TORQUEMADA’S ZEAL AGAINST SPANISH JEWS (1492).
After the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella had succeeded in driving the Moors from Spain, and when at last they had agreed to send Columbus on his expedition to the New World, the clergy inflamed the minds of the sovereigns and the Inquisition against the Jews, who obstinately resisted all efforts to convert them. While the Jews were negotiating with the sovereign to avert this odium, Torquemada, the Inquisitor-General, burst into the apartment of the palace, and, drawing a crucifix from under his mantle, held it up, and exclaimed, “Judas Iscariot sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him and barter Him away.” So saying, this demon priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apartment. The royal pair were overawed, and their superstitious forebodings were so effectually worked upon that they signed, in 1492, the edict for the expulsion of the Jews which caused so much misery. The Jews, who were then estimated to be about six hundred and fifty thousand, resolved to abandon the country and sacrifice all rather than their religion. They had to sell their property for a trifle, owing to the market being glutted. A house would be sold for an ass and a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews swallowed their jewels; others tried to conceal them in clothes and saddles. Some ships carrying the fugitives were visited by the plague. Those suffered all the miseries of hunger who travelled by land, and many sold their children for bread. Some were cast naked and desolate on the African coast. Some tried to escape into Portugal; and King Joan II. drove a hard bargain, fixing a high capitation tax, which his tax-gatherers lined the frontiers in order to collect. This was only for permission to pass through the country and embark for Africa. The new king, Emanuel, acted still more brutally, and ordered all Jewish children to be kidnapped and torn from their parents’ arms, in order to be brought up in the Catholic faith. The Dominicans watched, during these years of massacre and pillage, the moment when a Jewish person was visible, rushed forth with crucifix in their hands to hunt and roast the offender, and for this brutal work of merit the reward was said to be that the sufferings in purgatory should be confined to a hundred days. This expulsion of Jews seriously marred the national prosperity.
THE PREJUDICE AGAINST JEWISH PHYSICIANS.
Southey says that nothing exposed the Jews to more odium, in ages when they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians. So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis I., after a long illness, finding no benefit from his own physicians, despatched a courier to Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to the Spaniards. No Jewish physician being heard of, a Christian one was sent, but was dismissed without a trial; and at last a Jew came from Constantinople, who, however, prescribed nothing more for the royal patient than asses’ milk. This reputation of the Jewish physicians was said to be founded on the notion that they had stores of knowledge not accessible to other people, especially as to all the drugs known in the East. Yet at the same time there were tales as to the disreputable knowledge they had, such as killing Christian children to use their fat as cosmetics. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen this obloquy. Several councils of the Church denounced excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a Jewish physician; for it was said to be pernicious and scandalous that Christians, who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in sickness. The decree of the Lateran Council, by which physicians were enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable, and used to forbid rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile unless he dared not refuse, and above all never to attend such patients gratuitously.
A HOLY FATHER CONVERTING A JEW (1600).
In the seventeenth century one Engelberger, a Bohemian Jew, was sentenced to imprisonment for stealing the plate from a synagogue at Prague. In prison he became a great reader; and a holy Father, who visited him and took an interest in him, promised him not only absolution but a considerable reward if he would renounce his faith. He did so, and was received into the Church, thereby drawing on him the contempt and vengeance of the other Jews, and the praise and congratulation of the Christians. He published a book vindicating his conversion, became a favourite of high society, and was invited to Vienna, where he was well received by the Emperor Ferdinand III. But the convert by degrees was suspected of hypocrisy; and on the first opportunity he robbed the royal treasury, and after trial was condemned to death. He again affected sincere piety and contrition, expecting that his sentence would be remitted. But at the last moment, being told the contrary, and while receiving the last Sacrament on the scaffold, he spat the sacred wafer from his mouth; he shouted to the mob that he deserved his fate for abjuring the faith of Moses, and he called on them to bear witness that he died in the faith of the patriarchs. The mob, who had formerly almost deified the renegade, were now enraged at this insult to the Catholic faith, and wanted to tear him to pieces; but he was withdrawn for a few days. He was then again exposed, and drawn on a hurdle through the streets of Vienna. And a more diabolical sentence had meanwhile been passed. His right hand was first cut off; his tongue torn from his mouth; he was suspended from the gallows with his head downward, and dogs were allowed to tear him to pieces; and then his dead body was thrown into the Danube. An inscription in the Guildhall at Vienna records the date of this appalling example of religious fanaticism.
THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT IMAGE WORSHIP (A.D. 726).
The mode in which the great controversy about worship of images in churches arose was said to be as follows: A hermit had sent to Gregory the Great, who was appointed Pope in 589, for an image of Christ and other religious symbols. The latter sent him a picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary, also of St. Peter and St. Paul, and added some observations as to the right use of images. The Pope observed that, though it was grounded in man’s nature that he should seek to represent things invisible by means of the visible, yet the representations were not to be worshipped as God, but only used to enkindle the love of Him whose image was present to the eye. About that time country bishops reported that the worship of images was spreading, and that those opposed to that tendency demolished them and cast them out of churches. Parties began to be formed on both sides. In the Greek Church the church books had long been ornamented with pictures of Christ, of the Virgin, and the Saints; and private houses and household furniture also had like embellishments. There were legends connected with each. Some prostrated themselves whenever they approached within sight of these symbols. The most noted and determined enemy of images was the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, who was full of zeal, and paid small respect to what he thought to be wrong. He was very arbitrary. He forced the Jews to receive baptism, which only made them more and more tenacious of their antipathy. He also forced the Montanists to join the dominant Church, and this so enraged them that they burned themselves in their own churches. Leo’s first ordinance of 726 forbade any kind of reverence to be paid to images or pictures, and any prostration or kneeling. One bishop in defence attributed miracles which were wrought to these images, and said he knew from his personal experience this was not a delusion; moreover, an image of Mary at Sozopolis, in Posidia, distilled balsam, as was well attested. In short, party spirit ran high, and at last a great champion of images arose, named John of Damascus. Leo waged war against images for twelve years, until his death. His son Constantine was as zealous an iconoclast as his father; but great disturbances were caused by his proceedings. In 754 he convoked a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who agreed with the Emperor. They denounced the wretched painters who with profane hands attempted to depict the sacred feelings of the heart, and laid down the rule of faith to be, that there was only one true image or symbol, which was the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Painting was described as a Pagan, godless art, which degraded the Divine Majesty; and whoever in future should manufacture an image to worship it either in church or dwelling-house should, if an ecclesiastic, be deposed; if a monk or a layman, he should be expelled from the communion of the Church. An anathema was pronounced accordingly against all images. Though the council by a majority so decided, yet the monks as a body were equally zealous and determined to resist all attempts to do away with images. It was said the monk Stephen was thrown into prison for his zeal in favour of images; he refused to touch the food which the gaoler’s wife secretly brought to him, until she secretly assured him that she kept a casket in her own chamber containing several images of Divine persons, and which she showed to the monk to reassure him of her genuine devotion. Constantine, during the thirty years of his reign, flattered himself that he had struck a final blow at image worship; but after his death the next emperor married Irene, an Athenian lady, who was an unscrupulous supporter of images, and she cunningly brought about a reaction and restored things to their former footing.
THE ICONOCLASTS AND THEIR FIRST REVOLT.
Thus a strong feeling grew up, maintained by the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, that the Christians were going to an excess in their worship of images, and the contest raged for a hundred and twenty-five years, and led to bloodshed and civil war. The precise occasion of this revolt is not known with certainty; and it was thought afterwards to be unfortunate, for Christians at that time were called upon rather to combine against Mohammedanism than think of dividing their forces. When Leo had reigned ten years, he issued in 726 a prohibition against the worship of all statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints; and all statues and pictures were to be raised sufficiently high that they could not receive pious kisses. Soon after a second edict was issued, commanding the total destruction of all images and the whitewashing of the walls of churches. The clergy and monks were driven to absolute fury by this tyrannical measure. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of our Saviour in a church in Constantinople, an image renowned for its miracles. The crowd (as stated ante, p. 112), consisting chiefly of women, saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with his impious axe the holy countenance which had so benignly looked down upon them. Heaven interfered not; but the women seized the ladder, threw down the officer, and beat him to death with clubs. The Emperor sent his troops to put down the riot, and a frightful massacre ensued; but the image worshippers were viewed as martyrs, and cheerfully encountered mutilation and banishment, while the Emperor was denounced as worse than a Saracen. The Pope prohibited the Italians from paying tribute to the Emperor, and wrote letters defending the practice of the Church. He alludes to that practice as including pictures of the miracles, of the Virgin with choirs of angels, of the Last Supper, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and other like subjects. The Pope’s letter, however, had no effect.