=3. Accession of Richard.=――In 1189, Richard the Lion-hearted, the

hero of so many romantic stories, ascended the English throne. The Jews,

who had been growing more and more unpopular all through the long reign

of Henry II., thought that the accession of this, the most hopeful of

his sons, might bring about a favourable change in their position. So

to the coronation ceremony there came a little body of Jews, selected

by their co-religionists as representatives, from every town in England

where Jews had settled. The members of this deputation were all of

the richest and most respected class. They were grandly dressed, and

were the bearers of rich gifts, which were to be presented to the

king in the name, and with the loyal congratulations, of the whole

Jewish community in England. They never got the chance of making

their contemplated pretty speeches, nor of offering their handsome

propitiatory presents. Possibly the sight of so much wealth, brought

as a free-will offering, suggested the idea of plunder. If Jews could

give so generously, unasked, what might they not give with a little

pressure? In this way reasoned the populace, and the result was that

the deputation never reached the palace. It was pitilessly set upon and

robbed, and one of the number, a Jew from York, named Benedict, was so

badly hurt in the course of the rioting, that he reached home only to

die of his wounds. In his fright, this Benedict had even submitted to

be baptized, but the poor man’s cowardice availed to save neither his

life nor his fortune. Perhaps his ‘conversion’ became the means of

attracting more attention to him and his neighbours, for although the

London outrage was rivalled in various parts of the kingdom, it was

at York, on this occasion, that the Jews suffered most of all. History

is said to repeat itself, and certainly the story of the fortress of

Masada, in 72,[26] has a grim counterpart in that of the castle of York

a thousand years later. In that terrible coronation month, the Jews

of York had shut up their houses, and tremblingly taken refuge in the

castle. The mob surrounded the walls, and resistance became hopeless.

Then the Jews of York, in wild fear of the English, like the Jews

of Masada in wild fear of the Romans, set fire to the unsheltering

walls of the fortress, and headed by their Rabbi, and by an eloquent

co-religionist named Joachin, killed first their wives and children,

and then themselves. Thus the English in the eleventh century, like

the Romans in the first, conquered a citadel, to find it garrisoned

by corpses. Some say 500, and some say 1,500 Jews were massacred in

York alone, in that year 1189. A commission of inquiry was subsequently

held, and some punishments were inflicted on the ringleaders. But

not on account of the massacres. In the course of the sacking of the

Jews’ houses, various deeds and titles to property, of which the value

had not been recognisable at a glance, had been burnt or destroyed.

The owners were presumably dead. By the law of the land in those

days, all such ownerless property reverted to the Crown. The massacre

of the missing owners was a fault that leant to virtue’s side, but

the careless destruction of the missing records was fraud on the

exchequer――a very grave crime indeed.

=4. Treatment by Richard.=――Richard, probably, showed himself

altogether averse from such riotous proceedings. He had lost his

coronation presents through it, and the intermittent plundering which

went on during his crusading expeditions, he must have reflected, was

all a distinct and further loss to the treasury. On his return from

captivity he put the whole thing on a legal footing. The Jews were

registered as chattels of the Crown, and a special court in the king’s

exchequer was set apart for the management of Jewish matters. The

amount of every Jew’s property throughout the kingdom was ascertained

as nearly as it was possible, was duly entered on the books, and

then a scale of tolls and taxes was drawn up in accordance with this

list, and an efficient staff of Jews and Christians appointed to

act as responsible collectors. It was a hard system, but it was open

and to-be-reckoned-upon robbery, and the Jews were infinitely the

gainers by it. Richard was not cruel, nor capricious, nor persecuting.

He constituted them ‘his Jews,’ and it was his interest, and it

probably was his pleasure, to protect them, and to permit no extra nor

unauthorised plunder at the hands of priests or barons or populace. It

was unfortunate for the Jews of England that Richard only reigned ten

years.

=5. Under John.=――The dissolute, unprincipled, and untrustworthy

John of Anjou succeeded his brother in 1199. During Richard’s frequent

absence from England, John had plotted for the crown, and had found

Jews very useful in supplying the wherewith for him to keep up the

character he had assumed of a liberal, open-handed prince. He had been

lavish in profession and in promises of good-will, and the grateful

Jews had sought by good offices to keep and deserve the favour of their

future sovereign. Lulled into a sense of security by his fair speeches,

they had even persuaded many of their rich Continental co-religionists

to come to England, and in the first years of John’s reign, so

encouraged, the Jews began to hide their money a little less, and to

enjoy it a little more. It may be that in their security they were even

a trifle ostentatious. And it is possible that the populace had grown

irritated at the royal favour shown to the despised Jews, and somewhat

jealous of the wealth they now displayed, and of which, for many years

past, royalty alone had reaped the benefit. Or it may be that such

favour as John had bestowed was wholly capricious, and that he had

played with his victims as a cat with the mouse she means to devour.

At any rate, his mood changed, and in 1210, quite suddenly, without

warning or provocation of any sort, all the Jews in the kingdom were

imprisoned, and their goods declared to be confiscated. Those who

would not disclose the whereabouts of their treasures were tortured,

and John is said to have himself stood over a certain Jew in Bristol,

seeing tooth after tooth extracted, till a ransom was agreed on for the

victim’s right to retain the two or three that were left in his head.

CHAPTER XXV.

JEWS IN ENGLAND (_continued_).

(1216‒1290.)

=1. The Next Fifty Years.=――Throughout the minority and during the

long reign of Henry III. (1216‒1272) things grew worse and worse for

the Jews. The ‘_Hep, Hep_,’ had not sounded so often for the last

century without leaving echoes. Even when and where the connection of

the cry with the crusades had grown somewhat faint, it kept its full

and terrible significance for the Jews. Church, and State, and people,

all seemed to unite in oppressing them, and each to have its own

separate cause and justification for oppression. The Church, which

had grown fierce in its fanaticism, hated Jews simply as Jews, and

persecuted them religiously. The State regarded them as a gold mine,

to be worked as profitably, and with as little personal or familiar

contact, as was possible. The populace, who were necessarily brought

into closer relations with Jews than were either the priests or the

barons, looked on them with a curious mixture of unwilling admiration

and superstitious dislike. They could not but recognise that the

superior intelligence and thrift of the despised Jews were at least

among the causes which contributed to their greater wealth. It is not

pleasant to have to acknowledge that one’s social inferiors are morally

and intellectually superior to one’s self. The Jews of England at

this period were very different from the Jews of Spain, but there are

degrees of difference; low as they had fallen from the level of what

Jews should be, they were yet far less ignorant and superstitious than

were most of their neighbours. They prayed to God instead of invoking

saints, and they trusted in temperance and cleanliness, rather than in

doubtful ‘relics,’ to ward off physical ills. Their knowledge, however,

like their religion, was often another danger to the Jews. If they

tried to teach the child of some Christian neighbour, or succeeded

in healing a sick person, or in helping a poor one, any such kindly

ministration was more likely to be looked on with suspicion than

with gratitude. Jews were compelled, too, in this reign to wear a

distinctive dress, and how could the wearers of a white badge[27] move

about among their fellows without a sense of aloofness which must have

made any familiar and wholesome intercourse impossible? And often,

in order that the royal treasury might be kept well filled, and the

‘protection’ of the king secured, the Jews were forced to prey upon the

people. Their neighbours could not have liked them if they would, and

thus, Jews were quite alone in the kingdom, left to themselves, without

the chance of making a friend among the populace, or the priests, or

the nobles.

=2. The Caorsini.=――Besides enmity and prejudice from Church and

state, Jews had, what might be called, professional enemies in a class

of money-lenders called the Caorsini. The Caorsini were originally

bankers and collectors of the Pope’s revenue, and lived in the town

of Cahors, in Italy. Then some of them came to England, and gradually

developed into a regular and recognised craft of dealers in money. This,

in a sense, was poaching on Jewish ground, and it was hard upon the

Jews, because the Caorsini were not fair rivals in an equal and open

competition. The Caorsini had the advantage in position, being, as it

were, licensed dealers in money; and they had, further, no unpopularity

of race to handicap them. Jews, to cover the grave risks to which their

property was always exposed, had often to ask a higher rate of interest

than contented the Caorsini. This angered the customers of both, and

the competition introduced an unhealthy trade jealousy and distrust

between the rival money dealers, which state of things pressed, of

course, most heavily on those who were already burdened and weakened

with the weight of prejudice.

=3. The First Jewish M.P.s.=――The constant quarrels between Henry and

his barons exhausted the treasury, and new means of raising money had

to be hit upon. The old accusation of crucifying Christian children

was revived, and little Hugh of Lincoln served as pretext for a

pretty extensive robbery. But this well-worn device was not wholly

satisfactory, being necessarily confined to one locality at a time.

In 1240 an entirely new mode was found of raising supplies. A Jewish

Parliament was summoned. Writs were issued in due form, no reasons

being given for the extraordinary proceeding. The larger towns were to

return six Jewish representatives, and the smaller, two. When the newly

elected members met, they were bluntly told their business, which was

to collect, without the smallest delay, 20,000 marks[28] from among

their co-religionists to replenish the royal treasury. The Parliament

was then dissolved. These members, of the date 1240, are the very first

Jewish M.P.’s in England.

=4. Another Device for raising Money.=――The supply of Jewish wealth

still proved unequal to the constant demand for it, and a little

later, Henry, who must have had a really original mind, thought

out an entirely new scheme. The Jews, we must remember, were, by

constitutional law, ‘his Jews.’ He had got money out of his property

by every conceivable way known to conscienceless holders of property;

now, why should he not sell it? Profits might be turned over afresh in

fresh hands. So actually King Henry III. sold his Jews to his brother

Richard, receiving 5,000 marks as their price, and, by the terms of

this remarkable bargain, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, became the legal

owner, with ‘all rights reserved,’ of all the Jews in the kingdom. The

terms of the sale would seem, however, to have considered the property

rather as leasehold than as freehold in its nature, for presently we

find the king reclaiming ‘his Jews,’ and subsequently selling them

again to the Caorsini.

=5. Under Edward I.=――In 1272 the long, cruel reign of Henry ended;

and if, like Herod, he had desired that the sound of Jewish weeping

should be heard at his funeral, he could hardly have devised surer

means of securing that satisfaction than his latest statute afforded.

By this statute it was decreed that all real property possessed by

Jews, in the form of land or houses, was to be wrested from them,

and any mortgages held by them on securities of this sort were to be

formally given up and confiscated to the Crown. Edward I. confirmed the

unrighteous statute, and to show some aptitude for persecution beyond

that of imitation, he made an order that the distinctive badge worn by

the Jews, and hitherto white in colour, should henceforward be yellow.

=6. Some Ironical Legislation.=――The State at this period showed also

some care, although it must be confessed of a somewhat unpractical

kind, for the moral condition of the Jewish portion of its property.

The Jewish habit of ‘usury’ is gravely condemned by the statute-book

of this date, and advice offered that manufacturing and agricultural

arts should be followed by Jews instead of, or besides, their all

but universal pursuit of retail trade. At the same time new taxes

were imposed, and the old statute, which forbade Jews to hold ‘real’

property of any sort, remained unrepealed. So the good advice was

somewhat ironical, and the concern expressed for outraged morality

sounds a trifle hypocritical. For how were men who might not hold an

inch of land to feel any interest in sowing and in planting it? and

how could artisans or labourers, working at a small wage, earn a tithe

of the tolls and the taxes which alone gained for Jews the right of

existing at all? Whilst legislation compelled men to dwell apart and

to dress apart, and claimed, at its own caprice, an unjust share of

their earnings, it forced such men into mean occupations, and made it

difficult to them to follow even these in an upright and honourable

fashion.

=7. Dishonest Jews.=――In truth, the terrible pressure put on the Jews

for money, drove many of them into dishonest ways of obtaining it.

The vast sums continually demanded could not possibly be raised in any

legitimate way. In their dreadful straits, Jews clipped and adulterated

the coin of the realm. Although, in strict equity, those who called

for money, which they knew quite well could not be honestly come by,

really caused this crime, and were as guilty in some respects as those

who perpetrated it, still, two wrongs never yet made one right, and

no amount of poverty is any justification whatever for dishonesty. It

is better to starve than to steal, to be shunned than to cheat. There

is, therefore, no cause for complaint in the fact that fraudulent

practices, whenever discovered, were punished in the severest manner.

In November 1279, all the Jews in the kingdom were arrested, on a

tolerably substantial charge against some of them, of having clipped

and adulterated the coin. Many non-Jews were likewise arrested, but

their punishments, when found guilty, were of a much less severe sort

than were pronounced upon the Jews. On this occasion, eighty Jews were

executed in London alone.

=8. Efforts at Conversion.=――Although their wealth was the chief

interest which Jews possessed for those in authority, yet their

conversion was always a secondary object, and was never quite lost

sight of. It served sometimes as the excuse, and sometimes as the

occasion, for a little extra persecution. During the reign of Edward I.,

Pope Honorius IV. issued a bull denouncing usury and fraud, which, all

men would agree with him, are practices quite justly to be denounced.

But Pope Honorius went further; he denounced them as _Jewish_ practices,

and took the occasion to speak strongly against the Jewish religion

generally and the Talmud in particular. This bull of his was issued

especially for the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the

English clergy, and it was supplemented by an English statute of about

the same date, which compelled Jews, under penalties, to attend places

where Dominican friars preached proselytising sermons. Whether these

sermons checked usury or promoted conversion may be doubted, but such

compulsory attendances must in any case have provoked bad feeling, and,

further, put the Jews into a false position with the priests and the

populace.

