Jews and Moors in Spain

by Joseph Krauskopf

[32] Cyril has the title of "St." now; when first we met him, instigating his monks to kill the learned Hypatia, he was only Bishop Cyril. That noble and humane act together with his commendable zeal for throttling science and rational research has won for him the honored title of "St."

[33] As a careful study of Eisler's "Vorlesungen Ueber Juedische Philosophie des Mittelalters," and Renan's "Averroes et Averoisme," and Joel's "Verhaltniss Albert des Grosseu zu Moses Maimonides," and "Spinoza's Theolgo-Politischer Traktat auf Seine Quellen's Geprueft," and Haarbruecker's translation of Schahrastani's "Religions Partheien Philosophen-Schulen," will readily prove.

[34] Jeremiah xxix: 5-8

[35] "Christians and Moors of Spain," by C. M. Yonge, chapter x.

[36] For details see Copee's "Conquest of Spain," volume II chapter VIII and Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," volume I, chapter VIII.

The Jews were the most skillful physicians, the ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers; while they were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of natural science. They were also the chief interpreters to western Europe of Arabian learning. But their most important service, and that with which we are now most especially concerned, was in sustaining commercial activity. For centuries they were its only representatives. By travelling from land to land till they became intimately acquainted both with the wants and the productions of each, by practising money-lending on a large scale and with consumate skill, by keeping up a constant and secret correspondence and organising a system of exchange that was then unparalleled in Europe, the Jews succeeded in making themselves absolutely indispensable to the Christian community, and in accumulating immense wealth and acquiring immense influence in the midst of their sufferings. When the Italian republics rose to power, they soon became the centres to which the Jews flocked; and under the merchant governments of Leghorn, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, a degree of toleration was accorded that was indeed far from perfect, but was at last immeasurably greater than elsewhere. (From Lecky's "Rationalism in Europe," part II, Chapter VI.).

From the port of Barcelona the Spanish khalifs had carried on an enormous commerce, and they with their coadjutors—Jewish merchants—had adopted or originated many commercial inventions, which, with matters of pure science, they had transmitted to the trading communities of Europe. The art of book-keeping by double entry was thus brought into Upper Italy. The different kinds of insurance were adopted, though strenuously resisted by the clergy. They opposed fire and marine insurance, on the ground that it was a tempting of Providence. Life insurance was regarded as an act of interference with the consequences of God's will. Houses for lending money on interest, that is, banking establishments, were bitterly denounced, and especially was indignation excited against the taking of high rates of interests, which was stigmatized as usury—a feeling existing in some backward communities up to the present day. Bills of exchange in the present form were adopted, the office of the public notary established, and protests for dishonored obligations resorted to. Indeed, it may be said, with but little exaggeration, that the commercial machinery now used was thus introduced. (Draper's "Conflict between Religion and Science," Chapter XI, pg. 317-318)

"The isolation in which the Jews were forced to live, and the prohibitions long continued, against acquiring real estate, directed their speculations toward commerce and manufactures, in which they soon obtained incontestable superiority.... Nothing is more curious to study than the commercial condition of that nation which had no territory of its own, nor ports, nor armies, and which, constantly tacking about on an agitated sea, with contrary winds, at last arrived in port with rich cargoes and immense wealth. The Jews traded because it was rarely permitted them to employ themselves in any other way with security. While the multiplicity of toll-houses and the tyranny of the feudal lords rendered all trade impossible except that of the petty tradesmen of the market-towns and cities, the Jews, more bold, more mobile, were dreaming of vaster operations, and were working silently to bind together continents, to bring together kingdoms. They avoided the highways and the castles, carefully concealing their real opulence and their secret transactions under the appearances of poverty. They went great distances for rare products of the remote countries, and brought them within reach of well-to-do consumers. By wandering about and traveling from country to country they had acquired an exact acquaintance with the needs of all places; they knew where to buy and where to sell. Some samples and a notebook sufficed them for their most important operations. They corresponded with each other on the strength of engagements which their interest obliged them to respect, in view of the enemies of every sort by whom they were surrounded. Commerce has lost the trace of the ingenious inventions which were the result of their efforts; but it is to their influence that it owes the rapid progress of which history shows us the brilliant phenomenon in the midst of the horrors of feudal darkness. Insensibly, the Jews were absorbing all the money, since this was the kind of property which they could acquire and keep safely.... For more than five hundred years, it is in the history of that nation that we must study the progress of commerce and the more or less venturesome attempts through which it has risen to the rank of political power.... The Jews were the depositaries of the finest cloths known, and they traded in them at immense profits: they extended the use and at the same time the demand for them into castles and into abbeys. They also engrossed the trade in jewelry and in gold and silver bullion. Feudalism disturbed these lucrative occupations less than one might suppose: the lords put upon them strict conditions, but they had the good sense to treat them with respect. Besides in the midst of the general terror which continually hovered around all highways and all travelers, the Jews, armed with safe-conducts, traveled all over Europe without inquietude, and in the tenth and eleventh centuries disposed like sovereigns of all the commerce of France. At that period, they had already greatly simplified commercial proceedings, and their correspondence would have done honor to the most able merchants of our great cities.

