Anthology of Religious Poetry from the Mexican Inquisition Trials of 16th-Century CryptoJews

A century after expulsion from Portugal, cryptoJews in Mexico, false converts to Christianity, could not speak of their beliefs for fear of becoming embroiled in the imprisonment, torture, and death in flames that characterized the Inquisition. Without written texts, the Jewish liturgy lost, clans of cryptoJews created a unique body of religious poetry, connecting them to the Laws of Moses, seeking redemption from sin, or hoping for an escape from their embittered lives. The Carvajal clan was led by Luis el Mozo, an alumbrado, a mystic, and his Judaizing sisters. Once discovered to be secretly practicing Judaism, years of suffering at the hands of the Inquisitors were meticulously recorded in the transcripts of their long demeaning trials. The Carvajals' friends, spouses, children and grandchildren were implicated as Judaizers, with many being reconciled by the Church to secular authorities to be burned alive. The burning of Luis and his sisters was the main attraction for massive cheering crowds at the auto de f of 1596 in Mexico City. The cruelty of the Inquisitors was matched by their attention to legal detail. Buried within thousands of pages of transcripts, hiding in special library collections of rare books around the world, are the only remnants of the religious poetry that sustained cryptoJews hiding in Mexico.

The current work is the first comprehensive anthology of religious poetry from the 16th-Century Inquisition trials of cryptoJews in Mexico City. The nearly 250 instances of trial poetry and prayers included are curated into three groups: 28 major poems, 20 fragments of poems, and 18 fragments of common prayers and scripture. Each work has been paleographically transcribed from the handwritten 16th-Century documents and then translated into English. Every instance of each piece is documented from each trial, and each version is presented in its entirety, to form a comprehensive anthology of surviving cryptoJewish poetry from Mexico. Appended to this original work is a compilation of previously published transcriptions and translations of Mexican cryptoJewish poetry.

The trial transcripts themselves changed hands over the centuries with most being held at one time by the historian and member of the ruling family, Riva Palacio. These were donated to the Mexican National Archives, although certain of the most important items were sold to pay debts in the 19th Century. Documents were later assembled to form the Anable, Conway, Douglas, Lea, and related collections that included various trials of the Carvajal clan. All available relevant original and scholarly trial transcripts in America were examined by the author from the Latin Americana Collection of the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley; the Walter Douglas Collection at the Munger Research Center of The Huntington Library; the Seymour B. Liebman Collection of The Latin American Library at Tulane University; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Libraries; The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, National Library of Israel; the G. R. G. Conway Collection at the Helmerich Center for American Research of the Gilcrease Museum at University of Tulsa; Jewish Theological Seminary; Center for Jewish History, American Jewish Historical Society; and the Family History Center of the LDS Church.

There is intrinsic historical value in preserving this richest cultural remnant of a Jewish sect from the risk and obscurity of single-copy documents in library special collections. The poems are moving and beautiful, depicting a deep faith in the Lord and a constant striving to live more virtuously to gain His favor. Poems from the tongues of Jewish martyrs, that gave up everything, including their lives, withstanding torture and years of imprisonment, but refusing to abandon the Laws of Moses.