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  • The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths by Nathan Wachtel
  • Teofilo F. Ruiz
The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths. By Nathan Wachtel (trans. Nikki Halpern) (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) 390 pp. $59.95

Published in French more than a decade ago and now translated into English, The Faith of Remembrance remains one of the most insightful works ever written about the history of the Marranos (Conversos). A distinguished scholar of colonial Peru, Wachtel has accomplished the monumental task of telling the intertwined stories of eight Converso or Marrano family networks, in the process explicating the complex social, cultural, and religious worlds that these Marranos inhabited. The result is a truly Atlantic or global narrative, in which Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Brazil, and Spain serve as the vertices along which Marrano identity was defined, and continues to be redefined, for almost five centuries.

Based upon extensive research in archives throughout the early modern Iberian world, Wachtel’s book is an erudite journey through the lives of male and female Marranos, and not just those who were influential and erudite. It is also a heartbreaking and dramatic account of [End Page 528] the cost of maintaining an identity that was, in most cases, a bricolage of Judaic, Christian, and skeptical ideas. Written with passion but also with the decided intent to explore every possible explanation for these lives, Wachtel’s eight case studies—veritable examples of the adroit use of micro-history and the marriage of anthropological, ethnographic, and historical methodologies—function as a lens on Marrano lives and identities throughout the longue durée. Although these case studies have been carefully chosen to provide a multitude of perspectives on Marrano lives, the connections among them—geographical, economic, religious, and, sadly, persecutory—offer a comprehensive view of their liminal status between Christianity and Judaism.

Marranos prayed to Saint Moses, Saint Esther, and Jesus. They practiced Judaism in secret on Saturday, fasting during the High Holidays, but they went to Church on Sunday. Some of these Marranos held Judaism and Christianity to be of equal value, depending on circumstances, and others showed a skeptical and hostile view of religion. Despite living between two worlds, they often ended up, after long and excruciating legal processes, being executed. Some married endogamously; others married old Christian women or denied their so-called “Judiazing.” Others confessed freely to it.

Wachtel does more than present a close reading of how these people lived. He adorns his meticulous research with bold interpretations. For example, although most Spanish Conversos assimilated into Spanish society, many Portuguese Conversos, the Naçāo (the Nation) retained their identity in spite of the difficulties that they faced for three centuries after their forced conversion to Christianity. Because of their experience living between two cultures, Wachtel argues that the Marranos were, because of the liminality of their positions and their skeptical views, forerunners of modernity.

Wachtel also describes the Inquisition’s scrupulous, almost Orwellian, pursuit of evidence, confession, and reconciliation. His insightful subtitle, “Marrano Labyrinths,” applies as much to labyrinthine Converso mentalities as to the practices of the Inquisition. In the end, what bound most of these Marranos, whether in Lima, Mexico City, Brazil, or Lisbon, was memory—“a faith of remembrance”—about trials and tribulations that are still palpable in northeastern Brazil and elsewhere.

Wachtel’s extraordinary study uncovers a world that only years of research and insightful reflection was able to bring to life. It is heartrending, insightful, and indispensable for those who wish to grasp the complexities of the West’s leap to modernity. [End Page 529]

Teofilo F. Ruiz
University of California, Los Angeles
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