A.D. 1800-1885.
THE JEWS IN FRANCE, ITALY, AND GERMANY.
We hear no more of the Jews in France, after the relief granted them
by the Republican Government, until 1806; when Napoleon, who by his
victory at Austerlitz had obtained almost undisputed supremacy in
Europe, was arranging his schemes for carrying out that darling dream
of his imagination, the Continental system. Few men were keener or
more far-sighted than Napoleon. It cannot be doubted that he saw the
great value which the cordial co-operation of the Jews would be to
him, if he could only obtain it. Their secret but widespread system
of mutual intercommunication,[219] their wealth, their intelligence,
their perfect mastery of the principles of commerce, would greatly
facilitate the designs he contemplated. It is probable that even
then he meditated the resuscitation of the Kingdom of Poland, as
a formidable opponent to Russia; and the vast number of Jews to
be found in those countries rendered their goodwill of the utmost
importance to the success of such a scheme. He convoked a meeting
of Jews in Paris, which, to gratify their national sentiment, he
called a Sanhedrin, and submitted to it twelve questions,[220]
mainly relating to their social life and position in France. It
had the effect, as he doubtless had anticipated, of drawing forth
an assurance of their appreciation of the privileges of French
citizenship, and their warm affection for their native land, as they
designated France. The Imperial Government professed itself satisfied
with the reply. A second Sanhedrin was summoned, at which foreign
Jews were invited to attend, and a kind of constitution framed, by
which it was hoped that the Jews everywhere throughout Europe would
be bound. It was ratified by an imperial edict, and was, on the
whole, extremely favourable to them. It took effect in France and
all countries to which Napoleon’s authority extended, though in some
parts, as Alsace, concessions were made to popular prejudice, and the
privileges of the Jews curtailed. The effect was soon seen in the
purchase of estates by Jewish proprietors, the employment of Jewish
capital in manufactures, and the participation of the Jews generally
in national schemes of foreign and domestic policy.[221] At the
Revolution of 1830 the most complete equality of citizenship was
granted them; and since that time there has been no alteration in the
laws of France, so far as they are concerned.
In Italy the condition of the Jews has varied very little during this
century, though public attention has been once or twice directed to
them. In most of the large cities, though they are regarded with a
species of tacit dislike, no open wrong is done them. In some, as,
for example, Florence, they are treated with strict justice, indeed,
it might be said with favour. Their rights are protected, and they
are allowed to pursue all trades and professions, except that of the
physician. At Rome, on the accession of Pio Nono, among the various
liberal measures adopted by him was one in favour of the Jews. At
that time they were strictly confined within the precincts of their
Ghetto; they were obliged every year to send a deputation of four
elders to ask permission to reside during that year at Rome, and they
were required to attend periodically to listen to sermons preached
for their conversion. All these obligations were annulled by the new
pontiff. On the 17th April, 1847, he went in solemn procession to the
Ghetto, and ordered the wall of partition between it and the rest of
the city to be thrown down.[222] He rescinded the regulations whereby
the Jews were compelled to sue for permission to dwell in Rome, and
to attend controversial sermons. He even substituted a star for a
cross, in an order of merit which he instituted, that he might not
offend their feelings. After the Revolution of 1848, however, the old
regulations were again enforced.
In the summer of the year 1858 public attention was again drawn to
the condition of the Jews in the Papal States. On the 23rd of June
in that year Signor Mortara, a cloth merchant of Bologna, received
a visit from the police; who, it appeared, had been sent by Padre
Felletti, Chief Inquisitor of Bologna. It was night, and Signor
Mortara’s seven children were all in bed. They were awakened; an
inquiry was made as to the names and ages of each; and the parents
were then informed that a maid-servant, who had been in their
service, had given evidence to the effect that six years before,
when one of their children, Edgar by name, had been dangerously ill,
she had secretly baptized him. The child was therefore a Christian,
and must be given up to the Catholic Church, to be bred up in that
faith. The mother screamed and fainted. The father appealed to the
Archbishop of Bologna and the Governor, but without effect. The child
was forcibly seized by the Carabineers, and sent to Rome.
