"Oh! blissful days,
When all men worship God as conscience wills!
Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew.
What tho' the skeptic's scorn hath dared to soil
The record of their fame! What tho' the men
Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatize
The sister-cause Religion and the Law
With Superstition's name! Yet, yet their deeds,
Their constancy in torture and in death--
These on Tradition's tongue shall live; these shall
On History's honest page be pictur'd bright
To latest time."
GRAHAME.
Retrospection is not pleasant in a narrative; but, if Marie has indeed
excited any interest in our readers, they will forgive the necessity,
and look back a few weeks ere they again arrive at the eventful day
with which our last chapter closed. All that Don Felix had reported
concerning the widow of Morales was correct. The first stunning
effects of her dread avowal were recovered, sense was entirely
restored, but the short-lived energy had gone. The trial to passively
endure is far more terrible than that which is called upon to _act_
and _do_. She soon discovered that, though nursed and treated with
kindness, she was a prisoner in her own apartments. Wish to leave them
she had none, and scarcely the physical strength; but to sit idly down
under the pressure of a double dread--the prisoner's fate and her own
sentence--to have no call for energy, not a being for whom to rouse
herself and live, not one for whose sake she might forget herself
and win future happiness by present exertion; the Past, one yearning
memory for the husband, who had so soothed and cherished her, when any
other would have cast her from his heart as a worthless thing; the
Present, fraught with thoughts she dared not think, and words she
might not breathe; the very prayer for Stanley's safety checked--for
what could he be to her?--the Future shrouded in a pall so dense, she
could not read a line of its dark page, for the torch of Hope was
extinguished, and it is only by her light we can look forward;
Isabella's affection apparently lost for ever; was it marvel energy
and hope had so departed, or that a deadening despondency seemed to
crush her heart and sap the very springs of life?
But in the midst of that dense gloom one ray there was, feeble indeed
at first as if human suffering had deadened even that, but brightening
and strengthening with every passing day. It was the sincerity of her
faith--the dearer, more precious to its followers, from the scorn and
condemnation, in which it was held by man.
The fact that the most Catholic kingdom, of Spain, was literally
peopled with secret Jews, brands this unhappy people, with a degree
of hypocrisy, in addition to the various other evil propensities
with which they have been so plentifully charged. Nay, even amongst
themselves in modern times, this charge has gained ascendency; and
the romance-writer who would make use of this extraordinary truth,
to vividly picture the condition of the Spanish Jews, is accused of
vilifying the nation, by reporting practices, opposed to the upright
dictates of the religion of the Lord. It is well to pronounce such
judgment _now_, that the liberal position which we occupy in most
lands, would render it the height of dissimulation, and hypocrisy, to
conceal our faith; but to judge correctly of the secret adherence to
Judaism and public profession of Catholicism which characterized
our ancestors in Spain, we must transport ourselves not only to
the _country_ but to the _time_, and recall the awfully degraded,
crushing, and stagnating position which _acknowledged Judaism_
occupied over the whole known world. As early as 600--as soon, in
fact, as the disputes and prosecutions of Arian against Catholic, and
Catholic against Arian, had been checked by the whole of Spain being
subdued and governed by Catholic kings--intolerance began to work
against the Jews, who had been settled in vast numbers in Spain
since the reign of the Emperor Adrian; some authorities assert still
earlier.[A] They were, therefore, nearly the original colonists of the
country, and regarded it with almost as much attachment as they had
felt towards Judea. When persecution began to work, "90,000 Jews were
compelled to receive the sacrament of baptism," the bodies of the
more obstinate tortured, and their fortunes confiscated; and yet--a
remarkable instance of inconsistency--_they were not permitted to
leave Spain_; and this species of persecution continued from 600
downwards. Once or twice edicts of expulsion were issued, but speedily
recalled; the tyrants being unwilling to dismiss victims whom they
delighted to torture, or deprive themselves of industrious slaves over
whom they might exercise a lucrative oppression; and a statute was
enacted, "that the Jews who had been baptized should be _constrained_,
for the honor of the church, to persevere in the _external practice_
of a religion which they _inwardly_ disbelieved and detested."[B]
[Footnote A: Basnage asserts that the Jews were introduced into Spain
by the fleet of Soloman, and the arms of Nebuchadnezzar, and that
Hadrian transported _forty thousand_ families of the tribe of Judah,
and ten thousand of the tribe of Benjamin, etc.]
[Footnote B: "Gibbon's Decline and Fall," vol. 6, chap. xxxvii,
from which all the previous sentences in inverted commas have been
extracted.]
