Abstract
This chapter deals with a fundamental issue of the Iberian Jews’ teleological discourse: the birth and consolidation of the Portuguese Empire. Beside the central topic of the Lost Tribes, we can observe other signs of this phenomenon since the beginning of the sixteenth century, when some conversos considered Portugal the last land of the diaspora at Europe’s western end; or when some Jews showed a clear sympathy toward Portuguese conquests and successes. But what in this case seems a more pragmatic attitude leads us to ask if it is related to a messianic dream, to take part in a universal adventure which will end with the imposition of a universal Jewish order? And what is the relationship of this “Jewish” universal lucubration with the creation of a Christian messianic discourse at that time?
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Notes
- 1.
See Carsten L. Wilke, Histoire des Juifs Portugais (Paris: Chandeigne, 2007), 55–56 and 61; Salomo Alami, Igeret musar, trans. Adolf Jellinek (Leipzig: J. Fischel, 1854), 27 and 10–11. Concerning Alami, see Yitzhak Baer, “A History of the Jews in Christian Spain,” 2 vols., (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1966), 2:239–243; and Azriel Shochat, “Alami, Solomon,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Cecil Roth et al., (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1971), 2:501.
- 2.
On ibn Bilia see Meyer Kayserling, História dos Judeus em Portugal, trans. Gabriela Borchardt Corrêa da Silva and Anita Novinsky (São Paulo: Pioneira Editora, 1971), 59–60.
- 3.
Darkhe No’am was published in Istanbul, between 1510 and 1514. See the reproduction of this text translated by Arie Schippers, in “Moses ibn Habib: Poet and Migrant,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 174–175, who also wrote a biography of the author and is a scholar of his work.
- 4.
See Abraham ben Jacob Saba, Zeror ha-Mor, edited in 1568. An extract is published in David Raphael, ed., The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles: An Anthology of Medieval Chronicles Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal (North Hollywood: Carmi House Press, 1992), 126–127; and Abraham bar Selomoh [de Terrutiel], Sefer ha-Qabbalah from 1510. An extract is published by Yolanda Moreno Koch, ed., Dos Crónicas hispanoebreas del siglo XV (Barcelona: Riopiedras Ediciones, 1992), 70.
- 5.
Elliot Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
- 6.
See Daniel Lasker, “Jewish-Christian Polemics in Light of the Expulsion from Spain,” Judaism 41, no. 2 (1992): 148–155; idem, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007); Ram Ben-Shalom, “The Foundation of Christianity in the Historical Perceptions of Medieval Jewry as Expressed in Anonymous Various Elements on the Topic of Christian Faith, London, BL, MS Addit 27129, 88b–92a,” in Conflict and Religious Conversation in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honor of Ora Limor, eds. Israel Yuval and Ram Ben-Shalom (Turnhout: Brepolis, 2014), 221–52; Carsten L. Wilke, The Marrakesh Dialogues: A Gospel Critique and Jewish Apology from the Spanish Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
- 7.
In that time, the Évora Inquisition had jurisdiction in Trás-os-Montes. See Elvira de Azevedo Mea, A Inquisição de Coimbra no século XVI: A instituição, os homens e a sociedade (Porto: Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida, 1997), 67.
- 8.
Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon) (ANTT), Inquisição de Évora, proc. 6117, fol. 3, 7v°, 15, 89v°–90v° and 160. See also José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “A ‘Fantastic’ Tale of the New Christians concerning the immigration of the Jews to Portugal,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 11 (2015): 166. On Francisco Aires see María José P. Ferro Tavares , “Judeus e conversos castelhanos em Portugal,” Anales de la Universidad de Alicante 6 (1987): 358.
- 9.
In the Vienna, Strasbourg, and Wasengeil versions of the Toledot Yeshu, the Shem ha-Meforash was inscribed on a rock put inside of the Holy of the Holies. See L’Evangile du Ghetto ou comment les juifs se racontaient Jésus, ed. Jean-Pierre Osier (Paris: Berg International, 1984), 38–39, 71–72, 89–90.
- 10.
See Peter Schäfer, “Introduction,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, eds. Yaacov Deutsch, Michael Meerson, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 3.
- 11.
See Michael Sokoloff, “The Date and Provenance of the Aramaic Toledot Yeshu on the Basis of Aramaic Dialectology,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, eds. Yaacov Deutsch, Michael Meerson, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 13.
