THE HUSSITES. PROGRESS OF JEWISH LITERATURE.
The Hussite Heresy--Consequences for the Jews involved in the
Struggle--Jacob Mölin--Abraham Benveniste and Joseph Ibn-Shem
Tob in the Service of the Castilian Court--Isaac Campanton,
the Poet Solomon Dafiera--Moses Da Rieti--Anti-Christian
Polemical Literature--Chayim Ibn-Musa--Simon Duran and his
Son Solomon--Joseph Albo as a Religious Philosopher--Jewish
Philosophical Systems--Edict of the Council of Basle against
the Jews--Fanatical Outbreaks in Majorca--Astruc Sibili and his
Conversion to Christianity.
1420-1442 C.E.
Meanwhile history received a fresh impulse, which, although coming
from weak hands, produced a forward movement. The spreading corruption
in the church, the self-deifying arrogance of the popes and the
licentiousness of priests and monks revolted the moral sense of the
people, opened their eyes, and encouraged them to doubt the very
foundations of the Roman Catholic system. No improvement could be
expected from the princes of the church, the jurists and diplomatists
who met in council at Constance to deliberate on a scheme of thorough
reform. They had only a worldly object in view, seeking to gloss over
the prevailing rottenness by transferring the papal power to the high
ecclesiastics, substituting the rule of an aristocratic hierarchy
for papal absolutism. A Czech priest, John Huss, of Prague, inspired
by the teachings of Wycliffe, spoke the magic word that loosened the
bonds in which the church had ensnared the minds of men. "Not this
or that pope," he said in effect, "but the papacy and the entire
organization of the Catholic church constitute the fundamental evil
from which Christendom is suffering." The flames to which the council
of Constance condemned this courageous priest only served to light
up the truth he had uttered. They fired a multitude in Bohemia, who
entered on a life and death struggle with Catholicism. Whenever a
party in Christendom opposes itself to the ruling church, it assumes
a tinge of the Old Testament, not to say Jewish, spirit. The Hussites
regarded Catholicism, not unjustly, as heathenism, and themselves as
Israelites, who must wage holy war against Philistines, Moabites, and
Ammonites. Churches and monasteries were to them the sanctuaries of a
dissolute idolatry, temples to Baal and Moloch and groves of Ashtaroth,
to be consumed with fire and sword. The Hussite war, although largely
due to the mutual race-hatred of Czechs and Germans, and to religious
indignation, began in a small way the work of clearing the church
doctrine of its mephitic elements.
For the Jews, this movement was decidedly calamitous, the
responsibility for which must rest, not with the wild Hussites, but
with the Catholic fanaticism stirred up against the new heresy. The
former went little beyond denunciations of Jewish usury; at the most,
sacked Jewish together with Catholic houses. Of special Hussite
hostility to the Jews no evidence is forthcoming. On the other hand,
Catholics accused Jews of secretly supplying the Hussites with
money and arms; and in the Bavarian towns near the Böhmerwald, they
persecuted them unmercifully as friends and allies of the heretics. The
Dominicans--the "army of anti-Christ" as they were called--included
the Jews in their fierce pulpit denunciations of the Hussites, and
inflamed the people and princes against them. The crusades against the
Hussites, like those against the Mahometans and Waldenses, commenced
with massacres of Jews. Revived fanaticism first affected the Jews in
Austria--a land which, like Spain, passed from liberal tolerance
of Jews to persecution, and in bigotry approximated so close to the
Iberian kingdom that it ultimately joined it. The mind of Archduke
Albert, an earnest and well-intentioned prince, was systematically
filled with hatred against the "enemies of God." Fable after fable
was invented, which, devoid even of originality, sufficed to drive to
extreme measures a man of pure character, ignorant of the lying devices
of the Jew-haters. Three Christian children went skating in Vienna;
the ice broke through, and they were drowned. When the anxious parents
failed to find them, a malicious rumor was set on foot that they had
been slaughtered by Jews, who required their blood for the ensuing
Passover celebration. Then a Jew was charged with a crime calculated
to incense the populace to a still greater degree. The wife of the
sacristan of Enns was said to have purloined the consecrated host from
the church, and sold it to a wealthy Jew named Israel, who had sent
it to a large number of Jewish communities in and out of Austria. The
charges of Jewish murders of Christian children and Jewish profanations
of hosts had not lost their charm in the fifteenth century, and their
inventors could calculate their effect with accuracy. By order of the
archduke, the sacristan's wife and her two accomplices or seducers,
Israel and his wife, were brought to Vienna, examined, and forced to
confess. The records of the case are silent as to the means employed to
obtain the avowal of guilt; but the procedure of mediæval Christendom
in such trials is well known.
Archduke Albert issued the order that in the early morning of the 23d
May, 1420 (10th Sivan), all the Jews in his realm should be thrown into
prison, and this was promptly done. The moneyed Jews were stripped
of their possessions, and the poor forthwith banished the country.
In the gaols, wives were separated from their husbands, and children
from their parents. When from helplessness they fell to hopelessness,
Christian priests came to them with crosses in their hands and honeyed
words on their lips to convert them. A few of the poorer-spirited saved
their lives by accepting baptism. The more resolute slew themselves and
their kinsfolk by opening their veins with straps, cords, or whatever
they found to hand. The spirit of the survivors was broken by the
length and cruelty of their imprisonment. Their children were taken
from them, and immured in cloisters. Still they remained firm, and on
the 13th March (9th Nisan), 1421, after nearly a year's confinement,
they were committed to the flames. In Vienna alone more than a hundred
perished in one field near the Danube. Another order was then issued by
Archduke Albert, forbidding Jews to stay thenceforth in Austria.
