At first glance, Miriam Bodian's Dying in the Law of Moses runs counter to recent converso and Inquisition historiography. She deals with what Cecil Roth (1899–1970) described as the most heroic, quintessential, and thus authentic—yet exceptional—product of conversos facing the Inquisition, namely, a predisposition of some conversos to choose a painful death at the stake as unrepentant judaizers rather than a quick and painless death as repentant heretics.Footnote ¹

Current scholarship, by contrast, seeks to transcend the reductive historiographical debate regarding the epistemic relationship between Inquisition and converso crypto-Judaism. Inquisition studies are no longer content to concentrate on the actions and evolution of the Holy Office, nor on its influence on particular heterodoxies. Rather, they focus on its role in the variegated aspects of societies and institutions. Scholars now consider the Inquisition to have been a powerful means of social control and mass education, an integral part of the early modern European confessional process.Footnote ² Similarly, converso studies have begun to question previously held rigid sociohistorical frameworks. David L. Graizbord's recent discussion of the meaning and articulation of crypto-Jewish identities, Souls in Dispute, is a case in point. Graizbord opposes I. S. Révah's (1917–73) univocal definition of marranism as “potential Judaism.” According to Graizbord, the acculturation of conversos into Iberian lifestyle qualified them equally as “potential Catholics.” In support of this claim, he traces the phenomenon of continuous reversal of religious identities. Some conversos fled Spain and Portugal in order to reclaim their Jewish identity in the Sephardic diaspora, only to return to their native lands to recover their Catholic identities. Graizbord maintains that this process served as a clear indicator of dual Jewish–Catholic identities.Footnote ³ Consequently, converso identities are treated as inherently heterogeneous, defying any pretense of representativeness. One could argue, therefore, that the relatively few converso martyrs studied by Bodian are the exception rather than rule.

A closer examination of Bodian's converso martyrs uncovers surprising similarities to Graizbord's converso “renegades.” As will be demonstrated, the origins of both groups can be traced back to a common converso hybridism. As a result, Bodian's study becomes an unexpected contribution to the most avant-garde historiography. By shifting converso martyrdom from the epicenter of group identity to its margins, and from the core of Jewish authenticity to its borderlines, Bodian has created a historiographical tour de force. From this perspective, the book can be seen in the context of Bodian's earlier work, in which she sought to demonstrate that the space in which converso group ethnicity was negotiated is not to be located in the center but in its peripheries.Footnote ⁴ Similar to Benedict Anderson's “national identities,”Footnote ⁵ Bodian's converso martyrology appears to be a matter of imagined individual constructions.

The focal point of Bodian's book is an analysis of four case studies: the son of Mexican “conquistador” Luis Rodríguez de Carvajal, the Portuguese monk Frei Diogo d'Asumpção, the South American physician Francisco Maldonado da Silva, and the University of Salamanca Hebrew scholar Lope de Vera y Alarcón. Significantly, these cases have already been discussed by earlier scholars.Footnote ⁶ Other converso martyrs, who have gone mainly unnoticed by previous scholarship, appear only incidentally, probably because of the scarcity of primary sources relating to them.Footnote ⁷ In the last part of this review, I will address some implications of this selection. Meanwhile, let it be said that Bodian's study is both moving and illuminating. The author successfully reconstructs the inquisitorial trials of these four converso martyrs in a meticulous and vivid fashion. In some instances, she corrects errors made by previous historians. Throughout the reconstruction, she offers compelling and original interpretations of their behavior, without diminishing their personal drama. In this sense, her methodology is reminiscent of Nathan Wachtel's acclaimed contribution to converso studies, La foi du souvenir. Footnote ⁸ Bodian's decision to analyze individual files rather than entire groups both underlines the heterogeneity of converso experience and uncovers common denominators.

