Some eighteenth-century refugees from Brazil

Author(s): EDGAR SAMUEL

Source: Jewish Historical Studies , 2011, Vol. 43 (2011), pp. 89-96
Published by: Jewish Historical Society of England

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29780147

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 Jewish Historical Studies, volume 43, 2011

Some eighteenth-century refugees

from Brazil
EDGAR SAMUEL

The fact that there was no Inquisition in the south of Brazil led many New
Christians to settle there during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By
the late seventeenth century they made up two thirds of the white population
of Rio de Janeiro.1 As in Portugal, secret Judaism has persisted in Brazil for
many centuries.
King Manoel Fs edict of 1497 expelling Jews from Portugal asserted that
Jews and Moors committed great evils and blasphemies in Portugal.2 The
belief that every epidemic, famine or earth tremor in Portugal was due to
divine vengeance for tolerating Judaism persisted over the centuries. John V
of Portugal (1689-1750) and his Inquisitor General, Cardinal Nuno Ataide da
Cunha, were extremely hostile to secret Judaism. The Inquisitor certainly
believed in the power of malevolent witchcraft. In the 1720s he turned his
attention to the old-established secret Jewish communities in northern
Portugal. From 1720 to 1723 the Coimbra Inquisition held seventeen autos da
fe, averaging four a year.3 Dom Luis da Cunha, the doyen of the Portuguese
diplomatic service, commented in his Political Testament on the immense
damage done by the Inquisition to Portuguese manufactures. By arresting
and frightening New Christians into emigrating, they had smashed the
Braganza silk industry which Spanish Jews had introduced to Portugal, and
greatly damaged the woollen-cloth-weaving industry of Fund?o and
Covilh?.4 The Inquisition sent a powerful agency to Rio and made many
arrests. Its confiscation of the New Christians' extensive sugar estates led to
suspicion of deliberate profiteering, but there is little doubt that crypto
Judaism survived more strongly there than in the north of Brazil. Professor
Anita Novinsky has published 128 inventories of goods confiscated by the
Inquisition from New Christian men in Brazil, who were found guilty of

1 Jose Goncalves Salvador, Os Crist?os-Novos e o Comercio no Atl?ntico Meridional (Com enfoco

nas Capitanias do Sul 1530-1680) (S?o Paolo 1973) 380.
2 Ordenaf?es do Senhor Rey D. Manuel II (Coimbra 1997). Facsimile edition of Fundac?o Calouste
Gulbenkian (Lisbon n.d.) 212.
3 Elkan Nathan Adler, Auto da Fe and Jew (Oxford 1908) 150.
4 Luis da Cunha, Testamento Politico (Lisbon 1820).

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 Edgar Samuel

Judaizing.5 I have found only eight families from Brazil who joined the
London synagogue, though there may well be others whom I have missed.
Novinsky's works and Joy Oakley's recently published Lists of the
Portuguese Inquisition6 give interesting information about some of the people
arrested in Brazil, who eventually took refuge in London. In 1708 Agostinho
Lopes Flores, aged twenty-eight, a goldsmith banker in Rio, and his wife
Brites Soares Pereira, aged twenty-seven, were arrested there by agents of
the Inquisition. They were shipped to Lisbon where they were tried and con?
victed of Judaizing. At an auto da fe on 30 June 1709 they were sentenced to
imprisonment, a perpetual penitential garment and the confiscation of their
property.7 They were released destitute in Lisbon, yet in 1710 they were
remarried in London at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Bevis
Marks (on 4 Kislev) as Daniel Flores and Sarah Suarez Pereira 'arrivals from
Portugal'.8
Agostinho's brother-in law, Alexandre Soares Pereira, aged thirty-three,
a sugar planter, and his wife, Leonor Mendes de Paz, aged twenty-five, were
arrested at the same time. Their property was seized, they were shipped to
Lisbon and were tried and convicted of Judaizing. At the same auto da fe on
3 June 1709 they were sentenced to imprisonment and a perpetual peniten?
tial garment as well as confiscation of their property.9 Eventually they too
were released in Lisbon destitute. Alexandre's sugar plantation near Rio was
farmed by sharecroppers. As well as paying a share of their crop as rent, they
were obliged to have their canes crushed in his mill and to have their sugar
boiled in his refinery. The inventory of his property showed total assets
worth 26,903 milreis (?7090 sterling) and liabilities worth 9388 milreis
(?2474). More significant, however, were the tithes he paid, which indicate
the size of his income. He paid 100 milreis (?26) a year to tax collectors for
the tithe on his sugar crop, which implies annual receipts worth 1000 milreis
(?263.54).10 The Inquisition seized his assets. Interestingly, he himself
owned no slaves. It would have been his sharecroppers and the operators of
his crushing mill and boilers who owned the slaves.
In 1724 Jacob Soares Pereira and his son Joseph were circumcised in
London, and he and his wife Rahel were remarried at the synagogue in Bevis

