Abstract
With these words Cecil Roth opened his essay ‘Romance at Urbino’, in which he deals with a case in an era and vein not far removed from the one I will discuss here. During the period since Roth published the original version of his essay in 1925 Jewish scholarship has turned increasingly to those ‘ponderous tomes’ for historical information. While it is no longer novel to use responsa or other legal texts in this way, the discovery of dramatic episodes has not lost its romance.
The ponderous tomes of rabbinic literature, as it is popularly conceived, would be the last place to which one would turn to find material of human interest. But law must of necessity deal with life; and fact, in spite of the fatuous proverb, is sometimes stranger than fiction.1
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References
Cecil Roth, ‘Romance at Urbino’, in id., Personalities and Events in Jewish History,Philadelphia 1961, 275.
On Aailion see Y. Nadav, ‘A Kabbalistic Treatise of R. Solomon Ayllion’, Sefunot 3–4 (1960) 301–347 and bibliography there; M. Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement in Greece,Jerusalem 1973, = Sefunot 14 (1970) 147–16o and n. 134 there; M. Goldish, ‘An Historical Irony: Solomon Aailion’s Court Tries the Case of a Repentant Sabbatean’, Studia Rosenthaliana 27 (1993) 5-12; id., ‘Jews, Christians and Conversos: Rabbi Solomon Aailion’s Struggles in the Portuguese Community of London’, Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994) 227–257. The latter is based on material from the manuscript used here. On Sasportas see E. Moyal, Rabbi Yaacob Sasportas,Jerusalem 1992; M. Goldish, Rabbi Ya‘akov Sasportas: Defender of Torah Authority in an Age of Change (unpublished M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991).
Gérard Nahon has published a letter patent from Louis XIV, confirmed by Henry II and Henry III for the toleration of ‘Portuguese merchants’ in Bayonne and surrounding areas. Though the original letter does not describe these merchants as Jews, their identity was an open secret, and this letter confirmed their rights de facto; see G. Nahon, Les ‘Nations’ Juives Portugaises du Sud-Ouest de la France (1684–1791): Documents, Paris 1981, 32–35, and see also documents XL, LXX-LXXII; id., ‘The Conversos in France in the 16th to the 18th Centuries’, in J. Dan, ed., Culture and History: Ino Sciaky Memorial Volume, Jerusalem 1987,185-zo1; Frances Malino, The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, Alabama 1978, Off.
There are two stages to the Jewish marriage: kiddushin,or betrothal, which forbids the bride to other men and requires divorce to dissolve, but does not constitute marriage in itself; and nissu’in,the actual wedding ceremony. Kiddushin is usually sealed by the gift of a ring or other item of some value from the groom to the bride in front of witnesses. At the nissu’in,seven blessings are recited in honor of the couple’s union, a contract (ketubbah) is signed, and usually the couple are seen off into a private chamber where they might theoretically engage in their first conjugal union. In modern times both kiddushin and nissu’in take place at one time under the wedding canopy, but previously they often occurred separately.
Rouen was not a place where one could practice Judaism openly, while Amsterdam was the centre of the Western Sephardi Diaspora, on which see below.
The questions concerning her status was that of levirate marriage. That is, the Torah prescribes that when a man dies without children, his brother is obliged to either marry his widow in order to raise a family in the late husband’s name (yibbum),or perform a ceremony officially declining to contract such a marriage with the widow (halivah). Until the brother can be located to perform one of these two ceremonies, or if he refuses, the woman is not free to remarry. The situation was particularly perplexing with regard to conversos because, as is presumably the case here, the brother of the dead husband was often living in Spain, Portugal or elsewhere as a Christian, so that both access and willingness (which would endanger his life in the Iberian Peninsula) were problems.
MS Ets Haim 47 A;, fol. 16r-17r. I would like to thank the trustees of the Ets Haim Library and the manuscript division of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem for their kind permission to quote this material.
Of the enormous literature on the Western Sephardi Diaspora I will mention only a few items. These are also the source of ideas in the next paragraphs. Y. Kaplan, ‘The Portuguese Community of Amsterdam in the 17‘h Century: Between Tradition and Change’, in A. Haim, ed., Society and Community,Jerusalem 1991, 141–171; id., From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro,Oxford 1989; M. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation,Indiana 1997; Y.H. Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto,Seattle 1981. On the relations between the French Portuguese communities and Amsterdam see G. Nahon, ‘Les rapports des communautés judéo-portugaises de France avec celle d’Amsterdam au XVII’ et XVIII’siècles’, Studia Rosenthaliana 10 (1976) 37–78,175–188.
On the problem of marginal conversos,see especially Goldish, ‘Jews, Christians and Conversos’.
