Gracia Mendes Nasi – also known as Dona Gracia, Hannah Nasi or by her Christianized name, Beatriz de Luna Miques – was considered the richest woman in the world in the 16th century. The Mendes bank which she led traded in goods, including diamonds and black pepper – then more valuable than gold. But Beatriz had a dangerous secret: She and her family were conversos – Jews forced to publicly convert to Christianity, in order to avoid expulsion from Portugal. Behind closed doors, they continued practicing their Jewish faith.
Due to the persecutions of the Inquisition and the Catholic Church, many conversos moved to the city of Antwerp in modern day Belgium, and from there sought to illegally make their way to the Ottoman Empire so they could practice Judaism freely again. Dona Gracia, who had always sought to be rid of the facade and to live openly as a Jew, moved from Portugal to Antwerp with the aim of continuing onto Turkey. But this left her with a problem:
Her public status as a “Christian” woman of great wealth led kings, dukes and other nobles to be interested in her only daughter Reyna (whom they called Ana at home).
One of the most stubborn matchmakers was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Emperor Charles V, or Karl V, ruled over large sections of Europe and the New World, an “empire on which the sun never sets.” As a result, his forces were constantly involved in wars and he was always short of cash. At one point, seeking a way to to refill his coffers, he wrote to his sister Mary, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, who also governed the Netherlands and was close to Dona Gracia.
He told her of his proposal to marry off the 15-year-old Reyna to Duke Fernando de Aragón. The marital arrangement was meant to serve a number of purposes. The first was financial – even before Dona Gracia had given her consent, the Emperor and Duke had already divided up the spoils they would receive, with the Duke promising a generous portion of Reyna’s dowry to the Emperor.
The other purpose was to keep an eye on this family of “New Christians,” as the Duke was a particularly zealous and loyal supporter of the Church who could personally devote his attention to keeping the suspect Mendes family in line. Finally, the proposed marriage was also designed to benefit Dona Gracia, as a one-way ticket from the merchant class into the aristocracy.
Emperor Charles pushed his sister Mary to convince Dona Gracia, and did not rule out the idea of forcing the match. He also proposed looking into the possibility of marrying off Dona Gracia’s five-year-old niece, also named Beatriz (she was called “La Chica” in order to distinguish her from her aunt), with betrothals of small children being common practice in Flanders at that time.
Queen Mary opposed forcing the marriage on the family, since the merchant class, unlike the aristocracy, tended to oppose outside intervention in marital and family arrangements. Queen Mary feared that doing so with Dona Gracia’s family would serve as a precedent and frighten the merchants.
Mary repeatedly invited Dona Gracia to her royal court, but Dona Gracia, who was well aware of the plans for her daughter, managed to get out of it time and again with excuses of illness and weakness. When she did finally make it to Queen Mary’s royal court, she declared that she preferred her daughter die than be married to a man she described as “lazy, old, and ugly.”

Mary, who began to despair at the possibility of receiving the mother’s consent, hinted that if the marriage was not arranged soon, a new investigation might be opened into suspicions that the Mendes family was guilty of desecrating the Christian religion and practicing Judaism. Now in danger, Dona Gracia sought a way to escape.
But a woman as rich as Dona Gracia, with all the property she owned, could not just disappear overnight. Moreover, if they fled Antwerp and were caught, such behavior would be considered a confession of guilt. She therefore came up with a sophisticated plan, composed of a number of stages.
In the first stage, her nephew and right-hand man João Micas (who would receive the name Joseph Nasi when he later publicly embraced his Judaism) returned from his university studies in Lyon to the family home. Almost immediately after his arrival, he suddenly left Antwerp in the company of his cousin Reyna, the object of Charles V’s financial desires. They turned towards Venice and disappeared into the night.
The next morning, Dona Gracia, in a show of great anguish and despair, declared that her daughter Reyna had been kidnapped by her cousin who had fallen in love with her and could not control his passions. According to Dona Gracia, her nephew had abducted the young lady and run off with her.
During this historical period, the abduction of women for purposes of marriage was a fairly common occurrence, meant to force marital arrangements on unwilling parents. Such an incident would typically harm the maiden’s reputation and honor, making her “damaged goods.” Instead of punishing the kidnapper, the authorities often preferred to allow him to legitimately marry the abductee, rather than leaving her in a state of indignity in which few would seek her hand. Here, Dona Gracia and João used this well-known trick to arrange a de-facto betrothal for Reyna, therefore making her a much less attractive prospect for marriage into the aristocracy.
The rumors of the kidnapping spread quickly, and no-one questioned the desire of the worried mother to follow her daughter and her scoundrel kidnapper, in order to save Reyna from such a dubious marriage.
No-one that is, except Queen Mary, who easily understood the real reasons behind this over-the-top Mendes family drama. But Mary was unable to summon Dona Gracia to her castle to provide answers, as a few weeks earlier Dona Gracia had requested and received transit papers and a passport from the Queen to visit the hot springs in Aix-la-Chapelle, which could help soothe the suffering caused by her many illnesses. Thus was Dona Gracia able to travel overland from Antwerp to Venice at the head of a large convoy, with official permission granted by Queen Mary herself.

