MORE THAN HOMESICKNESS

Minorities and the Transference of

Goods in the Mediterranean
(1492–1956)

edited by

José Alberto Rodrigues Da Silva Tavim

Hugo Martins
This volume is based on work undertaken as part of the research project ‘People in Motion:
Entangled Histories of Dis placement across the Mediterranean (1492–1923)’ (COST Action
18140), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)
 Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................. 3
JOSÉ ALBERTO RODRIGUES DA SILVA TAVIM & HUGO MARTINS

1. Moving money: Financing long-distance trade and merchant mobility in Renaissance Venice
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12
STEFANIA MONTEMEZZO

2. ‘Letters from Genoa’: Moving information, goods and assets in the seventeenth century .36
GIORGIO TOSCO

3. Mobility of People, Mobility of Assets: Marriage Contracts and Wills of the Portuguese Nation
of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.....................................................65
JOSÉ ALBERTO RODRIGUES DA SILVA TAVIM

4. A Broker’s Escape: Commercial Fraud and the Clandestine Repatriation of Antonio Enríquez
Gómez in 1649 .............................................................................................................................92
CARSTEN L. WILKE

5. Subjects and Objects on the Move: Settlement and Survival of the Portuguese Jews in the
Caribbean (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) ..................................................................140
ANA LEITÃO

6. On Money, Properties and Expulsions: Mudejars and Granadan Moriscos in Campo de

Calatrava – Comparative Insights ..............................................................................................167
FRANCISCO J. MORENO DÍAZ DEL CAMPO & LUÍS F. BERNABÉ PONS

7. Gifts and Livelihoods of Safavid Emissaries in Early Seventeenth-Century Spain ..............193

JOSÉ CUTILLAS

8. The Ahl Al-Kithãb’s Businesses: Economic and Religious Connections in the Maghrib World
(1766–1822). The Jews and the Transfer of Goods. ..................................................................217
JORGE AFONSO

9. Circulating Capital, Correspondences, and Campaigners: The Global Fallout from the 1956
Armenian Church Election .........................................................................................................244
TSOLIN NALBANTIAN

List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

2
 Introduction

JOSÉ ALBERTO RODRIGUES DA SILVA TAVIM & HUGO MARTINS

This volume presents a set of studies on a fundamental issue relating to the social and
economic history of minorities around the Mediterranean from the late fifteenth century
to the early twentieth century and examines how individuals, groups and communities
transferred money, commodities, people and information to others living within or
outside a given state.
Movements entailed more than just transfers of cash or commodities such as
jewels, precious stones, lacquer and textiles. A person, too, could be considered an asset
in such mobility, whether for marriage or another type of alliance or by being a slave.
This volume brings an innovative perspective to the topic through a comparative study of
the agents of transference, the goods transferred and the dynamics involved in these
exchanges at various times in history.
There is little literature on this subject for the medieval or early modern periods,
with existing studies concentrating mostly on minorities in a specific diaspora (or
individuals belonging to such minorities), such as the Jews or Armenians1 discussed here,
but often disregarding other groups or persons belonging to minorities and established
abroad for other reasons.
Although Kirti N. Chaudhuri and Philip D. Curtin did not set out to compile the
state of the art, with Curtin’s focus being mainly on cross-cultural trade, these authors
ended up conducting comparative studies on the ‘internal’ performance of some of these
groups in the diaspora, on both a global and comparative basis.2 We should also, however,
mention the 2005 edition of two key writings on the subject, specifically because of their

1
See primarily the ‘classics’: on the Jews, see Jonathan Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora. Jews, Crypto-
Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002); on the Armenians, see Sebouh
David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian
Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
2
K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean. An Economic History from the Rise of Islam
to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
3
comparative nature: Gabriel (Gabi) Sheffer’s article entitled “Is the Jewish Diaspora
Unique? Reflections on the Diaspora’s Current Situation”3 and Diasporas
Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, one of the best works on diasporas
and their internal performance, edited by Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis and
Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou.4
The launching in 1991 of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies brought
a new lease of life to the subject, both from a thematic and a conceptual perspective. Of
the articles in the inaugural issue, we would especially highlight William Safran’s
fundamental article on “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and
Return”.5
Unlike Sheffer and Safran, however, our main focus in this volume is not directed
primarily at ‘ethnonational diasporas, and homeland and return’, but rather at the
question, also raised by Sheffer, of the ‘efficiency ‘of these persons, people or groups in
a process of diaspora. How important was internal solidarity, or the possibility of
solidarity, within the scope of their activities and purposes (Tavim, Leitão, Pons and del
Campo, Afonso, Nalbantian)? And what were the opportunities for survival when
supposed solidarity was undermined internally (Wilke, Nalbantian)? To what extent did
success in this context depend on a socio-political organisation to support its missions or
social strategies and to ensure continuity, prevailing over the ephemeral (Cutillas)?
Meanwhile, did the effectiveness of these ‘foreigners’ in achieving their objectives
necessarily imply their travel and presence abroad, or could this also be achieved through
reliable local partners (Montemezzo, Tosco)?
As in the basis established by Safran, and in line with modern applications of the
term ‘diaspora’, the characters portrayed in this volume constitute a broader group than
the classical ‘people-nation’ or ‘portions’ of these nations, such as provisional ‘alien
residents’ (on foreign merchant nations, see Montemezzo, Tosco), and even foreign
political missions, which we know in the early modern age to have required long stays
and ‘small courts’ of advisers to representative political entities (Cutillas). This

3
In Israel Studies 10, no. 1 (2005): 1–35.
4
(Oxford: Berg). For a comparative perspective in this work, see the article by Jonathan Israel, (1) “Diasporas
Jewish and non-Jewish and the World Maritime Empires”; for a conceptual perspective, see the article by
Stathis Gourgouris (18), “The Concept of ‘Diaspora’ in the Contemporary World”.
5
1, No. 1: 83–99.
4
broadening of the scope of analysis immediately leads one to consider that, in the longer
term, establishing a larger community constituting a ‘body’ of compact identity and
allowing the maintenance of one’s own and other boundaries (Tavim, Leitão, Pons and
del Campo, Afonso, Nalbantian) required a different performance than that required from
those displaced from ‘existing nations’ for economic reasons (Montemezzo, Tosco), and
to perform political representation (Cutillas). Therefore, this book includes some articles
of reflections on the activities and strategies of Jews and Armenians in a diaspora (Tavim,
Wilke, ,Leitão, Afonso, Nalbantian), but also approaches on other groups or persons:
there is an article about transference of goods from a social group – the Moriscos (Pons
and del Campo) – not frequently considered in this field of studies, two on merchant
nations in Italy (Montemezzo, Tosco) and one on a Persian political representation in
Spain under Philip II and Philip III (Cutillas).

Besides taking different diasporic groups and people into account, the volume
extends across vast chronological boundaries, while also, in terms of spatial contours,
viewing the Mediterranean frontier in a broader conception and extending to the colonial
Atlantic dependencies (Tavim, Leitão), as already understood by Fernand Braudel.6 As
stated at the start, we consider goods not only in the traditional fundamental sense of
material goods – money, clothes, precious stones, furniture and so on – but also people in
their material status as slaves or captives (Afonso) or in their metaphoric humanity as
brides and grooms (Tavim), as well as immaterial goods such as the transmission of
information for commercial (Leitão) or socio-political purposes, including lobbying
(Nalbantian).

We will now turn to the contributions in this volume, which we present

chronologically. In the first contribution, Stefania Montemezzo analyses the account
books and letters of two well-known Italian merchant families – the Foscaris and the
Michiels – to understand how the introduction of financial instruments such as bank
deposits and bills of exchange impacted on patterns of capital flows for financing
international trade and transportation in fifteenth-century Italy. The author shows how
these two families combined financial innovations with traditional payment methods in
their operations across the Adriatic Sea, and overland to Flanders, in seeking to navigate

6
Fernand Braudel, O Mediterrâneo e o Mundo Mediterrânico na Época de Filipe II, Vol. 1 (Lisboa:
Publicações Dom Quixote, 1983), ch. 2.
5
the social, political and economic diversity of trading counterparties, intermediaries and
customs officials. By constantly adapting their strategies to conform to local specificities,
the Foscaris and Michiels took advantage of rapidly expanding capital and exchange
markets, with new speculative opportunities and a sound business organisation, to
manage liquidity and risk.

The second article, authored by Giorgio Tosco and concentrating on seventeenth-

century Genoa, provides an overview of the instruments and practices used by Dutch-
speaking merchants for moving goods and assets in and out of the city. The author
emphasises the role played by Genoa’s legal and institutional framework in facilitating
foreign merchants wanting to move their interests into the city and partake in its economic
life without being physically present there, but instead being represented by reliable local
merchants. By drawing on notarial records, mercantile letters and secondary literature
more generally, Tosco also lays bare the challenges and complexities faced by merchants
seeking to safely move their assets and goods and minimise uncertainties in their business
dealings. He does this by analysing and explaining the use, in terms of their legal
structure, of instruments such as powers of attorney, bills of exchange and business
correspondence, and the diversity of business ventures available at the time.

In the third article, José Alberto R.S. Tavim focuses on two of the most relevant
sources – marriage contracts and wills – used by Portuguese and Spanish Jews to transfer
and pass on their assets during the seventeenth century. Property transmission patterns
and the corresponding strategies of social and economic advancement are examined here
in the light of the customs and practices traditionally used by the Portuguese Jews from
their time in the Iberian Peninsula until they became established in the Portuguese-Jewish
community of Amsterdam. The author demonstrates that the geographical distribution of
bequeathed capital, with a preference for the Mediterranean and the colonial territories of
the Caribbean, did not prevent the continuing transmission of commodities from the
Netherlands to Portugal by inheritance. As far as social benefits were concerned,
charitable inheritances and consanguineous marriages were one of the many ways of
promoting the integration of socially, religiously and culturally distant members of the
Nation and promoting their physical and spiritual adherence to Judaism. The maintaining
of affective ties was thus consubstantiated through the constant mobility and transmission
of goods and capital across borders, with the ultimate purpose of ensuring the preservation

6
of family property through several generations, including those living in Catholic
territories as New Christians.

The next article, by Carsten Wilke, sheds new light on the famous case of the poet
Antonio Enríquez Gómez (c.1600–1663), who conjured up a stratagem for defrauding his
coreligionists of more than 80,000 pesos and fleeing from Rouen to Spain under a false
identity. Persecuted by the Inquisition and by his creditors, Enríquez Gómez managed to
live a comfortable life in Spain, one that nevertheless had a bitter end, after successfully
evading his persecutors for more than twelve years. This story is emblematic, not so much
because of the magnitude of the scheme or its ingenious plot, but because of the questions
left open regarding the actions and motivations of Enríquez when devising his plan, and
specifically the question of whether he was driven by reasons of an economic, social,
religious or personal nature. On the other hand, the repercussions of this flagrant example
of historical deception can be measured not only in terms of its major economic impact,
but also and particularly in the way in which it eroded the values of solidarity and integrity
characteristic of the Portuguese diaspora.

The historical context giving rise to the article by Ana Leitão is that of early
modern letter-writing relating to ships captured by the British in times of war. Written by
Sephardic merchants, these letters are part of the collection of Portuguese-language letters
in the Prize Papers series held in the records of the High Court of Admiralty and colonial
Vice-Admiralty Court in the National Archives at Kew (United Kingdom). As Leitão
shows, this fascinating and previously little-known set of sources opens an unprecedented
window onto the mental and material universe of Iberian Jews in overseas communities,
specifically in the Caribbean, portraying their everyday personal struggles and economic
activities, as well as the political and diplomatic dimensions of their presence during and
after the Cromwellian Protectorate. In particular, the author attempts to understand how
information about material goods related to the emotions expressed by interlocutors and
the role of these emotions in defining what was ultimately exchanged or transmitted, why
and to whom.

The article by Luis F. Bernabé Pons and Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo
seeks, firstly, to determine the strategies used by the Moriscos to integrate themselves
into the Castilian socio-economic fabric and, secondly, to establish the methods they used
to preserve their estates during major economic disruptions. The authors suggest possible
hypotheses for the fate of Morisco property – management, auctioning and adjudication
7
– and emphasise the many questions still to be answered in respect of this extended and
complex process of property transfers. The lasting effects that the profound economic
transformation had on regional financial and real estate markets seem certain, as do the
effects it had on the social structure and composition of localities disrupted by a sudden
imbalance in the market forces of supply and demand. Such questions also apply to the
Moriscos themselves: what was the economic impact of the expulsion for the Moriscos
and, more specifically, what was the fate of the wealth they brought from Spain to North
and sub-Saharan Africa?

We now move on to the contribution by José Cutillas. How was gift-giving

understood in the context of early modern Spanish and Safavid relationships? How did
its meaning deviate from the interpretation attributed to the same act in Ottoman and
Arabic Muslim contexts – about which most of the literature is concerned – and, more
importantly, what were the meanings and functions associated with or conveyed by this
ritualised behaviour between participants? These important and, in many ways, novel
questions are addressed by José Cutillas in his incursion into the world of seventeenth-
century relations between the Spanish monarchy and Safavid Persia. The circulation of
goods and royal gifts between Spain and Iran, as well as the troubles faced by emissaries
in their diplomatic travels to the foreign land, are meticulously examined with the help of
travelogues and archives from Portugal, Spain and Italy. The author’s main objective is
to understand the extent to which different cultural practices and customs affected the
development of transcultural diplomacy between the two kingdoms (in the case of the
Iranian emissaries, the goods were sold rather than being transformed into gifts) and how
the lack of a strong diasporic community (in this case, a Persian community), which could
have informed the ambassador of how to behave in accordance with the local traditions,
could lead to a degradation of his mission.

Jorge Afonso’s contribution sheds new light on the role played by Western
Mediterranean Jewish communities in the flows of funds, goods and information between
North-Western Europe, Portugal and the Moroccan Empire and Algerian Regency, not
only as diplomatic agents, but also as cultural and economic brokers. What did Portuguese
Sephardic interests in the Maghreb comprise and how did these communities attempt to
further these interests against the convoluted geopolitical backdrop of the Napoleonic
wars? To what extent did the ransom of captives and the trade in weapons and ammunition
affect negotiations between the two sides and, above all, which networks and individuals
8
were responsible for implementing and effecting movements of goods between North
Africa, on the one hand, and Western and Southern Europe on the other? These are just
some of the issues touched upon in this complex historical plot, in which Jews played an
essential role as intermediaries.

The final article, authored by Tsolin Nalbantian, leaves the far-off pre-modern
period to bring us an account of how a seemingly innocuous event – the 1956 election of
the head of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Lebanon – formed the backdrop for a
heated transnational debate on the role and fate of the Armenian religious diaspora in the
wider context of Cold War geopolitics. According to Nalbantian, the political intervention
by religious and non-religious actors seeking to steer the outcome of this contested
election constituted a global enterprise that brought actors spread across North and South
America, Europe and the Middle East into contact with each other. To further their
political interests, supporters and detractors of the successful candidate utilised all kinds
of strategies, including campaigning, propaganda, lobbying for political and legal action
and, last but not least, transferring and allocating financial capital raised through
international donations. These exchanges and their far-reaching implications are an
important component for understanding the history of this diaspora in the aftermath of
the Armenian genocide, as well as an interesting case study on the agents, dynamics and
patterns of capital repatriation and transference in the twentieth-century Armenian
diaspora.

If we consider these contributions from a comparative perspective, we can draw

three fundamental conclusions. The first is that the existence of a group with a secularly
defined identity – as in the case of Jews and Armenians – resulted in greater effectiveness,
despite persecutions and expulsions, in all the dynamics of their existence, including in
the transferring of various values, ranging from materials to human beings and to
information policies and lobbying practices. Secondly, while the studies by Carsten Wilke
and Tsolin Nalbantian show that this intra-community management was not always
peaceful, the multi-century effectiveness reveals that the problematic cases were not so
widespread as to decisively undermine the networks. Thirdly, and on the contrary, a
foreign community’s lack of representatives in a given country could even jeopardise the
effectiveness of missions conducted by their nations in that country, as seen in the
contribution by José Cutillas.

9
 According to David Abulafia, ‘The unity of Mediterranean history thus lies,
paradoxically, in its swirling changeability, in the diasporas of merchants and exiles, in
the people hurrying to cross its surface as quickly as possible …’7 The articles contained
in this volume reveal the extent to which the strategies used by displaced persons, as
minorities, to maintain their identity and survive varied and changed over time. These
strategies highlight the different ways in which diversified goods were transferred and
their differing underlying objectives. Sometimes these strategies failed because of a
failure in reliability behaviours or isolation in foreign territory, or because of the opposing
interests at stake. But, as Abulafia explains, any human history of the Mediterranean has
to take these inconsistencies into account and, above all, to understand the range of
strategies used by the displaced to ensure survival in a strange land.

7
In The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 648.
10
11
 Chapter 1. Moving money: Financing long-distance trade and merchant
mobility in Renaissance Venice

STEFANIA MONTEMEZZO

Introduction

Previous studies of the Venetian financial system examined the general patterns of
support available for financing international trade and merchant mobility during the late
medieval age. In order, however, to better understand the behaviour of traders in the
different markets, and their choice of payment methods, it is necessary to focus on some
specific cases and to trace their operations and business choices. The evolution of the
commercial sector and the role played in this evolution by the Venetian State are at the
centre of a wide-ranging historiographical tradition highlighting numerous aspects of the
medieval and Renaissance Venetian maritime economy. Earlier research on individual
merchants, the public navigation system, the traffic of goods and the relationships
between public institutions and commercial organisations have enriched the debate on the
birth of commercial capitalism, European expansion and entrepreneurship.1 Also
fundamental for understanding the dynamics and evolution of commercial exchanges and
merchant mobility are the studies of the Venetian financial and credit system, and in

1
Paola Lanaro, “Reinterpreting Venetian Economic History”, in At the Centre of the Old World. Trade and
Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800, ed. Paola Lanaro (Toronto: CRRS,
2006), 19–69. Among the most important works, see: Gino Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia dall’XI
al XVI secolo, (Venezia: Centro Internazionale delle arti e del costume, 1961); Frederic C. Lane, Andrea
Barbarigo. Merchant of Venice 1418–1449 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944); Frederic
C. Lane, “Ritmo e rapidità di giro d’affari nel commercio veneziano del Quattrocento”, in Studi in onore di
Gino Luzzatto, I, (Milano: Giuffrè, 1949), 254-273; Ugo Tucci, Lettres d’un marchand vénitien (1553–
1556) (Paris: SEVPEN, 1957); Alberto Tenenti, Corrado Vivanti, “Le film d’un grand système de
navigation: les galères marchandes vénitiennes, XIV – XVI siècles”, Annales. Économies, Sociétés,
Civilisations XVI (1961): 83–86; A. Tenenti, Cristoforo da Canal. La marine vénitienne avant Lépante,
Paris, SEVPEN, 1962.
12
particular the studies of the techniques used by bankers operating on the Rialto Square to
finance international trade and of the tools that were available to merchants at the time.2

This chapter aims to further the debate by showing how Renaissance Venetian
merchants were able to move capital and merchandise across Europe and the
Mediterranean thanks to their ability to combine various instruments for transferring
money and for making payments across long distances, while also continuing to use more
basic methodologies of business, such as bartering and cash payments. The use of these
instruments was geographically differentiated, and depended on the local political and
economic situation and also on the presence of fellow Venetian, and Italian, merchants
and bankers.

The chapter comprises three main parts: in the introduction I briefly describe the
main tools used for managing business activities, including the accounting system, and
its influence in developing Venetian family businesses. In the second section I analyse
the use of different patterns of payment and financing, based on case studies of the Foscari
and Michiel family firms. Lastly, I address the matter of capital movements by location,
showing the significance of different areas and traders’ personal interests. I will approach
the matter from two perspectives. Firstly, I will analyse accounting data to show how
payment patterns changed according to the period, goods and partners involved.
Secondly, I will explain reasons for regional differences, linking the information from the
sources to the wider economic and social context characterising the period.

2
Frederic C. Lane, Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1985); Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and
Renaissance Venice, 2: The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200–1500
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Frederic C. Lane, Andrea Barbarigo; Richard. T. Rapp,
“Real Estate and Rational Investment in Early Modern Venice”, Journal of European Economic History 8
(1979): 269–290; John H. Munro, “The Monetary Origins of the “Price Revolution”: South German Silver
Mining, Merchant-Banking and Venetian Commerce, 1470–1540”, in Global connections and monetary
History, 1470–1800, eds. Dennis O. Flynn, Arturo Giráldez, Richard Von Glahn (Aldershot: Ashgate 2003),
1–34; Gerhard Rösch, “Lo sviluppo mercantile”, in Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della
Serenissima, II, l’età del Comune, eds. Giorgio Cracco – Gherardo Ortalli (Rome: Istituto della
Enciclopedia italiana, 1995), 131–154; Brian Pullan, Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1968); Luzzatto, Storia economica di Venezia
dall’XI al XVI secolo.
13
 The case studies presented are based on accounting records held in various
collections in the Venice state archives. The first two ledgers are preserved in the private
collection of Gradenigo Rio Marin: these relate to two journeys to Flanders made in the
1460s and were written by Giovanni Foscari.3 These ledgers contain records of all the
transactions that Foscari entered into as the patrono of a state galley travelling to Flanders
and England, both as a public officer (for purchases of food, payments of salaries, duties
and so on) and as a trader/agent. The third ledger, that of the Michiel family, is preserved
in the Miscellanea Gregolin collection. Compiled between 1470 and 1482, these accounts
show the firm’s wealth and the distribution of its interests across the whole
Mediterranean. Since this ledger coincides almost entirely with the war between Venice
and the Ottoman Empire, it is also useful for gaining a better understanding of how traders
reacted to shortages of certain goods (such as spices and silk) and whether and, if so, how
they were able to restructure their exchanges accordingly.

Tools and strategies for commercial displacement and business development

Venetian and Italian merchants used a variety of effective organisational, monetary and
financial instruments, including accounting, currencies of account, letters of credit and
exchange, and bank transfers (current accounts), to enable capital, merchandise and men
to move from one place to another, and to keep track of such movements. From an
organisational perspective, one of their most important tools was their accounting records,
and specifically their use of double-entry bookkeeping. The structure of this bookkeeping
system, which paired accounts based on the object, as well as linking transactions and
payments, and matching entries, allowed control over operations thanks to the simple
concept of record-balancing and the ability to check individual transactions and trades
more quickly. Not only does this system provide important details of firms’ commercial
and financial operations, but it also clearly shows the timing and methodologies pursued
to generate returns on capital and to close deals. Accounting was also an important
instrument of trust: merchant letters, as well as court cases, show this system’s
significance for traders as, in a certain sense, it certified the reliability of their

3
Both are published in Giovanni Foscari, Viaggi di Fiandra (1463–64 e 1467–68), ed. S. Montemezzo
(Venice. La Malcontenta, 2013). Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV), Archivio Gradenigo rio
Marin, b. 250/2.
14
correspondents. Using the same accounting system was comparable to using a shared
language, allowing information to be exchanged, and transactions between different
books of the firms and partnerships to be checked and cross-referenced.

With regard to monetary resources, currencies of account were a particularly

relevant aspect for international commercial mobility. Based on imperial currencies –
such as the libra, solidus and denarius – this system consisted of various intangible units
used across the European continent and offering a stable exchange value with locally
minted coins. Despite the debasement of coined pennies (also known as black money),
and the stability of silver and golden coined currencies during the Renaissance, units of
account provided an alternative and stable international standard for counting and
evaluating the different local currencies. These units operated alongside coined currencies
and were a useful tool for handling large amounts, as well as representing an undisputed
value vis-à-vis local currencies, thus facilitating exchanges. Being the main currency used
in accounting ledgers, they also created a certain degree of transparency in business
records, allowing virtually anyone to access accounts and verify the value of the
transactions.4

Since the start of the medieval period, various financial instruments had been
created to facilitate movements of capital. Bills of exchange, along with bills of credit
and bank deposits, became a crucial tool for conducting business in medieval and early-
modern markets. This was because one of the biggest problems in medieval trade, and
one commonly paralysing it, was the lack of cash caused by periodic scarcities of precious
metals in Europe. Difficulties in transporting money and the need for continual
assessment, upon payment, of the actual intrinsic value of coins could also slow down
movements of goods and merchants’ mobility. Bills of exchange, bills of credit and bank
deposits made it easier to make payments in different currencies and to transport money
across long distances. Consequently, the introduction of these new forms of payment and
money transfer substantially changed the way business was carried out over the next few

4
Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
Luca Fantacci, “The dual currency system of Renaissance Europe”, Financial History Review 15, no. 1
(2008): 55–72.
15
centuries, with merchants becoming more sedentary and entrusting their business abroad
to agents and factors.5

Alvise Michiel, an international trader operating in Venice in the second half of

the fifteenth century, made wide-ranging use of these instruments to finance his trades
and the mobility of agents, while carefully recording all the transactions in his ledger,
using double-entry bookkeeping. Like many other Venetians at the time, and despite
being involved in international exchanges, Alvise was not part of a diversified business
with branches abroad. Instead, he preferred to keep the core of his business at a family
level (fraterna), while relying on factors for business in foreign markets, and forming
temporary partnerships with other commercial firms for broader-ranging operations.6 The
fraterna was a personified business in the sense that all its trades were entered into in the
holder’s name (and, in the Venetian case, usually in the name of the father or older
brother). As such a firm’s reach was consequently limited (particularly compared to that
of its Tuscan counterparts),7 the role played by business and financial tools was even more
crucial, particularly given that Venetian merchants generally entrusted their business
abroad to factors and agents who were responsible for moving items from one port to
another and needed constant flows of capital and merchandise.

Agents and factors were central for business success in the Venetian context, and
having a trusted agent could make all the difference. Being able to control agents’ actions
and hold them legally accountable for their mistakes often determined resident

5
R.C. Mueller, “The Role of Bank Money in Venice 1300–1500”, Studi Veneziani, ns., 3 (1979): 47–96;
Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice), 293–303; Francesco Guidi
Bruscoli, ‘Le tecniche bancarie, in Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa. Commercio e cultura mercantile, eds.
Franco Franceschi, Richard A. Goldthwaite and Reinhold C. Mueller (Treviso: A. Colla, 2007), 557–560;
Raymond De Roover, Money, Banking and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges: Italian Merchant-Bankers
Lombards and Money-Changers: A Study in the Origins of Banking (Cambridge. Mass.: The Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1948), 12–13. On the use of bills of exchange at international fairs, see Claudio
Marsilio, Dove il denaro fa denaro. Gli operatori finanziari genovesi nelle fiere di cambio del XVII secolo
(Novi Ligure, Città del silenzio, 2008), 32–38.
6
S. Montemezzo, “Fra pubblico e privato: la fraterna veneziana nel commercio del secondo Quattrocento”,
Ricerche di Storia Economica e Sociale, III (2017): 7–34.
7
A. Orlandi, “Le prestazioni di una holding tardo medievale riflette attraverso alcune teorie di management
e la social network analysis”, in Innovare nella storia economica: temi e metodi (Prato: Fondazione Istituto
Internazionale di Storia economica F. Datini, 2016), 117–148.
16
merchants’ choice of known individuals, such as relatives (either direct relatives or in-
laws), as their agents. This, too, was the choice made by Alvise Michiel, with one of the
key figures in the work of his fraterna being Silvestro, Alvise’s son and designated heir.
After several trips to Egypt, Germany, Barbary and Syria, all prior to 1470 (and therefore
not mentioned in the ledger), Silvestro resided in Alexandria, Egypt, between 1470 and
1472. From there he directly coordinated the trade brought to term in Barbary by Marino
Zorzi, and in Syria by Lorenzo Priuli. These operations were recorded in the ledger either
in Silvestro’s own name, with Silvestro being defined as a factor in these territories, or ‘a
hordene de Silvestro mio fiol’ (i.e. according to the orders of Silvestro, my son). The ease
with which Silvestro was able to manage flows of goods and capital to and from Venice
from his base in Egypt presupposes a deep knowledge of the Berber and Syrian markets,
and was most likely due to the experience he had gained on the many trips before 1470.

The goods traded, whether directly by Silvestro or on his orders, varied, ranging
from Berber oil to spices and from leathers to carpets, and even including sales of silver
on the Syrian market. The value of a single shipment of silver, both raw and worked, in
1470 exceeded 3,500 ducats. However, Silvestro’s sudden death in 1472, and the young
age of Alvise’s other children, forced Alvise to establish a diversified network of agents,
both resident and mobile, to manage his foreign business. This comprised a mixture of,
on the one hand, individuals residing in foreign ports and maintaining relationships with
local merchants and, on the other hand, a network of factors, also closely related to Alvise,
who travelled from one place to another in Europe and around the Mediterranean to
coordinate business and control the work of the local resident factors. Alvise made use of
many factors in European and Mediterranean cities, with a total of 34 being used in the
ten years of activity known to us. These factors were spread across all the major
emporiums of the time, including London, Bruges, Barbary, Alexandria, Syria, Puglia
and Sicily. After the death of his first-born, Silvestro, the factors he appointed to manage
his business also included some from outside his family circle. Looking at the dates on
which the factors were reported in foreign ports, these individuals – and particularly those
with a kinship relationship to Alvise Michiel – were not resident in a single port. Instead,
they tended to travel from one market to another, representing the merchant’s interests
with foreign counterparts, and managing the operations of local factors. They coordinated
the flow of goods departing from Venice and enabled tailor-made shipments to the
Levantine markets. Thanks to the intersecting of agents’ activities and shipments of
17
goods, we can see that Alvise Michiel organised his agency system on various levels,
centring primarily on the individuals closest to him, and in particular his relatives: these
people tended to travel and were responsible for supervising factors permanently resident
in foreign markets, as well as often being entrusted with individual business transactions
or accompanying goods travelling on the same routes.

Agents were in constant contact with the resident Venetian merchant thanks to the
frequent use of commercial letters, often sent in multiple copies. These letters contained
all sorts of information, from personal considerations to comments on political events or
announcements of swift changes in prices. To this information, agents often attached
extracts from their accounts, to be registered in the firm’s main ledger. Their length and
the details provided by agents on local markets, on the negotiation of prices (often in
court) and on local arrivals of shipments make these records particularly informative.

Capital displacement

The increasingly urgent need to regulate merchant transactions without moving money
led to new ‘virtual’ instruments for payments and money transfers being developed by
merchant-bankers. These instruments, of differing levels of complexity, allowed
relatively small businesses, such as the Venetian fraterne, to supply factors and agents
with enough capital to facilitate the movement of merchandise across Europe and the
Mediterranean.

One of the first systems introduced for facilitating payments was the system of
account transfers. This required two individuals (the payer and the payee) to present
themselves at the counter of the bank and to instruct the latter to move the money from
one bank account to the other and record the change in the ledger. This tool was used
mainly for local payments in the same place as it required both parties to have a current
account at the specific bank.8 International payments, however, necessitated other
instruments, and their use depended on local or Venetian bankers being present in the
ports of destination. In the Middle Eastern and African Mediterranean area and in the
English context, however, simpler methods of payment were used, particularly payments

8
Mueller, “The Role of Bank Money”: 47–96; Mueller, Money and Banking, 293–303; Guidi Bruscoli, Le
tecniche bancarie, 557–560.
18
in kind and payment deferments. This was due to the fact that the more restrictive policies
applied by local rulers prevented a broader use of financial instruments, and often made
them unpopular in those areas. The European Mediterranean areas and Continental
Europe, by contrast, saw regular use of more complex and differentiated instruments, with
the participation of local bankers.

Payments in kind and payment deferments

Barter and deferment of payments were two common practices, alongside payments in
currency and precious metals, adopted by the Venetians in their trades. These systems
were used mainly in the Mediterranean basin, particularly for trading and investing in the
Mamluk territories such as Egypt. Alvise Michiel’s ledger shows that bartering mainly
involved products from two distinct areas: Europe and the Orient. Between 1470 and
1482, goods with a total value of 19,200 ducats were exchanged by barter (Graph 1).

9000

8000

7000

6000

5000
Barters
4000
Pepper purchases
3000

2000

1000

-1000

Graph 1: Alvise Michiel’s barters and pepper purchases per year (in ducats).

The value of bartering was polarised in 1470 and 1480 by the effects of the war
between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, which prevented spices and Oriental products
from arriving in Venice in the usual quantities and prices. The main products involved in

19
barters were those in high demand at the time: spices, precious textiles and oil. Spices and
textiles were products commonly present in the Venetian market, thanks to the
emporium’s role in the trades between East and West. Pepper was the main spice
exchanged for products such as European minerals – iron, copper and pond – and Italian
light textiles such as fustians and linen cloths. Alvise acquired minerals directly from
German merchants, usually residing at the fondaco, while textiles were supplied by Italian
merchants from Lombardy and Central Italy, as in the case of a purchase of corded
fustians supplied by Giovanni Ambrogio dal Molten from Milan in May 1474.9 Venetian
merchants were also able to use pepper to pay for services such as transportation. In 1470,
before the effects of the first Veneto-Ottoman war started hindering trade, Alvise used
the Oriental spice to pay 2,787 ducats of transportation fees. Pepper was therefore
important in the late Middle Ages both as a spice and also, in effect, as a ‘currency’ that
could be used to pay for textiles, minerals and services linked to the mobility of goods
and persons. If we consider pepper as a currency, we should note that, particularly in
Northern Europe, it was sided by another product: wine. Sweet Mediterranean wine,
normally from the Greek islands under Venetian rule, was often used to pay for purchases
of local products and to reward officials. During the travels made on the state galleys in
the 1460s by Giovanni Foscari, a Venetian trader from one of the city’s wealthiest
families, wine was often used to pay for merchandise and corruption. 10 Malvasia wine
enabled Foscari to purchase light Flemish and Dutch cloths from local traders such as
Cholart, Rigo Bruzese and Zuane Pichardo, as well as to pay for repairs to his ship. The
sweet beverage was also appreciated by local customs officers, who often received one
or two kegs of wine as presents for their indulgence. During the first trip to Flanders,
more than ten kegs were used as presents for customs officers and clerks. Besides wine,
merchants used dates and leather bags to bribe officials in Bruges and London. This
practice was so common that the cost was ascribed to the travel expenses record in the
ledgers, and so accepted by the investors in the galley (caratisti) as an expense that should
be shared because it allowed movements of people and goods to proceed.11

9
ASV, Miscellanea Gregolin, b. 29.
10
S. Montemezzo, Giovanni Foscari.
11
C. Judde de Lariviere, Naviguer, commercer, gouverner: économie maritime et pouvoirs à Venise (15.-
16. siècle) (Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2008); S. Montemezzo, “Galley Routes and Merchant Networks between
20
 The capacity to trade and use global merchandise, such as pepper, as a means of
payment was linked to and limited by the international political situation, and specifically
by the question of whether it was possible to receive sufficient supplies throughout the
year. Alvise Michiel’s case shows that disruptive events such as wars represented a threat
to commercial exchanges since these hostilities often cut across supply chains and
resulted in markets being closed to European traders. In the case of the war between
Venice and the Ottoman Empire (1463–79), the Venetians saw part of their territory being
eroded by the Ottomans, who entered Italian territory in 1477, devastating the Friuli
area.12 During the hardest years of the war, when the Ottoman Empire quickly overran
the Albanian and Croatian coasts, the number of barter trades fell, reaching a historical
low between 1472 and 1480. It was not until the commercial lines were no longer
threatened by war and so could reopen, thus allowing fresh pepper to arrive from the
Middle East, that barter trade started to be used again to pay for European merchandise
and services.

But although it was important and widely used, barter was not always the best
choice for international traders, particularly when other issues could slow down the usual
mercantile mobility. Examples of these other issues can be found in several letters written
by the Venetian merchant Marco Bembo in the 1480s.13 In a letter written on 6 July 1482
to Girolamo Tiepolo, his agent in London, Bembo explicitly instructed the factor not to
use barter to sell some carpets in the city, but to resort instead to a regular sale or payment
deferment. The trader was indeed worried by the timing of the capital return since it
required a longer period to receive the exchanged merchandise in Venice and sell it. His
concerns also reflected the slowdown in the galley’s circulation that had been caused by
a new outbreak of the plague in some European ports. In the same letter, Marco explained
to Tiepolo that a common connection, Miani, had been infected by the plague and was
experiencing difficulties in raising capital to be invested in England.14 Barter and payment
deferments were not mutually exclusive instruments and were indeed both used by
traders, depending on the situation. While barter was commonly used for purchases of

Venice and the North Sea in the Fifteenth Century”, in C. Jeggle, C. Caracausi, Commercial Networks and
European Cities, 1400–1800 (London, Pickering & Chatto, 2014), 153–169.
12
M. Viallon, “Guerre e paci veneto-turche dal 1453 al 1573”, in (Chianciano-Pienza, Italy, 2003), 47–60.
13
ASV, Miscellanea di atti non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, b. 29.
14
ASV, Miscellanea di atti non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, b. 29, letter 2.
21
goods in high demand, such as spices, which were usually shipped to Venice, payment
deferments were preferred by sellers in matters relating to the circulation of ships and
capital.

Bills of exchange

Bills of exchange, together with bank deposits, were an important tool for conducting
business in medieval markets. One of the major problems in medieval trade was the
shortage of money in circulation; this was due to the scarcity of precious metals that
periodically hit Europe and often threatened to interrupt trade.15 In addition, difficulties
in transporting money and the continual need to verify the intrinsic value of coins at the
time of payment caused problems that could slow down exchanges. Until the late Middle
Ages, relatively little use was made of banking systems for payments, compared to the
internationalisation of the banking system seen from the fifteenth century onwards.16
However, the introduction of bills of exchange (or exchange letters, as they are also
referred to), which began to be used intensively between the end of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, enabled payments to be made in different currencies, money to be
moved and long-distance credit to be granted, and this substantially changed the ways of
doing business. Developed for remitting money in different places, bills of exchange also
became widely used for credit financing. Their emergence was essentially due to a
reorganisation of long-distance trade. From the end of the thirteenth century, merchants
became more and more sedentary, preferring this to incessant travelling, and opened
branches abroad or dispatched agents to these foreign markets. Bills of exchange enabled
trade to be managed directly from traders’ cities of origin, thus favouring methods and
tools that helped coordinate flows of goods and capital. Traders then sought ways to send

15
John H. Munro, ‘South German Silver, European Textiles, and Venetian Trade with the Levant and
Ottoman Empire, c. 1370 to c. 1720: A Non-Mercantilist Approach to the Balance of Payments Problem’,
in Relazione Economiche Tra Europa e Mondo Islamico, Seccoli XIII - XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi
(Florence: Le Monnier, 2006), 905–960.
16
Richard A. Goldthwaite, “Local Banking in Renaissance Florence”, Journal of European Economic
History 14 (1985): 5–55.
22
money in local currency to their agents, or vice versa, in order to finance businesses or
obtain payment from abroad, when necessary.17

As mentioned earlier, the war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire resulted
in the usual commercial lines used by Venice enduring a prolonged period of stagnation.
Surviving this period required traders to diversify their interests, invest in diverse
products and mobilise new resources. Alvise Michiel saw his way out of this hard
situation in the commercialising of a product – olive oil – that was already known, but
could prove profitable thanks to its multiple uses. Olive oil was used in the medieval
period as a foodstuff, but was also essential in the soap and wool industries, and for
lighting homes and cities. The product was so important that the Republic of Venice
established a dedicated office, the Ufficiali alla ternaria, to control its imports and
use.18Alvise consequently started importing large quantities of olive oil from Apulia, an
area where Venetians had historically been present. Unlike the Levant or Northern
Europe, however, Apulia’s local economy was barely able to support barter since it could
absorb only limited quantities of Venetian products. Bartering and exchanges in kind,
therefore, were not an option. Consequently, the only way for Alvise to finance exports
of oil was to resort to bills of exchange. These were usually sent by ship and entrusted to
agents and factors, or to the captains of the vessels, usually of Venetian origin. The trend
in the use of letters of exchange shows that their use polarised in two periods: 1472-73,
which corresponded almost entirely to the purchases of olive oil made in Apulia (mainly
Molfetta and Bari) and the Lake Garda area (Verona); and the years from 1479 onwards,
when trade was destabilised after the ending of Ottoman hostilities (see graphs 2 and 3).
Liquidity was provided in Apulia by the branches of Venetian and Italian banks such as
the Soranzo, Lippomano, Gerrucci and Bernardi banchi.

17
De Roover, Money, Banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges, 12-13; Marsilio, Dove il denaro fa denaro,
32–38.
18
Salvatore Ciriacono, L’olio a Venezia in età moderna: i consumi alimentari e gli altri usi (Firenze, Le
Monnier, 1997).
23
 Ducats
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1470 1471 1472 1473 1474 1475 1476 1477 1478 1479 1480 1481

Ducats

Graph 2. Alvise Michiel’s letters of exchange in ducats, by year.

8000 7380
7000

6000

5000

4000

3000
2089
2000
964
1000
170 130
0
Alexandria of Unknown Apulia Venice Verona
Egypt

Graph 3. Alvise Michiel’s letters of exchange in ducats, by destination.

Letters of exchange combined three characteristics that made them particularly

useful for medieval merchants operating over long distances. First, they limited the costs
and risks of carrying large amounts of cash on long journeys; second, they were a useful
tool for international credit and currency exchanges, as well as for circumventing the
problem of the Catholic ban on usury; thirdly, they had the advantage that they could be
used to finance ‘one-way’ trade; in other words, trades where certain commodity flows

24
were not matched with exports, but instead required payment in currency.19 While trade
in the Levant was usually financed with silver, letters of exchange were used to provide
capital to agents in continental European areas where Venetian bankers were present. The
presence of bankers operating according to the conventions of the Italian banchi was, of
course, a deterrent for the use of bartering and payments in cash. Areas such as Flanders,
for instance, which was particularly similar to Northern Italy in terms of commercial and
financial structures, saw greater use of financial instruments than areas such as the Middle
East, where traders preferred to rely on simpler typologies of exchange like bartering or
payment in silver.

Areas

The case studies analysed showed a differentiated use of the various methods of payment
in the European and Mediterranean ports. In Northern Europe, Bruges appears to have
been the main hub for commercial and financial transactions, with local bankers active
both in payments for purchases and in financial speculating. Although English cities were
important from a commercial perspective, these cities do not seem to have had an
established network of local financial correspondents, but instead seem to have been
‘colonised’ by Italian bankers (which recurrently led to anti-alien riots). Eastern
Mediterranean markets, such as Damascus, Beirut, Alexandria and the Greek islands, by
contrast, were mainly characterised by payments in cash or silver and especially bartering
(referred to as scambio alla levantina). Bills of exchange were used mainly between
Italian traders and to finance certain purchases or production (such as the grape harvest
in Crete).

19
Mueller, Money and Banking, 293–303; Mueller, “The Role of Bank Money”, 47-96; De Roover, Money,
Banking and Credit, 48–56; John Munro, “Il bullionismo e la cambiale in Inghilterra, 1272–1663: politica
monetaria e pregiudizio popolare”, in L’alba della banca: le origini del sistema bancario tra Medioevo ed
Età moderna (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1982), 193–270; David Abulafia, “The Impact of Italian Banking in
the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 1300–1500”, in Banking, Trade and Industry in Europe,
America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, eds. Alice Teichova, Ginette Kurgan-Van
Hentenryk and Dieter Ziegler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 17–34; S. Tognetti, “I
mercanti banchieri fiorentini e il ruolo di Venezia come piazza finanziaria europea nel tardo Medioevo. In
margine al lavoro di R.C. Mueller”, Archivio Storico Italiano CLVII, 2 (1999): 351–356.
25
 Commercial exchanges between Flanders, England and the Italian peninsula were
not limited to imports and exports of goods from the respective territories: Italy was also
the meeting point between Western Europe and the roads leading from the Mediterranean
coasts to India, from where luxury products, spices and precious stones were imported,
with Venice becoming the major European centre for trading these products. The Flemish
cities, for their part, were the natural intermediaries for the territories of Northern France,
Germany and the Baltic countries controlled by the Hanseatic League. These two
commercial circuits – the Eastern Mediterranean and the Hanseatic League – were
strongly integrated, with each being necessary for the proper functioning of the other.20

As far as the financing of trade was concerned, bankers played an important role
in Flanders, including during Giovanni Foscari’s travels in the 1460s. The contribution
by local bankers in Bruges was particularly remarkable, given that the merchant spent
only a limited period of time in the city, three to four months for every trip, but
nevertheless made wide-ranging use of their services for payment transactions and credit
financing. The value of these payments and currency exchanges was considerable and
increased between the first and second trips. In 1464, Foscari used Zuan Grisel, Zuan
Rolando and Girardo Febre as his bankers in Bruges, while in 1467/68 Zuan Rolando was
joined by Collinet de Mai. The latter was a well-known banker in Bruges in the 1460s
and 70s and involved in transactions with merchants and financial operators from all over
Europe.21 However, despite bankers being widely used in Bruges, and the importance of
investments made through their institutions, there is no evidence of them being present in
any other port where Foscari’s galley made a stop. In England, for example, banking
activities were managed by Venetian or other Italian companies, such as the Genoese
Ambrogio and Giorgio Spinola, who were involved in a currency exchange of 1,413
ducats in 1468. The well-known Tuscan bankers Antonio di Rebatta and Bernardo Cambi

20
Jan A. Van Houtte, Bruges. Essai d’histoire urbaine (Bruxelles: La Renaissance du livre, 1967), 56–60;
Ugo Tucci, “Costi e ricavi di una galera veneziana ai primi del Cinquecento”, in Mercanti, navi e monete
nel Cinquecento veneziano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1981), 167.
21
In the early 1470s, De Mai (or de May) had been involved in the compensation of debts with Luís Martins,
a Portuguese merchant who died in Flanders leaving unresolved business issues. In the same period De
May had been involved with another Portuguese trader, João de Santarém, in a trial for the alleged
misappropriation of the belongings of the Flemish merchant Hector de Backere. Jacques Paviot, “Les
portugais à Bruges au XV siècle”, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian 38 (1999): 1–122,
documents nos. 106, 108, 123, 125. Thanks to Flávio Miranda for sharing this information.
26
(the Rebattas are also mentioned in the records of the 1463/64 journey, but in partnership
with the Salviati)22 were used by Foscari in 1468; however, this was only for operations
between Bruges and Venice, without any reference being made to England, where they
were also active in the same years.23

The Bruges bankers were mainly used for exchange letters, which could be issued
to pay for goods and services (such as brokerage) or for remitting or transferring funds to
other cities in different currencies in order to profit from convenient currency exchange.
In the case of Foscari, the coinage used for speculative purposes was Flemish or English.

From this point of view, differentiation appears to be the decisive term. In 1464,
for example, the majority of bills of exchange issued were for payments of goods and
services (3,612 and 137 ducats respectively), while only a third of the money invested in
these bills was used for speculating on currency exchanges. The situation in 1467–68,
however, was very different. First of all, from a quantitative perspective, the sums
involved in the exchanges were significantly larger and structured differently (see graphs
4 and 5). More than half of the drafts were issued for currency exchanges, for a total of
9,595 ducats. Payments for goods and services also saw an increase in the use of drafts
(albeit with a decrease in the percentage), reaching 5,293 ducats for goods and 4,046 for
services. The increase in merchant transactions, therefore, was followed by an increase in
capital investments in financial transactions. These transactions were mainly with
Venetian merchants, or with other Italian (Genoese and Tuscan) and Flemish merchants.
In any case, no English merchants were involved in the currency exchange drafts. There
were various reasons for their absence, including the difficult climate for Italian
merchants in London and their methods of financing and managing their businesses. The
capitalist method by which Italians performed their investments was in fact one of the
triggers of the anti-alien movement that repeatedly destabilised the London market in the
fifteenth century.24

22
Archivio Salviati, I serie, registro 25 (di Giovanni Salviati e Piero di Rebatta, compagnia di Bruges), c.
168. Thanks to Matthieu Scherman for sharing this information.
23
ASV, Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, reg. 150, cc. 20 e ss.
24
Giorgia Nordio, “La Colonia Mercantile Veneziana nella Londra di metà Quattrocento: Attività
Commerciale e Movimento Anti-Alien’, in Atti Del Congresso Internazionale “Politiche Del Credito.
Investimento, Consumo e Solidarietà” (Asti: Cassa di risparmio di Asti, 2004), 222–240; Ian W. Archer,
27
 Graph 4
1800
1600
1400
1200
DUcats

1000
800
600
400
200
0
Bruges London In navigation Southampton Venice

Graph 5
20000
18000
16000
14000
12000
Ducats

10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
Bruges Southampton Venice

Graphs 4 and 5. Giovanni Foscari’s use of letters of exchange by place.

However, financial transactions such as exchange letters, or the use of bankers or

financial brokers, were not seen in the Mediterranean ports, which were dominated by
cash payments and, above all, bartering. In Foscari’s case, the importance of these
markets appears to be explained by the ties they ensured with merchants of other

“Responses to Alien Immigrants in London c. 1400–1650”, in Le Migrazioni in Europa: Secc. XIII-XVIII,

ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1994), 755–774; Jim L. Bolton, The Alien Communities
of London in the Fifteenth Century: The Subsidy Rolls of 1440 & 1483-4 (Stamford: Richard III & Yorkist
History Trust in association with P. Watkins, 1998), 1–40; Alwyn A. Ruddock, “Alien Hosting in
Southampton in the Fifteenth Century”, The Economic History Review a16, no. 1 (1946): 30–37.
28
nationalities, especially Italians. His relationships in North Africa, as well as the Spanish
ports, allowed him to maintain contact with the Genoese merchants involved in the coral
trade. The coral business was particularly important to Foscari as the fraterna had
obtained part of the Genoese contract for this trade.25 The Spanish, African and Sicilian
markets were mainly used for English and Flemish goods, which were traded for wax,
skins, slaves, tropical animals and gold. The exchanges with the Genoese merchants were
mostly settled in cash, while barter was used with local merchants (the names of whom
remain unknown in the vast majority of cases).

During Foscari’s first voyage, barter was used in nineteen exchanges for a total
value of 2,560 ducats. It was used, to varying extents, in almost all the galley’s docking
ports from Bruges to Tunis, and from Palermo to Malaga. In Bruges, Candia wine was
widely exchanged for local fabrics and tapestries, while in London and Southampton
precious fabrics such as silks and gold cloths financed purchases of woollen clothes in
several colours. In Mediterranean ports, on the other hand, silk was used to buy grain
cloths; this was with the exception of Tunis, where English cloth was exchanged for
Berber waxes and animal skins. With regard to the purchases and sales made by Foscari
on his first trip to Flanders, barter trade amounted to 8.6% of his total turnover. On his
second trip, however, when he exchanged wines, cinnamon and caps for English and
Flemish cloth, far less use was made of bartering: indeed, the value of these trades,
comprising only six transactions, amounted to a total of only 433 ducats (or 1.33% of the
value of the purchases and sales).

The situation for a travelling merchant in England was less favourable than in
Bruges. ‘Seasonal’ foreign merchants in England were obliged to reside with fellow
countrymen living in the kingdom, and the latter were liable for the actions of their
guests.26 From a commercial point of view, however, and despite the institutional and
social differences, the English market seems to have had a similar structure to that of
Bruges, with other merchants, usually compatriots, playing a key role in mediating many
of the muda merchants’ affairs.

In Bruges, it was customary to entrust foreign merchants to a mediator appointed

by the city council: this was certainly a method of supervising the work of foreign

25
ASV, Archivio Gradenigo rio Marin, b. 251, fasc. 13 and b. 246.
26
Bolton, The Alien Communities of London, 1–40.
29
merchants, but also a tool for assisting those who stayed for only short periods, or who
arrived in the Flemish market without any strong existing ties and being unaware of local
customs. These mediators enabled merchants temporarily present in the cities to create,
or enter, a commercial network (even temporarily) so that they could conduct large-scale
transactions.27 The situation in London, however, was different, given that Italian
merchants in that city were subject to far stricter controls and rules, and this could explain
English actors’ absence from purely financial operations.

The use of different financial tools in Europe and the Mediterranean area is
evident in the activities of many Venetian traders of the time, who had to balance the need
to ship merchandise and finance agents’ activities against local customs and the
availability of precious metals in Venice. These issues are often reflected in merchant
letters, with merchants such as Marco Bembo urging his agents to be wise in their use of
cash when dealing with the grape harvest in Crete.28 He underlined that although he was
able to send some silver to the East, Venice was suffering a shortage of coinage and this
could undermine the next year’s business. The agent would therefore be wise to collect
his credit in cash and save it for the following harvest period so that he could purchase
good-quality barrels and all the necessary materials. These commercial letters show the
difficulties traders faced when organising their trades, and the efforts they had to make to
balance their payment methods and financing in the various areas of their commercial
world.

Conclusions

The financing of merchant and merchandise mobility changed over time and took a
decisive turn during the medieval period. New organisational and financial tools, such as
double-entry bookkeeping and bills of exchange, started operating alongside more
traditional payment methods such as barter and cash. These instruments gave traders new

27
The presence of a local mediator limited the freedom of trade, even though such limitation was largely
outweighed by the benefits for the Venetian State. P. Stabel, ‘Venezia e i Paesi Bassi: contatti commerciali
e stimoli intellettuali’, in Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Durer, Tiziano,
edited by Bernard Aikema, Beverly Louise Brown, and Giovanna Nepi Scirè (Milano: Bompiani, 1997),
31–33.
28
ASV, Miscellanea di atti non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, b. 29, letters 6, 13, 19, 20.
30
opportunities that soon went beyond mere financing of mobility and moved towards credit
financing and speculation. Being able to move money from merchants’ places of origin
changed the commercial world of the time, allowing these individuals to become more
sedentary and entrust their business abroad to agents.

However, innovation and change also had to accommodate the economic, political
and social diversity that could be found across the Mediterranean and European world,
and this forced Venetian merchants to adapt their strategies both to the period they were
living in and to local specificities. Traders such as Alvise Michiel were able to relocate
their commercial interests, turning a necessity – surviving a period of war – into an
opportunity by investing in trades of products with lower added value, such as olive oil,
that nevertheless guaranteed a profit and furthered international connections. These
investments enhanced the use of instruments such as bills of exchange, which, thanks to
the local presence of Venetian bankers in the various markets, were an easy and safe way
to guarantee a purchase. The existence of a proper banking structure was fundamental for
the use of financial instruments, and their use was accordingly greatest in areas where
local or Italian bankers were present, such as Flanders. As other areas, however, were less
easy for financial instruments to penetrate, Venetian traders operating there were forced
to organise their businesses carefully by tailoring their use of bartering and cash payments
to their requirements. This applied in the case of Marco Bembo, who faced a scarcity of
coinage in Venice while still having money tied up in investments in wine production on
the Greek islands. The efforts made by Bembo to complete the harvest properly and to
ensure the necessary cash was still available for investments are understandable if we
consider how important certain products, such as wine, were for financing merchant
mobility. This was made clear by the case of Giovanni Foscari, who was able to use wine
and dates, two Mediterranean products in high demand in Northern Europe, to finance
part of his mobility and trades by giving them to customs officers and local clerks, or
exchanging them for local textiles. These products were so important that they could be
considered as non-coin currencies, ready to be used as merchandise or as a means of
payment, depending on the moment and necessity.

As explained earlier, the patterns of financing mobility were layered and could
change, depending on time and place, and also on local economic and political conditions
and dynamics, and this highly complex international panorama meant Renaissance
Venice traders were key figures in the mobility patterns of the late medieval period.
31
Sources and bibliography

Manuscripts

Archivio Salviati, I serie, registro 25.

Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Archivio Gradenigo rio Marin, b. 250; b. 251.

Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, reg. 150.

Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Miscellanea di atti non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, b.

29.

Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Miscellanea Gregolin, b. 29.

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35
 Chapter 2. ‘Letters from Genoa’: Moving information, goods and assets
in the seventeenth century

GIORGIO TOSCO

Introduction

Studying mobility in early modern Genoa means dealing with two powerful, interrelated
historical narratives. Scholars have often seen that period as an age of decline for the
whole Mediterranean, which lost its pre-eminence in favour of the North-Western
European economies. In particular, Northern European merchants are seen as having
outcompeted the local ones, and as having hegemonised trade and shipping in the inner
sea.1 A similar interpretation is often applied to the study of the institutions used by
Mediterranean merchants and states: even though those of Medieval Italy have often been
portrayed as an example of commercial progress,2 they are usually characterised as mere
stepping stones in a long and ultimately teleological process of innovation, and as
eventually bound to be superseded by North-Western European innovations, such as the
large, impersonal joint-stock companies3 or their free, accessible and impersonal
markets.4

1
J.K.J. Thomson, Decline in History: The European Experience (Blackwell: Polity Press; 1998); Thomas A.
Kirk, Genoa and the Sea: Policy and Power in an Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559–1684 (Baltimore:
JHU Press, 2005); Jan de Vries, “The Economic Crisis of the Seventeenth Century after Fifty Years,” Journal
of Interdisciplinary History 40, no. 2 (2009): 151–194.
2
Avner Greif, “Institutions and Internal Trade: Lessons from the Commercial Revolution,” The American
Economic Review 82, no. 2 (1992): 128–133; Avner Greif, “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society:
A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individual Societies,” The Journal of Political
Economy 102, no. 5 (1994): 912–950.
3
Ron Harris, Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).
4
Oscar Gelderblom, Cities of Commerce: The Institutional Foundations of International Trade in the Low
Countries, 1250-1650, The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2013).
36
 However, these frameworks of interpretation have not remained unchallenged,
and other scholars have nuanced, and sometimes even rejected, their conclusions. These
scholars have stressed the resilience of many Mediterranean economies in the face of the
seventeenth-century crisis, and shown how large parts of the sea trade continued to be
managed by local actors.5 Other historians, meanwhile, have pointed out that different
institutions were better suited to different environments, and that it is hard to attribute the
roots of ‘modern business’ to one specific model alone.6 Whatever the case, once we
zoom in on smaller-scale case studies and specific environments, we perhaps inevitably
have to reassess those large, comprehensive interpretations.

And reassessing is what I am going to do in this essay, in which I will analyse a

Mediterranean city that not only managed to weather the seventeenth-century crisis, but
also retain some of its old Medieval features, while remarkably also maintaining ‘open’
and accessible institutions. By describing how goods, information and assets were
transferred in seventeenth-century Genoa, I will show how complex, or even
contradictory, the business environment of that city was.

My analysis will concentrate on one specific minority, that of Dutch-speaking

traders. The role of minorities in pre-modern trade is, of course, a hotly debated issue.
Many scholars have considered diasporic communities of merchants, bound together by
constant flows of information and obligations of mutual assistance, as a natural channel
for inter-cultural trade.7 Commerce did not only take place between different
communities in the same network, but also members of different networks shared a
common commercial culture.8 At the same time, merchant minorities have commonly

5
Molly Greene, “Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century,” Past &
Present 174 (2002): 42–71; Maria Fusaro, “After Braudel: A Reassessment of Mediterranean Trade between
the Northern Invasion and the Caravane Maritime,” in Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern
Mediterranean: Braudel’s Maritime Legacy, ed. Maria Fusaro, Colin Heywood, and Mohamed-Salah Omri
(London – New York: Tauris, 2010), 1–22.
6
Regina Grafe and Maarten Prak, “Families, Firms, and Polities: Pre-Modern Growth, and the Great
Divergence,” in Global Economic History, ed. Tirthankar Roy and Giorgio Riello (Bloomsbury Academic,
2018), 83–101.
7
Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, Studies in Comparative World History
(Cambridge (UK); New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
8
Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural
Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
37
been seen as relatively detached from the surrounding society, not just by social and
cultural differences, but quite often also by legal discriminations or privileges.9

From this point of view, too, the Genoese case offers a counterbalance to the
general narrative. As I will show, Dutch merchants in Genoa faced few if any real legal
barriers, and nor were they organised in a corporate form. They were also able to access
the same kinds of institutions as their Genoese colleagues, but they did so selectively, and
generally did not export their own institutions. Their behaviour shows both a familiarity
with the most sophisticated financial institutions of their time, such as the Dutch joint-
stock companies or the Genoese exchange fairs, and a reliance on personal contacts and
relations.

In this essay, I will first describe the mobility of people in Genoa, taking into
account both those who moved into the city, such as the Dutch-speaking merchants, and
those who moved out, and then outline the trends and composition of the flows of goods
and other assets. In these two sections, I will rely mainly on existing literature. I will then
focus on the instruments used to sustain that mobility, proceeding chronologically, as if
describing an actual transaction, and therefore starting with the commercial letters that
underpinned the system and enabled merchants to plan their activities over long distances.
Next I will describe the institutional structures that were used by merchants, and lastly I
will examine how they settled their payments. For these purposes, I will rely not only on
private commercial sources, but also on contemporary overviews, including a
‘companion’ to maritime law for non-jurists, written by Carlo Targa, and Il Negotiante, a
merchant manual by Giovanni Domenico Peri.10 These books will provide a
comprehensive outlook on the situation, and enable us to understand what was common
in business practice at the time, and what was not.

