The struggle of the inquisitors of the Catholic kings against the allegedly unstable conversos (converted to Christianity Jews) ultimately led to widespread persecution of the Jews of the united kingdoms, which ended with their expulsion from the country.
Blood libel
In the years 1490-1491. The case of the Holy Child from LaGuardia caused a great resonance in Castile: the inquisitors then accused several Jews and their sympathetic conversos of the ritual murder of a five-year-old Christian child in a small town near Toledo. According to the investigation, the situation was as follows: on Good Friday 1488, five Jews and six “new Christians” whipped a 5-year-old boy from LaGuardia, forced him to carry a cross and “subjected him to the same sufferings as described in the New Testament in relation to Jesus Christ. After that, they crucified him and tore out his heart, which they were going to use for magical rituals in order to poison the water.
8 suspects were found guilty and burned. Three more were unavailable due to death or timely departure. And the boy, whose personality and the very fact of whose existence it was not possible to establish, was declared a saint. Jewish historians, by the way, are very skeptical about even the very possibility of an alliance of Spanish Jews with uncircumcised conversos, whom they did not consider to be Jews. In the historical literature, this case has received the eloquent name of "blood libel".
Book auto-da-fe
Around the same time, more than 6,000 books were burned on St. Stephen's Square in Salamanca, which, according to Torquemada, were "infected with the delusions of Judaism or permeated with witchcraft, magic, sorcery and other superstitions."
Juan Antonio Llorente, who, we recall, himself at the end of the 18th century was the secretary of the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Madrid, writes:
“How many valuable works were lost! Their only crime was that they could not be understood."
According to the testimony of the same author, this and other "book auto-da-fe" were pure "amateur" inquisitors who
“Not only did they not conform to either the papal bull or royal decrees, they even neglected to address the diocesan bishop. The Inquisition Council decided everything on its own, following the assessments of theologians, called qualifiers, who, in general, were prejudiced people."
Arthur Arnoux wrote in The History of the Inquisition:
“It was just the end of morality and intelligence. The earth was turning into a huge monastery, indulging in stupefying rituals of false and perverted piety."
However, books in Spain were also burned before Torquemada: in 1434, for example, Juan II's confessor Lope de Barrientos (a Dominican, of course) persuaded this monarch to burn the library of a close relative of the king - Enrique of Aragon, the Marquis de Villena, who was a fairly famous poet and alchemist.
The Spanish inquisitors did not invent anything new: they followed the path indicated by Dominique Guzman, their patron and founder of the Order.
Granada Edict
According to most historians, both the "blood libel" and the large-scale burning of books in Salamanca pursued the goal of preparing public consciousness for the publication of the famous "El Decreto de la Alhambra" ("Edicto de Granada"), which announced the expulsion of Jews from the territory of the united kingdoms. … This edict was published on March 31, 1492.
Alhambra (Granada) Edict of Ferdinand and Isabella of March 31, 1492
In the Edict, in particular, it was said:
"When a serious and heinous crime is committed by members of a group, it is prudent to destroy the entire group."
Nicolas-Sylvester Bergier (famous doctor of theology of the 18th century) wrote:
"After the conquest of Granada (January 2, 1492), the Inquisition unfolded in Spain with such strength and severity that ordinary tribunals never had."
Now the "Jewish question" in the territory under the control of the Catholic kings had to be resolved finally and irrevocably.
The Jews were ordered to leave Spain before the end of July 1492, while they were mockingly allowed
"Take your property outside our possessions, whether by sea or by land, provided that neither gold, nor silver, nor minted coins, nor other items prohibited by the laws of the kingdom (precious stones, pearls) will be taken away."
That is, the Jews had to leave the country, leaving almost all their property, since it was almost impossible to sell it - the neighbors knew that in 4 months they would get everything for nothing, and the money for the part of it that they still managed to sell was ruthlessly confiscated for borders. More than fifty thousand wealthy Jewish families are believed to have lost their fortune at that time. The descendants of Spanish Jews who left the country in 1492 kept the keys to "their" houses until the 19th century.
Having learned about the Edict of Granada, the Jews tried to act according to the principle: "If a problem can be solved with money, then this is not a problem, but a cost." They offered Catholic monarchs 30 thousand ducats "for state needs", an obligation from all Jews to live in separate districts from Christians, returning to their homes before nightfall, and even agreed to a ban on some professions. Yitzhak ben Yehuda, the former treasurer of the king of Portugal, and now the royal tax collector in Castile and a trusted adviser to the Catholic kings, who bestowed upon him the nobility and the right to be called Don Abravanel, went to an audience with Isabella and Ferdinand. At this meeting, Queen Isabella stated that Jews can stay on condition of conversion to Christianity. But the amount raised by the Jewish communities made the right impression. The Catholic monarchs were already inclined to revoke their Edict when Torquemada appeared at the palace and declared:
“Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of silver. And your majesties are now ready to sell it for thirty thousand coins."
