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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 forbidden and any Jewish practice was strictly repressed.

Judaism had four phases 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. Here’s a more detailed overview:

1. Arrival and Context

During the colonial period, Brazil was a Portuguese colony, and Portugal had a strict policy against Judaism. Jews and New Christians (Jews converted to Christianity) were targeted by the Portuguese Inquisition. The Jewish presence in Brazil began with the arrival of New Christians fleeing the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain.

2. New Christians and the Inquisition

The New Christians, who were Jews forced to convert to Christianity, often maintained Jewish practices in secret. They lived under constant surveillance and fear, as the Inquisition frequently accused them of heresy and used torture and execution to force them into full conversion.

3. Dutch Period in Pernambuco (1630-1654)

The Dutch presence in northeastern Brazil, especially in Pernambuco, marked a period of greater religious freedom. The Dutch, under the leadership of Johan Maurits of Nassau, were more tolerant of Jews and allowed them to practice their religion openly. During this time, a significant Jewish community was established in Recife.

• Contributions: Jews played an active role in the economy, contributing to trade and the region’s development. They also participated in cultural and intellectual life, with figures such as the physician and philosopher Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and the poet and playwright Menasseh ben Israel, who corresponded with Nassau.

4. Return to Portuguese Rule and Persecution

When the Portuguese regained control of Brazil in 1654, the Inquisition was reinstated and began persecuting Jews and New Christians with renewed intensity. Many Jews were forced to convert again to Christianity or leave the colony.

• Expulsion: Repression led many Jews to emigrate to other places, such as the Antilles, North America, and regions of the Amazon, where they managed to establish smaller communities and maintain their religious practices.

5. Legacy and Influence

Despite the difficulties and persecution, the Jewish presence left a lasting impact on Brazil. Jewish contributions during the Dutch period helped shape the economy and culture of the region. Additionally, the period of relative freedom under the Dutch left a legacy of tolerance and cultural exchange, remembered as an important part of Brazilian history.

The History of the Jews in Colonial Brazil

A história dos judeus no Brasil colonial é marcada por uma trajetória de resistência, adaptação e contribuição significativa, apesar da repressão que enfrentaram.

It is presumed, although documents are lacking, that the presence of Jews or New Christians in the lands rediscovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral dates back to the early Portuguese voyages to the shores of Brazil.

They were people accustomed to the sea and trade, who would not miss the opportunity for adventure and profit.

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

The condition was that they send their ships every year to discover three hundred leagues of land ahead, build a fort in the discovered area, and maintain it for three years: in the first year they would pay nothing, in the second year they would pay one-sixth, and in the third year, one-fourth of what they brought to the treasury.

The report of the Venetian Leonardo de Cha de Messer, written from 1506 to 1507 and published in the book Commemorative of the Discovery of America by the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, reveals that the lease was for twenty thousand quintals of brazilwood and was to last for a triennium, repeated in 1506, 1509, and 1511.

The name of Fernão de Noronha appears as one of the main lessees, who sent men and ships to Brazil every year. From these commercial voyages, little is known from the documents of the time.

However, it is likely that these various individuals later found in different points along the Brazilian coast, some considered convicts, others shipwrecked, all integrated into the life of the indigenous inhabitants, with many women and children.

The Caramuru, João Ramalho, Francisco de Chaves, the mysterious bachelor from Cananéa, that Castilian who lived in Rio Grande (do Norte) among the Potiguaras, with those well assured as theirs, and so many other unknowns, would perhaps be among this number of Jews, spontaneous colonizers of the lands of Santa Cruz.

The Inquisition took a long time to establish itself in Portugal. From 1531 to 1544 there were several attempts to establish it, which became definitive in 1547.

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

Around this time, approximately 1540, Felippe de Guillen, a Castilian who had previously lived in Portugal, arrived in Bahia and settled in Ilhéus. He had been a pharmacist in Porto de Santa Maria, had some skills as a mathematician, and had informed King D. João III that he wanted to give him the art from East to West, with an astrolabe to measure the sun at all times, for which he obtained a grant of one hundred thousand réis from the “habit and brokerage of the House of India, which was very valuable.”

