Antonio Jose Sariava The Marrano Factory The Portuguese Inquistion and Its New Christians 1536-1765 2001
Antonio Jose Sariava The Marrano Factory The Portuguese Inquistion and Its New Christians 1536-1765 2001
Antonio Jose Sariava The Marrano Factory The Portuguese Inquistion and Its New Christians 1536-1765 2001
FACTORY:
The Portuguese
Inquisition and Its New
Christians 1536-1765
BRILL
BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON KLN
2001
ISBN 90 04 12080 7
For the English edition: Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
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INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
Introduction to the English Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX
A Word to the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV
Prologue (Fifth Edition, 1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIX
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIII
Illustrations 1-18
Chapter One: The Birth of the Portuguese New Christians . . . . . .
19
43
66
84
VIII
contents
235
235
248
250
264
290
291
292
293
377
379
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
About Antnio Jos Saraiva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
381
395
397
403
1 We express our thanks for their sundry support to Maria Francisca de Oliveira Banha
de Andrade, Harm den Boer, Ana Cannas da Cunha, Maria do Carmo Jasmins Dias
Farinha, Antnio M. Feij, Andrew Gluck, Frits J. Hoogewoud, Bart Kerrebijn, John
Monfasani, Fernanda Olival, Judith K. Place, Job de Ruyter, Pedro P. Saraiva, Jos Antnio
Silva, Miguel Tamen, Jos Alberto R. D. S. Tavim, Maria Teresa Temudo, Michael Terry,
and The Research Foundation of the State University of New York at Albany.
2 Their crime was being New Christian. See Joaquim Romero de Magalhes,
E assim se abriu Judaismo no Algarve, Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, 29, 1981,
1-79: 6. As of 1987 a total of c. 42,000 numbered processos, 1540-1820, including
c. 37,000 complete trial records and c. 5000 incomplete, fragmentary or embryonic
documents erroneously classified as such, were known to be preserved in Lisbons
National Archives of the Torre do Tombo (see Maria do Carmo Dias Farinha,
Os Arquivos da Inquisio Existentes na Torre do Tombo [Conhecimento Actual],
Inquisio, Lisbon, 1989, pp. 1527-1537). An additional indeterminate number are
believed lost or misplaced but every year a few more turn up. Full trial records unconnected to Judaizing include: c. 450 for sodomy (30 executed: see Luiz Mott, Justitia
et Misericordia, A Inquisio Portuguesa e a represso ao nefando pecado de sodomia,
in Inquisio: Ensaios sobre Mentalidade, Heresias e Arte [Anita Novinsky and Maria Luiza
Tucci Carneiro, eds.], Rio de Janeiro, 1992, 703-738); c. 350 of mouriscos (converted
slaves and emancipated slaves as well as recent immigrants from Spain) for Islamic
practices, attitudes or attempted flight to Islamic lands (totaling c. 250, 1540-1560;
49 at vora, 1555-1608; none executed: see Isabel M. R. Mendes Drumond Braga,
Os Mouriscos perante a Inquisio de vora, Eborensia, 7, 1994, 45-76; id., Mouriscos
e Cristos no Portugal Quinhentista, Lisbon, 1999); c. 200 for Lutheranism, Calvinism,
Erasmianism, Illuminism, Disbelief (among whom c. 80 Netherlanders: see id.,
Os Estrangeiros e a Inquisio Portuguesa: Os Sbditos dos Pases Baixos, in Amor,
Sentir e Viver a Histria Estudos de Homenagem a Joaquim Verssimo Serro, Lisbon, 1995,
455-487 [95, 1540-1570, among whom 22 Portuguese]); c. 250 for turning Muslim in
North Africa (among whom c. 100 Portuguese: see id., Entre a Cristandade e o Islo, Ceuta,
1998); 9 for illegally transporting New Christian emigrants (2 in 1541, 7 in 1550: see
id., O embarque de Cristos-Novos para o Estrangeiro, Gil Vicente, 29, 1994, 26-32);
distinguish between guilt and innocence, but considered any defendant, once categorized a New Christian, to be ipso facto a Judaizer.
The warped logic of persecuting people for what they were not was
attributed to the Portuguese Inquisition by its 17th and 18th-century
opponents, but denied by early twentieth-century historiography.
Defenders of the Portuguese Inquisition who of course accepted its
premises found strange bedfellows in romantically inspired Jewish
historians. These aligned themselves with their predecessors in the
perpetuation of the crypto-Judaic myth. Consider, for instance, how
Cecil Roths History of the Marranos (Philadelphia, 1932; fourth edition,
New York, 1974) still considered authoritative to judge by the
number of recent translations presents the saga of the New Christians as evidence of the heroic tenacity of an indomitable religion,
surviving against all odds. This leads him to portray Judaizing as a real
and vital presence in the Iberian Peninsula and its overseas territories.
In Portugal itself, subsequent to the publication of Saraivas book,
two works dealing with the Portuguese Inquisition echo and prolong
the debate. Antnio Borges Coelhos study of the first 125 years of the
vora tribunal (Inquisio de vora dos Primrdios a 1668, Lisbon, 1987)
leaves the reader little doubt that those sentenced and in 307 cases
executed for Judaizing, who made up some 98% of its victims, were
overwhelmingly foreign to Judaic practices. Elvira Cunha de Azevedo
Meas study of the first 34 years of the Coimbra tribunal (A Inquisio
de Coimbra no Sculo XVI, Oporto, 1997), on the other hand, portrays
the Inquisitors as a beleaguered militia, manning the walls against ever
soaring onslaughts of Judaizers (144 of whom were duly executed).
The Marrano Factory presents the expanded 1985 edition of Saraivas
history and analysis of the Portuguese Inquisition. Appended are a
1971 interview with I. S. Rvah, professor at the Collge de France and
specialist on the Portuguese Inquisition, in which he sought to impugn
the books argumentative claims; Saraivas rebutter, in the form of
artfully contrived dramatic dialogues, as well as Rvahs surrebutter of
c. 400 for soliciting in the confessional, bigamy, blasphemy, sorcery, irregular or corrupt
Inquisitorial practices (see Charles Amiel, Les Archives de lInquisition Portugaise,
Arquivos do Centro Cultural Portugus, 14, 1979, 421-443); 21 for Masonry, 1770-1810
(see A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Os Processos da Inquisio contra os Pedreiros Livres,
Inquisio, Lisbon, 1990, 1125-1131); 123 for various offenses (with some overlapping
from the preceding) 1801-1820 (see Aniseta Afonso and Marlia Guerreiro, Subsdios
para o Estudo da Inquisio Portuguesa no Sculo XIX, ibid., 1243-1312); 25 (some of
them New Christians) for uttering sacrilegious or heretical propositions (see Fernanda
Olival, O Controle Sobre Proposies na Inquisio de Lisboa, 1681-1700, ibid.,
663-686). Nearly all the other complete processos (c. 35,000) and a high percentage of
the remainder through 1765 concern Judaizing.
XI
the same year; both scholars letters to the editor of the Dirio de
Lisboa, the newspaper that opened its columns to the long-running
polemic. (Despite their ad hominem attacks and flawed arguments,
Rvahs fierce rhetorical charges show that he shared, to some extent,
Saraivas views. Both realized, of course, that the Portuguese Inquisition was arbitrary, predatory and cruel.)
The first work by Antnio Jos Saraiva to be made available in
English, it is also the first one-volume history in English devoted
primarily to the Portuguese Inquisition. The original version, though
intended for the general public, was scholarly in conception. It did
not, however, include any bibliography, and footnotes were kept to the
scrimpiest. The present edition has sought to remedy such omissions.
We have added an extensive critical apparatus supporting the texts
various insights and supplying the intricate scholarly context against
which such insights ought to be read. While the translation is generally close to the original, literalness has occasionally been sacrificed to
perspicuity. The text has been supplemented in places and the odd
factual error corrected.3 The index introduced in the 1985 edition has
been modified. We have also added a brief aperu of the Portuguese
Inquisition in Goa, India; a report of 1631 to King Philip III by
Inquisitor General Francisco de Castro; a plea to King Joo IV for the
reinstatement of Inquisitorial confiscation; lists of Portuguese kings.4
and Inquisitors General, and an up-to-date bibliography. Saraivas
fleeting comparisons of the Portuguese Inquisitorial trial and the
New Christian victims condition with those of Kafkas K. have been
dropped. After all, K.s ordeal was sui generis, while Portuguese Inquisitorial persecution of New Christians stretched over 225 years and
affected c. 40,000 individuals, the Inquisitions magnitude and
diachronic span affording its victims ample opportunities for the
development of defensive strategies. As Antnio Nunes Ribeiro
Sanches pointed out in 1735, generations of prisoners who had gone
through the interrogations and confessions, though sworn to secrecy
and without access to the rule book, must have rehearsed their relatives and friends about Jewish actions (in addition to the stereotyped
ones publicly enounced in the Edicts of Faith) expected in their confessions if, and when, they should be arrested or voluntarily present
themselves for reconciliation in order to forestall arrest. The more
3 From 1971 until the year of his death, Prof. Saraiva (1917-1993) discussed with
H. P. Salomon the prospects of a revised edition of his book and, eventually, an English
translation.
4 We keep to the Portuguese form of their names throughout, except for the three
Philips, simultaneously kings of Spain, whose names we consistently anglicize.
XII
XIII
XIV
14 For a glimpse into Francisco de Castros life-style, see the inventory of his possessions made 1649-1652 published by Antnio Baio (El-Rei D. Joo IV e a Inquisio,
Academia Portuguesa da Histria, Anais, 6, 1942, 11-70). He was very likely the prepotent
financier and landed aristocrat of his time. See Maria do Rosrio lvaro de Oliveira
Mendes de Oliveira, D. Francisco de Castro e o morgado do menor D. Joo de Castro
Telles Meneses Henriques (1641-1654), Unpublished Masters Thesis, University of
Lisbon, 2000. See the biography of the immensely wealthy Inquisitor General Nuno da
Cunha de Atade e Melo (1664-1750) by Maria Lusa Braga, A Inquisio em Portugal
1700-1750, Lisbon, 1992, 25-66.
The Spanish word Marrano, 3 which before the General Conversion designated a convert to Christianity who, under Jewish influence, continued to adhere to Jewish practices or customs,4 had become
1 A reworking of the authors brief A Inquisio Portuguesa (The Portuguese Inquisition, Lisbon, 1953, reprinted with corrections in 1956 and 1964), Inquisio e CristosNovos was completed during the summer of 1964 and came from the press in February
1969, followed by a second printing with corrections in May, a third printing in July and
a fourth printing in December of that same year. A French summary appeared in
Annales, conomies, Socits, Civilisations, 22, 3, May-June 1967, 586-589. The introductory paragraphs of A Word to the Reader up to the sentence beginning In general,
have been added by the translators.
2 See Ho segundo liuro das ordenaes, Lisbon, 1513, ttulo 49,15 r; for the date of
promulgation see Synopsis Chronologica, Lisbon, 1740, 1, 158. The punishment was
meted out to Lus Fernandes, shield-bearer of King Manuels mother, the infanta
D. Beatriz. See Maria Jos Pimenta Ferro Tavares, Os Judeus em Portugal no Sculo XV,
Lisbon, 1982, 495.
3 For the origin and development of this word, see Juan Corominas, Diccionario
Crtico Etimolgico castellano e hispano, Madrid, 19802, s.v. Cf. Antnio de Moraes Silva,
Diccionario da Lingua Portugueza, Oporto, 18918, s.v.
4 See the distichs by lvaro de Brito Pestana, writing during the latter part of the
reign of Afonso V (1438-1481) when conversion to Christianity was still a voluntary
option (note the playful etymologies):
XVI
a vituperative synonym for all those who had been converted from
Judaism to Christianity under duress as well as their Christian descendants, suggesting that all of them were crypto-Jews.
In the course of time Marrano as a taunt or a term of scorn and
opprobrium for the New Christians fell into disuse in Portugal and the
word Jew took over this function.5 In general, there has been confusion regarding these terms. Many authors who write on the New
Christians assume this groups distinctiveness to lie in adherence to
Judaism. This was the ostensible justification for the Portuguese Inquisitions establishment in 1536 and its perpetuation (at least in continental Portugal) for the next 230 years.
The author of the present work intends to contest it. This is a difficult task. It is also a challenge to the inertia of clich, the charisma of
myth, and above all to the incontestable evidence of a documentation
XVII
XX
XXI
2 This is not to deny, of course, that the earthquake had an enormous impact on the
public mood and its receptiveness to Pombals major reforms.
3 Los judos en la Espaa moderna y contempornea, Madrid, 1962, 3 vols.
INTRODUCTION.1
XXIV
INTRODUCTION
2 Arianism was a non-Trinitarian branch of Christianity that goes back to the Alexandrian priest Arius (died Constantinople, 336) and holds the Messiah to be subordinate
to the Father.
INTRODUCTION
XXV
3 The Swabians occupied the region now called Galicia and Northern Portugal. The
Swabian king Rechiarius, whose capital was Braga, adopted Catholicism, c. 450.
However, his successor Remismund reverted to Arianism in 464.Except for its military
confrontations with the Visigoths, little is known about the vicissitudes of the Swabian
kingdom during the next few centuries and nothing at all about its policies toward
the Jews.
XXVI
INTRODUCTION
4
5
INTRODUCTION
XXVII
transgressor of all or any one of these things, he shall perish with new
flames or stones [].6
This placitum became law of the realm (Fuero juzgo, book 12). However,
the king reserved the right to commute the death sentence to slavery
and transfer the culprits property to a third party. (It will be noted
that the second placitum, like the first, still implies a Jewish presence
in the kingdom.) Thus were institutionalized the discriminatory laws
against Christian converts from Judaism (with Papal approval). The
mention of immolation as a punishment for lapsed converts foreshadows the Peninsular tradition of burning Judaizers at the stake.7
Under King Ervig (reigned from 680) 28 new anti-Jewish laws were
passed by the 12th Council of Toledo (681), the principal one being the
alternative of conversion or exile for all remaining Jews, whose presence was no longer even tacitly to be tolerated. On the other hand,
the placitums death penalty by stoning or fire is omitted. Instead,
such transgressions as Sabbath, Mosaic holy day or dietary law observance and possession of Jewish books were to be punished by fines,
100 lashes for the insolvent, banishment and loss of property for all
others. The law foresaw a possibility of the latters reconciliation in
case of repentance and contrition (modality unspecified). All Ervigs
laws were passed by the civil authority and approved by the Church.
Some of these laws are detailed regulations governing the supervision and ecclesiastical policing of New Christians. They were to spend
Sabbaths and Mosaic Holy Days in their place of residence under the
surveillance of the local bishop. They were not to travel without ecclesiastic permission and, if travel they must, the priests of any locality
where they spent Sabbaths and Mosaic Holy Days were to sign affidavits that they a) had not observed those Holy Days and b) that they
had consumed Mosaically objectionable food. These certificates had to
be delivered to their own parish priests upon their return home.
Failure to produce a certificate was to be punished by shaving of the
head and 100 lashes. A man participating in a childs circumcision was
to be castrated; a woman, to have her nose cut off.
Ervig was succeeded in 687 by King Egica, in whose reign the 16th
Council of Toledo (693) mitigated some of the harshest legislation in
respect to converts, lifting the collective suspicion under which they
6 For the full text of the second placitum see Philip Limborch, The History of the Inquisition translated into English by Samuel Chandler, London, 1731, 2, 104-105; a more recent
English translation of the placitum is provided by E. H. Lindo, The History of the Jews of
Spain and Portugal, London, 1848, 34-36. We here cite Chandlers version.
7 Cf. Montesquieu, De lesprit des lois (1748), 28, 1: We owe the Visigothic Code all
the maxims, all the principles and all the views of the present-day Inquisition [].
XXVIII
INTRODUCTION
8 The traditional laws codified by King Alfonso X (el Sabio), known as El fuero real
(1255) and the Siete Partidas (c. 1265) regulated the legal position of the Jews for the next
two centuries. France was then experiencing the full brunt of the Inquisition and many
other European countries were getting a taste. But not Spain, where there was no heresy,
INTRODUCTION
XXIX
While all this was going on, the Jews were able to maintain themselves outside the fray. To the Christians, warriors and country folk,
the Jews appeared as representatives of a superior civilization whose
services in many domains seemed indispensable. The Jews of Moslem
Spain were artisans, small-time and big-time merchants, financiers,
physicians, legal experts, court officials. In the parts of the Peninsula
reconquered by the Christians, they continued in these capacities and
the Christian kings availed themselves of their competence. Between
the agrarian population and the aristocratic warrior class, they made
up a sort of proto-bourgeoisie.
By dint of the functions they carried out and by their numbers,
they attained a higher social level, greater prosperity and kudos than
any other Jewish community in medieval Europe. At the very time
when the Jewish communities of Moslem and reconquered Christian
Spain were at the peak of their splendor during the 12th and 13th
centuries massacres and forced conversions of Jews were the order
of the day north of the Pyrenees, albeit without the active participation
of the Church, as mentioned earlier. Regions where economic advance
was notable, such as northern France, England and the cities along the
Rhine, witnessed over the same period the gradual or brutal elimination of the Jewish minority. Progress in arts, crafts and commerce,
which cut across ethnic and religious barriers, engendered an urban
middle class, first rivaling and ultimately turning on the older Jewish
one. The social classes gradually came to be characterized by their
economic function. They no longer saw themselves as hereditary castes
linked to particular religious denominations. The medieval codes, with
their jurisprudence particularized according to religion and class, were
giving way to a new concept of one universal law. This process was
paralleled, on the political level, by the creation of the Modern State,
with its Centralized Authority. Still not giving preeminence to the
bourgeoisie (as it will in 17th century France), it represented a half-way
house, which left the traditional Nobility to tick over as a caste, but
otherwise leveled out the playing field.
ergo Alfonso had no need and took no notice of the Inquisition. He regulated religious
affairs by secular law. Although the Jews enjoyed complete freedom of religion, some of
the old Visigothic legislation remained in force. Any Christian who converted or
reverted to Judaism was to be executed and his property confiscated. It is doubtful
whether any such case arose in Spain before the introduction of the Inquisition.
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INTRODUCTION
4. The Inquisition
Before the institution of the medieval Inquisition, the bishops investigated crimes against the faith within their respective dioceses. The
avalanche of heresies that submerged southern France during the 12th
century caused pontifical and royal powers to join forces in the crusade
against the Albigenses (named for the city Albi; also called Cathars
from the Greek word for pure), and to erase the last vestiges of
heresy among the vanquished. With this end in mind, during the first
years of the 13th century, the Pope authorized tribunals in areas worst
affected by heresies, to track down and punish heretics. The judges
were for the most part recruited among friars of the recently founded
Dominican order, which was most diligent in cracking down on new
heresies. To their function of inquiring into heretical crimes, these
special tribunals owed the name Tribunals of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition (i.e., Inquiry). As delegates of the Popes (and hence independent of the local Bishops), the Inquisitors counted on the collaboration of the royal officials to impose temporal punishments on those
convicted of heresy. Being an ecclesiastical institution, the Inquisition
could, in principle, only apply spiritual sanctions (excommunications,
penances, etc.) but, by handing over the convicted culprits to the
secular arm, it implicitly pronounced the death sentence over them,
as well as the confiscation of goods and chattels, which civil law stipulated for certain crimes, including heresy.
Yet, relations between the Inquisitorial tribunals and royal authority
fluctuated considerably during the Middle Ages. Prior to the reformed
Aragonese, Castilian.9 and Portuguese Inquisitions, there had never
been uniform statutes; that is to say, each country had its own Inquisitorial organization, but there was no French Inquisition or Aragonese
Inquisition because the organization was not national in the way
that historians speak of The Castilian Inquisition, or the The
Portuguese Inquisition.
In theory, the Inquisition dealt exclusively with members of the
Church, i.e., baptized individuals who then forsook Catholicism by
professing heresies, or by entering into a pact with the devil. Those
outside her bosom, such as Jews, were also outside her jurisdiction.
Indeed, there is no instance of the medieval Inquisitions indulging in
9 When Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile in 1469 the two kingdoms
were united but the name Spain still designated the Iberian Peninsula (including
Portugal) and did not take on its present meaning until the l6th century. Even at present,
however, Castile and Castilian are synonyms for Spain and Spanish.
INTRODUCTION
XXXI
XXXII
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
XXXIII
10 Whereas the two published versions of the Edict of Expulsion (see Judos. Sefarditas.
Conversos La expulsin de 1492 y sus consecuencias [Angel Alcal, ed.], Valladolid, 1995, 125133) do not mention the option of conversion, the Cretan rabbi and chronicler Elijah
Capsali (c. 1483-1555), in his Seder Eliyahu Zuta, provides a Hebrew translation of an otherwise unknown version of the Decree of Expulsion, including a stipulation that any Jew
opting to convert before the date the Decree takes effect will remain in possession of all his
property and be exempt from Inquisitorial investigation for ten years. See Eliyahu Capsali,
Chronique de lExpulsion (S. Sultan-Bohbot, translator), Paris, 1994, 96-98: 97.
11 Their being godfathers to the Court Rabbi of Castile and his clan at their baptism
in 1492 seems to contradict this theory. See below, note 19. Moreover, on November 10,
1492 Ferdinand and Isabella proclaimed an invitation to all Spanish Jews in Portugal to
return to Spain, promising them the repossession of all their properties and complete
security if they would accept baptism at the border, either in Ciudad Rodrigo or Zamora.
Although not specified, protection from Inquisitorial prosecution is fairly implied.
See Documentes referentes a las relaciones con Portugal durante el reinado de los Reyes Catlicos
(Antonio de la Torre and Luis Surez Fernndez, eds.), Valladolid, 1958, 2, 406-408; also
reproduced in Documentos acerca de la expulsin de los judos (Luis Surez Fernndez, ed.),
Madrid, 1964, 487-489. For the practical effects of the decree as regards Aragn,
see Miguel Angel Motis Dolader, La expulsin de los judos del reino de Aragn, 1990, 2,
319-445.
12 For the most recent estimates of the Jewish population in Spain in 1492, see Luis
Surez Fernndez, La population juive la veille de 1492, in Les Juifs dEspagne: histoire
dune diaspora, Paris, 1992, 29-41: 30-32. For the number of those entering Portugal, see
Maria Jos Pimenta Ferro Tavares, Os Judeus em Portugal no Sculo XV, 1, 1982, 252-257;
271-272.
XXXIV
INTRODUCTION
and exemption of the Jews became too onerous. In other words, the
Catholic monarchs were doing the Jews a favor by expelling them! (In
a way, the benign treatment of those who voluntarily converted and
remained was the last favor shown them by their erstwhile Lords and
Protectors.)
Another theory tossed around is that, since the New Christians
provided an adequate bourgeoisie and artisan workforce, the Jews
were so to speak no longer worth their keep. This theory forgets that
the New Christians, far from being left to make their economic contribution, were harassed and worse at every turn.13
In short, none of these explanations is satisfactory. Practically all
historians agree that the departure of the Jews was a devastating blow
to the Spanish economy.14 But even the reason set out by Ferdinand
and Isabella in the Edict of Expulsion itself, viz. that the Jews were
spiritually corrupting the New Christians and wooing them back to
Judaism, is unlikely to disclose the whole complex truth behind a
policy so calamitous as well as portentous.
7. Explanation
To us it appears that Ferdinand and Isabella, upon the conquest of
Granada and the final reversal of the Moslem invasion, were convinced
by Torquemada.15 to take up again where the pre-711 Visigoths had
left off. They saw as their supreme and divinely ordained task to rid
Spain once and for all of its Jewish minority and to brutally and decisively smash the cultural, theological, social and economic backbone
of the New Christian elite. The realization of this ambitious program
was to earn them the enviable honorific Catholic Monarchs a
conscious throwback to the old Visigoth title bestowed on them by
the pope.16
13 The latest analysis, by Benzion Netanyahu (The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth
Century Spain, New York, 1995, 1384 pp.), ascribes the expulsion to political pressure on
the monarchs.
14 Ferdinand himself stated as much in his letter to the Count of Aranda dated
Granada, March 31, 1492: in spite of considerable damage ensuing to us from [the
Edict of Expulsion]. See Pilar Len Tello, Documento de Fernando el Catlico [sic]
sobre expulsin de los judos, Homenaje a Federico Navarro, Madrid, 1973, 247-248.
15 In his letter to the Count of Aranda Ferdinand specifically states that the expulsion
of the Jews was a decision taken by the Holy Office of the Inquisition [= Torquemada].
See Len Tello, art. cit., and below, Chapter Two, note 18.
16 On December 19, 1496, by his bull Si convenit, Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the title of Catholic Monarchs for having completed the Reconquest
and expelled the Jews. See Diccionario de Historia Eclesiastica de Espaa, Madrid, 1973, s.v.
reyes catlicos.
INTRODUCTION
XXXV
17 The program for the regothization of Spain by means of the expulsion of the Jews
and the introduction of an Inquisition directed against the New Christians was outlined
in detail by the Franciscan friar Alonso de Espina in the third part of his polemical work
Fortalitium Fidei (Fortress of the Faith), first printed at Nuremberg in 1494, but
redacted in Spain c. 1458-1464. See Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, La Forteresse de la foi, Paris,
1998; id., De bello iudaeorum, Fray Alonos de Espina y su Fortalitium fidei (Fontes Iudaeorum
Regni Castellae, 8), Salamanca, 1998.
18 Of particular interest are 34 trial records of the Inquisition of Cuenca-Sigenza
from 1492-1497, all centering around the town of Molina (Madrid, Archivo Histrico
Nacional, Inq. Leg. 1930, 1-34). A comparison between these and the earliest Portuguese
trial records of four decades later is a desideratum.
19 Records of the Trials of the Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real (1485-1527), 3 vols.,
Jerusalem, 1974-1981. See the critical reviews by H. P. Salomon in The American Sephardi,
7-8, 1975, 120-121; 9, 1978, 156-157.
XXXVI
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
XXXVII
The Spanish New Christians tried gambits to outwit the laws. Some
passed themselves off as Old Christians, changing their name and
place of residence if necessary; others contracted marriages with Old
Christian families or purchased from the Crown an exemption from
stain of birth which could pave the way to membership in the Orders
of Knighthood (normally closed to New Christians). But it was not
until the middle of the 18th century that the Spanish New Christians,
as a group, were able to slough off the opprobrium that clung to them
even after active persecution had died down. And as long as discrimination lasted and they were legally barred from all other avenues of
advancement, New Christians turned for their livelihood primarily to
commerce, law, medicine and other non-ecclesiastical professions.
Between the nobleman, rich or poor, and the peasant of the lowest
social rank, who both prided themselves on their clean blood, the
New Christians in countless cases descended from Old Christians
made up the bulk of the Middle Class. Yet amidst all this strict stratification a few a very few merchant families, pulling themselves up
by their bootlaces, left Lombard Street behind and leapfrogged into
socially correct Belgrave Square. Conversely, Old Christians,
pursuing a typically New Christian life style, risked loosing their Old
Christian status and getting into the Inquisitions bad books.22 Thus,
22 A unique case in point is that of Majorca, where the Jewish community was decimated in 1391 and extinguished in 1435. After an intense initial period of Inquisitorial
persecution of its New Christian descendants 1478-1536, the Inquisition lay dormant
for 140 years. In 1675 a young Jew from Oran, born a Catholic in Madrid, was apprehended in the Majorca harbor on a ship bound for Leghorn. His trial was followed by
an auto-da-f where he was burnt alive and six fugitive Portuguese in effigy. In 1677 the
Inquisition was alerted to Judaizing among the inhabitants of a single street, the Carrer
del Sayel, leading to 237 arrests and trials, and five autos-da-f in April-May 1679, at
which 221 persons were sentenced. The victims, bearing 15 patronymics, were probably
not of unmixed Jewish descent (intermarriage between those of the street and those
outside it was rampant throughout the 16th century) but their successful mercantile
activities, ever more closed social group and in-breeding excited the envy and hatred of
outsiders. On the other hand many identifiable descendants of the ancient Jewish
community of Majorca, still bearing their original Jewish names, lived spread out on the
island, had non-mercantile livelihoods and were never bothered by the Inquisition. The
complicity of 1678 (as the Inquisition termed it) netted 2,500,000 ducats in confiscations. After a 10-year lull new arrests in 1688 precipitated a panic among inhabitants of
the street and an attempted collective escape from the island, which failed due to a
storm. All the prospective fugitives were arrested, leading to 86 drawn-out trials (46 of
women) on the count of relapsing and four autos-da-f in March-July of 1691. At the
first, 21 persons were sentenced to the galleys, scourging, etc.; at the second 18 persons
were garroted and burnt; at the third 14 persons were garroted and burnt, three burnt
alive and seven in effigy; at the fourth 17 were penanced, two were garroted and burnt,
one burnt in effigy. In 1691-1694 83 additional cases were suspended; in 1695 one
person was reconciled, 11 posthumously burnt in effigy. With this, outright Inquisitorial
persecution of the inhabitants of the street came to an end. The descendants of the
XXXVIII
INTRODUCTION
in Spain, the label New Christian defines economic and social status at
least as much as pedigree.
Naturally there were those who profited from this discrimination,
namely the traditional landowners and holders of political power, who
identified themselves with the feudal scale of values. These people felt
threatened by a dangerous enemy: the merchants, business men, lay
intellectuals, whose inquisitiveness probed received wisdom. The laws
of cleanness of blood were a barrier to keep the latter at arms length.
The feudal framework of Spanish society was propitious for such laws.
More than elsewhere there was an archaic persistence of the guild
mentality, leaning towards a caste system. It was thus in the blood of
the Spanish body politic for bourgeois to form not merely, as in
France, an economic third estate, gradually overshadowing the
nobility, but a closed hereditary out-group, after the manner of the
medieval Jews. If the cleanness of blood laws smack of backwardness,
it is no coincidence. People whose practical value to society has had its
day must find a new niche for themselves if they are to command
their habitual respect. Superior blood is a splendid old standby. In
post-medieval Spain the cleanness of blood myth was just what the
doctor ordered to pep up the fading luster and creaking floorboards
of the knightly edifice of yore.
9. Epilogue
For the reasons just set out the terms Jews or crypto-Jews used to
designate the Spanish New Christians, not only by their Old Christian
foes, but by supposedly impartial historians, is out and out misleading.
In Spain, Jews and New Christians were two totally distinct entities, even though historically linked. It is essential not to confuse them,
at the risk of misunderstanding the parameters of a problem posed by
a strictly Iberian social group.
In the Iberian Peninsula, as in the rest of Europe, the position of the
Jews as a separately administered entity from the Christians was conditioned by a religious barrier. In England and France the persecutions
of the Jewish minorities brought about their disappearance, either
INTRODUCTION
XXXIX
through extermination, expulsion or assimilation, as part of a calendering and equalizing movement which tended to abolish particular
legislation and discrimination within each of these political units. In
the Iberian Peninsula, however, the process of assimilation and liquidation of the religious minority was followed by a swing in the opposite direction, which might be termed dissimilation. Taking the place
of the former religious minority, a new minority was born, afflicted
with a hereditary stigma the stigma called New Christian.
In the Netherlands from c. 1600, in England from 1656 and in
Southwestern France from around 1690 there was to be a renewed
Jewish presence, centuries after the massacres, expulsions and conversions. But this Jewish presence was made up of immigrants (paradoxically initiated by Portuguese New Christians fleeing Inquisitorial
persecution.23) and not the descendants of long since baptized native
Jews. It was not the maimed ancient trunk which was sprouting new
branches, but seed blown in by the wind from outside, which struck
new roots. In the Iberian Peninsula, on the contrary, those Christians
who were depreciatingly called Marranos or Jews during the 16th,
17th and 18th centuries by their own countrymen, came to be considered so because after expulsion and assimilation had done away with
the medieval Jewries, the Inquisition and discriminatory legislation
succeeded up to a point in inventing a non-ghettoized caste.
Its identity represented no ethnic or religious reality and its personality was the result of pressure applied to it from outside by laws,
customs and prejudice fed by interested abettors. The statement about
the Jews by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980):
If they have anything in common [] it is their living amidst a society
which perceives them as Jews.24
can be far more aptly applied to the Iberian New Christians, whose
religious identity was indistinguishable from that of the Old Christians
and whose inculpation by the Inquisition on religious grounds was a
hoax. It is equally difficult to find an ethnic quotient in the personality
of the various populations living freely in the Iberian Peninsula from
Islamic times, who converted to Christianity from the second half of
the 14th century in successive waves and who did not deny themselves
XL
INTRODUCTION
matrimonial alliances with Old Christians. Thus the perceived otherness of this New Christian entity of indistinguishable religious
personality and ethnicity so amorphous must be sought in its only
distinctive trademark: the socio-economic one.
31
60
chapter two
31
60
chapter two
31
60
chapter two
31
60
chapter two
8. Portrait of Inquisitor General Francisco de Castro (from Retratos e Elogios dos Vares e
Donas, Lisbon, 1827). Courtesy New York Public Library, New York
31
60
chapter two
31
60
chapter two
13. D. Lus da Cunha (1662-1749). Oil painting attributed to Louis Michel Van Loo
(1707-1771). Courtesy, Fundao Ricardo Esprito Santo, Lisbon
31
14. Marquis de Pombal Monument, Lisbon, inaugurated 1934. Photo Jos Antnio Silva
60
chapter two
CHAPTER ONE
1 See her Os Judeus em Portugal no Sculo XIV (The Jews of 14th-century Portugal),
Lisbon, 1970 and Os Judeus em Portugal no Sculo XV (The Jews of 15th-century Por-
31
tugal) Lisbon, 1981; id., Judeus e Mouros no Portugal dos sculos XIV e XV, Revista
de Histria Econmica e Social, 9, 1982, 75-89, especially the map locating all the Jewish
and Moslem communities of Portugal, 83; id., A expulso dos judeus de Portugal:
conjuntura peninsular, Oceanos, 29, January-March 1997, 10-20.
2 Published by Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, Arquivo Histrico Portugus, 2, 1904, 201203; summarized by Joo Lcio de Azevedo, Histria dos Cristos-Novos Portugueses,
Lisbon, 1921, 44. N.B. We are opting throughout for the modern form of this authors
last name, originally dAzevedo (but in his own later writings de Azevedo), and of
the title, originally spelled Historia dos Christos Novos Portugueses.
3 Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, Arquivo Histrico Portugus, 4, 425; Azevedo, op. cit., 45.
4 This common misconception has been propagated not merely by professional Judeophobes but even by such reputable scholars as Lcio de Azevedo and Julio Caro Baroja.
CHAPTER ONE
5
6
voyage round the Cape to India (1497) and Pedro lvares Cabrals
voyage to Brazil in 1500. Zacuto worked out an Almanach Perpetuum
(Leiria, 1496) to be used by navigators in conjunction with an astrolabe
to orient themselves on the high seas. The fame of one of Zacutos
Portuguese disciples, Master Joseph Vizinho, also a Jew, rests upon his
determining the latitude of Guinea. The Church opposed astrology on
theological grounds (astronomy and meteorology had not yet replaced
it), yet each Portuguese king in turn appointed a court astrologer,
always a Jew, who fixed the dates and times for important court celebrations. Master Guedalia, physician and astrologer to King Duarte
(reigned 1433-1438) is mentioned by chroniclers. Jews also dominated
medicine. All the Portuguese court physicians we know of were Jews
and probably the majority of doctors in Portugal for many centuries.
The Jewish medical tradition survived the General Conversion of
1497. Thus there was on the one hand a Jewish intelligentsia, characterized by the exact and natural sciences, and on the other a Christian
intelligentsia, primarily clerical, identified with theology and literature. It is not fortuitous that the two major figures in Portuguese
science during the 16th century, namely Pedro Nunes (1502-1578), the
inventor of the nonius (called after him) and Garcia de Orta (1501?1568) the pioneer biologist (author of Dialogues of Ingredients and
Drugs immediately translated into a number of European languages)
had Jewish parents.8 Both were exponents of the experimental
method. We do find a smattering of Jews in Portuguese literature, such
as the 14th-century troubadour Vidal of Elvas and the minstrel Judah
Negro, a courtier of Queen D. Filipa de Lencastre (1360-1415).
Of the first fifteen books printed in Portugal twelve were Hebrew
religious classics (Bible, liturgy, commentary) printed by Jews for a
Jewish audience. This fact points not only to the cultural level of the
Portuguese Jews but also to the quality of their craftsmanship. The first
book printed in Portugal was the Hebrew Pentateuch, which appeared
at Faro (Algarve) in 1487. The first book printed at Lisbon was the
Hebrew commentary of Nahmanides (1195-1270?) on the Pentateuch,
in 1489. The handsomest incunabulum printed in Portugal is the
Hebrew Pentateuch with the commentary of Rashi and the Aramaic
paraphrase of Onkelos (Lisbon, 1491). The few 15th-century books
CHAPTER ONE
9
10
11
12 Ferno Lopes, Histria de uma Revoluo, Primeira Parte da Crnica de El-Rei D. Joo
I de Boa Memria (Jos Hermano Saraiva, ed.), Lisbon, 1977, 113-115.
13 Rui de Pina, Crnica de D. Afonso V, chap. 30; See Humberto Carlos Baquero
Moreno, O Assalto Judiaria Grande de Lisboa em Dezembro de 1449, Revista de
Cincias do Homem da Universidade de Loureno Marques, 3, 1970, 5-51.
14 However, usury was prohibited to both Christians and Jews by the Ordenaes Afonsinas, II, 96, 2. Ferro Tavares, in her books on the Jews in Portugal during the
14th century (1970) and the 15th century (1982), points out that usury was not practiced
by the Jews of Portugal and emphasizes their important agricultural activities as landholders and wine-producers.
CHAPTER ONE
In the feudal world they played a role considered degrading, but indispensable. Such boons as might be granted them by grandees were
not, therefore, a sign of standing, but an expression of capricious and
selfish appreciation as toward a pet, a bought woman, a court jester,
a buffoon. The gesture could be taken as patronizing. The king
protected his Jew or Jews. But the same princes who protected the
moneyed Jews, also invested them with odious tasks, such as the collection of taxes and dues, making them their whipping-boys.
We do have to shade or attenuate this scheme somewhat, keeping
in mind above all that the Jews had clout of their own, in the shape of
liquid cash. Yet since these assets were not esteemed in the feudal
ideology, they conferred amenity without prestige.
In spite of all the foregoing, the reign of Afonso V (1438-1481)
marked a period of opening-up during which the Jewish minority of
Portugal attained true integration and full participation in all the
activities of Portuguese society. Master Abraham Negro, Chief Rabbi
and physician to Afonso V, was killed during the conquest of Arzila
(1471), fighting alongside the king. Even earlier, under Joo I, Master
Jos Arame, the goldsmith of the Infante Dom Henrique, participated
in the one-day assault on and conquest of Ceuta and Tangiers (1415).
More than two decades later the same Jos Arame, on horseback and
in coat of arms with two Jewish foot-soldiers, battled under the Infante
during his unsuccessful 37-day campaign for the possession of Tangiers (1437).15
In 1492 the Jews of Spain were expelled by Ferdinand and
Isabella.16 About a third decided to ask for conversion and stayed on.
Another third embarked for Italy, North Africa and Turkey. The
remainder crossed into Portugal. The initial attitude of the Portuguese
king in this emergency once again shows the crown not unfavorable
towards the Jews: the king did not close the frontier to them. Isaac
Aboab II (1433-1493) during July 1492 negotiated his and thirty (?)
other families settlement in Portugal. At King Joo IIs behest,
the Oporto Municipality granted these thirty distinguished Spanish
Jewish families, who each paid the city a tax of fifty reals, thirty fine
houses and a synagogue in So Miguel Street and the city had the
street paved.17 According to a manuscript consulted by the historian
Alexandre Herculano (1810-1878) 600 wealthy Spanish Jewish fami
15
16
17
lies paid the king a collective sum of 60,000 cruzados for the privilege
of permanent settlement and freedom to practice Judaism.18 The rest
of the exiles were considered to be in transit and expected to move on
after eight months.19
According to Damio de Gis (1530-1590), the official court chronicler, whose chronicle for which he used documents from the royal
archives was published 70 years after these events, the king required
each immigrant family (except for the above-mentioned thirty families
admitted as permanent residents) to pay 8 cruzados per head at the
border and ordered them to arrange for embarkation for other parts
within eight months, on pain of slavery in case of failure to depart.
Other contemporary authors refer to an entry tax of 1 or 2 cruzados
(1 cruzado = 400 reals), a symbolic payment meant perhaps to establish a census.20 No doubt, besides the families who paid the tax, there
must have been others who crossed the border surreptitiously. As we
have seen, for blacksmiths, armorers, mailers and tinsmiths the head
tax was reduced by half, an accommodation that can only be interpreted as contradictory to the prohibition to settle in Portugal.
Supposedly this category of artisans was deemed vital to the armsindustry by the king and his advisors. Yet their departure was envisaged, perhaps because most of the nobles consulted by the king, as
well as the native Portuguese Jewish community, were opposed to any
Spanish Jewish immigration. The king himself was obviously in two
minds.21
The most fantastic numerical estimates of the immigrants, deriving
from contemporary chroniclers and witness accounts, have remained
current in modern historical and pseudo-historical works. For
instance, Abraham Zacuto, the Spanish mathematician who authored
the Almanach Perpetuum, himself a 1492 refugee, estimated the total at
18 History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, Chapter Two, note
17. Writing some sixty years later Samuel Usque (Consolaam s tribulaoens de Israel,
Ferrara 1553, 3, Chapter Twenty-Six) confirms that 600 families were granted permanent residence by Joo II and claims they paid only two cruzados per head. The 600
families are also referred to by Aboab (Nomologa, ibid.), who transforms the cruzados
into golden escudos. It is impossible to ascertain from Aboabs confused account
whether the 30 and 600 families overlap.
19 Aboab states that King Joo II allowed the 600 families only temporary residence
(six years), at the expiration of which he would provide them maritime transportation
out of his country.
20 The purchasing power of a cruzado is difficult to determine at this date. A century
and a half later an English pound sterling was worth four cruzados. See Biblioteca
Nacional de Lisboa, Ms. 10563, f. 121.
21 Herculano, op. cit., Chapter Two, notes 16 and 17. The sentence in Chapter Ten of
Gis Chronicle concerning the artisans and mechanics is opaque enough.
10
CHAPTER ONE
120,000 persons. Damio de Gis, who belonged to the next generation, refers to 20,000 families. High demographic estimates in premodern historiography are to be taken with a grain of salt or even with
a big clump. In any case, whatever the precise figure of the Spanish
Jewish immigration, it was perceived as massive.22 Prof. Ferro Tavares,
the most recent historian, found in the National Archives the cartas de
quitao or records of all the payments made at the border. On their
basis, and adding a conjectural number for the clandestine entries, she
calculated the number of Spanish Jews who entered Portugal in 1492
at approximately 30,000 souls, about the same number as the total of
resident Portuguese Jews.
Some of the refugees no doubt set sail for Italy or North Africa
hard upon arrival in the port cities. But the overwhelming majority
remained and were, once the expiration date had passed, reduced to
slavery, i.e., sold to or bestowed on Christian families by the king.23
Moreover, in 1493, the king rounded up two thousand Spanish Jewish
children, boys and girls ranging in age from one to eight years, had
them baptized and sent in the care of Captain lvaro Caminha to the
uninhabited island of So Tom off the coast of Guinea, to be raised
there as Christians and to populate the island, which he intended to
develop as a beacon of Portuguese culture for the whole African continent. In 1506, 600 of these children were still alive, aged between 14
and 20. These are in fact the ancestors of the white and mulatto population of the island.24
The enslaved Spanish Jews in Portugal were set free by a decree of
King Manuel, upon his accession in 1495. Manuels heart was set on
winning the hand of Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and
heir presumptive, which would put him in line to the throne of Castile
and Aragon and thus of the whole Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish
princess insisted in her correspondence with him that she would not
set foot in Portugal unless the Jews (and Moslems?) were expelled.25
22
23
Azevedo, op. cit., 20-21. Tavares, Os Judeus em Portugal no Sculo XV, 270-271.
The only precedent seems to be the 7th-century Visigothic enslavement of converts
from Judaism to masters designated by the king. See above, Introduction. On November
26, 1497, King Ferdinand ordered two Jews who had clandestinely returned to Aragn
from Navarra and upon discovery converted to avoid the death penalty, reduced
to slavery. One was bestowed and one was kept by the king. See Motis Dolader,
La expulsin de los judos del reino de Aragn, 2, 413.
24 See Humberto Carlos Baquero Moreno, lvaro de Caminha, Capito-mor da
ilha de So Tom, Congresso Internacional Bartolomeu Dias e a sua poca, Actas, Volume 1,
D. Joo II e a Poltica Quatrocentista, Oporto, 1989, 299-313; Padre Antnio Ambrsio,
A Fundao da Poom (S. Tom): uma capital em frica, ibid., 417-443.
25 Damo de Gis, Crnica do Felicssimo Rei Dom Manuel, Lisbon, 1566, 50: During
this time the princess, put up to it as was generally believed by the queen [Isabella],
11
wrote a letter to the king [Manuel], explaining that her coming would be deferred until
he had completely expelled the Jews one and all from his kingdom. The letter has not
been found in the archives. It is repeatedly cited in the lengthy missive sent to Manuel
by Ferdinand and Isabella on June 21, 1497, where it is stated that it was written on the
princess own initiative and wherein she is quoted as designating those to be expelled as
heretics, either a euphemism for Jews or, perhaps, a general term to include Moslems.
See Antonio de la Torre and Luis Surez Fernndez, Documentos referentes a las relaciones
con Portugal durante el reinado de los Reyes Catlicos, Valladolid, 1963, 3, 12-15 and the
stipulations for the marriage contract drawn up by Ferdinand and Isabella on July 11,
1497, reproduced ibid., 15-18.
26 The earliest presently known version of the royal decree of expulsion, signed on
December, 5 1496, was printed for the first time in 1513. See Ho segundo liuro das ordenaes [] em Lyxboa per Valentym Fernandez alem aos xix dias de nouembro. 1513, ttulo 48,
Que os judeus se sayam destes regnos e n morem nem esteem nelles, fol. 13v-14r.
It mentions only the Jews and makes no reference to Moslems. The same is true of the
second edition: Ho segundo liuro das ordenaes [] em Lixboa per Joh pedro bom homini:
a quinze dias de dezembro, 1514. However, ttulo 41 of Book 2 in the third edition, printed
by Jacobo Cronberguer at Lisbon in 1521, is entitled Que os judeus e mouros forros se
sayam destes reynos: e nom morem nem estem neles and inserts the words mouros
and mourarias into the text. A letter dated April 20, 1497, signed by Ferdinand and
Isabella, welcoming the Portuguese Moslems to Spain, states that they were being
expelled from Portugal (see De La Torre and Fernndez, Documentos referentes a las relaciones con Portugal, 3, 9-12) and King Manuel refers to his expulsion of the Jews and
Moors in a letter of October 20, 1504 (see As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, 1, Lisbon, 1960,
11-12). See the reference to the expulsion and departure of the Portuguese Moslems in
1497 by Damio de Gis, Crnica do Felicssimo Rei Dom Manuel, Lisbon, 1566, 8-9.
According to Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros (A comuna muulmana de Lisboa, Lisbon,
1998, 148-149; 155-157) a few Portuguese Moslems were still living in Lisbon as late as
1504 and two who had converted continued to dwell in Lisbons mouraria.
12
CHAPTER ONE
27 Instrues Inditas a Marco Antnio de Azevedo Coutinho, Lisbon, 1930, 90; Antnio
Nunes Ribeiro Sanches, Origem da denominao de Christo-Novo e Christo-Velho em
Portugal (edited by Raul Rego), Lisbon, 1956, 17.
28 See Joo Pedro Ribeiro, Dissertaes chronologicas e criticas sobre a histria e jurisprudencia ecclesiastica e civil de Portugal, Lisbon, 3, 1857, 95-96; text reproduced by Meyer
Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal, Berlin, 1867, 347-349. See Corpo Diplomtico
Portugus, 9, letter dated February 12, 1561.
13
Another historian, Jernimo Osrio (1506-1580), tells of an agreement signed at Lisbon between the leaders of the Jewish community
and a representative of the king, whereby the Jews accepted mass
baptism and the king promised to restore their children and immovable goods, give them privileges and honorable employment and
refrain from introducing the Inquisition into Portugal.31 From sparse
descriptions furnished by defendants in Inquisitorial trials and New
Christian migrs between 1540 and c. 1580, we know of forced
baptism on a smaller scale (at royal behest or with royal collusion)
all over Portugal during 1497. A few Jewish families and individuals
(perhaps fifty persons in all) managed to sail from Lisbon without
being baptized, including Abraham Zacuto, the kings astronomer and
the Biblical scholar Abraham Saba.32 As for the others, henceforth
they were all considered Christians and thus subject to the Church of
Rome. Anyone who continued claiming allegiance to Judaism would
be liable to punishment as an apostate.
King Manuel seemed to be pursuing a coherent policy of peaceable
integration. His legislation tended to suppress all discrimination
between Old Christians and the former Jews, keeping as many as
possible in the country. On the other hand, he used and perpetuated
the designation New Christians for those who were forcibly baptized in
1497, while freeing of this label those who had voluntarily accepted
baptism prior to that year. On April 21 and 22 of 1499 he prohibited
the emigration of New Christians, especially those who were taking
29 Crnica do Felicssimo Rei Dom Manuel, Lisbon, 1566, 8v-9r. The primary meaning of
the word estaus is hostel. This evidently spacious edifice is thought to have been situated on the Rossio, on the site later occupied by the Inquisitorial palace, which maintained the old name: estaus.
30 Cited by Herculano, History, 254-255.
31 Jernimo Osrio, De Rebus Emmanueliis, Cologne, 1574, 6-7.
32 See Elias Lipiner, A Saga dos Sete, Os Judeus Portugueses entre os Descobrimentos e a
Dispora, Lisbon, 1994, 115-119 (more fully in id., Os Baptizados em P, Lisbon, 1998,
105-112).
14
CHAPTER ONE
15
in store for the economy of Portugal, where there was no non-Jewish class
of artisans nor native mercantile lite (such as the New Christian class of
Spain) capable of modernizing the agrarian economy and exploiting the
potential of the voyages of discovery.
To what degree did the Manueline legislation succeed in integrating the Jewish minority? We have little documentary material for
the four decades between the General Conversion and the establishment of the Inquisition. We have some indications, however, that the
policy of integration bore fruit.
Fifteen years after the General Conversion, in April 1512, King
Manuel added 16 years to the 20 he had conceded in 1497, during which
the converts and their immediate descendants would not be subject to
religious inquiries: a good indication that the former Jews did not pose,
at least not publicly, any religious threat. But apparently breaking this
promise, the Portuguese king wrote his ambassador in Rome on August
26, 1515 charging him to solicit from the pope an Inquisition on the
Spanish model. However, this letter refers primarily to the refugees who
out of fear of the [Spanish] Inquisition would pass into our kingdom and
now do pass on a daily basis, about whom he is informed that they do
not behave as they should, nor give a good example.
Wherefore and in order to satisfy before God the obligation we have to
Him, not merely in regard to these who are arriving from Castile to these
our kingdoms, but even in respect to the native-born New Christians
who converted here to our faith in times gone by, it appears to us that we
must order to be established a true and just Inquisition to punish the
transgressors.36
36
37
16
CHAPTER ONE
How large was the New Christian segment of the Portuguese population during the first half of the 16th century? Running a little ahead
of ourselves, let it be noted that in 1542, a Portuguese New Christian,
Master Jorge Leo, speaking in the name of these people to the
agent of the New Christians in Rome, estimated their number at
60,000 souls..38 This figure roughly corresponds to that established
by Ferro Tavares for the total Jewish population of Portugal after the
arrival of the Spanish refugees in 1492. A half-century later, in the list
of persons of the Nation.39 drawn up in 1604 to pay the price of the
General Amnesty for Crimes of Judaism which was then proclaimed,
6000 supposedly full New Christian families are mentioned, which
cannot amount to more than 30,000 persons, especially considering
the fact that many Old Christian families were included in the list by
mistake.40
This halving can be explained as follows. Beginning in 1536, there
was a considerable emigration of New Christians and mid-century
documents we will refer to later show a dramatic increase of marriages
between New and Old Christians. Thus the descendants of the
converted Jews were being steadily absorbed into the general population, as Manueline legislation had intended.
The opposite view, or rather presumption, defended by a number
of historians, is that the Portuguese New Christians never assimilated
and that the majority, or even the totality, continued to practice
Judaism in secret. The trouble with this theory is that it is based almost
exclusively on 35,000 or so Inquisitorial trials for Judaizing in Portugal between 1536 and 1765, which all presume guilt and were engineered to produce confessions. We have yet to see proof, independent
of documentation produced by the Inquisition itself, that during
the reign of the Inquisition any New Christian families or individuals living in Portugal provoked arrest by indulging in traditional
Jewish practices or professing non-Christian Jewish beliefs. And even
38
39
Ibid., 5, 158-167.
This curious appellation, apparently never applied to the Jews of Portugal before
1497, came to designate their New Christian descendants and was maintained
throughout the centuries until the official abolition of discrimination in 1773. In
Portugal it was synonymous with New Christians and sometimes expanded to persons
of the Hebrew Nation; the Portuguese New Christian emigrant communities, whether
they adopted Judaism, as in Ferrara, Amsterdam and Bordeaux, or remained Catholic,
as in Antwerp, Rouen and Nantes, also referred to themselves as the Nation or the
Portuguese Nation. The latter expression in this sense may be found in Samuel Usques
Portuguese masterpiece Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (Ferrara, 1553,
2r, 4r; English translation, Philadelphia, 1965, 37, 40).
