Portugal, the Anusim and the Inquisition

Many exiles from Spain crossed into Portugal, paying King João II eight cruzados each for eight months' residence. When the term expired, those who could not leave were enslaved. In 1496 King Manuel I signed an expulsion decree to secure a Spanish royal marriage—but he needed Jewish physicians, navigators and taxpayers. So instead of expelling them he did something worse: in the spring of 1497 the Jews of the kingdom were herded into Lisbon and baptised by force, and children aged four to fourteen were seized from their parents.

Thus arose the class of 'New Christians'—in Hebrew Anusim, 'the coerced', popularly Marranos. Outwardly they attended church; at home they lit Sabbath candles in a locked closet and baked matzah. In 1506 a Lisbon mob murdered some two thousand New Christians in three days. In 1536 Portugal established its own Inquisition, and for two and a half centuries crypto-Jews were its chief target. Some escaped to Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, Istanbul, Salonika and Livorno and returned openly to Judaism—among them Doña Gracia Nasi, who smuggled refugees along her trading routes, and her nephew Don Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos.