THE JEWS IN SPAIN
You have seen the Catholic Sovereigns instilling order into that
distracted land of Spain, enforcing submissiveness to the law,
instituting a system of police for the repression of brigandage,
curtailing the depredations of the nobles, checking the abuses and
usurpations of the clergy, restoring public credit, and generally
quelling all the elements of unrest that had afflicted the State.
But one gravely disturbing element still remained in the bitter rancour
prevailing between Christian and Jew.
“Some clerics and many laymen,” says Pulgar,[35] “informed the
Sovereigns that there were in the Kingdom many Christians of Jewish
extraction who were Judaizing[36] again and holding Jewish rites in
their houses, and who neither believed the Catholic Faith nor performed
the Catholic duties. They implored the Sovereigns, as they were
Christian princes, to punish that detestable error, because if left
unpunished it might so spread that our Holy Catholic Faith must receive
great harm.”
* * * * *
Exactly to realize the position at the time, and the force behind the
arguments employed to induce the Catholic Sovereigns to complete
the ordering of the kingdom by the repression of the re-Judaizing,
or apostasy, of the New-Christians--as the baptized Jews and their
descendants were termed--it is necessary to take at least a brief
retrospective survey of the history of the Israelites in Spain.
* * * * *
At what period the Jews first appeared in the peninsula it is not easy
to determine with accuracy.
Salazar de Mendoza and other ancient historians, who base their
writings upon the work of Tomás Tamayo de Vargas, put forward views
upon this subject that are curious rather than important.
They assert that the Kingdom of Spain was founded by Tubal, the son of
Japhet, who had Europe for his portion when the division was made among
the sons of Noah. Hence it was called Tubalia, and later on Sepharad by
the Jews, and Hesperida by the Greeks. They hold that the first Jews in
the Iberian Peninsula were probably those who came with Nebuchadnezzar
II, King of Chaldea, and that he brought with him, in addition to
Chaldeans and Persians, ten tribes of Israel, who peopled Toledo,[37]
and built there the most beautiful synagogue that had been theirs since
the temple of Solomon. This synagogue, Mendoza states, afterwards
became the Convent of Santa Maria la Blanca (a statement which the
architecture of Santa Maria la Blanca very flatly contradicts). He
further informs us that they built another synagogue at Zamora, and
that those who worshipped there always prided themselves--his point of
view, of course, is narrowly Christian--that to them had been addressed
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews.
They founded a university at Lucena (near Cordova), and schools where
the law was taught, so that the holy Jewish religion spread rapidly,
and was observed throughout Spain until the coming of Our Lord into
the world. Then, in 37 A.D., the Apostle St. James came to preach the
new gospel in Iberia, “so that Spain was the first land after Judea to
receive the holy law of grace.” Following the writings of Vargas, he
goes so far as to say: “and although to many it has seemed apocryphal
that the Toledo Jews wrote to denounce the Passion of Our Lord, the
assertion is not without good foundation.”[38]
Amador de los Rios is probably correct in his opinion that the Jews
made their first appearance in Spain during the Visigothic dominion,
after the fall of Jerusalem; and scarcely had they settled in the
peninsula when they began to experience the bitterness of persecution.
But after they had been delivered from this by the Saracen invaders,
to whom by race and creed they were fairly sympathetic, they
enjoyed--alike under Moslem and Christian rule--a season of prosperity
in Spain, which endured until the close of the thirteenth century. And
this notwithstanding the undercurrent of mutual contempt and hatred, of
Christian for Jew and Jew for Christian, that was invincible in an age
of strong religious feeling.
To the Christian every Jew he encountered was his natural and
hereditary enemy, a descendant of those who had crucified the Saviour;
therefore he was an object of execration, a man upon whom it must
be meritorious to avenge the world’s greatest crime which had been
perpetrated by his forbears.
The Jew, on the other hand, held the Christian in a contempt as
thorough. From the standpoint of his own pure and unadulterated
monotheism, he looked scornfully upon a religion that must appear to
him no better than an adaptation of polytheism, developed upon the
doctrines of one whom the Jews had rejected as an impostor who had
attempted to usurp the place of the promised Messiah. To the truly
devout Jew of those days the Christian religion can have been little
better than a blasphemy. Nor was that the only source of his contempt.
