VII. THE HUSSITES. PROGRESS OF JEWISH LITERATURE
The Hussite Heresy--Consequences for the Jews involved in the Struggle--Jacob Mölin--Abraham Benveniste and Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob in the Service of the Castilian Court--Isaac Campanton, the Poet Solomon Dafiera--Moses Da Rieti--Anti-Christian Polemical Literature--Chayim Ibn-Musa--Simon Duran and his Son Solomon--Joseph Albo as a Religious Philosopher--Jewish Philosophical Systems--Edict of the Council of Basle against the Jews--Fanatical Outbreaks in Majorca--Astruc Sibili and his Conversion to Christianity.
1420-1442 C.E.
Meanwhile history received a fresh impulse, which, although coming from weak hands, produced a forward movement. The spreading corruption in the church, the self-deifying arrogance of the popes and the licentiousness of priests and monks revolted the moral sense of the people, opened their eyes, and encouraged them to doubt the very foundations of the Roman Catholic system. No improvement could be expected from the princes of the church, the jurists and diplomatists who met in council at Constance to deliberate on a scheme of thorough reform. They had only a worldly object in view, seeking to gloss over the prevailing rottenness by transferring the papal power to the high ecclesiastics, substituting the rule of an aristocratic hierarchy for papal absolutism. A Czech priest, John Huss, of Prague, inspired by the teachings of Wycliffe, spoke the magic word that loosened the bonds in which the church had ensnared the minds of men. "Not this or that pope," he said in effect, "but the papacy and the entire organization of the Catholic church constitute the fundamental evil from which Christendom is suffering." The flames to which the council of Constance condemned this courageous priest only served to light up the truth he had uttered. They fired a multitude in Bohemia, who entered on a life and death struggle with Catholicism. Whenever a party in Christendom opposes itself to the ruling church, it assumes a tinge of the Old Testament, not to say Jewish, spirit. The Hussites regarded Catholicism, not unjustly, as heathenism, and themselves as Israelites, who must wage holy war against Philistines, Moabites, and Ammonites. Churches and monasteries were to them the sanctuaries of a dissolute idolatry, temples to Baal and Moloch and groves of Ashtaroth, to be consumed with fire and sword. The Hussite war, although largely due to the mutual race-hatred of Czechs and Germans, and to religious indignation, began in a small way the work of clearing the church doctrine of its mephitic elements.
For the Jews, this movement was decidedly calamitous, the responsibility for which must rest, not with the wild Hussites, but with the Catholic fanaticism stirred up against the new heresy. The former went little beyond denunciations of Jewish usury; at the most, sacked Jewish together with Catholic houses. Of special Hussite hostility to the Jews no evidence is forthcoming. On the other hand, Catholics accused Jews of secretly supplying the Hussites with money and arms; and in the Bavarian towns near the Böhmerwald, they persecuted them unmercifully as friends and allies of the heretics. The Dominicans--the "army of anti-Christ" as they were called--included the Jews in their fierce pulpit denunciations of the Hussites, and inflamed the people and princes against them. The crusades against the Hussites, like those against the Mahometans and Waldenses, commenced with massacres of Jews. Revived fanaticism first affected the Jews in Austria--a land which, like Spain, passed from liberal tolerance of Jews to persecution, and in bigotry approximated so close to the Iberian kingdom that it ultimately joined it. The mind of Archduke Albert, an earnest and well-intentioned prince, was systematically filled with hatred against the "enemies of God." Fable after fable was invented, which, devoid even of originality, sufficed to drive to extreme measures a man of pure character, ignorant of the lying devices of the Jew-haters. Three Christian children went skating in Vienna; the ice broke through, and they were drowned. When the anxious parents failed to find them, a malicious rumor was set on foot that they had been slaughtered by Jews, who required their blood for the ensuing Passover celebration. Then a Jew was charged with a crime calculated to incense the populace to a still greater degree. The wife of the sacristan of Enns was said to have purloined the consecrated host from the church, and sold it to a wealthy Jew named Israel, who had sent it to a large number of Jewish communities in and out of Austria. The charges of Jewish murders of Christian children and Jewish profanations of hosts had not lost their charm in the fifteenth century, and their inventors could calculate their effect with accuracy. By order of the archduke, the sacristan's wife and her two accomplices or seducers, Israel and his wife, were brought to Vienna, examined, and forced to confess. The records of the case are silent as to the means employed to obtain the avowal of guilt; but the procedure of mediæval Christendom in such trials is well known.
Archduke Albert issued the order that in the early morning of the 23d May, 1420 (10th Sivan), all the Jews in his realm should be thrown into prison, and this was promptly done. The moneyed Jews were stripped of their possessions, and the poor forthwith banished the country. In the gaols, wives were separated from their husbands, and children from their parents. When from helplessness they fell to hopelessness, Christian priests came to them with crosses in their hands and honeyed words on their lips to convert them. A few of the poorer-spirited saved their lives by accepting baptism. The more resolute slew themselves and their kinsfolk by opening their veins with straps, cords, or whatever they found to hand. The spirit of the survivors was broken by the length and cruelty of their imprisonment. Their children were taken from them, and immured in cloisters. Still they remained firm, and on the 13th March (9th Nisan), 1421, after nearly a year's confinement, they were committed to the flames. In Vienna alone more than a hundred perished in one field near the Danube. Another order was then issued by Archduke Albert, forbidding Jews to stay thenceforth in Austria.
The converts proved no gain to the church. The majority seized the first opportunity of emigrating and relapsing into Judaism. They bent their steps to Bohemia, rendered tolerant by the Hussite schism, or northwards to Poland and southwards to Italy. How attached the Austrian Jews were to their religion is shown by the conduct of one clever youth. Having received baptism, he had become the favorite of Duke Frederick, afterwards the German emperor, but, although living in luxury, he was seized with remorse for his apostasy, and boldly expressed his desire to return to Judaism. Frederick exerted himself to dissuade his favorite from this idea. He begged, entreated, and even threatened him; he sent a priest to advise him; all, however, in vain. Finally, the duke handed the "obstinate heretic and backslider" over to the ecclesiastical authorities, who condemned him to the stake. Unfettered and with a Hebrew song on his lips the Jewish youth mounted the scaffold.
In the meantime, the devastating war broke out between the fierce Hussites and the not less barbarous Roman Catholics, between the Czechs and the Germans. A variety of nationalities participated in the sanguinary struggle as to the use of the cup by the laity in the eucharist. Emperor Sigismund, who found it impossible to subdue the insurrection with his own troops, summoned the imperial army to his standard. Wild free-lances, men of Brabant and Holland, were taken into his pay. From all quarters armed troops poured into the Bohemian valleys and against the capital, Prague, where the blind hero, Zisca, bade defiance to a world of foes. On the way, the German imperial army exhibited its courage by attacks on the defenseless Jews. "We are marching afar," exclaimed the mercenaries, "to avenge our insulted God, and shall those who slew him be spared?" Wherever they came across Jewish communities, on the Rhine, in Thuringia and Bavaria, they put them to the sword, or forced them to apostatize. The crusaders threatened, on their return from victory over the Hussites, to wipe the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Jewish fathers of families true to their faith gave orders that, at a certain signal, their children should be killed to avoid falling into the hands of the bloodthirsty soldiery. Letters of lamentation over the threatened disaster, calling upon him to implore the intervention of heaven, were addressed from far and near to the illustrious rabbi of Mayence, Jacob ben Moses Mölin Halevi (Maharil, born 1365, died 1427), the most pious rabbi of his time. His arrangement of the synagogue ritual and melodies is used to this day in many German communities, and their colonies in Poland and Hungary. Jacob Mölin ordered a general fast, accompanied by fervent prayer, and his instructions were circulated from one community to another throughout the land. The German congregations forthwith assembled for solemn mourning and humiliation, and fasted during four days between New Year and Atonement (8th-11th September, 1421), and for three successive days after Tabernacles, the observance being as strict as on the most sacred fast days of the Jewish calendar. It was a time of feverish tension for the German Jews. In their despair they prayed that victory might be vouchsafed to the Hussites, and it seemed as if their supplications were heard. For, shortly afterwards, the imperial army and its mercenary allies assembled near Saatz were stricken with such terror at the news of Zisca's approach, that they sought safety in disorderly flight, disbanding in all directions, and hurrying home by different routes. Famished and footsore, a few of the very men who had vowed death and extirpation to the Jews, appeared at the doors of their houses, begging for bread, which was gladly given them. Privation had so reduced the fugitives that they could not have harmed a child.
The Dominican clergy commissioned to preach against the Hussites did not cease to foster Catholic hatred of Jews. From their pulpits they thundered against heretics and Jews alike, cautioning the faithful against holding intercourse with them, and consciously and unconsciously inciting to attacks on their persons and property. The Jews flew for help to the pope, Martin V--doubtless not with empty hands--and again obtained a very favorable bull (23d February, 1422), in which Christians were enjoined to remember that their religion had been inherited from Jews, who were necessary for the corroboration of Christian truth. The pope forbade the monks to preach against intercourse between Jews and Christians, and declared null and void the ban with which transgressors had been threatened. He recommended to Catholics a friendly and benevolent attitude towards their Hebrew fellow-citizens, severely denounced violent attacks upon them, and confirmed all the privileges which had from time to time been granted by the papacy. This bull was, however, as ineffectual as the protection which Emperor Sigismund had so solemnly promised the Jews. A persecuting spirit continued to animate the Christian church. The monks did not cease to declaim against the "accursed" Jewish nation; the populace did not refrain from tormenting, injuring and murdering Jews; even succeeding popes ignored the bull, and restored the odious canonical restrictions in all their stringency. Turning a deaf ear to both pope and emperor, the citizens of Cologne expelled the Jewish community, perhaps the oldest in Germany. The exiles took up their abode at Deutz (1426). In the South German towns, Ravensburg, Ueberlingen and Lindau, the Jews were burnt because of a lying blood accusation (1431).
The literary work of the German Jews was, as a consequence, poor and inconsiderable. Anxiety and persecution had deadened their intellect. Even in Talmudical study the German rabbis hardly rose above mediocrity, and gave nothing of consequence to the world. Some rabbis were installed by the reigning prince; at least Emperor Sigismund commissioned one of his Jewish agents, Chayim of Landshut, "to appoint three rabbis (Judenmeister) in Germany." Under such auspices, appointments were probably determined less by merit than by money. For a college, in which students were prepared for the rabbinate, a heavy tax had to be paid, notwithstanding that the instruction was given gratuitously. Besides Jacob Mölin, only one name of importance emerges from the darkness of this period, Menachem of Merseburg, or, as he was generally called, Meïl Zedek. He wrote a comprehensive work on the practice of the Talmudic marriage and civil law, which the Saxon communities adopted for their authoritative guidance. He, at least, departed from the beaten track of his older contemporaries or teachers, Jacob Mölin and Isaac Tyrnau, who attached value to every insignificant detail of the liturgy. By and by Menachem of Merseburg was recognized as an authority, and an excellent regulation drawn up by him received universal assent. Among the Jews at that period, marriages took place at a very early age; girls in their teens were hurried into matrimony. According to Talmudical law a girl, under age, who had been given in marriage by her mother or brothers and not by her father, was permitted, on attaining her majority, in her twelfth year, and even much later under some circumstances, to dissolve her union without further ceremony than a declaration of her intention to do so, or the contracting of another marriage (Miun). Menachem of Merseburg felt the indecency of so sudden and often capricious a dissolution of marriage, and he decided that formal bills of divorce should be required.
The literary achievements of the Spanish Jews during this period were not of a higher character; they exhibited unmistakable signs of decay, notwithstanding that their situation had become more tolerable since the death of the bigoted and wanton queen regent, Catalina, and the fall of the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, and his Jewish accomplices. Don Juan II--or, rather, his favorite, Alvaro de Luna, to whom the management of the state was confided--stood too much in need of the assistance of Jewish financiers during the frequently recurring civil wars and insurrections to do anything to offend them. Hence, during his reign, restrictive laws against the Jews seem to have been enacted only to be broken. Jews were again admitted to public employment, regardless of the fact that such appointments had been sternly forbidden both by kings and popes. An influential Jew, Abraham Benveniste, surnamed Senior, distinguished for his intelligence and wealth, was invested with a high dignity at the court of Don Juan, and was thus in a position to frustrate threatened persecutions of his co-religionists. Also Joseph ben Shem Tob Ibn-Shem Tob, a cultivated and fruitful writer, proficient in philosophic studies, was in the service of the state under Juan II. On the one hand, the cortes did not fail to remind the king that by his father's laws and by papal decrees the Jews were excluded from public offices, and, on the other hand, Pope Eugenius IV, successor to Martin V, strained every effort to humiliate the Jews and harden their lot, even forbidding Don Juan to befriend them; but these representations were of no avail. To the cortes of Burgos the king replied evasively that he would cause an examination to be made of the laws promulgated in regard to the Jews by his father, and of the papal bulls, and he would take care to observe everything calculated to promote the service of God and the welfare of the state. Against the pope's interference with his crown-rights he entered a protest.
This king gave permission to the no less noble than wealthy rabbi, Abraham Benveniste, to hold a meeting of delegates from various communities in the royal palace of Avila (1432). These delegates were to bring harmony into the state of moral and religious disorder caused by the attacks of the masses in 1412-1415. The smaller communities were without teachers, the large ones without rabbis and preachers. Many of them had been reduced to poverty, and the richer members were unwilling to contribute to the support of religious institutions. Evil ways and denunciations by the unscrupulous had acquired the upper hand, because the representative men and the few rabbis did not venture to punish the evildoers. Abraham Benveniste, therefore, framed a statute (the law of Avila), which compelled people to establish schools and colleges, to introduce order into the communities, and to punish miscreants. Juan II confirmed this statute.
The literature of the Spanish Jews, however, was powerless to recover itself. Despite the calm succeeding the storm, it seemed to wither like autumn leaves. The decline was most marked in the department of Talmudic study. After the emigration of Isaac ben Sheshet and the death of Chasdaï Crescas, no Spanish rabbi obtained more than local authority and reputation. The only upholder of the traditions of the rabbinate was Isaac ben Jacob Campanton, who lived to be more than a hundred years old (born 1360, died at Peñafiel 1463); but he produced only one work (Darke ha-Talmud), which exhibited neither genius nor learning. Still, in his day, Campanton passed for the Gaon of Castile. Neo-Hebraic poetry, which had blossomed so profusely on Spanish soil, faded and drooped. Of those who cultivated it during this period only a few are remembered--Solomon Dafiera, Don Vidal Benveniste, the leading speaker on the Jewish side at the disputation of Tortosa, and Solomon Bonfed. The most gifted was the last. He was ambitious to emulate Ibn-Gebirol; but he possessed little more than the sensitiveness and moroseness of his great exemplar, like him imagining himself to be the sport of fortune, with a prescriptive right to lamentation.
The Jews of Italy failed to distinguish themselves in poetry even during the Medici period, in spite of the high culture which, with the Hussite movement, was eating away the foundations of mediæval Catholicism. Since Immanuel Romi, the Jews of Italy had produced but one poet; even he was not a poet in the noblest sense of the word. Moses ben Isaac (Gajo) da Rieti, of Perugia (born 1388, died after 1451 ), a physician by profession, a dabbler in philosophy, and a graceful writer in both Hebrew and Italian, might have passed for an artist if poetry were a thing of meter and rhyme, for in his sublimely conceived poem both were faultless. His desire was to glorify in poetry Judaism and Jewish antiquity, the sciences, and the illustrious men of all ages. He employed an ingenious form of verse, in which the stanzas were connected by threes by means of cross-rhymes. But Da Rieti's language is often rough, many of his allusions show want of taste, and where he should rise to lofty thought he sinks into puerilities. Only in one respect does his work mark an advance in neo-Hebrew poetry. He breaks entirely with the traditional Judæo-Arabic method of a single rhyme. There is variety in his versification; the ear is not wearied by monotonous repetition of the same or similar sounds, and the lines fall naturally into stanzas. He also avoids playing on Biblical verses, the objectionable habit of Judæo-Spanish poets. In a word, Da Rieti supplied the correct form for neo-Hebrew poetry, but he was unable to vivify it with an attractive spirit. Yet the Italian Jews adopted a part of his poem into their liturgy, and recited extracts daily.
From the Apennine Peninsula let us turn back to the Pyrenean, where the pulsation of historic life among the Jews, though gradually becoming weaker, still was stronger than in the other countries in which they were dispersed. The two branches of intellectual activity which formerly, in their palmy days, had exercised every mind--the severe study of the Talmud and the airy pursuit of the poetic muse-- had lost their predominance in the Spanish Jewries. The systematic study of the Scriptures also was no longer properly cultivated. The literary activity of this period was almost exclusively directed towards combating the intrusiveness of the church, repelling its attacks on Judaism, and withstanding its proselytizing zeal. Faithful and strong-minded Jewish thinkers held it a duty to proclaim their convictions aloud, and to admonish waverers and strengthen them. The more the preaching monks, especially apostates of the stamp of Paul de Santa Maria, Geronimo de Santa Fé, and Pedro de la Caballeria, exerted themselves to prove that the Christian Trinity was the true God of Israel, taught and typified in the Bible and the Talmud, and the more the church stretched forth its tentacles towards the Jews, straining every nerve to fold them in its fatal embrace, the more necessary was it for the synagogue to watch over its sacred trust, and guard its holy of holies from idolatrous desecration. It was especially necessary that the weaker-minded should be spared confusion in religious and doctrinal matters. Hence Jewish preachers devoted themselves more than ever to expounding the doctrine of the unity of God in their pulpits. They pointed out the essential and irreconcilable difference between the Jewish and the Christian conception of the Deity, and characterized their identification as false and impious. The time resembled that other epoch in Jewish history when Hellenized Jews tried to induce their brethren to deny God, and were supported by the secular arm. Some preachers, in their zeal, went to extremes. Instead of relying exclusively on the convincing demonstrations in the Bible text, or on the attractive illustrations of the Agada, they resorted to the armory of scholasticism, employing the formulæ of philosophy and, in the presence of the Torah, and by the side of the Hebrew prophets and the Talmudical sages, quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Averroes.
This controversial literature, cultivated on a large scale, was designed to defend Judaism against calumny and abuse, rather than to convert a single Christian soul. Its aim was to open the eyes of Jews, so that ignorance or credulity might not lead them into the snares prepared for them. Doubtless it also desired to stir up the new-Christians, and to re-animate their Jewish spirit beneath the disguise they had assumed to save their lives. Hence the majority of the polemical writings of the day were merely vindications of Judaism from the old charges fulminated by Nicholas de Lyra a century before, or more recently by Geronimo de Santa Fé and others, and widely circulated by the Christian clergy. Solomon-Paul of Burgos, who had been appointed bishop of his native town, wrote, in his eighty-second year (1434, a year before his death), a venomous tract against Judaism --"Searching the Scriptures" (Scrutinium Scriptuarum)--in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and his pupil, the unbelieving Saul and the converted Paul. Solomon-Paul does not seem to have retained much of the wit which, according to Jewish and Christian panegyrists, had at one time distinguished him--it had probably become blunted amid the luxurious ease of the episcopal palace--for his tract, devoutly Christian and Catholic in tone, is pointless and dull. Another ex-rabbi who devoted himself to attacking Judaism was Juan de España, also called Juan the Old (at Toledo), a convert who in old age had embraced Christianity under the influence of Vincent Ferrer's proselytizing efforts. He wrote a treatise on his own conversion and a Christian commentary on the seventy-second Psalm, in both of which he asserted the genuineness of his change of creed, and urged the Jews to abjure their errors. How many weak-minded Jews must have been influenced by the zeal, earnest or hypocritical, of such men as these, belonging to their own race, and learned in their literature!
It is impossible to exaggerate the services of the men who, deeply impressed with the gravity of the crisis, threw themselves into the breach, with exhortations to their co-religionists to remain faithful to their creed. In defiance of the dangers which menaced them, they scattered their inspiriting discourses far and wide. Foremost among them were the men who had distinguished themselves at the Tortosa disputation by their unyielding attitude and their courage in withstanding the unjustifiable attacks upon the Talmud-- Don Vidal (Ferrer) Ibn-Labi and Joseph Albo. The former drew up in Hebrew a refutation of Geronimo's impeachment of the Talmud (Kodesh ha-Kodashim), and the latter circulated, in Spanish, an account of a religious controversy he had sustained with an eminent church dignitary. Isaac ben Kalonymos, of a learned Provençal family named Nathan, who associated a great deal with learned Christians, and frequently had to defend his religious convictions, wrote two polemical works, one entitled "Correction of the False Teacher," directed against Geronimo's libelous essay, and the other, called "The Fortress," of unknown purpose. He also compiled a laborious work of reference intended to assist others in defending Judaism from attack. Isaac Nathan, in his intercourse with Christians, often had to listen to criticisms of Judaism, or evidences drawn from the Hebrew Bible, in favor of Christian dogmas, which he found were always based on false renderings of Hebrew words. To put an end to these illusory outgrowths of prevailing ignorance of the original text of the Scriptures, or, at least, to lighten the labors of his brethren in refuting them, he resolved to compile a comprehensive digest of the linguistic materials of the Bible, by which the actual meaning of each word should be made clear. According to the plan adopted, any one can ascertain, at a glance, both how often a certain word occurs in the Bible, and its varying meanings according to the contexts. The work thus undertaken by Isaac Nathan was of colossal scope, and occupied a long series of years (September, 1437-1445). It was a Bible concordance, that is, the verses were grouped alphabetically under the reference words according to roots and derivations. The existing Latin concordances served in a measure as models, although their purpose was the less ambitious one of assisting preachers to find texts. Isaac Nathan, who produced various other works, by this concordance rendered inestimable and lasting service to the study of the Bible, although his labor was of a purely mechanical kind. Originating from the temporary needs of the polemical situation, it has been, and will ever remain, a powerful weapon for ensuring the triumph of Judaism in its struggles with other religious systems.
