My family name, “Maron,” is a vestige of and a testament to the human capacity to hate.
My family tradition tells the story of my ancestors’ expulsion — along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews — from the Iberian Peninsula by royal Spanish decree in 1492 following an era of great success and coexistence there.
Jews (and many Muslims) were given three options: convert to Christianity, leave their country and belongings, or die without trial.
My family changed our name to “Maron” as a reminder that we were “marranos,” the term for Jews who were forced to publicly join the church and kept their Jewish identities in secret.
“Marrano” was a derogatory term literally meaning “pig” or “dirty”; this, of course, was meant to humiliate these Jews.
While historians continue to debate the exact figures, many believe that approximately 200,000 Jews were forced to convert to Christianity, hundreds of thousands more were expelled, and thousands were cruelly executed by auto-da-fé (burning alive on the stake).
So how was this brutal persecution enacted en masse?
The answer lies in the little-discussed fact that the Inquisition in fact began 200 years earlier, during the 13th century, under religious decree of Pope Gregory IX.
King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain greatly enhanced its far-reaching, destructive capacity in the late 1400s when they supplanted papal authority by assuming responsibility for the Inquisition themselves.
Their edict of expulsion called to “banish the … Jews from our kingdom” for having “been most guilty of the said crimes … against our holy Catholic faith.”
The political monarchy’s adoption of a radical religious agenda granted it dangerous power.
At a time when the pope and the king struggled with one another for political clout, only radical religion enabled by political legitimacy could mobilize and coordinate the massive discrimination and persecution including, but not limited to, the Spanish Inquisition.
So what does medieval Spain have to do with 2014 Iraq, Syria, and ISIS? Continue reading
Source
- Sam Maron in The Huffington Post
Sam Maron is a student at Princeton University.
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