Marrano (Jewish convert)
Marrano is a term that refers to the Judeoconversos (converted Jews) from the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula who "Judaized," that is, they continued to clandestinely observe their customs and their previous religion. The crypto-Judaism of the Marranos was justified by the rabbis on the grounds that Jews could—and even should—pretend to convert to another religion if they believed their lives were in danger and were exempt from those cult practices. that they might rat them out—they were only ultimately required to keep faith with their consciences.
Especially between the 15th and 17th centuries, the word marrano was used extensively and pejoratively to designate all Jewish converts and their descendants, implicitly implying feigned Christianity.
The origin of the word marrano, which was used (and is still used) in a derogatory way to identify Jewish converts to Catholicism and their descendants, does not come from the name of the animal, but from the name of the animal. contrary: relating the former to an animal considered unclean. Even today he maintains his definition: dirty and untidy: the very pig showers once a month; who acts rudely: that pig has said some rude things to me that I don't want to repeat; who acts with bad intentions : he is a pig and only thinks of his own benefit; [Jew] convert .
In contemporary times, the term marrano has been incorporated by international historiography and into the heritage of languages other than Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese; such as English, French, Italian or German.
The researcher Israël Salvator Révah defined the pig as a Catholic without faith and a Jew without knowing, although a Jew by choice.
As those who live in Spain do not keep the Law nor are circumcised, and even if they do some ceremonies of that Law and have been circumcised to some parts of Italy and Flanders... they lack in these things of ordinary that are the essential, to such they have there the true Jews for heretics that call them in Hebrew. minim.Jacob Cansino
Etymology and related names
According to the French Hispanist Joseph Pérez, the word «marrano» has a highly disputed etymology. In the Treasury of Covarrubias of 1611 it is said that "the Moors call the one-year-old pig a pig and it could be that the newly converted, for this reason and for not eating pork, was called a pig". Pérez acknowledges that this etymology is accepted by various authors, but he considers "much more likely that marrano comes from the verb marrar as Covarrubias himself points out: "marrar is to fail; old Castilian word, from which by chance... came the name of pig of the Jew who did not convert simply and simply"».
For other authors, the word «marrano» comes from the Arabic muḥarram, ('forbidden thing'), an expression used to designate, among many other things, the pig, whose meat is prohibited for Jews and Muslims. The word was first used in the peninsular romance to designate this animal (documented since 965). To designate, in a hurtful way, the New Christians is documented in Spanish since the beginning of the XIII century, probably because these converts they abstained from eating pork. In 1691, for example, Francisco de Torrejoncillo in his anti-Semitic libel Sentinel against Jews: placed on the tower of the Church of God with work , wrote a description of the term:
Another name that gives them old by affront, of more dogs or dogs, that was to call them Marranosas dize Didarus a Velazquez. Well, what's the reason for giving them this name, calling the Marran Jews? Many reasons give these serious Authors [...] Others say, that the Spanish went out this name, calling them marranos, that in Spanish means pigs; and so by infamy they called the new Christian puercos marranos, and give them, and this name can be given to them with great property, because among the marranos, when they grow, and one of them is quexed, all the other puercuno or marranos come.
Although initially the term was used both for converts from Judaism and Islam, over time the latter were called Moriscos, and the word "marrano" was left to designate only Jewish converts.
The term «marrano» is closely related to other names:
New Christians
Converts from Judaism to Christianity and their descendants (even if they had passed several generations or that status was only one ancestor among many "old Christians") were called "converts" or "New Christians"; in Portuguese cristãos novos. This term was also applied to converts from Islam (more specifically called Moriscos) and had a discriminatory character, although it currently seems less insulting than the word "marrano".
Judaizers
Jewish converts who "Judaized," that is, who secretly practiced Jewish Law or, at least, a reconstruction of the rites and beliefs of Judaism (which, in current socio-religious studies is called crypto-Judaism -literally "secret Judaism"-), were called "judaizers", and are the ones that most properly identify with the concepts of " pig" and "marranismo". On what it meant to "judaize" and the practices of the Judaizers, there is abundant documentation in the processes of the Spanish Inquisition, although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish which testimonies correspond to real events and which are slanderous accusations that are the product of imagination and anti-Semitism.
