Home

Text Box: “No ha de ser en vano:” Form and Meaning in the Sephardic Poetry of New Spain By Michelle M. Hamilton From HaLapid, Winter 2007 Among the Inquisition documents housed at the Bancroft Library, at the University of California, Berkeley are the trials of Isabel and Leonor de Carvajal, sisters of the more famous Luís de Carvajal. The Carvajal family, like many other immigrants, came to New Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century (c. 1579) from Trás-os-Montes—a mountainous region between Portugal and Spain--in search of a better life than that they had on the Iberian Peninsula. As practicing Jews, they were forced to conceal their religious beliefs in the Catholic lands of New Spain. Members of the family, however, held such strong religious convictions that in their need to keep the Sabbath, to keep kosher, and to strengthen their faith by fasting, which they viewed as penance for their life amongst “infidels,” they were inevitably discovered by the Inquisition. Most members of the family were tried for Judaizing in 1589-1590, convicted, forced to serve some prison time, as well as pay a stiff financial penalty, and then reconciled to the Catholic faith. The Carvajales did agree to renounce their Judaism, yet within five years charges were again brought against them, and they were brought before the Inquisitors yet again in 1595. Leonor de Carvajal was the seventh of the nine children of Francisco Rodríguez de Matos and Francisca de Carvajal. The best sources for the life of Leonor, and for all of the Carvajales, include the autobiography of Luís de Carvajal (in which he expresses his extraordinary and fervent religious convictions) gleaned from his trial records and published by the Archivo General de la Nación in 1935 under the title Procesos de Luís de Carvajal, as well as Alonso Toro’s 1944 history of the Carvajal family. The publication of the former brought international attention to the Carvajales’ trials, and led to the translation and study of Luís’ autobiography by Seymour Liebman. Although the focus of these studies is Luís, a fair amount of information about Leonor and other members of the family may be culled from them. The image of Luís and his family that these writings give us is that of a religious ideal. Luís speaks in religious terms constantly and views everything in his surroundings—from his tortillas to the way people pass in the hall—as endowed with religious meaning. In his sister Leonor’s trial—recorded over the course of almost a year and a half, from May of 1595 to November 1596—we have the testimony of a very different person. She has not been “allí arriba,” as she says, and she is scared. Her trial record is invaluable not only in providing another perspective on Luís and his account of the family’s religious practices, but also as a testimony to the importance of women of the Carvajal family in maintaining and transmitting Jewish beliefs. In this study I focus on how two of the songs/poems recorded in Leonor’s trial fit into the context of the larger Sephardic and Peninsular poetic traditions. The parallels found between the forms of these poems/songs and the forms used by contemporary Peninsular (often converso) court poets further supports the conclusion that I made in my 2000 study, namely that these poems have all the hallmarks of larger poetic traditions, and are more than likely not the unique compositions of one sixteenth-century Crypto-Jewish author—i.e. that Luís is not the author. These songs are important in establishing the Carvajales’ rituals and beliefs in a well-established tradition of Crypto-Jewish belief that can be traced back to the Iberian Peninsula. They reflect, through the use of certain poetic forms and meters, the historical moment of the Expulsion, during which such forms were in vogue among Jews and Christians alike. Afterward these forms and meters became a part of Sephardic cultural memory. The copla and décima song forms used to ritualize the Carvajal family religious practice transform popular lyric forms—the pop songs of their day--into transcendent spiritual texts. Central among the songs/poems in Leonor’s trial is a version of the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law (folios 126r-127v), several stanzas of which have been recorded by the Inquisition scribe. Leonor tells the tribunal that this poem about the Law of Moses was recited by the family on Shabbat. She says her brother Luís said the Law “en copla” / “in verse,” and that she and her sister Isabel “iban respondiendo porque también la saben de memoria” / “they would respond because they also knew it by heart.” It is a long work of more than eighty lines--eight stanzas of ten lines each (this is the number of lines recorded by the Inquisitorial scribe, although the fact that he adds “etc.” after the final line suggests the poem as recited by the Carvajales was longer). The first quinteto (five lines) appears to be entirely in Spanish, while Portuguese elements are already evident in the second quinteto (for example, meu acatamento in line seven). The rest of the poem continues this fluctuation between Spanish and Portuguese, often tending toward Portuguese, suggesting that the scribe may have been trying to transcribe in Spanish the poem being recited in Portuguese by