Pure Blood Statutes in Sixteenth Century Toledo. Implementation as Opposed to Adoption

Together with the Inquisition, the pure blood statutes have at­ tracted sorne of the harshest criticism to be leveled at Early Modero Spain • Designed to exclude any individual not descended from Old Christians, adoption of these statutes by military and religious orders, city councils and cathedral chapters, and colleges and confraternities, began in the fifteenth century and became ever more prevalent after 1520. The statutes were directed against the minorities of Castile, the descendents of Moors and Jews who were considered New Christians beca use of their relatively recent conversion to Christianity, although as is true with the Inquisition, the descendents of Jewish converts, known also as conversos or confesos, were the primary target.

when Pero Sarmiento, appointed by Juan II in 1446 to replace Pedro López de Ayala as alcalde mayor of Toledo, led the city into open rebellion. The immediate cause of the uprising was a tax imposed by constable Álvaro de Luna that was to be collected by the converso treasurer, Alfonso Cota 6 • The new impost enraged the tax payers, who first attacked and plundered Cota's house and then other conversos and their property. Afterwards, fourteen con versos were deprived of their municipal offices and, according to the new statute, neither they nor any other converso could ever again hold public office in the city.
Testimonies to the long-term failure of the 1449 statute are numerous. Among the municipal office holders who signed an ephe meral peace treaty in 1458 are several easily identifiable converso names: Fuente, Arroyo, Quadra, Husillo, and Juan Álvarez de Toledo-Zapata, father of the future crown secretary, Hernán Álvarez de Toledo-Zapata 7 • More evidence is given in 1468 when, after another outbreak of street fighting, fires and pillaging in 1467, conversos were again deprived of their public offices, which obviously means they had regained admission to the city council.
Most historians agree that in the fifteenth century the implemen tation of pure blood statutes in the city council was a failure. The statutes may serve as an indication of increasing anti-Semitism, but they did not serve as a meaos of keeping conversos out of the Toledo city government. The issue of pure blood in the city council did not come up again until the 1560s, but meanwhile the conversos had other preoccupations, given that in 1485 the Inquisition was number of persons removed from office in 1449 as eleven. the number adopted by F. Márquez Villanueva. According to A. A. Sicroff (p. 55, note 39) and a document transcribed by E. Benito Ruano (doc. 16), the number is fourteen. http://sefarad.revistas.csic.es established in Toledo 8 • This institution provided yet another means of keeping conversos out of the city council, since anyone punished by the Holy Office was automatically deprived from holding public office. It was the lower--and middle-class conversos who received the brunt of the Inquisition's public attack in the early years 9, not those with important aristocratic or royal connections who either escaped completely or frequently availed themselves of a secret reconciliation with the church. But in later years, even the descend ents of those publicly punished by the Inquisition managed to overcome this stigma. Descendents of the jurados, notaries, mer chants, and tax collectors whose names appear on the list of those reconciled or punished in 1486 or la ter, reappear in the city govern ment in the sixteenth century, sometimes with the same surname, sometimes with another.
One example of such a success story is a family that used the name Santo Domingo, with the occasional addition of Herrera. Gutierre de Santo Domingo, a trapero by profession, was one of the thousands of Toledo conversos reconciled in 14 86 1 0 • Both he and his wife f ormed part of the group reconciliation ceremonies that occurred after «The Time of Grace». Gutierre was accused of ob serving such Jewish practices as lighting candles on Friday night, celebrating Passover, eating unleavened bread and cooking special meals, dressing in clean clothes on Saturday, and blessing his children in a J ewish manner.
One of Gutierre's sons, Diego de Santo Domingo, managed to escape any contact with the Inquisition, possibly because he was too young, or possibly beca use he left town bef ore the Holy Office arrived in Toledo 11• A cloth merchant by trade, Diego, died in 1548. He and bis wife, Inés Álvarez Cota, a member of the far-flung Cota clan of Toledo, left behind two sons, Gutierre de Santo Domingo and Juan de Herrera y Santo Domingo, both merchants. The eldest son Gutierre died in 1554. This left the younger brother Juan as head of the family and the family business, which he ran with great acumen and profit, eventually becoming a wholesaler who dealt in a variety of products and merchandise, as well as a so urce of loa ns f or those in need of cash.
