IX. THE RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE SPANISH JEWS
(980-1492)
The five centuries marked at their beginning by the rise of Arabic-Jewish civilization in Spain and at their end by the banishment of the Jews from Spain (980-1492), offer the Jewish historian an abundance of culture manifestations and intellectual movements so luxuriant that it is well-nigh impossible to gather them up in one formula. The monotony formerly prevailing in Jewish national life, both in its external and in its internal relations, was succeeded by almost gaily checkered variety. Swept along by the movement towards enlightenment that dominated their surroundings, the Jews of Arabic Spain threw themselves into energetic work in all the spheres of life and thought. While they had political ground more or less firm under their feet, and for the most part enjoyed peace and liberty, the Jews in the Christian lands of Europe stood upon volcanic soil, every moment threatening to swallow them up. Exposed constantly to persecutions, they lived more or less isolated, and devoted themselves to one-sided though intense intellectual activity. Sombre shadows and streaks of bright light alternate with each other in this period. In its second half, the clouds massed themselves heavily upon the darkening horizon. Even the "privileged" Spanish Jews suffered an untoward change in their affairs at the beginning of the thirteenth century: gradually they were withdrawn from under the sovereignty of the Arabs, and made subject to the power of the Catholic monarchs. They became thenceforward the equal partners of their brethren in faith in the rest of Europe. All without distinction had a share in the spiritual martyrdom which is the greenest bayleaf in the crown of Jewish history. To think and to suffer became the watchword of the whole nation.
At first, as we have said, a considerable portion of the Jewish people enjoyed the happy possibility of thinking. This was during the classical epoch of the Arabic-Jewish Renaissance, which preceded the Italian Renaissance by four centuries. There is a fundamental difference between the two Renaissance periods: the earlier one was signalized by a re-birth of the sciences and of philosophy, the later one pre-eminently of the arts and of literature. The eleventh and twelfth centuries marked the meridian of the intellectual development of medieval Judaism. As once, in Alexandria, the union of Judaic with Hellenic culture brought in its train a superabundance of new ideas of a universal character, so again the amalgamation, on Spanish soil, of Jewish culture with Arabic gave rise to rich intellectual results, more lasting and fruitful than the Alexandrian, inasmuch as, in spite of their universal character, they did not contravene the national spirit. The Jewish people dropped its misanthropy and its leaning toward isolation. The Jews entered all sorts of careers: by the side of influential and cultivated statesmen, such as Chasdai ibn Shaprut and Samuel Hanagid, at the courts of the Khalifs, stood a brilliant group of grammarians, poets, and philosophers, like Jonah ibn Ganach, Solomon Gabirol, and Moses ibn Ezra. The philosophic-critical scepticism of Abraham ibn Ezra co-existed in peace and harmony with the philosophic-poetic enthusiasm of Jehuda Halevi. The study of medicine, mathematics, physics, and astronomy went hand in hand with the study of the Talmud, which, though it may not have occupied the first place with the Spanish Jews of this time, by no means disappeared, as witness the compendium by Alphassi. Unusual breadth and fulness of the spiritual life is the distinction of the epoch. This variety of mental traits combined in a marvelous union to form the great personality of Maimonides, the crown of a glorious period. With one "Strong Hand," this intellectual giant brought order out of the Talmudic chaos, which at his word was transformed into a symmetrical, legal system; with the other, he "guided the Perplexed" through the realm of faith and knowledge. For rationalistic clarity and breadth of view no counterpart to the religio-philosophic doctrine which he formulated can be found in the whole extent of medieval literature. The main feature of the philosophy of Maimonides and of the systems based upon it is rationalism, not a dry, scholastic, abstract rationalism, but a living rationalism, embracing the whole field of the most exalted psychic phenomena. It is not philosophy pure and simple, but religious philosophy, an harmonization, more or less felicitous, of the postulates of reason with the dogmas of faith. It is reason mitigated by faith, and faith regulated by reason. In the darkness of the middle ages, when the Romish Church impregnated religion with the crudest superstitions, going so far as to forbid its adherents to read the Bible, and when the greatest philosopher representatives of the Church, like Albertus Magnus, would have rejected offhand, as a childish fancy or, indeed, as an heretical chimera, any attempt to rescue the lower classes of the people from their wretched state of spiritual servitude—in a time like this, the truly majestic spectacle is presented of a philosophy declaring war on superstition, and setting out to purify the religious notions of the people.
