page_title: Expulsion of Jews from Spain
section_title: Jews in the fifteenth century
hierarchical_section_title: Expulsion of Jews from Spain / Background / Jews in the fifteenth century
caption_attribution_description: English: Havdalah Service (to mark the end of the Sabbath).
context_page_description: Following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and ensure its members did not revert to Judaism, many Jews in Spain either converted or were expelled. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted to Catholicism as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms in 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. Those who remained chose to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. An unknown number returned to Spain in the following years.:17 This led to Mass migration of Jews from Spain to Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean Basin. This can be seen with Jewish surnames as they began to show up in Italy and Greece at this time, like Faraggi, Farag and Farachi a surname which originates from the Spanish City of Fraga.
  The edict was formally and symbolically revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second Vatican Council.
context_section_description: After the massacres of 1391 and the preaching that followed them, by 1415 scarcely a hundred thousand Jews continued to practice their religion in the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Joseph Perez said, "Spanish Judaism will never recover from this catastrophe." The Jewish community "came out of the crisis not only physically diminished but morally and intellectually shattered".
  In the Crown of Aragon, Judaism virtually disappeared in important places such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Palma—in 1424 the Barcelona Jewry was abolished because it was considered unnecessary— and only the one in Zaragoza
  remained. In Castile, once-flourishing aljamas such as those of Seville, Toledo or Burgos lost many of their members; in 1492, the year of the expulsion, in the Crown of Aragon only a quarter of the former number of Jews remained. The famous Jewish community of Gerona, for example, was left with only 24 families. In the Crown of Castile, there were less than eighty thousand. In Seville before the revolts of 1391, there were about 500 Jewish families. According to Joseph Perez, at the time of the expulsion, there were fewer than 150,000 Jews, distributed in 35 aljamas of the Crown of Aragon and 216 in the Crown of Castile. In both Crowns, it was observed that the Jews had left the great cities and lived in the small and the rural areas, less exposed "to the excesses of the Christians."
  After the critical period of 1391-1415, the pressure on Jews recovering their synagogues and books confiscated decreased, and they became able to avoid certain obligations such as carrying the red ribbon or attending friars' sermons. They could also reconstruct the internal organization of the aljamas and their religious activities, thanks to the agreements reached by the procurators of the aljamas gathered in Valladolid in 1432 and sanctioned by the king, which means that "the Crown of Castile accepts again officially that a minority of its subjects has another religion than the Christian one and recognizes the right of this minority to exist legally, with a legal status." "In this way, the Jewish community is rebuilt with the approval of the crown." Abraham Beneviste, who presided over the meeting of Valladolid, was appointed court rabbi with authority over all the Jews of the kingdom, and at the same time as delegate of the king over them.
  During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, in the last quarter of the 15th century, many Jews lived in rural villages and engaged in agricultural activities. Crafts and trade were not monopolized—international trade had passed into the hands of converts. While Jews continued to trade as money-lenders, the number of Christian lenders had increased a lot. Jews also continued to collect royal, ecclesiastical, and seigniorial rents, but their importance had also diminished—in Castile they were only in charge of a quarter of the revenues. However, in the court of Castile—but not in the crown of Aragon—Jews held important administrative and financial positions. Abraham Senior was from 1488 treasurer-major of the Holy Brotherhood, a key organism in the financing of the war of Grenada, and also chief rabbi of Castile. Yucé Abravanel was "A greater collector of the service and mountaineering of the herds, one of the more healthy income and greater yield of the Crown of Castile." However, according to Joseph Perez, the role of the Jews in the court must not be exaggerated. "The truth was that the state could do without the Jews, both in the bureaucratic apparatus and in the management of the estate."
  We must, therefore, reject the claim that the Hebrew community at the end of the fifteenth century was immensely rich and influential. "In fact, the Spanish Jews at the time of their expulsion did not form a homogeneous social group. There were among them classes as in Christian society, a small minority of very rich and well-placed men, together with a mass of small people: Farmers, artisans, shopkeepers." What united them was that they practiced the same faith, different from the one recognized, which made them a separate c
caption: Jewish celebrating havdalá, detail of miniature of the century XIV.
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