Mendes, Francisco

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.

Bibliography:

  * Informatione Sommaria, reprinted in Grätz, Gesch. 3d ed., ix. 551;
  * Historia da Inquisição, p. 9, Lisbon, 1845.



G. M. K.