XI. EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN…

XI. EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN

Friendship of Marranos and Jews--Torquemada demands of the Rabbis of Toledo the Denunciation of Marranos--Judah Ibn-Verga--Jewish Courtiers under Ferdinand and Isabella --Isaac Abrabanel: his History and Writings--The Jews of Portugal under Alfonso V--The Ibn-Yachya Brothers--Abrabanel's Flight from Portugal to Spain--The Jews of Granada: Isaac Hamon--Edict of Banishment promulgated by Ferdinand and Isabella--Its Consequences--Departure from Spain--Number of the Exiles--Decline in the Prosperity of Spain after the Banishment of the Jews--Transformation of Synagogues and Schools into Churches and Monasteries--The Inquisition and the Marranos--Deza, the Successor of Torquemada.

1483-1492 C.E.

The monster of the Inquisition, having poured out its wrath on the new-Christians, now stretched its arms over the Jews, and delivered them to a miserable fate. The connection between the Jews and the Marranos was too close for the former not to be made to participate in the misfortunes of the latter. They were in intimate relations with each other, were bound to each other by close, brotherly ties. The Jews experienced heartfelt pity for their unfortunate brethren, so unwillingly wearing the mask of Christianity, and strove to keep them in touch with the Jewish community. They instructed Christian-born Marranos in the rites of Judaism, held secret meetings with them for prayer, furnished them with religious books and writings, kept them informed of the occurrence of fasts and festivals, supplied them at Easter with unleavened bread, and throughout the year with meat prepared according to their own ritual, and circumcised their new-born sons. In Seville, in fact in the whole of Andalusia, there were countless new-Christians, baptized at the time of the furious attack upon the Jews by Ferdinand Martinez, and later during the persecution of 1391, so that it offered a good field for the activity of Jews who were endeavoring to bring back turncoat brethren into the ranks of Judaism. One of the most active in this work was Judah Ibn-Verga, of Seville, Kabbalist and astronomer, who was held in high estimation by the governor of Andalusia. The king and queen intended to call the Inquisition into existence here, and the first step was to separate the Jews from Christians, especially new-Christians, and to destroy every connecting link between them. The cortes of Toledo insisted on the enforcement of the stringent regulations--hitherto so frequently evaded--for special Jewish (and Moorish) quarters, but the strictly executed law of separation, made to take effect all over the kingdom, could not sever the loving relations existing between Jews and Marranos. In spite of all, the closest intercommunion was maintained, only more secretly, more circumspectly. The greater the danger of discovery, the the greater the charm of meeting, despite the Argus eyes of priestly spies and their myrmidons, for mutual solace and encouragement. These meetings of the Jews and Moors, from the secrecy with which they were conducted, and the danger attending them, wore a romantic aspect. A loving bond of union was thus created, which grew closer and stronger for every effort to loosen it.

The fiendish Torquemada strove by every possible means to destroy these ties. As soon as he had become grand inquisitor, he issued a command that Marranos should present themselves for confession, ordered the rabbis of Toledo to be convened, and exacted from them an oath that they would inform against new-Christians who observed Jewish rites and ceremonies, and would excommunicate Jews who refused to become witnesses against their own people. They were threatened with heavy punishment if they refused to take this oath (1485). What a tragical struggle for the rabbis of Toledo! They themselves were to lend a hand to wrench their faithful brethren from Judaism, and deliver them over to Christianity, or, rather, to the stake! Surely, they could not be brought to this, and preferred to suffer punishment! Judah Ibn-Verga, ordered by the inquisitors to deliver over pseudo-Christians who secretly clung to Judaism, chose to leave his native Seville, and fled to Lisbon, where he eventually died a martyr's death. Since the inquisitors could not attain their ends through Jews, who, despite all measures, continued their secret intercourse with new-Christians, they urged the king and queen to issue a mandate for the partial expulsion of the Jews from Andalusia, especially from Seville.

The Castilian and Aragonese Jews might have known, from these sad events, that their sojourn could not be of long duration; but they loved Spain too dearly to part from her except under compulsion. Besides, the king and queen often protected them from unfair treatment. When they removed to special Jewish quarters, Ferdinand and Isabella were at great pains to shield them from annoyance and chicanery. Moreover, under the rule of these Catholic sovereigns there were Jewish tithe and tax collectors, and, finally, the Jews relied upon the fact that they were indispensable to the Christians. The sick preferred to seek advice with Jewish physicians, the lower classes consulted Jews on legal questions, and even asked them to read the letters or documents which they received from the clergy. In addition to all this, it happened that, at the time when Torquemada was casting his snares over the Moors and Jews, the celebrated Abrabanel received an important post at the court of Castile, and enjoyed unlimited confidence. Under his protection the Spanish Jews hoped to be able to defy the fury of the venomous Dominicans. Abrabanel's favored position at court, the geniality of his character, his affection for the Hebrew race, his love of learning, and his tried wisdom, brought back the time of Samuel Nagrela, and lulled the Jews with false hopes.

Don Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel (born in Lisbon 1437, died in Venice 1509) worthily closes the list of Jewish statesmen in Spain who, beginning with Chasdaï Ibn-Shaprut, used their names and positions to protect the interests of their race. In his noble-mindedness, his contemporaries saw proofs of Abrabanel's descent from the royal house of David, a distinction on which the Abrabanels prided themselves, and which was generally conceded to them. His grandfather, Samuel Abrabanel, who, during the persecution of 1391, but probably only for a short time, lived as a Christian, was a large-hearted, generous man, who supported Jewish learning and its votaries. His father, Judah, treasurer to a Portuguese prince, was wealthy and benevolent. Isaac Abrabanel was precocious, of clear understanding, but sober-minded, without imagination and without depth. The realities of life, present conditions and events, he grasped with unerring tact; but what was distant, less obvious to ordinary perceptions, lay veiled in a mist which he was unable to penetrate or dispel. The origin of Judaism, its splendid antiquity, and its conception of God, were favorite themes with Abrabanel from his youth upward, and when still quite a young man he published a treatise setting forth the providence of God and its special relation to Israel. Philosophical conceptions were, however, acquired, not innate with him; he had no ability to solve metaphysical questions. On the other hand, he was a solid man of business, who thoroughly understood finance and affairs of state. The reigning king of Portugal, Don Alfonso V, an intelligent, genial, amiable ruler, was able to appreciate Abrabanel's talents; he summoned him to his court, confided to him the conduct of his financial affairs, and consulted him on all important state questions. His noble disposition, his sincerely devout spirit, his modesty, far removed from arrogance, and his unselfish prudence, secured for him at court, and far outside its circle, the esteem and affection of Christian grandees. Abrabanel stood in friendly intimacy with the powerful, but mild and beneficent Duke Ferdinand of Braganza, lord of fifty towns, boroughs, castles, and fortresses, and able to bring 10,000 foot-soldiers and 3,000 cavalry into the field, as also with his brothers, the Marquis of Montemar, Constable of Portugal, and the Count of Faro, who lived together in fraternal affection. With the learned John Sezira, who was held in high consideration at court, and was a warm patron of the Jews, he enjoyed close friendship. Abrabanel thus describes his happy life at the court of King Alfonso:

"Tranquilly I lived in my inherited house in fair Lisbon. God had given me blessings, riches and honor. I had built myself stately buildings and chambers. My house was the meeting-place of the learned and the wise. I was a favorite in the palace of Alfonso, a mighty and upright king, under whom the Jews enjoyed freedom and prosperity. I was close to him, was his support, and while he lived I frequented his palace."

Alfonso's reign was the end of the golden time for the Jews of the Pyrenean Peninsula. Although in his time the Portuguese code of laws (Ordenaçoens de Alfonso V), containing Byzantine elements and canonical restrictions for the Jews, was completed, it must be remembered that, on the one hand, the king, who was a minor, had had no share in framing them, and, on the other, the hateful laws were not carried out. In his time the Jews in Portugal bore no badge, but rode on richly caparisoned horses and mules, wore the costume of the country, long coats, fine hoods and silken vests, and carried gilded swords, so that they could not be distinguished from Christians. The greater number of the tax-farmers (Rendeiros) in Portugal were Jews. Princes of the church even appointed Jewish receivers of church taxes, at which the cortes of Lisbon raised complaint. The independence of the Jewish population under the chief rabbi and the seven provincial rabbis was protected in Alfonso's reign, and included in the code. This code conceded to Jews the right to print their public documents in Hebrew, instead of in Portuguese as hitherto commanded.

Abrabanel was not the only Jewish favorite at Alfonso's court. Two brothers Ibn-Yachya Negro also frequented the court of Lisbon. They were sons of a certain Don David, who had recommended them not to invest their rich inheritance in real estate, for he saw that banishment was in store for the Portuguese Jews.

As long as Isaac Abrabanel enjoyed the king's favor, he was as a "shield and a wall for his race, and delivered the sufferers from their oppressors, healed differences, and kept fierce lions at bay," as described by his poetical son, Judah Leon. He who had a warm heart for all afflicted, and was father to the orphan and consoler to the sorrowing, felt yet deeper compassion for the unfortunate of his own people. When Alfonso conquered the port of Arzilla, in Africa, the victors brought with them, among many thousand captive Moors, 250 Jews, who were sold as slaves throughout the kingdom. That Jews and Jewesses should be doomed to the miseries of slavery was unendurable to Abrabanel's heart. At his summons a committee of twelve representatives of the Lisbon community was formed, and collected funds; then, with a colleague, he traveled over the whole country and redeemed the Jewish slaves, often at a high price. The ransomed Jews and Jewesses, adults and children, were clothed, lodged, and maintained until they had learned the language of the country, and were able to support themselves.

When King Alfonso sent an embassy to Pope Sixtus IV to congratulate him upon his accession to the throne, and to send him tidings of his victory over the Moors in Africa, Doctor John Sezira was one of the ambassadors. One in heart and soul with Abrabanel, and friendly to the Jews, he promised to speak to the pope in their favor and behalf. Abrabanel begged his Italian friend, Yechiel of Pisa, to receive John Sezira with a friendly welcome, to place himself entirely at his disposal, and convey to him, and to the chief ambassador, Lopes de Almeida, how gratified the Italian Jews were to hear of King Alfonso's favor to the Jews in his country, so that the king and his courtiers might feel flattered. Thus Abrabanel did everything in his power for the good of his brethren in faith and race.

In the midst of prosperity, enjoyed with his gracious and cultured wife and three fine sons, Judah Leon, Isaac and Samuel, he was disturbed by the turn of affairs in Portugal. His patron, Alfonso V, died, and was succeeded by Don João II (1481-1495), a man in every way unlike his father--stronger of will, less kindly, and full of dissimulation. He had been crowned in his father's lifetime, and was not rejoiced when Alfonso, believed to be dead, suddenly re-appeared in Portugal. João II followed the tactics of his unscrupulous contemporary, Louis XI of France, in the endeavor to rid himself of the Portuguese grandees in order to create an absolute monarchy. His first victim was to be Duke Ferdinand of Braganza, of royal blood, almost as powerful and as highly considered as himself, and better beloved. Don João II was anxious to clear from his path this duke and his brothers, against whom he had a personal grudge. While flattering the Duke of Braganza, he had a letter set up against him, accusing him of a secret, traitorous understanding with the Spanish sovereigns, the truth of which has not to this day been satisfactorily ascertained. He arrested him with a Judas kiss, caused him to be tried as a traitor to his country, sent him to the block, and took possession of his estates and wealth (June, 1483). His brothers were forced to fly to avoid a like fate. Inasmuch as Isaac Abrabanel had lived in friendly relations with the Duke of Braganza and his brothers, King João chose to suspect him of having been implicated in the recent conspiracies. Enemies of the Jewish statesman did their best to strengthen these suspicions. The king sent a command for him to appear before him. Not suspecting any evil, Abrabanel was about to obey, when an unknown friend appeared, told him his life was in danger, and counseled him to hasty flight. Warned by the fate of the Duke of Braganza, Abrabanel followed the advice, and fled to Spain. The king sent mounted soldiery after him, but they could not overtake him, and he reached the Spanish border in safety. In a humble but manly letter he declared his innocence of the crime, and also the innocence of the Duke of Braganza. The suspicious tyrant gave no credence to the letter of defense, but caused Abrabanel's property to be confiscated, as also that of his son, Judah Leon, who was already following the profession of a physician. His wife and children, however, he permitted to remove to Castile.

In the city of Toledo, where he found refuge, Isaac Abrabanel was honorably received by the Jews, especially by the cultured. A circle of learned men and disciples gathered round the famous, innocently persecuted Jewish statesman. With the rabbi, Isaac Aboab, and with the chief tithe-collector, Abraham Senior, he formed a close friendship. The latter, it seems, at once took him into partnership in the collection of taxes. Abrabanel's conscience pricked him for having neglected the study of the Law in following state affairs and mammon, and he attributed his misfortunes to the just punishment of heaven. He at once began to write, at the earnest entreaty of his new friends, an exposition of the books of the earlier prophets, hitherto, on account of their apparent simplicity, neglected by commentators. As he had given thought to them before, he soon completed the work. Certainly, no one was better qualified than Abrabanel to expound historical biblical literature. In addition to knowledge of languages, he had experience of the world, and the insight into political problems and complications necessary for unraveling the Israelitish records.

He had the advantage over other expositors in using the Christian exegetical writings of Jerome, Nicholas de Lyra, and the baptized Paul of Burgos, and taking from them what was most valuable. Abrabanel, therefore, in these commentaries, shed light upon many obscure passages. They are conceived in a scholarly style, arranged systematically, and before each book appear a comprehensible preface and a table of contents, an arrangement copied from Christian commentators, and adroitly turned to account by him. Had Abrabanel not been so diffuse in style, and not had the habit of introducing each Scriptural chapter with superfluous questions, his dissertations would have been, or, at all events, would have deserved to be, more popular. Nor should he have gone beyond his province into philosophical inquiry. Abrabanel accepted the orthodox point of view of Nachmani and Chasdaï, merely supplementing them with commonplaces of his own. He was not tolerant enough to listen to a liberal view of Judaism and its doctrines, and accused the works of Albalag and Narboni of heresy, classing these inquirers with the unprincipled apostate, Abner-Alfonso, of Valladolid. He was no better pleased with Levi ben Gerson, because he had resorted to philosophical interpretations in many cases, and did not accept miracles unconditionally. Like the strictly orthodox Jews of his day, such as Joseph Jaabez, he was persuaded that the humiliations and persecutions suffered by the Jews of Spain were due to their heresy. Yet, did German Jews, wholly untouched by heretical philosophy, suffer less than their brethren in Spain? Only a brief time was granted to Abrabanel to pursue his favorite study; the author was once more compelled to become a statesman. When about to delineate Judæan and Israelite monarchs, he was summoned to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella to be intrusted with the care of their finances. The revenues seem to have prospered under his management, and during his eight years of office (March, 1484-March, 1492) nothing went wrong with them. He was very useful to the royal pair by reason of his wisdom and prudent counsel. Abrabanel himself relates that he grew rich in the king's service, and bought himself land and estates, and that from the court and the highest grandees he received great consideration and honor. He must have been indispensable, seeing that the Catholic sovereigns, under the very eyes of the malignant Torquemada, and in spite of canonical decrees and all the resolutions repeatedly laid down by the cortes forbidding Jews to hold office in the government, were compelled to intrust this Jewish minister of finance with the mainspring of political life! How many services Abrabanel did for his own people during his time of office, grateful memory could not preserve by reason of the storm of misfortunes which broke upon the Jews later; but in Castile, as he had been in Portugal, he was as a wall of protection to them. Lying and fearful accusations from their bitter foes, the Dominicans, were not wanting. At one time it was said that the Jews had shown disrespect to some cross; at another, that in the town of La Guardia they had stolen and crucified a Christian child. From this tissue of lies, Torquemada fabricated a case against the Jews, and condemned the supposed criminals to the stake. In Valencia they were declared to have made a similar attempt, but to have been interrupted in the deed (1488-1490). That the Castilian Jews did not suffer extinction for the succor they afforded the unfortunate Marranos, was certainly owing to Abrabanel.

Meantime began the war with Granada, so disastrous for the Moors and Jews, which lasted with intervals for ten years (1481-1491). To this the Jews had to contribute. A heavy impost was laid upon the community (Alfarda--Strangers' Tax), on which the royal treasurer, Villaris, insisted with the utmost strictness. The Jews were, so to say, made to bring the fagots to their own funeral pyre, and the people, adding insult to injury, mocked them. In the province of Granada, which by pride had brought about its own fall, there were many Jews, their numbers having been increased by the Marranos who had fled thither to avoid death at the stake. Their position was not enviable, for Spanish hatred of Jews was strongly implanted there; but their creed was not attacked, and their lives were not in constant peril. Isaac Hamon was physician in ordinary to one of the last kings of Granada, and enjoyed high favor at court. One day a quarrel arose in the streets of Granada, and the bystanders implored the disputants to leave off in the name of their prophet, but in vain. But when they were bidden to give over in the name of the royal physician, they yielded. This occurrence, which testified that Isaac Hamon was held in more respect by the populace than the prophet Mahomet, roused certain bigoted Mahometans to fall upon the Jews of Granada and butcher them. Only those escaped who found refuge in the royal castle. The Jewish physicians of Granada came to the resolution henceforth not to clothe themselves in silken garments, nor ride on horseback, in order to avoid exciting the envy of the Mahometans.

