Alhambra Decree
The Alhambra Decree 1492 issued by the Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordered the expulsion of the Jews from all the territories of the Spanish Crown on 31 July of the year if they were not previously converted to Christianity.
With the Edict began a hitherto unprecedented expulsion of a population group that was established for centuries in the Iberian Peninsula. The large number of under massive pressure converted to Christianity Conversos - even contemptuously called popularly Marranos - was under the suspicion of the Inquisition, still secretly attach Judaism. Tirelessly the Christian ethos of the forcibly baptized has been verified. The heresy convicted Conversos were condemned to the stake and publicly burned during so-called Autodafés at the stake. Domestically, led the fear of the power of the Inquisition to a deep split in the Spanish society.
1968, the Alhambra Decree of the Catholic kings of the Spanish Government has been declared invalid, and only on 1 April 1992 by the King of Spain Juan Carlos I irrevocably overridden.
On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Alhambra Edict adopted the Spanish Parliament in 1992 a cooperation agreement with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, which regulates the relations between the Spanish State and the citizens of the Jewish faith.
Prehistory
Even during the ancient Jews lived in the Iberian Peninsula, and indeed even before the destruction of the Temple by Titus and the dispersion of the Jews to Asia, Africa and Europe. Early centers of Jewish culture included the Balearic Islands, Cordoba, Granada and Zaragoza. The Visigoths first tolerated the Jewish minority. Only with the continuously intensifying anti-Jewish decisions of the Councils of Toledo, there was an attempt to eradicate Jewish culture through forced baptisms, which were enforced with persistence and brutality, so that at the time of the conquest of Spain by the Muslims openly practiced Judaism was impossible. The Muslim conquerors were greeted by the Jewish population, they allied themselves openly with them against the Christian rulers. In the following period of Muslim rule, the heterodox minorities initially met with tolerance and then assigned them the legal status of wards ( dhimmis ), increased the influx of Jewish immigrants. Jewish enclaves in Moorish Spain were thriving centers of science and commerce.
With the rule of the North African Almohad ended the Muslim tolerance, there were forced conversions, expulsions, to the destruction of synagogues and the closure of universities. Many Jews fled to Egypt or in the Christian north to Castile and Aragon. In 1469 it came to the union of the two kingdoms through the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1472, the Spanish Inquisition was founded to combat heresy and to eradicate the crypto Jews, at the same time the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada became confessor to the queen, and were to 1490 sentenced 13,000 conversos secretly practiced because of their religion, many of them burned.
With the completion of the Reconquista by the conquest of Granada in January 1492, the hitherto exercised tolerance of kings towards their Jewish doctors, consultants and bankers came to the end.
Edict
On January 2, 1492, the Alhambra fell after ten years, costly war as the last Muslim stronghold of a 700 -year-old Moorish rule of Spain. This war was only through massive financial support of Jewish financiers, in particular the two Magnate and advisers of the crown Isaac Abravanel and Abraham Senior (1412-1493), persevered and been won. In this very same Alhambra was the advice named after her edict, signed by the two kings.
The edict is first explained that there were among the conversos certain " bad Christians" who Seduced the newly baptized to apostasy. Reason is the too narrow coexistence of Jews and Christians in society. Are listed here to provide complete, Jewish residential area, the introduction of the Inquisition, the expulsion from Andalusia - - As all previous attempts have failed to prevent the bad influence of the Jews did you have to decide to expel the Jews from Spain. Particularly offensive their customs and traditions are considered to have a " constant diabolic temptation " were for New Christians - such as circumcision, Jewish dietary laws, the celebration of the Passover festival, and the insistence on the Torah.
The reasons for Castile and Aragon differ insofar as in Aragon non-religious and economic reasons are submitted, which held the French historian Fernand Braudel for the deeper reasons for this expulsion of the Jews. In the version for Aragon says that the Jews " the Christian endowments eat with severe and unbearable usurious interest rates and devour " and " usurious depravity " ( pravidat usuaria ) exercised against the Christians. Be a contagious leprosy, which they could fight and win by expulsion.
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Demographic consequences
How many Jews left Spain, is an issue of the historian. The numbers vary between 130,000 and 300,000. According to new results of the research were between 80000-110000 in Castile and Aragon 10,000 to 12,000 in a total population in the two countries of approximately 850,000. How many Jews converted to Christianity, is even more difficult to estimate, there are no sources.