The philosopher, Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob (born 1400, died a martyr 1460), who was a voluminous writer, a popular preacher, and a frequenter of the Castilian court, also entered the lists against Christianity to expose the fallacy and unreasonableness of its dogmas. In his frequent intercourse with Christians of distinction, both clerical and lay, he found it necessary to make himself thoroughly acquainted with Christian theology that he might adduce cogent arguments in reply to those who wished to convert him, or in his presence made the oft-reiterated statement of the falsity of Judaism. Occasionally a regular controversy in defense of his creed was forced upon him. The fruits of his studies and thought he committed to writing in the shape of a small treatise, entitled "Doubts of the Religion of Jesus," in which he criticised with unsparing logic the dogmas of Original Sin, Salvation, and Incarnation. Besides, he wrote, for the instruction of his brethren, a detailed commentary on Profiat Duran's satire on Christianity, and made available for them, by means of a Hebrew translation, Chasdaï Crescas' polemical work against the Christian religion, originally written in Spanish. Strange to say, the Spanish Jews preferred, as a rule, Hebrew books to those in the language of their adopted country.
Among the authors of polemical works against Christianity a contemporary of Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob deserves special mention. History has hitherto forgotten Chayim Ibn-Musa, from Bejar, in the neighborhood of Salamanca (born about 1390, died about 1460), a physician, versifier and writer, who had access to the Spanish court and the grandees through his medical skill, and so, frequent opportunities of discussing questions of doctrine with ecclesiastics and learned laymen. A colloquy preserved by Chayim Ibn-Musa illustrates the spirit which prevailed in Spain before the hateful Inquisition silenced all freedom of speech. A learned ecclesiastic once asked Ibn-Musa why, if Judaism, as he maintained, was the true faith, the Jews could not possess themselves of the Holy Land and Jerusalem? Ibn Musa replied that they had lost their country through the sins of their fathers, and could regain it only by perfect atonement and purgation. He, in turn, propounded a question: Why are the Christians no longer in possession of the Holy Sepulcher? and why does it, together with all the sites associated with the Passion, continue in the hands of Mahometan infidels, notwithstanding that Christians, by means of confession and absolution, and through the medium of the nearest available priest, can free themselves at any moment from sin? Before the ecclesiastic could bethink himself of a suitable reply, a knight, who had formerly been in Palestine, interposed: The Mahometans are the only people who deserve to possess the site of the Temple and the Holy Land, for neither Christians nor Jews hold houses of prayer in so much honor as they. The Christians, during the night before Easter (Vigils), perpetrate shameful abominations in the churches at Jerusalem, abandon themselves to debauchery, harbor thieves and murderers, and carry on bloody feuds within their precincts. They dishonor their character in the same way as the Jews profaned their Temple. Therefore, God, in His wisdom, has deprived the Jews and the Christians of the Holy City, and has intrusted it to the Mahometans, because, in their hands, it is safe from desecration. To his observation the Christian priest and the Jewish physician could oppose only abashed silence.
Chayim Ibn-Musa devoted himself to the task of discrediting the chief sources of the materials of Christian attacks on Judaism, the writings of the Franciscan Nicholas de Lyra. He not only refuted the assertions put forward in those works, but deprived them of the soil upon which they fed. The ever-recurring controversies between Jews and Christians led to no conclusions, and left each party in the belief that it had gained a victory, because they generally turned on secondary questions, the disputants never discussing fundamental premises, but wrangling, each from his undemonstrated basis. Chayim Ibn-Musa wished to introduce method into these controversies, and to lay down clear principles for the defense of Judaism. Accordingly, he drew up rules which, strictly observed, were bound to lead to a definite result. In the first place, he advised Jews invariably to hold fast in a disputation to the simple meaning of the Scriptures, always to take the context into account, and especially to avoid allegorical or symbolical methods of interpretation, which left Christian polemics free to introduce arbitrary theories. Further, Jewish disputants were to announce that they ascribed no authority in matters of belief either to the Chaldaic translation of the Bible (Targum) or to the Greek (Septuagint), these being the sources of the false proofs adduced by Christians. He counseled them to abandon even Agadic exegesis, and not to hesitate to declare that it had no weight in determining the doctrines of Judaism. These and similar rules Chayim Ibn-Musa applied to the writings of Nicholas de Lyra, successfully refuting them from beginning to end in a comprehensive work, justly entitled "Shield and Sword."
The anti-Christian polemical literature of this period was further enriched by two writers, father and son, living in Algiers, far removed from the scenes of the Christian propaganda. But Simon ben Zemach Duran and his son, Solomon Duran, were Spaniards by birth and education. In his philosophic exposition of Judaism, the former devoted a chapter to Christianity, maintaining, in answer to Christian and Mahometan objections, the inviolability of the Torah. This chapter, entitled "Bow and Buckler," and described as being "for defense and attack," proves the contention of older writers, and more recently of Profiat Duran, that Jesus' intention was not to abolish Judaism. The rabbi of Algiers exhibits extraordinarily wide acquaintance with the literature of the New Testament and thorough familiarity with church doctrine, combats each with weapons taken from its own arsenal, and criticises unsparingly.
Solomon Duran I (born about 1400, died 1467), who succeeded his father in the Algerian rabbinate, combined with profound Talmudic knowledge a decided leaning towards a rationalistic apprehension of Judaism. Unlike his father and his ancestor, Nachmani, he was a sworn enemy of the Kabbala. During his father's lifetime and at his request, he wrote a refutation of the shameless, lying accusations brought against the Talmud by Geronimo de Santa Fé. In an exhaustive treatise ("Letter on the Conflict of Duties") he deals sharply with Geronimo's sallies. He repels the accusation that the Talmud teaches lewdness, and proves that it really inculcates extreme continence. Jews who regulate their lives according to Talmudical prescriptions scrupulously abstain from carnal sins, holding them in great abhorrence, and pointing with scorn at persons guilty of them. How, asks Solomon Duran, can Christians reproach Jews with unchastity--they, whose holiest men daily commit sins which dare not be mentioned to modest ears, and which have become proverbial as "Monk's sin" (peccato dei frati).
Religious philosophy, which had been raised to the perfection of a science only by Jewish-Spanish thinkers, had its last cultivators in Spain during this period. The same men who protected Judaism against the onslaughts of Christianity defended it against benighted Jews who wished to banish light, and, like the Dominicans, desired to establish blind faith in the place of reason and judgment. Zealots like Shem Tob Ibn-Shem Tob and others, biased by their narrow Talmudical education, and misled by the Kabbala, saw in scientific inquiry a byroad to heresy. Perceiving that for the most part cultivated Jews succumbed to the proselytizing efforts of Vincent Ferrer and Pope Benedict, men of the stamp of Shem Tob were confirmed in their belief that philosophic culture, nay, reflection on a religious topic, irretrievably lead to apostasy. The logical result of religious impeachment of science was the condemnation of Maimuni and all the Jewish thinkers who had allowed reason to have weight in religious questions. Against this form of bigotry Joseph Albo entered the lists with a complete religio-philosophical work (Ikkarim, "fundamental teachings"), in which he attempted to separate the essential doctrines of Judaism from the non-essential, and to fix the boundary line between belief and heresy.
Joseph Albo (born about 1380, died about 1444), of Monreal, one of the principal representatives of Judaism at the Tortosa disputation, who, probably through the intolerance of Pope Benedict, had emigrated to Soria, was a physician and a pupil of Chasdaï Crescas, hence well acquainted with the physical sciences and the philosophic thought of his time. Although a strict adherent of Talmudical Judaism, he was, like his teacher, not averse to philosophic ideas. Indeed, he tried to reconcile them, without, of course, permitting Judaism to yield a jot to philosophy. Albo had not, however, the profundity of his teacher; as a thinker he was superficial, commonplace, and incapable of writing with logical sequence. On the advice of his friends, he undertook to investigate in how far freedom of inquiry in religious matters was possible within the limits of Judaism. At the same time he wished to fix the number of articles of faith and to decide the question whether the number thirteen adopted by Maimuni was correct, or whether it could be increased or lessened without justly bringing a charge of heresy on him who made the change. Thus originated his religio-philosophical system, the last on Spanish soil. Albo's style differs widely from that of his predecessors. He was a preacher--one of the cleverest and most graceful--and this circumstance exercised marked influence on his method of exposition. It is easy, comprehensible, popular and captivating. Albo has the knack of explaining every philosophic idea by a striking illustration, and of developing it by skillful employment of Bible verses and Agadic aphorisms. What his style thus gained, on the one hand, in intelligibility and popularity, it lost, on the other, through a certain redundancy and shallowness.
It is a remarkable fact that Albo, who thought that he was developing his religio-philosophical system exclusively in the native spirit of Judaism, placed at its head a principle of indubitably Christian origin; so powerfully do surroundings affect even those who exert themselves to throw off such influence. The religious philosopher of Soria propounded as his fundamental idea that salvation was the whole aim of man in this life, and that Judaism strongly emphasized this aspect of religion. His teacher, Chasdaï Crescas, and others, had considered man's aim the bliss of the future life, to be found in proximity to the Deity and in the union of the soul with the all-pervading spirit of God. According to Albo highest happiness consists not so much in the exaltation of the soul as in its salvation. That is the nucleus of Albo's religio-philosophical system. Man attains only after death the perfection for which he is destined by God; for this higher life his mundane existence is but a preparation. How can he best utilize his term of preparation? There are three kinds of institutions for the reclamation of man from barbarism and his advancement to civilization. The first is Natural Law, a sort of social compact to abstain from theft, rapine and homicide; the second is State Legislation, which cares for order and morals; and the third is Philosophical Law, which aims at promoting the enduring happiness of man, or, at least, at removing obstacles in the way of its realization. All these institutions, even when highly developed, are powerless to assist the real welfare of man, the redemption of his soul, his beatitude; for they concern themselves only with actions, with proper conduct, but do nothing to inculcate the views or supply the principles which are to be the mainsprings of action. If the highest aim of man be eternal life or beatitude after death, then there must be a Divine Legislation, without which man in this world must always be groping in darkness and missing his highest destiny. This Divine Legislation must supply all the perfections lacking in its mundane counterpart. It must have for its postulate a perfect God, who both wishes and is able to promote the redemption of man; it must further bear witness to the certainty that this God has revealed an unalterable Law calculated to secure the happiness of man; and finally it must appoint a suitable requital for actions and intentions. Hence this Divine Legislation has three fundamental principles: the Existence of God, the Revelation of His Will, and just Retribution after Death. These are the three pillars on which it rests, and it requires none other.
Judaism, then, according to Albo, is a discipline for eternal salvation. It is "the Divine Legislation" (Dath Elohith), and, as such, comprises many religious laws--613 according to the customary calculation--to enable each individual to promote his own salvation. For even a single religious precept fulfilled with intelligence and devotion, and without mental reservation or ulterior motive, entitles man to salvation. Consequently, the Torah, with its numerous prescriptions, is not intended as a burden for its disciples, nor are the Jews threatened, as Christian teachers maintain, with a curse in the event of their not observing the entire number of commandments. On the contrary, the object is to render easy the path to higher perfection. Therefore, the Agada says that every Israelite has a share in Eternal Life (Olam ha-ba), for each one can obtain this end by the fulfillment of a single religious duty.
Arrived at this point, the religious philosopher of Soria propounds the question whether Judaism can ever be altered as previous dispensations were by the Sinaitic Revelation. This question required specially careful consideration, as Christians always maintained that Christianity was a new revelation, as Judaism had been in its time; that the "New Covenant" took the place of the "Old," and that by the Gospel, the Torah had been fulfilled, i. e., abrogated. Albo had acknowledged the existence of rudimentary revelations previous to that of Sinai, and to avoid being entrapped by the consequences of his own system he put forward a peculiar distinction. That which God had once revealed by His own mouth direct to man was, by virtue of that fact, unalterable and binding for all time; but that which had been communicated only by a prophetic intermediary might suffer change or even annulment. The Ten Commandments which the Israelites had received direct from God, amid the flames of Sinai, were unalterable; in them the three cardinal principles of a divine legislation are laid down. On the other hand, the remaining prescriptions of Judaism, imposed on the people solely through the mediation of Moses, were open to change or even revocation. But this instability of a portion, perhaps a large portion, of the Jewish religious law was only a theory, propounded simply as a possibility. In practice the obligations of the Torah were to be regarded as binding and unalterable, until it should please God to reveal other laws through the medium of a prophet as great as Moses, and in as open and convincing a manner as on Sinai. Hitherto no prophet had made good his claim so far as to render necessary the rescinding of any portion of Judaism.
Albo's religious system is far from satisfactory. Based upon the Christian doctrine of salvation, it was compelled to regard faith, in a Christian sense, as the chief condition of the soul's redemption, and the ordinances of Judaism as sacraments, similar to baptism or communion, upon which salvation was dependent. Nor is the development of his theory strictly logical. Too often the arts of the preacher take the place of severe reasoning, and for the illustration of his ideas he indulges in prolix sermons in exposition of Biblical and Agadic texts.
A bolder thinker than Albo, but, like him, a preacher, was his junior contemporary, Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob. At one time, when in disgrace with the king of Castile, and leading a wandering life, he held forth every Sabbath to large audiences. He had been well schooled in philosophy. His Kabbalistical, gloomy and fanatical father, who denounced philosophy as a primary source of evil, damned Aristotle to hell, and even accused Maimuni of heterodoxy, must have been scandalized when his son Joseph plunged deep, and with all his heart, into the study of Aristotle and Maimuni. But Joseph did not hesitate to stigmatize the error of his father and of those who thought the employment of philosophic methods opposed to the interests of religion. He, on the contrary, held that they were essential for the attainment of the higher destiny to which all men, especially Israelites, are called. The cultured, philosophical Jew who intelligently discharges all the religious duties of Judaism obviously realizes his high aim much sooner than the Israelite who practices his ceremonial blindly, without wisdom or understanding. Science is also of great value in enabling human intelligence to discriminate error. It is the nature of man's imperfect intellect to foster truth and error side by side; but knowledge teaches how to distinguish between the true and the false. On the other hand, gaps in philosophical teaching are bridged over by the Sinaitic Law. In so far as the latter conceives the happiness of man in the survival of the spirit after the destruction of the body, it is immeasurably the superior of philosophy. Judaism also names the means of attaining eternal happiness--the conscientious fulfillment of religious obligations. On this point, Joseph Shem Tob's view approximates that of Joseph Albo. In his eyes, also, the commandments of Judaism have a sacramental character, but he does not emphasize salvation so much as Albo. Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob went so far, however, as to deny that the objects of the religious laws were knowable, and, to a certain extent, ascribed to them a mystical influence.
None of these writings of the first half of the fifteenth century, philosophical or polemical, was the fruit of leisure and an unfettered spirit. All were stimulated into existence by the urgent necessities of the times, and were put forth to protect the religious and moral treasure-house from pressing danger. In order not to succumb, Judaism was forced simultaneously to strengthen itself from within and ward off attacks from without.
It was, indeed, more than ever necessary for Judaism to arm itself, doubly and trebly; its darkest days were approaching. Again the grim church fiend arose, and the gruesome shadow of its extended wings swept anxiously across Europe. As in the time of Innocent III, so again at this period the church decreed the degradation and proscription of the Jews. The old enactments were solemnly renewed by the official representatives of Christendom, assembled in Œcumenical Council at Basle, where they had declared their infallibility, and even sat in judgment on the papacy. Curious, indeed! The council could not arrange its own concerns, was powerless to bring the mocking Hussites back to the bosom of Mother Church, despaired of putting an end to the dissoluteness and vice of the clergy and monks, yet gave its attention to the Jews to lead them to salvation. Leprous sheep themselves, they sought to save unblemished lambs! The Basle church council, which sat for thirteen years (June, 1431-May, 1443), examining all the great European questions, gave no small share of its attention to the Jews. Their humiliation was necessary for the strengthening of Christian faith--such was the ground on which the council proceeded at its nineteenth sitting (September 7th, 1434), when it resolved to revise the old and devise new restrictions. The canonical decrees prohibiting Christians from holding intercourse with Jews, from rendering them services, and from employing them as physicians, excluding them from offices and dignities, imposing on them a distinctive garb, and ordering them to live in special Jew-quarters, were renewed. A few fresh measures were adopted, new in so far as they had not previously been put forward by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. These provided that Jews should not be admitted to university degrees, that they should be made, if necessary, by force, to attend the delivery of conversionist sermons, and that at the colleges means should be provided for combating Jewish heresy by instruction in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. Thus the Œcumenical Council, which gave itself out as inspired by the Holy Ghost, designed the conversion of all Jews. It adopted the program of Penyaforte, Pablo Christiani, and Vincent Ferrer, who had counseled systematic application of pressure to induce the Jews to abandon "their infidelity." On the baptized Jews, too, the Basle church council bestowed special attention. They were to be favored, but also carefully watched, lest they marry Jews, keep the Sabbath and Jewish feasts, bury their dead according to Jewish rites, or, in fact, follow any Jewish observances.
A fanatical paroxysm broke out afresh in various towns of Europe, commencing in the island of Majorca. The remnant of the congregation of Palma was hated alike by the priests and the mob, and both gave a willing ear to the rumor that the Jews, during Holy Week, had crucified the Moorish servant of a Jew, and put him to the torture. The reputed martyr was still living, but, nevertheless, Bishop Gil-Nunjoz caused two Jews to be imprisoned as ringleaders. Thereupon arose a contest between the bishop and the governor, Juan Desfar, the latter maintaining that as the Jews were the property of the king, he alone could condemn them. The bishop was obliged to hand over the Jews, who were locked up in the governor's jail. The priests, however, incited the mob against the governor and the Jews, and before Juan Desfar could arrange for a hearing, the people were prepossessed against him. A court composed chiefly of Dominicans and Franciscans was called together, and employed the rack as the most effectual means of obtaining the truth from the witnesses. One of the accused put to the torture acknowledged all that was desired, and pointed out any Jews who happened to be mentioned as his accomplices. An unprincipled Jew named Astruc Sibili, who lived in strife with many members of the community, and feared to be involved in the blood accusation, came forward as the denouncer of his co-religionists. Apparently of his own accord Astruc Sibili acknowledged that the servant had been crucified, and pointed out several Jews as the murderers. Although he kept himself clear from all complicity in the matter, Astruc Sibili was soon punished for his denunciations--he was thrown into prison as an accomplice. The fate of the informer and the flight of several Jewish families, justly fearing a repetition of massacres, from Palma to a mountain in the vicinity, excited the Christian inhabitants yet more. The fugitives were pursued, placed in fetters, and brought back to the city, their flight being considered a proof of the guilt of the entire community. Astruc Sibili and three others were condemned to be burnt at the stake, but their punishment was commuted to death by hanging, on condition that they be baptized. To this they agreed, considering baptism the last straw by which their lives might be saved. The whole community, men, women and children, two hundred in all, went over to Christianity to escape a horrible death. The priests had ample employment in baptizing the converts. How little they believed in the imputed crime of the condemned was shown when, the gallows being reached, the priests, encouraging the mob to do the same, demanded the pardon of the condemned. The governor yielded to the voice of the people, and by a procession and amid singing they were escorted to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted. Thus ended the community of Majorca, which had lasted over a thousand years, and had greatly contributed to the well-being of the island. With it disappeared the prosperity of this fruitful and favored island. Simon Duran, deeply grieved at the secession of the community of Palma, which he had lovingly cherished, silenced his conscience with the thought that he had not been remiss in exhortation.
VIII. CAPISTRANO AND HIS PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS
Pope Eugenius IV, under the Influence of Alfonso de Cartagena, changes his Attitude towards the Jews--His Bull against the Spanish and Italian Jews in 1442--Don Juan II defends the Jews--Pope Nicholas V's Hostility--Louis of Bavaria--The Philosopher Nicholas of Cusa and his Relation to Judaism--John of Capistrano--His Influence with the People is turned against the Jews--Capistrano in Bavaria and Würzburg--Expulsion of the Breslau Community--Expulsion of the Jews from Brünn and Olmütz--The Jews of Poland under Casimir IV--Capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II--The Jews find an Asylum in Turkey--The Karaites--Moses Kapsali--Isaac Zarfati--Position of the Jews of Spain--Persecutions directed by Alfonso de Spina--The Condition of the Marranos.
1442-1474 C.E.