=9. Expulsion of Jews from England.=――At last the wrongs and miseries

of the Jews in England reached their climax. Heavy pressure from his

clergy was brought to bear upon King Edward, and towards the end of the

year 1290, he signed an edict which ordered every Jew in his kingdom,

under penalty of being hanged if he remained, to leave England on

November 1. All debts owing to Jews were cancelled, and only strictly

portable property was to be carried away by them. Homes had to be

broken up; old folks, sick folks, little children, to all of whom

roughness and shifts and changes might mean agony or death, were

not considered. The decree was absolute and unconditional, and none

were exempt from it. King Edward was not wholly responsible for the

barbarous act, nor personally vindictive in its execution, yet it seems

to have been carried out with circumstances of peculiar cruelty. The

safe-conducts granted by the king were not always respected. One party

of refugees was left stranded on a desolate part of the coast at the

mercy of the incoming tide, whilst the master of the vessel they had

chartered sailed away with their poor belongings. Of the 15,000 or

16,000 Jews (accounts vary as to the exact numbers) who were expelled

from England in 1290, very many perished on their outward bound

journey, some by accident and illness, some, it may be feared, by more

or less of direct cruelty. The survivors were deposited at the nearest

foreign ports. Thence, they made their way inland to such places in

Central Europe as still permitted Jews to lead sad lives under State

‘protection.’

BOOK III.

100‒1500.

STARLIGHT.

לְךָ יוֹם אַף לְךָ לָיְלָה

PSALM lxxiv. 16.

‘_Then stars arise, and the night is holy._’

CHAPTER XXVI.

CONCERNING JEWISH LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN.

=1. Starlight.=――The darkness which closed in upon the Jews when

Jerusalem fell, in the year 70, lasted for 1,500 years. Through all

those long centuries the clouds of prejudice and of persecution hung

low and lowering over all the countries in which Jews dwelt, and it

was only in Spain, and for a comparatively short interval, that there

was any break in the gloom. Through all those centuries, the race was

outcast and alien, under the lash of the Church and under the ban of

the State. Church and State changed faiths and names, old dynasties

and old beliefs gave place to new, boundaries were shifted, and

civilisation took fresh forms, but the darkness that had fallen on

the Jews when Titus ruled over pagan Rome, never lifted in all those

centuries, save for that brief period during the Mahomedan occupation

of Spain. In the dense gloom, the word of God was, to His ‘witnesses,’

in literal truth what David had declared it should be, ‘a lamp unto

their feet.’ It did not keep them from stumbling, but it saved them

from being utterly lost and cast away in the terrible thick darkness.

Burdens were heavy, and a ‘lamp unto the feet’ was sorely needed, for

men stooped under their loads, and their eyes looked mostly earthwards.

But also, from time to time, through that long night of sorrow, stars,

as it were, rose on the black background, giving, to those who could

look up, some trembling and uncertain light on their weary way. Good

men, and wise men, and successful men, at different periods, and in

different countries, stood out from the ranks, and made the name of

Jew a name of honour, and not of reproach. Some of these men were like

shooting stars, just raising a bright swift track of light, and dying

down as quickly, having lit up only their own pathway. And some gave

forth but tiny rays, yet, grouped together in patient scholarship,

these unnamed units gradually grew into useful constellations. And just

a few, in their great gift of shining, were like fixed stars, and the

wide white light of their wisdom endures even unto these days.

=2. How the Stars shone.=――But every star has its own especial orbit.

The men who made starlight in the long night of Jewish history were

not of the sort who mostly make epochs in national history. It has been

well said that there are some great men, who are not doers nor speakers,

but influences. Among a dispersed people there was small room for doers

or for speakers. For warriors or for statesmen there was no place, and

but little opportunity for ‘heroes’ in any generally received sense of

the word, and thus, the names of eminent Jews, from the fifth to the

fifteenth century, include no doers of startling deeds. But if there

be heroism in endurance, in patient fulfilment of duty when desire

is altogether unsatisfied, in earnest endeavour for good, with evil

rampant all round, then these Jewish men lived heroic lives, although

it was life lived from within rather than from without. They worked on

without hurry and without rest, and in trust when hope failed. Their

outward action on passing events was small, but the impression they

made on the spirit and intellect of their time was great, and on the

liturgy and the literature of their people they have left enduring

marks. And truly, as the Bible says, ‘the light is sweet.’ The mere

light cast on dark places by the sight of men living clean, and

wholesome, and scholarly lives, must have been doubly ‘sweet’ in those

dark days when all refining and ennobling influences were so sadly

needed.

=3. Piyutim.=――Apart from the work of the schools, which found

its outcome in the Talmud,[29] the earliest Jewish literature of

post-Biblical times comes to us in the form of _Piyutim_. _Piyut_ is

derived from a Greek word which is rendered poet.[30] A large number

of _Piyutim_ are in existence, which range in dates of composition

over some thousand years, and represent contributions from all parts

of Europe. They are chiefly found in the _Machzor_ (prayer-book for

festivals――literally cycle) of the various _minhagim_, or rituals. In

this store there is a whole section of what are called _Selichoth_,

or penitential poems. The word _Selichoth_ comes from the Hebrew סְלִחָה,

meaning forgiveness, and the theme of most of these singers of the

synagogue is of hope for divine forgiveness, founded on the memory

of human sorrow. The _Selichoth_, and many of the _Piyutim_, tell

a never-ceasing tale of persecution and oppression. They take the

form sometimes of dirge and sometimes of elegy, and now and again

the recital of an actual experience becomes poetic through its very

literalness. ‘We are abused,’ says one _Selichah_, ‘spat upon, treated

like mire in the street.’ ‘We are trampled upon like mire, seethed

in the caldron, threshed like straw, and crushed as in a winepress,’

begins another. Sometimes the suffering teaches strength, and a poet

protests in all his pain, ‘Because I fear the one Lord God, I fear

amongst the many――none,’[31] or counsels his companions in misery

to ‘endure dispraise for fearing Him whose name is One. And never

be through idols raised to power and might.’[32] But sometimes the

undoubting belief in God which is breathed forth in these productions,

takes, as is hardly unnatural under the terrible circumstances, an

expression of passionate appeal to Him for active interference, or even

of a more distinct cry for divine vengeance on the ‘tyrants and their

race.’

The earlier of the _Piyutim_ are quite rugged and rhymeless, and

about many of them there is considerably more suggestion of martyrdom

than of minstrelsy. It must have been difficult for the _Chazan_ of

the synagogue to make this so-called poetry form any musical part of

the service. And here it is as well to note that the familiar title

_Chazan_ is derived from the Hebrew word חָזָה, to see, and was used in

the same sense as _Episcopus_, bishop, which means literally inspector,

or superintendent. The חַזָן of the synagogue, in addition to other duties,

read or intoned the prayers, and in course of time the reader or singer

became, and was called, the minister of his congregation. And hence

the word _Chazanuth_, a word which is only applied to the melody, and

not to the poetry of the synagogue, and which may be rendered sacred

minstrelsy. In actual fact, till about the tenth century the _Piyutim_,

which up to this date are mostly anonymous, have little claim to any

musical or rhythmical charm. They are more or less articulate cries

of exile, uttered by patient generations of men, who told of miseries

past singing, almost past praying about. Towards the second half of the

tenth century, the French and Spanish Jews, who were more cultivated

and more happy than the rest of their European brethren, begin to add

their share to the store of national religious poetry, and at once

a change comes over the style. It grows more polished in form, and

less uniformly mournful in subject. In these _Piyutim_, God resumes

His place as Creator and Father, as well as Protector and Avenger of

mankind, and His glories and His powers, and man’s hopes and man’s

duties, and the relations of the human spirit to the divine, are

said and sung in more metrical language. ‘Let me make the ballads

of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws,’ was once acutely

remarked, and the saying is often quoted to show how much influence

national songs have upon national character. In this sense it is very

interesting to find what was the general tone and tendency of Jewish

‘minstrelsy’ through all those long centuries of darkness and of

degradation. And first we notice that it was mainly of a religious

sort――that the intellectual wealth of the Jewish nation flowed chiefly

into the channels of the synagogue. In all the unutterable misery

of the Middle Ages, the national poetry of the Jews never ceased to

be religious, and it never, under all that cruel provocation, became

revolutionary. The tone of some of the _Piyutim_ is fierce and vengeful,

but it is never cowardly even in its hate. The writers recount openly,

and often passionately enough, the wrongs suffered by their race, but

for all redress they ‘lift up their eyes to the hills, whence cometh

their help.’ To the credit of these patient poets of the _Selichah_

be it said that they never used their power of national song to rouse

their people to any secret plotting, nor to any working of harm against

their oppressors. But to keep up a feeling of pride and hope in the

poor Ghetto folks old tales of ancient glories are recited over and

over again. It is somewhat curious to see how, through all the sad

and often despondent strains of the _Piyutim_, there sounds every now

and then a note of self-satisfied trustfulness, that seems, at first,

almost like a sign of national arrogance or conceit.

‘A race that has been tested,

And tried through fire and water,

Is surely prized by Thee,

And purified from sin,’

is an instance of the kind. But it was probably just this sure

sense that God never would desert His people that saved them from

utter degradation. And so, if the _Piyutim_ occasionally insist a

little strongly on God’s especial and peculiar love for Israel, under

Israel’s especial and peculiar need for it in those days, the slight

exclusiveness of their religious aspirations may well be forgiven to

them.

=4. A Specimen Planet.=――Astronomers, before they begin to study the

orbit of any particular star, like to be familiar with the general

aspect of the heavens; and students of history, who wish to learn about

any special period or personage, have to follow much the same course,

in order that they may be able to fill in for themselves the background

to any prominent figure. The general condition of the Jewish people in

the chief countries of Europe during the Middle Ages is now, perhaps,

sufficiently familiar to us for this plan to be possible, and, as each

star peeps out from its own particular corner of the dark sky, we can

picture somewhat accurately the nature of the surrounding darkness

which it illumined. Thus, the end of the ninth century, and the country

Egypt, recalls to memory the tempestuous close of a long period of

literary activity. The labours of the Gaonim were becoming, by that

date, intermittent and interrupted, and Jehuda the Blind, one of the

most active of them all, was already nearly a hundred years dead, when

in 849 the Sultan Mutavakel[33] imposed those intolerant and degrading

disabilities on the Jews of the East which were the beginning of the

end. Oppressed from without, and divided by jealousies from within,

the schools of Babylon gradually closed, one after the other, and

the scholars migrated to Egypt and to Spain. In 892, to one of these

settlers in Upper Egypt there was born a child who grew up and grew

famous under the name and title of Gaon Saadia.[34] He became head

of the college at Sora, and was a great authority on all theological

matters. He translated the Bible into Arabic, which language was

growing to be a second mother-tongue to the transplanted Eastern Jews.

Saadia fought a good fight against Karaism and its principles, which

seemed so wide and were so narrow.[35] His arguments in many forms were

directed against the plausible and impracticable doctrines which, about

the middle of the eighth century, Anan ben David had done his best to

spread. But Saadia’s chief original work was called אֱמוּנָה וְדֵעוֹת, Faith and

Morals. This book battles against unbelief, and sums up the arguments

in favour of holding by ‘tradition’ under seven excellent and pithy

heads. It shows that there is ignorant denial quite as often as

ignorant belief, and that doubting comes more often from knowing too

little than from knowing too much. But Saadia was no bigot. He taught

that religion has no cause to fear research, and that if research is

only carried far enough it confirms revelation. He wrote, all these

centuries ago, in the same spirit as the Poet Laureate in these days,――

‘Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in thee dwell.’

And Saadia led an active life apart from his books. Like Mordecai,

‘he sought the prosperity of his brethren, and the peace of all his

seed.’ But in these efforts our Rabbi was not successful, or only very

partially so. The spirit which asks, ‘Who made thee a leader over us?’

was as active in the days of Saadia as in the days of Moses, and the

Jews of Babylon were just as impatient as the Jews of the wilderness

of wise direction and control. However, if Saadia’s moderate counsels

did not always prevail among his people in his lifetime, the influence

of his written words remains to them, and are a fine record of fifty

years of useful life. He had a great deal of trouble, in consequence of

communal disputes with the רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא, David ben Sakkai. A reconciliation,

after many years’ discord, was effected between David ben Sakkai and

the community, and David’s grandson, who was the last רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא, was

brought up in Saadia’s house. Rabbi Saadia ben Joseph died in 942.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SOME FIXED STARS.

=1. Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021‒1070).=――This poet and philosopher, who

was born at Malaga in 1021, is a very good example of what tolerant

Mahomedan Spain produced among her Jews. The truest lives, it has

been said, are those which have been cut rose-diamond fashion, that

is to say, many-sided, and each side answering to some useful aspect

of the life around them. This many-sidedness is perhaps a distinctive

feature of Jewish genius, and due as much to circumstances as to nature.

Solomon ibn Gabirol is an instance in point. He was poet, patriot,

astronomer, and philosopher in one, and equally distinguished all round.

Of his own life-history we unfortunately know almost as little as we

do of Shakespeare’s, for biographies and autobiographies were not so

much in fashion in those days as in these. But sonnets and poems with

Gabirol, as with the great Englishman, take often a personal turn, and

from these we learn that the Spanish poet was early left an orphan, and

that he found a friend and protector in a certain Jekuthiel ibn-Hassan,

the chief minister of the reigning kaliph. There are verses in

existence which tell us of the friendship, and verses, too, of a

sadder sort, which tell us of that friendship’s ending. Jekuthiel died

when the boy he loved, and who loved him back again as only boys and

poets can, was but eighteen, and the sorrow that came thus early into

Gabirol’s life shadowed it henceforth. He seems always to have been

of a somewhat sombre temperament, and it is possible that the loss of

his parents when he was a child, and then the loss of this good friend

just as he was entering manhood, may have made him more inclined than

even he was naturally, to take sad views of things. He wrote a really

wonderful elegy for so young a poet, on the death of Jekuthiel, and

for the rest of his life he seems to have turned to work as a cure for

heart-break. The most valuable of his writings is called ‘The Fountain

of Life,’ and its philosophy was so wise and so original that the book

grew more celebrated than the author. It was translated about 1150,

from the Arabic language in which it was written, into Latin, and under

its name of _Fons Vitæ_ it was greatly prized by learned schoolmen

of the period, and in time it became a puzzle to identify the writer.

