A.D. 1400-1500.
THE JEWS IN GERMANY AND ITALY.
The records of the Jews in Central Europe during this century are
unusually scanty. They had been—nominally, at all events—expelled
from various parts of it; and, though it is very probable that they
were permitted, through contempt or compassion, to linger on in their
old homes, yet they would be careful, as far as possible, to avoid
notice. In Poland alone they seem to have flourished in prosperity
and peace, and to have received large accessions of members from less
kindly disposed countries.
But we hear something, nevertheless, of them. In Guelderland they
were numerous, and lived securely under the protection of its rulers,
particularly in the cities of Zutphen, Doesborg, and Arnheim. In
the last-named city a Jew was even appointed the physician to the
town; and decrees were issued prohibiting, on severe penalties, any
ill-treatment of Jews in public or private. On the other hand, a
singular fact occurred during this century, which seems to manifest
the very opposite state of feeling. A noble lady of Guelderland
having married a Jew, was regarded as an adulteress for having so
done, and was burnt alive at Cologne for the offence. The Jews also
were driven out of the neighbouring city of Utrecht in 1444; nor were
they allowed to return to Holland until after the revolution of 1795.
Commercial jealousy was probably the cause of this expulsion.
In 1453 there were Jewish riots in various parts of Silesia, and
particularly in Breslau, where more than forty Jews were burnt. In
the following year Ladislaus, King of Hungary, allowed his subjects
to drive the Jews out of his dominions, seize on their houses and
lands, and cancel all debts due to them. The only conditions he
required of them, in return for this permission, was their making
good to him the tribute which had been paid by the Jews. These
outbreaks appear to have been caused (as was so frequently the case,
both in previous and subsequent generations) by the influence of
fanatical monks, who made the tour of Central Europe, denouncing the
Jews as the enemies of God and man, and calling on all Christian men
to avert the displeasure of Heaven by slaying and expelling them. A
preacher named Capistran in this manner raised commotions in Silesia,
and in Southern Germany Bernard produced the same disastrous effects.
In Styria, late in the century, the people petitioned Maximilian to
be permitted to drive the Jews out, as their Hungarian neighbours
had done in the previous generation. They alleged the old charge of
kidnapping and murdering children, and offered him 30,000 florins
as a compensation for the loss of the Jewish tribute. We read that
they were expelled accordingly in 1496. Similar expulsions took place
in Mentz, Nuremberg, and Trent. In the latter place the accidental
death of a child—attributed, as usual, to the Jews—was the cause of
their banishment. But the mania for the removal of the Jews from all
the countries of Europe—either because their presence was held to
be like that of leeches fastening on the human frame and draining
its life-blood, or because it was feared that the vengeance of
Heaven would visit all those who offered shelter or kindness to its
enemies—seems now to have taken the place of the thirst for their
blood which distinguished the ages immediately preceding. The idea
was quite as unreasonable and unjust, but a shade less horrible and
revolting.
In Italy, as in previous generations, the Jews, if they did not
receive the full rights of humanity, were at least treated with
toleration, and even some degree of kindness. The demeanour of
the popes towards them was, as before, very capricious—varying,
in fact, with the religious convictions or state policy of each
succeeding pontiff. In 1417, when the schism of the double papacy
came to an end through the unanimous election of Martin V., the
Jews marched, according to ancient custom, in the papal procession,
with lighted torches, chanting Hebrew Psalms, and presenting to the
newly-made Pope a copy of the Pentateuch. Martin V. received it with
a benediction, and a prayer that the veil might be removed from
their eyes, so that they might rightly understand the Law. He then
issued a proclamation, in which they were dealt with mercifully and
justly. Their synagogues, their form of worship, their privileges,
usages, and institutions were to be respected, so only that they
offered no affront to the Christian faith. No forcible attempts were
to be made to baptize their children, and no one was to interrupt
their festivals. With Pope Eugenius IV., who succeeded in 1431, the
condition of things was changed. The stern and inflexible character,
so forcibly exhibited in his dealings with the Council of Basle
and the Eastern Church, was evinced also in his treatment of the
Jews. By a bull, issued in 1442, he deprived them of most of the
privileges which his predecessor had bestowed on them. He excluded
them from almost every profession, forbade them to eat and drink with
Christians, or to attend them medically in sickness, compelled them
to wear their distinguishing badge, and declared void any bequests
which Christians might make to them. His successor, the beneficent
Nicolas V., who was elected A.D. 1447, pursued a wiser course. He
published a decree forbidding compulsory baptisms, and warning all
persons to abstain from offering insults or injuries to the Jews.