In 1557, at about forty-seven years of age, sorne seventy years after bis grandfather had been reconciled by the lnquisition, Juan de Herrera y Santo Domingo was a ble to huy f or himself the office of regidor in Toledo 12• N ot surprisingly, after he became a regidor, Juan de Herrera dropped the Santo Domingo portian of his sur name, as that was the name associated with the lnquisition punish ment. However, the name Herrera was very popular with Toledo conversos, and few local people were ignorant of bis origins. The apparent ease with which Juan de Herrera purchased bis office underlines a basic element of Castilian society that counted for much in overcoming dubious lineage: money.
To support bis wars against heretics, Charles v needed immense sums of money, and the Castilian Council of Finance resorted to all sorts of creative money-raising schemes to find these sums 13• In the 1540s and 1550s aristocrats and prelates were pressed for donations to the crown, juros (state bonds) were sold in abundance, and villages, titles of hidalgufa (patents of nobility), and public offices were sold to those who could afford to huy them. However, in the 1550s, sales of sorne of these items were not going as well as had been anticipated. From Jaén, Diego de Córdoba y Mendoza wrote the crown that he had no luck selling hida/gufas in that city, he thought because the purchase of a municipal office was cheaper and achieved the same end, which was to pay no taxes 14 • According to bis report, a medical doctor had offered 4,000 ducats for all three municipal offices to be sold in Jaén, while another individual was willing to pay 800 ducats a piece for the three notarial offices to be sold. In Toledo the crown operative was the regidor Rodrigo Niño, who reported, on 24 March 1557, that he was having little success in selling any of the 150 titles of hidalguías the crown hoped would be purchased by «persons of wealth and property» 15 • The prospective buyers ali responded that they did not need to huy hidalguía because by living in Toledo they enjoyed hidalguía through the privileges and liberties given the city by past monarchs. To this Rodrigo Niño pointed out that one day they might have to leave Toledo and, if they did, they and their children would be taxpayers. However, <<neither this reason nor many others that I gave were sufficient to move even one of them to pay a real for hidalguía» 16 • The only item on the list that elicited interest was the sale of municipal offices.

A(rchivo) G(eneral) de S(imancas), C(onsejos) y J(untas) de
The reaction of the prospective purchasers, who wanted the best val u e f or their money and were not seduced by the prospect of nobility but were attracted by tax exemption, suggests that the group being appealed to in 1557 was largely of middle class origins. From the crown's point of view, the sale of municipal offices to the men of commerce, trade and finance aff orded an opportunity to tap the resources of these prosperous citizens. For the purchaser, a municipal office off ered many attractions aside from tax exemption. As a regidor, he would be able to take part in and possibly influence local politics, as well as increase bis income by participating in the 14  numerous deficit-financing schemes organized by the city council. And even if the office holder preferred not to attend the council meetings, the title of regidor made him a member of the local ruling oligarchy, which conferred a fair degree of social status and prestige within the community. Finally, since municipal offices could be sold or transmitted to one's heirs, they were a good long-term investment.
The crown's lack of success in selling hidalguía in the 1550s is partially explicable in terms of their high price: 5,000 ducats for hidalguía as opposed to 1,800 ducats for a regiduría in Toledo. Yet another explanation is that hidalguía could be acquired by other means. An hidalgo, literally a son of someone, occupied the lowest echelon of the noble estate 17 • The best way to acquire hidalguía was through blood lines, known as hidalguía de sangre. Barring this good f ortune, it could also be purchased from the crown, never a popular method judging by the small number of patents of nobility sold 18• A more favored recourse was an appeal to the chancellery or appeal courts, in the case of Toledo the chancellery of Valladolid, which would issue to successful litigants cartas ejecutorias, leading to the creation of hijosdalgo de ejecutoria 19 • Contemporaries knew and distinguished between hidalguía de sangre and hidalgula de eje cutoria, the former being the most admired but the latter also served sorne useful purposes for the owners.
