Haverford College Library preserves fragmentary Hebrew Bible leaves associated with Elvas and dated in Tiago Moita’s corpus to 1467. These fragments are a rare material witness to Hebrew book production in late medieval Portugal.

A Hebrew Bible copied in Elvas

Moita identifies the manuscript as a Bible in fragments, produced in Elvas and copied by a single scribe, Samuel al-Faruni. The copy was commissioned by Moisés, son of Abraão Caldes.

This information is important because it preserves more than the survival of a biblical fragment. It records a city, a date, a scribe and a patron. Together, these elements place Elvas within the network of Hebrew manuscript production in fifteenth-century Portugal.

The surviving fragment

An older Haverford catalogue describes the manuscript as one double leaf of vellum, written in two columns of 25 lines per page. The preserved biblical text includes passages from 2 Kings.

The manuscript should not be read as evidence for a book that remained in Elvas. Its relevance lies in what the fragment documents: the copying of Hebrew biblical material in the city before the forced conversion of Portuguese Jews in 1497.

Hebrew book production in Portugal

The fragments belong to the wider corpus of medieval Portuguese Hebrew books. This corpus includes biblical, liturgical, legal, philosophical and scientific manuscripts copied for Jewish readers, often through direct relationships between patrons and professional scribes.

For Elvas, the Haverford Hebrew Bible fragments are especially significant because the material evidence for medieval Jewish life in the city is limited. They preserve a precise documentary trace of Jewish intellectual and scribal activity in 1467.

The Centro Interpretativo Ephraim Bueno is located at Rua Dr. Ricardo Machado, nº 13, in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo. It is dedicated to the Jewish presence in the municipality and to Ephraim Bueno, a Jewish physician and writer born in Castelo Rodrigo in 1599.

Ephraim Bueno and the Sephardic diaspora

Ephraim Bueno, also known in Christian or Iberian contexts as Martim Álvares Bueno, belonged to a Portuguese Jewish family whose history later became connected with the Sephardic diaspora in northern Europe. He studied medicine, settled in Amsterdam and became part of the Portuguese Jewish community of the city.

In Amsterdam, Bueno was active as a physician, intellectual and writer. He was also connected to the world of Hebrew and Sephardic printing. His figure is especially known today because Rembrandt van Rijn portrayed him in the seventeenth century. The Rijksmuseum preserves a portrait of Ephraim Bueno painted by Rembrandt between 1645 and 1647.

Bueno died in Amsterdam in 1665 and was buried at Beth Haim, the Portuguese Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, near Amsterdam.

Jewish heritage in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo

The centre was inaugurated in July 2020 by the Municipality of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, during the municipal holiday celebrations. It was created as the main interpretive space for the local Jewish heritage route, bringing together dispersed traces of Jewish presence in the municipality.

The exhibition presents the Jewish history of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo through royal chancery records, Inquisition processes, local marks of Jewish presence and interpretive material connected to the former judiaria. It includes several exhibition rooms, a small area prepared to function as a synagogue, a replica of Rembrandt’s portrait of Ephraim Bueno and the genealogical tree of his family.

The Centro Interpretativo Ephraim Bueno today

The Centro Interpretativo Ephraim Bueno connects the medieval Jewish presence in Castelo Rodrigo with the later history of Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam. Its importance lies in this bridge between local documentation, frontier Jewish settlement in the Beira Interior and the wider Sephardic diaspora of the seventeenth century.

The Casa da Memória da Presença Judaica is a municipal museum located at Rua das Olarias nº 43, in the historic centre of Castelo Branco. It is dedicated to the Jewish presence in the city, the former Judiaria, and the memory of Jews and New Christians persecuted by the Inquisition.

The museum and its building

The museum opened on 11 November 2016, in buildings acquired and rehabilitated by the Municipality of Castelo Branco. During the intervention, a significant section of the old city wall was kept visible inside the building. The museum was created to present the Jewish history of Castelo Branco through the former Judiaria, local rituals, objects associated with Jewish life, the Inquisition, and figures connected to the city.

The exhibition begins on the ground floor, with reception and shop, where publications and kosher products are available. The same level introduces the foundation of the Judiaria of Castelo Branco, Jewish rituals and festivals, and the mechanisms of inquisitorial persecution.

Casa da Memória da Presença Judaica and the Inquisition

Between the ground floor and the first floor is the Memorial das Vítimas Albicastrenses da Inquisição. This memorial records 329 identified and studied Inquisition processes connected to Castelo Branco. Within this group, 21 people are identified as having died as a result of inquisitorial persecution.