The converts proved no gain to the church. The majority seized the
first opportunity of emigrating and relapsing into Judaism. They bent
their steps to Bohemia, rendered tolerant by the Hussite schism,
or northwards to Poland and southwards to Italy. How attached the
Austrian Jews were to their religion is shown by the conduct of one
clever youth. Having received baptism, he had become the favorite of
Duke Frederick, afterwards the German emperor, but, although living
in luxury, he was seized with remorse for his apostasy, and boldly
expressed his desire to return to Judaism. Frederick exerted himself
to dissuade his favorite from this idea. He begged, entreated, and
even threatened him; he sent a priest to advise him; all, however, in
vain. Finally, the duke handed the "obstinate heretic and backslider"
over to the ecclesiastical authorities, who condemned him to the stake.
Unfettered and with a Hebrew song on his lips the Jewish youth mounted
the scaffold.
In the meantime, the devastating war broke out between the fierce
Hussites and the not less barbarous Roman Catholics, between the
Czechs and the Germans. A variety of nationalities participated in
the sanguinary struggle as to the use of the cup by the laity in
the eucharist. Emperor Sigismund, who found it impossible to subdue
the insurrection with his own troops, summoned the imperial army to
his standard. Wild free-lances, men of Brabant and Holland, were
taken into his pay. From all quarters armed troops poured into the
Bohemian valleys and against the capital, Prague, where the blind
hero, Zisca, bade defiance to a world of foes. On the way, the German
imperial army exhibited its courage by attacks on the defenseless
Jews. "We are marching afar," exclaimed the mercenaries, "to avenge
our insulted God, and shall those who slew him be spared?" Wherever
they came across Jewish communities, on the Rhine, in Thuringia and
Bavaria, they put them to the sword, or forced them to apostatize. The
crusaders threatened, on their return from victory over the Hussites,
to wipe the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Jewish fathers
of families true to their faith gave orders that, at a certain signal,
their children should be killed to avoid falling into the hands of
the bloodthirsty soldiery. Letters of lamentation over the threatened
disaster, calling upon him to implore the intervention of heaven, were
addressed from far and near to the illustrious rabbi of Mayence, Jacob
ben Moses Mölin Halevi (Maharil, born 1365, died 1427), the most pious
rabbi of his time. His arrangement of the synagogue ritual and melodies
is used to this day in many German communities, and their colonies in
Poland and Hungary. Jacob Mölin ordered a general fast, accompanied by
fervent prayer, and his instructions were circulated from one community
to another throughout the land. The German congregations forthwith
assembled for solemn mourning and humiliation, and fasted during four
days between New Year and Atonement (8th-11th September, 1421), and
for three successive days after Tabernacles, the observance being
as strict as on the most sacred fast days of the Jewish calendar. It
was a time of feverish tension for the German Jews. In their despair
they prayed that victory might be vouchsafed to the Hussites, and it
seemed as if their supplications were heard. For, shortly afterwards,
the imperial army and its mercenary allies assembled near Saatz were
stricken with such terror at the news of Zisca's approach, that they
sought safety in disorderly flight, disbanding in all directions, and
hurrying home by different routes. Famished and footsore, a few of the
very men who had vowed death and extirpation to the Jews, appeared at
the doors of their houses, begging for bread, which was gladly given
them. Privation had so reduced the fugitives that they could not have
harmed a child.
The Dominican clergy commissioned to preach against the Hussites
did not cease to foster Catholic hatred of Jews. From their pulpits
they thundered against heretics and Jews alike, cautioning the
faithful against holding intercourse with them, and consciously and
unconsciously inciting to attacks on their persons and property. The
Jews flew for help to the pope, Martin V--doubtless not with empty
hands--and again obtained a very favorable bull (23d February,
1422), in which Christians were enjoined to remember that their
religion had been inherited from Jews, who were necessary for the
corroboration of Christian truth. The pope forbade the monks to preach
against intercourse between Jews and Christians, and declared null
and void the ban with which transgressors had been threatened. He
recommended to Catholics a friendly and benevolent attitude towards
their Hebrew fellow-citizens, severely denounced violent attacks upon
them, and confirmed all the privileges which had from time to time
been granted by the papacy. This bull was, however, as ineffectual as
the protection which Emperor Sigismund had so solemnly promised the
Jews. A persecuting spirit continued to animate the Christian church.
The monks did not cease to declaim against the "accursed" Jewish
nation; the populace did not refrain from tormenting, injuring and
murdering Jews; even succeeding popes ignored the bull, and restored
the odious canonical restrictions in all their stringency. Turning a
deaf ear to both pope and emperor, the citizens of Cologne expelled
the Jewish community, perhaps the oldest in Germany. The exiles took
up their abode at Deutz (1426). In the South German towns, Ravensburg,
Ueberlingen and Lindau, the Jews were burnt because of a lying blood
accusation (1431).
The literary work of the German Jews was, as a consequence, poor
and inconsiderable. Anxiety and persecution had deadened their
intellect. Even in Talmudical study the German rabbis hardly rose above
mediocrity, and gave nothing of consequence to the world. Some rabbis
were installed by the reigning prince; at least Emperor Sigismund
commissioned one of his Jewish agents, Chayim of Landshut, "to
appoint three rabbis (Judenmeister) in Germany." Under such auspices,
appointments were probably determined less by merit than by money.