About the middle of the fifteenth century, venomous hatred of Jews, become characteristic of Spain and Germany, began to increase, and at the end of that century reached its highest development. In Spain it was stimulated principally by envy of the influential positions still enjoyed by Jews in spite of misfortune and humiliation; in Germany, on the contrary, where the Jews moved like shadows, it arose from vague race-antipathy, of which religious differences formed only one aspect. An unfortunate event for the German communities was the death of Emperor Sigismund (towards the end of 1437) at the moment when the council of Basle was casting a threatening glance in their direction. This prince was not a reliable protector of the Jews. Often enough he bled them to relieve his ever-recurring pecuniary embarrassments, and he even charged them with the expenses of the council of Constance. But so far as lay in his power he set his face against the bloody persecutions of his Hebrew subjects. He was succeeded as German king and emperor by the Austrian Archduke Albert, who had already distinguished himself by inhumanity towards Jews. Albert II was a deadly enemy of Jews and heretics. He could not exterminate either, for the Hussites had courage and arms, and the Jews were an indispensable source of money; but whenever it was sought to injure them he gladly assisted. When the town council of Augsburg decided to expel the Jewish community (1439), the emperor joyfully gave his consent. Two years were granted them to dispose of their houses and immovables; at the end of that time they were one and all exiled, and the grave-stones in the Jewish cemetery used to repair the city walls. Fortunately for the Jews, Albert reigned only two years, and the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, or rather the anarchy by which it was convulsed, devolved on the good-natured, weak, indolent, and tractable Frederick III. As a set off, two fanatical Jew-haters now arose--Pope Eugenius IV and the Franciscan, John of Capistrano, a cut-throat in the guise of a lowly servant of God.
Eugenius, whom the council of Basle had degraded step by step, depriving him of his dignities and electing another pope in his place, ultimately triumphed through the treachery of some of the principal members of the council and the helplessness of the German princes, and was again enabled to befool the Christian nations. Eugenius, though of narrow, monkish views, was at first not unfavorably disposed towards the Jews. At the beginning of his pontificate, he confirmed the privileges granted Jews by his predecessor, Martin V, promised them his protection, and forbade their forcible baptism. But he was soon influenced in an opposite direction, and developed extraordinary zeal in degrading the Jews and withdrawing all protection from them. The prime mover in this conversion seems to have been Alfonso de Cartagena, a son of the apostate Paul de Santa Maria. Appointed bishop of Burgos on the death of his father, Alfonso warmly espoused the cause of Pope Eugenius at the council of Basle, and hence rose high in the favor of the pontiff. He alone could have been the author of the complaints against the pride and arrogance of the Castilian Jews which induced the pope to issue the bull of 1442. This document was addressed to the bishops of Castile and Leon (10th August, 1442), and was to the effect that it had come to the knowledge of his Holiness that the Jews abuse the privileges granted them by former popes, blaspheming and transgressing to the vexation of the faithful and the dishonor of the true faith. He felt himself compelled, therefore, to withdraw the indulgences granted by his predecessors--Martin and other popes-- and to declare them null and void. At the same time Eugenius repeated the canonical restrictions in a severer form. Thus, he decreed that Christians should not eat, drink, bathe, or live with Jews (or Mahometans), nor use medicines of any kind purveyed by them. Jews (and Mahometans) should not be eligible for any office or dignity, and should be incompetent to inherit property from Christians. They were to build no more synagogues, and, in repairing the old, were to avoid all ornamentation. They were to seclude themselves from the public eye during Passion Week, to the extent even of keeping their doors and windows closed. The testimony of Jews (and Mahometans) against Christians was declared invalid. Eugenius' bull emphatically enjoined that no Christian should stand in any relation of servitude to a Jew, and should not even kindle a fire for him on the Sabbath; that Jews should be distinguished from Christians by a peculiar costume, and reside in special quarters. Furthermore, every blasphemous utterance by a Jew about Jesus, the "Mother of God," or the saints, was to be severely punished by the civil tribunals. This bull was ordered to be made known throughout the land, and put in force thirty days later. Heavy penalties were to be exacted for offenses under it. If the culprit was a Christian, he was to be placed under the ban of the church, and neither king nor queen was to be exempt; if a Jew, then the whole of his fortune, personal and real, was to be confiscated by the bishop of the diocese, and applied to the purposes of the church. By means of circular letters, Eugenius exhorted the Castilian ecclesiastics to enforce the restrictions without mercy. He dared not be outdone in Jew-hatred by the council of Basle. At about the same time, or perhaps earlier, Eugenius issued a bull of forty-two articles against the Italian Jewish communities, in which, among other things, he ordered that, under pain of confiscation of property, Jews should not read Talmudic literature.
The papal bull for Castile was proclaimed in many of the towns, as it would appear, without the consent of the king, Juan II. The fanatics had won the day; all their wishes were fulfilled. The misguided people at once considered Jews and Mahometans outlawed, and proceeded to make violent attacks on their persons and property. Pious Christians interpreted the papal ordinances to mean that they were not to continue commercial relations of any kind with the Jews. Christian shepherds forthwith abandoned the flocks and herds committed to their charge by Jews and Mahometans, and plowmen turned their backs upon the fields. The union of towns (Hermandad) framed new statutes for the more complete oppression of the proscribed of the church. In consternation the Jews appealed to the king of Castile. Their complaints had all the more effect upon him as their damage meant damage to the royal exchequer. Accordingly, Juan II, or rather his favorite, Alvaro de Luna, issued a counter decree (April 6th, 1443). He expressed his indignation at the shamelessness which made the papal bull an excuse for assaults on the Jews and Mahometans. Canonical, royal and imperial law agreed in permitting them to live undisturbed and unmolested among Christians. The bull of Pope Eugenius placed Jews and Mahometans under certain specific restrictions; but it did not follow that they might be robbed, injured or maltreated, that they might not engage in trade or industry, nor work as weavers, goldsmiths, carpenters, barbers, shoe-makers, tailors, millers, coppersmiths, saddlers, rope-makers, potters, cartwrights or basket-makers, or that Christians might not serve them in these pursuits. Such service involved neither relaxation of Christian authority nor dangerous intimacy with Jews. Nor did it appear that the avocations mentioned conferred any of that prestige which solely the bull was designed to deny to Jews.
Christians should certainly abstain from the medicines of Jewish or Moorish physicians, unless compounded by Christian hands; but this did not mean that skillful doctors of the Jewish or the Mahometan faith should not be consulted, or their medicines not used, when no Christian physician was available. Juan II imposed upon the magistracy the duty of safeguarding the Jews and Mahometans, as objects of his special protection, and instructed them to punish Christian offenders with imprisonment and confiscation of goods. He furthermore ordered that his pleasure be made known throughout the land by public criers, in the presence of a notary.
Whether this sophistical decree was of any real use to the Jews is doubtful. Don Juan II had not much authority in his kingdom, and was obliged to make frequent concessions to hostile parties, with whom his own son occasionally made common cause. The Castilian Jews were consequently abandoned to the arbitrary authority of the local magistrates during the remainder of the reign of this well-meaning but weak monarch, and were obliged to come to terms with them whenever protection was required against violence or false accusations. Did any misfortune threaten a Jew, then the tailor would fly to his princely patron, or the goldsmith to a grandee of high position, and seek to avert it by supplications or gold. It was truly no enviable situation in which the Jews found themselves.
Eugenius' successor, Pope Nicholas V (March, 1447-March, 1455), continued the system of degrading and oppressing the Jews. As soon as he ascended the throne of St. Peter he devoted himself to abolishing the privileges of the Italian Jews, which Martin V had confirmed and Eugenius had not formally revoked, and subjecting them to exceptional laws. In a bull, dated June 23d, 1447, he repeated for Italy the restrictions which his predecessor had formulated for Castile, re-enacting them in the fullest detail, not even omitting the prohibition against the lighting of fires for Jews on the Sabbath. But though Nicholas' bull was only a copy, it had much more real force than the original; for its execution was confided to the pitiless Jew-hater and heretic-hunter, John of Capistrano. On him devolved the duty of seeing, either in person or through his brother Franciscans, that the provisions of the bull were literally obeyed, and infractions strictly punished. If, for example, a Jewish physician provided a suffering Christian with the means of regaining health, Capistrano was authorized to confiscate the whole of the offender's fortune and property. And the saintly monk, with heart of stone, was just the man to visit such a transgression with unrelenting severity.
The Jew-hatred of the council of Basle and the popes spread like a contagion over a wide area. The fierce and bigoted Bavarian Duke of Landshut, Louis the Rich--"a hunter of game and Jews"--had all the Jews of his country arrested on one day (Monday, October 5th, 1450), shortly after his accession to power. The men were thrown into prison, the women shut up in the synagogues, and their property and jewelry confiscated. Christian debtors were directed not to pay their Jewish creditors more than the capital they had originally borrowed, and to deduct from that the interest already paid. After four weeks of incarceration the unhappy Jews were obliged to purchase their lives from the turbulent duke for 30,000 gulden, and then, penniless and almost naked, they were turned out of the country. Gladly would Louis have meted out the same treatment to the large and rich community of Ratisbon, which was within his jurisdiction. As, however, his authority was recognized only to a limited extent, and as the Jews of the city were under the protection of the council and its privileges, he was obliged to content himself with levying contributions. Many Jews are said to have been driven by anxiety and want into embracing Christianity.
As the rest of the European Jews regarded their Spanish brethren as an exalted and favored class, so the papacy directed special attention to them in order to put an end to their favorable position in the state. Either on the proposition of the king to modify the severe canonical restrictions against Jews, or on the petition of their enemies to confirm them, Pope Nicholas V issued a new bull (March 1st, 1451). He confirmed the old exclusions from Christian society and all honorable walks of life, and entirely abolished the privileges of the Spanish and the Italian Jews.
The unpitying harshness of canonical legislation against the children of Israel was unconsciously based on fear. All-powerful Christianity dreaded the influence which the Jewish mind might exert on the Christian population in too familiar intercourse. What the papacy concealed in the incense-clouds of its official decrees was disclosed by a philosophical writer and cardinal standing in close relation with the papal court. Nicholas de Cusa (from Cues on the Moselle), the last devotee of scholasticism, into which he tried to introduce mystic elements, enthusiastically advocated, in the face of the dissensions of Christendom, a union of all religions in one creed. The church ceremonies he was prepared to sacrifice, nay, he was ready to accept circumcision, if, by such means, non-Christians could be won over to the belief in the Trinity. He feared, as he distinctly said, the stiffneckedness of the Jews, who cling so stubbornly to their monotheism; but he consoled himself with the reflection that an unarmed handful could not disturb the peace of the world. It is true, the Jews were unarmed; but, mentally, they were still powerful, and Nicholas resolved to devote himself to the task of depriving them of intellectual strength. The pope had appointed him legate for Germany, where he was to reform church and cloister (1450-1451). But the cardinal also occupied himself with the Jewish question. At the provincial council of Bamberg he put into force the canonical statute concerning Jew badges, which provided that men should wear round pieces of red cloth on their breasts, and women blue stripes on their head-dresses--as if the branding of Jews could heal the dissolute clergy and their demoralized flocks of their uncleanness. The only result of the isolation of the Jews was their protection from the taint of prevailing immorality. The cardinal was not successful in purifying the clergy, or in putting an end to the fraud of bleeding hosts and miracle-working images, against which he had exclaimed so loudly. The church remained corrupt to the core. There would have been abundant cause to fear the Jews, if they had been permitted to probe the suppurating wounds.
Especially troublesome to the church were the thousands of baptized Jews in Spain, who had been driven into its fold by the massacres, pulpit denunciations, and legal restrictions to which their race was exposed. Not only the lay new-Christians, but also those who had taken orders or had assumed the monk's garb, continued to observe, more or less openly, the Jewish religious laws. The sophistry of the converts, Paul de Santa Maria and Geronimo de Santa Fé, regarding the testimony in the Old Testament and the Talmudic Agada to the Messiahship of Jesus, the Incarnation of God, the Trinity and other church dogmas, impressed the Marranos but little. In spite of baptism, they remained stiff-necked and blind, i. e., true to the faith of their fathers. Don Juan of Castile, at the instigation of his favorite, Alvaro de Luna, who was anxious to strike at his arch-enemies, the new-Christians, complained to Pope Nicholas V of the relapses of the Marranos, and the pontiff knew of no remedy but force. He addressed rescripts to the bishop of Osma and the vicar of Salamanca (November 20th, 1451), empowering them to appoint inquisitors to inquire judicially into cases of new-Christians suspected of Judaizing. The inquisitors were authorized to punish the convicted, imprison them, confiscate their goods and disgrace them, to degrade even priests, and hand them over to the secular arm--a church euphemism for condemning them to the heretic's stake. This was the first spark of the hell-fire of the Inquisition, which perpetrated more inhumanity than all the tyrants and malefactors branded by history. At first this bull seems to have been ineffectual. The times were not ripe for the bloody institution. Besides, the Christians themselves helped to keep up the connection of the baptized Jews with their brethren in race. They denied equal rights to new-Christians of Jewish or Mahometan origin, and wished to exclude them from all posts of honor. Against this antipathy, inherent in the diversity of national elements, the pope was compelled to issue a bull (November 29th, 1451), but it was powerless to uproot the prejudice. It could be removed only by higher culture, not at the dictation of a church chief, even though he boasted of infallibility.
How absurd, then, to continue driving such proselytes into the church! Yet this was done by the Franciscan monk, John of Capistrano (of Neapolitan origin), who is responsible for immense injury to the Jews of many lands. This mendicant friar, of gaunt figure and ill-favored appearance, possessed a winning voice and an iron will, which enabled him to obtain unbounded influence, not only over the stupid populace, but also over the cultivated classes. With a word he could fascinate, inspire, or terrify, persuade to piety or incite to cruelty. Like the Spanish Dominican, Vincent Ferrer, the secret of Capistrano's power lay not so much in his captivating eloquence as in the sympathetic modulations of his voice and the unshakable enthusiasm with which he clung to his mistaken convictions. He himself firmly believed that, with the blood he had gathered from the nose of his master, Bernard of Siena, and his capuche, he could cure the sick, awake the dead and perform all kinds of miracles, and the misguided people not only believed but exaggerated his professions. His strictly ascetic life, his hatred of good living, luxury and debauchery, made an impression the deeper from its striking contrast to the sensuality and dissoluteness of the great bulk of the clergy and monks. Wherever Capistrano appeared, the people thronged by thousands to hear him, to be edified and agitated, even though they did not understand a syllable of his Latin addresses. The astute popes, Eugenius IV and Nicholas V, recognized in him a serviceable instrument for the restoration of the tottering authority of St. Peter. They rejoiced in his homilies on the infallibility of the papacy and his fiery harangues on the extermination of heretics, and the necessity of withstanding the victoriously advancing Turks. They offered no objection if, at the same time, he thought proper to vent his monkish gall upon harmless amusements, pastimes and the elegancies of life, seeing that they themselves were not disturbed in their enjoyments and pleasures. Among the standing themes of Capistrano's exciting discourses--second only to his rancor against heretics and Turks, and his tirades against luxury and sports--were his denunciations of the impieties and the usury of Jews. This procured his appointment by Pope Nicholas to the post of inquisitor of the Jews, his duty being to superintend the enforcement of the canonical restrictions against them. He had in Naples occupied the position of inquisitorial judge for the Jews, on the nomination of Queen Joanna, who had empowered him to punish with the severest penalties any failure to observe the ecclesiastical law or wear the Jew badge.
When this infuriate Capuchin visited Germany, he spread terror and dismay among the Jews. They trembled at the mention of his name. In Bavaria, Silesia, Moravia, and Austria, the bigotry of the Catholics, already at a high pitch on account of the Hussite schism, was further stirred by Capistrano, and, the Bohemian heretics being beyond its reach, it vented itself upon Jews. The Bavarian dukes, Louis and Albert, who had on one occasion before driven the Jews out of their territories, were made still more fanatical by Capistrano. The former demanded of certain counts, and of the city of Ratisbon, that they expel the Jews. The burgomaster and town council, however, refused, and would not withdraw the protection and the rights of citizenship which the Jews had enjoyed from an early period. But they could not shield them from the hostility of the clergy. Eventually even the Ratisbon burghers, despite their good will for their Jewish fellow-citizens, fell under the influence of Capistrano's fanaticism, and allowed themselves to be incited to acts of unfriendliness. In the midwife regulations, promulgated during the same year, occurs a clause prohibiting Christian midwives from attending Jewish women, even in cases where the lives of the patients were at stake.
The change of public feeling in respect to the Jews, brought about by Capistrano, is strikingly illustrated by the conduct of one eminent ecclesiastic before and after the appearance of the Capuchin in Germany. Bishop Godfrey, of Würzburg, reigning duke of Franconia, shortly after his accession to the government of the duchy, had granted the fullest privileges to the Jews. More favorable treatment they could not have desired. For himself and his successors he promised special protection to all within his dominions, both to those settled and those who might settle there later. They were to be freed from the authority of the ordinary tribunals, lay and ecclesiastical, and to have their disputes inquired into and adjudicated by their own courts. Their rabbi (Hochmeister) was to be exempt from taxes, and to be allowed to receive pupils in his Yeshiba at his discretion. Their movements were to be unrestricted, and those who might desire to change their place of residence were to be assisted to collect their debts, and provided with safe-conduct on their journeys. It was further promised that these privileges should never be modified or revoked, and the dean and chapter unanimously recognized and guaranteed them "for themselves and their successors in the chapter." Every Jew who took up his abode within Bishop Godfrey's jurisdiction was provided with special letters of protection. But after Capistrano had begun his agitation, how different the attitude towards Jews! We soon find the same bishop and duke of Franconia issuing, "on account of the grievous complaints against the Jews in his diocese," a statute and ordinance (1453) decreeing their banishment. They were allowed until the 18th January of the following year to sell their immovables, and within fourteen days after that date, they were to leave, for "he (the bishop) would no longer tolerate Jews in his diocese." The towns, barons, lords, and justices were enjoined to expel the Jews from their several jurisdictions, and Jewish creditors were deprived of a portion of the debts owing to them. When Jews were concerned, inhuman fanaticism could beguile a noble-hearted prince of the church and an entire chapter of ecclesiastics into a flagrant breach of faith.
Capistrano's influence was most mischievous for the Jews of Silesia. Here he showed himself in truth to be the "Scourge of the Jews," as his admirers called him. The two chief communities in this province, which belonged half to Poland and half to Bohemia, were at Breslau and Schweidnitz, and the Jews composing them, not being permitted to possess real property, and being, besides, largely engaged in the money traffic, had considerable amounts of money at their command. The majority of the nobles were among their debtors, and several towns were either themselves debtors or had become security for their princes. Hence it is not unlikely that some debtors of rank secretly planned to evade their liabilities by ridding themselves of the Jews. At any rate the advent of the fanatical Franciscan afforded an opportunity for carrying out such a design.
Capistrano came to the Silesian capital on the invitation of the bishop of Breslau, Peter Novak, who found himself unable to control his subordinate ecclesiastics. Summoning the clergy to his presence, the Franciscan preacher upbraided them for their sinful, immoral, and sensual lives. The doors of the church in which the interview took place were securely bolted, so that no lay ear might learn the full extent of the depravity of the ministers of the Gospel. But nearer to his heart than the reclamation of the clergy was the extermination of the Hussites, of whom there were many in Silesia, and the persecution of the Jews. The frenzied fanaticism with which Capistrano's harangues inspired the people of Breslau directed itself principally against the Jews. A report was spread that a Jew named Meyer, one of the wealthiest of the Breslau Israelites, in whose safe-keeping were many of the bonds of the burghers and nobles, had purchased a host from a peasant, had stabbed and blasphemed it, and then distributed its fragments among the communities of Schweidnitz, Liegnitz, and others for further desecration. It need hardly be said that the wounded host was alleged to have shed blood. This imbecile fiction soon reached the ears of the municipal authorities, with whom it found ready credence. Forthwith all the Jews of Breslau, men, women and children, were thrown into prison, their entire property in the "Judengasse" seized, and, what was most important to the authors of the catastrophe, the bonds of their debtors, worth about 25,000 Hungarian gold florins, confiscated (2d May, 1453). The guilt of the Jews was rendered more credible by the flight of a few of them, who were, however, soon taken. Capistrano assumed the direction of the inquiry into this important affair. As inquisitor, the leading voice in the prosecution of blasphemers of the consecrated wafer by right belonged to him. He ordered a few Jews to be stretched on the rack, and personally instructed the torturers in their task--he had experience in such work. The tortured Israelites confessed. Meantime another infamous lie was circulated. A wicked baptized Jewess declared that the Breslau Jews had once before burnt a host, and that, on another occasion, they had kidnaped a Christian boy, fattened him, and put him into a cask studded with sharp nails, which they rolled about until their victim gave up the ghost. His blood had been distributed among the Silesian communities. Even the bones of the murdered child were alleged to have been found. The guilt of the Jews appeared established in these various cases, and a large number, in all 318 persons, were arrested in different localities, and brought to Breslau. Capistrano sat in judgment upon them, and hurried them to execution. At the Salzring--now Blücherplatz--where Capistrano resided, forty-one convicted Jews were burnt on one day (2d June, 1453). The rabbi (Phineas?) hanged himself; he had also counseled others to take their own lives. The remainder were banished from Breslau, all their children under seven years of age having previously been taken from them by force, baptized, and given to Christians to be brought up. This was Capistrano's wish, and in a learned treatise he explained to King Ladislaus that it was in consonance with the Christian religion and orthodoxy. The honest town clerk, Eschenloer, who did not venture to protest aloud against these barbarities, wrote in his diary, "Whether this is godly or not, I leave to the judgment of the ministers of religion." The ministers of religion had transformed themselves into savages. The goods of the burnt and banished Jews were, of course, seized, and with their proceeds the Bernardine church was built. It was not the only church erected with bloody money. In the remaining Silesian towns the Jews fared no better. Some were burnt, and the rest chased away, stripped almost to the skin.
