Gracia Mendes Nasi was a Sephardic Jewish philanthropist, businesswoman, and one of the wealthiest Jewish women of Renaissance Europe.
She was also known as Doña Gracia, La Señora ("The Lady" in Spanish), and her Christianised name Beatriz (Beatrice) de Luna Miques.
She was the maternal aunt and business partner of Joseph Nasi, who became a prominent figure in the politics of the Ottoman Empire.
She developed an escape network that saved hundreds of Conversos from the Inquisition.
Gracia Mendes Nasi | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 20, 1510 |
| Died | November 3, 1569 |
| Spouse | Francisco Mendes (Hebrew name: Tsemach Benveniste) |
| Relatives | Felipa Mendes Benveniste (mother) Álvaro de Luna (father) Francisco Mendes (maternal uncle) Diogo Mendes (maternal uncle) Joseph Nasi (nephew) |
Gracia Mendes Nasi was born in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 20, 1510.
Her family was from Aragon and were Conversos Anusim Jews.
Her father, Álvaro de Luna, was possibly a relative of Álvaro de Luna.
When she was of bat mitzvah age, her parents told her about her background and Judaism.
Before that she considered herself a Christian.
In order to continue to practice Judaism, the family fled from Aragon to Portugal when the Expulsion of Jews from Spain took place in 1492.
Five years later, in 1497, they were forcibly converted to Catholicism, along with all other Jews and Muslims in Portugal at the time.
In 1528, Gracia married her uncle, Francisco Mendes
His Hebrew name was Tsemach Benveniste.
He was a very rich black pepper trader who was presented as a new Christian in Lisbon.
He also happened to belong to the same very prominent Jewish family as her mother, Benveniste from Castile and Aragon, and was also the great-grandchild of Don Abraham Benveniste of Castile [ disambiguation needed ].
The couple married in a secret Jewish ceremony in the basement of her home and then married in a public ceremony in the Lisbon Cathedral, in a public Roman Catholic wedding.
Francisco Mendes and his brother, Diogo Mendes, were the directors of a powerful trading company and bank of world renown, with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean.
The House of Mendes/Benveniste probably began as a company trading precious objects and currency arbitrage.
Following the beginning of the Age of Discovery and the finding, by the Portuguese, of a sea route to India, the Mendes brothers became particularly important spice traders.
They also traded in silver – the silver was needed to pay the Asians for those spices.
In January 1538, when she was only 28 years old, Francisco Mendes died.
In his will, Francisco divided his fortune between Gracia and his brother and business partner, Diogo.
This bold decision set Gracia on the path to becoming the successful and famous businesswoman of the sixteenth century as we know her today.
Later, she asked the Pope to move Francisco's remains to a new location.
When the approval arrived, she moved them to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
A few years before Francisco's death in 1538, his brother, Diogo, had opened a branch office of their house in the city of Antwerp together with his relative Abraham Benveniste.
Soon after Francisco's death, Beatrice Mendes moved to Antwerp to join Diogo with her infant daughter, Ana (the future wife of Joseph Nasi) and her younger sister, Brianda de Luna.
The move from Lisbon was also timely due to the changing political landscape in Portugal, when as of 23 May 1536, the Pope Paul III ordered the establishment of a Portuguese Inquisition.
Once they settled in Antwerp, Beatrice invested her family fortune in her brother-in-law's business, and started to make a name for herself not only as his business partner but as an independent business woman herself.
The relationship between the de Luna and Mendes households became even stronger, with the marriage between Beatrice's sister, Brianda, and Diogo Mendes. But just five years after Beatrice Mendes settled in Antwerp, Diogo also died.
It was now 1542, and in his will he left his niece and sister-in-law control of the Mendes commercial empire, making Beatrice Mendes an important businesswoman.
The enormous wealth enabled her to influence kings and popes, which she did to protect her fellow Conversos.
It also enabled her to finance her escape network.
It is believed she was the driving force behind the publication of the Ferrara Bible from Sephardic source texts.
The second, public printing of the book was dedicated to her.
All the while she had to fend off attempts by various monarchs to confiscate her fortune by trying to arrange a marriage of her only daughter to their relatives.
Had this happened, a large portion of the family wealth would have been lost, as it would have come under the control of her daughter's husband.
Beatrice Mendes resisted all these attempts, which often put her in personal peril.
Starting in Antwerp, Habsburg Netherlands, she began to develop an escape network that helped hundreds of fellow Crypto-Jews flee Habsburg Spain and Portugal, where they had been constantly under threat of arrest as heretics by the Inquisition.
These fleeing conversos were first sent secretly to spice ships, owned or operated by the House of Mendes/Benveniste, that sailed regularly between Lisbon and Antwerp.
