THE JEWS IN SPAIN
AS we have seen in a previous chapter, the lot of the Spanish Jews
under Mohammedan rule was supremely enviable. Their condition in the
Christian parts of the Iberian Peninsula was less uniformly prosperous.
We there find two forces at work, one favourable to the children of
Israel and the other the exact opposite. The people and the Church were
ill-disposed towards them; the princes and the nobles protected them.
Their history is therefore marked by the vicissitudes of the conflict
between those two forces, and their ultimate fate was to be determined
by the result of that conflict. That they should be mulcted by the
Christian princes was only what might have been expected. In Spain they
were subjected, among other burdens, to a hearth tax, a coronation
tax, a tax on various kinds of their own food, and a tax for the
King’s dinner. In Portugal, under Sancho II., they had to pay, besides
other things, a fleet tax, and were obliged to supply a new anchor
and cable to every vessel built for the royal marine. On the other
hand, they enjoyed a large measure of communal autonomy, settled their
disputes in their own Beth-Din, or religious tribunal, and even passed
capital sentence on culprits of their own persuasion. Despite manifold
restrictions in the exercise of certain trades and handicrafts, they
often succeeded in eluding the law, which in the earlier days was not
rigorously enforced, and in pursuing a variety of occupations. They
dealt in corn, cattle, silk, spices, timber, and slaves. They were
goldsmiths, mechanics, peddlers, and pawnbrokers. The trade in cloth
and wool, both domestic and foreign, was largely in their hands;
but they abstained from the manufacture of cloth, partly owing to
prohibitive legislation by the State, as was the case in Majorca during
the fourteenth century, and partly in obedience to the Talmud, which
denounced weaving as an immoral occupation, inasmuch as it tended to
facilitate undesirable propinquity between the sexes. Many of the upper
classes found equally, or more, lucrative employment as physicians,
clerks of the Treasury, and public officials.
Then was formed in Spain that higher type of Jew which compelled even
the Christians to forget their contempt for the race. Visigothic
legislation was ignored in practice, and the Jews ceased to be
systematically trampled upon. ♦1061–1073♦ Pope Alexander II., the
coadjutor and immediate predecessor of Gregory Hildebrand, in a decree
issued to all the bishops of Spain, draws a distinction between
the Saracens and the Jews, the latter being described as worthy of
toleration on account of “their readiness to serve.” Some of the
municipalities treated them on equal terms with the Christians, and in
both Aragon and Castile the Jews were allowed to act as judges. The
Christian princes found in them some of the qualities which commanded
their respect towards the Arabs, and they would fain avail themselves
of their lights. They employed Jewish physicians, Jewish financiers,
and Jewish tutors. ♦1085♦ Alfonso VI. of Castile began by diplomacy
the liberation of Spain, which was to be accomplished by the military
prowess of his successors. In this initial stage of the movement,
despite the persecution proclaimed against the “enemies of Christ” by
Pope Gregory VII., the Castilian King employed the astute and polyglot
Jews, notably his private physician, Isaac Ibn Shalbib, and after
the conquest of Toledo he confirmed to the Jews of that town all the
liberties which they had enjoyed under the Mohammedan rulers. Then
Alfonso, resolved to attack the Saracen King of Seville, whom he had
used as a tool in taking Toledo, thought it necessary to apprise his
former ally of his change of policy and bid him defiance. The delicate
task was entrusted to Ibn Shalbib, attended by five hundred Christian
knights. The Jewish diplomatist carried out his master’s instructions
so thoroughly and so boldly that the Mohammedan prince, in his fury,
forgot the inviolability of the ambassadorial character, and nailed the
unfortunate envoy to a gibbet.
The comparative liberty enjoyed by the Spanish Jews, under the aegis
of the Kings, brought with it opulence and luxury. The Spanish
synagogues were renowned throughout Europe for their beauty, and the
private dwellings of the Spanish Jews were not less noted for their
magnificence. The Spanish Jews, as their brethren elsewhere, set much
store by social distinction, and knew how to combine extravagance
with economy. The stately names and expensive equipages of the
Christian nobility were copied by them, not wisely but too well. Their
profuse ostentation of wealth in domestic decoration and personal
apparel excited the envy, and royal patronage the jealousy of their
neighbours. These feelings, intensified by religious antipathy, laid
up a fund of prejudice which only awaited a suitable opportunity for
converting itself into active hostility. The same causes which brought
about the eruption of anti-Judaism in other countries operated in
Spain also. First, the Crusading spirit which, though it produced no
immediate massacres in Spain, as it did in Central Europe, remained
longer alive by the Spaniard’s undying enmity to the Jew’s cousin,
the Saracen invader, whose invasion, it must be remembered, the Jews
had facilitated, or, at all events, welcomed. Secondly, the hatred
of heresy which, fostered by the monastic orders, found in Spain a
more fertile soil than in any other Christian country. So strong and
so pertinacious were these influences in the Iberian Peninsula that
the Kings who favoured the Jews were often obliged to assuage public
irritation, and to save their _protégés_ from the ebullitions of
popular fanaticism by separating them from the Christians. Already
in the eleventh century we hear of a “Jewish barrier” erected in
Tudela. This separation was also countenanced by the Church, though
from widely different motives. ♦1079♦ In Coyaca, in the Asturias,
a Council decreed that no Christian should reside in the same house
with Jews, or partake of their food. Persons caught transgressing this
canon were sentenced, if noblemen, to one year’s excommunication, if
of lower degree to one hundred lashes. Thus the normal isolation of
Israel was encouraged by two powers which, acting with opposite intent,
converged to the same dangerous result. But it was not until late in
the thirteenth century that the gathering animosity came to a head,
and declared itself in more methodical efforts at segregation and
humiliation, conversion or extirpation.
