The New Christian Image

chapter 3 The New Christian Image

3.1 Terminology

The majority of authors had the bad habit – inherited from medieval polemicists and in fact common within the era’s perception of History and time – of lumping together Jews of ancient times and those of their own.1 Portuguese authors exac- erbated this tendency by writing about New Christians, who were legally Catholic, as if they were Hebrews escaped from Egypt or Jews from the time of the Talmud. Certain texts describe “some of the punishments with which the Lord tried to bring Israelites to obedience, the departure from Egypt, the life and death of Moses” or “the various states of the Hebrew Republic until the birth of Christ our Lord.”2 Although these descriptions serve as the foundation for the actual polem- ical parts of the texts in which they are included, we will not analyse them. Rather, we will focus more specifically on the opinion and the image that authors had of the ‘Jews of their time,’ or in other words, of the Iberian New Christians. This confusion of terms between Hebrew, Jew, and New Christian meant the designation of those who practiced Judaism or their descendants was in no way uniform. Generally speaking, New Christians were associated with Jews. However, for some writers this was deliberate, while for others, it was not. Moreover, there appear to have been two parallel models in Portugal for cate- chizing Jews, at least in certain environments.3 An example of an alternative point of view was the House of Catechumens in Lisbon, which focused mainly at the conversion of Jews and Muslims from the North of Africa, and not of New Christians.

1 About the History of distinction between past and present, see Zachary S. Schiffman, The Birth of the Past, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. 2 “Alguns dos castigos com que o Senhor tratou de reduzir os Israelitas, a sahida do Egypto, vida, & morte de Moyses” … “de varios estados que tuuo la republica Hebrea hasta el nas- cimiento de Christo nuestro Señor.” Vicente da Costa Matos, Breve discurso, op. cit. (1622), Chp. V, and Luis da Apresentação, Demonstracion evangelica, op. cit., Book 3, Chp. 2. 3 Cf. Claude Bernard Stuczynski, “Subsídios para um estudo de dois modelos paralelos de ‘cate- quização’ dos judeus em Portugal”, in N. Falbel, A. Milgram and A. Dines (orgs.), Em nome da fé. Estudos in memoriam de Elias Lipiner, São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1999, pp. 173–202. Regarding the House of Catechumens, see also José Alberto da Silva Tavim, “Educating the Infidels Within: Some Remarks on the College of the Catechumens of Lisbon (xvi–xvii Centuries)”, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 5 (2009), pp. 445–472.

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The study of terminology is important for several reasons. It can reveal not only the image authors had of New Christians, but also, more explicitly, the idea that they had of themselves. Early Modern Portuguese society was marked not only by the transformation of Jews into New Christians, but also by the appearance of the term ‘Old Christian.’ Iberian societies created and ended up establishing a new binomial, non-existent in other regions of Europe. From the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, in addition to the typical differentia- tions of an estate-based society that separated men and women, nobles and plebs, clerics and lay, free and slaves, a new differentiation was created between Old Christians and New Christians.4 Naming is the means of appropriating what is named. Equally, the name chosen provides information about the type of relationship established between who gives the name and what is being named. In the case of polemi- cal literature, the choice of words is crucial, since the manifest intention of these texts is to combat the named object, and the name chosen to designate this object constituted a very important weapon in this fight. The terminology used by authors of the Portuguese polemics gives an idea, sometimes quite clearly, of the image they had of New Christians. It is also an outline of their own image, reflected in the mirror of their prejudices. The term ‘New Christian’ is the paradigmatic example of this phenomenon. It is little used and then, only in a strict sense, both theological and racial. New Christians are Jews who converted to Catholicism and their descendants. It is probably this reference to Christianity which makes authors despise the term, a contempt that reveals what the writers of these texts thought of the sincerity of this conversion and their suspicion of former Jews’ Catholicism. At the same time, they designate themselves the sole holders of Catholic orthodoxy. In the prologue to his Breve Discurso contra a perfídia do judaísmo, Vicente da Costa Matos states bluntly that “the name of Jews, like that of Hebrews and Israelites, is generic, and that of New Christians, particular to those who, from any law or sect are reduced to ours as new plants, with little foundation; those who unreason- ably are fond of them would find strange that those here at stake be called Jews (and which they are in truth), since they profess Judaism tacitly or even openly.”5 By refusing to call the New Christians as such, Costa Matos and other authors

4 Regarding the emergence of the differentiation between Old and New Christians on the Iberian Peninsula, Albert Sicroff’s work is still indispensable, Les controverses des statuts de ‘pureté de sang’, op. cit. 5 “O nome de Iudeus, como o de Hebreos, & Israelitas, he generico & o de Christaõs nouos particular, nos que de qualquer ley ou seita [que] se reduzem a nossa por plantas nouas nella, com pouco fundamento estranharaõ os que desmarcadamente [?] saõ seus afeiçoados, chamar Judeus a este de que trato (& o saõ de verdade) pois tacita, ou expressamente profes- saõ o judaismo.” Vicente da Costa Matos, Breve Discurso, op. cit. Prologue.