Vulgar History - Gracia Mendes Nasi： The 16th-Century Jewish Woman Who Ran A Pepper Empire

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann 0.77

00:00:17.380 foster and this is our tits out festive holiday spectacular super special i was looking back at

00:00:24.600 all of the past episodes a while ago for various reasons. And I remembered that the last two years

00:00:30.560 I've had this festive tits out holiday, super special, spectacular. And I was like, that's a 0.75

00:00:34.840 tradition I would like to maintain. So although last week was the finale of the truly unstoppable

00:00:41.980 international season, this is a super special. And the last two super specials, the first one

00:00:48.140 was Latisse Knowles. And then last year was Princess Cecilia of Sweden. And both of those,

00:00:52.340 as I recall, had a connection to this time of year. I think one of them like that was around

00:00:57.820 when their birthday was. And one of them that was like around, well, that was when Princess

00:01:02.180 Cecilia's whole Vedstina Bullrit that happened in December. So like things happen in their lives

00:01:07.180 that are timely. And this episode is a, it's a Hanukkah episode, frankly, because this is airing

00:01:14.540 during the celebration of Hanukkah. And I've been wanting to do a tits out Jewish woman for 1.00

00:01:19.960 quite a while. I sent out a specific request to the brigade several months ago just asking for 1.00

00:01:26.320 suggestions of Jewish women. And I got some suggestions specifically from a Tits Out Brigade 1.00

00:01:31.720 member who I only know their first initial is R. And R had various suggestions of people that fit 0.98

00:01:38.560 the bill as Tits Out Jewish women. And this one, as I am going to, I mean, the story called out to 0.82

00:01:43.440 me just because of the tits out-ishness of it all. But also because as I started looking into

00:01:50.640 the story, there are a stunning amount of tie-ins to past Vulgar History episodes, not just

00:01:56.080 international ones, but other ones too. Like I keep all my notes for all the episodes in

00:02:01.580 a series of documents. And I was just, I was like, wait, I know that name. And I was Googling,

00:02:06.240 I'm like, yeah, I was in that episode. And that was an episode. There's even a moment where like

00:02:09.980 a roman emperor is mentioned and i was like which one is that and i'm like fuck me it has to do with 0.98

00:02:14.760 like the agrippina story so this is in that way first of all it's a titso jewish woman couldn't 0.66

00:02:21.040 be happier to be sharing that story also it's a hanukkah special and also to people who like these 0.98

00:02:27.820 are going to be like easter eggs for people who've listened to every episode of vulgar history

00:02:32.400 especially recently maybe i know that there's always new listeners and and some of them can

00:02:37.220 in touch with me to let me know that they like binge through the whole, all of the episodes.

00:02:40.940 Can you hear Hepburn? She's really excited for this story. She is purring, chewing on things

00:02:45.520 very loudly close to me. Anyway, so there's going to be, if you've heard all the episodes of Vulgar

00:02:50.280 History, it'll be like, oh my God, what? Another connection? And if this is the first episode of

00:02:54.260 Vulgar History you've ever heard, then these will be sort of like little trailers for you to have

00:02:59.640 past episodes that you can look forward to listening to. And honestly, I was thinking if

00:03:03.880 you wanted to listen to Vulgar History the way that you play the card game Dominion, which is

00:03:09.700 a card game where there's all different cards and you put out, I think it's like 10 cards or

00:03:16.220 something each game, but like which 10 cards it is really affects the way that the gameplay goes

00:03:20.260 and the way that the game goes. So it's like different combinations. Like when you assemble

00:03:24.340 the cards differently, it makes a different experience of the game. And so one could put

00:03:30.160 together all the episodes that I've mentioned in this episode and make your own little vulgar

00:03:34.780 history experience of just all the people I mentioned in the Donna Gracia Nassi episode and

00:03:42.600 make your own little season. Anyway, yes, so thank you again to Tits Out Brigade member R

00:03:48.460 for suggesting the story and answering my request for tits out Jewish women. And thank you to 0.99

00:03:54.240 friend of the podcast Alison Epstein for suggesting some reading for me so I could

00:03:58.600 learn more about Renaissance-era anti-Semitism and stereotypes, because that was something I

00:04:04.100 really wanted to understand before I spoke about it on the podcast. I also listened to three or two

00:04:11.080 some Jewish history-themed podcasts that both have really interesting episodes about Doña Gracia

00:04:17.880 Nasi. So one of them is called A Deeper Conversation, the podcast for Jewish women.

00:04:22.980 And then the other podcast is called The Jewish Story. So I'll put both of those links in the

00:04:27.120 show notes because those are good, you know, add to your repertoire of podcasts you listen to about

00:04:30.580 different kinds of people. The references for this podcast. So I looked at an article from the Jewish

00:04:38.020 Museum in London, an article from the Jewish Women's Archives by Miriam Bodian, article from

00:04:44.420 the Museum of Jewish Heritage, an article on headstuff.org by Kieran Conliffe, Wikipedia as

00:04:50.940 forever, a website called etzion.org by Rav Avedtabori, and an article from iish.com by Dr.

00:05:00.240 Yvette Alt-Miller. So here we go. And I will also mention there's going to be, this first section

00:05:08.520 is called, because I always put sections in my notes to remember what each section is about.

00:05:14.560 anyways, this is called backgroundy stuff. Jews in Spain in the Middle Ages 101. So if you want

00:05:20.940 to skip ahead, we will put a timestamp in the show notes. So you can, if you want to skip ahead

00:05:27.760 this like history of anti-Semitism in Spain and just get to like Gracia's story, please do. But

00:05:34.320 for those who want to hear this, here's some context about what's been going on. Because

00:05:39.160 we're going to be going over some stuff that we have talked about in previous episodes, but just

00:05:42.460 from this new direction. So if you want to put the episodes together, as I suggested,

00:05:46.380 in a Dominion-like listening experience, I would suggest starting off with Isabella I of Castile,

00:05:52.700 then you can listen to the episode on Sayyid al-Hura, and then Harem Sultan, because this

00:05:57.400 is all happening in and around some of the events from all of those episodes. Namely,

00:06:03.260 remember that time when the Catholic monarchs, aka Isabella and Ferdinand, launched the Reconquista, 0.88

00:06:09.540 which is when they decided to kick all of the non-Catholics out of Spain often in murder

00:06:17.240 genocide manner. So we'll go back a bit further for the full context of the Jewish experience in

00:06:23.640 Spain in the middle ages because it's a much longer story than just Fernand and Isabella

00:06:29.440 frankly. Actually I'm just opening up my other spreadsheet that I keep my like increasing the

00:06:35.680 long spreadsheet of people who we've talked about on the podcast and when they lived and like who

00:06:41.100 overlapped with who, just so I can remember where exactly the story fits in. So Jewish people had

00:06:49.200 been living in, so we talked about this a whole bunch in the, I think in the Sayyid al-Hur episodes

00:06:53.680 where I was explaining about like the Iberian Peninsula, which is like the big square landmass,

00:07:00.280 which modern times contains Spain and Portugal, but in old times was called Al-Andalus during the

00:07:07.820 time when it was an Islamic kingdom. But Jewish people had been living in Spain since something

00:07:12.980 like the year 70 AD. So, you know, a long time. Following the Islamic conquest of the Iberian

00:07:20.840 Peninsula in the early 8th century, Jewish people were able to live and practice their religion as

00:07:26.200 long as they paid taxes because we talked about that a bit in the harem sultan episode when we're

00:07:31.100 talking about the ottoman empire which will come up again but it seems to me having studied now

00:07:36.520 like two periods in history when there was a muslim kingdom like muslim kings tend to be like

00:07:43.040 pretty chill about other religions living there as long as they pay their taxes they weren't trying

00:07:47.040 to like change anyone's religion or forcibly convert them isabel and ferdinand could have

00:07:52.220 learn from them. Anyway, so as the centuries went on, eventually there was, who was there? It was

00:07:58.800 like the Visigoths and the Goths. This is like, there's the podcast, the Spanish Arpada, which is

00:08:05.040 the podcast where they are looking at all of the rulers of Spain from the beginning of Spain until

00:08:10.420 now. So it really, um, it's changed hands a lot. Like when Ferdinand and Isabella came in and

00:08:16.160 they're like, let's make Spain Catholic again. It's like, well, yeah, it was Catholic at one 0.91

00:08:20.620 point, but it's also been other things. It's not just one thing. Anyway. But yeah, so Catholics

00:08:25.380 started taking over more and more of the Iberian Peninsula. There was tolerance for Jews because 1.00

00:08:30.080 they had crucial roles in banking and finance. And so, although, you know, their religion was like,

00:08:37.140 it's not Catholic people's favorite, but the Jewish people were important. They were financially

00:08:42.100 economically important. And the amount of tax that they paid was good for the economy because

00:08:46.780 they were rich people. So a side note on money lending. Throughout history, there have been

00:08:53.340 rich Jews, and there have been poor Jews, and there have been in between. And some of the

00:09:00.280 Jewish people in history became money lenders, which is people who would like today what banks 0.91

00:09:06.800 do. Like you can borrow money, but there's going to be interest on them. And when you borrow money 0.98

00:09:10.720 and there's interest on it, that's what's called usury, U-S-U-R-Y, which is a thing like lending

00:09:17.840 money with interest rates was forbidden in the Bible to Christians because something in the

00:09:23.580 Bible says, and maybe you know better than I do, it says a couple times in the Bible,

00:09:28.820 basically, thou shalt not charge interest on loans. So Christians were not allowed to have 1.00

00:09:34.060 this job, but people needed money. So Jewish people were kind of shunted into this job because

00:09:41.080 Christians needed the service, but they didn't want to like damn themselves to hell by doing 0.93

00:09:44.860 it themselves. So like someone had to, and Jewish people were like, okay, I guess we will. 1.00

00:09:49.240 There's other out of facts because Jewish people, most Jewish people weren't allowed to own land in 0.75

00:09:56.360 most European countries for a variety of reasons. And some just didn't want to own land. Like there

