198 Book Reviews / Medieval Encounters 16 (2010) 181-207

François Soyer, Th e Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the end of Religious Tolerance (1496-7). Leiden: Brill, 2007. xix, 325 pp.

In 1492, as all scholars of Iberia and the Mediterranean well know, Ferdi- nand and Isabel of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragón issued a decree ordering the expulsion of all Jews living in royal lands. Th e capitula- tion of the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in that same year resulted a decade later in the forced conversion of the remaining Muslims living in Spain and inaugurated the era of a thoroughly Catholic Spain. Neighbor- ing Portugal, which has been comparatively little scrutinized, is the subject of François Soyer’s provocative new study. By challenging the prevailing view that the persecution of Jews and Muslims in Portugal under Manuel I in 1496-1497 was infl uenced by and in imitation of the earlier Spanish expulsion and designed to curry favor with the Spanish Crown, Soyer seeks to bring into focus the complex, and largely independent, socio-political underpinnings of the breakdown of Christian–Jewish–Muslim relations in Portugal under Manuel I. Th e result is a fascinating analysis of a diversity of primary-source documents in multiple languages and an original thesis on an important topic that merits the attention of all scholars interested in any aspects of Christian–Jewish–Muslim relations. A concise introduction sets the historiographical scene. Soyer briefl y but adequately summarizes earlier scholarship on the topic, off ers some thoughts on why 1496-1497 has received less attention than it deserves, and introduces the reader to the types of sources that will be used. Th is is especially valuable as one of the true merits of this work is the diversity of narrative and documentary material consulted. Chapter 1 charts the his- tory of the Jewish and Muslim minorities in Portugal during the medieval period up to the 1480s and considers various questions relating to their origins, their organization into autonomous communities under royal pro- tection, the special tax system to which they were subjected, and their relations with both the majority Christian population and the Crown. Chapters 2 and 3 constitute the crux of Soyer’s historiographical revi- sion. Using a range of Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew sources, a number of them unedited, Soyer examines the social impact of the arrival in Portu- gal, fi rstly of numerous Jewish converts to Christianity (conversos) fl eeing the Inquisition tribunals of Castile in the 1480s, and secondly of thou- sands of Jewish refugees who were expelled from Spain in 1492. Soyer concludes that the consequences of these events have been greatly exagger-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/138078510X12535199002992 Book Reviews / Medieval Encounters 16 (2010) 181-207 199 ated by modern historians and that the impact of 1492 in particular was mitigated by the fact that the majority of Castilian Jews only transited though Portugal and were not allowed to settle there by King João II (r. 1481-1495). Moving in chapter 3 to the period between 1492 and 1496, Soyer shifts to political and diplomatic events leading up to, and immediately following, the accession of King Manuel I (r. 1495-1521). Soyer argues that there are no grounds to support the assertion that Man- uel entertained any ambitions to take over the various thrones of Spain (his marriage to the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella has largely been the source for that assumption). Rather, Soyer marshals an array of sources to convincingly suggest that Manuel had two very diff erent aims and ambi- tions in the fi rst years of his reign: his eagerness to fi nance a voyage of exploration to India and his obsession with the launch of a new crusade against the Muslims of Morocco. To achieve his two aims, Manuel needed to conclude an enduring peace with Spain. His marriage to the Spanish infanta and his decision concerning the fate of Portugal’s Jews were both the result of his larger ambitions. Chapter 4 moves from the promulgation of the expulsion edict in December 1496 to the forced conversion of the Jews in 1497. Drawing on genealogical sections of Inquisition trial records and Hebrew chronicles, Soyer is able to reconstruct the diff erent stages of coercion that gradually led to the forced conversion of all Jews. In ascending order these stages included the confi scation of Hebrew books, the abduction and conversion of all the Jewish children and the seizure of communal Jewish property. Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the “forgotten persecution” of the Muslim minority and examines their expulsion from Portugal—a fact generally but not universally accepted in Portuguese historiography. On the basis of con- temporary chronicles and other sources analyzed, Soyer argues that they migrated either to Castile or North Africa and that there is no evidence to claim that Spanish pressure underpinned Manuel’s decision. Instead, Soyer contends that the most plausible hypothesis is that it was an act of propa- ganda motivated by Manuel’s concern to obtain papal sanction prior to resuming the war against the Muslim rulers in Morocco. A number of important and historiographically current issues are raised in this fi nely crafted study. Th e fi rst concerns the sources on which the study is based. Th e relatively late arrival of medieval Iberian studies onto the plane of medieval studies has resulted in a relatively small percentage of documents being edited and made available. For the documents that have been made accessible and are more widely known, considerable debate