7.15. H. The Jewish Tragedy in Spain and Portugal
Chapter 3 A Summary of Jewish History H. The Jewish Tragedy in Spain and Portugal
I fear the hearts of my readers are already quite sick with the details of the Jewish tragedy in different lands, as is that of the writer in compiling them. Yet to finish this imperfect summary of Jewish suffering in the Middle Ages I must add a brief outline of their history in one or two other Christian countries. For some centuries the Jews suffered least of all in Spain, where some of them are supposed to have resided before the destruction of the second Temple, and where they took deep root and became very wealthy and powerful. Numbers embraced Christianity, and intermarried so largely with the noble families of the land, that it was said that in Aragon there was only one noble family which was not of partly Jewish extraction. “the Green Book of Aragon,” written by Juan de Andreas, secretary of the Inquisition, in 1507, is a genealogy of baptized Jewish families, and confirms this statement. In the reign of Alfonso XI., 1325—50, their condition was so favourable that they imagined it could no longer be held true that the sceptre had departed from Judah, for the lordship and government of Spain was in their hands.
During the same reign, however, hatred against the Jews had already grown to an alarming extent. In 1348 the Black Death, to which reference has already been made more than once, travelled from far-off China, across Asia and Europe, sweeping about one-third of humanity from off the face of the earth. The Jews of Spain were accused of concocting a diabolical plan to destroy all the Christians in the world by poisoning all springs and wells. The Rabbis of Toledo in particular were named as the fiends who devised this plan of ridding themselves of their Christian oppressors at one stroke. “They had despatched messengers far and wide with boxes containing poison, and with threats of excommunication had instigated all the Jews to aid in carrying out their plans. These directions to the Jews had issued from Toledo, which place was to all appearance the Jewish capital.
“The deluded and infatuated people even went so far as to point out by name the man who had delivered these orders and the poison. It was Jacob Pascate, said they, a man who had come from Toledo, and had settled in Chambery (in Savoy): he it was who had sent out a whole troop of Jewish poisoners into all the different countries and cities. This Jacob, together with a Rabbi Peyret, of Chambery, and a rich Jew, Aboget, were said to have dealt largely in the manufacture and sale of poisons. The poison, which was prepared by the Jewish doctors of the Black Art in Spain, was sometimes reported to be concocted from the skin of a basilisk, or compounded of spiders, frogs, and lizards, or again from the hearts of Christians and the fragments of the Host, beaten into a soft mass. These and similar silly stories, invented by ignorant or perhaps malicious people, and distorted and exaggerated by the heated imagination, were credited not alone by the ignorant mob, but even by men of higher culture.”1 1 Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. iv. p. 109.
Great excesses were committed against the Jews in different cities of the Peninsula, many of them being killed and their property plundered; a wholesale massacre of all the Jews in the kingdom being averted only by a Papal Bull of Clement VI. (one of the very few Popes who lifted up his voice in defence of the Jews) and by the intervention of the nobility. From this time onward, however, with short respites and brief intervals of prosperity, Israel’s night of sorrow in Spain commenced.
One special tragic chapter in the history of the Jews in Spain is that of the Marranos. In 1391, stirred up by the fiery eloquence of the fanatical priest Fernando Martinez, a series of wholesale massacres took place in Castile and Aragon. It commenced in Seville, where of the large and wealthy Jewish community about half were slain, and the other half to save their lives allowed themselves to be baptized. Of their three beautiful synagogues, two were turned into churches. The rising against the Jews spread itself all over Spain. Many thousands were sacrificed to priestly and popular rage, “and the cities of Toledo, Cordova, Catalonia, Barcelona, Valencia, as well as the island of Majorca, were coloured red with Jewish blood.” Great numbers, however—according to von Döllinger two hundred thousand—submitted to baptism to save their lives. To these “converts” large numbers more were added by the unenlightened frenzied zeal of the Dominican monk Fray Vincente Ferrer, afterwards canonised by the Romish Church for his great services on her behalf; a real ascetic, burdened by the corruptions of Christendom, and impelled by the belief that the end of the world and the Great Judgment were at hand, he went about preaching repentance in the monkish style, but with fiery zeal, and depicting in the most realistic style the Passion of our Saviour. Weeping and lamentation broke forth among the audience wherever he preached. Encouraged by his success in the churches, he thought himself called to undertake the work of converting the Jews and Saracens; and for this purpose obtained not only a royal mandate to preach in the synagogues, but that the Jews should be forced to attend his sermons. This “sincere but forbidding saint, who called his bigotry religion, and his hatred of heretics love to God,” rushed from synagogue to synagogue, the crucifix in one hand, the Torah roll in the other, attended by a crowd of “Flagellants” and a bodyguard of lancers, preaching the Gospel of peace in a voice of thunder. “Impressive processions, and sacred hymns, banners, crucifixes, and assaults on the Jewish quarter” by the Christian mob, had their desired effect, and large numbers of the confused and terrified Jews flocked to the churches to be baptized.