00:10:01.160 was a desire to live more communally, but then also there was discriminatory taxes, etc. So

00:10:06.000 Jewish people in like the Middle Ages tended to be city dwellers, which meant that they couldn't 0.97

00:10:10.820 get jobs as like farmers because they were living in the cities. So they had to make their trade in 0.98

00:10:15.440 city-based things like finance, trade, commerce. Also add to that, Jewish people tended to be more 0.99

00:10:22.020 literate and educated than the general population because reading is such an important part of

00:10:28.040 the cultural tradition like so they tended to go into like quote white collar jobs more than

00:10:34.340 your average christian proportionately so there were and continue to be stereotypes about jewish

00:10:41.520 people as these like evil money lenders these like rich people who are like predatory so if

00:10:47.500 you think about some famous stereotypes of this are like fagin from oliver twist by charles dickens 0.95

00:10:53.940 is he a money lender or he's just kind of like an evil jewish person who like has a child army of

00:10:58.360 thieves sort of thing shylock in the merchant of venice by shakespeare so this is a stereotype

00:11:04.700 that exists and i wanted to mention that because the jewish family in this story do work as money

00:11:11.480 lenders as did a lot of jewish people in this era so we're looking at one specific family story

00:11:17.340 their job happened to be money lending so i just wanted to put that in the context

00:11:22.440 so we're continuing on with the like anti-semitism of it all from 1350 to 1365 the king castile was a

00:11:31.820 guy named pedro the first aka pedro the cruel and this was this tweaked my memory so i was like wait

00:11:38.240 pedro the cruel was not pedro from inez and pedro also aka pedro the cruel but in my notes then even

00:11:46.700 in my notes then i said like there was another king also called pedro aka pedro the cruel and

00:11:51.000 a lot of records confuse who is who. So Pedro the Cruel that we know from Inez and Pedro was

00:11:59.000 a king of Portugal. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, was a whole other guy, also called

00:12:04.280 Pedro. There was also a third, like just to make this complicated, a third Pedro running around at

00:12:08.680 this time who's king of Aragon. So just like so many Pedros in general. It's like little boys now

00:12:14.560 called what? Like Owen or whatever. It's just like everyone was called Pedro at this point.

00:12:18.540 So this is not Pedro from Pedro and Inez, but this was happening at the same time as Pedro

00:12:24.460 and Inez was happening. I think, let me double check my timeline. Yeah. Inez de Castro was

00:12:31.280 killed in 1355 and this Pedro the cruel started being the King of Castile in 1350. So like

00:12:39.180 literally the same time, but not the same guy as Pedro and Inez. So it's interesting because like

00:12:45.360 Pedro from Pedro and Inez, who was AKA Pedro the Cruel, but also AKA Pedro the Just. It's like,

00:12:50.540 it's not like a Vlad the Impaler thing where you're like, okay, he has that name because he is,

00:12:54.900 you know, kind of a horrific in battle person. This Pedro the Cruel was actually kind of Pedro

00:13:01.360 the Okay. He was fairly sympathetic to the Jewish population of Portugal,

00:13:05.920 but he was enemies with his brother, oh, sorry, of Castile. We're looking at Castile,

00:13:11.140 which is one of those places that later on merged into Spain. Pedro the cruel king of Castile was

00:13:16.500 okay to the Jews. So, but he was enemies with his brother Enrique of Trastamara, who is aka 0.57

00:13:23.840 Enrique the fratricidal, which if you know that fratricide means kills your brother, then spoiler,

00:13:29.800 that is how this Pedro is going to die, killed by his brother. Enrique then took over as king,

00:13:34.760 but even before he took over as king, he killed something like 1,200 Jewish people in 1355.

00:13:39.320 he ordered a jewish massacre in 1360 and was involved in the murder of many other jewish

00:13:44.140 people in 1366 as one might expect given that's his track record when enrique the fratricidal

00:13:50.160 became king of castile jewish people lost their real protection and because the new king was so

00:13:55.560 violent towards them the common people of spain started to accept violent anti-semitism as just 0.57

00:14:01.600 like the way that things were and the way that things should be comma but jewish people were

00:14:07.840 still too important financially to be completely annihilated at this point. So during the reign of

00:14:15.800 Enrique the Fratricidal, this guy who's like a real asshole named Ferrand Martinez was running 0.99

00:14:22.580 around. He was like an archbishop or something. He was giving awful speeches, just like saying 0.99

00:14:26.660 terrible things about Jewish people. And that just really worked up people into being even more 0.88

00:14:30.840 anti-Semitic such that in 1391, one of the Middle Ages' largest attacks on Jewish people took place

00:14:37.760 across both Aragon and Castile. The number of Jewish people murdered might have been as high

00:14:42.480 as 50,000 in this series of violent attacks. So the attacks began in Sevilla, a place we've talked

00:14:51.340 about in other stories. So thousands of Jewish people were murdered there. The Jewish people

00:14:56.340 who survived generally converted due to their fear of being killed. And this pattern of violence 0.96

00:15:01.740 occurred again and again throughout the country. Like, and by the country, I mean like the Iberian

00:15:05.940 peninsula, like Castile, Aragon. So within three months in over 70 other towns, Jewish people

00:15:12.140 faced a choice of either like converting or being murdered, or I guess leaving would be a third 0.55

00:15:19.420 option. So these terrible events were nothing new. Frankly, I had said like things had been

00:15:25.080 kind of shitty for jewish people in spain for a while during the 12th and 13th centuries many

00:15:30.100 jewish communities throughout europe were faced with a choice of baptism or death however this 0.76

00:15:35.140 incident the like the one i'm talking about 1391 the results of this was different because whatever

00:15:42.520 the reason throughout the iberian peninsula a huge amount of jewish people chose to convert

00:15:48.800 in order to escape death. I guess in other places, more people died for the cause. So this was 0.99

00:15:55.580 different in the sense of suddenly you started having a whole bunch of ex-Jewish people who

00:15:59.760 were secretly still Jewish people, but pretending to be Catholic people. And the number of Jewish

00:16:04.520 people who converted in the kingdoms of Eragon Castile is thought to be as high as 200,000.

00:16:09.520 Among them, the ancestors of the women that I promised were going to eventually talk about,

00:16:14.040 Dona Gracia Nasi. So enter the Catholic Monarchs. So as we discussed substantially in the Isabella 0.69

00:16:22.100 of Castile episode, she and her husband Ferdinand were known as the Catholic Monarchs,

00:16:26.280 and they were responsible for a number, well, a lot of things. Notably, they financed Christopher

00:16:35.240 Columbus and kind of kick-started the conquest of the Americas. And they also set out to do the 0.86

00:16:42.380 Reconquista, which was where they were just going to like, let's make Spain Catholic again, 0.74

00:16:48.380 was what they were doing. So in which they killed and or kicked out and or forcibly converted 0.98

00:16:53.640 any non-Catholics from Spain. I mean, just like asterisks, remember what I said before, 0.66

00:16:59.760 like Jewish people had been in Spain before Christian people were in Spain, like by several 0.60

00:17:05.100 hundreds of years. So, okay. As part of the Reconquista, Ferdinand and Isabella released 0.89

00:17:12.720 the Alhambra Decree, in which remaining practicing Jews, Jewish people in Castile and Aragon

00:17:18.220 were forced to convert to Catholicism, thus becoming what was known as conversos, or some

00:17:24.140 ones are called meranos. So they were people who used to be Jewish, but now were converted,

00:17:29.760 and they were still discriminated against, but I guess not killed. Those who continued to practice

00:17:34.740 Judaism were expelled. And this will happen at the same time that the Muslims were also kicked out

00:17:41.280 of Al-Andalus, which we talked about in the Sayyid al-Hora episode. Because Sayyid al-Hora, 0.65

00:17:47.780 again, referring back to the timeline. Yeah, so she was born in 1485. The Alhambra decrees were

00:17:54.280 1492. So like very, very early in her life, she and her family, as we talked about in an episode,

00:18:00.100 like they fled, they went to Morocco. So Doña Gracia Nessi is who we were talking about today.

00:18:06.520 So her parents' families were kind of like old money from this region. So her father's family

00:18:14.800 were the Nessis and her mother's family were the Benvenistes. And both families fled as part of a 0.74

00:18:21.300 group of 600 wealthy Jewish families who just peaced the fuck out of Spain because they were 0.55

00:18:26.320 rich and wanted to still be Jewish, and they could afford to purchase land in Portugal, 0.95

00:18:30.260 which is where they went. So these 600 wealthy Jewish families went to Portugal, hoping to 0.77

00:18:35.600 continue practicing their faith. But five years after the Alhambra Treaty, Isabel and Ferdinand

00:18:42.080 pressured the Portuguese king, I don't have his name written down, but let's assume it was Pedro,

00:18:46.220 to do a similar thing. And so Portugal did the same thing, where it's like all the Jewish people 1.00

00:18:51.820 had to convert or leave or be killed, presumably. And so both her family, her parents' family,

00:18:59.500 her mother's family, they were all converted, but not by choice. So the Nasi's changed their 1.00

00:19:06.280 last name to De Luna, and the Benveniste's changed their name to Mendez. So interestingly, 0.88

00:19:13.800 forced baptism opened up new opportunities for the conversos to get new jobs, because there 0.83

00:19:19.720 some things that he couldn't do if he were jewish but now that they like were officially not jewish 0.50

00:19:24.980 but like they were we're going to talk about this like secretly still jewish like they were still

00:19:30.060 like observing the sabbath and like not eating pork and things but now that they were quote unquote

00:19:35.540 christians they were able to take new jobs including participating in the rapidly expanding

00:19:40.380 portuguese spice trade with the far east which is the thing we've talked about a bit before

00:19:45.220 because remember how Portugal, they were the first country to kind of trade with India. And

00:19:52.020 that's where they learned about chai. And then they were like, oh my God, we love tea. And then

00:19:56.480 Catherine Brugganza went from Portugal. She married Charles II and she's like, I love tea.

