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The Spanish and Portuguese Jews
Leslie Rübner
[Written in 2014]
I recently read “The Last Cabbalist of Lisbon”, a novel by Richard Zimler. The story captivated me and I decided to read up on the so-called Marranos. Here is what I found:
There are quite a few schools of thought regarding the origins of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. Some people think that they came to Hispania with the Roman Conquerors as merchants and businessman, with a second wave after the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 of the Common Era. The first known evidence of a Jewish presence in Spain is found on the grave of a young Jewish girl named Salomonulla from the 3rd century CE, found in Adra, Spain. Others however believe that they came after the destruction of the First Temple in the 6th century BCE, while still others date their arrival with Phoenician merchants in the 10th century BCE, during the Rule of King Solomon. On one thing however all agree is that Iberian Peninsula had more Jews than the rest of the world put together in the 12th century.
The Jews of Hispania during the dying days of the Roman Empire lived in an easy going and tolerant society, but this was brought to a sudden end in 409 when the Aryan and Christian Visigoths from Western Germany took possession of the Peninsula. These people did not tolerate anybody who were not Christians. They, in true Aryan spirit, murdered and plundered for 300 years. A Roman witnessing the early slaughters commented that the Iberian countryside resembled an open air morgue. Theirs was a Christian state and therefore the Jews were persecuted ostensibly for committing Deicide. In 638 the Visigoths declared that only Catholics could live in Spain.
THE CALIPHATE OF AL ANDALUS
In April 711, Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar (Jebel al Tariq or “Tariq’s mountain”). Leading an army of 7,000 Berbers from Morocco, he burnt the fleet that had brought them soon after landing and gave a speech in which he told them that with nothing but watery graves behind them they had nowhere to go but forward. The Moors (as they were referred to) clashed with and routed a Visigoth army of 60,000 under King Rodrigo. By 712 the Moors had taken the Visigoth capital of Toledo. Soon the Moors ruled all but a small northern strip of the Iberian Peninsula and so al Andalus (Moorish and Moslem Spain) was born. It was the Ummayad dynasty that ruled Moorish Spain for the next century or so, and most, but by no means all subsequent rulers maintained a tolerant and progressive society, they encouraged science and the arts and invited scholars from all over to come and serve the Caliph.
Jews, Moslems and Christians lived and worked together in this friendly atmosphere. Many Christians adopted some of the Moors’ culture and became known as Mozarabs. Jews also adopted Moorish customs, studied Arabic and the Koran while Arabs studied Hebrew and the Jewish Holy Books. The Greek philosopher’s original writings were studied. Learned Jewish and Arab scholars translated them into Arabic and Hebrew and from there into Latin. Jewish scholars developed the theories that created trigonometry. Algebra was invented. Arabic numbers replaced the unwieldy Roman numerals. Paper was manufactured for the first time. Immense libraries developed and were open to the public. Cordoba had a million books at a time when the largest library in Europe had, may be a dozen manuscripts.
Jewish philosophers studied Plato and Aristotle and developed new philosophies, incorporating these theories with Jewish theology and thinking. Prominent among these were:
Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, RaMBaM) was born to an illustrious scholar, Maimon, in Cordoba, Spain in 1135 and died on the twentieth of Tevet that was in January 1204. He is buried in Tiberias, in Israel). In 1148, when the RaMBaM was just 13 years old, Cordoba fell to the Al Mohads, a fierce Moslem group who tolerated no thought other than theirs. You see the Moslems could be just as bigoted as the Visigoths were. RaMBaM was influenced by the Arab philosopher Averroes and whose writings aroused much controversy and criticism from the traditionalist Jewish religious authorities particularly of France and Germany because of their use of reason and logic rather than just tradition and faith. There is a popular idiom said about the RaMBaM, comparing him to Moses the lawgiver: “From Moses to Moses, there was no one like Moses”.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Solomon ben Judah also known as Avicebron, b. Malaga c.1021-1058).
Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (was born in 1089 in Toledo and died, after travelling extensively throughout Europe in 1167 probably in Calahorra, but some say in England).
Judah ha Levi (b.1085? in Toledo-d.1140 a rabbi who was also a physician, a poet, and a celebrated Hebrew theologian and mystic) wrote exquisite poetry.
Moses Ibn Ezra (b.1055 in Granada -d. after 1135) was best known for his substantial body of penitential prayers…and plenty more.
