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Spain - Jews

The history of Jews in Spain is a rich and complex one, spanning over two millennia. During the Muslim rule of Andalusia, the Jews lived in a period of great security, and even held high positions as ministers, and their presence was prominent in all aspects of life. . On the other hand, they were subjected to persecution and extermination after the fall of Muslim rule and the arrival of Catholic Christian rulers, especially during what was called the Wars of Reconquest, in which the remaining Muslims and Jews in Andalusia were forced to convert to Christianity or be killed and displaced. A number of Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity, while tens of thousands of Jews - like Muslims - chose to flee Spain, and they found refuges for themselves in Muslim regions, especially in nearby North Africa, especially Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and many of them chose to seek refuge in areas under the control of the Caliphate. Ottoman Empire, including the capital, Istanbul.

Jewish communities are believed to have existed in Spain since at least the time of the Roman Empire. In AD 117, Hadrian became emperor, and issued an edict forbidding circumcision, the reading of the Law, and the observance of the Sabbath. Under Antoninus Pius (138-161), Hadrian's laws were repealed, and the active persecution against the Jews came to an end. Under Caracalla (211-217), the Jews received the rights of citizenship; and under his successors the various disabilities by which they had been affected were gradually removed. Even such rabid persecutors of the Christians as Decius (249-251), Valerian (253-260), and Diocletian (284-305) left the Jews unmolested. Under Constantine (306-337), the restrictions were few in number, and due to his interest in the welfare of his Christian subjects and in the promotion of the true religion. He made the passage from Christianity to Judaism a penal offence. His son Constans I (337-350) attached the death penalty to marriages between Jews and Christians. The accession of Julian the Apostate, in 361, made a new diversion in their favour. Hhis successor, Jovian (363-364), reverted to Constans' policy. The next emperors, Valens and Valentinian, reinstated the Jews in their former rights,

By the time of the Visigoths (5th to 8th centuries), Jews were well-established in Iberian society. Under Visigothic rule, Jews faced increasing persecution, including forced conversions and expulsions. In the West the Jews fared decidedly better during the fifth century than in the East. They of course suffered many evils during the invasions of the northern barbarians who flooded the Western Empire after its permanent separation in 395 from the Eastern Empire of Constantinople. In the midst of the political convulsions naturally entailed by these invasions, the Jews gradually became the masters of the commerce, which the conquerors of the Western Empire, addicted to the arts of war, had neither time nor inclination to pursue. In the various states which soon arose out of that dismembered empire, the numerous Jewish colonies do not seem for a long time to have been subjected to restrictive measures, except in connection with their slave trade.

They were justly treated in Spain by the Visigoths, down to the conversion of King Recared to Catholicism (589), or rather down to the accession of Sisebut (612), who, deploring the fact that Recared's anti-Jewish laws had been little more than a dead letter, resolved at once to enforce them, and in fact added to them first the injunction that the Jews should release the slaves in their possession, and next, that they should choose between baptism and banishment. Thus the laws against the Jews in Spain reached gradually a degree of severity unknown even to such Eastern persecutors of Judaism as Justinian I (527-5650 and Heraclius (610-641). Yet, the edicts of these Byzantine emperors were vexatious enough.

Jews were unfortunate in Spain, where most rulers of the seventh century enacted severe laws against Judaism. Towards the end of that century, Egica forbade them to own lands and houses, to repair to or trade with North Africa, and even to transact business with Christians. Having next discovered a plot of the Jews with the Moors to overthrow the Visigothic rule, he sentenced to slavery all the Jews of his states and ordered that their children of seven years and upwards be given to Christians to be educated. This condition of things came to an end under Roderic, Egica's second successor and last Visigothic King of Spain. With numerous Jews in their army, the Mohammedans crossed from Africa into Andalusia, defeated and slew Roderic (July, 711); Spain was gradually conquered; and in 720, the Saracens occupied Septimania, north of the Pyrenees, a dependency of the Gothic Kingdom.

In Mohammedan Spain, the Jews, to whose help the conquerors largely owed their victories, obtained their liberty. In fact, it was now given to the Jews at large to enjoy a long period of nearly unbroken peace and security. Apart from the persecutions started in 720 by the Caliph of Damascus, Omar II, and in 723 by the Byzantine emperor, Leo III, they prospered everywhere till about the middle of the ninth century. With the Muslim conquest of Spain in the early 8th century, Jewish communities experienced a "Golden Age" of cultural, economic, and intellectual prosperity, particularly in cities like Córdoba, Toledo, and Granada. Prominent Figures: Notable Jewish figures from this period include philosophers and scholars such as Maimonides and Hasdai ibn Shaprut.

