Marrano Factory

First published in Portuguese in 1969, this is the only work by António José Saraiva available in English and the only single-volume history devoted primarily to the working of the Portuguese Inquisition, a most lucid and compact survey. The Marrano Factory argues that the Portuguese Inquisition’s stated intention of extirpating heresies and purifying Portuguese Catholicism was a monumental hoax; the true purpose of the Holy Office was the fabrication rather than the destruction of "Judaizers".

António José Saraiva (1917-1993) was at the time of his death Professor Emeritus of Portuguese literature at Lisbon University. His major works include a three-volume History of Culture in Portugal and a History of Portuguese Literature which went through 16 editions between 1954 and 1993. His Inquisição e Cristãos-Novos underwent four printings in 1969 and sold approximately 20,000 copies in Portugal within the year of publication.H.P. Salomon, Doctor in Letters (1988), University of Nijmegen, teaches the Portuguese, French and Dutch Literatures and Languages at the State University of New York in Albany. He has published extensively on the Portuguese New Christians, including Portrait of a New Christian (Paris, Gulbenkian, 1982) and Uriel da Costa: Examination of Pharisaic Traditions (Brill, 1993). I.S.D. Sassoon was educated in his native England and in Israel. He teaches Rabbinics and Bible at the Institute for Traditional Judaism in Teaneck (N.J.). He has just published Destination Torah, a scholarly commentary on the Pentateuch.