For a college, in which students were prepared for the rabbinate, a
heavy tax had to be paid, notwithstanding that the instruction was
given gratuitously. Besides Jacob Mölin, only one name of importance
emerges from the darkness of this period, Menachem of Merseburg, or,
as he was generally called, Meïl Zedek. He wrote a comprehensive work
on the practice of the Talmudic marriage and civil law, which the
Saxon communities adopted for their authoritative guidance. He, at
least, departed from the beaten track of his older contemporaries or
teachers, Jacob Mölin and Isaac Tyrnau, who attached value to every
insignificant detail of the liturgy. By and by Menachem of Merseburg
was recognized as an authority, and an excellent regulation drawn up by
him received universal assent. Among the Jews at that period, marriages
took place at a very early age; girls in their teens were hurried into
matrimony. According to Talmudical law a girl, under age, who had been
given in marriage by her mother or brothers and not by her father, was
permitted, on attaining her majority, in her twelfth year, and even
much later under some circumstances, to dissolve her union without
further ceremony than a declaration of her intention to do so, or the
contracting of another marriage (Miun). Menachem of Merseburg felt the
indecency of so sudden and often capricious a dissolution of marriage,
and he decided that formal bills of divorce should be required.
The literary achievements of the Spanish Jews during this period were
not of a higher character; they exhibited unmistakable signs of decay,
notwithstanding that their situation had become more tolerable since
the death of the bigoted and wanton queen regent, Catalina, and the
fall of the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, and his Jewish accomplices.
Don Juan II--or, rather, his favorite, Alvaro de Luna, to whom the
management of the state was confided--stood too much in need of the
assistance of Jewish financiers during the frequently recurring civil
wars and insurrections to do anything to offend them. Hence, during his
reign, restrictive laws against the Jews seem to have been enacted only
to be broken. Jews were again admitted to public employment, regardless
of the fact that such appointments had been sternly forbidden both
by kings and popes. An influential Jew, Abraham Benveniste, surnamed
Senior, distinguished for his intelligence and wealth, was invested
with a high dignity at the court of Don Juan, and was thus in a
position to frustrate threatened persecutions of his co-religionists.
Also Joseph ben Shem Tob Ibn-Shem Tob, a cultivated and fruitful
writer, proficient in philosophic studies, was in the service of the
state under Juan II. On the one hand, the cortes did not fail to remind
the king that by his father's laws and by papal decrees the Jews were
excluded from public offices, and, on the other hand, Pope Eugenius
IV, successor to Martin V, strained every effort to humiliate the Jews
and harden their lot, even forbidding Don Juan to befriend them; but
these representations were of no avail. To the cortes of Burgos the
king replied evasively that he would cause an examination to be made of
the laws promulgated in regard to the Jews by his father, and of the
papal bulls, and he would take care to observe everything calculated to
promote the service of God and the welfare of the state. Against the
pope's interference with his crown-rights he entered a protest.
This king gave permission to the no less noble than wealthy rabbi,
Abraham Benveniste, to hold a meeting of delegates from various
communities in the royal palace of Avila (1432). These delegates were
to bring harmony into the state of moral and religious disorder caused
by the attacks of the masses in 1412-1415. The smaller communities were
without teachers, the large ones without rabbis and preachers. Many of
them had been reduced to poverty, and the richer members were unwilling
to contribute to the support of religious institutions. Evil ways and
denunciations by the unscrupulous had acquired the upper hand, because
the representative men and the few rabbis did not venture to punish the
evildoers. Abraham Benveniste, therefore, framed a statute (the law of
Avila), which compelled people to establish schools and colleges, to
introduce order into the communities, and to punish miscreants. Juan II
confirmed this statute.
The literature of the Spanish Jews, however, was powerless to recover
itself. Despite the calm succeeding the storm, it seemed to wither
like autumn leaves. The decline was most marked in the department
of Talmudic study. After the emigration of Isaac ben Sheshet and the
death of Chasdaï Crescas, no Spanish rabbi obtained more than local
authority and reputation. The only upholder of the traditions of
the rabbinate was Isaac ben Jacob Campanton, who lived to be more
than a hundred years old (born 1360, died at Peñafiel 1463); but he
produced only one work (Darke ha-Talmud), which exhibited neither
genius nor learning. Still, in his day, Campanton passed for the Gaon
of Castile. Neo-Hebraic poetry, which had blossomed so profusely on
Spanish soil, faded and drooped. Of those who cultivated it during
this period only a few are remembered--Solomon Dafiera, Don Vidal
Benveniste, the leading speaker on the Jewish side at the disputation
of Tortosa, and Solomon Bonfed. The most gifted was the last. He was
ambitious to emulate Ibn-Gebirol; but he possessed little more than the
sensitiveness and moroseness of his great exemplar, like him imagining
himself to be the sport of fortune, with a prescriptive right to
lamentation.
The Jews of Italy failed to distinguish themselves in poetry even
during the Medici period, in spite of the high culture which, with
the Hussite movement, was eating away the foundations of mediæval
Catholicism. Since Immanuel Romi, the Jews of Italy had produced but
one poet; even he was not a poet in the noblest sense of the word.
