Perspectives on Uriel Da Costa's Example of a Human Life

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STUDIA ROSENTHALIANA 42-43 (2010-2011), 1-23 doi: 10.2143/SR.43.0.2175916

Perspectives on Uriel da Costa’s Example of a Human Life

MATT GOLDISH

he saga of Uriel da Costa (Oporto 1583/4-Amsterdam 1640) is one T of the best known episodes in Western Sephardic history. A considerable literature has been devoted to Da Costa’s biography, his family background, his beliefs, and his relationship with heretical trends among seventeenth-century Amsterdam Jews.1 Here I will not attempt to review the scholarship or present new documents about Da Costa, but to consider the Example as an important book in the history of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community. It is one of the very few pre-modern Jew- ish autobiographies we possess and is thus deserving of careful attention as a work in itself. The perspectives I will examine are the Example’s signifi- cance as a converso text, as a literary work, and as a document of the early Enlightenment. While the Example may have had limited circulation in manuscript during the seventeenth century,2 it was seen by a great many Jews and Christians after it was published, and it has had a profound effect on our understanding of the community in which it originated.

1. Major editions and studies include: G. Albiac (ed.), Espejo de una vida humana (Madrid 1984); C. Gebhardt, Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa mit Einleitung / Übertragung und Regesten (Amsterdam 1922); K. Müller, Das ‘Exemplar humanae vitae’ des Uriel da Costa (Aarau 1952); J.-P. Osier, D’Uriel da Costa à Spinoza (Paris 1983); O. Proietti, Uriel da Costa e l’‘Exemplar Huma- nae Vitae’ (Macerata 2005); I.S. Révah, Uriel da Costa et les marranes de Porto: cours au Collége de France 1966-1972, edited by C.L. Wilke (Paris 2004); H.P. Salomon and I.S.D. Sassoon, Uriel da Costa, ‘Examination of Pharisaic Traditions’ supplemented by Semuel da Silva’s ‘Treatise on the Immor- tality of the Soul’ (Leiden: 1993); Uriel Acosta: A Specimen of Human Life (n/a) (New York 1967); C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Uriel da Costa: Notas relativas à sua vida e às suas obras (Coimbra 1921). Extensive bibliographies can be found in Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 163-176; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. xix-xxiii; Proietti, Uriel da Costa, p. 249-278. On the struc- ture of Da Costa’s narrative see Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, ch. 3. 2. The clearest evidence of this is the fact that Johannes Müller saw it and discussed it in his 1644 book Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb (cited in Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 202-204). 2 MATT GOLDISH

Background

Da Costa’s polemical autobiography, Example of a Human Life, written in Latin, was published by the Remonstrant theologian Philip van Lim- borch at Gouda in 1687 as an appendix to Limborch’s record of his disputation with the Jew Isaac Orobio de Castro.3 Limborch explains that in 1640 Da Costa attempted to assassinate a relative of his by whom he felt deeply insulted. Da Costa prepared two pistols: one for the assassination and one to turn upon himself. He missed the relative but immediately committed suicide with the second weapon. In Da Costa’s house, Limborch states, was found the manuscript of the Exam- ple of Human Life. A copy was made for Limborch’s great-uncle, the theologian Simon Episcopius, from whom Limborch received it.4 A contemporary of Da Costa who also saw the autobiography shortly after Da Costa’s death simply reports that Da Costa killed himself out of despair at his rejection by the community and left the manuscript on a nearby table.5 Scholars long debated the authenticity of the Example. The numer- ous documents about Da Costa and his background that have been unearthed since the early twentieth century, however, have essentially confirmed its veracity. While there are still questions about specific wording, particularly in opening passages of the work, it can now be taken as the actual statement of Da Costa.6 Uriel da Costa was born Gabriel da Costa in the city of Porto, Por- tugal, in 1583 or 1584. His family was well known in the circles of those conversos whose had fled the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 only to find themselves forcibly baptized by the Portuguese in 1497. Da Costa,

3. On this disputation see Y. Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, trans. R. Loewe (Oxford 1989), ch. 10. 4. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 206; Uriel Acosta, 94 (from John Whiston’s 1740 English transla- tion.) 5. The witness is Johannes Müller, in his Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb (1644), p. 71-72 (cited in Gebhardt, Schriften, 203.) See also Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 23. 6. See, e.g., the statement of Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 1. The following short description of Da Costa’s life is based on the Example with the addition of occasional material from the researches of Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Révah, Salomon, and others. Salomon’s introduction to the Examination, p. 1-24, provides an extremely useful amalgamation of the core story from the Example, Da Costa’s other writings, other contemporary sources, and the most important scholarly discoveries. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 3 by way of introduction to his family background, says only that he was a descendant of conversos from a ‘noble family’ – whatever that might mean for a converso – and that his father was ‘truly a Christian’.7 The extraordinary researches of Professor Révah reveal that Da Costa’s family included a number of crypto-Jews who were caught at their Judaizing practices and tried by the Inquisition.8 This suggests that Da Costa may have been raised with a fair amount of education about Judaism about which he says nothing. As the memoir opens, Da Costa tells us, instead, of his youthful devotion to Christianity, his attentive reading of Christian literature, and the earnestness of his faith.9 The wealth and success of his family are attested by his education in the law faculty of Coimbra University.10 At the age of twenty-five Da Costa completed his legal studies and was granted an ecclesiastical benefice as treasurer of the collegiate church. Da Costa’s well ordered and successful life, however, was troubled by doubts about the Christian faith. These had begun to develop when he was around twenty years old, and he tells us that they centred on his diffi- culty with the doctrines of eternal damnation on the one hand, and the ability of men to avoid damnation through confession and absolution on the other. The reader armed with knowledge of Da Costa’s family and its suffering at the hands of the Inquisition might suspect that these too might have been a factor in his renunciation of the Catholic Church, but it is noteworthy that he does not mention it. Da Costa describes his desire to attach himself to some church, and his consequent decision to read the Old Testament with the understanding that it contradicted many doctrines of the New Testament. Finding this to indeed be the case, Da Costa determined to become a Jew – as he understood it – and escape Portugal so he could practice Judaism. At the risk of life and limb he communicated his ‘discovery’ of true Judaism to his family and escaped with them to Amsterdam in 1615. (Archival researches have revealed that in Portugal Da Costa

