Abstract
Some rather astonishing statements about the apostasy of the pseudo-messiah Sabbatai Zevi in 1666 were made by one his chief theologians, Abraham Miguel Cardoso. Cardoso was a former converso, a descendent of Jews who had converted to Catholicism under duress in Spain or Portugal during the fifteenth century. Cardoso had himself escaped the Iberian Peninsula as an adult in order to revert to his ancestral Judaism in freer lands.1 Some of his ideas concerning Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam seem less influenced by mystical or classical philosophy (contexts central to much of Cardoso’s thought) than by his converso background. In trying to understand these statements I have gone back to examine traditions of messianism among the conversos, looking for patterns into which Cardoso’s views might fit.2
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Notes
Many of these positions can be found in Gershom Scholem, “Redemption Through Sin,” in idem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 78–141. On Cardoso, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto ¡ª Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), Ch. 7; Nissim Yosha, “The Philosophical Background of Sabbatian Theology ¡ª Guidelines Toward an Understanding of Abraham Michael Cardoso’s Theory of the Divine,” in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday ed. A. Mirsky, A. Grossman and Y. Kaplan (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 541–572.
My thoughts on these matters have been particularly influenced by: H.J. Scoeps, Barocke Juden Christen Judenchristen (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1965); R.H. Popkin, “Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the 17th Century,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 57–72, and in other studies of his cited below; D.B. Ruderman, “Hope Against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages,” in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart (Lo’azit; Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1991), 185–202, reprinted in Essential Papers in Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy ed. D.B. Ruderman (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 299–323. Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic: A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), Ch. 6, touches upon some important points on this subject but leaves them in embryonic form.
Moshe Idel has pointed out to me that a certain specifically anti-messianic view can be found among a different set of conversos, especially skeptics like da Costa and Spinoza in Amsterdam.
Since I began this study, David Gitlitz’s very important book on converso religion appeared, and it has been an invaluable aid. See David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), especially Ch. 4.2. On the conversos in general (also called marranos, crypto-Jews, Chuetas, etc.), see e.g., Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. Il (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961); Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (New York: Schocken, 1932); Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition ed. Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985); idem, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Oxford: Littman Library, 1989); Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). This is simply a sampling from an enormous literature. For an extensive bibliography, see Robert Singerman, comp., Spanish and Portuguese Jewry: A Classed Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993); Meyer Kayserling, Biblioteca Espanola-Portugueza-Judaica, rev. ed. (New York: Ktav, 1971); J.H. Coppenhagen, Menasseh ben Israel: A Bibliography (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1990).
I must make a comment about converso historiography at this point. There are maximalist and minimalist schools concerning the amount of Jewish identity or crypto-Judaism remaining at all among Catholic conversos. The maximalist position holds essentially that because so many conversos were put on trial for Judaizing from the 15th to the 18th centuries (it was not an enormous number in fact), there must indeed have been a lot of Judaizing going on. This position, which is found in some form in Cecil Roth, Yitzhak Baer and Haim Beinart, has been severely criticized by “minimalist” scholars like Benzion Netanyahu and (more moderately) Norman Roth, who think there is little relation between Inquisitional accusations and actual Judaizing. Roth claims, for example, that since practice of public Jewish rituals, for which many converses were tried, would have been tantamount to suicide, the vast majority of “Judaizing” accusations must be false. Concerning the evidence about converse messianism, I have concluded that much of the evidence both from Inquisitional records and other sources can be accepted. This is based on my own sense of the material, and, among other things, some ideas on deriving actual attitudes from Inquisitorial records developed by Professor Carlo Ginsburg. See Norman Roth, Conversos,Inquisition, and the Expulsion; Carlo Ginsburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), Ch. V, VIII.
See Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversas and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997).
Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 103.
See, e.g., Saul Levi Mortera, Tratado da verdade da lei de Mois¨¦s, edited, introduced and annotated by H.P. Salomon (Braga, 1988); Richard H. Popkin, “Philosophy and Polemics in MSS. ‘Ets Haim’,” (Hebrew) in Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry vol. 3, ed. Jozeph Michman (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 55–63.
Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, pp. 106–7. See also Martin A. Cohen, The Martyr: The Story of a Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973), 142.
Cohen, Martyr, 203.
Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 107. Harris Lenowitz has pointed out to me that such testimonies need to be treated with a certain scepticism. Nevertheless, I think the point bears mention.
Rabbi Jacob Sasportas, Zizath Novel Zvi, ed. I. Tishbi (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954), 293.
Ibid., 292–3.
Ibid., 298–302.
On the messiah son of Joseph in Sabbatian theology, see Avraham Elqayam, “The Appointed Messiah: On Messiah the Son of Joseph in the Thought of Nathan of Gaza, Shabbatai Zvi, and A.M. Cardoso,” (Hebrew) Da’at 38 (Winter 1997), 33–82.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Conversos Returning to Judaism in the Seventeenth Century: Their Jewish Knowledge and Psychological Readiness,” (Hebrew) Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies 2 (1969), 201–9.
Bodian, Hebrews, 144–6.
An exception may be found in the circle of Cardinal Ximines de Cisneros, according to Richard H. Popkin, “Marranos, New Christians and the Beginnings of Modern AntiTrinitarianism” (forthcoming).
As Moshe Idel has pointed out to me, the former converso Rabbi Jacob Zemah constitutes an exceptional case in sixteenth century Safed for his strong, talismanic kabbalistic messianism. See Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 178–9.
Sonne was among the first to present this idea, which has by now become a commonplace in converso research. See e.g., Isaiah Sonne, “The `Judaism’ of Spinoza,” (Hebrew) Ha-Do’ar 13 (1933–4), I:7, IL•22–3, IV:56–60, V:70–1; Roth, Marranos, Ch. VII; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit.
On this type see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution,and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), Ch. 3. I think Zagorin and many others have gone astray in not recognizing that the entire range of beliefs existed among the conversos, from sincere Catholicism to fanatic crypto-Judaism; yet they all shared a common universe of discourse, as I shall discuss.
This view is convincingly argued by Benzion Netanyahu in various studies. See, e.g., B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition (New York: Random House, 1995), Book IV.
Ibid., 848–54.
See Simha Assaf, “Portuguese and Spanish Conversos in the Responsa Literature,” (Hebrew) Zion 5 (1933), 19–60, reprinted in idem, Beoholei Ya’akov: Essays on the Cultural Life of the Jews in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1943), 145–80; H.J. Zimmels, Die Marranen in der Rabbinischen Literatur (Berlin, 1932).
See: Yosef Kaplan, “The Portuguese Community of Amsterdam in the 17th Century - Between Tradition and Change,” in Society and Community (Hevrah ve-Kehillah) ed. Avraham Haim (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1991), 141–171; Bodian, Hebrews.
Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 104.
Ibid., 104–5, who has brought this excellent material together but not commented on the special role the conversos envision for themselves in the messianic process. For another example, see A.Z. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements 2nd edition (Hebrew Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1987), 319.
See Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 106–7, 127. The processes concerning Juan de Cordoba Membreque and his nephew Alonso, connected with messianic movements studied by Professor Beinart (see next note), have been discussed by Carlos Carrete Parrondo, who emphasizes the centrality of return to Zion. See Carrete Parrondo, “Judeoconversos andaluces y expectativas mesiânicas,” in Xudeus e Conversos na Historica vol. I, ed. C. Barros (Santiago de Compostela: Deputacion Ourense, 1994), 325–37; idem, “Idealismo y realidad: notas sobre la nocion de Jerusalem entre los judeoconversos castellanos,” El Olivo 20 (1996), 7–11. For the issue of Zion in other converso messianic testimony see idem, “Movimientos mesiânicos en las juderias de Castilla,” in Las tres culturas en la Corona de Castilla y los Sefardies (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1990), 65–9, esp. 68–9.
The movement surrounding In¨¦s and several related prophets has been studied most thoroughly by Professor Haim Beinart, whose researches on this topic were published in various journals and books. They are now gathered together conveniently in idem, Chapters in Judeo-Spanish History vol. II (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 543–788. On the expectation of conversas being found to marry the conversas see 543.
Ibid., 546.
Ibid., 548.
Ibid., 546.
See Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 328–9.
By far the most material on this movement has been gathered in Elias Lipiner, O Sapateiro de Trancoso e o Alfaiate de Setûbal (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1993); and see his bibliography.
See Seymour B. Liebman, New World Jewry: Requiem for the Forgotten (New York: Ktav, 1982), 64–5; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 109.
See Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 382–7, 394–5. A further Inquisitional document recently published has been correctly associated by Miriam Bodian with the movement of David ha-Reuveni, although there are some unique elements in it which require further treatment. See Carlos Carrete Parrondo and Yolanda Moreno Koch, “Movimiento Mesiânico Hispano-Portugu¨¦s: Badajoz 1525,” Sefarad 52 (1992), 65–8; Bodian, Hebrews, 173 n. 43.
Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 387–8 and following. Molkho believed the messiah would appear between 1530 and 1539, and while it is unclear whether he saw himself in the role of messiah, there is no doubt that others did.