When the young king, Ladislaus, was petitioned by the Breslau town council to decree that from that time forward no Jew would be allowed to settle in Breslau, not only did he assent "for the glory of God and the honor of the Christian faith," but he added, in approval of the outrages committed, "that they (the Silesian Jews) had suffered according to their deserts," a remark worthy of the son of Albert II, who had burnt the Austrian Jews. The same monarch also sanctioned-- doubtless at the instigation of Capistrano, who passed several months at Olmütz--the expulsion of the Jews from the latter place and from Brünn.
The echoes of Capistrano's venomous eloquence reached even Poland, disturbing the Jewish communities there from the tranquillity they had enjoyed for centuries. Poland had long been a refuge for hunted and persecuted Jews. Exiles from Germany, Austria and Hungary found a ready welcome on the Vistula. The privileges generously granted them by Duke Boleslav, and renewed and confirmed by King Casimir the Great, were still in force. The Jews were, in fact, even more indispensable in that country than in other parts of Christian Europe; for in Poland there were only two classes, nobles and serfs, and the Jews supplied the place of the middle class, providing merchandise and money, and bringing the dead capital of the country into circulation. During a visit which Casimir IV paid to Posen shortly after his accession, a fire broke out in this already important city, and, with the exception of its few brick houses, it was totally destroyed. In this conflagration, the original document of the privileges granted the Jews a century before by Casimir the Great perished. Jewish deputations from a number of Polish communities waited upon the king, lamenting the loss of these records, so important to them, and praying that new ones might be prepared according to existing copies, and that all their old rights might be renewed and confirmed. Casimir did not require much persuasion. In order that they might live in security and contentment under his happy reign, he granted them privileges such as they had never before enjoyed in any European state (14th August, 1447). This king was in no respect a slave of the church. So strictly did he keep the clergy within bounds that they charged him with persecuting and robbing them. He forbade their meddling in affairs of state, saying that in such matters he preferred to rely on his own powers.
Either the king was misled by a false copy of the original charters, or he desired to avail himself of the opportunity of enlarging their scope without appearing to make fresh concessions; at all events, the privileges accorded under the new statute were, in many respects, more considerable than those formerly enjoyed by the Jews. Not alone did it permit unrestricted trading and residence all over the then very extensive kingdom of Poland, but it annulled canonical laws often laid down by the popes, and only recently re-enacted by the general church council of Basle. Casimir's charter mentioned that Jews and Christians might bathe together, and in all respects enjoy free intercourse with each other. It emphatically decreed that no Christian could summon a Jew before an ecclesiastical tribunal, and that if a Jew was so summoned, he need not appear. The palatines in their several provinces were enjoined to see that the Jews were not molested by the clergy, and generally to extend to them powerful protection. Furthermore, no Jew might be accused of using Christian blood in the Passover ceremonies, or of desecrating hosts, "Jews being innocent of such offenses, which are repudiated by their religion." If a Christian charged an individual Jew with using Christian blood, his accusation had to be supported by native, trustworthy Jewish witnesses and four similarly qualified Christian witnesses, and then the accused was to suffer for his crime, and his co-religionists were not to be dragged into it. In the event, however, of the Christian accuser not being in a position to substantiate his charge by credible testimony, he was to be punished with death. This was a check on ever-recurring calumny with its train of massacres of Jews. Casimir also recognized the judicial autonomy of the Jewish community. In criminal cases between Jews, or between Jews and Christians, the ordinary tribunals were not to interfere, but the palatine, or his representative, assisted by Jews, was to adjudicate. In minor law-suits the decision was to rest with the Jewish elders (rabbis), who were permitted to inflict a fine of six marks in cases where their summonses were not obeyed. To keep the authority of the Jewish courts within reasonable bounds, Casimir's charter enacted that the ban should be pronounced on a Jew only with the concurrence of the entire community. Truly, in no part of Christian Europe were the Jews possessed of such important privileges. They were renewed and issued by the king with the assent of the Polish magnates. Also the Karaite communities of Troki, Luzk, etc., received from Casimir a renewal and confirmation of the privileges granted them by the Lithuanian Duke Witold in the thirteenth century.
The clergy looked with jealous eyes on this complaisance to the Jews, and zealously worked to induce the king to change his friendly attitude. At the head of the Polish priesthood thus hostile to the Jews stood the influential bishop and cardinal of Cracow, Zbigniev Olesnicki. The protection accorded the Jews and Hussites by the king was to him a source of deep chagrin, and, to give effective vent to his feelings, he sent in hot haste for the heretic-hunter Capistrano. Capistrano entered Cracow in triumph, and was received by the king and the clergy like a divine being. During the whole of his stay in Cracow (August 28th, 1453, to May, 1454), aided by Bishop Zbigniev, he stirred up King Casimir against the Hussite heretics and the Jews. He publicly remonstrated with him on the subject, threatening him with hell-fire and an unsuccessful issue to his war with the Prussian order of knights, if he did not abolish the privileges enjoyed by Jews, and abandon the Hussite heretics to the church. It was easy to predict a defeat at the hands of the Prussian knights, seeing that the pope and the whole of the Polish church were secretly assisting them against Casimir.
Therefore, when the Teutonic knights, in aid of their Prussian allies, took the field against Poland, and the Polish army, with King Casimir at its head, was ignominiously put to flight (September, 1454), the game of the clerical party was won. They spread the rumor that the disaster to Poland was a consequence of the king's favor to Jews and heretics. To retrieve his fallen fortunes, and to undertake a vigorous campaign against the Prussians, Casimir needed the assistance of Bishop Zbigniev, and the latter was in a position to make his own terms. The Jews were sacrificed--the king was compelled to give them up. In November, 1454, Casimir revoked all the privileges he had granted the Jews, on the ground that "infidels may not enjoy preference over the worshipers of Christ, and servants may not be better treated than sons." By public criers the king's resolve was made known throughout the land. Besides, Casimir ordered that the Jews of Poland wear a special costume to distinguish them from Christians. Capistrano was victorious all along the line. Through him the Jews were abased even in the land where they had been most exalted. The results of this misfortune were not long in showing themselves. The Jewish communities mournfully wrote to their brethren in Germany, "that 'the monk' had brought grievous trouble," even to those who lived under the scepter of the king of Poland, whose lot had formerly been so happy that they had been able to offer a refuge to the persecuted of other lands. They had not believed that an enemy could reach them across the Polish frontier; and now they had to groan under the oppression of the king and the magnates.
Meanwhile, heavy but deserved judgment descended on Christendom. After an existence of more than a thousand years the sin-laden Byzantine empire, which had stood its ground for centuries in spite of its rottenness, had at length collapsed with the fall of Constantinople (May 29th, 1453). The Turkish conqueror, Mahomet II, had given New Rome over to slavery, spoliation, massacre, and every horror and outrage, yet had, by no means, requited the wrongs she had inflicted on others and herself. From Constantine, the founder of the Byzantine empire, who placed a blood-stained sword in the hands of the church, to the last of the emperors, Constantine Dragosses, of the Palæologus family, everyone in the long series of rulers (with the exception of the apostate Julian) was more or less inspired by falsehood and treachery, and an arrogant, hypocritical, persecuting spirit. And the people, as well as the servants of state and church, were worthy of their rulers. From them the German, Latin and Slavonic peoples had derived the principle that the Jews ought to be degraded by exceptional laws, or even exterminated. Now, however, Byzantium itself lay shattered in the dust, and wild barbarians were raising the new Turkish empire on its site. Heavy vengeance had been exacted. Mahomet II, the conqueror of Constantinople, threw a threatening glance at the remainder of Europe, the countries of the Latin Church. The whole of Christendom was in danger; yet the Christian rulers and nations were unable to organize an effective resistance against the Turkish conquerors. The perfidy and corruption of the papacy now bore bitter fruit. When the faithless pope, Nicholas V, called upon Christendom to undertake a crusade against the Turks, his legates at the diet of Ratisbon were compelled to listen to unsparing denunciation of his corruption. Neither the pope nor the emperor, they were told, had any real thought of undertaking a war against the Turks; their sole idea was to squander upon themselves the money they might collect. When the Turks made preparations to invade Hungary, and threatened to carry the victorious crescent from the right to the left side of the Danube, Capistrano preached himself hoarse to kindle enthusiasm for a new crusade. His tirades had ceased to draw. Their only effect was to assemble a ragged mob of students, peasants, mendicant friars, half-starved adventurers and romantic fanatics. The ghost of mediævalism vanished before the dawn of a new day.
It seems almost providential that, at a moment when the persecutions in Europe were increasing in number and virulence, the new Turkish empire should have arisen to offer an hospitable asylum to the hunted Jews. When, three days after the chastisement which he inflicted on Constantinople, the sultan, Mahomet II, proclaimed that all the fugitive inhabitants might return to their homes and estates without fear of molestation, he gave a benevolent thought to the Jews. He permitted them to settle freely in Constantinople and other towns, allotted them special dwelling-places, and allowed them to erect synagogues and schools. Soon after his capture of Constantinople, he ordered the election of a Greek patriarch, whom he invested with a certain political authority over all the Greeks in his new dominions, and also nominated a chief rabbi to preside over the Hebrew communities. This was a pious, learned, upright Israelite, named Moses Kapsali. Mahomet even summoned this rabbi to the divan, and singled him out for special distinction, giving him a seat next to the mufti, the Chief Ulema of the Mahometans, and precedence over the patriarch. Moses Kapsali (born about 1420, died about 1495), also received from the sultan a kind of political suzerainty over the Jewish communities in Turkey. The taxes imposed upon the Jews he had to apportion among communities and individuals; he had to superintend their collection and to pay them into the sultan's exchequer. He was furthermore empowered to inflict punishment on his co-religionists, and no rabbi could hold office without his sanction. In short, he was the chief and the official representative of a completely organized Jewish communal system.
This favorable situation of the Jews had a stimulating effect on the degenerate Karaites, who migrated in considerable numbers from Asia, the Crimea and southern Poland, to take up their abode with their more happily placed brethren in Constantinople and Adrianople. The Karaites, whose fundamental principle is the study and reasonable interpretation of the Bible, were in so lamentable a state of ignorance, that their entire religious structure had become a system of authorized dogmas and traditions more rigid even than that of the Rabbanites. The extent of their intellectual decline may be measured by the fact that in the course of a century they failed to produce a single moderately original theological writer. Those with a bent for study were compelled to sit at the feet of Rabbanite teachers and receive from them instruction in the Scriptures and the Talmud. The proud masters of Bible exegesis had become the humble disciples of the once despised Rabbanites. The petrifaction of Karaism is illustrated by an event in European Turkey. A Karaite college, consisting of Menachem Bashyasi, his son Moses Bashyasi, Menachem Maroli, Michael the Old, his son Joseph, and a few others, had permitted the lights necessary for the Sabbath eve to be prepared on Friday, so that the holy day need not be spent in darkness. The college gave adequate reasons for the innovation. According to a Karaite principle, not only an ecclesiastical authority, but any individual is justified in abolishing an ancient custom, or annulling former decisions, if he can cite sufficient exegetical authority. Nevertheless, stormy opposition arose (about 1460) against this decision, aimed at a custom derived, perhaps, from Anan, the founder of Karaism, and hence possessing the sacredness conferred by the rust of seven centuries. Schism and friction were the result. The section of the community which ventured to prepare the lights required for the Sabbath eve was abused, and charged with heresy. Moreover, the schism relating to the commencement of the festivals was still unhealed. The Palestinian Karaite communities and their neighbors continued to distinguish between an ordinary and a leap year by the state of the barley harvest, and to regulate their festivals by the appearance of the new moon. On the other hand, the communities in Turkey, the Crimea, and southern Poland, used the calendar of the Rabbanites. These hereditary differences were eating more and more into the solidarity of the sect, for there was no means of composing them, and agreeing upon uniform principles.
The conspicuous decrepitude of Karaism and the ignorance of its followers afforded the Rabbanites in the Turkish empire an opportunity for reconciling them to Talmudic Judaism, or, at least, overcoming their bitter hostility towards it. Rabbanite teachers, Enoch Saporta, an immigrant from Catalonia, Eliezer Kapsali, from Greece, and Elias Halevi, from Germany, stipulated that their Karaite pupils, whom they instructed in the Talmud, should thenceforward abstain, in writing and in speech, from reviling Talmudic authorities, and from desecrating the festivals of the Rabbanite calendar. In the difficult position in which studiously inclined Karaites found themselves, they could not do otherwise than give this promise. The Turkish chief rabbi, Moses Kapsali, was of opinion that, as the Karaites rejected the Talmud, they might not be taught in it. But he was a disciple of the strict German school, which, in its gloomy ultra-piety, would allow no concessions, even though the gradual conversion of a dissenting sect could be effected.
When contrasted with the miserable condition of the Jews in Germany, the lot of those who had taken up their abode in the newly-risen Turkish empire must have seemed unalloyed happiness. Jewish immigrants who had escaped the ceaseless persecutions to which they had been subjected in Germany expressed themselves in terms of rapture over the happy condition of the Turkish Jews. Unlike their co-religionists under Christian rule, they were not compelled to yield up the third part of their fortunes in royal taxes; nor were they in any way hindered in the conduct of business. They were permitted to dispose of their property as they pleased, and had absolute freedom of movement throughout the length and breadth of the empire. They were subject to no sumptuary laws, and were thus able to clothe themselves in silk and gold, if they chose.
The fruitful lands taken from the slothful Greek Christians were occupied by them, and offered rich reward to their industry. Turkey was, in short, correctly described by an enthusiastic Jew as a land "in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is wanting." Two young immigrants, Kalmann and David, thought that if German Jews realized but a tenth part of the happiness to be found in Turkey, they would brave any hardships to get there. These two young men persuaded Isaac Zarfati, who had journeyed in Turkey in earlier times, and whose name was by no means unknown in Germany, to write a circular letter to the Jews of the Rhineland, Styria, Moravia and Hungary, to acquaint them with the happy lot of Jews under the crescent as compared with their hard fate under the shadow of the cross, and to call upon them to escape from the German house of bondage and emigrate to Turkey. The lights and shadows of his subject could not have been more sharply defined than they are in Zarfati's letter (written in 1456), whose graphic, often somewhat too artificial language does not readily lend itself to translation:
"I have heard of the afflictions, more bitter than death, that have befallen our brethren in Germany--of the tyrannical laws, the compulsory baptisms and the banishments. And when they flee from one place, a yet harder fate befalls them in another. I hear an insolent people raising its voice in fury against the faithful; I see its hand uplifted to smite them. On all sides I learn of anguish of soul and torment of body; of daily exactions levied by merciless extortioners. The clergy and the monks, false priests, rise up against the unhappy people of God and say: 'Let us pursue them even unto destruction; let the name of Israel be no more known among men.' They imagine that their faith is in danger because the Jews in Jerusalem might, peradventure, buy the Church of the Sepulcher. For this reason they have made a law that every Jew found upon a Christian ship bound for the East shall be flung into the sea. Alas! how evilly are the people of God in Germany entreated; how sadly is their strength departed! They are driven hither and thither, and they are pursued even unto death. The sword of the oppressor ever hangs over their heads; they are flung into the devouring flames, into swift flowing rivers and into foul swamps. Brothers and teachers! friends and acquaintances! I, Isaac Zarfati, from a French stock, born in Germany, where I sat at the feet of my teachers, I proclaim to you that Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking. If ye will, all shall yet be well with you. The way to the Holy Land lies open to you through Turkey. Is it not better for you to live under Moslems than under Christians? Here every man may dwell at peace under his own vine and his own fig-tree. In Christendom, on the contrary, ye dare not clothe your children in red or in blue, according to your taste, without exposing them to insult and yourselves to extortion; and, therefore, are ye condemned to go about meanly clad in sad-colored raiment. All your days are full of sorrow, even your Sabbaths and the times appointed for feasting. Strangers enjoy your goods; and, therefore, of what profit is the wealth of your rich men? They hoard it but to their own sorrow, and in a day it is lost to them for ever. Ye call your riches your own--alas! they belong to your oppressors. They bring false accusations against you. They respect neither age nor wisdom; and, though they gave you a pledge sealed sixty-fold, yet would they break it. They continually lay double punishments upon you, a death of torment and confiscation of goods. They prohibit teaching in your schools; they break in upon you during your hours of prayer; and they forbid you to work or conduct your business on Christian feast-days. And now, seeing all these things, O Israel, wherefore sleepest thou? Arise, and leave this accursed land for ever!"
Isaac Zarfati's appeal induced many Jews to emigrate forthwith to Turkey and Palestine. Their grave demeanor, extreme piety, and peculiar apparel at once distinguished them from the Jews of Greece and the Orient, and ere long the new-comers exercised considerable influence upon the other inhabitants of the countries in which they settled.
There were peculiar circumstances connected with the prohibition of the emigration of Jews to Palestine. The Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem had obtained permission from a pasha to build a synagogue on one of the slopes of Mount Zion. The site of this synagogue adjoined a piece of land owned by Franciscan monks, or rather containing the ruins of one of their chapels, known as David's chapel. When this permission was given to the Jews, the monks raised as much clamor as though all Palestine, including the Holy City, had been their peculiar inheritance since the beginning of time. They forthwith carried their complaints to the pope, and represented that, if the Jews were permitted to take such liberties as this, it would not be long before they took possession of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher itself. The pope at once issued a bull directing that no Christian shipowner should convey Jewish emigrants to the Holy Land. As the Levantine trade was at that time almost entirely in the hands of the Venetians, the doge was prevailed upon to issue stringent orders to all the shipmasters of the mainland and the islands not to give passage to Palestine to any Jews.
It is, indeed, strange that, while the Christian powers were under the impression that they had hemmed in the children of Israel on all sides like hunted animals, the Turks of Eastern Europe opened a way of escape to them. Ere another half century had passed, their Spanish brethren, savagely hunted from the Peninsula, were destined to seek the same asylum.
It must, however, be admitted that under the sway of the Castilian king, Henry IV, and that of John II, of Aragon, the condition of the Spanish Jews was one of comparative peace and comfort. But it was the calm that went before the storm. The doubly impotent Castilian king was gentle to a degree ill-befitting a ruler of men. Although, as Infante, Don Henry had allowed himself to be persuaded by his partisans to replenish his exhausted coffers by plundering the houses, not only of the Jews, but also of the new-Christians or converts from Judaism, he had no personal antipathy to the people of Israel. A Jewish physician was his confidential minister. Not long after his accession to the throne he had even sent him to the Portuguese court on the most delicate mission of obtaining the hand of the young, beautiful princess of Portugal for his sovereign. The Jewish diplomatist brought his mission to a successful conclusion, but was assassinated in the hour of his success.
In spite of the papal bull and the repeated ordinances of the cities, Don Henry employed a Jewish farmer of taxes, one Don Chacon, a native of Vitoria; and he, too, fell a sacrifice to his office. A rabbi, Jacob Ibn-Nuñez, his private physician, was appointed by Henry to apportion and collect the tribute of the Jews of Castile; while Abraham Bibago, yet another Jew of eminence, stood high in the favor of John II of Aragon.
The example of the courts naturally affected the greater nobles, who, when their own interests were not concerned, troubled themselves very little about ecclesiastical edicts. The practice of medicine was still entirely in the hands of Jews, and opened to them the cabinets and the hearts of kings and nobles. It was in vain that papal bulls proclaimed that Christians should not employ Jewish physicians. There were few or no Christians who understood the healing art, and the sick had no recourse save to the skill of the Jews. Even the higher clergy had but little regard for the bulls of Eugenius, Nicholas, and Calixtus. They had too much care for the health of the flesh to refuse the medical aid of the Jews on account of a canonical decree. Most of the tyrannical restrictions belonging to the minority of John II and the times of the regent Catalina were completely forgotten. Only on one point did Henry insist with rigor. He would not permit the Jews to clothe themselves luxuriously. This was partly on account of his own preference for simplicity of dress, partly because he was desirous that the envy of Christians should not be excited against them. Under the mild rule of Don Henry, the Jews who had been more or less compulsorily baptized either returned to their faith, or at least observed the Jewish ritual unmolested. During the Feast of the Passover they lived upon rice entirely in order, on the one hand, to partake of nothing leavened, and, on the other, to avoid the suspicion of Judaism.
