But if the Reformation brought with it Protestant hostility and new tribulations to the outcasts of humanity, it also proved the cause of fresh persecution on the part of Catholicism. Even while the Popes at Rome tolerated or cherished the Jews, their agents abroad, the wandering Friars, and all those soldiers of orthodoxy by whose fanatical zeal the fabric of Papal supremacy had been reared and was maintained, exerted themselves strenuously and furiously to oppose the spreading epidemic of rebellion. In their eyes the Jews were the most implacable enemies of Christ and the eternal promoters of dissent and heresy. It was, therefore, against the Jews that they directed their deadliest shafts. The belief prevailed that the first step to the conquest of Judaism was the cremation of Jewish books, which after the invention of the printing press had multiplied. This new attack on Judaism, as so many other attacks in the past, was led by a renegade Jew, John Pfefferkorn by name, and a butcher by trade—also convicted of burglary and otherwise an unlimited miscreant.[123] ♦1509♦ This gentleman, acting in concert with the Dominicans of Cologne, obtained from the Emperor Maximilian authority to confiscate all Hebrew writings opposed to the Christian faith—a very comprehensive sentence which would have been carried out, but for the efforts made on behalf of literature and commonsense by John Reuchlin, the Father of German Humanism. This great scholar had restored Hebrew and promoted Greek studies in Germany. He was attracted by Hebrew mysticism and had many friends among the Jews. In 1490, whilst on a visit in Italy, he had made the acquaintance of Pico de Mirandola whose Cabbalistic doctrines he embraced and expounded in his work De Verbo Mirifico. In 1492 he was employed on a mission to the Emperor at Linz, and it was there that he met Jacob Loans, the Emperor’s Jewish physician, under whose guidance he began to read Hebrew. Although a good Catholic, Reuchlin was a broad-minded man, and his leaning to Cabbalistic theosophy and the esoteric wisdom of the Rabbis, without making him an admirer of the Jews as a people, induced him to defend their books. Summoned by Maximilian to express his opinion on Pfefferkorn’s proposal, Reuchlin did so in a manner which, while saving the Jewish writings from the fire, exposed the defender to the utmost rigour of the disappointed Dominicans; from whose clutches, however, after a severe struggle, he was rescued by the enthusiastic assistance of his brother-humanists.
The outbreak of the Lutheran rebellion paralysed the forces of Catholicism for a while. But it was not long ere the Papacy recovered from its panic. The latter half of the sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth century—the hundred years between the rise of the Order of Jesus and the peace of Westphalia—form a period of unprecedented activity for the conversion of the world to the one true faith. ♦1540–1648♦ The Catholic sovereigns were at the zenith of their power and bigotry, and both their consciences and their swords lay under the absolute control of the Pope; for on the triumph of Dogmatism depended the realisation of their own dreams of Despotism at home and conquest abroad. On the other hand, Protestantism was grimly determined to conquer or die. If one half of Western Christendom was passionately attached to the traditions made dear by the familiarity of ages, the other half was no less passionately attracted by the novelty of the prospect which had just unfolded its charms to their vision. The result of this antagonism was the most faithful imitation of hell on earth that the modern world has witnessed. Europe, convulsed by revolt and made desolate by barbarous repression, presented a scene for which, fortunately, it would be hard to find a parallel even in the annals of civilised mankind. While the Inquisition was revelling in human hecatombs in Spain, the Spanish general Alva was ravaging heretical Holland, and a Spanish Armada was preparing to assail heretical England. Religious motives receded further and yet further into distance as time went on; but the slaughter begun for the glory of God was continued for the love of power; and those who were formerly burnt as heretics were now butchered as malcontents. The Titanic feud culminated in the Thirty Years’ War, during which no fewer than ten millions of Christians were massacred in the name of Christ.
The Treaty of Westphalia staunched the flow of blood for a moment, but did not heal the wound. Open violence was aided by patient intrigue, and the monks carried on the enterprise wherein monarchs had failed. Meanwhile, as though the legions of St. Dominic, of St. Francis, and the other monastic orders were not sufficient for the work of destruction, to them was added, as we have seen, the more formidable Society of Jesus. By this time also the Spanish Inquisition had accomplished its special mission of blotting out the Morescos and Marranos, and had entered into an alliance with Loyola’s legion; the two bodies forming together a two-edged sword in the hand of the Catholic reaction.
Between Martin Luther and Ignatius Loyola there is commonly supposed to gape a very wide chasm. However that may be, there is one point at which the two apostles meet—hatred of Israel. Loyola’s disciples penetrated by degrees into every realm in Europe, and into every realm they brought with them that supple and sinuous spirit which was destined to dominate European history for ages, and to endow the European languages with a new word of evil import. In them Israel found an enemy powerful as Fate, and, like Fate, everywhere present, everywhere invisible and inexorable. Thus those Jews who had escaped from the zeal of nascent Protestantism were doomed to fall a prey to the zeal of reanimated Catholicism.
As in Italy, so in Central Europe, the reign of Pope Paul IV. marks the revival of Catholic Obscurantism. In 1557 the Inquisition was introduced into France under Henry II.—a prince who could be profligate without being gay, and who atoned for his gloomy immorality by so genuine a horror of heresy and culture that at his accession both Huguenots and scholars thought it advisable to quit Paris. In 1559—four years after the creation of the Ghetto in Rome—all Hebrew books were confiscated in Prague, at the instigation of a baptized Jew named Asher. A fire that soon after broke out in the Jewish quarter afforded the Catholics of Prague an opportunity of exhibiting their piety. They plundered the houses of the Jews, and even threw their women and children into the flames. At the same time the Emperor Ferdinand I. ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Prague and the rest of Bohemia, imposed many restrictions on those of Austria, and drove them from Lower Austria. ♦1569♦ Ten years later the Jews of Avignon and Venaissin, which, besides Marseilles, were the only communities left in France after the expulsion of 1395, and which, favoured by the enlightened Popes Leo X., Clement VII., and Paul III., had acquired great wealth, were ordered to quit the country, and, like the refugees from Spain and Italy, they sought and found a haven of refuge in the Sultan’s dominions.
♦1620–1648♦
During the Thirty Years’ War the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II. protected the Jews, forbidding their coffers to be robbed except by himself. The Bohemian Jews alone, after having paid a certain sum, are known to have bound themselves to contribute forty thousand gulden a year towards the expenses of the war. In Vienna also, now the headquarters of Catholicism, the Jews were allowed to grow fat. ♦1624♦ The Emperor permitted them to build a synagogue and to discard the badge; but the Christian citizens protested, demanding their banishment. In face of this opposition the Court acted with admirable tact. To the Christians it said: “You shall see the Jews banished, if you pay twenty thousand florins,” and to the Jews it whispered: “You need not fear, if you pay more.” To judge from the result, the Jews must have outbidden the Christians.
♦1630♦
Not long after, at Prague, an internal feud between rival factions of the Jewish community led to the interference of the authorities, and the Emperor ordered that the Jews should every Sunday morning submit to sermons preached for their conversion. Absentees were fined a thaler a head, and a higher sum on repetition of the offence. Inattention and slumber during the performance were also visited with a fine. However, the Jews had not suffered through so many centuries without learning how to dull the edge of persecution. Corrupt courtiers defeated the devout Emperor’s policy, and the Jews were allowed to remain in spiritual darkness and in peace.
♦1648♦