1492 expulsion decree against the Jews

The 1492 expulsion decree against the Jews is invoked in the introduction not as an episode in Lázaro’s narrated life, but as historical context for a disputed hypothesis about the anonymous author of the work. Its relevance lies in the possibility that the writer came from the community of Jews forced to convert to Christianity after the decree, a possibility the introduction carefully leaves unproven.

The Decree as Historical Context

The introduction identifies the decree of 1492 as the measure issued by the Catholic Monarchs that expelled Jews from their kingdoms. It supplies the background for the term conversos: Jews who converted to Christianity under the pressure of expulsion, sometimes only formally. The decree therefore enters the discussion of the book through the history of religious coercion and conversion, rather than through an event directly depicted in Lázaro’s story.

A Hypothesis About the Anonymous Author

The author’s identity had long been debated, and the introduction reviews competing attributions, including Juan de Ortega, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the Valdés brothers, Lope de Rueda, and Sebastián de Horozco. None, it concludes, is supported by conclusive evidence; absent an unlikely new discovery, the work is likely to remain anonymous. Against that uncertainty, the introduction suggests that the author’s background may nevertheless be located broadly within learned Castilian humanism, or perhaps among the conversos. The latter possibility is associated with A. Castro, but is presented as a proposal rather than a settled identification.

The Work and the Limits of Inference

The introduction points to the classical learning displayed with deliberate irony in the Prologue, where it undercuts the supposed rusticity of the fictional autobiography, and to the book’s pervasive anticlericalism as features that may inform discussion of the author’s cultural milieu. These observations do not establish that the writer was a converso, nor do they demonstrate a particular religious affiliation or doctrinal position. The decree’s significance here is therefore interpretive and conditional: it makes a possible social and historical background legible, while the author’s identity and the precise origins of the book’s critique remain unresolved.