SEPULVEDA:
City in the bishopric of Segovia, Spain, inhabited by Jews as early as the eleventh century. Its old laws contained a paragraph (No. 71) to the effect that if a Jew had intercourse with a Christian woman, he should be condemned to be garroted and she to be burned, and that, in case the man denied his guilt, yet was convicted on the testimony of two Christians and one Jew, the sentence should be carried out. The aljama of Sepulveda, which was not large, although the taxes amounted in 1290 to 5,046 maravedis, is best known on account of a martyrdom suffered by its members. In Holy Week, 1468, the report was spread by their enemies that, on the advice of their rabbi, Solomon Picho, the Jews had tortured and crucified a Christian child. Thereupon Juan Arias Davila, Bishop of Segovia, son of the baptized Jew Diego Arias Davila, caused eighteen of the alleged ringleaders to be taken to Segovia, some of whom were condemned to the stake and others to the gallows. The excited populace, which thought the fanatical bishop had proceeded too mildly, attacked the remaining Jews and killed most of them, only a few finding refuge in flight.
- Colmenures, Historia de Segovia, ch. xxxiii. (for the year 1468);
- Zacuto, Yuḥasin, ed. Filipowski, p. 226 (gives Saturday, the 26th of Siwan = June 15, 1471, as the day of the execution);
- Rios, Hist. i. 181, iii. 166;
- Grätz, Gesch. viii. 239.
