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Some twenty years ago, while investigating the circumstances
of the re-settlement of the Jews in this country under the
Protectorate, I was struck by the curious fact that that chief
figure in that movement, Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, and
several of his fellow adventurers, hailed from a little
archipelago in the East Atlantic, which had never before
figured in Jewish history, and which, so far as I know,
has not even yet found a place in that record. Carvajal had
considerable property in the Canaries, and seems to have spent
his early life at Santa Cruz. Duarte Henriques Alvares had
been Royal Treasurer in the islands, and his nephew, Antonio
Rodrigue Robles, whose sensational denunciation as a Spaniard
on the outbreak of the Spanish war in 1656 first revealed the
existence of the London Marano community, and successfully
established its rights of residence, had been his
Deputy-Treasurer. There was also reason to believe that
Carvaja's brother-in-law, Simon de Souza, and other relatives
and co-religionists of his who had joined him in England,
notably Domingo de la Cerda and Antonio de Porto, were
Canariote immigrants. With a view to throwing further light on
the personal histories of these men, and on the circumstances
which determined their eventful migration, I planned a visit
to Tenerife in the autumn of 1894. By a fortunate accident I
confided my project to the late Marquis of Bate, and was thus
spared a bootless journey. Some years earlier Lord Bute had
acquired the larger part of the original records of the
Canariote Inquisition, of which a general calendar, dealing
chiefly with Protestant and sorcery cases, has since been
printed under the editorship of Dr. de Gray Birch. These
valuable documents he was good enough to place at my disposal.
Since then I have had them carefully examined, and I am glad
to be able to tell you that a calendar of all the Jewish cases
figuring in them has now been completed, and that one of my
chief tasks in the office to which you have been good enough
to re-elect me in this society will be to edit and publish
this extremely valuable contribution to Jewish history
I propose to-night to give you a brief account of the hitherto
unknown history of our co-religionists in the Canaries as
revealed by these documents, reserving a more detailed study
for the introduction it will be my duty and privilege to
supply
to the calendar in its published form.
I.
Amador de los Rios in his " Historia de los Judios en
Espana " mentions the "islands of the Oceanic
Archipelagos" as having
afforded a refuge to some of the Jewish victims of the great
Iberian expulsion of 1492. That the Canaries were comprised
in this vague generalization is shown by the local historians,
Viera y Clavigo and Del Castillo, who expressly state that the
establishment of the Inquisition in those islands in 1504 was
due to the large number of Jewish outcasts from Spain who
had found an asylum there. From the Inquisition documents
themselves, however, we obtain more than one glimpse of a
community of Spanish Jews which had existed in the islands
before the Expulsion. According to a deposition made by an
aged
female in 1525 a family named Beltran lived openly as Jews in
Teneriffe as early as 1485, although the island was not
finally conquered! by the Spaniards until ten years later. In
1574 a record was discovered by the Inquisition stating that a
"Jewish heretic," named Rodrigo de Leon, was
prosecuted and "reconciled" by the ecclesiastical
authorities at Los Santos in 1490. A deposition made before
the Headquarters of the Holy Office in Seville and transmitted
to the Canariote Inquisitors in 1520 shows that there was an
early community in one of the islands the name is not given
duly equipped with a synagogue, a Jewish butcher shop, and a
Schochet ("matador de la carne de los Judios"), named
Rabbi David, and that .there was a brisk business in
"carne caser" or " kosher " meat. Jewish
funerals are also mentioned. For some years after the
expulsion from Spain this community led a normal life, and the
Jewish refugees seem to have remained unmolested. In 1499,
however, the Bishop Diego de Muros, acting as an
"Ordinary" or unofficial Inquisitor, set up an
enquiry into heresy. No one seems to have been prosecuted, but
evidence was collected establishing the existence of a
considerable number of Marranos in the islands, and of at
least one secret synagogue at San Lucar.
The fact that no action was taken on this evidence is
interesting as an early symptom of the difficulties with which
the Inquisition had to grapple throughout its career in the
islands. The Spanish settlers were from the outset a rough and
motley company. Far from the center of government, straddling
the great maritime highways which led to the New Worlds of the
East and West, they engaged in many prohibited enterprises.
Very soon they were hand and glove with all the nondescript
buccaneers and freebooters who made the Canariote creeks and
channels a rendezvous and a refuge in their illegal traffic
with the Spanish Main, and in their piratical forays against
the richly laden Portuguese galleons from Hindustan and Cathay.
