Alhambra Decree
gigatos | March 19, 2022
Summary
The Edict of Alhambra, also known as the Decreto de la Alhambra or Edicto de Granada (Hebrew גירוש ספרד Gerush Sfarad, i.e. expulsion from Spain) was issued on March 31, 1492 with two non-identical texts respectively for the dominions of the Crown of Castile and the dominions of the Crown of Aragon. The Castilian version was signed by the Catholic Kings Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in his capacity as Ferdinand V of Castile. The Aragonese version was signed only by Ferdinand II of Aragon. The edict ordered the expulsion of Jews from all territories of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon by July 31 of that year, unless they converted to Christianity by then.
Three months earlier, on January 2, 1492, the last Muslim dominion on the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered with the end of the siege of Granada.
With the edict began the expulsion of a population group that had been resident on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. The large number of Conversos, who had been converted to Christianity, mostly under massive pressure, were under the general suspicion of the Spanish Inquisition that they were still secretly adhering to Judaism. The Christianity of those who had been baptized by force was tirelessly scrutinized. Conversos convicted of heresy by Inquisition proceedings were often sentenced to death by fire and publicly burned at the stake after so-called autodafés. The Inquisition judged only baptized Christians and not Jews (limpieza de sangre).
On December 16, 1968 – on the occasion of the inauguration of the Madrid Synagogue – the Alhambra Edict of the Catholic Monarchs was declared invalid by the Spanish government and was irrevocably annulled by the Spanish King Juan Carlos I only on April 1, 1992.
In 1992, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Edict of the Alhambra, the Spanish Parliament approved a cooperation agreement with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, regulating relations between the Spanish State and citizens of Jewish denomination.
Jews were already living in the Iberian Peninsula during ancient times, even before the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Titus and the dispersion of Jews to Asia, Africa and Europe. Early centers of Jewish culture included the Balearic Islands, Córdoba, Saragossa, and Granada. The Visigoths initially tolerated the Jewish minority. It was not until the continually intensifying anti-Jewish resolutions of the Councils of Toledo that an attempt was made to eradicate Jewish culture through forced baptisms, which were enforced with perseverance and brutality, so that by the time of the Muslim conquest of Spain, openly practiced Judaism was impossible. The Muslim conquerors were welcomed by the Jewish population, who openly allied with them against the Christian rulers, which was understood by many as collaboration and secretly condemned. In the following era of Muslim rule, which initially treated minorities of other faiths with tolerance and assigned them the legal status of “proteges” (dhimmis), the influx of Jewish immigrants increased. Jewish enclaves in Moorish Spain became flourishing centers of science and trade.
On January 2, 1492, the last Arab ruler in Al-Andalus, Muhammad XII. (Boabdil), surrendered to the armies of the “Catholic Kings” Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. The disappearance of Muslim dominions in the peninsula increased the desire for religious unification as well. About three months after the conquest of Granada, the kings issued the Edict of the Alhambra, ordering the expulsion of Jews from all territories of the Spanish crown by July 31 of that year, unless they had converted to Christianity by then.
On January 2, 1492, after a costly ten-year war, the Alhambra had fallen as the last Muslim stronghold of a 700-year Moorish rule over Spain. This war had been sustained and won only through massive financial support from Jewish financiers, especially the two magnates and advisors to the crown, Isaac Abravanel and Abraham Senior. It was at this very Alhambra that the edict named after it was deliberated and signed by the “Catholic Kings”.
Although Senior and Abravanel intervened with the queen, the edict – despite their great services to the crown – applied to them as well. Unlike Abravanel, who refused to convert and left Spain, the 81-year-old Abraham Senior complied and, together with his son, was baptized in Valladolid on March 31, 1492. The king and queen attended the baptism as “godparents.” With the baptism, Senior took the Christian name Ferrad (= Fernando) Perez Coronel.
The edict begins by explaining that there were certain “bad Christians” among the conversos who were tempting the newly baptized to apostasy. The reason was that Jews and Christians lived too closely together in society. Since all previous attempts to stop the bad influence of the Jews had failed – the creation of closed Jewish residential quarters, the introduction of the Inquisition, the banishment from Andalusia are listed here – it had to be decided to expel the Jews from all of Spain. Particularly offensive were their customs and traditions, which were a “constant diabolical temptation” for the new Christians, such as circumcision, Jewish dietary rules, the celebration of the Pesah festival, and the insistence on the Torah.
The justifications for Castile and Aragon differ in that in Aragon, in addition to religious reasons, economic-moral reasons are asserted, which the French historian Fernand Braudel considered to be the deeper reasons for this expulsion of Jews. The version for Aragon states that the Jews “devoured and devoured the Christian goods with heavy and intolerable usury” and exercised “usurious depravity” (pravidat usuaria) against the Christians. They were a contagious leprosy that could be fought and conquered by expulsion.
Also read, biographies – Luther Vandross
Demographic consequences
How many Jews left Spain is a matter of dispute among historians. The numbers vary from 130,000 to over 300,000. According to new research, there were between 80,000 and 110,000 in Castile and 10,000 to 12,000 in Aragon, out of a total population in the two countries of about 850,000. How many Jews converted to Christianity is even more difficult to estimate, since no sources exist in this regard.