‘Avicebron’ was received as the name of the author, but who Avicebron

might be was only conclusively solved in these days, when the French

_savant_ Munk proved, to the satisfaction of all who knew most about

the facts, that the unknown and celebrated ‘Avicebron’ of general

fame, and the known and loved Gabirol of Jewish fame, were identical.

To Jewish literature his chief contributions were numerous _Piyutim_,

to be found in the various rituals, and the כֶּתֶר מַלְכוּת, or Kingly Crown,

which forms part of the New Year service in the Prayer-books of the

Spanish and Portuguese and the British Jews. This is a most beautiful

religious poem, beginning ‘Heavenly and earthly creatures bear

witness that they decay, and that Thou alone dost endure.’ The German

astronomer and philosopher, Humboldt, said of this composition of

Gabirol’s that it was a worthy and noble echo of ancient Hebrew poetry.

It has a certain scientific as well as a theological value, for the

first part of the prayerful poem gives a scholar’s rendering of the

truth that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God,’ by presenting to the

reader a faithful picture of what was the astronomical knowledge of the

period in which the author lived. The כֶּתֶר מַלְכוּת has been translated into

almost every European language. Another work of this many-sided man was

the composition of a Hebrew grammar in verse, and a more interesting

one was a small collection of wise and witty saws and sayings. This

little book was called a ‘Choice of Pearls,’ and here are a few sample

jewels:――

‘Questioning is halfway to wisdom.’

‘Courtesy is halfway to cleverness.’

‘Thrift is halfway to wealth.’

‘He who soweth hatred soweth regret.’

‘Man’s friend is his reason, and ignorance is his enemy.’

‘Who is wise? He who seeketh wisdom.’

‘A body without wisdom is like a house without foundation.’

‘Kings rule the land, wisdom rules kings.’

‘Forbearance is the best counsellor, courtesy the best companion.’

‘What is a test of good manners? Being able to bear patiently with bad

ones.’

The string on which these pearls, and such as these, were strung, was

a neat system of headings, such as ‘Friendship,’ ‘Patience,’ ‘Wisdom,’

and so on, under each of which headings the maxims were arranged.

Gabirol did not live to be an old man; he died at Valencia before he

was quite fifty years old, but, as Ben Jonson says,――

‘It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be,

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.’

It is not the number of our years, but the things done in them, that

will be counted to us in eternity. Ibn Gabirol lived his life to the

full, although it was twenty years short of the allotted sum.

=2. ‘Rashi’ (1040‒1105).=――Something more of a scholar, and something

less of a poet, was Rabbi Solomon Isaaci, a French contemporary of Ibn

Gabirol, who was born at Troyes in the year 1040. Though accusations

against the Jews of France had grown frequent, and their position ever

more and more insecure since the death of Charles the Bald in 877, yet

their schools, particularly in the south and south-east of the country,

were still flourishing and uninterfered with at the date of the little

Solomon’s birth. His father and his uncle were both learned men, and

the child was a student almost from his cradle. He was born, in fact,

into a community of scholars, and something of the simplicity, and

something too of the poverty which belongs to the scholarly life clung

to him all his days. His means were small, but his wants were few, and

he seemed always extremely content with his portion of ‘plain living

and high thinking.’ He married at eighteen, which is, perhaps, some

explanation both of the poverty and of the content. But happiness

did not quench his thirst for knowledge. So eager was he to learn all

he could possibly be taught, that, like Akiba before him, he did not

hesitate to leave his wife and children in the pursuit of study. He

went to the then celebrated theological colleges of Mainz and Worms,

and worked there to such good purpose that his fellow-students dubbed

him פַּרְשַׁנְדָּתָא, which is a Chaldaic equivalent for ‘Explainer of the Law.’

He is said to have made פְּשַׁט of the Talmud, which means to have arrived

at a clear and simple rendering of the text――a great feat if we are

to accept it literally. He made also a commentary on the Bible, which

gives evidence of wide research and clear thought, but his Talmud

commentary is considered, by competent judges, to be the more valuable

of the two. With all his learning, Rabbi Solomon Isaaci would seem to

have been one of those delightfully genial people who naturally earn

nicknames among their companions, or, at least, get long-sounding

titles affectionately shortened. In the very little we know of the

inner lives of these long dead heroes, it is often necessary to

add inferences to facts, and it is very suggestive that many of the

greatest of these scholars used what Dean Swift calls the ‘little

language’ among each other. The famous Maimonides was familiar Rambam

in his own circle. Ibn Ezra was known as Raba, and something of the

modest, happy nature of the wise Rabbi Solomon Isaaci seems to be

revealed to us when we hear that this learned scholar and distinguished

commentator on Bible and Talmud is seldom called by his grand full

names, but only by the initials ר ש י,‎ ‏(רַבִּי שְׁלֹמֹה יִעְחָקִי) and it is as ‘Rashi’

he is famous.

=3. Abraham Ibn Ezra[36] (1092‒1167).=――Ibn Ezra, who was born at

Toledo in 1092, was a star that shone in many different ways. He was a

man of vigorous intellect, and as active in body as in mind. For those

quiet days he was a famous traveller, and we find him enjoying a visit

to London when he was in his sixty-seventh year (1159). He was just

sixteen years old when the fanatic outburst against the Jews in his

native town was put down by King Alfonso of Castile,[37] and possibly

it was the sense of impending troubles in Spain which first set him

thinking of seeking his fortunes abroad. His ‘fortunes’ he never seems

to have found, but failures in that direction did not trouble him

much. He would laugh at his own disappointments, and say, ‘If I were

to take to shroud-making, I do believe men would leave off dying, or

if I adopted candle-making as a trade, I am certain the sun would take

to shining by night as well as by day till I gave it up.’ Ibn Ezra’s

travels were rather the result of a restless and inquiring spirit than

of a settled and sustained object. He would learn for a while, and then

teach for a while, and do both equally thoroughly, and to the delight

of either masters or pupils. And then he would travel again, and prove

the most charming and entertaining of companions to any one whom he

might chance to meet. He stayed once for a long time in Italy, and his

influence amongst scholars there caused quite a revival to take place

in grammatical and analytical study. He was an excellent critic, and

his philosophic and scientific commentaries on the Pentateuch, and

on some other parts of the Bible, are very valuable. Astronomy, also,

was a favourite pursuit of his, and he was a first-rate mathematician.

Ibn Ezra must have been, as the phrase goes, a very able man. Yet

all qualities have their corresponding defects, and the charm of

many-sidedness, when undirected by any high aim, has a tendency to run

into indistinctness of outline. Ibn Ezra, it must be confessed, was

all his life just a little of a rolling stone, and mere restlessness

appears to have had a good deal to do with his frequent change of place

and pursuit. His intellect seems to have been more active than his

emotions, and it looks almost as if he had more mind than heart. And

so the light this star gave forth, though brilliant, was of a somewhat

wavery and uncertain sort.

=4. A Great Traveller.=――Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela was a Spanish

merchant, who, between the years 1165 and 1173, visited the Jewish

communities then existing in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, and

has left the most valuable record extant of the general condition of

the Jews at that period throughout the three continents. It is quite

likely that commercial pursuits shared with the pursuit of knowledge

the motive of Rabbi Benjamin’s wanderings. For, in the modern sense,

he certainly did not ‘make a book’ of his travels. The Itinerary of

Benjamin of Tudela is the plainest and most unvarnished record of

experiences, and, on the face of it, the work of a man who had no great

literary ability. There is a lack both of detail and of polish in these

rather rough notes of twelfth-century travel, and some critics have

gone so far as to account for this meagreness by suggesting that Rabbi

Benjamin might, in strict truth, have dated some of his despatches

from Tudela. But more charitable and better informed commentators do

not accuse our traveller of this bad faith, but explain his baldness

of description and his occasional omissions by the much more likely

suggestion that parts of the diary may have been altogether lost. The

text which we now possess is considered by competent judges to be an

abridgment of the original, and if this be the case, it would account

for many otherwise unaccountable omissions. For instance, there is very

little space indeed given to the Jews of Germany, who were numerous

enough in the twelfth century to have afforded plenty of material to

a traveller bent on recording his impressions. There would seem to be

no cause for any wilful omission of this sort on the part of Benjamin,

but the accidental loss of the German descriptions would easily explain

it. With all its drawbacks, the book is extremely valuable. It gives

us a glimpse of Jews, ‘toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,’ in the midst of

alien peoples, and it enables us to see how they looked to the eyes of

a very keen-sighted and very plain-speaking traveller, who spent eight

years in visiting all the chief cities of the world in the second half

of the twelfth century. Rabbi Benjamin wrote his journals in Rabbinic

Hebrew. They have been translated into Latin, French, Dutch, and

English, but, strange to say, never into German. Possibly the Germans

considered a book of travels, which did not say much about them and

their country, to be too trivial for the trouble of translation.[38]

=5. Jehudah Halevi (1085‒1140).=――When the cry of _Hep! Hep!_ was

ringing in all its first fierce frenzy over Europe, there were just one

or two quiet corners in the Continent where the sound was forbidden.

Peter of Arragon and Alfonso VI. of Castile were the Caleb and Joshua

of their age, who stood steadfast, refusing to join in a ‘false report,’

and follow a multitude to do evil. Within the century that had just

closed, France, Italy, Germany, Bohemia, and Greece had each been, at

different times, the scene of terrible persecutions of the Jews. In

Spain alone, under the mild sway of the Ommeyade kaliphs, Jews found

peaceable homes. By the beginning of the twelfth century the Catholic

kings were fast winning back Spain from the Moors, but the tolerant

policy of the Mahomedans was yet, for a while, maintained. Space and

liberty were still accorded to Jewish subjects, and it was on the safe

soil of Old Castile, whilst Alfonso VI. reigned, that the poet, Jehudah

Halevi, of whom a sober historian[39] gravely writes that the words

‘created in the image of God,’ when applied to him, read like the most

simple and literal of descriptions, passed his childhood. As Jehudah

grew up he became the very centre and chief of the group of tuneful and

unworldly sages who, whilst the world was hurrying after vain shadows,

and forgetting all about such beautiful realities as learning and

humanity, remind us, by their calm and studious and religious lives,

that such things did exist even in the dark ages. The quiet, uneventful

histories of such men have been almost covered up from sight in the din

and dust raised by recurring crowds of ‘chivalrous’ crusaders. Even in

the age in which they lived, these gentle old scholars were not very

visible, nor very prominent figures. They seem to stand a little apart,

writing their poetry and philosophy, studying among the wise, teaching

among the ignorant, and rarely eager for fame, and never for reward.

Like the scholars of an older period, these, whom we find behind the

scenes of the Middle Ages, used ‘the Law’ neither as a spade to dig

with, nor as a crown to shine with. A modest livelihood was contentedly

dug out of some handicraft or profession, and as to shining, they never

thought about it at all.

Jehudah Halevi, physician and poet, was the highest type of this

old-fashioned class of authors, and in his lifetime was far wider

known as a doctor than as a poet. Even his doctoring was done on

old-fashioned lines. As he stands in his laboratory he writes:

‘This draught that I myself combine,

What is it? Only Thou dost know

If well or ill, if swift or slow,

Its parts shall work upon my pain.

Ay, of these things, alone is Thine

The knowledge. All my faith I place

Not in my craft, but in Thy grace.’

His ‘faith’ was perfect; it never failed him.

‘When I remove from Thee, O God,

I die whilst I live; but when I cleave to Thee

I live in death,’

is another saying of his, and so beautiful a one that it has found a

worthy setting in the יוֹם כִּפּוּר service. But, intensely religious as was

Halevi, and perhaps because he was so religious, he was of an extremely

happy nature, and he seems to have had, in addition to his other

doctoring gifts, the ‘cheerful heart which doeth good like a medicine.’

This cheerfulness is very apparent in all his compositions, and a great

many of his poems seem actually to be bubbling over with joyousness.

Though, like most of the Jewish authors of his age, Halevi was an

Arabian scholar, and thoroughly well read in Greek literature, he

wrote mostly in Hebrew, and, as it seems, by preference as well as

from principle, used his genius on Jewish subjects. He drank at the

classic well, he recognised to the full its charm and its use, but he

was too thoroughly Jewish for it ever to be to him as ‘the fount of

living waters.’ He warned his people, indeed, against the fascinating

influences of ‘Grecian wisdom.’ ‘It bears not fruit, but only blossom,’

he says in his charming poetic fashion. There could be to Halevi but

one ‘tree of life.’ His chief prose work is founded on the somewhat

doubtful history of that Bulan, the Jewish king who is said to

have reigned over the Khozars in the eighth century. The legend――it

is hardly history――tells that Bulan, startled into religious

self-questionings by a vision of the night, summoned, next day, Jewish,

Christian, and Mahomedan divines to talk to him of their faiths,

in order that, open-eyed, he might choose from among them the most

satisfying. The arguments of the Jewish doctors, it is said, proved the

most convincing to Bulan, and the legend concludes with his conversion

to Judaism, and the founding in his person of a Jewish dynasty which

lasted some two hundred years.[40] This was a tale after Halevi’s own

heart. He saw it all as it might have been, and made it not only into

a stirring story, but into an interesting discourse concerning Judaism;

and, that it might have the more readers, he wrote it in Arabic.

Halevi’s love for his race and his religion was enthusiastic. ‘Israel

among the nations,’ he says, ‘is as the heart among the limbs.’ But he

was practical as well as poetic, and loyal as well as loving. He never

neglected a patient for the sake of a poem, nor was he the less a

faithful citizen of Spain because Jerusalem was to him, as he expresses

it, ‘the city of the world.’ He had always a great desire to visit the

lost land of his fathers. ‘Oh! had I eagles’ wings, I’d fly to thee,’

he writes in his beautiful poem on Jerusalem. But as he had not eagles’

wings, but only the plodding feet of a steadfast and God-fearing man,

he set himself to do the work that lay straight before him, and made of

his unsatisfied longings no excuse for sloth, but a spur to endeavour.

