Hidden lives, hidden history and hidden manuscripts. In The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Conversos, Marie-Theresa Hernandez unmasks the secret lives of "conversos" and "judaizantes" and their likely influence on the Catholic Church in the New World. The terms converso and judaizante are often used for descendants of Spanish Jews (the Sephardi, or Sefarditas as they are sometimes called), who converted under duress to Christianity in the 14th and 15th centuries.

There are few, if any, archival documents that prove the existence of judaizantes after the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and the Portuguese expulsion in 1497, as it is unlikely that a secret Jew in 16th-century Spain would have documented his allegiance to the Law of Moses, thereby providing evidence for the Inquisition.