A Historic Dictionary of the Portuguese Sephardim? *

Transcription

1 A Historic Dictionary of the Portuguese Sephardim? * It is generally expected that one of the first clarifications connected with a work is its title. The Dicionário Histórico dos Sefarditas Portugueses. Mercadores e Gentes de Trato, published under the scientific direction of A. A. Marques de Almeida and coordinated by Paulo Mendes Pinto 1, fails to do so; which seems strange when such work was partly funded by the Chair of Sephardic Studies Alberto Benveniste. Are we facing a new epistemic category? Usually the expression Sephardic Jews is used to refer to the Jews of Iberian origin in general, notwithstanding more specific origins like the Castilians, Aragonese, Portuguese, etc., and alluding to the biblical toponym Sepharad as the modern equivalent of the Iberian Peninsula. Several authors have pointed out that the Iberian Jews lacked a sense of unity or, better still, a sense of pan-nationhood, thus identifying themselves more with their place of birth or, at most, with their kingdom of origin. The name Sephardim therefore, is retrospective and refers to the need felt by the Iberian Jews to accentuate their specificity in the Diaspora vis-à-vis other Jewish communities 2. The combination of these two categories seems to be unreflective and its unstably based on institutional formulations connected with the Early Modern Age; a period of time when there was a meaningful and definitive junction of the words Jews or Hebrews with Portuguese to establish the difference that the category Sephardim simply could not give. That can be seen in Amsterdam, for instance, where it was usual to refer to the Portuguese of the Nation, Portuguese of the Hebrew Nation or to the Portuguese Jews, but never to the Portuguese Sephardim 3. After running through this work we have discovered the root of its epistemic inconsistency, which point us to the core of its construction. The problem it is not the occasional detection of typos and grammatical errors, often caused by distraction, or even omissions, since we believe in the old Latin adage Errare humanum est. The problem is when its entire conception is an error. We refer to grave misconceptions, as the scholarship transmitted reveals ignorance unbecoming of researchers who are expected to produce consistent knowledge in their area of expertise. For example, in the entry Micas, Bernardo (p. 441) it is written on his marriage with Beatriz Luna it was then * A version in Portuguese it was also published. 1 Lisbon, Campo da Comunicação, 2009, 741 pp., ISBN Vide inter alia Joseph Hacker, The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth Century, in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, edited by Haim Beinart, Jerusalem, The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, vol. 2, 1992, pp ; Jonathan Ray, New Approaches to the Jewish Diaspora: The Sephardim as a Sub-Ethnic Group, in Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society, vol. 15, nº 1, 2008, pp See for instance Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation. Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997, pp ; Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans. The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, London, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000, pp

2 celebrated a Kettubbah (marriage contract) 4, the article used in Portuguese was masculine when it should have been feminine. And Kettubah is a legal document recording the financial obligations of the husband to the wife, which must be signed before the celebration of the marriage - the Hatunah or Nissouïm. Briefly, the legal document is confused with the marriage ceremony. Is this acceptable in a work on Sephardic or Jewish Studies in general? Still within this perspective, and after the Introduction had emphasised categorically the validation of the [work s] content, and the scrutiny of the inquisitorial processes whenever these were referred to (p. 14), we find that, for instance, on page 527 in the entry Paz, Tomé Pegado da; Chahaom, Rabi David, none of the members of this collective dictionary has noticed that the second [Hebrew] name is unequivocally badly transcribed, since it could only be read, as it is clearly written in the source Abrahaom [Abraham] 5. At last we stopped running through the dictionary. And we have stopped here because the most serious problem is not the scientific distractions, but a certain lack of principles in its making, which affect us personally. Logically that in a dictionary said to be prosopographical, an author has the tendency to look for entries on characters which he was been researching and producing original studies for the past decades. We saw then that these entries lacked to mention the name of its author, and were not even a well made synthesis on what we had been producing over the years, since they were simple acts of vampirism of our material: the research, the ideas, the interpretation and even the transliteration of names (which changes according to the several criteria in use) it is unmistakably ours. A sentence was changed here, an idea in the beginning was shifted to the end to pretend that there was no copy, but we have recognised as ours the text in those anonymous entries. And at the end of some of these entries there it is, our name and our work published years ago, as the sole bibliography and material used in its making, as if these were a ghost of what we had produced 6. 4 The rendering of the passage reads, in Portuguese: celebrou-se então um Kettubah (contrato de casamento). 5 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Inquisição de Lisboa, processo (proc.) 10906, fol The entries where they have solely used (and this is the literal sense that should be given to this verb) our works are: Adibe, Jacob, pp ; Adibe, José, pp ; Adibe, Moisés, pp ; Adibe, Yahya, pp ; Azevedo, Belchior Vaz de, pp ; Benzamerro, Abraão, pp ; Benzamerro, Ismael, p. 92, Benzamerro, Judas, p. 93; Benzamerro, Salomão, pp.93-94; Gibre, Abraão, pp ; e Vilhalon, Abraão, p Another proof that this dictionary is, at least, a work of vampirism and not a scientific endeavour, which implies the writing of a synthesis, is the fact that the entries size depends on the amount of material we have produced on each of these characters. We would like to stress, again, that unlike what is stated in the Introduction, the archival research is a sham, because we have made new research using other sources that has added fresh data to some of these biographies. Other entries where our works had been used (sometimes as the basic bibliography) are: Cabeça, Abraão, pp ; Cabeça, Isaac, pp ; Cordelha, Afonso Vaz, pp ; Mendes, Álvaro, pp ; Micas, João, pp ; Olivares, Jácome, pp ; Paz, Tomé Pegado de, pp ; Rosales, Jacob, pp , Rute, Abraão, pp ; Rute, Jacob, pp ; e Rute, Moisés, p