Then he threw the crucifix on the table, saying:
"Here is depicted our crucified Savior, for him you will receive a few more silver coins."
The fate of the Spanish Jews was sealed. According to modern data, from 50 to 150 thousand Jews chose baptism ("conversion"), the rest - exile. It is this group of Jews who are known throughout the world as "Sephardic" (from "sfarad" - Spain).
Sephardim and Ashkenazi
Before the exodus, the rabbis ordered all children over 12 years old to marry - so that no one would be alone in a foreign land.
It should be said that the expulsion of the Jews was not something fundamentally new and in Europe few people were surprised. From France, Jews were expelled in 1080, 1147, 1306, 1394 and 1591, from England - in 1188, 1198, 1290 and 1510, from Hungary - in 1360, from Poland - in 1407. The nature of this deportation could only surprise you: Jews expelled not on the national, but on the confessional principle. Torquemada sent his subordinates to the Jewish quarters to explain that the government and the church did not want the Jews to leave the country, but their conversion to the "true faith," and called on everyone to be baptized and preserve their property and position in society.
Against the background of large-scale repressions against conversos, the decision of many Spanish Jews to preserve the faith is not surprising: they quite reasonably assumed that in a couple of years they would be burned for not being zealous enough to perform the rituals of their new religion.
The expelled Jews chose different routes of emigration. Some of them went to Italy, among them was Don Abravanel (Yitzhak ben Yehuda). Many died on the way from the plague, and those who ended up in Naples in 1510-1511. were expelled from there for several years.
Others went to North Africa, where many of them were killed and robbed.
Better was the fate of those who decided to link their fate with the Ottoman Empire. By order of the eighth Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II, Turkish ships under the command of Admiral Kemal Reis, who from 1487 fought on the side of Granada in Andalusia and the Balearic Islands, now took on board the fleeing Sephardim. They were settled in Istanbul, Edirne, Thessaloniki, Izmir, Manisa, Bursa, Gelibol, Amasya and some other cities. The Sultan commented on the Edict of Granada with the words:
"How can I call King Ferdinand wise, if he enriched my country, while he himself became a beggar."
Some Jews made it to Palestine, where the Safed community emerged.
Tragic was the fate of those Spanish Jews who decided to emigrate to Portugal, because already in 1498 they had to go through the horrors of exile again. And Torquemada was again involved in their expulsion! It was he who insisted on the inclusion in the marriage contract concluded between the King of Portugal Manuel and the daughter of Catholic monarchs Isabella of Asturias (Isabella the Younger) a clause requiring the expulsion of the Jews from this country. Isabella, who was previously married to the Portuguese prince Alfonso (the young man died after falling from a horse), did not want to go to Portugal a second time. She stated that now she intends to engage only in prayers and self-flagellation, but with such parents and with Tommaso Torquemada, you can’t get too excited about it - I went.
The presentiment did not deceive the girl: on the way to her wedding, the only son of the Catholic monarchs, Juan, died, and she herself died in childbirth on August 23, 1498. And 4 years later, her son also died, who was supposed to become king of Castile, Aragon and Portugal. This death was one of the reasons that Portugal never became part of Spain.
In later times, the Sephardim reached Navarra, Vizcaya, central and northern France, Austria, England and the Netherlands.
Most strikingly, the more orthodox Sephardic people fiercely feuded with the Ashkenazi, considering them "second-class Jews." And some of them Ashkenazi did not consider Jews at all, claiming that they are the descendants of the inhabitants of the Khazar Kaganate and do not belong to any of the tribes of Israel. This "hypothesis" turned out to be very tenacious, and one can sometimes hear about the "Khazar origin of the Ashkenazi" (especially when it comes to immigrants from the former republics of the USSR) even in modern Israel.
In the Sephardic synagogues of Amsterdam and London in the 18th century, the Sephardim sat, the Ashkenazi stood behind the partition. Marriages between them were not encouraged; in 1776, the Sephardi community in London decided: in the event of the death of a Sephardi who married an Ashkenazi daughter, his widow is not entitled to help. Ashkenazi also treated the Sephardim very cool. In New York in 1843, they created a public organization, which in German was called "Bundesbruder", in Yiddish - "Bnei Brit" (meaning one - "sons" or "brothers" of the Union, in 1968 it had a thousand branches in 22 countries of the world) - the Sephardim were not accepted into this "union".
Yes, and these two groups of Jews spoke different languages: Sephardim - in "Ladino", Ashkenazi - in Yiddish.
