A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 06

Indeed, if while Jerusalem and its temple existed, the Jews were sometimes driven from their country by the vicissitudes of empires, they have still more frequently been expelled through a blind zeal from every country in which they have dwelt since the progress of Christianity and Mahometanism. They themselves compare their religion to a mother, upon whom her two daughters, the Christian and the Mahometan, have inflicted a thousand wounds. But, how ill soever she has been treated by them, she still glories in having given them birth. She makes use of them both to embrace the whole world, while her own venerable age embraces all time.

It is singular that the Christians pretend to have accomplished the prophecies by tyrannizing over the Jews, by whom they were transmitted. We have already seen how the Inquisition banished the Jews from Spain. Obliged to wander from land to land, from sea to sea, to gain a livelihood; everywhere declared incapable of possessing any landed property, or holding any office, they have been obliged to disperse, and roam from place to place, unable to establish themselves permanently in any country, for want of support, of power to maintain their ground, and of knowledge in the art of war. Trade, a profession long despised by most of the nations of Europe, was, in those barbarous ages, their only resource; and as they necessarily grew rich by it, they were treated as infamous usurers. Kings who could not ransack the purses of their subjects, put the Jews, whom they regarded not as citizens, to torture.

What was done to them in England may give some idea of what they experienced in other countries. King John, being in want of money, had the rich Jews in his kingdom imprisoned. One of them, having had seven of his teeth drawn one after another, to obtain his property, gave, on losing the eighth, a thousand marks of silver. Henry III. extorted from Aaron, a Jew of York, fourteen thousand marks of silver, and ten thousand for his queen. He sold the rest of the Jews of his country to his brother Richard, for the term of one year, in order, says Matthew Paris, that this count might disembowel those whom his brother had flayed.

In France they were put in prison, plundered, sold, accused of magic, of sacrificing children, of poisoning the fountains. They were driven out of the kingdom; they were suffered to return for money; and even while they were tolerated, they were distinguished from the rest of the inhabitants by marks of infamy. And, by an inconceivable whimsicality, while in other countries the Jews were burned to make them embrace Christianity, in France the property of such as became Christians was confiscated. Charles IV., by an edict given at Basville, April 4, 1392, abrogated this tyrannical custom, which, according to the Benedictine Mabillon, had been introduced for two reasons:

First, to try the faith of these new converts, as it was but too common for those of this nation to feign submission to the gospel for some personal interest, without internally changing their belief.

Secondly, because as they had derived their wealth chiefly from usury, the purity of Christian morals appeared to require them to make a general restitution, which was effected by confiscation.

But the true reason of this custom, which the author of the "Spirit of Laws" has so well developed, was a sort of "droit d'amortissement" – a redemption for the sovereign, or the seigneurs, of the taxes which they levied on the Jews, as mortmainable serfs, whom they succeeded; for they were deprived of this benefit when the latter were converted to the Christian faith.

At length, being incessantly proscribed in every country, they ingeniously found the means of saving their fortunes and making their retreats forever secure. Being driven from France under Philip the Long, in 1318, they took refuge in Lombardy; there they gave to the merchants bills of exchange on those to whom they had entrusted their effects at their departure, and these were discharged.

The admirable invention of bills of exchange sprang from the extremity of despair; and then, and not until then, commerce was enabled to elude the efforts of violence, and to maintain itself throughout the world.

SECTION IV

In Answer to Some Objections

Letters to Joseph, Ben, Jonathan, Aaron, Mathatai, and David Wincker.

FIRST LETTER.

Gentlemen: When, forty-four years ago, your countryman Medina became a bankrupt in London, being twenty thousand francs in my debt, he told me that "it was not his fault; that he was unfortunate"; that "he had never been one of the children of Belial"; that "he had always endeavored to live as a son of God" – that is, as an honest man, a good Israelite. I was affected; I embraced him; we joined in the praise of God; and I lost eighty per cent.

You ought to know that I never hated your nation; I hate no one; not even Fréron.