♦1212♦
Meanwhile the undercurrent of prejudice was checked by the action
of the Kings. When, for instance, the Crusaders from across the
Pyrenees, red-handed from the massacre of the Albigenses, came to
Spain as allies in the war against the Mohammedans, and began the work
of exterminating the infidels by attacking the Jews of Toledo, King
Alfonso IX. warded off the blows, and the misdirected zeal of the
foreign fanatics was condemned even by the populace of Castile. ♦1215♦
When, again, Innocent III. at the Fourth Lateran Council ordered the
Jews to be marked off by a special badge, the Jews of Spain, through
their influence at Court, succeeded in avoiding the effects of the
decree. King Alfonso connived at their disobedience, and vain were the
unwearied efforts of Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to enforce
the Jewish disabilities. ♦1220♦ Similar immunity from the ignominious
ordinances of St. Peter’s See was secured by the Jews of Aragon through
the exertions of the physician of King Jayme I. ♦1248♦ Several years
after King Ferdinand allotted three parishes to the Jewish community of
Seville, and surrounded them with a wall for their defence. Within this
enclosure were the exchanges, markets, slaughter-houses, synagogues and
tribunals of the Jews, while their cemetery spread over an adjacent
field.
♦1252–84♦
But how long could the Court maintain its Judaeophile attitude in
the teeth of the growing animosity against the race? Alfonso X.,
surnamed the Wise, employed Jews as Chamberlains and Chancellors of the
Exchequer, as well as in the construction of his famous Astronomical
Tables. ♦1261♦ But the same King was forced to throw a sop to Cerberus
by enacting that “the Jews may not enlarge, elevate, or beautify their
synagogues.” Another law of Alfonso’s contained the following ominous
statement: “Although the Jews deny Christ, they are still suffered in
all Christian countries, so that they should remind everybody that
they belong to that race which crucified Jesus.” During this reign
conversion of a Christian to Judaism was punished with death. No Jew
was to be elevated to any public office. The wearing of the badge was
made compulsory, and anyone seen without it was, if rich, fined; if
poor, scourged. Social intercourse between Jews and Christians was
made a punishable offence. The Jews should not appear abroad on Good
Friday. Though himself in the hands of a Jewish physician, Alfonso
decreed that no Christian should take medicine prepared by a Jew. These
restrictions, however, were tempered by measures protective of the
religion, the persons and the property of the Jews; and they did not
really become active until a much later period.
♦1263♦
Two years later there occurred in Barcelona, under the auspices of
Jayme I., the famous disputation between the Dominican Pablo Christiani
and the Rabbi Nachmanides, which led to the latter’s exile, and to the
expurgation of the Talmud.[69]
In the meantime the silly and sinister fables which caused the
persecution of the Jews in England and elsewhere met with credence
in Spain also. But, if the pious were exasperated by these stories,
less foolish persons found a sufficient food for their spleen in the
better founded charges of rapacity constantly brought against the
Jewish money-lenders; while the holy indignation of others was aroused
by the occasional sight of Christian proselytes seeking in the arms
of the Synagogue a spiritual rest which they could not find in the
Church; or by the spectacle, even less edifying, of Christian noblemen
seeking in the arms of a Jewish bride the wherewithal to regild their
tarnished escutcheons. All these grievances, assiduously nursed by
fanatical clerics and loudly voiced by insolvent debtors, culminated
in violent attacks upon the “accursed people” during the fourteenth
century. The Jewish colonies were repeatedly looted and burnt and the
inmates slaughtered without mercy and without regard to sex or age.
♦About 1330♦ In one attack of this kind in the kingdom of Navarre no
fewer than ten thousand Israelites perished.
But the time had not yet come for a general persecution of Israel
in Spain. The demon of Jew-hatred, if irritated, was also curbed by
kingly favour. ♦1325–1350♦ Alfonso XI. drew down upon himself the wrath
of pious Christians by employing Jewish ministers in his treasury.
Under this prince the Spanish Jews, indeed, enjoyed what some writers
have described as their Golden Age. They were powerful at Court, and
equally influential with the great nobility, many Castilian magnates
employing them as bailiffs and advisers. Their wealth and their power
cowed clerical and popular fanaticism, and overawed the avaricious
proclivities of impecunious hidalgos. ♦1350–1369♦ This prosperity
lasted under Alfonso’s successor, Don Pedro, or Peter the Cruel. Samuel
Levi, treasurer to the King and his victim, is reported to have left
behind him the princely fortune of 400,000 ducats; an affluence which
proved his undoing.
♦1333–1379♦
Nor was royal favour limited to one class of Jews, any more than Jewish
usefulness was limited to one province of activity. Henry II. of
Castile, the half-brother of Don Pedro, and other Iberian sovereigns
employed the talents of the Jews in various capacities. Through their
correspondence with their brethren all over Europe and the East, the
Jews were the best agents for commercial and political negotiations.
Their astronomical science, and their skill in map-drawing and in the
construction of nautical instruments, recommended them to princes
anxious to profit by the exploration of new lands. Jewish pilots and
navigators must have been in great demand, for they subsequently helped
Vasco da Gama in his voyages; while Jewish capitalists and adventurers
participated in many of the great transatlantic expeditions of later
times. ♦1334♦ Jayme III., the last king of Mallorca, describes Juceff
Faguin, a Jew of Barcelona, as a man who “had navigated the whole
of the then known world”; while Benjamin of Tudela’s older Itinerary
is a work of world-wide renown. ♦1404–1454♦ John II. of Castile,
in the ensuing century, even sought the assistance of Jews in the
compilation of a national _Cancionero_, for the Jews in Christian, as
in Mohammedan, Spain attained high distinction as troubadours. One of
them, Santob de Carrion, who flourished in Castile in the fourteenth
century, produced a Spanish _Book of Maxims_, which, thanks to its
charming quaintness, preserved its popularity far into the fifteenth.
Not less important are the contributions of Iberian Jews to the
vernacular drama.
