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

The circumstances of the time were such that the Jews of Poland were able, to a certain extent, to form an independent state within the Polish state. Several kings in succession were favorable to them, according them extensive protective privileges, and seeing, as far as their power went, that these rights were respected. After the death of the last king of the Jagellon dynasty, Sigismund Augustus (1572), the Jews of Poland profited by the elective monarchy. Each newly-elected king above all needed money, which could be supplied only by Jews; or, he needed a party among the nobles, and this order, in general devoted to the Jews, obtained a preponderating influence as compared with the narrow-minded German middle class, hostile to Jews.

After a thirteen months' interregnum, occupied by election negotiations and intrigues, the sagacious prince of Transylvania, Stephen Bathori, gained the Polish throne, not without the co-operation of the Jewish agent, Solomon Ashkenazi, for Turkey had supported his election. Not long after his accession, he sent kind messages to the Jews, protected those in Lithuania against false and calumnious accusation of the murder of Christian children, and uttered his conviction that the Jews conscientiously obeyed the Hebrew law of not shedding human blood. His reign of nearly twelve years (1575–1586) forms a happy episode in the history of the Jews in Poland. Stephen Bathori, moreover, did not allow the privileges to remain a dead letter, but preserved them in full force. He allowed Jews (in 1576) to carry on all kinds of trade without restriction, even to buy and sell on Christian holidays, desired that the murder of a Jew, like the murder of a Christian, be punished by death, and made the city magistracies responsible for riots and injuries caused by Christian mobs in synagogues, cemeteries, and at Jewish funerals. The promoters of tumultuous attacks upon Jews, which occurred chiefly in the half-German city of Posen, were to be fined ten thousand Polish marks, and the magistrate who had not done his duty in protecting Jews was to be fined a similar sum. Bathori's reign was not, however, free from libelous attacks on the Jews. Where was there at that time in Christian Europe a single country in which the enemies of the Jews did not assail them? A Polish poet, Klonowicz, poured forth his scorn of their trade, usury, and arrogance, in Latin verses; the rulers, he said, robbed the Jews, only to be robbed by them in turn.

In the long reign of Sigismund III (1587–1632), the Swedish prince whose election gave a pretext for internal dissensions and civil wars, the Polish Jews fared better than might have been expected from a pupil of the Jesuits and a zealous Catholic. Although he caused dissenting Poles to be severely persecuted, the Jews under his government were by no means unhappy. At the diet in Warsaw (1592) he confirmed the ancient privileges of Casimir, considered to be in their favor. However, Sigismund III introduced one law, very disadvantageous to Jews, and disclosing the ecclesiastical bent of his mind. He ordained that the permission of the clergy had to be gained to build new synagogues, a regulation which, of course, rendered the practice of the Jewish religion dependent on a church eager for persecution.

