DISPERSION OF THE JEWS.
EXILES TRANSPORTED ON SHIPS--HEART-RENDING SCENES ON BOARD A
SHIP--SET ASHORE ON DESERTED ISLANDS TO STARVE--STARVING JEWS GIVEN
THE CHOICE BETWEEN DEATH AND CHRISTIANITY--MERCIFUL ITALY--CRAFTY
PORTUGAL--TORQUEMADA'S EDICT ECLIPSED--THE EXPULSION OF JEWS
FROM PORTUGAL--A CONDITION--THE KING'S MARRIAGE--CONTRACT--FINAL
EXPULSION.
"The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country--Israel, but the grave."
Thus mournfully closed the last chapter. These are sad words, fraught
with anguish and despair, yet however sad, however despondent and
hopeless, however much of grief, and anguish and despair they convey,
they befell the Jews of Spain, and they fail altogether, when they are
asked to describe the sufferings and miseries which met the unfortunate
exiles, everywhere, in their fruitless search for a quiet spot where
they might live or die in peace. Ships stood ready in the harbors to
carry nearly all of the banished 300,000 Jews whithersoever it suited
the captains best. Into these ships the exiles were literally packed,
crowded together without regard to sex or age, often mother torn from
child, husband from wife, brother from sister, friends from friends,
and, separated on the coast meant separation forever.
Words and the heart fail me to speak of the heart-rending cries of
parent for child, and child for parent; of husband for wife and wife
for husband; or of the wailing and lamenting, as Spain, the land of
their birth, the home of their comfort and luxury and blessings, slowly
faded out of sight and finally disappeared beneath the horizon.
And now begins a chapter in the history of Israel's suffering so
frightful, so revolting that the pen and tongue recoil from dwelling
upon it in detail. Before these sufferings, all that had been hitherto
endured, faded into insignificance. And again it is avarice, and
rapacity that bring these miseries upon them. The possession of the
gold brought on their former sufferings, and now it is the want of it
that opens their present miseries. Thou miserable gold! Whether ally or
whether foe, ever thou wast the cause of Israel's untold sufferings!
Because of thee, they had to purchase life, and because of thee they
had to suffer death! The expulsion edict had prohibited the Jews,
under penalty of death, from having money in their possession at their
departure. And the Jews obeyed the mandate. What cared they for money
when they could not enjoy it in their beloved Spain? What cared they
for enjoyment, or even for life, when it was to be lived in distant
and hostile lands? But the pirate captains and their heartless crews
felt convinced, that the Jews must have large sums of money sewed up
in their clothes, or concealed on their persons. No sooner were they
on high sea, when men and women and children were ordered on deck,
commanded to disrobe publicly, regardless of innocence of youth and
modesty of sex. Many a virgin and many a youth, many a husband and
many a wife dared to resist, not that they had money concealed, but
for shame sake, and the raging billows rocked them into their eternal
sleep for their resistance. Disappointed in their search, their thirst
for gold was the more excited. Body after body they ripped open,
before the eyes of the unfortunate exiles, in the belief that they
must have swallowed their gold and precious jewels. And disappointed
in this, there followed a scene, a more detestable and dastardly one
the sun never shone upon. When the sailors had finally satiated their
brutal lusts upon the innocent and helpless, and faint from terror and
torture, and when the still surviving victims had been made to cleanse
the ships from every trace of the blood of their friends and kin, they
were seized and dropped into the ocean without a pang of conscience,
and as unconcernedly as if the great God had created Jews for no other
purpose but to appease the beastly appetites of inhuman sailors, and
serve as food for the fishes of the sea.
And all this for the glory of Christianity! All this in obedience to
the teachings of the Church! Heaven! Who can name the crimes that have
been perpetrated in Thy name? What seas of human blood have been shed
in the name of Christ, of Mercy and Love and Peace and Good Will!
