Juifs portugais du Sud-Ouest

Before being "Portuguese from the Southwest," these Jews were Hispano-Portuguese, heirs to one of the most prestigious Jewish cultures of the medieval West. The Iberian Peninsula, from the eighth to the fifteenth century, had offered Judaism a singular space for flourishing, where communities lived in turn under Muslim and then Christian domination. Historiography long celebrated this moment under the name of Convivencia, coexistence of the three monotheisms; María Rosa Menocal popularized this reading of a medieval Spain where, according to her, Muslims, Jews and Christians together created a culture of tolerance [Menocal, 2002]. Thomas F. Glick, however, invited a reevaluation of this paradigm, showing that coexistence was made of as much tension as exchange, hierarchies as dialogue [Glick, 2005]. This Sephardic culture, with its language, liturgy and learning, constitutes the deep foundation of the identity that the new Christians would carry, underground, into Gascony.

The end of the fifteenth century shattered this balance. The Edict of the Alhambra, promulgated by the Catholic Monarchs, expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492: by the Edict of the Alhambra, Jews are expelled from Spain in 1492; some chose Portugal as a refuge, but on December 5, 1496 they are expelled again, whether long-established in Portugal or newly arrived from Spain [Wikipedia, History of Jews known as Portuguese in France]. Portugal, a refuge of a day, closed its doors quickly: in October 1497, King Manuel transformed expulsion into conversion [Wikipedia]. This is the foundational event of our history. By forbidding departure while imposing baptism, Manuel I created out of whole cloth a population of forced converts — the cristãos-novos, "new Christians" — many of whom remained secretly faithful to the Law of Moses. The peninsula then established the apparatus that would hunt them down: in Portugal, the Inquisition organizes the first auto-da-fé in 1540; in Spain, the status of new Christian was suspect [Wikipedia]. From this permanent suspicion would arise the migratory movement toward the French Southwest. As Yerushalmi emphasized, Marranism is not a simple clandestine survival but a new existential condition, shaped by constraint and by the memory of a Judaism henceforth inaccessible [Yerushalmi, 1998].

Fleeing the Inquisition's gaze required finding nearby land that was mercantile and indifferent enough not to scrutinize consciences. Gascony, with its Atlantic ports and porous border, met these conditions. The New Christians settled there first as merchants, without revealing their Judaism, in Bordeaux as in the vicinity of Bayonne. According to research gathered in Judeo-Portuguese Communities of Southwestern France, some of these groups settled in Southwestern France, around Bordeaux and Bayonne, after obtaining Letters Patent of protection and safeguard from Henri II in 1550 [Persée].

These letters patent constitute the legal birth certificate of the community. In August 1550, the King of France officially recognized their presence under a carefully neutral designation: in August 1550, Henri II published letters patent concerning merchants and other Portuguese called New Christians [Wikipédia]. The vocabulary is revealing. There is nowhere any mention of Jews; the French State protects Catholic subjects of Portuguese origin, useful to the kingdom's commerce. This terminological veil was the very condition of their survival: it allowed them to exist legally without confessing an identity that would have exposed them. Those seeking a status did so precisely because elsewhere it was perilous; thus, those established in France sought to have their status made official [Wikipédia].

The geography of settlement took shape gradually. In Bayonne, the presence of New Christians quickly provoked hostility from local merchants. According to the history of the Bayonne synagogue, a group was expelled from the city in 1597 and settled in Saint-Esprit, Peyrehorade, Bidache and La Bastide-Clairence, where they remained despite the expulsion decree of Henri IV, which besides would not be executed [Wikipédia, Synagogue de Bayonne]. Thus was constituted a constellation of Jewish towns around Bayonne, of which Saint-Esprit became the heart. There, their status was fixed by a series of letters patent from Henri II in 1550 [Wikipédia]. The map of the Portuguese community of the Southwest — a great port, Bordeaux, and a string of Bayonne localities — was henceforth fixed for two and a half centuries.

The most singular trait of this community was to live for a long time in a religious in-between state of which the archive preserves only oblique traces, and which Memory alone fully restores. Officially Catholic, bringing their children to baptism and marrying in church, these families maintained in the secrecy of their homes Judaizing practices transmitted from generation to generation. The notion of crypto-Judaism designates this double life. According to the memoriali account taken up by historians of Portuguese Judaism, those compelled to remain in the country, other New Christians would continue to transmit clandestinely, from generation to generation, certain of their Jewish practices; these are the crypto-Jews [InfoJmoderne]. In the Southwest, the constraint was reversed: the host country did not actively persecute them, but their status as Catholic "Portuguese" obliged them to caution so long as inquisitorial suspicion could cross the border.

