Great Synagogue of Lisbon

OVERVIEW

The story of Great Synagogue of Lisbon

Medieval Lisbon had several Jewish quarters. The oldest and largest, the Judiaria Grande or Judiaria Velha, lay in the low city by the river and stretched across the parishes of Santa Maria Madalena, São Julião and São Nicolau; it existed at least from the reign of Afonso III in the thirteenth century. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 places the community's large synagogue on the Rua Nova, the street where the wealthiest Jews lived. Nothing is known of when it was built, who built it or what it looked like, and no drawing or plan of it is known.

King Manuel I ordered the Jews to leave Portugal in December 1496, and in 1497 most of those who stayed were forcibly baptised. The Jewish quarters were abolished and their communal buildings passed to the Crown. According to Turismo de Portugal, the Conceição Velha church on Rua da Alfândega stands within the former Judiaria Grande, on the site of a synagogue: in 1502 Manuel gave the place to the Order of Christ, which built a church dedicated to Our Lady of the Conception. That church, which also served as the first church of the Lisbon Misericórdia, was almost entirely destroyed in the earthquake of 1 November 1755 and rebuilt afterwards. Some writers treat the identification of this synagogue with the Great Synagogue as uncertain.

LOCATION

Where it stood

Historic: Rua Nova, Judiaria Grande, Lisbon (exact plot unknown). Today: site associated with the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Velha, Rua da Alfândega 112, 1100-068 Lisboa (approximate).

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The Jewish community

Jews lived in Lisbon long before Portugal's expulsion of 1496-1497, and by the late Middle Ages the city had one of the largest communities in the kingdom. Paths of Faith, the Jewish heritage route of Turismo de Portugal, places the Jewish quarters inside the Fernandine wall, close to the commercial and maritime centre of the city, with the Judiaria Grande the largest and oldest, and counts five synagogues in Lisbon in 1496. The Jewish Virtual Library adds a Judiaria Pequena created under King Dinis, and the Jewish Encyclopedia a third quarter in Alfama created in 1457. The Jewish Encyclopedia names the old families Ibn Yahya and Negro, and says the leading and richest members of the community lived on the Rua Nova, the street of the large synagogue. The same source records that the Rua Nova was plundered and wrecked by Castilian soldiers during the invasion of 1373, and that Jewish houses were attacked again in 1482, when Isaac Abravanel lost all his possessions, including his library. The community's population on the eve of the expulsion is unknown from the sources read.

Architecture and design

No description, drawing, plan or photograph of the Great Synagogue of Lisbon was found in any source read in this research, and its date of construction, architect, size and style are all unknown. The Jewish Encyclopedia says only that it was the large synagogue and that it stood on the Rua Nova. Paths of Faith notes that at least one Lisbon synagogue had 'a degree of monumentality', judging from its inauguration stone, which is now kept in the synagogue at Tomar; it does not say that this stone came from the Great Synagogue, and that link should not be assumed. Whatever survived of the building after 1497 was absorbed into the church that the Order of Christ built from 1502, which Portuguese Wikipedia says was completed in 1534 under Manuel I. That church was in turn almost entirely destroyed in 1755. Its rebuilt successor reuses the Manueline south portal of the earlier church, but no part of the synagogue has been identified in it.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the Great Synagogue itself. The Jewish Encyclopedia lists the chief rabbis of Portugal who lived in Lisbon, among them Judah and Moses Navarro and Judah Cohen, and a Don Abraham who became rabbi in 1484, but it does not say in which of the city's synagogues any of them officiated. It also records a smaller synagogue that Joseph ibn Yahya built at his own expense about 1260, which shows that wealthy families endowed their own prayer houses alongside the main congregation. As the large synagogue of the richest street of the Judiaria Grande, the building would have been the setting for the community's main services and assemblies, but no surviving document read in this research describes its officers, its liturgy, its school or its furnishings. Records of the Lisbon commune in the Portuguese national archives may contain such details; they were not consulted here.

Destruction

The Great Synagogue was not wrecked in a riot. It ceased to be a synagogue by royal order. On 5 December 1496 King Manuel I decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal; in 1497 most of those who remained were forcibly baptised, and the Jewish community of Lisbon ceased to exist. The Jewish quarters were abolished and their synagogues confiscated. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that the large synagogue was turned into a church. Turismo de Portugal records that the Judiaria Grande was extinguished with the expulsion of 1496 and that in 1502 Manuel gave the site of the synagogue to the Order of Christ, which built the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição there. Whether the old building was adapted or pulled down for the new church is not stated in the sources read. The church on the site was itself almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of 1 November 1755.

The community’s fate

Under the decree of December 1496 the Jews were to leave Portugal, but in 1497 the great majority were instead baptised by force and became New Christians, and the Lisbon Jewish community ceased to exist. The Jewish Encyclopedia counted only about 500 Jews in Lisbon as late as 1825. Paths of Faith describes the climate of fear and persecution that followed, culminating in the massacre of New Christians in Lisbon on 19 April 1506, and the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal in 1536, after which the city's converso population steadily lost its wealth and cultural life. Organised Jewish life returned to Lisbon only in the nineteenth century with Jews from Gibraltar and North Africa, and the Shaare Tikvah synagogue, opened in 1904, was the first synagogue built in Portugal since the forced conversions of 1497.

The site today

The site identified with the synagogue is occupied by the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Velha at 112 Rua da Alfândega, near the Praça do Comércio in the parish of Santa Maria Maior. The present church was rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake; its interior dates from the eighteenth century, and its richly carved Manueline south portal, with a rare image of Our Lady of Mercy, survives from the church built after 1502. It has been a national monument since 1910 and was restored by the Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Lisbon and reopened on 8 December 2013. No visible trace of the synagogue is recorded, and the street plan of the medieval Judiaria Grande was largely erased by the rebuilding of the Baixa after 1755.

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