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In 1917, a Polish Jewish mining engineer established at Lisbon, M. Samuel Schwarz, was on a business visit to Belmonte, a somewhat inaccessible spot in the hill-country in the north of Portugal, not far from the Spanish frontier. One of the inhabitants, desirous of obtaining his patronage, warned him pointedly against having anything to do with one of his competitors. "It is enough for me to tell you," he said, "that the man is a judeu—a Jew." The information naturally stirred M. Schwarz, a passionate student of things Jewish, to further inquiries. The person indicated by his informant could not help him much; he had married an "Old" Christian, and was thus out of touch with his former brethren in faith. However, he did his best to introduce the inquirer to them. "E dos nossos"—"He is one of us," he whispered to them, confidentially. With some difficulty, M. Schwarz began to gain their confidence. They were dubious as to the stranger's claims. They had not heard of any Jews different from themselves. They had no knowledge of the greater Jewish community living outside the bounds of Portugal. Their conceptions were limited to an exiguous body in their own township and the immediate neighbourhood, for whom secrecy was a primary condition of religious existence. The stranger moreover could not recite any of the traditional Portuguese prayers current amongst that and the
sister communities. It was in vain that he tried to point out that the universal Jewish language of prayer was Hebrew, in which the Jews throughout the world carried on their devotions. They had not heard of the language, and doubted its existence. At last an old woman, whom the rest treated with particular deference, asked him sceptically to repeat some prayer in the tongue for
which he claimed such sanctity. His choice was an obvious one. He recited the Jewish confession of faith—the same which Isaac de Castro Tartas had on his lips when he perished at the stake: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One." As he pronounced the name of God—Adonai—the woman covered her eyes with her hands—the traditional formality, intended to shut out all outside distractions during the recital of this verse. When he had finished, she
turned to the bystanders. He is indeed a Jew," she said, authoritatively, "for he knows the name of Adonai." Thus this solitary survival of the old Hebrew tongue, which had been preserved orally throughout the long centuries of subterfuge and persecution, at last brought the remnant of the Marranos into touch with a representative of the outside Jewish world.
Now that he was recognized as a coreligionist, M. Schwarz had no difficulty in being admitted to full confidence. What he discovered was nothing less than amazing. Throughout the period subsequent to the fall of the Inquisition, there had continued to exist in the remoter parts of the northern provinces of Portugal whole colonies of crypto-Jews, absolutely isolated from the general Jewish world, and not even suspecting its existence. Long centuries of persecution had left its mark on their outlook. They could not conceive any form of Judaism except that stunted and furtive one which they followed. They were not conscious of any short-comings or lapses on their part. But, at the same time, their religion in its essentials was unmistakably Jewish—a natural development of that which their ancestors had practiced at the time of the Inquisitional persecutions, an account of which has been given above. They steadfastly denied the Messiahship of Jesus and withheld recognition from the saints of the Roman Catholic Church. They recognized themselves as Jews, or as New Christians. They met together at regular intervals for prayer. They married only among themselves. They observed with the utmost possible fidelity the Sabbath and the major solemnities of Passover and the Day of Atonement, together with the Fast of Esther.
True, the persecution of centuries had left its trace. On Friday night, many of them placed the Sabbath light, which they so religiously kindled, inside a pitcher, safe from prying eyes. The Day of Atonement and Passover were both observed a day or two after their proper date, when the vigilance of their persecutors might be assumed to have been relaxed.
Their prayers, though sadly altered and diminished, were recognizably Jewish in inspiration and in origin. They were in Portuguese—a. large number of them in verse. Nevertheless, the ancient archetypes are in many cases recognizable. One or two words of Hebrew, even, survived— notably, the name Adonai. The formula of benediction, before performing any religious function, was strikingly similar to the traditional one. It ran thus: "Blessed art Thou, my Lord, my Adanai, who hast commanded us with His blessed and holy commandments that we do as our brethren do in the land of Promise." Only the concluding phrase, with its striking testimony to the unity Of Israel and the living influence of Palestine, is not to be found in the traditional Hebrew formula.[4] The prayers were scanty in number, and were seldom written down, being transmitted
from generation to generation by word of mouth. The principal repositories of these as of other traditions were the mothers and the wives. Indeed, on those occasions when meetings were held for prayer, it was generally an old woman who acted as sacerdotisa ("priestess") or spiritual guide of the community.
Among themselves, they continued to maintain feelings of the utmost
solidarity, expressed in mutual charity and characteristically generous help at times of stress: All of this had continued for the past century and a half, absolutely unknown to the Jews of the outside world, who were meanwhile endeavouring to understand how it was that the Marranos had died away with such dramatic suddenness after Pombal's reforms.
What had happened was as a matter of fact by no means difficult to explain. In the principal towns, the main centres of the Inquisitional activity, where surveillance was continual and whence departure from the country was comparatively easy, the persecution had been more or less effective. Almost all the Marrano population had been driven to emigrate, exterminated, or else
forced to conform. Indeed, in the last days of the period of the autos-da-fè, as has been seen, only a small proportion of those who figured had been natives of the capital or the greater cities in the western part of the country. But, in the rural centres, matters were different. The maintenance of some sort of communal life was simpler, and traditions could thus be perpetuated
with greater ease. On the other hand, emigration from the country (for the poorer classes especially) was difficult in the extreme. Hence, crypto-Judaism had here a greater vitality than
in the capital or the other great cities.
