"The fruits of the Christian faith are the most moral, the most just."
JD Vance
The "fruits" - meaning, what it produces.
Let me repeat: The fruits of the Christian faith, ala JD Vance, are the most moral and the most just.
Being the amateur historian that I am not, that struck me as an odd assertion.
Let's learn a little bit of history - starting with Nazi Germany and then going much further back in time:
The list of “bystanders” – those who declined to challenge the Third Reich in any way – that emerges from any study of the Holocaust is long and depressing. Few organizations, in or outside Nazi Germany, did much to resist Nazism or aid its victims. Assisting European Jews was not a high priority of the Allied governments as they sought to defeat Hitler militarily. The courageous acts of individual rescuers and resistance members proved to be the exception, not the norm.
To a great extent, this inertia defined the organized Christian community as well. Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent as Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered. In Nazi Germany in September 1935, there were a few Christians in the Protestant Confessing Church who demanded that their Church take a public stand in defence of the Jews. Their efforts, however, were overruled by Church leaders who wanted to avoid any conflict with the Nazi regime.
Three main factors shaped the behavior of the Christian Churches during the Nazi reign of terror in Germany and abroad. The first was the theological and doctrinal anti-Judaism that existed in parts of the Christian tradition. Long before 1933, this anti-Judaism – ranging from latent prejudice to the virulent diatribes of people like Martin Luther – lent legitimacy to the racial antisemitism that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
The second factor was the Churches’ historical role in creating “Christendom” – the Western European culture that, since the era of the Roman emperor Constantine, had been explicitly and deliberately “Christian.” The Churches’ advocacy of a “Christian culture” led to a process that theologian Miroslav Volf, in another context, has described as the “sacralization of cultural identity”: dominant, positive values were seen as “Christian” ones, while developments viewed negatively (such as secularism and Marxism) were attributed to “Jewish” influences. Moreover, particularly in the German Evangelical Church (the largest Protestant church in Germany), the allegiance to the concept of Christendom was linked to a strong nationalism, symbolized by German Protestantism’s “Throne and Altar” alliance with state authority.
The third factor was the Churches’ understanding of their institutional role. While most Christian religious leaders in Germany welcomed the end of the Weimar Republic and the resurgence of nationalism, they became increasingly uneasy about their institutions’ future in what was clearly becoming a totalitarian state. Moreover, some leading Nazis were overtly anti-Christian. While wanting to retain their prominent place in society, the churches in Nazi Germany opposed any state control of their affairs. Thus, the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches sought to maintain some degree of independence by entering into certain arrangements with the Nazi regime. The 1933 concordat, signed by representatives of the Nazi regime and the Vatican, ostensibly secured independence for Catholic schools and other Catholic institutions in Nazi Germany. The Protestant churches behaved cautiously, avoiding public confrontation and negotiating privately with Nazi authorities, in the hope that this would ensure institutional independence from direct Nazi control. Throughout Hitler’s Germany, bishops and other Christian religious leaders deliberately avoided antagonizing Nazi officials. When Christian clergymen and Christian women deplored Nazi policies, they often felt constrained to oppose those policies in a muted fashion. Even in the Protestant Confessing Church (the church group in Germany that was most critical of Nazism), there was little support for official public criticism of the Nazi regime, particularly when it came to such central and risky issues as the persecution of Jews.
The role of anti-Judaism in Germany’s Churches during the Nazi era was a complicated one. Throughout the 1930s, there was ample evidence of antisemitism in many sermons and in articles that appeared in German church publications. Some church leaders proudly announced that they were antisemites. Others warned their colleagues against any public show of support for the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. Christian antisemitism often complemented other factors – notably, the strong nationalism in the German Protestant churches. The most extreme example of this combination of antisemitism and nationalism was the so-called German Christian Movement, a Protestant group that embraced Nazism and tried to Nazify Christianity by suppressing the Old Testament, revising liturgics and hymns, and promoting Jesus as an Aryan hero who embodied the ideals of the new Germany.
It must be said that the churches’ theological attitudes about Jews did not always take the form of anti-Jewish diatribes or other kinds of explicit antisemitsm. Often they manifested themselves in a determination to convert Jews, and so Nazi policies confronted the Christian churches with an unresolvable theological problem: in a society that was determined to eradicate the Jews, the Christian Gospel claimed that the Jews were God’s chosen people and should be the special objects of Christian proselytization. This led to deep divisions among German clergy about what they really believed and what they were supposed to do in their new situation.
During the Nazi era, these various influences essentially paralyzed the churches and prevented them from facing the challenges posed by Nazism. The German churches stumbled, and they stumbled badly. Church leaders spent a great deal of time delineating a “viable” position: one that would conform to Christian doctrine, prevent their church from dividing into opposing factions, and avoid antagonizing the Nazi authorities. In any examination of the German churches’ public statements from this era, what is most striking is their painstaking attempt to say neither too much nor too little about what is happening around them. This ruled out any consistent or firm response to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews and others. This institutional inaction gave individual Christians throughout Germany an alibi for passivity. More tragically, those individual Christians who did express solidarity with the persecuted Jews – such as the Catholic priest Bernhard Lichtenberg and the Protestant deaconess Marga Meusel – received no public (and little private) support form their respective churches.
Energetic debates took place within the German churches about where to stand firm against Hitler’s regime and where to compromise, when to speak out and when to remain silent. Ecumenical documents show that there were Christian leaders inside and outside Germany who agonized about what they could do to stop Nazism and help its victims. The historical complexities suggested by these factors should never lead us to condone the churches’ failures during this period; they can, however, help us to understand the specific nature of those failures so that we may learn from them.
