The Jews of that period were probably richer in proportion to the Christians than now, and at all events, from the peculiarities of their traffic, more indispensable. They had friendly protectors alike at the Imperial court, in the harem of the Sultan, and in the secret chamber of the Pope; they had an aristocracy of blood, which was still highly respected by their fellow-believers, and at bridal feasts they wore with pride, the jewels which some ancestor, long perhaps before the days of Marco Polo, had brought from India, while exposing his life to manifold dangers; or another had got by bartering, from the great Moorish king at Granada. But in the streets the Jew still bore the degrading mark of the unhonoured stranger; in the Empire, a yellow cockade on his coat, and in Bohemia the stiff blue cravat; as in the middle ages he had worn the yellow hat, and in Italy the red mantle. It is true he was the creditor and employer of numerous Christians, but in most of the greater cities he still lived closely confined to certain streets or portions of the city. Few German Jewish communities were larger or more opulent than that in Prague, and it was one of the oldest in Germany. Seldom does a traveller neglect to visit the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter, where the small houses, clustered together like the cells of a beehive, enclosed at once the greatest riches and the greatest misery of the country, and where the angel of death so long caused tears of gall to trickle into the mouth of the believer, till every inch of earth in the dismal churchyard became the ashes of men. At the end of the seventeenth century, near six thousand industrious men dwelt there in a narrow space; the great money lenders, as well as the poorest frippery dealers and porters, all closely united in firm fellowship and common interests, indispensable to the impoverished country, yet in continual warfare against the customs, coarseness, and religious zeal of the newly converted kingdom.
For the second generation were then living, of the new Bohemia, which the Hapsburgers by scaffolds, expulsion, and fearful dragooning, had won back after the battle of Weissen Berge. The old race of nobles was, for the most part, rooted out; a new Imperial nobility drove in gilded carriages through the black Hussite city; the old biblical learning had wandered into foreign lands, or died away in the misery of the long war; in the place of the chalice priests and the Bohemian preachers, were the holy fathers and begging monks; where once Huss defended the teaching of Wickliff, and Zisk rebuked the lukewarmness of the citizens of the old town, the gilded statue of the queen of heaven now rose triumphant. Little remained to the people of their past, except the dark stones of Königsstadt, a rough populace, and a harsh piety.
There remains to us a little pamphlet of this time, for which we are indebted to two of the Prague celebrities of the order of Jesuits, the Fathers Eder and Christel, the first of whom, wrote it in Latin, and the second translated it into German; both writers are otherwise known, the second as a zealous but insipid German poet. From this writing the following narrative is taken.
"Thus in a few years a hundred and seventy persons of the Jewish persuasion, were purified in the saving waters of baptism, by one single priest of our society, in the Academical church of Our Saviour, of the college of the Society of Jesus.
"I will by the way, here shortly mention, the wonderful bias of a Jewish child for the Christian faith. A Jewess in the Zinkower domain was in the habit of carrying her little daughter in her arms; one day she accidentally met a Catholic priest, to whom she proposed to show her child, and taking the veil off its little face, boasted what a finely-shaped child she had brought into the world. The priest took advantage of this preposterous and unexpected confidence, to bless the unveiled child with the sign of the holy cross, admonishing the mother at the same time to bring up the said child in the love and fear of God, but leaving all else in the hands of Divine Providence. And behold this little Jewess had hardly began to walk, when she forthwith considered herself a Christian, knelt with them when they knelt, sang with the singers, went out with them into the meadows and woods, made hay, plucked strawberries, and picked up wood with them; besides this, she learnt of them the paternoster and the angel's salutation, as also to say the belief; in short she made herself acquainted with Christian doctrine, and desired earnestly to be baptized. The high born and Right Honorable Countess of Zinkow, in order to fulfil this maiden's desire, to her great delight took her in her carriage to Prague, that she might there, out of sight of her parents, more securely obtain the privilege of baptism. But after the parents had discovered that their daughter, who had for so long a time carefully kept her designs secret, had become a Christian, they bitterly lamented it, and were very indignant with the priest who had blessed her in her mother's arms with the sign of the cross, for they ascribed to him all their daughter's inclination for Christianity.