The Church had steeled the heart against every sentiment of pity
and mercy. Feelings of compunction of remorse in the perpetration of
crimes against the Jews, were taught to be the crime, and not the crime
itself. The tear of sympathy wrung out by the sight of Jewish suffering
was taught to to be an offense to be expiated by humiliating penance.
Any one, it was taught, might conscientiously kill a Jew wherever
he had an opportunity. The taste of blood, once gratified, begat a
cannibal appetite in the people, and the more it was satisfied the more
intense became its thirst for blood. Their zeal was not altogether
unselfish; every Jew accused of heresy, or killed, cancelled--so
the Church taught for the accuser one hundred days from his future
purgatory punishment.
Another captain was somewhat more merciful; whether he had to expiate
some of his tenderheartness by humiliating penance, ecclesiastical
history has neglected to record. He set all his exiles on the shore
upon a desert coast, leaving the weak and the suffering pitilessly
a prey to wild beasts and to starvation. One of these unfortunate
deserted exiles who survived, tells us how he saw his wife perish
before his eyes, how he himself fainted with exhaustion, and upon
awakening beheld his two children dead by his side. For weeks, roots
and grass furnished their food. Each day brought fresh miseries and
fresh graves. These were days such as Shakespeare speaks of:
"Each new morn--
New widows howl; new orphans cry; new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face."
Mothers, unable to bear the pining of their children, struck them dead,
and then took their own life. Whole families folded themselves in
loving embrace, and while thus embracing ended their life with their
own hand. When the wild beasts came upon them, the exiles plunged into
the sea, and stood shivering in the water for hours and hours, until
the beasts retreated. Wearily they made their way onward, until, at
last, they beheld the joyous sight of human settlements. Exhausted,
they lay along the coasts, wasted by suffering and disease, and half
demented from starvation. Down to the shore came the priests, and
holding a crucifix in the one hand, and provisions in the other, the
unfortunate Jews were given the choice between Christ and starvation.
The flesh was stronger than the spirit. They begged for the bread,
and ate at it ravenously, after the few drops of baptismal water had
cleansed their soul from the foulest stains of infidelity. "Thus," says
a pious Castilian historian, "thus the calamities of these poor blind
creatures proved in the end an excellent remedy, that God made use
of, to unseal their eyes, so that, renouncing their ancient heresies,
they became faithful followers of the cross." How many hundred days of
purgatory punishment were cancelled for this pious utterance of the
Castilian, History again neglected to record.
Another ship load was cast out by a barbarous captain upon the African
coast, where the African savages pounced down upon them, and abandoned
themselves to frightful cruelties. The men and youths they sold into
slavery, the defenseless women were brutally ravished; the children
at their mothers' breasts, the aged and the sick and the infirm were
mutilated and tortured and murdered by the thousands.
Another ship load landed in the harbor of Genoa. A graphic picture of
their sufferings is given by a Genoese historian, an eye witness of the
scenes, which he describes as follows:
"No one," says he, "could behold the sufferings of the Jewish exiles
unmoved. A great many perished of hunger, especially those of tender
years. Mothers, with scarcely enough strength to support themselves,
carried their famished infants in their arms, and died with them.
Many fell victims to the cold, others to intense thirst, while the
unaccustomed distress, incident to a sea voyage, aggravated their
maladies. I will not enlarge on the cruelty and the avarice which they
frequently experienced from the masters of the ships which transported
them from Spain. Some were murdered to gratify their cupidity, others
forced to sell their children for the expenses of the passage. They
arrived in Genoa in crowds, but were not suffered to tarry there long,
by reason of the ancient law, which interdicted the Jewish traveler
from a longer residence than three days. They were allowed, however,
to refit their vessels and to recruit themselves for some days from
the fatigue of the voyage. One might have taken them for spectres, so
emaciated were they, so cadaverous in their aspect, and with eyes so
sunken; they differed in nothing from the dead, except in the power of
motion, which, indeed, they scarcely retained. Many fainted and expired
on the mole, which, being completely surrounded by the sea, was the
only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched emigrants. The infection, bred
by such a swarm of dead and dying persons, was not at once perceived;
but when winter broke up, ulcers began to make their appearance, and
the malady, which lurked for a long time in the city, broke out into
the plague in the following year."[42]
[42] Prescott: "Ferdinand and Isabella," Volume I, chapter
xvii.
