History of the Jews in Portugal
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Before Portugal
Jewish populations existed in Iberia long before the Portugal became a separate kingdom, dating to the Roman era, but an attested Jewish presence in Portuguese territory can be documented only since 482 CE. Two Sephardic Jewish families, Rodriguez and Gradis, are traditionally said to have emigrated from Judaea to Iberia following the Bar Kokhba revolt, settling first in Portugal and later moving to Spain.In 711 CE, the Islamic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula was seen by many in the Jewish population as a liberation, and marked as the beginning of what many have seen as a golden age even if the Jews, as well as the Christians, under Muslim rule were considered dhimmi, who paid a special tax as non-Muslims, but could openly practice their religion and live in autonomous communities.
Rapidly in the 8th century, the Christian kingdoms of the north mountainous areas of the Iberian Peninsula started a centuries' long military campaign against the Muslim invaders, the Christian reconquest. The Jews, since many of them knew Arabic, were used by the Christians as both spies and diplomats on the campaign. That granted them some respect although there was always prejudice. Major changes came to Jews in Portugal following the fall of the last Islamic kingdom of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.
History
Medieval Era
Christian Portugal achieved victory over the Muslims in the Reconquest of the peninsula, with King Afonso I of Portugal becoming monarch of the newly independent region. Afonso entrusted Yahia Ben Yahi III with the post of supervisor of tax collection and nominated him the first Chief-Rabbi of Portugal. Jewish communities had been established prior to these years, an example of Jewish expansion can be seen in the town of Leiria founded by King Afonso I in 1135. The importance of the Jewish population to the development of the urban economy can be inferred from charters Afonso granted in 1170 to the non-Christian merchants living in Lisbon, Almada, Palmela and Alcacer. These charters guaranteed the Jewish minorities in the towns freedom of worship and the use of traditional law-codes. King Sancho I continued to honor these charters by protecting the Jewish community from rioting crusaders in 1189 by forcibly removing them from Lisbon. The importance of the Jewish community in the economy of Portugal can be inferred from the punishment against those who robbed merchant men, robbing either Muslim, Christian, and Jew was of equal severity. King Sancho I of Portugal continued his father's policy, making Jose Ibn-Yahya, the son of Yahia Ben Rabbi, High Steward of the Realm. The clergy, however, invoking the restrictions of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, brought considerable pressure to bear against the Jews during the reign of King Dinis I of Portugal, but the monarch maintained a conciliatory position.The Faro Pentateuch, printed in 1487, was the first printed book published in Portugal. It was printed in Hebrew, and published by a Jew, Samuel Gacon, who had fled from the Spanish Inquisition.
File:Lisbon_Bible.jpg|thumb|A folio from the Lisbon Bible, at the British Library
Until the 15th century, some Jews occupied prominent places in Portuguese political and economic life. For example, Isaac Abrabanel was the treasurer of King Afonso V of Portugal. Many also had an active role in the Portuguese culture, and they kept their reputation of diplomats and merchants. By this time, Lisbon and Évora were home to important Jewish communities.
After the January 1492 fall of the last Islamic kingdom of Granada, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain issued a decree in March 1492, forcing Jews in Spain to either convert immediately to Christianity or leave Spain. Many fled to the kingdom of Portugal, whose monarch was more tolerant of a Jewish presence there. Portugal was the destination of most Jews who chose to leave Spain after their expulsion in 1492. Around 100,000 Spanish Jews had decided to move to the neighboring Kingdom of Portugal, a minor Jewish population was already residing in Portugal.
The Portuguese were reluctant to admit the Jews into Portugal, but John II proposed to collect a tax of eight cruzados per person. Metal-workers and armorers would pay half. Officials were appointed to collect the tax at five points, issuing receipts which served as passports to enter Portugal. After eight months, the Portuguese crown would provide transport elsewhere at an additional fee. Six hundred wealthy families were offered a special contract to remain in Portugal and were settled in the larger cities. Those who could not afford the fee demanded from them by King John II after those eight months were declared his enslaved personal property and distributed to the Portuguese nobility. However, the Portuguese were not willing to house the large remaining population of Jewish immigrants. In some cases, Jewish families were housed within Christian households, in the city of Évora the authorities refused to let in more Jewish families. King John II attempted to facilitate the transportation of Jewish families to other kingdoms.When Manuel I of Portugal married a daughter of the Spanish rulers, he was pressed to align his policies with theirs. In December 1496, King Manuel I decreed that all Jews and Muslims in Portugal had until October 1497 to either be baptized or leave the country. In this way, many Jews were expelled, while others were integrated into Portuguese society.
Portuguese overseas voyages
Scientific developments by Portuguese Jews made a direct contribution to Portugal's age of exploration. In 1497, Vasco da Gama took Abraham Zacuto's tables and the astrolabe with him on the maiden trip to India. It would continue to be used by Portuguese ships thereafter to reach far destinations such as Brazil and India.Zacuto might have an uncredited appearance in Luís de Camões's 1572 epic poem, The Lusiad, as the unnamed "old man of Restelo beach", a Cassandra-like character that surges forward just before Vasco da Gama's departure to chide the vanity of fame and warn of the travails that await him . This may be Camões' poetic interpretation of an alleged meeting between Vasco da Gama and the older Abraham Zacuto at a monastery by Belém beach, just before his fleet's departure, in which Zacuto reportedly gave Gama some final navigational tips and warned him of dangers to avoid.