Far from hating, I have always pitied you. If, like my protector, good Pope Lambertini, I have sometimes bantered a little, I am not therefore the less sensitive. I wept, at the age of sixteen, when I was told that a mother and her daughter had been burned at Lisbon for having eaten, standing, a little lamb, cooked with lettuce, on the fourteenth day of the red moon; and I can assure you that the extreme beauty that this girl was reported to have possessed, had no share in calling forth my tears, although it must have increased the spectators' horror for the assassins, and their pity for the victim.

I know not how it entered my head to write an epic poem at the age of twenty. (Do you know what an epic poem is? For my part I knew nothing of the matter.) The legislator Montesquieu had not yet written his "Persian Letters," which you reproach me with having commented on; but I had already of myself said, speaking of a monster well known to your ancestors, and which even now is not without devotees:

Il vient; le fanatisme est son horrible nom;Enfant dénaturé de la religion;Armé pour la défendre, il cherche à la détruire,Et reçu dans son sein, l'embrasse et le déchire,C'est lui qui dans Raba, sur les bords de l'ArnonGuidait les descendans du malheureux Ammon,Quand à Moloch leur dieu des mères gémissantesOffraient de leurs enfans les entrailles fumantes.Il dicta de Jephté le serment inhumain;Dans le cœur de sa fille il conduisait sa main.C'est lui qui, de Calchas ouvrant la bouche impieDemanda par sa voix la mort d'Iphigénie.France, dans tes forêts il habita long-temps,À l'affreux Tentatès il offrit ton encens.Tu n'a point oublié ces sacres homicides,Qu' à tes indignes dieux présentaient tes druides.Du haut du capitole il criait aux Païens."Frappez, exterminez, déchirez les chrétiens."Mais lorsqu'au fils de Dieu Rome enfin, fut soumise,Du capitole en cendre il passa dans l'Eglise;Et dans les cœurs chrétiens inspirant ses fureurs,De martyrs qu'ils étaient les fit persécuteurs.Dans Londres il a formé la secte turbulenteQui sur un roi trop faible a mis sa main sanglante;Dans Madrid, dans Lisbonne, il allume ces feux,Ces buchers solennels où des Juifs malheureuxSont tous les ans en pompe envoyés par des prêtres,Pour n'avoir point quitté la foi de leurs ancêtres.He comes; the fiend Fanaticism comes —Religion's horrid and unnatural child —Armed to defend her, arming to destroy —Tearing her bosom in his feigned embrace.'Twas he who guided Amnion's wretched raceOn Anion's banks, where mothers offered upTheir children's mangled limbs on Moloch's altars.'Twas he who prompted Jephthah's barbarous oath,And aimed the poniard at his daughter's heart.'Twas he who spoke, when Calchas' impious tongueCalled for the blameless Iphigenia's death.France, he long revelled in thy forest shades,Offering thy incense to the grim Tentâtes,Whetting the savage Druid's murderous knifeTo sate his worthless gods with human gore.He, from the Capitol, stirred Pagan heartsTo exterminate Christ's followers; and he,When Rome herself had bowed to Christian truth,Quitted the Capitol to rule the church —To reign supreme in every Christian soul,And make the Pagans martyrs in their turn.His were in England the fierce sect who laidTheir bloody hands on a too feeble king.His are Madrid's and Lisbon's horrid fires,The yearly portion of unhappy Jews,By priestly judges doomed to temporal flamesFor thinking their forefathers' faith the best.

You clearly see, then, that even so long ago I was your servant, your friend, your brother; although my father and mother had preserved to me my fore-skin.

I am aware that virility, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, has caused very fatal quarrels. I know what it cost Priam's son Paris, and Agamemnon's brother Menelaus. I have read enough of your books to know that Hamor's son Sichem ravished Leah's daughter Dinah, who at most was not more than five years old, but was very forward for her age. He wanted to make her his wife; and Jacob's sons, brothers of the violated damsel, gave her to him in marriage on condition that he and all his people should be circumcised. When the operation was performed, and all the Sichemites, or Sechemites, were lying-in of the pains consequent thereupon, the holy patriarchs Simeon and Levi cut all their throats one after another. But, after all, I do not believe that uncircumcision ought now to produce such abominable horrors; and especially I do not think that men should hate, detest, anathematize, and damn one another every Saturday and Sunday, on account of a morsel more or less of flesh.

