him comes from the Marquis de Santillana, one of the early patrons and
leaders of Spanish literature. He says, "In my grandfather's time there
was a Jew, Rabbi Santob, who wrote many excellent things, among them
_Proverbios Morales_ (Moral Proverbs), truly commendable in spirit. A
great troubadour, he ranks among the most celebrated poets of Spain."
Despite this high praise, the marquis feels constrained to apologize for
having quoted a passage from Santob's work. His praise is endorsed by
the critics. It is commonly conceded that his _Consejos y Documentos al
Rey Dom Pedro_ ("Counsel and Instruction to King Dom Pedro"), consisting
of six hundred and twenty-eight romances, deserves a place among the
best creations of Castilian poetry, which, in form and substance, owes
not a little to Rabbi Santob. A valuable manuscript at the Escurial in
Madrid contains his _Consejos_ and two other works, _La Doctrina
Christiana_ and _Dansa General_. A careless copyist called the whole
collection "Rabbi Santob's Book," so giving rise to the mistake of
Spanish critics, who believe that Rabbi Santob, indisputably the author
of _Consejos_, became a convert to Christianity, and wrote, after his
conversion, the didactic poem on doctrinal Christianity, and perhaps
also the first "Dance of Death."[43] It was reserved for the acuteness
of German criticism to expose the error of this hypothesis. Of the three
works, only _Consejos_ belongs to Rabbi Santob, the others were
accidentally bound with it. In passing, the interesting circumstance may
be noted that in the first "Dance of Death" a bearded rabbi (_Rabbi
barbudo_) dances toward the universal goal between a priest and an
usurer. Santob de Carrion remained a Jew. His _consejos_, written when
he was advanced in age, are pervaded by loyalty to his king, but no less
to his faith, which he openly professed at the royal court, and whose
spiritual treasures he adroitly turned to poetic uses.
Santob, it is interesting to observe, was not a writer of erotic poetry.
He composed poems on moral subjects only, social satires and
denunciations of vice. Such are the _consejos_. It is in his capacity as
a preacher of morality that Santob is to be classed among troubadours.
First he addressed himself, with becoming deference, to the king,
leading him to consider God's omnipotence:
"As great, 'twixt heav'n and earth the space--
That ether pure and blue--
So great is God's forgiving grace
Your sins to lift from you.
And with His vast and wondrous might
He does His deeds of power;
But yours are puny in His sight,
For strength is not man's dower."
At that time it required more than ordinary courage to address a king in
this fashion; but Santob was old and poor, and having nothing to lose,
could risk losing everything. A democratic strain runs through his
verses; he delights in aiming his satires at the rich, the high-born,
and the powerful, and takes pride in his poverty and his fame as a poet:
"I will not have you think me less
Than others of my faith,
Who live on a generous king's largess,
Forsworn at every breath.
And if you deem my teachings true,
Reject them not with hate,
Because a minstrel sings to you
Who's not of knight's estate.
The fragrant, waving reed grows tall
From feeble root and thin,
And uncouth worms that lowly crawl
Most lustrous silk do spin.
Because beside a thorn it grows
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarled branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.
The goshawk, know, can soar on high,
Yet low he nests his brood.
A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?
Some Jews there are with slavish mind
Who fear, are mute, and meek.
My soul to truth is so inclined
That all I feel I speak.
There often comes a meaning home
Through simple verse and plain,
While in the heavy, bulky tome
We find of truth no grain.
Full oft a man with furrowed front,
Whom grief hath rendered grave,
Whose views of life are honest, blunt,
Both fool is called and knave."
It is surely not unwarranted to assume that from these confessions the
data of Santob's biography may be gathered.
Now as to Santob's relation to Judaism. Doubtless he was a faithful Jew,
for the views of life and the world laid down in his poems rest on the
Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash. With the fearlessness of conviction
he meets the king and the people, denouncing the follies of both. Some
of his romances sound precisely like stories from the Haggada, so
skilfully does he clothe his counsel in the gnomic style of the Bible
and the Talmud. This characteristic is particularly well shown in his
verses on friendship, into which he has woven the phraseology of the
Proverbs:
"What treasure greater than a friend
Who close to us hath grown?