Sephardim
The descendants of the members of the Spanish-Jewish community who maintained their faith and had to go into exile in 1492 as a consequence of the expulsion edict of the Catholic Monarchs, dispersed throughout northern Europe and the Mediterranean; and receive the name of "Sephardim" (literally "Spanish" -Sefarad is "Spain"-). They were, therefore, Jews, and not Christians. Subsequently, some Marranos who left Spain or Portugal rejoined the open practice of Judaism within these communities, sometimes with the suspicion of those who had remained faithful to their religion.
Cheetahs
In Mallorca, the local Jewish-converted community had a very peculiar historical trajectory, and they were identified with the name "chuetas" (xuetes in Majorcan).
Anousim
Sephardic Jews prefer to use the Hebrew word anusim, (אֲנוּסִים, "forced"), or benei anusim (בְּנֵי אֲנוּסִים, &# 34;sons of anusim"), a rabbinic legal term applied to converts forced to leave Judaism against their will. The term has a general character and does not identify the geographical origin.
Conversions
Since the assaults on the Jewish quarters in 1391, and because of the growing Christian anti-Judaism prevailing in the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula during the 15th century, numerous conversions of Jews took place, many of which were forced or had the sole purpose of avoiding persecution. Conversions increased significantly with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
The relatively powerful Jewish-converted community was the object of misgivings from Old Christians, who obtained legal discrimination measures (blood cleansing statutes) that have their antecedent in the "Sentence-Statute" approved during the anti-convert revolt of Toledo in 1449 led by Pedro Sarmiento. From 1478 the religious orthodoxy of the conversos was frequently the object of prosecution by the Spanish Inquisition, and later also in Portugal.
Classification of pigs
From a Jewish religious perspective, three categories are identified for the Marranos and their descendants, according to the different degrees in which they maintained the obligation to externally maintain the Christian way of life while privately maintaining different degrees of survival of Judaism. Therefore, this classification does not include converts who assumed their new condition (since its inception or throughout the generations) and sincerely practiced Christianity, despite the fact that generically or even concretely they were falsely accused of Judaizing and they will be called "marranos".
Indifferent or opportunistic
They are those who, without any affection for Judaism and indifferent to religion in general (what was later called libertine), received with the conversion the possibility of exchanging their oppressed condition for the excellent opportunities that were opened to them as Christians. They had no problem pretending to be Christians, since it was profitable for them; and they made fun of the Jews and Judaism. Some poets can be associated with this category: Pero Ferrús, Juan de Valladolid, Rodrigo Cota and Juan de España (from Toledo, also known as "El Viejo", who was considered a renowned Talmudist) and Fray Diego de Valencia. These the latter two used Hebrew words in their banners to mock the Jewish people. Obviously, if they did not already practice Judaism, they are not strictly marranos; however, some of them were accused of secretly Judaizing, and even openly returning to Judaism when it suited them (Juan de Valladolid during his stay in Morocco).
Converts externally
They are the ones who, after baptism, externally maintain Christian practices and limit Jewish practices, although sometimes they secretly attend the synagogue. In Aragón: the Zaporta de Monzón (related by marriage to the Aragonese royal house), the Sánchez, sons of Alazar Yusuf de Zaragoza (related to those of the Cavalry and the Santángels), the Espe (very rich), the Paternoy (residing in Verdun -Berdún?-), the Clementes (children of Moses Chamoro), the Vilanova de Calatayud, the Coscón, the Bruno, the Cartiglia or Cartigliano, the Brondo and others.
Converts only formally, due to force majeure
The New Christians who, when they had the opportunity to leave Spain, affirmed their religious condition as Jews, while they were in Spain preserved their Judaic practices. Others (probably the majority) never came out. They did not voluntarily take their children to be baptized, and when forced to, as soon as they returned home they washed them in the areas where the baptismal water had touched them. They kept Jewish food practices, celebrated the Jewish Passover, and brought the oil to the synagogue. Pretending he didn't like leavened bread, a pig ate unleavened bread all year long, so he could eat it at Easter without raising suspicion. In the festivals in which they had to blow the shofar, the pigs would leave the city so as not to be heard. It was common to denounce pigs for bleeding animals in their homes following the Jewish ritual, or for circumcising their children.