Once it was discovered that this invention was nothing but a deception, he was imprisoned, and Gil Vicente sent him some verses, including this stanza:

In Bahia, in Porto Seguro, Guillen achieved the position of provider of the royal treasury. When Thomé de Souza decided to make an expedition in search of gold mines, entrusted to Espinhosa, Guillen enlisted to participate in the venture; but, advanced in age and suffering from eye disease, he could do nothing.

He was still alive around 1571, according to the testimony of the Jesuit Antônio Dias, who, denouncing before the Inquisition in Bahia on August 16, 1591, said that, twenty years earlier, he had heard in Porto Seguro that Felippe de Guillen, considered a New Christian, when making the sign of the cross, did so with a fig, and explained that he had a long thumb.

It is well known the preference of Jews for the art of healing and its derivative, pharmacy. Mendes Cios Remédios, Castro Boticário, and many others are surnames that still today, through their ancestral profession, reveal the Jewish origin of their bearers. Jews were the first physicians or surgeons to come to Brazil, with royal appointments.

Jorge Fernandes arrived with the second governor-general, D. Duarte da Costa, and served as a physician for three years.

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

He had disputes with D. Duarte, but was not on good terms with Bishop D. Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, who 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 reported 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, about thirty-five years earlier, in the city of Salvador, Jorge Fernandes, a physician and half New Christian, was imprisoned for saying that Christ was born with a glorious, immortal, and impassible body, “and while imprisoned, the denouncer asked him if it 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 successor, Bachelor Master Alfonso Mendes, who must have come with Mem de Sá, and was one of the witnesses who testified in the document issued to that governor in 1570.

The canon Jacome de Queiroz accused him, when he was no longer among the living, of worshiping a crucifix he owned, as was publicly known and generally believed.

There was also a Master Pedro and several other surgeons, who did not disprove their Israeli origin, although almost nothing is known of their time in Brazil.

The New Christians in Bahia had their synagogue, or esnoga, as it was commonly said, 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 sons and three daughters, who all married and had extensive descendants.

One of the daughters, Leonor, married Henrique Moniz Barreto, a noble of the Royal House, a councilor of the Bahia City Council, and a sugar mill owner in Matuim. Anna Rodrigues, the mother-in-law of Moniz Barreto, was an elderly woman when she was arrested by the Inquisition in Bahia for her Jewish faith, sent to Lisbon, and burned alive there.

Just below Heitor Antunes was Fernão Lopes, a tailor who had been with the Duke of Bragança, and it is not well known why he was in Bahia, with his wife Branca Rodrigues and four daughters, who married, and only one seems not to have left descendants; another married Bachelor Master Alfonso, previously mentioned, and from this couple was born Manuel Affonso, who, despite the impurity of his blood, became a priest and was a canon of the faith in Bahia.

André Lopes Ulhoa belonged to the group of wealthy New Christians in the captaincy. When a dearly loved aunt passed away, he observed Jewish mourning customs for six months, taking meals on a low Indian box and receiving visitors seated on the floor, on a rug.

For this, he was reported and imprisoned by the Inquisition, which sent him to Lisbon, where the inquisitors ordered him to abjure in a private auto-da-fé.

A relative of his, 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.

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

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

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

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

He was still a contractor on November 25, 1583, the date of the decree that granted him a ten-day moratorium, based on the provision of September 20 of the previous year, from King Felippe II, which mandated the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in his domains.

Consequently, October 4, 1582, was followed not by October 5, but by October 15, with the immediate next day being October 16, and so on until October 31, counting only twenty-one days in that month for 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 develop significantly, as he allowed the grant 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 amount for that era and place.

He contributed to the conquest of Paraíba, and was present there with the auditor Martim Leitão, according to Frei Vicente do Salvador. He owned two sugar mills there, one functioning, the other not.