5 A. W. Novinsky, Inquisic?o Invent?rios de bens confiscados a Crist?os Novosfontes para a historia

de Portugal e do Brasil (S?o Paolo 1976).
6 J. L. Oakley (ed.) Lists of the Portuguese Inquisition, 2 vols (London 2008).
7 Ibid. I Lisbon (1540-1778) (London 2008) 492 and 495.
8 R. D. Barnett (ed.) Bevis Marks Records, being contributions to the history of the Spanish and
Portuguese Jews' Congregation ofLondon: Part II Abstracts ofthe Ketubot or Marriage Contracts of
the Congregation from the earliest times until 1837 (London 1949) no. 175.
9 Oakley (see n. 7) 492 and 495.
10 Novinsky (see n. 5) 22-5.

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 Some eighteenth-century refugees from Brazil

Marks. Alexandre was said by the Inquisitors to have been born in 1675.11
Jacob's circumcision record says that he was born in 1685,12 so either they
were two different men or, more likely, the age given in the de Paiba register
is incorrect.
In 1710, Diogo Lopes Flores, aged thirty, a nephew of Agostinho Lopes
Flores, and his wife, Ana Gutteres, aged twenty-one, were arrested in Rio
de Janeiro and sent to Lisbon where they were tried and sentenced for
Judaism, at an auto da fe on 26 July 1711, to imprisonment, the penitential
garment and confiscation of all property. He is described as Lavrador de Cana
(Farmer of Cane) on a sugar and manioc plantation, which meant that he was
a sharecropper. His inventory shows a much smaller estate than his uncle the
plantation owner. Diogo's farm was only worth 100 milreis (?26), whereas
his six slaves were worth 700 milreis (?184.48). In total he was worth 1460.91
milreis (?385).13 Of course the Inquisition confiscated it all.
Once the Inquisition had convicted someone, that person had a strong
incentive to escape from Portugal, because if convicted of Judaizing a second
time, the prisoner could be burnt at the stake. In the 1720s and 30s the
Lisbon Inquisition was extremely active. The number of executions
increased and so did emigration. Portugal was then England's biggest trading
partner. Under the terms of the Methuen Treaty of 1703, English ships were
exempt from the Inquisition. Many New Christians were therefore able to
escape to London from Lisbon and Oporto on English ships. In 1726 the
Lisbon Inquisition had four men and eight women burnt at the stake for
Judaism, plus two who had died in their cells. The next year no less than
twenty-four couples of Vindos de Portugal (arrivals from Portugal) were
remarried at the synagogue in Be vis Marks. Among them were Abraham and
Sarah Lopes Flores.14
Teodoro Pereira da Costa, described in the Lisbon Lista as ca brown man,
part of a New Christian, physician' {h?rnern pardo parte de x.n.y medico), was
arrested in Rio in 1716 and sentenced four years later. He owned a share in a
sugar plantation in Rio, with ten black slaves, a country villa, some houses
in Rio and a share in some land. His assets amounted to 3826 milreis (?956),
which of course were confiscated.15 In 1727 Abraham and Sarah Pereira da
Costa, 'arrivals from Portugal', were remarried at the synagogue in Bevis
Marks.16

11 Oakley (see n. 7) 492.

12 R. D. Barnett (ed.) Bevis Marks Records: IV The Circumcision Register of Isaac and Abraham de
Paiba (1715-1775) (London 1991) 47, no. 315.
13 Novinsky (see n. 5) 88-9.
14 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 8) 378, 25 Nisan 5487.
15 Novinsky (see n. 5) 242.
16 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 8) 397, 13 Tamuz 5487.

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 Edgar Samuel

Rio de Janeiro Prisoners In The Lisbon Listas

No. Date Name Age Occupation

Brites
30 June 1709 Soares Pereira wife of 28
d. of Jo?o Soares Pereira

492 30 JuneAgostinho
1709 Lopes Flores 29
H?rnern de Negocio

495 30 JuneLeonor
1709 Mendes da Paz, wife of 26
492 30 JuneAlexandre
1709 Soares Pereira 34
Senhor de Engenho
b. 1675 s.o. Jo?o Soares brother of Brites S. P.

Son of the above

506 26 July Anna

1711 Guterres wife of 21
502 26 July Diogo
1711 Lopes Flores b. 1681 30
Lavrador de Cana

542 16JuneTeodoro
1720 Pereira da Costa 37
Physician
'A Brown Man Part of a {H?rnern pardo
New Christian' parte de x.n.)

