There were many otherwise who, similarly unable to endure the hardships which they met abroad, broke down at last, accepted baptism and returned, or else returned clamouring for the baptism that should enable them to dwell in peace in the land of their birth.
For three years, says Bernaldez, there was a constant stream of returning Jews, who having abandoned all for their faith, had now abandoned their faith itself, and came back to make a fresh start. They were baptized in groups, all at once, by the sprinkling of hyssop over them.[246] Bernaldez himself baptized a hundred of them at Palacios, and from what he beheld, “I considered fulfilled,” he writes, “the prophecy of David—‘Covertentur ad vesperam et famen patiuntur ut canes et circundabunt civitatem.’”
The priest of Palacios estimates at 36,000 the Jewish families that accepted banishment,[247] which would represent some 200,000 souls. But Salazar de Mendoza and Zurita set the total exiles at twice that number,[248] whilst Mariana carries it as high as 800,000.[249] More reliable perhaps than any of these is the estimate left by the Jewish writers, who say that in the year 5252 of the Creation 300,000 Jews left Spain, the land in which their forbears had dwelt for close upon 2,000 years.[250]
These figures bring home to us the gravity of the step taken by the Sovereigns when they consented to the banishment of the Jews; and if anything had been wanting to make us appreciate the irresistible quality of Torquemada and of the fanaticism for which he stood, these figures would supply it.
The proposed expulsion must fully have been discussed in council before the edict was promulgated;[251] and it must have been obvious that Spain could not fail to be left materially the poorer if some 40,000 industrious families were driven out. It is unthinkable that king or councillor should not have raised the question of the inexpediency, of the positive danger attaching to such a measure. Yet certain it is that neither councillor nor king could stand against the stern, uncompromising friar, in whom they saw the representative of a God that was not to be trifled with—a God whom their conceptions transformed into some vindictive pagan deity.
Torquemada’s crucifix so dramatically flung into the scales had definitely settled the question.
The Sultan Bajazet, who welcomed and sheltered not a few of the fugitives in Turkey, was overcome with amazement at this blunder of statecraft, so that he is reported to have asked whether this king were seriously to be taken for a great statesman who impoverished his kingdom to enrich another’s.
What the Grand Turk perceived so readily, priest-ridden Ferdinand dared not perceive.
In banishing Jew and Moslem from her soil—for the Moor was soon to follow, though temporarily permitted to remain by virtue of the terms of the capitulation of Granada—Spain banished her merchants and financiers on the one hand, and her agriculturists and artisans on the other; in short, she banished her workers, the productive section of her community. It is accounted by many that she did so with the fullest consciousness of the consequences—an act of heroic sacrifice to principle and to religious convictions. And it may be that she accounted herself God-rewarded by the gift of a new world for this sacrifice to God.
The arts, the industries, manufactures, agriculture, and commerce have been bewailing for four hundred years the lack of hands to serve them. The New World proved but an illusory and transient compensation. Its gold could not furnish Spain with the workers that she lacked. On the contrary, it increased that lack. The New World repaid herself with interest for what she gave. In return for the gifts she poured into the lap of Spain she took to herself the very children of Spain, luring them overseas with the fabulous tales of riches easily to be acquired. Driven by this greed of gold, multitudes of families emigrated to increase the depopulation of their country. And when, in the course of time, those children of Spain in the New World had grown to a sufficient strength to claim their emancipation, they threw off the yoke of the motherland and distributed among themselves her vast possessions. They left her bare indeed, who by her own act was without home-resources, to realize perhaps at last what manner of service had been rendered her by the Prior of Holy Cross.