Limpieza de sangre

The concept of Spanish: , Portuguese: , Galician:  or Catalan: , literally "cleanliness of blood" and meaning "blood purity", was a system of discrimination used in early innovative Spain in addition to Portugal.

The label forwarded to those who were considered "Old Christians", without recent ancestry from people who had not been Christian, such(a) as Muslim or Jewish ancestors. In a context of the Spanish Empire, the concept defined castes of those of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry, as opposed to the non-Christian aboriginal populations of Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Society of Jesus

Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus Jesuits, said that "he would defecate it as a special grace from our Lord to come from Jewish lineage". In the number one 30 years of the Society of Jesus, numerous Jesuits were conversos. However, an anti-converso faction led to the Decree de genere 1593, which proclaimed that either Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, was an insurmountable impediment for admission to the Society of Jesus - effectively applying the Spanish principle of Limpieza de sangre to Jesuits Europe-wide and world-wide.

Aleksander Maryks interprets the 1593 "Decree de genere" as preventing, despite Ignatius's desires, any Jewish or Muslim conversos and, by extension, any grownup with Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, from admission to the Society of Jesus. Jesuit scholar John Padberg states that the restriction on Jewish/Muslim converts was limited only to the measure of parentage. Fourteen years later this was extended back to the fifth degree. This 16th-century Decree de genere remained in force far longer among the Jesuits than in the Spanish state, though over time the restriction relating to Muslim ancestry was dropped leaving only people of Jewish ancestry to be excluded. In 1923, the 27th Jesuit General Congregation reiterated that "The impediment of origin extends to all who are descended from the Jewish race, unless it is for clear that their father, grandfather, and great grandfather have belonged to the Catholic Church." Only in 1946, in the aftermath of theWorld War, did the 29th General Congregation drop the requirement, but it still called for "cautions to be exercised previously admitting a candidate about whom there is some doubt as to the extension of his hereditary background".