History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

For the same offense – that is, for no offense at all – the communities in the vicinity of the Bohemian capital were "confined, oppressed, ill-treated and persecuted." The reigning pope issued a bull condemning the outrages (July 2d, 1389), and based his action upon the edict of Pope Innocent IV, which enacted that Jews should not be forcibly baptized, nor disturbed in the observance of their festivals; but he failed to produce an impression on the consciences of the faithful. It was in vain, too, that the Jews appealed to their liege lord, the German emperor Wenceslaus, in whose capital the persecution had originated. This prince – who, had he not been an emperor, would certainly have been a freebooter – was a man of sense only on the rare occasions when he was not intoxicated. His reply to the representations of his Jewish subjects was that they had deserved the attacks made upon them, as they had had no right to show themselves outside their houses on Easter Sunday. For the goods and chattels they had left behind them he exhibited more concern, promptly ordering them to be appropriated to his empty exchequer. This was the measure of his general attitude towards the Jews. During several years he attempted to possess himself of their monetary claims on his Christian subjects, and to carry out his design he convened (1385) a conference of representatives of the Suabian cities, which met at Ulm. Despite the impoverishment of the German communities, he exacted from every Jew, even from every Jewish youth and maiden, the so-called "golden penny" poll-tax, amounting to one gulden annually. He openly declared that the possessions of the Jews were his personal property, and forbade them to sell or mortgage anything. And still Emperor Wenceslaus was not the worst of rulers in the eyes of the Jews. The rabbi, Avigedor Kara, of Prague, boasted his friendship; and the Jews of Germany whispered significantly to one another that his allegiance to the teaching of Christ was very weak.

This storm of spoliation and persecution had no far-reaching consequences in the history of the German Jews. It could not affect their abject condition, for they had been too long accustomed to turn their cheeks submissively to the smiter. Quite different were the effects of a contemporary persecution in Spain. Here the very heart of the Jewish race was attacked, and the results made themselves felt in the history of the whole Jewish people. The Spanish Jews had until then been more hated than despised; the horrors of this persecution, however, so thoroughly cowed their spirits, so paralyzed their energies, and humbled their pride, that they, too, became the scorn of their oppressors. As in Prague, the outbreak was the work of an ecclesiastic and a mob, but here it assumed the vastest proportions, and developed permanent results, the operations of which were disastrous in the extreme. It arose in Seville through the agitation of a fanatical priest, Ferdinand (Ferrand) Martinez, who seemed to consider implacable hatred of the Jews as the essence of his religion. His discourses were devoted to stirring up the populace against them, and he thundered against their hardened infidelity, their pride, their heaped-up riches, their greed, and their usury. In Seville he found the people only too ready to listen to him, for there the Jews were hated with special intensity. The citizens could not forgive them the important part they had played in the civil war between Don Pedro and Don Henry II, and particularly the suspicious circumstances of the death of Joseph Pichon, who had been so popular among them. As long as Don Juan I lived, Martinez took care to restrain the mob from open violence, for though the king regarded the Jews with but little affection, he was in the habit of punishing lawless outbreaks with the utmost severity. No sooner was he dead, however, than the bigoted cleric thought he might dare the utmost. The circumstances of the government were favorable to the development of his plans. The new monarch, Henry III, was a boy of only eleven years of age, and in the council of regency discord reigned, threatening to involve the country in another civil war.