In Antwerp, Beatrice Mendes and her staff gave them instructions and the money to travel by cart and foot over the Alps to the great port city of Venice, where arrangements were made to transport them by ship to the Ottoman Empire Greece and Turkey in the East.
At that time the Ottoman Empire, under the Muslim Turks, welcomed Jews to their lands.
The escape route was carefully planned. Even so, many died on the way as they traversed the mountain paths of the high Alps.
Under Beatrice Mendes (Gracia Nasi), the House of Mendes/Benveniste dealt with King Henry II of France, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, his sister Mary, Governor of the Low Countries, Popes Paul III and Paul IV, and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan.
These dealings involved commercial activities, loans, and bribes. Earlier payments to the Pope by the House of Mendes and their associates had delayed the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal (see History of the Jews in Portugal).
In 1544, she fled once again, this time to the Republic of Venice, and took up residence on the Grand Canal. The city-state offered Jews and conversos a safe base to live and conduct business, although most practicing Jews were confined in crowded ghettos; because of this situation that Jewish people were put into, the Mendes family most likely practiced Judaism secretly while still putting up the Catholic charade. She continued the type of business that she did with her brother-in-law, and very successfully traded pepper, grain, and textiles. While in Venice, she had a dispute with her sister, Brianda, Diogo's wife, regarding his estate, and left yet again to the nearby city state of Ferrara to avoid the ruling the Venetian Giudici al Forestier (Tribunal for the Affairs of Foreigners) decided would end the sisters' conflict over equal control of the fortune.
The city of Ferrara was eager to accept the Mendes family; Ercole II, Duke of Este (1508-1559), agreed to the terms of Diogo Mendes's will so that the wealthy family would move to his city, and received them gracefully in 1549. In Ferrara, Beatrice Mendes, for the first time in her life, was able to openly practice Judaism in a distinguished Sephardi Jewish Community and in a city that recognized her rights. She chose the Hebrew name Nasi (her daughter's name) instead of her own Latin/Jewish name Benveniste. This time in her life is most likely when she started to become known as Doña Gracia Nasi. The genealogy of her family starts to get a little confusing here; this is most likely when her sister Brianda adopted the name Reyna, when Beatrice's daughter Ana became known as Reyna as well, and also when Brianda's daughter, named after Beatrice, was given the name Gracia. The family's new proud Jewish identity brought Doña Gracia beyond the realm of commercial business, and she became a large benefactor and organizer for resettling Jewish people using her commercial network during the Jewish diaspora. Doña Gracia became very involved with the Sephardic colony in Ferrara, and became an active supporter of the burst of literacy and printing among the Jews of Ferrara. Because of her humanitarian efforts and other successes, books that were printed during this time, like the Ferrara Bible (published in 1553) and Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (published 1553, written by Samuel Usque), were dedicated to Doña Gracia Nasi. [1]
The move to Ferrara, however, did not end the quarrel between Doña Gracia and her sister, Brianda (now Reyna de Luna), over control of the estate. To finally end the dispute, Doña Gracia briefly went to Venice to settle with her sister in the Venetian Senate.
After the settlement was made, she, her daughter Ana (now Reyna Nasi), and a large entourage moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul), in the Ottoman domains, where she arranged for her daughter to marry her husband's nephew and business partner, Don Joseph Nasi. This move in 1553, just as her others, proved to be just in time as the political atmosphere in Counter-Reformation Italy started to become hostile. In Constantinople, Doña Gracia lived fashionably in the European quarter of Galata. She was very dedicated to her Jewish lifestyle, and assumed a role of leadership in the Sephardi world of the Ottoman Empire.
After the death of her spouse in 1579, she established her own printing business, one in Belvedere, near Constantinople, and another press in the Constantinople suburb of Kuruçeşme. She published at least fifteen books, including a tractate of the Talmud as well as several prayer books. [2] She was the first Jewish woman to have established her own press rather than inheriting it, and the first woman printer and publisher in the Ottoman Empire. [3]
In 1556, soon after Doña Gracia arrived in Constantinople, Pope Pius V sentenced a group of Conversos in Ancona to Execution by burning at the stake, claiming they were still practicing Jewish rites. In response, Doña Gracia organized a trade embargo of the port of Ancona in the Papal States. In Istanbul, she built synagogues and yeshivas. One of the synagogues is named after her (La Señora). These institutions were created primarily to help the refugees to return to Judaism, their ancestral faith.