Perhaps at the heart of those failures was the fact that the churches, especially in Nazi Germany, sought to act, as institutions tend to do, in their own narrowly defined “best” interests. There was little desire on the part of the churches for self-sacrifice or heroism, and much emphasis on “pragmatic” and “strategic” measures that would supposedly protect their institutional autonomy. This public institutional circumspection, and a fatal lack of insight, are the aspects of the churches’ behavior during the Nazi era that are so damning in retrospect. The minutes of German Protestant synodal meetings in 1942 reveal how oblivious the participants were to what was happening in the world around them. While innocent victims throughout Europe were being brutally murdered, Christian leaders were debating what points of doctrine and policy were tenable. This is especially haunting, of course, because the Christian clergy and laity never thought of their respective churches as mere institutions, but as religious bodies called to witness to certain values, including love of neighbor, the sanctity of life and the power of moral conscience.
Reflection on the churches’ failure to challenge Nazism should prompt us to ponder all the others – individuals, governments and institutions – which passively acquiesced to the tyranny of the Third Reich. Even the wisest and most perceptive of them, it seems, failed to develop adequate moral and political responses to Nazi genocide and to recognize that the barbarism of Hitler’s regime demanded something new of them.
Ultimately, the churches’ lapses during the Nazi era were lapses of vision and determination. Protestant and Catholic religious leaders, loyal to creeds professing that love can withstand and conquer evil, were unable or unwilling to defy one of the great evils in human history. For this reason, the Holocaust will continue to haunt the Christian churches for a very, very long time to come.
When Pope Urban II [Popes used to lead armies - they had more free time than us married guys with families to take care of....] called for the First Crusade in 1095, he unleashed nearly two centuries of intermittent warfare justified by Christian zeal. Supposedly launched to reclaim Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control, the Crusades exemplified how religious fervor could be harnessed for political and territorial gain.
The First Crusade succeeded in capturing Jerusalem in 1099, but what followed was a massacre. Crusaders slaughtered Muslims and Jews indiscriminately—men, women, and children—until, according to contemporary accounts, knights rode through blood reaching their horses’ knees.
As the Crusader knight Fulcher of Chartres wrote: “In the Temple of Solomon, the crusaders rode in blood up to their bridles. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers.”
Later Crusades proved less “successful,” and by 1291, Muslims had recaptured all Crusader territories. The legacy included:
Deepened religious animosity between Christians and Muslims
Weakening of the Byzantine Empire
Expansion of European trade networks
Emergence of military orders like the Knights Templar
Increasing papal power and religious intolerance within Europe
The Reconquista: Spain’s religious purge (718-1492)
For nearly 800 years, Christian kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula waged a series of campaigns against Muslim-controlled territories. The Reconquista culminated in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold.
Although portrayed as a holy mission to reclaim Christian lands, the Reconquista’s religious justification masked territorial and political ambitions. Its conclusion led to:
Forced conversions of Muslims and Jews
The Spanish Inquisition’s persecution of suspected non-Christians
Expulsion of Jews and Muslims who refused conversion
Unification of Spain under Catholic monarchs
The aftermath of the Reconquista demonstrates how religious warfare often leads to religious persecution. Spanish Christians created systems to root out and punish “heretics” and those suspected of secretly practicing other faiths.
The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, formalized by the Alhambra Decree of March 31, 1492, was a royal edict issued by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile ordering all unconverted Jews to leave their kingdoms and territories by the end of July that year, unless they converted to Christianity. Motivated by a desire for religious unity following the completion of the Reconquista and amid fears that unconverted Jews were influencing conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) to revert to Judaism, the decree brought to an end more than a millennium of Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula. It also ranks among the most consequential events in Spanish and Jewish history.
In the decades before 1492, successive crises had already thinned Spain's Jewish population through violence, forced conversion, and legal discrimination. In the aftermath of the 1391 massacres, large numbers of Jews converted to Catholicism.[1] Continued attacks produced about 50,000 additional conversions by 1415.[2] Authorities suspected that some conversos continued to practice Judaism in secret; concerns over such "Judaizing" helped motivate the creation of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, which investigated cases of heresy and, in some instances, used torture and imposed penalties up to execution for the unrepentant. Growing limpieza de sangre ("purity-of-blood") statutes in the 15th century further stigmatized "New Christians" of Jewish descent.
After the fall of Granada in January 1492, the Catholic Monarchs, urged on by Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, moved from consolidating territorial unity to enforcing religious uniformity, culminating in the Alhambra Decree of March 31. Many of those who remained decided to convert to avoid expulsion. Modern estimates generally place the number expelled between 40,000 and 200,000; figures remain debated. An unknown number returned to Spain in the following years. Following the expulsions many first crossed into Portugal (1492–96) before facing forced conversion in 1497; others moved to Navarre, which expelled its Jews in 1498. The Inquisition continued to prosecute suspected crypto-Jews for centuries in Spain and across its overseas tribunals, conducting autos-da-fé well into the 18th century. The mass expulsion created a large Sephardic Jewish diaspora across the Mediterranean, in North Africa, the Italian states, and especially the Ottoman Empire (notably Istanbul, Salonika, İzmir, Sarajevo, Jerusalem and Safed). Smaller streams reached southern France, and in the 16th–17th centuries Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London attracted merchant families. Many communities preserved Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino) for centuries.
of Navarre as a consequence of the arrival of the Shepherds' Crusade across the Pyrenees in 1321. The Jewish communities of Pamplona and Estella-Lizarra were massacred. Two decades later, the impact of the Black Death of 1348 provoked assaults on the Jewish quarters (juderías) of several places, especially Barcelona and other places in the Principality of Catalonia.
