The Olive Tree in Memory of the 60th Anniversary of Auschwitz’s Liberation is located in the garden of Escola Secundária Carlos Amarante, in Braga. It was planted on 15 June 2005 by Aaron Ram, then Ambassador of Israel to Portugal, during a commemorative act marking sixty years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
The memorial
The memorial consists of an olive tree and a commemorative plaque. Local references describe the plaque as dedicated to the memory of the victims of Auschwitz and mention the presence of a Yiddish lullaby. The site is therefore simple in form, but specific in meaning: a living tree placed beside a written mark of remembrance.
The school setting
The available sources do not state explicitly why Escola Secundária Carlos Amarante was chosen. Even so, its location in a school garden gives the memorial a clear public and educational character. It places the memory of Auschwitz within an everyday space of learning, rather than within a monumental or institutional setting.
The value of this memorial lies in its restraint: it preserves the memory of the Shoah through a modest gesture, combining a tree, a plaque, and the setting of a school.
Igreja de São João do Souto, a medieval parish church documented in the twelfth century, was the place where Francisco Sanches was baptized in Braga on 25 July 1551. Born into a family of converted Jewish origin, Sanches later became one of the most important physicians and philosophers of the Iberian Renaissance.
Francisco Sanches
Francisco Sanches is best known for Quod nihil scitur (That Nothing Is Known), published in 1581, one of the key works of Renaissance skepticism. In it, he challenged scholastic authority and questioned the possibility of certainty based solely on inherited systems of knowledge. His work placed doubt, observation, and experience at the center of intellectual inquiry. Beyond philosophy, he also built an important medical career in France, especially in Toulouse, where he taught and practiced medicine.
New Christian Background
His biography belongs to the difficult world of sixteenth-century Iberia, where families of Jewish descent lived under conversion, pressure, and unstable promises of tolerance. Baptism did not erase suspicion, and incorporation into Christian society did not guarantee security. Francisco Sanches emerged from that world of New Christian vulnerability, even though his later career unfolded far beyond Braga and Portugal.
The statue of Francisco Sanches, installed in 1954 in Largo de São João do Souto, was designed by the sculptor Salvador Barata Feyo and placed directly opposite the church where Sanches was baptized in 1551. That location is not incidental. It anchors the monument to the most concrete documented point in his early life and ties Braga’s urban memory to a figure born into a family of New Christian origin.
Francisco Sanches became one of the most important physicians and philosophers of the Iberian Renaissance. His best-known work, Quod nihil scitur (1581), challenged scholastic certainty and helped secure his place in the history of European skepticism. He later built his career mainly in France, especially in Toulouse, where he taught and practiced medicine.
The monument therefore does more than commemorate a local intellectual. It marks, in public space, the memory of a thinker whose life was shaped by the difficult world of families of Jewish descent in early modern Iberia, and whose work reached far beyond Braga. In this case, the statue connects the city not only to Jewish memory, but also to the wider histories of medicine, philosophy, and critical thought.
The Hebrew inscription of Braga is one of the rarest material traces of medieval Jewish presence in the city. It consists of a small Hebrew carving made up of only three letters, engraved on a granite voussoir reused within a Gothic arch preserved inside the building historically known as Casa Grande, the former District Hostel, located on Rua de Santo António das Travessas, within the area of the Judiaria Nova.
The inscription was identified in March 1981 by historian Eduardo Pires de Oliveira during works carried out in the building and later examined by several scholars. The letters, written in square Hebrew script, are alef, tav, and he (א ת ה). Due to its extreme brevity, the inscription’s exact meaning remains uncertain. Scholarly analysis raises a key question: whether the stone was carved for that specific location or reused from an earlier architectural context, a hypothesis considered likely.
Despite these uncertainties, the inscription is widely regarded as medieval and not a modern forgery. Its importance lies precisely in its modest scale and its urban context. While it does not conclusively identify the location of a synagogue, it stands as a rare epigraphic trace of Jewish life in Braga and strengthens the historical identification of the Judiaria Nova on Rua de Santo António das Travessas.
This fragment exemplifies how Jewish history in Portugal often survives through minimal physical traces, demanding careful reading, interpretative restraint, and respect for material evidence.
Judiaria Velha de Braga refers to the first known Jewish quarter of medieval Braga, later associated with Rua da Erva and today with Rua D. Gonçalo Pereira. Its importance lies less in a preserved monument than in the way written records, urban morphology and later toponymy allow the Jewish presence to be read inside the city’s ecclesiastical core.
The earliest identifiable Jewish residences in Braga appear in Cabido records from around 1369-1380. At that stage, Jewish inhabitants were not yet concentrated in a closed quarter. They lived in different streets, often in properties connected to the Cabido da Sé, sometimes side by side with Christians. This matters because Braga’s Jewish history began as a dispersed urban presence before becoming a more defined communal geography.
The formation of the Judiaria Velha
The first Jewish quarter seems to have taken shape gradually during the first half of the fifteenth century. Royal measures under D. João I in 1400, aimed at concentrating Jewish communities in their own quarters, form part of the wider context. However, the secure documentary evidence for Braga’s first judiaria is later. Cabido lease records from 1466 refer to an agreement with the Jewish commune and to the transfer of the community to another location.
From that moment, the earlier area became known as the Judiaria Velha. Medieval documentation also records the street as Rua da Erva. After the transfer, it could be referred to as Rua de Santa Maria que foi Judiaria, while the modern street is Rua D. Gonçalo Pereira. The present urban form should not be read as medieval, since the street was substantially altered by widening works in the late nineteenth century.
Rua da Erva and Braga’s religious centre
Rua da Erva occupied a central and economically active sector of medieval Braga. It belonged to the Bairro das Travessas, an urban grid partly inherited from the Roman plan of Bracara Augusta. The street linked the area around the cathedral and the Praça da Cidade to the direction of the Porta de Santiago.
This position was significant. Near the cathedral stood the civic and ecclesiastical powers of Braga, including the Paços do Concelho, the archiepiscopal sphere, market activity and the Cabido’s property network. The Judiaria Velha was therefore not marginal in the simple geographic sense. It stood in a privileged but controlled setting, close to Christian authority and dependent on ecclesiastical property structures.
The exact limits of the Judiaria Velha remain uncertain. The strongest interpretation confines it mainly to the northern stretch of Rua da Erva. Documentary references point to houses, adjoining properties, corners of the old Jewish quarter and the presence of Jews who remained there even after the transfer began. This suggests an open and porous quarter, not necessarily a fully gated enclosure.
The first synagogue and the later transfer
The first synagogue of Braga is associated with the western side of the northern stretch of Rua da Erva, near the Praça da Cidade. The surviving references describe it modestly as “houses”, suggesting a simple building without prominent exterior architecture. This fits the wider pattern of many medieval Portuguese synagogues, which were often adapted domestic structures rather than monumental purpose-built buildings.
In 1466 and 1467, the community was moved to the Judiaria Nova, linked to the area later known as Rua de Santo António das Travessas. This transfer did not erase the older quarter from memory. On the contrary, the name Judiaria Velha continued to function as a documentary and topographical reference after the Jewish community’s relocation.
The Judiaria Velha de Braga is therefore a key site for understanding Jewish life in a city dominated by the cathedral and its Cabido. It records a transition from dispersed residence to communal concentration, and then to relocation. It also shows that Jewish urban history in Portugal is often preserved through leases, street names and the afterlife of buildings, not only through monuments.
