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Home / Jewish law and estates / Gracia Nasi's sister Brianda sued her in Venice for half the Mendes fortune and denounced…
Case file s575 · Jewish law and estates · 1569
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1569
Died
1569
Place
Constantinople · Turkey
Field
merchant banking (House of Mendes) · Business and finance on the timeline
Legal tradition
Venetian law (Giudici al Forestier, the court for foreigners); wills of Francisco and Diogo Mendes
Historical event
Portuguese Inquisition (1536) and the flight of conversos from Iberia
Religion
Gracia Mendes Nasi: Jewish (recorded as Judaism on Wikidata; 16th-century Portuguese Jews, 16th-century Sephardi Jews, Jewish businesswomen on Wikipedia)
Jewish law and estatesBrothers and sisters in courtEmpires and conquestMiddle EastTurkey
AI illustration: Merchants and notaries at the Rialto in Venice, 16th century
Illustration made with AI for celebrity.estate.

Gracia Nasi's sister Brianda sued her in Venice for half the Mendes fortune and denounced her as a secret Jew

Beatriz de Luna came from a Jewish family forcibly converted in Portugal in 1497. In 1528 she married her uncle Francisco Mendes, a Lisbon merchant banker. He died in 1535, and his will divided the fortune between her and his brother Diogo, who ran the firm's Antwerp branch. Diogo married Beatriz's sister Brianda. When Diogo died in the 1540s, his will named Beatriz manager of the business and guardian of his daughter and her property, ahead of the girl's mother, Brianda. The sisters took the estate to Venice's Giudici al Forestier. Brianda denounced Beatriz to the Venetian authorities as a secret Jew and used an agent to denounce her in France; the agent denounced Brianda as well. France and Venice confiscated Mendes property, and Venice held Beatriz to stop her leaving. Rulings of September 1547 and December 1548 ordered half the fortune deposited at the Venetian mint until Brianda's daughter came of age. Her nephew Joseph Nasi and the sultan's physician Moses Hamon obtained an Ottoman envoy demanding her release. She reached Ferrara by 1549 or 1550, lived openly as a Jew under the name Gracia Nasi, and settled in Constantinople in 1552 or 1553. Her daughter Reyna married Joseph Nasi there. One account says a 1552 settlement placed 100,000 ducats with the Venetian treasury for the niece†. In 1558 she leased Tiberias from Sultan Suleiman. She died in 1569.

What the law took from it

A will that makes one sibling guardian of another sibling's child sends the excluded parent to court.

Record vs. record

Diogo's death is given as 1542 (Wikipedia), 1543 and about 1545 (Jewish Encyclopedia); the age at which the niece's half was to be released is given as 15 and 18:

Wikipedia (English)jewishencyclopedia.comencyclopedia.com
Sources
  1. jstor.orgScholarship
  2. jstor.orgScholarship
  3. jewishencyclopedia.comPress
  4. encyclopedia.comPress
  5. jwa.orgPress
  6. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Gracia Nasi's sister Brianda sued her in Venice for half the Mendes fortune and denounced her as a secret Jew,” story s575, https://www.celebrity.estate/gracia-nasi-1569, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Jewish law and estatesBrothers and sisters in courtEmpires and conquestMiddle EastTurkey