Well now that we know each other I suppose that I will introduce you to my academic works. Recently I wrote a paper on Jews in Iberia (modern Day Spain) and the exile that they faced at the end of the 15th century. I do apologize for the work not being very literary but I hope that you will enjoy it all the same. Currently as I post this I am awaiting the arrival of my beautiful girlfriend for a night with the parents and then shopping for a Halloween costume. Anyway, enjoy the paper.
The last two decades of the 15th century was a tumultuous time for the Jewish community living in Iberia. Throughout these last years they were coerced into converting to Christianity, doggedly “relieved” of their personal possessions, and expelled from the peninsula entirely. Modern day scholars are constantly in debate over the actual cause of the Jewish expulsion from the Kingdom of Castile-Leon and the Crown of Aragon in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497, and from Navarre in 1498. The two schools of thought on the expulsion of the Jews are as follows: first, one side believes that the actual expulsion was negligible because by the time that these decrees were made many Jews had either left the peninsula already or had converted to Christianity, thereby making the task of expelling them inexpensive and therefore largely an attempt to garner national support for the increasingly nationalistic monarchs and is largely supported by Norman Roth and Henry Kamen; the opposite theory advocates the intention of the Iberian monarchs to use the expulsion of the Jews to more efficiently collect taxes and seize the property of the Jews for their own benefit. This second reason is better represented in works by academics such as Jerome Friedman and E. William Monter and partially so by Benjamin Gampel. The idea that financial benefits could be the root cause of the expulsion is well founded in primary and secondary sources. In order to understand the actions taken in the last decades of the 15th century, one must also be aware of the events at the end of the 14th century. The end of the 14th century also saw an increase in coerced conversions and a general massacre in 1391. Beginning in the early 1400’s it becomes standard practice for priests to actively work at the conversion of Jews.1 In addition to this in certain areas Jews are also encouraged to move into Alhamas, areas of limited Jewish self-government, and separate areas of residence by both Christian and Jewish elite. General dislike of Jews was common but not overwhelmingly malicious. 1480, however, was the beginning of the end of Spanish Jewry. In this year the Inquisition of the Holy Office was established in the peninsula and Alhamas were more forcefully applied. The Inquisition was established, in part, in order to root out Conversos who were corrupting recently converted Jews or continued to Judaize, or act sympathetic to Jews.23
The financial effects on the Jews being expelled from Castile and Aragon in 1492 were quite dramatic, as some authors have portrayed. The expulsion such as the one that was ordered in the domain of Ferdinand and Isabella only allowed the removal of material wealth but not coinage nor unminted bullion.4 The decree also made a large mass of people sell off the majority of their personal possessions in a fairly restricted amount of time thereby flooding the market and devaluing everything that was being sold. In one account it is described as giving away a house in return for an ass.5 Prior to the expulsion, all Jews that were not converted to Christianity sold off their possessions in return for little money and then proceeded to immigrate to places such as Tunis, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire. The left over wealth that they left behind was normally seized by the royal families.6 In 1484, Torquemada, the Inquisitor in Spain, issued a decree which included 27 clauses, of which six were non-monetary.7 In the opinion of Monter this therefore made the Spanish Inquisition, and by extension the Iberian Monarchs, “…less bloodthirsty than bloodsucking.” The intent, according to Monter was for the monarchs to leach money from both Jews and Conversos alike before actually expelling the remaining unconverted Jews. In this practice they were utterly efficient.
According to Henry Kamen however the Jews by this point in time were, while hard working, not the richest section of society.8 But he provides little evidence to support his claim and even undercuts himself a few sentences before by claiming that many Jews were in fact money-lenders and jewelers. He comments that Isaac Abravanel, a contemporary Jewish elite living during the time, does not provide evidence for his sum of the Jewish worth, some 30 million msr. (Maravedes), the standard unit of Spanish Currency. He would instead advocate that the Jewish expulsion did not serve any major economic purpose.
The effect of the Inquisition of the Holy Office on Conversos was monumental in the decision for many remaining Jews, instead of converting, to leave the Kingdom of Spain altogether. The Inquisition was mainly interested in the financial assets of Conversos and resorted to placing the dead on trial to claim property that had passed to their heirs. Torquemada can is quoted by Monter as saying that “trails of the living must never take precedence over trials of the dead”. By burning their bones they were able to seize entire estates that had in some cases already been passed down to heirs9 The Inquisition was, curiously enough, monetarily motivated as shown by Torquemada’s explanation of certain fiscally pertinent decrees in which the Inquisition could, “…give cause for the treasury to take possession of their property.”10 Monter argues that this was clearly the reason for the Inquisition into Spanish Conversos. In the years between 1482 and 1491 it should be noted that at least, but likely more than, 9,647,523 liquid msr. was collected from individuals and communities by The Holy Office.11 This does not include property also seized.12 The inquisition was given even further allowances to prosecute citizens when it was discovered that Jews, not Conversos, of a certain sect were actively praying for the death of Queen Isabella, enraging Ferdinand.13 The Holy Office also was extraordinary in the fact that it actually burned at the stake three of the men accused of these acts, a harsh sentence usually reserved only for inquisitorial assassins.14
In Death of Coexistence Monter also presents the case of Portuguese Jews in 1497 that were forcibly converted after emigrating from Spain in 1492. The main difference between the two countries was the fact that the Holy Office, The Inquisition, did not operate in Portugal at that time. Because of this the King of Portugal, Manuel, was able to extend to the newly converted population of Jews, Conversos, a twenty year moratorium on persecution which, when ended, was renewed for an additional 20 years. While this might be seen by some to be a good will gesture it can just as easily be interpreted as a targeted marketing campaign. With a 20 year safety net Conversos were more likely to immigrate to Portugal than anywhere else until the banishment from that kingdom later in the decade. 15 Upon being converted these Conversos would then provide increased taxes to the new king, possibly in the form of charters for their individual alhamas, as well as fees that might be incurred for the conversion process. In this case the idea put forward by Monter seems to be that the King was forcing the Jews to convert and then providing them a safe haven merely out of the goodness of his heart, which is seldom a stable reason. 16
In his book, Norman Roth advocates the idea of nationality after the fall of Muslim Granada as the primary reason for Jewish persecution in Spain.17 In his book he relieves the Iberian Monarchs of their responsibility in expelling the Jews. However, his research is not presented in full because “there is not enough space here but look in my future works” and therefore it seems as though the majority of his argument, chiefly that the blame lay on local churchmen and even partially on the Jews themselves, comes across in a way that makes it sound as though he is attempting to vindicate the Spanish Monarchs for personal rather than academic reasons. He presents ideas that while intriguing are not presented in full negating their potential to actively participate in the academic discussion. He later repeats that the numbers of Jews in Spain, as listed by a colleague, are just “ridiculous”.18
The Jewish expulsion from Navarre rather than being motivated by financial gains was instead, according to Gampel, a way for the Navarrese Monarchs, Johan and Catalina, to remain independent of their larger southerly neighbors.19 During the waning of the 15th century after the expulsion of the Jews from Castile, Aragon, and nearby Provence the French, Castilian, and Argonese all had their eyes set on Navarre.20 In order to remain independent and to discourage an invasion by the Castilian Monarchs the Navarrese expelled the Jews with remarkable success, if that is the term to be used, in 1498.