00:20:00.600 And now everyone in England likes tea. And it's all traces back to this. Anyway, so this was an

00:20:05.200 era of trade with the Far East, but also the Atlantic trade of various things. And so Gracia's

00:20:13.420 maternal uncles, Francisco and Diogo. They were from the Benveniste, changed to Mende's family.

00:20:21.240 They became leading members of a consortium that marketed the annual spice shipment from India

00:20:26.220 and provided vital financial services to the Portuguese crown, aka money lending.

00:20:32.440 So, Gracia, our heroine, her parents. So, her mother was called Filipe. Her dad was called

00:20:38.160 Alvaro, which if you remember, their last name was changed to De Luna. So his name was Alvaro

00:20:43.080 De Luna. Now we did already in a previous episode, like in a previous season, talk about a guy called

00:20:48.680 Alvaro De Luna, who is the villain of the Isabel of Portugal story. She was one who's trapped in

00:20:53.500 the ghost castle. I vaguely remember he did something about throwing somebody out of a

00:20:57.300 window or something. So this is happening at around the same time, but this is a different

00:21:01.440 person also called Alvaro De Luna. Not the same person. Maybe he chose his name in honor of him.

00:21:06.040 i don't know so this forced conversion happened to her mother's family her father's family

00:21:11.020 and gracia was born 13 years later in lisbon portugal and she was baptized because her family

00:21:18.620 was like christian and the name that she's baptized with was beatrice de luna but as we've done with

00:21:26.120 previous people in this show especially in the season the international season she is known

00:21:31.600 famously as Gracia Nassi. So we're just going to use that name, even though that was not

00:21:37.580 officially her name as a child. Note that it's possible that she was referred to that internally

00:21:42.760 by her family because Gracia is a Portuguese translation for Hannah, which is a Hebrew name.

00:21:50.300 So like we're settling into the story. And as per every episode of this podcast, question mark,

00:21:57.620 who knows what happened to her during her childhood and youth but age 18 she was married

00:22:03.840 off and who is she married to she was married to her uncle the wealthy pepper merchant francisco

00:22:11.520 so he um was known aka the black pepper baron so yes she was married to her adult uncle her

00:22:19.720 mother's brother like let's just go with it this is not the only uncle niece marriage in this story

00:22:25.420 So just get used to it. So she and her uncle, husband, were married in the great cathedral of

00:22:33.600 Lisbon in a public Catholic wedding. But then they had a super secret, sexy Jewish ceremony 0.90

00:22:39.580 afterwards, secretly at home, I guess. So she was 18 and married to her uncle,

00:22:45.440 who is this business guy working with his brother, Diogo. And honestly, like, kind of like

00:22:50.320 we saw a sayed alhora kind of like ambra sishi also like the people who ran the business quickly 0.98

00:22:56.300 saw that like oh gracia is like got a good head on her shoulders she's got a good business mind 0.99

00:23:01.560 like she is like let's get her involved in this business she kind of has good idea so she became 0.99

00:23:06.640 involved in the pepper spice business too her husband slash uncle was the director of this

00:23:12.660 powerful trading company as well as a bank of world renown with agents across europe and around

00:23:17.320 the Mediterranean. And being in Portugal circa the time that Portugal started doing all its

00:23:21.740 colonizing, opened up, as I said, lots of opportunities for this business to just expand

00:23:25.800 and do even better. And then 10 years after their marriage, Garcia was 28 years old. Her uncle,

00:23:31.540 husband, Francisco died. In his will, he divided his fortune between his niece slash wife and his

00:23:37.460 brother slash business partner, Diogo. So I just want to highlight this because bear in mind,

00:23:42.680 Diogo was like a 50 year old man who is a multi-decade veteran of the spice trade who

00:23:51.100 had been a leader in Portuguese salt and pepper trading for a really long time.

00:23:54.680 Gracia was 28 years old and he divided the fortune between the two of them because she

00:24:00.680 was as talented and important as Diogo was, which speaks to her skill, but also like her

00:24:06.280 uncle husband, like, you know, thought a lot of her. So she also had one child, a baby daughter

00:24:13.060 named Anna, who had been born a year before Francesco's death. So her business skills are

00:24:18.920 quickly put to the test because a year after Francesco died, the Pope, um, I didn't write

00:24:24.720 down what name Pope it is. Later there's a named Pope, but anyway, whoever the Pope was at this

00:24:30.120 point, ordered the establishment of a Portuguese inquisition based on the Spanish inquisition,

00:24:35.660 which is like so the reconquista was like let's just find everybody who's not catholic and like

00:24:40.820 make them be catholic or kill them the inquisition was just like not trusting the people who said

00:24:45.060 they were catholic and like torturing them as i understand it so the pope like ordered this but

00:24:52.320 it wasn't his idea it was actually the idea of the current king of portugal joao the pious who was

00:24:58.500 just to connect this to other things joao the pious was the son of maria of aragon therefore

00:25:03.960 the grandson of Isabella of Castile. He hated Jewish people, and that's his deal. And ever 0.93

00:25:12.960 since they came to Portugal, which had been 40 years ago, the Nassi family and the Benveniste 0.79

00:25:18.240 family, aka the De Luna and the Mendez, have been secretly practicing Jewish people pretending to

00:25:24.040 be Catholics. If they got arrested by the Inquisition, they would probably be found out 0.66

00:25:29.500 for being secretly still Jewish. And then the Inquisition would like take all their money. 0.97

00:25:34.560 So they had to figure out a plan to save their business. And who figured out the plan was

00:25:40.060 Gracia. So 28 years old, half business owner of this pepper trading bank. What she did, 1.00

00:25:47.820 so Gracia, she grabbed her younger sister, who I haven't mentioned before, but she is going to

00:25:51.240 become important, Brianda. Gracia grabbed her daughter, Anna, and they made their way

00:25:55.580 across the continent to a city that, you know, I have feelings about, which is Antwerp, Belgium, 0.98

00:26:02.520 which is where their other pepper uncle Diogo was living. So like the pepper biz was a pretty big 1.00

00:26:10.900 deal. Like obviously, so they weren't just, it wasn't just based out of Portugal. The pepper biz

00:26:15.480 head offices and agents all over the place, including Diogo, their uncle slash brother-in-law 0.99

00:26:20.720 was in my nemesis of a city Antwerp. So at this time Antwerp was the leading financial center of

00:26:27.440 Europe. It was under Spanish rule and thus within jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition. In fact

00:26:34.760 Diogo had had a brush with the Inquisition. He had been arrested at one point and released only

00:26:39.060 after intervention by the king of Portugal Joao the Pious who you think like why would he intervene

00:26:45.440 when he hated Jewish people. But the thing is, Diogo had loaned him money and owed him and he

00:26:51.380 needed to keep that relationship going. So yeah, the resettlement in Antwerp of the Lisbon family,

00:26:58.940 like members of this family, was probably planned to be like a temporary thing.

00:27:03.860 They just kind of went there to just like not be in Portugal, but just to have the time to organize

00:27:08.860 a more permanent trip to a more secure place and also to transfer the family fortune

00:27:13.620 so it wouldn't be taken away by the inquisition once they settled in antwerp gracia invested

00:27:19.480 her family fortune into the business so i wonder if that's the family fortune from her mother no

00:27:26.380 because these are her mother's brother so she invested i guess her father's money anyway she

00:27:30.680 invested all the money she had into the pepper business and she started to make a name for

00:27:35.900 herself not only as diogo's business partner but also as an independent businesswoman herself 0.69

00:27:40.900 and then the relationship between the nazi and the benveniste household became even stronger

00:27:47.320 because her sister brianda married their uncle diogo so now both sisters had married both

00:27:55.980 brother uncles i don't know i hope a political type thing just bring the families together

00:28:02.040 i said this was not going to be the only uncle niece marriage and it's not there's still going

00:28:06.520 to be one more. Anyway, so this money lending slash banking business, which was making its money

00:28:13.440 also from the spice trade, was like they were, the connections I had were quite impressive,

00:28:21.260 frankly. I found this really interesting to see actually. So their important business,

00:28:27.200 like I'd said that they had been, they'd loaned money to Joao, the king of Portugal,

00:28:31.060 who hated Jewish people, but like still would borrow money from them. Some of the other people

00:28:36.160 who they had loaned money to included King Henry II of France, who is the husband of Catherine

00:28:41.920 de Medici, the brother of the guy who died in the pillow fight of death, which I talked about

00:28:46.540 on this podcast. They had loaned money to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who is the son of

00:28:51.520 Juana la Loca and Philip the Handsome. They also lent money to Pope Paul III and his successor,

00:28:58.300 Pope Paul IV. They had also loaned money to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, husband of

00:29:02.880 harem sultan. So these dealings involve commercial activities. So I guess maybe involving them in

00:29:08.180 the pepper biz, but also loaning money, also bribing people like they were connected. This

00:29:14.520 is like, if you're going to borrow money from somebody, it's like, this is the family you go 0.69

00:29:20.080 to the Mendez slash Ben Finiste family slash Nazi family. Like I found this really interesting.

