FOOTNOTES
[1] It is a proof of the high consideration in which such Israelites as were willing to embrace Christianity were held, that three of that number, Alvarez, Avila, and Pulgar, were private secretaries of the queen. (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 18.)
An incidental expression of Martyr's, among many similar ones by contemporaries, affords the true key to the popular odium against the Jews. "Cum namque viderent, Judaeorum tabido commercio, qui hac horâ sunt in Hispaniâ innumeri Christianis ditiores, plurimorum animos corrumpi ac seduci," etc. Opus Epist., epist. 92.
[2] Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 164.—Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. cap. 7, sec. 3.—Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 94.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 128.
[3] Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 163.
Salazar de Mendoza refers the sovereign's consent to the banishment of the Jews, in a great measure, to the urgent remonstrances of the cardinal of Spain. The bigotry of the biographer makes him claim the credit of every fanatical act for his illustrious hero. See Crón. del Gran Cardenal, p. 250.
[4] Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 7, sect. 5.
Pulgar, in a letter to the cardinal of Spain, animadverting with much severity on the tenor of certain municipal ordinances against the Jews in Guipuscoa and Toledo, in 1482, plainly intimates, that they were not at all to the taste of the queen. See Letras, (Amstelodami, 1670,) let. 31.
[5] Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1492.—Recep. de las Leyes, lib. 8, tit. 2, ley 2.—Pragmáticas del Reyno, ed. 1520, fol. 3.
[6] The Curate of Los Palacios speaks of several Israelites worth one or two millions of maravedies, and another even as having amassed ten. He mentions one in particular, by the name of Abraham, as renting the greater part of Castile! It will hardly do to take the good Curate's statement à la lettre. See Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 112.
[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, ubi supra.
[8] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 10.—Zurita, Analos, tom. v. fol. 9.
Capmany notices the number of synagogues existing in Aragon, in 1428, as amounting to nineteen. In Galicia at the same time there were but three, and in Catalonia but one. See Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. num. 11.
[9] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 10, 113.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 131.
[10] Zurita, Anales, tom. v. fol. 9.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 133.—Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, ubi supra.—La Clède, Hist. de Portugal, tom. iv. p. 95.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. p. 602.
[11] Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 133.—Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 113.
[12] Senarega, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiv. pp. 531, 532.
[13] See a sensible notice of Hebrew literature in Spain, in the Retrospective Review, vol. iii. p. 209.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 26, cap. 1.—Zurita, Anales, tom. v. fol. 9.
Not a few of the learned exiles attained to eminence in those countries of Europe where they transferred their residence. One is mentioned by Castro as a leading practitioner of medicine in Genoa; another, as filling the posts of astronomer and chronicler, under King Emanuel of Portugal. Many of them published works in various departments of science, which were translated into the Spanish and other European languages. Biblioteca Española, tom. i. pp. 359-372.
[14] From a curious document in the Archives of Simancas, consisting of a report made to the Spanish sovereigns by their accountant general, Quintanilla, in 1492, it would appear, that the population of the kingdom of Castile, exclusive of Granada, was then estimated at 1,500,000 vecinos, or householders. (See Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Apend. no. 12.) This, allowing four and a half to a family, would make the whole population 6,750,000. It appears from the statement of Bernaldez, that the kingdom of Castile contained five-sixths of the whole amount of Jews in the Spanish monarchy. This proportion, if 800,000 be received as the total, would amount in round numbers to 670,000, or ten per cent, of the whole population of the kingdom. Now, it is manifestly improbable that so large a portion of the whole nation, conspicuous moreover for wealth and intelligence, could have been held so light in a political aspect, as the Jews certainly were, or have tamely submitted for so many years to the most wanton indignities without resistance; or finally, that the Spanish government would have ventured on so bold a measure as the banishment of so numerous and powerful a class, and that too with as few precautions, apparently, as would be required for driving out of the country a roving gang of gypsies.
[15] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 110.—Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 7, sect. 7.—Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 26.—Zurita, Anales, tom. v. fol. 9.
[16] Bajazet. See Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. p. 310.—Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 168.
[17] "In truth," Father Abarca somewhat innocently remarks, "King Ferdinand was a politic Christian, making the interests of church and state mutually subservient to each other"! Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. fol. 310.
[18] Once at Toledo, 1480, and at Murcia, 1488. See Recop. de las Leyes, lib. 6, tit. 18, ley 1.
[19] The Portuguese government caused all children of fourteen years of age, or under, to be taken from their parents and retained in the country, as fit subjects for a Christian education. The distress occasioned by this cruel provision may be well imagined. Many of the unhappy parents murdered their children to defeat the ordinance; and many laid violent hands on themselves. Faria y Sousa coolly remarks, that "It was a great mistake in King Emanuel to think of converting any Jew to Christianity, old enough to pronounce the name of Moses!" He fixes three years of age as the utmost limit. (Europa Portuguesa, tom. ii. p. 496.)
Mr. Turner has condensed, with his usual industry, the most essential chronological facts relative to modern Jewish history, into a note contained in the second volume of his History of England, pp. 114-120.
[20] They were also rejected from Vienna, in 1669. The illiberal, and indeed most cruel legislation of Frederic II., in reference to his Jewish subjects, transports us back to the darkest periods of the Visigothic monarchy. The reader will find a summary of these enactments in the third volume of Milman's agreeable History of the Jews.
[21] The accomplished and amiable Florentine, Pico di Mirandola, in his treatise on Judicial Astrology, remarks that, "the sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of divine justice delighted, were so extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration." The Genoese historian, Senarega, indeed admits that the measure savored of some slight degree of cruelty. "Res haec primo conspectu laudabilis visa est, quia decus nostrae Religionis respiceret, sed aliquantulum in se crudelitatis continere, si eos non belluas, sed homines a Deo creatos, consideravimus." De Rebus Genuensibus, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiv.— Illescas, Hist. Pontif., apud Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 167.
[22] Llorente sums up his account of the expulsion, by assigning the following motives to the principal agents in the business. "The measure," he says, "may be referred to the fanaticism of Torquemada, to the avarice and superstition of Ferdinand, to the false ideas and inconsiderate zeal with which they had inspired Isabella, to whom history cannot refuse the praise of great sweetness of disposition, and an enlightened mind." Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. ch. 7, sec. 10.