Jewish History (2011) 25: 153–174 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

2011
DOI: 10.1007/s10835-010-9132-9

Being against, being with: Marrano self-identification

in inquisitorial Spain (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries). An essay

NATALIA MUCHNIK
Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris,
France
E-mail: natalia.muchnik@ehess.fr

Abstract By the end of the sixteenth century, the economic situation and the Iberian Union
(1580–1640) pushed hundreds of Portuguese conversos (New Christians of Jewish descent) to
emigrate to Spain. This influx led to a revival of crypto-Judaism and a resurgence of inquisi-
torial proceedings against conversos. This essay examines the process of identity construction
among those crypto-Jews or marranos, both as individuals and as a group. Crypto-Judaism
was more related to a social practice than a theological corpus; it was based on a culture of
mobility (geographical, socio-economic) that constantly reshaped the markers of difference.
Crypto-Jews were mainly those who wanted to be, and were, perceived as such through oppo-
sition to an “Other”—sometimes the Jew of the Diaspora (the nação), sometimes the Catholic
Old Christian, sometimes the image of themselves that they saw reflected back from those
around them. But the fear of betrayal or unmasking, stimulated by the Inquisition and exacer-
bated by the great mobility of the conversos, was also foundational to their identity. It gave the
marrano group, despite its great religious and socio-economic diversity, the characteristics of
certain secret societies where shared solidarities and collective identity are fundamental.

“Identity can’t be compartmentalised. You can’t divide it up into

halves or thirds or any other separate segments. I haven’t got sev-
eral identities: I’ve got just one, made up of many components in
a mixture that is unique to me”.
Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to
Belong, 2001.
“If they happen to be in Jewish company, they say, ‘We are Jewish’ and
when in Christian company, ‘We are Christian’.”1 This comment comes from
the anonymous Libro del Alborayque, a famous anti-Judaic pamphlet of the
late fifteenth century which stigmatised the New Christians of Jewish ori-
gin: neither “Moors, nor Christians, nor Jews,” they were like “Al-Burak,”
the amorphous and terrifying mount of Muhammad, a beast composed of
twenty different elements from twenty different animal forms. Fundamen-
tally hybrid, the monstrous creature and, hence, Jews who had converted to
Christianity, seemed impossible to grasp: A chameleon without religion or
who blended all faiths together in a polymorphous syncretism, the Jewish
convert was presented in the Libro del Alborayque as the prototype multi-
ple being. This was of course a fixed image, a stereotype that would not be
154 N. MUCHNIK

applied as such to the Jewish converts who formed Spain’s crypto-Jewish

communities in the following centuries. Notwithstanding the monolithic rep-
resentation to be found at times in historiography2 and in contemporary anti-
converso views, conversos in fact displayed extreme diversity. The image
did, however, reflect two of the fundamental identifying features of those
called “marranos,”3 or, in the vocabulary of the sixteenth through eighteenth
centuries, “Portuguese”—the synonym at that time for the converts from Ju-
daism and their descendants: instability and the relational nature of means of
identification. The persons described as marranos could not be reduced to a
simple duality, but existed in a perpetual state of becoming, a “cloud,” in the
sense that they were always to some extent uncertain, contingent, impossible
to seize4 and changing according to their interlocutors and the circumstances
of their evolving social contexts. Further, like any form of identity or process
of identification,5 theirs are essentially unknowable: only the practices and
utterances of those involved can be grasped. These could equally well assign
as entrust, submit as well as choose, even if these options are not always
present in the sources.
Among the styles of self-ascription evident among the “Portuguese” in
Spain I find two which seem fundamental: the “being-against,” in opposition
to a highly proximate Other, and the “being-with,” as member of a collective
body bound together by secrecy. I aim here to analyse these two strategies of
differentiation in the setting of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain.

Defining oneself in contrast to. . .

“An ethnic, social or cultural autonomy has always identified itself

through saying no. . .”6
As a figural device, the marrano did not exist in Spanish society except as
a heretic destined for prison or execution. He was above all a New Christian.
The social position assigned to him was essentially negative: The adoption
of the statutes of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) in most institutions in
the second half of the sixteenth century meant that positions of public of-
fice were closed to New Christians.7 When they identified as secret Jews,
their self-ascription as marranos was therefore private, established within
the framework of home and conscience. This initial dissociation imposed
between public and private matters, qualified by some as “schizophrenic,”8
paradoxically presented the crypto-Jews with one of the central characteris-
tics of their identity: their difference. Marranos represented this difference
concretely and powerfully among their own people when they rejected their
public identity in words and deeds. Besides engaging in blatant subversions
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 155

of Christianity, for instance, by mocking and parodying the sacraments—

which was doubtless related to the context of inquisitorial pronouncement
(see below)—crypto-Jews performed, what one may call “micro-practices”
of opposition on a daily basis which lay beyond the scope of the Holy Office.
Their identities were thus primarily a mirror, constructed through interaction:
Marranos established themselves through opposition to the Other, the dou-
ble, sometimes the Jew of the Diaspora, sometimes the Catholic Old Chris-
tian (and the moment of the inquisitorial trial was fundamental in forcing this
definition), sometimes the image of themselves that they saw reflected back
from those around them.
Until the circulation of statutes of limpieza de sangre, Old Christian per-
ceptions were dominated by the notion of the heretical nature of conversos.
Yet the terminology used about them gradually evolved: the growing use of
collective designations such as “men of the lineage,” “these people,” “this
lineal descent, this generation [generación]” “this race,” or “Men of the Na-
tion [homens da nação]” (Hebrew or Portuguese), reveal the ethnic content
conferred on the distinction between New and Old Christians.9 Conversely,
the expression “confeso,” which stressed the religious aspect and is common
in sixteenth-century sources, tended to die away thereafter. This shift, already
perceptible in the fifteenth century, can be linked more explicitly with accu-
sations of treachery, of which the Jewish converts, as well as the moriscos,
were supposedly guilty by nature. Without returning here to the statutes of
limpieza or the supposed link between blood purity and virtue, as between
dishonour and sin, clearly the assignation of these collective and quasi-ethnic
terms to the Jewish converts and their descendants was laden with implica-
tions for the construction of marrano identity. The New Christians, converted
Jews and their progeny, were reduced to a homogeneous entity by the dis-
course of Spanish society despite their great religious and socio-economic
diversity, and were thus willingly or unwillingly transformed into a group.
This reduction of a group to an “essence” was all the more influential in that
it assimilated converted Jew and Jew. This association which unavoidably
affected the conversos themselves, irrespective of their religious leanings. In
addition, with waves of converso immigrants entering Spain from Portugal by
1580, all New Christians of Jewish origin in Spain would be seen as foreign-
ers, at least as potential traitors to the king, particularly after the Portuguese
revolt of 1640. The anonymous Proposiçion del daño que pueden causar los
Portugueses y mas los christianos nuevos, que se han difundido por estos
reynos de Castilla en el estado presente, in 1642, is revealing:
We see that they don’t buy possessions or mingle with the natives
of these kingdoms, for most of them marry among themselves,
such that we can’t be sure of their stay in places where they ob-
tain houses, and that they live segregated from other residents by
156 N. MUCHNIK

intermarriages and connections with their relatives living outside

of these realms, especially in the rebel provinces and [among the]
enemy [Portugal and/or the United Provinces].10
The underlying foreignness of the archetypal Jewish convert appeared to
crystallise in the features of the migrant, clearly identifiable by his ignorance
of the local language or by his accent. The suspicion of treachery and tra-
ditional hostility towards the newcomer accentuated the singularity of the
marranos who daily saw and lived their own difference.