Not a breath of this ample spiritual development of the Jews of Arabic Spain reached the Jews living in the Christian countries of Europe. Their circumstances were too grievous, and in sombreness their inner life matched their outer estate. Their horizon was as contracted as the streets of the Jewries in which they were penned. The crusades (beginning in 1096) clearly showed the Jews of France and Germany what sentiments their neighbors cherished towards them. They were the first returns which Christianity paid the Jewish people for its old-time teaching of religion. The descendants of the "chosen people," the originators of the Bible, were condemned to torture of a sort to exhaust their spiritual heritage. Judaism suffered the tragic fate of King Lear. Was it conceivable that the horrors—the rivers of blood, the groans of massacred communities, the serried ranks of martyrs, the ever-haunting fear of the morrow—should fail to leave traces in the character of Judaism? The Jewish people realized its imminent danger. It convulsively held fast to its precious relics, clung to the pillars of its religion, which it regarded as the only asylum. The Jewish spirit again withdrew from the outer world. It gave itself up wholly to the study of the Talmud. In northern France and in Germany, Talmudic learning degenerated into the extreme of scholastic pedantry, the lot of every branch of science that is lopped off from the main trunk of knowledge, and vegetates in a heavy, dank atmosphere, lacking light and air. Rashi (1064-1105), whose genial activity began before the first crusade, opened up Jewish religious literature to the popular mind, by his systematic commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. On the other hand, the Tossafists, the school of commentators succeeding him, by their petty quibbling and hairsplitting casuistry made the Talmudic books more intricate and less intelligible. Such being the intellectual bias of the age, a sober, rationalistic philosophy could not assert itself. In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with their mystical books of devotion, Sefer Chassidim, Rokeach, etc., filled with pietistic reflections on the other world, in which the earth figures as a "vale of tears." Poetry likewise took on the dismal hue of its environment. Instead of the varied lyrical notes of Gabirol and Halevi, who sang the weal and woe, not only of the nation, but also of the individual, and lost themselves in psychologic analysis, there now fall upon our ear the melancholy, heartrending strains of synagogue poetry, the harrowing outcries that forced themselves from the oppressed bosoms of the hunted people, the prayerful lamentations that so often shook the crumbling walls of the medieval synagogues at the very moment when, full of worshipers, they were fired by the inhuman crusaders. A mighty chord reverberates in this poetry: Morituri te salutant.
One small spot there was, in the whole of Europe, in which Jews could still hope to endure existence and enjoy a measure of security. This was Southern France, or the Provence. The population of Provence had assimilated the culture of the neighboring country, Arabic Spain, and become the mediator between it and the rest of Europe. This work of mediation was undertaken primarily by the Jews. In the twelfth century several universities existed in Provence, which were frequented in great numbers by students from all countries. At these universities the teachers of philosophy, medicine, and other branches of science were for the most part Jews. The rationalistic philosophy of the Spanish Jews was there proclaimed ex cathedra. The Tibbonides translated all the more important works of the Jewish thinkers of Spain from Arabic into Hebrew. The Kimchis devoted themselves to grammatical studies and the investigation of the Bible. In Montpellier, Narbonne, and Lunel, intellectual work was in full swing. Rational ideas gradually leavened the masses of the Provençal population. Conscience freed from intellectual trammels began to revolt against the oppression exercised by the Roman clergy. Through the Albigensian heresy, Innocent III, founder of the papal power, had his attention directed to the Jews, whom he considered the dangerous protagonists of rationalism. The "heresy" was stifled, Provence in all her magnificence fell a prey to the Roman mania for destruction, and, on the ruins of a noble civilization, the Dominican Inquisition raged with all its horrors (1213).
Thenceforward the Catholic Church devoted herself to a hostile watch upon the Jews. Either she persecuted them directly through her Inquisition, or indirectly through her omnipotent influence on kings and peoples. In the hearts of the citizens of medieval Europe, the flame of religious hatred was enkindled, and religious hatred served as a cloak for the basest passions. Jewish history from that time on became a history of uninterrupted suffering. The Lateran Council declared the Jews to be outcasts, and designed a peculiar, dishonorable badge for them, a round patch of yellow cloth, to be worn on their upper garment (1215). In France the Jews became by turns the victims of royal rapacity and the scapegoats of popular fanaticism. Massacres, confiscations, banishments followed by dearly purchased permission to return, by renewed restrictions, persecutions, and oppressions—these were the measures that characterized the treatment of the Jews in France until their final expulsion (1394). In Germany the Jews were not so much hated as despised. They were servi camerae, serfs of the state, and as such had to pay oppressive taxes. Besides, they were limited to the meanest trades and to usury and peddling. They were shut up in their narrow Jewries, huddled in wretched cabins, which clustered about the dilapidated synagogue in a shamefaced way. What strange homes! What gigantic misery, what boundless suffering dumbly borne, was concealed in those crumbling, curse-laden dwellings! And yet, how resplendent they were with spiritual light, what exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The torch of faith blazed clear in them, and on the pure domestic hearth played a gentle flame. In the abject, dishonored son of the Ghetto was hidden an intellectual giant. In his nerveless body, bent double by suffering, and enveloped in the shabby old cloak still further disfigured by the yellow wheel, dwelt the soul of a thinker. The son of the Ghetto might have worn his badge with pride, for in truth it was a medal of distinction awarded by the papal Church to the Jews, for dauntlessness and courage. The awkward, puny Jew in his way was stronger and braver than a German knight armed cap-a-pie, for he was penetrated by the faith that "moves mountains." And when the worst came to the worst, he demonstrated his courage. When his peaceful home was stormed by the bestialized hordes of Armleder, or the drunken bands of the Flagellants, or the furious avengers of the "Black Death," he did not yield, did not purchase life by disgraceful treason. With invincible courage he put his head under the executioner's axe, and breathed forth his heroic spirit with the enthusiastic cry: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One."