Looking back upon his own splendid ancestry, upon the antiquity of
his race and the high order of its culture--the fruit of centuries of
intellectual evolution--what but scorn could he entertain for these
Spaniards of yesterday’s hatching, who were just emerging from the
slough of barbarism?
It is clear that mutual esteem between the races was out of all
question in an age of strong religious prejudices. Toleration, however,
was possible, and the Jew applied himself to win it. To this end he
employed at once the vices and the virtues of the unfortunate, which
centuries of tribulation had rendered inherent in him.
Armed with a stoicism that was almost pitiful, he donned a mask of
indifference to confront expressed hatred and contempt; to violence he
opposed cunning and the long-suffering patience that is so peculiarly
his own--the patience that is allied with a high order of intelligence;
the patience which, interpreted into “an infinite capacity for taking
pains,” has been urged as the definition of genius, and is the secret
of the Jew’s success wherever he is established.
In the cohesion in a foreign land of this people that cannot keep
together as a nation, and in their extraordinary commercial acuteness,
lies the strength of the Jews. They grew wealthy by their industry
and thrift, until they were in a position to purchase those privileges
which in Christendom are the birth-right of every Christian. Their
numbers, too, made it difficult in Spain to treat them with contumely;
for upon the reasoned estimate of Amador de los Rios[39] there were
close upon a million Jews in Castile at the end of the thirteenth
century.
They formed by their solidarity--as they always do--an _imperium in
imperio_, a state of their own within the state; they had their own
language and customs; they were governed by their own laws, which
were enforced by their Rabbis and chiefs, and they pursued their own
religion unmolested, for even the observation of the Sabbath was
respected by the Castilians. Thus they came to create for themselves in
a foreign country a simulacrum of their own native land.
It is true that they were afflicted from time to time by sporadic,
local persecutions; but in the main they enjoyed a tolerance and
religious liberty which the poor harried Albigenses beyond the Pyrenees
might well have envied. For the Church, which had already established
the Inquisition, was very far--for reasons that shall be considered
in the next chapter--from instigating any persecution of the Children
of Israel. Thus, Honorius III, whilst carrying forward the policy of
Innocent III, and enjoining the extirpation of heretics in Southern
France and elsewhere, confirmed (November 7, 1217) the privileges
accorded to the Jews by his predecessors upon the throne of St. Peter.
These were that no Jew should be constrained to receive baptism; that
should he incline to embrace the Christian Faith he must be received in
it with love and benevolence; that his feasts and religious ceremonies
must be respected by Christians; that the whipping or stoning of Jews
be forbidden and punished; that their burial-places be held sacred.
And when King Ferdinand III--afterwards canonized--wrested Seville from
the Moors (1224), he made over one of the best districts of the city
to the Jews, and gave them the four mosques contained in it that they
might convert them into synagogues.
The only restraint placed upon them by the law was that they must
refrain, under pain of death, from attempting to proselytize among
Christians, and that they must show respect for the Christian religion.
These were the halcyon days of Hebrew prosperity in Spain. Their
distinguished abilities were recognized, and they won to many positions
of importance in the government. The finances of the kingdom were in
their control, and Castile prospered under their able administration of
its commerce. Alfonso VIII, in whose reign it is estimated there were
12,000 Jews in Toledo alone, employed a Jew as his treasurer, and did
not disdain to take a Jewess for his mistress--an interesting little
fact in view of the law that was so soon to be promulgated on that
subject.
Hardly less than their value to the nation’s commerce were their
services to science, art, and literature. They excelled particularly in
medicine and chemistry, and the most skilful doctors and surgeons of
the Middle Ages were men of their race.
* * * * *
In the middle of the thirteenth century a change unfortunately set in,
and this external harmony so laboriously established was disturbed by
an excrescence of the real feelings that had never ceased to underlie
it. Largely the Jews were themselves to blame. Deluded by the religious
liberty that was conceded them, by the dignities to which men of their
faith had climbed, and by the prosperity which they had attained, they
failed to perceive that their accumulated wealth was in itself a menace
to their safety.
Emboldened by the consideration shown them, they committed the
imprudence of giving a free rein to their Oriental taste for splendour;
they surrounded themselves with luxury, and permitted themselves an
ostentatious magnificence in their raiment and equipages, and thus
proclaimed the wealth they had been amassing through generations of
comparative obscurity.
