Massacre of 1391
Anti-Jewish mob destroys Seville's judería
Even the date comes from conflicting memories: a Jewish witness writing months later said 4 June, a Christian chronicle written seven decades later said 6 June.
June 1391, inside the walls of the judería
In June 1391 a Christian mob broke into Seville's walled Jewish quarter, set its gates on fire, killed hundreds of Jews, plundered homes and drove many survivors to accept baptism.
Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, writing in October 1391, dated the attack to 1 Tammuz 5151 — Sunday 4 June. The Cuarta crónica general, written in 1460, gives Tuesday 6 June; modern accounts generally use 6 June, but the date is not beyond dispute.
The figures that are repeated, and the one that is defensible
The cautious description of the deaths is hundreds killed. The familiar total of 4,000 comes from that 1460 chronicle, and its modern scholarly editor judges it almost certainly exaggerated.
The attack shattered Seville's aljama, the organised Jewish community, and reports of it helped inspire assaults elsewhere in Castile and the Crown of Aragon.
Benjamin Gampel's comprehensive study states that comparable attacks were not recorded in Portugal or Navarre.
The archdeacon nobody places at the scene
Contemporary royal officials blamed the long anti-Jewish agitation of Ferrán Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, though no contemporary account puts him physically at the riot. Royal letters had complained about his threats more than a decade earlier.
Royal and ecclesiastical authority in the city had weakened after the deaths of King Juan I and Seville's archbishop, and Enrique III was eleven years old and governed through a regency.
Alvar Pérez de Guzmán and Juan Alonso de Guzmán had suppressed an earlier Seville riot that year, on Ash Wednesday; the precise spark for the June assault is not securely known.
Sources
- Ferrán Martínez's Speech at the Tribunal del Alcázar in Seville, 19 February 1388 — introduction and translated source
- Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392 — Cambridge excerpt
- Accounts of the Anti-Jewish Riot in Valencia, July 1391
- Ferrand Martínez — Encyclopaedia Judaica entry
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date disputed
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.
What the sources leave uncertain
- Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, writing in October 1391, dated the attack to 1 Tammuz 5151, corresponding to Sunday 4 June. The Cuarta crónica general, written in 1460, gives Tuesday 6 June. Modern accounts generally use 6 June but the exact date is not beyond dispute.
- The famous figure of 4,000 dead comes from the later Christian chronicle and is judged almost certainly exaggerated by the modern scholarly editor.
- No contemporary account places Ferrán Martínez personally at the scene, even though contemporary officials identified his agitation as a cause.
Checked against
- Ferrán Martínez's Speech at the Tribunal del Alcázar in Seville, 19 February 1388 — introduction and translated source
- Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392 — Cambridge excerpt
- Accounts of the Anti-Jewish Riot in Valencia, July 1391
- Was There Race Before Modernity? The Example of Jewish Blood in Late Medieval Spain
- Ferrand Martínez — Encyclopaedia Judaica entry