Until the late 18th century, the family held diplomatic positions for the Portuguese Crown in Hamburg and Amsterdam.
[1] The family's origins date back to the 14th century in Curiel de Duero, Castile, Spain.
[2][3][4] Part of the Sephardic community in Spain, the Curiel family settled in Coimbra, Portugal, after the 1492 Spanish decree that ordered the expulsion of all Jews who refused conversion to Catholicism.
Historian Jonathan Israel wrote that in the seventeenth century, "the new Hamburg synagogue, a place of worship for some eight hundred Sephardi Jews, was filled with emblems and reminders of the Curiel family.
He was be betrayed by the Curiels for having a free mind and questioning the logic of the Oral tradition and abused in front of an entire synogoge.