7. ‘Parentes habui ex ordine nobilium, qui à Judæis originem trahebant, ad Christianam rel- ligionem, in illo regno, quondam per vim coactis. Pater meus verè erat Christianus…’ Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 105; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 556. 8. Révah, Da Costa et les marranes. 9. On the ‘summas confessariorum’ Da Costa says he read as a youth, see the fascinating analysis of Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 22-23. 10. On his education there see Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas, p. 13-21, 97-101. 4 MATT GOLDISH was deep in debt as well, which may also have been another important factor in his departure.) In Amsterdam he and the other men of the family were circumcised and they all converted to Judaism. In Amsterdam, Da Costa claims, he first realized that contemporary Judaism is not the literal practice of biblical law, though the Jews claim to follow the Bible. It is rather the religion of powerful but unscrupulous rabbis and their talmudic tradition. Like the Christians, then, Da Costa found that the Jews of his day only paid lip service to the Bible. Out- raged, he decided to challenge the rabbis. In Hamburg, where he had moved in the meanwhile, Da Costa composed Eleven Theses against the tradition (1616.) These he transmitted to the rabbinic court of the Span- ish and Portuguese Jews in Venice. This court commissioned Rabbi Leon Modena to write a response, and meanwhile recommended that the author be excommunicated. He was indeed excommunicated in both Hamburg and Venice, in 1618, and remained in that status for close to fifteen years. It was in this state of separation that Da Costa expanded the Eleven Theses into a book called Examination of Pharisaic Traditions. Before he could publish the Examination, the Hamburg Jewish physician Samuel Da Silva published a refutation of Da Costa’s case. Amazingly, Da Silva had somehow acquired three entire chapters from Da Costa’s unpub- lished manuscript treatise and included them in his book. These chapters emphasize Da Costa’s arguments against immortality of the soul, so that is the central object of Da Silva’s attack. In 1623, the year that Da Silva’s book appeared, Da Costa returned to Amsterdam under the dis- approving eye of the Jewish community. He had his Examination printed in 1624, but it was promptly confiscated by the city fathers and its author jailed for several days. The entire run of the subversive Examination was condemned to be burned, but a few copies escaped. One copy survived to the present day, its existence unknown until H.P. Salomon discovered it in the Danish Royal Library in 1990.11 Da Costa spent several years in Utrecht, then returned to Amster- dam. In a somewhat paradoxical passage he states that during this time his views shifted from a Sudduceean or Karaite sort of literal biblicism to scepticism about the divine origin of the Bible. At the same time he

11. See Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, Prologue. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 5 decided that there was no reason to suffer in isolation, so he recanted his heresies before the rabbis and was readmitted to the congregation.12 Within a short time Da Costa had run afoul of the rabbis again. According to his account, his nephew, who lived in his home, saw Da Costa treating the dietary laws with laxity. Then, he was approached by two Christians considering conversion to Judaism and he discouraged them. These, he says, were the occasion of his second excommunication (or perhaps the renewed enforcement of the first.)13 This time the ban lasted for about seven years, and Da Costa describes the abuse and humiliation to which he was subjected by adults and children in the community. Ultimately, he again decided to humble himself before the rabbis so as to end the suffering of his segregation. He describes in detail the demeaning ceremony he was forced to undergo in order to gain readmission. This indignity was apparently the last straw for Da Costa’s fragile ego, and he soon committed suicide. This, then, is the life of Uriel da Costa. It is now the presentation of his life, as offered in the Example, which we will examine for its signifi- cance in several contexts.

The Example as a Converso Document

Uriel da Costa’s story of his own life is one of the few contemporary accounts we have detailing the process of a converso returning to Juda- ism after generations of Christian life in Spain or Portugal. There are even fewer such stories told as a first person narrative, and there may be no others as detailed and eloquent as Da Costa’s. He is also writing of events at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the early days of the Western Sephardi Diaspora.14 For these reasons and others, Da Cos-

12. Salomon and Sassoon (Examination, p. 19) point out that Da Costa had not been for- mally excommunicated in Amsterdam, so his reconciliation did not require the solemnities of the removal of an excommunication. 13. See Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 18-19. 14. The understanding that the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities of Western Europe and the Americas, which appeared only at the end of the sixteenth century, were a phenomenon distinguishable from the world of the Spanish exiles in the Ottoman Empire, is largely the work of my teacher, Y. Kaplan. See especially his An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden 2000). This picture has now become the standard view of scholars. See, e.g., M. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, IN 1997.) 6 MATT GOLDISH ta’s version of his experiences as a converso returning to Judaism has become a classic text of Jewish history and autobiography. The elements of Da Costa’s converso narrative include the sense that he was taught essentially nothing of Judaism by his parents; that his only access to knowledge of Judaism was through reading the Bible; that he endangered his life to share his ‘discovery’ of Judaism with his family; that they all endangered their lives to escape Portugal by boat; that he gave up a great deal of wealth and a wonderful existence in order to embrace Judaism; that Amsterdam was already known as the place to go for escaping conversos who wanted to practice Judaism; and that he was shocked to find contemporary Judaism to be based on rabbinic tradition which often seemed at odds with the Bible. Another element in the Example which might be considered part of the converso experience is Da Costa’s clash with the communal leaders and consequent excommunication. Generations of scholars have cited and discussed Da Costa’s description of his life at the same time that they were aware that matters were more complex than he presents them. Part of the problem is that Da Costa narrates events in a deliberately simplistic or naive style. The resulting underdevelopment of his portrayal renders Da Costa’s points simultaneously true and misleading.15 The best known example of this problem is Da Costa’s tale of reading the Old Testament, discovering Judaism through it, then learning to his shock that contemporary Judaism was not the religion of the Old Testament. This story was particularly convincing because we know independently of Da Costa’s work that there were other conversos who resisted the idea of rabbinic authority and the talmudic tradition. It was a position that went back at least to New Testament times and appears throughout the Middle Ages, but became known as an especially common issue among conversos.16 Da Costa, then, must be at least partially