On this traffic the commerce and agriculture of the islands
soon began to depend, and hence it became a common interest to
resist the monopolist policy of the Crown, and more especially
the desolating persecution of the Inquisition. Probably the
good Bishop found as some of his successors avowedly found
'that too close an enquiry into heresy was not calculated, to
swell the Church revenues, and with this view the secular
authorities, both royal and local, were perhaps in accord,
more especially as it applied with equal cogency to their own
material interests.
Unfortunately the mischief had already been done. It was not
long before an echo of the Bishop's discoveries reached the
"Suprema" at Seville, over which the zealous
Fiancisoo Diego Deza was then presiding in his capacity of
Inquisitor General of Andalusia. A summons to appear before
the Seville Tribunal was in due course issued to the chief of
the offenders on Muros's list, an influential Marrano resident
of Las Palrnas named Goncalo de Burgos. It appears that Burgos
had been tried and acquitted by the Seville Court once before,
and it was alleged against him in the Canariote depositions
that he had boasted of having outwitted, the Inquisitors. On
this occasion the Tribunal was again cheated of its prey, for
the caravel on which Burgos was conveyed to Spain was wrecked
off Cadiz in October, 1502, and Burgos was drowned. About the
same time orders were issued by the " Suprema " to
arrest another Marrano of Las Palmas, Luis Alvares, who was
reported to be the Eabbi of the local secret, synagogue, but
when the Alguazils appealed at his house, the lie had flown.
One of his congregants named Mayorga was, however, seized and
taken to Cordova, where he was convicted and burnt. These
fiascos seem to have convinced Deza of the necessity of
extending his net in a permanent form to the Canaries.
Moreover, he was then smarting from the failure of his famous
attempt to impose the Inquisition on the kingdom, of Naples in
the teeth of the Great Captain, Gonsalvo of Cordova, and it is
not difficult to understand that he should have been eager for
compensations elsewhere. However that may be, in 1504 he sent
Bartolome Lopez Tribaldos as his deputy to establish the Holy
Tribunal at Las Palmas, and the Commission was duly executed.
II.
During the firstl twenty years of its existence the Canariote
Office was exceedingly busy, but the results so far as
discoveries and punishments were concerned, were meagre. Held
between 1504 and 1510 the number of Marranos or New Christians
denounced to Tribaldos and his familiars was only thirty-four,
and in none of these cases were the circumstances held to
warrant 11 public Auto dn Fe. It is true that two Autos were
held, one in 1507 and the other in 1510, but they were
private, and the punishments inflicted belonged to the minor
categories of "Reconciliation " and
"Penitence." Nevertheless the evidence showed that
Marranism was widely and deeply rooted in the Archipelago.
Luis Alvams was back in Las Palmar and no fewer than five
informers denounced him as a Jew and as holding Judaical
meetings in his house. Similar evidence was given against one
Luis de Niebla, whose house was nicknamed "the little
synagogue," and another Marrano, Goncalo de Cordova, who
was accused of maintaining a secret synagogue in La Laguna. No
action appears to have been taken on these serious informations,
and when in 1507 the Inquisitors found themselves under the
necessity of doing something which should justify them at
Seville their wrath fell upon a quite insignificant Portuguese
Marrano named Juan de Ler, who, together with Ana Rodrigues,
accused of witchcraft, was " reconciled " in the
Cathedral. The Auto of 1510 was on a slightly more ambitious
scale. Four heretics, of whom one \\as a Mahominedan, were
"reconciled " with sambmito, and one Jew, Juan
Fernandez, was "penanced." The Jewish Reconciliados
were Pedro Dorador, Alvaro Esteves and Beatrice de la Cruz,
all accused of professing and teaching the Mosaic creed. Only
one of the prisoners, Pedro Dorador, was a person of
consequence, and his arrest for a time created a panic in the
Marrano community. He was one of Bishop Muros's cases in 1499
and he was known as a di.M-iplr of Lui Alvart.
