THE EXODUS FROM SPAIN
It was solemnly declared in the edict of expulsion that this decree
was promulgated solely in obedience to the pressing need to cut off at
the roots, once for all time, the evils arising out of the intercourse
between Christians and Jews, since all other efforts hitherto
undertaken with the same intent had proved fruitless.[236]
By this edict all Jews of any age and either sex who should refuse to
receive baptism must quit Spain within three months, and never return,
under pain of death and the confiscation of their property.
The cruelty of this expatriation calls for little exposition. Spain
was the motherland of these Jews. For centuries it had been the home
of their ancestors, and they held it in the affection implanted in
the heart of each of us for the country which is his own. They must
depart out of it, into exile in some foreign land, and the only terms
upon which they could obtain immunity from that harsh decree was by
the sacrifice of something dearer still, something as dear to them as
honour itself. They must be false to the faith of their fathers and
forswear the God of Israel.
That was the choice forced upon the Children of Judah--the choice which
the arrogant Christian Church had been forcing upon all men from the
moment that she had found herself mistress of the power to do so.
It was decreed that after the expiry of the three months allowed them
in which to settle their affairs and be gone no Christian would be
suffered to befriend or assist them, to give them food or shelter,
under pain of being called to account as an abettor of heretics.
Until their departure the persons and property of the exiled were
nominally under the protection of the Sovereigns. They were permitted
to dispose of what property they possessed, and to take the proceeds
with them in bills of exchange[237] or in merchandise, but not in gold,
which it was forbidden to carry out of the country.
Little greater would have been the injury done them if their property
had been confiscated outright. For being compelled to dispose of it at
such short notice, and the buyers knowing that it must be sold, and
eager to take advantage of these forced sales, what chance had the Jews
of realizing anything that should approach its value? How could they
avoid the pitiless Christian exploitation of their miserable position?
“The Christians obtained,” says Bernaldez, “much property and many
very rich houses and estates for little money; the Jews went about
offering these, and could not find any buyers, so that they were forced
to barter here a house for an ass, there a vineyard for a piece of
cloth.”[238]
From just this passage in the chronicle of an author whose detestation
of the Jews we have earlier considered may be conceived how terrible
was their distress, and how mercilessly was advantage taken of it by
the Christians.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Donald Macbeth._
SANBENITO OF IMPENITENT.
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis”]
Amador de los Rios adds that entire ghettos entered into the sacrifice,
and that, the Jews being utterly unable to dispose of such communal
property, they were forced to make gifts of it to the municipalities
that had shown them so little pity.[239]
Torquemada in his great zeal for the Faith was not content to leave
matters there. His chief aim, after all, was not the expulsion of the
Jews, but their conversion and the effacement of their creed. As a
means to that end was it that he had wrung the edict of banishment from
the Sovereigns.
Upon this campaign of conversion he now sent forth his army of
Dominicans. He published an edict, with the royal sanction, in which
he exhorted the Israelites to receive baptism, laying stress upon the
fact that those who should do so before the expiry of the three months
appointed for their emigration would be entitled to remain.
In every city, in every village, in every hamlet, in churches, in
market-places, and at street-corners his black-and-white Dominicans
sought by exhortation and argument to induce the Jews to receive the
waters of baptism, thereby securing their well-being and prosperity
in this world and their eternal salvation in the next. The preachers
penetrated to the very synagogues in their zeal, and exerted themselves
even in the Jewish temples, by the promises they held out of temporal
advantage, to lead the Jews into the fold of Christianity. No place
was sacred from the friars-preachers. In Segovia, when the hour of
departure approached, the Jews spent three days in their cemetery
weeping over the graves of their dead, which they were abandoning. And
there were zealous Dominicans who intruded upon that sorrow, and seized
the opportunity to preach conversion to that piteous assembly.[240]
But the response to all these sermons was only slight. If Torquemada’s
friars were preaching Christianity on the one hand, and attempting by
argument and bribery to induce the Hebrews to embrace it, the Rabbis,
on the other, were no less energetic in their efforts to encourage the
Israelites to stand firm in their fidelity to their God, to resist
the temptations of corruption, and to remember that even as God had
delivered them out of Egypt and led them into the Land of Plenty, so in
leading them out of Spain would He see that His children did not suffer
loss of honour or of worldly goods.
Whether the Israelites believed or not, the great body of them remained
staunch, and sooner than accept ease and advancement at the price of
baptism, they firmly envisaged exile and the loss of their property,
which the royal decree inspired by Torquemada rendered inevitable.