9
Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of
the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sheilagh C. Ogilvie,
Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Viktor
Nikolaevich Zakharov, Gelina Harlaftis and Olga Katsiardē-Hering, eds., Merchant Colonies in the Early
Modern Period (Pickering & Chatto, 2012).
10
Paola Massa Piergiovanni, Lineamenti di organizzazione economica in uno stato preindustriale: la
repubblica di Genova (Genova: CIEG, 1995), 427–441.
38
 Mobility of people

More often than not, the study of merchant mobility in Genoa has focused on the mobility
of people from Genoa who moved outside the city, rather than on that of foreign
minorities in the city. Indeed, and in contrast to other Italian cities, Genoa has sometimes
been characterised as a city that did not provide a welcoming environment for outsiders,
as it already had many local businessmen of its own and so did not need any more.11 This
view, however, should not be overstated, given that some foreign merchants did actually
move to Genoa. And in any case, these forms of mobility, both in and out of the city,
shared certain characteristics, including heavy reliance on informal networks, regulations
that were constantly bargained on the ground rather than planned and enacted in advance,
and a substantial degree of autonomy from the central state structure. Such a situation
reflected the character of Genoese institutions in general, which were, comparatively
speaking, relatively flexible and loose.12

As the topic of migration to Genoa will be covered in a volume currently being

edited by Francesca Ferrando, Fausto Fioriti and Andrea Zappia for the Genoa University
Press, I will devote only a few words to this issue, referring in advance to that overview.
Generally speaking, foreign immigration to Genoa was regulated very lightly. After 1628,
foreigners admittedly had to apply to a specific magistracy for permission to stay or settle
in the city, but this measure was intended primarily to keep out vagrants13 and seems not
to have affected the immigration of merchants and artisans, even though contemporaries
noted the occasional harassment of sailors or travellers who failed to comply with the
norms.14 Once they were in the city, foreigners could trade on a footing almost equal to
that of locals, with the only difference being foreigners’ lack of access to a specific court

11
Thomas A. Kirk, “Genoa and Livorno: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Commercial Rivalry as a
Stimulus to Policy...,” History 86, no. 281 (January 2001): 3.
12
Giovanni Assereto, “Comunità soggette e poteri centrali,” in Le metamorfosi della Repubblica: saggi di
storia genovese tra il XVI e il XIX secolo (Savona: elio ferraris editore, 1999), 77–96.
13
Luisa Piccinno and Andrea Zanini, “Genoa: Colonizing and Colonized City? The Port City as a Pole of
Attraction for Foreign Merchants (16th-18th Centuries),” in Reti Marittime Come Fattori Dell’integrazione
Europea / Maritime Networks as a Factor in European Integration. Selezione Di Ricerche/Selection of
Essays, Atti Delle Settimane Di Studio e Altri Convegni (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2019), 281–96,
https://www.academia.edu/39137080/Genoa_Colonizing_and_Colonized_City_The_Port_City_as_a_Pole_
of_Attraction_for_Foreign_Merchants_16th-18th_Centuries_.
14
“Forestieri”, in Andrea Spinola: Dizionario filosofico, BUG, ms. B VIII 26, fl. 295.
39
of appeal. There were also no merchant guilds in the city and, after three years of
residence, foreigners could apply for Genoese citizenship.15 Meanwhile, foreign
merchants were not organised as a formally autonomous and separate body within the
city, with specific regulations and privileges;16 indeed, even their own consuls had no
legal power over them under Genoese law, and had to limit themselves to informal
assistance and mediation.17

Things were different, of course, if the foreigners involved were not Catholic,
even though the norms applied in practice were usually milder than on paper. Jews lived
in a kind of limbo: as, for most of this time, Genoa did not host a legally recognised
Jewish community, permission to enter and reside was granted on an individual basis. It
appears, however, that such permission was granted and renewed regularly and smoothly,
and traces of strong social ties with the Gentile population can also be found. It was only
when the Genoese authorities formally allowed a Jewish community to be formed,
between the 1650s and the 1670s, that stricter rules on housing, clothing and forced
predications were enacted. Eventually, however, in 1678, Genoa reverted to its previous
practice of individual – usually milder – permission.18 As regards Protestants, Genoa
seems to have turned a blind eye, as long as religious activities were only performed
privately.19 Indeed, Protestant states such as the Dutch Republic could refer to a long-
standing practice of informal tolerance in order to protest if one of their citizens happened
to be harassed by religious authorities.20 The most unfortunate involuntary migrants were

15
Piccinno and Zanini, “Genoa”.
16
Edoardo Grendi, “Gli inglesi a Genova (secoli XVII-XVIII),” Quaderni storici 39, no. 115 (2004): 241–
278, https://doi.org/10.1408/13304.
17
“Consoli nazionali ed esteri”, in Giunta di Marina, 2, 1 November 1633.
18
Rossana Urbani and Guido Nathan Zazzu, The Jews in Genoa, vol. 1, Studia Post-Biblica 48.4 (Leiden
[etc.]: Brill, 1999), 93.
19
Julia Zunckel, “Esperienze e strategie commerciali di mercanti tedeschi fra Milano e Genova nell’epoca
della controriforma,” in Commerce, voyage et expérience religieuse : XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, ed. Gilles
Bertrand, Albrecht Burkardt and Yves Krumenacker, Histoire (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes,
2015), 231–255, http://books.openedition.org/pur/22727.
20
“Lettere di Principi: Olanda”, in Archivio Segreto, 2788, ASG, 7 October 1631.
40
the mostly Muslims slaves and Christian convicts who manned the Genoese galleys and
who stayed in Genoa during the winter, when their ships did not operate.21

But while all these norms were no harsher than the standards of the day and, if
anything, Genoa was a comparatively open environment,22 the city did not attract any
large communities of foreigners. Perhaps potential migrants were crowded out by the
contemporary rise of the nearby port of Livorno, where the settlement of foreigners was
a specific object of policy. Whatever the case, however, and besides permanent migrants,
we should not forget the large presence of transient foreigners moving through the city
on their way to somewhere else. While the magistracy mentioned above was supposed to
oversee these individuals’ movements, the loss of its records hampers research on the
topic, although some studies have been devoted to the spatial dimension of their social
activities23 or to their role in specific sectors such as shipping.24

By contrast, scholars have regularly emphasised the role of Genoese migrants

abroad, with these networks being considered remarkable for their size, strength and
continuity.25 Moving abroad, temporarily or for good, was a relatively common

21
Andrea Zappia, “In the Sign of Reciprocity: Muslim Slaves in Genoa and Genoese Ones in Maghreb,” in
Lepanto and Beyond. Images of Religious Alterity from Genoa and the Christian Mediterranean, ed. Laura
Stagno and Francisco Borja Franco Llopis (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2021), 259–78,
https://www.academia.edu/45262484/In_the_sign_of_reciprocity_Muslim_Slaves_in_Genoa_and_Genoese
_ones_in_Maghreb_in_B_Franco_Llopis_L_Stagno_eds_Lepanto_and_Beyond_Images_of_Religious_Alt
erity_from_Genoa_and_the_Christian_Mediterranean_Leuven_University_Press_Leuven_2021_pp_259_2
78.
22
Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade, 52–54.
23
Ennio Poleggi, “Les Espaces Des Étrangers à Gênes Sous l’Ancien Régime,” in Les Étrangers Dans La
Ville : Minorités et Espace Urbain Du Bas Moyen Âge à l’époque Moderne, ed. Jacques Bottin and Donatella
Calabi (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1999), 241–52; Paola Massa Piergiovanni,
“Approvvigionamento e distribuzione controllata del vino: alcuni esempi nella Liguria dell’età moderna,” in
La vite e il vino: storia e diritto (secoli XI-XIX), ed. Mario Da Passano et al., 2 vols. (Roma: Carocci, 2000),
501–530.
24
Luca Lo Basso, Gente di bordo : la vita quotidiana dei marittimi genovesi nel XVIII secolo (Roma: Carocci,
2016), 147–178.
25
Giorgio Doria, “Conoscenza del mercato e sistema informativo: il know-how dei mercanti-finanzieri
genovesi nei secoli XVI e XVII,” in La Repubblica internazionale del denaro tra XV e XVII secolo, ed. Aldo
De Maddalena, Hermann Kellenbenz, and Istituto storico italo-germanico, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-
germanico. Quaderno 20 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), 57–122.
41
experience across the social scale, with the main patrician families involved in trade and
finance often sending some of their members abroad to tend to that business. At times,
this phenomenon was so widespread that it altered the composition of the patriciate’s
internal factions, with destabilising political effects.26 The behaviour of the patrician
families was mirrored by that of people in poorer social strata who sought their fortune
abroad, and who composed the bulk of the Genoese expatriate communities.27 Once
abroad, Genoese migrants tended to integrate into the local society, even when retaining
social and economic ties with their original homeland. As Catia Brilli showed for
Andalusia, they used Genoese and local institutions interchangeably, depending on what
was most convenient in the specific circumstances.28

The places the Genoese emigrated to changed over time. Following the expansion
of the Ottoman Empire, Genoese mobility focused on the Western Mediterranean, and in
particular on Spain, a process that was further strengthened by the political alliance with
the Habsburgs established in 1528. Genoese communities flourished in various areas of
Castille, from where they occasionally moved to Spanish America.29 Genoese were also
important in other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, such as Naples or the Southern
Netherlands.30 Southern France, too, was an important destination, with Marseille

26
Carlo Bitossi, Il governo dei Magnifici: patriziato e politica a Genova fra Cinque e Seicento, ECIG
(Genova: 1990), 83.
27
Edoardo Grendi, “Traffico portuale, naviglio mercantile e consolati genovesi nel Cinquecento,” Rivista
storica italiana. 80, no. 3 (1968): 593–629.
28
Catia Brilli, Genoese Trade and Migration in the Spanish Atlantic (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016), 51–52.
29
Amelia Almorza Hidalgo, “El fracaso de la emigración genovesa en el virreinato del Perú, 1580-1640,” in
Génova y la Monarquía Hispánica (1528-1713), ed. Manuel Herrero Sánchez et al. (Genova: Società Ligure
di Storia Patria, 2011), 889–914; Brilli, Genoese Trade and Migration in the Spanish Atlantic; Matteo
Salonia, Genoa’s Freedom : Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2017).
30
Paul Janssens and Conny Deneweth, “Les relations entre Gênes et les Pays Bas espagnols (1555-1702).
État de la recherche,” in Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Storici: rapporti Genova –
Mediterraneo – Atlantico nell’età moderna, ed. Raffaele Belvederi (Genova: Università di Genova, Istituto
di Scienze Storiche, 1990), 241–57; Giovanni Brancaccio, “Nazione genovese”: consoli e colonia nella
Napoli moderna (Napoli: Guida, 2001).
42
eventually becoming a launching pad for many merchant families from the Ligurian coast
who built their fortune exporting Southern Italian oil to Provençal soap factories.31

Mobility of goods and assets

As mentioned earlier, Genoa was at the crossroads of various trading routes. Besides
serving a wide hinterland in Northern Italy and beyond, and connecting the different parts
of the Habsburg possessions, it was also the main victualling point for the population of
its state, given that the Republic had forced the other towns on the Ligurian coastline to
use the port of Genoa as a hub for their trade. Not unexpectedly, it was mainly bulk
products for mass consumption, in Genoa and a relatively close hinterland, that passed
through the port – goods such as wood, grain, salt, wine and oil – and the extent of this
commerce largely reflected long-term fluctuations in the demography of Northern Italy.32
Nevertheless, Genoa was also a transit point for many other goods, including, of course,
the products of its own manufactures (in particular silk cloth and paper).33 Finally, it was
also a financial centre, where capital was transferred back and forth across Europe and
the Mediterranean.

In terms of gross tonnage of goods moved, the port of Genoa experienced a decline
in the first half of the seventeenth century, in particular after the 1630s. Different factors
contributed to this: the growth of Livorno created heavy competition, while warfare (in
the Western Mediterranean, and mainly between France and Spain after 1635) hindered

31
Annastella Carrino, “Una folla mercantile fra pratiche e identità. Nella Marsiglia settecentesca risalendo il
Tirreno,” in Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Bari, 17-18 novembre 2006, ed. Biagio Salvemini (Lo spazio
tirrenico nella grande trasformazione: merci uomini e istituzioni nel Settecento e nel primo Ottocento (Bari:
Edipuglia, 2011), 217 – 262; Annastella Carrino, “Du bourg au lignage. Les sociétés commerciales des
Génois entre XVIIIe et XIXe siècle: le cas des Rocca,” in Mediterranean doubts : trading companies,
conflicts and strategies in the global spaces : (XV-XIX centuries), ed. Daniele Andreozzi (Palermo: New
Digital Frontiers srl, 2017), 115–142.
32
Giorgio Doria, “La gestione del porto di Genova dal 1550 al 1797,” in Il sistema portuale della Repubblica
di Genova: profili organizzativi e politica gestionale (secc. XII – XVIII), ed. Giorgio Doria and Paola Massa
Piergiovanni, vol. 1, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 28 (Genova: Società Ligure di Storia Patria,
1988), 135–197.
33
Massa Piergiovanni, Lineamenti di organizzazione economica in uno stato preindustriale: la repubblica di
Genova, 43–69.
43
navigation. More structurally, however, it was the whole region that was undergoing a
difficult period. In particular, a bout of plague hit northern-central Italy (with the
exception of Genoa itself) between 1628 and 1630, and strongly reduced demand for
goods of mass urban consumption. One generation later, in 1656-57, a second wave of
plague spread to the rest of the Italian peninsula, and this time also affected Genoa, which
lost around half of its population.34 This marked the lowest point in overall traffic at the
port, with the following decades witnessing a gradual recovery.35

Trends, however, were not the same in the case of all goods passing through
Genoa. A particular item whose movements have, obviously enough, been carefully
recorded and studied is silver. Genoese involvement in Spanish finances enabled bankers
from this city to get their hands on the precious metals arriving in Spain from America
every year, and then to export them either illegally or with official export licences. The
ebbs and flows in the arrivals of silver in Genoa were influenced mainly by investors’
decisions on whether, for example, to take the silver out of the Iberian peninsula for
divestment, while other influential factors could relate to variations in shipments of silver
across the Atlantic, or to the vagaries of Spanish foreign policy (whether, for example, it
was possible to ship silver from Spain to Northern Europe by sea and through England).36

Arrivals of silver first peaked during the 1620s, when Spain forcibly renegotiated
its public debt, and Genoese investors started pulling out of this market: during that

34
Giovanni Assereto, “Per la comune salvezza dal morbo contagioso”: i controlli di sanità nella Repubblica
di Genova (Novi: Città del Silenzio, 2011).
35
Edoardo Grendi, “I nordici e il traffico del porto di Genova: 1590 – 1666,” Rivista storica italiana. 83, no.
1 (1971): 23–69; Giulio Giacchero, Il Seicento e le Compere di San Giorgio, Il periplo (Genova: Sagep,
1979).
36
Claudio Marsilio, “Lisbon, London, or Genoa? Three Alternative Destinations for the Spanish Silver of
Philip IV (1627- 1650),” in Three Conferences on International Monetary History, ed. G. Depeyrot, C.
Brégianni, and M. Kovalchuk (Wetteren: Moneta, 2013), 399–413,
https://www.academia.edu/3783676/Lisbon_London_or_Genoa_Three_alternative_destinations_for_the_S
panish_Silver_of_Philip_IV_1627-
_1650_in_G._Depeyrot_ed._Three_Conferences_on_International_Monetary_History_Wetteren_2013_pp.
_399-413.
44
decade, more than 29 million pieces of eight were unloaded in Genoa.37 The divestments
continued afterwards and, as Spanish officials started to take measures to prevent illegal
shipments of silver, the Republic of Genoa changed its naval policy in order to ensure
that smuggling could continue. After 1655, the fleet of galleys, which had to put ashore
often, was joined by a flotilla of galleons able to wait for longer off the coast and out of
the reach of Spanish officials. This permitted the start of a new peak in silver exports,
which reached almost three million pieces of eight in 1666 alone.38

This upward trend coincided with an increase in overall imports of silver from
across the Atlantic.39 The Genoese consequently had to find ways to dispose of more and
more silver,40 and even contemporary planners came to regard exports of precious metal
as a sensible and advisable policy to follow in foreign trade.41 In the 1660s, also because
of this, Genoese merchants started exporting it to the Ottoman Empire, along with silk,
paper and velvet, mainly in exchange for primary products: however, their involvement
in counterfeiting foreign coins eventually led to them being expelled from that market.42
In this way, the Genoese were following a broader trend, with Dutch trade in the
Mediterranean in the same period also comprising large amounts of silver re-exports from
Spain to Smyrna via Livorno.43 Indeed, Dutch and Genoese traders sometimes
collaborated in shipping silver across the Western Mediterranean.44 Later in the century,
too, Genoa’s share of Spanish silver remained important, with their traders’ activities in

37
Gian Carlo Calcagno, “La navigazione convogliata a Genova nella seconda metà del Seicento,” in Guerra
e commercio nell’evoluzione della marina genovese tra XVI e XVII secolo, vol. 2, Miscellanea Storica Ligure,
1973, 362.
38
Calcagno, 351; Kirk, Genoa and the Sea.
39
Michel Morineau, Incroyables gazettes et fabuleux métaux : les retours des trésors américains d’après les
gazettes hollandaises (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) (London : New York : Paris: Cambridge University Press;
Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1985).
40
Luca Lo Basso, “Diaspora e armamento marittimo nelle strategie economiche dei Genovesi nella seconda
metà del XVII secolo: una storia globale,” Studi Storici 56, no. 1 (2015): 137–155.
41
“Maritimarum”, in Archivio Segreto, 1668, ASG, 31 January 1662.
42
Fausto Fioriti, “Els genovesos del Llevant mediterrani al segle XVII. Entre el comerç i l’especulació
monetària,” AFERS, no. 87 (2017): 345–370.
43
Renato Ghezzi, Livorno e l’Atlantico: i commerci olandesi nel Mediterraneo del Seicento (Bari: Cacucci,
2011), 136–138.
44
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7332, ASG, 5 November 1650 and “Lettere di Ansaldo
Imperiale Lercari”, in Archivi Pallavicini 1, 218, ADGG, 12 May 1657.
45
Cadiz, the hub of silver re-exports, being considered by French observers to lag only
behind that of the French themselves. Silver was bought in return for silk and paper45 and
continued, therefore, to play an important role in Genoese commerce throughout the rest
of the seventeenth century.

Closely related to the flows of silver were those of virtual capital. As we will see,
investors did not need to send actual coins or ingots to provide funding for their business
partners; instead, they could extend credit virtually through the exchange of documents,
and thus limit the actual use of bullion. Although these capital flows moved more quickly
and safely than the movements of precious metal that eventually followed them, it will
come as no surprise that the directions and rhythms of the two flows closely matched.

Generally speaking, the Genoese diversified their investments during the century,
moving from a strong focus on Spain to a wider involvement in the credit markets of other
countries. In particular, the public debt of other Italian states (for example, that of the
Republic of Venice) proved to be an enticing opportunity.46 This eventually gave way to
a new round of investments in the public debt of various states and cities across Europe,
a phase that spanned the whole eighteenth century and was eventually cut short only by
the French Revolution.47

Instruments of mobility: Commercial letters

As mentioned in the introduction, I will arrange my description of the instruments that

allowed for mobility in seventeenth-century Genoa by following the traditional cycle of
a business transaction. As a starting point, I will describe how information was
transmitted, and used to make decisions, by analysing the commercial letters
underpinning the whole system. I will then proceed to the institutional arrangements that

45
Morineau, Incroyables gazettes et fabuleux métaux, 264–269.
46
Giuseppe Felloni, Gli investimenti finanziari genovesi in Europa tra il Seicento e la restaurazione (Milano:
Giuffrè, 1971); Fausto Fioriti, “Procure, fedi di vita e cartoline: gli strumenti giuridici degli investimenti dei
Genovesi a Venezia a metà Seicento,” Quaderni Stefaniani 39 (2020): 105–134.
47
Giuseppe Felloni, “Genova e il capitalismo finanziario dalle origini all’apogeo (secc. X-XVIII),” Atti della
Società Ligure di Storia Patria 56 (2015): 71–90.
46
allowed merchants to exchange goods and assets, and finish by describing the payment
methods.

The exchange of letters was an essential part of the day-to-day management of

merchant houses, and the geographical distribution of their correspondents allows for a
reconstruction of their commercial networks.48 In private archives, depending on their
state of conservation, one can find the letters received, arranged on the basis of their
author or place of origin, and the letters that were sent, and that were transcribed in
registers (copialettere) before being dispatched. As the reliability of the postal system
varied wildly, it was common to send copies of the same letter, or to copy, but in a new
letter, the text of the preceding one. It was also relatively common, in the case of regular
correspondence, to start by specifying the date of the last letter, so that each party could
work out how much information the other party had. In, for example, a copialettere ledger
from 1635, Paolo Gerolamo Pallavicini copied out the letter he had sent to the Genoese
brothers Giovanni Battista and Bartolomeo Laviosa in Lisbon, first of all thanking them
for a certain letter he had just received, and which, in its turn, contained a copy of a
previous one. Pallavicini also referred to the specific information he had gleaned from
that letter (i.e., that a large amount of sugar had just arrived from Brazil), before
requesting shipment of it.49

The kind of information contained in a letter could vary substantially. The case
mentioned above was a particularly straightforward example: the Laviosas wrote that
sugar was abundant and cheap, and in his reply Pallavicini asked them to buy some on
his behalf. Usually, however, letters did not immediately elicit a new business transaction:
one could write just to inform a party of conditions in the local market, adding information
on prices, on exchange rates or on events likely to influence them: a few years later, for
example, the Laviosas informed another Genoese correspondent about the departure of
the Portuguese fleet that was supposed to reconquer Pernambuco from the Dutch50 (but

48
Seija-Riitta Laakso, “In Search of Information Flows: Postal Historical Methods in Historical Research,”
in Information Flows: New Approaches in the Historical Study of Business Information, ed. Leos Müller and
Jari Ojala, Studia Historica (Helsinki, Finland) 74 (Helsinki: SKS, Finnish Literature Society, 2007), 84–102.
49
“Registro di lettere di Spagna et Italia”, in Archivi Pallavicini 1, 305, ADGG, 11 June 1635.
50
“Lettere indirizzate a Giacomo Filippo e Gerolamo Durazzo congiuntamente”, in Archivi Durazzo, 105,
ADGG, 8 January 1639.
47
which would eventually lose). This kind of generic information could also be substituted
by printed information sheets, which could be forwarded with the letter.51

Letters could also contain more personal information, although we should not
overestimate the apparent friendliness of their style, which tended to conform to rather
static stereotypes.52 Nevertheless, people certainly sometimes exchanged information of
little economic value, and that testified to a more personal acquaintance.53 It is difficult,
for example, to escape the impression that when Francesco Imperiale Lercari wrote to his
brother Ansaldo setting out a long list of common acquaintances who had recently died,
his letter also expressed some personal feelings.54

As shown by Trivellato, letters were a way to ensure communications between

merchants from different origins. As even a cursory glance in the Genoese archives
shows, Genoese merchants and bankers, too, often corresponded with people who did not
come from their country, but who were instead part of an international network. Dutch-
speaking merchants were no exception in this respect: for example, Jan Sautijn and Pieter
van der Straten of Livorno (brothers, respectively, of Samuel Sautijn and Willem van der
Straten of Genoa) figured among the many correspondents of the Genoese merchant Carlo
Imperiale.55 And even though prior knowledge helped establish contacts, it was not
strictly necessary, given that newly established merchant houses could also advertise
themselves by sending letters to potential business partners. This practice was an easy
way of connecting people from different networks, as in the case of the ‘presentation

51
Mario Infelise, Prima dei giornali: alle origini della pubblica informazione (secoli 16.-17.) / Mario
Infelise, Quadrante 0115 (Roma [etc.], Roma-Bari: GLF editori Laterza, 2002), 80.
52
Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, 177–193.
53
Sebastien Lupo, “‘Vous m’avés si fort imposer de ne pas répliquer…’ Réseau et hiérarchie dans une
commandite marseillaise à Smyrne au XVIIIe siècle,” The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 7, no. 0
(2010): 37–57, https://doi.org/10.12681/hr.255.
54
“Lettere ricevute da Ansaldo Imperiale Lercari”, in Archivi Pallavicini 1, 212, ADGG, 15 February 1660.
55
“Registro cronologico delle lettere in partenza”, in Archivi Pallavicini 1, 218, ADGG, passim. Throughout
the text, I will refer to Dutch people by their Dutch name only if I have been able to cross-check it in Dutch
sources; otherwise I will leave these names in their Italian or Latin version.
48
letter’ sent to a group of Florentine merchants by a firm founded by Genoese and Venetian
partners in Cadiz.56

Instruments of mobility of goods and assets

Once they had a clear overview of the market opportunities, Genoese merchants could
seek recourse to a wide variety of institutional arrangements for managing their business.
They could structure their activities through different forms of companies, and could then
obtain freights and agents in a variety of different ways. And although they had some
peculiarities, the Dutch-speaking merchants of Genoa generally behaved just like their
other colleagues in the city.

It is tempting to conceptualise the evolution of company forms as a teleological

process, proceeding from individual merchants and family companies consisting of a few
jointly liable relatives and evolving into large organisations based on limited liability. In
seventeenth-century Genoa, however, as Andrea Zanini noted, all these forms coexisted
at the same time.57 In particular, the Medieval commenda contract, which allowed passive
investors to have a limited liability in a specific commercial enterprise, was still used.58
Besides this, merchants also used what was referred to in other parts of Italy as an
accomandita, a company that, just like the commenda, distinguished between passive
investors with limited liability and active investors with joint liability, but was established
for a few years only.59 Peri described this as the quintessential merchant company.60
However, Genoese usage, which Peri follows, was to refer to such entities by the very
generic term of compagnia di negozio (literally, ‘business company’), which often makes
it impossible to know beforehand whether the investors involved were passive or active.

56
“Corrispondenza di Ugolino Del Vernaccia”, in Archivio Caccini del Vernaccia, 151, BRP, 29 January
1673.
57
Andrea Zanini, “Famiglia e affari nella Genova del Seicento: il ruolo delle ‘compagnie di fratria,’” in La
famiglia nell’economia europea secc. XIII-XVIII / The economic role of the family in the European economy
from the 13th to the 18th centuries, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2009),
473.
58
Carlo Targa, Ponderationi sopra la contrattatione maritima (Per Antonio Maria Scionico, 1692), 150.
59
Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers.
60
Giovanni Domenico Peri, Il Negotiante, vol. 1 (Venezia: presso Gio. Giacomo Hertz, 1672), 42.
49
The Dutch-speaking merchants’ firms, for example, were referred to in that way, but they
do not appear also to have had partners with limited liability.

There were also other ways to spread assets and limit legal liability. The Banco di
San Giorgio, for example, which owned all Genoese public debt and administered most
of the toll system, was established as a joint-stock corporation, with ownership divided
into freely tradable shares.61 In the seventeenth century the Genoese experimented with
using the same legal framework for commercial companies, and founded three joint-stock
trading companies. These were explicitly based on the model of the Dutch East India
Company (VOC), and one of them, the Genoese East India Company (1647-1653), was
actually founded by a Dutch merchant in the city and largely staffed by Dutch personnel.62
Even though these companies were not economically successful, and this legal framework
took considerable time to spread across Italy,63 this was a way in which the Dutch
minority in Genoa helped innovate and extend the range of company forms available.

These companies had various ways of moving goods around, the most
straightforward of which was to own a ship, or parts of it. In the Republic of Genoa,
ownership of ships was usually divided into shares.64 This characteristic was hardly
unique, given that similar institutions were used in many other places in Europe, including
the Netherlands.65 Indeed, it was possible for Dutch and Genoese merchants to own shares
in the same ship, as Willem van der Straten, Giovanni Paolo Ayrolo and Giovanni
Francesco Brocco did in 1649.66 This, however, seems not to have been common, and the
usual pattern was for all the shareholders in a ship to be either Dutch or Genoese. When
Genoese merchants used Dutch ships, which they had started appreciating as carriers a

61
Carlo Taviani, “La Casa de San Giorgio de Génova y los orígines de las corporations europeas en la edad
moderna,” in Repúblicas y republicanismo en la Europa moderna : (siglos XVI-XVIII), ed. Manuel Herrero
Sánchez (FCE, Red Columnaria, 2017), 507–527.
62
Giorgio Tosco, “Importing the Netherlands: Dutch Influence on the Evolution of Genoese Shipping in the
Middle of the Seventeenth Century,” Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 40, no. 1 (2021): 58–72.
63
Paolo Ungari, Statuti di compagnie e società azionarie italiane (1638–1808) : per la storia delle società
per azioni in Italia (Milano: Giuffrè, 1993).
64
Targa, Ponderationi sopra la contrattatione maritima, 28–29.
65
Oscar Gelderblom and Joost Jonker, “Completing a Financial Revolution: The Finance of the Dutch East
India Trade and the Rise of the Amsterdam Capital Market, 1595-1612,” The Journal of Economic History
64, no. 3 (2004): 641–672.
66
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7330, ASG, 11 September 1649.
50
few decades earlier,67 they usually just freighted them. In 1646, for example, Giovanni
Filippo Cattaneo and two other merchants rented some space on a vessel bound for
Hamburg,68 while in 1651 Giovanni Battista Pozzo freighted the Dutch captain Pietro
Giacomo Cozze’s entire ship.69

Another way to manage the use of a ship, and a method widely used in Genoa,
was bottomry (prestito marittimo), which Targa described as the most frequent kind of
contract in maritime cities.70 While this technically entailed a loan to a skipper, it doubled
as a form of insurance, with the security being the ship itself (thus transferring the risks
to the investor).71 Again, and though also known in the Low Countries,72 bottomries seem
not to have been used by Dutch merchants or Dutch skippers in Genoa.

When moving goods abroad merchants needed somebody to look after them, and
to take any necessary decisions quickly. Unless that role was already being performed by
an employee or commercial partner, the quickest way was to appoint a legal
representative under a power of attorney (procura). According to the Genoese writer
Giovanni Domenico Peri, this instrument ‘was somewhat supernatural as, through it, you
can virtually move to any part of the world, and be everywhere you want in the same
moment, as your business requires, letting others do what you should do yourself.’73/74
More practically, it was an easier contract to arrange than many others because it was a
standard procedure that could be arranged by any notary. This probably explains why

67
Grendi, “I nordici e il traffico del porto di Genova: 1590–1666.”
68
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7323, ASG, 19 February 1646.
69
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7334, 19 November 1651.
70
Targa, Ponderationi sopra la contrattatione maritima, 150.
71
Luca Lo Basso, “The Maritime Loans as a Form of Small Shipping Credit (17th to 18th Centuries): The
Case of Liguria,” in Informal Credit in the Mediterranean Area: XVI-XIX Centuries, ed. Antonino Giuffrida,
Roberto Rossi, and Gaetano Sabatini (Palermo: New Digital Frontiers srl, 2016), 145–173.
72
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, “Forms of Cooperation between Dutch-Flemish, Sephardim and Portuguese Private
Merchants for the Western African Trade within the Formal Dutch and Iberian Atlantic Empires,” Portuguese
Studies 28, no. 2 (2012): 159–172.
73
Peri, Il Negotiante, 1:84.
74
Peri, Il Negotiante, 1:84. ‘(...) mi pare habbia un non sò che del soprahumano, posciache per il suo mezzo
uma persona può virtualmente trasportarsi in ogni parte del Mondo, et in quanti luoghi gli commoda in un
tempo medesimo, secondo ricchiedono i suoi Negotij, facendo, che altri essequisca ciò che doverebbe far lui’
[my translation].
51
foreigners and Genoese people alike found it convenient: out of a total of 521 notarial
contracts involving Dutch-speaking people in Genoa in the years around 1650, 120 were
powers of attorney.75

Powers of attorney could either be valid for all purposes, or limited to the specific
transaction detailed in the notarial act. Once, for example, Samuel Sautijn, a Dutch
merchant in Genoa, appointed the Lisbon merchant Guglielmo Rouzée as his
representative for the express purpose of collecting payment for a shipment of coral that
Sautijn’s uncle Jan van der Straten had sent there.76 Sometimes, however, the instructions
given to the representative were more general: in 1651, for example, captain Thomas
Sibrans gave powers of attorney to the merchants Samuel Sautijn and Willem van der
Straten.77 Two years later, Sautijn, in his role as Sibrans’ representative, collected
payment for the freight of his ship, which had brought a shipment of grain from Puglia to
Genoa, a transaction which Sautijn had most likely brokered himself. 78 For outsiders in
the local business environment (Sibrans needed a translator for the contract and so we can
assume he was not familiar with Genoa), powers of attorneys were a way for them to
orient themselves in the market and receive various services.

Powers of attorney, moreover, could be transferred to another person. For

example, Willem van der Straten, who had been granted a power of attorney by Jan Ossen
from Amsterdam, subsequently appointed Giovanni Battista Barcellini from Palermo to
act as Ossen’s representative when the ship sailed there.79 A few years later, Van der
Straten, acting as the representative of an Italian merchant from Cadiz, transferred his
power of attorney to captain Marcantonio Micheli in order to collect money from another
Genoese merchant.80

All these examples show the great flexibility of this instrument. Indeed it appears
to have been the main choice for Dutch skippers arriving in Genoa and who were not

75
Giorgio Tosco, “In Pursuit of the World’s Trade: Tuscan and Genoese Attempts to Enter Trans-Oceanic
Trade in the Seventeenth Century” (PhD, European University Institute, 2020), 121.
76
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7335, ASG, 12 January 1652.
77
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi , 7333, ASG, 25 May 1651.
78
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7337, ASG, 22 May 1653.
79
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7325, ASG, 20 April 1647.
80
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7331, ASG, 24 March 1650.
52
familiar with the local environment: by using Dutch-speaking merchants in Genoa as their
representatives, these skippers could offer their services to local merchants. In this way,
the Dutch-speaking merchants could take advantage of their liminal position between
Genoese society and the large Dutch merchant fleet. Powers of attorney were also widely
used beyond the borders of this community because, as we have seen earlier, people from
Genoa acted as representatives of Dutch traders, and vice versa. This was very different
from the other arrangements, such as bottomries or commende, that could link merchants,
investors and skippers.

Powers of attorney could thus connect people from widely different social
backgrounds and geographical origins. Their main advantage was probably that they were
less embedded than other institutions in other social and economic practices: for example,
powers of attorney committed people for far shorter periods of time than an accomandita
and, unlike bottomries, did not step into the insurance market. The degree of trust needed
to operate a power of attorney was also lower than for the other possible institutions.
Therefore, even if foreigners could theoretically rely on many different arrangements, it
is no wonder that, by and large, they preferred this one.

Instruments of capital mobility

Let us now turn to another fundamental part of every commercial transaction: payment.
While transferring money within the same city was relatively easy, receiving it from afar
or sending it abroad was a totally different matter. For Peri, sending cash was the least
attractive and most cumbersome option. The best choice, therefore, was to barter goods,
or to arrange two shipments of goods of equal value in the opposite directions. When this,
however, was not possible, a bill of exchange (lettera di cambio) had to be used.81

As this famous instrument has been described on many occasions, I will not dwell
too much on its details here: suffice to say that it allowed two people to net off one
person’s credit against another person’s debt so as to limit actual exchanges of cash.82

81
Peri, Il Negotiante, 1:49.
82
Francesca Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance
Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019),
24–30.
53
Before being paid, bills of exchange sometimes passed through several people, each of
whom could buy it at a discount. For a bill to circulate and be accepted, it had to comply
with some formal rules, but it did not need to be validated by a notary. This is why, in
notarial archives, we find only bills that happened not to have been endorsed and that
therefore gave rise to a legal dispute.83 All the merchants in Genoa, no matter whether
local or foreign, used bills of exchange to settle their debts.

While in some places it was relatively easy to find bills of exchange to net off
against one’s own and others’ debts, in other places it was more complicated. In that case,
merchants could redirect their credits and debts to a third place, with better connections.
When transferring money between Genoa and the Netherlands, for example, it was
common to use people from Antwerp or Venice as intermediaries: when Giovanni Battista
Pozzo was owed money by the famous Amsterdam merchant Guglielmo Bartolotti, for
example, he nominated a representative in Venice to receive the credit there.84 For
merchants with long lists of credits and debts, however, relying only on bilateral
exchanges for settlement was impractical. For the system to work smoothly, it was then
necessary to use an exchange fair.

Ever since the Middle Ages, exchange fairs had been used as clearing houses for
merchants to settle their accounts. From the sixteenth century onwards, Genoese
financiers had gradually taken control of the main fairs, and moved them from Besançon,
in Habsburg Burgundy, to locations much closer to their city, such as Piacenza or Novi
Ligure. By then, exchange fairs had become highly sophisticated institutions, with closely
regulated schedules and involving many specialised personnel.85

The use of exchange fairs was certainly not limited to the Genoese. In fact, much
of the capital used at the fairs was provided by other Italian financiers, whose debts and
credits were essential for the functioning of the system: the decision by financiers from
Tuscany and the Republic of Venice to briefly withdraw from these fairs and to try to set
up competing fairs in their own states consequently caused problems. Dutch merchants
in Italy settled their accounts at these fairs, just like everybody else: in 1657, for example,

83
“Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione”, in Notai Antichi, 7327, ASG, 14 March 1648.
84
7335, 10 February 1652.
85
Claudio Marsilio, Dove il denaro fa denaro : gli operatori finanziari genovesi nelle fiere di cambio del
XVII secolo (Novi Ligure: Città del Silenzio, 2008).
54
Jan Sautijn and Pieter van der Straten from Livorno used them to send money to
Ambrogio Lomellini and Domenico Grillo, two Genoese merchants from Madrid who
had sent them a shipment of Spanish wool.86

Conclusions

This short overview has focused on how merchants in seventeenth-century Genoa,

including members of a trading minority, moved goods and other assets. The set of
merchant practices and institutions they used was quite varied, and available to
everybody. Officially, all merchants were on an almost equal footing and, as we have
seen, Dutch-speaking merchants residing in the city sometimes behaved just like their
Genoese colleagues. Nevertheless, the operating method that traders ultimately chose also
depended on their personal networks and the social environment to which they were
exposed.

As regards institutions and commercial practices, it is clear that those that were
designed in the Middle Ages, and that had accompanied the commercial rise of Italian
cities some centuries earlier, were still viable and widely used. Luca Lo Basso has
described them as ‘functional archaisms’ (arcaismi funzionali)87. This does not mean,
however, that new arrangements were necessarily shunned, as the gradual rise of the
accomandite shows. Moreover, it was also possible in Genoa to experiment with other
systems, such as the joint-stock trading company. Indeed, Jan Willem Veluwenkamp
credits Dutch communities abroad with spreading new commercial practices:88 from this
perspective, therefore, the Genoese case conforms to his narrative.

This flexibility can be attributed to the open characteristics of the Genoese

commercial environment, a city where traders were not organised in guilds, and where
foreign merchants did not operate through officially separate associations. Even

86
“Registro cronologico delle lettere in partenza”, in Archivi Pallavicini 1, 218, ADGG, 22 March 1658.
87
Lo Basso, Gente di bordo, 105.
88
Jan Willem Veluwenkamp, “Merchant Colonies in the Dutch Trade System (1550-1750),” in Kapitaal,
Ondernemerschap en Beleid: Studies over Economie en Politiek in Nederland, Europa en Azië van 1500 tot
heden : Afscheidsbundel voor Prof. Dr. P.W. Klein, ed. C.A. Davids, Wantje Fritschy, and P.W. Klein,
NEHA-Series III ; 25. 038122618 (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1996), 141–164.
55
Protestants had little to worry about, as long as they kept a low profile. Setting up an
accomandita or buying shares in a ship just required a merchant to go to the notary and
draw up the contract. A foreigner wanting to use the exchange fair was seen as bringing
a welcome injection of new capital. And, if necessary, the Genoese authorities were even
ready to incorporate joint-stock companies.

However, if one goes through the notarial records, foreigners appear to have used
these opportunities to only a limited extent. Dutch skippers and Genoese merchants
mainly interacted through powers of attorney, often mediated by Dutch-speaking people
permanently residing in the city. Even though foreigners were permitted to use other
contracts, they rarely did so, with the result that even in a place such as seventeenth-
century Genoa, which was characterised by formal rules and a relatively high degree of
legal equality between economic actors, trust and social connections continued to play an
important role. Pre-existing links could result in economic connections, and personal
contacts, no matter whether they were based on a shared national origin or otherwise, also
provided an advantage.

Things always were – and still are – more complicated in reality than in neat
theoretical categorisations.89 There was, for example, no clear-cut dichotomy between
‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and while the institutions available for use were the same,
everybody used them in different ways, depending on the social capital they had, 90 and
on the information and relational resources they had access to. Even in a formally open
and accessible market, therefore, personal connections mattered, and this was equally true
in an early modern Mediterranean port as it is today.

89
Xabier Lamikiz, “Social Capital, Networks and Trust in Early Modern Long-Distance Trade: A Critical
Appraisal,” in Merchants and Trade Networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800 [Electronic
Resource] : Connectors of Commercial Maritime Systems, ed. Manuel Herrero Sánchez and Klemens Kaps
(New York: Routledge: 2017), 39–61.
90
Craig Calhoun, “Social Capital,” in Dictionary of the Social Sciences (Oxford University Press, 2002),
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195123715.001.0001/acref-9780195123715-e-
1540.
56
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova (BUG), Andrea Spinola: Dizionario Filosofico, ms.

B VIII 26.

Archivio di Stato di Genova (ASG), Maritimarum, Archivio Segreto 1668.

ASG, Lettere di Principi: Olanda, Archivio Segreto 2788.

ASG, Notaio Bartolomeo Castiglione, Notai Antichi 7323, 7325, 7326, 7327, 7330, 7331,
7332, 7333, 7335, 7337

Archivio Durazzo Giustiniani (ADGG), Lettere ricevute da Ansaldo Imperiale Lercari,

Archivi Pallavicini 1, 212.

ADGG, Lettere di Ansaldo Imperiale Lercari, Archivi Pallavicini 1, 212.

ADGG, Registro di lettere in partenza, Archivi Pallavicini 1, 218.

ADGG, Registro di lettere di Spagna et Italia, Archivi Pallavicini 1, 305.

ADGG, Lettere indirizzate a Giacomo Filippo e Gerolamo Durazzo congiuntamente,

Archivi Durazzo, 105.

Biblioteca Roncioniana di Prato (BRP), Corrispondenza di Ugolino Del Vernaccia,

Archivio Caccini – Del Vernaccia, 151.

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64
 Chapter 3. Mobility of People, Mobility of Assets: Marriage Contracts
and Wills of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries

JOSÉ ALBERTO RODRIGUES DA SILVA TAVIM

Introduction

The scholar Elias Lipiner recalled that in Consolation to the Tribulations of Israel,
published in Ferrara in 1553, Samuel Usque, a Jew from the Portuguese diaspora, used
the word ‘nation’ to refer to the collective identity of the ancient Jews. Lipiner also
recalled this as being one of the names adopted by Jews and used by the ‘ex-Marranos’
in their prayers as they did not consider it offensive.1

There is evidence, therefore, that the Jews were designated, and designated
themselves, as a nation; that the Iberian Inquisitions deepened the rift, even speaking of
the Nation of New Christians (meaning Jews converted in Spain and Portugal at the end
of the fifteenth century); that these people began to adopt this designation as being the
least ‘heavy’ in terms of social identification; and that they also transported it to their
countries of exile, with some unique variations or combinations undoubtedly referring to
Portugal in the then recent past.

In exile, the term began to be used in a distinct way, albeit with the same implicit
meaning as in Portugal, with internal documentation often containing titles such as Livros
dos Acordos da Nação [Books of the Agreements of the Nation].2 But once a socio-
religious explanation of identity became necessary, the word ‘Hebrew’ began to be added

1
In Elias Lipiner, Terror e Linguagem. Um Dicionário da Santa Inquisição (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores,
1999), 119. See also the mention of Samuel Usque, Consolação às Tribulações de Israel (Lisbon: Fundação
Calouste Gulbenkian, vol. 2, 1989 [1553], fl. ccixxvi. Regarding the use of the word ‘nation’ in the prayers
of the Marranos, see Samuel Schwarz, Os Cristãos-Novos em Portugal no século XX [Lisbon: Universidade
Nova de Lisboa, Instituto de Sociologia e Etnologia das Religiões, no date (original from 1925)], 105.
2
See, for example: SA, Portugees –Israëlitische Gemeente te Amsterdam (334), 19 – “Livro dos Acordos da
Naçam, Escamot, e Eleiçoens do KK. que el Dio augmenta”, 5398–5440 (1638–1680).
65
to ‘Portuguese Nation’,3 or even ‘Jews from the Portuguese and Spanish Nation’, as can
be seen in the text of the union of the Portuguese Congregations of Amsterdam in 1639.4

However, this separation between those who managed to escape inquisitorial persecution
and form communities of Jewish identity in the Netherlands, Germany, southern France
and Italy, and later in London, and those who remained as (converted) Christians in
Portugal did not result in a complete rift. This is because in addition to the continual
arrivals of the persecuted from all social strata, and the appeals by Portuguese and Spanish
Jews in exile for persecuted individuals to flee and establish in a free community in the
diaspora, we know from an abundant historiography that close ties of economic
cooperation and social solidarity continued to exist between these groups, despite their
officially assumed religious differences, and their links to people from other socio-
religious groups. On the other hand, we must not forget that Iberian immigrant
communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also cooperated with each other
through the circulating of people, including the poor, members of the elite and rabbis. In
this way they behaved as a (dispersed) ‘Nation’,5 whose origins (in addition to the

3
Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern
Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 13.
4
SA, Portugees-Israelitische Gemeente te Amsterdam (334) 19 – “Livro dos Acordos da Naçam, Escamot,
e Eleiçoens do KK. que el Dio augmenta”, 5398–5440 (1638–1680): chap. 3. Text pub. by Wilhelmina
Pieterse, in Daniel Levi de Barrios als Geschiedschrijver van de Portugees-Israëlietische Gemeente te
Amsterdam in zijn ‘Triumpho del Govierno Popular’ (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema NV, 1968), 156.
5
The long and diversified bibliography on the subject includes Gérard Nahon, Métropoles et Périphéries
Sefarades d`Occident: Kairouan, Amsterdam, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Jérusalem (Paris: Editions du Cerf,
1993); Jonathan Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires,
1540–1740 (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s
Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008);
Francesca Trivellato The Familiarity of Strangers. The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural
Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); Jonathan
Schorsch, Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the
Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2 vols, 2009); Richard L. Kagan and Philip Morgan, ed., Atlantic
Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500–1800 (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2009); Jessica Roitman, The Same but Different? Inter-cultural Trade and the
Sephardim, 1595–1640 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); David Graizbord, “The Fracturing of Jewish Identity in the
Early Modern Jewish Diaspora: The Case of the Conversos Diaspora”, in Paths to Modernity. A Tribute to
Yosef Kaplan, ed. Avriel Bar-Leva, Claude B. Stuczynski and Michael Heyd, (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar
Center, 2018), 85–119.
66
fundamental Israel referent) were clearly the Mediterranean Iberian Peninsula, and which
they always maintained as a distinct ‘cultural mark’, whether in terms of identity or
cultural and linguistic experience, even when living for centuries in non-Mediterranean
societies, such as those of the Netherlands, Germany or England.6

One of the privileged means of circulating people and goods among members of
the Nation was through marriage contracts and wills. This study consequently analyses
these two types of documents, each of which marked a fundamental moment in the life
of Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam.

Marriage contracts revolved around the fundamental document of the ketubbah,

in which the rights and duties of the bride and groom were ensured through a whole series
of contractual steps, including such important aspects such as the groom’s duty to provide
for the bride financially, the bride’s dowry and her family’s interest in her marriage to a
certain candidate. In one way or another, and regardless of whether the bride was from
the same community as the groom or from a more distant one, marriage implied goods
transiting between men and women from a different or the same family.

In the case of wills, the aim was to achieve a conditional sharing of assets for the
fundamental purpose of maintaining wealth within the extended family. Although this
sharing of assets reflected the legatee’s greater or lesser distance from the family nucleus,
with the most important assets being allocated to the closest family members, the main

6
See, for example, Hermann Kellenbenz, “Tradiciones nobiliarias de los grupos sefardíes”, in Actas del
primer simpósio de estúdios sefardíes, ed. Iacob M. Hassan, Mª Teresa Rubiato and Elena Romero (Madrid:
Instituto Arias Montano, 1970), 49–54; Harm den Boer, La literatura sefardí de Ámsterdam (Alcalá de
Henares: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardíes y Andalusíes, 1996); Harm den Boer, “Las múltiples
caras de la identidad. Nobleza y fidelidad ibéricas entre los sefardíes de Amsterdam”, in Família, Religión y
Negocio. El sefardismo en la relaciones entre el mundo ibérico y los Países Bajo en la Edad Moderna, ed.
Jaime Contreras, Bernardo J. García García and Ignacio Pulido (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes,
2002), 95–112; Daniel Swetschinski, “The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Cultural
Continuity and Adaptation”, in Essays in Modern Jewish History. A Tribute to Ben Halpern, ed. Francis
Malino and Phyllis Cohen Albert (Toronto: Associated University Press, 1982), 54–80; José Alberto
Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “´Rica e Sara`: Un diálogo sobre la vida frívola en Ámsterdam en el siglo XVII”,
Ladinar. Estudios sobre la literatura, la música y la historia de los sefardíes 9 (2017): ix–xxx; José Alberto
Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “`Bom senso e bom gosto`. Los judíos en contacto com las monarquias ibéricas:
protocolo y apariencia”, in La Monarquía Hispánica y las Minorías. Élites, poder e instituciones, ed. Ana
Isabel López-Salazar and Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo (Madrid: Sílex, 2019), 59–84.
67
purpose of these wills was in fact to bring all family members together, and this explains
why the individual legatees examined here also included converts living in the Iberian
Peninsula. This testamentary strategy had indeed a socio-religious plan: to bring back to
Judaism – outside the Iberian Peninsula, that is – those members of the community who
had remained in Spain or Portugal, living there as Christians. While it is also true that
legacies to synagogues and charitable and other institutions had a symbolic value,
reflecting a wish to perpetuate the memory of an illustrious member of the Nation, at the
same time they also sought to ensure their family’s continued prominence in the
community. We can advance that, in any case, these different motilities – of material
goods, of people and of symbolic goods – were intended to produce benefits by
articulating the members of an extended family. That is why the testator sought to control
the dictates of his will for the future, pressing for a favourable marriage or for a new
Jewish relative to be his future representative in colonial lands.

It is now time, then, to examine the documents in more detail and to observe what
happened there.

Time to Get Married

As Natalia Muchnik observed, ‘Diasporic populations mobilise marriage both to ensure

cohesion and to discipline, to strengthen links between establishments and with the land
of origin or maintain hierarchies within it.’7 In the case of the Portuguese Jews of
Amsterdam, marriage was above all a time to invest on a vertical or horizontal scale, but
also a time of socio-economic evaluation, when the goods transited in support of a union
could be of both an economic and a symbolic nature. It was decided, for example, in 1615
to establish a brotherhood in this city, based on the 1613 Venetian model of the Santa
Companhia de dotar órfãos e donzelas pobres, to provide a dowry for orphans and poor
young girls of the Hispano-Portuguese diaspora ‘resident from Saint-Jean-de-Luz to

7
Natalia Muchnik, “´Ne formez pas avec les infidèles d’attelage disparate´. L’enjeu matrimonial dans les
diasporas des XVIe-XVIIIe siècles”, Diasporas [En ligne], 23-24 (2014): 80-94, put online on 1 June 2015,
consulted 20 January 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/304;
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.304: 92-93 (original in French).
68
Danzig’.8 For ease of proceedings and reasonableness, however, preference was given to
candidates already living in diaspora communities, or at least those arriving there shortly
afterwards.

The general provisions in the marriage contracts suggest a tradition referring back,
at least from a perspective of social strategies, to medieval Iberian Judaism. In Portugal,
a medieval ketubbah from 1483, referring to the commune of Lisbon, is preserved in the
Évora public library. Although this document is unique, it also reveals certain legal
mechanisms and social strategies that we will observe later in the broader panoply of the
marriage contracts of the Jews of Amsterdam. This ketubbah clearly specifies the order
of the legal provisions shaping the union from a perspective of economic and social duties
and rights, including a guarantee that the wife would be provided with a certain sum of
money in the event of divorce or widowhood, a promise to provide her with food and
clothes, and details of the dowry to be paid in advance by the bride, as well as details of
how the choice of the newlyweds was made. The document shows how a young man from
a wealthy family, Josepe Crespim, had been pressurised into a ‘good’ marriage by his
family, with the candidates having been selected from the most economically attractive
women. And it was no coincidence that the young man put the engagement ring onto the
finger of the woman likely to have been the richest of them, the widow Rica.9

8
See Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 132–136; Miriam Bodian, “The ´Portuguese`
Dowry Societies in Venice and Amsterdam: A Case Study in Communal Differentiation within the Marrano
Diaspora”, Italia 6 (1987): 30–61; see also Israel Salvator Révah, “Le premier règlement imprimé de la
´Santa Companhia de dotar orfans e donzelas pobres”, Boletim internacional de bibliografia luso-brasileira
4 (1963): 650–691.
9
See Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, “A ketubbá, in Portuguese, from the Jews of Lisbon (15th century)”,
Hamsa, Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies 4 (2017-2018): 33-45,
http://www.hamsa.cidehus.uevora.pt/hamsa_n4/n4-2018.htm; Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, “Cultura
tabeliónica e língua: a propósito de uma kettubá da Biblioteca Pública de Évora”, in Os Judeus na Península
Ibérica durante a Idade Média. Análise das suas fontes, ed. José Alberto R.S. Tavim & others (Lisbon:
Almedina, 2018), 161–178. On Spain, see, for example, José Luis Lacave, Medieval Ketubot from Sefarad
(Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2002); Javier Castaño, “Kettubot en-cubiertas: fuentes
para el estudio del matrimonio judío en Jaca y los Almosnino”, Sefarad 69-1 (2009): 49–73; Ricardo Muñoz
Solla, “Dos ketubbot castellanas y outro fragmento hebreo del Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid”,
Sefarad 74, 2 (2014): 343–368; and Meritxell Blasco Orillana and José Ramon Magdalena Nom de Déu,“Una
kettubá inédita catalana de Santa Coloma de Montbul (siglo XIV)”, in Judaísmo hispano: Estudios en
69
 Whatever one may think of this ‘market of women’, it continued to be portrayed
as a source of comedy among the Jews of Amsterdam. The dialogue of Rica and Sara,
included in Relações, Adivinhações, e outras curiosidades, trasladadas de papéis velhos
juntados neste caderno, a miscellaneous collection of a memorialist character, dated as
being published in Amsterdam in 1683, shows how a marriage was ‘arranged’ there, and
how the candidates revealed their economic virtues in the synagogue, sporting luxurious
garments studded with precious stones.10 Whether the bride was beautiful was of no
importance: it was the fortune that mattered because, as Rica says, ‘If they have money
they will be beautiful.’ In the synagogue, alongside the bride with diamonds, Sara saw an
ugly woman next to her that ‘more than sewn, it was made of gold, / of pearls and
diamonds a treasure,’11 which suggests that wearing this precious ornamentation would
not have been a rare attribute. We should not forget that some of the families residing in

memoria de José Luis Lacave Riaño, ed. Elena Romero (Madrid: CSIC, vol. 2, 2003), 575–584. For a general
description of the contents of the ketubbah, see Shalom Sabar, Ketubbah: The Art of the Jewish Marriage
Contract (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1993).
10
See, for example, Tirtsah Levie Bernefeld, “Mujeres judías hispano-portuguesas en el entorno holandés de
Amsterdam en el siglo XVII”, in Familia, religión y negócio: El sefardismo en las relaciones entre el mundo
ibérico y los Países Bajos en la edad moderna, ed. Jaime Contreras, Bernardo J. García García and Ignacio
Pulido, (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, 2002), 137–172; Tirtsah Levie Bernefeld, “Religious Life
among Portuguese Women in Amsterdam`s Golden Age”, in The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry, ed.
Yosef Kaplan and Dan Mitchman (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 57–99; and José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva
Tavim,“Diamonds are forever. Eros judaico: capital económico e capital social. Reflexões sobre a relação
entre empreendimento mercantil e coesão social entre os judeus portugueses de Amesterdão (séculos XVII–
XVIII)”, Anais de História de Além-Mar 14 (2013): 63–91.
11
BL, Additionals, 18.155, fl. 9–9vº (original in Portuguese).There is another copy in the BRA, ms II-93.
Although the two copies contain some disparities, the differences in the ‘Rica and Sara’ dialogue are minimal.
On the copy remaining in London, see José Leite de Vasconcelos, De Campolide a Melrose. Relação de uma
viagem de estudo (Filologia, Etnografia, Arqueologia), (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, 1915), 7 and
159–164. On the code of Brussels, see Dirk van der Cruysse, “Une témoignage de rancune et de `saudadismo`
judéo-portugais au XVIIe siècle”, Les Lettres Romaines 27-1 (1973): 16–36. Both copies are mentioned by
Armistead and Silverman, in “El Romancero entre los sefardíes de Holanda”, in Études de Philologie Romane
et d`Histoire Littéraire offertes à Jules Horrent à l`occasion de son soixantième anniversaire, ed. Jean Marie
d`Heur and Nicoletta Cherubini, (Liège: Gedit, 1980): 535–541; and by Jacobo Sanz Hermida, “Estudio y
edición de un cancionerillo bilingüe sefardita”, in Territórios e culturas ibéricas, ed. Alexandra Isidro,
Alexandra Cunha, Rui Jacinto and Virgílio Bento, (Porto: Campo das Letras; Guarda: Centro de Estudos
Ibéricos, 2005), 146–158. I conducted a specific study based on the London version: see Tavim, “Rica e
Sara”.
70
Amsterdam and with an interest in the oriental trade, especially in precious stones, also
flowed into this ‘attractive scenario’, including the Pereira and Suasso,12 and the ‘firm’
of Leví Duarte and Athias studied by Edgar Samuel.13

Let us now return to the contractual proceedings. I have assumed that, in the
marriage contracts between the Jews of Amsterdam, common traditions for the provision
of property were assured of being respected in the event of the death of the husband or
wife. In the Netherlands, these would have been adjusted to take account of the ordinance
of 1 April 1580, according to which all contracts were required to be legalised before a
secular authority,14 while nevertheless respecting the particularities of each confessional
group. This is evident when it is said, in the presence of the notary, that certain persons
marry ‘according to Portuguese law.’15 When, for example, a marriage contract between
Jerónimo Rodrigues de Sousa, born in Porto, and Maria Gomes was signed in Amsterdam
on 26 July 1602, in the presence of the notary David Mostart, the relatives consenting to
the act also agreed that if either of the couple were to die without children, the survivor
would be entitled to half the inheritance.16 It was therefore understood that the marriage
contract also functioned as a mechanism for securing property at a time when the death
of a spouse was not uncommon.

