Jews in colonial Brazil faced a complex and often difficult situation. During the colonial period, Brazil was a Portuguese colony, and the Inquisition had a great influence on social and religious life. Judaism was therefore prohibited, and any Jewish practices were strictly repressed.

Judaism had four phases in colonial Brazil

1. Initial Period

In the early days of colonial Brazil, there was a presence of Jews who settled in the colony, often as New Christians (Jews converted to Christianity). Many of these New Christians were actually secret practitioners of Judaism, since Christianity was imposed by the Inquisition. These individuals were often persecuted and forced to practise their faith in secret.

2. Pernambuco and the Resistance

One of the most notable episodes of Jewish presence in colonial Brazil occurred in the region of Pernambuco. During the period when the region was occupied by the Dutch (1630-1654), there was relative religious freedom, and many Jews were attracted to the region. Under Dutch administration, led by João Maurício de Nassau, Jews were able to practise their religion openly and even contribute significantly to the economic and cultural life of the colony.

3. Persecution and Expulsion

After the expulsion of the Dutch and the resumption of Portuguese rule, the Inquisition returned to acting with severity. Many Jews and New Christians were persecuted, and those who were discovered practising Judaism were severely punished. Many fled to other places, such as the United States and the Amazon, where they attempted to establish new communities.

4. Legacy

Despite the difficulties and persecution, the Jewish presence had a lasting impact on Brazil. The resilience and contribution of Jews to economic and cultural life during the colonial period are important aspects of Brazilian history.

The History of Jews in Colonial Brazil

The history of Jews in colonial Brazil is marked by a trajectory of resistance, adaptation, and significant contribution, despite the repression they faced.

Arrival and first records

Although there are no documents to prove it, it can be assumed that the appearance of Jews or New Christians in the lands rediscovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral dates back to the first Portuguese voyages to the coast of Brazil.

These were people accustomed to the sea and trade, who would not let an opportunity for adventure and profit slip by.

From a letter by Piero Rondinelli, dated Seville, 3 October 1502, and published by Raccolta Colombiana (Part 3, vol. II, p. 121), we know that the land of Brazil or Papagaios was leased to some New Christians.

Leases and exploitation of brazilwood

The condition was that they send their ships every year to discover three hundred leagues of land ahead, build a fortress on the discovery and maintain it for three years: in the first year they would pay nothing, in the second they would pay one sixth and, in the third, one quarter of what they took to the treasury.

The report by the Venetian Leonardo de Cha de Messer, written from 1506 to 1507 and published in the book Comemorativo do Descobrimento da América (Commemorating the Discovery of America) by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, states that the lease was for twenty thousand quintals of brazilwood and was to last for three years, repeated in 1506, 1509 and 1511.

The name of Fernão de Noronha appears as one of the main leaseholders, sending men and ships to Brazil every year.

Spontaneous colonisers and indigenous integration

Little is known about these commercial voyages from the documents of the time.

However, it is likely that they derived from several individuals later found in various parts of the Brazilian coast, some considered exiles, others shipwrecked, all integrated into the lives of the indigenous inhabitants, with wives and children.

Caramuru, João Ramalho, Francisco de Chaves, the mysterious bachelor of Cananéa himself, that Castilian who lived in Rio Grande (do Norte) among the Potiguaras, with those as secure as theirs, and so many other unknowns, were perhaps among this number of Jews, spontaneous colonisers of the lands of Santa Cruz.

The Inquisition in Portugal and the flight to Brazil

The Inquisition was slow to enter Portugal. From 1531 to 1544, there were several attempts to establish it, which became definitive in 1547.

Meanwhile, under threat of persecution, the New Christians had to seek refuge in Brazil, far from the fierce gaze of their persecutors.

Individual cases — Felippe de Guillen

Around this time, in 1540, Felippe de Guillen, a Castilian who had previously lived in Portugal, arrived in Bahia and settled in Ilhéus.

He had been an apothecary in Porto de Santa Maria, had some mathematical skills, and at the Portuguese court he informed King João III that he wanted to teach him the art of East to West, with an astrolabe to measure the sun at all times, for which he obtained the mercy of one hundred thousand réis of tença ‘with the habit and brokerage of the Casa da Índia, which was worth a lot’.