Leonor. In it we find a rhymed synopsis of the Ten Commandments and a brief description of their reception in Sinai: “Yo soy tu Dios y Señor que con poder infinito te liberté del Egipto donde vivías con dolor y asperamente aflito. No tendrás dioses agenos ante meu acatamento ni farás alguos tropheos semellança dos arreos con que horne o firmamiento. Nada desto adorarás ni les darrás algún honor a mí so por Dios tendrás que soy fuerte zelador en quantas cosas versa Meu nome no jurarás sobre alguna vanidad sin muita necessidad bien castigado serás si fizieres tal maldad Lémbrate sanctificar a meu dia señalado os seys podes travallar en lo que mais te agradar ho séptimo te he vedado Porque en seis días crieu todas has cosas criadas en el séptimo descansé por esso santifiqué seguirás suas pissadas Tu pay y may honrrarás y vivirás largamente siempre alegre y contento hea terra que posseerás por mano de omnipotente. Fuge da alguien matar guarte da fornicaçion y de alleno furtar y ao próximo lebantar testimonio de trayçion, Não deseges cossa agena ni tampoco ha mulher ni hao esclavo que tuviere boy, o asno cossa fea la qual, o Señor não quere.” Todo o poblo oveu las vozes del poderosso Señor de ante su grande resplandor y de las más cosas que oveo se apartó con gran temor Todos a Moyssen dixeron que él se les relatasse ho que ho Señor le mandasse que elhes obedeçerían temendo que hos matasse. El le dije, “não temáis que esto fez nosso Señor para vos provar no mais si de El tendes temor uindo y a tantas siñaes feytas en vosso fabor.” etc. The poetic voice of the text shifts from that of God speaking to Moses to that of a witness to Moses’ sharing of the Law with Jews at Sinai. The composition summarizes the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses and underscores the idea of being tested by adversity--just as the Jews had been tested in Egypt, and just as the Crypto-Jews see themselves being tested in New Spain. The choice of Moses as the exemplary Jew is one that resonated with the Sephardim throughout the Diaspora. According to the Spanish scholar Elena Romero, in the Sephardic tradition there exists an entire cycle of poems/songs about Moses and his importance in the Jewish tradition. In this cycle of songs/poems Moses becomes something of an epic figure, and apocryphal information is added to flesh out historical details and the Biblical account. The cycle includes poems on Moses’ prodigious birth, his mission to liberate his people from Egypt, the Exodus and the reception of the Law on Sinai. We find in the eighteenth-century Sephardic copla entitled “Hazañas de Moisés,” the “Deeds of Moses,” a treatment of Moses’s reception of the Law and a brief synopsis of the Commandments similar to the synopsis found in Leonor’s poem/song. In this Moroccan version, however, the poet dedicates many more verses to a description of the Jews in Sinai, while dedicating only a few to the Decalogue itself. The version of the “Ley de Moyssen” Leonor recites to the tribunal clearly fits into this Sephardic tradition of Moses songs, and perhaps supplies us with a hitherto missing piece of this larger tradition—an elaborate version focusing on the actual Law itself. Interestingly, Leonor’s “Ley de Moyssen” is also one of the earliest of the Sephardic Moses songs recorded. Those poems/songs of the Sephardic Moses cycle studied by Romero date to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The formal aspects, including the rhyme scheme and line length, of the “Ley de Moyssen” merits special attention because of parallels with contemporary currents in Peninsular Iberian poetry. The stanzas are composed of ten lines each, with each line composed of eight syllables. These octosyllabic ten-line stanzas are called décimas. The rhyme scheme of these décimas follows a specific pattern—one that was used by fifteenth-century courtly Iberian poets. The basic rhyme scheme is: abbabcdccd. This particular combination of rhymes, line length and ten line stanzas makes this composition a copla real, a popular form in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish poetry. Court poets and the most popular of Golden Age playwrites, including Lope de Vega, composed and performed such coplas reales. As Dorothy Clotelle Clark points out, by the sixteenth century the copla real was “used to the almost complete exclusion of almost all other forms of octosyllabic stanza in lyric poetry.” This form was generally used by poets who avoided other Italianate forms that were becoming popular in the sixteenth century. Leonor’s testimony offers a glimpse of how New Spanish/Mexican Crypto-Jews originally from Portugal incorporated popular Spanish and Portuguese song forms into their secret rituals. It also offers us one of the first written records of the décima in the Americas, and further proves that the Sephardic copla corpus, which Hassán and Romero date to the eighteenth century, existed long before that—at least some 200 years before. However, the unusually long “Ley de Moyssen” which was used by the Carvajales to celebrate Shabbat, is by no means the only exceptional poem/song in Leonor’s trial record. The scribe also records nine “cánticos,” little songs that, according to Leonor, the family sang on Friday night at sundown. The first cántico is the most