3 It is written in the Introduction : In the making of this Dictionary the archival research has taken four years, and the entries redaction has taken the research team a similar period of time (p. 13). We feel bound to ask: it took four years of the collective effort of a team of sixteenth people to do this work of cut and paste? Moreover, in the Introduction it is also said: On this subject there is available, in the Libraries, a vast bibliography. Some of which, despite its relevancy, remains forgotten and is of difficult consultation. Whenever possible, this knowledge has been retrieved and used with more recent bibliography (p. 13). In view of this statement, shouldn t we question too, as it touches us, what kind of evaluation do they make of our work: Do they think that they are making us a favour, without ever consulting us, to publicise our works to a wider audience, implying that these laid forgotten in libraries, and in their name? Though we should also ask if this task is made by an individual author, or by the amorphous collective that lays behind the entries? Or when our work is considered the most recent bibliography, since there is no other, does that give them the right to pirate at will under the pretext of publicising it to a wider audience? Now that the general survey of this dictionary comes to an end, we arrive to a crucial point: Whatever are their criteria, as is case of the vampirism made with our work, do they consider as innovative research what they are making? That is the idea we got in the end, since it is also written in the Introduction : We present the final version of the project under the guise of a Dictionary as it looked to us the better way to organise the new knowledge provided by the research [???] (p. 14) [our underlining]. As a house of cards, however, the risk of collapse is always imminent since actually no research has been made, but instead copy was widely used. The result is that the new knowledge they have taken from others is often a poisonous gift, which not only damages the reputation of the person who authored the original work, but also the public to which it is intended. We will prove easily the last statement in what concerns directly our studies. For example, in the entry Olivares, Jácome the authors mention that his destiny is unknown after being tormented by the Inquisition (p. 501); when we had proved in 1995 that Olivares had escaped to Istanbul, where he remained connected with the House of Nasci 7. Such statement in the above-mentioned entry is strange, since they have written it based on Ana Cannas da Cunha, A Inquisição no Estado da Índia. Origens ( ) 8, and on our book Judeus e cristãos-novos de Cochim 9, where it is clearly stated how Olivares managed to escape to Istanbul. As the same entry refers as its source the inquisitorial process of this New-Christian, and as they say in the Introduction - as we remember - that whenever there were references to the Inquisition, we would refer to the processes in the Torre do Tombo (p. 14), it seems that 7 José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, From Setúbal to the Sublime Porte: The Wanderings of Jácome de Olivares, New Christian and Merchant of Cochin ( ), in Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies, vol. 2, 1995, pp Ana Cannas da Cunha, A Inquisição no Estado da Índia. Origens ( ), Lisbon, Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo, José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, Judeus e Cristãos-Novos de Cochim. História e Memória( ), Braga, Edições APPACDM Distrital de Braga, 2003, pp