The panic soon subsided and during the next fourteen years
very few Marranos were molested and none denounced. This does
not seem to have been due in any way to the edifying lives led
by the New Christians, or to a falling off in their
numbers. In 1519 the Vicar of La Palma reported to the
Bishop of Canary that the island was full of the so-called
"converts." We hear of a secret synagogue in
Santa Cruz and of another belonging to one Alvaro
Goncales, a prosperous wine-grower of a Palma, of whom we
shall hear more presently, which was frequented by many rich
Marrano merchants. In 1520 it was reported that many Marranos
sought to convert their slaves to Judaism, and one of them,
Gutierree de Ocana, a wealthy landowner nicknamed the
"King of Fuerteventura," tried to make the people of
his island keep the Saturday Sabbath. If the. Inquisitors
turned a blind eye ta these grave malpractices it! was
probably because both the civil authorities and the local
clergy feared the ruinous effects of a persecution. Quarrels
between them were incessant, and in 1521 the Chapter even sent
a deputation to Madrid to complain of Martin Ximenes, who had
succeeded Tribaldos as Inquisitor. The indifference of the
local clergy to heresy is amusingly illustrated by an incident
reported to the Inquisition in 1525. Diego Frances, a
"dog of a Jew," as the informer described him, was
alleged to have been seen to break a figure of the child Jesus
and throw the fragments into the fire. The wife of Anton de
Madalena promptly complained of this act of sacrilege to Juan
de Troya, the Parish priest. He, however, bundled her out of
his house, saying:
"Let him go to the Devil! What do you suppose I can do? I
cannot arrest him or punish him. The time will come when he
will pay for it."
Although Juan de Troya, good honest man, knew it not, the
spirit of prophecy was upon him when he uttered these words.
An evil time was indeed coming, not, perhaps, for Diego
Frances for we hear little more of him and his Judaical
image-breaking but for the whole heretical community tlo which
he belonged. Between 1523 and 1532 the happy Canaries the
Fortunate Islands of the early voyagers suffered a series of
calamities as strange as they were appalling. Plague broke out
in Grand Canary and ravaged the whole island, and in its wake
followed the horrors of famine. The inhabitants fled to the
neighboring islands, where they created a panie which speedily
took the form of religious exaltation. This was the
opportunity for the Inquisitor Ximenes, who at last found a
congenial public opinion to appeal to. The awful visitations
were pictured by him as manifestations of divine wrath on
account of the tolerance of Judaical and Mahommedan
backsliders, who celebrated in secret the rites of the
detestable heresies they had solemnly pledged themselves to
abandon. To appease the Almighty Don Martin set out on the
warpath against the heretics and laid his plans for n public
Auto da Fe on the tragical model of the Mother Church in
Seville. Towards the end of May, 1524, a batch of edicts were
promulgated in his name and duly published in the Cathedral
Church of St. Ana in Las Palmas. The first was a general
call for the extirpation of heresy and the confession of
erroneous practices. The second was aimed specifically at Jews
and Moors and gave an account of their religious and social
manners and customs at great length. This document is
exceedingly interesting as a record of the Jewish ceremonies
and customs which had survived among the Marranos, and was, of
course, very useful in enabling informers to detect the
heretics. A third edict prohibited masters, owners and
captains of ships, visiting, avoid leaving the Canariote
ports, from taking on board or giving passage abroad to
"converts or New Christians, converted to our Holy
Catholic Faith from Judaism " under pain of
excommunication and confiscation of their ships and other
property. The other edicts are not of specific Jewish
interest. The effect! of this appeal to the religious maniacs
was made apparent by the large number of denunciations which
poured into the Holy Office between 1524 and 1526. On these
denunciations formal prosecutions were founded, and eventually
eight 1 of the accused were condemned to be
"relaxed" or burnt alive, ten were
"reconciled" and two were "penanced"
Eleven of these unhappy creatures were Jews or Jewesses, six
figuring among the Kelaxados, four among the Icconciliados,
and one among the Pcnitenciados. The Jewish Relaxados were
AJvaro Gonfales, his wife Mencia Vaes, and his eldest son,
Silvestre Goncales, Maistre Diego de Valera, Pedro Gonfales
and Alonzo Yanez; the Ifcconciliados were Ana and Duarte
Goncales, son and daughter of Alvaro, Hector Mendes and Hernan
Rodrigues. The Pcnitenciado was Fernando Jaryam.
III.
Augustin Millares states in his "Historia de la
Inquisition en Islas Canarias " that all these
people suffered their penalties
on the same day February 24, 1526. This is an error. There
were two solemn burnings, one on February 24 and the other
a month later, while the non-capital sentences were executed
at intervals between the major functions. In the nrst batch oi
I!< !'ix ados were Alvaro Goncales and his son Siivestre,
Alonzo Yanez and Pedro Goncales. Alvaro Goncales was the most
important of the convicts. He had long been a marked man in I
he Archipelago As far back as 1506 he had been denounced
to the Inquisitors, and two further informations against him
were filed in 1519. He was born at Castil Blanco, in Portugal,
and was 70 years old when he was arrested. In his native Jewry
lie had acted as Rabbi, or Chazan, and he appears to have
been a person of some theological learning. In 1496, when, in
celebration of Don Manuel's marriage with the Spanish Infanta
Isabella, the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal was decreed,
Goncales joined the Roman Catholic Church with all his family.