While Wachtel's converso biographies sought to represent larger typological groups (i.e., men and women, judaizers and skeptics, rich and poor, educated and simple),Footnote ⁹ Bodian's analysis is very narrow and specific. The results are far from surprising. That is, the juxtaposition of these four cases proves that in many respects, converso martyrs were part of the typical “marrano condition.” This is illustrated by the fact that many of them had close ties (familiar, professional, and social) with other conversos. Of the latter group, some were also tried by the Inquisition but died in more “routine” ways (readmittance to the bosom of the church or garroted as repentant heretics). Moreover, the former only became martyrs at some point during their trials rather than at the beginning of their imprisonment. Indeed, the transformation was sometimes incited by their interaction with the Inquisitors (e.g., D'Asumpção). Were all judaizing conversos “potential martyrs” then? Bodian would be inclined to say no, because regardless of converso common features and idiosyncratic traits (historical and geographical context, social background, psychology), all converso martyrs shared a common characteristic. They were part of a distinct subgroup, labeled by the author as “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” (Chap. 2). This subgroup was an extreme by-product of converso hybridism. Historically, they appeared in the late sixteenth century and not at the beginning of the marrano phenomenon. They did not experience mass conversion, nor did they live in the vicinity of a Jewish community, as had conversos of previous generations. For them, Catholicism and the Inquisition were familiar and ubiquitous. Ethnically, they were of Old Christian ancestry to varying degrees. Some could claim pure Old Christian lineage (as in the case of Alarcón), virtual purity (D'Asumpcão's paternal great-great-grandparent alone was a converso), or partial purity (Maldonado da Silva and his father both married Old Christians). Only Carvajal had converso parents, but he did not hesitate to proselytize among Old Christians while in prison. Like all “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs,” Carvajal's attitude was “a striking indication of their expansive attitude, in contrast to the ethnic exclusivism more typical of crypto-Jews” (63). Moreover, while current scholarship assigns a preponderant role to women, as the primary promoters of converso Crypto-Jewish identities, “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” were men. Capable of engaging in theological disputes with trained church theologians, they were all familiar with Iberian Catholic “high” culture. As with other educated judaizers, they used Catholic and Christian heterodox ideas and books to frame their own “Jewish” identities (i.e., Maldonado da Silva's use of Pablo de Santa Maria's antirabbinic Scrutinium Scripturarum [124, 143, 147]). Although they took diverse theological approaches, the ideologies that led them to die at the stake “in the Law of Moses” as martyrs were heavily influenced by the Iberian notion of honor; Christian “Protestant” discourses (in the broadest and simplest sense of the term luterano, as it was understood in early modern Iberia); and, I would add, by the Counter-Reformation notions of martyrdom. The decision to perform self-circumcision (in the cases of Carvajal, Maldonado da Silva, and Alarcón) was “one of the defining acts of the crypto-Jewish martyr” (169) rather than an act of crypto-Jewish converso authenticity. According to Bodian, it was an idiosyncratic consequence of the biblicism (essentially “Protestant”) that characterized “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” She admits that “[c]onverso deaths of a heroic type had occurred … even before the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition [i.e., 1478]… . But earlier conditions did not lend themselves to the kind of prolonged, staged “combat” between inquisitor and prisoner that mark the career of the celebrated martyrs” (23). These common features distinguish “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” from the majority of Iberian judaizer conversos, who generally adopted strategies of secrecy and deceit.

In Chapter 6, the final chapter, Bodian discusses the ambivalence of the Sephardic diaspora of converso origins toward converso martyrs. The uncompromisingly heroic deaths of the latter contrasted with the more pragmatic attitudes of the former. Though the Judaism endorsed by the martyrs was sui generis (e.g., the “Sadducean” tendencies of D'Asumpcão or Alarcón's affinities with Islam), offering valuable examples for propaganda and edification for elegies and synagogue celebrations, it was actually an inappropriate and even hazardous norm for Jewish Sephardic communities. Bodian compares “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” with Sephardic “heretics” such as Uriel da Costa (c. 1585–1640).

Bodian's converso martyrs did not represent “authentic” historical manifestations of Iberian marranism, not to say normative Sephardic Judaism. Their actions appear reminiscent of Iberian Christian alumbrados and early modern Sephardic “heretics.” Consequently, one wonders whether the magnitude of their personal tragedy was attributable more to the atypical way in which they decided to “die in the Law of Moses” than to the humiliation and pains they suffered during their dilated Inquisition trials.