40 Ribeiro Sanches, op. cit., 45.
17
in the unlikely event that such proof could be produced, a few isolated
cases would not imply that the majority of the descendants of the
converts wished to revert to Judaism. Indeed, in their representations
to the papacy, spokesmen for the Portuguese New Christians at Rome
invariably protested their Catholic orthodoxy and that those who were
urging an Inquisition were spurred, not by piety, but by unholy stirrings to destroy and despoil them. Once it was in place, these representatives and their successors did not plead for its undoing but for the
incorporation of legal safeguards against abuses. Thus structured, they
said, they would welcome the Inquisition, feeling that it would vindicate once and for all their adherence.41
Now the first stated hypothesis, that the former Jewish population
of Portugal, beginning with the Manueline legislation drifted down the
road of assimilation, has in its favor some solid sociological arguments.
Until 1497 the Jewish religion was officially recognized in Portugal
and publicly practiced, with synagogues, rabbis, teachers, holy books,
precepts and laws governing collective and domestic life. For the
overwhelming majority of its practitioners Judaism, like Catholicism,
represents a formalistic conformity to inherited customs imposed by
the social environment. Once that social environment disappears, a
religion of this sort can but wilt and wither away. As a rule, the only
religions that integrally subsist under the restraints of furtiveness are
those born underground. The former Jews were submitted on a daily
basis to the public exercise of the Christian religion, the rites and discipline of the Church. Naturally the first and oldest victims of the forced
conversion were not sincere Christians. But a ritual that is practiced
for years on end and from one generation to the next cannot maintain
itself indefinitely as an hypocrisy or a constraint. The practitioner is
conditioned by practice; the degree of this conditioning is a question
of time and a function of the pressure exerted by the integrating environment. And let it not be forgotten that, at least in the western world,
the dominant faiths were imposed on the populations by governmental coercion rather than by the spontaneous adhesion of souls.
Cujus regio ejus religio.
The Portuguese environment was, as we have seen, quite conducive
to assimilation. In Spain it was different. The tolerated presence
of the Synagogue allegedly continued to allure pre-1492 Spanish
41 See Herculano, History, 597 and passim. The New Christian representatives consistently ignored Pope Clement VIIs bull (Sempiterno regi) of April 7, 1533, declaring
invalid the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews in 1497. See Corpo Diplomatico
Portuguez, 2, 430-440.
18
CHAPTER ONE
42
43
CHAPTER TWO
1 Generally believed to have been coined by Wilhelm Marr (1818-1904), the term
derives from Sem, one of the three sons of Noah (Sem, Ham and Jafeth) who repeopled
the world after the Flood (Genesis 9, 18-19). The term is absurd because 1) it assumes
that only descendants of Sem are Jews, i.e., Judaism is exclusively determined by
ethnicity, whereas Judaism has throughout history recruited proselytes without regard to
ethnicity and 2) it implies that all the descendants of Sem (i.e., one-third of humanity)
are Jews.
2 See now Peter Schfer, Judeophobia, Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World,
Cambridge (Mass.), 1997.
20
CHAPTER TWO
inalienable and hereditary. To defame the Jew was the in-born prerogative of every Christian and the lower his rung on the social ladder,
the more valuable this prerogative was to him. The Jews were the
substratum on which rested the feudal pyramid of privileges.
In spite of the rapid assimilation of the former Jewish minority
after 1497, this psychological lapdog prop formerly upheld by the
Jews was transferred to the New Christians. In petitions they addressed
to the pope and the Portuguese King Joo III in the course of the
negotiations that spearheaded the Inquisition, the New Christians
regularly decry their being the butt of hatred and violence. According
to a letter written by a New Christian spokesman in 1561, it was particularly the rabble which rejoiced at the sight of the auto-da-f executions (strangling at the stake, followed by burning on the pyre). Except
for the gentry, he writes, all and sundry join in persecuting them, especially a pack of idlers known as escudeiros (squires).3 The Portuguese
playwright Gil Vicente limned an unforgettable portrait of these
famished knaves who affected courtly manners and boasted of their
feigned nobility.
Among the religious orders it was above all the Dominicans that
were responsible for the transfer of hatred from the Jews to the New
Christians. In Spain the Dominicans had played a decisive role in the
anti-Jewish riots of 1391. Whereas the assault on the great Judiaria of
Lisbon in 1449 was prompted solely by loot and had no religious overtones, it was the Dominicans who were in the vanguard of the unprecedented massacre that came to be known in Portuguese history as the
slaughter of the New Christians at Lisbon in April 1506, nine years
after the General Conversion. In the midst of a solemnity in the
Church of St. Dominic a sudden brightness was seen emanating from
a crucifix, followed by a cry of Miracle! from the crowds. A man in
the church ventured that the brightness was the reflection of a candle.
A New Christian, he was set upon by onlookers who killed him on the
spot and set fire to his clothing. Two Dominican friars, brandishing
crucifixes, further excited the electrified mob with shouts of Heresy!
Heresy! During three days the city was taken over by mutineers,
joined by scores of German sea-men from a fleet of ships at anchor in
the harbor, who ransacked houses, threw women and children out of
windows onto the street and started bonfires everywhere, onto which
they flung the wounded and the dead.
According to the chronicler Damio de Gis, 2000 were killed,
including the collector of royal taxes Joo Rodrigues Mascarenhas,
21
one of the wealthiest men in Lisbon. King Manuel, on tour in the Alentejo province, reacted energetically. The malefactors were sentenced to
death; their accomplices to prison terms and confiscation of property;
the city collectively punished by withdrawal of privileges. Although
Damio de Gis makes the undocumented claim (probably based
on hearsay) that the two Dominican friars were sentenced to
public defrocking, strangulation and cremation, we now know that
they apparently got away thanks to collusion, for we find them back
36 years later (in 1542), alive and kicking, agitating for the Inquisition
in the delegation of King Joo III at Rome.4
Any excuse was seized on by clerics to whip up mass hysteria against
the New Christians. In 1531 there was an earth tremor at Santarm.
The local friars drove people into a frenzy by preaching that this was
divine retribution on Portugal for allowing the Jews into their midst.
This sermon was probably related to the campaign for the establishment of the Inquisition, it being the year Joo III started the Inquisitorial ball rolling. Gil Vicente, who was just then in Santarm as he tells
the king in a letter, took on the friars and made them assemble in the
cloister of the convent of Saint Francis where he preached to them that
an earthquake is a natural phenomenon and non-believers are to be
persuaded by reason.5
Before the General Conversion of 1497 the clerical governance of
public opinion was minimally threatened by lay intellectuals and not at
all by the Jews, who, as non-players, were out of the running. 1497
brought a non-clerical class of physicians, apothecaries, pharmacists,
scribes, lettered merchants into the bosom of Christian society, whom
the clerics feared as potential competitors. Their entry, if anything,
exacerbated ingrained anti-Jewish animus, especially of the subaltern
clergy. In contrast with the senior orders, in whose ranks were to be
found the younger sons of the nobility, enjoying fixed incomes from
benefits, the lesser or junior clergy lived on its sacerdotal tasks: masses,
confessions, processions, preaching, etc. Thus, the fight against sin
and heresy was its bread and butter. The lesser clergy, as intermediaries between the aristocracy and the people, who knew practically no
other lettered persons, molded, directed and indoctrinated the mass
of believers. Preaching against the Judaizing of the former Jews, who
had now fallen under the jurisdiction of the Church, was for them a
22
CHAPTER TWO
23
for a hierarchy that they apexed. Anything that might rock the boat
was anathema.
Now the threat posed to the traditional hierarchy by the societal
osmosis of the former Jews was also related to economic factors. The
Portuguese overseas expansion had two contradictory consequences:
firstly, it strengthened the power of the Crown and, therefore, of the
aristocracy, whose aspirations were embodied in that enterprise; on
the other hand, the rising bourgeoisie that it promoted challenged
the traditional hegemony of the aristocracy. We shall discuss each
effect in turn.
The Crown found itself at the helm of a mercantile juggernaut.
King Manuel, as President of the Company, gave himself the title
Lord of the Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India. The
royal palace was set up at the wharves, in a building whose lower floors
were occupied by the warehouses and offices of the House of India,
which received, registered and reshipped the wares of the East, and
the wares of the West for which they were traded. The Portuguese king
was nicknamed the Spice King. The bulk of this trade was a Crown
Monopoly. Its profits were distributed between civilian and military
officials appointed by the king, either in the form of salaries and
bonuses or as dues or entitlement to war loot. The principal beneficiary was the traditional nobility that enriched itself, not by despised
commerce and infra dig money-grubbing, but indirectly, through spinoff military careers or civil-service sinecures. The Portuguese Crown
might be compared to a multinational trust, whose profits are distributed between employees and stockholders in the form of salaries and
dividends, without the employees and stockholders personally
carrying out any industrial or commercial activity. This would explain
how come the Portuguese nobility, though enjoying the gains of the
Crowns commerce, did not forge a bourgeois mentality..6
Thus it was that the Portuguese State in the 16th century, modern
economy that it was becoming, perpetuated a feudal aristocracy whose
spirit was the antipode of bourgeois. And the most dependable prop
of this archaism (in Spain too) was the omnipotent Church with her
burgeoning wealth, much of it brought into her coffers by younger
sons of the landed aristocracy.7
6 Assuming that there exists an identifiable bourgeois mentality and that the same is
brought on through direct involvement with commerce. Both these premises are of
course impressionistic and direct involvement with commerce is a matter of degree.
7 In feudal Europe the eldest son inherited the family estate and the younger sons
entered the Church or the military. Some consequences of this system will be elaborated
further in this chapter.
24
CHAPTER TWO
25
the mercy of the Spanish King Philip II who, in 1580, became King
Philip I of Portugal. But, as if in inverse proportion to the States and
its monopolys decline, the Portuguese mercantile bourgeoisie was
expanding apace, in Asia, Brazil and in the port and market-place of
Lisbon which, by the end of the century, ranked as an important
commerce and finance center.
In this conjuncture, let us look once more at the extent, scope and
significance of the former Jews changed religious identity.
Before the General Conversion a Jewish mercantile bourgeoisie had
maintained itself separate from the corresponding Christian bourgeoisie. The abolition of discrimination meant that the once Jewish,
now New Christian bourgeoisie improved its legal status and broke
loose from its erstwhile fetters. On the other hand, it occasioned
an amalgamation, albeit short of a fusion, of the two bourgeoisies.
Between 1497 and 1535 the New Christians secured their dominant
economic position in the mercantile community and gradually
supplanted its Old Christian elements.9 From the beginning of the
17th century the expressions Men of Commerce and Persons of the
Nation, even in official documents, were to become synonymous with
New Christians. Throughout the century we shall see their economic
muscle flexing itself ever more, but the Lisbon mercantile community
will not be able to translate its financial strength into political power
nor to advance its interests over those of the nobility, clergy or lettered
(letrado i.e., lay or religious jurisconsults) class.10
To recapitulate: the assimilation of the former Jews, while economically beneficial to Portugal as a whole, was not especially propitious
for the preservation of the old order. Opening the flood-gates to the
9 See Joo Lcio de Azevedo, Organizao econmica, in Damio Peres (ed.), Histria
de Portugal, Barcelos, 1933, 5, 303. According to David Grant Smith (The Mercantile Class of
Portugal and Brazil in the Seventeenth Century, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, The University
of Texas at Austin, 1975, 13-14) the mercantile community of Lisbon in the mid-16th
century numbered less than 150 men. The pinnacle of the class was occupied by an
oligopoly of six [New Christian ?] merchant-bankers who contracted for the India trade.
10 See Smith, The Mercantile Class, 177. Smith notes that as a result of intensified
Inquisitorial persecution of New Christian merchants, between about 1650 and the
mid-1680s Old Christian merchants re-entered the mercantile community. His
sampling of 364 merchants in this period reveals 201 New Christians, 56 Old Christians
and 107 unclassified, whom he supposes to be partly New Christian. He was able to
identify New Christian merchants through their Inquisitorial trials and Old Christian
merchants through their habilitation trials for becoming Familiars of the Inquisition. He
concluded that Old and New Christian merchants engaged in precisely the same kinds
of operations often in partnership, but whereas both sought to escape the stigma and
buy themselves into the nobility, Old Christian merchants were usually successful and
New Christians but rarely. The principal difference, of course was that New Christian
merchants were subject to virtually arbitrary arrest by the Inquisition (op. cit., 103).
26
CHAPTER TWO
11 The trial record of Pero lvares (Inquisition of vora, no. 8628, 1543) contains the
defendants letter to the Inquisitor General Cardinal Dom Henrique, in which he narrates
an audience of three hours duration granted him by King Joo III in the queens chamber
and in her presence on the day the Inquisition was established (October 22, 1536).
lvares told the king that his children [i.e., the New Christians] were at his mercy, that
their property would be unjustly confiscated and their lives the forfeit through false
witnesses and the responsibility for these future occurrences rested on the king. The king
(he continues) listened intently and affably and it seemed to him [Pero lvares] that the
king considered his plea justified and would take it under advisement. But the theologians
(letrados) and monks (religiosos) followed Pedro into the queens chamber and speaking
with feigned meekness in the name of God convinced the king of the contrary. See Elias
Lipiners analysis of Pero lvares trial record in Os baptizados em p, Estudos acerca da origem
e da luta dos Cristos-Novos em Porugal, Lisbon 1998, 255-273: 257. Cf. Isaac Abravanels
legendary offer of 30,000 maraveds to King Ferdinand during an audience in 1492, to
dissuade him from carrying out the Edict of Expulsion. Abravanels offer was about to be
accepted when Torquemada, who had been eavesdropping, threw a crucifix before the
king to remind him of the 30 coins for which Judas Iscariot had betrayed Jesus and thus
convinced the king to go through with the expulsion.
12 According to an English merchant writing from Portugal to the Bishop of London
on September 7, 1686, a third of the population or more was in holy orders and the
church owned a third of the land. See British Library, Add. Ms. 23726, f. 82v, cited by
L. M. E. Shaw, The Inquisition and the Portuguese Economy, Journal of European
Economic History, 18, 1989, 415-431: 418. Lus da Cunha (Testamento poltico, Lisbon,
19432, 39) claimed that well into the 18th century the Church owned one-third of the
countrys real estate.
27
brother, who was archbishop of Braga and vora, prior of Santa Cruz,
abbot of Alcobaa and Inquisitor General, that the Portuguese crown
was to devolve in 1578. But there were not enough revenues to go
round, even though the number of dioceses doubled during this reign
by splitting the existing ones. The lower clergy was also multiplying at
a vertiginous rate, testing their means of subsistence. In 1620,
according to Nicolau Rodrigues de Oliveira in his Livro das Grandezas
de Lisboa (Book of the Grandeurs of Lisbon), the city had 165,000
inhabitants. Of these 3,189 were friars and nuns; 121 were physicians,
apothecaries, surgeons, schoolmasters and notaries. A century earlier
a Gil Vicente character says: There are more of us friars than there is
land..13 This massive body depended, theoretically, on the pope who
claimed the right to designate the usufructuaries of the Churchs
revenues. But the Portuguese king was not about to leave appointments concerning so many of his subjects and decisions concerning
grave national affairs in alien hands. The whole reign of Joo III was
a tug of war with the papacy for the upper hand in the ecclesiastical
affairs of the kingdom.
King Joo IIIs position was analogous to that of other monarchs of
Christendom, who, in order to dispose freely of ecclesiastical wealth,
entered into open conflict with the pope while theoretically remaining
under his hegemony (e.g., the French King Francis I) or who, for whatever motive, opted for schism (e.g., the English King Henry VIII). The
Portuguese king leaned on Court clerics and friars who probably made
up the better part of his administrative staff. Faced by the claims of
the Roman curia he represented secular power, as Head of State.
As defender of the Faith, i.e., protector of the interests of his churchmen
at home, he was the Head of the National Church. Thus, Joo III (like
other Renaissance European monarchs and the pope himself) offers an
ambiguous physiognomy: his religious role, the expression of a theocratic
order, now seems to serve, then again dominate his secular role.
The Spanish Inquisition offered the model. Its Inquisitors were
designated by the king and held delegated pontifical authority. Thus
they held their own against interference by the Holy See as well as the
national bishops. The Spanish Inquisition fortified the spiritual arm
of the king. It also created new ecclesiastic employment and a new
source of revenue. This source, the wealth of the New Christians, was,
through confiscation, to be added to the traditional feudal ones
although soon enough it was deflected from the general (royal,
13 See Gil Vicente, Obras Completas (ed. by Marques Braga), Lisbon, 1943, 4, 122
(Fragoa dAmor).
28
CHAPTER TWO
29
tage of the clerical one.15 This rivalry, we argue, was one of the Crowns
most immediate motivations for the introduction of the Inquisition.
Traditional society was initiating a long-lasting struggle against a
process that would ultimately destroy it. A new mercantile class, unified
by the forced assimilation of the former Jews, was looming on the
horizon, whose contours would be those of the future ruling
class. Naturally, no technocratic team was appointed to research the alternative strategies which finally came up with the Inquisition. It would
seem to be a case, as often in our own times, of the will of the leaders
intervening in the social process. Joo III had confirmed King Manuels
laws against discrimination as late as 1524.16 On August 28, 1532, when
the paperwork from Rome authorizing the Inquisition had already been
in Portugal for six months, the king wrote to his brother-in-law the
Emperor Charles V, lord of the Netherlands to wrest from the clutches of
the Flanders civil tribunal the person and assets of the Portuguese New
Christian merchant Diogo Mendes, born a Jew in Spain, arrested at
Antwerp on the charge (as stated above) of Judaizing. King Joo III
referred to Diogo by his Portuguese Christian surname Mendes as well as
by his Spanish Jewish surname Benveniste and described him in the most
flattering terms. Joo III did not give the slightest credence to the denunciation for Judaizing, nor had he faith in the integrity of a common law
court investigating such an accusation.17 Ten years later the Portuguese
Inquisition would be in full swing, given a free hand by the same king to
imprison indefinitely New Christians arrested on the charge of Judaizing,
to torture and kill them and sequestrate their property, heedless of the
safeguards of common law.
The Spanish Inquisition had been instituted on the pretense of
purifying the New Christians Catholicism from the deleterious influence of practicing Jews and their synagogues.18 For the establishment
30
CHAPTER TWO
than 12 years ago was to dissuade and detach New Christians from contact with Jews
and Judaism (text first published by Fidel Fita, Boletn de la Real Academia de la Historia,
11, 1887, 512-520); see also Ferdinands far more harshly worded Decree of Expulsion
of the Jews from Aragon, Catalua and Valencia (same date), in which he names Torquemada the instigator of both the Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews as means to
purify the New Christians of Jewish influence (Archivo General de la Corona de Aragn,
Real Cancillera, Reg. 3569 bis, ff. 129v-131, published in Revue Historique, 260, 1978,
85-90; Peamim, 46-47, 1991, 164-167). The work of Carlos Carrete Parrondo (Fontes
Iudaeorum Regni Castellae, Salamanca, 1985-1987, 3 vols.) shows that practically all
Inquisitorial denunciations for Judaizing (often referring to actions committed decades
before the denunciation) between 1480 and 1492 were based on social and religious
contacts between Christians and Jews, such as Christians attending circumcisions,
weddings and synagogue services, participating at meals in huts during Tabernacles,
acquiring unleavened bread during Passover, eating adafina in Jewish homes on the
Sabbath, etc. The procesos we have seen spanning the period 1492-1510 are nearly all
based on such denunciations harking back to the earlier era and the defendants not
recent converts. From c. 1510 until the massive immigration of Portuguese New Christians beginning in 1580 most Spanish tribunals practically cease prosecuting Judaizers,
and even after this date at least until the 1630s the latter usually make up a relatively small percentage of defendants. See however below, Chapter Nine, note 1.
19 History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, Stanford, 1926,
Chapters Three-Six.
31
imposed by the diocesan prelates. The style of the trials and the
punishments were to be copied from those of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Portuguese king insisted (against the popes better judgment) on
withholding from the accused the names of the denunciators and, if
found guilty, on the confiscation of his/her worldly goods.20
The sovereign pontiff had grave misgivings about accepting these
pretensions and for 27 years (from 1521 to 1548) resisted the tireless
obstinacy of King Joo III. This long intrigue, a classic illustration
of 16th-century back-room diplomacy, has all the stuff of a penny
dreadful: secret agents, bribery, double dealing and knifings. But no
amount of horse-trading can obscure the essential core: the opposing
positions of Portugal and the Holy See. The reputation for savagery
which the Spanish Inquisition had acquired all over Europe did not
help King Joo III at a Renaissance papal Court permeated
by letters and fine arts. Many of the princes of the Church of this
period were imbued with the humanist spirit, some were profoundly
pious Christians, others benignly tolerant and even skeptical. In Rome
Iberian fanaticism was looked on askance, as a throw-back to barbarity.
But above and beyond this cultural incompatibility, the conflict
between the pope and the Portuguese king was a naked power
struggle, no holds barred.
Roman public opinion suspected that Joo IIIs purpose was to rob
wealthy New Christians of their earthly possessions. Nevertheless, just
one year after the Portuguese king had taken the first steps, Pope
Clement VII granted him an Inquisition of sorts, but the king did not
like its terms. Instead of leaving it to the king to appoint the Inquisitors, the pope was to personally name a Commissioner of the Apostolic See and Inquisitor for Portugal and its Dominions who could in
turn appoint other Inquisitors, but would be subject to the bishops,
who would also be authorized to investigate heresies. Pope Clements
bull of December 17, 1531, named Friar Diogo da Silva, the kings
confessor, the first Commissioner and Inquisitor.
The bull was never applied in Portugal; Diogo da Silva, probably
pressured by the king, refused the appointment. All the same, in the
midst of popular unrest, a couple of Inquisitorial tribunals began to
function, albeit anarchically. The bull of December 17 only served to
spark scenes of violence directed against New Christians. On June 14,
1532, anticipating the popes authorization for a far more ruthless
Inquisition, a law appeared prohibiting, on pain of death and confiscation for those over 17 and arbitrary punishment for those younger,
20
32
CHAPTER TWO
21 Of the three only D. Diogo da Silva carried out the functions of the post. The king
did not name a fourth.
22 See H. P. Salomon, The Monitrio do Inquisidor Geral of 1536, Background and
Sources of Some Judaic Customs Listed Therein, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Portugus,
17, 1982, 41-65.
33
another, hoping to trip him up and thus get him removed from
Portugal.23 But meanwhile he stayed put. On Friday, February 7, 1539
posters appeared on the doors of the cathedral and of other churches
in Lisbon, announcing the immediate arrival of the Messiah. The
Grand Inquisitor Friar Diogo da Silva wrote the king that he was
inclined to consider the posters a put-up job, aimed at inciting public
opinion against the New Christians.24 King Joo III offered a reward
of 10,000 cruzados for information leading to the culprit. A man,
thought to be an Old Christian but later identified as a New Christian,
was tortured and executed by the civil authority for posting the affiches.
First his hands were cut off, then, still alive, he was thrown onto the
pyre.25 On June 10, 1539 Diogo da Silva tendered the king his resignation. Twelve days later the king named his own brother Henrique,
then archbishop of Braga, Grand Inquisitor, although at 27 the
appointee was under the legal age. In 1541 a tailor from Setbal
purportedly proclaimed himself Messiah. Although this act had no
repercussions, the king seized upon it to convince Rome that Judaism
was indeed imperiling Portugal.26 Such were the parade examples of
hardened Judaizing.
The New Christians had agents in Rome, who went all out to counteract the relentless exertions of King Joo III. They argued that there
was no need for an Inquisition in Portugal and, were it nevertheless to
be instituted, it ought to be governed by the norms of Common Law.
23
24
34
CHAPTER TWO
As stated above, the acts punishable by the Inquisition were enunciated for the first time in the Monitrio dated November 18, 1536,
although before then, as we have also mentioned, some tribunals were
already functioning.
Mestre Jorge Leo provides examples of crimes New Christians
might commit unwittingly:
[] take the man from Cascais who was indicted for washing a corpse
and dressing it in a clean shirt and a new shroud and putting it into a
newly made coffin. Does it not seem abusive to consider these things
indictable acts when done by New Christians, when they are widely practiced by Old Christians all the time with impunity?
27
28
29
35
Most telling are Jorge Leos unrehearsed and spontaneous sentiments in a letter (written by one New Christian to another!) sent with
all possible discretion and safeguards:
We shall see, Sir, what you have to say about the Antnios and the Vazes,
as well about what is in store for these people [] As for us, we put our
hope in Our Lord Jesus Christ in Whom you also say you put your hope,
so that we do not fear their threats.
poems were published at Nantes in 1644 by the Marquis de Nisa and an enlarged
edition anonymously at Barcelona in 1649. Reeditions were published and introduced
by Antnio Carlos Carvalho (Profecias do Bandarra, Lisbon, n.d.), Santos Costa (Trovas
do Bandarra, Trancoso, 1989) and Anbal Pinto de Castro (Trovas do Bandarra, Lisbon,
1989). See Antnio Jos Saraiva, Antnio Vieira, Menasseh Ben Israel et le cinquime
empire, Studia Rosenthaliana, 6, 1, 1972, 25-56: 29-30; Lipiner, O Sapateiro de Trancoso e
o Alfaiate de Setbal, cit. supra; Jos van den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo Histria sumria,
Lisbon, 1987, 49-65.
30 Ibid., 1546, 105-107.
60
chapter two
37
31 Cf. Herculano, History, p. 426: [] it was foreseen and calculated that there would
be a conflict with the nuncio which would afford a plausible reason for his expulsion.
32 No official lists of Inquisitorial victims survive in the Portuguese archives for 15391544, so that the numbers of those who were penanced and executed during this period
are all based on contemporary hearsay. See I.-S. Rvah, Les Marranes portugais et
lInquisition au XVIe sicle, The Sephardi Heritage, I (R. Barnett, ed.), London, 1972,
479-526 (reprinted in I. S. Rvah, tudes Portugaises, Paris, 1975, 185-229:211-212).
However, detailed lists of the victims of the second auto-da-f at Lisbon and of the second
one at Oporto were furnished the Commission of Inquiry constituted at Antwerp on
July 1, 1544. These lists (in Portuguese and French translation) are preserved at Brussels in the Archives gnrales du royaume and will shortly be published by us.
33 No precise idata is available on the first vora auto-da-f of 1542. The information
provided by Jos Loureno Domingues. de Mendona and Antnio Joaquim Moreira
(Histria dos Principais Actos e Procedimentos da Inquisio em Portugal, Lisbon, 1980, unnumbered 196-197: this is a reprint of a work published between 1842 and 1847), to the
effect that Lus Dias, the Messiah of Setbal and David Reubeni, the Jew of the Shoe
were executed at this auto-da-f, is erroneous.
34 Two autos-da-f were celebrated at Tomar, respectively on May 6, 1543 and June 20,
1544 (at which a woman was executed). The tribunal at Tomar was abolished by the pope
at an unknown date between 1546 and 1548. A study is needed of the Tomar trial
records preserved in the Torre do Tombo.
35 Scant information on the Lamego tribunal may be found in Baio, A Inquisio em
Portugal e no Brazil, 64. The Lamego tribunal was extinguished by papal decision in 1546
or 1547. Of its trial records too a study is needed.
36 At its first auto-da-f on February 11, 1543 4 people were executed and 59 penanced
in person. A crowd of 30,000 enjoyed the spectacle. The second and last auto-da-f
was held at Oporto on April 27, 1544. The idea that the people of Oporto opposed
the Inquisition and forced its departure is a legend. 111 processos of the Oporto tribunal,
which was suppressed by the papal bull of July 16, 1547, are extant for the period
1541-1546 in the Torre do Tombo. The ruthlessness and iniquity of the Oporto
tribunal reputedly even exceeded that of Lisbon. See Baio, op. cit., 62-63; Elvira Cunha
38
CHAPTER TWO
In 1544 the Portuguese New Christian lobby presented a memorandum to Pope Paul III,37 arguing that the true Christian doctrine
[] allows the conversion of infidels only by persuasive and gentle
means, inspired by Christs meekness, and respecting human freewill. It censured the violently imposed conversion of the Jews during
Manuel Is reign, insisting that those newly converted and their immediate descendants should have been assisted and charitably instructed,
noting that the Apostles and their successors accepted, at the cost of
Christian discipline, deeply rooted customs of the newly converted, as
long as they did not offend the purity of Christian doctrine: a clear
reference to the so-called Judaic customs which the Portuguese New
Christians were accused of observing and to which their spokesmen
denied any intentional religious significance.38 The memorandum
also dwelt on the workings of the Inquisitorial tribunals:
If any of these wretches for whose salvation Christ died is denounced,
sometimes by false witnesses, the Inquisitors haul him off to a dungeon
whence he is unable to see the sky or the earth, or even to communicate
with family or friends so that they may come to his aid. He is accused by
unidentified witnesses and neither the place nor the time of the alleged
crime are divulged to him. The only thing left him is to guess and if he
hits upon the right name, he has the consolation that that persons deposition does not count against him. Thus it would be more useful for him
to be a sorcerer than a Christian. They choose for him a lawyer who
frequently, instead of defending him, helps him from the frying-pan into
the fire. If he proclaims his Christianity and consistently denies the accusations, he is condemned to garroting and the flames and his goods are
confiscated. If he confesses to heretical acts, but claims to have practiced
them without heretical intent, he suffers the same fate, on the sham
count of dissimulating his heresy. If he frankly confesses everything of
which he is accused, they reduce him to the direst poverty and lock him
up for life. This they call using mercy with the culprit. He who succeeds
39
in irrefutably proving his innocence is, in any case, fined so that it may
not be said that he was arrested without cause. Hardly need it be
mentioned that the prisoners are constrained by every manner of torture
to confess whatever delicts are attributed to them. Many die in prison
and even those who are freed are forever dishonored, they and their
family branded with perpetual infamy. In sum, the abuses committed by
the Portuguese Inquisitors are such that anyone aware of the true nature
of Christianity may conclude that they are ministers of Satan, not of
Christ.
Ascertaining that the Inquisitors are acting, not as pastors of their New
Christian flock, but as robbers and mercenaries [sic], Pope Clement VII
(1523-1534) (the document goes on to say), following the example of
Christ, whose distinctive trait is to have pity and forgive, has not
merely ordered the Inquisition suspended but also, as a form of reparations for the harm he has unwittingly inflicted on the victims, desires
to present them with an amnesty. By doing so (notes the document),
the Pontiff was merely prolonging the privileges and exemptions
granted the New Christians by King Manuel.
This document, which epitomizes the accusations to be leveled
perennially at the Portuguese Inquisition shows up Joo IIIs motivations for what they were. The official position of the Holy See was that
true and correctly interpreted Christianity was obliged to defend and
protect the New Christians, helpless victims of a barbarous tyranny.
Unable to intervene, Pope Paul III (1534-1549) took the radical step
of ordering the Portuguese Inquisition suspended by his brief of
September 22, 1544. He took the precaution of having the brief
secretly brought to Lisbon by a new nuncio who published it upon his
arrival.
Now King Joo III staked his all. He demanded from the pope the
revocation of the suspension order and the reestablishment of the
Inquisition with unlimited powers. He did not stop short of a thinly
veiled threat. Joo III insinuated in his letter that he would formally
disobey the pope and break away from the Church of Rome. He was
following the advice given him nine years earlier, in 1535, by two of his
envoys to the Holy See, to follow the example of King Henry VIII of
England. If it boiled down to giving up the kind of Inquisition he
wanted or defying papal authority to set up a tribunal molded to his
specifications and his tool, the Portuguese king was prepared to stick
out his neck:
If Your Holiness does not provide for this, as you are obliged and I
expect you to do, I shall see no other way out but to remedy this, confident that not only will Your Holiness exonerate me, but the monarchs
40
CHAPTER TWO
and Christian faithful who will know what transpired will realize that I
was not the cause nor did I give occasion for it.39
39 The altercation between the Portuguese King Joo III and Pope Paul III in 1544 is
almost a repeat performance (short of the threat of schism) of the one between Joo IIIs
grandfather King Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Sixtus IV in 1482. Ferdinand was bent
upon transforming the Aragonese Inquisition into a royal tool with unlimited powers,
on the Castilian model. On April 18, 1482 Sixtus proclaimed a bull in which he declared
that the new Aragonese Inquisition was moved by cupidity rather than by zeal; that
faithful Christians had been condemned, tortured and executed, their property confiscated at the time of arrest, on the evidence of slaves, enemies and unfit witnesses; that
henceforth names and evidence of denunciators and witnesses should be divulged to the
accused, who should be allowed proper legal counsel; that defendants should be allowed
appeal to the Holy See; that those who freely confessed heresy should be given absolution, secret penance and guaranteed from future prosecution or any form of molestation; all under pain of excommunication. Without awaiting publication of the bull, on
May 13 Ferdinand addressed to the pope a haughty and disrespectful letter, stating that
the pope, yielding to the cunning persuasions of the New Christians, was acting
against the cause of Catholicism; that he, the king, would not allow the bull to take effect
and enjoined the pope to revoke it; that he, the king, was to have sole management of
the Aragonese Inquisition, including the appointment of the Inquisitors. Five months
later, on October 9, Sixtus replied that he was open to accommodation and was
suspending the bull of April 18. Documentation for the subsequent negotiations are
missing but on October 17, 1483 the agreement between king and pope was ratified by
a bull appointing Torquemada, the Inquisitor General of Castile, Inquisitor of Aragon,
Valencia and Catalonia. See Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition in Spain,
Philadelphia, 1906, 1, 233-239, 587-590. For all the texts see Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae, 15, 1949, 66-77.
41
40
41
42
CHAPTER TWO
justice infallible. But Tavoras advice might have been relevant if the
function of the Inquisitors and of the Inquisition had really been to
stamp out Judaism which, as Tvora notes, was well-nigh moribund by
the time the Inquisition came upon the scene.
CHAPTER THREE
1 Pace the Inquisitor Friar Antnio de Sousa writing in 1624: In this holy tribunal we
are concerned with unearthing the truth with the utmost care and diligence so that to
the extent that human judgments can be free of error, here we find pure truth. It is an
angelic tribunal devoid of passions and of regard for human considerations and it is with
our eyes fixed on God and on the weal of the Faith that its affairs are conducted. See
Sermam que o Padre Mestre Frei Antonio de Sousa [] pregou no Auto da F que se celebrou na
mesma Cidade, Domingo cinco de Mayo do Anno de 1624, Lisbon, 1624, 14. The sermon
was reproduced by Antnio Jos Teixeira, Antnio Homem e a Inquisio, Coimbra, 1895,
261-294: 290.
2 Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisio dos Reinos de Portugal Ordenado [] pelo []
Cardeal Da Cunha [], Lisbon, 1774. Reprinted in modern spelling by Raul Rego, Lisbon,
44
CHAPTER THREE
1971. A complete English translation was made and published by Hippolyto Joseph da
Costa Pereira Furtado de Mendona: A Narrative of the Persecution, etc., 2 vols., London,
1811, 1, 171-344.
3 Actually there was an earlier Regimento, consisting of a brief instruction dated
September 5, 1541, published by I. S. Rvah in 1966: Linstallation de lInquisition
Coimbra en 1541 et le premier rglement du Saint-Office portugais, Bulletin des tudes
portugaises, 27, 1966, 47-88, reprinted in id., tudes Portugaises, Paris, 1975, 121-153:
141-145.
4 It was published by A. Baio in the Archivo Historico Portuguez, 5, 1905, 272-298,
reprinted in id., A Inquisio em Portugal e no Brazil, Lisbon, 1906, Documentos, 31-57.
5 Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquyisicam dos Reynos de Portugal, Recopilado por Mandado do Illustrissimo & Reverendissimo Senhor Dom Pedro de Castilho, Bispo Inquisidor Geral
& Visorey dos Reynos de Portugal, Impresso na Inquisio de Lisboa por Pedro Crasbeeck, Anno
da Encarnao do Senhor de 1613 (reproduced in extenso by Jos Justino de Andrade e
Silva, Colleco chronolgica da legislao portugueza, 2, Lisbon, 1855, 23-64).
6 Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisio dos Reynos de Portugal, Ordenado por Mandado
do Illustrssimo e Reverendssimo Snor Bispo Dom Francisco de Castro, Inquisidor Geral do
Conselho dEstado, Lisbon, 1640 (reproduced in extenso by Andrade e Silva, op. cit., 3,
Lisbon, 1856, 251-375). Francisco de Castros prologue is dated October 22, 1640, just
five weeks before the restoration of Portugals independence. Its complete English translation by Hippolyto Joseph da Costa Pereira Furtado de Mendona was published in
London in 1811. See op. cit., supra, n. 2, vol. 2, xxiii-xxviii, 1-338.
7 The Ordenaes are the three successive and exhaustive codes of Portuguese Laws
redacted respectively during the reigns of Afonso V (Afonsinas, published during the
18th century), Manuel I (Manuelinas, the most original and elaborate, published in 1521)
Philip I (Filipinas, adaptation of the Manuelinas, published in 1603).
8 An exhaustive comparison between this and the earlier Regimentos is a desideratum.
9 See Miguel Jimnez Montesern, Introduccin a la Inquisicin espaola, Documentos
bsicos, Madrid, 1980, 82-137. There are two indications of direct borrowing from
Spanish practices. In 1524 Joo III contacted the Inquisitorial authorities at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, for information on how to organize an Inquisition (see Herculano,
45
History, 287); Pero lvares in a 1541 letter addressed to Grand Inquisitor Dom Henrique
(included in lvares trial record, Inquisition of vora, no. 8628, [cf. Elias Lipiner,
Os baptizados em p, 256]) recalls that Inquisitor Joo de Melo had sent to Valladolid for
a Spanish Inquisitorial rule book.
10 An abridged French translation of this closely printed compendium (744 + 240 pp.)
appeared in 1762 (Manuel des Inquisiteurs lusage de lInquisition dEspagne et du Portugal,
Lisbonne [= Paris]) and another in 1973 (Le manuel des inquisiteurs, introduced and
annotated by Louis Sala-Molins, Paris, critically reviewed by Agostino Borromeo,
A proposito del Directorium Inquisitorum di Nicolas Eymerich e delle sue edizioni cinquecentesque, Critica Storica, 20, 4, 1983, 499-547: 524-547). While there is no comparable
English translation, the section on Inquisitorial practice in Henry Charles Leas, The
Inquisition of the Middle Ages (New York, 1887; separately published with an historical
introduction by Walter Ullmann: The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Its Organization and
Practice, London, 1963) incorporates the essential features of Eymerich and Pea.
46
CHAPTER THREE
11 See Eymerich op. cit., passim; Ullmann, op. cit.; Henry Charles Lea, Superstition and
Force, New York, 18702, 376.
47
12 Assessors to the Inquisitor General, constituting under him, or in his absence, the
ruling body of the Inquisition.
48
CHAPTER THREE
This vigilance was to be kept up day and night, parts of the prison,
designated by the jailer, to remain illuminated (I, 14, 21). As may be
gathered from the Regimentos repeated references to them, denunciations made by one prisoner squealing on another were particularly
welcome.
Prisoners might not merely be questioned about their accomplices,
but could be put to the torture, to help them disgorge new information and names. The announcement of the torture and its purpose
would have to be made to them. This was called torture in caput
alienum (II, 14, 13).
13 Second edition, Tournon, 1633; third edition, Bergamo, 1639; fourth edition
(revised), Lyons, 1669; fifth edition (revised), Lyons, 1669. It is perhaps significant that
no comparable treatise was produced in Spain.
49
50
CHAPTER THREE
The difference of the formulae is explained by the rule that homosexuals and relapsed heretics (i.e., backsliders) were theoretically
(though not always in practice) condemned to death if the offenses
were proven even if they confessed them.
At the genealogy session, ten days after the arrest, the accused, duly
identified as a New Christian:
was asked his name, age, profession, livelihood, place of birth, residence,
names and ages of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings; marital
status of all the above; names and ages of spouses, children, grandchildren, deceased relatives; whether he practiced his Catholic religious
duties; whether at any time in the past he, his parents or relatives had
been arrested by the Inquisition; about his education, travel to foreign
countries (II, 6, 2).
51
52
CHAPTER THREE
The ambiguity of this formula was designed to disorient the defendant by making him believe the Inquisitors know something more
than what was told them in the confession.
53
In other words, the defendant against whom there was no proof as well
as the diminuto might be submitted to torture. But this rule was contingent, because its application had to be decided by majority vote of
the tribunal. As we shall see further on, torture was not applied to
every defendant against whom there was no evidence. Torture was
surrounded by a quintessentially Inquisitorial solemnity. The interrogating Inquisitor had at his side another member of the staff (an
Inquisitor or a deputy) and a representative of the diocese (ordinrio
= regular priest) and he was assisted by a notary.
The ceremony in the torture chamber began with the usual oath by
the defendant, followed by the admonishment:
considering the place he was in and the apparatus displayed all around
he could perhaps understand what awaited him. If it is something he
wants to be spared, he is being once again admonished with much
charity on behalf of Christ Our Lord to confess willingly his offenses.
Through this confession he may attain the mercy which this Desk vouchsafes all good and true confessors.
54
CHAPTER THREE
The next paragraph stipulates that the torture will be either pol
(strappado, or pulley on which the prisoner would be attached by
rope, hoisted and dropped) or potro (the rack: a kind of bench or
lathe-bed, into which the victim was fastened and had his members
squeezed by means of cords which would be tightened with a crank).
The potro was only used for defendants whose poor health made the
pol too risky a proposition. Women, because of great solicitude for
their modesty, only pol was appropriate for them. The same article
of the Regimento goes on to stipulate that prisoners may not appear at
autos-da-f showing signs of torture. It therefore recommends using
only the potro during the fortnight preceding the auto-da-f. It was
easier to break or dislocate joints or bones during strappado.
If the defendant decided to make a clean breast, either before or
during the torture session, he was immediately heard in whatever
position he found himself, without his bonds being loosened; the sole
exception would be if he had been hoisted to the ceiling by the rope
of the pol, he would be lowered to the floor. However, if the declarations did not satisfy the Inquisitors, the torture would continue without
interruption (II, 14, 7).
The Regimento deserves to be attentively read if we are to correctly
interpret the trials. We are now at the point where the defendants have
made a confession under torture. This would be recorded by the
notary and presented to the defendant 24 hours later for his signature.
He would be asked whether what he then said was the truth and if so
whether he is ready to reaffirm it without fear, force or violence (II,
14, 9). If the defendant declines to sign he is submitted anew to the
torture and if after repeating his previous confessions he once again
balks when told to sign, then he becomes a diminuto or negativo, both
of which implied the death penalty (II, 14, 11). Yet in III, 5, 1, we
read that if the defendant after three separate torture sessions each
time revoked his confessions before 24 hours had elapsed, he was
merely condemned to flogging and the galleys. There seems to have
been some fluctuation in the attitude of the Holy Office towards defen-
55
dants who confessed under torture and then refused to confirm those
confessions: in one place they are considered negativos and, as such,
liable to the death penalty; elsewhere they are considered perjurers
and subject to infamy (a penalty involving loss of honor, civil rights
and liberty, but not of life).14 But, the Regimento goes on to say, if the
defendant revokes his testimony more than 24 hours after the torture,
there is no deliverance from the death penalty as a stubborn, tergiversating denier (negativo, pertinaz, variante) (II, 14, 12).
Now if a defendant having maintained his negativo stance throughout
the interrogations, was then able to identify one or more of his denunciators and discredit the latters testimony, he might at the whim of
the Inquisitors be put to the torture. If he withstood the torments
without confessing, he would not only escape the death penalty
normally reserved for negativos, but would be let off, at the auto-da-f,
with a fine, costs of the trial, penances, a period of confinement and
Catholic re-education; fine and length of confinement to depend on
how convincing his guilt seemed to the Inquisitors. Thereafter he
would be freed either on a slight or on a vehement suspicion of
heresy without confiscation of possessions. This was the only case in
which a negativo escaped execution (III, 2, 8). The torture, in this
case, seems to be a vestige of the medieval ordeal or Divine Judgment..15 According to this conception if the accused is able to resist or
survive a physical ordeal, Providence must be on his side. In any case,
for a negativo, torture was the only road to deliverance.
4. The Accusation
The accusation was drawn up by a staff member of the Holy Office
called promotor who acted as a public prosecutor. When the interrogation is completed:
the prosecutor will draw up the indictments in the name of the law. The
first article shall be general, referring to the type of heresy for which the
defendant was denounced, and it shall state that although the defendant
is a baptized Christian and as such obliged to hold and believe all that
the Holy Mother Church of Rome holds, believes and teaches, he did just
the opposite and defected to such and such a belief or sect. And if the
offense is Judaism, it shall state that the defendant committed it after the
last general amnesty. Next he shall draw up articles based on the ques
14 Perhaps in II, 14, 11 the Regimento is speaking of cases in general but in III, 5,
1 of those who revoke their confessions quickly after the torture session.
15 See John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof, Chicago, 1977, 6-7.
56
CHAPTER THREE
tions put to the defendant during the in specie session and on the
denunciations of witnesses. Then he will add articles based on the defendants reputation, if there were witnesses who made depositions in regard
to it. Next, in a separate article, he will reprove the defendant for not
having confessed his offenses although repeatedly admonished to do so.
He will conclude the indictment requesting its acceptance and that the
defendant be chastised with all the rigor of the law as a negative and
pertinacious heretic and be handed over to secular justice.
This disposition was not meant only to diddle the defendant but also
to impress the public before whom the sentence was read at the autoda-f, since the sentence textually reproduced the accusations present
in the brief of indictment.
Finally, of the denunciation based not on first-hand knowledge of
heresy but on gossip and innuendo (II, 6, 8). Such rumors were not
merely clues for the Inquisitors. From them were distilled the accusations, which the promotor had to supplement with the words: against
the defendant there exists a legal presumption that he committed
such-and-such an heresy and concluding: that the defendant be
57
58
CHAPTER THREE
hand, was entirely dependent on the lawyer because the contradictions of the accusations had to be jointly redacted and signed by the
defendant and the lawyer (II, 10, 1). The Regimento puts great store
by this detail: II, 10, 10 prescribes that the contradictions must be
not only signed conjointly by defendant and lawyer, but written in the
hand of the latter. In this way, the defendant could not produce any
allegation which the lawyer had not underwritten before the Holy
Office. Lest lawyer and defendant gang up on the Holy Office, the
Regimento prescribes that the meirinho (the principal agent of arrests)
be present at all consultations between defendant and solicitor (I,13,
3; II,8, 6).
Let it also be noted that the lawyer had no access to the transcript
but merely to the bills of prosecution and decisions communicated
to the defendant. Moreover, the lawyer was not permitted to accompany the defendant at interrogations. In fact, he was but a prop
albeit an indispensable one in the histrionics. His sole practical
function was to redact and ratify the statements submitted by the
defendant.
Once the bill of accusation was drawn up and presented to the
defendant, the defense began. Schematically it fell into two phases.
Firstly the defendant presented an overall defense in which he denied
the possibility of the accusations by general circumstances of time,
place, family or other alibis, and alleged the reasons which accredited
him as a good Christian, backing it all up with witnesses. The prosecution replied with what is grandiloquently designated the publication of the proof of justice, which is simply the recording of the
accusatory depositions, in the conditions to be discussed anon. To this
the defendant replied with contradictions, which consisted in indicating and proving that certain persons were his enemies and susceptible of having falsely accused him in order to get even.
For this kind of defense it would be essential for the defendant to
know the time and place of his alleged crime as well as the names of
the witnesses. But the Regimento insists that all such knowledge be
scrupulously withheld.
II, 8, 7 says that if the accused requests, for his defense, a declaration of time and place of delict, the Inquisitors will order the Prosecutor to make one in the legal form and style of the Holy Office.
Precisely what the form and style of the Holy Office entails is set
forth in I, 6, 21:
When the accused asks to be told the place of delict, and the Inquisitors
emit an order to have it revealed, the prosecutor will make a vague declaration, avoiding specifics. For instance, if the crime was committed in the
59
Church of Saint Dominic at Lisbon, he will give the place as Lisbon, withholding the name of the church [] If the place is a hamlet so small that
by learning just its name the defendant would guess the witnesses, then
the Prosecutor, appraising the distance from that hamlet to the most
notable city, town or site, will say that the accused offended at such and
such a distance from the said city, town or site; if in a country house one
league from Lisbon, he will say that the defendant committed the crime
within a one-league radius of Lisbon.
In the publication of the proof of justice which follows the defendants exposition of defense, every precaution is taken to protect the
names of the witnesses or the locations and dates of the crimes. II, 9,
1 says that for this purpose the depositions are to be copied in the
order that they were made, concealing their names, the day, month
and year in which they testified [...] not revealing the place where the
offense was committed, but saying that it was in a certain region.
And if this were not sufficient to nonplus the defendant, the same
paragraph adds: If the testimony speaks of accomplices, it will be
stated that the defendant was in the company of certain persons of his
nation; and if there were no accomplices it will be stated that he was
in the company of certain persons. This means that, even if there was
no mention of accomplices in the denunciations, the Inquisitors tried
to make the defendant believe that there were, so as to pressure him
into producing names. And the same article insists on the suppression
of the witnesses names: while referring in full to the contents of the
testimony, clues to the witnesses identities are to be omitted.
6. Announcement of the Sentence and Appeal
Two announcements of the sentences were to be made to the defendant. The first was to be accompanied by a further admonishment to
confess his offenses or the rest of them so as to merit the mercy he
wishes for. This first announcement was not to be made to pederasts
and relapsers. The second was to be delivered on the Friday immediately preceding the Sunday auto-da-f, and then the notary would
announce to the defendants that they were to be transferred to the
secular arm and that they should attend to their consciences and the
salvation of their souls and commend themselves to Our Lord that He
direct them in the knowledge of the truth and forthwith he shall order
a guard whom he has brought with him to tie their hands (II, 15, 5).
Defendants could appeal to the General Council of the Inquisition
in matters of procedure, however they may not appeal the Inquisitors
decisions regarding them or any steps taken in their case which affect
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61
The 1640 Regimento was issued in a very limited edition, strictly for
internal use. The copy in the National Library of Lisbon, with an
Inquisitors marginal annotations, was obviously for the exclusive use
of the judges and prosecutor. The Regimento was unavailable not only
to the general public, but to the defendants, lawyers and no doubt to
the majority of the Inquisitorial staff. That this situation still prevailed
some three decades after its publication is confirmed by the anonymous Portuguese anti-Inquisitorial pamphlet (written around 1673)
translated into English: An Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal [] Written by One of the Secretaries to the Inquisition,
London, 1708.16 The author had a modicum of inside information
about the Inquisitorial working and knew some dispositions of
the 1640 Regimento, yet referred to it as a book he was not able to
examine first-hand (see articles 53 and 122 of the Account in the 1722
Portuguese version.17).
8. The Inquisitorial Trial and the Common Law Trial
As we have seen at the outset of this chapter, many features of the
Portuguese Inquisitorial trial were anticipated by Eymerichs Directorium Inquisitorum. Just a few examples: the acceptance by majority vote
of a suspect witness; the second interrogation of a suspect witness,
done in such a manner as to oblige him to either confirm or revoke his
testimony, with all attendant risks; the license granted the Inquisitors
to mislead the accused in respect to the number of witnesses for the
prosecution; hiding from the defendant the death or disappearance of
defense witnesses named by him; etc. Walter Ullmann sums up his
dispassionate appraisal of the medieval Inquisitorial trial as follows:
There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could
be squared with the demands of justice; on the contrary, every one of its
items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it [] its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive
concepts of natural justice [] This kind of proceeding has no longer
16 This translation is the earliest printing of the work. It was reissued with a new title:
The History of the Inquisition: With an Account of the Cruelties Exercised Therein, London,
1713. See below, Chapter Four.
17 The numeration of the articles into which the text of the Account is divided differs
in the English and Portuguese versions, no doubt due to their being based on variant
manuscripts.
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any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion.18
18 See Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Its Organization and Operation, Historical Introduction by Walter Ullmann, 29, 32. Agostino Borromeo attempts
to gainsay the opinion that medieval Inquisitorial jurisprudence was per se more arbitrary, cruel and unjust than medieval civil jurisprudence. See his article cit. supra, n. 10,
esp. 537-547.
19 See Maria de Ftima Coelho, A evoluo do processo inquisitorial e a sua relao
com o processo comum (1552-1774), Inquisio, 3, Lisbon, 1990, 1017-1028: 1025 and
n. 28.
63
Let us also note the 1640 Regimentos rule that the New Christian
defendant was not permitted to name New Christians in his defense.
In practice, however, New Christians were admitted as defense
witnesses, albeit their credibility was rated inferior to that of Old
Christians.
Torture, authorized in civil trials by Portuguese codes from the
Middle Ages on, was abolished de facto by unwritten common law
(during the early 18th century?) at a time it was going full blast in the
Inquisition.20
Perhaps the most egregious deviation from common law norms in
both the medieval and Portuguese Inquisitorial trials were the denunciations registered after the arrest of the defendant, either by fellow
prisoners or guards. These denunciations counted for proofs of guilt
although the prison guards were employees of the Inquisition. Leaving
prison fare uneaten was automatically denounced by the guards as
observance of a Judaic fast. (We shall see how lethal the accusation of
cell-fasting could prove.) As for the prisoners, they had every motivation to reciprocally denounce one another.
Now the Inquisitors decision to spare the life of a particular defendant was not unrelated to the volume of the latters blabber, as may be
gathered from the Regimento of 1552:
One of the surest signs that penitents are making a clean breast is when
they denounce others guilty of the same errors, especially when these are
close family members of whom they are especially fond [].21
20 See Marcello Caetano, Histria do Direito Portugus (1140-1495), Lisbon, 1981, 388;
Cardinal da Cunhas Prologue to the last Inquisitorial Regimento (1774). The 1539
case of Manuel da Costa (see Chapter Two, n. 25), the 1630 case of Simo Pires Solis (see
Chapter Twelve, n. 27) and the 1671 Odivelas episode (see Chapter Nine, n. 68) attest
to the continued use of severe torture in civil trials to produce confessions and/or names
of accomplices.
21 A. Baio, A Inquisio em Portugal e no Brazil, Lisbon, 1906, Documentos, 34. In Portuguese common law the testimony of parents, grandparents and siblings was not
accepted either against or in favor of the accused. See Coelho, art. cit., 1021 and note 5.
