Limpieza de sangre
Encyclopedia
Limpieza de sangre Limpeza de sangue (lĩˈpezɐ ðɨ ˈsɐ̃gɨ, limˈpeθa ðe ˈsaŋge) or Neteja de sang (nəˈtɛʒə ðə ˈsaŋ), meaning "cleanliness of blood", played an important role in modern
Iberian
history.
It referred to those who were considered pure "Old Christian
s", without Al-Andalus
' Muslim
or Jewish ancestors.
and the expulsion or conversion of Muslim Mudéjar
s (Moors) and Sephardic Jews, the population of Portugal
and Spain
was all nominally European Christian. However, the ruling class and much of the populace distrusted the recently-converted "New Christians", referring to them as converso
s or marrano
s if they were baptized Jews or descended from them, or Morisco
s if they were baptized Muslims or descended from them. A commonly-leveled accusation was that the New Christians were false converts, secretly practicing their former religion as Crypto-Jews or Crypto-Muslims. Nevertheless, the concept of cleanliness of blood came to be more focused on ancestry than of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appeared in Toledo
, 1449, where an anti-Converso riot succeeded in obtaining a ban on Conversos and their posterity from most official positions. Initially, these statutes were condemned by the monarchy and the Church; however, in 1496, Pope Alexander VI approved a purity statute for the Hieronymite Order
.
This stratification meant that the Old Christian commoner
s could assert a right to honor even if they were not in the nobility
. The religious and military order
s, guild
s and other organizations incorporated in their bylaw
s clauses demanding proof of cleanliness of blood. Upwardly mobile New Christian families had to either contend with their plight, or bribe and falsify documents attesting generations of good Christian ancestry. The Spanish
and Portuguese Inquisition
s were more concerned with repressing the New Christians and heresy
than chasing witches
, which was considered to be more a psychological than a religious issue, or Protestantism
, which was promptly suffocated.
The claim to universal hidalguía
(lowest nobility) of the Basques
was justified by intellectuals like Manuel de Larramendi (1690–1766) because the Moorish
conquest of Iberia
had not reached the Basque territories, so it was believed that Basques had maintained their original purity, while the rest of Spain was suspect of miscegenation
. In fact, the Moorish invasion also reached the Basque country and there had been a significant Jewish minority in Navarre
, but the hidalguía helped many Basques to official positions in the administration.
Tests of limpieza de sangre had begun to lose their utility by the 19th century; rarely did persons have to endure the grueling inquisitions into distant parentage through birth records. However, laws requiring limpieza de sangre were still sometimes adopted even into the 19th century. For example, an edict of 8 March 1804 by King Ferdinand VII resolved that no knight of the Military Order
s could wed without having a council vouch for the limpieza de sangre of his spouse.
Official suppression of such entry requirements for the Army were enacted into law in 16 May 1865, and extended to naval appointments on 31 August of the same year. In 5 November 1865, a decree allowed children born out of wedlock or illegitimate, for whom ancestry could not be verified, to be able to enter into religious higher education (canons). In 26 October 1866, the test of blood purity were outlawed for the purposes of determining who could be admitted to college education. In 20 March 1870, a decree suppressed all use of blood purity standards in determining eligibility for any government position or any licensed profession.
The discrimination was still present into the 20th century in some places like Majorca. No xueta
(descendants of the Majorcan conversos) priests were allowed to say Mass in a cathedral until the 1960s.
. However, those who pretended to enroll at the service of the Spanish Army or the Catholic Church in the Spanish colonies and their spouses had to obtain a certificate in the same way as those in the Peninsula did, that proved that they had no Jewish or Moorish ancestors.
Additionally, as early as the sixteenth century, shortly after the discovery of America, several regulations were enacted in the Laws of the Indies
to prevent members of those religious groups and their descendants to emigrate and settle in the overseas colonies. These provisions are repeatedly stressed upon on following editions of the Laws, which provides an indication that the regulations were often ignored, most likely because colonial authorities at the time looked the other way, as the skills of those immigrants were badly needed.
Modern Age
Modern Age is an American conservative academic quarterly journal, founded in 1957 by Russell Kirk in close collaboration with Henry Regnery...
Iberian
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
history.
