Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

During the long civil war in Castile between Don Pedro and his brother Don Henry, the heirs of Alfonso XI., the Jews had the misfortune to back the losing side. They sustained heavy losses in many a battle and siege, and suffered terribly at the hands of friend and foe alike. The great community of Toledo was decimated out of all recognition. Throughout Castile congregations once flourishing were reduced to penury, and many of their members in sheer despair embraced Christianity. The Jews of Burgos, even after Don Pedro’s death, remained stubbornly loyal to his memory, and when all Spain had recognised Don Henry’s rule they alone had the courage to defy him—a constancy which moved the usurper’s admiration, and secured to the besieged terms of submission honourable to both sides alike. Peace was restored, but it brought small comfort to Israel. Don Henry had always pretended that one of the causes of his enmity to his brother was the latter’s partiality for the Jews. The vanquished enemy’s favourites would now have been made to suffer the extreme rigour of Henry’s vengeance but for the financial straits in which the victor found himself. Instead of annihilating, Don Henry preferred to exploit the Jews. But the King’s forbearance roused the indignation of his followers, who felt despoiled of the fruits of their victory. In 1371 the Cortes assembled at Toro rebuked the King for employing the enemies of the faith at Court, and for allowing them to farm the revenues of the Crown. The representatives of the nation insisted that the Jews should be excluded from State offices, confined within special quarters, compelled to wear the badge, and forbidden to display their riches in their apparel or equipages, or to bear Christian names. The King, while dismissing most of these demands, thought it wise to concede the last three, and he also decreed some measures intended to restrain the rapacity of Jewish money-lenders. The clergy also, who had sanctioned Don Henry’s usurpation of the throne, claimed a reward in the shape of anti-Jewish legislation. ♦1375♦ Religious disputations were, therefore, revived, and Jewish renegades were once more the protagonists in the sorry farce.

At the same time the Church renewed its efforts to prevent the Christians from mingling with the impure race. The necessity for this persistent confirmation of anti-Jewish regulations shows that, though the antipathy between Jew and Gentile was spontaneous, and though both Church and Synagogue vied with each other in their endeavours to keep the two elements in sempiternal alienation, yet the social instinct which forms the strongest trait of human nature often triumphed over the barriers set up by religious bigotry. But human nature was allowed little opportunity for asserting itself. ♦1388♦ The Council of Palencia passed a decision forbidding Catholics to dwell within the quarters assigned to the Jews and Moors, under penalty of excommunication. ♦1390♦ Two years later the Jews of Majorca were forbidden to carry arms. ♦1391♦ Next year, thanks to the eloquence of the fanatical priest Martinez, a series of wholesale massacres took place in Castile and Aragon, in which thousands of Jews were sacrificed to priestly and popular rage, and the cities of Seville, Toledo, Cordova, Catalonia, Barcelona, Valencia, as well as the island of Majorca, were coloured red with Jewish blood; while great numbers of the unfortunate people sought safety in half-hearted apostasy. Efforts were made to confirm the hold upon these captured infidels, popularly known as Marranos, or “the Damned,” by ecclesiastical preferment and by the bestowal of municipal dignities; while many impecunious aristocrats, anxious to restore their declining fortunes, brought riches to themselves and a lasting reproach to their posterity by courting the fair daughters of converted Israel; so much so that many a noble Castilian pedigree to this day can be traced to such an alliance. But neither ecclesiastical or civic honours nor social advancement were sufficiently potent to keep the “new Christians” in the faith. There were, of course, exceptions to the rule—a truism which we are apt to overlook in dealing with the history of the Jews. Some, no doubt, who had honestly outgrown the racial and religious swathings of Judaism, were glad enough to adopt Christianity. Unfettered by spiritual convictions, they preferred the creed which entailed no social stigma. They deserve as little blame as admiration. Others, however, there were who, setting worldly advantages, or the gratification of private grudges, above principle, found both profit and pleasure in the persecution or vilification of their former brethren. But neither of these classes represented the majority. Most of the neophytes, as soon as they safely could, slipped the suffocating cloak, and came forth in their true character, while others vacillated between Church and Synagogue, trying to serve two masters, and by so doing increased the animosity of the priests against the race; for the theologian does not agree with the psychologist in holding that a feigned or fictitious faith is better than none at all. As in the time of the Visigoth tyrants, so now thousands of Jews and forced converts fled to Africa. Many towns on the coast, from Algiers westward, were filled with the unfortunate refugees from Spain and Majorca, who found the African Berbers more humane than the European Christians.