During the rule of the remaining popes of the century, Calixtus III.,
Pius II., Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI.,
the Jews seem to have been little interfered with. Odious as is the
character of the last-named pope, it must be recorded to his credit
that he afforded shelter to the wretched exiles whom the cruelty of
Ferdinand and the Inquisition had driven out of Spain, as we shall
presently record.
In the chief Italian cities also the Jews were, on the whole, well
treated. The Venetians, as we have seen, allowed them to open a bank
in their city; and they appear to have been the first who did so.
But it may be doubted whether any large amount of gratitude was due
to them on that account. It is tolerably clear that the Caorsini,
Lombards, and Florentines (as the native money-lenders were called),
who had hitherto engrossed the trade, exacted such enormous profits
that the change to the Jews must of necessity have been a commercial
advantage. It was doubtless on this account that their establishment
at Venice was speedily followed by their admission to Genoa,
Florence, Mantua, Verona, and Leghorn—in fact, into all the leading
Italian cities—their central seat of business being fixed at Rome.
But if the amount of interest they demanded was not so exorbitant
as that of the Caorsini, it was still enough to be a heavy burden
on all classes.[145] Towards the end of the century the celebrated
Bernardino di Feltre was stirred up to preach publicly against their
exactions, and the terms on which Christians stood with them, at
Piacenza. It is curious to read the language he employs, which is
a strange mixture of the most truly Christian and the most utterly
unchristian sentiment. He regards the Jews simply as if they had
been wicked men, towards whom Christian charity must be felt and
shown, but whom it is the duty of all Christian men to shun and
condemn. No Christian, he says, ought to employ a Jewish physician;
no Christian ought to be a guest at a Jewish feast—the risk of moral
contamination is too great! ‘Yet,’ he adds, ‘in defiance of these
obstacles, which the law, no less than duty, enjoins, Christians
had recently resorted in crowds to a Jewish marriage feast which
lasted eight days; and it was notorious that whenever Christians
were attacked by illness they resorted to a Jewish physician!’ The
mob, as might be expected, understood very little of his refined
distinctions. They interpreted his words as an exhortation to make
an attack on the Jews. They rose accordingly, and hanged and tore in
pieces all they met with.[146]
He employed, however, more reasonable means of rescuing his
countrymen from the clutches of the Hebrew usurer than these. He set
up banks, at which a lower rate of interest was required than that
demanded by the Jews, but at the same time sufficiently remunerative,
provided the debts contracted were faithfully discharged. These
he called Monte della Pieta. They met at first with very decided
success in the chief Italian cities, and particularly in Mantua,
Brescia, and Padua. In the last-named place they so engrossed the
money-lending business that the Jews were obliged to close their own
bank. There can be no doubt that the scheme was both commercially and
philanthropically wise. Yet, after all, it did not prosper. Possibly
the publicity of the dealings with Bernardino’s banks was not
acceptable to borrowers, who might wish the fact of their having been
obliged to borrow to be kept secret. Possibly those who would fain
have been customers were too deeply involved in debt to the Jews to
be able to break loose from them. Possibly it was the effect of long
habit, which men are ever unwilling to depart from. But, whatever may
have been the cause, the scheme, after a brief period of success,
began to languish, and in some places altogether failed.
It was revived later still in the century by the celebrated Girolamo
Savonarola, who professed his object to be the same as that of
Bernardino—rescuing his countrymen, and especially the poor, from the
ruinous exactions of the Jew money-lenders, whom he denounces in the
most unmeasured terms, as that ‘most wicked set, the enemies of God.’
Not contented with this harsh language, he obtained a decree of the
State, ordering them to quit Florence within the year.
