MIDDLE AGES
“JEWS massacred in France,” “Jews massacred in Germany,” “Jews
massacred in England,” “Jews massacred in Germany and France,” “Jews
massacred in Spain,” again and again and again. These headings, not to
mention expulsions, oppressions and spoliations without number, stare
us in the face as we turn over the pages of the history of Mediaeval
Europe, and the cold lines assume a terrible significance as we peruse
tale after tale of bodily and mental torment, such as no other people
ever suffered and survived. And as we read on, and try to realise the
awful scenes, the desolate cry of the sufferers rings in our ears, like
a long-drawn wail borne across the centuries: “How long, O Lord, how
long?”
It would, of course, be an absurd exaggeration to assert that the life
of Israel through the Middle Ages was an unbroken horror of carnage
and rapine. There were spells of respite, some of them fairly long,
during which the Jew was permitted to live and grow fat. But these
Sabbaths of rest can be likened not inaptly to the periods during which
a prudent husbandman suffers his land to lie fallow, in the hope of a
richer harvest. They are only intervals between the acts of a tedious
and bloody tragedy, with a continent for its stage and seven centuries
for its night. But, though covering so vast an extent in space and
time, the drama is not devoid of unity: the unity of plot. The motives
and the characters are ever the same, each scene ends in strict accord
with the foregoing, and the performance is a masterpiece of mournful
monotony. Nor is it easy to bestow the crown of excellence on any
European nation of actors without being unjust to their colleagues.
The drama naturally divides itself into two periods: the period of
spontaneous but unsystematic hostility, and the period of deliberate
and organised persecution.
While the Church was engaged in disseminating the gospel abroad, in
rooting out heresy at home and in establishing her own authority, she
had little time to devote to the persecution of the Jews; and the only
canon law against them was the prohibition to dwell under the same
roof with Christians and to employ Christian servants--a law which,
in the absence of rigorous supervision, often remained a dead letter,
and much oftener was observed, simply because neither side felt any
violent desire to break it. The Jews consequently throve amazingly,
their synagogues grew in number and splendour, and their antipathy to
outside influences, though continuing to be as implacable as ever,
found its chief expression in social isolation tempered by commercial
exploitation.
In every country and in every city in Europe they remained sharply
separated from their Christian neighbours, shunning intermarriage
with them, and forming a perfectly distinct body of people, with the
synagogue for its centre and its soul. The synagogue elected its
own officers in accordance with the traditions of the Temple and
the instructions of the Talmud, passing communal ordinances which,
as in ancient times, regulated the whole of Jewish life: enforcing
monogamy, prohibiting shaving, fixing the tax on meat, restraining
gambling, forbidding the promiscuous dancing of Jews and Jewesses,
dictating marriage settlements and divorce, defining the dress and
diet of men and women. The State frequently levied the taxes on the
Jewish community in a lump sum, leaving the assessment among individual
members and the collection to the officers of the synagogue.[41]
Justice also was administered by the _Beth Din_, or Jewish religious
tribunal. Thus, despite much external interference, the Jewries
constituted self-governing colonies--strange oases in mediaeval
society. Their members were neither villeins nor freeholders; neither
men-at-arms nor mechanics. Feudalism concerned them as little as
Catholicism. They took no more part in the martial exercises than in
the spiritual devotions of their neighbours. They belonged neither to
the knightly orders nor to the commercial and industrial corporations;
but they lived a life of their own, in closer communion of interests
and tastes with their brethren in Cairo or Babylon than with their
fellow-townsmen. In the ninth century, for instance, Babylon was to the
Jews of Western Europe what Rome was to the Catholics--the oracle of
Divine knowledge--and Rabbinical decisions issued therefrom were obeyed
as implicitly as Papal Bulls. The Mediaeval Jews were as indifferent to
the beauties of Chivalry as to its duties. The notes of the minstrel
fell dead upon their ears, and the sterile subtleties of Talmudical
exegesis thrilled them more than the amours of romance. Latin, the
language of Western Christendom, was abhorred by the descendants of
those whom the Roman destroyer of the Temple had driven into exile,
and the study of the Torah was the one form of literature to which
all Jews, old and young, rich and poor, devoted themselves with a
single-minded earnestness worthy of the ancient Pharisees and Scribes.
Even in their mutual greetings they retained the oriental formula
“Peace be to thee,” “To thee a goodly blessing.”