The number of offices available in the Toledo city council varied. ldeally, there were twenty-f our regidores and two jurados for each parish, but these numbers fluctuated dramatically according to the financia} needs and strength of the crown. In the fifteenth century the numbers rose to an ali-time high in 1475 when there were fifty- two regidores and seventy-five jurados 20• The number of regidores was slowly reduced to the original twenty-f our by the Catholic Kings, but throughout the sixteenth century it increased. Charles V added a total of fifteen new regidurías in Toledo; three in 1543, four in 1549, and eight in 1557. Philip II added more, and in 1581 there were thirty-six regidores, twenty-five who sat on the noble's bench and eleven who sat with the citizens. This excludes six officials -three alcaldes (mayor, de las alzadas, de mesta), an alferez, an alguazil mayor, and a depositario-general-who all had the right to sit and vote in the municipal council, making a total of f orty-two individuals who comprised the city council, nearly double the desired number 21 • As is true with most offices of the period, those of regidor and jurado were considered as personal property that could be either sold or transmitted to one's heirs. In the sixteenth century the crown had the right to approve the transmission of these offices, but it was rare that the office holder's wishes were not respected. The crown might have viewed the selling of municipal offices as a convenient way of raising money, but many regidores of the Toledo city council were not enthusiastic about the scheme 22• When the issue was debated in 1549, Rodrigo Niño was one of only two regidores who supported the plan, with twelve regidores opposed. Those opposed argued that the Catholic Kings had limited the number of regidores in Toledo to twenty-four, and when taking their oath of office they had sworn to uphold this limitation. In 1543, when the first sale of three new offices had occurred, they had agreed only on the condition that three existing offices be eliminated to maintain the correct number. Since this had not been carried out, http://sefarad.revistas.csic.es they were unwilling to accept the sale of any new municipal offices. Whatever the opinion of the Toledo city councillors, who had an obvious interest in maintaining a limited number, the crown con tinued to sell municipal offices 23 • In Toledo the crown handled these sales somewhat indirectly. Equal numbers of new seats were given to the two leading local aristocratic families, the Silva and the Ayala, counts of Cifuentes and Fuensalida, respectively, and they in turn sold them to others. This strategy worked to the benefit of the local leaders, who could build up their patronage network and still maintain a balance of power in the city council. The crown, however, got the money, which is not to say that the local élites did not collect sorne additional money. Juan de Herrera bought his seat from the Ayala clan, specifically caballero don Alonso Manrique de Ayala, a brother of the 4th count of Fuensalida, Pedro López de Ayala. The cost of the office was 1,800 ducats 24 • Jua.n de Herrera was not the only converso in the Toledo city council in the 1550s and l 560s. Limiting the discussion to those whose converso origins are reasonably well established, there is Gaspar Sánchez Franco, who also purchased a regiduria in 1557  The Toledo city council was divided into two benches of regi dores, one for nobles (caballeros), the other for citizens. The citizen's bench was dominated by conversos of the middling sort who had not yet had time, opportunity, money, or desire to intermarry with the local aristocrats. This is the bench where Juan de Herrera and all the men mentioned above sat. However, sorne wealthy conversos sat on the noble's bench. In 1534, after a bitter legal battle with many in the Toledo city council that had dragged on from at least 1529, Hernando Álvarez Ponce· de León, a grandson of the crown secretary Hernán Álvarez de Toledo-Zapata, was finally given a seat on the noble's bench 26• Juan de Herrera had been in office f or less than ten years when the crown decided to impose pure blood statutes in the Toledo municipal council 27 • The first royal letter arrived in Toledo in March 1566. It stipulated that those on the noble's bench were to be «hijosdalgo de sangre», whose parents had not had a «mechanical or vile office» presumably meaning they had· not been involved in manual labor or commerce. Those on the citizen's bench had to be «hijosdalgo or at least Old Christians, of