00:29:28.860 I think at one point later on, I have like, they were loaning money to like Henry the eighth

00:29:32.160 in England. It's interesting to me because we've talked so many times about all these kings and

00:29:37.640 their commissioning buildings and whatever. And I just kind of always assumed that all these people

00:29:41.760 had money because they were kings. But in fact, they didn't. In fact, they had to borrow money

00:29:46.060 and the people they borrowed money from was Gracia's business. So things are going well

00:29:51.560 business-wise, but just five years after they had settled in Antwerp, Diogo, Brianda's uncle

00:29:59.340 husband, died, but not before Brianda also had a daughter who's named Beatriz, which if you

00:30:05.620 remember is Gracia's official Christian name at this point. So in accordance with the will,

00:30:13.800 half the family property remained in Gracia's hands because she had inherited that from her

00:30:17.120 dead uncle husband, Francesco. But Diogo clearly also recognized how much Gracia should really be

00:30:23.380 the one in charge of this because in his will, he made her the administrator of his half of the

00:30:27.860 fortune on behalf of Brianda and their daughter. So Gracia now, she owned both halves of the

00:30:35.720 business, like Gracia owned the whole business. This decision was probably meant to provide the 0.98

00:30:41.620 best administration of the estate, like consolidating it all in her hands, like she clearly

00:30:45.080 knew what she was doing. But Brianda, her sister, who probably thought that she should have inherited 0.99

00:30:49.320 half of it, and she maybe kind of should have inherited half of it, was mad about that. And

00:30:53.700 she this is gonna cause some interpersonal problems between the two sisters spoiler alert 1.00

00:30:58.860 brianda's got a big claire claremont from mary shelley episode type relationship with gracia and 0.99

00:31:05.020 we'll see that play out including name change so it is now 1542 um gracia is in control of this 1.00

00:31:12.000 commercial empire and what did she do with this money and all the important contacts all across 0.98

00:31:17.700 western europe and the fact that like all of these monarchs and popes were like in literally in debt 0.82

00:31:22.840 to her, she set up a underground railroad type scenario to help Jewish people escape the 0.72

00:31:29.640 Inquisition. So Gracia was still, she was not allowed to live openly as a Jewish person in

00:31:35.820 Antwerp because it was under Spanish control and like you couldn't be Jewish if you lived

00:31:40.180 under Spanish control. But she used her extensive business contacts to help other Jewish people

00:31:44.760 escape to cities where they could live Jewish lives. So she helped secret Jewish people escape 1.00

00:31:51.760 from Portugal and Spain and to escape like the terrain of Europe. Like this is similar to the 0.99

00:31:57.780 route that like Cortel and Smanchini had to take. He had to go over the Alps to Italy or into the

00:32:02.660 Balkans. So, but she was doing her best to try to help these Jewish people escape with some of their 1.00

00:32:07.240 property and wealth to help them start new lives in a new place. So her extensive business contacts 1.00

00:32:12.660 hid a network of escape routes throughout Europe. So she was trading spices, but her business agents

00:32:19.880 were also secretly, I don't know if it was a sort of thing where you have like, you know, a big

00:32:24.820 wooden trunk. And you're like, yeah, what's inside the trunk? Just like pepper, just lots of pepper.

00:32:30.140 But secretly inside the trunk was like people, like Jewish people. So they hid Jewish people 1.00

00:32:36.000 in and among these shipments, along with the merchandise that they were shipping. 0.82

00:32:40.700 So one popular route was for Jewish people to board Gracias ships in Spain and Portugal,

00:32:44.880 where they then go to England. I'm not sure why they have to go to England and then like 1.00

00:32:49.400 back around to get to Antwerp, but that was the route. Anyway, so at this point in England,

00:32:54.260 Jewish people technically weren't allowed, but like when all the Jewish people had left Spain

00:32:59.840 and Portugal, several of them went to England where they were living, like, you know, secretly

00:33:04.240 Jewish, but like pretending to not be Jewish. So when the ships docked in Southampton or Plymouth, 0.70

00:33:10.080 one of Gracia's London agents, a man named Christopher Fernandez, was instructed to board 0.72

00:33:15.300 the ships and let the hidden Jewish people know whether it was safe to stay on board for the next

00:33:19.560 journey to the Netherlands or not. So I guess he would just like check up, I don't know, give them 1.00

00:33:24.260 water, maybe give them some food and just like let them know like, should you get off here or

00:33:28.160 can you keep going? Is it safe? Another of Grassi's London agents was a man named Antonio

00:33:33.740 della Rogna, who was described as a tall Jew with one eye. Now, initially when I was first

00:33:40.160 researching this, I think as one of the podcasts, they only refer to him as tall Jew with one

00:33:45.280 eye. And I thought that is a fantastic name. Um, but I want to learn more about it. So if you

00:33:51.320 Google tall Jew with one eye, you learn that it's Antonio de la Rogna. So, you know, notable looking 0.66

00:33:58.020 person. And he was related to her, to Gracia somehow as a cousin or something. And he was

00:34:03.940 a master of theology slash also merchant slash also conductor on this like underground Jewish 0.69

00:34:09.420 railroad. And he was tasked with helping Jewish refugees recover property that they'd been

00:34:14.500 forced to leave behind. So he, with his height and his one eye, that was his job. So like Jewish

00:34:21.660 people would like be smuggled along with Pepper over to London where they would be like, make 0.55

00:34:27.060 sure they're okay. And then this guy, the tall Jew with the one eye would help them like get their 0.98

00:34:32.360 property back. And then they would go on to the Netherlands. So in the Netherlands, many of these 1.00

00:34:37.480 people found employment working for Gracia's business in the warehouses or whatever until

00:34:43.160 they could be dispatched safely further south to Italy or Turkey, which were places where you could

00:34:47.300 live openly as a Jewish person. So her agents would instruct these Jewish people on which roads 0.91

00:34:53.740 to use and which inns to stay in. It's literally like an underground railroad scenario, right? 0.77

00:35:00.140 Where it's just like, this is a safe house, this is not. They relied on a network of sympathetic

00:35:04.720 allies. In Venice, a non-Jewish printer named Daniel Bomberg, he specialized in printing Hebrew

00:35:11.500 books, receive the property of the fleeing Jewish people and return it to their owners once they

00:35:16.140 made it to Italy. So like, she had this all figured out. Grazia, like, this is why I think 0.68

00:35:22.940 at age 18, they're like, guess what? You're going to be like in charge of the business now. Like

00:35:26.480 she figured this out herself. Like there wasn't a roadmap to figure this out there. Like she was

00:35:31.620 just like, here's my privilege. Like in as much as she had, like she was wealthy, she had all

00:35:37.180 these connections and she's like, how am I going to do this to help other people? And she just did.

00:35:41.260 And I just love that. So meanwhile, she's still in goddamn Antwerp and she was getting richer and 0.95

00:35:49.260 richer because along with like the secret Jewish underground railroad, she was also, you know, 0.94

00:35:55.160 spice trading, you know, making interest off of her loans to like the Pope, but she's getting

00:36:01.400 so rich. People are like, I don't like this rich woman because they like, first of all,

00:36:05.960 people don't like a rich woman, like an unmarried rich woman. Second of all, like they knew that she 1.00

00:36:10.840 like, was a converted Jewish person. So like, ooh, a rich Jewish woman, like, no thanks. 0.97

00:36:16.320 Emperor Charles V wanted her daughter, remember, she had the daughter Anna. He wanted the daughter 1.00

00:36:22.300 to marry one of his courtiers, basically, so he could then seize the family's wealth. And that's

00:36:26.300 the thing, right? Like part of the whole Inquisition Reconquista situation was that the

00:36:32.740 Catholic monarchs could then seize all the money from the Jewish people and like claim, like, now 0.58

00:36:37.260 it's ours. So Uncle Charles V just wanted her money. People saw this like wealthy, like former, 0.59

00:36:43.700 like as far as I knew, former converted Jewish woman. And they were just like, we want that 0.97

00:36:47.340 money. Like she's so rich. People are just like, how can we get the money? Oh, I know. We'll marry

00:36:51.880 the daughter. So she knew that this was happening and like things were getting a bit too dangerous

00:36:57.840 for her to stay there. So she said that she was just going to go to visit a spa in France. But

00:37:03.040 In fact, what she did is she and her daughter fled with as much property as they could carry.

00:37:08.720 And like, they went to France, but not for a spa.

00:37:11.880 From France, then she traveled on to Italy, I guess using her same connections and, you

00:37:16.080 know, secret safe inns.

00:37:17.660 And she eventually settled in Venice, where she reestablished her trading business because

00:37:22.540 she still had all her money and like, she's a business lady and here's what's happening.

00:37:27.080 So we talked about Venice.

00:37:29.420 Actually, no, I think that was more Rome.

00:37:31.160 but do you remember in the christina of sweden episode there was a thing like jewish people who

00:37:35.620 lived in venice had to like we lived in rome there's like a special area where they had to

00:37:40.960 live and then there was some sort of like fucked up like tradition where like bulls would chase 0.57

00:37:46.740 jewish people through the streets or something and christina was like how about we'd stop that 0.64

00:37:50.720 and i think they might have anyway some more things happening in venice so you could live 0.98

00:37:55.920 as a jewish person openly in venice but you had to live on this island called the ghetto

00:37:59.620 so she was still like rather not live there so she still didn't reveal her jewishness publicly

00:38:07.820 because this would have meant an end to her business basically and in fact it looks like

00:38:12.280 she was arrested and held in prison briefly in venice accused of being secretly jewish

00:38:17.020 and she got out of jail i'm gonna assume bribery was involved and her friends in high places but 1.00

00:38:22.020 then she began a super secret sexy plan to transfer her wealth to turkey with an eye to 1.00

00:38:28.840 eventually living there because as i mentioned before turkey was part or it was like the main 0.92

00:38:34.280 hq of the ottoman empire which was the muslim empire where jewish people could live as long

00:38:40.200 as you paid taxes and who was the sultan of the ottoman empire at this point literally

00:38:44.940 soleiman the husband of harem sultan in fact at the point this was all happening he had

00:38:52.480 pretty recently just married harem sultan so these two women these two powerful women living

00:38:56.700 in the same continent at the same time. 1.00

00:39:01.100 Fun fact, in fact, Gracia Nasi does have a six-episode arc

00:39:04.380 on the Turkish soap opera Magnificent Century,

00:39:08.440 all about Haram Sultan.

00:39:10.140 And now we're just going to take a break

00:39:11.540 for a word from our sponsors.

