Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies

Blood and Faith

Ronnie Perelis

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780253024091
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

Identity, family, and community unite three autobiographical texts by New World crypto-Jews, or descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 17th-century Iberia and Spanish America. Ronnie Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of crypto-Jewish activity. Each text, reflects the unique experiences of the author and illuminates their shared, deeply rooted attachment to Iberian culture, their Atlantic peregrinations, and their hunger for spiritual enlightenment. Through these writings, Perelis focuses on the social history of transatlantic travel, the economies of trade that linked Europe to the Americas, and the physical and spiritual journeys that injected broader religious and cultural concerns into this complex historical moment.

1 Audience and Archive

Text, Context, and the Literary Construction of Experience

THE TEXTS AT the center of this study present themselves as straightforward narratives with a clearly defined goal in mind. Montezinos’s Relación de Antonio de Montezinos reports to the Sephardic congregation of Amsterdam regarding his experiences with the Reubenites in South America and their message of hope to Jews of the diaspora. Luis de Carvajal and Manuel Cardoso de Macedo both tell their readers explicitly that they wrote their spiritual autobiographies in order to recount the glory of God’s providence in the world as exemplified in their life stories. However, these texts go beyond their stated purpose. In the process of telling their story, they spill over specific generic parameters and become multivalent narratives which engage in a variety of generic practices.

It is my contention that, as is the case with so many other early modern autobiographic texts, these narratives exhibit a great degree of hybridity. By appreciating the complex textures of each one, we can better understand its composition and relationship to its intended audience(s). This chapter explores the generic practices employed in the three texts and considers the impact of their possible audience(s) on their composition. I want to show how the texts participate within a wider network of writing—in terms of content but more importantly in terms of structure—which I term their “archive.”¹

Montezinos, Carvajal, and Cardoso produced hybrid texts that partake of multiple generic practices to achieve their particular ends. In the early modern Iberian context the shape of a personal narrative would be inspired by or in dialogue with many of the official forms of self-narratives that were composed for juridical or religious purposes, such as the relación, the confession, and vidas de monjas (nun’s lives), as well as the discurso de la vida, which begins most inquisitorial interrogations. In the following pages I will explore some aspects of the generic archive out of which these texts developed. My hope is to make the texts more intelligible by inscribing them within certain recognizable generic practices while at the same time highlighting how they employ those practices in creative and subversive ways.

The Relación and the Variety of Early Modern Autobiographic Writing²

¿Hay algo más novelesco que la autobiografía?
Miguel de Unamuno³

The diverse, unexpected, and bizarre circumstances surrounding the discovery, conquest, and colonization of the Americas created a situation wherein many of the individuals involved in this imperial project had to report back to their king. Many of these accidental authors were soldiers, sailors, merchants, or clergy who were not trained as humanists—many were barely literate—yet their need to report to their superiors, defend their innocence, or demand their just reward drove them to write their relaciónes. These texts were inscribed within the norms and expectations of the notarial arts, but because of the variety of circumstances, the varying literary skills of the authors, and the sheer number of relaciónes we begin to see texts that partake of those rhetorical structures—formal address, attention to the facts of a case, and the author’s thinly veiled self-interested advocacy for himself—but transcend their standard parameters and become hybrid texts treating varied aspects of the authors’ experiences and reflections on the new worlds they encountered. The “literary” nature of these texts—the ways they reflect a subjective grappling with existential issues—found its way into what should otherwise have been dry notarial records because of the heterogeneity of the individuals who wrote them and the often extraordinary experiences they recount.

Thus, Montezinos’s Relación and the vidas of Carvajal and Cardoso, despite presenting themselves as a prima facie “record” or “report” about their author’s experience, are in fact multivalent texts that engage in a range of generic practices and employ different narrative modes to tell their stories. These diverse modes of telling complex stories not only pave the way for the creative fancy of fiction, but also point to the constructed nature of language and expand the range of what can be written and communicated. From this perspective, the relación—that ubiquitous and supremely utilitarian form of bureaucratic communication—becomes a generic omnibus, a wide-open space for individuals to tell their messy and layered stories. Later in this chapter we will look at other modes of autobiographic discourse and the ways they bleed into each other and inform Carvajal’s, Cardoso’s, and Montezinos’s narratives. Before turning to this broader analysis, however, I focus on Montezinos’ Relación and its generic construction.

Antonio de Montezinos’ Relación and the Documentation of the Fantastic

All of which I wrote down with such certainty that although within it [the account] one reads certain very new things, and for some they might be difficult to believe, however, they can be believed without a doubt.

