Marrano Patterns in Spinoza

Author(s): YIRMIAHU YOVEL

Source: La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, terza serie, Vol. 49, No. 5/8, La Cultura Sefardita
(Maggio-Giugno-Luglio-Agosto 1983), pp. 543-564
Published by: Unione delle Comunitá Ebraiche Italiane
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 YIRMIAHU YOVEL (*)

Marrano Patterns in
Spinoza

Spinoza's philosophy cannot be reduced to any number of

« influences». Its meaning resides primarily in the relations
between its conceptual components. Yet Spinoza did not emerge
ex nihilo, and the ingredients of the new, original synthesis he
constructed are preserved, although transformed and transcended
in the final result. It is thereforeimportantto consider the historical
background, not as interpretationof Spinoza's thought but as a
necessary complement without which a vital perspective will be
lost.
Considering the impact of Spinoza's Jewish ancestry, three
major viewpoints are usually taken. One stresses the general
« Jewish» ideas of unity and radical monotheism (Hegel); another
emphasizes the role of the medieval Jewish philosophers (Maimoni-
des, Crescas, Ibn Ezra etc.) to whom the adolescent Spinoza was
largely exposed (Wolfson); and a third viewpoint, started by
Gebhardt, calls attention to the special marrano background from
which Spinoza came. In this paper I shall confine myself to the
latter topic, trying to enlarge it beyond what has been so far
discussed. I shall make no claims to causal relations; my aim is
to draw certain - to me, interesting- analogies between the life-
structure and typical experiences of the marranos, and what is
manifest in Spinoza. I shall thus be interested here more in
Spinoza's case than in his pure ideas; I shall also consider not so
much the literary influences on him, as a set of life experiences,
sensibilities, skills, mental patterns, hints and latent attitudes
embedded in his ex-marrano situation and in the psycho-cultural
milieu it gave rise to.

(*) The Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem.

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544 MENSILEDI ISRAEL
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Spinoza was born to a community of ex-marranos,or « new

Jews», tryingto rebuild their lives within the recuperated religion
of their forefathers,which had been lost or obliterated in Iberia.
Spinoza himself was born a Jew, but most of the community
around him was made up of ex-marranos,who brought with them
from Iberia the weight and richness of the marrano experience
- and of Catholic education and symbolism. The waves of marra-
nos returningto Judaism - in Hamburg, in Venice and Livorno,
in Amsterdam,and later in England - were motivated by a variety
of drives; some may have had social or even economic reasons,
but many, probably most, were driven by a deep religious attach-
ment to a secret truth they have been concealing for generations
from the Catholic world around them, a truth for which they had
suffered persecution and humiliation, but which was worth it,
since it indicated the true way to salvation. Throughout their
suffering,these marranos felt they were superior to their foes, for
they possessed an esoteric metaphysical key; they knew that the
true way to salvation was not through Christ but through the
« Law of Moses » (La Ley de Moysein) which their forefathershad
been given in ancient times and which Christianitypretended in
vain to supersede. What they did not know very well was the
content of this Law of Moses, its special rules and customs. These
have been slowly erased from memory due to the severance of the
marrano communityfrom the official Jewish world outside Iberia.
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, the ban on
ex-Jews leaving the peninsula, and the network of inquisitorial
spies blocked the two channels through which Judaizing marranos
could draw informationabout that which they considered as their
true essence but which became more and more distant in actual
life.
Three processes were at work. First, the content of clandestine
Judaism became ever more meagre as the years passed, because
of lack of books and instruction.Secondly, even those laws retained
in memory could not be observed in full, and frequentlynot at
all, because of mortal danger from the inquisition. This led
naturally to compromise, concessions, fulfillingone part of the law
while neglecting the other, or emphasizing not the inherently
importantcustom but the one which was easier to observe. Thirdly,
and perhaps most importantly:the mental frameworkwithin which
the residual Judaism of the marranos was comprehended became
embedded more and more in Christian symbols and categories.

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 PATTERNS
MARRANO IN SPINOZA 545

In the long run this was one of the most significantdevelopments,

which affected deeper layers of consciousness. Judaism itself, the
hidden essence of these marranos, took its place within a world-
picture whose foundations and main features were determined by
Christianity. This fact found expression in the famous dictum
which hundreds of inquisition files attributedto Judaizingmarranos
for many generations, namely, that « salvation lies not in Christ
but in the Law of Moses ». This formula was almost definitory
of Judaizing marranos; a kind of dogma belonging to their hidden
religion and a succinct and recurrent description of their faith.
But, as we shall see presently,this is basically a Christian formula,
filled with a Jewish content. The mixture of both religions is
equally apparent in the secret customs and rites of the Judaizers;
these are basically taken from the Jewish framework but are
saturated with Catholic elements and interpretations. We discover
this mixture again, in varying degrees, in the confessions of
inquisitorial victims, in phenomena of religious and mystical
enthusiasm, in hymns and songs.
Concern with « salvation » as the prime religious issue sounds
rather foreign in Judaism. Jews were hoping for redemption, but
this was mainly understood as a collective event in the immanent
world - bringing it to its climax: in essence it entailed the
liberation of the Jews from gentile domination, the restoration
of the temple and the rule of God from Zion. Even Jewish mystics
(in the Kabbalah ), who thought of redemption as a cosmic event,
affectingthe state of Being of the universe, did not see it in terms
of the salvation of the individual soul. Of course, Jews wished to
gain what was called « their part in the next world »; but this lacked
the metaphysical drama attached in Catholicism to the theme
of salvation, as well as the awesome apparatus of Hell and
Damnation, Fall and Grace, purgatory and last Judgement. The
next world was thought of by Jews more as a continued existence
in a better mode, well deserved by keeping the laws of the Torah;
Jews were more concerned with keeping the commands of the Torah
itself,not so much to gain reward as because that was what made
them Jews, the people chosen by God to whom be had given his
Law. The transcendence of God was bridged by his immanence in
the laws and customs he gave, and the daily, this-wordlyaffairs
thus gained an additional, sacred dimension. The Jew did not have
to contemplate a transcendent world for which he sacrifices his
actual life, in order to get in touch with the divine. It was the

