711 The beginning of the Muslim conquest of Spain
1070 Rashi, Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, writes the most widely read and influential commentary on the Torah and Talmud
1095 Pope Urban II calls for a Crusade to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim rule, opening the floodgates of anti-Jewish violence over the next century
1144 The first blood libel takes place in Norwich, England
1190 Mass suicide of the Jews of York during Third Crusade, under King Richard Maimonides completes the Guide for the Perplexed
1233 Pope Gregory establishes the Inquisition, appoints Dominicans and Franciscans to judge heretics
1252 Pope Innocent IV authorizes the use of torture to detect heresy
1263 Nachmanides defends Judaism against the charges of Pablo Christiani, a former Jew, in the disputation of Barcelona
1265 Thomas Aquinas begins to write Summa Theologica
1268 King Louis IX of France decrees that all the Jews of France be arrested and their property confiscated in preparation for their eventual expulsion
c. 1270–80 The Zohar, the primary text of Jewish mysticism, composed in Gerona, Spain
1288 The first mass burning of Jews at the stake takes place in Troyes, France, following a blood libel
Pope Clement IV grants the Inquisition the right to pursue converted Jews who have returned to their former faith
1290 Edward I banishes the Jews from England; first of the mass medieval European Jewish expulsions
1306 Jews are expelled from France; they are permitted to return in 1315
1391 Jews are massacred throughout Christian Castile and Aragon; Jewish community of Barcelona is destroyed; mass conversion of Jews
1394 Jews are again expelled from France; they do not return until the seventeenth century
1412 January 2, Friar Vicente Ferrer proclaims new anti-Jewish regulations in Castile
1412 June, Ferdinand I becomes king of Aragon; anti-Jewish edicts extended to Aragon
1449 Purity-of-blood statutes enacted in Spain as requirement for admittance to guilds, colleges, religious and military orders
1469 Ferdinand of Aragon marries Isabella of Castile; kingdoms united by 1479
1478 Ferdinand and Isabella invite the Inquisition into Spain to root out heretics among the New Christians
1483 Tomás de Torquemada appointed inquisitor general of Spain
1492 Granada falls to Christians; the end of Muslim Spain
Ferdinand and Isabella order all Jews in Spain to convert to Catholicism or leave Spain; many cross into neighboring Portugal
1497 King Manuel I of Portugal declares that all Jews must convert
1569–70 Rabbi Isaac Luria, already a leading kabbalist, moves to Safed
1579 The United Provinces of the Netherlands come into being as a Protestant state through the Union of Utrecht
1580 Spain and Portugal are united
1590 First New Christians arrive in Amsterdam; continue to hide their Jewish faith
1590s Michael de Spinoza, Baruch Spinoza’s father, flees Portugal as a child with his family, arriving in Amsterdam
1596 René Descartes is born
1614 Jews in Amsterdam buy land for cemetery outside Amsterdam; at least two Jewish congregations already functioning covertly in the city
1615 Jewish settlement in Amsterdam officially recognized; Jewish worship still forbidden by city authorities
1616 Uriel da Costa composes his Eleven Theses, rejecting rabbinic Judaism
1618 Beginning of Thirty Years’ War
1619 Amsterdam city council grants Jews the right to practice their religion, at the same time enacting restrictions on their economic and political rights and demanding that all Jews adhere to Jewish law
1624 Uriel da Costa is excommunicated for heretical understanding of Jewish law
1629 Descartes moves to Amsterdam
1632 Baruch Spinoza is born
John Locke is born (dies 1704)
Inquisitorial denunciation of Galileo
1633 Uriel da Costa is readmitted to the Amsterdam Jewish community, but excommunicated again soon after
1635–36 Amsterdam community is divided by bitter feud among its rabbis as to whether all Jews have a place in the afterlife
1637 Descartes publishes his Discours de la méthode
1638 Spinoza’s mother dies
1639 The three synagogues of Amsterdam combine; Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca leaves Amsterdam for Brazil (he returns to Amsterdam in 1654); Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira is appointed chief rabbi
1640 Uriel da Costa is readmitted to the Jewish community in a ceremony of public humiliation; he commits suicide shortly thereafter
1642 Death of Galileo (born 1564)
Birth of Isaac Newton (dies 1727)
Rembrandt paints The Night Watchman
1648 Cossack uprising in Ukraine, led by Bogdan Chmielnicki, destroys hundreds of Jewish communities
Thirty Years’ War ends with the Treaty of Westphalia
1650 Spinoza studies Latin, natural sciences, and philosophy with Dr. van den Enden of Bremen
Descartes dies in Sweden (born 1596)
1651 Probable date that Spinoza first reads the works of Descartes
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is published
1653 Jan de Witt is appointed Grand Pensioner of the States of Holland
1654 Death of Spinoza’s father
1655 Spinoza is accused of heresy before the gathered synagogue
Mannasseh ben Israel unsuccessfully petitions Oliver Cromwell for right of Jewish resettlement in England
1656 July 27, the Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicates Spinoza
An edict of the States of Holland prohibits the teaching of Cartesian philosophy
1657 Jews of Netherlands recognized as subjects of the republic
1659 Huygens identifies the rings of Saturn
1660 Municipal authorities petitioned by the Amsterdam synagogue to denounce Spinoza as a “menace to all piety and morals”
The monarchy restored in England with the accession of Charles II
1661 Spinoza leaves Amsterdam and moves to Rijnsburg; begins writing The Ethics; meets Heinrich Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society of London
1663 Spinoza moves to Voorburg, outside The Hague; takes up residence with the painter Daniel Tydemann
1664 Spinoza publishes The Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy
1665 Sabbatai Zevi is anointed Messiah in Gaza; he soon amasses followers throughout the Jewish world
1666 Newton discovers universal gravitation, differential calculus, lunar orbit
Leibniz finishes dissertation Nova methodus docendi discendique juris, as well as De arte combinatoria
Sabbatai Zevi converts to Islam; many of his followers become apostates 1667 Louis XIV invades the Spanish Netherlands
1668 Leeuwenhoeck first describes red blood corpuscles
Newton constructs reflecting telescope
The French conquest of the Spanish Netherlands halted by the Triple Alliance (England, United Provinces, Sweden)
1669 Death of Rembrandt (born 1606) in Amsterdam Spinoza moves to The Hague
1670 Spinoza publishes his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which is denounced by the (Calvinist) Council of Amsterdam as a “work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt”
1671 Leibniz sends Spinoza his Notita opticae promotea; Spinoza sends Leibniz his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
1672 Louis XIV invades the United Provinces; the Dutch open the dikes and succeed in holding the French back; Jan de Witt and his brother are massacred by a mob on August 20; Spinoza prevented by his landlord from denouncing the assassins as the “ultimate barbarians”
1673 Spinoza is offered professorship of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg but declines
1674 An edict banning the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is issued by the States of Holland
1675 Spinoza completes The Ethics
Leibniz visits Spinoza in The Hague
The Jews of Amsterdam complete the building of the Esnoga, the largest synagogue in Europe
1677 February 21, Spinoza dies
Publication, by Spinoza’s friends in Amsterdam, of Opera Posthuma (Ethics, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, Epistolae, Compendium grammatices linguae Hebralae)
1678 Dutch translation of Spinoza’s works published
1683 John Locke moves to Amsterdam
1686 Gottfried Leibniz publishes his Discourse on Metaphysics
1689 Locke publishes the “Letter on Tolerance,” a defense of religious liberty