The simulations of Marranism Avere, however, difficult for
him. and he soon fovind himself compelled to fly the country.
For three years he lived at Gibraleo, and then migrated to San
Miguel, in the Azores. Here he was arrested for sacrilege,
but, together with other imprisoned New Christians, managed to
break gaol and escape. He arrived in the Canaries in 1504, and
settled in La Palma, where he carried "n a shoe-making
business*, and acquired some vineyard property. According to
the evidence given at his trial, he and his family lived as
orthodox Jews. He killed his meat in the Jewish fashion,
observed the fasts and festivals, and kept open house for the
other Marrano residents in La Palma on Friday evenings, when
he inaugurated the Jewish Sabbath in orthodox fashion. He
refused to allow his slaves to be baptized, and he did not
scruple to speak his mind of Christianity. When one of his-
"Old Christian" neighbors taunted him with being a
Jew, he replied that it was "better to be a good Jew than
a bad Christian." After a trial lasting from October,
1524, until January, 1526, he was convicted of heresy and
perjury, and sentenced to be handed over gagged to the civil
power, and to confiscation of his property. Although
throughout the trial he denied the charges alleged against
him, he made no secret of his fidelity to Judaism when he was
being led to the stake.
The trial of his son Silvestre followed a similar course, with
the exception that he was submitted to torture in order to
extract from him a confession that would incriminate his
father. This cruel device failed, and Silvestre also was
"relaxed" as an impenitent heretic and perjurer.
The third Gonzales, who suffered death on February 24, was not
a relative of the other two. Pedro or Solomon Gonzales was the
public executioner, and we are told that he was in receipt of
a salary of 2,000 maravedis per annum from the Crown. He made
no secret of the insincerity of his Christianity. A Jew of
Castile, he had accompanied his father into exile in 1492, but
he returned six years later and was baptized. In 1505 he
settled in the Canaries, where he soon became known as a
Judaiser. He had a taste for theological controversy, and he
once expounded the Jewish view of the Crucifixion to a
prebendary of the Cathedral with a good deal of learning and
outspokenness. At his trial he denied nothing except that his
outward demeanor had been in any way contrary to the
requirements of the Church. Asked whether since his conversion
ha had entertained doubts concerning Christianity, he answered
frankly: "Sometimes, in seeing Christians act contrary to
the laws of their Church, I remember how faithfully the Jews
kept the commandments of their Church, and I remember that a
Jew is allowed but one wife and should know no other woman,
while Christians have one, two or more, and that in other
matters the Jews are more faithful to their teachings than the
Christians to theirs. Moreover, the Jews are honest, while the
Christian?, like the beasts of the field, prey upon one
another." After this avowal,
of course, his doom was sealed.
The fourth Reclarado on February 24 was Alonzo Yanez, a native
of Villaviciosa, in Portugal and a farmer in Teneriffe. The
documents relating to his case are scanty, and Millares in his
list excludes him from the Judaieers. It is true that in the
first instance he was arrested only on a charge of heresy, but
the sentence on him expressly states that he was found guilty
of "professing and teaching the deadly creed of the
Jews!"
In the second execution on March 24 the Reclarados were Mencia
Vaes, the wife of Alvaro Goncales, and Maistre Diego de Valera.
Like her husband, Mencia Vaee was a native of Caitil Blanco.
Her life story was similar to his, and her trial pursued very
much the same course. Diego de Valera was a friend of Alvaro
Goncales. Although he had been long suspected of heresy, it
was not until he publicly showed his sympathy with Goncales
during the Auto da Fe on February 24 that he was arrested and
prosecuted. It was then discovered that he was a Lisbon Jew,
who before the expulsion of 1496 had been known ns Isaac Levi.
On his baptism he received the name of Diego de Valera, and
for a time was in the King's service as a surgeon. He
accompanied the expedition of Diogo d'Azumbuja to Morocco in
1507, and, after the annexation of Safi, was given a post in
the administration of that town. Why and when he settled in
the Canaries we are not told. His trial lasted only a few
days, the charges against him being that he was a regular
frequenter of the Jewish conventicle held at Alvaro Goncales'
s house, and that at the Auto de Fe of February 24 he went up
to Goncales and congratulated him on dying a Jew. On March 21
he was found guilty of reverting to "the deadly
creed" and duly sentenced.