Signor Mortara followed, and had an interview with Cardinal
Antonelli. The line he took does not seem to have been the one which
would naturally have suggested itself to an Englishman. He did not
represent that, even assuming the girl’s statement to be correct,
it would be a most monstrous perversion, alike of natural right and
Christian doctrine, to suppose that her act could be any sufficient
ground for removing a child from the care of its parents, to which
the Providence of God had entrusted it. Probably he knew, however,
that any such plea would be urged in vain, and that his only chance
of success lay in disproving that any such baptism as the servant
alleged had ever taken place. He therefore brought forward evidence
that the child had not had the dangerous illness which she declared
it to have had, and further, that the servant girl’s character
was so bad that her evidence was of no value. Antonelli was not
to be convinced. He did, indeed, so far relent as to allow the
parents occasionally to see their son; but the priests continually
interfered; and at last, finding probably that they made no progress
in reconciling the child to his new life as long as the father and
mother had access to him, they conveyed him away altogether.
The story excited a profound sensation throughout Europe. Several of
the Great Powers remonstrated with the Vatican, urging that the boy
ought to be restored to his parents. Their representations failing,
Sir Moses Montefiore, the well-known champion of Jewish rights,
undertook a journey to Rome, where he had an interview with Cardinal
Antonelli, and asked to be allowed to plead his suit personally with
the pope. His efforts were zealously seconded by Mr. Odo Russell,
the British Agent, but they proved futile nevertheless. Sir Moses
was informed that Pio Nono regarded the affair as one which had been
finally settled, and which he declined to reopen. The boy’s mother is
said to have died of grief. However that may be, it is certain that
no more shameful tale of persecution ever disgraced the annals of the
Papacy. It is a consolation to know that the establishment of the
Italian monarchy brought freedom and civil equality at last to the
Jewish people.[223]
In Germany, their history during this century is full of interest,
partly on account of the remarkable variations of policy exhibited
from time to time in the dealings of the German Government with
them, and partly from the conflict of opinion between the ancient
Rabbinical schools and what may be called the neology of modern
Judaism, which, originating as we have seen with Mendelssohn and
his contemporaries, derived afterwards much of its inspiration from
Strauss and other kindred writers.
After the fall of Napoleon, when Germany was reconstructed
professedly as nearly as possible on its ancient basis, one article
of the Federal Act of the Germanic States, promulgated in June, 1815,
secured to the Jews the possession of equal rights of citizenship
throughout Germany, conditionally only on their compliance with
the laws of the State in which they resided. But it is always
easier to frame a law than to ensure its observance, and this was
especially the case in Germany, which consisted of a great number of
federal States, in which there was a great difference of opinion on
many subjects, and especially as regarded the status of the Jews.
The principle of Jewish equality, social and political, with the
Christian inhabitants of every country, did make its way, but very
slowly, and several generations passed before it came to be fully
acknowledged.
Nor was it only the _vis inertiæ_, so to speak, of public opinion
that had to be overcome. In some countries, at all events, there
was a positive reaction against the favour which had been shown by
Diets and Governments to the Jews. Even as early as 1815, Frankfort,
Lubeck, and Bremen made several enactments, revoking the civil
privileges which had been granted to the Jews. Commercial jealousy
does not seem to have been the main, or at all events the sole,
occasion of this change of policy. The Jews were attacked by men of
learning and ability, whom we might have expected to be superior to
the prejudices they displayed. The faults of their national character
were alleged against them—their exclusiveness, their inveterate
obstinacy, their greed of gain, and especially the bigotry of their
religious belief. This was no doubt offensive to the rationalizing
school, which was rising into eminence. Some of the German professors
insisted on their being regarded as always and everywhere aliens, who
could not be made to amalgamate with any other nation—who might exist
in great numbers _in_ any land, but would never be of it. The effect
of this agitation was, for the time, at all events, to throw back
the question of Jewish emancipation. They were excluded from holding
magisterial offices, professorships in the Universities, commissions
in the army. In some States the question of their expatriation
was mooted; it was even carried out at Lubeck, so far as the city
itself was concerned. In other places something of the old mediæval
outrages were renewed. At Hamburg and other towns the houses of the
Jews were pillaged and demolished. It is even said that in some
places the old cry of the monk Rodolph, ‘Hep, Hep,’ was again heard.
The revolutionary outbreak of 1830 in France spread into Germany; but
the extreme Liberal party did not now advocate, as before, the entire
social and political equality of the Jews with their fellow-citizens.