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00:41:37.180 And we're back. So, they're there as well. And this is her plan, to go to Turkey where she could

00:41:42.220 just like be a jewish like girl boss but so her life in Venice was precarious her sister Brianda 0.89

00:41:51.320 which like side note I if you watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix I think Brianna is the name

00:41:58.940 of this character played by June Diane Raphael and so whenever I read about a sister called

00:42:02.640 Brianna I just picture her anyway like Brianda is coming in hot with like a real Claire Claremont 0.98

00:42:10.000 sort of energy. She's still mad about how Gracia inherited all the businesses. Would Brianda have 1.00

00:42:16.960 been good at running the businesses? Like part of me is like, you know, maybe give Brianda a shot,

00:42:21.580 but part of me is just like, no, like if she'd been good, like then her husband would have like

00:42:25.660 made her inherit some of it instead of giving it all to Gracia. Like maybe she would have been fine,

00:42:29.500 but Gracia was like so good at it. Anyway, in a real, all I can describe this as a Rolf from

00:42:36.820 sound of music moment, Brianda revealed to the authorities in Venice that Gracia was still

00:42:42.220 secretly practicing Jewish traditions. Brianda, what are you doing? I want to support you,

00:42:49.480 Brianda, just like in this Claire Claremont way, or myself as a younger sister, intrinsically want

00:42:56.160 to support the Lydia Bennets of the world, the Amy March of the world. But Brianda, like, what

00:43:01.960 are you doing like she turned in gracia as being seriously jewish but it's like brianda like you're 0.63

00:43:07.880 also secretly jewish you're her sister like how did you think this was gonna go and this is where

00:43:13.020 i'm like brianda probably shouldn't have inherited the business anyway so brianda revealed to the

00:43:18.500 authorities of venice that gracia was still secretly doing jewish stuff to avoid being 0.85

00:43:23.960 punished and having all of her money and business taken away gracia fled with her fortune to the 0.94

00:43:28.160 italian town of ferrara she also took her daughter anna she also took brianda and brianda's daughter 0.88

00:43:35.180 with her like this is a real like when they go low we go high type moment because she took brianda

00:43:42.240 with her like what a mess anyway good for her gracia very forgiving so why do they go to the

00:43:49.980 city of ferrara not a place that i've read about before not a place we've talked about on this 0.95

00:43:54.420 podcast. But the city of Ferrara was happy to accept the family. So the Duke of Ferrara was a

00:44:02.560 person named Hercule II. He was the son of Lucrezia Borgia, who I have not talked about on

00:44:09.620 the podcast, but that's a very frequent suggestion. So perhaps one day. But his name is Hercule, like

00:44:15.200 Hercule Poirot. So, you know, I had to go look up an image search of him. Hercule II did have a

00:44:22.160 mustache. It was part of a whole beard, but I feel like if your name is Hercule, like you have to

00:44:27.220 have a mustache. So he was just like, this is great. Like you are like an incredibly wealthy,

00:44:33.320 powerful, connected family. And you want to move into my city? Like, yeah, please, please come

00:44:39.000 here. Like rich people come here, pay your taxes. Love it. So this, wherever I got this from, one of

00:44:45.100 my sources, says that he received them gracefully in 1549. Ferrara. So this is a place where,

00:44:54.700 because this is like, Italy is not a country, but there's all these places. There's Venice,

00:44:58.420 there's Rome, like Ferrara is like one of these other sort of places where you could be a Jewish

00:45:03.120 person. So for the first time in her life, Gracia Nasi was able to openly like be a Jewish person.

00:45:10.220 So there was a distinguished Sephardi Jewish community in Ferrara. This city also recognized

00:45:16.540 her rights. And this is where she officially changed her name, or she started referring to

00:45:21.500 herself as Gracia Nasi instead of Beatrice de Luna. At around the same time, there's a mass

00:45:26.260 name change of everyone else in her family. So Brianda changed her name to Reina, which is

00:45:33.000 the Spanish or Portuguese version of the Hebrew name Melca, which means queen, like Brianda,

00:45:38.560 like Brianna okay um Gracia's daughter Anna took on the name Reina as well Brianna's daughter who

00:45:48.660 is previously known as Beatrice changed her name to Gracia so now we literally have two Gracias

00:45:53.840 and two Reinas but they're not the Gracia is not the daughter of the Gracia the Reina is not the

00:46:01.180 daughter of the Reina so just to keep everything straight and like even then they're like how are

00:46:05.840 going to keep track of all this. So our Gracia, we're just going to call Gracia. Her niece,

00:46:11.780 Brianda, now Reina's daughter, was known as Gracia La Chica, which means Gracia the girl.

00:46:17.980 So while in Ferrara, Gracia supported local Jewish scholars because she's like hugely wealthy,

00:46:24.160 right? Like she has retained her wealth. Like every time she was like, someone's going to steal

00:46:27.320 my money. I'm just going to like peace out of town with all my money using the underground

00:46:31.820 railroad i invented so she supported local jewish scholars and paid for the first translation of the

00:46:37.220 torah into spanish but this calm-esque nice period was short-lived so they moved there in 1549 two

00:46:48.180 years later 1551 the constant companion of this podcast slash all of history the plague broke out

00:46:55.380 in ferrara and then although ferrara was like cooler than other places to jewish people they 0.75

00:47:01.400 were just like, the plague is here. And they were just like, well, I guess it must be because Jewish 1.00

00:47:06.620 people live here. It must be like Jewish people brought the plague, which is part of what the 1.00

00:47:10.280 anti-Semitism in Spain and Portugal was to begin with. It's just like whenever anything happened, 0.97

00:47:15.860 it was just like, this must be because of Jewish people, like just the way the prejudice works.

00:47:21.020 Anyway, this happened and all the Jewish people were forced to leave Ferrara. And Gracia was just

00:47:26.300 like, fuck this noise. And she set sail for Istanbul in the heart of the Ottoman Empire, 0.99

00:47:31.720 a place where she knew that like, they were not gonna kick her out and she could just like live

00:47:35.200 and thrive. Side note. Yeah. Oh, this is great timing. Actually, my cat Hepburn is here because

00:47:40.680 I'm talking about cat's Hepburn. So this whole past season, the international season, I've been

00:47:46.440 following on Instagram, just like accounts of people talking about the cities that I talked

00:47:50.420 about just because I want to learn what they look like. And when I read the history, I want to keep

00:47:53.900 up with them. And something I've learned is that Istanbul, the cats of Istanbul are like a whole

00:47:59.740 thing. There's cats. I feel like maybe I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I will never

00:48:03.900 tire of talking about it. The cats of Istanbul, like some people call it cat-stanbull. Like there

00:48:08.600 are cats in the street and the people there love them. There's like cats who are like in the mosques. 1.00

00:48:13.460 There's like official mosque cats. There's like this statue of a cat that people love because the 0.80

00:48:17.720 cat was so cute. It like sat sideways. So she moved to Istanbul, which is like great for her

00:48:23.740 for all these reasons, not just not cats. Like it's great for her because the whole like religious 0.80

00:48:28.500 tolerance situation, but also Istanbul, one of my favorite places that I want to visit one day

00:48:34.920 because of the cats. Anyway, so she moved to Istanbul. Gracie set up a fine household,

00:48:40.900 again, living openly and proudly as a Jewish woman. And she continued to run her trading empire 0.96

00:48:46.520 with and like she was still this whole time like even as she was like going through it she was 0.92

00:48:51.480 still keeping up with the whole like secret underground railroad ferrying jewish people

00:48:54.940 to freedom but for the first time in istanbul she was able to not just secretly be helping

00:49:01.060 jewish people but she could publicly support jewish people and jewish organizations so this

00:49:06.240 is where getting into a real philanthropy moment and this reminds me of kind of some of the work

00:49:11.480 that harem sultan ended up doing as well, like where she helped women and girls and stuff. So

00:49:16.880 each day. So Grassi was living in what is described here as a grand palace in Istanbul.

00:49:21.660 And I think like she moved there, like she'd been loaning money to Salema and like they were cool

00:49:26.100 with each other. He respected her. So she set up in a grand palace in Istanbul. Every day,

00:49:32.680 80 poor people entered her grand palace for free meals. So she paid to liberate enslaved Jewish 0.99

00:49:40.140 people who had been seized by pirates. When Turkey experienced a bitterly cold winter in 1567,

00:49:46.380 she paid to help the empire's poor Jewish people afford heat and clothes. She also used her wealth 0.80

00:49:51.160 to support hospitals, charities, schools, and synagogues throughout the Ottoman lands.

00:49:56.100 One of her favorite projects was a synagogue and yeshiva she established in the heart of Istanbul,

00:50:00.420 which was known as the synagogue of the senora. Oh yes, by now at this point.

00:50:04.600 so gracia just became and she sometimes referred to this as just la senora which just means like 0.98

00:50:11.140 the woman like she's that's how major she is and the synagogue she established was called the

00:50:16.820 synagogue of the senora previously local tradition dictated that istanbul's jewish people always

00:50:23.240 prayed in the one synagogue to which their families belonged like you couldn't just go to

00:50:28.600 whichever synagogue was close to you like your family was connected to just one specific one

00:50:32.360 but the synagogue of the senora was different. It was open to all Jewish people welcoming everyone

00:50:37.740 whether they were member or not. Eventually the thing with her and Brianda settled. So she briefly

00:50:46.260 went back to Venice to settle with her sister in the Venetian senate and the whole Brianda's whole

00:50:50.580 thing was just like for control over the business. So visiting Turkish emissary mediated between the

00:50:55.720 sisters and negotiated an agreement which was ratified by the Venetian senate. So according

00:51:00.480 the agreement, Gracia handed over 100,000 gold ducats to the Venetian public treasurer for

00:51:06.480 safekeeping until Reina's 12-year-old daughter, Gracia La Chica, reached the age of 15. Reina

00:51:12.800 slash Brianda received a relatively modest sum as a dowry in compensation. So if you put the best

00:51:19.180 spin on this, Brianda slash Reina was just wanted the best for her daughter. She wanted her daughter 0.96

00:51:23.940 to have an inheritance and now she did but meanwhile so reyna did not go with gracia to

00:51:30.700 istanbul she remained in venice with her daughter and that's why the like money was

00:51:34.240 kept in safekeeping in venice so much like happened with gracia's daughter um people a lot of people 1.00

00:51:42.060 wanted to marry reyna's daughter especially her daughter gracia la chica because of the whole like 0.89

00:51:48.760 then you could whether you're gonna like steal her money or just want to marry her because she 0.98

00:51:52.920 which a lot of people wanted to marry her. And so to try and save her, the sisters like Reina

00:52:00.480 and Gracia, they had a nephew named Joao, who was their mother's brother's son. Anyway, so Joao,

00:52:09.420 aided by his brother Bernardo, basically ran off with Gracia La Chica and hastily married her to

00:52:17.480 try and like save her from having to marry anybody else. So now we've got, sorry, I think I said it

00:52:21.700 was going to be another niece-uncle marriage, but this is actually, what would this be? So it's

00:52:26.080 their, it's a cousin marriage because Joao is Gracia's nephew. So it's a cousin-cousin marriage.

