Marranos on the Moradas: Secret Jews and Penitentes in the Southwestern United States From 1590 to 1890

In his new book, Norman Simms re-defines the study of two often misunderstood religious groups. The first are Marranos who claim descent from the persecuted Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism, yet who nevertheless continued to practice Jewish rituals secretly. The other group consists of the Penitentes, a Catholic group accused of violent acts of self-flagellation and other forms of masochism. Examining both groups through rabbinics, literature, psychology, and anthropology, Simms brings his readers to a new understanding of both these religious groups as well as religious mentalities.

Norman Simms is Associate professor at the Department of Humanities/English, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He is the author of A New Midrashic Reading of Geoffrey Chaucer: His Life and Works, 2004; Crypto-Judaism, Madness, and the Female Quixote: Charlotte Lennox as Marrana in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England, 2004; Festivals of Laughter, Blood and Justice in Biblical and Classical Literature, 2007.