After long and bloody strife the beautiful city of Granada fell into the hands of the proud Spaniards. Frivolous Muley Abu-Abdallah (Boabdil), the last king, signed a secret treaty with Ferdinand and Isabella (25th November, 1491) to give up the town and its territory by a certain time. The conditions, seeing that independence was lost, were tolerably favorable. The Moors were to keep their religious freedom, their civil laws, their right to leave the country, and above all their manners and customs, and were only required to pay the taxes which hitherto they had paid the Moorish king. The renegades--that is to say, Christians who had adopted Islam, or, more properly speaking, the Moorish pseudo-Christians--who had fled from the Inquisition to Granada, and returned to Islam, were to remain unmolested. The Inquisition was not to claim jurisdiction over them. The Jews of the capital of Granada, of the Albaicin quarter, the suburbs and the Alpujarras, were included in the provisions of the treaty. They were to enjoy the same indulgences and the same rights, except that relapsed Marranos were to leave the city, only the first month after its surrender being the term allowed for emigration; those who stayed longer were to be handed over to the Inquisition. One noteworthy point, stipulated by the last Moorish king of Granada, was that no Jew should be set over the vanquished Moors as officer of justice, tax-gatherer, or commissioner. On January 2d, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, with their court, amid ringing of bells, and great pomp and circumstance, made their entry into Granada. The Mahometan kingdom of the Peninsula had vanished like a dream in an Arabian Nights' legend. The last prince, Muley Abu-Abdallah, cast one long sad farewell look, "with a last sigh," over the glory forever lost, and retired to the lands assigned to him in the Alpujarras, but, unable to overcome his dejection, he turned his steps towards Africa. After nearly eight hundred years the whole Pyrenean Peninsula again became Christian, as it had been in the time of the Visigoths. But heaven could not rejoice over this conquest, which delivered fresh human sacrifices to the lords of hell. The Jews were the first to experience the tragical effect of this conquest of Granada.

The war against the Mahometans of Granada, originally undertaken to punish attempts at encroachment and breach of faith, assumed the character of a crusade against unbelief, of a holy war for the exaltation of the cross and the spread of the Christian faith. Not only the bigoted queen and the unctuous king, but also many Spaniards were dragged by this conquest into raging fanaticism. Are the unbelieving Mahometans to be vanquished, and the still more unbelieving Jews to go free in the land? This question was too pertinent not to meet with an answer unfavorable to the Jews. The insistence of Torquemada and friends of his own way of thinking, that the Jews, who had long been a thorn in their flesh, should be expelled, at first met with indifference, soon began to receive more attention from the victors. Then came the consideration that owing to increased opulence, consequent on the booty acquired from the wealthy towns of conquered Granada, the Jews were no longer indispensable. Before the banner of the cross waved over Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella had contemplated the expulsion of the Jews. With this end in view, they had sent an embassy to Pope Innocent VII, stating that they were willing to banish the Jews from the country, if he, Christ's representative, the avenger of his death, set them the example; but even this abandoned pope, who had seven illegitimate sons and as many daughters, and who, soon after his accession to the papal chair, had broken a solemn oath, was opposed to the expulsion of the Jews. Meshullam, of Rome, having heard of the pope's refusal, with great joy announced to the Italian and Neapolitan communities that Innocent would not consent to the expulsion. The Spanish sovereigns decided on the banishment of the Jews without the pope's consent.

From the enchanted palace of the Alhambra there was suddenly issued by the "Catholic Sovereigns" a proclamation that, within four months, the Spanish Jews were to leave every portion of Castile, Aragon, Sicily and Sardinia under pain of death (March 31, 1492). They were at liberty to take their goods and chattels with them, but neither gold, silver, money, nor forbidden articles of export--only such things as it was permitted to export. This heartless cruelty Ferdinand and Isabella sought to vindicate before their own subjects and before foreign countries. The proclamation did not accuse the Jews of extravagant usury, of unduly enriching themselves, of sucking the marrow from the bones of the people, of insulting the host, or of crucifying Christian children--not one syllable was said of these things. But it set forth that the falling away of the new-Christians into "Jewish unbelief" was caused by their intercourse with Jews. The proclamation continued that long since it would have been proper to banish the Jews on account of their wily ways; but at first the sovereigns had tried clemency and mild means, banishing only the Jews of Andalusia, and punishing only the most guilty, in the hope that these steps would suffice. As, however, these had not prevented the Jews from continuing to pervert the new-Christians from the Catholic faith, nothing remained but for their majesties to exile those who had lured back to heresy the people who had indeed fallen away, but had repented and returned to holy Mother Church. Therefore had their majesties, in council with the princes of the church, grandees, and learned men, resolved to banish the Jews from their kingdom. No Christian, on pain of confiscation of his possessions, should, after the expiration of a certain term, give succor or shelter to Jews. The edict of Ferdinand and Isabella is good testimony for the Jews of Spain in those days, since no accusations could be brought against them but that they had remained faithful to their religion, and had sought to maintain their Marrano brethren in it. A legend relates that their majesties were embittered against the Jews, because the Infante had found the picture of a crucified Holy Child in an orange which a Jewish courtier had given him.

The long-dreaded blow had fallen. The Spanish Jews were to leave the country, round which the fibers of their hearts had grown, where lay the graves of their forefathers of at least fifteen hundred years, and towards whose greatness, wealth, and culture they had so largely contributed. The blow fell upon them like a thunderbolt. Abrabanel thought that he might be able to avert it by his influence. He presented himself before the king and queen, and offered enormous sums in the name of the Jews if the edict were removed. His Christian friends, eminent grandees, supported his efforts. Ferdinand, who took more interest in enriching his coffers than in the Catholic faith, was inclined to yield. Then the fanatical grand inquisitor, Torquemada, lifted up his voice. It is related that he took upon himself to rush into the presence of the king and queen, carrying the crucifix aloft, and uttering these winged words: "Judas Iscariot sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver; your highnesses are about to sell Him for 300,000 ducats. Here He is, take Him, and sell Him!" Then he left the hall. These words, or the influence of other ecclesiastics, had a strong effect upon Isabella. She resolved to abide by the edict, and, of bolder spirit than the king, contrived to keep alive his enmity against the Jews. Juan de Lucena, a member of the royal council of Aragon, as well as minister, was equally active in maintaining the edict. At the end of April heralds and trumpeters went through the whole country, proclaiming that the Jews were permitted to remain only till the end of July to set their affairs in order; whoever of them was found after that time on Spanish ground would suffer death.

Great as was the consternation of the Spanish Jews at having to tear themselves from the beloved land of their birth and the ashes of their forefathers, and go forth to an uncertain future in strange lands, among people whose speech they did not understand, who, perhaps, might be more unfriendly towards them than the Spanish Christians, they had to bestir themselves and make preparation for their exodus. At every step they realized that a yet more cruel fate awaited them. Had they been able, like the English Jews at the end of the thirteenth century, and the French a century later, to take their riches with them, they might have been able to provide some sort of miserable existence for themselves; but the Jewish capitalists were not permitted to take their money with them, they were compelled to accept bills of exchange for it. But Spain, on account of its dominant knightly and ecclesiastical element, had no places of exchange like those in Italy, where commercial notes were of value. Business on a large scale was in the hands, for the most part, of Jews and new-Christians, and the latter, from fear, had to keep away from their brethren in race. The Jews who owned land were forced to part with it at absurd prices, because no buyers applied, and they were obliged to beg the Christians for even the meanest thing in exchange. A contemporary, Andreas Bernaldez, pastor of Los Palacios, relates that the most magnificent houses and the most beautiful estates of the Jews were sold for a trifle. A house was bartered for an ass, and a vineyard for a piece of cloth or linen. Thus the riches of the Spanish Jews melted away, and could not help them in their day of need. In Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, it was even worse with them. Torquemada, who on this occasion exceeded his former inhumanity, forbade the Christians to have any intercourse with them. In these provinces Ferdinand sequestrated their possessions, so that not only their debts, but also the claims which monasteries pretended to have upon them were paid. This fiendish plan he devised for the benefit of the church. The Jews would thereby be driven to despair, and turn to the cross for succor. Torquemada, therefore, imposed on the Dominicans the task of preaching Christianity everywhere, and of calling upon the Jews to receive baptism, and thus remain in the land. On the other side, the rabbis bade the people remain steadfast, accept their trials as tests of their firmness, and trust in God, who had been with them in so many days of trouble. The fiery eloquence of the rabbis was not necessary. Each one encouraged his neighbor to remain true and steadfast to the Jewish faith. "Let us be strong," so they said to each other, "for our religion, and for the Law of our fathers before our enemies and blasphemers. If they will let us live, we shall live; if they kill us, then shall we die. We will not desecrate the covenant of our God; our heart shall not fail us. We will go forth in the name of the Lord." If they had submitted to baptism, would they not have fallen into the power of the blood-stained Inquisition? The cross had lost its power of attraction even for lukewarm Jews, since they had seen upon what trivial pretexts members of their race were delivered over to the stake. One year before the proclamation of banishment was made, thirty-two new-Christians in Seville were bound living to the stake, sixteen were burned in effigy, and 625 sentenced to do penance. The Jews, moreover, were not ignorant of the false and deceitful ways in which Torquemada entrapped his victims. Many pseudo-Christians had fled from Seville, Cordova and Jaen, to Granada, where they had returned to the Jewish faith. After the conquest of the town, Torquemada proclaimed that if they came back to Mother Church, "whose arms are always open to embrace those who return to her with repentance and contrition," they would be treated with mildness, and in private, without onlookers, would receive absolution. A few allowed themselves to be charmed by this sweet voice, betook themselves to Toledo, and were pardoned--to a death of fire. Thus it came about that, in spite of the preaching of the Dominicans, and notwithstanding their indescribably terrible position, few Jews passed over to Christianity in the year of the expulsion from Spain. Among persons of note, only the rich tax-collector and chief rabbi, Abraham Senior, his son, and his son-in-law, Meïr, a rabbi, went over, with the two sons of the latter. It is said that they received baptism in desperation, because the queen, who did not want to lose her clever minister of finance, threatened heavier persecution of the departing Jews, if these did not submit. Great was the rejoicing at court over the baptism of Senior and his family. Their majesties themselves and the cardinal stood as sponsors. The newly-baptized all took the family name of Coronel, and their descendants filled some of the highest offices in the state.

Their common misfortune and suffering developed among the Spanish Jews in those last days before their exile deep brotherly affection and exalted sentiments, which, could they have lasted, would surely have borne good fruit. The rich, although their wealth had dwindled, divided it fraternally with the poor, allowing them to want for nothing, so that they should not fall into the hands of the church, and also paid the charges of their exodus. The aged rabbi, Isaac Aboab, the friend of Abrabanel, went with thirty Jews of rank to Portugal, to negotiate with King João II, for the settlement of the Jews in that country, or for their safe passage through it. They succeeded in making tolerably favorable conditions. The pain of leaving their passionately loved country could not be overcome. The nearer the day of departure came, the more were the hearts of the unhappy people wrung. The graves of their forefathers were dearer to them than all besides, and from these they found parting hardest. The Jews of the town of Vitoria gave to the community the Jewish cemetery and its appertaining grounds in perpetuity, on condition that it should never be encroached upon, nor planted over, and a deed to this effect was drawn up. The Jews of Segovia assembled three days before their exodus around the graves of their forefathers, mingling their tears with the dust, and melting the hearts of the Catholics with their grief. They tore up many of the tombstones to bear them away as memorial relics, or gave them to the Moors.

At last the day arrived on which the Spanish Jews had to take staff in hand. They had been accorded two days respite, that is, were allowed two days later than July 31st for setting forth. This date fell exactly upon the anniversary of the ninth of Ab, which was fraught with memories of the splendor of the old days, and had so often found the children of Israel wrapped in grief and misery. About 300,000 left the land which they so deeply loved, but which now became a hateful memory to them. They wandered partly northwards, to the neighboring kingdom of Navarre, partly southwards, with the idea of settling in Africa, Italy or Turkey. The majority, however, made for Portugal. In order to stifle sad thoughts and avoid the melancholy impression which might have moved some to waver and embrace the cross in order to remain in the land, some rabbis caused pipers and drummers to go before, making lively music, so that for a while the wanderers should forget their gnawing grief. Spain lost in them the twentieth part of her most industrious, painstaking, intelligent inhabitants, its middle class, which created trade, and maintained it in brisk circulation, like the blood of a living organism. For there were among the Spanish Jews not merely capitalists, merchants, farmers, physicians and men of learning, but also artisans, armor and metal workers of all kinds, at all events no idlers who slept away their time. With the discovery of America, the Jews might have lifted Spain to the rank of the wealthiest, the most prosperous and enduring of states, which by reason of its unity of government might certainly have competed with Italy. But Torquemada would not have it so; he preferred to train Spaniards for a blood-stained idolatry, under which, in the sunlight of the Lutheran Reformation, pious men were condemned to chains, dungeons, or the galleys, if they dared read the Bible. The departure of the Jews from Spain soon made itself felt in a very marked manner by the Christians. Talent, activity, and prosperous civilization passed with them from the country. The smaller towns, which had derived some vitality from the presence of the Jews, were quickly depopulated, sank into insignificance, lost their spirit of freedom and independence, and became tools for the increasing despotism of the Spanish kings and the imbecile superstition of the priests. The Spanish nobility soon complained that their towns and villages had fallen into insignificance, had become deserted, and they declared that, could they have foreseen the consequences, they would have opposed the royal commands. Dearth of physicians was sternly felt, too. The town of Vitoria and its neighborhood was compelled, through the withdrawal of the Jews, to secure a physician from a distance, and give him a high salary. In many places the people fell victims to quacks, boastful bunglers, or to the superstition of deceiving or self-deceived dealers in magic. In one word, Spain fell into a condition of barbarism through the banishment of the Jews, and all the wealth which the settlement of American colonies brought to the mother country only helped to render its inhabitants more idle, stupid, and servile. The name of the Jews died out of the country in which they had played so important a part, and the literature of which was so filled with Jewish elements that men of intelligence were constantly reminded of them. Schools, hospitals, and everything which the Jews could not or dared not take away with them, the king confiscated. He changed synagogues into churches, monasteries or schools, where the people were systematically kept ignorant, and trained for meanest servility. The beautiful synagogue of Toledo, which Don Pedro's Jewish statesman, Samuel Abulafia, had erected about a century and a half before, was transformed into a church (de neustra Señora de San Benito), and, with its Moorish architecture, its exquisite columns, and splendid proportions, is to this day a magnificent ornament to the city. In the other cities and towns of Spain, which live in the chronicles of Jewish history, in Seville, Granada, Cordova, in densely-populated Lucena, Saragossa and Barcelona, every trace was lost of the sons of Jacob, or of the Jewish nobility, as the proud Jews of Spain styled themselves. Jews, it is true, remained behind, Jews under the mask of Christianity, Jewish Christians, or new-Christians, who had afforded their departing brethren active help. Many of them had taken charge of their gold and silver, and kept it till they were able to send it on by the hands of trusted persons, or had given them bills of exchange on foreign places. These negotiations were often of no avail, for when the fanatical king and queen heard of them, they sent for the treasure left behind, or sought to prevent the payment of the checks.