00:52:35.180 Her nephew, but it's not a nephew-aunt marriage. Anyway, the Venetian authorities learned about

00:52:41.080 this, intervened, and had Gracia La Chica returned to the mother in Venice. Joao tried to have the 0.63

00:52:47.640 marriage recognized, but like it had never been consummated. It wasn't, it was pretty easy to get

00:52:53.560 out of it. Frankly, she wanted to have, he wanted to get the fortune returned to him, but I, and I

00:52:58.160 think in a good way, like I think he's an okay person. Anyway, after lengthy proceedings, he,

00:53:03.300 Joao, was banned from Venice. Gracia Nasi was just like, ugh, can nobody do anything except for me?

00:53:09.540 Clearly no. So she sent a ship to fetch him and his brother Bernardo, and they came to Istanbul.

00:53:14.840 so after arriving Istanbul Joao assumed the Hebrew name Joseph Nasi and married Gracia Nasi's

00:53:24.020 daughter Reina so he didn't marry the one cousin of his but married the other cousin anyway but I

00:53:30.500 think this is kind of like a business marriage thing at least in part because Joseph then became

00:53:35.040 Gracia's trusted partner in the family business and he secured a powerful place at the court of

00:53:40.280 Suleyman. So they're just like these Suleyman, the Nasi family, they're just good. They're like

00:53:47.420 business companions, maybe friendly. And in fact, Gracia's daughter, Reina Nasi, in time became a

00:53:54.520 forceful figure in her own right, known for her support of charitable works. But Gracia Nasi

00:54:00.020 maintained a unique reputation as the very embodiment of passionate solidarity among

00:54:05.680 exiled Jewish people kind of everywhere. So one of the most ambitious of her interventions on

00:54:14.820 behalf of Jewish people was when she led the boycott of the port of Ancona in 1556, which is

00:54:22.980 one of the rare acts of organized Jewish resistance to persecution in this era. So Ancona is another 0.73

00:54:30.860 italian town um so for two decades people from the iberian peninsula like jewish people who

00:54:40.020 had been forcibly or like had to say that they had converted the conversos

00:54:44.680 but they were secretly still jewish um they're able to go to ancona this italian town which was

00:54:53.020 under papal rule so it was the pope slash the vatican somehow was overseeing it and when you 0.51

00:55:00.740 lived in ancona this is like quite a situation and that's like a whole other rabbit hole to go 0.83

00:55:05.800 down but for some reason in ancona the pope gave consent that you could be jewish there and you'd

00:55:11.040 be protected from the inquisition when you live there the popes who granted this did so in order

00:55:17.240 to encourage trade between ancona and the ottoman empire um a task for which jewish people from

00:55:23.340 portugal were particularly well suited this all comes down to trade doesn't it anyways they were

00:55:29.520 just, I guess the popes were like, well, we need, we need, we need somehow to trade. So let's make 0.95

00:55:35.520 this one city that's like, okay for Jewish people to live in. So we could trade with the Ottoman 1.00

00:55:39.360 empire. Anyway, not surprisingly, four agents of Gracia Nasi were counted among the Jewish merchants 0.83

00:55:44.440 active in this city. But in May 1555, a new pope took over, which was Paul IV. He was

00:55:53.960 really anti-Semitic. Two months after taking over, he took sudden action against the Jewish people

00:56:00.980 in Ancona. He overrode the guarantees that the previous popes had provided for them. He initiated

00:56:08.500 the inquisition against them. The entire community of Portuguese Jewish people in Ancona

00:56:13.920 was placed under arrest. When Gracia heard about this over in Istanbul, she went to her friend,

00:56:20.600 Sultan Suleyman, to see if he would intervene diplomatically. And so Suleyman sent an envoy

00:56:26.940 with a letter demanding the release of the arrested Jewish people. He claimed them to all 0.96

00:56:31.700 be under Turkish protection. But this asshole Pope, Paul IV, agreed only to turn over their 0.99

00:56:37.880 confiscated property, but not the people. Some of these prisoners were able to escape, 0.98

00:56:42.660 apparently using bribery, but more than 50 were tried and convicted. And then in the spring and

00:56:48.900 summer of 1556, 24 of these people were burned at the stake, including a man called Jacob Masso,

00:56:54.720 who was Gracia's agent in Encona. So as a protest and as punitive measure, some of the arrested

00:57:03.340 merchants initiated the idea of a Jewish commercial boycott of Encona and a diversion of the Encona

00:57:09.720 commerce to another place called Pissarro. So they were like, if this shit is happening in 0.99

00:57:14.120 Encona, let's just like not fuck with them. Let's just like not trade with them. Like, 1.00

00:57:18.480 let's just do an economic, let's make them stop or make them suffer for what they're doing to 0.90

00:57:22.740 Jewish people by just like not trading with them anymore, but to carry out a boycott of an entire 0.53

00:57:28.700 city, this required organization. And it was really only the Nazi family that had the means 0.80

00:57:33.620 and the activist spirit to make this happen. So Gracia and her nephew slash son-in-law, 0.62

00:57:40.820 Joseph exerted pressure for the boycott. Like they went around Istanbul, like getting the people,

00:57:46.800 the ottoman like the jewish people in the ottoman empire to agree with this but there were delicate

00:57:51.500 issues involved and it was hard for people to agree to this it was a tricky situation and the

00:57:57.640 question about whether to support the boycott or not divided the jewish rabbis and communities in

00:58:03.580 the ottoman empire and just kind of without able to really galvanize behind the plan the boycott

00:58:09.800 it just fizzled out it kind of didn't really get going but just in another side note whatever

00:58:17.440 happened to gracia la chica so this is gracia's niece reina slash brianda's daughter shortly

00:58:24.380 before this whole encona situation was happening so gracia la chica who is still living with her

00:58:29.740 mother reina in venice came of age which means that she was now eligible to inherit her half

00:58:35.580 of the business or her half of the business's money. But only, only months later, after she

00:58:41.380 came of age, she and her mother were banished from Venice after an inquisitorial investigation

00:58:47.460 discovered that Raina had been keeping hidden in her home, a Jewish agent of the, of the business

00:58:55.220 of their like company, the pepper company. So, um, in 15, early 1556, this is like really around

00:59:02.580 the same time as the Ancona situation was happening. Reina and her daughter, Graciela

00:59:06.780 Chica, moved with their possessions to Ferrara. But shortly after arriving, Reina died unexpectedly,

00:59:13.800 leaving Graciela Chica now an orphan. So it's like quite a life she's led thus far. And remember,

00:59:20.680 she's not the one who had been like kidnapped and then married to her cousin. She's still like,

00:59:24.360 a lot's happened to her, but she's not yet married to a relative.

00:59:27.640 yet dot dot dot so at this point joseph nasi's brother bernardo who had also by now taken on

00:59:36.220 a hebrew named samuel nasi arrived in ferrara and after a year's mourning had passed for reina

00:59:42.700 he was married to his cousin gracia la chica so it's really a weird parallel like gracia the main

00:59:49.360 gracia and her sister reina slash brianda they both they were sisters who married brothers who

00:59:54.340 were also their uncles. And then their daughters, married brothers, who were also their cousins.

01:00:00.440 Anyway, this is why at the beginning I said, just like, let's not focus on that. It's just a lot of

01:00:05.740 family marriage and that's just what's going on. Nothing's ever going to be as weird as a Cleopatra

01:00:09.480 story in terms of incestual marriages. Anyway, and this was, okay, Graciela Chica's previous quote,

01:00:16.560 marriage to Joseph Nassi was not regarded as valid by anyone. Was that her? I thought that

01:00:22.040 was reina anyway so they were married and then they had to like gracia had to like you know talk 1.00

01:00:28.600 with a sultan and stuff to like use some diplomacy so that the duke of ferrara would allow samuel

01:00:35.480 and gracia la chica to depart for istanbul with all of her money which eventually they did good

01:00:40.860 this this whole family is good negotiators so in 1558 and then kind of the next thing that gracia

01:00:47.780 really focused on was this place called Tiberias. I think it's a town, or it was a town technically.

01:00:55.060 So it's on the Sea of Galilee. It's called Tiberias. And it had been a major Jewish center

01:00:59.880 like a thousand years before Gracia was on the scene. Fun fact, Tiberias, the place, 0.92

01:01:06.000 had been founded originally in ancient times by Herod Antipas, who, if you know you're like

01:01:14.820 jesus christ superstar the musical and or the bible so herod antipas is not the herod from

01:01:20.600 the nativity story who hunted down little baby jesus but he is the herod from jesus christ

01:01:26.380 superstar the musical the one who sings the song i'm herod song like the one that's like you are

01:01:32.340 the christ etc so herod was loyal to the roman empire and that's part of why in the whole like

01:01:38.980 story of jesus he's like turned over to the romans by herod anyway herod found the city and

01:01:44.660 he named it Tiberius after the person who was the Roman emperor at that time, who I think was a Roman

01:01:51.760 emperor at this time, or just a Roman emperor who he really liked. And this emperor Tiberius was the

01:01:56.700 Roman emperor just before Caligula. Caligula being the brother of Agrippina, who we talked about in

01:02:02.960 like season two of this podcast. Tiberius as a person. To quote myself from that episode about

01:02:09.780 Agrippina. Tiberius was worse than useless. Everybody hated him because he was overly 0.99

01:02:14.260 serious, overly pious, and had a tendency to run away and hide out on distant islands rather than

01:02:19.600 do emperor-y stuff. So that's the city, Tiberius. And Gracia was like, you know what, Tiberius,

01:02:26.540 it had been a Jewish center a thousand years ago. So let's make it a Jewish center again. 0.99

01:02:33.980 Let's make it a safe place for Jewish people fleeing prosecution to go and live and thrive.

