Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal (ca. 1540, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

—December 8, 1596, Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

) was a Marrana

Marrano

Marranos were Jews living in the Iberian peninsula who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled but continued to observe rabbinic Judaism in secret...

 (converted Jew) in New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

 executed by the Inquisition

Mexican Inquisition

The Mexican Inquisition was an extension of the Spanish Inquisition into the New World. The Spanish Conquest of Mexico was not only a political event for the Spanish, but a religious event as well. In the early 16th century, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition were in full...

 for "judaizing" in 1596.

Around 1580 Don Luis de Carabajal, Spanish governor of Nuevo León

Nuevo León

Nuevo León It is located in Northeastern Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Tamaulipas to the north and east, San Luis Potosí to the south, and Coahuila to the west. To the north, Nuevo León has a 15 kilometer stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border adjacent to the U.S...

, brought with him to Mexico his brother-in-law, Don Francisco Rodríguez de Matos, and his sister, Doña Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal, with their 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 de Carabajal the younger

Luis de Carabajal the younger , son of Doña Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal and nephew of Luis de Carabajal y Cueva, governor of Nuevo León, was the first Jewish author in America. He was a Castilian by birth, and a resident of Mexico City; he died there in an auto-da-fé in 1596...

, Miguel and Anica (the last two being very young). Another son, Caspar, 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 family

Caceres was the name of a Jewish family, members of which lived in Portugal, the Netherlands, England, Mexico, Suriname, the West Indies, and the United States...

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

Tasco

Tasco is one of the major international distributors of telescopes. The company's products mainly target telescope buyers that are amateur astronomers, but has grown to manufacture a large assortment of optical equipment, including terrestrial spotting scopes, microscopes, binoculars, telescopic...

 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. Doña Isabel was tortured until she implicated the whole of the Carabajal family.

The whole family was forced to confess and abjure at a public auto-da-fé, celebrated on Saturday, February 24, 1590. 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 father, Francisco Rodriguez de Matos, deceased, burnt in effigy. In January, 1595, Doña Francisca and her children were accused of a relapse into Judaism, and convicted. During their imprisonment they were tempted to communicate with one another on Spanish pear seeds, on which they wrote touching messages of encouragement to remain true to their faith. At the resulting auto-da-fé, Doña Francisca and her children, Isabel, Catalina, Leonor, and Luis, died at the stake, together with Manuel Diaz, Beatriz Enriquez, Diego Enriquez, and Manuel de Lucena. 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" at the same time.

Sources

• Vicenta Riva Palacio, El Libro Rojo, Mexico, 1870.
• C.K. Landis, Carabajal the Jew, a Legend of Monterey, Vineland, N. J., 1894.