Jews in the azores and portuguese jewish surnames
greetings,
regarding the presence of jews in the azores, i have posted several
articles and information from various sources such as surnames from the
1604 "levy" for the general pardon amongst new christians in the azores,
as well as notarial records from the 17th century in amsterdam which often
have reference to the azores.
the surnames bemsaude, benarus, sequeira, etc. refer to jews who
immigrated to portugal after the demise of the inquisition around 1770,
albeit the inquisition was not formally abolished until 1821 by a liberal
national assembly.
in the 1770's, the marquis de pombal, portugal's enlightened despotic
"prime minister", abolished the distinction between new christians and old
christians and invited jews back to portugal. accordingly, sephardic jews,
that is, jews whose ancestors were from the iberian peninsula but had fled
the realm after the spanish expulsion of 1492, and the forced baptism of
1497 in portugal (mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries), returned to form
communities in lisbon, faro, sao miguel, terceira and faial where there are
extant cemeteries. those communities also had synagogues. Pedro Merlin,
deceased, wrote a book about the Jews of Terceira, "Os Hebreus da
Terceira".(?)
the lisbon community dates from 1804. the lisbon synagogue, which was
restored in 2004, was built in 1904. in faro there is a museum of the
jewish cemetery. the cemetery in Faial which i have visited has about 17
tombs and the one in Terceira about 50 (last burial in 1961 or so in both
cemeteries, Faial later). I have not visited the cemetery in Sao Miguel. I
have also read that there are several tombs in Flores but i am not aware of
any actual evidence of such burials.
little is known about the early settlement of the azores by jews. for
example, witness the name of "Porto Judeu", a village in Terceira. i have
heard that the original name of Terceira, 'Island of Jesus Christ" was
changed due to the majority jewish presence on that island, but again have
not seen any actual documenatry evidence.
professor drummond braga has written an unpublished phd thesis on
azorean jews and muslims in the portuguese inquisition from which i
extracted the 1604 census information.
i have also translated the trial of the first Azorean woman to be
burned in the inquisition (Maria Lopes from Sao Miguel (A native of Viseu),
16th century) which i hope to publish along with the trials of 6 other
women in the portuguese inquisition.
this is an area crying for research but so far has been largely
neglected. for example, there is a dearth of information about the jewish
connection with the origin and rituals of the brotherhood of the holy
spirit (irmandade do espirito santo).
assuming that surnames of plants such as Oliveira, Silva, Pereira are
Jewish is too simplistic; they may be, but not necessarily so. there is
no hard and fast rules about portuguese jewish surnames. when portuguese
jews were forced to the baptismal fonts in 1497, they were often given the
names of their christian godparents. sometimes they adopted names from
their places of birth.
there are very few records indicating a person's jewish name and their
adopted new christain name in 1497.
in my opinion, the best source to determine the "jewishness" of a
portuguese surname is probably the records of the inquisition housed in the
national archives, torre de tombo. in addition, there are several good
dictionaries and internet resources.
manuel azevedo
http://ladina.blogspot.pt/
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