Under such patrons of science and art as the Ommiad caliphs, Abd-er-Rhamman III (d. 961), Al-Hakem (d. 976), and the regent Al-Mansur (d. 1002), the Jews greatly increased in Moorish Spain, and became famous for learning as well as for commercial and industrial activity. The Talmudic schools of Cordova, Lucena, and Granada took the place of those of Sora and Pumbeditha, under the high patronage of the Jewish statesmen Hasdai, Jacob Ibn-Jau, and Samuel Halevi. During this period, an Arabic translation of the Mishna was made in Spain by Ibn-Abitur.

As Christian kingdoms gradually reconquered Spain (the Reconquista, spanning the 8th to 15th centuries), the status of Jews fluctuated. Mohammedan Spain owed a great deal to its Jewish population; yet, in 1066, the Jews were expelled from the Kingdom of Granada. In many ways, too, the young kingdoms of Christian Spain were indebted to their Jewish inhabitants; nevertheless, Ferdinand the Great subjected them to vexatious measures and was only prevented from drawing the sword against them by the intervention of the Spanish clergy. These, however, were but passing storms; for Alfonso VI (1071-1109) soon freely used Jews in his diplomatic and military operations, while in the Mohammedan states distinct from Granada, Jewish culture reached the zenith of its splendour.

The era of Jewish persecutions really began with the First Crusade (1096-1099). The crusaders enacted in May-July, 1096, bloody scenes against the Jews of Trier, Worms, Mainz, Cologne, and other Rhenish towns, and repeated them as they went along in the cities on the Main and the Danube, even as far as Hungary, bishops and princes being mostly on the side of the victims, but proving, for various reasons, powerless to protect them effectively. On the capture of Jerusalem, 15 July, 1099, the crusaders wreaked a frightful vengeance on the Jews of the fallen city. And the Jews of Toledo were put to death by crusaders (1212).

While some Christian rulers protected Jewish communities, others imposed heavy taxes, restrictive laws, and violent pogroms. Between 1257 and 1266, Alfonso X of Castile compiled a code of laws which contained several clauses against the Jews and countenanced the blood accusation which had been contradicted by Innocent IV. By the 14th century, anti-Jewish sentiment had intensified, culminating in violent pogroms such as those in 1391, which led to the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity (conversos) or their flight from Spain. In Castile, where the Jews possessed great influence with Alfonso XI (1312-1350), the various plans against them actually failed, and the king showed himself favourable to them till the day of his death.

In Castile, the Jews attained to a great influence under Don Pedro (1360-1369), and the misfortunes which then befell them arose partly from the prevalent view that they availed themselves of their power to lap up the people's possessions with their tax-farming, and partly from their constant loyalty to Don Pedro's cause, during the civil war which broke out between him and Don Henry. The latter, after reaching the throne, showed himself friendly to the Jews, and agree only reluctantly to some of the restrictive measures urged by the Cortes in 1371.

In Spain, the reign of John I (d. 1390) witnessed a great curtailing of the Jews' power and privileges; and that of Henry III (d. 1406) was marked by bloody assaults in many cities of Castile and Aragon and even in the island of Majorca, on account of which numerous Jews embraced Christianity. As early as 1408, there appeared in the name of the infant King of Castile, John II, an edict which revived the dormant anti-Jewish statutes of Alfonso X; and soon afterwards (1412), a severer edict was issued, intended to isolate the Jews from the Christians lest intercourse should injure the true Faith, and calculated to induce them to give up their religion. In fact, degraded in every way, parked in "Juderias", and deprived of practically every means of subsistence, many Jews surrendered to the exhortations of St. Vincent Ferrer, and received baptism, while the others persevered in Judaism and saw their misery somewhat alleviated by the royal edict of 1414. The persecution gradually extended to all the provinces of Spain, where St. Vincent also effected many conversions. At length, brighter days dawned for the Spanish Jews upon the death of Ferdinand, King of Aragon (1416) and of Catherine, Regent of Castile (1419),

The Jewish communities of Castile prospered under John II, who promoted several Jews to public offices, and who in 1432 confirmed the statute of the Jewish Synod of Avila prescribing the establishment of separate schools. In the course of time, however, Spanish Christians complained to the pope of the arrogance of the Castilian Jews, and, in consequence, Eugenius IV issued an unfavourable Bull (1442) which greatly reduced Jewish prosperity and influence in Spain, and which was practically repeated in 1451 by Nicholas V (1447-1455). This pontiff was distinctly opposed to mob violence against the Jews, and he enjoined upon the Inquisitors of the Faith not only to refrain from exciting the popular hatred against them, but even to see that they should not be forcibly baptized or otherwise molested.