With the interest in Arabic grammar, Hebrew grammar was developed and the language revived. This easy going and free environment that was conducive to so much progress at a time when the rest of Europe was wallowing in filth, disease and ignorance, did not come to a sudden end as one would have expected, when the Catholics reconquered Spain. Indeed Alfonso VI named himself “Emperor of the Three Religions”. (Just like Prince Charles wants to be the “Defender of all Faiths”). However, the Papal Authorities strongly objected to this state of affairs. The Pope sent several Edicts and Bulls urging the Christian monarchs to deal more harshly with their Jews and Moslems. French and other troops were sent in to assist the Spanish reconquest and deal more harshly with the conceived enemy than the Christian Spanish troops were willing to do.
RAMBAN AND THE FIRST DISPUTATION
By the XIV century things taken a turn for the worse, long periods of drought and the Black Death killed huge numbers of the inhabitants of Spain. Of course, the accusing finger was pointing at the Jews for poisoning the wells and they were blamed for causing the Plague. There was large scale massacres of the Jews by blood thirsty mobs, tempers were whipped up by travelling self flagellating Catholic fanatics. Slowly the old Visigoth heritage and thinking came to the fore, gradually transforming Spain from the most tolerant nation in Europe into the most intolerant.
In 1263 RaMBaN (Born in Gerona 1194 and buried in Haifa in 1270) was involved in a disputation in Barcelona. An apostate, Pablo Christiani, had failed at convincing Jews to convert to Christianity. However he succeeded in getting the monarch to order a debate between him and RaMBaN to prove that the Talmud actually indicated that Jews believed that the Messiah had already come and that Christianity was the superior religion.
RaMBaN was willing to take part on condition that he would have complete immunity for anything he said. The king agreed. During a four-part disputation, RaMBaN proved that the Talmudic passages were being miss-quoted. He then indicated that Jews weren't required to believe all the haggadic materials found in the Talmud. He added that the main difference between Judaism and Christianity was not the issue of the Messiah. Since he had official immunity, RaMBaN went one step further. He ridiculed some basic Christian doctrines. He asked why, if Jesus was the Messiah did he have to hide from the Romans? And, once Rome accepted Christianity, why did it decline? Why was Islam the most powerful empire and not Christianity? And why were Christians responsible for more bloodshed than any other people? The king, impressed, gave RaMBaN 300 pieces of silver and then recommends that he get out of town.
RaMBaN wisely fled. He ended up in the Land of Israel in 1267 and travelled to Jerusalem. There he found the Jewish community reduced to two animal-skin dyers. He immediately set about to establish a synagogue and a yeshiva there. According to tradition, his fame was so great that hundreds of scholars flocked to Jerusalem to study with him.
THE POGROM
In 1391 there were riots. Preachers such as one called Ferrer roamed the countryside stirring up mobs that looted and terrorised the Jews People. The agenda of these riots were to kill the Jews or have them converted to Catholicism. The riots started in Seville. Many got themselves Baptised, but more than 4000 Jews preferred death to conversion. Some members of the mob took advantage of the situation by stealing Jewish debt records, but the main focus remained religious fervour. In Cordoba, 2,000 Jews were killed. In Valencia, not a single Jew survived.
The pogroms continued for three months striking every Jewish community except Saragossa, King John’s seat. In all, more than 50,000 Jews were murdered! The rest either escaped slaughter by sheer luck or had accepted baptism. They thus became the Conversos or in another name, New Christians.
The Conversos created a new set of problems for Christian Spain. Most of them still thought like Jews and practised Judaism in secret. Many of them were married to Jews who had escaped baptism. Moreover, they were considered by the Church to be Christians and therefore had full rights. Unlike true Jews, they were exempt from the poll taxes. They were able to work in any profession and began to take over the jobs of true Christians. This led to much bitterness among the Old Christians.
The Conversos were called Marranos (Pigs in English), by the Old Christians, and the name stuck.
THE SECOND DISPUTATION
One of the converted Jews, Joshua Lorki, took his conversion seriously, whom two years after his conversion had raised to become the right hand of the anti-pope. He renamed himself Geronimo De Santa Fe (Holy Faith), and he began a campaign against the Talmud. He, just as Pablo Christiani before him, charged that the Talmud supported the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah, that the Talmud contained heretical statements, and slanderous things about Christianity. The anti-pope, Benedict XIII (recognised as pope in Spain and France only, and resided in Avignon) authorised a new Disputation (as it happened before with Pablo Christiani and RaMBaN), but the members of the Disputation were not given immunity this time! He ordered the Jewish community to attend and reply to the charges.
Twenty Jewish representatives were called. They assembled in Tortosa in 1412. It became clear from the start that this was not going to be a real debate. Pope Benedict announced that the purpose of the meeting was to prove that the Talmud showed the truth about Christianity. Geronimo frequently responded to statements of the rabbis by threatening them, declaring that their statements were heresy. The Disputation’s format was set up so that Geronimo had the last word on every topic. The Disputation took more than a year and a half. Most of the Jewish participants and their families suffered terrible financial losses because they were gone so long. Pieces of the Talmud which Geronimo had declared to be wrong were obliterated.
THE RISE OF THE MARRANOS
Despite all the threats, the Jewish representatives were not charged with heresy, but the combination of the debate, the restrictive laws and the persecutions caused such demoralisation that thousands accepted baptism voluntarily. The Jewish aristocracy was particularly prone to conversion since they were largely secular and because they were needed to continue their traditional roles as advisers to the government, they were encouraged. However, they also maintained the old traditions, such as not eating pork and so on. Many of them married into the Spanish nobility where their wealth was a great asset to impoverished nobility.
Jokes appeared, calling conversos alboracos because, Al Borak the magic steed that transported Mohammed to Heaven was “neither a horse nor a mule”, just as these conversos were neither Jews nor Christians.
The clergy had felt that if Jews were converted to Catholicism their problems would be over. The impoverished Castilian peasantry, envious of the Jews because of their economic and social success, did not see any change in their living conditions after the conversions. Gradually the anger with monarchs that had been deflected to the Jews extended to the rulers themselves especially after a couple of particularly ineffective monarchs and a civil war between feuding half-brothers.
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA
The marriage of royal cousins, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, in 1469 brought stability to their kingdoms. Both understood the importance of unity; together they effected institutional reform, such as in the Spanish Reformation (This included the reorganisation of the church administration; the militant orders’ districts were abolished, replaced by regular dioceses. Church discipline was enforced among priests and monks, up to the level of bishops).
Initially Isabella was not anti-Semitic, however she was a devout Catholic and under the strong influence of her father confessor, Torquemada, who taught her to hate all heretics. When Dominicans convinced her that many conversos retained Jewish behaviour or beliefs, she agreed to instituting the Inquisition in Seville in 1481 and then in other cities. It did not hurt that her coffers were empty and that the Conversos were among the wealthiest and most powerful group in all of Spain. The planned war to conquer the last Moorish kingdom of Granada needed large funds that the Inquisition conveniently provided. When Spain conquered Granada in 1492, Islamic Spain ceased to exist and attention was focused on the internal threat posed by the hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in the recently acquired Granada. In Spain it was strongly believed that religious unity was necessary for political unity, but unfortunately Spain had the most heterogeneous population in Europe.
The Council of Inquisition was organised and authorised by papal bull in 1478, and it was given the task of enforcing the uniformity of religious practise. The Inquisition was originally intended to investigate the sincerity of Conversos, people who converted to Christianity as directed by law, who had been accused of being Jews and Muslims. Jews and Muslims faced three options: to be exiled, to be killed by the Inquisition tribunals, or to convert to Christianity. It is remarkable that only a few agreed to give up their religion. Most preferred to be exiled.
In Spain, heresy was more than a religious question; it was also a political and national issue. Limpieza (purity) and untainted blood became the issue despite Ferdinand's own converso grandmother. The nobility, most of which had intermarried with conversos were terrorised and powerless against the power of the Inquisition and the Crown. Not much proof was needed to accuse someone of practising Judaism, and simultaneously proving one's own piety while settling old scores.
Many of the conversos were extremely prominent, wealthy, and intermarried with the highest nobility. They would not at first believe that these actions could affect people of their calibre but they were sadly mistaken (here one cannot help, but make comparisons with the Third Reich). The Inquisition, backed by the monarchy was too powerful. Accusing hundreds of fellow conversos of practising Judaism was encouraged by the Inquisitors as a way to possibly save oneself from the flames, thus pitting one against the other.
TORQUEMADA AND THE INQUISITION
And now let us mention Tomás Torquemada the Chief Inquisitor himself. At his birth (born 1420, Valladolid, Castile [Spain] died 16th Sept. 1498, Ávila, Castile) Torquemada already had something to hide, his grandmother was a converso; a converted Jew; a New Christian a Marrano.
The nephew of a noted Dominican cardinal and theologian, Juan de Torquemada, the young Torquemada joined the Dominicans and in 1452 became prior of the monastery of Santa Cruz at Segovia, an office that he held for 22 years. He was closely associated with the religious policy of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, to whom he was both confessor and adviser (to Isabella, from her childhood). He was convinced that the existence of the Marranos, Moriscos (Islamic converts), Jews, and Moors was a threat to the religious and social life of Spain, and his influence with the Catholic Monarchs enabled him to affect their policies.
In August 1483 he was appointed grand inquisitor for Castile and León, and on October 17 his powers were extended to Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca. In his capacity as grand inquisitor, Torquemada reorganised the Spanish Inquisition, which had been set up in Castile in 1478, establishing tribunals at Seville, Jaén, Córdoba, Ciudad Real, and, later, Zaragoza.
In 1484 he promulgated 28 articles for the guidance of inquisitors, whose competence was extended to include not only crimes of heresy and apostasy but also sorcery, homosexuality, polygamy, blasphemy, usury, and other offences; torture was authorised in order to obtain evidence (since blood shedding is forbidden by the Catholic faith [?] great care was taken not to shed blood). Others promulgated between 1484 and 1498 supplemented these articles. The number of burnings at the stake (see? no blood shedding!) during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000.
The Spanish cult of sangre limpia, “pure blood”, that is pure white Christian blood was of paramount importance, this being the first sign in history of racial anti-Semitism (again just like that of the Third Reich). Actually, since Spain had the largest Jewish population in medieval Europe and conversion and intermarriages were common, hardly anyone had sangre limpia, but many claimed to, and it was a constant preoccupation of the nobility. Torquemada's life work was an attempt to achieve sangre limpia for Spain. The purpose of the Inquisition was to root out heresy, and for Torquemada this meant destroying the New Christians.
The Inquisition published a set of guidelines so that Catholics could inform on their Marrano neighbours:
If you see that your neighbours are wearing clean and fancy clothes on Saturdays, they are Jews.
If they clean their houses on Fridays and light candles earlier than usual on that night, they are Jews.
If they eat unleavened bread and begin their meal with celery and lettuce during Holy Week, they are Jews.
If they say prayers facing a wall, bowing back and forth, they are Jews.
Important to the religiously motivated Inquisitors was that “no blood be spilt,” which meant the act torturing confessions out of people required a special science. The favoured techniques were flogging, the rack, and red coals applied to the feet. Also popular at the time was the strappado, in which the wrist suspended you and incrementally heavier weights are wrapped around your ankles or looped among your toes (see? no blood shedding!).
The mildest penalty imposed on Marranos began with the forfeiture of their property, which proved to be as mentioned before, convenient fund-raising technique for the war against the Moors. This was followed by the public humiliation of being paraded through the streets wearing the sambenito, a sulphur-yellow shirt emblazoned with crosses that came only to the waist, leaving the lower body totally uncovered. They were then flogged at the church door. The scale of punishments continued up to burning at the stake (see? no blood shedding), which was performed as a public spectacle called an auto-da-fé (act of faith). If the condemned recanted and kissed the cross, they were mercifully garrotted (what? Blood shedding?), before the fire was set. If they recanted only, they were burned with a quick-burning seasoned wood. If not, they were burned with slow-burning green wood.
In 1490 Torquemada staged a famous show-trial, the La Guardia trial. This involved eight Jews and conversos, who were accused of having crucified a Christian child. No victim was ever identified and no body was ever found; nevertheless all eight were convicted, on the strength of their confessions that were obtained through torture. They were burned at the stake.
Rumours about Jews committing ritual murder of Christian children have circulated around Europe for centuries and are known collectively as “the blood libel.” While there is no evidence to support the blood libel, its opposite, the ritual murder of Jews by Christians, is well known. The Spanish Inquisition alone committed the ritual murder of about thirty thousand Jews.
Torquemada used the LaGuardia trial to argue that the Jews were a danger to Spain. His intention was to convince Ferdinand and Isabella to order their expulsion. Hearing of these, two influential Jews raised thirty thousand ducats and offered it to Ferdinand and Isabella, saying they could give them even more if they would allow the Jews to remain. Ferdinand and Isabella, always hard up for cash, wavered at this; but Torquemada said, “Judas sold his Master for thirty ducats. You would sell Him for thirty thousand... Take Him and sell Him, but do not let it be said that I have had any share in this transaction.”
THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN
On 31 March 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued their Edict of Expulsion. “[We] have decided to command all of the aforesaid Jews, men and women, to leave our kingdoms and never to return to them”.
The Jews were given until 1st July to leave the kingdom; any found within its borders after that date would be killed. Some fled to Portugal or North Africa, where they faced more persecution; some took ship with a foolhardy explorer named Christopher Columbus; some remained in Spain as “Secret Jews”, and their descendants still exist as such today.
Having accomplished the expulsion of the Jews, Torquemada retired to the monastery of St Thomas in Avila, which he had designed himself. In his last years he was convinced that he would be poisoned, and kept a unicorn’s (!) horn by his plate as an antidote. He was not poisoned, however, but died a natural death in 1498.
