Massacres of 1391 in Spain

The Archdeacon of Écija, Ferrán Martínez, had been preaching against the Jews of Seville for years despite reprimands from the king and the archbishop. The death of the sovereign and the minority of his successor left him free rein.

Seville erupted in the early summer, and the violence spread across the entire peninsula within weeks: Córdoba, Toledo, Madrid, Cuenca, Burgos, Logroño, then the Crown of Aragon — Valencia, Mallorca, Barcelona, Girona, Lérida, Perpignan. The patterns repeat: the quarter stormed, the choice offered between baptism and death, the municipal authorities overwhelmed or complicit.

This is the event that transforms the Jewish history of Spain. It does not merely destroy communities: in the space of a single season it creates a large group of converts, the *conversos*, whose status would fuel a century of suspicion, the statutes of "purity of blood," the Inquisition, and ultimately expulsion. The philosopher Ḥasdaï Crescas, who lost his son in Barcelona, gave an account of it in a letter addressed to the communities of Avignon.