MARRANOS

Marranos is a term used to describe Spanish, Portuguese, and Navarrese Jews who converted to Christianity, either voluntarily or under coercion by Spanish or Portuguese royal authorities, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, they continued to practice Judaism in secrecy or were suspected of doing so. They are also called crypto-Jews, the preferred term.

The term specifically refers to the charge of crypto-Judaism. In contrast, the term converso was used for the broader population of Jewish converts to Catholicism, whether or not they secretly still practised Jewish rites. Converts from either Judaism or Islam were referred to by the broader term of “New Christians“.

Spain
Violence against Jews culminated in the sack of the Jewish quarter of Seville on June 4, 1391. Ecija, Carmona, Córdoba, Toledo, Barcelona and many others saw their Jewish quarters destroyed and inhabitants massacred.

200,000 Jews saved their lives by converting to Christianity, other Jews left the country, and 100,000 openly practicing Jews remained.

In 1449, feelings against conversos resulted in a riot at Toledo. The mob plundered and burned the houses of Alonso Cota, a wealthy converso and tax-farmer. They were executed with their leader. In 1467, another mob attacked conversos in Toledo. 1600 houses of New Christians burned. The brothers De la Torre were captured and hanged. In Córdoba, a mob denounced conversos as heretics, killing them, and burning their houses. A riot lasted three days. The government decreed that Jews and conversos should remain in their neighborhood or leave the city.

In 1473, attacks on conversos occurred in Montoro, Bujalance, Adamuz, La Rambla, Santaella, Andújar, Úbeda, Baeza, Almodóvar del Campo, Valladolid, Segovia (massacre in 1474). At Carmona, it was reported that not one converso was left alive. The conversos of Seville, Castile, and Aragon, bitterly opposed the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478. They rendered considerable service to the king, and held high legal, financial, and military positions. The government issued an edict directing traditional Jews to live within a ghetto and be separated from conversos. Despite the law, the Jews remained in communication with their New Christian brethren.

“They sought ways and means to win them from Catholicism and bring them back to Judaism. They instructed the Marranos in the tenets and ceremonies of the Jewish religion; held meetings in which they taught them what they must believe and observe according to the Mosaic law; and enabled them to circumcise themselves and their children. They furnished them with prayer-books; explained the fast-days; read with them the history of their people and their Law; announced to them the coming of the Passover; procured unleavened bread for them for that festival, as well as kosher meat throughout the year; encouraged them to live in conformity with the law of Moses, and persuaded them that there was no law and no truth except the Jewish religion.” This constituted the grounds for their expulsion and banishment in 1492, so they could not subvert conversos. Jews who did not want to leave Spain had to accept baptism as a sign of conversion.

The conversos and Jews were one people, yet if the Christians hated the conversos, the Jews liked them no better.

40,000 Jews were baptized in the three months before the deadline for expulsion to avoid expulsion, rather than as a sincere change of faith. These conversos were the principal concern of the Inquisition; being suspected of continuing to practice Judaism put them at risk of denunciation and trial.

The term Marrano (the preferred term for Spanish Jews) came into later use in 1492 with the Castilian Alhambra Decree, which prohibited the practice of Judaism in Spain and required all remaining Jews to convert or leave. The Spanish Inquisition was established prior to the decree and surveilled New Christians to detect whether their conversion to Christianity was sincere. The vast majority of Jews in Spain converted to Catholicism as they had no choice but to adopt Christianity, or leave Spain and the Crown seize their property and money. Murder was possible for not showing complete loyalty to Christianity.

The number of conversions was underestimated, as 20% of the tested Iberian population have haplogroups consistent with Sephardi ancestry.

They also migrated to Flanders, to its flourishing cities, such as Antwerp and Brussels.  And from there to Hamburg and Altona, Scotland, and Denmark (Emden in 1649).

The vast majority of Spain’s conversos, however, remained in Spain and Portugal and were suspected of “Marranism” by the Spanish Inquisition. Although the wealthier among them could easily bypass discriminatory Limpieza de sangre laws, they constituted a significant portion of the over three thousand people executed for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition.  After June 14, 1532, New Christian emigration from Portugal became a capital offense, anti-New Christian sentiment surged on all sides. The New Christians were panic-stricken and emigrants, legal or clandestine, headed for Flanders, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese possessions in India, and North Africa. Some migrated to London, whence their families spread to Brazil (where conversos had settled at an early date) and other colonies in the Americas.