When it was discovered that this invention was nothing more than a hoax, he was arrested, and Gil Vicente sent him some verses, including this ten-line stanza:

In Bahia, in Porto Seguro, Guillen attained the position of provider of the royal treasury. When Thomé de Souza decided to set out in search of gold mines, entrusted to Espinhosa, Guillen signed up to take part in the venture; but, advanced in age and suffering from eye problems, he was unable to do anything.

He was still alive around 1571, according to the testimony of the Jesuit Antônio Dias, who, denouncing before the table of the Holy Office in Bahia on 16 August 1591, said that twenty years ago he heard in Porto Seguro that Felippe de Guillen, considered a New Christian, when he crossed himself, he did so with a fig sign, and that he excused himself by saying that he had a long thumb.

Medical professions and apothecaries

The Jews‘ predilection for the art of healing and its derivative, pharmacy, is well known. Mendes Cios Remédios, Castro Boticário and many others are surnames that still today reveal, through their ancestral profession, the Jewish origin of their bearers.

The first physicians or surgeons who came to Brazil with royal appointments were Jews. Jorge Fernandes arrived in the company of the second governor-general, D. Duarte da Costa, and served as a physician for three years.

On 1 July 1556, the governor ordered his name to be removed from the payroll, but twenty-one days later he ordered him to be reinstated.

He had issues with D. Duarte, but he was not a friend of Bishop D. Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, of whom he said in a published letter that ‘his qualities were enough to depopulate a kingdom, let alone a city as poor as this one.’

He died in June 1567. Twenty-five years later, Fernão Ribeiro de Sousa denounced him, saying that during his final illness, he asked to be washed when he died and buried in the Jewish manner, which was done.

Father Luís da Gran also reported in 1591 that, some thirty-five years earlier, in the city of Salvador, Jorge Fernandes, a physician and half-New Christian, had been arrested for saying that Christ was born with a glorious, immortal and impassive body, ‘and while he was in prison, the accuser asked him whether this was true or not.’

Another physician was Master Jorge de Valadares, who served for a short time, probably a New Christian, as was certainly his replacement, Bachelor Master Alfonso Mendes, who must have come with Mem de Sá, and was one of the witnesses who testified in the Instrument passed on to that governor in 1570.

Canon Jacome de Queiroz accused him, when he was no longer among the living, of worshipping a crucifix he possessed, as was generally believed to be true.

There was also a master Pedro and several other surgeons, who did not deny their Israelite origin, although almost nothing is known about their time in Brazil.

Jewish community in Bahia

The New Christians of Bahia had their synagogue, or esnoga, as it was commonly called, in Matuim. Heitor Antunes, an important figure among them, arrived with Mem de Sá and settled in the captaincy with his wife Anna Rodrigues and six children, three men and three women, who all married and had numerous descendants.

One of the daughters, Leonor, married Henrique Moniz Barreto, a nobleman of the Royal House, councillor of the Bahia City Council and owner of a sugar mill in Matuim.

Anna Rodrigues, Moniz Barreto’s mother-in-law, was already an old woman when she was arrested by the Holy Office in Bahia for practising Judaism, sent to Lisbon and burned alive there.

Just below the family of Heitor Antunes came that of Fernão Lopes, a tailor who had been with the Duke of Bragança, and it is not clear why he was in Bahia with his wife Branca Rodrigues and four daughters, who all married, although only one seems to have had children. another married the aforementioned bachelor master Alfonso, and from this couple Manuel Affonso was born, who, despite the impurity of his blood, became a priest and was half-canon of the faith in Bahia.

André Lopes Ulhoa was one of the wealthy New Christians in the captaincy. When a beloved aunt died, he observed the Jewish mourning formalities for six months, eating his meals on a low Indian box and receiving visitors while seated on the floor on a carpet.

For this reason, he was denounced and arrested by the Holy Office, which sent him to Lisbon, where the inquisitors ordered him to recant his faith in a private ceremony.

One of his uncles, Diogo Lopes Ulhoa, accompanied Christovão Cardoso de Barros in the conquest of Sergipe and obtained a land grant there; another is said to have been burned by the Inquisition.

Persecutions and the workings of the Holy Office

As can be seen, many New Christians from Bahia had to answer to the tribunal presided over by the inquisitor Heitor Furtado de Mendonça, who arrived solemnly on 9 June 1591, Trinity Sunday.

