Gracia Mendes Nasi
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Donna Gracia Mendes Nasi (Gracia is Spanish for the Hebrew Hannah, also known as Beatrice de Luna Miques, her Christianized name, 1510–1569) was one of the wealthiest Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. She married into the eminent international banking and finance dynasty of Mendes, and was the aunt of Joseph Nasi, who became a prominent figure in the politics of the Ottoman Empire.
Donna Gracia was born in Lisbon into an ancient, venerable family of marranos, originally from Aragon, that could flee to Portugal when the Catholic Monarchs expelled the Jews in 1492 (see Alhambra decree and History of the Jews in Spain).
In 1528 Gracia and Francisco Mendes married in a public Catholic wedding and then in a Crypto-Judaic ceremony with the signing of a ketubah. Francisco Mendes (originally Benveniste) ran, along with his brother Diogo, a powerful trading company and bank of world repute with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean. The House of Mendes probably began as a company trading precious objects, but, with the boom in spice trade following the Portuguese explorations leading to the sea route to India, they become important spice traders.
In 1538 Francisco died, leaving her with an infant daughter, Reyna (future wife of Joseph Nasi). Diogo had opened a branch office of their banking house in the Habsburg Netherlands city of Antwerp with the help of a member of their family, Rabbi Abraham Benveniste. She moved to Antwerp and joined Diogo.
Soon after settling in the city, the last of the Nasi-Mendes brothers Diego also died in 1542, Donna Gracia assumed the management of the Mendes commercial empire. She was a very successful businesswoman. Her enormous wealth put her into a position to influence kings and popes, which she used to protect crypto-Jews and contribte money to free various hostages. It is believed she was the driving force in the publication of the Ferrara Bible from Sephardic source texts; the second, public printing of this document was dedicated to her.
Under Donna Gracia, the House of Mendes, dealt with Henry II of France, Henry VIII of England, Charles V of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, Maria of Austria, Regent of the Low Countries, Popes Paul III and Paul IV, and Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. These dealings involved commercial activities, loans, and bribes. Payments to the Pope delayed the establishment of an Holy Inquisition in Portugal.
In 1544 she fled to the Republic of Venice. In 1551, a bubonic plague epidemic broke out, and the Jews, who were blamed for causing it, were forced out of the city. She tried to help those evicted but she was arrested once her sister denounced her as a Jew. After she was freed she moved to Ferrara, where she lived openly as a Jew for the first time in her life. At that time she adopted her Jewish name, Gracia Nasi.
In 1553 she moved to the Ottoman domains, and married her daughter off to her nephew Joseph. In 1556 the Pope sentenced a group of Marranos who had returned to Judaism in Portugal to death by fire. In response, Donna Gracia organized a trade embargo on the port of Ancona (in the Papal States). She built synagogues, yeshivas and hospitals. One of the syngogues is still standing in Istanbul and is named after her (La Señora).
In 1558 she leased Tiberias, in Palestine, from Sultan Suleiman, for a yearly fee of 1,000 ducats and, in 1561, Joseph Nasi obtained ruling authority over Tiberias and Safed, developing major new centres of Jewish settlement.
Gracia Nasi died near Istanbul.
[edit] References
- "Nasi, Gracia", in The Encyclopedia Judaica
- Andrée Aelion Brooks, The Woman Who Defied Kings, Paragon House, 2002
- Gad Nassi, Rebecca Toueg, Doña Gracia Nasi, Women's International Zionist Organisation, Tel Aviv, 1990
- Cecil Roth, Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1948