507 26 July Anna

1711 Rodrigues wife of 36
502 26 July Dami?o
1711 Advocate
Rodrigues Moeda 46
506 26 July Catherina
1711 de Miranda wife of 31

490 30 JuneFrancisco
1709 de Sequeira Machado
Physician 42
Joseph de Sequeira Machado
513 9 July 1713 19
Student of Grammar

Isabel de Sequeira 19
516 9 July 1713 Unmarried
524 16 Feb. David
1716 de Miranda cloth merchant 29
H?rnern de Negocio
574 16 Oct.David
1729 de Miranda 44 H?rnern de Negocio

587 6 July 1732 Manuel Nunes Sanches 32 Mine owner unmarried

The wardens of the Bevis Marks Synagogue let it be known on the Royal
Exchange that they would pay the fare of any refugee brought in from
Portugal. In 1727 the Mahamad resolved to pay no more than ?3 per person
in fares for arrivals from Spain and Portugal.17 If they were to receive help
from the community it was made a condition that the men must be circum?
cised and the women must have a ritual immersion or Tevilah within fifteen
days and undergo remarriage as Jews.18 In the period from 1700 to 1730,
17 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 12) 7.
18 Ibid. 2.

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 Some eighteenth-century refugees from Brazil

Vindos de Portugal In The Ketuboth Register

No. Remarriage Date Circumcision
No.
175 Sara Suarez Pereira 4Kislev 5471
Daniel Flores 1710
320 Rahel Soares Pereira 26 Heshvan 5485

Jacob Soares Pereira aged 42 8 Oct. 1724 315

Joseph Soares Pereira aged 19 8 Nov. 1724 615

378 Sarah Lopes Flores 25 Nisan 5487

Abraham Lopes Flores 1727 3 April 1727

397 Abraham Pereira da Costa 13Tamuz 5487
Sarah Pereira da Costa 1727

481 Sarah Rodrigues Moeda 21 Heshvan 5491

Abraham Rodrigues Moeda 1730

Sarah de Sequeira Machado 1731
490 Abraham de Sequeira Machado 26AdarL5491
Abraham de Sequeira Machado 11 Dec. 1726 167
591 Ribca de Abraham Sequeira Machado 5AdarL5497
1737
493 Aaron de Miranda 21Iyar 5491
Ribca de Miranda 1731
717 Isaac Nunes Sanches 2 Ellul 5506
Sara Nunes Sanches 1746

about 1500 refugees from Portugal joined the London Sephardi community.
Some were sent on to Barbados and Jamaica, and one shipload to Savannah,
Georgia.19
Darniao Rodrigues Moeda, an advocate aged forty-six, and his wife
Catherina de Miranda, aged thirty-one, were arrested in 1710 in Rio. His
assets amounted to 1756 milreis (?462) including eight domestic slaves.20

19 R. D. Barnett, 'Dr Samuel Nunes Ribeiro and the Settlement of Georgia', in A. Newman (ed.)
Migration and Settlement (London 1971) 91-2.
20 Novinsky (see n. 5) 72.

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 Edgar Samuel

These were confiscated. The Moedas were shipped to Lisbon and convicted
of Judaism in 1711, together with forty-seven other residents of Brazil,
mostly from Rio,21 and released destitute in Lisbon. However, as an experi?
enced advocate, he was probably able to earn a living. In 1729 ten New
Christians were burnt at the stake in Lisbon for Judaism, and the next year
the Moedas fled to London, joined the synagogue in Bevis Marks and were
remarried there as Abraham and Sarah Rodrigues Moeda, 'arrivals from
Portugal'.22
Francisco de Sequeira Machado, a physician, and his wife Catherina de
Miranda, their son Joseph and daughter Isabel were arrested in Rio in 1708
and shipped to Lisbon, where they were sentenced by the Inquisition and
went out in autos da fein 1709, 1711 and 1713.23 Francisco owned a share in
a sugar plantation with eighteen slaves24. Joseph arrived in England in 1726,
but his parents not until 1731, when they were remarried at the synagogue in
Bevis Marks as Abraham and Sarah de Sequeira Machado25.
David de Miranda was a textile and clothing merchant selling to gold
miners. He owned four slaves and substantial stock.26 David was arrested in
Bahia in 1714 and went out in an auto da fe in Lisbon in 1716.27 Thirteen
years later, in 1729, he was tried and sentenced a second time for Judaizing.
In 1730 five men and five women were burnt at the stake in Lisbon for
Judaism and one died in the cells of the Inquisition.28 Then in 1731 Aaron
and Ribca Miranda, 'arrivals from Portugal', were remarried in the syna?
gogue in Bevis Marks.29
Manuel Nunes Sanches owned a gold mining claim in northern Brazil. He
was arrested in 1730, shipped to Lisbon and sentenced for Judaizing in July
1732.30 In 1746 Isaac and Sarah Nunes Sanches were remarried at the Bevis
Marks Synagogue.31
Both King John V and his Inquisitor General Cardinal Nuno Ataide da
Cunha died in 1750. The new king Joseph I appointed Sebasti?o Jose Carvalho
e Melo as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.32 He had served as the
Portuguese Ambassador in England for four years and was a man of great

21 Oakley (see n. 7) 500-07.

22 Barnett(ed.) (seen. 8)481.
23 Oakley (see n. 7) 490, 506, 513, 516.
24 Novinsky (see n. 5) 120.
25 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 8) 490.
26 Novinsky (see n. 3) 77.
27 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 7) 524.
28 Ibid. 581.
29 Barnett (ed.) (see n. 8) 493.
30 Novinsky (see n. 3) 587.
31 Barnett (ed.) (seen. 8)717.
32 A. H. Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal (N< York I976) r.420-21.

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 Some eighteenth-century refugees from Brazil

ability. Carvalho e Melo was well aware of how much the Inquisition's activi?
ties had damaged Portuguese trade and industry and how badly the public exe?
cutions for Judaism damaged Portugal's reputation in Europe. Eventually he
became the de facto ruler of Portugal and was created Marques de Pombal.33
Pombal's first priority was to build up Portuguese trade, which was dominated
by English merchants, and to increase the royal revenues. In 1755 an earth?
quake destroyed much of Lisbon and Pombal was preoccupied with the plan?
ning and reconstruction of the city. His handling of the situation and of an
assassination attempt against the king in 1759 brought Pombal to full power.
When Pombal had been in England he had been friendly with his physi?
cian Dr Jacob de Castro Sarmento, who was a member of the London syna?
gogue and had proposed his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. I think
that this friendship with Sarmento influenced Pombal's policy towards the
Inquisition.
Pombal did not attempt to abolish the Inquisition, which would have been
politically impossible when most aristocrats rejoiced in being Familiars of
the Holy Office, but he bent it to his purposes. No Inquisitor General was
appointed for eight years. As in the sixteenth century, property confiscated
by the Inquisition once more went to the Crown instead of to the Inquisitors.
On 24 September 1752 four New Christians were publicly burnt at the stake
as negativos for denying that they were guilty of Judaism.34 Thereafter this
was not repeated in Lisbon, where autos da fe were then held within the
Dominican Convent. In 1758 the King appointed his legitimated half
brother Dom Jose to the office of Inquisitor General.35 Two years later
Pombal succeeded in having him exiled and replaced by his own younger
brother, Paolo Carvalho e Mendonca.36 Important changes then took place in
the Inquisition. In 1761, at the last outdoor public auto da fein Lisbon, the
leading Jesuit, Father Gabriel Malagrida, was burnt at the stake as a 'here
siarch' for his booklet which claimed that the Lisbon earthquake was God's
punishment for the sins of Portugal and its government.37 Even an enlight?
ened despot could not tolerate such a subversive theology. At the same time,
the effigy of a Portuguese Calvinist then living in London, Francisco Xavier
de Oliveira, was burnt for claiming in his booklet, Discours pathetique au sujet
des Calamites presentes arrivees en Portugal, that the Lisbon earthquake had
been God's punishment on Portugal for persecuting the Jews.

33 Ibid.
34 Oakley (see n. 7) 673.
35 J. Verissimo Serrao, Hist?ria de Portugal: VI0 Despotismo Iluminado (1750-1807) (Lisbon 1981)
130.
36 Ibid.
37 jfuizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto. Que padeceo a corte de Lisboa, no primeiro de Novembro
de 1755.. . (Lisbon 1756).

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 Edgar Samuel

Pombai stopped the killing of New Christians. After the Evora auto da fe
of 1761 none were burnt at the stake. Sentencing for Judaizing and confisca?
tion of property continued on a smaller scale. By the end of the eighteenth
century the Inquisition was continuing to enforce social control, but it was
used much less as an instrument of religious persecution. The emigration to
England dwindled. There were several convictions of nuns for receiving
visions or claiming to be a saint, usually classed as 'Molinism', and of gypsies
for fortune telling. In 1778 the Inquisition sentenced officers of an Oporto
regiment for practising Freemasonry.38 Pombal had bridled the Inquisition
and placed it firmly under government control.
In 1820 Inquisition was abolished. The Portuguese Inquisition had lasted
for 250 years. Its management had varied, just as the men who controlled it
did. In 1830 Jews were readmitted to Portugal and in the same year the
Elders of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation in London decided
that in future sermons should be preached in English rather than Portuguese,
which fewer congregants could understand.

38 Oakley (see n. 7) 723-5.

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