* * * * *
More fortunate were the exiles that landed upon the shores of Naples.
Its king, _Ferdinand I._, was a prudent sovereign, a distinguished
scholar, and, unlike the other rulers of Europe, he had succeeded in
keeping his power above that of the Church, and his heart free from
the inhumanity and bigotry of the clergy. He opened his kingdom to the
Jews, made the great Abarbanel, formerly in the service of Isabella,
of Castile, one of his cabinet officers, and personally defended the
Jews from an attack of the clergy and of the populace, who held the
presence of the Jews accountable for the plague which was then raging,
as elsewhere in Europe, in Naples.
Equally as fortunate were those who landed upon the coasts where
the Turks held dominion. Sultan _Bajazet_ received them cheerfully,
provided for them humanely, and directed their intellect and industry
into useful channels. "Do they call this Ferdinand, of Spain, a
prudent prince," asks the Sultan, "who can thus impoverish his own
kingdom and enrich ours?"
Nearly 150,000 souls made their way, by land, to Portugal, whose king,
_John II._, dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to
allow his greed to triumph over his creed. He granted them a passage
through his dominion on their way to Africa, and the permission of an
eight months' stay in his realm, in consideration of a tax of eight
dollars a head, which immense sum he levied from the native Portuguese
Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella threatened, and Torquemada incited the
Portuguese clergy, but _John II._ had over a million of dollars to
quicken his conscience and to wage war if necessary, and expecting it,
he instantly put such of the Jewish exiles who were manufacturers of
arms and miners to work. But his clemency was of short duration. It
soon gave away to the most frightful era of the exiles' sufferings.
When the news reached the homeless exiles of the atrocious crimes
inflicted upon their brethren on their way to the African coasts, by
inhuman captains and heartless crews, seeing nothing but cruel death
before them, whether going or whether remaining, they preferred meeting
death in Portugal, to exposing themselves to the inhumanity and beastly
lusts and tortures of barbarous pirate sailors and African savages, and
listlessly awaiting death, and praying for it, they remained after the
time purchased for their stay had passed away. To their misfortune the
plague broke out in Portugal and raged with deathly fury. Immediately
the church arose, held the Jews responsible for the visitation of the
plague, and lashed the populace into a relentless fury, because of
the visitation of the plague, and the breach of contract on the part
of the Jews. The king's creed awoke again simultaneously with the
re-awakening of his greed. He issued an edict which threw even that of
Torquemada into the shade. All Jewish children below fourteen years
of age were torn from their parents' arms, dragged into the church,
baptized; those under three years of age were given to Christians,
to receive a Christian education, or in other words to be raised as
slaves; those between three and ten years of age, were put on board of
a ship and conveyed to the newly discovered, unwholesome island of St.
Thomas, called "_Ilhas perdidas_," "the isles of perdition," which was
colonized by Portuguese condemned criminals, to fare there as best they
could. Those between ten and fourteen years were sold as slaves. Then,
indeed, the cup of the their affliction was full to the brim. It was a
stern truth which Lenau uttered, when he said:
"Die Kirche weiss die Schmerzen zu verwalten
Das Herz bis in die Wurzel aufzuspalten."