Great as were the obstacles, the Marranos did not cool in their zeal for their exiled brethren. They pursued those guilty of inhuman brutality to the wanderers with bitter hatred, and delivered them over to the Inquisition--turning the tool against its makers. At the instigation of the Marranos, the brother of Don Juan de Lucena, the powerful minister of Ferdinand, was thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, kept there under a strong guard, and none of his relatives allowed to see him, the minister, whose position exempted him from the power of the Inquisition, having counseled the banishment of the Jews, and practically assisted in it, and his brother having relentlessly confiscated the property they had left behind. Torquemada complained that Don Juan was persecuted by the new-Christians on account of his faith. The Marranos, now more than ever on their guard, lest they give the slightest offense, had to cross themselves assiduously, count their beads, and mumble paternosters, while inwardly they were attached more than ever to Judaism. Frequently their feelings outran their will, they broke the bonds of silence, and this was productive of heavy consequences. Thus a Marrano in Seville, on seeing an effigy of Christ set up in church for adoration, cried out, "Woe to him who sees, and must believe such a thing!" Such expressions in unguarded moments naturally afforded the best opportunity for inquiry, imprisonment, the rack and autos-da-fé, not merely for the individual caught in the act, but for his relatives, friends, and everybody connected with him who had any property. It had, moreover, grown to be a necessity to the people, hardened by the frequent sight of the death agonies of sacrificial victims, to witness a solemn tragedy of human sacrifice now and again. It is, therefore, not astonishing, that under the first inquisitor-general, Thomas de Torquemada, in the course of fourteen years (1485-1498) at least two thousand Jews were burned as impenitent sinners. He was so hated that he lived in constant fear of death. Upon his table he kept the horn of a unicorn, to which the superstition of the time ascribed the power of nullifying the effect of poison. When Torquemada went out, he was attended by a body-guard (Familares) of fifty, and two hundred foot-soldiers, to protect him from assault. His successor, the second inquisitor-general, Deza, erected still more scaffolds; but it soon came to pass that the men of blood butchered each other. Deza before his death was accused of being secretly a Jew. When the persecutions against the remaining Moors and Moriscos, and against the followers of the German reformer Luther, were added to those of the Marranos, Spain, under the wrath of the Holy Inquisition, became literally a scene of human slaughter. With justice nearly all the European princes, and even the parliament of Paris, bitterly blamed the perverseness of Ferdinand and Isabella in having driven out so useful a class of citizens. The sultan Bajasid (Bajazet) exclaimed: "You call Ferdinand a wise king, he who has made his country poor and enriched ours!"

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XII. EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM NAVARRE AND PORTUGAL

The Exiles from Navarre--Migration to Naples--King Ferdinand I of Naples and Abrabanel--Leon Abrabanel--Misfortunes of the Jews in Fez, Genoa, Rome, and the Islands of Greece--The Sultan Bajazet--Moses Kapsali--Spanish Jews in Portugal--The Jewish Astronomers, Abraham Zacuto and José Vecinho--The Jewish Travelers, Abraham de Beya and Joseph Zapateiro--Outbreak of the Plague among the Spanish Jews in Portugal--Sufferings of the Portuguese Exiles--Judah Chayyat and his Fellow-Sufferers--Cruelty of João II--Kindly Treatment by Manoel changed into Cruelty on his Marriage--Forcible Baptism of Jewish Children--Levi ben Chabib and Isaac Caro--Pope Alexander VI--Manoel's Efforts on Behalf of the Portuguese Marranos--Death of Simon Maimi and Abraham Saba.

1492-1498 C.E.

The Jews of northern Spain, in Catalonia and Aragon, who turned their steps to neighboring Navarre, with the idea of seeking shelter there, were comparatively fortunate. Here at least was a prospect of a livelihood, and a possibility of looking round for other places of refuge. The Inquisition had met with courageous resistance from the rulers and the people of Navarre. When some Marranos, concerned in the murder of Arbues, the inquisitor, fled to this kingdom, and the bloodthirsty heresy-mongers demanded that they be given up to the executioners, the town of Tudela declared that it would not suffer such unrighteous violence to people who had sought its protection, and closed the gates against their emissaries. In vain did king Ferdinand, who had an eye upon Navarre, threaten it with his anger. The citizens of Tudela remained firm. A Navarrese prince, Jacob of Navarre, suffered for the shelter he gave to a hunted Marrano. The inquisitors suddenly arrested, imprisoned and sentenced him, as an enemy of the Holy Office, to shameful exposure in a church, where his list of offenses was publicly read out, and absolution promised him only if he submitted to flagellation from priestly hands. Several other towns of Navarre gave protection to the fugitives, and about 12,000 Castilian wanderers took up their quarters in Navarre. Count of Lerin probably received the greater number of these. But the Jews enjoyed only a few years of peace in Navarre; for upon the vehement urging of King Ferdinand, who followed the fugitives with bitterest enmity and persecution, the king of Navarre gave them the choice between wandering forth again and baptism. The greater number adopted Christianity, because there was only a short time for preparation, and no time for thinking. In the community of Tudela, so famous for steadfast piety, 180 families submitted to baptism.

Also those Castilian Jews were fortunate who, instead of indulging themselves in the vain hope that the edict would be recalled, did not stay until the last day, but made their way, before the end of the respite, to Italy, Africa, or Turkey. They did not lack the means of getting away. The Spanish Jews had such widespread repute, and their expulsion had made so much stir in Europe, that crowds of ships were ready in Spanish seaports to take up the wanderers and convey them to all parts, not only the ships of the country, but also Italian vessels from Genoa and Venice. The ship-owners saw a prospect of lucrative business. Many Jews from Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia desired to settle in Naples, and sent ambassadors to the king, Ferdinand I, to ask him to receive them. This prince was not merely free from prejudice against the Jews, but was kindly inclined towards them, out of compassion for their misfortunes, and he may have promised himself industrial and intellectual advantage from this immigration of the Spanish Jews. Whether it was calculation or generosity, it is enough that he bade them welcome, and made his realm free to them. Many thousands of them landed in the Bay of Naples (24th August, 1492), and were kindly received. The native Jewish community treated them with true brotherly generosity, defrayed the passage of the poor not able to pay, and provided for their immediate necessities.

Isaac Abrabanel, also, and his whole household, went to Naples. Here he lived at first as a private individual, and continued the work of writing a commentary upon the book of Kings, which had been interrupted by his state duties. When the king of Naples was informed of his presence in the city, he invited him to an interview, and intrusted him with a post, in all likelihood in the financial department. Probably he hoped to make use of Abrabanel's experience in the war with which he was threatened by the king of France. Whether from his own noble impulses, or from esteem for Abrabanel, the king of Naples showed the Jews a gentle humanity which startlingly contrasted with the cruelty of the Spanish king. The unhappy people had to struggle with many woes; when they thought themselves free of one, another yet more merciless fell upon them. A devastating pestilence, arising out of the sad condition to which they had been reduced, or from the overcrowding of the ships, followed in the track of the wanderers. They brought death with them. Scarcely six months had they been settled on Neapolitan soil when the pestilence carried numbers of them off, and King Ferdinand, who dreaded a rising of the populace against the Jews, hinted to them that they must bury their corpses by night, and in silence. When the pest could no longer be concealed, and every day increased in virulence, people and courtiers alike entreated him to drive them forth. But Ferdinand would not assent to this inhuman proceeding; he is said to have threatened to abdicate if the Jews were ill-treated. He had hospitals erected for them outside the town, sent physicians to their aid, and gave them means of support. For a whole year he strove, with unexampled nobility, to succor the unfortunate people, whom banishment and disease had transformed into living corpses. Those, also, who were fortunate enough to reach Pisa found a brotherly reception. The sons of Yechiel of Pisa fairly took up their abode on the quay, so as to be ready to receive the wanderers, provide for their wants, shelter them, or help them on their way to some other place. After Ferdinand's death, his son, Alfonso II, who little resembled him, retained the Jewish statesman, Abrabanel, in his service, and, after his resignation in favor of his son, took him with him to Sicily. Abrabanel to the last remained faithful to this prince in his misfortunes (January, 1494, to June, 1495).

After the conquest of Naples by the weak-headed knight-errant king of France, Charles VIII, the members of the Abrabanel family were torn apart and scattered. None of them, however, met with such signal misfortune as the eldest son, Judah Leon Medigo (born 1470, died 1530). He had been so well beloved at the Spanish court that they were loath to part with him, and would gladly have kept him there--of course, as a Christian. To attain this end, a command was issued that he be not permitted to leave Toledo, or that his one-year-old son be taken from him, baptized immediately, and that in this manner the father be chained to Spain. Judah Abrabanel, however, got wind of this plot against his liberty, sent his son, with his nurse, "like stolen goods," secretly to the Portuguese coast; but as he himself did not care to seek shelter in the country where his father had been threatened with death, he turned his face towards Naples. His suspicions of the king of Portugal were only too speedily justified. No sooner did João hear that a relative of Abrabanel was within his borders than he ordered the child to be kept as hostage, and not to be permitted to go forth with the other Jews. Little Isaac never saw his parents and grandparents again. He was baptized, and brought up as a Christian. The agony of the father at the living death of his lost child was boundless. It gave him no rest or peace to his latest hour, and it found vent in a lamentation sad in the extreme. Yet what was the grief for one child, compared with the woes which overtook the thousands of Jews hunted out of Spain?

Many of them found their way to the nearest African seaport towns, Oran, Algiers and Bugia. The inhabitants, who feared that their towns would be overcrowded from such a vast influx, shot at the Jews as they landed, and killed many of them. An eminent Jew at the court of Barbary, however, addressed the sultan in behalf of his unhappy brethren, and obtained leave for them to land. They were not allowed to enter the towns, probably because the pestilence had broken out among them, too. They could only build themselves wooden huts outside the walls. The children collected wood, and their elders nailed the boards together for temporary dwellings. But they did not long enjoy even this miserable shelter, as one day a fire broke out in one of the huts, and soon laid the whole camp in ashes.

Those who settled in Fez suffered a still more terrible lot. Here also the inhabitants would not admit them, fearing that such an influx of human beings would raise the price of the necessaries of life. They had to encamp in the fields, and live on roots and herbs like cattle. On the Sabbath they stripped the plants with their teeth, in order not to desecrate the holy day by gathering them. Starvation, pestilence, and the unfriendliness of the Mahometan people vied with each other in inflicting misery upon the Jews. In their awful despair, fathers were driven to sell their children as slaves to obtain bread. Mothers killed their little ones that they might not see them perish from the pangs of hunger. Avaricious captains took advantage of the distress of the parents to entice starving children on board their vessels with offers of bread, and, deaf to the cries and entreaties of the parents, carried them off to distant lands, where they sold them for a good price. Later, the ruler of Fez, probably at the representation of the original Jewish inhabitants, proclaimed that Jewish children who had been sold for bread, and other necessaries of life, should be set at liberty.

The descriptions by their contemporaries of the sufferings of the Jews make one's hair stand on end. They were dogged whithersoever they went. Those whom plague and starvation had spared, fell into the hands of brutalized men. The report got about that the Spanish Jews had swallowed the gold and silver which they had been forbidden to carry away, intending to use it later on. Cannibals, therefore, ripped open their bodies to seek for coin in their entrails. The Genoese ship-folk behaved most inhumanly to the wanderers who had trusted their lives to them. From avarice, or sheer delight in the death agonies of the Jews, they flung many of them into the sea. One captain offered insult to the beautiful daughter of a Jewish wanderer. Her name was Paloma (Dove), and to escape shame, the mother threw her and her other daughters and then herself into the waves. The wretched father composed a heartbreaking lamentation for his lost dear ones.

Those who reached the port of Genoa had to contend with new miseries. In this thriving town there was a law that Jews might not remain there for longer than three days. As the ships which were to convey the Jews thence required repairing, the authorities conceded the permission for them to remain, not in the town, but upon the Mole, until the vessels were ready for sea. Like ghosts, pale, shrunken, hollow-eyed, gaunt, they went on shore, and if they had not moved, impelled by instinct to get out of their floating prison, they might have been taken for so many corpses. The starving children went into the churches, and allowed themselves to be baptized for a morsel of bread; and Christians were merciless enough not merely to accept such sacrifices, but with the cross in one hand, and bread in the other, to go among the Jews and tempt them to become converted. Only a short time had been granted them on the Mole, but a great part of the winter passed before the repairs were completed. The longer they remained, the more their numbers diminished, through the passing over to Christianity of the younger members, and many fell victims to plagues of all kinds. Other Italian towns would not allow them to land even for a short time, partly because it was a year of famine, partly because the Jews brought the plague with them.

The survivors from Genoa who reached Rome underwent still more bitter experiences; their own people leagued against them, refusing to allow them to enter, from fear that the influx of new settlers would damage their trade. They got together 1,000 ducats, to present to the notorious monster, Pope Alexander VI, as a bribe to refuse to allow the Jews to enter. This prince, himself unfeeling enough, was so enraged at the heartlessness of these men against their own people, that he ordered every Roman Jew out of the city. It cost the Roman congregation 2,000 ducats to obtain the revocation of this edict, and they had to take in the refugees besides.

The Greek islands of Corfu, Candia, and others became filled with Spanish Jews; some had dragged themselves thither, others had been sold as slaves there. The majority of the Jewish communities had great compassion for them, and strove to care for them, or at all events to ransom them. They made great efforts to collect funds, and sold the ornaments of the synagogues, so that their brethren might not starve, or be subjected to slavery. Persians, who happened to be on the island of Corfu, bought Spanish refugees, in order to obtain from Jews of their own country a high ransom for them. Elkanah Kapsali, a representative of the Candian community, was indefatigable in his endeavors to collect money for the Spanish Jews. The most fortunate were those who reached the shores of Turkey; for the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet II, showed himself to be not only a most humane monarch, but also the wisest and most far-seeing. He understood better than the Christian princes what hidden riches the impoverished Spanish Jews brought with them, not in their bowels, but in their brains, and he wanted to turn these to use for the good of his country. Bajazet caused a command to go forth through the European provinces of his dominions that the harassed and hunted Jews should not be rejected, but should be received in the kindest and most friendly manner. He threatened with death anyone who should ill-treat or oppress them. The chief rabbi, Moses Kapsali, was untiringly active in protecting the unfortunate Jewish Spaniards who had come as beggars or slaves to Turkey. He traveled about, and levied a tax from the rich native Jews "for the liberation of the Spanish captives." He did not need to use much pressure; for the Turkish Jews willingly contributed to the assistance of the victims of Christian fanaticism. Thus thousands of Spanish Jews settled in Turkey, and before a generation had passed they had taken the lead among the Turkish Jews, and made Turkey a kind of Eastern Spain.

At first the Spanish Jews who went to Portugal seemed to have some chance of a happy lot. The venerable rabbi, Isaac Aboab, who had gone with a deputation of thirty to seek permission from King João either to settle in or pass through Portugal, succeeded in obtaining tolerably fair terms. Many of the wanderers chose to remain in the neighboring kingdom for a while, because they flattered themselves with the hope that their indispensableness would make itself evident after their departure, that the eyes of the now blinded king and queen of Spain would be opened, and they would then receive the banished people with open arms. At the worst, so thought the refugees, they would have time in Portugal to look round, decide which way to go, and readily find ships to convey them in safety to Africa or to Italy. When the Spanish deputies placed the proposition before King João II to receive the Jews permanently or temporarily in Portugal, the king consulted his grandees at Cintra. In presenting the matter, he permitted it to be seen that he himself was desirous of admitting the exiles for a pecuniary consideration. Some of the advisers, either from pity for the unhappy Jews, or from respect for the king, were in favor of granting permission; others, and these the majority, either out of hatred for the Jews, or a feeling of honor, were against it. The king, however, overruled all objections, because he hoped to carry on the contemplated war with Africa by means of the money acquired from the immigrants. It was at first said that the Spanish refugees were to be permitted to settle permanently in Portugal. This favor, however, the Portuguese Jews themselves looked upon with suspicion, because the little state would thus hold a disproportionate number of Jews, and the wanderers, most of them penniless, would fall a heavy burden upon them, so that the king, not of an amiable disposition, would end by becoming hostile to all the Jews in Portugal. The chief men, therefore, of the Jewish-Portuguese community met in debate, and many gave utterance to the cruel view that they themselves would have to take steps to prevent the reception of the Spanish exiles. A noble old man, Joseph, of the family of Ibn-Yachya, spoke warmly for his unfortunate brethren; but his voice was silenced. There was no more talk of their settling in Portugal, but only of the permission to make a short stay, in order to arrange for their journey. The conditions laid down for the Spanish Jews were: Each one, rich or poor, with the exception of babes, was to pay a stipulated sum (eight gold-cruzados, nearly one pound) in four instalments; artisans, however, such as metal-workers and smiths, who desired to settle in the country, only half of this amount. The rest were permitted to stay only eight months, but the king undertook to furnish ships at a reasonable rate for transporting them to other lands. Those found in Portugal after the expiration of this period, or not able to show a receipt for the stipulated payment, were condemned to servitude. On the promulgation of these conditions, a large number of Spanish Jews (estimated at 20,000 families, or 200,000 souls) passed over the Portuguese borders. The king assigned to the wanderers certain towns, where they had to pay a tax to the inhabitants. Oporto was assigned to the families of the thirty deputies, and a synagogue was built for them. Isaac Aboab, the renowned teacher of many disciples, who later took positions as rabbis in Africa, Egypt and Palestine, died peacefully in Oporto; his pupil, famous as a geographer and astronomer, Abraham Zacuto, pronounced his funeral oration (end of 1492). Only a few of his fellow-sufferers were destined to die a peaceful death.

