Gracia
Nasi was born into an ancient and venerable family of Spanish Jews that
immigrated to Portugal when Spain expelled its Jews in 1492. Along with
the thousands of other Jewish refugees of the Spanish Inquisition, the
family was forcibly converted to Christianity by the Portuguese king in
1497. These converted Jews were known by the gentiles as "Marranos"
or "New Christians."
Bearing the Christianized name Beatrice de Luna, she enters recorded history
in 1528 at 18 years of age in Lisbon. This was when she married Francisco
Mendes, whose wealthy Spanish Jewish banking family had also fled the
Inquisition and settled in Portugal. Fiercely devoted to Judaism despite
her New Christian status, Doña Beatrice Mendes (Doña is
a formal title meaning "Mrs.") was, in her private life, called
by her Jewish name Gracia Nasi (Gracia is the Spanish equivalent of Hannah,
Nasi her family's ancestral name).
Doña
Beatrice Mendes was widowed in 1536, at which time she went to Antwerp,
where her brother-in-law Diogo Mendes had moved the family business years
before. At his death in 1542 she inherited control of the Mendes fortune
and soon proved to be highly courageous and an excellent businesswoman.
As Diogo had done before, she continued using the family's contacts and
resources to help Jews escape the Inquisition, and this meant that she
and her remaining family were constantly in danger.
Over the next 11 years, she moved across Europe with her daughter, her
sister, and her daughter- and son-in-law, traveling from Antwerp through
France, Italy, and Turkey. The Inquisition pursued them, local rulers
relentlessly crying heresy and attempting to confiscate their fortune.
Even her own sister denounced her as a Judaizer in hopes of gaining control
of the family's riches. With amazing diplomacy, shrewdness, and business
acumen, she managed to escape each assault and continue building the family
business.
Doña Beatrice and her family finally reached Turkey
in 1553, where they settled near Constantinople. Finally free to openly
live as a Jew, she de-Christianized her maiden and married names and was
called Gracia Nasi once and for all. Throughout her life, she was known
for her generosity and her devotion to Judaism and her fellow Jews. She
died in 1569.
View
the complete map of the
late 15th, early 16th-century
travels of the House of Nasi
|
You
may read more about the life of Beatrice Mendes (as narrated in historian
Cecil
Roth's biography, Doņa Gracia of the House of Nasi), by clicking
on any of the four points on the following sketch (following the expulsion
from Spain and Portugal).
Map
of Travels
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