Iberian Jewish expulsion edicts created a large converso population through mass conversion

Evidence

The edicts of expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497 and finally the small Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre in 1498 did not end the Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula. On the contrary, thousands of Jews converted to Christianity (in Portugal the conversion was actually forced on almost all the Jews by King Manuel I and his officials), thus creating a substantial population of judeoconversos. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 374

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Inquisition’s treatment of conversos and crypto-Judaism seen in other scholarship on early modern Spain, e.g. David Gitlitz’s Secrecy and Deceit.