The feverish eagerness for discovering unknown lands and entering into trading relations with them, which had seized on Portugal, gave practical value to two sciences which hitherto had been regarded as the hobby or amusement of idlers and dilettanti--namely, astronomy and mathematics, the favorite pursuits of cultured Jews of the Pyrenean Peninsula. If India, the land of gold and spices, upon which the minds of the Portuguese were set with burning desire, was to be discovered, then coasting journeys, so slow and so dangerous, would have to be given up, and voyages made thither upon the high seas. But the ships ran the risk of losing their way on the trackless wastes of the ocean. Venturesome mariners, therefore, sought astronomical tables to direct their way by the courses of the sun and the stars. In this science Spanish Jews had the mastery. A Chazan of Toledo, Isaac (Zag) Ibn-Said, had published astronomical tables in the thirteenth century, known under the name of Alfonsine Tables, which were used with only slight alterations by the scientific men of Germany, France, England and Italy. As João II of Portugal now wished to send ships to the Atlantic for the discovery of India by way of the African sea-coast, he summoned a sort of astronomical congress for the working out of practical astronomical tables. At this congress, together with the famous German astronomer, Martin Behaim, and the Christian physician of King Rodrigo, there sat a Jew, the royal physician, Joseph (José) Vecinho, or de Viseu. He used as a basis the perpetual astronomical calendar, or Tables of the Seven Planets, which Abraham Zacuto, known later as a chronicler, had drawn up for a bishop of Salamanca, to whom he had dedicated it. Joseph Vecinho, together with Christian scientists, also improved upon the instrument for the measurement of the altitude of the stars, the nautical astrolabe, indispensable to mariners. By its aid Vasco da Gama first found it possible to follow the seaway to the Cape of Good Hope and India, and thus, perhaps, Columbus was enabled to discover a new continent. The geographical knowledge and skill of two Jews, Rabbi Abraham de Beya and Joseph Zapateiro de Lamego, were also turned to account by King João II, who sent them to Asia to obtain tidings of his emissaries to the mythical land of Prester John.

Although King João thus employed learned and skillful Jews for his own ends, he had no liking for the Jewish race: he was indifferent, or rather inimical, to them directly they came in the way of his bigotry. In the year in which he dispatched Joseph Zapateiro and Abraham de Beya to Asia, at the instigation of Pope Innocent VIII he appointed a commission of the Inquisition for the Marranos who had fled from Spain to Portugal, and, like Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, delivered over those who had Jewish leanings, either to death by fire or to endless imprisonment. Some Marranos having taken ship to Africa, and there openly adopted Judaism, he prohibited, under penalty of death and confiscation, baptized Jews or new-Christians from leaving the country by sea. On the breath of this heartless monarch hung the life or death of hundreds of thousands of Jewish exiles.

Against those unfortunates in Portugal, not only evil-minded men, but nature itself, fought. Soon after their arrival in Portugal, a cruel pestilence began to rage among them, destroying thousands. The Portuguese, who also suffered from the plague, believed that the Jews had brought it into the country; and, indeed, all that they had suffered, the oppressive heat at the time of their going forth, want, misery, and all kinds of devastating diseases, may have developed it. A considerable number of the Spanish refugees died of the plague in Portugal. The population on this account murmured against the king, complaining that the pestilence had followed in the track of the accursed Jews, and established itself in the country. Don João, therefore, had to insist more strenuously than he otherwise would have done upon the condition that all who had settled in Portugal should leave at the expiration of the eight months. At first he put ships at their disposal, at moderate rates of transportation, according to his agreement, and bade the captains treat their passengers with humanity, and convey them whither they wished to go. But these men, inspired by Jew hatred and avarice, once upon the seas, troubled themselves but little about the king's orders, since they had no need to fear complaints about their inhumanity. They demanded more money than had originally been bargained for, and extorted it from the helpless creatures. Or, they carried them about upon the waste of waters till their stock of provisions was exhausted, and then demanded large sums for a fresh supply of food, so that at last the unfortunates were driven to give their clothes for bread, and were landed anywhere in a nearly naked state. Women and young girls were insulted and violated in the presence of their parents and relatives, and disgrace was brought upon the name of Christian. Frequently these inhuman mariners landed them in some desolate spot of the African coasts, and left them to perish from hunger and despair, or to fall a prey to the Moors, who took them prisoners.

The sufferings of the exiled Jews who left Portugal in ships are related by an eye-witness, the Kabbalist, Judah ben Jacob Chayyat, of a noble and wealthy family. The vessel on which he, his wife, and two hundred and fifty other Jews, of both sexes and all ages, had embarked, left the harbor of Lisbon in winter (beginning of 1493), and lingered four months upon the waves, because no seaport would take them in for fear of the plague. Provisions on board naturally ran short. The ship was captured by Biscayan pirates, plundered and taken to the Spanish port of Malaga. The Jews were not permitted to land, nor to set sail again, nor were provisions given them. The priests and magistrates of the town desired to incline them to the teaching of Christ by the pangs of hunger. They succeeded in converting one hundred persons with gaunt bodies and hollow eyes. The rest remained steadfast to their own faith, and fifty of them, old men, youths, maidens, children, among them Chayyat's wife, died of starvation. Then, at last, compassion awoke in the hearts of the Malagese, and they gave them bread and water. When, after two months, the remainder of them received permission to sail to the coasts of Africa, they encountered bitter sufferings in another form. On account of the plague they were not permitted to land at any town, and had to depend upon the herbs of the field. Chayyat himself was seized, and flung by a malicious Mahometan into a horrible dungeon full of snakes and salamanders, in order to force him to adopt Islamism; in case of refusal, he was threatened with death by stoning. These continuous, grinding cruelties did not make him waver one instant in his religious convictions. At last he was liberated by the Jews of a little town, and carried to Fez. There so severe a famine raged that Chayyat was compelled to turn a mill with his hands for a piece of bread, not fit for a dog. At night he and his companions in misery who had strayed to Fez slept upon the ash-heaps of the town.

Carefully as the Portuguese mariners strove to conceal their barbarities to the Jews, their deeds soon came to light, and frightened off those who remained behind from emigrating by sea. The poor creatures, moreover, were unable to raise the necessary money for their passage and provisions. They, therefore, put off going from day to day, comforting themselves with the hope that the king would be merciful, and allow them to remain in Portugal. Don João, however, was not a monarch whose heart was warmed by kindness and compassion. He maintained that more Jews had come into Portugal than had been stipulated for, and insisted, therefore, that the agreement be strictly carried out. Those who remained after the expiration of eight months were made slaves, and sold or given to those of the Portuguese nobility who cared to take their pick from them (1493).

King João went still further in his cruel dealings with the unhappy Spanish Jews. The children of from three to ten years of age whose parents had become slaves, he ordered to be transported by sea to the newly-discovered San Thomas or Lost Islands (Ilhas perdidas), there to be reared in the tenets of Christianity. The weeping of the mothers, the sobbing of the children, the rage of the fathers, who tore their hair in agony, did not move the heartless despot to recall his command. Mothers entreated to be allowed to go with their children, threw themselves at the king's feet as he came out of church, and implored him to leave them at least the youngest. Don João had them dragged from his path "like bitches who had their whelps torn from them." Is it to be wondered at that mothers, with their children in their arms, sprang into the sea to rest united in its depths? The Islands of San Thomas, whither the little ones were taken, were full of lizards and venomous snakes, and inhabited by criminals transported thither from Portugal. Most of the children perished on the journey, or became the prey of wild beasts. Among the survivors it happened that brothers and sisters, in ignorance of their relationship, married each other. Perhaps the king's barbarity to the Jews must be accounted for by the bitter gloom which mastered him at the death of his only legitimate son.

After the death of João II, who sank in wretchedness into his grave (end of October, 1495), he was succeeded by his cousin Manoel, a great contrast in disposition to himself--an intelligent, amiable, gentle-minded man, and a lover of learning. There seemed some prospect of a better star's rising upon the remnant of the banished Jews in Portugal. King Manoel, finding that the Jews had remained in his kingdom beyond the allotted time only from fear of many forms of death upon the ocean, gave all the slaves their freedom. The money which, beside themselves with joy, they offered him for this, he refused. It is true that his ulterior motive, as Bishop Osorius tells us, was to win them over to Christianity by clemency. The Jewish mathematician and astronomer, Abraham Zacuto, who had remained in Lisbon, having come thither from northern Spain, where he had taught his favorite science even to Christians, was made chief astrologer. Zacuto served the king not merely in the latter capacity. Although a man of limited understanding, unable to rise above the superstition of his day, he had sound knowledge of astronomy, and published a work upon that science, besides preparing his astronomical tables. He also invented a correct metal instrument for measuring the altitude of the stars, to replace the clumsy and inaccurate wooden one used hitherto by mariners.

Under King Manoel, in whose reign Portugal's domains were enlarged by acquisitions in India and America, the Jews were able to breathe awhile. It appears that soon after ascending the throne he issued a command that the accusations against them for murdering children should not be recognized by courts of justice, since they were malicious, lying inventions. Nor would he allow the fanatical preaching friars to utter denunciations against them.

Very short, however, was the gleam of happiness for the Jews under Manoel: the somber bigotry of the Spanish court changed it into terrible gloom. No sooner had the young king of Portugal mounted the throne than their majesties of Spain began to entertain the idea of marriage relations with him in order to turn an inimical neighbor into a friend and ally. They proposed marriage with their younger daughter, Joanna, who afterwards became notorious on account of her jealous disposition and her madness. Manoel lent a willing ear to the proposal of an alliance with the Spanish court, but preferred the elder sister, Isabella II, who had been married to the Infante of Portugal, and had soon after become a widow. Isabella had strong repugnance to a second marriage; but her confessor knew how to overrule her objections, and made her believe that if she consented she would have opportunity to glorify the Christian faith. The Spanish court had marked with chagrin and vexation that the Portuguese king had received the Jewish and Mahometan refugees, and King Manoel's friendly treatment of them was a thorn in their flesh. Ferdinand and Isabella thought that by falling in with the Portuguese king's wishes, they would attain their end. They, therefore, promised him the hand of their eldest daughter upon condition that he join with Spain against Charles VII, and send the Jews out of Portugal, both the native and the refugee Jews. The conditions were very disagreeable to King Manoel, who was on good terms with France, and reaped great advantage from the wealth, energy, intelligence, and knowledge of the Jews.

He consulted with his lords and council upon this question, fraught with such importance for the Jews. Opinions upon it were divided. Manoel hesitated for some time, because his noble nature shrank from such cruelty and faithlessness. The Infanta Isabella spoke the deciding word. She entertained fanatical, almost personal hatred against the Jews. She believed or was persuaded by the priests that the misfortunes and unhappiness which had befallen King João in his last days were occasioned by his having allowed Jews to enter his kingdom; and, nourished as she had been at the breast of superstition, she was afraid of ill-luck in her union with Manoel if Jews were permitted to remain in Portugal. What dreary lovelessness in the heart of a young woman! Irreconcilable strife of feelings and thoughts was thus raised in the soul of King Manoel. Honor, the interest of the state, humanity, forebade his proscribing and expelling the Jews; but the hand of the Spanish Infanta, and the Spanish crown were to be secured only by the misery of the Jews. Love turned the balance in favor of hate. When the king was expecting his bride to cross the borders of his kingdom, he received a letter from her saying that she would not set foot in Portugal until the land was cleansed of the "curse-laden" Jews.

The marriage contract between Don Manoel and the Spanish Infanta, Isabella, then, was sealed with the misery of the Jews. It was signed on the 30th of November, 1496, and so early as the 24th of the following month, the king caused an order to go forth that all the Jews and Moors of his kingdom must receive baptism, or leave the country within a given time, on pain of death. In order to relieve his conscience, he showed clemency in carrying his edict into effect. He lengthened the term of their stay until the October of the following year, so that they had time for preparation. He further appointed three ports, Lisbon, Oporto, and Setubal, for their free egress. That he sought to allure the Jews to Christianity, by the prospect of honor and advancement, was so entirely due to the distorted views of the times, that he cannot be held responsible for it; as it was, only a few submitted to baptism.

Precisely Manoel's clement behavior tended to the greater misery of the Jews. Having ample time to prepare for their departure, and not being forbidden to take gold and silver with them, they thought that there was no need to hurry. Perhaps the king would change his mind. They had friends at court who were agitating in their favor. Besides, the winter months were not a good time to be upon the ocean. The majority, therefore, waited until spring. In the meantime King Manoel certainly did change his mind, but only to increase their fearful misery. He was much vexed at finding that so few Jews had embraced Christianity. Very unwillingly he saw them depart with their wealth and their possessions, and sought ways and means to retain them, as Christians, of course, in his own kingdom. The first step had cost him a struggle, the second was easy.

He raised the question in council whether the Jews could be brought to baptism by force. To the honor of the Portuguese clergy it must be said that they expressed themselves as opposed to this. The bishop of Algarve, Ferdinand Coutinho, cited ecclesiastical authorities and papal bulls to the effect that Jews might not be compelled to adopt Christianity, because a free, not a forced, confession was required. Manoel, however, was so bent upon keeping the industrious Jews with him, that he openly declared that he did not trouble himself about laws and authorities, but would act upon his own judgment. From Evora he issued (beginning of April, 1497) a secret command that all Jewish children, boys and girls, up to the age of fourteen, should be taken from their parents by force on Easter Sunday, and carried to the church fonts to be baptized. He was advised by a reprobate convert, Levi ben Shem Tob, to take this step. In spite of the secrecy of the preparations, several Jews found it out, and were about to flee with their children from the "stain of baptism." When Manoel heard it, he ordered the forced baptism of children to be carried out at once. Heartrending scenes ensued in the towns where Jews lived when the sheriffs strove to carry away the children. Parents strained their dear ones to their breasts, the children clung convulsively to them, and they could be separated only by lashes and blows. In their despair over the possibility of being thus for ever sundered, many of them strangled the children in their embraces, or threw them into wells and rivers, and then laid hands upon themselves. "I have seen," relates Bishop Coutinho, "many dragged to the font by the hair, and the fathers clad in mourning, with veiled heads and cries of agony, accompanying their children to the altar, to protest against the inhuman baptism. I have seen still more horrible, indescribable violence done them." In the memory of his contemporaries lingered the frightful manner in which a noble and cultured Jew, Isaac Ibn-Zachin, destroyed himself and his children, to avoid their becoming a prey to Christianity. Christians were moved to pity by the cries and tears of Jewish fathers, mothers and children, and despite the king's commands not to assist the Jews, they concealed many of the unfortunates in their houses, so that at least for the moment they might be safe; but the stony hearts of King Manoel and his young wife, the Spanish Isabella II, remained unmoved by these sights of woe. The baptized children, who received Christian names, were placed in various towns, and reared as Christians. Either in obedience to a secret order, or from excessive zeal, the creatures of the king not only seized children, but also youths and maidens up to the age of twenty, for baptism.

Many Jews of Portugal probably embraced Christianity in order to remain with their children; but this did not satisfy the king, who, not from religious zeal, but from political motives, had hardened his heart. All the Jews of Portugal, it mattered not whether with or without conviction, were to become Christians and remain in the country. To attain this end, he violated a solemn promise more flagrantly than his predecessor. When the time of their departure came closer, he ordered the Jews to embark from one seaport only, that of Lisbon, although, at first, he had allowed them three places. Therefore, all who wished to go, had to meet in Lisbon--20,000 souls, it is said, with burning grief in their hearts, but prepared to suffer anything to remain true to their convictions. The inhuman monarch allowed them lodgings in the city, but he placed so many hindrances in the way of their embarkation, that time passed by, and the day arrived when they were to forfeit life, or at least liberty, if found upon Portuguese soil. He had all who remained behind locked in an enclosed space (os Estaõs) like oxen in stalls, and informed them that they were now his slaves, and that he could do with them as he thought fit. He urged them voluntarily to confess the Christian faith, in which case they should have honor and riches; otherwise they would be forced to baptism without mercy. When, notwithstanding this, many remained firm, he forbade bread or water to be given them for three days, in order to render them more pliable. This means did not succeed any better with the greater number of them: they chose to faint with starvation rather than belong to a religion which owned such followers as their persecutors. Upon this, Manoel proceeded to extreme measures. By cords, by their hair and beard, they were dragged from their pen to the churches. To escape this some sprang from the windows, and their limbs were crushed. Others broke loose and jumped into wells. Some killed themselves in the churches. One father spread his tallith over his sons, and killed them and himself. Manoel's terrible treatment comes into more glaring prominence when compared with his behavior to the Moors. They, too, had to leave Portugal, but no hindrances were placed in their way, because he feared that the Mahometan princes in Africa and Turkey might retaliate upon the Christians living in their domains. The Jews had no earthly protector, were weak and helpless, therefore, Manoel, whom historians call the Great, permitted himself to perpetrate such atrocities. In this fashion many native Portuguese and refugee Spanish Jews were led to embrace Christianity, which they--as their Christian contemporaries relate with shame--had openly scorned. Some, at a later period, became distinguished Rabbinical authorities, like Levi ben Chabib, afterwards rabbi in Jerusalem. Those who escaped with their lives and their faith attributed it to the gracious and wondrous interposition of God. Isaac ben Joseph Caro, who had come from Toledo to Portugal, there lost his adult and his minor sons ("who were beautiful as princes"), yet thanked his Creator for the mercy that in spite of peril on the sea he reached Turkey. Abraham Zacuto, with his son Samuel, also was in danger of death, although (or because) he was King Manoel's favorite, astrologer and chronicler. Both, however, were fortunate enough to pass through the bitter ordeal, and escape from Portugal, but they were twice imprisoned. They finally settled in Tunis.

