Garcia de Orta

Garcia de Orta (or Garcia d'Orta) (1501? – 1568) was a Portuguese Renaissance Sephardi Jewish physician, herbalist and naturalist. He was a pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, working mainly in Goa, then a Portuguese colony in India.

His magnum opus was a book on the simples (herbs used singly) and drugs published in 1563 Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India, the earliest treatise on the medicinal and economic plants of India. Carolus Clusius translated it into Latin which was widely used as a standard reference text on medicinal plants.

Garcia de Orta was born in Castelo de Vide, probably in 1501, the son of Fernão (Isaac) da Orta, a merchant, and Leonor Gomes. He had three sisters, Violante, Catarina and Isabel. Their parents were Spanish Jews from Valencia de Alcántara who had taken refuge, as many others did, in Portugal at the time of the great expulsion of the Spanish Jews by the Reyes Catolicos Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492. Forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497, they were pejoratively classed as Cristãos Novos (New Christians) and marranos ("swine"). Some of these refugees maintained their Jewish faith secretly.

According to a confession by his brother-in-law after his death, Garcia de Orta privately continued to assert that "the Law of Moses was the true law"; in other words, he, probably in common with others in his family, remained a Jewish believer. In 1565 the Inquisition was introduced to the Indian Viceroyalty and an inquisitorial court was opened in Goa. Active persecution against Jews, secret Jews, Hindus and new Christians began. Garcia himself died in 1568, apparently without having suffered seriously from this persecution, but his sister Catarina was arrested as a Jew in the same year and was burned at the stake for Judaism in Goa in October 25, 1569. Portuguese Inquisitors burned de Orta’s sister, Catarina, at the stake by for being an “impenitent Jewess”. Catarina could have been executed at the New Pillory - a wooden framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, used to expose one to public derision. Garcia himself was posthumously convicted of Judaism. His remains were exhumed and burned along with an effigy in an auto da fé on December 4, 1580. Memorials recognizing his contributions have been built both in Portugal and India. 

Born in 1501 or 1502 in Castelo de Vide, Kingdom of Portugal, Died in 1568 in Goa, Portuguese India, his Occupation Physician and naturalist

Pic of Garcia de Orta: Statue of Garcia de Orta by Martins Correia at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Lisbon

Garcia de Orta Garden in Panjim, Goa. Maintained by The Corporation of  City of Panjim 

Reference: Wikipedia