Gracia Nasi

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Gracia Nasi (born 1510 in Portugal as Beatrice de Luna Mique ; died 1569 in Constantinople Opel ) was a Sephardic woman renaissance . She was a merchant, managed the bank of Casa Mendes-Benveniste (the surnames of her mother and her uncle, her future husband) and was also active as a diplomat and philanthropist , and as such she is also considered a savior of her people.

The consolation of Samuel Usque Consolação ás Tribulações de Israel (Consolation for the Sorrows of Israel), here the title page of the first edition from 1553 in old Portuguese orthography, contains an eulogy for Dona Gracia: "The essential piety of Miriam , which put her life at risk , to save her brothers, the great prudence of Deborah who led her people, the boundless virtue and great holiness of Ester who helped those who were persecuted, and the much touted strength of the extremely chaste and generous Judit . "

biography

Gracia Nasi was born to wealthy Marran parents in the shadow of the Inquisition . Her father's family, Agostino Álvaro Miques de Luna (his Hebrew name was Shmuel Nasi ), and that of her mother, Philipa Mendes Benveniste , came from the Kingdom of Aragón and had emigrated to Portugal in 1492. Gracia's baptismal name was Beatrice de Luna Miques ; her Jewish first name was Hanna Gracia . Her family was so influential that Gracia's brother, Augustine Miques, even rose to be the personal physician of the Portuguese king.

In 1528, Gracia married Francisco Mendes (Jewish name Semah Bemvisto or Benveniste ) in Lisbon Cathedral . The Mendes-Benveniste family owned a large bank with connections as far as France and Flanders . After the Christian wedding, the couple married according to the Jewish rite, including Ketubba . The marriage resulted in a daughter, Ana, in 1532, who called herself Reyna Nasi in adulthood .

Francisco Mendes died in the middle of 1536. It is unclear whether the Inquisition imposed on Lisbon in May 1536 was the cause of his death. The 27-year-old widow sold her husband's property and moved with several family members to Antwerp to live with her brother-in-law Diogo Mendes ( Meir Benviste ), who took her on as an employee in his bank and married Gracia's sister Ana. In addition to their business activities, Diogo and Gracia took care of the covert emigration of Jewish co-religionists from Lisbon to other European cities by placing bogus trade contracts. Nevertheless, more than a thousand Jews died in Lisbon's Autodafé in 1540.

After the death of her brother-in-law Diogo (1542), Gracia inherited the family fortune and from then on proved to be an independent, courageous businesswoman. In 1544 she left Antwerp under political pressure and traveled through Europe with her daughter Ana, her sister Brianda and other relatives. The family lived in Venice from 1544 onwards on the basis of a charter ( salvacondotto ) from the Council of Ten . There she was able to continue running her bank until property disputes and court cases with her sister Brianda and the Republic of Venice made this impossible. In 1550 Gracia received a charter from the Duke of Ferrara , where she secretly moved to openly practice the Jewish religion. During this time she dropped the name Beatrice de Luna and called herself only Gracia Nasi . She was active as a patron and commissioned the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Spanish, the so-called Ferrara Bible , which was printed by Abraham Usque in 1553 . Two editions of the translation were produced: one for Christian readers, the other for Jewish readers.

In 1553 Gracia Nasi and her nephew Joseph Nasi settled in the Ottoman Empire . Under the sultans Bayezid II , Selim I and Suleyman I , Jewish immigrants were not only offered asylum , but were also given extensive religious freedoms and opportunities for economic development. Gracia Nasi was able to continue the family's trade with the Republic of Venice and other states of Italy with merchant ships that were built on her behalf. In view of the inquisition tightened by Paul IV. In 1555, Gracia again tried to rescue oppressed Jews, this time from the city of Ancona . In 1558 or 1559, when Joseph was given control of an area on the Sea of ​​Galilee as a reward for his active support for Suleyman I in his struggle for the succession to the throne , Gracia acquired a property in the city of Tiberias and founded a Jewish settlement with a teaching house there ( Yeshiva ), which only existed for a short time.

Memorial stone for Dona Gracia on her 500th birthday in 2010 in Tiberias.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gerda Hoffer : Gracia Nasi . In: Time of the heroines. Life pictures of extraordinary Jewish women. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30701-3 , pp. 49-75.
  2. ↑ https://www.vidapraticajudaica.com/single-post/2018/06/19/A-História-de-Dona-Gracia-Mendes-Nasi .

literature

  • Hannah Karminski : Jewish-religious woman culture, in Emmy Wolff Ed .: Generations of women in pictures. Herbig, Berlin 1928, pp. 163–172 (therein Grazia Nassi (sic) pp. 164f., With a well-known contemporary medal (1556), embossed on one side, with a bust of Nassis after p. 164)
  • Cecil Roth : Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi . The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia PA 1948.
  • Bea Stadtler: The story of Dona Gracia Mendes . United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education, New York NY 1969, ISBN 0-8381-0734-6 .
  • Gad Nassi, Rebecca Touegg: Doña Gracia Nasi. Women's International Zionist Organization - Education Department, Tel Aviv 1990.
  • Riccardo Calimani : Joao Micas, Giovanni Miches, Juan Miguez, Joseph Nasi, duca di Nasso: quattro nomi e molte identità per un stesso uomo. In: Calimani: Storia del ghetto di Venezia. Milano 1995. pp. 103-109.
  • Andrée Aelion Brooks: The Woman Who Defied Kings. The Life and Time of Doña Gracia Nasi, a Jewish Leader during the Renaissance . Paragon House, St. Paul MI 2002, ISBN 1-557-78805-7 , (extensive, newly researched biography of Gracia Nasi).
  • Renée Levine Melammed: Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile . New edition. Oxford University Press , New York NY et al. 2002, ISBN 0-19-515167-4 .
  • Yaron Ben-Naeh: Sultan Jews. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 611–614.

Fiction representations

  • Catherine Clément : La Señora . Novel. Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-7021-2062-8 , (German: Die Senyora . Novel from the Europe of the 16th century. Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-13546-9 ).
  • Naomi Ragen: The Ghost of Hannah Mendes . Simon & Schuster, New York et al. 1998, ISBN 0-684-83393-X , (novel, interweaves the story of the historical heroine with the women's family history of a Sephardic family).
  • Marianna D. Birnbaum: The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes . Central European University Press, Budapest et al. 2003, ISBN 963-924167-9 , (novel, describes the Marran culture in Western Europe and the Muslim Orient).
  • Peter Prange : The seeker of God . Novel. Droemer Knaur, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-426-19751-6 .
  • Waldtraut Lewin : The Jewess of Constantinople ; Roman, Knaur-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-426-50430-7 .
  • Yitzhak Gormezano Goren: Kvartet ha-senyora (Hebrew: The Quartet of Senhora). Roman, part 1 Ha-sheker ha-kadosh (the holy lie), part 2 Malkat ha-finansim (queen of finances), part 3 Kadachat venetzyanit (Venetian fever). Ha-Kibutz ha-me'uchad, Bne Brak 2010, 2013 and 2015.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Nasi, Gracia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mendes, Gracia; Beatrice de Luna Miques (Christian baptismal name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Leader of the Marranos
DATE OF BIRTH 1510
PLACE OF BIRTH Portugal
DATE OF DEATH 1569
Place of death at Constantinople