What Spanish term means 'purity of blood' and was enforced by the Inquisition?

The Spanish term meaning “purity of blood” was limpieza de sangre. It described a system that classified people according to ancestry, especially whether they could prove descent from Old Christians without Jewish, Muslim, Romani, or Agote ancestors.

The earliest famous statute appeared in Toledo in 1449 after an anti-converso revolt. Such rules increasingly barred New Christians—Jewish converts and Moriscos—from offices, schools, religious institutions, guilds, and military orders. The system treated ancestry as a permanent social mark, even when a family had been Christian for generations.

The Spanish Inquisition helped spread and administer this discriminatory culture, but the statutes were not simply a single nationwide Inquisition law. Individual institutions adopted their own requirements, often demanding genealogical investigations and sworn testimony. A suspected ancestor could damage an entire family’s reputation and prospects.

Limpieza de sangre is therefore not a neutral religious phrase. It became a framework for hereditary exclusion and an important precursor to later racialized ideas of identity. Requirements declined from the 18th century onward; major legal abolition began in the 19th century, although some practices persisted for decades.