Jews and Moors in Spain

by Joseph Krauskopf

Two races of men engaged our attention most, the Jews and the Moors. When first we met the Jews in the southwestern corner of Europe, we found them a prosperous community, large in numbers, loved and appreciated by their heathen neighbors, busily engaged in transforming Spain into a granery and into the garden spot of Europe, and contributing largely, by their high morality and intelligence, by their skill and industry to the nation's prosperity.

With the advent of the power of Christianity in Spain, in the Sixth Century, a sad change took place. It marked the beginning of the martyrology of the Jews in Europe. Thousands were massacred, thousands were dragged to the baptismal font, thousands were forced to take the staff of exile. But not for long. A deliverer arose from the Arabian peninsula and hastened to their rescue. This Arabian people, agile in the use of arms, dexterous in the training of horses, capable of sustaining great fatigue and hardship, and, true to the Semitic race, intellectual and sagacious, had lived till late in the Sixth Century a peaceful, nomadic life. Suddenly they were awakened out of their religious and political inactivity by their great leader Mohammed, the prophet. He kindled in their hearts the fire of enthusiasm, and led them forth to establish throughout the world his faith and his dominion. Asia submitted, Africa submitted. The early dawn of the Eighth Century saw them, where the African continent protrudes boldly to meet the continent of Europe, casting wistful glances across the straits of Hercules, upon Andalusia's beauteous lands. The exiled Jews and Christians, roused to rebellion by the religious and political tyranny of Spain, conspired with the Mohammedan invaders, and the portals of Spain were opened to the people of Arabia, and Europe to the creed of Mohammed. The exiled Jews returned to their country, and the baptized to their cherished faith, for the Arab-Moors tolerated both the Hebrew people and their faith. Moorish and Jewish skill and industry and intelligence united, and united they became—and they maintained that distinction for many centuries—the most prosperous and most intellectual people of Europe, at a time when the rest of Europe was numbed into a death-like torpor, mentally spell-bound, industrially entranced, politically enslaved, morally degraded and religiously fettered, by a corrupt priestcraft, to ignorance and superstition.

Eight centuries long Jew and Moor toiled side by side, and during all these centuries, the Jews, with some few exceptions, politically tolerated, and religiously free, arose to great wealth and commercial importance, clothed honorably high political offices, and occupied a social and intellectual position never equalled in Europe before or since.

But the Mohammedan power began to wane, and with its waning came the terrible change in the fortunes of the Hebrew people. With Moorish decline awakened the eagerness of the Spaniards for the provinces from which the Arabian invaders had driven them, and with it grew a most fanatical zeal for the expulsion from its territories of every belief save that of Christianity.

A desperate struggle ensued. Province after province the Moor was forced to yield to the relentless foe. At last all was lost. The Mohammedan power in Spain was crushed. The Moors and Jews were given the choice between baptism and expulsion. Hundreds of thousands of them feigned allegiance to the Church of Christ, and remained. Hundreds of thousands of them, true to their faith, parted heart-broken from the land that was dearer to them than their own life. The remaining baptized Jews and Moors were soon suspected of relapsing into their old faith, and the Inquisition was brought and burned them by the thousands, and thinned the ranks of the exile Jews. By far the greater number perished from cruelty, exposure, starvation, disease, in their search for a quiet spot where they might live or die in peace. Wherever the remainder of them was permitted to settle, thither they brought blessings[43] verifying the promise of God: "They that bless thee will be blest.[44]

And so, too, was verified the other half of that promise: "They that curse thee will be cursed." The curse of God has hung heavily upon Spain, ever since she had dared to lay violent hand upon God's anointed, ever since she cruelly massacred, burned and exiled the most thrifty, the most industrious, the most intellectual people that ever trod her soil, and made her the glory of Europe and the pride of the world. For a short time only, lingered her prosperity after the expulsion of the people that had created that prosperity. The New World, the discovery of which the Jews and Moors had made possible, poured into the mother country a prodigious wealth, which hastened the ruin of Spain. It intoxicated the Spaniards, and when the sobering came, the effect was terrible. Had they had the skillful, and industrious and intelligent Jews and Moors to turn the vast treasures, which poured into Spain with every vessel, into useful channels, Spain would have maintained her position as leader in the commercial world, and Italy, and France, and the Netherlands, the new homes of the Jews, would never have seized it from her, and Spain would not have been to-day what she is. But, instead, it flowed into the coffers of the greedy and insatiable Church, and the richer the Church became the more terrible became its tyranny, and the greater the inducement for laymen to enter it. Convents and Churches multiplied with such vast speed, that early in the Seventeenth Century the Spanish historian enumerates upwards of 9,000 monasteries, besides nunneries, 32,000 Dominican and Franciscan friars, 14,000 chaplains in the diocese of Seville, and 18,000 in the diocese of Calahorra.

The State was completely in its power. Even Charles V and Phillip II, sovereigns not to be matched in any other country for a period of equal length, submitted cheerfully to the power of the Church, and thought it a blessed privilege to do so. It was Charles V's great boast that he always preferred his creed to his country, and proved his boast by slaying in cold blood, in the Netherlands, over 50,000 peaceful, industrious, good Christian citizens for their religious opinions. The cannibal appetite of the Church had to be appeased, when the stock of Jewish and Moorish victims was exhausted, truth and knowledge-seeking Christians had to supply their places upon the quemaderos, and in the torture-dungeons of the Inquisition. Even with his last breath he commanded his son, Philip, never to show favor to heretics, to kill them all, to uphold the Inquisition as the best means for the establishment of the true belief. Philip II. proved himself worthy of his sire. He has written his services to the Church upon history's records with flames of fire and letters of blood.

With amazing swiftness Spain's once invincible power began to disappear, becoming weaker with every century, and to-day the population of more than 30,000,000 of people before the expulsion of the Jews and Moors has dwindled down to about one half of that number, while her neighboring countries have increased in numbers and prosperity. "So rapid was the fall of Spain," says Buckle in his "History of the Civilization of England," Vol. II, Chap. I, "that the most powerful monarchy existing in the world was depressed to the lowest point of debasement, was insulted with impunity by foreign nations, was reduced more than once to bankruptcy, was stripped of her fairest possessions, was held up to public opprobrium, was made a theme on which schoolboys and moralists loved to declaim, respecting the uncertainty of human affairs. Truly did she drink to the dregs the cup of her own shame. Her glory had departed from her, she was smitten down and humbled. The mistress of the world was gone; her power was gone, no more to return."

The Church had proven itself a false prophet. "Once purge blessed Spain," it preached to its credulous followers, "of the presence of the accursed Jews and Moors, and yourselves and your families will be under the immediate protection of Heaven. The earth will bear more fruit. A new era will be inaugurated, Spain will be at ease. People will live in safety, and gather in peace and in abundance the fruits of their handiwork."