I have thus related—not in their chronological order, but in the order of their importance—the events growing out of the rise, development, and suppression of the intellectual revolutions which, in the thirteenth century, appeared in Sicily and Southern France, for the reason that they were the direct and legitimate results of Arab conquest and the subsequent promulgation of Arab philosophical opinions. A striking analogy exists between the circumstances respectively connected with these two great movements of the human mind. Both arose in regions which had been subject to Moslem domination. In both, after the extinction of Saracen rule, the customs of the vanquished race long maintained their influence over the ruder conquerors, who insensibly adopted and diligently observed them. Commercial relations strengthened the bonds already existing between Christian master and Moslem tributary. In the heyday of their prosperity, the courts of Toulouse and Palermo were, in all but name and costume, Mohammedan. Indeed, one of these exceptions scarcely applied to the Sicilian capital, where the ample robes and spotless turbans of the Moorish philosophers suggested at every step the habits and traditions of the Orient. In Sicily, the Arabic language was almost universally used by the nobility and the mercantile classes; in Provence and Languedoc, intercourse with the Moorish principalities of Spain rendered its adoption necessary to a large portion of the community; in both countries its study formed an essential part of a learned education. The general trend of scientific thought, and its practical adaptation to the intellectual requirements of the people, is disclosed by the establishment of those two great literary foundations, the medical colleges of Salerno and Montpellier. In the curriculums of these magnificent schools, which were by no means confined to instruction in the art of healing, Arabic and Hebrew literature, taught by professors of those nationalities, predominated. The Romance idiom, more widely diffused than any other tongue spoken in Europe since the dissolution of the Roman Empire, has, in a measure, survived the calamities of conquest and revolution; still indicates its Arabic derivation by words daily heard upon the banks of the Seine and the Danube; and forms no inconsiderable portion of the language of the English-speaking world. In Italy, it made greater progress than in any other country, advancing simultaneously through the North from France and through the South from Sicily, superseding the unformed dialects of the Latin Peninsula, and, through its adoption by the potentates of Ferrara and Montferrat, it reached even the Greek principality of Thessalonica; its impress is to-day apparent in Portuguese, in Castilian, and in the numerous soft and guttural dialects of Spain.
From Moorish sources, through intercourse with the Hispano-Arabs and the medium of French and Sicilian conquest, were derived those maxims of chivalry which modified the turbulent barbarism of feudal Europe, the courteous gallantry of the tournament, idolatrous devotion to the female character, a high sense of honor and personal dignity, and the refining amenities of social life.
From these originals sprang the germ of modern literature and the earliest models of modern poetry. The Arabs were unrivalled masters of improvisation, an art which attained an extraordinary degree of popularity in the Middle Ages; and the employment of rhyme, the most important and striking characteristic of modern versification, was familiar to the Bedouin centuries before the appearance of Mohammed. The vagrant bard of the Desert was the literary progenitor of the troubadour, as was the Arabian buffoon and story-teller the prototype of his companion the jongleur, whose broad pleasantry and suggestive antics diverted the appreciative and not over-delicate assemblies of the Provençal and Sicilian courts. Through the schools of Montpellier and Salerno, contemporaneous seats of learning and both dominated by Arabian influence, the philosophy of Averroes, the botany of Ibn-Beithar, the surgery of Abulcasis, the agriculture of Ibn-al-Awam, the histories of Ibn-al-Khatib, became familiar to the benighted and priest-ridden people of Europe.
It was, however, in the impetus it gave to the assertion of the right of private interpretation in religious matters that Moorish influence was most marked and permanent. One of the principal tenets of the Moslem creed was toleration. On the other hand, the first duty of the Christian was unquestioning obedience to his spiritual advisers. The rapid and almost miraculous development of the human mind during the thirteenth century was the inevitable consequence of a policy based upon those principles whose application had promoted the wonderful progress of every nation ruled by the enlightened successors of Mohammed.