Hatred of the Jew, which burnt most fiercely in the great towns, naturally made it impossible for the orthodox to behold without indignation this favoritism towards the supposed enemies of their faith, and they made use of a weapon whose efficacy had been proved in other lands. The cry went forth: The Jews have put Christian children to death! Then came the report that "a Jew in the neighborhood of Salamanca had torn a child's heart out;" or, "Jews elsewhere have cut pieces of flesh out of a living Christian child," and so on. By means of such rumors, the fanaticism of the mob was speedily inflamed, the magistrates took up the matter, and the accused Jews were thrown into prison.
The king, well aware of the origin and object of these accusations, had them thoroughly sifted, with the result that the innocence of the accused was completely established. Notwithstanding this fact, the enemies of the Jews maintained their guilt. Some insinuated that the judges had been bribed; while others asserted that the new-Christians had exerted themselves in behalf of their kinsmen, and that the king himself was partial to them.
Among all their enemies the man who raged most bitterly and fiercely against the Spanish Jews was a preacher in Salamanca, Alfonso de Spina, a Franciscan monk, of the same order and opinions as Capistrano. Instead of the venomed tongue, he used the poisoned pen against them. This man enjoyed a certain amount of fame, because he happened to have accompanied Alvaro de Luna, the once all-powerful minister of John II, to the scaffold as his confessor. This bigoted priest thundered unceasingly from the altar steps against the Jews and their patrons, and especially against the new-Christians as secret adherents of their former faith. As his preaching did not appear to him to produce sufficient effect, De Spina issued, in 1460, a virulent work in Latin, directed against Jews, Moslems, and other heretics, under the title "Fortalitium Fidei." In this book he collected everything that the enemies of the Jews had ever written or said against them. He reproduced every absurd legend and idle tale that he could procure, and seasoned the whole collection with every device of rhetoric that his malice could suggest. In his opinion it was only right and natural that all Moslems and heretics should be exterminated root and branch. Against the Jews, however, he proposed to employ apparently lenient measures. He would simply take their younger children from them, and bring them up as Christians, an idea for which he was indebted to the scholastic philosopher, Duns Scotus, and his fellow Franciscan, Capistrano. De Spina most deeply deplored that the various laws for the persecution of the Jews, promulgated during the minority of John II, were no longer in force under his successor. In most trenchant words he rebuked the king, the nobles and the clergy for the favor that they showed to Jews; and, in order to inflame the mob, he untiringly retailed all the old fables of child-murder, theft of the host, and the like, in the most circumstantial narrative, and insinuated that the partiality of the king permitted these abominable crimes to go unpunished.
The fanaticism aroused by Alfonso de Spina was by no means without effect; indeed, the most lamentable consequences ere long resulted from it. A monk, crucifix in hand, proposed a general massacre of the Jews of Medina del Campo, near Valladolid, and his words were favorably received. The inhabitants of the town fell upon the Jews, and burnt several of them alive with the sacred books which they happened to find in their possession. Murder was naturally followed by plunder of the victims' goods. The king had the ringleaders of this outrage punished; but this was all that he could do. He was unable to prevent a recurrence of such scenes. He had been compelled to recognize the abject position of the Jews officially in the statute book which his advisers, his secret enemies, Don Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, and the Count of Valencia, prepared at his request. Don Pacheco, who by his intrigues brought both king and country to confusion, was himself of Jewish blood, his mother, who had married a Spanish noble, being the daughter of a Jew named Ruy Capron. Notwithstanding this fact, he included the most odious enactments in Don Henry's revised statute book. All the earlier disabilities were revived: the exclusion of Jews from all offices, even from practice as apothecaries, the wearing of distinctive badges, restriction to the Jewries of towns, and even confinement to their houses during Holy Week.
The civil war kindled by the intrigues of Don Pacheco and other courtiers through the burlesque deposition of Don Henry in Avila, and the coronation of his younger brother, Alfonso, bore more heavily on the Jews than even on the general population of Castile.
In 1467 Alfonso's party had by treason become master of Segovia, and immediately a riot against the Jews began here. The enemies of this unhappy people spread the report that, on the suggestion of their rabbi, Solomon Picho, the Jews of the little community of Sepulveda, not far from Segovia, had during Holy Week so cruelly tortured a Christian child that it died upon the cross (April, 1468). On the motion of Bishop Juan Arias, of Avila, of Jewish race, several Jews (eight or sixteen, according to different accounts), whom the popular voice had accused, were hauled from Sepulveda to Segovia, and there condemned to the stake, the gallows and the bowstring, whereupon the Christians of Sepulveda fell upon the few remaining Jews of the community, massacred some, and hunted the rest from the neighborhood. Is it not strange that in Castile and in Silesia, in Italy and in Poland, the selfsame accusations were raised, and followed by the same sentences?
Scarcely was Alfonso's party dissolved by the death of its puppet king before another sprang up, which professed to defend the rights of the Infanta Isabella, sister of Don Henry. The utter weakness which Henry betrayed encouraged the rebels to make the most outrageous assaults upon his prerogatives. The cortes convened at Ocaña in 1469, wishing to humiliate him, took up the Jewish question. They reminded him of the laws of his ancestors, and told him to his face that he had violated these laws by endowing Jews with the chief offices in the collection of the royal revenues. They further asserted that, owing to this distinguished example, even princes of the church had farmed out the revenues of their dioceses to Jews and Moslems, and that the tax-farmers actually levied their contributions in the churches. In conclusion, they insisted that the edicts be once more stringently enforced, and that heavy penalties be imposed for their transgression.
The finances of this monarch, who, in consequence of his liberality and the expense of putting down the ever-recurring revolts against his authority, was in constant need of money, would have been in a sorry condition had he intrusted them to Christian tax-farmers. The latter bid only a small amount for the privilege; moreover, they might have made use of the rebellious factions to rid themselves of their obligations. A king who said to his treasurer: "Give to these that they may serve me, and to those that they may not rob me; to this end I am king, and have treasures and revenues for all purposes"--such a king could not dispense with Jewish financiers.
Thus there existed, in Castile, an antagonism between the edicts against the Jews and the interests of the state; and this antagonism roused the mob, inspired alike by ecclesiastical fanaticism and envious greed against their Jewish fellow-townsmen, to the perpetration of bloody outrages. The fury of the orthodox was also excited against the new-Christians, or Marranos, because, happier than their former fellow-believers, they were promoted to the highest offices in the state by reason of their superior talents.
The marriage of the Infanta Isabella with Don Ferdinand, Infante of Aragon, on the 19th of October, 1469, marked a tragical crisis in the history of the Spanish Jews. Without the knowledge of her royal brother, and in open breach of faith--since she had solemnly promised to marry only with his consent--she had followed the advice of her intriguing friends, and had given her hand to the Prince of Aragon, who, both in Jewish and in Spanish history, under the title of "The Catholic," has left an accursed memory behind him. Don Abraham Senior had promoted this marriage, hoping by it to increase the welfare of his brethren. Many new complications arose in Castile out of this union. Isabella's partisans, anticipating that under her rule and that of her husband the persecution of the Jews would be made legal, took up arms in Valladolid, Isabella's capital, and fell upon the new-Christians (September, 1470). The victims assumed the defensive, but were soon compelled to surrender. Thereupon they sent a deputation to Henry, begging him to protect them. The king did, indeed, collect troops, and march against the rebellious city, but he had to be grateful that he himself was well received by the citizens, and could not think of punishing even the ringleaders.
Two years later the new-Christians underwent a persecution, which surely must have caused them to repent having taken shelter at the foot of the cross. The religious populace blamed the Marranos, not altogether without reason, for confessing Christianity with their lips while in their souls they despised it. It was said that they either did not bring their children to be baptized, or if they were baptized, took them back to their houses and washed the stain of baptism off their foreheads. They used no lard at their tables, only oil; they abstained from pork, celebrated the Jewish Passover, and contributed oil for the use of the synagogues. They were further said to have but small respect for cloisters, and were supposed to have profaned sacred relics and debauched nuns. The new-Christians, were, in fact, looked upon as a cunning and ambitious set of people, who sought eagerly for the most profitable offices, thought only of accumulating riches, and avoided hard work. They were believed to consider themselves as living in Spain as Israel did in Egypt, and to hold it to be quite permissible to plunder and outwit the orthodox. These accusations were not by any means merited by the new-Christians as a body, but they served to inflame the mob, and caused it to hate the converts even more bitterly than the Jews themselves.
The outbreak above referred to arose as follows: A certain princess was going through the streets of Cordova with the picture of the Virgin under a canopy, and a girl, a new-Christian, either by accident or design, poured some water out of a window on the canopy. The consequence was a frenzied rising against the converted Jews. An excited smith incited the Christian mob to avenge the insult offered to the holy picture--for it was said that the girl had poured something unclean upon it--and in an instant her father's house was in flames. The nobles sought to defend the Marranos, and in the skirmish, the smith was killed. This so enraged the already furious mob that the men-at-arms were forced to retire. The houses of the new-Christians were now broken into, plundered, and then reduced to ashes; while those who had not been able to save themselves by flight were massacred in the most barbarous manner (March 14th-15th, 1472). The fugitives were hunted like wild beasts in the chase. Wherever they were seen, the most horrible death inevitably awaited them. Even the peasant at work in the field struck them down without ado. The slaughter which thus began at Cordova spread rapidly from town to town. Those of the Cordovan fugitives who had found a temporary refuge in Palma lost no time in seeking a stronghold to afford them protection from the tempest of persecution. One of their company, Pedro de Herrera, held in the highest respect both by his fellow-sufferers and the governor, De Aguilar, went to Seville to seek an interview with the duke of Medina-Sidonia, lieutenant-governor of the province. He asked for the fortress of Gibraltar as a city of refuge for himself and his brethren, under their own command. In return, he promised to pay a considerable yearly tribute. The duke had signified his consent to this proposition, and the new-Christians had betaken themselves to Seville to sign the contract, when the friends of the duke took alarm. They believed that the Marranos were not to be trusted, and expressed the fear that they might enter into an alliance with the Moors, and deliver the key of the Spanish coast into their hands. The duke, however, insisted upon completing the contract, whereupon the opponents of the scheme gave the signal to the mob of Seville, which instantly rose against the new-Christians in an outburst of fanatical frenzy. It was with difficulty that the governor protected them. They were forced to return hastily to Palma, were waylaid by the country people, and ill-treated and plundered (1473).
Thus the plan of Pedro de Herrera and his friends served only to bring greater misery upon them, endangering the whole body of new-Christians as well as the Jews themselves. As early as this, the idea took shape among both the converted and the unbaptized Jews to leave the now inhospitable Peninsula and emigrate to Flanders or Italy.
Attacks upon the new-Christians were now so frequent that they suggested to the cunning and ambitious minister, Pacheco, the means of carrying out a coup d'état. This unscrupulous intriguer, who for two decades had kept Castile in constant confusion, saw with secret chagrin that the reconciliation of Don Henry with his sister and successor bade fair to completely annul his influence. To bring about new complications he determined to gain possession of the citadel (Alcazar) of Segovia, at that time occupied by the king. With this end in view, he instigated, through his dependents, another assault upon the baptized Jews, during the confusion of which his accomplices were to seize Cabrera, the governor of the castle, and, if possible, the king himself. The conspiracy was betrayed only a few hours before it was to be carried into action; but the attack upon the new-Christians was perpetrated. Armed bands perambulated the streets of Segovia, broke into the houses of the Marranos, and slew every man, woman and child that fell into their hands (May 16th, 1474).
The crowning misfortune of the Jewish race in Spain came in the death of Don Henry in the following December. The rulers of the united kingdoms of Aragon and Castile now were his sister, the bigoted Isabella, who was led by advisers hostile to the Jews, and Ferdinand, her unscrupulous husband, who pretended to be excessively pious. Sad and terrible was the fate that impended over the sons of Jacob throughout the length and breadth of the Pyrenean Peninsula.
Chapter IX
THE JEWS IN ITALY AND GERMANY BEFORE THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN.
Position of the Jews of Italy--The Jewish Bankers--Yechiel of Pisa--His Relations with Don Isaac Abrabanel--Jewish Physicians, Guglielmo di Portaleone--Revival of Learning among Italian Jews--Messer Leon and Elias del Medigo--Pico di Mirandola, the Disciple of Medigo--Predilection of Christians for the Kabbala--Jochanan Aleman--Religious Views of Del Medigo--German Rabbis immigrate into Italy--Joseph Kolon, his Character and his Feud with Messer Leon--Judah Menz an Antagonist of Del Medigo--Bernardinus of Feltre--Jews banished from Trent on a False Charge of Child-Murder--The Doge of Venice and Pope Sixtus IV befriend the Jews--Sufferings of the Jews of Ratisbon--Israel Bruna--Synod at Nuremberg--Emperor Frederick III.
1474-1492 C.E.
The Spanish Jews would have belied their native penetration and the wisdom born of bitter experience had they not foreseen that their position would ere long become unbearable.
Because they did foresee it, they turned their gaze towards those countries whose inhabitants were most favorably disposed towards Jews. Italy and the Byzantine Empire, just wrested from the cross, were now the countries of greatest toleration. In Italy, where men saw most clearly the infamy of the papacy and the priesthood, and where they had most to suffer from their selfishness, the church and her servants were utterly without influence over the people. The world-wide commerce of the wealthy and flourishing republics of Venice, Florence, Genoa and Pisa, had in a measure broken through the narrow bounds of superstition, and enlarged men's range of vision. The interests of the market-place had driven the interests of the church into the background. Wealth and ability were valued even in those who did not repeat the Catholic confession of faith. Not only the merchants, but also the most exalted princes were in need of gold to support the mercenary legions of their Condottieri in their daily feuds. The Jews, as capitalists and skillful diplomatists, were, therefore, well received in Italy. This is proved by the fact that when the city of Ravenna was desirous of uniting itself to Venice, it included among the conditions of union the demand that wealthy Jews be sent to it to open credit-banks and thus relieve the poverty of the populace.
Jewish capitalists received, either from the reigning princes or the senates, in many Italian cities, extensive privileges, permitting them to open banks, establish themselves as brokers, and even charge a high rate of interest (20 per cent). The archbishop of Mantua in 1476 declared in the name of the pope that the Jews were permitted to lend money upon interest. The canonical prohibition of usury could not withstand the pressure of public convenience. The Jewish communal regulations also tended to guard the bankers from illegal competition, for the rabbis threatened with the ban all those members of the community who lent money on interest without proper authorization.
A Jew of Pisa, named Yechiel, controlled the money market of Tuscany. He was, by no means, a mere heartless money-maker, as the Christians were wont to call him, but rather a man of noble mind and tender heart, ever ready to assist the poor with his gold, and to comfort the unfortunate by word and deed. Yechiel of Pisa was also familiar with and deeply interested in Hebrew literature, and maintained friendly relations with Isaac Abrabanel, the last of the Jewish statesmen of the Peninsula. When Alfonso V of Portugal took the African seaboard towns of Arzilla and Tangier, and carried off Jews of both sexes and every age captive, the Portuguese community became inspired with the pious desire to ransom them. Abrabanel placed himself at the head of a committee to collect money for this purpose. As the Portuguese Jews were not able to support the ransomed prisoners until they found means of subsistence, Abrabanel, in a letter to Yechiel of Pisa, begged him to make a collection in Italy. His petition was heeded.
The Jews of Italy were found to be desirable citizens, not only for their financial ability, but also for their skill as physicians. In his letter to Yechiel, Abrabanel asked whether there were Jewish physicians in the Italian states, and whether the princes of the church employed them. "Physicians," he said, "possess the key to the hearts of the great, upon whom the fate of the Jews depends."
A celebrated Jewish doctor, Guglielmo (Benjamin?) di Portaleone, of Mantua, first was physician in ordinary to Ferdinand of Naples, who ennobled him; he next entered the service of Duke Galeazzo Sforza, of Milan, and in 1479 became body physician to Duke Ludovico Gonzaga. He was the founder of a noble house and of a long line of skillful Italian physicians. There even arose an intimate relation between Jews and Christians in Italy. When a wealthy Jew--Leo, of Crema-- on the marriage of his son, arranged magnificent festivities which lasted eight days, a great number of Christians took part, dancing and enjoying themselves to the intense displeasure of the clergy. Totally forgotten seemed the bull in which Nicholas V had quite recently forbidden under heavy penalties all intercourse of Christians with Jews, as well as the employment of Jewish physicians. In place of the canonically prescribed livery of degradation, the Jewish doctors wore robes of honor like Christians of similar standing; while the Jews connected with the courts wore golden chains and other honorable insignia. The contrast between the condition of Jews in Italy and that of their brethren in other lands is well illustrated by two similar incidents, occurring simultaneously in Italy and Germany, but differing greatly in their issues.
The mother of a family in Pavia, in consequence of differences with her husband, had given notice of her desire to be received into the Catholic Church. She was put into a convent where she was to be prepared for baptism. The bishop's vicar, with other spiritual advisers, was earnestly occupied with the salvation of her soul, when she was suddenly seized with remorse. The bishop of Pavia, far from punishing her for this relapse, or seeking to oppose her desire, interceded for her with her husband. He advised him to take her out of the convent forthwith, and testified most favorably as to her behavior, so that her husband, a descendant of the family of Aaron, might not be obliged, under the Jewish law, to put her away.
In the same year a spiteful fellow in Ratisbon, Kalmann, a precentor (Chazan), took the fancy to turn Christian. He frequented the convent, attended church, and at length the bishop received him in his house, and instructed him in the Christian religion. To curry favor with the Christians he calumniated his fellow-believers by asserting that they possessed blasphemous writings against Christianity. Kalmann also came to rue the step he had taken. He secretly attended the synagogue, and at length, during the absence of the bishop, left his house, and returned to the Jews. The clergy of Ratisbon were infuriated against him, arraigned him before the Inquisition, and charged him with having sought to blaspheme the church, God, and the blessed Virgin. He was specially charged with having said that, if baptized, he would remain a Christian only till he found himself at liberty. On the strength of this, he was condemned, and put to death by drowning.
Wherever even a little indulgence was granted the Jews, their dormant energy revived; and the Italian Jews were able to display it all the sooner from the fact that they had gained a certain degree of culture in the days of Immanuel and Leone Romano. They took an active part in the intellectual revival and scientific renascence which distinguished the times of the Medici. Jewish youths attended the Italian universities, and acquired a liberal education. The Italian Jews were the first to make use of the newly-discovered art of Gutenberg, and printing-houses soon rose in many parts of Italy--in Reggio, Ferrara, Pieva di Sacco, Bologna, Soncino, Iscion, and Naples. In the artistic creations of the time, however, in painting and sculpture, the Jews had no share. These lay outside their sphere. But several educated Jews did not a little for the advancement and spread of science in Italy. Two deserve especial mention: Messer Leon and Elias del Medigo, the latter of whom not only received the light of science, but also shed it abroad.
Messer Leon, or, by his Hebrew name, Judah ben Yechiel, of Naples, flourished between 1450 and 1490, and was both rabbi and physician in Mantua. In addition to being thoroughly versed in Hebrew literature, he was a finished Latin scholar, and had a keen appreciation of the subtleties of Cicero's and Quintilian's style. Belonging to the Aristotelian school, he expounded several of the writings of the philosopher so highly esteemed in synagogue and church, and wrote a grammar and a book on logic, in the Hebrew language, for Jewish students. More important than these writings is his Hebrew rhetoric (Nófeth Zufim), in which he lays down the laws upon which the grace, force and eloquence of the higher style depend, and proves that the same laws underlie sacred literature. He was the first Jew to compare the language of the Prophets and Psalmists with Cicero's--certainly a hardy undertaking in those days when the majority of Jews and Christians held the Scriptures in such infinite reverence that a comparison with profane pagan literature must have seemed a species of blasphemy. Of course, this was possible only in the times of the Medici, when love for Greek and Latin antiquities rose to positive enthusiasm. Messer Leon, the learned rabbi of Mantua, was liberal in all respects. He was never weary of rebuking the formal pietists for striving to withhold foreign influences from Judaism, as though it could be profaned by them. He was rather of opinion that Judaism could only gain by comparisons with the culture of the ancient classical literatures, since thereby its beauty and sublimity would be brought to light.
Elias del Medigo, or Elias Cretensis (1463-1498), the scion of a German family that had emigrated to Crete, is a striking figure in later Jewish history. He was the first great man produced by Italian Judaism. His was a mind that shone clearly and brilliantly out of the clouds which obscured his age; the mind of a man of varied and profound knowledge, and of both classical and philosophical culture. So completely had he assimilated the Latin literary style that he was able, not only to issue works in that language, but also to present Hebrew syntax under Latin analogies.
Medigo kept aloof from the vacuity of Italian sciolists, who were under the spell of the newly-discovered neo-Platonic philosophy introduced by Ficinus. He gave allegiance to those sound thinkers, Aristotle, Maimuni, and Averroes, whose systems he made known to Christian inquirers in Italy, by tongue and pen, through the medium of translations and in independent works. That youthful prodigy of his time, Count Giovanni Pico di Mirandola, made the acquaintance of Medigo, and became his disciple, friend and protector. Mirandola, who was a marvel by reason of his wonderful memory, wide erudition, and dialectic skill, and was, moreover, on friendly terms with the ruling house of the Medicis in Tuscany, learnt from his Jewish friend the Hebrew language, and the Arabic development of the Aristotelian philosophy, but he might also have learnt clearness of thought from him.