15. On Da Costa’s rhetorical style and self-fashioning, see Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 66-67. 16. On the history of Jewish heresy and anti-rabbinism, including the rejection of the Oral Law, see e.g. D. Frank and M. Goldish (eds), Rabbinic Culture and Its Critics: Jewish Authority, Dissent, and Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Times (Detroit, MI 2008). On converso rejection of rabbinic authority and the rabbinic response, see e.g. S. Rosenberg, ‘Emunat Hakhamim’, in I. Twersky and B. Septimus (eds), Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA 1987), p. 285-343; M. Orfali (trans. and ed.), Imanuel Aboab’s Nomologia o discursos legales: The Struggle Over the Authority of the Law (Jerusalem 1997) (in Hebrew). PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 7 believed when he tells us of his biblical Judaism coming in conflict with the rabbis’ talmudic Judaism. In a path breaking study, however, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi dem- onstrated that conversos in Spain and Portugal who wished to know about Judaism had access to far more information about it than that which is found in the Old Testament.17 Books common in Iberian librar- ies, particularly the Church Fathers and medieval anti-Jewish polemics, contained extensive discussions of the Talmud, Midrash, Jewish law, and Jewish exegetical tradition. Sometimes Jews came to Spain and Portugal incognito and brought books and information. Traditions of Jewish knowledge were tenaciously passed down in some families. A figure such as Da Costa, who studied at a university, could find material easily if he simply looked. A particularly strong program was established in sixteenth-century Portugal for the publication of medieval anti-Jewish literature – especially anti-talmudic polemics – in the vernacular as well as in Latin.18 These contained extensive information about the Talmud and Midrash. It seems to me that Da Costa was peculiarly well-prepared with anti-talmudic arguments when he began his campaign against the rabbis. Many passages in the Examination and a few in the Example strongly suggest that Da Costa was indeed familiar with the Christian anti-talmudic tradition, much of which had developed in Spain during the high Middle Ages.19 For example, in his treatise, De Judaicis erroribus ex Talmut, republished in Portugal in 1565, the fourteenth-century Catholic polemicist and former rabbi, Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, argues that the Talmud is full of ideas contrary to charity, humanity, and natural law, among other things.20

17. Y.H. Yerushalmi, ‘Conversos Returning to Judaism in the Seventeenth Century: Their Jewish Knowledge and Psychological Readiness’, Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2 (1969), p. 201-209 (in Hebrew). 18. See M. Orfali, ‘The Portuguese Edition (1565) of Hieronymus de Sancta Fide’s Contra Iudaeos’, in O. Limor and G.G. Stroumsa (eds), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews (Tübingen 1996), p. 239-256. 19. On this see particularly J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti- Judaism (Ithaca, NY 1982); A. Funkenstein, ‘Changes in Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Twelfth Century’, in idem, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, CA 1993), p. 172-201; Ch. Mer- chavya, The Church Versus Talmudic and Midrashic Literature, 500-1248 (Jerusalem 1970) (in Hebrew); A. Meyuhas Ginio, ‘The Fortress of Faith – At the End of the West: Alonso de Espina and his Fortalitium Fidei’, in Limor and Stroumsa, Contra Iudaeos, p. 215-238; Orfali, ‘The Portu- guese Edition’. See also Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 40-41. 20. See Orfali, ‘Portuguese Edition’, p. 246. 8 MATT GOLDISH

These are themes we see in the Example and even more in the Exami- nation. In addition to Da Costa’s access to the Talmud and Midrash through literature, we know that several members of his family were arrested for Judaizing. This suggests that something of Judaism was known among them, and that Da Costa did not independently ‘discover’ Judaism for himself.21 We are left, then, with a paradox. On the one hand, Da Costa’s description of his naive ‘discovery’ of Judaism, both in the Bible and in Amsterdam, is surely misleading. On the other hand, there is certainly truth as well to his claim that he learned a great deal of what he knew from reading the Old Testament, and that he was genuinely shocked at the extent of rabbinic control in contemporary Judaism. This problem exemplifies the way we must read the Example. Further implications of Da Costa’s rhetorical style will be discussed below. We may consider some other aspects of Da Costa’s converso narrative in a similar vein. Did he risk his very life to tell his family about his ‘discovery’ of Judaism? Any Iberian discussing a belief in heretical or blasphemous ideas with another human being, including a family member, was indeed risking his or her life. Even if the listener was receptive or not hostile to these ideas, he or she might later be arrested and perhaps tortured by the Inquisition, and the name of the speaker could easily slip out. Again, however, Da Costa’s case is probably not this simple. In a family with several known Judaizers, Da Costa can hardly have been the first in his home to speak about a belief in Juda- ism or antipathy toward the Catholic Church. The decision of almost his entire family to join him in fleeing to Amsterdam also strongly suggests that Uriel’s sudden interest in Judaism was not the first they had heard of it. Using the same method we might question Da Costa’s claim to have lost much money and property in his flight. He did give up his ecclesiastical benefice, which had to be hard on the finances. On the other hand, as we saw above, Da Costa was deep in debt at the time of his flight, so he would probably not have been able to hold on to the

21. Osier noticed this oddity and presented some suggestions about why Da Costa pretended to discover Judaism on his own. See Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 26-27. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 9 wonderful ancestral house he so poignantly describes abandoning. His account is again truthful but incomplete, and thus misleading The Example, then, has created a powerful account of converso life and reversion to Judaism, but it is one we must treat with care. As a work of literature it has been phenomenally successful. As a work of history, its importance has been greatly augmented by the corrective or supplementary information contributed by archival scholars. Their discoveries allow us to place Da Costa’s statements in appropriate context and perspective.

