1492: Out With The Old, In With The New (original) (raw)
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Eurasia Review
The Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile took control of the Emirate of Grenada (1238-1492), the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, on January 2, 1492. King Boabdil surrendered to Spanish forces and offered the key to the city in the Alhambra palace, an event Christopher Columbus witnessed as he received the support of the monarchy to sail to the Indies. The monarchy was under particular pressure from Isabella’s father, Tomas de Torquenada, and also papal appeals and influential militant figures to re-conquer Christian land from “impure” Muslims and their “filthy” allies, the Jews. In the same year that the monarchs took Grenada, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in Christian Byzantium, further threatening Christendom and reinvigorating Europe’s crusading spirit.
� s year we _ com � emorate th � five hundredth anniversary of a tragic expulsion. Our history 1s replete With tragic moments, but this moment ia Of enormous significance for Jewish as well as for Christian and Moslem hlstory. For J � ws, 1492 con � tituted the abrupt end of an extraordinary cultural expenence, a formative and repercussive period in the life of our people affecting every area of its civilization: Halakha, philosophy, kab balah, poetry, ethical literature, messianism, political thought, and more.2 A world of enormous vitality and effervesence, a world, both in its hlgh and low points, that can teach us a great deal about the nature of our faith an d community, about our interaction with others, in short, about ourselves.
The Chronicles of the Sephardic Jews in Spain, Europe and in Morocco after 1492
In the year 1492, the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella captured Grenada from the Moors. The city surrendered on January 7, 1492 and the Catholic king and queen immediately ordered the expulsion of all Jews within three months’ time and the expropriation of all their wealth. The expulsion of this intelligent, cultured, and industrious ethnic and religious group was prompted only, in part, by the greed of the king and queen and the intensified nationalism of the people who had just brought the crusade against the Muslim Moors to a glorious close. The real motive was the religious zeal of the Church, the monarchies in presence, and the masses. Accordingly, the equivalent of 250 000 Jews were thrown in merchant ships and sent to other parts of Europe and North Africa, with no food or means to start a new life. It is considered one of the most inhuman mass expulsion in human history of people on the ground of their religious affiliation.
Jewish history and gentile memory: The expulsion of 1492
Jewish History, 1995
During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, the Christian kingdoms and principalities in northern Iberia extended their power southward. They acquired territory and people that, since the first quarter of the eighth century, had been under Islamic rule. The kingdoms of Leon-Castila, Aragon, and Portugal (especially the former two) contained greater numbers of non-Christians-Jews and Muslims-than any other Christian territory in western Europe. Until the late fourteenth century the kind of public life led in these states was termed convivencia, "peacefully living together," and in Jewish usage Iberia was termed Sefarad (Obadiah 20: literally the farthest northern point of Jewish migration in Syria; figuratively, a refuge remote from Palestine). Jews played a subordinate but crucial role in these kingdoms, which have been termed sociologically incomplete societies, i.e., requiring the presence and service of non-Christians for some governmental functions-chiefly financial and professional-that Christian subjects could not or would not perform. Although Jews were needed, they were also excluded from high public office, as were Jews elsewhere in Christian Europe. In 1391 a number of riots broke out in different parts of Iberia, directed against Jews. As a result, about half the Jewish population of Iberia converted to Christianity. This was an event unprecedented in history-and one for which the Iberian church and society, indeed any contemporary Christian church and society, were utterly unprepared. A generation or so later, in the 1440s, new anti-Jewish movements began again, directed this time also against the "New Christians," or conversos, as they were called. The reasons for some of this resentment against conversos as well as
CINQUECENTENARIO DELL’ESPULSIONE DEGLI EBREI DALL’ITALIA MERIDIONALE ATTI DEL CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE NAPOLI, UNIVERSITÀ “L’ORIENTALE” – 22-23 NOVEMBRE 2010, 2013
The failure of the repeated attempts to establish in the kingdom of Naples the new Inquisition “all’uso di Spagna” led to an unprecedented decision: the expulsion of Christians of Jewish origins along with the Jews. This was a reversal of a religious policy persistently carried out in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily, namely, that of preventing New Christians and their descendants from leaving their native lands because they might thus return to Judaism. This policy shift is given ample consideration in rabbinical thinking as it is manifest in the Responsa literature of the sixteenth century. Thus, the decision to expel the converts along with the Jews was understood as permission for them to return to Judaism. There are several surviving rabbinic Responsa that refer to the expulsion of 1511 which is known in Hebrew sources as גרוש פוליא (Ğeruš Pulia - Expulsion of Apulia). The principal sources referred to in this article are the Responsa of R. David ha-Kohen of Corfu (d. ca. 1530) and that of R. Binyamin ben Matatyiah of Arta (ca. 1475 – ca. 1539)9 which offer precious information on the fate of the exiles, and particularly on Jewish converts to Christianity, as well as interesting details on the process of departure from Italy, the formation of new settlements, family relationships, and the mentality. However, the main concern in the following discussion focuses on the “converso” problem as perceived by the spiritual leaders of this period.
A suggestion that Europe also a Muslim: a study from historical and contemporary perspectives
Indonesian Journal of Islam and Muslim Societies, 2019
In the past century saw that Europe associates themselves as a Christian domain until now. The proclaimation of Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD made the Nicene Christianity as the state in Roman Empire and saw a transition from paganism to a Christian domain or Christendom. Since its inception, several edict has been enacted and several peace treaties have been broken to diminish an idea of multiculturalism within theirs faith land. The establishment of Muslim rules in Iberian Peninsula has changed the dominion of Christian. Muslims in Spain introduced convivencia, which saw that Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity co-exist together, removing racial, cultural and religious barriers to embrace each other that nurture spirit of inclusion. The Golden Age of Muslim Civilization evidence that Cordova has become a center of Europe, perhaps the world for scientific knowledge advancement. Subsequently, contribute for Renaissance Age in Europe. Additionally, fall of Constant...