In April 1506 a violent massacre of New Christians took place in Lisbon, killing thousands of people accused of Jewish ancestry or false conversion. The event exposed the dangers faced by conversos in Iberian society. It also deepened the climate of fear surrounding religion, identity and speech.

Sephardic exile, crypto-Jewish memory and Iberian religious repression shaped poetry, lament and historical writing across the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. The massacre helps explain the hidden voices and coded expressions found in early modern minority literature.