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daily affairs themselves which were sanctified, taking up a

metaphysical significance, by being organised in a network of
sacred rites and procedures. While not neglecting the prospects of
the next world, the Jew was more disposed to think of this world
and its practical concerns - which included also religious and
ritual concerns: how to practice certain rules scrupulously, how
to apply them correctly to differentconditions, etc. The practical
attitude attribuded to Jews was thus in great degree metaphysical,
for they were concerned with a multitude of questions relating
to the observance of the Mitzwot (commands) - concerns which
to a pure utilitarian observer would appear bizarre and very
impractical.
In turning to « salvation » as their prime religious concern,
marranos betrayed both their Catholic education and the needs
of their situation. They could not place the bulk of their religious
life on practice and rite; on the contrary,practice to them became
usually false and deceptive. And they lived and were educated in a
Catholic milieu where « salvation » was a prime issue. Yet upon
this Catholic framework they have superimposed a Judaic inter-
pretation: Not Jesus Christ, but the Law of Moses is the true
way to salvation. There was an alternativeway, differentfrom that
of the multitude,which only the Judaizing marranos possessed.
The mixture of both religions is also manifest in secret cults.
Marranos were praying to « Saint Esther », their patron Saint -
for wasn't she the first marrano, who disguised her true nation
and religion? Passover Matzot were called « the holy bread ».
Marrano victims of the inquisition acquired martyr status in the
- dia pura,
style of the first Christians. Prayers for Yom Kippur
-
as marranoscalled it were not onlyasking forpardon,as in Judaism,
but also, again, for « salvation » and « grace ». One prayer asks
the « angels and archangels» to mediate between the caller and
God and make Him accept the fast. Other prayers and cantations
are full of Catholic symbolism. « O great, omnipotent God » prays
a girl caught by the Inquisition, « you who, as a Good Shepherd,
(a Christian symbol) leadst the sheep back to their pastures, ...let
them not be harmed by another, foreign shepherd [= Jesus] ».
Some marranos interpreted their lot in terms of the Christian
concept of the Fall. Their fathers had sinned, betraying Judaism,
and now the offspringlived in a state of fallenness. Their own
existence must be marred by sin, idolatry, duplicity, and failure
to be true Jews even when Judaizing. The sense of fallenness and

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 MARRANO
PATTERNS
IN SPINOZA 547

of acute guilt that adheres to one's existence as such - the rudiments

of the consciousness of original sin - are basically a Catholic
sensibility, that now fitted the situation of the marranos and
penetrated their self-feeling.
A strikingexample of such mixture is given by the case of the
Beata of Herrera. Beatas were popular mystical figures,who made
their appearance at the beginning of the 16 th. C. Most of them
were Catholic (although disturbingto tradition); but this particular
beata of Herrera was genuinelymarrano, evoking a whole movement
of Judaizing in her region. According to her story, she was
summoned in her sleep to heaven where, guided by an angel, she
saw « those in pain and those in glory», as well as « purgatory
with the souls sufferingthere». This Christian, even Dantesque
picture takes a surprising marrano turn when the girl sees the
just sitting in glory,and the angel tells her they are « those burnt
on earth » - a direct marrano martyrology,fittedinto the Christian
model. On later trips to heaven the beata brought the message that
God was ready to lead the conversos to the promised land. « And she
told us at great length», a witness tells the Inquisition, « ... how
Elijah and the Messiah were to come », and that it was good to
keep the law of Moses for in it lay salvation. As a result, many,
conversos started observing the sabbath and otherwise Judaizing,
until the beata was arrested.
The religious duality had penetrated the consciousness, and the
sub-consciousness,of the most ardent Judaizers. Even the marrano
martyrs and heroes were not always, and probabily were only
seldom, Jews in the conventional sense. The clandestine character
of worship, Catholic education, the lack of Jewish instructions,a
mental mixture of both faiths, and isolation from the living Jewish
communitiesoutside Iberia, have created with time a special pheno-
menon in the history and sociology of religion, a forn of faith
which is neither Christian nor actually Jewish.

Exile within an Exile

These faithfulJudaizers suffered a triple alienation. First, by
identifyingthemselves, even if abstractly, with the Jews as God's
elect people, they have thereby shared the exile of the Jews and
their alienated state among the nations. Secondly, as Jews by
intent,but not in the real life, they were also alienated from their
own inner essence, from what was supposed to be the deepest and

