Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal ( pt, Francisca Nunes de Carvalhal) (ca. 1540,

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

– December 8, 1596,

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital city, capital and primate city, largest city of Mexico, and the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North Amer ...

) was a Marrana (Crypto-Jew) in New Spain executed by burning at the stake by the

Inquisition The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...

for judaizing in 1596.

Arrival in Mexico

Around 1580 Don Luis de Carabajal, Spanish governor of Nuevo León, brought with him to Mexico his brother-in-law, Don Francisco Rodríguez de Matos, and his sister, Doña Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal, with eight of their nine children, Doña Isabel, the oldest, 25 years of age, widow of Gabriel de Herrera; Doña Catalina, Doña Mariana, Doña Leonor, Don Baltasar, Don

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

, Miguel and Anica (the last two being very young). Another son, Gaspar, a pious young man, perhaps a monk, in the convent of Santo Domingo, Mexico, had arrived a short time before. Doña Catalina and Doña Leonor married respectively Antonio Diaz de Caceres (see ''

Caceres family Caceres was the name of a family, members of which lived in Venezuela, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, Mexico, Honduras, Peru, Suriname, the West Indies, and the United States. They came from the city of Cáceres, Spain, Cáceres in Spain. Fr ...

'') and Jorge de Almeida—two Spanish merchants residing in Mexico City and interested in the

Taxco Taxco de Alarcón (; usually referred to as simply Taxco) is a small city and administrative center of Taxco de Alarcón Municipality located in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Taxco is located in the north-central part of the state, from the cit ...

mines. The entire family then removed to the capital, where, in the year 1590, while in the midst of prosperity, and seemingly leading Christian lives, they were seized by the Inquisition.

Auto-da-fé

The eldest, Doña Isabel, was tortured until she implicated the whole of the Carabajal family.La persecución inquisitorial: el caso de la familia Carbajal
.

La Crónica de Hoy ''La Crónica de Hoy'' is a Mexican newspaper published in Mexico City. The newspaper was launched in 1996 by its founder, Pablo Hiriart. ''La Crónica de Hoy'' has been directed by journalist Guillermo Ortega Ruiz since 2007. See also * List of ...

The whole family was forced to confess and abjure at a public auto-de-fé, celebrated on Saturday, February 24, 1590. Francisca was the only one tortured, taking five rounds on the string rack. Luis de Carabajal the younger, with his mother and four sisters, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and his brother, Baltasar, who had fled upon the first warning of danger, was, along with his deceased father Francisco Rodriguez de Matos, burnt in effigy. In January, 1595, Doña Francisca and her children were accused of a relapse into

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...

and convicted.

Relapse

During their imprisonment they were able to communicate with one another with Spanish pear seeds, on which they wrote touching messages of encouragement to remain true to their faith. They were found out and at the resulting auto-da-fé, Doña Francisca and her children, Isabel, Catalina, Leonor, and Luis, were burned at the stake, together with Manuel Diaz, Beatriz Enriquez, Diego Enriquez, and Manuel de Lucena, being accused of ''relapsos'', term used to those repeatedly accused of judaizing.Women of the Carvajal Family
Jewish Women's Archive Of her other children, Doña Mariana, who lost her reason for a time, was tried and put to death at an auto-da-fé held in Mexico City on March 25, 1601; Anica, the youngest child, being

reconciled ''Put Your Hands Down'' is the debut studio album of Penal Colony, released in February 1994 by Cleopatra Records. Reception ''Factsheet Five'' compared the music of ''Put Your Hands Down'' favorably to Hate Dept. and described Penal Colony as b ...

at the same time.

References

Sources

* *Vicente Riva Palacio, ''El Libro Rojo'', Mexico, 1870. *C.K. Landis, ''Carabajal the Jew, a Legend of Monterey'', Vineland, N. J., 1894. {{DEFAULTSORT:Nunez de Carabajal, Francisca 1596 deaths Mexican Sephardi Jews Executed Portuguese people People executed by the Spanish Inquisition Conversos Year of birth uncertain Executed Mexican people People executed by Spain by burning Victims of antisemitic violence Mexican people of Portuguese-Jewish descent People executed for heresy 16th-century Mexican women