Blind fate no bitt'rer lot can send
Than bid us walk alone.
For solitude doth cause a dearth
Of fruitful, blessed thought.
The wise would pray to leave this earth,
If none their friendship sought.
Yet sad though loneliness may be,
That friendship surely shun
That feigns to love, and inwardly
Betrays affections won."
The poem closes with a prayer for the king, who certainly could not have
taken offense at Santob's frankness:
"May God preserve our lord and king
With grace omnipotent,
Remove from us each evil thing,
And blessed peace augment.
The nations loyally allied
Our empire to exalt,
May God, in whom we all confide,
From plague keep and assault.
If God will answer my request,
Then will be paid his due--
Your noble father's last behest--
To Santob, Carrion's Jew."
Our troubadour's poetry shows that he was devotedly attached to his
prince, enthusiastically loved his country, and was unfalteringly loyal
to his faith; that he told the king honest, wholesome truths disguised
in verse; that he took no pains to conceal his scorn of those who, with
base servility, bowed to the ruling faith, and permitted its yoke to be
put upon their necks; that he felt himself the peer of the high in rank,
and the wealthy in the goods of this world; that he censured, with
incisive criticism, the vices of his Spanish and his Jewish
contemporaries--all of which is calculated to inspire us with admiration
for the Jewish troubadour, whose manliness enabled him to meet his
detractors boldly, as in the verses quoted above:
"Because beside a thorn it grows,
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarled branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.
A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?"
History does not tell us whether Pedro rewarded the Jewish troubadour as
the latter, if we may judge by the end of his poem, had expected. Our
accounts of his life are meagre; even his fellow-believers do not make
mention of him. We do know, however, that the poor poet's prayers for
his sovereign, his petitions for the weal and the glory of his country
were not granted. Pedro lost his life by violence, quarrels about the
succession and civil wars convulsed the land, and weakened the royal
power. Its decline marked the end of the peace and happiness of the Jew
on Castilian soil.
As times grew worse, and persecutions of the Jews in Christian Spain
became frequent, many forsook the faith of their fathers, to bask in the
sunshine of the Church, who treated proselytes with distinguished favor.
The example of the first Jewish troubadour did not find imitators. Among
the converts were many poets, notably Juan Alfonso de Baena, who, in the
fifteenth century, collected the oldest troubadour poetry, including his
own poems and satires, and the writings of the Jewish physician Don
Moses Zarzal, into a _cancionera general_. Like many apostates, he
sought to prove his devotion to the new faith by mocking at and reviling
his former brethren. The attacked were not slow to answer in kind, and
the Christian world of poets and bards joined the latter in deriding the
neophytes. Spanish literature was not the loser by these combats, whose
description belongs to general literary criticism. Lyric poetry, until
then dry, serious, and solemn, was infused by the satirist with flashing
wit and whimsical spirit, and throwing off its connection with the
drama, developed into an independent species of poetry.
The last like the first of Spanish troubadours was a Jew,[44] Antonio di
Montoro (Moro), _el ropero_ (the tailor), of Cordova, of whom a
contemporary says,
"A man of repute and lofty fame;
As poet, he puts many to shame;
Anton di Montoro is his name."
The tailor-poet was exposed to attacks, too. A high and mighty Spanish
_caballero_ addresses him as
"You Cohn, you cur,
You miserable Jew,
You wicked usurer."
It must be admitted that he parries these thrusts with weak, apologetic
appeals, preserved in his _Respuestas_ (Rhymed Answers). He claims his
high-born foe's sympathy by telling him that he has sons, grandchildren,
a poor, old father, and a marriageable daughter. In extenuation of his
cowardice it should be remembered that Antonio di Montoro lived during a
reign of terror, under Ferdinand and Isabella, when his race and his
faith were exposed to most frightful persecution. All the more
noteworthy is it that he had the courage to address the queen in behalf
of his faith. He laments plaintively that despite his sixty years he has
not been able to eradicate all traces of his descent (_reato de su
origen_), and turns his irony against himself:
"Ropero, so sad and so forlorn,
Now thou feelest pain and scorn.