The Jews have experienced fully the unequaled skill of the Church
in administering pain. Mothers cast themselves at the feet of the
tyrants and pitifully begged to be taken with their babes; they were
heartlessly thrust aside. Hundreds of mothers mad with despair, ran
behind the ships as they carried off the idols of their heart, and
perished in the waves. The serene fortitude, with which the exile
people had borne so many and such grievous calamities, gave way at
last, and was replaced by the wildest paroxysms of despair. Piercing
shrieks of anguish filled the land. Childless and broken-hearted
they now sought to leave the land, but they were told that they had
forfeited their right, and they were given the choice between baptism
and slavery. Thousands, after enduring all they did, after leaving
their beloved Spain and all their wealth and ease, submitted to baptism
now, in the hope of being reunited with their children. Thousands were
sold as slaves, yet prior to their being sold, they were submitted
to tortures, cruelties, outrages too revolting, too repulsive, too
heart-rending to be here narrated.
Terror seized upon the native Portuguese Jews, when they helplessly
beheld the cruelties to which their Spanish brethren were subjected.
They knew they, themselves, could not escape the wrath of the Church
much longer, and they thought of flight, and well had it been for
them had they made their escape then. While they were making secret
preparations, John II. died, 1495. He had been afflicted, on the very
day when the ships, laden with the Jewish exile children, set sail for
the isle of the condemned criminals, with a strange, painful malady,
and had lingered ever since.
His own promising son and successor preceded him into the grave. His
cousin _Manoel_ ascended the throne. He was the counterpart of his
predecessor, kind hearted, a promoter of learning, eager to further
the interests of his country by discoveries abroad and by commerce
at home. Immediately he disfranchised the Jewish exiles sold into
slavery, promised to recall the condemned children, and issued an
edict, in which he commanded kind treatment to the Jews, and prohibited
accusations against them. In their great joy the native Portuguese Jews
sent an embassy to him, offering him large sums of money, voluntarily
as a token of their gratitude. The king thanked them, reassured them of
his good will, but refused to be paid for human kindness.
But, again had destiny decreed that a woman was to play an ignoble part
in the tragic history of the Jews. A marriage was proposed between
Manoel of Portugal, and the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, of
Spain. Manoel was rejoiced with the proposal. Already he saw himself in
the near future King of United Spain and Portugal, and of the entire
New World. But Satan stepped between, dipped his pen in gall, and
writing the marriage contract, demanded as one of the conditions, the
immediate expulsion from Portugal of all the Jews, both natives and
exiles.
The king hesitated. The fanatical daughter of fanatical parents
persisted, argument made her more vehement. Torquemada might well
be proud of his pupil--the possession of vast empires, and of the
most powerful crown of Europe tempted, and the tempter conquered. He
had purchased his right to the princess of Spain at a sacrifice of
thousands and thousands of lives, and with the destruction of the very
pillars of his nation's prosperity.
On the 30th of November, 1497, the marriage contract was signed, and
on the 20th of the following month appeared the edict of the expulsion
of the Jews from Portugal.--The scenes of mourning and wailing and
heart-rending cries which resounded in Spain, re-echoed in Portugal,
only the more painfully, because of the terrible knowledge they had
since acquired of the meaning of the word "Expulsion."
Manoel soon regretted his signing away his most industrious, most
intelligent and most prosperous citizens. But the marriage contract
held him fast, and the Spanish queen kept a watchful eye on him, and
Torquemada upon both. The prospective vast empire, and the Spanish
crown still dazzled his eyes. He planned a strategy. He thought he
could force the parents to embrace Christianity, and to remain, if he
once succeeded in getting all their children into his power, and into
the Christian faith. He gave secret orders for the repetition of the
atrocious crime of having all children under fourteen years of age
seized from their mothers' bosom and fathers' arm, dispersed through
the kingdom to be baptised and brought up as Christians. The secret
became known. Portugal again re-echoed the wails of stricken ones.
Frantic mothers threw their children into deep wells or rivers. Mothers
were known to take their babes from their breast and tear them limb
from limb, rather than to resign them to Christians. They would rather
know the bodies of their children in the grave, and their released
spirit in Heaven, than have them adopt a faith into which Satan sent
his friends for their schooling. With all the parents' opposition the
king's order was executed. Many accepted baptism, but not enough to
please the king, and to wreak vengeance upon them for thwarting his
wishes, he revoked his edict, seized all who had not yet fled and sold
them as slaves.
