Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

CHAPTER XVI
IN HOLLAND

Holland was at this time the one European country in which man was allowed to worship his Maker according to the dictates of his conscience. Commercial activity in Europe has always been accompanied, or followed, by speculative freedom, and where these two forms of national vigour flourish religious bigotry languishes. The Dutch, like the Italians, and even in a higher degree, had from the earliest times shown a spirit of insubordination to papal authority. The decrees of the Holy See had frequently met with a stubborn resistance in which beggars and princes, prelates and burgesses heartily participated. The long feud between Guelf and Ghibelline, stirred up by Gregory Hildebrand’s overweening ambition, had found both the people and the clergy of Holland on the side of the Pope’s enemies. And not only the decrees but also the doctrines of Rome had often failed to command obedience in this undutiful daughter of the Church, who from the very first lent an attentive ear to the whisperings of infidelity. All the heresies that sprang up in Europe from the beginning of the twelfth century to the beginning of the sixteenth—from Tanchelyn to Luther—had been welcomed by the Dutch. Wickliffe found numerous sympathisers in the Netherlands; and the victims of the Holy See eager avengers. Many Hollanders, who had taken part in the crusade against Huss and his followers in Bohemia, returned home horror-struck at the cruelty of those under whose banner they had fought. Scepticism grew with the growth of ecclesiastical depravity and persecution with the growth of ecclesiastical authority, so that in no other region, not even excepting Spain, was the infernal ingenuity of the Inquisition more severely taxed than in Holland. It was here that the longest anathemas were pronounced, and the most hideous tortures endured. The annual returns of the banned, fleeced, flayed, and burnt, amounted to thousands. But at last tyranny bred despair, and despair rebellion. People and nobility were united in a common cause. If the burgesses hated the priests for their persecuting spirit, the barons hated them as cordially for the wealth and power which they had contrived to usurp. And then came the invention of the printing press to prepare the way for the great day of the Reformation, on which was signed the death-warrant of mediaeval Catholicism.

In Holland alone rebellion did not degenerate into a new species of despotism. While the hidalgos of Castile, impelled by lust for glory and gold, carried into a new world the cross and the cruelty of the old, conquering kingdoms for Charles and Philip, souls for Christ and wealth for themselves; while even in England one sovereign was engaged in persecuting Popery, another Puritanism, and a third both, the citizens of the Netherlands were laying the foundations of a less splendid but far more solid prosperity. As in the Venetian, so in the Dutch Republic, integrity and intelligence in the individual were esteemed more highly than orthodoxy, and an extensive commerce was regarded as more valuable to the State than a rigid creed—an attitude which earned the Hollanders a reputation for worldly weakliness and carnal self-seeking among our stern upholders of sanctity and inspired their brother-Protestants of Barebone’s Parliament to denounce them as enemies of Christ. Briefly, the Dutch had never submitted to the suicidal necessity of extinguishing liberty at home in order to achieve greatness abroad, nor had they subscribed to the mad doctrine which, under one form or another, had obsessed Europe during so many centuries: that it is a good man’s duty to make a hell of this world in order to inherit paradise in the next.

It was in Holland, accordingly, that the Jews of Spain and Portugal, fleeing from the holocausts of the Holy Office, found a harbour of safety. Whilst the Netherlands lay under Spanish rule these emigrants were repeatedly expelled from various Dutch cities, owing to the citizens’ dread of seeing the Inquisition—which had been introduced into the country by Charles V. in 1522—established amongst them. But the liberation from the foreign yoke was to change all this—not without a struggle. In 1591 a Jewish consul of the Sultan of Morocco proposed to the burgesses of Middelburg that they should permit the Portuguese Marranos to settle in their town. The shrewd burgesses would gladly have welcomed these commercial allies, but they were obliged to yield to the prejudices of the Protestant clergy, not unnaturally embittered by their long fight for liberty. The opposition, however, was short-lived. The Dutch recognised kindred spirits in the Jews. They shared their implacable hatred of the Spanish tyrant and of Catholicism, as they shared their aptitude for trade. Under William of Orange the dream of toleration became a political reality, and in 1593 the first contingent of Portuguese pseudo-Christians landed at Amsterdam.

But, though the flames of the Quemadero had been left far behind, the fear which centuries of ill-usage had instilled into the Jews’ hearts remained with them. The secrecy, with which these hunted refugees at first deemed it necessary to meet and worship, excited the suspicion of their Christian neighbours, who, not unreasonably, concluding that so many precautions covered a sinister design, informed the authorities. ♦1596♦ On the Fast of Atonement the Jews, while at prayer, were surprised by armed men. The appearance of these myrmidons awakened memories of the Inquisition in the breasts of the worshippers, who fled, thereby deepening the suspicion. And while the Jews were trying to escape from imaginary Papists, the Dutch officers searched the Jewish prayer-house for crucifices and wafers. An explanation ensued, the prisoners were released, and the congregation returned to its devotions. After this incident, which made it clear to the Dutch that the Marranos were not Papist conspirators, but only harmless hypocrites, the latter were allowed to stay, under certain restrictions, and a synagogue was inaugurated in 1598 amid great enthusiasm.

