History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

The Jewish duke was placed in a position of the greatest danger, and with him probably all the Jews in the Turkish empire. If Daud had been able to push his hatred to the point of an open accusation, if French money could have supported the intrigue, and if the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, the deadly enemy of Joseph, could have taken the matter in hand, the latter would have been lost. But the French ambassador thought it wise to treat the matter as a secret for a time.

In spite of this secrecy, the intrigues of Daud and the French ambassador were betrayed to Joseph of Naxos, and he was able to be beforehand with them. It was not difficult for him to convince Sultan Selim that he had always served him faithfully, and that of all his courtiers, he had been most sincerely attached to him. He obtained a decree from the sultan by which the traitor Daud was banished for life to Rhodes, the criminal colony of the Turkish empire. Either at the instigation of Don Joseph, or by their own impulse, all the rabbis and communities of Constantinople pronounced the severest form of excommunication upon Daud and two of his accomplices. The rabbinical colleges of the largest Turkish communities, Joseph Karo at their head, in servile flattery joined them, without first having convinced themselves of Daud's innocence or guilt. The extraordinary efforts of the French ambassador and court to procure the overthrow of Joseph were thus a complete failure, and left in the mind of the latter a feeling of only too justifiable bitterness, which induced him to strive the more to hinder and frustrate the diplomatic schemes of France.

Joseph of Naxos dealt even more severely with the state of Venice. Secret enmity prevailed between the Jewish duke and the republic, which both tried in vain to conceal by compliments. Independently of the ill-treatment which his mother-in-law had undergone at the hands of the Venetian government, it had refused Joseph's request for a safe conduct through its dominions for himself and his brother. Selim, not very well disposed towards the Venetians, was often urged by his Jewish favorite to put an end to the long-existing peace between them, and to set about the conquest of the Venetian island of Cyprus. In spite of the disinclination of Mahomet Sokolli, the first vizir, who was favorable to the Venetians, the war was undertaken.

The sultan is said to have promised Joseph that he should become king of Cyprus, if the enterprise proved successful, and the duke of Naxos is said to have kept a banner ready in his house, with the inscription, "Joseph, King of Cyprus." His European alliances made this undertaking easy. Whilst Mahomet Sokolli was still raising difficulties about consenting to a naval war of this character, Joseph received the news that the arsenal in Venice had been destroyed by an explosion. Joseph and the party in the divan which he had gained over for war took advantage of the embarrassment thus caused to the Republic of Venice, and persuaded the sultan to allow the attacking fleet to sail at once. Nicosia, one of the chief towns of Cyprus, fell at the first assault, and the other, Famagusta, was closely besieged.

In this instance, as often before, all Jews were made answerable for the action of one. That the Venetian government, at the outbreak of the war, imprisoned all the Levantine merchants in Venice, for the most part Jews, and seized their goods, was only natural in the barbarous state of intercourse between one state and another. But that the senate, at the instigation of the hostile doge, Luis Mocenigo, came to the resolve (December, 1571) to expel all Jews from Venice, as fellow-conspirators of Joseph Nassi and of the Turkish empire, was a result of the race-hatred encouraged by Christianity. Happily, things did not go so far. Notwithstanding the endeavors of the fanatical pope, Pius V, to bring about a league of the Christian states against Turkey, to organize a crusade against the so-called unbelievers, and to drive the Turkish fleet from the waters of Cyprus, the town of Famagusta was obliged to yield to the Turkish commander, and so the whole island fell into the hands of Turkey. The Venetians were compelled to sue for peace, and they placed their whole hope of obtaining it upon an influential Jew, who was to negotiate it. In spite of the solemn determination of the Venetian senate that no one should venture to say a word in favor of Jews, they had to be tolerated, because it dared not quite break with the Jews in Turkey.

The power of the latter was, indeed, so great that they, generally the suppliants, were entreated for aid by Christians. A serious rebellion had arisen in the Netherlands against Spain and the morose king, Philip II, who wished to introduce the bloody tribunal of the Inquisition. The barbarous Alva was trying to suppress apostasy and to lead back the erring into the bosom of the Catholic church by hecatombs of human beings. The block was to support the cross. In this extremity, the rebels turned to Joseph of Naxos, who had dealings with some of the nobility of Flanders from the time of his residence there. Prince William of Orange, the moving spirit of the rebellion, sent a private messenger to Joseph of Naxos, entreating him to persuade the sultan to declare war against Spain, which would necessitate the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the Netherlands. The Austrian emperor, Ferdinand, also condescended to address an autograph letter to the Jewish duke in order to obtain the favor of the Porte, increasing the grand vizir's envy. Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland, who was hoping for an important service from the Porte, also addressed him, gave him the title of "Serene Highness," and, what was of greater importance, promised favorable conditions to the Jews in his country, to ensure Joseph's approval of his plans.

We may almost say that the divan, or Turkish council of state, under Sultan Selim consisted of two parties trying to checkmate each other: the Christian party, represented by the first vizir, and the Jewish, headed by Joseph of Naxos. Through and besides him there were other Jews who, though only in subordinate positions, exercised influence—the men on the holders of office, the women on the ladies of the harem. Sultan Selim's goodwill towards Jews was so evident that a story became current that by birth he was a Jew, foisted into the harem as a prince, when he was a child. Even the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, although an enemy of Joseph of Naxos and of Jewish influence, was forced to employ a Jewish negotiator and to intrust him with important commissions. The Venetian envoy, ordered to work secretly against the Jews at the Turkish court, himself assisted such a man in obtaining influence.

