Antwerp had no open Jewish community in the early modern period. It had a community of Portuguese New Christians — the Nação Portuguesa — who lived as Catholics from about 1512 until the mid-seventeenth century, financed the escape of others from Portugal, and passed them on to Amsterdam, Hamburg, London and Livorno.
Florbela Veiga Frade’s judgement is that without Antwerp there might have been no Western Sephardic diaspora.
That is why this page matters even though there was never a synagogue here. If your family reached Amsterdam or Hamburg from Portugal, there is a fair chance it passed through Antwerp, and was recorded there as Catholic.
Was Belgium a country then?
No. Belgium is a nineteenth-century creation.
This territory was the Spanish and then the Austrian Netherlands. It stayed Catholic; the northern provinces became Protestant. That division is the whole story: Antwerp was under the Spanish crown but outside the reach of the Portuguese Inquisition, and business could be done there in Portuguese.
Bruges
The Portuguese factory in the Low Countries was at Bruges until the Zwin silted up and ships could no longer reach the city. It moved to Antwerp. João Brandão, the first consul of the Portuguese nation at Antwerp, came from Bruges. Records of the Bruges community are thin.
What was the Portuguese Nação?
A nação was a merchant nation: traders from one country resident in a foreign city, with their own officers, privileges and internal jurisdiction. Antwerp had Spanish, Italian, English, German and Genoese nations as well as the Portuguese. The city gave the Portuguese Nação a building and privileges in 1511.
Not everyone in the Nação was a New Christian. It was a commercial body and included Old Christians. Membership shows a family was Portuguese and mercantile, nothing more. This is the commonest error made with the Antwerp material.
The Nação held charitable funds, cared for orphans and widows, judged commercial disputes between members, and protected refugees arriving from Portugal. The Sephardic communities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and London later used the same structure.
Twenty New Christian households were listed in 1540. Frade puts the maximum size of the Nação at around five hundred people.
Where did they come from?
Lisbon, and the Alentejo towns of Évora and Elvas, which sat on the commercial road between Lisbon and Madrid. Porto supplied others.
Charles V granted the New Christians a letter in 1526 permitting them to remain in Antwerp and travel on into Germany.
Getting out of Portugal was expensive. An exit permit cost 500 to 600 cruzados, about thirty years’ income for an ordinary person. Collective pardons cost more: 5,000 cruzados in 1535, and 125,000 for the pardon that financed King Sebastian’s African expedition. The merchant houses paid.
What did they trade in?
Antwerp was the northern end of the Portuguese spice route. The royal pepper monopoly was run from the factory by a feitor, always a nobleman, who set the price. Sugar, cochineal, timber and textiles followed, and gemstones.
Diamonds, pearls and finished jewellery were the New Christian speciality. Guilds were largely closed to them; trade was not. Jewels are valuable, portable and easily moved at short notice — which is the point, for a family that might need to leave. The Antwerp Duartes had relatives dealing in gemstones at Amsterdam, Lisbon, Paris and Hamburg, all speaking Portuguese.
A guild of diamond and ruby cutters was founded at Antwerp in 1582, over the opposition of the Portuguese Nação under Diego I Duarte.
This trade is not the origin of the modern Antwerp diamond industry, which dates from the 1890s and was Ashkenazi. The two are routinely confused.
What happened in 1549 and 1585?
1549. The New Christians were expelled and the Portuguese royal factory closed. A consulate of merchants replaced it, headed by an elected consul rather than a royal nobleman.
1585. Antwerp fell to Spain. More than half its population of around 100,000 left for the north. The Scheldt was closed to shipping, confirmed at the peace of 1648. The diamond trade moved to Amsterdam.
1587–1703. Portuguese continued to leave Antwerp for Amsterdam in every decade, heaviest in the 1630s.
Families divided deliberately. Manuel Duarte moved to Amsterdam around 1620 to live openly as a Jew while his brother Gaspar stayed in Antwerp as a Catholic and kept the business. The Antwerp branch ended in 1691. A family appearing in both a Catholic parish register and an Amsterdam Jewish register is not two families.
Did they practise Judaism?
Not publicly. There was no synagogue.
