by Michael Waas
1492.
It was the eve of the onset of modernity. The old elementary school ditty,
“In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”
belies the enormity of this date not only for the native peoples of the Americas as the beginning of their genocide at the hands of European Colonial powers, but also the end of open Jewish and Muslim life in Iberia as they knew.
For the parents and grandparents of surgeon Gregório Lopes, this date would also be one of life-changing consequences. This article tells the story of Gregório, his wife Catarina, and their two daughters Helena and Beatriz. Gregório, who was born around 1521 in the first or second generation after 1492, would be tried just over a century later in the Inquisition Court of Lisboa, along with both Helena and Beatriz. Catarina would be tried in the Inquisition Court of Evora (a photo of which is right below). But context and background are needed to fully understand their story.
So, I invite you to come along and join me for this journey into the past.
The building where the Court of the Inquisition sat in Evora, Portugal. Photo taken by the author in June 2018.
1492 is an easy date to assign as the beginning of the Inquisition and the terror of the auto-da-fé (burning at the stake for heresy) because it ties in nicely with Columbus departing on his journey to the New World and with the Expulsion from Spain, and leaves our tale nice and neat with a bow on top. Like most easy dates in history, this is not the case.
1492 marks the Alhambra Decree and the formal expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from the newly unified and created Spain. The Inquisition in Spain began 14 years before in 1478 to ensure doctrinal uniformity of a new Catholic Spanish national identity. 101 years prior to 1492, persecution of the Jews in Iberia began in earnest with increasing numbers of converso families, many of whom were forcibly converted under threat of death. These conversos were treated with suspicion by many as not true Catholics and hounded as heretics.
Plaza Mayor in Madrid, where many auto-da-fés were held. Photo taken by the author in August 2019.
Most of the Jewish population of Spain fled with the Expulsion in 1492. Some went to North Africa, some went to the Levant, some went to the rising Ottoman Empire, and some went to the city-states of the Italian Peninsula. However, many went across the border into Portugal. Gregório’s parents and grandparents likely may have been amongst these refugees, crossing the border from Spain into Portugal.
The sea journey was dangerous and replete with rumors and news of pirates kidnapping Jewish refugees and holding them for a king’s ransom, or even selling them into slavery. Many of the Jews in newly unified Spain, instead, went to Portugal, believing that while times were difficult, the Alhambra Decree would soon be rescinded. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares in their authoritative work, Os Judeus em Portugal No Seculo XV (The Jews in Portugal in the 15th Century), estimates the number of Jews in Portugal in 1496 at a maximum of 30,000 people based on the sisão poll tax collected that year. This is where our story truly begins.
In 1496, in order to marry the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, King Manuel I of Portugal had to extend the Alhambra Decree to his domain as part of the dowry agreement. King Manuel, of course, was not interested in expelling a large part of his population. Instead, he enacted the decree but forcibly baptized all of his Jewish subjects in 1496 and 1497 to Catholicism and thus, as new converts to the faith, they were not allowed to leave Portugal. In Spain, the Inquisition had already been active for almost 20 years, but a grace period had been instituted – no Inquisition was established for these new converts, now called the Cristãos Novos (the New Christians). This only formally ended with the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, 40 years later.
Because there wasn’t a formal Inquisition, there was no formal mechanism for prosecuting heretics and ensuring adherence to Catholicism. As a result, a distinct and enduring Crypto-Judaism developed among the New Christians. Furthermore, even though the forced baptism was meant to assimilate the New Christians by making them indistinguishable from the Old Christians in name, discrimination by Old Christians and preferences among New Christians to stay within trusted networks led to lasting divisions between the two communities.
In Spain and Portugal, in order to enter into society for powerful positions, usually one had to prove that one was of “Pure, undirtied Iberian blood” (Christian). The so-called limpieza de sangre (in Spanish)/limpeza de sangue (in Portuguese), required the person to testify as to their genealogy through their grandparents and show that they were neither of Muslim nor Jewish blood. These genealogies, while often true, could just as easily be falsified. In many cases, these genealogical examinations could go even deeper.
Letter testifying about Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier.
Here are two examples of these documents, one from Portugal and one from Spain.
The first one, from 1653, involves a Gonçalo Mouro from Tangier, testifying about his clean blood in order to join the military order, the Order of Christ. The Order of Christ was the surviving order of this little known group, you may have heard of, the Knights Templar (see Mesa da Consciência e Ordens, Habilitações para a Ordem de Cristo, Letra G, mç. 6, n.º 152 from Torre do Tombo, Portugal).