If one of the spouses did not have the same economic standing as the other,
mechanisms were in place to ensure that the legacy would not transfer from a wealthier
family to a poorer one. When, for example, Miguel Lopes entered into a marriage contract
with Grácia da Fonseca on 22 March 1600, it was stated that if he died without children,
she would be left with a dowry of 320 guilders, in addition to wool and linen dresses, and

12
Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans. The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century
Amsterdam (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 138–139; and Jonathan Schorsch,
Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 442–443, note
120.
13
Edgar Samuel, At the End of the Earth. Essays on the History of the Jews of England and Portugal,
(London: The Jewish Historical Society of England, 2004), 203–204.
14
Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 18–19.
15
Marriage contract between António Fernandes Homem and Paula Brandão, Amsterdam, 15 February
1605, SA, Notariële 61, fol. 643. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 3, nº.2 (1969), 241.
16
Marriage contract between Jerónimo Rodrigues de Sousa and Maria Gomes, Amsterdam, 26 July 1602,
SA, Notariële 61, fl. 360. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 2, nº. 2 (1968): 262–263.
71
jewellery for her body and neck. If, however, she died first, Miguel Lopes would keep
everything since he had consorted to her without receiving a dowry.17

Owing to its economic value, the dowry represented a fundamental element in the
marriage contract. On 24 December 1605, for example and although the reasons for this
decision are unknown, Mayor Rodrigues, wife of Rodrigo Álvares de Vitória, empowered
Marcus van Woensel, a Middelburg merchant, to complain and, if necessary, collect the
dowry owed to him in the form of jewels and other values, amounting to between 3,000
and 4,000 guilders, which were in the custody of Bartholomeus Schaep Backer of that
city.18 In Amsterdam, as is evident from the notary records and testamentary legacies, the
wealthiest Jewish wives also played a fundamental role in managing the family fortune,
especially if their husbands were absent or deceased. And that meant possession of a
dowry was vital. When, for example, Gaspar Lopes Homem died in 1612, his son and
father-in-law needed the signature of the widow, Mayor Rodrigues, in order to continue
their partnership with Manuel Lopes Homem, Manuel Lopes Pereira and Francisco Nunes
Homem, all three of whom moved between Lisbon, Seville and Amsterdam.19 Guiomar
Nunes even replaced her late husband, André de Azevedo, in the business association
with João de Paz, maintaining the old designation of ‘João de Paz and André de
Azevedo’.20

It is no coincidence, therefore, that marriage was a major theme in the Rica and
Sara colloquium: as in the Iberian Peninsula, marriage was a real game of interests. Daniel
Leví de Barrios even became the wedding’s ‘official poet’ in the most famous houses of
the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam and wrote no fewer than
24 epithalamiums transporting us into the wedding network and its auctions, as revealed
sarcastically in the dialogue between Rica and Sara.21 Marriages really were a business

17
SA, Notariële 61, fl. 251vº. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 2, nº. 1 (1968): 121–122.
18
SA, Notariële 56, fl. 672vº. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 3, nº. 2 (1969): 246.
19
SA, Notariële, nº 62, fl. 490–490vº. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 6, nº. 1 (1972): 123.
20
“Notarial requirement of 22 February 1618”, SA, Notariële 381, fl. 84. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam
notarial” 12, ns. 1–2 (1978): 173.
21
Boer, La literatura sefardí, 349–364.
72
of family and economic consolidation, as is evident from the fact that these families, just
like the New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, also practised endogamous marriages.22

And while marriage represented a transit of goods, it was even more a moment to
ensure wealth was concentrated in the hands of a family member, whether male or female.

Ars Moriendi: A Time to Give

A sense of approaching death led the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam to think about two
interconnected aspects. The first of these involved perpetuating the testator’s own
memory beyond death, through legacies granted to community institutions, especially to
synagogues, charitable institutions, and the yeshivot (Talmudic Schools) in the Holy Land
(among others), but also through legacies to relatives, and even friends, both near and far.
The second involved a more fundamental type of legacy, and one in which testators
sought to determine the fate of their family members.

Contrary to the approach in the Christian universe, the proximity of death reflected
in the Jewish wills of Amsterdam was a serene moment and ‘normalised’ by a stipulated
form. It was as if the ‘drama’ taking place in the rooms of dying Christians, according to
Christian ars moriendi (in which the person was oscillating between God and the Devil,
anguishing about his destiny in transcendence), was replaced by an almost exclusive
interest in immanence and in ‘perpetuating’ the person of the testator, and his intentions
for the family.23 That is why the ars moriendi of the Jews of Amsterdam, as mirrored in
their wills, was more concerned with perpetuating their person in earthly life by, for
example, paying for ascabot (prayers) to be said in memory of them as benefactors, but
as if they were still alive and dominant, and playing a decisive role in managing the
family. In this sense, the Jewish ars moriendi seemed more like a continuation of physical
life. This then explains why, in the funeral panegíricos [panegyrics], whose greatest

22
Cf. Maria José P. Ferro Tavares, Judaísmo e Inquisição. Estudos (Lisbon: Presença, 1987); Carlos Carrete
Parrondo, El Judaísmo Español y la Inquisición (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992); Renée Levine Melammed, A
Question of Identity. Iberian Conversos in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
23
See Alberto Tenenti, Sens de la mort et amour de la vie. Renaissance en Italie et en France, tr. from the
Italian by Simone Matarasso-Gervais (Paris : Serge Fleury, 1983), mostly chaps 3 and 4; Philipe Ariès,
L`Homme devant la mort (Paris: Seuil, 1997), mostly chap. 3.
73
herald was again Daniel Leví de Barrios, the enunciation of the deceased’s virtues
revealed him to be calm in the Ethereal. When, for example, Ribca Cohen, widow of the
‘glorious varón Abraham Cohen’, died in 1685, Daniel Leví de Barrios was rewarded by
Cohen’s children for writing the following:

Her prudent Consort Ribca Cahanét / dressed in virtue, followed his steps, / which
guided her to the glorious court, / where her husband lives, resting./

The Angels in Choir divided/praise the Sovereign archetype, / that unites them in
their love and praise / and admits Ribca in His heavenly space.24

Formally, the wills of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam follow the model
applied by the Portuguese Christians, which is hardly surprising, given the experience of
many of them as Christians, in Portugal.25 These wills started with a preamble of a
religious nature, but this time, as would be expected, invoking the fundamental element
of monotheistic belief. Then came the identification of the testator and, in addition to the
name, reiteration of the person’s unquestionable socio-religious identification as Jewish
and a believer. As in wills in Portugal, this invocation was followed by a clause in which
the testator clung to an article of faith. The justification clause was also the same as in
Catholic wills. Let us look, for example, at the case of Miriam Álvares or del Sotto in her
will of 1678:

And considering that there is nothing more contingent and uncertain than life, nor
more certain that death I resolved myself to be healthy and with all the perfect
judgment that the Lord granted me, by will.

Miriam then commits herself in a way specifically relating to belief in the absolute
omniscience of God. Indeed, the expression ‘committing’ (encomendar) is even present
in this part of the will: ‘(...) committing my soul first and foremost to the Lord God (…).’
As already mentioned, an important element of these wills were the donations to enable
evocative religious services to be performed. Miriam left 400 guilders to the Mahamad

24
Barrios, Metros Nobles, 260 (original in Spanish).
25
Araújo, Ana Cristina, A Morte em Lisboa, Atitudes e Representações 1700–1830 (Lisbon: Editorial
Notícias, 1997), 81–83; Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, O Regresso dos Mortos. Os Doadores da Misericórdia
do Porto e a Expansão Oceânica (Séculos XVI-XVII) (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2018), 31.

74
[Governing Board] so that a haskavâ could be said in the synagogue in the name of her
deceased husband and herself on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.26

Let us also take as an example another will, specifically that of Isaac da Veiga,
which was signed in Amsterdam on 4 June 1716. With regard to the pious legacies, he
stated:

It is my will that in the honours of the seven days of my funeral, and those of the
thirty days, as in those of the eleven months, that should offer in the synagogue of
the aforementioned Kahal Kadosh for my intention, and the contents of a memory
will be shared among the poor, as I point out, which will be attached to this my
will, written entirely from my hand.

The sum mentioned was 200 guilders, in addition to which he left some money to
the three charitable foundations to which he belonged: firstly, the Brotherhood of Eshaim
(hevrah Ets Haim), to whom he bequeathed 100 guilders to be handed over for 50 years
in exchange for ‘making ascabot’ for his soul; secondly, the Brotherhood of the Orphans
(Aby Jetonim), where he was also a brother and to whom he left an equal amount for the
same time in exchange for ‘making ascabot’ for his soul; and, thirdly, Dressing the Poor
(Malbis Arunim), of which he was a member and to which he bequeathed the same
amount for the same time, but specified that this third donation should be used to dress
two of the most ‘shameful and deserving’ poor, as well as a widow of the same class. In
addition, he left 100 guilders to be spent during a period of 50 years in the Brotherhood
of Maasim Tobim, the yeshiva, or Talmudic School, dedicated to studies, but also to
caring for the sick and, once again, in exchange for performing ascabot.27

Let us now look at Judith Baruch Carvalho’s will, signed on the island of Curacao
on 5 November 1713. Judith decided to bequeath 150 guilders as alms for the poor, to be
distributed seven days, one month and eleven months after her death, with a further
300 guilders for the sedacá (tzedakah, or charity) to put ‘escaba on it’ on Yom Kippur
and Rosh Hashana. She then moved on to personal legacies. We can attribute this
economy in the testamentary text to the consecration of the form, which replaced the

26
Will of 28 October 1678, in SA, APIGA (334) 628 (original in Portuguese). No pagination.
27
Will of 4 June 1716, in SA, APIGA (334) 520, pp. 325–329. Citation p. 327 (original in Portuguese).
75
rhetoric of the initial period, when it was necessary to stress belonging, both socially and
religiously, to the Jewish community in Amsterdam.28

We can thus say that ‘caring for the soul’ in a very earthly way – in memory,
therefore, of the deceased – immediately resulted in the first transfer of goods, which thus
achieved this ‘reviving’ of the person. In the case of this first level of donations, the
memory of the deceased required the designated beneficiaries of the legacies to be close:
in other words, they were the poor or the institutions whose members were known to the
testators.

The Santa Companhia was also a designated beneficiary, but not the only one, of
the legacies of those Jewish women in Amsterdam. Let us return to the will of Miriam
Álvares or del Sotto, who, as a ‘sister’ of the Brotherhood of the Orphans (Santa
Companhia de dotar orfãs e donzelas pobres), left 50 guilders to this charitable institution.
Being a ‘sister’ of this brotherhood on the male side, too, she left the institution a further
50 guilders, as well as 20 guilders to each of the three yeshivot of which she was also a
‘sister’. But even the famous rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca29 was left 100 guilders, while
the hazan [singer] Manuel Abenatar received 50 guilders to say prayers on her deathbed.
Meanwhile her friend and the famous doctor Isaac Oróbio de Castro30 received a golden
Portuguese as a souvenir. It was no coincidence that Oróbio followed in this sequence of
pious men: after all, he was one of the great defenders of orthodoxy in Judaism against
deviant currents even within the community. The poor were also contemplated, but in a
discriminated manner, with their charitable legacy being embodied in 5,000 guilders in
billets from the General States, the annual revenue from which was to be divided into
three parts: one third for the poor of the Amsterdam city sedacá, one third for the poor of
her husband’s generation (a task to be carried out by his niece, Ester Lopez) and the final
third for Miriam’s brother to share among the poor of his generation. Miriam’s decision

28
Will of 22 October 1619, in SA, APIGA (334), 779.
29
On this character, see Moisés Orfali, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca: Jewish Leadership in the New World
(Brighton: Sussex Academy, 2010).
30
On this important person from the Jewish cultural environment of Amsterdam, see Yosef Kaplan, From
Christianity to Judaism. The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish
Civilization, 1989).

76
to formulate her will in this way also gave prestige to her relatives, who were responsible
for distributing the funds to the poor.31

While consideration was given to the poor covered by charitable institutions,

provisions in wills also included some precautions. On 16 December 1636, for example,
Esther (or Isabel) Pinta , José Pinto’s widow, made the beneficiaries of her will those poor
relatives of her, including Josué Mendes, who could not walk. On the other hand, this will
also shows us that the beneficiaries of the legacies included some ‘special poor’,
specifically those who decided to leave for the Holy Land, where precarious living
conditions meant they were dependent on such gifts for their survival.32 But these
donations to the Holy Land, too, were not wholly innocent since we know that members
of the Portuguese community in Amsterdam continued to dream of ending their days in
the Holy Land. Filipa de Sá, for example, who was condemned by the Inquisition of
Coimbra when she was young, more precisely in 1593,33 and who, residing in Amsterdam,
decided to make her will, at the age of about 52 years, on 28 April 1621 precisely because
she intended to leave for the Holy Land, via Venice.34 In this way, a person bequeathing
goods for the poor in the Holy Land would be esteemed in their place of residence and be
well received. But some bequests were made even without that intention, as in the case
of Miguel de Castro and Leonor Mendes, who also donated 30 guilders to the poor of
Safed, prisoners of war and ‘the others of the Nation’.35

These types of donations to the poor are thus examples of how, for the first time,
goods could circulate outside a strict territorial circle, but take into account the presence
of people from the same community in a space with a fundamental and symbolic
dimension for Judaism.

Charitable donations were so important in the testamentary strategies of these

Jews of Amsterdam that, even in a will, it could be decided to specify which beneficiary

31
Will of 28 October 1678, in SA, APIGA (334) 628.
32
Will of 16 December 1636, in SA, Notariële 414, fl. 452. On the precarious conditions of life in the Holy
Land in this period, see Yaron Ben-Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultan: Ottoman Jewish Society in the
Seventeenth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
33
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 8652.
34
In SA, Notariële 645B, fl. 1499–1502. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 19, nº. 1 (1985): 79–80.
35
In SA, Notariële 62, 369–369vº. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 6, nº. 1 (1972): 118.
77
– normally, the main beneficiary – should subsequently donate to the poor on special
occasions. In this way, charitable bequests represented a strategy for strengthening a
family’s social heritage. The fact that the main beneficiary was granted this specific
bequest was yet another way of showing society that the family continued to have a solid
position in the economic, social and religious life of the Portuguese Jewish community in
Amsterdam. Isaac Furtado, for example, the only male child of the schoolmaster and
cashier Jacob Jesurun Furtado, and his ‘right arm’, was made responsible in the father’s
will of 20 January 1661 for distributing 40 guilders to the poor, both within and outside
the synagogue.36 On 26 June 1623, the elderly Brites Tomás determined that her son-in-
law Samuel Abrabanel, also the executor of her will, would be in charge of distributing
her linen clothes to the poor relatives.37 It is easy to understand why she entrusted this
task to Samuel since her own son, António Gomes, was a spendthrift and, being under
Abrabanel’s tutelage, was not in control of his own possessions. This directive was, in
fact, of such social importance that, in 1636, the widow Isabel Pinta, having no children,
bequeathed assets to the lords of the Mahamad of her congregation, Bet Israel, instructing
that these assets should each year be shared among their poor relatives on Rosh
Hashanah.38

With one of the fundamental provisions in wills being the one stipulating who
would be granted the privilege of distributing donations among the poor, the zeal
demonstrated in taking care of the future of the poorest relatives will come as no surprise.
Not only was this a way to consolidate the testator’s future image, but also that of his kin.

When drawing up wills, it was also important not to neglect family orphans and
thus ensure that the family did not experience the disgrace of seeing one of its members
resort to the Santa Companhia de dotar orfãs e donzelas pobres. This was reflected, for
example, on 10 January 1627, when the will of Joseph Nahemias provided 1,500 guilders
for the dowry of a niece, the daughter of Nahemias’ late brother Manuel Lopes, who lived
in Livorno. He also left 1,000 guilders as gifts for the daughters of another deceased
brother, Jacob Nahemias Torres, along with 300 guilders for the daughter of his great-

36
SA, Notariële 2890, pp. 1411–1416.
37
SA, Notariële 646A, pp. 576–577. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 24, nº2 (1990): 220–221.
38
SA, Notariële 414, p. 542.

78
niece, the daughter of his widowed niece Clara Nunes; and 3,000 guilders as an
endowment for a great-niece, the daughter of his niece Filipa Nunes, who lived in Lisbon.

Wills could also make provision for sick relatives, as in the same will of
10 January 1627, in which Joseph Nahemias bequeathed 500 guilders to his nephew
Daniel so that the latter could take care of his mother, who was in a precarious state of
health.39 And we have already seen that, on 16 December 1636, Esther Pinta bequeathed
assets to the Mahamad to be shared among her poor relatives, such as Josué Mendes, who
was lame.40

Even if not mentioned directly, donations to certain collateral members of the

family also revealed the need to help poorer people who, in addition to being orphans,
had no skills, or who were sick. In 1627, for example, Joseph Nahemias left 400 guilders
to each of his nephews, the children of his sister, Violante Nunes, in his will, leaving to
the first-born Isaac Navarro more than ten guilders.41

Where there were direct descendants, these were logically the persons
contemplated in the wills, although bequests could also be made in grandchildren’s
names. As we have seen, in 1623, Brites Tomás, knowing that her son was incapacitated
and a spendthrift, made provision to give his son half of his legacy while placing him
under the tutelage of Tomás’s son-in-law Samuel, with the other half of the legacy to be
distributed by the grandson and granddaughters, Samuel’s children.42 On other occasions,
grandchildren were logically the main heirs in the apparent absence of any other heirs: on
15 October 1659, for example, Sara Pereira Chusson left 3,000 guilders to each of her
two granddaughters, Sara Navarro and Rifca Navarro.43

Sometimes there was no mention of sons and daughters, and then good legacies
commonly went to brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. The joint will of Miguel de
Castro and his wife Leonor Mendes, of 31 October 1612, left a certain sum to the brothers
António and Manuel Mendes, as well as leaving a pitcher and a silver plate to Leonor`s

39
SA, Notariële 633, pp. 134–135. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial”, 34, nº. 1 (2000): 75.
40
Will of 16 December 1636, in Notariële 414, fl. 542.
41
SA, Notariële 633, pp. 134–135. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 34, nº. 1 (2000): 75.
42
SA, Notariële 646A, pp. 576–577. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 24, nº. 2 (1990): 220–221.
43
SA, Notariële 2999, pp. 177–180.
79
brother, Francisco Mendes.44 Another example was that of Abigail Semah Cortiços (also
known as Clara Gomes), born in Rouen, widow of Isaac Semah Cortiços, resident in
Amsterdam and without children, who bequeathed to her sister Reina Gomes (also known
as Leonor Gomes), her most precious assets, being 400 guilders, a silver salver and an
emerald ring.45 The widow Isabel Pinta, who also had no living descendants, left to her
brother Moisés Barrocai da Paz a piece with an emerald set, and to her sister Leonor, who
lived in Madrid, a jewel worth 40 guilders.46 On 28 April 1621, Filipa de Sá, with no
visible heirs and deciding to leave for the Holy Land, shared her most important
possessions with her brothers and sisters, who lived in the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil:
the widow Isabel Henriques, who lived in Porto; Pedro Homem de Sá, who lived in
Salvador da Baía; Jerónima de Sá, who lived in Chaves, and Joana de Sá, who lived in
Noya, Galicia. However, the other half of the inheritance was bequeathed to her sister-in-
law, Francisca Ribeiro, who lived in Guimarães.47

In the absence of a direct descendant, testators often opted for the person in whom
the greatest consanguinity converged; in other words, a person who was a descendant of
the legatee couple on both sides. In the case, for example, of the joint will of Miguel de
Castro and his wife Leonor Mendes, of 31 October 1612, it was stipulated that if Miguel
were the first to die, his possessions would be inherited by his wife and, after her death,
by her nephew Isaac Nehemias, son of Miguel`s brother - Rafael Cardoso - and Leonor’s
older sister, Catarina Mendes.48 Meanwhile Filipa de Sá chose, in her will of 28 April
1621, for one of her four brothers to be replaced as her heirs by her nephew, Henrique
Dias de Carvalho. The latter was the son of Joana de Sá and her cousin Fernão Mendes,
who in turn was the son of his aunt Leonor Mendes.49 In other words and once again,
those whose ancestors represented the core of endogamous relationships favoured
maintaining the inheritance within the same family nucleus.

The desire to assign assets to collateral relatives, even without expressly raising
questions of poverty, was evident in all the wills examined and corresponds to a wider

44
SA, Notariële 62, pp. 369–369v. Pub. by Koen, in «Amsterdam notarial” 6, nº. 1 (1972): 118.
45
SA, Notariële 2890, pp. 1217–1220.
46
SA, Notariële 414, p. 542.
47
SA, Notariële 645B, pp. 1499–1502. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 19, nº. 1 (1985): 79–80.
48
SA, Notariële 62, pp. 369–369v. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 6, nº. 1 (1972):118.
49
SA, Notariële 645B, pp. 1499–1502. Pub. by Koen, in “Amsterdam notarial” 19, nº. 1 (1985): 79–80.
80
notion of family. Even where the goods bequeathed were minor, the collaterality in
testamentary terms in these Portuguese Jewish families of Amsterdam was very
extensive: in addition to brothers, nephews and great-nephews, cousins were also
contemplated. On 18 May 1660, for example, the couple Francisco de Mesquita and
Isabel Luís de Mesquita granted dowries even for the marriages of second cousins; that
is, the three daughters of their cousins Isabel de Mesquita and João da Silva, living in
S. João da Pesqueira, Portugal, in the amount of 1,000 guilders, to help their (Catholic)
marriages. But the distribution of the fortune among cousins who had remained in
Portugal was even more extensive: Violante de Mesquita, Manuel Dias Casela and Maria
Marques, all also from S. João da Pesqueira, were each left 1,000 guilders. The four
children of his cousin Maria Marques, from Vila Flor, in Trás-os-Montes (North
Portugal), and his cousin Francisco Vaz de Mesquita, from the Algarve, received the same
amount. A sum of 2,000 guilders was also donated to help the children of their nephew
Isaac Febos to marry, while the cousins in the family’s Venetian branch, the daughters of
Diogo Luís Furtado, received 3000 guilders.50 In this way, the will was also seen as the
time at which to provide for all the elements of the family, ranging from those relatives
assumed still to be Jews to those forming a differentiated geographical and identity
network – not least because the New Christian relatives’ business relationships in
Portugal and its empire meant that these relatives were often the most important source
of support for the testator’s wealth.

The above will’s inclusion of relatives who still lived in Portugal shows that
family relationships overlapped those defined by religious identity; that is, it was the
awareness of the same ethnicity and, within this, of family relationships, that prevailed
over any other considerations.

Let us look at the example of Miriam del Sotto in her will of 1678. Among the
many assets, in money and jewellery, left to charitable institutions and family members,
she granted her niece Sara Álvares:

50
SA, Notariële 3000, pp. 114–122.

81
 (…) That I created, my diamond buttons of the sleeves, a tablecloth of emeralds
with diamonds around it, all my porcelain, four tapestry cloths, with all the living
room furniture (…), the whole damask bed, green, my silver hanuquillas
[h`anuquiot], the good Indian bedspread of the living room bed (…), and an
upholstery, with silver and red background.

But the inheritance in precious goods extended even further as her nephew Joseph
Álvares was left a large and perfect diamond, weighing 12 to 13 grains, as well as her
agate stick. And to her nephew Isaac Álvares she bequeathed a silver bottle decorated
with her husband’s and her coat of arms. To the son of her brother João Álvares, known
as Micael, and who lived in Italy, she left a ring with a diamond rose weighing four grains
and ‘with six diamonds on the side’. To her nephew Palácia, who lived in Antwerp, she
bequeathed a ring consisting of ruby and six diamonds, while Palácia’s daughter was left
a silver jug. Meanwhile her nephew Manuel Álvares was left a silver watch and a ring
with a yellow diamond and six diamonds on the side, while her brother José was left a
ring containing two diamonds. Even the friend and famous doctor Isaac Oróbio de Castro,
as mentioned earlier, received a “golden Portuguese” in memory of her.51

Daniel Swetschinski points out that the del Sotto family functioned as a clan that,
through inbreeding marriages over the generations, had created an elaborate network of
relations between its central nucleus of Amsterdam and its branches in France, Spain and
England.52 This is evident from the above will, which also included the branches of the
family in Italy and Antwerp. In this context, however, it is important to emphasise the
distribution of assets to ‘feed’ the family network, as well as the constitution of a core of
precious assets as security to support it.

But the will was also a moment at which to seek to direct the family’s destiny in
the future. The joint will of the couple Manuel Francisco de Mesquita and Isabel Luís de
Mesquita, drawn up in Amsterdam on 18 May 1660, put pressure on their nephew Simão
de Mesquita, the bastard son of, respectively, his cousin, and her brother, Francisco de

51
Will of 28 October 1678, in SA, APIGA 628 (original in Portuguese). No pagination.
52
Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 259. On the del Sotto, see also Lydia Hagoort, “The Del Sottos:
A Portuguese Jewish Family in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century”, Studia Rosenthaliana 31, ns. 1–2
(1997): 31-57.
82
Mesquita, living in Portugal, by leaving him the largest amount of 5,000 guilders, but
making this bequest subject to compliance with certain conditions:

(…) [He] come to Judaism, and being Jewish, and fearing God, as your relatives
are, you will be given [the] said five thousand guilders, in money and thus two
dozen more sheets, six pillows, six tablecloths, a dozen hand towels, six shirts,
two blankets, four pillowcases, a dozen silver spoons, and a tall silver cup, and the
money will be in the States-General Lords banknotes, and you won’t be able to
move it until you have aged over twenty (…).53

On 26 January 1702, the will drawn up by the widower Abraão Rafael Rodrigues
(also known as Miguel Rodrigues Vitória) left part of his property to the Jew Josepho,
resident in Suriname, for having brought him from Portugal, but only when Josepho
reached the age of 25 or got married, and subject to the express condition of his
‘professing’ the Jewish law: ‘And that if the said Jew does not follow the said law, then
he will not enjoy anything.’ And if Joseph were to die before the age of 25, the amount
would go to the testamentary nephew, Rafael Rodrigues, who lived in Porto, as long as
he, too, fulfilled the same conditions. In other words, it was specified that Rafael had to
come to Amsterdam or any other place where he could declare himself a Jew, and
‘profess’ Judaism. If he died in Portugal, efforts to find a relative wishing to profess
Judaism would be made for 25 years.54

In 1692, Daniel Pinto, being ill, decided on a quick and succinct will, with the
decisions on who to leave donations to being made in a very direct way. As a result, he
left certain amounts to the daughters of Isaac Castanho and David Israel, but specified
that these funds were for the help of their marriages ‘and otherwise not’. The most
interesting instruction in the will is that his daughter Raquel should continue to be married
to his nephew Isaac, son of Abraão de Isaac Bueno, ‘following the agreement that we
made’ – as if, therefore, the daughter’s marital relationship was also a legacy in the will.
Meanwhile Pinto also had to determine the fortunes of his first-born, Daniel, whom he
designated as the universal heir.55

51 SA, Notariële 3000, pp. 114-122 (cit. pp. 118–119).

54
In SA, APIGA (334) 815, pp. 192-202 (cit. p. 198).
55
SA, APIGA (334) 799.
83
 In short, wills served to secure a family’s future. Following the formal structure
of Catholic wills – and thus revealing the social origins of these new Jews56 – with the
form being duly adapted to the new religious specificity, the undifferentiated wills
compiled by Portuguese men and women of openly Jewish identity point above all to the
efforts undertaken to consolidate social and economic capital, while also extending to
large areas of the Mediterranean and the Iberian colonial dependencies.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, the circulation of goods through marriage contracts was mainly
between close families, or even within the same families, such as the marriages entered
into between cousins, uncles, nieces and so on. Where, however, a bride or groom
travelled to the partner’s community, the geographic mobility of goods was greater.

By contrast, the wills of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the seventeenth

and the eighteenth centuries provide insight into the relationships between families
formally separated by belief and geography, and in which identities were allowed or
denied. In the case of the wealthiest families, the core of the wealth to be distributed
among the various members of the family was primarily generated by their commitment
to the commercial dynamics of the Portuguese and Dutch empires, whether directly or
through intermediaries, and sometimes involving New Christians, including relatives.
Many of the Portuguese Jews continued trading with the New World even after leaving
Portugal, some following in the footsteps of their ancestors.57

Most of these merchants’ fortunes originated from trading in Iberian colonial

goods and investing in the Iberian empires. However, commodities and profits were also
reinvested in the Dutch economy. Iberian commodities appear ubiquitously in marriage
contracts and wills, and in the trade engaged by men and women of the Nação, who also
invested in the Dutch empire. Family relations between Jews and New Christians helped
to spread investments throughout the Portuguese and Dutch empires, and their capital
flowed from one empire to the other in line with their interests. These kin-based economic

56
Following the analysis of Yosef Kaplan, Judíos nuevos en Amsterdam. Estudios sobre la historia social e
intelectual del judaísmo sefardí en el siglo XVII (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1996).
57
Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: 88–90, 187, 191, 206 and 284–285.
84
ties helped Portuguese New Christians to diversify their investments indirectly through
their Jewish relatives in the Netherlands, thus keeping part of their wealth safe from
possible inquisitorial confiscation.58 The commercial network created by these ties also
facilitated the flow of commodities from the Iberian empires to the Netherlands, thanks
to New Christian relatives providing the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam with capital to
invest in the Dutch colonial enterprise.59

However, for this multifaceted exchange of goods to work, mechanisms of

viability and social cohesion were needed. One of these mechanisms resulting from this
‘intracultural trade’60 was the distribution of goods among various members of the family,
with the intention being to reach as many of them as possible, and especially those living
in communities as far away as Italy and the converted relatives in Portugal. As we have
seen, this distribution itself was sometimes an instrument of social pressure, intended to
persuade the person to re-join a Jewish community, or sometimes enter into a marriage
of interests. It also, however, had economic consequences, given that becoming part of a
Jewish community in the metropolis or colonies could mean this relative becoming more
of a family negotiator. But it was the assumptions made in wills, more so than in marriage
contracts that resulted in the extreme mobility of the deceased’s assets. And these
assumptions were so fundamental that, for generations, wills came to privilege the
‘Christian’ relatives of Portugal, thus making some legacies difficult to execute as a result
of distance and an adverse social context.

58
On the inquisitorial confiscation, see Maria Leonor Garcia da Cruz, “Relações entre o poder real e a
Inquisição (séculos XVI-XVII): fontes de renda, realidade social e política financeira”, in Inquisição
Portuguesa. Tempo, razão e circunstância, ed. Luís Filipe Barreto et al. (Lisbon-São Paulo: Prefácio,
2007), 107–126; and Ana Isabel López-Salazar Codes, Inquisición y Política. El Gobierno del Santo Oficio
en el Portugal de los Austrias (1578-1653) (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 2011): 224–242.
59
Israel, Diasporas.
60
On the notion of ‘intra-cultural trade’ as meaning business relationships between two related groups,in
this case Portuguese Jews and New Christians, see Roitman, The Same.

85
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisboa) (ANTT), Inquisição de Coimbra, processo

(proc.) 1826-1.

Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Brussels, ms II-93 [Relações, Adivinhações, e outras

curiosidades, trasladadas de papéis velhos juntados neste caderno], Amsterdam, 1683.

British Library, Additionals, 18.155 [Relações, Adivinhações, e outras curiosidades,

trasladadas de papéis velhos juntados neste caderno], Amsterdam, 1683.

Stadsarchief Amsterdam [SA], Notariële 56, 61, 62, 414, 612, 633, 646A, 645B, 2890,
2999, 3000.

Archief Portugees-Israëlitische Gemeente te Amsterdam (APIGA) (334) 520, 628, 779,

799, 815.

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 Chapter 4. A Broker’s Escape: Commercial Fraud and the Clandestine
Repatriation of Antonio Enríquez Gómez in 1649

CARSTEN L. WILKE

Introduction

For members of an ethnic diaspora, returning to their homeland may seem to mark the
happy conclusion of an odyssey. However, it can also disrupt the emigré solidarity that is
vital for collective survival in a minority situation. And like all migration movements
back and forth between continents, ethnic groups, religions and political regimes,
repatriation also has an important financial dimension, which will be the focus of this
article. What happened in pre-modern commerce when a person used the material and
social capital of a diaspora to drop out of this diaspora? Did the logic of material gain
compete with feelings of belonging, and at which point did economic rationality tip the
scales?

The example examined here is taken from the heyday of the Portuguese merchant
diaspora, a network of New Christians and Sephardic Jews operating between the fronts
in the European wars of the seventeenth century.1 The siècle of this merchant community,
as Fernand Braudel called it, was the result of an unlikely success. Many of the members
of the nação hebrea, or ‘Portuguese Nation’, were secret adepts of a religion that was not
welcome on either side of the confessional divide. They were persecuted by the
Portuguese Inquisition in their home country, and initially suspected in the Protestant
countries as being enemy aliens. The nação nonetheless thrived in maritime commerce
thanks to its unique ability to create a solidary network across political and confessional
borders. The nação maintained a distinctive group profile, flexibly combining family ties,

1
Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–
1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Carsten L. Wilke, Histoire des juifs portugais (Paris: Chandeigne, 2007).
92
professional discipline, Portuguese ethnicity, the experience of exclusion and persecution,
and varying levels of marranic and Jewish faith.2

The Portuguese Jewish diaspora was threatened from outside by sea storms, trade
laws, predatory taxation, pirates and, most of all, by the Inquisitions. But there were also
dangers within the network, which risked losing members to intermarriage and
assimilation, as well as to remigration and betrayal. Yosef Kaplan has shown that this
return movement was a constant threat facing Jewish merchant networks.3 Indeed, the
Spanish Inquisition encouraged defection by promising amnesty to returnees who were
willing to become informers on the diaspora communities and their trade in Spain. The
many individuals who availed themselves of this opportunity, especially during the 1650s
and 1660s, have filled archival volumes with colourful autobiographical accounts.4

In a study on these sources published by David L. Graizbord in 2004, the author

observes, however, that there was only one case in which scholarship had ‘discussed the

2
See the seminal article by Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Kinship and Commerce: The Foundations of
Portuguese Jewish Life in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” Studia Rosenthaliana 15 (1981), 58–74; and
subsequent literature reviewed by Carsten L. Wilke, "L’historien de la 'Nation portugaise' devant le défi de
la mobilité: l’étude des réseaux nouveaux-chrétiens depuis I. S. Révah", Arquivos do Centro Cultural
Calouste Gulbenkian 48 (2004): 41–53. Socioeconomic case studies on single Castilian-based Portuguese
merchant families were undertaken by Bernardo López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda: Hombres de
negocios y judíos sefardíes (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2001), focusing on Fernando
Montesinos (1588 – 1659) from Vila Flor in Trás-os-Montes, and by Jesús Antonio Carrasco Vázquez, La
minoría judeoconversa en la época del conde duque de Olivares: Auge y ocaso de Juan Núñez Saravia (1585
– 1639), PhD Universidad de Alcalá, 2004, on a businessman from Trancoso. Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A
Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) studies the Atlantic trade of Manuel Bautista Pérez (1589–1639).
3
Yosef Kaplan, “Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity.”
Jewish History 8/1–2 (1994): 27–41. Kaplan has studied the return phenomenon from a statistical and cultural
angle in various further articles, including a biographical case study “Cristóbal Méndez, alias Abraham
Franco de Silveyra: The Puzzling Saga of a Seventeenth-Century Converso,” in Conversos, marrani e nuove
comunità ebraiche in età moderna, ed. Myriam Silvera (Florence: Casa Editrice Giuntina, 2015), 19–47.
4
James S. Amelang, "Tracing Lives: The Spanish Inquisition and the Act of Autobiography," in Controlling
Time and Shaping the Self: Developments in Autobiographical Writing since the Sixteenth Century, ed.
Arianne Baggerman; Rudolf Dekker; Michael Mascuch (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 33–48.
93
motivations of returnees in sustained fashion,’5 and this was the sudden and mysterious
return of the merchant-poet Antonio Enríquez Gómez from France to his native Spain in
1649. At the age of fifty, and defying an Inquisition warrant for his arrest, this emigré left
his family and crypto-Jewish diaspora community in Rouen to settle incognito in Seville
‘for reasons which can never be completely clear,’ as Constance H. Rose rightly
commented.6 Living under the alias of ‘Don Fernando de Zárate’, Antonio Enríquez
Gómez was unmasked by the Inquisition twelve years later. He died in prison in 1663
and, in a rare ceremony, was reconciled in effigy with the Church, a condemnation that
did not impair the success of his literary works.7

While primary sources, as well as scholarly reflections, on this cause célèbre are
abundant, this study will fill the gap in an English summary of the economic aspects
involved. When they were interrogated by the Inquisition, Antonio Enríquez Gómez and
his family members certainly sought to explain their repatriation mainly in terms of
religious conversion; however, the sources suggest an ideological motivation to have been
quite unlikely. Both before and after his return, Enríquez Gómez is said to have
maintained certain inconspicuous signs of crypto-Judaic piety in his private life;8 and it
would appear that the exaggerated Catholic piety of the dramas that he wrote for
performance in Seville should be interpreted as a literary fake. 9 It would seem that the
focus should be placed not on the poet’s personality, but rather on the sudden turn in the
economic, social and religious life of his merchant cluster.

5
David L. Graizbord, Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 196.
6
Constance H. Rose, "The Marranos of the Seventeenth Century and the Case of the Merchant Writer
Antonio Enríquez Gómez", dans The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind, ed. Angel Alcalá, (New
York: Columbia University, 1987), 53–71, here 62.
7
For an excellent introduction and historical contextualisation of Enríquez Gómez's biography, see Raphaël
Carrasco, "Antonio Enríquez Gómez, un escritor judeoconverso frente a la Inquisición", in Antonio Enríquez
Gómez, Academias morales de las musas, ed. Felipe Pedraza Jiménez and Milagros Rodríguez Cáceres
(Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-la-Mancha, 2015), Vol. 1, 17–54.
8
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 399–403, collects the evidence from the Inquisition documents.
9
Carsten Wilke, "Judaísmo y cristianismo en la obra sevillana de Enríquez Gómez," in Enríquez Gómez en
Sevilla, ed. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez and Milagros Rodríguez Cáceres (Berriozar, Navarra: Cénlit
Ediciones, 2021), 19 – 49.
94
 What we know about Enríquez Gómez’s economic situation is mainly based on
source material in the archives of the Inquisition that was discovered in 1955-1956 by the
French Hispanist I.S. Révah, who published only scant allusions on his findings before
his untimely death in 1973. Révah’s disciple Charles Amiel, who had access to his papers,
authored in 1977 the most widely accepted narrative of the poet's surprising repatriation:

The trade company that Antonio Enríquez Gómez and his cousin Francisco Luis
Enríquez de Mora had founded went bankrupt around 1649. Adding to their
infortune, their trade correspondent in Spain, the poet’s son-in-law, profited from
the situation to keep part of their common business capital for himself. At this
moment, Antonio Enríquez Gómez took the totally unexpected decision to return
to Spain, where he hoped to recover the sums owed to him and remake his fortune;
he also wanted to be reconciled [with the Catholic Church] by way of a
spontaneous presentation before the Inquisition. […] Having brought his son-in-
law to his senses, he settled in Seville, where he would henceforth live under the
alias of Fernando de Zárate for a decade despite Inquisitorial vigilance, sharing
his life once more, as in his early years in Madrid, between his commercial activity
and an abundant literary production for the theatre scene.10

While observing that ‘Amiel offers no documentation for any of these statements,’
the American Hispanist Michael McGaha was, in 1991, the first to publish a properly
documented presentation of two of the many relevant Inquisition files. He, however,
copied and even augmented Amiel’s narrative, highlighting the alleged dishonesty of the
son-in-law.11 French archival documents found meanwhile by Timothy Oelman suggest
that the insolvent cousins had not actually gone bankrupt, but had instead been granted

10
Charles Amiel, in Antonio Enríquez Gómez, El Siglo Pitagórico y vida de Don Gregorio Guadaña, ed.
Charles Amiel (Paris: Ediciones iberoamericanas, 1977), XIX.
11
Michael McGaha, in Antonio Enríquez Gómez, The Perfect King / El Rey más perfecto, ed. Michael
McGaha (Tempe AZ: Bilingual Press, 1991), xliii–xlv (quote from xliv, footnote); id., "Biographical Data
on Antonio Enríquez Gómez in the Archives of the Inquisition", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 69 (1992): 127–
139. McGaha’s interpretation, essentially blaming the return on Ortiz’s unfaithfulness, is shared by Nechama
Kramer-Hellinx, "La literatura como espejo de la historia: los históricos malsines inquisitoriales en la
literatura de Antonio Enríquez Gómez (1600–1663)", Melanges de la Casa de Velázquez 30, 2 (1994): 139–
150, here: 144.
95
an extension of their payment deadlines and left France before these expired.12 In my
German-language thesis on Antonio Enríquez Gómez, I located a large part of Révah’s
Spanish sources and presented additional evidence from French notarial archives,
concluding that there was no proof of the Spanish correspondent’s unfaithfulness and that
the return to Spain was instead a concerted and premeditated act of fraud: in other words,
the cousins were perpetrators rather than victims of financial dishonesty. 13 Later, I had
the opportunity to publish Révah’s posthumous manuscripts in the original French with
an edition of the Spanish source material. It turns out that, in an unpublished lecture given
in May 1965, the French scholar had already hinted at this possibility. He affirmed that
the Enríquez cousins fled Rouen ‘to escape their creditors and with the intention to
reclaim sums due by the poet’s son-in-law, their correspondent in Cadiz, who apparently
abused their vulnerable situation.’14 More recently, Jaime Galbarro completed the picture
with evidence from the overseas archives in Seville. While he still shares the reading that
‘Constantino Ortiz de Urbina did not manage the commercial company’s economic
benefits in an honest manner, and as a consequence, Antonio Enríquez Gómez was
crushed by the debts and obligations that he had with his commercial associates in
Rouen,’15 Galbarro also argues that the return was a precipitated reaction to the disaster
brought upon investors by the Spanish Crown’s unexpected decision to confiscate a large
part of that year’s revenues from its American trading fleet.16

12
Timothy Oelman, in Antonio Enríquez Gómez, Romance al divín mártir, Judá Creyente [don Lope de Vera
y Alarcón] martirizado en Valladolid por la Inquisición, éd. Timothy Oelman (Rutherford: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1986), 24.
13
Carsten Wilke, Jüdisch-christliches Doppelleben im Barock: Zur Biographie des Kaufmanns und Dichters
Antonio Enríquez Gómez (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994).
14
I.S. Révah, Antonio Enríquez Gómez: un écrivain marrane (v. 1600–1663), ed. Carsten L. Wilke, (Paris:
Chandeigne, 2003), 384; manuscript source: Bibliothèque de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris, Archives
privées, AP 39 Fonds I.S. Révah, Box 26, Un écrivain marrane, 33-34.
15
Jaime Galbarro García, “San Hermenegildo de Fernando de Zárate: contexto y lecturas de una comedia de
santos,” in Judaísmo y criptojudaísmo en la comedia española, eds. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, Rafael
González Cañal y Elena E. Marcello (Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2014), 241-256, here 246;
similarly Galbarro, El "Triumpho lusitano" de Antonio Enríquez Gómez (Seville: Editorial Universidad de
Sevilla, 2015), 29.
16
Jaime Galbarro García, “Antonio Enríquez Gómez en la Carrera de las Indias”, in Antonio Enríquez Gómez.
Un poeta entre santos y judaizantes, eds. J. Ignacio Díez y Carsten L. Wilke (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2015),
115–137.
96
 Two contradictory explanations of the poet’s enigmatic repatriation are available
in scholarship. Both Révah and Amiel stressed how Enríquez Gómez was perfectly settled
in his Jewish diaspora society, his sudden departure being attributable to the economic
desolation caused by his deceitful Old Christian associate. According to a different
hypothesis, Enríquez Gómez's return to his home country was an intensely desired
fulfilment of a personal life-project, reflecting his feelings of belonging as a Spanish
poet.17 Far from being treacherous, his Old Christian family demonstrated loyalty and
courage in making this hazardous resettlement possible. It has even been claimed that the
poet found himself ‘of course, protected by a well-crafted network of complicity based in
the family of his wife, an Old Christian of Burgos, Isabel Basurto, whose brother was a
familiar of the Holy Office and took the most dangerous risks to help him.’18

The present article analyses this poet’s repatriation to Spain in its context. His
return to Spain in 1649 was indeed a rather risky gamble; and I will seek to establish the
exact situation in which, and with which expectations, the two cousins made their evasion
and repatriation plans in the first place. This was not a merely individual move, but a
collective act and a multi-layered process in which socio-economic constraints were
bound up with socio-economic agency. Any person returning from the New Christian
diaspora had to redefine his religious and political allegiance. Returning meant that he –
the adventurous emigrant being invariably male –broke ties with his former Jewish
associates and thus radically recomposed his social relations, and often passed through a
process of economic reconversion by changing his means of livelihood. Finally, and most
importantly for our research, he needed strategies for transferring property and credit from
one socio-geographical environment to another, and concomitantly needed provisions
either to bring his wife and children with him or to support them if they remained abroad.
The case of Enríquez Gómez thus offers a rare opportunity to study all these factors in
their interconnectedness.

17
Rose, "The Marranos of the Seventeenth Century,": 64; Antonio Enriquez Gómez, Política Angélica, ed.
Felice Gambin (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2019), 20.
18
Gonzalo Santonja Gómez-Aguero, "Antonio Enríquez Gómez o la vida incierta," in: Manierismo y
transición al Barroco. Memoria del III Encuentro Internacional sobre Barroco (Pamplona: Universidad de
Navarra, 2011), 321–326, here 323.
97
 Dispersion: a Castilian converso family’s expansion in Western Europe, 1588–
1648

Any social analysis of Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s return has to start with the fact that he
and his family were not just ordinary members of the Portuguese New Christian networks,
but had joined these networks from outside and fulfilled the tasks of intermediaries. When
large numbers of New Christians – often of crypto-Jewish faith – came from Portugal to
Spain during the personal union of the two countries in 1580-1640, they were helped by
a singular population that formed a grey zone between the ‘Portuguese‘and the Castilian
Old Christians. The latter were Castilian conversos, descendants of medieval Jewish
populations who for some reason had maintained the family memory of their Jewish
origins.19

For the two lineages that I will consider here, the Enríquez and the Villanueva
families, the last common ancestor was Diego de Mora (c.1516–c.1585), who lived in La
Mancha under the feudal regime of the knights of Saint John made famous by Don
Quixote. In Quintanar de la Orden, the knights protected one of the last pockets of crypto-
Judaism remaining in Castile after the medieval mass conversions of Jews. While
managing the knights’ finances, Diego de Mora had promoted crypto-Judaism in his
family, drawing his information partly from oral tradition and partly from Catholic
compendia of biblical history.

The second generation, most of whose members lived from the 1550s to the 1610s,
was the target of momentous Inquisitorial persecution, with the entire family group being
imprisoned by the tribunal of Cuenca from 1588.20 The dominant personality in that
generation appears to have been Francisco de Mora Molina, whom the Inquisition
executed in 1592 as an impenitent Judaizer. Among his penanced family members was
his sister Francisca de Villanueva, who was married to an Old Christian, Hernando de

19
See the study by Pilar Huerga Criado, En la raya de Portugal : Solidaridad y tensiones en la comunidad
judeoconversa (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1994): 28; Markus Schreiber, Marranen
in Madrid 1600–1670 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994), 61, with further literature.
20
On this persecution, see Révah, Enríquez Gómez, p. 97–175; Charles Amiel, "Les cent voix de Quintanar:
Le modèle castillan du marranisme", Revue de l’histoire des religions 218 (2001) : 195–280, 487–545;
Herman P: Salomon, "Spanish Marranism Re-examined," Sefarad 67.2 (2007) : 367–414; 68:1 (2008) : 105–
162.
98
Sauca, in Madrid. Other relatives uprooted from La Mancha by the persecution included
Leonor Enríquez, the widow of the burnt heretic Francisco, who raised her two sons in
Cuenca.21

This third generation, located chronologically between the 1580s and the 1640s,
profited from the heyday of the Castilian wool trade. Indelibly stigmatised, its members
merged all the more easily with New Christian merchants from Portugal. After the turn
of the century, María de Villanueva, Francisca’s daughter, was the first to marry a
Portuguese, Melchor Fernandes.22 Her cousin, Antonio Enríquez de Mora, Francisco’s
son, who set up an export business in Seville, already had progeny from a Spanish
concubine when he married Leonor Nunes, a woman of the ‘Portuguese Nation’, whose
brother, João Luís Guimarais, established himself as a banker in Paris.23 Mora narrowly
escaped arrest by the Seville Inquisition in 1619 and immigrated to Bordeaux.24 There,
he became one of the leaders of the Portuguese merchant colony, which doubled as a
semi-clandestine Jewish community. His brother, Diego Enríquez Villanueva, was
arrested by the Inquisition of Cuenca in 1622; after his condemnation, he joined his
brother in Bordeaux and later represented him in Nantes. He, too, remarried into a
Portuguese crypto-Jewish family, while ostensibly remaining a Catholic.25

The fourth generation, most of whose members lived from the 1600s to the 1660s,
took over in 1642, by which time Diego had died and Antonio had moved to the Jewish
community of Livorno. The six children of María de Villanueva, especially Francisco and
Diego, the two oldest sons, continued to be active in the trans-Pyrenean trade between
Bordeaux and the town of Pastrana in the province of Guadalajara.26 Two descendants of

21
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 110–111.
22
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 116.
23
Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid (henceforth: AHN), lib. 1103, fol. 774v–775r; lib. 1139, fol. 310r–v;
Wilke, Doppelleben: 128.
24
AHN, lib. 1103, fol. 36r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 136.
25
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 181–188.
26
Révah, Enríquez Gómez: 212–215; Carsten L. Wilke, "Autorretrato picaresco de un mercader: El "discurso
de la vida" de Francisco López Villanueva en la Inquisición de Toledo", in Caminos de leche y miel: Jubilee
Volume in Honor of Michael Studemund-Halévy, Volume I: History and Culture, ed. Harm den Boer, Anna
Menny, and Carsten L. Wilke, Barcelona: Tirocinio, 2018, 275–297.
99
the Enríquez line, by contrast, founded a maritime trading firm in Rouen:27 Our poet
Antonio Enríquez Gómez, the son of Diego’s Spanish wife, was married to Isabel
Basurto, an Old Christian woman from a Basque merchant family, whereas Francisco
Luis Enríquez de Mora, son of Antonio’s Portuguese wife, married his Portuguese cousin,
Maria Cardoso Guimarais,28 whose brother, Jacques Guimarais, inherited his father’s
position as their financial associate in Paris.29 Both cousins lived together with their
families in a house on the Rue de la Vicomté in the harbour area of Rouen. Their
company, which appears as ‘Gommès & Henricquès’ in the French deeds, replicated the
business model of their fathers, who had cultivated associations with Catholic merchants
in Spain while solidly inserting their activities into the Portuguese Jewish diaspora
through marriage, religious participation, social relations and financial cooperation.30
Having grown up together in the Franco-Castilian trade, the cousins were able, despite
the Inquisition, to connect two antagonistic worlds in European commerce. Yet it was
they who dropped out of this way of life in 1649; and by 1652 the entangled Enríquez,
Villanueva, and Guimarais families had dissociated themselves from the New Christian
diaspora and dispersed, under false names, into the global Hispanic realm. At that time,
Francisco Luis Enríquez (renamed ‘Bernabé de Sauca’ after his Old Christian great-
uncle) was living in Peru, while Antonio Enríquez Gómez stayed in Seville (where he
became known as ‘don Fernando de Zárate’); Francisco López Villanueva had stopped
travelling to France and had set up a shop in Pastrana. All three replaced their absent
wives with local concubines. Only Jacques Guimarais (alias ‘Diego de Rojas’) eventually
retired to the Jewish community of Livorno, where his father and uncle lived.31

The return movement to Spain consequently impacted on the fifth generation,

whose lifespan encompassed approximately the 1620s to the 1680s. Antonio Enríquez
Gómez’s eldest daughter Catalina never left her home country, where she married a

27
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 314r.
28
Archives nationales, Paris (henceforth: AN), ét. LXXXI, vol. 19, 27 June and 3 July 1639; AHN, Inq., lib.
1139, fol. 310v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 214–217.
29
AN, ét. LXI, vol. 208, fol. 273, of 18 October 1647; AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 310v; Wilke, Doppelleben,
252–253.
30
Archives départementales de la Loire Atlantique, Nantes (henceforth: ADLA), 4E-2/100, of 30 March
1642, mentions Francisco Luis in Rouen, see Wilke, Doppelleben, 231–232.
31
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 318r–v, 360r.
100
Basque merchant, Constantino Ortiz de Urbina (1612-1664), in Madrid on 16 May 1639.
A cleric’s illegitimate son, Ortiz de Urbina had obtained the dignity of a familiar of the
Inquisition, which made him unsuspicious and, moreover, well informed about the
internal workings of the Holy Office.32 Catalina’s brother Diego, who had married within
the family,33 and her younger sister Leonor moved with their mother from Rouen to the
Spanish Netherlands.34 Juan de León Cisneros, a son of Antonio Enríquez de Mora’s
illegitimate Spanish daughter, had grown up in the diaspora and served the older relatives
as a tradesman; after the collective return of 1649 he became their business assistant in
Peru, and in 1666 joined the French merchant corporation in Seville.35 Antonio’s half-
brothers Miguel and Esteban, as well as Francisco López Villanueva’s younger brothers
Manuel, Luis and Baltasar, were around the same age, although they belonged to the
previous generation.36 All these bachelors earned their living as ambulant merchants, and
all fell victim to Inquisitorial persecution in the 1660s. By 1677, in the aftermath of this
persecution, Manuel and Baltasar were living as Jews in the French Pyrenees.37

Slowly, therefore, the descendants of a Castilian heretic burnt in 1592 integrated

into the Judeo-Portuguese ‘nation’ in a process that took about half a century to complete,
and with various obstacles having to be overcome. But regardless of how carefully the
cousins had crafted their local economic, religious and private ties, they suddenly decided
to unravel them in 1649. I will now examine how, in retrospect, they rationalised their
decision.

Autobiographies: Repatriation Accounts before the Inquisition

32
AHN, Inq., leg. 420, no. 2,071 includes the biographical documentation that he submitted in 1635 before
becoming a familiar of the Holy Office. See Wilke, Doppelleben, 225–227.
33
Archives départementales de la Seine Maritime (henceforth: ADSM), 2E-1/2458, of 28 August 1645;
Wilke, Doppelleben, 262–263.
34
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 15r.
35
Albert Girard, Le commerce français à Séville et à Cadix au temps des Habsbourg (Paris: Boccard, 1932),
51, 575.
36
Révah, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, 188–189, 216–223.
37
Révah, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, 222–223.
101
The social horizon and financial underpinning of this clandestine repatriation event
demonstrate the key role of genealogical solidarity. By 1649, the lynchpins holding the
cousins inside the Portuguese network had deteriorated one by one: the heads of the Mora,
Fonseca and Fernández Villanueva families had passed away and, as Francisco Luis
affirmed, the family elders had failed in their plans to secure marriage alliances with
important Portuguese dynasties, partly because the latter found their Jewish zeal
unconvincing.38 Their strongest remaining Portuguese alliance was with the Guimarais
banking firm in Paris, but this family then surprisingly broke away in collusion with the
Castilian clan.

An inner family cluster, ranging from brothers to second cousins and in-laws,
survived the secession from the larger network intact. Shielded by their ingenious
schemes and probably by some degree of corruption within the Inquisitorial bureaucracy,
the returnees remained unharmed for more than a decade. Francisco López Villanueva,
then in Pastrana, was the first to be sent to prison in Cuenca, on 2 June 1660, with the
accusations that led to his imprisonment appearing to come from local sources. 39 The
same was true for the arrest of Antonio Enríquez Gómez in Seville. While the Seville
Inquisition had given up searching, the city’s chief sheriff identified the poet under his
alias of Don Fernando de Zárate and arrested him in his home, along with his half-brother
Esteban and two of the Villanuevas, Manuel and Baltasar, on 21 September 1661.40 The
poet soon confessed the sums that his former business associate, Constantino Ortiz de
Urbina, still owed him, and the latter was sent to prison in Madrid on 12 October 1661.41
Further interrogatories with Enríquez Gómez on 8 July 1662 led to a warrant of
apprehension being issued against Francisco Luis Enríquez.42 The latter was identified
and arrested in Sorata, in present-day Bolivia, and wound up in the cells of the Lima
Inquisition on 10 December 1663.43 The same tribunal held the first interrogatory with

38
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 314v, 317r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 214–215, 284.
39
AHN, Inq., leg. 145, no. 8, of 2 June 1660, gives a short extract from the lost trial record; Wilke,
Doppelleben, 388.
40
AHN, Inq., 2994; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 559–569. This crucial document was not yet known to me in
Wilke, Doppelleben, 391–393.
41
AHN, Inq., lib. 693, fol. 303r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 395–396.
42
AHN, Inq., leg. 1648, no. 18, fol. 20r.
43
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fols. 304–351; Wilke, Doppelleben, 397–398, 401.
102
Juan de Cisneros on 21 February 166544 and imposed penance on both uncle and nephew
at an auto-da-fé on 16 February 1666, confiscating their property and expelling them back
to Spain.45 By then, Enríquez Gómez had died in his prison cell in Seville, and his
associate Francisco López Villanueva had met the same fate in Toledo, after the
Inquisition had arrested him for a third time, based on the testimony from Lima. His sister,
the shopkeeper Isabel de Villanueva, was subsequently arrested with her husband in
1678.46

The Inquisition thus hauled in the entire group of repatriates, missing only
Enríquez Gómez’s half-brother Miguel (alias ‘Miguel Ortiz’), who was apparently able
to flee abroad.47 Though the original trial records have mostly perished, some fragments
that were copied and transmitted in extant documents give an idea of how the defendants
narrated their return. In the fragment of an interrogatory held with Antonio Enríquez
Gómez quite late in his Seville trial, the latter affirmed that when he came back to Spain
in 1649, there were two ‘persons with whom he settled accounts on the property that
remained in their hands though it belonged to the defendant.’ The first of these was
Constantino Ortiz, and the second ‘Francisco de Villanueva, a resident of Pastrana in
whose house he stayed.’ The latter owed him some 40,000 reals, but since this sum
resulted from merchandise that had been confiscated as contraband, he could not reclaim
it.48

Constantino Ortiz provided details of his debts when he was interrogated in

Madrid. Around 1641, he had travelled to Nantes, where he had met his father-in-law
Antonio Enríquez Gómez and planned joint business ventures with him.49 From the
treasure that came in on the America fleet in 1649, he was entitled, according to the
register, to a sum of more than 40,000 silver pesos; this sum resulted from the sale of
merchandise that he had sent to the Indies for Antonio Enríquez Gómez and other Rouen
merchants. The royal government held back part of this capital by converting it into a

44
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fols. 353–368; Wilke, Doppelleben, 402–403.
45
AHN, Inq., leg. 2195, no. 2, of 30 March 1666; Wilke, Doppelleben, 402.
46
Archivos Diocesanos de Cuenca (henceforth: ADC), Inq., leg. 377, no. 5339bis; Révah, Enríquez Gómez,
220–223.
47
AHN, Inq., lib. 1129, fol. 356v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 395.
48
AHN, Inq., leg. 162, no. 495, fol. 18v, on 9 January 1663; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 574.
49
AHN, Inq., lib. 1127, fol. 359v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 227.
103
bond of which Ortiz could not claim more than 1,700 reals of interest.50 Ortiz then added
that about two years after his associates’ clandestine repatriation to Spain, they had
definitely settled accounts:

The said Antonio Enríquez wished to return to France and make a living there
with his wife. For this purpose, they agreed that he [Ortiz] would pay to the latter
3,000 pesos for his share in the bond, which he indeed delivered to him. The share
was worth more, but the said Antonio Enríquez generously ceded it to him, so that
he might found a chaplaincy in favour of one of his grandsons, sons of the said
Constantino. There was no deed nor paper on all this because they dealt with it as
frankly as parents with children [con la llaneça de padres a hijos].

This declaration failed, however, to convince the Inquisition, which ordered the
interrogators to proceed with utmost care.51 The most substantial information resulted
from the interrogatories with Francisco Luis Enríquez in Lima. On 12 December 1663,
the latter affirmed that ‘Antonio Enríquez Gómez returned to Spain some twelve years
ago to settle accounts and claim money from Constantino,’ who knew perfectly well that
the visitor was a Jew but refrained to denounce him to the Inquisition.52 Three days later,
Francisco Luis described the situation in late 1649:

After this defendant and Antonio Enríquez had had business relations with
Constantino Ortiz, who settled in Cadiz for this purpose, and [after they had] gone
bankrupt, the said Constantino, realising their bankruptcy, stayed with more than
80,000 pesos without sending a word [y quedadoseles con mas de ochenta mil ps
el dho Constantino sin dar pra por hauerles visto caydos]. This defendant then went
to Spain with the said Antonio Enríquez and Jacques Guimarais, travelling
together with them.53

The first sentence is the only source from which Révah and Amiel concluded that
Constantino Ortiz must have tried to defraud the cousins. Felice Gambin likewise reads

50
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 2r–v, on 23 December 1661.
51
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 34v–35r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 366–367.
52
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 316r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 596; Wilke, Doppelleben, 358.
53
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 317v, on 15 December 1663; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 599; Wilke, Doppelleben,
346.
104
in this sentence a ‘manifest’ reference to Constantino’s betrayal. 54 However, the phrase
may also be understood as indicating that the Spanish partner had retained the capital not
with fraudulent intentions but in their common interest, since in France it would have
been swallowed up by the bankruptcy.