Moses ben Isaac (Gajo) da Rieti, of Perugia (born 1388, died after 1451
), a physician by profession, a dabbler in philosophy, and a graceful
writer in both Hebrew and Italian, might have passed for an artist if
poetry were a thing of meter and rhyme, for in his sublimely conceived
poem both were faultless. His desire was to glorify in poetry Judaism
and Jewish antiquity, the sciences, and the illustrious men of all
ages. He employed an ingenious form of verse, in which the stanzas
were connected by threes by means of cross-rhymes. But Da Rieti's
language is often rough, many of his allusions show want of taste, and
where he should rise to lofty thought he sinks into puerilities. Only
in one respect does his work mark an advance in neo-Hebrew poetry. He
breaks entirely with the traditional Judæo-Arabic method of a single
rhyme. There is variety in his versification; the ear is not wearied
by monotonous repetition of the same or similar sounds, and the lines
fall naturally into stanzas. He also avoids playing on Biblical verses,
the objectionable habit of Judæo-Spanish poets. In a word, Da Rieti
supplied the correct form for neo-Hebrew poetry, but he was unable to
vivify it with an attractive spirit. Yet the Italian Jews adopted a
part of his poem into their liturgy, and recited extracts daily.
From the Apennine Peninsula let us turn back to the Pyrenean, where
the pulsation of historic life among the Jews, though gradually
becoming weaker, still was stronger than in the other countries in
which they were dispersed. The two branches of intellectual activity
which formerly, in their palmy days, had exercised every mind--the
severe study of the Talmud and the airy pursuit of the poetic muse--
had lost their predominance in the Spanish Jewries. The systematic
study of the Scriptures also was no longer properly cultivated. The
literary activity of this period was almost exclusively directed
towards combating the intrusiveness of the church, repelling its
attacks on Judaism, and withstanding its proselytizing zeal. Faithful
and strong-minded Jewish thinkers held it a duty to proclaim their
convictions aloud, and to admonish waverers and strengthen them. The
more the preaching monks, especially apostates of the stamp of Paul de
Santa Maria, Geronimo de Santa Fé, and Pedro de la Caballeria, exerted
themselves to prove that the Christian Trinity was the true God of
Israel, taught and typified in the Bible and the Talmud, and the more
the church stretched forth its tentacles towards the Jews, straining
every nerve to fold them in its fatal embrace, the more necessary was
it for the synagogue to watch over its sacred trust, and guard its holy
of holies from idolatrous desecration. It was especially necessary
that the weaker-minded should be spared confusion in religious and
doctrinal matters. Hence Jewish preachers devoted themselves more than
ever to expounding the doctrine of the unity of God in their pulpits.
They pointed out the essential and irreconcilable difference between
the Jewish and the Christian conception of the Deity, and characterized
their identification as false and impious. The time resembled that
other epoch in Jewish history when Hellenized Jews tried to induce
their brethren to deny God, and were supported by the secular arm.
Some preachers, in their zeal, went to extremes. Instead of relying
exclusively on the convincing demonstrations in the Bible text, or on
the attractive illustrations of the Agada, they resorted to the armory
of scholasticism, employing the formulæ of philosophy and, in the
presence of the Torah, and by the side of the Hebrew prophets and the
Talmudical sages, quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes.
This controversial literature, cultivated on a large scale, was
designed to defend Judaism against calumny and abuse, rather than
to convert a single Christian soul. Its aim was to open the eyes of
Jews, so that ignorance or credulity might not lead them into the
snares prepared for them. Doubtless it also desired to stir up the
new-Christians, and to re-animate their Jewish spirit beneath the
disguise they had assumed to save their lives. Hence the majority of
the polemical writings of the day were merely vindications of Judaism
from the old charges fulminated by Nicholas de Lyra a century before,
or more recently by Geronimo de Santa Fé and others, and widely
circulated by the Christian clergy. Solomon-Paul of Burgos, who had
been appointed bishop of his native town, wrote, in his eighty-second
year (1434, a year before his death), a venomous tract against Judaism
--"Searching the Scriptures" (Scrutinium Scriptuarum)--in the form
of a dialogue between a teacher and his pupil, the unbelieving Saul and
the converted Paul. Solomon-Paul does not seem to have retained much
of the wit which, according to Jewish and Christian panegyrists, had
at one time distinguished him--it had probably become blunted amid
the luxurious ease of the episcopal palace--for his tract, devoutly
Christian and Catholic in tone, is pointless and dull. Another ex-rabbi
who devoted himself to attacking Judaism was Juan de España, also
called Juan the Old (at Toledo), a convert who in old age had embraced
Christianity under the influence of Vincent Ferrer's proselytizing
efforts. He wrote a treatise on his own conversion and a Christian
commentary on the seventy-second Psalm, in both of which he asserted
the genuineness of his change of creed, and urged the Jews to abjure
their errors. How many weak-minded Jews must have been influenced by
the zeal, earnest or hypocritical, of such men as these, belonging to
their own race, and learned in their literature!
It is impossible to exaggerate the services of the men who, deeply
impressed with the gravity of the crisis, threw themselves into
the breach, with exhortations to their co-religionists to remain
faithful to their creed. In defiance of the dangers which menaced
them, they scattered their inspiriting discourses far and wide.
