American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

2 American Jewish Archives
Portuguese Iberia is hardly appropriate before 1512, when King Fer-
nando added cys-Pyrenean Navarre to the dyarchy of Castile and
Aragon. The edict of Ferdinand and Isabella consequently referred
only to Castile, Aragon and their possessions. The independent Iber-
ian kingdoms of Navarre and Portugal actually opened their doors to
at least some Jewish refugees.
The number of Jews in Castile and Aragon at the time of the Edict
could hardly have exceeded 100,ooo. Of these a minority of no more
than 15,000 lived in Aragon, and the rest in Castile. At the time the
Jewish population of Portugal could hardly have exceeded 30,000 and
that of Navarre half that number. The numbers of Jews in Castile and
Aragon had been greatly diminished in the previous century. The
massacres of 1391 claimed anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 Jewish
lives, while conversions beginning at that time and continuing
throughout the fifteenth century claimed several times that number.
The number of Jews who left the Peninsula in the wake of the Edict
may have exceeded 50,000, although it is possible that only a minori-
ty left. The remaining Jews converted to Christianity, as did many
who returned in the years immediately following their departure. Of
those leaving a considerable number went to Portugal, where they
were almost all converted by force or fiat in 1497.
Nevertheless, the Expulsion of 1492 remains one of the watersheds
of Jewish history. This is because of its impact upon the psyches of
the affected Jews and their descendants, and the resonance of this
experience ever since in the Jewish community at large.
The issuance of the decree of Expulsion was the centerpiece of the
three major Iberian events in that fateful year. On January 2 the
Catholic Monarchs had conquered the Kingdom of Granada, the last
independent Muslim polity in the Peninsula. And at dawn on August
3, presumably on the heels of the last refugees, Christopher Colum-
bus, a Christian of possible Iberian Jewish descent and a crew that
included Christians of unquestionable Jewish descent, set sail for the
Catholic Monarchs on their first and most momentous voyage.
Together the three events bespeak a policy of unification and expan-
sion that was to catapult the nation of Spain, once formed, into the
vanguard of the modern world.