The Jew’s old aversion to the language of Titus, the destroyer of
the Temple, had also partially vanished from Spain, and many Jewish
politicians employed Latin in the diplomatic correspondence which they
conducted for their Christian masters, while the Spanish language in
the fourteenth century even bade fair to oust Hebrew, the Book of
Esther being, in some parts of the peninsula, read in the vernacular
on the Feast of Purim, for the benefit of the women, to whom the
sacred tongue was no longer intelligible. Naturally such liberalism
scandalised strait-laced pietists, who did their utmost to prevent
the profanation of Holy Writ. But the real check to the gradual
reconciliation between Jew and Gentile in Spain did not proceed from
the Jewish side, as we shall see.
♦1348♦
All this sunshine was already overshadowed by the clouds which herald
the storm. In the year of the Black Death the charge of well-poisoning
stirred up the mob of Barcelona against the Jews, twenty of whom were
slain and their houses sacked, a wholesale massacre being averted only
by the intervention of the higher classes. A few days later a similar
outbreak at Cervera resulted in the murder of eighteen Jews and the
flight of the rest. Destruction threatened all the Jewish communities
of Northern Spain, and their members, panic-stricken, betook themselves
to prayer, fasting, and other precautions of a more practical
character against the impending attack, which, however, was prevented
by the nobility and by a Papal Bull, in which Clement VI.--who,
though no saint, was an accomplished gentleman and a broad-minded
prince--exposed the absurdity of the poison charge, and prohibited the
Christians from assaulting the Jews on pain of excommunication.
During the long civil war in Castile between Don Pedro and his
brother Don Henry, the heirs of Alfonso XI., the Jews had the
misfortune to back the losing side. They sustained heavy losses in
many a battle and siege, and suffered terribly at the hands of friend
and foe alike. The great community of Toledo was decimated out of
all recognition. Throughout Castile congregations once flourishing
were reduced to penury, and many of their members in sheer despair
embraced Christianity. The Jews of Burgos, even after Don Pedro’s
death, remained stubbornly loyal to his memory, and when all Spain had
recognised Don Henry’s rule they alone had the courage to defy him--a
constancy which moved the usurper’s admiration, and secured to the
besieged terms of submission honourable to both sides alike. Peace
was restored, but it brought small comfort to Israel. Don Henry had
always pretended that one of the causes of his enmity to his brother
was the latter’s partiality for the Jews. The vanquished enemy’s
favourites would now have been made to suffer the extreme rigour of
Henry’s vengeance but for the financial straits in which the victor
found himself. Instead of annihilating, Don Henry preferred to exploit
the Jews. But the King’s forbearance roused the indignation of his
followers, who felt despoiled of the fruits of their victory. In 1371
the Cortes assembled at Toro rebuked the King for employing the enemies
of the faith at Court, and for allowing them to farm the revenues
of the Crown. The representatives of the nation insisted that the
Jews should be excluded from State offices, confined within special
quarters, compelled to wear the badge, and forbidden to display their
riches in their apparel or equipages, or to bear Christian names.
The King, while dismissing most of these demands, thought it wise to
concede the last three, and he also decreed some measures intended to
restrain the rapacity of Jewish money-lenders. The clergy also, who
had sanctioned Don Henry’s usurpation of the throne, claimed a reward
in the shape of anti-Jewish legislation. ♦1375♦ Religious disputations
were, therefore, revived, and Jewish renegades were once more the
protagonists in the sorry farce.
At the same time the Church renewed its efforts to prevent the
Christians from mingling with the impure race. The necessity for this
persistent confirmation of anti-Jewish regulations shows that, though
the antipathy between Jew and Gentile was spontaneous, and though both
Church and Synagogue vied with each other in their endeavours to keep
the two elements in sempiternal alienation, yet the social instinct
which forms the strongest trait of human nature often triumphed over
the barriers set up by religious bigotry. But human nature was allowed
little opportunity for asserting itself. ♦1388♦ The Council of Palencia
passed a decision forbidding Catholics to dwell within the quarters
assigned to the Jews and Moors, under penalty of excommunication.
♦1390♦ Two years later the Jews of Majorca were forbidden to carry
arms. ♦1391♦ Next year, thanks to the eloquence of the fanatical priest
Martinez, a series of wholesale massacres took place in Castile and
Aragon, in which thousands of Jews were sacrificed to priestly and
popular rage, and the cities of Seville, Toledo, Cordova, Catalonia,
Barcelona, Valencia, as well as the island of Majorca, were coloured
red with Jewish blood; while great numbers of the unfortunate people
sought safety in half-hearted apostasy. Efforts were made to confirm
the hold upon these captured infidels, popularly known as _Marranos_,
or “the Damned,” by ecclesiastical preferment and by the bestowal of
municipal dignities; while many impecunious aristocrats, anxious to
restore their declining fortunes, brought riches to themselves and a
lasting reproach to their posterity by courting the fair daughters of
converted Israel; so much so that many a noble Castilian pedigree to
this day can be traced to such an alliance. But neither ecclesiastical
or civic honours nor social advancement were sufficiently potent
to keep the “new Christians” in the faith. There were, of course,
exceptions to the rule--a truism which we are apt to overlook in
dealing with the history of the Jews. Some, no doubt, who had honestly
outgrown the racial and religious swathings of Judaism, were glad
enough to adopt Christianity. Unfettered by spiritual convictions,
they preferred the creed which entailed no social stigma. They deserve
as little blame as admiration. Others, however, there were who,
setting worldly advantages, or the gratification of private grudges,
above principle, found both profit and pleasure in the persecution or
vilification of their former brethren. But neither of these classes
represented the majority. Most of the neophytes, as soon as they
safely could, slipped the suffocating cloak, and came forth in their
true character, while others vacillated between Church and Synagogue,
trying to serve two masters, and by so doing increased the animosity
of the priests against the race; for the theologian does not agree
with the psychologist in holding that a feigned or fictitious faith is
better than none at all. As in the time of the Visigoth tyrants, so now
thousands of Jews and forced converts fled to Africa. Many towns on the
coast, from Algiers westward, were filled with the unfortunate refugees
from Spain and Majorca, who found the African Berbers more humane than
the European Christians.
