Background
Dona Beatrice de Luna or Gracia Nasi was born in Lisbon. The family was from Aragon and was forcibly converted Jews known as Conversos (also called Crypto-Jews, Marranos and Secret Jews). While still Jewish, they had fled to Portugal when the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, expelled the Jews in 1492. Five years later, in 1497, they were forcibly converted to Catholicism along with all the other Jews in Portugal at that time. Her father was Alvaro de Luna of Aragon. Her mother was Phillipa Benveniste, a great granddaughter of Don Abraham Benveniste of Castile.
Read more about this topic: Gracia Mendes Nasi
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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