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Full Description
In a series of intimate and searing portraits, Nathan Wachtel traces the journeys of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Marranos-Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism but secretly retained their own faith. Fleeing persecution in their Iberian homeland, some sought refuge in the Americas, where they established transcontinental networks linking the New World to the Old. The Marranos-at once Jewish and Christian, outsiders and insiders-nurtured their hidden beliefs within their new communities, participating in the economic development of the early Americas while still adhering to some of the rituals and customs of their ancestors. In a testament to the partial assimilation of these new arrivals, their faith became ever more syncretic, mixing elements of Judaism with Christian practice and theology.
In many cases, the combination was fatal. Wachtel relies on inquisitorial archives of trials and executions to chronicle legal and religious prosecutions for heresy. From the humble Jean Vicente to the fabulously wealthy slave trafficker Manuel Bautista Perez, from the untutored Theresa Paes de Jesus to the learned Francisco Maldonado de Silva, each unforgettable figure offers a chilling reminder of the reach of the Inquisition.
Sensitive to the lingering tensions within the Marrano communities, Wachtel joins the concerns of an anthropologist to his skills as a historian, and in a stunning authorial move, he demonstrates that the faith of remembrance remains alive today in the towns of rural Brazil.
Contents
Foreword
—Yosef Kaplan
Introduction: Marranism and Modernity
Chapter 1. Juan Vicente's Sanbenito
Chapter 2. Heaven Face to Face: Francisco Maldonado de Silva
Chapter 3. "They Spoke of the Things of the Law of Moses": Manuel Bautista Perez
Chapter 4. "Remember the Mother of the Maccabees!": Regarding Leonor Nuñez
Chapter 5. "May Everyone Be What He Is": Francisco Botello and Maria de Zarate
Chapter 6. "The Law of the Name Received from the Ancients": Fernando de Medina
Chapter 7. "Moses, Son of Queen Esther": Theresa Paes de Jesus
Chapter 8. "For in This Time All Is Lies, and All Is Truth": João Thomas de Castro and António José da Silva
Conclusion: Faith, Memory, Forgetting
Epilogue: "Five Hundred Years of Hunger": Returning
Finale: Three Poems by Odmar Pinheiro Braga
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
