The Inquisition and Judaism. A Sermon Addressed to Jewish Martyrs, on the Occasion of an Auto-da-Fe at Lisbon, 1705. By the Archbishop of Cranganor. Also a Reply to the Sermon, by Carlos Vero [i. e. David Nieto]. Translated by Moses Mocatta.

(INQUISITION)

J. Wertheimer & Co

London

1845

FIRST EDITION. Translated into English from the original Portuguese and Spanish. On front fly, inscribed with the translator’s regards to J. G. Henriques (President of the Board of Deputies of the British Jews). * TIPPED IN: Appendix to The Inquisition and Judaism. 8-pages, unopened. Unrecorded by bibliographers.

Roth, Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica, p. 257, no. 8

The vicious sermon delivered by Dom Diego da Annunciacoa Justiniano, the titular Archbishop of Cranganor, India, before sixty-six miserable victims of an auto-da-fé held in Lisbon in 1705, was a brutal tirade in which the Archbishop attempted to prove from Jewish sources the truth of Christianity. Upon publication, David Nieto, the celebrated Haham of London, was moved to provide a response, penned under the nom-de-plume Carlos Vero (“Charles Truth”), this was necessitated by the relentless pressure exerted by the Inquisition upon the Marranos of Portugal, which was a painful and ongoing problem of 18th-century Jewish life. Moses Mocatta produced the first English translation of the notorious sermon and Haham Nieto’s celebrated refutation in 1845. It was later published by Isaac Leeser in Philadelphia in 1860. See H. P. Salomon, "New Light on the Portuguese Inquisition: The Second Reply to the Archbishop of Cranganor, " in: Studia Rosenthaliana, Vol. V, No. 2 (1971) pp. 178-86; I. Solomons. "David Nieto and Some of His Contemporaries, " in: JHSE Transactions, Vol. XII (1931) pp. 53-56, 77.