the european renaissance and the new world 363
century in northern Europe. In the seventeenth century the role of
Amsterdam as a printing centre for general books encouraged a huge
output of publications in a wide variety of languages in order to cater
for a Jewish market for religious books throughout Europe. Less posi-
tive was the increased role of Christian censors, often converts from
Judaism, in monitoring the content of Jewish books.^2
Equally significant as a catalyst of change in the Jewish world was
the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497– 8
by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. The expulsion sent a
flood of refugees eastward to the relative tolerance of Ottoman rule.
Many settled in Constantinople, Salonica and Adrianople, but others
set up congregations in scattered locations in Asia Minor and in Greece,
and yet others went to live in Egypt and (in small numbers) in the land
of Israel, especially Safed and Jerusalem. By the seventeenth century,
some states in Protestant Europe also provided a haven for Jews from
Catholic persecution, including Jews who had been living as Christians,
and who sought freedom to practise their religion openly. Already
around 1590 there was a secret community of conversos in Amsterdam
for whom the natural language of religious discourse was not Hebrew
or Dutch but Spanish. In 1605 Jews were given permission to build
synagogues in Rotterdam and Haarlem, and, although the civic status
of Jews differed greatly in the various parts of the Netherlands, they
became increasingly integrated into wider society.
The career of one Amsterdam rabbi, Manasseh b. Israel, born in
Madeira in 1604 to a family living as Christians and baptized as Manoel
Dias Soeiro, was particularly remarkable. Brought to the Netherlands
as a child, his theological abilities, and the publicity he gained through
the printing press he established in 1626, gained him a reputation
among Christians as well as Jews. In 1655, he negotiated with Oliver
Cromwell the return of Jews to England, from where they had been
banished since 1290. During the voyage of Christopher Columbus in
1492, the first European to set foot on American soil was Luis de Torres,
a former Jew, and conversos from Spain and Portugal were quick to
settle in the New World. In Brazil in the late seventeenth century many
converso communities proclaimed themselves openly as Jews when they
came under Dutch rule, only to have to flee north from the Inquisition
to the Caribbean and North America when the Dutch parts of Brazil
were reconquered by Portuguese settlers in the 1650s. They settled pri-
marily in New Amsterdam (later to be renamed New York). The Touro
synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest extant Jewish edifice in