Editing Alhambra Decree (section)

===European context===
{{Main|History of the Jews in Europe}}
[[File:Expulsion judios-en.svg|thumb|right|250px|Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600]]

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, European countries expelled the Jews from their territories on at least fifteen occasions. Before the Spanish expulsion, the Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, several times from France between 1182 and 1354, and from some German states. The French case is typical of most expulsions: whether the expulsion was local or national, the Jews usually were allowed to return after a few years.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe|last=Stow|first=Kenneth|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1992|isbn=978-0674015937|location=Massachusetts|pages=181–308}}</ref> The Spanish expulsion was succeeded by at least five expulsions from other European countries,<ref name="isbn0-7065-1327-4">{{cite book|title=Anti-Semitism: Israel Pocket Library|publisher=Keter Books|year=1974|isbn=9780706513271|volume=12|location=Jerusalem, IS}}</ref><ref name="Teacher's">{{cite web |title=Map of Jewish expulsions and resettlement areas in Europe |url=https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/expuls.htm |work=A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust  |publisher=Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida |access-date=9 September 2016}}</ref> but the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was both the largest of its kind and, officially, the longest lasting in western European history.

Over the four-hundred-year period during which most of these decrees were implemented, the causes of expulsion gradually changed. At first, expulsions of Jews (or absence of expulsions) were exercises of royal prerogatives. Jewish communities in medieval Europe often were protected by and associated with monarchs because, under the feudal system, Jews often were a monarch's only reliable source of taxes.<ref name=":3" /> Jews further had reputations as moneylenders because they were the only social group allowed to loan money at a profit under the prevailing interpretation of the [[Vulgate]] (the Latin translation of the Bible used in Roman Catholic western Europe as the official text), which forbade Christians to charge interest on loans.<ref name=":3" /> Jews, therefore, became the lenders to and creditors of merchants, aristocrats, and even monarchs. Most expulsions before the Alhambra Decree were related to this financial situation: to raise additional monies, a monarch would tax the Jewish community heavily, forcing Jews to call in loans; the monarch then would expel the Jews; at the time of expulsion, the monarch would seize their remaining valuable assets, including debts owed them by other subjects of the monarch and, in some instances, by the monarch himself.<ref name=":3" /> Expulsion of the Jews from Spain was thus an innovation not only in scale but also in its motivations.