Before the Inquisition’s court, both in Bahia and later in Olinda, João Nunes was accused of serious offenses, including, among the lighter ones, being lenient in his contracts and committing cruel offenses against Cristovão Vaz do Bom-Jesus, Felippe Cavalcanti, the Florentine, Cristovão Lins, the German, and many others. He was a shrewd, astute man with considerable knowledge, the rabbi of the Jewish law in Pernambuco, to whom the New Christians showed great obedience and respect, despite his scandalous cohabitation with a married woman, refusing to return her to her forgiving husband, who repeatedly demanded her back.

In the same society in Pernambuco, there were other New Christians who made their mark in history, more or less interesting due to their influence in their community. Diogo Fernandes and his wife Branca Dias are noteworthy.

Jeronymo de Albuquerque, the patriarch of Pernambuco, in a letter to D. João III, dated Olinda, August 1556, interceded on behalf of Diogo Fernandes, who, with other companions from Vianna, had lost his estate and become very poor due to the war with the Iguarassú Indians, along with his wife, six or seven daughters, and two sons, requesting that His Majesty grant him some favor, as he was a man who, for negotiating with mills, “there was no one more capable in the land than him.”

It was indeed a reader of the Camaragibe estate, Bento Dias de Santiago, who was related to his wife.

There was a synagogue there, where, on the new moons of August, the Jews of the land would go to celebrate Yom Kippur and other Jewish rites.

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

Branca Dias outlived her husband, but was already deceased by 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, also known as Boas-Noites; Felippa married Pero da Costa; Andresa married Fernão de Sousa; and Anna married another Diogo Fernandes. One daughter of Ignez with 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 great-nephew of Pope Adrian VI, according to Borges da Fonseca and Gamboa.

This union was only fortunate in not having descendants, adds the first of those genealogists with the zeal of a family member of the Holy Office, who also mistakenly states that Brites or Beatriz Fernandes was the wife of Agostinho de Hollanda, when the correct fact is that this was one of Branca Dias‘s daughters who did not arrange a marriage, because she was crippled and unattractive, and even had the nickname of Yella.

Branca Dias, when living in Olinda, had a house on Rua dos Palhaços, where she received girls as boarders to learn sewing and washing with her and her daughters.

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

It is hard to believe that a mere colonist would possess that formidable cornucopia of admirable knowledge, which he lavishly poured into the pages of his book, with such secure information and just observation.

Brandão was not a physician like Garcia da Orta; there is no testimony that he had passed, like the other, through Coimbra or Salamanca.

This is why it is amazing how he possessed such scientific knowledge and extensive erudition in matters that, by his trade or profession, he was not obliged to master, let alone teach.

He was in Pernambuco at least by 1583; from there, he accompanied the auditor Martim Leitão as a captain of merchants on one of the expeditions against the French and Indians of the Paraíba and took part with his company in the battle where the area of Braço de Peixe was conquered. At that time, he was one of the readers of the treasury of Bento Dias de Santiago and frequented the synagogue of the Camaragibe estate; this was why he was reported to 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 charged by Bento Santiago.

Before 1613, he settled in the Paraíba, where he also took part in other expeditions against the French and Indians.

At that time, he owned two sugar mills, Inobi, or Santos Cosme e Damião, and Meio, or São Gabriel; that year he requested permission to build a third mill on the banks of Garjaú, and asked for a land grant, which was only granted to him ten years later. It is unknown when he died, but he was no longer alive when the Dutch took Paraíba.

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

The visitor already knew him from the unfavorable absences made by various informants in Bahia. His parents died in this captaincy, where the family first arrived in Brazil. Two of his brothers also adopted a literary profession.

Fernão Rodrigues, the eldest of the three, was a master teaching boys on the island of Itamaracá, and Fernão Rodrigues da Paz, the youngest, also had the same occupation there but no longer practiced it in July 1595.

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

In his deposition in Olinda, the same Fernão Rodrigues da Paz stated that he knew of no relative of his who had been imprisoned or sentenced by the Holy Office, which excludes the hypothesis that the family came to Brazil as exiles for offenses in the Inquisition’s records.

Bento Teixeira, around 1580, attended the studies at the College of the Jesuits in Bahia; he was a tall, thick young man with little beard, wearing long robes and a clerical cap; four years later, he was in the Ilhéus captaincy, where he married.