This ominous isolation was to the Jews a source of pride, with which
no bribe could induce them to part. The thought of making themselves
one with the uncircumcised was as repugnant to them as it had been to
their ancestors on entering Canaan. Their poetical literature, which
through the Jewish hymn-book supplied a bond of sympathy between all
the scattered sections of Mediaeval Jewry, is a lasting monument of
their sorrows and of their self-glorification; of their faith in the
promises of the past and of their firm trust in the future. All these
sentiments may be regarded as embodied in that love for an idealised
and idolised Zion which brightened many a gloomy hour, and which was
for the Jews what political ambitions and aspirations were for their
Christian neighbours. They looked upon themselves but as sojourners in
the land, and upon their residence among the Gentiles as an evil dream
from which the Lord in His time would awaken them, and lead His people
back to the land of their fathers. Israel still was the slave of the
Idea, and its victim.
This social isolation was symbolised and perpetuated by local
segregation. The Jews everywhere dwelt together in special quarters,
distinguished even amid the gloom and squalor of a mediaeval town
by a darkness and dirtiness which contrasted curiously with the
occasional magnificence of the interior of the houses and with the
personal cleanliness of the inmates. In these quarters they resided,
many families in one house, eating meat killed and cooked in a special
manner, frequently fasting when their neighbours feasted, and feasting
when they fasted; or, worse still, sometimes, by a fatal coincidence,
celebrating their Deliverance while the Christians mourned the
sufferings of their Saviour; as a rule, resting on the day on which
the others worked, and working on the day on which they rested. They
attended no mass, partook of no sacrament, showed no reverence for
the crucifix and the saints; but they lived unbaptized, unblest and
circumcised, worshipping their own God after their own fashion and in
their own tongue, indulging in mysterious ablutions, observing the new
moons and a thousand quaint rules of conduct, abstaining from touching
fire from Friday evening till Saturday night, from eating pork, from
drinking wine and milk, or from using vessels, touched by a Gentile.
Their religious symbolism was alien to that of their neighbours; their
allegorical wedding customs, their rejoicings and their wailings
equally weird; their music as wonderful as their symbolism; the nasal
sing-song strains that floated out of the windows of the synagogue of
a morning, or those that filled the night air with their strangeness,
as a funeral procession hurried through the street, sounded horribly
harsh, unmelodious, and unmeaning to non-Hebrew ears. Their very
children were unlike the children of the Gentile; precocious in worship
as in work, they knew nothing of the sprightly brownies, elves, and
fairies of European folk-lore, but believed in the solemn and sober
spirits of Asiatic mythology. Altogether they must have seemed a
singular and sinister people, with usury for their favourite pursuit,
and prayer for their main recreation.
Thus they lived, and when they died they were buried in special
cemeteries, emphasising the amiable principle that there could be no
union or intercommunion between Jew and Gentile even in death.
Is it to be wondered at that the Jews everywhere were looked upon with
aversion and suspicion? The chastity of Jewish life, the gracious charm
of the Sabbath, the serene beauty of the Jewish home were unknown, for
Jewish homes in the Middle Ages rarely received a non-Jewish guest. If
an inquisitive Catholic strayed into a synagogue on a Sabbath morning,
what he saw therein would tend to strengthen his antipathy. He would
find a congregation of men with their heads covered, gathered together
in a place which had none of the attributes of a church: no images, no
font, no altar, no holy-water stoup; a club-room rather than a House
of the Lord. He would see some of these men absorbed in learned study,
and others in lively gossip; some chanting, and others chattering
aloud; many dropping in casually at odd times; all heedless of the
precentor, whose trilling airs soared aloft in triumphant discord, amid
the pandemonium of tongues, now melting into melodramatic tears or
hysterical laughter, now drowned by the shrill blast of the ram’s horn.
How could the ignorant Gentile know that these listless or belated
worshippers had already prayed abundantly at home, and, like people
who go to a public banquet after having enjoyed a good dinner in
private, had no appetite for further devotion? To him the whole scene,
with the din of children crying and running about, and the free and
easy nonchalance of the men, must have appeared an orgy of indecorous
levity. Worse still, he might have surprised this congregation
discussing lawsuits, or prices of goods; for the synagogue was much
more than a prayer-house to the Jew, and in it were made proclamations
and bargains such as the mediaeval citizen was accustomed to see made
in the market-place. Everything that the visitor witnessed would
impress him as uncouth, unchristian, and uncanny; and he would go away
amazed and scandalised, if not disgusted.
