Article of the Month - September 2011

The Tale of Susana, a Spanish Tragedy

Rabbi Fred Morgan, Senior Rabbi, Temple Beth Israel, Melbourne

In May of this year several members of my synagogue were on a tour of Spain. We were looking for signs of the vibrant Jewish life that had been so much a part of Spanish culture 500 years ago, before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.

As we walked through the narrow streets of Seville in Andalucia, we came upon a pretty square with a tree growing in the centre of it. On one wall was a small plaque with a picture of a grotesque skull on it and a single word underneath: ‘Sosana’. Our guide told us the story of the skull and the name, Susana.

Near this place, he said, there stood a house owned by a wealthy converso, a ‘new Christian’ as they were disparagingly called by the defenders of the Church, named Diego de Susan. Diego had a step-daughter, Susana. Susana’s beauty was renowned throughout Seville, and especially by one young man, the scion of an ‘old Christian’ family. He referred to her as others did, with the nickname La Hermosa Hembra, ‘The Beautiful Woman’. 

This was in 1481, when the Inquisition was being established in Seville by monks avid to save the souls of heretics, especially conversos, those Jews who had recently converted to the Christian religion. The fear was that some of these conversos were still Jews at heart, secretly keeping their Jewish traditions and sullying the pure faith of Christianity. The head of the Inquisition was a God-fearing monk by the name of Tomas de Torquemada, and his king was Ferdinand. Just as Torquemada sought to save souls, so the King sought to save his kingdom from penury brought on by the conquest of Granada. Granada was the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and the war, as necessary as it was, was fast draining the royal coffers.

The King realized that the Inquisition, if successful, would refill his treasury, since those found to be heretics would be forced to cede their land and possessions to the state. He saw this as a win-win situation; the Church would gain salvation for countless straying souls, and he would replenish his dwindling funds. The conversos would also win, since, once they confessed, they would be relieved of their heresy and assured of heaven in the fullness of time. 

The wealthy converso, Diego de Susan, saw a flaw in this plan. He believed that the Inquisition would threaten the health of the nation, turning Andalucians against one another, driving the Jewish traders away and further damaging the economy. He conspired with other conversos to resist the King’s plan and derail the Inquisition.

In the meantime, Susana continued her tryst with her lover, and eventually she fell pregnant. Her father was shocked to discover that his beautiful step-daughter had been so wayward and willful. He forbade her to have anything to do with her young man. Susana decided to turn the tables on Diego. She denounced him and his co-conspirators to the Inquisition, who took him away, tortured him and then burned him at the stake at an auto-da-fe, a test of faith. 

When Susana realized what she had done, she was filled with despair and self-loathing. She gave up her child and entered a convent. But the convent offered her no solace. Eventually she became a prostitute, and when she had lost all her famed beauty and could no longer ply that trade, she lived life in poverty as a wasted beggar.

Finally, as she lay dying, she asked that her skull be sunken into the wall of the house where she had lived as a prostitute, a warning to all who passed that way. 

And there, said our guide, pointing to the ceramic skull implanted in the wall above us, is Susana’s skull, a warning to all who pass this way. But, he added, a warning of what? Of what happens when we put our personal desires before the needs of society, when we fail to grasp the larger consequences of our actions?   Or of the dangers of historical naiveté, of not being able to imagine the worst? Is it a warning of the destructive nature of religious ideologies and the dangers inherent in religious fanaticism when it is married to political power? Does the tale teach us what happens when a small group of men are convinced it is their duty to save other men’s souls? Or does it warn of something else?

His questions hung unanswered in the air, and we left them behind as we continued our tour.

(Photo courtesy of the Temple Beth Israel website.)