• 1 On the forced conversion see François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: K (...)
• 2 On the global scope of the Portuguese New Christian diaspora, see João Lúcio de Azevedo, História d (...)

2Fonseca was a member of the New Christian diaspora made up of Portuguese Jews and their descendants who were forcibly converted to the Christian faith in 1497 on the orders of King Manuel I (1494‑1521).1 The measure followed an initial decree of expulsion similar to that which the crowns of Castile and Aragon had imposed on Spain’s Jews in 1492. In October the kingdom’s Jews were thus forced to collectively migrate from one faith to the other, adopting Christianity as their new religion and being called cristãos novos, New Christians or conversos. The matter did not end with this massive embrace of a new religion as many were suspected of secretly adhering to Judaism in some form, however syncretic. Measures were taken, both benign and coercive, to ensure religious uniformity among the New Christians until the arrival of a tribunal of the Inquisition, with national autonomy along the Spanish model, was introduced by King John III (1521‑1554) in 1531 and began functioning in 1536. Alongside this control of orthodoxy in the land, the distinction between Old and New Christians, already set in stone upon the forced conversion of 1497 and only abolished in 1773, slowly imposed a series of exclusionary measures against those with impure blood or Jewish ancestry. The result was a steady diaspora that would last centuries, extending from the very outset to the furthest corners of the globe. Members of the diaspora were often presented as belonging to a distinct nation or nação in Portuguese, different from their fellow countrymen on account of shared origins, a common predicament and struggle.2

• 3 On these invitations, see Aron di Leone Leoni, La nazione ebraica spagnola e portoghese di Ferrara, (...)
• 4 On the dual nature of the early modern papacy, see the classic study by Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prin (...)

4Rome was one of the early centres of the Portuguese New Christian diaspora in Italy in spite of the city never having issued a formal invitation to them. Unlike other localities in the Italian peninsula, such as the duchy of Ferrara in 1538, the papal port city of Ancona in 1547 and the duchy of Tuscany in 1549, the Eternal City never made out a charter to them which guaranteed them rights and the possibility to settle there in a permanent way.3 In the early modern period Rome was, of course, a very special city as the centre of global Catholicism, with a complex bureaucracy in place to manage the affairs of the Church and the court of a monarch who was at once a spiritual and political ruler in the context of the Italian peninsula. At the same time, it had its own storied civic institutions and complex organisation and management of urban space and justice.4

• 5 On this group and its activities in Rome, see James W. Nelson Novoa, “The Nação as a Political Enti (...)
• 6 James W. Nelson Novoa, “The Portuguese New Christian nação as a Catholic Diaspora in Rome”, in Nich (...)

5Rather than formally invite conversos to come to the city, they were accepted on a case-by-case basis. The closest thing to any collective formal invitation was a papal brief from 1535 allowing Portuguese New Christians of either sex to represent their kin at the papal court who were subject to the recently created tribunal of the Inquisition in Portugal. The result was the presence in the city of a veritable lobby with various individuals from the 1530s onwards who could claim to be agents of members of the nação who were unjustly harassed in their homeland. Over the course of at least two centuries, they were able to influence papal policy with regards to the tribunal in Portugal, at times being instrumental in obtaining albeit short‑lived suspensions of its functioning.5 From the outset then, the Portuguese New Christian diaspora in Rome was eminently political. While they did not have representation in the city in the way various nationes were present in the city through churches and confraternities, New Christians were indeed recognised by the pope as members of a persecuted minority, curiously as Catholic refugees from a sovereign Catholic country who could plead their cases there.6

• 7 James W. Nelson Novoa, “Portugal in Rome: Glimpses of the Portuguese New Christian Representation i (...)
• 8 James W. Nelson Novoa, Being the Nação in the Eternal City, op. cit., p. 97‑183.
• 9 Ibid. supra, p. 185‑229 and James W. Nelson Novoa, “Una red mercantil y de influencias entre la Pen (...)

6Alongside individuals who presented themselves in Rome in their capacity as agents of persecuted New Christians back home in an almost professional fashion, working to secure releases from prison or reversals of Portuguese policy regarding the tribunal, there were those who made it to Rome and also managed to find some livelihood, such as the physician Pedro Furtado and Jacome da Fonseca, who were business associates owning an apothecary in the city.7 Archival evidence indicates a wide cross section of members of the nação present in the city in the 1530s and 1540s: physicians, clerics, lawyers, merchants and bankers.8 Aside from their status as New Christians, which was evoked when they acted in their capacity as agents before the Roman Curia, they were, for all intents and purposes, Portuguese. They were counted as Portuguese residents in the city and there was never any formal impediment of any kind to their belonging to that national community or frequenting its church, Santo Antonio dei portoghesi. In fact, over several decades its confraternity would feature prominent New Christian members as members.9

• 10 Antonio J. Díaz Rodríguez, “Mercaderes de la gracia: Las compañías de negocios curiales entre Roma (...)
• 11 For the late 17th century, see Ana Paula Lloyd, “Manuel de Gama de Pádua’s Political Networks: Serv (...)

