A forged letter exchange forged the medical-murder conspiracy myth

Evidence

The perceived link between the ‘secret identity’ of the judeoconversos and their role as medical practitioners soon became an integral part of an elaborate antisemitic conspiracy theory that appeared in the second half of the sixteenth century and was based on two forged letters. One of these letters was supposedly written and sent by the Jews of Toledo to the Jews of Constantinople in 1492, complaining of their fate and persecution by Old Christians, and the other was the reply to the latter, advising them to make use of their new public identity as Christians and infiltrate Christian institutions in order to gain their revenge. Among the professions that the judeoconversos were advised to infiltrate by the Jews in Constantinople were the medical professions. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 384

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how two forged letters became evidence for a murder conspiracy - the epidemiology of fabricated ‘proof’ texts across centuries of antisemitism.