If I have said that some of the circumcised have clipped money at Metz, at Frankfort on the Oder, and at Warsaw (which I do not remember) I ask their pardon; for, being almost at the end of my pilgrimage, I have no wish to embroil myself with Israel.

I have the honor to be (as they say),

Yours, etc.

SECOND LETTER.

Antiquity of the Jews.

Gentlemen: I have ever agreed, having read a few historical books for amusement, that you are a very ancient people, and your origin may be dated much farther back than that of the Teutones, the Celts, the Slavonians, the Angles, and Hurons. I see you assembling as a people in a capital called, sometimes Hershalaïm, sometimes Shaheb, on the hill Moriah, and on the hill Sion, near a desert, on a stony soil, by a small torrent which is dry six months of the year.

When you began to-establish yourselves in your corner, I will not say of land, but of pebbles, Troy had been destroyed by the Greeks about two centuries.

Medon was archon of Athens. Echestratus was reigning in Lacedæmon. Latinus Sylvius was reigning in Latium; and Osochor in Egypt. The Indies had been flourishing for a long succession of ages.

This was the most illustrious period of Chinese history. The emperor Tchin-wang was reigning with glory over that vast empire; all the sciences were there cultivated; and the public annals inform us that the king of Cochin China, being come to pay his respects to this emperor, Tchin-wang, received from him a present of a mariner's compass. This compass might have been of great service to your Solomon, for his fleets that went to the fine country of Ophir, which no one has ever known anything about.

Thus, after the Chaldæans, the Syrians, the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Indians, the Chinese, the Latins, and the Etruscans, you are the first people upon earth who had any known form of government.

The Banians, the Guebers, and yourselves, are the only nations which, dispersed out of their own country, have preserved their ancient rites; if I make no account of the little Egyptian troops, called Zingari in Italy, Gypsies in England, and Bohemians in France, which had preserved the antique ceremonies of the worship of Isis, the sistrum, the cymbals, the dance of Isis, the prophesying, and the art of robbing hen-roosts.

These sacred troops are beginning to disappear from the face of the earth; while their pyramids still belong to the Turks, who perhaps will not always be masters of them – the figure of all things on this earth doth so pass away.

You say, that you have been settled in Spain ever since the days of Solomon: I believe it, and will even venture to think that the Phœnicians might have carried some Jews thither long before, when you were slaves in Phœnicia, after the horrid massacres which you say were committed by the robber Joshua, and by that other robber Caleb.

Your books indeed say, that you were reduced to slavery under Chushan-Rashataim, king of Mesopotamia, for eight years; under Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years; then under Jabin, king of Canaan, for twenty years; then in the little canton of Midian, from which you had issued, and where you dwelt in caverns, for seven years; then in Gilead, for eighteen years – notwithstanding that Jair, your prince, had thirty sons, each mounted on a fine ass – then under the Phœnicians (called by you Philistines), for forty years – until at last the Lord Adonai sent Samson, who tied three hundred foxes, one to another by the tails, and slew a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass, from which issued a fountain of clear water; which has been very well represented at the Comédie Italienne.

Here are, by your own confession, ninety-six years of captivity in the land of promise. Now it is very probable that the Syrians, who were the factors for all nations, and navigated as far as the great ocean, bought some Jewish slaves, and took them to Cadiz, which they founded. You see that you are much more ancient than you think. It is indeed very likely that you inhabited Spain several centuries before the Romans, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Moors.

I am not only your friend, your brother, but moreover your genealogist. I beg, gentlemen, that you will have the goodness to believe, that I never have believed, I do not believe, and I never will believe, that you are descended from those highway robbers whose ears and noses were cut off by order of King Actisanes, and whom, according to Diodorus of Sicily, he sent into the desert between Lake Sirbo and Mount Sinai – a frightful desert where water and every other necessary of life are wanting. They made nets to catch quails, which fed them for a few weeks, during the passage of the birds.

