Sermons by Vincent Ferrier, forced conversions

The Dominican Vincent Ferrier traveled through Castile and Aragon preaching the conversion of Jews, entering synagogues crucifix in hand, escorted by crowds of flagellants. He did not call for murder; he obtained baptisms through a pressure that the communities, weakened since the massacres of the end of the previous century, could not withstand.

The laws of Valladolid, promulgated under the regent Catherine de Lancastre, gave the preaching its legal apparatus: enclosed quarters, prohibition of trades and offices, of lending, of commerce in foodstuffs, the obligation of a distinctive sign and a long beard. The disputation of Tortosa, convened by the antipope Benedict XIII, added a public humiliation: twenty months of controversy in which rabbis were made to answer to a convert, and at the end of which many of the delegates had themselves baptized.

The result was not the disappearance of Spanish Judaism but the emergence, alongside it, of a massive group of converts — the very ones whom the Inquisition would pursue a generation later.