When the Emperor and the Queen understood that these precious birds had flown the cage, they abandoned all pretense and started working directly to get their hands on the Mendes fortune. This was the beginning of a legal saga which stretched on for some five years, in which the monarchs tried to confiscate and expropriate Dona Gracia’s property, with the very same João accused of taking his cousin’s innocence returning to Antwerp to defend his aunt’s rights in court.
Dona Gracia herself would never set foot again in Antwerp for fear of being arrested and put on trial. Instead, João engaged in a deliberate war of legal attrition, parrying the monarchs with a variety of creative arguments. For instance, he argued that the property actually belonged to Reyna and La Chica who had inherited it from their deceased fathers, and that Dona Gracia was merely the custodian managing it all. Therefore, even if Dona Gracia was thinking about returning to Judaism, that had nothing to with the “innocent” minors and therefore the authorities had no right to touch the property. While the gears of justice ground on slowly, João took advantage of the respite to smuggle more and more of the Mendes fortune out of Antwerp.
Another method Dona Gracia used to save her property could be seen as an early form of insurance. She deposited chests of diamonds and precious stones with important merchants in the city in exchange for a promise from them to pay her exorbitant sums if they didn’t return the chests. When the Emperor and his sister tried to get ahold of them, the merchants so feared the costs of paying Dona Gracia that there was a real fear that they would flee the city and collapse its economy.
This legal-religious-romantic saga finally came to a close when Dona Gracia agreed to compensate Emperor Charles V by granting him an interest-free loan for two years and another extension on the many debts and loans he already owed to the Mendes bank.

The Mendes family underwent many trials and tribulations, but when they fled to the city of Ferrara in Italy, Dona Gracia returned to practicing Judaism openly. Although there were other suitors who sought Reyna’s hand, including the son of the Ottoman Sultan’s Jewish doctor, the family considered her to be the “betrothed” of her cousin João.
Upon reaching the age of 18, Reyna demanded that Dona marry her off to João, which was highly irregular in those days, since parents usually arranged their children’s marriage based on financial interests, regardless of the desires of the bride and groom.
Reyna’s close circle of friends opposed the marriage, as João had a reputation as a womanizer who secretly provided the Sultan with alcohol and attended his lavish parties.
Dona Gracia nevertheless agreed to the match, since it kept the wealth within the family. But she presented João with a condition – that he openly return to Judaism and be circumcised. While doing so, he returned to the Jewish name he received from his parents – Joseph Nasi. Reyna and Joseph were married, and we know they had only one daughter who appears to have died before her parents.
Reyna Nasi’s story may have ended here, but the Mendes family continued to have an impact on Jewish history: Dona Gracia was behind an effort to establish a Jewish autonomy in Tiberias, in what might be seen as an early precursor to Zionism, to serve as a shelter for Jews from persecution around the world.

As part of Dona Gracia’s efforts on behalf of the conversos of Spain, she ransomed captives and intervened on behalf of those who caught by the authorities, but she also saw to their spiritual and religious needs. Over time, many conversos forgot their Hebrew, and the Christian scriptures were only available in Latin. A real need therefore arose to translate the Hebrew Bible into Spanish.
Dona Gracia donated a significant sum of money to fund the efforts of Abraham Usque and Yom Tob Atias, who sought to print a converso bible. Usque was a converso who printed Latin books in Portugal and escaped to Ferrara after suspicions arose that he was practicing Judaism. Atias was a Jewish converso from Spain. The Ferrara Bible stood out in its adherence to Hebrew grammar in Spanish, leading to a strange form of Spanish featuring no conjunctions. Their work also elegantly avoided interpretive translation which could be seen as supporting Christian understandings of the Bible.
The Ferrara Bible includes an illustrious dedication to Dona Gracia in unique, poetic language, thanking her for her support for the project. Copies of the Ferrara Bible can still be found around the world; the National Library has a copy of the second edition of this rare and wonderful book.
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The Ferrara Bible will temporarily be displayed to the broader public, as part of a special tour at the National Library of Israel celebrating Sephardic Jewish heritage and culture – from treasures of the Sephardic Golden Age to items from the Library’s Islam collection to remnants of the crisis which befell Spanish Jewry following the expulsion and dispersal across the globe.
This special Sephardic tour, telling the story of Spanish Jewry, is one of the Library’s thematic tours. Other examples include our Green Building and Sustainability Tour, the Art and Architecture Tour, a tour accessible to the deaf and more. Find more details on all our special tours, here.