Funeral oration for Dom Pedro V, King of Portugal. By the “Israelite Minister in the Synagogue of Ponta Delgada.”

Oration prepared and later delivered by the “Israelite Minister in the Synagogue of Ponta Delgada.” The short-lived and much beloved King Pedro V (born 1837), ruled from 1853 until his sudden death during a cholera outbreak in 1861. The Azores is a Portuguese possession, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 950 miles from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. It is possible that Marranos settled there in earlier centuries, however the first recorded settlement of Jews in the islands began in 1818 with the arrival of merchants from Morocco, by 1848 the community numbered 250 (see EJ, Vol. III col. 1012).