Of the four teronriliados and one Penitenciado little need be
said. Indeed, in the cases of two of the Reconciliados, Hector
Mendes and Hernan Rodrigues, all the documents are missing,
and al! we know of them is that they were condemned to a
public abjuration of Judaism with confiscation of property,
and the attendant civil disqualifications. The other two,
Duarte and Ana Goncalos, were children of Alvaro. Ana was the
wife of an "Old Christian" named Pedro Hernandez,
who had long been at feud with her father, and was largely
responsible for his prosecution. She and her brother both
confessed after their father's death and when a confession
could no longer compromise him. The following paragraph in the
record of Duarte's examination throws an ironic light on the
methods of the Inquisition in extorting confessions :
Asked why he had not confessed before he replies that he had
always believed what his father had taught him until two days
ago when lie was present at the Auto in which his father and
his brother were burnt, and learnt then that the faith, of
Jesus Christ is the true faith, and that this witness has been
in error.
How enduring this lesson was is shown by another Auto da Fe to
which I shall refer presently. Ths one Jewish Penitenciado
Fernando Jaryam was a choleric Spanish notary whose habit of
blasphemous language had long been the scandal and wonderment
of the saintly people of Las Palmas. All was explained when
one day in May, 1525, Sebastian Valera came forward and
declared that while traveling in Morocco he had met a Jew
named Jaryam who had told him that Fernando was his brother,
and that both had been born as Jews at San Lucar de Barremeda.
How he had brought himself within the clutches of the
Inquisition, however, does not appear.
IV.
Contented with his tragical act of propitiation Ximenes
retired from the post of Inquisitor in the following year and
was succeeded by Luis de Padilla. The plague still raged in
Canary, and the extirpation of heresy consequently remained
necessary as an antidote to the scourge. Padilla followed
zealously in Ximenes's footsteps, and held two more public
Autos, one in 1530 and the other in 1534. In comparison with
the great Auto of 1526, 'however, they were poor affairs.
Victims were no longer easy to find. Marranism had been taught
a terrible lesson. The leading Nuevos Christianas had
disappeared, and those who remained took care to give no
offence to the Holy Office. Denunciations of Jewish practices
were still forthcoming but they were few and trivial. The sort
of information with which Padilla had to deal is illustrated
by the following note of a deposition dated May, 1527: Aldonca
de Vergas y Vargas smiled when she heard mention of Our Lady
the Virgin Mary, which caused her to be suspected of being a
Christiana, Nueva.
Nevertheless the Jewish Reconciliados were obtained for the
second Auto, and there would have been one Kelaxado in person,
a certain Juan de Tarifa, had he not cheated the stake by hanging
himself in prison the night before. The Auto had to be content
with his dead body. None of these cases present any features
of special interest. In the third Auto were two Jewish
reclarados who were burnt in effigy and one Reconnliado. The
reclarados were Duarte Gon pales, the younger son of Alvaro
Goncales, who, it will be remembered, was converted to
Christianity by the edifying spectacle of his father and
brother at the stake in the Auto of 1526, and hie uncle Duarte
Perez. Both had managed to escape to Cape Verd, where
they had rich relations. In the case of the recontiliado,
Pedro Berruyo, no documents have been preserved.
Ths ensuing hundred years were comparatively uneventful so far
as the crypto-Jews were concerned. All traces of the permanent
community had been uprooted by the great Auto, and although
Jews never ceased in the islands, they were more or less birds
of passage, who recognized that the old immunities were gone,
and that the same vigilant prudence and dissimulation were
required at Las Palmas or Santa Cruz as in Seville or Lisbon.
The plague finally disappeared in 1532, and the islands
resumed their normal easy-going life. For twenty-three years
the Inquisition remained idle, and during the whole of that
period not a single case of Judaism was reported to it. When,
in 1557, it ventured on another Auto, it had only Mohammedans
and Dutch Lutheran sailors to deal with, and even then the
majority were condemned in coniumaciam. But even this proof of
solicitude for the orthodoxy of the islands does not seem to
have been relished by the inhabitants, for it was followed in
1562 by a violent conflict between Padilla and the
municipality. This state of affairs gave great dissatisfaction
at Seville, and the " Suprema " ordered the reorganization
of the local Inquisition with larger powers. An independent
inquisitor was appointed in the person of Diego Ortiz de Funez,
who, with 20 noble familiars, landed at Las Lsletos in 1568,
and at once promulgated the Royal letters commanding obedience
to him. In the following year a fifth Auto was held, and
one Jew named Pedrianis, who had been denounced in 1524, was
penanced with ten years in the galleys. There were also three
non-Jewish Reclarados in effigy and a score of other
Penitenciados.
