“... it was their last chance to avoid forcible conversion...a later wave of persecution saw them all forcibly converted..”
That’s the sort of thing Michener meant by “Black Legend.” Christian doctrine does not allow for forcible conversion, at all, ever. That, together with other sources I have read, leads me to classify allegations of “forced conversion” as fake history.
Forcible, coerced by circumstance... oh what a difference.
Not when living meant being able to keep one’s earned estate in the land.
Christian doctrine also calls for one to turn the other cheek and bless one’s enemies, which has been honored in the breach more often than otherwise. A lot of history is fake, but this is not. During the 1300s, there were forced conversions galore in Spain, with the blessings of the clergy on the endeavor. This was no black legend, but actual fact. 100,000 Jews converted, 100,000 were murdered, and the remaining 100,000 finally left in 1492, deeply impoverished. In Portugal, the forcible conversions and introduction of the Inquisition preceded the Portuguese monarch’s son’s marriage to a scion of the Isabella/Ferdinand line. Entire communities kept their real faith in underground synagogues, while attending church and pretending devoutness. In recent decades, at least one such community came out of hiding.
In Poland, Chmelnicki’s uprising saw the commission of even more heinous crimes against the Jewish community, although it was primarily aimed at the Polish overlords. It would be nice if all this was fake history. But it’s not.
In Gibraltar, Jews, Christians and Muslims live in commercial competition but otherwise in harmony. Ladino is still spoken on the streets, along with Arabic and Spanish. And that’s all the fault of Capitalism.