It is said by some writers that he did at last go to Jerusalem, and

died there; and others assert that he was murdered by Arabs on the road

thither; and yet others, that he never had even the happiness to start

on the long-desired journey. In truth, of the actual facts of Halevi’s

life we know, as absolute certainty, but few, and we have to build up

his character, and guess at his circumstances, from his writings. These

are fortunately plentiful, and there is no difficulty at arriving at

some settled conclusions. From the love poems, which are 800 in number,

we gather some knowledge of a happy home, and of a wife of ‘rarest

worth and sweet exceedingly.’ Then there are quantities of letters to

prove to us that Halevi was as faithful in friendship as in love. One

of these epistles, written to a companion while absent on his travels,

after regretting the loss of his society, adds, prettily and poetically

enough, ‘Within our hearts thou ne’er art out of sight.’ Another, which

is addressed to Moses Ibn Ezra, begins, ‘How can I rest whilst we are

absent one from another? Were it not for the glad hope of thy return,

the day which tore thee from me would tear me from all the world.’ An

elegy, which Halevi wrote in 1138 on the occasion of Moses Ibn Ezra’s

death, is one of his best known and best liked compositions. Moses Ibn

Ezra was a relative of the witty, wandering Abraham Ibn Ezra, and one

of that brotherhood of poetic philosophers. But the most characteristic

of Halevi’s writings are his religious poems, and these show us our

poet in the truest aspect of his short but many-sided life. ‘For Thy

songs, O Lord, my heart is a harp,’ he says in one place; and here is

a specimen of the melody of his heart-strings:

‘Lord! where art Thou to be found?

Hidden and high is Thy home.

And where shall we find Thee not?

Thy glory fills the world.

Thou art found in my heart,

And at the uttermost ends of the earth.

A refuge for the near,

For the far, a trust.

‘The universe cannot contain Thee;

How then a temple’s shrine?

Though Thou art raised above men

On Thy high and lofty throne,

Yet art Thou near unto them

In their spirit and in their flesh.

Who can say he has not seen Thee?

When, lo! the heavens and their host

Make, silently, Thy presence manifest.

‘I sought to draw near to Thee.

With my whole heart I sought Thee,

And when I went out to meet Thee,

To meet me, Thou wast ready.

In the wonders of Thy might

And in Thy holiness I have beheld Thee.

Who is there that should not fear Thee?

The yoke of Thy kingdom is the yoke of all.

Who is there that should not call upon Thee?

Thou givest unto all their food.’

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE GREATEST OF THE FIXED STARS.

MAIMONIDES. (1135‒1204.)

=1. Early Days in Spain.=――At Cordova, in Spain, on March 30, 1135,

there was born, in the family of a certain Rabbi Maimon, a little boy,

who was named Moses. The mother died soon after the baby came, and

so, in very early days, the little Moses did not get quite his fair

share of petting. And soon his father married again, and besides some

older brothers and sisters, there were presently several younger ones,

to claim the new mother’s care, and between them all Moses seems to

have been, at first, just a little neglected and misunderstood. It is

possible that his own mother, if she had lived, would have found him

somewhat slow and sensitive, for other folks, more hastily judging,

pronounced him to be a rather sulky and stupid little boy. Among the

family circle, in his childhood, Moses ben Maimon held somewhat the

position of Hans Andersen’s Ugly Duckling, and like this famous little

farmyard hero, he was fated, as he grew up, to astonish them all.

His capabilities were soon recognised by his teachers in the schools,

where, as we have seen, the Law and the Talmud were the text-books. The

study of these included a wide range of subjects, but the education of

Moses ben Maimon was not gained only from books. He had in his youth

the advantages which extended travel confers, and not travelling of the

sort which has idleness for its motive and pleasure for its aim, but

journeying undertaken from a cause, and with an object, which must have

greatly roused the enthusiasm of an intelligent and high-minded boy.

Cordova, his native place, had been, for the four centuries during

which the Ommeyade kaliphs ruled in Spain, the centre of civilisation

in Europe. In 1148, when Moses ben Maimon was a boy of thirteen,

Cordova was taken by the Almohades, and under their fierce and bigoted

government an era of persecution set in for Spanish Jews and Christians.

The Almohades gave only the choice of ‘death or exile’ to such of their

subjects as would not be converted to the faith of Islam. Some, hard

pressed, took upon themselves the disguise of an alien religion, and,

loyal in secret, and so far as circumstances permitted, to their own

faith, remained as professed Mahomedans in their old homes. Others

were brave enough to follow truth at all costs, and amongst those who

emigrated with this object, were Rabbi Maimon and his family.

=2. Life in Exile.=――Moses ben Maimon was old enough and cultivated

enough to take in new impressions, and to benefit by new experiences.

For years the family moved about from place to place, since safe

‘cities of refuge’ for Jews at that date were but few and far between.

They finally settled down at Fostat, in Egypt, where an elder brother,

David, seems to have been the chief bread-winner in the family. David

ben Maimon was a dealer in precious stones, and Moses is said by some

historians to have helped his brother for a while in the cutting and

polishing of these gems. Although other historians vehemently deny that

Moses had ever anything to do with trade, yet, knowing the respect in

which manual labour is always held by Jews, and how often literary men

of the race have been handicraftsmen, there seems, on the face of it,

no improbability in the story, and rather a reason for giving credence

to it, since all agree that at one period in their lives David ben

Maimon took upon himself the care and support of his young brother. But

whether Moses ever helped in the workshop or not, it is quite certain

that he was no idler. He read and wrote most industriously, and before

he was twenty-three he had published a treatise on the Jewish calendar,

which shows some considerable knowledge of mathematics, and for years

he worked away steadily at the production of a learned commentary

on the Mishnah. When the time came for choosing a profession――for

again, of course, the Law could not be ‘used as a spade’――Maimonides

decided to become a physician. That even did not promise to be a very

profitable pursuit, for his services were always at the disposal of the

class who could not pay fees, but he took the keenest interest in all

his patients, and it was not very long before his skill attracted the

notice of influential outsiders.

=3. Becomes a Court Physician.=――In the middle of the twelfth century,

Saladin, titular sovereign of Syria, was virtual Sultan of Egypt, and

was proving himself, in every action, a hero fit for reality as well

as for romance. Saladin had many kingly qualities, and not least among

them was his aptitude for finding out good men, and honouring them when

found. Saladin seems to have heard of Maimonides through his vizier,

Alfadhel, who, first knowing the Jewish doctor professionally, had come,

as he knew him more intimately, to regard him with great admiration

as a friend. The introduction to the Sultan proved very fortunate, in

a worldly sense, for Maimonides. He was put on the roll of physicians,

which gave him a recognised position in the profession, and, in return

for certain fixed hours of attendance at court, a pension was allotted

to him. The appointment was made about 1186, when Maimonides was more

than fifty years of age, and the most valuable thing about it was the

freedom it gave him from money anxieties, which especial worry is quite

fatal to the production of good original work.

=4. Court and other Employment.=――But the court appointment gave him

no freedom from work, nor any license to be idle. And still less did

Maimonides let his successes in the outer world make him indifferent

to the wants and the welfare of his own community. It is possible that

the physician of Saladin, whose services, report said, had even been

solicited by Richard of England, became, by degrees, a little more

in request among his own congregation than had he remained only the

congregational doctor. But as he grew famous, Maimonides was far too

generous to recall whether his fame had come first from without or

first from within, and his talents and his services were always at

the disposal of all who needed him, poor or rich, Jew or Mahomedan,

without much thought of self in the matter. Maimonides was a famous

correspondent, and an extract from one of his letters to a friend at

this stage in his life will give some idea of what work meant to a

popular physician in the Middle Ages.[41]

‘With respect to your wish to come here to me, I cannot but say how

greatly your visit would delight me, for I truly long to communicate

with you, and would anticipate our meeting with even greater joy than

you. Yet I must advise you not to expose yourself to the perils of the

voyage, for beyond seeing me, and my doing all I could to honour you,

you would not derive any advantage from your visit. Do not expect to

be able to confer with me on any scientific subject for even one hour,

either by day or night, for the following is my daily occupation:――I

dwell in Mizr [Fostat], and the Sultan resides at Kahira [Cairo]; these

two places are two Sabbath days’ journeys (about one mile and a half)

distant from each other. My duties to the Sultan are very heavy. I am

obliged to visit him every day, early in the morning; and when he, or

any of his children, or any of the inmates of his harem, are indisposed,

I dare not quit Kahira, but must stay during the greater part of the

day in the palace. It also frequently happens that one or two of the

officers fall sick, and I must attend to their healing. Hence, as a

rule, I repair to Kahira very early in the day, and even if nothing

unusual happens, I do not return to Mizr until the afternoon. Then I am

almost dying with hunger; I find the antechambers filled with people,

both Jews and Gentiles, nobles and common people, judges and bailiffs,

friends and foes――a mixed multitude, who await the time of my return.

I dismount from my animal, wash my hands, go forth to my patients, and

entreat them to bear with me while I partake of some slight refreshment,

the only meal I take in the twenty-four hours. Then I go forth to

attend to my patients, write prescriptions and directions for their

several ailments. Patients go in and out until nightfall, and sometimes

even, I solemnly assure you, until two hours and more in the night.

I converse with them, and prescribe for them while lying down from

sheer fatigue; and when night falls I am so exhausted that I can

scarcely speak. In consequence of this, no Israelite can have any

private interview with me, except on the Sabbath. On that day the whole

congregation, or, at least, the majority of the members, come unto me

after the morning service, when I instruct them as to their proceedings

during the whole week; we study together a little until noon, when

they depart. Some of them return and read with me after the afternoon

service until evening prayers. In this manner I spend that day. I have

here related to you only a part of what you would see if you were to

visit me.’

=5. His Writings.=――Busy as he was, yet, like most very busy people,

Maimonides always found plenty of time for everything, and he continued

to write and to study and to prescribe, in a way that seemed wonderful

to those who were not in the secret of how good work gets done. To say

he was ‘a genius’ does not quite explain it. Maimonides’ genius was of

the steady sort, that has industry for its roots, and grudges neither

years of labour nor daily efforts of self-denial. The precious leisure

of ten whole years was spent by Maimonides in the production of a

single book, and this ‘leisure’ of early manhood must have included

very many monotonous hours, which might have been given to personal

pleasure or to active enjoyment. And even odd minutes were utilised

by Maimonides. In the intervals of his great works he would write a

treatise on medicine or mathematics, or throw off a poem, or indulge

in an epigram.

The title of the ten-years book is הַיָּד הַחֲזָקָה, ‘The Strong Hand.’ It

consists of an introduction and fourteen sections or books. In the

introduction he describes the chain of tradition from the time of Moses

till his own days, and the rest is a religious code, containing the

Jewish laws――written and oral――systematically arranged and presented

to the reader without discussion or argument. This work was published

in 1180, when Maimonides was forty-five years old, and it was well

received by most of the people who were wise enough to understand it.

In 1191 a very important book was brought out by Maimonides, which,

under the name of מוֹרֶה נְבוּכִים, ‘a Guide to the Perplexed,’ attracted an

immense amount of attention, but not altogether of a favourable sort,

to the author. The book deals with the perplexities of religious belief,

and tries to solve some of the many puzzles in life and in religion

to which God Himself gives and withholds the key, when He says to the

children of men, ‘My ways are not your ways, neither are your thoughts

My thoughts.’ Maimonides, in a reverent but still in a philosophising

spirit, tried to reconcile these ‘thoughts and ways,’ and to lift the

lower to a comprehension of the higher. His efforts were not always,

nor altogether, understood. In the then debased state of the Jews, the

pressing need of a God who should be ‘near’ to them, had led, in many

instances, to an ideal of divinity something a little different from,

something a little lower than, what ‘the Lord, the Spirit of all flesh,’

should mean. There was a tendency, here and there, to materialise

God, to localise His favours, and to dogmatise concerning His doings.

Against all this, Maimonides patiently and persistently strove. To take

as an instance a very famous chapter in this book, which has excited

much controversy. The theme is the Jewish code concerning sacrifice.

Maimonides argues that the blood of ‘cattle on a thousand hills’ could

never have been, at any time, a desirable, or even an acceptable,

offering to a loving and merciful God. He ‘guides the perplexed’ to the

conclusion that the sacrificial system of the Jews was designed as an

education, with the object of weaning a people living in the midst of

idolatrous nations from worse, and of leading them to better, things.

He considered the laws on sacrifice as designed against idolatry. But,

in his view, the value of sacrifice, like the value of prayer, lay in

the fact that it was a means to an end, and not an end in itself. He

held that ‘sacrifice’ was designed to teach self-denial and practical

repentance, and that the especial form, through which, in the world’s

early history, such lessons were taught, was suited to the conditions

under which it was given. Such reasoning sounded to many, not the

loving argument it really was in favour of a spiritual idea of

God, but a reasoning away of old received and literal renderings of

time-honoured texts.

And even this much-resented chapter on sacrifice did not produce so

much discussion and bitter feeling as did some chapters on prophecy,

in which Maimonides appeared to represent the power of prophecy as,

in degree, a _natural_ development of man’s intellect. The conflict

between faith and philosophy was waxing strong among Christians. There

was a growing tendency to call names on both sides, to denounce science

as paganism, and to sneer at religion as superstition. The sounds of

this conflict between philosophers and theologians, in the larger world

around them, found echoes among the Jews. We must remember that, except

in Spain, the poor Jews of Europe, for centuries, had had no healthy

interest whatever outside of their religion. Their Law was their

‘light,’ and their Talmud was the only window through which that light

was let in upon their lives. Oftentimes they ‘darkened with counsel’

the rays of Law and Talmud both. The endeavour of Moses Maimonides was

to clear away the gathering mists, and to broaden the window-panes,

that the knowledge of the Lord might shine out on all the multitude.

