severing of
life from tradition is described. He was educated in the Jewish faith, but
was made a Christian at the age of ten.

So he had to be converted with his sire,
To doff the awe he learned as Ephriam,
And suit his manners to a Christian name.

The poet then delivers one of her doctrinal utterances, and one which is in
this case the keynote of the whole poem.

But infant awe, that unborn moving thing,
Dies with what nourished it, can never rise
From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture.

That awe which grows up in childhood, if destroyed later, brings anarchy
into human life. All the characters of the poem exemplify this teaching,
and each is but a product of his past, individual or social. Don Silva,
Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives
utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he
has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable
of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, without
regard to other considerations.

My lord, I will be frank; there's no such thing
As naked manhood. If the stars look down
On any mortal of our shape, whose strength
Is to judge all things without preference,
He is a monster, not a faithful man.
While my heart beats, it shall wear livery--
My people's livery, whose yellow badge
Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say
Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile:
That suits the rich _marranos_; but to me
My father is first father and then man.
So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass.
'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic
But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew,
Willing to serve Don Silva.

[Footnote: In a note George Eliot gives the following explanation of the
word _marranos_: "The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of
their race converted to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century
and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty derivation from _Maran-atha_, the
Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that _marrano_ is Spanish for
_pig_. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt
for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not
too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted
opprobrium of the name _Jew_. Still, many Marranos held the highest
secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were respected
accordingly."