In Pernambuco, he would have been there around 1586; he had a school for teaching boys in Iguarassú, Olinda, and finally in Cabo de Santo Agostinho.

In December 1594, he would have sought asylum in the São Bento monastery for having murdered his wife; the reason for the uxoricide is unknown, but it is not out of the question that it was due to adultery, which, according to contemporary legislation, was not considered punishable, as the murderer had already, by September of the following year, or even earlier, left the Benedictine asylum, perhaps with relief from 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 the Prosopopéia, who, for over three centuries, has been considered by Greeks and Trojans as 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 firmly established in literature for centuries, especially, as in this case, when it is somewhat sympathetic to the national sentiment of a people.

But, until the existence of a native Brazilian Bento Teixeira in Pernambuco in the late 16th century, capable of writing poetry, is proven, it is foolish to insist on the classical thesis, which is only supported by the tradition accepted by Barbosa Machado and servilely adopted by those who came afterward.

The testimony of Bento Teixeira Portuguese, native of Porto, before the Holy Office in Olinda, raises him far above the common career of other deponents, due to the knowledge he reveals of sacred and profane letters, 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.

That he could translate the Psalms, that he declared the Bible in Latin into language, that he read Diana by Jorge de Montemor, that he was a learned, discreet, witty man and very versed in Latin science and other matters, as well as in the knowledge of Sacred History, and that he attended the school of the Jesuit college and the College of São Bento, always as a simple student and frequenter; it is also inexplicable that a new Christian of the sort described above, to further establish his plausibility, would be a victim of inquisitorial fury.

Bento Teixeira was the most popular poet of the first half of the 17th century; and there are books in the Spanish language by authors contemporary to him, where he is recognized with an honorable place.

These authors translated Teixeira‘s verses into Spanish, and his writings are recommended by different critics as works of the highest quality.

In 1647, the West India Company, according to the States General, contemplated sending Nassau back to Pernambuco with a large reinforcement of troops to quell the Pernambuco rebellion.

This expectation alarmed Sousa Coutinho, who, through Gaspar Dias Ferreira, managed to arrange a secret meeting with the Count in the Haya forest at ten o’clock at night, during a torrential rain.

Later, through the same intermediary, he promised Nassau one million florins if he negotiated an agreement that included Portugal in a broad truce; otherwise, he offered four hundred thousand florins.

This promise weakened Nassau, who, although not entirely refusing the proposal from the Company and the States, asked for so much that it soon became clear that he was evading the deal.

He sought to ensure that, if he continued as the governor of Brazil with sovereign power, he would receive the same salary as in Holland, five hundred thousand florins to pay his debts, nine thousand men provided by the States, and three thousand by the Company, along with the necessary naval forces and subsequent support.

In Holland, Gaspar Dias Ferreira obtained a letter of naturalization as a subject of the States General.

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

Imprisoned, he was sentenced in May 1646 to seven years in prison, perpetual banishment upon completing his sentence, and a heavy financial penalty. He managed to escape from prison in August 1649; the States General published notices offering a reward of six hundred florins to anyone who denounced and captured Gaspar Dias Ferreira, “a man of somewhat short stature, thick-set, with a dark complexion, and over fifty years of age.” Before fleeing, Gaspar Dias Ferreira had written the Epistola in carcere, soon published in the press, which remains one of the interesting documents of the time.

In 1645, he had drafted a lengthy memorial addressed to D. João IV, urging the purchase of Pernambuco from the Dutch, which the king ordered his council to examine.

On this memorial, Padre Antonio Vieira wrote the famous opinion known as Papet-Jorte, dated Lisbon, March 14, 1647, in which he advised offering three million cruzados, in annual installments of five hundred and six hundred thousand, in exchange for the Dutch returning the territories occupied in Brazil, Angola, and São Tomé.

By the end of 1652, Gaspar Dias Ferreira was in Lisbon, writing to Francisco Barreto, Felippe Bandeira de Mello, and Fernandes Vieira, seeking their support for his appointment as procurator of Pernambuco before D. João IV.