In the Crown of Castile, anti-Jewish violence was closely related to the civil war during the reign of Peter of Castile. In this conflict, the side supporting Enrique de Trastámara (later King Henry II of Castile) used anti-Judaism as a propaganda weapon, and the pretender to the throne accused his stepbrother, Peter of Castile, of favoring the Jews. The first slaughter of Jews, in Toledo in 1355, was carried out by the supporters of Enrique de Trastámara when they entered the city. The same happened eleven years later when they occupied Briviesca.
In Burgos, Jews who could not pay the large tribute imposed on them in 1366 were enslaved and sold. In 1367 in Valladolid, Jews were assaulted to shouts of "Long live King Henry!" There were no deaths, but the synagogues were burned down.[24]
Slaughter of Jews in Barcelona in 1391 by Josep Segrelles, c. 1910
The great catastrophe for the Jews took place in 1391 when the communities of Castile and the Crown of Aragon were massacred. The assaults, fires, looting, and slaughter began in June, in Seville, where Ferrand Martínez , archdeacon of Écija, took advantage of the power vacuum created by the death of the archbishop of Seville. Hardening his[clarification needed] preaching against the Jews that had begun in 1378, he ordered the overthrow of synagogues and the seizure of prayer books. In January 1391, an assault on the Jewish quarter was avoided by the municipal authorities, but in June, hundreds of Jews were murdered, their houses were ransacked, and their synagogues were converted into churches. Some Jews managed to escape; others, terrified, asked to be baptized.[25][26]
From Seville, anti-Jewish violence extended throughout Andalusia, and then towards other parts of Castile. In August, it reached the crown of Aragon. Murders, looting, and fires occurred everywhere. The Jews who managed to survive either fled, many seeking refuge in the kingdoms of Navarre, Portugal and France, and in North Africa, or chose baptism to avoid death. It is difficult to be certain of the number of victims. In Barcelona some 400 Jews were murdered; in Valencia, 250; and in Lérida, 68.[27][26]
After the Massacre of 1391, anti-Jewish measures were intensified. In Castile in 1412, Jewish men had to let their beards grow, and Jews were required to wear a distinctive red badge sewn to their clothes, so they could be recognized. In the Crown of Aragon, possession of the Talmud was declared unlawful, and the number of synagogues was limited to one per Jewish community (aljama). In addition, the mendicant orders intensified their campaign of proselytism to make Jews convert to Christianity. The Dominican Vincent Ferrer of Valencia played a prominent role in this campaign, which had the support of the monarchs. In the Crown of Aragon, it was decreed that Jews were obligated to attend three sermons a year. As a result of the massacres of 1391 and the measures that followed, by 1415 more than half of the Jews of the crowns of Castile and Aragon had renounced Mosaic law and had been baptized, including many rabbis and important members of the community.[1]
Jews in the fifteenth century
Miniature of a Spanish haggadah of the 14th century
After the massacres of 1391 and the preaching that followed them, by 1415 scarcely 100,000 Jews continued to practice their religion in the crowns of Castile and Aragon. The historian Joseph Perez explains that "Spanish Judaism [would] never recover from this catastrophe." The Jewish community "came out of the crisis not only physically diminished but morally and intellectually shattered".[28]
In the Crown of Aragon, Judaism virtually disappeared in important places such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Palma – in 1424 the Barcelona Jewry was abolished because it was considered unnecessary – [29] and only the one in Zaragoza remained. In Castile, once-flourishing aljamas such as those of Seville, Toledo, and Burgos lost many of their members; in 1492, the year of the expulsion, in the Crown of Aragon only a quarter of the former number of Jews remained. The famous Jewish community of Gerona, for example, was left with only 24 families. In the Crown of Castile, there were less than 80,000. In Seville before the revolts of 1391, there were about 500 Jewish families. According to Joseph Perez, at the time of the expulsion, there were fewer than 150,000 Jews, distributed in 35 aljamas of the Crown of Aragon and 216 in the Crown of Castile. In both Crowns, it was observed that the Jews had left the great cities and lived in the small and rural areas, less exposed "to the excesses of the Christians."[30]
Jewish man celebrating havdalah, detail of 14th century miniature.
