The Expansion of tolerance

Native American allies of the Dutch, and especially to New Christians who
were looked upon as heretics and turncoats. The terminology of heresy
became the mould into which the war was poured, and so it becomes
virtually impossible to separate the strands of economic, political, and
religious motivation and justification in the struggle.
But the use of the language and concepts of religious intolerance was
not uncontested. When Recife fell on 28 January 1654, the Portuguese
commander Francisco Barreto treated the defeated Dutch with all the
courtesies of war, abiding by the surrender agreement and enforcing strict
control of his troops to prevent abuses. Even more impressive was his
treatment of the remaining Jewish community despite the objections of the
Inquisition, allowing them to depart unharmed, to sell their property, and
even helping to provide adequate shipping for their voyage. Surely, said
the Jewish chronicler Saul Levy Mortara, God had saved his people by
influencing the ‘heart of governor Barreto’. 36 Given the tone of the
Portuguese chronicles of the war, mostly written by clerics, Barreto’s actions
seem singular and strange, but if understood within the long tradition of
Portuguese religious relativism and a belief in a shared humanity as well as
his own sense of honour, and perhaps self-interest, Barreto’s actions may
not have been so strange after all.
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