Join IHGC Fellow Sam Shuman (Religious Studies) in welcoming Emily Colbert (Salve Regina University) for this public lecture. This event is presented as part of Prof Shuman's "States, Saints and Other Sovereigns" speaker series.
States, Saints, and Other Sovereigns: Queen Esther, Patron Saint of Crypto-Judaism
Queen Esther is the most beloved biblical figure among the crypto-Jews of the Spanish Inquisition—the conversos—who publicly converted to Catholicism but lived secretly as Jews. Esther was a figure who passed within the majority society in biblical Persia, ultimately revealing her faith to save her Jewish people. This story of hidden religious identity became a huge source of inspiration for crypto-Jews throughout the Sephardic Diaspora, who themselves were passing as Catholics while privately living as Jews. Remarkably, she was also upheld as a heroine among the Catholic-majority communities of early modern Iberia (Spain and Portugal), but for very different reasons.
Professor Colbert Cairns will discuss how Esther represented various and sometimes conflicting positions; she simultaneously was a symbol for the Catholic State in the Iberian Empire and for the Jews of the Sephardic Diaspora. Queen Esther was a relatable sovereign who was compared to Queen Isabel for Catholic practitioners and for crypto-Jews immersed in the Cult of the Virgin Mary, she was venerated as Saint Esther in personal letters and inquisitorial manuscripts.
Emily Colbert Cairns is Professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University. She specializes in gender, converso and crypto-Jewish identity in the early modern period. She has published with eHumanista, Chasqui, Cervantes Journal and Hispanófila. She is co-editor of the volumes Early Modern Maternities in the Iberian Atlantic (Amsterdam UP) and Confined Women: The Walls of Female Space in Early Modern Spain (Hispanic Issues Online) and she is the author of Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas (Palgrave). Her current manuscript, Medieval Mamas: Surprisingly Relatable Nipple Tales which is under consideration with the University of Delaware Press. She has served as an invited editor for a critical cluster on food studies with La Corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures and Cultures.