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This article focuses on the analysis of a medical consilium about a rhino horn written around 1570 by the Portuguese royal physician Jorge Godines to the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon. It sheds light on the processes of knowledge production concerning rhino and unicorn horns in early modern Lisbon. Through micro-historical analysis, we will demonstrate how demand, supply, and the availability of specimens, experience, information, and intellectual networks contributed to the establishment of a specific geography of scientific knowledge around the city. The analysis hopes to contribute to the disclosure of a more heterogeneous scientific landscape in early modern Europe, where practices of knowledge production depended very much on local contacts and on the agents' individual trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The humanist and polymath Duarte Gomes, born in 1510 to a prominent New-Christian family in Lisbon, underwent three processos by the Portuguese and Italian Inquisitions in his lifetime. His encounters and escapes from these tribunals are at once extraordinary and representative of the experience of many Portuguese Jews and suspected Judaizers who were compelled to flee abroad when the Inquisition initiated proceedings in their homeland. While their existence was precarious, it was made more bearable by a complex network of coreligionists and sympathizers in commercial, diplomatic, and humanist circles. In Gomes's case, the Inquisition itself proved vulnerable to influences from these networks. This paper makes use of previously unstudied documents which reveal important information concerning when and how Gomes left Lisbon for Antwerp while the initial inquiry into his alleged marranismo was still taking place. The details of this and the subsequent processos against Gomes reveal, on the one hand, Inquisitions that wielded very real power to intimidate even those who, like Gomes, ostensibly enjoyed royal and episcopal favour; on the other hand, in comparison with Gomes's own connections, the Inquisition's manifest significant limitations of geographical reach and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]