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This gem of a text provides a glimpse into the mentality of the Regimentos redactors, inherited from the medieval Inquisition. The obsession with correct window-dressing has its reason: the Inquisitors knew
the importance of public opinion and attempted to influence it
through a stage setting which comes into its own, as we shall see, with
the autos-da-f; and it seems to have impressed not just the gullible
masses but some heavyweight 20th-century historians.23
65
Left cold were a few thinking people such as Pope Innocent XI, as
we shall see in the next chapter, and the anonymous author of the
Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal (to be
surveyed anon):
It is obvious that the plethora of people confessing Judaizing is the fault
of the trials, and does not correspond to the reality of the fault. There
cannot be the slightest doubt about this. Were Old Christians subjected
to what New Christians have to endure, the same confessions would
result [], for the form, style and the constant oscillations of precision
and confusion are breeders of phoniness down to the invention of delicts
in all the defendants.24
24 See Account of the Cruelties, 1708, 97. Our quotations are direct English translations
from the original untitled Portuguese text as found in Noticias Reconditas, 1722 (in this
case, p. 107). All page references henceforward will be to the 1722 Portuguese edition.
CHAPTER FOUR
1 A 1750 Venice reprint of this miscellany, under the Portuguese title Relao Exactssima Instructiva, Curioza, Verdadeira e Noticioza do Procedimento das Inquisies de Portugal
attributes the original Portuguese version of An Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the
Inquisition in Portugal to Antnio Vieira (1608-1697). According to the Spanish prologue
to Noticias Reconditas (London, 1722), which is the same as the English prologue to An
Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal (hereafter Cruelties), the secretary to the Inquisition who authored the Portuguese text left Portugal for Rome in 1672,
worked there on behalf of the New Christians for 12 months and in 1674 obtained the
Inquisitions suspension, which lasted until 1681. Antnio Vieira, a Jesuit whose sermons
are one of the classics of Portuguese Literature, was in Rome around 1673 where, inter
alia, he was taking up the cudgels for the cause of the New Christians. The hypothetical
attribution of the Portuguese text to Pedro Lupina Freire derives from a 1673 letter by
Padre Vieira. See Antnio Vieira, Obras Escolhidas (Antnio Srgio and Hernni Cidade,
eds.), 4, 2, Lisbon, 1951, 139-140 (cf. below, note 6). Vieira may have retouched the work
and interspersed it with his own writing: some passages allegedly bear the mark of his
style. Manuscript copies circulated in various European cities. Some copies, according to
the prologue of the printed editions, reached Portugal and were put in the hands of
67
various high placed aristocrats. In 1821, the year the Inquisition was abolished, the
miscellany was reprinted in Lisbon under the Portuguese title Notcias Recnditas do Modo
de Proceder da Inquisio de Portugal com os seus Presos, containing on pp. 3-205 a variant,
expanded Portuguese version of Cruelties. This marked the first time a work critical of
the Inquisition was ever printed in Portugal. The 1722 text was reprinted in modernized
spelling as an appendix to Vieira, op cit.,139-244; the notes on 248-250 concerning the
history of the works publication are partially incorrect.
2 After having found out part of the secrets [] of that Tribunal (Preface to the
Reader) (Despues de haver penetrado parte de los secretos desse Tribunal [Prologo]).
3 In article 122 of the 1722 edition he refers to it as a work he was not able to
examine first-hand. See above, Chapter Three, n. 16-17.
4 E.g., Noticias Reconditas, 1722 (hereafter in the notes: NR) 28, 30, 38, 41, 45, 46, 51,
54, 57, 96, 126.
5 Its reliability was contested by I. S. Rvah in 1971. See his Surrebutter to A. J.
Saraiva (Appendix Three). Cf. Francisco Bethencourts call for a critical edition of the
work (Histria das Inquisies, Portugal, Espanha e Itlia, Lisbon, 1994, 305).
6 Maria da Conceio (or de Sequeira), Inquisition of vora, no. 1369, auto-da-f,
April 18, 1660 (NR, 64-66); Manuel Rodrigues da Costa, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 9948,
auto-da-f, June 21, 1671 (NR, 69); Jorge Fernandes Mesas, Inquisition of vora, no. 326
(document in a state of disintegration), auto-da-f, April 18, 1660 (NR, 95); Jcome de
Melo Pereira, Inquisition of vora, no. 7346, auto-da-f, October 16, 1667 (NR, 97);
Afonso Nobre, Inquisition of Coimbra, no. 4385, auto-da-f, October 26, 1664 (NR, 98);
Joo (and Antnio) de Sequeira, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 5427 (and no. 2416), autosda-f October 11, 1637 and March 24, 1642 (NR, 100); Joo Travassos, Inquisition of
Lisbon, no. 9781, auto-da-f, August 3, 1637 (NR, 101); Bautista Fangueiro Cabras,
Inquisition of vora, no. 4741, autos-da-f, November 12, 1662 and October 16, 1667
(NR, 104); Friar Diogo de Assuno, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 104, auto-da-f August 3,
1603 (NR, 112); Francisco de Azevedo Cabras, Inquisition of vora, no. 2314, auto-daf, May 31, 1665 and Sala, October 15, 1673 (NR, 113); Manuel Lopes Sotil (trial records
not found, but see those of his son Andr Lopes Sotil and of his daughter Maria Nunes
Sotil, Inquisition of vora, no. 10441 and no. 1975, sentenced respectively on July 16,
1667 and September 30, 1667 (NR, 116); Francisco Lopes Margalho, Inquisition of
vora, no. 7829, auto-da-f, May 31, 1665 (NR, 117); Antnio Gonalves, Inquisition of
Coimbra, no. 1155, auto-da-f, May 23, 1660 (NR, 118). It will be noted that none of
the cases postdate 1672, most are from 1660 onwards and that eight of them are from
68
CHAPTER FOUR
the vora Tribunal. A connection between the author and the vora Tribunal seems
probable and, concomitantly, the authorship of Pedro Lupina Freire, who was a notary
of the Lisbon Tribunal from 1648-1655, arrested for revealing Inquisitorial secrets and
banished to Brazil 1656-1660, quite unlikely (see Appendix Three, n. 58). A notary
whose name appears on all of the above-listed vora trial records is Simo Thom.
7 See below, note 17. The auto-da-f statistics and marginal notes compiled by
Antnio Joaquim Moreira (1792-1865) were included by Jos Loureno D. de Mendona
in his Histria dos Principais Actos e Procedimentos da Inquisio em Portugal, Lisbon, 1845,
256-348. Hereafter we cite the Lisbon 1980 edition as Mendona and Moreira.
Moreira may have gleaned the Maria Mendes anecdote from NR.
8 Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 4791, auto-da-f, October 17, 1660 (NR, 119-120;
Azevedo, Histria, 139). Pires, a rabid New Christian-baiter, was denounced for Judaizing
by dozens of New Christian prisoners from Abrantes. He claimed unblemished Old
Christian status but the Inquisitions genealogical inquiry was inconclusive. The
members of the Lisbon tribunal voted seven to two that Pires heresy had not been
proven and that he should be put to the torture but the General Council reversed their
decision, accepted as confirmed his New Christian blemish and insisted on the death
penalty without further ado. He refused to confess and was heard screaming that he was
a pure Old Christian while being taken to the stake. Cf. Mendona and Moreira, 169
but see previous note.
9 The expected confessions included not merely carrying out Mosaic precepts but
believing in their salvific function and especially mentioning them during chance meetings
with other New Christians. Such discussions, classified as reciprocal declaration of
belief in the dead Law of Moses to which one looks for salvation were of and by themselves the principal Judaic count in most indictments. Their confession entailed the
revelation of the interlocutors identity, giving rise to more arrests.
69
that the prisoners are refused the right to hear mass, go to confession
or communion; he does not know, however, that some were under
surveillance from secret peep-holes. The human environment within
the prisons is worthy of his careful notice. Among the prisoners reigns
a kind of solidarity-in-abjection and a degenerate democracy. The
weakest and most corrupt do their damnedest to fell the stronger.
Those who have already confessed persecute those who have not yet
confessed, saying to them: there is no other escape and those who
deny are no more honorable than those who confessed their way to
freedom. And they speak to them so earnestly as if those who refuse
to confess are doing them personal injury; for their whole intent is that
all should undergo the same fate, to avoid the disgrace of others
putting up a front which they did not..10 Denunciations without reason
or cause are common practice among the prisoners. Solely because
he feels himself slighted and shamed, a defendant in his confession
will denounce the one who stubbornly maintains his innocence or, if
he is more cautious, tries to induce other prisoners to make the denunciation. When they are transferred to another cell and put in the
company of other prisoners, they tell their new companions to
denounce the one who is about to be released without having
confessed, to prevent the latter from feeling superior to them. Thus
the denunciations are multiplied and all of them become entangled in
the web of denunciations, which even occurs when the cellmates get
along well, because those who have confessed resent anyone getting off
scot-free..11
During the first interrogation the prisoner is asked if he knows the
tenor of the accusation(s) and is then made to sign an asseveration that
he will keep his lips sealed about everything he has seen and about his
interrogations. Between this first interrogation and the following ones
there are often intervals ranging from months to years. The only part
of the defendants declarations taken down by the scribe are the yes
or no with which he replies to the Inquisitors questions. (Here Cruelties hardly adds anything to the Regimento.12) The prisoners are asked
70
CHAPTER FOUR
The lawyer and the guard sit hatted on their chairs; the prisoner is
seated on a little back-less bench, bare-headed, as a serf before his
lord. This is the scenario for their meetings. If the prisoner,
confronted by the accusations, pleads innocent, the lawyer exhorts him
mations of doctrine and faith, which implies they were not on their knees throughout
the questioning. Graphic representations of Inquisitorial interrogation show the defendant seated on a stool. Moreover, Eymerics Directorium inquisitorum (Peas gloss to 2, 18)
recommends that the accused be seated on a low, humble bench, contrasting with the
arm-chair of the Inquisitor.
13 NR, 32.
14 NR, 46.
71
to confess for here there is no other way out [] he who does not
confess remains in prison for many years and at the end will either be
executed and burnt or come round to confessing anyway, like all the
rest of them. The defendant may nevertheless decide to maintain his
stance. When the moment comes for the defendant and his lawyer to
contradict the denunciations and impugn the integrity of the denunciators, the defendant perplexedly inquires:
If I do not know who the denunciators are, how am I to invalidate their
testimony? The legal adviser replies: Put everyone into your list, prisoners of the Inquisition and free people, because we do not know who
has been or is going to be arrested during your imprisonment.
15 The articles of impeachment (contraditas) were the one defense strategy provided
the New Christian defendant unwilling to confess to Judaizing, namely to impeach the
integrity of the unknown denouncers and the trustworthiness of their denunciations by
stating for each one mentioned a plausible reason deriving from some incident for
their supposed animosity and adding the names of minimally three and up to six preferably male Old Christian witnesses to each recounted incident. In the course of the weeks
or months following the presentation of the list the Inquisitors proceeded to examine
as many witnesses as possible of incidents involving an impeached person who had
actually denounced him. During these cross-examinations the witnesses, intimidated,
fearful of damaging or seeming too partial to the defendant, would cautiously substantiate the reported incident read out to them by the Inquisitor. While the cited witnesses
might deny (precise) knowledge of the incident and thus dissociate themselves from the
defendant, the interrogation of the witnesses almost always produced a confirmation of
whatever personal animosity was being verified, since the contradita was read to the
witnesses if they could not guess its contents. Thereupon, if at all favorably inclined to
the defendant, they would naturally tend to confirm the defendants deposition. The
standards by which this evidence was evaluated were arbitrarily defined in each case
by the Inquisitors. See H. P. Salomon, Portrait of a New Christian, Paris, 1982, 106-107.
16 NR, 54-59. The 1722 Portuguese text (p. 59) is defective (to name witnesses to his
Contradictions, six for every article and they must be without exception). Cf. the 1708
English version: They bid him name witnesses, telling him beforehand that they must
be people of good credit, Old Christians and six to each Article, or at least three. The
1640 Regimento (2, 10, 2) says up to six witnesses and, while requiring them to be Old
Christians, leaves a loophole for those who are not. See Salomon, op. cit., 91-92.
72
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(The author of Cruelties fails to indicate that another leap of the negative defendants imagination was necessary to recall or rather invent
the incident causing each named denunciators purported enmity.)
If, in the course of the trial, the defendant renounces his negative
stance and gives up the almost impossible task of contradicting and
impugning, he has to prepare his confession which, in order to
be considered sincere and complete sincere because complete
perforce denounces as accomplices all the denunciators; so he is
back to establishing a list.
Finally, having learned by rote the lesson of falsehood, he goes
at his own request, illuminated by the Holy Ghost to confess at
the Desk, pretending to be extremely repentant and desirous of
telling the whole truth. He returns again and again to the Desk. He
recites names and more names. Occasionally he does not succeed in
recalling the names, so he identifies them as sons, daughters or
brothers of so-and-so, and this often suffices. In order to hit upon
fifteen or twenty denunciators in the successive bills of indictment,
some of whose names may be totally unknown to him, he might easily
denounce a couple of hundred people. To be on the safe side he regularly first denounces his parents, spouse, children, siblings and other
relatives, because by doing so (so he is told) the Inquisitors will forgive
him those denunciators he does not mention, attributing his failure to
faulty memory rather than to heretical malice. But this is a purely arbitrary decision on the Inquisitors part. Basing himself on specific trial
records, the author of Cruelties asserts that the confessions of many
defendants who abundantly denounce but do not guess the identity of
their denunciators are accepted and that others who denounce their
father and mother but not all their denunciators do not escape execution. He provides the example of a certain Maria Mendes, resident
of Elvas, widow of a shoemaker, who was arrested in 1657 and
confessed immediately:
She denounced as many children as she had, grandchildren and other
relatives and as many people as she knew by name. She was heard to say
that she had denounced more than six hundred persons. In spite of this
she was sentenced to death as an incomplete confessant. After the
announcement of the sentence, she revoked all her testimony, saying the
73
Judaizing she had attributed to herself and her near and dear ones, in
the hope of saving her life, was falsehood. When this woman was
paraded in the auto-da-f, one of her daughters, who appeared for
sentencing in the same auto, yelled to her mother the names of some
distant relatives for her mother to denounce then and there [] The
mother yelled back: My daughter, there are no names left to denounce
in Castile or Portugal. I went through them all and it availed me
nothing.17
17 NR, 96-97. Cf. Azevedo, Cristos-Novos, 136. Antnio Borges Coelho (Inquisio de
vora, Lisbon, 1987, 1, 114), who located the trial record of Maria Mendes, 70 (Inquisition of vora, no. 3963), was unable to confirm from it the gist of the anecdote. He
unconvincingly conjectures (op. cit., 224-226) that Cruelties confused Maria Mendes with
Maria lvares (80) (Inquisition of vora, no. 3961), also a resident of Elvas, executed at
the same auto.
74
CHAPTER FOUR
We find the same idea identically formulated in a play by the Brazilianborn dramatist Antnio Jos da Silva (1705-1739) who was arrested by
the Inquisition along with a host of relatives and actually subjected to
no fewer than two trials, the second ending in his execution. In his
comedy Anfitrio (1736) Jupiter is simultaneously the Lord of All, the
Chief Schemer and the Vilain. He has Saramago and Amphytrion,
both innocent, arrested and jailed. The latter laments:
What misdeed have I committed to have to undergo
the yoke of these harshest of chains
in the horrors of a painful prison
18
19
20
75
76
CHAPTER FOUR
21 NR, 103. The author also mistakenly assumes that the prescript was included in the
new Regimento. (He presumably means the 1640 edition.)
77
22 See H. P. Salomon, Portrait, 24-26 (including source references); Azevedo, CristosNovos, 137.
23 Consider, however (H. P. Salomon, ibid.) the case of the emancipated Indian slave
Vitria Dias (ANTT, no. 3331), born in China, converted to Catholicism in adulthood,
brought to Lisbon via Cochin and Goa by the wealthy New Christian merchant Henrique
Dias Milo. She was tried and sentenced for Judaizing and attempting to flee the
country with the rest of the family and ultimately joined the Portuguese Jewish community of Hamburg, in whose cemetery she is buried.
78
CHAPTER FOUR
24 See Azevedo, Cristos-Novos, 137-138. Cf. Elvira Cunha de Azevedo Mea, A Inquisio de Coimbra no Sculo XVI, Oporto, 1997, 474-485.
25 See his first auto-da-f appearance in Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Cod. 198, f. 15;
first trial record, Inquisition of Coimbra, no. 967; second trial record, Inquisition of
Lisbon, no. 3389, which provides March 22, 1632 as the date of execution. Public autosda-f were held in Lisbon on March 24, 1631 (180 victims) and on March 22, 1632
(53 victims). According to Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Cod. 198, f. 60-61 he was
executed at the Lisbon auto-da-f of March 24, 1631. On May 24, 1631 Inquisitor
General Francisco de Castro (appointed May 20, 1630), writing to King Philip III in
response to a report on Portuguese Inquisitorial excesses presented to the king in 1629,
clearly refers (though not by name) to Rebellos false testimony and execution on March
24, 1631. See Antnio Baio, El-Rei D. Joo IV e a Inquisio, Academia Portuguesa da
Histria, Anais, 6, 1942, 11-70: 13-15 The sentence of his second trial record was reproduced by Mendona and Moreira, 369-373 and by Carlos Jos de Meneses (A Inquisio
em Portugal, Oporto, 1892, 2, 99-107). Azevedo, Histria, 138 provides the name, the
year 1632 and apparently confused his case with that of the Bragana perjurers.
26 See Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Cod. 198, ff. 13-31. On April 13, 1630, availing
themselves of a Period of Grace, 49 persons from Lamego (41 women and 9 men)
presented themselves to the Coimbra Inquisitors to confess to Judaizing and were reconciled behind closed doors without being subjected to the sanbenito or to confiscation of
possessions. See ibid., ff. 55-57.
27 Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 3389, f. 215v: de que seguio danno gravissimo, reduzindo a pureza da justia do Santo Officio e sua sagrada estimaam a tal perplexidade
que esta receando com muito fundamento se por ventura condenou algus xptaos velhos
innocentes por herejes e se outros se impuseram culpas falsas afim de se livrarem da
Inquisio com dano grave de sua propria consciencia e da republica christam [].
28 The report on Portuguese Inquisitorial excesses presented to King Philip III in
1629 claims that when Diogo and his two brothers were arrested at Coimbra in 1626
they had been given a list of people to denounce as accomplices by an Inquisitor who
79
was a friend of their father, Afonso Homem Ferreira, an Old Christian from Lamego,
and that Diogo had subsequently lengthened the list to over 300 on his own initiative.
See Antnio Borges Coelho, Inquisio de vora, Lisbon, 1987, 2, 162-181: 171.
29 Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 3389.
30 NR, 104-107. According to Cruelties he was one-eighth New Christian, or even less:
for the measuring of these degrees is a matter of opinion or, more precisely, malevolent
disposition. According to the trial record his maternal grandmother was his sole New
Christian forbear: Whether she was a full or a half New Christian is not stated.
31 See Inquisition of vora, no. 4741.
80
CHAPTER FOUR
32 See Ibid., Acrdo: E considerado o damno que resulta de semelhantes falsidades e a grande perturbao que delas se segue Repblica e se presumir que o reo
sentio mal do recto e livre procedimento do Santo Officio intentando desacreditar seus
ministros, dandolhe ocasio a procederem contra pessoas inocentes, pondo-as a risco de
porem sobre si e sobre outrem testemunhos falsos, com grave damno de suas honras e
concincias e ser necessario em semelhantes casos dar exemplar castigo aos culpados em
to abominvel crime e no dar o reo escusa que o releve [] (Punctuation supplied.)
33 See John H. Langlein, Torture and the Law of Proof, 29-33.
34 According to Cruelties the foreman, Joo Fidalgo, was rebuked by the Holy Office
for sparing him from the more rigorous tasks. The processo identifies the foreman as
Joo Fialho.
35 Among the trial records of dozens of nuns and priests he denounced see that of his
niece, Soror Violante Batista, Inquisition of vora, no. 11354.
36 NR, 113-116; Inquisition of vora, no. 2314.
81
happened, like his father and even more so, Francisco was a relentless
persecutor of New Christians, whom he insulted at every opportunity,
especially when they were prisoners of his father. Rumor had it that his
mother, deceased 24 years earlier, was partly of New Christian stock
through her father, who had come to Elvas from the Algarve. His other
three grandparents were pure Old Christians, as well as his fathers
four grandparents, all natives of Elvas. His mothers sister Brites de
Sequeira and he were arrested. At the vora Tribunal he protested to
the Inquisitors, supported by a letter from his father,37 that he was a
pure Old Christian and asked to be released. All the same he was
remanded to his cell. On October 6 he requested and was granted
an audience, where he retracted his earlier protest and declared
himself to be partly New Christian. Beginning on October 7 and at
many successive audiences he confessed the standard Judaic actions
committed fourteen or more years prior to his arrest, denouncing as
accessories hundreds of persons, among them his mother and aunt.38
On November 29, 1664, at his eighth session with the Inquisitors, he
declared his genealogy, claiming that, while his fathers parents and
his mothers father were all pure Old Christians, his maternal grandmother, Caterina de Azevedo, had a partly New Christian mother. At
the vora auto-da-f of May 31, 1665 he was reconciled to the Holy
Mother Church and sentenced to the wearing of the sanbenito and
confiscation of all his worldly goods. Upon his release his father sent
him, in spite of the hostilities then raging between Portugal and Spain,
to a Spanish monastery, whence he returned to Elvas, after peace was
declared, a Franciscan friar. In the meantime, however, his aunt Brites
de Sequeira, arrested together with him, staunchly maintained her
unstained Old Christian origin, proving to the satisfaction of the
Inquisitors that her three Elvas grandparents as well as her one
Algarve grandparent were all of pure Old Christian stock. According
to Cruelties she was declared innocent at an auto-da-f at which all those
who had denounced her, wearing perjurer miters, were flogged and
sentenced to the galleys.39 On May 12, 1672 Francisco was re-arrested,
submitted to a new trial and convicted on the following counts: 1) of
having falsely confessed to Judaizing whereas it has become known
that he is an Old Christian and thus there is no verisimilitude to his
37 His father suggested in the letter to the Inquisitors that his son had been malevolently denounced by New Christian prisoners whom he had insulted at the time of their
arrest.
38 Inquisition of vora, no. 2314, 41-84.
39 We were unable to retrieve her trial record.
82
CHAPTER FOUR
40 Inquisition of vora, no. 2314: e que tudo visto e constar ser o reo cristo velho e
como tal no ser verosmil cometesse culpas de judasmo.
41 Ibid.: disse falsamente de sua me e de tia D. Brites de Sequeira que tinham parte
de naso hebreia e que ero judeus [] nada tinham de Cristo novo ou de outra
infecta e reprovada naso.
42 Ibid.: mostrando que queria se entenderem que no Santo Ofcio tudo ero falsidades.
43 The Account states that the private auto, at which no more than 12 ecclesiastical
persons were present who took an oath not to divulge what transpired there, took place
immediately following the vora auto-da-f of November 26, 1673.
83
two trial records, dating from 1608 and 1628. For reasons best known
to themselves no recent trial was to be scrutinized by impartial eyes.
The trials which Inquisitorial zeal and coyness so darkly enveloped
are now part of the archives in Lisbons Torre do Tombo (National
Archives of Portugal) and, luckier than the pope of yore, modern
researchers consult and analyze them. In these and hundreds of other
trial records we can obtain not only documentary proof of the deposition by the author of Cruelties, but of Inquisitorial dealings of which he
had no inkling.
CHAPTER FIVE
1 See ANTT, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 10794, summarily analyzed by Antnio Baio,
Episdios Dramticos, etc., 19733, 2, 211-233. On Gregrios trial (Inquisition of Lisbon,
no. 1309) see Baio, op. cit., 228-233.
2 He had begun his career in the church by obtaining a canonry in vora, contrary
to the purity of blood laws, thanks to his fathers connections with the Holy See. Against
those who objected to a New Christian holding this canonry it was argued that all the
canons of the Cathedral church of Lisbon were New Christians. His fathers and
brothers arrest may be seen as an Inquisitorial revenge for this New Christian triumph.
King Joo IVs role in the affair appears equivocal. See Azevedo, Cristos Novos, 152-153.
85
real or bogus defendants. With all of them the Niggard gave free vent
to his feelings. He accused the Inquisitors of arresting wealthy people
in order to gobble up their fortunes. He rejoiced on learning that the
king had done away with confiscation, which deprived the Inquisitors
of well-filled udders; he mentioned a relative who had been obliged
to confess what she never did so as to escape execution; he boasted
of having plugged the peep-hole through which he was being spied on
with a dead mouse and some excrement. What transpires from these
accounts is, in the first place, the Niggards total lack of respect for
the Inquisitors, whom he called thieves. Naturally the informers
slipped in between these expletives some indications, however vague,
of Jewish beliefs. The old blighters faith in his cellmates was so naive
that he entrusted them with a message for his son Gregrio, of whose
arrest he was unaware, and a letter for a friend, which naturally fell
into the hands of the Inquisitors.
The Inquisitors put the victim under the observation of guards,
charged to watch for Judaic fasting and to report it. (This was, as other
cases seem to bear out, a method the Inquisition used sporadically for
want of other incriminating evidence.) Thus was mounted within the
prison the whole works whereby a defendant apprehended on baseless
charges could be condemned as a Judaizer. In September 1654, some
three years after his arrest, the Niggard was informed of the decision,
taken seven months before, in February, to sentence him to death. He
attempted to appeal to the pope but the General Council of the Inquisition refused to transmit his request. On the threshold of death the
Niggard was given paper on which he dictated his farewell to his
wife and family: Light and flame of my eyes, my companion of over
50 years, may you be well, it having not pleased Our Lord Jesus Christ
to let me die in your arms and in those of my children. In this piteous
letter.3 which still today can draw tears, he puts in order his affairs, both
material and spiritual. As to the latter, it contains among others the
following recommendation: To all of you, children of my soul and
grandchildren, not to forget our many years of devotion to Our Lady
of Glory and her affection to the poor who came to our house, so that
God will remember my soul. There we have the victim of an Inquisitorial condemnation for Judaism at the hour of his death invoking
Our Lord Jesus Christ and Our Lady of Glory. Can this be playacting? Francisco Gomes Henriques kept his composure until the very
end. The haughty tone he employs in the same letter when he tells of
the Inquisitors who said to him that, if I were being executed unjustly,
86
CHAPTER FIVE
4 Henriques specimen trial bears comparison with the vora trial and execution
(1625) of Manuel Casco Farelais (no. 6684), analyzed by Antnio Borges Coelho,
Inquisio de vora, Lisbon, 1987, 1, 133-136, 349-352, specifically Henriques letter to
his wife with Farelais letter to Father Agostinho Dias and the appended ballad.
5 See ANTT, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 7794; Jos Ribeiro Guimares, 1640-1652,
Manuel Fernandes Villa Real, Summario de Varia Historia, Lisbon, 1875, 5, 85-146; Jos
Ramos Coelho, Manuel Fernandes Villa Real e o seu Processo na Inquisio de Lisboa, Lisbon,
1894; I. S. Rvah, Manuel Fernandes Vilareal, Adversaire et Victime de lInquisition
Portugaise, Ibrida, 1, 1959, 35-54, 181-207; Iva Delgado, Manuel Fernandes Vila
Real, Polemista da Restaurao, Revista da Biblioteca Nacional, 3, 1-2, 1983, 27-46.
6 Cardinal de Richelieu untiringly promoted the cause of Portuguese independence
as part of his anti-Spanish policy. Moreover, he had acquired in 1633, thanks to the
outcome of a monumental struggle between pro- and anti-Inquisition elements within
87
the Portuguese community of Rouen, the reputation of protector of the latter against the
predacity of the Peninsular Inquisitions. Curiously, the most rabid members of the
pro-Inquisition party were former victims of that same Inquisition. See I. S. Rvah,
Le Cardinal de Richelieu et la Restauration de Portugal, Lisbon, 1950; id., Autobiographie
dun Marrane, Revue des tudes Juives, 119, 1961, 41-130: 41-89.
7 Vasco Lus da Gama, Count of Vidigueira, Marquis de Nisa (1612-1676) was
Portuguese ambassador to France, 1642-1649.
88
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89
get their hands on him. Back at the Inquisitorial Desk a week later,
the friar confirmed his denunciation, but this time supplied the Inquisition with a new motive for arrest, contradicting the earlier one. The
week before the friar had said Vilareal was dangerous to the Inquisition
because he was going to remain in Portugal; now that Vilareal was
returning to France the friar declared him dangerous to the Inquisition
because of his activity in foreign climes. Another friar, mentioned in
Macedos deposition, came to testify. His name was Antnio de Serpa,
a friend and Paris associate of the accused. This Serpa was probably
terror-stricken by the thought that he might be arrested and brought to
trial by the Inquisition. Fear drove him to betray friendship. He
repeated more or less what the other friar had said, adding, in order to
emphasize the potential peril to the Holy Office, that Vilareal had
worked with Padre Antnio Vieira for the reform of the Inquisitions
styles. He also mentioned the book about Jewish precepts which the
accused was suspected of acquiring and then offering the Portuguese
ambassador. The Marquis de Nisa, summoned to the Inquisitorial
tribunal, admitted to having conspired in Paris against the Portuguese
Holy Office but insisted that the book on Jewish precepts had not been
given him by the accused, but by Vicente Nogueira (1586-1654), a
Portuguese scholar-prelate-diplomat residing at Rome.
Thus the requisite two denunciations were to hand. The General
Council was thwarted from interfering with the arrest, which was ordered
October 29, 1649 and made the next day. The only precise count
against Vilareal was the offer of the notorious book to the Marquis de
Nisa. All the rest were mere presumptions, hearsay and calumnies.
When he entered the Inquisitorial prison, Vilareal believed his position to be strong. Right at the start of his trial he identified Macedo as
his denunciator. His first interrogation on March 14, 1650 must have
confirmed his suspicions, since it dealt with the general nature of his
writings, readings and activities in France. But in the second interrogation (in specie) after having pursued the same subject for a while, the
Inquisitors asked him four questions concerning four Judaic fasts. In
keeping with the styles of the Holy Office, neither the date nor the
place of this alleged fasting were indicated.
Here is where for Manuel Fernandes Vilareal began the enigma of
which he had spoken in his book. Asked specifically what fasts of the
Law of Moses he had observed, he denied ever observing any whatsoever. The Inquisitors concluded the interrogation with the third and
last admonishment for the defendant to confess his offenses in order
to merit the mercy of the Tribunal.
90
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91
92
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93
94
CHAPTER FIVE
dant had discovered the peep-holes in his cell and disclosure of this
secret was extremely prejudicial to the Inquisition.
On December 1, 1652, more than three years after his arrest,
Vilareal appeared among those condemned to death on the scaffold of
the auto-da-f. He was still not resigned to his execution. Like a fish
squirming in the net, he tried a last ploy. He requested the Inquisitors
for one more audience, which was granted.
He now declared that he had observed 434 fasts in prison,
including 54 of three days duration and 35 of two days. This represents an average of more than one fast per every three days he had
been in prison, but with the series of three and two day fasts he was
trying to cover other hypotheses in connection with the seven enigmatic fasts. He made other small revelations and a supreme confession: he declared himself so obstinately attached to the Law of Moses
that after his last confession he had decided to die in its observance
(which meant to be burned alive). Now, however, he was finally repentant and truly reconverted to Catholic truth. This repentance, he said,
came indeed from the heart, even though it was not accompanied by
exterior signs of emotion, because he was tough by nature and did not
have the gift of shedding tears.
The Inquisitors met and decided that these confessions were meant
to save his life and were not motivated by true repentance: the proof
of this was that the defendant was not denouncing persons whom the
Holy Office could proceed to arrest. Friar Pedro de Magalhes, who as
we have seen was Vilareals patron, argued that the defendant had
confessed the prison fasts and thus could no longer be considered a
diminuto (incomplete confessant); accordingly, in his opinion, the
death sentence should be suspended. Indeed the 434 confessed
Judaic fasts perforce comprised the seven reported by the peep-hole
spies. But the majority opined that the defendant though no longer
diminuto continued impenitent, since his contrition was obviously
faked. The General Council confirmed that as an impenitent heretic
he be handed over to secular justice.
This dreadful trial displays the whole bag of tricks at the Inquisitors disposal when it is their pleasure to see a defendant dead,
including the procedural procrastinations and bureaucratic minutiae.
To us it is obvious that all Vilareals confessions of Judaic practices are
as untruthful as his declaration that he gave the Marquis de Nisa the
book of Jewish rites and on a par with his fantastic 434 fasts during a
37 month incarceration which works out at 5 fasts a week. Vilareal, who
thought he knew his foe, racked his brains to work out the Enigma.
95
A most remarkable postscript to this famous trial is that the Inquisitors succeeded in deluding not only the defendant, but also modern
scholars who have dealt with it. I. S. Rvah, who authored an in-depth
study of the Vilareal case, includes him among the martyrs of
Judaism.9 The 20th-century Spanish scholar Julio Caro Baroja writes:
it does not shock me that Vilareal was condemned to death on the
basis of these proofs..10 To us it seems that he is simply a Marrano
Manufactured in the Inquisition (another one of thousands) by a
process described two decades later in the Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal.
Antnio Jos da Silva (1705-1739)
Let us now examine the case of the man known to Portuguese literature as The Jew..11
Antnio Jos da Silva, who lived in Lisbon, was born in Rio de Janeiro
into a well-off family of intellectuals. His father, Joo Mendes da Silva,
was a lawyer and poet, author, inter alia, of an epic poem entitled Christiados, subtitled The Life of Christ, Our Lord, as well as other devotional works. Antnios uncles and cousins included several priests and
friars. In 1711, in a swoop on sugar-plantation owners, the Inquisition
apprehended the parents and numerous other relatives of Antnio Jos
da Silva and shipped them off to Lisbon. All of them used the strategy
of confessing everything and denouncing everybody. Joo Mendes da
Silva, known as a fervent Catholic in Rio de Janeiro, confessed to practicing all the familiar and publicized Inquisitorial rites of Judaism ever
since his student days thirty years earlier in Portugal and denounced
more than 120 accomplices. The Inquisitors considered him a good
repentant and he, his wife, siblings and in-laws were all reconciled
with light penalties at a Lisbon auto-da-f of 1713.
Thereafter Joo Mendes da Silva settled down as a lawyer in Lisbon
and succeeded in keeping the Inquisition off his back. But his wife,
Lourena Coutinho, got into scrapes with her neighbors and relatives
9
10
11
96
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97
that such an interpretation was subjective and that the verse applied
specifically to the fictional Jupiter of the play. Moreover, the Inquisitors would make themselves ridiculous were they seen to insist that
the crime of not being guilty could have been applied by any
sentient being to their irreproachable system.14 Be that as it may, the
Inquisitors were now hell-bent on getting Antnio Jos.
Antnio Jos da Silva was arrested for the second time on October
5, 1737 without a single registered denunciation in the Inquisitorial
files and without a written warrant, an anomaly, to say the least.
His arrest was by order not of the Lisbon Tribunal, as might have
been expected but of the General Council, to whose authority all
three Portuguese Inquisitorial tribunals (Lisbon, Coimbra, vora)
were subject. On the same day, but with the customary formalities of
warrant and registered denunciations the Inquisition arrested his
wife, mother and other relatives. The familiares of the Holy Office
who apprehended Antnio were all high-ranking aristocrats: the
Marquis of Alegrete,15 the Viscount of Ponte de Lima, the Marquis of
Marialva and the Count of Atougia.
A couple of days before his second arrest Antnio Jos had voluntarily appeared before the Lisbon Inquisitors. He advised them that a
certain slave, whom he had been unwilling to grant a letter of emancipation, in the course of an altercation had threatened to denounce
him and his wife to the Inquisition for Judaizing. Possibly this move
on da Silvas part gave the Inquisitors ideas. The slave was arrested
simultaneously with her masters. The Inquisition certainly expected
from her the denunciation which was the sine qua non of any procedure
and, at her first interrogation, she did not fail them. At the second
she recounted the reasons she had for thinking that her masters
were observing the Sabbath and the Jewish fasts. The Inquisitors had
her locked up and shortly after testifying she died having given birth
in her cell. But her deposition, being a slaves deposition, was considered below par; and totally discounted once she had been identified by
the defendants as their denouncer.
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Antnio Jos as well as his mother and wife had been arrested as
relapsers into heresy and his mothers arrest was her third. All three
were in grave danger. With one difference though: there were denunciations against the two women but not against him and indeed the
method of investigation applied to the women differed from the one
applied to him.
The women were put to the torture. They held firm throughout
their ordeal and were granted liberty after several months in prison.
Also the denunciations against them were invalidated because they
had guessed their nature and discredited their authors.
But this loophole was denied Antnio Jos da Silva. Instead of
torture, he was subjected to a method which infallibly resulted in a
death-sentence: the prison denunciations.16 Various Familiars were
stationed at the peepholes to spy on the defendant and notify the
Desk of any fasting. Two prisoner-spies were put in his cell and
confirmed the depositions of the Familiars, although according
to the declarations of one of these prisoners the fasts were not
always Judaic (i.e., according to the Inquisitorial definition, Monday,
Thursday and the Day of Atonement). One of them added that he had
seen the accused spitting on images of the saints, an unusual accusation in Portuguese trials, though common in Spanish American ones.
Let us not forget that these spies were creatures of the Inquisitors, in
their pay and service.
It was on the basis of these declarations that the trial was
constructed once the slaves denunciation had misfired. The defendant had been brought in on October 5, 1737 and the death-sentence
specified that he had been in a state of heresy since April 1738, the
time the first of his fasts was registered. Thus he had spent six months
in prison for the crime of not being guilty prior to committing the
purported crime for which he was ultimately to be executed.
That he was treated differently from his mother and wife can only
mean that the Inquisitors were bent on his speedy dispatch, and ready
to do whatever it takes; whereas in respect of the two women they
made do with routine Inquisitorial procedure. The arrest without a
denunciation, the omission of torture (with its uncertain outcome),
testimony collected in prison, all converge and lead to the conclusion
that Antnio Jos da Silva was somehow a threat to the Inquisition.
The trial records summarized above add a new twist not mentioned
in the Account of the Cruelties: prisoners denounced by peep-hole
observers for fasts carried out in their cells and who did not confess to
16
99
them were usually (or almost always) executed.17 Had the author of the
Account known of this device for legal assassination, how could he have
failed to exploit it? And yet, as an Inquisitorial Notary, how could he
not have known of it?.18 In any case the defendants who discovered the
peep-holes and their function in the course of the trials and escaped
with their lives to tell the tale must have been so exceptional that
their reports also failed to reach him.
17 We now know that defendants accused of cell-fasts were not, as a rule, executed.
Consider, for instance, the trial records of the three Milo brothers: Gomes Rodrigues
Milo, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 2523; Ferno Lopes Milo, Inquisition of Lisbon, no.
3338; Paulo de Milo, Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 9389: each contains elaborate reports
on two or more Monday and Thursday cell fasts, each witnessed by two peep-hole
observers. None were specifically confessed to by the defendants. All three brothers were
reconciled with various penances at the auto-da-f of April 5, 1609. Their 80-year old
father, Henrique Dias Milo, on the other hand, who was not spied on in his cell, was
executed at the same auto-da-f (Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 6677). All were arrested when
attempting to flee Portugal on October 28, 1606. A transcription, translation and thorough analysis of some Inquisitorial cell fast reports (authors, contents, technique,
verisimilitude) is a desideratum. It is also not the case that the reports of the peep-hole
observers are invariably unfavorable to the defendant, even when the Inquisitors are
obviously intent on legally assassinating the defendant. See, e.g., Noticias Reconditas,
1722, 100-102 (see Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 2416), the case of Antnio de Sequeira,
son of a washer-woman from Torres Novas, arrested on October 15, 1637 at the age of
15 or 16, whose maternal great-grandmother was his only New Christian ancestor. He
was kept in prison until he was old enough to be executed as a New Christian who
refused to confess his Judaizing. On October 6, 1641 he was moved to an observation
cell (i.e., with peep-holes) but the observer, Augusto de Gis, a prison warden,
reported that he always saw the boy eating at regular hours. On December 7, 1641 the
Inquisitors had the baptismal registers of the Church of Santa Maria in Torres Novas
ransacked and came up with an Antnio de Sequeira born to the same parents in 1613,
not taking into account that this child died in infancy and ignoring the register for 1622
or 1623. Thus they concluded that the defendant, by then in reality 18 or 19, was in
fact 28 and old enough to die. They notified Antnio of his impending execution on
March 24, 1642 (the last pages of the trial record are missing). Antnio was one of eight
siblings, five of whom had died in infancy. His older brother Joo, arrested on March
29, 1634, also negativo, had been executed on October 11, 1637 (Inquisition of Lisbon,
no. 5427). The Account reports a sarcastic repartee (which could well explain the Inquisitors murderous wrath) made by Joo (or Antnio) de Sequeira to the Inquisitors in
connection with a denunciation against him and his brother. No trace is to be found of
this denunciation in either brothers trial record nor in that of the purported denunciator (Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 9781, Padre Joo Travassos, former Vicar General of
Lisbon, one-eighth New Christian).
18 See I. S. Rvahs well-taken strictures in his surrebutter (Appendix Three). Whereas
Saraivas hypothesis, viz. that prisoners denounced by peep-hole observers for carrying
out fasts in their cells were (almost) always executed, is untenable, the hypothesis that all
or most of the defendants who discovered the peep-holes and their function in the course
of their trials were executed, has not been invalidated by subsequent archival research.
CHAPTER SIX
1 Whereas the original Portuguese name obtained universal currency, in the course
of the post-Inquisition era auto-de-f (Act of Faith) became the accepted form in
Portugal itself, replacing auto-da-f in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Similarly, in
Spanish, auto de la fe became auto de fe. In recent years, however, auto-da-f (or auto
da f) has made a come-back in Portuguese publications.
2 On the medieval French sermon or actus fidei see Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition
of the Middle Ages, New York, 1887, 1, 391-393. Descriptions of 15th and early 16thcentury Spanish autos-da-f are scarce, scant and often unreliable. On the Spanish autoda-f see Joseph del Olmo, Relacin historica del Auto General de Fe que se celebr en Madrid
este ao de 1680, Madrid, 1680; Maria Victoria Gonzlez de Caldas Mndez, El auto de
fe: modalidades de un ritual, in Images et reprsentations de la justice du XVIe au XIXe sicle
(G. Lamoine, ed.), Toulouse, 1983, 41-60; id., New Images of the Holy Office in Seville:
the Auto de Fe, in The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind (Angel Alcal, ed.),
New York, 1987, 265-300; in that same volume, 249-264: Miguel Avils, The Auto de
Fe and the Social Model of Counter-Reformation Spain; Maria Isabel Prez de Colosia
Rodrguez, Auto inquisitorial de 1672, el criptojudasmo en Mlaga, Mlaga, 1984; Consuelo
Maqueda Abreu, El Auto de Fe, Madrid, 1992; Michle Escamilla-Colin, Crimes et chtiments dans lEspagne Inquisitoriale, Paris, 1992, 1, 57-187; Miguel Jimnez Montesern,
Modalidades y sentido histrico del Auto de Fe, Historia da la Inquisicin en Espaa y
Amrica (Joaquin Prez Villanueva and Bartolom Escandell Bonet, eds.), Madrid, 1993,
2, 559-587, reprinted without footnotes: El auto de fe de la Inquisicin espaola,
Inquisicin y conversos, Madrid, 1994, 203-224. On the Portuguese autos-da-f see Pedro
Monteiro, Notcia Geral das Santas Inquisies deste Reino e suas conquistas, Colleam
dos Documentos e Memrias da Academia Real Portugueza, 3, Lisbon, 1723, 392-397; Isaas
de Rosa Pereira, Para a Histria da Inquisio em Portugal: o que era um Auto-de-F,
Os Portugueses e o Mundo, 2, Oporto, 1988, 173-180; Francisco Bethencourt, The Autoda-F: Ritual and Imagery, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 55, 1992,
155-168; Antnio Ribeiro Guerra, O Auto-Da-F, Histria de Portugal dos Tempos PrHistricos aos Nossos Dias (Joo Medina, ed.), 6, 1993, 95-112. The earliest and still useful
general study is the chapter Of an Act of Faith in Philip Limborch, The History of the
Inquisition translated into English by Samuel Chandler (London, 1731, 2, 291-319); the most
recent is the chapter O auto-da-f in Francisco Bethencourt, Histria das Inquisies
Portugal, Espanha e Itlia (Lisbon, 1994, 195-257; French translation: LInquisition
lpoque moderne, Paris, 1995). A book-length study on the Portuguese auto-da-f, such as
the one on the Spanish auto-da-f by Consuelo Maqueda Abreu, comparing (or
contrasting) it to the latter, is sorely needed.
101
3 Of 97 autos-da-f held by the three tribunals of continental Portugal during the 16th
century, 67 were held in a city square; 129 of 330 during the 17th century; 27 of 252
during the 18th century (including those taking place in front of churches [adros and
tabuleiros] rather than inside them). However, printed and manuscript lists of Portuguese
autos-da-f often also designate as pblicos those held in the monastery of Santa Cruz in
Coimbra, the convent of So Domingos in Lisbon and the Convent of So Joo Evangelista in vora. See Maria Isabel Ribeiro de Faria and Maria da Graa Perico de Faria,
Inquisio, Coimbra, 1977, 151-199; Cod. 198 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa. On
f. 271r of this codex (Coimbra auto-da-f of June 18, 1656, held in the monastery of
Santa Cruz) the scribe explains that its preparations and ceremonies were comparable
to those of an auto-da-f in a city square. Moreiras statistics may be found in Fortunato
de Almeida, Histria da Igreja em Portugal, 4, Lisbon, 19712, 287-318 and in Jos
Loureno D. Mendona and Antnio Joaquim Moreira, Histria dos Principais Actos e
Procedimentos da Inquisio em Portugal, Lisbon, 19802, 146-279. Moreiras incomplete list
of 71 Goa autos-da-f mentions no public ones. See, however, the dedication to the
Inquisitors preceding the sermon preached by Friar Manuel da Encarnao at the Goan
auto-da-f of February 7, 1617 in which he states that it was the first sermon of the first
auto-da-f to be celebrated on a public square in this State. In Spain a full-fledged auto
general (or: pblico) de fe in the open air, attended by high personalities (such as the auto
pblico in Portugal), while rampant in the early years, became a rarity much sooner than
in Portugal. During the 17th century there were only four such in Madrid, four in
Crdoba, four in Seville and five in Granada. See Gonzlez de Caldas Mndez, El auto
de fe, 49. Maqueda Abreus list of 127 printed Spanish auto-da-f descriptions (El Auto
de Fe, 482-489) mentions no auto general during the 18th century. However, the ten
Spanish tribunals totaled c. 400 autos-da-f 1666-1732. See Escamilla-Colin, op. cit.
102
CHAPTER SIX
Yet this same zeal for the reputation of the country did not prevent
223 public autos-da-f 1540-1714 (out of a total of 689 registered
by Moreira 1540-1781) at Lisbon, Coimbra and vora.5 whose victims
were overwhelmingly condemned for Judaism, thus spreading
throughout the world the belief that Portugal was a country peopled by
outlawed Jews. In point of fact, at least during the 16th century, the
Inquisition pursued different policies towards Judaizers and
Lutherans. But if it was loath to advertise the rare instances of Christian heterodoxy, it was far from averse to sensationalizing what it called
Jewish heresy.
This preoccupation with publicity is already manifest in the oldest
known description of a Portuguese auto-da-f pblico, which we owe to
the pen of one of the first Inquisitors, Joo de Mello, in a letter to King
Joo III dated Tuesday, October 14 (no year).6 Reporting the autoda-f held on that day,7 Joo de Mello tells the king that it had been
raining and storming in Lisbon up to the 14th, but on Tuesday the
weather turned fair. This, said the Inquisitor, was taken as an omen
that God was favoring the Holy Tribunal. After describing the procession of clergy, nobles and other grandees, he comes to the arrival of
the penitents. There were about a hundred, arranged by categories
103
and they made a pretty sight. They were preceded by a very devout
crucifix which I had made especially for the occasion and which will
from now on be kept in the audience chamber. This crucifix (Joo de
Mello continues) aroused devotion in the crowd. The sermon, delivered by a Dominican, was excellent, but it had to be kept short because
of the sheer volume of business at hand. Indeed there were many
trials and no fewer than twenty defendants to be handed over to the
secular arm. But a certain woman escaped execution because, on the
scaffold, she gave a better accounting of her offenses. The notaries
then and there took down her declarations and she was forthwith
remanded to her cell. This was a good example for the people, the
Inquisitor opines, because they now could see with their own eyes that
only those were garroted and burnt who did not wish to be Christians.
Joo de Mello omits from his letter to the King a description of the
executions, which would have taken place the next day in a different
location. He does observe that many of those condemned to death had
Judaized in their cells, from which it would seem that with these
people moderate punishment is no longer [?] effective and what they
need is punishment of a kind that instills fear. He reports further that
many of those condemned to death would be kept in their cells to
await another auto-da-f, for various reasons but chiefly because it
would be injudicious to give the public any idea of the Holy Office
being a bloodthirsty or sanguinary body. Still other prisoners, who
were also to be sentenced to death, were awaiting notification. Because
of this, says Joo de Mello, the cells are filled to the brim and a huge
amount of work is awaiting us. What apparently most impressed this
Inquisitor is the attitude of the relatives and friends of those to be
executed. Our Lord gave them such resignation that children would
see their parents led to their execution and wives their husbands,
without so much as speaking, weeping or showing any emotion other
than taking leave of one another with their blessings, as if they
expected them back the next day. All such marvels are portents that
these matters are pleasing to Our Lord.
Joo de Mello is describing a ceremony he presided over and
that he himself helped organize. His letters one preoccupation: the
publics response. Popular devotion must be excited with processions,
with an impressive artifact. It is furthermore expedient for the people
to feel that the very elements are propitious to the Holy Offices work,
and to believe in her indulgent moderation.
With time and experience, the auto-da-f pblico and its minutely
regulated ceremonial grew into a grand and pompous pageant. It was
attended by the top brass, often by the king and the royal family and,
104
CHAPTER SIX
8 See Baio, op. cit., 158-161, who mistakenly locates this auto-da-f in Lisbon. The
document is presently included in ANTT, Inquisition of vora, Livro 106.
9 See Isaas da Rosa Pereira, Auto-da-F de Coimbra de 14 de Junho de 1699,
Clio Revista do Centro da Histria da Universidade de Lisboa, 1995, 99-116.
10 See Baio, op. cit., 119-142.
11 See Michael Geddes, A View of the Court of Inquisition in Portugal With a List of
the Prisoners That Came Forth in an Act of the Faith Celebrated at Lisbon in the Year
1682, Miscellaneous Tracts, 1, London, 17142, 423-519 (first edition 1702), partly based
on Relacin Verdadera del Avto General de la Fe que celebr el Santo Oficio de la Inquisicin de
la Ciudad de Lisboa en el Terreno de Palacio de dicha Ciudad el Domingo 10 de Mayo deste
presente Ao de 1682, Madrid, 1682.
12 Cf., however, the popular etymology current in Portugal reported by Pedro Monteiro (Notcia Geral das Santas Inquisioens deste Reino e suas conquistas, Colleam dos
Documentos e Memrias da Academia Real Portugueza, 3, Lisbon, 1723, 393): saccus benedictus
(saco bento, blessed sack). See also Escamilla-Colin, op. cit. supra (note 2), 1, 833-834.
105
used, i.e., about 87 meters of cloth for 115 penitents and persons to be
executed, costing a total of 62,700 reals at 380 per cvado.13 On the two
sides were painted the insignia corresponding to the offenses. In the
case of those on death row, painters called in by the Inquisition had
seeing but unseen to sketch their features and then paint on one side
of the sanbenito their portrait, head engulfed by flames.14
The day on which a forthcoming auto-da-f pblico was announced
in the palace of the Holy Office was a festive one, as we can ascertain
from the quantity of compotes and various pastries, procured from
neighboring convents and delivered on that day to the secret chambers of the Inquisition. According to the List of Expenses for the vora
auto of November 18, 1646, 64,820 reals were spent on these dainties,
hence more than on the 87 meters of cloth for the sanbenitos (62,700
reals) and more than triple the cost of feeding a prisoner during an
entire year (20,000 reals). It is worth noting that prison fare included
meat, in order to test whether the prisoners were observing Jewish
dietary laws. This fabulous quantity and variety of foodstuffs was
destined exclusively for higher echelons of lawyers and clergy, i.e.,
three Inquisitors, four deputies, four notaries and a prosecutor,
besides the six Jesuit fathers who confessed the six persons sentenced
to death. If we round off to twenty the total of these table companions,
13 See Baio, op. cit., 158. Moreiras statistics mention 114 persons penanced (55 men
and 59 women) at the vora auto-da-f of November 18, 1646 but no persons executed.
However, the description of this auto-da-f in ANTT, Conselho Geral do Santo Ofcio,
Book 434 (List of vora autos-da-f, 1542-1763), ff. 95-99, specifies, among the 114, 12
persons burnt in effigy (including 3 who died in prison).
14 The list of expenses for the vora auto-da-f of November 18, 1646 includes 3,600
reals paid to the painter Manuel Fernandes for painting in oil the 12 sanbenitos for
those to be executed, at 300 reals each. In Inquisitorial lingo executed could refer to
live people (executed in the flesh) and to dead or otherwise unavailable people
(executed in effigy or executed in statue) and in the latter case their effigies
(statues) were to be decked out and then executed (i.e., burnt). As to those who died
in prison, their bones, in small caskets, accompanied the statues and were burnt as
well. We know that at this auto-da-f all those to be executed had either died in prison
or were fugitives from Inquisitorial justice. Now we recognize the cost of 300 reals as that
of a full-sized sanbenito. The statues representing the deceased and the absent were
life-size straw figures with facial masks on a crosspiece of timber, rigged out in a
sanbenito and, at least in respect to the sanbenitos of the absentees, bore portraits probably not true to life.. The engraving presumably of a Portuguese auto-da-f
following p. 303 of vol. 2 of Philip Limborchs The History of the Inquisition, reproduced
here, shows two such straw figures, held up on sticks, preceding the respective caskets.
Four such figures followed by caskets presumably of a Lisbon auto-da-f may be
discerned in the engraving owned by Lisbons Museu da Cidade, c. 1741 (reproduced by
Francisco Bethencourt in his Histria, Lisbon, 1994, inside the front cover and in Histria
Religiosa de Portugal, Lisbon, 2000, 2, 226). See also the details of Francisco Rizis
painting of the 1680 Madrid auto de f reproduced by Maria Victoria Caballero Gmez,
El Auto de F de 1680. Revista de la Inquisicin, 3, 1994, 69-140: 111-112.
106
CHAPTER SIX
it would mean that each one received on a daily basis, during the
two weeks preceding the auto-da-f, 215 reals worth of sweetmeats,
compotes, and pastries. By way of comparison, each Inquisitorial prisoner consumed, per day, an average total of less than 60 reals in victuals, including meat.
The feasting did not stop there. Since Friday was a fast day on
which Catholics abstain from meat, six varieties of fish (sole, mullet,
eel, pollock, snapper and sardines) as well as flour and olive oil.15 to
cook them in and seasonings for fish-cakes, to the tune of 27,546 reals,
were delivered at the Palace of the Inquisition, to be eaten on that day
and the left overs on the Saturday preceding the auto. This fish was
distributed to everyone, including the guards who received also rations
of bread, meat, wine and fruit, for a total value of 760 reals. The day
of the ceremony proper saw the auto-da-f supper, which we are
coming to, by and by.
In the meantime the Inquisitors sent out the necessary orders and
invitations. The principal judicial magistrate of the city and the other
civil servants, such as the corregedor and the Justice of Peace were
ordered by the Inquisitors in person to take part in the procession,
assure the policing and execute the sentences. Cloth to decorate the
altars and the benches of the tribune and the scaffold were requisitioned from the Archbishopric. The Prior of the Dominicans was
summoned to take his place with other delegates of his order. Notice
was sent out to the familiares of the city and its outskirts to present
themselves. The Superior of the Jesuits was requested to send fathers
to confess and accompany those condemned to death to the scaffold
and place of execution.
These fathers were designated, not by their respective Jesuit Superior, but by the Inquisitors. They were sternly adjured not to disclose
to the prisoners the names of any relatives who might be under arrest.
This was, as we have seen, the only occasion the prisoners could go to
the confessional, but it was no standard confessional. The Jesuit father
went to the door of the cell accompanied by the warden and a notary.
The notary called the prisoner and announced to him that on the next
Sunday he would hear his death-sentence pronounced and that, for
him to come to terms with his conscience and prepare his salvation,
a religious person was being allocated him with whom he could
communicate on matters regarding his office. Thereupon the prisoners hands were manacled behind his back. The Jesuit father sat
down on a bench in front of the cell door, waiting for the prisoner to
15
107
speak. If the prisoner spoke, from inside the cell, saying that he had
offenses against the faith to confess at the Desk of the Holy Office,
the father called the warden, who would then conduct the prisoner to
the Inquisitors. Thus passed the condemneds last nights.
On Sunday morning.16 the procession left the headquarters of the
Holy Office on the Rossio and wended its way to the square (Terreiro
do Pao) where the sentences were to be read. The friars of St. Dominic
headed the procession with the banner of the Inquisition that bore on
one side the icon of St. Peter the Martyr and on the other a crucifix
between an olive branch and a sword, with the Latin motto: Justice
and Mercy. Then followed the penitents, according to the gravity of
their crimes, each wearing the sanbenito, his head covered by the
carocha, a kind of cardboard miter, a lit candle in hand, barefoot. Each
penitent marched between two guards. Behind the penitents,
preceded by the crucifix, came the batch of relaxados (those-to-behanded-over). These were accompanied by the familiares, and also by
Jesuit confessors who, from the previous Friday had been ceaselessly
exhorting them to confess their transgressions. Thereupon followed
the effigies of those who had been tried in absentia or died in prison
before sentencing. In the latter case the coffin containing their mortal
remains, which was also to be burnt, accompanied the effigy. Then
followed a troupe of familiares on horseback, preceding the high dignitaries of the Inquisition. Bringing up the rear were the Inquisitor
General, escorted by the hoity-toitiest. At the Lisbon auto of 1682 the
Inquisitor General appeared astride a white steed wearing a black hat
with a green band. The Inquisitors and deputies were flanked by torchbearers.
Dense multitudes filled the streets and required a sizeable constabulary force of armed soldiers. The fate of the prisoners was depicted
on the sanbenitos. Those of the penitents to be reconciled bore only
a painted crucifix when their offense was considered light. Others
exhibited flames pointing downwards (fogo revolto), emblematic of a
death sentence commuted in response to comprehensive confession.
Those to be executed exhibited a painting of their own face emerging
from upward pointing flames: these were the negativos and diminutos.
They took their place, together with the Jesuit fathers, in the highest
rows of the amphitheater doubly visible with their portraits burning
on their habits at the height of their chests.
16
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CHAPTER SIX
The preachers next point was the duty to reinforce the Holy Office: he
threatened certain unnamed circles which were preparing measures
favorable to the New Christians. Finally he warned of imminent divine
chastisement of Portugal if the heresy were not duly repressed. We quote:
Sacred Scripture is full of threats and punishments which God gave some
monarchs who had neglected to destroy idolaters and of promises and
graces extended to those who destroyed them. It is the opinion of many
17 Sermam (cited above, Chapter Three, note 1), 12. Here the preacher uses Jews in
the sense of Judaizers but as he warms up Jews become in his mouth a generic name
for all New Christians. The same is true of the vora auto-da-f sermons analyzed by
Coelho, (vora, 1, 126-133, 142-145: Friar Manuel dos Anjos (June 21, 1615); D. Francisco da Costa (November 28, 1621), who calls Palestine the Portuguese New Christians
fatherland; Father Manuel Fagundes, S. J. (November 29, 1626). At the Lisbon autoda-f of September 6, 1705, D. Diogo da Anunciao Justinianos sermon not only
addresses the victims as Jews, Hebrews, members of the Jewish people, etc., but
refers to your city of Jerusalem, your Talmud, your schools, improperly called synagogues, your rabbis, your own Hebrew language, your scriptural commentators,
etc. In our cursory perusal of all 66 published auto-da-f sermons we have found but one
occurrence of the term New Christians (Friar Manuel dos Anjos at vora on June 21,
1615, unnumbered p. 46): shamed, abased with this blessed sack on you to mark you a
New Christian if indeed you are [a Christian]. Cf. below, note 25.
109
learned men [] that one of the causes of the evils and travails which
this country has been experiencing for so many years is the glut of Jews
that live among us.18
The autos-da-f pblicos seem to have aimed at convincing the population at large of the truth of this assertion.
When the preacher stepped down from the pulpit, another father
went up to read the sentences. The latter and successive speakers were
chosen and paid on the strength of their voice and diction: a vast audience all agog was to take cognizance of the crimes of the penitents
and the condemned. The sentences, very lengthy, generally reproduced,
word for word, the denunciations as if they were averred facts. Some of
them took half an hour to read. Now the collective suspense reaches its
climax. Nothing could be more sensational than the detailed narration
of Jewish ceremonies, spiced with the odd cases of bigamy, impudicity
between friars and women, pacts and relations of nuns with the Devil,
who bore him children in the form of dogs, cats or monsters. But the
sensational soon turned monotonous, because many of the sentences
were simply strings of stereotyped formulae, repeated ad nauseam, e.g.,
that the defendant changed shirts on Saturday, abstained from pork or a
fish without scales, etc., and having met with another of his nation, they
mutually confided their commitment to the Law of Moses outside of
which there is no salvation, etc.
The prisoner heard his sentence kneeling in front of the altar,
facing the pulpit where the priest was reciting it. Having heard it, if
penanced, the defendant made his abjuration. If condemned to
death, he descended a stairway next to the altar, at the bottom of which
he would walk into the arms of civil officials who forthwith seized him
and pronounced a sham judgment on him. From the moment the
Inquisitors handed over the defendant to secular justice, importuning it (as we have seen) to treat him benevolently and devoutly and
not to proceed to the death sentence or the shedding of blood, the
defendant no longer belonged to the Inquisition but to civil justice. In
theory the civil magistrate was required to judge the defendants that
were handed over to his jurisdiction. In fact, however, he was not
even permitted to see their Inquisitorial trial record but merely the
Inquisitorial sentence and he confined himself to having the deathsentence implied in the handing over carried out.19
18
19
Sermam, 16.
The Hispano-Portuguese Inquisitorial system of execution by the secular arm
with its ancillary cant was, of course, simply taken over from the medieval Inquisition
and is amply described and recommended by Eymerich.
110
CHAPTER SIX
20 The last auto-da-f on this spectacular site was held on August 8, 1683. The reason
given for the change of venue was an armed fray that broke out during the auto of
August 8, 1683, which could have led to the penitents flight. See Mendona and
Moreira, 174-175. All subsequent public Lisbon autos-da-f were held near the Inquisitorial palace on the Rossio (the last one on October 14, 1714), the private ones either in
the Church of Saint Dominic or in the Great Hall (Sala) of the Inquisitorial palace.
The executions continued as before on the Campo da L, involving a somewhat longer
march of the condemned than from the Terreiro do Pao. See Alberto Dines, Vnculos do
fogo, So Paulo, 1992, itinerary and map preceding p. 118.
21 The place of execution, called quemadero in Spanish, was never identical with the
place of the auto-da-f anywhere in the Hispano-Portuguese world. None of the Inquisitors or Inquisitorial officials were ever witnesses to the executions, carried out by the
secular arm. Paintings and engravings of autos-da-f which depict persons tied to stakes
for execution are montages of artistic license. See Isaas Rosa Pereira, art. cit., 179-180.
The place of execution in vora was the Praa Grande or Rossio (now called Praa do
Geraldo), where no less than 307 persons (166 men, 141 women) were executed, 304 of
them for judaizing, 1543-1668. The vora public autos-da-f were held alternately in
front of the Church of the Lios (next to the monastery, now the pousada); on the patio
of the Inquisitorial palace; in front of the Cathedral; in front of the Church of Santo
Anto; on Inquisition (or Cardinal) Square with the scaffolding propped up against the
balcony of the Cardinal-Infantes palace; on the Praa Grande itself, at some remove
from the place of execution. See Coelho, vora, 1, 28-29, 105, 124, 140-141, 150-158.
22 We spare the reader he/she, his/her and him/her though the victims were
women at least as often as men.
111
When they were done killing, it was time for the auto-da-f supper,
served at the estaus.24 In the vora account of November 18, 1646
it comprised about 14 kilos of lamb, 20 young chickens and pullets,
12 roasting chickens, 4 ducks, 4 rabbits, 3 turkeys (each one cost more
than what was paid to the painter for one portrait of a prisoner
condemned to death); one sow which was divided by the Gentlemen
Inquisitors and the notaries and one large fruit basket, containing
Bosc pears, bergamots, chapel apples and rennets. Like the sweetmeats and compotes which had arrived at the palace of the Holy Office
a fortnight before the auto, this repast was meant for the higher officials, i.e., the three Inquisitors, the four deputies, the four notaries, the
prosecutor and six Jesuits. It is a curious thing that there were as many
turkeys as Inquisitors, as many ducks and rabbits as deputies and
112
CHAPTER SIX
113
indicating name, date of execution and crime. This permanent exhibition of paintings and names of the condemned was not just a custom
but a requirement of the 1640 Regimento (Book 3, title 2, 2).
The ashes of the dead disappeared more quickly from collective
memory than the auto-da-f. Not only the pictures perpetuated the
defendants and their crimes but also a number of sermons and their
invectives were (from 1612 on) preserved for posterity in printed
form. Auto-da-f sermons are a peculiarly Portuguese branch of
sacred oratory. Sixty-six published pieces, delivered over a period of
137 years (1612-1749) are extant. All but one deal exclusively with the
ravages of Judaism.25 It would seem from the editorial exuberance that
this genre went over well with the populace, like the Portuguese shipwreck stories and accounts of prodigies. On the other hand, it may be
that the Holy Office itself promoted these publications, irrespective of
demand, as part of their propaganda machine.
And, speaking of orchestrated propaganda, it is indeed one of the
most awesome aspects of the public autos-da-f. As their stage they had
the principal town square and as their auditorium the entire city and
its suburbs. As long as it was in progress, the auto was the allconsuming diversion of religious orders, ecclesiastical authorities, civil
magistrates, city constables. Except for royal visits during the period of
the dual monarchy (1580-1640), the public autos-da-f certainly proved
by far the grandest popular attraction. Nothing could rival the procession and array of marked men and women, the revelations of exotic
and unspeakable crimes, blazing flames, the lurid fascination of faces
carbonizing in full view. It was the show of shows; the theatre and bullfight paled in comparison. And an adequate scenography made
evident the reality and persistence of the danger combated by the
Inquisitors. Public autos were mounted only when enough defendants
had accumulated to put on a formidable show. This is one of the
reasons so many prisoners rotted for years in their cells. Rarely did a
public auto comprise fewer than 50 penanced and executed prisoners;
frequently there were over two hundred.
25 24 from Lisbon, 21 from Coimbra, 17 from vora, 4 from Goa. See Alfonso
Cassuto, Bibliografia dos Sermes de Autos-da-F impressos, Arquivo de bibliografia
portuguesa, 1, 1955, 293-345; Edward Glaser, Invitation to Intolerance, a Study of
Portuguese Sermons Preached at Autos-da-F, Hebrew Union College Annual, 27, 1956,
327-385; idem, Portuguese Sermons at Autos-da-F: Introduction and Bibliography,
Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, 2, 1955-1956, 53-78, 96. On the exceptional sermon
preached at a Goa auto-da-f in 1672 against Oriental idolatry see Appendix Four. On
three 16th-century auto-da-f sermons preserved in manuscript, compared with the
published ones, see Maria Luclia Gonalves Pires, Sermes de Auto-da-F, Evoluo
de Cdigos Parenticos, Inquisio, Lisbon, 1989, 269-289.
114
CHAPTER SIX
26
115
protected and purified by these immolations which unfolded in accordance with a majestic and sanctifying ceremonial.
To sum up, if our explanation is correct, the public auto-da-f was
the culmination of a grand illusion if you like, the catharsis of those
affective tensions mentioned earlier. Furthermore it was a cultic rite
that bestowed supernatural confirmation on the Inquisition and by
association on all Portuguese that identified with it. As for the Inquisitors, their solemn mien and magisterial disdain for human foibles
such as reason and compassion endowed them with larger-thanlife eminence. Their efficacy to discover and combat invisible heresy
would fain hold off infernal menaces of an altogether metaphysical
order.
The first public auto-da-f was solemnized at Lisbon on September
20, 1540, the last on October 14, 1714. The last public auto-da-f was
held at vora on July 20, 1710; at Coimbra on November 8, 1738.27
During those two centuries, the heyday of modern Portuguese history,
the public autos-da-f may be considered the typical and fundamental
rite of Portuguese society, in which, from the King at his window down
to the barefoot beggar on the pavement of the square, everyone participated, communing in the same horror for the maleficent heretic and
the same, no less awestricken respect for the Inquisitor who purged the
land and appeased the lowering forces of the unknown.
27 Private autos-da-f followed by public executions went on as before. The last autosda-f altogether were held at Lisbon on October 11, 1778; at Coimbra on August 26,
1781; at vora on September 16, 1781; at Goa on February 7, 1773. See below, Chapter
Thirteen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CLEANNESS OF BLOOD
As we have seen, King Manuel had promulgated in 1502 and 1507
Affirmative Action Laws, abolishing all distinctions between New and
Old Christians, making the former eligible for any position or honor.
But Manuels laws fell by the wayside. With the coming of the Inquisition, laws were enacted and customs introduced, discriminatory to
New Christians.
Here too the model was Spain. Already in 1449 (more than half a
century after the 1391 mass conversions had created the class of New
Christians), the Statutes of Toledo were passed, barring descendants
of 1391 converts from certain posts and honors. By the middle of the
16th century proof of cleanness of blood was a sine qua non to be
considered for higher ecclesiastical office, Orders of Knighthood, religious brotherhoods, academic careers, civil service, the army, etc.1 The
Statute of Siliceo (July 29, 1547), forever excluding descendants of
Jews, Moslems or persons penanced by the Inquisition from holding
any ecclesiastical benefice in the Cathedral of Toledo, was signed and
sealed by Pope Paul III in 1548, by Pope Julius III in 1550 and by Pope
Paul IV in 1555.2
As far as one can tell, it took time for discriminatory laws to
take hold in Portugal. In 1546 four New Christians, confidentially
consulted by King Joo III, complained of the people of the Nation
not being allowed into the charitable institutions called Misericrdias,
neither into the Colleges, nor municipal and town guilds, nor
accepted for military enlistment heading to India, nor even for
honorary posts.3 They implore the king not to tolerate in his
realms the introduction of any law or custom tending to separate New
Christians from Old. This document marks a watershed in the development of the cleanness of blood doctrine. It had as yet not
been enacted into law, so that it was still possible to cavil at discrimi
1 See Albert A. Sicroff, Les Controverses des statuts de Puret de Sang en Espagne du XVIe
au XVIIe sicle, Paris, 1960 and the excellent synopsis of this work by Ellis Rivkin,
Commentary, 60, 1962, 544-547.
2 See Diccionario de Historia Eclesistica de Espaa, 2, Madrid, 1972, s.v. Limpieza de
sangre.
3 See Herculano, History, 595-598. Herculanos date is hypothetical, since the document is undated.
CLEANNESS OF BLOOD
117
4 The Santa Casa de Misericrdia of Lisbon officially precluded New Christians from
membership only after 1577. See Antnio Gomes da Rocha Madahil, A edio de 1577
do compromisso da Misericrdia de Lisboa, Boletim Internacional de Bibliografia LusoBrasileira, 1962, 3, 3, 445-473: 450. However it is only by a clause of the Compromisso of
1618 that New Christians were excluded from this Portuguese Brotherhood in all its
branches.
5 See Epistolae [] Simonis Rodericii Societatis Jesu, Madrid, 1903, 861.
6 See Francisco Rodrigues, Histria da Companhia de Jesus na Assistncia de Portugal, 2,
1, Oporto, 1938, 345-357.
7 Azevedo, Histria dos Cristos-Novos, 149-150.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Philip III in his response dated July 26, 1627 recognized the fitness
of New Christians for all secular posts and honors, except for the children and grandchildren of those convicted by the Holy Office. In this
way the general principle of equality of all the kings subjects, while
reiterated, had been made subservient to canon law and Inquisitorial
legislation.8
Pontifical cleanness of blood laws proper, disqualifying New Christians for lucrative or influential functions or sinecures, such as the
so-called benefices (i.e., the right to collect certain ecclesiastical
revenues) begin to be promulgated in Portugal during the reign of
Philip I (1580-1598). They kick off with Sixtus Vs notorious brief
De Puritate (that no collation or provision of ecclesiastical benefices
[] should be made to persons descended from the race and stock of
the Hebrews), which antedates 1598 and was cited by successive
popes.9 Already in 1588 Archduke Albert, Prince-Regent, Inquisitor
General of Portugal and Apostolic Legate, was charged with seeing to
it that this exclusion be enforced.10 By his brief Decet Romanum dated
October 18, 1600, Pope Clement VIII ordained:
that henceforth the canonries and allowances and dignities in cathedrals
and the principal dignities in the collegiate and parochial churches and
the other ecclesiastical benefices relating to the care of souls in the kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves [] are not to be conferred on any
person descended from the Hebrew race or stock in the paternal or
maternal line of either of these up to the seventh degree computed
inclusively from the time of their conversion.11
8
9
CLEANNESS OF BLOOD
119
13
14
120
CHAPTER SEVEN
was never entirely resolved. A royal charter of 1633 orders the ancient
precepts concerning the exclusion of persons descended from Jews
from public posts and honors to be rigorously observed.17 What
precepts? These are not specified. The extreme limit attained by
discrimination in civil law, on the crest of a particularly fierce repression, is the decree of June 22, 1671 which, to satisfy complaints
presented in the legislative assembly, prohibited New Christians
from instituting or inheriting entails, marrying Old Christians or
registering for courses at the University of Coimbra. In a letter written
that year to the Portuguese king, Father Antnio Vieira protests the
absurdity and illegality of such stipulations.18
The foregoing bespeaks a dissonance between the laws elemental
mandate to evaluate behavior and actions, and the dictates of bloodlaws that call for genealogical evaluations of defendants. Nor were
these new dictates comparable to what had obtained in Portugal prior
to the General Conversion of 1497. Then there were three discrete
entities that in many respects functioned as three peoples, three ethnic
groups. But their insularity was largely spontaneous and certainly not
synthetically enforced from the outside which was the case under
the cleanness of blood laws that ran so jarringly against the natural
grain. Hence it had continuously to be harped on and promoted by
often unenforceable legislation.
Indeed, the discriminatory laws and statutes were never systematically applied. That is why every time the legislative assembly met, the
renewal of their application was petitioned for. There were quasipermanent exceptions. Before 1598, for instance, the brief De Puritate
disallowed New Christians from becoming prebendaries or canons.
Nevertheless, on February 27, 1622, the Inquisitor Miguel de Castro
informed the king that during the previous eight years seven canons
had appeared for sentencing at autos-da-f, among numerous other
New Christian ecclesiastics.19
The Inquisitors themselves, moreover, contributed to this laxity.
A document was circulated accusing the Inquisitor General Dom Ferno
Martins Mascarenhas (1616-1628) of protecting New Christians for
17
18
19
CLEANNESS OF BLOOD
121
20
21
22
23
122
CHAPTER SEVEN
This, of course, was hardly a typical case. Yet poke around where
you will in the intellectual, economic and even ecclesiastical sectors of
Portuguese society, and whole clusters of so-called New Christians
tumble out, mocking the cleanness of blood laws. It is surprising at
first glance that, in view of the innumerable exceptions, the fossilized
rule of discrimination was maintained at all. As to which segment of
society was to be targeted for discrimination, that choice depended
upon whatever end-goal the Inquisitorial institution happened to be
pursuing at any given time.
The essential thing was that there continued to exist in Portugal a
discrimination of which the archetype was the separation between
Christians and Jews before 1497. That is the model present in the
mind of Friar Antnio de Sousa when he dedicated a chapter of his
Aphorismi Inquisitorum (1630) to those who communicate with infidels. According to this friar, whose book is a seminal source for the
history of the Portuguese Inquisition, the faithful are prohibited by
canon law from fraternizing with Jews, living with them under the
same roof, sharing meals with them, employing them as physicians
except in cases of dire necessity, buying medicines from them, entering
the public baths with them, entrusting them with ones children,
serving in their households in whatever capacity, accepting them as
public officials. Friar Antnio holds that any such fraternization is
punishable by excommunication.24 He is evidently referring to canon
law which may have been in force in Portugal when Jews were still
freely practicing their religion, but he is putting one over on his audience by pretending that the 17th-century New Christians and the
medieval Jews, properly so called, are all much of a muchness.25
Friar Antnio was living anachronistically, applying to his society
juridical categories of a world long since defunct. He was interweaving
myth with verity.
The cleanness of blood doctrine in 17th century Portugal has but a
chimerical substantiality; yet was no less effective for all that.
24 Sousa, Aphorismi, 1, 36, 26: laicus ver excommunicetur, non tamen excommunicationem incurrit ipso facto.
25 This is in fact the main thrust of all 66 surviving Portuguese auto-da-f sermons
(1612-1749). See preceding chapter, note 17.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 See Maximiliano Lemos, Ribeiro Sanches, A sua vida e a sua obra, Oporto, 1911;
David Willemse, Antnio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches, lve de Boerhave et son importance pour la
Russie, Leiden, 1966.
2 By Raul Rego (Origem da denominao de Christo-Velho e Christo-Novo em Portugal, Lisbon, 1956); by Alvaro Leon Cassuto, Arquivo de Bibliografia Portuguesa, 3, 1956,
5-37; by Raul Rego (in modernized spelling), Oporto, 1973 (Cover title: Cristos-novos e
Cristos-velhos em Portugal).
124
CHAPTER EIGHT
3 A comparison between the Jews of Portugal, who were forcibly converted, and the
Jews of France and Naples, who were expelled (in 1395 and 1541 respectively), would
hardly be valid, unless one assumes with Father Antnio Vieira (Papel a favor dos
Cristos-Novos [1671], Obras Escolhidas, Lisbon, 1951, 4, 106) that the majority of the
French Jews expelled in 1395, converted and were not heard from again. Sanches,
however, is quite definite about mass conversions of Jews in France during the reigns of
Philip Augustus, Louis IX and Louis X and in Naples during the reigns of Charles III
and Ladislas.
125
126
CHAPTER EIGHT
tether, he has a brain-wave: he remembers that Judaizing means flogging holy statues and images, tucking bread or a pastry underneath
the tail of an animal and then giving it to a poor Old Christian,
and similar puerilities that he then confesses to have indulged in and
when these do not suffice, practices suggested by the Inquisitors
themselves. Such offenses are well known from sentences read aloud
at autos-da-f [] and, however idiotic, they saved the lives of some
parlous wretch if it pleased the Inquisitors magnanimity.
Different, if no less tragic, is the fate of the prisoner whose close
relatives have already known Inquisitorial arrest and imprisonment.
From childhood he is primed on how to act when the moment comes.
If a relative is arrested (so parents teach their children) the New Christian who is still free must make a bee-line for the Holy Office and
spontaneously declare that he has offenses to confess; and, interrogated
as to their nature, declare that there was a time he believed in the Law of
Moses, abstained from pork, recited the Lords Prayer without
pronouncing the name of Jesus at its close.
127
128
CHAPTER EIGHT
contempt and hatred of their Old Christians neighbors, find their own
way into the Mosaic error.
*
As noted, Ribeiro Sanches is not innocent of a polemic agenda. It
seems to be his objective to persuade the Portuguese powers-that-be to
modify the styles of the Inquisition. He therefore embraces the
opposing camps premises: he is resolved not to reprove the Holy
Office, in whose direction he jerks polite bows. He even exerts himself
to ward off some atrocious calumnies, originating in the camp of
heretics (from whom he disassociates himself). Assuming a position at
least as anti-Judaic as that of the Inquisitors, he lashes out against
Judaism, which is taking off all over Portugal. To target the same goal
as the Inquisitors, Sanches would simply advance other means. The
spread of Judaism he would attribute to the laws of cleanness of blood
and the organization of the Inquisitorial trial. By showing how counterproductive these laws are, Ribeiro Sanches was trying to impress the
ruling circles, who claimed to serve the Catholic cause. Thus the
Inquisitors argument was being turned against them.
Once we have caught his drift we recognize what Ribeiro Sanches
has to say about the increase of the crypto-Judaic cult to be tongue in
cheek. The 50 families who became Jews because two of them
Judaized is sophistry since Sanches claims:
there has never been a father or a mother in Portugal who took it upon
themselves to indoctrinate their children with Jewish beliefs and practices since they well know that if they impart such teaching to their children and it leaked out they would be doomed.4
129
No doubt the Jews of Portugal proliferated, granted the Inquisitorial definition of Jews: those who confessed at the Tribunal of
the Holy Office to having Judaized plus all their relatives to the
nth degree and their descendants down to the umpteenth generation.
An appraisal of the Holy Office, not dissimilar to Ribeiro Sanches,
was attributed to a Friar-Inquisitor by Dom Lus da Cunha, an enlightened nobleman under the reign of King Joo V:
Friar Domingos de Santo Toms, a deputy of the Holy Office, used to say
that just as in Lisbons Calcetaria there is a building where coins are
stamped out of metal, so on Lisbons Rossio there is a building where
Jews are stamped out of Christians.5
5 Lus da Cunha, Instrues inditas, Coimbra, 1929, 85-86; cf. id., Testamento Poltico,
Lisbon, 1820, 45.
6 Cf. H. P. Salomon, Portrait, Epigraph.
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1 See Francisco Bethencourt, Histria das Inquisies: Portugal, Espanha e Itlia, Lisbon,
1994, 272-275. An exceptionally high number of convicted Judaizers is noted at the
Granada autos de fe of 1528, 1529, 1540 and a recrudescence after the Portuguese influx
into southern Spain upon the union of the two countries in 1580. At the Granada auto
de fe of 1593 out of 127 penitents 85 were sentenced for Judaizing, of whom 6 executed.
The auto of 1595 was a continuation. See Maria Antonia Bel Bravo, El auto de fe de 1593,
los conversos granadinos, Granada, 1988. Olivares, who ruled from 1623, to some degree
protected the Portuguese New Christians but after his fall from power (1643), Judaizers,
now labeled Portuguese, once again became the prime target of all ten tribunals of the
Spanish Inquisition. According to Michle Escamilla-Colins statistical analysis (Crimes et
chtiments dans lEspagne Inquisitoriale, Paris, 1992), out of a total of 3351 persons
appearing at c. 400 Spanish autos de fe 1658-1739, 2317 (7 out of 10) were sentenced for
Judaizing of whom over 40% are designated Portuguese on the lists. Renewed Inquisitorial persecution of native Spanish (or, rather, Cataln) purported descendants of
pre-1492 converts took place on the island of Majorca in 1678 and 1691, affecting 240
persons and permanently damaging the reputation of their descendants. See above,
Introduction, note 20. Renewed persecution of Portuguese by the Granada Inquisition
chalked up 13 autos de fe 1720-1727, totalling 367 sentences for Judaizing, including
36 actual executions. See Rafael de Lera Garca, Gran Ofensiva Antijuda de la Inquisicin de Granada (1715-1727), Inquisio, Lisbon, 1990, 1089-1108.
2 See Fortunato de Almeida, Histria da Igreja em Portugal, 4, 306; Biblioteca Nacional
de Lisboa, Cod. 198, f. 12. For the vora tribunal, out of 8644 trial records 1543-1668,
7269 (89%) pertained to Judaism and for the Lisbon tribunal, out of 5503 trial records
1540-1629, 3751. During the first 33 years of the Coimbra tribunals operation (15661599) all 144 persons executed were New Christians accused of Judaizing. See Antnio
Borges Coelho, Inquisio de vora, Lisbon, 1987, 1, 150-158; 2, 73.
3 See Sermam, 1624, 13.
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Friar Antnio de Sousa was even more blatant in his auto-da-f sermon
of 1624:
For our sins of the last years people of quality have been cross-breeding
with these perverse Jews.6 to whom I am referring. They became
corrupted by their contact with them and have become Jews like they are.
Just a few years ago only low-class, trashy Jews were paraded at the autosda-f. See what now appears for sentencing in the autos-da-f and in
this very one at which I am preaching: ecclesiastical personnel, friars,
nuns, holders of masters degrees, licentiates, doctors and professors,
with family connections to the nobility, people only half of New Christian
origin, or a quarter, or an eighth, all confessing and convicted of
Judaism. And let no one think that they were falsely denounced by
people already arrested, because every day that goes by many people
4
5
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who have but minimal New Christian ancestry come to the Holy Tribunal
of the Inquisition to accuse themselves voluntarily, saying that they withdrew from the faith of Christ and passed into belief in the Law of Moses
under the influence of relatives and friends who live in the same belief.
We see towns and cities whose New Christian populations were discovered to be almost entirely Judaizers, such as Beja, vora, Tomar,
Coimbra, Porto, Escarigo, Freixo de Numo and others.7
Friar Antnio de Sousa is rehashing a favorite argument of the Inquisitors of the day. That year 1624 the General Council of the Inquisition
submitted a survey of the Portuguese of Jewish origin, to the following
effect: after 1497, when most of the Jews left (?), only six or at most
ten thousand of the poorest and most wretched families converted and
remained. But since then these increased and multiplied to such a
pitch that they are now commonly estimated at 200,000 families, each
very large. This, without exaggeration, would amount to 1,000,000
persons, or over half the Portuguese population of the time. Moreover,
the Inquisitors add, in the aristocracy there are many [New Christians] who have been ennobled by Your Majesty and knights of the
military orders, not excepting the best positions; they are the only ones
who have ready cash, contracts, merchandise and hold all of Portugal
to ransom..8
This document is obviously self-seeking and tendentious: the
Inquisitors were being irritated by the Men of Commerce at the
royal court in Madrid, who actually secured in 1627 an edict of grace
and other privileges. The number of 200,000 sizable families of the
Nation was meant to shake up the court. In any event it certainly
impressed early 20th-century historians, such as Joo Lcio de Azevedo, who apropos a similar document, dated 1671, writes:
the plant they wanted to extirpate burgeoned exuberantly, its robust
stalks stretching out to the sun; no catastrophe was able to cut down the
individuals nor to check the lush vitality of the race.9
7
8
9
Sermam, 12-13
Document published by Azevedo, op. cit., Appendix Fourteen.
Azevedo, op. cit., 292.
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10
11
12
134
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13
14
15
16
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This is the voice of practical sense, if not of tolerance. But one can go
much further than Vieira. The simple fact that marriages between New
and Old Christians were contracted all along the line as well as the fact
that the New Christians, as a collective entity, were officially
demanding the lifting of obstacles to such unions, prove that the
People of the Nation considered themselves homogeneous with their
Old Christian neighbors and had lost their cohesiveness as well as
any religious personality they may have had at the beginning of the
16th century. Had they felt loyalty to their ancestral faith, is it conceivable that they would fight for the right to marry Old Christians?
Therefore the Inquisitors categorization of marriages between Old
and New Christians as mixed was meaningless in religious terms.19
17
18
136
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higher requirements. They decided that any New Christian was either an overt or a
surreptitious Judaizer. Once one accepts the premise that their decision impacts reality
and that reality waits on their wishes, then the Jewishness of the New Christians is a
religious just as much (or as little) as an ethnic one and no amount of evidence can
change this fact.
20 It was rumored that Friar Diogos paternal great-grandfather Bernardo Dias (the
father of Lianor Bernardes who was the mother of Jorge Velho Travassos who was the
father of Friar Diogo), from Lorvo, had undergone baptism at the time of the General
Conversion. The Genealogical inquiry conducted by Inquisitorial agents at Lorvo
revealed that Bernardo Dias had a son, Baptista Dias, who in turn had a son, Joo
Baptista Dias. The first of the six witnesses said that Baptista Dias had married Lianor
Bernardes, but Lianor Bernardes was Bernardo Dias daughter (Baptistas sister), who
married Nuno Velho, a pure Old Christian. This led the Inquisitorial agent to inquire
whether Bernardo Dias had a son Nuno Velho. The six witnesses were aged, respectively,
60, 68, 65, 80, 75 and 80. See H. P. Salomon, Portrait of a New Christian, 31.
21 See Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 104. Excerpts from the trial record were published by
Antnio Jos Teixeira, Antnio Homem e a Inquisio, Coimbra, 1895, 217-260; a
summary may be found in Azevedo, op. cit., Appendix Seven.
22 Friar Diogo declared on December 14, 1599 that he was the son of a Jewess and a
Portuguese. The wish to improvise a Jewish parent betrays, of course, a certain Old
Christian reflex, that mixes up beliefs, nationality and blood.
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23 His father, Jorge Velho Travassos, born in Cantanhede and raised in the household
of the Lord of the town, was of a distinguished Old Christian family. His paternal grandfather, Nuno Velho was related to Pero Travassos da Costa, a high official at the royal
court. Jorge Velho Travassos lived for some years in Aveiro, where he married Maria de
Oliveira, who gave him at least seven children. At some point he moved to Viana de
Caminha (now Viana do Castelo) where he was appointed Steward of the Royal Customs
and where Friar Diogo was born, c. 1570, but he was baptised at Aveiro. He was sent to
the Seminary in Braga, received the confirmation in Viana where he became a Capuchin
friar in 1591, at age 21.
24 NR, 112. The author of Cruelties refers his reader (i.e., the Pope, or his representative) to the friars processo, and to the familys (appended?) petition. It would seem he
knew both documents first-hand. Whereas the processo survives, we have not found the
petition.
25 Azevedo, op. cit., 159-160.
26 The Inquisitorial notion of potential Judaizer was resuscitated in our times by
I. S. Rvah.
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27 ANTT, Ms. 1506 (Portuguese version). We are quoting a Spanish version acquired
in 1997 by the Biblioteca Nacional of Lisbon, f. 325.
28 Op. cit., 292-293.
29 NR, 109.
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However, in 1606, when the Amnesty expired, the Portuguese Inquisition began making new arrests. That same year a Commission for the
Collection of the 1,700,000 cruzados was formed in Lisbon, and a
royal decree forbade persons of the Nation to move from one district
to another without a document from the ruling Junta showing that they
had paid their allotment. In 1610 permission for New Christians to
leave Portugal temporarily or permanently was altogether rescinded.
30 Letter cited by J. Gentil da Silva, Stratgie des affaires Lisbonne entre 1595 et 1607,
Paris, 1956, 5, n. 27.
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Soon it became clear that the Inquisition, far from defunct, was
entering a new phase of unchecked brutality.31
At the third auto-de-f following the expiration of the General
Amnesty, on April 5, 1609, the execution of Henrique Dias Milo, 81,
caused a sensation. Milo, a well-known merchant of sterling reputation and the father of nine grown children, whose huge houses were a
Lisbon landmark, refused to admit to the crime of Judaism until just
before his sentencing. Three of his sons, womenfolk, retainers and
household staff, arrested together with him on October 28, 1606 while
attempting to leave the country, all ultimately confessed. They were
penanced at the same auto-da-f and subsequently released, except for
a partly Old Christian servant of the Milo family, who refused to
abjure his confessed heresy and was therefore burnt alive. In addition, five women unrelated to the Milo group were executed.32
Starting around the middle of the 16th century, at irregular intervals, Inquisitorial officials selected for visitation a city or town under
their jurisdiction or an overseas territory which had not yet felt the
impact of their authority, installing there a temporary tribunal for the
purpose of proclaiming the Edict of Faith and taking denunciations.33 This operation was called opening up Judaism in places
which have lain fallow. Inevitably, a family quarrel or a commercial
intrigue would lead to several series of denunciations, followed by
arrests. Arrests led to trials which spiraled into new rounds of arrests
and trials, so that, during the first half of the 17th century it was not
unusual to see practically an entire urban population vanish; the
unlucky, marched off to the Inquisitorial cells and the long-legged,
scuttling to Spain.34
31
32
33
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whom 18 executed, were from Serpa; 1615-1640, 713 persons sentenced, of whom 62
executed (some in effigy), were from Beja. Out of 8644 vora trial records, 1543-1668,
1704 (26%) concern persons born or resident in Beja, 591 persons from the small town
of Campo Maior, where 288 persons, mostly women, were arrested 1582-1593, of whom
17 were executed; 116 persons were arrested at Elvas in 1655; 115 at Olivena in 1651;
99 at Elvas in 1657; 64 at Serpa in 1600, including 5 girls of 15, 1 of 13 the daughter
of a previously executed man , 2 boys aged 12 and 13; 40 at Serpa in 1602. Of 438
persons sentenced at vora autos-da-f,1635-1637, 215 were from the Algarve; 170 trial
records 1633-1640, concern residents of Faro: 40 arrests in 1633; 40 in 1634; 16 in 1635;
11 in 1637; 11 in 1638; 11 in 1639; 6 in 1640; included are a boy arrested at 12 and
tortured at 14, 5 girls of 15, a boy arrested age 10 in 1635, sentenced at the auto-da-f
of 1640; 12 Faro residents were executed 1635-1651; as of 1760, 1796 persons from the
District of Bragana had been sentenced as Judaizers (Coelho, vora, 1, 295-303, 305310, 340, 361-363; Joaquim Romero de Magalhes, E assim se abriu judasmo no
Algarve, Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, 29, 1981, 1-74, Francisco Manuel Alves,
Memrias Arqueolgico-Histricas do Distrito de Bragana, 5, Bragana, 19773). In 1639 the
Inquisition arrested c. 33 New Christians in Arraiolos (see Anita Novinsky, Cristos Novos
na Bahia, So Paulo, 1972, 153). A statistical study such as Borges Coelhos of vora
Inquisitorial trial records by period, town and region (leading to social and economic
analyses) is a desideratum as regards the other two tribunals.
35 See Municipal Archives of Amsterdam, Notary Sibrant Cornelisz, 625, ff. 81-83;
Notaries Jacob and Nicolaes Jacobs, 382, f. 26; State Archives of The Hague, States
General, Admiralty, Documents Concerning Damages Incurred by Portuguese
Merchants Who are Dutch Subjects During the Truce Between Spain and the Netherlands (1609-1621). The claims of the defrauded merchants, for which the Dutch
government unsuccessfully attempted to obtain recoupment from the Portuguese Inquisition (!), totaled some 300,000 guilders. We thank Ms. Odette Vlessing of the
Amsterdam Municipal Archives for these references.
36 See Inquisition of Lisbon, Processos nos. 15,421 and 16,225. Cf. Tefilo Braga,
Histria da Universidade de Coimbra, 2, Lisbon, 1895, 473-650; Antnio Jos Teixeira,
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Many observers felt that the Portuguese Inquisition was out of all
moral and legal bounds, even by Spanish Inquisitorial standards and
that if the Portuguese New Christians plight were brought to the
attention of an influential part of Spanish public opinion hopefully
including the king and the Spanish Inquisitor General some
assuagement might be forthcoming from that quarter.
Commissioned by unnamed Portuguese New Christians, a Spanish
barrister, Martn de Zellorigo, published in 1619 at Madrid a work
directed to the Spanish Inquisitor General, Dominican Friar Lus de
Aliaga (and indirectly to King Philip III), contesting the procedures of
the Portuguese Inquisition.37 Zellorigo prides himself on his and his
wifes noble, unblemished Old Christian stock. He served the Inquisitorial tribunal of Valladolid for 28 years as lawyer for the accused,
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38 See I. S. Rvah, Le Plaidoyer, passim. During the entire reign of the Inquisition,
no attack on it or apology for the New Christians was ever printed in Portugal.
39 Aliagas fate after but three years in office strikingly illustrates the difference in
clout between a Portuguese Inquisitor, irremovable, and a Spanish Inquisitor General,
subject to the vagaries of political fortune. See Joaquin Perez Villanueva and Bartolome
Escandell Bonet, Historia de la Inquisicin en Espaa y Amrica, Madrid, 1984, 218, 891,
1009, 1032, 1070; Diccionario de Historia de Espaa, Madrid, 1968, s.v. Aliaga.
40 See Joo de Almeida Lucas, Dilema de um Cristo-Novo em tempos de Sua Majestade Imperial Filipe III de Espanha, Ocidente, 24, 1944, 369-389: 369-370, 377-380. See
also Baio, Episdios Dramticos, 3, 45-55; Coelho, vora, 343-346.
144
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41
42
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The same author, like his predecessor, takes note of the intense antagonism felt in Portugal towards the Men of Commerce, a hate that
drags discrimination even into State contracts.48 He argues for
commerce with the Far East to be channeled through these men who
are as honest as they are wealthy and not through undependable
adventurers. For if the nobles and ministers had a modicum of business acumen they could tell a merchant from a tinker..49 He petitions
the king to suppress the laws which persecute the New Christians
(cristianos nuevos) after having expelled those who actually prevaricated
in matters of faith. He proposes, so that the good people may enjoy
45
46
146.
47 Alegacin (ed. Moses Bensabat Amzalak), Lisbon, 1955, 209-210. [A. J. Saraiva
confused the 1955 edition of this work with its 1950 analysis by J. Gentil da Silva (see
below, Chapter Twelve, note 22) a slip for which he was rapped over the knuckles in
I. S. Rvahs Surrebutter (Appendix Three).]
48 Apparently, between 1619 and 1628, the New Christian monopoly on Portugals
international trade was being challenged.
49 Solis, Alegacin, Lisbon, 1955, 68.
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the privileges which are owing to the native born, those of bad
conduct and evil presumption be banished and let the former remain
in possession of all rights of the native born:
Let laws be promulgated against those New Christians who are penanced
with sanbenitos. But those who can boast ancestors with unsullied
records, let them enjoy the immunities enjoyed by the native born
throughout the world.50
Deploring the fact that the talents of the Portuguese of the Nation
(de la Nacin), while thoroughly appreciated in the lands of foreign
princes, are begrudged in their own country, he urges the king to:
favor them with privileges and immunities consistent with their persons
and his expectations of them in his royal service, thereby encouraging
them [] since they are the people most useful to all the realms of the
Iberian Peninsula.51
Gomes Solis, identifying Portugals interest with the interest of business, insists on the imperative to abolish discrimination. His proposals
will be picked up and developed a century later, as we shall see, by Lus
da Cunha and kindred spirits. The thrust of Solis book posits for the
People of the Nation a mercantile mindset, prudent and sensible
even when up against gratuitous dilapidation, devastating fanaticism
or the ignorance of a backward-looking society.
It is evident that to Duarte Gomes Solis the terms New Christians,
People of the Nation and Men of Commerce are interchangeable.
We encounter the same identification in contemporary (or slightly
earlier) documents from the Simancas archives.52 Half a century later
Father Antnio Vieira in his letters from Lisbon to Rome refers to the
members of the New Christian lobby and their agent in Rome as Men
of Commerce. Around the same time the Portuguese ambassador in
Rome refers to the same agent mediating on behalf of the New Christians as the agent of the People of the Nation..53 The usage comes
officially of age in the royal letters-patent of 1649 which exempt from
confiscation the goods of condemned New Christians, in exchange for
their chipping in to launch the Company for General Commerce in
Brazil. In this document King Joo IV repeatedly designates these
subjects of his Men of Commerce and People of the Nation:
The principal expedient for augmenting and preserving the said
Company will be through the exemption from seizure and confiscation
50
51
52
53
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of the property of the said Men of Commerce and People of the Nation
in the event of their arrest or condemnation by the Holy Office of the
Inquisition [].54
54
55
Charter dated February 2, 1649, reproduced by Azevedo, op. cit., Appendix Nineteen.
A characteristic example is the interrogation at Antwerp on October 1, 1608 of
Gaspar Nunes, a 65-year old refugee from the Portuguese Inquisition, and his son Lus
Vaz, aged 19 or 20. The latter, asked why his father had fled Portugal, explained that
in Portugal merchants were much harassed and that is why his father came here, to be
freer. Told that those who wish to live as Christians are as free there as here, he replied
that this was not so, because many are arrested there in spite of being good Christians
and are subjected to many tribulations, which is not the case here where there is no
Inquisition [] (See Brussels, Archives Gnrales du Royaume, Office Fiscal de Brabant,
Dossier 529 (71), ff. 64-71:69r.)
56 See Baroja, Los Judos, 2, 342.
57 See below, Chapter Twelve.
58 Azevedo, op. cit., 342.
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The commission of familiar of the Holy Office was a supreme testimonial of cleanness of blood and, by granting it ex oficio to aristocrats without
a preliminary investigation, the Inquisition made them its collaborators
and allies. At the autos-da-f the presiding Inquisitor was attended by the
patrician lite, and the convicted prisoners who, as we shall see, were
nearly all members of the mercantile middle class, marched in the
procession and into the amphitheater in the custody of noble familiares.
Here was a microcosm of a society where the old patrician clans were on
the bullying side and the bourgeois the bullied.61
Indeed, the vast majority of the convicted prisoners were, as far as
we can tell, bourgeois.62 All statistical probes undertaken so far agree
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63 See the statistical chart, based on Moreira, in Azevedo, op. cit., 492. There are
discrepancies between the numbers of auto-da-f victims between 1682 and 1691
presented by Lcio de Azevedo and those for the same period presented by Fortunato
de Almeida (Histria da Igreja em Portugal, Lisbon, 1967-19712, 3, 425-426, 4, 286-318).
See Jos Veiga Torres, Uma Longa Guerra Social: Os Ritmos da Represso Inquisitorial em Portugal, Revista de Histria Econmica e Social, 1, 1978, 55-68. Elvira Cunha de
Azevedo Mea (A Inquisio de Coimbra no Sculo XVI, Oporto, 1997, 504-505) presents a
list of professions for 811 out of a total of 2203 persons (including Old Christians)
sentenced by the Coimbra tribunal during the 16th century. This list has 243 merchants
and hawkers, 179 cobblers, 34 tillers of the soil, 29 tax-collectors, 28 shopkeepers,
26 tailors, 25 muleteers, 12 seamstresses, a variety of artisans, three surgeons, one
lawyer. According to Isaas da Rosa Pereira (Notas sobre a Inquisio em Portugal no
Sculo XVI, Lusitnia Sacra, 10, 1978, 259-300), out of 1899 persons sentenced by the
Coimbra tribunal during the 16th century, 1697 were New Christians and 15 were half
New Christians. Coelho (vora, 1, 365-385) presents a list of professions (701!) for all
8644 persons sentenced by the vora tribunal, 1543-1668 and a simplified categorization grouping 1182 merchants (over 40%), 734 leatherworkers, 603 textile manufacturers, 911 journeymen, 493 tillers of the soil and cattle raisers, 351 lawyers, physicians,
musicians and other intellectuals, 249 military men, 218 administrators, 202 workmen,
124 squires, priests, friars and nuns, 114 transporters, 82 slaves and freedmen,
42 seamen, 36 miscellaneous. See Coelhos list of 93 persons professions (or their
fathers or husbands) among 139 sentenced at the vora auto-da-f on November 29,
1626 (op. cit., 139).
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facts confirm the New Christian (or Middle Class) monopoly of the
intellectual professions. By royal charter of November 20, 1568, King
Sebastio instituted scholarships for 30 Old Christian students of
medicine. King Philip I increased the stipends and provided them also
to Old Christian students of pharmacy.68 A sop to Cerberus: by
creating competition for the New Christian doctors and pharmacists,
these kings were responding to the Inquisitions ongoing campaign
against New Christian practitioners whom it accused of systematically
killing their Old Christian patients. Royal and Inquisitorial appeals to
exclude children of middle class families from the university fell on
deaf ears and therefore had to be repeated. A century later, in 1671,
following the sacrilege in the church of Odivelas imputed to a New
Christian,69 the king contemplated legislation that would shut out
New Christians from the University of Coimbra and channel them into
mechanical trades. Father Antnio Vieira protested:
Put yourself into the shoes of a lawyer, a wholesaler, a physician, a
grandee ennobled by the king, as many New Christians have been. Are
they about to apprentice their children to cobblers or the like? You have
guessed; and so mechanical trades being out of the running, the only
alternative is scientific, medical or legal training with a view to careers as
doctors and lawyers.70
Vieira takes into account the upper crust of the People of the Nation,
which made up as we have seen a sizeable proportion of Inquisitorial
prisoners. His grandees were bourgeois whom the king ennobled for
their financial advice or services. But this pinnacle had a broad base of
petty tradesmen, hawkers and artisans, also represented in the autosda-f, albeit in smaller proportions than the merchants.
Jesuits in 1559 and closed exactly two centuries later when the Jesuits were expelled
from Portugal. Coimbra Universitys secular College of Arts, opened in 1548, attracted
humanists from far and wide. In 1550 the Inquisition arrested its three most notable
professors, Joo da Costa, Diogo de Teive and George Buchanan on the charge of
Lutheranism. In 1555 the College (but not the University itself) was handed over to the
Jesuits. We are not aware of any Inquisitorial repression at the University of vora.
68 Azevedo, op. cit., 167.
69 Odivelas is a village a few miles north of Lisbon. In a replay of the Santa Engrcia
episode of 1630 (see below, Chapter Twelve), during the night of May 10 to 11, 1671,
the ciborium was reported robbed of its consecrated wafers. A purported culprit was
found, submitted to torture by the civil court to obtain a full confession, sentenced to
death, paraded through the streets of Lisbon to the Rossio where he was hanged from a
tall pole after his hands were chopped off and his eyes burnt out. His body was incinerated on a bonfire. It was subsequently reported that he was a New Christian. On the
consequences, see Azevedo, op. cit., 290-291; Carl A. Hanson, Economy and Society in
Baroque Portugal, 1668-1703, Minneapolis, 1981, 90-107.
70 Vieira, Obras Escolhidas, 4, 102.
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71 Confiscations over the period 1671-1673 netted the Granada Tribunal 100,000,000
maraveds, the highest revenue in its history. See Maria Isabel Prez de Colosia
Rodrguez, Auto Inquisitorial de 1672: el criptojudaismo en Mlaga, Mlaga, 1984.
72 No es buen argumento que las personas que estn presas no son de los ms superiores linajes, porque no se pueden componer las repblicas todas de personas altas; y,
faltando las de media esfera y comercio, falta mucho. Pido a Vuestra Excelencia que
cargue la consideracin en esto, que es negocio gravsimo. See Prez de Colosia
Rodrguez, op. cit., 109.
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Now the bourgeois, whose wealth is born and grows in full view of his
neighbors, upsets this order: God created man, but the bourgeois is
self-made. Let the French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) have
the last word:
Of all occupations none is crasser considered from the religious point
of view than the commonest, namely working to earn money, either
73
74
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CHAPTER TEN
1 Uriel da Costas Exemplar Humanae Vitae (Amsterdam, 1640) and Antnio Ribeiro
Sanches Origem da denominao (St. Petersburg, 1735).
2 See Christovam Aires, Ferno Mendes Pinto. Subsdios para a sua biografia e para
o texto de sua obra, Histria e Memrias da Academia Real das Cincias, New Series, Class
II, Lisbon, 1904. The author cites J. L. Cardozo de Bethencourt to the effect that relatives of Ferno Mendes Pinto were arrested by the Inquisition on the charge of
Judaizing. Cf. Rebecca Catz, A stira social de Ferno Mendes Pinto, Lisbon, 1978, 75,
84-88, 297.
3 Exploration of certain Spanish literary works in pursuit of their possible New Christian quiddity (see inter alia Marcel Bataillon, Les Nouveaux Chrtiens dans lessor du
roman picaresque, Neophilologus, 48, 1964, 283-298) has been qualified as subjective
and impressionistic (see inter alia Eugenio Asensio, La peculiaridad literaria de los
conversos, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 4, 1967, 327-351; Nicholas Grenvile Round,
La Peculiaridad Literaria de los Conversos: Unicornio o Snark?, in Judos. Sefarditas.
Conversos, La expulsin de 1492 y sus consecuencias [Angel Alcal, editor], Valladolid, 1995,
557-576).
157
But New Christians are not all passivity. In this chapter we shall cite
Antnio Enrquez Gmez and Manuel Fernandes Vilareal on how
discrimination was dividing Portuguese society into two factions. This
is already a more active, more combative stance. The Old Christians
now no longer appear as a historical subject, but as one faction persecuting another the faction of the New Christians to the detriment of the collective weal. At the root of all this mischief is the
Inquisitorial Tribunal.
Abhorrence for the Inquisition and its flagrant injustice risked
rebounding upon the religion it claimed to represent. For many the
only brand of Catholicism they knew was Inquisitorial. We here touch
upon a fundamental contradiction inherent in the Iberian Inquisition.
Its legitimization resided in its sacred character. The name of God was
invoked to legitimate confiscations, imprisonments, executions, all
directed against the bourgeois sector of the population. But since the
combat was being waged in defense of the Christian Faith, proof had
to be adduced for each individual defendants sin or delict. The Holy
Office could not admit to condemning a segment of the population
because of an ethnic and/or economic quirk. The Inquisitorial
sentence had to be announced and publicized: so-and-so committed
such-and-such a crime against the Faith and is to be punished for it.
The author who speaks of the factions which destroy everything, is Antonio Enrquez Gmez (Cuenca, 1600 - Seville, 1663),
in La Poltica Anglica (Angelic Politics, 1647) a book on Portugal,
composed and printed in the Portuguese New Christian (non-Jewish)
emigrant community of Rouen.4 Antonios one-quarter New Christian
status was made in the Spanish Inquisition. I. S. Rvahs researches
reached his great-grandfathers great-grandfather in the paternal line,
Juan Gonzlez, who died a Christian before 1486. Rvah hypothesizes
that among Juan Gonzlezs great-great-great-grandparents there
must have been some Jew(s) who converted in 1391.5 At the Cuenca
auto-de-f of August 12, 1590 Antonios paternal grandfather, Francisco
de Mora, was about to be sentenced to execution on the count of
Judaism, together with a niece and a nephew, when he and his niece
were set upon by spectators who stoned and clubbed them to death.
4 The second part of this work was reprinted by I. S. Rvah: Un pamphlet contre
lInquisition dAntonio Enrquez Gmez: la seconde partie de la Poltica Anglica
(Rouen, 1647), Revue des tudes Juives, 121, 1962, 81-168: 115-168.
5 See I. S. Rvah, Un crivain marrane: Antonio Enrquez Gmez, Annuaire de
lcole Pratique des Hautes tudes, Quatrime Section: Sciences historiques et philologiques, 97,
1964-1965, 274-276. See now Carsten Wilke, Jdisch-Christliches Doppelleben im Barok, Zur
Biographie des Kaufmans und Dichters Antonio Enrquez Gmez, Frankfort, 1994.
158
CHAPTER TEN
Five sisters and six other family members were also sentenced at the
same auto-da-f.6 In 1622 Antonios father, Diego Enrquez de Mora,
was denounced and arrested for having mosaically(?) slaughtered a
sheep through the back of the neck eighteen years earlier (whereupon
he is said to have fainted).7 He was reconciled at a Cuenca auto-de-f.8
Antonios father identified his mother and his wife as Old Christians
and himself, accordingly, as half New Christian. Thus Antonio
Enrquez Gmez would be one quarter New Christian. Antnio
married, in Spain, an Old Christian, before joining the Portuguese
New Christian (non-Jewish) expatriates in Nantes, among whom his
father was living, remarried to a Portuguese. Antonio was a business
man and a prolific writer. He lived successively in the Portuguese
New Christian colonies of Nantes, Bordeaux and Rouen. In his Poltica
Anglica he argues that:
untold disaster can befall a monarchy, a republic, nobility and even the
salvation of souls when people of certain ancestries are singled out for
opprobrium. This is the most pernicious and wanton devilry to blight
Christendom. Through it the nobilitys luster is tarnished; because of it
the best families quit the country; infidels mushroom; neighborly love
scowls. Communities are torn to tatters; cities impoverished, feuds eternalized. It robs the Church of righteous men; sows infernal discord
among folk; on outsiders it showers triumphs; at home it rains down
shame; inside churches for the saints it substitutes portraits of hells
denizens roasting in flames; it disinters the dead; dishonors the living;
parades effigies of absent people; to the guileless it expounds heresies of
the condemned [].9
6 No less than fifty members of the de Mora family were sentenced on the count of
Judaism at Cuenca autos-de-f between 1588 and 1591 at a time when the Spanish Inquisition did not particularly persecute on this count. Between 1540 and 1614 only five
percent of all Inquisitorial victims were sentenced for Judaizing. See Henry Kamen,
Spain 1469-1714, a Society of Conflict, London & New York, 1983, 185.
7 According to rabbinic interpretation of Dt. 12, 21 (you shall slaughter as I command you) animals for consumption must be killed in the swiftest and most painless
way by cutting horizontally across the throat, severing the windpipe, esophagus, jugular
veins and carotide arteries. Perhaps the Inquisitors got confused with the heifer whose
neck is broken in the ravine to atone for the shedding of innocent blood (Dt. 21, 1-9).
8 His trial was published by Heliodoro Cordente Martinez, Origen y Genealoga de
Antonio Enrquez Gmez, Cuenca, 1992, 50-84
9 Poltica Anglica, Rouen, 1647,149. The second part of the book is preceded by an
imprimatur in French, signed by the Franciscan Friar Guillaume Du Vair.
159
king believe that they can draw water from a rock. Other vampires are
the denunciators and informers who batten on confiscations. In sum,
the larceny called confiscation hobbles commerce: a country bereft of
commerce is a body without a soul..10
Manuel Fernandes Vilareal, the Portuguese New Christian who moved
to France, well known to us by now, was a friend of Enrquez Gmez and
of Father Antnio Vieira. In his El Poltico Cristianissimo, which we have
already discussed, he goes Enrquez Gmez one better, because he rises
to higher ground whence he takes in the whole question of liberty of
belief. No doubt economy also comes into it, because his ultimate object
is to lift the mortgage which by way of the Inquisitorial confiscation
weighs down on the Men of Commerce.11 In his book he alludes but once
to Inquisitorial confiscation: a subject of the King, convinced that those
trying to save his soul have half an eye on his wallet, may attribute their
salvific efforts to motives not entirely free of cupidity. Ostensibly panegyrizing Cardinal Richelieus policy towards Protestants, Vilareal writes
that the kings subjects road to the true faith must be by way of persuasion and never under duress; a blind soul will not be enlightened by the
obscurity of a trial and the gloom of a long imprisonment. His book is
imbued with bourgeois rationalism, which Vilareal could only have
known outside the Iberian Peninsula:
making slaves out of those whom nature has created free is not an act of
obedience to God but a negation of His work.
These and other ideas were not the monopoly of New Christians.
Everywhere discerning minds were discovering international commerce. By and by we shall come across men such as the Marquis of
Nisa, Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo and the ambassador Sousa Coutinho
banding together with Vilareal and Enrquez Gmez against the Inquisition, in the economic interest of the State.
In 1646, Father Antnio Vieira is already championing the New
Christians. As a Jesuit, he was by definition unstained. At his side, in
the same trench, we find Manuel Fernandes Vilareal (whose trial was
reviewed in Chapter Five) and Antonio Enrquez Gmez, whom we
have just met. Like the latter, Vieira emphasized the importance of
commerce in the Republic. According to Vieira:
[] Navigation and commerce had formerly ensured Portugals prosperity and it is curbing commerce that has precipitated our present
plight [] The perennial financial insecurity of the Men of Commerce
10
11
160
CHAPTER TEN
occasioned by Inquisitorial arrest and confiscation of assets is the principal cause for the commercial decline. What is needed, therefore, is to
free commerce by exempting from confiscation the property of the
merchants or People of the Nation.12
These then are grounds, in Vieiras reckoning, for abolishing Inquisitorial confiscation. But Vieira goes further, he recommends knighting
merchants on a large scale:
[L]et Your Majesty acknowledge trafficking as praiseworthy so that
instead of stigmatizing its practitioners it may earn them laurels. Let all
the merchants, not just wholesalers, but retailers too, become nobles.
The incentive would attract quality people, including Old Christians, to
pursue trade to Portugals advantage, just as the merchant princes of
Venice, Genoa, Florence and their likes with their trading bring prosperity to their republics.15
of 1619, discussed in the last chapter. See I. S. Rvah, Le Plaidoyer en faveur des
Nouveaux Chrtiens portugais du licenci Martn Gonzlez de Cellorigo (Madrid,
1619), Revue des tudes Juives, 122, 1963, 279-280.
12 Razes apontadas a el-Rei D. Joo IV a favor dos Cristos-Novos, Obras Escolhidas,
4, 63-71.
13 Op. cit., 69.
14 Op. cit., 70.
15 Proposta que se fez ao Serenssimo Rei D. Joo IV a favor da Genta de Nao,
Obras Escolhidas, 4, 27-62: 49-50.
161
Therefore to speak of a distinctive social and economic Weltanschauung of the New Christians, colored by their mercantile vocation, yes; but in no way was this a consubstantial ethnic condition.
As Groethuysen remarks in the work cited in the previous chapter,
the bourgeois tends to agnosticism. Trade obliges him to read and
predict markets rather than leave everything to fate; the trader is
prone, as far as humanly possible to take his individual destiny in
hand: Yearly inventories, just like books on Physics, dissipate mystification..16 Even when participating in religious rituals, the bourgeois
is assailed by skepticism; the rituals underlying beliefs he leaves for
those that way inclined. But in the Portuguese case there are additional
factors, namely the ancestral religion of many people of the Nation
and the effects of Inquisitorial repression.
We have indicated how well-nigh impossible it would have been for
Judaism to maintain itself in Portugal following the General Conversion of 1497, even before the arrival of the Inquisition. With the Inquisition in jackbooted stride, there surely was reason to get out as long
as one could and a number of families indeed joined Portuguese
Jewish communities in Turkey and Morocco or Catholic ones in France
and the Netherlands. In Italy there were Portuguese communities,
both Jewish and Catholic. Many New Christians settling in Italy chose
to remain Catholic, an option denied settlers in Morocco (except in
the Portuguese fortress towns Ceuta, Tangiers, Mazagan) and Turkey.
In Antwerp Judaism was prohibited and punishable by death. Yet the
Inquisition in the Spanish Netherlands grew sluggish after the mid16th century. The Portuguese Nation of Antwerp was on the whole
staunchly Catholic and ultimately dissolved into the local aristocracy.17
Nevertheless, not all New Christians who disembarked at Antwerp
remained. For many Antwerp served as a stepping-stone en route
to Italy or Turkey. Among those who adopted Judaism in Ferrara
(Italy) were Abraham Usque (Duarte Pinel) and Samuel Usque
(baptismal name unknown). Abraham Usque published Hebrew,
Spanish and Portuguese books (including the first edition of the
Portuguese pastoral novel Menina e Moa) and Samuel was the author
of Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (Ferrara, 1553). After
long sojourns in Italy where they did not adopt Judaism, the neo-Latin
poet Diogo Pires (Didacus Pyrrhus Lusitanus) and the physician Joo
16
17
162
CHAPTER TEN
Uriel, at odds with the Jewish community, but constrained to live in it,
tried to dissuade them:
But these perfidious wretches, induced by the hope of filthy lucre,
instead of returning to me thanks, went and disclosed all to my dear
friends, the Pharisees.19
18 This paragraph has been expanded in the light of H. P. Salomon, Deux tudes portugaises / Two Portuguese Studies, Braga, 1991.
19 See Uriel da Costa, Examination of Pharisaic Traditions, Leiden, 1993, 559.
163
20
21
164
CHAPTER TEN
From these reports it may be inferred that a Portuguese exiles subsequent affiliation with the Synagogue was not necessarily indicative of a
long standing acquaintance with Judaism. Even less can such affiliation be invoked in support of your gloating Inquisitor back in Portugal
who on learning of a New Christians proselytization is wont to
exclaim: What did I tell you theres a Jew lurking in every last New
Christian! No. Take for example the Portuguese Jewish community in
Amsterdam. Its founding fathers were, to be sure, stirred by religious
zeal for the Mosaic Law, but this was not atavistic. Many had been
devout Catholics, totally estranged from Judaism in Portugal, yet
persecuted nonetheless. Upon their arrival in Amsterdam at the end
of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, where Catholicism
was outlawed and Judaism not yet introduced, they were cryptoCatholics, in the sense that they openly professed Protestantism
while secretly observing Catholicism. No doubt the competence of
outstanding spiritual leaders recruited in Emden, North Africa, the
Ottoman Empire, Italy, etc., had an input; firing some hearts and souls
with a Judaism newly discovered.23
Much attention has been paid to the multitudes of Portuguese who
left for Spain and the Spanish Americas from 1580 onwards, only to be
tried by the Spanish tribunals. This, according to some, would tend to
prove that they were continuing to practice Judaism as in Portugal,
differently from the Spanish New Christians who were by now entirely
Christianized. But this evidence has to be reconsidered, taking into
account that the victims were in the first place Portuguese, and therefore outsiders and, moreover, occupied privileged economic positions
22
23
165
on foreign soil. As we have seen earlier and shall see again, the
Portuguese fanned out all over Europe and beyond. Especially in
Spain they came to manage the bulk of the State revenues and monopolies, not to mention involvement in banking, money-lending and the
sporadic finger in the political pie. It was only a matter of time for this
invidious national minority to become the butt of the native stocks
envy. Trial records summarized or excerpted by Julio Caro Baroja in
his three-volume work on The Jews teem with informers, agents
provocateurs, false witnesses some in the service of the Count-Duke
de Olivares (governed Spain 1621-1643). A case in point is the trial
record of Joo Nunes Saraiva, a Portuguese banker of Madrid.24
Barojas analysis suggests that it was his Portuguese identity, political
intrigues and commercial rivalries that brought about his downfall.
The defendants guilt on any of the counts (e.g., Judaizing, contraband, dealing in counterfeit coin, complicity in murder) is extremely
implausible. Even more implausible (and, of course, undocumented) is
Barojas assessment of Joo Nunes Saraiva as fundamentally a Jewish
fanatic..25
But the very same emigration to the Americas which comforts some
historians belief in the New Christians Judaism furnishes an argument against it. Many members of the persecuted minority emigrated
to Brazil, where for more than a century they enjoyed practical liberty.
Up to the 18th century the Inquisition made three or four brief incursions there. If these New Christian emigrants had, in fact, practiced
Judaism, Brazil would have become a haven for Judaizers or have
developed strong crypto-Jewish traditions. But this did not happen in
that country where the encounter between Christian, Amerindian and
24
25
166
CHAPTER TEN
26
27
167
28 Displaced to some degree during the second half of the 20th century by butter,
sunflower and other oils. See Isabel Margarida de Sousa, O fio da vida, Revista
Expresso, no. 1474 (January 27, 2001), 40-53: 48.
168
CHAPTER TEN
29 Erasmo y Espaa, Mexico, 19662, 166-190. Bataillon does not always make it clear
whether he is dealing with descendants of 1391 or of 1492 conversos.
30 Le Colloque Ropica Pnefma de Joo de Barros, Bulletin hispanique, 64 bis, 1952
[Mlanges offerts Marcel Bataillon], 572-592, reprinted in I. S. Rvah, tudes portugaises,
Paris, 1975, 99-120.
31 See Itinerrio da Terra Sancta (Antnio Baio, ed.), Coimbra, 1927, 531..
32 For the legend that Averroes had embraced and rejected Judaism, Christianity and
Islam and authored the notorious but non-existent De Tribus Impostoribus, see The Jewish
Encyclopedia, s.v. Averroes. See also Jacob Presser, Das Buch De Tribus Impostoribus,
Amsterdam, 1926; Lon Poliakov, op. cit., 133.
33 See Francisco Mrquez Villanueva, Nascer e Morir como Bestias (Criptojudasmo
y Criptoaverrosmo), Los Judaizantes en Europa y la Literatura Castellana del Siglo de Oro
(Fernando Daz Esteban, Editor), Madrid, 1994, 273-293.
169
At present we are not equipped to reply to these two related questions, but we can at least piece together the few available leads and
pointers.
According to Ribeiro Sanches in his pamphlet on the Origin of the
Designation New Christian in Portugal,.34 families that felt threatened by the Inquisition, either because they had remote Jewish ancestors or because their relatives had been penanced or executed, learnt
the defense mechanism of clamming up. Furtiveness reigned supreme.
The same motives impelled them to make common cause and marry
among themselves, creating a propitious terrain for what Ribeiro
Sanches called Jewish seed. In small towns and villages far from
Lisbon such as Penamacor (Beira Baixa Province), where Ribeiro
Sanches grew up, it was difficult unless by moving away to discard
ones hereditary label and the neighbors vigilance. As a result of this
a solidarity among affected families developed, which in a number of
towns and villages lasted up to and into the twentieth century. Father
Antnio Vieira tells us that in his day there were villages in the proximity of the Spanish border inhabited exclusively by New Christians.35
One of them must have been Caro in the District of Bragana, whose
Jewish personality is even today common knowledge in neighboring
villages. Also far from Lisbon, in the town of Belmonte (Beira Baixa
province), families were discovered by Samuel Schwarz in 1920, practicing Pentateuchal rituals. This is a fossilized, albeit by now somewhat
adulterated, sector of Portuguese society, one of those stones which the
throb of history did not have time to grind and digest.36 In the
high and middle urban bourgeoisie, on the other hand, especially
at Lisbon, family mobility was easier, changes of fortune more
common, trysting and so-called mixed mating more frequent.
Dissolving chameleon-like into different circles, made it impos
34
35
36
170
CHAPTER TEN
sible to mould into fixed and durable form the tenacious structure
which modern historians designate by the term crypto-Judaism.
It would be intriguing to study Old and New Christians
converting to (Inquisitorial) Judaism. We have already encountered Friar Diogo de Assuno, the Old Christian Capuchin monk
whose religious awakening seems to have been brought about by theological and scholastic discussions. Friar Diogo was burnt alive
proclaiming his Judaism.37 Perhaps, with rationalism out of reach and
Protestantism unknown, Judaism, constantly called to mind by trials,
autos-da-f, the books of anti-Jewish propaganda, appeared as the
sole alternative for those who had given up on the Inquisitorial brand
of Catholicism. The victims burnt alive at the autos-da-f provided
Judaism with the additional argument of abundant martyrdom.
Uriel da Costa can perhaps be explained in the light of this hypothesis rather than by an alleged Jewish tradition in the family. Uriel,
baptized Gabriel, was born in Oporto c. 1584. According to his autobiography, written in Amsterdam, his father was a fervent Catholic. His
paternal family seems to have been unscathed by Inquisitorial arrests.
The researches of Prof. Rvah have uncovered that his maternal
grandfather and great-grandmother were arrested in 1543 and 1544,
respectively, before his mothers birth. His grandfather (who had taken
minor orders in the Church and received the tonsure) was sentenced
to abjure de levi (on a slight suspicion) and his great-grandmother
was acquitted. One of his grandfathers sisters, however, was executed
by the Inquisition in 1568 as an incomplete confessant (she refused
to denounce her husband). One of his mothers brothers emigrated to
Amsterdam around 1597 where he was the first to be buried in the
newly opened Jewish cemetery.38
Uriels father was on the way to full integration into Old Christian
society, having earned a title of lower nobility. Uriel himself studied
Canon Law at Coimbra and, like his maternal grandfather, took minor
orders, the first step in an ecclesiastical career, which landed him an
extremely lucrative benefice.
However, around his twentieth year, Uriel experienced a religious
crisis. Endowed with a penetrating, audacious mind, straight as a die,
as he would show during the rest of his life, it suddenly seemed to him
37 Cf. the case of a Galician priest, Vasques de Arajo, who in 1687 declared himself
a convert to Judaism, which he only knew through Catholic writings attacking it. See
Baroja, op. cit., 1, 510-513.
38 See I. S. Rvah, Des Marranes Spinoza, Paris, 1995, 119-168.
171
39
40
172
CHAPTER TEN
Written Law, came from the press and was immediately impounded
and condemned to public burning by the Jewish authorities, although,
as we now know, at least one copy escaped the flames.41 In 1628 he was
reconciled with the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community but,
denounced four years later for not conforming to dietary and other
precepts, he was summoned by the authorities. Refusing to bend he
was once again excommunicated. For seven years he lived in
Amsterdam sequestered from the community and frequently the object
of harassment, until, in 1639, he applied for re-admission. In the long
run, life was impossible in Amsterdam for an exiled Portuguese former
New Christian outside the congregational framework. Uriel had to
submit to a humiliating penance as a condition for lifting his ban. This
involved a public but symbolical flogging inside the synagogue and
then lying down at the door of the synagogue to be stepped over by
the congregation. In April 1640, supposedly in a fit of melancholy
brought on by his degradation, he committed suicide in his room. On
a table near his body was found his spiritual autobiography, written in
Latin. In this brief work he abnegates all revealed religions and
confesses a deity whose only requirement of human beings is to lead
moral lives.42
The story just told.43 contradicts those who believe in the persistence of the Judaic cultic traditions among the Portuguese New Christians. What really happened was that the Jewish tradition disappeared
in the family of Uriel da Costa and he would probably never have
thought about Judaism, let alone reconstructed his utopian version, if
not for the Portuguese Inquisition. This institution was a permanent
reminder of the presence of Judaism and thus offered frustrated
Christian believers an alternative. It finally drove Uriel da Costa, a
man of systematic thought, to a distrust of all forms of religious
dogmatism, whether Christian or Jewish. It is perhaps not fortuitous
that the most radical modern condemnation of religious myths
appeared in the bosom of the Portuguese New Christian-turnedJewish community of Amsterdam and that its celebrated author,
Bento (Baruch) de Espinosa, very likely meditated on the work and
example of Uriel da Costa.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 For the documents concerning the Inquisitors status and functions, see the Collectorio de diversas letras apostolicas, provises reaes e outros papeis, em que se contem a instituyio
& primeiro progresso do Sancto Officio em Portugal & varios privilegios que os Summos Ponctifices & Reys destes Reynos lhe concedero, Lisbon, 1596; second edition, Collectorio das Bullas
e Breves Apostlicos, etc., printed by order of the Inquisitor General Francisco de Castro,
Lisbon, 1634.
2 He owed both appointments to King Philip III. See below, Chapter Twelve, note 2;
Azevedo, Histria, 240-241. Of the many conspirators, three members of the high
nobility (including a father and son) and a major official were beheaded; six commoners
were hung and quartered. Cf. Conde de Ericeira, Histria de Portugal Restaurado, Oporto,
19452 (first edition, 1710), 1; 304, 308-309, 312, 322. Pp. 503-505 of this work contain
three servile letters of self-exoneration to Joo IV from de Castro, written shortly after
his arrest, throwing all the blame on the Archbishop of Braga (who died in prison) and
casting an aspersion on the loyalty to the Portuguese king of the Men of Commerce.
174
CHAPTER ELEVEN
for his part, had no more control over the Inquisition than did the
king. His role was limited to delegating his authority to the Inquisitor
General. The pope was unable to meddle in the trials, act as court of
appeal, etc. The only way he could intervene was to alter the Inquisitions statutes. But the Crown opposed any such initiative on the part
of the Holy See, as interference in Portuguese affairs.
Thus perched between two opposing poles, removable by neither
and in practice not answerable to either, the Inquisitor General
appointed all other Inquisitors, devolving upon them the authority he
himself had received from the pope. Similarly he named all the officials and the so-called familiares, whom we shall soon be coming to.
He was assisted by a Council General of Deputy Inquisitors (deputados), appointed and presided over by him, which functioned as a
court of last appeal. The Council could order arrest without prior
denunciation. It also served the king as an advisory body on matters of
faith and morals, thus functioning as a Royal Council and composing,
with the kings other councilors, the Portuguese Court.
Under the Council Generals supreme authority the three
Portuguese Inquisitorial tribunals of Lisbon, Coimbra and vora operated. The first had jurisdiction over the Portuguese possessions in
Brazil, Western Africa and, until 1560, Eastern Africa and India. In
1560 the only tribunal outside of Portugal was established in Goa,
capital of Portuguese India, which was given jurisdiction over the
entire Orient from Eastern Africa to Timor.3 Each of these tribunals
was made up of a mesa (the administrative desk), of three Inquisitors,
plus a varying number of deputies who would be called upon to vote,
at the beck of the three permanent Inquisitors when important decisions had to be reached. Decisions were always by majority vote, five
suffrages being the minimum quorum. Each tribunal had at its
disposal a bureaucratic and judicial staff (notaries, bailiffs, prosecutor,
lawyers, etc.) and its own prison with its staff of guards, wardens, sheriffs, barbers, physicians, chaplains, etc.4
In the port cities the Inquisition employed inspectors (visitadores)
of foreign ships, including a scribe, a guard and an interpreter, who
were charged with searching all incoming ships for indexed books;
(The letters were reproduced also by Antnio Baio, El-Rei D. Joo IV e a Inquisio,
Academia Portuguesa da Histria, Anais, 6, 1942, 11-70: 26-28.) On the executions and de
Castros release from prison see Francisco Manuel de Mello, Tacito Portuguez (1650), Rio
de Janeiro, 1940, 93-95, 216-217.
3 See Appendix Four, The Portuguese Inquisition in Goa (India).
4 See Regimento do Medico, C,urguio [sic] e Barbeyro do S. Officio, printed undated
broadside in Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.
175
preventing foreign heretics from communicating on matters of religion with native-born Portuguese, taking note of the names and
addresses of new arrivals from foreign parts. In addition to all this, in
the most important towns, there were commissioners of the Holy
Office. These were priests empowered to make arrests, receive denunciations, set up interrogations and do what it takes to protect the
Faith..5
Any temerarious enough to carp at the plethora of ministers
of the Holy Office were soon put in their place. Friar Antnio de
Sousa in his auto-da-f sermon of 1624 felt constrained to refute such
murmuring:
Some people have commented on the great number of ministers [] Is
having many ministers unreasonable when heretics abound? They ought
rather to supplicate God for more workers and a Tribunal in every town..6
5
6
7
176
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If conferred on a man of lowly birth (as it was on occasions few and far
between) the title of familiar instantly upgraded his status and brought
with it a feeling of superiority vis--vis the squire whose cleanness of
blood was insufficiently attested for a diploma. Thus it was particularly
prized by the minority of Old Christian merchants whose profession
linked them with New Christians, for without it any merchant stood in
danger of arrest by the Inquisition. Moreover, the diploma paved
the way to a merchants ennoblement, allowing him to abandon his
despised profession.9 Familiares were exempted from the jurisdiction
of the civil law courts: in criminal cases (except for certain egregious
crimes) they could only be judged by the Inquisition itself, even
when they were the plaintiffs rather than the defendants. They were
also exempt from paying taxes and from mandatory service as municipal councilors. Besides all these fringe benefits they had the right
to wield:
offensive and defensive weapons [] offensive weapons such as sword
and long dagger, or just a short dagger and any defensive weapons of
their choice [] but when they go out to make an arrest or carry out an
act of justice which might require other offensive weapons, they can arm
themselves with any that suit their fancy and need.10
9 See David Grant Smith, The Mercantile Class of Portugal and Brazil in the Seventeenth
Century, a Socio-Economic Study of the Merchants of Lisbon and Bahia, unpublished doctoral
thesis, University of Texas (Austin), 1975, 330. For the period 1620-1690 Smith sampled
364 Lisbon merchants of whom he found 201 to be New Christians, 56 Old Christians
and 107 indeterminate.
10 Traslado, etc., Lisbon, 1685, unnumbered p. 2.
11 See Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Conselho Geral, Book 381, folios 1v-2. The
decree was reproduced by Aboim, op. cit. According to Veiga Torres (art. cit., 109-135:
127, 135) there were 702 familiares from 1570 to 1620; 2,285 from 1621 to 1670; 5,488
from 1671 to 1720; 8,680 from 1721 to 1770; 2,746 from 1771 to 1820. According to
Antnio Borges Coelho (Inquisio de vora, Lisbon, 1987, 1, 71-72) in 1693 there were
211 familiares in the Alentejo, 236 in the area covered by the Coimbra tribunal, 187 in
the area covered by the Lisbon tribunal, for a countrywide total of 634.
177
12
13
178
CHAPTER ELEVEN
17 See Collectorio (1596), 4r-6v, reproduced in facsimile and commented by H. P. Salomon, The Monitorio do Inquisidor Geral of 1536, Background and Sources of Some
Judaic Customs Listed Therein, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Portugus, 1982, 41-64 + 9
of illustrations.
18 There were Spanish and Catalan Edicts of Faith dated 1484, 1512, 1524 and 1525.
The analogies in contents and wording between the first Portuguese one and its Spanish
forerunners suggest textual borrowing rather than empirical knowledge of any Judaic
practices on the part of Portuguese New Christians. Cf. Salomon, art. cit.
179
way, by slashing the throat,19 after first testing the knife with their fingernail and the blood they cover with earth [cf. Leviticus 17, 13-14]. They
abstain from lard, hares, rabbits, choked birds,20 eels, octopuses,
congers, skates, fish lacking scales and other things forbidden to Jews in
the old dispensation.21
19 This condemned method of slaughtering for food is at present the only one practiced in Portugal.
20 The implication is that in those days throttling must have been the common
method of killing birds.
21 These words imply that the new dispensation permits sea creatures lacking fins and
scales, yet the New Testament nowhere explicitly overturns the prohibition on this class
of creatures (as it allegedly does for beasts and birds: see Acts 11, 5-11 and Origen,
Contra Celsum, 2, 1-2).
22 The Monday-Thursday fasts became the single most characteristic Judaic offense
attributed to all New Christian defendants in Portuguese Inquisitorial trials. The codifier Jacob ben Asher, Chief Rabbi of Toledo (c. 1270-1340), refers to them (cf. Tur, Orah
Hayim, hilhot nefilat apayim, 134: Monday and Thursday are days of grace, since Moses
went up the mountain on a Thursday and came down on a Monday and therefore we
have the custom of fasting on them). Their earliest inclusion in a Spanish Edict of Faith
dates from 1524 (Las Palmas, Grand Canary Island). They may derive from the Christian erudition of its redactors. The pseudepigraphic Didache bids Christians not to fast
with the hypocrites (i.e., Pharisees = Jews) on Monday and Thursday. Cf. Luke 18, 12.
In 17th-century trial records (e.g., Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 8051, Ferno lvares Melo,
July 30, 1609) the Inquisitor asks the defendant, among other statutory questions, how
many fasts of the thanis [taanit (rabbinic Hebrew) = fast] of Mondays and Thursdays he
carried out, not eating the whole day until nightfall, after the star appears, in keeping
with and in observance of the Law of Moses (see Salomon, Portrait, 217). The 1640 Regimento lists (p. 156) as Judaic heresies: the keeping of the Passovers of the Jews which
occur in the lunar month of March; of the fasts of the thaniz of Mondays and Thursdays
or of the quipur [Hebrew: atonement], which occurs on their great day of September; the
observance of Sabbaths. See below, note 29.
23 A Catholic selection of seven psalms. Their combination is unknown in Jewish
liturgy.
24 The word atafalis is a strange corruption of Hebrew tefilin, meaning phylacteries.
Until now no Portuguese Inquisitorial trial record is known wherein anyone is
denounced for, interrogated about or confesses to possessing or using phylacteries.
25 As is the present-day custom in Portugal among all non-Jews.
180
CHAPTER ELEVEN
pearl or gold or silver coin, saying that is to pay the first nights lodging.
They mourn their dead by eating at low tables the mourners meal of
fish, eggs and olives. They pour out the water from pitchers and jars
saying that the departeds soul comes to the water to bathe or that the
Destroying Angel washes his sword in the water. They cut and keep the
deceaseds nails. The corpses are buried in virgin soil and in very deep
graves, while those attending bewail them and sing their dirges as the
Jews do.
Other customs listed include throwing iron, bread or wine into jugs
and pots filled with water during the nights of Saint John the Baptist
and Christmas. The Edict concludes with the necessity of verifying
whether parents bless their children by putting their hands on their
head and lowering them along their cheeks without making the sign
of the cross,26 whether they have their sons circumcised or their children secretly given Jewish names.
Following this fairly long list of Judaic practices we find a very
short description of the principal elements of Islam and various nonclassified heresies, deriving either from Protestantism or 16th-century
Spanish mystical movements. One such heresy supposedly denies that
there is either paradise and glory for the righteous or hell for the
wicked, it is all just a matter of being born and dying. We have already
seen that denial of immortality, which goes all the way back to the
Sadducees, seems to have been an undercurrent in 16th-century
Portugal (Spain?) and surfaces with a bang in the da Costa - da Silva
polemic in Amsterdam (1623-1624).27 Another heretical opinion is
metempsychosis, which in Spain goes back to 13th-century Jewish
cabalism.28
In time the Edicts of Faith were systemized, refined, added to,
pruned. A short, undated Edict, replacing the one of 1536, is included
in the 1640 Regimento.29 Among items eliminated are circumcision, the
Jewish manner of slaughtering poultry and the ceremonies of the
nights of St. John and Christmas. But ominously this Edicts list of
Judaic practices ends with the formula; or by doing any other action
which might seem to be in observance of the Law of Moses. This word
26 To slide ones hands down ones own face was a Judaic practice confessed by
numerous New Christians who misunderstood the nature of the practice they were
required to confess. See H. P. Salomon, The Portuguese Background of Menasseh Ben
Israels Parents as Revealed Through the Inquisitorial Archives at Lisbon, Studia Rosenthaliana, 17, 2, 1983, 105-147: 121.
27 See the previous chapter.
28 Menasseh Ben Israel (De Resurrectione Mortuorum, Amsterdam, 1636, 117) claims
that Lisbon-born Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) believed in metempsychosis.
29 Pp. 207-210.
181
seem allows any action which by its singularity might attract attention
or suspicion of neighbors to be a matter for denunciation..30 The list
preserves if less extensively the reference to those who deny
immortality of the soul averring that there is nothing but birth and
death; metempsychosis has fallen by the wayside. On the other hand
Protestant deviations are augmented with references to Luther and
Calvin and their faith-above-good-works doctrine, criticism of indulgences and papal supremacy, etc. The doctrine that holds usury and
simple fornication not to be mortal sins makes its first appearance as
do seduction of males or females by priests in the confessional and
the nefarious and abominable sin of sodomy. Another important
innovation: any former Inquisitorial prisoner overheard confiding that
he had falsely confessed offenses he had never committed or denigrating or defaming the procedure and righteous ministry of the
Holy Office must be denounced. This disposition implicitly makes the
righteous procedure of the Holy Office an article of faith (something
that was denied by a member of the General Council of the Inquisition
who opposed the arrest of Manuel Fernandes Vilareal in 1649.31), and
to divulge the secret of the Inquisitorial trial now becomes an offense
tantamount to pacts with the Devil or bigamy. Failure to denounce
these offenses entails major excommunication, ipso facto incurrenda.
To the categories of potential Inquisitorial defendants, not listed in
the new Edict nor in the 1613 Regimento, the 1640 Regimento (III, 9)
adds supporters of heresy (defined as those who refuse to testify
against heretics) and impeders of the Holy Office. The latter,
besides incurring excommunication and other penalties, were to be
publicly flogged or sentenced to the galleys. State or court officials,
who, in the exercise of their jurisdiction oppose in any manner or
by any means the activities of the Inquisition; also persons of whatever rank or eminence who promulgate any statue or decree that
encroaches upon the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, all of these are
30 Three manuscript versions of the Edict, dated 1594, 1597 and 1611, are extant in
the National Archives of the Torre do Tombo. The 1594 version we have consulted
includes removing the sinew from the hindquarter (tirar a lndoa do quarto traseiro)
(see Genesis 32, 32) and casting three rounded balls of dough into the fire (a practice
related to Jewish ritual when baking bread). The two we have not consulted may include
practices which were standard accusations and confessions, such as sweeping the house
the wrong way (varrer a casa s avessas: See Edward Glaser, Invitation to Intolerance,
Hebrew Union College Annual, 27, 1956, 327-385: 353-355); cutting away the fat and
drawing the blood from the meat that comes from the butcher; adding onion fried in
olive oil to cooked meat; mentioning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when blessing ones
children.
31 See above, Chapter Five.
182
CHAPTER ELEVEN
32
183
But the popes say in these matters was accepted as a matter of course.
By his brief of June 7, 1548, the pope had conceded the New Christians of Portugal a ten-year exemption from confiscation. Yet from
Queen Catarinas charter of 1558 it would seem that the initiative for
such exemption is a royal prerogative. It was explained that the 1548
brief had been solicited by King Joo III, whose intention and will it
was to favor those of the said Nation in the matter of the said estates,
which in those cases continue to belong to them. The 1558 charter,
which extended the 1548 exemption for another ten years, was a royal
33 The case, which dragged on for years, was finally settled by the king in favor of the
Inquisition. See Rodrigues, Histria dos Jesuitas em Portugal, 3, 1, 479-483.
34 This document concerning Inquisitorial confiscation and those cited below were
published by Antnio Baio, Estudos sobre a Inquisio Portuguesa, Boletim da Segunda
Classe, Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa, 13, 1918-1919, 784-827. For the history and mode
of Inquisitorial confiscations in Spain, see Jos Martinez Milln, La Hacienda de la
Inquisicin (1478-1700), Madrid, 1984, 59-81. A comparative study of Spanish and
Portuguese Inquisitorial confiscation is a desideratum.
184
CHAPTER ELEVEN
35
185
36
186
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The product of confiscation must have run into dizzy figures. Of the
some 18,000 people put on trial by the Inquisition at Lisbon between
1540 and 1760, the great majority were bourgeois. The intense persecution of New Christians that took place between 1660 and 1685
(even though the Inquisition lay dormant from 1674-1682) netted
2,402 victims in vora (55 executed), 1,621 in Coimbra (77 executed)
and 871 in Lisbon (18 executed), a grand total of 4,894 victims
(150 executed). During 1672-1674 the Inquisition of Lisbon fairly
decimated the merchant-bankers. To take just a single example. In
1672 the financial magnate Ferno Rodrigues Penso was arrested. He
lived on the Rossio in a large house filled with precious furniture,
rare and inlaid woodwork, paintings, silver tableware and more than
40 silver decanters and cups. In addition, he owned a bag of brute
diamonds, jewelry of gold and other precious stones, doubloons, etc.
The total value of his houses contents was estimated at the time of
confiscation at 9,000,000 reals. Outstanding debts of individuals as
well as the State totaled 90,000,000 reals. In addition, he owned a
country estate at Palhav, sedan-chairs, horses, etc. To gain some
perspective on these figures, one might compare them with Mauros in
his book on Portugal and the Atlantic. In 1665 the total expenses of
the Lisbon Municipality (200,000 inhabitants) were approximately
9,600,000 reals.39 This Ferno Rodrigues Penso belonged to the category of big fish caught by the Inquisition, but he is only one among
many and far from the plumpest.
The figures of confiscated material can be inferred also from the
successive financial bids made by representatives of the New Christians
for the suspension or abolition of confiscation and an amnesty. In 1577
they negotiated for 9,000,000 reals (= 225,000 cruzados) a ten-year
37
38
39
187
40
41
188
CHAPTER ELEVEN
189
48
We summarize the results of the Royal Inquiry as reported by Baio, op. cit., 1, 167-193.
190
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The kings inquiry also reveals that more than sixty silver pieces of
Dr. Antnio Homem had been taken by Pedro Homem de Resende,
treasurer of the Coimbra Tribunal, to a silversmith, to erase the
Homem escutcheon and replace it with the Resendes. The silversmith,
Pero Mendes, did the work and had a good reason for doing so: he
himself had just left the Inquisitorial prison after being penanced at
an auto-da-f. Later in the course of the inquiry it transpired that the
same Resendes clan had also appropriated real estate that had
belonged to Dr. Homem.
These are just a few of the findings of the 1627 inquiry. They go
beyond cutting corners or even violations of rules. Let us first of all
take note of the infringers identity: an Inquisitor General, several other
Inquisitors, a Treasurer of the Holy Office. These men, despite what the
inquiry unearthed, continued their careers and even, in the case of the
Coimbra Inquisitors, went on to become bishops. The king did not have
leave to dismiss them. It would seem that the investigation was prompted
less by the scandal than the kings curiosity as to his share of confiscations
and that for once he would not be slaked by the Inquisitors stock-in-trade
explanation, that the product of the confiscation did not cover their
expenses. What comes out of this investigation is that the irregularities
were, in fact, regular and practiced, not by mischievous subordinates,
but by those who made and enforced the rules. The embezzlement of the
confiscated estates was institutional. It was governed not by law but by
custom, just as customary as supercilious replies to requests for legal restitution, made by former prisoners. In a formal appeal to the Holy See in
1628, the New Christians protested that when an entitled party came to
reclaim his belongings,
he was told by the Judge of Confiscation that no ready cash was available;
that he should wait until other Jews were arrested and with their money
he would be reimbursed.49
49
50
191
51 Cf. Friar Antnio de Sousas words, cited above, Chapter Three, n. 1: [The Holy
Office] is an angelic tribunal devoid of passions and of regard for human considerations
and it is with our eyes fixed on God and on the weal of the Faith that its affairs are
conducted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1
2
The transfer occurred on November 16, 1579. See Baio, Estudos, Document 3.
Cardinal-Archduke Albert of Austria, Viceroy of Portugal 1583-1593, was Inquisitor
General 1586-1596; Pedro de Castilho, Inquisitor General 1604-1614 was simultaneously Viceroy of Portugal 1605-1608, 1612-1614; Ferno Martins Mascarenhas was
Inquisitor General 1616-1628 and also Member of the State Council; Francisco de
Castro was Inquisitor General 1630-1653 and also Member of the State Council, both
under King Philip III (1633-1640) and under King Joo IV (1640-1653).
193
In this letter to the pope the king added that New Christian
emigration to Flanders was depriving the Crown of revenue.
As already noted, Inquisitorial oppression tightened ever further
the nexus between New Christians and business, to the extent that it
excluded them from all other careers. In a memorial addressed to
King Philip II by the People of the Nation of Portugal around 1601,
they make the point that shutting them out of the professions narrows
their scope, fairly shoving them into the financial arena. This, they go
on to explain, is how they have come to be the wheelers and dealers
of the Portuguese empires thriving sugar trade. Moreover, their role
as intermediaries between the Portuguese and Spanish empires
boosted the Royal Customs revenues.4 As we have seen in Chapter
Nine, Martin de Zellorigo in his Apology for the Portuguese New
Christians (Madrid, 1619) attributed the People of the Nations near
monopoly on commerce to the fact that all other avenues of advancement were blocked to them. The same explanation is given in the
other Apology analyzed in Chapter Nine, by the Portuguese economist Duarte Gomes Solis (Madrid, 1628): for lack of rewards and
honors the New Christians turn their energies to trading because
commerce is the one profitable area open to them in Portugal..5
Another side-effect of persecution was the New Christians
dispersal, members of the same family often forming networks of
world trade. The web spun out of family relationships facilitated international trading so that a prodigious slice of overseas trade became
the perquisite of the Portuguese New Christians. The Rodrigues de
vora family furnishes an example. This family descended from the
Spanish court rabbi Abraham Seneor (baptized in 1492, taking the
name Fernando Prez Coronel), and from Master Toms da Veiga,
physician in ordinary to King Manuel, scion of a family (original
Jewish name unknown) that had entered Portugal in 1492.6 In their
new Portuguese home they became the mainstay of a world trade
center. At the close of the 16th century Manuel Rodrigues de vora,
great-grandson of Abraham Seneor, installed himself at Antwerp
where he created a mercantile enterprise together with a nephew
3 See Corpo Diplomatico Portuguez, 4, 231-234: 231; the kings letter of January 13,
1545: 5, 330-343: 337.
4 See Baroja, Los Judos, 2, 37.
5 See Solis, Alegacin en favor de las Indias Orientales, Amzalak editon, 211.
6 See Jos Gentil da Silva, La Stratgie des Affaires Lisbonne, Introduction.; Rodrigues, Histria dos Jesuitas, 2, 1, 341-343.
194
CHAPTER TWELVE
7
8
9
195
196
CHAPTER TWELVE
aries, there were the traders in manpower, who shipped slaves from
Africa to Brazil, not to mention all kinds of contraband. But for the
New Christians this was not their only avenue of income. Other
sources included contracting to the State and loan-banking, inherited,
as it were, from their remote Jewish ancestors. The importance of such
loans to the State or to individuals, transpires from inventories
included in the Inquisitorial trial records that frequently list debts
owed the defendants by nobles, religious institutions and even
convents.13 From an exhaustive study of these inventories (allowing
for the compilers tendency to leave undeclared some of their assets,
shielded from the Inquisitions insatiable confiscatory guzzlers) it
might be possible to follow the economic decline of many an aristocratic house and the redistribution of their wealth, including entails,
among the commercial classes. The State debts were crucial in the
economy of the 16th and 17th centuries. Sometimes they are direct
loans, then again open credit and the advancement of funds, often for
the purchase of arms and other military supplies. These loans were not
always paid in cash, but in advantages, royal privileges and graces,
whether collective or individual. We shall return to this point. Another
activity that passed from the medieval Jews to the 16th and 17thcentury New Christians was the collection of duties and State taxes.
So the Portuguese Dispersion developed into one of the financial
organs of Europe. Duarte Gomes Solis, in his previously analyzed
Alegacin en favor de las Indias Orientales, picturesquely portrays these
Portuguese in action: In the Rua Nova of Lisbon, without getting off
their bobtail mules, these merchants, the most trusted financiers of
Europe, scribble on scraps of paper letters of credit honored in all
European cities, payable in local coin. Duarte Gomes weighs the relative success of the 16th-century Genovese and the current Portuguese
traders. In his reckoning the latter have the edge because their grid of
kinsmen and associates that hyphenates the cities, ports and isles of
northern Europe had enabled them even a century earlier, in partnership with Lombards, to regulate the spice and other India trade.
In Antwerp alone there were at one time more than 200 substantial
Portuguese merchant families [] The Genovese concentrated their
activity in a few select cities; the Portuguese merchants are all over
Europe and have credit everywhere.14
13 See Smith, op. cit., passim. Smith studied the inventories included in the Inquisitorial trials of c. 50 New Christian merchants.
14 See Gomes Solis, op. cit., Amzalak edition, 67-69, 210-211.
197
This economic power-station might be compared to a meteoric, gravitational movement, impacting from afar. At the outset superficial
and cyclical, in due course it transforms and restructures the whole
system which it penetrates. The Inquisitorial plunder, on the other
hand under pretense of lawful confiscation might have been
interpreted, at the time of its institution, as a primitive precursor of a
capital gains tax on assets which escaped the traditional forms of
feudal appropriation. Yet, as we know, the royal power (the government) was defrauded of its cut of the spoils. Instead this vast revenue
stagnated in a sterile enterprise the Inquisition. We shall now show
how the Inquisition and royal power came to bifurcate.
The question was who would benefit by the impounded assets of the
New Christians. As we have seen, the product of confiscation legally
belonged to the king but, administered by the Fisc (an appointee of
the Inquisitor General), it was, in fact, appropriated by the Tribunal of
the Holy Office. Nevertheless, quite early on, the royal power found a
way of getting round the Inquisition: by selling the interested parties
a dispensation or suspension of the confiscation, or other collective or
198
CHAPTER TWELVE
18
19
199
Portugal was falling prey to Judaism. While this tug-of-war was going
on, the Inquisitor Antnio de Sousa from the pulpit of an auto-da-f,
warned the high-placed protectors of the New Christians that:
The impudence of these people far removed from the Faith has broken
all bounds in this country, where they have received such great benefits.
They dare publicly to oppose the Sacred Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, attempting to defame it by means of false depositions and to
destroy the Faith itself with their iniquitous contentions [] I ask you,
therefore: when we pray for the discomfiture of the Jewish perfidy, who
is it that grumbles? Is it the Christian or the Jew? Obviously: the Jew. The
Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition proceeds against many crimes and its
manner of proceeding is always the same.
20
21
200
CHAPTER TWELVE
Around this time the church hierarchy went into action. A junta of
bishops meeting at Tomar between May and August 1629 submitted to
the king a shopping-list of policies relating to New Christians. High on
the agenda was the proposal to expel anybody penanced at an autoda-f for Judaizing. At the same time a junta in Madrid (presided by
the kings confessor Friar Antonio de Sotomayor, named Spanish
Inquisitor General in 1632) was examining the recriminations of the
23 The royal decree of August 27, 1628 founding the Company as well as its 68-clause
Regimento were published by Jos Gentil da Silva, Alegao a favor da Companhia
Portuguesa da ndia Oriental, Associao Portuguesa para o Progresso das Cincias, 13. Congresso, Lisbon, 1950, 8, 465-537: 486-528. The Company did not prosper and was
dissolved in 1633. See Chandra Richard de Silva, The Portuguese East India Company,
1628-1633, Luso-Brazilian Review, 11, 1974, 152-205; Anthony R. Disney, Twilight of
the Pepper Empire, Portuguese Trade in Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century,
Cambridge (Mass.), 1978, 71-100.
24 Alegacin en favor de la Compaia de la India Oriental. See above, Chapter Nine.
25 Letter to the king of December 6, 1627. See Azevedo, Cristos-Novos, 190; Coelho,
vora, 2, 50.
201
Portuguese New Christians and considering more concessions to alleviate their plight and facilitate their access to public office.26
To pep up their counter-attack the Inquisitors (whose agenda did
not coincide with the bishops) mobilized popular sentiment; and luck
not necessarily unaided was on their side. On January 16, 1630
news swept Portugal that the sacrarium in Lisbons church of Santa
Engrcia had been burglarized during the previous night and that the
thief had made off with its consecrated wafers.27 The next day posters
appeared on walls all over the city reading: May the Holy Sacrament
202
CHAPTER TWELVE
forever be praised. That night some people saw or claimed they saw
armed men, holding lanterns, ripping off the posters or scrawling over
them Long live the Law of Moses. In the town of Portalegre a dead
dog was found transpierced on a crucifix. Public opinion was conditioned to demand a New Christian scapegoat. In Coimbra, Lisbon,
vora and Braga students boycotted classes, demanding the screening
and expulsion of New Christian students. The University of vora,
which had many New Christian students, was temporarily closed.28
Finally a certain Simo Pires Solis,29 who had been seen riding home
in the vicinity of Santa Engrcia on the night of January 16 to 17, was
arrested, tried, repeatedly subjected to severe torture to reveal accomplices and condemned to death a year later by a civil tribunal.30 for
the purported crime, on the counts of being a restless man [he had a
history of breaches of the peace] and a New Christian. The motive
given in the sentence is revenge for good friends arrested by the Inquisition.31 Solis was killed on Monday, February 3, 1631.32 First his hands
were amputated and then he was consigned alive to the flames. The
sham trial and judicial murder of Simo Pires Solis gained new enthusiasm for the Inquisition among the masses.33 The real author of the
28
29
203
34 According to Guimares (op. cit., 82-83) he was a Portuguese boy who had been a
servant in a Lisbon monastery. Guimares cites but does not disclose the whereabouts
of an authenticated document sent to Lisbon containing his confession and other
details.
35 See Honda de David con Cinco Sermones o piedras [] contra Hereges Sacramentarios y
Iudios baptizados en el Reyno de Portugal [] por la occasion del robo sacrilego cometido en la
Iglesia Parroquial de Santa Engracia en la Ciudad de Lisboa, predicados y compuestos por el Dotor
Timotheo de Ciabra Pimentel Portugues, Predicador en la dicha Ciudad y Reyno de Portugal,
Barcelona, 1631, cited by Helga Bauer, Die Predigt als Spiegel politischer und socialer
Ereignisse: Zur Judenfrage im Jahre 1630 in Portugal, Aufstze zur Portugiesischen
Kulturgeschichte, 11, 1974, 26-67: 50-63. Sermons, boringly anti-Jewish, were delivered in
Lisbon every year between 1630 and 1747 on the anniversary of the Sacrilege of Santa
Engrcia; of these, no less than 73 were published. See Helga Bauer, Shnungspredigten im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Portugal, ibid., 12, 1975, 12-77.
204
CHAPTER TWELVE
with other Portuguese, they would scourge and pass through fire a
statue of Christ. Interrogated by the Inquisitor, the boy gave his name:
Andrs Nunes (Andresillo), said his parents had been denounced for
not eating pork but that in reality they tied a Christ with a rope and
scourged him with thorns. Then his father would hold the figure by
the feet and his mother by the head as they passed it through fire. This
they would do secretly in the kitchen but he had seen it through a
crevice. On September 8 the Inquisitor took the boy to his parents
home and convinced himself that he could have peered into the
kitchen from the garden of the patio. There was a rosebush which the
boy said had furnished the thorns for the flagellation. On September
10 this information was forwarded to Toledo. A search in the apartment failed to discover an image of Christ. On September 17
Andresillo was brought back to his parents home by don Pedro
Pacheco, a member of the Council of the Inquisition. Asked to describe
the size, color and material of the whipped image, he pointed to
Pacheco, said the image looked and was dressed jut like him and that
he could not remember whether it was made of wood or another material. He showed Pacheco where the image had been suspended, but
Pacheco retorted that there was not enough room there to hold a
Christ of the size described. Andresillo became flustered and was
returned to prison. Pacheco described him as of low intelligence. On
June 28, 1631 Andresillo formally ratified his testimony and spontaneously added that the thorns had been brought from Portugal. He
had evidently forgotten about the rosebush in the back of the garden.