pure blood, with no trace of Moor or Jew». For the citizen regidores the onus of having held a vile or mechanical office was to be pardoned, but the pure blood qualification would eliminate many of them. As is true with most of the sixteenth century pure blood statutes, the determination of these qualities was to occur after the initial office holder died and the 26 AMT, Libro de regidores, eighth old on right. Jerónimo Román de Higuera, «Familias de Toledo», R(eal) A(cademia) de la H(istoria), cod. 9/229, fols. 227-232, gives details and sorne of the documents relating to the lengthy litigation. The 1566 crown letter also called for a reduction in the number of regidores on both benches; the nobles would have sixteen seats, the citizens only eight seats. If enf orced, the reduction of seats, combined with the new personal qualifications, would deprive many of their municipal offices. But there was not a great flurry of activity to enforce the new ruling. To the royal order of 1566 the city council responded by doing nothing, and the arder was sus pended in April of that year. Yet another order to the same effect arrived in April of 1569, and this inspired sorne efforts to compliance, although it is impossible to say exactly what. In 1594 the city council consisted of forty-four individuals, twenty-eight regidores on the noble's bench, ten on the citizens bench and six officials, which was do u ble the number specified by the crown order of the 1560s 28• What prompted the new order for the Toledo city council? The explanation given by the crown was the avoidance of «differences, litigation, and passions» that had caused much «uneasiness and anxiety» in the city and the city council. But surely this is specious reasoning. If the issues of who was qualified to become a regidor and what bench they were to sit on had created discord and strife in the past, which they certainly had, the imposition of a pure blood statute on the citizen's bench would certainly exacerbate these prob lems. lt may be that this new ruling was nothing more than another stratagem for extorting money from the office holders, who would be f orced to have their nobility confirmed either by the crown or the chancellery courts, or pay more in bribes to have their lineage certified locally. That the crown continued to sell titles of hidalguías and offices to those who could afford them, including conversos, suggests that the money raised through these sales was too tempting to abandon. Hernán Suárez Franco, yet another of the numerous Franco clan, became a regidor in 1576 and purchased a patent of nobility in 1569 29 • And after nearly twenty years of litigation and appeals, another converso family finally secured a place on the 2 8 AGS, DGT, lnv. 24, leg. 322, nf. noble's bench when Antonio Álvarez de Alcocer was admitted as a noble regidor in 1583 30 • Juan de Herrera, however, made no effort to invest in hidalguía, even though he could certainly have paid the price. Aside from being deterred by the thought that purchased nobility was too expensive f or the rewards it brought, he might also have felt there was an element of risk in seeking a patent of nobility, which would involve sorne amount of possibly compromising genealogical research. On the other hand, if the Toledo-Zapata, the Franco, and the Alcacer families were successful in passing the test, surely every converso in Toledo could hope to pass.
It is also possible that Juan de Herrera and sorne of bis fellow citizen regidores were proud of their middle class background, be lieved that commerce and business activities were useful and respec table, alld did not aspire to nobility. This interpretation seems implicit in the protests presented to the crown against the 1566 statute by sorne citizen regidores, including Juan de Herrera, Fran cisco Sánchez de Toledo, Diego Hurtado, and three members of the Franco clan 31 • Starting with the premise that the citizen regidores knew more about the problems of the city and took a greater interest in the municipal council than the nobles, they argued that a decrease in the number of citizen regidores would leave the city less well governed. The truth of this assertion must await a more detailed study of the Toledo city council, but given their experience in the business world, it is certain that these men had a better understand ing of the city's finances than many nobles. What the protest <loes make clear is that in the 1560s the citizen regidores were confident of their abilities and talents, and their contribution to the well-being of their native city.
