La persecución inquisitorial contra la matriarca criptojudía

Abstract

The inquisitorial persecution of crypto-Jewish women had important contradictions, as the visual and narrative representations of these women show. Jewish women represented in the Catholic imagination are typically young, beautiful and sensual, and contain a didactic message of perversion. The portrayal of Jewish women as beautiful, yet dangerous, follows a Christian tradition that relies on a pattern of negative marks. These images reflect sensual women, dressed in luxurious clothes, adorned with overloaded jewels, who seduce and deceive Catholic men, who are unable to reject their beauty and fall for their seduction. The message contained is didactic as they warn the Catholic audience that youth and beauty are only elements of temptation, and that every young and beautiful Jewish woman will eventually become an old Jewish woman, who represents evil and sin. The elderly character symbolizes the stereotyped inquisitorial image of the matriarchal Jewish woman, who remains active in her sacrilege against Christ and, as an allegory of the synagogue, becomes the very personification of Judaism.