The recent tribulations and the anticipation of worse sufferings in
the near future gave rise to a new Messianic frenzy. According to the
Scriptures, the advent of the Redeemer was to be preceded by terrible
persecution. ♦1391♦ Three Messiahs appeared to voice the convictions
and to try the faith of the hunted people: Abraham of Granada,
Shem-Tob, and Moses Botarel. All three were mystics, the last one also
an impostor.
The fifteenth century adds fresh scenes to the tale of sorrow, new
“black-letter days” to the Jewish Calendar, and more dark pages to
the history of Europe. In 1408 the anti-Jewish statutes of Alfonso
the Wise were revived. Ruinous fines were imposed upon any Christian
who should confer, or Jew who should accept, municipal or other
office. ♦1412♦ Four years later the intercourse of the Jews with
the Christians was restricted, and their commercial and industrial
activity hampered by numerous prohibitions. They were forbidden to
act as physicians, apothecaries, and stewards to the nobility; as
bakers, millers, or vintners. They were debarred from selling oil or
butter; from exercising the handicrafts of smith, carpenter, tailor,
or shoemaker, and, of course, from farming or collecting the public
revenues. It was further decreed that no Jew should carry any kind of
arms, or be addressed as Don; that the unclean people should live in
special quarters (_Juderias_) provided with not more than one gate
each, and that they should not employ Christian servants. Thus the
seclusion which was at first granted to the Jews as a privilege and a
protection was now enforced as a means of oppression. Furthermore, they
were stripped of their gay apparel, and compelled to wear a peculiar
garment of coarse stuff and to display the hated badge, except such as
could pay for permission to discard it, especially on their journeys.
Lastly, they were forbidden to have their hair cut or their beards
shaved. Confiscation of goods and corporal chastisement were the
penalties inflicted for any breach of these and other regulations, the
aim of which was, by humiliating and impoverishing the race, to induce
it to embrace Christianity. A contemporary Jewish writer thus describes
the sad effects of this edict: “Inmates of palaces were driven into
wretched nooks, and dark and lowly huts. Instead of rustling apparel,
we were obliged to wear miserable clothes which drew contempt upon us.
Prohibited from shaving the beard, we had to appear like mourners.
The rich tax-farmers sank into want, for they knew no trade by which
they could gain a livelihood, and the handicraftsmen found no custom.
Starvation stared everyone in the face. Children died on their mothers’
knees from hunger and exposure.”[70]
In the midst of all this suffering the Church was not idle. The
chief of the apostles was Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar and
indefatigable winner of souls, afterwards canonised for his exertions.
This sincere, though forbidding saint, who called his bigotry religion
and his hatred of heretics love of God, rushed from synagogue to
synagogue, crucifix in hand, preaching the gospel of peace in a voice
of thunder, and endeavouring to persuade the infidels to repentance
by promises of comfort in this world and by threats of everlasting
damnation in the next. Ferrer was more than an orator. His sermons
were accompanied with exhibitions of the priest’s dramatic genius and
of the saint’s thaumaturgic powers. Impressive processions and sacred
hymns, banners, crucifices, and assaults upon the Jews heightened the
effect of his impassioned appeals. Thousands of wretches succumbed to
Ferrer’s eloquence, and many synagogues were turned into churches. This
result was by contemporary piety attributed to the fiery exhortations
addressed to the Jews, and to the miracles performed for their benefit,
by St. Vincent; but a twentieth century heretic, while admitting the
efficacy of exhortation and miracle, may be pardoned for suspecting
that the systematic persecution on the part of the State and the
spontaneous fury of the mob had at least some influence in turning the
hearts of the infidels.
♦1413♦
From Castile the preacher and persecution travelled to Aragon. The
newly-elected King Ferdinand, who owed his elevation to Ferrer’s
influence, showed his gratitude by placing his conscience in the
saint’s keeping and the royal power at his disposal. St. Vincent, thus
armed with both necessaries of success--enthusiasm and means--journeyed
to and fro in the country, denouncing, exhorting, threatening, and
baptizing; and the victims of his fervour in the two kingdoms are said
to have exceeded twenty thousand souls. Such is the persuasive power of
theological reasoning, when assisted by brute force. In the same year
a compulsory controversy between Hebrew renegades and Rabbis, on the
traditional lines, was begun in Tortosa.
No more splendid assembly ever met for the purpose of enforcing the
gospel of divine mercy by the gratification of human vanity. The
anti-pope Benedict XIII., clad in his pontifical robes, sat on a lofty
throne, surrounded by cardinals and prelates refulgent with brocade
of gold and gems. A thousand Spanish grandees thronged behind this
glorious group, while before it stood a small band of Jews anxious
to defend their faith, without imperilling their lives. The truth of
Christianity was beyond cavil. The falsity of Judaism, after the advent
of Christ, was equally clear. Does the Talmud recognise Jesus as the
Messiah or not? That was the question which was debated in sixty-eight
sittings extending over a period of twenty-one months.
And so the ruin of the Jews was progressing satisfactorily. The
originators of the persecution passed away one after the other.
Benedict XIII. was deposed by the Council of Constance and denounced
by Vincent Ferrer as an “unfrocked and spurious Pope.” The renegade
Jew Geronimo vanished into his native obscurity. King Ferdinand died
in 1416, and St. Vincent was translated to heaven three years later.
But the tribulations of Israel did not cease. ♦1419♦ Pope Martin V.,
indeed, surprised the world with a Bull of toleration, dictated, as
one would gladly have believed, by Christian charity; as documents
prove, procured by bribery. But the plant of anti-Judaism had taken too
deep roots to be permanently stunted by this tardy edict. ♦1442♦ Pope
Eugenius IV. addressed another Bull to the Bishops of Castile and Leon,
withdrawing the indulgences granted to the Jews by his predecessor, and
he renewed all the old restrictions, adding that the unclean people
should be confined to their houses during Holy Week. Autograph letters
to the Castilian ecclesiastics exhorted them to enforce the Pontiff’s
orders without mercy. ♦1447♦ Pope Nicholas V. aggravated all these
measures of oppression.