And yet, such is the apparent inconsistency of human nature, it was to
this despised and detested assembly that the Christians of the lower
orders, when ill, often had recourse for medical assistance. As in the
old days at Rome, so in mediaeval Europe the Hebrew rites commanded
the veneration of the Gentiles. The mystery of the unknown fascinated
them. Many people, who ordinarily shunned the Jewish community, in time
of trouble repaired to the synagogue, took part in its processions
and ceremonies, and made votive offerings, that ailing friends might
recover, that seafaring relatives might reach harbour in safety, that
women in child-bed might be happily delivered, and that the barren
might rejoice in offspring. The real proficiency of the Jews in
medicine encouraged the popular superstition; for medicine and magic
were as closely associated in the mediaeval mind as they still are in
the minds of the less advanced races. Jewish women were dreaded as
sorceresses, and the Rabbis were believed to be on terms of intimacy
with the powers of darkness. It was held that
“Unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms
Display undreamt of powers when gathered by them.”
And Christian knights applied to them for scraps of parchment covered
with Hebrew texts as protective charms for their persons and castles.
Even so at the present day the Christians of the East resort to
Mohammedan friars for charms and amulets of all kinds, and Mohammedans
make offerings to Christian saints. Creeds may be mutually exclusive;
there is free trade in popular religion. This liberalism, however,
is not incompatible with a deep and abiding abhorrence. It is not the
deities but the demons of the rival race that the ignorant strive to
propitiate. The act is the outcome of fear, and the help received
implies no gratitude. Consequently, the mediaeval Jews and Gentiles,
like modern Christians and Turks, despite superstitious sympathy,
contiguity of centuries, occasional intercourse for festive purposes,
and interchange of gifts, cherished no fellow-feeling for each other.
Even genuine personal friendship could do little to counteract national
and religious antipathy. The Jews were still aliens and infidels,
therefore enemies, and they frequently fell victims to insult and
assault, and sometimes to massacre, at the hands of the populace.
Hostility found an appropriate occasion for self-manifestation on the
great festivals of the Church, and more especially at Easter. At those
times the sight of a Jew reminded the Christians of the Old Crime, and
the maltreatment of him suggested itself as a natural deed of piety.
The sentiment was holy; the practical expression of it partly childish,
partly fiendish.
At Toulouse, for example, it was the traditional custom to slap a
Jew on the face every Good Friday. The Count opened the ceremony by
publicly giving the president of the Jewish community a box on the
ear, and his subjects followed suit, until the blow was commuted for a
tribute in the twelfth century. At Beziers pious wantonness took the
form of an attack on the Jews’ houses with stones from Palm Sunday
till Easter. The use of other weapons was contrary to the rules of the
game; but none other were needed. A sermon from the Bishop was the
regular preamble to the commencement of hostilities, and this Christian
pastime continued in public favour year after year until a prelate,
less cruel or more practical than his predecessors, abolished it for
a consideration. In May 1160 a treaty was concluded providing that
any priest who should stir up the people against the Jews should be
excommunicated, while the Jews, on their side, pledged themselves to
pay four pounds of silver every Palm Sunday. Elsewhere, an old pagan
rite for the propitiation of the powers of vegetation was cloaked in
the devotional cremation of a straw “Judas” during Holy Week; a custom
still surviving in many parts of Europe. But racial and religious
animosity, especially when fuelled by material grievances, knows no
seasons. In Germany Jew-baiting was a perennial amusement of gentlemen
impoverished by usury, and the _Judenstrasse_, or Jews’ street, a not
unusual field of ignoble distinction.
However, during the earlier Middle Ages, the Jews, though exposed to
popular hatred, were generally shielded from popular outrage by the
princes, spiritual and temporal, who countenanced their usury, sharing
the profits, and availed themselves, not without strict precautions,
of their medical skill and administrative ability. We find them as
land-owners, physicians and civil officials in Provence and Languedoc.
At Montpellier, under the wing of the Count of Toulouse, there
flourished a Jewish academy where medicine and Rabbinical literature
were cultivated successfully--an institution which helped much to
create and promote a medical profession throughout Southern Europe,
while the great School of Salerno also owed much to Jewish talent.
In a word, medical studies in the Middle Ages were deeply indebted
to the Hebrew doctors. They were the first to discard the ancient
belief in the demoniacal origin of disease and to substitute physic
for exorcisms. Their adoption of rational methods in the treatment of
patients helped to revolutionise the theory and practice of medicine,
to emancipate the European mind from superstition, and to earn for
them the cordial detestation of the monks and priests, whose relics
and prayers were discredited and whose incomes decreased in proportion
to the Jewish practitioners’ success. Thus the animosity of the
lower clergy against the mediaeval Jew may, in part, be traced to
professional rivalry.
