THE LISBON MASSACRE OF 1506 AND THE ANTI-JEWISH HATE SPEECH

Abstract

The theme of this article is the Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the discourse of anti-Jewish hatred, which configured the action of the Portuguese Christians against the so-called New Christians. In those days, the urban insalubrity, the cultural integration and the expansionist policy of King Manuel formed the difficult conditions of life in Lisbon. But they found expression as a religious problem, an anti-Jewish sentiment driven by the discourse of hatred of the
Dominican friars. The frontiers of Portuguese identity were built by the confrontation of social forces - the king and the nobility on the one hand, and the majority and the lower clergy on the other hand - which respectively protected and persecuted the so-called New Christians, thus delineating a social hierarchy based on ethnic Jewish inferiority. For this reason, the article analyses the historical precedents and political tensions, the living conditions of Lisbon in
those days and the discourses of hatred, as triggers of anti-Jewish sentiment in the population, using historical documents, D. Manuel’s letters and decrees, and the chronicle of Salomon Ibn Verga and two accounts of a German witness of the massacre.