- 12.
See Paola Tartakoff, “The Toledot Yeshu and Jewish-Christian Conflict in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, eds. Yaacov Deutsch, Michael Meerson, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 297–309.
- 13.
See Yaacov Deutsch, “The Second Life of Jesus: Christian Reception of Toledot Yeshu,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, eds. Yaacov Deutsch, Michael Meerson, and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 289.
- 14.
On other works of the same author, see Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, La forteresse de la foi (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1998).
- 15.
Tartakoff, “The Toledot,” 303. Concerning the figure of Jesus in Toledot Yeshu see also the excellent articles of Alexandra Cuffel, “Jesus, the Misguided Magician: The (Re-)emergence of the Toledot Yeshu in Medieval Iberia and its Retelling in Ibn Sahula’s Fables from the Distant Past,” Henoch 37, no. 1 (2015): 4–16, and Alexandra Cuffel, “Between Epic Entertainment and Polemical Exegesis: Jesus and Antihero,” in Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, ed. Ryan Szpiech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), ch. 10. I am indebted to Alexandra Cuffel for those references.
- 16.
See Alfonso Toro, Los Judíos en la Nueva España (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982), 278; and Pedro Antonio Escalante Arce, “Apuntes sobre la inquisición mexicana y los judíos portugueses en el siglo XVII,” in Actas do IV Congresso das Academias da História Ibero-Americanas, ed. Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa de História, 1996), 400–401.
- 17.
ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, proc. 8976, fol. 42–44.
- 18.
See Luís Suárez, La Expulsión de los judíos de España (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992), 325–27 and 341–44; María José Pimenta Ferro Tavares, “Judeus e conversos castelhanos em Portugal,” Anales de la Universidad de Alicante: Historia Medieval 6 (1987): 341–468; François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims in Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7) (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 122.
- 19.
Campbell, Marie, “The Three Teachings of the Bird,” in Studies in Biblical and Jewish Folklore, eds. Raphael Patai, Francis Lee Utley, and Dov Noy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 97–107.
- 20.
See Abraham ben Hasdai, Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir (Barlaam and Josaphat), ed. A. M. Habermann (Tel Aviv: Mahbarot le-sifrut be-siyu’a Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1950), 346–60.
- 21.
“Ando por aqui em grande penitência que me deu Deus Nosso Senhor. E trago este feixinho de lenha na cabeça com o qual me queimo duas vezes cada dia por quanto mal se faz aos judeus. E por quanto mal fazem os gentios a esta gente dos judeus por amor de mim.” ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, proc. 8976, fol. 38–39v°. My translation. See also Tavim, “A ‘Fantastic’ Tale,” 154–55.
- 22.
Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (Northampton: University of Washington Press, 2001). Catalina Cabán-Owen considers advisedly that “selective adaptation also suggests that acculturation occurs in some areas and not in others. For example, acculturation can occur in the educational arena with an exchange of knowledge and ideas, but not in the religious arena where unique rituals of each culture are maintained.” Catalina Cabán-Owen, A Study of the Acculturation: Experience of Puerto Rico Migrant Women: Manifestation and Meaning Making Process (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 7–8. An exemplary case in this sense is provided in the book authored by Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (Yale: Yale University Press, 1984). For the definition of “acculturation” in 1936, see Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herkovits, “Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation,” American Anthropologist 38, no. 1 (1936): 149–52. For a modern perspective of the evolution of theories of acculturation, see Kevin M. Chun, Pamela Balls Organista, and Gerardo Marín, eds., Acculturation: Advances in Theory, Measurement, and Applied Research (Decade of Behavior) (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2003).
- 23.
ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, proc. 8976, fol. 39v°–40.
- 24.
See Samuel Usque, Consolação às Tribulações de Israel, eds. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and José V. de Pina Martins, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1989), vol. 2, Dialogo Terceiro. For a modern French edition see Samuel Usque, Consolation aux tribulations d’Israël (1553), trans. Lúcia Liba Mucznik, ed. Carsten Wilke (Paris: Chandeigne, 2014).
- 25.
ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc. 8976, fol. 14 and 41.
- 26.
Ibid., fol. 41v°.
- 27.
Ibid., fol. 94v°.
- 28.
