Bodies Stigmatizing New Christians in Early Modern Spain Julia Gebke
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(Foreign) Bodies Stigmatizing New Christians in Early Modern Spain Julia Gebke Published with support of Austrian Science Fund (FWF): PUB 535-G24 Translation supported by Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna. Open Access: Unless otherwise stated, this publication is licensed under the Creative-Commons License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This publication was subjected to an international anonymous peer review process. Title of the original: Julia Gebke (Fremd)Körper. Die Stigmatisierung der Neuchristen im Spanien der Frühen Neuzeit © 2020 by Böhlau Verlag Ges. m. b. H. & Co. KG, Zeltgasse 1, A-1080 Wien ISBN 978-3-205-20303-2 Translation: Henry Whittlesey Schroeder Proofreading: Henry Whittlesey Schroeder and Darja Watzdorf LaTeX-Layout: Dario Kampkaspar, <bau|ka|st/>, https://baukast.digital For Franz, Helga, Michaela & Soheil Contents Acknowledgments 1 Foreword 3 1 Introduction 5 1.1 A Master Narrative? ................................ 13 1.2 1632 ........................................ 24 1.3 Ideology of Blood Purity and Medical Biologism . 26 1.4 Physical Distinguishing Features .......................... 29 1.5 Ad Fontes ..................................... 30 1.6 Body, Gender, Senses and “Race” ......................... 33 2 The Impure Blood of New Christian Wet Nurses 41 2.1 Wet Nurse’s Milk and Mother’s Milk in Early Modern Medicine . 42 2.1.1 Discussion: Wet Nurse’s Milk or Mother’s Milk . 43 2.1.2 Qualities of a Good Wet Nurse ...................... 49 2.1.3 The corrupción of the Wet Nurse’s Milk . 52 2.1.4 Mother’s Milk as the Cause of Illness and Disease or as a Cure . 57 2.2 The Medieval Ban on Jewish Wet Nurses ..................... 63 2.2.1 Christian Legislation ........................... 63 2.2.2 The Siete Partidas ............................. 67 2.2.3 Jewish Legislation ............................. 70 2.3 The Early Modern Ban on New Christian Wet Nurses . 75 2.3.1 Juan Huarte de San Juan ......................... 77 2.3.2 The New Christian Wet Nurse Issue and its Context . 79 2.3.3 The Heredity of the Milk ......................... 83 2.3.4 Warnings against New Christian Wet Nurses . 85 2.4 Conclusion ..................................... 89 3 “Jewish Male” Menstruation 91 3.1 Menstrual Blood between Femininity and Masculinity . 91 3.1.1 From Milk to Blood ............................ 91 3.1.2 Barriers .................................. 93 3.1.3 Menstruating Men ............................ 95 3.2 Menstruation Ideas in Antiquity .......................... 98 3.2.1 Causes ................................... 100 3.2.2 The Cycle ................................. 101 3.2.3 Logic and Purpose ............................ 103 3.2.4 Effects ................................... 107 3.3 “Jewish Male” Blood Flow in the Middle Ages . 108 3.3.1 Accusation of Deicide and Blood Libel Legend . 110 3.3.2 Hemorrhoids and Melancholy . 118 3.4 Male and “Jewish Male” Menstruation in the Early Modern Era . 124 3.4.1 The Medical Point of View . 125 3.4.2 The View in the Ideology of Blood Purity . 140 3.4.3 The Special Case of Juan de Quiñones . 149 3.4.4 Critics of “Jewish Male” Menstruation . 165 3.5 Conclusion ..................................... 175 4 The New Christian Smell 179 4.1 The Dimensions of Smell ............................. 180 4.1.1 Experiences with Smell . 180 4.1.2 Early Modern Worlds of Smell . 183 4.2 The foetor judaicus and the “Pagan Stench” . 185 4.2.1 Antique Precursors ............................ 185 4.2.2 Medieval Precursors ............................ 192 4.2.3 A Special Case: The Holy Spring of Matarieh . 195 4.3 The New Christian Stigma of Smell . 200 4.3.1 Theological Arguments . 200 4.3.2 Medical Arguments ............................ 209 4.3.3 Culinary Dimensions . 221 4.3.4 The Dog of Alba ............................. 226 4.4 The Stigma of Smell and limpieza de sangre . 228 4.4.1 Conversos ................................. 228 4.4.2 Moriscos .................................. 230 4.5 Conclusion ..................................... 233 5 Conclusion 237 6 Abbreviations 243 7 Bibliography 245 7.1 Archival Records and Manuscripts . 245 7.2 Old Prints and Source Editions . 246 7.3 Literature ..................................... 254 8 Index 269 8.1 Terms ....................................... 269 8.2 Names ....................................... 271 Acknowledgments “Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), chapter 12) Dear reader, It was a long and exciting journey from the moment the idea germinated to the day the final version of this book was ready to be printed, with many people accompanying and actively supporting me along the way. I will not be able to name all of them here, but I would like to mention a few. Rainer Walz took the very first step when one day he casually said to me on the way out: “Ms. Gebke, don’t you want to do something with the Conversos?” Slightly taken by surprise, I answered that question in the affirmative. No sooner said than done. After that, this engrossing topic hasnever let go of me and inspired me to write not only a master’s thesis, but also a dissertation. I would like to thank Rainer Walz very much for not only setting this work in motion, but for helping to the end and always standing by my side in word and deed with many indispensable suggestions. Special thanks go to my supervisor Dorothea Nolde, who gave me the opportunity to continue along the path I had chosen and who granted me complete freedom to develop my topic from the very beginning, always knowing how to intervene at exactly the right time when I could no longer see the forest for the trees. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my supervisor Simone De Angelis for his support and the many fascinating discussions in his privatissima, as he opened up completely new and intriguing perspectives on the history of science for me and thus enriched my topic immensely. At stops from Bochum to Bremen and Graz, I was able to exchange ideas about my dissertation project with many colleagues at conferences, colloquia or simply over a cup of coffee, and benefited from the numerous perspectives they had on my topic. In particular, I ought to mention: Nikolas Jaspert, Javier Castaño González, Cordula Nolte, Fritz Dross, Robert Jütte, Gabriele Haug-Moritz, Stefanie Walther, Jan Ulrich Büttner, Eva Schöck-Quinteros, Clemens Janisch, Florian Meixner and Thomas Durlacher. I would like to acknowledge my profound debt to Ursula Huber at Böhlau Verlag for getting involved in the book project and for always being there at exactly the right time to move ahead with it. Special thanks are due to Henry Whittlesey Schroeder for translating the book into English and for the pleasant and smooth collaboration despite the great geographical distance. For the proofreading of the translation, I would like to thank Darja Watzdorf. I am indebted tothe Austrian Science Fund FWF, the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of History and Cultural Studies, the Institute for History at the University of Vienna and Dorothea Nolde for financially supporting the book project and the translation. And last but not least I am sincerely grateful to the small intimate circle that has read all my 1 Acknowledgments chapters and put them to the acid test: Irina Barzcaitis, Alexander Bauer and Helga Gebke. Without your eye for reader guidance, commas and superfluous filler words, the resulting text would read quite differently. Any remaining errors are exclusively my responsibility. Emmerke, December 30, 2018 2 Foreword Much too used to shake with anger at the crimes of the swastika times we forget to be just a little thankful to our predecessors that their deeds might still help us to recognise in time that we are planning a far greater crime today (Erich Fried: Debt of Gratitude)1 It may be initially shocking to associate the word thankful with the history of National Socialism and thus inevitably the history of the Holocaust when reading Erich Fried’s poem (1921–1988). However, this is the only positive aspect that we can take from the atrocities of the Nazi regime, namely the hope that we will learn from them, that is, that we will recognize the warning signs induetime and do it better in the future. To understand the mechanisms of exclusion, discrimination and persecution and to fight them soon enough, we must understand how they work. That is why it is worthwhile to take a look at history – and not just the history of the 20th century. My book should make a small contribution to our understanding of exclusion mechanisms. One strategy seemed critical to me in the process: the excluding group’s propagation of the physical otherness of the group to be excluded. Therefore, the focus of my book is on the excluding perspective of the perpetrator and especially on the distinguishing characteristics that were ascribed to the body declared to be different. I chose the ideology of blood purity, limpieza de sangre, in early modern Spain during the 16th and 17th century as the subject to be studied. This book will examine and analyze how to understand the concept of limpieza de sangre and how this ideology was implemented. The translations of the citations in this work are from the German translations 1 Erich FRIED: Love poems, trans. by Stuart HOOD, New York and London 1991, 49. 3 Foreword provided by the author, unless stated otherwise. 4 1 Introduction “May his blood be on us and on our children.” (Matt. 27.25) This verse from the Gospel of Matthew is of immense importance in the history of anti-Judaism since it is the basis for the argument in the accusation of deicide. It refers to the blood of Christ because it is the cry of the people when they support the enforcement of his execution, and the prisoner Barabbas is released in return.