7By the 1540s and 1550s, prominent members of the diaspora had made important inroads into the life of Papal Rome and the often complex and sinewy world of the papal court and curia. Those decades onwards saw the presence and rise of well-connected and well-to-do merchant bankers, with often privileged access to the most important circles in the city, working as veritable go‑betweens linking the Iberian world and Rome by representing the interests of Spanish and Portuguese ecclesiastics, in spite of their converso origins. A disproportionate number of the ranks of this elite were of converso origin, such as the prominent merchant banker Antonio da Fonseca (1515?‑1588), the brother of the aforementioned Jacome.10 In their case, what was often excluded or at least more complicated in the homeland was possible in Rome. Over time the diaspora became several generations old, with people born and brought up in Rome with an increasingly faint sense of their converso origins, alongside newcomers who continued to arrive, oftentimes availing themselves of their status as representatives of the nação.11

• 12 On the Irish in Rome, for example, see Matteo Binasco, “La comunità irlandese a Roma, 1377‑1870. Il (...)
• 13 James W. Nelson Novoa, “Being Portuguese, Becoming Roman”, in Simona Marchesini, Nicoletta Martinel (...)

8The Portuguese New Christians could be considered then a silent diaspora in the Eternal City, bereft of the trappings of other diasporic groups there such as their own church or confraternity as was the case with Catholics fleeing from persecution in Protestant lands.12 Throughout the 16th and well into the 17th centuries they generally seemed to prefer to live in the rione of Parione, in close vicinity to Piazza Navona and the Castilian national church of San Giacomo degli spagnoli. It was there that they appear in the parish registers of several churches where they tended to live at least for the first generation, later inhabiting other quarters of the city in subsequent generations, especially when a general trend of assimilation through intermarriage into Roman families can be observed.13

• 14 Bernard Dov Cooperman, “Portuguese conversos in Ancona…”, op. cit.

9Technically bona fide Catholics, they were however fundamental in negotiating and obtaining Italian safe havens for the nação in the early half of the 16th century. As has been shown by Bernard Dov Cooperman, the 1547 charter which allowed them to settle in Ancona was negotiated, at least in part, by New Christians in Rome, well placed in the seat of Catholicism to be able to secure these privileges in the Adriatic port city of the Papal States, based on a previous charter that had been made out to Levantine Jews, many of whom, though Ottoman subjects, were in reality cristãos novos who had converted to Judaism.14 In a similar fashion, as will be discussed in the following section, the 1548 invitation on the part of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici (1537‑1569, then grand duke from 1569 to 1574) was disseminated by key members of the nação in Rome.

• 15 On early modern Rome, see the essays in Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch and Simon Ditchfield (eds), (...)
• 16 Jacopo Curzietti, “L’arte come strategia politico‑culturale nella comunità portoghese dei nuovi cri (...)

10As the capital of global Catholicism, it was a city which demanded that orthodoxy be public in an ostensible fashion.15 Especially after the creation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, the public flaunting of adherence to Catholicity became increasingly important. This meant a display of public piety on the part of its inhabitants, be it in the form of religious practice, charitable works or religious art patronage was fundamental, something which prominent New Christians learnt to use to their advantage.16 Reversion to Judaism would have been tantamount to heresy as apostasy or reneging on the faith. In the case of Rome, in spite of the fact that New Christians were not especially under the watch of religious authorities, they had to be extra vigilant in case their converso pasts could possibly come under scrutiny. It became all the more important to emphasise their Catholic credentials and excise their Jewish pasts.

• 17 Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto…, op. cit., p. 15‑28, James W. Nelson Novoa, “I procur (...)

11In 1548 a letter was written in Spanish by one Pedro de Salamanca that was to be sent out to different localities already inhabited by New Christians, informing them of the privileges which the duke was to render public in January 1549 guaranteeing them safety, freedom from ecclesiastical prying and the right to work and reside in the city of Pisa with a view to enhancing it. It mentioned several prominent New Christian residents in Rome, calling them the foundation on which edifice it, that is, the Tuscan invitation, rested. It is known that several of the individuals, such as Pedro Furtado, the physician mentioned earlier, and trained lawyers Antonio Lopez and Fernão Mendes, eventually settled in the city, where they took up positions of responsibility.17 It could be said then that the Pisan Portuguese New Christian diaspora to a certain extent was an offshoot of the one in Rome.

