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Luis de Carvajal the Younger (born c. 1566 - died 8 December 1596), was a Crypto-Jewish writer. His writings are the earliest known to be written by a Jew in the Americas. He was executed as a martyr of the Jewish faith in 1596.

Biography

He was born into a family of conversos in Benavente, Spain, around 1566 or 1567.[1] His parents were Francisco Rodriguez de Mattos and Francisca Núñez de Carvajal. He was the fifth of nine children, and had five sisters: Isabel, Leonor, Catalina, Mariana, and Ana[a], and three brothers: Baltazar, Miguel, and Gaspar.[2] His mother's family was originally from Portugal; his uncle on his mother's side, Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, was a conquistador named as a governor of Nuevo León. The elder Luis de Carvajal may have heard suspicions of his sister's family practicing Judaism in secret, and brought them to New Spain, possibly hoping to save them from the worst of the Inquisition.[1] His family arrived in New Spain at the port of Tampico in 1580, and stayed in Pánuco. De Carvajal accompanied his father to Mexico City; when his father died in 1584, Luis returned to Pánuco.[3]

De Carvajal had studied at a Jesuit school. According to his memoirs, he received a Bible on Yom Kippur around the age of thirteen; after reading it, he circumcised himself and in secret begin practicing the Jewish faith, and encouraging his family to practice the faith in secret as well (with the exception of his brother Gaspar, who became a Franciscan friar).[4] De Carvajal spoke no Hebrew and knew little about Jewish tradition; his isolation from the rest of the Jewish world led him to practice a syncretic form of Judaism and Christianity.[5]

In 1589, his sister Isabel was denounced as a Judaizer (the term used in the Spanish Inquisition for crypto-Jews practicing Judaism in secret), and was tortured until she gave up the names of her family and several others. Luis de Carvajal was detained for Judaizing alongside his family. His uncle, who had already been arrested on suspicions of being descended from New Christians, would die in prison, and his mother and sisters were sent to a convent.[4] His brother, Baltazar, had managed to escape to Italy by then.[6] De Carvajal was sent to teach Latin to indigenous men.[4] He began writing his autobiography in 1591, with the last entry dated to October 1594. He also wrote under the pseudonym Joseph Lumbroso, or "Joseph the Enlightened".[1][7]

Undeterred by his arrest, he would become the leader of a secret Jewish community. When he was arrested again in February[8] of 1595, alongside his mother and several sisters, he refused to incriminate them in Judaizing.[7] However, in February of 1596, he was tortured, and revealed the names of 120 other crypto-Jews, including his mother and sisters. In shame, he tried to kill himself, but could not do so.[9][10]

Luis de Carvajal was executed by garrote, then burnt at the stake on 8 December 1596, in an auto da fe in Mexico City. He was about 30 years old. His mother Francisca and sisters Catalina, Isabel, and Leonor were executed on the same day.[9] According to one source, upon witnessing the execution of his mother and two of his sisters, he had a mental breakdown and converted to Catholicism just before his death; however, there is ambiguity over whether the source is reliable.[11] His sisters, Ana and Mariana, were not executed with their brother, and Mariana was "reconciled" into the Catholic faith. Mariana was accused of relapsing to Judaism and was executed by garrote and then burnt at the stake on 25 March 1601, at twenty-nine years of age, in an auto da fe, whereas Ana was "reconciled" at the same auto da fe. Ana was also accused of practicing Judaism in secret, and was garroted and subsequently burnt at the stake on 11 April 1649, at about seventy years of age,[b] In an auto da fe in Mexico City.[12][13]

A depiction of the execution of Mariana de Carvajal, Luis de Carvajal's sister. Published in 1870.

