Steven Nadler

But something happened around his twentythird year – whether it was sudden or gradual, we do not know – that led to the harshest excommunication ever proclaimed by the leaders of the Amsterdam Sephardim.

We have only the cherem document, full of oaths and maledictions, that was composed by the community’s governors.

But after his excommunication from the Talmud Torah congregation and his voluntary exile from the city of his birth, Spinoza no longer identified himself as a Jew.

He preferred to see himself as just another citizen of the Dutch Republic – and perhaps, as well, of the transnational Republic of Letters.

On March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella signed an expulsion order covering all the territories under the crowns of Castile and Aragon, “to prevent Jews from influencing conversos and to purify the Christian faith.”

Within months there were, officially, no more Jews in Spain.

The majority of the exiles (about 120, 000) went to Portugal. Others left for North Africa, Italy, and Turkey.

The Jews who remained behind in Spain converted to Christianity, as the law required.

On December 5, 1496, Manuel, the ruler of Portugal, issued a royal decree banishing Jews and Moslems from his realm.

Thus, to make sure that the financiers and traders remained a part of his economy, he decided that forced conversion was to be the only option offered the Jews. On March 4, 1497, he ordered all Jewish children to be presented for baptism.

In 1547, a “free and unimpeded Inquisition” was fully established in Portugal by papal order.