Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand bid Columbus fair sailing in this print made two centuries later. All those row boats in the harbor crammed with people are likely Jews being expelled.
On August 3, 1492 two events of world changing significance brushed up
against each other in Spain. Italian
born mariner Christopher Columbus set out from the Atlantic port of Palos on his voyage to discover new trade routes to the Indies. As his little three ship flotilla left port it
passed several vessels laden with Jews.
Just weeks after Columbus’s patrons Their Most Catholic Majesties Queen Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, joint monarchs of newly united Spain, had finally expelled the last of the Moors
from Iberia by capturing the fabled city of Grenada earlier that year, they issued the Edict of Alhambra. Isabella,
Columbus’s main sponsor, was fanatically
Catholic and under the influence of the Inquisition.
Jews had lived and thrived as a significant minority in both Islamic and Christian areas of the Iberian
Peninsula Spain for hundreds of
years and going back to Roman times. But over the previous 200 years, they had come under increasing pressure in
Catholic areas. In more tolerant Moorish
regions, Jews thrived as philosophers,
scientists, physicians, statesmen,
and money lenders—a profession that was forbidden to Muslims and Christians alike.
The Inquisition successfully petitioned the Joint Monarchs for the expulssion of the Jews of Spain, which they ordered in the Edict of Alhambra. |
The new decree ordered that the remaining
Jews in the realm to either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain
with four months. Many Jews did choose baptism, but they and their decedents, called Marranos, remained under
suspicion of secretly practicing
Judaism and eventually themselves fell under the yoke of the Inquisition.
Jews who would not convert were promised
the protection of the monarchs while they disposed of their assets and were to be to be allowed to depart unmolested carrying with them their personal belongings, but no gold or silver. Forced
to sell assets under these conditions, most Jews received only a fraction of their worth. Others had property seized by Christians while authorities looked the other way, and many more had to simply abandon everything.
Expelled from their homes and carrying with them what they could salvage, Spanish Jews begin the trek to ports like Palos to sail into exile. |
Many voluntarily sailed before the deadline, mostly to North Africa where tolerant Moors welcomed them. They and their descendants eventually spread over the Muslim world and became
known as the Sephardic Jews.
Jews unable to arrange their own
transportation by the deadline were rounded
up and placed on ships that scattered
them across Europe to uncertain fates.
Some were given refuge in Portugal on promise of protection. Prince
Henry instead robbed and enslaved
them. Many arrived in Italian city states where some found a begrudging welcome and others were later massacred. In all an estimated 250,000 Jews were expelled.
Columbus, himself a devout Catholic,
saw nothing wrong with any of this. On his voyage he stumbled on the islands of the Caribbean
without realizing where he was, and returned to Spain declaring that he had claimed the Indies for the
monarchy. He was rewarded with the position of
Viceroy over the new lands and the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea.
The native Arawak people were among the Carib tribes tortured and annihilated by Columbus in his ruthless reign as Viceroy of the New World. |
Columbus made more voyages in increasingly desperate attempts to prove
that he had actually found the orient.
He also became a despotic ruler. He was so
cruel to the Native Carib people—
nations he essentially wiped from the
face of the earth in a decade—that even the Church was appalled. He was eventually hauled back to Spain in chains and stripped of his titles and fortune.
He spent the last few bitter years of his life trying to regain what he had lost and defending the increasingly dubious claim
that he had reached Asia.
As for Isabella and Ferdinand, they grew wealthy on the gold and silver of
the disbursed Jews. The Spanish
Empire grew fat on gold looted from
the Aztecs and Incas and from new mines
of silver and gold worked by Indian
slaves.
The losers were the displaced
Jews and the conquered native
peoples of the New World.
"...the of the Inquisition"? Perhaps you meant "yoke"?
ReplyDeleteFixed! Being under the yolk of the Inquisition would have been very messy and what would they have done with all the whites? Made the world's largest meringue?
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