Doña Gracia

Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510 – 1569), also known as Doña Gracia or ''La Señora'' "The Lady", was a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish philanthropist, businesswoman, and one of the wealthiest women of Renaissance Europe. She married Francisco Mendes, whose Hebrew name was Tsemach Benveniste (). She was the maternal aunt and business partner of Joseph Nasi, simultaneously known by his alias João Micas, who became a prominent figure in the politics of the Ottoman Empire. She also developed an escape network that saved hundreds of ''conversos'' from the Inquisition. Like other New Christians, she had a Christianized name, Beatriz (Beatrice) de Luna Miques. Nasi herself was a Crypto-Jew, not a believing Christian.

Biography

Early life

Gracia Mendes Nasi was born in Lisbon, Portugal circa 1510. Her family were ''anusim'' from Aragon, Spain. She had a younger sister, Reyna (d. 1556), just as known by her Christian name, Brianda.

In Sephardic contexts, the ''anusim'' were the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism as a result of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. The Sephardic Bnei Anusim are the descendants of these Jews. Even though many ''anusim'' did know of the risks and possible punishments for being accused of Judaizing, or ''judaizando'' in Spanish and Portuguese, countless of them still held their devotion and connection to Judaism close, though secretly. In Europe, Jews were often forced to accept Christianity.

The de Luna family fled to Portugal after the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, expelled the Jews in 1492. If they hadn’t fled when they did, it would have been very tricky to keep their Sephardic law and customs and themselves alive.

Nonetheless, five years later in 1497, the family couldn’t escape their fate: they found themselves forcibly converted to Catholicism, along with most other Jews and Muslims in Portugal at the time.

Gracia’s father, Álvaro de Luna (possibly a relative of Álvaro de Luna from Spain (1388 or 1390 – 1453), a colleague of Don Abraham Benveniste), was married to Felipa Mendes Benveniste, the sister of the Mendes brothers, Francisco and Diogo.

Marriage and early widowhood

In 1528, at only 18, Gracia married her uncle, Francisco Mendes, a wealthy spice trader, and a fellow New Christian (''Cristiano'' ''Nuevo'' and ''Cristão Novo'' in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively). He was also a creditor and confidante of John III of Portugal. Brianda later married Francisco's brother, Diogo.

Francisco belonged to the same prominent family as Gracia’s mother, Benveniste, from Habsburg Spain. She was the great-grandchild of Don Abraham Benveniste of Castile.

The couple married in a secret Jewish wedding in Gracia’s basement in her home. Then, they also married in a public ceremony, but at the Lisbon Cathedral with a public Catholic wedding.

Francisco Mendes and his brother, Diogo Mendes, were the masterminds behind an influential and globally renowned trading enterprise and bank, with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean. The House of Mendes and the House of Benveniste likely began as a company centered on trading precious valuables and employing currency arbitrage. With the onset of the Age of Discovery and the Portuguese discovery of a sea route to India, the Mendes brothers became particularly notable spice traders. They also expanded into silver trading, a crucial payment method for Asian traders who supplied the business with spices.

In the winter of 1535, Francisco died, leaving behind his young wife Gracia with their infant daughter, Anna. In his will, he divided his fortune between Doña and his brother and business partner, Diogo. This decision would leave Doña Gracia a wealthy woman. After some time had passed, she asked the Pope if his remains could be put to rest in a new burial place. Once she received the Pope’s approval, she had her now-resting husband’s body moved to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.Solomon H. P. and Leone Leoni A. Mendes, Benveniste, De Luna, Micas, Nasci: The State of the Art (1522-1558. The Jewish Quarterly Review 88, 3-4, 1998, pp. 135-211

Beginnings in Belgium

A few years before Francisco's death in 1535, his brother, Diogo, had opened a branch office of their house in the city of Antwerp together with his relative Abraham Benveniste. Soon after Francisco's death, Doña Gracia Mendes moved to Antwerp to join Diogo with her infant daughter, Ana (the future wife of Joseph Nasi) and her younger sister, Brianda de Luna. The move from Lisbon was also timely due to the changing political landscape in Portugal, when as of 23 May 1536, the Pope Paul III ordered the establishment of a Portuguese Inquisition.