With all Funez's energy, the supply of Judaisers remained
exceedingly scanty. In 1570 he sent Bravo y Zayas on a tour of
the Archipelago to hunt up heretics and collect denunciations,
but the offences reported to him were for the most part
ludicrously trivial, and although he transmitted six cases of
suspected Marranism to Las Palmas, not one of them was found
qualified for the. sixth Auto, which was held in 1574. At the
seventh Auto, in 1676, one Jew, Juan Yanez, was relaxed in
effigy, and at the eighth, in. 1561, a crypto-Jeweee, Catalina
Nunez, was penanced, but here the list ends. In the remaining
three public Autos, in 1587, 1591, and 1597, no Jews or
Marrianos figured. Sixty years later there was a Jewish case,
to which I shall refer presently, but technically it was not
one of the ordinary public Autos, of which none were held
after 1597.
V.
The revival of Marranism in the Canaries dates from the first
quarter of the seventeenth century. The peace between England
and Spain in 1604 gave a great impetus to the sugar and wine
trades of the Archipelago, in which the Marranos of Lisbon,
and the Jews of Bayonne, Nantes, Rouem, Bordeaux, Rochelle and
Amsterdam were largely interested. It became necessary for
these Jewish merchants to pay occasional visits to the islands
to look after their interests, and gradually some of them
resettled in Teneriffe and La Palma. The immigration was
vastly increased by the outburst against the New Christians in
Portugal, and especially at Coimbra, where between 1612 a.nd
1630 no fewer than ten. great Auto da Fes were held. In 1631
the Inquisition took action against the immigrants, and a
number of denunciations were collected during the ensuing six
years. The investigation disclosed the existence of quite a
colony of rich Jewish merchants in La Laguna. Most of them
were refugees from Portugal who had narrowly escaped the
clutches of the Inquisition, and whose relatives in many cases
had perished at the stake in Lisbon and Coimbra. The
depositions give detailed accounts of their family history.
The most conspicuous of them was Fernan Pinto, who exported
wine in his own ships to Holland, receiving British
manufactures in return. He eventually escaped to Amsterdam. It
was probably this investigation and the persecution it
threatened which drove Carvajal to emigrate to England, for we
find the name of his brother Jorge Fernandez in the list of
suspects for 1631, and in his petition for Denization in 1655
he states that he had then been resident in England "for
20 years and upwards."
In 1641 a fresh immigration of Marranos arose out of the
abortive Lisbon conspiracy of that year to re-establish the
Spanish domination in Portugal, in which many rich and
influential New Christians were involved. It will be
remembered that when Duarte Henriques Alvares gave evidence in
the Robles case in London in 1656 he was asked how it was that
his nephew being a Jew could venture to live in the Canaries,
whereupon he replied that "the Portugalls who took part
with the King of Spain were free -to live in his
territories." This does not seem to have been true of
Robles, but it was true of Alvares himself and of many others,
for about this date we find numerous references in the
Canariote documents to New Christians who were living in the
islands "on licence " and consequently were free
from the attentions of the Inquisition so long as the
spuriousness of their Christianity was not openly flaunted.
The Inquisition, however, still tried to make itself
disagreeable to the Marranos, but its action was limited
partly by public opinion, which would not tolerate any serious
interference with the flourishing trade then growing lip with
England and Holland, and in which the Jews were an important
element, and partly by a shrewd sense of its own material
interests which, as it explained in 1654 in a petition to the
King against restrictions on the wine trade, were bound up
with the prosperity of the vineyards on the ground-rents of
which its revenues largely depended.
From
this time forward the local Jewish interest of the Canariote
documents becomes subordinate to their Anglo- Jewish interest.
My hope that they would serve to throw some fresh light on the
lives of the founders of our community and on the
circumstances of the Resettlement in 1655-56 was not
disappointed. Quite a number of members of the little
congregation which worshipped in Creechurch Lane under the
wardenship of Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, at the time of
Menasseh ben Israel's visit to London, appear in these
documents together with much information concerning their
social and political status.
The first name we come across is that of Diego Rodrigues
Aries, whose existence as a Loiidon Marrano was first revealed
when he appeared as a witness in the Robles case in 1656. His
name is entered on the prisons' register for 1653. It appears
that Aries was a native of Marchena in Andalusia. After living
for some years in Amsterdam he migrated to London in 1651 and
was known there as a Jew. He was a shipowner and he came to La
Cruz in January, 1653, in one of his own ships to take in a
cargo of wine. While in the port he was denounced by a
coloured man who had served him in London. and he was arrested
in the house of his brother-in-law, Gonpnle Rodrigues Vaez. He
does not appear to have been kept in prison very long, for in
the following year he was back in London, and there is no
record of any punishment having been inflicted upon him.