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca⁴

Montezinos’s Relación presents itself as a straightforward report of Antonio de Montezinos’s experiences in the Andes. It begins by noting the date and location where the report was given and the audience before whom it was “declared.” The reader is also informed of the names by which the author of the report is known. “On the 18th of Elul of the year 5404, which according to the secular reckoning is [1]644, there arrived to this town of Amsterdam Aharon Levi who in another time in Spain was known as Antonio de Montezinos, and he declared before a diverse group of the Portuguese nation the following report.”⁵ Despite its reference to the Hebrew date, this scribal introduction to the Relación functions within the basic patterns of Spanish notarial writing and shares its trust in the written and authorized word. The exact dates, the clarification of the subject’s identity, and the presence of witnesses who heard Montezinos’s report follow the guidelines of Spanish legal discourse, which “gave formal, bureaucratic bonding and approval to what the documents contained.”⁶

The recorded text of Montezinos’ narrative employs the legal formulae common to the relación and to contemporary Iberian juridical discourse. It begins with the date and location where the story begins and goes on to provide more dates, locations, and names of individuals whom Montezinos encountered. These details are important for his crafting of a believable story. While his reference to the Indian “Francisco” will become significant as the story unfolds, the mestizo mule driver, “Francisco del Castillo,” who is never mentioned again, seems to have no importance for his tale, except that the inclusion of his name strengthen its sense of verisimilitude. I do not consider such a detail a fabrication. The Relación, along with so many other “factual reports” of the period, made ample use of the details of its author’s experience in order to anchor the narrative in a reality recognizable to its readers.

As a comparison, a more “canonical” example of this rhetorical move can be found in the first chapter of the relación that eventually became known as the Naufragios (Castaways) of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca begins his account with the date that the expedition began, the name of the captain and the other officers of the fleet, where they first set anchor, and so on.⁷ In order to give a “true account” Cabeza de Vaca is compelled to include the names of people and places and the series of dates when events of little note occurred regardless of whether or not they will become important to his overall narrative project(s). These details ground his relación within the real and the “verifiable” so that those parts that are essential to his self-presentation as a valiant and responsible leader deserving of reward are part of a larger constellation of “real” events. This is not to assert that Cabeza de Vaca invented these details. Instead, I argue that while they appear superfluous to the narrative, in actuality they are essential to supporting its larger project of presenting a “true” report.

The Naufragios and Montezinos’s Relación share certain thematic and rhetorical commonalities. Both tell the story of a journey into unknown American territory. The protagonists assume an attitude of humility, openness, and respect as well as condescension to indigenous peoples and their cultures. Both relate stories that partake of the fantastic—the discovery of the lost tribes, Cabeza de Vaca’s becoming a miracle healer—yet consistently present their experiences with the dry objectivity typical of the relación. The generic packaging of these semi-fantastic themes into the rhetorical format of the relación orients readers’ expectations and predisposes them to consider the text before them as a “factual” narrative.

A text such as the Naufragios, or any of the relaciónes prepared by soldiers, colonial officials, or clergy working within the colossal infrastructure of the Spanish Empire, was designed for a distinct reader or group of readers, who had a major impact on the composition of any particular report. This intimate dependence between author and his desired audience is readily apparent in the composition of Montezinos’s Relación. Montezinos lived most of his life as a subject of the Spanish crown, but when he came to Amsterdam and decided to give a report of his experiences with the Reubenites, Montezinos was already Aharon Levi, a “New Jew” whose allegiance lay with his embattled people.⁸ The Relación was presented before the eminences of the Spanish Portuguese community of Amsterdam, but Montezinos likely hoped that it would reach a wider audience. He hoped to spread the “good news” (“buenas nuevas”) of the continued existence of the tribe of Reuben and to impart their particular message of messianic hope to the Jews of the diaspora.⁹ By anchoring his narrative within notarial discourse he was better positioned to convince his readers of the validity of his claims.

Notorial discourse, however, was only one vehicle that the Relación utilized to substantiate its narrative. Montezinos’s text also employs a confessional mode of discourse to establish credibility. As will be discussed at length in chapter 5, the Relación is a story of religious awakening and transformation. We meet Montezinos as an assimilated converso seeking his fortune in South America. Through a series of powerful experiences, he embraces his secret Judaism, abandons the allure of the Iberian colonial project, and becomes a fervent messianist, a bearer of the “good news” of an imminent redemption. His own transformation is essential to his narrative and to the practical ends it intended to achieve. Montezinos’s own conversion was brought about by his encounter with the Reubenites; consequently, the converted Montezinos becomes living proof of their existence. On a more immediate level, by sharing his experience of conversion, Montezinos certifies his religious credentials for his Sephardic readers: the Montezinos of the Relación is committed to the God of Israel and has renounced his former life as a converso. Within the ex-converso community of Amsterdam there was a great deal of anxiety about the religious integrity of its newly “returned” members, and Montezinos’s account of his conversion would have strengthened the trustworthiness of his story as a whole.

