What happened in the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 in Spain?
The anti-Jewish riots of 1391
Los pogromos de 1391
6 June 1391–1392. For years Ferrand Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, had preached against the Jews of Seville.
Where: Spain, Seville, Castile, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia
What happened
For years Ferrand Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, had preached against the Jews of Seville. On 6 June 1391 crowds attacked the Jewish quarter, killing thousands and forcing others to be baptised, and the violence spread through Castile, Valencia, Catalonia and Mallorca in the following months; the Jewish community of Barcelona was destroyed. Royal power was weak, with a boy king in Castile, and local authorities often failed to intervene. Tens of thousands converted to survive. These conversos and their descendants lived under suspicion for generations, and the Inquisition of 1478 was created to police them. Historians see 1391 as a turning point after which coexistence gave way to conversion, expulsion and inquisition, though recent work shows hostility and forced conversion long before.
Say it
En 1391 muchos judíos fueron obligados a convertirse.
In 1391 many Jews were forced to convert.
Why it matters
1391 began the end of Spain's medieval Jewish world: the conversos, the Inquisition, the expulsion of 1492 and the Ladino-speaking Sephardic diaspora all follow from it.
Connected
- Convivencia: living together, and apart (711–1492)
- The Black Death reaches the peninsula (March 1348–1350)
- The Black Death reaches the peninsula (March 1348–1350)
- The fall of Granada (2 January 1492)
Sources
- Review of Paola Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew (Hussein Fancy) — Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 9 (2014), Boston College
- The Politics of Antisemitism in Medieval Spain and the Riots of 1391 (Maya Soifer Irish) — Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin–Madison