From Spanish court to Italian ghetto; Isaac Cardoso

Traces the life of Cardoso, a Portuguese Converso physician and writer who lived for many years in Madrid. Ch. 1 (p. 1-50), "Marranos in the Seventeenth Century", describes the status of Conversos in Spain, Portugal, and other countries, referring to discrimination and persecution by means of the "limpieza de sangre" statutes and to the introduction of the Inquisition in Spain (1478) and Portugal (1536). Ch. 3 relates to the "El Cristo de la Paciencia" case in which Conversos were accused of Judaizing and of beating an image of Christ on the cross, which ended with the execution of six Conversos in Madrid in 1632. 48 years later, Cardoso, after returning to Judaism in Italy, gave his own account of these events. Also describes Cardoso's later polemics with Christianity and his "Las excelencias de los Hebreos", which contains a reply to antisemitic calumnies and stereotypes.