About those relatives see Martin Cohen, The Martyr: Luis de Carvajal: A Secret Jew in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 35. About branches of the Carvajal family see also Martin Cohen, “The Religion of Luís Rodriguez Carvajal,” American Jewish Archives 20 (1968): 33–62; Seymour Liebman, The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame and the Inquisition (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970); Eva Alexandra Uchmany, La vida entre el judaísmo y el cristianismo en la Nueva España, 1580–1606 (México: Archivo General de la Nación, 1982); David Gitlitz, Secreto y engaño: La religión de los criptojudíos, trans. Maria Luísa Balseiro (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2003); and Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), ch. 3.
- 29.
See mostly Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz , L’Idée imperiale manueline (Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1990, offprint).
- 30.
António José Saraiva, História e utopia: Estudos sobre Vieira, trans. Maria de Santa Cruz (Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, 1992), 83–84. See Padre António Vieira, “História do Futuro (I) [ca. 1649],” in Padre António Vieira: Obras escolhidas, eds. António Sérgio and Hernâni Cidade, vol. 8 (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, 1953), 244–49.
- 31.
See Maria José P. Ferro Tavares , “Características do messianismo judaico em Portugal,” in Estudos Orientais II: O Legado Cultural de Judeus e Mouros, ed. António Augusto Tavares (Lisbon: Instituto Oriental, 1991), 255–61.
- 32.
“Forte nome é Portugal, / Um nome tão excelente, / É Rei do cabo poente, / Sobre todos principal. / Não se acha vosso igual / Rei de tal merecimento. / Não se acha, segundo sento, / Do Poente ao Oriental.” Profecias do Bandarra [1603 edition by D. João de Castro], ed. Fernando Jorge Santos Costa (Trancoso: Trancoso Eventos, n.d.), 58.
- 33.
“Portugal, por parte de seus reis, gemerá por muito tempo e padecerá de muitas maneiras. Mas Deus te será propício e, não esperadamente, será remido por um não Esperado. […] Tudo será transformado. […] Reviverá a Idade do Ouro. Por toda a parte reinará a Paz. Bem-aventurados os que virem isto.” José van den Basselaar, O Sebastianismo: História sumária (Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, 1987), 43.
- 34.
Among the many works about D. Isaac Abravanel, see Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1982); Jean-Christophe Attias, Isaac Abravanel: La mémoire et l’espérance (Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1992); Isaac Abravanel, Letters, ed. and trans. Cedric-Cohen Skalli (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007).
- 35.
Besides Nethanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, 205–42; and Maria José P. Ferro Tavares , “Características do messianismo judaico em Portugal,” 248–53, see among others Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schoken Books, 1971); Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); and Maria Ana Travassos Valdez, Historical Interpretations of the “Fifth Empire”: Dynamics of Periodization from Daniel to António Vieira, S.J. (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
- 36.
ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, proc. 6047, fol. 93–94 and 110. The question of the nine and a half tribes arises as the tribes that formed the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel were Reuben, Simon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Ephraim, and half of the tribe of Manasseh. So it is assumed that in the times of Jesus only the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and half of the tribe of Manasseh survived in the Judaea Roman Kingdom. See “Tribus Perdues, Dix,” in Dictionnaire Encyclopédique du Judaïsme, ed. Geoffrey Wigoder (Paris: Cerf, Robert Laffont, 1996), 1030–31.
- 37.
See among others, J. A. Goris , Étude sue les colonies marchandes meridionales (Portugaises, Espagnoles, Italiennes) à Anvers, de 1488 à 1567: Contribution à l’histoire des débuts du capitalisme moderne (Leuven: Uystpruyst, 1925); José Gentil da Silva, Stratégie des affaires à Lisbonne entre 1595 et 1607: Lettres marchandes des Rodrigues d’Évora et Veiga (Paris: Centre des Recherches Historiques, 1956); Valentin Vasquez de Prada, Lettres marchandes d’Anvers (Paris: SEVPEN, 1960); Israel Salvator Révah , “Pour l’histoire des marranes à Anvers: Recensement de la nation portugaise de 1571 à 1666,” Revue des Études Juives 122 (1963): 123–74; Hermann Kellenbenz, “I Mendes, I Rodrigues, e I Ximenes nei loro rapporti commerciali con Venezia,” in Gli Ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV–XVIII: Atti del Convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini, ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Milan: Edizioni Comunità, 1987), 153–56; and Aron di Leone Leoni, The Hebrew Portuguese Nations in Antwerp and London at the Time of Charles V and Henry VIII: New Documents and Interpretations (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2005).