The Example as Rhetoric and Literature

Natalie Zemon Davis, using her own extensive research as well as the considerable literature on autobiography, has examined two early-modern Jewish memoirs. In the course of her comments there she gives us an excellent sense of how to read these documents.22 She teaches us to look carefully at the intended audience of the document, the author’s community, his or her self-presentation, the language and tone of the prose, the manner of recording and presenting it, and especially, the nuances of what the author chooses to reveal and what to conceal. We may address some of these considerations in studying the Example. Da Costa chose to write the Example in Latin, which suggests that he had a Christian audience in mind, and perhaps a secondary Jewish audience. Well-educated Jews could read Latin, but their normal exchanges were conducted in Portuguese – Da Costa’s native tongue – or in Spanish. If Da Costa aimed his words at a Christian audience, he may have intended his message to be taken exactly in the way van Lim- borch read it: as a vehement assault on the Jewish communal leadership. What, however, of the strong deist and general anticlerical passages, which would be offensive to Christians as well? The Example might indeed not have been printed, and have circulated only in manuscript, were it not for two factors. One is that these views held far less shock value in 1687, when the treatise was published, than they did in

22. N. Zemon Davis, ‘Fame and Secrecy: Leon Modena’s Life as an Early Modern Autobiog- raphy’, in M.R. Cohen (transl. and ed.), The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah (Princeton 1988), p. 50-70; eadem, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA 1995), p. 5-62 (on Glükl of Hameln.) 10 MATT GOLDISH

1640 when it was written. The other and more important consideration was that the Example was published together with a refutation by a leading minister, rendering it ‘safe’. This is the same reason that three chapters of Da Costa’s Examination could be published and preserved in 1623 – they were embedded in Da Silva’s critique, which theoretically neutralized their danger. In any case, the choice of Latin clearly indi- cates Da Costa’s desire for his case to be known to a learned Christian readership. The autobiographical and ingenuous style may have been influenced by the beloved Spanish proto-picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) or other picaresque works that popularized the first-person life narrative.23 We have already had occasion to discuss one aspect of Da Silva’s self-presentation in the Example, his simplistic and seemingly naive exposition of events. This was clearly deliberate and fits with a number of other rhetorical qualities in the book. Da Costa paints himself as a wealthy noble who was raised with servants, horses, a fine house, and excellent lineage. He describes himself as a person of natural piety and deep sensitivity toward the suffering of others. Thus far he has offered himself as the very model of a fidalgo, a Portuguese noble. Da Costa also presents himself as one oppressed, and therefore anxious to be the defender of others oppressed. He suffers at the hands of the Portuguese oppressors, then incalculably more at the hands of the rabbis. He is tormented by his family, the children of the community, and the communal leaders. Every good turn he does is repaid with evil.24 On a simple level this self-presentation is intended to heighten the sense that Da Costa was a respected and venerable person who was gravely wronged by a rapacious religious leadership. At various points he addresses the readers directly and asks them to judge whether he has not been terribly mistreated. In his persona as a fidalgo he proclaims, ‘It is

23. See Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 61-62, 67-69; P.E. Russell, ‘Spanish Literature (1474- 1681)’, in idem (ed.) Spain: A Companion to Spanish Studies, ed. (London 1973), p. 284-285. 24. Henry Méchoulan comments that Da Costa presents himself in the manner of the heroes of Corneille and Cervantes. See H. Méchoulan, ‘L’anticléricalisme d’Uriel da Costa et de Spinoza face à l’orthodoxie’, in J. Marx (ed.), Aspects de l’anticlericalisme du moyen age à nos jours: hommage à Robert Joly: Colloque de Bruxelles, juin 1988 (Brussels 1988), p. 59. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 11 the duty of every man to live with honour or die bravely!’25 This is the voice of the honest and compassionate noble crying out against the evils of those deceitful, corrupt modern Pharisees, the rabbis. More subtly he tries to take the rest of the religious establishment down with them, but, like Spinoza after him, he is far more solicitous toward Christians than he is toward his Jewish co-religionists. At a deeper level, it appears to me that Da Costa sees himself in the Example in the role of Jesus. This reading is suggested by his overall narrative of coming to Amsterdam (known as the ‘Jerusalem of Europe’ and later as mokum) to uproot corruption and re-establish the righteous interpretation of God’s Word. It is bolstered by a long series of more subtle observations. Da Costa sees his attack on the rabbis as ‘doing God’s service’. He refers to the rabbis as Pharisees with such regularity that it is clearly more than a casual epithet. His evaluations of them con- sistently follow the abuses heaped on them in the New Testament. He castigates, for example, their scrupulousness in ritual matters that did not extend to matters of morality and spirituality. He refers to their ‘abominable and carnal institutions’ and calls them ‘blind Pharisees’. They persecute, humiliate, and excommunicate him. He describes their tribunal as a Sanhedrin and states that the rabbis would have stoned him if they had the power. More specifically, Da Costa says that the rabble ran after him yelling ‘Crucify him!’ and asserts that if Jesus were to show up in Amsterdam, the Pharisees would scourge him as their ancestors did. This, of course, is precisely what they did do to Da Costa. Taken in sum, I find these phrases and formulations to insinuate Da Costa’s strong identity with Jesus. There are, then, two Christian aspects to Da Costa’s rhetorical attack on the rabbis. One is Da Costa’s identification with the person, character, suffering, and mission of Jesus that I have just described. The second and more obvious aspect is Da Costa’s essentially Christian critique of talmudic or rabbinic Judaism, focusing on the logical errors of the Talmud

