The Seventeenth-Century Vida of the Proselyte Abraham Pelengrino, alias Manoel Cardoso de Macedo: Analysis and Translation

Abstract

The 1668-9 Cópia da vida de bemaventurado, claiming to be a copy of text written by Manoel Cardoso de Macedo who later adopted the name Abraham Pelengrino (d. 1652), is a unique testimony of an early modern conversion to Judaism, a phenomenon of which few descriptions have survived. The English translation of the Portuguese original presented in this article shows, among others, how such conversions were deeply personal experiences while at the same time served converts’ apologetic needs and, possibly, the Jewish community’s anti-Christian polemics. The essay that introduces the translation addresses questions of authorship, genre, and, focusing on discrepancies between facts described in the text and other sources, explores the Vida as a literary construct.