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Francisco Maldonado da Silva (1592 - 1639) was an Argentinian (Tucumano) marrano, who learned about his Jewishness through his father Diego Nuñez da Silva, who was a Jewish physician. As his father Francisco became a bachelor in Medicine, his continuous study of scripture made him a religious scholar. After a few years in Chile he decided to assume fully his Jewishness and stop hiding as a Christian (marrano). He was abducted at night and taken to Lima where he was held in the secret prisons of inquisition for 6 years, during those years he was confronted 13 times with Christian Theologians to try to help him find the "True Faith", His astounding knowledge made him valuable even to his enemies. He was held accountable for the heresy of honoring the "law of Moses", something the Holy Inquisition was not tolerant of. Finally he was burned at the stake with eleven other Jews in the largest Auto de Fe recorded in history.
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