• 18 Yosef Kaplan, “Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity”, Jew (...)
• 19 Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora…, op. cit.
• 20 Renzo Toaff, “Il governo della Nazione Ebrea a Pisa e Livorno dalle origini (1591) al Settecento”, (...)
• 21 On the Jews in Pisa, see Michele Luzzati, Gli Ebrei di Pisa (secoli ix‑xx), Pisa, Pacini editore, « (...)
• 22 Benjamin Ravid, “The Legal Status of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1541‑1638”, Journal of Economi (...)

13The diaspora which followed the expulsion decree of 1496 and forced conversion of 1497 was complex and imbricated. It included those few Jews who were able to leave as Jews, New Christians who lived as Christians and those who converted to Judaism, New Jews, a term coined by Yosef Kaplan.18 This complexity was often at the heart of many of the networks of commerce and kinship which could include members from all of the spectrum.19 The fact was not lost on the Medici ruler who, three years after the 1548 invitation, made out a subsequent invitation to merchants from the Levant, including Levantine Jews, many of whom were, in reality former conversos but who had settled in the Ottoman Empire. Thus Iberian Jews were able to settle in Tuscany under the guise of subjects of the Sublime Porte from 1551 onwards.20 As a result, a distinct Levantine community arose in Florence and Pisa alongside the storied Tuscan one.21 It followed on the heels of a similar measure in Venice in which the Republic made a provision for the creation of a specific ghetto for Levantine Jews in 1541, the ghetto vecchio.22

• 23 On Pisa in the period, see Emilio Tolaini, Forma Pisarum: storia urbanistica della città di Pisa: P (...)
• 24 James W. Nelson Novoa, “Atlantic Denizens at a Tuscan Crossroads: Portuguese Merchants in Pisa and (...)
• 25 Ibid. supra., p. 75‑77.

14The decades following the 1549 invitation saw the constant arrival of members of the nação, many of them merchants who settled in Pisa. Unlike Rome, there was no Portuguese national church or confraternity there, nor was there a consul who oversaw the interests of these merchants, in an important mercantile centre in which Porto Pisano was being eclipsed by Livorno in close vicinity.23 In the 16th century, Pisa was still the chosen place of residence for a well‑entrenched mercantile elite. Preliminary work on their presence in the city indicates that they were present in several parishes especially those in prominent quarters known for the presence of other merchants, such as the parishes of San Sepolcro and San Martino in Kinzica in the mercantile quarter of San Martino, or in close proximity to the Medici palace, such as the parish of San Nicola.24 Archival work also suggests a close-knit community with at least the first two generations in the city generally practicing endogamy, thus remaining within the community while generally purchasing property with a view to remaining in the city, even from the outset of their arrival.25

• 26 Ibid.
• 27 Ibid., p. 72‑74 and James W. Nelson Novoa, “Medicine, Learning and Self Representation in Seventeen (...)

15One of these families, the Dias family, arrived the same year as Cosimo’s invitation and for generations maintained itself within the nação through their business dealings and marital patterns, having doctors and merchants in the family.26 Another, the Fonseca family, had close ties with Rome as well as the first member of the family to settle in Pisa, Diogo Luis, who was the brother‑in‑law of Antonio da Fonseca, the prominent Portuguese‑Roman merchant banker. Luis, active in international commerce in the city, brought a young son along with him, Rodrigo da Fonseca (1550?‑1622), who studied at the university of Pisa, where he became a prominent professor of medicine while following in his father’s footsteps and dedicating himself to commerce as well.27

• 28 Corey Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World, 1574‑179 (...)

16Rodrigo was one of several Portuguese merchants who, in the final decades of the 16th century, were especially involved in bringing products from the Atlantic world to Tuscany, in a period in which Livorno had become the major Tuscan port. Though the project to enhance that port city had begun with Cosimo, it was his son Ferdinando (1587‑1609) who brought it to fruition, making it one of the most important ports in the Italian peninsula.28 The watershed moment in this transformation were edicts rendered public in 1591 and 1593, known as the Livornine, offering residence rights to merchants of all nations and confessions if they settled in Pisa and especially Livorno. They were, in essence an extension of the terms of the privileges which his family had made out to merchants almost half a century before with a view to courting Levantine merchants and commerce.

