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JewishHistoryעברית

Massacre of the Jews of Barcelona

Date
5 August 1391 – 10 August 1391
Location
BarcelonaSpain
Then part of
Crown of Aragon
Perpetrators
  • Christian urban mob (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
250 – 400[2]Jews killed. Hasdai Crescas wrote that about 250 were killed. The Jewish Encyclopedia reports about 100 killed in the first assault and about 300 killed when the Castell Nou was stormed.
Locality

6.3% – 44% of the Jewish population of Barcelona[3]

Country

0.42% – 1.5% of the Jewish population of Crown of Aragon (c. 1391)[13]

Worldwide

0.021% – 0.04% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1300)[15]

Category
Massacre, Pogrom, Forced conversion
Confidence
DisputedCrescas gives about 250 killed. The Jewish Encyclopedia, drawing on other accounts, reports about 100 killed in the first assault and about 300 when the fortress was taken.

Summary

On Saturday, 5 August 1391, three days after the massacre at Palma in Majorca, Castilian sailors and a local mob attacked Barcelona's Jewish quarter. In the first assault about a hundred Jews were killed and the rest fled to the Castell Nou. After the mob freed imprisoned Castilians and stormed the fortress, the Jewish Encyclopedia reports that about 300 Jews who remained there were killed; many others killed themselves or were baptized. Hasdai Crescas, whose only son died in the assault, wrote that about 250 were killed and that afterward no one in Barcelona was called by the name of Israel. King John I of Aragon later executed ringleaders.

Sources

  1. Richard Gottheil, Meyer Kayserling, Barcelona (section "The Great Massacre of 1391"). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  2. Hasdai Crescas (letter to the Jews of Avignon, 1391), Spain, 1391, Hasdai Crescas Letter. Center for Online Judaic Studies
  3. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  4. Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 1,000,000 – 1,200,000[15]c. 1300DellaPergola's Fundamentals Table 2 gives 1.2 million in 1300. Botticini and Eckstein Table 9 give about 1–1.2 million for the early fourteenth century.
  • Crown of Aragon: 27,000 – 60,000[13]c. 1391Schraer gives 30,000–60,000 Jews in the Crown of Aragon; Riera, cited there, records 27,000 across 76 aljamas in 1391.
  • Barcelona: 900 – 4,000[3]Jews in Barcelona in the fourteenth century, at the 1391 massacre. Hinojosa Montalvo gives about 4,000 persons for the aljama of Barcelona, the largest in Catalonia, in the century of the 1391 conversions. The Jewish Encyclopedia statistics table, citing Isidore Loeb, lists 900 for 1391 and marks that figure as uncertain.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
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  31. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Appendix A: Sources and Methodology for Section 2 (Jewish and total population in Germany-Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Authors' appendix PDF (citing Weinryb, Stampfer, Kupovetsky, Guggenheim, Toch, Battenberg, Israel) (2018)
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
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  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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