Avantgarde of secular assimilation, the ‘port-jews’ were capable of syncretizing otherness and structuring a revolutionary mentality that unhinged national, religious, ethnic, linguistic and gender cages for the sake of individual freedom, demonstrating a levelling cosmopolitanism. Beatrice de Luna, alias Grazia Mendes Nasì, with her immense fortune and open-mindedness influenced the politics of European courts and challenged the Roman curia and religious conservatism. Her individuality that does not fit into confessional obsolescence fully represents the revolution of modernity of the Mediterranean Renaissance breaks down community identities and embodies a new model of cosmopolitanism. In her relationship with the court of Ferrara, the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovačka Republika) and in her vast network of procurators and consuls, la señora of the ‘port-jews’, she disposes on the Mediterranean chessboard her own diplomatic and cultural network based on her cosmopolitan influence.

«Pionieri dell’assimilazione», così definì gli ebrei portoghesi il grande storico russo-francese Léon Poliakov nel suo magistrale saggio sull’atroce storia dell’antisemitismo, ricordando lo splendore della ricchezza e l’eleganza dei costumi che caratterizzavano i ‘marrani’. Una fierezza costruita, per contrasto, con il disprezzo del quale sono stati oggetto per la duplicità della loro identità sia dagli ebrei che dai cristiani.