Parables of Coercion – Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain - Hardcover

Kimmel, Seth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022627828X ISBN 13: 9780226278285

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, competing scholarly communities sought to define a Spain that was, at least officially, entirely Christian, even if many suspected that newer converts from Islam and Judaism were Christian in name only. Unlike previous books on conversion in early modern Spain, however, Parables of Coercion focuses not on the experience of the converts themselves, but rather on how questions surrounding conversion drove religious reform and scholarly innovation. In its careful examination of how Spanish authors transformed the history of scholarship through debate about forced religious conversion, Parables of Coercion makes us rethink what we mean by tolerance and intolerance, and shows that debates about forced conversion and assimilation were also disputes over the methods and practices that demarcated one scholarly discipline from another.

About this title

About the Author

Seth Kimmel is assistant professor of Latin American and Iberian cultures at Columbia University. He lives in New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022627828X
• ISBN 13: 9780226278285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288