History

Following the Christian re-conquest of Cordoba by Fernando III el Santo (the Saint) in 1236, the Jewish community maintained some of its influence. Fernando proclaimed a realm where Christians, Jews and Muslims would all receive the same treatment. Jews and Christians lived together in peace until the end of the 13th century, when relations began to deteriorate as a result of anti-Jewish propaganda and the radicalism of ecclesiastical Christians. As a result of the preaching of the Archdeacon of Seville, Ferrán Martínez, the Jewish community was attacked in 1391, and many Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. The Spanish Inquisition, founded during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs at the end of the 15th century with the objective of establishing the basis for a strong, centralised state, without minorities or dissent. In 1473, Cordoba witnessed the persecution of those converted Jews who were suspected of continuing to practise their rites in private, contemptuously known as Marranos. Such as had happened in other European kingdoms like England, the Catholic Monarchs decreed the expulsion of the Jews in 1492; so the Jews were given a four months period for leaving the country or converting to Christianity. When the Sephardis left the Peninsula following the decree, their houses, public buildings, tombs and devotional objects were destroyed or used for some other different purposes; this makes it very difficult to find and recognise traces of Jewish culture on Spanish soil. Muslim vestiges is often confused with Jews trace in al-Andalus due to the Jews hadn’t their own architectural style.

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