His parents, he added, would first attach pins to the thorns. During
the flagellation the statue spoke and asked why they were whipping it
and his parents replied that they had to do it. On September 5, 1631
Andresillos sister Ana Rodrigues, 12, was brought from Madrid to
Toledo and, still apparently unacquainted with the central charge,
confessed on September 17 only that some years earlier she had
been initiated into the Law of Moses. On September 24, however,
she asked for a hearing and confessed that her parents had whipped
a Christ a few times and once it spoke. On May 15 she confessed that
her father had twice ordered her and her sister to hold the Christ while
he and others beat it. Andresillos testimony and details culled from
others confessions (the statue had regularly bled as well as spoken;
other images had been whipped and wept) were used to convict all the
members of the group for complicity. Yet on November 26, 1631 the
Madrid Inquisitor who had interrogated Andresillo in 1630 informed
the Toledo Inquisitors that the Council of the Inquisition in Madrid
had found the boys testimony unsubstantial.
205
36 This was the third full-fledged auto general de fe in the open air, out of four held in
Madrid during the 17th century. On the rarity of such celebrations in 17th-century Spain,
in contrast with their frequency in Portugal, see above, Chapter Six, note 3.
37 Both were pulled down in 1837 to make room for the Plaza de Bilbao.
206
CHAPTER TWELVE
38 See for the Cristo de la Paciencia episode Yosef Hayim Yerushalmis well documented
and personally researched account in his From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, New York,
1971, 105-122.
39 For a General Amnesty and the modification of the Portuguese Inquisitions styles,
in 1630 a corporate payment to the Crown was offered and apparently accepted, variously reported as amounting to 150,000, 200,000 and 240,000 ducats. As late as March
25, 1631, in a letter oozing human sympathy and cordiality towards the Portuguese New
Christians, Philip III expressed his opinion that a General Amnesty could not be denied
them and affirmed his belief in their Catholic piety. It was published by Antonio
Domnguez Ortiz, Los Judeoconversos en Espaa y Amrica, Madrid, 1971, 68-69. Cf.
Appendix Seven.
40 Azevedo, Cristos-Novos, 216-217. Azevedos treatment of the period of conflict
between King Philip III and the Portuguese Inquisition (1627-1631), ending with the
latters triumph, is heavily indebted to the sheaf of documents purchased by Elkan
Nathan Adler in Madrid and published by him in the Revue des tudes Juives, 48-51,
1904-1906. The originals, consisting of 103 numbered leaves, are preserved in the
Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Ms. Spanish 31). The unpublished continuation of the documents, numbered 104-623 (leaves 458-507 are missing),
unknown to Adler and Azevedo, is in the Library of the Hispanic Society of America
(Ms. HC: 363/141). It awaits analysis.
41 Azevedo, Cristos-Novos, 180-192.
207
42 Id., op. cit., 236-237; Baroja, Los Judos, 2, 46; Id., La Sociedad Cripto-Juda, 52;
Azevedo, Histria de Antnio Vieira, 1, 83.
43 See F. Rodrigues, Histria dos Jesuitas, 1, 1, 693-697.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
at the risk of opposing Father Ignacio, were from the inception of the
Jesuit order in Portugal zealous defenders of the cleanness of blood
doctrine. We know the role reserved for the Jesuits in the auto-da-f as
confessors to the condemned. Jesuits also carried out Inquisitorial functions at the mesa (Manuel lvares Tavares, S.J., Head Inquisitor of the
Lisbon Tribunal from about 1590 until his promotion to the General
Council in 1610 was known as the most methodical and cruel Portuguese
Inquisitor of all times.44) and as Book Censors, such as Father Baltasar
lvares, S.J., who drew up the Portuguese Index of forbidden books in
1624. The Inquisitors General Pedro de Castilho (1604-1614) and Ferno
Martins Mascarenhas (1616-1628) were protgs of the Jesuits whose
emblem was reproduced on the title-page of the rule book of 1613.
By 1643 this alliance was dissolved.
1643 was the year of the renowned kerfuffle over apples (described
in Chapter Eleven) in the vora market, between Jesuits and Inquisitors. On that occasion the king sided with the Inquisitors, but the
Jesuits appealed to the pope and, from one wave to another were by
1644 pressing the pope for reforms to the Tribunal. The apple basket
was the catalyst for the Jesuits to come of age and disengage from
Inquisitorial hegemony. This evolution could not have come about
without the wider re-structuring we are trying to characterize.
The first to raise openly at court the New Christian issue was a
Jesuit and an intimate advisor of Joo IV: Father Antnio Vieira. In
1643 he drafted his first tract in favor of the New Christians. Identifying them, as we have seen, with the mercantile bourgeoisie, he
recommended liberty of commerce and the ennoblement of
merchants as a way of enticing funds into the war chest of the Spanish
campaign. He published this tract the following year. On August 21,
1644, in a sermon preached in the Church of Saint Roch, Vieira
presented a plan for the formation of trading companies to be
financed by New Christians.45 Vieira summarized the plight of the
newly independent kingdom: all resources had dried up, including
confiscation, minting and other sources of extraordinary revenues.
The war chests were empty; the country was virtually unarmed, pregnable should Spain invade, as invade she must once she has made
peace with France. The income from Brazil was down to a trickle and
would soon dry up because Angola had been taken by the Dutch,
44
45
209
46
210
CHAPTER TWELVE
47
Cartas do Padre Antnio Vieira (ed. J. Lcio de Azevedo), Coimbra, 1925, 1, 102.
211
48 Summary of and excerpts from the trial record of Duarte da Silva in Baio, Episdios Dramticos, 2, 253-347.
49 Letter of August 13, 1657. See Corpo Diplomtico Portuguez, 13, 450-456.
212
CHAPTER TWELVE
50
51
52
213
53
54
214
CHAPTER TWELVE
56 See Padre Antnio Vieira, Cartas, 3, letter dated May 5, 1674 to Padre Manuel
Fernandes.
57 Cunha, Instruces, 71, 87; Azevedo, op. cit., 363.
58 Id., op. cit., 276. The original printed Edict was reproduced by Baio, art. cit. supra,
n. 52.
215
which often coincided with its own, and the Inquisitorial ideology, to
which it was forced to pay lip service or even vassalage. The Inquisition was exploiting the latent antagonism between king and pope.
During King Joo IVs reign it had extracted from the pope briefs that
annulled royal orders; during the regency (1668-1683) and reign
(1683-1706) of Pedro II, it suited the Inquisition to egg the king on to
resist the popes interference and even disobey papal bulls.
The last phase in the ding-dong between New Christians and Inquisition plays out in the years 1673-1681. On the initiative and through
the mediation of the Jesuits, the New Christians offered to finance
once again an East India Company on the model of the British and
Dutch East India Companies, in exchange for a general amnesty and
drastic reforms in Inquisitorial procedure.59 The proposal was drawn
up at the beginning of 1673 by a Jesuit, Father Baltasar da Costa,
Provincial of the Malabar coast of India and presented to the king by
another Jesuit, his confessor, Father Manuel Fernandes. Father Vieira,
in Rome at the time, was lobbying for the proposal together with other
Jesuits and New Christians. The regent Pedro, after consultations with
his confessor, gave his consent and informed the pope and the
Portuguese ambassador in Rome that he was supporting the New
Christians. But the shakiness of his throne which he had usurped from
his brother Afonso VI along with Queen Maria-Francisca, who became
Pedros wife after her marriage to Afonso VI had been annulled, gave
the Inquisitors some welcome leverage. As soon as the news reached
Lisbon, riots broke out, stirred up by Inquisitors and partisans of the
dethroned and de-wived king, now in Azorean exile. A report was
spread to the effect that the regent had been kidnapped. The army
was called in to prevent an insurrection at Lisbon. Pedro, intimidated,
thought it the better part of valor to kowtow ever more to the Inquisitors. While this was going on the Legislative Assembly was convoked in
order to acknowledge as heir apparent to the throne Pedros and his
sister-in-laws daughter, conceived so it was bruited before their
legal marriage.60 The Inquisitors did not throw away the opportunity
59 The New Company for East India was finally launched in 1687 but, beset by
dissension and commercial failures, it was dissolved in 1699.
60 On March 27, 1669 Maria-Francisca-Isabel of Savoys marriage with Afonso VI was
annulled. On April 2, 1669 Pedro II married her. Their daughters birth was announced
nine months and four days later, on January 6, 1670. Baptism was delayed until March
2, awaiting Papal confirmation of the Infantas legitimacy, which did not, however, stifle
the rumors. The Legislative Assembly was convened to declare the Infanta Isabel heir
presumptive on January 20, 1674.
216
CHAPTER TWELVE
So feeble was the position of the Regent Pedro, or of his character, that
he did not object when each of the three Estates, undercutting his
authority, wrote directly to the pope recommending the Inquisitorial
delegation. He himself wrote in the same tenor; so did the Queen,
supposedly of her own accord. The Portuguese resident in Rome,
caught between the representatives of the Inquisitors and those of the
New Christians, who also carried recommendations from Pedro, was in
a quandary. The pope and his cardinals inclined towards the New
Christians, believing or dissembling belief that the latter were backed
by Pedro.
The Account of the Cruelties and similar writings having registered,
the pope issued a brief on October 3, 1674 suspending the Portuguese
Inquisition and ordering all cases of heresy in Portugal referred to
himself. The regent was neither consulted nor advised so that this
foreign interference piqued his pride (or amour propre) enough to make
him rush to the defense of his Inquisition. The occasion presented
itself almost immediately. The post of Inquisitor General fell vacant.
The partisans of the New Christians espoused the candidacy of the
kings confessor, Father Manuel Fernandes, with his pro-New Christian
record. Instead the appointment went to Dr. Verssimo de Lencastre,
of the House of the Dukes of Aveiro, a man inimical to New Christians
and zealous for the Tribunals prerogatives. The route may have been
serpentine but the outcome straightforward enough: the Inquisition
got its way.
In these shifted alignments it was now Holy See versus King and
Inquisition, odd brothers-in-adversity. Their game of defiance reached
its zenith with the pope summoning the Portuguese Inquisitors to
submit some trial records to him. The regent, deploring this further
interference in national affairs, confiscated the keys to the Inquisitorial
archives. The Inquisitors supported him, even though they may not
61
217
62 See Azevedo, op. cit., 313-323. It is perhaps not a coincidence that 1680 marked the
climax of the Spanish Inquisitions persecution of Portuguese New Christians. At the
auto general de fe on June 30 of that year, held on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid in the
presence of the young Charles II and his bride Louise Marie dOrlans, newly arrived
from France, 118 persons were sentenced in actuality or in effigy. Of these the 86 (mostly
interrelated) Judaizers were identified as Portuguese (born in Portugal, of Portuguese
parents or origin). No less than 21 persons were executed (an all-time record) of whom
8 (including one Islamizer) burnt alive. A 308-page book by Joseph del Olmo (who
was its major-domo) triumphantly describes every ghastly detail of this, the grandest
aristocratic Court happening in Spanish history, probably the last auto general de fe held
in Madrid (see above, note 36). The unique book (Relacion historica del auto general de fe
que se celebro en Madrid este ao de 1680 con assistencia del Rey N. S. Carlos II y de las Magestades de la Reina N. S. y la augustissima Reina Madre, Madrid, 1680) awaits a modern annotated edition and an anthropological analysis. (On the book and the famous painting of
the event by Francisco Rizi in Madrids Prado Museum, see Maria Victoria Caballero
Gmez, El Auto de F de 1680. Un lienzo para Francisco Rizi, Revista de la Inquisicin,
3, 1994, 69-140.) A close second in the perverse gongorism of its description is the
shorter Relacin del auto de fe de 1672, Granada, 1672, reprinted by Maria Isabel Prez
de Colosia Rodrguez (Auto inquisitorial de 1672, el criptojudasmo en Mlaga, Mlaga,
1984). At this Granada auto general de fe, out of 90 penitents, 79 were sentenced for
judaizing, six of them executed, one burnt alive. Of the 79 Judaizers 76 are described
as residents of Mlaga, 57 are identified as Portuguese, of whom 32 actually born in
Portugal.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
219
220
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
country to trammel the Men of Commerce. Another emissary, Francisco de Sousa Coutinho, ambassador to the Netherlands, also an
acquaintance of Vieiras, took the liberty of writing a letter to the
queen regent in 1657, formally accusing the Inquisitors of thievery
and hindering Portugals independence. Vieiras circle included
Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, another ambassador to Paris, author of a
Discourse on the Introduction of the Arts into Portugal. This book
advocates a Colbertian economic policy (after the French statesman
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 1619-1683, originator of the mercantile
theory). Macedo must have been reckoned a sworn enemy of the
Inquisition,2 because during the war on its style, around 1673,
Father Vieira had made him privy to what was brewing in Rome.
Others in the know were aristocrats such as Rodrigo de Meneses, the
Marquis de Fronteira and the Duke of Cadaval.3
A generation later the anti-Inquisitorial faction attracts even higher
profile figures. The Knight of Oliveira mentions the philosopher
Martinho de Mendona Pina e Proena, who died in 1743, widely traveled in Europe. He was chief archivist of the Torre do Tombo National
Archives and librarian to King Joo V. He polemized with the Spanish
rationalist Father Feijoo (1676-1764), but is remembered chiefly as the
first Portuguese to publicly question Aristotle. He was the author of
Notes for the Education of a Scion of the Nobility (1737), that went
through several reprints. It proved to be the precursor of another work
on the same subject by Ribeiro Sanches. It would be nice to imagine
Pina e Proena allowing perhaps gently nudging his young
friend Oliveira to read Father Vieiras manuscripts which were in his
custody at the Royal Library. Our informant also names some priests
who were critical of the Inquisition, even while in its service: Father
Hiplito Moreira, S.J., member of the Royal Academy; Father Manuel
Guilherme, O.P.; Father Manuel Ribeiro of the Congregation of the
Oratory of Saint Philip of Nery.4 We are well aware of the Jesuits antiInquisitorial orientation, ever since the Restoration, and suspect a
similar tendency in the Congregation of the Oratory, breeding ground
of religious and pedagogical modernizers, future associates of the
Marquis de Pombal. Speaking of the Congregation of the Oratory, Lus
Mendes de Frana, a Lisbon merchant, before his arrest in 1683, asked
Father Bartolomeu do Quental, founder of this order in Portugal,
2 The idea that Macedo was opposed to the Inquisition is contested by I. S. Rvah in
his surrebutter (Appendix Three).
3 See J. Lcio dAzevedo, Histria de Antnio Vieira, 2, 1931, 166-167.
4 For these names, see Oliveira, op. cit., 33-35.
221
222
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
public and State interest, called for a total overhaul of the Tribunal of
the Holy Office, freedom of conscience in Portugal, the re-creation of
a Jewish quarter in Lisbon; the execution of those who opt for Christianity but then Judaize; the substitution of civil procedure for the
Inquisitorial one; the suppression of confiscation and the transfer of
money and property of condemned persons to their heirs. Da Cunha
warned his reforms would be slow to implement; why, even the royal
childrens preceptors, imbued with terror of the Holy Office, were still
transmitting that fear to their young charges.8
Change loped with longer strides than da Cunha had envisaged.
King Joo V, staunch patron of monks and nuns, had engaged as
private secretary Father Bartolomeu de Gusmo (1685-1724) an adept
of mechanical science who spent his free time experimenting with
flying machines. This priest was denounced as a Judaizer, although in
fact he had Protestant sympathies and was to be arrested on this count
by the Inquisition. He fled to Toledo where he died.9 The king, as if
having lost his scruples through contact with a heretic, replaced
Bartolomeu with his brother Alexandre de Gusmo, who made it a
habit to snub the Inquisitors. Now the myth of blood purity was
becoming a subject of pendulous and grotesque research. Scholars
were falling over themselves crafting pure genealogies in which families who paid for them might gleefully ogle their Jew-free lineage. Lus
da Cunha held the Inquisition responsible for the genealogical mania
that was seizing Portugal. Alexandre de Gusmo, making some calculations, waggishly asked the members of the Confraternity of the
Nobility whether all the 32,530,432 ancestors in the twentieth degree
of each Portuguese applying for membership had to be of pure blood
or have been a Familiar of the Holy Office.10
Lus da Cunha speaks with the voice of the New Christians themselves. There are so many common features between da Cunhas criticisms in his Instructions to Marco Antnio de Azevedo Coutinho and
those of the emigrant Antnio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches pamphlet
Origin of the Labels Old Christian and New Christian in Portugal,
that one may wonder whether these two Portuguese who had known
each other outside Portugal had not cooperated on a program for
Inquisitorial reform. Both proposed the suppression of discrimination,
adoption of civil procedures and, most insistently, an end to autos
8
9
10
223
The twin reforms of mentality and the economy, head and tails of the
same coin, became the national objective once stagnation was identified as the countrys arch-predator.
Much water had flowed under the bridge since Vieira had advocated, in vain, the ennoblement of the merchants. Now all those in
Portugal who thought of themselves as Europeanized agreed that
commerce was the most useful and beneficial activity for the State.
But this still represented neither official doctrine nor the sentiments of
the obscurantist circles where public opinion was molded. The autosda-f continued imperturbably. Lus da Cunha had already written his
diatribes on the Inquisition when on October 8, 1739 the playwright
Antnio Jos da Silva, whose bout with the Inquisition we have
discussed at length, and ten others (including a father and daughter)
were executed. There were to be 36 more autos-da-f at Lisbon
including the last one on August 7, 1794 (one woman sentenced). On
June 18, 1741, eleven were executed; on November 4, 1742, ten; on
June 24, 1744, eight; on September 26, 1745, seven; on October 23,
1745, seven; on September 24, 1747, two; on November 20, 1748,
three; on November 16, 1749, two; on November 8, 1750, five; on
September 24, 1752, four; on May 19, 1754, one and on September
224
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
20, 1761, one was executed (the hapless Italian Jesuit Father Malagrida, aged 71).11
Nor had the Inquisitorial stream of anti-Jewish publications run its
course. In 1748 yet another vituperative tract appeared in Lisbon,
Catholic Invective Against the Obstinacy and Perfidy of the Hebrews,
by an obscure Capuchin friar.12 The mass of friars and nobles, as well
as the lower classes, were still expected to grope through life in a
miasma of apparitions, hobgoblins and terror of the Rossio fortress.
Little did they dream that the menacing fortress was but a handful of
dust sustained by inertia, waiting to crumble.
It was left to the Marquis de Pombal to implement the enlightened
projects. He himself was one of the diplomats and high officials who,
during the long reign of Joo V had been noiselessly planning for the
modernization and Europeanization of Portugal. In his library were to
be found the works of Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, including the
Discourse on the Introduction of Arts into Portugal, as well as those
of Lus da Cunha, who, as noted, was his acknowledged mentor.
Ribeiro Sanches was one of his counselors, especially as regards the
founding of the Boarding School for the Sons of the Nobility. Like
this whole clique, the Marquis considered commerce the mainstay of
national health. The poet Pedro Antnio Correia Garo (1724-1772),
one of the Marquiss panegyrists, on the occasion of King Joss
recovery after the attempt on his life, composed a discourse in the
name of the Lusitanian Literary Academy, congratulating Pombal
for his appreciation of the merchant class, which is the most useful
and distinguished sector of the Portuguese people. Garo and fellow
poets attributed their countrys grandeur and heroic past not to its
wars but its commerce. Propitiously Lisbons elegant square, where the
royal palace had stood before the earthquake and most autos-da-f were
held until 1683, had its name changed under Pombal from Terreiro
do Pao (Palace Place) to Praa do Comrcio (Commerce Square).13
225
14 As we have seen in Chapter Two and passim, King Joo III, like his grandfather
Ferdinand of Aragon, had wrested the Inquisition from the mitigating authority of the
Pope, intending it to be an instrument of political absolutism, but in the course of time
the Inquisition became a State Within the State, opposing any royal interference on the
pretext of Papal prerogatives. In fact the Portuguese Inquisition had emancipated itself
from both Royal and Papal authority and played off one against the other.
226
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
15
16
227
names removed, contrived to get other Old Christians onto the lists that
they might suffer their stigma at least in good company [].
228
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
tious and impious distinction between New and Old Christians. Here
we seem to hear Ribeiro Sanches:
It is certain that neither in Portugal nor in Spain at the time of the mass
conversions to Christianity were there ever among the newly converted
as many apostates as today among the Portuguese New Christians, until
the [cleanness of blood] investigations and the Inquisitions began.
19 Pombals decrees concerning New Christians are included in the volume Colleco
das Leys, Decretos e Alvars que compreende o Feliz Reinado de El-Rei Fidelssimo, D. Jos, o I.
20 Regimento do Santo Officio da Inquisio dos Reinos de Portugal [] pelo [] Cardeal da
Cunha, Lisbon, 1774; reprinted in modernized spelling with an Introduction by Raul
Rego: O ltimo Regimento da Inquisio Portuguesa, Lisbon, 1971. Inquisitor-General
Cosme da Cunhas request to the king of April 6, 1773 to abolish the Goan Inquisition
was implemented by Pombal on February 10, 1774. See Appendix Seven.
21 While Judaizing is listed as a capital offense, the practice of non-Catholic religions
by foreign residents is authorized, thus legalizing the holding of worship services by
Jewish immigrants from Gibraltar, who were British subjects.
229
22
230
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1761. At the same auto the Knight of Oliveira was burnt in effigy.23
The Jesuit Father was condemned to garroting and burning for saying
that the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755 was divine retribution because the Portuguese instead of attending church were wasting
their time at bull-fights, dances, theatres and other entertainment:
Know, Lisbon, that the sole destroyers of so many houses and palaces,
the ravagers of so many temples and convents, slayers of so many of its
inhabitants, that the fires which have devoured so many treasures, are
not comets, not stars, not vapors or exhalations, not natural phenomena,
not chance occurrences, but solely our intolerable sins [] Is there
anyone not to speak of Catholics but a heretic, a Turk or a Jew who
dares to maintain that this great scourge was simply the effect of natural
causes and not thundered forth by the deity specifically for our sins?.24
The Head Inquisitor, who was Pombals brother, drafted and read out
the sentence at the auto-da-f: Both condemned men were heretics,
because earthquakes had a geological explanation, unrelated to divine
punishment. Two centuries earlier, in 1531, Gil Vicente had preached
to the friars of Santarm that an earthquake is a natural phenomenon
that had nothing to do with the Portuguese allowing the Spanish
Jews into their midst.26 Thus Pombals arguments with Malagrida and
23 The list of those sentenced at this auto-da-f was published in extenso in Arquivo
Histrico Portugus, 2, 8, 1904, 315-320. Among the 57 victims were 15 full or partial New
Christians sentenced on the count of Judaism: two women among them, deceased in
prison, were burnt in effigy along with the Knight of Oliveira.
24 Juizo da verdadeira causa do terremoto (Judgment of the True Cause of the Earthquake) cited by Joo Lcio de Azevedo, O marqus de Pombal e a sua epoca, Lisbon, 1909,
187. The pamphlet, bearing the Inquisitions imprimatur (and praise) was printed in
October 1756 to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake. The Jesuit personally
presented Pombal with a copy, little suspecting that it was ultimately to cost him his life.
25 The full text of Oliveiras trial record was published in Arquivo Histrico Portuguez,
2, 8, 1904, 281-314 (the sentence on pp. 313-314).
26 See above, Chapter Two.
231
Oliveira have come full circle, picking up where Gil Vicentes quarrel
with the friars of Santarm left off. All in all this seems to indicate that
16th-century unbelief in the supernatural is closer to 18th-century
rationalism than Lucien Febvre thought.27 Both the Jesuit Malagrida
and the Protestant Oliveira were sentenced to death.28 The agnostic
Marquis, besides being a freemason, was possessed of an impish
humor. The irony of a Jesuit garroted and burnt at the stake could not
have escaped Pombal, who consistently accused the Jesuits of abetting
the Inquisition.
Whatever opposition his laws may have encountered, Pombal, with
his characteristic aplomb, made short shrift of it. Pursuant to a royal
decree of March 11, 1774, some New Christians, citing the laws which
had abolished discrimination, asked to be admitted to philanthropic
Brotherhoods such as the Misericrdias. The Boards, however, rejected
their applications on the authority of the restrictive dispositions of the
Statutes adopted in 1577. Promptly corregidors were instructed by
royal decree to examine these statutes and eliminate all references to
New Christians so that the memory of this irreligious, tyrannical and
abusive distinction may be erased once and for all. Any trustees of
Misericrdias or other Brotherhoods and Confraternities denying
admission to persons formerly called New Christians or refusing to
excise references to them from the statutes would be liable to arrest
and penalties.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Antnio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches copied out
into his diary this royal decree. But about some of the legislation he is
cynical, even as he was its godfather:
Can laws excise from memory ideas acquired in childhood when one
heard fathers and mothers calling Christians descended from Jews
shameless betrayers of Christ Our Lord, who caused his scourging.29 and
crucifixion? Can the adolescent and the adult forget the sermons heard
on Good Fridays? or those garroted and burnt for not confessing to apostasy? or the sermons of parish priests preaching in pulpits and confessionals that Christians descended from Jews, even if baptized at birth,
always remain Jews because they retain in their impetuous blood an ever
Jewish soul which obliges them to deny the Christian faith?.30
27
28
29
232
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
31 Op. cit., 356. Azevedos theories about the New Christians may have been influenced by those of the German economist Werner Sombart (1863-1941), his junior by
8 years. Be that as it may, tribute is abundantly due to this remarkable historians talent,
immense erudition, probity and gift for synthesizing. His work is indispensable for any
further investigation of 17th-century Portugal.
233
The fact that the New Christians vanished like a mirage when
touched by Pombals magic wand proves that this astute statesman
started out from a much more likely theory than the one the Inquisitors had adopted out of self-interest: Pombal believed the New Christians to be the product of arbitrary discrimination; that the only line
of demarcation between Old and New Christians were the blood cleanness prescripts, the lists of contributors to the obtainment of
amnesties, of people sentenced at autos-da-f and, last but not least, the
autos-da-f themselves. As soon as these prescripts were revoked, the
registers burnt, the ritual killing of New Christians abolished, there
were no longer any New Christians in Portugal.32 The aftermath of
Pombals legislation vindicates Enlightenment figures such as Sanches
and da Cunha, who contended that the Inquisition was a Jew-Factory.
When, after an hiatus of some three centuries, authentic Jewish
communities sprang up once again on Portuguese soil (at Lisbon; Faro
[Algarve]; Ponta Delgada and Angra do Herosmo [Azores]).33 their
membership were all immigrants from Gibraltar and Morocco. Indigenous Portuguese families were conspicuous by their absence.34
32 Here and there, to be sure, in remote towns and villages, there are vestiges of
the pre-1497 Jewish quarters and persons who are regarded, or regard themselves, as
descendants of their medieval Jewish denizens. See above, Chapter Ten, the case of
the Jews of Belmonte.
33 Although de facto freedom of religion was not formally proclaimed until the oneyear reign of Pedro IV (1826), Gibraltarian Jews of British nationality had been holding
private worship services at Lisbon undisturbed from the time of Pombal. On November
11, 1797, Prince Joo (the future Joo VI), governing in the name of his mother Queen
Maria I, sent David Nassy and the other members of the Portuguese Jewish Nation of
Surinam a letter stating that it would be most agreeable to him that any and all
members of that Nation would settle in Portugal where they will enjoy the greatest security and tranquillity because none of the reasons that motivated their Nations emigration presently obtain under his august and enlightened regency (see Azevedo, Historia,
494-496). Joo Ferro de Mendona e Sousa, a deputy, on February 16, 1821, made a
motion to the Cortes (Legislative Assembly) inviting all Jews in the world to settle in
Portugal, but the motion was not put to the vote (see Dirio das Cortes Gerais da Nao
Portuguesa, no. 17). Article 6 of the constitution of 1826, signed by King Pedro IV on
April 29 of that year, reads: Roman Catholicism remains the religion of the kingdom,
all other religions being allowed to foreigners, but article 145, 4 of that same constitution declares that no Portuguese may be prosecuted on the count of religion,
provided he respects that of the State and does not offend public morality. This constitution was in force until 1910. On April 20, 1911 the parliament of the Portuguese
Republic decreed total separation of Church and State and equal status for all religions.
34 In 1801 the new Jewish community of Lisbon purchased a piece of ground for a
cemetery at no. 6, rua da Estrela, next to the English cemetery. The oldest legible
inscription (Hebrew and Portuguese) is that of Joseph Amzalak, died February 26, 1804.
By 1810 there were three places of Jewish worship in Lisbon. The oldest congregation,
called Shaar Ha-Shamaim (Gate of Heaven), whose rabbi was Abraham Dabella (died
1853), held services attended (in 1815) by 40 to 50 worshippers in the rabbis own quarters of a house belonging to a Gibraltarian Jew, 194 Rua do Ouro, 4th floor (see ANTT,
234
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Why did it all happen so late, only under the government of the
Marquis de Pombal? Because together with him came to power the
very families whom the Inquisition had hounded, namely the mercantile middle class, as well as the enlightened aristocratic elite. Until
then this alliance had been in a clinch with a reactionary society which
ever more despairingly clung to the New Christian myth. Pombals
government marked the moment of a qualitative mutation, which
wrested power, or its shadow, from its century-old stronghold.35 As
ghosts etherialize with the collapse of the house they haunt, so the
traditional upper class, when it toppled, the myth of the New Christians went down with it, leaving nary a trace.
Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 15266). The community around this time acquired a proper
synagogue in the Beco da Linheira. The second congregation, Hes Haim (Tree of Life)
acquired a synagogue in 1826 in the Travessa da Palha. See Joo Leo Cardozo de
Bethencourt, The Jews in Portugal from 1773 to 1902, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 15,
1903, 251-274; Samuel Schwarz, Histria da moderna comunidade israelita de Lisboa,
O Instituto, 119, 1957, 163-201; 120, 1958, 140-200. The new community of Faro
(Algarve) acquired its first cemetery in 1820 and its first synagogue in 1830. The elegant
synagogue in Ponta Delgada (Azores) dates from 1836.
35 Pombals government was the training ground for many of the men of letters who
fomented the liberal revolution of 1820.
APPENDIX ONE
236
APPENDIX ONE
united people who belonged to very different classes of Portuguese society, does
indeed constitute a very serious drawback. But this obstacle did not
stymie our Saraiva of 1953. To surmount it, he simply jettisoned the
New Christian ethnicity and the crypto-Judaic religion overboard.
They were naught but abominable myths invented by the Portuguese
Inquisitors (tools of the ruling seigniorial class). The label New Christian he dismisses as an invention of the ruling class and its Inquisitorial agents to keep the mercantile bourgeoisie and its allies out of
power. An added advantage of these conjectures for our hurried
essayist not particularly attracted to archival dust was that it disguised
his personal incompetence as an historic method, allowing his
readers to believe that the immense Inquisitorial documentation is
without the slightest value for the historian: in a word, sour-grapism.
Do you think Saraiva changed his ideological scheme when, in 1969, he
devoted a full-size book to the New Christians and the Inquisition?
Inquisition and New Christians is nothing but a rehash of his 1953
conjectures dressed up in a horribly polemical and tendentious style and
elaborated into absurd and demagogical theses. Now, his original conjectures were the butt of published and signed criticism which, in 1969,
Saraiva tried to dismiss by passing it off as stray anonymous remarks.
Thus, the readers of Inquisition and New Christians are unaware that:
1. Jos Alcambars pamphlet: State and Inquisition (Rgua,
1956) which he does cite in a note on Chapter Ten without, however,
revealing its true import, has a telling subtitle: Critical Notes to
Antnio Jos Saraivas The Portuguese Inquisition.
2. I myself criticized those conjectures without any acrimony
in my lecture: What are the Marranos?, published in Les Cahiers de
lAlliance Isralite Universelle, no. 120, 1958 and in an article entitled
The Marranos (Revue des tudes Juives, vol. 118, 1959-1960).
Allow me to dwell on my earlier question: if the book is so weak, how to explain
its enormous success?
I think that Saraiva himself already partially answered your question in
an interview he granted you (Dirio de Lisboa, July 24, 1969). You had
asked him about the rising popularity of historical essays, as exemplified by the success of his book. Saraiva replied by propounding his
conception of historiography and suggested a possible, rather
pessimistic, interpretation of the said success:
On the other hand, there may be a negative aspect to this popularity,
because history is a most propitious field for ideologies and utopias
237
projected into the past. All too often, history books consist of past facts
classified according to an ex post facto ideology. Then they are but ways
of endowing ideologies with a scientific appearance. Seen in this light
the commercial success of historical works may not always be indicative
of a broadening intellectual curiosity on the part of their readers.
I should like to add that the books appeal which may be ascribed
in major part to its demagogical presentation and ideological implications profoundly saddens me, because the issues and events it
presumes to pontificate on and dares to trifle with are seminal to
Portuguese history and deserve better. I am astonished, moreover, by
the silence of professional historians. Perhaps they have been numbed
by the patronage bestowed on the book by certain high-placed French
worthies. This patronage exacerbates the extremely pernicious effect
the book will no doubt have on the sorely needed development of
Portuguese New Christians and Inquisition research.
To better situate the debate before undertaking the actual analysis of the book,
I should like to ask you: why, in your opinion, is the spiritual and material
history of the New Christians so important for a correct understanding of
Portuguese civilization? Another question: Saraiva claims in his Introduction
that Rvah uses the terms Jews and Crypto-Jews to designate the Spanish
New Christians. Do you consider these realities to overlap?
I shall answer your second question first. In order to appraise the good
faith of polemicist Saraiva, suffice it to quote a passage from a book of
mine published in 1950 which he read and even quotes: my introduction to the edition of an unpublished manuscript by the great classical
author Joo de Barros entitled Evangelical Dialogue on the Articles
of Faith Against the Talmud of the Jews..1 In this passage I emphasized the profound difference between the spiritual situation of the
New Christians of Spain and those of Portugal:
In Spain militant conversion went on steadily from 1391. During the
entire 15th century the anti-Jewish polemic did not slacken for a
moment. The invention of printing increased ten-fold the controversialists influence. The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 eliminated the possibility of the neophytes contagion by professing and practicing Jews. The
Spanish New Christians constituted within the midst of Spanish Catholicism a restless mass, extremely sensitive to religious innovation but, when
all is said and done, rotating within the orbit of the Christian creed.
1 Joo de Barros, Dilogo Evanglico sobre os Artigos da F contra o Talmud dos Judeus
(Introduction and Notes by I. S. Rvah), Lisbon, 1950. [All footnotes by translators.]
238
APPENDIX ONE
239
240
APPENDIX ONE
dogmatism, in all its immaculate splendor, the heaps of duly established historical facts.
It is profoundly distressing that, except for the rarest of exceptions,
no one has noticed that the absurdity of these nihilistic theses can be
demonstrated by two rather elementary historical givens:
1. from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th centuries tens
of thousands.2 of New Christians left their homeland to join existing
Jewish or crypto-Jewish communities or to found and maintain new
Jewish communities, notwithstanding the more or less tenacious
hostility shown them by the dominant Christian establishment
(Catholic or Protestant, depending on the area of settlement) and
notwithstanding the social and sometimes economic handicaps to
which membership of a Jewish community exposed these refugees.
2. crypto-Judaic groups of a notably homogeneous ethnic and
religious character have been discovered during the twenties of the
present century in a number of localities in the countrys interior.
The 1953 conjectures were entirely wrong-headed but the 1969
thesis, which picked them up and embellished them, is arrant
nonsense. We may ask ourselves to what extent Saraiva, who read Jos
Alcambars objections as well as mine, really believes in his own theses.
Indeed he contradicts in one place what he affirms in another, sometimes at a distance of only a few pages. For instance, when he wants to
demonstrate that in Portugal there never existed either a neo-Christian ethnic group or a crypto-Jewish religion, Saraiva bases himself on
the writings of authors such as Father Antnio Vieira, Lus da Cunha,
Antnio Ribeiro Sanches, etc., who firmly believed in the existence of
that ethnic group and that religion and who aimed at their peaceful
and gradual absorption into the Old Christian mass. The result of this
ambiguity (i.e., using the writings of those who do not share his thesis
to shore up his thesis) is that in the course of his demonstration
Saraiva sometimes uses the word New Christians to designate bourgeois with no known ethnic or religious link to Judaism (persons
deprived of political power by the seigniorial aristocracy and its
Inquisitorial agents), then again to designate authentic descendants of
the Jews forcefully converted in 1497 (many of whom did indeed
adhere to crypto-Judaism).
Were the author consistent with his thesis it would require:
1. all pseudo-New Christians to have belonged to the high
mercantile and financial bourgeoisie. Unfortunately for Saraiva, a
majority of the New Christians actually the majority of those who
241
242
APPENDIX ONE
Azevedo, Israel Salvator Rvah, Julio Caro Baroja) in respect to their own
works. Saraiva is so convinced of their stupidity that he didnt even bother
to consult the documents used by these ridiculous historians.
Armed with his boundless impudence, Saraiva imperiously lays
down the law in respect of a documentation of which he is blithely ignorant. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, he is not averse to
refuting his own theories, sometimes just a couple of pages after
propounding them.
In his Word to the Reader he formulates a thesis whose grandiloquence is hard put to dissimulate its absurdity:
Concerning this documentation which has until now been explored in a
most unsystematic fashion fished haphazardly as with line and
sinker it is important to remember that it is an Inquisitorial product,
designed to justify the existence of the Tribunal of the Holy Office. The
Inquisitors were both judges and party, not only in all the proceedings
against New Christians on the charge of Judaism, but also in the larger
trial unfolding before what we might call without risk of over-dramatization the Tribunal of History.
Concerning an article in the Regimento of 1640 in which the Inquisitors are ordered to speak so circumspectly about the people of the
Nation that the impression should never be given that the hatred
everyone must harbor for the offense is extensive to persons, but
rather they should treat with appropriate compassion the weakness of
those who commit offenses against our Holy Faith, Saraiva treats us to
a commentary whose absurdity he himself had already caught:
This gem of a text provides a glimpse into the mentality of the Regimentos redactors, inherited from the medieval Inquisition. The obses
4 To establish the contradiction (which is otherwise not patent) Rvah interprets
Saraivas words designed to justify the existence of [] the Holy Office to mean that
according to Saraiva the trial records were written up in a way to win over those
most convinced of their iniquity. The words could just as well mean, however, that
the trial records were written up in a way to lend the procedure a semblance of legal
respectability.
243
sion with correct window-dressing has its reason: the Inquisitors knew the
importance of public opinion and attempted to influence it through a
stage setting which comes into its own, as we shall see, with the autos-daf, and it seems to have impressed not just the gullible masses but some
heavyweight 20th-century historians. Had they found time for crystalball gazing could the Inquisitors have foreseen such far-flung success for
their propaganda? (Chapter Three).
Thus, according to Saraiva, the Inquisitors intended to strongly influence public opinion by means of a rule book whose existence they
kept rigorously hidden from all outsiders and even from most of their
own staff.5
Having registered your disagreement with Saraivas theses, what can you offer
in their stead?
Such folly could have germinated only in the mind of a publicist
nescient of the Inquisitorial documentation. It would be well to remind
the unfortunate readers of Saraivas Inquisition and New Christians
that Inquisitorial documentation consists of secret archives, governed
by a secret set of rules, using a secret procedure, according to a secret
formulary. Of all this immense documentation, removed from the
inquisitiveness of persons unconnected to the Holy Office, whether
they be the Portuguese king or the pope, only the sentences read out
at the autos-da-f reached the ears of the public. Even these publicly
proclaimed sentences were preceded by secret decisions which often
give the true justification of the Inquisitors choice of punishment or
penance, in any particular case, among several available options.
Inquisitorial documentation was reserved for internal use. Each official
of the Holy Office when adding his bit had only one objective in mind:
5 Was it the text of the 1640 Regimento that Saraiva saw as the means of influence or
the stage setting and other Inquisitorial practices recorded in the book?
244
APPENDIX ONE
to convince his hierarchical superior (or his successor in the mechanism of the trial) of the correctness of his procedures.
The archives were so secret and the authorities of the Holy Office
so confident that they would perpetually remain so that they preserved
documents inimical to their reputation. It obviously never remotely
occurred to them that one day the Tribunal of the Holy Office would
be required to justify itself before the Tribunal of History. Among
such documents are:
1. those proving that the Inquisition had condemned innocents,
arrested on testimony of witnesses whose denunciations were later
found to be false;
2. those proving that mutual surveillance and denunciations
within the Inquisitorial staff were encouraged;
3. those proving that certain officials, notaries in particular,
accepted bribes from potential Inquisitorial victims;
4. those proving that functionaries, even those occupying the
highest echelons, on certain occasions behaved as common thieves,
unduly appropriating the convicted prisoners goods;
5. those proving that on occasion Inquisitorial judges, those of
the three regional tribunals as well as those of the General Council,
had committed slight or severe infractions of the spirit or letter of
Inquisitorial jurisprudence.
Do such writings as An Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal (which Saraiva considers to be a collaborative effort of a
former Inquisitorial notary and the Jesuit Father Antnio Vieira) and the very
Inquisitorial rule book printed in 1640 (Regimento do Santo Ofcio da
Inquisio dos Reinos de Portugal), often cited by Saraiva, not amply and
definitively expose the partiality, bias and injustice upon which the sentences
are based? Did not this Regimento give the Inquisitors practically absolute
discretion to condemn or absolve, thereby vitiating the value of the trial records
as historical evidence?
In spite of all his demagogy, Saraiva does not succeed in putting due
emphasis on the most scandalous aspects of Inquisitorial justice. The
explanation is simple: the responsibility for these monstrous miscarriages of justice rests with no given Portuguese social class (whence the
absurdity of his simplistic application of the class struggle scheme):
they are the normal application of canon law, valid for all nations.
Canon law grants Inquisitors the sovereign power to evaluate the
sincerity or lack of sincerity of the confessions made by heretics
seeking reintegration into the Church. Sincerity would justify the
mercy of the Holy Mother Church and the consequent reconcilia-
245
tion of the heretics. This means that canon law attributed to the
Inquisitors a near superhuman power, to infallibly detect the most intimate spiritual pangs within a prisoners soul.
It hardly needs stating that the evaluation of such imponderables is
almost totally subjective and, consequently, arbitrary. In practice the
Inquisitors were obliged to employ more objective criteria which,
though rarely explicitly set out in the Regimento (which is why hasty
ideologists are mostly unaware of them), can be deduced from the
study of the trial records and other Inquisitorial documents. For
instance:
1. when the accused denied the charges and when the indications of guilt were feeble, he was submitted to a graduated torture, the
degree depending on the number of accusations; if the defendant
overcame the torture without confessing (a frequent occurrence) he
was considered to have purged the presumptions of guilt and was
required to abjure de levi (on a light suspicion of heresy) or de vehementi
(on a vehement suspicion of heresy) according to the weight finally
given the accusations by the Inquisitors. Real villains (by Inquisitorial
definition) if they held their own through the torture could not be
indicted for heresy; innocent victims of calumnious denunciations, if
they cracked under torture and confessed non-existent offenses, would
be treated as guilty.
2. when the accused denied the charges he was generally put
into a watched cell, where his behavior would be observed by the
prison guards and familiares of the Holy office, stationed at little holes
in the walls or ceiling of the cell, imperceptible to the prisoners. If he
abstained from Catholic religious practices and practiced Jewish or
Marrano rites (e.g., Jewish fasts, praying in a typically Jewish way,
making Judaizing remarks to a cell-mate), his culpability would be
considered undeniable. Even were he finally to confess, if his confession did not include his cell heresy, it would be considered insincere
and he would be handed over to the secular authority for execution.
The system of watched cells was certainly a diabolical invention but
a most useful and efficacious tool for the repression of heresy and the
watchers reports present a guarantee of reliability. In the course of the
1673-1681 controversy on the abuses practiced by the Portuguese
Inquisition, the Roman Pontifical commission, orally informed of this
system by the Portuguese Inquisitorial delegate, did not raise any
objection to it nor did the agent in Rome of the New Christians make
an issue out of it.
3. when the accused admitted to the charges but failed to name
the person who initiated him into the heresy and his accomplices
246
APPENDIX ONE
247
geared to produce results other than the objective truth about the
accused (Chapter Three).
2. prisoners denounced by peep-hole observers for fasts
carried out in their cells and who did not confess to them were usually
(or almost always) executed (Chapter Five).
3. the proposition that the Inquisitors showed a propensity to
indict is fairly borne out [] the confiscations system was just that: the
more found guilty and the pickings multiply proportionately [] the
advantage of the system was that estates would never have to be restituted (Chapter Eleven).
However, since Saraiva believes all defendants to have been equally
innocent of the charges it would have been nice of him to tell us by
what criteria the Inquisitors chose:
a) those they exonerated;
b) those they sentenced to a de levi or a de vehementi abjuration
(without confiscation of goods and property);
c) those they reconciled (whose goods and property, after 1568,
were confiscated);
d) those they decided to judicially murder by means of the system
of purported cell-fasts.
An Account of the Cruelties certainly does bring out various ways in
which the Inquisitors condemned innocents, but Saraivas claim, not
backed by personal consultation of a single trial record, that the
Inquisitorial trial was not designed to distinguish between guilt and
innocence is one an historian conscious of the obligations of his trade
will always refuse to buy.
Any responsible historian, be he ever so tempted by facile demagogy,
if he takes the trouble to study say a thousand Portuguese Inquisitorial
trial records of the 16th and 17th centuries, will have to admit that:
1. the judges of the three regional tribunals often felt that the
prosecutors had not juridically justified either their requests for arrest
or for conviction;
2. the deputies of the General Council would often modify the
(intermediary or definitive) decisions of the regional tribunals, either
by applying greater severity or greater clemency;
3. the judges of the regional tribunals, on the one hand, and the
deputies of the General Council, on the other, at times had a profoundly
different approach to the decision at hand, whereby each body would
expound at length by what considerations it had arrived at the secret
sentence, definitively adopted by a majority of votes;
248
APPENDIX ONE
6 In our translation we have not attempted to preserve the flavor of the solecisms (in
fact, Gallicisms) alluded to by Saraiva, which, after all, may conceivably be attributed to
the interviewer, a long-time resident of Paris.
249
250
APPENDIX ONE
7 (as cerimnias judaicas assim celebradas eram descritas nas sentenas lidas publicamente
durante os autos-de-f no s em relao aos relaxados como tambm em relao aos reconciliados.
O segredo no morria, pois, com os relaxados.) Rvah seems to imply that a prisoners
having been watched through peep-holes was not a secret (as Saraiva claims) but a
matter of common knowledge through the divulgation of cell-fasts in the sentences at
the auto-da-f. However, the sentences never elaborate on the means whereby fasting was
discovered or how any other information on cell behavior was gathered. The audience
hearing that so-and-so fasted in his cell could assume the Inquisition to have found out
by reports of the prison staff when delivering meals or collecting garbage, etc. not
from peeping Toms. See Chapter Five, note 19.
251
8 As was pointed out above (Chapter Five, n. 8) Vilareal was aware of two distinct
books and testified in his written apology of January 19, 1650 that they were both
obtained for the Marquis de Nisa by Vicente Nogueira. An Italian letter written by Leon
Modena to Vicente Nogueira c. 1639 apparently unknown to both Rvah and Saraiva
published by Cecil Roth in Israel Abraham Memorial Volume, Vienna, 1927, 395
(reprinted in id., Studies in Books and Booklore, Westmead, 1972, 196), reveals that the two
men had met and conversed in Venice and that Nogueira had acquired a copy of the
rabbis Riti hebraici which he much valued. Thus Saraivas instincts turn out to be
sounder than he himself realized. The falsehood of Vilareals in extremis confession that
he bought the Riti in Paris and then gave it to Nisa is now all but demonstrated by the
Modena letter.
252
APPENDIX ONE
Saraiva does not know or, at least, does not tell his readers that:
1. Vilareal was befriended with all the Judaizing New Christians
in the French city of Rouen, whose families were to join the Jewish
communities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and London.9
2. Vilareal was the sworn enemy of the few New Christians of
Rouen who remained Catholic.10
3. Vilareal carelessly blurted out to the Inquisitors, who knew
nothing of this matter, that his wife and daughter had reverted to
Judaism and were members of a constituted Jewish community.
4. Vilareal, in a book published and reprinted time and again in
France and translated into many languages, had called for freedom of
religion in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula.
Does the lure of confiscated property and the cupidity of the Inquisitorial judges
not render even more difficult an objective evaluation of the trials and do these
factors not lend credence to the claim that, during certain periods, plunder was
the Inquisitors principal motivation for prosecution?
The confiscation of property, decreed in 1563 for those who were
sentenced to death, was extended in 1568, on the basis of canon law, to
all self-confessed heretics who were reconciled to the Church at the
auto-da-f. Had cupidity and the desire for plunder been the sole motivations of the Inquisitors, why would there have been (as there were)
so few prisoners sentenced to death between 1563 and 1568 and why,
after 1568, were so many prisoners considered to be insincere, incomplete confessants (diminutos) and, accordingly handed over to the
secular arm for execution, even though their property would in any
case have been confiscated, since they had confessed?
Naturally I do not for a moment believe in the impartiality of the
Inquisitors. Many contemporary adversaries of the Inquisition empha
9 Judaizing in the context of the Rouen Portuguese community did not imply the
observance of Jewish precepts but an anti-Inquisitorial political stance. Rvahs assurance
that Portuguese left Rouen for the Jewish centers in London and Hamburg contrasts with
his tentative position of 1961: It is however possible that the [Rouen] Marranos when
presented with the choice between the economic advantages of the French ports and the
uncertainties of an equivocal juridical situation, a pretty sizeable number might have been
led to prefer cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg or London where the practice of Judaism
was authorized. (See Revue des tudes Juives, 119, 1961, 83). In point of fact, there is no
shred of evidence that any Portuguese New Christians of Rouen apostatized from Catholicism while residing there and only one, the poet Joo Pinto Delgado, originally a fervent
Catholic, is known to have ultimately adopted Judaism in Amsterdam.
10 By the words remained Catholic Rvah apparently alludes to their denouncing their
fellow Portuguese to the French government as Judaizers. However, the latters Catholicism
was ultimately vindicated and their delators forced to flee the country. See I. S. Rvah,
Autobiographie dun Marrane, Revue des tudes Juives, 119, 1961, 41-130: 80-85.
253
254
APPENDIX ONE
255
256
APPENDIX ONE
257
Rosenthaliana, 17, 1983, 105-146: 119-123; for the Inquisition of vora, id., Portrait,
313-315. 20th century Marrano prayers have been published by Samuel Schwarz,
Os Cristos-Novos em Portugal no sculo XX, Lisbon, 1925, 47-110; Casimiro de Morais
Machado, Subsdios para a histria de Mogadouro, Douro Literal, 1, 1952, 17-49: 2249; Manuel da Costa Fontes, Oraes criptojudias na tradio oral portuguesa,
Hispania, 74, 1991, 511-518 (expanded English version Four Portuguese Crypto-Jewish
Prayers and their Inquisitorial Counterparts, Mediterranean Language Review, 6-7,
1993, 67-104). In view of the relatively large number of New Christian prayers culled
in Eastern Portugal by 20th-century ethnologists, it is surprising that so many 16thcentury Inquisitorial prisoners from the same areas even to save their lives could
produce but one prayer before the Inquisitors the Our Father. A number of processos
do, however, provide prayers in the vernacular, which are similar to those recorded in
the 20th century. Their most salient feature is their derivation from the Apocrypha,
which is not part of Judaism, or from the Seven Penitential Psalms, a strictly Catholic
selection. Of manifest Jewish derivation are a combination of verses from Psalms 90 and
91 known to some New Christian prisoners by the word fermosura, translating the word
nocam (Ps 90, 17), used as an incantation from high Jewish antiquity. Fragments constituted or introduced by a corruption of the Hebrew words of Psalm 90, 17 were produced
as a Jewish prayer by confessants in a goodly number of Portuguese processos from 1566
to 1726, and also in Spanish and Spanish American trial records. We have shown (art.
cit., Studia Rosenthaliana, 116-117) that the fermosura in its Portuguese manifestations is
an adaptation of a Spanish version found in a Hebrew-Spanish prayer-book published
at Venice in 1552. One should not lose sight of the fact that the Inquisitors considered
a confessants recital of crypto-Judaic prayers (preferably accompanied by tears of
remorse and the denunciation of the person who taught them) to be the most
convincing form of sincere contrition and the surest way to speedy release; often the
only way to avoid the death penalty as a diminuto . Texts of such prayers (whether improvised or from published sources) must accordingly have been in great demand, both
within and without the Inquisitorial prison.
13 Whereas Saraiva suggests that some may have abandoned the Church in disgust
or for a myriad other reasons after the trauma of an Inquisitorial trial, Rvah
claims that their later actions reveal and confirm their earlier state of mind (retroactive
evidence).
258
APPENDIX ONE
3. Frequently the case of an arrested or denounced New Christian can be inserted into the history of his environment. In most cases
the judges of the Holy Office carried out numerous arrests which all
originated in a single denunciation or spontaneous confession leading
to a first arrest which in turn would spawn others, each of which would
again spawn others. As a rule, Inquisitorial trial records are linked-up
like cogs in a wheel. It is easy to understand how the simultaneous
study of all the denunciations and all the trial records related to a
single milieu and a single period permits an effective control of the
global historical value of documents relating to individual members of
this milieu. All the more so when it is possible, as occurs from time to
time, to apply other methods of control such as I have enumerated
earlier on. The combined application of two of these methods led the
Portuguese historian Joo Lcio de Azevedo to change his opinion,
between 1921 and 1932,14 concerning the trial of Antnio Jos
da Silva, the Jew, to whom Saraiva regrettably devotes pages
(Chapter Five) as distressing as those he devotes to Uriel da Costa.
I was able to verify the efficacy of this third method of control when
I applied it to the 150 trial records of New Christians from Oporto
arrested between 1618 and 1625.