How, then, can compelled obedience to this statute be termed
hypocrisy? Persecution, privation, tyranny, may torture and destroy
the body, but they cannot force the mind to the adoption of, and
belief in tenets, from which the very treatment they commanded must
urge it to revolt. Of the 90,000 Jews forcibly baptized by order of
Sisebut, and constrained to the external profession of Catholicism,
not ten, in all probability, became actually Christians. And yet how
would it have availed them to relapse into the public profession of
the faith they so obeyed and loved in secret? To leave the country was
utterly impossible. It is easy to talk now of such proceedings being
their right course of acting, when every land is open to the departure
and entrance of every creed; but it was widely different then, and,
even if they could have quitted Spain, there was not a spot of ground,
in the whole European and Asiatic world, where persecution, extortion,
and banishment would not equally have been their doom. Constant
relapses into external as well as internal Judaism, there were, but
they were but the signal for increased misery to the whole nation; and
by degrees they ceased. It was from the forcible baptism of the 90,000
Hebrews, by Sisebut, that we may trace the origin of the secret
Jews. From father to son, from mother to daughter, the solemn secret
descended, and gradually spread, still in its inviolable nature,
through every rank and every profession, from the highest priest to
the lowest friar, the general to the common soldier, the noble to the
peasant, over the whole land. There were indeed some few in Spain,
before the final edict of expulsion in 1492, who were Hebrews in
external profession as well as internal observance; but their
condition was so degraded, so scorned, so exposed to constant
suffering, that it was not in human nature voluntarily to sink down
to them, when, by the mere continuance of external Catholicism--which
from its universality, its long existence, and being in fact a rigidly
enforced statute of the state, _could_ not be regarded either as
hypocrisy or sin--they could take their station amongst the very
highest and noblest of the land, and rise to eminence and power in any
profession, civil, military, or religious, which they might prefer.
The subject is so full of philosophical inquiry, that in the limits of
a romance we cannot possibly do it justice; but to accuse the secret
Jews of Spain of hypocrisy, of departing from the pure odinances of
their religion, because _compelled_ to simulate Catholicism, is taking
indeed but a one-handed, short-sighted view of an extensive and
intensely interesting topic. We may often hope for the _present_ by
considering the changes of the _past_; but to attempt to pronounce
judgment on the sentiments of the _past_ by reasoning of the
_present_, when the mind is always advancing, is one of the weakest
and idlest fallacies that ever entered the human breast.
Digression as this is, it is necessary clearly to comprehend the
situation in which Marie's avowal of her religion had placed her,
and her reason for so carefully wording her information as to the
existence of the secret closet, that no suspicion might attach itself
to the religion of her husband. Her confession sent a shock, which
vibrated not only through Isabella's immediate court, but through
every part of Spain. Suspicion once aroused, none knew where it might
end, or on whom fall. In her first impulse to save Arthur, she
had only thought of what such confession might bring to herself
individually, and that was, comparatively, easy to endure; but as the
excitement ceased, as the dread truth dawned upon her, that, if he
must die at the expiration of the given month, her avowal had been
utterly useless, the dread of its consequences, to the numerous secret
members of her faith appalled her, and caused the firm, resolve under
no circumstances to betray the religion of her husband. Him indeed it
could not harm; but that one so high in rank, in influence, in favor
with sovereigns and people, was only outwardly a Catholic, might have
most fatal consequences on all his brethren. That he should have
wedded a Jewess might excite surprise, but nothing more; and in the
midst of her varied sufferings she could rejoice that all suspicion
as to his race and faith had been averted. She felt thankful also at
being kept so close a prisoner, for she dreaded the wrath of those
whom her avowal might have unwittingly injured. Such an instance
had never been known before, and she might justly tremble at the
chastisement it might bring upon her even from her own people. As long
as she was under Isabella's care she was safe from this; all might
feel the vibration, but none dared evince that they did, by the
adoption of any measures against her, further than would be taken by
the Catholics themselves.
Knowing this, her sole prayer, her sole effort was to obtain mental
strength sufficient under every temptation, either from severity or
kindness, to adhere unshrinkingly to the faith of her fathers--to
cling yet closer to the love of her Father in heaven, and endeavor,
with all the lowly trust and fervid feelings of her nature, to fill
the yearning void within her woman's heart with his image, and so
subdue every human love. It seemed to her vivid fancy as if all the
misfortunes she had encountered sprung from her first sin--that
of loving a Nazarene. Hers was not the age to make allowances for
circumstances in contradistinction to actual deeds. Then, as
unhappily but too often now, all were sufferings from a misplaced
affection--sprung, not from her fault, but from the mistaken kindness
which it exposed her to without due warning of her danger. Educated
with the strong belief, that to love or wed, beyond the pale of her
own people was the greatest sin she could commit, short of actual
apostacy, that impression, though not strong enough, so to conquer
human nature, as to arm against love, returned with double force, as
sorrow after sorrow gathered round her, and there were none beside her
to whisper and strengthen, with the blessed truth that God afflicts
yet more in mercy than in wrath; and that his decrees, however fraught
with human anguish, are but blessings in disguise--blessings, sown
indeed with tears on earth, to reap their deathless fruit in heaven.
