The Marranos of Spain: From the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources

Rating:
Summary: Christians or Apostates?
Review: The Marranos of Spain is a landmark study for this period of Spanish history and the Jews of Spain. Its importance lies within the utlized sources, which for the first time in the scholarly research of Marranos, someone is intelligent enough to integrate Hebrew sources, religous as well as secular, in order to have a better picture.

However, Netanyahu's analysis leaves much to be desired. The debate about his analysis and contradictions have been discussed in Spanish Academia, and they are mainly due to some of the second or third sources he has utilized which are not reliable. Even his discussion of Jewish jurisprudence falls short when considering he's mixing two Jewish traditions (Spanish and German) in regards to forced converts, traditions that had not been merged in 15th century Europe. He tried to use all that he could to prove his thesis that the forced converts were truly sincere Christians, and in this process he purposely dismissed the psycological and socio-antropological analysis of this period. Basically what Netanyahu did was to find sources that said "black," and so black it was. He missed much on the complexity of this period.

As a pioneering work for the use of Hebrew sources, Netanyahu's work is most excellent, but again, he needs to revise many of his forced conclusions.