ALFONSO DE OROPESA

ALFONSO DE OROPESA (d. 1468), head of the Geronimite Order in Spain, said to have been of Jewish descent. In the early 1460s clashes took place in the cities of Castile between the ex-Jews who had adopted Catholicism (conversos ) and their opponents among the Old Christian population. Alfonso now advised King Henry IV to take measures to supervise the Conversos and punish backsliders to Judaism. The king authorized him to execute his relatively moderate program, and Alfonso then conducted the investigation in Toledo and its environs for an entire year, imposing what he considered were adequate penalties. In 1465 Alfonso completed his Lumen ad Revelationem Gentium ("to prove the unity of all the faithful"), in which he explained his plan for the solution of the problem of both the Conversos and the Jews. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Baer, Spain, 2 (1966), 289ff., 302; H.C. Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, 1 (1906), 127, 153; A.A. Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts de "Pureté de Sang" en Espagne du XVè au XVIIè siècle (1960), 67ff. M. Orfali, "Ha-She'elah ha-Yehudit bi-Tfisato shel Frey Alonso de Oropesa," in: Zion, 51:4 (1986), 411–33. (Zvi Avneri)