When the Dutch were finally expelled from Pernambuco, the Supreme Council of Recife approached General Francisco Barreto to request that the Jews be allowed to remain in Brazil until the final settlement of their affairs.

Barreto denied the request, stating that, once the three-month deadline granted to the Dutch to embark for Holland expired, he could not prevent the general vicar from arresting the Portuguese Jews and handing them over to the Inquisition.

It is known that most of the Jews in Pernambuco and other subdued captaincies were Portuguese emigrants who had moved from Portugal to Holland during successive persecutions.

The Jews who embarked for their homeland within the specified period did not stay there long. Already accustomed to the tropical climate and agricultural work, they resolved to establish themselves in the Americas.

At the time, there was a craze or fervor 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 to form a colony on the island of Guiana, named Patroa Útil.

Hostile action from the French, who had settled on the mainland, forced the Jewish colony to seek refuge elsewhere, moving to Suriname.

In Suriname, it seems that the Jews from Pernambuco found their coreligionists who had come from England, which then controlled that part of Guiana.

As Lúcio de Azevedo wrote in História dos Cristãos-Novos Portugueses, “When in 1667, during the peace of Breda, the territory was ceded to the Dutch, many Jews preferred to leave with the English for Jamaica.

Jacob Josué Bueno Henriques and Benjamim Bueno Henriques are names that became known on the island. In Barbados, Jews were present since 1656. That year, they were granted permission to live there with the same privileges as other foreigners. Cromwell protected this emigration and it appears he personally promoted it, sending the Hebrew Abraão Mercado and his son, in 1655, the first of whom was a professional physician, though he also engaged in trade.

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 was the one who brought the anonymous denunciation of the Pernambuco conspiracy against Dutch rule to the Recife Council.

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

In the 18th century, the center of Jewish activity shifted to Southern Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro became the preferred location, although, like other Brazilian cities, it was not exempt from the terrible persecutions by ecclesiastical authorities, who were always vigilant for the purity of the Catholic faith.

No more special visitations came to Brazil, but the bishops had the inquisitor’s commission to arrest and prosecute those guilty of Judaizing and other offenses, subsequently sending them to the Inquisition tribunal in Lisbon.

Historian Varnhagen attributes the impetus for the persecutions of New Christians in Rio de Janeiro in the early 18th century to Bishop D. Frei Francisco de São Jerônimo.

However, this assertion lacks evidence. J. Lúcio de Azevedo contests it in his article “Judaísmo no Brasil” (in Revista do Instituto, volume 91): “It was from Lisbon, from the Estaus Palace, where the Inquisition centralized its terrors, that the lightning was sent to strike unsuspecting apostates overseas.

During the time of that prelate (D. Frei São Jerônimo), in 1707, at the auto de fé of November 6th, Teresa Barrera, 20 years old, native of Olinda, daughter of Castilian parents, became the first Brazilian to be condemned. She had come to Lisbon six years prior, and the events that led to her arrest occurred there.

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

The persecutions escalated alarmingly, so much so that, as Varnhagen asserts, from 1707 to 1711, there was a year in which more than one hundred sixty people were imprisoned, sometimes entire families, including children.

Monsenhor Pizarro, in Memórias do Rio de Janeiro, transcribes a letter from a witness in Lisbon describing the French invasion of 1711, which includes this interesting excerpt: “I forgot to mention the number of people who had been arrested by the Holy Office, which I believe exceeds one hundred; and because I cannot individualize them, I say that it is the remaining New Christians you knew; who, with the invasion, sought to save their lives and are still scattered, and will remain so until there are ships and an opportunity.

José Gomes da Silva and his children will not go with them, because when the French general left the College (which was his residence), he embraced a flag, saying: — May that flag of the King of France protect him — and indeed he went with them.”

The year 1713 saw the largest contingent of people from Brazil condemned by the Holy Office: thirty-two men and forty women from Rio de Janeiro. In the auto of that year, on July 9th, D. Ventura Isabel Dique, a 26-year-old nun from the convent of Odivellas, born in Rio de Janeiro, abjured for Judaizing offenses.