- 38.
Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, 229–30.
- 39.
Profecias do Bandarra, 81–85.
- 40.
Padre António Vieira, “Esperanças de Portugal, Quinto Império do Mundo” [1659], in Padre António Vieira, Obras escolhidas, eds. António Sérgio and Hernâni Resende, vol. 6 (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, 1952), 34–37.
- 41.
“[…] os dez tribos de Israel (Êxod. XIII), que desapareceram há mais de dois mil anos, sem se saber deles,” in “Sentença que no Tribunal do Santo Ofício de Coimbra se leu ao padre António Vieira” [Coimbra, December 23, 1667], in Padre António Vieira, Obras escolhidas, eds. António Sérgio and Hernâni Resende, vol. 6 (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa, 1952), 183.
- 42.
See among others, William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, Portugal e o descobrimento Europeu da América: Cristóvão Colombo e os portugueses (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional—Casa da Moeda, 1992); James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
- 43.
“[…] ebrei [of Judea] o ebrei figli di Israele.” Cédric-Cohen Skalli and Michele Luzati, Lucca 1493: Un sequestro di lettere ebraiche: Edizione e commento storico (Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale,” Centro di Studi Ebraici, 2014), 189–90. I thank Cédric-Cohen Skalli for giving me a copy of this important work.
- 44.
See among others Mercedes García-Arenal, “‘Un réconfort pour ceux qui sont dans l’atteinte:’ Prophétie et millénarisme dans la Péninsule Ibérique et au Maghreb (XVIe–XVIIe siècles),” Revue de l’histoire des religions 220, no. 4 (2003): 473–82; Bernardo López Belinchón, “Aventureros, negociantes y maestros dogmatizadores: Judíos norteafricanos y judeoconversos ibéricos en la España del siglo XVII,” in Entre el Islam y occidente: Los judíos magrebíes en la edad moderna, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 2003), 69–99; Natalia Muchnik, “Des intrus en Pays d’Inquisition: présence et activités des juifs dans l’Espagne du XVIIe siècle,” Revue des études juives 164, nos. 1–2 (2005): 119–56; José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “Juifs de Mafoma dans le Portugal catholique (XVe–XVIIe siècle),” in Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 2: Passages et contacts en Méditerranée, eds. Jocelyne Dahklya and Wolfgang Kaiser (Paris: Albin Michel, 2013), 613–38; idem, “’Tempo de judeus e mouros:’ quadros das relações entre judeus e muçulmanos no horizonte português (séculos XVI–XVII),” Lusitania Sacra, 2nd ser. 27 (2013): 59–79.
- 45.
See among others Ervin Birnbaum, “David Reubeni’s Indian origin,” Historia Judaica 20 (1958): 3–30; Miriam Eliav-Feldon, “Invented Identities: Credulity in the Age of Prophecy and Exploration,” Journal of Early Modern History 3, no. 3 (1992): 203–32; idem, “Portugal, Prester John and the Lost Tribes of Israel”, in Vasco da Gama: Homens, Viagens e Culturas: Actas do Congresso Internacional, ed. Joaquim Romero de Magalhães, vol. 1 (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 2001): 301–37; José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “David Reubeni: um ‘embaixador’ inusitado,” in João III e o Império: Actas do Congresso Internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento, eds. Roberto Carneiro and Artur Teodoro de Matos (Lisbon: CHAM, 2004), 683–715; Moti Benmelech, “History, Politics, and Messianism: David ha-Reuveni’s Origin and Mission,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 35, no. 1 (2011): 35–60.
- 46.
This is a very prolific subject. See among others, Menasseh ben Israel, Espérance d’Israël, eds. and trans. Henry Méchoulan and Gérard Nahon (Paris: Vrin, 1979); Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1945); David Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan and Richard H. Popkin, eds., Menasseh ben Israel and his World (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Richard H. Popkin, “Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the 17th Century”, in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, eds. Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 57–72; Lionel Ifrah, L’Aigle d’Amsterdam: Menasseh ben Israel (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2001); Sina Rauschenbach, “Mediating Jewish Knowledge: Menasseh ben Israel and the Christian Respublica litteraria”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 102, no. 4 (2012): 561–88. Concerning specifically the question of the Lost Tribes, António de Montesinos and Menasseh ben Israel, see Jonathan Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), vol. 2, ch. 9.
- 47.
“[…] e Nuestro Señor que ayuda e favorece las cosas de V.A., dyo Victoria a los Cristanos. El sea loado,” Rabbi Abraão to King D. Manuel I, Safi, January 3, 1511, in Les Sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc: Première série: Dynastie Sa’adienne: Archives et bibliothèques du Portugal, eds. Pierre de Cénival, David Lopes and Robert Ricard, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions Paul Geuthner, 1934), 281–83, and in As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, ed. A. da Silva Rego, vol. 10 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1974), 104–106. On the context see José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, Os judeus na expansão portuguesa em Marrocos durante o século XVI: Origens e actividades duma comunidade (Braga: Edições APPACDM Distrital de Braga, 1997), 206–208.
- 48.
“Consultation of the Ultramarine Council on the petition of the Jew Abraão Cohen,” Lisbon, February 2, 1655, in Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (Lisbon), Pernambuco, Papéis Avulsos, box. 6, doc. 522. See also A. Mendes de Gouveia, Relação abreviada de documentos do Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino relativos aos judeus no Brasil, 1639–1663 (Lisbon: Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, 1962), 2.
- 49.
On Abraão Cohen see José Antônio Gonsalves de Melo, Gente da nação: Cristãos-novos e judeus em Pernambuco, 1542–1654 (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1996), 372–73.
- 50.
“[…] os vassalos de Vossa Magestade com muito amor e fidelidade, solicitando a liberdade de muitos que estiveram presos no Recife, e acudindo-lhes com suas esmolas e fazendas e assistindo-lhes a seus negócios, odiando-se por isso com os holandeses, principalmente por lhes procurar o resgate, e ficar por fiador de muitos até mandarem as quantias em que se comcertauão, no qual fez a Vossa Majestade muito particular serviço.” “Consultation of the Ultramarine Council on the petition of the Jew Abraão Cohen,” 2.
- 51.
“Abraham Coen en el Brasil remoto / del Príncipe Mauricio [van Nassau-Siegen] halló el agrado, / prospero y noble, y oy del Rey Empireo / goça la luz en el ideal Palácio. / Cerco al Brasil el Luso belicoso / en nueve años contínuos, que empeçaron / en el de mil seiscientos y quarenta / y cinco, contra el Valeroso Holandio, / Y en todos com magnanima grandeza / el grande Abraham Coen sustentò a quantos / Judios y Cristianos, de su auxilio / en la miseria atroz, necesitaron. / Entonces los Señores del Supremo / Consejo sobre el Pueblo Brasiliano, / vieron del fiel Kohen la piedad grande, / que el Rey Divino en la Alma esta premiando.” Daniel Leví de Barrios, “Funebre poesia por el Fallecimiento de la bienaventurada Señora Doña Ribca Cahanet viuda del glorioso Varon Abraham Coen a 28 de Agosto de 1685 años, dirigela A sus muy Ilustres hijos los Señores Jacob Mosseh, Mordojay, y Ester Cohen,” in id., Metros Nobles (Amsterdam: Jacob van Velsen, 1675), 259–60, Ets Haim / Livraria Montezinos, Amsterdam, 2F10. Almost all these poems were published by M. Kayserling, “The Earliest Rabbis and Jewish Writers of America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 3 (1895): 13–20.
- 52.
Menasseh ben Israel, De la resurrección de los muertos (Amsterdam, 1636), 100; idem, Piedra Gloriosa o de la estatua de Nabuchadnesar: Con muchas y diversas autoridades de la S. S., y antiguos sabios (Amsterdam, 1655), 246. On Menasseh ben Israel’s ideas see Harm den Boer, La Literatura sefardí de Amsterdam (Alcalá de Henares: Instituto de Estudios Sefardíes y Andalusíes, 1996), 177; Henry Méchoulan, “Menasseh ben Israel and the World of the Non-Jews”, in Menasseh ben Israel and his World, eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 83–97; idem, “Conséquences théologiques et politiques de l’espérance messianique, XVIe–XVIIe siècles,” in Menasseh ben Israel, La Pierre Glorieuse de Nabuchodonosor ou la fin de l’Histoire au XVIIe siècle, introduction and notes M. Hadas-Lebel and H. Méchoulan , trans. H. Knafou (Paris: Vrin, 2007), 52–53.