Now, there were some sincere converts to Christ among the Jews in Spain, several of the eminent for their learning and devotion to His cause (as there were, thank God! in all other countries, and at all times—even in the darkest days of the Church’s history), who must not be confounded, as Jewish historians maliciously attempt to do, with those who have been driven into the Church by fear, or who have themselves entered it out of indifference, or for worldly advantage. But the methods of the Dominicans and of the Romish Church generally were not only foreign to the spirit of the Gospel, but have resulted in incalculable injury to the cause of Christ; for these are largely responsible for the deep-seated hatred of the Jews to Christianity, and their prejudice against those who attempt to make the Gospel of their Messiah known among them.
These Anusim (forced converts), as the Jews called them, or Marranos (“the Damned”) as the Spaniards called them, became eventually a curse to Spain, to their own people as well as to themselves. Many of them felt in their hearts a more intense antipathy to Christianity than when they had been openly opposed to it, but were obliged to live a lie. Outwardly they had to conform to the Church-regulated life of a Spaniard, while in secret they observed the Jewish rites and ceremonies. The new Christians soon began to be suspected by the old; moreover, the spirit of envy and jealousy took possession of multitudes of Spaniards, for these Marranos, by their wealth and intelligence, pressed themselves into all circles, and monopolised many important positions, not only in the State, but also in the Church. They intermarried with the highest in the land, many an impecunious noble seeking to make good his declining fortune by courting a fair daughter of “converted Israel.” But neither ecclesiastical nor civic honours nor social advancement could bring these Marranos to have faith in Christ, or into real sympathy with the Romish Church. Cardinal Mendoza, the Archbishop of Seville, was commanded by the Spanish sovereigns, “as a last resort before proceeding to extremes to set forth the doctrines of the Catholic faith in a short catechism, and to cause his clergy to diffuse the light among the benighted Marranos”; but this also proved of no effect. “Such was the frame of the public mind when short-sighted statecraft, in the person of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, was wedded to narrow piety in that of Isabella, heiress to the crown of Castile. The legitimate offspring of such a union could be no other than persecution. But even if the sovereigns had been enlightened and tolerant, it is doubtful whether they could have stemmed the current.
“In 1473 the mob massacred the Constable of Castile at Jaen, because he attempted to repress its fury; and after Isabella the Catholic’s accession to the throne, petitions poured in from all sides, clamouring for the extirpation of the ‘Jewish heresy.’ The bigots of Seille, headed by the Dominican Prior of the monastery of St. Paul, agitated for the introduction of the Inquisition. Their demand was seconded by the Papal Nuncio”;1 but only after seven years (on September 17, 1480) did Ferdinand and Isabella at last yield to the popular clamour.
