Alhambra Edict

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Signatures of Ferdinand and Isabella ( yo el Rey , yo la Reyna ), the royal secretary Juan de Coloma and seals under the Castilian version of the Alhambra Edict

The Alhambra Edict , also known as the Decreto de la Alhambra or Edicto de Granada ( Hebrew גירוש ספרד Gerush Sfarad ) was issued on March 31, 1492 with two non-identical texts for the territories of the Crown of Castile and the territories 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 only signed by Ferdinand II of Aragon. The edict ordered the expulsion of the Jews from all territories of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon on July 31 of that year, provided they had not converted to Christianity by then .

In Asturias , the first organized Christian rebellion took against the Muslim rule began in the year 718 that the Reconquista led. The Reconquista ended in 1492 with the complete conquest of the last Muslim domination on the Iberian Peninsula ( siege of Granada ) and the Alhambra Edict.

The edict began to displace a population that had resided in the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. The large number of Conversos , mostly under massive pressure, converted to Christianity - also contemptuously called Marranos among the people - was under the general suspicion of the Spanish Inquisition of continuing to cling to Judaism in secret . The Christian attitudes of the forced baptized were examined tirelessly . Conversos convicted of heresy through inquisition proceedings were often condemned to death by fire and publicly burned at the stake after so-called auto - dafe . The Inquisition only judged baptized Christians and not Jews ( Limpieza de sangre ) .

On December 16, 1968 - for the inauguration of the Madrid synagogue - the Alhambra edict of the Catholic kings was declared ineffective by the Spanish government and was only irrevocably overridden on April 1, 1992 by the Spanish King Juan Carlos I.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Alhambra Edict, the Spanish Parliament passed a cooperation agreement in 1992 with the Association of Jewish Communities in Spain, which regulates relations between the Spanish state and citizens of Jewish denomination.

prehistory

Jews lived on the Iberian Peninsula even in antiquity, before the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by Titus and the dispersal of the 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. Only with the increasingly anti-Semitic resolutions of the Councils of Toledo was there an attempt to eradicate Jewish culture through forced baptism, which was enforced with perseverance and brutality, so that openly practiced Judaism was impossible at the time of the conquest of Spain by the Muslims. The Muslim conquerors were welcomed by the Jewish population, who openly allied themselves with them against the Christian rulers, which was understood by many as a collaboration and was secretly condemned. In the following epoch of Muslim rule, which initially treated minorities of other faiths with tolerance and assigned them the legal status of “wards” ( dhimmis ) , the influx of Jewish immigrants increased. Jewish enclaves in Moorish Spain became thriving centers of science and trade.

The Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century.

With the beginning of the rule of the Maghreb Almohads from the middle of the 12th century, Muslim tolerance ended, there were forced conversions, expulsions, the destruction of synagogues and the closure of universities. Many Jews fled to Egypt or to the Christian north to Castile and Aragon. In 1469, the heir to the throne of the Crown of Castile , Isabella I of Castile , and the Crown of Aragón married Ferdinand II of Aragon . As a result, the countries were ruled in a personal union after the assumption of government in Castile in 1474 and in Aragón in 1479 . In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was founded to fight heresy and to exterminate the crypto-Jews , at the same time the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada became the Queen's confessor. It is estimated that by the year 1520, about 10% of the approximately 25,000 Conversos had inquisition trials.

At the beginning of January 1492 the last Arab ruler in Al-Andalus , Muhammad XII, capitulated . (Boabdil) , before the armies of the " Catholic Kings " Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragón . With the disappearance of Muslim domains on the peninsula, the desire for religious standardization also increased. About three months after the conquest of Granada, the kings issued the Alhambra Edict, in which the expulsion of the Jews from all territories of the Spanish crown was ordered on July 31 of that year, provided they had not converted to Christianity by then.

edict

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile

On January 2, 1492, after a costly ten-year war , the Alhambra fell as the last Muslim stronghold of a 700-year Moorish rule over Spain. This war was only held out and won through massive financial support from Jewish financiers, in particular the two magnates and advisers to the crown, Isaak Abravanel and Abraham Senior . It was at this Alhambra that the edict named after her was discussed and signed by the “Catholic Kings”.

