Expulsion of Jews from Spain

January 1483

A secondary academic account places publication on 1 January 1483 of an inquisitorial order directing Jews in the dioceses of Cádiz, Seville and Córdoba to move elsewhere in the kingdom.

The exact day is not secure. Academic summaries and Haim Beinart's history give 1 January; the Seville municipal minute of 21 January only confirms that inquisitors had already ordered Jews to leave the archbishopric of Seville and the bishopric of Cádiz.

Sources also disagree over scope — some specify those dioceses, others describe all Christian Andalusia, or say further areas were added soon afterwards.

Not 1492, and not out of Spain

The order was regional. It did not command Jews to leave all of Castile and Aragon, as the general decree of 1492 would.

What it generally meant was relocation to other Castilian territory rather than departure from the Iberian Peninsula. Accounts differ over whether those affected were given one month or six, and over where they were directed to go.

The reasoning, and how little followed

The early Inquisition pursued a policy of separating practising Jews from conversos, whom inquisitors suspected of maintaining Jewish observances. Border-security concerns during the Granada war have also been proposed.

Publication and enforcement were separate things: scholarship reports delayed, uneven implementation and evidence of Jewish residence in the affected region afterwards.

The documentary evidence does not support attributing the January initiative personally to Tomás de Torquemada — Spain's PARES authority record dates his appointment as inquisitor general of Castile to 2 August 1483.