1 Abbott, Israel in Europe. The Inquisition—the very mention of which sends a shudder through our whole being, and which afterwards directed its devilish machinery against the saints of God who broke away from the superstitions of Rome—was thus established in the first instance to terrify into faithfulness apostate Jews, the sincerity of whose conversion to Christianity was suspected, and in almost all cases with good reason. “Seated in some vast and frowning castle, or in some sunless cavern of the earth, its ministers chosen from the most influential men of the nation, its familiars in every disguise, in every corner of the land, its proceedings utterly secret, its decrees overriding every law, it would be impossible to draw a picture which would exaggerate its accumulated horrors. Men and women disappeared by hundreds, suddenly and completely as a breath annihilates the flame of a lamp, some gone for ever, without a whisper as to their fate; some to reappear in after years, halt through long tortures, pale and insane through frightful incarceration. when, in the cities the frequent processions wound through the streets, with their long files of victims on the way to the place of burning, children, bereaved of father and mother, flocked to see whether among the doomed they might not catch a last look at the face of the long lost parent. The forms that were observed were such a mockery of justice! In the midst of the torture came the cold interrogation of the inquisitor. Fainting with terror and anguish, the sufferer uttered he knew not what, to be written down by waiting clerks and made the basis of procedure. Grace Aquilar, in one of her stories, makes her heroine to disappear through the floor of a chamber of Queen Isabella herself, who had sought to protect her; borne then by secret passages to a vast hall, where a grandee of Spain superintends cruelties of which my words give but an adumbration. She recites the traditions that have come down in Jewish families, and history confirms all that they report. No earthly power could save, no human fancy can paint the scene too dark.” The Inquisition had not been in existence three days when six wretched Marranos suffered at the stake; and the Jesuit historian Mariana informs us that the net total of victims for the first year amounted to 2,000 burnt alive and 17,000 sentenced to loss of property, loss of civil rights, or incarceration. Already in the following year the first auto-da-fé took place; and to give my readers an idea of what this meant, I include a description from a Jewish writer of one celebrated just two hundred years later (1680) in honour of the marriage of Charles II. with Marie Louise, niece of Louis XIV.:
“Upon the great square in Madrid an amphitheatre was reared, with a box for the Royal Family upon one side, opposite to which was a daïs for the grand inquisitor and his train. The Court officials were present in gala uniforms, the trade guilds in their state dresses, the orders of monks, and an immense concourse of the populace. From the church towers pealed the bells, among those sounds were heard the chants of the monks. At eight o’clock entered the procession. Before the grand inquisitor was borne the green cross of the Holy Office, while the bystanders shouted, ‘Long live the Catholic faith!’ first marched a hundred charcoal-burners, dressed in black and armed with spikes. it was their prescriptive right to lead the procession, as having furnished the fuel for the sacrifice. A troop of Dominican monks followed, then a duke of the bluest blood, hereditary standard-bearer of the Holy Office. After friars and nobles, carrying banners and crosses, came thirty-five effigies of life size, with names attached, borne by families of the Inquisition, representing condemned men who had died in prison or escaped. Other Dominicans appeared, a ghastly row, carrying coffins containing the bones of those convicted of heresy after death; then fifty-four penitents, with the dress and badge of victims, bearing lighted tapers. In turn came a company of Jews and Jewesses (in the interval since Ferdinand and Isabella a few wretched Jews had ventured back into Spain), mostly persons of humble rank, in whom the interest of the ceremony chiefly centred; these were to be burned as obstinate in their refusal of the faith. Each wore a cloak of coarse serge, yellow in colour, covered with representations, in crimson, of flames, demons, serpents, and crosses. Upon their heads were high pointed caps, with placards in front bearing the name and offence of the wearer. Haggard they were through long endurance of dungeon damp and darkness, broken and torn from the torture chambers, glad, for the most part, that the end of their weary days had come.