The division of Jews into Sephardic and Ashkenazi persists to this day. But there is also another rather large group of Jews - "Mizrahi", who are considered immigrants from Asia and Africa of non-Hispanic origin: these include the Jews of Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran and India.
Mostly Ashkenazi Jews lived on the territory of the Russian Empire (beyond the Pale of Settlement).
But in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Bukhara there were Jewish communities professing Sephardic Judaism, these Jews have no Spanish roots.
Among the descendants of Spanish Jews are philosopher Baruch Spinoza, one of the founders of political economy David Ricardo, impressionist painter Camille Pizarro and even British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The latter once stated in the House of Lords:
"When the ancestors of my respected opponent were savages on an unknown island, my ancestors were priests in the Jerusalem temple."
It is believed that the last Jew left Spain on August 2, 1492. And the next day, three caravels of Christopher Columbus set off from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frantera (Wembla province).
Jacques Attali, a French politician and economist of Jewish origin (the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a prospective member of the Bilderberg Club), said on this occasion:
"In 1492 Europe closed to the East and turned to the West, trying to get rid of everything that was not Christian."
It is believed that between one and a half to two million descendants of Jews who were expelled by Catholic kings in the 15th century live in the world today. The authorities of modern Spain offer them to obtain citizenship according to a simplified procedure: this requires either historical documents or a notarized certificate from the head of a recognized Sephardic Jewish community.
Roman opponent of Tommaso de Torquemada
Meanwhile, on July 25, 1492, Pope Innocent VIII died, and Rodrigo di Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, was elected as the new pontiff.
This native of the small town of Jativa near Valencia was called "Satan's apothecary", "the monster of debauchery" and "the darkest figure of the papacy", and his reign - "a misfortune for the church."
It was he, according to legend, who died, confusing a glass with poisoned wine, which his son Cesare prepared for the cardinals who dined with them (Cesare survived).
All the more surprising are the efforts of this pope to stop the madness of the Spanish inquisitors beyond his control and his struggle against Torquemada, to which he tried to attract even the Catholic king Ferdinand. These efforts of his, much more active and consistent than the timid attempts of Sixtus IV, gave Louis Viardot the opportunity to call Torquemada "a merciless executioner, whose bloody atrocities were condemned even by Rome."
Once again, the question arises - which is worse: a cheerful bastard invested with power or an honest and disinterested fanatic who got the opportunity to decide human destinies?
In the end, on June 23, 1494, Alexander VI sent Torquemada four "assistants" (coadjutors), whom he gave the right to appeal his decisions. The papal decree said that this was done "in view of Torquemada's advanced age and his various ailments" - the Grand Inquisitor took this phrase as an open insult. Many believe that this was a deliberate provocation: Alexander VI hoped that the enemy, angry with "mistrust", would demonstratively resign, relying on the intercession of Queen Isabella.
But Torquemada was not a man who could at least let someone get involved in his affairs, and therefore he continued to make decisions alone. At his insistence, two bishops were sentenced to death, who dared to file a complaint against him in Rome, but Pope Alexander VI obtained their pardon from the Catholic kings.
The constant opposition that Torquemada now experienced literally at every step and on all issues, of course, very angry and strained him. And age already made itself felt. The Grand Inquisitor now slept badly, he was tormented by gouty pains and constant weakness, some even said that the inquisitor was being pursued by "the shadows of innocent victims." In 1496, Torquemada, nominally continuing to remain the Grand Inquisitor, actually retired, retiring to the monastery of St. Thomas (Tommaso) built with his active participation.
He did not come to the royal palace again, but the Catholic monarchs visited him regularly. Queen Isabella's visits became especially frequent after the only son of Isabella and Ferdinand, Juan, who died at the age of 19, was buried in this monastery in 1497.
In the last year of his life, Torquemada summoned the inquisitors of the united kingdoms to acquaint them with the new set of 16-point instructions. He also entered into negotiations with the English king Henry VII, who, in exchange for facilitating the marriage of his eldest son Arthur with the youngest daughter of Catholic monarchs, Catherine, promised not to accept in his country those who are persecuted by the Inquisition.
Ekaterina of Aragonskaya
The fate of this daughter of great monarchs turned out to be difficult and strange. She arrived in England in October 1501, the wedding took place on November 14, and on April 2, 1502, her husband Arthur died before he could leave an heir. Catherine said that she did not have time to enter into an intimate relationship with her husband in view of his young age. For several years she was in England, while her parents (and then, after the death of her mother in 1504, only her father) negotiated with Henry VII.