Forced by the persecutions of the Holy Office, since it began operating in Lisbon, countless Jews must have left Portugal to live in Brazil, as emphasised above.

Some had wealth, which they sought to increase in the colony by both legal and illegal means. Bento Dias de Santiago was among the first.

Jewish presence in Pernambuco and Paraíba

He had the contract for royal tithes in the captaincies of Bahia de Todos os Santos, Pernambuco and Itamaracá, at least since 23 December 1575, but before that date he was already in Pernambuco, owner of the Camaragibe sugar mill.

He was still a contractor on 25 November 1583, the date of the charter that gave him a ten-day moratorium, based on the provision of 20 September of the previous year, by King Philip II, which ordered the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in his domains, by virtue of which 4 October 1582 was followed not by 5 October, but by 15 October, with the next day being 16 October, and so on until 31 October, with that month having only twenty-one days in that year.

Due to his possessions, he was an influential figure in the Portuguese court; he even obtained a land grant on the island of Itamaracá, which he did not make much use of, however, because he allowed the concession to expire at the end of the decade.

Another wealthy Jew who lived in Pernambuco at that time was João Nunes, whose fortune exceeded two hundred thousand cruzados, an almost astronomical figure for that time and place. He contributed credits to the conquest of Paraíba, where he met the magistrate Martim Leitão, according to Frei Vicente do Salvador.

There he owned two sugar mills, one grinding and the other not grinding.

Before the Holy Office, both in Bahia and later in Olinda, João Nunes was accused of serious crimes, including, and this was the least of them, being unscrupulous in his contracts, committing cruel offences against Cristovão Vaz do Bom-Jesus, Felippe Cavalcanti, the Florentine, Cristovão Lins, the German, and many others.

He was a shrewd, astute and very knowledgeable man, the rabbi of the law of the Jews in Pernambuco, to whom the New Christians had great obedience and respect, despite living scandalously cohabiting with a married woman, without wanting to return her to her complacent husband, who had forgiven her adultery and insistently demanded her return to her marital ways.

Diogo Fernandes, Branca Dias and the synagogue of Camaragibe

In the same society in Pernambuco, there were other New Christians who made their mark on history, more or less interesting due to the influence they exerted in their milieu. Diogo Fernandes and his wife Branca Dias deserve special mention.

Jeronymo de Albuquerque, the patriarch of Pernambuco, in a letter to King João III, dated Olinda, August 1556, interceded on behalf of Diogo Fernandes, who, along with other companions from Vianna, had lost his farm and become very poor due to the war with the Indians of Iguarassú. had lost his farm and become very poor, with his wife, six or seven daughters and two sons, for which reason he deserved some mercy from His Highness, as he was a man who, when it came to negotiating with mills, ‘there was no one more capable in the land than him.’

He was, in fact, a reader at the Camaragibe mill, owned by Bento Dias de Santiago, who was a relative of his wife. There was an esnoga there, where, on the new moons of August, in decorated carriages, the Jews of the land went to celebrate Yom Kippur and other Jewish ceremonies.

D. Brites de Albuquerque, widow of the first grantee, witnessed the last moments of Diogo Fernandes, and in his agony she told him to call out the name of Jesus, naming him many times, and ‘he always turned his face away and never wanted to name him.’

Branca Dias survived her husband, but was already deceased in 1594, when the Holy Office arrived in Pernambuco. Her daughters married well in the land: the eldest, Ignez Fernandes, married Balthazar Leitão; Violante married João Pereira; Guiomar married Francisco Frazão; Isabel married Bastião Coelho, nicknamed Boas-Noites; Felippa married Pero da Costa; Andresa married Fernão de Sousa; and Anna married another Diogo Fernandes. A daughter of Ignez and Balthazar Leitão, Maria de Paiva, married the nobleman Agostinho de Hollanda, son of Arnal de Hollanda and his wife D. Beatriz Mendes de Vasconcellos, and grandnephew of Pope Adrian VI, according to Borges da Fonseca e Gamboa.

This union was only fortunate in that it produced no offspring, adds the first of those genealogists with the zeal of a member of the Holy Office, who, incidentally, makes a gross error by giving Brites or Beatriz Fernandes as the wife of Agostinho de Hollanda, when in fact she was the only one of Branca Dias‘ daughters who did not marry, because she was crippled and ugly, and even had the nickname Yella.