The Spanish Jews were now regarded simply as outlaws. The pious
eschewed all dealings with them. Husbandmen deserted the fields, and
shepherds the flocks belonging to the proscribed people; while the
towns framed new regulations for their utter suppression. King Henry
IV. of Castile and Juan II. of Aragon, horror-struck at the terrible
cruelty of this treatment, or rather alarmed at its consequences on
the royal exchequer, endeavoured to mitigate the sufferings of the
Jews. But their efforts met with no success. The campaign on the part
of the Dominicans was carried on vigorously, backsliders were scented
out and punished, charges of child-murder were preferred against the
Jews, and the populace was stirred up to acts of violence, which grew
in ferocity and frequency as the years rolled on. In 1468 a charge
of this description led to a massacre at Sepulveda. ♦1469♦ In the
following year the Cortes of Ocaña insisted that the anti-Jewish edicts
should be stringently enforced. Despite Henry’s feeble protests, the
Jews for many years continued to be exposed to the utmost cruelty of
the priests and of the populace in an age when the priests and the
populace were most cruel. They were not members of the Church, of the
feudal aristocracy, or of the commercial and industrial corporations.
Though living among the Christians, they were not of them. They were
unpopular. They could not defend themselves; and neither bishops,
barons, nor burgesses would lift a finger in their defence. They were,
therefore, abandoned without reserve and without remorse to the tender
mercies of clerical and civic fanaticism. The Marranos especially
continued to be the pet aversion and occupation of the Church.
A monastic writer of Andalusia, where the “new Christians” were most
numerous and now most miserable, quoted by Prescott, summarises
contemporary feeling regarding them in the following eloquent lines:
“This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to
be baptized, or, if they did, they washed away the stain on returning
home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil, instead of
lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover; ate meat in Lent; and
sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues; with many other
abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no respect
for monastic life, and frequently profaned the sanctity of religious
houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They were an
exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the most lucrative
municipal offices, and preferred to gain their livelihood by traffic,
in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labour
or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the hands of the
Egyptians, whom it was a merit to deceive and plunder. By their wicked
contrivances they amassed great wealth, and they were often able to
ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families.” Here we
find all the old sources of the Gentile’s hatred towards the Jew:
antipathy due to diversity of character--as manifested in occupation,
daily diet, and conduct; steeled by economic jealousy, and edged by
religious bigotry.
♦1469 Oct. 19♦
Such was the frame of the public mind, when short-sighted statecraft,
in the person of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, was wedded to narrow piety
in that of Isabella, heiress to the Crown of Castile. The legitimate
offspring of such a union could be no other than persecution. But,
even if the sovereigns were enlightened and tolerant, it is doubtful
whether they could have stemmed the current. In 1473 the mob massacred
the Constable of Castile at Jaen, because he attempted to repress its
fury, and, after Isabella the Catholic’s accession to the throne,
petitions poured in from all sides clamouring for the extirpation of
the “Jewish heresy.” The bigots of Seville, headed by the Dominican
prior of the monastery of St. Paul, agitated for the introduction of
the Inquisition--a tribunal originally established during Innocent
III.’s pontificate at the beginning of the thirteenth century for the
suppression of heresy--and their demand was seconded by the Papal
Nuncio. In 1477 Friar Philip de Barberi, Inquisitor for Sicily,
arrived in Seville to persuade the Spanish monarchs of the manifold
virtues of his remedy for infidelity. The prospect of plunder lured
Ferdinand, while Isabella’s feminine tenderness was assailed by the
importunities and the casuistry of her spiritual advisers. Torquemada,
the narrow-hearted Dominican of universal notoriety, had already
poisoned the Queen’s mind with his pernicious maxims of intolerance,
when he acted as the guardian of her conscience in early youth. In that
susceptible age he had extorted from his pupil the promise that she
would devote her life “to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of
God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” He now reappears on the
scene to claim the fulfilment of the fatal vow. The young queen, noble
and generous though she was by nature, could not long withstand the
unanimous exhortations of persons whose sanctity her religion taught
her to revere, and the superiority of whose wisdom her own modesty
prompted her to accept without question. Much less could she resist her
own beloved husband’s solicitations. All that was good or engaging in
her conspired with all that was ignoble in her counsellors to warp her
judgment, to silence the voice of her heart, and to force her to give
her consent to one of the greatest crimes of any time.
It required but little effort to induce Pope Sixtus IV. to allow the
establishment of the Holy Office in Castile for the detection and
punishment of backsliders to Judaism, and the necessary Bull was issued
on November 1st, 1478. But the Queen still hesitated to make use of the
dread weapon, while her husband was not without misgivings regarding
the absolute power claimed by the tribunal. As a last resource, before
proceeding to extremes, the monarchs commanded Cardinal Mendoza, the
Archbishop of Seville, to set forth the doctrines of the Catholic
faith in a short catechism, and to cause his clergy to diffuse the
light among the benighted Marranos throughout his diocese. This
worthy and humane ecclesiastic gladly obeyed the royal command, and
betook himself to the work of friendly persuasion. But with little
success. The Christians were incited to acts of hostility by rumours
of Jewish plots against the Church and the State, and of Jewish crimes
of the traditional type, such as sacrifices of children and insults
offered to the Host. The Government, yielding to public clamour,
expelled the Jews from Seville and Cordova in 1478, and renewed the
severe measures of repression in 1480. Furthermore, an ill-advised
Jew, by the publication of a caustic criticism of Christianity at
that inopportune moment, threw oil into the fire, and precipitated a
catastrophe which perhaps no power on earth could have averted in any
case. A people whose inflexibility had triumphed over the temptations
and the persecutions of fifteen centuries was hardly likely to be bent
by the good Archbishop’s catechism; and, after two years’ fruitless
endeavour, a Commission appointed for the purpose returned a highly
disappointing report. The term of grace having expired, the only
remaining alternative was the Inquisition.[71]
On September 17th, 1480, the tribunal was constituted of two Dominicans
and two other ecclesiastics appointed by the Crown, and was ordered to
commence operations at Seville without delay. The civil authorities
were instructed to lend the assistance of the secular arm to the
Judges; but, owing to the opposition which the latter at first
encountered on the part of the high-spirited Castilians, they were
obliged to confine their activity for a while within those districts of
Andalusia which depended directly from the Crown. However, limited as
the field at first was, it proved more than sufficient for the purpose.
