Francisco Maldonado da Silva

Who was Francisco Maldonado da Silva?

Francisco Maldonado da Silva was an Argentine marrano physician, who learned about his Jewishness through his father Diego Nuñez da Silva, who was a Jewish physician. He was born to a marrano family of Portuguese Jewish background. Francisco studied the scriptures while he was a medical student. After a few years in Chile he decided to assume fully his Jewishness and stop hiding as a Christian. He was abducted at night and taken to Lima where he was held in the secret prisons of the Inquisition for 6 years, during those years he was confronted 13 times with Christian theologians to try to help him find the "True Faith". His astounding knowledge made him valuable even to his enemies. He was held accountable for the heresy of honoring the "law of Moses", something objectionable to the Holy Inquisition. Finally he was burned at the stake with eleven other Jews in the largest Auto-da-fé recorded in history.