PORTUGAL
When Spain expelled all her Jews in 1492, more than 150,000 Jews fled to Portugal. They were given visas for eight months. At the end of that time, when they couldn't ’t find ways to get out of Portugal, King John II declared them to be slaves. He grabbed 700 youths and sent them to Africa.
In 1495, Emanuel the Fortunate, the new king of Portugal, arranged to marry Princess Isabella of Spain. The condition for marriage was that he cleanses Portugal of all its Jews. He didn't want to lose the economic advantages that the Jews provided and tried to torture the Jews into becoming Christians, thus enabling them to stay. He was not very successful.
In March 1497, he forcibly converted all the Jewish minors. He then assembled all the Jews in Lisbon, ostensibly to expel them. Instead, he officially converted 20,000 Jews right there, on the spot. Many of the New Conversos promptly fled the country. Emanuel tried to prevent this mass emigration by sealing the borders, but he was only partially successful.
NEW HORIZONS
Some of the New Conversos fled to the Netherlands. Others made it to England. In neither country were they permitted to acknowledge that they were actually Jews, but it was an open secret. They were so numerous that the word “Portuguese” became synonymous with “Jew”.
The vast majority of New Christians who succeeded in getting out of Portugal went to the New World. They arrived in the new Portuguese colony of Brazil. Over the next hundred years, these New Christians married into the leading Catholic families there, (but they were often caught by the Inquisition, sent back to Portugal, and executed).
It is estimated that by 1590, there were more than 50,000 New Christians working in the New World. In the beginning of the 17th century, the Dutch began to make military forays into Brazil.
In 1630, they took northern Brazil. In 1634, they granted religious freedom to the Jews. This gave the Conversos the opportunity they had been praying for. The “New Christians” declared themselves to be Jewish and created a synagogue, Magen Avraham, on the 4 January 1634.
Jews flocked to Brazil from Europe. Their dreams of living openly as Jews were shattered, however, when, on the 27 January 1654, Portugal reconquered northern Brazil and took it back from the Dutch. Hundreds of Conversos were rounded up and shipped back to Lisbon for trial and execution. Many fled to the West Indies and the Netherlands.
The remaining Jews were expelled. Some made it back to Europe. A small group headed north and ended up in New Amsterdam. The governor, Peter Stuyvesant, was violently opposed to having Jews corrupting his town. He sought permission from the Netherlands to expel them. The Dutch West India Company, pressured by influential Jews in Holland, refused. Stuyvesant then tried to add a tax on Jews because he wouldn’t allow them to stand guard duty. The Jews petitioned and received the right to stand guard duty and to engage in the wholesale and retail trade.
In 1664 the British took New Amsterdam and renamed it New York (after the Duke of York). The Jews were accorded even more civil rights. By 1706 they had organised their own congregation, Shearith Israel.
The travails of Spanish Jews as they sought refuge wherever they could, their persistent identification for generations with Spain they still considered home is a unique and fascinating story. Deprived of their possessions, often murdered on ships for whatever little they had left, their travels took them to nearby North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman empire whose sultan welcomed them (“if the Spanish sovereign is foolish enough to expel his Jews, his loss will be our gain”), and the frontier edges of the New World in their attempt to flee the Inquisition that followed them.
THE CRYPTO-JEWS’ DIASPORA
The crypto-Jews, in the New World, in Spain, in Portugal, in Majorca and elsewhere, some of who retained the memory of their Judaism over five centuries to this day and co-incidentally only marrying among other crypto-Jewish families (?), is another fascinating chapter in the history of Sephardic Jews as is the history of the Inquisition in the New World.
The impacts of Sephardic Jews were very significant wherever they settled, both culturally and in economic development. Their participation in the travels of exploration, both Spanish and Portuguese, from Christopher Columbus who may well have been a crypto Jew himself to Francisco de Albuquerque and many others was profound and their acknowledged pre-eminence in map making and navigating - the reasons for which are themselves a fascinating story - made them the navigators on most ship travels of their time, usually as "new Christians".
Those that settled in Muslim lands tended to share the cultural decline of the countries they resided in. Others mostly in Holland and the New World prospered and grew to new heights.
The involvement of Sephardic Jews, mostly from Morocco, in the development of the Amazon and its rubber trade is another intriguing and little-known chapter in the history of these Sephardim as is the impact of Sephardic Jews in the development of Holland as a worldwide banking and sea-going world power.
When I first decided to compile an article about the Marranos, I thought it would be a short piece, but as I have got myself more and more into it, I realised that it may end up as thick as the War and Peace, so I decided to stop here and now.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.
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