"Following this violence, the Inquisition that began in the late 15th century, and the expulsions, Sephardic Jews spread throughout the Mediterranean littoral and the Ottoman Empire, as well as to Holland, England, the Western Hemisphere (in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Inquisition's long arm pursued conversos--crypto- Jews who professed to be practicing Christians--to such places as Lima and M" . . . . .