At Naples only of the Italian cities they were not permitted to find a home. In the first instance, as the reader has learned, a considerable number of the Spanish exiles had found refuge in that city, where they had been received in a friendly manner. But the invasion of Charles VIII. of France exposed them to fresh persecution. Wearied out by their endless trials, they lost heart at last, and consented to embrace the Christian faith. But, as in the other instances, the conversion was only nominal, and the danger had no sooner passed than the pseudo-converts returned to their former profession. A few years subsequently Gonsalvo de Cordova took possession of Naples in the name of the King of Spain. He raised the question as to whether they ought not to be driven out of the country, which had now become part of the Spanish dominions. But the idea had now got possession of most people’s minds, that to expel the Jews from any country was to do it serious injury. He therefore proposed to introduce the Inquisition, which would retain the Jews in the land, but compel them to keep to their newly made profession. This, however, did not please the Neapolitans, who rose in insurrection, and the government were fain to compromise the matter by expelling the Jews; though it is affirmed by some of the Jewish writers (as, for example, Orobio de Castro) that these stern measures were adopted only so far as the Sephardim (or Spanish Jews) were concerned.
In this century great numbers of Hebrew printing-presses were set up in Italy, which were under the management of learned Jews. Among these was the celebrated Abraham Usque, by whom the well-known Bible of Ferrara, a Spanish version of the Old Testament, was printed. Hebrew presses were also erected at Cremona, Leghorn, Padua, Genoa, Rimini, and Verona, as well as the central city of Rome. The renowned Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp established himself at Venice in 1516, and his works attained great celebrity. He also published the first complete edition of the Talmud, and the first Rabbinical Bible. To this age also belongs Rabbi Joseph, the historian of the French Crusades and the sufferings of the Jews in Castile, Asarja de Rossi, and Abraham Portaleone.
FOOTNOTES:
[164] It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that they were not to be met with in those countries. Even in England, though the law forbade any settlement, Jews were occasionally to be found, whose presence was tolerated. This was still more the case in France and Germany; while in Spain and Portugal great numbers remained, whose profession of Christianity was very widely known to be a mere pretence. Of them we shall speak in the next chapter.
[165] Sultan Bajazet was shrewd enough to apprehend this. When he heard of the banishment of the Jews by Ferdinand, he exclaimed: ‘A wise king this, who impoverishes his own kingdom to enrich mine!’
[166] Paul IV. was the Pope whose overbearing dealings with Queen Elizabeth precipitated the rupture with the English Church. He was also the author of the well-known Index of prohibited books.
[167] Urban VIII., Gregory XIV., and Innocent IX.
[168] A remarkable instance of the esteem in which they were held in Florence is to be found in the quarrel between Florence and Milan in 1414. The Florentines, considering that they had cause of complaint against the Duke of Milan, sent a Jewish banker, named Valori, as an ambassador to him. The duke refused to receive a Jew as an envoy, which the Florentines so highly resented that they declared war against him.
CHAPTER XXX.
A.D. 1500-1600.
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL, SPAIN, AND HOLLAND.
The Jews having been publicly expelled from Portugal and Spain, it might be thought that there was an end of their history, so far as those two countries are concerned. So, doubtless, there would have been, had the expulsion been a complete one. But it was notorious that, though they had been nominally driven out, great numbers remained, who, though they called themselves Christians, were in reality Jews, and nothing but Jews. Miserable as was the condition of those whose sufferings have been described in the previous chapters, it may be doubted whether those who stayed behind were not more wretched still. True, they had escaped the dreaded severance from home and country; they might still dwell among the familiar scenes of youth and manhood; they had not undergone the horrors of the outward voyage, and the landing among barbarous and inhospitable strangers. But there was the self-reproach and shame of a false profession of faith; there was the necessity of complying with forms and observances which in their heart they hated; there was the continued dread of detection and ruin. They knew themselves to be the objects of continual suspicion, that keen and merciless eyes were ever upon them, and that on the slightest evidence of any open recurrence to the worship which they still secretly rendered, the fearful scenes, still fresh in their memory, would be renewed.