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548 LA RASSEGNA
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most genuine element of their existence. A second duality has been

formed in their lives: between the outer existence and the inner
essence, between the reality of life and what was supposed to be
its most authentic meaning. The Judaizing marrano thus lived in
alienation not only from his Catholic environmentbut also from
his own inner essence, because he was unable to express it in his
actual life, which remained, in effect,in opposition to his essence.
This inner existentialalienation took up also a practical social aspect,
in that the Judaizers were cut off the tree of Jewish life that still
flourished outside Iberia. They were an exile within an exile,
exiled, as Jews, among the nations, and exiled also from the Jews
themselves. In this sense, Iberia was their Babylon; and their
messianic yearningswere directed not so much toward the historical
Zion as to the symbolic Zion - that is, toward the lost essence
of Judaism which, as they felt, was still projecting meaning into
their lives and nourishing them with a certain power and with
a secret sense of self-value,but from which their actual life was
getting farther and farther away. Their true essence became a
distant, abstract ideal, constanly fading into the horizon; while
their actual existence and life of the present has become a play
of masks, an empty shell of conformism, an externality which
stands in direct opposition to its inner essence and is thus unable
to unite with it and to express it authentically.
This was a classic case of alienation, almost in accord with
the original philosophical sense of this category. Moreover, it was
even involvinga measure of conscious responsibility.
se//-alienation,
Part of the marranos, at least, had an opportunityfor leaving the
peninsula: this was true of Portuguese marranos in the fourth
decade of the 16th. c., and of resolute individuals throughout the
century. For these people, living as an exile within an exile was a
matter of choice - not, indeed, an active choice but rather the
confirmationof inertia: but still,it cannot be said that no alternative
of emigrationexisted throughoutthe 16th. c. By that passive choice
the real severance took place between Judaizing marranos and
professingJews, and the marranos began taking shape as a special
hybrid phenomenon, or perhaps even sui generis, setting its own
phenomenological category.
This fact was dimly recognized by the Jews, for many rabbis
kept their distance from the Judaizing marranos, refusing to
recognize them as Jews. It is a tragic irony that while these
marranos were risking their lives in order to be faithfulto what

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 IN SPINOZA
PATTERNS
MARRANO 549

they thought was the religion of their fathers, the official Jewish
world refused to welcome them as brethren,at least not without
misgivings and thorough examination. The rabbinical responsa
literatureis full of cases (some of tragic familysplits, encapsulating
the general lot of the marranos) in which rabbis refused to
acknowledge marranos as Jews; and there were also many theoretical
discussions of the principle. Rabbis were divided, but the majority
tended to severity. Part of the rejection of marranos in principle
was due not to ideological fundamentalism but to concrete legal
questions concerning aqunot, inheritance,etc. It is by denying the
Jewishness of the Marranos that rabbis could solve liberally these
difficultpersonal issues. And yet, it is a fact that even from this
third aspect marranos faced alienation.
Judaizers, however, were only part of the marranos, and
certainlythe minority.Two other groups should also be mentioned:
those - undoubtedly the largest group - who were finally
absorbed in the Christian culture and were faithful to the new
religion in varying degrees - from mere routine and inertia to
devotion and fanatic zeal; and those, especially important to us,
who were led by the confusion of both religions into scepticism
and secularism, preferringthe life of this world, or even - as had
happened to some - arriving at a positive rationalist philosophy,
either in a deist form or even in a neo-pagan spirit.

Religious zeal among conversos

There were conversos who embraced their new religion with
zeal and fervent devotion. Some became bishops and inquisitors.
Others,at lower ranks, affirmedtheir new identityby overemphasiz-
ing it, partly as means for shedding their old Jewish identity,and
that led many of them into sharp and sometimes venomous anti-
Jewish polemics. Injecting the Jewish messianic zeal into the
Catholic church, along with the sense of election and universal
mission among the nations has contributed to reinforce the trend
that had already started in Spain at the end of the Middle ages
- a feeling of an elect people, devout and unswering in its
Christian faith and serving a divine mission on earth. So in
Spain, while in Portugal of the later 16th. c. this has assumed a
differenttone as well, when Sebastian, the king who died in a
disastrous military adventure in Morocco, evoked after his death
a short-lived but intensive messianic movement, since popular

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consciousness refused to admit his death and saw him as an ever

living king, a secret saviour who will redeem Portugal of its
subjugation. The movement of « Sebastianism », as it came to be
called, supplied a special Portuguese version and a distinctive
channel for capturing part of the messianic deep-waters that had
penetrated the soil of Christian society together with the
marranos.
The feeling of divine mission, the sense of an elect people,
the messianic enthusiasm - these are « Judesque » forms of
consciousness that mass conversion had added to the Iberian
experience, or served as catalyst to processes that were already
at work. The antiJewish propaganda to which former Jews have
made an important contribution,is also partly explained by the
state of consciousness of a person who tries to overcome his
former identity by over-affirming the new identity at the expense
of the one he wishes to abandon. This is often accompanied with
a certain amount of guilt-feelingthat heightens the aggressiveness
of the polemics, or, in the absence of hidden guilt, with the
awareness that identities cannot be easily changed, by the force
of a mere decision and turn in life, and that a good deal of what
he wants desperately to shed still sticks to him despite his will.
In either case, the war he wages against Judaism is in part a
war against his « former Ego » and a residue that still persists in
his own mind.
But there was also another spiritual contribution which the
experience of marranism had made to Spain. I have here in mind
the experience as such, regardless of the beliefs and views it entails.
At the start of the 16th. c., two related trends of religious reform
and purification made their appearance in Spain. First, the
teachings of Erasmus have gained a strong hold in important
Spanish monastic circles, especially among the Franciscans, and
among certain intellectuals of the first importance, including Vives
and Valdes. Both these men, and, as it turns out, a surprising
proportion of other followers of Erasmus were of Jewish origin.
This movement demanded the return to the pure origins of
Christianity,to the Gospel of Jesus and his early disciples, overcom-
ing the corruption,institutionalbureaucracy, and the over-emphasis
on external, mechanical cult at the expense of the true heart and
inner religious awareness, with which the established Catholic
church was supposed to be affected. The astounding number of
New Christiansamong Erasmus' followershas not been satisfactorily