25. This phrase is part of a larger harangue about the importance of honor in Uriel Acosta, p. 30-31. Osier discusses Da Costa’s emphasis on honour, nobility, and martyrdom (D’Uriel da Costa, 24-26), in which he seems interested almost solely in converso contexts. This approach seems to me too narrow. At the same time, one might be able to make the case that Da Costa’s sense of honour even to death was inspired partly by a different converso context: the ignoble assassination of his teacher, António Homem, by the Portuguese Inquisition. Homem himself may have modeled his martyrdom on that of Socrates. See Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 5-6 n. 10. 12 MATT GOLDISH and rabbis, their obfuscation of the biblical text, their petty ritualism, and their moral failures. I would suggest, then, that Da Costa did not strongly identify with the ancient Sadducees or medieval Karaites as many scholars have suggested, though these may have been important sources for his denial of immortality. Rather, he associated far more with Jesus and with the well-known, powerful anti-rabbinic tradition of the ancient and medieval Christians, with which he would have been well familiar.26 Two other rhetorical aspects of the Example are worthy of note. One is the image Da Costa deliberately nurtures of a man with no history or influences. We have noted Da Costa’s description of his ‘discovery’ of Judaism as the result of his own reading, his own questioning, his own thinking. He ascribes no influence to his converso background, his reading in secondary literatures, his family, or his teachers. This, as we noted, is hardly credible in light of what scholars have been able to tell us about Judaizing trends in his family and his circle in Coimbra. Da Costa’s rhetoric of the self-made man continues throughout the book as he describes his isolation under the ban, his friendlessness, and his ongo- ing religious discoveries. It is difficult to imagine, however, that he could have survived for twenty years in Holland and Germany with no support from anyone except his mother. Researchers have discovered that he carried on a lucrative trade with Portugal and its colonies, that he lived for periods in Hamburg and Utrecht, that he was married for most of this period, and that after his wife died he took a Dutch mistress. This is hardly the life of a friendless outcast. The rhetoric of independence and isolation is intended to impress us with Da Costa’s brilliance, suffering, and self-reliance – the latter possibly connected with a philosophical position I will discuss shortly. Another rhetorical moment in the Example occurs as Da Costa expands on his persecution at the hands of the Amsterdam Jewish leaders. ‘I know,’ he claims, ‘that these adversaries, in order to blacken my reputation and traduce me before the illiterate vulgar, would frequently say, this man, is neither Jew, Christian, nor Mahometan, he believes no religion at all.’27 Now, this specific indictment was well known in the world of the conversos. Christians in Spain and Portugal would often

26. Compare, e.g., Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 51-55. 27. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 117; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 561; Uriel Acosta, p. 31. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 13 make this accusation against them by calling them ‘Alboraycos’ or ‘Albo- raiques’.28 Alboraique (al-Baraq) was the mythical creature said by the Koran to have transported the prophet Mohammad to Jerusalem for his heavenly journey. Each part of this beast was taken from a different ani- mal: wolf’s mouth, ox’s body, serpent’s tail, and so on. The implication was clear: conversos, who were not trusted to be orthodox Catholics after their conversions, were neither completely Jews, nor Christians, nor Muslims, but some vile hybrid. Now, Da Costa tells us, the rabbis have taken that very same description and turned it on him, a converso who had returned to Judaism. He is an Alboraique in their eyes not because his religion is indeterminate, but because it is non-existent. That is, when Iberian Catholics said conversos are neither Jew, Christian, or Muslim, they meant that the converso might be a mixture of all those things. When the rabbis said the same about Da Costa, they meant that he was none of those things. It is hard to say whether this is truly what Da Costa’s adversaries said of him or whether he is reflecting what he thinks they said. Either way, it is an ironic rhetorical element because – at least by the time he was readmitted to the community – the charge was quite correct.

Philosophy and Theology in the Example

Three particular theological positions in the Example can be traced back to trends in sixteenth-century Iberian thought: a very robust anticlericalism, elements of Neo-Stoicism, and positions on natural law reflecting an engagement with Neo-Scholasticism. The anticlerical stance of the Example is one of its most notable features. Henry Méchoulan has commented on this facet in the thought of Da Costa and Spinoza. In the case of Da Costa, Méchoulan explains the anticlerical position in terms of Da Costa’s converso background and of the Enlightenment anticlerical background. He suggests that Da Cos- ta’s attack on the rabbis is at the same time part of a critique of the Catholic priesthood.29 While this is an important first consideration of

28. On this term and its history see M. Lazar, ‘Anti-Jewish and Anti-Converso Propaganda: Confutatio libri talmud and Alboraique’, in M. Lazar and S. Haliczer (eds), The Jews of Spain and the Expulsion of 1492 (Lancaster, CA 1997), p. 153-236, esp. p. 163-168, 207-219, and images on p. 222-226. 29. Méchoulan, ‘L’anticléricalisme’, p. 57-71, esp. p. 59-61. 14 MATT GOLDISH

Da Costa’s anticlericalism, it seems to me that another element of the background should be added. While anticlericalism was a recurring theme in the thought and literature of most European societies, Portugal had its own special history with this subject. That history commenced long before the Enlighten- ment, undoubtedly picked up steam with the impact of Erasmianism and the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and peaked in the nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries.30 Among the themes of anticlerical literature in late medieval Portugal were some that are echoed in Da Costa’s writings, though he applies them to the rabbis rather than priests. These include the rampant superstition fostered by the clergy; their poor moral character; and their failure to teach their flocks by setting a good example.31 The great sixteenth-century Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente often focused on the divergence between the simplicity and deep piety of the early Christians, and the ostentatious clergy and empty ritual in his own day.32 The conversos, with their alienation from two religious traditions, undoubtedly added to the anticlerical atmosphere among both Old and New Christians as Méchoulan says. They were by no means, however, the initiators of this attitude in Portugal. Da Costa’s bitterness about the Amsterdam rabbis may well have been a stepchild of his enmity toward the friars and priests who had made his life miserable, but it also appears to have drawn on a long-standing Portuguese anticlerical heritage. While I am not sure how much stock to put in it, Osier comments that Da Costa may also have been influenced by Epicureanism, which he says was popular in Coimbra at the time as well.33 He mentions the following passage in the Example where Da Costa says he was accused by Samuel da Silva of being an Epicurean.