Aside from their converso origins, the men who wrote against the 1566 statute shared other traits. Excluding Diego Hurtado, whose personal life is not well enough known, their careers are similar. Having amassed a comf ortable f ortune through business and trade, they were the «new rich» of the mid-sixteenth century, who invested sorne of their wealth in improved social status and political influence through the purchase of a municipal office. As regidores, sorne exercised important civic responsibilities. During bis first years in office, Juan de Herrera was responsible f or much of the financing involved in buying the grain that fed a hungry populace during the famine and sickness of 1557 and 1558, and Francisco Sánchez de Toledo served as a procurador to tbe Castilian Cortes in 1569. To describe tbese men as forming part of a marginal group within Toledo society seems inappropriate in view of their economic achievements, their social mobility, and their political participation. In fr �t, it may bave been their success on tbe local level that caused a backli..f!h against tbem in the form of tbe 1566 pure blood statute. For bloo1.i lines were one area in which tbese meo remained unas similated and tbus open to attack. They were married to, and tbeir children married, spouses of other known converso families, wbicb is to say tbat tbey did not try to escape their origins by marrying into the relative safety of tbose reputed to be of pure blood. For wbatever reasons, tbey preserved tbeir etbnic origins witbin the family.
Juan de Herrera and bis wife, Leonor de Alcocer, bad thirteen cbildren baptized, ten of wbom lived to be adults 32 • All the spouses of tbe seven children who married were of converso origins, sorne from Toledo, otbers from more distant points. Of interest here are Juan de Herrera, J r., tbe youngest son wbo eventually inberited bis fatber's office of regidor, and the second daughter, Jerónima de Herrera, wbo married Francisco Sedefto de Mesa, an outsider from Albacete.
Exactly bow the Herrera-Santo Domingo clan carne into contact with tbe Albacete family is unknown, but Francisco Sedefto did not arrive in Toledo witbout resources or contacts. He was a regidor of Albacete, and bis father, Gabriel de Espinosa, had bis hidalgo status confirmed by the Granada chancellery sometime bef ore his death in 1559. Francisco's mother, Isabel de Solís, lived on forty years longer in Albacete, skillf ully managing the f amily investments.
In a world where family contacts counted a great <leal in achiev ing success, it is worth exploring the family network of Gabriel de Espinosa, for he had two influential relatives. One was Sebastián 32 A(rchivo) de la P(arroquia) de S(an) N(icolás), Libros 1, 2 de bautismos de San Vicente.

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Ramírez de Sedeño y Fuenleal, a comendador of a military arder and a regidor of Toledo as of 1558 33 • Another was a cleric, Diego Ramírez de Sedeño y Fuenleal 3 4 • In 1559 Diego Ramírez was also in Toledo as an inquisitor, and he was active in the arrest of the new Toledo archbishop, Bartolomé Carranza. In 1561 Diego Ramírez was appointed bishop of Pamplona and a year later left to attend the Council of Trent. He was accompanied on the journey by bis brother Sebastián, who f ormed part of an eighteen-person entourage, one of the largest in Trent.
The exact origins of the bishop of Pamplona are unknown, but he was a relative of a man who had been bishop of Cuenca, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa. This family boasted an impressive record in church appointments from the late-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, with a total of six prelates. What the prelates had in common was their birthplace in the village of Villaescusa de Haro, in the present-day province of Cuenca. As a biographer put it, «They called Villaescusa 'the fortunate', and it truly was ... as in little more than fifty years it gave to the church seven great prelates, all of the same family and surname►> 35 • The first of the dynasty was Dr. Gil Ramírez de Cuenca, who died bef ore he could take possession of the diocese of Calahorra. N ext was García Ramírez de Villaescusa, bishop of Oviedo when he died in 1508. He was an older brother of Diego Ramírez de Villaes cusa who became dean of Granada and Seville, senior chaplain of Queen Juana and her spouse Philip the Fair, successively bishop of Astorga (1498), Málaga (1500), and Cuenca (1518-1537), president of the chancellery court in Valladolid at the time of the Comunero The Toledo hearing was concerned with Jerónima de Herrera and her parents, and the testimony proceeded with boring predicta bility. The six