Flight from persecution
Portuguese New Christians to Amsterdam
← View on the mapWhy it happened
On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I ordered the Jews and Muslims of Portugal to leave by the end of October 1497.1 Historian François Soyer cautions that Manuel's November 1496 marriage contract did not itself contain the often-claimed Jewish-expulsion clause; the diplomatic sequence and the king's motives were more complex.1 Manuel then prevented most Jews from departing and orchestrated their mass baptism in 1497, while Muslims were allowed to leave.1
The migration
Portugal received a substantial but difficult-to-quantify influx of Jewish refugees after the 1492 expulsions from Castile and Aragon; Soyer reviews sharply divergent contemporary estimates and cautions against treating the largest figures as firm counts.1 On 19 March 1497, the crown began seizing Jewish children aged fourteen and under for Christian upbringing.1 The ensuing 'general conversion' forcibly baptized the overwhelming majority of Portugal's Jews, creating a New Christian population that could not openly practice Judaism and whose travel abroad was restricted by royal licensing.11 The movement shown here occurred generations later: Portuguese merchants began settling in relatively tolerant Amsterdam around 1590 without initially declaring themselves Jews.2 A group held services in a private home in 1602; Beth Jacob organized services in 1607 and erected a synagogue with municipal permission in 1614.2 The line is representative rather than a record of every family's itinerary.
Sources
- BSoyer, François. 2007. The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7). Brill doi:10.1163/ej.9789004162624.i-330
- BEncyclopaedia Judaica. 2007. Amsterdam. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.), via Encyclopedia.com link