Secrecy and Deceit : The Lives of Crypto-Jews

Secrecy and Deceit documents the religious customs of the Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism, largely under duress, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although many of the converts quickly melted into the Catholic mainstream, thousands of others and their descendents strove to preserve their Jewish culture despite the efforts of the Inquisition to suppress them.The author uses Inquisition records, chronicles, rabbinical rulings, letters, eyewitness accounts, religious books, and other historical documents to give the most thorough and accurate picture of crypto-Jews ever cataloged.