Uriel da Costa

Biography

Gabriel da Costa (1585-1640), native of Oporto, is the son of an enthusiastic Christian, Bento da Costa, and of a marrane practitioner secretly the Judaism. Itself receives a Christian education and studies the canon law at the university of Coïmbre, before becoming treasurer of a collegiate church. Is 22 years old, according to its own account, of the doubts relating to the immortality of the heart start to live it. Its reflections lead it to read the Torah and to convert with the Judaism. Because of Spanish persecutions and Portugueses against the Jews, it must then leave its country, with his mother and her brothers. They settle in 1612 with Amsterdam, where the Jews can freely exert their worship. During conversion, it takes the name of Uriel.

It is quickly disappointed to note that the Judaism resembles the " little; biblisme" that it secretly cultivated, and conceives of it a sharp loathing for the rabbinical traditions, which appear fixed to him in useless cérémonials, foreigners with the mosaic law. In 1616, it leaves to Hamburg and publishes Propostas there countered has tradiçao , protesting against the Talmud and the rabbinical culture, and refusing to put on an equal footing the word of the men (oral law) and the word of God (Torah). In answer, a herem (measurement of exclusion of the Jewish community) is pronounced against him by the Jewish congregation of Venice, in 1618. Driven out Hamburg, it returns to Amsterdam, continuing to profess the same theories. The community of Amsterdam confirms the herem in 1623.

In addition to the rites and the oral law, Uriel da Costa also denies the immortality of the heart, question which did not cease haunting it. For him, the heart is as perishable as the body, it has neither life there postmortem, nor judgment. He also denounces the hopes and superstitions related to this illusion. He exposes his theses - by basing them on the mosaic law - in Examen of the tradition of the Pharisees , published in 1624. Offending the Jewish community, but also the Christians, the book is worth to him to be arrested by the authorities of the city, imprisoned ten days and condemned to a fine. Its work is burned.

The thought of da Costa is radicalized still thereafter. It comes from there to doubt the nature divine, or at least revealed mosaic law, this one being according to him too contrary with the natural law to proceed of God. Thus he considers that any religion is a human invention. With the meaningless rites, he prefers a religion based on natural laws. In same time, it tries to be reconciled with the Jewish community, to break its insulation, acceptor to make the monkey between the monkeys. It is however impossible for him to yield a long time with orthodoxy. Again convinced of heresy, it is victim of a second herem in 1633, who breaks his engagement, and does not accept the sorrow immediately allowing the cancellation of measurement, namely scourging. It is subjected to it seven years later, to cure poverty and loneliness. However, it does not support the humiliation of public scourging and the ceremonial, at the exit of the synagog, which consists for each person present, to span its body. After having completed its autobiography - Exemplar humanae vitae - it commits suicide. He is often regarded as one of the precursors of Spinoza.

Works

Proposals against the tradition (Portuguese, Propostas countered has tradição ), Ca 1616.
Examen of the traditions pharisiennes (Portuguese, Exame das tradições farisaicas ), 1623. Among the various doctrines called into question, that of the immortality of the heart.
Example of an human life (Latin, Exemplar humanae vitae ), 1640. It is about an autobiography.

Random links: