Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510 – 1569), also known as Doña Gracia or La Señora (The Lady), was a Portuguese philanthropist and one of the wealthiest Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. She married Francisco Mendes/Benveniste. She was the maternal aunt and business partner of João Micas (alias, Hebrew name Joseph Nasi), who became a prominent figure in the politics of the Ottoman Empire. She also developed an escape network that saved hundreds of Conversos from the Inquisition. Her name – Graça in Portuguese – Gracia is Spanish for the Hebrew Hannah, which means Grace; she was also known by her Christianized name Beatriz (Beatrice) de Luna Miques. Family background and early life Beatriz de Luna was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1510. The family was from Aragon in Spain and were forcibly converted Jews known as Conversos (also called Crypto-Jews, Marranos and Secret Jews). So that they could still practice Judaism, the family had fled to Portugal when the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, expelled the Jews in 1492. Five years later, in 1497, they were forcibly converted to Catholicism along with all the other Jews in Portugal at that time. Beatrice's father Álvaro de Luna (possibly a relative of Álvaro de Luna from Spain in the mid-15th century that was a colleague of Don Abraham Benveniste) was married to Filipa or Felipa Mendes Benveniste, the sister of Francisco Mendes and Diogo Mendes. Marriage and widowhood in Lisbon, Portugal In 1528, Beatriz de Luna married her uncle, the very rich black pepper trader and new Christian in Lisbon, Francisco Mendes. Francisco also happened to belong to the same very prominent Jewish family as her mother – Benveniste from Castile and Aragon – and was also the great grandchild of Don Abraham Benveniste of Castile. The couple were believed to have been married in the great cathedral of Lisbon, in a public Catholic wedding, and then to have had a crypto-Judaic ceremony with the signing of a ketubah. Francisco Mendes and his brother, Diogo Mendes, were the directors of a powerful trading company and bank of world renown, with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean. The House of Mendes/Benveniste probably began as a company trading precious objects and currency arbitrage. Following the beginning of the Age of Discovery and the finding, by the Portuguese, of a sea route to India, the Mendes brothers