ACOSTA, GABRIEL (URIEL)

Jewish rationalist and religious dissenter; b. Oporto, Portugal, c. 1590; d. Amsterdam, Holland, April 1640. He was called originally Gabriel da Costa, and he himself always used the family name of da Costa, but he is more generally known by its Latinized form of Acosta. He was born into a family of marranos, his father having escaped the stake by accepting Catholicism. However, according to Gabriel's autobiography, his family observed the tenets of the Catholic faith punctiliously. Young Gabriel was reared as a noble; he studied law and prepared himself for an ecclesiastical career. Despite this background he began to doubt the truth of Christian dogma, became increasingly disenchanted, and found no solace in the resolute doctrines of the Catholic Church. Circumstances, however, had compelled Acosta to conceal his theological views, for in 1615, after the death of his father, in order to support his family, he accepted a semiecclesiastical office as chief treasurer of an abbey, the collegiate church of Oporto. But his spirit became more restless and his conscience more disquieted. Secretly he began to delve into the faith of his ancestors, and the doctrines of Judaism brought repose to his mind. Gabriel then determined to forsake Catholicism and return to Judaism. Cautiously, he conveyed his intention to his mother and brothers, and they too resolved to expose themselves to the great danger of secret emigration and to the perils of an uncertain future. About 1617 the Acosta family arrived in Amsterdam, where they were admitted into the covenant of Abraham and where the baptismal name Gabriel was exchanged for the name Uriel.

Soon, however, it became apparent that in Judaism as well, Uriel's wayward disposition could find no satisfaction. From his readings of the Old Testament he had constructed an ideal of Judaism that clashed sharply with the realities of Jewish life. Liberal Mosaic and prophetic doctrines, he believed, were being discarded for rigid and prosaic ritual and observance, and the religious life of Judaism seemed to be as clogged with petty detail as the Catholic faith that he had abandoned. He had expected that Judaism would resolve for him the puzzles that the Church could not solve and that the rabbis could offer what he could not obtain from his Catholic confessors. Acosta had sacrificed much for his convictions, and he believed he had earned thereby his right to protest and to propagate his views. In a lengthy pamphlet (Proposals against Tradition ), which he had written from Hamburg and directed to the Sephardic community of Venice, he challenged and denounced the "offensive" traditional laws and customs, and with arrogant expressions he decried their rabbinic guardians and cavilled at their authority. His revolutionary ideas had aroused a vigorous opposition, and upon his refusal to recant he was promptly placed under the ban at Hamburg and publicly excommunicated at Venice (Aug. 14, 1618).

In the interim he had returned to Amsterdam, where he was held in great contempt and isolated from all human intercourse. This forced severance only served to increase his passion for speculation, and he resolved to publish a work in which he would deny the doctrine of immortality and indicate the "glaring contrasts" between the Bible and rabbinical Judaism. But Acosta's intention was anticipated by his former friend, the physician Samuel da Silva, who in 1623 had published a book in Portuguese entitled A Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul in order to Confute the Ignorance of a Certain Opponent, Who in Delusion Affirms Many Errors. Believing that the opposition had commissioned Da Silva, he hastened to publish his retort (1624), also in Portuguese, An Examination of the Pharisaic Traditions Compared with the Written Laws, and a Reply to the Slanderer Samuel da Silva. He now denied not only the belief in immortality but also the doctrines of the resurrection and of reward and punishment. By denying such concepts he had challenged Christian dogma as well. He was again denounced, arrested, imprisoned for several days, and fined 300 florins, and his work was condemned to the flames. For 15 years (1618–33) Acosta lived as an outcast; unable to bear it any longer, he agreed to recant and to be, as he phrased it, "an ape among apes."

He had submitted not from conviction but from despair, and consequently he became embittered to the point of disbelief in the divine origin of the Bible itself. Word had now gotten out that he dissuaded three Christians from their intention of embracing Judaism, and he was once more placed under the ban. After seven years of total ostracism he succumbed. His tortured spirit now longed for tranquility, and the price required of him this time was severe and cruel. Before huge audiences he was ordered to recite his public penance, was given 39 lashes, and then trampled upon as he lay prostrate upon the threshold of the synagogue. His proud and indomitable spirit had now been broken; with shame and humiliation he arrived home, poured out his feelings in a short autobiographical sketch entitled Exemplar Humanae Vitae (A Specimen of Human Life), and then shot himself. A refutation of the Exemplar was made by Philip Limborch, a Dutch theologian, as an appendix to his Amica collatio cum erudito Judaeo (Gouda 1687; repr. 1847).

Bibliography: s. bernstein, Universal Jewish Encyclopedia 1:72–74. f. de sola mondes, The Jewish Encyclopedia 1:167–68. c. gebhardt, Encyclopaedia Judaica: Das Judentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart 5:678–80. j. cantera, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 1:113. i. sonne, "Da Costa Studies," Jewish Quarterly Review 22 (1932) 247–93. h. h. graetz, History of the Jews, ed. and tr. b. lÖwy, 6 v. (Philadelphia 1945) 5:56–65. j. whiston, The Remarkable Life of Uriel Acosta (London 1740).

[n. j. cohen]