Many Jews settled in Portugal, where they were the King John II for financial reasons, firstly welcome. The residence, however, was limited. Jews who were not yet 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 off to Africa to work in the plantations of their Christian employer. Under John's successor, Manuel I followed a brief interlude of tolerance and clemency one of the Alhambra Decree of similar decree was ordered in which Jews and Arabs to leave the country by October 1497.
The greater part of the Spanish Sephardim were scattered in small groups to North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, where granted them the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II refuge, and to Greece. Others came to Italy, where they were taken with different enthusiasm. The Sicilian towns acted hostile and forbidding as Spain, under whose rule they were, just as Naples, which was ruled from 1504 by Spain. And as the Duchy of Milan fell to the Spanish crown, all Jews were expelled there. The Medici in Florence took the Jews with open arms and granted them stay for Livorno. In the so-called Leggi Livornine ( 1590-93 ) they were given equal rights as all other nations - Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Hebrews, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, etc. - full religious freedom, the right to bear arms, everywhere in the settle city and to open stores. These conditions were so attractive to the Sephardim, the Jewish population grew from 114 people in 1601 to around 3,000 in 1689. ,
Venice they tolerated and extended the ghetto to receive the Sephardim. The Renaissance popes assumed the Jews the protection of the Church. Many Jews settled in the Papal States, especially in Ancona and Rome. Small groups of displaced persons arrived in Amsterdam and Hamburg.
Economic Impact
Due to the short time that remained to regulate their shops and on preparing to travel the deportees, the market was flooded with goods. Property could be acquired at bargain basement prices. On the other hand, fell abruptly from all sectors in the economy, which had been mostly operated by the Sephardim. Especially in the capital market, the consequences were felt. The state had trouble collecting the taxes, as many tax collectors came up to the highest tax collector, Abraham Senior, of the Sephardic ethnic group. It lacked capital for military or economic projects and to finance lifestyle and luxury of the upper class, because money lending was forbidden to Christians. In the cities lacked doctors and craftsmen. The government and diplomacy lacked the language- knowledgeable, urbane Sephardim with their diverse European contacts. However, the economic losses were by the South African gold that flowed with the colonization of South America to Spain, partially offset.
The Spanish state remained the top layer and the layer of peasants and landless, while the formation of a dynamic and well-educated middle class was smothered by the elimination of the Sephardim in the bud.
Culture and Science
With the Edict Spain lost a number of excellent personalities of the cultural and scientific life. Apart from Abravanel, who was not only a great financier and after his expulsion from Spain, among others, advisor to the King of Naples and the Doge of Venice, but also one of the major Bible commentators of his time, and the astronomer, mathematician and cosmographer Abraham Zacuto, the Almanach perpetuum accompanied Columbus on his voyages of discovery, many scholars and university teachers left the country. The blossoming since the Arab rule in Spain universities could not replace their teachers, and the monitoring of conversos by the spies of the Inquisition brought their research to a halt.
With the expulsion and dispersal of Sephardic Kabbalah, hitherto confined only to some little-known circles, especially in Spain, was widespread in the Mediterranean and northern Europe. As a new center of kabbalistic studies, the city of Safed in Palestine began to emerge - the two most influential Kabbalists in Safed, Moses ben Cordovero and Isaac Luria, were of Sephardic origin. From here the mystical flow of Judaism widespread even among the Ashkenazim and could are received by the early humanists.
Social Impact
A motif of the kings of the adoption of the edict was to produce the inner, religious unity of the country after the political unity of Spain. The Alhambra Decree was the first step in this direction. 1501 was also issued an ultimatum to the Muslims to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. 1609 to 1614 the Moors were finally driven from Spain.
Despite diligent efforts by the Church many conversos secretly held firmly in Judaism. The cause of this " intransigence " and " stubbornness " was found in the impurity of Jewish blood. That had already in 1449 in Toledo to a statute on blood purity ( limpieza de sangre de estatutos ), to a certain extent Nuremberg Laws ante litteram led. They began first on the part of the Inquisition, to discover the "right attitude " of the New Christians. A network of spies ( familiares ) overlaid the society. The totalitarian thinking of the Spanish Inquisition, the suppression of freedom of thought, created a climate of fear and a total conformism, at least on the surface of Spanish society. Inquisitorial mentality and totalitarian thinking also took the state organs: Anyone who applied for an office or a higher position in the army, had to prove that his ancestors were not new Christians to the second member. This led to a disastrous split into old and new Christians to a deep distrust of each other, especially as Marranos were different from the Moors, not externally to recognize and had large parts of Spanish society, especially in the upper class, Sephardic relatives or ancestors.