Forced to be Christian

[mpjh]

The Moors were the government. They paid their taxes, they obeyed the laws of the land. That is not collaboration. Hell, even goggle does that in China.

[muy_thaiguy]

The Moors were the government. They paid their taxes, they obeyed the laws of the land. That is not collaboration. Hell, even goggle does that in China.

And when Spain and Portugal moved into those towns after pushing the Moors out, for all they knew, the Jews could still have been working with the Moors, their old government. You know, loyalties? The Spanish and Portugese could not afford that during the Reconquista. The difference between Google in China and the Jews in Iberia, was that in Iberia, there was a centuries long war going on, rather then a company paying taxes.

[mpjh]

The Jews had no army. They lived peaceably throughout Europe. They were as willing to live under a Christian government as any other. They did not try to carve out a territory for themselves, and were no military threat to the Christians. They were driven out, forced to convert, or executed beacuse they were Jews.

[FabledIntegral]

The Jews had no army. They lived peaceably throughout Europe. They were as willing to live under a Christian government as any other. They did not try to carve out a territory for themselves, and were no military threat to the Christians. They were driven out, forced to convert, or executed beacuse they were Jews.

Where are your sources on this, saying they lived peaceably? I must admit I have none and based my conclusions on the premises of what Napoleon presented. Yet there are so many things "wrong," with old governments. Was it any less wrong of the government of Rome to force everyone to be Christian or die? Or was it any less wrong for a government to hinder people's right to speak? Wasn't slavery a bigger issue? Yes - I'd say morally it was "wrong," yet given the time, I wouldn't say whoever decided to make the decision was an immoral person, rather he wanted to protect his people. It was simply the rational of the time, it's not like it was a lust for power, merely how things were dealt with.

[mpjh]

I made this post because I have learned how that period affected my own family, or at least one side of it. the forced conversion of many Jews, and the secret continued practice of the Jewish faith by the Morano Jews, has had lasting effects even up to today. I have learned the my grandfather was a Jewish refugee during WWII in Hawaii. He hid his Jewish heritage until his death, and we have only begun to learn the true history because of a DNA test we did.

What strikes me is that these types of injustices in the past do have a continuing impact, and my personal experience has made me more sensitive to the plight of others such as the Native Americans forced into assimillation programs up until the 1970s.

But more to you point. The Jews had no army in Europe. They were not a military force in Spain. They were completely under the control of whatever government held the military whether the Moors or the Christians. The Moors allowed co-existance, the Christians did not.

I cannot prove a negative, but if you have evidence that the Jews had an army in Europe during the Dark Ages, and in particular the 1600s CE, please I would like to see it.

[muy_thaiguy]

The Jews had no army. They lived peaceably throughout Europe. They were as willing to live under a Christian government as any other. They did not try to carve out a territory for themselves, and were no military threat to the Christians. They were driven out, forced to convert, or executed beacuse they were Jews.

Do you not listen? I never said that they had an army. What I am saying is that you need to look at it for the times and from a military perspective. If you only look at it through 1 point of view, you will never fully understand history. But now, you are trying to make a red herring argument. I will continue this discussion when you decide to not make such a poor argument and actually read what I type.

[FabledIntegral]

I made this post because I have learned how that period affected my own family, or at least one side of it. the forced conversion of many Jews, and the secret continued practice of the Jewish faith by the Morano Jews, has had lasting effects even up to today. I have learned the my grandfather was a Jewish refugee during WWII in Hawaii. He hid his Jewish heritage until his death, and we have only begun to learn the true history because of a DNA test we did.

What strikes me is that these types of injustices in the past do have a continuing impact, and my personal experience has made me more sensitive to the plight of others such as the Native Americans forced into assimillation programs up until the 1970s.

But more to you point. The Jews had no army in Europe. They were not a military force in Spain. They were completely under the control of whatever government held the military whether the Moors or the Christians. The Moors allowed co-existance, the Christians did not.

I cannot prove a negative, but if you have evidence that the Jews had an army in Europe during the Dark Ages, and in particular the 1600s CE, please I would like to see it.

Oh forgive me - I'm not particularly in tune with the time area and facts. I was merely wondering where your data came from concerning the Jewish situation, as I already said mine came from Nap's premises.

If you want my opinion - if the context of Nap's premises are indeed true, I do think that it's justifiable only within the context of the situation. If it happened now, no. But back then, that was how things were dealt with... lest we go and say 90% of the acts back then were wrong from our perspective today's... just pointless to me.

