[30] St. Helena’s memory was prominently before the public attention just then, owing to the discovery in Rome of a silver box containing what was alleged to be the label that had been hung upon the Cross. Its recovery from the Holy Land was, of course, attributed to St. Helena, and it was supposed that it had been brought by her to Rome.
[31] The ducat was worth 7s. 6d. of our present money, with fully five times the purchasing power of that sum; so that, roughly, this would be equivalent to-day to £200,000.
[32] Salazar de Mendoza, “Cronica del Gran Cardenal,” I. cap. lii.
[33] “Histoire d’Espagne,” tom. v. p. 432.
[34] “Historia General de España,” lib. xxiv. cap. xvii.
[35] “Chronica de los Reyes Catholicos,” Pt. II. cap. lxxvi.
[36] To Judaize (Judaizar) was to embrace the Mosaic law, and the term was applied particularly to the relapse of those who had been converted to Christianity.
[37] Toledo, Mendoza tells us, was founded by Hercules, who sailed to Spain in the ship Argo.
[38] Tomás Tamayo de Vargas maintains that the Jews in Toledo at the time of the Crucifixion sent a letter of warning and disapproval to their brethren in Jerusalem. This letter—which it is alleged was translated into Castilian when Toledo fell into the hands of Alfonso VI—the historian quotes. Amador de los Rios, in his able and exhaustive history of the Jews in Spain, pronounces the document to have been manufactured to impose upon the credulity of the ignorant, since to any one acquainted with the growth and development of the Castilian language a glance is sufficient to prove its apocryphal character.
It is in this letter that the legend of the Jewish incursion into Spain after the fall of Babylon has its roots. It concludes with the following statement: “... You know that it is certain your temple must soon be destroyed, for which reason our forefathers, upon issuing from the Babylonian captivity, would not return to Jerusalem, but with Pyrrhus for their captain—sent by Cyrus, who gave them many riches taken from Babylon in the year 69 of the captivity—they came to Toledo and built here a great aljama.”