01:02:39.220 So, I mean, what helped her in this situation was that this area where Tiberius was, was already

01:02:44.460 under the control of Suleiman, her pal, as part of the Ottoman Empire. So she asked, and he gave

01:02:50.660 her tax collecting rights in Tiberius and its surrounding villages. And he also gave her a

01:02:55.500 permit to establish Jewish autonomy there. So this whole project was mixed success at best,

01:03:02.920 because you know people live there already local muslim people resisted sometimes violently to

01:03:10.480 attempts to build to rebuild this city plans were made for jewish people to move from parts of

01:03:17.920 italy but when the ottomans went to war with the republic of venice that plan was abandoned

01:03:23.720 by the end of the century so like she started this in like the mid 1500s so by 1596 kind of

01:03:31.300 at its height of this project, the village of Tiberias had 54 households, 50 families,

01:03:37.000 and four bachelors, and all the people living there were still Muslims. And then four years

01:03:42.160 later, oh no, sorry, 64 years later, in 1660, the Tiberias was destroyed by a group called the

01:03:49.980 Druze, and this resulted in the abandonment of the city by its Jewish community. But unlike

01:03:55.540 Tiberias, the nearby city of Safed recovered from the destruction and wasn't entirely abandoned,

01:04:00.020 remaining an important Jewish center in the Galilee. But anyway, this was Gracia's like kind

01:04:05.000 of final project was really trying to like make Tiberius into this kind of place where Jewish

01:04:09.580 people could just go and thrive and not have to like always have to be on the run. And she also

01:04:15.140 had a promise to keep. So way back before her husband, uncle Francisco had died, she promised

01:04:20.460 that she would do everything in her power to see that he was buried in like Jewish holy lands.

01:04:23.960 so now like that she had control of this area of tiberius with and it was a very complicated

01:04:30.340 situation to do she had his body removed from the church graveyard in lisbon because i guess he had

01:04:35.260 died still as like pretending to be a catholic person so then his body was was in fact able to

01:04:41.580 be reburied in tiberius and although she commissioned and had a grand home built for

01:04:45.500 herself there gracia never actually got to go herself because she became ill i'm not sure with

01:04:50.740 what, but we've done enough episodes. We know the illnesses are going around at that point.

01:04:55.540 She withdrew from public life, like she was not well. And eventually she died in Istanbul in 1569,

01:05:02.000 aged 59. And then her nephew, son-in-law, Joseph kind of kept the Tiberius project going for as

01:05:08.840 long as it did. And so she was la senora. Like her death was like a lot of people really affected by

01:05:14.360 this, like emotionally. Tributes were delivered throughout Europe and the Middle East. One of the

01:05:19.560 most famous tributes was a poem written by a Jewish poet called Saadia Longo, who had fled

01:05:25.780 the Spanish Inquisition as a child and moved to Salonica with his family, where he witnessed her

01:05:30.340 generosity and her help for the fellow Jewish people firsthand. So he wrote a piece called

01:05:34.960 Doña Gracia of the House of Nasi, and he compares Gracia's passing to some of the major calamities

01:05:40.280 in Jewish history. He says, quote, she straightened the path in the wilderness, the passage to an

01:05:45.540 awesome God. So getting into her legacy, Gracia Nassi was directly responsible for protecting,

01:05:52.500 sheltering, and smuggling thousands of Jewish people to safety and freedom,

01:05:56.380 coaxing Jewish culture and faith to flourish anew through her extensive charitable commitments.

01:06:01.980 So when she died, like so many people have talked about on this podcast, like yet again, she

01:06:06.960 was not talked about a lot after she died. And she remained apparently hardly known for the

01:06:13.940 subsequent 500 years like after she died like she did all this amazing stuff and it's just kind of

01:06:18.280 like kind of forgotten not written about but like clearly her story was being shared if not in any

01:06:25.580 major way like the legend of her like the poet wrote like all the people who she affected like

01:06:31.000 shared her story and what she did and then so the first known published book about her was released

01:06:37.120 in 1969. And since then, there's been more scholarship about her, like people looking up

01:06:44.960 historical documents and papers to track what she did and who she was. And her story of bravery and

01:06:50.360 of supporting Jewish people spread through Jewish communities and all the places she lived and the

01:06:55.220 places where their descendants wound up. So that includes in New York City in 2010, they designated

01:07:02.540 a Dona Gracia Day in June 2010, followed by a similar proclamation in Philadelphia a year later.

01:07:08.960 I believe the Jewish community in Turkey is still, like, she's remembered very fondly there. I think

01:07:13.960 the synagogues she built are still around. And the Turkish government sponsored a Dona Gracia

01:07:18.420 evening in New York City, and they also sponsored an exhibit about her in Lisbon. There have been

01:07:24.140 lectures, articles, and festivals in her honor all over Europe. This is all, like, post-1969.

01:07:28.440 I like this detail. An Italian white wine has been named after her. And again, as I mentioned

01:07:33.740 before in the TV series, Magnificent Century, she is on for six episodes. So time to get into some

01:07:41.800 scoring for Doña Gracia, the first category. And this is, it's not a straightforward thing,

01:07:50.320 like scandalousness. Like, I mean, she did marry her uncle, but like that was not scandalous to

01:07:55.920 like anyone around what scandals about her is all of her like the secret underground jewish

01:08:02.760 railroad like the fact that she was secretly jewish and did so much stuff for so many people 0.61

01:08:06.160 had she like every time she was almost caught she had to like flee the country like people 0.74

01:08:09.960 wanted to capture her for what she was doing so it's like scandalousness in a different way from

01:08:14.600 um other episodes we've talked about it's more scandalous it's kind of like 0.89

01:08:18.260 more like emmanuela sands thing where she was doing all this stuff for like 0.98

01:08:22.560 social justice reasons like the stuff she's doing a lot of people were mad about but it wasn't 1.00

01:08:28.780 not in like a sexy way but i do think the extent of what she was doing and like how scandalous it 1.00

01:08:34.480 was to be like running an entire underground railroad operation for like decades like saving

01:08:39.540 people like using her business contacts it's scandalous now to know about it if people then 0.98

01:08:43.580 like her enemies had found out about it she would have been in so much shit which to me 0.99

01:08:48.500 makes it scandalous. And I'm just going to give her a 10 straight up because in that context, 0.98

01:08:54.080 her actions were in fact, incredibly scandalous in the sense of being how shocking it would have

01:09:00.480 been to people who didn't agree with her. Her scheminess. And I don't know, you know, I do

01:09:06.080 at times regret my choice of that word for this category, because again, when we're getting into

01:09:11.140 talking about a Jewish woman, I think the word scheminess can have some connotations of stereotypes

01:09:15.420 and stuff so like just a reminder that by scheminess i mean like how smart was she her 0.97

01:09:20.660 intelligence like how much when she had her back up to the wall did she come up with a good plan

01:09:24.040 like her resiliency and i feel like this is like a 10 this is a huge 10 for her like the fact that

01:09:29.300 by the time she was 28 her husband was like i'm just gonna like leave you in charge like half in

01:09:33.640 charge of this business because you are in your 20s and a woman and like really good at business

01:09:38.880 and clearly she was and she like invented this underground railroad situation like she saw

01:09:43.680 like the money and the connection she had like the fact that she never got like this charge has

01:09:48.520 never stuck to her like the she was arrested very few times for the like stuff she was doing that

01:09:52.900 was against the laws of some of the places where she was but she always got out of it and she kept

01:09:58.680 doing it and i think that's just a 10 as well i feel like it's a 10 for significance too like if

01:10:04.580 you look at her the significance she has to the jewish community as a heroine but also the

01:10:10.480 significance of like how many people's lives did she save and change by like helping them escape

01:10:16.500 persecution by having them like keep their finances intact even the fact that like as part

01:10:20.940 of her plan she would like give them employment until they could find a better place to go 1.00

01:10:24.440 and then the stuff she's doing in istanbul like feeding the poor and like being welcoming in her 0.98

01:10:30.500 synagogue like i think the like butterfly wing trickle down effect of her of her life and works

01:10:36.740 is very significant. So in terms of a higher score is going to be, it really does come down

01:10:41.160 to sexism. And this is also where I've been, especially like this season, like this past

01:10:45.340 season, the international season, when we're looking at people where there's an intersection

01:10:49.240 of the prejudice that they faced, you know, sexism, I feel like was not a huge thing in her way. Like

01:10:56.580 if this was like antisemitism, like how much of that did she face? Like that would be a much higher

01:11:00.660 score. But like in terms of this scale and how we're comparing her against other people, how much

01:11:06.180 did sexism get in her way? And I think that was not really an issue for her. Like, and it wasn't

01:11:11.380 because her husband, uncle, who she married, respected her business acumen. And then like,

01:11:17.780 it was her half and half with her uncle, brother-in-law. And he also like was so impressed

01:11:23.400 by her that he gave her basically full control of the business when he died. Like she, like the

01:11:28.300 sexism did not get in her way because the people who she was around respected her. Like the fact

01:11:34.540 that like Suleiman you know like he he had her back in some ways like he wasn't just at no part

01:11:40.340 of the story was ever was anyone ever like oh you're just a woman like and that got in her way

01:11:44.480 so in the spirit of festive holidays I want to round up but I don't think sexism was in the top

01:11:53.340 10 of challenges that she faced in her life so I'm going to give her an average sexism bonus score

01:11:57.380 of just five because I think she's great and I want to give her as high a score as possible

01:12:02.000 which gives her a score of 35 which puts her in the top 10. One of the projects I hope to do in

01:12:11.040 my upcoming hiatus from this podcast is to perhaps finally make a website where you can see the scale

01:12:17.680 the Fredegund Memorial Scandalicious scale instead of just me like saying it out loud to you every

01:12:23.460 now and then but let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine it's a tie actually so she's

01:12:30.020 in the top 10, in the sense that there's three people who all have 35 and they're tied at the

01:12:35.680 bottom of the top 10. So if we're doing the top 10, but again, with a tie, a three-way tie for

01:12:40.800 10th place, it's Dowager Empress Zixi, Danya, Gracia Nasi, and Zhang Yisao, all of a 35.