30. See P.A. Odber de Baubeta, Anticlerical Satire in Medieval Portuguese Literature (Lewis- ton, NY 1992); Actas do colóquio anticlericalismo Português: historia e discurso, n/e (Aveiro 2002), dealing mainly with the modern period, but with some passages dealing with earlier background. On the relationship between Erasmianism, Church corruption, and anticlericalism in Spanish popular culture in this period, see M. Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne (Paris 1998; orig. printing 1937), p. 652-655. On anticlericalism in Spanish literature see Russell, ‘Spanish Literature’, p. 281. 31. Baubeta, Anticlerical Satire, passim. 32. See J. Perkins and T.F. Earle, ‘Portuguese Theatre in the Sixteenth Century: Gil Vicente and António Ferreira’, in S. Parkinson, C.P. Alonzo, and T.F. Earle (eds), A Companion to Portu- guese Literature (Woodbridge 2009), p. 63. 33. Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 41-42 and 56 n. 13. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 15

…The doctor inveighed bitterly against me as one who defended Epi- curus’s principles, and who by denying the immortality of the soul, did in a manner dispute the being of a God. Whereas at that very time I had conceived but an ill opinion of Epicurus, and being prejudiced by the unfair relations of other people, without hearing what he had to say for himself, did not scruple to censure him with great freedom. But having heard the sentiments of some impartial lovers of truth, concerning him and his doctrine, I have found reason to change mine, and to be sorry for the injustice I did him then, in pronouncing so great a man to be both absurd and mad, when at this very time I am so far from being a competent judge of his opinions, that I am an utter stranger to his works.34 Osier states that no person with Da Costa’s education could have been so ignorant of Epicurus and his followers. Despite Da Costa’s denial, then, Osier may be correct about an Epicurean influence on Da Costa. The real irony is that in rabbinic parlance the pejorative term Apikores, which Da Costa understood literally to mean an Epicurean, simply means a heretic of any kind. Another philosophical trend that was influential in Portugal and seems to have influenced Da Costa was Neo-Stoicism. A recent definition of Christian Neo-Stoicism can help us understand the elements that appear in Da Costa’s Example. The Stoic ethical system does not just require the practice of virtue; it also insists that virtue should be practiced for its own sake. This means that the Stoic is self-sufficient, refusing to recognize the claims of anything, or anyone, over which he has no control. So the man who follows the path of virtue, reason, and nature – to many Stoics virtual synonyms – is a man who walks alone.35 We have seen that Da Costa insists repeatedly on his virtue as an honest, devout, and empathetic person. We have also noted his self-presentation as someone who came to understand God, the world, and religion on his own, without assistance from family or teachers. Da Costa’s denial of an afterlife may also be related to his belief in the practice of virtue for its own sake – that is, without hope for reward in an afterlife. In addition,

34. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 108-109; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 558; Uriel Acosta, p. 16-17. 35. T.E. Earle, ‘Lyric Poetry in the Sixteenth Century’, in Companion to Portuguese Literature, p. 90. 16 MATT GOLDISH

Da Costa’s willingness to remain under the ban for extended periods suggests Stoic self-reliance. Da Costa’s ideas about the impositions of clerics on their congregants has a particularly Neo-Stoic ring. Why need I mention the horrors and anxieties, with which some superstitious men have filled the minds of their fellow creatures, and which had they observed only the dictates of nature, they would have been entirely free from. How many die martyrs to various opinions that have been instilled into them by others? How many devote themselves to a miserable life, tormenting their bodies, giving up themselves to solitude and sadness, perpetually disquieting their minds with dismal apprehensions, and making themselves wretched here, for fear of being so hereafter?36 This passage further reflects another aspect of Neo-Stoic philosophy which also turns up elsewhere in the Example: the idea that good is defined by what is beneficial, useful, and in agreement with nature rather than by some abstract principle.37 That certainly appears to be Da Cos- ta’s view at the end of his life. Neo-Stoicism was an important force in Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands during Da Costa’s life. In Portugal it was particularly influential through the poetry of Francisco de Sá de Miranda. This important figure withdrew from court life in order to pursue the Stoic virtues of self-reliance, solitude, justice, simplicity, and proximity to nature.38 In Spain it was represented by Francisco Sánchez ‘el Brocense’, who published the influential Doctrina de Epicteto in 1612, around the time Da Costa was contemplating his family’s flight to Amsterdam. In the Neth- erlands lived the master of Renaissance Neo-Stoicism, Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), who taught in Leiden from 1579 to 1591, where he carried out and published some of his most important work. Lipsius was popular and influential throughout Europe.39 It is thus highly likely that Da Costa came into contact with Neo-Stoic literature or teachings and incorporated them into his thought.

36. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 121; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 563; Uriel Acosta, p. 37. Compare this passage with the opening of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. 37. J.L. Saunders, Justus Lipsius: The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism (New York 1955), p. 105. 38. Earle, ‘Lyric Poetry’, p. 90-93. 39. Saunders, Lipsius. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 17

The emphasis of Neo-Stoicism on nature is one of the few elements it holds in common with Neo-Scholasticism, the third and perhaps most important philosophical influence on Da Costa to which I want to call attention. Neo-Scholasticism combined the logic and Christian values of medieval Aristotelian Scholasticism with the Humanist emphasis on the dignity and rights of man. One particular emphasis of this movement was its expression of logic and human dignity through natural law. This was an ancient concept, of special importance to St. Thomas Aquinas, but it took on new and compelling meaning in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We have noted how central the idea of natural law was to Da Costa toward the end of his life, so we might wonder whether he had any contact with this current in contemporary philosophy. We need not look far for precisely such a contact. The generation’s foremost Neo-Scholastic and natural law theorist, the Jesuit theologian Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), was teaching in the law faculty at the Uni- versity of Coimbra precisely at the time that Da Costa was a law student at that same institution. While we know with whom Da Costa studied directly at Coimbra, and Suárez was not listed among his teachers, the great theologian and philosopher must have been a commanding presence there with influence far beyond his own classroom.40 What was probably known to almost no one at the time, but has come out in recent research, is that Suárez was also a descendant of conversos.41 A study of Suárez and his doctrine of natural law is beyond my competence and the scope of this paper, but a few points might suggest where his influence may be felt in Da Costa. Here are some of Da Cos- ta’s impassioned thoughts on the matter. I contend nobly in the cause of truth, and assert the natural rights of mankind, whom it becomes [i.e. behooves] to live suitably to the dignity of their nature, free from the burden of superstitions and vain ceremonies…42