Solomon ben Nathan Ashkenazi, who conducted the diplomatic affairs of Turkey with Christian courts for nearly thirty years, and who supplanted Nassi, was an unknown personage in Constantinople at the period when the duke of Naxos had a powerful voice in the divan. Descended from a German family of Udine, he began to travel early in life, and went to Poland, where he rose to be first physician to the king. On his removal to the Turkish capital, he placed himself as a subject of the Venetian republic under the protection of the diplomatic agents of Venice. Solomon Ashkenazi understood the Talmud, and was called rabbi, but displayed greatest intelligence and skill in the niceties of diplomatic technicalities, the disentanglement of knotty questions, in negotiations, settlements, and compromises. For these qualities he had been esteemed by successive Venetian agents in Constantinople. The first minister of the Turkish court recognized his diplomatic skill, attached him to his service, and trusted him to the end of his life with such commissions as required tact, wisdom, and discernment in their fulfillment. Whilst the Turkish arms were raised against the Venetians, Solomon Ashkenazi was beginning to weave the web for the future treaty of peace.

Christian cabinets did not suspect that the course of events which compelled them to side with one party or the other was set in motion by a Jewish hand. This was especially the case at the election of the Polish king. The death (July, 1572) of the last Polish king of the Jagellon family, Sigismund Augustus, who left no heir, necessitated a genuine election from an indefinite number of candidates, and this put the whole of Europe, at all events the cabinets and diplomatic circles, into the utmost excitement. The German emperor, Maximilian II, and the Russian ruler, Ivan the Cruel, were most intimately concerned in the election, as neighbors of Poland. The former did everything that he could to insure the choice of his own son, and the latter boasted that he or his son would be chosen king. The pope plotted for a Catholic prince to be placed on the throne of Poland; otherwise it was to be feared that the choice of a king in favor of the Reformation, already on the increase among the nobles and the townspeople of Poland, would strengthen the movement, and that the country would free itself from the papacy. On the other hand, the Protestant countries of Germany and England, and, above all, the adherents of the various sects of the new church in Poland itself, felt the greatest interest in securing the election of a sovereign of their own faith, or at least of one not an aggressive Catholic. To this was added the personal ambition of a powerful French queen, who interfered with a deft hand. The widowed queen, Catherine de Medici, as clever as false, who believed in astrology, and to whom it had been announced that each of her sons should wear a crown, wished to procure a foreign throne for her son, Henry of Anjou, so that the astrological prophecy might not be fulfilled by the death of her reigning son, Charles IX. She and her son, the king of France, therefore, set every lever in motion to place Anjou on the throne of Poland. Turkey also had important interests and a powerful voice in the election of the king of Poland. A tangle of cabals and intrigues was developed by the election. Each candidate sought to gain a strong party among the higher and lesser nobility of Poland, and also to gain the favor of the Porte. Henry of Anjou seemed at first to have some prospect of success, but this was imperiled by the bloody massacre of St. Bartholomew, in France, in which, at a hint from the king and the queen-mother, a hundred thousand Huguenots, great and small—men, women and children—were attacked, and murdered (August 26th, 1572). Such barbarity, planned and carried out in cold blood, had been unheard of in European history since the murderous attack made on the Albigenses in the thirteenth century by papal command. The Lutherans and other adherents of the Reformation in every country were completely stunned by this blow. The candidates for the throne of Poland sought to make capital out of it against Anjou. So much the more the French candidate, his mother, and his brother, were compelled to endeavor to gain over the Porte to their side. An ambassador extraordinary was dispatched to Constantinople with this object. So the choice of a king of Poland rested with a Jew who was in the background, for Solomon Ashkenazi governed the grand vizir completely, and ruled his will, and he managed foreign affairs in the sultan's name. Solomon decided in favor of Henry of Anjou, and won over the grand vizir to his side. When Henry of Anjou, by a combination of favorable circumstances, was at last chosen almost unanimously (May, 1573), the French ambassador boasted that he had not been one of the last in bringing about this election. But Solomon Ashkenazi ventured to write as follows to the king of Poland, afterwards king of France under the name of Henry III: "I have rendered your majesty most important service in securing your election; I have effected all that was done here" (at the Porte).

Great sensation was aroused throughout Christian Europe when this Jewish physician and diplomatist was appointed by the Porte to conclude the peace which he had for several years been trying to bring about with Venice, and thus to stand forth as a person of the highest official importance. The Jewish ambassador was not accepted without opposition by the illustrious republic. The subject was eagerly discussed in the senate, and the members of the government were against him. But, on the one hand, the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, was resolved upon it, because Solomon enjoyed his unreserved confidence, and he wished through him to establish diplomatic relations for other purposes. On the other hand, the words of the Venetian consul, Mark Antonio Barbaro, who repeatedly assured his state that the Jewish diplomatist cherished the warmest sympathy with Venice, made a great impression. Under these circumstances, "Rabbi Solomon Ashkenazi," as he was termed, went to Venice in the capacity of envoy extraordinary from Turkey. When once he was acknowledged, the dignitaries of the republic, the doge, and the senators, paid him the greatest honor and attention, because the Turkish court was very sensitive on this point, and would have regarded want of due respect to its representative as an insult. Solomon was, therefore, received in state audience at the doge's palace, and there the act of peace between Turkey and Venice was signed by him on behalf of the former. The signoria showed him the most polite attentions during his stay in Venice (May to July, 1574), and all the European ambassadors in Venice paid him court.