Foremost among them were the men who had distinguished themselves
at the Tortosa disputation by their unyielding attitude and their
courage in withstanding the unjustifiable attacks upon the Talmud--
Don Vidal (Ferrer) Ibn-Labi and Joseph Albo. The former drew up in
Hebrew a refutation of Geronimo's impeachment of the Talmud (Kodesh
ha-Kodashim), and the latter circulated, in Spanish, an account of
a religious controversy he had sustained with an eminent church
dignitary. Isaac ben Kalonymos, of a learned Provençal family named
Nathan, who associated a great deal with learned Christians, and
frequently had to defend his religious convictions, wrote two polemical
works, one entitled "Correction of the False Teacher," directed against
Geronimo's libelous essay, and the other, called "The Fortress,"
of unknown purpose. He also compiled a laborious work of reference
intended to assist others in defending Judaism from attack. Isaac
Nathan, in his intercourse with Christians, often had to listen to
criticisms of Judaism, or evidences drawn from the Hebrew Bible, in
favor of Christian dogmas, which he found were always based on false
renderings of Hebrew words. To put an end to these illusory outgrowths
of prevailing ignorance of the original text of the Scriptures, or,
at least, to lighten the labors of his brethren in refuting them, he
resolved to compile a comprehensive digest of the linguistic materials
of the Bible, by which the actual meaning of each word should be made
clear. According to the plan adopted, any one can ascertain, at a
glance, both how often a certain word occurs in the Bible, and its
varying meanings according to the contexts. The work thus undertaken
by Isaac Nathan was of colossal scope, and occupied a long series of
years (September, 1437-1445). It was a Bible concordance, that is, the
verses were grouped alphabetically under the reference words according
to roots and derivations. The existing Latin concordances served in a
measure as models, although their purpose was the less ambitious one of
assisting preachers to find texts. Isaac Nathan, who produced various
other works, by this concordance rendered inestimable and lasting
service to the study of the Bible, although his labor was of a purely
mechanical kind. Originating from the temporary needs of the polemical
situation, it has been, and will ever remain, a powerful weapon for
ensuring the triumph of Judaism in its struggles with other religious
systems.
The philosopher, Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob (born 1400, died a martyr 1460),
who was a voluminous writer, a popular preacher, and a frequenter of
the Castilian court, also entered the lists against Christianity to
expose the fallacy and unreasonableness of its dogmas. In his frequent
intercourse with Christians of distinction, both clerical and lay, he
found it necessary to make himself thoroughly acquainted with Christian
theology that he might adduce cogent arguments in reply to those who
wished to convert him, or in his presence made the oft-reiterated
statement of the falsity of Judaism. Occasionally a regular controversy
in defense of his creed was forced upon him. The fruits of his studies
and thought he committed to writing in the shape of a small treatise,
entitled "Doubts of the Religion of Jesus," in which he criticised
with unsparing logic the dogmas of Original Sin, Salvation, and
Incarnation. Besides, he wrote, for the instruction of his brethren, a
detailed commentary on Profiat Duran's satire on Christianity, and made
available for them, by means of a Hebrew translation, Chasdaï Crescas'
polemical work against the Christian religion, originally written in
Spanish. Strange to say, the Spanish Jews preferred, as a rule, Hebrew
books to those in the language of their adopted country.
Among the authors of polemical works against Christianity a
contemporary of Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob deserves special mention. History
has hitherto forgotten Chayim Ibn-Musa, from Bejar, in the neighborhood
of Salamanca (born about 1390, died about 1460), a physician,
versifier and writer, who had access to the Spanish court and the
grandees through his medical skill, and so, frequent opportunities
of discussing questions of doctrine with ecclesiastics and learned
laymen. A colloquy preserved by Chayim Ibn-Musa illustrates the spirit
which prevailed in Spain before the hateful Inquisition silenced all
freedom of speech. A learned ecclesiastic once asked Ibn-Musa why,
if Judaism, as he maintained, was the true faith, the Jews could not
possess themselves of the Holy Land and Jerusalem? Ibn Musa replied
that they had lost their country through the sins of their fathers, and
could regain it only by perfect atonement and purgation. He, in turn,
propounded a question: Why are the Christians no longer in possession
of the Holy Sepulcher? and why does it, together with all the sites
associated with the Passion, continue in the hands of Mahometan
infidels, notwithstanding that Christians, by means of confession and
absolution, and through the medium of the nearest available priest,
can free themselves at any moment from sin? Before the ecclesiastic
could bethink himself of a suitable reply, a knight, who had formerly
been in Palestine, interposed: The Mahometans are the only people
who deserve to possess the site of the Temple and the Holy Land, for
neither Christians nor Jews hold houses of prayer in so much honor
as they. The Christians, during the night before Easter (Vigils),
perpetrate shameful abominations in the churches at Jerusalem, abandon
themselves to debauchery, harbor thieves and murderers, and carry on
bloody feuds within their precincts. They dishonor their character in
the same way as the Jews profaned their Temple. Therefore, God, in His
wisdom, has deprived the Jews and the Christians of the Holy City, and
has intrusted it to the Mahometans, because, in their hands, it is
safe from desecration. To his observation the Christian priest and the
Jewish physician could oppose only abashed silence.
Chayim Ibn-Musa devoted himself to the task of discrediting the chief
sources of the materials of Christian attacks on Judaism, the writings
of the Franciscan Nicholas de Lyra. He not only refuted the assertions
put forward in those works, but deprived them of the soil upon which
they fed. The ever-recurring controversies between Jews and Christians
led to no conclusions, and left each party in the belief that it had
gained a victory, because they generally turned on secondary questions,
the disputants never discussing fundamental premises, but wrangling,
each from his undemonstrated basis. Chayim Ibn-Musa wished to introduce
method into these controversies, and to lay down clear principles for
the defense of Judaism. Accordingly, he drew up rules which, strictly
observed, were bound to lead to a definite result. In the first
place, he advised Jews invariably to hold fast in a disputation to
the simple meaning of the Scriptures, always to take the context into
account, and especially to avoid allegorical or symbolical methods
of interpretation, which left Christian polemics free to introduce
arbitrary theories. Further, Jewish disputants were to announce that
they ascribed no authority in matters of belief either to the Chaldaic
translation of the Bible (Targum) or to the Greek (Septuagint), these
being the sources of the false proofs adduced by Christians. He
counseled them to abandon even Agadic exegesis, and not to hesitate to
declare that it had no weight in determining the doctrines of Judaism.