One answer to this perplexity is suggested throughout Bodian's “archeological” research of martyrdom. In Chapter 1, largely dedicated to the history of Jewish martyrdom prior to the eruption of “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs,” the author stresses its cross-cultural character. As a radical act of faith performed before and against others, martyrdom was “countercultural.” In Bodian's own terms, martyrdom endorsed an extreme “counter theology” (xiii). Countercultural acts performed by a minority group affirm its resistance to the majority, and often employ the rhetoric of majority as a means of underlining differences between the two. Therefore, such acts tend to be an acculturated phenomenon. The martyrdoms can be distinguished by their cultural locations. While Jewish martyrdom erupted in the interstices created by inner Jewish and non-Jewish conceptions of martyrdom, “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom” was formulated only within the cultural values and ideas of Others. For this reason, martyrdom attained its acculturated—even syncretistic—apogee precisely among “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” Resisting Christianity but nevertheless relying heavily on it, converso martyrdom was inexorably condemned to remain a heroic act of resistance against oppression but an “absurd” (in Albert Camus's sense of incomprehension) manifestation of positive differentiation.

A second answer could be drawn from Bodian's hermeneutic considerations. Bodian is aware of the well-known issues regarding the use of Inquisition archives to study the converso phenomenon (xii, 13). She argues that converso martyrdom may have been the consequence rather than the instigator of Inquisitorial imprisonment. Imprisoned conversos knew that their ethnic origins all but negated the possibility of being proclaimed innocent. They faced the choice of denying the charges at the price of death at the stake as negativos, or confessing faults (even faked) and naming accomplices (preferably close acquaintances) in the hopes of reconciliation. All the while they were forced to undergo public humiliation and suffer the confiscation of their property: “It was possible to view martyrdom as a ‘best’ option—that is, as one that would preserve self-esteem and honor …, provide a noble outlet for the expression of anger, vindicate one's inner sense of truth, and ensure eternal salvation” (24). Bodian explains that converso martyrdom began with debates and theological confrontations held during their imprisonment and interrogations (36–37). Even defiantly, the subject of an inquiry must react to the discursive apparatus of his inquisitor. Martyrdom can be seen as an extreme manifestation of explicit antagonism against the Inquisitors.

Third, the removal of a converso martyr from the dungeons of the Holy Office to the crowded theater of public sentencing and executions signified “the last scene of an extended drama” in which the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” “became martyrs in the classic, ‘athletic’ sense… . [T]he moment that transfixed the crowd and ‘defeated’ the inquisitors came after the auto-da-fé, when those condemned to death, having been relaxed to the secular authorities, were to be taken to the ‘quemadero’ to be burned” (27). Certainly, this was the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” own interpretation of the drama. The work of Stuart B. Schwartz confirms Bodian's assumption concerning the shocking impact they had on many other Iberian people, Inquisitors, and others (33).Footnote ¹⁰ Still, I am rather inclined to adopt Foucault's assumptions on the overwhelming edifying role of spectacular executions like these on behalf of the establishment.Footnote ¹¹

Finally, I would like to address the implications of Bodian's criteria of selection. It seems to me that despite the scarcity of data, a closer examination is required of those converso martyrs appearing only incidentally in this volume. I believe that a more comprehensive reconstruction of their lives may elucidate—or even challenge—the nature of the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” paradigm. These would include, for instance, the “few women” who “were praised in the diaspora literature for having been burned alive at the stake, [although] none of them attained iconic status” (41), or the converso surgeon Manuel Tavares alias Manuel da Fonseca alias David (as he was named following his circumcision in the Leghorn Sephardic community), who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of Lima (126). Further study may reveal that the profile of many of these converso martyrs corresponded to other converso judaizers rather than to “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” This suggestion is not meant to cast a shadow on the qualities of Bodian's book. On the contrary, her self-imposed limits prove Dying in the Law of Moses to be a major contribution to converso studies and a demonstration of intellectual honesty.