The stir which the enforced conversion of the Jews caused in Portugal did not immediately subside. Those who had submitted to baptism through fear of death, or out of love for their children, did not give up the hope that by appealing to the papal court they might be able to return to their own faith, seeing that, as all Europe knew, Pope Alexander VI and his college of cardinals, as base as himself, would do anything for money. A witticism was then going the rounds of every Christian country:

Vendit Alexander Claves, Altaria, Christum; Emerat ista prius, vendere jure potest.

Rome was a market of shame--a hill of Astarte--a mart of unwholesomeness--but there the innocent, also, could buy their rights. The Portuguese new-Christians now sent a deputation of seven of their companions in misery to Pope Alexander, and they did not forget to take a purse of gold with them. The pope and the so-called holy college showed themselves favorably inclined towards them, especially Cardinal de Sancta Anastasia took them under his patronage. The Spanish ambassador, Garcilaso, however, was instructed by their Spanish majesties to oppose them. Despite his influence the affairs of the Portuguese Jews must have taken a favorable turn, for King Manoel decided to make concessions. He issued a mild decree (May 30th, 1497), in which he granted amnesty to all forcibly baptized Jews, and a respite of twenty years, during which they were not to be brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition for their adherence to Judaism. It was said that it was necessary for them first to lay aside their Jewish habits, and accustom themselves to the ways of the Catholic faith, for which they needed time. Further, the decree ordered that, on the expiration of this term, a regular examination should be made of those accused of Judaizing practices, and if the case was decided against them, their goods should not be confiscated, as in Spain, but given over to their heirs. Finally, the decree ordained that those baptized physicians and surgeons who did not understand Latin might make use of Hebrew books of reference. Practically this allowed the enforced Christians to live in secret, without fear of punishment, as Jews, and to retain all their books. For, who, in Portugal, in those days, could distinguish a book of medicine from any other work in the Hebrew language? The students of the Talmud could thus follow their favorite researches and studies under the mask of Catholicism. This amnesty benefited the Portuguese Marranos, but not those who had immigrated into Portugal, by a clause which Manoel had inserted out of deference to the Spanish court, or, more particularly, to the Spanish Infanta Isabella. For she insisted that the Marranos who had fled out of Spain into Portugal should be delivered over to the Moloch of the Inquisition. In the marriage contract between the king of Portugal and the fanatical Isabella (August, 1497), it was expressly set down that all persons of the Hebrew race coming under condemnation of the Inquisition, who sought refuge in Portugal, must leave within a month's time.

Thus many thousand Portuguese Jews became pseudo-Christians, but with the firm resolve to seize the first opportunity to get away, so that in a free country they might openly practice a religion only the dearer to them for all they had suffered for it. Their souls, as the poet Samuel Usque writes, had not been stained by the baptism imposed on them. There were some Jews, however, who had refused baptism with all their might. Among them was Simon Maimi, apparently the last chief rabbi (Arrabi mor) in Portugal, a scrupulously pious man; also his wife, his sons-in-law, and some others. They were closely imprisoned, because they would not forswear Judaism, nor observe the rites of the church. To bring them to conversion, Simon Maimi and his fellow sufferers, official rabbis, were most inhumanly tortured. They were immured up to the neck in their prison, and left for three days in this fearful position. When they nevertheless remained firm, the walls were torn down; three had died, among them Simon Maimi, whose conversion was most important, because his example would have influenced the others. Two Marranos imperiled their lives to secure the corpse of the pious martyr, that they might inter it in the Jewish burial-ground, although it was strictly forbidden to bury the Jewish victims of Christian sacrifice otherwise than by the executioner's hands. A few Marranos secretly attended their deeply-lamented saint to his last rest, and celebrated a mourning service over his grave. Manoel permitted the few remaining Jews to depart not long after, probably on the death of Isabella, the instigator of all his barbarities to the Jews. She died at the birth of the heir to the thrones of Portugal and Spain, August 24th, 1498, and the Infante died two years later. One of the remnant dismissed was Abraham Saba, a preacher and Kabbalist author, whose two children were baptized by force and taken from him. The companions of Simon Maimi and his sons-in-law remained in prison a long time, were afterwards sent to Arzilla, in Africa, there condemned to work at the trenches on the Sabbath, and died at last a martyr's death.

Eighty years later, Manoel's great-grandson, the adventurous king, Sebastian, led the flower of the Portuguese people to fresh conquests in Africa. In a single battle the power of Portugal was broken, her nobility slain, or cast into prison. The captives were carried to Fez, and there, in the slave-market, offered for sale to the descendants of the barbarously treated Portuguese Jews. The unhappy Portuguese nobles and knights were, however, glad to be bought by Jews, as they well knew the mild and humane nature of the followers of the "God of vengeance."

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Chapter XIII

RESULTS OF THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. GENERAL VIEW.

Widespread Consequences of the Expulsion--The Exiles--Fate of the Abrabanel Family--Leon Medigo--Isaac Akrish--The Pre-eminence of Jews of Spanish Origin--The North-African States: Samuel Alvalensi, Jacob Berab, Simon Duran II--The Jews of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis--Abraham Zacuto, and Moses Alashkar--Egypt: Isaac Shalal, David Ibn-Abi Zimra--The Jews of Cairo--Selim I--Cessation of the Office of Nagid-- Jerusalem--Obadyah di Bertinoro--Safet and Joseph Saragossi --The Jews of Turkey--Constantinople--Elias Mizrachi: the Karaites--The Communities of Salonica and Adrianople--The Jews of Greece--Elias Kapsali--The Jews of Italy and the Popes: Bonet de Lates--The Ghetto in Venice--Samuel Abrabanel and Benvenida Abrabanela--Abraham Farissol--The Jews of Germany and their Sorrows--Expulsion of the Jews from Various Towns--The Jews of Bohemia--Jacob Polak and his School--The Jews of Poland.

1496-1525 C.E.

The expulsion of the Jews from the Pyrenean Peninsula, unwise as it was inhuman, forms in various ways a well-marked turning-point in the general history of the Jewish race. It involved not only the exiles, but the whole Jewish people, in far-reaching and mostly disastrous consequences. The glory of the Jews was extinguished, their pride humbled, their center displaced, the strong pillar against which they had hitherto leant broken. The grief caused by this sad event was shared by the Jews in every country which had news of it. They all felt as if the Temple had been destroyed a third time, as if the sons of Zion had a third time been condemned to exile and misery. Whether from fancy or pride, it was supposed that the Spanish (or, more correctly, the Sephardic) Jews were the posterity of the noblest tribe, and included among them descendants in a direct line from King David; hence the Jews looked upon them as a kind of Jewish nobility. And now these exalted ones had been visited by the severest affliction! Exile, compulsory baptism, death in every hideous form, by despair, hunger, pestilence, fire, shipwreck, all torments united, had reduced their hundreds of thousands to barely the tenth part of that number. The remnant wandered about like specters, hunted from one country to another, and princes among Jews, they were compelled to knock as beggars at the doors of their brethren. The thirty millions of ducats which, at the lowest computation, the Spanish Jews possessed on their expulsion, had melted away in their hands, and they were thus left denuded of everything in a hostile world, which valued the Jews at their money's worth only. At the same period many German Jews were driven from cities in the East and in the West, but their misery did not equal that of the Spanish Jews. They had known neither the sweetness of a country that they could call their own, nor the comforts of life; they were more hardy, or, at least, accustomed to contempt and harsh treatment.

Half a century after the banishment of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, we everywhere meet with fugitives: here a group, there a family, or solitary stragglers. It was a kind of exodus on a small scale, moving eastwards, chiefly to Turkey, as if the Jews were to approach their original home. But their very wanderings, until they again reached secure dwelling-places, and in a measure were settled, were heartrending through the calamities of every description, the humiliations, the contumely, sufferings worse than death, that they encountered.

The ancient family of Abrabanel did not escape heavy disasters and constant migrations. The father, Isaac Abrabanel, who had occupied a high position at the court of the accomplished king, Ferdinand I, and of his son Alfonso, at Naples, was forced, on the approach of the French, to leave the city, and, with his royal patron, to seek refuge in Sicily. The French hordes plundered his house of all its valuables, and destroyed a choice library, his greatest treasure. On the death of King Alfonso, Isaac Abrabanel, for safety, went to the island of Corfu. He remained there only till the French had evacuated the Neapolitan territory; then he settled at Monopoli (Apulia), where he completed or revised many of his writings. The wealth acquired in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish courts had vanished, his wife and children were separated from him and scattered, and he passed his days in sad musings, out of which only his study of the Scriptures and the annals of the Jewish people could lift him. His eldest son, Judah Leon Medigo Abrabanel, resided at Genoa, where, in spite of his unsettled existence and consuming grief for the loss of his young son, who had been taken from him, and was being brought up in Portugal as a Christian, he still cherished ideals. For Leon Abrabanel was much more highly accomplished, richer in thought, in every way more gifted than his father, and deserves consideration not merely for his father's, but for his own sake. Leon Abrabanel practiced medicine to gain a livelihood (whence his cognomen Medigo); but his favorite pursuits were astronomy, mathematics, and metaphysics. Shortly before the death of the gifted and eccentric Pico de Mirandola, Leon Medigo became acquainted with him, won his friendship, and at his instigation undertook the writing of a philosophical work.

Leon Medigo, in a remarkable manner, entered into close connection with acquaintances of his youth, with Spanish grandees, and even with King Ferdinand, who had driven his family and so many hundred thousands into banishment and death. For he became the private physician of the general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, the conqueror and viceroy of Naples. The heroic, amiable, and lavish De Cordova did not share his master's hatred against the Jews. In one of his descendants Jewish literature found a devotee. When King Ferdinand, after the conquest of the kingdom of Naples (1504), commanded that the Jews be banished thence, as from Spain, the general thwarted the execution of the order, observing that, on the whole, there were but few Jews on Neapolitan territory, since most of the immigrants had either again left it, or had become converts to Christianity. The banishment of these few could only be injurious to the country, since they would settle at Venice, which would benefit by their industry and riches. Consequently the Jews were allowed to remain a while longer on Neapolitan territory. But to exterminate the Spanish and Portuguese Marranos who had settled there, Ferdinand established the terrible Inquisition at Benevento. Leon Medigo for over two years was De Cordova's physician (1505-1507), and King Ferdinand saw him when he visited Naples. After the king's departure and the ungracious dismissal of the viceroy (June, 1507), Leon Abrabanel, having nowhere found suitable employment, returned to his father, then living at Venice, whither he had been invited by his second son, Isaac II, who practiced medicine first at Reggio (Calabria), then at Venice. The youngest son, Samuel, afterwards a generous protector of his co-religionists, was the most fortunate of the family. He dwelt amidst the cool shades of the academy of Salonica, to which his father had sent him to finish his education in Jewish learning. The elder Abrabanel once more entered the political arena. At Venice he had the opportunity of settling a dispute between the court of Lisbon and the Venetian Republic concerning the East-Indian colonies established by the Portuguese, especially concerning the trade in spices. Some influential senators discerned Isaac Abrabanel's correct political and financial judgment, and thenceforth consulted him in all important questions of state policy. But suffering and travel had broken his strength; before he reached seventy years, he felt the infirmities of old age creeping over him. In a letter of reply to Saul Cohen Ashkenasi, an inhabitant of Candia, a man thirsting for knowledge, the disciple and intellectual heir of Elias del Medigo, Abrabanel complains of increasing debility and senility. Had he been silent, his literary productions of that time would have betrayed his infirmity. The baited victims of Spanish fanaticism would have needed bodies of steel and the resisting strength of stone not to succumb to the sufferings with which they were overwhelmed.

We have a striking instance of the restless wanderings of the Jewish exiles in the life of one of the sufferers, who, though insignificant, became known to fame by his zeal to raise the courage of the unfortunate. To Isaac ben Abraham Akrish, a Spaniard, a great traveler and a bookworm (born about 1489, died after 1575), Jewish literature owes the preservation of many a valuable document. Akrish said, half in joke, half in earnest, that he must have been born in the hour when the planet Jupiter was passing through the zodiacal sign of the Fishes, a nativity which indicates a wandering life. For, though lame in both feet, he spent his whole life in traveling from city to city, on land and on sea. When a boy, Akrish was banished from Spain, and at Naples he underwent all the sufferings which seem to have conspired against the exiles. Thus he limped from nation to nation, "whose languages he did not understand, and who spared neither old men nor children," until in Egypt, in the house of an exile, he found a few years' rest. Who can follow all the wandering exiles, with sore feet, and still sorer hearts, until they somewhere found rest, or the peace of the grave?

But the very enormity of the misery they endured raised the dignity of the Sephardic Jews to a height bordering on pride. That they whom God's hand had smitten so heavily, so persistently, and who had undergone such unspeakable sorrow, must occupy a peculiar position, and belong to the specially elect, was the thought or the feeling existing more or less clearly in the breasts of the survivors. They looked upon their banishment from Spain as a third exile, and upon themselves as favorites of God, whom, because of His greater love for them, He had chastised the more severely. Contrary to expectation, a certain exaltation took possession of them, which did not, indeed, cause them to forget, but transfigured, their sufferings. As soon as they felt even slightly relieved from the burden of their boundless calamity, and were able to breathe, they rose with elastic force, and carried their heads high like princes. They had lost everything except their Spanish pride, their distinguished manner. However humbled they might be, their pride did not forsake them; they asserted it wherever their wandering feet found a resting-place. And to some extent they were justified. They had, indeed, since the growth of the tendency among Jews towards strict orthodoxy and hostility to science, and since their exclusion from social circles, receded from the high scientific position they had held, and forfeited the supremacy they had maintained during many centuries; yet they far surpassed the Jews of all other countries in culture, manners, and also in worth, as was shown by their external bearing and their language. Their love for their country was too great to allow them to hate the unnatural mother who had cast them out. Hence, wherever they went, they founded Spanish or Portuguese colonies. They carried the Spanish tongue, Spanish dignity and distinction to Africa, Syria, and Palestine, Italy and Flanders; wherever fate cast their lot they cherished and cultivated this Spanish manner so lovingly, that it has maintained itself to this day in full vigor among their descendants. Far from being absorbed by the rest of the Jewish population in countries which had hospitably received them, they considered themselves a privileged race, the flower and nobility of the Jewish nation, kept aloof from others, looked down upon them with contempt, and not unfrequently dictated laws to them. This arose from the fact that the Spanish and Portuguese Jews spoke the languages of their native countries (which by the discoveries and conquests of the sixteenth century had become the languages of the world) with purity, took part in literature, and associated with Christians on equal terms, with manliness, and without fear or servility. On this point they contrasted with the German Jews, who despised pure and beautiful speech, the very thing which constitutes a true man, and considered a corrupt jargon and isolation from the Christian world as proofs of religious zeal. The Sephardic Jews attached importance to forms of all kinds, to taste in dress, to elegance in their synagogues, as well as to the medium for the exchange of thought. The Spanish and Portuguese rabbis preached in their native tongues, and laid great stress on pure pronunciation and euphony. Hence their language did not degenerate, at least not in the first centuries after their expulsion. "In the cities of Salonica, Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo, Venice, and other resorts of commerce, the Jews transact their business only in the Spanish language. I have known Jews of Salonica who, though still young, pronounced Castilian as well as myself, and even better." This is the judgment of a Christian writer about half a century after their expulsion.