In Seville, an inquisitor graphically showed the corregidor the extent of this condition: if you want to realize the number of pigs,... let's go up to the top of this tower... No matter how cold it is time, you will not see any smoke rising from those rooms, because it is Saturday. And, during this day, Jews are not allowed to touch the fire to light it.
The Marranos after the expulsion of 1492
The edict of Granada of March 31, 1492, by which Jews who did not opt for conversion were forced to leave Spain, did not affect the Marranos (rather, their number increased). The coincidence in the year with other fundamental historical events for the history of Spain (the conquest of Granada, in January, and the first voyage of Columbus -he left on August 3-) is proof of the determination of the Catholic Monarchs in achieving what that Luis Suárez Fernández has called the religious maximum.
Jews expelled to Portugal
The Jews who left for Portugal were forced, in 1493, to separate from their children. By order of Juan II of Portugal, seven hundred of these were deported to the Island of Santo Tomé, and eight months later they were turned into slaves. Manuel I of Portugal (king since 1495) freed them, but between December 1496 and 1497, pressured by the Catholic Monarchs, he issued expulsion decrees that affected all Jews who did not want to convert.
Coinciding with the Jewish Passover, on March 19, 1497, it was ordered to bring to Lisbon all the children of non-converted Jews between the ages of four and fourteen. Only after arriving there were their parents informed that they would be separated from their children permanently, who would be adopted by Christian families. Faced with this situation, some families opted for conversion, while those who did not were violently taken away. Some managed to hide their children, and in some cases they preferred to kill them themselves. From then on, only Jewish converts could remain in Portugal.
His new condition did not mean social integration. The obvious compelling cause of many conversions made them suspicious of judaizing, and their identification with the appellations of "new Christian" and "pig" it testified to its social discrimination in an identical way as in Castile. In 1506 there was a massacre of five thousand converts in Lisbon (Lisbon massacre of 1506). In 1536 the Portuguese Inquisition was established, which in the centuries that it was active (until its abolition in 1821) ordered the execution of 1,200 people, the burning of 600 in effigy and sentenced 29,000 to different penances. A good part of the community of Portuguese pigs later moved to other places: the Antilles, Brazil, Thessaloniki, Constantinople, Morocco, France, but especially to Amsterdam, where today there is excellent documentation of these events in the JHM Historical Museum.. The synagogue resulting from this exodus was one of the largest of those times, and is still in use. In the Portuguese city of Belmonte, a very strict and inbred Marrano community was formed, which persisted in isolation until contemporary times, when it began to publicly celebrate Jewish worship in a synagogue.
The Jewish BrideRembrandt. Although the identity of the portrayed has not been established with certainty, one of the possibilities is that it represents Miguel de Barrios and his second wife, Abigail de Pina.
Interior of the Portuguese synagogue in AmsterdamEmanuel de Witte, ca. 1680.
Marranos in the Hispanic Monarchy
The Spanish Inquisition after 1492 began to act immediately against the Judaizers and in the following four decades they were its main victims. From 1530-1540, the cases judged by the Inquisition that had to do with them practically disappeared -in the court of Toledo, for example, only 3% of the cases that went through the court between 1531 and 1560 had to do with judaizers-. Even the Inquisition took care to eradicate the fairly common practice of calling "Jew" to an enemy -the aggrieved person could take his case before the Holy Office and have it demonstrate that he had no Jewish ancestry, thus cleaning his honor-. In addition, there are testimonies from contemporaries that the Judaizers had disappeared. Agustín Salucio used the fact that there were no longer any Judaizers as an argument to denounce the statutes of purity of blood in the book he published in 1599. Diego Serrano de Silva wrote in 1623:
Today it is seen by a long experience of years that families who have a race of this infection are heart-felt Christians, devotees and pious, giving their daughters to religions, their children to the priesthood, working with manifest Christian devotion
However, Henry Kamen claims that in the late 16th century and early XVII there were still Judaizers, but they were "unrecognizable as Jews" because "virtually all the signs of Judaism [such as circumcision, the Sabbath, the Jewish holidays, abstaining from pork] had disappeared." "Those who remained clinging to their identity, however, maintained an unwavering faith in the God of Israel, passed down from father to son the few traditional prayers they could remember, and used the Catholic Old Testament as their basic reading." He provides as proof that in the last decade of the XVI century the Inquisition condemned various groups of Judaizers –singularly women- in Quintanar de the Order -where about a hundred people were penalized-, in Granada -with more than 150 people convicted- and in Seville -89 Judaizers.
