Editing Marrano (section)

===Converso-Jewish relations===
The ''conversos'' of Seville and other cities of Castile, and especially of Aragon, bitterly opposed the [[Spanish Inquisition]] established in 1478. They rendered considerable service to the king, and held high legal, financial, and military positions. The government issued an edict directing traditional Jews to live within a ghetto and be separated from ''conversos''. Despite the law, however, the Jews remained in communication with their [[New Christian]] brethren.

"They sought ways and means to win them from Catholicism and bring them back to Judaism. They instructed the Marranos in the tenets and ceremonies of the Jewish religion; held meetings in which they taught them what they must believe and observe according to the Mosaic law; and enabled them to circumcise themselves and their children. They furnished them with prayer-books; explained the fast-days; read with them the history of their people and their Law; announced to them the coming of the Passover; procured unleavened bread for them for that festival, as well as [[kosher]] meat throughout the year; encouraged them to live in [[conformity]] with the law of Moses, and persuaded them that there was no law and no truth except the Jewish religion." These were the charges brought by the government of [[Ferdinand II of Aragon]] and [[Isabella I of Castile]] against the Jews. They constituted the grounds for their expulsion and banishment in 1492, so they could not subvert ''conversos''. Jews who did not want to leave Spain had to accept baptism as a sign of conversion.

The historian Henry Kamen's ''Inquisition and Society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'' questions whether there were such strong links between ''conversos'' and Jewish communities. Whilst historians such as Yitzhak Baer state, "the conversos and Jews were one people",<ref name="Kamen pg 27">{{Citation |title=Inquisition and Society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries |first=Henry |last=Kamen |page=27 |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=1985 |isbn=0-253-22775-5 }}.</ref> Kamen claims, "Yet if the conversos were hated by the Christians, the Jews liked them no better."<ref name="Kamen pg 27"/> He documented that "Jews testified falsely against them [the conversos] when the Inquisition was finally founded."<ref name="Kamen pg 27"/> This issue is being debated by historians.