The edict for the expulsion of the Jews was signed by the Spanish sovereigns at Granada, March 30th, 1492. It decreed that all the unbaptised Jews, of whatever age, sex, or condition, should depart from the realm by the end of July next ensuing; prohibiting them from revisiting it, on any pretext whatever, under penalty of death and confiscation of property. It was, moreover, interdicted to every subject to harbour, succour, or minister to the necessities of any Jew, after the expiration of the term limited for his departure. The persons and property of the Jews, in the meantime, were taken under the royal protection. They were allowed to dispose of their effects of every kind on their own account, and to carry the proceeds along with them, in bills of exchange, or merchandise not prohibited, but neither in gold nor silver.
The doom of exile fell like a thunderbolt on the heads of the Israelites. A large proportion of them had hitherto succeeded in shielding themselves from the searching eye of the Inquisition, by an affectation of reverence for the forms of Catholic worship, and a discreet forbearance of whatever might offend the prejudices of their Christian brethren. They had even hoped that their steady loyalty and a quiet and orderly discharge of their social duties would in time secure them higher immunities. Many had risen to a degree of opulence by means of the thrift and dexterity peculiar to the race, which gave them a still deeper interest in the land of their residence. Their families were reared in all the elegant refinements of life; and their wealth and education often disposed them to turn their attention to liberal pursuits, which ennobled the character, indeed, but rendered them personally more sensible to physical annoyance and less fitted to encounter the perils and privations of their dreary pilgrimage. They were to go forth as exiles from the land of their birth—the land where all whom they ever loved had lived or died; the land not so much of their adoption as of their inheritance; which had been the home of their ancestors for centuries, and with whose prosperity and glory they were of course as intimately associated as was any ancient Spaniard. They were to be cast out helpless and defenceless, with a brand of infamy set on them, among nations who had always held them in derision and hatred.
Spanish Cavalier of the Fifteenth Century
Those provisions of the edict which affected a show of kindness to the Jews were contrived so artfully as to be nearly nugatory. As they were excluded from the use of gold and silver, the only medium for representing their property was bills of exchange. But commerce was too limited and imperfect to allow of these being promptly obtained to any very considerable, much less to the enormous amount required in the present instance. It was impossible, moreover, to negotiate a sale of their effects under existing circumstances, since the market was soon glutted with commodities; and few would be found willing to give anything like an equivalent for what, if not disposed of within the prescribed term, the proprietors must relinquish at any rate. So deplorable, indeed, was the sacrifice of property that a chronicler of the day mentions that he had seen a house exchanged for an ass, and a vineyard for a suit of clothes! Yet there were found but very few, when the day of departure arrived, who were not prepared to abandon their country rather than their religion. This extraordinary act of self-devotion by a whole people for conscience’ sake may be thought to merit other epithets than those of “perfidy, incredulity, and stiff-necked obstinacy,” with which the worthy curate of Los Palacios,[h] in the charitable feeling of that day, has seen fit to stigmatise it.
When the period of departure arrived, all the principal routes through the country might be seen swarming with emigrants, old and young, the sick and the helpless, men, women, and children, mingled promiscuously together, some mounted on horses or mules, but far the greater part undertaking their painful pilgrimage on foot. The sight of so much misery touched even the Spaniards with pity, though none might succour them; for the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, enforced the ordinance to that effect by denouncing heavy ecclesiastical censures on all who should presume to violate it. Much the largest division, amounting according to some estimates to eighty thousand souls, passed into Portugal; whose monarch, João [John] II, dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to give them a free passage through his dominions on their way to Africa, in consideration of a tax of a cruzado a head. He is even said to have silenced his scruples so far as to allow certain ingenious artisans to establish themselves permanently in the kingdom.
A considerable number found their way to the ports of Santa Maria and Cadiz, where, after lingering some time in the vain hope of seeing the waters open for their egress, according to the promises of the rabbis, they embarked on board a Spanish fleet for the Barbary coast. Having crossed over to Ercilla, a Christian settlement in Africa, whence they proceeded by land towards Fez, where a considerable body of their countrymen resided, they were assaulted on their route by the roving tribes of the desert, in quest of plunder. Notwithstanding the interdict, the Jews had contrived to secrete small sums of money, sewed up in their garments or the linings of their saddles. These did not escape the avaricious eyes of their spoilers, who are even said to have ripped open the bodies of their victims in search of gold which they were supposed to have swallowed. The lawless barbarians, mingling lust with avarice, abandoned themselves to still more frightful excesses, violating the wives and daughters of the unresisting Jews, or massacring in cold blood such as offered resistance.
But, without pursuing these loathsome details further, it need only be added that the miserable exiles endured such extremity of famine that they were glad to force a nourishment from the grass which grew scantily among the sands of the desert; until at length great numbers of them, wasted by disease and broken in spirit, retraced their steps to Ercilla, and consented to be baptised, in the hope of being permitted to revisit their native land. The number, indeed, was so considerable that the priest who officiated was obliged to make use of the mop, or hyssop, with which the Roman Catholic missionaries were wont to scatter the holy drops whose mystic virtue could cleanse the soul in a moment from the foulest stains of infidelity. “Thus,” says the Castilian historian, Ferreras,[k] “the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in the end an excellent remedy, that God made use of to unseal their eyes, which they now opened to the vain promises of the rabbis; so that, renouncing their ancient heresies, they became faithful followers of the cross!”
Many of the emigrants took the direction of Italy. Those who landed at Naples brought with them an infectious disorder, contracted by long confinement in small, crowded, and ill-provided vessels. The disorder was so malignant, and spread with such frightful celerity, as to sweep off more than twenty thousand inhabitants of the city in the course of the year, whence it extended its devastation over the whole Italian peninsula. Many of the exiles passed into Turkey, and to different parts of the Levant, where their descendants continued to speak the Castilian language far into the following century. Others found their way to France, and even England. Part of their religious services is recited to this day in Spanish, in one or more of the London synagogues.
The whole number of Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella is variously computed at from 160,000 to 800,000 souls; a discrepancy sufficiently indicating the paucity of authentic data. Most modern writers, with the usual predilection for startling results, have assumed the latter estimate; and Llorente[l] has made it the basis of some important calculations in his History of the Inquisition. A view of all the circumstances will lead us without much hesitation to adopt the most moderate computation. This, moreover, is placed beyond reasonable doubt by the direct testimony of Bernáldez.[h] He reports that a Jewish rabbi, one of the exiles, subsequently returned to Spain, where he was baptised by him. This person estimated the whole number of his unbaptised countrymen, at the publication of the edict, at thirty-six thousand families. Another Jewish authority, quoted by the curate, reckoned them at thirty-five thousand. This, assuming an average of four and a half to a family, gives the sum total of about 160,000 individuals.[55]