Was Thomas of Torquemada Jewish?
Thomas of Torquemada - otherwise known as Tomas de Torquemada – was a fifteenth century Spanish Dominican friar famous for being one of the principal architects of the Spanish Inquisition and also of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 which expelled all the jews from Spain.
He was a violent and long-time foe of ‘conversos’ (jewish converts to Christianity) and ‘moriscos’ (Islamic converts to Christianity) within both the Iberian Peninsula and the Roman Catholic Church as well as a proponent of the proto-racial doctrine of the purity of the blood: limpieza de sangre. (1)
He also has long been subject to the historical claim that he was of a ‘converso’ (i.e., jewish) origin himself which is sometimes claimed to have ‘fuelled’ his anti-Semitism and zeal for the Catholic faith.
The problem with this that despite the fact it is routinely claimed by both academic and popular writers as a ‘known fact’ without citing a source, (2) but the truth is that there is only one source for this claim, and it is ‘based primarily on Hernando del Pulgar’s statement that Juan de Torquemada’s abuelos were converts from the jewish faith’. (3)
The problem is that scholars – such as Rafael Dominquez Casas – cannot find any converso ancestors whatsoever to validate de Pulgar’s non-specific claim (4) and despite Norman Roth’s attempt to rescue Torquemada’s jewishness by arguing that del Pulgar’s use of ‘abuelos’ can mean ‘ancestors’ as well as ‘grandparents’. (5) He is completely unable to state (let alone evidence) who these ‘jewish ancestors’ were and – as Salomons points out – this would render Torquemada’s ‘jewish ancestry’ so remote as have no impact at all on either Thomas of Torquemada or his uncle Cardinal Juan of Torquemada as well as unlikely that they (or del Pulgar) would have known about it. (6)
The truth is likely far simpler in that we know del Pulgar was converso (i.e., jewish) origin himself and he seems to have imputed jewish ancestry to Cardinal Juan of Torquemada as well as Thomas of Torquemada in revenge for their campaign against jewish influence in Spain on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. (7)
So, what we are likely dealing with when addressing the claim that Thomas of Torquemada was of jewish origin is a piece of jewish black propaganda aimed at two of the most ferocious and fanatical opponents of jewish influence in Spain during the Spanish Golden Age.
References
(1) Carolyn Salomons, 2016, ‘"An impossible quid pro quo": Representations of Tomas de Torquemada’, Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 5-6
(2) Ibid., p. 2
(3) Ibid.
(4) Cf. Rafael Dominquez Casas, 2020, ‘El linaje del cardenal don Juan de Torquemada: poder economico y promocion artistica’, BSAA Arte, Vol. 86, pp. 41-94 also Norman Roth, 2002, ‘Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain’, 2nd Edition, The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, p. 225
(5) Roth, Op. Cit., p. 225
(6) Salomons, Op. Cit., p. 2, n. 5
(7) A. G., 1940, ‘Book Review’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 29, No. 113, p. 140