This section is the strongest documentary core of the museum. It connects the Jewish and New Christian history of Castelo Branco not only to the medieval Judiaria, but also to the long afterlife of forced conversion, surveillance, denunciation and trial before the Portuguese Inquisition.

Jewish and New Christian figures

The first floor is dedicated to Jewish and New Christian figures from Castelo Branco, including Amato Lusitano, Afonso de Paiva, Maria Gomes, Elias de Montalto, Moisés de Montalto and Manuel Joaquim Henriques de Paiva. The museum presents these figures within a wider timeline of Jewish presence in Portugal and beyond.

The upper level includes a study and research area, with access to documents, a physical library and digital material related to Jewish history, New Christians and the Inquisition.

The Statue of Amato Lusitano stands in Praça do Município, in the central area of Castelo Branco. It honours João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, known in Europe as Amato Lusitano, one of the most important Portuguese physicians of the sixteenth century.

Monument to Amato Lusitano

The monument was created by the sculptor Joaquim Martins Correia and inaugurated on 27 May 1956. The bronze statue represents Amato standing and holding an open book, placed on a granite pedestal in front of the municipal buildings of Castelo Branco.

The statue is not only a civic monument. It also marks the city’s public recognition of a physician whose life was shaped by Jewish ancestry, medical scholarship, exile and the wider Sephardic diaspora after the forced conversion of Portuguese Jews in 1497.

João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco

João Rodrigues was born in Castelo Branco in 1511, into a family of Jewish origin. He studied at the University of Salamanca and received medical training at a young age. After returning to Portugal, he worked in Lisbon before leaving for Antwerp, under the pressure of growing persecution against people of Jewish descent.

From Antwerp, Amato’s career developed across several European centres. He lived and worked in Ferrara, Ancona, Rome, Ragusa and Salonica. In Ferrara, he taught at the university. In Italy, he became known as a physician to important patients, while also producing medical works that circulated across the learned world of Renaissance Europe.

Medical work and legacy

Amato Lusitano became especially known for the Centuriae Curationum Medicinalium. This work gathered seven hundred clinical cases, organized into seven “centuries” of one hundred cases each. The cases record patients, symptoms, diagnoses, treatments and medical observations. For this reason, Amato is remembered as one of the major clinical authors of Renaissance medicine.

He also wrote on Dioscorides and materia medica, the study of medicinal substances. His work connected classical medical knowledge with plants, drugs and products circulating through Portuguese routes from Africa, the Indian Ocean and the East. This made him part of a broader medical culture in which observation, travel, commerce and textual scholarship were closely linked.

Amato is also cited in the history of anatomy for his observations on the venous system, especially the valves of the azygos vein. His medical career combined clinical practice, anatomical attention, humanist learning and the experience of religious displacement.

Amato Lusitano died in Salonica in 1568, during a plague epidemic, while providing medical care to the sick.

Diáspora is a public memorial located in Praça Postiguinho de Valadares, in Castelo Branco. It was created as a tribute to Amato Lusitano and to those persecuted because of intolerance, exile and religious repression.

Diáspora memorial

The work was created by the Spanish artist Machaco and inaugurated on 20 March 2012, during the civic commemorations connected to Castelo Branco and the memory of Amato Lusitano. Contemporary reports describe it as a public artwork dedicated to Amato and to those who suffered persecution.

The memorial should be read within the wider local recognition of João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, known as Amato Lusitano. Born in Castelo Branco in 1511, he came from a family of Jewish origin and became one of the major physicians of the sixteenth century.

Amato Lusitano and exile

Amato studied medicine in Salamanca and later lived in several European cities, including Antwerp, Ferrara, Ancona, Rome, Ragusa and Salonica. His career was shaped by scholarship, medical practice, publication, movement and exile.

His most important medical legacy is associated with the Centuriae Curationum Medicinalium, a collection of clinical cases that records patients, symptoms, treatments and observations. This work helped establish his reputation as one of the important clinical writers of Renaissance medicine.

Jewish and New Christian memory

The title Diáspora connects the monument to the forced displacement experienced by Jews, New Christians and other people persecuted for origin, belief, thought or religious identity. In this context, the memorial marks Amato Lusitano not only as an individual figure, but also as part of a broader history of persecution and Sephardic displacement.

In Castelo Branco, the Diáspora memorial stands alongside other contemporary forms of public remembrance connected to Jewish and New Christian history, including the statue of Amato Lusitano and the Casa da Memória da Presença Judaica.