It referred to those who were considered pure "Old Christian
Old Christian
Old Christian was a social and law-effective category used in the Iberian Peninsula from the late 15th and early 16th century onwards, to distinguish Portuguese and Spanish people attested as having cleanliness of blood from the populations categorized as New Christian, mainly persons of partial...
s", without Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
' Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
or Jewish ancestors.
After the Reconquista
After the end of the ReconquistaReconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
and the expulsion or conversion of Muslim Mudéjar
Mudéjar
Mudéjar is the name given to individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity...
s (Moors) and Sephardic Jews, the population of Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
was all nominally European Christian. However, the ruling class and much of the populace distrusted the recently-converted "New Christians", referring to them as converso
Converso
A converso and its feminine form conversa was a Jew or Muslim—or a descendant of Jews or Muslims—who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions once took place under significant government pressure...
s or marrano
Marrano
Marranos were Jews living in the Iberian peninsula who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled but continued to observe rabbinic Judaism in secret...
s if they were baptized Jews or descended from them, or Morisco
Morisco
Moriscos or Mouriscos , meaning "Moorish", were the converted Christian inhabitants of Spain and Portugal of Muslim heritage. Over time the term was used in a pejorative sense applied to those nominal Catholics who were suspected of secretly practicing Islam.-Demographics:By the beginning of the...
s if they were baptized Muslims or descended from them. A commonly-leveled accusation was that the New Christians were false converts, secretly practicing their former religion as Crypto-Jews or Crypto-Muslims. Nevertheless, the concept of cleanliness of blood came to be more focused on ancestry than of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appeared in Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
, 1449, where an anti-Converso riot succeeded in obtaining a ban on Conversos and their posterity from most official positions. Initially, these statutes were condemned by the monarchy and the Church; however, in 1496, Pope Alexander VI approved a purity statute for the Hieronymite Order
Hieronymites
Hieronymites, or the Order of St. Jerome , is a common name for several congregations of hermits living according to the Rule of St. Augustine, with supplementary regulations taken from the writings of the 5th-century monk and scholar, St Jerome. The principal group with this name was founded in...
.
This stratification meant that the Old Christian commoner
Commoner
In British law, a commoner is someone who is neither the Sovereign nor a peer. Therefore, any member of the Royal Family who is not a peer, such as Prince Harry of Wales or Anne, Princess Royal, is a commoner, as is any member of a peer's family, including someone who holds only a courtesy title,...
s could assert a right to honor even if they were not in the nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
. The religious and military order
Military order
A military order is a Christian society of knights that was founded for crusading, i.e. propagating or defending the faith , either in the Holy Land or against Islam or pagans in Europe...
s, guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
s and other organizations incorporated in their bylaw
Bylaw
By-law can refer to a law of local or limited application passed under the authority of a higher law specifying what things may be regulated by the by-law...
s clauses demanding proof of cleanliness of blood. Upwardly mobile New Christian families had to either contend with their plight, or bribe and falsify documents attesting generations of good Christian ancestry. The Spanish
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
and Portuguese Inquisition
Portuguese Inquisition
The Portuguese Inquisition was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III. Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of marriage with Maria of Aragon, but it was only after his death that the Pope...
s were more concerned with repressing the New Christians and heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
than chasing witches
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, which was considered to be more a psychological than a religious issue, or Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
, which was promptly suffocated.
The claim to universal hidalguía
Hidalgo (Spanish nobility)
A hidalgo or fidalgo is a member of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. In popular usage it has come to mean the non-titled nobility. Hidalgos were exempt from paying taxes, but did not necessarily own real property...
(lowest nobility) of the Basques
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
was justified by intellectuals like Manuel de Larramendi (1690–1766) because the Moorish
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
conquest of Iberia
Umayyad conquest of Hispania
The Umayyad conquest of Hispania is the initial Islamic Ummayad Caliphate's conquest, between 711 and 718, of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania, centered in the Iberian Peninsula, which was known to them under the Arabic name al-Andalus....
had not reached the Basque territories, so it was believed that Basques had maintained their original purity, while the rest of Spain was suspect of miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
. In fact, the Moorish invasion also reached the Basque country and there had been a significant Jewish minority in Navarre
Navarre
Navarre , officially the Chartered Community of Navarre is an autonomous community in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Country, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Aquitaine in France...
, but the hidalguía helped many Basques to official positions in the administration.