complete: the scribe recorded six of its stanzas while only recording the first stanzas of the following eight . The first song, “Si con tanto cuidado cada día,” has a regular rhyme scheme (fol 123r-124r): As in the “Ley de Moyssen,” this cántico stresses the difficulty and persecution of the Crypto-Jews and their fervent belief in God and their hopes in redemption. Line 27, “No a de ser en vano . . .” / “Let it not be in vane . . .”, is particularly poignant when put in the context of Leonor’s long imprisonment in the Inquisition prisons and her final execution. Cántico 1 Si con tanto cuidado cada día cantássemos loores al Señor como El tiene de darnos alegría y en todas nuestras cossas su favor no fueran nuestros males tan continuos. No durará tan grande adverssidad de sus bienes todos nos hiziera dignos y de poblar su sancta çiudad en la qual fueran largos nuestros años 10 exemptos de peligros y de daños Confiesso que por ser inobedientes fuimos de nuestra patria deshechados Vibimos entre incircunçissas gentes con hambres y con guerras afrentados 15 todos con crueldades diferentes Fuimos de nuestra patria desechados volbamos al Señor que él es piadosso que él hará nuestro spiritu gozosso Cantemos su loor en este día, 20 del señor escogido y regalado ensalçemos su recta y sancta vía Pues sólo a nos lo ha encomendado de quantas generaciones criado auía como la de Ysrrael por mayor grado multiplicando su generaçion más que las estrellas que en el çielo son No a de ser en vano la esperança que no puede faltar lo prometido muy puesto gozaremos de bonança si inclinamos a bien nuestro sentido porque aquel que en Dios espera todo alcança, Si del bien esperar no es movido, el Señor haga que siempre en él esperremos y que toda su sancta ley guardemos. 35 Prometido ha el Señor si nos tornamos a la ley de su sancta voluntad y si de coraçon y alma assentamos aver de executar su voluntad Si con justiçia por fabor clamamos 40 estando en la mayor adverssidad nos volverá a juntar en esse instante de norte, sur, poniente, y de levante que más señal o muestra pretendemos para reconosçer la obligaçión 45 que de sanctificar tal día tenemos con toda alma y todo coraçón Pues el señor nos veda que busquemos en el mantenimiento y provisión. gastémoslo cantando los loores 50 del Señor que nos da tantos favores While this cántico expresses similar sentiments to those expressed in the “Ley de Moyssen,” its form differs significantly. This cántico is composed of hendecasyllabic lines (consisting of eleven syllables each). Eleven-syllable lines are the hallmark of Italian style poetry that was in vogue among both Spanish and Portuguese court poets beginning in the fifteenth century. The strophic form of this song, which consists of stanzas of eight eleven-syllable lines with three rhymes—the first two alternating in lines one to six, and the last repeating in lines seven and eight (ABABABCC) is known as the octava real. This is the same form we find in the other eight cánticos recorded in Leonor’s trial. The octavas reales are an Italian poetic form that was introduced to Spanish and popularized by court poets Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán. This form quickly became the metric pattern for the learned Spanish compositions of both a religious and profane nature. The great Spanish literati Lope de Vega and José de Valdivielso composed religious poetry in octavas reales. The form was also popular among Portuguese poets and a favorite of Camões. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary theorists tell us this form was particularly suited for important and weighty subject matter such as moral instruction or epic material. One of the best-known representatives of the octava real is Garcilaso de la Vega, who used the form to compose his Églogas, a series of long poems recounting the poet’s personal amorous adventure through a mythological landscape imitative of the classical world. The octavas reales, then, are a form used by erudite, professional Iberian court poets, and the inclusion in the Carvajales Crypto-Jewish rituals in New Spain is a bit unexpected. The learned, cultured poetic form of the octavas reales contrasts with the coplas reales of the “Ley de Moyssen.” While the octavas reales evoke the learned courtly circles of professional Italianate Iberian poets, the coplas reales, although also used by learned courtly poets, remained an essentially popular literary form. The octosyllabic copla real cum décima continued to exist and even thrive in the popular cultures of the Americas--people sang it on the street and on the ships arriving to the New World and have continued doing so until the present. The cántico form, however, was a learned poetic form found almost exclusively among the works of trained court poets. The presence of cánticos in Leonor’s trial shows us that, in addition to being aware of the popular décima form, the Carvajales also possessed a sophisticated and very learned/literary level of poetic composition. Theirs was not a rustic, rude ritual pieced together from bits of scripture, but a private ritual based on well-developed, learned poems/songs that reflect the literary tastes and values of the Iberian aristocrats and literati. Thus Leonor’s trial record is valuable not only for what it tells us about what