- 53.
About Rabi Abraão Rute of Safi see Tavim, Os judeus, 202–10 and 405–406; and idem, “Abraão Benzamerro, ‘Judeu de Sinal,’ sem sinal, entre o Norte de África e o Reino de Portugal,” Mare Liberum 6 (1993): 125–26.
- 54.
“David Reubeni[’s] Diary,” in Jewish Travelers in the Middle Ages, 19 Firsthand Accounts, ed. Elkan Nathan Adler (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 294–96.
- 55.
Ibid., 313–14.
- 56.
See Tavim, “David Reubeni;” and Maria José P. Ferro Tavares, “Para o estudo dos judeus em Trás-os-Montes no século XVI. A 1ª geração dos cristãos-novos,” Cultura—História e Filosofia 4 (1985): 390.
- 57.
See David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 8–9.
- 58.
See David Graizbord, “Who and What was a Jew? Some Considerations for the Historical Study of New Christians,” in Anais de História de Além-Mar 14 (2013): Os judeus e o comércio colonial (séculos XVI–XIX): Novas abordagens, ed. José Alberto Tavim, 15–44.
See also Leora Batnizky, How Judaism became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
- 59.
Graizbord, “Who and What,” 37.
- 60.
See Luis H. Feldman, Jews and Gentiles in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
- 61.
On this case, see mostly Morris S. Goodblat, Jewish Life in Turkey in the XVIth Century as Reflected in the Legal Writings of Samuel de Medina (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1952); and Dora Zsom, “The Return of the Conversos to Judaism in the Ottoman Empire and North-Africa,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 7 (2010): 335–47. Dora Zsom also came back to the fifteenth century concerning this question in her book Conversos in the Responsa of Sephardic Halakhic Authorities in the 15th Century (Piscataway: Georgias Press, 2014).
- 62.
See Cecil Roth et al., “Proselytes”, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Cecil Roth et al. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1971), 13:1187.
- 63.
Haïm Zafrani, Les Juifs du Maroc: Vie sociale, économique et religieuse: Études de taqqanot et responsa (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1972), 176n156.
- 64.
Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta, The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
- 65.
See Nathan Katz and Ellen S . Goldberg, The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993); J. B. Segal, A History of the Jews of Cochin (London and Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993); and José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, Judeus e Cristãos-Novos de Cochim: História e memória (1500–1662) (Lisbon: APPACDM Distrital de Braga, 2003).
- 66.
See Bodian, Dying.
- 67.
See Carsten L. Wilke, “Conversion Theology among Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Jews: Protestant and Islamic Subtexts,” in In the Iberian Peninsula and Beyond: A History of Jews and Muslims (15th–17th Centuries), eds. José Alberto R. Silva Tavim , Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, and Lúcia Liba Mucznik (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 1:252–65. See also idem, The Marrakesh Dialogues.
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See Daniel Sperber, “Gentile,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Cecil Roth et al. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1971), 7:411. For the development of those topics, see the contribution of Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile relations in Medieval and Modern Times (Springfield: Behrman House, 1961).
- 69.
Concerning the Sephardic minhag , see, for example, Rabbi Herbert C. Dobrinsky, A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1986).
- 70.
See Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and Their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in Crisis and Creativity in The Sephardic World, 1391–1646, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 121–28.
- 71.
For the Ottoman Empire see among others Arye Shmuelevitz , The Jews of the Ottoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Century: Administrative, Economic, Legal and Social Relations as Reflected in the Responsa (Leiden: Brill, 1984); Joseph Hacker, “The Sürgün System and Jewish Society in the Ottoman Empire during the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” in Ottoman and Turkish Jewry: Community and Leadership, ed. Aron Rodrigue (Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies, 1992), 9–65; idem, “The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth Century,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1992), 2:109–33; Minna Rozen, A History of the Jewish Community in Istanbul: The Formative Years, 1453–1566 (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Yaron Ben-Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewish Society in the Seventeenth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). Concerning Morocco and the disputes between megorashim (exiled) and toshavim (locals) see Zafrani , Les Juifs du Maroc; Tavim, Os judeus na expansão portuguesa, 88–92 and 118–23; as also David Corcos, Studies in the History of the Jews of Morocco (Jerusalem: Rubbin Mass, 1976); and Mariano Arribas Palau, “Comunidades israelitas bajo los primeros sa’dies,” in Homenaje a Millàs Vallicrosa, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1954), 1:45–65.
