## *About Diego Nunes Belmonte aka Jacob Belmonte*Jacob Belmonte was one of the early Jewish settlers in Amsterdam, and a lot has been written about him by Gottheil, Swetschinsky, Fuks-Mansfeld, Bodean, and many others. The reason for this is that he left autobiographical notes. Since such notes were very scarce among Portuguese Jews in those times, this attracted much attention and scholarship.And it attracted a lot of speculation, everyone wants to be a Belmonte descendant. You may read here and there, especially on genealogical sites, that Jacob was born in Belmonte, that he was born on Maderia, or that he was a Baron. None of this is true.Diogo Nunez Belmonte born in the Algarve. I found his name in the Livro dos Homems in the series Culpados in the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition.He is recorded as follows:Diogo Nunez Belmonte, xn, mercador, natural do Algarve, morador no ilha da Maderio, donde fogio para Flandrez e la cazou - testimonia Francisco Gomez - no primeiro caderno do promotor folio 299. https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=2299779 (image 460, at the bottom)So he was a New Christian, born in the Algarve, living on the island of Madeira, from where he fled to Holland This was testified by Francisco Gomes. His testimonial is of course also preserved here (go to image 543):[https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=2318027](https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=2318027) The Livro dos Homems, in short, is an index to Processos, and to the Cadernos dos Promotores of the Inquisition. It is on the given name, and within that, chronologically. it started in 1607 when the Inquisition had a reset. It's good for the first half of the 17th century, less good for the second half, and even less good for the eighteenth century. The second volume of this index is missing. It's 220 pages long with between 5 and 10 entries per page. In the margin,on the left is the place of residence of the defendant, and in the margin on the right is the verdict, or the lack thereof. The script may seem difficult but is entirely readable, you will enjoy it with some practice. The Cadernos dos Promotores have declarations from lots of people about lots of other people that may, or may not have ended in a processor, a court case before the Inquisition. The dossiers about the processor contain declarations from relatives, friends, neighbors, or others, references to other documents, statements by the defendant, and, important to us, a genealogy, the verdict, etc.