The contempt which even Isaac Abrabanel, mild and broken though he was, entertained for the barbarous jargon spoken by German Jews is characteristic. He was surprised to discover in a letter, sent to him by Saul Cohen of Candia, a native of Germany, a finished Hebrew style and close reasoning, and freely expressed his astonishment: "I am surprised to find so excellent a style among the Germans (Jews), which is rare even among their leaders and rabbis, however gifted they may be in other respects. Their language is full of awkwardness and clumsiness, a stammering without judgment." This superiority of the Jews of Spanish descent in culture, bearing, social manners, and knowledge of the world, was appreciated and admired by other Jews, especially by German Jews, with whom they everywhere came into contact. Hence Spanish Jews could presume to play the rôle of masters, and frequently, in spite of their paucity of numbers, they dominated a majority speaking other tongues. In the century after their expulsion they are almost exclusively the leaders; the names of their spokesmen are heard everywhere; they furnished rabbis, authors, thinkers and visionaries, whilst German and Italian Jews occupied a humble place. In all countries, except Germany and Poland, into which they had not penetrated, or only as solitary individuals, the Sephardic Jews were the leaders.

The northern coast of Africa, and the inhabitable regions inland, were full of Jews of Spanish descent. They had congregated there in great numbers during the century from the persecution of 1391 to their total expulsion. From Safi (Assafi), the most southwestern town of Morocco, to Tripoli in the northeast, there were many communities, of varying numbers, speaking the Spanish language. Though mostly hated, arbitrarily treated, and often compelled by petty barbarian tyrants and the uncivilized, degenerate Moorish population to wear a disgraceful costume, yet prominent Jews found opportunities to distinguish themselves, to rise to high honors and acquire widespread influence. In Morocco a rich Jew, learned in history, who had rendered important services to the ruler of that country, was held in high esteem. At Fez, where there existed a community of five thousand Jewish families, who monopolized most trades, Samuel Alvalensi, a Jew of Spanish descent, was greatly beloved by the king, on account of his ability and his courage, and so trusted by the populace that it accepted him as its leader. In the struggle between the two reigning families, the Merinos and the Xerifs, he sided with the former, led one thousand four hundred Jews and Moors against the followers of the latter, and defeated them at Ceuta. A very numerous Jewish community of Spanish descent occupied the greater portion of Tlemçen, or Tremçen, an important town, where the court resided. Here Jacob Berab (born 1474, died 1541), fleeing from Spain, found a refuge. He was one of the most active men among the Spanish emigrants, and the most acute rabbi of his age. At the same time, he was a crusty, dogmatical and quarrelsome man, who had many enemies, but also many admirers. Born at Maqueda, near Toledo, Jacob Berab, after passing through many dangers, suffering want, hunger and thirst, reached Tlemçen, whence he went to Fez, the Jewish community of which chose him, a needy youth, for their rabbi, on account of his learning and sagacity. There he conducted a college until the fanatic Spaniards made conquests in northern Africa, and disturbed the quiet asylum that the Jews had found there.

The reduced community of Algiers was under the direction of Simon Duran II, a descendant of the Spanish fugitives of 1391 (born 1439, died after 1510), a son of Solomon Duran, the rabbi with philosophic culture. Like his brother, he was considered in his day a high rabbinical authority, and the advice of both was sought by many persons. Of as noble a disposition as his father, Simon Duran was the protector of his co-religionists and the sheet-anchor of the Spanish exiles who came within his reach, for he shunned neither cost nor danger when the religion, morals and safety of his compatriots were in question. Fifty fugitive Jews, who had suffered shipwreck, had been cast on the coast of Seville, where the fanatical Spaniards, in accordance with the edict, put them into prison, and kept them there for two years. They were in daily expectation of death, but finally they were pardoned--that is to say, sold for slaves. As such they reached Algiers in a deplorable condition; but by the exertions of Simon Duran they were redeemed for the sum of seven hundred ducats, which the small community managed to collect.

Two eminent Spanish Jews, the aged historian and astronomer, Abraham Zacuto, and a younger man, Moses Alashkar, found a refuge at Tunis. Zacuto, who had taught mathematics and astronomy to Christian and Mahometan pupils in Spain, and whose published writings were widely read and made use of, was nevertheless compelled to wander about like an outlaw, and had only with difficulty escaped death. He seems to have spent some quiet years at Tunis, where he completed his more celebrated than useful chronicle ("Sefer Yochasin," 1504), history it cannot be called. It is an epitome of Jewish history, with especial reference to the literature of the Jews. It has the merit of having promoted historical research among Jews, but lacks artistic arrangement and completeness. It is a mere compilation from works accessible to the writer, who has even failed to give a complete sketch of the history of his own times, the sufferings of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Zacuto's chronicle was a child of his old age and misery; he wrote it with a trembling hand, in fear of impending events, and without sufficient literary materials. On this account it must be judged leniently.

A contemporary of Zacuto at Tunis was Moses ben Isaac Alashkar, as deeply learned a Talmudist as his teacher, Samuel Alvalensi. He was a correct thinker, and devoid of narrow one-sidedness. He plunged into the dark labyrinths of the Kabbala, yet, at the same time, raised his eyes to the bright heights of philosophy--a mental mésalliance possible in those days. Alashkar even defended Maimuni and his philosophical system against the charge of heresy brought by obscurantists.

Terrified by the perils which the Spanish arms foreboded to the Jews of northern Africa, Zacuto and Alashkar, with many others, appear to have quitted Tunis. They were but too well acquainted with the cruelties practiced against Jews by the ultra-Catholic Spaniards. The former went to Turkey, where he died shortly after his arrival (before 1515). Alashkar fled to Egypt, where his extensive learning and wealth secured for him an honorable position.

Egypt, especially its capital, Cairo, had become the home of many Jewish-Spanish fugitives, who had in a short time acquired an influence surpassing that of the original Jewish inhabitants. On their arrival, all the Jewish communities were, as of old, ruled by a Jewish chief justice or prince (Nagid, Reis). The office was then held by the noble and rich Isaac Cohen Shalal, a man of upright character, learned in the Talmud, who employed his wealth and the high esteem in which he was held by all, even including the Egyptian Mameluke sultan, for the benefit of his community and the fugitives who settled in their midst. He impartially promoted deserving men of the Spanish immigration to offices, whereby they gradually obtained paramount influence. The Spanish scholar, Samuel Sidillo (or Sid, Ibn-Sid), a disciple of the last Toledan rabbi, Isaac de Leon, highly venerated in his day on account of his piety and his profound rabbinical knowledge, found a refuge at Cairo. A Spanish fugitive who acquired still higher distinction was David Ibn-Abi Zimra (born 1470, died about 1573). A disciple of the mystic Joseph Saragossi, he was rich in knowledge and virtues, as well as in property and distinguished descendants, and he soon outshone the natives, acquiring the reputation of being the highest rabbinical authority in Egypt. Many other Spanish rabbinical scholars found rest in Egypt; to those already named, including Jacob Berab and Moses Alashkar, we may add Abraham Ibn-Shoshan, all eventually becoming official rabbis.

Political changes in Egypt placed the Spaniards at the head of the Jewish communities in that country. The land of the Nile, together with Syria and Palestine, whose conquest was so difficult a task for the sultans of Constantinople, finally became the well-secured prey of Selim I, who won a splendid victory over the Mameluke sultan in a decisive battle not far from Aleppo (1517). His march from Syria to Egypt was a triumphal progress. Selim spent the summer of that year in remodeling the order of things in Egypt, reducing it to a real dependency of Turkey, turning it, in fact, into a province, ruled by a viceroy, a pasha entirely devoted to him. Abraham de Castro, a Jew of Spanish descent, was appointed by Selim master of the mint for the new Turkish coinage, and, by his wealth and influence, he acquired great weight among Turkish officials and the Egyptian Jews. De Castro was very benevolent; he annually spent three thousand gold florins in alms, and in every way took lively interest in the affairs of his co-religionists.

Selim, or his viceroy, appears to have introduced an entirely new order into the management of the Egyptian Jews. For ages a chief rabbi and judge had ruled all the communities; the person holding the office had possessed a kind of princely power, similar to that formerly exercised by the princes of the exile in Babylon. The chief rabbi or prince (Nagid) nominated the rabbis of the communities, had the supreme decision of disputes among Jews, confirmed or rejected every new regulation, was even authorized to decree corporal punishment for offenses and crimes committed by Jews under his jurisdiction. From these functions he derived a considerable revenue, but all this ceased with the Turkish conquest. Every community was thenceforth declared independent in the election of its head, and allowed to manage its own affairs. The last Jewish-Egyptian prince or chief rabbi was deposed from his dignity, and betook himself with his riches to Jerusalem, where he became a benefactor of its growing community. The office of rabbi of Cairo was bestowed on the Spanish immigrant David Ibn-Abi Zimra, on account of his upright character, learning, benevolent disposition, and chiefly, probably, on account of his wealth. His authority rose to such a degree that he could venture to abolish a very ancient custom, which excessive conservatism had dragged along from century to century, like a dead limb. The Babylonian Jews had more than eighteen hundred years before adopted the Syrian or Seleucidan chronology (Minyan Yavanim, Minyan Shetaroth), in memory of the victory of the Syrian king Seleucus over the other generals of Alexander the Great. The Syrian empire and the Seleucidæ had perished long ago, Syria had by turns become the prey of Romans, Byzantines, Mahometans, Mongols and Turks; nevertheless, the Babylonian and Egyptian Jews had retained that chronology, employing it not only in historical records and secular papers, but also in the dating of documents of divorce and similar deeds. Whilst the Jews of Palestine and of Europe had gradually adopted other chronologies, as "After the Destruction of the Temple," or "Since the Creation" (æra mundi), the Babylonian and Egyptian Jews so pertinaciously adhered to the Seleucidan era as to declare invalid every letter of divorce not so dated. Ibn-Abi Zimra abolished this antiquated chronology, as far as Egypt was concerned, introducing in its stead the already accepted mode of reckoning from the Creation, and his innovation met with no opposition. The ascendency of the immigrant Sephardic Jews over the majority of the original community (the Mostarabi) was so great and so well established, that the former, in spite of the objections of the latter, succeeded in the bold attempt to abolish an ancient and beautiful custom, introduced by Maimuni himself. The Mostarabian Jews for more than three centuries had been accustomed to have the chief prayer said aloud in the synagogue, by the reader (Chazan), without themselves participating in it. But to the pious immigrants from the Peninsula this custom, though promoting decorum and devotion, appeared illegal, anti-Talmudic, if not heretical, and they zealously set to work to abolish it. Terrible sufferings had hardened the hearts of the Sephardic Jews, and they were but too ready to exercise the utmost severity in religious matters, and slavishly to follow the letter. The rabbi, David Ibn-Abi Zimra, was their leader.

During his term of office a great danger hovered over the Cairo community. The fourth viceroy of Egypt, Achmed Shaitan (Satan), harbored the design of severing Egypt from Turkey, and making himself its independent master. Having succeeded in his first measures, he proposed to the Jewish superintendent of the mint, Abraham de Castro, to have his name placed on the coins. De Castro pretended compliance, but asked for a written order. Having obtained it he secretly left Egypt, and hastened to the court of Solyman I, at Constantinople, to inform the sultan of the treacherous design of the pasha, which was thus frustrated. Achmed vented his rage on the Jews, threw some of them, probably De Castro's friends and relatives, into prison, and permitted the Mamelukes to plunder the Jewish quarter of Cairo. He then sent for twelve of the most eminent Jews, and commanded them within a short time to find an exorbitant sum of money, threatening them, in case of non-compliance, with a cruel death for themselves and their families. For greater security he retained them as hostages. To the supplications of the Jewish community for mercy and delay, the tyrant replied by more terrible threats. In their hopelessness the Jews of Cairo turned in fervent prayer to God. Meanwhile the collectors had got together a considerable sum, which they offered as a payment on account. But as it scarcely amounted to the tenth part of Achmed's demand, his private secretary had the collectors put in irons, and threatened them, and all the members of the community, with certain death on that very day, as soon as his master left his bath. At the very moment when the secretary uttered these words, the pasha was attacked in his bath by Mahomet Bey, one of his vizirs, and some other conspirators, and severely wounded. Achmed Shaitan made good his escape from the palace, but was betrayed, overtaken, cast into fetters and then beheaded. The imprisoned Jews were set free, and their community escaped a great peril. The Egyptian Jews for a long period afterwards commemorated the day of their deliverance (Adar 27th or 28th, 1524--a Cairoan Purim, Furin al-Mizrayim).

By the immigration of Spaniards and Portuguese, Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities also obtained a great increase of members to their congregations, and considerable importance. Here, too, the immigrants in a short time became the social and religious leaders. In the very brief period of seven years the number of Jewish families in the Holy City grew from scarcely seventy to two hundred, and again within the space of two decades (1495-1521), it rose from two hundred to fifteen hundred. The influx of new settlers had largely augmented the prosperity of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem. Whilst formerly nearly all the members of the community were in a state of destitution, three decades afterwards there were only two hundred receiving alms. And what is of greater importance, morality was greatly benefited by the immigrants. Jerusalem was no longer the den of robbers found by Obadyah (Obadiah) di Bertinoro (1470-1520), who had immigrated from Italy. The members of the community were no longer harassed to death, and driven to despair or voluntary exile by a rapacious, tyrannical and treacherous faction; harmony, union, a sense of justice, and peace had found an abode with them. There was indeed a show of excessive piety, but it no longer flagrantly contrasted with a revoltingly immoral mode of life. Obadyah di Bertinoro, the gentle and amiable Italian preacher, had greatly contributed to this improvement of the moral tone of Jerusalem; for more than two decades he taught the growing community, by precept and example, genuine piety, nobility of sentiment and relinquishment of barbarian coarseness. After his arrival at Jerusalem, he wrote to his friends: "If there were in this country one sagacious Jew, who knew how to lead a community gently and justly, not Jews only, but also Mahometans would willingly submit to him, for the latter are not at all hostile to the Jews, but full of consideration for strangers. But there is not one Jew in this country possessing either sense or social virtues; all are coarse, misanthropical and avaricious." Bertinoro did not anticipate that he himself would soften that coarseness, improve the morals, mitigate that immorality, ennoble that baseness. But his genial, amiable manner disarmed evil and healed the sores he had discovered, lamented, and pitilessly exposed. Obadyah was the guardian angel of the Holy City, he cleansed it from pollution, and clothed it with a pure festival garment. "Were I to attempt proclaiming his praise," writes an Italian pilgrim to Jerusalem, "I should never cease. He is the man who is held in the highest esteem in the country; everything is done according to his orders, and no one dares gainsay his words. From all parts he is sought after and consulted; his merits are acknowledged by Egyptians and Babylonians, and even Mahometans honor him. Withal, he is modest and humble; his speech is gentle; he is accessible to every one. All praise him and say: He is not like an earthly being. When he preaches every ear listens intently; not the least sound is heard, his hearers are so silently devout." Exiles from the Pyrenean Peninsula supported him in his humane work.

To the intervention of Obadyah di Bertinoro, and of those who shared his opinions, probably were due the excellent ordinances which the community voluntarily imposed on itself, and for remembrance graved on a tablet in the synagogue. They were directed against the abuses which had crept in by degrees. These ordinances included amongst others the following decrees: In disputes between Jews, the Mahometan authorities are to be applied to only in the utmost necessity. The Jewish judge or rabbi is not to be allowed to compel wealthy members of the community to make advances for communal wants. Students of the Talmud and widows shall not contribute to the communal funds. Jews are not to purchase bad coin, and, if they acquire any accidentally, are not to pass it. The pilgrims to the grave of the prophet Samuel are not to drink wine, for men and women traveled together, the latter unveiled, and if the men had been excited by wine, great mischief might have ensued.

The Holy City acquired still higher importance by the immigration of Isaac Shalal, with his riches, experience, and authority.

Safet in Galilee, the youngest town of Palestine, next to Jerusalem acquired the largest Jewish population and considerable importance, which increased to such a degree that Safet not only rivaled, but excelled the mother-city. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the next century it sheltered only some three hundred Jewish families, original inhabitants (Moriscos), Berbers, and Sephardim. It did not at first possess any eminent native expounder of the Talmud, who might have become a leader. It owed its importance and far-reaching influence to the arrival of a Spanish fugitive, under whose direction the community was strengthened. Joseph Saragossi became for Safet what Obadyah di Bertinoro had been for Jerusalem. Driven from Saragossa, he passed through Sicily, Beyrout and Sidon, in which latter place he resided for some time, and finally reached Safet, where he settled. Joseph Saragossi possessed a mild, fascinating character, and considered it the task of his life to preach peace and restore harmony in private and communal life. Even among Mahometans he worked in a conciliating and appeasing spirit, and on this account he was loved and revered as an angel of peace. At one time he wished to leave Safet. The inhabitants fairly clung to him, and promised him an annual salary of fifty ducats, two thirds of which the Mahometan governor of the town offered to furnish. Joseph Saragossi transplanted the study of the Talmud to Safet, and also that of the Kabbala, as he was an ultra-pious mystic. Through him the hitherto untainted community became a nest of Kabbalists.

