FOOTNOTES:
[107] At a Parliament held at Northampton, when it was proposed to raise a tax for an expedition to the Holy Land, the Jews were assessed at £60,000, and the whole of the rest of the population of the country at £70,000 only.
[108] Two of these, similar to the outbreak in Stephen’s time, occurred in 1160 and 1181. It has been shrewdly remarked, that the Jews were always charged with this crime just at the times when the kings wanted money.
[109] The readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember the graphic scene in ‘Ivanhoe,’ where Front de Bœuf threatens to roast Isaac of York alive, unless he pays his demand.
[110] It is said that, deceived probably by the long continuance of their immunity from ill-usage, the Jews had begun to make display of their wealth, in a manner which gave great offence to the citizens of London; who treated them, in consequence, with many indignities. This had reached the king’s ears, and he wrote a letter to them respecting it.
[111] Between six and seven thousand pounds, English money.
[112] His history is given in detail by the celebrated Benjamin of Tudela.
CHAPTER XVII.
GREAT JEWISH DOCTORS.—ABEN EZRA, MAIMONIDES, BENJAMIN OF TUDELA.
It would be impossible, within the limits of a work like this, to give even an outline of the great schools of Jewish learning, which date from an age anterior to the coming of Christ, and have been continued even to modern times. The mere enumeration of the names of their renowned Rabbins, each the author of some profound thesis or learned commentary, would fill a volume. During the gloomiest ages of Christendom, when the lamp of learning was all but extinct, even in the cloister, where alone it glimmered, the Jews had light in their dwellings, like their ancestors of old who sojourned in Goshen, while the world without was wrapped in Egyptian darkness. They are, as a rule, but little known to ordinary readers, one reason of which doubtless is, that they concern themselves mainly with subjects which very nearly affect their own people, and find exercise for their peculiar mode of thought, but which neither suit the fancy nor awaken the interest of other races. Their treatises on the Talmuds and the Cabbala, on cosmogony and judicial astrology, even their commentaries on the Pentateuch and the Hebrew Prophets, are read with profound attention by their own people; but their learning and ability is lost on other readers. Nevertheless, there are some great names among their literary celebrities, which are familiar to the ears of all students, and with which all ought to be acquainted who would know anything of their history. There are three in particular, belonging nearly to the era with which we are now dealing, which ought not to be passed over. These are Aben Ezra, Moses the son of Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides, and Benjamin of Tudela.
Aben Ezra was born about A.D. 1092 at Toledo, of a family already distinguished for learning and literary ability. He was an eminent commentator and Cabbalist, a writer on grammar, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy, celebrated also as a physician and a poet. His commentaries include nearly the whole of the Old Testament, the earlier prophets being the only ones on which he has not written. Being a man of substance, he was able to gratify his fancy for travelling, which was a rare taste in those days, but possessed by several others of his brethren also. The places at which his various writings were composed may serve to illustrate the extent of his wanderings. Thus one of his treatises is dated from Mantua, another from Rome, a third from London, and a fourth from some Greek city, and the like. He visited Africa also, as well as Palestine, and conferred with learned men of his own race at Tiberias, where the Patriarch of the West had once fixed his abode. He died on his return from this pilgrimage, in his seventy-fifth year, A.D. 1174. Posterity has bestowed on him the title of ‘Hachacham, or the Wise,’ and learned men of all races and ages have done justice to his genius and learning.[113]