These and similar rules Chayim Ibn-Musa applied to the writings of
Nicholas de Lyra, successfully refuting them from beginning to end in a
comprehensive work, justly entitled "Shield and Sword."
The anti-Christian polemical literature of this period was further
enriched by two writers, father and son, living in Algiers, far
removed from the scenes of the Christian propaganda. But Simon ben
Zemach Duran and his son, Solomon Duran, were Spaniards by birth and
education. In his philosophic exposition of Judaism, the former devoted
a chapter to Christianity, maintaining, in answer to Christian and
Mahometan objections, the inviolability of the Torah. This chapter,
entitled "Bow and Buckler," and described as being "for defense and
attack," proves the contention of older writers, and more recently of
Profiat Duran, that Jesus' intention was not to abolish Judaism. The
rabbi of Algiers exhibits extraordinarily wide acquaintance with the
literature of the New Testament and thorough familiarity with church
doctrine, combats each with weapons taken from its own arsenal, and
criticises unsparingly.
Solomon Duran I (born about 1400, died 1467), who succeeded his father
in the Algerian rabbinate, combined with profound Talmudic knowledge
a decided leaning towards a rationalistic apprehension of Judaism.
Unlike his father and his ancestor, Nachmani, he was a sworn enemy of
the Kabbala. During his father's lifetime and at his request, he wrote
a refutation of the shameless, lying accusations brought against the
Talmud by Geronimo de Santa Fé. In an exhaustive treatise ("Letter on
the Conflict of Duties") he deals sharply with Geronimo's sallies. He
repels the accusation that the Talmud teaches lewdness, and proves
that it really inculcates extreme continence. Jews who regulate their
lives according to Talmudical prescriptions scrupulously abstain from
carnal sins, holding them in great abhorrence, and pointing with scorn
at persons guilty of them. How, asks Solomon Duran, can Christians
reproach Jews with unchastity--they, whose holiest men daily commit
sins which dare not be mentioned to modest ears, and which have become
proverbial as "Monk's sin" (peccato dei frati).
Religious philosophy, which had been raised to the perfection of a
science only by Jewish-Spanish thinkers, had its last cultivators in
Spain during this period. The same men who protected Judaism against
the onslaughts of Christianity defended it against benighted Jews who
wished to banish light, and, like the Dominicans, desired to establish
blind faith in the place of reason and judgment. Zealots like Shem Tob
Ibn-Shem Tob and others, biased by their narrow Talmudical education,
and misled by the Kabbala, saw in scientific inquiry a byroad to
heresy. Perceiving that for the most part cultivated Jews succumbed to
the proselytizing efforts of Vincent Ferrer and Pope Benedict, men of
the stamp of Shem Tob were confirmed in their belief that philosophic
culture, nay, reflection on a religious topic, irretrievably lead
to apostasy. The logical result of religious impeachment of science
was the condemnation of Maimuni and all the Jewish thinkers who
had allowed reason to have weight in religious questions. Against
this form of bigotry Joseph Albo entered the lists with a complete
religio-philosophical work (Ikkarim, "fundamental teachings"), in which
he attempted to separate the essential doctrines of Judaism from the
non-essential, and to fix the boundary line between belief and heresy.
Joseph Albo (born about 1380, died about 1444), of Monreal, one of
the principal representatives of Judaism at the Tortosa disputation,
who, probably through the intolerance of Pope Benedict, had emigrated
to Soria, was a physician and a pupil of Chasdaï Crescas, hence well
acquainted with the physical sciences and the philosophic thought of
his time. Although a strict adherent of Talmudical Judaism, he was,
like his teacher, not averse to philosophic ideas. Indeed, he tried to
reconcile them, without, of course, permitting Judaism to yield a jot
to philosophy. Albo had not, however, the profundity of his teacher; as
a thinker he was superficial, commonplace, and incapable of writing
with logical sequence. On the advice of his friends, he undertook to
investigate in how far freedom of inquiry in religious matters was
possible within the limits of Judaism. At the same time he wished to
fix the number of articles of faith and to decide the question whether
the number thirteen adopted by Maimuni was correct, or whether it could
be increased or lessened without justly bringing a charge of heresy
on him who made the change. Thus originated his religio-philosophical
system, the last on Spanish soil. Albo's style differs widely from
that of his predecessors. He was a preacher--one of the cleverest
and most graceful--and this circumstance exercised marked influence
on his method of exposition. It is easy, comprehensible, popular and
captivating. Albo has the knack of explaining every philosophic idea by
a striking illustration, and of developing it by skillful employment
of Bible verses and Agadic aphorisms. What his style thus gained, on
the one hand, in intelligibility and popularity, it lost, on the other,
through a certain redundancy and shallowness.
It is a remarkable fact that Albo, who thought that he was developing
his religio-philosophical system exclusively in the native spirit
of Judaism, placed at its head a principle of indubitably Christian
origin; so powerfully do surroundings affect even those who exert
themselves to throw off such influence. The religious philosopher
of Soria propounded as his fundamental idea that salvation was the
whole aim of man in this life, and that Judaism strongly emphasized
this aspect of religion. His teacher, Chasdaï Crescas, and others,
had considered man's aim the bliss of the future life, to be found
in proximity to the Deity and in the union of the soul with the
all-pervading spirit of God. According to Albo highest happiness
consists not so much in the exaltation of the soul as in its salvation.