The parallel existing between the Sicilian and Languedocian civilizations in origin, in progress, in thought, in education, in skepticism, in the repudiation of ecclesiastical interference, is continued even in the date and the method of their extirpation. Both reached their climax during the pontificate of Innocent III., the exemplar of Papal autocracy, the ruthless foe of religious freedom, the evil genius of the thirteenth century. Each was destroyed by a crusade which under the mask of piety appealed to the most sordid impulses and degrading instincts of humanity. Both were followed by conflicts, seditions, and persecutions which endured for centuries. But the fires, while apparently quenched, still smouldered under the ashes of their victims. The principles advocated by philosophical thinkers at the courts of Raymond and Frederick formed the basis of the creeds of Lollard, Huguenot, Puritan. All of the blessings of civil and religious liberty now enjoyed by the enlightened nations of the earth, all of the wonderful mechanical contrivances which lighten toil, diminish suffering, facilitate communication, encourage commerce, promote manufactures, and conduce to the general happiness of the human race, are indirectly derived from the impulse given to philosophical inquiry and scientific progress by the Norman kings of Sicily, the Emperor Frederick II., and the Counts of Provence, animated by the spirit and emulous of the achievements of Arab civilization. These inestimable benefits are inseparable from the innate right of every individual to freely exercise and profit by his mental faculties. That right the Church has always denied as subversive of her alleged prescriptive title to universal sovereignty over the opinions of mankind. In Europe it was first publicly asserted upon the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the advantages its untrammelled practice affords the present generation are a priceless legacy of the founders of the Moslem empire in Spain.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SPANISH JEWS
711–1492
Influence of the Semitic Race on Civilization—Enterprise of the Ancient Jews—Their Eminent Talents—Their Power during the Middle Ages—Their Universal Proscription—Their Condition under the Moors of Spain—Their Extraordinary Attainments—Their Devotion to Letters—Their Academies—Rabbis as Ambassadors of the Khalifs—Learned Men—Poets, Physicians, Statesmen, Philosophers—Maimonides: His Genius and His Works—His Character—Preponderating Influence of the Spanish Jews in Government and Society—Their Necessity to the Ruling Classes—They are driven to Usury—Their Prosperity—They are favored by Alfonso X. and Pedro el Cruel—Their Proficiency in Medicine—Obligations of Mediæval and Modern Science to the Jews—Their Wonderful Survival under Oppression—Their Exile from the Peninsula—Their Sufferings—The Taint of Hebrew Blood in the Aristocracy of Spain and Portugal.
The preponderance of Semitic influence is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the annals of human civilization. The progress of those nations, which in ancient times attained the highest rank of intellectual culture, is directly traceable to that influence. The success of the Semitic element in modifying the character of every people with which it had been brought in intimate contact, either by conquest or through commercial intercourse, is one of the most striking and instructive incidents of history. From the days when the Phœnicians controlled the trade of antiquity, profiting by their thorough knowledge of humanity, whose avarice they stimulated by the introduction of unknown luxuries, and whose fears they excited by the invention of portentous fables; through the Middle Ages, whose tyrants and inquisitors plundered and oppressed the Hebrew bankers and merchants of Europe, down to our time, when the Jew is not only the possessor of a large proportion of the wealth of the globe, but also a dominating force in the business community of every city and village of the Old and New Worlds, the enterprising genius of the Semitic race has been paramount in its control over the minds and the fortunes of men. And not merely in a mercantile but in a religious point of view is this influence manifest. The Scriptures and the Koran monopolize the pious reverence of the civilized world. The successors of Mohammed in Hindustan alone changed the faith of forty-one million souls. The most important dogmas of the Church, the leading maxims of kingly government, are of Semitic origin; the majority of the popular legends and tales which compose the folk-lore of France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain are indigenous to the Valley of the Nile or the plains of Arabia. Asiatic ideas, which dominated the comparatively insignificant geographical area of the continent of Europe whose appreciation of the advantages of literary and scientific investigation made it so conspicuous amidst mediæval ignorance, have maintained their power unshaken through many centuries. To the impulse thus imparted to letters, modern society owes a debt which it long repudiated, and which it is even now loath to acknowledge. Among those races which have exercised the greatest influence on human destiny that of the Hebrews is pre-eminently distinguished. From the earliest times of which history makes mention, the Jews have occupied an exalted place among civilized nations. They were among the first of traders, merchants, navigators. Neighbors of the Phœnicians, they imbibed the commercial spirit of that adventurous people, accompanied their expeditions, participated in their enterprises, shared their profits, and with them overcame the obstacles which invested the navigation of unknown and mysterious seas. They were not slow to recognize the immense commercial advantages to be obtained from the development of the boundless resources of the Spanish Peninsula, whence the Tyrian and Sidonian mariners brought such quantities of silver that their vessels could scarcely transport it, notwithstanding that the anchors, the most common utensils, and even the ballast, were composed of that precious metal.