Once they settled in Antwerp, Beatrice invested her family fortune in her brother-in-law's business, and started to make a name for herself not only as his business partner but as an independent business woman herself. The relationship between the de Luna and Mendes households became even stronger, with the marriage between Beatrice's sister, Brianda, and Diogo Mendes. But just five years after Beatrice Mendes settled in Antwerp, Diogo also died. It was now 1542, and in his will he left his niece and sister-in-law control of the Mendes commercial empire, making Beatrice Mendes an important businesswoman. The enormous wealth enabled her to influence kings and popes, which she did to protect her fellow Conversos. It also enabled her to finance her escape network. It is believed she was the driving force behind the publication of the '' Ferrara Bible'' from Sephardic source texts. The second, public printing of the book was dedicated to her. All the while she had to fend off attempts by various monarchs to confiscate her fortune by trying to arrange a marriage of her only daughter to their relatives. Had this happened, a large portion of the family wealth would have been lost, as it would have come under the control of her daughter's husband. Beatrice Mendes resisted all these attempts, which often put her in personal peril.

Starting in Antwerp, Habsburg Netherlands, she began to develop an escape network that helped hundreds of fellow Crypto-Jews flee Habsburg Spain and Portugal, where they had been constantly under threat of arrest as heretics by the Inquisition. These fleeing conversos were first sent secretly to spice ships, owned or operated by the House of Mendes/Benveniste, that sailed regularly between Lisbon and Antwerp. In Antwerp, Beatrice Mendes and her staff gave them instructions and the money to travel by cart and foot over the Alps to the great port city of Venice, where arrangements were made to transport them by ship to the Ottoman Empire Greece and Turkey in the East. At that time the Ottoman Empire, under the Muslim Turks, welcomed Jews to their lands. The escape route was carefully planned. Even so, many died on the way as they traversed the mountain paths of the high Alps.

Under Beatrice Mendes (Gracia Nasi), the House of Mendes/Benveniste dealt with King Henry II of France, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, his sister Mary, Governor of the Low Countries, Popes Paul III and Paul IV, and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan. These dealings involved commercial activities, loans, and bribes. Earlier payments to the Pope by the House of Mendes and their associates had delayed the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal (see History of the Jews in Portugal).

Life in Venice and Ferrara, Italy

In 1544, Gracia Nasi fled once again, this time to the Republic of Venice, and took up residence on the Grand Canal. The city-state offered Jews and conversos a safe base to live and conduct business, although Jews were confined in the Venetian Ghetto. Because of this situation that Jewish people were put into, the Mendes family most likely practiced Judaism secretly while still putting up a façade of Catholicism. She continued the type of business that she did with her brother-in-law, and successfully traded pepper, grain, and textiles. While in Venice, she had a dispute with her sister, Brianda, Diogo's wife, regarding his estate, and left yet again to the nearby Duchy of Ferrara to avoid the ruling the Venetian ''Giudici al Forestier'' "Tribunal for the Affairs of Foreigners" decided would end the sisters' conflict over equal control of the fortune.

The city of Ferrara was eager to accept the Mendes family; Duke Ercole II d'Este (1508-1559) agreed to the terms of Diogo Mendes's will so that the wealthy family would move to his city, and received them gracefully in 1549. In Ferrara, Beatrice Mendes, for the first time in her life, could openly practice Judaism in a distinguished community and a city that recognized her rights. She chose the Hebrew name Nasi (her daughter's name) instead of her Latin name Benveniste. This time is most likely when she became known as Doña Gracia Nasi.

The genealogy of her family becomes confusing here; this is most likely when her sister Brianda adopted the name Reyna, when Beatrice's daughter Ana became known as Reyna as well, and also when Brianda's daughter, named after Beatrice, was given the name Gracia. The family's new proud Jewish identity brought Doña Gracia beyond commercial business, and she became a large benefactor and organizer for resettling Jewish people using her commercial network during the Jewish diaspora. Doña Gracia became very involved with the Sephardic colony in Ferrara, and actively supported the burst of literacy and printing among the Jews of Ferrara. Because of her humanitarian efforts and other successes, books that were printed during this time, like the Ferrara Bible (published in 1553) and Consolation for the ''Tribulations of Israel'' (published 1553, written by Samuel Usque), were dedicated to Doña Gracia Nasi.

The move to Ferrara, however, did not end the quarrel between Doña Gracia and her sister, Brianda (now Reyna de Luna), over control of the estate. To finally end the dispute, Doña Gracia briefly went to Venice to settle with her sister in the Venetian Senate.

Final years

After the settlement was made, she, her daughter Ana (now Reyna Nasi), and a large entourage moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the Ottoman Empire, where she arranged for her daughter to marry her husband's nephew and business partner, Joseph Nasi. This move in 1553, just as her others, proved to be just in time, as the political atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation Italian peninsula became hostile. In Constantinople, Doña Gracia lived fashionably in the European quarter of Galata. She was very dedicated to her Jewish lifestyle and assumed leadership in the Ottoman Sephardic world.