One day (March 15, 1391) – a memorable day, not only for the Jews and for Spain, but for the history of the entire world, for on that day the first germ of the monstrous Inquisition was created – Martinez, preaching as usual against the Jews, deliberately incited the mob to riot in the expectation that many Jews would abjure their religion. The passions of the multitude became inflamed, and broke out in wild uproar. The authorities of the city, the Mayor (Alguacil mayor), Don Alvar Perez de Guzman, and two of the magistrates interposed to protect the Jews, arresting two of the ringleaders in the riot, and ordering them to be flogged. This proceeding excited the fanatical mob only the more. In their fury they put a large number of Jews to death, and threatened with a like fate the governor of the city, Don Juan Alfonso, and the officials who were attempting to shield the unfortunate Hebrews. A few of the leading Jews of Seville, perceiving that the local authorities were not strong enough to grapple with the rising, hurried to the court of the young king, and appealed to the council of regency to stop the slaughter of their brethren. Their representations were favorably received. Messengers were dispatched forthwith to Seville with instructions to tell the populace to abstain from further outrage. The local nobility seconded the action of the king, and, ranging themselves on the side of the Jews, succeeded in mastering the rioters. When the Christian inhabitants of the neighboring towns showed a disposition to imitate the scenes enacted in Seville, the council of regency also sent messengers thither armed with the same powers. Thus, for a brief moment, the threatened Jew-hunt was delayed, but by no means suppressed. It was soon renewed with greater violence, and on a far more extended scale. The young king and a few of the members of the council of regency were probably earnest in their desire not to permit the massacres, but, unfortunately, they were not sufficiently interested to take adequate precautions against them. One such precaution should have been to silence the outrage-monger, Ferdinand Martinez, or at least to prohibit his inflammatory harangues; but they did nothing of the kind. They left him perfectly free to level his poisonous eloquence at the Jews, and he was not slow to take advantage of their inaction. Encouraged by the dissensions in the government, and the disorder which consequently reigned throughout the entire land, he again set himself to stir up the rabble of Seville, and this time with greater success. Hardly three months after the last outbreak, the mob resumed (June 6th, 1391) its holy work of massacre by setting fire to the Jewish quarter (Juderia) and slaughtering its inhabitants. The result was that, of the important and wealthy community of Seville, which had numbered 7,000 families, or 30,000 souls, but few remained. Murder counted not more than 4,000 victims, but to escape death the majority permitted themselves to be baptized. Women and children were sold into Mahometan slavery by the bloody rioters. Of the three synagogues of Seville two were transformed into churches. Among the large number who sought refuge from fire and sword at the baptismal font was Samuel Abrabanel, the ancestor of the afterwards celebrated Abrabanel family, and an ornament of his community in the reign of Don Henry II, with whom he possessed great influence. He adopted the Christian name of Juan de Sevilla.

From Seville the persecution swept like a raging torrent over a large portion of Spain. Its progress was stimulated more by a craving for plunder than by fanatical eagerness to proselytize. Cordova, the parent community of the Peninsula, the mold in which the high character of Spanish Judaism had been cast, was the next scene of its activity. Here also many Jews were cruelly murdered, and a large number forced to embrace Christianity. On the fast day commemorating the fall of Jerusalem (Tammuz 17th–June 20th) the population of the capital, Toledo, rose against the largest Jewish community in Spain. The blood of the believers in the unity of God, who steadfastly refused to change their faith, deluged the streets. Among the many martyrs who fell at Toledo were the descendants of the Asheri family. They met death with the same unflinching courage as their German brethren. Jehuda ben Asher II, one of Asheri's great-grandsons, who lived in Burgos, but happened to be at Toledo, took with his own hands the lives of his mother-in-law and wife, and then his own. Here also a large number went over to Christianity. About seventy communities were visited by this terrible persecution, among them those of Ecija, Huete, Logroño, Burgos, Carrion, and Ocaña. At Ascalona not a single Jew remained alive. The thoroughly maddened Christian population meditated a similar fate for the Moors, or Mahometans, living in the kingdom of Seville. The more prudent among them, however, pointed out the danger of such a step, reminding them that the Christians living in the Mahometan kingdom of Granada, or held as prisoners by the Moors on the other side of the straits of Gibraltar, might be sacrificed in retaliation. The massacre of the Moors was consequently abandoned. The Jews alone were made to drain the cup of bitterness to the dregs, because they were too weak to protect themselves. Nothing demonstrates more impressively that the clergy had succeeded in transforming the people into a race of cut-throats.

In the kingdom of Aragon, where both ruler and people were opposed to Castile, and, as a rule, held that to be wrong which in the latter state was considered right, the hatred and persecution of the Jews were promoted with the same zeal. Here the government was in the hands of the weak but well-meaning king, Juan I, who, absorbed by his love of music and the chase, wielded but little authority, and was the laughing-stock of his generally uncultured subjects. About three weeks after the outbreak at Toledo, the inhabitants of the province of Valencia rose against the Jews (Ab 7th–July 9th). Of the 5,000 souls that constituted the Jewish community in the city of Valencia, not one was left. Some 250 were murdered, a few saved themselves by flight, and the rest embraced Christianity. Throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom the defenseless Jews were attacked with fire and sword, the community of Murviedro alone being spared.

