Massacre of 1391

Massacre of 1391
Massacre of 1391
Part of Antisemitism in Europe
	Slaughter of Jews in Barcelona in 1391 (José Segrelles, c. 1910)
Location	Crown of Castile, Crown of Aragon
Date	1391
Target	Jews
Attack type	Pogrom
Motive	Antisemitism

The Massacre of 1391, also known as the pogroms of 1391, refers to a murderous wave of mass violence committed against the Jews of Spain by the Catholic populace in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, both in present-day Spain, in the year 1391. It was one of the most lethal outbreaks of violence against Jews in medieval European history. Anti-Jewish violence similar to Russian pogroms then continued throughout the "Reconquista", culminating in the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain.^[1] The first wave in 1391, however, marked the extreme of such violence.^[1]

After the massacres, Jews began to convert en masse to Roman Catholicism^[2] across the Iberian Peninsula, resulting in a substantial population^[3] of conversos known as Marranos. Catholics then began to accuse—with or without substantiation—the conversos of secretly maintaining Jewish practices,^[3] and thus undermining the newly united kingdom's nascent national identity. Non-converted Jews were ultimately forced to convert or leave by royal decree of the "Catholic Monarchs" Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and León in 1492.^[3]

^ ^a ^b Freund, Scarlett; Ruiz (1994). "Jews, Conversos, and the Inquisition in Spain, 1391–1492: The Ambiguities of History". In Perry, Marvin; Schweitzer, Frederick M. (eds.). Jewish-Christian Encounters Over the Centuries: Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue. P. Lang. pp. 169–195. ISBN 978-0-8204-2082-0.
^ Illescas Nájera, Francisco (2003). "De la convivencia al fracaso de la conversión: algunos aspectos que promovieron el racismo antijudío en la España de la Reconquista" (PDF). Revista de Humanidades: Tecnológico de Monterrey (14). Monterrey: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey: 243. ISSN 1405-4167.
^ ^a ^b ^c Ray, Jonathan Stewart (2013). After expulsion: 1492 and the making of Sephardic Jewry. New York: New York University Press. pp. 18–22. ISBN 978-0-8147-2911-3.