4. In certain cases it is possible to check the historical value of
Inquisitorial documentation by comparing it with printed or manuscript declarations made by New Christians who had joined Jewish
communities in foreign parts, concerning their adoption of cryptoJewish practices before leaving Portugal or Spain, specifically in cases
where there had been Inquisitorial proceedings against them. I have
already a number of times called attention to the importance of these
declarations when they emanate from men such as Elijah Montalto,
Uriel da Costa, Isaac de Pinto, Isaac de Mathatias Aboab, Dr. Antnio
Nunes Ribeiro Sanches. I have recently shown that a book of poetry
published in 1626, no doubt in Hamburg, by David Abenatar Melo,
permits us to verify the authenticity of the denunciations/declarations,
confessions and denials concerning the crypto-Judaism of members of
his family and of himself.15
The Portuguese Inquisitors, although they put him to the torture,
were unable to convict him of Judaism: so they made him abjure a
14 Cf. Joo Lcio de Azevedo, Histria dos Cristos Novos Portugueses, Lisbon 1921, 343345 and id., O poeta Antnio Jos da Silva e a Inquisio, Novas Epanforas, Lisbon,
1932, 137-218: 152-153 (this study was actually first published in Portugalia, 1926).
15 At the time of the interview Rvah was teaching a course at the Sorbonne on Ferno
lvares Melo, alias David Abenatar Melo. See Annuaire de lcole Pratique des Hautes
tudes-IV, 1970-1971, 482-483. Cf. H. P. Salomon, Portrait, 8-9.
259
vehement suspicion of Judaism. Yet, according to his own autobiographical declaration published in his book of 1626, long after his
expatriation, he had been initiated into crypto-Judaism by his parents
from the age of 8 or 9, as were his siblings. His mother died in the
Holy Land, in Safed.16
Do you agree with the thesis formulated by Ribeiro Sanches and Lus da
Cunha, taken over by Saraiva, that the Inquisition was a Marrano Factory?
Or do you believe that, subsequent to the spectacular General Conversion
of 1497, had there been no Inquisition there were strong motives for a
Judeo-Christian or Judaizing Nation to assert itself in Portugal, as an individualized ethnic group endowed with a specific spiritual evolution?
The phrase the Inquisition, a Marrano Factory is equivocal and
susceptible to two interpretations:
1. The author of An Account of the Cruelties, piously followed by
Saraiva, asserts that New Christians innocent of crypto-Judaism
(Saraiva is even more categorical: innocent Old Christians), were
locked up in the Inquisitorial dungeons and, when the time came for
them to appear at the auto-da-f, emerged, diabolically transformed
into Marranos after repeatedly being made to falsely confess cryptoJudaism and incriminate purported accomplices who, in turn, landed
in the dungeons of the Holy Office to undergo an identical transformation. While this interpretation, flowing from the pen of the author
of An Account of the Cruelties is, as we have seen earlier, explicable, it can
hardly pass muster coming from an author writing in 1969;
2. according to Ribeiro Sanches and Lus da Cunha, it was
Inquisitorial persecution and racial discrimination (as between Old
and New Christians) that preserved, well into the 18th century, an
authentic crypto-Judaism in Portugal and were rendering impossible the
total fusion of the two ethnic strata of the Portuguese population, by
continually impelling toward crypto-Judaism New Christians who were
well on the way to complete assimilation.
16 Melo successfully maintained his Catholic stance throughout his trial and severe
torture. He abjured de vehementi at the Lisbon auto-da-f of July 31, 1611. Dismissed from
the College of Penitents on August 22, 1611, by October 1612 he was a practicing Jew
in Amsterdam and an active member of the community. In 1626 he published a Spanish
verse adaptation of the Psalms which, according to Rvah, clinches the falsehood of
Melos declarations of attachment to Catholic Christianity made during his trial and the
truth of the denunciations that got him arrested. Our book-length study of the trial and
analysis of Melos poetical work, however, convinced us of just the opposite, namely that
Melo had been a staunch Catholic who lost his original faith in the course of his trial
(Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 8051). See H. P. Salomon, Portrait, 195.
260
APPENDIX ONE
I subscribe to the second interpretation. If King Manuels policy, characterized by the absence of an Inquisition and of racial discrimination
had been maintained by his successors, I am convinced that after a few
generations the New Christians would have dissolved into the mass of
Portuguese. The Inquisition and racial discrimination seriously jeopardized this assimilation by favoring the perpetuation of New Christian
ethnicity, by permanently calling to mind the Jewish religion, by engendering in some instances a repugnance for a religion as inhuman
as that of the Inquisitors and by attracting to crypto-Judaism some who
were not even of purely New Christian ancestry.
Saraiva, without drawing any consequence from it, makes the
following correct assessment (Chapter Ten):
The victims burnt alive at the autos-da-f provided Judaism with the additional argument of abundant martyrdom.
Two executions which attained notoriety attracted numerous New Christians to crypto-Judaism: that of Diogo da Assuno, a Franciscan friar
who, unaware of his one New Christian great-grandparent, was burnt
alive in 1603, proclaiming loud and clear the truth of the Law of Moses
and that of Dr. Antnio Homem, a Catholic priest and professor of
Canon Law at the University of Coimbra, whose ancestors were not all
New Christians,17 and who was garroted and burnt in 1624 without
confessing any heresy or incriminating any of his numerous accomplices
(one of whom was later to become the father-in-law of Spinozas sisters).18
Subsequent to the establishment of Jewish or Marrano communities
in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Leghorn, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Rouen,
London, etc. (not to mention the more ancient center in Antwerp),
many New Christians resident in Portugal came to have Jewish or
Judaizing relatives in foreign parts, with whom they maintained
constant contact and whom they could easily join if and when they felt
under the immediate threat of Inquisitorial arrest or when they felt the
time had come to abandon idolatry and adopt the pure cult of the
God of Israel. These family relationships were an additional factor
rendering impossible the total disappearance from Portugal of New
Christian ethnicity and crypto-Jewish religiosity.
17
18
261
That being the case, what was the precise role of the Portuguese Inquisition
and, above all, what were the consequences of its effect on Portuguese society
during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries?
To provide a direct answer to your question, I would state my conviction that, without the Inquisition and racial discrimination, the fundamental problem of Portuguese society during the 16th and 17th
centuries would not have existed. Only by some intellectual quirk is
one to explain the establishment and activity of the Portuguese Inquisition from 1536 to 1820 as the normal result of a class struggle within
Portuguese society. The Holy Office constituted an omnipotent bureaucracy (it had authority to condemn to hell) which from its inception eluded
the control of its theoretical heads (the Portuguese monarch and the
supreme pontiff) and which, desirous above all of perpetuating its own
power, did not attribute the slightest importance to the religious, economic and
social consequences of its actions, Thus it perpetuated during nearly three
centuries an authentic Portuguese crypto-Judaism. It forced an enormous
number of Portuguese to emigrate and, during the 16th and 17th
centuries, impeded the development of a lower and upper national middle
class which would have invested its capital in Portugal. During at least
two centuries it stunted the economic development of the country and favored
the installation of foreign merchants, whose property was protected from
Inquisitorial confiscation by commercial treaties, and who thus came
to occupy numerous positions abandoned by the New Christians.
Apropos of what he calls the disappearance of the race or religion of the New
Christians at the time of the Marquis de Pombal, Saraiva formulates the following
questions: How to explain the virtually overnight cessation of Judaizing? Why
were there legions of confessed Judaizers up until Pombal, but come Pombals
reforms end hey presto! It is all over? Why did it all happen so late, only under
the government of the Marquis de Pombal? To these questions, Saraiva replies:
Because together with him came to power the very families whom the Inquisition
had hounded (Chapter Thirteen). Do you agree with this thesis?
This thesis of his contradicts all the known realities of Pombals time
as well as of the preceding and following periods:
1. crypto-Judaism was prosecuted by the Holy Office in Portugal
until December, 1768.19
19 The last Lisbon auto-da-f involving Judaizers (2 out of 40 sentenced) took place on
October 27, 1765. There were no known autos-da-f at vora 1763-1781 and Coimbra
1762-1781. Goa had seven 1761-1769, which included no Judaizers.
262
APPENDIX ONE
I do not know whether the very families whom the Inquisition had
been persecuting came to power with Pombal, but I do know that
during the first ten years of Pombals government from 1750 to
1760.20 the Inquisition sentenced 1,138 persons of whom 18 were
executed.21 The fact that Paulo de Carvalho, Pombals brother,
presided over the General Council of the Holy Office from 1760 on
did not prevent the sentencing of 21 Judaizers at the public auto-da-f
of 1761.22 and of many others at private and public autos-da-f up to
December 1768.23 In 1763 a large family from Bragana adopted
Judaism in Bordeaux.24 and similar cases abound. It was only in 1773,
23 years after having come to power, that Pombal abolished the
distinction between Old and New Christians. Saraiva says that the
Marquis reforms were especially influenced by Ribeiro Sanches.25 Well
now, in the Inquisitorial archives I have discovered proof that Ribeiro
Sanches account was delivered in 1756 to two calificadores (censors) of
the Holy Office (one was Fr. Jos Malaquias), who concluded that the
author of the account should be arrested and punished by due process
of law.26 It seems that the punishment was not applied;
2. the persecution of crypto-Jews progressively diminished in
intensity during the first half of the 18th century and, as Lus da Cunha
263
From the wording of these statements, which could bear further development, one may easily gather the impossibility of my agreeing with
Saraivas final thesis. To complete this interview by summing up my
thought on the matter, I believe I can safely state that Saraivas interpretation of the complex whole of Portuguese New Christian history,
from 1497 on and into the 20th century, is wishful thinking and devoid
of any relationship to historical reality.
27 We have not been able to locate the source of this information. According to Isaac
S. and Suzanne A. Emmanuel (History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, Cincinnati,
1970, 1, 120) as late as 1822 one J. Fonseca with his three children arrived at Curaao
directly from Portugal to join the Portuguese Jewish community.
APPENDIX TWO
265
266
APPENDIX TWO
267
2 Rvah will take David to task for his slip of the pen (Antnio for Guilherme) in
his surrebutter. Guilherme J. C. Henriques published the Inquisitorial trial records of
the humanists Damio de Gis (Lisbon, 1896) and George Buchanan (Lisbon, 1906),
both Old Christians. Rvah will also point out that the other scholars mentioned by
David published excerpts and paraphrases of trial records on the count of Judaizing, but
no full transcriptions.
268
APPENDIX TWO
remain to provoke others to formulate new answers, and our cause will
have been well served.
AFONSO: However (excuse me for harping on this), Rvah accuses
Saraiva of dismissing Inquisitorial documentation as devoid of the
slightest value for historians and that his dismissiveness is his way of
making a virtue out of ignorance or a methodology out of incompetence.
DAVID: This accusation tells us more about Rvah than about
Saraiva. We could respond in kind that Rvah, incapable of anything
except compiling and summarizing arbitrarily selected documents,
makes believe that he follows a scientific method. But let us not stoop
to that gimmick. Saraiva never said anywhere in his book that the
Portuguese Inquisitorial records were worthless for historians. You
dont even have to be half as astute as Saraiva to see that they provide
the indispensable raw material for any meaningful history of Portuguese society. What he did say was that as far as the accusation of heresy
is concerned Inquisitorial trials are extremely suspect, just as are all
trials for ideological deviance. Thats quite a different matter.
AFONSO: But on this note we take leave of generalities and begin to
tackle more specific problems. Lets concentrate our attention on the
principal themes, which I see as the following:
1) class war
2) the Inquisitorial trial per se
3) Judaisms persistence in Portugal from the 16th century to the
present, among the descendants of those converted in 1497
4) the Portuguese Jewish communities in foreign parts
DAVID: These related but distinct questions are twisted and twined
in the Silva-Rvah interview, and plaited with supplementary ones,
such as the value of the anonymous work An Account of the Cruelties
Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal, Manuel Fernandes Vilareals trial,
Inquisitorial stage effects, etc.
AFONSO: So let us untwist and untwine them, leaving particular
questions aside for the nonce.
DAVID: The question of the Portuguese Jewish congregations in
foreign parts is now tied up with that of the Inquisitorial trial, then
again with that of Judaisms persistence in Portugal. We must examine
whether it isnt best treated separately. Where to begin?
AFONSO: Lets start with the Inquisitorial trial. Saraiva says, in sum,
that the Inquisition had a vested interest in proving that there were
hosts of Judaizers in Portugal; that the Inquisitors were simultaneously
judges and policemen; they investigated, arrested, judged and
sentenced in secret; were accountable to no higher court. The very
269
270
APPENDIX TWO
271
3
4
272
APPENDIX TWO
leave the defendants fate to the arbitrary whim of the judges, as Rvah
indeed recognizes.
AFONSO: So, if the Inquisitors had wished to sentence to death all
defendants who denied the accusations or whose confessions they
considered insufficient, they had in their arsenal a simple tactic: not to
put them to the torture. Doesnt this prove that, when all is said and
done, they didnt want to murder indiscriminately?
DAVID: The Inquisition was not interested in wiping out the New
Christians. On the contrary, the more New Christians the merrier.
Duly identified New Christians were the Inquisitions fish-pond.
Thats why the Inquisitors, more than once, opposed the Crowns
proposals to have confessed Judaizers expelled from the country. This
policy explains the relatively low proportion of executions: probably
not more than one-half percent of those appearing for sentencing at
the autos-da-f. Rvah, who seems incapable of comprehending a
general idea, didnt grasp this. Thats why he infers the Inquisitors
impartiality from the trial of Antnio Bocarros relatives, who were
submitted to torture in order to save them from execution.5
AFONSO: Hold on. When the Inquisitors had insufficient proof for
a conviction, was torture not used as a means of investigation?
DAVID: That depends. If they wanted to condemn someone to
death they had an infallible expedient: having the prisoner observed
through peep-holes.
AFONSO: Rvah says that this system was certainly a diabolical
invention, but a most useful and efficacious tool for the repression of
heresy and the watchers reports present a guarantee of reliability.
DAVID: What do you say to such an argument?
AFONSO: That Rvah may be suffering from angelitis. Unless
indignation has muted his common sense.
DAVID: These watchers were paid by the Inquisition, poor devils
who had to stand or crouch for hours in the same spot, one eye glued
to a tiny hole, on the lurk for Judaic behavior inside a poorly lit cell.
What trust can be invested in these institutional sneaks and their
reconnaissance? Even if their findings were not suggested by Inquisitorial coaching, most of them must have known the kind of tidbits
their bosses liked to hear. As we see in the case of Vilareal, two watchers
would be assigned to the peep-hole, at which they took turns, so they
could communicate their depositions to each other, compare and
conflate them. These experts on cell-Judaizing worked six-hour shifts.
273
6 See above, Chapter Five, note 7 and Rvahs surrebutter on this point, which he
seems to win.
7 Useless because David (and his progenitor), to justify their failure to do
research, pretend that Rvah sits on the key to the archives and allows nobody access!
We will see that Saraivas unfamiliarity with trial records will cost him a victory over
Rvah which could easily have been his in the crucial peep-hole debate. See Chapter
Five, note 19: Appendix Two, note 20; Appendix Three, note 36.
8 See above, Chapter Nine.
274
APPENDIX TWO
9 David was on the brink of a semantic pitfall when he was saved by the term empirical guidelines as a substitute for rules or rules. The problem is the term rule book
as translation of Regimento, which makes it sound like a book of laws. Torquemadas
Spanish term Instrucciones was probably more apt. Davids last sentence sums up the
problem in a nutshell.
10 See above, Appendix One, note 4.
275
11 See I. S. Rvah, Autobiographie dun Marrane, Revue des tudes Juives, 119, 1961,
41-130: 61-62.
12 Les Marranes, Revue des tudes Juives, 118, 1959-1960, 29-77.
276
APPENDIX TWO
277
father, whose body was burnt at an auto-da-f. The Portuguese are moved
to tears, beg him for a small quantity of this precious relic, quickly collect
25 ducats which they give the lad, along with a letter of recommendation for a correspondent in Paris. I took my leave of them, says the
rogue, proud of having taken for a ride people who always cheat others,
but never allow themselves to be cheated. Though reeking of gunk, the
tales core probably reflects a sociological reality. We chance upon similar
cases in Portuguese emigrant circles of our own days, where there is
always someone who attempts to solve personal problems by attributing
ideological motives to his emigration. All in all, descriptions by
emigrants of their crypto-Jewish practices in Portugal are hardly the
impartial second proof necessary to establish the veracity of Inquisitorial
accusations. Rvah tends to forget that.
AFONSO: Lets move on to another theme, related to the practice of
crypto-Judaism in Portugal. Rvah says that crypto-Jewish groups, of
a notably homogeneous ethnic and religious character which have
been discovered during the 20th century in the interior regions of the
country attest to the persistence of Judaism in Portugal and thus show
that the Inquisitors were right.
DAVID: Saraiva considers these groups a residual phenomenon
which does not affect the general lines of assimilation of the pre-1497
Jewish population which remained in Portugal. The phenomenon
should be reduced to its true proportions. The engineer Samuel
Schwarz published in 1925 a book called The New Christians
in Portugal in the 20th century which recounts his discovery in
Belmonte of families who were secretly practicing some very disfigured
relics of what might be termed a Judaic cult. He also found some
people conscious of Jewish ancestry in towns such as Covilh, Fundo,
Guarda, Bragana and others. As a result, the Jewish Community
of Lisbon launched an international appeal for the creation of a
boarding-school where Marrano boys were to be taught authentic
Judaism. In order to study the situation in loco, the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Alliance Isralite Universelle sent an emissary to
Portugal in the person of Lucien Wolf, a distinguished historian of
Sephardic Jewry. He spent four weeks in Portugal, visiting Oporto,
Coimbra, Guarda, Covilh, Belmonte, Curia, and interviewed highranking personalities including the President of the Republic, who
promised him every possible support. His Report on the Marranos or
Crypto-Jews of Portugal appeared in London and, in French translation,
in Paris, in 1926: 17 dense pages, remarkably lucid and powerfully
synthesized, which came to have a decided impact on the study of
Marranism. Wolf arrived at conclusions which did not coincide with
278
APPENDIX TWO
13 In point of fact, Captain Barros Basto was not of New Christian descent, except in
his own fantasy. See Elvira de Azevedo Mea and Incio Steinhardt, Ben-Rosh, Biografia do
Capito Barros Basto, o Apstolo dos Marranos, Oporto, 1997.
279
DAVID: Hes putting one over on his readers. The Bragana synagogue referred to was founded by Captain de Barros Basto in 1927.14
And even though the latter was an ardent apostle, his efforts dont
seem to have had much success. The same Leite de Vasconcelos
records that since 1910 the number of Israelites have gradually
diminished in Portugal (Etnografia, 4, p. 237).15
AFONSO: In any case these survivals, scanty as they may be, testify
to the existence of a clandestine Judaism in times gone by. One may
suppose that in Pombals time crypto-Judaism was stronger and more
viable than now. At least that is what Rvah seems to think when he
discusses the trials for Judaism during the 60s of the 18th century.
DAVID: As Ive already said, Saraiva does not dispute that underground Judaizers held out in progressively diminishing number
throughout the reign of the Inquisition. The Inquisition of course
pretended that this Judaizing was ever on the increase. But as Saraiva
has shown, at the time of Pombals reforms it was no longer a viable
entity and what Marranism had survived was a fossil without religious
significance, more or less what Lucien Wolf discovered.
AFONSO: How is that?
DAVID: With Pombals reforms, arrests for Judaizing came to a
halt. Indeed, the last decades of the 18th century saw practicing Jews
(whether or not of remote Portuguese origin) organize themselves
communally in Portugal. The Amzalak family of Jerusalem settled in
Portugal during the last decades of the 18th century. A synagogue was
inaugurated at Lisbon in 1813 (until then, from about 1780, worshippers had gathered in private homes), and a Jewish cemetery was
acquired in 1801 (until then Jews were buried in a plot set aside in the
British Protestant cemetery). When the persecution ended, had
Judaism still been alive in Portugal even in deepest hibernation
that was the moment for it to come out into the daylight. However
nothing of the sort occurred. The initiative for all the synagogues built
in mainland Portugal and the Azores after 1813, in Lisbon, Faro, Ponta
Delgada, Angra de Herosmo, etc., was taken by outsiders. The exceptions are Captain de Barros Basto and Jos Antnio Furtado
Montanha, director of the Bragana branch of the Bank of Portugal
280
APPENDIX TWO
281
has a bourgeoisie and a group of New Christians: what makes for its
originality is the de facto confusion between bourgeois and New Christians. He himself ascertains that during the 17th century, in Portugal, the expressions Men of Commerce and Men of the (Hebrew)
Nation were synonymous, even in official documents. To suppose that the
Portuguese mercantile and financial bourgeoisie, which was on the
whole New Christian, had ceased to exist by Pombals time, is so
risible that it must be Rvahs humor finally coming on with a
vengeance.
AFONSO: Doesnt Rvah realize that hes inviting ridicule?
DAVID: I would wager that as soon as he leaves the archives he is a
fish out of water. Who else with one thousand trial records in his cap
would conclude that the Portuguese mercantile and financial bourgeoisie had already vanished from the scene by Pombals day!
AFONSO: Perhaps he read this somewhere
DAVID: The abrupt end to a Jewish question in Portugal immediately the Pombaline laws were promulgated has impressed historians
from Lcio de Azevedo to Lucien Wolf. Rvah confines himself to
regurgitating their explanations. But during the period when they
were writing the terms of the problem were different, because the identification of the Portuguese bourgeoisie with the New Christians had
not yet been made plain. By doggedly dishing up the same stale argument even after the publication of Saraivas book Rvah makes himself
a laughing stock.
AFONSO: Its the context of the class war. By now we are tackling the
last main theme of the Rvah-Silva interview. Rvah challenges
Saraivas simplistic application of this theory to the Portuguese New
Christians.
DAVID: I suspect that Rvah knows little more about the theory of
class war than that its a touchy subject in the present university
upheaval in France. Thats why he prudently refrains from discussing
the theory itself, but only its simplistic application, without bothering to explain what the over-simplification consists of.
AFONSO: Thats not strictly true. He gives the following synopsis of
the thesis of Saraivas first book on the subject (1953): that the neoChristian ethnicity and the crypto-Judaic religion were abominable
myths invented by the Portuguese Inquisitors (tools of the ruling
seigniorial class) and that the label New Christian was an invention of
the ruling class and its Inquisitorial agents in order to keep the
mercantile bourgeoisie and its allies out of power.
DAVID: Thats not exactly what Saraiva said, but rather: that the
rapid assimilation of the converted Jews (which took effect especially
282
APPENDIX TWO
in the circles of the high bourgeoisie), gave the complex whole of the
Portuguese bourgeoisie a force which threatened to shake up the old
guard, nobility and clergy. To obviate this situation the ruling classes
thought up a form of discrimination (which had been legally abolished
in 1496), that would pen up and separate from the rest of society by a
sanitary cordon virtually the whole Portuguese bourgeoisie. The Inquisition, not merely by its autos-da-f but also by its cleanness of blood
archives, was the tool for imposing this discrimination.
AFONSO: Was this also the thesis of the 1969 book?
DAVID: Yes, but in this second book Saraiva carefully avoided the
schematization that characterized the first, wherein the bourgeoisie
and the ruling class might appear as homogeneous, rigid blocks. That
is why he gave the breakdown of the governing class: king, clergy,
traditional nobility. He descried the motivations of the low and high
clergy; specified those of the intellectual bourgeoisie; described the
state of mind, favorable to the Inquisition, of the so-called plebeian
classes. He stressed the socio-psychological aspects of the problem.
Above all, he developed a theme that had already been sketched in
1955: phases of the Inquisition which correspond to different types of
relations between it and the ruling lite. There is a phase when the two
powers are intimately allied, another when they dissociate, a third
when they go at each other no-holds-barred. These different phases
correspond to the progressive alteration in the balance of forces in
Portugal. By the time Pombal reformed the Inquisition it had been
reduced to a scarecrow because the center of economic and cultural
gravity had already passed, for the most part, to the high bourgeoisie.
This doesnt look like a simplistic application of the theory of class war
and even though Saraiva nowadays goes around proclaiming that this
theory has been abused, the scheme he proposed in 1953 and developed in 1969 still seems to me the best key for explaining the appearance and the history of the Portuguese Inquisition.
AFONSO: Rvah challenges this thesis, if I understand him
correctly, with the following argument: to assume that the Inquisition
was created as an instrument of combat against the mercantile and
financial bourgeoisie one would have to accept the idea that all the
pseudo-New Christians belonged to the high mercantile and financial bourgeoisie and that they belonged to it from the 16th century
until its triumph during the Pombal era. However, in the first place,
many of the New Christians werent wealthy; secondly the so-called
high bourgeoisies heyday lasted only from the reign of King Joo III
through that of King Pedro II and had practically disappeared from
the scene during Pombals time.
283
17
See Joo Lcio dAzevedo, Histria dos Cristos-Novos Portugueses, Lisbon, 1922, 492.
284
APPENDIX TWO
Rvah has written and he is perhaps right as regards a very late period
in the history of the Inquisition.
AFONSO: But leaving aside for a moment Rvahs arguments, I
myself should like to venture an objection to Saraivas book: are we to
believe that the Jews, who retained their religious identity during
thousands of years in all the countries of the the Diaspora, would have
allowed themselves to lose it in little Portugal?
DAVID: This is a tough nut to crack. But one answer already occurs to
me. The present-day Jews of Western Europe are a handful of survivors
of a long march strewn with dead and missing persons. Those who have
made it into the present are the ones who successfully resisted or escaped
massacres, pressures, temptations and assimilation. This historic process
of natural selection no doubt contributed to the tempering of the extraordinary quality of these people, from the economic, literary, technical,
scientific and spiritual viewpoint, although the annihilation of the 1940s
left no room for tempering. As to the Portuguese Jews, the few who
resisted conversion left for alien shores. From among the persecuted later
generations of Portuguese New Christians, those who shed their Christian beliefs, readopted their ancestors Jewish beliefs and maintained
their Portuguese identity in new areas of settlement, a majority of their
conscious and identifiable European descendants were to be murdered in
the Nazi gas chambers; others in the course of centuries migrated to the
Americas and some live today in Israel. Those who remained in Portugal
(the overwhelming majority) dissolved into the Portuguese population,
sharing, along with everything else, its fervent, lukewarm or non-existent
Christianity.18 What remains to be ascertained is the extent to which they
introduced Judaic cultural elements into every-day Portuguese life.
AFONSO: This is no doubt a theme for future research and it would
be well for Saraiva not to lose sight of it. But we still have to clear up
certain questions of detail. Lets consider a few of them: the cases of
Francisco Gomes Henriques and Uriel da Costa. Rvah reckons the
pages Saraiva dedicated to the former absurd.
DAVID: He should explain how it is that Gomes Henriques,
according to Rvah a convinced Judaizer, attempted, just before his
execution, to smuggle a letter to his wife, in which he refers to Our
Lord Jesus Christ and recommends to his family, in memory of his
soul, devotions to Our Lady of Glory.
285
19
286
APPENDIX TWO
another New Christian, while Vilareal was in Lisbon. One of his principal enemies was his brother-in-law, his wifes brother. In the game of
blind mans buff (which is what an Inquisitorial trial amounted to),
Vilareal suspected, among other things, that his wife, not over keen to
have him back, was indirectly responsible for his arrest.
AFONSO: Hold on! Dont tell me all this escaped Rvah!
DAVID: Of course not. But he is keeping it from his readers.
AFONSO: So thats the use he makes of the documents? But lets
proceed to Rvahs third argument. 3: Vilareal, in one of his books, had
called for freedom of religion in the countries of the Iberian Peninsula.
DAVID: This proves absolutely nothing. The book in question,
El Poltico Christianissimo, published in 1642, is a panegyric upon the
French prime minister Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) and, by association, upon religious liberty at large. It refers especially to the French
wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants and it alludes but
obliquely, here and there, to the Inquisition. Father Antnio Vieira and
others espoused Vilareals criticisms on this point. Saraiva, analyzing
El Poltico Christianissimo, shows that Vilareal was in reality a precursor
of toleration [in the sense of John Lockes Letter on Toleration, 1689],
no more Jewish or Protestant than he was Catholic, like Uriel da
Costa.20 and the French free-thinkers of his time.
AFONSO: They really are pretty weak, these supplementary arguments adduced by Rvah to support his (and the Inquisitors)
theory that Vilareal was a Judaizer. And yet he is acquainted with all
3000 folios of the trial record.21
DAVID: He is, but he picks and chooses what to use. There is, for
example, a letter written by Menasseh Ben Israel to Vilareal in 1648,
in reply to the latters query concerning Scriptural chronology.22 In
this letter, amiable and courteous, Menasseh complains of pressure of
time, explaining that, for lack of a personal fortune, he has to give
lessons in Talmud. The passage runs as follows: I am resigned to
287
20 See above, Chapter Five, n. 8. It seems strange that Rvah ignored these words of
Vilareals, since elsewhere he quotes other parts of the apology. See Ibrida, 1, 1959, 185,
n. 8.
288
APPENDIX TWO
289
the practices of the Holy Office may confidently quench his thirst at
this source [History of the New Christians, Preamble, p. vii].
A first-rate testimony which has never been surpassed, as far as the
subject goes, in design and clarity. From the time the wretched defendant is arrested until he is sentenced to death and executed not a
single stumbling-block or anguish which he meets up with in the
course of his trial is missing from the narrative. Everything The Account
of the Cruelties exposes about the prison routine, the Inquisitors and
the defendants crafty devices (the formers to obtain confessions, the
latters to escape death) is the absolute truth [History of the New
Christians, p. 309].
AFONSO: Is it worth while replying to Rvahs remark about the
effect of the theatrical scenario which, according to Saraiva, the Inquisitors organized?
DAVID: His reasoning is so infantile
AFONSO: Infantile doesnt fit, because kids in general are smart.
DAVID: The scenario was intended for the crowds at the autos-da-f;
for the defendants at the interrogatory and declaratory sessions,
always mounted according to a strict formulary with juridical pretensions; for the Inquisitions own staff who pranced and went through
the motions of a dance whose choreography they did not grasp; for the
very Inquisitors, who wished to see themselves in the mirror of legitimacy and Christian charity. Rvah knows perfectly well that even in
confidential meetings we are on stage and play out parts. The 1640
rule book systematically organized the whole stage effect for the
various audiences and is itself a model of stylized virtuosity. There is
perhaps no other work like it in the bibliography of ideological totalitarianism and, as such, might lend itself to a formidable study.
AFONSO: Are there any other points to focus on in the Silva-Rvah
interview?
DAVID: To be sure, but Im weary. Moreover there is a Portuguese
proverb which says: You can tell the cloth from the sample.
We havent sufficiently dealt with Rvahs intentional omissions. He
argues, for instance, that the discovery through the peep-holes of
Jewish fasts was not a secret procedure, but was publicly revealed at
the autos-da-f.24 But he forgets to add that in these publicly read-out
24 Rvah, in the interview, did not say in so many words that peep-holes were
mentioned in the sentence. Yet David seems to understand Rvah to have said precisely
that. As we pointed out in our footnote 7 to the interview, peep-holes were never
referred to in the sentences (the sentence read out at the auto-da-f was the Inquisitors
summary at the close of each trial record, beginning with the word Acrdo). Thus,
290
APPENDIX TWO
Saraivas hypothesis that all or most of the defendants who discovered the peep-holes and
their function in the course of their trials were executed, stands and Rvah whether
he implied or (according to David) actually said that peep-holes were mentioned in the
sentences suffers a heavy blow. See Chapter Five, note 19.
25 The translators have not been able to locate these in their copies of the Dirio de
Lisboa.
291
292
APPENDIX TWO
293
294
APPENDIX TWO
APPENDIX THREE
1 The translation includes the July 29, 1971 installment, accidentally omitted from
the Appendix to the 5th edition (1985) of Inquisio e Cristos-Novos. A number of paragraphs erroneously printed in the August 19, 1971 installment have been moved to
their proper place and a repetition eliminated. All footnotes are by the translators. The
original titles of Portuguese works whose titles are translated into English in the text may
be found in the Bibliography. The words diatribe and lampoon are both our translation of the word diatribe regularly used by Rvah to designate A. J. Saraivas Inquisio
e Cristos-Novos.
296
APPENDIX THREE
297
3 Whereas Saraiva in the interview was defining and condemning an all too prevalent
type of historical writing, Rvah is here presenting Saraiva out of context as its
advocate and representative.
298
APPENDIX THREE
299
300
APPENDIX THREE
4
5
301
302
APPENDIX THREE
303
304
APPENDIX THREE
305
the three critics whom I have just quoted, Mr. Jorge Reis didnt fall into
the trap set by Mr. Saraivas demagogy. He recognizes the worthlessness of that gents description of Inquisitorial justice because he knows
that the crypto-Jews were not invented by the Inquisition; just as he
knows that there is a religious continuity between the medieval Jews
and the modern crypto-Jews of Portugal, that there is an ethnic continuity between those Jews and these New Christians and that, for a true
historian, the words New Christians and bourgeois are not synonymous. Mr. Saraiva dogmatically denies the existence of the slightest
relationship between Judaism and Neo-Christianity. Mr. Reis is astonished that the author of such a dogmatic thesis has completely
neglected the study of pre-1497 Judaism in Portugal. He writes: If the
author had cast a glance in that direction which would have been
the normal way of proceeding, since we are dealing with people
accused, rightly or wrongly, of persisting in the practice of the earlier
religion and who belonged to all levels of Portuguese society we are
convinced that he would have been the first to perceive the bond which
unites the pre-1497 Jews and the New Christians (or persons of the
Nation) who took their place; thus he would have perceived that the
formers Judaism could not simply vanish into thin air by the miraculous intervention of his highly acclaimed assimilation; and he would
also have understood that the General Conversion was not a cocoon
in which the caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly and that
material advantages might just not have produced calming and
compensatory effects on all human beings even Jews.
I am convinced that an imminent masterpiece by Mr. Saraiva will
apprise us of the ideologies which Alcambar, Leite de Vasconcelos,
Viegas Guerreiro, Amaral Nogueira, Novinsky, Paulo, Reis attempted
to array with scholarly trappings when they wrote on the history of
the Inquisition and the New Christians. In my own case the problem
is solved: my ideological biography was masterfully outlined in the
Dialogue that the Dirio de Lisboa was privileged to publish. In great
earnest, albeit with little respect for the readers of the paper, the two
chimeras Afonso and David observe that the sacrifice of all those
years of his life spent in the dust of the archives availed I. S. Rvah
nothing. He just confirms the views held once upon a time by the
Inquisitors and passed from them to Lcio de Azevedo and Jewish
historiography. Were Lcio de Azevedo to resuscitate and prepare a
new edition of his book, he would merely have to increase his bibliographical references, without altering the text.
The Inquisitors opinion of Judaism and crypto-Judaism is well
known. Lcio de Azevedo, says the phantom David, his intelligence
306
APPENDIX THREE
8 Saraiva never claimed that Azevedos regrettable prejudice rendered useless his
History of the Portuguese New Christians, quite the contrary. See Chapter Thirteen,
note 27.
9 Die Juden und das Wirtschafstleben, Leipzig, 1918.
10 See, for example, Azevedos 1933 letter cited anon.
307
arts and crafts with them, since there were none to take. Unlike the
Moriscos, expelled from Spain by Philip III, they werent farmers. What
were they then? A couple of medicasters [sic] and the rest usurers or
merchants whose function is generally that of parasites, not to forget the
miserable throng of plebeians, devoid of trade or skill, who kept body
and soul together in Amsterdam with the charity of the Congregation.
Spinoza, expelled from the clan for not respecting the Bible was a great
man because at heart he was not a Jew: modesty and detachment are
hardly qualities which characterize the Children of Israel. When the
multitude of Jewish fanatics came to Brazil at the time of the Dutch invasion they scandalized by their greed and ambition not only the local
Portuguese, the original settlers, but the Dutch themselves. It was in
Brazil that they picked up from the locals the sugar industry, which they
later took along to Surinam and the Antilles; it was certainly not they
who introduced it, as Sombart claims. The latter, due to his impassioned
attachment to Jewry, states that Tom de Sousa was a Jew and that
because of this the colonization of Brazil proceeded rationally. He bases
his theory on the name. Well, if all Sousas were Jews (30-31 of the
Introduction).
308
APPENDIX THREE
309
It almost goes without saying that for the history of the descendants
of the Jews converted in Portugal in 1497 as, indeed, for the history of
any large segment of the Portuguese people, the historian must
consult the parish registers, the notary, municipal, district, national
archives of Portugal, Spain and of the countries which received the
fugitive New Christians in their midst and granted them, sooner or
later, the right to practice the Jewish religion.
The learned Antnio Ribeiro dos Santos (1745-1818) wrote in
1792: The Christian religion has not had during the last centuries a
more cruel and obstinate enemy than Orbio. As it happens, this
Baltasar lvares Orbio de Castro, born in Bragana c. 1617-1618, was
educated in Spain (at the Universities of Osuna and Alcal), whence he
emigrated to Toulouse in 1660. In 1662 he arrived at Amsterdam
where he wrote a number of treatises against all Christian denominations. Obviously an historian dealing with this thinker must attempt to
situate him in his native environment and study, in conjunction with his
works, the numerous trial records of members of his family arrested at
the end of the 16th century by the Coimbra Tribunal of the Portuguese
Inquisition and records of his own trials (1640-1642; 1654-1656) by
the Spanish Holy Office.12
*
Mr. Saraiva summoned his chimeras and entrusted them with a seemingly unfeasible task: to convince the readers of the Dirio de Lisboa that
he was right not to have personally perused a single Portuguese or
Spanish Inquisitorial document before sitting down to write The
Portuguese Inquisition (1953) and Inquisition and New Christians
(1969). There it is, this extraordinary profession of faith: My standards
are different. I do not carry out archival research because that is not my
specialty. One really has to see this, black on white, to believe that such
a profession of faith is possible. I am not even going to try to harmonize
this declaration with Mr. Saraivas biography and bibliography.
12 At the time of the surrebutter Rvah was devoting his Collge de France lectures to
this Jew made in the Spanish Inquisition. Baltasar Alvarez de Orobios first publication, age 17, was a fervently Catholic poem on the occasion of the plague in Mlaga
(1637). Until his arrest in 1654 by the Seville Inquisition as part of a crack-down on
Portuguese, he had been a model of Catholic piety. In Amsterdam, after 1662, he
became a militant apostle of Judaism and a redoubtable anti-Catholic polemicist. See H.
P. Salomon, Baruch Spinoza, Ishac Orobio de Castro and Haham Mosseh Rephael
dAguilar on the Noachites: A Chapter in the History of Thought, Arquivos do Centro
Cultural Portugus, 14, 1979, 253-286; Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism, the Story
of Isaac Orobio de Castro, Oxford, 1989.
310
APPENDIX THREE
13 The 19th-century manuscript catalogue of the vora Tribunals 11,767 trial records
on the open shelves of the Torre do Tombo is alphabetical not chronological and
provides the scantiest imaginable often incorrect and almost illegible summary of
the final sentence, practically uniformly worded, almost all on the count of Judaizing. As
of 2001 the Torre do Tombo offers computerized indices, providing minimal or less
than minimal essentials, to the c. 42,000 numbered documents of the three tribunals
(Lisbon, Coimbra, vora).
311
14
15
312
APPENDIX THREE
registered by the Holy Office. Yet David, spiritual son of Mr. Saraiva,
reminds future summarizers of Inquisitorial archives to make good
use of the defendants genealogy.
In the 319 pages of Inquisition and New Christians there is not a
single suggestion of any positive value inherent in the Inquisitorial
documentation or about its possible authentic ingredients, but there
are many arguments against the reliability of these documents. Nevertheless, the cynical David asserts that Saraiva never said anywhere in
his book that the enormous Portuguese Inquisitorial documentation
was worthless for historians [] What he did say was that as far as the
accusation of heresy is concerned Inquisitorial trials are extremely suspect,
just as are all trials for ideological deviance. Thats a horse of another
color. Saraivas diatribe is dedicated to Marcel Bataillon, the author
of Erasmus and Spain, in which judicious use was made of a dozen
Spanish Inquisitorial proceedings instituted against persons accused
of heresy,17 i.e., extremely suspect [documents], just as are all [those
produced by] trials for ideological deviance. I have already publicly
admitted that, when I was 20, it was Prof. Bataillons book which
completely convinced me of the extraordinary importance of the
Iberian Inquisitorial archives for the history of Peninsular cultures.
Could Bataillon have surmised, around 1937, to what dangers his
methodology was exposing him and what possible means there
were to avert them? These dangers and means were discovered by
Mr. Saraivas astuteness in Paris, June 1968, viz: [] the outward
trappings of the trials, the procedural norms, the system of delation,
the genealogical inquiries, all conspire against the scrupulous historian who takes the Inquisitorial documentation at face value. His only
safeguard is constant vigilance against a directive intention pervading the
Inquisitorial archives. This tendentiousness can be elucidated only by
treating the Inquisition, not as a source of formally reliable documents, but
as a phenomenon within a certain historic context (Inquisition and
New Christians, A Word To the Reader, emphasis supplied).
The distaste for archival research manifested by Mr. Saraiva gave
birth to the most extravagant idea to be found in Inquisition and New
Christians, viz. that the Inquisitorial documentation was produced
with the purpose of justifying the existence of the Tribunal of the Holy
Office; this end-result was so perfect that it succeeded in mystifying
20th-century scholars: Had they found time for crystal-ball gazing,
313
could the Inquisitors have foreseen such far-flung success for their
propaganda? (Inquisition and New Christians, Chapter Three).
Since everything I myself have had to say on the subject until today is,
according to the shrewd David, to be found in the works of Azevedo,
Wolf and Roth, not to mention Graetzs seminal History, I might as
well confess that it is from Antnio Baio that I lift the following:
In respect to the Inquisitorial Archives, Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha
Rivara [1809-1879] correctly states: We cannot form a well-founded and
impartial opinion on the Inquisition as long as historians dont frequent
the Torre do Tombo to rummage the Inquisitorial trial records. Indeed,
there can be no surer guide for the scholar, taking into account that the
Inquisitorial Archives, all of which fortunately escaped destruction
during the earthquake of 1755, were secret and, for that very reason,
whatever was written in those documents was truthful and never
intended to deceive.
18 The decision was in fact within Inquisitorial legality since it was approved by
majority vote, despite a dissenting opinion, also recorded. But for Rvah to admit
this would mean throwing in the towel in his debate with Saraiva. See below note 36.
Cf. Chapter Five, note 19; Appendix Two, note 20.
314
APPENDIX THREE
the Desk by the Inquisitor General Cardinal Nuno da Cunha, but this
extraordinary procedure is mentioned in the trial record, to unburden the
conscience of the Inquisitors at the Desk (J. Lcio de Azevedo, Novas
Epanforas, 199-200). The slave Leonor, against whom there were also
no charges, was arrested and taken to the Penitentiary (not to the
Inquisitorial prison) because she was expected to denounce members
of the Jews family. This is not a unique case in the history of the
Portuguese Inquisition but its illegality.19 was registered in the trial record.
The Historical Sources Used by a Pseudo-Historian
With No Archival Specialty
Mr. Saraiva and his creatures of reason, with unheard of contempt
for their readers, tried to convince them that it is quite possible to
write the history of the Inquisition and the New Christians by shirking
the Torre do Tombo.
A The published trial records
In his Letter to the Editor the pseudo-historian writes: I have
studied in detail only the hitherto published trial records but that does
not prevent me from trying to understand what was going on, by
comparing the known trial records (including those which Mr. Rvah
cites or summarizes) with other documents []. In the Dialogue the
phantom named David is much more erudite than his procreator:
true, its merely for show. To Afonsos question: So you think the hitherto published documents are sufficient in number to sustain a
theory? David replies: Numerous trial record documents have been
published by Alexandre Herculano, Joo Lcio de Azevedo, Antnio
Baio, Antnio Jos Teixeira, Jos Ramos Coelho, Antnio Henriques,
Tefilo Braga, more recently by Julio Caro Baroja, Israel Salvator
Rvah and others.
These deceits (pardon the word), attempt to inculcate the idea that
many trial records of Portuguese Judaizers have been published when,
in reality, what we have up to now are:
a) summaries consisting of a few lines or a couple of pages;
b) excerpts or extracts of short length;
c) partial studies of trial records.
315
20 William John Charles Henry (alias Guilherme Joo Carlos Henriques) (London,
1846 Alenquer, ?) came to Portugal age 14 where he was adopted by the AngloPortuguese historian John Smith Athelstone, Count of Carnota (1813-1886), who
bequeathed him his estate by that name, near Alenquer.
316
APPENDIX THREE
317
21
22
318
APPENDIX THREE
23 Pace Rvah, Baios Episodes are regrettably studded with asides disparaging New
Christians, whom he regularly calls Jews. For instance, referring to the inventory of his
possessions made by the Inquisitorial prisoner Francisco Gomes Henriques (the
Niggard), Baio drops the snide remark: The assets of Francisco Gomes Henriques
commercial establishment were not to be sneezed at, in spite of the omissions and
sophisms in which the Jews were fertile (vol. 2, 220,1973 edition).
24 So Rvah allows ulterior motives to Portuguese New Christian emigrants who opt
for Catholicism but not to those who adopt Judaism.
319
25 Rvahs conception of Judaism apparently discounts the possibility of Old Christians voluntarily joining a synagogue were that option open to them.
320
APPENDIX THREE
26 Virgnia Raus note suggests that Macedos anti-New Christian stance may have
been pragmatic: his candidacy for a familiar-ship had just been rejected by the Holy
Office due to rumors that one of his grandmothers might have been of partly New
Christian origin. His letter of a month later to Father Antnio Vieira equivocates on the
same issue.
27 Rvahs critical study of An Account of the Cruelties was not published during his
lifetime and has not come to light since his death, so we do not know what impels him
to think that the text we have is incomplete. As to its reliability, see above, Chapter Four,
note 6, in which are identified thirteen out of the seventeen trial records cited and
summarized (quite correctly as it turns out from a rigorous comparison) by the author
of Cruelties.
321
28 Rvah, construing Afonsos mistake as dishonesty, implies that Saraiva has some
hidden agenda for wanting to exaggerate tenfold the length of the trial record, but does
not intimate what that agenda could be. To the translators it seems more like a slip of
the pen (adding a zero to 300).
322
APPENDIX THREE
323
another Amsterdam rabbi, Saul Levi Mortera, the true spiritual leader
of the Portuguese Jewish community, showed great appreciation for
the works published by the two friends, Manuel Fernandes Vilareal
and Antonio Enrquez Gmez. It is hardly necessary to cite other
elements which prove the utter absurdity of claiming that Vilareal was
in reality a precursor of toleration [] no more Jewish or Protestant
than he was Catholic, like Uriel da Costa.
The interlocutors of the Dialogue do not mention Mr. Saraivas use
of the New Christian Duarte Gomes Solis Spanish work: Arguments
in favor of the East India Company. Gomes Solis book is quoted eight
times in Inquisition and New Christians. For the first quotation
(Chapter Nine), Mr. Saraiva provides the following reference:
Alegacin, Gentil da Silva edition with commentary, Lisbon, 209-210.
But Mr. Jos Gentil da Silva never produced any edition, with or
without commentary, of the Alegacin; his analysis of this work
appeared in vol. 8 of the Proceedings of the 13th Luso-Spanish
Conference for the Advancement of Sciences (465-537). Mr. Saraivas
eight quotations from the Alegacin were taken from Moses Bensabat
Amzalaks edition of Gomes Solis book (Lisbon, 1955; offprint from
the Anais do Instituto Superior de Cincias Econmicas e Financeiras).
Three Specimen Trial Records
The cynical David exalts Mr. Saraivas scholarly integrity: But the cases
invoked by Saraiva are known and published trial records that can be
verified by anyone. He moreover explores all the circumstantial motivations which might have produced the Inquisitors decision, whereas
Rvah, limiting himself to cases with which he alone is acquainted,
omits all specifications. But the integrity is but sham integrity.
The cases invoked by Saraiva are not published trial records because, even
the one which enters into this category (of published trial records),
was not consulted in the published text by our pseudo-historian.
Mr. Saraiva confined himself to the use of ready-made summaries he
found of some trial records, picking, choosing and juggling with the
facts that appear in these summaries. To prove that New Christian
defendants in Inquisitorial trials were all falsely accused of Judaizing,
he applied this methodology to three trial records which he calls specimens. To refute my 1962 discovery of a crypto-Jewish tradition in
Uriel da Costas family, it suited his book to disregard, in his ridiculous
analysis of Uriels convictions, my summaries of the trials of Uriels
relatives. His creature of reason David nullifies completely the value
of Uriels maternal grandfathers, great-grandmothers, great-aunts
324
APPENDIX THREE
31 The initial denunciation leading to the Niggards arrest in 1651 was made by
Bento da Costa Brando (the son of Uriel da Costas sister Maria). In the course of his
carefully rehearsed appearance before the Inquisitors on October 10, 1646 Bento, then
24, confessed that on a Day of Atonement 8 or 9 years earlier he went to fetch his
father and met him in the company of Francisco Gomes Henriques and Manuel
Machado, walking towards the Rossio. When all four arrived there these gentlemen took
leave of his father because it was getting time and his father agreed. Bento had then
asked his father if they were also fasting and his father had said yes. Whereupon he
and his father went home to break their fast. See ANTT, Inquisition of Lisbon, no.
10794 (Francisco Gomes Henriques), transcribed from ANTT, Inquisition of Lisbon, no.
1772 (Bento da Costa Brando). Cf. Uriel da Costa, Exame das tradies farisaicas (edited
by H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon), Braga, 1995, 38-39.
325
decided that his summary of a summary was a bit gaunt and, to pad it
out, appends the following decisive argument (Chapter Five):
[Informed of his death sentence in November 1654, the Niggard
addressed a letter of farewell to his wife and family.] The Niggard
intended this letter to reach his family by the intermediary of his cellmate whom he trusted to the point of recommending him warmly to his
wife, requesting her, in case this friend of his would ever be freed, to
provide him with shelter, money and clean clothing, and a silk jerkin
and all the clean linen he may need and sheets and all the rest of better
quality than mine for such is my last will. But the man who thus
succeeded in insinuating himself in the gratitude and affection of old
Niggard delivered the letter to my lords the Inquisitors. The family
never received it and, for this very reason, we can read it today in the
Inquisitorial archives. The Inquisitors knew, then, that the man they had
condemned to death as a Judaizer was a fervent Christian, a devotee
of Our Lady of Glory And they buried the proof in their frosty vaults.
32 Rvahs original Portuguese text reads: o notrio escreveu Cardozo no alto das
pginas que entregou ao Forra-gaitas para este escrever mulher. However, the trial
record gives no indication of the use to which the paper was to be put.
33 Rvahs original Portuguese text reads: o Forra-gaitas entregou a carta para a
mulher aos inquisidores. However, the trial record contains no indication that the
Niggard handed the Inquisitors the letter for his wife. In his independent study of the
trial record, David Grant Smith (The Mercantile Class of Portugal and Brazil in the
Seventeenth Century: A Socio-Economic Study of the Merchants of Lisbon and Bahia,
1620-1690, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1975, 224-225, 264)
ascertained that Francisco Gomes Henriques dictated his letters to one of his cell-mates
because he was illiterate and capable only of making his sign (see his Genealogy
Session on Octobre 13, 1651: e que ele declarante no sabe sciencia alguma, nem ler,
nem escrever, nem faz mais que seu sinal [he had no formal education and can neither
read nor write but merely makes his mark]). It is amazing that neither Baio nor Rvah,
who consulted the trial record directly, noticed this. Furthermore, Rvah fails to take into
account that the Niggard had previously entrusted cellmates with a message for his son
326
APPENDIX THREE
Gregrio (of whose arrest he was unaware) and one for a friend, which also fell into the
Inquisitors hands. See Saraivas summary (Chapter Five), gleaned from Baios account
of the trial record.
34 One wonders what advantage the Niggard could have hoped to gain from the
Inquisitors by his profession of Catholic piety. On the contrary, the only way for him to
save his life would have been to own up to Judaizing.
35 It is not clear how the following remarks would forestall Saraivas potential rebuttal
to the preceding ones.
327
Well, it just so happens that Francisco Gomes Neto did not completely
proceed in the same fashion. On November 21, 1652 he confessed
that he had carried out in his cell Jewish ceremonies with Vilareal. But
on November 24 he deposed that it was he who had prevented Vilareal
from going to the Desk to confess his offenses and, on December 1,
at the auto-da-f, he stated: He now remembers in addition that he,
the confessant, was the principal cause of his cellmates Manuel
Fernandes Vilareals committing the offenses which he, the confessant,
has specified in his confession. And he said no more. Whats the use
of pointing out that the family of the noble Francisco Gomes Neto fled
to Amsterdam? Mr. Saraiva will reply that this falls short of proof that
Francisco Gomes Neto and his own were Judaizers in Portugal:
The Portuguese Jewish community, leaving aside its religious cornerstone, was also a fraternity or a kind of Free and Accepted Masons,
whose meshes crisscrossed over a wide span. No doubt there was also the
odd Portuguese Old Christian cynic who thought, like King Henry IV of
France, that Paris is well worth a mass or, in this case, Amsterdam a
Passover (Inquisition and New Christians, Chapter Ten).
36 How odd that Rvah, familiar as he was with Ramos Coelhos study, forgot that it
is but an abridgement and that it skips Vilareals reference (cited by the phantom
named David) to the two books.
328
APPENDIX THREE
Were I now to say that I believe the depositions concerning the fasts
and Jewish ceremonies carried out in their cell by Fernandes Vilareal
and Gomes Neto, because I have compared these depositions with the
two defendants confessions and with everything I know about their
biographies,37 the cynical phantom David would no doubt retort:
Rvahs belief in the depositions of the peep-hole watchers can be
explained only by the fact that he needs them to support his cryptoJudaism theory.
37
38
329
330
APPENDIX THREE
331
the Jew, his mother and his wife, the slave was taken to the penitential prison (not to the secret cells reserved for Judaizers) where
the Inquisitors hoped she would accuse her masters. At her second
interrogation, on October 10, 1737, the slave told her story which
Azevedo summarized without realizing its importance, but which
Antnio Baio published in volume 2 of his Dramatic Episodes,
where he twice reproduced the part which concerns the Jew. From it
we learn that the Jew and his wife had washed and had the house cleaned
before sunset on Friday, October 4, 1737; had not supped and had under
various pretenses tried to conceal the fact that they fasted the whole day on
Saturday, October 5.
