PORTUGAL MARKS 500-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF MASSACRE OF JEWS
21/Apr/2006
By Levi Fernandes
Camila Wilkinson and Nuno Martins contributed to this report
The
organizer of the event, New York-based journalist Nuno Guerreiro, had asked that
people light 4,000 candles, one for each person believed to have been killed,
many burned at the stake, between April 19 and 21, 1506.
But only about 20 candles were lit by a tree in front of the church where the
three-day killing spree began.
Representatives of Portugal’s tiny Jewish community welcomed the event but had
warned that it would be difficult for many Jews to participate because it
coincided with the last day of Passover, one of Judaism’s main holy days.
City officials later unveiled a small memorial at the site of one of the main
stakes used during the three-day killing spree, Square Rossio.
Nuno Guerreiro said he hopes the event will help ensure that one of Portugal’s
darkest, but still largely unknown, moments in history is not forgotten.
"It is important to remember the three days that 500 years ago filled the
streets of Lisbon with blood," he said in a statement posted on his
Jewish-related blog (internet diary).
‘New Christians’
Historians
estimate that between 2,000 and 4,000 "New Christians" ─ Jews who were forced by the state to
convert in 1496 -- were thrown into pyres set up across the city centre
before authorities regained control of the Portuguese capital.
The violence erupted on April 19, 1506 after a man believed to be a "New
Christian" suggested that a light emanating from a crucifix at a chapel
was likely caused by natural causes instead of divine intervention as thought
by many Christians.
He was dragged from the church by a group of women who beat him to death,
according to several historical accounts.
A
priest then made a fiery sermon against "New Christians" while two
other priests, crucifix in hand, marched through the cobblestoned streets of
Lisbon inciting people to kill them.
In the ensuing violence even Catholics who were thought to look like "New
Chistians" were killed or saw their homes destroyed.
King Manuel, who was outside of the Portuguese capital when the massacre began,
ordered the ringleaders rounded up and hung while those convicted of murder or
pillage received various corporal punishments.
When the king
forced the Jews to become Christians, many of them decided to leave the
country, including a number of highly educated people, such as the astronomer
and mathematician Abraao Zacuto, who went to Turkey, and Baruch Espinosa's
(Spinoza) parents, who went to Holland.
The massacre highlights the growing unease in Portugal at the time with
"New Christians."
Spain had launched its Inquisition in 1492 which aimed to expel or forcibly
convert to Christianity all Jews and other non-believers, prompting thousands
to cross the border into Portugal where they sought shelter.
But nearly five decades later Portugal launched its own Inquisition which led
hundreds of Jews to be tortured or burned at the stake in the 16th and early
17th century after being accused by church tribunals of being heretics.
Diminished
Jewish life
The forced conversion of Jews together with the Inquisition drastically reduced
the number of Jews in Portugal, leading the memory of the "Lisbon
massacre" as it has come to be known to fade.
Since Jewish
culture practically disappeared from the country, there was no one to evoke the
memory of the massacre," author Richard Zimmler, who has written novels
set against the purge of Jews in Portugal, said in an interview published in
daily newspaper Publico last Sunday.
Some historians estimate that 20 percent of Portugal’s population, or 200,000
people at that time, before the start of the Inquisition were Jewish.
Many were successful traders and scientists whose international visibility made
the term "Portuguese" be synonymous with "Jew" at the time.
Today there are just some 3,000 Jews in Portugal, a nation of just over 10
million people. Most are concentrated in Lisbon and the majority came to the
country after Portugal’s Inquisition was officially abolished in 1821.
Source: European Jewish Press