Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

The last months of the Jews’ sojourn in Spain were spent by the priests in frantic efforts at conversion. But those who had opposed an adamant firmness to temptation when they had much to lose, could not be expected to yield when reduced to beggary. The consciousness of suffering for the Idea brought with it an exaltation that shed a halo over their misery. This affliction also was a fatherly rod, to be borne with fortitude; an ordeal to be endured as a test of faith; a humiliation that contained in it a promise of future glory. The God of their fathers, who had led them out of the house of bondage and fed them in the wilderness in the days of old, would not suffer his children to perish. The waters would again be divided for them, and the sea made dry land. This last expectation, confidently encouraged by the Rabbis, proved vain when the exiles reached the coast. But failure did not shake the faith of the children of Israel. The severer the martyrdom, the greater the certainty of beatitude. Scattered and scorned though they were, the day would dawn when they would once more be gathered under Jehovah’s parent pinion. The light of Zion still shone in the distance undimmed.

Thus, poor in worldly possessions, but rich in hope; defenceless, yet strong in faith, they journeyed from all parts of the country to the frontiers: the healthy and the sick, old men bending over their staffs, little footsore children tottering by their fathers’ sides, and infants clinging to their mothers’ breasts. Venerable Rabbis and scholars, delicately nurtured maidens, young gentlemen, yesterday proud cavaliers, to-day penniless and broken-spirited paupers—they all dragged their weary limbs in various directions: some north, others south; one group to the east and another to the west. Many a wet eye followed the melancholy processions, and many a warm Spanish heart melted to pity, but no hand was held out to the wanderers, no word of comfort was addressed to them: the fear of God restrained many; the fear of Torquemada more. The time of year added to the sadness of the spectacle. Andalusia was bathing in the exuberant beauty of a Spanish summer; the sky smiled blue and bright overhead, the earth was spangled with flowers beneath, the birds warbled blithely in the trees and bushes, the air was sweet with the scent of orange blossoms; Nature seemed to hold a carnival of joy in mockery of the misery and heartlessness of man.

The banishment of the Jews from England at the close of the thirteenth century was mere child’s play compared with their expulsion from Spain at the close of the fifteenth. The Jews who left England had only been in the country for two centuries; those who now left Spain had lived there more than twelve. The English exiles had borne small part in England’s greatness; the Spanish Jews had served the state in the highest capacities, had won universal fame in art, science and literature, and had become to the rest of the world’s Jewries an exemplar of that harmonious combination of piety with culture which was nowhere, outside Spain, so prominent a feature of mediaeval life. And in quantity as in quality the Spanish banishment far surpassed its English prototype. The exiles from England amounted at most to sixteen thousand; those from Spain were computed at least as one hundred and sixty thousand. Some accounts even raise them to five times that number. It was a movement on a scale comparable only to that of the exodus of Israel from Egypt, with the sole difference that, whereas the Jews had dwelt in Egypt as strangers and bondsmen in the land, in Spain they had become in many respects Spaniards. But the crime, augmented by a similar crime against the Moors, brought its penalty with it. Even accepting the lowest estimate as nearest the correct one, the price in skill, industry and intelligence, which Spain—despite her recent military achievements and her budding power beyond the seas—had to pay for the gratification of her religious fanaticism cannot easily be calculated; but it can be seen to this day. The same yoke which crushed the alien and the infidel could not but cramp the native and the Christian. Freedom of thought, speech, or action was dead. Intellectual culture was soon to be succeeded by monasticism, and material prosperity by mendicity. Meanwhile the value of Ferdinand and Isabella’s Hebrew subjects could not but have been realised immediately on their departure. The Spanish Government, prompted by the Spanish Church, had said to the Jews: “Be baptized or be gone!” The Jews went, and the life of Spain went with them. Stately mansions fell into mossy decay, rich cornfields and vineyards were turned into waste land, busy and populous cities were suddenly silenced as by a magician’s black art. In return, Spain nursed the cold comfort of having served the cause of the gloomy and bloodthirsty monster that the age called God.

Nothing throws a clearer light on the spirit of the times than the comments of contemporary writers on Ferdinand and Isabella’s suicidal policy. The Spanish historians join in a chorus of indiscriminate panegyric; the Spanish poets sing pæans to the triumph of the Faith. Foreign spectators, while deprecating the severity of the methods employed, have nothing but praise for the motive. They all applaud the deed as a sacrifice of temporal to spiritual interests. It is true that Ferdinand’s treasury was the richer for the confiscated property of the Jews. But, though lust for plunder may be regarded as the mainspring of his own policy, it was not the primary motive of the Dominicans, nor had it any share in Isabella’s conduct. This amiable princess has laid her soul bare in the confession: “In the love of Christ and his maiden mother I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms.” The expulsion of the Jews, like the autos-da-fé, was a crime committed principally por amor de Dios.

CHAPTER XI
AFTER THE EXPULSION

Twelve thousand of Spanish fugitives sought shelter in Navarre, where, after a few years’ peace, they were again confronted with the alternatives of baptism or banishment. Most of them, worn out with distress and disappointment, adopted Christianity, and some of these converts returned to Spain.

Eighty thousand of the exiles crossed into Portugal and purchased permission to tarry in that kingdom for eight months, preparatory to their departure for Africa. King John II. even connived at the permanent settlement of some of them in the country. But the King’s tolerance was not shared by his subjects. ♦1481♦ John had already been beset with complaints of Jewish cavaliers being suffered to parade the streets mounted on richly caparisoned horses and mules, arrayed in fine cloaks and velvet doublets, and dangling gilt swords at their sides. Under his successor popular hatred obtained the satisfaction which had hitherto been denied to it. King Emanuel, a liberal but deeply enamoured prince, was forced to yield to the wishes of his superstitious betrothed,—the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,—who made the banishment of the Jews a condition of her acceptance of his suit; and he ordered the hapless people to quit his dominions. ♦1495♦ But, as though the measure of Israel’s woes were not yet full, the same King, yielding again to the pressure of love, caused all Jewish children of fourteen years of age and under to be torn from their parents in order to be kept in Portugal, and be reared in the Catholic faith. The scenes of agony which followed this diabolical edict would be revolting beyond endurance, but for their occurrence directly after the autos-da-fé. Many Jewish mothers, mad with grief and despair, slew their darlings with their own hands and then destroyed themselves. A contemporary writer concludes his description of these ghastly events with the characteristic comment: “It was a great mistake in King Emanuel to think of converting to Christianity any Jew old enough to pronounce the name of Moses.” In the writer’s opinion the age limit ought to have been three years.

Many Jews, afraid to face the perils of the unknown, shielded themselves from the storm under the cloak of conversion, and either remained in Portugal or returned to Spain to join the pseudo-converts left there, and for ages after supplied the hounds of the Inquisition with a healthy occupation. The State, of course, aided the Church in her lethal work; for dissent in religion is close akin to dissent in politics, and domestic discord is incompatible with vigorous expansion abroad.

♦1498♦

Meanwhile Torquemada’s successor, Deza, surpassed the great Inquisitor in ferocity and energy. One of his confederates, called Lucero, was nicknamed even by his own associates Tenebrero, on account of the darkness and cruelty of his temper, which drove the people of Cordova to revolt. ♦1506♦ Immediately after Cardinal Ximenes became Grand Inquisitor, and, with his predecessor’s fate before his eyes, proved less savage. But what the Inquisition lost in height of iniquity was amply compensated by the extension of its activity over a new field—the vanquished Mohammedans—who were also permitted to choose between baptism and banishment; while the Morescoes, or Moorish converts, were treated in the same manner as the Jewish Marranos.