Another heroic martyr of Mexico was Don Tomas de Sobremonte, a Judaizer, who died at the stake April 11, 1649, without uttering a groan, mocking “the Pope and his hirelings” and taunting his tormentors with his last breath.
The Inquisition in Lima, Peru, is known to have solemnized thirty-four Autos da Fé at that place between 1573 (November 15) and 1806 (July 17) and at ten or eleven of them there were Jewish victims, their numbers ranging from one or two to as high as fifty-six (January 23, 1639). From the earliest day of its establishment it looked with suspicion upon the Portuguese who settled there. In this case as in many others, Portuguese was only another name for Marranos, and they were treated with great severity. There is a record of one David Ebron, who in 1597 sent a memorial to Philip II. relating to his discoveries and services in South America, but it is not known how far his claims were recognized. About 1604 or 1605 a number of those who were accused in Peru of Judaizing sent memorials to the King of Spain in which they pleaded that life under such conditions had become unbearable. Relief was obtained in the form of an Apostolic Brief from Pope Clement VIII., commanding the Inquisitors to release, without delay, all Judaizing Portuguese in Peru. When this order arrived in Lima, only two prisoners were still detained in the dungeons of the Tribunal, Gonzalo de Luna and Juan Vicente. The others had either become reconciled or had suffered death at the stake.
The liberal decree, which arrived too late for most of the complainants who were to benefit by it, still seems to have had the effect of securing the Marranos against molestation for several decades. But as soon as they had increased in wealth and influence the establishment of a new Tribunal was ordered in the Province of Tucuman, it having been ascertained that quite a colony of Jews were domiciled in the Rio de la Plata. In consequence of this order, dated May 18, 1636, the Portuguese were again hounded and many of them lost life and fortune. The Inquisition succeeded in ferreting out the fact that in Chili alone, at that time, there were no less than twenty-eight (secret) Jews, most of them enjoying the rights of citizenship and living securely and at peace with their neighbors. It has now been practically ascertained that a considerable number of Jews or Marranos lived in Peru, Chili, Argentine, Cartagena and La Plata towards the end of the sixteenth century, that their number and wealth increased in the first half of the seventeenth, when the new era of persecutions was ushered in by attacks and denunciations.
A notable instance, typical of the times, was the case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva. His sister Doña Isabel Maldonado, forty years old, on the 8th day of July, 1626, testified before the Commissioner of the City of Santiago de Chile that her brother had, to her horror and indignation, confessed to being a Jew, imploring her not to betray him and using all endeavors to convert her too. He was arrested in Concepcion, Chili, April 29, 1627, and was transported to Lima in July of the same year, where he was imprisoned in a cell of the convent of San Domingo. He is described in the records of the Tribunal as a bachelor, thirty-three years old, an American by birth, having been born of new-Christian parents in the city of San Miguel, Province of Tucuman, Peru. His father, the Licentiate Diego Nunez de Silva, and his brother, Diego de Silva, were both reconciled by the Inquisition at an auto held in Lima March 13, 1605. He confessed that he was brought up as a Catholic and that up to his eighteenth year he rigidly observed the tenets of the Christian faith. According to a circumstantial description of his case (Publications, XI, pp. 163 ff.), he remained in prison for nearly twelve years, during which time he had many hearings and disputed with many priests who undertook to convert him. He also wrote much in defence of his views and at one time made a nearly successful effort to escape. In the last years of his confinement he fasted very much, thereby becoming so feeble that he could not turn in his bed, “being nothing but skin and bones.” He was, with ten others, burnt at the stake in Lima, on January 23, 1639, at a splendid and gruesome Auto da Fé, for which the preparations were costly and elaborate, involving fifty days of uninterrupted labor, holidays included.
CHAPTER IV.
MARRANOS IN THE PORTUGUESE COLONIES.
Less persecution in Portugal itself and also in its colonies—Marranos buy right to emigrate—They dare to profess Judaism in Brazil, and the Inquisition is introduced in Goa—Alleged help given to Holland in its struggle against Spain.
While the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal, which took place five years after the great expulsion from Spain, was in many respects more cruel and accompanied by greater atrocities, notable among which were the forced conversions and the robbing of children from their Jewish parents to be brought up as Christians, the conditions in the Portuguese colonies, including Brazil, were somewhat more favorable for the reception of Jewish refugees than in the Spanish possessions of the New World. This happened because the conditions in Portugal itself were much more favorable to the Jews prior to the era of expulsions, and the sudden severity against the Jews in 1497, which was almost unexpected, was due to the influence of the Spanish rulers. It was Queen Isabella of Spain who prevailed on King Manuel of Portugal (reigned 1495–1521), her future son-in-law, to exile the Jews of his dominion, vowing she would never set foot on Portuguese soil until the country was clear of them.
In the preceding centuries the Jews, though they were recognized and treated as a separate nation in Portugal even more than in Spain, their condition when judged by the standards of the dark ages was much more favorable and well nigh secure. There are no records of systematic persecutions in Portugal before the exile from Spain. The influence of the Church grew much more slowly in the former country, and its kings followed the old Spanish policy of protecting the Jews and Moors against the encroachments of the clergy long after it was abandoned by Spain. Marranos and other Jews who escaped from the Inquisition to Portugal before the Spanish expulsion were—because the King did not want or did not dare to harbor them—permitted to go to the Orient but not to Africa, because in the latter place they could become dangerous to him as allies of the Moors. So it came to pass that while in the more extensive Spanish domains across the Atlantic we hear only of individual crypto-Jewish settlers and more of their misfortunes and the Autos da Fé of which they were the victims, than of their successes, we learn of considerable settlements of Marranos in Brazil early in the sixteenth century.
But even the better conditions in the Portuguese territories must not be taken in the sense which such a term would imply to-day or even a hundred years ago. The Portuguese policy was cruel and vaccillating, only a little less so than that of its larger and more consistent neighbor. King Manuel forbade the neo-Christians, in 1499, to leave Portugal, the prohibition was removed in 1507 and again put into effect in 1521. His successor John III. (reigned 1521–57) was even less favorably disposed towards the secret Jews who remained in his Kingdom, and in 1531 the Inquisition was introduced there by the authorization of Pope Clement VII. The Marranos bought from John’s successor King Sebastian (reigned 1557–78) the right of free departure for the sum of 250,000 ducats. But there were other involuntary departures in the periods when the emigration of those suspected converts was prohibited. For a considerable time in the 16th century Portugal sent annually two shiploads of Jews and criminals to Brazil, and also deported persons who had been condemned by the Inquisition. The banishment of large numbers to Brazil in 1548 is especially mentioned.
Jews