Elsewhere they became “penitents,” who, expelled by the Saracens from their homes in Lower Egypt, had confessed themselves to his Holiness, and had been condemned to seven years’ wandering and dispersion by way of penance. Thus was visited upon their heads the crime of those “perverse pagans” their forefathers, who refused a drink of water to the Virgin and Child flying from the wrath of Herod. This was only fourteen centuries after, and we know that lenta ira deorum est. There was quoted concerning them the forty years’ dispersion of Ezekiel: “And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries” (xxix. 12). The prophet’s minatory ravings against the old Egyptians, who had been a “staff of reed to the house of Israel,” were also recalled to explain their bondage and vagabondage. Hence some declared that it was sinful to maltreat these pseudo-pilgrims.
The Gypsies travelled to Rome and secured a papal safe-conduct twenty years after their first appearance at Bologna. Hypocritical legend secured them passes and passports from the European powers who were then engaged in the perilous Ottoman Wars. They were more or less supported by the Emperor Sigismund and the bishop of the same name, who, a.d. 1540, at Fünf-Kirchen employed them in casting iron and cannon-balls for the benefit of the Turks; by Ladislas II., King of Hungary, and other potentates. The Gypsies doubtless imitated the Jews in hedging between the two belligerents, and in betraying both of them for their own benefit; and this doubtless was part of the cause of the persecution which the two scattered races endured. Purely religious movements of the kind are rare in history; but they are numerous when religion mixes itself, as it ever has and always will, with politics.
Presently public opinion changed, and the natural reaction set in. Lorenzo Palmireno, a.d. 1540, declared in one of his books “that the Gypsies lie,” and the lives they led were not of penitents, but of “dogs and plunderers.” They were now loaded with all the crimes of the Middle Ages—espionage in the cause of the infidel, incendiarism, professional poisoning and other forms of assassination, cannibalism, sorcery and bewitching, blaspheming God and the saints, and personal intercourse with the foul fiend in the shape of a grey bird.
In 1499, shortly after the institution of the Holy Office, a.d. 1481, and the expulsion of the Jews, a.d. 1492, the “Great Pragmatic,” signed by Ferdinand and Isabella at Medina del Campo under the influence of Jimenez de Cisneros, the archbishop who disgracefully broke faith with the Moors of Grenada, formally attacked the vagrant race.[153] It decreed that the Egyptians and stranger tinkers, caldereros, should settle as serfs for sixty days, and after that time leave the kingdom under severe personal penalties. This decree was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo, in 1523, and of Madrid, in 1528, 1534, and 1560, with the condition that “those found vagabonding for the third time should become the life slaves of their captors.” Under the timorous Philip III., 1619, the Professor of Theology to the Toledo University, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, addressed a discourse to the king justifying the wholesale slaughter of the race, even women and children, by the dictum, “No law pledges us to bring up wolf-cubs.”
Following the lead of the Catholic kings, the Diet of Augsburg, 1500-1548, revoking all previous concessions, banished the Gypsies from the Holy German Empire under similar conditions. This ordinance was also revived in 1530, in 1544, in 1548, in 1551, and in 1577, the last time confirmed by a police regulation at Frankfurt. In 1545 the Superior Tribunal of Utrecht punished a Gypsy who had disobeyed a decree of exile by flogging until blood was drawn, by splitting his nostrils, and by shaving his head before he was driven to the frontier.[154]
In England the liberal and Protestant Henry VIII.[155] sanctioned an Act of Parliament persecuting the Gypsies to extermination; and it was renewed by Philip and Mary, and by Elizabeth.
Francis I. of France followed the example of his neighbours; and under Charles IX. the persecution was renewed by the States-General assembled at Orleans, 1561, who decreed extermination by steel and fire. Another and similar edict appeared in 1612. Charles V., besides his proclamations in Spain and Germany, condemned the Gypsies of the Netherlands to enrolment under pain of death, and this was confirmed by the States-General in 1582. Fanatic Poland in 1578 issued a law forbidding hospitality to Gypsies, and exiling those who received them. Pius V. showed himself equally inhuman, and the Romá were driven from the duchies of Parma and Milan, from the republic of Venice, and the kingdom of Denmark. Sweden distinguished herself by the severest laws of expulsion in 1662, 1723, and 1727.
From these barbarities arose the Gypsies’ saying, “King’s law has destroyed the Gypsy law.” The latter consisted of fidelity to one another; the code contained only three commandments, of which the first two were addressed to women:
“Thou shalt not separate from the Rom (Gypsy law).”
“Thou shalt be faithful to thy Rom.”