Lisbon ליסבון
The city where Portuguese Jewry ended not in expulsion but in baptism: in 1497 no one was let out and everyone was christened. Nine years later a mob spent three days killing New Christians in the streets.
After the Spanish expulsion of 1492 many crossed into Portugal—next door, and, as they thought, not for long. Five years later King Manuel I declared an expulsion and at once made it impossible: those who came to the ships at Lisbon were not let out but forcibly baptised. So instead of a community there appeared the anusim—the christened who remained what they were.
In the Easter days of 1506 (19–21 April) a massacre began in Lisbon. The pretext was churchly: a miracle was proclaimed at the church of St Dominic, one of the New Christians doubted it aloud—and was killed on the spot. Dominican friars came out in procession calling on the crowd to "root out the wicked seed"; the killing went on three days. The sources give the dead differently: from five hundred to four thousand, agreeing only that the count ran into thousands. The king answered harshly—some five hundred rioters executed, two friars stripped of orders and burned, the monastery closed for eight years, and the city stripped of privileges.
In 1536 the Inquisition was established in Portugal, and Lisbon became a city of autos-da-fé. From there two roads led out: one to Amsterdam and Livorno, where the anusim returned to open Jewish life, and one inward, into families that kept the customs silently for three and four generations.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Shevet Yehudah of Solomon ibn Verga — a Jewish chronicle of the persecutions, written soon after
Documents of the period
- Consolação às Tribulações de Israel, Samuel Usque, Ferrara 1553 — the testimony of an anus on the baptism of 1497 and on the massacre
Basis: documents and evidence.