Brites Henriques

Born into a Portuguese New Christian family, Brites Henriques was arrested, with the rest of her family, in January 1674. The records of her trial reveal that she was a brave woman who stubbornly clung to the faith of her ancestors. The records also include thirty-two prayers that she recited at the trial. These prayers provide insights into the liturgy of crypto-Jews, which developed after their forced conversion to Christianity and through which they sought to maintain connection with the traditional Jewish prayers while concealing their real intentions from the Inquisition. Parallels to one of Henriques’s prayers have been found in records of the Coimbra Inquisition from 1583, 1584, and 1701. Henriques’s family was decimated by the Inquisition. Her father, António Rodrigues Mogadouro, and two sisters died in prison. One brother was burned at the stake and another sent to life imprisonment. Henriques and her younger brother were tortured for eight years, after which she was sent to a convent and he to a monastery.