When Branca Dias lived in Olinda, she had a house on Rua dos Palhaços, where she took in girls as boarders to learn to sew and wash with her and her daughters.

Âmbrosio Fernandes Brandão and Bento Teixeira

A singular figure in that society was Âmbrosio Fernandes Brandão, undoubtedly the Brandão of the magnificent Diálogos das Grandezas do Brasil (Dialogues on the Greatness of Brazil), which is one of the most substantial writings on Brazil in the first century.

It is hard to believe that a simple settler had such a formidable cornucopia of admirable knowledge, which he lavishly poured into the pages of his book, with such reliable information and such accurate observations.

Brandão was not a doctor, like Garcia da Orta; there is no evidence that he studied at Coimbra or Salamanca, as the latter did.

That is why it is so surprising that he possessed such scientific knowledge, such extensive erudition in subjects that his trade or profession did not require him to study, let alone teach.

He was in Pernambuco at least as early as 1583; from there he accompanied the magistrate Martim Leitão as captain of merchants on one of the expeditions against the French and Indians of Paraíba and took part with his company in the battle in which the Braço de Peixe fence was conquered.

He was then one of the readers of the estate of Bento Dias de Santiago, and frequented the esnoga of the Camaragibe mill; For this reason, he was denounced before the Holy Office in Bahia in October 1591, along with other co-religionists such as João Nunes, already mentioned, Simão Vaz, Duarte Dias Henriques and Nuno Alvares, perhaps the interlocutor Antão dos Diálogos, who, like him, was also a reader of the royal tithes under the charge of Bento Santiago.

Before 1613, he settled in Paraíba, where he took part in other campaigns against the French and Indians. At that time, he was the owner of two sugar mills, the Inobi, or Santos Cosme e Damião, and the Meio, or São Gabriel. That year, he requested permission to build a third mill on the banks of the Garjaú River and applied for a land grant, which was only granted ten years later. It is not known when he died, but he was no longer alive when the Dutch took Paraíba.

Another interesting figure in the Pernambuco captaincy is Bento Teixeira, who qualified before the Santo Ofício (Holy Office) in Olinda on 21 January 1594 as a “New Christian, a native of the city of Porto, son of Manuel Alves de Barros, who had no other occupation than that of a dealer, and his wife Lianor Rodrigues, New Christians, married to Felippa Raposa, an old Christian, resident in the lands of João Paes, in the parish of Santo Antonio, in Cabo de Santo Agostinho, master of teaching boys Latin, reading and writing, and arithmetic.”

The visitor already knew him because of the unfavourable reports made by several complainants in Bahia. His parents died in this captaincy, where it seems the family first landed in Brazil.

Two of his brothers also adopted literary professions. Fernão Rodrigues, the eldest of the three, was a teacher of young boys on the island of Itamaracá, and Fernão Rodrigues da Paz, the youngest, had the same occupation there, but was no longer practising it in July 1595.

At the age of seventeen, he was in Rio de Janeiro, where he took arithmetic lessons with the New Christian Francisco Lopes, and already had a good knowledge of Latin.

Testifying in Olinda, Fernão Rodrigues da Paz himself stated that he knew of no relative of his who had been arrested or sentenced by the Holy Office, which rules out the possibility that the family had been exiled to Brazil for offences recorded in the archives of the Inquisition. Bento Teixeira, around 1580, attended the College of the Society of Jesus in Bahia; he was a tall, thick young man with little beard, and wore long robes and a clergyman’s cap; four years later he was in the captaincy of Ilhéus, where he got married.

He was in Pernambuco around 1586, where he taught young people in Iguarassú, Olinda and, later, in Cabo de Santo Agostinho.

In December 1594, he sought refuge in the monastery of São Bento after murdering his wife. the specific cause of the uxoricide is unknown, but it is not inconceivable that it was adultery, which under contemporary law was not considered a punishable offence, since the killer had already left the Benedictine asylum in September of the following year, or even earlier, perhaps to the relief of the good monks.

Whether some historians and compilers of national literature like it or not, this Bento Teixeira cannot fail to be the same Bento Teixeira who wrote Prosopopéia, who for more than three centuries has been considered by Greeks and Trojans alike to be Brazilian, a native of Pernambuco, and chronologically the first poet of Brazil.