Until sixty years had flown,
Thou couldst say to every one,
'Nothing wicked have I known.'
Christian convert hast thou turned,
_Credo_ thou to say hast learned;
Willing art now bold to view
Plates of ham--no more askew.
Mass thou hearest,
Church reverest,
Genuflexions makest,
Other alien customs takest.
Now thou, too, mayst persecute
Those poor wretches, like a brute."
"Those poor wretches" were his brethren in faith in the fair Spanish
land. With a jarring discord ends the history of the Jews in Spain. On
the ninth of Ab, 1492, three hundred thousand Jews left the land to
which they had given its first and its last troubadour. The irony of
fate directed that at the selfsame time Christopher Columbus should
embark for unknown lands, and eventually reach America, a new world, the
refuge of all who suffer, wherein thought was destined to grow strong
enough "to vanquish arrogance and injustice without recourse to
arrogance and injustice"--a new illustration of the old verse: "Behold,
he slumbereth not, and he sleepeth not--the keeper of Israel."
* * *
A great tournament at the court of the lords of Trimberg, the Franconian
town on the Saale! From high battlements stream the pennons of the noble
race, announcing rare festivities to all the country round. The
mountain-side is astir with knights equipped with helmet, shield, and
lance, and attended by pages and armor-bearers, minnesingers and
minstrels. Yonder is Walther von der Vogelweide, engaged in earnest
conversation with Wolfram von Eschenbach, Otto von Botenlaube, Hildebold
von Schwanegau, and Reinmar von Brennenberg. In that group of notables,
curiously enough, we discern a Jew, whose beautiful features reflect
harmonious soul life.
"Suesskind von Trimberg," they call him, and when the pleasure of the
feast in the lordly hall of the castle is to be heightened by song and
music, he too steps forth, with fearlessness and dignity, to sing of
freedom of thought, to the prevalence of which in this company the
despised Jew owed his admission to a circle of knights and poets:[45]
"O thought! free gift to humankind!
By thee both fools and wise are led,
But who thy paths hath all defined,
A man he is in heart and head.
With thee, his weakness being fled,
He can both stone and steel command,
Thy pinions bear him o'er the land.
O thought that swifter art than light,
That mightier art than tempest's roar!
Didst thou not raise me in thy flight,
What were my song, my minstrel lore,
And what the gold from _Minne's_ store?
Beyond the heights an eagle vaunts,
O bear me to the spirit's haunts!"
His song meets with the approval of the knights, who give generous
encouragement to the minstrel. Raising his eyes to the proud, beautiful
mistress of the castle, he again strikes his lyre and sings:
"Pure woman is to man a crown,
For her he strives to win renown.
Did she not grace and animate,
How mean and low the castle great!
By true companionship, the wife
Makes blithe and free a man's whole life;
Her light turns bright the darkest day.
Her praise and worth I'll sing alway."
The lady inclines her fair head in token of thanks, and the lord of
castle Trimberg fills the golden goblet, and hands it, the mark of
honor, to the poet, who drains it, and then modestly steps back into the
circle of his compeers. Now we have leisure to examine the rare man.--
Ruediger Manesse, a town councillor of Zuerich in the fourteenth century,
raised a beautiful monument to bardic art in a manuscript work, executed
at his order, containing the songs of one hundred and forty poets,
living between the twelfth and the fourteenth century. Among the authors
are kings, princes, noblemen of high rank and low, burgher-poets, and
the Jew Suesskind von Trimberg. Each poet's productions are accompanied
by illustrations, not authentic portraits, but a series of vivid
representations of scenes of knight-errantry. There are scenes of war
and peace, of combats, the chase, and tourneys with games, songs, and
dance. We see the storming of a castle of Love (_Minneburg_)--lovers
fleeing, lovers separated, love triumphant. Heinrich von Veldeke
reclines upon a bank of roses; Friedrich von Hausen is on board a boat;
Walther von der Vogelweide sits musing on a wayside stone; Wolfram von
Eschenbach stands armed, with visor closed, next to his caparisoned
horse, as though about to mount. Among the portraits of the knights and
bards is Suesskind von Trimberg's. How does Ruediger Manesse represent
him? As a long-bearded Jew, on his head a yellow, funnel-shaped hat, the
badge of distinction decreed by Pope Innocent III. to be worn by Jews.