Some of the learned have pretended that this origin perfectly agrees with your history. You yourselves say, that you inhabited this desert, that there you wanted water, and lived on quails, which in reality abound there. Your accounts appear in the main to confirm that of Diodorus; but I believe only the Pentateuch. The author does not say that you had your ears and noses cut off. As far as I remember, (for I have not Diodorus at hand), you lost only your noses. I do not now recollect where I read that your ears were of the party; it might be in some fragments of Manetho, cited by St. Ephraem.

In vain does the secretary, who has done me the honor of writing to me in your name, assure me that you stole to the amount of upwards of nine millions in gold, coined or carved, to go and set up your tabernacle in the desert. I maintain, that you carried off nothing but what lawfully belonged to you, reckoning interest at forty per cent., which was the lawful rate.

Be this as it may, I certify that you are of very good nobility, and that you were lords of Hershalaïm long before the houses of Suabia, Anhalt, Saxony, and Bavaria were heard of.

It may be that the negroes of Angola, and those of Guinea, are much more ancient than you, and that they adored a beautiful serpent before the Egyptians knew their Isis, and you dwelt near Lake Sirbo; but the negroes have not yet communicated their books to us.

THIRD LETTER.

On a few Crosses which befell God's People.

Far from accusing you, gentlemen, I have always regarded you with compassion. Permit me here to remind you of what I have read in the preliminary discourse to the "Essay on the Spirit and Manners of Nations," and on general history. Here we find, that two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Jews were slaughtered by one another, from the worshipping of the golden calf to the taking of the ark by the Philistines – which cost fifty thousand and seventy Jews their lives, for having dared to look upon the ark, while those who had so insolently taken it in war, were acquitted with only the piles, and a fine of five golden mice, and five golden anuses. You will not deny that the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty men, by your fellow-countrymen, without reckoning those whom you lost in alternate war and slavery, must have been very detrimental to a rising colony.

How should I do otherwise than pity you? seeing that ten of your tribes were absolutely annihilated, or perhaps reduced to two hundred families, which, it is said, are to be found in China and Tartary. As for the two other tribes, I need not tell you what has happened to them. Suffer then my compassion, and do not impute to me ill-will.

FOURTH LETTER.

The Story of Micah.

Be not displeased at my asking from you some elucidation of a singular passage in your history, with which the ladies of Paris and people of fashion are but slightly acquainted.

Your Moses had not been dead quite thirty-eight years when the mother of Micah, of the tribe of Benjamin, lost eleven hundred shekels, which are said to be equivalent to about six hundred livres of our money. Her son returned them to her; the text does not inform us that he had not stolen them. The good Jewess immediately had them made into idols, and, according to custom, built them a little movable chapel. A Levite of Bethlehem offered himself to perform the service for ten francs per annum, two tunics, and his victuals.

A tribe (afterwards called the tribe of Dan) searching that neighborhood for something to plunder, passed near Micah's house. The men of Dan, knowing that Micah's mother had in her house a priest, a seer, a diviner, a rhoë, inquired of him if their excursion would be lucky – if they should find a good booty. The Levite promised them complete success. They began by robbing Micah's chapel, and took from her even her Levite. In vain did Micah and his mother cry out: "You are carrying away my gods! You are stealing my priest!" The robbers silenced them, and went, through devotion, to put to fire and sword the little town of Dan, whose name this tribe adopted.

These freebooters were very grateful to Micah's gods, which had done them such good service, and placed them in a new tabernacle. The crowd of devotees increasing, a new priest was wanted, and one presented himself. Those who are not conversant with your history will never divine who this chaplain was: but, gentlemen, you know that it was Moses' own grandson, one Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses and Jethro's daughter.

You will agree with me, that the family of Moses was rather a singular one. His brother, at the age of one hundred, cast a golden calf and worshipped it; and his grandson turned chaplain to the idols for money. Does not this prove that your religion was not yet formed, and that you were a long time groping in the dark before you became perfect Israelites as you now are?