See Richard H. Popkin, “Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in Spain, 1492 and after,” Judaism 41 (Summer 1992), 248–9. One must not let the fact that these individuals were strongly anti-Jewish conversionary activists and important church figures detract from the understanding that their conversa identity probably influenced them, just as it did conversos who returned to Judaism.
Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676), His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), 95–6. For more on this general theme, see Popkin, “Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the 17th Century,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 57–72. La Peyrère’s messianism will come up again shortly.
These views of Cardoso were placed in the general Portuguese conversa context at the time by Haham Jacob Sasportas, and in modern research by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. It is my hope that I have sharpened some of the specific aspects of that context here.
Sasportas, Zizath Novel Zvi, 291–5. Perhaps Cardoso’s most interesting maneuver here is the exegetical justification he finds for this position by reading the prophecy in Deuteronomy 28:36 as an imperative. Angela S. Selke, in her study of the Majorcan conversos, called Chuetas, has suggested that Sabbatianism, and perhaps even the theologies of Cardoso, may have influenced the great messianic Judaizing movement on Majorca in the 1680s. The conversa messiah of the Jewish world might have had special appeal for those suffering at the hands of the Old Christians. See Selke, The Conversas of Majorca (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), 194–200. The Chuetas, too, dreamed of escape to Jerusalem.
This too is an enormous field. See e.g., Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971); Messianism in the Talmudic Era ed. L. Landman (New York: Ktav,1979); Eschatology in Maimonidean Thought: Messianism, Resurrection and the World to Come ed. J.I. Dienstag (New York: Ktav, 1983); Amos Funkenstein, Maimonides: Nature, History and Messianic Beliefs (Tel-Aviv: MOD Books, 1997); Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Moshe Idel, Messianism and Mysticism (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1992); idem, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Idel has pioneered a much more radical set of definitions for messianism, indicating that perhaps Judaism as well as crypto-Judaism was flexible in this regard.
It is highly noteworthy, however, that a number of Catholic converses stuck on the issue of a trinity of persons, and the charge of anti-Trinitarianism was among the most common leveled at the New Christians.
See e.g., Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Puritans, The Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660 ed. Peter Toon (London: James Clarke, 1970); Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, Introduction (by Moshe Idel) and Ch. 6.
On some of these ideas see Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne 2 vols., rev. ed. (Geneva: Droz, 1991); Alain Milhou, Colon y su mentalidad mesianica en el ambiente franciscanista espanol (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1983); Jos¨¦ C. Nieto, “The Franciscan Alumbrados and the Prophetic-Apocalyptic Tradition,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8 (1977), 3–16; Americo Castro, Aspectos del vivir hispanico: Espiritualismo, mesianismo,actitud personal en los siglos xiv al xvi (Santiago de Chile: Cruz del Sur, 1949).
See Baer, Jews in Christian Spain vol I, pp. 278–9, 434 n. 3.
It appears that despite the broad similarities between this trend and Savonarola’s spiritual apocalypticism, the latter explicitly opposed the temporal political approach. See Castro, Vivir hispanico, 27 n. 18. This important footnote also brings out the influence of certain streams of Spanish spiritual-political millenarianism on sixteenth and seventeenth century movements elsewhere in Europe.
Castro, Vivir hispanico, 22–3. For a similar comment, see Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne, 64–5 and n. 1 there. Many scholars miss a great deal by searching for influences on Spanish millenarianism only in the Jewish roots of the converso apocalyptics, without taking the unique converso condition itself into account as a related but independent factor. Bataillon acknowledges the difference only in a passing comment. An influence from either Judaism or the converso condition on messianic ideas need not render someone heretical in the Catholic church, especially when orthodoxy itself fluctuated considerably.
Nieto, “Franciscan Alumbrados,” 6.
Perhaps this situation is analogous to that of the Jews in Eastern Europe during the early 20th century. Most people dealt with the growing anti-semitism and shrinking economic base by either leaving for America or simply bearing up. Others, however, searched for a conclusive solution. The main competing ideologies were the autochthonous solution, socialism or Marxism; and the nationalist solution, Zionism. Both had messianic undertones.
See Michael Heyd, Be Sober and Reasonable’: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), Introduction and Chapter 1.
See e.g., Roth, Marranos, 193.
See Richard H. Popkin, “Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in Spain, 1492 and After,” Judaism 41 (1992), 248–67; idem, “Savonarola and Cardinal Ximines: Millenarian Thinkers and Actors at the Eve of the Reformation” (Paper presented at the Clark Library Conference on Catholic Millenarianism from Savonarola to the Eighteenth Century Jansenist Thinkers,“ 1998, forthcoming in conference proceedings volume).
On the difference between these two groups, as well as other groups of Alumbrados, see Nieto, Juan de Valdes, 56–9.