According to Francisco Luis, the three returnees from the Jewish diaspora had
decided to resettle in Spain, to live as Catholics and to atone for their heretical past by
presenting themselves before the Holy Office. Upon their arrival at the Villanueva
brothers’ home in Pastrana, they had taken a detour to Alcalá de Henares, where they had
allegedly met Antonio’s Old Christian brother-in-law, Pedro Basurto, a priest in Aravaca
near Madrid, and implored him to broker such an arrangement. However, Basurto advised
them to return to France since the accusations against Antonio weighed too heavily.55
Obviously, Francisco Luis was trying to blame others for his failure to make his alleged
abjuration of Judaism public. By the time of this confession, Father Basurto was no more
among the living,56 and the narrative of religious repentance had become unverifiable. It
was not worth much anyway since the defendant repeatedly affirmed that ‘all or the
majority of those persons who present themselves of their own will at the Inquisition
follow their convenience or particular aims.’57

Of course, the repatriates’ alleged plans to arrange a secret reconciliation and

avoid confiscation imply that they would have been able to rely on property kept by their
Old Christian associate. And this was indeed the case: Francisco Luis went on to affirm
that ‘when they came to Seville and had stayed there for more than a year,’ Constantino
Ortiz repaid 28,000 pesos that he owed them.58 Of this sum, each of the cousins’ wives
received 6,000 pesos by transfer to Antwerp, while another 4,000 pesos were paid to
Jacques Guimarais. The cousins kept the remaining 12,000 pesos for themselves. Antonio
Enríquez, who stayed in Seville, persuaded Francisco Luis to take this entire sum to

54
Enríquez Gómez, Política angélica, 19.
55
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 318r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 599–600; Wilke, Doppelleben, 56.
56
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 21r, attests that Basurto had died on 22 February 1660.
57
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol.316v, 320r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 597, 603. Francisco Luis gives examples of
unsincere espontaneados, some of whom even returned to France.
58
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 318r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 600; Wilke, Doppelleben, 359, 365.
105
Spanish America and to set up a shop in Lima, which he did after arriving there in 1653,
helped by Juan de León Cisneros and Luis de Villanueva.59

Francisco Luis concluded his autobiography with the explicit confession that,
back in 1649, it was not Ortiz, but he himself who had tried to defraud creditors and that
his clandestine return had been planned and desired. He wished to free himself from his
previous stigma of being New Christian or Jew so that he could lead a respectable life:

One of the reasons why this defendant came to this country, apart from the debts
that he had in Rouen, was that he wanted to live with honour and reputation among
Christians and not be considered as a Hebrew, which name and disrespect has
always been repulsive to his sense of honour.60

The younger prisoner’s declarations mirror the clientelar structure of the family
cluster. During his interrogatory by the Inquisition of Lima, Juan de Cisneros narrated in
detail the crucial capital transfer of 1649 from the perspective of a twenty-year-old
business traveller:

From there [i.e. Rouen] he travelled on a Hamburg-based vessel to Cadiz with a

cargo of textiles that the said Antonio Enríquez Gómez and Don Bernabé de
Sauca, alias Francisco Luis Enríquez de Mora, wanted him to deliver to the said
Constantino Ortiz, who had moved there from Madrid with his family. With some
part of these textiles and other merchandise, this confessant embarked in the year
[16]49 to sell it in Portobelo on the said Constantino’s account. He then returned
to Cadiz after seven months and eight days and paid him back in silver. He went
on to Rouen to claim from the said Antonio Enríquez and Francisco Luis 4,000
pesos that they still owed to his father. He did not find them, however, because
they had gone bankrupt. As he went to look for them in Spain, he travelled to
Pastrana and stayed with Francisco, Diego and Manuel López de Villanueva,
Portuguese brothers, merchants born in Cuenca, who considered themselves as his
relatives and kept the Law of Moses … Then he passed on and found them [i.e.
the Enríquez cousins] in Granada, and they went to Seville together. And Jacques

59
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 318r–v, on 17 December 1663; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 600–601; Wilke,
Doppelleben, 372.
60
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 320v, on 17 December 1663 Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 197, 604.
106
 Guimarais, Francisco Luis’s brother-in-law, went with them; and later he went to
his father Juan Luis Guimarais in Livorno to keep the Law of Moses.61

It seems puzzling that Cisneros brought merchandise from Rouen to Cadiz, but
did not take any payment back when he returned on the same route. But the young men
of the Enríquez, Cisneros and Villanueva families seem to have had little knowledge of
the financial schemes that their patrons had worked out. They crossed the Pyrenees and
the Atlantic in the service of their older relatives, simply hoping to find economic support
from them, and they were rarely disappointed.

Commercial Fraud: Seventeenth-century Practices

From this overview of the actors’ memories recorded by the Inquisition, it seems likely
that the 1649 remigration corresponded to a type of commercial fraud that was frequent
in the political and juridical disunion of seventeenth-century Europe. Defections
following defaults on payment obligations happened with a certain frequency, normally
involving sudden emigration and change of residence by the debtor. Several spectacular
cases occurred in the entourage of the Enríquez family within just fifteen years.

First, Francisco Luis Enríquez, in his declarations to the Lima Inquisition,

mentions García de Illán, a Portuguese court banker in Madrid, who fled from the
Inquisition to Antwerp in 1634, taking 50,000 ducats with him. Illán belonged to one of
the rare Portuguese banking families that readily intermarried with Castilian conversos,
and Enríquez Gómez had hoped for a time to marry his daughter to one of his nephews.62

A second example is that of Enríquez Gómez himself, who fled from Madrid to
Bordeaux in 1636, defrauding Segovia weavers of a large amount: again, the sum of

61
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 359v–360r, on 26 February 1665; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 615; Wilke,
Doppelleben, 333–334.
62
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 317r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 193, 284; Schreiber, Marranen, 183; Maurits A.
Ebben, "Corona y comerciantes: García de Yllán, un mercader al servicio de Felipe IV," Diálogos Hispánicos
16 (1995): 169–186.
107
50,000 ducats is mentioned.63 This decision was precipitated by his uncle, the elder Mora,
who, by not paying his cargos, forced his nephew to leave Spain.64

Third, Mora left Bordeaux for Livorno at the end of 1639. As he had taken out
copious loans during the weeks preceding his disappearance, he evaded French debts of
about 60,000 livres, while repaying those partners with whom he chose to remain in
contact.65

Fourth, one of Mora’s oldest Portuguese partners, Francisco Rodríguez

Penamacor (1592-1650), who had represented the Enríquez family in Seville, Cáceres
and Madrid under the constant threat of the Inquisition,66 broke off contact around 1642
and stole much of the firm’s money, while making a career in Spanish state finance.67
Enríquez Gómez spent seven years suing him, and even cursed him in his literary works.68

Fifth, a mass defection of Portuguese court bankers took place in 1646, when the
Pinto brothers, Diogo Teixeira and Tomás Rodríguez Pereyra (later Abraham Israel

63
Miguel Quintanilla, “Antonio Enríquez Gómez comerciante”, Estudios Segovianos 9, no. 25–26 (1957):
308–316; Wilke, Doppelleben, 184–185.
64
AHN, Inq., lib. 1103, fol. 430r; lib. 1105, fol. 240v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 189, 192.
65
Archives départementales de la Gironde, Bordeaux (henceforth: ADG), 3E-15239, fol. 618, of 25–26
November 1639, before he disappeared from Bordeaux; then in his absence ADG, 3E-15240, fol. 11, of 6
January 1640; fol. 170, of 20 March; fol. 278, of 27 May; AN, ét. LXXXI, vol. 22, of 30 October, 1640;
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 327v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 215–221.
66
ADC, Inq., leg. 399, no. 5660, fol. 9r, of 13 October 1620, an agent of the Inquisition affirms that he was
"married to a sister-in-law of Antonio Enríquez, who kept them in his house." Cf. AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol.
332r.
67
Álvaro Sánchez Durán, "Los hombres de negocios portugueses, una élite profesional en la Castilla del siglo
XVII: Posibilidades de movilidad social e intermediación," Tiempos modernos 8, 31 (2015), p. 193–220; Id.,
"Información y reputación en el siglo XVII: la construcción de la confianza en redes sociales de hombres de
negocios portugueses," Studia historica. Historia moderna 38, 2 (2016): 425–466, here: 435.
68
ADG, 3E-15242, fol. 434v, of 20 August 1642; ADSM, 2E-1/2372, of 1 May 1643; 2E-1/1168, of 2
March 1644; 2E-1170, of 3 November, 29 November and 1 December 1644; 2E-1/2382, of 2 and 20
October, 1646; 2E-1/2385, of 28 May 1648; Antonio Enríquez Gómez, La Torre de Babilonia. Primera
parte (Rouen: Laurens Maurry, 1649), IX; Oelman, in Enríquez Gómez, Romance, 22; Wilke, Doppelleben,
236, 253, 309–311.
108
Pereyra) fled from Madrid to the north, taking with them fabulous sums of money from
the royal treasury.69

The very similar fraud committed by the Enríquez cousins in late 1649 was thus
the sixth in this non-exhaustive enumeration. It is now time to study their commercial
activity, insolvency and repatriation in detail, based on sources from commercial life
contemporary to the events, and to ask whether a recurrent model can be identified.

Decapitalisation and Insolvency, 1648-1649

During the 1640s, the commercial firm of the Enríquez cousins abandoned their family’s
economic mainstay, the export of Castilian wool and woolcloth, and turned toward
colonial trade. While they may have been motivated by the Spanish monetary crisis of
September 1642,70 no significant decline in the wool trade was as yet visible.71 Perhaps
driven by ambitions to expand their business, they started trading with their Jewish family
members in Livorno and with a Jewish merchant in Amsterdam, Duarte Ramires Pina
(alias Abraham Naar), who was related to the Fonseca family of Enríquez Gómez’s
stepmother.72 Via the Guimarais banking family of Paris, they then started investing in
the sugar and slave trade of Dutch Brazil.73 Beyond these co-operations based on family
alliances, the cousins also corresponded with other New Christians from Portugal,
especially with António Fernandes Carvajal, the leading crypto-Jewish merchant in
London, who was said to possess more than 200,000 pesos of business capital. Although
Carvajal was not a relative, Francisco Luis visited him in London to add him to his list of

69
Henry Méchoulan, Hispanidad y judaísmo en tiempos de Espinoza: Edición de "La Certeza del Camino"
de Abraham Pereyra (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1987), 49–50; Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and
Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1715 (London, 1990), 397–406; Wilke,
Doppelleben, 308.
70
Domínguez Ortiz, Política y hacienda, 58, 249–252; Wilke, Doppelleben, 244–245.
71
Carla Rahn Philipps, "The Spanish Wool Trade, 1500–1780," The Journal of Economic History 42 (1982):
775–796, here: 785–786; López Belinchón, Honra, libertad y hacienda, 109.
72
AHN, Inq., lib. 1103, fol. 211r; lib. 1105, fol. 236r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 142.
73
ADSM, 2E-1/2381, of 11 May 1646; Wilke, Doppelleben, 245–258.
109
financial partners.74 A major local partner was António Rodrigues de Morais, the restored
kingdom of Portugal’s agent in Rouen. For a period of three years, between spring 1646
and winter 1649, the Enríquez cousins were co-owners, with Morais, of a sugar refinery
in Rouen;75 during the same period and until their departure, they also actively attended
the Portuguese crypto-Jews’ major religious festivities.76 While the cousins backed up the
Portuguese connection by inserting themselves into the religious community, they sought
to multiply their ‘weak ties’ in business and French social life: Enríquez Gómez even
wrote a poem in praise of the public physical experiments carried out by Blaise Pascal in
Rouen.77

After the Enríquez cousins had deserted the Spanish wool trade and moved to
exploring the French, English, Dutch and Portuguese economies for new fields of gainful
activity, they also tried to obtain access to Spanish American markets, with Constantino
Ortiz settling down in Cadiz for this purpose. Antonio Enríquez Gómez tested the new
maritime trade route by sending him wheat from Hamburg and leather from Normandy,
which he had shipped down the Loire to Nantes.78 When Ortiz proved to be a reliable
correspondent, the cousins ventured in 1647 into the big business of the Carrera de las
Indias, the royal Spanish America fleet. According to Ortiz’s official declaration, he had
placed one load and one barrel on the San Jerónimo, which left with the annual Mexico
fleet on 13 July, while dispatching nine and a half loads on board the San Juan
Evangelista in the Terra Firma fleet that set sail for the Isthmus of Panama on 17 October.
From the fees of 6,900 and 22,500 maravedís, respectively, Galbarro calculated that the
total declared amount must have been 588,000 maravedís, or 2,161.8 pesos. Antonio’s
half-brother from Nantes, Miguel Enríquez de Fonseca, should have embarked on that

74
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 319r, Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 601–602, Wilke, Doppelleben, 228, article by
Lucien Wolf.
75
ADSM 2E-1/2387, 18 January 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 282, 434–435.
76
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 314r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 286–287.
77
Pierre Guiffart, Discours du Vuide sur les experiences de Monsieur Paschal, et le traicte de Mr Pierius
(Rouen; Besongne, 1648), 7; Charles Robillard de Beaurepaire, Blaise Pascal et sa famille à Rouen de 1640
à 1647 (Rouen: Imprimerie Cagniard, 1902), 63–65; Oelman in Enríquez Gómez, Romance, 23–24, 27;
Wilke, Doppelleben, 301–302.
78
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 17r; ADSM, 2E-1/2692, of 4 July 1647; Wilke, Doppelleben, 312.
110
fleet with merchandise worth 25,000 silver reals, but at the last moment refused to go on
board.79

It seems that the entire venture was nonetheless profitable. This success
encouraged the cousins and their associates to make a more substantial investment in the
fleet that left in January 1649; and it was this massive capital transfer that eventually
enabled the cousins to defect from their Jewish network. This time, French, English and
Portuguese merchants advanced important cargos that Constantino Ortiz placed on the
fleet in his name. The major investor was António Fernandes Carvajal, the
abovementioned crypto-Jewish merchant in London, who between 27 November and 21
December 1648 bought various loads of British and French merchandise, which he then
sent directly to Cadiz and paid with bills of exchange drawn on Francisco Luis. Later,
Enríquez Gómez calculated the value of these shipments to be 8,000 pesos, with the
largest of the cargos that Carvajal sent being worth 10,132 French livres. The holder of
Carvajal’s bills of exchange, and therefore a major creditor of the two cousins, was an
English merchant in Rouen, Humphrey Wilkins, who was known in local French sources
as ‘Onfroy Willen’. The cousins also obtained capital from Duarte Ramires Pina of
Amsterdam, a long-time associate of their family, as well as 26,000 silver reals from the
brothers João and Francisco Dias Sanches of Rouen,80 very rich people whose wealth
Francisco Luis likewise estimated at 200,000 pesos.81 Antonio Enríquez Gómez had been
a friend of their late father, Manuel Dias Sanches, whose moral integrity he praised in the
prefaces of one of his books. Another investor, Agostinho Coronel, had contributed a
friendship sonnet to the same publication.82 The Dias Sanches brothers and Manuel
Rodrigues Nunes had all hosted gatherings for the Jewish festivals in their country homes
south of Rouen, which the cousins and their families attended.83

All these men had dispatched merchandise to Ortiz on various ships, but most of
the transfer was in Juan de Cisneros’s possession when he and Diego de Villanueva
travelled from Le Havre to Cadiz in January 1649, as mentioned above. Since France and

79
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 17v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 313; Galbarro, "Carrera de las Indias", 124.
80
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 2r.
81
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 317r.
82
Enríquez Gómez, La culpa del primero peregrino, prologue; Wilke, Doppelleben, 261–262.
83
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 317r, 326r, 359v.
111
Spain were at war, this commercial journey was, of course, illegal and so the ship
navigated under the neutral flag of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, with a Dutch
captain, Octavius Gerxz, as skipper. Their employers, the two cousins, signed all their
merchandise, mainly consisting of French textiles, under their alias of ‘Guillaume
Willen’, obviously inspired by the French name of their British creditor. Since this name
evoked some kind of a North Sea identity – British, Dutch, Flemish or German – it was
most distant from the French or Portuguese onomastics that would have alerted the
Spanish customs authorities in Andalusia. These authorities may also have turned a blind
eye to certain embarcations since the customs were then leased to Simón Rodríguez
Bueno, an investor who was close to the contraband networks of the Portuguese New
Christians.84

Most of this merchandise was destined for the fleet heading for the Isthmus of
Panama. The twenty-three ships of the Armada de la Guardia de la Carrera de las Indias
set sail from the Bay of Cadiz on 29 January 1649. Juan de Cisneros embarked with the
fleet without appearing in the passenger list: being a native Frenchman, he had to travel
illegally as a personal guest of one of the captains. The register attests that Constantino
Ortiz loaded merchandise onto the ships La Candelaria and Ánimas de Purgatorio,
paying 7,500 maravedís in tax for six half loads and thus allowing Galbarro to calculate
a declared value of 300,000 maravedís, or 1,103 pesos. The goods were supposed to be
delivered to Diego de Sauca or, in his stead, to Juan de León, or in the third line to
Francisco Maldonado. These first two names were the travellers themselves, while the
third was a merchant from Peru whom they were supposed to meet. The actual quantities
in the firm’s two travellers’ possession were in fact much higher: 98.6% remained
undeclared.

This ingenious investment plan covered a vast Atlantic itinerary and brought
together agents of various European nations and religious identities. It was risky because
the cousins had retained only a very thin financial cover and were reliant on their Paris
banker, Jacques Guimarais, to back up the payments due. However, these financial
arrangements were struck by misfortune very early on. Gerxz’s ship had barely left Le
Havre when rebellion flared up in Paris, resulting in Queen Anne, Cardinal Mazarin and

84
Albert Girard, La rivalité commerciale et maritime entre Séville et Cadix jusqu'a la fin du XVIII e siècle
(Paris: Boccard, 1932), 115.
112
the child Louis fleeing the Louvre during the night of 5-6 January and taking refuge in
Saint-Germain. The ensuing siege and civil war completely disrupted economic life, not
only in Paris, but also in Normandy, where the Parliament of Rouen joined the rebellion
on 18 January. On that very day, and proving their urgent need for cash, the Enríquez
cousins sold their shares in the sugar refinery to Antonio Rodrigues de Morais in return
for 25,000 French livres in bills of exchange.85

This, however, gained them only a few days of respite. With Paris under siege,
Jacques Guimarais declared on 28 January that he was no longer able to honour his
obligations.86 As he explained on a later occasion, ‘the misery of the present time does
not leave him any opportunity to meet the payment deadlines.’87 Responsibility for the
considerable sums from bills of exchange that Guimarais was supposed to pay fell to his
associates in Rouen, the Enríquez cousins, especially amounts owed to Carvajal for his
cargos.88 The English and Portuguese merchants who presented Carvajal’s bills of
exchange from London for payment were told by the two cousins that they were insolvent,
with the first such case being documented on 4 February, when Nicolas Couquard tried
to liquidate a bill of 1,000 écus through their associate, Antonio Dias Montesinos.89 For
a while, António Rodrigues de Morais generously agreed to step in by settling debts with
their Amsterdam correspondent ‘to honour the said Mr. Ramires Pina.’90 To no avail: the
debtors soon had to defend themselves at court against impending confiscations.
Fortunately for them, a judgment by the Parliament of Normandy’s commercial chamber
on 5 February gave them time to agree a moratorium with their creditors:

Because of the upheaval that is in Paris as well as in Rouen, where commerce has
totally ceased, as well as for other reasons included in the said request, and
because not a single merchant can be found who would invest money into the
trades with Spain, Flanders, Holland, Germany, Nantes, La Rochelle and other
places where the said Enríquez use to trade, the tribunal is requested to grant them

85
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, 18 January 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 330, 336, 434–435.
86
AN, ét. XXX, vol. 35, 28 January 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 336.
87
AN, ét. LXI, vol. 211, 6 March 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 336
88
AN, ét. XXXIX, vol. 84, 19 March 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 336–337.
89
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, 4 February; Wilke, Doppelleben, 337.
90
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, 12 February 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 338.
113
 safe conduct of their persons and property for six months, in which time the said
Henriques will negotiate with their creditors.91

One group among the creditors, probably the Portuguese merchants, worked out
a moratorium on 28 February. Since, however, the Peace of Rueil had ended the Fronde
rebellion on 12 March, another group of creditors, all with French names, refused to grant
the cousins any extension of their payment obligations. Protesting that the moratorium
had been drawn up against their will, these creditors proceeded on 12 April to have the
debtors’ estate confiscated. On 15 April, the tribunal granted a three-month extension for
the insolvent cousins to meet their financial obligations,92 and this moratorium was
extended on 1 July for a further three months until 15 October. These extensions protected
the cousins against the avalanche of unpaid bills that arrived during the early spring
months.93

‘Gommès & Henricquès’ thus earned a long vacation, and their living conditions
seem to have become more relaxed, with Enríquez Gómez devoting himself to intense
literary activity. During this period, and although he had scandalised the ambassador of
Portugal by printing a book critical of the Inquisition only two years earlier,94 he seems
to have become involved in Portuguese publishing once again since he contributed a
poem, signed only with his initials, to a propagandistic epic by Manuel Tomaz that was
printed in early March.95 Perhaps he then went to Paris to mark the diplomatic occasion

91
ADSM, 1B-1072, of 5 February 1649; the document was found by Oelman, 24.
92
ADSM, 1B-1072, of 15 April 1649; Wilke, Doppelleben, 343, "contre André Guéroult, Dauid de la
Chambre, Iacob Bunel, Léon Hubert, Robert & Louis Le François, Iacques Rommère, Dauid de Beaulieu, et
Benjamin Benzelin adjournez et défaillantz, en présence de François Fortin, Iean de la Vigne, Gaspard Beznel
tant pour luy que pour Richard Crouc et Maurice de la Roche aussy adjournez."
93
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, of 10 February 1649, Humphrey Wilkins speaking to their brother-in-law Domingo
Guimarais (1,950 écus); ibid., 12 February, António Rodrigues de Morais speaking to the accountant Marc
Pitié with a bill of exchange drawn by Duarte Ramires Pina in Amsterdam (500 écus); ibid., 23 February,
Simão Soares presented to Antonio Montesinos a bill drawn by Carvajal in London (9,443 pounds); ibid., 25
February, Étienne Caron (400 écus); ibid., 10 March, David Couquard (400 écus) presented bills of exchange.
94
I.S. Révah, "Un pamphlet contre l'Inquisition d'Antonio Enríquez Gómez: la seconde partie de la Política
Angélica (Rouen 1647)," Revue des études juives 121 (1962) : 81–168.
95
Constance H. Rose, "Portuguese Diplomacy Plays a Role in the Printing of Some Peninsular Works in
Rouen in the Seventeenth Century", Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português de Paris 9 (1975): 523–541,
here: 538–539.
114
that this publication must have served. In any event, Marie Grassin, a maid in the two
cousins’ home in Rouen, informed a latecomer among the creditors on 23 March that her
employers were not in town.96

Enríquez Gómez must have returned to Rouen a few days later. Around the time
of the Jewish Passover holiday, he hosted several business travellers who were known to
practice Judaism either publicly or semi-clandestinely. Among them were Jorge
Rodrigues da Costa and Salvador Rodrigues da Costa (alias Josua Jesurun Rodrigues)
from Amsterdam, the latter being a member of the synagogue board. Francisco Barrassa
de Aguilar, the cousin’s trade correspondent in Antwerp,97 also attended the same
occasion. All these guests wrote laudatory verses for Enríquez Gómez when he published
a satirical novel, The Tower of Babel, that he had written during the previous winter and
whose dedication letter was signed on 10 May. Much of this novel’s satire is devoted to
criticising greed for money.98 Enríquez Gómez then started work on a new ambitious
manuscript, an epic based on the Samson story and rivalling Miguel de Silveyra’s epic on
the Maccabees.99 In a preliminary note to the 1656 editio princeps, the printer Laurens
Maurry stated that Antonio Enríquez Gómez had given him the manuscript of his epic for
typesetting in 1649 progressively and chant by chant, but that the final chant remained
pending for seven years.100

From Francisco Luis’s confessions to the Inquisition of Lima, one can conclude
that in 1649, as in previous years, the cousins participated in gatherings of the clandestine
Jewish community to mark the Day of Atonement,101 which that year fell on 16
September. Enríquez Gómez was clearly attached to his Jewish contacts in Rouen and
cultivated his relations among the Jews of Amsterdam, while also being intensely active
in his literary work. Though crushed by his debts, he could rely on support among the

96
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, of 23 March 1649. The creditor, Jan Vandalle, had presented Grassin with a bill of
exchange for 758 écus.
97
ADSM, 2E-1/2387, of 29 January 1649, proves this relationship.
98
Enríquez Gómez, La Torre de Babilonia, VI (date), IX, 48–102 (money).
99
Modern editions by María del Carmen Artigas (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 1999) and Moshe Lazar
(Lancaster, Calif.: Labyrinthos, 2007).
100
Enríquez Gómez, Sansón nazareno (Rouen: Maurry, 1656), preliminary note "El impresor al que leyere";
Wilke, Doppelleben, 346.
101
AHN. Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 314r.
115
Portuguese merchants, who obviously spared him because they expected him soon to be
enriched by treasures from the Spanish silver fleet. But the sudden interruption of the
almost finished epic indicates that the cousins’ departure must have been undertaken
precipitately. Something unforeseen must have happened.

Repatriation: Defection from the Diaspora Networks, 1649-1650

While civil war raged in France and a plague devastated Seville in spring 1649, the
Spanish America fleet completed its journey successfully. On Easter Eve, 3 April, the
armada reached its first port of call on the American mainland, Santa Marta in present-
day Columbia. From there, it proceeded to its main destination, Portobelo, where it
arrived on 20 April.102 This town, which was of little importance during the rest of the
year, became one of the world’s major trading fairs upon arrival of the galleons as this
was where European merchandise was exchanged for Peruvian silver.103 It was also where
Juan de Cisneros sold his French cargo for silver coins and bars and where, on 10 May,
he registered 17,061 silver pesos for Constantino Ortiz, although, as he later recalled, he
actually transported three times as much on the return fleet. One can infer from a notarial
contract that Cisneros reached La Habana by 18 June.104 There, his Terra Firma fleet met
the Mexican fleet coming from Veracruz, and both fleets, sailing in joint formation, were
back in Cadiz by 8 September.105 The armada is estimated to have carried about 11 million
ducats, of which only 1.77 million were officially registered.106 The latter remained in the
treasury of the Casa de la Contratación, the commercial authority, for an unusually long
time. King Philip IV of Spain, much in need of cash for the war against France, decreed
on 29 October that only 2,000 ducats of registered property per investor would be
released. Of the 1.77 million ducats registered, one million were seized and converted
into a forced loan at 4.24% interest. In the best case, therefore, merchants would have had

102
Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique, vol. 5, 508; vol. 6.1, 248.
103
See the description by Pedro de Leão Portocarrero in Boleslao Levin, ed., Descripción del Virreinato del
Perú: Crónica inédita de comienzos del siglo XVII, Universidad del Litoral, Rosario de Santa Fe, 1958, 121.
104
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 18r.
105
Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique. Partie statistique: Le mouvement des navires et des marchandises
entre l'Espagne et l'Amérique, de 1504 à 1650, vol. 5: Le trafic de 1621 à 1650 (Paris: Colin, 1956), 512.
106
Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Política y hacienda de Felipe IV (Madrid: Pegaso, 1983), 277.
116
to wait twenty-four years to see their money back.107 The remainder of the registered
silver was finally paid out on 10 December 1649.108

Many merchants went bankrupt as a result of this unexpected confiscation, which

also aggravated the troubles of the Enríquez cousins. Of the assets registered by
Constantino Ortiz, 4.64 million maravedís were lost to the confiscation. The conditions
of the forced loan entitled Ortiz to claim annual interest of 196,761 maravedís; that is,
524.7 ducats, or 723.4 pesos.109 An inquisitor in Toledo was paid 7,300 reals (661.9
ducats) per year,110 which was only slightly above the income that the Enríquez could
expect. However, this prospect of regular future benefits was not enough to save the
cousins from impending bankruptcy. Their creditors expected that Cisneros would deliver
the silver to Ortiz immediately, that the latter would send part of it to Rouen, and that the
Enríquez would then be able to pay their local debts, as well as their debts in London and
Amsterdam.

To understand the radical decision that the cousins took, it is important to establish
what financial news they could have obtained from Spain, when and from which sources.
It was not until 23 October that the Parisian weekly Gazette, edited by Theophraste
Renaudot, reported from Cadiz that the Spanish silver fleet had returned ‘with a very
decent cargo.’ As this message had arrived via Amsterdam, the merchants must have
known of it earlier.111 In the following issue, Renaudot announced that the royal portion

107
Domínguez Ortiz, "Los caudales de Indias y la política exterior de Felipe IV", Anuario de estudios
americanos 13 (1956): 311–383, here: 366–368.
108
Galbarro, "Carrera de las Indias", 134.
109
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 4r–5v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 359.
110
David Willemse, Un "portugués" entre los castellanos: El primer proceso inquisitorial contra Gonzalo
Báez de Paiba, 1654–1657 (Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1974), vol. I, lxxi. Annual salaries of 200
and 80 ducats, respectively, applied to major and minor professorships at the University of Alcalá. See Luis
Alonso Muñorreyo, La facultad de medicina en la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Madrid: Diana, 1945),
27, 110.
111
Recueil des Gazettes, 1649, 964, message from Amsterdam, 13 October: "Nouvelles sont ici venües que
la Flotte d'Espagne est arrivée à Cadis, avec une charge assez raisonnable."
117
on the ships was lower than expected, whereas a stately fleet loaded with silver was on
its way to Le Havre.112

On 1 October, a French creditor, Jacques Cavellier, spoke to Francisco Luis at his

home,113 but the Enríquez cousins must have left Rouen shortly afterwards. It is likely
that they fled in anticipation of the 15 October payment deadline and found refuge with
their agent, the banker Jacques Guimarais, in the Paris financial district. A denunciation
sent from Venice on 16 October confirms that Antonio Enríquez Gómez was indeed
staying in Paris.114 This may explain why, much later, Francisco Luis recalled details
about the inheritance of the court banker Alphonse de Loppe (Alfonso López), a crypto-
Muslim from Zaragoza who died in Paris on 21 October that year,115 being ‘somehow
considered both as Spanish Jew and Spanish Morisco in France.’116 There is, in any case,
definite proof of Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s presence in Paris before his departure,
namely a letter that he sent from there to Nantes on 15 November and that was reproduced
in a later denunciation to the Inquisition. In it, the poet promised swift payment of his
debts to one of his creditors, Nuno Álvares de Matos, starting rhetorically by claiming
that ‘I have not written to Your Graces because Fortune, when it persecutes a man, rarely
gives a break, my sir and friend.’117

This letter from Paris being the last trace of the cousins in France means they must
have departed shortly before Juan de Cisneros arrived in search of them. During the month
that they spent in the French capital, they apparently waited for news from Cadiz rather
than from Le Havre. Cisneros visited Rouen in November, as we learn from a notarial

112
Recueil des Gazettes, 1649, 995, message from Amsterdam, dated 20 October: "Vn navire de Hambourg
venu cette semaine de Cadis avec trente deux mille marcs d'argent, nous confirme l'arrivée de la flote
d'Espagne, mais qu'il n'y a qu'vn million et demi d'or pour Sa Majesté Catholique. Il reporte aussi, qu'il y
avoit sur la Barre 7 vaisseaux Francois qui chargeoyent de l'argent & des marchandises pour S. Malo & Le
Havre de grace, & 7 autres pour cette ville, & celle de Hambourg".
113
ADSM, 201 BP 343, of 1 October 1649.
114
Jesús Antonio Cid, "Judaizantes y carreteros para un hombre de letras: A. Enríquez Gómez (1600–1663)",
in Homenaje a Julio Caro Baroja, Madrid, 1978, 271–300, here 274.
115
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 317v; cf. Henri Baraude, Lopez, agent financier et confident de Richelieu (Paris:
Revue mondiale, 1933), 171; Wilke, Doppelleben, 345.
116
Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew
in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 119.
117
AHN, Inq., lib 1116 (no folio numbering); Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 550.
118
declaration that two Portuguese merchants, Manuel Rodrigues Nunes and Agostinho
Coronel, gave two months later, on 26 January 1650, at the request of the local merchant
Jean Baudouin. The two Portuguese informed Baudouin that Cisneros declared having
deposited 55,000 pesos in Cadiz with Constantino Ortiz for the account of ‘Anthoine
Henricques Gomes et François Louis Henricques, surnommez audit pais d'Espaigne
Guillaume Willen.’118 However, Ortiz did not forward this money to France, and neither
did Cisneros export any of his journey’s proceeds when he sailed to Rouen in November.
Two months after his visit, some of the Portuguese merchants realised that the two cousins
had acted fraudulently towards them, and they consequently agreed to disclose their
aliases, their itineraries and their exact destinations.

Unfortunately, the court records of Rouen have a gap around 15 October, and I
have not been able to find details of the sentence imposed on the cousins when their debts
remained unpaid at this final deadline. However, I found a notarial deed dated 27 July
1650, in which their closest Portuguese business associates, namely António Rodrigues
de Morais, his brother-in-law Diogo Dias Nunes in Rouen, and Duarte Ramires Pina in
Amsterdam, gave a power of attorney to an unnamed person to act on their behalf to find
the three fugitives and to proceed:

to initiate the seizure and arrest in whatever towns, kingdoms, provinces and
lordships of each and every movable property, promise, obligation, bill of
exchange, profit, merchandise, cash money and whatever else may be found in
possession of Antonio Enríquez Gómez, Francisco Luis Enríquez, previously
merchants here in the city of Rouen, and Jacques Guimarais, also a merchant,
previously residing in Paris, presently absent because of their debts, so that the
said acting gentlemen can have and recover payment, either for themselves or in
the name of others, of the great sums of money owed to them by the said Antonio
Enríquez Gómez, Francisco Luis Enríquez and Jacques Guimarais according to
the documents and accounts that the said acting gentlemen will display, and also
to seize and arrest their persons.119

At this point, the cousins’ many local friends, business partners and coreligionists
had manifestly lost any illusions they may have had about their former associates and

118
ADSM 2E-1/2391, of 26 January 1650; Wilke, Doppelleben, 436.
119
ADSM 2E-1/2392, of 27 July 1650; Wilke, Doppelleben, 437.
119
sought to prosecute them as criminal offenders. The returnees had consciously
antagonised the entire Portuguese Jewish community to which they had previously
belonged and, after their departure, do not seem to have maintained contact with anyone
in Rouen other than their wives and children.

Reinvestment: The Returnees in Spain, 1650-1653

The cousins’ long overland journey, which they must have started in Paris in November
1649, brought them to Seville incognito by way of Pastrana and Granada. But if they had
ever lost trust in Constantino Ortiz, this was restored almost instantly because the three
businessmen soon agreed on another joint investment in the Carrera de las Indias. Ortiz
subsequently sent two consignments of merchandise on El Ángel San Gabriel and San
Juan Evangelista, both of which left Cadiz with the Mexico fleet on 10 March 1650. In
Veracruz, their port of destination, this merchandise was to be released to the captain of
the latter ship, Pedro de Aranguibel. In his absence, Juan de Manurga or, in his stead, the
captain Juan Rodríquez de Villanueva would be entitled to sell the goods.120 Ortiz had
apparently not dispatched an agent of his own and relied instead on the fleet’s crew
members.

According to the registration papers, Ortiz paid a fee of 3,600 maravedís for his
merchandise on each of the two ships. This means that he declared only the ridiculously
low amount of 84,000 maravedís, or 308.7 pesos,121 while the real value of the cargo was
91,250 pesos, of which just under one quarter belonged to the cousins. In a notarial deed
from Seville, dated 2 September 1650, Ortiz confirmed that he owed them that quarter
plus 8,125 pesos from earlier debts apparently relating to the forced loan. The cousins
signed the deed under their joint alias of ‘Guillermo Vanwillen’ in the presence of the
witnesses Baltasar Fernández, the youngest of the Villanueva brothers, and one Francisco
de la Torre.122

120
Galbarro, "Carrera de las Indias”, 125 – 126, 128.
121
Galbarro, "Carrera de las Indias", 130.
122
AHN, Inq., leg. 1872, no. 35, 6r–v; 6r–8r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 359.
120
 For a year, Antonio Enríquez Gómez then lived in Granada ‘in a guesthouse on
the Zacatín,’123 whereas his cousin lodged in a narrow alley in the centre of Seville, the
Calle de la Morería de las Siete Revueltas, at an inn run by Doña Ana de Montezuma and
a woman of colour.124 Although the inquisitors were searching for the suspects, they were
unaware of their return and still presumed them to be in France. Moreover, the tribunal
of Valladolid had confused Enríquez Gómez with Enrique Enríquez de Paz, a Portuguese
from Bayonne, who was definitely beyond its reach. A person with these two names was
therefore burnt in effigy at an auto de fe in Toledo on 1 January 1651. Seeing their case
concluding in this way must have encouraged the cousins to renew their trading activities.
In March, therefore, Antonio Enríquez Gómez travelled incognito from Seville to
Pastrana, where he promised to invest in the Villanueva brothers’ French trade. Francisco
Luis even followed the brothers north to Pamplona, where he made contact with a
Bayonne merchant, Diogo Rodrigues Pinheiro. The cousins then returned to Pastrana and
Seville,125 accompanied by Antonio’s half-brother Miguel.

Pinheiro meanwhile returned to Bordeaux, where he candidly mentioned his

Pamplona encounter to a fellow Portuguese, the cleric Francisco Paez Ferreira.
Unbeknown to him, however, this man was a spy for the Madrid Inquisition, to which he
sent cyphered messages under the name of ‘Pedro de Flores’.126 Not only, therefore, did
Paez Ferreira inform the Inquisition about Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s return to Spain,
but he was also able to identify the poet’s two main contacts in the kingdom, namely
Constantino Ortiz and the Villanueva brothers. The Supreme Council of the Inquisition
acted swiftly by ordering the Seville colleagues, on 21 March 1651, to arrest Enríquez
Gómez at Ortiz’s house in Cadiz, where the two were said to be awaiting the return of the
America fleet. Apprehensive of possible leaks and corruption, an inquisitor made an
annotation in the margin of the same message: ‘He was a well-known person in the

123
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 562.
124
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 327r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 362.
125
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 314r, 327r, Wilke, Doppelleben, 366.
126
AHN, Inq., lib. 1326 (no folio numbering); Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 531. Paez Ferreira later became
chaplain of the Portuguese embassy at the Spanish court and edited an anti-Jewish treatise; see Bruno Feitler,
The Imaginary Synagogue: Anti-Jewish Literature in the Portuguese Early Modern World (Leiden: Brill,
2015), 61-63.
121
capital, one must proceed carefully.’127 Paez Ferreira commented on 24 April that he
regarded it as impossible to get hold of Enríquez Gómez while the latter was still in
Pastrana since ‘the Duke of Pastrana shelters and protects all these people for his
interests.’128 In contrast, the Inquisitors in Seville seemed to be seeking to perform their
tasks loyally as, on 16 April 1651, they arrested a man resembling Antonio Enríquez
Gómez in Ortiz’s home. This man, however, called himself Antonio Cuadrado. The
Seville inquisitors explained, on this occasion, that Ortiz had no family relation
whatsoever to the wanted poet, that his wife ‘had died of the plague and that she had been
the daughter of a very rich Frenchman, native and living in that country.’129

After this affair, which reeked of cover-up, the members of the Supreme Council
suspected their Seville colleagues of negligence or, worse, of corruption. On 8 August
1651, therefore, they summoned these colleagues to submit their file on the case of
Enríquez Gómez ‘because it appears that you have not complied with your duty as
punctually as you should.’130 The Supreme Council soon obtained new evidence
indicating that the wanted man was still on Spanish territory. On 26 November 1651, Paez
Ferreira reported that twenty days earlier, when he was passing through Pamplona, an
innkeeper had shown him that the Villanueva brothers were in town. He, Paez Ferreira,
had also heard from Diego de Villanueva in Bordeaux that Antonio Enríquez had visited
them undercover.131 Fearing that the heretic might escape, the Supreme Council
completed its new act of accusation speedily and by dubious means. On 15 December
1651, the Inquisitors in Zaragoza extracted a very detailed, but manifestly fabricated
testimony from one of their prisoners, a certain Luís da Costa. This man, a fifty-year-old
converted Jewish shoemaker from Morocco, claimed he had been in Rouen in late April
1650, where he had allegedly met Antonio Enríquez Gómez as a Judaizer.132

More details about Enríquez Gómez’s new trading activities were reported in due
time to the Inquisition, the informer being Bartolomeu Vieira of Madrid, an old enemy of

127
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 537–539.
128
AHN, Inq., lib. 1113 (no folio numbering); Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 532.
129
AHN, Inq, leg. 2984, fasc. 1; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 533–534.
130
AHN, Inq., lib. 692, fol. 155r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 537.
131
AHN, Inq., lib. 1114, 23v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 370.
132
AHN, Inq., lib. 1115, Luis de Acosta, fol. 42r–44r, Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 540–542; Wilke,
Doppelleben, 314–316, 539–542.
122
the Mora family, who had previously lived in Bordeaux and had denounced his crypto-
Jewish neighbours for fifteen years in multiple letters and personal declarations.133 He
now transmitted some information to the Holy Office that he had received from his son-
in-law, the previously mentioned Nuno Álvares Matos in Nantes. This Portuguese
merchant, a Catholic New Christian who lived in peace with the crypto-Jewish fraction,134
wrote to Vieira on 12 January 1652 that ‘those robber barons Enríquez’ (estes ladroins
don Anriques) had defrauded him of large sums of ‘more than 14,000’, which they had
invested in the Carrera de las Indias135 As the Inquisitors knew perfectly well that
Constantino Ortiz administered the heretic’s fortune, they marked his Cadiz home for a
second raid on the armada’s return.

The repatriate’s putative accomplices within the Inquisition apparatus fought back
with targeted disinformation. On 13 August 1652, an anonymous denunciation from
Pastrana affirmed ‘that Antonio Enríquez Gómez is hiding in one of the villages of the
Alpujarras, three or four miles from Granada,’136 while on 27 August 1652 the Seville
inquisitors tried to persuade their superiors that the culprit was back in France. On
3 September, the Supreme Council, seeing its suspicions confirmed, ordered the
inquisitors of Granada to undertake the search in Cadiz ‘without involving the Seville
tribunal of the Inquisition,’ which would normally be responsible for that area.137

On 22 October 1652, Nuno Álvares Matos reported to Vieira that much of the
silver from the fleet had been confiscated from Ortiz, which, he imagined, was mostly
owed to him and other unpaid creditors. Moreover, the wool transports that Francisco
López Villanueva embarked in San Sebastián or moved across the Navarra customs
border to Pamplona were partly funded by the fraudulent cousins. 138 On 4 December
1652, Vieira remarked that Ortiz, who until recently had been a petty merchant, was now

133
AHN, Inq., lib. 1103, fol. 95-146.
134
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 319r, 326r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 98–99.
135
"Muyto danno me tem feito estes ladroins don Anriques, que me estan deviendo mas de 14000, afora 3
pesas de paño do amigo Fernando Albarez Vega e outras muitas couzas, que tudo emporta perto de 18000,
sem saveremos dónde estão".
136
AHN, Inq., leg. 2985, fasc. 1; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 546.
137
AHN, Inq., leg. 2985, fasc. 1; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 548.
138
AHN, Inq., lib. 1116 (no folio numbering); Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 549.
123
a rich man with a fortune of 30,000 pesos, while Francisco Villanueva and his formerly
penniless brothers now owned a big shop in Pastrana.139

On 22 March 1653, Vieira reported exciting news from Nuno Álvares Matos. In
January that year, Diogo Cardoso Pinheiro, one of the Jews of Bayonne, and Francisco
López Villanueva, then in San Sebastián, had surprisingly contacted him. Pinheiro had
presented himself as a representative (encomendero) of the fugitive Enríquez cousins,
who were allegedly hiding in a monastery in Seville and had offered Álvares Matos the
personal favour of repaying all the debts that the cousins owed to him, with the clear
intention being to recruit him as a business associate.140

Further hints show that Enríquez Gómez had become somewhat relaxed in his
precautions. On 7 June 1653, for example, Juan Rodríguez de Amezquita declared in
Cuenca that the poet’s strange story and itinerary were fairly well known among the
Portuguese of Pastrana, whose pious fraternity in honour of Saint Anthony had even
ordered some Christmas carols from the same person whom the Inquisition was hounding
for crypto-Judaism.141 And by 1656 the Rouen printer Laurens Maurry was able to publish
the complete Samson epic, after the last chant ‘had finally come into my hands and I gave
in to requests by many lovers of Spanish poetry.’142 Enríquez Gómez must have used his
French connections to send literary manuscripts to Maurry, no doubt via the trade of the
Villanueva brothers.

By the end of 1653, however, the confiscation of Constantino Ortiz’s silver in

search of Enríquez Gómez’s hidden assets, Álvares Matos’s refusal to renew the trade
relations with the fraudsters and the many indiscretions committed on the French route
seem to have scared Enríquez Gómez away from any further clandestine commerce. It
had become clear that he could not aspire to renew his correspondence with any of the
firms that were active in the Franco-Spanish trade: neither with the Jewish creditors the
cousins had defrauded, nor with the collaborators of the Inquisition, and not even with
those few who, like Nuno Álvares Matos, tried to remain neutral.

139
AHN, Inq., lib. 1116; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 550 – 551.
140
AHN, Inq., lib. 1116; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 552.
141
AHN, Inq., leg. 2563; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 555.
142
Enríquez Gómez, Sansón Nazareno, preliminaries; Wilke, Doppelleben, 377 –378.
124
 Poverty and Retrospective Commerce, 1653-1661

Enríquez Gómez could count on more indulgence from the Inquisition than from his
French creditors. No serious search for him took place in Seville, and on 13 April 1660,
the local tribunal treated him as a fugitive by burning his effigy once again. Later that
year, the inquisitor Don Bernardino de León de la Rocha assured his Madrid superiors
that the man being sought was certainly not in his district. However, the Supreme Council
of the Holy Office squarely refused to believe him, reiterating its conviction that ‘he is
there [in Seville] or in Cadiz, and he changes his clothing.’143

In his undercover existence, living off his savings that he had partly invested in
about one hundred religious paintings,144 Enríquez Gómez rapidly became impoverished,
and he therefore had to fall back on literary activity to earn his livelihood. It seems that
his abundant work for the Spanish theatre, including the religious scene, should be
interpreted as a substitute source of income at a time when informers from Bordeaux had
made new commercial gains impossible. Enríquez Gómez was sharing a flat with his
mistress, María Felipa de Zárate, and his half-brother Esteban, and was increasingly
urgently in need of cash. He therefore entered into a sort of retrospective commercial
activity by repeatedly trying to retrieve cash from his former associates, especially
Constantino Ortiz, for long-past business ventures. At some point after the 1651
settlement of accounts, he drew up a revealing document in which he listed, in coded
language, all the open claims that he and Francisco Luis (‘Don Bernabé’) had against
Constantino (‘Don Agustín’):145

- 13,637 pesos as, according to his calculation, still being due from their joint
commercial activities in 1648–1650 since the three partners had agreed to share
all investments and profits equally;
- 8,100 pesos as the expected proceeds from the royal bonds;

143
AHN, Inq., leg. 2994, of July 3, 1661; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 558.
144
AHN, Inq., leg. 2067, no. 25, fol. 4r, 5r; Wilke, Doppelleben, 376.
145
AHN, Inq., leg. 1875, no. 17 (no folio numbering); Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 534– 537.
125
 - 13,480 pesos as the sum of unclaimed debts owed by their Spanish agents Juan de
Correa, Miguel de Torderas, Fernando de Novela, Pedro de Aranguibel and
Jacinto de Acevedo;
- 49,138 pesos as his share in the income from the 1650 America fleet. As we know,
the company had invested a total of 91,000 pesos, of which 40,000 came from the
Enríquez cousins, 20,000 from Ortiz, and another 31,000 from a loan. The entire
return value had been 104,707 pesos and, after the loan had been deducted,
Enríquez Gómez calculated that he could claim two thirds of the remaining
73,707;
- 11,577 pesos in the bills of exchange left unpaid by one Luis Carnero and a cargo
from La Habana in 1648.146

Enríquez Gómez acknowledged that he had so far received 49,534 pesos from
Ortiz, namely:

- 19,500 sent ‘to the North’: this amount manifestly represented the provisions for
their wives and families, as mentioned by Francisco Luis;
- 20,284 given to ‘the one of Cadiz,’ presumably Francisco Luis, before he
emigrated to Peru;
- 3,100 paid for an unidentifiable ‘denunciation’ and roughly coinciding with the
money that Ortiz claims to have used to buy Enríquez’s share in the royal bond;
- 5,500 ‘for an account set in rrezo‘ (Seville?); and
- 1,150 that Ortiz had paid to his father-in-law in Granada.

It is remarkable that Enríquez Gómez allocated much more capital to his family
members than to himself. But Francisco Luis, who received the largest share, went
bankrupt despite the fortune that he took with him to Lima. By 1660 he had only 3,500
pesos left and became an ambulant trader between Cusco, San Antonio de Esquilache,
Arequipa and Sorata.147 It seems, however, that the cousins’ wives and daughters sensibly
invested their money in the Iberian colony of Antwerp. The Inquisition issued an arrest
warrant against them on 9 February 1665,148 but they were outside the tribunal’s

146
Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 537.
147
AHN, Inq., lib. 1139, fol. 318v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 601.
148
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 27r.
126
jurisdiction at that time and, it seems, were still being referred to as ‘Las Henriquez’ in
1666.149

By 1660, Enríquez Gómez’s financial situation in Seville had become desperate.

In spring that year, he sold most of his dramatic manuscripts to printers and
benefactors,150 while on 6 November 1660 he sued his half-brother Miguel for the money
that the latter, as previously mentioned, had received in 1647.151 Later Enríquez Gómez
sent a notarial demand to Juan de Cisneros, reminding him of the 1,500 pesos of old
debts.152 He was eagerly awaiting this sum in order to flee to Naples.153 Although
Cisneros sent him this amount, it did not arrive in time. The fleet landed in La Coruña on
16 September 1660,154 only a few days before the sheriff arrested Enríquez Gómez and
three younger relatives whom he was hosting in his Seville home. His situation was
aggravated by the fact that it was precisely during the years in which he fell from fortune
that his solidarity was more in demand than ever. The clientelar structures of the
enterprise had survived, but the young men were cut off from opportunities for
employment and marriage. When interrogated on 18 September 1663, Manuel Fernández
Villanueva was most explicit about the family solidarity that he, at age 44, still expected
from his second cousin:

This defendant lived constantly in France without interruption until June 1661,
when he went from Bidache to Madrid in search of a possibility to return to this
country and to live here in a place most convenient to him. […] He came here for
this reason, and because he had in Seville Antonio Enríquez, whom they call in
this city Don Fernando de Zárate ‘the Poet’ and who, he hoped, would
accommodate him because of the long acquaintance that the latter had had with
his parents and some consanguinity, though he does not know by which degree or
by whom, but he vaguely remembers having heard from his parents that they were
relatives. And when he came to Seville and searched for the said Antonio

149
I.S. Révah, "Pour l'histoire des marranes à Anvers: recensements de la 'Nation portugaise' de 1571 à 1666",
Revue des études juives 122 (1963) : 123–147, here : 145–147.
150
Wilke, Doppelleben, 383–384.
151
AHN, Inq., lib. 1127, fols. 356–358.
152
AHN, Inq, leg. 1872, no. 35, fol. 36r–v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 388.
153
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 14v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 579; Wilke, Doppelleben, 389–390.
154
Domínguez Ortiz, "Los caudales de Indias", 376.
127
 Enríquez, the latter told him that he was poor, yet he promised that he would
support him with some money that he hoped to receive from the Indies and that
he would [meanwhile] accommodate him.155

Antonio kept slightly better genealogical records since he believed that the
Villanueva brothers’ mother was a third cousin of his father (in fact, she was a first
cousin).156 His half-brother Esteban had benefited from the poet’s solidarity from early
on. On 5 October 1661, he described the crypto-Jewish customs of the household in
Rouen, with the records including the laconic statement: ‘And then he moved to Spain,
heading directly to Seville in search of his half-brother Antonio Enríquez Gómez, with
whom he has lived approximately twelve years in this city.’157 On 9 March 1662 Esteban
stated that during those long years he had corresponded with his sister-in-law, Isabel
Basurto, who resided in Antwerp, ‘and what these letters contained was his half-brother’s
state of health and that he was poor because Constantino Ortiz de Urbina did not want to
give him his property.’158 When interrogated on 12 October 1661, Constantino Ortiz
recalled that Esteban had come to Madrid some three years earlier ‘to ask him to support
the said Antonio Enríquez Gómez with alms, because he was dying of poverty, and the
declarant did not give him anything’.159 Antonio Enríquez’s former concubine, María
Felipa de Zárate y Hoces, also remembered those years of frustrated claims in an
interrogatory held with her on 3 April 1666:

Her husband Antonio Enríquez Gómez complained continuously of the bad

attitude that the said Constantino Ortiz had towards him. He used to say that the
latter had robbed him and that he owed him great sums of money; and he
frequently went on saying that God should not take his life before he could take
revenge on that thief, by which name he referred to the said Constantino Ortiz.160

155
AHN, Inq., leg. 147, no. 6; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 585 –586.
156
AHN, Inq., leg. 162, no. 495, fol. 17v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 573.
157
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 14r–v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 578.
158
AHN, Inq., lib. 1134, fol. 15v.
159
AHN, Inq., lib. 1127, fol. 359v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 570; Wilke, Doppelleben, 386.
160
AHN, Inq., leg. 79, no. 14, fol. 55v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 618.
128
 Ortiz, however, slightly outlived his father-in-law. He died in Madrid on 17 July
1664 and was given a solemn funeral.161 In that year, after Esteban was granted penance
and released by the Seville Inquisition, María Felipa showed him some notarial deeds
from her late consort’s papers and, since she was illiterate, asked Esteban to find out
whether these papers contained any open monetary claims. Esteban recognised that one
paper was about Constantino Ortiz’s debts and offered her to turn these into cash. She did
not know what came of this, however, because she then went to live in Granada. 162 The
Inquisition found out that Esteban had indeed travelled to Madrid and met Ortiz’s widow,
Tomasa García de Cevallos, who immediately alerted the tribunal. On 3 November 1664,
she declared:

He [Esteban] said to me that he had come to talk with me in secret on behalf of

that devil who is in Seville and who is the reason of all my troubles. What he
brought were some papers signed by Constantino for a quantity of 40,000 ducats
in favour of that evil man. He said that we could arrange it with a little sum, in
exchange for which he would hand over the papers, to which I replied that I would
rather be killed than do such a thing.163

The blatant hostility expressed by both sides takes us a long way from the mutual
trust that they had previously observed in their business, and that Constantino Ortiz
enthusiastically compared to a relationship between father and son. While both may have
exaggerated the reality in their own ways, it is also likely that the misunderstanding only
arose after 1651, when Ortiz considered their accounts to be settled, while Enríquez
Gómez continued to be obsessed with searching for unclaimed credit from his commercial
past.

Conclusion

The directors of a recent Spanish research project on Enríquez Gómez’s work

distinguished three explanations for his clandestine return to Spain: economic constraints,
national identity, and his reinsertion into the world of letters and theatrical

161
Archivo Parroquial de San Ginés, Madrid, Defunciones, lib. 10, fol. 349v; Wilke, Doppelleben, 408.
162
AHN, Inq., leg. 79, no. 14, fol. 55r; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 617.
163
AHN, Inq., leg. 79, no. 14, fol. 29r–v; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 610 –611.
129
representation.164 It seems to me that all three explanations need to be taken into
consideration and contextualised within the financial turmoil of 1649–1651.

There is no doubt, first, that Enríquez Gómez nourished a long-standing project

of return. He is known as ‘the Spaniard who has most profoundly lamented the loss of his
country and who like no other desired to return to it,’ wrote Vicente Llorens in 1948,
years before I.S. Révah demonstrated how the poet ended up fulfilling this ardent
desire.165 Knowing the tragic outcome of his itinerary, it is even more tempting to
interpret his actual return as a realisation of the fatal yearning for his homeland that he
expressed in his poetic anthology of 1642: ‘If by returning I could restore my fame, / I
would go back to dangerous Libya / because dying in my homeland would suffice for
me.’166 The approximate itinerary of his return trip, from Pamplona to Barahona, Alcalá
and Madrid, appears in detail in Enríquez’s satiric novella of 1647, which was published
in his Tower of Babylonia in May 1649, and which he, moreover, dedicated to the ‘women
inhabiting the Torre del Oro,’ which presumably means the port prostitutes of Seville.167
We should take into consideration, however, that his concerns as a patriot and a poet were
not shared by the other two returnees, who had grown up in France, and that even
Enríquez Gómez did not make any preparations for his return until very late on. Still on
the eve of his departure, he continued to engage in intense literary, social and juridical
efforts to remain part of the crypto-Jewish community in exile.

All these aspects seem to point to tactics of short-term commercial manoeuvring,

with the cousins’ defection representing a spontaneous, even panicked reaction to the
financial crisis resulting from the Norman Fronde in January or the Spanish confiscation
of assets in October. The three decided to flee when they had to choose between the luring
prospect of enjoying fabulous wealth in Spain and the alternative of seeing all their gains
engulfed by their French debts and losses. They thus applied a ready-made strategy of

164
Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez and Milagros Rodríguez Cáceres, Enríquez Gómez: política, sociedad,
literatura: Ensayos reunidos (Ciudad Real: Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha, 2020), 17–18.
165
Vicente Llorens, Estudios y ensayos sobre el exilio republicano en 1939, ed. Manuel Aznar Soler (Seville:
Renacimiento, 2006), 118.
166
Enríquez Gómez, Academias morales de las Musas (Bordeaux: Pierre de la Court, 1642): 66; Constance
H. Rose, “Antonio Enríquez Gómez and the Literature of Exile,” Romanische Forschungen 85 (1973): 63-
77, here: 77.
167
Enríquez Gómez, La Torre de Babilonia, VII, 174, 177; Wilke, Doppelleben, 354–355.
130
infidelity that they had practised or suffered on several previous occasions. Their
repatriation obeyed a recurrent pattern of moving capital across borders between warring
states, suddenly followed by the moving of its owner; of a family cluster breaking away
from a larger trade network; and of the migrants then deciding for themselves which
creditors to repay and which to defraud. What was different in Enríquez Gómez’s case
was that he moved from the north back to Spain and that he captured money from the
diaspora to live in his Catholic home country, while all the precedents mentioned above
were in the reverse direction.

However, short-term causes cannot explain the fundamental change that these
emigrants made in their lives. Third, a belated accommodation to constraints seems more
likely than a planned new life project. Francisco Luis affirms that Constantino Ortiz had
interrupted the correspondence when he learned about their insolvency, which had been
a fact since early February 1649. According to this version of events, he tried to force
them to return by withholding their assets, in the same game of attrition that Mora had
played thirteen years earlier with Enríquez Gómez. During the first two years after their
return, they actually left the decision open as to whether to stay in Spain or to return to
the diaspora. Jacques Guimarais chose the latter option, while, according to Ortiz,
Enríquez Gómez was still considering it in 1651. There may have been various reasons
for the latter’s final decision to stay: having enjoyed a year of leisure in Granada and
having resumed his writing for the theatrical stage, he knew that his wife and daughter
were endowed with sufficient subsistence even in his absence, while he was entering his
fifties in the company of a 23-year-old mistress and assembled a fine art collection for
her.168

Whether we associate this remigration with upward or downward social mobility,

with the fulfilment of social strategies or with disillusion is largely a matter of subjective
judgment. The two factors that this case study recommends prioritising are the transfers
of merchant capital and the solidity of kinship ties. Such ties are certainly no protection
against intra-familiar quarrels, as many cases in the seventeenth-century Jewish diaspora

168
AHN, Inq., leg. 2994, of 21 September 1661: "vnos quadros que tiene en su cassa son de D a Maria de
oces, vna muger que le asistia y seruia"; Révah, Enríquez Gómez, 565.
131
show.169 However, the threat of financial infidelity was much restricted through
consanguinity and marriage. If, therefore, defection was attractive and feasible for the
Enríquez cousins in late 1649, one reason for this was the condition in which their family
cluster found itself due to its failure to secure high-level Portuguese alliances in the years
preceding the repatriation, the reduction of previous alliances to one, the Guimarais, the
lack of marriageable women and abundance of unattached males.

