The Judeo-Converso Problem in the Society of Jesus

Abstract

The matter of racial purity itself can not justify the complex situation suffered by the Society at the end of the XVI century, not even defendable because of the acting of a group of Jesuits with Jewish conversion origin. The issue was more complicated: the Jesuits Society made an effort, during Mercuriano and above all Aquaviva generalships, for developing its own principles and fixing its identity that would characterise all its history against the pressure to be submitted by the leading power groups of the two great institutions of the era, the Spanish Monarchy and the Catholic Church. In this fighting, which could lead to divide the Society, the issue of limpieza de sangre inquiries were one of the characteristic manifestations of the ideals of Castilian elites who organised the Spanish Monarchy (opposing what the Roman Church defended) whom justified their political action in a Spanish catholicism.