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 PATTERNS
MARRANO IN SPINOZA 551

explained; there has been mention of demographic concentrations

and of the « spirit of the Hebrew prophets » - a rather remote
cause. I think that this phenomenon may be better understood
if we keep in mind two facts. First, that whoever has converted
to a new religion, or was born to a religion new in his family
may tend to seek in it a deeper spiritual significance and a living
pulsation than one who has been accustomed to his old religion as
a matter of routine; and searching for the deeper meaning of
Christianity as a living awareness, over and above the external
apparatus of cult and institution, could well be construed as
Erasmus' message. Secondly, and more importantly: the very
experience of marranos creates a tendencyto prefer the inner heart
to external works, considered as false or an empty shell. This
may well develop in marrano families with a Judaizing history,
as many indeed had. It produces the sense that what counts is
the inner experience, the heart and the direct awareness of one's
spiritual truth,deprecating the value of externalities. From a mere
phenomenological viewpoint - regardless of the content of the
religion at hand - we may see this as preparing the ground to a
critique of merely external acts even when the individual passes
over to Christianity.
This explanation holds even more strongly concerning the
second spiritual trend which came to the fore in 16th. c. Spain
- the phenomenon of Spanish mysticism,or the alumbrados (the
illuminated). A surprising number of Spanish mystics were again
conversos, including the greatest figure of the movement, Santa
Teresa d'Avila, the teacher of San Juan de la Crux (St. John of
the Cross). She was born to a family of ex-Jews,which had even
suffered Inquisitorial prosecution because of a Judaizing history.
This point is important,because we are dealing here with a pattern
of experience that had first been internalized in the state of secret
Judaizing, and later was transported into and preserved within
Christianity,where it took the form of a secret spiritual yearning.
The esoteric nature of Judaizing marranos, the rejection of external
acts as meaningless, interiorizationand concentration in the inner
self as a way to reach God and attain salvation - these are patterns
of life and experience that, by the force of necessity, took shape
on the one hand among the Judaizing marranos, and on the other
hand were transformedand translated into basic features of the
Spanish schools of the alumbrados.

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Sceptics, Rationalists, and Secularists

But the group which interests us here most had opposite
inclinations. The confusion of Judaism and Christianity has led
in many cases to the loss of both. Religious scepticism and
secularism were not infrequent results. Conversos who lost their
Jewish faith without acquiring a Christian one found their attention
directed into the secular, earthly affairs of this world, either in
the form of work, commerce, and practical life, or also in subtler
forms of secularism - developing tastes for art and learning,
cherishing one's own « life and exploits » one's career and life-
adventures. These objectives were pursued not only for their
utilitarian sake but also as esthetic and existential values not to say
as metaphysical substitutes), expressing and developing the self
in a world without transcendence.
This type of converso is known, in variations, from early times
to Spinoza's day. Before and during the Great Expulsion (1492)
we can take for example the adventures of the offspringof the
noble ex-Jewishfamily,de la Caballeria, some of whom were even
prosecuted by the Inquisition. Pedro de la Caballeria, author of
a violent anti-Jewishbook, was accused of having secretly had
meals, in the country,in the company of Jews, and bragging about
his religious insincerity,which - free of ideological constraints-
lets him pursue a career of freedom and lury; his portrait,drawn
convincinglyby Baer, is that of a this-wordlyman, who does not
take seriously the views of any religion, especially those concerning
salvation and the next world, but sees his life in this world as the
sole area worthy of effort and concern. His nephew, Fernando
de la Caballeria, an outstandingly brilliant jurist and a close
assistant of King Fernando the Chatolic in imposing the Inquisition
on the unwilling capital of Barcelona, was himself prosecuted by
the Inquisition as a secret Judaizer and an agent of the Jews.
In his case, even more than in his uncle's, politics, law, personal
talent and exploits, career, esthetic enjoyment, and achievements
in this world replaced the transcendent burden of either Judaism
or Christianity.
Other examples of the same period are Fernando de Rojas,
the converso author of the Spanish classic Celestina, and his
father-in-law,Alvaro de Montalban. Rojas' genial work (to which
we shall return) is an outburst of the spirit of freedom, this-
worldliness, and the forfeitureof all transcendentperspective from
life and the universe. Neither Jewish nor Christian,it is neo-pagan

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 MARRANO IN SPINOZA
PATTERNS 553

in its mood, regarding the existing universe as all there is, a

constant play of forces, opposiing each other in eternal strife,and
- unlike Heraclitus' view - not controlled by an overall logos or
meaning. The power of excess is supreme ruler, exemplified by
earthly love, which takes up cosmic dimensions as a symbol of
the basic structure of the universe. Rojas is, in many ways, a
forerunnerof Spinoza, but also his opposite. To Rojas, the loss
of all transcendence has left the universe a metaphysical desert,
an abyss. In that, Rojas was not really pagan, but remained bound
by the Cristian view that the world without an external God is
an abyss. Spinoza, on the other hand, turned immanence into a
divinity,identifyingthe universe with God and attributing to it
the supreme qualities that religious tradition had placed upon
the transcendent creator. Spinoza's immanent universe is orderly,
meaningful, the object of absolute knowledge and overpowering
love that leads to salvation; to Rojas and the early secularists, the
loss of transcendence had led to a sombre view of life and the
universe - as, in a differentmood - it did to modern non-
religious existentialists,or to Nietzsche.
Rojas' father-in-lawwas twice sentenced by the Inquisition, once
for having followed a few Jewish customs (the evidence shows
that on one day he violated the laws of both Judaism and
Christianity,eating meat and dairy products on one of the fasting
days of Lent!); and the second time, decades later, he was
imprisoned as a relapso for having denied twice the existence of
a next world. His secularism was a confusion, a fading out of
both religions, rather than a strong positive position. As such,
however, it was far from being an exception.
The undercurrentof secularism and sceptic rationalism attended
the life of the conversos for generations. But until the early 17th.
c. it was confined to the Iberian peninsula and affected the life of
individuals, in their private sphere and life-history,and did not
become an open movement or a fermentfor one. This had started
only a century after the Expulsion, when emigration from the
Iberian peninsula started on a meaningful scale - and when the
cultural atmosphere in Europe was more prone to sceptical quests.
This brings us closer to Spinoza. Considering the main patterns
of marrano experience which can be discerned in him, one may
list the following major points: (1) Heterodoxy and the transcend-
ence of revealed religion; (2) a skill for equivocation and dual
language; (3) a dual life - inner and external; (4) a dual career