The so-called Amazonian Jews did not arrive in Brazil during the colonial era, but rather are descended from Moroccan Jews who immigrated to the Amazon region during the Amazon rubber boom.
Inquisition, persecutions and expulsions
Spain instituted the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 before decreeing the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. Tens of thousands of Spanish Jews fled Spain, including to Portugal, where King John II granted them asylum in return for payment. However, the asylum was withdrawn after eight months, with the Portuguese government decreeing the enslavement of all Jews who had not left Portugal. In 1493, King John deported several hundred Jewish children to the newly formed colony of São Tomé, where many of them perished.King John died in 1495, and the new king Manuel I of Portugal at first restored the freedom of the Jews. However, in 1496, under Spanish pressure as part of the marriage of Isabella, Princess of Asturias, the Church, and some Christians among the Portuguese people, King Manuel decreed that all Jews had to convert to Christianity or leave the country without their children by October 1497. The initial edict of expulsion of 1496 was then turned into an edict of forced conversion in 1497, whereby Portuguese Jews were prevented from leaving the country and were forcibly baptized and converted to Christianity. Hard times followed for the Portuguese Jews, with the massacre of 2000 conversos in Lisbon in 1506, further forced deportations to São Tomé, and the relatively late establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536.
In 1525, David Reubeni, a Jewish man who claimed to be the commander of a Jewish army in the Ottoman Empire, arrived in Portugal. With the approval of the Pope, he sought the Portuguese king’s assistance in providing him with ammunition to fight against the Muslims. Reubeni stayed in Portugal for several months, during which he sparked messianic expectations among the New Christians. His actions also led to the conversion of Solomon Molcho, which ultimately resulted to the King of Portugal expelling Reubeni from the country.
Jews in Portugal were forced to convert to Christianity, but were largely allowed to practice their religion in private. Portugal did not immediately establish an Inquisition until 1536. The Inquisition held its first Auto da fé in Portugal in 1540. Like the Spanish Inquisition, it concentrated its efforts on rooting out converts from other faiths who did not adhere to the strictures of Catholic orthodoxy; like in Spain, the Portuguese inquisitors mostly targeted the Jewish New Christians, conversos, or marranos. The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to the Portuguese Empire, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and India. According to Henry Charles Lea between 1540 and 1794 tribunals in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Évora burned 1,175 persons, another 633 were burned in effigy and 29,590 were penanced. The Portuguese Inquisition was extinguished in 1821 by the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation".
When Philip II of Spain succeeded to the crown of Portugal in 1580, Portuguese Jews there were increasingly under threat. Portuguese Jews, "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation", migrated to cities outside Portugal, including Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, especially Amsterdam, the "Dutch Jerusalem". Many had been successful merchants in Portugal and they established an international trading network in the Atlantic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The vast majority would eventually emigrate to Amsterdam, Thessaloniki, Constantinople, France, Morocco, Brazil, Curaçao and the Antilles. In some of these places their presence can still be witnessed, as in the use of the Ladino language by some Jewish communities in Turkey, the Portuguese-based dialects of the Netherlands Antilles, or the multiple synagogues built by what was to be known as the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.
The prohibitions, persecution and eventual Jewish mass emigration from Spain and Portugal probably had adverse effects on the development of the Portuguese economy. Jews and non-Catholic Christians reportedly had substantially better numerical skills than the Catholic majority, which might be due to the Jewish religious doctrine, which focused strongly on education, for example, because Torah-reading was compulsory for men. Even when Jewish men were forced to quit their highly skilled urban occupations, their numeracy advantage persisted. However, during the inquisition, spillover-effects of these skills were rare because of forced separation and Jewish emigration, which was detrimental for economic development.
Despite strong persecution, conversos of Jewish ancestry did stay in Portugal initially. Of those, a significant number converted to Christianity as a mere formality, practicing their Jewish faith in private. These Crypto-Jews were known as New Christians, and would be under the constant surveillance of the Inquisition – to such an extent that most of these, would eventually leave the country in the centuries to come and again embrace openly their Jewish faith, joining the communities of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in places such as Amsterdam, London or Livorno.
Some of the most famous descendants of Portuguese Jews who lived outside Portugal are the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who was expelled from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam;Rabbi Solomon Molcho, mystic and messiah claimant; Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, trained as a rabbi in Amsterdam; Uriel da Costa a precursor of Spinoza and modern biblical criticism; and the classical economist David Ricardo.
Very few Jews, the Belmonte Jews, went for a different and radical solution, practicing their faith in a strict secret isolated community. Known as the Marranos, some dozens have survived until today by the practice of inmarriage and few cultural contact with the outside world. Only recently, have they re-established contact with the international Jewish community and openly practice religion in a public synagogue with a formal rabbi.