Under this king the Jews in Poland introduced (1586–1592) an institution which had not existed in that particular form in Jewish history. It gave the Polish communities extraordinary unity, firmness, and strength, and hence secured respect both from their members and outsiders. Hitherto it had naturally come about that, at the meeting of rabbis and heads of schools with their followers at the great fairs, important questions were discussed, law cases were settled, and general consultations took place. The utility of such meetings may have become clearly apparent, and given rise to the idea of arranging regular conferences of the heads of communities, to draw up final, binding decisions. Both leaders and communities must have been actuated by a healthy spirit in agreeing to common action. The communities of the chief provinces, Little Poland, Greater Poland, and Russia, were the first to unite in instituting conferences (Vaad) at regular intervals, to take place at the great fairs of Lublin and Jaroslaw. The communities sent delegates, learned men of proved excellence, who had a seat and a vote in the synod. They chose a president, who directed the discussion of questions, and drew up a report of the session. Disputes in the communities, questions of taxation, religious and social regulations, the averting of threatened dangers, and help to brethren in distress, were the main points treated by the synods, and settled finally. The synods also exercised a literary censorship by granting permission for certain books to be printed and sold, and refusing it in the case of others which seemed to them harmful. Probably the Lithuanian Jews were represented at a later period, and the synods were called the Synods of the Four Countries (Vaad Arba Arazoth). These conferences had a very beneficial effect: they prevented long-standing dissensions, averted or punished acts of injustice, kept alive a feeling of union amongst the communities, directing them towards common action, thereby counteracting the narrowness and selfishness of merely local interests, which so greatly encouraged the dismemberment and isolation of communities, as, for example, in Germany. On this account the synod of Polish Jews was respected even abroad; and distant German communities or private individuals who had any complaint to make, applied to these supreme assemblies, certain to obtain relief. It is to the glory of the men who, for nearly two hundred years, presided over the synods, that their names, worthy of the remembrance of posterity, remained in obscurity, as though they had consciously suppressed their individuality in favor of the community at large. Still less is known of the originators of this institution, who succeeded in the difficult task of overcoming the anarchic tendency of the people, as Jews and as Poles, and of inducing them to subordinate themselves to one great end. It is conjectured that Mordecai Jafa, a rabbi from Bohemia (born about 1532, died 1612), who made many journeys, and suffered much sorrow, was the organizer of these regular conferences. He had been compelled, in his youth, to assume the wanderer's staff. In this way he came to Venice; here he occupied himself in drawing up a religious code more convenient than that of Joseph Karo. Apparently the search made by the Inquisition for copies of the Talmud rendered his stay in Venice unpleasant, and he again betook himself to Poland. There finally he officiated as a rabbi, first in Grodno, afterwards in Lublin, from about 1575 till the spring of 1592. In Lublin, one of the great fair towns, many thousands of Jews used to meet, and there were always undecided law-suits and disputes to be settled. Mordecai Jafa may very possibly have gained from this the idea of transforming these chance synods into regular conferences and of drawing up rules for them. His authority was sufficient to gain acceptance for his proposals, which satisfied an urgent need. When he left Lublin in his old age to take up the office of rabbi at Prague, the presidency of the synod seems to have been occupied by Joshua Falk Cohen, the head of a school at Lemberg (1592–1616), whose great academy was maintained by his rich and respected father-in-law. The frequent meetings of the Reformers in Poland, the Lutherans and Unitarians, with their respective sects, seem to have served as a model for the Jewish assemblies. Only the latter did not discuss hair-splitting dogmas, like the others, but decided practical questions of daily life.

Poland and Lithuania, superficially considered, presented the spectacle of a land honeycombed with religious divisions, from which a new form of Christianity was to arise. While in Germany the reforming movement and the opposition to it was subsiding, while the Titans who stormed the gates of heaven were settling down into ordinary parsons; while the new church in its turn was entering upon a process of ossification, and, after a short season of youthful ardor, was falling into the feebleness of old age; the waves of religious and sectarian separation were only now rising in Polish countries, and threatening a general inundation. The German colonies in Poland had transplanted the Reformation with them, and the Polish nobility thought it an imperative fashion to pay homage to this anti-papal innovation. Christianity in Poland and Lithuania, be it the new or the old church, was too young to be firmly rooted; and so the Reformation, finding little opposition, gained rapid admittance among the nobles and the bourgeoisie almost to its own discomfiture. Sigismund Augustus had allowed the movement free play; indeed, under the influence of the Radziwills of Lithuania, who stood close to his throne, he almost renounced the papacy altogether. Thus Poland became a free state in the widest sense, and an arena for the new teaching of the Augustine monk of Wittenberg. Even those thinkers or enthusiasts in Italy, Switzerland, or Germany, who wished to push the religious movement, but were persecuted either by the Catholics or the Reformers, found kindly welcome and protection under the Polish nobility, who were quite independent in their own districts.

Thus arose a sect in Poland which, logically developed, might have given a fatal blow to Christianity in general. The ashes of Servetus of Aragon, burned at the stake in Geneva, the author of a treatise, "On the Errors of the Trinity," seem to have been the seed for fresh dissensions in the church. A number of his disciples, Socinus, Blandrata, and Paruta, Italians of bold intellect, who undermined the foundations of Christianity, and were outlawed by Catholics and Reformers alike, passed over the Polish frontier, and were allowed not only to live there free, but also to speak freely. The attacks of the Socinians or Pinczovinians (as this sect, which flourished in Poland, was called) were directed mainly against the Trinity as a form of polytheism. Hence they received the name of Unitarians or anti-Trinitarians. There arose a swarm of sects who met at synodic conventions to find grounds of union, but separated with still further divisions and dissensions.