kinds of texts sixteenth-century Crypto-Jews in New Spain were using to maintain their faith, but also that learned forms of Spanish poetry thrived in the world outside the court. In addition to showing that the Crypto-Jews of New Spain used a variety of Peninsular poetic/song forms as part of their private familiar ritual, including the octava real—a form that reveals the Carvajales had a knowledge of sophisticated learned Iberian court poetry—Leonor’s trial record also shows that women, including Leonor and her sisters, participated in the performance of these songs and were key in their preservation and transmission. In the Spanish tradition there is almost no evidence of how or if women in the court read or sang similar poems/songs composed in coplas and octavas reales. The value of Leonor’s testimony, however, transcends whatever light it may shed on sixteenth-century literary forms and the role of women and Sephardim in their performance and transmission. Leonor’s trial illustrates why literature matters. The poems and songs Leonor recites to the Inquisitors prove to be the most damning evidence against this family that will ultimately be put to death in one of the largest autos de fe in the Americas. In these texts the Carvajales both preserved and created their identity as Jews—these songs tell them not only what rules should govern their lives, but also reassure them that they are not alone in their affliction and that they have a special relationship to the Lord. As such Leonor’s trial is more than just a collection of poems and songs, however valuable these may be to the study of Iberian and Jewish culture and literature, but is above all a testament to a woman’s faith and to her courage in the face of oppression. For more on Leonor de Carvajal click here END NOTES 1For information on this collection, see the Bancroft Library web page: “Survey of Mexican Inquisition Documents,” Regents of the University of California, 2006. http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/inquisitionsurvey.html For Leonor’s trial see Tribunal de la Inquisición. Segundo Proceso de Leonor de Carvajal. BANC 95/96 m. unpublished. Berkeley: Bancroft Library, 1596. 2For more on Leonor de Carvajal’s trial record and the collection of Inquisition manuscripts housed in the Bancroft Library, see Michelle M. Hamilton, “La poesía de Leonor de Carvajal y la tradición de los criptojudíos en Nueva España,” Sefarad 60:1 (2000) 75-93. 3Alfonso Toro, La familia Carvajal. Mexico, D.F., Editorial Patria S.A., 1944. I: 41. 4See D. Luís González Obregón y D. Rodolfo Gómez, Procesos de Luís de Carvajal (el Mozo). México: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1935; and Alfonso Toro, La familia Carvajal. Alfonso Toro’s history was made available in English in 2002 by Frances Hernández as The Jews and the Inquisition in New Spain in the Sixteenth Century (Texas Western Press, 2002) 5Seymour Liebman, The Enlightened: The Writings of Luís de Carvajal, el Mozo (Coral Gables: Univ. of Miami Press, 1967) Also see the more polemical work by Martin A. Cohen, The Story of a Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973). 6See Hamilton, “La poesía.” 7Spanish text also available in Hamilton, “La poesía,” 90-92. 8English translation is my own. 9For a more thorough analysis of the imagery see Hamilton, “La poesía,” 92. 10Romero, La creación literaria en lengua sefardí. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992, 163. 11Romero, Coplas sefardies: primera selección. Intro. by Iacob M. Hassán. Córdoba : Ediciones El Almendro, 1991, 61-65. In fact, the scholars who have undertaken the study and publication of the Sephardic coplero (the corpus of strophic poems composed by Sephardic Jews), Jacob Hassán and Elena Romero, claim it is essentially an eighteenth-century phenomenon. See Romero, La creación literaria. 146; Hassán, “Un género castizo sefardí: Las coplas.” in Los sefardíes; cultura y literature San Sebastián: Universidad del País Vasco, 1987) 103-123 at 105. This date corresponds to the rise of Sephardic presses in the Balkan communities, but Leonor’s trial offers us a much earlier hand-written record of Sephardic coplas. 12The décima will become the most important song form of the New World—the heart of several regional and national musical traditions, including those of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Bibliography on the décima in the Americas is extensive. See, among others: María Teresa Novo and Rafael Salazar, La décima hispánica y el repentismomusical caribeño. Caracas: Fundación Tradiciones Caraqueñas, 1999. 13Clotelle Clark, “The Copla Real,” Hispanic Review 10.2 (1942) 163-165; See also Clotelle Clark, “The Spanish Octosyllable.” Hispanic Review 10.1 (1942) 1-11 at 1-2. 14Ibid., 165. 15English translation is my own. 16Clotelle Clark, The Chronological Sketch of Castilian Versification Together with a List of Its Metric Terms (Berkeley: University of California, 1952) 297. 17See Catalina and José Palomares Expósito, “La ‘Octava real’ y la épica renacentista española.” LEMIR 8 (2004) 1-12. http://parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Revista.html at 4-12. 18For more on the role of women in the Carvajal family and in the transmission of Sephardic culture, see Hamilton, “La poesía,” 79-80.