4 they have ignored not only what we had written, but also the inquisitorial process we have used in our research 10. Actually we are being quite benevolent, as this time the work of vampirism was less perfect, since probably they never got to the end of our book used as their primal source, they simply killed the character before time. Basically, is this what matters really in the context of this scientific production? Then what is for the nefarious use of our bibliography? In the entry Mendes, Álvaro; Costa, Álvaro Mendes da; Aben-Ayish, Salomão (p. 411), nor Abraham Galante in his study D. Salomon Aben Yaèche, duc de Mételin 11, nor we in our article Conversos: A península desejada. Reflexões em torno de alguns casos paradigmáticos 12 say, as it is stated there, that Queen Elizabeth I of England knighted D. Salomon, since this is simply false. Though the two above-mentioned studies were used to write the entry, both authors know that D. Salomon still as Álvaro Mendes was made a knight in the Portuguese Order of Santiago by King D. João III (in March ), to reward his services to the Crown as a jeweller 13. Elizabeth I only name him in English as knight according to his Portuguese social status 14. A third and final example of the excellent work made, one that reveals a neglect that can damage the good name of the author used. In none of our works we mention the erroneous fact that the letter of Gaspar and João Ribeiro to the King of Portugal is a proof of João Micas connection with the Orient, as it is explicitly written using our name in the entry Micas, João; Nasi, Joseph; Duque de Naxos (p. 446). This entry makes use of our already mentioned article Conversos. A península desejada. Reflexões em torno de alguns casos paradigmáticos 15 ; when it is in our book Judeus e Cristãos-Novos de Cochim where we, based in the process of Tomé Pegado da Paz 16, proved how in Venice João Ribeiro informed D. Joseph Nasci on the Christendom projects vis-à-vis the Ottoman Empire. Though these are not the central proofs of D. Joseph Nasci s connection with Indian matters while an Ottoman subject. Such proofs can be seen in our study Judeus e Cristãos-Novos de Cochim 17, which as already mentioned and proved, was ignored, since the public never knew what happened to Jácome Olivares. 10 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc , fol Istambul, Société de Papeterie et d`impremerie Fratelli Haim, In Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas, vol. 6, 2006, pp Idem, p A. Galante, op. cit., p Pp D 16 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc , fols José Alberto R. Silva Tavim, op. cit., pp

5 The evidences shown are clear enough to make us repudiate publicly all the mentions made in our name, all the entries remitting exclusively to our works, or to other references based on our studies which appear in this Dicionário dos Sefarditas Portugueses 18 ; and stress the lack of scientific rigour and professionalism modelling it, which is improper for a work partly subsidised by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (POCTI/HAR/42393/2001), a Portuguese government foundation. The unspeakable vampirism made on the research we have done in the last decades, which is clear when the text of some entries is compared with our studies cited therein 19, and its corruption already proved, not only damages our image as a researcher, but also impairs the public interest in general, is not acceptable in a work subsidised by a foundation whose objective is to promote scientific research using the taxpayer money. Since its first page the Dictionary fails to mention one of its peculiarities to the reader: None of its entries is signed, unlike what is usual in similar works we know of, on some of which we have collaborated both in Portugal and abroad. And there is a reason why this procedure is commonly applied internationally. It is a question of professional ethic (yes, ethic, a word seemingly in disuse in certain circles, or then carefully weighted on quantitative and relative terms - to be more or less ethic ), and used to respect the author or authors who wrote a given article, making him or them accountable for it, while simultaneously recognising his or theirs proficiency in a particular subject. We can even try to believe that all the sixteenth members of the so-called research team are co-authors of each and every entry throughout the 741 pages of the Dictionary. Isn t this anonymity a proof of the dichotomy between the prolix introductory academic discourse and the more sad and mean reality of its content? On the other hand, the Research Team, as is expressly mentioned, had two full-time fellows of scientific research funded by the FCT, and four research trainees. We feel bound to ask: contrary to the proved vampirism and adulteration of facts, wasn t the editors task to educate these young researchers, instead of using them as labour force in a so-called scientific activity, frankly deformed and deforming? In the end we come again to the Introduction : This dictionary asserts a thematic knowledge. It is a moment of synthesis of what, in a given time, is known about this subject. It transmits knowledge, often generational, integrating new information, and seeking its scientific validation in the novelty it brings about, and in the methodological rigour of its treatment (p. 15) [our underlining] 18 With the purpose publication to a wider audience, but always identified as ours, see the entries we made for dictionaries worthing the name due to the scientific deontology guiding them, as the Dicionário do Judaísmo Português, edited by Lúcia Mucznik et al, Lisbon, Presença, 2009; Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, edited by Norman Stilman, Leiden, Brill, 2010; and Dizionario storico dell`inquisizione, directed by Adriano Prosperi (in print). 19 Vide supra note 6. 5

6 In face of what is said above it is worthwhile citing a famous article by Susan Sontag The imagination of disaster : Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of oldest subjects of art 20 As it is widely known the Jewish Studies are not internationally a work of fiction, therefore we candidly believe that its development in Portugal will, most certainly, circumvent the disaster. José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim Centro de História Departamento de Ciências Humanas 20 Susan Sontag, The imagination of disaster, in Commentary, October 1965, p