The accounts of the reign of Solomon afford abundant evidence of the wealth and prosperity of the Hebrews. Their abilities and services were highly appreciated by the most enlightened governments of antiquity. They were invited by the Ptolemies to establish colonies on the banks of the Nile. They were often intrusted by the Roman emperors with the collection and disbursement of the imperial revenues. The Emperor Hadrian declared that during his travels in Egypt he had never met a Jew of that country who was not an expert mathematician. In the far Orient, where their ancestors had once been detained in ignominious captivity, they rose to be the confidential friends of powerful monarchs. They were known and welcomed in every seaport of the Mediterranean, and their thirst for gain even induced them to boldly encounter the perils of the barbarous countries of Europe. In all their social and political relations, they maintained their reputation for that mental superiority which is still one of the marked characteristics of the Hebrew race. All of the knowledge extant among contemporaneous nations—the secret lore of the Egyptians, imparted in mysterious temples under the shadow of the Pyramids; the hoary traditions of the Magi; the rich inheritance of classic antiquity; the argumentative skill acquired in the Museum of Alexandria and the philosophical schools of Athens—was the patrimony of the Jew. His curiosity was awakened by travel and by contact with a hundred different peoples included within the sphere of his commercial activity; his genius was developed and matured by studious industry; and the affluence resulting from his shrewdness enabled him to profit to the utmost by his unrivalled opportunities. No fact is better established than that the intellectual improvement of a nation, its progress in the arts, its scientific acquirements, its literary culture, have a direct and absolute dependence upon its material prosperity and the independent pecuniary circumstances of its scholars and learned men. While poverty is often an incentive to that perseverance which insures success, it is a condition which only affects individual and not national development. Without leisure, there can be no studies; without studies, no advance. Another factor of paramount importance in the evolution and maintenance of civilization, and one to which the Hebrew was deeply indebted, was the wide and varied experience derived from cosmopolitan habits and associations. This intercourse was facilitated by the easy and rapid means of international communication at the disposal of the Jewish trader. The Mediterranean, which washed the shores of three great continents, presented no obstacles to the enterprise of the Phœnicians, whose intimate connections with the Jews gave the latter advantages enjoyed by no other people; and the fabled monsters invented by those astute navigators to damp the ardor of other maritime adventurers, and which survive in the traditions of classic mythology, possessed no terrors for the allies and friends of the Tyrian merchants and sailors. No area of equal extent in the world offered so diversified and instructive a spectacle of human life and manners as the winding coast of that great inland sea. With its cities and its kingdoms, founded under different political conditions, living under different systems, governed by different laws, frequent and prolonged visits had early made the Jew familiar. To the audacious navigator who had sailed over the mysterious Ocean, far beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the coasting of the Mediterranean was a trifle. In subsequent times the military highways of the Roman Empire—whose construction, the first work after the invasion of a country destined to subjection, indicated the fate of its people, and insured their obedience with far more certainty than the fortified camps of the legions—afforded the Hebrew merchant easy access to the utmost limits of the vast region subject to imperial authority. But it was not only in lands generally accessible to commercial enterprise that the mercantile and intellectual activity of the Jew was displayed. With the periodical caravans he traversed the Arabian Peninsula, and braving the perils of the Desert—the stifling heat, the sand-storms, the robbers who thrived amidst its desolation—collected and distributed the precious commodities of Yemen. He penetrated to the centre of Ethiopia; his costume and his wares were known to the inhabitants of every city on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The coast of Britain was visited by Jews long before the invasion of Cæsar. The restless, adventurous spirit, so universal that it became a national characteristic fostered through untold generations, and the extensive and profound acquaintance with the motives and the affairs of humanity which resulted from its exercise, is the principal secret of the prodigious and phenomenal development of the Hebrew mind. Other considerations of no less importance contributed largely to this result. In the estimation of those who strictly observed the precepts of the law, and to whom were committed the instruction of youth and the guidance of the community, idleness was considered one of the most despicable of vices. “Whoever,” say the learned rabbis, “does not teach his son some trade, rears him for a life of brigandage;” and the sedulous inculcation of this principle led to its universal adoption and practice, until its effects are to-day discernible in the habits of every individual of Hebrew extraction. In ancient times there was no industrial occupation whose requirements were unfamiliar to the Jewish artisan, no profession in which the scholars of that nation did not excel. The talents of the latter were often unprofitably employed in commentaries on the Talmud and whimsical interpretations of the Scriptures, whose texts were at times distorted to support some absurd and extravagant conception which the fruitless ingenuity of the doctors of the law, devoted to metaphysical subtleties, had invented. The Talmud was regarded with even greater reverence than the