Bernaldez tells us that, notwithstanding the law against taking gold
out of Spain, many of the exiles did take it in large quantities
concealed about them--which is extremely probable. Not quite so
probable is the common rumour which he reports, that they reduced many
gold ducats to pellets with their teeth, and then swallowed them upon
arriving at seaports or other places where they were to be searched,
thus carrying the gold away in their stomachs. The women in particular,
he says, were great offenders in this respect, and--again reporting
the voice of common rumour--he informs us that some women contrived to
swallow as many as thirty ducats each.[241]
The story of this swallowed gold evidently got abroad, to add to their
affliction; and we are told that some who sailed from Cadiz to Fez, and
who fell into the hands of Moors upon landing on the coast of Barbary,
were not only plundered of their belongings, but were in several cases
ripped open by these brigands in their quest for gold.[242]
Within the little period of three months appointed them, the Israelites
sold or bartered what they could, and abandoned that for which they
found no buyers. All boys and girls of the age of twelve or more they
married, so that each nubile female should set out under the protection
of a husband.[243]
The exodus from Spain began in the first week in July of 1492. Those
amongst the exiles who were wealthy supported their poorer brethren,
in pursuance of the custom that had ever prevailed in their ghettos.
Many who had been very wealthy and masters of thriving trades abandoned
their prosperity, and trusting to what Bernaldez terms “the vain hope
of their blindness,” they took the harsh road into banishment.
The parish priest of Palacios has left us a vivid picture of this
emigration.[244] It is a picture over which Christianity must weep in
shame.
On foot, on horseback, on donkeys, in carts, young and old, stalwart
and feeble, healthy and ailing, some dying and some being born, and
many falling by the way, they formed forlorn processions toiling
onwards in the heat and dust of that July. On every road that led out
of the country--on those that went southwards to the sea, or westwards
to Portugal, or eastwards to Navarre--these straggling human droves
were to be met, and they presented a spectacle so desolate that there
was no Christian who did not pity them.
Succour them none dared, by virtue of the decree of the Grand
Inquisitor; but on every hand they were exhorted to accept baptism and
thus set a term upon their tribulations. And some, unable to endure
more in their utter exhaustion and hopelessness, gave way and forswore
the God of Israel.
But these were comparatively few. The Rabbis were at hand to encourage
and stimulate them. The women and the young men were bidden to sing
as they marched, and timbrels were sounded to hearten these wretched
multitudes.
The Andalusians made for Cadiz, where it was their intention to take
ship. Those of Aragon also turned towards the coast, repairing to
Cartagena; whilst many Catalans sailed for Italy, where--singular
anomaly!--a Catalan Pope (Roderigo Borgia) was to afford them shelter
and protection in the very heart of the system that was oppressing and
persecuting them.
Of those who arrived at Cadiz, Bernaldez says that at sight of the sea
there was great clamour amongst them. Their imaginations fired by the
recent sermons of the Rabbis, in which they had been likened to their
forefathers departing out of the Egyptian captivity, they confidently
expected to behold here a repetition of the miracle of the Red Sea, and
that the waters would separate to allow them a dry-shod passage into
Barbary.
Those who went westwards were permitted by King John of Portugal to
enter his kingdom and abide there for six months upon payment of a
small tax of one cruzado each.[245] Of these many settled in Portugal
and engaged there in trade, which they were permitted to do subject to
a tribute of 100 cruzados levied on each family.
It is no part of our present task to follow the Israelites into exile
and observe the miserable fate that overtook so many of them, alike at
the hands of the followers of the gentle Christ and at those of the
Children of the Prophet. Many sages and rabbis were amongst those who
abandoned Spain, and in their number was Isahak Aboab, the last Prince
of the Castilian Jews, and Isaac Abarbanel, the sometime farmer of the
royal taxes.
“The expulsion,” writes this last, “was accompanied by pillage on land
and sea; and amongst those who, stricken and sorrowful, set out for
foreign lands, was I. With great trouble I contrived to reach Naples,
but I was unable to find any repose there in consequence of the French
invasion. The French were masters of the city, the very inhabitants
having abandoned their Government. All rose against our congregation,
expelling rich and poor, men and women, fathers and sons of the
Children of Zion, and reducing them to the greatest ruin and misery.
Several abandoned their religion, fearing lest their blood should be
shed as water, or that they might be sold into slavery; for men and
women, young and old, were being carried off in ships without pity for
their lamentations, compelled to abandon their Law and continue in
captivity.”
France and England received some of the exiles, others went to settle
in the Far East. Most wretched, perhaps, were those who landed on the
coast of Africa and attempted by way of the desert to reach Fez, where
there was a Jewish colony. They were beset by a horde of plundering
tribesmen, who pillaged them of their belongings, treated them with the
utmost cruelty and inhumanity, ravished their women under their very
eyes, and left them stripped and utterly broken. Their sufferings had
reached the limit of their endurance. The survivors sought baptism at
the first Christian settlement they reached, and many of these returned
to their native Spain, having thus qualified themselves for readmission.