The sanguinary madness then crossed the sea, and alighted on the island of Majorca. In the capital, Palma, a crowd of roughs and sailors paraded the Monte-Zion street, in which the Jews resided, and holding aloft a cross, rudely formed by tying together two cudgels, shouted "Death to the Jews" (August 2d–Ellul 1st). One sturdy Jew, assaulted by the rabble, ventured to defend himself, and severely punished his assailants. Hereupon the mob broke out in uncontrollable violence, and 300 martyrs fell to its fury. Among the victims was the rabbi, En-Vidal Ephraim Gerundi, whose controversy with Solomon Zarfati has already been referred to. A large number of Jews here also sought safety in baptism.

Three days later, as if by previous arrangement, the Jew-massacres began in Barcelona, one of the proudest homes of Jewish intelligence. The great wealth which the Jews of this city had acquired by their extensive maritime commerce appears to have excited the envy of the Christians, and tempted them to outrage. On the 5th August, a Sabbath, on which was held a minor festival in honor of Mary, the mob attacked the Jews as if to honor their queen of heaven with human sacrifices. In the first assault, close upon 250 victims fell. The larger portion of the community were harbored and cared for in the citadel by the governor of the town; but here again the rabble opposed the nobility. They attacked the citadel with crossbows, laid siege to it in due form, and ultimately set it on fire. When the imprisoned Jews saw that there was no longer a chance of being saved, a large number slew themselves with their own hands, or threw themselves from the walls. Others sallied forth from the fortress to meet their assailants in the open field, and fell in honorable combat. Among the martyrs was the noble Chasdaï Crescas' young and only son, then on the eve of his marriage. Eleven thousand Jews are said to have been baptized on this occasion. Only a very few escaped, and not one remained in Barcelona. The same fate befell the communities of Lerida, Gerona, and other towns, in each case a large number of Jews being murdered, some being baptized, and a very few escaping by flight. In Gerona, where the community was distinguished for rigid piety, the number of converts to Christianity was exceedingly small, the rabbis setting their flocks an example by their steadfastness and contempt for death. In Catalonia, as in Valencia, but few Jews were spared, and they owed their good fortune to the protection received – in exchange, of course, for large sums of money – in the castles of the nobility. In Aragon itself the outbreaks were not so serious, as the Jewish communities had made a timely and prudent offer of all their wealth for the protection of the court.

For three months fire and sword raged unresisted in the majority of the Spanish Jewries. When the storm abated, the Jews remaining were so broken in spirit that they did not venture forth from their places of refuge. The sad occurrences were described in a heart-breaking, tearful epistle to the community of Perpignan, which Chasdaï Crescas, who had been robbed of an only son and his entire fortune, penned in answer to their sympathetic inquiries. Thus, to Spanish Jews came the tragical fate which had befallen their German brethren, hardly half a century before, at the time of the Black Death. They also had acquired materials for bitter songs of lamentation, which they inserted in the Jewish liturgy. But the consequences of the persecution were even more terrible than the persecution itself. Their pride was completely crushed, and their spirit permanently darkened. They who had formerly held their heads so proudly aloft, now slunk timidly along, anxiously avoiding every Christian as a possible murderer or instigator of murderous assaults. If hundred Jews were assembled, and a single rough abused them, they fled like a flock of frightened birds. This persecution gave them their first experience of the bitterness of exile, for, notwithstanding many untoward circumstances, they had always imagined themselves secure and at home in Spain. Now, for the first time, their haughty demeanor was humbled. They were no longer the men who had so valiantly wielded the sword in the armies of Don Pedro. In Portugal alone the Jews were free from fanatical attacks. Its king, Don João I, enjoyed a popularity to which, in a crisis, he was able to appeal. As his instructions were cheerfully obeyed, he was able to preserve order and put down outbreaks with a firm hand. The chief rabbi, Don Moses Navarro, brought under his notice the two bulls of the popes Clement VI and Boniface IX, in which force was forbidden in converting Jews. The king immediately issued an order (July 17th, 1392) prohibiting persecutions. Wide publicity was given to the bulls in every town in Portugal, and they were inserted among the statutes of the realm. Portugal thus became an asylum for the persecuted Jews of Spain.