Pentateuch. Its diligent perusal was required as a duty; children were familiar with its maxims long before their minds were sufficiently developed to thoroughly comprehend them; and the mastery of this voluminous and incongruous compilation was regarded as the rarest and most desirable of mental accomplishments. From the study of this work was derived the partiality for mysticism, magic, and oneiromancy, topics which formed so large a proportion of ancient Hebrew literature, and which frequently dissipated the efforts of genius which might have been exercised in more practical and advantageous employments. In the Talmud, however, are also to be found the germs of medical science in which, from the remotest antiquity, the Jews were distinguished, and whose pursuit, thus sanctioned by an authority regarded as divine, became the favorite pursuit of that extraordinary people. Some of its ideas and principles had been learned from the Magi of Persia; others were borrowed from the Egyptian priesthood. The more numerous, and by far the most valuable, precepts of that science, however, were a portion of the inheritance transmitted by the noble school of the Ptolemies. With all were mingled not a few puerile superstitions which exalted the virtues of charms and amulets. The Bible gives many instances of diseases and their treatment, which in that age was the peculiar province of the Levites. The talents of the Hebrew thus early directed to medicine and botany arrived eventually at an extraordinary degree of development; and his adaptive ingenuity was revealed in the discovery and application of many indispensable drugs of the Materia Medica, and in the intelligent use of the instruments and caustics of the surgeon. In ancient Chaldea and Babylonia there were no physicians. The priesthood, as in the Middle Ages, enjoyed a monopoly of learning, which, so far as the practice of medicine was concerned, rested upon no more substantial foundation than the imposture of the charlatan. The cure of disease was effected by the exorcism of evil spirits; and such is the tenacity of venerable ideas and the lamentable credulity of the human mind that, through the influence of a certain class whose pecuniary interests are directly involved, this superstitious belief, with others equally absurd, still prevails among the members of educated communities even in our enlightened age. The difference between the fetichism of the African savage, the mediæval relic-cure, and the so-called Christian Science of modern days is one of degree and not of kind. In the infancy of civilization every malady was attributed to demoniacal possession. The Jews were the first to detect the true nature of disease and to realize the necessity for the employment of physical remedies, where heretofore, through the medium of spells and incantations, the aid of the supernatural alone had been invoked. By the adoption and application of rational principles, they revolutionized the theory and practice of medicine. Their attempts to thus partially emancipate the human mind from the degrading thraldom of superstition brought upon them the anathemas of the priesthood wherever these innovations were attempted. The wonder-workers of Pagan temples and the monkish custodians of Christian shrines saw with dismay their incomes decreasing as a consequence of the successful ministrations of the Hebrew practitioner. It was not without reason that the latter became an object of clerical animadversion, for the offerings annually bestowed by grateful credulity upon the custodians of some apocryphal relic of imaginary virtues not infrequently exceeded in value the revenues of a city. Much of the prejudice everywhere existing against the Jewish name is thus attributable to sacerdotal malevolence, originally excited by interference with material interests. But even in an age of ignorance homage was paid, however reluctantly, to the ascendency of intellectual power; and the Jews flourished in countries where the laws did not tolerate their presence and sovereigns were pledged by their coronation oaths to their destruction. Political necessity proved stronger than popular odium; and the strange anomaly of a proscribed race, whose existence was condemned by the civil and ecclesiastical codes alike, flourishing in the midst of implacable enemies was exhibited in every country of mediæval Europe. This peculiar condition was due to the dominating force of intellect alone. It is true that toleration was frequently purchased with gold; but the Jews were the sole depositaries of real knowledge, and without their wise and practical counsels the wheels of government could not be kept in motion. This indispensable necessity of maintaining in positions of honor and power a class whose nominal disabilities degraded them below the legal status of cattle was a result of the illiterate and priest-ridden state of the Dark Ages.
The cause of the universal prejudice existing against the Jews from time immemorial has been the subject of much speculation, but has never been definitely ascertained. That prejudice long antedates the Christian era. They were banished by the Egyptians, enslaved by the Persians, despised by the Greeks, persecuted by the Romans. So little were they esteemed by the latter, that during the wars with Hadrian four Jews were bartered for a modius of barley. A well-founded tradition, repeated time and again by classic historians, declared that they were expelled from Egypt for fear that the plague might be communicated by the loathsome diseases with which they were afflicted. In that country, as elsewhere subsequently, they were isolated from all other members of the community. Moses is designated by ancient writers as the “Chief of the Lepers.” It is well known that leprosy was first introduced into Italy by the soldiers of Pompey, who contracted it in Palestine. This awful malady was not only indigenous to the latter country, but was generally considered a morbid physiological condition peculiar to the Hebrew people, with whom, in fact, it was chronic and hereditary, and among whom it assumed its most malignant and appalling form.