Among the Unitarians, or disbelievers in the Trinity, were some who partially approached Judaism, rejecting the veneration of Jesus as a divine person. They were scoffed at by their various opponents as "Half-Jews" (semi-judaizantes). To the strictest sect of Unitarians in Poland belonged Simon Budny, of Masovia, a Calvinist priest, who founded a sect of his own, the Budnians. He died after 1584. He possessed more learning than the other founders of sects, and also had a slight knowledge of Hebrew, which he had probably learned from Jews. Simon Budny made himself famous by his simple translation of the Old and the New Testament into Polish (published at Zaslaw, 1572). His intercourse with Jews is shown by his respect for the universally despised Talmud.

Although the movement of religious reform in Poland, in spite of the frequent synods, disputations, and protests, did not penetrate very deep, it was not without effect upon the Jews. They were fond of entering into discussions with the leaders or adherents of the various sects, if not to convert them to Judaism, yet to show their own superiority in biblical knowledge. Conversations upon religion between Jews and "Dissenters" (as all Poles who had seceded from Roman Catholicism were called) were of frequent occurrence. A Unitarian, Martin Czechowic (born about 1530, died 1613), from Greater Poland, a man of confused intellect, who had passed through all the phases of the religious movements of the day, and who finally became a schismatic, rejected the baptism of infants, and maintained that a Christian could not undertake any office of state. This Martin Czechowic had written a work to refute the objections of the Jews to the Messianic claims of Jesus, and had fought against the continued obligatoriness of Judaism with old and rusty weapons. A Rabbanite Jew, Jacob of Belzyce, in Lublin (1581), wrote a refutation, so effective that Czechowic found himself compelled to justify his thesis in a rejoinder.

Isaac ben Abraham Troki, of Troki, near Wilna (born 1533, died 1594), a Karaite, engaged still more actively than Jacob of Belzyce in disputations with the adherents of Polish and Lithuanian sects. He had access to nobles, princes of the church, and other Christian circles, was deeply acquainted with the Bible, well read in the New Testament, and in the different polemical, religious writings of his day, and thus able to produce thoroughly accurate statements. Shortly before his death (1593) Isaac Troki collected the results of his religious conversations in a work that was subsequently to serve as the arsenal for destructive weapons against Christianity. He entitled his work "The Strengthening of Faith." He not merely answered the numerous attacks made upon Judaism by Christians, but carried the war into the camp of Christianity. With great skill and thorough knowledge of his subject, he brought into prominence the contradictions and untenable assertions in the Gospels and other original Christian documents. It is the only book by a Karaite author worth reading. It certainly does not contain anything specially new; all brought forward in defense of Judaism and against Christianity had been far better said by Spanish authors of a previous period, especially by the talented Profiat Duran. Yet Troki's work had more success, for books have a fate of their own. This book was translated into Spanish, Latin, German, and French, and gained still greater fame from the attacks upon it by Christians. One of the dukes of Orleans undertook to refute the onslaught of this Polish Jew upon Christianity. And when Reason, awakened and strengthened, applied the lever to shake the foundations of Christianity and demolish the whole superstructure, it was to this store-chamber that she turned for her implements.

CHAPTER XIX.

SETTLEMENT OF JEWS IN HOLLAND. – FEEBLE ATTEMPTS AT ENFRANCHISEMENT

Revival of Catholicism – Decay in European Culture – Ill-treatment of Jews in Berlin – Emperor Rudolph II of Austria – Diminution in the Numbers of Italian Jews – Pope Gregory XIII – Confiscation of Copies of the Talmud – Vigorous Attempts at the Conversion of Jews – Pope Sixtus V – The Jewish Physician, David de Pomis – Renewal of Persecution by Clement VIII – Expulsion from Various Italian States – The Censors and the Talmud – The Jews of Ferrara – Settlement of Jews in Holland – Samuel Pallache – Jacob Tirado and the Marranos in Amsterdam – Tolerant Treatment – The Poet, David Jesurun – Moses Uri – Hebrew Printing in Amsterdam.

