From the late fourteenth century onwards attempts to prohibit the use of the term Marrano (which derives from pig), for converted Jews proved totally ineffective. Although some papal bulls do not use the term,
there was a general and increasing tendency to extend its application not only to Jews but to Spaniards in general.
During the 1490s the arrival in Italy of Spanish Jews, fleeing from Inquisition,
fixed in the mid of Italians the conviction that virtually all Spaniards were Jews.
Pope Alexander VI, himself a Valencian by birth, was called a "faithless Marrano" by Savaranola, a "circumcised Marrano" by his successor, Julius II (
*).
"
I will become a Jew, with the Spaniards", remarked Pasquino in Rome at the time of election of a Spanish protégé as Pope Hadrian VI in 1521.
When Charles V came to Bologne in 1529 to be crowned by Clement VII he was accompanied, according to Arentino, by "Don Rodrigo of Valencia
(surely an allusion to Rodrigo Borgia,
Alexander VI),
with a suite of 1,000 Marranos"
For another Italian poet, writing in 1540,
the whole of Italy under Spanish rule was subject to "Marranos"
Its slightly more surprising to find one of the greatest Reformation Popes,
Pius V, describing the ministers of Philip II as " barbarians and Marranos", so daring that they think they can guide (the king) in any religious matter