First published in Portuguese in 1969, this is the only work by Antonio Jose Saraiva available in English and the only single-volume history devoted primarily to the working of the Portuguese Inquisition, a most lucid and compact survey. "The Marrano Factory" argues that the Portuguese Inquisition s stated intention of extirpating heresies and purifying Portuguese Catholicism was a monumental hoax; the true purpose of the Holy Office was the fabrication rather than the destruction of "Judaizers."
The Marrano Specter pursues the reciprocal influence between Jacques Derrida and Hispanism. On the one hand, Derrida’s work has engendered a robust conversation among philosophers and critics in Spain and Latin America, where his work circulates in excellent translation, and where many of the terms and problems he addresses take on a distinctive meaning: nationalism and cosmopolitanism; spectrality and hauntology; the relation of subjectivity and truth; the university; disciplinarity; institutionality. Perhaps more remarkably, the influence is in a profound sense reciprocal: across his writings, Derrida grapples with the theme of marranismo, the phenomenon of Sephardic crypto-Judaism. Derrida’s marranismo is a means of taking apart traditional accounts of identity; a way for Derrida to reflect on the status of the secret; a philosophical nexus where language, nationalism, and truth-telling meet and clash in productive ways; and a way of elaborating a critique of modern biopolitics. It is much more than a simple marker of his work’s Hispanic identity, but it is also, and irreducibly, that. The essays collected in The Marrano Specter cut across the grain of traditional Hispanism, but also of the humanistic disciplines broadly conceived. Their vantage point—the theoretical, philosophically inflected critique of disciplinary practices—poses uncomfortable, often unfamiliar questions for both hispanophone studies and the broader theoretical humanities.
A cultural and architectural history of Judaism as it expanded and took root in the Atlantic world Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World is a unique blend of cultural and architectural history that considers Jewish heritage as it expanded among the continents and islands linked by the Atlantic Ocean between the mid-fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Barry L. Stiefel achieves a powerful synthesis of material culture research and traditional historical research in his examination of the early modern Jewish diaspora in the New World. Through this generously illustrated work, Stiefel examines forty-six synagogues built in Europe, South America, the Caribbean Islands, colonial and antebellum North America, and Gibraltar to discover what liturgies, construction methods, and architectural styles were transported from the Old World to the New World. Some are famous—Touro in Newport, Rhode Island; Bevis Marks in London; and Mikve Israel in Curaçao—while others had short-lived congregations whose buildings were lost. The two great traditions of Judaism—Sephardic and Ashkenazic—found homes in the Atlantic World. Examining buildings and congregations that survive, Stiefel offers valuable insights on their connections and commonalities. If both the congregations and buildings are gone, the author re-creates them by using modern heritage preservation tools that have expanded the heuristic repertoire, tools from such diverse sources as architectural studies, archaeology, computer modeling and rendering, and geographic information systems. When combined these bring a richer understanding of the past than incomplete, uncertain traditional historical resources. Buildings figure as key indicators in Stiefel's analysis of Jewish life and social experience, while the author's immersion in the faith and practice of Judaism invigorates every aspect of his work.
In Identity and Violence in Early Modern Granada: Conversos and Moriscos, Tanja Zakrzewski argues that Conversos and Moriscos, despite being distinct socio-cultural groups within Spanish society, still employed the same arguments and rhetorical strategies to establish and defend their place within society. Both Conversos and Moriscos relied on contemporary notions of honour, authority, and loyalty to emphasize that they are true Spaniards - not despite their New Christian heritage but because of it. This book offers an entangled narrative of their history and examines how their notions of honor and hispanidad shaped their socio-cultural identities during the time of the socio-cultural identities during the time of the Alpujarras Rebellion.
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.
Few financial crises, historically speaking, have attracted such attention as the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles of 1719–20. The twin bubbles had major economic and political implications, sending shock waves through the whole of Europe; they astonished contemporaries, and, to a large extent, they still resonate today. This volume offers new readings of these events, drawing on fresh research and new evidence that challenge traditional interpretations. The chapters engage, in particular, with: the geographical frame of the 1719-20 bubbles their social, cultural, economic and political impact the ways in which contemporaries understood speculation the contributions and impact of a diverse array of participants popular and print memorialization of the events Overall, the volume helps to rewrite the history of the 1719–20 bubbles and to recontextualize their place within eighteenth-century history.
From the sixteenth century on, hundreds of Portuguese New Christians began to flow to Venice and Livorno in Italy, and to Amsterdam and Hamburg in northwest Europe. In those cities and later in London, Bordeaux, and Bayonne as well, Iberian conversos established their own Jewish communities, openly adhering to Judaism. Despite the features these communities shared with other confessional groups in exile, what set them apart was very significant. In contrast to other European confessional communities, whose religious affiliation was uninterrupted, the Western Sephardic Jews came to Judaism after a separation of generations from the religion of their ancestors. In this edited volume, several experts in the field detail the religious and cultural changes that occurred in the Early Modern Western Sephardic communities. "Highly recommended for all academic and Jewish libraries." - David B Levy, Touro College, NYC, in: Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews 1.2 (2019)
In Portuguese Jews, New Christians and ‘New Jews’ Claude B. Stuczynski and Bruno Feitler gather some of the leading scholars of the history of the Portuguese Jews and conversos in a tribute to their common friend and a renowned figure in Luso-Judaica, Roberto Bachmann, on the occasion of his 85th birthday. The texts are divided into five sections dealing with medieval Portuguese Jewish culture, the impact of the inquisitorial persecution, the wide range of converso identities on one side, and of the Sephardi Western Portuguese Jewish communities on the other, and the role of Portugal and Brazil as lands of refuge for Jews during the Second World War. This book is introduced by a comprehensive survey on the historiography on Portuguese Jews, New Christians and 'New Jews' and offers a contribution to Luso-Judaica studies
In the Early Modern period, the religious refugee became a constant presence in the European landscape, a presence which was felt, in the wake of processes of globalization, on other continents as well. During the religious wars, which raged in Europe at the time of the Reformation, and as a result of the persecution of religious minorities, hundreds of thousands of men and women were forced to go into exile and to restore their lives in new settings. In this collection of articles, an international group of historians focus on several of the significant groups of minorities who were driven into exile from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The contributions here discuss a broad range of topics, including the ways in which these communities of belief retained their identity in foreign climes, the religious meaning they accorded to the experience of exile, and the connection between ethnic attachment and religious belief, among others.