At length the turn of the Spanish Jews arrived. For the unbroken peace they had enjoyed, they had to atone by centuries of unexampled suffering. By degrees, the Arabs were forced out of the Pyrenean Peninsula, and the power they had to abdicate was assumed by the Catholic kings of Castile and Aragon. In 1236 occurred the fall of Cordova, the most important centre of Arabic Jewish culture. Thereafter Arab power held sway only in the province of Granada. The fortunes of the Spanish Jews underwent a calamitous change. The kings and the upper ten thousand were, indeed, favorably disposed toward them. At the courts of Castile and Aragon, the Jews were active as ministers, physicians, astronomers. But the people, incited by the propaganda of the clerics, nursed frightful hatred against the Jews, not only as "infidels," but also as intellectual aristocrats. The rage of the populace was the combustible material in the terrific explosions that occurred periodically, in the bloody saturnalia of the Pastouraux (1320), in the Black Death riots (1348), in the massacre of Seville (1391).
Dire blows of fortune were unable to weigh down the Spanish Jew, accustomed to independence, as they did the German Jew. He carried his head proudly on high, for he was conscious that in all respects he stood above the rabble pursuing him, above its very leaders, the clerics. In spite of untoward fate his mental development proceeded, but inevitably it was modified by the trend of the times. By the side of the philosophic tendency of the previous age, a mystical tendency appeared in literature. The Kabbala, with its mist-shrouded symbolism, so grateful to the feelings and the imagination, chimed in better than rationalistic philosophy with the depressed humor under which the greater part of the Jews were then laboring. Another force antagonistic to rationalistic philosophy was the Rabbinism transplanted from France and Germany. The controversy between Rabbinism and philosophy, which dragged itself through three-quarters of a century (1232-1305), ended in the formal triumph of Rabbinism. However, philosophic activity merely languished, it did not cease entirely; in fact, the three currents for some time ran along parallel with one another. Next to the pillars of Rabbinism, Asheri, Rashba, Isaac ben Sheshet, loomed up the philosophers, Gersonides (Ralbag), Kreskas, and Albo, and a long line of Kabbalists, beginning with Nachmanides and Moses de Leon, the compiler of the Zohar, and ending with the anonymous authors of the mysterious "Kana and Pelia."
The times grew less and less propitious. Catholicism steadily gained ground in Spain. The scowling Dominican put forward his claim upon the Jewish soul with vehement emphasis, and made every effort to drag it into the bosom of the alone-saving Church. The conversion of the Jews would have been a great triumph, indeed, for Catholicism militant. The conversion methods of the Dominican monk were of a most insinuating kind—he usually began with a public religious disputation. Unfortunately, the Jews were experts in the art of debate, and too often by their bold replies covered the self-sufficient dignitaries of Rome with confusion. The Jews should have known, from bitter experience, that such boldness would not be passed over silently. From sumptuous debating hall to Dominican prison and scaffold was but a short step. In 1391, one of these worthy soul-catchers, Bishop Ferdinando Martinez, set the fanatical mob of Seville on the Jews, and not without success. Terrorized by the threat of death, many accepted Catholicism under duress. But they became Christians only in appearance; in reality they remained true to the faith of their fathers, and, in secret, running the risk of loss of life, they fulfilled all the Jewish ordinances. This is the prologue to the thrilling Marrano tragedy.
Finally, the moment approached when gloomy Catholicism attained to unchallenged supremacy in the Pyrenean Peninsula. On the ruins of the enlightened culture of the Arabs, Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella of Castile reared the reactionary government of medieval Rome. The Inquisition was introduced (1480). Torquemada presided as high priest over the rites attending the human sacrifices. Ad gloriam ecclesiae, the whole of Spain was illuminated. Everywhere the funeral pyres of the Inquisition flared to the skies, the air was rent by the despairing shrieks of martyrs enveloped in flames or racked by tortures, the prisons overflowed with Marranos,—all instruments of torture were vigorously plied.
At last the hour of redemption struck: in 1492 all Jews were driven from Spain, and a few years later from Portugal. Jewish-Arabic culture after five centuries of ascendency suffered a sudden collapse. The unhappy people again grasped its staff, and wandered forth into the world without knowing whither.