From Portugal to the Empire of the Sublime Porte: The Duke of Naxos and the Sephardic networks in the Mediterranean Sea (15th-16th centuries)

• Grant number: 23/12585-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Ana Paula Torres Megiani
• Grantee: Yure Fonseca de Vasconcelos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/02912-3 - A connected history of the Middle Ages: communication and circulation from the Mediterranean Sea, AP.TEM

Abstract

This research aims to analyze, based on discussions about Connected Histories, the development of Sephardic contact networks that were formed in the Mediterranean as a result of anti-Judaism in the 15th century Iberian Peninsula. From this context of popular and institutional violence, we intend to understand the processes that led various Jewish or New Christian families to move to different parts of the Mediterranean throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, forming communities and maintaining close commercial, religious and cultural relations with each other. To this end, we intend to focus on the Portuguese Jew Joseph Nasci, the Duke of Naxos, who from the Ottoman Empire controlled a complex network of exchanges in the Mediterranean, in a context where goods, ideas, religions, political projects and identities intersected.