Mendes, Francisco:

By: Richard Gottheil , Meyer Kayserling

Portuguese Marano; physician to Don Affonso, brother of the cardinal infante; lived in Lisbon in the sixteenth century. The shoemaker Luis Diaz, who proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, induced Mendes to undergo circumcision at the age of thirty-seven and to confess Judaism ( c. 1541) together with other converts. Diazwas burned at the first auto da fé held at Evora toward the end of 1542, Francisco Mendes escaping the same fate by flight.