CHAPTER XVI.
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS.
TORQUEMADA RESOLVES UPON IMMEDIATE EXPULSION OF ALL UNCONVERTED JEWS.—THE FATAL EDICT.—THE SPANIARDS MOVED TO PITY.—DON ISAAC ABARBANEL PLEADS WITH THE QUEEN.—THE QUEEN HESITATES.—TORQUEMADA, THE FIEND, CONQUERS AGAIN.—THE ILL-FATED JEWS SEEK AMONG THE DEAD THE PITY WHICH THE LIVING REFUSE.—THE DEPARTURE.
With tearful eyes and bleeding heart we have seen portrayed the mournful and tragic fate of the Jews and Moors in Spain. We were unwilling eye-witnesses to sufferings and cruelties, which we knew had never been equalled, and thought could never be surpassed. We thought we had seen the climax of maniacal fanaticism. We thought well might Thomas de Torquemada recline now beneath the laurels of infamous immortality he had won for himself, and henceforth concentrate his frenzied zeal upon religious efforts, less iron-hearted and less murderous. We thought now that Spain had completely vanquished the Moor, had degraded the Jews, had successfully taught the "convert" Jews a most "burning" love for the Christian faith, by means of the Inquisition's pitiless, slaughtering tribunal, now that greed and bigotry and viciousness and ambition had been satiated, we thought Ferdinand and Isabella would halt in their unpitying and unmerciful career, would pause long enough to gaze upon the terrible calamities they had inflicted upon the realm and upon innocent people, and would hasten to amend their ways, and repair their great wrongs.
It was natural for us to think so. It is the experience of mankind that reaction accompanied by remorse, ever follows close upon the heels of rampant fury; that generosity and clemency, however fiercely the infuriated storms had lashed them into savage atrocity, will seek and find again their unruffled calm. It is therefore we stand aghast at beholding the next brutish inhumanity of Torquemada. Of a truth, he is not man but fiend, for to him principles which guide the actions of human beings are not applicable. For him there exists no reaction and no remorse, no generosity and no clemency. Where the most cruel of the cruel tremble at the mere thought, he executes sportively and in cold blood. Where others rest their blood-reeking weapons in the belief that they have reached, at last, the summit of crime, he heartlessly advances as upon mere stepping stones to far greater cruelties to come. He knew why he apprehended assassination now. He knew why he secured an escort now of fifty horse and two hundred foot. He was about to perpetrate a crime that should throw into the shade all that he had enacted hitherto.
The fate of the Moors had been decided. The Inquisition thinned the ranks of the "convert" Jews. The unconverted Jews, they that had preferred degradation to baptism; they that had preferred to take up their wretched abode as degraded outcasts in the prescribed outskirts of the cities, to feigning adherence to a faith which their hearts hated; they that had sacrificed with singular resignation all that honest toil had honestly secured, and donned the garberdine of disgrace, and followed the degrading vocations enforced upon them by cruel laws, and suffered everywhere meekly unprovoked jeers, insult, outrage, assault, these must be dealt with now. Torquemada was resolved, and with him resolve was equal to execution, that in Spain the sun should shine upon none but pure Catholics, that the atmosphere of Spain should no longer be polluted by the presence of Jews; that none but "pious" Christians should tread upon its holy soil. He resolved upon expelling the Jews forever. They had long clogged the wheels of his triumphal car. He knew that there was a secret communion between "converted" and unconverted Jews. He knew that it was mainly due to their religious influence that the convert Jews relapsed again into Judaism. He knew that they provided spiritually and physically for the poverty-stricken and branded families of those of their race, whom the Inquisition burned, and whose possessions it confiscated. He knew that, despite rigorous measures and Dominican spies, converted and unconverted Jews met in subterranean caverns, and counseled and worshipped together, and comforted each other. He hit upon a cure at last. He knew a remedy that would remove the clog forever. He counselled immediate expulsion of all unconverted Jews.
In the year 1492, in the year in which Columbus discovered a new world, in the year in which the Jewish sailor of Columbus' crew first set foot upon the virgin soil of the western Hemisphere,[40] strange fatality, in the same year that Spain opens domains vast, destined to become the land of the free, the blessed haven for the politically and racially and religiously persecuted; in the same year, the year 1492, she opens her portals at home, only to thrust out, mercilessly, brutally, hundreds of thousands of unoffending, industrious, intelligent people, closes the gates behind them, and keeps them barred nigh unto four hundred years.
On the 30th of March, 1492, the edict for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was signed by the Spanish sovereigns at Granada. Torquemada had triumphed. He had conquered the scruples of king and queen and Grandees. The edict, schemed and defended by him, had passed, and the faithful execution thereof he took upon himself. Heralds proclaimed from the street corners of every hamlet and village and city of Spain, that all unconverted Jews, of whatever sex or age or condition, should depart from the realm before the expiration of four months, never to revisit it, on any pretext whatever, under penalty of death, that all who should remain in the realm after the expiration of the four months would be put to death, as also all such Christian subjects, who should harbor, succor, or minister to the necessities of any Jew, after the expiration the term limited for his departure; that the Jews dispose in the meanwhile of their possessions as best they can, but are prohibited, under penalty of death, from having gold or silver in their possession at the time of their departure.
Unfortunate Jews! It was an idle hope when, seeing the sky lurid from the burning of your brethren upon the quemaderos (places of burning heretics), you thought that the cup of your afflictions was full at last. It was an idle hope, when, thinking of the invaluable services you rendered unto Spain, you thought her people could not possibly visit still greater calamities upon your innocent heads. Unfortunate Jews! Ye thought not of Torquemada, the fiend, when you fondly nursed these hopes.
When the edict was read from the corners of the streets and from the cross-roads, as the words that convey the sentence of death, strike terror in the heart of the condemned: