Souls in Dispute. David L. Graizbord

planted on good soil died within a few days.¹⁵⁰ In 1633, Juan Escobar de Corro provided what could easily pass for a “digest” of common misgivings about conversos when he wrote, “Hebraei et … eorum descendentes abjecti et infames ab omnibus reputantur. Et sunt … seditosi, cupidi, avari et perniciosi ad comunitates.…”¹⁵¹ Unfortunately for conversos, such pejorative evaluations were not the preserve of polemicists. Similar derogations issued from places far removed from debates concerning the purity of blood statutes. In popular literature, for instance, the collective image of conversos did not fare particularly well. Miguel de Cervantes had one of his characters in El Coloquio de los Perros exclaim the following:

      It is with wonder that one can find among [conversos] one who believes in the sacred Catholic faith in a straightforward manner: their sole intent is to grasp and save money.… [A]lways earning and never spending, they…gather up the greatest quantity of money that there is in Spain…. They get it all, they hide it all, and they swallow it all. Let it be considered that they are many, and that each day they hide a little or a lot…. They steal from us with stealth [a pie quedo], and they do so with the fruits of our own inheritance, which they resell to us, becoming rich and leaving us poor…. [T]heir science is none other than stealing from us, and they practice it effortlessly.¹⁵²

      According to depictions such as the above, conversos despised honest, productive labor. What is more, they were physically weak and incapable of exhibiting valor; thus (among other reasons) they could never equal the honor of hidalgos—or, for that matter, that of Old Christian commoners, who enjoyed the comparable dignity of working on the land. Conversos were unworthy, the argument went, regardless of how successful they were in purchasing offices and titles, and in sporting all the external trappings of social success—fine dress, good manners, and the like.¹⁵³