THE ORIGINS OF THE FAMILY AND ITS FIRST STEPS IN GOVERNMENT

ON FRIDAY, 15 JUNE 1492, Abraham Senior and his son-in-law Rabbi Meir Melamed were baptized with great pomp and circumstance in the presence of the king and queen and other great personages in Guadalupe. For all of those present the occasion was highly significant. For the monarchs it was a double victory: both a solution of impending problems regarding cash flow to the Royal Treasury, and also a step towards the end of Judaism in Spain. For the converts themselves it was the end of their lives as Jews and the beginning of their new path in Christian society.

The family as a whole probably did not abandoned Judaism, for it cannot be assumed that all its members from Ávila, Guadalajara, and Segovia made their way to Guadalupe in order to be baptized in the royal ceremony. Indeed, we shall see below that some of the family went into exile at the time of the expulsion.

In order to understand the activities of Abraham Senior, who became Fernán Núñez Coronel after his conversion, and his son-in-law Rabbi Meir Melamed, who became Fernán Pérez Coronel, we must turn our attention to their beginnings as Castilian Jews and their ties to prominent personages of the kingdom. Nothing is known about the origin of the family. Given its activity in the region of Ávila, Guadalajara, Segovia, and Medina del Campo, most likely it came from there. In the opinion of A. Marx, Abraham Senior was 80 years old when he converted to Christianity, which means that he was born in 1412. If we accept this estimate, we find that the first document associated with him, dating from 12 February 1468, shows he was already well established when he began to develop ties with the authorities. In any event, he certainly knew Rabbi Abraham Bienveniste of Soria, and he would have been very familiar with the steps he took for the renewal of the Jewish community of Castile, since he organized the conference of the representatives of Jewish communities which convened in Valladolid in 1432 and instituted certain ordinances. Moreover, Abraham Senior was known to Abraham's son Don Joseph Bienveniste, who farmed and collected taxes during the 1440s and 1450s, and also to Abraham Bienveniste, the son of Joseph, and to Vidal Bienveniste.