That is all! and save what we may infer from his six poems preserved by
the history of literature, pretty much all, too, known of Suesskind von
Trimberg.
Was it the heedlessness of the compiler that associated the Jew with
this merry company, in which he was as much out of place as a Gothic
spire on a synagogue? Suesskind came by the privilege fairly. Throughout
the middle ages the Jews of Germany were permeated with the culture of
their native land, and were keenly concerned in the development of its
poetry. A still more important circumstance is the spirit of tolerance
and humanity that pervades Middle High German poetry. Wolfram von
Eschenbach based his _Parzival_, the herald of "Nathan the Wise," on the
idea of the brotherhood of man; Walther von der Vogelweide ranged
Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans together as children of the one God;
and Freidank, reflecting that God lets His sun shine on the confessors
of all creeds, went so far as to repudiate the doctrine of the eternal
damnation of Jews. This trend of thought, characterizing both Jews and
Christians, suffices to explain how, in Germany, and at the very time in
which the teachers of the Church were reviling "the mad Jews, who ought
to be hewn down like dogs," it was possible for a Jew to be a
minnesinger, a minstrel among minstrels, and abundantly accounts for
Suesskind von Trimberg's association with knights and ladies. Suesskind,
then, doubtless journeyed with his brother-poets from castle to castle;
yet our imagination would be leading us astray, were we to accept
literally the words of the enthusiastic historian Graetz, and with him
believe that "on vine-clad hills, seated in the circle of noble knights
and fair dames, a beaker of wine at his side, his lyre in his hand, he
sang his polished verses of love's joys and trials, love's hopes and
fears, and then awaited the largesses that bought his daily bread."[46]
Suesskind's poems are not at all like the joyous, rollicking songs his
mates carolled forth; they are sad and serious, tender and chaste. Of
love there is not a word. A minnesinger and a Jew--irreconcilable
opposites! A minnesinger must be a knight wooing his lady-love, whose
colors he wears at the tournaments, and for whose sake he undertakes a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Jew's minstrelsy is a lament for Zion.
In fact what is _Minne_--this service of love? Is it not at bottom the
cult of the Virgin Mary? Is it not, in a subtle, mysterious way, a phase
of Christianity itself? How could it have appealed to the Jew Suesskind?
True, the Jews, too, have an ideal of love in the "Song of Songs": "Lo,
thou art beautiful, my beloved!" it says, but our old sages took the
beloved to be the Synagogue. Of this love Princess Sabbath is the ideal,
and the passion of the "Song of Songs" is separated from German _Minne_
by the great gap between the soul life of the Semite and that of the
Christian German. Unbridled sensuousness surges through the songs rising
to the chambers of noble ladies. Kabbalistic passion glows in the
mysterious love of the Jew. The German minstrel sings of love's
sweetness and pain, of summer and its delights, of winter and its woes,
now of joy and happiness, again of ill-starred fortunes. And what is the
burden of the exiled Hebrew's song? Mysterious allusions, hidden in a
tangle of highly polished, artificial, slow-moving rhymes, glorify, not
a sweet womanly presence, but a fleeting vision, a shadow, whose elusive
charms infatuated the poet in his dreams. Bright, joyous, blithe,
unmeasured is the one; serious, gloomy, chaste, gentle, the other.
Yet, Suesskind von Trimberg was at once a Jew and a minnesinger. Who can
fathom a poet's soul? Who can follow his thoughts as they fly hither and
thither, like the thread in a weaver's shuttle, fashioning themselves
into a golden web? The minnesingers enlisted in love's cause, yet none
the less in war and the defense of truth, and for the last Suesskind von
Trimberg did valiant service. The poems of his earliest period, the
blithesome days of youth, have not survived. Those that we have bear the
stamp of sorrow and trouble, the gifts of advanced years. With
self-contemptuous bitterness, he bewails his sad lot:
"I seek and nothing find,--
That makes me sigh and sigh.
Lord Lackfood presses me,
Of hunger sure I'll die;
My wife, my child go supperless,
My butler is Sir Meagreness."