. . . non-Iberians (Jews)

Simultaneously, in the eyes of Jews of other origins (Ashkenazi for instance)

the crypto-Jew was distinct because of his supposed nature as an Iberian (and
not simply his Hispanicity), what could be called his “quality.” Some schol-
ars speak of it as his “ethnicity.”11 We should not see the western Sephardic
Diaspora, which included the nação (or “nation”), as a homogeneous ensem-
ble, as some have sought to represent it: The “Other” existed at the same time
within the majority culture and within the Diaspora, on different scales. In
the marrano community, as in Jewish congregations, we may distinguish in
particular the “core,” attached to normative cultural and religious activities,
from the periphery, namely those who remained more or less at a distance
from the core. Further, all could combine a strong sense of belonging, and
show themselves to be “sincere” crypto-Jews with the retention of varied and
sometimes contradictory spiritual attitudes.12
It is well known how much “pride of lineage”—which, in the view of
writers such as José Luis Lacave,13 was specific to Sephardim—was visi-
ble, particularly in western Sephardi congregations emerging ab nihilo from
the influx of former crypto-Jews, as in Hamburg or Amsterdam.14 For ex-
ample, although they willingly recognised the Ashkenazim as Jewish, to the
Sephardic nação the Ashkenazic Jews were nonetheless of different extrac-
tion, of lower prestige. Proof of this lies, among other sources, in the state-
ments of Abraham Idaña, alias Gaspar Méndez de Arroyo (1623–1690), a
New Christian of Jewish origin from the Badajoz region who converted to
Judaism and settled in Amsterdam around 1660. In 1683, he wrote a letter
to his “friend” Juan Baldés (Respuesta a Don Juan mi amigo a la carta que
me escrivió en que me pide le dé noticia de algunas cosas de esta ciudad
de Amstardam [sic]), probably a functionary of the Inquisition of Madrid, in
which he explains that the Ashkenazim,
. . .like the Portuguese [los portugueses] observe the same Holy
Law of Moses and its practices, but they are very different in their
behaviour, because they are of foreign origin/nature [estraña nat-
uraleza] and that is why, although some today are very wealthy,
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 157

they are not highly esteemed, and because their nature is really
base, they are of low [i.e., debased] spirit [son bajos de espíritu].15
As Méndez de Arroyo configures it, this Iberian specificity of the conver-
sos balances criticisms of the marranos’ supposed simulation of Catholicism
and the alleged weakness of their true religious adherence, and argues for
their Judaicity.16 Quintessentially Iberian in the eyes of the nação, crypto-
Jews were at the same time praised for their supposed sacrifice in the name
of the Jewish faith, and thus they became significant martyrs in Diaspora
culture and memory as we see in many texts published in Amsterdam; for in-
stance, Elogios que zelozos dedicaron a la felice memoria de Abraham Nuñez
Bernal, que fue quemado vivo sanctificando el Nombre de su Criador en Cor-
dova a 3 de Mayo 5415 (1655) written by the most representative authors of
the Sephardi community or Contra la Verdad no ay Fuerça. Panegirico a los
tres bienaventurados mártires Abraham Athias, Yahacob Rodrigues Caseres
y Raquel Nuñez Fernandez que fueron quemados vivos en Cordova por san-
tificar la unidad divina, en 16 de Tamuz año de 5425 (1665), by the very pro-
lific Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios.17 In particular, Diaspora martyrologies
helped to construct identity for young congregations of New Jews (in Am-
sterdam, Hamburg, etc.) that were in need of legitimation. In this respect it
is useful to recall the words of Balthasar (Isaac) Orobio de Castro (c. 1617–
1687)—a converso from Braganza who lived in Andalusia—who became a
fervent apologist for Jewish orthodoxy in Amsterdam. Despite their idola-
trous lifestyle, he saw the conversos as part of the Jewish people (and of the
nação), “. . .because Israel does not designate a spiritual thing [cosa espiri-
tual], but a nation, whether it be good or bad.”18 “New Jews” such as Castro
often observed, proclaimed the concept of the nação as a people, a commu-
nity of ethnic identity independent of the sacred; hence they considered the
marranos of the Iberian Peninsula to be full members of it.
Yet whether Old Christians or Jews denigrated or praised the conversos’
origins, marranos were above all aware of their difference in the eyes of the
Other, who designated them as such. They grasped that image and sought
to invest in and rebuild it, in order to construct their own identities. This
reformulation of difference allows us to understand those specular, crypto-
Jewish identities which were based principally on everyday practices of de-
rision: Some marranos disparaged whatever formed the essence of Catholi-
cism as they perceived it (the Eucharist, the saints, etc.) at the very same
time as they distorted Christian rituals and texts to create their own ritual
life and thought. For example, if they clearly rejected Jesus as the Messiah,
they frequently perceived him as a prophet, as those of the Old Testament.
Paradoxically therefore, the Messiah ardently expected by the marranos is
sometimes called “Jesuschristo” as in 1643, when Jerónimo Gómez Pereda,
a crypto-Jewish physician from Vilaflôr (Braganza) living in Madrid, sought
158 N. MUCHNIK

to convert to Judaism Antonio Gabriel Zárate, a young converso from the

region of Lamego. Antonio wanted to become a monk, causing the despair
of his elder brother, a crypto-Jew. Pereda alleged that he (Antonio) should
observe the Law of Moses, because “Jesus Christ had not come yet and the
one the Christians [Old Christians] considered as the promised Messiah was a
prophet but not the one who had to come.”19 Are there two Jesuses, the lesser
and the great, the human and the divine, one for each Law, one for marranos
like Pereda? Or is it only an interpretation of the Holy Office’s secretary who
could not escape Catholic terminology?
Thus, far from rejecting the Iberian societies’ classification, which stigma-
tized them partly through the imputation of unclean blood, some crypto-Jews
adopted and reversed the established categorization by giving it, to summon
Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation, “the best possible ingredients to emphasise
what he has and what he is.”20 Located within the hierarchy constructed
by the Old Christians, marranos retained its vocabulary but reversed its ele-
ments, using pairs of antagonistic adjectives employed in theology and reli-
gious practice. This is the case with questions dealing with nobility and purity
of blood as we shall see later. To some extent, crypto-Jews turned the shame-
ful marks of identity inside out, to borrow Erving Goffman’s expression,21
and in so doing created their own “sociodicy” (P. Bourdieu), providing a the-
oretical justification to the society in which they lived. If we consider that
the marranos saw themselves, and were seen, as foreigners (as conversos
and as “Portuguese”) and, therefore, witnessed the devaluation of their group
adherence, it could be said that in this case a reactive identity was being de-
veloped, a “being against.” The strategy to ensure the balance of identity is
to over-assert their stigmatized characteristics, both the real and the alleged.

