses, pp. 26–7. See also Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, La clase social de los conversos en Castilla en la edad moderna, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955, p. 13. For the complex vocabulary linking pigs and Jews, see Fabre-Vassas, Singular Beast.

9. See Harvey, Islamic Spain, pp. 314–21. The easiest source of the full text of the capitulation is in García Arenal, Los Moriscos, pp. 19–28.

10. Caro Baroja, Los Moriscos, p. 9.

11. Ibid., p. 12.

12. Caro Baroja indicates that most of the Muslim inhabitants appeared content with these arrangements.

13. See Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, “Spain 1492: Social Values and Structures,” in Schwartz, Implicit Understandings, pp. 101–2.

14. Columbus’s Journal, cited in Liss, Isabel, p. 291.

15. “The calamitous century” was how Barbara Tuchman described it in her popular book A Distant Mirror (1978).

16. See Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, London: Folio Society, 1997, p. 245. The comparison he refers to was made by J. W. Thompson in “The Aftermath of the Black Death and the Aftermath of the Great War,” American Journal of Sociology 26 (1920–21), p. 565.

17. Anwar Chejne observes that the term Morisco was less used than the traditional Moro,