The most dramatic and devastating event for Spanish Jewry was the Alhambra Decree issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on March 31, 1492, which ordered the expulsion of all practicing Jews from Spain by July 31 of that year. This decree forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to convert to Christianity, flee to other countries, or face execution. The conquest of the rich Kingdom of Granada apparently led Ferdinand and Isabella to regard the Spanish Jews as no longer indispensable, as in fact out of place in their estates, which they wished altogether Christian. Without the approval of Innocent VII, the decree appeared (1492) banishing all Jews from Spain, and it was carried out despite Abrabanel's supplication and offer of an immense sum of money.

A small number fled to Italy, Amsterdam, and the Americas, but most went to neighboring Portugal. When the Inquisition came to Portugal in 1496, the Jews were forced to leave, convert, or die. Of those Conversos who opted not to emigrate, many, if not most, were murdered by the “Holy” Inquisition. By 1500, estimates of as few as 40,000 and of more than 200,000 Jews were forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula. Exact numbers are not available because many of the Crypto Jewish family names had been changed after the pogroms of the 1300s in anticipation of future persecution.

Many Jews who left Spain settled in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Portugal, and other parts of Europe. The expulsion significantly impacted Jewish culture and demographics. Those who converted to Christianity (conversos) often continued to face suspicion and persecution. The remaining practicing Jews chose to join the already large Converso Community rather than face exile. In order to safe-guard the Old Christian population and make sure that the Converso or “New Christians" were true to their new faith, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Spain in 1481. Conversos who did not fully or genuinely embrace Catholicism and continued to practice their Jewish faith in secrecy were referred to as “judaizantes" and pejoratively as Marranos ("swine") or in Hebrew Bnai Anusim [ "those who were forced"]. The term Marranos specifically refers to the charge of crypto-Judaism, whereas the term converso was used for the wider population of Jewish converts to Catholicism, whether or not they secretly still practised Jewish rites.

The Spanish Inquisition targeted conversos suspected of secretly practicing Judaism, leading to trials, torture, and executions. Despite these challenges, conversos contributed significantly to Spanish and Portuguese societies, even as many maintained their Jewish identity in secret. The Spanish Inquisition remains a fearful symbol of state terror. Its principal target was the conversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier. Since thousands of them confessed to charges of practicing Judaism in secret, historians have long understood the Inquisition as an attempt to suppress the Jews of Spain.

Some argue for a different view: that the conversos were in fact almost all genuine Christians who were persecuted for political ends. The Inquisition's attacks not only on the conversos' religious beliefs but also on their "impure blood" gave birth to an anti-Semitism based on race that would have terrible consequences for centuries to come. The Second Inquisition, although an important part of Spanish society, was probably not quite as lethal as most people suspect. At the same time the Inquisition did torture [but blood must not be spilled] people, humiliated them in the notorious Auto de Fes, and sometimes even burned them to death. It started as an effort to insure that Jewish and Moorish Conversos were genuinely Christian and morphed into an organization that forced religious uniformity and excluded Protestantism from the shores of the entire Spanish Empire.

The expulsion of 1492 remains a significant event in Jewish history, shaping the Sephardic diaspora and influencing Jewish culture for centuries. Jews began to return to Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1968, the Spanish government officially rescinded the Alhambra Decree. Today, Spain's Jewish community is relatively small but vibrant, with synagogues, cultural institutions, and educational programs, particularly in cities like Madrid and Barcelona. The Jews of Spain, known as Sephardim, have had a lasting impact on Jewish culture worldwide. The Ladino language, Sephardic cuisine, music, and liturgy continue to be celebrated in Jewish communities globally. Jews have had a presence in Spain for over two millennia, contributing significantly to its cultural, intellectual, and economic life. The Jewish experience in Spain has been marked by periods of both flourishing and intense persecution.

In 2014, descendants of Jews who were exiled from Andalusia were granted Spanish citizenship, without being required to move to Spain or renounce any other citizenship they may have at the time. Portugal, which was also under Muslim rule, made the same decision. The deadline for submitting applications was September 2019, and at that time, estimates say that 130,000 Jews had applied for this purpose.