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554 MENSILEDI ISRAEL
LA RASSEGNA

with a break in between; (5) a zeal for salvation, to be gained by

alternative ways, other than that of tradition; and - coupled with
it - this-wordliness,secularism, and the denial of transcendence.
All these marranesque features may be traced in Spinoza, even
if in a somewhat differentguise. They are reflected not only in
his thought but even more in his life and existential case.

II

1. Heterodoxy and the transcendence of revealed religion

This topic is, by now, the most widely discussed aspect when
considering Spinoza's marrano roots. I have dealt with it myself
at some length(1). In the marrano experience in Iberia, a mixture
of Judaism and Christianityhas led, in various cases, to scepticism,
secularism, neo-paganism,rationalist deism, or - in most of these
cases - to a rather inarticulate confusion between conflicting
symbols and traditions. This inevitable mixture has affected the
minds of even the most ardent among secret Judaizers. In the
early 17th. c., when ex-marranos started emigrating to Holland
and elsewhere to rejoin official Judaism and reconstruct their
identity along the traditional Jewish lines, they carried over with
them deep residual layers of their formerexperience and education.
As « New Jews », they now sufferedfrom a new duality. Living in
the relativelytolerant Netherlands,with no fear of the Inquisition,
their lives were no longer divided between a true self and a false
appearance. This old duality has now been internalizedand became
a split within the authentic self - between its desired Judaism and
its residual Christianity. No longer a tension between truth and
appearance, the new duality affected the true, authentic person,
who was determined to become Jewish again yet in the process
carried over with him a universe of Catholic symbols, attitudes,
and world-images,in which his recovered Judaism was inevitably
couched and interpreted.Thus, what in Iberia was a tension between
the false official culture and an abstract inner truth, was now
transformedinto a tension within the official culture itself.

(1) Y. Yovel, « Marranismeet Dissidence», Cahiers Spinoza 3 (1980):

67-99.

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The outcome, however, was much the same: religious ambiva-

lence and a ready ground for dissent. But heterodox phenomena
drew also from sceptic, rationalist trends that had developed in
Iberia and were transported into the « new-Jewish» life in Holland
- one case, that of Juan de Prado, catapulting directly into
Spinoza's close circle.
Prado and, even more so, Spinoza himself, were the extreme
cases of dissent, stepping beyond all revealed religion. Others
remainedwithinthe fold of revelationbut gave it new interpretations,
or challenged its particulars, or mixed together elements from the
competing revelations of Christ and Moses, or - as in the case of
Uriel da Costa - sought to reform the rabbinical establishment
in light of spiritual ideals they had drawn from their former
Christian phase. If Spinoza's case brought these forms of dissent
to their extreme,it certainly sprang from the same psycho-cultural
milieu and should be understood against its background.
Spinoza's heresy has been explained by more direct and localized
« impacts »: whether the impact of certain heterodox ideas scattered
in medieval Jewish philosophers,which Spinoza read as a youngster
(Wolfson), or the personal impact of such figures as Prado (Revah)
or Isaic la Peyreire (Popkin), with whom Spinoza had socialized
shortly prior to the heren. But as i have argued elsewhere (2),
none of these direct contacts supplies sufficient explanation, as
long as the larger psycho-culturalmilieu of marranism is not seen
at their background. Why should the young Baruch plunge into
old philosophy books, drawing doubts from passages which, taken
in themselves, smack of dangerous heresies, although in their
systematic context they can be accomodated to tradition and still
count as legitimate? And why, in later days, should he seek the
company of such marginal and unsettling characters as Prado or
La Peyreire (assuming with Popkin that indeed he met him)?
That Spinoza took to the reading and to the company he did must
be explained by what has gone in his mind beforehand- a religious
disquiet and a rationalist quest, which is both rooted in his psycho-
cultural milieu and which throws the latent (and dangerous) features
of this milieu into strong relief.

(2) Op. cit.

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2. Equivocation and Dual Language

Spinoza was a grand master of dual language and equivocation.

He spoke to differentaudiences in differentways, using the same
sentence or phrase in varying senses, masking his true intention
to some while disclosing it to others. He could pass a covert
message to whoever was deemed capable of grasping it, while
using a phrase whose literal sense was the opposite, thus misleading
the unwarned reader. This art is manifest in those of Spinoza's
writings published in his lifetime, especially the TTP and the
Letters, and much less in the Ethics, a work destined for a more
restricted and homogeneous audience.
While Spinoza advocated, by and large, a literal hermeneutic
method for the Bible, using this method on Spinoza's own
published works will prove a fatal mistake. As Leo Strauss has
shown, to understand Spinoza's language, a rather complex and
subtle hermeneutics is required, far removed from the literal
reading of the text.
In looking for a precedent to Spinoza's use of language, Strauss
went back to Maimonides. But this is too great a leap backwards.
Just as Wolfson bypassed marranism in looking for Spinoza's
Jewish roots, so did Strauss bypass a crucial step concerning the
use of language. The direct and relevant tradition which Spinoza
continues almost uninterruptedlyis that of the marrano culture
and linguistic habits. Spinoza's mastery of equivocation and dual
language brings to a climax devices and sensibilities in which
marranos had excelled for generations.
New Christian intellectuals, whether Judaizing or not, have
for many years before Spinoza developed the art of playing the
overt meaning against the covert one, decipheringhidden messages,
using, as speakers, several voices at a time or - as readers -
learning to reverse the declared intention of authors, or to draw
illicit informationfrom texts that were not intended to convey it.
This knack also assumed artistic dimensions. It produced famous,
and typically Spanish, art-forms, first in the Celestina, the
astounding classic written by the young converso Fernado de
Rojas, and later in the picaresque novel, a genre given to the
world by Spain and in which New Christian allusions and
undercurrent motifs abound. The picaresque literature and its
antecedents show ample evidence of a use of language characteristic
of in-groupcommunicationand of esoteric minorities.It has provided
readers and writers alike with opportunities to indulge in the