See Y. Kaplan, ‘The Travels of Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam to the ‘Lands of Idolatry’ (1644–17z4)’, in id., ed., Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition,Jerusalem 1985, 597-224; id., ‘The Struggle Against Return to Iberia in the Sephardi Diaspora’, Zion 64 (5999) 65–1oo.
See further also S. Rosenberg, ‘Emunat Hakhamim’, in I. Twersky and B. Septimus, eds, Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century,Cambridge 1987, 285–341; Uriel da Costa, Examination of Pharisaic Traditions,ed. H.P. Salomon and I.S.D. Sassoon, Leiden 1993; Imanuel Aboab’s ‘Nomologia o discursos legales’: The Struggle Over the Authority of the Law,ed. and trans. M. Orfali, Jerusalem 1997.
See B. Gottlieb, ‘The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage’, in R. Wheaton and T.K. Hareven, eds, Family and Sexuality in French History,Philadelphia 198o, 5o; R.B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850,London 1995, 5,and chapter 1 in general.
See Gottlieb, ‘Clandestine Marriage’, 49–83; M.-C. Phan, Les amours illégitimes: Histoires de séduction en Languedoc (1676–1786),Paris 1986; A. Redondo, ed., Amours légitimes, amours illégitimes in Espagne (XVIe-XVIIe siècles): colloque international,Paris 1985, especially the essays of J. Casey and J. Riandière La Roche; Carmen Martèn Gaite, Love Customs in Eighteenth-Century Spain,Berkeley 1991, dealing with various related issues, particularly in literature; G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice,Oxford 1985, chapters 1-z et passim P. Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821,Stanford 1988, again dealing with surrounding issues as well as clandestine marriages in particular; D. Haks, Huwelijk en gezin in Holland in de 17de en 18de eeuw,Utrecht 1985, chapters 34; L. Stone, Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England, 1660–17S3,Oxford 1992, chapter I:8, II:10–12; and see Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage.
For an overview see G. Ellinson, Non-Halachic Marriage: A Study of the Rabbinic Sources,Tel-Aviv 1975.
See e.g. the papers by R. Lamdan, K. Stow, R. Weinstein and E. Horowitz in I. Bartal and I. Gafni, eds, Eros, Sexuality and the Family in History, Jerusalem 1998.
Y. Kaplan, ‘Famille, mariage et société: les mariages clandestins dans la diaspora séfarade occidentale (XVII’ et XVIII’siècles)’, XVIIe Siècle 183 (1994) 255-278. See now also id., ‘The Threat of Eros in Eighteenth-Century Sephardi Amsterdam’, in id., An Alternative Path To Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe,Leiden z000, z8o300 See also A.H. Freimann, Seder Kiddushin we-Nissu’in,Jerusalem 1964, 227–234. One must note that Freimann does not differentiate between communities of former conversos and those of other Sephardim. Thus, for example, when he refers to a local tradition in Avignon of carrying out kiddushin some time before the nissu’in, a situation which could bear directly on our case, we must question to what degree that practice might have affected the Portuguese community of the seventeenth century.
This presumably refers to a short statement in the original Haskamot,the constitution of the community at the time of its formal organization. Such short statements requiring parental or communal consent to a marriage existed throughout the Western Sephardi Diaspora. While our case does not specify that there was a parental objection to the union, this was undoubtedly the most common issue in all cases of clandestine marriage.
For a second time the document fails to mention whose permission is required. Later it will state that it must be done with the knowledge (a-da’ateh) of the rabbinical court. In the 1703 document which follows in Freimann, it is specified that the parents’ permission is required. In the cases cited by Kaplan, permission might be needed from the parents or closest living relatives of previous generations, the communal rabbi, or six members of the congregation who would be present. This last requirement resembles the Christian practice of banns, public announcements of the upcoming nuptials, which allowed anyone with knowledge of disqualifying information to step forward.
This step is extremely important because it disqualifies the marriage from before its occurrence and thus obviates the requirement for divorce. The method, making the money or object with which the groom attempts to carry out the engagement into public property, is ingenious if not original. At the core of the problem is that in Judaism as in Catholicism (see Gottlieb, ‘Clandestine Marriage’, 5off.) it is extremely simple to enter into a binding marriage whose consequences can create a personal and legal nightmare.
Freimann, Seder Kiddushin we-Nissu’in, 228. Freimann continues with a document of 1703 expanding further on the ban over clandestine marriage in Bayonne, including the signatures of the Amsterdam rabbis to the document.
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Goldish, M. (2002). Passion at the Periphery: The Contexts of a Clandestine Converso Conjunction. In: Berger, S., Brocke, M., Zwiep, I. (eds) Zutot 2001. Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3730-2_17
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