But the situation changed with the arrival in Castile of a large number of Portuguese Jewish converts –in reality they were Castilian Jews who had marched to Portugal in 1492 and who in 1497 had been forced to convert- after the definitive implantation of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1547 -between 1547 and 1580 in the three courts of Lisbon, Évora and Coimbra there were 34 autos de fe, with 169 executions in person and 51 in effigy and 1998 penitents- and especially after the incorporation by Felipe II of the kingdom of Portugal to the Spanish Monarchy in 1580, which meant that the Portuguese Inquisition intensified the persecution of those who were Judaizing - between 1581 and 1600 there were 50 autos de fe in the three Portuguese courts, in which 162 convicted in person and 59 in effigy and there were 2,979 penitentiaries. The problem that arose was that a good part of these Portuguese Jewish converts were Marranos, because it was not until fifty years after they were forced to be baptized in 1497 that the Inquisition was established there and during that time they had been able to continue more or less openly practicing the Judaic faith. It is not surprising that the Spanish Inquisition immediately began to act against them. "Starting in the 1590s, the presence of Portuguese Judaizers in the inquisitorial processes became increasingly significant", a presence that continued throughout the century XVII and early XVIII century –"of the of more than 2,300 people prosecuted for judaizing by Spanish courts between the 1660s and the 1720s, 43 percent were of Portuguese origin".
The problem for the Inquisition was that the Monarchy needed the Portuguese pigs because a group of them were big financiers who could grant loans to the deficient Royal Treasury - already in 1604-1605 Felipe obtained from the Pope a general pardon for the Portuguese pigs for previous crimes in exchange for a donation of almost two million ducats. The Count-Duke of Olivares, trusted by Felipe IV, protected the Portuguese pig bankers and merchants, especially after the bankruptcy of the State in 1626, which meant bankruptcy for the Genoese bankers who until then had been the main financiers of the Monarchy. and that from then on the Portuguese became so. In 1628 Felipe IV granted "to the Portuguese bankers the freedom to trade and establish themselves without restrictions, hoping in this way to recover part of the trade with the Indies, which was now in foreign hands".
It was even said that the Count-Duke had begun negotiations with Jewish descendants of those expelled in 1492 who lived in North Africa and the Near East to return, giving them guarantees of their safety. In a letter dated August 8, the father Pereyra wrote: "The valid [Olivares] wants the Jews to enter Spain". A chronicler noted: "I have known for a certain thing that it is a question of restoring and bringing back the Jews, who are in the synagogues of Holland and other parts... The Holy Inquisition opposes".
Apparently, what Olivares wanted was to make use of the Sephardic marrano networks that had spread throughout Europe and the Middle East with their epicenter in Amsterdam, and that were constituted "on the basis of business relationships, religious complicity and ties of kinship". Thanks to them "a pig, as soon as he arrives in an unknown city or land, quickly comes into contact with other pigs, relatives or friends of friends, who help him and, many times, give him the opportunity to practice Judaism or even incite him to Judaize when he had stopped doing so".
In the existence of these organized networks of solidarity among Sephardic Jews is the origin, according to Joseph Pérez, of the myth of the global Jewish conspiracy. One of its first propagators was the writer Francisco de Quevedo, who "always felt great revulsion and hatred for the Jews" as demonstrated in his pamphlet Execration of the Jews. Quevedo's writing in which he refers to the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to pull the strings of world politics was titled The Island of the Monopantos, which he included in 1644 in his work Sueños. It described a supposed secret meeting held in Thessaloniki, then a city of the Ottoman Empire and where thousands of Sephardim lived, between Jews who came from all over Europe and the Monopantos, that is, the Christians who they were willing to collaborate with them to put an end to the Christian world –among whom it can be assumed that Olivares would be found-.
