"More than a century had passed since Ferdinand and Isabel had expelled the
Jews from Spain. The people of the Peninsula were beginning to pay the price for
that 'purging,' as it was called. It was not the price imagined by so many
sentimental historians. Spain was not being ruined, as schoolchildren have been
told, because the Jews took away their gold and their astute commercial minds.
For the number of Jews who left, probably not over 160,000, it is now generally
agreed, was small compared to those who remained in the country as Marranos,
baptized Catholics, some sincere, other secretly observing the rites of Judaism.
These latter kept their wealth and power, made new contacts, remained in
communication with the more courageous Jews who were scattered throughout
Europe...Wherever it worked it strove, as in past times, to destroy...Christianity.
Where it could not openly attack, it endeavored to undermine and weaken the
structure...In short, no panacea had ever healed the Jewish aversion (hatred) to
Christianity, and ended the acts and policies that logically flowed therefrom, save
pure undiluted Christianity itself. Saints like Vincent Ferrer had caused the
genuine assimilation of thousands of Jews who enriched the Spanish mind and
culture with a new vitality and dept; and to such an extent that Pope Adrian VI
could speak of the whole Spanish nation as 'the Jews.' But the politicians with
their expedients and compromises had left in the unconverted Jewish heart a
natural human bitterness, with a thirst for revenge and a greater determination not
to examine the claims of the Church." (Philip II, William Thomas Walsh, pp. 90-
91).
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