Antonio de Montezinos

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Antonio de Montezinos , Aaron Levi (* around 1604 in Vila Flor ( Portugal ), † 1648 in Recife ( Dutch Brazil )) was a Marran traveler and supposedly the discoverer of the lost tribes of Israel overseas.

Life

Antonio de Montezinos was born in a Converso family in Vilaflor ( northern Portugal ) around 1604 . Between 1639 and 1644 he traveled to South America , especially New Granada . From 1639 to 1641 he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias (now Colombia ) for a year and a half . In 1644 he returned to Europe. He presumably converted to Judaism openly in Amsterdam and took the name Aaron Levi . Before a committee of the local Sephardic community he testified under oath that he had encountered members of the ten lost tribes of Israel in South America.

When he crossed the Cordilleras in 1639 , he heard one of the Indians speak of a secret people. It was only after he was imprisoned on suspicion of Judaizing that he realized that this Indian must be a Hebrew. After his release from captivity in February 1641, he therefore visited the Indian again. This led him to a group of locals who claimed to be descendants of the lost Israeli tribe of Ruben . The Indians recited the Shema Yisrael and recognized him as one of their brothers. They had encouraged Montezinos to make his discovery, which was a sign of messianic fulfillment, known to the Jewish diaspora .

The story was received with great interest by the leadership of the Sephardic community ( mahamad ) in Amsterdam . After six months in the Netherlands, Montezinos returned to South America. He went to Recife (now Brazil ), where the oldest Jewish community in South America was. When he died two years later in Pernambuco (1648), he is said to have confirmed the truth of his story while still on his death bed.

The hope of Israel

The information on Montezinos is based primarily on the records of Menasse ben Israel . According to his own statements, he was personally present when the Marran traveler was questioned. He wrote his remarks under the title Relación de Aarón Levi, alias Antonio de Montezinos and tied the story in his book The Hope of Israel . The book was published in Amsterdam in 1650 in Spanish and Latin and a little later in English ( The Hope of Israel , London 1650).

Even before Menasseh ben Israel went to print, the story was circulating in millenarian circles in England. The Scottish theologian John Dury had received the manuscript during one of his stays in Amsterdam and left it to Thomas Thorowgood (1595–1669) for his book Jewes in America or Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race . The thesis of the Jewish descent of the Indians had been advocated earlier and was now given new impetus among the Puritans . The thesis was another justification for their missionary work in New England. Now that there was the possibility of converting the lost tribes in America to Christianity in addition to the Jews of Europe, the Millenarianists believed that the end times and the return of the Messiah could become a reality.

The hope of Israel was intended in response to the Puritan's speculation. For the Jews, too, finding the ten lost tribes was a prerequisite for the return of the Messiah. In Jewish messianism, the second prerequisite for the fulfillment of Israel's hope was the dispersal of Jews around the world. This requirement was not fulfilled as long as the Jews could not settle in England and practice their religion. For this reason Menasseh ben Israel dedicated the first edition of Hope of Israel to the English Parliament ( dedicated by the author to the high court, the Parliament of England, and to the Councell of State ). Indeed, Menasseh was subsequently invited to England, where he successfully negotiated the resettlement of the Jews with Cromwell .

The theory that the Indians were descended from the Jews could partly hold up into the 19th century, but lost more and more importance with the extinction of millenarianism and extinct completely with the advent of scientific ethnology .

Editions of the Relación de Aarón Levi, alias Antonio de Montezinos (selection)

First editions
  • Migweh Israel. Esto es, Esperança de Israel . Amsterdam 1650 (Spanish) online
  • Miqweh Israel. Hoc est Spes Isaelis . Amsterdam 1650 (Latin from Menasseh ben Israel)
  • The Hope of Israel . London 1650, 1651, 1652 (in English by Moses Wall)
  • De Hoop van Israel . Amsterdam 1666 (Dutch)
  • Miqveh Yisra'el . Amsterdam (Yiddish 1691, Hebrew 1698)
new editions
  • The hope of Israel , Oxford 1987, ISBN 0-19-710054-6
  • Henri Méchoulan, Gérard Nahon (eds.): Menasseh ben Israel: Espérance d 'Israël . Paris 1979, ISBN 2-7116-0557-4
  • Elias Hayyim Lindo: The Narrative of Aharon Levi, alias Antonio de Montezinos . In: Tanya Storch (ed.): Religions and missionaries around the Pacific, 1500–1900 . Aldershot 2006. ISBN 978-0-7546-0667-3
contemporary discussion
  • Edward Winslow: The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England . London 1649.
  • Thomas Thorowgood: Jewes in America or Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race . London 1650. (with The Relation of Master Antonie Monterinos, translated out of the French Copie sent by Manasseh ben Israel )
  • Hamon L'Estrange: Americans no Jewes, or Improbabilities that the Americans are of that race . London, 1652.
  • Gottlieb Spitzel: Elevatio relationis Montezinianae de repertis in America tribubus Israeliticis . Basel 1661
  • Israelita revertens armatus versus ne an fictus? Kurtzer but a thorough report from the ten tribes of Israel . 1666

Literature (selection)

  • Rachel Rubinstein: Members of the Tribe. Native America in the Jewish Imagination . Detroit 2010. ISBN 978-0-8143-3434-8
  • Ronnie Perelis: “These Indians are Jews!” Lost Tribes, Crypto-Jews, and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Antonio de Montezino's Relacion of 1644, in: Richard L. Kagen, Philip D. Morgan (eds.): Atlantic Diasporas. Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800 . Baltimore 2009, pp. 195-211. ISBN 978-0-8018-9035-2
  • Jonathan Schorsch: Swimming the Christian Atlantic. Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the seventeenth century . Leiden 2009. ISBN 978-90-04-17040-7
  • Benjamin Schmidt: The Hope of the Netherlands: Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Idea of ​​America . In: Paolo Bernardini, Norman Fiering (ed.): The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1400-1800 . New York 2001, pp. 86-106. ISBN 1-57181-153-2
  • Richard H. Popkin: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory . In: Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, Richard Henry Popkin (eds.): Menasseh Ben Israel and his world . Leiden 1989. pp. 63-82. ISBN 90-04-09114-9
  • Lee Eldridge Huddleston: Orgins of the American Indians. European Concepts, 1492-1729 . Austin 1967.
  • Heinrich Graetz: History of the Jews. Volume 10, pp. 90-92.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Perelis, 2009.
  2. ↑ Ronnie Perelies: “These Indians are Jews!” - Lost Tribes, Crypto-Jews, and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Antonio de Montezino`s Relación of 1644 ; in Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan: Atlantic Diasporas - Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800 , Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8018-9034-5 , P. 195
  3. ^ Montezinos, Antonio de . In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 14, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865942-8 , p. 460 (English).
  4. ↑ Esperança 1650, pp. 1-16.
  5. ↑ a b Popkin, 1989
personal data
SURNAME Montezinos, Antonio de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levi, Aaron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese-Jewish traveler and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1604
PLACE OF BIRTH Vila Flor , Portugal
DATE OF DEATH 1648
Place of death Recife , Brazil