Had they confined themselves to this strictly personal display all
might yet have been well. But being dressed and housed in princely
fashion, they put on princely ways. They grew haughty and arrogant with
the horrible arrogance of wealth. They allowed their disdain of the
less affluent Christians to transpire in their contemptuous bearing
towards them, and being unchecked in this it was but another step to
abuse the privileges which they enjoyed.
Their parade of wealth had provoked envy--the most dangerous and
maleficent of the passions implanted in the human heart. Their
arrogance and cavalier bearing stirred that envy into activity.
Questions arose touching the sources of their wealth. It was propounded
against them that their usurious practices had ruined many of the
Christians whom they now dared to spurn. And although usury had been
sanctioned and it had been proclaimed lawful for them to charge a
rate of interest as high as 40 per centum, it was suddenly remembered
that usury had in all times been uncompromisingly condemned by the
Church--and by the term usury the Church then understood any interest,
however slight, paid upon borrowed money.
Fanaticism began to stir uneasily in its slumber, and presently, under
the spur of greed, it roused itself and reared its horrid head. Public
feeling against the Israelites was increased by the fact that they had
practically acquired control of the ever-unpopular offices for the
collection of taxes.
The populace grew menacing. Evil tales concerning them were put about,
and they were accused, among other ritual abominations, of practising
human sacrifices.
Whether there was any real ground for the accusation is one of those
historical mysteries that baffle the student. On the one hand it seems
impossible to collect sufficient data to establish any single one
of the many specific accusations made; whilst on the other hand, in
view of the persistence with which the charge crops up in different
countries and at different epochs,[40] it would be presumptuous to
dismiss it as groundless.
The first official recognition of the accusation is to be found in the
code known as the _Partidas_, promulgated by Alfonso XI (1256-1263),
which contains the following clause:
“As we hear that in some places the Jews on Good Friday make a mocking
commemoration of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, stealing boys
and crucifying them, or making waxen images and crucifying these when
boys are not procurable, we order that should it become known that
hereafter, in any part of our realm, such a thing is done, all those
whom it is ascertained are connected with the deed shall be arrested
and brought before the King. And when he shall have satisfied himself
of the truth of the charge he shall have them put to death, as many as
they may be.”[41]
* * * * *
Llorente mentions four specific cases of ritual murder, to which he
appears to attach credit:
1250.--A choir-boy of the Metropolitan Church of Zaragoza, named
Domingo de Val, crucified by Jews. He was afterwards canonized and
worshipped at Zaragoza as a martyr.
1452.--A boy crucified by Jews at Valladolid.
1454.--A boy from the lordship of the Marquess of Almarza, near Zamora,
crucified. His heart was afterwards burnt and the ashes were consumed
in wine by the Jews who attended the ceremony. The body was afterwards
discovered by a dog, and this led to the arrest of the culprits and
their conviction.
1468.--At Sepulveda, in the Bishopric of Segovia, a boy was taken on
the Thursday of Holy Week, and on Good Friday he was crowned with
thorns, whipped, and finally crucified. The Bishop, D. Juan Arias,
having received intelligence of this crime, instituted an inquiry which
resulted in the arrest of several men, who, being convicted, were put
to death.
* * * * *
Llorente gives as his authority for the third and fourth cases
the “Fortalicium Fidei” of Espina--by no means an authority to be
unquestioningly accepted. For the second he mentions no authority
whatever; whilst for fuller information upon the first he refers his
readers to the “Historia de Santo Domingo de Val,” which is of no more
authority than most works of this class.[42] But the canonization
of this victim gives rise to thought; for it was never the way of
the Church of Rome to proceed recklessly and without due evidence in
such matters. Even if it were, however, it would be necessary in this
case to show a motive for such recklessness. The only motive possible
would be the desire to create justification for a persecution of the
Jews. But, as has been said--and as shall presently be made abundantly
clear--it never was the aim of the Church of Rome to engage in such
persecution or to incite to it.
The famous case of the crucifixion of the “Holy Infant” of La Gardia,
whose trial was directed by Torquemada himself, shall be considered in
its proper place.