Suesskind von Trimberg's poems also breathe the spirit of Hebrew
literature, and have drawn material from the legend world of the
Haggada. For the praise of his faithful wife he borrows the words of
Solomon, and the psalm-like rhythm of his best songs recalls the
familiar strains of our evening-prayer:
"Almighty God! That shinest with the sun,
That slumb'rest not when day grows into night!
Thou Source of all, of tranquil peace and joy!
Thou King of glory and majestic light!
Thou allgood Father! Golden rays of day
And starry hosts thy praise to sing unite,
Creator of heav'n and earth, Eternal One,
That watchest ev'ry creature from Thy height!"
Like Santob, Suesskind was poor; like him, he denounced the rich, was
proud and generous. With intrepid candor, he taught knights the meaning
of true nobility--of the nobility of soul transcending nobility of
birth--and of freedom of thought--freedom fettered by neither stone, nor
steel, nor iron; and in the midst of their rioting and feasting, he
ventured to put before them the solemn thought of death. His last
production as a minnesinger was a prescription for a "virtue-electuary."
Then he went to dwell among his brethren, whom, indeed, he had not
deserted in the pride of his youth:
"Why should I wander sadly,
My harp within my hand,
O'er mountain, hill, and valley?
What praise do I command?
Full well they know the singer
Belongs to race accursed;
Sweet _Minne_ doth no longer
Reward me as at first.
Be silent, then, my lyre,
We sing 'fore lords in vain.
I'll leave the minstrels' choir,
And roam a Jew again.
My staff and hat I'll grasp, then,
And on my breast full low,
By Jewish custom olden
My grizzled beard shall grow.
My days I'll pass in quiet,--
Those left to me on earth--
Nor sing for those who not yet
Have learned a poet's worth."
Thus spake the Jewish poet, and dropped his lyre into the stream--in
song and in life, a worthy son of his time, the disciple of Walther von
der Vogelweide, the friend of Wolfram von Eschenbach--disciple and
friend of the first to give utterance, in German song, to the idea of
the brotherhood of man. Centuries ago, he found the longed-for quiet in
Franconia, but no wreath lies on his grave, no stone marks the
wanderer's resting-place. His poems have found an abiding home in the
memory of posterity, and in the circle of the German minnesingers the
Jew Suesskind forms a distinct link.
In a time when the idea of universal human brotherhood seems to be
fading from the hearts of men, when they manifest a proneness to forget
the share which, despite hatred and persecution, the Jew of every
generation has had in German literature, in its romances of chivalry and
its national epics, and in all the spiritual achievements of German
genius, we may with just pride revive Suesskind's memory.--
On the wings of fancy let us return to our castle on the Saale. After
the lapse of many years, the procession of poets again wends its way in
the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The
venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly
ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude
and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing
down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked
hat, the badge of the mediaeval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray
of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance looks into a distant
future. Suesskind von Trimberg, to thee our greeting!
HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY
One of the most remarkable discoveries of the last ten years is that
made in Paris by M. Ernest Renan. He maintains as the result of
scientific research that the Semitic races, consequently also the Jews,
are lacking in humor, in the capacity for laughter. The justice of the
reproach might be denied outright, but a statement enunciated with so
much scientific assurance involuntarily prompts questioning and
investigation.
In such cases the Jews invariably resort to their first text-book, the
Bible, whose pages seem to sustain M. Renan. In the Bible laughing is
mentioned only twice, when the angel promises a son to Sarah, and again
in the history of Samson, judge in Israel, who used foxes' tails as
weapons against the Philistines. These are the only passages in which
the Bible departs from its serious tone.
But classical antiquity was equally ignorant of humor as a distinct
branch of art, as a peculiar attitude of the mind towards the problems
of life. Aristophanes lived and could have written only in the days when
Athenian institutions began to decay. It is personal discomfort and the
trials and harassments of life that drive men to the ever serene, pure
regions of humor for balm and healing. Fun and comedy men have at all
times understood--the history of Samson contains the germs of a
mock-heroic poem--while it was impossible for humor, genuine humor, to
find appreciation in the youth of mankind.