The Lisbon massacre of 1506: what happened in the Rossio

It's a painful story. We tell it here without cruel detail.

Who were the New Christians?

To understand what happened, you need to go back ten years. In December 1496, King Manuel I ordered the kingdom's Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave. The king allowed a few exceptions among the Muslims, but the order changed the city: the Jewish quarter of Alfama, for one, ceased to exist that same year.

Jews who were baptised at that time became known as New Christians. In the eyes of the law, they were now Christians. The name, though, reminded everyone where they'd come from.

How did the massacre begin?

The spring of 1506 was a terrible one in Lisbon. There was plague and there was hunger. Many of the leading families had fled the city for fear of the epidemic, and the king was in Avis, a long way from the capital. In the churches, people prayed and held processions so that the city might be spared.

On the Sunday after Easter, 19 April, someone noticed a glow on the crucifix in the Chapel of Jesus, inside the Dominican monastery. Word spread that it was a miracle, and the church filled up. A German witness, whose name we don't know and who described events in pamphlets printed that same year, mentions around two hundred people convinced they could see lights.

Then a New Christian spoke up. Damião de Góis, the royal chronicler, writing six decades later, says the man denied there was any miracle: what was shining, he said, was a candle alight next to the figure of Christ. The German witness remembers him as more defiant: in his account, the man asked in front of everyone what miracle a dry old piece of timber could possibly perform.

That man never left alive. He was taken outside and killed, and the chronicler adds that he was then burnt in the Rossio.

Who took part in the massacre?

The violence didn't end that day. A friar gave a sermon attacking the New Christians, and then two friars came out of the monastery and paraded a crucifix through the streets, shouting "Heresy!". Crews from the foreign ships anchored in the harbour, Dutch, Zeelanders and Germans, fell in behind them, and so did townspeople. For three days, New Christians were hunted down and killed in the open street and inside their own homes. According to the chronicler, the bodies were burnt in the Rossio and at the Ribeira, down by the river.

Góis is worth reading carefully. He was writing to honour King Manuel's memory, and he pins the blame on outsiders, on men of low station and on the friars. Yet his own chronicle lets slip a detail that doesn't fit that version: more than a thousand men "da terra", local men, in other words, joined the mob. This wasn't just the work of sailors passing through.

How many people died?

Nobody knows exactly, and the figures given by those who described it don't agree. The German witness first counted 1,930 dead and, by the end of his account, brought it down to no more than 1,200. Góis gives more than 1,900. Other writers give three thousand, and one goes as high as four thousand.

So the honest answer is a range: from just over a thousand to four thousand people. The inscription on the memorial doesn't commit to a number. It says "thousands".

Was the miracle a trick?

Some people suspected so at the time. The German witness says he put the question himself to the people next to him: couldn't the light be a hoax cooked up by the friars? He was told it was a sign from heaven. Ibn Verga, a Jewish writer who knew the story only by hearsay, wrote that the crucifix was hollow, with a candle behind it.

Neither is proof: they're suspicions from the time. What was shining in that chapel on that Sunday, we don't know.

Was anyone punished?

Yes, and quickly, though it didn't last. From Avis, the king sent two trusted men to Lisbon, the Prior of Crato and the Baron of Alvito, with special powers. Plenty of culprits ended up in prison, most of them Portuguese, since the outsiders were already safe aboard their ships with the loot. Dozens of people were put to death, forty-two according to the German witness, until the king ordered the executions to be suspended. Manuel I also closed the São Domingos monastery, and Lisbon lost its title of "very noble and ever loyal city".

What about the friars with the crucifix? The accounts clash. Góis says they were stripped of holy orders and sentenced to death. A letter from 1542 says the opposite: that they were still alive, in Rome, under new names. There's no way of knowing which is right.

What is on record is that, before long, the crackdown softened: sentences were reduced or pardoned, and the monastery wasn't even closed for six months.

What's in the Largo de São Domingos today?

In the Largo de São Domingos, beside the church, there's been a stone memorial since 2008. Its inscription, in Portuguese, is dedicated to the thousands of Jews who were murdered, whom it calls "victims of intolerance and religious fanaticism" (our translation), and it states where it all started: "neste largo", in this very square. It carries two pairs of dates, 1506–2006 and 5266–5766: five hundred years, counted in the Christian calendar and in the Jewish one.

The church carries another scar, too, a more recent one. Fire broke out there on the night of 13 August 1959. The roof collapsed. When the church fully reopened, in 1994, it was decided to leave the marks of the fire in plain sight: the reddened walls and the scarred columns are still there.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: the massacre began on 19 April 1506 at São Domingos, by the Rossio, and lasted three days; its victims were New Christians of Jewish origin; foreign sailors and Lisbon residents took part; the king punished the city, and the penalties were softened before long. The memorial dates from 2008.
• Accounts from the time: what the man who denied the miracle said comes to us through the chronicler Damião de Góis, writing six decades later, and an anonymous German witness. Each tells it his own way.
• Suspicion, not proof: that the "miracle" was the friars' trick. The German witness asked the question; Ibn Verga, writing from hearsay, said so.
• No exact figure: the number of dead. Sources range from about 1,200 to 4,000.
• Accounts that don't match: what became of the two friars with the crucifix.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story at two consecutive stops on the route "From the Rossio to the Mouraria: the Inquisition, 1506 and fado", both in the Largo de São Domingos: "A light in the chapel", which tells how it began, and "Remembering the massacre of 1506", about what came after and how it's remembered. The route gives you a warning beforehand, because it's a hard subject. A few stops earlier, "The guesthouse that became a tribunal" explains what stood on the north side of the Rossio when, decades later, the Inquisition moved in.

The Alfama Jewish quarter that was emptied in 1496 has a stop of its own, "The Jewish quarter at the evening bell", on the route "Lower Alfama: From the River to Fado".

If you're planning your trip, our Lisbon guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Rita Ribeiro Voss, "O massacre de Lisboa de 1506 e o discurso de ódio antijudaico", Revista de História das Ideias 35 (2017), pp. 305–333, doi:10.14195/2183-8925_35_12 (in Portuguese): https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/rhi/article/download/2183-8925_35_12/5106/24404
• Damião de Góis, Crónica do Felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, part I, ch. CII (Lisbon, 1566), original edition digitised on archive.org (https://archive.org/details/chronicadofelici00gi) and modernised adaptation published by República e Laicidade (in Portuguese): https://www.laicidade.org/documentos/documentacao-historica/pogrom-damiao-gois/
• The Historical Marker Database (HMdb), "Memorial às Vítimas do Massacre de 1506", entry with the inscription: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=246160
• Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, "The Muslim Minority in the Portuguese Kingdom (1170–1496): Identity and Writing", e-Journal of Portuguese History 13/2 (2015), on the 1496 edict: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5314112.pdf
• André Gomes Luís, "Os 300 de São Domingos", Observador (2026), on the 1959 fire (in Portuguese): https://observador.pt/opiniao/os-300-de-sao-domingos/