witnesses included two clerics 41 , one the ninety-year old parish priest of San Vicente, where the Herrera family had their large, imposing houses; a jurado named Pedro de Manzanos; and Diego Hurtado and Juan Sánchez Cota, both called caballeros of Toledo and both enjoying the prefix of señor, neither of which is accurate. Juan Sánchez Cota, who lived practically next door to the Herrera household, must certainly have been a relative of Jerónima de Herrera, although he is not listed as such. The last witness was Juan de la Cámara, a majordomo of Pedro Zapata de la Cerda, who claimed to be unable to sign bis name so he made a cross at the end of bis testimony. Given that any majordomo worth his salary would have to be able to sign bis name, it seems clear that Juan de la Cámara pref erred not to sign his testimony. A man of the same name, and this is an uncommon name in Toledo, served as a witness for the baptism of one of Juan de Herrera's grandchildren in 1575, suggesting that he was a close friend of the family 42 • All six witnesses said almost the same thing. Establishing that members of the Herrera f amily were hijosda/go either by blood or by purchase was not easy since Juan de Herrera, Sr., had not availed himself of the opportunity to purchase such a title. The witnesses largely evaded this question by saying that in their dealings and conversation in Toledo, Juan de Herrera and his wife were considered as hijosda/go. This was feebly buttressed by the fact that the Herrera family was exempt from paying taxes because all citizens of Toledo were exempt from taxes. Other merits mentioned were that neither the candidate nor his father had ever had a vile office, they always lived very nobly and with much honor, and they owned very impressive houses in the city. All the witnesses stated unequiv ocally that Juan de Herrera and his wif e were of pure blood, with no compromising admixtures: «no les toca ninguna raza ni mescla de moro, judio ni confeso en ningun grado por muy remoto que sea» 43 • One witness embellished this by pointing out that Juan de Herrera, Jr., a brother of Jerónima, was a regidor of the city, an office that required proof of pure blood on the part of the office-holder.

AMT, Libro de regidores, ninth old on right. Sebastián Ramírez is mentioned as a comendador in A(rchivo) H(istórico) P(rovincial) de T(oledo), Prot. 1507, fols. 242-246, 16 January 1560, but I have been unable to locate him in any of the military orders.
In Alba ce te the investigation f ocussed on the paternal grandpar ents, Gabriel de Espinosa and Isabel de Solís. Since Gabriel de Espinosa had gone to more expense in certifying their hidalgo status in the Granada chancellery, the five witnesses here had an easy time affirming that the paternal grandparents were indeed hijosdalgo no torios; they had all seen the court document. As well, in 1590 Gabriel Sedeño enjoyed the title of «alguazil mayor of Albacete for the noble estate» certainly another of the numerous offices devised by the crown to sell to those who could aff ord to buy them. Isabel de Solís was a native of Albacete. Where Gabriel de Espinosa was born is more difficult to determine. Several witnesses said he was born in Villaescusa de Haro, where most of the Ramírez-Sedeño Villaescusa clan originated, but when the last witness mentioned that Gabriel de Espinosa was a native of San Clemente, the investi gation team moved there.
The villagers of San Clemente, sorne of whom were admitted relatives of Gabriel de Espinosa, were equally supportive of the candidate. From them we learn that Francisco Sedeño had been rumors that they were of J ewish origins; and those who said they were of pure blood, that is, no Jewish blood. The first group was the most numerous with a total of nine witnesses. The second group accounted f or five witnesses. This makes a total of fourteen witnesses who stated they either knew or had heard that the candidate's maternal grandparents were of Jewish origins. Only seven witnesses testified to their pure blood.
·Those in the second group -the undecided-kept their obser vations to a mínimum, adopting a fairly common technique of making assumptions based upan decisions already determined by the crown. They pleaded ignorance about the lineage of the regidor Juan de Herrera, Sr., and Leonor de Alcocer, but they assumed that since their son Juan de Herrera, Jr., was a regidor and had to prove his untainted lineage to occupy this office, and since Gabriel Sedeño had already received a habit of Montesa, their lineage must be acceptable. Gossip and doubts about their blood lines had circulated in the city, but they themselves knew nothing certain about this question.