Bataillon, Érasme en l’Espagne, 65–75.
Nieto, “Franciscan Alumbrados,” 4–9.
Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth Century Spain: The Alumbrados (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1992), 65–71. For a detailed discussion of the “Judaizing” background of the Alumbrados dexados, see Melquiades Andres Martin, “Tradicion Conversa y Alumbramiento (1480–1487): Una Veta de los Alumbrados de 1525,” Studia Hieronymiana 1(1973), 381–98. While this article is less relevant to the issues of prophetic Alumbrados, it is very useful for understanding views about “true” and “false” conversos at the turn of the fifteenth century.
Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 382–7, 394–5; Gerard Nahon, “From Algarve to Rivtigo: New Chrisitians During David ha-Reuveni’s Travels in Portugal,” typescript in International Congress: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1474–1516) ¡ª Abstracts (Jerusalem, 1992), 63–4.
See e.g., Karl Kottman, Law and Apocalypse: The Moral Thought of Luis de Leon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972); idem, “The Messianism of Fray Luis de Leon” (Typescript of a paper presented at the UCLA Clark Library Conference on Catholic Millenarianism, 23–24 January 1998, forthcoming in conference proceedings volume); Catherine Swietlicki, Spanish Christian Cabala (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1986), Ch. 4–5. Oddly, Kottman’s paper has the least to do with de Leon’s actual messianism.
Kottman, Law and Apocalypse, 80.
Elias Lipiner discusses the debate about Bandarra’s converso background, which is still inconclusive. Lipiner, O sapateiro de Trancoso, 25–33.
See ibid. and also J. Lécio de Azevedo, A Evoluçâo do Sebastianismo (Lisbon: Livraria Clâssica Editora, 1947); Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, Ch. 7. Lipiner (1:1) emphasizes the strange way in which Europeans came to identify the Portuguese with Judaism in general, and with Jewish messianic thought in particular. This was closely related to the Jewish elements in Sebastianism.
See Antonio Jos¨¦ Saraiva, “Bocarro-Rosales and the Messianism of the Sixteenth Century,” in Menasseh ben Israel and His World ed. Y. Kaplan, H. M¨¦choulan and R.H. Popkin (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 240–3; Francisco Moreno-Carvalho, “Yaakov Rosales: Medicine, Astrology, and Political Thought in the Works of a Seventeenth-Century Jewish-Portuguese Physician,” Korot: The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science 10 (1993–4), 143–156.
Saraiva, “Bocarro-Rosales,” 243.
Antonio Jos¨¦ Saraiva, “Antonio Vieira, Menasseh ben Israel et le Cinquieme Empire,” Studia Rosenthaliana 6 (1972), 25–57; Jos¨¦ R. Maia Neto, “Epistemological Remarks on Vieira’s Millenarianism” (Paper presented at the Clark Library Conference on Catholic Millenarianism from Savonarola to the Eighteenth Century Jansenist Thinkers, 1998, forthcoming in conference proceedings volume.) Note that (with the exception of Rabbi Nathan Shapira, a complex case) essentially the only Jews who were even willing to talk to millenarian reformers like Vieira, La Peyrère and Hartlib were former conversos: Menasseh ben Israel, Jacob Judah Leon Templo, Jacob and Isaac Abendana, and Benedict Spinoza (in his persona as friend of the Collegiants.) I do not know how seriously to take Conde Bernadino de Rebolledo’s sarcasm in his poem to Dr. Juan de Prado, at the time of Queen Christina of Sweden’s arrival in Hamburg, where she stayed with the former converso Abraham Texeira. Rebolledo refers to Christina as the former conversos’ “unhoped-for messiah of the female gender.” See I.S. R¨¦vah, Spinoza et le Dr. Juan de Prado (Paris: Mouton, 1959), 279; Susanna Akerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), 196–7.
Roland Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus,1511–1553 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953), esp. 13, 145–7; Jerome Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case Study in Total Heresy (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978), esp. Ch. 12; idem, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1983); idem, “The Myth of Jewish Antiquity: New Christians and ChristianHebraica in Early Modern Europe,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, 41–5; Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), 1II:3; Richard H. Popkin, “Marranos, New Christians and the Beginnings of Modern Anti-Trinitarianism” (forthcoming).
Marion L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things; His Life and Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), esp. 16–7, 129–38 (quotation from 130.)
Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 133.
Popkin, La Peyrère, Ch. 8 (quotation from p. 102).
Popkin, La Peyrère, 23. On the question of La Peyrère’s converso background, see 20–3.
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Goldish, M. (2001). Patterns in Converso Messianism. In: Goldish, M.D., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 173. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2278-0_2
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