The recent tribulations and the anticipation of worse sufferings in the near future gave rise to a new Messianic frenzy. According to the Scriptures, the advent of the Redeemer was to be preceded by terrible persecution. ♦1391♦ Three Messiahs appeared to voice the convictions and to try the faith of the hunted people: Abraham of Granada, Shem-Tob, and Moses Botarel. All three were mystics, the last one also an impostor.

The fifteenth century adds fresh scenes to the tale of sorrow, new “black-letter days” to the Jewish Calendar, and more dark pages to the history of Europe. In 1408 the anti-Jewish statutes of Alfonso the Wise were revived. Ruinous fines were imposed upon any Christian who should confer, or Jew who should accept, municipal or other office. ♦1412♦ Four years later the intercourse of the Jews with the Christians was restricted, and their commercial and industrial activity hampered by numerous prohibitions. They were forbidden to act as physicians, apothecaries, and stewards to the nobility; as bakers, millers, or vintners. They were debarred from selling oil or butter; from exercising the handicrafts of smith, carpenter, tailor, or shoemaker, and, of course, from farming or collecting the public revenues. It was further decreed that no Jew should carry any kind of arms, or be addressed as Don; that the unclean people should live in special quarters (Juderias) provided with not more than one gate each, and that they should not employ Christian servants. Thus the seclusion which was at first granted to the Jews as a privilege and a protection was now enforced as a means of oppression. Furthermore, they were stripped of their gay apparel, and compelled to wear a peculiar garment of coarse stuff and to display the hated badge, except such as could pay for permission to discard it, especially on their journeys. Lastly, they were forbidden to have their hair cut or their beards shaved. Confiscation of goods and corporal chastisement were the penalties inflicted for any breach of these and other regulations, the aim of which was, by humiliating and impoverishing the race, to induce it to embrace Christianity. A contemporary Jewish writer thus describes the sad effects of this edict: “Inmates of palaces were driven into wretched nooks, and dark and lowly huts. Instead of rustling apparel, we were obliged to wear miserable clothes which drew contempt upon us. Prohibited from shaving the beard, we had to appear like mourners. The rich tax-farmers sank into want, for they knew no trade by which they could gain a livelihood, and the handicraftsmen found no custom. Starvation stared everyone in the face. Children died on their mothers’ knees from hunger and exposure.”[70]

In the midst of all this suffering the Church was not idle. The chief of the apostles was Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar and indefatigable winner of souls, afterwards canonised for his exertions. This sincere, though forbidding saint, who called his bigotry religion and his hatred of heretics love of God, rushed from synagogue to synagogue, crucifix in hand, preaching the gospel of peace in a voice of thunder, and endeavouring to persuade the infidels to repentance by promises of comfort in this world and by threats of everlasting damnation in the next. Ferrer was more than an orator. His sermons were accompanied with exhibitions of the priest’s dramatic genius and of the saint’s thaumaturgic powers. Impressive processions and sacred hymns, banners, crucifices, and assaults upon the Jews heightened the effect of his impassioned appeals. Thousands of wretches succumbed to Ferrer’s eloquence, and many synagogues were turned into churches. This result was by contemporary piety attributed to the fiery exhortations addressed to the Jews, and to the miracles performed for their benefit, by St. Vincent; but a twentieth century heretic, while admitting the efficacy of exhortation and miracle, may be pardoned for suspecting that the systematic persecution on the part of the State and the spontaneous fury of the mob had at least some influence in turning the hearts of the infidels.

