Ferrand Martínez

Ferrand (or Ferrán) Martinez (fl. 14th century) was an elite Spanish cleric at the Cathedral of Seville and archdeacon of Écija most noted for being an antisemitic agitator whom historians cite as the prime mover behind the series of massacres of the Spanish Jews in 1391, beginning in the city of Seville. 

Early life

Little is known of Martínez's early life.  Before taking up the position at Écija, he was the confessor of the queen mother of Aragón.

Role in the struggle for power

Martínez was made an alcalde (royal judge) in 1376.

In 1378 he began preaching sermons against the Jews. Although Enriques II's heir Juan I commanded him to cease his rabble-rousing, he ignored the royal order, as well as commands from the primate of Spain, Archbishop Barroso of Toledo. For more than a decade Martínez continued his verbal assaults, telling Catholics to "expel the Jews...and to demolish their synagogues."

The aljama's 1388 lawsuit against the archdeacon

His preaching alarmed Seville’s Jewish community, known as the aljama.

The Massacre of 1391

Main article: Massacre of 1391

A tipping point occurred when both Juan I and Barroso died in 1390, leaving his 11-year-old son Henry III to rule under the regency of his mother. Martínez continued his campaign against the Jews of Seville, calling on clergy and people to destroy synagogues and seize Jewish holy books and other items. These events led to a further royal order deposing Martínez from his office and ordering damaged synagogues be repaired at Church expense. Declaring that neither the state nor the local church authorities had power over him, he ignored the commands.

Imprisonment and death

Martínez was imprisoned again by royal order in 1395, and although he was quickly released, he died soon after, leaving his fortune to a hospital he had founded at San María, Seville.

Further reading

• Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Translated by Louis Schoffman. Vols. 1-2. The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1992-93.
• Cáceres, Fernando Castillo. "Ferrán Martínez". Real Academia de la Historia (in Spanish).
• Gampel, Benjamin. Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392. Cambridge UP, 2016
• Lea, Henry Charles (1896). "Ferrand Martinez and the Massacres of 1391". The American Historical Review. 1 (2): 209–219. doi:10.2307/1833647. ISSN 0002-8762.
• MacKay, Angus (2003). "Martínez, Fernando (also Fernán, Ferrant)". In Gerli, E. Michael (ed.). Medieval Iberia : an encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93918-6.
• Miguel-Prendes, Sol; Sofier Irish, Maya; Wacks, David A. (eds.). "Ferrán Martínez's speech at the Tribunal del Alcázar in Seville, 19 February, 1388 (English version)". Knowledge Commons. Retrieved September 8, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/a5e1-cj38
• Mitre Fernández, Emilio. Los judíos de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique III: El pogrom de 1391. U de Valladolid, 1994.
• Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society, 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
• Pérez, Joseph. History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Translated from Spanish by Lysa Hochroth. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-252-03141-0
• Poliakov, Léon. The History of Anti-Semitism: From Mohammed to the Marranos (orig. 1961; tr. 1973; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0-8122-1864-7, ISBN 0-8122-3767-6
• Nirenberg, David. Anti-Judaism: the Western Tradition. W.W. Norton, 2014.
• Soifer Irish, Maya. “Toward 1391: The Anti-Jewish Preaching of Ferrán Martínez in Seville.” The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism: Continuities and Discontinuities from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, Routledge, 2018, pp. 306-319.
• Wolff, Philippe. ‘The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?” Past and Present, vol. 50, 1971, pp. 4-18.

External links

• Ferrán Martínez’s speech at the Tribunal del Alcázar in Seville, 19 February, 1388. Maya Soifer Irish, Rice University (2020), https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:32497/

• The Jewish Encyclopedia [1]
• Selections in English and Spanish of Ferrán Martínez’s speech at the Tribunal del Alcázar in Seville, 19 February, 1388 (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)