The English king hesitated for a long time, choosing to marry the young widow himself (which did not suit the Spanish side), or to marry her to his second son. In 1507, Ferdinand sent Catherine's credentials, and she found herself in the role of ambassador to the English Court, thus becoming the first female diplomat. Finally, in April 1509, dying, Henry VII, worried about the future of his dynasty, demanded that his son and only heir marry Catherine. On June 11, 1509, the new king married his brother's widow. This king was the famous Henry VIII, who is widely regarded as the English reincarnation of Duke Bluebeard from French legend.
And this is an English rhyme that allows schoolchildren to remember their fate:
Divorced, beheaded, died;
Divorced, beheaded, survived.
("Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived").
All the children of Catherine of Aragon, except for one girl - Mary, were born dead, or died immediately after giving birth. On this basis, Henry VIII asked Pope Clement VII for permission to divorce - referring to the biblical dictum: “If someone takes his brother's wife: this is disgusting; he revealed his brother's nakedness, they will be childless."
The Pope's refusal led to a complete rupture of relations with Rome and the adoption in 1534 of the famous "Act of Suprematism", in which Henry was proclaimed the supreme head of the English Church. Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn, Catherine was stripped of her queen status, becoming only the Dowager Princess of Wales, and her daughter was declared illegitimate. This did not prevent Mary Tudor from ascending the English throne (in 1553). She was also Queen of Ireland, and since 1556, after her marriage to Philip II, she was also Queen of Spain.
She went down in history under the nickname Bloody Mary, ruled for 4 years and died in 1557 from some kind of fever. Her successor was another girl with a difficult fate - the daughter of Anne Boleyn Elizabeth, whose "sea dogs" will destroy the Invincible Armada and tear the colonial possessions of Spain to shreds.
During her reign, the famous British East India Company will appear, William Shakespeare will become famous and Mary Stuart will be executed.
Death of Tommaso Torquemada
After the pardon of the bishops who complained about him to Rome, the offended Torquemada did not visit the royal palace. Catholic kings, especially Isabella, visited him themselves.
On September 16, 1498, Torquemada died and was buried in the chapel of the monastery of Saint Thomas (Thomas). In 1836, his grave was destroyed on the grounds that Torquemada, who ordered the removal of many people from the graves in order to abuse their remains, himself must posthumously suffer the same fate.
The sad fate of the Mudejars and Moriscos
4 years after the death of Torquemada, the Moors (Mudejars) who did not want to be baptized were expelled from Castile - this happened in 1502. This deportation is also often mistakenly attributed to Tommaso Torquemada. Those Moors who chose to remain, having converted to Christianity, in Castile since then were contemptuously called Moriscos ("Mauritanians"), in Valencia and Catalonia - Saracens, and in Aragon they retained the name of the name of the Moors.
In 1568, the Moors, who lived in the territory of the former Granada Emirate, revolted, which was a response to the prohibition of the Arabic language, national dress, traditions and customs in 1567 (Alpukharian war). It was suppressed only in 1571.
On April 9, 1609, King Philip III signed an edict for the expulsion of the Moriscos from the country, very similar to that of Granada in 1492. The difference was that from the families of the Moriscos, it was allowed to remove small children, who were handed over to Catholic priests for education. First, the descendants of the Moors were expelled from Valencia, then (already in 1610) - from Aragon, Catalonia and Andalusia.
In total, about 300 thousand people were deported, according to experts, this deportation had negative consequences for the country's economy. It was the Moriscos that specialized in the cultivation of olive and mulberry trees, rice, grapes, and sugar cane. In the south, through their efforts, an irrigation system was created, which has now fallen into disrepair. Many fields in those years remained unseeded, the cities experienced a shortage of labor. Castile has suffered the least in this regard - it is believed that tens of thousands of Moriscos managed to escape deportation in this kingdom.
Interestingly, some of the Moriscos remained Christians - they moved to Provence (up to 40 thousand people), Livorno or America. But most of them returned to Islam (some, perhaps in protest) and settled in the Maghreb.
Some of the Moriscos settled in Morocco near the city of Salé, where a colony of Spanish Moors already existed, who moved there at the beginning of the 16th century. They were known as "Ornacheros" - after the name of the Spanish (Andalusian) city of Ornachuelos. Their language was Arabic. But the new settlers already spoke the Andalusian dialect of the Spanish language. They had nothing to lose, and very quickly the pirate republic of Salé (from the name of the fortified city) appeared on the Moroccan coast, which also included Rabat and the Kasbah. This peculiar state existed from 1627 to 1668, its authorities even established diplomatic relations with England, France and Holland. This time is reminiscent of the Consuls Street in the Medina (old town) of Rabat. Its first "great admiral" and "president" was the Dutch corsair Jan Jansoon van Haarlem, who, after being captured by the Barbary pirates near the Canary Islands, converted to Islam and became known to everyone as Murat-Reis (the Younger).
But we will talk about the famous Barbary pirates and great Ottoman admirals in the following articles.
