Religious conversion and identities in the Iberian peninsula

Abstract

Early modern society afforded a certain margin for change in the activities and appearances by which people wound up making their way in the world, and this was as true of the dynamic patchwork of localities that made up the Iberian world as anywhere else in Europe. The options of voice, and loyalty that developed elsewhere as means of finding one’s way amid possibilities and constraints thrived in Iberia as well. Early modern Iberians developed firmly relational notions of selfhood. They thought of individuals collectively, as members of aggregates bound together publicly by shared ties, contacts, and vested commitments. By contemporary and even later standards early modern Iberia sheltered an impressive range of local identities. The end of the legal coexistence and social acceptance of Iberia’s religious minorities began in the later Middle Ages. Crucial to this outcome was the deep trauma of the Black Death of mid-fourteenth century and the ensuing power vacuum and dynastic conflict in the peninsula.