Granada
City in the south of Spain, seat of a Muslim kingdom until it surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella on 2 January 1492. Their edict expelling the Jews was dated there on 31 March of that year, and Isabella was buried there.
In the bull of 1478 that let them appoint inquisitors, Sixtus IV told Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile that he hoped they would also bring the kingdom of Granada, where unbelievers lived, under their rule and convert its people (Sixtus IV, Exigit sincerae devotionis, Fita, pp. 450–451). The Instructions of 1484 direct that money penances laid on the reconciled be applied to the war against the Moors of Granada (Instructions of Seville (1484), article 7 (fol. 4r–v)).
Andrés Bernáldez tells how the city came to terms in December 1491, on condition that the Moors be left in their law and their property, and how on Monday 2 January 1492 its king came out and gave the keys to Ferdinand. A cross was then raised on the highest tower of the Alhambra (Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Monarchs, ch. 102 (vol. 1, pp. 300–304)).
The edict that ordered the Jews to leave is dated in the city on 31 March 1492, and in it the king and queen count Granada among their kingdoms (Edict of Expulsion (1492), Amador de los Ríos, vol. 3, pp. 603, 607). Bernáldez says that Isabella’s body was brought to Granada and buried in the church of the Alhambra (Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Monarchs, ch. 201 (vol. 2, p. 266)). See the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews.
What happened here
- 1478 to 1492, firm dateThe Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews
In 1478 Sixtus IV lets Ferdinand and Isabella appoint inquisitors against baptised Jews said to keep Jewish rites. Burnings begin at Seville in 1481; in 1482 the pope writes of complaints against the inquisitors. In 1492 the monarchs order all Jews to leave their kingdoms.