Tests of limpieza de sangre had begun to lose their utility by the 19th century; rarely did persons have to endure the grueling inquisitions into distant parentage through birth records. However, laws requiring limpieza de sangre were still sometimes adopted even into the 19th century. For example, an edict of 8 March 1804 by King Ferdinand VII resolved that no knight of the Military Order
Military order
A military order is a Christian society of knights that was founded for crusading, i.e. propagating or defending the faith , either in the Holy Land or against Islam or pagans in Europe...
s could wed without having a council vouch for the limpieza de sangre of his spouse.
Official suppression of such entry requirements for the Army were enacted into law in 16 May 1865, and extended to naval appointments on 31 August of the same year. In 5 November 1865, a decree allowed children born out of wedlock or illegitimate, for whom ancestry could not be verified, to be able to enter into religious higher education (canons). In 26 October 1866, the test of blood purity were outlawed for the purposes of determining who could be admitted to college education. In 20 March 1870, a decree suppressed all use of blood purity standards in determining eligibility for any government position or any licensed profession.
The discrimination was still present into the 20th century in some places like Majorca. No xueta
Xueta
The Xuetes , were a social group on the island of Majorca, descendants of Majorcan Jews who either converted to Christianity or were forced to keep their religion hidden...
(descendants of the Majorcan conversos) priests were allowed to say Mass in a cathedral until the 1960s.
Historical genesis of Blue Blood
- "It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin--proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy."
- Robert LaceyRobert LaceyRobert Lacey is a British historian and biographer. He is the author of a number of bestselling biographies, including those of Henry Ford and Queen Elizabeth II, as well as works of popular history....
, Aristocrats. Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 6.
Procedure to judge Purity of Blood
The earliest known case judging Limpieza de Sangre comes from the Church of Cordoba, that explained the procedure to judge the purity of blood of a candidate as follows: Kneeling, with his right hand placed over the image of a crucifix on a Bible, the candidate confirmed not being either of either Jewish or Moorish extraction. Then the candidate provided the names of the parents and grandparents, as well as places of birth. Two delegates of the council, church or other public place would then research the information to make sure it was truthful. If the investigation had to be carried out of Cordoba, a person, not necessarily a member of the council would be appointed to examine the witnesses appointed by the candidate. This researcher would receive a sum per diem according to the rank of the person, the distance traveled and the time spent. Having collected all the reports, the secretary or the notary must read them all to the council and a vote would decide whether the candidate was approved. A simple majority was sufficient, after which the candidate had to promise to obey all the laws and customs of the Church.Spanish colonies
Being a medieval concept that targeted exclusively the Jewish or Moorish population in Spain, Limpieza de sangre was never an issue among the native population in the colonies of the Spanish EmpireSpanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
. However, those who pretended to enroll at the service of the Spanish Army or the Catholic Church in the Spanish colonies and their spouses had to obtain a certificate in the same way as those in the Peninsula did, that proved that they had no Jewish or Moorish ancestors.
Additionally, as early as the sixteenth century, shortly after the discovery of America, several regulations were enacted in the Laws of the Indies
Laws of the Indies
The Laws of the Indies are the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown for its American and Philippine possessions of its empire. They regulated social, political and economic life in these areas...
to prevent members of those religious groups and their descendants to emigrate and settle in the overseas colonies. These provisions are repeatedly stressed upon on following editions of the Laws, which provides an indication that the regulations were often ignored, most likely because colonial authorities at the time looked the other way, as the skills of those immigrants were badly needed.
See also
- The discussion of CastaCastaCasta is a Portuguese and Spanish term used in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period...
makes it appear as if differentiation based upon privileges applied only to the distinction between mulattos, blacks and others in Nueva España. However, originally limpieza de sangre was used in the Iberian Peninsula to distinguish clearly between Spaniards and Moors/Jews.
- Caste system
External links
- Attestment of the purity of blood of Justo Rufino de San Martín (brother of JoséJosé de San MartínJosé Francisco de San Martín, known simply as Don José de San Martín , was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain.Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes , he left his mother country at the...
) in Paredes de NavaParedes de NavaParedes de Nava is a municipality located in the province of Palencia, Castile and León, Spain.It is the birthplace of Renaissance painter Pedro Berruguete. Some paintings by him can be seen in the predella of the local church of Santa Eulalia. Other sights include the church of St. Martin ....
, 1794. Note - Google translation from Spanish to English.