on the Christian side than of anything resembling a religious crusade.
In all periods of its history, Toledo was subject to these sudden and inexplicable outbursts against the Jews, in spite of the historic legend that Toledo was first peopled and created by the Jews sent adrift by Nebuchadnezzar—a legend that should have entitled the unfortunates to regard themselves as at home upon her seven hills. Not so at any time. First the Carthaginians, then the Romans, then the Arians, the Christians, the Saracens, again, the Christians. Hideous persecution, continually and intermittently, of the chosen people, the followers of Moses and the prophets, the brethren of Christ, the apostles and Mary! One Toledan law against the Jews was a righteous one: the money-lenders were not allowed to exceed thirty-five per cent. on monies lent. Many a beggared scamp and spendthrift to-day would be the better off if such a law in usury had always existed. But there was no inducement to conversion, for the converted Jew was never recognised by his adopted brethren. He always wore a piece of coloured stuff on his shoulder as the señal de Judio. The Inquisition started the final and worst persecution of all, and the Catholic Isabel publicly banished them from the kingdom. Abhorrence of the race has never died, never even diminished, in the Peninsula. A grandee once married the granddaughter of a converted Jew, and, even a hundred and fifty years later, his descendants could not hope to marry into their own rank. He might have hoped for pardon and oblivion if he had married a ballet-dancer or a courtesan. In the Cathedral, a host is preserved, supposed to have been traversed by a Jewish spear which pierced it in three places, the sacrilege having taken place in Holland. The legend runs that the light from the holes was so intense that the Jew instantly became converted. There is also a legend of a highroad cross near the town having been struck by a Jewish sword, bleeding humanly as it fell upon the sacrilegious slayer, the drops of blood as he carried it home revealing to the Toledans his crime, which was naturally the motive of a fresh persecution of the race. So that God, finding the Christians too pacific and lukewarm, used this dumb instrument of painted wood to provoke an onslaught, and redden the streets of Toledo with Hebrew blood. These things you must read seriously when you take to study of the Spanish historians. So they explain to you the legend of the Cathedral gate, the Puerta del Niño perdido. In 1490, a Jew of Quintana went to Toledo to witness the edifying sight of an auto-da-fé. He stood on the brilliant and thronged little Zocodover, and watched the sombre flare of the torches, listened to the lugubrious chants. Turning to a neighbour, he exclaimed: “I know something that will drive these people wild, and will, at the same time, proclaim the triumph of the law of Moses.” He appointed a meeting with his neighbour at Tembleque, and settled to carry off a child of three or four. He stole the child from Toledo, and brought it to the village of La Guardia. At Passiontide, they met at a grotto outside La Guardia, and submitted the baby to a repetition of the insults and outrages Christ had endured; then lanced him, tore out his heart, and buried the little body. The child’s mother was blind, and at this instant miraculously recovered her sight. Not content with this, they bribed a recently converted Jew, Juan Gomez, to steal a host, paying him thirty reals for the sacrilege, and sent him off with the child’s heart to Zamora. Thus the crime was traced to Juan Gomez, who, opening his prayer-book in the cathedral of Avila, on his return, attracted attention by the wonderful projection of bright rays from the leaves. He was instantly seized, examined, papers were found on him, and he and the gang of Jewish torturers of babies were burnt by the Inquisition.
This charming little temple was built for Levi by the Jew, D. Meir Abdeli, a rabbi to whom an elaborate Hebrew inscription on one wall does honour as a man of transcendent virtue. The architecture is Morisco. Slowly the restorers are unveiling the admirably-wrought stucco walls, where the sculpture is as fine and delicate as the most exquisite lace, and has lain for centuries under a degrading coat of whitewash. You must mount the high scaffolding with lighted wax or lamp, and here you may examine at your leisure the inexhaustible delights of the Moorish-Andalusian style in its most florid period. The prodigality of ornament is as amazing as the Gothic wealth of sculpture of San Juan de los Reyes, but I confess this pleases far more. It is much more charming, more fairy-like, with that delicately-sensual note which forms the eternal witchery of the East. The friezes are magnificent, and nothing could be prettier than the effect of the semi-horseshoe windows and their frail pillars and arches. Above the famous Hebrew inscriptions, quotations from the Psalms mostly, run a row of arches, highly decorated, resting on slim columns fancifully wrought. Here the extreme elegance of design and finish touches upon preciosity. The Moorish windows are most lovely, perfect little poems in stone, of a marvellous fragility and grace. From their dainty lines and traceries, you look in stupor up at the massive artesonado ceiling, with its geometrical figures, its infinitude of design carven in heavy wood—blurred, it is true, and brutally defaced by time and neglect. Here and there the woodwork is discoloured, here and there hopelessly degraded; but some notion of its pristine magnificence may be gathered even yet.