• 29 Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto…, op. cit., p. 43‑51.
• 30 Lia Markey, “The Riches of the Indies: Francesco and Ferdinando de’ Medici and the Americas”, in Al (...)
• 31 Brian Brege, “Renaissance Florentines in the Tropics: Brazil, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the L (...)

17Especially important for members of the nação was the guarantee that they be spared any Inquisitorial prying and allowed them to live as Jews, even if they had previously lived as Christians, a measure which went beyond the 1551 invitation.29 Though the privileges specifically mention Levantine merchants (Levantine Jews, Turks and Greeks) and hence seem clearly directed at encouraging commercial links with the Levant, Ferdinando very likely had in mind forging ties with the Atlantic world, especially given his own keen interest in that context even before he became grand duke, something which had been shared by his father and brother Grand Duke Francesco (1574‑1587).30 During his years at the helm of the Grand Duchy, Ferdinando repeatedly showed interest in outreach to the Atlantic world to the point of actively seeking out the possibility of establishing a Tuscan colony in the Amazon, sending out an expedition in 1608 which reached Guyana, though these plans were shelved with his death the following year.31

• 32 Renzo Toaff, La nazione ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa: (1591‑1700), Florence, Leo S. Olschki editore, «S (...)
• 33 Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno and Cross‑Cultu (...)
• 34 Benjamin C.I. Ravid, “The First Charter of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1589”, AJS Review, vol.  (...)

18The 1591‑1593 edicts gave rise to one of the most important Jewish communities on Italian soil and indeed in Europe in the early modern period, becoming a crossroads for Jews throughout the Mediterranean world and a major intellectual hub for centuries.32 The community was to become privy to complex commercial networks which could often be transcultural and transconfessional.33 The Jewish community of Livorno, which was referred to at the outset as the Nazione ebrea levantina as an extension of the Pisan community created in 1551 and due to the official overtures to Levantine Jews, was in reality from the beginning predominantly Portuguese. It was, for the most part, made up of former conversos who had to practice Judaism in some concealed form until they reached places like Pisa and Livorno after 1591 where they could do so and were known as Ponentine Jews. As in the case of the 1551 invitation to Levantine Jews, the Republic of Venice had a head start, having invited Ponentine Jews to settle there in 1589 where they would inhabit a third ghetto, the ghetto novissimo.34

• 35 Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto…, p. 137‑206.
• 36 On the connections between the Venetian and Livornese communities see, Benjamin Ravid, “A Tale of T (...)
• 37 Giuseppe Marcocci, “Itinerari marrani: I portoghesi a Livorno nei secoli dell’età moderna”, in Adri (...)

19Unlike other Tuscan localities like Florence or Siena, a ghetto was never created in Pisa or Livorno, so they were able to live freely throughout both cities, in close relation with their Christian peers. For centuries the Portuguese language was used for the documents of the Livorno community and some of its most prominent members were of Portuguese origin.35 At the end of the 16th century then, Tuscany was unique in the Italian peninsula, alongside Venice which had extended a similar invitation in 1589, as a place where a Ponentine Jewish community could exist and thrive thanks to the interest the Serenissima had in enticing these merchants to settle there.36 The fact did not go unnoticed in Rome and the newly minted Jewish community comprised, in the eyes of Rome, apostates, which gave rise to a series of Inquisitorial investigations by the local branch of the Roman Inquisition in the years following the Livornine.37

• 38 James W. Nelson Novoa, “From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean: The Voyage of Rui Teixeira to the I (...)
• 39 James W. Nelson Novoa, “The Many Lives of Two Portuguese Conversos: Miguel Fernandes and Rui Teixei (...)

20Among those who came under suspicion during those investigations, but in the city of Rome, were two Portuguese merchants, Rui Teixeira (1538‑1601) and his son‑in‑law Miguel Fernandes. They had settled in 1594 in Pisa, after Grand Duke Ferdinando actively sought their arrival, along with that of their family, from Portugal. The merchant, who had spent years in Brazil and was active in the sugar trade, was obviously viewed as an important asset to have in the duchy by the grand duke.38 The pair were apprehended in Rome in May 1595, where they were seeking out an appropriate future home for Fernandes and his wife, and were accused of blasphemy, spending several months in prison before they were released.39 They were supposed to find the Roman house thanks to the assistance of a member of the Fonseca family, Jerónimo da Fonseca (1546?‑1596), a prominent merchant banker who was married to Violante da Fonseca, Diogo Luis’ daughter. In this episode, as in other cases, Pisa and Rome were intertwined.