While this scarcity of family attachments, both existing and potential, may have
been a symptom rather than a cause of their marginal state within the nação, the reason
for this marginality, whose effects were sudden and convulsive, go back deeply into
family history. The importance of cultural socialisation and identification should thus not
entirely be dismissed. Long-term factors of a social, religious, linguistic and
ethnonational character can be held responsible for the precarity of this Castilian family’s
integration into the merchant network of the Portuguese Nation. And when the quantity
and quality of family links dwindled, it became hard to resist the short-term economic
pull-factors created by the massive debt in France and the equally massive credit in Spain.
This extreme disequilibrium of financial prospects activated a latent return strategy and
subverted the fragile fabric of the hybrid Castilian-Portuguese diaspora network, ruining
all but the innermost core that had been forged by the great-grandparents in a village of
La Mancha.

169
Lydia Hagoort, “The Del Sottos, a Portuguese Jewish Family in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century,”
Studia Rosenthaliana 31, 1–2 (1997): 31–57; Daniel Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: the Portuguese
Jews of Seventeenth Century Amsterdam (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 252–
259.
132
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Archives départementales de la Gironde (ADG, Bordeaux), 3E-15239, 15240, 15242.

Archives départementales de la Loire Atlantique (ADLA, Nantes), 4E-2/100.

Archives départementales de la Seine Maritime (ADSM, Rouen), 1B-1072, 2E-1/1168,

1170, 2372, 2381, 2382, 2385, 2387, 2391, 2392, 2458, 2692, 201BP-343.

Archives nationales (AN, Paris), ét. XXX, vol. 35; ét. XXXIX, vol. 84; ét. LXI, vols. 208,
211; ét. LXXXI, vols. 19, 22.

Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN, Madrid), Inquisición, leg. 79, 145, 147, 162, 420,
1648, 1872, 1875, 2067, 2195, 2563, 2984, 2985, 2994; lib. 692, 693, 1103, 1105, 1113,
1114, 1115, 1116, 1127, 1129, 1134, 1139, 1326.

Archivo Parroquial de San Ginés (Madrid), Defunciones, lib. 10.

Archivos Diocesanos de Cuenca (ADC, Cuenca), Inquisición, leg. 377, no. 5339bis; leg.
399, no. 5660.

Bibliothèque de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris), Archives privées, AP 39 Fonds

I.S. Révah, Box 26.

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 Chapter 5. Subjects and Objects on the Move: Settlement and Survival of
the Portuguese Jews in the Caribbean (Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries)

ANA LEITÃO

Introduction
Dealing with judicial sources and, more specifically, documentary evidence provides a
different perspective – from below – on the nature of human relationships, everyday life
and communication resources, even in an environment of scarce literary competences and
limited materials or while individuals were under surveillance. As part of the Post
Scriptum project,1 where I conducted my post-PhD research, thousands of private letters
were analysed for the purposes of studying properties of the Portuguese language over
the centuries. The focus was on informal discourse evidence, including evidence from
Portuguese inquisitorial records, with many of these records emanating from unexplored
Jewish/New Christian sources. The resultant linguistic corpus can be used, besides the
properties of the language itself, as the basis for arriving at a better understanding of the
context of the letters and their interlocutors, with the involvement of historians alongside
linguists being crucial for a more comprehensive scenario. While researching the
Portuguese letters, we came across many from New Christians among the inquisitorial
proceedings, as well as the Jewish letters kept in the National Archives at Kew (UK).
Although we obviously do not see the same individuals in space and over time, the
diaspora of some of the families and individuals who successfully evaded inquisitorial
justice in the Portuguese empire can nevertheless be followed.

An analysis of the Prize Papers series, including 1,100 boxes of papers relating to
ships captured in times of war (1652–1832) and held in the High Court of Admiralty and
colonial Vice-Admiralty Court records in the UK National Archives, identified a huge

1
Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna
(7FP/ERC Advanced Grant – GA 295562), coordinated by Rita Marquilhas (2012 – 2017), at the Center of
Linguistics - University of Lisbon.
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volume of correspondence, including around 160,000 letters, of which some 16,000 are
private letters. Thanks to the Post Scriptum project’s research in these archives, it was
possible to identify several dozens of letters exchanged by Iberian Jews settled in the
Caribbean and on the Wild Coast. The fact that such findings were possible is the
consequence, indirectly, of Cromwell’s maritime navigation constraints, which forbade
the establishing of trade relations between English colonies and Holland, Spain, France
and their overseas territories. As a result, several ships were captured in open seas because
of English suspicions that Jewish communities settled in those regions were trading goods
and sharing sensitive information with the Dutch to the disadvantage of the English
Crown.

Thanks to this series we were able to gain access to correspondence exchanged by

Portuguese and Spanish Jews settled in the Dutch colonies of Suriname (in the 1670s) –
comprising forty letters in Portuguese and sixteen in Spanish – and Curaçao (in the 1780s)
– comprising six letters in Spanish and four in Portuguese. Most of these letters were
addressed to people in Amsterdam, one of the major financial capitals of Europe, while a
few were addressed to recipients in Middelburg, Brussels, Bordeaux or Ghent. These
correspondences provide a wealth of detail on everyday life and circulations of
individuals, raw materials and convenience or other goods, as well as conveying the
writers’ fears of losing everything they exchanged, including contacts with their relatives
and business partners. On the other hand, the contents of these correspondences reflect
how the Jewish communities had to deal with the English Crown’s constant suspicions
that they were trading goods and sharing sensitive information with the Dutch.

A closer look at the letters and their interlocutors shows not only the struggles
faced by individuals, but also episodes in the lives of the Jewish Iberian communities
overseas, whose origins and paths were still strongly connected to the Iberian territories,
and who operated in large networks where commercial and familiar ties were often
difficult to separate. From these sources, a research question emerged: at what point can
similarities be found in the way that emotions, information and material assets were
conveyed between Portuguese Jews or Conversos under closer surveillance?

This article aims to provide a brief overview of the correspondence exchanged

within the networks of Sephardic settlers in the Dutch colonies on the Wild Coast and in
the Caribbean and that ended up in judicial records, with this correspondence being

141
compared to various ego documents found in the Portuguese inquisitorial records
concerning New Christians and Jews and to other letter-writing contexts in the
Mediterranean. The main objective is to deepen our understanding of how private
correspondence ensured the maintenance of affective ties and reciprocal obligations, even
in the most dramatic circumstances. At what level was private letter-writing crucial in
ensuring the success of Jewish trading networks? How were trans-regional family ties
challenged by difficulties attributable both to geographical distance and to being under
surveillance, as well as by the possibility of letters being seized and other possible
constraints? Lastly, in the diaspora context, was there a Jewish identity that transcended
locality and remained closely connected to roots in the Mediterranean and other past
locations?

Subjects
The improvement in the Atlantic trade conditions and the increased price of sugar in the
1630s and 1640s encouraged the expansion of production to the Caribbean at a time when
the Brazilian sugar trade was suffering the impact of action taken by France and England,
specifically the English navigation laws, and Colbert’s policies in France2. After leaving
Pernambuco in 1654, therefore, it was a natural choice for the Dutch West India Company
to seek to expand sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

The Anglo-Dutch wars were a period of intense cleavage between these two
European powers. Supervising the navigation routes of vessels going to or from Holland
on behalf of Jews gave the English (and later British) government the opportunity to
deprive the Dutch of their commercial advantages, while English commercial relations
were at stake at a transnational level3, as was their sovereignty in the Caribbean. But
despite these circumstances, there was still considerable interaction between the
Sephardic settlers and their European contacts during the Third Anglo-Dutch Maritime
War (in the 1670s), as well as around the time of the American Revolutionary War (in
the 1780s). Even though they were under surveillance and their goods could be seized,

2
Stuart Schwartz, “A ‘Babilónia’ colonial: a economia açucareira”, in História de Expansão Portuguesa,
eds. Francisco Bethencourt, Kirti Chaudhuri (Lisboa: Círculo dos Leitores, 1998), 217.
3
Jonathan Schorsch, “Sephardic Business: Early Modern Atlantic Style”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 100,
No. 3 (Summer 2010): 483–503.
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the terms to which the Sephardic settlers were subject were very different from those
applying during the periods of religious persecution in the Iberian societies: on the Wild
Coast and in the Caribbean, it was a matter of sovereignty, and these settlers had the
misfortune to be caught in an iron fist between two empires. Indeed, on the English side,
the aggression was more anti-Dutch than anti-Jewish, although not everyone was in
favour of aggressive colonial action against Dutch interests:

Merchants engaged in the west African trade were already vocal about the need
to curb Dutch malpractices, but mercantile opinion in general had been sobered
by the heavy losses of vessels and the paralysis of trade caused by Cromwell’s
aggressive Spanish War4.

The portrait of the letter-writers and their interlocutors in the broad network
emerging from the Prize Papers reveals many details about the lives of sugar mill and
plantation owners, for example, as well as details of the familiar and friendship ties
binding these individuals to various European cities, but also to Brazil and even to Iberia,
from where many families had had to flee. These individuals played an important role in
the Sephardic mercantile network, with some of them circulating in the territories of the
Dutch Wild Coast and the Caribbean. We also find details of women in control of land,
while correspondence from Suriname in the 1670s testifies to the presence of the first
Jewish land owners settled in what became known as the Jodensavanne.

Indeed, the Dutch territories of Suriname and Curaçao benefited from the Jewish
settlements from the mid-seventeenth century onwards; being focused on sugar
production and plantation life meant they could put their experience gained in other
territories to good use. It was not only their expertise as sugar cane mill owners on, for
instance, the islands of Madeira and São Tomé, as well as in Dutch Brazil, that was of
great value, but also their longstanding experience in trade, dating back to the pre-
diaspora times in the Iberian Peninsula. Although the analysed sources provide only a few
details of daily life in the slave and plantation societies of Suriname or Curaçao, they
certainly add a more personal and emotional perspective on the circumstances in which
these Sephardic settlers were living.

4
J. R. Jones, The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1996), 90.
143
 It is important to note, in the case of Suriname, that the efforts by David Cohen
Nassi and Abraham Drago – to name but a few – to establish a Jewish presence in certain
areas of the Caribbean were aimed at finding a solution for the ‘growing number of
impoverished Jews in the Northern Netherlands, where large numbers of persecuted Jews
were arriving from Eastern Europe around the same time that Jews returned from the lost
colony of Dutch Brazil.’5

As Schreuder argued, ‘Sephardic merchants remained engaged in the Atlantic

sugar trade and were prepared to relocate and realign with different European imperial
powers as circumstances dictated or as opportunities occurred’6. The Navarro family is a
good example in this respect: Rodrigo Fernandes, a trader of wool and tobacco, and his
wife, Sara Navarro, were Portuguese New Christians living in Oporto until 1618, when
they were forced to flee to Amsterdam. Their eldest son, Isaac Navarro, was already
trading with Brazil from Amsterdam in 1645 and, at some point, moved to Recife. After
the Dutch lost this colony, he moved to Curaçao in 1659–60, while his brother Arão
settled in Suriname before later moving to Barbados7.

The letters analysed here testify to the efforts undertaken by several Jewish
families to establish networks for the trading and exploration of sugar cane, and that these
networks played a significant role in helping transatlantic mercantile activities to flourish.
With respect to the profiles of the authors in these communicative exchanges, the arrested
couriers attest to how the Sephardic settlers were equally dedicated to the planting of
sugar cane as they were to being merchants or mill owners. Here may lie the solution to
the paradox surrounding the profitability of the sugar industry, evoked in particular by
Johnson and Nizza da Silva8 while debating the situation of colonial Brazil: keeping the
business in the family enabled a balance to be ensured between the high costs of the mill
and the profits obtained in the mercantile sector.

5
Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch
America, 1650s and 1660s”, in Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of
Mercantilism, 1500–1800, eds. R. Kagan, P. Morgan (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 34.
6
Ida Schreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) 28.
7
Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneur”, 34–37.
8
Harold Johnson and Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva (eds.), Nova história da expansão portuguesa - O império
luso-brasileiro 1500-1620, vol. VI (Lisboa: Ed. Estampa, 1992), 273 – 276.
144
 On the other hand, these circumstances arose alongside a significant change in the
existing commercial model, with the Antillean areas becoming increasingly valuable
from the 1670s onwards.9

But who were these letter writers? The 56 letters from Suriname (1671–1672) may
reflect the situation of several waves of Jewish settlers of Portuguese and Spanish origin,
among which we can find families playing a particularly important role in the community.
In the case of the Portuguese speakers, the patronymic names commonly found were
Nassi, Baruch, Brito, Costa, Arias, Avelar, Mesa, Cid and Silva, while those in the case
of the Spanish speakers were Fonseca, Pereira, de la Parra, Montesinos and de Prado,
with the Castaños and the Zamora demonstrating being fluent in both Portuguese and
Spanish.

One piece of material evidence of their presence in these colonial territories can be
found in a Dutch map, the Caerte ofte vertooninge vande Rivieren van Suriname (1667),10
which shows six Jewish plantations in the wide area that became known as the
Jodensavanne (Jewish Savannah). This document provides clear evidence of the spatial
distribution of various Sephardic settlers: Cáceres, Pereira, Silva and Mesa, possibly
coming from the Guyanas.

In the case of the Jewish letter-writers from Curaçao, the Portuguese speakers had
patronymics such as Maduro, Pardo/Brown and Aboab, while those of the Spanish
speakers were Fonseca (once again), Morales and Taboada. We can recognise several
influential families among this large group of senders and recipients, including the Nassi
and Drago families, represented by David Cohen Nassi (aka José Nunes de Fonseca, or
Cristóvão de Távora) and Abraão Drago. These families were responsible for mobilising
many conversos and Jews settled in Dutch Brazil or the Netherlands to move to the
Caribbean in the 1650s and 1660s11. On the other hand, the West India Company also
needed to safeguard the development of the Dutch overseas possessions by promoting
plantations and increasing transatlantic trade.

9
Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998).
10
John Carter Brown Library (USA), Cabinet Blathwayt 39, file no. 8189-39.
11
Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneur”, 34.
145
 The letters from the Prize Papers corroborate how significant numbers of Jews
from the Iberian matrix moved to settle on the Wild Coast and in the Caribbean at a time
when the Portuguese and the Spanish inquisitions were particularly active in persecuting
Jews and conversos. Besides challenging, adventures in the New World could also be
very attractive12. The new communities in the Caribbean ‘included former New Christians
freshly arrived from Iberia who were unfamiliar with rabbinic traditions and who
continued to speak and read Portuguese or Spanish in islands where Dutch or English was
dominant’13.

The geographical distribution of settlements at locations of strategic importance

for the flow of raw materials and their commercialisation led us to consider the concept
of ‘port Jews’. Several Jewish communities were found to have flourished not only at
important port locations, but also to have been involved in mediation activities operating
by river. During the 1700s, for instance, Curaçao housed the richest and second-largest
Jewish community in the Americas14. Meanwhile Cesarani15 observes how their
permanence in such trading posts – between the land and the sea, and on a local or global
scale – showed the diasporic networks’ strong sense of pragmatism and recognition of
the increased value of past overseas experience (in trading and in operating plantations
and sugar mills, for instance).

Sephardic voices through judicial archives: different perspectives?

The contents of such ego documents naturally vary, depending on the circumstances.
Nevertheless, there are some aspects they have in common, beginning with the fact that
these communications were subject to severe restrictions: flowing in an environment
under surveillance and subject to constant disruption, with seizures of mail and

12
Aviva Ben-Ur, “Distingués des autres Juifs:’ les Séfarades des Caraïbes ('Distinguished from Other Jews:'
Sephardim in the Caribbean)”, in Le Monde sépharade: histoire et civilization, Vol. I, ed. Shmuel Trigano
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006), 279-328; here 307.
13
Gérard Nahon, “Amsterdam and the Portuguese Nação of the Caribbean in the eighteenth century”, in The
Jews in the Caribbean, ed. Jane S. Gerber (Oxford: Littman Library, 2014), 72.
14
Aviva Ben-Ur, “Distingués des autres Juifs”, 304.
15
David Cesarini, “Port Jews: concepts, cases and questions”, in Port Jews: Jewish Communities in
Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550-1950, ed. David Cesarini (New York: Frank Cass Publishers,
2002), 1-11.
146
disclosures to third parties being frequent. From an emotional perspective, letter-writing
was critical for maintaining identity, for surviving in times of anger, hate or war and when
falling victim to varying degrees of anti-Jewishness. Here, therefore, lies the general value
of these informal sources found in judicial proceedings, given that they express more
clearly how the intervenient felt about such obstacles.

Before turning to the information from private sources of Jews settled on the Wild
Coast and in the Caribbean, with the Mediterranean as their starting point, it may be
helpful to compare attitudes and descriptions, written in the first person, of survival in
other intercontinental spaces. We can consider, for instance, a brief overview of correlated
sources relating to Jews of the Iberian matrix at a time when they were being persecuted
by the Holy Office.

Once knowledge of secret communications began to become evident in the

inquisitorial prisons of Lisbon, Évora and Coimbra (mainly during the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries), the judicial authorities became very concerned owing to the
absolute need to keep these proceedings secret16. Prisoners persevered in seeking to
overcome the obstacles hindering the production, circulation and reception of messages
and found ways to be successful: certain goods were wrapped in paper and cloth, while
chicken feathers were used as writing tools, with charcoal as ink, and pots and other
kitchenware were used to conceal messages, with cats being used as messengers. But
despite these clever and quite risky measures, various marginal correspondence
nevertheless ended up being seized, scrupulously examined and, finally, attached to legal
proceedings17.

Regarding the specific case of the Portuguese Jews and New Christians, judicial
officers frequently had to overcome various obstacles when seeking to understand
exchanged messages, whether oral or written. These obstacles could relate to the sender
or the intended recipient, especially if the source was anonymous; to other actors involved
in the writing and sending of the message; and finally, to the message itself, which may

16
Antonio Castillo Gómez, “Escrito en prisión. Las escrituras carcelarias en los siglos XVI y XVII”,
Península. Revista de Estudos Ibéricos, No. 0 (2003): 147-170.
17
Ana Leitão, "Escrita à Prova ou a Pena por Espada: Manuscritos subversivos e Inquisição Portuguesa (Sécs.
XVI-XIX)", in III Simpósio Internacional de Estudos Inquisitoriais: novas fronteiras [Anais electrónicos],
eds. Couto et al., 2016.
147
have been written in a different language (Hebrew, Latin or Ladino, for example) or using
symbols or an alphanumeric code. Furthermore, a lack or the poor quality of reference
chains could leave the reader or listener with anything but a clear understanding, while a
physical medium or technique may also have been used to make the message undetectable
(such as using lemon juice as invisible ink).

Although it is not always easy to clearly understand the reasons why such
documents were selected and attached in judicial proceedings, they nevertheless provided
data sufficiently relevant to ensure someone’s conviction. On the other hand, and
particularly in the context of the persecution of the Portuguese Jews, the use of private
correspondence proved to play a crucial role in reconstructing human networks and,
consequently, seizing more suspects.

Besides the material aspects, discourse analysis can also be useful in shedding
light on the emotional perspective and how it contributed to maintaining an identity under
threat. Indeed, it is possible to identify both verbal and non-verbal strategies used by
intervenients, mainly in the details described by guards and in complaints made by
cellmates. Messages could also frequently preserve an author’s identity or hide meaning,
with an economic use of words and the use of figures of speech obviously being key to
ensuring success in such marginal interactions. In the end, both strategies worked, given
that the codes could be deciphered only by those who shared insider knowledge.

While the ‘beef pot strategy’ was well known among prisoners, it went awry for
one imprisoned doctor, Miguel Nunes, aged 33, who was convicted for persevering in
practicing the Law of Moses. Despite knowing the risks, he wanted to comfort his wife
and so sent her a short note via this route on 28 January 1601. On the same day, the guards
intercepted the small, wrapped paper – written on a page of a book18 – in the inquisitorial
prison at Coimbra. There were no doubts as to its authorship, and the addressee, who was
being held in the exact same prison, was soon revealed. In addition, there was a strong
suspicion about the delivery of several other notes and oral warnings in Latin, either
giving hope to other conversos or revealing details of judicial procedures.

Certain common features of the genre can be observed in the message. On the one
hand, the context clearly affects the quality of the discourse and leads to linguistic

18
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. (file) 889.
148
economy, thus making the contents difficult to interpret. On the other hand, the absence
of punctuation and capital letters – possibly because of having to write during a very short
period and leading to less careful writing – also compromised understanding. Here is a
revised version of Nunes’ letter, preserving the original contents:

Send me a sign if this is delivered, so that I can rest. Be patient. When was the
day, if someone else came. About the cans, nothing, nothing, nothing, it’s very,
very well and it will be. I’m afraid the wound came from the imprisoned guard or
from outside. Sincerely yours until death.19

This message, too, suggests the existence of verbal/non-verbal resources (the

‘sign’), linguistic resources (the sentences’ juxtaposition, the repetition of words and the
absence of certain points of reference in the speech) and strategic resources in this
couple’s interaction. The author also uses a remarkable variety of forms of speech, given
the dimension of the note: there is a demand, an encouragement, an inquiry about two
issues, gratitude and some news. After all, this was an opportunity too precious to be
missed.

This interaction does not differ very much from the interaction reported to have
taken place in the same prison around 1600. Ana Fernandes20, aged 52, was married to a
tax collector. She and her two sons, Brás21 and Diogo, were persecuted and imprisoned,
but not at the same time. Once again, this was an interaction driven by familial motives
and concerns between New Christians. The messages exchanged were very brief and
followed previous attempts at contact in which the mother and son had tried to reach each
other, without raising the guards’ suspicion, through non-verbal interactions in which the
exchange of specific objects confirmed the identity of the sender (Ana) to the addressee

19
The original message was the following: “Mandai sinal se é este dado, para que repouse. Paciência. Quando
foi o dia, se veio mais alguém. Das conservas nada, nada, nada, está muito, muito bem, e estará. Temo que a
ferida veio do guarda preso, ou lá de fora. / Verdadeiro até [à] morte.” ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc.
(file) 889, folio [13A front and reverse], accessed February 15, 2022,
https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2350578 A full transcription is available at: “PS1012 - [1601]. Bilhete
de [Miguel Nunes, médico] para [a mulher, Isabel Dias].”, accessed February 16, 2022,
http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=edit&cid=PS1012
20
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 2398. Digitized file at: “Processo de Ana Fernandes”, accessed
February 10, 2022, https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2352205
21
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 2397.
149
(her 30-year-old son Diogo22), not only inside all sorts of kitchen utensils, but also inside
food: eggs, onions23, meat, among other possibilities.24

The circumstances of the writings found in the Prize Papers are quite different:
not facing religious persecution, the subjects make no efforts to hide their Jewish names,
and do not display the same quality of strategies designed to conceal identity, or veiled
transmission of messages through ciphers, invisible ink or economy of wording.
However, these correspondences are generally unclear on the status of New Christians
and other biases against being Jewish. In addition, it is hard to know – other than through
the use of Jewish surnames – whether their relations and networks differed depending on
their identity; in other words, depending on whether they were crypto-Jews, Judaizers or
simply, as portrayed by Schorsch25, New Christians who considered themselves Jews and
behaved in accordance with whatever they knew of Judaism. In turn, however, the
writings in both situations constituted and were preserved as documentary evidence that
came to be used as incriminating. From a discursive point of view, too, the writings were
often capable of conveying comparable emotions, as we will see later.

Their seizures of Dutch vessels resulted in the English and later British authorities
becoming aware of a considerable amount of correspondence, mainly on business, but
also on personal matters, written in Dutch, Portuguese, English, Spanish, Yiddish or
French. The seizure of several ships in open seas resulted in the loss of goods and money,
and prejudiced long-distance communications. For the English, the vessel’s cargo and,
therefore, all the written material on board served as documentary evidence of goods

22
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 37.
23
In the file of Diogo Rodigues, son of Ana Fernandes, there are three small messages that were found inside
an onion, placed inside a pan that came from his prison cell. ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 37, fls.
19a to c.
24
The judicial authorities’ analysis of such manuscripts was fraught with difficulties. As in this case,
manuscripts were often made of easily degradable material, with handwriting that was difficult to read, and
displayed notoriously bad syntax, spelling and discursive consistency. Ana Fernandes’ messages present a
peculiar handwriting and are not easy to decipher, which shows how poor her writing skills were. When
asked, her son Diogo claimed that she was illiterate in an attempt to avoid a more severe punishment and to
keep further interactions secret. However, the evidence was strong enough to prove the opposite.
25
Jonathan Schorsch, “New Christian Slave Traders: A Literature Review and Research Agenda”, in The
Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives, eds. Sina Rauschenbach and Jonathan
Schorsch (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 34.
150
being smuggled on the open seas. Besides the expected judicial effects through the action
of the High Court of Admiralty, the English and later British arrest policy could also be
an important strategy in terms of destabilising the Dutch settlements and fragmenting the
Jewish networks.

The Jewish letters in the archive series under analysis are not only examples of
mercantile correspondence within certain Jewish trade networks between the Caribbean
and Europe, but also constitute the majority of the correspondence, such that:

[…] the Prize Papers offer new sources related to trade and commerce, including
large caches of business letters, account books and the like. These do more than
just supplement more quantitative sources; they offer a window into the culture,
the social networks and legal and political manipulations (especially manipulation
of the laws of neutrality) that constituted trade […] [and] often preserve
correspondence to and from quite humble participants in the great diaspora that
was European global trade and settlement in the early modern period.26

The discursive contents of the letters, as well as the strategies used, challenge us
to decode what is transmitted, the situational context (i.e. where each one was written and
the predicted conditions of its transmission) and, of course, their objectives. As part of
the Post Scriptum Project, some one hundred private letters written in Portuguese or
Spanish were collected between 2014 and 2016 and have now become part of this
historical-linguistic corpus.27

This Sephardic private correspondence from the Prize Papers sheds light on
individual and family lives and ties – both direct and indirect, and present and absent –
and on strategies of belonging. At this level, written communications within these social
networks can be very clear on hierarchies, possessions, ideals and affections.

26
“All At Sea: The Prize Papers as a Source for a Global Microhistory – conference report”, accessed June
28, 2021, https://uol.de/f/4/inst/geschichte/download/All_At_Sea_Whole_Conference_Report_.pdf
27
All sort of epistolary writings by authors from different social backgrounds and with different literacy
levels can be found here. Such documents survived by chance, mainly because their paths happened to cross
the means of persecution used by the Inquisition or the ecclesiastical, military or civil courts; in other words,
those institutions that used private correspondence as criminal evidence. Our findings can be seen at: “P.S.
Post Scriptum: A Digital Archive of Ordinary Writing (Early Modern Portugal and Spain)”, accessed
February 1, 2022, http://ps.clul.ul.pt/pt/index.php.
151
 The letters were mainly produced shortly before vessels departed, as clearly
mentioned in several cases, and this sense of a convenient epistolary opportunity was very
common during the early modern period28. Knowing that a ship was soon to depart for
Europe, individuals would hurriedly write multiple letters on a single day and sometimes
during the days that followed. A single envelope could also carry more than one letter,
and so a single letter would generally reach further than delivering news and information
to just the specific addressee.

Among the personal epistolary writings analysed, the main goals consisted in
more than just a desire to nurture social networks. From an emotional perspective, it
seems quite clear how the Jews and conversos who settled in these Dutch territories
manifested a sense of belonging and of wanting to preserve ties despite the diasporic
context, but also a sense of displacement and of trying to survive the effects of another
sort of exile; in other words, both hope and despair in the face of adversities, ranging from
a variety of local limitations to long-distance obstacles. From an emotional point of view,
such features were not exclusive to these subjects settled in this corner of the Dutch
overseas empire. Consider, for example, a family of Jewish entrepreneurs in the
Mediterranean in the eighteenth century. Bregoli studied the private correspondence of
Joseph Franchetti in the context of the Salomone Enriches & Joseph Franchetti company,
a family-based trading firm with interests in Tunis, Livorno and Smyrna, and stated that:

These letters offer a glimpse into personal, often fraught exchanges between
relatives who knew each other well and did business together, thus shedding light on a
little studied, but common aspect of eighteenth-century Jewish life: the emotional
relations and tensions between close relatives in transnational merchant families divided
by great geographical distance. 29

Although the exchanges were between Franchetti and various partners and
associates, these partners and associates included some of his relatives, such as his young
sons and his brother-in-law. In this case we can also observe a strategy commonly
deployed by many Jewish families and involving male members of the immediate

28
Lindsay O’Neill, The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 78.
29
Francesca Bregoli, “Emotions and Business in a Trans-Mediterranean Jewish Household”, in History of
Emotions/Emotions in History, Vol. 13 (New York: Fordham University, 2016), 121.
152
household being dispatched abroad to secure, for instance, the company’s commercial
position in distant markets or to ensure the family’s participation in other ways. As
Bregoli stated30:

Joseph’s eldest child, Abraham, remained with his father in Tunis, but his younger
sons were sent to learn the trade not long after reaching the age of majority.
Reuben left home in 1771, at 14, first for Livorno, and later for Smyrna, where he
worked with his uncle Benjamin Baruch. Judah left for Smyrna in May 1778 (at
18) to become a clerk, the first step in his mercantile apprenticeship. Isaac, the
youngest son, was sent to Livorno during the same year, at 15, to pursue the same
education.

Letter-writing could be an obligation, such as when serving a need to discuss

business arrangements, to exchange all sort of news and information about the family, to
expose misconduct and to prevent future actions. If these letters are compared with the
ego documents found in the inquisitorial proceedings, we can see that the purposes of
certain messages coincided. Back to the Franchetti case, in respect of which Bregoli
stated31:

In the impossibility of bridging the distance that kept them apart, letters allowed
Franchetti to maintain contact with his children. Indeed, correspondence was one
of the key avenues for families to teach shared values across space, reinforcing
rights and stressing obligations and duties; as David Cressy put it in his now
classic discussion of seventeenth-century transatlantic communication, letters
provided ‘an emotional lifeline […] that stretched across the wide ocean to inform,
comfort or persuade kinsmen and friends on the other side.’

On the other hand, these ego documents also served as a form of liberation by
expressing obstacles experienced on a day-to-day basis in those territories, what the
writers were feeling, the harsh circumstances of their lives as settlers, their homesickness,
and their wish to know more about the situation in northeastern Brazil and even in the
Iberian Peninsula. Such, for instance, was the case for Leonor de Brito, who wrote to her

30
Francesca Bregoli, “Emotions and Business”, 121–122.
31
Francesca Bregoli, “Emotions and Business”, 122.
153
merchant cousin José Pessoa in Lisbon. Her letter of 2 September 1672 32 shows her as
recognising that life in Suriname was like being in exile, while also regretting the distance
separating her from all her relatives – who still lived in Portugal or Brazil, certainly as
New Christians – and also her cousin’s long silence, despite her having written to him so
many times. What she did not know is that her cousin was already suffering inquisitorial
persecution, having been arrested in May and accused of Judaism.

Despite being one of only a few examples of Sephardic women’s letters from the
Caribbean, this letter undoubtedly constitutes important evidence of the social relevance
that a woman could have in the business world, in addition to her entrepreneurial qualities
and autonomous character, during the early modern period.

When finishing the letter, the author added one final request: ‘If your mercy has
any news from Bahia, please let me know something about the rest of what is there.’ As
her letter shows, Leonor de Brito was clearly connected to this Portuguese overseas
territory, and so her concerns could have been at an economic level, or regarding her
contacts who remained there, even several decades after the Dutch departed from the
Brazilian Northeast.

Another interesting letter came from Isaac Arias, a plantation owner settled in
Suriname. This was written on 10 September 1672 to his brother Jacob de Aguilar, living
in Amsterdam.33 Isaac was not the kind of person to demand different things from
different people in a single letter. As he declared, he preferred to address each request
separately. But there was an interesting main goal in this text: his wish to find out more
about the background of a certain individual, João Machado, a New Christian with several
relatives (whose names he refers to clearly and unequivocally) still living in Iberia or in
other corners of the Portuguese overseas empire. This was a mission to be undertaken
with the utmost secrecy, so as not to arouse the slightest suspicion:

And, without Machado’s knowledge, you will do me the favour of providing full
and well-developed information on who he is, without harming his relatives that

32
“PSCR1481 - 1672. Carta de Leonor de Brito para José Pessoa, [mercador] ”, accessed october 29, 2021,
http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=edit&cid=PSCR1481.
33
“PSCR1486 - 1672. Carta de Isaac Arias, [dono de plantação], para o irmão, Jacob de Aguilar”, accessed
November 7, 2021, http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=edit&cid=PSCR1486.
154
 he still has in Lisbon. (...) And he, the so-called João Machado, was sent to Angola
when he was 20 years old. So I ask for your mercy, because I care to know if he
is who he claims to be or if he has ambitions in another way. I hope you can give
me all the information with caution and let me know on the first occasion and on
the following two or three, because if one doesn’t arrive, [the other may] arrive.34

In this personal correspondence, the epistolary discourse is primarily dominated

by the transmission of news, information of all sorts and specific demands. In the case of
the letters from Suriname, since they were produced in the first period of the Jewish
settlement, the information required was crucial for daily needs, as in the case of the letter
written by Raquel da Silva to her sister, Rifeca del Sotto. In this letter Raquel shows the
effects of being apart from some relatives who were still with Rifeca in Amsterdam. 35
Those contacts in Europe were also precious for gaining access to proper clothes and
accessories of good quality, such as lace. That was partly why Raquel had previously sent
some muscovado sugar to be used to produce income. She apologised for the
inconvenience and for these sorts of demands being quite frequent, but living in Suriname
was to her – and many others – like being in a desert, compared to life in a city such as
Amsterdam.

Allusions to the war, the wish for peace and the constant fear of the coastal zone
being attacked by pirates are also very present in these letters, in addition to fears about
the arrival of the English and French, new allies in the Third Anglo-Dutch War36. In that
same letter, Raquel da Silva is very clear about the war and her fear of not knowing what
to expect in the future. She also transmitted this fear to her brother, Abraão del Sotto,
although in more detail and conveying that this was the predominant feeling in the colony:

… we are very worried and very afraid of the war, for not knowing any news, for
not having come by ship so far, nor knowing whether these English or French

35
“PSCR1473 - 1672. Carta de Raquel da Silva para a irmã, Refica del Sotto.”, accessed november 7, 2021,
http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=file&cid=xmlfiles/Revistas/ModernizadasTeitok/a
notadas_PT/PSCR1473.xml.
36
J. R. Jones, The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century, 179.
155
 gentlemen will see us, with which the whole colony is very frightened. God forbid
and help us escape from the hands of our enemies.37

These were, without doubt, challenging times, with individuals able to do little
more than hope that goods and letters would cross the Atlantic smoothly. In fact, these
letters from Suriname were written just before peace talks were concluded between
England and the Netherlands in 167438 and so the possibility of trade and economic
cooperation between the two countries was on the horizon. Nevertheless, it should be
noted that this correspondence is not entirely clear about smuggling, given that the
contents of the letters do not make a clear distinction between licit and illicit trade
involving, for instance, Sephardic traders in North America and the Caribbean in the
period 1688–1783.39

We can observe an understandable and constant worry about the safety of raw and
muscovado sugar exports in the letters from Suriname in 1671–72 as these exports still
entailed considerable investments and were to become even more profitable during the
subsequent years.

The increasing consumer demand for sugar in the seventeenth century was
matched by increased investments in the refining industry in Amsterdam, with sugar
becoming the preferred sweetener for tea and coffee and being distilled as an alcoholic
beverage in the form of rum40.

In Suriname itself, however, goods and supplies were in very short supply, both
supplies for the most common everyday needs, and even supplies needed to operate mills
and plantations. In this sense, horses imported from Europe, particularly breeding horses,
were very valuable, but not always easy to obtain and to keep alive in Suriname. We

37
”PSCR1474 - [1672]. Carta de Raquel da Silva para o irmão, Abraão del Sotto”, accessed November 8,
2021,http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=edit&cid=Revistas/ModernizadasTeitok/anot
adas_PT/PSCR1474.xml&tpl=long.
38
Kenneth Morgan, “Anglo-Dutch Economic Relations in the Atlantic World, 1688–1783”, in Dutch Atlantic
Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders, eds. Gert Oostindie and Jessica Roitman
(Leiden: Brill, 2014), 126.
39
This window is not yet closed as it is important for all the contributions to the Prize Papers to be fully
analysed.
40
Ida Schreuder, Amsterdam’s Sephardic Merchants, 116.
156
found two situations in which authors expressed regret about their losses. One of these
authors was Aarão da Silva,41 who had invested substantial amounts in eight horses, of
which only three were left by the time they arrived at their destination. As he observed in
his letter to François de Martin, his cousin, these horses were crucial for operating the
sugar mills, while the remaining horses had now also died:

I have already warned what happened to the 8 horses that came to me, 3 died at
sea and 2 as soon as they arrived on land, that the freight for them must be paid,
which is a great loss. And the same with others I had at home, they also died,
which I regret more for the lack of what will grind my cane.

The other victim was Francisco Henriquez Pereira.42 What could be the cause of
these horses’ deaths? The way they were kept on board for long periods? Or the fact that
the species was not native to the Caribbean and was unable to adapt to the territory’s
biodiversity? But while expressing his regrets about losing a Norwegian breeding horse,
Pereira also started blaming the behaviour of someone else, Isaac Arias. He was a well
know plantation owner in the region of Thorarica (at least since 1668), brother of Jacob
de Aguilar and also an author of letters from Suriname, fluent in Portuguese. The
testimony that follows might suggest that Pereira and Arias were two Sephardic land
owners, competing with each other – or, at least, not agreeing in their methods:

The past few days a pregnant Norwegian mare died. And I am not saying that
death is not natural, but not all ailments are fatal if the remedies are applied. That
if Isaac Arias had done it by calling Aarón de Silva’s marshal, it would
undoubtedly have escaped [death], but he leaves everything to nature. (...) And as
Isaac Arias says he wants to say goodbye, that since he got married and has so
many family, he wants to bleed in health, both with your mercy as with everyone.
And for this purpose and to better do his business, he is planting, attending it at
night and by day, which he has not done for many days.

41
“PSCR1387 - 1672. Carta de Aarão da Silva para o primo François de Martin”, accessed November 12,
2021,http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=file&cid=xmlfiles/Revistas/ModernizadasTei
tok/neotag_PT/PSCR1387.xml.
42
“PSCR5258 - 1672. Carta de Francisco Henríquez Pereira para su hermano Pedro Henríquez Pereira”,
accessed November 12, 2021, http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=file&id=PSCR5258.
157
 In the same letter, this Spanish speaker also provides a few insights into slavery
and how it was portrayed in the Sephardic Caribbean. His accusatory tone when referring
to Isaac draws attention to his own lack of skills in managing plantations and slave labour,
with slaves stealing along the paths opened by the plantations.

Francisco was also worried about his lack of slaves, who were hard and expensive
to get; he had around 24 to 30 at best, while the minimum required for the work was
around 40. The consequences of this were felt later, when the scarcity of labour led to a
delay in harvesting the sugarcane and, therefore, to a poorer-quality crop.

Another perspective on preserving goods in Suriname comes from Isaac

Montesinos in his letter to Paulo Jácome Pinto in Middelburg.43 Besides declaring the
quantities of sugar sent on various vessels, the letter refers to the seizure of a Dutch vessel
on which he had sent sugar, and how hard it was to preserve imported goods – their quality
seemed to rapidly deteriorate over time owing to the environmental conditions:

To my brother I sent a memory of a few things that I missed, that he will send to
your merci, so that it comes in the first ship. And for the flour, I beg You to be the
best, because in this land everything that is not good, lasts less.

During the Post Scriptum project research, we also observed some close
connections to individuals under surveillance by the inquisitorial justice. These included
Paulo Jácome Pinto (aka Jacob Jessurun Pinto), the addressee of the above letter and
whose name occurs quite frequently in the analysed correspondence. Born in Portugal,
Pinto played an important role in moving Portuguese Jews from Dutch Brazil and the
Italian maritime port of Livorno to Cayenne. By 1643 he was in Middelburg, from where
he continued to keep in touch with his contacts in Portugal, while also participating in
sugarcane trading from Brazil and, being close to David Cohen Nassi, supporting sugar
exports from the Caribbean to Europe. In this way, and despite being apart from relatives,
friends and business partners spread across Europe and in the Portuguese overseas
territories, these Sephardic settlers were able to share news about the situation under
inquisitorial persecution. Their letters made their worries clearly visible: this situation
was something simply impossible to ignore.

43
“PSCR5265 - 1672. Carta de Isaac Montesinos para Paulo Jácome Pinto”, accessed November 12, 2021,
http://teitok.clul.ul.pt/postscriptum/pt/index.php?action=file&id=PSCR5265.
158
 Material evidence: transmitting letters, goods and emotions

The correspondence seized on Dutch vessels included many commercial and semi-private
letters. These showed that the information required on goods shipped included the
obligation to place distinctive marks on boxes used, for instance, for shipping sugar
(white, raw or brown) to Europe. Another important formality was the requirement to
rigorously weigh products in order to guarantee the exact quantities sent. Besides such
evidence, the international nature of the colonial sugar trade required the establishment
of equivalents for weights and measures, and these were not always easy to obtain or
understand, especially for today’s historians. On the other hand, as Moura Filho44 argues,
the relationships between volumes and weights and product quality can be objectively
equated in the metric system if measures of other characteristics, such as density or sugar
concentration, are taken into account. This is why, besides mentioning how many boxes
were sent or about to be sent, traders also specified the amounts of ousove and azoes, by
which they were referring to the English ‘hoshead’ or the Dutch ‘okshoofd’, an ancient
measure of volume.

Compared to the situation prevailing in trade between Madeira, the Azores,

mainland Portugal and other corners of the Portuguese overseas empire, all these matters
were critical for the survival of the international activities of any trader, plantation or
sugar mill owner in the early modern period, not only because of the problems that could
arise from inexact measurements and the cost of shipping goods, but also because of the
threat of corsairs and pirates raging across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean45.

Furthermore, the sector was certainly vulnerable, given that in the first few
decades of the seventeenth century the Brazilian Northeast had suffered an economic
depression following the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618, exchange
manipulations orchestrated by various European governments, the accumulation of sugar
stocks in European markets, the seizure of several vessels by the Dutch, the instability of

44
Heitor Pinto de Moura Filho, “Pesos e medidas no Brasil oitocentista”, in VIII Congresso Brasileiro de
História Econômica e 9ª Conferência Internacional de História de Empresas (Campinas, 2009).
45
Frédéric Mauro, Portugal, o Brasil e o Atlântico 1570-1670 (Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1997), 305–317.
159
prices and the inevitable loss of profits by the Bahian planters46– and this was all before
the Dutch occupation of the Brazilian Northeast.

Possible paths from persecution to diaspora

Besides marginal communications with prisoners, the judicial archives also contain
details of attempts to flee Portugal, not all of which were successful. These attempts are
mentioned in the testimonials (direct or indirect) evidencing the existence of smugglers
or facilitators of many Jews’ escapes – the passadores de cristãos-novos. Francisco de
Morais47, for instance, a 21-year-old barber from Vimioso (in the diocese of Miranda)
helped many conversos to escape to Castela as part of a local network involving even a
priest and an abbot. What did all these facilitators have in common? Somehow or other
they were all descendants of conversos. And their interventions proved crucial in the
attempts to achieve family reunification, when, for example, fathers and mothers had left
their children in Portugal under the care of an older relative. But were they simply
showing solidarity? Inquisitorial authorities claimed that, in fact, there was evidence of
extortion.48

Let us also consider letters and other forms of correspondence seized from Jewish
networks in the seventeenth century (among several inquisitorial records). Writers could
transmit confidential information when under close surveillance, with correspondence
(from their places of exile to Portugal, and vice versa) also being used as a way of
maintaining family ties and friendship at long distance. This can be seen in the letters
exchanged in the case of the dealer (tratante) Domingos Ferraz Fonseca, a single man of
36, who was accused of Judaism by a close friend. Domingos, who was born in Trancoso
and lived in Oporto, only narrowly escaped the Holy Office. As set out in the letter, the
plan was to flee to Amsterdam, where some friends were waiting for him. Meanwhile,

46
Stuart Schwartz, “A ‘Babilónia’ colonial: a economia açucareira”, 216.
47
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. (file) 5723.
48
The original version: “Se lhes dessem 100 mil reis, deixariam passar os cristãos-novos; porém, enquanto
não o fizessem, levavam aquela mulher e os filhos como garantia.” ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc.
(file) 5723, fls. 26r-26v. Diogo Álvares. agreed and went to look for that woman's relatives in Carção. For
that purpose, she received 50 patacas. When they learned of such an amount, they threatened Diogo, who
gave them that amount and not what was initially agreed.

160
the two friends exchanged several letters, without knowing that their correspondence was
already under surveillance by the Holy Office.

While the friends will have known that their correspondence could always be
intercepted, the contents of their letters clearly show how Domingos was helping other
Portuguese conversos by acting as a mediator between individuals settled in Portugal and
those in exile. These thirteen letters (and one short note) reveal how risky this mission
could be: while many of Domingo’s friends were safe and had escaped inquisitorial
persecution, many of his relatives had been imprisoned, as he himself had, with only one
of his brothers, the jurist Álvaro da Fonseca, having managed to flee to Italy.

In one of those letters, the merchant Lopo da Fonseca Ramires (aka David Curiel)
began by regretting the lack of response – a common feature in other authors’ letters –
from the above Domingos Ferraz, described as a trader in Amsterdam. But there were
greater concerns: Lopo regretted to hear that Domingo’s father had been imprisoned by
the Portuguese Inquisition, while also expressing his concerns about the situation of
Domingos and his relatives, and at the same time trying to comfort him.

You must warn me very widely of your determination when it is time to move to
these parts. I will be able to help you in this too. At least we, old man Crasto and
Gomes should be safe, because times are going to be difficult and even worse,
because they will be more and more.

I don’t write to Manuel Ferraz. This letter will serve him. You will send that one
from Micael de Luna's and, if possible, mine, which [...] was to you, and I have I
have the confirmation that the letter has been received. Our God will want us to
have others of greater pleasure and benefit. So I hope in Him and that from this
restlessness you will all be in tranquility. […]

Thanks be to God, even if [we are] in foreign lands with greater favours than we
[...] deserve, may He be praised. Warn me of everything, commanding me to serve
you, whom God preserves and frees from all evil. 49

49
ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. (file) 975, Caderno 1, fls. 13r-v. A full transcription is available at:
“PS1014 - [1600-1621]. Carta de Lopo da Fonseca Ramires, alias David Curiel, mercador, para Domingos
Ferraz Fonseca, tratante”, accessed October 30, 2021,
http://ps.clul.ul.pt/pt/index.php?action=edit&cid=PS1014.
161
 We do not know exactly how his inquisitors became aware of this correspondence,
but the letters were clearly exchanged before Domingo’s imprisonment – perhaps during
a house search or through the intercepting of mail. The major value of these writings lies
in their revelation of a wide network, with Domingos providing details of the location of
conversos and their plans that had been forged and were running in the background. One
of his addressees, the above-mentioned New Christian merchant Lopo Ramires, a close
friend of Domingo’s family, was already in Amsterdam, despite having been accused by
the Portuguese Inquisition, and was preparing to receive Domingos, who was also his
business partner. Unfortunately, however, these efforts were without success. One thing
is sure: ‘Amsterdam is omnipresent, because of the epistolary, commercial, religious, and
family relations it maintained with each of these communities’50. Many people therefore
departed for Amsterdam, leaving behind most of their families, in Portugal.

Conclusions
Although the presence of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in locations such as Barbados,
Curaçao, Suriname and Jamaica has been studied by numerous scholars, the recent
findings from hundreds of letters in the National Archives at Kew (UK) provide a deeper
understanding of the communities that settled in those territories in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Given the effects of Cromwell’s maritime navigation constraints,
these Caribbean Jewish ego documents, written during the period of the Anglo-Dutch
maritime wars, are in fact testimonies of communication under surveillance, conveying
fear, but also rich in hope.

In this chapter, I have sought to demonstrate how, as well as being a crucial source
of information on the social and economic history of the Sephardic communities in the
Caribbean, the Jewish letters found in the Prize Papers collection are also important for
studying the lives of these people in depth. Besides allowing direct access to
correspondence concerning the networks existing at the time, these primary sources
provide insight into the everyday lives, trade and fears of these Jewish settlers who were
under close surveillance during the Anglo-Dutch wars. Written either for personal or
professional purposes, these letters from the Wild Coast and the Caribbean also provide

50
Gérard Nahon, “Amsterdam and the Portuguese Nação of the Caribbean”, 68.
162
relevant data for studying individual and collective experiences in correlation with
historical events. This is important since, as Bregoli states, ‘We still know very little about
the emotional worlds and values of Jewish family members who lived distant from each
other, often in different lands. What expectations and concerns did they harbor?’ 51. For
this reason, and given the wealth of testimonies found in these informal sources and
archives concerning Jews and New Christians, focusing on the process was eventually
felt to be the most natural and relevant choice, rather than simply collecting data for an
approach at the level of the social or even economic history of Jews in Suriname and
Curaçao.

As shown, these letters from the Jewish settlers provide access to a more personal
and real perspective on the survival, economic activities and needs of the Jewish settlers,
and the strategies they used in business and to maintain family ties and other long-distance
relationships. On the other hand, as primordial and authentic sources, they also evoke,
both directly and indirectly, past human trajectories and portray the strategies used to
overcome being away from their homeland and to succeed in work and business.

There is still, however, much more to be done, including, for example, taking on
the challenge of O’Neill52 to find out how the Jewish letters from the Caribbean
functioned within networks. Does the Prize Papers series, for example, provide evidence
of permanent networks that were maintained over time, regardless of the territories in
which the Sephardic senders and addressees were located? If so, what was the extent of
these epistolary networks in space and time?

51
Francesca Bregoli, “Emotions and Business in a Trans-Mediterranean Jewish Household”, 123.
52
Lindsay O’Neill, The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World.
163
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT, Portugal), Tribunal do Santo Ofício,

Inquisição de Coimbra: proc. (file) 37; proc. (file) 889; proc. (file) 975; proc. (file) 2397;
proc. (file) 2398; proc. (file) 5723.

John Carter Brown Library (USA): Cabinet Blathwayt 39, file no. 8189-39

The National Archives (Kew, UK), Records of the High Court of Admiralty (Prize
Papers): 30/223; 30/227; 30/227 (folder n.º 13); 30/227 (folder n.º 14); 32/790/349;
32/790.

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166
 Chapter 6. On Money, Properties and Expulsions: Mudejars and
Granadan Moriscos in Campo de Calatrava – Comparative Insights1

FRANCISCO J. MORENO DÍAZ DEL CAMPO & LUÍS F. BERNABÉ PONS

Moriscos, Mudejars and Privileges in Campo de Calatrava

In 1625, Philip IV of Spain ordered that the privileges granted by the Catholic kings to
the ancient Mudejars (Mudéjares antiguos) from Campo de Calatrava more than a century
earlier had to be respected.2 This royal decision meant endorsement of the request made
months before by Diego de Yébenes, an ancient Mudejar from Villarrubia de los Ojos. In
his plea to the king, in which he relied on the special treatment that Isabel and Fernando
had afforded to his ancestors because of their voluntary conversion to Christianity,
Yébenes requested that the expulsion order issued by Philip III in 1610 should be revoked.
The king agreed to this request; his decision overrode the expulsion of the descendants of
those ‘privileged Moriscos’ who had been regarded as Old Christians since 1502 and
meant that any ancient Mudejar could freely return to his town, without fear of being
detained by the justice administration. The decision by Philip IV was made in the context
of a change in the Hispanic Monarchy’s attitude towards socio-religious minorities. The
scope of that change was enormous as it represented a reversal of the policy of intolerance
that had been pursued by Philip III.3

Among the communities benefiting from the repealing of the decree were the
Moriscos born in the Cinco Villas [Five Towns] of Campo de Calatrava, a small region
in inland Castile, located around two hundred kilometres south of Madrid. During the

1
This research was conducted as part of the Research Project IMPI 2. Antes del orientalismo. Figuras de la
alteridad en el Mediterráneo de la Edad Moderna: del enemigo interno a la amenaza turca (Ref.: PID2019-
105070GB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
2
Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, “Felipe IV y los moriscos”, Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos 8
(1959): 59–60.
3
Antonio Domínguez Ortiz and Bernard Vincent, Historia de los moriscos. Vida y tragedia de una minoría
(Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1997), 258 – 260.
167
Middle Ages, the area had been populated by Muslim communities spread over small
farmsteads; the spread of these communities had been gradually slowing down since the
twelfth century, as the Christian conquest of the Guadiana valley progressively
advanced.4 From then on, the Mudejars had adopted an organisational model, the aljama,
that was clearly influenced by the presence of the Order of Calatrava, the owner of the
land. As well as a basic form of organising those places, the aljama emerged as an
institution for encouraging both the internal structure of those communities and their
dialogue with Christian powers.5 The final years of the fifteenth century then saw the start
of a process of demographic and cultural stagnation that favoured both the socio-
economic integration of the aljama communities and the gradual religious assimilation of
some of their members. Five communities that stood out in this respect were those of
Almagro, Daimiel, Villarrubia de los Ojos, Bolaños and Aldea del Rey; these
communities, known as the Cinco Villas, led the Mudejars’ conversion to Christianity in
that area of Castile, with their populations becoming known as the ‘ancient Moriscos from
Campo de Calatrava’ or ‘ancient Mudejars’.6

These communities were severely damaged during the third and fourth decades of
the sixteenth century, when the Inquisition dismantled their ties of internal solidarity.7
Then, after the War of the Alpujarras, Philip II ordered Moriscos from the Kingdom of

4
Clara Almagro Vidal, “Revisando cronologías: nuevas hipótesis sobre la formación de las aljamas en el
Campo de Calatrava”, in De la alquería a la aljama, ed. Ana Echevarría Arsuaga and Adela Fábregas
García (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2016), 115 – 134.
5
Clara Almagro Vidal, “Más allá de la aljama: comunidades musulmanas bajo el dominio de la orden de
Calatrava en Castilla”, En la España Medieval 41 (2018): 12–17.
6
This latter term, more neutral and akin to the historical reality of the area, is proposed by Bernard Vincent
in order to differentiate these Moriscos from the Granadan Moriscos, who arrived in Castile after being
expelled from Granada by Philip II after the War of the Alpujarras. See Bernard Vincent, “Los mudéjares
antiguos”, in Comunidad e identidad en el mundo ibérico. Community and Identity in the Iberian World:
One-day Simposium [sic] in Honour of Jim Casey, ed. Francisco Chacón Jiménez and Silvia Evangelisti
(Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València-Universidad de Granada-Universidad de Murcia,
2013), 39 – 51.
7
Jean Pierre Dedieu, “Les morisques de Daimiel et l’Inquisition”, in Les morisques et leur temps. Table
Ronde Internationale, ed. Louis Cardaillac (Paris: Editions du Centre Nationale de la Recherche
Scientifique, 1983), 495–521.
168
Granada to be distributed throughout Castile.8 The arrival of these ‘new Moriscos’
reactivated the importance of Islamic elements in the region, not only in the Cinco Villas,
but also in localities not used to living near the Mudejars. The total of more than two
thousand new residents from the south represented a huge increase in the population of
Muslim origin living in those quiet Castilian villages.9 The new situation aroused fears
among the Old Christians in the area and led to day-to-day life becoming tinged with
mutual mistrust, but also to coexistence and cultural and economic exchanges.

The installation of the Granadan Moriscos not only generated mistrust among Old
Christians, but was also seen as threatening the identity of the ancient Mudejars. Although
some of the latter used the arrival of their coreligionists to reaffirm their old beliefs, even
the most integrated Mudejars started to be identified with the newcomers in a way that
ended up degrading their position vis-à-vis the Old Christians and resulted in all the
Moriscos in the area being suspected of being bad Christians. This identification was most
visibly manifested in the expulsion ordered by Philip III in the early seventeenth century,
when, despite their past of collaboration and of being good Christians, and having initially
been excluded from the punishment, the ancient Mudejars of Campo de Calatrava were
exiled from their villages. However, the tenacity of people such as Diego de Yébenes, the
Morisco submitting the request referred to above, shows that many of them did not resign
themselves to abiding by the decision that was intended to force them to leave Spain.

Studies of the extent of ancient Mudejars’ clandestine returns to their places of

origin have been undertaken in recent years, with the topic gaining in relevance upon the
publication of Trevor J. Dadson’s book on the Moriscos from Villarrubia de los Ojos,10
one of the Cinco Villas. As this topic has been widely debated, we will not dwell on it
again here. It is more interesting, though, to emphasise that those returns were one of the
consequences of the legal and juridical battle launched by the ancient Mudejars of Campo
de Calatrava in an attempt to avoid being forced into exile. And while their situation was

8
Bernard Vincent, “L’expulsion des Morisques du Royaume de Grenade et leur répartition en Castille
(1570–1571)”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 6 (1970) : 211–46.
9
Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, Los moriscos de La Mancha. Sociedad, economía y modos de vida
de una minoría en la Castilla moderna (Madrid: CSIC, 2009), 33 – 38 and 138 –139.
10
Trevor J. Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV-XVIII). Historia de una minoría
asimilada, expulsada y reintegrada (Madrid/Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2007).
169
not unique, it had parallels and clear links with the experiences of other coreligionists
living in Hornachos (Extremadura) and in the Ricote Valley, in Murcia.11

There are multiple examples of this ‘legal resistance’ described by Benítez, both
individual and collective,12 and its effects are well known: when those mechanisms
opposing the expulsion succeeded, the Moriscos were allowed to remain in the territory.
What is not clear, however, is whether these victories had any economic effects. This is
important to establish: when the Moriscos of Campo de Calatrava took legal action
against the Hispanic Monarchy, they were guided not only by love for their ‘natural
homeland,’13 but clearly also had interests of a chrematistic nature, given that leaving a
region, a town or a neighbourhood also implied leaving behind houses, real estate,
livestock; in short, leaving behind wealth.

As a result, the confirmation of the privileges granted to the ancient Mudejars of

Campo de Calatrava not only had an important social and political significance, but also
implicitly had substantial legal and economic consequences because of paving the way
for beneficiaries of the royal order to recover assets they had lost when they had been
forced to abandon their homes. Not surprisingly, the papers presented by Yébenes to the
Crown contained an extensive account of the real estate lost by him and his family more
than ten years earlier. Those documents confirmed that Doña Leonor Manrique de la
Cerda had acquired a large portion of the houses and lands that had once belonged to the
Moriscos of Villarrubia de los Ojos. Doña Leonor was the aunt-in-law of Diego de Silva
y Mendoza, himself son of the Princes of Éboli, a confidant of Philip III and consort of
the Duchy of Salinas.14 As such, Mendoza was also Lord of Villarrubia de los Ojos, where

11
Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, “Sobrevivir a la expulsión. Estrategias colectivas e individuales de
mudéjares y granadinos en el Campo de Calatrava (y más allá)”, in Comprender la expulsión de los moriscos
de España (1609–1614), ed. Bernard Vincent (Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de
Oviedo, 2020), 525–555.
12
Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “Continuidad de la presencia morisca en España después de las
expulsiones. Resistencias a la expulsión, permanencias y retornos de los moriscos”, in Actas XII Simposio
Internacional de Mudejarismo. Teruel, 14–16 de septiembre de 2011 (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares,
2013), 473–490.
13
Quixote,2, ch. 54.
14
Trevor J. Dadson, Diego de Silva y Mendoza: poeta y político en la corte de Felipe III (Granada: Editorial
Universidad de Granada, 2011).
170
the most important Morisco aljama in the Cinco Villas of Campo de Calatrava was
located. Don Diego and Doña Leonor had benefited from the generalised purchase of their
old vassals’ properties. According to Dadson,15 those investments were a strategy for
preventing the assets of the Mudejars from leaving the Duchy of Salinas and remaining –
even if only temporarily – in the hands of the Crown. The acquisition process was
completed in 1612, but had two important legal consequences for the property of the
expelled Moriscos. The later of these two consequences were the lawsuits initiated by
Moriscos in an attempt to recover those assets. This was ultimately achieved between
1620 and 1640, and affected not only the Moriscos of Villarrubia, but also the rest of the
aljamas in Campo de Calatrava.16

The other consequence was the conflict of jurisdiction that the sale of the properties
and other possessions of the same Mudejars gave rise to. The protagonists in this clash
were the Council of State (in charge of executing the expulsion) and the Council of the
Treasury (empowered to sell Morisco properties once the expulsion had been completed).
While the Treasury commissioners in charge of selling the expelled individuals’ property
defended their jurisdiction over these items, members of the Council of State argued that
the properties and possessions of the Mudejars should be excluded, as established in the
expulsion decrees.17

To fully understand this situation, we have to go back to the expulsion decrees

signed by Philip III. The contents of these decrees have been analysed in depth by
Benítez,18 who identified similarities – but also important differences – between those
decrees affecting the territories of the Crown of Aragon and those codifying the Moriscos’
departure from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. The expulsion of the Moriscos from
Castile was regulated by three edicts. The first of these was the proclamation of
28 December 1609, instructing the Moriscos from Extremadura and Castile to leave the
Iberian Peninsula without interference from the authorities. The second was the decree of
general expulsion, signed on 10 July 1610. In principle, this affected Moriscos from

15
Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos, 515.
16
Moreno, Los moriscos de La Mancha, 60.
17
Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos, 515 – 522.
18
Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “Análisis comparativo de los bandos de expulsión de los moriscos”. In
Tríptico de la expulsión de los moriscos. El triunfo de la razón de Estado, by Rafael Benítez Sánchez-
Blanco (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2012), 207 – 233.
171
Granada and the ancient Mudejars as well, although it was relatively easy for the latter to
avoid it. These breaches then led to the promulgating of the third order on 11 March 1611,
in which the conditions for the Mudejars’ departure were regulated more clearly. The
tougher provisions in this new order, which was ratified in May of the same year,
considerably restricted the exceptions contemplated and practically pushed the entire
community into taking the path of exile. Only those Mudejars who could demonstrate that
they did not live in specific neighbourhoods and ‘were not on any list of payment of
specific tributes of the Moriscos’ were excluded from the expulsion. 19 The provisions
relating to the exiling of the Moriscos from Castile were completed with the publication
of a ‘clarification’ in May 1611 and the separate decrees for ‘returned and stayed’ and
‘hidden and laggards’ that were issued in September 1612 and October 1613,
respectively.