The Jews of the south of France were not entirely exempted from the horrors of this persecution. The tempest which had crossed the sea to the island of Majorca also whirled over the snow-capped Pyrenees, and caught up the Jews of Provence in its deadly eddies. No sooner was intelligence received of the bloody massacres of the Jews of Spain than the populace of Provence rose, and began to plunder and murder their Jewish neighbors.

The Jews in France had been permitted to settle in the country only for a specified time, and, although this term was frequently extended, their thoughts were necessarily always directed towards possible banishment. They were compelled to amass and keep in readiness sufficient money to enable them, at any moment, to start life afresh in another land. Like their ancestors in Egypt, they were ready for an exodus, their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, and their staffs in their hands. Although the acquisition of land was allowed them, they were obliged to concentrate themselves on the money business, and pursue the advantages offered by each moment. Necessity made them usurers. Some among them charged a higher rate of interest than permitted by the privileges granted them, and exacted even compound interest from dilatory debtors. But it was the king himself who forced them to immoderate, exasperating usury, by the extravagant demands he made upon their purses to meet the expenses of his wars, and the Jews could fulfill his demands only by transgressing the laws, but their exactions naturally rendered them hateful in the eyes of the general public. That Jewish creditors frequently had ill-intentioned or tardy Christian debtors imprisoned to force them to discharge their liabilities tended to increase the bitterness. The exercise of this right was regarded as a triumph of "the children of the devil over the children of heaven." The public became so angered at their possessing the privilege that the king, Charles VI, was obliged to abolish it. On the other hand, the necessity of maintaining the privilege was shown to be so imperative – the Jews being threatened with the entire loss of their outstanding debts – that the king and parliament had to grant it a month later in a modified form. They permitted the Jews to imprison only the debtors who, in their bonds, made themselves answerable with their bodies.

A trifling circumstance sufficed to kindle into a flame these embers of Jew-hatred in France. A wealthy Israelite, Denys Machault, of Villa-Parisis, became a convert to Christianity, and then suddenly disappeared. The affair became the subject of strange rumors. Some said that he had been murdered by Jews; others that he had been hurried abroad with a view to providing him with an easy means of returning to Judaism. The clergy interested themselves in the mystery, fanatical appeals were made to the people, and, eventually, the Paris tribunals prosecuted seven prominent Hebrews. A commission of priests and lawyers subjected the accused to the rack, and extorted the confession that they had advised Denys Machault to abandon his new faith. The commission condemned them to the stake as promoters of apostasy from Christianity. Parliament substituted an apparently milder punishment. It ordered the accused to be scourged in three of the public places of Paris, kept in goal until Denys Machault re-appeared, and then, stripped of all their possessions, expelled the country. From the publicity given to this affair, it created an extraordinary sensation, and still further inflamed the popular passions against the Jews.

For about three months the court extended a protecting wing over the unfortunate Jews, but soon withdrew it in face of the stormy, menacing clamor of the clergy and people. At last the enemies of the Jews prevailed upon the king to promulgate the order of banishment. Doubtless with malice aforethought the day chosen for the issue of the decree was the solemn Fast of Atonement (September 17th, 1394), when the Jews were afflicting their souls during the entire day in the synagogues. The prolonged term granted for their sojourn in the country not having expired, it became necessary to put forward an excuse for ignoring the convention. The royal decree was not able to impute to the Jews specific crimes or misdemeanors, and, consequently, confined itself to vague generalities. It had been reported to his majesty by trustworthy persons, including many of his lieutenants and other officials, that complaints had been made concerning offenses committed by the Jews against the Christian religion and the special laws drawn up for their control. That meant that they had encouraged baptized Jews to recant, and had practiced extortionate usury – the latter Charles had partly approved and partly condoned. The decree then stated that his majesty had made the irrevocable law that henceforth no Jews should be allowed to reside or tarry in any part of France, either in Languedoil or Languedoc (northern and southern France).

