In 1492—after a century of massacres and persecution that had already led tens of thousands of Jews to convert to Catholicism or to leave Spain—King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decreed the expulsion of all Jews who refused to accept the cross. Recently a monument of this vanished Jewish community, once Europe’s largest and most prestigious, has come to light. The Times of Israel reports:
Archaeologists in the southern Spanish town of Utrera confirmed on Tuesday they had uncovered a 14th-century synagogue hidden within a building that was later converted into a church, hospital, and most recently a bar. The archaeologist Miguel Ángel de Dios told journalists that “the first thing to confirm is the presence of the prayer room” following years of analysis of the building’s walls and floor.
“The fundamental elements of the synagogue, such as the entrance hall,” he said, “or the perimeter benches that have emerged in this survey, now confirm that we are indeed in the prayer hall.”
The only hint of the [synagogue’s] existence came from a priest and historian, Rodrigo Caro, who wrote in 1604 that a hospital now stood on a site where Jews used to pray. There are a tiny handful of medieval synagogues surviving in Spain, including in the cities of Toledo and Cordoba. The Utrera synagogue was converted into a church in the 16th century, de Dios added.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/archaeologists-uncover-rare-remains-of-14th-century-spanish-synagogue/