"But by what intrigues the perfidious Jews endeavoured to frustrate every conversion, I have myself not long since had experience, when for the first time, a disciple in the faith of the Jewish race, Samuel Metzel, was placed under me for instruction. The father, who had four children yet minors, was a true Israelite, out of the Egypt of the Jewish town, and had endeavoured, much and zealously, to bring them all, together with himself, out of bondage. But, behold! Rosina Metzelin, his wife, who then had a great horror of the Christian faith, would not obey him; and when she found that the four children were immediately withdrawn from her, this robbery of her children, was, like the loss of her young to a lioness, hard to bear. She summoned her husband before the Episcopal consistory, where she sued for at least two of the four purloined children, which she had given birth to, with great labour, pain, and weariness, both before, at, and after the time. But the most wise tribunal of the Archbishop, decided that all the children belonged to the husband, who was shortly to be baptized. Then did the wife lament piteously, indeed more exceedingly than can be told or believed; and as she was afeard that her fifth offspring, which was yet unborn, would be stolen from her after its birth, she endeavoured earnestly to conceal from the Christians the time of her delivery. Therefore she determined first of all to change her place of abode, as her present one was known to her husband and children. But there is no striving against the Lord! The father discovered it by means of his innocent little daughter, who for some months had been constantly kept in a Christian lodging, and was unwarily admitted by her mother into her concealed dwelling. On receiving this information, I sought out the Imperial Judge of the Altstadt of Prague, who, without delay, despatched his clerk to the house, to demand the new-born child from the woman, and (in case she refused) from the Elder of the Jewish people, as belonging to the now baptized father. But as these crafty Jews would not consent to deliver up the child, a Christian midwife was ordered for the Jewish woman, that the same might, by some womanly, pious contrivance, carry off the child from the mother. This midwife was accompanied by certain prudent matrons. The conductress was to be Ludmilla, well known for her great godliness, wife of Wenzeslaus Wymbrsky, who had gone through the baptism of water and blood. Her husband Wenzeslaus was, with this his wife and five children, baptized in our church by his Eminence the Cardinal and Archbishop of Prague in 1464. It was above all displeasing to the furious Jews, to see thirteen men of other families, following the example of Wenzeslaus, abjuring Judaism the same year. At last it became insupportable to them that Wenzeslaus, by whose shop many Jews had daily to pass to their frippery market, should publicly set up in it the image of the crucified Saviour, and every Friday keep a burning lamp before it. Therefore he was greatly hated by the Jewish rabble, and often assailed with derision and scoffing. Now, once when he went, according to his daily custom, to the Teynkirche, an hour before day, three armed Jews fell on him, by whom he was mortally wounded with two poisoned pistol-balls, so that on the fifth day thereafter, he devoutly departed this life, without having been persuaded to name the murderers. The ringleader was caught later, and condemned to the wheel, but acting as his own executioner hanged himself with a rope. Now the widow of the deceased man, Ludmilla, could not slip in, with the little troop of pious women, unperceived, because the Hebrews with their sharp lynx-eyes watched narrowly. At that moment, many of them combined together and pushed their way into the room of the Jewish woman about to be confined. But Ludmilla did not take alarm at their presence, nor at the possible danger of death. She handed over the consecrated water she had brought with her, to the midwife, calling upon her in strong language, to deliver the woman and baptize the child. And so it took place, and the nurse took the child and baptized it. But the woman who had been confined sprang frantically from her bed, and with vehement cries, tore the child violently from the hands of the midwife. Forthwith, the city judge made his appearance with armed men, in order to separate the now little Christian son from the mother. But as she, like a frantic one, held the child so firmly clasped in her arms, that it was feared it would be stifled in extricating it from her, the judicious judge of the city contented himself with strictly forbidding the old Jews there assembled, to make the child a Jew. Thereupon it was commanded, by his Excellence, the Lord Count of the Empire, Von Sternberg, Chief Burgrave of the Kingdom of Bohemia, that this fifth child should be delivered over to the father. Not long after, the mother also, who had so stubbornly adhered to Judaism, gave in, and was baptized.
"The father of the Jewish boy Simon Abeles, was Lazarus, and his grandsire Moses Abeles who for many years had been Chief Rabbi of the Jews. Whilst already of tender years, there had been discovered in this boy a special leaning of the spirit towards Christianity. Whenever he could, he separated himself from the Jewish youths, and associated with the Christian boys, played with them, and gave them sweets which he had collected from his father's table, in order to gain their good will. The Jewish cravat, stiffened with blue starch, which the Jews wear round the neck, thereby distinguishing themselves here in Bohemia from the Christians, was quite repugnant to Simon. As the light of his reason became brighter, he took every opportunity of learning the Christian mysteries. It happened that he was many times sent by his father, who was a glove dealer, on business to the house of Christopher Hoffman, a Christian glover. There he tarried in contemplation of the sacred, not the profane, pictures that hung on the walls, although the last were more precious and remarkable as specimens of artistic painting, and he inquired with curiosity of the Christian inmates, what was signified in these pictures. When in reply they told him, that one was a representation of Christ, another of the mother of Christ, the miracle-working mother of God, by Buntzel, and another, the holy Antonius of Padua, he exclaimed, from his heart, sighing: 'Oh, that I could be a Christian!' Moreover, a Jew called Rebbe Liebmann bore witness, that the boy sometimes passed whole nights among Christians, and did not appear at his father's house.