To my question you answer, that our Simon Peter Barjonas did as much; that he commenced his apostleship with denying his master. I have nothing to reply, except it be, that we must always distrust ourselves; and so great is my own self-distrust, that I conclude my letter with assuring you of my utmost indulgence, and requesting yours.

FIFTH LETTER.

Jewish Assassinations. Were the Jews Cannibals? Had their Mothers Commerce with Goats? Did their Fathers and Mothers Immolate their Children? With a few other fine Actions of God's People.

Gentlemen, – I have been somewhat uncourteous to your secretary. It is against the rules of politeness to scold a servant in the presence of his master; but self-important ignorance is revolting in a Christian who makes himself the servant of a Jew. I address myself directly to you, that I may have nothing more to do with your livery.

Jewish Calamities and Great Assassinations.

Permit me, in the first place, to lament over all your calamities; for, besides the two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Israelites killed by order of the Lord, I find that Jephthah's daughter was immolated by her father. Turn which way you please – twixt the text as you will – dispute as you like against the fathers of the Church; still he did to her as he had vowed; and he had vowed to cut his daughter's throat in thanksgiving to God. An excellent thanksgiving!

Yes, you have immolated human victims to the Lord; but be consoled; I have often told you that our Celts and all nations have done so formerly. What says M. de Bougainville, who has returned from the island of Otaheite – that island of Cytherea, whose inhabitants, peaceful, mild, humane, and hospitable, offer to the traveller all that they possess – the most delicious of fruits – the most beautiful and most obliging of women? He tells us that these people have their jugglers; and that these jugglers force them to sacrifice their children to apes, which they call their gods.

I find that seventy brothers of Abimelech were put to death on the same stone by this Abimelech, the son of Gideon and a prostitute. This son of Gideon was a bad kinsman, and this Gideon, the friend of God, was very debauched.

Your Levite going on his ass to Gibeah – the Gibeonites wanting to violate him – his poor wife violated in his stead, and dying in consequence – the civil war that ensued – all your tribe of Benjamin exterminated, saving only six hundred men – give me inexpressible pain.

You lost, all at once, five fine towns which the Lord destined for you, at the end of the lake of Sodom; and that for an inconceivable attempt upon the modesty of two angels. Really, this is much worse than what your mothers are accused of with the goats. How should I have other than the greatest pity for you, when I find murder and bestiality established against your ancestors, who are our first spiritual fathers, and our near kinsmen according to the flesh? For after all, if you are descended from Shem, we are descended from Japhet. We are therefore evidently cousins.

Melchim, or Petty Kings of the Jews.

Your Samuel had good reason for not wishing you to have kings; for nearly all your kings were assassins, beginning with David, who assassinated Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, his tender friend, whom he "loved with a love-greater than that of woman"; who assassinated Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba; who assassinated even the infants at the breast in the villages in alliance with his protector Achish; who on his death-bed commanded the assassination of his general Joab and his counsel Shimei – beginning, I say, with this David, and with Solomon, who assassinated his own brother Adonijah, clinging in vain to the altar, and ending with Herod "the Great," who assassinated his brother-in-law, his wife, and all his kindred, including even his children.

I say nothing of the fourteen thousand little boys whom your petty king, this mighty Herod, had slaughtered in the village of Bethlehem. They are, as you know, buried at Cologne with our eleven thousand virgins; and one of these infants is still to be seen entire. You do not believe this authentic story, because it is not in your canon, and your Flavius Josephus makes no mention of it. I say nothing of the eleven hundred thousand men killed in the town of Jerusalem alone, during its siege by Titus. In good faith, the cherished nation is a very unlucky one.

Did the Jews Eat Human Flesh?

Among your calamities, which have so often made me shudder, I have always reckoned your misfortune in having eaten human flesh. You say that this happened only on great occasions; that it was not you whom the Lord invited to His table to eat the horse and the horseman, and that only the birds were the guests. I am willing to believe it.

Were the Jewish Ladies Intimate with Goats?

You assert that your mothers had no commerce with he-goats, nor your fathers with she-goats. But pray, gentlemen, why are you the only people upon earth whose laws have forbidden such commerce? Would any legislator ever have thought of promulgating this extraordinary law if the offence had not been common?