Portugal
If the remaining Jews believed they had found a haven in Portugal, they were soon disabused. João’s successor Manuel I (1495-1521) found himself in a dilemma. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain had offered him their daughter’s hand in marriage – a great political opportunity – but they placed a condition on the union- the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal. The young Portuguese monarch, not wanting to give up the match, ordered the expulsion of the Jews from his kingdom by November 1497. He expected and hoped that mass conversions would ensue, allowing the economically beneficial Jewish population to remain. But the population of Jews who had already sacrificed so much to resist baptism showed no eagerness to comply. In early 1497 the king thus rounded up Jewish children and had them forcibly baptized, a measure aimed at preventing their parents from fleeing. The order then went out for the Jews to gather in Lisbon prior to their departure. Jews flooded into the city with the expectation that they would be put on board ships. But instead they, too, were forcibly baptized. To prevent these new conversos from leaving his kingdom, the king, in the spring of 1499, prohibited their emigration.
It was obvious to everyone that the conversos of 1497 would not become sincere Catholics at once. However, it was Manuel’s expectation that in the course of time the converso population would be integrated into Portuguese society. This is evident from his decree of 1497- “For the next 20 years no Inquisition shall act against them [the conversos]. They may live freely and without fear, and in the course of this period they will abandon their habits and will be strengthened in our holy faith.” But in fact the New Christian population of Portugal proved to be particularly tenacious in its Jewish loyalties. Because of its particular cohesiveness and its relatively high proportion of judaizers, it was to become a somewhat distinct entity in the Sephardic diaspora.
Rioting against the Portuguese New Christians first broke out in Lisbon in May, 1504. Two years later, in 1506, during an outbreak of plague exascerbated by drought, and shortly after some New Christians had been accused of celebrating Passover, violence again broke out in Lisbon. This time more than a thousand New Christians were killed – a massacre that left the New Christians terrified. The king issued an edict in 1507 that finally allowed New Christians to leave Portugal freely. Many did. Yet most stayed.
In 1531 Manuel’s successor, João III, began negotiations with the pope to obtain permission to establish an Inquisition like that of Spain in Portugal. The conversos reacted sharply, and acted by means of “lobbyists” in Rome to thwart the program. As a result of their efforts, as well as hesitations on the part of the Vatican, an Inquisition was established in Portugal only in 1536. But once it became active (the first auto-da-fé was held in Lisbon in 1540), the Portuguese Inquisition proved acted vigorously to punish “judaizers.” The prohibition for conversos to leave the kingdom had been renewed in 1521, but royal decrees never entirely impeded emigration. Indeed, the emigration of Portuguese conversos – and their reversion to Judaism in Jewish communities outside the Peninsula – played an important role in the development of the Sephardic diaspora, as we shall see.
Secondary Sources
- Beinart, Haim. “Order of the Expulsion from Spain- Antecedents, Causes, and Textual Analysis,” Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World (1997), 79-94.
- Carrete Parrondo, Carlos. “Nostalgia for the Past (and for the Future?) among Castilian Judeoconversos,” Mediterranean Historical Review 6 (1991), 25-43.
- David, Abraham. “The Spanish Expulsion and the Portuguese Persecution through the Eyes of the Historian R. Gedalya Ibn Yahya.” Sefarad 56, no. 1 (1996)- 45-59. Abstract- About Italian rabbi Gedalia Ibn Yahia (1526-87), the son of Portuguese Jews who fled to Italy in the late 15th century to escape persecution, copyist and author. Examples from his Shalshelet Ha-Kabbalah [Chain of tradition] concerning the persecution of Iberian Jews show that Gedalia attempted to supplement and enrich the bare facts with new information based on additional Jewish and non-Jewish sources. Gedalia’s aim was to provide information based on his understanding of the situation and personal observation. These aspects determine his place in 16th-century Jewish historiography.
- Edwards, John. “Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain- Soria circa 1450-1500,” Past and Present, No. 120 (1988), 3-25.
- Gutwirth, E. “Hispano-Jewish Attitudes to the Moors in the Fifteenth Century.” Sefarad 49, no. 2 (1989)- 237-262. Abstract- The article discusses Jewish Attitudes toward Moors, demonstrating that there was no single Jewish attitude toward Islam, but a complex, highly individual, often contradictory, set of responses based on different modes of encounter.
- Martz, Linda. “Pure Blood Statutes in Sixteenth Century Toledo- Implementation as Opposed to Adoption.” Sefarad 54, no. 1 (1994)- 83-107. Abstract- Discusses pure blood statutes in 16th-century Toledo, Spain, particularly those imposed by the crown on the city council in 1566, and how the statutes affected some conversos. Focusing on one Toledo family to demonstrate the marriage alliances preferred by some wealthy conversos and the means by which conversos overcame efforts to exclude them from the city council and other positions of status.
- Nirenberg, David. “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities- Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain.” Past and Present 174 (2002)- 3-41.
- Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. “Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism- The Iberian and the German Models,” The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 26 (New York 1982).
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