. . . Non-Jewish Iberians

Although for Christians the new dispensation had replaced the old one which
established a privileged dialogue between God and the Hebrews, for the
crypto-Jews, as for Jews as a whole, it was unquestionably the first, the old-
est, which was the “true” Law to be followed to ensure salvation. Spiritual
dichotomy extended into social relations. The alleged statements of Gracia
de Gabiria, reported at the time of the auto-da-fé of 18 October 1570 at
Logroño, are very revealing. The young woman, who lived in Galicia and
was married to a tailor, was herself of the “generation of Jews” and daughter
of a one-convicted father. She had been accused of,
. . . having publicly boasted of being of Jewish caste [venía de
casta de judíos], praising the Jews and their Law, [and saying] that
Jew meant righteous, and that the Jews were better than Christians,
and that soon they would be in command and would be greatly
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 159

feared and that the greatest honour that could be paid to her, as
well as to their children, was to call them Jews and that [their] law
is better than [that] of the Christians and that, because she was
Jewish, God gave her more wealth and goods than to Christians.22
Contrary to the dominant Spanish culture, which insisted on the taint that
dishonoured their blood (and their spirit) and their recently adopted Catholic
faith, New Christians such as Gracia asserted their status as true nobles be-
cause of the antiquity of the Jewish people. The argument often mentioned
by the crypto-Jews is that they descend from King David, from the Tribes of
Judah and Benjamin, from the Jewish elites exiled after the destruction of the
First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar II or one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. This
is the case of Pascual de Chaves and others crypto-Jews of Madrid around
1640. In their meetings (juntas),
They said that those who were gathered there were great Jews
[grandes judios] and were all descendants of the Tribe of David
and they called each other by the name of the “congregated” [con-
gregados] implying they were all of the same blood as descen-
dants of the Tribe of David for which reason they said they had
royal blood.23
Such nobility could not be diminished even by the blemish of their al-
legedly definitive occupation as merchants from the sixteenth century on-
wards, although trade—even more visible among Portuguese than among
Spanish conversos—was synonymous with dishonour in a society so con-
cerned with the virtues of nobility.24 That in Spanish society (although not
uniquely) trade itself became synonymous with unclean blood (as did the
administration of royal revenues and the practice of medicine) no doubt ren-
dered this claim all the more insistent for marranos.
It may of course be argued that what face us here are patterns of discourse
codified by the Holy Office’s instructions for the interrogation of witnesses.
Not wishing to revisit the longstanding polemic which, from the time of An-
tónio J. Saraiva and Isräel S. Révah, has raised questions over the use of
inquisitorial sources to comprehend the marrano phenomenon,25 I prefer to
concentrate on instances where witnesses’ statements exceeded the tribunal’s
expectations and the patterns established, among other matters, by inquisi-
torial Edicts of Faith. Following the step proposed by Carlo Ginzburg and
taken up by David Graizbord in relation to the Iberian world,26 I focus not
on categories of testimony but rather on fragments of discourse within the
testimony. It is evident, indirectly, that the Inquisition recorded more than
mere transgression against the norms of Old Christians (in other words, its
own fantasies); we can thus identify information that exceeded that imposed
by the inquisitors and which enables the voice of marranos themselves to be
160 N. MUCHNIK

heard. This voice is not necessarily alien to the shared Spanish culture but
picks up threads from it and reconfigures them.
We can observe, for instance, that the principle of Iberian nobility or col-
lective hidalguía mentioned above is similar to that claimed by the Basques,
to whom moreover the crypto-Jews often compared themselves. The decla-
ration of Agustina Pimentel, aged around twenty and living in Madrid but
originally from Puerto de Santa Maria (Cadix), offers an example: In 1720
she had, she said, heard her mother and other people (including her uncle and
aunt) say on several occasions that “the Virgin Mary had been unfaithful to
Joseph (to whom they referred as “the old man”)” and that this “deceit [en-
gaña] was so widespread that all the Basques were in despair, that is to say,
all the Jews [esto es a todos los Judios].”27 The Inquisitor Francisco Pérez de
Prado in turn reported in his Compendio de las tres leyes. . . (Seville, 1726)
that Judaizers often spoke of themselves under the code-word “Basques,” as
a symbol of their Judaic antiquity.28 The Basque link was significant because
it also introduced the claim of autochtony. The Iberian concept of collec-
tive (universal) hidalguía or of ancestral nobility was based on, among other
things, the translatio electionis, namely the identification of Spaniards as the
new Chosen People, in particular, the supposed presence of the Biblical fig-
ure Tubal, son of Japhet and grandson of Noah, in Basque territory and on the
claim that the population of Spain originated in Tubal. In this narrative the
blood of the Basques, living in isolation (and thus preserved throughout the
various conquests of the Peninsula), and expressed in a language of striking
singularity, could not be tainted by any admixture, and this made the Basques
Old Christians par excellence. Several northern regions, such as Biscay and
Guizpuzcoa, were thereby able to achieve recognition of their inhabitants’
collective hidalguía in 1610: The presentation of “proofs” [pruebas] took
place before a specific tribunal of the Chancellery of Valladolid, which still
preserves many thousands of investigations into these vizcainías.29
The recurrent theme of the antiquity of the Hebrew people and their root-
edness in Spanish soil is, however, not limited to the native crypto-Jews of
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain. It can also be identified among those
newly arrived from Portugal. The phenomenon may be explicable as a re-
verberation of the memory of the exiles of 1492 who crossed the Spanish
frontier in vast numbers and settled in the Upper Douro valley, particularly
in the provinces of Beira Alta and Tras-os-Montes, near Braganza. Indeed,
the area was the point of origin of a number of conversos who emigrated to
Spain during the Iberian Union (1580–1640). Perhaps we should ask if it was
instead their foreignness on Spanish territory that reactivated the process of
identification with the Jews of ancient and mediaeval Spain.
In crypto-Jewish eyes this nobility was also associated with a “purity” of
blood that was specifically Jewish—a concept that of course already existed
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 161

in mediaeval Spain.30 It appeared, for example, even in the fifteenth century

in the statements of Diego de Madrid from Castillo de Garcimuñoz (in the
region of Cuenca), which were assembled for his trial in 1492. In 1485 he
was supposed to have declared that “the blood of the Jews was good and
pure and the Jews were of royal blood. It is because the blood of Jews was so
pure that God chose Our Lady for his incarnation.”31 From this it is not hard
to understand the wish of many crypto-Jews to promote endogamy–marriage
between Judaizers- within the familial clan.32 Beyond the fear of unions be-
tween Catholic conversos and crypto-Jews, which threatened group security,
marriage outside “the blood” seems to have attracted frequent criticism from
marranos themselves after the sixteenth century and the period of (relative)
assimilation of the conversos. Proof of this lay with the chuetas (Mallorcan
crypto-Jews) who when entering into a mixed union were known among Old
and New Christians alike as “poor blends” (malmesclats) and their children
as “peach-apples,” synonymous with dishonourable.33 The declarations of an
Old Christian before the Mallorcan Holy Office in 1673 are a case in point.
His statements concern a chueta, N. Reyo:
He had heard it said [. . .] on the occasion of the first marriage of
N. Reyo, a goldsmith, with a woman of the Street [Sagell, where
the chuetas lived] whose name he did not remember, that he had
endowed her with the sum of eight hundred libras because she
was Jewish in every line of her descent and he himself was a poor
blend malmesclat because he was one-quarter Old Christian.34
The system of compensation for racial impurity that chuetas established
(increased dowry) shows clearly the exchange value of a woman “Jewish in
every line” in relation to Reyo, one of whose grandparents was Old Christian.
Although the content differed, the chuetas’ rules covering matrimony appear
to correspond to those unofficially in effect in Spanish society. The inversion
of criteria of limpieza in the chueta system of representation is in this respect
particularly significant since it played out across several generations. Located
between two communities, the “peach-apple” children of the malmesclats
thus came to acquire a particular status, suffering the disdain of their co-
religionists; and in fact, they generally married among themselves.

Portuguese versus Spanish?

