Corpus Christi — A Synagogue Inside a Later Christian Building
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Transcript
The present Corpus Christi church was once Segovia’s principal synagogue, the religious centre of the medieval Jewish community.
The building was converted to Christian use in the early fifteenth century, before the 1492 expulsion of Jews from the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Later alterations and a major fire in 1899 destroyed much original material, and twentieth-century restoration attempted to recover the spatial character of the synagogue.
That layered history is more useful than presenting the building as evidence of timeless coexistence. Medieval Segovia did contain significant Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations, but their legal status and security were unequal and changed over time.
The surviving horseshoe arches and three-aisled prayer hall allow the older synagogue to remain legible inside a later convent complex. The architecture records continuity of space alongside rupture in community.