And all this for the glory of Christianity! All this in obedience to the teachings of the Church! Heaven! Who can name the crimes that have been perpetrated in Thy name? What seas of human blood have been shed in the name of Christ, of Mercy and Love and Peace and Good Will! The Church had steeled the heart against every sentiment of pity and mercy. Feelings of compunction of remorse in the perpetration of crimes against the Jews, were taught to be the crime, and not the crime itself. The tear of sympathy wrung out by the sight of Jewish suffering was taught to to be an offense to be expiated by humiliating penance. Any one, it was taught, might conscientiously kill a Jew wherever he had an opportunity. The taste of blood, once gratified, begat a cannibal appetite in the people, and the more it was satisfied the more intense became its thirst for blood. Their zeal was not altogether unselfish; every Jew accused of heresy, or killed, cancelled—so the Church taught for the accuser one hundred days from his future purgatory punishment.
Another captain was somewhat more merciful; whether he had to expiate some of his tenderheartness by humiliating penance, ecclesiastical history has neglected to record. He set all his exiles on the shore upon a desert coast, leaving the weak and the suffering pitilessly a prey to wild beasts and to starvation. One of these unfortunate deserted exiles who survived, tells us how he saw his wife perish before his eyes, how he himself fainted with exhaustion, and upon awakening beheld his two children dead by his side. For weeks, roots and grass furnished their food. Each day brought fresh miseries and fresh graves. These were days such as Shakespeare speaks of:
"Each new morn—
New widows howl; new orphans cry; new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face."
Mothers, unable to bear the pining of their children, struck them dead, and then took their own life. Whole families folded themselves in loving embrace, and while thus embracing ended their life with their own hand. When the wild beasts came upon them, the exiles plunged into the sea, and stood shivering in the water for hours and hours, until the beasts retreated. Wearily they made their way onward, until, at last, they beheld the joyous sight of human settlements. Exhausted, they lay along the coasts, wasted by suffering and disease, and half demented from starvation. Down to the shore came the priests, and holding a crucifix in the one hand, and provisions in the other, the unfortunate Jews were given the choice between Christ and starvation. The flesh was stronger than the spirit. They begged for the bread, and ate at it ravenously, after the few drops of baptismal water had cleansed their soul from the foulest stains of infidelity. "Thus," says a pious Castilian historian, "thus the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in the end an excellent remedy, that God made use of, to unseal their eyes, so that, renouncing their ancient heresies, they became faithful followers of the cross." How many hundred days of purgatory punishment were cancelled for this pious utterance of the Castilian, History again neglected to record.
Another ship load was cast out by a barbarous captain upon the African coast, where the African savages pounced down upon them, and abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties. The men and youths they sold into slavery, the defenseless women were brutally ravished; the children at their mothers' breasts, the aged and the sick and the infirm were mutilated and tortured and murdered by the thousands.
Another ship load landed in the harbor of Genoa. A graphic picture of their sufferings is given by a Genoese historian, an eye witness of the scenes, which he describes as follows:
"No one," says he, "could behold the sufferings of the Jewish exiles unmoved. A great many perished of hunger, especially those of tender years. Mothers, with scarcely enough strength to support themselves, carried their famished infants in their arms, and died with them. Many fell victims to the cold, others to intense thirst, while the unaccustomed distress, incident to a sea voyage, aggravated their maladies. I will not enlarge on the cruelty and the avarice which they frequently experienced from the masters of the ships which transported them from Spain. Some were murdered to gratify their cupidity, others forced to sell their children for the expenses of the passage. They arrived in Genoa in crowds, but were not suffered to tarry there long, by reason of the ancient law, which interdicted the Jewish traveler from a longer residence than three days. They were allowed, however, to refit their vessels and to recruit themselves for some days from the fatigue of the voyage. One might have taken them for spectres, so emaciated were they, so cadaverous in their aspect, and with eyes so sunken; they differed in nothing from the dead, except in the power of motion, which, indeed, they scarcely retained. Many fainted and expired on the mole, which, being completely surrounded by the sea, was the only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched emigrants. The infection, bred by such a swarm of dead and dying persons, was not at once perceived; but when winter broke up, ulcers began to make their appearance, and the malady, which lurked for a long time in the city, broke out into the plague in the following year."[42]