Among the reasons for Iberian Monarchs to convert and expel Jews from their lands at the end of the 15th century, the most probable and realistic reason is financial in origin. The Catholic Monarchs had just concluded a costly and expensive war against the Moors to the south in Granada and were looking for an effortless way to accrue more money. Jews had long been known to be moneylenders and merchants and cases that had been brought before the Cortes were concerned with the interest that Christians paid on loans taken from Jews. Therefore the Crown saw the Jews as an easy target not adequately able to defend themselves from increased pressure. Outstanding loans made by Jews to Christians were cancelled or more simply just paid off by conversos, depleting their (the conversos) ability to ward off the grasping fingers of the Inquisition. This was the case in 1491 with Isaac Abravanel in which he was owed the enormous sum of 1.5 million msr. by the Crown of Castile and it was repaid by a recent Converso, Luis de Santangel, his cousin. 21The Crown also ‘repays’ loans in the years of 1489-92 but it should be mentioned that the Jews leaving Iberia were not allowed to carry coinage with them therefore making any repayment more like a modern day CD.22 A borrower repays the Jews, allows them to invest it and make a profit then exiles them and seizes their property. Even if they were Conversos there remained a good chance that the Inquisition would still find them guilty of anything ranging from desecration of the Sacraments to following false prophets thereby enabling them to still seize their property.
In all, the actual reason for the expulsion of the Jews from Iberia is believed by some such as Roth and Kamen, to a brief extent, to be nationalistic in origin and having little effect on anything economic. This hypothesis disregards simple human greed in determining the root cause of the expulsion. While an increase in nationalism after concluding the war with Granada might have led to the ejection of the Jews partially, it is more likely that the expulsion fed nationalism and not the other way around. The main driving force behind Jewish expatriation is financial in origin allowing both the upper nobility and monarchs to benefit from their left over goods and property, money and fines acquired through the Inquisition, and new taxes levied against recent Jewish Conversos.
Works Cited
Baer, Yitzhak . A History Of The Jews In Christian Spain. 1961. Reprint, Tel Aviv: The Jewish Publication Society, 1966.
De Quiros, Felipe Torroba Bernaldo. The Spanish Jews. 1959. Reprint, Madrid: Sucs. de Rivadeneyra, 1972.
Gampel, Benjamin R.. The last Jews on Iberian soil: Navarrese Jewry, 1479/1498. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Goodman, Martin, Jeremy Cohen, and David Jan Sorkin. The Oxford handbook of Jewish studies . Oxford [England: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kamen, Henry. "The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492." Past and Present 119 (1988): 30-55.
Nirenberg, David. Communities of violence: persecution of minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Roth, Norman. Conversos, Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. "Death of Coexistence." In The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and after. New York: Garland Pub., 1994. 4-14.
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and Jerome Friedman. "New Christian Religious Alternatives." In The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and after. New York: Garland Pub., 1994. 19-31.
Roth, Norman. Conversos, Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Pg 66-67
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. "Death of Coexistence." In The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and after. New York: Garland Pub., 1994. 4-14. Pg 12
Roth, Norman. Pg 285
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. 4-14. Pg 12
De Quiros, Felipe Torroba Bernaldo. The Spanish Jews. 1959. Reprint, Madrid: Sucs. de Rivadeneyra, 1972. Pg 283
Roth, Norman. . Pg 285-286
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. 4-14. Pg 8
8 Kamen, Henry. "The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492." Past and Present 119 (1988): 30-55.
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. 4-14. Pg 8
ibid
Roth, Norman. Pg 263
12ibid
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and E. William Monter. Pg 12
ibid
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and Jerome Friedman. "New Christian Religious Alternatives." In The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and after. New York: Garland Pub., 1994. 19-31.Pg 21
Waddington, Raymond B., Arthur H. Williamson, and Jerome Friedman. Pg 23
Roth, Norman. Pg 271
Roth, Norman. Pg 274
Gampel, Benjamin R.. The last Jews on Iberian soil: Navarrese Jewry, 1479/1498. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pg 122
Gampel, Benjamin R.. Pg 121
Roth, Norman. Pg 280-281
Roth, Norman. Pg 280-281
