31 October 2005

Hidden Family Heritages Unearthed in the New World

Regions of Mind directs attention to a very interesting post by Ann Althouse. Here's Geitner's summary.
One of the most affecting aspects of the Jewish experience in Inquisition-era Spain was how many Jews professed to have adopted Christianity but in secret maintained the rites of Judaism. Ann Althouse has a terrific post on a 21st-century tangent of this story: Some present-day Latino residents in the United States are discovering that, despite their Catholic heritage, they are the descendants of those Iberian Jews. The comments at Ann's site are quite interesting, too.
One of Ann's commenters notes that the hidden infidels who fled the Spanish Inquisition to the New World after 1492 were just as likely to have been Muslim as Jewish.

No comments: