Ferdinand and Isabella (Spain)

Isabella became Queen of Castile in December 1474, five years after her marriage to Ferdinand, who became King of Aragon in 1479. Ruling together, they united most of Spain. Jews served them as financiers and courtiers, among them Don Isaac Abravanel and Abraham Senior, but the monarchs were determined to root out the conversos suspected of practising Judaism. With a bull of Pope Sixtus IV of 1478 they founded the Spanish Inquisition, which held its first auto-da-fé in Seville in February 1481, and in 1483 Tomás de Torquemada became its inquisitor general. On 2 January 1492 they took Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, and on 31 March 1492, in the Alhambra, they signed the decree expelling all Jews from their realms by the end of July.

Abravanel pleaded with them in vain and left with the exiles, while Senior was baptized. Tens of thousands of Jews left for Portugal, North Africa, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, and many others converted. Pope Alexander VI gave them the title "Catholic Monarchs" in 1496. Isabella died in 1504, Ferdinand in 1516; they lie in the Royal Chapel of Granada.