40. Osier makes the connection with Suárez but does not develop it fully. Osier also mentions the possibility that Jean Bodin influenced Da Costa. Bodin did have an important interest in natural law, and there is much his thought has in common with that of Da Costa. Suárez, however, had a more carefully conceived theology of natural law, and he can be tied directly to Da Costa’s environment. See Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 32-33, 43-44, 69-73. 41. See R.A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden 2010), p. 106-108. 42. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 116; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 561; Uriel Acosta, p. 29. 18 MATT GOLDISH

Da Costa brings up the Seven Noachide Laws as a Jewish version of natural law, chiding the rabbis for denying that even within their own creed one may be saved through the practice of these.43 By your own confession then, there is one other religion that I may trust in, though I am descended from the Jews [and thus not a ‘Noachide’, but subject to Mosaic law.]…O thou blind Pharisee, who unmindful of that primary Law which was from the beginning, and will be so to the end of things, only makest mention of other laws of a latter date, all of which thou condemnest except thy own [i.e. Mosaic and rabbinic law]; but of that, others will judge whether you will or no, according to the rule of right reason, which is the true standard of that law of nature, which you utterly disregard and would fain bury in oblivion, that you may lay a grievous and heavy yoke on other men, and divest them of their reason and sense. As I have touched upon this point, I shall dwell a little on the subject, and take notice of the excellency of this primary law. Granting then that this law is the common rule of action to all men, and suitable to them as they are such; it does certainly link them together in the ties of mutual affection, and is an utter stranger of those divisions, which occasion hatred and animosity among men, and are the greatest evils that infest society. It is that which teaches us the art of living well, which distinguishes between right and wrong, and points out what is decent and indecent. Whatever is excellent in the law of Moses or any other institution, it is perfectly contained in the law of nature, from which if we deviate never so little, contentions and divisions are the natural consequences; but if we err widely from it, who can describe the distraction, confusion, and terrible disasters that must result from such a defection? What are the most useful precepts in the law of Moses or any other religion, relating to human society, and conducting to a friendly intercourse with one another? They are chiefly those of honouring our parents, and not to invade the property of others, whether it be in their lives, their characters or for- tunes. Now there is nothing in these which is not dictated by the law of nature, and does not entirely agree with that rule of right of reason….All true Christians must acknowledge what I have advanced,

43. Osier (D’Uriel da Costa, p. 69 and 76 n. 31), citing H.P. Salomon, raises the important identification of Noachide law with the law of nature in Da Costa and the English legalist John Selden, who published an enormous tract on the subject precisely in 1640. An earlier and local precedent for this idea is the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, whose De jure belli et pacis (1625) speaks of Noachide law as natural law. See Grotius, Rights of War and Peace (London 1738), p. 18, 28-29. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 19

and are much to be commended where they have banished these [superstitious] impositions, only retaining those things which assist us in leading a good moral life…44 Da Costa, then, appears to focus on certain aspects of natural law. It is eternal and universal, it teaches men to act according to reason and not superstition, it promotes good relationships between men, and any attempt to add to it or subtract from it will lead to disaster. Suárez treats natural law in his highly influential treatise, De Legibus (1612), a book he would have been researching and writing precisely at the time Da Costa was a law student at Coimbra. One aspect of natural law is that it is called natural to distinguish it from the supernatural, a point that Da Costa would wish to emphasize.45 In other respects, however, Da Costa is distinctly at odds with Suárez. In his discussion of natural law, Suárez cites Aquinas’s definition of it as ‘a participation in the eternal law on the part of the rational creature’.46 He goes on to quote Aquinas’s sense that natural law is appropriate only to mankind because men are the only beings ‘cognizant of the essential nature of his end and of the comparative relationship between the work and the end…’47 Aquinas’s concept of the basis of natural law, then, is connected with man’s end, which for him is the fulfilment of God’s will and the afterlife. Suárez agrees with this view, differentiating it from the divisions suggested by the pagan orator Cicero. We, however, divide created or temporal law into natural and positive, after the manner of the theologians; since the term ‘positive’ covers a wider field than does ‘human.’ for it is to be noted that the [pagan?] philosophers have not recognized man’s supernatural end but have dealt only with a certain felicity in this life, or rather, with a certain state conducive to passing it in peace and in justice, and have considered the subject of laws, from the standpoint of this temporal end; so that they have merely distinguished natural law from human law, which we may call ‘civil,’ and to which we shall

44. Gebhardt, Schriften, p. 117-119; Salomon and Sassoon, Examination, p. 562; Uriel Acosta, p. 32-35. 45. F. Suárez, On Laws, in G.L. Williams et al. (trans. and eds), Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suárez, S.J., vol. 2 (Oxford 1944), p. 42. On Suárez’s views of natural law see R. Wile- nius, The Social and Political Theory of Francisco Suárez (Helsinki 1963), p. 56-63. 46. Suárez, ibid. 47. Ibid. 20 MATT GOLDISH