It is understandable how difficult it is to overturn a notion that has been ingrained in literary treatises for centuries, especially in this case, when it is, in a way, sympathetic to the national sentiment of a people.

But until the existence in Pernambuco, at the end of the 16th century, of a native Brazilian Bento Teixeira, capable of writing poetry, is proven, it would be foolish to insist on the classic thesis, which is only supported by the tradition accepted by Barbosa Machado and slavishly collected by those who came after him.

The testimony of Bento Teixeira, a Portuguese native of Porto, before the Holy Office in Olinda, elevates him far above the ordinary careers of the other witnesses, due to his knowledge of sacred and profane literature and the doctrines of the Talmud and Kabbalah, which he sought to counter with the book of Symbols by Frei Luís de Granada, and with the treatises of Bishop Jeronymo de Osório, De Gloria et Nobilitate Cirile et Christiana.

He could translate the Psalms, he declared the Bible from Latin into language, he read Diana, by Jorge de Montemor, he was a cunning, discreet, witty man, well versed in Latin and other sciences, as well as in the knowledge of Sacred History, and he attended the Jesuit college and the College of São Bento, always as a simple student and attendee; it is also inexplicable that a New Christian of the fortune described above, to further establish his verisimilitude, was a victim of the Inquisition’s fury.

Bento Teixeira was the most popular poet of the first half of the 17th century; and there are books in Spanish by his contemporary authors in which he is given an honourable place.

Diaspora, Nassau and Jewish colonies

In 1647, the West India Company, in agreement with the States General, considered sending Nassau back to Pernambuco with a large reinforcement of troops intended to quell the Pernambuco rebellion.

This prospect alarmed Sousa Coutinho, who, through Gaspar Dias Ferreira, managed to arrange a secret meeting with the count in the woods of Haya at ten o’clock at night, in torrential rain.

Later, through the same intermediary, Sousa Coutinho offered one million florins if Nassau negotiated an agreement that included Portugal in a broad truce, and four hundred thousand florins if this was not possible.

The promise influenced Nassau, who, in order to meet Sousa Coutinho’s objective, did not totally refuse to accept the proposal of the Company and the States, but demanded so much that it was understood that he was exempting himself.

Nassau sought the same wages he would have received in Holland, five hundred thousand guilders to pay his debts and retire, in addition to nine thousand men provided by the States and three thousand by the Company, with the necessary seamen and subsequent aid.

In the Netherlands, Gaspar Dias Ferreira obtained a letter of naturalisation as a subject of the States General.

However, when the Pernambuco uprising broke out, he was suspected of colluding with the rebels and compromised by intercepted letters written to his uncle, Diogo Cardoso, resident in Seville, to Mathias de Albuquerque and other people.

Arrested, he was sentenced in May 1646 to seven years in prison, perpetual banishment upon completion of his sentence, and a heavy fine. Gaspar Dias Ferreira managed to escape from prison in August 1649.

The States published notices offering a reward of six hundred florins to anyone who reported and brought in Gaspar Dias Ferreira, described as ‘a man of somewhat short stature, thick-bodied, with a dark face, and over fifty years of age.’

Before escaping, Gaspar Dias Ferreira had written the Epistola in carcere, which was published by the press and is one of the most interesting documents of the period. In 1645, he wrote a long memorial addressed to D. João IV, recommending the purchase of Pernambuco from the Dutch.

The king had the memorial examined by his council. Regarding this memorial, Father Antonio Vieira wrote the famous opinion called Papet-Jorte, dated Lisbon, 14 March 1647, in which he advised offering three million cruzados, in annual instalments of five hundred and six hundred thousand, in exchange for the return of the territories occupied by the Dutch in Brazil, Angola and São Tomé.

At the end of 1652, Gaspar Dias Ferreira was in Lisbon, from where he wrote to Francisco Barreto, Felippe Bandeira de Mello, and Fernandes Vieira, seeking to be appointed as attorney for Pernambuco before D. João IV.

Expulsion of the Dutch and fate of the Jews

When the Dutch were finally expelled from Pernambuco, the Supreme Council of Recife asked General Francisco Barreto to allow the Jews to remain in Brazil until the final settlement of their affairs.

Barreto rejected the request, arguing that once the three-month period granted to the Dutch to embark for the Netherlands had expired, he could not prevent the vicar general from taking the Portuguese Jews and handing them over to the Inquisition.

