Renegade Jew: Luis de la Ysla

In this first installment of Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics, we analyze the Inquisition case of Luis de la Ysla — 

Luis de la Ysla represents a fascinating case: here is not only a young man who lived in 29 different locales around the Mediterranean, but also someone who repeatedly crossed the boundary between identifying as a Jew and identifying as a Christian.

Luis was born as Abraham Abzaradiel in Buytrago, a small Castilian town close to Toledo. He was raised as a Jew, and his grandfather, Yuçufa Abzaradiel, was a tax farmer (the grandfather’s first name suggests familial origins in Arab-speaking lands). At time of the Expulsion in 1492, Abraham traveled to Algiers, where we knew there was a large Jewish presence from the responsa of the rabbis we read of the Duran family — Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (Rivash, 1326-1408), Rabbi Simon ben Ẓemaḥ Duran (Rashbaz, d. 1444), and his son Rabbi Shlomo ben Shimon Duran (Rashbash, 1400-1467), his son Simon ben Shlomo Duran (Rashbash ha-Sheni, 1438-1510), who succeeded his brother Ẓemaḥ ben Shlomo Duran as Chief Rabbi of Algiers.

Abraham moved from Barbary to Genoa, Italy, where he became a Christian, on the eve of his thirteenth birthday. Apparently, the Monarchy had permitted a “right of return” to the Jews who had left the Iberian peninsula as Jews but who converted to Catholicism. Kagan and Dyer (p. 30) note that they may have played a role in Abraham’s family’s decision to have him baptized.

As a New Christian, Luis de la Ysla returned to Spain, and lived in the house of the archdeacon of Toledo - where we have the role of a New Christian living with a church leader - this also happened in the case of Immanuel Tremellius, a Ferrara-born Italian Jew who converted to Christianity in 1530 in Padua and lived with Cardinal Farnese (who would later become Pope Paul III) in a house of converts or domus catechumenorum which had a large number of people [see my thesis - page 190-193, https://hdl.handle.net/2376/101963]. Luis then learned the trade of silk spinning, which is associated as a Jewish dominated trade. He then goes on his way to Ferrara, Venice, Constantinople, Alexandria, and other places.

What is fascinating also about his narrative is his apparent dismissal of his identity before the Inquisition. He notes that “he had been a Jew,” in the past tense (24). He also notes that the merchants in Turkey, “lived like Jews, performed all of the Jewish ceremonies, and ate meat” on Lent, but even though Luis “spent Saturdays with these Jews, eating the same food,” he did not enter the synagogues with them, “but stayed outside and walked around the corrals and along the marshes along with other servants like myself” (25). Luis distances himself from his Jewish associates to garner Inquisitorial sympathy.

Another strange aspect of his case is the number of times he confesses. In Catholic tradition, one must confess only one’s mortal sins as soon as he becomes aware of them. Mortal sins are those (1) one knows are wrong (2) you think about it and (3) you do it anyway. Additionally, the confessional booth is private — anything divulged in the confessional can never be repeated and is completely absolved. It is in the past. So I find it very strange that Luis resolves to not only confess himself several times, but others urge him to confess as well. It denies the power and understanding of confession. (Also, although I disagree that his actions of living like a Jew are something that should be punished as mortal sin) - it seems strange people would urge him to keep confessing. As he himself says, “I had already confessed and been absolved of everything” (28) - although he does note fear of “their Reverences” and “he did not want to suffer any insult.” Even the friar at San Juan de los Reyes told him “it was not necessary to do so again and suggested that I confess other sins” (29). While I believe that Luis would have been released for transparency, he unfortunately died in the prison cell in Toledo at age 31.

Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics, edited by Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).