Society For Crypto Judaic Studies

Home

A History of the SCJS

News and upcoming events

Articles from HaLapid

Personal Stories

Reviews of Conferences

Book Reviews

Member Closeups

Officers

Membership information

“I am your Lord and God

who, with infinite power

liberated you from Egypt

where you were living in pain

and were gravely afflicted.

You shall not have foreign gods before me.

Nor shall you make images

similar to the jewels [stars]

with which I adorned the firmament

You shall not adore any of this

nor shall you give it any honor.

You will have only me as your God.

For I am very zealous

in all that is dictated.

You shall not swear on my name over some trifling matter when it is not necessary.

You will be severely punished

if you commit such an evil

Remember to keep

my designated day holy.

You can work on the other six

doing whatever you like.

The seventh I have reserved

because in 6 days I created

all created things [and]

on the seventh I rested.

Because of this I sanctified [it]

[and] you shall follow in their footsteps

You shall honor your mother and father and thus live a long time

always happy and content

in lands that you shall own

according to the Lord’s will.

Avoid killing someone,

Keep yourself from fornication

and from stealing from others

and from offering traitorous

testimony against those close to you

Do not covet others’ things

nor their wife nor any slave they might have--ox or ass or any base thing--for such a thing the Lord does not want.”

The whole community heard the voices of the powerful Lord.

From the presence of his great brilliance and the other things they heard they fled in great fear

All told Moses to tell them

what the Lord commanded him and that they would obey,

fearing that He would kill them. He told them, “Do not be afraid for the Lord did this to test you and find if

you would fear Him,

having seen there so many signs done in your favor.” etc.

If we were to sing praises to the Lord everyday with great care about how He gives us great happiness and favors all our endeavors

Our tribulations would not be so constant. Such a great adversity will not last. He made us worthy of all his blessings and of populating his holy city in which our days will be long and free of danger and harm

I confess that because we were disobedient we were thrown out of our country. We live among uncircumcised people, hungry and facing war. We are all thrown out of our country by different cruel means.

Let us return to the Lord for he is generous and will please our spirit

Let us sing his praise on this day chosen and gifted by God. Let us praise his straight and holy path, it has been entrusted only to us

Of all the generations He has nurtured that of Israel, causing to multiply its offspring so that they outnumber the stars in the sky. Our hope will not be in vain; that which is promised cannot be denied. Very soon we will enjoy the benefits if we direct our understanding toward good. For he who trusts in God achieves all. If one is not motivated for good, the Lord makes us always have trust in Him and we must keep His holy law

The Lord has promised that if we return to His holy faith and if we try with all our heart and soul to do His will [and] justly pray for help when in the greatest need, at that moment He will again unite us all—from the North, South, East and West

What more sign or evidence

should we give to recognize the

obligation we have to honor the

day with all our heart and soul?

For the Lord prohibits us from

seeking food or provisions.

Let us spend the day singing

the Lord’s praises, for he gives

us so many favors