The History of Bayonne illustrates concretely this oscillation. The local chronicle records the stages of unveiling: they settle in the Saint-Esprit suburb; they take the title of Portuguese or New Christians; the Portuguese resume practicing the Jewish religion; complaints are brought by the people of Bayonne; it is ordered that the Jews withdraw into the interior of the kingdom [SearchWorks, Histoire des Juifs de Bayonne]. One reads in this sequence the very breathing of crypto-Judaism: a practice first dissimulated, then gradually resumed in broad daylight, awakening at once the mistrust of Christian competitors, and provoking measures that, often, were only partially applied.

It is here that the intersection between Memory and archive takes on its full meaning. Tradition transmits the account of an inner fidelity never broken; the archive, more cautious, records above all commercial frictions and administrative injunctions. The two answer one another without covering exactly the same ground. Yerushalmi has emphasized the complexity of this Marrano identity, neither quite Jewish nor quite Christian, product of a History of constraint [Yerushalmi, 1998]. In Bordeaux, the process was analogous: Portuguese families, long registered as Catholics, slipped progressively toward a public Jewish observance as de facto tolerance grew firmer. What Memory names "return to Judaism" was, in fact, less a return than an exit from secrecy.

The eighteenth century marked the apogee of the Portuguese community of Bordeaux, now organized as a "Nation," a recognized body endowed with its own internal institutions. Legal recognition reached a decisive stage with a new royal charter. The collective work published under the aegis of the CTHS summarizes it clearly: at the end of the Ancien Régime, the Jews of Bordeaux were essentially descendants of Portuguese families whose existence was recognized by the letters patent of 1723 [OpenEdition, CTHS]. These letters patent, issued under Louis XV, confirmed and broadened earlier privileges, allowing the Portuguese Nation to administer itself, keep its registers, maintain its places of worship and charitable works. The word "Jew" could finally be pronounced in official documents: the fiction of the sole Catholic Portuguese merchant faded away.

The Bordeaux community distinguished itself by a remarkable economic and social integration. According to the same study, they experienced spectacular examples of economic success and integration into the city's social circles [OpenEdition, CTHS]. Colonial and Atlantic trade, maritime shipbuilding, wine commerce and foreign exchange made the fortune of families whose names structure historiography: the Gradis, the Furtado, the Peixotto, the Dacosta, the Dalpuget, so many lineages that Théophile Malvezin enumerated in his pioneering history of the Jews of Bordeaux [Malvezin]. The very index of his work — which juxtaposes Astruc, David Gradis, Dacosta, Fernandès, converts, consistory, coreligionists, Spanish and Portuguese established in Bordeaux — gives the image of a dense, ramified society, both mercantile and communal [Google Books, Malvezin].

Settlement also spread to the Bayonne hinterland. The community of Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne, though more modest and more artisanal than its Bordeaux counterpart, developed structured religious life, with synagogue, confraternities and cemeteries. The works compiled by the section of religious sciences of the École pratique des hautes études have illuminated the functioning of these Judeo-Portuguese communities of the Southwest between 1684 and 1791, a period during which the Nation, at first tolerated by caution, became a recognized component of the regional economy [Persée]. Gérard Nahon showed how this institutionalization required the establishment of internal governance — syndics, deliberations, communal taxation — which prefigured the consistorial structures to come [Nahon, 2003].

The history of the Portuguese Nation culminates in the great turning point of the late eighteenth century, when the question of the civil status of the Jews of France was raised in public debate and then decided by the Revolution. The Portuguese of the Southwest found themselves in a particular position: better integrated, more wealthy, less visibly "foreign" than the Ashkenazi Jews of Alsace and Lorraine, they were able to assert their French antiquity and economic utility. Frances Malino analyzed this singular trajectory of assimilation and emancipation specific to the Sephardim of Bordeaux, who negotiated their entry into citizenship from an already advanced position of social insertion [Malino, 1978].

The revolutionary sequence was decisive. From the opening of debates on the status of non-Catholics, the deputies of the Portuguese Nation pleaded for a distinct recognition of their situation. The CTHS study on the Jews of Bordeaux between 1787 and 1806 precisely restores this pivotal moment, between the edict of tolerance concerning Protestants and the decree of citizenship [OpenEdition, CTHS]. On January 28, 1790, the Constituent National Assembly granted full citizenship to the Jews "Portuguese, Spanish and Avignon," that is to say precisely to the Sephardic communities of the Southwest and the Comtat, before the general decree of September 27, 1791 extended emancipation to all Jews of France. Thus the Portuguese of Bordeaux and Saint-Esprit were, chronologically, among the first Jews of Europe to obtain civil equality.

