Th e Marranos’ story in Brazil begins in the Iberian Peninsula where, after having lived culturally and socially integrated for 15 centuries, Sephardic Jews were de-clared second-class citizens by monarchial decree and infi dels by the all-powerful Catholic Church. Th eir expulsion from Spain in 1492, their forced conversion to Ca-tholicism in Portugal a few years later in 1497, the establishment of the court of the Holy Offi ce of the Inquisition in 1536, and the diabolical and gory persecution of Portuguese people of Jewish descent all turned the Sephardic Jews once more into a wandering people and scattered them to the four corners of the earth. For these Jews, their lives were drastically changed and their destiny altered forever: it was a new Diaspora.
Insecure and stigmatized in their home country, many of the converted Jews and their descendents, known as New Christians, conversos, or Marranos, found refuge in the Brazilian New World, which they called the Promised Land. Th e Mar-rano history in Brazil should be understood fi rst within the colonial context, be-cause the converted descendants of Sephardic Jews (anussim in Hebrew) who came to the New World searching for a better or diff erent life that held the possibility of escaping Inquisitional persecution underwent a completely diff erent experience from that of the New Christians who converted back to Judaism in Italy, France, Holland, North Africa, the Levant, and elsewhere around the world.
Having crossed the Atlantic to Portuguese America, the New Christians rebuilt their lives within a radically diff erent environment with other people who were also starting over. Th ey transferred their economic techniques, commercial experi-ences, customs, and beliefs to a welcoming America, which they gratefully em-braced. And today, with new research published in the past few years about the New Christians in Portuguese America, it is clear that they must be included among the builders of Brazil.
Brazil represents a real laboratory for Marrano studies. In Brazil the Marranos continued to follow the rituals and recount the suff erings of their long-established
Jewish religion. Th ey transmitted their understanding from one generation to an-other over three centuries. Recent discoveries show that Jewish practices are even followed among Brazilians today whose ancestors established settlements in the interior jungles, often without knowing their origin. Today, in large part because of modern communication and information available on the Internet, a Brazilian movement is developing: a return to the Marranos’ Jewish roots. Th ough anthropo-logical interest in families with Jewish customs in Rio Grande do Norte and Per-nambuco contributed to knowledge about and created interest in the subject, much research remains to be done in other states of Brazil.
For 285 years, Portugal refused to entertain any departure from Catholic Church dogma. In fact, the Holy Offi ce of the Inquisition was created by the king of Portu-gal, D. Joao III, uniquely and exclusively because of the “Jewish question.” Accused of being false Christians and suspected of following the customs of the Jewish reli-gion, every converso was at least potentially a criminal (a heretic). Practically speaking, this meant that any practice passed down through generations, even if it only pertained to domestic rituals and ceremonies, was enough to off er as evidence for the heinous crime of heresy.
Th e Holy Offi ce was the grandest and most extensive bureaucracy of Portugal, but it had only one revenue source to fi nance its operations, which included hun-dreds of agents: confi scation. Th e Holy Offi ce of the Inquisition supported its bu-reaucracy with the property of New Christians accused of Judaism. Th e Tribunal could only survive if there was a constant supply of victims. When a particular her-esy diminished it had to be reinvented. Like modern totalitarian regimes (and even some democracies) the Inquisition had to create an enemy to legitimize and justify the system. Th e agents of the Inquisition were the Gestapo spies of the time. Th ey operated throughout the Portuguese Empire—India, the Azores, and America—
encouraging friends, neighbors, and business associates to bear witness against this “enemy within.” Often the testimony was driven by jealousy and other personal considerations, and equally often, it was false. Not only was it dangerous to be a crypto-Jew, it was equally dangerous to be in any family that had former practition-ers of Judaism who truly converted to Christianity.
