Isaac 'David' dePINTO

Isaac de Pinto, Isaac de Pinto was born in 1717 by David Pinto and Leah Belmonte Ximenes. He grew up in a wealthy Portuguese-Jewish environment and developed into a cosmopolitan scholar polemised the famous Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire and include personal contact with the famous writer Denis Diderot. The last years of his life Isaac de Pinto, after the death of his wife in 1783, in relative solitude. He died on August 13, 1787 and was the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery buried in The Hague.
born 1717-04 Amsterdam
deceased 8/13/1787 Hague
Father Pinto, David
Ximenes Belmonte mother, Leah
Pinto brothers, Aron of 1716
Pinto, Jacob 1718
Partner Nunes Henriques, Rachel 1713 (?) - 05/20/1783
1734 Amsterdam wedding
Isaac de Pinto was born April 20, 1717 in Amsterdam as the second son of the wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchant, David Pinto and Leah Belmonte Ximenes. Isaac's older brother Aron was born to him one year and one year later, in 1718, was his younger brother Jacob in the world. One month after the birth of Isaac his father bought for 34,000 guilders Tulpenburg the outdoors. This fact underscores the great success of the Pinto family. In Amsterdam, the family De Pinto a lovely mansion in St. Antoniesbreestraat: the continuing De Pinto House. Isaac's father belonged to his fiftieth birthday of the ten richest Sephardim in Amsterdam and had a yearly income of 28,000 guilders broad base of life.
The members of the family descended from the Pinto called Marranos or New Christians. They had settled in Portugal in 1497 under pressure from the Inquisition to convert to Catholicism. In 1607 arrived the ancestors of Isaac de Pinto, therefore as new Christians in Antwerp. Only in January 1647 were all male members of the family gathered at the Pinto in Rotterdam to be circumcised after 150 years back which they openly returned to Judaism. Part of the family moved to Amsterdam where Isaac's eponymous ancestor in 1651 for 30,000 guilders above the house at St Antoniesbreestraat bought. The leading position that the family took the Pinto was not only their great power, but also from the fact that their outside Tulpenburg was attended by dignitaries like the Duke of Lorraine and William IV.
About the education of Isaac de Pinto and his two brothers, little is known. Probably they were taught by a tutor and prepared to live according to their position. A specifically Jewish education was at the Sephardim that time does not arise. Aron have visited the school "Ets Haim. Perhaps because he was the eldest son was destined for the commercial and banking house, the Pinto to lead and therefore had to be aware of the Halacha underpinned trade ethics. Aron was also the one that his father lived, while Isaac and Jacob elsewhere in the city as a merchant settled. The results of Isaacs education may in part be measured by his written legacy. Isaac mastered Portuguese and especially French. Besides, he knew Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, English and Dutch.
The three brothers were at an early age involved in leading the Portuguese-Jewish community. They occupied until 1760, met regularly alternating, many important functions. With his marriage in December 1734 Isaac de Pinto began his independent life. He married that year to four years old Rachel Nunes Henriques, daughter of a wealthy financier VOC and shareholder. From this marriage no children were born. After 1739, when he was secretary of the informal learned society, "Soci?t? Amicale" was, he conducted correspondence with some foreign writers who frequented this society.
For the "Soci?t? Amicale" Pinto said the two French philosophical discourses which subjects recur in subsequent publications and can be regarded as decisive for his philosophical interest. The Pinto was in these essays on the topics "What is truth 'and' abuse of science and study.
In the years 1746 and 1747 he conducted correspondence with Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701-1774), a famous astronomer in his day, who also was an avid traveler. In this correspondence, two men were mainly in the position of the original peoples of the Americas. Pinto defended the American Indians against the often overly negative assessments of La Condamine. It was a nation under the Pinto is not judged by the few who you'd met by chance. An argument that he later in his polemic with Voltaire on the Jews would be used.
