Photos: 14th-Century Synagogue That Survived Spanish Inquisition Uncovered Near Seville
© AP Photo / Santi Donaire
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Over the years the small brick building in Utrera had served as a hospital, a church, an orphanage, and a bar. Now, archaeologists believe it was something else before all of that: a synagogue.
The building is believed to date to the 14th century, built a little over 100 years before the Spanish monarchy, having seized all the Muslim lands in Iberia in the Reconquista, would expel all Muslims and Jews from the kingdom.
During the centuries of Muslim rule in Spain, an era of economic and cultural prosperity was accompanied by a rare religious pluralism as Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities existed side-by-side and engaged with each others’ beliefs in creative ways.
The Spanish Jews, known today by the Hebrew name for Spaniards - Sephardi - would be scattered to the Mediterranean winds after the Christian kingdoms of Aragon and Castile drove the Muslim armies from the Iberian peninsula in 1492 - the same year Christopher Columbus made first contact with the Americas while in the united crown’s employ.
Si algo bueno está trayendo el turismo es que los políticos están apostando por redescubrir el patrimonio olvidado de sus ciudades. Lo de Utrera y el descubrimiento de una de las mayores sinagogas medievales de España podría integrar a la localidad en la red de juderías. pic.twitter.com/CDsnZ5dKPv
— Jujo🌿 (@Jujonomi87) February 7, 2023
With Spain’s Jewish community either exiled or sent underground to practice their faith in secret as so-called “crypto-Jews,” their cultural institutions were taken over and repurposed and the memory of their original use was largely erased. To ensure the Jewish memory was erased, the crown sent the Inquisition to hound out the crypto-Jews, targeting any converso who clung to their old faith.
"Now we're certain, scientifically speaking, that this is a medieval synagogue,” said Utrera Mayor Jose Maria Villalobus at a press conference announcing the discovery. He called the find “extraordinary.”
“Until now, there were only four such buildings in all of Spain – two in Toledo, one in Segovia and one in Córdoba,” the mayor said. “This is an exceptional building that’s been part of Utrera and part of its inhabitants’ lives for 700 years. This building was born in the 1300s and has made it all the way to the 21st century.”
“Apart from the heritage value – this is a building with an important history that was once a synagogue – the thing that makes me happiest is knowing that we can get back a very, very important part of not just Utrera’s history, but also the history of the Iberian peninsula,” he said. “The story of the Sephardic Jews was practically erased or hidden for a long time.”
"The important components of a synagogue, like the entrance hall and the remains of the benches, confirm that it's a prayer site," archeologist Miguel Angel De Dios told reporters, explaining that his crew had studied the building’s walls and floors for several years.
The archeologists knew to study the site after finding a reference to a repurposed synagogue in a 1604 document written by a local priest and historian.
“In that place, there were only foreign and Jewish people … who had their synagogue where the Hospital de la Misericordia now stands,” the text said.
The historians now hope to find Jewish artifacts in the area, such as a menorah or evidence of a bimah, the raised platform from which the Torah is read. They will also look around the synagogue to see if they can find evidence of other Jewish structures associated with it, such as a rabbinical school or a mikveh ritual washing bath.
In recent years, Spain has undertaken efforts to uncover that history and right some of the wrongs, including allowing descendants of the Sephardi Jews expelled in 1492 to gain Spanish citizenship. Most Sephardi Jews today live in Israel, having relocated there in the years after Israel was established from the Muslim-majority countries where they had lived for centuries. More than 130,000 people applied for Spanish citizenship before the program ended in 2019.
