Mexican scholar Eva Uchmany has produced a valuable addition to Mexican Inquisition historiography with this handsome volume issued by the Archivo General de la Nación and the Fondo de Cultura Económica. The work’s avowed aims are two (pp. 17–19). The first is to reconstruct, on the basis of Inquisition trials of judaizantes, the social, family, and religious life of Portuguese cryptojews in New Spain and their relations with the Catholic world around them. The second aim is to consolidate and make available the record of the second trial of Diego Díaz Nieto, twice arrested as a Judaizer and reconciled in the autos-da-fé of December 8, 1596, and March 25, 1605. The record of his first trial is in the AGN, but that of the second was removed by Riva Palacio and split up when his documents were dispersed. The first half of this record, containing the arrest order and witnesses’ testimony, is now at the Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa, and the rest is in the Archivo Histórico of the Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia, Mexico City. The author asserts that this trial is unique in the annals of the Mexican Inquisition, for it reveals that Diego Díaz Nieto was not actually a cryptojew or even, strictly speaking, Portuguese: he was born and raised in the Jewish faith in Ferrara, Italy, and never baptized as a Catholic (pp. 19, 184).
The transcript of this trial occupies the bulk of Uchmany’s book, supplemented by a separate introduction and transcriptions from the AGN: some requests from penanced judaizantes for permission to return to Portugal to accept the amnesty and a list of those released from the carceles secretas in 1606. Uchmany’s study proper is loosely structured around the peregrinations and tribulations of Diego Díaz Nieto and his father, Ruy Díaz Nieto. The family’s trajectory from Portugal to Italy, back to the Iberian peninsula, and thence to New Spain, as well as the peculiar nature of Diego’s trial, have allowed Uchmany to range far beyond the general relations suggested in the title. She surveys the fluctuating fortunes of Jews and New Christians in Iberia, Italy, and elsewhere, beginning with Manuel I’s forced conversion of Portugal’s Jews in 1497. She also covers the inconstancy of popes and monarchs and the mounting threat posed by the Counter-Reformation.
Diego Díaz Nieto eventually converted to Catholicism, albeit under considerable duress. Well educated in the tenets of Judaism and apparently possessed of a prodigious memory, he repeatedly requested clarification from his captors of Christian doctrines that conflicted with Judaic scriptural interpretations. The evidence for this allows Uchmany to extend her discussion to the evolution of Jewish and Christian positions on topics ranging from diet to the Trinity and the Messiah. The question of dietary habits is a recurrent theme, for it loomed large as a statement of faith—a concession to Catholicism and a means of concealment for those cryptojews who served and ate pork, for example, or an act of defiance and the constant risk of exposure for those who, like Diego and his father, did not. Diet also serves as a major indicator of the “double life” cryptojews were obliged to lead (p. 182).
Uchmany’s treatment of judaizante life in Mexico City is not restricted to that of Ruy and Diego Díaz Nieto. It gives a collective view of the Portuguese cryptojewish community, discussing at some length the lives and fates of the Carvajal family and others. The bibliography lists a total of 131 manuscripts consulted, the majority of which are trial records of Portuguese accused as Judaizers. Furthermore, the period covered is primarily 1590-1606 and not, as the title implies, 1580–1606. The titular dates correspond, respectively, to Spain’s addition of Portugal to its imperial dominions, and the Mexican Inquisition’s reluctant compliance with Pope Clement VIII’s amnesty for Lusitanian Judaizers in exchange for a two-million-cruzado contribution from the New Christians.