Uriel Acosta

Uriel da Costa (Portuguese: [uɾiˈɛɫ dɐ ˈkɔʃtɐ]; c. 1585 – April 1640) or Uriel Acosta (from the Latin form of his Portuguese surname, Costa, or da Costa) was a Jewish philosopher and skeptic who questioned the Catholic and Rabbinic institutions of his time.

Many details about his life appear in his short autobiography, but over the past two centuries documents uncovered in Portugal, Amsterdam, Hamburg and more have changed and added much in the picture.

Costa was born in Porto with the name Gabriel da Costa Fiuza. His parents were cristãos novos, or New Christians, Christians who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism when they faced the alternative to be expelled from Portugal. His father was a well-off international merchant and tax-farmer.

Studying canon law in the University of Coimbra intermittently between 1600 and 1608, he began to read the Bible and contemplate it seriously. Costa also occupied an ecclesiastical office. In his autobiography Costa pictured his family as devout Catholics. However they have been subjects to several investigations by the Inquisition, suggesting they were Conversos, more or less close to Jewish customs. Gabriel explicitly supported the adherence to Mosaic prescriptions as well as traditional ones.

After his father died, the family came in greater need of some debts they had not been paid. In 1614 they changed this predicament as they sneaked out of Portugal with a significant sum of money they previously collected as tax-farmers for . The family took Jewish names, and headed to two major Sephardic diaspora communities. Newly circumcised, two brothers settled in Amsterdam, and two with their mother in Hamburg. Gabriel was in the latter city, and became Uriel for the Jewish neighbors, and Adam Romez for outside relations, presumably because he was wanted in Portugal. All resumed their international trade business.

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