As far as was consistent with their religious beliefs, the Jews of Toledo assimilated themselves with the conquerors. The minutes of the congregation were kept in Arabic down to the end of the thirteenth century, and that language was sedulously cultivated and almost exclusively employed by the brilliant succession of Jewish theologians and humanists who made the city a centre of literary and scholastic activity.
We have it on the authority of Mr. S. P. Scott that, under the Muslim dominion, the Jews were allowed to elect a king, always a prince of the House of Judah, “who, while not openly invested with the insignia of royalty, received the homage and tribute of his subjects.” It is illustrative of the respect of the race for learning that the erudite Rabbi Moses, when recognised exposed as a slave at Cordoba, was immediately elected to this dubious royalty.
The Jews of Toledo must have viewed with unpleasant apprehensions the re-establishment of the Catholic monarchy. Yet at first it seemed they had no cause for alarm. Alfonso VI., as we know, granted to them the liberal privileges by which the Muslims also benefited. But in the charter confirming the customs of the Mozarabes (1091) it was made plain that no penalty would be exacted of a Christian for the murder of a Jew or Muslim. The result might have been foreseen. Seventeen years after, the people rose in savage fury, broke into the synagogues and butchered the rabbis in their pulpits, burnt and pillaged every Jewish house, and slaughtered the luckless objects of their animosity without mercy. But it was the people, rather than the governing classes, who manifested this violent racial prejudice. As in every other land, in spite of persecution, the Chosen People grew in wealth and abated not their industry and commercial activity. It was they who brought to the grim Gothic city the choicest products of the East; they alone who could combat the ravages of disease; they alone who could supply the needy king and nobles with the coin for which in Italy men paid as much as one hundred and twenty per cent. interest. Spain hated the Jew, but could not as yet do without him.
The rule of Alfonso VI.’s successors could not have been excessively harsh, for many Jewish families, hounded out of Southern Spain by an unusual manifestation of Mohammedan bigotry, took refuge within the walls of Toledo. Thanks to the influence of Fermosa, the Jewish mistress of Alfonso VIII., many of her race exercised important functions at the Court. But the fanatical temper of the populace attributed to the favour shown these unbelievers the disaster of Alarcos, and the beautiful favourite and her friends were murdered in the very presence of the king.
“At the beginning of the thirteenth century,” says Mr. Joseph Jacobs, B.A., in the “Jewish Encyclopædia,” “the Shushans, the Al-Fakhkhars, and the Alnaquas, were among the chief Jewish families of Toledo, Samuel Ibn Shushan being nasi [the chief of Sanhedrim] about 1204. His son built a synagogue which attracted the attention of Abraham ben Nathan of Lunel, who settled in Toledo before 1205. During the troubles brought upon Castile by the men of ‘Ultrapuertos’ in 1211-12, Toledo suffered a riot; and this appears to have brought the position of the Jews more closely to the attention of the authorities. In 1219 the Jewish inhabitants became more strictly subject to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Toledo, who imposed upon every Jew over twenty years old an annual poll-tax of one-sixth of a gold mark; and any dispute about age was to be settled by a jury of six elders, who were probably supervised by the nasi, at that time Solomon ben Joseph Ibn Shushan. In the same year papal authority also interfered with the affairs of the Toledo Jews, ordering them to pay tithes on houses bought by them from Christians, ‘as otherwise the Church would be a considerable loser.’”
A significant phrase! But not only houses and land all over the country were mortgaged to the Jews, but also church plate and even the sacred vessels. Jewish usurers were said to drink out of the chalices used for the Precious Elements. The exasperation of the Christians was disregarded by Alfonso X. the Learned, who entertained a profound respect for the erudition and traditions of the Jews. A Hebrew, Don Zag Ibn Said, directed the compilation of the famous Alfonsine Tables; and under the patronage of the monarch, Toledo became famous for its translations from the Arabic into Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish. The rabbis distinguished themselves in medicine and astronomy. While doing his utmost to draw the oppressed race within the fold of the Catholic church, the Learned King granted permission to the Jews of Toledo to erect that beautiful synagogue which, under the name of Santa Maria la Blanca, ranks to-day among the national monuments of Spain.
“The Spanish Jews,” says Mr. Scott, “by reason of the peculiarities of their situation, the hostility of their rulers—which their pecuniary resources and natural acuteness often baffled, but never entirely overcame—and their successive domination by races of different origin, faith, and language, were impressed with mental peculiarities and characteristics not to be met with in their brethren of other countries. Their religious formalism was proverbial, and the Hebrew of Toledo observed more conscientiously the precepts of the Pentateuch and Talmud than the Hebrew of Damascus or Jerusalem.” Thus we find the Jews of Toledo siding against the rationalising theories of the great Maimonides, himself a native of Cordoba, and whose tomb is a conspicuous landmark on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Don Amador de los Rios reproduces an ancient record for the year 1290, stating the amount of tribute payable by the various Jewish communities of Castile. Out of a total of 2,801,345 maravedis the Israelites of the city of Toledo contributed 216,500, and those in the entire archdiocese 1,062,902 maravedis. The pomp of Catholic public worship and the wealth of the clergy are partially accounted for by these figures.
Up till then, always the most valuable (from a European point of view) and the most prosperous element of the population of Toledo, the Jews assumed yet greater prominence in the reign of Pedro I. That prince was declared by his numerous enemies to be the substituted child of a Jewess, and his Court was reviled as a Jewish Court. He showed favour to the race in many ways. His treasurer and confidential adviser was the famous Don Samuel Ha Levi. Whether or not the Jewish statesman’s administration was in the interests of Castile, it is too late in the day to say; but there can be no doubt that he was a loyal servant of his king and a devoted friend of his own people. He it was who caused to be erected Toledo’s other great synagogue, now called the Transito. He was a warm ally of the beautiful Maria de Padilla, Pedro’s gentle mistress, and for years, with consummate astuteness, defended himself against the insidious and violent attacks of his innumerable enemies. His enormous wealth—honestly or dishonestly acquired—brought about his downfall. In the very year (1360) the synagogue was completed, Samuel was seized at Seville, and, by order of the king, placed upon the rack. The haughty Hebrew is said to have died of sheer indignation. Pedro shed crocodile tears over his ill-starred Minister’s fate, and greedily confiscated his property. His fortune was found to consist of 70,000 doubloons, 4000 silver marks, twenty chests filled with treasure, and eighty Moorish slaves. The property of all Levi’s relatives was also forfeited to the Crown, and was valued at 300,000 doubloons. Pedro did not, however, withdraw his favour from the Jews as a race. It had been well for them if he had. Their loyalty to the Bluebeard King earned for them the detestation of the partisans of Enrique de Trastamara, and brought about, as we have seen, the massacre of 1355, in which 1200 Jews perished.
The new king, Enrique, took advantage of a riot said to have been excited by the arrogance of the converted Jews in 1367, and in which 1600 houses were burnt to the ground, to impose a tribute of no less than twenty thousand gold doubloons on the afflicted people.