The Sabbatean Prophets

The Jewish Tradition 45
Converso Messianism
A strong connection between former conversos and the Sabbatean movement
has come to light in the multitude of surviving documentary sources. Many
persons known for certain to be of converso families were associates of Shabbatai
and prophets of the movement. 24 Looking at the map of Sabbatean
propagation it is immediately clear that most of the cities that were centers
of Sabbatean activism before the apostasy were converso centers as well, such
as Izmir, Istanbul, Salonika, Livorno, Amsterdam, and Venice. It is thus particularly
worthwhile exploring the background and messianic proclivities of
this group.
A sizeable percentage of the important Jewish population of Spain converted
to Catholicism voluntarily or by force between the years 1391, when
pressure to convert started to become very heavy, and 1492, when Jews
who held on to their faith were expelled. Among those spiritually stout Jews
who left, a large proportion went to neighboring Portugal, where they had
been promised asylum. But in 1497 the king decreed their expulsion from
Portugal as well. When the hapless Jews came to the harbor to embark for
more tolerant shores, they were incarcerated and forcibly converted. At the
time of their expulsion from Spain, there was already a national Inquisition
at work rooting out conversos alleged to continue “Judaizing” in secret. The
Portuguese Inquisition was not established until decades later, but conversos
were forbidden to leave either country, and they were in constant fear.
Conversos and Moriscos (descendants of Spanish Muslims) were systematically
excluded from many important institutions and professions by a series
of “purity of blood” statutes. Nevertheless, many conversos did quite well for
themselves in the Iberian peninsula, studying in universities, achieving considerable
wealth, and rising to important offices in the government and even
the church.
Some conversos—probably most—had become good Catholics within one
or two generations of conversion; but others clung to some residual Jewish
identity with great tenacity. Absent any living Jewish tradition, there was almost
no authentic practice, but a crypto-Judaism developed using the elements
that could be remembered or learned. Crypto-Judaism tended to assimilate
many Christian elements despite its highly anti-Catholic bias, and it
was heavily biblical, since the Bible was almost the only available source of
Jewish knowledge. The tradition of Jewish identity was passed down in the