Thursday, December 9, 2010

Crypto-Judasim in Ireland

According to Wikipedia, the earliest reference to the Jews in Ireland was in the year 1079.  

A permanent settlement of Jews was definitely established, however, in the late fifteenth century. Following their expulsion from Portugal in 1496, some of these Marrano Jews settled on Ireland's south coast. Ireland's first synagogue was founded in 1660 near Dublin Castle, and the first Jewish cemetery was founded in the early eighteenth century in the Fairview district of Dublin, where there was a small Jewish colony.

There is a history of people known as Crypto-Jews who were a community of people who fled from the Spanish Inquisition and practiced Judiasm underground while posing as Catholics.  They were buried in cemeteries reserved for infants who died before baptism. The un-baptised infants and crypto Jews were buried away from the consecrated graveyard alongside murderers, lunatics and others deemed beyond salvation.

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