Rodrigo de Castro

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Rodrigo de Castro , also David Namias , (* around 1550 in Lisbon , † February 1, 1627 in Hamburg ) was a Portuguese doctor and author .

Live and act

Rodrigo de Castro came from a respected Crypto-Jewish family from which many personal physicians for the Portuguese royal family and church dignitaries had emerged. He studied medicine and philosophy at universities in Coimbra , Évora and Salamanca and practiced as a resident doctor in Lisbon from 1587. He did not accept an order from Philip II to extract medicinal herbs in East India. Instead, he moved to Amsterdam , where he probably re-adopted the Jewish faith. Around 1592 he reached Hamburg with his brother-in-law Henriques Rodrigues, where he had a practice near the Petrikirche . Since, as a gynecologist, he was able to impart knowledge about caesarean sections and epidemiology in particular , he was quickly recognized as a specialist well-known beyond the city limits of Hamburg. As a personal physician, he looked after the Archbishop of Bremen, the King of Denmark , the Dukes of Holstein and Mecklenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse and renowned citizens of Hamburg.

After the plague broke out in Hamburg in 1595 , de Castro recorded his experiences a year later in the Tractatus brevis de natura et causis pestis . In 1603 he wrote De universa muliebrum morborum medicina, an important work on gynecology, which appeared in several editions. In 1611, a chronicler described the physician as a citizen who “like the other Christian doctors” wore a skirt, woolen collar and a high velvet suit, had a high social status and was self-confident. In 1614, in Medicus Politicus , he dealt with music therapy, problems of medical ethics and the moral and religious position the doctor assumed in society. For this work he used the writings of Jewish physicians in particular as sources.

De Castro was involved in disputes with the Hamburg Jewish community and their rabbis as well as with Italian rabbis. The Venetian rabbi Leone de Morena threatened de Castro in 1614 with the ban because he had not complied with the demand to relieve his sister-in-law Sara of the duty of levirate marriage . Since, from his point of view, the Jewish community had subordinated itself to the law of a foreign community, De Castro offered the community the prospect of filing a complaint with the Hamburg government in return. To this end, he wrote the book Tratado de Herem in 1617 , which is now considered lost.

When the Hamburger Bank was founded in 1619 , he was one of the first people to pay deposits.

family

Rodrigo de Castro was married to Catarina / Ribka Rodriguez. Since he was regarded as a Catholic for a long time, his wife was initially in the cemetery of the Maria Magdalena Church from 1602. Her grave has been in the Jewish cemetery in Altona since she was reburied in 1628 . The couple had their son Benedictus de Castro , who, like his father, became a doctor.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Castro, Rodrigo de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Namias, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese doctor and author
DATE OF BIRTH around 1550
PLACE OF BIRTH Lisbon
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1627
Place of death Hamburg