The new year, 1481, was inaugurated with an edict, published on January
2nd, bidding all true Catholics to aid the tribunal in the fulfilment
of its mission, by indicating any person that might be known as, or
suspected of, entertaining heretical opinions. The result was a monster
hunt with men for quarry and hounds, and Satan for their master. Soon
the number of victims grew to such an extent that the court was obliged
to exchange its seat in the monastery of St. Paul, within the city of
Seville, for the larger castle of Triana, in the environs. There it
established its headquarters and blasphemed the Deity whom it professed
to serve by the following inscription, engraven over the portal:
_Exsurge, Domine; judica causam tuam; capite nobis vulpes_, “Arise, O
Lord; judge thine own cause; capture for us the foxes.”
Day after day the Satanic sport went on, and the number of “foxes”
increased apace. The Jews were not even allowed the privilege accorded
to the animal. Flight was forbidden under penalty of death, and was
prevented by guards posted at the gates of the city. None the less,
some of the victims succeeded in escaping to Granada, France, Germany,
and Italy, where they made an appeal to the Holy See from the barbarity
of the Holy Office. Sixtus IV. contented himself with a gentle rebuke
of his subalterns for their excessive zeal, soon followed by a request
for more strenuous “purification,” addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella.
Never, perhaps, since the fall of the Roman Empire did the detestable
trade of the informer flourish so lustily as it did during the ensuing
years in Castile. Bigotry, malice, cupidity were all invited to
contribute to the havoc, and, as the accuser’s identity was sedulously
concealed from the accused, the last motive for self-restraint was
removed. A new coat or a clean shirt on Saturday morning, a cold hearth
on Friday evening, avoidance of food popular among the Christians, or
a taste for a kind of drink affected by the Jews, a visit to a Jewish
house,--these were some of the proofs of Judaism accepted as conclusive
evidence by this model court of justice. The grave itself afforded no
refuge from its clutches. A person who was observed to turn his face to
the wall when dying was at once pounced upon, and his body shared the
fate of living heretics.
The Inquisition had been in existence for three days when six wretches
suffered at the stake. Seventeen more followed in March, and at the
end of ten months the “bag” had reached the number of two hundred and
ninety-eight, in Seville alone, in addition to many effigies of those
who had been fortunate enough to escape. The plague which devastated
Seville in that year of evil omen did not interrupt the other plague.
The Inquisition once more moved its racks, and continued its infernal
work in Aracena. Meanwhile, its branch establishments carried on
a brisk business in human lives in other parts of Andalusia, and
their diligence is proved by the fact, which we owe to the Jesuit
historian Mariana, that the net total of victims for the year amounted
to two thousand burnt alive, and seventeen thousand sentenced to
loss of property, loss of civil rights, or incarceration--mercies
which figured in the balance sheet under the comprehensive euphemism
“reconciliation.” ♦1483♦ In the third year Thomas de Torquemada was
appointed by Sixtus IV. Inquisitor-General of Castile and Aragon,
invested with full powers to draw up a new constitution for the Holy
Office. His labours resulted in the modern Inquisition, which for
centuries after blasted the Iberian Peninsula and supplied historians,
novelists, and dramatists with an inexhaustible mine of horrors. The
Spaniards were not pleased to see the extension of the grim tribunal’s
operations, and Pedro Arbués, the first Inquisitor who, in spite of
popular protests, ventured to make his appearance in Aragon, was
murdered in the Cathedral of Saragossa. ♦1485♦ But all opposition was
soon silenced.
Year after year edicts were issued and read in every church on the
first two Sundays of Lent, spurring the faithful, on pain of eternal
damnation, to denounce their fellow-citizens, and often their nearest
and dearest; for loyalty to the cause cancelled all other bonds.
Neither friendship nor family affection was permitted to interfere with
the course of fanaticism, and the vilest crimes against nature and
morality were hallowed by the blessings of the Church. The Marranos
and their Jewish sympathisers and abettors, against whom the terrible
engine continued to be almost exclusively directed under Torquemada’s
management, were decimated, mulcted, and mutilated at the average
annual rate of six thousand roasted or “reconciled,” not including an
unknown number of orphaned children doomed to starvation or vice by the
confiscation of their patrimony.
None were spared, but the most exalted were the first to be laid low;
judges and municipal officers, noblemen, and even clergymen suspected
of Judaism were mysteriously snatched from their homes, conveyed to the
subterranean dungeons of the Inquisition, and there, amid the terrors
of darkness and solitude, were kept for a while in strict ignorance
of the specific crime with which they were charged. When sufficiently
bewildered in his lonely, cold, and lightless cell, the prisoner was
dragged before the court and asked to give straight and lucid answers
to crooked and vague questions. It was accepted as a principle of
judicial procedure that every prisoner was guilty until he proved
himself to be innocent, and that it was better that ten innocents
should suffer than one infidel escape. Denial of guilt was visited
with torture, persistence in denial with more torture, and confession
of sin--to obtain which was an essential element in the Inquisitorial
process--with sentence of death or confiscation of goods, the greater
part of which went to defray the expenses of the prisoner’s trial and
to fill the pockets of his judges, while the remainder was swallowed up
by the Royal Treasury.
Thus the martyrs, mangled by the rack, emaciated by privation,
and almost maddened by mental suffering, were led to the place of
execution. The spectacle partook of the pomp of a Roman pageant and
of the horror of a cannibal feast. Noble Castilians, arrayed in the
dark livery of the Holy Office, disdained not to act as banner-bearers
and body-guards to the monastic executioners. A brilliant throng of
gorgeously apparelled ecclesiastics added to the magnificence of the
procession and enhanced by contrast the humiliation of the convicts,
who, clad in coarse yellow frocks made hideous with a scarlet cross and
designs of demons and hell-flames, haggard and already half-dead with
torture and terror, tottered to the funeral pyre. This was piled on
the Quemadero--a spacious stone platform, with the statues of the four
major prophets erected at the four corners, to which the victims were
bound. The semi-decomposed bodies of those convicted after death, torn
out of their tombs, were placed upon the pile, the fuel was ignited,
and the same flames gradually and slowly reduced the quick and the dead
to ashes.
The havoc of war and the massacres due to sudden eruptions of popular
fury have frequently surpassed these hecatombs in number of victims.
But in sustained and cold-blooded ferocity authentic history contains
nothing, and feverish fiction little, that can compare with one of
them. And yet the Inquisitors were men--no doubt honest, pious,
and honourable men, most of them; some perhaps amiable, nay even
charitable men. Unfortunately they imagined themselves to be something
more--ministers of Heaven’s will on earth. It was this fatal certainty
of the righteousness of their cause that turned the Inquisitors into
monsters. Man would less often become a fiend if he never mistook
himself for an angel.
Torquemada himself, who has been execrated through the ages as the
red-handed protagonist of the appalling tragedy, hardly deserves his
great reputation. There is little originality in his crime. He was not
more cruel, but only more conscientious, courageous, and consistent
than millions of the men of his generation and creed. When in the
nineteenth century we find Cardinal Newman--an English gentleman and
scholar--preaching that “To spare a heresiarch is a false and dangerous
pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable
towards himself,”[72] can we wonder that a Spanish priest should have
acted on that principle in the fifteenth century? Strong convictions
do not, of course, excuse unscrupulous and unrelenting brutality, but
they explain it. Given such a conviction, persecution becomes a duty
and toleration a sin. If the persecutor cannot command our respect, he
is at least entitled to our compassion. Torquemada deserves our pity
almost as much as his victims. The drama in which he distinguished
himself was an example of that highest kind of tragedy which needs no
villain. Faith had spun the plot; chance supplied the actor.
Year after year the hunt went on. But, in spite of Torquemada’s
unremitting endeavours, few Israelites hesitated in the option between
the font and the stake offered to them. Few chose the first, and, even
with these, conversion was merely a device for escape from death.
Inquisitors come and Inquisitors go, but Israel endures for ever; and
the hope of a better future supplied an indomitable patience with
the present. Disappointment infuriated the persecutors, but failed
to increase the ranks of the proselytes. It was in vain that ancient
calumnies were revived, and fresh ones invented. It was in vain that
the spies redoubled their activity, and the judges strained their
murderous ingenuity. It was in vain that a tempest of execration
and derision raged round the children of Israel. Torquemada and his
accomplices were at last forced to recognise the fact that Judaism
could not be extirpated, save by the extirpation of the Jews. And
forthwith all his influence was brought to bear on persuading the
sovereigns to drive the unclean and accursed race out of the country.
This was an unexpected blow for the wretched Jews, who feared exile
even more than execution. They had borne imprisonment, ignominy,
penury, and mutilation unflinchingly, in the hope that time would
soften the heart, or at least wear out the arm, of persecution. But
final banishment, with all the terrible perils of shipwreck, of famine,
of attack by pirates and of disease which a large and unprotected crowd
voyaging the high seas was certain to encounter in those days, would
mean irretrievable ruin for the whole race. Moreover the Jews loved
Spain with passionate devotion,[73] as is shown by the mediaeval Hebrew
poetry which assumes some of its most glowing eloquence in praise of
Andalusia. So, in order to avoid expatriation, the leading Jews offered
thirty--some say three hundred--thousand ducats to the sovereigns as a
ransom for their people.
Ferdinand and Isabella, intent on bringing their costly Moorish
campaign to a successful issue, were not disinclined to listen to a
proposal which promised a reinforcement of their military resources.
They received the Jewish deputy in audience, and there was every
prospect of the negotiations coming to a happy conclusion, when, at the
psychological moment, Torquemada, the sleepless and ruthless, burst
into the apartment of the palace where the interview was held, and,
lifting up a crucifix, which he drew forth from beneath his cassock,
thundered at the King and Queen: “Judas Iscariot sold his master for
thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty
thousand; here He is, take Him and barter Him away.” With these words
the terrible actor cast the crucifix upon the table and left the room.
The effect of the scene on the sovereigns’ minds was such as the
crafty priest had anticipated. His sudden and opportune appearance,
and his equally sudden disappearance, savoured of the miraculous; his
solemn warning seemed to issue from Heaven. The same superstitious
subservience to ghostly influence which had induced Isabella more
than a dozen years before to sanction the persecution of the Jews,
now induced her to order their expulsion. Nor was there a voice to
protest. The Castilians who would have bitterly resented the arbitrary
banishment of one of themselves, heard with complacency a similar
decision taken against a whole nation. For Israel was a people apart.
They had no share in its interests; and it had no share in their rights.
♦1492♦
It was the month of March in 1492, a year of incomparable moment for
Spain, for Europe, and for the world at large. That year witnessed the
capitulation of Granada, and the downfall of the Mohammedan Empire
in the West; a victory for the Cross which was received with hearty
thanksgivings throughout Christendom as a providential compensation
for the loss of Constantinople. The same year saw the departure of
Christopher Columbus, under the flag of the Spanish monarchs, on that
memorable voyage which was to result in a triumph wherein the whole
of mankind had reason to rejoice. The same hands which signed those
two glorious treaties now affixed their signatures to the edict that
banished the Jews from the land in which they had lived longer than
their persecutors, which they had loved as much, and adorned more than
they.