In April 1653, Francisco Méndez de Salazar, a converso of Madrid aged

36 who kept a tobacco shop (puesto de tabaco), disclosed to the inquisito-
rial court that two residents of the city—one the licenciado Arroyo, a priest,
and Julian de Frias, who claimed to be a notary and a familiar of the Holy
Office—had blackmailed him. It appears in fact that Arroyo, whom Fran-
cisco knew by sight because he used to say mass in the Parish of San Luis
162 N. MUCHNIK

where he lived, approached him to propose a transaction which he was not

in a position to refuse because, as the priest asserted tellingly, “he must be
careful because he was Portuguese, and for any reason [con qualquier cossa]
they could harm him and that if he had been Castilian [castellano] this would
not be so significant [no importara tanto].”35 This anecdote, among others,
shows the common conflation of the concepts “Portuguese” and “Crypto-
Jew” and the suspicions which weighed on conversos newly arrived from
Portugal and their descendants despite the latter’s birth in Spain.
Yet it is interesting to note that this Portuguese identity that Spanish so-
ciety assigned to conversos of Portuguese extraction36 became a bearer of
marrano group identity as a whole. As with other exiles, distance from the
homeland gave the crypto-Jewish conversos and Catholic ones alike an un-
derstanding of their difference, and at the same time reinforced their Lusi-
tanian character, which in the case of the crypto-Jews sometimes developed
into a deeper attachment to their Mosaic faith. Further, exile was a factor in
the cohesion of the group. In general no conflict of belonging existed among
the crypto-Jews of Spain from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
By contrast, Portuguese identity and crypto-Jewish identity tended to over-
lap and even merge with each other. As a result, Portuguese origins were
established as the norm among the people “of the Nation,” so much so that
Portuguese crypto-Jews explicitly designated their non-Portuguese counter-
parts as such. So too, marranos described the Old Christians as common-
ers or peasants (villanos), which also emphasized the supposed nobility of
conversos. Likewise, marranos associated Old Christians with the names of
Spanish regions—in most cases Castile or Galicia—but without necessar-
ily stressing any relation to a genuine national origin. The important point
was that such nomenclature to designate the Other underlined the absence of
the word “Portuguese,” which, furthermore, crypto-Jews never replaced with
the name of a province. In their inquisitorial testimonies, crypto-Jews may
mention a “Castilian,” for example, without taking the trouble to mention
either the person’s religion or his/her place of birth. This was the case with
Vasco Fernández Valentín, a converso aged 28 and born in Andújar (Jaén) to
a family from northern Portugal. In 1650 he recounted the days before his
(voluntary) appearance at the Holy Office, as follows:
Having reached his inn, he told Eufrasio de Lisera (or Liseda),
his companion, resident of Bujalancia and a native of Andújar, a
Castilian whom he takes for an Old Christian [castellano a quien
tiene por xptiano viejo], of his nervousness at the thought of ap-
pearing before the Holy Office.37
That for Vasco Fernández Valentín individuals such as Eufrasio had no
right to the title of “Portuguese” implied that they were neither conversos nor
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 163

crypto-Jews, a fact that Vasco (or perhaps the tribunal’s secretary) appears to
have added here for the benefit of the inquisitors.
By the end of the sixteenth century, a person’s Portuguese origin had be-
come a source of trust in marrano society, even a base for social relations,
following a pattern common among migrant populations. Conversely, indi-
cations of another origin normally gave rise to distrust. In these and similar
ways, the nação’s styles of differentiation made it possible to distinguish the
elements of a common and collective identity, largely constructed around the
“open secret” of shared solidarities.

Defining oneself as a part of . . .

The marrano group bore some resemblances to certain secret societies stud-
ied by Georg Simmel among others, and shared one of their major character-
istics: The “awareness of being a society” and in consequence the centrality
to its members of their collective identity.38 The interdependence of crypto-
Jews as individuals and vis-à-vis the group was central to them although this
did not necessarily lead to unity within the group itself or all of its members
to exhibit an equal degree of solidarity.39 Certainly, the inquisitorial threat
was omnipresent during the period under consideration: It put the survival
of crypto-Jews in question, and occasioned a constant fear of betrayal or un-
masking by neighbours, kinsmen, friends and associates. Indeed, it would
be wrong to limit crypto-Jews’ social links to their own inner circle, as por-
trayed in inquisitorial sources. This is all the more clear in that the practices
of secrecy did not give rise to tightly compartmentalised concealment. Nei-
ther did they always result in an internal hierarchization of crypto-Jewish
groups (putting aside the structural pattern of familial clans40 ), as conveyed
by the concept of “complicity” (complicidad) that the Holy Office employed.
Complicidad refers to the group of people associated in a bill of inquisitorial
indictment recorded in direct testimonies or reconstructed through hearsay.
Generally a complicidad corresponded to the clans and networks of solidarity
of the accused, from village to continent. The “discovery” of one such group,
triggered the “discovery” of all others, like a set of gears. In this particular
way the crypto-Jewish community stood out from other clandestine commu-
nities that sought maximum protection for their members through division
into water-tight and rigorously hierarchical groups—as for example with the
Italian Carbonari of the early nineteenth century. Secrecy, both external and
internal, played a double role in that case, since the identity of each section
remained secret to the others.
Conversely, to be a crypto-Jew was not only to follow rites considered
Mosaic and to take part in a network of sociability; it meant also (and per-
haps above all) “to be taken for” such, or, as Captain Esteban (David) Ares
164 N. MUCHNIK

de Fonseca (a crypto-Jew from Coimbra who had spent time in several com-
munities of the nação) stated in 1636 when speaking of Diego Rodriguez de
Morais, then living in Madrid, it meant to be “considered, held and reputed
as a judaizing Jew (judio judaiçante)” in Spain as much as in Amsterdam,
Hamburg, and other places.41 This reputation, although founded on real or
presumed religious practice or belonging to a clan, exceeded such parame-
ters as it evolved along with rumor.42 The centrality of reputation—alongside
its diffusion in the process of community-structuring at different levels for
individual identification—was such that it did not allow the internal com-
partmentalisation which characterised other clandestine societies.
Consequently the collective identity of the marrano group found its cen-
tral pillar in the reciprocity and solidarity of its members in the face of the
common enemy, the Inquisition. The Holy Office’s prosecution of crypto-
Jews, contrary to the tribunals’ intentions, stimulated the remembrance and
explication of conversos’ familial links and solidarity.43 The sense of belong-
ing to the group was also inherited, reinforced by endogamy, and constantly
reaffirmed through participation in visible forms of union.44 In these circum-
stances crypto-Jews saw themselves as one of the links which assured the
unity and strength of the group, each link of equal importance for its sur-
vival, and which to some extent constituted the “common good” to be pro-
tected down the ages. In this sense crypto-Jews had something in common
with all those who called themselves “brothers” in other secret societies, such
as the Freemasons, and whose discourse was organised in the same manner,
namely “according to the ways of the other and of the analogue, of the same
and of the opposite.”45 In sum, having considered the process of identifica-
tion at work among the marranos from the point of view of difference, we
now examine it through the angle of resemblance.

