Joseph Nasi - Early Life

Early Life

Joao Micas, Yosef Nasi was born in Spain as a Marrano (practicing Judaism in secret), and was a friend of Maximilian, nephew of the Habsburg King Charles I of Spain. He escaped to Portugal after Charles decided to confiscate the Mendes fortune, and, after the Holy Inquisition began operating against Portuguese Marranos, moved to Antwerp, in the Habsburg Netherlands, with his aunt, Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi. He studied at the University of Louvain, but had to flee the Inquisition in 1547. He then moved to France and later to Venice, before finally leaving for the Ottoman realm in 1554, Where he married Doña Reyna the daughter of his aunt Gracia Mendes Nasi.

Read more about this topic:  Joseph Nasi

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    “The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “One perceives that again and again she has destroyed her life when it was forming into shapes of happiness because of her loyalty to the early misery, her conviction that that has the sanction of ultimate reality, and that beside it all other things are trivial.”
    —Rebecca West (1892–1983)