But other were far more certain. The seventy-two-year-old Fer nando de Salazar stated that the grandparents of the candidate were descendents of Jews « ... que no los tiene por hombres limpios sino por confessos y descendientes de judíos, y que esto es publico y notoria y publica voz y fama. En esta ciudad se escandalizaron mucho de ver en Gabriel Sedefto el habito de tan insigne orden y que se entendio que la informacion que se hizo para darsele se hizo traiendo las partes los testigos>► 45 • Don Hernando Carrillo Osario went still f urther by adding that not only was Juan de Herrera, Sr., a descendent of Jews but that he «possessed not a drop of Old Christian blood». Still worse, Juan de Herrera, Sr., had gotten his start in the business world by sweeping a merchant's shop floor: 45 AHN, OM, Montesa, exp. 453, Gabriel Sedefio de Mesa y Herrera, nf, witness 3, second hearing; « ••• which is notorious and well known. In this city there was great scandal upon seeing Gabriel Sedefio in the habit of so illustrious an order, and it was understood that the investigation carried out to gíve it to him was done by paying witnesses to give favorable testimony». Señor Pedro de Silva argued that both sets of grandparents, maternal and paternal, were descendents of Jews: «Dixo que no solamente los padres de Gabriel Sedeño les tiene por judios pero sus abuelos ansi paternos como maternos les tiene y ha tenido por judios y confessos ... y fue de grave escandalo el dia que le viere con el habito de Montesa y ansi le tiene por incapaz del habito» 47 • Alonso de Rojas also accused the paternal grandparents of Jewish blood: «No conocio al padre de Gabriel Sedeño pero entendio que no es christiano viejo ni limpio porque caso con Gerónima de Herrera cuyas hermanas todos [casaron] con confesos y con descendientes de judios; y por buena consequencia se a de entender y sospechar que el padre de Gabriel Sedeño era confeso, pues caso con confe sa» 48.

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, Avalos, who gratuitously complained that the admission of Juan de Herrera, J r., as a regidor after the crown ordered that a pure blood statute be enacted in the Toledo city council had caused another scandal in the city.
Toe f our humblest witnesses -an apothecary, a citizen, a farmer, and a surgeon-all testified to Juan de Herrera, Sr's untainted lineage, as did the maestrescuela, Antonio de Covarrubias, and the prebendary and secretary of the lnquisition, Juan Bautista de Chaves. While numerically outvoted, they gained an important supporter with the corregidor Alonso de Cárcoma. The corregidor based bis testimony on an investigation carried out by Gaspar de Robles, a Toledo regidor and familiar of the Holy Office, which concluded that Juan de Herrera, Jr., was · of pure blood. To explain bis decision and «to unburden his conscience», the corregidor offered the f ollowing homily: ccE n este lugar ay gente de tan mala inclinacion que se ofresceran a defamar en esta y en otras informaciones como se? [esta?] a decir contra la limpieza y calidad de hombres limpios y principales y honrrados, porque a este que declara an venido muchas personas deste lugar a poner faltas y defectos en la calidad y limpieza de muchas personas graves y principales en quien no cabe ni ay las tales faltas; de donde infiere que es conveniente andar con recato en semejantes diligencias y para la verificacion dellas hecha mano de gentes que no sean apasionadas y que sean christianos temerosos de dios» 50 • The corregidor was correct when he said that many people in Toledo were willing to accuse others of impure blood, and he was wise in bis decision to proceed with caution. But it is likely that bis posture of circumspection was influenced by the money -1,000 ducats-that sorne witnesses accused him of accepting from the candidate, an arrangement not mentioned by Alonso de Cárcoma in bis testimony. In addition, Gas par de Robles, the man who carried 50 lbid., witness 21, second hearing; «In [Toledo] there are people of such evil inclination that they off er to defame, in this and in other hearings, the purity and quality of pure, prominent, and honorable men. Many people have come [to me] from [Toledo] to allege faults and defects in the quality and purity of many grave and prominent persons who do not have such faults. From this I infer that it is wise to proceed with circumspection in such procedures, and for verification to use people who are not prejudiced and who are Christians f earful of God». http://sefarad.revistas.csic.es out the investigation of the lineage of Juan de Herrera, Jr., was himself of dubious lineage, and in later years the name Cárcoma appears as a surname f or a son of the Franco family, suggesting that while the corregidor was in office he f ormed a marriage alliance with another wealthy converso. family of Toledo. Money, combined with friends and· relatives in high places, allowed many conversos to achieve and secure their upward mobility, and in many cases to make a mockery of the pure blood statutes.