The next names are those of Duarte Henriques Alvares and his
nephew Antonio Rodrigues Robles. Alvarez occupied a great deal
of the attention of the Inquisitors owing to the high official
position he had held in the Islands. As we know he had been
the local treasurer, and Robles had been his deputy. He
settled in the Canaries in 1641 and married a lady named de
Rojas, apparently an "Old Christian," by whom he had
two sons, Tomas and Diego de Rojas. Left a widower he fell in
love with a Jewess named Leila Henriques, while on a visit to
Amsterdam. Returning to the Canaries he realized as much of
his property as he could and then fled to Holland where he was
married in the synagogue. In 1653 he settled in London, and
sent to the Canaries for his two sons. Owing to the reports
which were received of his life in London, where he was a
model of Jewish orthodoxy, the Inquisition solemnly sentenced
him to be relaxed in effigy in 1658, and a special Auto da Fe
was held for the purpose. In 1665 his eldest son Tomas got
into the hands of some Jesuit priests in London, who at his
request sent him back to the Canaries. There he appeared
before the commissioner of the Inquisition at Orotava and
solemnly denounced his father as a Jew.
Concerning Robles, whose life was set out in detail in his
case before the Admiralty Commissioners in London in 1656, no
fresh facts of any importance are given. The other London Jews
1 referred to in the various reports received by the
Inquisition from London are Antonio Fernandes Carvajal,
Domingo Rodrigues Francia and Jorge Francia, Domingo de la
Cerda, Joseph Carre,ra y Coligo, Lourenco Rodrigues Liudo and
Manuel Lindo. We also hear of two Jews in Dublin in 1662,
Manuel Pereira and Jaques Faro. Some of these names are new to
you". The most interesting of them is Lourenco Rodrigues
Lindo. He was in London in 1653, but returning to the Canaries
was arrested in 1656, together with his wife Perpetua and his
uncle and aunt, Goncalo and Lucina Rodrigues Vaes. Lucina
Rodrigues was a sister of Diego Aries, and all were residents
in Teneriffe. After his release from prison, Lourenco Lindo
emigrated with his wife to London, where, as Isaac Lindo, he
founded a family which has ever since been honorably connected
with the Anglo-Jewish community, and which is the only founder
family that has perpetuated itself in the community in the
male line. Lourenco Lindo was a nephew of Carvajal, his mother
and Dona Maria Carvajal being sisters. These ladies were of
the Nunez family of La Guarda, one of the hotbeds of
Lusitanian Marranism, who had been known for generations as
^tiff-necked Judaisere. In 1650 one of Lourenco Lindo'*
brothers, Antonio Rodrigues Lintlo, was a Reconciliado in the
Lisbon Auto de Fe, and about the same time his maternal uncle,
Antonio Fernandez Nunez a brother-in-law of Carvajal was
awaiting his trial in the Inquisition dungeons at Lima.
With regard to the question of the date of the Resettlement of
the Jews in this country which, with every deference to Dr.
Gastey and Mr. Henriques, I hope is no longer a question the
Canariote documents confirm the traditional view which fixes
it at 1655-56 that is the period which covers the Whitekail
Conference and the Robles case. On this point I will content
myself with quoting only two documents. The first ira,
deposition made before the Inquisitors in the City of Canary
on March 10, 1660, by Friar Mathias Pinto, a defender of the
Order of St. Francis lor the province. He relates that dm mi;
a sojourn in England in 1658 he had had occasion to visit
Anton" Fernandas Carvajal in order to cash a letter of
credit for 1,000 ducats. The deposition proceeds :
Having seen him frequently, he on several occasions told this
deponent that he had been a Jew from the time that the
Protector Cromwell had broken the peace with Syain, and many
times he was wont to take this deponent's hands in is and say
: " Don Mathias, although I am a Jew, we shall all meet
in Heaven."
The other is dated September 4, 1665, and runs as follows:
Letter from Don Francisco Porteros de la Vega to the
Commissioner of the Inquisition at Garachico stating that
because of information received, that since the year 1655,
when disturbances arose between England and Spain, many
Portuguese have left Spanish territory to establish themselves
in England and follow the Jewish religion, it is advisable
that the Catholics who have arrived at the islands in the ship
which came there for Don Christoval de Aponte should be
examined on the matter.
What this contemporary testimony means is quite clear. It
fixes the outbreak of the war with Spain, in 1655 that is to
say, the spring of 1656 N.S., when the Kobles case was
investigated as the date when the Jews in England were able to
throw off their mask and live openly as Jews. The facts that
Carvajal himself says so, and that Jews had emigrated from
Spain to England on the strength of it, seem to me conclusive.