This privilege of anteriority stems from their very history. Because they had first been admitted as Catholic merchants, because they had blended into Bordeaux sociability, they could present themselves in 1790 as long-standing French rather than as a separate nation. The title chosen by CTHS historians—"Israelites in our temples, French among our fellow citizens"—condenses this aspiration to conjugate religious fidelity and national belonging [OpenEdition, CTHS]. Emancipation was therefore not, for them, as brutal a rupture as for others: it crowned a long work of integration begun in the sixteenth century under the guise of new Christianity. The secret of the Gascon Marranos opened, two and a half centuries later, onto open citizenship.

Beyond dates and deeds, the Portuguese Jews of the South-West formed a distinct culture, a branch of what historiography calls the Western Sephardic diaspora — the ensemble of communities descended from Iberian New Christians who returned to Judaism in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, Livorno, and South-Western France. Esther Benbassa defined this network as a coherent area, united by common origins, trade routes, and a shared religious sensibility [Benbassa, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judaism]. Bordeaux and Bayonne constituted its Gascon extremity, in constant dialogue with Amsterdam, the spiritual metropolis of this diaspora.

The Memory of this community crystallized around a few traits transmitted with fervor. As Western Sephardic Memory recalls, these Portuguese Jews maintained a strong mnemonic bond with Portugal in the diaspora — language, rites, family names, objects [House of Jewish Culture]. The so-called "Portuguese" rite, distinct from the Ashkenazi rite, the particular pronunciation of Hebrew, the residual use of Portuguese and Spanish in certain prayers and documents, the Iberian surnames preserved — Gradis, Furtado, Nunes, Rodrigues, Lopes — were so many identity markers. According to the same mnemonic narrative, once freed from constraint, they largely returned to Judaism [House of Jewish Culture], accomplishing that return which the founding notice of the community sums up in the formula: "New Christians returned to Judaism."

Here again, Memory and History intertwine. The archival record attests to institutions, fortunes, and decrees; Memory bears the meaning of experience, the consciousness of a fidelity wrested from secrecy. Portugal itself has recently renewed ties with this heritage: the country, described as the cradle of Sephardic Judaism, attracts Jewish memorial tourism since the revival of tourism [InfoJmoderne]. This contemporary movement testifies to the persistence of a bond that neither the Inquisition nor the centuries have erased. Historiographical debates on relations between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages — nourished by the work of Gilbert Dahan on Christian intellectuals and Jews [Dahan, 1990], Israël Jacob Yuval on the sharing of origins [Yuval, 2012], or Marcel Simon on the Verus Israël of Late Antiquity [Simon, 1948] — offer the long perspective within which this experience is inscribed: that of a European Judaism constantly compelled to negotiate its place between recognition and suspicion.

The history of Portuguese Jews in the Southwest is one of a long detour through secrecy to reach the light. Departing from the Iberian peninsula after the expulsions of 1492 and 1497 and the forced conversion imposed by Manuel Ier, these New Christians crossed the Pyrenees, obtained in 1550 the letters patent of Henry II that protected them under the modest name of "Portuguese merchants," and settled permanently in Bordeaux and around Bayonne, in Saint-Esprit, Peyrehorade, Bidache and La Bastide-Clairence. For two centuries, they lived a double loyalty, outwardly Catholic and Jewish at heart, before the relaxation of Inquisitorial vigilance and the usefulness of their commerce allowed them an open return to Judaism, consecrated by the letters patent of 1723.

Their destiny culminated in revolutionary emancipation: recognized as citizens as early as January 1790, among the very first Jews in Europe to attain civil equality, they reaped the fruit of patient integration begun under the mask. This trajectory makes them an exemplary case of the Western Sephardic diaspora, between Marranism, merchant prosperity and citizenship. Following Gérard Nahon [Nahon, 2003], Frances Malino [Malino, 1978] and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi [Yerushalmi, 1998], we retain that this community was not merely a social group but a singular historical experience: that of an identity maintained by Memory across constraint, and ultimately recognized by law. The "return to Judaism" that defines the founding entry was not merely a religious event, but the culmination of a long history of quiet courage and transmitted loyalty.