presently devote some words. However, since it is a doctrine of the faith that men are ordained to the supernatural end of the future life by fitting means which are to be sought after in this life, sacred theology rightly infers that this natural law is necessary for a reason vastly different [from the reasons recognized by the philosophers], and that men need more laws of a positive nature than were dis- cerned by those same philosophers.48 While this is a very small piece of Suárez’s discussion of natural law, it is critical for us in understanding Da Costa. The converso law student apparently took great interest in the idea of natural law, but by the end of his life he sided with the pagan philosophers rather than the Christian Neo-Scholastics – natural law was about peace and justice in this life rather than preparation for an afterlife. Suárez subsequently describes a dual character of natural law, the first aspect deriving from man’s reason and the second from God’s infu- sion of divine light into man’s mind.49 This appears to be his way of reconciling the medieval Scholastic theory of natural law with the origi- nal and humanistically compelling pagan version. Da Costa decidedly accepts only the first character. In his rejection of a belief in an afterlife he is almost explicitly addressing Suárez’s comment that ‘[Natural law served] this purpose, too, namely: that man might have a law through the observance of which he could, by divine aid, obtain remission of sins and eternal life’.50 Da Costa again appears to be thinking explicitly of Suárez’s claim that man needs divine law in addition to natural law when Da Costa claims that the important part in all religions is that which is already encompassed in natural law.51 While I have described Da Costa’s relationship with Suárez’s version of natural law mainly in terms of a contrast, we should not ignore what is almost certainly a relationship of influence. Suárez was the foremost exponent of this field in his day, and figures like Grotius in the Netherlands were avidly reading his work. Suárez was also one in a rau- cous field of Iberian natural law theorists – including Domingo de Soto, Gabriel Vasquez, and Luis Molina – who, like Grotius after them, hotly

48. Ibid, p. 43. 49. Ibid, p. 44. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid, p. 46-47. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 21 debated the relationship between human and divine elements in natural law.52 Da Costa clearly studied the natural law writings of his day and admired the principle concept. His presence at Coimbra during Suárez’s tenure there, and his apparent struggle with ideas discussed explicitly in Suárez, strongly suggest that he was one of Da Costa’s chief sources of information. Ultimately, Da Costa’s treatment of natural law is a bril- liant study of an idea originating in pagan antiquity, Christianized during the Middle Ages, gingerly Humanized in the Renaissance, and returned to its pagan origins at the hands of a seventeenth-century converso rationalist. While Da Costa was hardly a formative influence on seventeenth-century European ideas, his selective enthusiasm for natural law is symptomatic of a fascination with that idea among many circles of sceptics and early Enlightenment figures later in the century. It is important to note that this aspect of his thought is revealed almost entirely in the Example rather than in Da Costa’s legal writings, the Examination and Eleven Theses.

The Example as an Early Enlightenment Text

The radical nature of Da Costa’s ideas was of course immediately recognized by the Jewish community, which struggled with his anti-rabbinism and rejection of an afterlife both during his lifetime and after his demise. It was clear to Philip van Limborch as well. Pierre Bayle dedi- cated an entry in his Enlightenment classic Historical and Critical Dic- tionary (1692, 1702, etc.) to Da Costa (under ‘Acosta’.) He describes Da Costa as a sceptic and later a deist, but lays much of the blame for Da Costa’s unhappiness on the Portuguese Catholics. Bayle comments in connection with Da Costa that reason and philosophy are powerful tools for banishing error, but their corrosive powers eventually devour the truth as well.53

52. See, e.g., L. Daston and M. Stolleis (eds), Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy (Surrey 2008), esp. p. 57-63. 53. Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, English ed. (Oxford 1710), vol. I, p. 72-75. Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 191-199, transcribes this entire article from the 1730 French edition of Bayle. The comment about reason is quoted in R.H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford 2003), p. 288. 22 MATT GOLDISH

One of the interesting aspects of the Example is that, at least in literary terms, it presents Da Costa’s odyssey as one of linear sceptical development almost unprecedented in the period. He describes his ‘arc’ as beginning with sincere Catholic faith, moving into scepticism about the efficacy of the Church to erase sin and save one’s soul, then becoming a Jew, becoming sceptical about the Jewish Oral Law tradition, rejecting the authority of the rabbis, rejecting the doctrine of an afterlife, rejecting the authority of the Bible, and ultimately, rejecting the entire principle of rev- elation. While this orderly progression may not reflect Da Costa’s actual development as a thinker, it is almost unique in literature for its description of a thinker moving through a sceptical crisis from faith to doubt.54 A number of Da Costa’s positions – described in the Example at a stage of development far advanced from that in the Examination – keenly reflect the views of the Early Enlightenment in Europe. These include Da Costa’s anticlericalism and interest in natural law, but also his objec- tion to ecclesiastical authorities holding political power; his tirades against false piety; his arguments for liberty of conscience; his accusa- tions that religion teaches superstition; his denial of an afterlife; and ultimately his deism. One of the earliest and most persistent claims of scholars who studied Da Costa is that he influenced Spinoza. This is a virtual certainty. A point by point examination of Da Costa’s positions about Judaism and religion in general reveals that almost every tenet central to Da Costa, especially later in life, has a parallel in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. We may thus see Da Costa as a pioneer sceptic in the Jewish world whose influence would ultimately reach far beyond his community and those who read his works.

Conclusion

Uriel da Costa’s Example of a Human Life is thus a landmark not only for the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but also for the Jewish world and even for European ideas. It presents a benchmark narrative of converso life and ideas which occupied contemporaries and modern scholars alike. His clash with the community over talmudic tradition, rabbinic

54. See Osier’s discussion of this arc and the question of whether any unifying rationalist belief underlies Da Costa’s thought at all stages. Osier, D’Uriel da Costa, p. 19-20. PERSPECTIVES ON URIEL DA COSTA’S EXAMPLE OF A HUMAN LIFE 23 power, and the afterlife was the most visible and zealous manifestation of opinions that were widespread in the Western Sephardi Diaspora. Da Costa appears to have used Portuguese models of literary self-fashioning and autobiographical style to craft his memoir. He also brought to the Jewish community such Portuguese intellectual trends as anticlericalism, Neo-Stoicism, and Neo-Scholastic natural law theory. It was by means of these late-Renaissance schools of thought that Da Costa smuggled ancient pagan ideas past the thicket of medieval Christian theology and into the modern world. While the recent discovery of a sole remaining copy of Da Costa’s Examination of Pharisaic Traditions is a spectacular addition to our knowledge about the man and his world, his autobiography is the only witness to the final development of his thought at the end of his life. As a deathbed document (as it were), it is also singularly frank. The Example remains one of the great treasures of Amsterdam Jewish literature.