. . .A crypto-Jewish community

In identifying themselves as believers in the Law of Moses, individual crypto-

Jews assumed that they were identical in all essentials to other members of
their marrano group. The individuals were therefore in communication with
others contiguous with them. Of course this collective identity was based
on imaginary representations; it was in effect the “symbolic weft” that took
the crypto-Jewish conversos from the status of human aggregate to that of a
group and then of an imagined community. This corresponds in part, there-
fore, to the concept of “imagined [but in this case not political] community”
as defined by Benedict Anderson: Just as “the Javanese villagers have always
known that they are connected to people they have never seen” by virtue
of links “once imagined particularistically—as indefinitely stretchable nets
of kinship and clientship,” marranos were integrated into a collective which
was greater than themselves.46
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 165

The illusion of forming a group, linked to a feeling of euphoria (“being

well together”), created a protective filter vis-à-vis the stigmatising society
and provided each marrano with a foundation on which to build individual
identity.47 Beyond their individual religious choices, crypto-Jews saw their
religious community as a primary (but not exclusive) reference group, simul-
taneously sociocultural and economic. It would thus take precedence over
other ensembles of inclusion such as the nação and the Jewish world in its
broad sense—providing norms, values and points of comparison—and Span-
ish society, shaping the conditions of individual action.
The influence of specifically crypto-Jewish symbolism cannot be seen
outside a certain social context. Thus it cannot be viewed in the terms that we
have defined, either at the end of the fifteenth century or in the early sixteenth
century, as more directly dependent on mediaeval Judaism. Rather, strategies
of social integration, pursued by certain families or even by single individu-
als, where group solidarity was excluded, deserve particular attention. We do
best not to reduce these “solitary” marranos to New Christians or conversos
who had chosen Catholicism, but to see them as individuals who managed
to choose a half-tone strategy, simultaneously within and outside the mar-
rano community. A case in point from the mid-sixteenth century is that of
Lorenzo Angel, whose fortune exceeded 60,000 ducats, and his wife Gracia
Rola. According to accusations the Inquisition brought against them, Angel
and Rola followed the Mosaic law (Lorenzo was one of the leaders of the
Badajoz crypto-Jewish community) and instructed their four children in this
faith. Their rise in society began with their marriage, to which Gracia brought
a substantial dowry in the form of livestock. The couple’s fortunes and repu-
tations grew through trade, the administration of royal funds, the acquisition
of a municipal post (Lorenzo was the permanent regidor for Badajoz), and
was consolidated through the alliance. Armed with false certificates of blood
purity and letters of hidalguía, Lorenzo and Gracia offered their three daugh-
ters in marriage to Old Christian hidalgos with substantial dowries of 5,000
ducats. At the same time, however, they preferred a crypto-Jewish bride for
their son; and it was with their older daughters (married to Old Christian hi-
dalgos) that Lorenzo and Gracia would be relajados (condemned to death
and surrendered to the secular arm of the Law) by the Holy Office in 1569.48
Thus, the crypto-Jewish community was by no means an exclusive point of
reference. The personal identity of a marrano was as much the product of
self-awareness as of knowledge of the socio-economic constraints to be con-
fronted and, therefore, of the scope of his or her individual power of action,
in a word, of his or her individual agency.49
Further, the identifying mechanisms of the group and the content of rep-
resentations which are associated with them show unequal participation by
the sub-groups of which it was composed: Some mechanisms constituted
166 N. MUCHNIK

more significant identifying poles. The remarkable role of women in the

religious life and imagination of crypto-Judaism is well known. So is the
function of certain personalities (clan leaders, spiritual guides, etc.) in main-
taining crypto-Judaic momentum and solidarity. On one hand, as far as the
sources will allow us to see, crypto-Jewish society, essentially urban and
home-centred, demonstrates the religious and social ascendancy of women,
who became the genuine binding element of the community, taking on the
roles of domestic preacher and guardian of memory, whether concerning food
(in particular the preparation of meat), the body (for example, in caring for
the dead), or the handling of objects (as seen, for instance, in the practice
of changing household linens). This centrality of women was particularly
marked when it came to elderly widows: gaining a privileged status as in-
dividuals who fasted professionally, they were paid to abstain from food in
the name and place of another. In Madrid these fasting women were settled
across urban districts and circles of personal acquaintances—for example,
Beatriz Rodríguez, a jeweller’s widow, in the 1650s. She and her daughters
Ana, Escolástica, and Isabel, together with Leonor Gómez, another widow,
belonged to the same group of acquaintances in the same district and were
frequent visitors to the same households. Like Esther, the quintessential mar-
rano woman and symbolic figure of the marrano soul and destiny, the fasting
women held the potential for the salvation of the entire group.50 Their func-
tion was strongly codified: each fast had a set fee—it cost four reales to fast
for a dead person—and entailed a specific linguistic code. For instance, Es-
colástica told the inquisitorial court that the young Fernando Gómez, born
in Andalusia but living in Madrid with his parents, had brought repeatedly
some money to Beatriz Rodríguez on behalf of his mother, Gracia Gómez.
At these occasions, Fernando used to say that,
his mother sent these [four or sometimes eight reales] for her to
make one handkerchief, or two handkerchiefs: it meant [queriendo
dar a entender con aquello] that she [Beatriz] had to fast one day
or two, depending on the amount she was sending, for four reales
each, in her [Gracia’s] name in observance of the Law of Moses.51
Some crypto-Jewish physicians played a similar role: benefitting from the
aura conferred by their education and their power of healing, among crypto-
Jews they acquired spiritual and cultural authority. Further, because they were
often itinerant, they played a key role in the structuring of “marrano terri-
tory.” Physicians such as Juan (Daniel) de Prado (c. 1612–1669) and Bal-
tasar (Isaac) Orobio de Castro (see above), two conversos from the region
of Braganza, who studied in the University of Alcalá de Henares and then
lived in Andalusia in the 1640s before moving to Amsterdam, performed
rites, directed ceremonies, and proselytised actively. In 1651, for example,
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 167

when Gabriel Gómez, a merchant of Jaén born in Medina del Campo, fell
ill in a hostel in Cádiz, he was visited by “Don Baltasar de Orobio, an im-
portant physician (medico grande)” who took the opportunity to tell him that
“the Law of Moses was the true one” and that “he [Gabriel] should commend
himself to the real God and not to the Christ he had in the room, telling him
it was something trifling [cossa de Chanfaina].”52 Attending to their patients
in small communities, these physicians were well-placed as a source of in-
formation about friends and relatives in Spain and the rest of Europe. The
circulation of this information was essential since it formed the base of what
I have referred to as the “virtual diaspora” among crypto-Jews that overlay
the real one, which was formed by the network and circulation of people
and goods.53 These individuals we may perhaps rightly see as integral ele-
ments in what Didier Anzieu calls the “communal mystique.” They obeyed
an internal hierarchical (but not institutionalized) organisation which appears
to have been firmly established—even if the wide range of circumstances in
fact offered nuances.

To be recognized by the “Other”

As the first of the devices that regulated relations within the Judaizing group,
signs of recognition instilled the confidence necessary for reciprocal disclo-
sure. Inseparable from secrecy, such signs responded to the fear of betrayal
which the Inquisition stimulated and which was exacerbated by the great
mobility of the group’s members. Disclosure had a double function: It con-
veyed the value to the collective of the individual who revealed his or her
secret and simultaneously encouraged recognition by the person’s counter-
part as a member of a shared community, thereby supporting the group’s sur-
vival. In consequence, when a crypto-Jew such as Francisco Gómez Romano
(see above), declared to a fellow Judaizer that “his eyes were open”—as in
the Christian theological metaphor—he was declaring his conversion to the
“true Law,” his initiation, his passage from the shadows of the profane world
to the light, and, hence, he made himself recognized by the other. The case
of Manuel Duarte around 1645 is typical. Then aged 16 and living with his
parents at Cáceres, in Estremadura, the young man fled from the town with a
companion whose name he kept secret. In Madrid he lodged with one of the
man’s relatives, Justa Rodríguez, a widow whose husband had died in prison.
As soon as he arrived, she enquired whether “his eyes were open [si tenia
los ojos abiertos]” and, evidently understanding the question, he replied in
the affirmative. She immediately announced that the fast for “the Great Day”
(Yom Kippur) was approaching and that they would celebrate the occasion
together at her house.54 Conversely, Judaizers applied the expression “to be
blind” to conversos who had not adopted the Mosaic Law. We find this in
168 N. MUCHNIK