After the critical period of 1391–1415, the pressure on Jews to recuperate their confiscated synagogues and books had decreased, and they were then able to avoid certain obligations such as carrying the red ribbon or attending friars' sermons. They were also able to reconstruct the internal organization of the aljamas and their religious activities, thanks to the agreements reached by the procurators of the aljamas gathered in Valladolid in 1432 and sanctioned by the king, which meant that "the Crown of Castile accepts again officially that a minority of its subjects has another religion than the Christian one and recognizes the right of this minority to exist legally, with a legal status." "In this way, the Jewish community is rebuilt with the approval of the crown." Abraham Benveniste, who presided over the meeting of Valladolid, was appointed court rabbi with authority over all the Jews of the kingdom, and at the same time as delegate of the king over them.[31]
During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, in the last quarter of the 15th century, many Jews lived in rural villages and engaged in agricultural activities. Crafts and trade were not monopolized – international trade had passed into the hands of converts. While Jews continued to trade as money-lenders, the number of Christian lenders had increased by a large percentage. Jews also continued to collect royal, ecclesiastical, and seigniorial rents, but their importance there had also diminished – in Castile they were only in charge of a quarter of the revenues. However, in the court of Castile – but not in the crown of Aragon – Jews held important administrative and financial positions. Abraham Senior was from 1488 treasurer-major of the Holy Brotherhood, a key organ in the financing of the Granada War, and also chief rabbi of Castile. Yucé Abravanel was "A greater collector of the service and mountaineering of the herds, one of the more healthy income and greater yield of the Crown of Castile."[32] However, according to Joseph Perez, the role of the Jews in the court must not be exaggerated. "The truth was that the state could do without the Jews, both in the bureaucratic apparatus and in the management of the estate."[33]
Isabel I of Castile
The Hebrew community at the end of the 15th century was therefore far from rich and influential. "In fact, the Spanish Jews at the time of their expulsion did not form a homogeneous social group. There were classes among them as in Christian society, a small minority of very rich and well-placed men, together with a mass of small people: farmers, artisans, shopkeepers."[33] What united them was that they practiced the same faith, different from the one recognized, which made them a separate community within the monarchy and which was "property" of the crown which thereby protected them.[34] In a letter dated July 7, 1477, addressed to the authorities of Trujillo, where incidents had occurred against the Jews, Queen Isabella I of Castile, after putting the aljama under her protection and prohibiting all type of oppression or humiliation against its members, states:[35]
All the Jews of my kingdoms are mine and are under my protection, and it is for me to defend and protect them and to keep them in justice.
Thus, the Jews "formed not a State in the State, but rather a micro-society next to the majority Christian society, with an authority, the crown rabbi, that the crown delegated to it over its members." The aljamas were organized internally with a wide margin of autonomy. They designated by lottery the council of elders that governed the life of the community; collecting their own taxes for the maintenance of worship, synagogues, and rabbinical teaching; lived under the norms of Jewish law; and had their own courts that heard all cases in civil matters – since the Cortes de Madrigal [es] of 1476, criminal cases had passed to the royal courts. But Jews did not enjoy full civil rights: they had a specific tax system far more burdensome than that of Christians and were excluded from positions that could confer authority over Christians.[36]
The situation in which the Jews lived, according to Joseph Perez, posed two problems: "As subjects and vassals of the king, the Jews had no guarantee for the future – the monarch could at any time close the autonomy of the aljamas or require new Most important taxes"; and, above all, "in these late years of the Middle Ages, when a state of modern character was being developed, there could be no question of a problem of immense importance: was the existence of separate and autonomous communities compatible with the demands of a modern state? This was the real question."[37]
Conversos and the Inquisition
Judeo-Spanish dish of the 14th century
In the 15th century, the main problem stopped being the Jews becoming conversos, who, according to Henry Kamen, probably numbered around three hundred thousand people “Christian convert” was the term applied to Jews who had been baptized and their descendants. As many of them had been forcibly converted, they were often looked upon with distrust by those who considered themselves Old Christians.[38] The positions abandoned by Jews were mostly filled by converts, who congregated where Jewish communities had flourished before 1391, doing work formerly performed by Jews – trade and crafts – with the added advantage that as Christians they could now access trades and professions previously forbidden to Jews. Some even entered the clergy, becoming canons, priors[39] and even bishops.[40]
The socio-economic position of converts was viewed with suspicion by the "old" Christians, a resentment that was accentuated by the conscience on the part of those who had a differentiated identity, proud of being Christians and having Jewish ancestry, which was the lineage of Christ. Popular revolts broke out against the converts between 1449 and 1474, a period in Castile of economic difficulties and political crisis (especially during the civil war of the reign of Henry IV). The first and largest of these revolts took place in 1449 in Toledo, during which a "Judgment–Statute" was approved that prohibited access to municipal positions by "any confessor of Jewish lineage" – an antecedent of the blood-purity statutes of the following century. The origin of the revolts was economic in Andalusia especially because there was a situation of hunger, aggravated by an epidemic of plague – and in principle "not directed especially against the converts. ... It was the parties and the demagogues that took advantage of the exasperation of the people and directed it against the converts."[41]
The painting Virgen de los Reyes Católicos in which appears kneeling behind the king Ferdinand the Catholic, the inquisitor general Tomás de Torquemada and kneeling behind the queen the inquisitor of Aragon Pedro of Arbués
To justify the attacks on converts, they affirmed that conversos were false Christians and that they still practiced the Jewish religion in secret. According to Joseph Perez, it is a proven fact that, among those who converted to escape the blind furor of the masses in 1391, or by the pressure of the proselytizing campaigns of the early fifteenth century, some clandestinely returned to their old faith when it seemed that the danger had passed, of which it is said that they "Judaized". The accusation of Crypto-Judaism became more plausible when some cases arose of prominent converts who continued to observe Jewish rites after their conversion. But Judaizers, according to Joseph Perez, were a minority, although relatively important. Henry Kamen says that "it can be affirmed that at the end of the 1470s, there was no Judaizing movement highlighted or proven among the converts." He also points out that when a convert was accused of Judaizing, in many cases the "proofs" that were brought were, in fact, cultural elements of his Jewish ancestry – such as treating Saturday, not Sunday, as the day of rest – or the lack of knowledge of the new faith, such as not knowing the creed or eating meat during Lent.[42]
This is how the "converso problem" was born. The baptized cannot renounce their faith according to the canonical doctrine of the Church, which considers Crypto-Judaism to be heresy that must be punished. This is how various voices began to claim, including those of some converts who do not want to question the sincerity of their baptism because of those "false" Christians who are beginning to be called Marranos. And it also bolstered the idea that the presence of the Jews among the Christians is what invites the converts to continue practicing the Law of Moses.[43]
When Isabel I of Castile ascended to the throne in 1474, she was already married to the heir to the Crown of Aragon, the future Ferdinand II of Aragon. At this time, there was no punishment for practicing crypto-Judaism, not out of tolerance for Jews, but for legalistic reasons.[a] They decided to confront the "converso problem," especially after having received some alarming reports in 1475 by the Prior of the Dominicans of Seville, Friar Alonso de Ojeda,[b] who reported that there were a large number of conversos in that city secretly practicing their religion in private, some even doing so openly. After receiving these reports, the monarchs applied to Pope Sixtus IV for authorization to name a number of inquisitors in their kingdom, which the pontiff agreed to in his bull Exigit sincerae devotionis of 1 November 1478.[45] "With the creation of the Tribunal of the Inquisition,[c] the authorities will have sufficient instruments and methods of investigation at their disposal."[46] According to Joseph Pérez, Ferdinand and Isabella "were convinced that the Inquisition would force the conversos to assimilate into society once and for all: the day when all of the new Christians would renounce Judaism, and nothing would distinguish them anymore from any other member of society."[44]
Expulsion
Segregation of the Jews (1480)
Isabel I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon.