On one occasion a quarrel on a learned subject broke out in the University of Padua. The professors and students were divided into two parties, and, according to Christian custom, were on the point of settling the question with rapier and poniard. The University, acting with the Venetian senate, which was desirous of ending the dispute, called upon Elias del Medigo to act as umpire. Everyone confidently expected a final settlement from his erudition and impartiality. Del Medigo argued out the theme, and by the weight of his decision brought the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. The result was that he became a public lecturer on philosophy, and discoursed to large audiences in Padua and Florence. The spectacle was, indeed, notable. Under the very eyes of the papacy, ever striving for the humiliation and enslavement of the Jews, Christian youths were imbibing wisdom from the lips of a Jewish teacher. Against the protectors of Jews in Spain it hurled the thunders of excommunication, while in Italy it was forced passively to behold favors constantly showered upon the Jews by Christians.
Pico di Mirandola, a scholar rather than a thinker, took a fancy to plunge into the abysses of the Kabbala. He was initiated into the Kabbalistic labyrinth by a Jew, Jochanan Aleman, who had emigrated from Constantinople to Italy. Aleman, himself a confused thinker, made him believe that the secret doctrine was of ancient origin, and contained the wisdom of the ages. Mirandola, who had a marvelous faculty of assimilation, soon familiarized himself with the Kabbalistic formulæ, and discovered confirmations of Christian dogma in them; in fact, he found far more of Christianity than of Judaism. The extravagances of the Kabbala demonstrated in his eyes the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Original Sin, the Fall of the Angels, Purgatory, and Eternal Punishment. He lost no time in translating several Kabbalistic writings from Hebrew into Latin in order to bring this occult lore to the knowledge of Christian readers. Among the nine hundred points which Pico, at the age of twenty-four, pledged himself to defend--to which end he invited all the learned of the world to Rome, and undertook to pay the cost of their journeys--was this: No science affords more certainty as to the Godhead of Christ than Kabbala and magic! Even Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) was by this means so strongly attracted to the Kabbala that he was eager to procure Latin translations of Kabbalistic writings for the benefit of the Catholic faith.
It is a striking proof of his sober mind and healthy judgment that Elias del Medigo kept himself aloof from all this mental effeminacy and childish enthusiasm for the pseudo-doctrine of the Kabbala. He had profound contempt for the Kabbalistic phantom, and did not hesitate to expose its worthlessness. He had the courage openly to express his opinion that the Kabbala is rooted in an intellectual swamp, that no trace of this doctrine is to be found in the Talmud, that the recognized authorities of ancient Judaism knew nothing of it, and that its supposed sacred and ancient groundwork, the Zohar, was by no means the work of the celebrated Simon bar Yochaï, but the production of a forger. In short, he considered the Kabbala to be made up of the rags and tatters of the neo-Platonic school.
Del Medigo had, in fact, very sound and healthy views on religion. Although a warm adherent of Judaism, entertaining respect also for its Talmudic element, he was yet far from indorsing and accepting as truth all that appears in the Talmud. When requested by one of his Jewish disciples, Saul Cohen Ashkenasi, of Candia, to give his confession of Jewish faith, especially his views on the signs which distinguish a true religion, Elias Cretensis issued a small but pregnant work, "The Investigation of Religion" (Bechinath ha-Dath), which gives a deep insight into his methods of thought.
It cannot be maintained that Del Medigo suggested novel trains of thought in his work. In general, the Italians were not destined to endow Judaism with new ideas. Moreover, he occupied the standpoint of belief rather than of inquiry, and his aim was to defend, not to cut new paths. Standing alone in the mental barrenness of his age, Del Medigo's sound views are like an oasis in the desert. He must be credited, too, with having recognized as deformities, and with desiring to remove, the additions to Judaism by Kabbalists and pseudo-philosophers.
Unfortunately, the rabbis who emigrated from Germany to Italy assumed an attitude distinctly hostile to philosophical investigation and its promoters, Elias del Medigo and Messer Leon. With their honest, but one-sided, exaggerated piety, they cast a gloomy shadow wherever their hard fate had scattered them. Fresh storms breaking over the German communities had driven many German Jews, the most unhappy of their race, into transalpine lands. Under Emperor Frederick III, who for half a century had with astounding equanimity beheld most shameless insults to his authority on the part of an ambitious nobility, a plundering squire-archy, a demoralized clergy, and the self-seeking patricians of the smaller towns, the Jewish communities but too often saw their cup of bitterness overflow. Frederick himself was by no means hostile to them. On the contrary, he frequently issued decrees in their favor. Unhappily, his commands remained for the most part a dead letter, and his laxity of rule encouraged the evil-minded to the commission of the most shameful misdeeds. It was dangerous for the German Jews to go beyond the walls of their cities. Every man was their foe, and waylaid them to satisfy either his fanaticism or his cupidity. Every feud that broke out in the decaying German empire brought misery to them.
Among exiles from Mayence were two profound Talmudic scholars. They were cousins, by name Judah and Moses Menz. The former emigrated to Padua, and there received the office of rabbi, while the latter at first remained in Germany, and then passed over to Posen. As the result of expulsion or oppression, many rabbis were emigrating from all parts of Germany, and on account of their superior Talmudic knowledge these German emigrants were elected to the most distinguished rabbinical positions in Italy. They re-indoctrinated with their prejudice and narrowness of vision the Italian Jews, who were making determined efforts to free themselves from the bonds of the Middle Ages.
The most distinguished rabbis of Italy were at that time Judah Menz and Joseph Kolon, and precisely these two were most inimical to any liberal manifestation within Judaism, and most strenuously opposed the advocates of freedom. Joseph ben Solomon Kolon (flourished 1460-1490) was of French extraction, his ancestors having been expelled from France; but he passed his youth in Germany, and belonged to the German school. He subsequently lived with his relatives in Chambéry until the Jews were hunted out of Savoy. With many companions in misfortune he went to Lombardy, where he gained his living by teaching; finally he became rabbi of Mantua. Endowed with extraordinary penetration, and fully the equal of the German rabbis in the depth of his Talmudic learning, Joseph Kolon was celebrated in his day as a Rabbinical authority of the first magnitude, and his academy rivaled the German school itself. He was consulted by both German and Italian communities. On scientific subjects and all matters outside the Talmud he was as ignorant as his German fellow-dignitaries. A resolute, decided nature, Joseph Kolon was a man of rigid views on all religious matters. His ruggedness involved him in unpleasant relations with Moses Kapsali in Constantinople, and in a heated controversy with the cultured Messer Leon in his own community. However well they might agree for a time, Joseph Kolon, the strict Talmudist, and Messer Leon, the cultured man of letters, could not long tolerate each other. When the conflict between them broke out, the whole community of Mantua took sides in their feud, and split into two parties as supporters of the one or the other. The strife at length became so keen that in 1476-1477 Duke Joseph of Mantua banished them both from the city; after which Kolon became rabbi of Pavia.
Still more strained were the relations between the rabbi Judah Menz and the philosopher Elias del Medigo. The former (born 1408, died 1509), a man of the old school, of comprehensive knowledge of Talmudic subjects, and of remarkable sagacity, was most resolutely opposed to scientific progress and freedom in religious matters, and after his expulsion from Mayence transplanted the narrow spirit of the German rabbis to Padua and Italy in general.
The relatively secure and honorable position of the Jews in Italy did not fail to rouse the displeasure of fanatical monks, who sought to cover with the cloak of religious zeal either their dissolute conduct or their ambitious share in worldly affairs. The colder the Christian world grew towards the end of the fifteenth century with regard to clerical institutions, the more bitterly did the monastic orders rage against the Jews. Preaching friars made the chancels ring with tirades against them, and openly advocated their utter extermination. Their most desperate enemy at this time was the Franciscan Bernardinus of Feltre, a worthy disciple of the bloodthirsty Capistrano. The standing text of his sermons was: Let Christian parents keep a watchful eye on their children lest the Jews steal, ill-treat, or crucify them.
He held up Capistrano, the Jew-slayer, as the type and model of a true Christian. In his eyes friendly and neighborly intercourse with Jews was an abomination, a most grievous sin against canonical law. Christian charity, he admitted, directs that Jews, being human, be treated with justice and humanity; but at the same time the canonical law forbids Christians to have any dealings with them, to sit at their tables, or to allow themselves to be treated by Jewish physicians. As the aristocracy everywhere, in obedience to their own interests, took the part of the Jews, Bernardinus inflamed the lower classes against the Jews and their patrons. Because certain Jewish capitalists had been successful, he depicted all Jews as vampires and extortioners, and roused the ill will of the populace against them. "I, who live on alms and eat the bread of the poor, shall I be a dumb dog and not howl when I see the Jews wringing their wealth from Christian poverty? Yea! shall I not cry aloud for Christ's sake?" Such is a fair specimen of his preaching.
Had the Italian people not been actuated by strong good sense, Bernardinus would have become for the Jews of Italy what, in the beginning of the same century, the Dominican, Vincent Ferrer, had been to the Jews of Spain, and Capistrano, to the communities of Germany and the Slav countries. The authorities sorely hindered Bernardinus in his business of Jew-baiting, and his bloodthirsty sermons mostly failed of effect. When he was conducting his crusade in Bergamo and Ticini, Duke Galeazzo, of Milan, forbade him to proceed. In Florence, in fact everywhere in Tuscany, the enlightened prince and the senate took the part of the Jews with vigor. The venomous monk spread the report that they had allowed themselves to be bribed with large sums by Yechiel of Pisa and other wealthy Jews. As Bernardinus was inciting the youth of the city against the Jews, and a popular rising was imminent, the authorities ordered him to quit Florence and the country forthwith, and he was compelled to submit (1487). Little by little, however, by dint of untiring repetition of the same charges, he managed so far to inflame public opinion against the Jews that even the Venetian senate was not always able to protect them. Finally, he succeeded in bringing about a bloody persecution of the Jews, not, indeed, in Italy, but in the Tyrol, whence it spread to Germany.
While Bernardinus was preaching in the city of Trent, he remarked with no little chagrin the friendly relation between Jews and Christians. Tobias, a skillful Jewish physician, and an intelligent Jewess, named Brunetta, were on most friendly terms with the upper classes, enjoying their complete confidence. This roused his ire not a little, and he made the chancels of Trent ring with savage tirades against the Jews. Some Christians called him to account for his hatred of Jews, remarking that though they were without the true faith, those of Trent were worthy folk. The monk replied: "Ye know not what misfortune these good people will bring upon you. Before Easter Sunday is past they will give you a proof of their extraordinary goodness." It was easy for him to prophesy, for he and a few other priests had arranged a cunning plan, which not only brought about the ruin of the community of Trent, but also caused the greatest injury to the Jews of various countries. Chance aided him by creating a favorable opportunity.
In Holy Week of 1475 a three-year-old child, named Simon, the son of poor Christian parents, was drowned in the Adige, and the corpse was caught in a grating close to the house of a Jew. In order to anticipate misrepresentation of the event, he hurried to Bishop Hinderbach to give him notice of the occurrence. The bishop took two men of high position with him, went to the place, and had the body carried into the church. As soon as the news spread, Bernardinus and other hostile priests raised a fierce outcry against the Jews, saying that they had tortured and slain the child, and then flung it into the water. The body of the supposititiously ill-treated child was exhibited, in order to inflame the fury of the populace against them. The bishop had all the Jews of Trent, high and low, cast into prison, commenced proceedings against them, and called a physician, Matthias Tiberinus, to testify to the violent death of the child. A baptized Jew, one Wolfkan, from Ratisbon, an engrosser, came forward with the most fearful accusations against his former co-religionists. His charges the more readily found credence as the imprisoned Jews confessed under torture that they had slain Simon, and drunk his blood on the night of the Passover. Brunetta was said to have supplied the weapons for the purpose. A letter also was said to have been found in the possession of a rabbi, Moses, which had been sent from Saxony, asking for Christian blood for the next Passover. Only one of the tortured victims, a man named Moses, endured every torment without confirming the lying accusations of his enemies. The result was that all the Jews of Trent were burnt, and it was resolved that no Jew should thenceforth settle in the city. Four persons only became converts to Christianity, and were pardoned.
The bishop of Trent, Bernardinus, and the monks of all orders made every effort to utilize this occurrence for the general ruin of the Jews. The corpse of the child was embalmed, and commended to the populace as a holy relic. Thousands made pilgrimages to its remains, and ere long it was believed by the faith-drunken pilgrims that they had seen a halo about the remains of the child Simon. So much was said about it that even its inventors came to believe in the martyrdom. From every chancel the Dominicans proclaimed the new miracle, and thundered against the infamy of the Jews. Two lawyers from Padua who visited Trent in order to convince themselves of the truth of the occurrence were almost torn to pieces by the fanatical mob. It was imperative that the marvel be believed in, and so the Jews of all Christian countries were jeopardized anew. Even in Italy they dared not go outside the towns lest they be slain as child-murderers.
The doge, Pietro Mocenigo, and the Venetian senate, on the complaint of the Jews about the insecurity of their lives and property, issued orders to the podesta of Padua energetically to defend them against fanatical outbreaks, and to forbid the preaching friars to inflame the mob against them. The doge accompanied the orders with the remark that the rumor that Jews had slain a Christian child in Trent was a fabrication, a device invented by their enemies to serve some purpose. When Pope Sixtus IV was urged to canonize little Simon he steadfastly refused, and sent a letter to all the towns of Italy, on October 10th, 1475, forbidding Simon of Trent to be honored as a saint until he could investigate the matter, and thus he allayed the popular excitement against the Jews. The clergy, nevertheless, permitted the bones of Simon to be held sacred, and instituted pilgrimages to the church built for his remains.
Through this circumstance Jew hatred in Germany gained fresh vigor. The citizens of Frankfort-on-the-Main exhibited, on the bridge leading to Sachsenhausen, a picture representing in hideous detail a tortured child, and the Jews leagued with the devil in their bloody work. The news of the child-murder in Trent spread like wildfire through the Christian countries, and became the source of new sufferings to Jews. Nowhere were these sufferings so severe as in the free city of Ratisbon, containing one of the oldest Jewish communities in South Germany. It was held to be not only very pious but of distinguished morality, and it was considered a high honor to intermarry with the Jews of Ratisbon. Within the memory of man no native Jew had been brought before the tribunal for any moral lapse. The community was regarded as the most learned in the land, and the parent of all German communities. It possessed chartered liberties, which the emperors, in consideration of a crown-tax, were accustomed to renew on their accession. The Jews of Ratisbon were half recognized as burghers, and mounted guard with the Christians as militia. One might almost say that the Bavarian princes and corporations vied with each other in favoring them--of course, merely to share their purses. In the latter half of this century they had become a veritable bone of contention between the Duke of Bavaria-Landsberg and Frederick III, who, hard pressed on all sides, not only in the empire, but even in his own possessions, hoped to fill his empty coffers with the wealth of the Jews.
In addition to these the Kamerau family made claims upon the Jews of Ratisbon, as well as the town council, and, of course, the bishop. These contradictory and mutually hostile demands made the position of the Jews anything but a bed of roses. First from one side and then from another came orders to the council to imprison the Jews, their chiefs, or their rabbi, at that time the sorely-tried Israel Bruna, until, worn out by confinement, they decided to pay what was claimed. The council did indeed seek to shield them, but only so long as no danger threatened the citizens, or the Jews did not compete with the Christian guildmembers.
To escape these cruel and arbitrary extortions, prudence directed that they place themselves under the protection of one of the Hussite nobles or captains. They would thus enjoy more security than was possible under the so-called protection of the emperor, since the fiery Hussites were not a little feared by the more sluggish Germans. Although they had to some extent abandoned their heretical fanaticism, and had taken service under the Catholic sovereigns, their desperate valor was still a source of terror to the orthodox clergy. The event proved that the Jews had acted wisely in appealing to their protection.
A bishop named Henry was elected in Ratisbon, a man of gloomy nature, to whom the sentiment of mercy was unknown, and he naturally insisted on the enforcement of the canonical restrictions against the Jews. As examples to others, for instance, he mercilessly punished a Christian girl who had entered the service of a Jew, and a Christian barber who had let blood for a Jewish customer. His animosity was contagious. On one occasion, when the Jewish midwife was sick, and a Christian was about to attend some Jewish women, the council actually dared not give her the required permission without the episcopal sanction.
Bishop Henry and Duke Louis, one in their hatred of Jews, now pursued what seemed to be a preconcerted plan for the ruin or conversion of the Jews of Ratisbon. On the one hand, they obtained the acquiescence of the pope, and on the other, the assistance of influential persons on the city council. Their campaign began with attempts at conversions and false accusations, for which they availed themselves of the assistance of a couple of worthless converted Jews. One of these, Peter Schwarz by name, wrote slanderous and abusive pamphlets against his former co-religionists. The other, one Hans Vayol, heaped the vilest calumnies upon the aged rabbi, Israel Bruna, amongst other things charging him with purchasing from him a seven-year-old Christian child and slaughtering it, and the rabbi of Ratisbon, already bowed down by sorrow and suffering, was charged with the death of the child.
Israel Bruna (of Brünn, born 1400, died 1480) was one of those sons of sorrow who seem to fall from one misfortune into another. He appears to have been exiled from Brünn, where he was recognized as a Rabbinical authority, and after many wanderings, to have traveled by way of Prague to Ratisbon. He settled there, and wished to perform the functions of rabbi for those who might place confidence in him. But a Talmudic scholar who resided in the city, one Amshel, a layman, not an elected rabbi, raised objections to his competitor, and forbade Israel Bruna to hold discourses before disciples, to deal with matters of divorce, to exercise any Rabbinical functions, or to divide the honors of the office with himself. As each had his followers, a schism arose in the community of Ratisbon. His two teachers, Jacob Weil and Isserlein, upholders of the freedom of the Rabbinical office and pronounced opponents of spiritual officialism, took the part of the persecuted Israel Bruna, with whom David Sprinz, a rabbi of Nuremberg, also took sides. These men proved in the clearest manner that any Jew is competent to assume Rabbinical functions, provided he possesses the requisite knowledge, is authorized by a recognized teacher, and leads a pious and moral life. They further adduced in favor of Israel Bruna the fact that he contributed his quota to the communal treasury, and was therefore a worthy member of the community. The breach nevertheless remained open, and Israel Bruna was often exposed to insults from the opposite party. Once when he was about to hold a discourse, several of the ringleaders left the lecture-room, and were followed by many others. Disciples of his opponent secretly painted crosses on his seat in the synagogue, wrote the hateful word "heretic" (Epicuros) beside them, and offered other insults to him. As time went on, after the death of the great rabbis, Jacob Weil and Israel Isserlein, Bruna was recognized as a Rabbinical authority, and from far and near questions were sent to him. His misfortunes, however, did not cease. When Emperor Frederick demanded the crown-tax from the community of Ratisbon, Duke Louis opposed the payment, and the council was unable to decide which side to assist. The emperor thereupon threw Israel Bruna into prison to force him to threaten his people with the ban if they did not pay over the third part of their possessions. He was released only on bail of his entire property; and, in addition, the fearful charges of child-murder and other capital crimes were raised against the decrepit old man by the converted Jew, Hans Vayol. Bishop Henry and the clergy were only too ready to gratify their hatred of Jews by means of this accusation, and the besotted populace gave all the more credence to the falsehood, as rumors of the death of Christian children at the hands of Jews daily increased. No one in Ratisbon doubted that gray old Israel Bruna had foully murdered a Christian child, and he was on the point of being put to death on the demand of the clergy. To withdraw him from the fury of the mob, the council, which feared to be made answerable, imprisoned him.
In the meantime the anxious community appealed, not only to the emperor, but also to the Bohemian king, Ladislaus, more feared than the emperor; and ere long stringent directions came from both to release the rabbi instantly without ransom. The council, however, excused itself on the plea of fear of the bishop and the mob. Thereupon followed a mandate from the emperor to defer the execution of Israel Bruna until he came to the diet at Augsburg. The council was still less satisfied with this order, for it feared to lose its jurisdiction over the Jews. It accordingly prepared to take decisive action in the matter. The accuser, Hans Vayol, was led on the stone bridge, where the executioner stood in readiness. He was informed that he must die, and admonished not to go into eternity with a lie on his lips. The hardened sinner maintained his accusations against the Jews in general, but confessed that the rabbi, Israel Bruna, was innocent of the charge of child-murder, and on receipt of another rescript from the emperor, Vayol was banished, and the rabbi released from prison. He was, however, compelled to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for his long sufferings. This poor, feeble graybeard--how could he have avenged himself?
At this juncture the news of the martyrdom of Simon of Trent reached Ratisbon, and added fuel to the fire. Bishop Henry was delighted to have an opportunity of persecuting the Jews with impunity in the interest of the faith. He had heard something of this child-murder on his journey to Rome. On his return, he urged the council to institute a rigid inquiry respecting the Jews accused by Wolfkan. The result of the extorted confessions was the imprisonment of the whole community. Sentinels stood on guard day and night at the four gates of the Jewry of Ratisbon, and permitted no one to enter or go out. The possessions of the whole community were confiscated by the commissioners and judges who took an inventory of everything. A horrible fate threatened the unhappy children of Israel.
This trial, which caused considerable attention in its day, proved quite as prejudicial to the citizens as to the Jews themselves. Immediately after the inquiry began, several Jews of Ratisbon had betaken themselves to Bohemia and to the emperor, and tried by every means to save their unhappy brethren. They knew that to explain their righteous cause gold, and plenty of it, would be above all things necessary. For this reason several Bavarian rabbis assembled in a synod at Nuremberg, and decided that the Bavarian communities and every individual not absolutely impoverished should contribute a quota to make up the amount necessary to free the accused Jews of Ratisbon. When the safety of their brethren was in question, the Jews, however fond they might be of money, were by no means parsimonious. The intercession of the Bohemian nobles under whose protection several of the Ratisbon community had placed themselves led to no result. Far more efficacious were the golden arguments which the ambassadors of the community laid before Emperor Frederick and his advisers. It is only just to say that this usually feeble sovereign displayed considerable ability and firmness in this inquiry. He was so strongly convinced of the falsehood of the blood accusation against the Jews that he would not allow himself to be deceived by any trickery. He dispatched rescript after rescript to the council of Ratisbon, ordering the immediate release of the imprisoned Jews, the cessation of the durance of the community, and the restoration of their property. The council, through fear of the bishop and the duke, delayed the execution of the order, and the emperor became furious at the obstinacy of the citizens when news was brought to him that, in spite of the imperial command, they had already executed some of the Jews. He thereupon declared the city to have fallen under the ban of the empire on account of its obstinate disobedience, and summoned it to answer for its contumacy. At the same time he sent the imperial chancellor to deprive the city of penal jurisdiction and to threaten it with other severe penalties.
Frederick, as a rule weak, showed surprising firmness on this occasion. New and shameless charges were nevertheless brought by the clergy against the Jews. In Passau they were accused of having bought consecrated wafers from a Christian, and profaned them; whereupon certain marvels were said to have occurred. For this the bishop of Passau had a great number of Jews put to death, some "mercifully" by the sword, others at the stake, and others by means of red-hot pincers. In memory of this inhumanity and "to the glory of God," a new church was built near the scene of the atrocities. A Jew and a Jewess of Ratisbon were accused of complicity in this crime, and thrown into prison with the others. All the details were brought to the notice of the emperor in order to rouse his anger. He, however, maintained his conviction that the Jews of Ratisbon were innocent, and issued a new order to the effect that those in prison on the charge of profaning the host were neither to be tortured nor put to death, but to be treated like other prisoners. In vain the council sent deputy after deputy to the imperial court. Frederick roundly declared, "In justice and honor I neither can nor will permit these Jews to be slain, and the men of Ratisbon who have so long hardened themselves in their disobedience shall certainly not sit in judgment upon them."
Thus, after long resistance, the council was compelled to kiss the rod, and give a written promise to release the imprisoned Jews, and not to drive any out of the city on account of this trial. Further, the city was sentenced to pay a fine of 8,000 gulden into the imperial exchequer and to find bail in 10,000 gulden--which latter burden, strangely enough, the Jews had to bear. An appeal to the pope was out of the question, since experience had taught that "the papal court was even more greedy of gold than the imperial."
When the community of Ratisbon was informed of this conclusion of the affair, and of the conditions under which it could gain its freedom-- by paying not only the sum imposed upon itself, but also the fine of the city and the costs of the proceedings--it refused. The delegates said that the total exceeded the possessions of the Jews, as they had been deprived, for three long years, of freedom and all opportunity of earning money. They preferred their present miserable state to becoming beggars. So they remained two years longer in durance, partly on account of lack of money, and partly by reason of the excessive bail demanded. They were finally set at liberty on taking an oath that they would not take revenge, nor convey their persons or their goods out of the city of Ratisbon.
All the Jews living in Suabia were expelled, doubtless in consequence of false accusations in connection with the child-murder of Trent. As late as in the eighteenth century, the shameless falsehood was repeated, and in many parts entailed upon the Jews the sacrifice of life and property.
X. THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN
Jewish Blood in the Veins of the Spanish Nobility--The Marranos cling to Judaism and manifest Unconquerable Antipathy to Christianity--Ferdinand and Isabella--The Dominicans, Alfonso de Ojeda, Diego de Merlo, and Pedro de Solis--The Catechism of the Marranos--A Polemical Work against the Catholic Church and Despotism gives a Powerful Impulse to the Inquisition--The Tribunal is established in 1480--Miguel Morillo and Juan de San Martin are the first Inquisitors--The Inquisition in Seville--The "Edict of Grace"--The Procession and the Auto-da-fé--The Numbers of the Accused and Condemned--Pope Sixtus IV and his Vacillating Policy with Regard to the Inquisition--The Inquisition under the first Inquisitor General, Thomas de Torquemada; its Constitutions--The Marranos of Aragon--They are charged with the Death of the Inquisitor Arbues--Persecutions and Victims--Proceedings against two Bishops Favorable to the Jews, De Avila and De Aranda.
1474-1483 C.E.
A Jewish poet called Spain the "hell of the Jews;" and, in very deed, those foul fiends in monks' cowls, the inventors of the Holy Inquisition, made that lovely land an Inferno. Every misery, every mortal pang, conceived only by the most extravagant imagination of poet; every horror that can thrill the heart of man to its lowest depths, these monsters in the garb of humility brought upon the Jews of the Hesperian Peninsula.
These Calibans also said, "'Burn but their books;' for therein lies their power." The Dominicans wished to destroy not only the bodies, but the very soul and spirit of the Jews. Yet they were not able to quench the life of Judaism. They only succeeded in transforming the Spanish paradise into one vast dungeon, in which the king himself was not free. The Inquisition, created by the begging friars, wounded the Jew deeply, yet not mortally. His wounds are now almost healed; but Spain suffers still, perhaps beyond hope of cure, from the wounds dealt by the Inquisition. Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella the Bigot, who, through the union of Aragon and Castile, laid the foundation for the greatness of Spain, prepared the way, at the same time, by the establishment of the Inquisition, for her decay and final ruin.
The new-Christians, who dwelt by hundreds and thousands throughout the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, were so many thorns in monkish flesh. Many of them held high offices of state, and by means of their wealth wielded great and far-reaching influence. They were also related to many of the old nobility; indeed, there were few families of consequence who had not Jewish blood in their veins. They formed a third part of the townspeople, and were intelligent, industrious, and peaceful citizens. These Marranos, for the most part, had preserved their love for Judaism and their race in the depths of their hearts. As far as they could, they observed Jewish rites and customs, either from piety or from habit. Even those who, upon philosophical grounds, were indifferent to Judaism, were not less irreconcilably hostile to Christianity, which they were compelled to confess with their lips. Although they did not have their children circumcised, they washed the heads of the infants immediately after baptism. They were, therefore, rightly looked upon by the orthodox clergy either as Judaizing Christians, or as apostate heretics. They took no count of the origin of their conversion, which had been accomplished with fire and sword. They had received the sacrament of baptism, and this condemned them and their descendants to remain in the Christian faith, however hateful it might be to them. Rational legislation would have given them liberty to return to Judaism, and, in any case, to emigrate, in order to avoid scandal. But the spiritual powers were full of perversity. That which demands the freest exercise of the powers of the soul was to be brought about by brute force, to the greater glory of God!
During the lifetime of Don Henry IV the clerical members of the cortes of Medina del Campo had persistently advanced the proposal that a court of Inquisition be instituted to bring recusant or suspected Christians to trial, and inflict severe punishment with confiscation of goods. Unfortunately for the clericals, the king was by no means zealous for the faith or fond of persecution; and so this decision of the cortes, like many others, remained a dead letter. The Dominicans, however, promised themselves greater results under the new sovereigns--Queen Isabella, whose confessors had reduced her to spiritual slavery, and Don Ferdinand, who, by no means so superstitiously inclined, was quite ready to use religion as the cloak of his avarice. It is said that the confessor, Thomas de Torquemada, the incarnation of the hell-begotten Holy Inquisition, had extorted from the Infanta Isabella a vow that, when she came to the throne, she would devote herself to the extirpation of heresy, to the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith. She was now queen; "her throne was established; and her soul was sufficiently beclouded to believe that God had raised her solely to cleanse Spanish Christianity from the taint of Judaism."
The prior of a Dominican monastery, Alfonso de Ojeda, who had the ear of the royal consorts, made fearful representations to them as to the offenses of the new-Christians against the faith. Aided by two others of like mind, he strained every nerve to set the Inquisition in motion against the Marranos; and the papal nuncio in Spain, Nicolo Franco, supported the proposition of the monk for a tribunal to call them to account for their transgressions.
Without further consideration Don Ferdinand, seeing that his coffers would be filled with the plunder of the accused, gave his assent to the scheme. The more scrupulous queen hesitated, and the royal pair decided to appeal to the pope for advice. The two Spanish ambassadors at the court of Rome, the brothers Francisco and Diego de Santillana, earnestly pressed the pope and the college of cardinals to grant the request of their sovereigns. Sixtus IV, from whom anything, good or bad, could be obtained for gold, immediately grasped the money-making aspect of the Holy Inquisition. In November, 1478, he issued a bull empowering the sovereigns to appoint inquisitors from among the clergy, with full authority to sit in judgment on all heretics, apostates, and their patrons, according to the laws and customs of the ancient Inquisition, sentence them, and--most important point of all-- confiscate their goods.
Isabella, who had been somewhat favorably influenced in behalf of the new-Christians, was not inclined to adopt rigorous measures to begin with. At her direction, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Mendoza, prepared a catechism in 1478 for the use of new-Christians, and issued it to the clergy of his diocese, in order that they might instruct the Marranos in the articles, the sacraments, and the usages of the Christian religion. The authors of this measure displayed strange simplicity in believing that the baptized Jews would allow an antipathy, which every day found new incitement, to be appeased by the dry statements of a catechism. The Marranos naturally remained in what the church considered their blindness; that is to say, in the purity of their monotheism and their adherence to their ancestral religion.
It happened that a Jew or a new-Christian grievously offended the sovereigns by the publication of a small work in which he exposed at once the idolatrous cult of the church and the despotic character of the government. Hereupon the queen became more and more inclined to assent to the proposals for the establishment of the bloody tribunal. The work made so strong an impression that the queen's father-confessor, in 1480, published a refutation by royal command. The attitude of the court became more and more hostile to new-Christians, and when the commission appointed by the sovereigns to inquire into the improvement or obstinacy of the Marranos reported that they were irreclaimable, it was authorized to frame the statute for the new tribunal. The commission was composed of the fanatical Dominican, Alfonso de Ojeda, and the two monks--one in mind and order--Pedro de Solis and Diego de Merlo.
Had demons of nethermost hell conspired to torment innocent men to the last verge of endurance and to make their lives one ceaseless martyrdom, they could not have devised more perfect means than those which the three monks employed against their victims.
The statute was ratified by the sovereigns, and the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition was appointed on September 17th, 1480. It was composed of men well fitted to carry out the bloody decree: the Dominican Miguel Morillo, inquisitor in the province of Roussillon, and renowned as a converter of heretics by means of torture; Juan de San Martin; an assessor, the abbot Juan Ruez, and a procurator fiscal, Juan Lopez del Barco. These men were formally confirmed by Sixtus IV as judges in matters of faith, and of heretics and apostates. The tribunal was first organized for the city of Seville and its neighborhood, as this district stood immediately under royal jurisdiction, and, therefore, possessed no cortes, and because it contained a great many Marranos. Three weeks later the sovereigns issued a decree calling upon all officials to render the inquisitors every assistance in their power.
It is noteworthy that as soon as the creation of the tribunal became known, the populace everywhere looked upon it with displeasure, as though suspicious that it might be caught in the net spread for the Marranos. While the cortes of Medina del Campo proposed the establishment of a court for new-Christians, the great popular assembly at Toledo in the same year--the first after the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella--maintained absolute silence on the question, as though it desired to have no share in the unholy work. The mayor and other officials of Seville proved so disinclined to assist the inquisitors that it was necessary to issue a second royal decree on December 27th, 1480, directing them to do so. The nobles, allied with the converted Jews either through blood or friendship, stood stoutly by them, and sought by every means to protect them against the new tribunal.
As soon as the new-Christians of Seville and the neighborhood received news of the establishment of the Inquisition, they held a meeting to consider means of turning aside the blow aimed at them. Several wealthy and respected men of Seville, Carmona and Utrera, among them Abulafia, the financial agent of the royal couple, prepared to do battle with their persecutors. They distributed money and weapons among the people, to enable them to defend themselves. An old man urged the conspirators to armed resistance; but the conspiracy was betrayed by the daughter of one of its members, and all fell into the hands of the tribunal. Others, who had collected their possessions, and fled to the province of Medina-Sidonia and Cadiz, under whose governors they hoped to receive protection against the threatened persecution, were deceived, for the Inquisition went to work with remorseless severity. As soon as it had taken up its quarters in the convent of St. Paul at Seville, on January 2d, 1481, it issued an edict to the governor of Cadiz and other officials to deliver up the Marranos and distrain their goods. Those who disobeyed were threatened not only with excommunication, but also with the punishment assigned, as sharers of their guilt, to all who showed sympathy to heretics--confiscation of goods and deprivation of office.
The Inquisition inspired so much terror that the nobility lost no time in imprisoning those to whom they had lately promised protection, and in sending them in custody to Seville. The number of these prisoners was so great that the tribunal was soon obliged to seek another building for its functions. It selected a castle in Triana, a suburb of Seville. On the gate of this house of blood were inscribed, in mockery of the Jews, certain verses selected from their Scriptures:--"Arise, God, judge Thy cause;" "Catch ye foxes for us," which plainly showed the utter heartlessness of their judges. Fugitives when caught were treated as convicted heretics. So early as the fourth day after the installation of the tribunal, it held its first sitting. Six Marranos who had either avowed their old religion before their judges, or made horrible confessions on the rack, were condemned and burnt alive. The tale of victims grew to such proportions that the city authorities set apart a special place as a permanent execution ground, which subsequently became infamous as the Quemadero, or place of burning. Four huge caricatures of prophets distinguished this spot, existing to the present day to the shame of Spain and Christianity. For three hundred years the smoke of the burnt-offering of innocence ascended to heaven from this infernal spot.
With that mildness of mien which skillfully covers the wisdom and the venom of the serpent, Miguel Morillo and his coadjutors gave to the new-Christians guilty of relapse into Judaism a certain time in which to declare their remorse. Upon doing this they would receive absolution, and be permitted to retain their property. This was the Edict of Grace; but it was not wanting in threats for those who should permit the time of respite to elapse, and be denounced by others as backsliders. The full vigor of the canonical laws against heresy and apostasy would then be exercised against them. The credulous in crowds obeyed the summons. Contritely they appeared before the tribunal, lamented the awful guilt of their lapse into Judaism, and awaited absolution and permission to live in peace. But now the inquisitors imposed the condition that they declare by name, position, residence and other particulars all persons of their acquaintance whom they knew to be apostates. This declaration they were to substantiate on oath. In the name of God they were asked to become accusers and betrayers--the friend of his friend, the brother of his brother, and the son of his father. Terror, and the assurance that the betrayed should never know the names of their betrayers, loosed the tongues of the weak-hearted, and the tribunal soon had a long list of heretics upon whom to carry out its bloody work.
Not only the hunted Marranos, every Spaniard was called upon by an edict of the inquisitors to become an informer. Under threat of excommunication every one was bound to give, within three days, a list of acquaintances guilty of Jewish heresy. It was a summons to the most hateful vices of mankind to become allies of the court: to malice, hatred and revenge, to sate themselves by treachery; to greed, to enrich itself; and to superstition, to gain salvation by betrayal.
And what were the signs of this heresy and apostasy? The Inquisition had published a very complete, practical guide on the subject, so that each informer might find good grounds for his denunciation. The following signs of heresy were set forth: if baptized Jews cherished hopes of a Messiah; if they held Moses to be as efficacious for salvation as Jesus; if they kept the Sabbath or a Jewish feast; if they had their children circumcised; if they observed the Jewish dietary laws; if they wore clean linen or better garments on the Sabbath, laid tablecloths, or lit no fire on this day, or if they went barefoot on the Day of Atonement, or asked pardon of each other. If a father laid his hands in blessing on his children without making the sign of the cross; if one said his prayers with face turned to the wall, or with motions of the head; or if he uttered a benediction (Baraha, Beracha) over the wine-cup, and passed it to those seated at the table with him, he was to be deemed recalcitrant. As a matter of course, neglect of the usages of the church was the strongest ground for suspicion and accusation. Again, if a new-Christian repeated a psalm without adding the Gloria; or if he ate meat on fast-days; or if a Jewish woman did not go to church forty days after her lying-in; or if parents gave their children Jewish names, the charge of heresy was held proved.
Even the most innocent actions, if they happened to coincide with Jewish usages, were regarded as signs of aggravated heresy. If anyone, for instance, on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles accepted gifts from the table of Jews, or sent them; or if a new-born child was bathed in water in which gold coins and grains of corn had been placed; or if a dying man in his last moments turned his face to the wall--all such actions were held to be signs of heresy.
By such means unscrupulous people were given ample opportunity for denunciation, and the tribunal was enabled to accuse of heresy the most orthodox proselytes when it desired to destroy their influence or confiscate their property. Naturally the dungeons of the Inquisition were soon filled with Jewish heretics. Fully 15,000 were thrown into prison at the outset. The Christian priests of Moloch inaugurated the first auto-da-fé, on January 6th, 1481, with a solemn procession, repeated innumerable times during the following three hundred years. The clergy in their gorgeous vestments and with crucifixes; the grandees in black robes with their banners and pennons; the unhappy victims in the hideous San Benito, short and clinging, painted with a red cross, and flames and figures of devils; the accompanying choir of a vast concourse--so the executioners with proud bearing and the victims in most miserable guise marched to the place of torment. Arrived there the inquisitors recited their sentence on the victims. To the horror of the scene was added the ghastly mockery that the tribunal did not execute the sentence of death, but left it to the secular judge; for the church, though steeped to the lips in blood, was supposed not to desire the death of the sinner. The Jewish heretics were given to the flames forthwith, or, if penitent, they were first strangled. In the first auto-da-fé, at which the bishop, Alfonso de Ojeda, preached the inauguration sermon, only six Judaizing Christians were burnt. A few days later the conspirators of Carmona, Seville, and other towns, and three of the most wealthy and respected of the Marranos, among whom was Diego de Suson, the possessor of ten millions, and Abulafia, formerly a Talmudic scholar and a rabbi, were burnt to death. On the 26th of March seventeen victims suffered death by fire on the Quemadero. In the following month a yet greater number were burnt; and up to November of the same year 298 burnt-offerings to Christ gasped out their lives in flame and smoke in the single district of Seville. In the archbishopric of Cadiz no less than 2,000 Jewish heretics were burnt alive in the course of that year, most of them being wealthy or well-to-do, their possessions, of course, going to the royal exchequer. Not even death afforded a safeguard against the fury of the Holy Office. These ghouls of religion tore from their graves the corpses of proselytes who had died in heresy, burnt them, confiscated their possessions in the hands of their heirs, and condemned the latter to obscurity and poverty that they might never aspire to any honorable office. Here was a splendid field for the avarice of the king. When it was impossible to convict a wealthy heir, it was only necessary to establish proofs of a relapse to Judaism against his dead father, and then the property fell partly to the king, partly to the Holy Inquisition!
Many Marranos saved themselves by flight from the clutches of the merciless persecutors, and took refuge in the neighboring Moslem kingdom of Granada, in Portugal, Africa, Provence, or Italy. Those who reached Rome approached the papal court with bitter complaints about the savage and arbitrary proceedings of the Inquisition against themselves and their companions in misery. As the complainants did not come with empty hands, their cause usually obtained a ready hearing. On the 29th of January, 1482, the pope addressed a severe letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, censuring the conduct of the Inquisition in no measured terms. He stated that he had been assured that the proceedings of the tribunal were contrary to all forms of justice, that many were unjustly imprisoned, and subjected to fearful tortures. Innocent people had been denounced as heretics, and their property taken from their heirs. In this letter the pope admitted that he had issued the bull for the institution of the Inquisition without due consideration!
Sixtus further stated that, in strict justice, he ought to depose the inquisitors, De Morillo and San Martin; but out of consideration for their majesties he would allow them to remain in possession of their offices, only so long, however, as no further complaints were made against them. Should protests again be raised he would restore the inquisitorial office to the bishops, to whom it properly belonged. The pope refused the request of Don Ferdinand to institute in the other provinces of the united kingdom extraordinary tribunals for the trial of heretics.