That is the nucleus of Albo's religio-philosophical system. Man
attains only after death the perfection for which he is destined by
God; for this higher life his mundane existence is but a preparation.
How can he best utilize his term of preparation? There are three
kinds of institutions for the reclamation of man from barbarism and
his advancement to civilization. The first is Natural Law, a sort of
social compact to abstain from theft, rapine and homicide; the second
is State Legislation, which cares for order and morals; and the third
is Philosophical Law, which aims at promoting the enduring happiness of
man, or, at least, at removing obstacles in the way of its realization.
All these institutions, even when highly developed, are powerless
to assist the real welfare of man, the redemption of his soul, his
beatitude; for they concern themselves only with actions, with proper
conduct, but do nothing to inculcate the views or supply the principles
which are to be the mainsprings of action. If the highest aim of man
be eternal life or beatitude after death, then there must be a Divine
Legislation, without which man in this world must always be groping
in darkness and missing his highest destiny. This Divine Legislation
must supply all the perfections lacking in its mundane counterpart. It
must have for its postulate a perfect God, who both wishes and is able
to promote the redemption of man; it must further bear witness to the
certainty that this God has revealed an unalterable Law calculated to
secure the happiness of man; and finally it must appoint a suitable
requital for actions and intentions. Hence this Divine Legislation has
three fundamental principles: the Existence of God, the Revelation of
His Will, and just Retribution after Death. These are the three pillars
on which it rests, and it requires none other.
Judaism, then, according to Albo, is a discipline for eternal
salvation. It is "the Divine Legislation" (Dath Elohith), and, as
such, comprises many religious laws--613 according to the customary
calculation--to enable each individual to promote his own salvation.
For even a single religious precept fulfilled with intelligence
and devotion, and without mental reservation or ulterior motive,
entitles man to salvation. Consequently, the Torah, with its numerous
prescriptions, is not intended as a burden for its disciples, nor are
the Jews threatened, as Christian teachers maintain, with a curse in
the event of their not observing the entire number of commandments.
On the contrary, the object is to render easy the path to higher
perfection. Therefore, the Agada says that every Israelite has a share
in Eternal Life (Olam ha-ba), for each one can obtain this end by the
fulfillment of a single religious duty.
Arrived at this point, the religious philosopher of Soria propounds
the question whether Judaism can ever be altered as previous
dispensations were by the Sinaitic Revelation. This question required
specially careful consideration, as Christians always maintained that
Christianity was a new revelation, as Judaism had been in its time;
that the "New Covenant" took the place of the "Old," and that by the
Gospel, the Torah had been fulfilled, _i. e._, abrogated. Albo had
acknowledged the existence of rudimentary revelations previous to that
of Sinai, and to avoid being entrapped by the consequences of his
own system he put forward a peculiar distinction. That which God had
once revealed by His own mouth direct to man was, by virtue of that
fact, unalterable and binding for all time; but that which had been
communicated only by a prophetic intermediary might suffer change or
even annulment. The Ten Commandments which the Israelites had received
direct from God, amid the flames of Sinai, were unalterable; in them
the three cardinal principles of a divine legislation are laid down.
On the other hand, the remaining prescriptions of Judaism, imposed on
the people solely through the mediation of Moses, were open to change
or even revocation. But this instability of a portion, perhaps a large
portion, of the Jewish religious law was only a theory, propounded
simply as a possibility. In practice the obligations of the Torah were
to be regarded as binding and unalterable, until it should please God
to reveal other laws through the medium of a prophet as great as Moses,
and in as open and convincing a manner as on Sinai. Hitherto no prophet
had made good his claim so far as to render necessary the rescinding of
any portion of Judaism.
Albo's religious system is far from satisfactory. Based upon the
Christian doctrine of salvation, it was compelled to regard faith, in
a Christian sense, as the chief condition of the soul's redemption,
and the ordinances of Judaism as sacraments, similar to baptism or
communion, upon which salvation was dependent. Nor is the development
of his theory strictly logical. Too often the arts of the preacher take
the place of severe reasoning, and for the illustration of his ideas he
indulges in prolix sermons in exposition of Biblical and Agadic texts.
A bolder thinker than Albo, but, like him, a preacher, was his junior
contemporary, Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob. At one time, when in disgrace with
the king of Castile, and leading a wandering life, he held forth every
Sabbath to large audiences. He had been well schooled in philosophy.
His Kabbalistical, gloomy and fanatical father, who denounced
philosophy as a primary source of evil, damned Aristotle to hell, and
even accused Maimuni of heterodoxy, must have been scandalized when
his son Joseph plunged deep, and with all his heart, into the study
of Aristotle and Maimuni. But Joseph did not hesitate to stigmatize
the error of his father and of those who thought the employment of
philosophic methods opposed to the interests of religion. He, on the
contrary, held that they were essential for the attainment of the
higher destiny to which all men, especially Israelites, are called.
The cultured, philosophical Jew who intelligently discharges all the
religious duties of Judaism obviously realizes his high aim much sooner
than the Israelite who practices his ceremonial blindly, without wisdom
or understanding. Science is also of great value in enabling human
intelligence to discriminate error. It is the nature of man's imperfect
intellect to foster truth and error side by side; but knowledge teaches
how to distinguish between the true and the false. On the other hand,
gaps in philosophical teaching are bridged over by the Sinaitic Law.
In so far as the latter conceives the happiness of man in the survival
of the spirit after the destruction of the body, it is immeasurably
the superior of philosophy. Judaism also names the means of attaining
eternal happiness--the conscientious fulfillment of religious
obligations. On this point, Joseph Shem Tob's view approximates that
of Joseph Albo. In his eyes, also, the commandments of Judaism have a
sacramental character, but he does not emphasize salvation so much as
Albo. Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob went so far, however, as to deny that the
objects of the religious laws were knowable, and, to a certain extent,
ascribed to them a mystical influence.