But Israel was not yet forsaken. Italy, which had now become the seat
of European learning, and had become very prosperous through the
commercial and industrial zeal of the Spanish Jews, to whom it had
offered refuge, and also Turkey, bade the Portuguese fugitives a hearty
welcome. What Spain and Portugal rejected, they knew how to value.
Even some of the Popes, Clement VII and Paul III. (I rejoice to give
them credit for it), favored their stay in Italy. They had learned
to appreciate the services of the Jews. The flourishing Italian and
Turkish Jewish congregations ransomed their brethren, and enabled them
to settle in Ancona, Pesaro, Livorno, Naples, Venice, Ferrara and
elsewhere, and the blessing of God rested upon whatever city the Jews
were permitted to settle.
Many of the Portuguese Jews settled, and became prosperous, in the
Indies, in Southern France and in Hamburg. Others settled in the
Netherlands, and became especially prosperous in Holland. From Holland
large numbers of the descendants of the Portuguese and Spanish exiles
entered England, through the intercession of _Menasse ben Israel_ with
Oliver Cromwell, and from England and from the Indies and from Italy
they entered the United States, into the land where tyranny is known
no more, and persecution is fettered fast. Here dwell Christian and Jew
side by side, peacefully, lovingly, aiding each other, uniting with
each other in the blessed work for which religion exists on earth, and
in the spreading of the great principles of political and religious
liberty. Here, where Christian extends the hand of fellowship unto
Jew, and the heart of the Jew beats as loyally American as that of the
Christian, solemnly they pledge:
"We swear to be a nation of true brothers,
Never to part in danger or in death,"
--_Schiller's "Tell"_
[Illustration]
ISABEL LA CATOLICA.
In den Raeumen der Alhambra
Wandelt Spaniens fromme Herrin
Isabella, die geruehmt wird
Als "katholische Regentin".
Wandelt durch die Zauberhallen,
Die ein Maerchenglanz umspielet,
Und befriedigt laechelnd laesst sie
Auf den Thron sich langsam nieder.
Denkt voll Selbstgefuehl des Seufzers
Jenes letzten Maurenherschers:
"A Dios Granada!" rief er,
"Ach, ich muss mich von dir wenden!"
Denket jenes alten Stammes,
Dem Vernichtung sie geschworen,
Jenes hartverstockten Stammes,
Den einst Gott in Lieb' erkoren.
Was sich zaehlte zu den Ketzern
Musste ihr Gebiet verlassen,
Die "katholische Regentin"
Laesst nur Einen Glauben walten.
Froelich schaut sie auf die Staette,
Wo Columbus einst gestanden,
Der ihr neues Land entdeckte,
Ihre Herrschaft zu entfalten.
Da erscheint vor ihr die Tochter,
Gleichfalls Isabel geheissen,
Die den Gatten den geliebten.
Still beklagt im Trauerkleide.
"Sei willkommen mir zur Stunde!"
Sprach die Mutter froher Weise,
"Eines Fuersten Liebeswerben
Hab ich heut dir mitzutheilen.
Portugals beruehmter Koenig
Legt sein Reichsland dir zu Fuessen,
Fuer ihn Spricht sein Ritterwesen,
Fuer ihn sprechen wicht'ge Gruende."
Tief erschrocken hoert die Wittwe
Ihrer Mutter kurze Rede,
Deren Gruende, so betonet,
Stets im Rathschluss mussten gelten.
Isabella, unbeweglich,
Faehrt im gleichen Tone weiter:
"Manoel muss mir geloben,
Alle Juden zu vertreiben.
Portugal und Spanien seien
Eines Sinnes, Eines Glaubens,
Toleranz ist unvertraeglich
Mit dem Einen, wahren Glauben."
Diese Worte machen Eindruck
Auf die glaeubig fromme Wittwe,
Und zur Ehre Gottes will sie
Manoel in Lieb sich widmen.
Voller Eifer richtet selbst sie
An den Werber zarte Zeilen:
"Soll ich dein Gebiet betreten,
Must die Juden du vertreiben."
Manoel, der kluge Koenig,
Der mit Milde sonst regieret--
Isabellas Worte zuenden,
Keine Zeit will er verlieren.
Seine Liebe macht ihn grausam,
Unbesonnen folgt er Weibern,
Ja, noch ueberbieten will er
Sie, wenn's geht, an Grausamkeiten.
Den Befehl erlaesst er schleunig.
Dass bis zu bestimmtem Tage
Die Bekenner des "Allein'gen"
Alle sein Gebiet verlassen.
Alle Kinder die der Jahre vierzehn
Noch nicht zaehlen, soll man geben
Frommen Christen zur Erziehung,
Dass sie fromme Christen werden.
Vor dem Jammerschrei der Muetter
Sucht sich Manoel zu retten,
Blickend auf das zarte Bildniss,
Gleichend einem holden Engel.
Isabella laesst vergessen
All das Leid, das er veruebet,
Und mit Liebesgluthen eilt er,
Seine Gattin heimzufuehren.
Schon das Hochzeitsfest ist truebe,
Ploetzlich starb der Kronprinz Spaniens,
Und mit Trauer im Gemuethe
Zieh'n nach Evora die Gatten.
Manoel, dir drohet mehr noch:
Eh' ein kurzes Jahr entschwindet
Wirst du deine heissgeliebte
Isabel als Leiche finden.
Tief bewegt steht vor der Bahre
Portugals beruehmter Koenig,
Ihn erschreckt das Schrei'n des Kindes,
Das ihm Isabel geschenket.
Ob er jetzt wohl hoert das Schreien
Jener Muetter, angsterfuellet?
Das Geschrei der armen Kinder,
Denen man geraubt die Muetter?!
Tiefgebeugt steht vor der Bahre
Isabella, "die Katholische",
Bruetend, sinnend, bleichen Blickes,
Findet sie jetzt keine Worte.
Aus dem Trauerkreise zieht sie
Nach Granada mit dem Kinde,
Das in ihrem herben Schmerze
Ihr als einziger Trost geblieben.
In den Raeumen der Alhambra
Wandelt Spaniens fromme Herrin
Isabella, die geruehmt wird
Als "katholische Regentin".
Wandelt durch die Zauberhallen,
Die ein Maerchenglanz umspielet,
Und mit kummervollem Herzen
Laesst sie auf den Thron sich nieder.
Denket da des schweren Leides,
Dass sie Schlag auf Schlag betroffen.
Und es loesen sich die Seufzer.
Weinend sitzt sie auf dem Throne.
Einz'ger Sohn, des Thrones Erbe,
Musst' so frueh ich dich verlieren,
Isabella, liebste Tochter,
Musst' so frueh ich dich verlieren!
Ach, Maria, meine Tochter,
Musst' so frueh ich dich verlieren,
Einsam wandelt Katharina,
Die vom Manne sich geschieden.
Meine Leiden mehrt Johanna,
Aermstes meiner guten Kinder.
Ihres Gatten treulos Treiben
Hat ihr den Verstand verwirret".
Also seufzet Isabella,
Seufzet auf dem stolzen Throne,
Da erscheint vor ihr ein Diener,
Doch er zoegert mit dem Worte.
Boeses ahnend ruft die Koenigin:
"Welches Unglueck wirst du melden?
Sprich nur, ohne mich zu schonen,
Haertres kann mich nicht mehr treffen".
"Don Miguel, das herz'ge Soehnchen,
Den in Ihrer grossen Liebe
Ihre Majestaet als Kronprinz nannten,
Eben ist er sanft verschieden".
Lautlos hoert es Isabella,
Die fuer Gott nur stets gehandelt--
Und mit frommer Duldermiene
Schleicht sie wankend aus dem Saale.
[Illustration]