Explicaçoens, e Provas dos Agravos, Dos quais sequeixão a See App.caos: Christãos Descendentes do Sangue Hebreu no Reino de Portugal. Contra os Stillos, Uzo, e Modo de Proceder dos Inquizidores Daquelle Reyno

AUCTION 51 | Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts Graphic & Ceremonial Art Including: The Alfonso Cassuto Collection of Iberian Books, Part II

Back to Catalogue Download Catalogue

Lot 47
(INQUISITION).

Explicaçoens, e Provas dos Agravos, Dos quais sequeixão a See App.caos: Christãos Descendentes do Sangue Hebreu no Reino de Portugal. Contra os Stillos, Uzo, e Modo de Proceder dos Inquizidores Daquelle Reyno

Manuscript in Portuguese. Brown ink on paper. Wide margins pp. (145). Trace foxed. Contemporary mottled calf, spine in compartments, gilt extra, scuffed. Lg. 4to

n.p: Late 17th-century

Est: $6,000 - $9,000
PRICE REALIZED $10,000
A polemic against the discriminatory treatment of "New Christians" of Hebrew blood by the Portuguese Inquisition. H.P. Solomon et al considered this subversive anti-Inquisitorial tract to be an unimpeachable inside-source of information concerning the actual trial proceedings of the Portuguese Inquisition. Alfonso Cassuto has pencilled at the beginning of the manuscript: "This (work) was originally written under the title “Noticias Reconditas” and published for the first time by Haham David Nieto in London in 1720 [i.e., 1722]. Later it was attributed to P[adre] Anto[nio] Vieira. See J.L. d'Azevedo, Hist[oria] dos Christaos Novos Portugueses, pp. 249, 476-7, who cites an identical manuscript in Torre do Tombo." To expand on the Cassuto information above: The work which circulated underground, had been anonymously composed in about the year 1673 in order to buttress New Christian petitions to the Pope to reform the "style" of the Holy Office. It first appeared in English translation in London in 1708 under the title “An Account of the Cruelties Exercised by the Inquisition in Portugal...Written by One of the Secretaries of the Inquisition” and it was not until 1722 that Haham David Nieto published the original Portuguese version “Noticia Reconditas,” or “Secret Information.” The suggestion that the work was written, or at least edited, by the Portuguese Jesuit priest Antonio Vieira, was because he spent the years 1672-74 in Rome, importuning the Pope on behalf of the New Christians. Vieira did indeed achieve the suspension of the Inquisition - but only until 1681. Research carried out at the National Archives of the Torre do Tombo in 1998 has corroborated the accounts of the trials contained in the Noticias Reconditas. See A.S. Saraiva, H.P. Salomon, I.S.D. Sassoon, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536-1765 (2001) pp. 66-68 The author would appear to have served in Spain's military. Of especial interest is the entry on p. 82 where the author shares how he fell madly in love with a Jewish girl serving in some sort of medical capacity. In the poetic rendition on the following page (83), we read: "Fue escritor de profession / Artillero y buen soldado / Medico, en fin emigrado / Y murio por la mania / De querer a una Judia / Sin estar circuncidado." ["Was a writer by profession / Artilleryman and good soldier / Medic, finally an emigrant / and died for the mania / Of loving a Jewess / Without being circumcised."] Earlier in the poem, there may be an allusion to this having taken place in Gibraltar. There is every indication that this is an unpublished manuscript.