The appearance of the tradesmen of Lombardy, Tuscany, and other parts of Italy completed the work of the Jews and gave an energetic impulse to the commerce of the middle ages. The latter, from that time, traded in everything, and put in circulation real and personal property, such as horses, lands and houses. The historian Rigord goes so far as to say that the Jews were, at that time, real proprietors of half the kingdom.... It is also claimed that it was at this time that the first Bills of Exchange appeared, the invention of which some trace to about the seventh century, and others, only to the middle of the twelfth. It is a point which has not yet been cleared up, and which is not of so much consequence as some have supposed. The date of such a discovery, even if it could be authentically fixed, would be of interest simply as a matter of curiosity; but it appears destined to remain forever in doubt. It is thought, and with reason, that the invention is rather due to the Italian traders than to the Jewish brokers of this time, the latter not having had occasion as soon as the others to devote themselves to trade between different places, which probably suggested the idea. The very name of Letter of Exchange, which was primitively Italian, seems to indicate their true authorship; and the first city where they were used, Lyons, then the entrepot of Italy, is a further indication. It is probable that the Lombards and the Jews had an equal part in inventing them, and divined, from the beginning, the important consequences from their use.[36a] These ingenious contrivers later entered into a strife, and the history of the Italian republics of the middle ages is full of the debates which arose between them on the subject of privileges which some wished to exercise to the exclusion of others. We see the Jews become intendants, stewards, procurators, bankers, and even agents in marriages, according as they are more or less forcibly driven from all the regular commercial positions by the bulls of the Popes or by the jealousy of competitors. Everything thus contributed to narrow them down to a vicious circle, from which they can only escape by usury and money negotiations. When envy has forced them to abandon a city, the interest of the inhabitants calls them back; their capital has become so necessary to their industrial cities that the orders of the authorities are disregarded to prevent the Jews carrying it elsewhere. Moreover, soon houses for loaning money are started even in the villages; and the Jews of Tuscany direct from a central point a multitude of branch-houses of their establishments at Florence and Pisa. Their opulence and their magnificence surpassed imagination, and aroused against them fanatical adversaries. We know the history of that famous Bernardin de Feltre, who carried his enthusiasm so far as to preach a crusade against them, and who on every occasion showed himself their most implacable enemy. He pursued them everywhere as usurers thirsting for the blood of the people, and, to ruin their establishments, he conceived the idea of opposing them by the formation of those houses of loaning on pledges, which are called monts-de-piete. At the beginning, everything was free in them, and the sums lent were without interest. Moreover, their success was prodigious, and most of the cities of Italy had their monts-de-piete, which were one day to surpass in usurious exactions the boldest operations of the Jews.... However these monts-de-piete could not fill the place of the establishments of the Jews, and this circumstance proves with what shrewdness the latter had truly divined the wants of the money circulation. Although monts-de-piete loaned money almost without interest, the formalities which it was necessary to undergo in order to have a right to their help, the inevitable delays in their administration, the necessity of proving the legitimate possession of the articles pledged, and above all, the obligation on the part of depositors to make known their names, soon kept away borrowers, who could obtain funds at any time, in secret and without formalities, from the Jewish bankers. Rich and poor, lords and villeins, hastened to them, and their credit was so great at Leghorn, in the times of the Medicis, that the saying became proverbial: "It is better to beat the Grand-duke than a Jew." Pope Sixtus Fifth had opened again to them all the sources of wealth which his predecessors had closed; their goods were even exempt from every toll, the sacra monte della pieta ceased to compete with them, when the Christians in charge had surpassed the abuses of their rivals. After ten years of its existence, the monts-de-piete had become what they are to-day, open pits under the steps of misfortune rather than asylums to escape it.... Everything then seems to warrant the belief that the Jews exercise a notable influence on the course of political economy in Europe, by keeping in charge, in the midst of feudal anarchy, the commercial traditions destined to become perfected and refined in the atmosphere of the fifteenth century. It is to the persecutions of which they were victims that we are indebted for the first attempts at credit and the system of circulation. They alone, perhaps, by concentrating on trade in gold and silver an attention which the prejudices of their contemporaries prevented them from giving to anything else, prepared the way for the great monetary revolution which the discovery of the mines in America and the establishment of European banks were to accomplish in the world. Thus the luminous trace of the future shines and is preserved, in the midst even of the darkest events.

[36a]--"History of Political Economy in Europe," by Jerome Adolphe Blanqui Chap. XV.