Also read, biographies – El Cid
Economic consequences
Due to the short period of time left for the expellees to settle their business and prepare for their journey, the market was flooded with goods. Real estate could be purchased at knockdown prices. On the other hand, entire sectors of the economy, which had been run primarily by the Sephardim, suddenly collapsed, and the consequences were felt on the capital market. The state had difficulty collecting taxes, since many tax collectors, up to and including the highest tax collector, Abraham Senior, came from the Sephardic ethnic group. There was a lack of capital for military or economic projects and to finance the lifestyle and luxuries of the upper class, because money lending was forbidden to Christians. The cities lacked doctors and craftsmen. The government and diplomacy lacked Sephardic linguists with their diverse European contacts.However, the South American gold that flowed to Spain with the colonization of South America partially compensated for the economic damage.
The Spanish state was left with the upper class and the layer of peasants and the dispossessed, while the emergence of a dynamic and educated middle class was nipped in the bud by the elimination of the Sephards.
Also read, biographies – Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Culture and science
With the edict, Spain lost a number of excellent personalities of cultural and scientific life. Apart from Abravanel, who was not only an outstanding financier and, after his expulsion from Spain, became an advisor to the King of Naples and the Doges of Venice, among others, but was also one of the important biblical exegetes of his time, and the astronomer, mathematician and cosmographer Abraham Zacuto, whose Almanach perpetuum accompanied Christopher Columbus on his voyages of discovery, many scholars and university teachers left the country. The universities that had flourished in Spain since Arab rule could not replace their teachers, and the surveillance of the Conversos by the Inquisition”s informers also brought their research activities to a halt.
With the expulsion and dispersion of the Sephards, Kabbalah, hitherto confined to a few little-known circles, especially in Spain, became widespread in the Mediterranean and northern Europe. The city of Safed in Palestine emerged as a new center of Kabbalistic studies – the two most influential Kabbalists in Safed, Moses ben Cordovero and Isaac Luria, were of Sephardic origin. From here, this mystical current of Judaism spread also among the Ashkenazim and could be received by the early humanists.
Also read, biographies – Paul Cézanne
Social consequences
One motive of the kings in issuing the edict was to establish, after the political unity of Spain, the internal, religious unity of the country. The Alhambra Edict was the first step in this direction. In 1501, Muslims were also given an ultimatum to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. Finally, between 1609 and 1614, the Moors were expelled from Spain.
Despite zealous efforts on the part of the church, however, many conversos secretly clung to Judaism. The cause of this “intransigence” and “obduracy” was found in the “impurity of Jewish blood”. This had already led in 1449 in Toledo to a statute about blood purity, estatutos de limpieza de sangre, so to speak Nuremberg laws ante litteram. One began, first on the part of the Inquisition, to fathom the “right mind” of the new Christians. A network of informers (familiares) covered society. The totalitarian thinking of the Spanish inquisitors, the suppression of freedom of thought, created a climate of fear and total conformism, at least on the surface of Spanish society. Inquisitorial mentality and totalitarian thinking also gripped the organs of state: anyone applying for office or a higher position in the army had to prove that their ancestors up to the second rank were not New Christians.This led to a fatal split between old and new Christians, to a deep mistrust among themselves, especially since Marrans, unlike the Moors, were not outwardly recognizable, and large sections of Spanish society, especially in the upper classes, had Sephardic relatives or ancestors.
Many Jews settled in Portugal, where they were initially welcomed by King John II for financial reasons. However, the residence permit was limited in time. Jews who had not been baptized after two years of residence had to leave the country. Since only a few found the opportunity to leave the country by ship, they were enslaved, forcibly baptized or shipped to Africa to work in the plantations of their Christian employers. Under John”s successor Manuel I, after a brief interlude of tolerance and leniency, a decree similar to the Alhambra edict was issued ordering Jews and Moors to leave the country by October 1497.
The larger part of the Spanish Sephards dispersed in small groups to North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, where the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II. and to Greece, especially Salonika.
Others arrived in Italy, where they were received with varying degrees of enthusiasm.The Republic of Venice tolerated them and expanded the ghetto to accommodate the Sephards. The Renaissance popes placed the Jews under the protection of the Church. Many Jews settled in the Papal States, especially in Ancona and in Rome. Smaller groups of exiles arrived in Amsterdam and Antwerp, but also in Hamburg.Sardinia and Sicily were lands of the Crown of Aragon in which the edict applied just as it did on the Spanish mainland. The Kingdom of Naples was conquered by Ferdinand II in 1504. When the Duchy of Milan fell to the Spanish crown, all Jews there were expelled as well. The Medici in Florence welcomed the Jews with open arms and granted them residence for Livorno. In the so-called Leggi Livornine (1590-93), they were granted full religious freedom, the right to bear arms, to settle anywhere in the city, and to open stores, on an equal footing with all other nations-Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, German, Hebrew, Moorish, Armenian, Turkish, and so on. These conditions were so attractive to the Sephards that the Jewish population grew from 114 people in 1601 to about 3,000 in 1689.
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