Changing minds-changing bodies: The gendered subject of conversion

This chapter presents Profiat Duran and examines a few segments from two of his letters that are relevant to the discussion: his Letter of Lamentation and his polemical letter Be Not Like Your Fathers. While Duran serves a symbol of converso anti-Christian defiance, Pablo is often turned into an emblem of enthusiastic converso assimilation to Christian society and even of anti-Jewish zeal. The chapter deals with Pablo de Santa Mara and some of his corresponding ideasabout converso identity as they were presented in his polemical dialogue Scrutinium scripturarum, based on a reading of the Epistle to the Romans and its allegories. Pablo de Santa Mara concluded his anti-Jewish' polemical dialogue with themessage that the carnal descendants of Israel from the biblical fathers, through the Second Temple Pharisees and Talmudists, the Jews and converts of the Middle Ages, and until the end of time would share a common history and future.