The contents of the expulsion edicts were broad-ranging. Along with the conditions
on which the exile should take place, the safeguarding clauses, and the categories of the
excluded, the decrees also regulated what was to be done with the property of those
expelled. Benítez20 has shown how the Hispanic Monarchy changed its policy, with the
promulgating of norms that started from a common source but were then adapted to the
legal conditions in each territory. These differences were also inspired by the differing
relevance of the Morisco element in each territory and even by the interests of the lord,
which led to much more restrictive norms in the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia. In
the case of Castile, too, the norms included a gradation. Whereas the order of December
1609 consented to the free disposition of all property, the decree issued in the summer of
1610 authorised the seizure of the real estate and ordered that, before their departure, the
expelled should declare their furniture, livestock, jewellery, and cash and deliver half of
the value of these assets to the Royal Treasury.21

These provisions remained in force until the end of the expulsion process and
entrusted management of the Moriscos’ exile to the Treasury Council. 22 They were

19
Benítez, “Análisis comparativo de los bandos”, 211 – 212.
20
Benítez, “Análisis comparativo de los bandos”, 221 – 223.
21
Jorge Gil Herrera, “El botín de la expulsión. Proceso de recaudación de las “mitades” y tasación de los
bienes dejados por los moriscos de Castilla”, Chronica Nova 36 (2010): 47 et seq.
22
Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo, “Geografía de la expulsión morisca. Aproximación al análisis de
la administración y venta del patrimonio de los moriscos expulsados de la Corona de Castilla”. Chronica
172
modified only slightly in the decree of March 1611, which allowed Mudejars who were
permitted to remain in the territory to sell their real estate,23 maybe in an attempt to
facilitate a faster uprooting and propitiate their final departure.

Granadan Moriscos: Between Expulsions and Seizures

The Granadan Moriscos’ arrival in Castile took place in a climate of economic

uncertainty. The War of the Alpujarras had been tough, with almost three years of conflict
seriously depleting the Kingdom of Granada’s wealth. Furthermore, the forced exile
decreed by Philip II had pushed thousands of Moriscos into emigration without a clear
destination and, more relevantly, without any defined labour and economic support.
Studies analysing Granadan settlement in Western Andalusia24 and those focusing on
Castile25 coincide in showing how the group took years to recover economically and that
its productivity did not return to normal until the 1580s and 90s, and so more than a
decade after the war.

Notary protocols represent a very useful source for gaining insight into that reality.
Purchases, wills, powers of attorney and leases are just some of the activities recorded in
these sources, the study of which has shed light on daily life in societies of the Old
Regime, such as the Moriscos. One of the sources that has provided more information in
recent years has been marriage contracts, the study of which has provided highly relevant

Nova 31 (2005): 379– 426.

23
Benítez, “Análisis comparativo de los bandos”, 222.
24
Manuel F. Fernández Chaves and Rafael Pérez García, En los márgenes de la Ciudad de Dios. Moriscos
en Sevilla (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València-Editorial Universidad de Granada-Servicio
de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2009); Rafael M. Pérez García and Manuel F. Fernández
Chaves, Las élites moriscas entre Granada y el reino de Sevilla. Rebelión, castigo y supervivencia (Sevilla:
Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2015); Santiago Otero Mondéjar, La reconstrucción de una comunidad.
Los moriscos en los reinos de Córdoba y Jaén (ss. XVI y XVII) (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2012).
25
Juan M. Magán García and Ramón Sánchez González, Moriscos granadinos en La Sagra de Toledo,
1570-1610 (Toledo: Caja de Castilla-La Mancha, 1993); Miguel F. Gómez Vozmediano, Mudéjares y
moriscos en el Campo de Calatrava. Reductos de convivencia, tiempos de intolerancia (ss. XV-XVII)
(Ciudad Real: Excma. Diputación Provincial de Ciudad Real, 2000); Moreno, Los moriscos de La Mancha).
173
information about the socio-economic strategies used by Moriscos when configuring their
family assets and the interior of their homes.

Figure 1. Structure of the marriage patrimonies of Moriscos and Old Christians in

Almagro (1580–1610)

Source: Archivo Histórico Provincial de Ciudad Real (AHP CR), Secc.

Protocolos Notariales, Almagro, various files.

The pre-nuptial agreements reflect several significant aspects. First, the scant
attention that Granadan Moriscos paid to real estate investments. Although the reasons
for this remain to be confirmed, it may be attributable to their economic incapacity and
largely motivated by social procrastination. It is true that there were Granadan Moriscos
living in Castile and Andalusia who had a high standard of living and where a large part
of their wealth relating to commercial activity involved investments in real estate.
However, a study of the notarial documents shows that, when participating in the real
estate market, the majority of the Moriscos opted for renting rather than purchasing.

Unfortunately, we do not have any in-depth studies of the real estate market in rural
Castile in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Reliable data would enable
174
us to conduct a proper assessment of whether this situation was due to purely economic
circumstances or whether it was also influenced by political and social issues. Whatever
the case, the arrival in Castile of more than 70,000 Moriscos from Granada undoubtedly
distorted the housing market. And while the impact in rural areas was likely to have been
less, the expulsion of 1570-1571 and the resultant higher demand for accommodation will
certainly have led to a general increase in housing prices in Castile, especially in cities
such as Córdoba, Seville, Ciudad Real and Toledo, which received large contingents. The
increase in the numbers of urban workers and agricultural labourers should also be noted,
given the adverse effects of this in the form of lower wages and an increasing gap between
real estate prices and the new settlers’ ability to pay. This situation, combined with the
dramatic economic situation of those expelled from Granada, explains why the Moriscos
played hardly any role in acquisitions of real estate, at least during their initial years in
Castile. The course of time, improvements in their economic situation and scarcities in
the market because of the economic crisis in the late sixteenth century may have
facilitated their access to real estate. But while the sources suggest a greater role in
purchase transactions immediately prior to the expulsions of 1609–1614, rental continued
to be the preferred option and it was only in the case of the richest Morisco families that
investments in real estate were above average.

A second scenario, however, is also conceivable: a certain economic conservatism

on the part of the Moriscos. In this scenario, their low predisposition to owning land
related not only to economic factors but was also conditioned by psychological factors.
The fear that a new exile would ruin all their accumulated efforts led many Moriscos to
divert their investments into savings, either in cash or, above all, in jewellery (see
Figure 1). This aspect is relevant, or at least striking, because it reflects the complaints
expressed by apologists for the expulsion and by the Cortes of Castile about traditional
Morisco greed.26 Of course, this should not be taken as validating the apologists’
arguments, given the exaggerated and self-interested tone in which these arguments were
expressed. On the other hand, however, it may point to an element of truth in some
affirmations, reflecting the views of the Old Christian elites, but also popular sentiment,
especially among urban groups. A final question then arising is whether the Castilian

26
Actas de las Cortes de Castilla 1863, vol. XIII, 94 (1593); Marcos de Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable
expulsión y justísimo destierro de los moriscos de España (Pamplona: Nicolás de Assyain, 1613), 84r.
175
elites’ fears were justified? And, if so, were they interested in preventing Morisco access
to real estate? To the best of our knowledge, there was no political provision preventing
Moriscos from freely buying houses and land, but could the market be closed to them
unofficially? Is it possible that owners used other form of discrimination and political
pressure to make it difficult for Moriscos to access property? Although this is certainly a
possibility, it is still a working hypothesis to be confirmed and for which we do not yet
have sound answers.

The low importance of real estate in notarial deeds also validates the structure of a
real estate market observed by studying the sales of expelled persons’ properties.
Although much work on this subject still has to be undertaken and only a few regions
have so far been analysed – almost all of them based on case studies –, the data obtained
show two aspects to be considered. First, Morisco owners of real estate were never the
majority in their respective towns.27 Second, the structure of the seized properties reflects
an initial (and logical) vital aspiration: to have a home of one’s own. The fact that a third
of the sales corresponded to urban goods, and that more than 90% of these goods were
houses, can indicate only one thing: that, wherever possible, Morisco owners opted for
direct tenure to live and for renting to survive. And although there are examples of well-
to-do individuals and families, including Moriscos, who owned not only several farms in
the countryside, but also various urban properties, the most common situation, at least in
Campo de Calatrava, was that of an owner who, at the time of expulsion, owned at best a
house and one or two small plots, generally for dry farming.28

Lastly, protocols also confirm the importance of movable property in the haciendas
of Granadan Moriscos, as indicated by the data in Figure 1. These data are supplemented
by the reports mentioning the items that people from Granada took with them into exile.29
It is important also to consider the stratagems deployed to avoid the Crown’s registers
and safeguard the jewels the Moriscos treasured and the cash they had saved.30 While the

27
José Martínez Millán, “Los moriscos en Castilla: ‘bienes raíces’ de los moriscos en la villa de Pastrana,
in Les morisques et leur temps. Table ronde internationale. Montpellier, 4–7 juillet 1981, ed. Louis
Cardaillac (Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983), 416.
28
Moreno, Los moriscos de La Mancha, 501 – 511.
29
Manuel Lomas Cortés, “Aixovar, diners i contraban. L’equipatge dels moriscs expulsats segons els
registres de béns de Castella”, Recerques 61 (2010): 5–24.
30
Luis F. Bernabé Pons and Jorge Gil Herrera, “The Moriscos outside Spain. Routes and Financing”, in
176
Castilian Moriscos used the Portuguese judeoconversos to escape, via France, and protect
their money and jewels,31 the Granadan Moriscos used their commercial networks in
Spain and abroad to save as much of their heritage as possible. Moriscos from Granada
seem to have established a nucleus of merchants in the south of France who were able to
handle transfers of huge amounts of ‘Spanish’ money to North Africa and Turkey.32

In some cases, we know that the sums of money that individuals or families
managed to transfer to North Africa or Turkey were really high. In the Estienne affair, for
example, in which the captain of a French ship stole money from the Moriscos that he
was transporting, the latter claimed before the French consulate the sum of 100,000 ducats
that they had been carrying.33 Meanwhile, thanks to the capital he was able to take with
him, the Morisco Diego/Mustafa de Cárdenas, head of the Morisco community in Tunisia,
soon became a large landowner and slaveholder there, to the point of arousing the
suspicions of the authorities. Another representative of the Tunisian Moriscos, Luis
Zapata, was intercepted by the Spanish authorities when he was sailing from Tunisia to
France to recover the heritage that he had stored there.34

These events, which must undoubtedly be considered only examples of a much

broader and more complex phenomenon, raise a question concerning Andalusian and
Mudejar/Morisco exile in North Africa, and specifically the fact that while wide-ranging
consensus exists on attributing the development of many techniques and knowledge in
the Maghreb to this emigration, as well as the appearance of certain spiritual and social
traits, very little has been written about the role that the new capital brought by
immigrants could play in the host societies in the Maghreb. Indeed, while we know that

The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. A Mediterranean Diaspora, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and
Gerard A. Wiegers (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 221–227.
31
Jesús A. Carrasco Vázquez, “Contrabando, moneda y espionaje (el negocio del vellón)”, Hispania, 57, 197
(1997): 1099-1104; Luis F. Bernabé Pons, “Notas sobre la cohesión de la comunidad morisca más allá de su
expulsion de España”, Al-Qantara 29-2 (2008): 309–314.
32
Bernabé, “Notas”, 323–326.
33
Louis Cardaillac, “Procès pour abus contre les morisques en Languedoc”, in M. de Epalza and R. Petit,
Études sur les moriscos andalous en Tunis, Madrid-Tunis: Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales,
1973, 103–113; M. de Epalza, de, “Moriscos y andalusíes en Túnez durante el siglo XVII”, Al-Andalus, 34,
2 (1969): 247–328.
34
Bernabé, “Notas”, 317–318.
177
various groups of Moriscos established mortmain properties (hubous) for the well-being
of their communities, and that other Moriscos contributed economically to public works
in Algiers or Tunis, we still do not generally know how this monetary wealth imported
from the Iberian Peninsula was inserted into the economic systems of North Africa and
how it contributed to the growth of Maghreb societies, beyond benefiting their
Mudejar/Morisco owners.

The process by which the Moriscos dealt with their heritage has been studied for
some towns in Castile. From notarial documentation, we know that many Moriscos from
Granada made use of the little ‘advantage’ that the authorisation published in 1609 meant
for them in allowing them to freely dispose of their real estate and other property. While
individual situations were very varied, we can generally see three main types of contracts.
First, there were sales, which did not generally involve any problems and enabled a quick
and almost immediate change in ownership in certain towns. Second, there were transfers,
which were somewhat more complex. These contracts did not always relate to real estate.
Indeed, the most common transaction involved rural plots yielding harvests and crops; in
other words, transferring only the contents of a plot of land, and not the plot itself. Despite
their apparent complexity, these contracts were quite common, mainly because, as
mentioned earlier, Granadan Moriscos were generally tenants rather than owners. The
existence of this kind of agreement is attested to not only in Campo de Calatrava, but also
in other Castilian towns such as El Toboso or Ciudad Real, with dozens of examples,35 or
in Pastrana, one of the Éboli towns.36 These agreements only gave rise to problems if the
beneficiary of the transfer was a third party and not necessarily the same person as the
owner of the plot where the Morisco crop was planted. In these cases of the third type of
contract mentioned above, the Morisco had to negotiate not only with the owner – with
whom he had to settle payment of the corresponding lease – but also with the
assignee/buyer of his harvest. This type of three-way contract was a form of agreement
used if an expelled Morisco left behind unpaid debts; therefore, it was used not to
safeguard assets, but instead to settle and extinguish previous financial commitments.

35
Moreno, Los moriscos de La Mancha, 397 – 401 and 477 – 487.
36
Aurelio García López, Señores, seda y marginados. La comunidad morisca en Pastrana (Guadalajara:
Ediciones Bornova, 2009), 350 – 352.
178
 However, they proceeded, the room for manoeuvre available to the Moriscos
expelled from Granada was minimised by their definitive exile, given that the expulsion
decree issued in summer 1610 confiscated all their real estate and made it available to the
Royal Treasury. In the face of this decision, they then had no option but to obey.

The Old Mudejars and Their (Material) Attachment to the Land

Unlike the Granadan Moriscos, the ancient Mudejars had access to certain tools for
safeguarding their heritage or at least minimising the economic impact of the expulsion
decrees. The first of these was the legal battle, which allowed some of them to be exempt
from expulsion and the majority at least to delay their final departure. And while it may
seem of minor significance, the months between the order of 1609 and the decree of 1611
provided these individuals with another key protection instrument: time. Taking
advantage of this, the Old Mudejars of Campo de Calatrava made haste to sell their goods
and on many occasions were able to preserve a significant share of their estates.

By 1613, life for the inhabitants of Campo de Calatrava had become tense: Pedro
de Lizana, who had been governor during the most difficult years of the expulsion, was
facing a residency trial37 after his work as the highest representative of the Crown in the
region was questioned owing to certain irregularities committed during his mandate.
These ‘excesses’ were related to various aspects of Lizana’s government, such as his
relationship with the Moriscos and the role that he and his subordinates played in the
expulsion, especially in the most difficult years of 1610 and 1611. Specifically, he was
accused of having illegally collected amounts in return for registering goods seized from
the Moriscos and of forcing exempt individuals to submit to these enquiries, coercing the
affected, and even using force. The matter was discovered by chance, but gave rise to a
long trial, the contents and vicissitudes of which are well known.38

37
This last term, more neutral and akin to the historical reality of the area, is proposed by Bernard Vincent
to differentiate the inhabitants of Campo de Calatrava from the Granadan Moriscos who arrived in Castile
after being expelled from Granada by Philip II after the War of the Alpujarras. See Vincent, “Los Mudéjares”.
38
Moreno, “Geografía de la expulsión morisca”, 105; Miguel F. Gómez Vozmediano, “La expulsión de los
moriscos granadinos de La Mancha a inicios del siglo XVII”, Chronica Nova 36 (2010), 86–87. The whole
179
 To clarify what happened: several testimonies were collected in various locations
during the spring of 1613. Practically all those individuals questioned – many of them
Old Mudejars – confirmed that Lizana’s men had charged them amounts of between six
and twenty reales for registering and inventorying their assets. The fraud not only affected
the Cinco Villas, but also spread to other towns in the region.

Only a few Moriscos, who could prove they had permission not to be expelled, were
exempted from having to pay these amounts, largely due to their poverty, as well as some
elderly or disabled people. In the end, it proved impossible to establish that the money
collected by the governor and his family had been used irregularly, or even that the
governor himself had used it for his own benefit. Some of his subordinates – and also he
himself at a later date – declared that the proceeds were used to cover the expenses
incurred by the expulsion. Others even went as far as to affirm that the governor had
risked his personal finances and that he had always acted ‘with great vigilance and care
and desire to serve his majesty, working night and day, horseback and afoot, and many
nights without going to bed, trying to do the said expulsion very calmly.’39

Although Lizana was relatively successful in the trial – largely due to the collusion
of the judge, who was his successor – these legal proceedings provided various interesting
insights for understanding the behaviour of broad sectors of Old Christian society in the
face of the Moriscos’ expulsion. First, the proceedings evidenced some of the
administrative irregularities generated in managing the expulsion. The governor’s first
victims were the Granadans, specifically a large group from Almagro. Shortly before
embarking, the Moriscos – around 70, according to the document – granted a power of
attorney to Gabriel de la Caballería, a neighbour and cleric of that town. The document,
signed in Murcia in June 1610, was clear: the priest was empowered to act on behalf of
the Moriscos and to file a lawsuit against the governor. At stake was part of the money
that the latter had collected from them illegally. The amount involved was not trivial as it
exceeded seven hundred reales. As their return seemed unlikely, the Moriscos ordered

dossier in Archivo Histórico Nacional, Sección Órdenes Militares, Archivo Histórico de Toledo (AHN, OM,
AHT), exp. 38787.
39
‘...con muncha vigilancia y cuidado y deseo de seruir a su magestad, trauabajando de noche y de día a
cauallo y a pie y munchas noches sin acostarse tratando de hazer la dicha espulsion con mucha quietud,’
AHN, OM, AHT, exp. 38787-2, fols. 41v–43r (testimony of Diego de las Parras, a neighbour in Almagro
15 March 1613).
180
Don Gabriel, in the event of the money being recovered, to assign it to pious work he
considered appropriate. Some months later the priest fulfilled these instructions; the
beneficiary was the brotherhood of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, which had a hermitage
near the town. This was a curious way to allocate the money of supposed heretics.40

The corruption went far beyond amounts charged for registering property. More
serious than the amounts exacted in this way was the irregular allotting of some of the
possessions of the Moriscos, especially those of the ancients. Warnings about the situation
were given by Gabriel de Oviedo, alderman of Almagro, who noted that:

...through the warnings made both in the inventory and in the charges to Gerónimo
Gaytán, Your Majesty will find that many of the goods that were sold and were
claimed to be from the ancient Moriscos were bought by the ministers and bailiffs
who had been in the expulsion.41

Lastly, the proceedings against Lizana give an account of the juicy ‘loot’ that the
Moriscos’ heritage represented, especially at a time – the early seventeenth century –
when signs of the Castilian economy becoming exhausted were already starting to appear.
The loot in this specific case involved money and jewellery, being the funds that the
people of Granada – the main people affected by the governor’s abuses – were able to
take with them to the Burgos and Cartagena customs, where they had to declare the
remaining ‘halves’. Lizana’s records also revealed other types of assets, which often get
forgotten: livestock, especially cattle, but also grain. In this case, the goods came from
Aldea del Rey and were inventoried in May 1612, with everything indicating that most
of these goods were owned by ancient Mudejars. Although this is a partial record, in
which barely a few dozen animals were counted (mainly labour cattle), it is valid for
verifying three points. First, it is very likely that the Moriscos chose to undersell (or even
abandon) those animals not strictly necessary for the trip. The high cost of their
sustenance and then not being able to take them into exile were reason enough to justify
such a decision. This high cost of sustenance also explains why the animals were a drag

40
AHN, OM, AHT, exp. 38787-3, fols. 4r-7v.
41 ‘… por aduertencias que en el ynbentario y cargo que se hiço a Gerónimo Gaytán hallará V.M. que
munchos de los bienes que se vendieron que deçían ser de los moriscos antiguos, los conpraron los ministros
y alguaçiles que auían sido en la espulsión,’ AHN, OM, AHT, exp. 38787, fols. 52v (testimony of Diego
de las Parras, a neighbour of Almagro, 15 March 1613).
181
on the commissioners appointed to administer expelled individuals’ assets,42 as well as
why the Crown made use of them without delay and with little interest. This becomes
apparent if we make a quick comparison with the prices that these animals fetched in the
years prior to 1610.43

Real estate, by contrast, posed fewer problems. The ability to use it in the medium
and longer term made real estate a coveted item for Old Christians: neighbours, investors
and creditors were the parties most interested, but the wide range of properties on offer,
and the variety of conditions applying, meant many people ventured to buy. Little is
known about the possessions left by the ancient Mudejars of Campo de Calatrava. As the
bulk of the documentation remains unpublished, with only isolated references known so
far, we can but guess at their importance. This lack of information can be filled with case
studies such as the one presented here. This is based on two lists of properties, which,
problems of interpretation notwithstanding, are revealing. The first list is dated 1614,
although its information refers to Daimiel in 1611. It is a list of real estate that the ancient
Mudejars of that town sold in the spring of 1611, just after the Council of State drove
them, like the people from Granada, into exile. That decision led to the departure of the
remaining families in the town and to the sale of their houses and plots. The speed with
which both operations – exile and the sale of property – were carried out resulted in a
mismatch in the accounts of the region’s tax lessors. Some of the exiled appear to have
departed without paying the corresponding alcabala on the sale of their possessions. In
the main, the document includes two types of information: on the one hand, a list of the
individuals (about 250) who had to pay this tax, thus giving us a partial indication of the
community’s size, and, on the other hand, a list of the possessions sold, the names of the

42
Moreno, Geografía de la expulsión morisca, 104.
43
A couple of examples can confirm this, although it should be noted that the value of such merchandise
could fluctuate considerably, depending on the age, robustness, and strength of each animal. In 1612, the
two cows and a calf that belonged to a Morisco named Cristóbal López were sold for 132 reales, a low
amount considering that, only a few years before, Gonzalo de Granada, a Morisco from Ciudad Real, had
paid 200 reales for only one cow (AHP CR, Protocolos, leg. 46-1, fols. 336r–336v. 4 October 1605). The
situation was similar in the case of the three mares bought by a certain Andrés Sánchez, a neighbour in
Almagro. Their total price was 275 reales (about 92 each), a little lower than what was paid in the region
for similar animals and on the same dates – between 110 and 150 reales per animal – (examples in AHP
CR, Protocolos, leg. 55, fol. 480r, 29 June 1596 and leg. 11, fols. 123r-v, 4 June 1601, among others).
182
Mudejar sellers and the buyers (some of them also Mudejars),44 and the prices paid.
Descriptions of individual farms are included only sporadically.

The other document, issued a decade later, pertained to the transfer of the goods
bought by Doña Leonor Manrique de la Cerda and that were reclaimed by the Mudejars
when they were allowed to return. Although this document was written in 1627, its
contents refer to the state of these properties in 1612, just when it seemed that the town’s
Moriscos would be abandoning their homeland for ever.

The two reports are different in terms of their contents. Villarrubia’s document, for
example, includes many more properties: 313 compared with 99. There are also
qualitative differences. For example, the Daimiel document includes the names of all the
Moriscos, while that of Villarrubia does not mention any names. In the latter, the
descriptions of the farms are more complete, although details of around 7% of the farms
are concealed. Lastly, in relation to prices, the Daimiel list provides greater detail of the
individualised properties, while that of Villarrubia states a total price for all the properties.
Therefore, certain data must be interpreted with caution because they are not definitive
and nor can we be completely sure that they represent the full set of properties owned by
the Mudejar communities in these two towns.

Despite the provisional character of these lists, however, we can note several
important aspects. First, the greater relevance of urban property in Daimiel (52.5% of all
properties, compared to 19.2% in Villarrubia), which suggests the Daimiel list was less
complete. It is very likely that this document included only those properties that the
Mudejars kept as a last resort; this may distort the analysis by accentuating the urban
character of Daimiel. Another possible explanation could be that the Villarrubia
community had greater economic potential and a more diversified heritage. Nevertheless,
we should remember the provisional nature of these lists.

Figure 2. Properties of the ancient Mudejars of Villarrubia de los Ojos

acquired in 1612 by Doña Leonor Manrique de la Cerda

44
This was not a strange situation: both Dadson (2007) and Pascual (2014) document it for Villarrubia and
Pliego (Murcia), thus confirming the permanence of certain Mudejars, who occasionally acted as potential
front men for those expelled while waiting for a hypothetical return and restitution of those same goods.
183
 Source: AHN, Consejos, leg. 38039

Be that as it may, in both cases virtually all the properties were houses, with only
a few lots and fenced parcels being mentioned, and with little more detail provided. The
source does not specify measurements, planimetric or data providing information on the
condition in which each home found itself.

Leaving those details aside, which may need further explanation in the future, and
focusing on the rural properties, we can see that their structure was very similar in both
villages. Logically, the dry lands account for a very important part of the declared assets;
however, the relevance given by the document to irrigated land deserves attention. In
Daimiel, its importance was even greater than that of the dry farms. Similarly, the farms
intended for vines, olive trees, or both crops simultaneously – which was common in the
regions of La Mancha –, were not negligible.45

Despite their provisional nature, the data point to a consolidated heritage in which
owners seem to show a certain preference for plots destined for intensive cultivation. In
this sense, the hemp fields of Villarrubia have a special relevance. According to the
source, the majority were located in a very specific place, the Dehesa de Lote, where the
town’s Mudejar community had held an important part of its original patrimony since the

45
Jerónimo López-Salazar Pérez, Estructuras agrarias y sociedad rural en La Mancha (ss. XVI-XVII)
(Ciudad Real: Instituto de Estudios Manchegos, 1986), 299.
184
late Middle Ages.46 On the other hand, the Mudejars from Daimiel showed a preference
for orchards and quiñones,47 possibly because the town did not have so many dry lands.

Table 1. Rural real estate properties of the Mudejars of Campo de

Calatrava

Partial accounts 1611–1612.

Villarrubia Daimiel

Number % Number %

Dry lands 102 40.3 17 36.2

Vines 42 16.6 6 12.8

Vines/Olive Olive
2 0.8 1 2.1
groves groves

Both 4 1.6 0 -

Hemp
72 28.5 5 10.6
fields

Irrigated lands Orchards 10 4.0 8 17

Quiñones 16 6.3 8 17

Other 1 0.4 0 -

Other 4 1.6 2 4.3

Source: AHN, Consejos, leg. 38039 (Villarrubia) y AHN, OM, AHT,

exp. 38538 (Daimiel)

46
Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarubia de los Ojos, 706 –717.
47
The quiñones were small plots located in the vicinity of (and sometimes within) the urban area and destined
for intensive cultivation of cereals, mostly barley. These plots were very common in Campo de Calatrava
and highly valued by small local farmers. López-Salazar, Estructuras agrarias, 568 – 572.
185
 In any event, the data are not very different from those for the whole region
regarding the people of Granada, including provisional data.48 In this sense, and despite
the logical differences, there are two factors that should be considered in future research,
especially in the case of Villarrubia. First, the low importance that urban assets had from
a perspective of Mudejar heritage. Second, the idea of a more consolidated heritage shows
the greater importance of farms with intensive cropping, although this aspect should be
reviewed as soon as the available sources allow it. Other data such as extensions, numbers
of owners and their socio-economic conditions (i.e., how many farms in each owner’s
possession) should also be considered. In this sense, the sample here includes individuals
whom we can certainly consider wealthy, such as Diego López de Pedro López, a
Mudejar from Villarrubia, in whose name no fewer than twenty-two properties were
registered: a house, two hemp fields, two quiñones, a sumac field, two vineyards, a parcel
with both a vineyard and an olive tree, and thirteen more plots of dry land with a joint
extension of 163.5 hectares. Unfortunately, the source does not allow us to go beyond
such specific examples as while the Villarrubia report provides more data, it is barely
uniform, thus losing any usefulness it may have had for comparative purposes. However,
the differences observed between the Mudejar and Granadan heritages would not seem to
be attributable to sociological criteria or to ethnic or racial origins, but instead to purely
economic and more deep-rooted reasons.

The situation regarding prices was similar. In this case, the Daimiel list provides
more data, but once again, unfortunately, the information is incomplete. Nevertheless, a
brief check of the available examples confirms the previously noted impression: the
undervaluation of many of the Granadan goods. In this sense, paying 75 reales for a
house, 66 for a garden, or 55 for a quiñón seems indicative of really low prices.
Obviously, the prices paid for some farms and houses were higher, but everything
indicates that sales were generally at prices below the market value, or at least at very
reasonable prices, and thus benefiting Old Christian buyers. This is made clear by the
example of Villarrubia and one very explicit fact: that Doña Leonor paid just four hundred
ducados (just over 4400 reales) for a total of 313 properties.

48
Moreno, Los moriscos de La Mancha, 216.
186
 By Way of Conclusion: Transfers, Changes of Ownership and Dispersion of
Money

While much remains to be discovered about the final destinations of the assets of the
Moriscos expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614, some of the ideas suggested here,
although still in a early stage, could constitute a good starting point for a deeper study of
this issue. The ideas suggested are not merely opinions; the sources suggest that they
seem to be correct, but we need to be cautious before confirming them with complete
certainty.

Managing, auctioning, and adjudicating the real estate of the Moriscos of Castile
(regardless of whether they were Granadans or ancient Mudejars) represented a major
administrative and economic process: a process that put the real estate owned by a
population of more than 90,000 individuals up for sale49 and involved huge numbers of
Hispanic Monarchy officials. While it is still difficult to assess the scope of the action, it
undoubtedly caused changes in the structure and uses of real estate in a kingdom that was
on the verge of both an economic crisis and political decline. The use of resources was
enormous, as were the efforts made. Nevertheless, we can question whether the process
was executed totally reliably, whether its results were as expected, and whether the
resources obtained from that great operation were beneficial. As far as we know, the
operation was used to settle Moriscos’ debts and resulted in the extinguishing of many
censuses. In addition, it probably helped to improve the solvency of those who obtained
the assets, although this still has to be confirmed. How those properties were distributed,
and whether any specific social group benefited, also remains to be analysed. Likewise,
possible regional differences or nuances that may arise from comparisons between town
and country, or between lordship or royal areas and so on, still need to be examined.
Lastly, it is essential to establish the final amounts involved in the operation, as well as
its profitability for the Crown and the destination of the earnings. In this sense, the
certifications of expenses in Campo de Calatrava confirm that a huge share of the money
from the Moriscos’ properties was set aside to pay for the expulsion itself and also to
cover the costs of managing the sales; in other words, the costs of fees for representation
and travel to court, the costs of transferring Moriscos to the ports, salary and maintenance

49
Domínguez and Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, 200.
187
payments for the troops in charge of pursuing Morisco fugitives, the costs of listing the
expelled, and so on.

On the other hand, we also still need to assess the economic impact that the
expulsion had on the Moriscos themselves. Exile destroyed processes of enrichment and
social advancement or, on a more modest level, simple personal lives and family
strategies based on selfless work and prudent savings. Hence, the struggles of the
Moriscos to remain where they were, or to return to their ancient towns and cities, also
must be considered from an economic perspective. Acquiring in-depth knowledge of this
reality is crucial if we are to understand the Morisco exile in all its dimensions. Likewise,
we have yet little knowledge of the fate of the wealth that the Moriscos managed to take
with them from Spain and the role that this money could have played within the host
Maghrebi societies, and both these issues demand an urgent study. After all, this was a
process that showed that the struggles of the New Christians were based on more than
just nostalgia.

188
Sources and Bibliography

Sources

Archivo Histórico Nacional:

- Consejos, leg. 30839 (Villarrubia).

- Sección Órdenes Militares, Archivo Histórico de Toledo (AHN, OM, AHT), exp. 38538
(Daimiel); exp. 38787.

Archivo Histórico Provincial de Ciudad Real (AHP CR), Protocolos Notariales, leg. 11;
leg. 46-1; leg. 55.

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———. Diego de Silva y Mendoza: poeta y político en la corte de Felipe III. Granada:
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192
 Chapter 7. Gifts and Livelihoods of Safavid Emissaries in Early
Seventeenth-Century Spain

JOSÉ CUTILLAS

Introduction

After a century of unsuccessful attempts to establish an alliance between the European

Christian kingdoms and the Safavid dynasty, the outlines of a possible alliance, involving
a more intense exchange of emissaries and ambassadors, began to materialise in the early
seventeenth century. One of the many reasons for this change in attitude can be found in
the initiative launched by Shāh ʿAbbās I at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and
the weight of the Asian territorial interests facing both Philip II and Philip III after the
dynastic union in the Iberian Peninsula.1 In the first quarter of the seventeenth century,
Safavid Iran’s relations with European dynasties became considerably more important as
part of a strategy of alliances designed to restrain the Ottoman advance in Europe and
across the Safavid border. Most of the attention paid to European–Safavid relations to
date has related to the role played in this process by some Iranians rulers, and especially
Shāh ʿAbbās, who opened his country to Europeans. Now, however, researchers are
starting to shed light on all kinds of historical and socio-political aspects in Safavid Iran’s
relations with Europe, with an attractive subset of information relating to the relations
between the Spanish monarchy and Safavid Iran, especially during the first quarter of the
seventeenth century. Modern studies on Spanish–Safavid Iran relations have focused on
the intricate processes entailed in the military alliance against the Ottomans and how the

1
On the Spanish-Safavid embassies, see Luis Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español y la Persia safávida,
2 vols., (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2006 – 2009); for Portugal, see João Teles e Cunha,
“Portugal. I. Relations with Persia in the Early Modern Age (1500–1750)”, in Encyclopædia Iranica, online
edition, 2009, (accessed on 17 June 2021); for Venice, see Giorgio Rota, “Safavid Persia and its Diplomatic
Relations with Venice,” in W. Floor and E. Herzig, eds., Iran and the World in the Safavid Age (London:
Tauris, 2012), 149–160; for the Hapsburgs and Austria, see Helmut Slaby, “Austria. I. Relations with Persia,”
Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2012, (accessed: 17 June 2021).
193
missionaries established their networks in Safavid Iran. These include the pioneering
research of Carlos Alonso,2 Luis Gil3 and Rui Loureiro,4 all of whom have highlighted
the intense nature of these relations.

The search for an alliance, driven by parties with the same geopolitical interests
in the second half of the sixteenth century, resulted in the establishing of the Safavid
embassy of Shāh ʿAbbās in Spain in 1601. Although this was not the first embassy, it was
certainly the most remarkable.5 Relations subsequently intensified and, although military
agreements to counter the Ottomans proved impossible, emissaries continued to be
exchanged until 1622. Great numbers of documents from this period have been
preserved,6 including the well-known travelogues of Don Juan de Persia,7 Don García de
Silva y Figueroa and Pedro Teixeira.8 Unfortunately, not much material in Persian has
been preserved. However, the materials from the Portuguese, Spanish and Italian archives
are sufficiently significant to allow us to reconstruct the Spanish monarchy’s policy
towards Safavid Iran.9 Among previous studies focusing on political and trade relations

2
See “Bibliography of Carlos Alonso O.S.A.” The Spanish Monarchy, Antonio de Gouvea, O.S.A.
Diplomático y visitador apostólico en Persia (Valladolid: Estudio Agustiniano, 2000), 219 – 223.
3
Luis Gil Fernández, El Imperio.
4
Don García de Silva y Figueroa, Comentarios de la Embaxada al rey Xa Abbas de Persia (1614–1624),
eds. Rui Manuel Loureiro, Ana Cristina Costa Gomes and Vasco Resende, (Lisbon: CHAM, 2011).
5
José Cutillas, “Spain: Relations with Persia in the 16th and 17th Centuries”, in Encyclopædia Iranica, online
edition, 2018 (accessed: 1 June 2021).
6
Willem M. Floor and Farhad Hakimzadeh, The Hispano-Portuguese Empire and Its Contacts with Safavid
Persia, the Kingdom of Hormuz and Yarubid Oman from 1489 to 1720: A Bibliography of Printed
Publications 1508–2007, (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Materials for the study of the Spanish-Luso-Safavid
relations can be found in the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid), Archivo Histórico Nacional
(Madrid), the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon) and the Biblioteca do Palácio Nacional de
Ajuda (Lisbon).
7
Juan de Persia (Oruj Beg Bayāt), Relaciones de Don Iuan de Persia... : Divididas en tres libros, donde se
tratan las cosas notables de Persia, la genealogía de sus Reyes, guerras de Persianos, Turcos, y Tartaros, y las
que vido en el viaje que hizo a España..., (Valladolid: Juan de Bostillo, 1604); Relaciones de Don Juan de
Persia, ed. Narciso Alonso Cortés, (Madrid: Gráficas Ultra, 1946); Don Juan of Persia: A Shi’ah Catholic
1560–1604, transl.: Guy Le Strange, (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1926; repr., 2005).
8
Pedro Teixeira, Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira d’el origen, descendencia y succession de los Reyes de Persia,
y de Harmuz, y de un viage hecho por el mismo autor dende la India Oriental hasta Italia por Tierra, (Antwerp:
Hieronymo Verdusen, 1610).
9
For an approach to Spain–Safavid Iran relations, see: José Cutillas Ferrer, “Spain: Relations with Persia”.
194
between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern scholars have not overlooked
many aspects related to economy or trade, with important studies having been carried out
on the economy and commercial aspects of the Safavid dynasty, including Rudi
Matthee’s10 classic study on the silk trade and Willem Floor’s study on the economy.11
But while Spanish literature on travel to Asia is a subject in need of further study,
Portuguese travel both overseas and overland, whether of a commercial or political
nature, has given rise to a quite remarkable amount of academic literature. 12 These
studies, in turn, have helped us to define the routes to Asia. In certain crucial respects,
overland travel differed dramatically from that associated with the Carreira da Índia, as
Anthony Disney explained,13 in that it allowed for more extensive descriptions of
everything seen and experienced during the journey. With regard to the circulation of
goods and people, however, many aspects still need to be explored in greater detail,
including aspects pertaining to the overland routes to and from Safavid Iran, the
maintenance of embassies and emissaries during journeys, and the international support
networks. Regarding overland travel from Portugal and Spain in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Anthony Disney’s work offers an analytical study of the related
literature;14 this is based on Sousa Viterbo’s work15 and mostly re-examines the ground
covered in the Portuguese travelogues. Overland journeys from the peninsula to Safavid
Iran and the Estado da Índia were made by a wide variety of people, including couriers,
merchants, priests, envoys, adventurers, pilgrims, spies, captives, renegades, fugitives,
interpreters and other travellers wanting to reach Iran or India from Europe as quickly as

10
Rudi Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver 1600–1730, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
11
Willem M. Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia, (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000).
12
A Carreira da India e as Rotas dos Estreitos. Actas do VIII Seminario Internacional de História Indo-
Portuguesa, eds. Artur Teodoro de Matos and Luis Filipe Thomaz, (Angra da Heroismo: Centro de História
de Além-Mar da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1998).
13
Anthony Disney, “The Gulf Route from India to Portugal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries:
Couriers, Traders and Image-Makers,” in A Carreira da India e as Rotas dos Estreitos, eds., Artur Teodoro
de Matos and Luis Filipe Thomaz (Angra da Heroísmo: Centro de História de Além-Mar/Instituto de
Investigação Científica Tropical, 1998), 540.
14
Disney, “The Gulf Route”, 527–550.
15
Sousa Viterbo, Viagens da India a Portugal por terra e vice-versa, (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade,
1898).
195
possible.16 On many occasions, the choice for the overland route was motivated by the
maritime blockade imposed by the Ottomans, Dutch and English. On other occasions,
however, the overland route through Aleppo was closed, such as when Safar arrived in
Aleppo in the middle of an Ottoman war against the Safavids.

Relating to the idea of circulations of goods and people, this article focuses on the
problems that Safar, the general factor of Shāh ʿAbbās, encountered on his journey
through Europe and the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. While Safar
did not go to Europe as an ambassador responsible for dealing with the attempts to
establish and maintain an anti-Ottoman alliance, but instead travelled as the general factor
of Shāh ʿAbbās, he nevertheless ended up performing diplomatic functions and advising
the papacy on and preparing for Don García de Silva y Figueroa’s embassy to Safavid
Iran. Secondly, I will analyse the concept of gift-giving in Spanish–Safavid relations.
Some very interesting contributions have been written about gift-giving in various
cultural spheres,17 including works outlining the concept of gifts in the Islamic sphere of
Persianate societies. However, there have been no previous reflections on how the
concept of gift-giving is profiled in Spanish–Safavid relations or on the implications of
such gifts. Starting from the classic idea of the gift as developed by Mauss18 and implying
compulsory reciprocity, I will show how the obligatory nature of reciprocating a gift in
Spanish–Safavid relations was linked to an idea that was, on the one hand, of an economic
nature and that, on the other hand, served to demonstrate power and rivalry through the
quality and quantity of the gifts given. Possibly this dichotomy in defining the objects to
be gifted explains some of the misunderstandings that arose in diplomatic relations
between European kingdoms and Muslims in the early modern age and is a key factor in
helping us to understand the very different reactions generating both protocol and para-
protocol behaviour between the Safavids and the Spanish Monarchy.

16
Disney, “The Gulf Route”, 530–531.
17
Sharon Littlefield, “The Object in the Gift: Embassies of Jahangir and Shah Abbas” (University of
Minnesota, 1999); Rudi Matthee, “Gifts and Gift-Giving. IV, in the Safavid Persia. In Encyclopædia Iranica,
X/6, (New York: Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, 2001), 609–14; Linda Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan:
The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Sinem Arcak, “Gifts in
Motion: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1501–1618,” (PhD. diss., University of Minnesota, 2012).
18
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, (New York and London:
W.W. Norton, 2000); reprint (London: Routledge, 1990).
196
 The Difficulties of Being an Emissary in a Foreign Land

Analysing the embassies through which Don Juan de Persia went to Spain in 1601, as
well as the 1610 mission of Khvāja Safar, the factor of Shāh ʿAbbās, and the embassy of
Don García de Silva y Figueroa in Safavid Iran, there were similarities regarding the
systems for sustaining the emissaries and embassies in the two territories. In both
kingdoms, the system for maintaining the emissaries was based on the king having co-
responsibility for the emissary, including for ensuring his protection.

Safavid Iran had a figure at the court who arranged to receive and maintain
embassies from other kingdoms, and who also exercised this role with high-ranking
foreign missions. This figure, the mehmāndār-bāšī,19 was responsible for providing
foreign guests with lodgings and hospitality while they were in the capital. He was also
responsible for supervising officials (mehmāndār) who received embassies arriving at the
Iranian border and ensured they were provided with protection, lodgings and sustenance
until they reached the capital. During the journey to the capital, these embassies were
hosted according to their status, with all kinds of information being gathered about their
mission and objectives. Don García de Silva y Figueroa equated the mehmāndār-bāšī to
the aposentador mayor in Spain and explained his task as being to ‘accommodate and
provide the Ambassador.’ According to Willem Floor, the rank of the mehmāndār
receiving the emissary depended as much on the importance of the person arriving in the
country as on the respect the shah wanted to show the emissary and his king.20 In the
Spanish territories, and also in the shah’s territories, the network of ambassadors and
religious men in Europe would notify the king and the Council of State of the forthcoming
arrival of ambassadors and emissaries and of their intentions.

Unlike Khvāja Safar, who did not receive any special treatment, the reception
afforded to and accompaniment provided for the Safavid ambassador Dengiz Beg when
he arrived in Barcelona in 1601 was notable: the viceroy, the Duke of Feria, had ordered

19
Vladimir Minorsky ed. and transl. Taḏkirat al-mulūk: A Manual of Safavid Administration (London: E.J.W.
Gibb Memorial Series, 1943), 110, nº 2.
20
Willem Floor, “Foreign Affairs, administration and ministry”, in Encyclopædia Iranica, X/1 (New York,
Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation), 2001, 82–6.
197
the authorities and nobles to wait for him half a league before he arrived in the city of
Barcelona, where he was received and entertained before leaving for Zaragoza. 21 The
Spanish court was responsible for the expenses and maintenance of the embassies and
emissaries during their stay. Interesting accounts are also available on the support and
maintenance of embassies in Safavid territory, including that of García de Silva y
Figueroa. Although the issue of how emissaries and embassies were maintained had not
previously been explored in depth, the recent study by Carlos Martinez Shaw and José
M. Moreno González22 on the diary of expenses for the embassy of Don García de Silva
y Figueroa means we now know a little more about the circulation of goods, support and
maintenance in Persia. In addition to royal co-responsibility for supporting and hosting
the embassy in Iran, the funds needed to support the travellers were transferred, in the
case of the embassy of Silva y Figueroa, by order of the king and the Council of State to
the viceroy in Goa, and from there to religious orders or merchants passing through Iran.
Usually, the funds carried by the embassy and the money it received were enough to cover
the costs of maintaining the people accompanying the ambassador through Iran. Don
García de Silva y Figueroa’s expense diary is unfortunately not available to us in full;
nevertheless, it represents a unique source for understanding the financing and
transferring of funds.

So, how was money to finance the mission transferred? The most relevant data
can be found in the network of merchants, Armenian or European, with common interests
and relations in important places along the route to the Mediterranean and including
Aleppo. Safavid Iran’s relations with the various European dynasties were not only
political, but also included a commercial aspect centring on silk, and that, in turn, had
some important benefits. Regarding this commercial activity, Armenians and Europeans
in trade enclaves such as Aleppo or Baghdad in Ottoman territory, or Hormuz in the
Persian Gulf, were almost the last group in the chain to whom funds to finance a mission
could be transferred. Whether they were based in Venice, Aleppo, Baghdad, Hormuz or
Isfahan, Armenians had freedom of movement in Ottoman territory. And European
merchants settled in Aleppo, Baghdad or in the Safavid capital, Isfahan, such as the

21
Relaciones de Don Juan, 244; Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, Relaciones de las cosas sucedidas en la Corte
de España desde 1599 hasta 1614 (Madrid: Imp. J. Martín Alegría, 1857), 109.
22
José M. Moreno González and Carlos Martínez Shaw, Un extremeño en la Persia del siglo XVII. Nuevos
testimonios de la embajada de Don García de Silva y Figueroa (1614-1624), (Badajoz: Diputación, 2016).
198
Venetian Jacome Facca,23 were able to transfer goods and offer loans. When, therefore,
Khvāja Safar went to Europe as a factor of Shāh ʿAbbās to recover goods that Khvāja
Fattih had bought a few years earlier,24 he contacted an old acquaintance of the family,
the Venetian consul Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571-1620), in Aleppo. As a go-
between, Sagredo knew Safar through his delegate in Iran; and in Venice, in addition to
Fattih, Safar found other Iranians, traders or go-betweens, such as Esmāʿil, perhaps a
convert from Jolfā, and another Armenian named Codis.25

To prepare for Safar’s arrival in Venice, Sagredo sent a letter to the Serenissima
from Aleppo, dated 2 September 1609, in which he expressed the degree of Safar’s
relationship with the shah. This letter also introduced Safar and emphasised the
importance of recovering the shah’s goods in order to increase trust and diplomatic
cooperation. Sagredo added that he had already provided Safar with 200 zecchini to cover

23
Luis Gil, Imperio, I, 173.
24
Fattih Beg, the merchant commissioned by the shah to undertake purchasing in the city of Venice, had
arrived in Venice with 139 bails of silk, while the Venetian Angelo Gradenigo had 20 bails to sell in Europe
(Luis Gil, Imperio I, 166 ff.). In one of the documents compiled by Berchet, Gradenigo is mentioned as the
son of Jews converted to Christianity: E principalmente da uno chiamato Giacomo Nava di Salò, il quale
viene trattenuto dal re come pieggio di un Angelo Gradenigo figliuolo di un ebreo fatto cristiano, che ebbe
da S. M. circa 50 balle di seta (Guglielmo Berchet, La Repubblica di Venezia e la Persia (Turin: Tipografia
G.B. Paravia, 1865), 201-202). After selling the silk, Fattih Beg started making his way back (Luis Gil,
Imperio, I, 166 and II, 149). While he was returning to Iran in 1609, however, another conflict erupted
between Shah ʿAbbās and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617). The Ottomans consequently cut
the trade routes, thus making it impossible for the Armenian Fattih Beg, who was licensed to travel in
Ottoman territory, to carry goods to Iran. In Aleppo, Fattih Beg and his partner fell into the hands of the
Ottoman governor, who confiscated a large quantity of goods and five thousand escudos from Gradenigo.
Lacking the means to continue their journey, they were then forced to return to the starting point. However,
not all their goods were confiscated as a portion was held for safekeeping by the Venetian consul in Aleppo,
Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (Nick Wilding, Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of
Knowledge, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 72-88; Rota, “Safavid Persia…”, 153). Sagredo
subsequently moved these goods to Venice. When Shah ʿAbbās found out what had happened, he ordered
Safar to travel to Venice to recover them. Safar arrived in Venice in January 1610, not only on a mission
to recover the goods, but also on a diplomatic mission to deliver letters to the Christians princes, asking
them to form a common front against the Ottomans (Gil, Imperio, II, 149 ff.; Wilding, Galileo’s Idol, 79,
81).
25
Berchet, La Repubblica, 201–3.
199
running costs and had ordered the delivery of some boxes remaining in Alessandretta
(Iskenderun) and that belonged to Shāh ʿAbbās.26

In fact, Safar had started out with more than enough money, but he was
accompanied by servants and also, as he himself reported, by his family, although we do
not know the exact number of people in his party, and also spent time during his Italian
journey visiting religious sites of importance for the Armenians.27 These activities quickly
depleted his supplies and forced him to ask for help. In view of the joint responsibility of
the king, as referred to above, Shāh ʿAbbās asked Philip III, in a letter of creencia
(credentials) for Safar, to help and maintain Safar, to arrange for the recovered goods to
be transported to Lisbon, and to give Safar a ship to take them to Hormuz.28 There are
several letters from ambassadors and representatives of the Spanish monarchy informing
the king about how Safar was being helped and that funds were being transferred to him.29
By the late summer of 1610 in Milan, however, it seems that these funds had run out. In
a memorial Safar informed the king that having not been able to recover all those goods
and money owed to the shah by Robert Sherley, he was in a precarious financial
position.30 In another memorial he asked the king directly for help. 31 This help was

26
Berchet, La Repubblica, 202–3.
27
José Cutillas Ferrer, “Armenians, Diplomats, and Commercial Agents of Shah ʿAbbās: The European
Journey of Khvāja Safar (c. 1609–14),” Journal of Persianate Studies 11, nº 1 (2018): 10.
28
“Carta de Abbas I, rey de Persia a Felipe III en creencia de Coggia Sefer”, II. 1609, Estado, AGS, 494, u.p.
29
“De Alonso de la Cueva y Benavides, embajador en Venecia” Venecia, 6.II.1609, Estado, AGS, 1354, no
41; Venecia, 27.II.1609, Estado, AGS E, 1354, no 52; “Carta del conde de Castro, embajador en Roma”,
Roma, 20.VII.1610, Estado, AGS, 494 u.p. The commentary on the back of the letter reads: ‘that he is coming
to these kingdoms to fulfil his mission and begs Don Francisco de Castro to give him the favour and help he
may’; “Del conde de Castro a su tío del duque de Lerma”, Rome, 27.VII.1610, Estado, AGS, 494, u.p.; “Carta
de D. Juan Vivas, embajador español en Genova a Felipe III”, Genoa, 7.IV.1611, Estado, AGS, 1435, fol.
63.
30
“Memorial dell’Ambasciatore di Persia”, Milan, 18.IX.1610, Estado (AGS), 1299, n. 188: ‘Nè trovandosi
in tanto commodo di mantenersi con la familia, non havendo trovato alcuni crediti ch’egli pensaba di poter
essigere, ha perciò pensato di darne parte all’È.V., supplicandola ad esser servita di far sì ch’egli sia soccorso
fin tanto che da altra parte possa provedersi.’
31
“Memorial de Coggia Sefer, armenio, presentado al rey de España”, 1611, Estado (AGS), 494 u.p. In this
memorial he says that the Spanish ambassador lent him three thousand ducats in Venice and that he had
hoped to collect the money owed by Robert Sherley from the sale of the shah’s silk, but that everything had
200
forthcoming and, once in Madrid, Safar requested two thousand ducats for his trip to
Lisbon.32 Given the economic situation during the reign of Philip III, the latter was unable
to demonstrate magnanimity or co-responsibility for Safar, and many others, and instead
ordered the viceroy of Portugal, the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo, to help Safar and to put
at his disposal everything he requested in order to take his family and the shah’s
merchandise from Lisbon to Hormuz.33 However, the problems encountered, even though
in the king’s own territory, were many, with the royal envoys facing all kinds of affronts,
even on the ships going to the Estado da Índia. These included the incident in 1610 when
the Iranian ambassador Pakiza Imam Qoli Beg was robbed by ‘hidalgos’ who took his
money by force.34

Since his departure from Milan, Safar’s financial situation had clearly
deteriorated, and he faced major setbacks. These included the taxes imposed on him,
during his journey to Madrid, at the ‘dry ports’ of Aragon and Castile, where five gold
medals and a cross that Paul V had given him, and that was valued at seven hundred and
fifty reales, were seized. The king ordered that these items should be returned to Safar
and that he should be allowed to reach Lisbon without further incident.35 The situation in
Lisbon, however, was not at all flattering to Safar as the viceroy was advised to obtain
the funds to pay him from the remainder of the silk that had been sold and that had not
been included in the gift for the queen. This was the same shipment of silk that Shāh
ʿAbbās had originally sent for sale in Lisbon, but that, incomprehensibly, had been
received as if it were a gift.

turned out to be a deception and that he consequently found himself living in hock and having spent all his
money. For this reason, he asked for the king’s help.
32
“Billete del duque de Lerma para el secretario Antonio de Aróstegui”, Madrid, 7.VII.1611, Estado (AGS),
494, u.p.
33
“Carta de Felipe III para el virrey de Portugal,” El Escorial, 15.VII.1611, Estado, (AGS), 2706 u.p. In this
letter from the king to D. Cristóbal de Moura and others we can see how he tries to hide one of the facts
interfering most in the relations between the court of Madrid and Shāh ʿAbbās, being the assumption that the
initial shipment of silk by the shah for trading constituted a gift for Philip III. This error had personal
consequences for the Iranian ambassador and the future relations, and I have always considered one of the
causes of the change in attitude of Shāh ʿAbbās with respect to relations with Spain to have its origins in the
fiasco of the silk.
34
Luis Gil, Imperio, II, 173.
35
13.VIII.1611, Cámara de Castilla (AGS), 989, fol. 114.
201
 Safar’s situation in Lisbon consequently worsened and he had no option but to
appeal directly and insistently for help from the viceroy of Portugal, King Philip III and
anyone else who could conceivably help him. He even requested one of his servants, a
Persian, to write to the Secretary of State, Antonio de Aróstegui, telling him that he was
in a very precarious situation and in need of assistance, and was selling all the gifts he
had received at the Italian courts.36 In a memorial of December 1611 addressed to the
Secretary of State, Safar stated that he had still not received the remaining one thousand
ducats of the two thousand ordered to be given to him. In desperation he pleaded that he
could not continue to support his family for the remaining four months until the departure
of the ships, stating that he had also sent a memorial to the Duke of Lerma requesting
help.37 Finally, the Persian ambassador Dengiz Beg wrote to the Duke of Lerma to report
on the precarious situation of Safar and, curiously, to remind the Duke of the system of
regal co-responsibility prevailing in both kingdoms, recalling that ‘whatever mercies are
made to the vassals of the King of Persia, are not lost, because he does the same to those
of His Majesty.’38 Eventually Safar was paid the thousand ducats owed to him through
D. Cristobal de Moura, viceroy of Portugal, as, despite the complaints about delays, the
court wanted the ambassador, Safar and his entourage to be treated with dignity. Finally,
Dengiz Beg departed in March 1612 without Safar, who was left waiting for the goods
that had been pawned in Milan and that were to be sent as a gift to the shah. It was indeed
a grave mistake to attempt to pass off as a gift the objects previously purchased by the
shah,39 even though not only the Council of State, but also Friar António de Gouvea
believed that the goods pawned in Milan represented a good gift or a way to please the
shah.40 Analysing the items pawned in Milan, however, shows that they were not really

36
“Carta de un criado persa de Coggia Sefer al secretario de Estado Antoni de Aróstegui”, Lisbon,
10.XII.1611, Estado (AGS), 234, u.p.
37
“Carta de Coggia Sefer al secretario de Estado Antonio de Aróstegui”, Lisbon, 10.XII.1611, Estado (AGS),
234, u.p.; “Memorial de Coggia Sefer para el Duque de Lerma”, XII.1611, Estado (AGS), 254, u.p.
38
“Quantas mercedes se hace a los vassallos del rey de Persia, no se pierden, porque lo mismo hace él a los
de S.M.” “Carta del embajador persa Dengiz Beg al Duque de Lerma”, Lisbon 10.XII.1611, Estado (AGS),
234, u.p.
39
“Y parece al Consejo muy justo que haga lo del desempeñar las armas, entre lo demás que se hubiere de
enviar, pues tratándose de darle satisfacción, será esto de lo que hará más estimación”, “Consulta del Consejo
de Estado sobre cosas de Persia” Madrid, 27.VIII.1611, Estado (AGS), 2641, u.p.
40
“Consejo de Estado sobre cosas de Persia”, Madrid, 3.IX.1611, Estado (AGS), 2641, u.p.
202
objects of value or meant to be presented as a gift, especially given that the shah had
previously bought them with his own money.41 Moreover, the cost of recovering the
goods from pawning was more than the seven thousand ducats for which they had been
pawned.42

By the end of 1612 it seemed that Safar’s proposal to send an ambassador to the
court of the shah would delay his return to Iran. However, there are some doubts about
whether he sailed before García de Silva or had to wait. There is, for example, the letter
from the Duke of Lerma to the Count of Salinas of 15 December 1612, in which it is
resolved that Safar should be given a ship and a malotaje (supplies and provisions carried
on the vessel) for the ships of India, as well as one hundred ducats a month for sustenance
on behalf of the king.43 However, Safar continued claiming economic hardship and that
he had not received the promised financing. In 1613, Safar went on to ask for help to pay
the debts he had incurred in Lisbon, amounting to a total of two thousand five hundred
ducats.44 In an order of February 1613, the viceroy of Portugal, Pedro del Castillo, was
asked to take charge of Safar’s debts, but only, according to the king’s letter, if these did
not exceed two thousand ducats.45 Then king himself requested the viceroy to clean,
arrange and ship the objects pawned in Milan and that nothing should be lost.46 Safar’s
stay in Lisbon appeared thus to be coming to an end. Although I have not been able to
verify whether Safar was able to sail in March 1613, in the same letter of 3 March 1613
the king insisted that he should embark on one of the ships travelling to India with the
items belonging to the shah. However, doubts arise as to whether he departed the Iberian
Peninsula because of remarks in various letters in September 1613, in which Safar

41
“Cosas dejadas en Milán por Coggia Sefer”, Estado (AGS), 1301, no. 139 and 139-A. On the artefacts
purchased and recovered for the shah, see note 60 below.
42
“Carta del Condestable de Castilla, gobernador de Milán, con nota de las armas del rey de Persia allí
retenidas”, Milan, 8.IX.1611, Estado (AGS), 1301, nº 138 and no. 139, 139-A; “Resumen anónimo del
memorial presentado por Coggia Sefer” 1611, Estado (AGS), 494, u.p.
43
“Carta del Duque de Lerma al Conde de Salinas, presidente del Consejo de Portugal”, El Pardo,
15.XII.1612, Estado (AGS), 249, u.p.
44
“Memorial e Coggia Sefer al duque de Lerma”, 1613, Estado (AGS), 495, u.p.
45
“Carta de Felipe III para D. Pedro de Castilla, virrey de Portugal”, Madrid, 20.II.1613, in Secretarías
Provinciales (AGS), 150, 13v.
46
Ms 51-VIII-5, fol. 11, BPNA; “Carta de Felipe III a D. Pedro del Castillo, virrey de Portugal”, Madrid,
3.III.1613, Estado (AGS), 2708, u.p.
203
indicated that he had embarked, but then returned de arribada to the port of Lisbon, a fact
not considered in my previous work on Safar.47 In a letter to the Duke of Lerma dated 28
September 1613 he says that ‘I was very sorry for my arrival because of the great desires
with which I was going (to) serve S.M., it still seems that God allowed it so that I would
take Don García de Silva in my company.’48 And in his memorial addressed to Philip III
Safar says, ‘The Armenian Count Safar, factor and general procurator of the King of
Persia, makes it known to Your Majesty how he came from arrival very dishevelled and
almost entirely deprived, with his family, and that in order to return to embark and to
refuse he cannot do so without the customary mercies that Your Majesty makes with all
the servants of the King of Persia, his friend.’49 It is possible that Safar sailed from Lisbon
in the armada of 4 April 1613, of which Manuel de Meneses was the captain, and then
returned to Lisbon on 23 August 1613. At this point, we see Safar once again being
overwhelmed by his debts, which made it impossible for him to leave the city. Once again,
the Duke of Lerma tried to help Safar and, in a letter to the Count of Salinas, insisted that

47
11(1): 1-28
48
“sentí mucho mi arribada por los grandes deseos con que iba (a) servir a S.M., todavía parece que lo
permitió Dios así para que llevasse en mi compañía a Don García de Silva.” “Carta de Coggia Sefer al duque
de Lerma”, Lisbon, 28.IX.1613, Estado (AGS), 495, u.p.; Estado (AGS), 2643 (Folder: García de Silva y
Figueroa).
49
“El conde Seffer armenio, factor y procurador general del rey de Persia, haze saber a V. M. cómo él vino
de arribada muy despezo y desproveído casi del todo con su familia, y que para tornar a embarcarsse y
rehazerse no puede sin las acostumbradas mercedes que V. M. haze con todos los criados del rey de Persia,
su amigo.” “Memorial de Coggia Sefer dirigido a Felipe III”, IX.1613, Estado (AGS), 459, u.p.; Luis Gil
records a letter from Philip III to Shāh ʿAbbās dated August 9, 1613, where he also implies that Safar had
sailed after Ambassador Dengiz Beg and Friar António de Gouvea: ‘Aunque con los Embaxadores y personas
que V(uestra) Ser(enida)d ha embiado por acá le he escrito, y de ellos y de Fray Antonio de Govea, Obispo,
de Cirene, que por mi orden volvió a essas partes el año passado, con quien también escriví, y ultimamente
del Conde Cocha Xefer Armenio, factor general de V(uestra) Ser(enida)d, avrá entendido lo que por acá se
ofrecía.’ Luis Gil, Imperio II, 261; The Council of State seems to have ratified this when it replied in a letter
of 1 October 1613: ‘En el Consejo se ha visto un memorial del conde Sefer armenio, factor y procurador
general del rey de Persia, en que dize que bolvió de arribada a Lisboa con su casa y familia muy desprobeydo.
Que para bolverse a envarcar y rehacerse le es forçoso valerse de las acostumbradas mercedes de V. M., a
quien humildemente supplica.’ “Consejo de estado sobre Coggia Sefer”, Madrid, 1.X.1613, Estado (AGS),
495, u.p.
204
the debts should be paid if they amounted to less than two thousand ducats.50 To the
problems of financing were added those arising from the tensions generated with the
administrations in the viceroyalties, especially those linked to the Crown of Portugal. In
the same memorial to Philip III in September 1613 Safar again asked the king to write to
the viceroy of Goa and his officers in Hormuz, requesting them not to charge him taxes
on the goods recovered for the shah, and to help him to transport them to Isfahan.51 The
Council of State ruled that since the goods belonged to the King of Persia, taxes should
not be charged.52

Ultimately, however, Safar did not return to Isfahan as he suspected that Shāh
ʿAbbās would punish him for having pawned the goods in Milan, and instead went to
India. Although I have not been able to trace his journey through India, some references
mention that he travelled to Mughal India so as to avoid possible punishment by Shāh
ʿAbbās.53 Chick also mentions Safar going to the Mughal court before ultimately
returning to Safavid Iran.54 By 1625 he may already have been in Safavid territory,
judging by a reference that mentions both him and his brother Khvāja Nazar at the
Nativity and Theophany festival in Farahābād, where Shāh ʿAbbās gathered significant
numbers of Armenians, Georgians and Jews to repopulate the new capital.55

Circulation of Goods and Royal Gifts

When Safar arrived in Venice and was recognised by the Doge, he was able to recover
the goods that had been able to be saved from the Ottoman seizure in Aleppo. The
inventory list includes a series of curious objects; prominent among them is a series of

50
“Carta del Duque de Lerma al Conde de Salinas, presidente del Consejo de Portugal”, Madrid, 9.9.1613,
Estado (AGS), 253, u.p.
51
“Memorial de Coggia Seffer dirigido a Felipe III”, Lisbon, IX.1613, Estado (AGS), 495, u.p.
52
“Consejo de Estado sobre Coggia Sefer”, Madrid, 6.XII.1613, Estado (AGS), 495, u.p.
53
Valle, Viaggi, II, 43; Zekiyan, “Xoğa Safar,” 366–367.
54
H. Chick, A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth
centuries (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, vol. I, 1939, repr., 2012), 192-193.
55
M.-F Brosset,ed. and transl., Collection d’historiens arméniens (St. Petersburg, Impr. de l'Académie
imperiale des sciences, vol. I, 1874), 382.
205
paintings of religious and historical subjects and a noted box of rock crystal and silver.56
The paintings show a Nativity scene, the Virgin Mary, the Saviour, a nude woman putting
on a shirt, Mary Magdalene in habit, a nude Mary Magdalene, the Queen of Cyprus
(possibly a portrait of Catherine Cornaro, r. 1474–89), a Venetian woman, and a woman
with long hair, possibly Cassandra. However, there are no records of these paintings in
the later reports that were made. Indeed, only the Comentarios of the ambassador García
del Silva and Pietro della Valle in his La Persia mention paintings, with one of these
being of the Infanta of Spain and one of the Queen of France. 57 Many of the artefacts in
later lists of the recovered objects that complete this earlier list could be considered as
being of dubious quality and functionality. However, many would have had an exotic
significance in the Safavid court, and maybe others would have been able to be gifted.

This idea of the gift as an exotic object to be given as a present in the courtly
environment is presented in a very interesting fashion by Linda Komaroff.58 At first, these
recovered objects were intended to be sent to the shah with a clear aim of maintaining the
friendship and concord.59 But the situation changed when a possible change in the shah’s
political position – and specifically a possible turn towards the English claims – began to
be sensed. This is when the idea of sending an ambassador and a substantial gift arose,
surpassing the supposed gift of silk previously sent by the shah. Now, however, the type
of protocolary gift in which the Safavid court and the Spanish monarchy were involved
had other characteristics. As I mentioned earlier, this new moment entailed both

56
Berchet, La Repubblica 208–9; Cristelle Baskins, “Framing Khoja Sefer in the Sala Regia of the Quirinal
Palace in Rome (1610–1617),” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 24 (2015): 17.
57
Both references to the paintings are included in the list of objects delivered to the shah. Luis Gil, Imperio
II, 317, nos. 78 and 79.
58
Linda Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan, 20-1.
59
‘Parece que siendo S. M. servido de hazer este favor al rey de Persia, las puede embiar con el embaxador
que S. M. huviere de embiar al dicho rey de Persia, para que heche de ver la amistad que se le haze, porque
desembolsando S. M. este dinero y llevando las armas el dicho Cocha Sefer no parezca que se le haze a él la
merced del dinero.’ [‘It seems that S. M., being served to do this favour to the king of Persia, can send them
[the artifacts) with the ambassador that S. M. will have to send to the said king of Persia. In order that he may
see the friendship that is made to him, so that by His Majesty disbursing this money and the said Cocha Sefer
carrying the arms, it may not seem that the mercy of the money is made to him.’], 1611, Estado (AGS), 494,
u.p.; “Carta de Felipe III para el Condestable de Castilla, gobernador de Milán,” El Escorial, 23.IX.1611,
Estado (AGS), 2706, u.p.
206
obligatory reciprocity in the gift given and a demonstration of power and rivalry, with the
king of Spain continually insisting that his gift to the shah must be more important and
greater than the misunderstood gift of silk sent to Spain by the shah. Hence, every effort
was made not only to recover what the shah had previously purchased, but to augment it
with infinite numbers of exotic and valuable objects, including some of sentimental value,
such as the sword that Philip III carried when he married Margaret of Austria (1599).

The items in the recovered gifts that stand out are the glass box and military
objects such as coats of chain mail, perhaps serving as exotic uniforms. 60 Hernando
Moraga said of the glass box that it had been commissioned by the shah and made in Italy.
And he added that the King of Persia liked it very much when the ambassador gave it to
him, along with the rest of the present, in Qazvin.61 The Madrid court’s preparations for
the shah’s gift went through several stages, and the suggestions made by the members of
the Council of State and others for choosing the gift for the shah are very interesting.
Although there were recommendations regarding the shah’s wishes, many of the

60
“Cosas dejadas en Milán por Coggia Sefer”, Estado (AGS), 1301, 139 and 139-A:
Una cassa di cristallo legata in argento sopra dorata con 28 colori di cristallo.
Numero cento undeci zacchi di maglia.
Para dieci nove e mezza maniche di maglia.
Pezzetti di zacchi numero cento quaranta per accommodare gli altri.
Una serratura di ferro.
Un morso di cavallo frusto.
Otto pezzi di rami di cucina.
Una bacila di lottone.
Una scattola di sonagli et altro.
Una scattola con forbicietti e specchietti piccoli.
Un plico di disegni in papeli.
Una tacina di porfido.
Un armatura, cioè il petto, la schiena, morioni, li braciali e maniche usate.
Pezzi sette quadri di pitture usati.
Numero tre cossini usati.
Uno vasso di porfido, o sia porcellana.
Una pietra di musaico de diversi colori.
Una fodra di zibellino
Due fodre di foino.
Una bacila et bocale di argento usati.
61
Fray Hernando Moraga, Relación breve de la embaxada, fol. 2r.
207
suggestions, however, can be regarded as strange. The Comendador Mayor of Leon, for
example, suggested in a letter sent to the king to send some glass earrings, a piece of stone
inlaid with emeralds ‘if it is not of great value’ and adds ‘other trifles that have to go with
the present, and likewise the coat of mail and broadsword, of those in the armoury of
Your Majesty, for the person of the ambassador.’62 The viceroy of Portugal, meanwhile,
suggested a gold sword for the ambassador and a portrait of the king.63 The Venetian
Nicolas Crivelli wrote an interesting report on the objects to be included in the shah’s
gift. Commenting on the dogs, he listed four male and female pairs of small and large
woolly and smooth-haired dogs and hunting dogs.64 In short, as the Comendador himself
said, trifles. Later, however, we will see that the final gift was nevertheless very important
and had a great impact on the shah.

It is striking how, in this accumulation of data on the gift to the shah, some items
stand out because of their curiousness. The reference to a sword from the king’s armoury
to be given to the ambassador is later converted into a simple brass sword when the drawer
is opened in Goa to display the contents.65 Also curious is the idea of the dogs that the
Crivelli and the Comendador Mayor of Leon includes in the recommendation.66 However,
the shah liked hunting and so perhaps that explains the proposal for dogs with certain
characteristics. The court decided that some of these proposals, together with the pawned
goods from Milan, would combine to form a magnificent and exceptional gift,67 as the
chronicles show.

Consequences of Cultural and Geographical Remoteness

62
‘y otras menudencias que han de ir con el presente, y así mesmo la cota de malla y espada ancha, de las
que hubiere en la armería de V.M., para la persona del embajador.’ “Opinión del Comendador Mayor de
León sobre cosas que enviar a Persia.” Madrid, 31.I.1612, Estado (AGS), 2642, u.p.
63
Lisbon, 7.II.1612, Estado (AGS), 245 fol. 158; Luis Gil, Imperio, II, 210-11, n. 102.
64
Estado (AGS), 2642, u.p.; Luis Gil, Imperio, II, 476.
65
Alonso, Antonio de Gouvea, 165.
66
“Opinión del Comendador Mayor de León sobre las cosas que enviar a Persia”, 31.I.1612, Estado (AGS),
2462, u.p.
67
31.I.1612, Estado (AGS), 2642, u.p.; Alonso, Antonio de Gouvea, 149.
208
Lastly, the time that elapsed from September 1613 to March 1614 allowed the court to
configure and shape the gift to the shah. But while preparing the gift, the court sent a
preliminary gift comprising what was at hand. This, however, had disastrous
consequences for the Safavid ambassador. As Luis Gil points out, after the Persian
ambassador, Dengiz Beg, departed with a first shipment of not very important gifts for
the shah, the viceroy of the Estado da Índia was asked to notify the shah that this gift was
only a token of good will and that the real one would come later, with the weapons and
objects pawned in Milan.68 In an unsuspected way when Dengiz Beg arrived in Isfahan,
Shāh ʿAbbās ordered that he should be executed. It has been argued that the shah’s
displeasure and violent reaction were motivated by several factors, including the
ambassador’s behaviour with some members of the embassy, his opening of the shah’s
letters in Goa, and the disproportionate nature of the gift sent by Philip III compared with
that sent earlier by the shah.69 Looking at the matter of the silk in detail, the real problem
would seem to have been that the silk was reclassified from a commodity to be traded to
an item to be given as a gift to Philip III. This was something that Shāh ʿAbbās had never
ordered or even mentioned, and it was a strategy adopted by Friar António de Gouvea
and the ambassador, Dengiz Beg, in order to avoid paying taxes in Hormuz as the
shipment was registered as a gift for the king of Spain at the customs office (alfândega)
of Hormuz.70 When Dengiz Beg returned empty-handed after not having sold the silk in
Lisbon, the shah brought all his fury down on him and Friar António de Gouvea.71

68
Luis Gil, Imperio II, 213, n. 110; Luis Gil already points out that in Nicolás Crivelli’s memory of what
should have been sent to the shah and what was sent, there was an important difference. Luis Gil, Imperio II,
104, n. 112. See documents in the documentary appendix: Doc. 4 ‘Sobre el presente que llevó fray Antonio
de Gouvea al rey de Persia (A). Propuesta de don Cristóbal de Moura’; Doc. 5 ‘Sobre el presente que llevó
fray Antonio de Gouvea al rey de Persia (B). Memoria de las cosas que se han de enviar y procurar se busquen
para el presente del Rey de Persia. Nicolás Crivelli’; Doc. 6 ‘Sobre el presente que llevó fray Antonio de
Gouvea al rey de Persia (C). Memoria de lo que se assentó que se embiasse de presente al Rey de Persia.’
69
For a detailed account of the possible motives, see Luis Gil, Imperio II, 217-8.
70
Corpo cronologico (ANTT), 1, 116, 2; Roberto Gulbenkian, ed., L’ambassade en Perse de Luís Pereira de
Lacerda et des pères portugais de l’ordre de Saint-Agustin, Belchior dos Anjos et Guilherme de Santo
Agostinho, 1604-1605 (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1972), 61; Pietro della Valle, Delle
conditioni di Abbas, re di Persia (Venice: Francesco Baba, 1628), 70-78.
71
See Luis Gil’s argument about the silk that was supposedly sent as a gift and what happened when it was
sold, including that a large share of the profits remained in the hands of the queen. Luis Gil, Imperio II, 218–
21. Luis Gil records the statement of Friar António de Gouvea to Shāh ʿAbbās, where a certificate is presented
209
 The gift for the shah was ultimately brought to Iran by the ambassador, García de
Silva, who arrived in Qazvin in 1618, where Shāh ʿAbbās was awaiting him. The present
consisted of the objects and weapons brought from Milan, comprising the gift from the
king of Spain, and the items added by the ambassador. García de Silva, Pietro della Valle
and Hernando Moraga provide descriptions of how it was arranged for the gift to be
carried by several hundred porters. From Moraga’s account we know the order in which
everything was paraded through the streets of Qazvin.72 A description, possibly by
Gutierre de Monroy, and skipping the protocol for the Ottoman ambassador and other
ambassadors who called to see the imposing gift being presented on behalf of Philip III,
refers to how Shāh ʿAbbās was particularly interested in one of the arquebuses decorated
with a figure of a nude Venus carved in gold; after testing the arquebus, he was able to
confirm its safety.73

The diplomatic mission, however, proved a failure, and the ambassador Don
García de Silva ultimately returned to Hormuz and Goa. This shows that despite the court
of Madrid’s continued attempts to remain in control of events, diplomatic relations,
movements of people and goods were far from easy owing to the problems of distance
and the fact that this was a relationship between two kingdoms with clear transcultural
religious antagonism. Even if this latter aspect was not initially a problem, given the need
to set these differences aside in the face of the common enemy, the Ottoman Empire, the
cultural substratum of the two societies did create problems.

Whereas the circulation of people and goods was a reality, despite the distance
and dangers, nothing could guarantee the circulation or transfer of ideas or an alignment
of the political priority agenda of the two courts. Entanglement was possible, but this, too,
did not bring about the intended military alliance. In short, as Lockhart pointed out, the
distance was a factor ‘which rendered impossible any concerted planning by the powers

from the alfândega of Hormuz containing a joint declaration by Dengiz Beg and Cocha Rageb that the
shipment of silk was a gift from the King of Persia to the King of Spain. Shāh ʿAbbās had demanded from
António de Gouvea the value of the silk and the interest generated. Luis Gil, Imperio II, 220. This occurred
in 1613 and it would still take time for the Spanish ambassador to arrive at the court of Isfahan. This fact, I
believe, was at the root for Shāh ʿAbbās to change his mind regarding the need for an alliance with the Madrid
court and for his growing sense, over the next few years, of miscommunication with the Spanish monarchy.
72
Luis Gil, Imperio II, 314–318.
73
Fundo Geral (BNP) Ms 580, 57v-58r.
210
concerned’.74 And to which I would add the socio-cultural barriers between the two
kingdoms in the early modern era that prevented them from reaching a real understanding.

74
Lawrence Lockhart, “European Contacts with Persia, 1350-1736,” in The Cambridge History of Iran: The
Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. VI, 1986), 373–410, 382.
211
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Secretarías Provinciales, 150

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Cámara de Castilla, 989

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 245

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 249

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 234

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 253

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 254

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 459

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 494

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 495

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 1299

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 1301

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 1354

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 1435

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 2641

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 2642

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 2643

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 2706

Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) Estado, 2707

Biblioteca do Palácio Nacional da Ajuda (BPNA)

Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo: (ANTT)

Corpo Cronologico, 1, 116

Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP)

Ms 580

212
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216
 Chapter 8: The Ahl Al-Kithãb’s Businesses: Economic and Religious
Connections in the Maghrib World (1766–1822). The Jews and the
Transfer of Goods.

JORGE AFONSO

Introduction

Portuguese archives contain a great deal of information on economic and religious connections
in the Maghrib, including on the relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean, the
links to the main ports on the Atlantic seaboard of the Iberian Peninsula and the role played in
this context by the Jewish communities of the Mare Nostrum.

Competition between Christian and Muslim powers for vital space to administrate their
foreign and domestic policies marked the Western Mediterranean area during the second half
of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth. In the Maghrib, both the
Algerian Regency and the Moroccan Reign faced internal challenges, which they dealt with
differently, as well as external pressures from Europe.

In the Algerian Regency, the Turkish minority kept large sections of the population in
poverty, while increasing the autonomy of the Constantine and Oran beys. The Algerian deys,
staying in power through military uprisings or sustained by the raïs elite that filled its coffers
with revenues raised from ransoms, sales of ships and treaty negotiations with European
powers, failed to achieve their objectives through their foreign policy of using privateers to put
pressure on the European powers. Instead, this served only to delay the inevitable.

The change came about in the late eighteenth century, when internal conflicts and the
call of the Atlantic routes, with their Brazilian gold and South American silver, generated a
bold and ambitious shipbuilding plan. This plan showed that Algeria had taken note of
information received from the Sephardic networks connecting the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic ports, as well as information collected from the cargo manifests of Spanish ships
coming from Havana and that was published in the Cadiz press.

217
 Maghribian privateers had regularly been used by the hegemonic European powers to
manage commercial flows, to defend their maritime routes and merchant fleets and, in the
British case, to attempt to commercially strangle the new nation in the Americas, the United
States. However it was this new power, and its attitude to European conflicts, with American
troops landing in Tripoli in 1805, as well as the death of raïs Hamidou Ibn Ali in a battle against
an American squadron commanded by Stephen Decatur in 1815, that changed the power
relationships in the Western Mediterranean.

The first Alawid sultans quickly understood the importance of free trade for
independence and territorial integrity. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Muhammad
Ibn ‘Abd Allah (1757–1790) tried to regulate the geometry of his makhzen by, for example,
reducing agricultural taxes and promoting external trade in order to increase customs revenues
and sustain Moroccan development. In 1765 he then decided to concentrate external trade at a
single port in order to decrease wheat smuggling along the Moroccan Atlantic Coast, as well
as for fiscal optimisation purposes. The port of Essaouira was designated for this purpose
because of its important strategic position, with Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah inviting Jewish
traders to establish themselves there by appointing them as Tujjãr al-Sultan.

The years between 1790 and 1798 were years of great conflict, both in Europe and
Morocco. During the reign of Mawlay Yazid (1790–1792) the Alawid Empire failed to
reconquer Ceuta, which even today is still in Spanish hands, and suffered the devastating effects
of the battles for succession. Over the years, Spanish interference in Moroccan domestic policy
continued, more or less openly, through its consul in Tangier, Juan Manuel Gonzalès Salmon,
and his agents from various religious denominations across the Moroccan Empire. Mawlay
Yazid did not forget this interference and, after acceding to the throne, took reprisals against
those who had collaborated with the Spanish. As a result, one of the most important Spanish
agents, Muhammad Ibn al-Arbi Efendi, was executed; while his head was sent to the Franciscan
Convent in Meknes for Priest José Boltas, recognised as an advocate for Madrid’s interests,
one of his hands was sent to Tangiers to be fixed to the door of the Spanish Consulate. All that
Mawlay Yazid said about his foreign policy was that he wanted to promote peace with Great
Britain and Sweden and declare war on all other nations.

Europe faced several conflicts during the reign of Mawlay Sulayman (1792–1822),
when the hegemonic powers’ interference in the Maghrib became more overt, thus revealing
the geostrategic importance of Morocco. In the circumstances, and given Europe’s need for

218
strategic goods, the sultan made efforts to develop trade with the North Mediterranean Coast,
but also noted that trade with Europe generally resulted in trouble. Ultimately, in 1799, after
numerous cases of disrespect being shown to Moroccan colours at sea, he decided to call all
the nation’s vessels home.1

The French defeat at Trafalgar changed French–Moroccan relations and went on to

determine the links with Europe for more then a century, including through Mawlay
Sulayman’s decision to grant the British commercial advantages that he denied to other nations.
In this way, the dynamics of interference by European powers were consistently present from
the second half of the eighteenth century until the French occupation of Algiers.

Relations between Portugal and Morocco were excellent after 1769, even during the
succession conflicts between 1792 and 1798. However, the Alawid Empire was never a
desirable place for Portuguese elites, with a diplomatic dynasty, the Colaços, being responsible
for protecting national interests for more then a century. This family was responsible, with the
helpful cooperation of the Moroccan Jewish community, for managing the consular posts and
the ambiguities of Portuguese foreign policy, including being involved in negotiating the Luso–
Moroccan Treaty in 1774 and its ratification, in ensuring the issuing of cereal exportation
licences, in explaining to an astounded Mawlay Sulayman the Portuguese Royal Court’s
departure to Brazil in 1807, and in preventing the Lisbon business community from interfering
in the Moroccan Atlantic ports’ rebellion against the sultan. This was the very special context
in which financial resources and goods travelled between Maghribian and European spaces.

The Maghrib’s contribution was crucial in supplying provisions to the Luso–English

armies that fought Bonaparte’s troops in the Iberian Peninsula and in mitigating Portugal’s
frequent cereal crises. The information received in this respect from Portuguese agents all over
the Moroccan Empire clearly underlined the importance of the Western Mediterranean Jewish
communities and their connections to the Sephardic diaspora that enabled the flow of funds,
goods and information, as well as their interactions with other monotheistic religions. This was
the context in which various attempts to approach the Algiers Regency were made in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the aim of freeing the Portuguese captives and
signing a peace treaty to protect Portuguese navigation in the Western Mediterranean and
prevent Algerian privateers from crossing the lucrative South Atlantic routes. It was an

1
Mohamed El Mansour, Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman (Cambridgeshire: MENAS Press, 1988),
56.
219
approach that considered not only Portugal’s interests but also those of Britain, by then the
dominant maritime power.

Financial Flows: Diplomatic Interventions and the Ransoming of Captives

The final release of Portuguese subjects in the eighteenth century was in 1778. However,
between 1783 and 1810, a further fifty Portuguese vessels, most of them fishing and merchant
boats, were lost to Algerian privateers in the Mediterranean and Atlantic waters. These included
the brig Lebre Pequeno and the frigate Cisne. The brig was lost near Estepona in 1799, while
the frigate was lost in the Mediterranean on 2 May 1802. Of these ships’ crew members, 248
were ultimately returned to Portugal.

The Portuguese imprisoned by the Algerian privateers as a result of the struggles for
control of the Western Mediterranean were the nineteenth-century’s last great ransom case on
the Mare Nostrum. This was an important business, and one involving many stakeholders:
Portugal was always short of funds and wanted only the return of its subjects and security on
the maritime routes in the South Atlantic, while the Algerian dey was facing a series of internal
crisis, as well as pressure from the hegemonic European powers and the United States, a new
actor in the Mediterranean’s geopolitical space. Meanwhile Great Britain was concerned to
ensure the captives were freed because it would otherwise be impossible for a Luso–Algerian
peace treaty to be signed and for Britain to use Portuguese ships to supply the armies fighting
Napoleon’s troops in Europe, and the Livorno Jews’ financial elite were involved because of
being intermediaries between the Portuguese Crown and the Maghribian interests.

The loss of the Cisne provoked wide-ranging discussions in Lisbon, given that her crew
included some prominent members of Portuguese society. A big campaign to collect donations
for the ransom was immediately launched under the patronage of the Prince Regent D. João.
The money raised in this way, including substantial amounts from the Portuguese Crown in
Brazil, was sufficient to allow the captives to be ransomed in 1810.

Fr. José de Santo António Moura’s first voyage to Algiers was in 1799, followed by a
second visit in 1803. In 1799, he tried to rescue the Portuguese captives from Lebre Pequeno
and negotiate a truce. The information sent by Moura to Portugal included the first mention of
Naphtali Busnach as the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs. On Moura’s return to Algiers
in 1803, he once again sought recourse to Naphtali Busnach as a mediator, but without
220
success.2 In November 1804, however, a captive wrote to his superiors informing them that he
had been approached by Naphtali Busnach to send a message saying that the dey was now
ready to reopen negotiations.3 Busnach’s evident interest in this matter led him to contact ‘Abd
al-Karim Ibn-Taleb, a Moroccan trader located in Lisbon, to intercede with the Portuguese
authorities as the Divan’s agent.4 The dey had also ordered Ibn-Taleb to address a letter to the
Prince Regent D. João with a new proposal for securing the Portuguese captives’ release.

The early years of the nineteenth century in the Maghrib were marked by riots, which
also led to significant changes in the Turkish oligarchy that held power in Algiers. From Fez
to Cairo, the enthusiasm that Jews from Iberia had brought to the Jewish communities there
quickly faded, with violent crises shaking North African Jewish communities in Egypt in 1735,
in Morocco during the reign of Mawlay Yazid and in Algiers in 1805.5

In September 1805, detailed information about the pogrom on 28 June that year was
sent to Lisbon, explaining that it had been caused by the failure of negotiations with Portugal.6
The next month, another representation to the Portuguese authorities added the murder of
Mustapha Pacha (1798–1805) to Naphtali Busnach’s list of deaths, as well as details of
intervention by other Livorno Jews, specifically David Durand, David Bacri and Joseph Cohen
Bacri.7 The amount of money involved (the dey had initially demanded five million Spanish
duros for the captives’ ransom) attracted the interest of the financial elite of the European Jews
acting as intermediaries for Turkish oligarchs, as well as Portuguese agents, and facilitators of
other European powers in Algiers that, for geopolitical reasons, were not interested in peace
with Portugal. However the failure of these negotiations did not prevent the Livorno Jews from
intervening in other potentially profitable businesses, such as when Joseph Cohen Bacri used

2
“Narração da Viagem que por Ordem de Sua Alteza de Lazaro Joze de me mandou associar”, AHU, NA,
box 425.
3
“Carta de Paulo Freire de Andrade para o visconde de Anadia”, Argel, 7.XI.1804, AHU, NA, box 411.
4
“Carta de Naftali Busnach para Hagi Abdelkrim Bentaleb”, Argel, 1.XI.1804, AHU, NA, box 415.
5
Michel Abitbol, Le passé d’une discorde: Juifs et Arabes du VIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Perrin, 2003),
114–15.
6
“Carta de João Afonso Neto para o visconde de Anadia”, Argel, 11.IX.1805, AHU, NA, box 391.
7
“Carta de Paulo Freire de Andrade para o visconde de Anadia”, Argel, 26.X.1805, AHU, NA, box 425.
221
his financial services to ensure wages were paid for crews on Portuguese warships lost to
Algerian privateers.8

Following the negotiations’ failure, Joseph Cohen Bacri contacted the Viscount of
Anadia9 through his Lisbon correspondent, Comello Corminati, and referred to another dey
(Ahmed Pacha 1805–1808)10 in Algiers, proposing that talks with the Regency should
resume.11 This new approach came about because of the lucrative business opportunities
perceived and the subsequent entrusting of funds to the Sephardic diaspora’s banking houses.
However the Portuguese reply was inconclusive, given the well-known financial difficulties
of its Royal Treasury and because British interference prevented any other position on this
subject.

In 1806, other players emerged from the complex relationship between Portugal and
the Algerian Regency. This new context in the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas, resulting
from the confrontation between the maritime and continental powers represented by Britain
and France, led to new approaches by the Portuguese government, now under British tutelage.
Richard Cartwright, the British ambassador, informed Lisbon that this would be a good
moment to adopt a new approach to the dey. The Algerian oligarch was facing demands from
his janissaries, as well as food shortages caused by a terrible harvest, and Cartwright drew
attention to the need for the Portuguese envoy to bring appropriate funds with him to avoid
being ‘subject to the famous Jew Bacri, consuls’ broker, to receive ten, fifteen, twenty, and
thirty per cent to lend it, in addition to his two per cent brokerage fee.’ 12 Joseph Cohen Bacri
was certainly aware of the British interest and offered his services again. However, Lisbon
refused, based on an order by the Prince Regent’s Council.13

8
“Relatório do Capitão-Tenente João Affonso Neto”, Argel, 11.X.1805, AHU, NA, box 414. The Portuguese
warships lost to the Algerian privateers were the brig Lebre Pequeno and the frigate Cisne.
9
Viscount of Anadia, João Rodrigues de Sá e Mello de Menezes e Sottomayor (1755–1809), Portuguese
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and War.
10
Ahmed Pacha was also murdered following one of the many riots that shook Algerian society in the early
nineteenth century. Albert Devoulx related the event, based on oral witness sources. See Albert Devoulx, Le
Raïs Hamidou: Notice Bibliographique sur Le plus célèbre Corsaire algérien du XIIIe siècle de l’hégire
(Alger: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan, 1859), 98–101.
11
“Carta de Joseph Cohen Bacri para o visconde de Anadia”, Argel, 3.XII.1805, AHU, NA, box 391.
12
“Carta de Ricardo Cartwright para Luiz de Mota Feo”, Gibraltar, 6.III.1806, AHU, NA, box 391.
13
“Carta do visconde Anadia para Joseph Cohen Bacri”, Mafra, 11.III.1807, AHU, NA, box 415.
222
 The Portuguese authorities’ new procedure brought another player, Abraham
Cardozo,14 into the attempts to normalise institutional relations with Algiers. This Sephardic
Jew, whose family came from Portugal and who was the Regency’s consul in Gibraltar and
the agent of the Algerian dey in various businesses, approached the Reign authorities.
However, despite the Cardozo family being no less important than the Bacri family in the
Western Mediterranean’s financial world, his efforts were unsuccessful. Lisbon’s response –
communicated through Cipriano Ribeiro Freire, one of the Reign’s governors in the absence
of the Portuguese Court in Brazil and a former ambassador in London (1774–1791) and
Washington (1794–1799) – was to refuse the offer by the dey.15 The Portuguese reaction also
has to be seen in the light of the expected British interference in the approach to the Algiers
Regency, although the effects of mediation by the Livorno Jews cannot be excluded.

In the years after the French Revolution, the Bacris faced several challenges in their
relationships with European powers. These Jewish businessmen, coming from Europe and
living in North African maritime cities, considered themselves to be an elite among
Maghribian Jewish communities. The importance of their community in Algiers was
considerably boosted by the arrival of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula following the religious
persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.16 Documentation from the Algerian
Divan considered Jews to be subjects, with no mention being made of their origins. However
when referring to the most important members of the European Jewish elite with links to the
Turkish economic and financial oligarchy’s interests, the documentation expressly mentioned
them by name: Bacri and Busnach.17

14
On Abraham Cardozo, see António Jorge Afonso, “O Arresto do Brigue Português Intrépido. Um negócio
inter-religioso no mundo sefardita,” in As Diásporas dos Judeus e Cristãos-Novos de Origem Ibérica Entre o
Mar Mediterrâneo e o Oceano Atlântico. Estudos, org. José Alberto R. Silva Tavim et al (Lisboa: Centro de
História da Universidade de Lisboa, 2020), 213 – 214; Lionel Levy, La Nation Juive Portuguaise: Livourne,
Amsterdam, Tunis 1591 – 1051 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 207; Tito Benady, “The Jewish Community of
Gibraltar,” in The Western Sephardim, ed. Richard Barnett and Walter Schwab (Gibraltar: Gibraltar Books,
1989), 159; Lorraine Madway, “Sefarad but not Spain: The Settlement of Jews in Gibraltar (1704–1783),”
Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie IV. Hª. Moderna, t. 6 (1993): 221– 230.
15
“Carta de Cipriano Ribeiro Freira para A. Cardozo”, Palácio do Governo, 21.II.1809, box 415.
16
Jorge Afonso, “As relações entre Judeus, Mouros e Turcos no espaço magrebino: a leitura de algumas
fontes europeias dos séculos XVIII e XIX,” Lusitania Sacra, 2ª Série, T. XXVII (Janeiro-Junho 2013): 116.
17
Lemnouar Merouche, Recherches sur l’Algérie à l’époque ottomane I: Monnaies, Prix, et Revenues 1520-
1830 (Paris: Editions Bouchène, 2002), 209.
223
 The Cohen-Bacris arrived in Algiers from Livorno in 1774, while their associate
Naphtali Busnach arrived in 1782. The elite of the Sephardic Jews from Livorno were
characterised by their capacity to adapt to the specific evolution of the various economic and
political realities of the Maghrib. Unlike Jewish merchants in the Alawid Empire, who always
privileged their financial and business relations with the Atlantic area, the Netherlands and
the Southern French oceanic ports, Livorno Jews preferred the Mediterranean trade, which
they operated under the protection of the French consuls in the Central Maghrib.18 Many
Sephardim were themselves also seafaring people; those who chose exile opted, therefore, for
the most favourable sea route for their interests and salvation, with few choosing to risk
crossing the Pyrenees into Northern Europe or the Levant and passing through a Christian
territory where they would not be tolerated.19

Studying the European Jewish communities’ role in the North African ports is possible
thanks to the numerous testimonies of travellers and diplomats revealing the importance of
Jewish merchants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.20 However, uncertainties in
the political context of the Central Maghrib led to these communities suffering executions,
massacres and pillaging, despite their close relations with the Algerian Divan, while other
social groups also suffered similar probations.21

Eighteenth-century Livorno was characterised by cosmopolitanism and ‘otherness’,

with its population, economy and dynamism being very different from those in other Tuscan
cities. Such cosmopolitanism, being the capacity of a person to live in any country,22 was a
positive feature of the European Jews, especially the Bacris and Busnachs, who settled in
Algiers in the late eighteenth century. Livorno was also a port of international dimensions, a
hub for trade not only between the two shores of the Mare Nostrum, but also with the Atlantic,

18
Richard Ayoun, “Les négociants juifs d’Afrique du Nord et la mer à l’époque moderne,” Revue française
d’outre-mer, Tome 87, Nº 326–327 (1er. semestre 2000): 110.
19
Simon Schwarzfuchs, “Les Sépharades et la mer,” Revue française d’outre-mer, Tome 87, Nº 326-327
(1er. semestre 2000): 49.
20
Ayoun, “Les négociants,” 112.
21
Merouche, Recherches, 210.
22
Samuel Fettah, “Le cosmopolitisme livournais: représentations et institutions (XVII-XIXe siècles).”
Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 67 (2003): 2, http://cdlm.revues.org/123.
224
where the Sephardic diaspora’s main settlements were located.23 From the time they arrived
in the Regency, therefore, the Sephardic families from Livorno dominated its economic and
financial environment until the French troops landed at Sidi Feruch. The Livornians’ political
influence thus gained a dimension hitherto unknown in the Regency, in contrast to other
Algerian Jews, who represented the majority of the community.

One of these Livorno merchants, Michel Bacri, started his activities on a small scale
and then expanded in line with the interests of Turkish oligarchs. In 1782, Michel’s son Jacob
founded the Solomon Cohen Bacri & Sons trading house with his brothers Joseph, Mordecai
and Solomon. After years as a successful businessman, Naphtali Busnach became a partner
in this firm, which was renamed Bacri Brothers & Busnach. The firm was the bankers for the
most influential members of the Turkish oligarchy, as well as their agents in various complex
and profitable business deals, and quickly took control of the Algerian cereal trade. Following
rapid economic growth, Bacri Brothers & Busnach drew up a strategy for sustained
development, in which the Bacris would conduct the business and Busnach would take care
of political matters. This strategy allowed Mustapha Pacha to be nominated as the Algerian
dey. The new ruler became involved in the European struggle for supremacy in the
Mediterranean and survived his creator, Naphtali Busnach, by only a few months. However,
the great political and economical power of the Bacri and Busnach families could never have
been achieved without the collusion of the Turkish elite. This deepened the existing fractures
and tensions in the Regency social fabric even further, thus marginalising important groups
such as the Kuluglis and Moors, who comprised the majority of the population.

Diplomatic protection became essential for trade continuity and the transfer of funds
between the Maghrib and the European continent. As active players in this trade, the
Moroccan Jews sought out Portuguese diplomats’ assistance across the Alawid Empire. In a
letter sent to Portugal, José Januário Colaço, consul in Larache, notified the appointment of
three new consular agents: Isac Taregano in Larache, Solomon Abudarham in Rabat and

23
Fettah, “Le cosmopolitisme,” 4. On Livornian cosmopolitanism, see Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity
of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in Early Modern Period (New
Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), 70-101; Francesca Trivellato, “Les juifs d’origine portugaise
entre Livourne, le Portugal et la Méditerranée (c. 1650-1750),” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste
Gulbenkian: La Diaspora des Nouveaux-Chrétiens, Vol. XLVIII (2004): 171–182.
225
Judah Coriat in Tetouan.24 This initiative was also of interest to Portugal and the Colaços,
who were able to benefit from the expertise of Jewish merchants at no cost to themselves.

In France, meanwhile, revolutionary disorder and the rapacity of the new power led
to a decline in Marseille’s influence in the Mediterranean trade. In 1794 Jewish merchants
obtained a monopoly on grain exports from Constantine, while in 1795 Jacob Bacri
established himself in Marseille so as to better manage the cereal trade with France. Given
the extent of the business with the Turkish elites, with ‘their Jews’ and with the new French
power, Simon Abucaya, another European Jew and a Bacri employee, settled in Paris as
‘General Agent and chargé d’affaires of the Dey of Algiers’.25 This new agent of the Turkish
oligarchy and the Bacris’ commercial and financial interests, which were volatile but rarely
opposed, sought to take advantage of the Algerian Regency’s geostrategic importance for
French politics in the Western Mediterranean. From a business perspective, the new French
National Assembly decree of 9 March 1792, which made more than ten million francs
available for cereal purchases, was sufficient reason for the dey to have an agent at the centre
of France’s political power.

In 1794, the Marseille Supply Committee ordered the negotiation of foodstuff purchases
in Algiers, for which dey Hassan provided a loan of 250,000 francs, also offering ‘live animals
and good horses’.26 The Livorno Jews were a crucial link for understanding the new Maghribian
context from the end of eighteenth century to the French invasion in 1830: Bacri and Busnach
were not spared the complex international context of the late eighteenth century as they faced
the French government’s default on its debts, with these amounts also being claimed by the
Algerian dey; were subjected to questioning of their demands, often as a delaying tactic, by
Bonaparte orders;27 were pursued on many occasions by legal actions in France,28 and

24
“Ofício de José Januário Colaço para Joaquim José Monteiro Torres”, Tânger, 29.IX.1821, AHU, NA, box
394.
25
Eugène Plantet, Correspondance de Deys d’Alger avec la Cour de France (1579-1833), II (Leipzig: Elibron
Classics, 2007), 452.
26
“Sidi Hassan, Dey d’Alger, au Citoyen Buchot, Commissaire des Relations Extérieurs, Alger, le 15 octobre
1794”, pub. in CDACF, v. II, pp. 443–446.
27
“Mustapha, Dey d’Alger, a Bonaparte, Premier Consul de la République Française, Alger, le 12 août 1802”,
pub. in CDACF, v. II, pp. 504-507.
28
See MM Girod et Clariond, Journal de Jurisprudence Commerciale et Maritime, Tom I (Marseille, 1820),
337-368.
226
frequently had to engage in complicated games of Mediterranean politics, while simultaneously
being active players on the international scene and also able to take advantage of their
economic, financial and information networks across the European continent. While violence
and conflicts with the Algerian authorities and their own community caused the Busnachs and
some members of their Bacri family to flee to Tunis and Livorno, other members of the latter
family remained in Algiers until the death of Moïses Bacri in 1837, and it was in their mansion
in Livorno that the last dey of Algiers and his family took refuge.29

In May 1810, meanwhile, a Portuguese delegation arrived in Algiers; its members

included Duncan Casamajor, secretary of the British ambassador in Lisbon, who was to take
on the role of mediator in negotiating a truce and rescuing the Portuguese captives. The
delegation also included Henrique Teixeira de Sampayo, a wealthy merchant of Sephardic
origin,30 the agent of several Jewish businessmen in the Portuguese capital and the bearer of
a letter from the British ambassador in Portugal, Charles Stuart, to the Emperor of Morocco,
Mawlay Sulayman.31 In August that year the Portuguese returned to Algiers. D. Miguel
Pereira Forjaz, the Reign’s governor, faced with the usual financial difficulties of the
Portuguese Treasury and the consequences of the third French invasion, and fearing that the
amount transported would be insufficient to rescue the captives, indicated that an alternative
solution would be to use Solomon Benoliel, who, according to Forjaz, had already offered his
lending services, and whom Forjaz had tried to persuade to accept repayment of a possible
loan in the form of sugar or other colonial products.32

In Gibraltar, the chief of the Portuguese delegation announced that a loan of fifty
thousand duros, to be paid in Lisbon, had been obtained, while Benoliel had also supplied the
ships that returned with the first of the Portuguese captives. It was reported from Gibraltar,
moreover, that a new loan in the amount of 5,300 duros, to be paid in the Portuguese capital,
had been contracted with the same financier.33 However, this did not prevent Solomon

29
Lucette Valensi, Juifs et Musulmans en Algérie: VIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Tallandier, 2016), 71-72.
30
Afonso, “O Arresto,” 218.
31
“Relação da viagem que eu Fr. Joze de Santo Antonio Moura fiz a Argel em Maio de 1810 para servir de
Interprete a James Scarnichia, Capitam de Mar e Guerra, e Enviado de Portugal, Conferencias sobre a paz e
resgate de captivos e resultados das mesmas”, AHU, NA, box 395.
32
“Instruções de D. Miguel Pereira Forjaz”, 25.VIII.1810, AHU, NA, box 413.
33
“Carta de James Scarnichia para os Senhores da Junta encarregada da recepção dos Donativos Voluntários
para o resgate”, Gibraltar, 2.I.1811, AHU, NA, box 409.
227
Benoliel from being confronted with the news from his agents in Lisbon, Don. P.M.Y.J.E.
Montano, that the bills covering the amount of previous loans had not been paid.34

In September 1811, the Portuguese were in Algiers again and this time approached
Solomon Benoliel for a loan of fifty thousand duros to be repaid in the usual way. Again, it
was suggested that repayment could be in colonial goods. Benoliel refused and claimed that
he could not possibly advance the amount requested because of the extraordinary expenses
he had incurred in supplying the British forces in Malta and Sicily. Understanding the
difficulties of the situation, however, Benoliel proposed an interest-free loan of twenty
thousand duros. During their subsequent third mission, the Reign’s envoys had to deal with
the additional matter of the Intrépido, a brig that had been captured by Algiers privateers on
her return from Brazil, and whose arrest has been requested by the Portuguese consul in
Gibraltar. The return of the 183 captives from this vessel was thus entirely dependent on
payment of forty thousand duros, the amount attributed by the Algerian dey to the loss of the
ship taken from his privateers.

The amount of money involved forced the Portuguese ambassador to appeal, under
pressure from the Turkish side, to Joseph Cohen Bacri, the only financier able to advance
such an amount. After much hesitation Benoliel agreed to advance thirty thousand duros at
35
an interest rate of 15%. The bills guaranteeing the loan were to be settled in Gibraltar
because, based on information from their European networks, the Sephardic Jews feared a
new invasion of Portugal by French armies and foresaw this as manifestly endangering the
funds held by the Bacris’ agents in Lisbon.

The expense statement for the voyage to Algiers, sent to the Prince Regent Dom João,
show the amounts advanced by Jews from the Regency and Gibraltar, and also the financial
flows seeking the relative safety of European territory. The Portuguese envoy arrived in
Algiers with 124,400 Spanish duros, including the loan received in Gibraltar from Solomon
Benoliel. To complete the sum, however, he was forced to ask ‘some Jews in Algiers for the

34
“Carta de Salomão Benoliel para James Scarnichia”, Gibraltar, 2.I.1811, AHU, NA, box 409.
35
“Relação da viagem que eu Fr. Joze de Stº. Antonio Moura fis a Argel em Setembro de 1811 na companhia de
James Scarnichia Chefe de Divizão, e encarregado de efeituar a 2ª parte do resgate, e de ajustar a paz definitiva;
e do rezultado sobre este Negocio”, AHU, NA, box 420.
228
sum of 101,270 duros’36 to be paid to their agents in Lisbon. The Bacris were probably among
those contributing to this loan as such an amount was out of reach for most Algerian Jews.

Fr. José de Santo António Moura and José Joaquim da Rosa Coelho 37 returned to
Maghrib in June 1813 with the aim of negotiating a peace treaty with Algiers. Once again,
they were accompanied by a British subject, William A’Court. Although Solomon Benoliel
informed his friends and correspondents that the firm Judah Benoliel Arengo Y Cia had gone
into liquidation, this information was not very credible as Judah Benoliel and his partner, John
Arengo, were known to have been intensely involved in international banking during the early
decades of the nineteenth century, while Judah, who died in 1839, was also the private banker
of Cardinal Giovanni Maria Ferreti, the future Pope Pius IX. In any event, the Portuguese
envoys received a loan of 250,000 Spanish duros from Judah Benoliel Arengo & Co. in
Gibraltar on their way to Algiers for the peace treaty negotiations.

The relations between Portugal and the great Sephardic financiers of the Western
Mediterranean continued beyond these Portuguese envoys’ final journey. The significant
sums advanced by Judah Benoliel through his trading firm Judah Benoliel, Arengo & Co.,
which the Portuguese authorities needed in order to honour their commitments, continued to
be paid in Lisbon to Benoliel’s agent in Lisbon, Henrique Teixeira de Sampayo, still his agent
in this city. On the 29 July 1819, Judah Benoliel sent to Sampayo two bills that had been
submitted to him by H. Mc Donnel, the BritishEnglish ambassador and representative of
Portuguese interests in the Regency, for requesting payment. 38 The various approaches to the
Algerian Regency, the Royal Treasury’s recurrent lack of liquidity and the high demand for
loans fuelled flows of money from the Central Maghrib and Gibraltar to the security offered
by the Jewish agents’ firms in Portugal.

High dignitaries of the Maghribian regencies and the Alawid Empire were regularly
in need of the safety that European banking houses could offer. When seeking to rescue
captive subjects in Malta, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah, Sultan of Morocco, used funds he had
deposited in Cadiz,39 while the money destined for ransoming Portuguese captives in

36
“Carta dos Governadores do Reino para o Príncipe Regente”, Lisboa, 11.I.1812, AHU, NA, box 420.
37
José Joaquim da Rosa Coelho, Portuguese Navy Commander.
38
“Carta de Judah Benoliel para D. Miguel Pereira Forjaz”, Gibraltar, 29.VII.1819, AHU, NA, box 395.
39
Mariano Arribas-Palau, “Rescate de cautivos musulmanes en Malta por Muhammad Ibn ‘Utman,”
Hespéris-Tamuda, vol. X, Fasc.3 (1969): 281.
229
Morocco at the end of the seventeenth century was sent to a Jewish agent in Amsterdam
indicated by Abrahm Maymoran, a trustworthy financier of Mawlay Ismaïl (1672–1727).40

Jewish businesses’ involvement in negotiating loans payable in the large urban centres
of the Sephardic diasporas in the Netherlands, France and Livorno, and even to their agents
in Lisbon, was an continuing reality at the time, with the last dey of Algiers’ choice of the
Bacris’ mansion in Livorno certainly also taking account of these financial practices and
reflecting the close relations he had always maintained with the Livorno Jews.

Movements of Goods: Cereals, Weapons and Supplies

It was dangerous to be Jewish and rich in the Maghrib, especially in Algiers, given the
numerous riots in the early decades of the nineteenth century perpetrated by the Anatolian
janissaries that dominated the enthroning and overthrowing of deys and always found an
easy target in the Jewish community for draining wealth into Turkish oligarchs’ pockets.
These riots included the pogrom that broke out in Algiers on 28 June 1805, apparently
following the failure of the negotiations with the Portuguese envoys that had been
intended to result in a truce and in the captives’ release, and that involved David Bacri,
muqaddam for four years, and David Durand, his successor, both of whom were executed
by the dey Hadj ‘Ali in 1811.

Jews were similarly persecuted during the reign of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah,
when Samuel Sumbel, a merchant with Tujjãr al-Sultan status, attempted to escape, and
during the reign of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah’s son between 1790 and 1792. In these
cases, the alleged reasons were the relations, never denied, that some prominent members
of the Jewish community maintained with the Spanish power and the latter’s interference
in Moroccan policy. For Sephardic Jews, mediation in Maghribian businesses was
therefore not only a matter of wealth, but also of life or death, given how difficult
negotiations and deals in the Maghribian space could be and how the richest Jewish traders

40
Leïla Maziane, “Les juifs marocains sous les premiers sultans ‘alawites,”. In Entre l’Islam y Occident: Los
judíos maghrebies en la Edad Moderna. Judíos en tierras de Islam II, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal, (Madrid:
Casa de Velázquez, 2003), 303-316.
230
felt the need to transfer their assets to the security of certain European countries, especially
those where flourishing Jewish communities existed.

The Mémoire concernant le système de paix et de guerre: Que les Puissances

Européennes pratiquent à l'égard des Régences Barbaresques was published in Venice in
1788, with the promoting of commercial exchanges being advocated as an alternative to
privateers’ activity in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The author mentions the example
of a Moroccan Jew who had advised Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah to load his ships with
cereal instead of cannons.41 The merchant Samuel Sumbel, referred to several times in the
diary of Bernardo Simões Pessoa, the Portuguese consul in Mogador between 1773 and
1779, is likely to have been behind this advice.

By the early eighteenth century, the Moroccan sultans, as well as some Christian
leaders, had realised the importance of Jewish businessmen for attracting and stimulating
economic activity. Indeed Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah had started constructing the port of
Essaouira both for internal political and international reasons, probably in response to
suggestions by Sumbel, and in 1766 granted special privileges, including Tujjãr al-Sultan
status, to Jewish businessmen willing to settle in this new port on Morocco’s Atlantic
Coast.42 Once Essaouira became the most important Moroccan commercial city, exports of
agricultural products and imports of manufactured goods began to result in considerable
amounts being transferred to the Alawid Treasury in the form of external trade taxes.43

41
Mémoire concernant le système de paix et de guerre: Que les Puissances Européennes pratiquent à l’égard
des Régences Barbaresques, traduit de L’Italien par Le Chev. D’Hénin Officier au Rég. Des Dragons de
Languedoc Secrétaire d’Ambassade de France à Venise, 2 éd. Rev. Et cor. (Venise: Chez Formaleoni, 1788),
77–8.
42
On the Tujjar al-Sultan, see Michel Abitbol, Les commerçants du roi. Tujjar al-Sultan: Une élite
économique judéo-marocaine (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1998), 5-17; Sidney S. Corcos, “La
communauté juive de Mogador-Essaouira. Immigrations et émigrations, recherche généalogique et
onomastique,” in La bienvenue et l’adieu: Migrants juifs et musulmans au Maghreb (XVe-XXe siècle), dir.
Frédéric Abécassis et al. Vol. III. (Casablanca: Centre Jacques-Berque, 2012), 123–56.
43
Ahmed Farouk, “Aperçu du trafic du port de Mogador avec les principales places européennes (1786-
1787),” Hespéris-Tamuda, Vol. XXVI-XXVII (1988–1989): 96.
231
 Simões Pessoa’s diary includes many references to Moroccan Jews and their
European networks.44 In November 1773, for example, he reported the first contact with
Samuel Sumbel, 45 with a lot of information about imports and exports by Jewish merchants
from 1775 onwards. On 12 February of that same year, a ship sailing under the English flag
sailed from Essaouira for Cadiz, fully loaded with wheat negotiated by Elias Levy, with part
of this cargo belonging to the Moroccan sultan.46

Obtaining cereal export licences had always been an objective for Portuguese
diplomats in Morocco. For the Lisbon authorities, wheat was the main export product from
Morocco ‘because the fruits of this country, except wheat, had no importance.’47 In April
1775 Simões Pessoa mentioned Abraham Ben Walid, another Jew associated with the cereal
export trade, who had interceded with the sultan for granting authorisation to export wheat to
Lisbon.48

There is not much information about wheat exports from Morocco to Europe through
Jewish or Portuguese traders between 1773 and 1779. Indeed it was not until 1798 that the
new consul in Mogador, João António França, sent Portugal ‘Information about the
Commerce of the Kingdom of Morocco’ including the main Moroccan Atlantic ports
appropriate for cereal extraction.49 Mention was also made of the most important Moroccan
products being ‘Wheat, Vegetables, Wax, Arabica and Sandraca gums, Olive oil, Sweet and
bitter almonds, Cowhide, Ostrich feathers, raw copper, ivory, Wools, Mules [and]
Saltpetre,’50 as well as the crucial role of the ‘Hebrews’ in Moroccan trade. By the end of the
reign of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah, however, cereals seem to have become abundant again
as three Lisbon merchants sent 31 ships to Mogador to load wheat between 12 February 1789
and 24 April 1790.

44
On the Portuguese Sephardic diaspora and its networks, see Ronaldo Vainfas, Jerusalém colonial: Judeus
portugueses no Brasil holandês (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2010), 19–84.
45
On 11 January 1774, Portugal signed a peace treaty with Morocco, in which discussions the Portuguese
consul in Mogador had participated.
46
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 12.II.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
47
“Ofício de Bernardo Simões Pessoa para Martinho de Melo e Castro”, 2.XII.1774, AHU, NA, box 424.
48
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 14.IV.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
49
“Informação sobre o Commercio da Barbaria Reino de Marrocos”, 1798, AHU, NA, box 390.
50
“Informação sobre o Commercio da Barbaria Reino de Marrocos”, 1798, AHU, NA, box 390.
232
 The year 1775, by contrast, was characterised by Moroccan imports from Atlantic
Europe and the Sephardic diaspora settlements. Between April and December of that year,
ships chartered by Jewish merchants from Essaouira were used for this commercial traffic,
and some of these ships may well have been owned by these merchants. 51 According to the
Portuguese consul in Mogador, however, the volume of traffic was not enough to maintain a
significant trade:

The exportation trade, without rules, without freedom, oppressed, and in a continuous
change; the great poverty of the inhabitants, these without luxury, ignoring many
things, which among the Europeans, would be of great necessity; remedying
themselves with what they have at home, it seems to me, that all these causes will
work for the little importance of importation trade in these Reigns.52

The goods transported from Amsterdam, Texel and Hamburg on ships flying the
English, Dutch or Danish flags consisted of iron, drugs from Asia, cloths from Holland,
firearms, chifarotes,53 all consigned to Jews in Essaouira. The choice of maritime and
commercial Atlantic routes by the Tujjãr al-Sultan was thus confirmed, with only one ship,
also chartered by Moroccan Jews, sailing to Livorno during this period.

The Portuguese consul continued to note the maritime and goods traffic handled by
Jewish businesses, with their preference for the port of Amsterdam remaining, despite the
reduced dimension of this trade. Simões Pessoa indicates the reasons for this decrease:

There are no ships here, because of the War, and the few returns they have to load, in
the ports of this Coast, resulted in the small number that entered and left Mogador last
year [1778]: namely, five to Amsterdam, five to Marseille, two to Cadiz, three to
London, Lisbon, and Livorno.54

51
For more on Maghribian Jewish shipowners, see M.J.M. Haddey Le livre d’or des israélites algérien: Recueil
de renseignements inédits et authentiques sur les principaux négociants juifs d’Alger pendant la période turque
(Alger: Imprimerie Typographique de Bouyer, 1872).
52
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 31.VII.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
53
A chifarote was a short, straight sword, also known as a fascine knife, used by European armies (light
infantry and artillery) from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.
54
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 1.I.1779, AHU, NA, box 417.
233
 There are also many references to other Jews who were part of the Tujjãr al-Sultan:
‘Sumbel’55 (Samuel Ben Yusuf Sumbel); ‘Solomon Bengualid’56 (Abraham Ben Walid, also
referred to several times as Solomon); a ‘Jew named Toledano, colleague of Sumbel’57 (Haïm
Toledano); a ‘Jewish treasury official named Eliau Livi’58 (Elias Levy); ‘Lion David Acris
and Izaac Acris’59 and ‘Haïm Capua.’60 Simões Pessoa also referred to a ‘Jewish merchant,
native of Tetuan, who has served as an Interpreter to more than eight Consuls,’ whom he
praised for his education and from whom he received the reply ‘that he was a friend of
humanity, because he had read = L’Ami des Homes=, and all the other works of its author.’61

Although Portugal had not previously considered establishing a priority trading

relationship with Algiers, a change in this situation was sought in 1780 by Guilherme Rodrigo
Delamar,62 and later Gerardo José de Sousa Bitancourt, who tried to act as an agent in the
rescue of Portuguese captives.63 The resistance of most Maghribian powers to Wahhabi
agitation had no equivalent in the Alawid Empire. The statement by Muhammd Ibn ‘Abd
Allah to the effect, according to Moroccan sources, that he was Malikite of rite and Hanbalite
of dogma lost its significance when the ideas of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhâb were
reconciled with the demands of Moroccan makhzen and the dynamism of the international
context.

55
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 15.XI.1773, AHU, NA, box 417.
56
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 14.IV.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
57
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 1.X.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
58
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 12.II.1775, AHU, NA, box 417.
59
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 4.X.1774, AHU, NA, box 417.
60
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 15.VIII.1774, AHU, NA, box 417.
61
“Diário de Bernardo Simões Pessoa, Cônsul de Portugal em Mogador”, 24.V.1774, AHU, NA, box 417.
62
“Demonstração das vantagens que rezultarão ao reyno de Portugal por meyo de huma paz, ou Tregoa com
a Regencia de Argel”, AHU, NA, box 393. On Guilherme Rodrigo Delamar’s ancestors in Essaouira, Lazen
Morkoday de la Mar and his brother Joseph de la Mar, see Hosotte-Reynaud, “Un négociant français a
Mogador a la fin du XVIIIe siècle et sa correspondence avec le consul de France a Salé,” Hespéris, Tome
XLIV (1957): 341.
63
“Instruçoens de Monstrativas sobre o carácter dos Argelinos, seu Governo, e modo com que se deve tratar
com elles”, Madrid, 28.II.1786, AHU, NA, box 396. Gerardo José de Sousa Bitancourt, born on Terceira
Island (Azores), was a Portuguese sailor of Jewish origin who was captured at Algiers Regency, ransomed
himself in 1778 and stayed there as a businessman.
234
 The Jewish community experienced a series of major disasters during the reign of
Mawlay Yazid. The violence and atrocities committed by the successor of Muhammad Ibn
‘Abd Allah continued after his death, when Essaouira was occupied by one of the Alawid
princes. And, once again, the Jewish Tujjãr were affected: the Portuguese consul in Mogador
informed Lisbon that it had been demanded ‘from the [Jewish] traders, as a loan, twelve
thousand hard pesos, and [this has] reduced the unfortunate Hebrews to extreme poverty.’64
Although, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah and his successors never gave up using the Jewish
Tujjãr as a way of sustaining the Moroccan economy, William Lempriere, an English
physician who travelled to Morocco, criticised the way they were treated throughout the
Alawid Empire:

In every country where they reside, these unfortunate people are treated as another
class of beings; but in no part of the world are they severely and undeservedly
oppressed as in Barbary, where the whole country depends upon their industry and
ingenuity, and scarcely subsist as a nation without their assistance. They are the only
mechanics in this part of the world, and have the whole management of all pecuniary
and commercial matters.65

The Jewish minority in Morocco lived as a separate society in that while they enjoyed
freedom of worship, they were bound by a special dhimma status,66 which required them to
wear distinctive clothing and pay the jizya. These requirements were designed to serve as a
constant reminder of their inferior social position as non-Muslims.67 But although, like his
father, Mawlay Sulayman was in favour of returning to the traditions of the Prophet and his
companions and to restoring the primitive purity of Islam,68 he continued to use the
commercial intermediation of his Tujjãr.

64
“Ofício de João António França para Luís Pinto de Sousa Coutinho, Mogador”, 18.XI.1792, ANTT, MNE,
Correspondência dos Consulados portugueses: Estados berberescos, box 272.
65
William Lempriere, A Tour from Gibraltar to Tangier, Sallee, Mogadore, Santa Cruz, Tarudant; and thence,
over Mount Atlas, to Morocco: including a particular account of the Royal Harem. The Second Edition (London:
J. Walter, 1793), 315–6.
66
On Jewish dhimma status, see Meir M. Bar-Asher, Les Juifs Dans le Coran (Paris: Albin Michel, 2019), 191-
208.
67
El Mansour, Morocco, 14.
68
El Mansour, Morocco, 134.
235
 In 1809, the Moroccan Prime Minister Muhammad al-Salawi made representations to
the Portuguese authorities to settle a dispute between two Jews, Menahim Sefarti and Izac
Cariat, born in Tetuan. This dispute derived from their dealings with an English merchant
established in Lisbon. Al-Salawi also requested Portuguese mediation regarding payment of
a debt owed by Menahim Sefarti to a Moroccan subject, Muhammad el-Hassan. All of this
was possible thanks to the excellent relations that continued with the Alawid sultans after
Portugal left Mazagan in 1769 and following the signing of the Luso–Moroccan Treaty in
1774.

In Morocco, the Colaços, a diplomatic dynasty of Jewish origin, ensured continued

Portuguese representation for over a century and sought to overcome the lack of funds sent
from Lisbon by engaging in various business activities.69 For this purpose they drew on
commercial and family networks dating back to the early eighteenth century, as demonstrated
by the correspondence exchanged by Abraham Lopes Colaço and his son Aaron between
1700 and 1774 and preserved in the Colaços’ documental sources [Colaço Kollektie].70

In view of the difficulties Portugal experienced in importing wheat from Morocco,

Algiers was tried out as an alternative market.71 In late 1811, a ship owned by Joseph Cohen
Bacri, flying the Algerian flag, arrived in Lisbon carrying wheat to supply the Portuguese
capital.72 But although the frigate Pérola, which returned to Algiers in June 1812 for the final

69
On the importance of the Colaços for Portuguese foreign policy, see António Jorge Afonso “Os Colaço e
a política externa portuguesa em relação ao Magrebe. Do tratado luso-marroquino de 1774 aos finais do
século XIX”, in Os Judeus Sefarditas entre Portugal, Espanha e Marrocos, coord. Carmen Ballesteros e
Mery Ruah (Lisboa: Edições Colibri/Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Judaicos/CIDEHUS-UE, 2004),
179-87; António Jorge Afonso, “Portugal e o Magrebe nos finais do Antigo Regime” (Master’s diss.,
Universidade de Lisboa-Faculdade de Letras, 1998), 114–129.
70
Evelyne Oliel-Grauz, “La diáspora séfarade au XVIIIe siècle: communication, espace, réseaux,” Arquivos
do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian, Vol. XLVIII (2004): 55–71.
71
“Relação da segunda viagem que eu Fr. Jozé de Santo António Moura, Religioso da Terceira Ordem, fiz a
Argel no anno de 1810 na companhia de James Scarnichia, Cheffe de Divisão da Armada Real”, AHU, NA,
box 420.
72
“Relação da viagem que eu Fr, Jozé de Sto. António Moura fiz a Argel em Setembro de 1811, na companhia
de James Scarnichia Chefe de Divizão, e encarregado de efeituar a 2ª parte do resgate, e de ajustar a paz
definitiva; e do rezultado sobre este Negocio”, AHU, NA, box 420. Santo António Moura also gives a detailed
description of David Durand’s murder by order of the dey Hadj ‘Ali following the conflicts that struck the
236
Portuguese captives, carried goods belonging to Joseph Cohen Bacri and his associates, the
traffic between the Livorno Jews and their agents in Lisbon was short-lived.73 Nevertheless,
the commercial and information networks connecting the Jewish businessmen of Morocco
and Gibraltar and the western Iberian Peninsula remained active.

In 1816, Solomon Benoliel interceded on behalf of ‘Amram Elmalek, a Hebrew boy’

imprisoned in Lisbon. Amram, whose father Joseph Elmalek, a Gibraltar merchant, had
business activities in the Portuguese capital, had bought some goods that he then exported to
Livorno, Gibraltar and Faro, where they were seized by order of his creditors. Judah Benoliel,
Solomon’s son, offered to purchase the seized goods himself for sixty per cent of their value.
This was one of the many businesses that Sephardic merchants from Gibraltar maintained
with the Portuguese capital, and the scale and frequency of these businesses justified the need
for legal representatives and agents to represent them in Lisbon. In 1818, Abraão Cardozo,
the Algerian consul in Gibraltar, appointed Salomão Pacífico, a Lagos inhabitant, to the
position of vice-consul of the Regency in the ‘Reyno of Algarve’.74

Conclusion

The economic and financial intervention of the Ahl Al-Kithãb in the Western Mediterranean
was a constant reality from the second half of the eighteenth century until French troops landed
in Algiers in 1830, with large number of Portuguese subjects being captured by Algerian
privateers during this period. Regarding this period as a ‘golden age’ of Algerian privateers
would, however, be anachronistic, given that the dubious and complex relationship with the
two main European powers, France and Great Britain, and the arrival of a new power, the

Livorno Jewish community in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. On the same subject, see
Elizabeth Broughton, Six years residence in Algiers (London: Saunders and Otley, 1839), 230.
73
On her return to Portugal carrying the last Portuguese captives from Algiers, the frigate Pérola also
transported, according to her passenger list, Moïses Benoliel (Solomon Benoliel’s son), Ester Benoliel (Judah
Benoliel’s wife) and her young son, David Aeriz and Isaac Hassan. These Jews had all come from Gibraltar
to Caldas da Rainha to enjoy its medical hot-baths.
74
“Nomeação de Salomão Pacífico como vice-cônsul de Argel”, Gibraltar, 2.I.1828, AHU, NA, box 420. For
additional information on this matter, see Jorge Afonso, “Os negócios dos Ahl Al-Kitâb. O caso específico
dos judeus magrebinos,” Anais de História de Além-Mar XIV (2013): 249–273.
237
United States, with the capacity to act in both the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean,
ultimately led to the failure of this trade.

The development of external trade promoted by the Alawid sultans – Muhammad Ibn
‘Abd Allah and Mawlay Yazid – made the Moroccan state increasingly dependent on trade
dominated by the European powers. The various attempts to establish a Moroccan merchant
navy, always conditioned by European conflicts and by European war navies that prevented
commercial traffic under the Maghribian flags, clearly failed. In the second half of the
eighteenth century, therefore, these external conditions resulted in Moroccan foreign trade
having to be conducted through European merchant navies or the Tujjãr al-Sultan

There were various reasons for Portugal to seek recourse to the intermediation of the
most qualified brokers – the Sephardic Jews from the Western Mediterranean – for intervening
in these desirable businesses. These included the importance of a peace treaty with the Algerian
Regency, which required large sums of money to be raised, including money to be spent on
obtaining the release of Portuguese captives. Other reasons were the need to ensure the South
Atlantic routes were safe for shipping Brazilian gold and other colonial products, the need to
find markets able to remedy Portugal’s cereal deficit and the need to remedy the Portuguese
Treasury’s permanent shortage of funds.

As a result, the Bacris, the Busnachs and David Durand in Algiers; Samuel Ben Yusuf
Sumbel, Abraham Ben Walid, Haïm Toledano and Elias Levy in Morocco, and prominent
Jews, such as Abraão Cardozo and Solomon and Judah Benoliel, living in Gibraltar all played
an important role in commercial transactions and in the funds flowing from the Maghrib to the
North Mediterranean Coast, the Iberian Peninsula, France and the Netherlands.

The Sephardic Jews used their close network of contacts in Europe and the Levant to
take advantage of the very specific context existing between Europe, Algiers and the Alawid
Empire to enable their funds to be transferred from the insecurity of the Maghrib to the relative
safety of their trading houses and European banks. In the case of Portugal these funds related
mainly to imports of cereals and the huge loans taken on for ransoming Portuguese captives
and signing the peace treaty with Algiers.

When diplomatic protection became essential for trade continuity and the transferring
of funds between the Maghrib and Europe, Moroccan Jews played an active role in this trade
and sought out Portuguese diplomatic assistance from across the Alawid Empire. Officials of

238
Jewish origin held all the Portuguese diplomatic functions in Morocco, while Portugal and
the Colaço family benefited from the expertise of Jewish merchants and their networks
throughout Europe at no cost to themselves.

From the establishing of the port of Essaouira and the signing of the peace treaty
between Portugal and Morocco in 1774 until the end of Mawlay Sulayman’s reign, therefore,
all kinds of business activities were conducted in the Maghrib, with money and goods being
transferred between Ahl Al-Kithãb, travelling along Jewish networks’ ‘freeway’ and
surpassing inter-religious conflicts.

239
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Historical Overseas Archive (AHU), North Africa (NA), 1739-1828, box (cx.) 390.

AHU, NA, 1731-1832, box (cx.) 391.

AHU, NA, 1784-1816, box (cx.) 393.

AHU, NA, Negócios Consulares e Diplomáticos, box (cx.) 394.

AHU, NA, Negócios Consulares e Diplomáticos, 1799-1821, box (cx.) 395.

AHU, NA, 1786-1811, box (cx.) 396.

AHU, NA, Cativos de Argel, 1813, box (cx.) 409.

AHU, NA, Resgate de Cativos, 1780-1832, box (cx.) 411.

AHU, NA, Argel, 1809-1811, box (cx.) 413.

AHU, NA, Argel, 1649-1815, box (cx.) 414.

AHU, NA, Correspondência de Argel, 1799-1818, box (cx.) 415.

AHU, NA, Correspondência, 1759-1800, box (cx.) 417.

AHU, NA, Cativos de Argel, 1773-1820, box (cx.) 420.

AHU, NA, 1770-1825, box (cx.) 424.

AHU, NA, 1806-1823, box (cx.) 425.

National Archives-Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE),

Correspondência dos Consulados portugueses: Estados Berberescos, 1789-1832, box (cx.)
272.

Correspondance des Deys d’Alger avec La Cour de France (1579-1833), (CDACF), ed.
Eugène de Plantet, Leipzig, Elibron Classics, v. II. 2007.

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243
 Chapter 9: Circulating Capital, Correspondences, and Campaigners: The
Global Fallout from the 1956 Armenian Church Election

TSOLIN NALBANTIAN

Circulating Capital, Correspondences, and Campaigners: The Global Fallout

from the 1956 Armenian Church Election

The Armenian Genocide that the Ottoman government perpetrated in World War I is often
seen as marking the end of Armenians’ historic presence in Anatolia.1 And yet, at the
same time it also marked new beginnings.2 What had previously been multiple Armenian
communities living in the vast geographical space of Anatolia in the Ottoman Empire
became a singular minority community living in various nation states. At the same time,
each community was extremely heterogeneous: they hailed from different villages that
may never have had any contact with one another and, if they spoke Armenian, had
different dialects. Indeed, many were monolingual in Turkish, and while most followed
the Armenian Orthodox Church, there were also sizeable Protestant and Catholic
populations.

The Armenian Church itself also experienced institutional change following the
Genocide and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Before, there had been multiple
ecclesiastic centres, or sees, of the Armenian Church. Thereafter, only two sees survived.
One, the Cilician See (or the Catholicosate of Cilicia) that had been located at Sis
(present-day Kozan), moved temporarily to Aleppo and then permanently to Antelias, just
north of Beirut, Lebanon. The other, the Echmiadzin See (or the Catholicosate of

1
For more on the Armenian Genocide, see, among others, Raymond H. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide:
A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past,
Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2017); Ronald Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else:” A History of the
Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
2
Such a position is also taken by the author in Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
244
Echmiadzin) had operated from the Russian Empire and subsequently fell within the
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), one of the fifteen republics of the USSR.

For the Cilician See, this forced movement from its ancestral home to Lebanon
perhaps counterintuitively increased its power. This see been under the jurisdiction of
increasingly despotic rule of the Ottoman party Committee of Union and Progress in
1908-1918. Moreover, and more importantly, ever since the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II’s
conquest of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, it had, in practice, been inferior to
what in theory was a hierarchally inferior body, the Istanbul Patriarchate, which the sultan
established in 1461.3 The Istanbul Patriarchate was designated – first by Mehmet II and
then by his successors – as head of the Armenian millet (community). According to the
imperial structures of power, this meant its authority surpassed that of any other Armenian
institution, irrespective of church hierarchy. This discrepancy continued even in the wake
of the Ottoman government’s mid-nineteenth-century tanzimat reforms, which dissolved
the millet system. While the formal institutionalisation of the millet changed, the
community’s power, prestige, finances and proximity to the imperial capital of the
Istanbul Patriarchate did not.

This situation changed irrevocably when, after World War I, Britain and France
established League of Nations mandates over the former Arab Provinces of the Ottoman
Empire and, in 1923, the Turkish Republic was established. To be sure, the Istanbul
Patriarchate still did not behave exactly as a subsidiary of either surviving see, the Cilician
and Echmiadzin ones. But its influence now now was basically a function of actions and
decisions by the Cilician See, which by 1946 was located in the independent Lebanese
Republic. This became most evident in the 1950s, and specifically in the fraught 1956
election of that see’s Catholicos, its highest functionary.

This chapter examines the correspondences between the Cilician See and other
Armenian ecclesiastic figures, Armenian lay people, and government representatives and

3
Hratch Tchilingirian, The Armenian Church: A Brief Introduction (Burbank, CA: Western Diocese of the
Armenian Church, 2008), 22. For more on the Armenian Church in the context of the Ottoman Reforms and
Constitutional Period, see Richard Antaramian, Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the
Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020) and Bedross Der
Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2014).
245
political figures, centring on the build-up, occurrence, and aftermath of the election. It
shows how opposition to and support of the election reflect dissent within the larger
Armenian population embroiled in internal struggles for power in a post-Genocide,
nation-state landscape. Using the Cold War as a backdrop, it likewise demonstrates how
a transnational minority community was able to circulate and assert authority in various
innovative ways, the ramifications of which affected not only the Middle East region, but
also areas far beyond.

Lead-up to the Election

In 1952, Catholicos Karekin I (Hovsepian) of the Cilician See passed away, and his seat
remained vacant for the next four years. Owing to internal disagreements, the Cilician
See repeatedly postponed electing the next Catholicos. Every time the see announced a
date in the Lebanese Armenian-language press, its list of delegates changed, thus
indicating conflict. Cilician See Catholicoi were historically elected by a group of laymen
and clerics from six separate groups and institutions: members of the Catholicosate
complex; the Patriarchs of the Lebanese, Damascus, Aleppo and Cypriot Patriarchates;
separate delegations comprising laypeople and religious figures from the Aleppo and
Lebanese patriarchates; a layperson from the Cypriot Patriarchate; two laypeople from
the Damascus Patriarchate, and two laypeople from the Echmiadzin Catholicosate located
in the ASSR.4 Numerous letters exchanged between Khoren (Paroyan), the acting-
Catholicos of the Cilician See, and the above patriarchates also indicated trouble behind
the scenes: Archbishop Khoren would politely confirm the date of the intended election,
and reaffirm the names of the delegates, and in response would be informed – equally
civilly –that those very delegates had been changed.5

Meanwhile, Vasken (born Levon Garabed Baljian, 1908–1994), the Catholicos of

the Echmiadzin See, announced that he would be the Echmiadzin See’s official delegate

4
“Katʻoghikos Ěntrutʻean 50 Patgamawornerě” [The 50 Delegates of the Catholicos Elections], Aztag,
15 February 1956, 1.
5
See, for example, the letter from acting Catholicos Khoren (Antelias, Lebanon) to Archbishop Zareh
(Aleppo) of 3 November 1955 and the Official List of Delegates written by acting Catholicos Khoren
(Antelias, Lebanon). Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 11, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia
(Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
246
in the Cilician See’s election. This action was quite unprecedented. Not only was it his
first trip outside the USSR since he was ordained in 1955, but, more importantly, it was
incredibly rare for the Catholicos himself to be the delegate from the Echmiadzin See.
Typically, a Catholicos would send an emissary on his behalf. After all, the two sees had
historically had a cordial relationship, and took care not to become involved ech other’s
daily activities. Nevertheless, the geopolitical changes in the first half of the twentieth
century elevated the reach of the Cilician See’s authority and made such an intervention
by the Echmiadzin See possible. This paved the way for a direct confrontation between
the two sees that culminated in the eventual election of Zareh (born Simon Payaslian), an
outspoken critic of communism and the USSR. And yet, even after the election, and
within an openly adversarial relationship, the two sees and their associated prelates,
archbishops, bishops and laypeople continued to communicate and negotiate with one
another.

The re-establishment of the Cilician See in Lebanon, and especially its

recognition, first by the French mandate government and then by the independent republic
of Lebanon, as the official representative of the Armenian sect changed the dynamics
between the surviving sees and their patriarchates. The changes occurring with regard to
the Istanbul Patriarchate (most notably its loss of membership, and the need for it to
manoeuvre within the new ethno-nationalist state of Turkey) and the Echmiadzin See
(with Armenia having become part of the USSR and, therefore, a Soviet institution)
created new opportunities for Armenian Church members to become powerful actors
competing with one another and using church institutions to gain authority over the
Armenian community. Moreover, these actors included not only figures in the upper
echelons of the Armenian Church, but also Armenian laypeople living far from these
centres of power and as distant as the United States and South America. These changes
thus created new opportunities for members of the Armenian community who may
otherwise have been restricted by geography.

Election

In early 1956, when the Cilician See announced that the election would indeed take place,
all the Armenian-language daily newspapers followed developments with great fanfare
and did not speculate why the Cilician See had finally decided to proceed with the
247
election. With the notice of the election, however, came another announcement in the
Armenian press: Vasken would visit Lebanon – his first trip outside the Soviet Union.
His arrival, on 3 February, was a rather undisguised attempt to influence the election
outcome. While his presence was surprising, it was likewise unprecedented, and attracted
great attention and celebrations among Armenians in Lebanon. Even Armenian
newspapers critical of the USSR and against the Soviet manifestation of Armenia cheered
his arrival. Perhaps this was just because he was the Echmiadzin Catholicos, but it is also
possible that it was an attempt by Armenian leaders to represent the Armenian community
as one, in the face of other powers, be they Lebanese, Soviet or otherwise.

Nevertheless, Zareh’s subsequent election triggered a public row between the two
sees, with religious, political and societal dignitaries around the world endeavouring to
assuage the situation. At the same time, in seeking either to reconcile the sees or
demonstrate the independence of the Cilician See, or a combination of the two, these
dignitaries used the tensions that had arisen to renegotiate their own relationships with
these ecclesiastic institutions. And while the arrival of Vasken from Echmiadzin, and his
personal attempt to participate in the election, was unprecedented, the changing
relationship between the two sees also represented a continuation of the new opportunities
for power and organisation that had arisen after the Armenian Genocide.

Zareh, the new Catholicos elected on 20 February, was the former archbishop of
Aleppo. An outspoken critic of communism and the USSR, he lost no time in condemning
what he considered ‘organised attempts by Soviet authorities to use the Echmiadzin See
as an instrument to control the Armenian communities of the Diaspora.’6 In effect, his
election officially positioned the Cilician See against the Echmiadzin See, the ASSR and
the USSR. Tensions were thus converted into chaos.7

6
“Atʻenagrutʻiwn Patgamaworakan Zhoghoboy” [Minutes of the Meeting of Religious Representatives],
Hask (Beirut, Lebanon) Nos. 1-4, January-April 1956), 12.
7
Supporters and opponents of Zareh clashed in Beirut. The pro-Western Lebanese President Camille
Chamoun (1900–1987; r. 1952–1958), who had taken a close interest in the election and met all parties
concerned, ordered government troops to secure Armenian neighbourhoods in Beirut. A month later, the ach,
a solid gold mould of the right arm of St Gregory, who is credited with converting the pagan Armenians to
Christianity in 301, and a few other relics were stolen from the Cilician See’s monastery complex in Antelias.
This act was universally seen as an attempt to embarrass the Cilician See and to torpedo Zareh’s ordination.
248
 At the same time, Zareh’s election and ordination, however controversial,
demonstrated the autonomy of the Cilician See, both to his supporters and his opponents.
Aztag, a Beiruti Armenian newspaper published supportive of Zareh and opposing the
ASSR, published daily features highlighting the historical independence of the Cilician
See and profiling incidents in which the Catholicosate of Echmiadzin had acted less than
morally, with the aim of reinforcing a historical precedent of the latter’s unethical
behaviour.8 Ideologically opposed Armenian daily newspapers, such as Ararad and
Zartonk, continued their coverage against the newly elected Zareh and followed
developments in the Echmiadzin See and the ASSR more closely. At the same time,
unpublished communiques between and among church figures and lay people expose
attempts to reorder the hierarchy of power between Armenian Church institutions, their
officials and community leaders. It is these channels – unbeknown to the public – that
highlight the space in which Armenians actively continued to negotiate and shape the
infrastructure around them.

Letters of Congratulations

Congratulatory telegrams and letters from states and religious figures, addressed to the
newly elected Catholicos Zareh, started arriving at the Cilician See almost immediately.
The office of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
the French and Turkish ambassadors all sent official notes of congratulations on 24
February 1956,9 with the United States following on 27 February and the United Kingdom
on 28 February.10 Although merely formal, these congratulations represented official
communications by these states and thus reinforced Zareh’s election. In this way,

In September, however, Zareh was ordained. And the following year, the relic was ‘found’ in Jordanian-ruled
East Jerusalem and returned to Beirut in triumph.
8
Father Ter Melgonyan, “Hay Katʻoghikosakan Atʻorʻin Teghapʻokhutynnerě” [The Migration of the
Armenian Catholicos Seat], Aztag, 21 March 1956, 1.
9
Telegrams to Catholicos Zareh from the office of Camille Chamoun, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Embassy of France and the Embassy of Turkey (Antelias, Lebanon), 24 February 1956. Personal Papers of
Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
10
Telegrams from the Embassy of the United States to Catholicos Zareh (Beirut, Lebanon), 27 February
1956, and from the Embassy of the United Kingdom (Beirut, Lebanon), 28 February 1956, Personal Papers
of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
249
therefore, they legitimised Zareh vis-à-vis both other states and the larger Armenian
community, regardless of these parties’ ideological position on the matter. As far as
foreign dignitaries and the Lebanese government were concerned, Zareh was the head of
the Cilician See. Crucially, for the Lebanese state, this meant that Zareh was likewise the
head of the Armenian sect in Lebanon. This had ramifications beyond any crisis between
Armenian ecclesiastic centres. As the head of the Armenian sect, he was the population’s
official representative to the state. In some ways, this mirrored the historical relationship
between the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul and the Armenian millet, albeit in a very
different capacity and geography. While most of the Armenian millet lived in provinces
and was rather poor, the Armenian community in Lebanon was thriving by the 1950s,
owning businesses and accumulating capital. In addition, the relationship between the
Ottoman State and the Istanbul Patriarchate had been one of deferrence and mitigation.
In contrast, the Cilician See, while not equal to a state power, commanded a powerful
transnational network.

For the Armenian community in Lebanon and its day-to-day activities, the
Lebanese government’s recognition of Zareh’s election meant that important life markers
such as baptisms, marriages, divorces and burial rites would be sanctioned in his name.
In addition, the Armenian education system in Lebanon and Syria fell under the authority
of the Cilician See, which, as the overseer of these schools, was responsible for hiring
and staffing, and for designing school curricula. Indeed, many of the textbooks used in
Armenian schools were commissioned and published through the see’s publishing house.
This was in addition to the power the see held in its capacity as supreme head of the
Armenian Church in Lebanon. This position automatically attracted attention in the press,
regardless of how mundane or exceptional the activity. Significantly, the coverage given
to the Cilician See transcended politics in that it was enjoyed regardless of a newspaper’s
political affiliations. By mentioning the religious leader present at any given event, which
the newspapers always did, often with an accompanying photograph, the Armenian press
reinforced the need for Armenian religious figures. Perhaps this was even more so
because the Armenian community, more so than other communities in Lebanon, and
particularly given that the ASSR comprised one of the fifteen republics of the USSR,
mirrored the Cold War divisions at the time. The reassuring presence of the Armenian
Church figure transcending political affiliations represented a circumventing of conflict.

250
 This all changed with the election of Zareh, who used his position and its
purported transcending of politics to underline his political ideology. The well-wishes
continued, and although some may seem minor in comparison to those afforded to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ambassador of the United States of America, or the
President of the Lebanese Republic, they demonstrated the importance of the Cilician
See. Moreover, these unpublished correspondences reveal the Armenian community’s
ongoing restructurationsand showcase the transnational exchanges resulting from this
election.

Thus, the fact that the editor of the Istanbul-based Armenian-language daily
Marmara sent his congratulations indicated that the newspaper would cover the comings
and goings of the Catholicos,11 while also indicating its acceptance of it. As Marmara
also actively followed and reported on the activities of the Istanbul Patriarchate, its
covering of the two centres legitimised each centre in the eyes of the other, too.

Armenians from other cities wrote to Zareh expressing not only their support, but
also their hope that the election would end intra-Armenian tensions. David Davidian
wrote from Sao Paolo, Brazil, on 27 February 1956,12 claiming to speak on behalf of the
entire Armenian community there. While he did not detail what afflicted Armenians, he
expressed his hope that Zareh’s ordination would take place soon and that this would
finally ‘resolve the Armenian problems.’ And while Davidian used the official title of
‘Catholicos of All Armenians’ when referring to the Catholicos of the Echmiadzin See,
he placed quotation marks around ‘All Armenians’, suggesting an adherence to formality,
if not even a degree of derision.13 In fact, Davidian explained the situation quite plainly.
As an Armenian in Sao Paolo, he recognised that the Armenian nation was divided. There
was the diaspora, he explained, headed by the Cilician See, and the regime of the
Catholicos of ‘All Armenians’ in Armenia, and this division made it the duty of those in
the diaspora to support the Cilician See. Armenians far outside the latter’s jurisdiction

11
Letter from Karpis Muratean (Istanbul, Turkey) to Catholicos Zareh, 23 February 1956. Personal Papers
of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
What is also interesting is that of the papers present in the archive of the Catholicosate of Cilicia, this
newspaper is the only congratulations present.
12
Letter from Tavit Tavitean (Sao Paolo, Brazil) to Catholicos Zareh, 27 February 1956. Personal Papers of
Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
13
Ibid. “The Catholicos of All Armenians” is the official title of the Catholicos of Echmiadzin.
251
thus strengthened the Cilician See. Davidian said as much in ending his letter with the
words ‘so we must empower the Cilician See and make it strong.’14

Davidian was not the only Armenian to make such sentiments known to the newly
elected Zareh. On 29 February 1956, Diran Goureghian wrote, on the official letterhead
of his jewellery company based in Heliopolis, Cairo, that the Cilician See needed
leadership from precisely someone such as Zareh. While Davidian’s letter demonstrated
the reach of the Cilician See, Goureghian’s letter was important because it originated in
Cairo, the site of the controversial Council of Bishops’ meeting called for by Vasken to
prevent the impending election of Zareh.15 Crucially, Goureghian’s letter also voiced his
opposition to Vasken and to the Echmiadzin See in Cairo. The fraught election caused
individual Armenian parishes’ allegiance to one or the other of the two Catholicosates to
become unsettled. Goureghian’s letter could have been seen by the Cilician See as a
possible indication of the Catholicosate to which the Egyptian Armenian community
would adhere. If Goureghian was a noteworthy individual with financial ties to the
community, as the letterhead seemed to suggest, such support would be crucial for the
Cilician See’s current or future claims to represent the Egyptian community. These letters
therefore demonstrate not only the reach of the see’s authority, but also its interest in
acquiring the allegiance of Armenian congregations. Likewise, they demonstrate how
individual Armenians used the uncertainty to vie for influence with the Catholicos and
the Cilician See as an institution.

Congratulations from Hagop Hisayean writing from Asnières, France; from Azad
Yessaian in Parma, Italy; and from Hagop Arakelian in Baghdad all included expectations
of Zareh’s leadership.16 All also stressed their own ‘credentials’ as part of an Armenian
‘network’. When signing his letter, for example, Arakelian informed Zareh that he hailed
from Aintab. In addition to expressing his congratulations, a letter sent by Bedross
Hassessian from Sao Paolo invoked personal connections with Zareh’s family in

14
Ibid.
15
For more on the Council of Bishops and Catholicos Vasken’s attempt at thwarting the election, see
Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora, 140-144.
16
Letter from Hagop Hisayean (Asnières, France) to Catholicos Zareh, 29 February 1956; Letter from Azad
Yessayan (Parma, Italy) to Catholicos Zareh, 2 March 1956; and from Hagop Arakelian (Baghdad, Iraq) to
Catholicos Zareh, 5 March 1956. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the
Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
252
Aleppo,17 explaining that his paternal uncle was Dikran, related to either Zareh’s sister
‘or her husband.’18 It did not seem to matter that Hassessian could not indicate precisely
how they were related.19 Perhaps this was likewise an indication of the intimacy of the
relationship, rather than an example of uncertainty. It is feasible that both Zareh’s sister
and her spouse were related, thus making it unnecessary to pinpoint the exact relationship.
Or, perhaps, invoking either was sufficient to demonstrate belonging to a network.

In these letters, Zareh’s transnational supporters lauded his achievements, while

also delineating his responsibilities. In so doing, they steered the obligations of his rule
and the greater see. After Hassessian detailed their kinship, he went on to state that ‘Just
as you saved all the Armenians in Syria and Lebanon [by your election], you will do the
same here. Your name will be written in golden letters in Armenian history.’20 Aside from
this strong expression of support, Hassessian’s letter was likewise an invitation to Zareh,
and perhaps even an expectation, to involve the Cilician See in affairs outside its historical
jurisdiction. Here, Hassessian was welcoming the see to engage directly in the South
American Armenian community.21 His encouragement, an innovation of the Cilician
See’s network of authority, simultaneously acted as an affront to the Echmiadzin See’s
reach of power. Laypeople like Hassessian thus used the Cold War tensions articulated in
the election of Zareh to push for alternative religious and political representation and, in
so doing, further transnationalised the Cilician See.

It was not only individuals or Zareh’s relatives who congratulated him, while also
calling for changes in representation. Armenian diasporic organisations, too, promoted
their own interests through salutations. These organisations included the Union of

17
Letter from Bedross Hassessian (Sao Paolo, Brazil) to Catholicos Zareh, 10 March 1956. Personal Papers
of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Letter from Bedross Hassessian (Sao Paolo, Brazil) to Catholicos Zareh, 10 March 1956. Personal Papers
of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
21
Largely a migrant community established at the end of the nineteenth century, these communities became
permanent in the wake of the First World War and the Armenian Genocide. These migrants would have
hailed from the Eastern Anatolian provinces and been most familiar with the Istanbul Patriarchate. When
they built permanent structures in South America, including schools and churches, they would have been
under the jurisdiction of the Echmiadzin See.
253
Armenian Compatriots of Van, established in Marseille in 1923, which congratulated
Zareh and noted that ‘only now [with Zareh’s election] was the Cilician See
safeguarded.’22 While they did not express who, or from what, it was safeguarded ‘from’
or ‘for,’ one can deduce that they meant the Echmiadzin See, the very see that their own
churches followed.

Letters continued to arrive from Armenians far from the jurisdiction of the
Cilician See. Vartan Kevorkian, the editor of Armenia, the Armenian daily newspaper
published in Buenos Aires, expressed his congratulations and the community’s gratitude
for how Zareh had handled what he called ‘the unfortunate trials.’ 23 Speaking on behalf
of the Argentine Armenian community, Kevorkian went to on express the relief that he
[Zareh] was as patient as he was forgiving.24 He lauded Zareh for treating both his
supporters and opponents equally.25 These lines commending Zareh for his behaviour and
‘open-mindedness,’ however, can simultaneously be read as instructions.26 Noting that
Zareh’s ‘forgiving’ and ‘fatherly qualities’ would ‘sooner or later’ be felt by ‘all
Armenians’ indicated not only how Zareh should behave, but also the future expanse of
his authority and that of the Cilician See.27

Other well-wishers were hardly less suggestive. Dr Levon Daghlian’s

congratulations from Boston included a behest ‘May God Almighty guide you in our
arduous task of saving the Armenian Church from the destruction by the atheist agents of
communism.’28 For Armenians like Daghlian, this was an existential threat, and it was

22
Letter from the Union of Armenian Compatriots of Van (Marseille, France) to Catholicos Zareh, 3 June
1956. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician
See), Antelias, Lebanon.
23
Letter from Vartan Kevorkian (Buenos Aires, Argentina) to Catholicos Zareh, 5 October 1956. Personal
Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 16, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias,
Lebanon.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Letter from Levon Daghlian (Boston, MA) to Catholicos Zareh, September 1956. Personal Papers of Zareh
(25), Box 1, Folder 23, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon. [Emphasis
added.]
254
not solely Zareh’s responsibility to ward it off. It was instead a responsibility of the
collective ‘our’ – including of actors such as Daghlian.

In sum, such calls to action – and the encouragement to expand the Cilician See’s
authority – hailed from these faraway locations, and from communities that fell under the
jurisdiction of its rival, the Echmiadzin See. Power emanated not only from one central
or historical location, but also and particularly from individuals whose actions were more
than simply customary codes for expressing cheer. Armenians from places such as
Boston, Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Marseille, Baghdad, Parma and Istanbul, and linked
both to the Cilician See and to one another, exercised a new type of power that legitimised
the election of Zareh.29 Together, therefore, they demonstrated an innovation in the
workings of transnational Armenian connections.

Resistance

Armenians from various countries used Zareh’s election to either call for the expansion
of the Cilician See’s authority into new geographical areas or for opposition to its new
leader. In so doing, they became vehicles of power, steering the authority of the Cilician
See. Prior to the election, opponents had expressed their disapproval by changing the
delegates in the electoral list. After Zareh’s election, however, religious figures and
laypeople alike switched to more circuitous means of exchange. While the background of
these communications was still the election, they were not addressed to Zareh. Rather,
these exchanges were between affiliates of the Cilician See and its opponents. Ironically,
once the election had taken place, Zareh and the Cilician See became ancillary figures in
an increasingly less insular institution.

In a letter dated 8 October 1956, Manaseh G. Sevag wrote to Haroutune Hazarian,

the treasurer of the Armenian Seminary Association in New York, requesting that his
US$50 donation made out to the Armenian Theological Seminary of the Cilician See in

29
Other well-wishers included the writers of letters from Isfahan, Amman, and cities throughout Syria.
Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 23, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See),
Antelias, Lebanon. [Emphasis added.]
255
Lebanon should be returned.30 In the letter, he explained that he had given the donation
to Bishop Terenig Palodian, the head of the Armenian Seminary Association, who had
acknowledged receipt of the cheque.31 In addition to including a copy of cashed cheque,
he informed Hazarian that while the National City Bank of New York had deposited the
donation in the account of the Armenian Seminary Association, he had been alerted that
this contribution had never been transferred to the Armenian Theological Seminary in
Lebanon and instead remained on the Armenian Seminary Association’s account in New
York.32

Although Sevag never disclosed the identity of the ‘unnamed authentic source’
who had informed him that the contribution had not been forwarded to the treasury of the
Armenian Theological Seminary in Lebanon,33 his mentioning of Bishop Terenig
Palodian, who had studied at the very seminary for which the donation was intended,
involved the Echmiadzin See in the ASSR. It also demonstrated the degree to which the
financial and clerical networks of these two autonomous sees were intertwined. The
Armenian Seminary in New York was under the tutelage of the New York Armenian
Patriarchate, which itself was under the jurisdiction of the Echmiadzin See in the ASSR.
Yet Palodian had been one of the designed delegates of the Cilician See, and this had
resulted in the election of Zareh. Loyalty to the seat of Armenian religious power could
thus change, and this flexibility showed there was no singular centre of ecclesiastic power.
The withholding of money from the Cilician See exposed how individual figures located
outside major Armenian geographical centres could and indeed did yield power. But
although Zareh was informed of the situation, he was unable to retrieve the money.

30
Letter from Manaseh Sevag (Newtown Square, Pennsylvania) to Haroutune Hazarian, 8 October 1956.
Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See),
Antelias, Lebanon.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid. Sevag’s letter made its way to the Cilician See and was used as evidence in legal action subsequently
brought against Hazarian by Catholicos Zareh. See, for example, the letter from Arthur B. Kramer (New
York) to Catholicos Zareh, 20 October 1960. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29, Archives of
the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
33
Letter from Manaseh Sevag (Newtown Square, Pennsylvania) to Haroutune Hazarian (8 October 1956).
Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See),
Antelias, Lebanon.
256
 Sevag’s conclusion that ‘It is clear therefore that this money must still be in the
treasury of the Armenian Seminary Association,’ and his appeal to Hazarian for its return,
treated the Cilician See as a passive witness to this injustice rather than as an actor; 34 in
other words, the Cilician See was informed of the issue, but it is unclear whether it had
the power to force Palodian to sanction the return of the donation. Sevag’s donation to
the Armenian Seminary Association on the assumption that it would reach the Cilician
See highlighted the reliance of one see upon the other. At the same time, however, it also
revealed how both sees depended upon Armenian laypeople located transnationally in the
flows of capital, and the ways in which Armenians expressed their opposition to the
election: in this case, by disrupting these flows.

Others used legal means to express their grievances. The Bishop of Damascus,
Shawarsh Kuyumjian, and Agop Khashmanian filed a suit against Zareh in a Syrian
court.35 They did so not only on their own behalf, but also in their capacity as delegates
who had opposed the election. This involved their filing a petition on 5 March 1956
describing the irregularities in the election and requesting the Syrian court to rule that the
election should be nullified and a new one called.36

Using the Syrian legal system to attempt to impose an order on the internal
electoral process of the Cilician See located in Lebanon was certainly a bold move. It
placed the Bishop and the Prelacy of Damascus in direct contention with the Cilician See,
while also identifying the Syrian state as the central arbitrator in such an affair. It also
located Damascus as the central site of opposition to Zareh and to the see. This went
beyond the matter of Bishop Palodian withholding the release of US$50 in that it involved
an intervention by the Syrian state legal system, sanctioned by two Syrian citizens of
Armenian descent. At the same time, it demonstrated the integration of Syrian Armenians
and their confidence in the Syrian state apparatus. Kuyumjian and Khashmanian enlisted
the Syrian legal system to oppose a church election that took place in another nation state,
Lebanon, under the watchful eyes of Lebanese armed forces. 37 These Armenians’ use of

34
Ibid.
35
Syrian Supreme Court Ruling of 20 November 1959. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
36
Ibid.
37
See Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora, 126-166.
257
the courts likewise empowered the very structure of Syrian legal system. At the same
time, it was assumed that, no matter how the Syrian court ruled, Kuyumjian and
Khashmanian would abide by the ruling, thus demonstrating that the transnational
authority of the Cilician See was overseen by Syrian national law.

A similar line of reasoning was adopted by the Syrian court, which stated in its
ruling that, on 5 May 1956, both men submitted a petition directly to Zareh, asking him
to reject the election and ‘uphold the call for a new election to be held in accordance with
the forms prescribed in the Community Regulations 1863.’38 Zareh did not reply to this
request, the papers detailed, thus leading the plaintiffs to consider ‘his silence as an
implied refusal.’39 This resulted in the filing of the lawsuit on 16 June 1956, implicitly
asking the Syrian Supreme Court to annul the election.40 Once again, Zareh’s silence
allowed Bishop Shawarsh and Khashmanian to activate the Syrian legal system. Of
course, the Syrian state was only too happy to oblige, for this matter demonstrated its own
authority not only over Armenians in Syria but also over those in Lebanon and beyond.
The Syrian state could likewise be seen as brandishing its power vis-à-vis the Lebanese
state, especially given that the election had taken place under the protection of Lebanese
armed troops.

This was not the first time that Armenians had used nation-state structures such
as the military, police or court to advance a particular cause.41 After the Armenian
Genocide, Armenians had created new centres of power, distinct from the community’s

38
Syrian Supreme Court Ruling from 20 November 1959. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
The election of Zareh in Antelias took place under the guard of Lebanese military figures. When Vasken
arrived in Lebanon he was greeted by thousands of Armenians lining the streets and was escorted by Lebanese
military figures in a motorcade. Before the election, Vasken met President Chamoun, while Zareh met him
afterwards, with both seeking to obtain Lebanese governmental support for their respective positions. When
it became clear that the election would go ahead, Vasken called for the Council of Bishops’ meeting to be
held in Jerusalem; the Jordanian authorities, however, refused his request for entry. When Vasken then sought
to have the meeting held in Cairo, Egyptian President Gamal abd al-Nasser personally met him and took the
opportunity to speak out on the Armenian community’s behalf. Armenians and nation-state figures, therefore,
used each other to push for their own interests, all in the context, albeit sometimes less clearly so, of
succession in the Cilician See. For more details, see Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora, 126-166.
258
historical locations. Nevertheless, this was the first time that Damascus had fashioned
itself as a site of Armenian authority and power and, in so doing, demonstrated the
competition that existed between these centres. In addition, the fact that the suit was filed
in Damascus, and not in Lebanon, where the Cilician See was located, showed how
Armenian transnational actors doubled as potential liabilities. While manifesting the far-
reaching power of the Cilician See, they could – and did – use a variety of state
apparatuses to contend for power over other Armenians, both regionally and worldwide.

Nevertheless, the laws used by plaintiffs to challenge the election and authority of
Zareh were not exactly new as the standardised legal system of the Syrian state had its
roots in both Mandate and Ottoman law.42 Even, therefore, in the novel ways that
Armenians intervened in their support and opposition of this election, there was also a
sense of continuity from the Ottoman period, with the legal action making mention of the
laws of 1860, 1863 and 1941.43 The year 1863 marked the establishment of the Armenian
National Assembly and its approval by Ottoman state authorities. Its use by both the
plaintiffs and the Syrian Supreme Court some 90 years later turned this Ottoman
Armenian document into a vehicle of power for the Syrian nation state and the Damascene
Armenian community that sought to annul the elections, and also for the legitimisation of
Zareh as Catholicos.

Although the Syrian Supreme Court ruled in the defendant’s favour, it was once
again Zareh and the Cilician See that took on passive roles in the process. The court
declared that the plaintiffs had not submitted their claim to invalidate the election to the
necessary ‘competent authority’ in due time, thus leading the court to reject the case.44 It
went on to explain that any request to invalidate the election first had to be submitted to
the General Assembly, which would then consider any violation of the election
procedures.45 In the court’s view, the 1863 Constitution ‘which is in force since the
Ottoman regime, delegated to the General Assembly of the Community the election of

42
Benjamin White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French
Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 43-68.
43
Syrian Supreme Court Ruling, 20 November 1959. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid.
259
the religious supreme head (Catholicos).’46 It was unclear, however, if the court regarded
the General Assembly as the ‘competent authority’ and, if so, what body of authority this
would have referred to in 1956. Would this have been the electoral delegates who voted
for the Catholicos of the Cilician See, or the defunct Ottoman National Assembly, or the
Lebanese or Syrian parliaments?47

In addition to bringing their grievances to the Syrian Supreme Court, the plaintiffs
also attempted to insert the Syrian presidency directly into the case. According to the
amendments made to the Armenian National Constitution (shortly after Syria’s
independence in 1947), the newly elected Catholicos was subject to approval by the
Syrian Premier (President).48 This recognition, as detailed in the ruling, was dependent
upon the elected Catholicos’ ‘traits and qualities becoming this religious office’ and upon
his having won ‘the confidence of the government.’49 The plaintiffs raised this issue even
though the Syrian President had already sent his congratulations to Zareh on 24 February
1956.50 In doing so, they yet again demonstrated their own authority, while also
reinforcing the authority of the Syrian nation state in confirming the delegates’ selection
of the Catholicos. Unsurprisingly, the Syrian state agreed with the plaintiffs that it enjoyed
the right to authenticate the ‘religious head,’ but added that the election was ‘free from
any faults of trespassing upon authority.’51

While two sets of actors – the plaintiffs and the Syrian state – wrestled over the
interpretation of Armenian historical documents and governmental legal ones, the voice
of Catholicos Zareh remained silent. Although listed as a defendant, he was not present

46
Ibid.
47
Ibid. The Syrian court’s citation of a Lebanese law in its adjudication – ‘the provisions of Article 60’ of
the Lebanese Republic – also demonstrated its reinforcing of its power through the legal systems of other
states. Article 60, dating from 1936, recognized Armenians as an official sect in Lebanon, while also
coinciding with the year that Cilician See moved to Lebanon permanently.
48
Syrian Supreme Court Ruling, 20 November 1959. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
49
Ibid.
50
“Surioy Vsemashukʻ Naghagah Shukʻri Kʻuatʻli Kě Shnorhaworē N.S. Zareh I Kʻatoʻgh.i Ěntrutʻyuně [His
Eminence the Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli Congratulates Zareh I on his Election], Aztag, 24 February
1956, 1.
51
Syrian Supreme Court Ruling, 20 November 1959. Personal Papers of Zareh (25), Box 1, Folder 29,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
260
in this struggle for power. Instead, the plaintiffs used his election to claim power and
nullify the election’s outcome in an attempt to challenge the Cilician See; just like the
Syrian state sought to consolidate its authority and confirm its right to oversee the election
process in neighbouring Lebanon.

Zareh’s Presence

The events surrounding Zareh’s election thus became a fertile space for various actors to
seek to exercise influence on the Cilician See. They did so in ways that both challenged
and shaped its authority. Because of the see’s transnational reach, nation-state
apparatuses, such as the Syrian Supreme Court, became opportune vehicles for opposing
or legitimising the election. And all the while, both the presence and voice of Zareh
himself seemed absent.

However, Zareh did send a series of letters to Armenian parishes, organisations

and influential lay people around the world, including in India, South America, North
America and Europe, and across the Middle East. He also corresponded with non-
Armenian dignitaries worldwide. While some of these letters were simply
correspondences expressing gratitude for the well-wishes, many more were intended to
serve a purpose: either informing on members of the Cilician See who had since been
excommunicated, such as Terenig Palodian, the head of the Armenian Seminary
Association (who had not transferred the US$50 donation from Manaseh Sevag), or
soliciting additional funds from congregants.52 Thus, Zareh’s actions revealed the Cilician
See’s dependence on transnational donors. The capital that flowed or was expected to
flow into the Catholicosate in turn challenged how the Syrian and Lebanese governments
viewed their jurisdiction over the see. In the above Supreme Court case, the Syrian
government delineated the Cilician See as a religious body representing Armenians

52
Letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Julias Elias, Metropolitan Delegate to the Holy See
of Antioch in India (Kerala), 24 May 1957. Personal papers of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box
1, Folder 219, and letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Philadelphia’s Arapgir Association,
27 September 1956. Personal papers of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives
of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
261
residing in Syria and Lebanon and made no reference to these Armenians’ potential
contacts and networks elsewhere.

For Zareh and the Catholicosate, these transnational networks represented a

lifeline. In a letter to Philadelphia’s Arapgir Association shortly after his ordination in
September 1956, Zareh wrote ‘Our Holy See’s presence and future, and why shouldn’t
we state [the obvious], the essence of the diaspora’s Armenianness are connected to the
existence and maintenance of the monastery [at the Cilician See].’53 ‘Without it,’ he
continued, ‘and the adequate preparation of educated cultivators, the nation stalls and
dies.’54 The Catholicosate was dependent on these funds, and Zareh, in the precarious
position of a being a newly installed Catholicos whose opponents had not retreated with
his ordination but had only furthered their cause by using nation-state legal frameworks
in an attempt to unseat him, was not overstating things. ‘In this case,’ he continued, ‘more
than in any other time, our seminary is of the utmost importance.’55 After all, if the
Cilician See’s seminary fell into disarray, how would he have trained, staffed and
circulated priests and bishops throughout his congregations? Without this institution and
its ability to train and deploy ecclesiastic figures, Zareh would have lost his ability to
govern. While he may have remained in power, securing his ‘seat,’ his authority may not
have extended beyond the monastery walls. In essence, then, this fight to secure income
for the see to maintain its seminary became the new battleground for both Zareh and his
opponents.56

Zareh not only solicited funding from Armenians in the United States; as well as
carefully responding by personal correspondence to each donation, he also sought to
expand the libraries of the Cilician See’s seminary in order to fortify it as a learning

53
Letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Philadelphia’s Arapgir Association, 27 September
1956. Personal papers of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives of the
Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid.
56
This is evidenced by the forced removal of Terenig Palodian as head of the Cilician See’s seminary.
Although Palodian was excommunicated from the Cilician See, he went on to serve the Echmiadzin See, still
in his capacity as Archbishop. This horizontal move also demonstrates the lack of theological difference
between the two sees.
262
centre.57 In early 1957, he wrote to Kourken Mkhitarian, the editor of the Armenian-
language Hayrenik newspaper in Boston, with a mission.58 The first lines of the letter
described his reason for writing: ‘We heard from our mutual friend, the distinguished Mr
Malkhaseh, that someone with the last name Topalian whose life goal was to amass a
library of periodicals and rare publications lived in Boston.’59 This library had apparently
been completed, as Zareh explained, expressingdelight and amazement. ‘Far away in
America, [Topalian] dedicated his free time to gathering this valuable collection, one that
could rival any cultural centre.’60 After Zareh learned of this from Malkhaseh, he
explained, he had thought to write to Mkhitarian to inquire whether this collection could
be donated to the Cilician See.61 While the connections were circuitous, Zareh was
explicit in what he would like Mkhitarian to do: encourage Topalian to donate his
collection – and move – to the Cilician See, where he would spend his ‘advanced years
… close to us and his books [and] … become the seminary’s librarian.’ In doing so, Zareh
declared, Topalian would ‘bestow his faith to my See.’62

Zareh did not correspond with Topalian directly, stating to Mkhitarian that ‘it was
not possible or suitable’ to do so, without providing any further details as to why.63
Instead, he relied on Mkhitarian to do so. Mkhitarian was part of Zareh’s network and
was called upon by him to fulfil his wish. In this way, Zareh, too, was dependent on his
trusted contacts located transnationally. As editor of Hayrenik, the daily newspaper of the
Armenian Dashnak political party, Mkhitarian would also have been a party member. The
expectation that Mkhitarian would fulfil Zareh’s wish indicated a level of intimacy not
only with the editor of Hayrenik, but also with Dashnak. At the same time, it was these

57
See, for example, the letters from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Zaruhy Khanoean in Fresno, 5
October 1956; to Alexander Puzantean in Cambridge, MA, 9 March 1957; and to Haygazn Ghazaean in
Boston, MA, 15 June 1957. Personal papers of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218,
Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
58
Letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Kourken Mkhitarian, 4 January 1957. Personal papers
of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia
(Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
263
entities – comprising individual Armenians in the United States and their affiliated
political parties – that had the power to expand Zareh’s authority. His request, therefore,
simultaneously exposed the power of these individuals rather than solely showcasing the
expectations of the Catholicos of the Cilician See. Power rested in the least likely of sites:
in an elderly, previously unknown man, Topalian, first name not specified, who was
invited to live out his final days at the Cilician See in Lebanon.

As well as calling on the editor of Hayrenik for assistance, Zareh engaged in back-
and-forth letter-writing to prominent members of the Armenian community in the United
States. These letters included a five-page response to Harry M. (Movsesian) Burt, a
wealthy Armenian-American businessman based in Providence, Rhode Island, and who
was president of Lloyd Products Company.64 Zareh first acknowledged the receipt of
Burt’s letter and described his appreciation of his ‘love for the church and nation.’65 He
then went on to detail what Burt had written in his letter: that he had met with Archbishop
Mampre Calfayan, Primate of North America, who had expressed his commitment to
peace and unity.66 Zareh also expressed his surprise, recounting to Burt his experience
with Archbishop Mampre during the election process in Antelias the previous year.
‘During that week, Archbishop Mampre did not strike us as a peaceful or uniting soul.’67
In fact, Zareh stated, ‘When we gathered in both official and unofficial capacities, we
realised that Archbishop Mampre cannot play a role in the Armenian Church and national
life.’68 He then went on to detail the duplicitous behaviour of Archbishop Mampre,
including his involvement in attempts to set up an alternative authority of the Cilician
See, entailing, among other things, the thwarted take-over of the Cilician Theological

64
Biographical details of Henry Burt vary, with it sometimes being stated that he was also the owner of Rex
Manufacturing, Triad Pen and Royal Moulding. Jonathan A. Veley, “The Lead-Head’s Pencil Blog” accessed
10 August 2021, https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/rex-manufacturing-company-father-of.html.
Regardless of the exact relationship, Burt was clearly a prosperous resident of the Providence area and an
active member of the Armenian community. See also G.Y. Loveridge, “R.I. Armenian to Get Church Medal,”
Providence Sunday Journal, 19 February 1956, 4-6.
65
Letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Henry M. Burt, 3 September 1957. Personal papers
of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia
(Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
264
Seminary (hence the excommunicating of Palodian), and his support for the ‘Armenian
Gregorian Orthodox Independent Patriarchate’ that opponents of Zareh (on the directive
of the Echmiadzin See, Zareh noted) had tried to establish in both Lebanon and Syria.69

Nevertheless, Zareh’s intention was not only to discredit Archbishop Mampre,

who was the leader of the Armenian Church in North America under the jurisdiction of
the Echmiadzin See. While he spent most of the letter detailing Mampre’s ‘unpriestly’
actions, Zareh had additional reasons for engaging with Burt in such detail: Burt had been
Catholicos Vasken’s attendant during his ordination as the head of the Echmiadzin See
in 1955 in the ASSR and, a year later, the recipient of the Medal of St. Gregory, the
highest award given by that see.70 This was bestowed upon him by none other than
Archbishop Mampre, whom Catholicos Zareh derided in the letter.71 Burt was also one
of the few American-Armenians who had not only been to the ASSR, but who had also
spoken on record in the English-language press on his wonderful visit and ordination
ceremony.72 He was therefore an important member of the Armenian community in the
United States, but clearly also had a close relationship with the upper echelons of the
Echmiadzin See. Zareh used Burt to assert his see’s position vis-à-vis his rivals, the
Echmiadzin See, and Burt became his intermediary for communicating to and even
threatening the rival see.

69
Once again, the Armenian Theological Seminary of the Cilician See reappears and connects many of these
correspondences. This was the same institution to which Sevag donated $50, and that Archbishop Terenig
Palodian used to head. That is also why Catholicos Zareh informed Julias Elias, the Metropolitan Delegate
to the Holy See of Antioch in India (Kerala), that he was no longer associated with the Cilician See. Letter
from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Henry M. Burt, 3 September 1957. Personal papers of the
Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician
See), Antelias, Lebanon.
70
G.Y. Loveridge, “R.I. Armenian to Get Church Medal,” Providence Sunday Journal, 19 February 1956,
4-6.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid. It was probably no coincidence that such an expansive feature was published the day before Zareh’s
election in Lebanon, drawing yet more attention to the impact of the Cilician See’s transnational connections.
265
 In the final paragraph of the letter, Zareh wrote ‘And now, dear Mr. Burt, the
Cilician See is in a new stage of rebirth.’73 While he declared that he did not want to fight
with anyone, he likewise invoked Apostle Paul: ‘If you forget what happened in the past,
it will extend to your future.’74 As the head of Cilician See, Zareh would not allow past
actions of his opponents to fade from memory. In addition, in both an ambitious – and
prophetic – demonstration of how the Cilician See would, in a few years’ time, expand
physically into the United States by establishing its own prelacies and congregations
under its sole jurisdiction, Zareh declared that ‘The Cilician See is prepared to grow and
reciprocate the people’s love and understanding.’75

Conclusion

Correspondences between Zareh and his supporters and detractors reveal the many actors
involved in the struggles for power to limit and expand the Cilician See’s authority. In
addition, they offer evidence of the Cilician See under duress: donations were being
withheld, various church officials were attempting to discredit Zareh, active movements
were being undertaken to set up rival authorities to the see, and the leader of its seminary
was excommunicated. The attempts by the Cilician See to negotiate with rival and allied
church officials and leading members of the larger Armenian global community reveal
how transnational connections created additional complications for the see. While these
actors could be used as vehicles working on Zareh’s behalf to consolidate the authority
of the Cilician See, they also steered their trajectories. The impact of these actors further
demonstrates the active engagement of transnational Armenians in this increasingly less
insular ecclesiastic affair, while the correspondences also show how the involvement of
transnational Armenians, including at the behest of Zareh, expanded the reaches of their
own power, potentially at the expense of more traditional Armenian institutions.

73
Letter from Catholicos Zareh (Antelias, Lebanon) to Henry M. Burt, 3 September 1957. Personal papers
of the Catholicosate of the Cilician See (1), Box 1, Folder 218, Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia
(Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon.
74
Ibid.
75
Ibid.
266
267
Sources and Bibliography

Manuscripts

Archives of the Catholicosate of Cilicia (Cilician See), Antelias, Lebanon. Personal

Papers of Zareh.

_____. Personal Papers of the Catholicosate of Cilicia.

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269