The Iberian Crypto-Jews, or Marranos,[2] as they were called, represented one of the strangest and most romantic movements in the religious history of Europe. Marranism was an attempt by the Jews to outwit the Jesuits with their own weapons. Both sides acted on the principle that the end justified the means, and each employed the most unscrupulous guile to defend itself against the other. The Inquisition was ruthless in its methods to stamp out Judaism, the Marranos were equally unprincipled in preserving their allegiance to their proscribed religion. Abandoning their ceremonial, abandoning even the racial limitation on marriage, the Jewish tradition was maintained by secret conventicles chiefly composed of males, and thus Jewish blood and the Jewish heresy became distributed all over the peninsula, and crept into the highest ranks of the nation. The Court, the Church, the army, even the dread tribunals of the Holy Office itself were not free from the taint.[3] A secretary to the Spanish king, a vice-chancellor of Aragon, nearly related to the Royal House, a Lord High Treasurer, a Court Chamberlain, and an Archdeacon of Coimbra figure in the lists of discovered Marranos preserved by the Inquisition.[4] At Rome the Crypto-Jews commissioned a secret agent supplied with ample funds, who bribed the Cardinals, intrigued against the Holy Office, and frequently obtained the ear of the Pontiff.[5] Some idea of the social ramifications of the Marranos is afforded by the careers of the early members of the Amsterdam Jewish community. Many of them were men of high distinction who had escaped from Spain and Portugal in order to throw off the burden of their imposture. Such were the ex-monk Vicente de Rocamora, who had been confessor to the Empress of Germany when she was the Infanta Maria; the ex-Jesuit father, Tomas de Pinedo, one of the leading philologists of his day; Enriquez de Paz, a captain in the army, a Knight of San Miguel, and a famous dramatist; Colonel Nicolas de Oliver y Fullana, poet, strategist, and royal cartographer; Don Francesco de Silva, Marquis of Montfort, who had fought against Marshal de Créqui under the Emperor Leopold; and Balthasar Orobio de Castro, physician to the Spanish Court, professor at the University of Salamanca, and a Privy Councillor.[6] It was by Jews of this class that the congregations of Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Antwerp were founded, and it was largely through them that those towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were enabled to wrest from Spain her primacy in the colonial trade.