In Spain the Jews had always been most numerous and prosperous. Under
the Saracen conquerors, with few exceptions,--as, for instance,
the persecution by Ibn Tumart,--they enjoyed a peace such as they
had seldom experienced under Christian rule. The liberty usually
accorded to them enabled the Spanish Jews to attain distinction in
other fields of activity besides money-lending. They were farmers,
land-owners and slave-dealers. The last kind of trade was particularly
encouraged by the Caliphs of Andalusia who formed their bodyguards of
picked Slavonian slaves. They also were physicians, financiers, civil
administrators, and they vied with their Mohammedan masters in learning
as well as in material splendour and love of display. The influence
of Moorish culture on the spiritual and intellectual development of
the Spanish Jews has been very ably outlined by a modern Jewish writer
in the following words:--“The milder rule of the Moslem gave the Jew
a needed pause in the struggle for existence, and the similarity of
the Semitic genius in both prevented the perceptible tendency to
narrowness, and brought the Jewish mind again into free contact with
the world’s thought.... The first aim of the Caliphs, after the victory
of Islam was assured, was to resuscitate Greek science and philosophy.
Translators were employed to bring forth from their Syriac tombs
Aristotle and Galen. And the Jews at once took part in this Semitic
renaissance.”[42] The writer might have added that it was mainly
through the instrumentality of the Jews that this Arabic resuscitation
of Hellenic philosophy and science was transmitted from Islam to
Christendom. Learned Jews, familiar with both languages, rendered
the Arabic translations of Aristotle into Latin, thus bringing them
within reach of the Schoolmen, who valued these versions highly, not
only for their fidelity to the original but also for the explanatory
comments which accompanied the text. In fact, the first acquaintance
of mediaeval Europe with any of the Aristotelian writings, other than
the _Organon_, was due to the Arabs and Jews of Spain.[43] Thus these
two Semitic races, by a dispensation of fate the irony of which was not
to become apparent until our own day, were the first to stimulate in
Western students a thirst for Hellenic literature and to supply them
with the means of gratifying it.
The first school founded by the Jews in Spain was that of Cordova
(948), followed by those of Toledo, Barcelona and Granada. All these
institutions were thronged with eager students and formed centres of
light, the rays whereof shone all the brighter amid the gloom of the
Dark Ages. Not only Talmudic, Biblical, and Cabbalistic lore were
there cultivated, but secular philosophy was diligently studied;
and Aristotle was revered as a disciple of Solomon! Poetry, music,
mathematics, astronomy, metaphysics and medicine were also included
in the curriculum, and the Spanish Jews, as the result of this
encyclopaedic training, were men of the broadest and most varied
culture; the same individual often combining in his own person the
subtleties of the Rabbinical scholar with the elegant taste of a poet;
the sagacity of a financier with the practical skill of a physician.
♦915–970♦
All these talents are found embodied in Abu-Yussuf Chasdai of Cordova,
a European in every respect except religion and name. From his father
Chasdai inherited great wealth and liberal views on its uses. He
studied the science of medicine, but he shone especially as a patron
and man of letters, and as a diplomatist. Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin
were almost equally familiar to him. He rendered brilliant political
services to Caliph Abdul-Rahman III. in his relations with the
Christian sovereigns of Northern Spain and other European potentates,
and he was rewarded by his master with a post which in reality,
though not in name, represented the powers of a Minister of Foreign
Affairs, of Trade, and of Finance, all in one--an elevation which
enabled Chasdai “to take the oppressor’s yoke from his people,” and “to
break the scourge that wounded it.” Fate decreed that envoys from the
Byzantine persecutors of the Jews should come to Cordova to solicit the
aid of the Western against the Eastern Caliphs, and they were received
by the Jewish Minister.
Under the paternal, if at times despotic, rule of the Caliphs the
Hebrew character cast away some of its sternness and austerity--a
change which is pleasantly reflected in the literature of the period.
The Hebrew Muse ceased to weep and wail over old misfortunes, and
the lays of the Hispano-Jewish minstrels laugh with the sunshine or
sigh with the lyric tenderness of their new country. These traits
are brilliantly illustrated by the work of the Castilian poet
Jehuda Halevi, born in 1086, and thus described by an enthusiastic
co-religionist:
“Pure and true, without blemish,
Were both his song and his soul.
When the Creator had formed this soul,
Pleased with Himself at His work,
He kissed the beautiful creation,
And the glorious echo of his holy kiss
Trembles yet in every song of the poet,
Sanctified through this Divine grace.”
There is nothing mournful in Halevi’s poetry. In his early youth he
sang of wine and of the gazelle-like eyes of his beloved, of her rosy
lips, of her raven hair, and of her unfaithfulness. In his manhood he
studied the Talmud, natural science, and metaphysics. He also, like
many other Jewish writers, practised medicine; not with conspicuous
success, as he naïvely confesses in a letter to a friend: “I occupy
myself in the hours which belong neither to the day nor to the night
with the vanity of medical science, although I am unable to heal.”
Halevi’s heart remained wholly devoted to poetry, and his masterpiece
is the _Songs of Zion_, wherein he pours forth all that deep veneration
for the past and that ardent belief in the future glory of Israel,
which have inspired Jewish genius through the ages. Jehuda voices the
national sentiment in the following touching lines:
“O City of the world, beauteous in proud splendour,
From the far West, behold me solicitous on thy behalf!
Oh that I had eagle’s wings, that I might fly to thee,
Till I wet thy dust with my flowing tears!
My heart is in the East,
Whilst I tarry in the West.
How may I be joyous,
Or where find my pleasure?
How fulfil my vow,
O Zion! when I am in the power of Edom,
And bend beneath Arabia’s yoke?
Truly Spain’s welfare concerns me not;
Let me but behold thy precious dust,
And gaze upon the spot where once the Temple stood.”
Nor was the longing a mere matter of sentiment. Jehuda was earnestly
convinced that Israel could not have a national existence outside the
Holy Land. He urged his people to quit the fields of Edom and to seek
its native home in Zion. But the cry aroused no echo. The Jews of
Spain, allowed to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of existence, felt no
desire to exchange the real for a wild chase after the ideal. The poet,
however, proved his own sincerity by undertaking a weary pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. Leaving his peaceful home, his only daughter, his friends,
his pupils, and his studies, he set out on his adventurous journey,
accompanied by the good wishes and praises of numerous admirers through
Spain. The long and stormy voyage and the hardships thereof did not
quench the poet’s enthusiasm for the Holy Land:
“The sea rages, my soul rejoices;
It draws near the Temple of its God!”
At Alexandria, Halevi was met by a crowd of Jews to whom his name
was known and dear. They entertained him sumptuously, but could not
prevail upon him to relinquish his aim. Once more Halevi resisted the
seductions of safety and comfort and set out for Jerusalem, which he
found in the possession of unsympathetic Christian princes and bishops.
His sentiments of disillusion and sorrow are commemorated in the lines:
“Mine eye longed to behold Thy glory,
But, as if I were deemed unworthy,
I could only tread on the threshold of Thy Temple.
I must also endure the sufferings of my people;
Therefore I wander aimlessly about,
As I dare not pay homage to any other being.”[44]
This prophet and singer of Zionism died in the land which his soul
loved so dearly.
Another great Jew of Spain was Moses Maimonides, born at Cordova in
1135. He came of a long line of Rabbis, who traced their descent from
the royal house of David, and he might be described as a Talmudist
by inheritance as well as by training. He had scarcely completed his
thirteenth year when Cordova was taken by the fanatical sect of the
Almohades, who offered to the Jews and Christians of the city the
alternatives of Islam or death. The ancient Jewish community was
broken up, and the family of Maimonides migrated to Almeria. But
this town also, three years later, fell into the hands of the same
fanatical Mohammedans, and the Jews and Christians were once more
driven forth to seek freedom of worship elsewhere. Henceforward the
family of Maimonides wandered hither and thither through Spain, unable
to find a home. But this roaming life did not prevent the youth from
attaining great proficiency in various branches of learning, sacred and
profane. His father’s teaching was always ready at hand, and his own
quick and clear intellect found it easy to acquire and to digest the
lessons of experience. Aristotle, as has been said, was much studied,
though little understood, by the Jews and Arabs of Spain. Maimonides’
intellect had much in common with the Greek philosopher’s scientific
mind, while he possessed a sense of religion to which the Greek was
a stranger. In the character of Maimonides the two temperaments, the
Hebraic and the Hellenic, the reasoning and the emotional, met in a
harmonious combination. Truth in thought as well as in action, was
the object for which he strove, and the idle fictions of poetry were
as severely condemned by him as by the mediaeval monks; but he was
far from adopting the monastic definition of poetry as “the Devil’s
wine.” His earnestness was free from fanaticism, and he could be severe
without being savage. Unsparing in his scorn of what he considered
false, he was most forbearing towards the victims of falsehood. Like
many earnest men, Maimonides was born a missionary. Neither fatigue
of body nor pain of mind deterred him from the diffusion of what he
deemed to be the light, and to the propagation of rational Judaism
he devoted his whole life ungrudgingly and unfalteringly. To this
end he made himself master of all the knowledge accessible in his
time. He studied ancient Paganism as well as contemporary Islam and
Christianity; philosophy, medicine, logic, mathematics, and astronomy.