Portugal also passed legislation that excluded Portuguese citizens with Jewish ancestors from all offi cial (and thus, honorable) positions, and prohibited them from even having a superior education. Practically speaking, however, the legisla-tion was ineffi cient because it only worked when there was suffi cient interest to apply it. Often positions went to Jews both unknowingly and knowingly because particular applicants were preferred by those in authority. Sermons from the pul-pit were the most infl uential channel through which the Portuguese people got this deeply anti-Semitic message. And during the Acts of Faith—celebrated mass spectacles that were attended not only by kings and the rest of the aristocracy but also by nearly the entire population—everyone turned out to see fellow citizens punished for a particular heresy. Th e heresy was being Jewish, or at least someone at some point in a family’s history had been Jewish.
Historically, the Jews were the only people for whom a special court was cre-ated to investigate and punish their behavior and their ideas—and this court lasted
three centuries. Th e persecution of the New Christians was an anti-Semitic program.
To fi nd the heresy (the crime), the inquisitors ordered their agents to identify the
“origins” of every suspected Portuguese citizen. Hitler went back fi ve generations but the Inquisition searched birth and family records for the preceding seventh and eighth generations to identify Jews. If current descendents were not actual practi-tioners of Judaism, they were likely ones, which amounted to nearly the same thing in determination of guilt.
Laws were continuously promulgated forbidding New Christians to leave Por-tugal, but even so, clandestine immigration to Brazil was uninterrupted. Th e every-day risk of exposure was great, and once exposed, torture and death were imminent.
Clearly, the Inquisition’s goal was extermination of Judaism; it was an early model for the Holocaust.
During the reign of the House of Hapsburg, the Inquisition reinforced its func-tioning and became more organized and systematic, and its discriminatory politics in general were transferred to Brazil, where it came to include many peoples of mixed heritage (another model for Hitlerism).
However, the Dutch invasion of the northeast of Brazil in 1630 changed the so-cial and religious picture of the country and the life of the New Christians. Jews ar-rived from Holland with the Dutch and infl uenced Marranos to return to the open practice of Judaism.
Th e religious tolerance the Dutch granted to the Brazilian Jews gave them hope of liberty and restoration of their personal dignity. Many New Christians in north-east Brazil returned to Judaism, circumcised their children, and even became prac-ticing Orthodox Jews. A school, synagogue, and cemetery were established by the Jews of Pernambuco. Th e Inquisition was forbidden to act in Brazil’s Dutch Terri-tory (which at one time included all of northeast Brazil), but in the remainder of the country the Inquisition’s agents were active and continued arresting. And once arrested, their victims were returned to Portugal and imprisoned. Th ere, they were judged and sentenced and, if not executed, given life in prison or sentenced to slave labor on Portuguese galleys. Sometimes in special circumstances they were exiled.
Th e New Christians, including those living farther south in Brazil, played a fundamental role in the interplay between Portugal and Brazilian economic and fi -nancial worlds. In a time when the contacts were diffi cult—time consuming and exorbitantly expensive—the New Christians established a stronghold as intermedi-aries where confi dence and trust were paramount; and it was linked by the mem-bers of particular families—all New Christians and/or Jewish—spread throughout strategic ports and trade centers of Europe and in the Americas. An exhaustive study of the amount of wealth confi scated by the Inquisition from the New Christians is still lacking, but it was signifi cant by any measure. Ironically, the Inquisition—
which was initiated and supported by the country’s royal family—was responsible for the exodus of large numbers of its population, and this exodus decimated the economic foundation of the Portuguese Empire.
Research has found that the Marranos in Brazil were engaged in many diff erent professions and occupations, and in a few they were in the majority. It appears that all physicians in Brazil’s early centuries were New Christians, although offi cially New
Christians were denied admittance to medical schools in Portugal. Other university-educated Marranos—writers, poets, lawyers, and well-university-educated businessmen—
came to Brazil and represented the “learned class” in what was then a cultural wasteland. Th eir contribution to the cultural life of their new country was signifi -cant. However, the strongest attachment to Judaism in Brazil came from the lower middle class. In Rio de Janeiro, where the cultural level was much higher than in Paraiba, the Marranos were much less attached to religion of any kind.