Most of the Jews in Pernambuco and the other submissive captaincies were Portuguese who had emigrated from Portugal to the Netherlands during successive persecutions.

The Jews who embarked for their homeland within the specified period did not remain there long.

Accustomed to the tropical climate and agricultural work, they decided to settle in America.

At the time, there was a craze for founding colonies in the New World. Taking advantage of the situation, the Jew David Nassy, with his family and many companions, requested and obtained from the Assembly of the XIX, in 1657, the privilege of forming a colony on the island of Guyana, called Patroa Útil.

Harassed by the French who had settled on the mainland, the Jewish colony was forced to seek refuge elsewhere, moving to Suriname.

In Suriname, the Jews from Pernambuco found their co-religionists from England, which at the time owned that part of Guiana.

When, in 1667, on the occasion of the Peace of Breda, the territory was ceded to the Netherlands, many Jews preferred to leave with the English for Jamaica. Jacob Josué Bueno Henriques and Benjamim Bueno Henriques are well-known names on the island.

In Barbados, Jews had been present since 1656. In that year, they were granted the right to live there with the same privileges as other foreigners.

Cromwell protected this emigration and, it seems, promoted it himself, sending the Hebrews Abraham Mercado and his son on a special mission to that colony in 1655. Abraham Mercado was a doctor by profession and also a merchant.

Economic historians attribute the spread of the sugar industry in other parts of Tropical America to this emigration from Brazil.

The physician or apothecary Abraão Mercado lived for some time in Pernambuco and it was he who brought to the Council of Recife the anonymous denunciation of the Pernambuco conspiracy against Dutch rule.

Portuguese names can be found among the early inhabitants of New York, Philadelphia, New Haven and other locations, probably brought there by the Jews expelled from Pernambuco.

18th century — Rio de Janeiro and persecution

In the 18th century, the centre of activity for Jews shifted to southern Brazil. Rio de Janeiro was the preferred location, although, like other Brazilian cities, it was not exempt from the terrible persecution of the ecclesiastical authorities, who were always vigilant in their defence of the purity of the Catholic faith.

There were no more special visits to Brazil, but the bishops had the commission of the grand inquisitor to arrest and prosecute those who were guilty of Judaism and other offences, and then send them to the Inquisition court in Lisbon.

The historian Varnhagen attributes to Bishop D. Frei Francisco de São Jerônimo the impetus for the persecution of New Christians in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the century. This statement, however, lacks foundation. J. Lúcio de Azevedo, in his article Judaísmo no Brasil (Judaism in Brazil) (in Revista do Instituto, volume 91), contests the statement, indicating that it was from Lisbon, from the palace of the Estaus, where the Inquisition centralised its terrors, that the lightning bolt was sent to strike the apostates overseas.

Acts of faith and emblematic cases

In 1707, in the act of 6 November, Teresa Barrera, 20, a native of Olinda, daughter of Castilian parents, inaugurated the series of Brazilians condemned. She had come from Lisbon six years earlier, and the events that led to her arrest in Lisbon occurred there.

In the following auto, on 30 June 1709, for the first time, a number of criminals brought from Brazil appeared, one of whom was sentenced to death, five from Bahia and seven from Rio de Janeiro.

The persecutions increased dramatically, to the point that, from 1707 to 1711, there were years when more than 160 people were arrested, including entire families, with no exception for children.

Monsignor Pizarro, in his Memoirs of Rio de Janeiro, transcribes a letter from an eyewitness about the French invasion of 1711, in which we read a relevant excerpt: “I forgot to tell you the number of people who had been arrested by the Holy Office, which I believe to be over a hundred; and since I cannot identify them individually, I will say that they are the rest of the New Christians whom Your Excellency knew; who, with the invasion, fled for their lives and are still scattered, and will remain so until there are ships and an opportunity.”

The year 1713 saw the largest contingent of people in Brazil condemned by the Holy Office: thirty-two men and forty women from Rio de Janeiro. In the auto of that year, on 9 July, D. Ventura Isabel Dique, a 26-year-old professed nun at the convent of Odivellas, a native of Rio de Janeiro, abjured her guilt of Judaism. After her penance, upon returning to the convent, the other nuns rebelled against her presence and, as their protests were not heeded, they left in a cross procession, abandoning the cloister.