- 72.
See Tavim, Judeus e cristãos-novos de Cochim, 368–70.
- 73.
See Walter Joseph Fischel, “The Exploration of the Jewish Antiquities of Cochin on the Malabar Coast,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 87, no. 3 (1967): 233; as also Barbara Johnson Hudson, “Shingli or Jewish Cranganor of the Cochin Jews of India, with an appendix on The Cochin Jews Chronicles” (Master diss., Smith College, 1975), 169–71.
- 74.
“[…] a cor é amulatada, o que procede do clima certamente, visto estarem totalmente separados dos [judeus] Malabares.” Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva, Notícias dos judeos de Cochim, mandadas por Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva [Amsterdam 5447/1687]. Facsimile ed. by Moses Bensabat Amzalak (Lisbon: Oficinas do Museu Comercial, 1923), 7.
- 75.
“Todas estas Preguntas lhes fiz não obstante seguirem o nosso minhag porque sou muy amigo de informarme com fundamento para Caminhar sobre o seguro.” Paiva, Notícias, 8 and 13–15 (for the quotation).
- 76.
The catechumen is a person receiving instruction from a catechist in the principles of the Christian religion with a view to baptism. On this character, see between others Idalina Resina Rodrigues, Literatura e anti-semitismo: Séculos XVI e XVII (Lisbon: Reprint Brotéria Review, 1997), 20–22, 27–28, and 36 [Brotéria 109 (1979): 41–56, 137–53]; José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “Jews in the Diaspora with Sepharad at the Mirror: Ruptures, Relations and Forms of Identity: A Theme Examined Through Three Cases,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 181–86; and David Graizbord, “Pauline Christianity and Jewish ‘Race:’ The Case of João Baptista d´Este,” in Race and Blood in the Iberian World, eds. Max S. Hering Torres, María Elena Martínez, and David Nirenberg (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 61–79.
- 77.
“[…] e que é muy ordinario entre os judeus comprarem negros, e negras, e fazerem-nos judeus, e tem visto em Pisa alguns destes negros, e negras, judeus,” in ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, livro 536 [of Reduzidos], fol. 294.
- 78.
Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 75.
- 79.
Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 178.
- 80.
Cf. Bernard Lewis, Race et esclavage au Proche-Orient, trans. Rose Saint-James (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 19.
- 81.
Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 196–97.
- 82.
See note 71.
- 83.
Concerning the Baghdadi Jews and the adoption of the Sephardic minhag see Rabbi Ezekiel N. Musleah, On the Banks of the Ganga: The Sojourn of Jews in Calcutta (North Quincy: Christopher Publishing House, 1975); Joan G. Roland, “The Baghdadi Jews,” in The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities, ed. Orpa Slapak (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1995), 37–44; John Cooper and Judy Cooper, “The Life-cycle of the Baghdadi Jews of India,” in India’s Jewish Heritage: Ritual, Art & Life-Cycle, ed. Shalva Weil (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1986), 100–109.
- 84.
See Yale M. Needel, “Rethinking ‘Sephardic:’ Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Observances among the Jews of Bombay,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 26, no. 2 (2008): 59–80.
- 85.
Imanuel Aboab, Nomología o Discursos Legales, ed. Moisés Orfali (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 2007).
- 86.
D. Miguel de Barrios , Historia universal judaica (Amsterdam, 1684).
- 87.
Menasseh ben Israel, “To His Highnesse the Lord Protector of the Common-Wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland: The Humble Addresses of Menasseh ben Israel, a Divine, and Doctor of Physics, on Behalf of the Jewish Nation [1655],” in Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell: Being a Reprint of the Pamphlets Published by Menasseh ben Israel to Promote the Re-admission of the Jews to England 1649–1656, ed. Lucien Wolf (London: Macmillan Co. Limited, 1901), 81–98.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Professor João Teles e Cunha and Dr. Hugo Martins for their help in translating this text. I am also grateful to Professor Jonathan Schorsch, for his editorial comments and his additional efforts of harmonizing my English. Ekua Yankah did the final editing.
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da Silva Tavim, J.A.R. (2018). Galut and Empire: On the Way to Final Redemption. In: Rauschenbach, S., Schorsch, J. (eds) The Sephardic Atlantic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99196-2_5
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