The good news drew more refugees from Spain and Portugal to Holland. The persecuted crypto-Jews of the Peninsula began to look upon Amsterdam as a new Jerusalem, or rather as a new world—so different and so novel was the treatment which they met with there from that to which they were accustomed in every other Christian country. To Amsterdam, therefore, they continued to flee from the racks and the stakes of the Inquisition—men, women, and even monks—in ever increasing numbers, so that a new synagogue had to be built in 1608. Six years afterwards they secured a burial ground in the neighbourhood of the town. The community rejoiced exceedingly in the acquisition of this cemetery, though on every body carried thither they had to pay a tax to each church that the funeral procession passed on its way. Tolerated though they were, these Peninsular exiles were still distrusted by the common people as Catholic spies in disguise, and it was not till 1615 that they were officially recognised as settlers and traders. Before long a Hebrew printing press was established in Amsterdam, and gradually mere tolerance grew into warm welcome. The community was about this time joined by immigrants driven out of Germany by the ravages of the Thirty-Years’ War. These German Jews formed the mob of the colony; despised by their cultured brethren as uncouth and, in turn, despising them as spurious Jews. Hence arose a schism, and the German section set up a synagogue of their own. But community of creed and the subtle affinity of blood, reinforced by the necessity of presenting a united front to a hostile world, overcame the prejudices of class, and a reconciliation was effected in 1639. Amsterdam speedily became the seat of a prosperous and united Hebrew congregation, and the stronghold of a vigorous and uncompromising Judaism. The colony consisted of men and women, everyone of whom had suffered for the faith. It was natural, therefore, that they should strive to safeguard by all means in their power a treasure preserved at so enormous a cost of blood and tears. Faith, unfortunately, is not far removed from fanaticism, and the victims of tyranny are only too prone to become its ministers. The Jews of Amsterdam had undergone a long and severe course in the most distinguished school of cruelty and bigotry, and it is no wonder if they graduated with high honours. The Rabbis enjoyed an immense power over the souls and the purses of their disciples; they levied heavy fines upon members of the Synagogue who incurred their displeasure; and in their promptitude to stifle freedom of thought they rivalled the Satraps of the Church. A sad illustration of Hebrew intolerance is supplied by the story of the hapless Uriel Acosta.

He was a gentleman of Oporto, one of those Marranos whose fathers had been taught to love Christ by torture, and who had bought the right of residence in their native land by baptism. Though brought up as a devout Catholic and destined for a clerical career, Uriel was repelled by the mechanical formalities of Catholicism, and he reverted to the old faith; thus escaping from the meshes of the Church only to fall into those of the Synagogue. ♦1617♦ On his arrival at Amsterdam the idealist was rudely awakened to the meanness of reality. He found actual Judaism widely different from the picture which his vivid imagination had drawn of it, and he was, unfortunately for himself, too honest to conceal his disappointment. The independence of character which had induced Uriel to give up social position, home, and fortune for the sake of conscience, also caused him to disagree with the pious mummeries of the Hebrew priests. A long contest between the individual and the institution ended in an inglorious victory for the latter. Uriel Acosta’s rebellion was visited with excommunication and social ostracism. He was figuratively extinguished in more senses than one. All his friends and relatives shunned him as a leper, or rather ignored him as if he had ceased to exist. It was death in life.

Alone in a city whose language he could not speak, stoned by those for whom he had sacrificed all, spurned even by his nearest and dearest, Uriel was driven to the publication of a book which cost him imprisonment and a fine; for the Rabbis denounced it to the Dutch authorities as hostile not only to Judaism, but also to Christianity. This widened the breach between him and his brethren. Thus fifteen years of misery and loneliness dragged on, till, unable to bear his awful isolation any longer, this poor outcast from a people of outcasts tried to regain the favour of the Synagogue and the society of his fellow-men by feigned repentance. ♦1633♦ There ended the second part of the trilogy. The third began when Uriel’s simulated conversion was seen through. The discovery led to new persecution and insults innumerable. He was again ostracized by his relatives, robbed of his betrothed, and excommunicated by the Synagogue.

Seven years of suffering elapsed, and the victim at last, worn out by a fight to which his sensitive nature was unequal, prematurely aged and longing for rest, once more offered to sign a recantation. Pardon was granted, but not without terrible penalties and fresh humiliation. The penitent was made to read aloud his confession of sin; he was subjected to a public castigation—thirty-nine lashes—and was obliged to lie prone across the threshold of the synagogue for all the congregation to walk over and trample upon him. This disgrace drove Uriel to despair, attempt at murder, and suicide.

These things happened in 1640. In the ensuing year John Evelyn, whom we have seen at Venice, paid a visit to the community—probably to the very synagogue—that had witnessed poor Uriel’s sufferings, and he enters his impressions in his Diary as follows: