Chinese Porcelain Ordered by Portuguese Jews 473

Chapter 21 Chinese Porcelain Ordered by Portuguese Jews in the Diaspora*

Roberto Bachmann

For a better understanding of the subject referred to in the title, we have to look into the historical background of the Jews in and the Jewish fam- ilies that originated from there. The Jews in Portugal around the year 1500 were a minority, numbering between 80,000 and 100,000 in a population of about one million inhabitants. This number included about 40,000 Portuguese Jews and about 50,000 Jews exiled from after 1391, but mainly after August 1492, the date when their expulsion was implemented by Isabel and Fernando, the “Catholic Kings,” rep- resenting around ten per cent of the total population of Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century. This Jewish minority lived in harmony with the local powers, and was to a large degree tolerated under the protection of the kings of Portugal, whom they served in the fiscal administration, in the economy and in the sciences. They contributed from the beginning with their scientific knowledge to the , with leading figures such as Abraham Zacuto, mathematician to the King and author of the Perpetual Almanac, his disciple, Master José Vizinho, physician and astrologer to King João II. A probable great- great grandson of Zacuto, by the name of Manuel Álvares de Távora, called Zacuto Lusitano, was a doctor of great prestige, who left an important collec- tion of writings. However, the break came in 1496 when the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from Portuguese territory was signed in Muge (Ribatejo) by King Manuel I, supposedly for dynastic reasons, followed a year later by the decree of forced conversion of the entire Jewish population, now transmuted into “conversos,” in Portugal called New Christians, and then in 1499 when their emigration from the country was forbidden, whether as individuals or in groups. Earlier, in 1493, King João II ordered the deportation of about 2,000 young New Christians aged between 10 and 15 years old to the island of São Tomé,

* This text was originally published in Portugal in Porcelain from China: 500 Years of Trade, ed. A. Varela Santos (: Artemágica, 2010, vol. IV).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004364974_022 474 Bachmann which had been discovered only a few years earlier. They were the children of Jews from Spain who had been exiled in Portugal in 1492, and this second forced relocation was done under the pretext of wanting to educate them in the Catholic faith and as an attempt to populate São Tomé, known as the “Lizard Island” in Jewish chronicles of the time. The massacre of 1506, which began in Largo de São Domingos in Lisbon, aggravated the discomfort of this numerically and socially important segment of the population of the kingdom, now converted into New Christians. Even so, they were unable to escape the fury of the population, incited by Dominican friars, costing the lives of some 4,000 New Christians, sacrificed in the public square just yards away from the Church of São Domingos. Recently, a small monument was erected in the square where the killings started. In 1536, under King John III, with the implantation in Portugal of the Inqui­ sition – officially known as the Holy Office Court – finally approved in Rome by Pope Clement VII, the exodus escalated, and the New Christians emigrating to the four corners of the then known world, leaving the country with little or no luggage and in most cases, with just their knowledge and the determination to rebuild their lives abroad. The first auto-da-fé in Portugal took place in September 1540, followed by another one in 1541, with nine people executed and 23 condemned to death in their absence. This spread panic amongst the New Christians, who were afraid of being accused, justly or, in most cases, unjustly of secretly still practicing Judaism. And so, seeking a less hostile environment, there were Portuguese New Christians in Hamburg, Antwerp, Bordeaux, Venice, Ferrara and Livorno, as well as in North Africa, in the Ottoman empire and in all the recently discov- ered lands of the New World. Important figures originating from Portugal were or became outstanding in the field of medicine, occupying chairs at the Universities of Pisa and Padua, as was the case of the illustrious medical doctor Rodrigo da Fonseca born in Lisbon. In Venice, and later in Amsterdam, Fernando (Isaac) Cardoso, born in Trancoso (Portugal), after his exile from Spain, where he was physician to Philip II of Spain, wrote medical and philo- sophical works of great interest, as well as a vindication of the Jews in response to attacks and calumnies made to them. In Italy there was also Jehuda , the physician and philosopher also known as Leão Hebreo, born in Portugal of the noble lineage of the Abravanel family. He wrote the Dialogues of Love, a neo-Platonist work, the first edition being published in 1535. The sec- ond edition (Venice 1541) mentions in the title page that the author is “of the Hebrew nation and later converted to Christianism.” It is not known whether Leão Hebreo abandoned the Jewish faith at any time, and it is assumed that the