As is well known, the practice of human sacrifice is an extremely old
one; and it has been associated in varying forms with many widely
different cults. The earliest absolutely historical instance of Jews
resorting to it is probably that quoted by Dr. J. G. Frazer (in “The
Golden Bough”) from the “Historia Ecclesiastica” of Socrates. The
scholiast relates how in 416, at Imnestar in Syria, a company of Jews
during one of their festivals fell to deriding Christians and their
Christ. At the height of their frenzy they seized a boy, bound him to
a cross, and hung him up. A brawl was the result, and the authorities
intervened to make the Jews pay dearly for their crime.
Amador de los Rios, in dealing with the spread of this charge against
the Spanish Hebrews in the thirteenth century, attributes it to the
subject’s having been made the theme of an exceedingly dramatic
narrative poem in the “Milagros de Nuestra Señora” by Gonzalo de
Berceo. At the same time he does not go so far as to urge that the
story upon which the ballad was founded may not have had its roots in
fact. On the contrary, he suggests that such may have been the case,
and having chronicled the persistence of the accusation, he refrains
from expressing any definite opinion on the subject, hesitating either
to accept, or to dismiss as idle calumnies, these charges of ritual
murder.
From the able arguments that have been put forward on this same
subject by Frazer and Wendland, it is to be concluded that in any
case the Christians were mistaken in assuming that these alleged
crucifixions held at the Feast of Purim--whether of human beings
or of effigies--were intended as a mockery of the Passion of the
Redeemer. Their origin is a far more ancient one, involving a rite of
which the Sacrifice of Golgotha may itself have been an individual
celebration--the commemoration of the hanging of Haman--which, again,
was the continuation of a ritual practised by the Babylonians and
acquired from them by the Jews during their captivity.[43]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Lacoste._
ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC.
From a Painting in the Prado Gallery, attributed to Miguel Zittoz.]
Whatever may be the truth of this matter of ritual murder, there
is no doubt that these rumours were diligently spread to inflame the
popular mind against the Jews.
Fanatical monks--ignoring the papal injunctions of forbearance and
toleration towards the Children of Israel--went forth through Castile
preaching the iniquity of the Jews and God’s wrath to fall upon the
land that harboured them. Thus incited, and perceiving profit in the
business, the faithful rose to destroy them. Massacres and pillages
were the inevitable result, although as a rule the authorities were
prompt to intervene and repress the populace’s combined fanaticism and
quest for plunder.
But when in 1342 the Black Death spread over Europe, the Dominicans and
others renewed their denunciations, and led men to believe the Jews
responsible for the pestilence that afflicted the land. In Germany
they were ruthlessly given to choose between death and baptism, and
they suffered horribly until Pope Clement VI stepped in to save
them. He besought the Emperor to restrain his murderers; and finding
that his pleadings lacked effect, he launched the thunderbolts of
excommunication against all who should continue to engage in the
persecution of the Jews.
Stricken with terror before that awful menace of the Church, the
faithful paused in the carnage, and the voice of denunciation fell
silent.
* * * * *
Thus, for a season, they won a little measure of peace. But throughout
the fourteenth century spurts of persecution broke out here and
there, and massacres took place in Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. The
authorities, too, with the precedent of the Partidas before them,
whilst not going the length of sanctioning, or even permitting violence
where they could repress it, yet practised upon the Jews the most
flagrant and cruel injustices. Of these the worst instance is that of
the tax of 20,000 gold dobles levied upon the aljamas of Toledo by
Henry II on his accession in 1369. To realize this sum he ordered the
public sale not only of the property of the Jews, but actually of their
persons into slavery, as is to be seen by his decree.[44]
The persecutions with which they were visited were chiefly procured by
the monks, who went abroad preaching against them, fomenting the hatred
of the Christians against a people who were largely their creditors.
Even where the religious incentive was insufficient, the easy way of
wiping out debts which this gratification of their piety afforded
proved irresistible to a people whose flagrant immorality--in every
sense of the term--went hand in hand with their perfervid devoutness.