Although Senior and Abravanel intervened with the queen, the edict - despite their great services to the crown - also applied to her. Unlike Abravanel, who refused to convert and left Spain, the 81-year-old Abraham Senior submitted and was baptized together with his son on March 31, 1492 in Valladolid . The king and queen attended the baptism as “godparents”. With the baptism, Senior took on the Christian name Ferrad (= Fernando) Perez Coronel.

The edict first explains that there are certain “bad Christians” among the Conversos who seduce the newly baptized into apostasy . The reason is the close coexistence of Jews and Christians in society. Since all earlier attempts to prevent the bad influence of the Jews had failed - the creation of closed Jewish residential areas, the introduction of the Inquisition, the banishment from Andalusia - one had to decide to expel the Jews from all of Spain. Particularly offensive are their customs and traditions, which are a "constant diabolical temptation" for the new Christians - such as circumcision , Jewish dietary regulations , observing the Passover festival and insisting on the Torah .

The reasons for Castile and Aragon differ insofar as in Aragon not only religious but also economic and moral reasons are asserted, which the French historian Fernand Braudel considered to be the deeper reasons for this expulsion of the Jews. In the version for Aragon it says that the Jews "eat and devour Christian goods with heavy and intolerable usurious interest" and exercised "usurious depravity" (pravidat usuaria) against the Christians. They are a contagious leprosy that can be combated and defeated by displacement.

consequences

Demographic Consequences

How many Jews left Spain is a matter of dispute for historians. The numbers vary between 130,000 and over 300,000. According to new research results, there were between 80,000 and 110,000 in Castile and 10,000 to 12,000 in Aragon with a total population in the two countries of approx. 850,000. How many Jews converted to Christianity is even more difficult to estimate, as there are no sources on this.

Economic consequences

The market was flooded with goods due to the short period that the expellees had to regulate their business and prepare for their trips. Real estate could be bought at bargain prices. On the other hand, entire sectors of economic life that had primarily been run by the Sephardi suddenly failed. The consequences were particularly noticeable on the capital market. The state struggled to collect taxes , as many tax collectors up to the top tax collector, Abraham Senior , came from the Sephardic ethnic group. There was a lack of capital for military or economic projects and for financing the lifestyle and luxury of the upper class, because Christians were forbidden to lend money. There was a lack of doctors and craftsmen in the cities. The government and diplomacy lacked the linguistic Sephardi 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 peasant class and the poor, while the emergence of a dynamic and educated middle class was nipped in the bud by the elimination of the Sephardi.

Culture and science

With the edict, Spain lost a number of distinguished personalities in cultural and scientific life. Apart from Abravanel, who was not only an excellent financier and, after his expulsion from Spain, among other things, became an advisor to the King of Naples and the Doges of Venice , but was also one of the most important Bible exeges of his time, and the astronomer, mathematician and cosmographer Abraham Zacuto , whose almanac perpetuum Columbus accompanied on his voyages of discovery, left many scholars and university teachers the country. The universities, which had flourished in Spain since Arab rule, could not replace their teachers, and the Inquisition's surveillance of conversations also brought their research activities to a standstill.

With the expulsion and dispersion of the Sephardi, the Kabbalah , which was previously limited to a few little-known circles, especially in Spain, was spread 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 Isaak Luria , were of Sephardic origin. From here this mystical tendency of Judaism spread among the Ashkenazim and could be received by the early humanists .

Social consequences

Auto-dairy (1653)

One motive of the kings when issuing the edict was to establish the internal, religious unity of the country after the political unity of Spain. The Alhambra Edict was the first step in this direction. In 1501, Muslims were also given an ultimatum to either convert to Christianity or to leave the country. 1609-1614 finally were Moriscos expelled from Spain.