But the poor persecuted Jews clung to their Law and their Talmud, to

every line of Mishnah and Gemara, with a love that was so personal

and passionate, that any sort of criticism on such prized possessions

was suspected and resented. Maimonides’ views on God and angels and

prophets were based on Greek philosophy, and these views did not seem

to his opponents any better than their own notions, which were drawn

from the national sources of _Midrash_ and _Hagadah_. Hence it is

hardly surprising that some Rabbis forbade the study of מוֹרֶה נְבוּכִים, and

called its author a heretic. When the opinion of the Rabbis became

known to the Dominicans, these latter had copies of the book burnt in

the market-place of Paris.

=6. His Character.=――In the writings of Maimonides we discover the

talent of the man, but it is in his attitude under the response which

these writings met with that we find out his character. He never grew

angry at the mistaken zeal of his co-religionists. He understood the

circumstances, and could make allowance for injustice, and pass over

personal annoyance. And yet he was by no means a patient man. He did

not like stupid nor ignorant criticism concerning essential principles

of Judaism, and he could express himself in no very gentle language

when he or his writings met with opposition of that sort. Still, he

showed every respect to his opponents. He saw that there was a good as

well as a bad side to the clamour and the seeming narrow-mindedness;

and to enthusiastic, earnest natures like Maimonides’, intolerance

is easier to bear than indifference. At this crisis in his life,

Maimonides showed that he had ‘staying’ power. He could wait as well

as he could work. He let his faith――

‘Rest large in time, and

That which shapes it to some perfect end.’

And his trust was justified. Called ‘heretic’ by some faithful,

fearful co-religionists whilst he lived, posterity has deliberately

and unanimously reversed their sentence. Among the great men of Israel,

Maimonides has long been accorded a place in the foremost rank. ‘From

Moses unto Moses,’ says one Jewish proverb, ‘there has been none like

unto Moses.’[42] His books, once condemned, forbidden, and burnt in

the open market-place, are now among the works which no orthodox Jewish

theologian’s library may be without. Some of his doctrines, certainly,

still leave room for amicable discussion, but the important hymns of

אְדוֹן עוֹלָם and יִנְדַּל which are founded on his teachings have an honoured home

in the Jewish prayer-book.

=7. The End of his Life.=――In 1204, when not quite seventy years old,

Maimonides died, rich in ‘honour, fame, and troops of friends.’ He

was happy in his domestic relations, and his honest, earnest belief

that the good of all creeds and of all nations have a share in the

life to come, made him in full sympathy with ‘all sorts and conditions

of men’ in this life. An upright and consistent Jew, he lived on

the pleasantest terms with the large Mahomedan circle of which he

was a prominent and distinct figure. He was courteous without undue

concession, helpful without unnecessary interference, and thus

self-respecting, was universally respected. Maimonides had to bear

the sorrow of the death of several children, but a good and clever

son survived, to follow the great Jewish philosopher to his honoured

grave in Tiberias.

CHAPTER XXIX.

DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN.

=1. The Stars die out.=――Maimonides was not only the greatest of the

fixed stars in the Jewish literary firmament of the Middle Ages, but

he was also the last star that found a chance of shining through the

ever-gathering gloom. Denser and denser grew the thick clouds, and, one

by one, the stars waned and died out. Even had stars continued to arise,

brilliant enough and near enough to pierce that terrible thick darkness,

life to the Jewish nation was fast becoming so mere a hurrying from

death, that the frantic, stumbling struggle would have left little

opportunity or inclination for stargazing. There was no leisure to

look up. Jews had to ‘take heed to their ways’ in the saddest and

most sordid sense. And even the heedfulness was hopeless of result.

The brute force, and the bigoted faith, of the age were both arrayed

against the Jews, and oppressions culminated in edicts of expulsion. In

1290 the race was exiled from England, in 1394 from France, and in 1492

from Spain.

=2. Whither the Exiles went.=――The English exiles had little choice

of asylum. The ‘sea-girt isle’ pushed them from her shores, and the

nearest ports must have seemed to promise least misery in the way of

transit, and most chance of safe landing somewhere. As the opposite

coast of France came in view, it must have looked to those poor

sea-sick and heart-sick fugitives as if the worst of their troubles

were over. They disembarked at any and all of the French ports which

would take them in, and journeyed hither and thither inland, eager and

grateful to share the comparative security of their French brethren.

They did not stay to think how unsafe it all was; they did not look

back to see how, but sixteen years before, under a decree of Philip the

Fair, the Jews of France had been in like evil case with themselves,

nor did they look forward through a gloomy hundred years to see all

this dreary drama of exile acted over again, with added details of

hardship. It was, perhaps, well for them that they could only see a

little way at a time.

=3. Life in Germany.=――The English Jews who went further, and found

a refuge in the German states, like the Continental Jews who joined

them there, when exiled a century later, were certainly no better off.

Germany, so called, extended from Russia in the east to the Netherlands

in the west; and Jewish settlements existed in all the principal states

and provinces. In the flourishing cities on the banks of the Danube or

the Elbe, on the Maine or the Rhine, the Jews were all nominally ‘serfs

of the Imperial Chamber,’ and avowedly under the protection of the

Emperor. This ‘protection’ consisted in the Emperor, for the time being,

possessing the first, and, in theory, the sole right of plunder. German

Jews were the Emperor’s Jews――his absolutely. He might sell them, or

pawn them, or make presents or legacies of them. And, as a rule, the

Emperors did protect this property of theirs from other depredators.

If the vassal princes of the various states desired to plunder the

Jews, they had to do it after a fashion that should not be found out.

For this ‘protection,’ the Jews, of course, had to pay a tax to their

protector. On some occasions it was raised so high as a third of each

man’s ascertainable property. To regular, or irregular, taxation the

Jews generally submitted, for any outbreak of resistance only made

matters worse.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century, with the new influx of

French exiles, things altogether looked so desperate in the German

states, that a large number of Jews, principally from the Rhenish

provinces, determined on emigrating to Palestine. Rudolph of Hapsburg,

the then reigning Emperor, was very angry at this prospect of losing so

large a slice out of his revenue. He at once confiscated all the Jewish

goods on which he could lay his hands, and, as a speculation, seized

on the chief Rabbi of Germany, and held him as a prisoner in one of

his castles in Alsace. Rudolph calculated on getting a large ransom for

his Rabbi, and the Jews would gladly enough have paid generously for

his release. But the Rabbi refused to be ransomed. He would not play

into his enemies’ hands in that way. It was too easy a mode of raising

money, and one that, if he yielded to it, would most certainly become a

precedent. So the Rabbi declined his liberty on such terms, and he died

a prisoner.

Unlike England and France and Spain, Germany never went to the length

of expelling her Jews altogether, but she would hunt them, now and

again, from place to place in her dominions, and the hospitality she

extended to them was, at best, the hospitality of a sponging-house.

There is not a state, nor a province, nor a city of now united

Germany which has not, at some time or other, taken its evil share in

ill-treatment of the Jews. Prague, in Bohemia, could, perhaps, tell

the most sensational tales of all, if it were well or wise to write out

such sad stories in sober pen and ink. But the good old rule is best:

‘Write kindnesses in marble, and _injuries in dust_.’ It is sufficient

to say emphatically that things did not improve. Towards the end of

the fifteenth century the poor persecuted Jews of Germany made another

effort at emigration, but not to Palestine this time, for the feeling

which inspired the crusades had done its work, and the site of the

‘Holy Sepulchre’ was considered, at this date, too holy for Jewish

feet to profane with their tread. By order of the Popes, the masters of

vessels, bound for any parts connected with Palestine as a destination,

were forbidden to carry Jewish freight or Jewish passengers. Their own

land was denied to outcast Jews. Emigration, however, of some sort was

growing imminent. Poland and Turkey, in their undeveloped civilisation,

were found to be tolerant of aliens, and in these countries Jewish

settlements began to be made. There was no general desertion of the

German states, but the Jewish element in many of the cities perceptibly

dwindled, and, by degrees, only Frankfort, Worms, and Ratisbon

continued to be important centres of Jewish life.

=4. A New Crusade.=――At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was

a new sort of crusade got up against the Jews, and what might be called

a paper warfare opened upon them in Germany. It was mostly the fault

of one man, a wretched apostate named Joseph Pfefferkorn, who, from

the same vulgar love of profit and notoriety which had induced him to

change his faith, published a silly and offensive pamphlet, ridiculing

and abusing the habits and customs of his former co-religionists.

Such a crusade as this wretched convert inaugurated was sure of

supporters. His chief point for malicious attack was the Talmud, which

he represented as the stronghold and storehouse for Jewish crime,

stupidity, and superstition. He invented his examples to prove his rule.

And the Talmud, for such an object, was well chosen. It is extremely

easy to make assertions against a book which very few people can read.

Those who were ignorant of the real contents of the Talmud naturally

did not like to confess to their ignorance. Jews were an unpopular

subject, and it looked so wise and dignified to agree in a condemnation

which was apparently founded on much learned research. The Emperor

Maximilian listened to Pfefferkorn’s lying revelations, and we may be

sure that the priests pricked up their ears. It was all but decided

that the ‘horrible book’ which Pfefferkorn denounced should be burnt

wholesale. But a saviour was at hand for ‘Rabbi Talmud,’ as some of the

most ignorant of all called it, actually believing, in their hot haste,

that all this wickedness which they were called on to shudder at was

contained in a man, and not in a book! There was living at the time a

sensible and learned Christian scholar named Reuchlin. He was heartily

ashamed of all the stupid malignity, the spite, and the folly. He made

a spirited appeal, and not in vain, to the Senate of Frankfort and

to the Elector of Mayence. ‘Read the book,’ he bravely urged, ‘before

you burn it. The best way to fight Judaism is to try and understand

something about it. Burning is no argument.’ The Dominican monks were

very angry with Reuchlin, but he gained his point, and the Talmud was

not burnt that time.[43]

=5. What became of the Spanish and Portuguese Exiles.=――The Jews who

were expelled from the Peninsula underwent awful experiences. There

were so many of them seeking new homes, that governments, not cruelly

disposed, yet hesitated in their own interests from offering asylum

to such crowds. In Italy, to which many turned in the hope of a genial

climate and congenial pursuits, scant hospitality was experienced.

Genoa distinctly closed her gates against the fugitives; Venice

received them, but shut them up in a _ghetto_ (1516); and Rome, even

the Jews of Rome, were very doubtful as to the expediency of extending

a welcome. Naples was more generous, but the result was hardly more

fortunate for the Jews. In deference, perhaps, to Abarbanel, who led

a party of refugees to his kingdom, Ferdinand of Naples received them

graciously, and took Abarbanel into his own service. But hardly were

they settled in their new homes, when the Black Pestilence broke out in

Ferdinand’s State, and for a whole year made ravages among his subjects.

Great numbers of the Jewish exiles crossed the Straits of Gibraltar,

and made settlements on the northern coast of Africa, and in Egypt.

A painful difference, at best, such rough colonising must have proved

to the cultured grandees of Spain, and worse than roughnesses were in

store for them. The resources of civilisation, in those parts of the

world, were not equal to such a sudden influx of strangers needing

to be fed, and, delicately nurtured and luxuriously brought up as

these Jews had been, they had to suffer the horrors of actual famine.

Of those who managed to survive, many were seized by captains of

privateering vessels, and sold into slavery, and some lingered on, to

meet a worse fate at the hands of the natives. The barbarous tribes

of Africa had not arrived at the civilised pitch of persecuting Jews

for religion’s sake, but they had mastered the elementary reasons for

persecution. They had got so far as to believe that Jews, however poor

they looked, were potential mines of wealth, made and designed for

plunder. On this belief they acted in a shockingly literal manner.

Numbers of Jews who fell into the hands of these savages were actually

ripped open by them, in the hope that gold was the ordinary lining of

Jewish bodies.

Some eighty thousand of the exiles travelled no further than

Portugal, and there, for three or four years, they seemed tolerably

secure. But in 1496 dynastic considerations induced King Manuel of

Portugal, contrary to his own convictions, to follow the lead of

his parents-in-law, Ferdinand and Isabella. An edict of expulsion

against ‘Jews and Moors’ was pronounced. Ten months were granted for

preparation, and then the Jews of Portugal were dispersed, as their

Spanish brethren had been, over Italy, Africa, and Western Turkey, and

gradually, and by degrees, a small contingent found a safe asylum in

the Netherlands.

From 1497 till 1808, when Napoleon put an end to the ‘holy court’

of the Inquisition, no declared Jews were to be found in the Spanish

Peninsula. Plenty of secret Jews remained, who, under their name of

Marannos, or New Christians, continued, generation after generation, to

fill high offices in Church and State. The Marannos were true at heart,

and by stealth, to Judaism, and not seldom at the tribunal of the

Inquisition they had to pay the penalty of the suspicions which their

deceit excited. The Marannos preferred, when they could, to marry among

themselves, but there were, of necessity, frequent alliances, prompted

by love or by ambition, between the highly placed New Christians and

the grandest and most orthodox Catholic families of Spain. In course

of time there were very few Catholic nobles who could not trace back

to at least one Jew or Jewess amongst their ancestors. In the middle of

last century, Joseph, King of Portugal, wishing to make a distinction

between his subjects of pure, and those of mixed, descent, asked

his minister Pombal if he could arrange for a peculiar hat to be

recommended to the wear of New Christians. The next day Pombal

brought his master three of such hats. ‘For whom are these?’ asked

the king. ‘One is for your Majesty, one is for me, and one is for

the Inquisitor-General,’ answered Pombal. The minister’s genealogical

researches, we may suppose, rather disconcerted the king, but as they

went to show that the new hats would have to be pretty generally worn,

King Joseph gave up the idea of distinguishing the Jewish descended

grandees of his kingdom.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE DARKNESS VISIBLE.