"Now many maintained that this leaning to Christianity arose from a supernatural source, and was produced by the baptismal sign, which had been impressed upon him by a Christian, whilst he was in the cradle. When later this report had been carefully investigated, it was certified that a preceptor, Stephen Hiller, was once sent to Lazarus Abeles to obtain payment of a debt, that he there found a child lying alone in the cradle, and had, from deep impulse of heart, baptized him with the elemental water which was at hand. On being examined by the consistory of the Right Reverend the Archbishop, this preceptor, who is now invested with a chaplaincy, said that he did not know whether the child was the little son of Lazarus; nay, his supposition had been far stronger, that it was the son of a Jewish tailor. From such evidence this weighty point remained doubtful.
"After some years, the steadfast leaning of Simon's spirit to Christianity, having so much increased that it began to be clearly perceived at home, the astute boy, foreseeing well that his parents and relations would spare no pains to put impediments in his way, was minded to prevent this, by flying from his father's house and Jewish friends, before the path was closed against him. Now while, on the 25th of July, 1693, Lazarus the father, kept the solemn day of rest in the Jewish school, his son betook himself to a Christian house near the Jewish town, which was inhabited by the newly baptized Jew, Kawka, and that same evening summoned to him Johannes Santa, a Jew who many years before had been converted with his whole family, of whom he had already heard a good repute, as a zealous man and assiduous guide. For this man had, at the risk of his life, brought away Jews who had a desire for the Christian faith, and their newly baptized children from the Jewish town, had placed them under instruction in our college of St. Clement, had provided them with food, clothes, and lodging, and had for hours together read spiritual books, especially the Life of Christ, with deep devotion to such as could not read, and whose greatest pleasure it was to see them cleansed in holy baptism. To him Simon honestly opened his heart, and entreated that Johannes would take him to the college of the Society of Jesus.
"There was no necessity for entreating, the man borrowed clothes of a Christian youth, covered Simon's head, which was shorn after the Jewish fashion, with a peruke, and conducted him across the Altstadter Platz to the college. In the middle of the said Platz, stands the large richly-gilded image of the holy mother of God, carved out of one stone. Johannes explained to his Christian scholar, that this richly-gilded image represented the Queen of heaven, the faithful mediator of believers with God. This Simon listened to with great eagerness, took off his hat without delay, bowed his whole body low, and commended himself with pious sighs, to the blessed mother of God, as her foster child. Hereupon he turned to his guide and thus addressed him: 'If my father saw this, he would straightway kill me.' Thus they reached our college between seven and eight o'clock in the evening. I was called to the door, and Simon imparted to me his desires with marvellous eloquence, and at the same time begged with such fervent zeal to be instructed in the Christian faith, that I was much amazed. I presented him the same evening to the Reverend Father Rector of the college. It almost seemed as if this twelve-year-old boy behaved himself, as afore time Jesus among the doctors, seeing that he answered various questions with an eloquence, acuteness, and judgment which far surpassed his age. When it was objected to him, that his arrival excited a suspicion that he had committed some evil deed in the Jewish town, and sought a refuge in the ecclesiastical house, Simon answered with cheerful countenance: 'If there is a suspicion of any misdeed, let the truth be searched out by proclamation, as is usual in the Jew town. If I were conscious of any evil deed, I should have more hope of remaining unpunished among the Jews than among the Christians, for I am a grandson of Moses Abeles, their chief Rabbi.' Then when it was suggested that he had come among the Christians in order to wear a peruke, a little sword, and fashionable dress, the boy made a face and said: 'I must confess that for a long time, I have not worn the Jewish collar. Nevertheless, I do not desire to shine among Christians in any fashionable clothes, and will be content with my old rags.' After he had given this earnest answer, he began to strip his hands of his gloves, to ungird his little sword, to tear the peruke from his head, and to unhook the clean, little upper coat, determined were it necessary to follow the destitute Jesus, unclothed.