In 1558, Doña Gracia was granted a long-term lease on the Tiberias region in Galilee (part of Ottoman Syria at the time), from Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, in exchange for guaranteeing a substantial increase in the yearly tax revenues. The Ottoman Empire, under the Sultan, had conquered that part of the Holy Land some years earlier, but it was largely a desolate place. As a result, she obtained ruling authority over the Tiberias area. With the help of the Sultan, she then began to rebuild the area's abandoned towns to make them available to refugees so they could settle there if they wished. Her aim was to make Tiberias into a major new center of Jewish settlement, trade and learning. A Jewish traveler who visited Tiberias around this time mentions how she had lent support to the Jewish community there, and how after her death they were compelled to ask for Jewish donations elsewhere. [4] [5] This venture has often been called one of the earliest attempts at a modern Zionist movement. Doña Gracia (Mendes) Nasi died in Istanbul in early 1569.
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(December 2023) |
After Doña Gracia's death, her life and story remained relatively unknown for the next four centuries. In 1969, Jewish educator and historian Bea Statdler published a book length biography, The Story of Doña Gracia Mendes. [6] [7] A museum and hotel dedicated to her was opened in Tiberias, Israel in the early 2000s. [8] New York City designated a Doña Gracia Day in June 2010, followed by a similar proclamation in Philadelphia a year later.[ citation needed ] Israel's political leaders honored her for the first time in October 2010.[ citation needed ] The Turkish government sponsored a Doña Gracia evening in New York City and has also sponsored an exhibit in Lisbon.[ citation needed ] There have been lectures, articles and festivals in her honor all over Europe.[ citation needed ] The growing numbers of women in business and the professions who attend the programs identify with her ambition, courage and even personal loneliness.[ citation needed ] An Italian white wine has been named after her.[ citation needed ] The Israeli Government Coins and Medals Corporation has produced a commemorative medal. She is idolized by the descendants of conversos she saved, now living in southern Italy, Central and South America and the United States.[ citation needed ] In the TV series Muhteşem Yüzyıl , Gracia Mendes Nasi is portrayed by Turkish actress Dolunay Soysert.
Tiberias is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. In 2022, it had a population of 48,472.
Marranos is one of the terms used in relation to Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted or were forced by the Spanish and Portuguese crowns to convert to Christianity during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but continued to practice Judaism in secrecy or were suspected of it, referred to as Crypto-Jews. "Crypto-Jew" is the term increasingly preferred in scholarly works, instead of Marrano.
A converso, "convert", was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of their descendants.
Joseph Nasi, known in Portuguese as João Miques, was a Portuguese Sephardi diplomat and administrator, member of the House of Mendes/Benveniste, nephew of Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, and an influential figure in the Ottoman Empire during the rules of both Sultan Suleiman I and his son Selim II. He was a great benefactor of the Jewish people.
João Gonçalves Zarco was a Portuguese explorer who established settlements and recognition of the Madeira Islands, and was appointed first captain of Funchal by Henry the Navigator.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The Spanish Benveniste family is an old, noble, wealthy, and scholarly Jewish family of Narbonne, France and northern Spain established in the 11th century. The family was present in the 11th to the 15th centuries in Hachmei Provence, France, Barcelona, Aragon and Castile.
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Ferrara Bible was a 1553 publication of the Ladino version of the Tanakh used by Sephardi Jews. It was paid for and made by Yom-Tob ben Levi Athias and Abraham ben Salomon Usque, and was dedicated to Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Ercole's wife Renée of France was a Protestant, daughter of Louis XII of France.
The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Old Yishuv comprised 0.3% of the world's Jews, representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
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On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal signed the decree of expulsion of Jews and Muslims to take effect by the end of October of the next year.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who did emigrate normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, as only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the Sephardic ancestry present in Latin American populations arrived at the same time as the initial colonization, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrants would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
Eastern Sephardim are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews mostly descended from Jewish families which were exiled from Iberia in the 15th century, following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 in Spain and a similar decree in Portugal five years later. This branch of descendants of Iberian Jews settled across the Eastern Mediterranean.
Istanbul became one of the world's most important Jewish centers in the 16th and 17th centuries. In marked contrast to Jews in Europe, Ottoman Jews were allowed to work in any profession and could also enter the Ottoman court. Ottoman Jews in Istanbul excelled in commerce and trade and came to dominate the medical profession. Despite making up only 10% of the city population, Jews constituted 62% of licensed doctors in 1600.
Jácome de Olivares was a Cochin Jew who converted to Catholicism in Portugal (converso). He later re-converted to Judaism after fleeing to the Ottoman Empire in 1571. Olivares was mostly active as a merchant, and spied for the Ottoman Sultan Selim II in Kochi, Portuguese India. He was part of Joseph Nasi's worldwide network of spies for the Ottoman Empire.
The Yahya family is a prominent Jewish family of sages, rabbis, and statesmen. Originating in the Iberian Peninsula, the family expanded into Italy and the Ottoman Empire over subsequent generations.
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