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MARRANO IN SPINOZA 557

hunt for meanings and allusions that only the initiated could grasp
and appreciate.
Startingwith the Celestina, the pragmatic needs of concealment
by language were transformed into esthetic values in themselves.
What started as a practical necessity gave rise to new forms of
artistic pleasure. Equivocation, mask-play,dual and triple language,
became highly valued and enjoyable artistic devices, even when
no longer serving a specific practical need. This helped shape, if
not the « language of the marranos », as I am tempted to call it
with a slightlyexaggerated edge, then at least the special linguistic
sensibilities (and gifts) of the marranos, which Spinoza inherited
and brought to a new peak.

3. Dual Life: « The Marrano of Reason »

The use of dual language, for both Spinoza and the marranos,
betrayed a deeper existential fact: their life 011 two levels, one
inner and one outer, overt and concealed. Just as the marranos
lived in this dual way because of danger from the inquisition,
Spinoza repeated this life-patternin the relativelyfree Netherlands.
He even lived so twice: first as a young dissenter within the
Jewish community and then, after the Herem, as a free thinker
and reputed atheist in Calvinist dominated Holland. In both
phases, though in somewhat differentways, Spinoza led the life
of a marrano of reason. Like the old Judaizing marranos, he, too,
possessed a secret metaphysical truth,the genuine key to salvation
and the worthwhile life, which the multitude would never grasp
and always despise. Like the marranos, he, too, had to conceal
his deeper thoughts from the eyes of the general public - and
even, to some extent, from his own friends and disciples. The
reason for that was not only prudence, but a sense of the depth
and intimacy of the rational truth, that can hardly be shared by
the vulgar and which even devoted rationalists may lack the
depth and the subtlety to grasp. This made Spinoza an extremely
lonely thinker - not socially, but intellectually. The reasons for
this solitude were of two kinds at least. Even without an inquisition,
there were, in the fermentof the Netherlands and in the aftermath
of the wars of religion,enough social pressure and political dangers
which the prudent philosopher, in quest of peace for study and
contemplation, will do best to avoid (caute). But beyond these
pragmatic considerations there was also a purely philosophical

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one, relatingto Spinoza's view of the multitude.Even if, in principle,

reason is open to all ,Spinoza remains an elitist and almost
an esoterist in his view of the actual capacities of humanity. That
ratio let alone scientia intuitiva,will become the lot of the multitude
is an illusion. Although Spinoza's theory of reason is potentially
modern and « democratic», his view of the sage and the multitude
is still medieval, very much marked by Maimonides' views and
by Spinoza's own experience and appreciation of the vulcanic
nature and fluctuationsof that big beast, the vulgus.
Given human nature and the overwhelmingpower of the ima-
ginatio, true metaphysical knowledge can be only possessed by
the few. This raised the question of the multitude, and how the
philosopher will deal with it. Part of the answer is, to Spinoza,
that the wise man will neither impose his truth on others, nor
show it off, not even disclose its existence to those unable to
grasp it. Rational wisdom thus becomes esoteric, it has an inter-
nal, intimate side which cannot be shared with the uninitiated
without being violated and falsified. (This, by the way, can happen
even on the level of mere ratio, where the wisdom of the third
degree is lacking and only half-baked bits of rational knowledge,
based upon scientific generalizations and abstractions, are pro-
claimed, lacking the power to transformthe inner person and the
quality of his emotions). Duality of life - and of discourse - is
thus not only a pragmatic need (caute) but also a matter of princi-
ple and also, as Nietzsche might say, of good philosophical taste.
What cannot be vulgarized in principle should not be made access-
ible to the vulgus.
The true philosopher will thus be a « marrano of reason » even
where no pragmatic needs arise. But this is an imaginarysituation,
for most people remain under the power of the imagination and
the ensuing fluctuations of the soul and their violent outbursts,
and so a need to conceal and be prudent is almost an inherent
part of the wise man's lot.
That Spinoza took to this view cannot be unrelated to the
long marrano experience which he shared and inherited mentally.
In the same way, Spinoza's persistent defence of tolerance,
and rejection of all forms of fanatic imposition of beliefs, cannot
be totallydivorcedfromhis backgroundsas offspringto the communi-
ty that most sufferedfrom the Inquisition. Caute is the slogan of
the son of the marranos who, while proclaiming the antithesis of
the inquisition as his principle, knows that human nature cannot

