Il a/avait une relation avec Jael.
Enfant(s):
The earliest known member of this branch Gideon Abudiente, great-grandfather of wife of brother-in-law of step 3rd great-grandfather of husband of 2nd great-aunt (Alice Mary Curtis), was a Portuguese Marrano from Lisbon. The Marranos, or New Christians, were families of Jewish descent who had been forced to convert to Christianity. However carefully they abandoned or concealed their Judaism, or tried to buy their way out of persecution, the New Christians were never quite safe from the Inquisition, or from disgruntled Catholics who tended to slaughter suspected Jews whenever they needed a scapegoat.
An escape network had been set up, involving ‘safe’ ships which the Marranos boarded surreptitiously hoping to reach Protestant ports where the local intolerance was against Catholics rather than Jews. Perhaps that was how Gideon escaped. It was risky, and meant abandoning property and relatives, who might suffer reprisals.
Or perhaps Gideon used a window of opportunity for escape which opened in 1605. The year began with a particularly nasty campaign of torture and humiliation against the New Christians of Lisbon, which only ended when they managed to bribe enough courtiers and advisers of King Philip III for the king to accept an enormous sum of about 2 million cruzados in return for a general pardon allowing them to emigrate with their possessions.
The Grand Inquisitor in Lisbon, and the population, were not best pleased with being denied Jewish blood and plunder, and in 1610 the pardon was revoked. But by then young Gideon Abudiente was safely in Amsterdam. He may well have travelled with brothers or other relatives, since there are records of other Abudientes in the Amsterdam community.
Persecution on the grounds of religion was forbidden in Holland, under the Treaty of Utrecht. The first three Marranos arrived there after a perilous voyage in 1593, and were soon followed by many more along with Gideon Abudiente. They were free to abandon the pretence of being Christian, and keen to embrace their ‘Jewish roots’.
Amsterdam profited from this accession of Jews. Holland was a poor country , and the Portuguese Jews brought great wealth into the land. They were successful merchants who fostered Dutch trade all over the Old and New Worlds. And they not only increased the city’s material riches, they increased its intellectual wealth too6. The Marranos of Amsterdam created an exhilarating centre of Jewish music, thought, scholarship and poetry.
Gideon Abudiente fitted right in with this mix of merchants and intellectuals. Among his sons, grandsons and in-laws were poets, playwrights and a grammarian on the intellectual side, balanced by the prosperous mercantile sons, grandsons and in-laws who traded in India, Brazil, the West Indies and Europe.
Gideon Abudiente | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jael | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=67901979&pid=3782/ Ancestry.com