Around 1681 Margarita Martí, the first wife of Pere Onofre Cortès, «Moixina», died. He was left a widower with several children, in a community that always married within itself, and within it, only among those who shared the hidden faith.
He set his eyes on Margarita Ana Piña, daughter of a man known as Capdebou. And he wrote to her. Not just any letter: he told her he wished to marry her because they both observed the Law of Moses, and he argued the point with passages from Scripture, from the Old Testament.
The answer came back through a go-between. Margarita Ana did not want to marry him «because he was a widower and had many children».
It was not fear of the Inquisition, nor a difference of faith. It was the oldest reason there is. Among so many files full of denunciations, prisons and bonfires, this may be the most human moment in the archive: the teacher of the secret Law, turned down for reasons that belong to every age.
Moixina eventually married Juana Miró. We know all this because he told it himself, years later, to his judges.