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 MARRANO IN SPINOZA
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make possible a true sharing of truth, and that, therefore, tole-

rance - that is, inter alia, the freedom to error be subject to
imaginatio, must be offered the multitude because it is subject
to the imaginatio. Had it not been the case, then all would have
reached reason by its « geometric» necessity, and tolerance would
have been redundant.
On differentoccasions. I have discussed what Spinoza proposes
for the multitude. Basically, he devises the apparatus of the state,
and of rationalized (« universal ») religion, as to complementary
institutions with the following aim: to turn the activity of the
imagination into an external imitation of reason, using the power
of authorityand obedience. This means that, without passing from
imaginatio to ratio, the multitude will, out of its own transformed
imagination,held together by obedience to rational authority,pro-
duce the same behaviour that reason, too, would produce out of
its own sources, so that externally they will coincide. This is the
foremost goal of political organization and religious reform. Even-
tually, in the best of cases, it will neutralize the destructive and
violent potential of the imaginatio, making the life of all, including
the philosophers, safer and more secure. Philosophers, like other
people, would then be freer to express themselves without fear.
But if Spinoza the thinker might have believed this to be possible
at some future time, Spinoza the son of the marranos realistically
still clinged to the inscription on his ring.

4. The Dual Career

Spinoza's career as a « marrano of reason » is divided in two.

Among the Jews, he lived concealing his inner truth,while conform-
ing to the outer customs and rites of the community,until he
deemed this was no longer possible. Then, breaking away from the
communityand sufferingthe Herem, he repeated, as it were, the
act of his ex-marrano fathers, who left Iberia to live in freedom
elsewhere; and yet even in the atmosphere of gentile Holland, Spi-
noza went on concaling his new truth from most of his fellowmen.
Neither Jew nor Christian,unconvincinglyfightinghis notoriety as
an atheist and called by all a « Jew », he neither found the external
freedom necessary for a life without concealment, nor the intellec-
tual partnership of others who could fathom the depth or share
the intensity of Spinoza's unconditional mystical faith in reason

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560 MENSILEDI ISRAEL
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- this new alternativeway to salvation, which lies neither in Christ

nor in the Law of Moses, but in the third degree of knowledge.
It was typical of many marranos, especially (but not only) those
returningto Judaism,that their lives were divided into two opposing
periods, often radically severed from each other by a break. As
Yerushalmi has pointed out, Spinoza's dual career before and after
the Herem reiterates a pattern known from other marranos and
ex-marranos. Fernando Cardoso (the subject of Yerushalmi's mo-
nography) started as a highlyplaced Catholic courtier and doctor in
Spain, then made a full turn and became a Jewish scholar and apo-
logist in the Ghetto of Venice. His brother, Michael Cardoso, also
started as a Catholic and ended as a militant Jew, though a mystic
and Sabbetaian messianic, to his brother's great dismay. From
Uriel da Costa to Isaac Orobio de Castro, not only intellectuals but
many less renowned people had shed their formerexistence, career,
name, and identity,to become something very different,in Amster-
dam and Altona, Venice and Livorno, later in London, and even in
Bayonne, Toulouse and Bordeaux. In this respect, Spinoza's dual
career repeats a well-knownmarrano (or ex-marrano) pattern; alt-
hough he did not leave a Jewish career for a Christian one, but
stepped out of both toward a religion of reason.
What happened in most of these cases, including Spinoza's, is
that the duality which marks one's existence at any given moment
or place is translated into a two chapter life history.This requires
that the person do somethingto overcome the original duality, and
decide for a full realization of one of its aspects at the expense of
the other. Thus, the secret Judaizer in Iberia opts for open Jewish
life in Amsterdam or Venice. His career and social identity are
radically changed, and the duality marking his life now takes the
form of a breach between two periods. Yet, as we have seen, it
will be too simple to suppose that all the determinativeelements
of the formerlife had disappeared. In subtler ways, duality persists
even after the break; and this may be true of Spinoza, the marrano
of reason, no less than of ex-Judaizingmarranos in his former
community.
I may add that translating a marranesque duality into a two-
chapter career is not necessarily a pattern of ex-marranosalone. It
can be found also in the lives of conversos who never reverted to
Judaism, or were never really Judaizing in the first place; thus it
seems to be a larger « converso » pattern. I refer particularlyto the
case of Fernando de Rojas, the converso author of the classic

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PATTERNS
IN SPINOZA 561

Celestina. As I tried to show elsewhere, Rojas was neither Christian

nor Jewish, but a sceptic, neo-pagan, a « heraclitean without the
logos ». The effects of the converso duality on his mind are clear
and typical, as is his incessant use of equivocation, dual language,
and a play of masks, all similarlyrooted in the marrano experience
and frequentlyalluding to it. As a young man, Rojas composed the
Celestina as a celebration of freedom, this-worldliness,and esthetic
pleasure mixed with his pessimistic and « heraclitean» metaphysics.
Then he married,moved to a small town and led the life of a provin-
cial, respectable jurist, very bourgeois, prudent, a master of the
dictum caute, sidestepping the inquisition, which however reached
the doorsteps of his familyat least twice in his lifetime. Rojas lived
to his verylast moments the concealed life of a « marrano of reason »
(or, rather, of an « artistic reason » - religious scepticism turned
into art) and died as one.
Rojas never left Iberia; Spinoza's fathers and ex-marranocollea-
gues did, and Spinoza himself repeated the act in leaving his own
« Iberia » - the Jewish community. But as we have seen, even
afterwards he did not, and could not, live his inner truth in outer
freedom. Part of the reason, we have seen, was the esoteric nature
of this truth,which in its purity can serve only the few. But there
was another, no less significantreason. Spinoza, unlike all other
ex-marranos,did not leave the communityto join another. He left
a religious community without joining another - and there still
was no social frameworkexpressing Spinoza's thoughts in its overt
structure. Spinoza represented a principle that was not yet insti-
tuted in communal and social life. There was no laicized commu-
nity to identifywith; one still had to be identified as a Catholic,
Calvinist, Jew, Lutheran, etc. The social frame of reference of any
individual was still religiously defined. The idea of a genuine indi-
vidual, marked only by his rational powers - that is, by a universa-
list capacity - with no rooting and affiliationto a particular reli-
gious community- was too novel. It has, indeed, been actualized
in Spinoza, but not institutionalizedby him. Spinoza was a living
manifestationof this principle - but as a special case, anticipating
something to come, but not yet a social reality; and thus he was,
necessarily, alienated from the social reality of his time even after
leaving the Jewish community and living in the relative tolerance
of Holland. In this sense, the alienation of the marrano, transfor-
med into new form, still persists in the case of this « marrano of
reason », in both periods of his career.

