Inquisitorial document signed by Don Jayme Fabregues, confiscating patrimony of Don Marcus Valles, a prominent Chueta (crypto-Jew) of Palma de Mallorca, for the crime of Apostasy

(MAJORCA).

Majorca

September 1, 1768

Spanish text

The history of the Jews of the Isle of Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands in the Mediteranean off the Spanish coast, is especially tragic. The once glorious Jewish community which had given birth to great savants such as the halachist R. Simon ben Tzemach Duran, author of the responsa Tashbe"tz (1361-1444), effectively came to a cruel end in 1435 when the Jews of the isle were forcibly baptized. Nonetheless, as in mainland Spain, crypto-Judaic activity did not cease with the mass conversion to Christianity. These Majorcan crypto-Jews were not referred to by the Castillian epithet "Marranos," but rather by its Catalan equivalent "Chuetas" (in Catalan orthography "Xuetas"). (Both marrano and chua/xua mean "pig".) Centuries later, the descendants of these Jewish converts to Christianity were still restricted to living in the "call" or former Jewish quarter, where they could easily be scrutinized by the ever-watchful eye of the Inquisition. By 1771 the Inquisition had sent a total of 594 Chuetas to the stake for the crime of "Judaizing." See JE, Vol. II, pp. 471-473; EJ, Vol. XI, cols. 795-804; H.C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. III (1907), pp. 305-308. This document is signed by one of the most ruthless inquisitors, Jaime Fabregues. Once extremely wealthy, Don Marcus Valles, the object of the inquisitor's wrath, was bankrupted when he put his fortune at the disposal of the Bourbons in their fight against the Habsburgs for the crown of Spain during the War of Succession