Confiscations, penalties and economic motivations

The nun’s father, João Dique de Sousa, aged 67, a mill owner living in Rio de Janeiro, was sentenced to death as a convicted, negative and stubborn heretic in the auto-da-fé of 14 October 1714; three brothers, Fernando, Diogo and Luis Dique de Sousa, were also sentenced by the Holy Office.

It is remarkable how many plantation owners from Rio de Janeiro were sent to Lisbon and then condemned by the Inquisition, ranging from abjuration in form, imprisonment and perpetual habit or at the discretion of the court, to relaxation, that is, delivery to secular justice for death by burning at the stake.

In the 1713 auto alone, this number includes the following: Pedro Mendes Henriques, Manuel Cardoso Coutinho, Luis Alvares Monte-Arroyo, José Corrêa Ximenes and his wife Guiomar de Azevedo, his brother João Corrêa Ximenes and his wife Brites Paredes, João Rodrigues Calassa and his wife Magdalena Peres, Diogo Duarte de Sousa, Isabel da Silva, widow of Bento de Lucena, Isabel Cardosa Coutinho, daughter of Balthazar Rodrigues Coutinho and his mother Brites Cardosa, among others.

Final proceedings and convictions

In the same auto-da-fé of 1713, Abraão, or Diogo Rodrigues, commonly known as Dioguinho, aged 49, a native of the village of Vidaxe, in the kingdom of France, and resident in the city of Bahia, was sentenced to six years in the galleys for pretending to be a baptised Christian and receiving the sacraments of the church.

In 1726, the court of the Holy Office sentenced Father Manuel Lopes de Carvalho, a 44-year-old priest of the Order of St. Peter, a native of Bahia, to be relaxed in the flesh, ‘convinced, stubborn and professed of the law of Moses and other errors.’ In 1729, the same fate befell João Thomaz de Castro, 31, a doctor, son of Miguel de Castro Lara, a lawyer, born in Rio de Janeiro, ‘convinced, fixed, false, simulated, conflicting, diminutive and unrepentant.’

On the same occasion, Braz Gomes de Siqueira, a merchant, born in the village of Santos and resident in the captaincy of Espírito Santo, was burned in effigy for having had the misfortune of dying in prison, ‘convinced, negative and stubborn.’

Antônio José da Silva and repercussions

The case of the extraordinary poet Antônio José da Silva, a perfect incarnation of Gil Vicente in the 18th century, is well known and needs no further explanation.

Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães, the future Viscount of Araguaya, dedicated a drama to him — O Poeta e a Inquisição (The Poet and the Inquisition). All historians of Luso-Brazilian literature have filled pages with the misfortunes of Antônio José da Silva, his father, the lawyer João Mendes da Silva, his mother and his brothers, all sacrificed to the religious fury of the Torquemadas of the Estaus palace.

End of legal distinction and Pombaline laws

The Inquisition of Lisbon, from 1700 to 1770, celebrated seventy-six acts of faith; that of 1767 was the last to sentence people from Brazil, mainly from Rio de Janeiro.

In 1773, by a law of 25 May, thanks to the great Pombal, the separation between New Christians and Old Christians was definitively abolished, declaring the former eligible for any position and honour, like other Portuguese.

The law prohibited the public or private use of derogatory terms in reference to people of Hebrew origin, establishing penalties of flogging and exile for offenders if they were commoners; loss of jobs or pensions if they were nobles; and expulsion from the kingdom if they were clergy.

Another law, dated 15 December of the following year, expanded on the previous one, with the abolition of the infamy attributed to those who prevaricated in the faith.

According to this provision, apostates who confessed their crime and were reconciled in the Holy Office would not be tainted, nor unfit for dignities and offices, much less their descendants.

Infamy was understood only to apply to those condemned to death, the unrepentant, upon whom the penalty of confiscation fell — which was widely applied, since the proceeds of the confiscation were to belong to the inquisitors.

Conclusion: assimilation and traces

In Brazil, despite the precautions, the truth is that Israelite blood has always mixed with Christian blood, even in families of presumed nobility, as more than one case has been noted in this brief study.

More than a century and a half after the enactment of the Pombaline laws, the Jewish element can be considered completely absorbed into the large mass of the Brazilian population.

If there are still some slight remnants of their interference, these are manifested only by more or less pronounced somatic characteristics, by the survival of certain habits and customs, or by atavistic tendencies towards certain professions.

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