Hatred of dogmatic teaching seems to have overpowered every other
consideration; and as the dogmatism of the Jews has always been one
of their most marked characteristics, the Rationalist leaders, among
whom Bruno Bauer was conspicuous, clamoured for their suppression
as a religious community, and the withdrawal of civil rights and
privileges from them. The orthodox Jews did not lack able and
zealous champions; but, as has been already intimated, it was not
from Christians only that they encountered opposition. As some
nominal Christians in Germany, and certain others who could hardly
claim the title of Christian at all, had dealt with the historical
records and theological dogmas of the Gospel, so did nominal Jews
deal with those of Judaism. ‘In the Synagogue, as in the Church,’
says Da Costa,[224] ‘everything that was national and Israelitish,
all that was supernatural and beyond the reach of unassisted human
reason, was furiously attacked and rejected.’ It was not merely
that novelties were introduced into the ancient Hebrew liturgy and
synagogue service, that organs and music were imported, and sermons
preached in the German language, and new prayers interpolated, and
old prayers excluded, but the fundamental doctrines of their faith
were questioned and discredited. One party proposed to abolish the
Jewish Sabbath, substituting the Christian Sunday for it. Another
openly declared that they looked for and desired no Messiah to come.
Another more insidiously averred that they did indeed believe in
the future advent of the Hope of Israel, but He was not a Person,
but simply the representative of ever-advancing enlightenment and
benediction—one who always had been and ever would be coming, but who
would never come until the perfection of humanity had been reached.
But a theory like this would be more embarrassing to the Jew than
its counterpart was to the Christian. Rationalists might declare the
Incarnate God to have been a personified myth, an ideal Being, in
whose reputed words and acts Christian ideology found embodiment.
But there were His words, which no man could have spoken; and there
were His acts, which no man could have performed; there were His
predictions, which the history of the world since His day had made
good, and which nothing but Divine Wisdom could have uttered. The
Jews had nothing of this to sustain them, and it cannot surprise
us that many among them found no shelter in such a sea of doubt,
except in embracing the Christian creed. Hence, in all likelihood,
the number of conversions which are reported to have taken place in
Germany at this period. Da Costa reports them as having amounted to
five thousand in twenty years.
But orthodox Judaism made a resolute stand against the evil. Schools
and colleges were established in the great German cities, presided
over by learned and zealous teachers: nor is there any lack of
distinguished writers and able preachers among them. Among scholars,
Raport and Leopold Zunz were pre-eminent;[225] among historians,
Geiger and Graetz, the last-named the author of the most copious and
learned History of the Jews which has yet appeared. The German Jews
have also distinguished themselves in every department of science and
literature—in politics, in music, in metaphysics, in medicine, in the
_belles lettres_. Their free admission to all public offices, and the
full rights of citizenship, dates only from the reconstruction of the
German empire; but it is now fully, and we may hope finally, secured.
FOOTNOTES:
[219] Baron Rothschild, by his private agencies, was enabled to
inform the British Government of the escape of Napoleon from Elba,
and Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.
[220] These questions were: 1, 2, 3. Are polygamy, divorce, and
intermarriage with Christians allowed by Jewish law? 4, 5, 6. In what
light are Frenchmen regarded by Jews, and do the Jews feel themselves
bound by the laws of France? 7, 8, 9. In what manner, and by whom,
are the Rabbins elected, and what are their powers? 10, 11, 12. Are
there any professions forbidden to Jews? Is usury, with their own
people, and with strangers, permissible? The Jews answered: that
polygamy was forbidden; divorce allowed, if in accordance with the
law of the land; intermarriage legal, but not celebrated by any
religious rite; that the Jews regarded Frenchmen as their brethren,
and acknowledged French law; that any profession was lawful; that
the Rabbins were elected according to custom, and had no judicial
authority; that legal interest was permitted, but usury forbidden.
[221] In a return made in 1808, scarcely more than a year after
Napoleon’s edict, it is declared that there were then 80,000
Jews in France, of whom 1,232 were landed proprietors, 250 were
manufacturers, and 797 military men, among whom were officers of all
ranks, up to field-marshals.
[222] The Ghetto had been thrown open during the French possession of
Rome; but in 1815, when Italy returned to its old masters, the former
state of things was resumed.
[223] Since the complete consolidation of the Italian kingdom under
Victor Emmanuel, the Jews in all parts of Italy have enjoyed the
rights of citizenship without any restriction. They are free to
live wherever they like, follow any trades or professions, and are
entitled to hold the same offices and perform the same duties as all
other Italian citizens. The Ghettoes are everywhere abolished—that
is, every one who chooses is permitted to live in them, and no one
who does not choose is required to reside there.
[224] _Israel and the Gentiles_, p. 597.
[225] Zunz is the author of a masterly review of Jewish ethics, and
two works on the poetry of the mediæval Jews. He also wrote a notice
of the celebrated Rashi, and other works.