The insertion of a confessional discourse into a relación was not uncommon. Moments of introspection, remorse, and repentance can be found throughout the corpus of New World relaciónes, beginning with Columbus’s diaries and letters. These confessional moments strengthen the image of the author in the eyes of his readers: He is not only responsible and brave, but also a man of faith and conviction whose word should be trusted. On a personal level, the confessional mode meets the author’s need to express the psychological dimension of his experience. Rhetorically it partakes of the proliferation of confessional discourses, both oral and written, within the Counter-Reformation Iberian world.

The authorship of Montezinos’s text complicates its generic connection to the relación and its status as an autobiographical text. The text is entitled Relación de Aharon Levi, alias, Antonio de Montezinos. The reader is informed within the first sentence that the text was “declared” orally by Montezinos before an eminent group of witnesses. While Montezinos supposedly gives an account of his own experience, the Relación is recorded in the third person, like a deposition or a transcript of a juridical interrogation: the witness said X or did Y. The strong first-person voice that is classically associated with autobiographical narratives is absent. Its absence is compounded by the fact that the text of the Relación is a written transcript of Montezinos’s oral report, not his own recording of his experiences in the third person, as in the case of Luis de Carvajal’s Vida.

The distancing of Montezinos from his text complicates but does not preclude its participation in the autobiographic mode. Montezinos can be considered the text’s “corporate” author. Margarita Zamora applies this term to Columbine texts; although they originated with the admiral, they were clearly mediated by those who copied, edited, and circulated his texts.¹⁰ In the case of Montezinos, we can assume that his account suffered a similar amount of mediation. The use of the third person reflects the fact that his story was recorded by a third party. In this sense the Relación follows a rhetorical model common to other generic practices, such as the mediated confession of nuns, and the confessions produced through inquisitorial interrogation. In both situations, the subject is required to recount an experience, or his or her entire life, and this autobiographic narrative is then rendered into a written text by a third (often hostile) party. In the next section we will consider how this coercive method of narrative “extraction” informed the production of more “literary” autobiographic and pseudo-autobiographic writing.

Unwitting Autobiographers: Inquisitorial Interrogation and Autobiographic Composition¹¹

Confession is an essential aspect of a Catholic’s religious life. In confessing their sins, the children of the Church are guided through a process of spiritual cleansing and renewal. The Inquisition hoped that its interrogations and prosecutions of accused sinners would also result in their repentance, atonement, and spiritual illumination. The Holy Office did not consider the punishments it meted out to be retributive; rather, they were to be understood as atonement, “a penance that had to be done in order to make amends for the defendant’s injury to God, the Church, and the sacraments.”¹² The sinner’s confession was an essential step in that process of atonement.¹³

The Inquisitors used a variety of strategies to guide (or coerce) sinners to their eventual confession. Inquisitorial procedures were draped in secrecy. The accused were not told why they were under investigation. Instead, the Inquisitors asked the accused why they thought they were arrested. This placed the accused in a vulnerable position where they would be frightened “into providing them [the tribunal] with a ‘truthful’ confession that would reveal aspects of their lives that they might otherwise conceal.”¹⁴ At the conclusion of three audiencias, and before being informed of the charges against them, the accused were warned to search their conscience and provide a “full and complete confession.” They were reminded that “the Holy Office is not accustomed to arresting people without having sufficient information that they have said, done, and committed … an offense against God and against the Holy Roman Catholic Faith.”¹⁵ These warnings framed the acts of autobiographic narration known officially as the discurso de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Audience and Archive: Text, Context, and the Literary Construction of Experience
• 2 “Hermanos en el Señor”: Spiritual and Social Fraternity and Paternity in Luis de Carvajal the Younger’s Spiritual Autobiography (New Spain, 1595)
• 3 A Prophetic Matrix: Motherhood, Sorority, and a Reimagined Sagrada Familia
• 4 Writing His Way into the Jewish People: Faith, Blood, and Community in Manuel Cardoso de Macedo’s Vida del buenaventurado Abraham Pelengrino
• 5 “All of Us Are Brothers”: Race, Faith, and the Limits of Brotherhood in the Relación of Antonio de Montezinos, alias Aharon Levi (1644)
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index