CHAPTER VII
THE PERIOD OF IMPROVEMENT (1492-1791)
The Jews of Spain went to Turkey, North Africa, Oriental countries, and especially to Palestine. They came in such numbers that their language, the so-called Ladino, became the language of the Jews in these countries, taking the place of Arabic and Greek. Sultan Bajazed II, 1481-1513, is reported to have said that he could not understand why Ferdinand of Spain should be called a wise king, since he had impoverished his own country and enriched Turkey. Jews stood very high at Court. Joseph Hamon was physician to Sultans Bajazed II and Selim I (1512-1520) and his son, Moses Hamon, to Sultan Soliman II (1520-1566). Joseph Mendes (died 1579) and his aunt, Gracia, whose daughter Reyna he had married, were Marranos who had fled from Spain to Antwerp, then to Venice, and finally to Constantinople. Joseph was a special favorite of the Sultan, who forced the Republic of Venice to surrender the property of Donna Gracia, which had been confiscated. The Sultan made Joseph Duke of Naxos, and he seriously contemplated the establishment of a Jewish state there. Owing to Don Joseph’s influence, the Pope was forced to free a number of Marranos who had been imprisoned in the Papal States and charged with apostasy. A number of Jews, prompted by Messianic expectations, founded settlements in Jerusalem and Safed.
In Italy the condition of the Jews changed for the worse. Venice established the first ghetto, called thus after the gun foundry “Gietto” in the vicinity. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century the Popes employed Jewish physicians, such as Bonet del Lattes under Leo X. But Paul IV and Pius V issued oppressive laws against the Jews, restricting their commercial activity to trading in cast-off clothing, enforcing the marks of distinction, Jew Badges, and ordering the censorship of Hebrew literature. The reaction against Protestantism and the foundation of the Jesuit order further tended to make the condition of the Jews still worse. The Council of Trent, 1563, prohibited the Talmud altogether, but later on modified its decree to the effect that the word Talmud should not be printed on the title page of the work and that every edition should be submitted to the ecclesiastic censor aided by Jewish converts. Prominent among the latter were Elijah and Solomon Romano, grandsons of Elijah Levita.
The Italian Jews, in order to obviate the dangers arising from informations against Jewish literature, decided in 1564 that no book should be printed without the consent of three prominent rabbis and the trustees of the congregation in the district where the press was located. By these measures the Hebrew printing trade, which had flourished in Italy during the first half of the sixteenth century, was ruined and the press transferred to Poland. There, owing to the low state of industry, the art of printing declined.
The frequent expulsions and the constant oppressions fostered Messianic hopes. In 1507 a Messianic pretender arose in Northern Italy. His name was Asher Lemlein. Of the particulars of his career we know nothing. Of greater importance is the appearance of a man who called himself David Reubeni in Venice, 1522. He pretended to be the brother of the reigning king of the tribe of Reuben, living in Arabia, and planned an alliance of the Christian powers against the Mohammedans. For this he pledged the aid of the ten tribes living there. The Pope sent him to Portugal, where he made the acquaintance of Solomon Molcho, a young Marrano, who returned with Reubeni to Italy, preached and prophesied there and became a favorite of the Pope. The Jews feared the results of his eccentricities and denounced him to the authorities as an apostate from Christianity, but the Pope shielded him. Finally both went to Germany in 1530, where they hoped to win Charles V to their plans. They were imprisoned; Molcho, as an apostate, was burned at the stake and Reubeni sent to Portugal, where every trace of him was lost. Who he was is not known. He seems to have travelled in the East, and probably was an Arab.
The Reformation of 1517 at first influenced the condition of the Jews for the better. The accusations that the Jews desecrated hosts ceased. As late as 1492 a number of Jews were burned for this supposed crime at Sternberg in Mecklenburg. In 1510, thirty-nine Jews were burned at Berlin for the same cause. But aside from this Protestantism in itself stood for religious toleration. Luther, in the beginning of his career, spoke of the Jews as “cousins of our Lord,” who should be treated with kindness. He thought that his purified Christianity would win them over, but, toward the end of his life, when he had failed in his efforts and was embittered for other reasons, he wrote two pamphlets filled with invective against the Jews. In these he advocated the confiscation of their property, the destruction of their synagogues, and the forcible baptism of their children. Still more bitter than Luther’s attacks were those of John Eck, his Catholic opponent.
It seems, however, that the Reformation increased the number of Jewish converts. Prominent among these was Emanuel Tremellius, an Italian, who first became a monk and then a Protestant. He was a friend of Calvin, and translated the Bible for him into Latin. He also translated Calvin’s Catechism into Hebrew. Another convert was Luke Helic, who assisted the Moravian Brethren in translating the Bible into the Slavic language. A calumniator of Judaism was Antonius Margaritha, the son of a rabbi of Ratisbon, named Jacob Margaliot, who in 1530 wrote a libel on Judaism. Characteristic was the act of the Protestant Landgrave, Louis of Hesse, who advised the suppression of an anti-Jewish book, “Jüdenfeind,” by Nigrinus (1570) saying that the same arguments might just as well be used by Catholics against Protestants.
The Renaissance, which produced the Reformation, also had a favorable effect on the position of the Jews. When John Pfefferkorn, a convert from Judaism, in 1506 accused the Jews of blaspheming Jesus in their prayers and in their literature, and proposed the confiscation of all their books, John Reuchlin, a famous diplomat and expert Hebrew scholar, rendered an opinion in their favor. The Dominicans of Cologne, among them a former rabbi, Victor von Karben, whose tool Pfefferkorn had been, made the latter’s cause their own, but did not succeed. In Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the books had been confiscated, they were ordered to be returned to their owners, and a long and bitter controversy, in which both parties engaged in vile attacks, ensued. In the meantime the Reformation intervened; and the Pope, who had been appealed to, ended the matter by an order in 1516 that both parties should keep their peace. He reversed this decision in favor of the Dominicans in 1520.
Such occasions as the calumniations of Pfefferkorn and others showed the arbitrariness of municipalities and lords in the treatment of the Jews, and pointed out the advisability of Jews appointing an advocate, “Shtadlan,” who would always defend their rights when necessary. One of the most famous of these was Josel Rosheim (1478-1554) who was originally appointed as their advocate by the Jews of Alsace, and often acted in behalf of all the Jews of Germany, here and there arbitrating dissensions in congregations. He obtained various charters from Emperor Charles V, in which protection to the Jews was promised. Among these stipulations, one issued in 1530 is of special interest. The Emperor prohibited the expulsion of Jews from his territory without his consent. This rule, however, was not even observed in the immediate possessions of the German rulers. At various times Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V, and German Emperor (1522-1564) ordered expulsions from Austria in 1557, and in 1541 and 1561 from Bohemia; they were hardly ever carried out. When the expulsion from Bohemia was decreed, Mordecai Meisels, a wealthy Jew of Prague, 1528-1601, and the descendant of the Italian family Soncino, which in 1513 established a printing press in Prague, went to Rome and obtained a bull from the Pope for the protection of the Jews. The law of expulsion from Bohemia was repealed. Meisels was in other ways a great benefactor of his co-religionists.