Description
Book SynopsisThis book offers portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Marranos: Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism but secretly retained their own faith. Merging the concerns of an anthropologist with his skills as a historian, Wachtel traces their odyssey from early modern Europe to twenty-first-century Brazil.
Trade Review
From reviews of the French edition
"One of the most important books on crypto-Judaism in the New World, bringing together Wachtel's classic combination of anthropologist and historian into psychological and spiritual investigations of the Marrano community. Based heavily on archival research of Inquisition cases in Mexico City and Lima, this book stresses the syncretist tendency of this group whose knowledge of Judaism and Hebrew was minimal and who couldn't help mixing in a good deal of Christian practice and theology."—Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study
"Wachtel is truly a brilliant and impeccable scholar. Innovative and massively researched, The Faith of Remembrance is written from the heart."—Nancy Farriss, University of Pennsylvania
"Wachtel unravels the complex history of each case study with the mix of prudence and audacity that has become his trademark. It is at this level that his microanalytic approach demonstrates its full potential: not only does it allow the author to be attentive to the details, opacities, and contradictions of each episode, but it also makes possible a keen contextualization of the Marrano experience."—Jacques Revel, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales
"Wachtel combines a rigorous microhistorical inquiry with the desire to bring us 'the lived, the affective, and the immediate,' or the emotion aroused by sampling the chronicles of suffering in the jails of the Holy Office. With the help of a wealth of details, he immerses us . . . in the everyday world of the Marranos."—Danielle Rozenberg, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions
Table of ContentsForeword
—Yosef Kaplan
Introduction: Marranism and Modernity
Chapter 1. Juan Vicente's Sanbenito
Chapter 2. Heaven Face to Face: Francisco Maldonado de Silva
Chapter 3. "They Spoke of the Things of the Law of Moses": Manuel Bautista Perez
Chapter 4. "Remember the Mother of the Maccabees!": Regarding Leonor Nuñez
Chapter 5. "May Everyone Be What He Is": Francisco Botello and Maria de Zarate
Chapter 6. "The Law of the Name Received from the Ancients": Fernando de Medina
Chapter 7. "Moses, Son of Queen Esther": Theresa Paes de Jesus
Chapter 8. "For in This Time All Is Lies, and All Is Truth": João Thomas de Castro and António José da Silva
Conclusion: Faith, Memory, Forgetting
Epilogue: "Five Hundred Years of Hunger": Returning
Finale: Three Poems by Odmar Pinheiro Braga
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