But Olivares's politics could not stop the Inquisition from acting, especially in Madrid, where the behavior of Portuguese pigs at court sometimes "bordered on provocation. In 1629, four Portuguese Jewish converts who had desecrated and burned a crucifix were sentenced and burned in an auto-da-fe presided over by Felipe IV. In 1633, billboards proclaiming the superiority of the Jewish religion over the Christian one appeared on the streets of Madrid, which gave rise to Quevedo's reply Execration against the Jews. The Inquisition prosecuted some Portuguese bankers such as Manuel Fernández Pinto or Juan Núñez Saravía as Judaizers.
After the fall of Olivares in 1640, the Inquisition was able to act freely and arrested almost all the Portuguese bankers one by one. Soon the persecution spread to the entire community of Portuguese converts and "the 1650s saw the beginning of a series of indiscriminate arrests and trials that reinstated the reign of terror for the minority converts of Portuguese origin" says Henry Kamen. Some escaped to northern Europe, especially to the United Provinces of the Netherlands and its most important city Amsterdam, where they returned to the Jewish faith without being persecuted. One of them Gaspar Méndez, who changed his name to Amsterdam as soon as he arrived in Amsterdam. that of Abraham Idana, wrote a harsh argument against the Inquisition:
By compelling them with inaudit torments that many confess by force what they did not, and this has been and is cause that many [have been imprisoned, entering prisons without knowledge of anything else but being Christians [have come out Jews. This was the cause of withdrawing from the land where such a court dominates.
Starting in 1680, the number of Jewish converts prosecuted by the Inquisition decreased, indicating, according to Henry Kamen, that "the first generation of Portuguese converts had been wiped off the face of the earth, the same than it had been that of the Spanish converts at the beginning of the century".
The Mallorcan chuetas
At the end of the XVII century there was one last case of persecution of Jewish converts: the chuetas of Mallorca —according to Joseph Pérez, "the word chueta appears for the first time in an inquisitorial document from 1688 to refer to the Judaizers of Palma who lived in a neighborhood around Sagell street". It was about a community descended from Jewish converts that in 1675 it was discovered that many of its members had secretly Judaized for more than a century – since 1531, the year in which it executed the last Judaizer, the Inquisition had dealt mainly with the Moriscos. That year a 19-year-old boy was burned alive and in the following four years several hundred people were arrested and their property was confiscated for a value of more than two and a half million ducats. In the first half of 1679, five autos-da-fé were held in Mallorca, in which there were 221 executions. Nine years later, some Chuetas organized a conspiracy but it failed, giving rise to four autos-da-fé held in 1691 in which 37 convicts were executed in person and 49 in effigy. Their sanbenitos remained hanging in the church of Santo Domingo in Palma until the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the ominous decade (1823-1833) of the reign of Fernando VII, there was a violent repression against the Chuetas and their houses on Calle de las Platerías were looted. Discrimination continued throughout the 19th century. A priest of Chueta origin, J. Taronjí, was prohibited from preaching in 1876; In 1904, in a parliamentary debate, a deputy yelled at the president of the government at the time, the Majorcan Antonio Maura: que la chueta shut up. Until 1963 there was no canon of Chueta origin in the chapter of the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca.
Pigs in America
The colonization of America was an opportunity for many new Christians (marranos included) to get away from an environment in which they were discriminated against. However, there were legal limitations that they had to avoid, as demonstrated by the case of Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, who formed a true marrana community in Monterrey (Nuevo Reino de León), harshly repressed. Other cases occurred in Cartagena de Indias (Kingdom of New Granada) and in other parts of America.
The first Jewish convert executed as a Judaizer in America seems to have been Juan Muñoz, who was burned in Cuba in 1518. A year earlier, the notary public Alonso de Escalante was arrested in Santiago de Cuba by order of Bishop Antonio Manso and sent to Seville, where he was burned in 1523.
The descendants of the New Christians, even having lost almost their entire Jewish identity to this day, can be identified by genetic analysis and genealogical studies, which have recognized a large number of family surnames of Jewish-convert origin.
- See also: Sefardí and López de Lacalle