The Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews

Jews who continued practicing their religion were not persecuted by the Holy Office, but it was suspicious of them because it was thought that they urged conversos to practice their former faith. In the trial at Santo Niño de la Guardia in 1491, two Jews and six conversos were condemned to be burned for practicing a supposedly blasphemous ritual.

On March 31, 1492, scarcely three months after the reconquest concluded with the fall of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella promulgated a decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from all their kingdoms. Jewish subjects were given until July 31, 1492 to choose between accepting baptism and leaving the country. Although they were allowed to take their possessions with them, land-holdings, of course, had to be sold; gold, silver and coined money were forfeit. The reason given to justify this measure was that the proximity of unconverted Jews served as a reminder of their former faith and seduced many conversos into relapsing and returning to the practice of Judaism.

A delegation of Jews, headed by Isaac Abravanel, offered a large sum in compensation to the monarchs in exchange for edict's revocation. It is believed that this offer was rejected under pressure of the Inquisitor General. It is said that he burst into the room and threw 30 pieces of silver on the table, asking what would be the price this time to sell Jesus to the Jews.

The number of the Jews that left Spain is not known. Historians give extremely high figures (Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Isaac Abravanel of 300,000). Nevertheless, current estimates significantly reduce this number. (Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration[8]). The Spanish Jews emigrated mainly to Portugal (where they were later expelled in 1497) and to Morocco. Much later, the Sefardim, descendants of Spanish Jews, established flourishing communities in many cities of Europe, North Africa, and, mainly, in the Ottoman Empire.

Those who remained enlarged the group of conversos who were the preferred objective of the Inquisition. Given that all the Jews who remained in the Kingdoms of Spain had been baptized, continuing to practice Judaism put them at risk of being denounced. Given that during the three months prior to the expulsion there were numerous baptisms—some 40,000 if one accepts the totals given by Kamen—one can logically assume that a large number of them were not sincere, but were simply a result of necessity to avoid the expulsion decree.

The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted through 1530. From 1531 through 1560, the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials lowered significantly, down to 3% of the total. There was a rebirth of persecutions when a group of crypto-Jews was discovered in Quintanar de la Orden in 1588; and the last decade of the sixteenth century saw a rise in denunciations of conversos. At the beginning of the seventeenth century some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition that was founded in 1532. This translated into a rapid increase in the trials of crypto-Jews, among them a number of important financiers. In 1691, during a number of Autos de Fe in Mallorca, 36 chuetas, or conversos of Mallorca, were burned.

During the eighteenth century, the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition dropped significantly. The last trial of a crypto-Jew was of Manuel Santiago Vivar, which took place in Cordoba in 1818.

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THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE INQUISITION AND THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS