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This chapter describes the attempt, which began in 1509, to promote conversion by confiscating Jewish books. Supported by the Franciscan and Dominican Orders as well as the University of Cologne, Johannes Pfefferkorn agitated for universal expulsion of Jews or, that failing, destruction of their “blasphemous” and “heretical” books (with emphasis on the Talmud and liturgical books). The chapter offers extensive analysis of the inflammatory anti-Jewish pamphlets published to support this campaign. In 1509, the anti-Jewish effort scored a major success: Emperor Maximilian issued a mandate authorizing confiscation of Jewish books.

This chapter explains the complex legal maneuvers undertaken to oppose and support the imperial mandates authorizing confiscation. It offers a new reconstruction and interpretation of the actual campaign against Jewish books. While the confiscations were being conducted in the Rhineland with the support of the Archbishop of Mainz, the University of Mainz, and the University of Cologne, the city of Frankfurt and its Jewish community were nonetheless able to negotiate a stay of execution for the mandate. As this occurred, the office of the Papal Inquisition for the province of Teutonia, under Jacob Hoogstraeten, was assuming effective leadership of the campaign and taking steps to resume the empire-wide confiscation. This was the context of Johannes Reuchlin's intervention and the reason the inquisition immediately turned its sights on him and his arguments. The chapter analyzes the evolution of Emperor Maximilian's Jewish policy (including his support of expulsions) and the phenomenon of divided authority over Jewish communities in the empire. It argues that Reuchlin's defense was a conscientious effort to strengthen the eroding legal status of Jewry in the empire. His pamphlet also offered an unprecedented acknowledgment of the theological significance and integrity of the Jewish tradition (including defense of the Talmud).

In the “Introduction,” Lee provides the theoretical framework of her book, which is founded on the notion that all textual production—literary and documentary—are valid in understanding the early modern Spanish experience. She then explains the historical context for understanding the pervasive desire of New Christians and lowborns to “pass” for dominant members of society and proposes that dominant’s anxiety of sameness becomes a focal point in the construction of the other. She then summaries of the sections that encompass the book.

This introductory chapter explores the experience of the Sephardim, one of the two major branches of the Jewish people, in several major centres of urban civilization. It seeks to understand who they are and how their visit in certain cities left its impression upon them and distinguished them from other parts of the Jewish people. The chapter also recognizes that being 'Sephardi' means to be related in some fashion to Spain. Yet most bearers of that designation today never had any contact with Spain, nor did many of their ancestors. It examines seven cities through which to explore the shaping of Sephardi identity. The chapter also includes the descendants of Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula before the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and of Jews who received the refugees from Iberia afterwards.

This chapter tells the history of Granada in the immediate aftermath of the Reconquista. At first the Treaty of Granada appeared generous to the Moors; they would continue living as Mudejars, Muslims living under Christian rule. Yet the edict expelling all Jews from Spain, signed at the Alhambra in 1492, was an early warning sign of what was to come. The first city leaders of the Christian era, the Mendoza family and Archbishop Talavera, showed respect for the Moors and their culture, but this was not to last. When Ferdinand and Isabella returned to the city in 1499, they were horrified by how Islamic the city remained. Archbishop Cisneros set about converting the Mudejars, by force if necessary, and rebellion broke out in the Albaicin. When this spread to the mountainous Alpujarra region, the uprising was met with great brutality. As Granada entered the sixteenth century, its status as a Muslim city was at an end, its people converted, and its Arabic books condemned to be burned in the city’s squares.