Esther, Queen of the Conversas

For further reading on this period see Haim Beinart’s The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. (Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002), Yitzhak Baer’s A History of The Jews in Christian Spain. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961) and Americo Castro’s Spain and its History: Christians, Muslims and Jews. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948) and David Graizbord’s Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

The inquisition was only officially abolished in 1834.

For further reading on the practices of the Inquisition see Richard E. Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969); Henry Kamen The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

For further reading on the Carvajal family see Martin Cohen The Martyr: Luis de Carvajal, A Secret Jew in Sixteenth Century Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001); Luis de Carvajal The Enlightened: The Writings of Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, ed. and trans. Seymour B. Liebman (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1967); Alonso Toro, The Carvajal Family: The Jews and the Inquisition in New Spain in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Frances Hernández (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2001).

These manuscripts are housed today in the Bancroft Library Special Collections in Berkeley, California. I analyze manuscripts Segundo Proceso de Isabel de Carvajal MSS 95/96 v.3 and Segundo Proceso de Leonor de Carvajal MSS 95/96 v. 4 from Leonor and Isabel’s second inquisitorial trials (1595–1596) after which they were both put to death.

Cleary the women were literate and even learned in a period of high illiteracy.

The Carvajal family was part of a large network of crypto-Judaizers in New Spain and whose male members participated in Atlantic Sephardic trade routes that connected Africa and the European continent. For more see Jonathan Israel, Diaspora within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World of Maritime Empires 1540 -1740 (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

Michelle M. Hamilton explores the songs and poetic compositions transmitted by Leonor de Carvjal, “La poesía de Leonor de Carvajal y la tradicion de los criptojudíos en Nueva Espana,” Sefarad 60, no. 1 (2000), 75-94.

Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto: Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) and Reneé Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) develop the idea that crypto-Judaism is a matriarchal religion.

I explore this connection in Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan 2017). I thank Palgrave MacMillan for allowing me to reproduce parts of this work.

Scholars including David M. Gitlitz in Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication, 1996) highlight the central role that Queen Esther plays for crypto-Jews throughout the Sephardic Diaspora.

I cite from Moshe Lazar’s Escorial I.J.3 edition Vol. 1-2 (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995), p. 688. The Biblia Ladinada was created from the Hebrew-language and is based upon the no longer extant fourteenth-century manuscript composed in Spain. It is known as a precursor to the vernacular Ferrara Siddur which was famously composed in 1552 in Italy for the Sephardic community living there and throughout the Diaspora. The Ferrara Siddur was dedicated to Gracia Mendes Nasi, an Iberian converso Jew who returned to openly practicing Judaism in Italy. According to María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, the Ferrara Siddur was translated from the Hebrew and composed by Abraham Usque and Yom Tob Atias (“El siddur ladinado de 1552.” Romance Philology. 17:2 (1963): 332-38).

All translations from the trial documents are my own.

See Miriam Bodian. Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World” (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

The fast of Esther was a central aspect of crypto-Jewish observance. Irene Silverblatt Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 36, shows that crypto-Jews in Peru observed this fast in the seventeenth century.

Self-flagellation, in contrast, seems to have been practice by the men too. There is evidence, for instance, that their brother Luis engaged in this practice. Men did fast for religious purposes but not nearly to the same extent as their female counterparts in this context.

Ideology in this tapestry is typical of the period. I have readings from other sources like the Auto Sacramental dramas (one act plays in Spain): “When the King Ahasuerus Undid Vasti” and “When King Ahasuerus hung Haman” (1501), and the two-act plays “The Beautiful Esther” (1610) by Lope de Vega—a central playwright in the period, and “Queen Esther” by Felipe Godidenz (1613). All of these were written from a Catholic perspective, within Spain, that create a similar situation regarding the role of the Esther story to celebrate a strong Iberia.

The tapestry images come from the Museo de la Seo in Zaragoza, Spain. All images in this essay are from the third panel in the series. The sumptuous tapestries displaying rich colors are woven in wool and an abundance of silk, and measure 395 X8 00 cm (Demarcel, Guy. Flemish Tapestry from the 15^th to the 18^th Century. Tielt: Lannoo Publishers, 1999). They were created within the Flemish workshop of Tornai, Belguim which was under Spanish Habsburg rule at the time and each panel took sixteen months to complete by a team of four weavers.