Filo-hebraísmo y Antisemitismo: Cabezas de Jano del Barroco Quevediano

Abstract

Spanish  Early Modern culture, despite the Inquisition’s attempts to divest it of any ostensibly Jewish influence, was deeply and irrevocably influenced by  Sephardic Jewish philosophy and thought.   Even the most anti-Semitic exponents of Spanish “Golden Age” writing could be characterized by  a veritable “obsession” with Judaism. In the portraits of Judaism presented (or rather, in the portraits of folk of Jewish origin, seeing as these characters would not have been “Jewish” in any recognizable sense of the Word,(Quevedo, in his work El Buscon, constitutes the prime example), the predominating stereotypes were those of the miser, the hoarder, the trickster, etc.

The fascination evinced by Quevedo for Judaism in no way mitigated the hatred that he expressed towards Jewish individuals per se, although it is hardly possible that Quevedo would actually have made the acquaintance of any professed Jew. Even so, it is precisely this Baroque autor who substantiates, via his writing, the unbreakable and problematic bond between Spain and the Jews.