Frade identifies three clandestine congregations meeting in private houses: at the Vega sisters’, at the Castro house, and at the Costa house. Kosher meat came from Amsterdam. The Antwerp households were connected to Milan, and Milan to the Hakham of Hamburg.
Several men were imprisoned in the 1530s, including Nuno Henriques, and released on payment. Gaspar Duarte was accused of being a Jew in 1608. Constantijn Huygens’s daughter described Diego Duarte as “un juif” in 1663.
In 1682 the church pressed the magistrates to expel the New Christians, and a badge and a ghetto were discussed. The Bench of Burgomaster and Aldermen refused:
En les chassant absolument, plusieurs centaines de familles se retireront de notre ville et un grand nombre de maisons demeureront vuides et le commerce en souffrira extremement, principalement celuy des diamans.
If we expel them, several hundred families will quit our city, many houses will stand empty, and trade will suffer badly, especially the diamond trade.
A covert synagogue was closed in 1692. Nothing further was done.
What records survive?
Censuses of the Portuguese Nação, 1571–1666. Published by I. S. Révah, ‘Pour l’histoire des marranes à Anvers: Recensements de la “Nation Portugaise” de 1571 à 1666’, Revue des études juives CXXII (1963). Membership lists running eighty years past the fall of the city in 1585. This is the central source.
Antwerp City Archive (Felixarchief).
| Series | Contents |
|---|---|
| Wijkboeken | House ownership, street by street |
| Notarial archives (N) | Deeds, contracts, property transactions, wills. Digitised and searchable online |
| Vierschaar and aldermen’s registers | Litigation, including disputes within the Nação |
| Certificatieboeken | Attestations and certificates issued by the city |
Parish registers. New Christians were baptised, married and buried as Catholics. Sint-Jacobskerk holds the Duarte family grave. Nothing in a baptism entry identifies a family as of Jewish descent — which is precisely the difficulty.
Where else should you look?
Amsterdam City Archive, inventory 334 — archive of the Portuguese-Israelite community. Holds Antwerp business papers inherited by the Amsterdam branches: Diego Duarte’s letter book 1681–89 is item 682, Manuel Levy Duarte’s Antwerp ledger is item 691.
Amsterdam marriage banns and notarial archives — for those who left. The banns record place of origin, which is how the list below was compiled.
Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon — Portuguese Inquisition. Attempting to flee to Flanders was itself a charge. Men born in Antwerp were tried at Lisbon.
Archivo General de Simancas — Spanish administration of the Netherlands.
Hamburg — the other daughter community. Many families appear in both.
Who is named in the Antwerp and Brussels sources?
These gave Antwerp or Brussels as their place of origin when marrying in Amsterdam, 1587–1703. This is not a complete record of the Nação: for that, see Révah.
Antwerp. Sebastian Pimentel (1587, 1603) · Emanuel d’Orta (1591) · Benjamin Touro (1593) · David Abenhacar (1603) · Philip Ximenes (1604) · Manasse de Aragon (1604) · Aron Hamiz (1604) · Samuel d’Andrade (1611) · David Senior (1611) · Antonio d’Azevedo (1613) · George d’Azevedo (1618) · Emanuel da Serra (1621) · Samuel da Serra (1621) · Duarte Dias de Paz (1622) · Luis Mendes de Paz (1622) · Jacob da Serra Abrabanel (1622) · Jacob de Pinto (1630) · Samuel de Paz (1630) · George Spinossa (1636) · Benjamin Spinossa (1636) · Isaac de Paz (1636) · Mozes de Pinto (1637) · Benjamin da Serra (1637) · Mozes Rodrigo Alvares (1637) · Isaac Marchena (1638) · Isaac Gomes de Souza (1643) · Jacob d’Avila (1654) · Isaac Alvares Veiga (1658) · Jacob Lorenzo (1658) · Benjamin de Campos (1659) · Daniel Pereira de Campos (1661) · Diego Ramirez (1662) · Isaac Curiel (1662) · Abraham Alvares Veiga (1664) · Antonio da Silva Castro (1671) · Raphael Palacios (1686) · Abraham Nunes da Costa (1690) · Mozes Rodriguez da Costa (1691) · Mozes Israel Mello (1694) · Juda Nunes da Costa (1700) · Benjamin Nunes da Costa (1700) · Joel Wartel (1702) · Abraham Quiros da Silva (1703). Undated: Isaac de Pinto, Simon da Serra, Emanuel Teixeira, Abraham da Silva Castro, Isaac da Costa, Samuel da Serra, Emanuel da Serra.