particular in the early eighteenth century, for example in the words of Diego
de la Fuente. On a visit to Francisco Melo, a confectioner of some forty
years, in Orihuela (Murcia), this “foreigner” from France expressed himself
as “grieved for him because he lived in blindness [por la ceguedad en que
vibia]” because he persisted in his Catholicism, contrary to his wife Clara
Garcia and daughters Mencia and Leonor Melo. In turn, two acquaintances
of the couple, residents of Murcia, Margarita de Figueroa, a zealous crypto-
Jew and her husband Antonio Ruiz de Mendoza, were asked to deliver some
sharp remarks to Francisco’s brother-in-law, Manuel García, “whom they be-
lieved to be blind.”55
The centrality of mutual recognition to the crypto-Jews is evident in the
phrases they frequently used: “To declare oneself [declararse como], an ob-
server of the Law of Moses” or, more rarely, “as a judaizer [judaizante]”.
This declaration of “communion” in Judaism enabled a marrano to extend,
in an imaginary sense, the limited range of his or her social relationships
and satisfy the need—no easy matter in inquisitorial Spain—to proclaim ad-
herence. Thenceforward, he or she was a “declared observer of the Law of
Moses, [quedar/estar declarado como observante]”; and, being recognized
as a member of the community, the Judaizer was enabled to take his place
legitimately in the “virtual diaspora” constructed by hearsay and reputation.
To be a crypto-Jew, at least for a person who truly was one, was above all, as
the sources point out, “to be held and reputed” as such.

“Todos son Uno”

“All are one” (or, “All make one alone”): The phrase is a recurrent formula in
inquisitorial testimonies. It is used to describe the interdependence between
individual marranos and vis-à-vis the entire group. This was the expression
used, for example, in January of 1659 by Sebastián de Arellano, a crypto-
Jew from Granada, when the young Antonio Gabriel Zárate (see above) met
him for the first time. Shortly before his visit to the Sierra Nevada, Anto-
nio had talked with an acquaintance, Francisco Gómez Romano (originally
from north-eastern Portugal). The latter had mentioned his “great friend, a
very capable and intelligent person, who observed the Law of Moses,” and
to whom he (Gómez Romano) would entrust a letter of recommendation.
This he did, and Antonio pondered the contents of the missive. Did Romano
provide “a certain sign [alguna señal]” in it, in order to reveal that he was
crypto-Jewish? This must have been the case, for on his first visit to Arel-
lano (Antonio’s friend in Granada), the latter told him without prevarication
“that he already knew that he [Antonio] had opened his eyes and that all were
one [que todos heran uno] and the latter understood thereafter that he said it
because they were Jews [porque eran judios].”56
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 169

Fulfilling both the concept of collective responsibility inherent in tradi-

tional Judaism and the corporeal metaphor set out in Saint Paul’s first Letter
to the Corinthians (12: 12–30), marranos were thus simultaneously a secret
society and a people. Their imagined unity of spirit, identity and objectives,
their survival and their material prosperity, overcame their genuine religious
and socio-economic diversity. The expression “todos son uno,” which as-
sumed that all crypto-Jews were essentially the same, and which took prece-
dence even over the concept of brotherhood that other minority groups used
to define themselves (notably the Huguenots), was used and directed at them
in anti-Jewish or at least anti-converso writings, such as the Discurso si es
util y justo, desterrar de los Reynos de Portugal, los Christanos [sic] nuevos,
convencidos de Iudaysmo, por el tribunal del Santo Oficio, y reconciliados
por el, con sus familias, y aquellos contra los quales ay prueva bastante
para destierro (1629), by the Portuguese jurist João Pinto Ribeiro. Ribeiro
attributes to New Christians (conversos) the natural propensity to “dogma-
tize” each other and to declare themselves reciprocally as Jews. For Ribeiro,
“It arises from this, both because the vice of apostasy is ancient and natu-
ral among them and because they retain for each other affection and friend-
ship, that therefore all wish and claim that they are all one, as Christ said
in Saint Matthew.”57 Others, who defended the Catholicism of some New
Christians, promoting faith rather than blood as a definitive marker of iden-
tity, also used the time-honored phrase in order to criticise it. This was the
case with Juan Bautista de Villadiego, secretary to the Holy Office in Seville.
Villadiego went on a mission of discovery into Judeo-Iberian communities in
France in the spring of 1633. He had already brought 66 Catholic conversos
from France and Antwerp back to Spain. Three years later, he continued to
affirm the primacy of faith over blood, so he despatched an insistent and in-
flammatory plea to the Inquisitor General. There is no reason not to believe,
Villadiego wrote, “in the range of laws that they [the conversos] observe,”
and that therefore, “all don’t make one.”58 The concept of a social monolith
was not the prerogative of conversos alone: The same phenomenon emerged
in connection to the moriscos in the sixteenth century and persisted even after
their expulsion from Spain (1609–1614). For the anti-moriscos, the unifying
expression “todos son uno” was in fact intended to emphasise the theory of
conspiracy as well as to reify the morisco stereotype in order to facilitate the
Moriscos’ elimination from the social body.59
The bodily metaphor, a sign of recognition and pivotal point for collec-
tive representations of the marranos, was also central to ritual practices. The
absence of normative and doctrinal texts specific to crypto-Jews meant that
crypto-Judaic instruction and ritual were principally dependent on the spoken
words, uttered face to face. For this reason, to quote Simmel, “each mem-
ber finds himself linked extraordinarily closely to the community; and he
170 N. MUCHNIK

feels, continuously, that if he were separated from this substance he would

thereby lose his own and would not find it anywhere else.”60 This percep-
tion of co-substance ran through the whole of crypto-Jewish existence. Pur-
suing the analogy with Pauline discourse on the body of Christ, one could
say that individual crypto-Jews “formed a body” with their co-religionists
and the whole marrano community at the moment of meals taken together.
Such meals, like the rules for food preparation, were the high point of so-
ciability and of marrano religious life, just as it was in many confraternities
and sects, mediaeval or modern. Indeed, it was the meeting around the ta-
ble which enabled them, in Emile Durkheim’s words, to “revive their shared
faith by showing it together,” to reassert those feelings (religious, in the sense
of belonging to the group and to a people) which could otherwise atrophy at
any time. This is where they created and gave form to their sense of the
group.61

***

Although the marranos defined themselves collectively, by their place

in the crypto-Jewish community and through their difference from others,
also conceived collectively, they were still able to construct their unique per-
sonal identities. Despite the process of “dis-individuation,” which was part
of the group’s formation, each crypto-Jew absorbed the referents that were
presented to him or her, whether through the micro-society of crypto-Jewry
or through the variant societies of Spain, in order to “fabricate a self.”62
Faced with the strategies of identification deployed by the larger body of neo-
Christians to achieve its own social positioning, the crypto-Jew developed a
personal style by making use of alterity, discreet and occasionally deliberate
omission of detail, and compromise. The ascendance of the collective within
the marrano group and the indiscriminate assortment of forms of belonging
and solidarities weighing on personal identification raise the question of the
unity of the self. Should the Judaizers only be—and be conceived of as—
“dual” beings with a life of perpetual inner conflict? Or were they not, rather,
the prototype of human beings torn between contradictory identities? In fact,
however, what they really were was an extreme case of the fragmentation of
self and, hence, a proof of the illusion of the self’s indivisible unity.

