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A HISTORY OF THE MARR k NOS By Cecil Roth
That anti-Semitism is as stupid as it is brutal seems to be the moral of Mr. Cecil Roth's learned History of the Marranos (Routledg:e, 18s.). The Marranos, or " Swine," were thoge "Spanish and Portuguese Jews who in the later middle ages accepted baptism to escape massacre. These conversos or ` New Christians " were numerous and wealthy, and many of them rose to high places in both Church and State. Outwardly Catholic, they often, if not always, maintained in private their Jewish rites and traditions. Isabella the Catholic's Treastirer, Luis de Santangel, who helped Columbus to obtain the royal patronage for his Atlantic adventure, was a Marrano ; some say that Columbus himself was one, like several of his companions. But after the avowed Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492; the Inquisition began to spy out the crypto-Jews, and for several centuries the Peninsula and the Spanish colonies were disgraced by the persecution of these unhappy people. Thousands of them emigrated to Turkey, Northern Europe and America. The great Jewish community at Amsterdam was much strengthen- ed by them and helped to sustain the Dutch revolt and long war against Spain. A few Marranos came to London in the sixteenth century ' • one of them was Queen Elizabeth's physician, Lopez, who was executed on a charge of attenipting to poison her—a charge trumped up by his political enemies like Essex. Under Cromwell Marrano immigration was connived at, and the newcomers were, the author says, accorded fuller liberty even than they would enjoy in Holland. He gives a long list of the Marranos and their descendants who have risen to eminence, like Spinoza, Ricardo, Disraeli, Grove (of the Dictionary of Music) and Lombroso. Spain in her decadence needed the clever and industrious people whom she had burnt or exiled.
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