Thus equipped, he entered the arena.
His people, after ten years’ wandering in Spain, had repaired to
Fez, where persecution had driven many Jews to assume the mask of
Mohammedanism--a form of compulsory hypocrisy, examples of which
abounded in every country. A zealot wrote a pamphlet denouncing these
apparent renegades as traitors to the cause of Israel. Maimonides,
who was one of them, undertook to vindicate their conduct. But, while
defending their prudence, he strove to combat their lukewarmness, and
to confirm the wavering; endeavours which nearly cost him his life at
the hands of the Mohammedans. In the dead of night he and his family
embarked on board a vessel bound to Palestine. After a month’s perilous
voyage the refugees landed at St. Jean d’Acre (Acco), whence they
proceeded to Jerusalem, then in Christian hands, and finally reached
Egypt. There Maimonides lost his father first, and then his brother,
suffered severely in his health and fortune, and was obliged to eke out
a modest livelihood by the practice of medicine. But in the midst of
all afflictions and occupations he continued his first great work on
the Talmud, which appeared in 1168 under the characteristic title, _The
Light_. This work, though it failed to make its mark among the Jews
of Egypt, gradually brought fame to the author abroad. In 1175 he was
already revered as a great Rabbinical authority, and questions bearing
on religion and law were submitted to him from all parts of Israel. At
the same time he busied himself with the affairs of the Cairo community
of which he was made Rabbi. In 1180 he completed his _Religious Code_,
in which he wedded Judaism to philosophy. The object of the book was
to introduce light and limit into the chaos of Biblical and Talmudical
teaching. The _Code_ attained wide popularity, and copies of it were
diligently conned in every corner of the Jewish world from India in
the East to Spain in the West. The learning as well as the character
of Maimonides excited universal respect, and many were the titles
bestowed upon the sage by his admiring co-religionists. Maimonides was
proclaimed “the Enlightener of the eyes of Israel.” Opposition and
calumny, the involuntary tributes which envy pays to success, came in
due course; but Maimonides who had not been intoxicated by praise did
not suffer himself to be intimidated by obloquy. His reputation as a
physician was almost as great as his theological renown; a Mohammedan
poet declares that “Galen’s art heals only the body, but Maimonides’
the body and soul”; Saladin, then Vizier of Egypt, engaged him as his
physician, and Richard Coeur de Lion, who during his crusade in the
Holy Land heard of Maimonides, invited him to be his physician in
ordinary, an honour which the sage declined. Thanks to the high esteem
in which he was held by the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt, Maimonides was,
in about 1187, made supreme and hereditary head of all the Egyptian
communities. While at the height of his power and popularity Maimonides
found himself once more exposed to the danger which he had so narrowly
escaped in Morocco. A traveller from that country recognised in the
official chief of the Hebrew community of Egypt his pseudo-Mohammedan
friend of Fez, and denounced him as an apostate. The penalty for
apostacy prescribed by the Laws of Islam is death. Maimonides, however,
succeeded in convincing the Vizier of the Moorish visitor’s mistake,
and thus was enabled to return to the calm pursuit of his labours,
communal, medical and philosophical. Soon afterwards Palestine was
re-conquered by Saladin, and the Jews were allowed to settle in
Jerusalem--a boon for which Maimonides is supposed to be responsible.
♦1190♦
In the midst of his manifold duties, and his feud with a rival Rabbi
of Baghdad, Maimonides found time to produce another philosophical
work, the _Guide to the Perplexed_, a work which forms the crown
of his intellectual achievement, and which has been pronounced
“perhaps the most remarkable metaphysical _tour de force_ in the
history of human thought.”[45] At any rate, it is a brave attempt at
reconciliation between Aristotelian philosophy and Judaic religion,
between Rationalism and Revelation, between Hellenic free-thought and
Hebrew feeling. Therein is propounded the eternal problem of the origin
and destiny of things, and solved in a manner that carried conviction
at the time. The book has, indeed, been a guide to the perplexed for
many generations, and, though it has not always commanded obedience
among the Jews, it has served as a stimulus to enquiring minds and,
through mediaeval scholasticism, has exercised an abiding influence
over Christian theology. If metaphysical speculation be of any value
to mankind, the world owes a great debt to the work of Maimonides. He
died in 1204, at the age of seventy, full of years and honours, and his
end was followed by a general outburst of grief. In Egypt both Jews
and Mohammedans held a public mourning for three days, in Jerusalem
a public fast was proclaimed, and similar funeral services and fasts
were observed in many synagogues all over the world. The verdict of his
contemporaries was, “From Moses the Prophet till Moses Maimonides there
has never appeared his equal.” Posterity was not so unanimous in its
appreciation. His tomb at Tiberias was adorned with the epitaph:
“Here lies a man, and yet no man.