[mpjh]

The Jews had no army. They lived peaceably throughout Europe. They were as willing to live under a Christian government as any other. They did not try to carve out a territory for themselves, and were no military threat to the Christians. They were driven out, forced to convert, or executed beacuse they were Jews.

Do you not listen? I never said that they had an army. What I am saying is that you need to look at it for the times and from a military perspective. If you only look at it through 1 point of view, you will never fully understand history. But now, you are trying to make a red herring argument. I will continue this discussion when you decide to not make such a poor argument and actually read what I type.

Continue or not, I don't care. My point is that the Jews posed no military threat to the government that took over after the Moors.

[mpjh]

I made this post because I have learned how that period affected my own family, or at least one side of it. the forced conversion of many Jews, and the secret continued practice of the Jewish faith by the Morano Jews, has had lasting effects even up to today. I have learned the my grandfather was a Jewish refugee during WWII in Hawaii. He hid his Jewish heritage until his death, and we have only begun to learn the true history because of a DNA test we did.

What strikes me is that these types of injustices in the past do have a continuing impact, and my personal experience has made me more sensitive to the plight of others such as the Native Americans forced into assimillation programs up until the 1970s.

But more to you point. The Jews had no army in Europe. They were not a military force in Spain. They were completely under the control of whatever government held the military whether the Moors or the Christians. The Moors allowed co-existance, the Christians did not.

I cannot prove a negative, but if you have evidence that the Jews had an army in Europe during the Dark Ages, and in particular the 1600s CE, please I would like to see it.

Oh forgive me - I'm not particularly in tune with the time area and facts. I was merely wondering where your data came from concerning the Jewish situation, as I already said mine came from Nap's premises.

If you want my opinion - if the context of Nap's premises are indeed true, I do think that it's justifiable only within the context of the situation. If it happened now, no. But back then, that was how things were dealt with... lest we go and say 90% of the acts back then were wrong from our perspective today's... just pointless to me.

Actually not pointless at all. If you read the other posts you would see that the concern is that the anti-semitic furor of those times has spilled over into the present. After all, studying history is not always just to pass a test or dazzle your fellow students with citations, it also is to learn where we are by understanding where we came from.

[FabledIntegral]

I made this post because I have learned how that period affected my own family, or at least one side of it. the forced conversion of many Jews, and the secret continued practice of the Jewish faith by the Morano Jews, has had lasting effects even up to today. I have learned the my grandfather was a Jewish refugee during WWII in Hawaii. He hid his Jewish heritage until his death, and we have only begun to learn the true history because of a DNA test we did.

What strikes me is that these types of injustices in the past do have a continuing impact, and my personal experience has made me more sensitive to the plight of others such as the Native Americans forced into assimillation programs up until the 1970s.

But more to you point. The Jews had no army in Europe. They were not a military force in Spain. They were completely under the control of whatever government held the military whether the Moors or the Christians. The Moors allowed co-existance, the Christians did not.

I cannot prove a negative, but if you have evidence that the Jews had an army in Europe during the Dark Ages, and in particular the 1600s CE, please I would like to see it.

Oh forgive me - I'm not particularly in tune with the time area and facts. I was merely wondering where your data came from concerning the Jewish situation, as I already said mine came from Nap's premises.

If you want my opinion - if the context of Nap's premises are indeed true, I do think that it's justifiable only within the context of the situation. If it happened now, no. But back then, that was how things were dealt with... lest we go and say 90% of the acts back then were wrong from our perspective today's... just pointless to me.

Actually not pointless at all. If you read the other posts you would see that the concern is that the anti-semitic furor of those times has spilled over into the present. After all, studying history is not always just to pass a test or dazzle your fellow students with citations, it also is to learn where we are by understanding where we came from.

Today's implications are irrelevant with whether or not it was moral then (isn't that what we were debating, I haven't read the OP in a while, hehe). Even if we think gay marriage is justifiable now, should we ban it because it could become controversial in the future? No, it's the "right" (I say that so liberally as potentially you and many others may come in and debate, which is a completely different topic) thing to do, from my point of view that is.

And don't think what I meant by pointless was that this topic is pointless, rather it's pointless to pick out one specific thing and make a big deal out of it in today's context while in their context, nothing was wrong with it.

[mpjh]

No one is raising a moral question. The op simply pointed out that a significant (about 20%) amount of the population in Spain have ancestors with genetic markers to the Sephardic Jews of Europe and another 11% had markers to the Moors. This was a suprise to many of the Spanish because they were not educated to the degree of repression of the Jewish culture that resulted from the actions against Jews in Spain by Christians.