It may not be amiss, at this point of history, to inquire how far
the severe language and harsh treatment with which even really good
men among the Christians of the Middle Ages were wont to assail the
Jews, had any reasonable justification or excuse. There were some
men, as we have seen, with whom the prejudices of their brother
Christians had little or no weight; who were capable of regarding
the Jews as the children of their Father in heaven, and as such
their brethren, though, doubtless, their erring brethren. They might
rightly, in such men’s eyes, be the subjects of entreaty, warning,
perhaps punishment, but never of hate or contempt. But they who were
thus raised above the convictions of their age were very few. And
there were others—men of the highest character, whose devotion to
God’s service and love for their fellow-men cannot be questioned—men
like Louis IX. of France, Peter of Clugny, Savonarola, Martin Luther,
Cardinal Borromeo—who regarded the Jews with horror and detestation,
as persons beyond the pale of charity, who were simply to be crushed
and trampled out.[147] How are we to account for men like these so
viewing them? Was the character of the Jews in the Middle Ages such
as really to merit a condemnation so unqualified? Is the portraiture
of the Jew given by our great dramatist[148] a true one? Shylock is
depicted as sordid, vindictive, without mercy and without natural
affection. Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the
mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?
What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the
Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse
population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile,
but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse.[149] As it
has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves.
Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not
the very noblest—that the world has seen. Whatever great qualities
humanity may possess, it is by men of this race that they have been
exhibited in their highest development. If we ask from what nation
has arisen the ablest legislator, the most far-seeing statesman,
the wisest philosopher, the most chivalrous warrior, the greatest
monarch, the most Heaven-inspired poet, we must answer, in every
instance, From the nation of the Jews. Nor is it to individuals
alone that this applies. What struggle for national independence was
ever more gallant than that of the Maccabees? Which among all the
countless nations, overthrown by the military genius of Rome, ever
resisted so long, or with such fatal effect, her illimitable power,
as the defenders of Jerusalem? But, no doubt, centuries of oppression
had their effect in deteriorating the nobler, and developing the
meaner, features of the Jewish character, until the Jews became at
last almost—though not quite—what their persecutors believed them to
be.[150] Shut out from every nobler pursuit, forbidden the career of
the statesman, the soldier, the artist, the author, or the physician,
except within the narrow bounds of their own despised race—they
were driven to the one sordid trade of money-getting, and compelled
even in that to practise the extremity of exaction and rigour, or
else—subject as they were to continual lawless plunder—they could
not have lived. If they were at any time disposed to show mercy, no
one believed it to be anything but a subtle scheme for securing some
worldly end. Treated systematically as the outcasts of humanity, what
wonder if they often really became so?
FOOTNOTES:
[145] It is stated that the Jewish money-lenders demanded thirty-two
and a-half per cent. on their loans, together with compound interest!
[146] The Jews were actually driven out of Ravenna in 1484, in
consequence of the agitation he stirred up against them.
[147] Peter of Clugny wrote: ‘If the Saracens are justly to be
detested, how much more are the Jews to be execrated and regarded
with hate!’ Louis IX. charged them with being in league with evil
spirits to injure and destroy men. It has been affirmed that Luther
treated the Jews with lenity and toleration. But, if he ever really
did evince this spirit towards them, it was only at the outset of his
career. Later on he was stern and merciless in his tone towards them.
‘Burn their synagogues and schools,’ were his words; ‘break into and
destroy their houses. Forbid their Rabbins, on pain of death, to
teach,’ etc.
[148] Shylock, it should be noted, whether a fair picture or not,
of the Jews of Shakspeare’s time, is at least a genuine character—a
real man. But the Barabbas of Marlowe’s _Jew of Malta_ and the Fagin
of Dickens’s _Oliver Twist_ are simply coarse and gross caricatures,
pandering to the vulgar taste of the day.
[149] Palestine is a land ‘rich in its soil, boundless in its
capabilities of production, glowing in the sunshine of an almost
perpetual summer—this enchanting land was indeed (what the patriarch
had described it) a field which the Lord had blessed.... But
Mohammedan sloth and despotism have converted it into a waste
rock and desert, with the exception of some few spots, which
remain to attest the veracity of the accounts formerly given of
it.’—Bannister’s _Holy Land_, pp. 37, 38.
[150] Every reader will remember the noble passage in _Ivanhoe_,
where Bois Guilbert taunts Rebecca with the degraded character
of her countrymen, and she answers him by appealing to their
former greatness. ‘Thou hast spoken of the Jew,’ she says, ‘as the
persecution of such as thou has made him. Read the ancient history
of the people of God, and tell me if those by whom Jehovah wrought
such marvels among the nations were then a people of misers and
usurers!’—_Ivanhoe_, chap. xvi.