In Brazil, as in Portugal, Marrano women were seen as the most dangerous ele-ment in the transmission of Judaism. Th e fi rst crypto-Jewish women arrested for heresy in the 16th century were from Bahia, Brazil’s capital at the time. Th eir role was elemental in many respects, and it was for this reason that the majority of Bra-zilians arrested for heresy were women. In a world where most women were illiter-ate, Marrano women were mostly educated. Not only could they read and write, but they often played signifi cant roles in their husbands’ businesses. Th ey were knowledgeable in the aff airs of their family and familiar with the outside world, and they passed on this knowledge to their off spring with accompanying opinions and criticisms.
Th e Portuguese literature of the time describes women in general as intellectu-ally inferior to men, and the traditional portrayal of them as agents of Satan was common. However, a Portuguese chronicler who was usually representative of the offi cial line, Duarte Nunes de Leão, in his work about the Kingdom of Portugal, dedicates three chapters of rapt description to the capacities of Portuguese women, writing about their achievements and courage and emphasizing their abilities in the arts and letters.
Th e Marranos drew their strength to keep together and to maintain their secret society from the home, and the home has always been the domain of women. Th e home was a vital factor and provided for the very survival of Judaism. From the family came the strongest force to revitalize Judaism. In their homes they followed religious ceremonies. Shabbat was the much cherished feast of the Marranos—and its practice one of the most serious crimes. Th ey kept dietary laws and other ritu-als, and they observed Jewish holidays, especially Passover and Yom Kippur, which they called “the big day.”
During three centuries of the Inquisition, Jewish identity was transmitted by women relying on historical memory that they in turn transmitted to their chil-dren. Th ese Brazilian Marrano women would have their memory reinforced by their mothers and other female relatives in Portugal or other countries from where they fl ed. By ship, letters would arrive from mothers and other relatives addressed to the New World. Inside the letters would be separate pieces of paper on which were written dates and events important for Jewish people to remember. “We were slaves in Egypt” one would say, and “Th ere is only one God—the creator of the uni-verse,” read another scrap received.
Without women’s participation, Marranism would have been impossible; be-cause of women the numbers of the Inquisition’s victims were seriously reduced. In the fi rst half of the 18th century, many Brazilian prisoners were women from Rio de Janeiro—167 women and 158 men. Once arrested, they were sent to Portugal. After
torture and forced confessions most of these women were sentenced to life in prison, or allowed to reside in a certain village from where they were brought peri-odically before the Tribunal to give a “signal of Presence.” Th ey were also forced to wear the sambenito, which was a sack over their clothes embroidered with devils and fl ames. However, two of the Brazilian women’s crimes were considered so seri-ous that they were burned at the stake. Of the whole country of Brazil, reprisals against Marranos were severe. A total of 544 people were accused of Judaism. In Parailba the Inquisition virtually eliminated an entire crypto-Jewish community, most of them women.
After converting to Christianity, Marranos did not become equal to Catholics, but instead emerged as new pariahs. Even when the Jews lived as a free community in medieval, pre-Inquisition times and enjoyed a privileged situation in relation to the rest of Europe, they remained “tolerated” guests. Th e fact that after their con-version they belonged neither as Jews nor as Christians, and considering that they were forbidden to leave Portugal and could therefore not return to their Jewish ori-gins, produced a tremendous tension in the Portuguese of Jewish descent.
Th e Portuguese and Brazilian Marranos who were discriminated against from birth were psychically aff ected by it. Intolerance in the Portuguese Empire was ex-pressed at all societal levels; the Portuguese did not allow or accept the “diff erent”
and pushed the converted Portuguese to society’s margins. Th e Marranos were forced to build a world of their own—the world of the “Secret.” Th ey were forced to live two lives: one external, in which all Catholic strictures were observed, and the other internal, private, where they followed the customs passed down from their ancestors.