There were many otherwise who, similarly unable to endure the hardships
which they met abroad, broke down at last, accepted baptism and
returned, or else returned clamouring for the baptism that should
enable them to dwell in peace in the land of their birth.
For three years, says Bernaldez, there was a constant stream of
returning Jews, who having abandoned all for their faith, had now
abandoned their faith itself, and came back to make a fresh start. They
were baptized in groups, all at once, by the sprinkling of hyssop over
them.[246] Bernaldez himself baptized a hundred of them at Palacios,
and from what he beheld, “I considered fulfilled,” he writes, “the
prophecy of David--‘Covertentur ad vesperam et famen patiuntur ut canes
et circundabunt civitatem.’”
The priest of Palacios estimates at 36,000 the Jewish families that
accepted banishment,[247] which would represent some 200,000 souls.
But Salazar de Mendoza and Zurita set the total exiles at twice that
number,[248] whilst Mariana carries it as high as 800,000.[249] More
reliable perhaps than any of these is the estimate left by the Jewish
writers, who say that in the year 5252 of the Creation 300,000 Jews
left Spain, the land in which their forbears had dwelt for close upon
2,000 years.[250]
These figures bring home to us the gravity of the step taken by the
Sovereigns when they consented to the banishment of the Jews; and
if anything had been wanting to make us appreciate the irresistible
quality of Torquemada and of the fanaticism for which he stood, these
figures would supply it.
The proposed expulsion must fully have been discussed in council before
the edict was promulgated;[251] and it must have been obvious that
Spain could not fail to be left materially the poorer if some 40,000
industrious families were driven out. It is unthinkable that king or
councillor should not have raised the question of the inexpediency,
of the positive danger attaching to such a measure. Yet certain it
is that neither councillor nor king could stand against the stern,
uncompromising friar, in whom they saw the representative of a God that
was not to be trifled with--a God whom their conceptions transformed
into some vindictive pagan deity.
Torquemada’s crucifix so dramatically flung into the scales had
definitely settled the question.
The Sultan Bajazet, who welcomed and sheltered not a few of the
fugitives in Turkey, was overcome with amazement at this blunder of
statecraft, so that he is reported to have asked whether this king
were seriously to be taken for a great statesman who impoverished his
kingdom to enrich another’s.
What the Grand Turk perceived so readily, priest-ridden Ferdinand dared
not perceive.
In banishing Jew and Moslem from her soil--for the Moor was soon to
follow, though temporarily permitted to remain by virtue of the terms
of the capitulation of Granada--Spain banished her merchants and
financiers on the one hand, and her agriculturists and artisans on
the other; in short, she banished her workers, the productive section
of her community. It is accounted by many that she did so with the
fullest consciousness of the consequences--an act of heroic sacrifice
to principle and to religious convictions. And it may be that she
accounted herself God-rewarded by the gift of a new world for this
sacrifice to God.
The arts, the industries, manufactures, agriculture, and commerce
have been bewailing for four hundred years the lack of hands to serve
them. The New World proved but an illusory and transient compensation.
Its gold could not furnish Spain with the workers that she lacked. On
the contrary, it increased that lack. The New World repaid herself
with interest for what she gave. In return for the gifts she poured
into the lap of Spain she took to herself the very children of Spain,
luring them overseas with the fabulous tales of riches easily to
be acquired. Driven by this greed of gold, multitudes of families
emigrated to increase the depopulation of their country. And when, in
the course of time, those children of Spain in the New World had grown
to a sufficient strength to claim their emancipation, they threw off
the yoke of the motherland and distributed among themselves her vast
possessions. They left her bare indeed, who by her own act was without
home-resources, to realize perhaps at last what manner of service had
been rendered her by the Prior of Holy Cross.
* * * * *
The Moors of Granada, meanwhile, had obtained from Ferdinand a promise
that the Inquisition should not be set up in Granada within the
following forty years, nor yet any prosecution instituted of Moriscoes
(baptized Moslems) for the observance of Mohammedan customs.
The term, however, set too great a strain upon priestly patience. In
1526--long before the expiry of the period marked--the Holy Office
crept slyly into Granada upon the pretext that it was requisite to
watch the many suspected Marranos who had gone to reside there in the
shelter of the immunity enjoyed by the Moriscoes. That it was the
merest pretext is shown by the circumstance that already, as early
as 1505, the Holy Office of Cordova had been moving in Granada and
instituting there, when occasion arose, proceedings against Judaizers.