None of these writings of the first half of the fifteenth century,
philosophical or polemical, was the fruit of leisure and an unfettered
spirit. All were stimulated into existence by the urgent necessities
of the times, and were put forth to protect the religious and moral
treasure-house from pressing danger. In order not to succumb, Judaism
was forced simultaneously to strengthen itself from within and ward off
attacks from without.
It was, indeed, more than ever necessary for Judaism to arm itself,
doubly and trebly; its darkest days were approaching. Again the grim
church fiend arose, and the gruesome shadow of its extended wings swept
anxiously across Europe. As in the time of Innocent III, so again at
this period the church decreed the degradation and proscription of
the Jews. The old enactments were solemnly renewed by the official
representatives of Christendom, assembled in Œcumenical Council at
Basle, where they had declared their infallibility, and even sat in
judgment on the papacy. Curious, indeed! The council could not arrange
its own concerns, was powerless to bring the mocking Hussites back
to the bosom of Mother Church, despaired of putting an end to the
dissoluteness and vice of the clergy and monks, yet gave its attention
to the Jews to lead them to salvation. Leprous sheep themselves, they
sought to save unblemished lambs! The Basle church council, which sat
for thirteen years (June, 1431-May, 1443), examining all the great
European questions, gave no small share of its attention to the Jews.
Their humiliation was necessary for the strengthening of Christian
faith--such was the ground on which the council proceeded at its
nineteenth sitting (September 7th, 1434), when it resolved to revise
the old and devise new restrictions. The canonical decrees prohibiting
Christians from holding intercourse with Jews, from rendering them
services, and from employing them as physicians, excluding them from
offices and dignities, imposing on them a distinctive garb, and
ordering them to live in special Jew-quarters, were renewed. A few
fresh measures were adopted, new in so far as they had not previously
been put forward by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. These
provided that Jews should not be admitted to university degrees, that
they should be made, if necessary, by force, to attend the delivery
of conversionist sermons, and that at the colleges means should be
provided for combating Jewish heresy by instruction in Hebrew, Chaldee,
and Arabic. Thus the Œcumenical Council, which gave itself out as
inspired by the Holy Ghost, designed the conversion of all Jews. It
adopted the program of Penyaforte, Pablo Christiani, and Vincent
Ferrer, who had counseled systematic application of pressure to induce
the Jews to abandon "their infidelity." On the baptized Jews, too,
the Basle church council bestowed special attention. They were to be
favored, but also carefully watched, lest they marry Jews, keep the
Sabbath and Jewish feasts, bury their dead according to Jewish rites,
or, in fact, follow any Jewish observances.
A fanatical paroxysm broke out afresh in various towns of Europe,
commencing in the island of Majorca. The remnant of the congregation
of Palma was hated alike by the priests and the mob, and both gave
a willing ear to the rumor that the Jews, during Holy Week, had
crucified the Moorish servant of a Jew, and put him to the torture. The
reputed martyr was still living, but, nevertheless, Bishop Gil-Nunjoz
caused two Jews to be imprisoned as ringleaders. Thereupon arose a
contest between the bishop and the governor, Juan Desfar, the latter
maintaining that as the Jews were the property of the king, he alone
could condemn them. The bishop was obliged to hand over the Jews, who
were locked up in the governor's jail. The priests, however, incited
the mob against the governor and the Jews, and before Juan Desfar
could arrange for a hearing, the people were prepossessed against
him. A court composed chiefly of Dominicans and Franciscans was
called together, and employed the rack as the most effectual means of
obtaining the truth from the witnesses. One of the accused put to the
torture acknowledged all that was desired, and pointed out any Jews who
happened to be mentioned as his accomplices. An unprincipled Jew named
Astruc Sibili, who lived in strife with many members of the community,
and feared to be involved in the blood accusation, came forward as the
denouncer of his co-religionists. Apparently of his own accord Astruc
Sibili acknowledged that the servant had been crucified, and pointed
out several Jews as the murderers. Although he kept himself clear from
all complicity in the matter, Astruc Sibili was soon punished for his
denunciations--he was thrown into prison as an accomplice. The fate
of the informer and the flight of several Jewish families, justly
fearing a repetition of massacres, from Palma to a mountain in the
vicinity, excited the Christian inhabitants yet more. The fugitives
were pursued, placed in fetters, and brought back to the city, their
flight being considered a proof of the guilt of the entire community.
Astruc Sibili and three others were condemned to be burnt at the stake,
but their punishment was commuted to death by hanging, on condition
that they be baptized. To this they agreed, considering baptism the
last straw by which their lives might be saved. The whole community,
men, women and children, two hundred in all, went over to Christianity
to escape a horrible death. The priests had ample employment in
baptizing the converts. How little they believed in the imputed crime
of the condemned was shown when, the gallows being reached, the
priests, encouraging the mob to do the same, demanded the pardon of
the condemned. The governor yielded to the voice of the people, and
by a procession and amid singing they were escorted to the church,
where a _Te Deum_ was chanted. Thus ended the community of Majorca,
which had lasted over a thousand years, and had greatly contributed to
the well-being of the island. With it disappeared the prosperity of
this fruitful and favored island. Simon Duran, deeply grieved at the
secession of the community of Palma, which he had lovingly cherished,
silenced his conscience with the thought that he had not been remiss in
exhortation.