=1. Deterioration of Character.=――The effects of all the evil

treatment which we have traced, began to be clearly manifest in the

Jewish character. The ravages on Jewish life and on Jewish property

were not the worst results of these ages of persecution. The real

injury done to the Jews went far deeper than any amount of outrage

or wrong might inflict on an individual. ‘Few natures,’ writes the

Laureate, ‘are of such fine mould, that if you sow therein the seed of

hate, it blossoms charity.’ Jewish nature is of ‘fine mould,’ or under

such a course of manuring, and such a season of neglect, it might well

have become altogether overrun with rank weeds. Seeds once planted can,

nevertheless, only follow the law of nature, and blossom and bear fruit

according to their kind. Forced into secret and sordid ways, denied

hope, aim, or ambition of any worthy sort, contemptuously shunned when

they were not actively hunted, ‘protected’ by princes and persecuted

by priests, what wonder if Jews at last became ‘degraded,’ never indeed

to the level of what they were thought, but something undoubtedly below

the level of what they should have been? Agur’s prayer was a wise one.

‘Give me, O Lord,’ he says, ‘neither poverty nor riches: lest I be full,

and deny Thee; or lest I be poor, and steal.’ Jews, for generations,

were subject to the extreme of both the temptations which Agur prayed

against. The cultivated Marannos of Spain yielded to the one; they were

‘full,’ and for continued wealth and ease they denied their God. The

ignorant clippers of coin in England yielded to the other temptation;

they were poor, and stole.

The higher ideals which keep men straight were sometimes lost sight

of in the gloom. Honour and honesty came often to be regarded as

impossible virtues. Life was so uncertain that it grew unduly dear,

and men and women, in their terror, became, not unseldom, selfish

and cowardly. Instances crop up in contemporary records, though they

are happily rare, of Jews being denounced and betrayed by Jews. The

carefully guarded secret of a co-religionist’s hidden hoards would

now and again be disclosed to the enemy, as a means of averting the

‘evil eye’ from a too close scrutiny into the traitor’s own concerns.

Men were even found capable of owning to untrue accusations, and of

inventing stories of never-designed plots, with the object of gaining

favour and ‘protection’ for themselves and their families. Under the

terrible conditions of their life, the very virtues of the Jews turned

to vices. The old Jewish characteristics of steadfastness, and prudence,

and intelligence, seemed to take new and lower forms; for bare life’s

sake, the loyal, large-minded Jew learnt to be narrow, and secret,

and cunning. There was such awful need to be rich. Rich Jews could

gain at best a lofty tolerance, and for poor Jews there must have

seemed no cause nor excuse for living at all. Money-getting became the

one absorbing pursuit of the race, the one ambition of life, the one

possible protection against cruel and tortured death. And the money got,

it brought no leisure, no gracious possibilities with it of refinement

or of culture. To toil for wealth which they might not openly enjoy,

and to passionately believe in a religion which they might not openly

profess, was the portion of the Jews for centuries. It was a sort of

suffering which sapped at the very roots of self-respect, and which

inevitably resulted in defects of bearing and of conduct. The outcast

Jew learnt to stoop where he should have stood upright, and to swagger

and to push when standing room was grudgingly allotted him. He came by

degrees to merit, in his outward aspect, some of the contempt which he

had never earned, and in this sadly changed aspect of the heirs of the

prophets, the darkness of the ‘dark ages’ was made visible.

=2. Atmospheric Conditions.=――Nothing, again, perhaps shows more

plainly the density of the darkness than the extraordinary light which

was cast upon it in the seventeenth century by a baleful shooting star,

which rose like a rocket in the East, just as the dawn was beginning

to break in the Western world. The miserable condition of the Jews had

by this time a little shaken their faith. They had been martyrs, and

mute inglorious martyrs, for so long. They suffered, among other things,

from suppressed religion. Their faith in God was as fervent as ever,

but the fervour, denied any honoured and open expression, had come to

be of a dangerous and an emotional sort. This spiritual weakness, such

as it was, did not lead them, however, in the direction of doubt, but

of credulity. They did not think that the Lord’s ‘hand was shortened,’

that it could not ‘save,’ but they grew over-eager to see it stretched

out on their behalf, and far too ready to welcome any sorry impostor

by way of Saviour. As had happened before the fall of Jerusalem, and

again before the coming of Barcochba, the very air that was breathed by

unhappy Jews seemed full of portent and prophecy, and a ‘Messiah’ was

almost bound to appear in response to the wild and superstitious hopes

in which they indulged. And when, at length, such a one came forward,

he found he had marvellously little to do to keep up the character.

=3. A Shooting Star: Sabbatai Zevi (1626‒1676).=――Smyrna, in Turkey,

was the birthplace of the wretched impostor who, for some three years

in the latter half of the seventeenth century, ‘made,’ as an old

chronicler expresses it, ‘a madness among the Jews.’ The father of

Sabbatai Zevi was a merchant, and in no wise remarkable. The son

was something of a scholar, and gained a certain amount of unwelcome

prominence in his youth by propounding some rather startling religious

theories, an exploit which led to his being banished from the city

by order of the authorities of the synagogue. Before his exile he was

twice married and twice divorced. We do not know what effect these

domestic experiences may have had on his character, but we hear of him

next (1664) at Jerusalem, interesting himself greatly in all Jewish

questions, and finding in a certain Jew of the place, named Nathan, an

enthusiastic listener to all his wild plans. Whether the sight of the

fallen city may have inspired Sabbatai with a genuine and passionate

desire to help in its restoration, or whether he was a conscious

impostor from the very first, and only influenced by the desire of

revenge on the Smyrna synagogue, it is difficult to decide. It is not

easy to think that, within the very walls of Jerusalem, a Jew could

plan a deliberate imposture on his nation. In his actions, however,

it is certain, Sabbatai was never honest. Quite suddenly he proclaimed

himself the Messiah of the Jews, appointed Nathan his prophet, and

proceeded to predict the very date when he, Sabbatai Zevi, should

be acknowledged sole monarch of the universe, with the capital and

head-quarters of his kingdom fixed in a restored and beautified

Jerusalem.

=4. How the News was received.=――The news of a Messiah having arisen

spread like wildfire through all the cities of Turkey. Business of

every sort was suspended, and men and women abandoned their ordinary

occupations, and gave themselves up entirely to what they called good

works. Believing that they were about ‘to inherit all things,’ rich

and poor alike refused to labour. Those who had led self-indulgent

lives now fasted and scourged themselves, and became so lavish in their

charity, and were so urgent to make amends, that the beggars had an

extremely good time. There must have been something very persuasive

about Sabbatai Zevi, for a certain Samuel Pennia who began by making

a strenuous stand against all this folly, ended by becoming a violent

convert to it. Sabbatai presently went to his birthplace, Smyrna.

In that city early recollections stirred some of the people to just

sufficient doubt to make them ask their old townsman to perform a

miracle in proof of his Messiahship. Sabbatai, says the same old

chronicle, ‘was horribly puzzled for a miracle,’ but his effrontery was

equal to the credulity of his dupes. In an audience before the cadi or

judge of the city, Sabbatai suddenly and gravely exclaimed, ‘See you

not a pillar of fire?’ Many of the crowd, in the hysterical excitement

of the moment, really believed that they saw something of the sort, and

those who did not see were silent, hardly liking to proclaim their want

of faith or their defective sight. Sabbatai was triumphant, and men who

refused to acknowledge him were actually, in some cases, excommunicated

by the synagogues.

=5. The Sultan interferes.=――But an end was coming to this

extraordinary imposture. The Sultan of Turkey, Mahomed IV., thought

it time to put a stop to the tumult and confusion which the man was

creating in his dominions. So when Sabbatai, shortly after the visit to

Smyrna, made a mission, as he would have called it, to Constantinople,

he was seized by order of the sultan upon his arrival, and imprisoned

in a dungeon. It was an unpleasant experience for Sabbatai, and it

made a very great difference in his way of looking at things, but on

his infatuated followers, strange to say, his reverse of fortune made

little or no impression. In a dungeon or in a palace, as martyr or as

prince, they believed in their Messiah. Poor deluded people, there is

something very pathetic about their enthusiasm; it seems to suggest so

plainly how few objects in life they must have had worthy of belief or

of reverence.

=6. Sabbatai resigns his Pretensions.=――The sultan was quite

determined to make an end of all this madness. At the end of two

months he demanded a miracle of Sabbatai as the price of his release

from prison. But it was to be a miracle of the sultan’s own choosing

this time. Sabbatai was to be stripped naked, archers were to shoot at

him, and his ‘divine’ flesh was to remain proof against their arrows.

Now, two months in an uncomfortable dungeon had considerably sobered

Sabbatai Zevi. He was not the sort of stuff of which heroes are made,

and he had not the slightest ambition to be a martyr. All his audacity

ebbed away from him, and he, of course, refused the test. Then, like

the coward he was, seeing the game was up, and tired perhaps of the

whole thing, he owned that he was nothing but a very commonplace

charlatan, who had traded on the credulity of his countrymen.

=7. Becomes a Convert to Mahomedanism.=――The confession, humiliating

as it was to Sabbatai, did not altogether satisfy the wise sultan. He

wanted to make an example of the cheat, and to show his dupes what a

poor creature they had believed in. So the sultan said that as Sabbatai

had proved himself so bad a Jew, he must try if he could do better as

a Mahomedan. Quite cheerfully Sabbatai consented to conversion, and had

the effrontery to add that to be a Turk had long been his ambition! And

as a Turk, and a rather popular one, this impostor continued to live,

and it was in the rather mixed character of a ‘Jew-Turk’ that, some ten

years later (1676), he died.

BOOK IV.

1591‒1885.

DAWN.

עַד שֶׁיָּפוּחַ הַיּוֹם וְנָסוּ הַצְּלָלִים

SONG OF SOL. ii. 17.

‘_Who counts the billows, when the shore is won?_’

CHAPTER XXXI.

DAWN.

=1. Beginning of Better Days in Holland.=――At last, after the thick

darkness and the waning stars, some faint streaks of dawn began slowly

to appear. It was on ugly, flat, Dutch marshes that the new light of

liberty first tremblingly broke, and its unaccustomed rays touched the

sluggish canals and solid bridges of the ancient city of Amsterdam into

a beauty that had been lacking to the picturesque minarets of Spain,

and gave to the respectable Dutch burghers a dignity that is somehow

absent from the stateliest of Spanish grandees. It was in 1591 that

the first small settlement of Jews was made in Holland, and these

earliest settlers were Marannos from Spain. Religious intolerance in

the Peninsula had grown no less fierce since the days of Torquemada,

and under the gloomy fanatic Philip II., the widower of our poor,

merciless Queen Mary, all the worst terrors and persecutions of the

Inquisition had been revived. The New Christians, or Marannos, as

the disguised Jews of Spain and Portugal were called, felt, under

Philip’s sway, less secure than ever from suspicion and its terrible

consequences. Emigration seemed their only chance of safety, but, as

of old, there was small choice of safe asylum. England and France were

still closed against declared Jews; the Popes and princes of Italy

were hostile to them; Germany was cruelly inhospitable; and Turkey

sounded very foreign and very far off to these cultivated and somewhat

self-indulgent Marannos. At last in their straits they bethought

themselves of brave little Holland, whose people had fought as sturdily

to guard their shores from the inroads of Inquisitors as from the

inroads of the ocean, and had made of their enemy, the sea, an ally

against the Spaniards.[44] In the States which had revolted from the

cruel supremacy of Spain, and had struggled so heroically for national

and religious independence, there seemed to be a certainty of freedom

of conscience being accorded to all citizens. The Marannos had come to

be very tired and very impatient of their masks, worn though they were

amid the palms and the orange groves. And so it came to pass that, at

the end of the sixteenth century, a little party of Spanish Jewish

refugees made this fresh experiment for life, and were most kindly and

generously received by the Protestant inhabitants of the new republic

of the Netherlands.

=2. The New Jerusalem.=――The emigrants who thus sought the hospitality

of the States were, in truth, of a sort to make the Dutchmen very

satisfied with their own unfashionable virtue of religious tolerance.

It was no hungry, pushing crowd of traders, eager only for bare

livelihood, who made their way to this new country. Spain, for all the

fetters she had laid for centuries on the consciences of her subjects,

had also for centuries given full opportunity for every energy which

they might possess to develop in the service of the state. Jews do

not restrict themselves to commerce when they have chance and choice

of other pursuits. As open and declared Jews so long as they could,

and then, when they could not, as Marannos, the Jews of the Peninsula,

since the occupation by the Moors, had held office as statesmen and as

finance ministers, and had been distinguished among the physicians and

scholars and poets of their country, as well as among its landowners

and its merchants. It was thus a highly intelligent, and cultivated,

and fairly well-off little community which threw off its disguise of

New Christians, and hastened to settle down as self-respecting Jews in

Amsterdam. They lost no time in building themselves a synagogue, and

in establishing schools. Their first synagogue was built in 1598, and

seventy years later there were several prosperous places of worship.

The old scholarly instinct of Judaism, which had asserted itself in so

many epochs, and in so many parts of the world, at Jamnia and at Sora,

at Alexandria and at Cordova, revived again, and Amsterdam grew into

a quaint Dutch likeness of them all. The men of light and leading in

Holland gave a glad welcome to these congenial spirits from Spain,

and Amsterdam, with its happy, honoured, and rapidly increasing Jewish

colony, came to be called the New Jerusalem. In 1619, sufficiently full

legal rights were secured to the immigrants, and the Jews of Holland

gradually became no inconsiderable addition to the commerce and the

culture of the country.