Thus, ninety years after their first expulsion by Philip le Bel, and after a second sojourn of thirty-four years, the French Jews were compelled once more to grasp the wanderer's staff. Charles, however, dealt more leniently with them than his heartless ancestor. They were not, as before, robbed of all their possessions, and turned adrift stripped to the skin. On the contrary, Charles VI issued orders to the prevôt of Paris and his provincial governors, instructing them to see that no harm come to the Jews, either in their persons or their chattels, and that they cross the frontier safely. Time was also allowed them up to the 3d November to collect their debts. They did not leave France until the end of 1394 or the beginning of the following year. To some of the nobility and towns the expulsion was not a welcome measure. Thus, the Count de Foix wished at all hazards to retain the community of Pamier, and had to be forced by royal officers to expel the Jews. In Toulouse twelve Jewish families, and in the vicinity seven more, remained behind, so that they must have received special indulgences. Jews also remained in the provinces not directly dependent on the French crown – in the Dauphiné, in Provence proper, and in Arles, these being fiefs of the German empire. The flourishing seaport, Marseilles, possessed a Jewish community for a long time after the expulsion. Even the popes of Avignon tolerated Jews in Avignon and Carpentras, the chief towns of their small ecclesiastical province of Venaissin; and here they remained until very recent times, using a ritual of their own, which differed from that of their Spanish and their French brethren. The papacy had now little to fear from the helpless, enfeebled Jews; hence, doubtless, this parade of toleration.

The exiles who failed to find an asylum in the tolerant principalities of France emigrated to Germany and Italy; only a few directed their steps to Spain, formerly the most hospitable refuge for persecuted Jews. Since the massacres of 1391 that country had become a purgatory to the native Jews, and so long as foreign Jews could find a shelter elsewhere, they naturally avoided its frontiers. French communities migrated in a body to Piedmont, and settled in the towns of Asti, Fossano, and Moncalvo, where they could maintain unchanged their old synagogue ritual. The fate of the larger number of the French exiles may be described in the words of Amos: "As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him." Almost everywhere they were met with a storm of barbarity, not unfrequently stirred up against them by baptized Jews. In Germany an apostate named Pessach, who, with Christianity, had adopted the name of Peter, brought serious accusations against his brethren in race, with a view to bringing about another persecution. To the usual charges that the Jews called Jesus the crucified or the hanged, and that they cursed the Christian clergy in one of their prayers, Pessach-Peter added others. He stated that an abusive allusion to Jesus was contained in the sublime Alenu prayer, which pictures the future reign of God on earth, and he made other lying and ludicrous charges. The result was that a large number of the Jews of Prague were arrested and imprisoned (August 3d, 1399). Among them was the foremost and, perhaps, only really learned German Jew of the Middle Ages, Lipmann (Tab-Yomi) of Mühlhausen, a scholar accomplished alike in Biblical and Talmudical lore, who had read not only Karaite authors, but also the New Testament in a Latin version. The clergy called upon him to answer Pessach-Peter's charges. His defense was forcible, but seems to have had little effect, for on the day Emperor Wenceslaus was deposed, and Rupert of the Palatinate elected his successor (August 22d, 1400), seventy-seven Jews were executed, and three weeks later three more led to the stake.

CHAPTER VI.

JEWISH APOSTATES AND THE DISPUTATION AT TORTOSA

The Marranos – The Satirists – Pero Ferrus of Alcala, Diego de Valencia, and Villasandino – Astruc Raimuch and Solomon Bonfed – Paul de Santa Maria and his Zealous Campaign against the Jews – Joshua Ibn-Vives – Profiat Duran (Efodi) – Meïr Alguades – The Philosophy of Crescas – Death of Henry III of Castile and Unfavorable Change in the Position of the Jews – Messianic Dreams of the Kabbalists – Jews seek an Asylum in Northern Africa – Simon Duran – Geronimo de Santa Fé, Vincent Ferrer and Benedict XIII – Anti-Jewish Edict of Juan II – Special Jewish Costume – Conversion of Jews owing to Ferrer's Violent Efforts – Disputation at Tortosa – The Jewish Spokesmen at the Conference – Incidents of the Meeting – Geronimo instigates the Publication of a Bull for the Burning of the Talmud – Pope Martin V befriends the Jews.