If thou wert a man, Angels of heaven
Must have overshadowed thy mother.”
This inscription was in later times replaced by the following:
“Here lies Moses Maimonides, the excommunicated heretic.”[46]
The two epitaphs form an epitome of the sage’s posthumous
career--characteristic, though hardly unique. Maimonides had to share
the fate of all advocates of compromise ere he was accepted as the
oracle of Jewish orthodoxy.[47]
The condition of Israel across the Pyrenees must now engage our
attention.
♦768–814♦
Charlemagne, the great founder of the Frankish Empire, in spite of his
enthusiasm for the advancement of the Catholic faith and in defiance
of the decrees of a Church which he adored, and by which he was
afterwards honoured as a saint, considered it his duty to contribute
to the progress of the Jewish colonies in France and Germany. If the
Churchman saw in the Jews the enemies of Christ, the statesman saw
in them useful subjects, through whose international connections the
interests of his Empire might be served. Among other liberties, he
allowed them to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. Exempt from
the burdens as well as from the honours of chivalry on one hand, and
from the degradation of the peasantry on the other, the Jews at this
period devoted all their energies to commerce. But Charlemagne was
more than an imperial shopkeeper. The spiritual needs of his subjects,
Jewish no less than Christian, received as much attention from him as
their material welfare. Though his own learning was of very late and
limited growth, this great soldier was keenly alive to the value of
scholarship, and he endeavoured to diffuse education by encouraging
learned men of both creeds to bring their lights from Italy to the
dark regions of the North. Under his long reign the Jews prospered and
spread over many parts of Germany. In the ninth century great Jewish
colonies were to be found in Magdeburg, Mersburg, and Ratisbon, whence
they penetrated into the Slavonic lands of Bohemia and Poland. But even
Charlemagne could not quite overlook the chasm which separated the Jew
from the Christian. In deposing against a Christian, the Jewish witness
was obliged to stand within a circle of thorns, to hold the Torah in
his right hand, and to call down upon himself frightful curses if he
spoke not the truth. The Jews were also forbidden to buy or sell sacred
church vessels, to receive Christian hostages for debt, and to trade
in wine and cereals.
♦814–840♦
The favourable condition of Israel in Western Europe, with the
exception of the above prohibitions, lasted under Charlemagne’s
successor Louis, who, a pious Catholic though he was, did not refrain
from bestowing benefits upon the Jews and from defending them against
popular prejudice and ecclesiastical oppression. Influenced partly by
the principles of enlightened statesmanship which he had inherited
from his father, and partly by the philo-judaism of his second wife
Judith, he showered many favours upon the Jews. The works of the Jewish
writers, Josephus and Philo, were assiduously studied at Court. Jews
and Jewesses were received and petted in royal circles, and their
co-religionists were held in high esteem by the nobility. They were
exempt from the barbarous punishment of the scourge and from the
ordeals of fire and water. They were permitted to employ Christian
workmen and to own Christian slaves, to settle their disputes in their
own courts of justice, to build new synagogues, to farm the revenues of
the realm, and to carry on trade freely. For their sake the market-day
was changed from the Sabbath to Sunday. In return for all these
privileges they had to pay a tax to the treasury, which exercised a
supervision over their incomes.
But this very toleration excited the resentment of strict Catholics,
who could not see without disgust the canons of the Church disregarded
and her enemies honoured. The clerical party, under the leadership
of St. Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, wished to reduce the Jews to the
position which they occupied under the bigoted Merovingian dynasty.
An opportunity for the expression of these feelings offered itself in
an incident such as has often proved the immediate cause of bloodshed
between the faithful and unbelievers in the Ottoman Empire. A female
slave of a rich Jew of Lyons ran away from her master and sought
freedom in baptism. The Jews demanded the restoration of the slave. The
Bishop refused to comply. The Court supported the Jews, the clerical
party the Bishop. The Emperor endeavoured to restore peace by summoning
a council wherein the bishops and the heads of the Jewish community
might settle their differences by argument. The adversaries met and
“roared rather than spoke” to each other. The council broke up, and
the feud continued to rage. The Bishop preached to his flock sermons
hostile to the Jews. ♦828♦ The friends of the latter intrigued in the
Imperial Court on their behalf, and prevailed upon the Emperor to
command St. Agobard to desist from his oratorical exercises, and the
Governor of Lyons to lend his assistance to the Jews.