Notes

1. Madrid, Biblioteca nacional de España [BNE], Ms. 17891, fols. 233r –265r , edited by
Nicolás López Martínez in Los judaizantes castellanos y la Inquisición en tiempo de Is-
abel la Católica (Burgos, 1954), 249–250. Se also David M. Gitlitz, “Hybrid Conversos
in the ‘Libro llamado el Alboraique’,” Hispanic Review 60 (1992): 1–17.
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 171

2. For an enriched analysis of the “traditional” historiography of marrano or converso iden-

tity, see David Graizbord, “Religion and Ethnicity Among ‘Men of the Nation’: Toward
a Realistic Interpretation,” Jewish Social Studies 15 (2008): 32–65, especially 32–36.
(Henceforth referred to as “Religion and Ethnicity among ‘Men of the Nation.”’)
3. I take the view that the word marrano, a synonym of “crypto-Jew” has today lost the
offensive connotation which it held in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, notably
in Italy. I have used this term, although it was not employed in Spain, in preference to
converso which, in my thinking, confuses the New Christians (regardless of whether they
were Judaizers) with the Crypto-Jews (declared or otherwise), and even with the rest of
the converted people and their descendants, including moriscos.
4. Serge Gruzinski, “‘Un honnête homme, c’est un homme mêlé’. Mélanges et métissages,”
in Louise Bénat Tachot et Serge Gruzinski, eds., Passeurs culturels. Mécanismes de métis-
sage (Paris-Marne-la-Vallée, 2001), 1–19, especially 18.
5. We will not rehearse here the problems attached to the concept of identity and its use,
which have given rise to a vast literature; see inter alia Rogers Brubaker and Frederick
Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” in Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge,
Mass. and London, 2004) 28–63; Craig Calhoun ed., Social Theory and the Politics of
Identity (Oxford, 1994); Carmel Camilleri et al., eds., Stratégies identitaires (Paris, 1990);
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
(Cambridge, 1991).
6. Michel de Certeau, La culture au pluriel (Paris, 1980 [1974]), 139.
7. On the Statutes of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre), see first of all Albert Sicroff, Les
controverses des statuts de pureté de sang en Espagne (Paris 1960), but also Monique
Combescure Thiry and Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, eds., El libro verde de Aragón
(Zaragoza, 2003); Juan Hernández Franco, “El pecado de los padres: construcción de
la identidad conversa en Castilla a partir de los discursos sobre limpieza de sangre,” His-
pania LXIV (2004): 515–542, and Ruth Pike, Linajudos and Conversos in Seville: Greed
and Prejudice in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain (New York and Washington,
2000).
8. The literature on marrano identity is vast. See, for example Julio Caro Baroja, Los judíos
en la España moderna y contemporánea (Madrid, 2000 [1961]); David M. Gitlitz, Se-
crecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Albuquerque, 2002 [1996]); David
L. Graizbord, Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora,
1580–1700 (Philadelphia, 2004); Richard L. Kagan, Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos,
and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800 (Baltimore, 2008); Charles Mey-
ers and Norman Simms, eds., Troubled Souls: Conversos, Crypto-Jews, and Other Con-
fused Jewish Intellectuals from the Fourteenth through the Eighteenth Century (Hamil-
ton, 2001); Israël S. Révah, Des marranes à Spinoza (Paris, 1995); Nathan Wachtel, La
foi du souvenir. Labyrinthes Marranes (Paris, 2001); and Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other
Within: The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton and Oxford,
2009). On the Sephardic Diaspora, see also Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon
the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire 1492–
1640 (Oxford, 2007); Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant cosmopolitans. The Portuguese
Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (London and Portland, 2000), and Francesca
Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-
Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, 2009).
9. Miriam Bodian, “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern
Europe,” Past and Present 143 (1994): 48–76, especially 56–57; and id., “Hebrews of the
Portuguese Nation: The Ambiguous Boundaries of Self-Definition,” Jewish Social Studies
15 (2008): 66–80.
172 N. MUCHNIK

10. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE], Ms 18758 (35), fols. 19r –19v .
11. David Graizbord, “Religion and Ethnicity Among ‘Men of the Nation’,” 44–56.
12. See, for instance, the case of Juan de Prado in my Une vie marrane. Les pérégrinations
de Juan de Prado dans l’Europe du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 2005); other examples are pro-
vided in Julio Caro Baroja, De la superstición al ateísmo. Meditaciones antropológicas
(Madrid, 1981), 250–281; Francisco Márquez Villanueva, “‘Nasçer e morir como bestias’
(Criptojudaísmo y criptoaverroísmo),” in Fernando Díaz Esteban, ed., Los Judaizantes en
Europa y la literatura castellana del Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 1994), 273–293; and Stuart
B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic
World (New Haven, 2008).
13. José Luis Lacave, “España y los judíos españoles,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 144 (1985):
7–25, especially 21–22.
14. Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardi Jews of Western Europe and Their
Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in Benjamin R. Gampel, ed., Crisis and Creativity
in the Sephardi World (New York, 1997), 121–145.
15. Amsterdam, Archief der Gemeente Amsterdam Ms. O 826. Text edited by Benjamin N.
Teensma in “Fragmenten uit het amsterdamse convoluut van Abraham Idaña, alias Gaspar
Méndez del Arroyo (1623–1690),” Studia Rosenthaliana 11 (1977): 127–156, especially
149.
16. We will not comment on the controversies raised by Benzion Netanyahu’s work: The
“Marranos” of Spain from the Late XIVth to Early XVIth Century (New York, 1966) and
The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (New York, 1995).
17. BNE R. 31572 and London, British Library, 4033. a. 37. On the perception of crypto-
Jewish martyrdom in the nação, see inter alia Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses.
Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Blommington and Indianapolis, 2007),
178–196. On Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios, see among others, Julia Rebollo Lieber-
man, El teatro alegórico de Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios (Newark, 1996); Kenneth
R. Scholberg, La Poesía religiosa de Miguel de Barrios (Madrid, 1962); and Francisco J.
Sedeño Rodríguez, ed., Flor de Apolo. Miguel de Barrios (Kassel, 2005), 1–76.
18. I. Orobio de Castro, Respuesta a un escrito que prezentó un Predicante Francés a el
Author contra la observancia de la Divina Ley de Mosseh, in BNE, Ms 18249, fol. 333r .
On Orobio de Castro, see Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism. The story of Isaac
Orobio de Castro (Oxford, 1989).
19. Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional [AHN], Inquisition section [INQ], Book 1135, fol.
177v .
20. Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction, critique sociale du jugement (Paris, 1979), 554.
21. Erving Goffman, Stigmate. Les usages sociaux des handicaps (Paris, 1975 [1963]).
22. AHN INQ, Book 787, fols. 57–63. Quoted in José Simon Diaz, “La Inquisición de
Logroño (1570–1580),” Berceo. Boletín del Instituto de estudios riojanos 1 (1946): 89–
119, especially 98.
23. AHN INQ, Book 1135, fols. 179r –179v .
24. Vincent Parello, “Sociología conversa en los siglos XV y XVI: La dinámica de las familias
manchegas,” Sefarad 59 (1999): 391–418, here 400–401.
25. See António José Saraiva, Inquisição e Cristãos-novos (Porto, 1969) and the recent edi-
tion, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians, 1536–
1765 (Leiden, 2001) edited and augmented by Herman Prins Salomon and Isaac S.D.
Sassoon; and, for the opposite view, Israël Salvator Révah, “Os Cristãos-Novos Portugue-
ses e a Inquisição, réplica ao Sr. Antonio José Saraiva,” in Diario de Lisboa, Supplemento
Literario, 670–672, 736–737, 675, 677 (July–August 1971).
 MARRANO SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN SPAIN 173

