Crypto-Judaism - Famous Crypto-Jews

Famous Crypto-Jews

• Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi was a 16th century international banker who created an escape network that saved thousands of Crypto-Jews from the Inquisition. She was also a patron of (Jewish) writers, and a diplomat on behalf of her people, who also attempted to start a modern state of Israel.
• Luis de Carvajal was the governor of the state of Nuevo León, a northern Mexico province in which the restriction against immigration from conversos was relaxed in order to encourage migration to the peril-fraught frontier. He was responsible for bringing a significant group of crypto-Jewish conversos living in Portugal since the Expulsion of 1492.
• Luis de Carvajal el Mozo, was the nephew of Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, the only crypto-Jew of the Spanish colonial era whose memoirs have been preserved.
• Antonio Fernandez Carvajal was a Portuguese merchant in London; "like other Marranos in London, Carvajal prayed at the Catholic chapel of the Spanish ambassador, while simultaneously playing a leading role in the secret Jewish community, which met at the clandestine synagogue at Creechurch Lane."
• Some scholars of Judaic studies believe that Miguel de Cervantes may have been a crypto-Jew or of crypto-Jewish descent.
• Rodrigo Lopez, a converso who fled from Portugal to England and became physician to Queen Elizabeth I.