(2 of 2)
Manuel's solution, ordered in 1497, , was to close the ports and force the Jews to be baptized or die. Thousands were ' herded into a Lisbon camp to face starvation and violence. Many committed suicide rather than convert; others were dragged by their hair or beards to the baptismal font. All Jewish children from ages two to ten were taken from their parents and placed in Catholic homes. Only after ten years were some Jews permitted to escape to Amsterdam or the Americas.
Public Burnings. Those who converted were designated "New Christians," but they continued to be hounded for 2½ centuries by the Inquisition, installed in 1536, and by zealot neighbors. In one Lisbon riot alone, in 1506, between 2,000 and 4,000 of the New Christians were slaughtered. The auto-da-fe—the parade and ritual sentencing of Jews and heretics, sometimes followed by spectacular public burnings —was not abolished in Lisbon until 1765.
In the 1920s, Army Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, a descendant of Marranos, converted to Judaism and helped establish a synagogue and seminary in Oporto. He toured rural areas telling the Jews that there was no longer reason to be afraid. During the early years under Salazar, the right-wing Catholic Action movement started a smear campaign against Barros Basto. His seminary was closed down, and he was court-martialed for immorality because he promoted circumcision. He died a broken man in 1961.
Today Portugal enjoys official freedom of religion, and the 400 members of Lisbon's openly Jewish community are prominent in business and the professions. In the northern villages, however, cruel memories persist. The priests are nearly as powerful—and many of them as backward and anti-Semitic—as in the Middle Ages. The current priest in Belmonte is a "good man," says a prosperous Marrano housewife, but the previous one "said in church that the Jews should be hanged." The Marranos claim that when they did not attend Mass they were denounced to the secret police as suspected Communists. "My father was stoned in the streets," recalls another Marrano. The furtive believers shun photographers and almost never talk of their religion to outsiders. Suspicion, like fear, has become a way of life.