01:12:49.420 Queen Min has a 35.5, Malin Zin, 35.5, the Chevalier Dayan, 35.5, Harem Sultan, 36,

01:12:57.860 and Jenga 36, Manuela Sons 37, and then Queen Margot 37.5, Fredigan 38. So that top 10,

01:13:06.420 which like asterisks comprises 11 people, almost all are people from, from this super special,

01:13:12.860 but then also from the international season, which is great to see. You know, I'm just comparing

01:13:19.400 these people on the podcast on these four categories to see where they all go. But I do

01:13:24.080 appreciate that there's people from so many different cultures and ethnicities and religions 0.96

01:13:30.040 who are all tits out to the extent that they're in the top 10.

01:13:35.220 So I want to let you all know what is happening with this podcast in the new year. We are going

01:13:40.920 to take a couple weeks off because it's hiatus time, it's seasonal holiday time, and frankly,

01:13:47.720 I'm really tired. So I plan the international season to be like 12 episodes or maybe 16,

01:13:54.080 or 20 and you got something like when you had all the super specials like 44 episodes so like

01:13:59.320 it's been fun it's not a hardship like you're welcome it's been fun but over this past year

01:14:07.060 there's been a lot of new members have joined as listeners as members of the tits of brigade

01:14:11.220 and if you're all caught up with this show this would be like if you just listen to it all at

01:14:16.100 once like this might be your first experience of like i go on hiatus so rest assured i'm not

01:14:21.700 planning to take like five months off or whatever I've done between previous seasons because

01:14:27.120 various reasons and I have lots to talk about. But I will be taking off at least a month

01:14:32.520 to refuel and rest up and prepare for season six, which is going to be coming. I have an

01:14:39.960 idea for what season seven will be. Like the show is going to go on. Don't worry about that. It's

01:14:44.300 just going to be a bit of a little petite break. But other than taking a few weeks off during the

01:14:50.580 hiatus, I am in the works planning a bunch of super special episodes, which will be like

01:14:55.060 people will be joining me like guests. So some are going to be authors who have books coming out

01:14:59.620 or that have come out about women in history. Some we've talked about on the show and some who

01:15:03.740 we're going to learn about other fun guests who are people who know stuff about women in history.

01:15:08.600 So for the next little while, after a few weeks off, there's going to be some super specials,

01:15:13.220 but there probably won't, there may not be episodes like every week, but at least every

01:15:17.040 couple weeks there's going to be something so just make sure you're subscribed or you're following

01:15:21.640 or whatever on your podcast app to make sure you notice when new super specials pop up um and i'll

01:15:27.700 always be posting about them on the instagram page as well when that sort of stuff when those

01:15:31.880 things are coming and that's instagram vulgar history pod yeah i also wanted to um shout out

01:15:37.900 christina lumagi who jumped on board as editor midway through the international season and whose

01:15:44.940 help has been so necessary. I don't want to be like, she's just like volunteered her time. I'm

01:15:49.680 like, I am paying her. I hired her as an editor. And it's been such a great help for me. Because 0.94

01:15:57.120 just so I could see the season through like international, three quarters of the way through,

01:16:01.880 I was just like, I had so many more stories I wanted to tell, but I was just getting like

01:16:04.720 on the precipice of burning out. But like having her jump in and help out with the editing has

01:16:09.360 really, really helped out. Because there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a podcast.

01:16:14.120 my favorite things are researching which friends the podcast Alison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson

01:16:20.700 would could explain to you when I'm researching someone who I'm excited about like the amount of

01:16:25.140 random like screenshots and texts I send to them both to just be like you'll never believe this

01:16:29.100 guess what like I love learning things I love um the research process I really enjoy recording and

01:16:35.440 then I really enjoy after the episodes come out to follow up with a TikTok brigade on Instagram

01:16:39.880 or on TikTok and see what your thoughts are and just discuss these like fun stories. So

01:16:45.120 not doing the editing myself has freed up a lot of time doing a task that is not my favorite thing.

01:16:51.140 And so thank you so much to Christina for helping out. And Vulgar History is now part of the Realm

01:16:56.760 Podcast Network, which is also a huge help and also great news. So I want to explain what that

01:17:02.480 is because like there's podcasts I listen to that are on networks and I don't always know what that

01:17:06.320 means, what this means for me and for you, the show is still going to be, it'll still sound the

01:17:11.720 same. It's still me sitting at my kitchen table with my cat running around eating things. I'm

01:17:17.840 still going to have full control over like who I talk about and when I release episodes and all

01:17:21.620 that sort of stuff. You're still going to be able to listen to the show in all the same ways you can.

01:17:26.420 But it means again, like some of the podcast behind the scenes work that used to take up my

01:17:31.240 time. Now the people at Realm are going to help out with some stuff like finding advertisers,

01:17:35.860 but also finding ways to advertise vulgar history to find new listeners. And that frees up even more

01:17:41.460 of my time to work on new episodes, which is why I don't think it's going to be like a five-month

01:17:45.300 hiatus because like we've got a team now, which is just so fantastic. And this all happened

01:17:52.600 this past year. So really, really grateful for that. So it's all win, win, win. Like people

01:17:58.560 are helping out, gives me more time to do more episodes. So you'll have more episodes to listen

01:18:01.840 two. It's all good. All that being said, so there's going to be like over the next little

01:18:06.340 while, some super specials with special guests. And in the background, I'm going to be working on

01:18:12.360 getting ready for season six. And I do want to let you know, here's your little festive holiday

01:18:17.440 tits out treat. What's coming up? So season six is going to be a whole season about a much requested

01:18:23.400 person who is Mary Queen of Scots. So I really didn't want to do this. I think I've said in a

01:18:31.460 couple past episodes like if i was going to do mary queen of scots like i have so much to say

01:18:35.000 and there's so much to talk about like i want to do it right i want to be able to do it thoughtfully

01:18:39.960 and i think i figured out a way to do it which is so it'll be similar to the jane gray season

01:18:45.380 how to lose a queen in nine days it's going to be a deep dive into the whole mary queen of scots

01:18:51.300 scenario looking at her life and there's going to be multiple episodes just her because a lot

01:18:56.280 happened that's just her but also episodes about the women who were around her the women who

01:19:01.700 influenced her and who influenced what happened to her and if you know her story you know who some

01:19:06.000 of those women might be and those are also going to be really scandalous just probably multi-part

01:19:10.520 episodes but like you know i hope you know mary queen of scots is my girl and i think i'm a place

01:19:17.400 now where i can do her story the justice that i feel like i want to do yeah so there's gonna be

01:19:24.200 super specials. Well, I work on getting that ready. And until that season starts, really all

01:19:28.600 I can recommend is just that you watch all the episodes of all the seasons of rain because it's

01:19:34.340 the greatest show ever made. And it's about Mary Queen of Scots. And some of it is stuff we'll be

01:19:37.980 talking about on the, on the podcast. So finally, I want to thank each and every one of you out there

01:19:42.900 in the tits out brigade, because the reason I keep doing more episodes and the reason why the

01:19:47.720 international season kept, it just got this momentum is because of all the incredible energy

01:19:52.080 and feedback I get from all of you. Like not just, you know, messages you send me in email or DMs or

01:19:58.480 whatever, but also just like seeing the numbers of like how many people listen to each episode and

01:20:03.320 how many people are following the podcast. It's like knowing that there's this beautiful tits 0.97

01:20:07.660 out brigade literally around the world is just really making me grateful that so many people 0.80

01:20:13.060 are jumping on board. This, like what feels to me, just like a clown car of a podcast of randomness.

01:20:18.780 I love getting your feedback and ideas of people to talk about. Please know I get a lot of

01:20:24.280 suggestions, which is great. Please keep the suggestions coming. But if you suggest something

01:20:27.660 and I don't do it right away, that's not because it's not a good suggestion. That's just because

01:20:31.700 I've got a lot of suggestions and I want to read up on all of them. Like I've got the world's

01:20:37.180 longest Google spreadsheet of people, and I'm really excited to learn more about them. And

01:20:42.120 I really do intend, as I said at the beginning of the international season,

01:20:45.320 to eventually have done a podcast about somebody from every single country and place where any

01:20:52.540 Tits Out Brigade member is from or their ancestry is from. Anyway, so as per ever, you can reach out

01:20:59.680 to me using, there's a form at vulgarhistory.com. You can email me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

01:21:06.300 I'm on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod and I'm now on TikTok at vulgarhistory. And if you're really

01:21:12.200 going through this like cold turkey ending of the podcast a couple weeks off like and you just need

01:21:19.540 to listen to my voice and you've like already listened to all the episodes there are so many

01:21:24.840 bonus episodes on patreon so if you join for five dollars a month you get episode access to all the 0.99

01:21:29.520 episodes of so this asshole vulgar peace theater which is so most recently and so this asshole 0.92

01:21:34.660 genghis khan and on vulgar peace theater we talked about a knight's tale and there's going to be more 0.99

01:21:39.260 of those coming up. And you can keep shopping for Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.store,

01:21:44.700 or you can always use code TITZOT for free US shipping or TITZOT10 for 10% off. And so I will

01:21:49.680 leave you by saying, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy whatever of

01:21:56.640 the like 29 various cultural observances that happened during the month of December. And when

01:22:01.780 I come back, at least in the Western or the Northern hemisphere, days are going to be getting 0.99

01:22:06.980 longer and the yeah whatever you celebrate i hope you do it with your pants on and your tits out and 0.91

01:22:15.400 i'll talk to you in the new year vulgar history is hosted written and researched by ann foster 0.99

01:22:22.140 and edited by christina lumagi

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Vulgar History - December 21, 2022

Gracia Mendes Nasi： The 16th-Century Jewish Woman Who Ran A Pepper Empire

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