In 1556, soon after Doña Gracia arrived in Constantinople, Pope Pius V sentenced a group of ''conversos'' in Ancona to auto-da-fé (burning at the stake), claiming they were still practicing Jewish rites. In response, Doña Gracia organized a trade embargo of the port of Ancona in the Papal States. In Istanbul, she built synagogues and yeshivas. One of the synagogues is named after her (''La Señora''). These institutions were created primarily to help the refugees to return to Judaism, their ancestral faith.

In 1558, Doña Gracia was granted a long-term lease on the Tiberias region in Galilee (part of Ottoman Syria at the time), from Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, in exchange for guaranteeing a substantial increase in the yearly tax revenues. Süleyman had conquered that part of the Holy Land some years earlier, but it was desolate. Consequently, she obtained ruling authority over Tiberias, one of the Four Holy Cities in Judaism. With the help of the Ottoman sultan, she began to rebuild the area's abandoned towns to make them available to refugees so they could settle there if they wished. She aimed to make Tiberias a major new center of Jewish settlement, trade and learning. A Jewish traveler who visited Tiberias around this time mentions how she had lent support to the Jewish community there, and how after her death they were compelled to ask for Jewish donations elsewhere. This venture has often been called one of the earliest attempts at a modern Zionist movement. Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi died in Istanbul in early 1569.

After the death of her spouse in 1579, Gracia's daughter, Reyna, established her own printing business, one in Belvedere, near Constantinople, and another press in the Constantinople suburb of Kuruçeşme. She published at least fifteen books, including a tractate of the Talmud as well as several prayer books. She was the first Jewish woman to have established her own press rather than inheriting it, and the first woman printer and publisher in the Ottoman Empire.

Legacy

After Doña Gracia's death, her life and story remained relatively unknown for the next four centuries. In 1969, Jewish educator and historian Bea Statdler published a book length biography, ''The Story of Doña Gracia Mendes''. A museum and hotel dedicated to her was opened in Tiberias, Israel in the early 2000s. New York City designated a Doña Gracia Day in June 2010, followed by a similar proclamation in Philadelphia a year later. Israel's political leaders honored her for the first time in October 2010. The Turkish government sponsored a Doña Gracia evening in New York City and has also sponsored an exhibit in Lisbon. There have been lectures, articles and festivals in her honor all over Europe. The growing numbers of women in business and the professions who attend the programs identify with her ambition, courage and even personal loneliness. An Italian white wine has been named after her. The Israeli Government Coins and Medals Corporation has produced a commemorative medal. She is idolized by the descendants of conversos she saved, now living in southern Italy, Central and South America and the United States. In the TV series '' Muhteşem Yüzyıl'', Gracia Mendes Nasi is portrayed by Turkish actress Dolunay Soysert.

See also

* Benvenida Abrabanel
* Esther Handali
* Esperanza Malchi
* Rüstem Pasha
* Nurbanu Sultan

Citations

References

jwa.org
*Andrée Aelion Brooks (2002). ''The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Dona Gracia Nasi''. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House.
*Marianna D. Birnbaum (2003)
The long journey of Gracia Mendes
Central European University Press.
*"Nasi, Gracia", in ''The Encyclopaedia Judaica''
*Gad Nassi, Rebecca Toueg: ''Doña Gracia Nasi'', Women's International Zionist Organisation, Tel Aviv, 1990.
*Cecil Roth (1948). ''Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi''; also published as ''The House of Nasi: Doña Gracia'', Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.
*Naomi Ragan (1998). ''The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: A Novel''. New York: Simon & Schuster.
*Aron Di Leone Leoni (2005). ''The Hebrew Portuguese Nations in Antwerp and London at the Time of Charles V and Henry VIII''. Jersey City, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
*Solomon, H. P. and Leone Leoni, A. "Mendes, Benveniste, De Luna, Micas, Nasci: The State of the Art (1522-1558)". ''The Jewish Quarterly Review'' 88, 3–4, 1998, pp. 135–211.

Related books

* A fictionalized biography for children.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

External links

Dona Gracia ProjectOut of Spain educational materials
Tiberias
Veiled Reference Podcast on Dona Gracia Nasi by Tzipora WeinbergLecture on Dona Gracia Nasi
by Henry Abramson

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nasi, Gracia Mendes
1510 births
1569 deaths
16th-century Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews from the Ottoman Empire
Immigrants to the Ottoman Empire
Portuguese emigrants
16th-century businesspeople from the Ottoman Empire
Businesspeople from Lisbon
Sephardi Jews from Ottoman Palestine
Portuguese women in business
16th-century Portuguese Jews
16th-century businesswomen
Jewish women in business
Jewish women philanthropists
Women printers
16th-century printers
16th-century Portuguese businesspeople
16th-century Portuguese women
16th-century Jews from the Ottoman Empire
16th-century women from the Ottoman Empire
Medieval Jewish history