Jews and Converted Jews in the Business of Wool Trade and Cloth Manufacture in Soria from the 14th to the 17th Century

Abstract

Research about the role that Jews and Converted Jews played in the local economy of the Castilian town of Soria during a long period of time, from the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. It is based on the comparative analysis of the results of previous monographic works, and in the study of many unpublished archival documents from the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The author highlights the connections between the establishment of Portuguese families of Jewish origin in the city of Soria in the last decades of the sixteenth century, that has so far remained unnoticed by the historiography, and the social and economic realities of the previous centuries in this Castilian town, characterized by the economic dynamism of the Jews, and of the Converted Jews. He highlights the fact that the Portuguese families established in Soria at the end of the sixteenth century were devoted to the same economic activities practiced by Jews and Converted Jews in this same town in the previous centuries. These activities were the usual ones for the members of the social group that we identify as “middle class.”