Brussels. Diego Fernando Coronel (1649) · Isaac Coronel (1649) · Joseph de Lima Burgos (1697).
Tried by the Portuguese Inquisition, Antwerp or Flanders connection. Abraão Cohen, merchant, born Antwerp, tried 1580 · João Carvalho, broker, born Antwerp, tried 1607–10 · Paulo Zonio, factor for Flemish merchandise, born Antwerp, tried 1618–20 · Francisco Rodrigues, resident Antwerp, tried 1618–20 · Duarte Nunes da Costa, resident Flanders, tried 1638 · Diogo Nunes da Veiga, merchant, resident Lisbon, Hamburg and Flanders · Ana de Solis, resident Flanders · Álvaro Gomes, merchant, tried 1569 for attempting to flee to Flanders · José Coutinho, tried 1623–26 for the same.
The Duartes
Diego I Duarte came from Lisbon before 1571 and appears in the Nação list of that year. The family had been Abolais before conversion. His son Gaspar I was consul of the Nação in 1641. His grandson Diego II was court jeweller to Charles I from 1635. The Antwerp line ended with Diego II in 1691. The Amsterdam branch — Manuel Duarte’s descendants, and the firm of Athias & Levy — continued.
What about after 1794?
The French annexed the territory in 1794 and brought emancipation, with civil registration from 1796. Belgium became a kingdom in 1830 and recognised Judaism as an official religion in 1831. The Central Jewish Consistory was founded in 1832. The Great Synagogue of Brussels was built in 1876–77.
These communities were overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, and are not the subject of this page.
The world diamond trade shifted back from Amsterdam to Antwerp from the 1890s.
The present Sephardic congregation in Brussels, the Synagogue Séfarade Unifiée, descends largely from Jews of Rhodes and Morocco who settled in the Belgian Congo and left at independence. It has no continuity with the Nação.
Further reading
Florbela Veiga Frade, As Comunidades Sefarditas e a Nação Portuguesa de Antuérpia.
Hans Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit (Wiesbaden, 1977).
I. S. Révah, ‘Pour l’histoire des marranes à Anvers: Recensements de la “Nation Portugaise” de 1571 à 1666’, Revue des études juives CXXII (1963).
Timothy De Paepe, ‘Diego Duarte II (1612–1691): a converso’s experience in seventeenth-century Antwerp’, Jewish History 24 (2010).
Edgar R. Samuel, ‘Manuel Levy Duarte (1631–1714): An Amsterdam Merchant Jeweller and His Trade with London’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 27 (1978–80).
Luc Dequeker and Veerle Seymus, ‘Les autorités de la ville d’Anvers sur l’émancipation des Juifs Portugais, août 1682’, Lias 16 (1989).
Floris Prims, ‘Joden te Antwerpen in 1682–1694’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis (1937).
Sephardic World lectures
- The Nação Portuguesa in Antwerp — Florbela Veiga Frade (2021)
- I. S. Révah, The Scholar who Revolutionised Sephardic Studies — Carsten Wilke (2025)
Help us find records
We are looking for:
- A transcription or scan of Révah’s 1571–1666 censuses of the Portuguese Nação
- Any index to the Antwerp notarial archives identifying Portuguese merchants
- Baptisms, marriages and burials of Portuguese families in the Antwerp parish registers, especially Sint-Jacobskerk
- Material on the Bruges Portuguese community before the move to Antwerp
- Records of the Brussels Sephardic congregation and its Congo origins
- Family papers from any of the families named above
Please email [email protected]. Material contributed is credited, and we work under whatever conditions you set.
Research services
Antwerp research means Catholic parish registers, notarial deeds and Inquisition trials in three languages, with the family recorded under a Christian name throughout. If you would like help, you can hire a Sephardic genealogist.
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See also: Sephardic Jews of the Netherlands · Sephardic Genealogy in Germany: Hamburg · Sephardic Jews of Portugal