The Massacre of the New Christians of Lisbon in 1506: A New Eyewitness Account

Abstract

On Sunday 19 April 1506, the city of Lisbon was convulsed by an explosion of bloodshed that lasted four days and is estimated to have resulted in the violent deaths of anywhere between 1,000 to 4,000 men, women and children. The victims were the so-called “New Christians”, the Portuguese Jews forced to convert to Christianity by King Manuel I in 1497. The massacre of 1506 sent shockwaves throughout Europe and accounts of it exist in Portuguese, Jewish, Spanish and German sources. An anonymous German, who was present in Lisbon at the time of the massacre and personally witnessed the tragedy, wrote a vivid account that was printed in at least three different German editions. Likewise, the Spanish chroniclers Andrés Bernáldez and Alonso de Santa Cruz – who did not bother to mention the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews in 1497 at all – both devoted an entire chapter in their works to the tragedy of 1506. Some of these sources offer us stirring eyewitness accounts. The New Christian Isaac Ibn Faradj, for instance, was present in Lisbon during the massacre. He was fortunate enough to survive and later escaped from Portugal for Salonica in the Ottoman Empire where he reverted to Judaism.