The Casa da Memória da Medicina Sefardita Ribeiro Sanches is located on Rua D. Sancho I, in the historic centre of Penamacor. It is the town’s main museum space dedicated to Sephardic medicine, New Christian memory and the history of Portuguese Jews connected to medical practice.

Sephardic medicine in Penamacor

The museum opened in December 2021 and forms part of the wider heritage work associated with the Rede de Judiarias de Portugal. Penamacor was one of the founding municipalities of this network, which places the museum within a national geography of Jewish and Sephardic memory.

Its exhibition is dedicated to figures connected to medical practice and healing, including physicians, físicos and apothecaries of Sephardic origin or New Christian ancestry. It also presents Portuguese Jewish and New Christian doctors whose careers developed beyond Portugal, often after exile, persecution or forced displacement.

The Corredor de Todos os Nomes

The museum is organized into four main areas. The first introduces the Rede de Judiarias de Portugal and situates Penamacor within the broader history of Jewish and New Christian presence in Portugal.

The second area is the Corredor de Todos os Nomes. This corridor includes a mural with about five hundred names identified in Inquisition proceedings from the tribunals of Lisbon, Coimbra and Évora. These names connect the museum directly to the documentary record of New Christians persecuted by the Holy Office.

The third area is dedicated to the Sephardic medical diaspora. It presents major Portuguese Jewish and New Christian physicians from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, including Garcia de Orta, Amato Lusitano and Rodrigo de Castro.

Ribeiro Sanches and the Sephardic medical diaspora

The upper floor is dedicated to António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches, born in Penamacor in 1699, into a New Christian family. This section presents his life, writings, intellectual network and European trajectory, from Portugal to Salamanca, Leiden, Russia and Paris.

Ribeiro Sanches became one of the major Portuguese physicians and intellectuals of the eighteenth century. The Casa da Memória da Medicina Sefardita Ribeiro Sanches connects his biography to the history of medicine, the Enlightenment, the Sephardic diaspora and the consequences of Inquisition persecution.

António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches was born in Penamacor on 7 March 1699. He was the son of Simão Nunes, a shoemaker and merchant, and Ana Nunes Ribeiro. His family belonged to the New Christian population of Beira Baixa, descended from Jews forced to convert in Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century.

New Christian origins and exile

In 1716, Ribeiro Sanches enrolled at the University of Coimbra, where he studied in the field of law. He later moved to Salamanca, where he studied medicine and completed his medical training in 1724.

In 1726, he left Portugal after being denounced to the Inquisition for practices associated with Judaism. This departure placed him within the wider movement of Portuguese New Christians who left the kingdom because of inquisitorial persecution, family pressure, or the search for religious and intellectual freedom.

Ribeiro Sanches in the Sephardic diaspora

His exile first took him to London, where he entered the Portuguese Sephardic environment connected to Bevis Marks and to members of his own family. He later continued his medical formation on the continent and reached Leiden, where he studied under Herman Boerhaave, one of the most influential medical teachers of eighteenth-century Europe.

In 1731, Ribeiro Sanches went to Russia after Boerhaave recommended him for service at the Russian court. He worked as a military physician and later became connected to the imperial medical world of Saint Petersburg. In 1739, he was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg and was also recognized by the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

After leaving Russia, he settled in Paris in 1747. There he lived among the intellectual networks of the Enlightenment and remained active as a physician, writer and reformist thinker. His works included Dissertation sur la Maladie Vénérienne, Tratado da Conservação da Saúde dos Povos, Cartas sobre a Educação da Mocidade, Método para Aprender e Estudar a Medicina and Mémoire sur les Bains de Vapeur en Russie.

The Casa da Memória and Ribeiro Sanches

António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches became one of the major Portuguese physicians and intellectuals of the eighteenth century. His life connects Penamacor to New Christian history, the Inquisition, the Sephardic diaspora, medical reform, Enlightenment thought and the circulation of scientific knowledge across Europe.

He died in Paris on 14 October 1783. Today, his memory is presented in Penamacor through the Casa da Memória da Medicina Sefardita Ribeiro Sanches, whose upper floor is dedicated to his life, writings and European intellectual network.

Sahar Hassamain Synagogue, in Ponta Delgada, is the most important surviving Jewish religious building in the Azores and one of the key monuments of modern Jewish life in Portugal. Built in 1836 at Rua do Brum, it was founded by members of the nineteenth-century Jewish community that settled on São Miguel after Moroccan Sephardic Jews began arriving in the island in late 1818 or early 1819. The synagogue gave architectural form to a community that had reestablished Jewish religious life in the Azores through trade, family networks, and communal organization.