It will be noted that the author of the second document had
apparently never heard of Charles II. in the matter, although,
when he wrote, the alleged Carolian Charter to the Jews which
has so beguiled Dr. Gaster was thirteen months old.
Let me add to this rapid survey of these interesting
documents, which I give you only as a rough installment of our
program for the coming session, that we shall also publish in
connexion with them the lists of Jewish cases in the archives
of the Lisbon Inquisition which were prepared for us some
years ago by M. Cardozo de Bethencourt. The volume will thus,
I ami sure, prove a valuable contribution to Jewish history,
but I am hoping that it will prove still more valuable as an
incentive and guide to original research, for which there is
an illimitable field in the Spanish and Portuguese!
inquisition, and of which I am afraid this society has had
much too little during the last ten yeans.
Sent by Bill Carmena JCarm1724@aol.com
Beprinteil
from TBB JKVVISU WORLD by OKAS. Siiivuijt A.XD SONS, LTD.,
Bisliopsgate Avenue, Camomile Street, London, E.G.
|
Posted Feb 24, 2010
New
York - Leaders of the New York Army National Guard's 1st Battalion,
69th Infantry, the Army's famous "Fighting 69th," will pay
their final respects in California this weekend to Alejandro R. Ruiz,
a former comrade and Medal of Honor recipient.
CORPUS
CHRISTI
During his 28-year tenure, the tribe constructed an industrial park and the Pearl River Resort, with two casinos, a golf club and a water park, on its land in rural Mississippi.
Associated Press, February 6, 2010 
LOS ANGELES --
Jaime Escalante, the Los Angeles math teacher whose inspirational
career was made famous in the 80s hit movie "Stand and
Deliver" is battling cancer. His family has run out of money to
pay for his medical bills.
A Sonora, CA man turned adversity into innovation by creating a specialized boot to protect dogs from the elements.
Jim Leal thought his dog, Baxter, an Australian shepherd and boxer mix, was
indestructible. Then Leal, 43, took Baxter on a hike in the Emigrant Wilderness in the summer of 2009.
I
arrived a little late to Rafael Jesús González's reading and book
presentation and I was pleasantly surprised to see many familiar faces in
the audience. He was in between poems and Rafael calmly called my
name and suggested that I sit in an available chair closer to the stage.
After sitting down, Rafael started reading the poem "Moon chased by
dogs" and I let myself be enveloped in the message of the poem:
"There are mad dogs let loose in the world." Indeed.
San
Antonio Police Officer Pedro Garcia saved the life of one critically
wounded officer and helped rescue another in a shootout in the city’s
South Side last September. For his quick thinking and daring action, the
33-year-old father of two has been named 2009 Police Officer of the Year
by PARADE and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He and
12 other officers will be honored Tuesday in Denver at the IACP’s
annual convention.
In the summer of 1945 airmen of the Mexican Air Force flew combat missions along with their American Allies. Mexico's Escuadrón 201, The Aztec Eagles, equipped with Republic P-47D Thunderbolt fighter aircraft distinguished themselves in providing close air support to American ground units as well as long-range bombing strikes deep into Japanese held territory.
FULLERTON - Frederick Aguirre was 8 or 9 when he attended his
first district meeting of the League of United Latin American
Citizens. The Orange County gatherings always included the Pledge
of Allegiance, a prayer for guidance and a talk by a politician or
prominent member of the Mexican-American community.
Washington DC (March 10, 2010) Congresswoman
Loretta Sanchez honored Silvia Ichar, publisher of PARA TODOS magazine
during her speech celebrating Women's History Month.
Growing up in Sacramento, Steve Yee, now 56, remembers piling into
his father's big Pontiac Streamliner to visit the Ong family
association. The group's members welcomed his father in a Cantonese
dialect and addressed him as one of their own.
The
Lakota elders had a dream. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski had a vision. His
wife, Ruth, and seven of his 10 children now have a mission.
The reservation is occupied by the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara
tribes, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, who were placed in
west-central North Dakota by the federal government in the 1800s –
long before anyone knew of the oil.
Martes
11 de febrero
Francisco
Ignacio Madero fue un hombre bueno y bien intencionado,
quizá fue demasiado bueno y por eso abusaron de él.
Los preceptos democráticos de Madero fueron tan
avanzados para el México de principios de Siglo XX,
que 100 años después, nuestro país no ha encontrado
la perfección deseada en la democracia. Desde luego
que ha habido avances, pero ha pasado ¡Un Siglo! El
pueblo de México aún tiene ‘Hambre y sed de
Justicia” –entiéndase de libertad y democracia-;