Massacres of 1391

For years Ferrand Martínez, archdeacon of Écija, preached against the Jews of Seville, defying the orders of the king and the archbishop to stop. After the deaths of King Juan I of Castile in 1390 and of the archbishop left the realm under a boy king and a weak regency, the mob he had stirred attacked the Jewish quarter of Seville on 4 June 1391. Hundreds or thousands were killed, the synagogues were turned into churches, and many Jews accepted baptism to save their lives. That summer the riots spread through Castile and Aragon: Córdoba, Toledo, Valencia, Majorca, Barcelona and Girona. In Barcelona the son of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas was killed, and Crescas described the destruction in a letter that survives.

Thousands died, and tens of thousands were baptized. These conversos, or "New Christians", and their descendants, often suspected of practising Judaism in secret, became the target of the Spanish Inquisition founded in 1478. The 1391 riots began the century that ended with the expulsion of 1492 and destroyed the confidence of the largest Jewish community in Europe.