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5. An alternativeway to salvation

Finally, Spinoza reiterates a strong marrano pattern in his at-

tachment to an alternative way to salvation. Here we are dealing
with Spinoza's thought no less than with his personal case. The
fifthbook of the Ethics, where its whole essence and goals lies,
offersthe individual a way to the salvation and even the eternityof
his soul, that challenges all the established religious and mystical
ways, and yet is motivated by a similar absolute drive. Not only
knowledge, but beatitudo, an ethical objective, relating to the su-
preme state of the soul, is what Spinoza's philosophy seeks and
offers. This may seem, at first,a revival of the classic ideal of the
sage. Yet Spinoza already writes in the midst of the modern scien-
tific revolution, starting an era where that supreme ideal was no
longer the issue. Indeed, Spinoza is almost unique among modern
philosophers, to set forth this ancient, almost archaic ambition;
others were more modest in their goals, a modesty that almost be-
came the distinctivemark of modern philosophy in general (3), and
against the background of which Spinoza stands out as an exception.
However, if we look closer, the ideal of salvation in Spinoza is not
borrowed directlyfrom Greek philosophy (which he knew scarcely)
or even fromthe Roman Stoics (whom he did know and absorb). It
comes in the first place from Spinoza's religious and mystical con-
cerns in their translation into the language of reason; and, histo-
rically it echoes his marrano background. Salvation was a revived
concern in Spain (and France) at the end of the middle ages. It
helped fire the mind of Catholic Spain and nourish the Inquisition.
It had its part - alongside marranism- in the rise of the Spanish
alumbrados in the 16th. c. And it was, as we have seen, a central
concept in all accounts of Judaizing marranos, who declared that
salvation was to be found through the Law of Moses, not through
Christ. This marrano formula, repeated time and again in the files
of the Inquisition, indicated that marranos saw their secret religion
as an alternative way to salvation, other than that of the establi-
shed belief. They knew better than the multitude, for they had a
secret key to the absolute. Spinoza - infinitelymore sophisticated,

(3) Broken only by Hegel, and Hegelian offshootsin 19th.century

ideologies.

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subtle, and solitary- had also the same self-consciousness. A mar-

rano in the second degree, (the « marrano of reason »), it was he,
not they,who knew the true way to salvation - namely, that it did
not pass throughany historical religion,either that of Moses or of
Christ,but only throughthe third degree of knowledge and the intel-
lectual love of God it produced.
Reason thus inherits the supreme goals and ambitions that
were traditionallyassigned to mysticism and to historical religion.
The pursuit of rationalitydoes not end in knowledge but in beati-
tude, eternity,and rational love. For this purpose, of course, reason
itself cannot be mere ratio, but has to take the shape of scientia
intuitiva; it cannot be simple cognition but a powerful motivation,a
dominant love; and it cannot be merely analytic and discursive, but
must be also construed as synoptic and intuitive. The distinction
between two types of rationality, between the second and third
degrees of knowledge,is thus tightlyrelated to the absolute task of
reason, to serve not only as way to knowing the world, but to the
supreme ethical and spiritual goals which religion had called
« Salvation ».
In stressing this marranesque aspect of Spinoza I certainly
attributeto him an affinitywith the ideals of mysticismand revealed
religion,although the way he suggests is radically opposed to theirs.
Unlike other modern philosophers, Spinoza never gave up the abso-
lute spiritual goals of the religious mystics; but he thought that
reason itself, shaped as scientia intuitiva and as the most powerful
affectus,can lead to these goals, and is the only way to reach them.
Mysticismis irrational,confused, a form of the imaginatio; its goals
are to be attained only by its opposite, and in so far as they require,
indeed, love and unity with God, this love must be the intellectual
kind, based upon the third degree of knowledge, and God and the
soul's unity with God must be duly understood and interpreted-
that is, outside all historical religion. Neither the love of Christ,
the Law of Moses, or the confused and inarticulable mystical expe-
rience can lead the soul to where, indeed, it necessarily aspires by
its nature and conatus; this can only be done in ways which, while
retainingthe basic ambitions of the mysticand the religious devotee,
are utterlyopposed to their ways.
In this respect, Spinoza resembles, on the one hand, Plato and
on the other, Hegel, who despite the great differencesin the nature
of their rational systems, also were driven by the absolute aspira-
tions of mystical religion, but tried to attain them by the power

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of reason - distinguishing,as all had to do, between two types or

degrees of rationality.Spinoza can also be seen as secularizingreligion
without giving up its absolute pathos, or as sacralizing reason, by
giving it the supreme spiritual tasks that were wrongly attributed
to religion. This important aspect of his thought has to be ela-
borated with due care to detail and distinctions; here I have only
invoked it, with a limited aim in mind, showing that, indeed, Spino-
za's absolute rationalism offers an alternative way to salvation,
combatting that of religion and the multitude - and that in this
respect, too, a powerful marrano pattern is retained in his thought.
Yirmiahu Yovel

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