Legacy

De Carvajal's writings are the earliest known writings from a Jew in the New World,[14][10] as such, they have posed great interest to historians. His memoirs were stored in the national archives of Mexico until 1932, when they mysteriously disappeared. They were recovered in 2016 by Leonard L. Milberg and restored to the archives.[14][15][16]

The writer Sabina Berman's play En el nombre de Dios (In the Name of God) dramatizes the lives of the Carvajal family.[17]

Notes

  1. ^ This individual's name is varyingly transcribed as Ana or Anica. For instance, Martin A. Cohen in his article "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Sixteenth Century" gives her name as Anica, and then in his article "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Seventeenth Century" gives her name as Ana.
  2. ^ Martin A. Cohen writes in "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Seventeenth Century" that she was sixty-seven at the time of her death, putting her birthdate at around 1582. However, he writes that the family had arrived with "Anica" in 1580 in Tampico in his article "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Sixteenth Century." Samuel Temkin in "Luis de Carvajal and his people" lists her birthdate as 1579.

References

  1. ^ a b c Cohen, Martin A. (1966). "The Autobiography of Luis De Carvajal, the Younger". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 55 (3): 277–318. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23875621. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  2. ^ Temkin, Samuel (2008). "Luis de Carvajal and His People". AJS Review. 32 (1): 90. doi:10.1017/S0364009408000044. ISSN 0364-0094. JSTOR 27564328. S2CID 159940007.
  3. ^ "400th Yartzheit of Luis Carvajal, el mozo, Joseph Lumbroso | Southwest Jewish Archives". Southwest Jewish Archives of the University of Arizona. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  4. ^ a b c Perelis, Ronnie (2012). "Blood and Spirit: Paternity, Fraternity and Religious Self-fashioning in Luis de Carvajal's Spiritual Autobiography". Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe. 23 (1). ISSN 0792-7061.
  5. ^ Cohen, Martin A. (1972). "Some Misconceptions About the Crypto-Jews in Colonial Mexico". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 61 (4): 289–291. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23880521. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  6. ^ Wiznitzer, Arnold (1962). "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Sixteenth Century". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 51 (3): 168–214. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23873766. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  7. ^ a b Cohen, Martin A. (1966). "The Letters and Last Will and Testament of Luis De Carvajal, the Younger". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 55 (4): 451–520. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23873285. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  8. ^ Adler, Cyrus (1896). "Trial of Jorge De Almeida by the Inquisition in Mexico". Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (4): 29–79. ISSN 0146-5511. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  9. ^ a b "El diminuto diario secreto que narra la atroz persecución de una familia durante la Inquisición española en México" [The diminutive secret diary that narrates the atrocious persecution of a family during the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico]. BBC News (in Spanish). 11 June 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  10. ^ a b Silverstein, Stephen (2015). "La hibridación en las Cartas de Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo" [Hybridization in the Letters of Luis de Carvajal the Younger]. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. 31 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1525/msem.2015.31.1.1. ISSN 0742-9797. JSTOR 10.1525/msem.2015.31.1.1.
  11. ^ Bodian, Miriam (2002). "In the Cross-Currents of the Reformation: Crypto-Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition 1570-1670". Past & Present. 176 (176): 66–104. doi:10.1093/past/176.1.66. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 3600727. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  12. ^ Wiznitzer, Arnold (1962). "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Sixteenth Century". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 51 (3): 168–214. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23873766. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  13. ^ Wiznitzer, Arnold (1962). "Crypto-Jews in Mexico during the Seventeenth Century". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 51 (4): 222–322. ISSN 0002-9068. JSTOR 23874312. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  14. ^ a b "Earliest Jewish manuscript in New World to return to Mexico". Reuters. 4 March 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  15. ^ Milberg, Leonard L. (2020). "The Diary of Luis de Carvajal". The Princeton University Library Chronicle. 78 (1): 131–134. ISSN 0032-8456. JSTOR 48693096. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  16. ^ Berger, Joseph (2 January 2017). "A Secret Jew, the New World, a Lost Book: Mystery Solved". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  17. ^ Warshawsky, Matthew (2009). "Secret Histories Exposed: the Recovery of Crypto-Jewish Identity in Modern Latin American Theater". Pacific Coast Philology. 44 (1): 17–33. ISSN 0078-7469. JSTOR 25699549. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&oldid=1174207412

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