After the middle of the century, England, France, the Spanish Americas and Brazil were the favorite destinations, not necessarily in that order.” The New Christians breathed more freely when Philip III of Spain came to the throne. By the law of April 4, 1601, he granted them the privilege of unrestricted sale of their real estate as well as free departure from the country for themselves, their families, and their property. Many, availing themselves of this permission, followed their coreligionists to North Africa and Turkey. After a few years, however, the privilege was revoked, and the Inquisition resumed its activity.

During 1492, 12,000 conversos entered Navarre, a converso haven. The most intense persecution of conversos lasted until 1530. From 1531 to 1560, the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3% of the total. Denunciations of conversos continued intermittently. In 1691, in Mallorca, 37  conversos were burned. The last person tried for being a crypto-Jew tried was in Córdoba in 1818.

Migrations to Constantinople and Thessaloniki, where Jewish refugees had settled after the expulsion from Spain, as well as to Italy, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Vienna, and Timișoara, continued into the middle of the 18th century.

Portugal
After the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain (1492) and the Forced Conversion by Portugal’s King Manuel I in Portugal (1497), conversos continued to be suspect in socially strained times. In Lisbon in 1506, a months-long plague caused people to look for scapegoats. Sailors from Holland in the port of Lisbon joined the Dominicans and formed a mob who dragged conversos from their houses and killed some. The killing spree lasted from 19 to 21 April and came to be known as the Lisbon massacre.

King Manuel granted religious freedom for 20 years to all conversos. New Christians were attacked in Gouveia, Alentejo, Olivença, Santarém, and other places. In the Azores and Madeira, mobs massacred former Jews. Spanish and Portuguese conversos offered 80,000 gold crowns to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V if he would mitigate the harshness of the Inquisition. None were successful in preventing the 1547 Inquisition in Portugal. The “Power of Confiscation” in 1579 endowed it with the same extremities of rigour as the Spanish prototype. The conversos suffered immensely from mob violence.

In 1562, conversos had to wear special badges, and to order Jewish descendants to live in ghettos (judiarias) in cities and villages as their ancestors had before the conversions.

In 1641, João IV of Portugal ennobled the Curiel family, a Marrano family who defected to Portugal after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1498. They went on serving the King of Portugal in diplomatic positions across Europe until the late 18th century.

Some Portuguese conversos continued to practice as crypto-Jews for more than four centuries without being fully assimilated into the Old Christian population. The last remaining crypto-Jewish community in Belmonte returned to Judaism in the 1970s, opened a synagogue in 1996, and in 2005, the first Jewish museum in Portugal.

Conversos in Italy
Some chose to leave Spain and many went to Italy, with a similar climate. They were granted privileges and protected from the inquisition in Florence, Venice, Milan, Bologna, Pisa, Naples, and numerous other Italian cities. They freely exercised the Jewish religion. Pope Paul III received them and by 1553 three thousand Portuguese Jews and conversos were living at Ancona. Two years later, Pope Paul IV threw all the conversos in Papal states into prison, 60 who acknowledged the Catholic faith were transported to Malta; twenty-four, who adhered to Judaism, were publicly burned (May 1556). Those who escaped the Inquisition were expelled in 1558. Many conversos went to Dubrovnik.

Latin America
Legal emigration to the New World was strictly controlled and required proof of three generations of Christian ascendance. Nevertheless, many conversos evaded these restrictions. The most common destinations were Brazil, Peru, and Río de la Plata, Argentina.

France
3,000 Jews came to Provence after the Alhambra Decree expelled Jews from Spain in 1492. However, Louis XII, in 1498 expelled the Jews of Provence and in 1501, enforced it. Those who converted to Christianity were levied a special tax and were subjected to social discrimination and slanders.

Portuguese India
Goa had a considerable influx of recently baptized Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Some sought to re-join Jewish populations in India (particularly in Cochin), while others became wealthy in the spice and gems trade between Portugal and India. The Inquisition in Goa was established in 1560.

Today
Sephardi Jews historically linked with Spain are allowed to seek citizenship after two years and in 2012, the residency requirement was eliminated. In October 2006, the Parliament of Andalusia asked the three parliamentary groups that form the majority to support an amendment that would similarly ease the way for nationals of Morisco descent to gain Spanish citizenship. The proposal was originally made by IULV-CA, the Andalusian branch of the United Left.
In Portugal, Comunidade Judaica Masorti Beit Israel ensures the recognition of the Bnei Anusim as Jews.