“Marranism” was a phenomenon that expressed itself diff erently depending on where it was practiced. In Brazil it had specifi c characteristics, which changed fur-ther within Brazil, depending on the area. Th ere was no unique behavior that was practiced everywhere in Brazil and considered part of every ceremony. Many diff er-ent expressions of Marranism were found in Brazil and throughout the South American continent. However, even in the diversity of expression there are similari-ties. A particular practice may have changed—evolved—through the generations, but still it is not diffi cult to identify the ritual, the practice’s ancestor, so to speak, from which it sprang. In other words, over time, and without rabbinical schools and books that would have helped keep practices “pure,” variations multiplied.
Much has been written in recent years about Marranos and Marranism, much of it contradictory. Rather than shedding light on heretofore secrets, recent work has mostly led to confusion. Th e old polemic that asked whether the Marranos were really Jews no longer has much meaning to scholars in the fi eld, at least not after new research revealed the real measure of the phenomenon and the many shapes of Marranism. Often, even if Marranos did not celebrate Jewish holidays or even if they were unbelievers, they were Jews.
What is now known is that although not all New Christians were Jews, all Mar-ranos certainly were. And further, it can now be categorically stated that Marran-ism does not always mean someone who practices JudaMarran-ism in secret. To many Marranos, Jewish practices do not equate with religious posture. Still, one thing re-mains and is the signifi er of the whole phenomenon that unites them all. It is “Th e
secret society.” Real believers, atheists, and skeptics all belonged to the secret soci-ety that spread throughout the jungles and cities of colonial Brazil. What linked those diff erent mentalities and several socioeconomic classes was their identity. Th ey all together “did not belong” to the greater society. Th ey went to church without be-lieving. Th ey confessed, lying, and at the Eucharist, they did not swallow. Th eir secret and their identity made them diff erent, at least to themselves—but in the secret so-cieties they referred to themselves as “us,” and in these soso-cieties they belonged.
Th e term “Marrano” is today part of a political and religious debate in Israel and throughout the Diaspora. Psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and psychoanalysts are paying attention to the Marrano dual personality. Edgar Morin, Richard Popkin, Miguel Abensour, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Damasio, and Jean Pierre Winter have all tried to interpret the psychological consequences produced by the ambiguous life, the dual personality, and the Marranos’ living their lives as pariahs.
A Marrano lived in constant turmoil with this dual identity. Th e main society in which Marranos made their way discriminated against them and excluded them when it could. But the secret side of society welcomed the Marranos, and it was only in this secret society that the Marranos felt a sense of belonging. Th is ever-present ambiguity captured Marranos in a vortex of two-world uncertainty: the Christian and the Jewish. Th e Marranos swam in a sea of fl uctuatio animi, so well characterized by Spinoza (Ethics III). Jean Pierre Winter gives us an apt diagnosis of the Marrano when he writes that Jews not being tolerated for what they were had to pretend to be what they were not in order to preserve what they believed they were. Th is gave to the Marrano experience an extraordinary actuality. Philosophers, psychoanalysts, and anthropologists found that traces of the Marranos’ “being,”
“ideas,” and “confl icts” can be found among their descendents even today. Th e spirit of Marranism can be found in Montaigne, Spinoza, Tirso de Molina, and even Freud.
With new research and new interpretations of previous studies of Marranism, today researchers can better understand the psychological consequences of the tragic Inquisitional period. Th e Inquisition forced Portuguese and Brazilian people of Jewish descent to live divided, always pretending, lying, changing family names, and using word play with the Inquisition and with nearly everyone they encoun-tered in their day-to-day lives.
Reality could not be shown as it was, but as the Marranos pretended it was. Th e Marranos never exactly knew what to want or even what to say, especially in the Inquisition’s interrogation process. Th e face of the inquisitors was where the Mar-ranos took their cue. Sometimes they confessed and sometimes they refused or
Reality could not be shown as it was, but as the Marranos pretended it was. Th e Marranos never exactly knew what to want or even what to say, especially in the Inquisition’s interrogation process. Th e face of the inquisitors was where the Mar-ranos took their cue. Sometimes they confessed and sometimes they refused or