44 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanIncantation
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: Religious Powers of Spain
Content Warning: The source material deals with death, torture, and antisemitism, as well as hate crimes and cruelty to animals. Descriptions of violence and grief feature prominently.
The three religious cultures featured in the novel—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—all have a long history within Spain. Jews and Christians lived on the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Roman Empire, while Muslims first arrived in significant numbers amid the Umayyad Caliphate’s 8th-century CE conquest of the region, which ousted its Visigoth rulers. Over the next several centuries, the borders between Muslim and Christian lands were constantly changing due to ongoing territorial disputes in the Reconquista (711-1492) between the Christian North and the Islamic South. Spain consequently experienced a lot of tension between the different groups, but because it was located between these different worlds, it was also a place where Jews, Muslims, and Christians mixed socially and learned from each other. Being a place where different faiths lived with relative tolerance for each other meant that people moved to Spain in the hopes of joining in this prosperity. Even when Jewish people were institutionally discriminated against under Muslim or Christian rule, there was still a great deal of cultural sharing. This resulted in a unique Jewish identity within Spain: the Sephardic Jews.
The Reconquista culminated in 1492, when the last Muslim-controlled territory fell to Christian rulers King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. This signaled a new level of Christian power over the whole country. Ferdinand and Isabella, who ruled Spain as a Catholic country, imposed a decree requiring that all Jews within Spain either convert or be forced into exile. A few years later, the same rule would be applied to Muslim citizens. The Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 to ferret out “heretics” among those who converted, was a direct result of Spain’s multicultural past and its new Catholic rulers’ desire to prove their power and might.a
Historical Context: Inquisition Courts
As Estrella experiences in the book, a large institution was behind the persecution of Spain’s isolated Jewish communities and individuals. The bureaucracy of the Spanish Inquisition is important to understand because its unrelenting organization is what made it so dangerous. By crafting strict rules and operating across the country and territories, the Inquisition proved the strength of both the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchy. During the Inquisition, clerics traveled across the country to investigate and question people, using punishments and torture in an effort to learn more from suspected heretics. Because the Church claimed the assets of those judged heretics, it was incentivized to convict people; religious zeal also made it very difficult for even those who had embraced Christianity to prove their “innocence.” Once someone was arrested, it was likely that they would be found guilty and forced to name other “heretics,” thus participating in the arrests of other people. Judges did not name the witnesses or accusers, making it even more difficult to argue against the Inquisitors at trial.
This intimidating tactic was part of what forced prisoners to turn against each other. The promise of leniency was another real temptation offered to those who promised to cooperate. Though there were rules surrounding torture intended to ensure confessions were “true,” prisoners knew the consequences of not cooperating. Confessing to what they were accused of and promising to renounce their ways could often save someone’s life. Even those who were not executed faced severe punishments, such as becoming an enslaved worker on a ship and thus providing Spain with needed labor. Further, while people who converted fully could be granted mercy, certain crimes were deemed worse than others—especially educating people in Jewish traditions.
Religious Context: Crypto-Jewish Symbols
The novel foreshadows Estrella’s heritage with descriptions of Jewish symbols and traditions. Because family’s like Estrella’s practiced these traditions in secrecy, the traditions altered over the years, leading to differences between people who were publicly Jewish and those who covertly practiced Judaism after publicly converting to Catholicism. Those who converted under duress but continued to practice Jewish traditions are referred to as “crypto-Jews” but at the time were insultingly known as “marranos.” Their traditions could include avoiding pork, lighting candles on Friday nights, and fasting in order to observe traditional holidays. However, crypto-Jews sometimes invented new practices in order to better fit the world they lived in. For example, Estrella and her family cross themselves, but they don’t do so in the same manner as actual Catholics.
Because Estrella follows the rules of her family without knowing their true motivation, the novel never explicitly labels certain details as coming from their Jewish roots—for example, stacking stones on grave-markers carved with stars, or the prayers and chants that Estrella hears her grandfather recite. “Esther,” the secret name given to Estrella, refers to the biblical Esther, who hid her Jewish identity long enough to marry a king. The “church” Estrella attends refers to her as a saint, and while Esther is not a saint in the Catholic Church, the reference illustrates the blurring of lines between Jewish and Christian traditions.
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