That prosperity, however, proved to be their curse. It is a mistake to believe that the greatest crime of the Jews was their faith; it was their prosperity. Idlers and spendthrifts have never yet been thrilled with ecstatic delight at another's prosperity, and never is their venom more poisonous and their wrath more bitter than when the Jew is unfortunate enough to be fortunate. In Spain, as elsewhere, a mighty power of soldiers, and monks, and priests, and dependants, all unproductive laborers, stood arrayed against the handful of Jews, the only productive laborers of the realm, and the battle cry was not the Jews' money, but the Jews' "soul." There was great diplomacy in this battle cry. They knew of the intensity of the Jew's faith in his religion. They knew how he was wedded to the traditions and hopes of his race. They knew that he would cheerfully part with all his treasures rather than sacrifice an iota of his belief. They knew that the industrial, and economical, and intellectual, and peace and home-loving traits of the Jew were so deeply rooted, that he would at once begin anew to acquire again, perhaps for the same end, all that had been cruelly torn from him, just as the bees, nothing daunted by the theft of their painfully hoarded wealth, will start anew to fill the hive. And so, whenever they had need of the money of the Jews, and that need was, alas, a frequent one, they became all at once painfully concerned about the Jewish soul, and its final fate, and they never failed to relieve the Jews of their treasures, even if they failed in the saving of their souls.
Spain took the lead in Jewish persecutions and maintained its odious distinction for centuries. Henceforth there is no lack of historic material concerning the Jews in Spain. But, alas! until the time of the conquest of Spain by the Moors, it is not a history of achievement, it is a history of suffering—a martyrology. That martyrology began with the Third Council of Toledo (589 A. C.) at which Recaredo presented his abjuration of Arianism and was anointed as the first Catholic monarch of Spain. At that council laws were passed, of which the spirit may be comprehended from the following preamble and titles:
"Laws concerning the promulgation and ratification of statutes against Jewish wickedness, and for the general extirpation of Jewish errors. That the Jews may not celebrate the Passover according to their usage; that the Jews may not contract marriage according to their own customs; that the Jews may not practice the Abrahamitic rite; that the Jews bring no actions against Christians; that the Jews be not permitted to bear witness against Christians."
The Jews knew what was wanted; they paid a large sum of money, and the laws remained inoperative till Recaredo's successor, Sisebuto, ascended the throne. This king entered into a league with Emperor Heraclius, with the pious determination of "extirpating the dangerous race throughout the world," and so he issued a law which gave the Jews a year's time to decide whether they would confess Christ and be baptized, or be shaved and scourged, their property confiscated, and themselves forced to leave the country.[17]
Ninety thousand are said to have submitted to baptism, but with them the enforced Christian rite was but a mask for their secret Jewish belief and practices. And they had ample cause for regretting their religious weakness, for baptism did not secure them from new indignities and humiliation. They were despised for their apostacy, and their property was taken from them as if they had not complied with the king's edict. Thousands upon thousands fled to the northern coasts of Africa, and with them fled the prosperity from the Gothic kingdom.
Having once discovered so excellent a source for satisfying their greed for money, they had no intention of letting such golden opportunities escape them. A few years had passed, and the baptized Jews, true to their industrial and economical habits, had hoarded up some wealth with which they might buy life from the infuriated mob, and so the Fourth Council met at Toledo, in the year 633, and enacted the cruel requirement that the children of those, who had accepted Christianity, should be torn, forever, from their parent's heart, to be educated by Christians in the Christian faith. The Sixth Council enacted a law, that every king on his accession shall take an oath, that he will execute all the laws against the Jews, and will issue others equally as severe. Another law enacted the punishment of death upon Christians, who should embrace Judaism, or commit "the monstrous and unutterable crime of pursuing an execrable commerce with the ungodly." The Ninth Council decreed, that all baptized Jews were bound to appear in the church, not only on Christian, but also on Jewish holidays, lest, while they outwardly profess Christianity, they should practice secretly Judaism.
The Twelfth Council, of Toledo, 681, far surpassed its predecessors in the cruelties of its enactments. The preamble complained that "the crafty Jews had eluded all former laws," and then decreed that hereafter 100 lashes would be inflicted upon the naked body, and after that, the offender would be put in chains, banished, and his property confiscated for any of the following offences: For rejecting the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, for not bringing children or servants or dependants to baptism, for observing the Passover, the New Moon, the Feast of Tabernacles, for violating the Christian Sabbath, or the great festivals of the church. The circumcision of a child brought additional tortures, upon the father mutilation, upon the mother the loss of her nose. No marriage was hereafter to be contracted, without solemn obligation that both would become Christians. All subjects of the kingdom who harbored, assisted or concealed the flight of a Jew, were to be scourged, and have their property confiscated. The Jew who read or allowed his children to read books written against Christianity was to suffer 100 lashes; on the second offense the lashes were to be repeated, with banishment and confiscation. No Jew was to hold any office by which he might have authority over Christians.
I shall spare you a recital of the numerous other cruel laws enacted, and the account of the terrible sufferings endured. The land re-echoed the piteous groans and lamentations of the lashed and scourged. Their wealth purchased but temporary immunity and exemption.
"Certainly the heroism of the defenders of every other creed fades into insignificance before this martyr people, who confronted all the evils that the fiercest fanaticism could devise, enduring obloquy and spoliation and the violation of the dearest ties, and the infliction of the most hideous sufferings, rather than abandon their faith. For these were no ascetic monks, dead to all the hopes and passions of life, but were men who appreciated intensely the worldly advantages they relinquished, and whose affections had become all the more lively on account of the narrow circle in which they were confined. Enthusiasm and the strange phenomena of ecstasy, which have exercised so large an influence in the history of persecution, which have nerved so many martyrs with superhuman courage, and have deadened or destroyed the anguish of so many fearful tortures, were here almost unknown. Persecution came to the Jewish nation in its most horrible forms, yet surrounded by every circumstance of petty annoyance that could destroy its grandeur, and it continued for centuries their abiding portion. But above all this the genius of that wonderful people rose supreme. While those around them were grovelling in the darkness of besotted ignorance; while juggling miracles and lying relics were the themes on which almost all Europe was expatiating; while the intellect of Christendom, enthralled by countless superstitions, had sunk into a deadly torpor, in which all love of enquiry and all search for truth were abandoned, the Jews were still pursuing the path of knowledge, amassing learning, and stimulating progress with the same unflinching constancy that they manifested in their faith."[18]