♦1413♦

From Castile the preacher and persecution travelled to Aragon. The newly-elected King Ferdinand, who owed his elevation to Ferrer’s influence, showed his gratitude by placing his conscience in the saint’s keeping and the royal power at his disposal. St. Vincent, thus armed with both necessaries of success—enthusiasm and means—journeyed to and fro in the country, denouncing, exhorting, threatening, and baptizing; and the victims of his fervour in the two kingdoms are said to have exceeded twenty thousand souls. Such is the persuasive power of theological reasoning, when assisted by brute force. In the same year a compulsory controversy between Hebrew renegades and Rabbis, on the traditional lines, was begun in Tortosa.

No more splendid assembly ever met for the purpose of enforcing the gospel of divine mercy by the gratification of human vanity. The anti-pope Benedict XIII., clad in his pontifical robes, sat on a lofty throne, surrounded by cardinals and prelates refulgent with brocade of gold and gems. A thousand Spanish grandees thronged behind this glorious group, while before it stood a small band of Jews anxious to defend their faith, without imperilling their lives. The truth of Christianity was beyond cavil. The falsity of Judaism, after the advent of Christ, was equally clear. Does the Talmud recognise Jesus as the Messiah or not? That was the question which was debated in sixty-eight sittings extending over a period of twenty-one months.

And so the ruin of the Jews was progressing satisfactorily. The originators of the persecution passed away one after the other. Benedict XIII. was deposed by the Council of Constance and denounced by Vincent Ferrer as an “unfrocked and spurious Pope.” The renegade Jew Geronimo vanished into his native obscurity. King Ferdinand died in 1416, and St. Vincent was translated to heaven three years later. But the tribulations of Israel did not cease. ♦1419♦ Pope Martin V., indeed, surprised the world with a Bull of toleration, dictated, as one would gladly have believed, by Christian charity; as documents prove, procured by bribery. But the plant of anti-Judaism had taken too deep roots to be permanently stunted by this tardy edict. ♦1442♦ Pope Eugenius IV. addressed another Bull to the Bishops of Castile and Leon, withdrawing the indulgences granted to the Jews by his predecessor, and he renewed all the old restrictions, adding that the unclean people should be confined to their houses during Holy Week. Autograph letters to the Castilian ecclesiastics exhorted them to enforce the Pontiff’s orders without mercy. ♦1447♦ Pope Nicholas V. aggravated all these measures of oppression.

The Spanish Jews were now regarded simply as outlaws. The pious eschewed all dealings with them. Husbandmen deserted the fields, and shepherds the flocks belonging to the proscribed people; while the towns framed new regulations for their utter suppression. King Henry IV. of Castile and Juan II. of Aragon, horror-struck at the terrible cruelty of this treatment, or rather alarmed at its consequences on the royal exchequer, endeavoured to mitigate the sufferings of the Jews. But their efforts met with no success. The campaign on the part of the Dominicans was carried on vigorously, backsliders were scented out and punished, charges of child-murder were preferred against the Jews, and the populace was stirred up to acts of violence, which grew in ferocity and frequency as the years rolled on. In 1468 a charge of this description led to a massacre at Sepulveda. ♦1469♦ In the following year the Cortes of Ocaña insisted that the anti-Jewish edicts should be stringently enforced. Despite Henry’s feeble protests, the Jews for many years continued to be exposed to the utmost cruelty of the priests and of the populace in an age when the priests and the populace were most cruel. They were not members of the Church, of the feudal aristocracy, or of the commercial and industrial corporations. Though living among the Christians, they were not of them. They were unpopular. They could not defend themselves; and neither bishops, barons, nor burgesses would lift a finger in their defence. They were, therefore, abandoned without reserve and without remorse to the tender mercies of clerical and civic fanaticism. The Marranos especially continued to be the pet aversion and occupation of the Church.