Alas, converting Jews did not solve ‘the Jewish problem’. What it did, as the Spanish authorities rapidly discovered, was to present it in a new and far less tractable form. For the problem now became racial as well as religious. The church had always presented the Jews as a spiritual danger. Since the twelfth century, popular superstition had presented them as a social and physical danger too. But at least Jews, as such, were an open and public danger: they were known, they lived in recognizable communities, they were forced to bear distinguishing marks and dress. But when they became
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