“As the procession moved past the station of the royal personages, a girl of seventeen, whose great beauty had not been destroyed, cried out aloud from among the condemned to the young queen: ‘Noble queen, cannot your royal presence save me from this? I sucked in my religion with my mother’s milk; must I now die for it’ The queen’s eyes filled with tears, and she turned away her face. She was unused to such sights. Even she, probably, could not have interceded without danger to herself. The supplicating girl passed on with her companions to her fate. High Mass having been performed, the preliminaries to the terrible concluding scene are transacted. The sun descends, the Angelus is rung from the belfries, the vespers are changed, the multitude proceeds to the place of suffering. It is a square platform of stone in the outskirts of the city, at whose four corners stand mis-shapen statues of the prophets. Those who repent at the last moment have the privilege of being strangled before burning. The effigies and bones of the dead are first given to the flames. Last perish the living victims, the king himself lighting the fagots; their constancy is so marked that they are believed to be sustained by the devil. Night deepens; the glare of the flames falls upon the cowl of the Capuchin, the cord of the Franciscan—upon corselet and plume—everywhere upon faces fierce with fanaticism. In the background rises the gloomy city—all alight as if with the lurid fire of hell!”
Leaving the Marranos and turning again to the general history of the Jews in Spain, the final and greatest calamity that befell them in that land has yet to be told. On March 31, 1492, the decree was finally signed by Ferdinand and Isabella in the magnificent Alhambra of Granada (about three months after the final overthrow of the Moors and their triumphal entry into that city) that all the Jews of Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia must quit those countries within four months on pain of death; the reason adduced in the edict being that they were the occasion of, and abetted, the relapses into Judaism on the part of the “New Christians,” or Marranos. They might take their property with them, with the exception of gold, silver, coins, or such articles as were forbidden to be exported; but as by far the greater part of their wealth consisted in these very precious metals and money, it practically implied also the confiscation of their property.
It is related that when the decree of expulsion of the Jews was promulgated, Abrabanel, a Jew himself and Lord of the Treasury, with the most eminent Marranos of the Palace, came to the Catholic sovereigns with the offer of a large sum of money to induce them to recall the decree; but that when Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, learned this, he hastened to the palace, and holding the crucifix before Ferdinand and Isabella said: “Judas sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver; your majesties are willing to do so for thirty thousand. Here He is; take and sell Him.” This had the desired effect, and the doom of the Jews in Spain was sealed. For the finest palaces and houses the poor exiles obtained a mere song. Why should the Christians buy when they knew that the Jews would have to leave all behind anyhow? A piece of cloth was offered for a vineyard, an ass for a house. The Inquisition even forbade Christians to sell them any food. On August 2, 1492, which happened to fall on the 9th of Ab—the day of such sorrowful associations to the Jewish nation (on which both the first and second Temples were destroyed)—about 400,000 Jews left Spain, that “happy land,” as they once used to call it; the “accursed land,” as it has since been known among them—to go forth they knew not whither. To help them forget their sorrows, the Rabbis caused companies of trumpeters and pipers to head the mournful pilgrim procession. In Segovia the last three nights were spent in weeping and prayer by the graves of their fathers. The tale of their wanderings is most woeful. Misery and dire need, robbery, hunger, and the plague overtook them; many were sold in foreign lands as slaves; many were drowned, many burnt on ships at sea; 12,000 who sought refuge in the neighbouring kingdom of Navarre had the usual conditions proposed to them—exile or baptism. Those who sought safety in Oran and Algiers were prevented landing on account of the plague which had broken out among them; and when later they did land, they were not permitted to enter the towns. A fire broke out among their wooden huts and reduced them all to ashes. In Fez they were nowhere allowed inside the towns, and had to subsist, like the animals, on herbs. Fathers were obliged to sell their children as slaves that they might not die of hunger; mothers killed themselves and their children; sailors tempted children to the ships by offer of food in order to sell them as slaves. the Genoese seamen were worst of all in their treatment of the fugitives. They threw many into the sea, and it is related that, actuated by greed, they cut many of their victims open in search of jewels and coins which they may have swallowed in order to retain them. Those who were landed were permitted to remain in Genoa three days only, unless they would submit to baptism. The children were so hungry that they crept into the town and the churches, consenting to be baptized for a bit of bread. In Corfu and Candia they were sold into slavery, and were bought by Persians, who hoped to extract large sums from the Persian Jews for their release. The Jews in Portugal The history of the Jews in Portugal is, to a large extent, linked with and very similar to that of their brethren in Spain. Here, too, they could look back to a golden age of prosperity, and there were times when the destiny of the kingdom might almost be said to have been in Jewish hands. But soon Israel’s night of weeping commenced here too. Already, early in the fourteenth century, we read of anti-Jewish decrees and the imposition of the badge of shame. From time to time excesses were also committed against them by mobs urged on thereto by the preaching of the monks. Their sorrows in this kingdom, however, culminated shortly subsequent to the Spanish catastrophe in 1492. when the decree for their expulsion from the Peninsula was signed, many Spanish Jews desired to settle in Portugal; but with the exception of a limited number of artisans, armourers, and other workers in metal, permission was refused; the rest were only permitted on payment of twenty marks in gold each to remain eight months, after which the King promised to provide ships and a cheap passage to any land in which they might choose to settle. One hundred and twenty thousand came to Portugal on these conditions, in the hope, most probably, that the time limit would be lengthened or removed. Popular feeling, however, was against them; and as the plague made its appearance in Portugal soon after, the unfortunate Jews were accused of having brought it to the country, and the populace clamoured for their departure.