The bellicose saint paid no heed to the Imperial mandate, and the
Emperor was obliged to send two courtiers to enforce respect for his
orders; but they failed. The bishop then appealed to his brother
prelates, entreating them to bring home to Louis his sinful conduct.
His appeal met with hearty response. It was generally felt that the
question was a test of the relative strength of Church and Court, and
the supporters of the one were as determined to uphold their cause as
were the partisans of the other. A number of prelates met at Lyons
and held a consultation as to the best means of humbling the Jews and
bringing the Emperor to the path of orthodoxy. ♦829♦ The fruit of this
meeting was a joint letter of protest “concerning the superstitions
of the Jews,” addressed to Louis. The manifesto produced no result,
and in the following year the Bishop of Lyons joined the conspiracy of
the Emperor’s sons against their father, was worsted, and paid for his
treason by temporary exile to Italy, whence, however, he soon returned
on condition, it seems, that he should leave the Jews alone.
The struggle only served to demonstrate the Emperor’s power and
determination to protect his material interests in the teeth of
ecclesiastical opposition. ♦838♦ Nor did Louis the “Pious” withdraw
his countenance from the Jews even after the scandalous apostasy of
his favourite Bishop Bodo to Judaism--an event which produced an
enormous shock through Frankish Christendom, especially as it occurred
directly after the bishop’s visit to Rome.[48] It is probable that a
closer inspection of the Holy See accelerated Bodo’s resolution, though
contemporary indignation traced it to the direct agency of Satan.
♦843♦
The golden age of Franko-Jewish history continued under Charles the
Bald, son of Louis and Judith, who numbered amongst his closest friends
the Jewish physician Zedekiah and another Jew called Judah. But the
same causes brought about similar effects. The favour shown to the
Jews by Louis’s successor excited the enmity of the pious, who found
a leader in Agobard’s successor and other bishops, and held several
councils with the object of inventing means for the curtailment of
imperial power, the exaltation of ecclesiastical authority, and the
suppression of the Jews. Again letters were addressed to the Emperor,
in which he was recommended to enforce towards the murderers of
Christ the measures which had been originated by Constantine the
Great and Theodosius the Younger, adopted by the Spanish Visigoths
and the Merovingian Kings of France, and sanctioned by the unanimous
intolerance of so many Synods in the East and West. But these new
enemies of the Jews proved no more successful than their predecessors.
♦877♦ Charles the Bald contented himself with extorting one-tenth
of their earnings from the Jews, while his Christian subjects paid
one-eleventh. Thanks to their commercial enterprise and integrity
the “murderers of Christ” continued to prosper under the judicious
fleecing of the Carlovingians, until the partition of the empire into a
number of small states, the wane of the secular and the growth of the
spiritual power brought about a change.
♦899–914♦
Charles the Simple was induced by his love of God and fear of the Pope
to surrender all the lands and vineyards of the Jews in the Duchy of
Narbonne to the Church. Boso, King of Burgundy and Provence, also made
to the Church a gift of the property of his Jewish subjects, and this
cavalier treatment of the wretched people continued under the first
Capets, their degradation keeping pace with the progress of Papal
influence. So deep was the suspicion now inspired by them, that when
King Hugh Capet died in 996 his Jewish physician was generally accused
of having murdered him.
♦965♦
A parallel evolution took place in Germany. When Otto the Great wished
to show his piety by endowing the newly-built church of Magdeburg, he
did so by bestowing upon it the revenue which he derived from the Jews.
Likewise Otto II., sixteen years later, made an offering of the Jews
of Merseburg to the local bishops. At the beginning of the eleventh
century there occurred in Germany an event which may be regarded as
the prelude to the subsequent persecutions of Judaism. ♦1005♦ The
chaplain of the Duke Conrad suddenly scandalised the Christian world by
going over to the Synagogue, and exasperated the brethren whom he had
forsaken by producing a scurrilous lampoon on Christianity. The Emperor
Henry caused to be published a reply in every respect worthy of the
apostate’s pamphlet. Six years after the Jews were driven forth from
Mayence, a decree was issued ordering the Jews of various towns to be
branded, that they might not seek refuge in baptism, and so rigorous
was the persecution that a contemporary Jewish poet commemorates it in
lugubrious songs, wherein he expresses the fear that the children of
Israel might be forced to forget the faith of their fathers. But the
alarm was premature. Though, as a general rule, traffic in goods and
in money were the only callings left open to the Jews, in some of the
German states they still possessed the rights of citizenship and were
permitted to own real estate.
Thus the first period of the mediaeval drama came to a close, as the
second was opening.