In Damascus, the half-Palestinian capital of Syria, there also arose, by the side of the very ancient Mostarabian community, a Sephardic congregation, composed of fugitives, and numbering five hundred Jewish families. Within a short time after their arrival, the Spaniards built a splendid synagogue at Damascus, called Khataib. They speedily increased to such a degree as to separate into several congregations, according to the states from which they had originally come.

The main stream of the Jewish-Spanish emigration flowed towards Turkey in Europe; the greater part of the remnant of the three hundred thousand exiles found an asylum in that country, where the inhabitants did not take love as their watchword. The sultans Bajazet, Selim I and Solyman I, not only tolerated the fugitive Jews, but gave them a hearty welcome, and granted them the liberties enjoyed by Armenians and Greeks. A Jewish poet enthusiastically described the freedom of his co-religionists in Turkey. "Great Turkey, a wide and spreading sea, which our Lord opened with the wand of His mercy (as at the exodus from Egypt), that the tide of thy present disaster, Jacob, as happened with the multitude of the Egyptians, should therein lose and exhaust itself. There the gates of freedom and equal position for the unhindered practice of Jewish worship are ever open, they are never closed against thee. There thou canst renew thy inner life, change thy condition, strip off, and cast away false and erroneous doctrines, recover thy ancient truths, and abandon the practices which, by the violence of the nations among whom thou wast a pilgrim, thou wert compelled to imitate. In this realm thou art highly favored by the Lord, since therein He granteth thee boundless liberty to commence thy late repentance."

The immigrant Jews at first enjoyed very happy days in Turkey, because they were a godsend to this comparatively new state. The Turks were good soldiers, but bad citizens. The sultans, frequently on bad terms with Christian states, could place but indifferent trust in the Greeks, Armenians, and Christians of other national creeds; they looked upon them as born spies and traitors. But they could depend on the fidelity and usefulness of the Jews. Hence they were, on the one hand, the business people, and on the other, the citizen class of Turkey. They not only carried on the wholesale and retail commerce by land and sea, but were the handicraftsmen and the artists. The Marranos especially who had fled from Spain and Portugal manufactured for the warlike Turks new armor and firearms, cannons and gunpowder, and taught the Turks how to use them. Thus persecuting Christianity itself furnished its chief enemies, the Turks, with weapons which enabled them to overwhelm the former with defeat after defeat, humiliation on humiliation. Jewish physicians especially were held in high esteem in Turkey; they were for the most part clever disciples of the school of Salamanca, and, on account of their skill, higher education, secrecy and discretion, were preferred to Christian, and even to Mahometan doctors. These Jewish physicians, mostly of Spanish descent, acquired great influence with grand sultans, vizirs and pashas.

Sultan Selim had for his physician in ordinary Joseph Hamon, an immigrant probably from Granada. Hamon's son and nephew successively held the same office. The son, Moses Hamon (born 1490, died about 1565), physician to the wise sultan Solyman, on account of his skill and manly, determined character, enjoyed even higher reputation and influence than his father. He accompanied the sultan in his warlike expeditions, and brought back from Persia, whither he had followed Solyman on a triumphal progress, a learned man, Jacob Tus or Tavs (about 1535), who translated the Pentateuch into Persian. This version, accompanied by Chaldean and Arabic translations, was afterwards printed at the expense of Hamon, who was justly considered a protector of his brethren and a promoter of Judaism.

The Jews were also in great request in Turkey as linguists and interpreters, they having acquired knowledge of many languages through their wanderings among foreign nations.

The capital, Constantinople, held within its walls a very numerous Jewish community, which was daily increased by new fugitives from the Peninsula, so that it became the largest in Europe, numbering probably thirty thousand souls. It had forty-four synagogues, consequently as many separate congregations. For the Jewish community in the Turkish capital and other towns did not form a close corporation, but was divided into groups and sections, according to their native places, each of which was anxious to retain its own customs, rites and liturgy, and to possess its own synagogue and rabbinical college. Hence there were not only Castilian, Aragonese and Portuguese congregations, but still more restricted associations, Cordovan, Toledan, Barcelonian, Lisbon groups (Kahals), besides German, Apulian, Messinian and Greek. Every petty congregation apportioned among its members the contributions, not only for its worship, officials, the maintenance of the poor, its hospitals and schools, but also for the taxes payable to the state. These latter at first were trifling: a poll-tax on every one subject to taxation (charaj), and a kind of rabbinical tax levied on the congregation, according to the three different classes of property, of 200, 100 and 20 aspers. The family of the physician Hamon alone was exempt from taxes.

At first the native Jews, who formed the majority, had complete preponderance over the immigrants. The office of chief rabbi, after the death of the meritorious but unappreciated Moses Kapsali, was held by Elias Mizrachi, probably descended from an immigrant Greek family, who under the sultans Bajazet, Selim I, and perhaps also under Solyman, had a seat in the divan like his predecessor, and was the official representative of the whole body of Turkish Jews. He deservedly held this post on account of his rabbinical and secular knowledge, and upright, impartially just character. Elias Mizrachi (born about 1455, died between 1525 and 1527), a disciple of the German school, and a profound Talmudist and strictly pious man, was no enemy to science. He not only understood, but taught mathematics and astronomy, gave public lectures thereon, as also on the Talmud, and compiled handbooks on these subjects, some of which became such favorites as to be translated into Latin. In his youth he was a Hotspur, and had a feud with the Karaites in Turkey. But in his old age he felt more kindly towards them, and employed his weighty influence to avert a wrong which the ultra-pious were about to inflict on them. A few obscurantists, chiefly members of the Apulian congregation at Constantinople, attempted to interrupt, in a violent manner, the neighborly intercourse which for half a century had existed between Rabbanites and Karaites. They assembled the members of the congregation, and, with the Sefer Torah in their hand, excommunicated all who should henceforth instruct Karaites, whether children or adults, in the Bible or the Talmud, or even in secular sciences, such as mathematics, natural history, logic, music, or even the alphabet. Nor were Rabbanite servants any longer to take service with Karaite families. These fanatics intended to raise an insuperable barrier between the followers of the Talmud and those of the Bible. But the majority of the Constantinople community were dissatisfied with this bigoted measure. The tolerant Rabbanites of the capital held a meeting to frustrate the plan of the zealots. But the latter behaved so outrageously and with such violence, bringing a fierce rabble provided with cudgels into the synagogue where the consultation was to be held, that the conveners of the meeting had no chance of being heard, and the act of excommunication was carried by an insolent minority, in defiance of the sound arguments and opposition of the majority. Then Rabbi Elias Mizrachi openly and vigorously opposed this unreasonable, illegal and violent proceeding, showing in a learned discourse how unjust and opposed to the Talmud was the rejection of the Karaites. He impressed on the zealots the fact that by their intolerant severity they would bring about the decay of the instruction of the young, since hitherto emulation to surpass their Karaite companions had been a great incentive to Rabbanite scholars.

The Turkish Jews in those days had a kind of political representative, an advocate (Kahiya), or chamberlain, who had access to the sultan and his great dignitaries, and was appointed by the court. Shaltiel, otherwise an unknown personage, but said to have been of noble character, held the office under Solyman. With a population looking contemptuously on unbelievers, with provincial pashas ruling arbitrarily, and with fanatical Greek and Bulgarian Christians, instances of injustice and violent proceedings against the Jews in the Turkish empire were not of rare occurrence; on all such occasions the Kahiya Shaltiel interposed on behalf of his co-religionists, and, by means of money liberally spent at court, obtained redress.

The community next in importance in Turkey was that of Salonica (the ancient Thessalonica), which, though an unhealthy town, possessed attractions for the immigrants of Spain and Provence; for this once Greek settlement offered more leisure for peaceful occupation than the noisy capital of Turkey. Ten congregations at least were soon formed here, the most of Sephardic origin. Eventually they increased to thirty-six. Salonica, in fact, became a Jewish town, with more Jews than Gentiles. A Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, calls the town "a mother of Judaism, built on the deep foundation of the Lord, full of excellent plants and fruitful trees, such as are found nowhere else on earth. Their fruit is glorious, because it is watered by an abundance of benevolence. The greatest portion of the persecuted and banished sons from Europe and other parts of the earth have met therein, and been received with loving welcomes, as if it were our venerable mother, Jerusalem." Within a short period the Sephardic immigrants acquired complete supremacy over their co-religionists, even over the original community, so that the leading language of Salonica became Spanish, which German and Italian Jews had to learn, if they wished to maintain intercourse with the Spanish immigrants. The son of one of the last Jewish-Spanish ministers of finance, Judah Benveniste, had settled here. From his paternal inheritance he had saved enough to possess a noble library; he was the standard around which his heavily-tried brethren could rally. Representatives of Talmudic learning were naturally found among the sons of the Pyrenean Peninsula only, such as the Taytasaks, a family of scholars, and Jacob Ibn-Chabib, though even they were not men of the first eminence. Spanish immigrants, such as the physicians Perachyah Cohen, his son Daniel, Aaron Afia (Affius), and Moses Almosnino, also cultivated philosophy and astronomy to some extent. But the chief study was that of the Kabbala, in which the Spaniards, Joseph Taytasak, Samuel Franco, and others, distinguished themselves. Salonica in Turkey and Safet in Palestine in time became the chief seats of Kabbalistic extravagance. Of less importance was Adrianople, the former residence of the Turkish sultans, though there also, as at Nicopolis, communities in which the Sephardic element predominated were formed.

To the towns of Amasia, Broussa, Tria and Tokat in Asia Minor, the Spanish fugitives furnished inhabitants. Smyrna, which later on had a large Jewish population, was then of little importance. Greece, however, could show some large communities. Calabrese, Apulian, Spanish and Portuguese fugitives settled at Arta or Larta, by the side of the original inhabitants, Rumelians and Corfuites. They seem to have done well here, for we read that the Jewish youth were much given to gayety and dancing, thereby greatly offending the ultra-pious. Not unimportant communities existed at Patras, Negropont and Thebes. The Thebans were considered very learned in Talmudic lore. The rites of the community of Corfu were followed by the other Jews of Greece. There was an important community at Canea, on the island of Candia, belonging to Venice. At their head were two famous families, the Delmedigos, sons and relatives of the philosopher Elias del Medigo, and the Kapsalis, connections of the former chief rabbi of Turkey. Judah Delmedigo (the son of the teacher of Pico di Mirandola), and Elias ben Elkanah Kapsali, finished their studies under the same rabbi, Judah Menz, of Padua; nevertheless, they were not at one in their views. As both held the office of rabbi at Canea, there was constant friction between them. If the one declared anything to be permissible, the other exerted all his learning and ingenuity to prove the contrary; yet both were worthy men of high principle, and both were well versed in general literature.

Elias Kapsali (born about 1490, died about 1555) was a good historian. When the plague devastated Candia, and plunged the inhabitants into mourning, he composed (in 1523) a history of the Turkish dynasty in a very agreeable Hebrew style, in lucid and elevated language, free from pompous and barbarous diction. Kapsali merely aimed at relating the truth. Interwoven with the Turkish narrative was the history of the Jews, showing in gloomy colors the tragic fate of the Spanish exiles, as he had heard it from their own lips. Though in this composition he had the subsidiary intention of cheering the people during the continuance of the plague, his work may serve as a sample of a fine Hebrew historical style. It has, indeed, found imitators. Kapsali forsook the dry diction of the chroniclers, and as an historian was far superior to his predecessor, Abraham Zacuto. Considering that Kapsali was a rabbi by profession, and that in consultations and the giving of opinions he was bound to make use of a corrupt jargon, his work displays much versatility and talent.

Italy at this period swarmed with fugitive Jews. Most of those driven from Spain, Portugal and Germany first touched Italian soil, either to settle there under the protection of some tolerant ruler, or to travel on to Greece, Turkey, or Palestine. Strangely enough, among the masters of Italy the popes were most friendly to the Jews: Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, and Clement VII, were pursuing interests, or devoting themselves to hobbies, which left them no time to think of torturing Jews. The popes and their cardinals considered the canonical laws only in so far as they needed them for the extension of their power or to fill their money-bags. Totally oblivious of the decree of the council of Basle, which enacted that Christians were not to consult Jewish physicians, the popes and cardinals themselves chose Jews as their physicians in ordinary. It appears that, owing to the secret warfare, the intrigues and the frequent use of poison, which, since Alexander VI, had been rife in the curia, where every one looked on his companion as an enemy, Jewish physicians were in favor, because there was no danger of their offering a pope or cardinal a poisoned cup instead of a salutary remedy. Alexander VI had a Jewish physician, Bonet de Lates, a native of Provence, who practiced astrology, prepared an astronomical circle, and sent the pope the Latin description thereof with a fulsome dedication. Bonet de Lates afterwards became the favorite physician in ordinary to Leo X, and influenced his conduct. Julius II had for his physician Simon Zarfati, who in other respects also enjoyed his masters confidence. Cardinals and other high princes of the church followed their examples, and generally intrusted their sacred bodies to Jewish doctors, who consequently were much sought after in Italy. Following the example of the popes, the northern Italian cities received fugitive Jews, even pseudo-Christians re-converted to Judaism, from Spain and Germany, and admitted them to all the privileges of free intercourse. Even the popes permitted Marranos to settle at Ancona, notwithstanding their having been baptized. The most important communities in Italy were formed, after the annihilation of the Jews of Naples, by an influx from other countries into Roman and Venetian territory; in the latter, Venice and the flourishing city of Padua, in the former, Rome and the port of Ancona, receiving most of them. Two opposite views with regard to Jews swayed the council of the egotistical Venetian republic. On the one hand, this commercial state did not wish to lose the advantages that Jewish connections might bring, though at the same time it was loath to foster them, for fear of offending the Levantine Jews, their co-religionists in Turkey; on the other hand, the Venetian merchants were full of trade envy against Jews. Hence the latter were caressed or oppressed as the one or the other party predominated in the Signoria. Venice was the first Italian city wherein Jews resided which set apart a special quarter as a Ghetto (March, 1516).

As a rule the immigrant Jews, Spaniards or Germans, obtained supremacy in Italy over native Jews, both in rabbinical learning and communal relations. The Abrabanels played an important part in Italy. The head of the family, Isaac Abrabanel, indeed, was too much bowed down by age and suffering to exercise much influence in any direction. He died before Jewish affairs had assumed a settled condition. His eldest son, Leon Medigo, likewise made no impression on his surroundings; he was too much of a philosophical dreamer and idealist, a poetic soul averse to dealing with the things of this world. Only the youngest of the three brothers, Samuel Abrabanel (born 1473, died about 1550) left his mark on his contemporaries. He was considered the most eminent Jew in Italy, and his community venerated him like a prince. He alone inherited his father's financial genius, and, after his return from the Talmudic college at Salonica, appears to have availed himself of it, and to have been employed in the department of finance by the viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo. At Naples he acquired a considerable fortune, valued at more than 200,000 zechins. He employed his wealth to gratify the disposition hereditary in his family to practice noble beneficence. The Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, gives an enthusiastic description of his heart and mind: "Samuel Abrabanel deserves to be called Trismegistus (thrice great); he is great and wise in the Law, great in nobility, and great in riches. With his wealth he is always magnanimous, a help in the sorrows of his brethren. He joins innumerable orphans in wedlock, supports the needy, and redeems captives, so that he possesses all the great qualities which make the prophet."

To increase his happiness heaven had given him a companion in life, the complement of his high virtues, whose name, Benvenida Abrabanela, was uttered by her contemporaries with devout veneration. Tender-hearted, deeply religious, wise and courageous, she was a pattern of refinement and high breeding, qualities more highly esteemed in Italy than in any other European country. Don Pedro, the powerful Spanish viceroy of Naples, allowed his second daughter, Leonora, to be on intimate terms with Benvenida, that she might learn by her example. When this daughter afterwards became Duchess of Tuscany, she kept up her acquaintance with the Jewish lady, and called her by the honored name of mother. This noble pair, Samuel Abrabanel and Benvenida, in whom tenderness and worldly wisdom, warm attachment to Judaism and social intercourse with non-Jewish circles were combined, were at once the pride and the sheet-anchor of the Italian Jews, and of all who came under their beneficent influence. Samuel Abrabanel, though not so well versed in the Talmud as his poetic worshiper represents him to have been, was a friend and promoter of Jewish knowledge. To fill the office of rabbi at Naples, he sent for David Ibn-Yachya and his young, courageous wife, who had fled from Portugal (1518); and, as the congregation was too small to pay his salary, Abrabanel paid it himself. In his house the learned Yachya lectured on the Talmud, and probably also on Hebrew grammar. He thus formed a center for Jewish science in southern Italy. Christian men of science also resorted to Abrabanel's house.

