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The origin of the synagogue is linked to the jewish diaspora, the first exile of the jewish people. They were created to receive the jewish people, regardless of their origin, and to practice their religion. In the Synagogue there could be carried out two functions: one as school, where they studied the Bible and another as church. The wise men and the rabins were the only ones that knew the Bible, and they had to spread it out.
After Ferdinand III‘s entry, at Pope Innocent IV’s period, the Jewish decided to raise a big Synagogue. The clerus and the proximity of the works to the Cathedral caused a big polemic. Inocencio IV decided to stop the works. 
But the synagogue was not demolished, for the simple reason that when the bull arrived in Córdoba, Don Gutierre Bishop had died. However, the Synagogue would be demolished a few years later, they were not going to allow the jews to build a building of such dimensions to their religious activities. In 1315 a smaller one was built, because the obligation to meet their spiritual needs. This one was built under the Ishaq Moheb’s orders, that is what has reached us.
As I said earlier, after their expulsion by the Catholic Monarchs, the Synagogue was a hospital, called Santa Quinteria, dedicated to healing from the evil of anger. Then in 1588 it was turned into a hermitage, Saint Crispin and Saint Ciprian Hermitage, patrons of the shoemakers. In that period it was decorated with altarpieces, altars, even paintings that cancelled the plaster decorations and the inscriptions.
In the middle of the XIX Century it was a nursery school till 1884, Don Rafael Romero Barros, the Julio Romero painter‘s father, studied, with the Priest Mariano Párraga, the inscriptions found in the building. After, it was declared National Monument, in 1885.
Don Félix Hernández, important character in the history of our city, who in future will devote a section on our website, presented a project for its restoration in 1928. Don Félix commanded the restoration that gave us the current state of the Synagogue. It was a very careful and respectful intervention, which, however, could not prevent some inscriptions disappear. |