Since 1747 was the political interest of the Pinto prevailed. That year saw the end of the second stadtholderless period, which lasted from 1702, and the restoration of Orange. De Pinto, and cheered the revolution Orangist was keen on a good relationship with the governor to maintain. The relations between the governor and the Pinto family were at the level of personal intercourse. A direct connection to William IV was Isaac and his men of the utmost importance because, as Jews is not allowed to hold office. This exclusion played tricks on them, especially where the affairs of the VOC and the WIC were. With great persistence by the De Pinto's appointment of William IV to the chief administrator of the VOC and WIC in 1748 and 1749 achieved.
In his votes in 1748 in Amsterdam "Reflex Cameroon Politicas, tocante a Constitui??o da Na??o Judaica" De Pinto made clear its view that economic exclusion decrees the growing poverty and crime caused by his co-religionists. Within the Portuguese-Jewish nation became exhausted the resources and the Pinto, the Portuguese Jews feared that the same fate could await if their Ashkenazic coreligionists. To resolve this issue, the Pinto propagated the sending away of the paupers to overseas territories and the creation of a separate capital fund to support this plan. Both proposals were the Pinto's co-directors accepted. The execution was not successful.
Isaac died in 1751, both the Pinto's father as the governor considers it highly. William IV De Pinto's lost his ability to influence politics. The death of his father David Pinto gave a complicated property settlement and a small inheritance with him. Aron inherited "the Court of the Pinto", the family building at the St. Antoniesbreestraat. Jacob and Isaac inherited together outside Tulpenburg. The business began to decline in 1754 when Jacob was made a ward of the Pinto. In 1756 was "The Garden of the Pinto" to be sold off. In 1761 it was never formally established a bankruptcy event. Tulpenburg was sold and the name of Isaac de Pinto alleged bill could not be cashed. Isaac traveled then off to Paris while the rest of the family moved to The Hague. There they were eventually able to building on the Voorhout involved, showing that the family apparently did return to financial recovery.
Isaac traveled to Paris, the rest of the family moved to The Hague. Isaac is not sought in Paris accompanied by his faith but that of famous writers like Voltaire and Diderot. It was during this period that his famous "Apology pour la Nation juive" which he wrote the negative views of Voltaire about the Jews enter. This essay was also translated into Dutch and published in 1763 under the title "Defense of the Jews the magazine in the" Letter Vaderlandsche exercises.
After spending several years in the French capital, added the Pinto is around 1765 with his family in The Hague and renewed since his contacts with influential people such as William Bentinck, Hendrik Fagel, Nicholas at Hove and the much younger Utrecht professor Rijklof Michael Goens. Van Goens de Pinto exchanged letters and writings. Since 1777, the Pinto came not with his views in public. The last letter of the Pinto of Goens dates back to 1783 and was the worrying state of his wife, who died on May 20, 1783. The last years of his life in relative solitude, the Pinto. Isaac de Pinto died on August 13, 1787 and was the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery Hague buried.
Isaac de Pinto:
Portuguese moralist of Jewish origin; born 1715; died Aug. 14, 1787, at The Hague. He first settled at Bordeaux, and then removed to Holland. Pinto was a man of wide information, but did not begin to write until nearly fifty, when he acquired a reputation by defending his co-religionists against Voltaire. In 1762 he published his "Essai sur le Luxe" at Amsterdam. In the same year appeared his "Apologie pour la Nation Juive, ou R?flexions Critiques." The author sent a manuscript copy of this work to Voltaire, who thanked him. Guen?e reproduced the "Apologie" at the head of his "Lettres de Quelques Juifs Portugais, Allemands et Polonais, ? M. de Voltaire." In 1768 Pinto sent a letter to Diderot on "Du Jeu de Cartes." His "Trait? de la Circulation et du Cr?dit" appeared in Amsterdam in 1771, and was twice reprinted, besides being translated into English and German. His "Pr?cis des Arguments Contre les Mat?rialistes" was published at The Hague in 1774. Pinto's works were published in French (Amsterdam, 1777) and also in German (Leipsic, 1777).
Bibliography: Didot, Nouvelle Biographie G?n?rale, p. 282;
Barbier, Dictionnaire des Anonymes;
Dictionnaire d'Economie Politicale, ii.;
Qu?rard, La France Litt?raire, in Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung, 1787, No. 273.D. I. Co.