From the beginning of their reign, Isabel and Ferdinand were concerned with protecting Jews – since they were "property" of the crown. For example, on September 6, 1477, in a letter addressed to the Jewish community of Seville, Queen Isabel I gave assurances about their safety:[47]
I take under my protection the Jews of the aljamas in general and each one in particular, as well as their persons and their property; I protect them against any attack, whatever their nature ...; I forbid that they be attacked, killed or injured; I also forbid that they adopt a passive attitude if they are attacked, killed or injured.
Hence, even the Catholic Monarchs were reputed to be favorable to the Jews until 1492. This is what the German traveler, Nicolas de Popielovo said, for example, after his visit in 1484–1485:[48]
Her subjects from Catalonia and Aragon speak publicly, and I have heard the same thing from many in Spain that the Queen is the protector of the Jews and the daughter of a Jewess.
But the monarchs could not do away with all the vexations and discrimination suffered by the Jews, encouraged on many occasions by the preaching of the friars from the mendicant orders. They decided to segregate the Jews to end the conflict. Already in the Cortes of Madrigal of 1476, the monarchs had protested the breach of the provisions in the Order of 1412 on the Jews – prohibition to wear luxury dresses; obligation to wear a red slice on the right shoulder; prohibition to hold positions with authority over Christians, to have Christian servants, to lend money at usurious interest, etc. But in the Cortes de Toledo of 1480, they decided to go much further to fulfill these norms: to force the Jews to live in separate quarters, where they could not leave except during daytime to carry out their professional occupations. Until then, the Jewish quarters – where the Jews used to live and where they had their synagogues, butchers, etc. – had not formed a separate world in the cities. There were also Christians living in them and Jews living outside them. From 1480 onwards, the Jewish quarters were converted into ghettos surrounded by walls, and the Jews were confined in them to avoid confusion and damage to Christianity. A term of two years was established for the process, but it lasted for more than ten years and was not exempt from problems and abuses by Christians.[49]
Descent to the Gate of San Andrés, in the judería of Segovia
The text approved by the Cortes, which also applied to the Muslims of the region, read as follows:[50]
We send to the aljamas of the said Jews and Moors: that each of them be put in said separation [by] such procedure and such order that within the said term of the said two years they [shall] have the said houses of their separation, and live and die in them, and henceforth not have their dwellings among the Christians or elsewhere outside the designated areas and places that have been assigned to the said Jewish and Moorish quarters.
The decision of the kings approved by the Courts of Toledo had antecedents, since Jews already had been confined in some Castilian localities like Cáceres or Soria. In this last locality it had been carried out with the monarchs' approval "to avoid the harms that followed from the Jews living, dwelling, and being present among the Christians."[51] Fray Hernando de Talavera, the queen's confessor and who had opposed the use of force to solve the "converso problem," also justified the segregation "by avoiding many sins that follow from the mixture and a great deal of familiarity [between Christians and Jews] and from not keeping everything that, encompassing their conversation with Christians, by holy canons and civil laws is ordered and commanded."[52]
With the decision to detain Jews in ghettos, it was not only a question of separating them from Christians and of protecting them, but also of imposing a series of obstacles to their activities, so that they would have no choice but "to give up their status as Jews if they want to lead a normal existence. Their conversion is not demanded – not yet – nor is their autonomous statute touched, but it continues with them in such a way that they end up convincing themselves that the only solution is conversion."[53]
The expulsion of the Jews from Andalusia (1483)
Interior of the Córdoba Synagogue.
