The Other Within : : The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity / / Yirmiyahu Yovel.

• VerfasserIn: Yovel, Yirmiyahu,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2018]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

The Marranos were former Jews forced to convert to Christianity in Spain and Portugal, and their later descendents. Despite economic and some political advancement, these "Conversos" suffered social stigma and were persecuted by the Inquisition. In this unconventional history, Yirmiyahu Yovel tells their fascinating story and reflects on what it means for modern forms of identity. He describes the Marranos as "the Other within"--people who both did and did not belong. Rejected by most Jews as renegades and by most veteran Christians as Jews with impure blood, Marranos had no definite, integral identity, Yovel argues. The "Judaizers"--Marranos who wished to remain secretly Jewish--were not actually Jews, and those Marranos who wished to assimilate were not truly integrated as Hispano-Catholics. Rather, mixing Jewish and Christian symbols and life patterns, Marranos were typically distinguished by a split identity. They also discovered the subjective mind, engaged in social and religious dissent, and demonstrated early signs of secularity and this-worldliness. In these ways, Yovel says, the Marranos anticipated and possibly helped create many central features of modern Western and Jewish experience. One of Yovel's philosophical conclusions is that split identity--which the Inquisition persecuted and modern nationalism considers illicit--is a genuine and inevitable shape of human existence, one that deserves recognition as a basic human freedom. Drawing on historical studies, Inquisition records, and contemporary poems, novels, treatises, and other writings, this engaging critical history of the Marrano experience is also a profound meditation on dual identities and the birth of modernity.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- PART ONE: A Millennium of Jewish Spain -- 1. Sefarad, the Spanish Jerusalem -- 2. Reconquest and Revival: The Cross Is Back -- 3. Pogroms and Mass Conversions -- PART TWO: Marrano Otherness and Dualities -- 4. Conversos: The Other Within -- 5. The New Otherness: Duality in Many Faces -- 6. Marrano Mosaic I: Places, Persons, Poems -- 7. The Arias d'Avilas: Hidden Jews or Marrano Dualists? -- PART THREE: The Growing Marrano Problem -- 8. Enrique the Impotent: Prosperity, Anarchy, and Inquisition on the Horizon -- 9. Ferdinand, Isabella, and the "True Inquisition" -- 10. The Great Expulsion -- PART FOUR: Portuguese Marranism Takes Over -- 11. Trap in Portugal -- 12. Portuguese Inquisition, Pure Blood, and the "Nation" -- PART FIVE: New Christian Religions and Spanish Culture -- 13. A Judaizing Marrano Religion -- 14. New Christians at the Forefront of Spanish Culture -- 15. A Christian Religion of the Interior -- 16. Picaresque Antiheroes -- PART SIX: Dispersion and Modernity -- 17. Marranos Globalized: The Networks, the "Nation" -- 18. Marrano Mosaic II: Wanderers, Martyrs, Intellectuals, Dissenters -- 19. Marranos and Western Modernity -- 20. Marranos and Jewish Modernity -- Epilogue: Present-Day Marranos -- Appendix: Trends in the Literature -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index