baptized descendants with any fraction New Christian blood up to the third generation, the fourth generation being exempted. In Phillip II's reign, it included any person with any fraction of New Christian blood "from time immemorial". In Portugal, in 1772, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquess of Pombal decreed an end to the legal distinction between New Christians and Old Christians. New Christian as a legal category Although the category of New Christian is meaningless in Christian theology and ecclesiology, it was introduced by the Old Christians who claimed "pure unmixed" Christian bloodlines to distinguish themselves as a unique group, separated from ethnic Jews and Iberian Muslims. The Old Christians wanted to legally and socially distinguish themselves from the conversos (converts to Christianity) who they considered being tainted by their non-Spanish bloodlines-even though the overwhelming majority of Spain's Muslims were also of indigenous Iberian stock, descendants of native Iberians who earlier converted to Islam under Muslim rule. In practice, for New Christians of Jewish origin, the concept of New Christian was a legal mechanism and manifestation of racial antisemitism rather than Judaism as a religion. For those of Moorish origin, it was a manifestation of racial anti-Berberism and/or anti-Arabism. Cleanliness of blood and related concepts The related Spanish development of an ideology of limpieza de sangre ("cleanliness of blood") also excluded New Christians from society — universities, emigration to the New World, many professions — regardless of their sincerity as converts. Other derogatory terms applied to each of the converting groups included marranos (i.e. "pigs") for New Christians of Jewish origin, and moriscos (a term which carried pejorative connotations) for New Christians of Andalusian origin. Discrimination and persecution Aside from social stigma and ostracism, the consequences of legal or social categorization as a New Christian included restrictions of civil and political rights, abuses of those already-limited civil rights, social and sometimes legal restrictions on whom one could marry (anti-miscegenation laws), social restrictions on where one could live, legal restrictions of entry into the professions and the clergy, legal restrictions and prohibition of immigration to and settlement in the newly colonized Spanish territories in the Americas, deportation from the colonies. In addition to the above restrictions and discrimination endured by New Christians, the Spanish Crown and Church authorities also subjected New Christians to persecution, prosecution, and capital punishment for actual or alleged practice of the family's former religion. After