The first inquisitors appointed by the kings arrived in Seville in November 1480, "immediately sowing terror." During the first years, in this city alone, they pronounced 700 death sentences and more than 5,000 "reconciliations" – that is, prison sentences, exile or simple penances – accompanied by confiscation of their property and disqualification for public office and ecclesiastical benefits.[54]
Over the course of their inquiries, the inquisitors discovered that for a long time many converts had been meeting with their Jewish relatives to celebrate Jewish holidays and even attend synagogues.[55] This convinced them that they would not be able to put an end to crypto-Judaism if converts continued to maintain contact with the Jews, so they asked the monarchs for the Jews to be expelled from Andalusia. This request was approved and in 1483, the monarchs gave six months for the Jews of the dioceses of Seville, Cordoba, and Cadiz to go to Extremadura. There are doubts as to whether the order was strictly enforced, since at the time of the final expulsion in 1492 some chroniclers speak of the fact that 8,000 families of Andalusia embarked in Cadiz and others in Cartagena and the ports of the Crown of Aragon. On the other hand, the expulsion of the Jews of Saragossa and Teruel was also proposed, but in the end, it was not carried out.[56]
According to Julio Valdeón, the decision to expel the Jews from Andalusia also obeyed "the desire to move them away from the border between the crown of Castile and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, the scene, during the 1480s and the first years of the 1490s, of the war that ended with the disappearance of the last stronghold of peninsular Islam."[57]
On March 31, 1492, shortly after the end of the Granada War, the Catholic Monarchs signed the decree of expulsion of the Jews in Granada, which was sent to all the cities, towns and lordships of their kingdoms with strict orders to not read it or make it public until May 1.[58] It is possible that some prominent Jews tried to nullify or soften it but did not have any success. Among these Jews, Isaac Abravanel stands out, who offered King Ferdinand a considerable sum of money. According to a well-known legend, when Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada discovered this, he presented himself before the king and threw a crucifix at his feet, saying: "Judas sold our Lord for thirty pieces of silver; His Majesty is about to sell it again for thirty thousand." According to the Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu, quoted by Julio Valdeón, when Abravanel met with Queen Isabella, she said to him: "'Do you think this comes from me? The Lord has put that thought into the heart of the King?"[59]
A few months before, an auto da fe[clarification needed] was held in Avila in which three converts and two Jews condemned by the Inquisition were burnt alive for an alleged ritual crime against a Christian child (who will be known as the [Child of the Guard]) contributed to create the propitious environment for the expulsion.[60]
Tomas de Torquemada, first inquisitor general.
The Catholic Monarchs had precisely entrusted to the inquisitor general Tomás de Torquemada and its collaborators the writing of the decree fixing to them, according to the historian Luis Suarez, three previous conditions which would be reflected in the document: to justify the expulsion by charging Jews with two sufficiently serious offenses – usury and "heretical practice"; That there should be sufficient time for Jews to choose between baptism or exile; And that those who remained faithful to the Mosaic law could dispose of their movable and immovable property, although with the provisos established by the laws: they could not take either gold, silver, or horses. Torquemada presented the draft decree to the monarchs on March 20, 1492, and the monarchs signed and published it in Granada on March 31. According to Joseph Pérez, that the monarchs commissioned the drafting of the decree to Torquemada "demonstrates the leading role of the Inquisition in that matter."[61]
Of the decree promulgated in Granada on March 31, which was based on the draft decree of Torquemada – drawn up "with the will and consent of their highnesses" and which is dated March 20 in Santa Fe – there are two versions: One signed by the two monarchs and valid for the Crown of Castile and another signed only by King Ferdinand and valid for the Crown of Aragon. Between the draft decree of Torquemada and the two final versions, there exist, according to Joseph Pérez, "significant variants." In contrast to the Torquemada project and the Castilian decree, in the version addressed to the Crown of Aragon:
The advocacy of the Inquisition is recognized – "Persuading us, the venerable father prior of Santa Cruz [Torquemada], inquisitor general of the said heretical iniquity...";
Usury is mentioned as one of the two crimes of which the Jews are accused: "We find the said Jews, by means of great and unbearable usury, to devour and absorb the properties and substances of Christians";
The official position is reaffirmed that only the Crown can decide the fate of the Jews since they are the possession of the monarchs – "they are ours," it is said;
And it contains more insulting expressions against the Jews: they are accused of making fun of the laws of Christians and of considering them idolatrous; it mentions the abominable circumstances and of Jewish perfidy; labels Judaism as "leprosy"; and it recalls that the Jews "by their own fault are subject to perpetual servitude, to be slaves and captives."[62]
Regarding the essentials, the two versions have the same structure and expose the same ideas. The first part describes the reasons why the monarchs – or the king in the case of the Aragonese version – decided to expel the Jews. The second part details how the expulsion would take place.[63]
The conditions of expulsion
The second part of the decree detailed the conditions for expulsion:[64]
The expulsion of the Jews was final: "We agree to send out all male and female Jews from our kingdoms and [order] that none of them ever come back or return to them."
There was no exception, neither for age, residence, nor place of birth – it included both those born in the crowns of Castile and Aragon and those from elsewhere.
There was a period of four months, which would be extended ten more days, until August 10, to leave the monarchs' domains. Those who did not do so within that period, or who returned, would be punished with the death penalty and the confiscation of their property. Likewise, those who aided or concealed the Jews were liable to lose "all their goods, vassals, and fortresses, and other inheritances."
Within the set period of four months the Jews could sell their real estate and take the proceeds of the sale in the form of bills of exchange – not in coinage or gold and silver because their export was prohibited by law – or merchandise, as long as they were not arms or horses, whose export was also prohibited.
Although the edict did not refer to a possible conversion, this alternative was implicit. As the historian Luis Suárez pointed out, the Jews had "four months to take the most terrible decision of their lives: to abandon their faith to be integrated in it [in the kingdom, in the political and civil community], or leave the territory in order to preserve it."[65]
The drama that the Jews lived is documented by a contemporary source:[66]
Some Jews, when the term was running out, went about by night and day in despair. Many turned from the road ... and received the faith of Christ. Many others, in order not to deprive themselves of the country where they were born and not to sell their goods at that time at lower prices, were baptized.
Isaac Abravanel.