In his diatribe and in the Dialogue Mr. Saraiva gives ample proof
that he shares the Inquisitors impertinence in assuming that he knows
more about the Jewish or the crypto-Judaic religion than the Jews and
the crypto-Jews themselves. During centuries the Edict of Faith, read
out at regular intervals in Portuguese churches by order of the Holy
Office, proclaimed that the principal Jewish fast, the fast of the great
Inquisition paying his passage, but on board ship he was repeatedly heard blaspheming
Christ and the Trinity, professing devotion and marriage to the devil and distributing
relics of those executed at autos-da-f. Arrested in Rio de Janeiro on April 1, 1740 he was
back in the Inquisitorial prison of Lisbon by May 20 and made his confession at the desk
on February 13, 1741, describing his actions and words as diabolical hallucinations.
On March 13, 1741 he was absolved and released. Meanwhile his mother, Maria de
Valena, arrested as we have seen at the purported Day of Atonement ceremony on
October 5, 1737, immediately confessed her participation whereby, as a relapsed heretic,
she was liable to the death penalty. On February 15, 1738, however, she revoked all her
confessions, attributing them to hallucinations (lhe andou o miolo arvoado), claiming
never to have strayed from the Catholic faith. She identified her son as her denunciator,
attributing his accusation to enmity and maintained her negativa stance (which could
also but result in the death sentence) throughout stringent examinations and crossexaminations. On March 20, 1739 she revoked her revocation, reaffirming her earlier
confessions (including the fast of the Day of Atonement and another fast eight days
prior to it which, however, she had broken). She also admitted to having once stated that
it was a misfortune that the People of the Nation were baptized because by and by they
would all be imprisoned by the Holy Office to pay for their sins in this world. On April
11, 1739 she confessed to having lied when she said she had broken the earlier fast.
Confessing and recanting went on periodically until May 30, 1739. Thenceforth the
Inquisitorial prison was her home, because the Inquisitors could not find their way to
sentence her to death, which was the only possible punishment for one who had
relapsed into heresy and revoked earlier confessions. On September 11, 1744 they sent
Pope Benedict XIV a copy of her trial record for his opinion as to what to do with her,
but no reply was forthcoming. On May 29, 1751 she was transferred to the Inquisitorial
prison in vora. On May 24, 1755 the pope belatedly replied to the letter of 1744,
leaving the decision up to the Inquisitors. She was reconciled at the vora auto-da-f of
June 20, 1756 where she was sentenced to perpetual reclusion and the unremitting
wearing of the sanbenito. On July 30, 1756 she was released but enjoined not to leave
vora. Her second Inquisitorial imprisonment had lasted for almost 19 years. Cf. Azevedo, op. cit., 214-215 and Maria de Valenas processos (Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 1530).
332
APPENDIX THREE
day [i.e., the Day of Atonement] falls in the month of September (at
times, particularly in sentences, more specifically on the tenth of the
lunar month of September). These gentlemen were and are unaware
that Jewish feasts do not fall every year on the same day of the Julian
calendar.44 Thus the Day of Atonement, celebrated on the tenth day
of the seventh month [Leviticus 23, 27], also called tishri, sometimes
falls in October. In the year of creation 5498, which began on
September 27, 1737, the tenth day of tishri coincided with Saturday,
October 5. The Inquisitors and Mr. Saraiva were and are unaware that
in the Bible a day begins on the previous day, at nightfall.45 Thus, in
1737, the Day of Atonement began on October 4. Moreover the
Inquisitors and Mr. Saraiva (and, before the latter, Joo Lcio de
Azevedo) were and are unaware that any fast which falls on the Sabbath
is transferred to Sunday, except the Day of Atonement and the Fast of
Esther which may be celebrated on the Sabbath [sic].46
The Inquisitors did not establish any connection between the indication of Simo Rodrigues da Fonseca, who informed them that the
Day of Atonement would fall on Saturday, October 5, 1737 and the
declaration of the slave who asserted that the Jew and his wife had
fasted at the end of Friday, October 4 and on Saturday, October 5,
1737. The Inquisitors, the Prosecutor and the historian Joo Lcio de
Azevedo thought it perfectly normal for the Judaizer Antnio Jos da
Silva to have fasted on October 5, 1737 since it was a Saturday as the
bill of indictment against the Jew states. The Prosecutor did not
precisely accuse him of having celebrated the Day of Atonement. He
summarizes the slaves deposition, omitting the names of the implicated persons, then vaguely asserts that all these ceremonies and the
fast were in observance of and in keeping with the Law of Moses..47
The pseudo-historian Saraiva asserts that, by 1524, the Jewish rites,
practiced by a small minority of New Christians, were progressively
losing their religious significance. A genuine historian might assert
44 Does the designation lunar month not indicate awareness on the Inquisitors part
that the two calendars do not coincide?
45 The Edicts of Faith and the Inquisitorial interrogations invariably state that the
Sabbath begins on Friday evening.
46 Actually the only fast in the Jewish calendar which may be observed on the Sabbath
is the Day of Atonement. This is explicitly stated in the list of Jewish ceremonies, festivals and fasts prepared for the Inquisitors by Joo Baptista dEste c. 1610: even though
this fast falls on the Sabbath they hold it [on that day] (e ainda que o tal jejum venha
no sabbado o poem em execusso). See op. cit. supra, Appendix One, note 10, 304.
47 This imprecision may be due to the slaves deposition of October 10, 1737 (clearly
prompted) having been invalidated. It could not be used to condemn Antnio Jos da
Silva, which explains the Inquisitors need of the cell-fasts.
333
that in 1737 (240 years after the General Conversion of 1497 and
30 years before the Marquis of Pombal put a definitive stop to the
persecution of the New Christians) there were families in Lisbon who
knew the religious significance of Jewish rites rather well and
succeeded in obtaining precise information concerning the dates on
which the most important of these rites was to be performed. The
writer Antnio Jos da Silva belonged to one of these families and
posterity correctly nicknamed him the Jew.
The Inquisitors did not know certain fundamental principles of the
Jewish religion, but they attributed enormous importance to a few
Jewish ceremonies (especially Monday and Thursday fasts) purportedly performed in the Inquisitorial prison as described by the
observers at the peep-holes, which depositions they could employ as
exhibits for the prosecution. The differences between Jewish and
Catholic fasts are so great that, generally speaking and from their
point of view they were right in considering to be impenitent heretics
the defendants (e.g., deniers, diminutos, confessants) who carried out
Judaic fasts in their cells. As a matter of fact a defendant whose cell
fasts were proven was considered ipso facto convicted and was never
put to the torture to be made to confess these cell-fasts. Indeed, the
1640 rule book indicates that a defendant is to be tortured either
because his crime is not proven or because of the lacunae in his confession. In the same manner a convicted denier, i.e., a denier whose
crime was considered proven by the Inquisitors, was not put to the
torture. Mr. Saraiva, who claims to be the first to make proper use of
the 1640 rule book, did not understand or chose not to understand
any of this and came up with an absurd idea: the Inquisitors had those
they wanted to save from death put to the torture. How extraordinary!
The Jew and all the members of his family arrested in 1737 were
accused of relapsing into Judaic practices (his mother had already
been arrested twice before on this accusation). Antnio Jos was the
only one convicted for keeping Judaic fasts in his cell and, consequently, was the only one to be executed (garroted and burnt) without
having been put to the torture. Proof of his misdeeds was produced by
the observation system and by the testimony of the two cellmates who
had been assigned to him. Speaking of the Jews cellmates, who
denounced him to the Inquisitors, the pseudo-historian writes: Let us
not forget that these spies were creatures of the Inquisitors, in their pay
and service (Chapter Five, emphasis supplied).
So the pseudo-historian Saraiva asserts that these cellmates were
creatures of the Inquisitors, in their pay and service (Chapter Five)
without the slightest evidence for his assertion. Azevedo who, as an
334
APPENDIX THREE
historian, deserves more confidence than Mr. Saraiva, says that the two
cellmates were penanced at the same auto-da-f at which the Jew was
executed: since one of them confessed to having joined Antnio Jos
in one of his Judaic fasts, he must certainly have been sentenced to
confiscation of his worldly goods. Azevedo notes that the second one
requested a new audience at which he modified his previous denunciation: From those scruples we may infer that the denunciator was not,
at least not consciously, a calumniator (Novas Epanforas, 207). The
phantom named David says of the persons who spied on the prisoners
in the observation cells: Even if their findings were not spelled out
for them in advance by the Inquisitors, it was in their interest to justify
their miserable pittance with interesting tidbits. The peep-hole
watchers of the Jew, among many interesting things, recounted facts
which the Inquisitors had certainly not suggested to them, such as he
crossed himself ; he crossed himself rapidly; at the end he crossed
himself rapidly!
The imaginary beings of the Dialogue sustain the absurd conclusion
of Mr. Saraivas lampoon. The arrest without a denunciation, the
omission of torture (with its uncertain outcome), testimony collected
in prison, all converge and lead to the conclusion that Antnio Jos
da Silva was somehow a threat to the Inquisition (Chapter Five). The
impudent David even has the nerve to stake a claim of priority on
behalf of his progenitor: Saraiva proposed a hypothesis! (Saraiva of
course found the hypothesis in Azevedos book.) Saraiva proposed a
hypothesis: Antnio Jos da Silva had dared, in one of his plays, to
make an allusion to the Inquisitorial trial procedure, cryptic and veiled
to be sure, but penetrating, because it summed up its public reputation
and was already known from the pamphlet An Account of the Cruelties of
the Inquisition in Portugal.
In reality, Mr. Saraiva had but one purpose in mind in completely
distorting Azevedos remarkable analysis of this trial: to resuscitate the
thesis of the 19th-century polemicists (who did not consult the Inquisitorial archives): The Jew was murdered by the Holy Office because
of a line in his play Amphitryon: But if perchance O tyrant, impious
star, / It is a crime not to be guilty, then I am guilty. The pseudohistorian knows very well that Azevedo overthrew this thesis with a
decisive argument: the imprimatur for Amphytrion was given in 1743
in the name of the very same Inquisitor General who had, in 1737,
orally instructed the Lisbon Tribunal to have Antnio Jos da Silva
arrested (Novas Epanforas, 193).
335
336
APPENDIX THREE
dant must not be revealed nor should it be made known, if there were cell
fasts within the prison of the Holy Office, that the defendant did not confess the
place where they were carried out. When this circumstance of place is not
missing from the defendants confession (whether he was to be
executed or reconciled) the sentence provides absolutely all the information about the cell ceremonies. The pseudo-historian Saraiva might have
taken note of this had he read the sentence of the executed Manuel
Fernandes Vilareal. He didnt even have to go to the Torre do Tombo:
he could have read it in the appendix to Camilo Castelo Brancos novel
O Olho de Vidro (The Glass Eye) (first edition, Lisbon, 1866, reprinted
many times since), which reproduced the sentence containing a detailed
description of the ceremonies practiced in his cell by Vilareal and his cellmate
Francisco Gomes Neto.51 (Camilos transcription was included by Inocncio Francisco da Silva in his Dicionrio Bibliogrfico Portugus.52)
In the Dialogue we encounter the following passage:
AFONSO: But [Rvah] says that in certain cases the watchers testified to
the orthodox Catholic behavior of the accused.
DAVID: Let him publish or summarize such trials and then we shall be
able to form an opinion.
Its hardly worth the trouble, for such a small challenge, to publish or
summarize any manuscript trial record. We simply open up a book
much used by Mr. Saraiva, Antnio Baios Dramatic Episodes of the
Portuguese Inquisition, 2 (1924, 315-316). The subject is Catarina
da Silva, daughter of the extremely wealthy Duarte da Silva, Baio
writes: On September 12, 1652 the General Council decided that the
accused be placed in an observation cell, but the physician did not
consent [] Nevertheless she was placed in an observation cell on
October 14, 1652. Since Catarina abjured de levi (a slight suspicion of
heresy) we may be absolutely certain that the watchers did not discover any
heterodox behavior in the cell on the part of the accused between October 14
and December 1, 1652 (date of the auto-da-f) and that they told the Inquisitors as much. Thus the peep-hole watchers do not deserve the contempt
which the phantasmagoric demagogue David heaps upon them. We
know that Catarina was placed in an observation cell on the orders of the
51 Vilareals lengthy sentence includes the following stealthy rather than overt reference to his confessed cell fasts: [] and to such an extent did he keep [the Law of
Moses] after his arrest, that he decided to die for its observance with such zeal that after
being notified of the decision concerning his case, he readied himself for death with
whatever ceremonies known to him, washing and putting on a new shirt that he had
made for this purpose and still fasting as a Jew.
52 Lisbon, 1893, Vol. 16, Supplement 9, 206-209.
337
53 Rvah appears to imply that payments to watchers do not occur in the unspecified
account books, but leaves the reader in the dark as to how their excellent socioeconomic status is to be inferred from this silence. Nor does he say in so many words
that payment (whether small or large) to watchers is nowhere to be found in any of the
innumerable extant account books. Moreover, if there is indeed no mention of
watchers wages in any account book, why was Saraiva wrong to suggest that these
unpaid volunteers devoted to the Inquisitorial cause were accepting filthy lucre?
338
APPENDIX THREE
54 For an even more telling example see above, Chapter Five, note 18 (the trial record
of Antnio de Sequeira).
55 There is no indication by Baio (Episdios Dramticos da Inquisio Portuguesa, 2,
Lisbon, 1973, 3d edition, 253-258) that Brites Henriques was put into an observation
cell.
339
in 1620 (first denied then confessed the said cell fasts). About this last
case the Prosecutor wrote: This trial of Brites Manuel is remarkable
in the following respects: by the decisions of the Desk of this Holy
Office which steadily shied from condemning her to death; by her
excellent confessions as regards all her Judaic practices except the cellfasts (J. Mendes dos Remdios, The Jews in Portugal, 2, 19, 28-29).
Mr. Saraivas aversion to archives deprives him of the acquaintance
with manuscripts from which Inquisitors, deputies, prosecutors,
notaries learned their trade. For example, the Guide-lines for
indicting for the fasts and other offenses which the prisoners commit
in the cells..56 Moreover, in order to construct his egregiously demagogic thesis about the device for legal murder of prisoners by the
Inquisitors, a device so meticulously concealed that not even the
notaries of the Holy Office knew about it, Mr. Saraiva had to deliberately forget many important paragraphs of the 1640 Regimento (the
very one our scholar boasts of being the first to properly make use
of). These paragraphs foresee every possible contingency. In them we see that
for the Inquisitors the essential point was whether the prisoners confessed to or
denied the heretical ceremonies they performed in their cells and not a desire to
legally murder certain defendants. All imaginable cases are listed in Book
3 of the Regimento. (On the penalties to be inflicted on those
convicted of crimes of which the Holy Office has direct knowledge),
more precisely title 3, 9 (On confessants) and especially title 4, 2
(On incomplete confessants). Yet Mr. Saraiva asseverates:
The trial records summarized above add a new twist not mentioned in
the Account of the Cruelties: prisoners denounced by peep-hole observers
for fasts carried out in their cells and who did not confess to them were
usually (or almost always) executed. Had the author of the Account known
of this device for legal assassination, how could he have failed to exploit
it? And yet, as an Inquisitorial Notary, how could he not have known of
it? In any case the defendants who discovered the peep-holes and their
function in the course of the trials and escaped with their lives to tell the
tale must have been so exceptional that their reports also failed to reach
him [] The Secretary [ = ? ex-Inquisitorial notary Pedro Lupina Freire]
of the Inquisition, knew a part but only a part of the Tribunals
secrets. His purpose was to rock the Holy Office and at the same time to
56 Directrio para se processarem os jejuns e mais culpas que os presos cometerem nos crceres.
Unfortunately Rvah does not give the location of the manuscript thus entitled, nor
does he tell us how its contents obviously crucially important support his arguments against Saraiva. A systematic search in the 27 volumes of manuscripts listed by
Maria do Carmo Jasmins Dias Farinha under the subtitle Formulrios [Os Arquivos da
Inquisio, Lisbon, 1990, 99-10] might track it down.
340
APPENDIX THREE
341
APPENDIX FOUR
343
2 The island of Bombay, site of the present city by that name, c. 100 miles south of
Daman, was also under Portuguese rule, 1534-1665 (ceded to Great Britain in 1661,
along with Tangiers in Morocco, as part of Catherine of Braganas dowry on the occasion of her marriage to King Charles II).
F.D.2001
PORTUGUESE INDIA
Diu
Daman
Dadra
Nagar Aveli
Bombay
Goa
Kranganor
Cochin
INDIAN OCEAN
0
100
200
300
400
500 km
345
346
APPENDIX FOUR
3 Two of them were Catarina de Orta and her brother the famous botanist Garcia de
Orta (1500-1568). Arrested on October 28, 1568, after the death of her brother, Cata-
347
rina was executed at the Goa auto-da-f of October 25, 1569. Copies of parts of her trial
were sent to Lisbon (Inquisition of Lisbon, no. 1283) of which, in turn, excerpts were
published by Augusto da Silva Carvalho, Garcia dOrta, Revista da Universidade de
Coimbra, 12, 1934, 61-246: 202-215. On the basis of her denunciations of her late
brother (which she revoked in the course of her trial), the latter was tried and sentenced
to death post mortem. His mortal remains were exhumed and burnt with his effigy at the
Goa auto-da-f of December 4, 1580.
348
APPENDIX FOUR
349
4 See Tavim, Os Judeus e a expanso portuguesa, art. cit. supra, n. 1, 213-225, 253260. Christian accusations of a connection between Jewish making sport of Haman
and making sport of Jesus go back at least as far as the reign of Theodosius II, ruler
of the Eastern Roman Empire (408-450). His Codex Theodosianus (16, 8, 1-29) speaks of
a Jewish custom to burn (incendere) (cf. inscendere: to lift up) an image similar to the holy
cross and to sacrilegiously burn (exurere) it out of contempt for the Christian religion on
their Haman day. See Iacobus Gothofredus, Codex Theodosianus 16,8, 1-29, German
translation by Renate Frohne, Bern, 1991, 132-136. There was apparently an Oriental
Jewish tradition that Haman was crucified by the Persian king, interpreting the word es
[normally tree] in Esther 5, 14; 7, 9; 8, 7 to mean wooden cross, confirmed by the
frequent reference to the cross in the New Testament as a tree (xulon), that being the
Septuagints Greek translation of the Hebrew es. (Crucifixion was certainly not unknown
in the ancient Orient long before the Romans adopted it.) The persistence of the interpretation of Hamans hanging as a crucifixion is attested in Al-Birunis Chronology of
Ancient Nations (c. 1023; English translation by Edward Sachau, London, 1879, 274)
where he states that Esther asked [the king] to have [Haman] crucified on the same tree
which he had prepared for [Mordecai] and that on the Feast of Megilla or Haman-Sur
[the Jews] make figures which they beat and then burn, imitating the burning [sic] of
Haman. Note that Al-Biruni says nothing about crucifying the figures. In any case there
is no record of executing and burning Haman in effigy on Purim by the Jews of
medieval Christian Europe, perhaps because it was banned by the Church for the abovestated reason. See Marsha B. Cohen, Jews and the Jewish Calendar in Al-Barunis
Chronology of Ancient Nations, unpublished M.A. dissertation, Florida State University, 2000.
350
APPENDIX FOUR
351
forcible mass conversion to Catholicism and the majority of the population remained unbaptized). Non-Christians could also be arrested by
the Inquisition for attempting to dissuade countrymen from
converting to Catholicism, aiding and abetting the flight of Christian
Goans to non-Portuguese areas or for hiding Hindu or Moslem children from the Catholic authorities. Laws were periodically passed
(despite voiced misgivings from the local government) that illegitimate and orphaned non-Christian children, even when living with a
parent or other relative, must be forcibly converted to Catholicism and
be given a Spartan upbringing in Catholic orphanages (Pai dos
Orfos), where the use of the native Goanese Concani language was
strictly forbidden. Anyone withholding or conspiring to withhold such
a child from seizure was subject to Inquisitorial arrest, as was anyone
denounced for singing Concani songs, celebrating the birth of Krishna,
wearing a pudvem, growing certain plants, playing native musical
instruments, exchanging betel nuts and flowers at weddings, etc.6
At present the surviving repertories and other documents have not
yet been exhaustively studied. We learn from them of the extraordinary corruption and cruelty of the Goan Inquisitorial staff, far
outdoing even their counterparts in Portugal. The Goan Inquisition
had authority over all Portuguese possessions in East Africa, India,
China and the East Indies. We hear of commissioners stationed as far
as Macao in China and Timor in the East Indies but we still do not
know if any backsliding converts from Confucianism, Hinduism or
Animism were arrested in these remote places and brought to Goa for
trial. Research on the 17th century has not been completed as far as
quantitative and statistic studies are concerned. What, for instance, was
the respective percentage of Portuguese New Christians, converts from
Hinduism and those from Islam (or their Catholic descendants)
among the victims of the Goan autos-da-f of 2-7-1617, 8-26-1635,
9-4-1644 and 3-27-1672, the only ones of which the sermons were
printed?.7 We are in the dark. Aside from a few passing references
(the heresies of Idolatry and the vile sect of Mohammed represented
in the present audience, Jews, Moors and idolaters, worshippers of
pagodas [1617]; superstitions, sorcery, sodomy [1635]; backsliders
352
APPENDIX FOUR
353
APPENDIX FIVE
1 Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Codex 868, ff. 138-157, bearing his signature. The
document was cited and integrally published for the first time by Antnio Borges
Coelho, Inquisio de vora, 2, Lisbon, 1987, 182-202. It is apparently an expanded
version of his brief report to King Philip dated May 24, 1631, reproduced by Antnio
Baio, El-Rei D. Joo IV e a Inquisio, Academia Portuguesa da Histria, Anais, 6, 1942,
11-70: 15-16. A few egregious factual errors are pointed out in our footnotes but the
abundant innuendoes and bad faith permeating practically every page are hardly
susceptible to annotation.
2 On Antonio de Sotomayor, named Inquisitor General of Spain in 1632, see above,
Chapter Twelve.
355
356
APPENDIX FIVE
still fresh and we with tears in our eyes to see him thus maltreated,
what is the world to think when it sees favored the very people who
(the public is convinced) shed this blood and who are already beginning to be punished for the strong probability of their guilt? Moses
drew his sword and killed 22,000 idolaters.4 God forfend that Your
Majesty ever open your arms to them and favor them. That God
forgives the injuries we do Him is not astonishing, for He is infinitely
merciful and pardons personal injuries. But what reason can approve
our letting them get off lightly? What reason for us to favor those who
thus offend Him and multiply their offenses at the very time they are
soliciting favors?
3. Decisions reached with adequate deliberation should not be overturned or challenged without developments or very pressing cause,
lest great confusion and perturbation ensue. Authentic documents
show that everything the People of the Hebrew Nation propose in this
memorial of theirs, they had already submitted a number of times to
King Joo III. He ordered them duly examined by men of letters,
experience and good conscience, whose considered decision was that
New Christians pretensions are to be rejected. In 1545, among other
things that they collectively solicited from King Joo III was a General
Amnesty and that their property should not be subject to confiscation.
If this were granted they would undertake not to leave the country,
those who had emigrated would return, trade and commerce would
revive. They alleged abuses in proceedings against them, such as false
denunciations by prisoners of the Inquisition who confess and
denounce in order to preempt the charge of diminutos and depositions
made in spitefulness against innocent people. In 1557 they carped at
the same abuses to the same king and proposed substantially the same
reforms as are contained in the present memorial. Each time their
complaints were judged unfounded and their pretensions unjust and
contrary to the good of the faith. Their petitions were not granted.
They repeated their demands a number of times. Now they are once
again pressing those same demands, in the same old formulation; nor
have they changed in such a way that could dispose to their securing
by importunity that which reason and justice saw fit to refuse them. It
is a lesson to be earnestly pondered that in those bygone times, so
close to the General Conversion, when forbearance with them was
far greater, it was judged meet and necessary not merely to reject these
4 Marginal note: Exodus 22, an error for Exodus 32. The Hebrew Bible, however,
says nothing about Moses drawing a sword nor does it mention this figure. The Levites
armed themselves with swords and killed about 3000 people (Exodus 32, 26-29).
357
358
APPENDIX FIVE
Judaize for the price of merchandise on which import duties are paid
Your Majesty.
When the economy is in the doldrums and the royal coffers at their
leanest, that is when they come up with their proposals looking to
exert leverage by proffering their assistance, making collective
payments to the Crown in exchange for liberties detrimental to the
faith. These occasions they deem propitious for persuading you that
the denunciators are perjurers; the severities applied to them excessive
and they themselves innocent. Nor should it surprise us that they dare
to thus approach Your Majesty and his ministers when we recall that
the devil, whose henchmen are the Jews, dared to approach Gods very
son, openly demanding that he worship him, offering to make him
lord of the whole world. Other tempting offers may dissimulate their
diabolical provenance but with the one of temporal benefits he throws
off the mask and gives his fiendish self away. But one may depend on
the zeal and Christianity of Your Majesty, delegated by God to govern
on earth, and of the ministers who assist you, that just as Christ
violently cast aside the devil, you too will forego his venial blandishments and not brook any transaction odious to the faith or discrediting
the Inquisition.
5. Whether God is pleased or displeased with our actions can often
be inferred from the sequels; that is His way of speaking to us. In this
case we see that the favors done to these people may have produced
some temporal benefits, but was followed by grave harm, both to their
consciences and to the affairs of the country. Pope Paul III gave in to
their pretensions, delayed the brief establishing the Inquisition (which
had already been granted by Pope Clement VII) until 1536. Even then
he allowed them many years of exemption from confiscation; the
names of their denunciators revealed to them; prisons accessible;
Judaizing to be prosecuted in the same manner as any crime in the
civil courts. He granted them two General Amnesties and many other
favors, all of which he revoked by his brief of July 15, 1547, explaining
that they had used and claimed them in order to Judaize more
brazenly.5
King Sebastio obtained from the pope a ten year moratorium on
confiscation. This was extended a number of times, in the hope that
this favor would coax them into confessing their crimes. Pope Gregory
5 The brief actually states lest under the cover of the amnesty these New Christians
be given occasion to return to their vomit and sinning ([] ne ipsis novis christianis
sub praetextu exemptionum [] ad vomitum redeundi et deliquendi occasio tribuatur
[]). See Corpo Diplomatico Portuguez, 6, 164-166: 164.
359
XIII ended the moratorium at the behest of King Henrique who with
his 40 years experience as Inquisitor General knew exactly what he was
doing. In a provision redacted at Almeirim on December 19, 1579, he
affirms that he duly consulted with legal experts, and all agreed that it
was necessary and obligatory in the interest of the faith to bring back
confiscation. On October 6 of that same year Gregory XIII published
a brief to that effect, which states: Praehabita super remissione poenae
publicationis bonorum hujusmodi cum viris doctrina, religione et fidei zelo
praestantibus, ac in rebus Sancti Officii hujusmodi plurimum versatis, matura
deliberatione censeas remissionem praedictam non modo nihil profecisse, quo
facilius criminosi per humilem peccatorum suorum confessionem ad catholicam
fidem redirent, sed ansam eis potius praebuisse liberius delinquendi et pertinatius in erroribus et haebraica perfidia, ac judaicis suis ritibus et caeremoniis
permanendi, et eosdem errores inter filios, propinquos et familiares eiusdem
gentis disseminandi.6 [After prior mature deliberation concerning
confiscation with men distinguished by their learning and zeal for the
faith and exceptionally well versed in the affairs of the Holy Office,
Your Majesty thinks that the said moratorium not only had no effect in
making it easier for the criminals to return to the Catholic faith
through the humble confession of their sins, but rather gave freer
reign to their pertinacious obduracy and Hebrew perfidy and their
Jewish rites and ceremonies and to disseminate the same errors
among these peoples children, relatives and kinsmen.]
But it is the way of these people: the more clemency they are shown
the worse they regress in the faith and in their deportment. Holy
Scripture tells us how with all the favors God granted them they abandoned Him and followed idols and returned to Him only after being
chastised.
Subsequent to a General Amnesty granted the New Christians of
Majorca in 1489, Arnaldo Albertino remarks (De haereges, 6, 12, 4) that
there were many more arrests and punishments for Judaizing after it
than before. This is precisely what we experienced in this country,
where the General Amnesties and clemencies only served to foment
Judaism. They were always Judaizers everywhere. To hope that they
will now improve in response to increased favors amounts to fooling
ourselves: but God cannot be fooled.
King Sebastio, sojourning in Sintra, promulgated a law on June
30, 1567, ratified at vora on June 1, 1572, prohibiting the New Christians from leaving the country and selling their property, because of
The complete text of this brief appears in Corpo Diplomatico Portuguez, 10, 556-559.
360
APPENDIX FIVE
the economic drain their departure would cause. But his Letters Patent
of May 21, 1577 overturned the prohibition. His successor King
Henrique revoked these Letters Patent in part on January 18, 1583,7
prohibiting New Christians from leaving any bishopric where a visitation of the Holy Office was in progress, both during the visitation and
six months after its termination. His reason for modifying the Letters
Patent of May 21, 1577 was that experience had shown them to be an
impediment to the ministry of the Holy Office. His successor King
Philip I, the grandfather of Your Majesty whom God preserve, reintroduced the former laws of King Sebastio and revoked these
Letters Patent in their entirety. In an appended provision, dated
Lisbon, January 26, 1587, he wrote: Because time and experience
have demonstrably proved the damage and injury produced by the
Letters Patent inasmuch as they reversed the law of 1567 and its
confirmation of 1572, thereby giving permission and liberty to the
New Christians (who subsequently emigrated, some with their
movables and family, some without) to abandon the faith of Our Lord
Jesus Christ which they had professed and to freely Judaize in foreign
parts and follow the perverse rites and customs of the Jews. Thus
there is no need to go into further particulars, to show the enormous
spiritual damage that would ensue from giving in to the pretensions of
the New Christians.
The following temporal evils resulting from the past two concessions made to these people were generally remarked upon by all whose
attention was drawn to them. Because of the grace extended to them
by King Sebastio in authorizing them (in return for a certain collective payment made to him) to leave the country and sell their possessions, he fell in the battle of Alcacer-Quebir and the Portuguese crown
was transferred to Castile; due to the General Amnesty that King
Philip II obtained for them from Pope Clement VIII, for the consideration of 1,700,000 cruzados, many evils resulted, the least of which was
the loss of two armadas, some ships of the India fleet and other large
vessels that were fitted out for a part of this money and four galleons
of the India fleet (not to mention other disasters and deaths generally
taken to have ensued from the same cause). That it is only the most
recent concessions, made to them by King Philip, whose consequences
have received due attention, could have several reasons. Either they
are the last in a long line so that their cumulative effect was what made
clear that God disapproved them. Alternatively, it was the intervention
of these peoples monetary gifts (or whatever you care to call them),
361
which were not to divine satisfaction. Thus one may not presume that
granting new concessions without new and most urgent cause will be
pleasing to God.
6. To repeat the kind of concessions made during that period runs
a serious risk of abetting Judaism assuming as one must that the
authors of this memorial are promoters of Judaism even if not
Judaizers, as those who drew up an earlier similar one were discovered
to be. It may further be assumed that the authors of this and other
memorials containing similar pretensions were and are private
persons and not the entire Nation.
Our suspicions as to the authors motives are amply supported by
the record; all these many years the People of the Hebrew Nation
always tried to put spokes in the wheels of the Inquisition and its
procedures. The Inquisition began operations in this country 95 years
ago, but the New Christians have been hampering its course for the
last 110 years. In 1521 King Joo III began to canvas for an Inquisitorial tribunal for Portugal to help him deal with the newly converted
Jews and their flagrant affronts to the faith. The negotiations were so
drawn out, the bribes and lies (their usual methods) so brazen, that
they managed to delay its establishment for ten years and even after
Clement VII finally granted it, they would not give up until Paul III
suspended it. But the latter, once he saw through these people and
their subterfuges and realized their goal was none other than to gain
the freedom to practice Judaism, changed his mind and confirmed the
Inquisition. Even then their wrangling deceitful as ever did not
stop. Now if those who were the first to have these pretensions and
kept harping upon them for such a long time were discovered to be
Judaizers, as stated above, and these present ones employ the same
pretensions, gotten-up for the conservation of Judaism and to hinder
the just proceedings of the Inquisition, what is one to suppose
concerning those who are today so glowingly introducing and
endorsing them?
Neither is the timing of the present importuning fortuitous. The
recent arrests by the Inquisition of some of their close relatives and
confidants is just the kind of thing that gets their wind up. This is what
transpired at the time of the General Amnesty of 1605 and what we are
seeing today is undoubtedly a repeat performance; in other words the
authors of this present stunt no less than their predecessors are
attempting either to free Judaizers or to cover themselves up for
having surreptitiously confided their own Judaizing to them. Confirmation of this presumption is Your Majestys letter of May 19, 1624,
attesting the presence in Madrid of many New Christians who having
362
APPENDIX FIVE
363
364
APPENDIX FIVE
crimes, it cannot be right to devise means for freeing them from it, for
compassion which does well to shine in princes must never
oppose justice, particularly in matters impinging on the Christian religion. Moreover, in this case they have the remedy within themselves:
let the crimes cease and so shall the punishments and persecutions.
7. That they are not being unjustly persecuted, as they proclaim,
can be clearly shown. For unjust persecution derives from two causes:
either from not observing with its victims the rules of justice, or from
applying them with excessive astringency. To invoke either in their
case is an utter falsehood. For were all the trial records that have been
accumulated from the beginning of the Inquisition until now and kept
in the secret vaults of the tribunals to be examined, it would be seen
that no one has been arrested without solid incriminating evidence.
When upon rare occasions arrests are carried out on the basis of a
single denunciation, that testimony is so convincing and so many
circumstances, clues and presumptions corroborate it, that to desist
from arresting would be a denial of justice. In the course of the trial
the accused are provided with all the means of defense to which
Inquisitorial jurisprudence and practice lawfully entitles them.
Where the accused neglect to make use of such means of defense as
are available to them, the Inquisitors act on their behalf ex officio, by
carrying out many inquiries, above and beyond those requested by the
accused, so that the truth may come out and justice be done equally to
both parties. In the administration of torture severity is kept to a
minimum. Prisoners are handed over to the secular authorities only on
the basis of overwhelming proof; the Inquisitors pretend as far as
possible not to notice the failure of diminutos to confess fully or to
denounce all their accomplices. At the auto-da-f all those who leave
the Inquisition unpunished by abjuring a vehement suspicion have
sufficient proof against them to lead to their condemnation in any
secular tribunal; rare are those who get off scot-free by abjuring a
slight suspicion against whom proof almost as convincing is not available. Resipiscents are reconciled with much charity, many a time when
they are already at the auto-da-f or about to appear there. Sentences
to penances are remitted with abundant mercy; rare are those whose
penances are not in part alleviated. The compassion exercised by the
Holy Office in regard to these people is so well-known that in the case
of Simo Pires Solis, recently sentenced.8 in connection with the sacrilege of Santa Engrcia, whose judges, appointed by Your Majesty, were
8 The execution of Simo Pires Solis took place on February 3, 1631. See above,
Chapter Twelve.
365
366
APPENDIX FIVE
hand, their terror results from the witnesses being false, in line with
the presumptions stated in the memorial to the effect that many of the
witnesses denounce others falsely out of hatred, jealousy, in order to
coincide with the crime attributed to them or in order not to be
executed as negativos, they are still not free of the presumption that
they are Judaizers and that their terror is due, not to the witnesses
being false, but to the prospect that they may be telling the truth. For
we see that whereas this terror (if their presumption were true) should
be common to all of them, there being no special reason why they
should falsely denounce some rather than others, many members of
that same Nation, for all that they too have their enemies, not only do
not stand in terror of the Holy Office and consider themselves secure,
but do not participate in drawing up these kinds of proposals and, in
fact, loathe them, protesting to the Inquisition and to the government
that they do not wish to benefit from any favors sought after by these
people specifically as regards the Inquisition and that they renounce
them all in advance.
To this may be added that the authors of the memorial themselves
do not vitiate indiscriminately all the testimonies against them. Nor do
they affirm certainty, but merely presumptions, for in their memorial
they say that presumably many perjure themselves. Thus the presumption of falsehood, even in their opinion, is limited to some and is a
matter of opinion, but in others there is certainty of truth. Now, since
we do not know who are the some and who the others, we must form
a moral judgment as regards the truthfulness of such witnesses and
judge in accordance with human prudence that they are truthful
witnesses and that the presumption which makes some uncertain does
not destroy the truth in others. And even though the former are not
fully accredited they should not be declared invalid and they retain
whatever credit the prudent judge decides to attribute to them.
This much assumed, we may ask: what reason can the New Christians allege for their fearing false witnesses more than true ones? Especially since the argument as to their falseness is either based on the
statements made by some of those condemned that they perjured
themselves (a reason previously alleged and shown to be false) or on
their professed astonishment concerning the great number of
Judaizers of such varied alloy (whereas we well know all about the
extensive communication they maintain among themselves due to
their belief that they are living in the midst of enemies who observe a
different religion). We have moreover on our side juridical proofs,
along with collation of testimonies and circumstantial evidence, which
367
368
APPENDIX FIVE
That they are now petitioning for others which involve slackening the
procedures of the Holy Office, what better proof that those who are
now appealing for this are not suited and should not be permitted to
reside in a Catholic country? If brigands would complain about Your
Majestys justice (though it proceeds against them in conformity with
the laws of Spain, using the established means and practices to expose
their heinous acts) and petition for moderation of these procedures,
who would not be suspected of complicity with them if he were so rash
as to advise Your Majesty to lend your ear and give in to them? By petitioning Your Majesty to moderate (or perhaps better said: to trample
underfoot) the stipulations of Canon Law in the proceedings against
Judaizers, as well as the uses and customs practiced for the last 95
years by the Inquisitorial tribunals of this country, examined by so
learned, experienced, pious and zealous gentlemen, including many
an Inquisitor General, men of high quality and competence, above all
King Henrique, Inquisitor General for 40 years, and His Serenity
Archduke Albert, what else are the authors of the present memorial
doing, if not demonstrating how interested they are in the maintenance of Judaism? And if brigands are not to be given into, how much
more reasonable is it to expect from so Catholic a Monarch, so zealous
of the faith, son and grandson of parents and grandparents who
labored so tirelessly for it, a scion of the Habsburgs who were so prospered by their devotion to and veneration of the most divine Sacrament of the Altar, that he causes to entomb in perpetual silence such
impudent pretensions, so many times rejected?
The People of the Hebrew Nations perennial argument to secure
Your Majestys favor is the fear lest by their exodus duties and excise
will accrue to the enemies of the Crown. This argument has made
governments wary of alienating them and hereon rests the fulcrum of
their leverage. Were royal favor to entice those who have emigrated to
return, the result will be profit and increase of duties from growing
trade. What I do know is that were this country to be less wealthy due
to the emigration and absence of the New Christians, it would be more
Catholic. And if the permission granted to them (which should of
necessity be revoked) to emigrate and sell their possessions were the
cause of the country having less money, the permission to return, now
asked to be granted to those outside the Iberian Peninsula, will be the
cause of greater Judaic corruption. For seeing that they learn Jewish
rituals and ceremonies outside the Iberian Peninsula, to take these
people back will amount to nothing more nor less than to fill the
country once more with as many teachers of Judaism as there are repatriates. We saw and experienced the same phenomenon with those
369
370
APPENDIX FIVE
favoring the holy zeal of the late king. While it was they who tilled the
land, worked the silk and increased with their industriousness public
and private revenues, yet God soon provided replacements who took
over their tasks. In the same way He will succor Portugal. And if Spain
did not have to wait long to be compensated for the loss of nearly
45,000.9 persons, all the sooner will Portugal make up for the fifty or
so emigrants of considerable capital.
It is also erroneous to think that the decline and recovery of
commerce in this country is dependent respectively on the People
of the Nations exodus and return. The truth is that the health of
Portuguese mercantile commerce is not determined by the Hebrew
peoples presence or absence, but (as they themselves admit and is well
known to all merchants) by the regularity or diminution of shipping.
At present our merchant navy is in decline due to war and pirating,
not to mention smuggling. Such conditions are not conducive to
commerce that requires liberty and security to flourish; when these are
restored, prosperity will return to Portugal. But the People of the
Nation have nothing to do with it, as witnessed by the fact that prior
to their emigration everyone was already commenting the decline and
near demise of commerce and trade, whereas now that peace has been
declared and shipping looks to recover, these people are suddenly
pressing to come back to this country. It is known from the letter of a
New Christian residing in Flanders that trade outside the Iberian
Peninsula is presently very slow and he advises Lisbonians to earn
here, and then enjoy the proceeds there in greater freedom.
The economic benefits the memorial holds out (but does not
guarantee, nor could it possibly guarantee) depend, as its authors
themselves say, on the migrs return to Portugal. Here some considerations are in order.
(1) What is the guarantee that as a result of the favors to which they
aspire all the migrs will indeed return? For one may be sure, as will
be shown further on, that many will not want to return. Thus it is not
proper to accord favors potentially inimical to the faith in exchange
for doubtful benefits.
(2) The argument for these peoples return is the promise of
increase in trade and royal excise. But it is an empty promise since it
is well-known (and the memorial itself confirms) that these people are
discredited by their reputation as an arrest-prone community, so that
no one relies on them, and this attitude must continue as long as the
Inquisition is not abolished. Not all the migrs, moreover, produce
371
wealth. Most of them are poor or worth very little. Furthermore many
of those who engaged in trade merely retailed the merchandise
supplied by the wealthier ones. The return of such middlemen will not
enhance Your Majestys revenues, for it is not they who import taxable
merchandise, nor is the commonwealth improved through them.
As far as New Christians selling on behalf of others, Portugal still has
plenty. It is therefore not meet to make any changes in order to attract
the kind of people we have wanted to be rid of.
(3) There is little likelihood of those with considerable capital and
trade relations pouring back to Portugal. Why would they uproot
themselves after so many years of making their home elsewhere?
Besides, as long as the Inquisition remains in force and proceeds
against the guilty, the same fear which caused them to emigrate would
deprive them of the security they enjoy in the regions where there is
no Inquisition and everyone lives as he pleases. As to those who
emigrated for other reasons one may be sure they will not move.
A clear proof of this is that following the General Amnesty of 1605 no
one of substance returned to Portugal.
(4) Even if financial exigencies dictate that part of these peoples
request be given into, it is imperative that they be made to list the
names of the persons who intend to return to this country and the
precise amount of each ones capital, show proof of their intent to
return and the dates by which they will do so. At that point a decision
may be reached as to whether it is in keeping with the service of God
and the weal of the country to grant these individual cases. For (as was
already stated) it is only some private individuals who for ends of their
own have composed this and other similar memorials and whereas the
pretensions are theirs they ascribe them collectively to the People of
the Nation; making the cause of the few the cause of all. This was done
once before at the time of the last General Amnesty [1605] and, as we
know, for what was the interest of a very few individuals, the whole
Nation of New Christians was taxed, affronting those who were good
Catholics, causing grave scandals and endless mischief. While passing
themselves off for mandataries of the Hebrew people at large, they
were, in fact, merely those of a limited group, and should not have
been permitted to prejudice the interests of the majority.
It is a matter of common knowledge among the New Christians of
this city that to achieve the pretension of this memorial, its authors are
offering Your Majesty 600,000 cruzados, compared to the 1,700,000
cruzados given to obtain the General Amnesty of 1605. Thus we see
that the ease of concession diminishes the value of what is being
conceded. This cheapens the faith, everything we stand for; not of
372
APPENDIX FIVE
373
the case with the New Christians. They do not have their own head
other than the commonwealth by definition common to all citizens of
this country, Old and New Christians alike. Nor do they have among
themselves any kind of organization, so that any collective action, if it
does not originate in a law which is obligatory upon them, must of
needs proceed from each ones free will, which on occasion brings
them together in an alliance of convenience. Now there is no specific
law which constrains them to be united in a corporation, nor is there
any uniformity among their free wills, for we see that some are
Judaizers, others faithful Christians; some solicit these amnesties, privileges and favors, others want nothing to do with them, which is to say
that in these particular matters there is no unified collective will. For
that very reason there can be no corporation and, since there is none,
the consent of some (even a majority) cannot be imposed upon the
rest. It would therefore be manifestly unjust to force those who did not
give their consent to pay any part of the money which, under the guise
of price, collective payment or compensation is being offered.
The memorial is vague as to the measures whereby the Judaic
heresy is henceforth to be repressed. Its authors implore the return of
those applied by Sovereign Pontiffs of yore and Your Majestys predecessors. But there were so many measures and of such varied character,
and some of them so objectionable, that the authors ought to specify
which ones they now hope to see reinstated. One suspects that their
silence on this score is no oversight, for people who have been
engrossed in these matters for so long and who are so adept in coming
up with bids in their favor and interest, do not go to work without due
reflection. If their diffidence is to be explained by their desire to leave
it up to Your Majesty, then they will have shown some good judgment.
If it is up to you, then no doubt you will want the guilty to go on as
before confessing their crimes to the Inquisitors so as to obtain the
latters mercy and those who are innocent to be content with the Inquisitions diligent pursuit of the truth. These may rest assured that no
injury will come to them.
But if this deliberate vagueness of theirs is to allow them leeway to
pick and choose among the measures, then one has every reason to
anticipate that they will select only those that provide them liberty to
live without or with little fear of exposure and punishment: that is the
end towards which their pretensions tend, now and always. This can be
proven by the fact (and we of course allow ourselves to borrow proofs
on credit, so to speak) that modify the Inquisition any way you might,
their mutterings will never cease. Let the following example out of
many suffice: in 1557 they complained to King Joo III that the
374
APPENDIX FIVE
measures taken against them were those of Castile and they began
their petition with these words: The New Christians of the realms and
territories of Portugal have just cause and reason to oppose proceedings brought against them by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the
manner of Castile. And yet but a very few years ago they submitted
memorials to Your Majesty imploring that the Portuguese Inquisition
follow the same laws and modes as the Castilian Inquisition. Seeing
this, who can doubt but that these people desire neither type of
proceedings; all they want is to stop the outflow of denunciations and
switch Inquisitorial procedures so that the lack of experience will make
it harder to prosecute them and to discover their crimes.
The present memorial has in the main been refuted. When and if
they come up with specifics, we shall address each proposal in a
manner suitable to the service of God and of Your Majesty. One procedure, however, is imperative as a conclusion to all that has been said.
Considering that all these pretensions and alterations resulting from
them have always been and are clearly at the present time the work of
very few; and that, moreover, it appears from a letter written by its
instigators, that they are keeping alive the hopes of those who have
emigrated, inciting them to unite and take steps to realize their
dreams, Your most Catholic Majesty is under the obligation to put a
stop to such evils, not merely by rejecting these new solicitations, but
by punishing their authors as disturbers of the public weal by inciting
the wretched multitude who, but for these rabble-rousers, would calm
down. The reign of Your Majesty is the opportune time to be firm with
them which firmness will rank as an achievement to be added to the
other splendors of your reign and, being for the honor of God, the
increase of the Faith and the preservation of the Inquisition and your
realms, it will stand out as the most glorious of all.
Nor will the material well-being of this country suffer as a result of
this action. For the confluence of durable merchandise does not flow
into a country because of the presence of merchants, but because of the
necessity of merchandise. And because it is worth more when scarce,
its arrival will attract merchants from far and wide. We still have in this
country and in this city many commercial houses belonging to native
Old Christians as well as to foreigners: Spaniards, Germans and Italians, with very large capitals. If Your Majesty would grant favors to
these and to Old Christian traders, the country will regain its former
prosperity and nobody will feel deprived of people whose presence
engendered so many other deprivations, of so different a nature.
APPENDIX SIX
1 ANTT, Ms. 1458, f. 402, published by Antnio Baio, El-Rei D. Joo e a Inquisio, Academia Portuguesa da Histria, Anais, 6, 1942, 56-57. On the Alvar of February
6, 1649, rescinded on January 18, 1657, see above, Chapter Twelve.
376
APPENDIX SIX
princes, yet not imposing the punishment on those who are and were
traitors to the King and Lord of these princes and kings?
The Catholic faith is a most fair and comely damsel, craving to be
finely treated and regaled wherever she dwells. Persecuted in Asia, she
fled to Europe. And because in some parts of that continent too they
abused her, she took shelter in Portugal, under the succor and protection of the kings of this realm. The latter, out of gratitude for the
gracious confidence she deigned to place in them, instituted in this
country the Tribunal of the Faith that tower of the Lords vineyard
referred to in the Gospel which alone preserves and defends it in its
purity. Look what happened to England, France and Germany, where
its establishment was rejected.
If then the sacred bulwark should be undermined in our land, we
have reason to fear that the Faith will flee hence as it has fled the other
lands.
Wherefore we beg Your Majesty by the entrails of Christ Jesus, son
of the living God, to have this decree so inimical to Faith, Religion
and Justice revoked and to maintain the Holy Office in its sovereign
preeminence and jurisdiction. For, as long as Your Majestys empire
remains founded on this solid rock, we shall be secure in the certainty
that it will last eternally in Your Majestys offspring and descendants.
That, second only to Gods honor, is all we aspire to in this our memorial and petition.
APPENDIX SEVEN
378
APPENDIX SEVEN
HOUSE OF BRAGANA
APPENDIX EIGHT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANUSCRIPTS CITED
Brussels (Archives Gnrales du Royaume)
Office Fiscal de Brabant, Dossier 529 (71).
Lisbon (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo)
Conselho Geral do Santo Ofcio
Reposta a algumas calumnias com que a gente da nao procura desacreditar o
recto procedimento das Inquisioens deste Reyno (Mao 20, no. 3)
Inquisition of Coimbra
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Inquisition of vora
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Inquisition of Lisbon
Livro dos homens (Livro 31)
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
382
BIBLIOGRAPHY
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
383
384
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
385
386
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
387
388
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
01. King Joo III (1502-1557). Courtesy Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa
02. Title-page of the first Regimento of the Portuguese Inquisition, 1552. Courtesy
Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
03. Privileges of the familiares, first edition, Lisbon, 1608. Courtesy Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
04. Title-page of the second Regimento of the Portuguese Inquisition, Lisbon, 1613.
Courtesy Hispanic Society, New York
05. Joo Delgado Figueira, General Repertory of 3800 Inquisitorial Trial Records
Dispatched in Goa and Elsewhere in India,1561-1623, Goa, 1623, title-page. Courtesy, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa
06. Aphorismi Inquisitorum, first edition, Lisbon, 1630. Courtesy Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
07. Title-page of the third Regimento of the Portuguese Inquisition, Lisbon, 1640. Courtesy Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
08. Portrait of Inquisitor General Francisco de Castro (from Retratos e Elogios dos Vares e
Donas, Lisbon, 1827). Courtesy New York Public Library, New York
09. An Account of the Cruelties, first edition, London, 1708. Courtesy University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia
10. First page of An Account of the Cruelties. Courtesy University of Pennsylvania Library,
Philadelphia
11. Noticias Reconditas, [London] 1722, title-page. Courtesy Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana,
Amsterdam
12. Procession of an Act of the Faith. Philip Limborch, The History of the Inquisition,
London, 1731
13. D. Lus da Cunha (1662-1749). Oil painting attributed to Louis Michel Van Loo
(1707-1771). Courtesy, Fundao Ricardo Esprito Santo, Lisbon
14. Marquis de Pombal Monument, Lisbon, inaugurated 1934. Photo Jos Antnio Silva
15. Marquis de Pombal Monument, Lisbon, detail concerning New Christians. Photo
Jos Antnio Silva
16. Antnio Jos Saraiva (1917-1993)
17. Israel Salvator Rvah (1917-1973)
18. National Archives of the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (1990)
INDEX
Aboab, Isaac II, 8,9
Aboab, Isaac de Mathatias, 258
Abravanel, Isaac, XVI, 26 180
Affaitati, Giovanni-Carlo, 24
Afonso V, XV, 8
Afonso VI, 215
guila, Joo de, 322
Albert, Archduke, 118, 192
Alarico II, XXIV
Albertino, Arnaldo, 359
Alccer-Quibir, Battle of, 24, 221
Alcambar, Jos, 236, 283, 299, 300, 305
Alexander VI, XXXIV
Alfonso I, XXVIII
Alfonso X, XXVIII, XXIX, 7
Aliaga, Lus de, 142-144
Almanach Perpetuum (Abraham Zacuto), 5,
96
Almeida, Francisco de, 343
Almeida, Gaspar Gomes de, 322
lvares, Baltasar, 29, 208
lvares, Pero, 26, 45
Alves, Francisco Manuel, 150, 280, 298
American Sephardi, The, 288, 296
Amzalak, Joseph, 233
Amzalak, Moses Bensabat, 323
Andrade, Rodrigo de, 139, 202
Alegacin (Apology on Behalf of the
Portuguese New Christians by Martn
de Zellorigo) (Madrid, 1619), 142146, 193
Anfitrio (Antnio Jos da Silva), 74, 75,
234
Aphorismi Inquisitorum (Antnio de Sousa),
48, 122, 182
Apology on Behalf of the Portuguese
New Christians (Ms., 1624), 142
Alegacin (Apology on Behalf of the
Portuguese East India Company by
Duarte Gomes Solis) (Madrid, 1628),
146-148, 196, 210
Arago, Ferno Ximenes de, 194
Arame, Jos, 8
Aranda, Count of, XXXIV
Arajo, Vasques de, 170
Areda, Diogo de, 133, 352
Arias, XXIV
Aristotle, 220
Assuno, Diogo de, 136, 137, 170, 260,
311
398
INDEX
INDEX
399
Haman, 349
Henrique, Cardinal King D., 27-29, 33,
37, 40, 41, 44, 76, 184, 192, 198, 359,
360, 368
400
INDEX
INDEX
401
402
INDEX