I have commente on the impact on my own family of this history and asked for others to comment. Seems some people only want to apologize it away or act as though it is no big thing.

[FabledIntegral]

No one is raising a moral question. The op simply pointed out that a significant (about 20%) amount of the population in Spain have ancestors with genetic markers to the Sephardic Jews of Europe and another 11% had markers to the Moors. This was a suprise to many of the Spanish because they were not educated to the degree of repression of the Jewish culture that resulted from the actions against Jews in Spain by Christians.

I have commente on the impact on my own family of this history and asked for others to comment. Seems some people only want to apologize it away or act as though it is no big thing.

But that's the thing - I don't think it was any bigger than the Romans having Christianity forced on them, lest they die. Or something of that matter. Neither are exactly recent. You were the OP, and sometime back you asked "does that make it right?" or something to one of those posts, so since then I have continued on that subject.

[got tonkaed]

I was always under the impression that the reason they were expelled was far more because of an economic policy shift than it was because of a domestic fear of cooperation with a recently defeated enemy, if your using the middle part of the second millenium as your timeline. From what i was aware of, it was because of a change to Mercantilist policy and the fact that Jewish people were seen as being able to undermine Spain in that regard that many of them were given the ultimatum. It was necessarily just their religion, but their economic practices that were seen at the time as undesirable. Of course, from the perspective i was informed by, this ended up over the long term being a terrible move, as it locked out some forward thinking people economically and lock Spain into some long term practices that were difficult as a country to overcome at the time.

I believe napoleon is spouting a bit in this thread for what its worth.

[joecoolfrog]

The idea of there being a security aspect to the persecution of the Jews in Spain is a complete red herring, economics and anti semitic resentment were the driving forces.
Those that were forcibly converted were known as New Christians or Conversos ( Secret Jews ) and continued to be persecuted and discriminated against, they were a prime target of the Inquisition for example even though many by then would have been second or third generation converts.

[Napoleon Ier]

The idea of there being a security aspect to the persecution of the Jews in Spain is a complete red herring, economics and anti semitic resentment were the driving forces.
Those that were forcibly converted were known as New Christians or Conversos ( Secret Jews ) and continued to be persecuted and discriminated against, they were a prime target of the Inquisition for example even though many by then would have been second or third generation converts.

Well, you could posit that, but the economic factors seem an unlikely explanation since they allowed Jews to convert if they wished, and I'd argue the anti-Semitism was in fact a result of their co-operation with the Muslims. Inevitably, we're going to get a standard "no! no they didnt!!" from mpjh, but you do have to remember the morisco uprisings at the time were a constant threat that extended quite far North in the mid-Spanish mountain ranges. Yes, conversos were persecuted, to the tune of 3% of the total of Inquisition trial (Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, Yale 1998), but I'm not convinced that if we assume a similar proportion were executed, we arrive at anything more than a ridiculous figure which confirms the modern hypothesis that the Spanish Inquisition was a political tool of the State reserved for removing powerful political undesirables, rather than a mass religious persecution.

If you believe the information in the Spanish National Archives, you get 40.000 trials roughly, 1.9% of which ended in burning at the stake, so we get 200. If we calculate 3% would have been conversos (which I'm pretty sure you'll find is Spanish for convert, not crypto-Jew, but maybe someone who's studied the language can tell me), we arrive at the absurd figure of 6 Crypto-Jews being recorded as burned at the stake. If we add the other methods of execution, estimates for nom-recorded executions, and numbers of those that died in prison account for (according Garcia Garcel) 5000 deaths, which after we do the maths, translates to 150 Jewish conversos or crypto-Jews. So from 1480 to 1700, there's roughly 160 Jews that were executed, if that.

You'd also best be careful saying that they persecuted "even though they were 2nd/3rd generation converts": the whole point of the Inquisition was that if they did turn out to be crypto-Jews, it would have no jurisdiction over them and be forced to turn them over for accompaniment to the border.

The main "persecutions" you refer to are probably the sporadic pogroms that occurred especially in Eastern coastal cities where their numbers were prominent and where they had pissed off a lot of debtors. Some creditors did try to get them tried under the Inquisition, the number don't suggest this ever particularly successful.

Of course, no-one's denying the Spanish Inquisition wasn't terrible, etc, but it is interesting how for presenting historical evidence, mpjh immediately jumps to the conclusion we're trying to "explain things away". What would we possibly be wanting to explain away if all he's done is to "have commente on the impact on my own family of this history and asked for others to comment", what would we possibly "want to apologize away or act as though it is no big thing?" I mean, apparently, "the op simply pointed out that a significant (about 20%) amount of the population in Spain have ancestors with genetic markers to the Sephardic Jews of Europe and another 11% had markers to the Moors".