The most outstanding Jews, with few exceptions such as that of Isaac Abravanel, decided to convert to Christianity. The most relevant case was that of Abraham Senior, the chief rabbi of Castile and one of the closest collaborators of the monarchs. He and all his relatives were baptized on June 15, 1492, in the Guadalupe monastery, with the monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand as their godparents. He took the name of Fernán Núñez Coronel, while his son-in-law Mayr Melamed took the name Fernán Pérez Coronel – in both cases, the same Christian name as the king. This case, like that of Abraham de Córdoba, was given much publicity, to serve as an example for the rest of their community. In fact, during the four-month tacit term that was given for the conversion, many Jews were baptized, especially the rich and the most educated, and among them the vast majority of the rabbis.[67]
A chronicler of the time relates the intense propaganda campaign that unfolded:[66]
The Jews who decided not to convert "had to prepare themselves for the departure in tremendous conditions." They had to sell their goods because they had very little time and had to accept the sometimes ridiculous amounts offered to them in the form of goods that could be carried away, since the export of gold and silver from the kingdom was prohibited. The possibility of taking bills of exchange was not much help because the bankers, Italians for the most part, demanded enormous interest. A chronicler of the time attests:[68]
They sold and bargained away everything they could of their estates ... and in everything there were sinister ventures, and the Christians got their estates, very many and very rich houses and inheritances, for few monies; and they went about begging with them, and found not one to buy them, and gave a house for an ass and a vine for a little cloth or linen because they could not bring forth gold or silver.
They also had serious difficulties in recovering money lent to Christians because either the repayment term was after August 10, the deadline for their departure, or many of the debtors claimed "usury fraud," knowing that the Jews would not have time for the courts to rule in their favor.[69] In a letter to the monarchs, the Ampudia Jews complained that, "The mayors of the said village were committing and have committed many wrongdoings and affronts that were specifically not consented to, no less do they want to pay their personal property and real estate that they have, nor pay the debts owed to them and that which they owe urge them to do and then pay them even if the deadlines are not reached."[70]
Luis de Santángel, a Valencian convert who collaborated with Isaac Abarbanel in the organization of the journey of the expelled Jews.
In addition, they had to pay all the expenses of the trip – transport, maintenance, freight of the ships, tolls, etc. This was organized by Isaac Abravanel, who contracted the ships (having to pay very high prices), and whose owners in some cases did not fulfill the contract or killed the travelers to steal what little they had. Abravanel counted on the collaboration of the royal official and convert Luis de Santángel and of the Genovese banker Francisco Pinelo.[71]
The monarchs had to give orders to protect Jews during the trip because they suffered vexations and abuse. This is how Andrés Bernaldez, pastor of Los Palacios, describes the time when the Jews had to "abandon the lands of their birth":[71]
All the young men and daughters who were twelve years old were married to each other, for all the females of this age above were in the shadow and company of husbands... They came out of the lands of their birth, big and small children, old and young, on foot and men on asses and other beasts, and on wagons, and continued their journeys each to the ports where they were to go; and went by the roads and fields where they went with many works and fortunes; some falling, others rising, others dying, others being born, others becoming sick, that there was no Christian that did not feel their pain, and always invited them to baptism, and some, with grief, converted and remained, but very few, and the rabbis worked them up and made the women and young men sing and play tambourines.
European wars of religion: Christians against Christians (16th-17th centuries)
Following the Protestant Reformation, Europe erupted in a series of devastating conflicts between Catholics and various Protestant denominations.
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
Beginning as a conflict between Protestant and Catholic states within the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years’ War evolved into Europe’s most destructive religious conflict. The war was triggered by the famous “Defenestration of Prague” in 1618 when Protestant nobles threw Catholic officials out of a window in Prague Castle.
The Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II played a decisive role in starting the conflict. A fervent Catholic educated by Jesuits, Ferdinand once declared he would “rather rule over a desert than a land of heretics.” As King of Bohemia, he had revoked religious freedoms guaranteed by the Letter of Majesty and closed Protestant churches in Prague, directly provoking the Protestant rebellion.
Throughout the war, Ferdinand’s uncompromising religious policies—including the 1629 Edict of Restitution demanding Protestants return all church properties acquired since 1552—escalated tensions and expanded the conflict. What began as a religious dispute in Bohemia became a devastating continental war. An estimated eight million people died from combat, famine, and disease. In some regions, up to 60% of the population perished.
The Peace of Westphalia ending the war established the principle that rulers could determine their territories’ religion, essentially acknowledging that religious unity in Europe was impossible.
French wars of religion (1562-1598)
For 36 years, France suffered through eight civil wars between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots. The conflict was catalysed by the growth of Calvinism in France during the 1550s, which alarmed the Catholic establishment. The spark that ignited open warfare came in March 1562, when the Duke of Guise and his armed retinue massacred a congregation of Huguenots worshipping in a barn at Wassy (Vassy). This act of violence transformed simmering tensions into armed conflict.
The wars were marked by shifting alliances among powerful noble families—particularly the Catholic Guise family and the Protestant Bourbons—who used religious division to advance their political ambitions. The conflict reached its nadir with the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which began in Paris on 24 August 1572. Following the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre (future King Henry IV) to Margaret of Valois, Catholic mobs began systematically murdering Protestants throughout the city.
The violence was instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the queen mother, with the approval of her son King Charles IX. Catherine had grown alarmed at the influence of Protestant leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny over the young king. What began as a targeted assassination of Huguenot leaders spiralled into mass violence that spread from Paris to other French cities. Estimates of the death toll range from 5,000 to 30,000 Protestants killed over several weeks.