The end of July was fixed as the limit for their preparations. They
were permitted to liquidate their possessions and to carry away the
proceeds in bills of exchange, but not in gold or silver, for an
existing law forbade the exportation of precious metals from the
country. The consequence of the edict was that the Jews were forced to
sell or barter away some of their effects at a nominal price, and to
leave the greater portion behind them. If contemporary witnesses are to
be believed, a house was seen bartered for an ass, and a vineyard for
a suit of clothes. In Aragon the property of the Jews was sequestered
by the authorities for the benefit of their creditors, and the people
constantly reviled for their excessive wealth and usury were found to
owe more than they possessed!
The last months of the Jews’ sojourn in Spain were spent by the
priests in frantic efforts at conversion. But those who had opposed
an adamant firmness to temptation when they had much to lose, could
not be expected to yield when reduced to beggary. The consciousness
of suffering for the Idea brought with it an exaltation that shed a
halo over their misery. This affliction also was a fatherly rod, to
be borne with fortitude; an ordeal to be endured as a test of faith;
a humiliation that contained in it a promise of future glory. The God
of their fathers, who had led them out of the house of bondage and
fed them in the wilderness in the days of old, would not suffer his
children to perish. The waters would again be divided for them, and
the sea made dry land. This last expectation, confidently encouraged
by the Rabbis, proved vain when the exiles reached the coast. But
failure did not shake the faith of the children of Israel. The severer
the martyrdom, the greater the certainty of beatitude. Scattered and
scorned though they were, the day would dawn when they would once more
be gathered under Jehovah’s parent pinion. The light of Zion still
shone in the distance undimmed.
Thus, poor in worldly possessions, but rich in hope; defenceless,
yet strong in faith, they journeyed from all parts of the country to
the frontiers: the healthy and the sick, old men bending over their
staffs, little footsore children tottering by their fathers’ sides,
and infants clinging to their mothers’ breasts. Venerable Rabbis and
scholars, delicately nurtured maidens, young gentlemen, yesterday proud
cavaliers, to-day penniless and broken-spirited paupers--they all
dragged their weary limbs in various directions: some north, others
south; one group to the east and another to the west. Many a wet eye
followed the melancholy processions, and many a warm Spanish heart
melted to pity, but no hand was held out to the wanderers, no word
of comfort was addressed to them: the fear of God restrained many;
the fear of Torquemada more. The time of year added to the sadness
of the spectacle. Andalusia was bathing in the exuberant beauty of a
Spanish summer; the sky smiled blue and bright overhead, the earth
was spangled with flowers beneath, the birds warbled blithely in the
trees and bushes, the air was sweet with the scent of orange blossoms;
Nature seemed to hold a carnival of joy in mockery of the misery and
heartlessness of man.
The banishment of the Jews from England at the close of the thirteenth
century was mere child’s play compared with their expulsion from
Spain at the close of the fifteenth. The Jews who left England had
only been in the country for two centuries; those who now left Spain
had lived there more than twelve. The English exiles had borne small
part in England’s greatness; the Spanish Jews had served the state
in the highest capacities, had won universal fame in art, science
and literature, and had become to the rest of the world’s Jewries an
exemplar of that harmonious combination of piety with culture which
was nowhere, outside Spain, so prominent a feature of mediaeval life.
And in quantity as in quality the Spanish banishment far surpassed its
English prototype. The exiles from England amounted at most to sixteen
thousand; those from Spain were computed at least as one hundred and
sixty thousand. Some accounts even raise them to five times that
number. It was a movement on a scale comparable only to that of the
exodus of Israel from Egypt, with the sole difference that, whereas
the Jews had dwelt in Egypt as strangers and bondsmen in the land,
in Spain they had become in many respects Spaniards. But the crime,
augmented by a similar crime against the Moors, brought its penalty
with it. Even accepting the lowest estimate as nearest the correct one,
the price in skill, industry and intelligence, which Spain--despite
her recent military achievements and her budding power beyond the
seas--had to pay for the gratification of her religious fanaticism
cannot easily be calculated; but it can be seen to this day. The same
yoke which crushed the alien and the infidel could not but cramp the
native and the Christian. Freedom of thought, speech, or action was
dead. Intellectual culture was soon to be succeeded by monasticism, and
material prosperity by mendicity. Meanwhile the value of Ferdinand and
Isabella’s Hebrew subjects could not but have been realised immediately
on their departure. The Spanish Government, prompted by the Spanish
Church, had said to the Jews: “Be baptized or be gone!” The Jews went,
and the life of Spain went with them. Stately mansions fell into mossy
decay, rich cornfields and vineyards were turned into waste land, busy
and populous cities were suddenly silenced as by a magician’s black
art. In return, Spain nursed the cold comfort of having served the
cause of the gloomy and bloodthirsty monster that the age called God.
Nothing throws a clearer light on the spirit of the times than the
comments of contemporary writers on Ferdinand and Isabella’s suicidal
policy. The Spanish historians join in a chorus of indiscriminate
panegyric; the Spanish poets sing pæans to the triumph of the Faith.
Foreign spectators, while deprecating the severity of the methods
employed, have nothing but praise for the motive. They all applaud the
deed as a sacrifice of temporal to spiritual interests. It is true that
Ferdinand’s treasury was the richer for the confiscated property of the
Jews. But, though lust for plunder may be regarded as the mainspring of
his own policy, it was not the primary motive of the Dominicans, nor
had it any share in Isabella’s conduct. This amiable princess has laid
her soul bare in the confession: “In the love of Christ and his maiden
mother I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and
districts, provinces and kingdoms.” The expulsion of the Jews, like the
_autos-da-fé_, was a crime committed principally _por amor de Dios_.