It couldn't be that he did so in a cheap attempt at scoring points off the Catholic CHurch on the back of some very dodgy history?

[mpjh]

Sorry nappy but you got it wrong again. The reason the large number of people in Spain with the genetic markers to Sephardic Jews was shocking to the Spanish is because many had bought the minimies-the-impact argument you just made. The DNA evidence, however, seems to indicate a much larger impact on Spanish society and culture.

I suspect the real shocker is an realization that many more Morano Jews may still be practicing in secret than was thought before. The cultural right of passage that many young Spanish pass through is when the men in their family take them into ther confidence on this very issue. i.e., that they are secretly practicing the Jewish faith.

[Napoleon Ier]

Sorry nappy but you got it wrong again. The reason the large number of people in Spain with the genetic markers to Sephardic Jews was shocking to the Spanish is because many had bought the minimies-the-impact argument you just made. The DNA evidence, however, seems to indicate a much larger impact on Spanish society and culture.

I suspect the real shocker is an realization that many more Morano Jews may still be practicing in secret than was thought before. The cultural right of passage that many young Spanish pass through is when the men in their family take them into ther confidence on this very issue. i.e., that they are secretly practicing the Jewish faith.

I'm sorry, did you read any of my post? At what point did I posit the "minimies[spelt incorrectly]-the-impact" argument? Here's a hint:

Absolutely nowhere.

In fact, wouldn't the fact that there's such a large proportion of sephardic Jewish haplogroups identified suggest that relatively few were successfully persecuted by the ultra-evil Catholic scarecrow you keep trying to terrify us all with?

[mpjh]

Nappy, nappy, the whole point of your post was to minimalize the horror of the inquisition and the church's persecution of Jews.

[Napoleon Ier]

Nappy, nappy, the whole point of your post was to minimalize the horror of the inquisition and the church's persecution of Jews.

Ok, yes, my post did the job of cleaning up most of the pseudo-historical revisionist bollocks you posted about "forced conversions". You responded to none of the perfectly valid arguments I put forward, probably because you know I'm right and that you'll get pitifully demolished like in the Heaven thread, but never mind.

Now explain to me in what way, shape, and/or form stating that the Inquisition had relatively little impact on Jewish conversos constitutes the same line of argumentation as saying that they had relatively little impact on Spanish culture?

Surely the mere fact that the Inquisition did bugger all to them in fact is evidenced by the very fact they were able to get away with influencing Spain so much?

[mpjh]

That is like saying that "the holocaust didn't have any real impact because, look the Jews are still here."

[Napoleon Ier]

That is like saying that "the holocaust didn't have any real impact because, look the Jews are still here."

Not really, because whilst the holocaust did actually very much kill several million Jews, had a very much observable impact on the Jewish population in Europe, and this in fact is very much verifiable using serious historical evidence, the Inquisition did nothing of the sort.

And that is also very much evidenced by serious history, which I just posted, and which you, unable to respond, decided first to say was posted in an attempt to support a claim that had nothing to do with what it was in reality seeking to establish, then, when I pointed this out and you were humiliated, decided to compare me to a holocaust-denier.

Still, nice to we're resorting to the old ad hominem peddle and thread derailing brakes to avoid having to seriously defend your absurd opinions so early in the day.

[mpjh]

Nappy, nappy, I started the post with straightforward information about DNA testing in Spain. The results showed a surprising high ration of the Spanish having genetic markers to Shephardic Jews. I have commented on several posts her about my own family experience with the consequences of anti-semitism.

You are the only one going off topic.

[Napoleon Ier]

Nappy, nappy, I started the post with straightforward information about DNA testing in Spain. The results showed a surprising high ration of the Spanish having genetic markers to Shephardic Jews. I have commented on several posts her about my own family experience with the consequences of anti-semitism.

You are the only one going off topic.

And I've demonstrated to you how every single conclusion you make off the back of this DNA, and indeed the travesty of a title you've given this thread, are plain old vanilla-flavoured wrong.

Do we get a serious response, or can I take, as in the other thread, your utter refusal to engage in intellectual debate, to be a concession?

[mpjh]

You have your response nappy. You need to read the post with more respect. But then, maybe you are not capable of that.

[Napoleon Ier]

Ah OK. I'm a Nazi holocaust-denier because you say so, and therefore I'm wrong, and that's my response and I ought to read it "with respect".

I love arguing with American liberals... always so intellectually challenging.