The Jewish Community of Ponta Delgada

The Jews who settled in Ponta Delgada in the early nineteenth century came mainly from Morocco and were active above all in commerce. Over the following decades they formed the main Jewish community in the Azores. One of the central figures in that history was Abraham Bensaúde, born in Morocco, who became a leading member of the community and is closely associated with the founding of the synagogue. In this context, Sahar Hassamain was not an isolated building. It was the religious center of a small but active Sephardic community established in the city during the liberal period.

The Building

The synagogue was installed within the urban fabric of Ponta Delgada in a discreet building that outwardly resembles an ordinary townhouse. That exterior restraint is one of its defining features. Inside, however, the structure was adapted to Jewish worship and communal use. The building preserved the liturgical organization expected of a synagogue while remaining architecturally integrated into the street. This combination of modest exterior and distinct interior reflects the scale and character of Jewish life in the Azores in the nineteenth century.

Decline and Reopening

During the twentieth century, the decline of the local Jewish community led to the building’s long disuse. Even so, it remained the clearest surviving architectural trace of Jewish life on São Miguel. After restoration, it reopened in 2015 as the Museu Hebraico Sahar Hassamaim. Today it functions as a museum and heritage site, preserving the memory of the Jewish families who reestablished communal life in Ponta Delgada in the nineteenth century.

The Judiaria de Tomar occupied the area of today’s Rua Dr. Joaquim Jacinto, the old Rua da Judiaria, later called Rua Nova. It was a central street of the town, close to commercial activity and integrated into the urban core of Tomar rather than set apart on the margins.

First Evidence of the Jewish Community

The oldest evidence usually associated with the Jewish presence of Tomar is the epitaph of Rabbi José de Tomar, dated 1315. By the end of the fourteenth century the community was already institutionally visible. In 1384 there is reference to the serviço geral dos judeus de Tomar, which shows that the Jews of the town already formed a recognized and taxable communal body.

The Comuna of Tomar

The Judiaria de Tomar was the space of an organized comuna, not just a cluster of houses. The Jewish community of the town had enough stability and structure to maintain its own collective life, and by the fifteenth century it was large enough to sustain a defined quarter and a synagogue. Later historiography has estimated a population of around 150 to 200 Jews in mid-fifteenth-century Tomar, rising to about 250 to 300 by the time of the expulsion, with additional growth linked to Jews who arrived from Castile.

Why Jews Settled in Tomar

Tomar was one of the main political, administrative, and economic centers linked to the Order of Christ. That position helps explain the consolidation of a Jewish community there. The organization of the Judiaria is associated in local and historical tradition with the period of Infante D. Henrique, under whose protection Jews were settled in this central street. The quarter was therefore connected to the wider importance of Tomar itself and to the urban opportunities created by a town with strong commercial and institutional life.

Street and Limits

The Judiaria was organized around a single main street. Local historical interpretation places its limits near Rua Direita and Rua dos Moinhos and holds that the quarter had gates at its ends, closed at night. This gives the Judiaria de Tomar a clear urban form: a controlled Jewish street inside the town, but in a central and economically active area.

What Survives

The old street survives today as Rua Dr. Joaquim Jacinto. The former synagogue still stands there and remains the clearest material marker of the Judiaria. Even though the gates no longer survive, the location of the quarter is still easy to understand in the present city through the continuity of the street and the permanence of its main monument.

Casa da Memória Judaica da Raia Sabugalense is a museum and interpretation center created to present the Jewish and crypto-Jewish history of the Sabugal border region. Opened in 2017 in the historic center of Sabugal, it is not a former synagogue or a preserved medieval Jewish institution, but a modern space built to gather and explain the local evidence.

The Museum

The museum focuses on the historical presence of Jews in Sabugal and on the later history of New Christians and crypto-Jews in the region. Its importance lies in making that material legible through documents, local history, and exhibition narrative. Instead of centering on one monumental object, it presents a broader picture of Jewish life, forced conversion, concealment, and persecution in this border area.

Inquisition and Local History

One of the strongest points of the institution is its use of inquisitorial documentation. The exhibition material highlights the high number of Inquisition cases from Sabugal linked to accusations of Judaizing, showing how deeply this history marked the town and its surroundings. In that sense, the Casa da Memória Judaica da Raia Sabugalense is important because it turns a regional and often overlooked history into a structured public memory.

The Sabugal Border Region

The museum also helps place Sabugal within the wider history of the Portuguese-Spanish borderlands, where mobility, refuge, commerce, and religious pressure shaped Jewish and New Christian experience over time. Its value is therefore not architectural, but historical and interpretive.