El Transito was seized by Isabel the Catholic, on her expulsion of the Jews from her kingdom, and handed over to the Knights of Calatrava, whose arms are stamped on every corner of the temple. The Knights did what every other religious body in all ages and lands has done on taking possession of the temple of the dethroned gods. They marred the harmony of Eastern architecture by the erection of Christian altars, less flagrantly, of course, than the great Mosque of Cordova was marred. But still the false note is there: it greets us with singular bad taste in the fifteenth century retablo, in a plateresca altar, in mediocre sixteenth century paintings that represent scenes from the New Testament, oddly unsuitable to the walls of a synagogue, and out of keeping with the long Hebrew inscriptions in relief above the frieze. Some of these meritless canvases are attributed to John of Burgundy. There is a choir neither decorative nor impressive, and a plateresca door, a tolerable specimen of that Spanish architecture. These are mere blots upon a graceful whole. The Jews under Moorish influence, built this lovely little temple, and its spirit, its essence, its genius, remain Jewish after more than four centuries of dispossession.
The origin of the name Santa Maria la Blanca dates from the fourth century, when Our Lady, in a miraculous vision, is said to have chosen the spot for the erection of a church in her honour, which was covered with snow. Pope Liberius then ordered the church to be built and consecrated to the White Lady—Nuestra Señora la Blanca. Later, the church became the property of the Jews, who rebuilt above its ruins the imposing synagogue we see to-day, in the Moorish ninth century style. Unhappily for them St Vicente Ferrer, a mediaeval fanatic who to-day would be called a demagogue, came to Toledo in 1405, on his famous crusade against the unfortunate race. You may see the highly sculptured pulpit half Moorish, half Gothic, he preached his frantic sermons from to the inflammatory Toledans in the little church of Santiago below the Puerta del Sol, now closed up with a wooden statue of the saint in the middle, holding in one hand a wooden crucifix, and flourishing the other in exhortation to the populace to destruction and cruelty. The Man of Sorrow, who preached peace and goodwill to all men, love of enemies, forgiveness of injuries, himself a Jew, son of a Jewess, is held up to excite the furious passions of the mob, to urge them to crime and infamous injustice. How much fatal misery humanity in all ages, even in our own, might have been spared by the prevalence of so small a quality as a sense of humour! The Valencian saint himself died in bleak far-off Vannes, in Brittany.
But there was no humour then in grim and blood-saturated Toledo. The mob rushed from the church to the synagogue, tore the obnoxious Jews limb from limb, thrust them into the streets and the highways, robbed, tortured, wounded, took possession of their beautiful temple, sacked their houses, carried off their money-bags, (naturally), hooted, hissed, and kicked them precisely as it would to-day in Paris, for all our enlightenment and progress, if it dared. All this in the pacific name of Christ! Centuries after the synagogue became a Magdalen’s Asylum, under Cardinal Siliceo, until 1791, when it was converted into a barrack and military stores. It was only rescued from this ignoble use thirty years ago, and restored by public subscription.
Nothing could be more miserable than the exterior of Santa Maria la Blanca; nothing more squalid than its surroundings. A deserted quarter, mean little laneways, towzled babies, unfortunate beggars. “As soon as you descend the steps that lead to it,” writes Quadrado, “you are arrested by the surprise of this singular mingling of magnificence and nakedness, of capricious strangeness of lines, the exquisite taste of the ornaments; you fancy yourself transported to a fantastic pagoda. The glance is lost in the midst of this forest of great octagonal pillars, which from the point of view of proportion, lack half of their height. They are seven in a line, forming five naves, and holding Moorish arches of a bold curve. The capitals in stucco are of different forms, composed of branches, of leaves and garlands, mixed with fir-cones, reminiscences of the old Byzantine style. Varied ornaments, arabesques, lovely rose windows along with arches, and prominent above the central nave a frieze in slight relief, formed of lines crosswise and intermingling, and even still of a remarkable precision and purity. No dome, not even a ceiling; a roof of wood, of miserable aspect, descending from the height of the central nave to the two lateral extremities, gives to the whole edifice an appearance of ruin and abandonment.” The restorers, with customary clumsiness, have coated the whole temple in plaster, like the cloisters of San Juan de los Reyes, with a result almost facetious, taking into consideration the name of the building. It is now white with a sorry vengeance. The ceiling is said to have been made from beams of the cedars of Lebanon, and the soil the synagogue is built upon to have been brought from Mount Zion. The Moorish and Byzantine style mingle most artistically, with the accumulated delicate and artistic effects of both and the enchanting azulejos, here of an admirable beauty of colour and design; but arabesque, tiles and horse-shoe arches are sadly out of harmony with the Gothic altars of the chancel. One finely sculptured, is supposed to be by Berruguete or one of his pupils. Elsewhere it would show to better advantage than here. Curious detail, the wells may still be seen where the Jews and Jewesses performed their ablutions.