The second is a register of powers to members of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares to carry out the Limpieza de Sangre examination and also notes on the examinees from 1601-1608 (see Archivo Histórico Nacional, Universidades, L.706). This page includes two such examinations and their listed genealogies. The genealogies have “Father….Mother…Paternal Grandparents…Maternal Grandparents...” and the applicant testifying to their “untainted” blood.
Folios 72v, 73r of this register from the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de Alcalá de Henares of Limpieza de Sangre examinations.
However, this article is not about Old Christians and Blood Purity – it’s about the fact that genealogy was not only used as a tool of entrance into high society and opportunities, but as a tool to persecute “to the ends of the Earth”. While everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition, did you know that it was, in fact, the Portuguese Inquisition that was the most brutal and targeted the Jews/New Christians the most?
As part of an Inquisitorial prosecution, most defendants had to testify to their genealogy to the best of their knowledge. And so we return to the surgeon Gregório Lopes, his wife Catarina Lopes and their two daughters, Helena Lopes and Beatriz Lopes da Silveira. All four were imprisoned by the Inquisition, Catarina (in 1587 in the court of Evora, where she died in prison), Gregório (1594-1597 in the court of Lisboa), Helena (1593-1597 in court of Lisboa), and Beatriz (1594-1597 in court of Lisboa). Each of the files except for Catarina’s are available for full reading.
Folio 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes. See the end of this article for an example transcription of this page.
Gregório was born in the first or second generation after the forced conversion in Portugal. According to his processo, he was born in Beja around 1521 to Manuel Afonso “o Grande” and Helena Lopes, both New Christians. At the age of 10, with a brother Henrique Lopes, he began to study to become a surgeon. At 15, together with Henrique and a Martim Rebello, they went to Lisboa to continue their studies. By the age of 19 he obtained the office of surgeon and moved to Evora and at 25, he left Evora for Beja. This is a family of surgeons; his daughters Helena and Beatriz both married surgeons. The processos of all three mentioned relatives who also are surgeons, but were unclear how they fit on the basis of reading just the genealogy section of the processo. In addition, in the typical naming pattern of Portuguese and Sephardic Jews, the daughters of Gregório and Catarina are named first for each of their mothers.
Tree created by the author on the basis of Gregório’s, Beatriz’s, and Helena’s processos. The notation “xn/xv” (New Christian/Old Christian) was added to the spouses of known. In the processos, the wife of Diogo Manuel, Catarina Goncalves, was unclear whether she was Old or New Christian. Beatriz and Helena disagreed about which maternal aunt was married to Luis Mendes and which was unmarried. Duarte Dias em Beja and Manuel Lopes, sirgueiro, were mentioned as relatives but currently unable to tie them to the tree.
When researching Sephardic history and genealogy in the Inquisition Courts, these genealogical interrogations can be enlightening, helping to build out a fuller picture of the ways these families networked and, in some cases, can show varying levels of integration with Old Christian families. My own ancestry has examples of this, a da Veiga family from Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra, that was either wholly or mostly of Old Christian ancestry, that married with New Christians in the city of Viseu. In part 2 of this article, I will explore tracing one such family from various sources, using Inquisition, parish, notary, and Jewish communal archives to showcase what is possible with careful research.
Transcription of F. 41r, Processo de Gregório Lopes
1: de a dizer. Perguntado he cuidou em
2: suas culpas como nesta mesa lhe foi mandado
3: e se as quer acabar de confessar pera com-
4: isso ser tratado com misericordia. Disse
5: q[ue] si cuidou e q[ue] naõ he de mais lembrado
6: e logue lhe forão feitas as perguntas
7: seguintes de sua genealogia perguntado
8: como a nome de q[ue] idade e nação he donde
9: natural e ao presente m[orad]or e as mais pergun-
10: tas gerais. Disse que elle se chama Grego-
11: rio Lopes de idade de setenta e quatro anos
12: naceo em Beja na rua davis freguesia
13: de Sancta Naria, e q[ue] morava agora na
14: granja termo desta cidade en casa de
15: Josea chanoca e ahi o prenderão e que
16: não tem avos né avoos e q[ue] seu pai
17: se chamava Manoel Afonso o grande xrão
18: novo q[ue] fazia mantas e sua mai se
19: chamava Helena Lopes xrã nova q[ue]
20: morava na dita rua e freguesia ambos
21: defunctos e q[ue] não tem tios nem tias da
22: parte de seu pai nem de sua mai e que
23: tem alguns parentes em Beja como he
24: Duarte Dias q[ue] tem irmaõs e alguns filhos
25: e Manoel Lopes cirgueiro, e q[ue] tem