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JewishHistoryעברית

Execution of Portuguese conversos at Ancona

Date
1556
Location
AnconaItaly
Then part of
Papal States
Perpetrators
  • Pope Paul IV (Religious authority)
  • Roman Inquisition (Religious authority)
Killed (estimate)
24 – 25[1]Portuguese conversos (Marranos) who had returned to Judaism, hanged and then burned. The Jewish Encyclopedia Ancona article names twenty-three men and one woman; Encyclopaedia Judaica gives twenty-five burned at the stake. Paul IV had invited Levantine and Portuguese merchants to the port under earlier popes; he then had about a hundred Marranos imprisoned and, according to Encyclopaedia Judaica, fifty sentenced by the Inquisition.
Worldwide

0.0018% – 0.0031% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1490)[14]

Category
Forced conversion, Massacre, Persecution
Confidence
DisputedSources agree that Portuguese conversos in Ancona were tried and burned under Paul IV after the 1555 bull. They differ on the year of the burnings (1556 in the Jewish Encyclopedia's narrative of the March 1556 Ottoman letter; 1555 in Encyclopaedia Judaica's Ancona article) and on the number killed (24 in the Jewish Encyclopedia Ancona article; 25 in Encyclopaedia Judaica).

Summary

After Pope Paul IV's bull of July 1555, papal officers moved against Portuguese conversos in Ancona who had been allowed to settle as merchants under Paul III and Julius III. The Jewish Encyclopedia records that the commissioner Cesare Galuaba was sent to imprison those who refused baptism; sixty-three accepted baptism, and twenty-three men and one woman were hanged and then burned in the Piazza della Mostra. Encyclopaedia Judaica states that fifty were sentenced and twenty-five burned. Sultan Suleiman II, petitioned by Doña Gracia Nasi, wrote on 9 March 1556 asking that Turkish subjects be released. Levantine Jews attempted a commercial boycott of Ancona, which was only partly carried out. The date of the burnings is given as 1556 in the Jewish Encyclopedia's account of the sultan's letter; Encyclopaedia Judaica's Ancona article places them in 1555.

Sources

  1. Vittore Castiglione, Ancona (section "Persecution under Pope Paul IV"). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  2. Ancona. Encyclopedia.com (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  3. Paul IV. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 800,000 – 1,300,000[14]c. 1490DellaPergola's Fundamentals Table 2 gives 1.3 million in 1490. Botticini and Eckstein Table 9 give about 0.8–1 million for the late fifteenth century; their Chosen Few summary puts world Jewry below one million on the eve of the 1492–97 Iberian expulsions.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
  13. Joseph Jacobs, Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  50. Greece. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  56. Jewish Populations in the Arab World. Jewish Virtual Library (citing Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2021 / AJYB 2023)
  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
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  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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