King Henry IV, himself a Protestant who converted to Catholicism to secure the throne, finally ended the conflicts by issuing the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting Protestants limited religious freedoms—though these would later be revoked by Louis XIV in 1685.
English Civil War (1642-1651)
While often portrayed primarily as a constitutional struggle between Parliament and the Crown, the English Civil War was deeply influenced by religious tensions. King Charles I’s perceived Catholic sympathies—including his marriage to Catholic Henrietta Maria of France and attempts to impose high-church Anglican practices—alarmed the more Puritan-leaning Parliament and common people. Many Puritans viewed the elaborate rituals promoted by Archbishop William Laud as dangerously close to Catholicism, which they considered idolatrous.
The conflict pitted Parliamentarians (or “Roundheads”), who were predominantly Puritan in religious outlook, against Royalists (or “Cavaliers”), who supported the king and the Anglican church hierarchy. Oliver Cromwell emerged as the Parliament’s most effective military leader, forming his “New Model Army” that was infused with Puritan zeal. Cromwell and many of his soldiers viewed themselves as God’s instruments, fighting against ungodly forces—a belief that strengthened their resolve in battle.
Following Parliament’s victory and Charles I’s execution in 1649, Cromwell’s subsequent rule as Lord Protector saw religious reforms in England but brutal religious persecution elsewhere. His campaign in Ireland (1649-1650) was particularly savage, justified by both political rebellion and religious differences. The massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, where Catholic civilians and priests were slaughtered alongside combatants, were defended by Cromwell as “a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches.” These atrocities cemented centuries of religious-tinged animosity between Ireland and England.
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 did not end England’s religious tensions. The Test Acts and various religious settlement laws continued to discriminate against both Catholics and Protestant dissenters until the 19th century. The religious dimensions of the English Civil War had lasting consequences for British politics, constitutional development, and imperial policies.
The Northern Crusades: Forced conversion (12th-13th centuries)
While the better-known Crusades targeted the Holy Land, the Northern Crusades focused on forcibly converting pagan peoples around the Baltic Sea. These campaigns were launched in 1147 when Pope Eugene III extended the crusading concept to the northern frontier of Christendom, authorising campaigns against the pagan Wends (Slavic peoples living east of the Elbe River).
The catalyst for this expansion of crusading was the failure of the Second Crusade in the Holy Land, which prompted European leaders to seek more achievable victories against pagans closer to home. Bernard of Clairvaux, the influential Cistercian abbot who had preached the Second Crusade, declared: “We utterly forbid that for any reason whatsoever a truce should be made with these peoples, either for the sake of money or for the sake of tribute, until such a time as, by God’s help, they shall be either converted or wiped out.”
Multiple groups participated in these northern holy wars:
Danish and Swedish kings launched campaigns against Finns, Estonians, and other Baltic peoples
German princes from Saxony and Holstein attacked the Wends and other Slavic peoples
The Livonian Brothers of the Sword, a military order founded in 1202, conquered parts of modern Latvia and Estonia
The Teutonic Knights, originally formed during the Crusades to the Holy Land, became the dominant force in the region after 1226 when they began conquering Prussia
Polish dukes collaborated with the Teutonic Knights against the pagan Prussians before later coming into conflict with the Knights themselves
The methods employed were brutally effective. The Teutonic Knights systematically conquered territory, built castles, brought in German settlers, and forced conversion of local populations. Those who resisted were often killed or enslaved. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes campaigns where villages were burned, men killed, and women and children taken captive, all in the name of spreading Christianity.
These campaigns directly contradicted Christ’s approach to spreading his message through peaceful persuasion. The Northern Crusades resulted in:
Mass killings and forced baptisms
Destruction of indigenous cultural and religious traditions
German colonisation of Baltic territories
Establishment of new Christian states in northeastern Europe
Creation of a frontier society dominated by military orders and colonial settlers
By the end of the 13th century, paganism had been largely eliminated from the Baltic region through these violent campaigns, completing the Christianisation of Europe.
The Albigensian Crusade: Christians killing Christians (1209-1229)
Colonial Conquests: The Cross and the Sword
European colonisation often intertwined Christianity with imperial conquest. Spanish conquistadors in the Americas, Portuguese explorers in Africa and Asia, and later colonial powers frequently justified their conquests as spreading Christianity.
In the Americas, Indigenous populations were decimated by disease, warfare, and forced labour, all while colonisers claimed to be saving souls. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar who witnessed these atrocities, wrote: “What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offences ever committed against God and mankind.”
Modern Religious Conflicts
Even in recent times, Christianity has been invoked to justify violence:
In Northern Ireland, the Troubles (1968-1998) pitted Protestants against Catholics in a conflict that claimed over 3,500 lives
In Bosnia, some Christian Serbs committed atrocities against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s, justifying ethnic cleansing with religious rhetoric
In Central Africa, the Lord’s Resistance Army claimed Christian inspiration while committing horrific human rights abuses
The early Christian church was largely pacifist for its first three centuries. Only after Christianity became Rome’s state religion did theologians like Augustine develop “just war” theories that allowed Christians to fight under certain circumstances.
Lessons from blood-stained history
The history of wars fought in Christianity’s name serves as a sobering reminder of religion’s potential for both inspiration and corruption. These conflicts demonstrate how readily foundational teachings of peace can be set aside when political power, territorial ambition, and human fear of difference come into play.
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Conclusion: Christians have probably tortured and killed more people in the name of their religion than any other religion on the planet.
But besides that, it being a form of idolatry and its many other vices - it's not all that bad.
