  The roots of Albo’s philosophical theory are located deep within the ground of the historical reality in which he lived and worked. The central circumstance that directly shaped his thought was the distressed state of Jewish society in Christian Spain. Beginning in the fourteenth century, the Jews in Spain were subject to religious persecution on the part of the Catholic Church and Christian society in general. Jewish thought also suffered from sharp ideological conflict between conservative thinkers and rationalists over both theological and social issues.