Marrano

The term marrano 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.

[1] The origin of the term Marrano as applied to crypto-Jews is unclear, since there have been several proposed etymologies in addition to swine.

The Hebrew word for מְשֻׁמָּד‎ Meshumad, literally standing for "self-destroyed" or a heretic to Judaism, for a Jew who deliberately rebels against the observance of Jewish law.

[2] However, as applied to Crypto-Jews, the term Marrano derives from the Spanish & Portuguese verb "marrar" and "amarrar" meaning "to fail", "to plan to go wrong", "to break away", "to defraud", "to target", "to tie up", "to refrain", "to deviate", "to clinch", "to moor", illuminating that those targeted and forced by the Spanish Crown had no choice but to adopt Christianity, either leave the Kingdom of Spain all while the Crown seized their property and money and gave them no support to leave, be murdered either for not showing complete loyalty to Christianity or for leaving Spain and coming back showing that these Jews were traitors to the Spanish Crown.

[1] José Meir Estrugo Hazán writes in his book Los Sefardíes[5] that "marrano" is the term the Spanish Jews prefer.

In the early 20th century, historian Samuel Schwartz wrote about crypto-Jewish communities discovered in northeastern Portugal (namely, Belmonte, Bragança, Miranda, and Chaves).

[citation needed] Two documentary films have been made in north-eastern Portugal where present-day descendants of marranos were interviewed about their lives.

In 1974 for The Marranos of Portugal, the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) sent reporter Ron Ben-Yishai to conduct interviews with families about their religious practice.

On April 17, 1506, several conversos were discovered who had in their possession "some lambs and poultry prepared according to Jewish custom; also unleavened bread and bitter herbs according to the regulations for the Passover, which festival they celebrated far into the night."

On the same day on which the conversos were freed, the Dominicans displayed a crucifix and a reliquary in glass from which a peculiar light issued in a side-chapel of their church, where several New Christians were present.

[citation needed] Attracted by the outcry, sailors from Holland, Zeeland and others from ships in the port of Lisbon, joined the Dominicans and formed a mob with local men to pursue the conversos.

The mob attacked the tax-farmer João Rodrigo Mascarenhas, a New Christian; although a wealthy and distinguished man, his work also made him resented by many.

Alfonso Gutierrez, Garcia Alvarez "el Rico" (the rich), and the Zapatas, conversos from Toledo, offered 80,000 gold crowns to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, if he would mitigate the harshness of the Inquisition.

In 1562, prelates petitioned the Cortes to require conversos 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.

Throughout Spain during this year, the cities of Ecija, Carmona, Córdoba, Toledo, Barcelona and many others saw their Jewish quarters destroyed and inhabitants massacred.

Instigated by two canons, Juan Alfonso and Pedro Lopez Galvez, the mob plundered and burned the houses of Alonso Cota, a wealthy converso and tax-farmer.

A local blacksmith started arousing a rabble against the Jews, who he blamed for the insult, which immediately joined in a fierce shout for revenge.

Later the resistance to the inquisitors was so strong that its aldermen ordered commissioners and attorneys to ask the Catholic Monarchs to limit the power of the Inquisition in 1510.

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.

The historian Henry Kamen's Inquisition and Society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries questions whether there were such strong links between conversos and Jewish communities.

They were soon so numerous that Fernando de Goes Loureiro, an abbot from Oporto, filled an entire book with the names of conversos who had drawn large sums from Portugal and had openly avowed Judaism in Italy.

Two years later, Pope Paul IV issued orders to have all the conversos in Papal states be thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition which he had instituted.

Conversos from Flanders, and others direct from the Iberian Peninsula, went under the guise of Catholics to Hamburg and Altona about 1580, where they established a community and held commercial relations with their former homes.

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.

The New Christians were panic-stricken and emigrants, legal or clandestine, headed for Flanders, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese possessions in India, North Africa.

After the middle of the century, England, France, the Spanish Americas and Brazil were the favorite destinations, not necessarily in that order.

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.

[citation needed] Late 20th century political and social changes in Spain caused reappraisal of Jewish and Muslim contributions to its culture.

[29] In 2004, Shlomo Moshe Amar traveled to Portugal to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Lisbon Synagogue "Shaare Tikvah".

Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar promised to create a committee to evaluate the Halachic situation of the community.