These persecutions, as we have said, the authorities made haste to
quell. But there arose presently a rabid fanatic who proved altogether
irrepressible. His name was Hernando Martinez. He was a Dominican
friar, and Canon of Ecija. Of his sincerity there can be no doubt;
and their sincerity is the most terrible thing about such men,
blinding them to the point of utter madness. He was ready to suffer
any martyrdom sooner than be silent in a cause in which he considered
it his sacred duty to give tongue. About this sacred duty he went
forth, screaming his denunciations of the Jews, frenziedly inciting
the mob to rise up and destroy this accursed race, these enemies of
God, these crucifiers of the Saviour. Indeed, he could not have shown
a more fierce and frothing hatred of them had they been the very men
who at the throne of Pilate had clamoured for the blood of Christ--and
for whose pardon the gentle Redeemer had prayed in His expiring
moments: a matter this which escaped the attention of the Archdeacon
of Ecija, being--like many another--too full of piety to find room for
Christianity in his soul.
Appeals against him were made to the Archbishop of Seville, whose
official, or representative, he was. He was ordered by his Archbishop
to desist, and when in flagrant disobedience to his superior he
continued to preach his gospel of blood and hatred, appeals were
made to the King, and even to the Pope; and by King and Pope was he
commanded to cease his inflammatory sermons.
But he defied them all alike. In his fanatical fury he carried his
contumacy so far as to call in question the papal authority, and to
declare illicit the sanction given by the popes for the erection and
preservation of synagogues. This was perilously akin to heresy. Men
had been sent to the stake for less, and Hernando Martinez must have
been utterly mad if he conceived that the Church would permit him to
continue the diffusion of such doctrines.
He was brought before the episcopal court to answer for his words. He
answered defiantly--told them that the breath of God was in him, and
that it was not for men to stop his mouth.
Thereupon Don Pedro Barroso--the archbishop--ordered that he should
stand his trial for contumacy and heresy, and meanwhile suspended him
from all jurisdiction and all duties as archiepiscopal official.
It happened, however, that Barroso died shortly thereafter, before the
trial could take place; and Martinez contrived to get himself elected
by the Chapter to the position of one of the provisors of the diocese
pending the appointment of a successor to Barroso. Thus he resumed his
power and the faculty to preach; and he used it so ruthlessly that in
December of 1390 several synagogues in Seville were laid in ruins by
the mob acting in obedience to his incitement.
The Jews appealed to the King for protection, and the authorities, now
thoroughly roused, ordered that Martinez be deposed from his office and
forbidden to preach, and that the demolished synagogues be rebuilt by
the Chapter which had made itself responsible by electing him.
But Martinez, ever defiant, disregarded both King and Chapter. He
pursued his bloodthirsty mission, stirring up a populace that was but
too ready to perceive--through his arguments--a way to perform an act
that must be pleasing to God whilst enriching itself at the same time.
What populace could have been proof against such reasoning?
Finally, in the summer of 1391, the whole country was ablaze with
fanatical persecution. The fierce flames broke out first in Seville,
under the assiduous fanning of the deposed archdeacon.
Three years before, in view of the harm that it was urged the Jews
were doing to religion by their free intermingling with Christians,
King John I had ordered them to live apart in districts appointed for
them, which came to be known as Juderias (Jewries or ghettos). It
was commanded that the Christians should not enter these, and that
for purposes of trade the Jews should come to the public markets and
there erect tents, but they must own no house or domicile beyond the
precincts of the Juderias, and they must withdraw to these at nightfall.
Into the Juderia of Seville the mob now penetrated, wrought by Martinez
to a pitch of frenzy almost equal to his own. They went armed, and
they put the place to sack and slaughter, butchering its every tenant
without discrimination or pity for age or sex. The number of the slain
has been estimated at some four thousand, men, women, and children.[45]
From Seville the conflagration spread to the other cities of Spain,
and what had happened there happened in Burgos, Valencia, Toledo, and
Cordova, and further in Aragon, Cataluna, and Navarre, whilst the
streets of Barcelona are said to have run with the blood of immolated
Jews.
Into the Jewry of every town went the infuriated mob to force
Christ--as these Christians understood Him--upon the inhabitants;
to offer the terror-stricken Jews the choice between steel and
water--death and baptism.
So mighty and violent was the outbreak that the authorities were
powerless to quell it, and where they attempted to do so with any
degree of determination they were themselves caught in the fury of
the populace. Nor did the slaughter cease until the Christians were
glutted, and some fifty thousand Jews had perished.
