Ferdinand & Isabella, King and Queen of Castille and Leon (Privilege Granted to Gonzalo del Rio Regarding the Tax Roll of Jews in Segovia), Segovia: 1476

4 leaves, (11 1/2 x 8 7/8 in.; 294 x 225 mm).  Manuscript document on paper written in a gothic hand in dark brown ink, 41 lines, signed by Royal Secretary Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, and other local officials with signatures and paraphs; evidently preserved inside a binding with consequent damage such as frayed and wormed foremargin, stained and soiled, large sections of script faded.

Always in a position of needing to raise funds, medieval rulers, who often commanded only small, inefficient, and unreliable bureaucracies, preferred to delegate tax collection to private entrepreneurs.  These "tax-farmers" would, for a specified lump sum paid to the treasury, exact the payments due from the taxpayers. Of course, the risks of undercollection were, as a rule, more than made up by the potential of the considerable surpluses that could be obtained. So indispensable were the Spanish Jewish tax farmers that the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, continued to sign four-year contracts for the collection of taxes, with Jewish entrepreneurs as late as 1491, only a year before they expelled the Jews from Spain.

The community of Segovia was one of the most important in Castile, and achieved great prosperity in the 13th century. When the persecutions of 1391 broke out, the Segovian authorities were unable to protect the Jews, and the community never attained its former grandeur. Anti-Jewish activity came to a head at the close of the 1480s even as the community grew in size, due to the arrival of Jews expelled from Andalusia.