However, despite diligent efforts on the part of the Church, many Conversos secretly clung to Judaism. The cause of this “stubbornness” and “obduracy” was found in the “uncleanness of the Jewish blood”. This had already led to a statute on blood purity in Toledo in 1449 , estatutos de limpieza de sangre , so to speak Nuremberg Laws ante litteram . One began, initially on the part of the Inquisition, to fathom the “right attitude” of the New Christians. A network of informers ( familiar ) spread across 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 seized the state organs: Anyone who applied for an office or a higher position in the army had to prove that their ancestors were not new Christians up to the second tier. This led to a fateful split into old and new Christians, to a deep distrust of one another, especially since Marranos, unlike the Moriscos, were not externally recognizable, and large parts of Spanish society, especially in the upper class, had Sephardic relatives or ancestors .

Receiving countries

Many Jews settled in Portugal, where they were initially welcome to King John II for financial reasons. The residence permit, however, was limited in time. Jews who had not yet been baptized after a two-year stay had to leave the country. Since few had 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 Johann's successor, Manuel I , after a brief interlude of tolerance and mildness, a decree comparable to the Alhambra Edict was issued, in which Jews and Moors were ordered to leave the country by October 1497.

Expulsions of Jews from the 12th to the 17th centuries

The greater part of the Spanish Sephardi dispersed in small groups to North Africa, Egypt, the Levant , where the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II granted them refuge, and to Greece especially Salonika .

Others made it to Italy, where they were received with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The Republic of Venice tolerated them and expanded the ghetto to accommodate the Sephardi. The Renaissance Popes placed the Jews under the protection of the Church. Many Jews settled in the Papal States, especially in Ancona and Rome . Smaller groups of the displaced came to Amsterdam and Antwerp , but also to Hamburg . Sardinia and Sicily were countries of the Crown of Aragon in which the edict was as valid as 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 were expelled there too. 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 given equal rights to all other nations - Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Hebrews, Moors, Armenians, Turks etc. - full religious freedom, the right to bear arms, anywhere in the world To settle down in the city and open stores. These conditions were so attractive to the Sephardi that the Jewish population grew from 114 in 1601 to around 3,000 in 1689.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Alhambra Edict  - Sources and full texts (Spanish)
Wikisource: Alhambra Edict  - Sources and full texts (English)

References and comments

  1. Asunción Blasco Martínez: La expulsión de los judíos de España en 1492 . In: Kalakorikos: Revista para el estudio, defensa, protección y divulgación del patrimonio histórico, artístico y cultural de Calahorra y su entorno . No. 10 , 2005, pp. 13 f . (Spanish, dialnet.unirioja.es [accessed April 18, 2015]).
  2. Leo Trepp : The reconquest of Spain by the Christians - The Inquisition. In: The Jews; People, history, religion. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60618-6 , pp. 61-62.
  3. “King Juan Carlos I visited the synagogue of Madrid on April 1, 1992, apologized for the act of barbarism that his predecessors had committed five hundred years earlier, and solemnly and irrevocably suspended the edict of expulsion. The Erensia Sefardi Association then awarded him its Angel Pulido Prize in 1994 ... ”quoted from: Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , p. 114.
  4. Uwe Scheele: The difficult return to Sepharad. Jewish newspaper (Berlin) , May 2, 2009.
  5. Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , p. 33.
  6. Gerd Schwerhoff: The Inquisition - persecution of heretics in the Middle Ages and modern times . 3. Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-50840-0 , p. 64 .
  7. ^ Nikolaus Böttcher: Continuity and breaks in Hispanoamerica. Otto von Freising lectures at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-658-02243-4 , p. 21
  8. According to recent estimates, around 70,000 people were affected by the deportation order, but many of them returned and converted after a few years. Little more than 30,000 left the Iberian Peninsula for good. See Henry Kamen: The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492, in: Past and Present 119 (1988) p. 44; Herbers p. 309.
  9. a b Quotations from Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 . Chapter: The expulsion of 1492 and its consequences. Pp. 53-69.
  10. Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , pp. 57-58.
  11. Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , pp. 65-69.
  12. ante litteram , Latin before the letter , describes something that existed before there was a word for it [1] .
  13. Georg Bossong: The Sephardi. History and Culture of the Spanish Jews. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56238-9 , p. 92
  14. ^ Ferdinando I. de 'Medici: Costituzione livornina. 1593. (PDF)
  15. La storia di Livorno .
  16. ^ Virtual Jewish World. Livorno, Italy .