The churches were now filled with Jews who came clamouring for baptism,
having perceived that through its waters lay the way to temporal as
well as to spiritual life, and having in most cases--in the abject
state of terror to which they had been reduced--more concern for the
former than for the latter. Llorente estimates the number of baptized
at over a million, and this number was considerably swelled by the
conversions effected by St. Vincent Ferrer, who came forth upon his
mission to the Jews in the early years of the fifteenth century,
and who induced thousands to enter the fold of Christianity by his
eloquence and by the marvels which it is said he wrought.
* * * * *
The fury of the mob having spent itself, peace was gradually restored,
and little by little those Jews who had remained faithful to their
religion and yet survived began to come forth from their hiding-places,
to assemble, and, with the amazing, invincible patience and pertinacity
of their race, to build up once more the edifice that had been
demolished.
But if the sword of persecution was sheathed, the spirit that had
guided it was still abroad, and the Jews were made to experience
further repressive measures. Under decrees of 1412-13 they lost most of
the few privileges that the late king had left them.
It was ordained by these that henceforth no Jew should occupy the
position of a judge even in a Hebrew court, nor should any Jew be
permitted to bear witness. All synagogues were to be closed or
converted into Christian temples, with the exception of one in every
town in which Jews should be established. They were forbidden to
continue the practice of the professions of medicine, surgery, and
chemistry, in which they had specialised with such good results to the
community. They were no longer to occupy the offices of tax-collectors,
and all commerce with Christians was forbidden them. They must neither
buy nor sell in trade with Christians, nor eat with them, nor use
their baths, nor send their children to the same schools. The ghetto
was ordered to be walled round, so as to be enclosed and cut off
from the rest of the city, and they were forbidden to issue from it.
Intercourse between a Jew and a Christian woman was forbidden under
pain of death by burning, even though the woman were a prostitute.
They were forbidden to shave, and compelled to allow their beards and
hair to grow, in addition to which they were ordered to wear as a
distinguishing mark a circle of red cloth upon the shoulder of their
gabardines. They were further compelled to hear three sermons annually
from a Christian preacher, whose aim it was to pour abuse and contumely
upon them, to inveigh against their accursed race and creed, to assure
them of the certainty of the damnation that awaited them, and to exalt
before them the excellences of the Catholic religion (based, be it
remembered, that we may fully savour the irony, upon Faith, Hope, and
Charity).[46]
When King John I had established the Juderias in 1388, curtailing at
the same time the privileges which until then the Jews had enjoyed--at
least by paying for them--there had been many who, finding the
restraint imposed upon them altogether intolerable, had abandoned the
faith of their fathers and embraced Christianity. Those who held
the affairs of this world in esteem had sought baptism, and whilst
many in doing so had entirely broken with the past--and often, as is
the way of converts, become zealots in their observance of the faith
embraced--many others, whilst outwardly complying with the obligations
of the Christian religion, continued in secret to observe the law of
Moses and their Jewish rites. Similarly these further decrees against
their liberty had the effect of causing still more numerous conversions
to Christianity.
These converts were termed “New-Christians” by the Spaniards. By
those of their own race who had remained faithful they were called
“marranos”--a contemptuous epithet derived from _Maran-atha_, (“The
Lord is coming”), but supposed by the Christians to signify “accursed.”
It came into general use before very long.
These New-Christians, as a consequence of their conversion, gained
not merely the privileges recently lost to them as Jews, but found
themselves upon a footing of absolute equality with the Old-Christians;
every profession was open to them, and by applying themselves to these
with all their energy and intelligence, they found themselves before
very long in possession of some of the highest offices in the land.
But in the meanwhile the rigour of the decrees of 1412 came to be
considerably relaxed; a degree of liberty and of intermingling with
Christians was permitted to the Jews, and many of the offices which
they had occupied of old came once more under their control, chiefly
those concerned with commerce and finance and the farming of the
taxes. Under the deplorable rule of Henry IV the nobles, whose slave
he was, demanded that he should “expel from his service and States the
Jews who, exploiting public misery, have contrived to return to the
appointments of tax-gatherers.”
The weak King agreed, but neglected to execute his promise; it was
presently forgotten, and the Jewish section of the community was
allowed to continue under the conditions of ease we have described.
Under these conditions was it found by Ferdinand and Isabella upon
their accession, nor does it appear that they paid any particular
attention to it until invited to do so by the “clerics and laymen” who,
as Pulgar[47] tells us, represented to them that in the re-Judaizings
that were taking place was matter for their jurisdiction.