The chief seat of Talmudic or rabbinical studies was at that time at Padua, where presided not Italians but immigrant Germans. Judah Menz, of Mayence, even at his great age of more than a hundred years, exercised attractive power over studious disciples from Italy, Germany, and Turkey, as though from his lips they would learn the wisdom of a time about to pass away. To be a pupil of Menz, was considered a great honor and distinction. After he died, his son, Abraham Menz, undertook the direction of the college (1504-1526); but his authority was not undisputed. The native Jews have in no direction left names of note. The chronicles mention some famous Jewish-Italian physicians, who also distinguished themselves in other branches, such as Abraham de Balmes (1521), of Lecce, physician and friend of Cardinal Grimani. De Balmes possessed philosophical knowledge, and wrote a work on the Hebrew language, which was published with a Latin translation by a Christian. Other Jewish physicians of the same age were Judah, or Laudadeus de Blanis, at Perugia, a worshiper of the Kabbala, and Obadyah, or Servadeus de Sforno (Sfurno, born about 1470, died 1550), a physician of Rome and Bologna, who, besides medicine, studied biblical and philosophical subjects, and dedicated some of his Hebrew writings with a Latin translation to King Henry II, of France. But, as far as we are now able to judge of these highly praised compositions, they are mediocre, and the authors, even in their own times, enjoyed but local reputation. It is certain that De Balmes and Sforno are far beneath Jacob Mantin, who, driven from Tortosa to Italy, there distinguished himself as a physician and philosopher, leaving a famous name behind him. Mantin (born about 1490, died about 1549) was a great linguist; beside his native language and Hebrew, he understood Latin, Italian and Arabic. He was a deeply learned physician and philosopher, and translated medical and metaphysical works from Hebrew or Arabic into Latin. He was held in high esteem as physician by a pope and the ambassador of Charles V at Venice. But his learning was marred by his iniquitous character; envy and ambition led him to commit wicked deeds, to accuse and persecute innocent persons, even his own co-religionists.

In those days there lived in Italy a man, who, though not distinguished by any brilliant achievement, was superior to nearly all his co-religionists by a qualification better and rarer than literary ability. He was gifted with common sense and a fine understanding, which led him not to judge of things by appearances, or from a limited point of view. Abraham Farissol (born 1451, died about 1525), a native of Avignon, for reasons unknown, perhaps from want, had emigrated to Ferrara. He supported himself by copying books, and also, it would appear, by officiating as chorister at the synagogue. Though he was in needy circumstances, and confined within narrow surroundings, his perception was acute, his horizon wide, and his judgment matured. Like most of his learned contemporaries in Italy, he commented on the Bible, and his independence of thought in the midst of the dense credulity of his time constitutes his claim upon pre-eminence. He said of himself, "As regards miracles, I belong to those of little faith." Farissol was the first Jewish author who, instead of studying the starry firmament, astronomy and astrology (to which Jewish authors of the Middle Ages were but too much inclined), turned his attention to investigate the configuration and phenomena of our globe. He was influenced to undertake these studies by the marvelous discoveries of the southern coasts of Africa and India by the Portuguese, and of America by the Spaniards. Penetrating mediæval mist and the deceptive illusions of fancy, Farissol saw things as they actually are, and deeming it necessary to point them out, he scoffed at ignorant men who, in their pseudo-learned conceit, considered geography of no account. He had to show conclusively that the Book of books, the holy record of the Torah, attached importance to geographical data, in doing which he indicated a new point of view for the comprehension of the Bible: it was not to be explained by allegories and metaphysical or Kabbalistic reveries, but by actual facts and the plain meaning of the words.

Farissol had access to the court of the duke of Ferrara, Hercules d'Este I, one of the best princes of Italy, who vied with the Medici in the promotion of science. The duke took delight in his conversation, and often invited him to discuss religious questions with learned monks. It seemed as if frequent religious disputations and intellectual encounters were to be renewed on Italian soil. Farissol displayed philosophical calm, besides caution, and forbearance for the sensibilities of his opponents, when touching upon their weak points. At the request of the duke of Ferrara, Farissol wrote down in Hebrew the substance of his discourses with the monks, and reproduced it in Italian, to give his opponents an opportunity for refutation. But his polemical and apologetic work is of much less value than his geographical writings, which he completed in his old age, with one foot in the grave. They display Farissol's clear mind, common sense and extensive learning.

The Italian Jews had at least the right of free discussion with Christians. But as soon as they crossed the Alps into Germany they breathed raw air, politically as well as atmospherically. Few Sephardic fugitives visited this inhospitable land. The German population was as hostile to Jews as the Spanish. True, the Germans had no occasion to envy Jews on account of the position and influence of Jewish magnates at royal courts, but they grudged them even their miserable existence in the Jews' lanes in which they were penned up. They had been banished from some German districts, from Cologne, Mayence and Augsburg, and not a Jew was to be found in all Suabia. From other parts they were expelled at about the same time as from Spain. Emperor Frederick III to his last hour protected those outlawed by all the world. He even had a Jewish physician, a rarity in Germany, the learned Jacob ben Yechiel Loans, whom he greatly favored, and made a knight. Frederick is said on his death-bed to have strongly recommended the Jews to his son, enjoining on him to protect them, and not to listen to calumnious accusations, whose falsity he had fathomed. It appears that Jacob Loans also enjoyed the favor of Emperor Maximilian, whose lot it was to rule over Germany in very troublous times. He transferred this favor to Loans' relatives, for he appointed a certain Joseph ben Gershon Loans, of Rosheim, in Alsace, as official representative of all German Jews at the diet. This Joseph (Josselman, Joselin) was distinguished neither by his rabbinical knowledge, nor his position, nor riches; yet, to a certain extent, he was the official representative of German Judaism. His most striking qualities were untiring activity, when it was necessary to defend his unfortunate co-religionists, his love of truth, and fervent clinging to his faith and people. Born 1480, died 1555, for half a century he vigorously protected his co-religionists in Germany, and became security for them when the ruling powers insisted on special bail. The Jews, therefore, praised and blessed him as their "Great Defender."

But the very fact that the German Jews needed a defender proves that their condition was not easy. For Emperor Maximilian was not a man of decided character, but was swayed by all kinds of influences and insinuations; nor did he always follow his father's advice. His conduct towards the Jews, therefore, was always wavering; now he granted, or at least promised, them his protection; now he offered his help, if not for their sanguinary persecution, at least for their expulsion or humiliation. At times he lent ear to the lying accusations that the Jews reviled the host, and murdered infants, falsehoods diligently promulgated by Dominican friars, and, since the alleged martyrdom of young Simon of Trent, readily believed. Hence, during Maximilian's reign, Jews were not only expelled from Germany and the adjoining states, but were hunted down and tortured; they were in daily expectation of the rack, and of the martyr's death, so that a special confession of sins was drawn up for such cases, and the innocently accused, summoned to apostatize, sealed their confession with death, and joyfully sacrificed themselves for the One God. When, either with the sanction or by the passive permission of the emperor, Jews were banished, he felt no compunction in confiscating their property and turning it into money.

The emperor did not, indeed, expel the Nuremberg community, but for a pecuniary consideration gave the citizens leave to do so. Yet Christians presumed to reproach Jews with making money unjustly, whereas only the rich did so, and then only on a small scale. Immediately after the emperor's accession, the townsmen of Nuremberg appealed to him to permit the expulsion of the Jews on account of "loose conduct." This "loose conduct" was explained in the indictment to be the reception of foreign co-religionists, whereby the normal number of Jews had been excessively increased in the town; the practice of inordinate usury; fraud in recovery of debts, whereby honest tradesmen had been impoverished, and finally the harboring of rogues and vagabonds. To stir up hatred against them, and to confirm the Latin reading (i. e., the educated) classes, in the illusion that Jews were blasphemers, revilers of the host and infanticides, the rich citizen, Antonius Koberger, had the venomous anti-Jewish Fortalitium fidei of the Spanish Franciscan, Alfonso de Spina, reprinted at his own expense. After long petitioning, Emperor Maximilian at last granted the prayer of Nuremberg, "on account of the fidelity with which the town had ever served the imperial house," abrogated the privileges enjoyed by the Jews, and allowed the town council to fix a time for their expulsion, stipulating, however, that the houses, lands, synagogues, and even the Jewish cemetery should fall to the imperial treasury. He, moreover, granted to Nuremberg the privilege of being forever exempt from receiving Jews within its walls (July 5th, 1498). The town council at first allowed four months only for the exodus--and the cultured, virtuous and humanity-preaching patrician, Willibald Pirkheimer, afterwards so strong a pillar of the Humanists, was then a member of the council! Upon the supplications of the unfortunate people, the short reprieve was prolonged by three months. But the Jews, summoned to the synagogue by the sheriffs, had to swear to leave the town by that time. At last, on March 10th, 1499, the much reduced community left Nuremberg, to which it had returned after the Black Death.

At about the same time the Jews of other German towns, Ulm, Nordlingen, Colmar, and Magdeburg, were sent into banishment.

The community of Ratisbon, then the oldest in Germany, was to fare still worse; even then it heard the warning voice to prepare for expulsion. Since the inhabitants of that imperial city, through the disputes with the Jews growing out of the false blood-accusation, had suffered humiliation and pecuniary loss at the hands of Emperor Frederick, the former friendly feeling between Jews and Christians had given way to bitterness and hatred. Instead of attributing to the right cause the troubles and misfortunes which had come upon the town by its attempted secession from the empire, the citizens charged the Jews with being the authors of their misfortunes, and vented their anger on them. The priests, exasperated by the failure of their plot against the Jews, daily stirred up the fanaticism of the populace, openly preaching that the Jews must be expelled. The millers refused to sell them flour, the bakers, bread (1499), for the clergy had threatened the tradespeople with excommunication if they supplied them with food. On certain days Jews were not admitted into the market place, on others they were allowed to make their purchases only after stated hours, when the Christians had satisfied their wants. "Under severe penalties," imposed by the senate, Christians were prohibited from making purchases for Jews; the former were to "secure the glory of God and their own salvation" by being cruel to the latter. The town council seriously discussed applying to Emperor Maximilian to give his consent to the expulsion of the Jews, allowing about twenty-four families to remain. For a few years more they were permitted to drag on a miserable existence. Besides Ratisbon, only two large communities remained in Germany, viz., at Frankfort-on-the-Main and Worms, and even these were often threatened with expulsion.

There were many Jews in Prague, but this town was not in Germany proper; Bohemia was counted a private possession of the crown, under the rule of Ladislaus, king of Hungary. The Bohemian Jews were not too well off under him; the Jewish quarter in Prague was often plundered by the populace. The citizens were sincerely anxious to expel the Jews from Bohemia. But the latter had their patrons, especially among the nobility. When, at a diet, the question of the expulsion or retention of the Jews arose, the decree was passed (August 7th, 1501) that the crown of Bohemia was for all time to tolerate them. If any one of them offended against the law, he only was to be punished; his crime was not to be visited on the whole Jewish community. King Ladislaus confirmed this decision of the diet, only to break it very shortly after, for the citizens of Prague were opposed to it, and spared no pains to frustrate its fulfillment. They so strongly prejudiced the king against the Jews as to induce him to decree their expulsion, and to threaten with banishment such Christians as should venture to intercede for them. By what favorable dispensation they remained in the country is not known. Though in daily expectation of expatriation, they grew reconciled to having their habitation on the verge of a volcano. A descendant of the Italian family of printers, Soncinus, named Gershon Cohen, established a Hebrew printing office at Prague (about 1503), the first in Germany, nearly four decades after the foundation of Hebrew printing offices in Italy.

The Prague community does not seem to have excelled in learning; for some time not a single scientific work, not even one on a Talmudic or rabbinical subject, issued from the press of Gershon; it merely supplied the needs of the synagogue, whilst Italian and Turkish offices spread important ancient and contemporary works. We find but one rabbinical authority mentioned in those days: Jacob Polak (born about 1460, died about 1530), the originator of a new method of Talmud study, a foreigner, and, with the exception of his namesake Jacob Berab, in the East, the most profound and sagacious Talmudist of his time. Curiously enough, the astonishing facility of ingenious disquisition on the basis of the Talmud (Pilpul), attributed to Polak, which attained its highest perfection in Poland, proceeded from a native of Poland.

After Italy and Turkey, Poland was in those days a refuge for hunted and exiled wanderers, chiefly for those from Germany. Here, as well as in Lithuania, united with Poland under one sovereign, Jews enjoyed a better position than in the neighboring lands beyond the Vistula and the Carpathians, though the monk Capistrano had for a while interrupted the good understanding between the government and the Jews.

Kings and the nobility were, to a certain extent, dependent on them, and, when other interests did not conflict, generally granted them privileges, because with their capital and commerce they were able to turn the territorial wealth of the country into money, and to supply its inhabitants, poor in coin, with the necessary funds. The farming of the tolls and the distilleries were mostly in the hands of Jews. It goes without saying that they also possessed land, and carried on trades. Against 500 Christian there were 3,200 Jewish wholesale dealers in Poland, and three times as many artificers, including workers in gold and silver, smiths and weavers. The statute of Casimir IV, so favorable to Jews, was still in force. For though, constrained by the fanatical monk Capistrano, he had abrogated it, yet in view of the advantages that the crown of Poland derived from the Jews, he re-enacted the same laws a few years after. The Jews were generally treated as citizens of the state, and were not compelled to wear ignominious badges; they were also allowed to carry arms. After the death of this politic king, two opponents arose against them: on the one hand, the clergy, who saw in the favored position of the Polish Jews an offense to Christianity, and on the other, the German merchants, who, long settled in Polish towns, had brought with them their guilds and old-fashioned prejudices, and hated the Jewish traders and artificers from sheer envy. United they succeeded in prejudicing the successors of Casimir, his sons John Albert and Alexander, against the Jews, so that their privileges were abolished, and the Jews themselves confined to particular quarters, or even banished altogether from certain towns (1496-1505). But the next sovereign, Sigismund I (1506-1548), was favorably disposed towards them, and repeatedly protected them against persecution and expulsion. The strongest supporters, however, of the Polish Jews were the Polish nobility, who hated the Germans from national and political antipathy, and therefore, both from policy and inclination, favored the Jews, and used them as their tools against the arrogant Germans. And since the nobles held the high official posts, the laws against Jews, to the vexation of the clergy and the guilds, remained a dead letter. Poland, therefore, was an asylum much sought after by persecuted Jews. If a Jew who had turned Christian, or a Christian, wished to become a Jew, he could do so as freely in Poland as in Turkey.

The rabbis were important agents for the crown. They had the privilege of collecting the poll-tax from the communities and paying it over to the state. Therefore, the rabbis of large towns, appointed or confirmed by the king, became chiefs in the administration of communal affairs, represented the Jews before the crown, and bore the title of chief rabbi. The rabbis retained the civil jurisdiction, and were authorized to banish unworthy members, and even to inflict the punishment of death. But in Poland, the country which for several centuries was to become the chief home of the Talmud and the nursery of Talmudic students and rabbis, which was long enveloped, as it were, in a Talmudic atmosphere, there were no prominent Talmudists at the beginning of the sixteenth century; it became the home of the Talmud only after the immigration of numerous German scholars. Coming from the districts of the Rhine and Main, from Bavaria, Suabia, Bohemia, and Austria, swarms of Jewish families settled on the banks of the Vistula and the Dnieper, having lost their fortunes, but bringing with them their most precious possessions, which they defended with their lives, and which they could not be robbed of, namely, their religious convictions, the customs of their fathers, and their Talmudic learning. The German rabbinical school, which at home had no breathing-space, established itself in Poland and Lithuania, in Ruthenia and Volhynia, spread in all directions, and, impregnated with Slavonic elements, transformed itself into a peculiar, a Polish school.

But the Jewish-German fugitives transplanted to Poland not only the knowledge of the Talmud, but also that of the German language, as then spoken; this they imparted to the native Jews, and it gradually superseded the Polish or Ruthenian tongue. As the Spanish Jews turned portions of European and Asiatic Turkey into a new Spain, the German Jews transformed Poland, Lithuania, and the territories belonging thereto, into a new Germany. For several centuries, therefore, the Jews were divided into Spanish and German speaking Jews, the Italian speaking members being too small in number to count, especially as in Italy the Jews were compelled to understand either Spanish or German. The Jews settled in Poland gradually cast off their German awkwardness and simplicity, but not the language. They honored it as a palladium, as a holy remembrance; and though in their intercourse with Poles they made use of the language of the country, in the family circle, and in their schools and prayers, they adhered to German. They valued it, next to Hebrew, as a holy language. It was a fortunate thing for the Jews that at the time when new storms gathered over their heads in Germany, they found on her borders a country which offered them a hospitable welcome and protection. For a tempest burst in Germany, which had its first beginnings in the narrow Jewish circle, but eventually drew on the Jews the attention of all Christendom. An eventful, historical birth, which was to change the face of European affairs, lay, so to speak, in a Jewish manger.

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