• 40 James W. Nelson Novoa, “Atlantic Denizens at a Tuscan Crossroads…”, art. cit., p. 135‑137.

22Tuscany actively sought them out whereas Rome simply allowed them to arrive to the city on an an ad personam basis. In Rome some of them joined an elite which was intimately involved in the affairs of the Apostolic Camera and management of the global church. As ecclesiastical brokers, they were the public face of the Iberian church in their capacity as men who were sought after to obtain ecclesiastical benefices in Rome. In order to maintain their privileged position within the Eternal City, they had to actively cultivate a persona of public piety and relation with the highest instances of the Church, something which was not as important in the Tuscan context. There, as merchants, what was paramount was their capacity to bring products to Tuscany, often from far-flung places, many of which were hard to come by. Especially in the final decades of the 16th century, archival evidence demonstrates how they would regularly receive shipments with products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, testimony to their importance as merchants who had access to truly international commercial networks.40

• 41 Frattarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto…, op. cit., p. 136‑252.

23With the creation of a new Jewish community which, from the outset, was predominantly made up of former Portuguese conversos Pisa and Livorno, the nação found itself with a completely new set of social dynamics. It was now possible to migrate from Christianity to Judaism, to become New Jews and not have to be considered a Levantine Jew. As a result, Portuguese Jews could present themselves as such, clearly indicating that they had indeed formerly been Christians. After 1591, then two “nations” coexisted and were often interconnected in Pisa and Livorno: Portuguese New Christians and New Jews. A family could have individuals who had made different faith options, something which, of course, was not without its problems.41

• 42 Ibid. supra.
• 43 Renzo Toaff, “Il governo della Nazione Ebrea a Pisa e Livorno…”, art. cit., p. 503‑541, and Andreas (...)

24Though it goes beyond the scope of this article and a systematic study of the question has yet to be undertaken, it would seem that as the 17th century progressed the Iberian Jewish communities of Pisa and Livorno eclipsed the New Christian nação with the most prominent merchants of Iberian origin presenting themselves as Jews. Though there continued to be Portuguese merchants mentioned in official documents, their presence dwindled and more often than not the most important were clearly Jews of Portuguese or Spanish origin.42 Thus the New Christian diaspora in Pisa and Livorno was to be transformed over time into one of New Jews with its own distinct community structures and institutions, chief among them the register of individuals entering the community known as bollotazione and a synagogue.43

• 44 Serena di Nepi, Surviving the Ghetto: Toward a Social History of the Jewish Community in 16th‑Centu (...)

25An entirely different set of dynamics of course were those present in Rome, which, as we have seen, was largely linked to the impetus for the presence of a New Christian diaspora in Pisa and later Livorno. It remained, of course, impossible to migrate from Christianity to Judaism there and the walled‑off ghetto in Rome, created in 1555 with mechanisms of control and repression in place on the part of civic and ecclesiastic officials, made interactions with Jews difficult if not impossible.44 New Christians could only live as faith‑abiding Catholics in the Eternal City and the category of Ponentine Jews could not exist. Members of the nação, whether they be prominent merchant bankers or New Christian agents trying to alleviate the plight of conversos in Portugal, could only be present in that guise. Over the course of the 17th century and several generations of intermarriage, sometimes as part of a calculated strategy of romanisation and assimilation, meant that the Portuguese ethnic origins of the New Christian diaspora in the city dissipated if not disappeared and with it the consciousness of belonging to it.

• 45 On New Christians in Venice see, Federica Ruspio, La nazione portoghese: Ebrei ponentini e nuovi cr (...)
• 46 See Pilar Huerga Criado, “Cristianos nuevos de origen ibérico en el Reino de Nápoles en el siglo xv (...)

26In the broader Italian context, the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries saw the existence of officially sanctioned Jewish communities of predominantly Portuguese origin in Tuscany and Venice which existed alongside the presence of New Christians.45 In Spanish‑controlled Italy New Christians often bore the brunt of religious control and Ponentine Jews could not exist.46 The Papal States presented an identical situation and tried in earnest to impose religious uniformity and exclude apostasy throughout the Italian peninsula. Throughout the different changes of policy and modifications of the possibilities of faith definition over the decades in Rome and Pisa, the fundamental predicament of New Christians remained. Unable to live in their place of origin or unwilling to accept the cost of doing so, they chose to create and find a haven for themselves in the Italian peninsula, establishing nodes in localities like Rome and Pisa in the midst of the increasing complexity of a diaspora for which the borders of ethnicity and religion were not always entirely clear.