26. Carlo Ginzburg, “The Inquisitor as Anthropologist,” in id., Clues, Myths, and the Histor-
ical Method (Baltimore, 1992); 156–164; and David Graizbord, “Religion and Ethnicity
Among ‘Men of the Nation,”’ 38–41.
27. AHN INQ, Legajo 157 (11), fol. 408r .
28. Michael Alpert, “The secret Jews of 18th Century Madrid,” Revue des Études juives 158
(1997): 135–171, especially 143.
29. Juan Aranzadi, “Raza, linaje, familia y casa-solar en el País Vasco,” Hispania 61 (2001):
879–906, Josetxo Beriain, La identidad colectiva: Vascos y Navarros (Alegia, 1998); and
Carlos Rilova Jericó, El honor de los vascos. El duelo en el País Vasco, fueros, nobleza
universal, honor y muerte. Estudio sobre el sistema político vigente en algunos territorios
vascos y navarros durante el Antiguo Régimen (siglos XVI y XVII) (San Sebastian, 1999),
13–22.
30. The analyses of David Graizbord (“Religion and Ethnicity Among ‘Men of the Nation,”’
47) which refer notably to the works of David Nirenberg, are once again to the point.
I would however wish to add a nuance to the concept of an over-systematic continuity, too
often seen as achieved, between the Jews of mediaeval Spain and the crypto-Jews of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The same unifying trend (and process of reduction
to essentials) reemerges, as I have indicated, when the Sephardic Diaspora is considered
as a whole without consideration of internal divisions and the specific socio-economic
contexts of the various receiving countries.
31. Archivo diocesano de Cuenca [ADC], Inquisition section [INQ], Legajo 8 (167). Quoted
in Yolanda Moreno Koch, “La comunidad judaizante de Castillo de Garcimuñoz: 1489–
1492,” Sefarad 37 (1977): 351–371, especially 370.
32. The first historiography of the marranos was very particularly attached to the reconstruc-
tion of family genealogies, with the help of inquisitorial and parish archives. It was a
matter, notably, of displaying and prioritising endogamous alliances (between cousins, or
an uncle and a niece, etc.) but also geographical mobility. See for instance Israël S. Révah,
Uriel da Costa el les Marranes de Porto. Cours au Collège de France 1966–1972, edited,
with an introduction and commentary by Carsten L. Wilke (Paris, 2004).
33. Enric Porqueres i Gené, Lourde alliance. Mariage et identité chez les descendants de juifs
convertis à Majorque (1435–1750) (Paris, 1995), 227–230.
34. AHN INQ, Legajo 1709 (3), fol. 26. Quoted in E. Porqueres i Gené, Lourde alliance, 230.
35. AHN INQ, Book 1117, fol. 116v .
36. Witness, among others, the amalgam between New-Christian (converso)-crypto-Jew-
Portuguese in the Avis of Jerónimo de Barrionuevo who, on 18 September 1655, asserted:
“it is held for true that there is no Portuguese, of high or low condition, who is not a Ju-
daiser in Madrid.” Id., Avisos de Madrid (1654–1658), ed. Antonio Paz y Meliá (Madrid,
1969) 191.
37. AHN INQ, Book 1112, fol. 4v .
38. Georg Simmel, Secret et sociétés secrètes (Paris, 1991 [1908]), 91.
39. For critical analyses of the concept of a “group,” see for example Rogers Brubaker, “Eth-
nicity without Groups,” in id., Ethnicity without Groups, 7–27.
40. See Bernardo López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda (Hombres de negocios y
judíos sefardíes) (Alcala de Henares, 2001); my “Religion et mobilité sociale: l’ascension
des marranes dans l’Espagne inquisitoriale (XVIe –XVIIe siècles).” Genèses. Sciences so-
ciales et histoire 66 (2007): 90–107; and Markus Schreiber, Marranen in Madrid, 1600–
1670 (Stuttgart, 1994).
41. AHN INQ, Book 1121, not foliated.
42. Jaime Contreras, “Criptojudaísmo en la España Moderna: clientelismo y linaje,” Areas 9
(1988): 77–100, especially 81.
174 N. MUCHNIK

43. David Graizbord, Souls in Dispute, 106: “The identities of the declarants did not exist
exclusively prior to and independently of the autobiographical testimonies by which the
informants gave momentary shape to those identities.”
44. Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White, eds., Self, identity, and social
movements (Minneapolis, 2000).
45. Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, L’Autre et le Frère. L’Etranger et la Franc-maçonnerie en
France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998), 539–540.
46. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na-
tionalism (London-New York, 1991 [1983]), 6–7.
47. See Didier Anzieu, Le groupe et l’inconscient: l’imaginaire groupal (Paris, 1999 [1975])
and Marie-Cécile Guhl, “L’être ensemble: questionnement à propos des fondements imag-
inaires de l’identité communautaire,” in Sylvain Santi and Jean Derive, eds., La com-
munauté. Fondements psychologiques et idéologiques d’une représentation identitaire
(Grenoble, 2003), 17–30.
48. See my “Religion et mobilité sociale: l’ascension des marranes,” 99–100, and Markus
Schreiber, “Entre las sociedades ibéricas y la diáspora judía: Los Pinto y los Ribeiro en
los siglos XVI y XVII,” Sefarad 58 (1998): 349–378.
49. We refer here to an identity constructed through action as was proposed, for example, by
Charles Taylor, as “the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand,” in Sources
of the Self: the making of the modern identity (Cambridge, 2006 [1989]), 27.
50. See my “De la ville inquisitoriale à la ville de tolérance: identités féminines judaïsantes
en Europe occidentale (XVIIe siècle),” Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest 113
(2006): 29–42; and Renée Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The
Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (New York and Oxford, 1999), 73–112 and 166–174.
51. ADC INQ, Legajo 492 (6569), fol. 22v .
52. AHN INQ, Book 1131, fols. 116v , 117r , 118r .
53. See Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism. The story of Isaac Orobio de Castro,
79–90; Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish court to Italian ghetto: Isaac Cardoso, a
study in seventeenth century marranism and Jewish apologetics (New York, 1971); and
my Une vie marrane. Les pérégrinations de Juan de Prado, 228–232.
54. AHN INQ, Book 1126, fols. 58r –58v .
55. AHN INQ, Liasse 3733 (126), not foliated.
56. AHN INQ, Book 1135, fol. 182r .
57. BNE, Ms. 18170 (12).
58. Informacion del licenciado Iuan Bautista de Villadiego, secretario del Sancto Oficio de
la Inquisicion de Sevilla. POR los Portugueses Catolicos de la nacion Hebrea, que han
venido de Francia. CONTRA los Iudayzantes de la misma nacion [. . .] in AHN INQ,
Legajo 3737 (21), fol. 2v . See my “De la défense des ‘impurs’ à la critique du Saint-Office:
le plaidoyer de Juan Bautista de Villadiego (1636),” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 564
(2006): 1014–1038.
59. José María Perceval, Todos son uno. Arquetipos, xenofobia y racismo. La imagen del
morisco en la Monarquía Española durante los siglos XVI y XVII (Almeria, 1997), 185.
60. G. Simmel, Secret et sociétés secrètes, 72.
61. Émile Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Le système totémique en
Australie (Paris, 1991 [1912]), 371.
62. Carmel Camilleri, “Stratégies identitaires: les voies de la complexification,” in Marie-
Antoinette Hily and Marie-Louise Lefebvre, Identité collective et altérité. Diversité des
espaces, spécificité des pratiques (Paris, 1999) 197–211.