=3. Sephardim and Ashkenazim.=――Many delightful qualities have their

corresponding defects. The refugees from Spain had some drawbacks

to their cultivated minds and their refined manners. They were very

superior, but they were also, on occasion, not a little selfish. They

valued much their training in the old country, and the consideration

which it gained for them in the new. They valued it, in fact, so much,

that they desired to keep it wholly to themselves, and not to risk any

loss of social standing by contact with less creditable co-religionists.

Naturally enough, when the poor downtrodden Jews of Germany heard of

this happy little settlement in Amsterdam, many journeyed thither,

hoping to find toleration from strangers and a welcome from their

brethren in faith. In this latter hope they were disappointed. The

Spanish and Portuguese Jews kept themselves proudly and distinctly

aloof from the German Jews, refusing even to intermarry with them. The

Sephardim and Ashkenazim[45] Jews of Holland were, from the very first,

entirely separate communities, worshipping in different synagogues,

learning in different schools, supporting each their own charities,

and using each their own prayer-books, with not even the pronunciation

of the ancient language in common. The German Jews, as a body, were,

it is undeniable, of a distinctly lower tone, in regard to occupation

and education and refinement, to these others. It was impossible, from

the widely different antecedents and experiences of both communities,

that things should have been otherwise, and many of the differences

between them were quite inevitable. Still, that resolute aloofness

from the unattractive Ashkenazim was not a nice attitude on the part

of the prosperous and respected Sephardim. Excuses may be found for

them; their own position was certainly not very secure. Still the fact

remains that the Sephardim, under pressure of circumstances, did what

the prophet Isaiah warns us all from doing――they ‘hid themselves from

their own flesh.’

=4. Spanish Jews in Holland.=――Quite as surely, if not quite as

conspicuously, as the Ashkenazim showed signs of the treatment to

which they had been subject in Germany, did the Sephardim bear traces

of the experiences which they had undergone in Spain. The defects which

persecution had developed in the one case were the more disagreeable

and more apparent, but they were hardly as harmful as some tendencies

which a long course of religious hypocrisy had created in the other.

The German Jew had worn the yellow badge for centuries, and something

of the look, and something of the habits, of an outcast disfigured

him still; the Spanish Jew, to escape the fate of the persecuted, had

taken upon him the disguise of the persecutors, and some remnants of

the fierce, intolerant Catholicism of Spain unhappily clung to him for

a long while after his close-fitting mask of New Christian had been

flung aside.

=5. Their Acquired Intolerance.=――It is a sad thing to find that Jews,

who had so suffered from the terrors of the Inquisition, should have

set up a little tribunal of their own, and invested it with similar

powers over religious offences; and very strange that those who had

experienced the horrors of penance and excommunication should have

imitated the proceedings of those persecutors in the treatment of

members of their own faith, whom they considered heretical in religious

matters. But this actually happened. The effects of persecution have

now and again made Jews a little ‘mixed’ in their morals as well as

in their manners. The Jews of Holland, with that long-denied gift

of religions freedom at last in their hands, grasped it somewhat

over-tight, and in their delight at holding their Judaism fast and

firm in the sight of all men, they were not always quite as careful as

they might have been to do unto others as they were so very thankful to

be at last done unto.

=6. An Instance in Point: Uriel da Costa.=――Amongst those disguised

Jews of Spain who, the better to conceal their Judaism, went even to

the length of taking the office and performing the rites of Catholic

priests, was a certain Uriel da Costa. When the Amsterdam settlement

gave its chance to Jews of living true lives, da Costa gladly enough

left Spain, threw off his disguise, and joined his brethren in faith.

But he had been for too many years dwelling as a Catholic among

Catholics to be able to become all at once a strict and orthodox Jew.

He had grown used to ceremonial of one sort, ceremonial of another

sort, perhaps even, for a while, of any sort, was irksome to him.

He neglected Jewish observances, and, what was less pardonable, he

spoke and wrote against many cherished Jewish practices, denouncing

and ridiculing them as relics of formalism and superstition. It was

something more than imprudent. His own long failure in courageous

profession of his faith should have led da Costa to consider himself

quite unfitted to give any opinion whatever as to the correct forms

of its observance. He had expressed his Judaism throughout the best

part of his life by entire silence: silence would better have become

him still. He had submitted to circumstances, and lived a life of

active religious deceit: it could have been no great strain on such

a seasoned conscience to conform to what the bulk of his people were

content to accept. Little sympathy can be felt with the hasty attitude

of opposition in which da Costa conceitedly placed himself to the

congregation of Amsterdam, but still less for the unfortunate spirit

in which his opposition was resisted. He was first excommunicated

by theological authority, and a little later, when he had published

an attack upon the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, he was

sentenced by the Dutch civic authority, which the congregation most

unwisely invoked, to a term of imprisonment. So closed the first act

in this discreditable affair.

Some years later, da Costa, grown older and perhaps wiser, wished to

be reconciled with his co-religionists, and made formal application for

the ban of excommunication to be lifted from him. Here was an excellent

opportunity for burying the hatchet, and for the authorities to accept

da Costa’s overtures as a sufficient acknowledgment on his part that he

had been in the wrong. Unluckily, old associations with that dreadful

Inquisition were deeply implanted in the members of the Amsterdam

congregation. They were no longer New Christians, but they were also

not quite yet true Jews. It was resolved that Uriel da Costa should

be pardoned, but there was a horrible and grotesque imitation of

Torquemada’s barbarous programme when the penitent was received back

into the synagogue. A special service was held, a ‘confession’ of

his sins was required to be read aloud by the suppliant, a sermon was

preached at him, stripes to the number of nine-and-thirty were laid

upon him with no gentle hand, and one after another, over his prostrate

body, the elders of the congregation solemnly stepped. Then the curse,

which no human being has any shadow of right to pronounce, was declared

to be removed from him. It was altogether a terribly unjewish and

mistaken proceeding. Every society or community has, undoubtedly, the

right to lay down certain rules by which they will receive new members,

or expel old ones, just as every father has a right, and even a duty,

to keep from his house persons whose influence he fears as dangerous

to the morals of his children. But to punish is another matter. No

opinions, however mischievous, could justify such treatment as da Costa

received at the hands of the Amsterdam community, and his next act put

these bigoted interpreters of a bad system yet more hopelessly in the

wrong. Two days after that humiliating scene in the synagogue (in April

1640), da Costa shot himself, and thus aroused a sympathy which on the

merits of the case, had it been properly dealt with, would have been

given neither to him nor to any one of his actions.

CHAPTER XXXII.[48]

MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL.

=1. His Early Life.=――The Amsterdam settlement increased and prospered.

Its members were distinguished in learning and in commerce, and by

degrees their presence and their influence were not confined to the

Dutch capital. Early in the seventeenth century an important branch

colony of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants was formed at Hamburg, and,

a little later on, another at Copenhagen. But Amsterdam continued to

be the centre of the revival, and new refugees from the Peninsula were

always arriving in Holland, to take the place of the younger and more

adventurous spirits who sought their fortunes further afield.

Under Philip III. of Spain there was a fresh outbreak of activity on

the part of the Inquisition. In January 1605 an _auto-da-fé_ was held

at Lisbon, in which 150 Jews and Jewesses literally walked ‘in the

shadow of death,’ and were only set free from that fearful procession,

at the last moment, on payment of an enormous fine. Their ransom money

paid, these poor souls hastened to leave the land which bigotry had

made intolerable to them, and, broken in health and ruined in fortune,

they made for the friendly shores of Holland. Among these refugees

was a certain Joseph ben Israel and his family, the youngest member of

which was a year-old baby named Manasseh. Joseph ben Israel received

the kindest of welcomes from his old friends, who were now no longer

professing Catholics, but very earnestly practising Jews. The Rabbi

of the Amsterdam congregation, Isaac Uziel, in due time became tutor

to the little Manasseh, and by the year 1622, when Manasseh was barely

eighteen, the office of Rabbi having become vacant through Uziel’s

death, the appointment was given to the promising son of Joseph ben

Israel. So, from the early age of eighteen, Manasseh preached and

taught with great satisfaction to himself and his congregation, and to

the benefit also of many learned Christian scholars, who, interested

in the Jewish community in their midst, would often pay a visit to the

synagogue or the school. It was an honoured and an honourable position

which Manasseh held, but it was not a well-paid one, and, like the

older Rabbis, Manasseh had to supplement head work by hand work. He

set up a printing press, and in 1627 he issued a prayer-book, which

prayer-book was the first Hebrew publication that ever appeared in

Holland. Perhaps the opportunity of being able to publish whatever

he might like to write had something to do with making an author of

Manasseh, for, without any great original talent, he became a prolific

writer. In 1632 he brought out a book called the ‘Conciliator,’ the

object of which was to reconcile conflicting passages in the Pentateuch.

There are no valuable independent ideas in the ‘Conciliator,’ and,

perhaps, what it shows most clearly is how indefatigably Manasseh

read before he began to write. There were five years spent on the

composition or compilation of this work, and it contains quotations

from, or references to, over two hundred Hebrew, and fifty Latin, Greek,

and Spanish authors. It was written in Spanish, though it might as

readily have been written in Hebrew or Latin or English, for Manasseh

was a most accomplished linguist. The research of the book, and the

industry and talent of the author, gained it fame. The ‘Conciliator’

was speedily translated into Latin and Italian, and attracted to

Manasseh a great deal of complimentary attention from the scholars

of the day. Money, however, was still lacking, and began to prove a

somewhat serious difficulty, for Manasseh had married young, and his

wife, though a great-granddaughter of Abarbanel,[46] and bringing

him delightfully patriotic memories as her portion, had brought him

no solid dowry. And, of course, there were children to make the ideal

of ‘plain living and high thinking’ somewhat of a practical puzzle.

By 1640 Manasseh began to seriously face the necessity of turning to

mercantile pursuits, and of emigrating to the Brazils. His congregation,

which seems to have been a little slow to recognise his talents till

the outer world pointed them out, and not very quick or very liberal in

rewarding them even then, would have let him go, and only regretted him

as a printer of prayer-books, but, luckily, two brothers named Pereira

were wiser than the rest of the Amsterdam community. These brothers,

who were wealthy men, came forward very liberally, endowed a college,

and made Manasseh the head of it. Thus set free from pecuniary cares,

Manasseh ben Israel, at the age of thirty-six, was able to give himself

up to his books, and to his duties in the pulpit and at the schools.

=2. His Writings and his Friends.=――The exceptional position which

the Jews held in Holland gave to any distinguished member of their

community a quite exceptional prominence. The Amsterdam Rabbi, as

Manasseh ben Israel was called, came to be quite a celebrated personage.

He was looked on as an encyclopædia of knowledge, and scholars of both

sexes came from far and near to consult with him on learned subjects,

and Hebrew came to be quite a fashionable study, even among Jews and

Jewesses. There is no doubt that Manasseh’s character had as much to do

with his popularity as his attainments. He was a thoroughly upright man,

and most courteous in his manners. He was, moreover, never sparing of

time or trouble when the results of his really wide and varied reading

were in request. Grotius, the author of the ‘Law of Nations,’[47]

Caspar Barlæus, who has been called the Virgil of his age, the whole

of the learned family of Vossius, father and sons, all came to know

and to esteem Manasseh, though neither one of them was naturally fond

of Jews. And as Isaac Vossius was not only a distinguished scholar,

but also chamberlain to Christina, Queen of Sweden, his friendship

proved, by-and-by, a very useful one to Manasseh. Not useful in the

vulgar sense of gaining for the Jewish Rabbi the right of rising in

influential Christian society, but useful for the patriotic end, the

טוֹב לְעַמּוֹ――the good of his people, which Manasseh, like Mordecai, was

always seeking. Manasseh was no great author, as we have seen, yet

even in his authorship he had a patriotic ideal. He was always meaning

to write a ‘Heroic History,’ as he called it, by which he meant a

history of the Jews, who were his heroes. He never did it, and possibly

our libraries are not the poorer for the lack, whilst our lives are

certainly the richer. For Manasseh was destined to make an altogether

new chapter in Jewish history, instead of expending his energies in

compiling many prosy ones. In truth, the works which he did publish

add but little to his reputation. There were a great many theological

treatises, some translations, and some compilations, all alike showing

signs of industry and of reading, but none affording much trace of

critical or original thought. Perhaps the most widely read of his works

at this time was a little book called ‘The Hope of Israel,’ which tried

to prove that some aborigines in America were lineal descendants of

the lost ten tribes of Israel. The ‘Hope’ seems to have rested on no

more solid foundation than a traveller’s tale of savages met with in

the wilds, who included something that sounded like the שְׁמַע in their

vernacular. The story was quickly translated into several languages,

but it was almost as quickly disproved, and Manasseh’s illusions, which

were founded on the ‘Hope,’ were somewhat roughly dealt with.

=3. Manasseh finds his Vocation.=――Till the age of fifty, Manasseh

continued to lead his honourable, useful life in Amsterdam, ‘doing

with all his might whatsoever his hand found to do,’ and making of the

things that lay close to him his nearest duties. But alike in the happy

home life, and in the pleasant social intercourse; as he preached his

helpful discourses, and as he compiled his rather dull books; when

he was teaching or when he was printing, Manasseh seems to have been

always, and all the while, conscious of a certain purpose in life,

which his life, busy and useful as it was, had not as yet fulfilled.

_He_ was happy and honoured, and in any country he might have chosen

to visit would have been welcomed by the wisest and the best, but his

people were still outcasts, and that, to our Amsterdam Rabbi, spoilt it

all. Manasseh valued the position he had won chiefly for his people’s

sake, and by the time he was fifty years old he had come to a definite

determination of how to use it for their benefit.