After the penances, she returned to the convent, but the other nuns rebelled against her, refusing her as a companion. When their protests were not heeded, they left in anger, abandoning the cloister.

The case was brought to a royal resolution, which was unfavorable to the rebels, and they were forced to return to the convent, imagine with what hatred towards the unfortunate victim of their religious scruples.

Her father, João Dique de Sousa, 67 years old, a sugar mill owner in Rio de Janeiro, was sentenced to death for being convicted, negative, and pertinacious in the auto de fé of October 14, 1714; his three brothers, Fernando, Diogo, and Luis Dique de Sousa, were also sentenced by the Holy Office.

It is noteworthy the number of sugar mill owners from Rio de Janeiro who were sent to Lisbon and subsequently condemned by the Inquisition with various degrees of punishment, from abjuration in forma, imprisonment, and perpetual habit or at discretion, to relaxation, meaning delivery to secular justice for execution by burning.

Among these, only in the auto of 1713, were 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.

An illustrious contemporary, D. Luis da Cunha, in his Esforço Político (cited by J. Lúcio de Azevedo), attributed this persecution of sugar mill owners to greed, because the properties were confiscated from those condemned by the Inquisition for the benefit of the tribunal.

In the same auto de fé of 1713, Abraão or Diogo Rodrigues, commonly known as Dioguinho, 49 years old, a trader from the village of Vidaxe in the Kingdom of France and resident in the city of Bahia, was sentenced to six years of galleys for the crime of pretending to be a baptized Christian while being a Jew and receiving church sacraments as such.

In 1726, the Holy Office condemned Padre Manuel Lopes de Carvalho, a priest of the habit of São Pedro, 44 years old, from Bahia, to be relaxed in the flesh, “convicted, pertinacious, and professing the law of Moses and other errors.”

In 1729, João Thomaz de Castro, 31 years old, a physician, son of Miguel de Castro Lara, a lawyer from Rio de Janeiro, was similarly condemned, “convicted, fixed, false, simulated, conflicting, diminished, and impenitent.”

At the same time, Braz Gomes de Siqueira, a merchant from the village of Santos and resident in the captaincy of Espírito Santo, was burned in effigy for having had the fortune of appearing deceased in prison, “convicted, negative, and pertinacious.”

The case of the extraordinary poet Antônio José da Silva, a perfect embodiment of Gil Vicente in the 18th century, though well-known, needs no further explanation. Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães, the future viscount of Araguaya, dedicated a play to him — O Poeta e a Inquisição; all historians of Luso-Brazilian literature have filled pages with the misfortunes of him, his father João Mendes da Silva, his mother, and his siblings, all sacrificed to the religious fervor of the Torquemadas of the Estaus Palace.

The Inquisition in Lisbon, from 1700 to 1770, held seventy-six autos de fé; the last one in 1767 was the final one that sentenced people from Brazil, primarily from Rio de Janeiro.

In 1773, a law dated May 25, thanks to the great Pombal, definitively abolished the separation of New Christians and Old Christians, declaring the former eligible for any positions and honors, like other Portuguese, and prohibiting the use of derogatory terms in public or private referring to people of Hebrew origin: penalties of flogging and exile for commoners; loss of jobs or pensions for nobles; and exile from the kingdom for ecclesiastics.

Another law, dated December 15 of the following year, extended the previous one by abolishing the infamy previously attributed to those who transgressed the faith.

By this provision, apostates who confessed the crime and were reconciled in the Holy Office did not carry a stain nor were they unfit for dignities and offices, and neither were their descendants. Infamy was only applied to those condemned to death, impenitent, over whom the penalty of confiscation applied — a penalty applied with great zeal since the confiscated goods belonged to the inquisitors, as already noted.

In Brazil, despite various precautions, the truth is that the Israelite blood 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 promulgation of the Pombaline laws, the Jewish element can be considered completely absorbed into the broader mass of the Brazilian population.

If there are still some faint traces of their intrusion, they are only manifested through more or less pronounced somatic characteristics, by the survival of certain habits and customs, or by atavistic tendencies towards specific professions.