But though firmly believing all her suffering was deserved, aware that
when she first loved Arthur, the rebel-thought--"Why am I of a race so
apart and hated?" had very frequently entered her heart, tempting her
at times with fearful violence to give up all for love of man; yet
Marie knew that the God of her fathers was a God of love, calling even
upon the greatest sinner to return to him repentant and amending, and
that even as a little child such should be forgiven. He had indeed
proclaimed himself a jealous God, and would have no idol-worship, were
it by wood or stone, or, far more dangerous, of human love; and she
prayed unceasingly for strength to return to Him with an undivided
heart, even if to do so demanded not only separation from Stanley--but
a trial in her desolate position almost as severe--the loss of
Isabella's confidence and love.
Few words passed between Marie and her guardians; their manner was
kind and gentle, but intercourse between rigid Catholics and a
proclaimed Jewess, could not be other wise than restrained. From the
time that reason returned, the Queen had not visited her, doing actual
violence to her own inclinations from tire mistaken--but in that age
and to her character natural--dread that the affection and interest
she felt towards Marie personally, would lessen the sentiments of
loathing and abhorrence with which it was her duty to regard her
faith. Isabella had within herself all the qualifications of a martyr.
Once impressed that it was a religious duty, she would do violence to
her most cherished wishes, sacrifice her dearest desires, her best
affections, resign her most eagerly pursued plans--not without
suffering indeed, but, according to the mistaken tenets of her
religion, the greater personal suffering, the more meritorious was the
deed believed to be. This spirit would, had she lived in an age when
the Catholic faith was the persecuted, not the persecutor, have led
her a willing martyr to the stake; as it was, this same spirit led to
the establishment of the Inquisition, and expulsion of the Jews--deeds
so awful in their consequences, that the actual motive of the
woman-heart which prompted them, is utterly forgotten, and herself
condemned. We must indeed deplore the mistaken tenets that could
obtain such influence--deplore that man could so pervert the service
of a God of love, as to believe and inculcate that such things could
be acceptable to Him; but we should pause, and ask, if we ourselves
had been influenced by such teaching, could we break from it? ere we
condemn.
Isabella's own devoted spirit could so enter into the real reason of
Marie's self abnegation for Arthur's sake, that it impelled her to
love her more; while at the very same time the knowledge of her
being a Jewess, whom she had always been taught and believed must be
accursed in the sight of God, and lost eternally unless brought to
believe in Jesus, urged her entirely to conquer that affection, lest
its indulgence should interfere with her resolution, if kindness
failed, by severity to accomplish her own version. She was too weak in
health, and Isabella intuitively felt too terribly anxious as to young
Stanley's fate, to attempt any thing till after the expiration of the
month; and she passed that interval in endeavoring to calm down her
own feelings towards her.
So fifteen days elapsed. On the evening of the fifteenth, Marie,
feeling unusually exhausted, had sunk down, without disrobing, on her
couch, and at length fell into a slumber so deep and calm, that her
guardians, fearing to disturb it, and aware that her dress was so
loose and light, it could not annoy her, retired softly to their own
chamber without arousing her. How many hours this lethargic sleep
lasted, Marie knew not, but was at length broken by a dream of terror,
and so unusually vivid, that its impression lasted even through the
terrible reality which it heralded. She beheld Arthur Stanley on the
scaffold about to receive the sentence of the law--the block, the axe,
the executioner with his arm raised, and apparently already deluged
in blood--the gaping crowds--all the fearful appurtenances of an
execution were distinctly traced, and she thought she sprung towards
Stanley, who clasped her in his arms, and the executioner, instead of
endeavoring to part them, smiled grimly as rejoicing in having two
victims instead of one; and as he smiled, the countenance seemed to
change from being entirely unknown to the sneering features of the
hated Don Luis Garcia. She seemed to cling yet closer to Stanley,
and knelt with, him to receive the blow; when, at that moment, the
scaffold shook violently, as by the shock of an earthquake, a dark
chashm yawned beneath their feet, in the centre of which stood the
spectral figure of her husband, his countenance ghastly and stern, and
his arm upraised as beckoning her to join him. And then he spoke; but
his voice sounded unlike his own:--
"Marie Henriquez Morales! awake, arise, and follow!"
And with such extraordinary clearness did the words fall, that she
started up in terror, believing they must have been spoken by her
side--and they were! they might have mingled with, perhaps even
created her dream. She still lay on her couch; but it seemed to have
sunk down through the very floor of the apartment[A] she had occupied,
and at its foot stood a figure, who, with upraised arm held before her
a wooden cross. His cowl was closely drawn, and a black robe, of the
coarsest serge, was secured round his waist by a hempen cord. Whether
he had indeed spoken the words she had heard in her dream Marie could
not tell, for they were not repeated. She saw him approach her, and
she felt his strong grasp lift her from the couch, which sprung up, by
the touch of some secret spring, to the place whence it had descended;
and she heard no more.
[Footnote A: I may be accused in this scene, of too closely imitating
a somewhat similar occurrence in Anne of Geirstein. Such seeming
plagiarism was scarcely possible to be avoided, when the superstitious
proceedings of the _vehmic_ tribunal of Germany and the _secret_
Inquisition of Spain are represented by history as so very similar.]