But Don Ferdinand also knew how to apply the golden key to the papal cabinet, and obtained a bull sanctioning the establishment of the Inquisition in the provinces of Aragon. In this bull, dated February 11th, 1482, Sixtus appointed six monks and clerics as chief inquisitors, among them Thomas de Torquemada, general of the Dominicans of Avilo, a monk already infamous for his bloodthirsty fanaticism. In another letter, of the 17th of April, he invested these men with discretionary powers, in virtue of which they were able to dispense with certain forms of common law, the hearing of witnesses and the admission of pleaders for the defense. Thus were fresh victims brought to the stake.
In the kingdom of Aragon, however, where the nobility and the middle class had a weighty voice in public matters, the condemnation of Jewish heretics without formal trial raised such formidable opposition that Cardinal Borgia, afterwards the infamous Alexander VI, and the king himself, petitioned the pope for a modification of the conditions governing the practice of the tribunal. In a letter of the 10th of October, Sixtus excused himself from making any radical changes in consequence of the absence of the cardinals, who had fled from Rome in mortal fear of the plague. But he abrogated the conditions which too flagrantly violated the principles of common law; that is to say, he ordered that accuser and witnesses should be confronted with the accused, and that the process should be conducted in public.
The Inquisition also met with great opposition in Sicily, an appanage of the kingdom of Aragon. The people and even the authorities took the part of the new-Christians, and shielded them from the persecution of their bloodthirsty judges. Christians themselves openly charged that the victims were not executed out of zeal for the faith, but from insatiable greed which sought ceaseless confiscations. The bigoted Isabella was sorely troubled at having her pious desire to devote the proselytes to death thus evilly represented, and even the pope behaved as though it wounded him to the heart. (February, 1483.)
Sixtus IV had the greatest interest in maintaining friendly relations with the Spanish court, and, therefore, made every concession with regard to the Inquisition. As it often happened that Christian proselytes condemned by the tribunal, who had succeeded in escaping to Rome, purchased absolution from the papal throne, with the infliction of only a light, private penance, the sovereigns saw that their efforts to purge the Christian faith by the extermination of Jewish proselytes, especially by the confiscation of their goods, were most unpleasantly thwarted. The court, therefore, insisted that the pope appoint a judge of appeals in Spain itself, so that the rulings of the Inquisition might not be reversed in foreign countries, where all kinds of unfavorable influences might be brought to bear. The pope agreed to this proposition, and appointed Inigo Manrique chief judge of appeals in cases in which the condemned moved for a revision of their trial. This measure was, however, of very doubtful benefit to the unfortunate culprits, for upon what ground could they base their appeal when the trial had been conducted in secret, and neither accuser nor witnesses were known to them? It is altogether likely, too, that the tribunal did not leave them very much time to institute proceedings for the revision of the verdict. Between the passing of the sentence and the last act of the auto-da-fé only a very short interval elapsed.
Another measure of the Spanish court, calculated to deprive the accused of the last hope of acquittal, was approved by the pope. Baptized Jews, or new-Christians descended from them, frequently held bishoprics, and were naturally favorably inclined to their unfortunate and persecuted brethren in race. At the request of the Spanish court, the pope issued a bull decreeing that no bishop, vicar, or member of the upper clergy descended from a Jewish family, whether paternally or maternally, should sit as a judge in any court for the trial of heretics. From this prohibition there was only a step to the condemnation of clergy of Jewish blood to the stake. Both his own frame of mind and his political position now inclined the pope to encourage the sovereigns in the prosecution of their bloody work. He reminded them that Jesus had established his kingdom on earth solely by the extirpation of idolatry and the extermination of idolators, and he pointed to the recent victories which the Spaniards had gained over the Moslems in Granada as the reward of heaven for their efforts towards the purification of the faith--that is to say, for the burning of new-Christians and the confiscation of their goods.
Had his Holiness, Sixtus IV, not been infamous as a monster of depravity, sensuality and unscrupulousness, who appointed boys that he had himself abused to bishoprics and the cardinal dignity, and who bestowed no clerical office without payment--as his contemporary, Infessura, the chancellor of Rome, has recorded--his conduct with regard to the Holy Inquisition would have been sufficient to brand him with immortal infamy. Within a short period he published the most contradictory decisions, and did not take the trouble to veil his inconsistency with the most flimsy pretense. Scarcely had he proclaimed the utmost rigors against Judaizing heretics, and appointed a tribunal of appeals, than he partly abrogated these bulls, and issued another prescribing milder proceedings to the Inquisition, only to alter this policy in its turn.
The hated Marranos, among them the high-spirited Juan de Seville, had exerted themselves to procure from the papal court a decree to the effect that those who had undergone private penance in Rome should not be submitted to the oppression and persecution of the avaricious king and his bloodthirsty inquisitors, but should be regarded and treated as orthodox Christians. At first the pope consented, and issued a bull on August 2d, 1483, "to be held in eternal remembrance and as guide for the future," in which he especially directed that rigor be tempered with mercy in dealing with the new-Christians, seeing that the severity of the Inquisition had overstepped the bounds of justice. The bull enacted that all new-Christians who had confessed their remorse to the confessor-general in Rome, and had been assigned a penance, should not be pursued by the Inquisition, and should have their trials suppressed. It exhorted the king and queen, "by the bowels of Jesus Christ," to remember that in mercy and kindness alone may man resemble God, and that, therefore, they might in this follow in the steps of Jesus, whose peculiar attribute it was to show mercy and to pardon. The pope permitted this bull to be copied indefinitely, each copy to have the authority of the original, in order that the papal attitude with regard to new-Christians might be made universally known. Sixtus concluded with the statement that he issued this bull entirely of his own motion, not in obedience to external influence, although it was well known in high circles that it had been bought with new-Christian gold. The sovereigns, however, would have nothing to do with mercy or forbearance; they desired the death of the culprits and the possession of their property. Nor was the pope really inclined to mild measures. A few days later, on August 13th, he recalled this bull, excusing himself to the king for its tenor, and said that it had been issued in too great haste. Such was the consistency and infallibility of his Holiness, Pope Sixtus IV!
In vain Don Juan de Seville, who had procured the promulgation of the favorable bull, endeavored to circulate it. He failed to find any clerical official in Spain to copy and confirm it. He, therefore, applied to the Portuguese archbishop of Evora, who caused it to be copied by his notary and recognized as authentic. The Inquisition, however, was extremely suspicious of those who had sought and obtained indulgences at Rome, and Don Juan de Seville and his companions fell at length into its hands, and were severely punished.
Terrible though the tribunal had hitherto been; though many thousands of compulsory proselytes and their descendants, during its three short years of existence, had been cast into the flames, left to rot in its dungeons, driven from their country, or reduced to beggary, it was child's play compared with what it became when placed under the control of a priest whose heart was closed to every sentiment of mercy, whose lips breathed only death and destruction, and who united the savagery of the hyena with the venom of the snake. Until now the Inquisition had been confined to southern Spain, to the districts of Seville and Cadiz, and the Christian province of Andalusia. In the remaining provinces of Spain it had hitherto been unable to get a footing, in consequence of the resistance offered to its introduction by the cortes. Through the opposition of the people, the wicked will of the inquisitors Morillo and Juan de San Martin had remained inoperative; their uplifted arm was paralyzed by innumerable difficulties. If here and there a few courts were held in the remaining districts of Spain, they were isolated and without organization, and were thus unable to furnish each other with victims. King Ferdinand thus had not yet collected treasure enough, nor had the pious Isabella beheld a sufficient number of new-Christians writhing in the flames. For their joint satisfaction they now persuaded the pope to appoint an inquisitor-general who should constitute, direct, and supervise the several courts, that none of the suspected Marranos might avoid their fate, and that the opposition of the populace might be broken down by every species of terrorism. In cold blood, and with little interest even for the faith itself, the pope assented; and in May, 1483, appointed the Dominican, Thomas de Torquemada, hitherto prior of a monastery in Segovia, inquisitor-general of Spain. There are certain men who are the embodiment of good or evil sentiments, opinions and principles, and fully illustrate their extremest consequences. Torquemada was the incarnation of the Holy Inquisition with all its devilish malice, its heartless severity, its bloodthirsty ferocity.
"Out of Rome hath arisen a savage monster of such wondrous shape and hideous appearance that at the sound of its name all Europe trembles. Its carcass is of iron, tempered in deadly poison, and covered with scales of impenetrable steel. A thousand venom-dropping wings support it when it hovers over the terrified earth. Its nature is that of the ravening lion and the snake of the African desert. Its bite is more terrible than that of the hugest monster. The sound of its voice slays more speedily than the deadly glance of the basilisk. From its eyes and mouth stream fire and ceaseless lightnings. It feeds on human bodies, and its drink is human tears and blood. It excels the eagle in the speed of its flight, and where it broods its black shadow spreads the gloom of night. Though the sun shine never so clearly, the darkness of Egypt follows in its track. Wheresoever it flies, every green meadow that it touches, every fruitful tree on which it sets foot, withers and dies. With its destroying fangs it roots up every herb that grows, and with the poison of its breath it blasts the circle in which it moves to a desert like that of Syria, where no green thing grows, no grass-blade sprouts."
Thus did a Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, himself singed by its flames, depict the Inquisition.
The inscription which the poet Dante placed upon the portal of Hell--
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"
would have been even more suitable to the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, which the cruel energy of Torquemada now established in nearly all the great towns of Spain. He at once instituted three new tribunals in Cordova, Jaen and Villareal (Ciudad-Real), and, later on, one in Toledo, the capital of southern Spain. The offices of the Inquisition were entirely filled by him with hypocritical and fanatical Dominicans, whom he made the tools of his will, so that they worked like an organism with a single head, ready at his word to perpetrate the most hideous barbarities with a composure that cannibals might have envied. In those days Spain was filled with the putrefaction of the dungeon, the stench of corpses, and the crackling of the flames in which were burning innocent Jews, forced into a faith the falsity of which was demonstrated by every action of the servants of the church. A wail of misery piercing bone and marrow went through that lovely land; but their Catholic majesties paralyzed the arm of every man prompted by mercy to put a stop to the butchery. At the court itself there sat a commission on the affairs of Jewish Christians, of which the inquisitor-general held the presidency.
Don Ferdinand wished to perpetuate the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in his hereditary lands, in order to fill his purse with the spoils of the new-Christians settled there. During the assembly of the cortes at Tarazona, in April, 1484, he laid his plans before his privy council, and canceled the ancient privileges of the country, which had existed from the earliest times, and which provided that no native of Aragon, whatever his crime, should suffer confiscation of his property. The inquisitor-general accordingly appointed for the archbishopric of Saragossa two inquisitors who rivaled himself in bloodthirsty fanaticism, the canon, Pedro Arbues de Epila, and the Dominican, Gaspard Juglar. A royal ordinance was now issued to all officials and nobles, directing them to give every assistance to the inquisitors. The grand justiciary of Aragon, though of Jewish origin, and other dignitaries, were obliged to take an oath that they would spare no efforts to exterminate the culprits condemned by the tribunal.
Torquemada, the very soul of the Inquisition, now decided to publish a code for the guidance of the judges, so that the net might be drawn as closely as possible round his victims. The whole body of inquisitors was assembled to consider this design, and, under the title of "Constitutions," issued, on October 29th, 1484, a code of laws, calculated to inspire the utmost horror had no more been done than commit them to paper. It has been asserted that the monkish inquisitors merely copied the anti-Jewish enactments of the councils under the Visigothic kings. It is true that the decrees of Receswinth threatened with death, by fire or stoning, all new-Christians convicted of adherence to Jewish customs. The comparison is, nevertheless, incorrect. For not the enactments against heresy, but their enforcement, distinguishes the "Constitutions" of the Inquisition as the most hideous ever fashioned by human wickedness. It was as though the most malicious demons had taken counsel to discover how they might bring innocent human beings to destruction.
One decree ordained a respite of thirty days for those who of their own free will would tender confession of their relapse to Judaism. These were to be spared all punishment and confiscation of goods with the exception of a moderate fine. They were, however, compelled to put their confession into writing, to give exact answers to all questions put to them, and especially to betray their fellow-offenders, and even those whom they only suspected of Judaizing tendencies. Those who confessed after the expiration of the time of respite were to lose all their property, even that which they had possessed at the time of their falling away from Christianity, and though it had passed into other hands. Only new-Christians under twenty years old were exempted from loss of property in the event of later confessions; but they were compelled to bear a mark of infamy composed of flaming crosses, the San Benito, upon their clothing, and to take part in the processions and attend high mass in this guise. Those whose remorse awakened after the appointed day were indeed to receive indulgence, but they were to remain branded for life. Neither they nor their descendants were ever to hold any public office, nor to wear any garment embroidered with gold, silver or pearls, or made of silk or fine wool, and they were condemned to bear the "fiery cross" for ever. Should the inquisitors discover that the confession of a penitent was insincere, it was their duty to deny him absolution, to treat him as a recalcitrant, and to consign him to the flames. If a penitent made only a partial confession of his sins, he, too, was condemned to death. The evidence against a Judaizing Christian might, when not otherwise convenient, be taken through other persons. It was not necessary to place this testimony before the accused in full detail, but merely as an abstract. If, in spite of the evidence laid before him, he maintained that he had never relapsed into Judaism, he was condemned to the flames as impenitent. Inconclusive proofs of relapse brought against a Marrano stretched him upon the rack; in case he confessed under torture, he was submitted to a second trial. If he then adhered to what he had confessed under torture he was condemned; if he denied it, he underwent the torture again. In those cases in which an accused person failed to answer to the summons issued against him, he was condemned as a contumacious heretic, i. e., his property was confiscated.
In the face of such proceedings--the parody of a trial--and the pre-determination on the part of the judge to consider the accused guilty, how was it possible for any Marrano to prove his innocence? The dungeon and the rack frequently made the accused so indifferent to their fate and so weary of life that they made confessions as to themselves, their friends and even their nearest relatives which appeared to vindicate the necessity for the Inquisition. The trial of every new-Christian involved others in apparent guilt, and brought new examinations and new accusations in its train, thus furnishing an ever-increasing number of victims to the Holy Office.
The towns of the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia had from the first manifested the greatest displeasure at the introduction of the Inquisition. Up to this period they had been less despotically governed than Castile, and were exceedingly jealous of their freedom. Above everything the Aragonese valued, as the apple of their eye, the privilege which forbade the confiscation of goods even on account of the gravest offenses. Now the officers of the Inquisition were to be invested with unlimited power over life and property. The new-Christians, who held high offices and influential positions in Aragon, were naturally eager to foment and increase the discontent. In Teruel and Valencia, in 1485, disastrous popular risings broke out against the Inquisition, and were quelled only after great bloodshed. The Marranos and those of Jewish descent did not, however, surrender their project of paralyzing the Inquisition in Aragon. Some of the highest dignitaries of state were numbered among them; as, for example, Luis Gonzalez, royal secretary of state for Aragon; Alfonso de Caballeria, the vice-chancellor; his brother, the king's major-domo; Philip Clemente, chief notary; and such high hidalgos as the Counts of Aranda, together with many knights, among whom were the valiant Juan de Abadia, whose sister was burnt for heresy, and Juan Perez Sanchez, whose brothers were at court.
As soon as the first victims fell under the Inquisition in Saragossa, influential new-Christians brought pressure to bear upon the cortes to induce them to protest, both to the king and to the pope, against the introduction of the tribunal into Aragon. Commissioners were sent to the royal and papal courts to effect in person the repeal of the ordinances. They expected but little trouble in Rome, for there everything was to be had for money. With the king it seemed to be a matter of much greater difficulty. Ferdinand remained obstinately fixed in the resolution to exterminate the Jewish Christians by means of the Inquisition, and to acquire their property. When the commissioners sent news to their friends in Aragon of the failure of their efforts, Perez Sanchez conceived a plot to remove Pedro Arbues, chief inquisitor for Aragon, in order to cripple the activity of the Inquisition by terrorism, and to force the king to give way. He imparted his project to his friends, and many bound themselves to stand by him. In order to win over the entire body of new-Christians, and to induce them to stand firmly together, the leaders of the conspiracy laid them under contribution for the expenses of carrying out the project. A hidalgo, Blasco de Alagon, collected the money, and Juan de Abadia undertook to hire the assassins, and to see that the death of Arbues was achieved. This conspiracy was joined by many distinguished persons of Jewish descent in Saragossa, Tarazona, Calatayud, Huesca and Barbastro.
Juan de Abadia procured two trustworthy men, Juan de Esperaindo and Vidal de Uranso, with four assistants, to accomplish the death of the inquisitor Arbues. The intended victim appears to have suspected the plot, for he protected his body with a shirt of mail and his head with a species of steel cap. Before daybreak on the 15th of September, 1485, as he was entering the church with a lantern to hear early mass, the conspirators followed him. As soon as he had fallen on his knees, Esperaindo struck him on the arm with his sword, while Vidal wounded him in the neck. He was borne out of the church bathed in blood, and died two days later. The conspirators took instant flight. As soon as the news of the attack on the chief inquisitor spread in Saragossa it produced a violent reaction. The orthodox Christians assembled in crowds crying in tones of fury: "To the flames with the Jew-Christians! They have murdered the chief inquisitor!" The Marranos would have been massacred in a body there and then, had not the royal bastard, the youthful Archbishop Alfonso of Aragon, mounted his horse, and restrained the crowd by an armed force, promising them the fullest satisfaction by the severe punishment of the guilty persons and their accomplices.
King Ferdinand made good use of the unfortunate conspiracy in the establishment of the Inquisition in Aragon. The sovereigns carried public mourning for the murdered Arbues to the verge of idolatry. A statue was consecrated to his memory, in honor of his services to religion and the extermination of Jewish heretics. The Dominicans were by no means displeased at the death of the chief inquisitor. They were, in fact, in need of a martyr to enable them to surround their tribunal of blood with a halo of glory. They used every effort to raise Pedro Arbues to the rank of saint or Christian demi-god. It was not long before they fabricated a divine communication from the sainted heretic-slayer, in which he exhorted all the world to support and carry forward the Holy Inquisition, and soothed the scruples of the members of the tribunal, on account of the enormous number of men they had consigned to the flames, by assuring them that the most honorable places in heaven awaited them as the reward of their pious efforts.
The unsuccessful conspiracy of the Marranos in Saragossa afforded a vast number of fresh victims to the Christian Moloch. A few of the conspirators made full confession, and so the inquisitors soon had a complete list of the culprits. These were pursued with redoubled vigor as Judaizing heretics and enemies of the Holy Office. Those who had borne a leading part in the conspiracy, as soon as they fell into the hands of their judges, were dragged through the streets of Saragossa, their hands were hewn off, and they were then hanged. Juan de Abadia escaped this dishonorable fate by killing himself in prison. More than two hundred Jewish Christians were burnt as accomplices, a yet greater number were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, among them a high dignitary of the Metropolitan Church of Saragossa, and not a few women of gentle birth. Francisco de Santa Fé also died at the stake. Even those who had given shelter to the conspirators for a brief period during their flight were compelled to attend an auto-da-fé as penitents, and lost their civil rights. How far the inhumanity of the persecutors went is especially shown by one of the punishments inflicted. A conspirator, Gaspard de Santa Cruz, had been successful in making his escape to Toulouse, and there died in peace. The Inquisition, not content with burning him in effigy, laid hands upon his son as an accomplice in his father's flight, and condemned him to travel to Toulouse to communicate his sentence to the Dominicans of that city, and to desire them to exhume the body of his father and burn it. The weak son performed his disgraceful mission, and brought back to Saragossa the certificate of the Dominicans to the effect that the corpse of the father had been dishonored on the prayer of the son.
Certain towns of northern Spain, such as Lerida and Barcelona, still obstinately resisted the introduction of the Inquisition. Their resistance proved vain. The iron will of Fernando and the bloodthirsty fanaticism of Torquemada overcame every obstacle, and the papal court was obliged to give its assent to every proposal. From that time forth the number of victims continued to increase. On the 12th of February, 1486, an auto-da-fé was celebrated in Toledo with 750 human burnt-offerings, while on the 2d of April in the same year, 900 victims were offered up, and on the 7th of May, 750. On the 16th of August twenty-five Jewish heretics were burnt alive in Toledo; on the following day two priests suffered; and on the 10th of December 950 persons were condemned to shameful public penance. In the following year, when the Inquisition was established in Barcelona and on the island of Majorca, two hundred Marranos suffered death by fire in these places alone. A Jew of that time, Isaac Arama, writes on this subject as follows: "In these days the smoke of the martyr's pyre rises unceasingly to heaven in all the Spanish kingdoms and the isles. One-third of the Marranos have perished in the flames, another third wander homeless over the earth seeking where they may hide themselves, and the remainder live in perpetual terror of a trial." So the tale of victims grew from year to year under the eleven tribunals which transformed the fair land of Spain into a blazing Tophet, whose flames soon reached and devoured the Christians themselves.
The pitiless persecution of the new-Christians had its origin perhaps even more in the racial hatred of the pure-blooded Spaniards towards the children of Judah than in religious fanaticism. Persons of Jewish descent, whom it was impossible justly to accuse of heresy, were included in the accusations simply because they held high offices. They were not permitted to enjoy any dignity or to exercise any influence in the country. The inquisitor-general, Torquemada, even laid hands upon two bishops of Jewish blood, De Avila and De Aranda, so that, if it were impossible to consign them to the flames, he might at least expel them from their sees.