Jews driven from Spain; the infamous “Alhambra Decree”
Regents Ferdinand and Isabelle are the perpetrators. Some Jews accept the Cross, while well over 100,000 (possibly up to 200,000) leave.
This is 11 years into Spanish Inquisition (see above) which was primarily focused on Marranos—Jews who secretly practiced their faith while posturing as Christians.
1492 is the same year as the voyage of Columbus, hence the suspicion that not only part of his crew and/or his translators, but Columbus, as well, may have been Jewish, especially since he apparently used Hebrew serifs (fancy letter heads) in his penmanship. (Maybe .0001 percent of even the Jewish population knows Hebrew serifs, but possibly a Jewish relative or friend of Columbus was a scribe.)
In any event, the Spanish (then Portuguese) expulsions changed the contours of Jewish demography, flinging the elite Iberian Peninsula Jewish community, across the far–reaches of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Northern Europe, India, and the New World.
For those families who settle in Arab lands in the 1500s, the establishment of the State Israel 450 years later in 1948 will be another mega–earthquake rocking the status quo yet once again for them.
Underground or overground, the former Iberian Peninsula Jews will tenaciously hold onto their distinctive and rich Sephardic traditions.
***
*
end of
Jews, Church & Civilization
Volume III
*
continued
in Volume IV