For a reader with no knowledge of the Herrera-Santo Domingo family, it would be difficult to know what conclusions to draw from the conflicting evidence presented in this case. If in the second hearing the majority confirmed the converso origins of Gabriel Sedeño's mother, sorne witnesses did not, and the corregidor's speech put the motives of ali the adverse witnesses in doubt. However, in this case the majority was correct. The amount and degree of perjury, most obviously in the first trial but also in the second, is striking. That the more humble citizens might not know the origins of Juan de Herrera is credible, but it is highly doubtful that maes trescuela Antonio de Covarrubias, the corregidor, or the secretary of the lnquisition, who had access to ali the inquisition documents, would not know. Possibly they were ali bribed, or possibly they wanted to help a fellow traveller or to express their dislike of the pure blood syndrome. One apparent result of the pure blood statutes was the creation of a sizeable number of perjurers.
By the 1590s the Herrera family could boast a member in two institutions that had pure blood statutes, but is their experience an exception or the norm? In the case of enf orcement of pure blood statutes in the Toledo city council, their experience appears to be typical. The Herreras retained their office of regidor until 1629, when this branch of the family died out. The Franco and Hurtado f amilies also continued on as regidores into the seventeenth century. While the office occupied by Diego Hurtado was eliminated when he died in 1567, it was re-created in the form of a new office known as the depositario-genera/ that was bought by another converso,

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Toledo had no children, so the continuity of this family ended with his death. With the military orders things were a bit riskier. One can cite more deserving candidates than Gabriel Sedeño who were refused a habit because of their tainted lineage 52 , but Gabriel Sedeño was not the only Toledano of converso origins to boast a military habit, even bef ore the opening up period initiated by the count-duke of Olivares in the seventeenth century.
However one chooses to interpret the pure blood statutes, their effectiveness in keeping conversos out of desirable institutions or corporations is as questionable in the sixteenth century as it was in the fifteenth century. This is not to say that the statutes were without effect. As the seventeenth century wore on, men like Juan de Herrera, Sr., proud of their accomplishments and their middle class or citizen status, slowly faded from view. The deteriorating economic conditions in Castile from 1580 onward certainly played a role in fortifying the deleterious values embodied in the pure blood statutes -no business activities or demeaning physical labor, such as sweeping shopfloors; no paying of taxes; and Old Christian origins, best demonstrated by distant forbears from the north of the Península. By 1650, citizen regidores were a thing of the past in the Toledo city council, and nearly all the regidores were members of a military arder or familiares of the Inquisition. The irony is that many of these men were descendents of those against whom the pure blood statutes were aimed. For a variety of reasons, in the seventeenth century they chose to seek the titles and adopt the lifestyle that had come to be associated with pure blood.
By concentrating on a family that chose to maintain its ethnic identity, this paper may have the regrettable effect of strengthening another common misconception: that the upper levels of Toledo society can be neatly divided into Old and New Christians. This is not the case, f or intermarriage between the two groups occurred in the fifteenth century and continued on into the sixteenth century. This, however, is another tapie to be explored in the future.

SUMMARY
This article is concerned with the pure blood statutes in the city of Toledo, particularly those imposed by the crown on the city council in 1566, and how the statutes aff ected sorne conversos. lncluded in the analysis are the sales of municipal offices and titles of hidalguía by the crown, and the social status of sorne conversos who brought regidurías before 1566. One Toledo family is used to demonstrate the marriage alliances preferred by sorne wealthy conversos and the means by which conversos overcame efforts to exclude them from the city council and other positions of status.