Ships were provided at the end of eight months to take them whither they would or could go; but the sailors extorted from them all that they had, refused them food except at exorbitant prices, committed outrages on the women and girls, and finally landed the wretched people in desert parts on the African coast, where they were left to perish of hunger or to be carried as slaves by the Moors. Those who were in the country after the eight months, were declared by King Joao to be his slaves, whom he proceeded to present to the different grandees of his kingdom. To add to their anguish their children were torn from them and shipped to the island of St. Thomas, there to be forcibly baptized and brought up as Christians. So much for these poor Spanish exiles; there still remained in the kingdom the native Portuguese Jews, who had been in the country for centuries. In 1495 King Manoel came to the throne. This prince was at first favourably inclined to his Jewish subjects; but, unfortunately for Portugal as well as for the Jews, he entered into negotiations for a marriage with the Infanta Isabella, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who had already been married to the Infanta of Portugal, but soon after became a widow; the Spanish Court would listen would listen to the proposal only on two conditions—firstly, that he should break off friendly relations with the Court of France, and, secondly, that he should banish all the Jews out of his kingdom. Both proposals were repugnant to Manoel; but after a time of hesitation, being deeply enamoured with the Infanta, he weakly yielded. This Isabella herself seemed to excel her own mother in bigotry. When King Manoel was at last expecting his bride to cross the borders of his country, he received a letter from her, saying that she would never set foot in Portugal until the land had been cleansed from the “curse-laden Jews.” The marriage contract had therefore to be sealed in the misery of the Jewish people. The King promulgated an edict that all the Jews of his kingdom must either be baptized or leave the country after a few months’ respite on pain of death. Only a few, however, chose the alternative of baptism, which aggravated the King, who wanted very much to retain the Jews in his country. A decree was issued that all Jewish children under fourteen years must be baptized before or on Easter Sunday, 1497. The agony which this occasioned to the Jewish parents cannot be described. Some killed their own children, some threw them into the rivers and wells to prevent what they feared for them even more than death. Many parents and children were torn from one another by the whip and scourge, and then dragged by the hair to the baptismal font, the poor children being afterwards distributed among Christians to be brought up as such.
Some of the Jews now asked for baptism merely in order to retain their children, but only afterwards, as suspected Marranos, to be followed by fire and sword by the Inquisition. At last Manoel appointed the single harbour of Lisbon as the place of departure for the remaining Jews of Portugal. Some twenty thousand of the wretched people assembled; but so many difficulties were put in their way that a large number were unable to leave by the appointed time, whereupon the King declared them to be his slaves. Later, again, he promised them honour and privileges if they would submit to baptism; and when this did not succeed, he kept them three days without bread and water. Again abominable scenes occurred, and aged men were dragged by their beards, or hair, or by ropes, to the churches, to be forcibly baptized; from which they saved themselves only by suicide, either without or within the churches. In the year 1500 two thousand “new Christians,” or Jewish Marranos, were massacred in Lisbon within three days.