=4. Negotiations begun for the Return of the Jews to England.=――The

Amsterdam Rabbi wanted to insure for the Jews another such welcome as

Holland had given to them. He wanted to find for the proscribed and

exiled race a home as free citizens among a free people. His relations

with Grotius and with Vossius made his thoughts turn, in the first

place, to Sweden, with whose queen, Christina, he had had, too, some

literary correspondence. But before the Swedish project came to any

practical issue, the course of events happily made him direct his

energies towards England, where the struggle for a nation’s ‘rights’

had but lately been won at the cost of a king’s life. In 1649 Charles I.

had expiated his hateful, harmful weakness on the scaffold, and though

John Hampden’s brave voice, which had aroused the English conscience

like a trumpet call, was, since June 1643, stilled in death, his cousin,

Oliver Cromwell, was at the helm, and sternly and uncompromisingly

directing it to good ends. The first demand of the victorious army

of Independents, who had fought not for place, but for principle, was

liberty of conscience, and equality before the law for all religious

denominations. In this new attitude of Puritan England, and in the

earnest character of its new and uncrowned ruler, Manasseh ben Israel

saw and seized his opportunity. In the year 1650 he forwarded to

Cromwell his ‘Hope of Israel,’ and, by the help of influential friends,

he caused petitions for the re-admission of Jews to England, with

rights secured to them of worship, of commerce, and of burial, to be

laid before the Long and the Rump Parliaments. He busied himself also

in the composition of a pamphlet, called _Vindiciæ Judæorum_ (Defence

of the Jews), which proved, on its completion, the most powerful and

the least pedantic of his writings. It was not, however, finished

when, in 1655, the way having been now, as he considered, sufficiently

prepared by correspondence, he resolved on trying the effect of

personal intercession with the Protector. To quote his own subsequent

and simple words on the subject, ‘I could not be quiet in my mind until

I had made my humble addresses to the Lord Protector, whom God preserve.

And finding that my coming over would not be altogether unwelcome to

him, with those great hopes which I conceived, I joyfully took leave

of my house, my friends, my kindred, all my advantages there, and

the country wherein I have lived all my lifetime under the benign

protection and favour of the lords, the States-General, and magistrates

of Amsterdam. In fine, I say, I parted from them all, and took my

voyage to England.’

CHAPTER XXXIII.[48]

THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO ENGLAND.

=1. Manasseh presents his Petition.=――In October 1655, Manasseh ben

Israel, with his only son Samuel, and two or three eminent Amsterdam

Jews who had accompanied them, were safely arrived in London and

settled in lodgings in the Strand. The first thing that was done was

to personally present an address to the Protector, and a declaration

to the Commonwealth, setting forth the objects of the Jewish visit to

England, was published at the same time. Both these documents are very

remarkable. Although humble petitions from an outcast people, who had

been ignominiously thrust forth into exile 365 years before, Manasseh’s

appeals have not the smallest trace of reproach nor of servility, into

either of which mistakes it would have been so easy to fall. The Jewish

case is stated with dignity, and on its merits, it is pleaded without

passion, and on the grounds of justice rather than of favour. The

‘clemency’ and ‘high-mindedness’ of Cromwell are certainly taken for

granted, but equally is assumed the worthiness of the clients who

appeal. Manasseh, with a certain shrewdness, makes a point of the

‘profit’ which the Jews are likely to prove to their hosts. ‘Where the

Jewes are once kindly receaved,’ he urges, ‘they make a firm resolution

never to depart from thence, seeing they have no proper place of their

own; and so they are always with their goods in the cities where they

live a perpetual benefit to all payments.’[49] ‘Profit,’ proceeds

Manasseh, ‘is a most powerful motive,’ and, therefore, he ‘deals

with that point first.’ He dwells on the ‘ability’ and ‘industry and

naturall instinct of the Jews for merchandizing,’ and on the fact

that ‘wheresoever they go to dwell, there presently the traficq begins

to flourish.’ And then, urging his claim on higher grounds, Manasseh

dwells on the loyalty of the Jews, which he shows is a religious

duty with the race, and cannot fail to make of them law-abiding,

and law-defending, citizens of their adopted states. He shows from

history that Jeremiah’s injunction to ‘pray for the peace’ and to

‘seek the peace’ of the cities to which they are ‘led captive,’ has

been literally, and over and over again, fulfilled by Jews. In a

few well-chosen and dignified words he refers to the slanderous and

superstitious statements of which Jews have been the subject. He

disposes with brief and distinct denial of the simply silly accusations,

such as the killing of Christian children for the manufacture of

passover cakes, only with quiet emphasis recalling that in the early

days, when the Church was struggling against paganism, ‘the self-same

ancient scandalls were cast upon innocent Christians.’ The more serious,

because less entirely untrue, charges of ‘usury,’ which have been

brought against Jews, Manasseh meets as boldly. Whenever, wherever, the

practice exists, he frankly denounces it as ‘infamous.’ But he will not

admit that ‘usury’ is in any sense a _Jewish_ principle, nor in any but

a cruelly acquired one a _Jewish_ practice. ‘The sacred Scriptures,’

says Manasseh, ‘forbid absolutely the robbing of all men, whatsoever

religion they be of. In our Law it is a greater sinne to rob or defraud

a stranger than if I did it to one of my owne profession. A Jew is

bound to shew his charity to all men: he hath a precept not to abhor

an Idumean or an Egyptian; and yet another, “Love the stranger, for ye

know the heart of a stranger.” If, notwithstanding, there be some that

do contrary to this, _they do it not as Jews, but as wicked Jews_.’

This petition, helped as it was by the fine presence and the fine

character of the pleader, made a profound impression, and some

five weeks after Manasseh’s arrival in England the question of the

re-admission of the Jews was submitted to public discussion, and an

assembly composed of the majority of the ministers, a commission of

clergymen, the Lord Mayor, two sheriffs, and some selected merchants,

was convened to take Manasseh’s petition into formal consideration.

=2. A Christian Advocate.=――A powerful ‘friend at court’ was found in

one Edward Nicholas, who, under Charles Stuart and now under Cromwell,

held the office of Secretary or Clerk to the Parliament. This gentleman

had published in 1648 a little work entitled ‘An Apology for the

Honourable Nation of the Jews and all the Sons of Israel,’ which work

warmly espoused their cause, speaking of them as a ‘people chosen by

God and protected by God,’ and insisting that ‘unless, as Englishmen,

we all show ourselves compassionate and helpers of the afflicted Jews,

... and repeal the severe laws made against them, ... God will charge

their suffering upon us, and will avenge them on their persecutors.’

Nicholas expressly stated in his little pamphlet that he alone was

responsible for it, that he was publishing only his own views on the

subject, unprompted and unsolicited by any one. And this was, in all

probability, the exact truth. But the official position which Nicholas

held under Cromwell made it seem hardly likely that he would have

ventured to express such decided opinions had the Protector been

entirely averse from them, and, naturally, such a pamphlet, from such

a quarter, aroused a great deal of interest, and provoked a great deal

of discussion. Published as it was, at the very time when Manasseh had

begun to think in earnest of his mission, the pamphlet was also most

useful in enabling him, before coming to England, to judge a little

of the state of public feeling on the question, and to draw his own

conclusions as to the attitude which Cromwell was likely to take up. On

this latter point there was, from the first, very little room for doubt.

=3. What People said.=――When Edward Nicholas presented that brave,

bold brief of his on behalf of proscribed and unpopular clients, the

whispers had been many that he held it by the grace, or even, said

some, at the secret instigation of Cromwell, but when Manasseh arrived

in London, the marked favour with which the Protector received his

Jewish petitioner set the wildest rumours in circulation. Cromwell was

declared to be of Jewish descent, and it was further alleged that his

Jewish kinsfolk beyond the seas had recognised in him their Messiah.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, on the same authority, was to be converted into

a synagogue, and an actual sum was named as the price the Jews had

offered for it. These absurd tales were actually believed in by many

ignorant people, for those most incapable of faith are often the most

credulous of folly. The solution of Cromwell’s favourable reception of

the Jews was simple enough. Those who went so far to seek for reasons

could have found them close at hand. But there are people, says Carlyle,

who ‘can look into the great soul of a man, radiant with the splendours

of very heaven, and see nothing there but the shadow of their own

mean darkness.’[50] In Cromwell’s support of Jewish claims the ‘great

soul’ was only consistent with itself. The character of Cromwell in

all things was an index to his conduct in this one thing. Liberty of

conscience, religions rights secured to all men, was the Puritan battle

cry. The principle had been fought for at Naseby, it would be upheld at

Whitehall, and, though Cromwell could not know it, it would never more

be abandoned by the England which he, in his stern rectitude, lifted

out of the meretricious mists of greatness, into the ‘fine air, the

pale severity of light’――a national ideal of goodness.

=4. How the Petition was received.=――Cromwell presided over the

assembly which met to consider Manasseh’s petition. Two points were

submitted for decision: 1, whether it was lawful to re-admit the Jews;

and 2, under what conditions such re-admission should take place. The

law officers ruled that if it should be decided that such re-admission

was for the welfare of the State, it could not be by law opposed. That

settled the legal aspect of the question. Then came the commercial.

The merchants feared for the effects of Jewish competition on English

industries. ‘Can you really think,’ asked Cromwell, ‘that so despised a

people should be able to secure the upper hand in trade and credit over

the merchants of England――the most honoured in the world?’ These adroit

words allayed for the moment the mercantile jealousies that blocked

the way, and left room for the religious difficulty to be debated. The

clergy did not limit themselves to argument; an old chronicler declares

the majority present ‘raged like fanatics,’ quoting Scripture, too, in

their arrogant ignorance, against ‘the people of the Book.’ And after

much debate, Cromwell roused himself to reply on the whole question.

His speech has only come down to us in fragments, but these fragments

justify the opinion expressed by one of the audience, who says, ‘I have

never heard a man speak so splendidly in all my life.’ The man who, as

Carlyle says, ‘grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with

the naked truth of things,’[51] tore that mask of ‘English prosperity

in danger’ from the merchants, and, dubbing their doubts ‘trade

jealousy,’ flung their pretences at them. Then, turning to the clergy,

he stripped off the rags of rhetoric in which they had clothed their

personal prejudices, and held forth their action, bare, in all its

hideousness, as persecution. He spoke sternly as the champion of

justice, gently as the advocate of compassion. He did not succeed,

but neither did he speak altogether in vain. Manasseh’s appeal was

not granted; when put to the council, the majority voted against it,

yet nevertheless Cromwell’s eloquence had done its silent work; the

known favour of the Protector ensured no active steps being taken to

prevent Jews coming to England, and quietly, and without much notice

being taken of them, Jews gradually did come, and settled themselves

in London. By 1657 they were numerous enough and felt secure enough to

ask for, and to obtain, the loan of a piece of ground in the parish of

Stepney for a בֵּית חַיִּים.

=5. End of Manasseh’s Story.=――Manasseh, after the disappointing

decision of the Council of State, waited on month after month, hoping

that the informal permission of the Protector might become the law

of the land. His companions grew tired, and went back to their homes

in Amsterdam, but Manasseh stayed on, patient and steadfast in his

purpose, and longing to complete his work. Early in 1656 he published

his _Vindiciæ Judæorum_, a triumphant answer to the slanders which were

uttered against his people. And that was his last effort in the cause.

His mission never fulfilled itself in the grand, complete way which

he had hoped. He sowed his seed, and it is we, his descendants, who,

‘rejoicing, bear the sheaves.’ He would have been content that it

should be so. In the autumn of 1657, when his book was launched and

he could do no more, he set out for home. And, at home, in Amsterdam,

before he reached it, they made ready his grave. For illness overtook

him on the way, and on November 20, 1657, at Middleburg, in the house

of Ephraim Abarbanel, his brother-in-law, Manasseh ben Israel died.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

SPINOZA.

=1. Clouds obscure the Dawn.=――The dawn which had arisen on the Jews

in Holland had now fairly spread to England. But so long and so stormy

had been the night, that the dawn was dark and tempestuous, and the

light of perfect day was still very far off. Dense clouds swept ever

and anon across the Jewish horizon, and one such heavy mist hung over

the community in Amsterdam even as Manasseh was so manfully striving to

disperse the fogs in London. And these mists and clouds and fogs, which

rose up obscuring the dawn, were due sometimes as much to Jewish as to

Christian atmospheric conditions. It is a strange fact to record, that

at the very time when Manasseh was earnestly pleading to the English

nation for religious liberty and freedom of conscience to be granted to

the Jews, the elders of his own congregation in Amsterdam seemed to be

as seriously engaged in denying these rights to one of their body, a

young man of four-and-twenty, who, now known to the world as Benedict

Spinoza, is accounted ‘great among the greatest as a thinker.’[52]

=2. The Amsterdam Jews at the Time of Spinoza.=――In November 1632,

when the Amsterdam synagogue had been built just four-and-thirty years,

there was born to one of the Spanish Jewish families there resident,

called d’Espinoza, a son who received the name of Baruch. To understand

at all his sad and wonderful story, it is necessary, first of all, to

see in what ways their residence in Holland had affected the refugees

from Spain and Portugal. Though, at the date of Spinoza’s birth, nearly

forty years had passed since Jews from the Peninsula had settled in

Holland, the community in Amsterdam were far from being good Dutch Jews,

in any complete sense of either word. They were good according to their

lights, but their lights had come to burn low and false, through the

long, fierce glare of the Inquisition. They were Dutch in any practical

ordinary interpretation of grateful loyalty, but in language, in

manners, and in modes of thought, they were still Spanish. And as Jews,

these emancipated Marannos fell also distinctly short of the standard.

Their very earnestness was in some sort against them. They were not

content to be ‘witnesses,’ they would be judges. Their consciousness

of their own long neglect of all the forms of Judaism was so keen,

that they sought relief from this self-reproach in hunting out cause

for reproach in others, and they were, in truth, terror-stricken when

any member of the community questioned any doctrine or abandoned any

practice of Judaism. They did not seem to realise that to be Jewish in

every minute observance, is not quite the same thing as to fulfil the

Jewish Law in the sense in which the prophet Micah exhorted us――to ‘do

justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.’