1593–1618 C.E

The free spirit of the nations of Europe, which at the beginning of the century had taken so bold a flight, had broken the ancient bonds in which the church had long held minds captive, and cast the blight of doubt on the hitherto sacred authority of the wearer of the Roman purple – this spirit, which promised to bring the regeneration of civilized humanity and political freedom, seemed in the second half of the century to be utterly cast down. The papacy, or Catholicism, had recovered from its first feeling of terror, and collected itself. Extraordinarily strengthened by the council of Trent, it forged new chains to which the nations that had remained faithful, willingly submitted. The order of the Jesuits, restless and indefatigable champions, who not only disarmed their opponents, but even drew them over to their own ranks, had already reconquered much lost ground by their widespread plots, and had conceived new measures in order to win back with double interest what they had lost. Italy, a great part of southern Germany and the Austrian provinces, France – after long civil wars and convulsions, after the blood-stained eve of St. Bartholomew, and the murder of two kings – as also to a great extent Poland and Lithuania, had once more become Catholic, as fanatically Catholic, too, as Spain and Portugal, the blazing hells of the Inquisition. In Lutheran and reformed Germany another papacy had gained the mastery, a papacy of dry formulas of belief, and slavery to the letter of the law. The Byzantine quarrel about shadowy dogmas and meaningless words divided the evangelical communities into as many sects and subsidiary sects as there were points of discussion, and had a harmful influence upon political development. Classical philology, at first liberalizing and suggestive, was neglected, owing to excessive belief in the Bible by the one party and the sway of authority over the other, and had degenerated into fanciful dilettanteism or learned lumber. The study of the Hebrew language, which for a time had kindled great enthusiasm, was similarly debased, or only carried on superficially for the purposes of ecclesiastical wrangling. The knowledge of Hebrew had always been considered, at any rate was now thought, in orthodox Catholic society, to be actual heresy. And the same was still truer of rabbinical literature. The learned Spanish theologian, Arias Montano, published the first complete polyglot Bible in Antwerp, at the expense of Philip II. He also compiled grammars and dictionaries of the Hebrew and cognate languages, in which regard was had to the older Jewish expositors. He, the favorite of Philip II, who had himself drawn up a list of heretical books, was accused by the Jesuits and the Inquisition of favoring heresy, suspected of secret conversion to Judaism, and stigmatized as a rabbi. Thus, Europe seemed to be actually making a retrograde movement, only with this distinction – what had formerly been cheery, naïve credulity now became sinister, aggressive fanaticism.

Refined ecclesiasticism, resulting in the tension which subsequently relieved itself in the general destructiveness of the Thirty Years' War, made the sojourn of Jews, both in Catholic and Protestant countries, a continual torture. Luther's followers in Germany forgot what Luther had so earnestly uttered in their favor, only remembering the hateful things of which, in his bitterness, he had accused them. The Jews of Berlin and the province of Brandenburg, for instance, had the sad alternative put before them of being baptized or expelled. A Jewish financier, the physician Lippold, favorite of Elector Joachim II, and his right hand in his corrupt, financial schemes, examined and tortured on the rack by Joachim's successor, John George, admitted, though afterwards recanting, that he had poisoned his benefactor. The Jews were driven also out of Brunswick by Duke Henry Julius. Catholic nations and princes had no cause to reproach their Protestant opponents with toleration or humanity in regard to Jews.

It was, in some respects, fortunate for the Jews of Germany and Austria, that the reigning emperor, Rudolph II, although a pupil of the Jesuits, educated in a country where the fires of the stake were always smoking, and a deadly enemy of the Protestants, was not greatly prejudiced against Jews. Weak and vacillating, he was not able to check the persecutions directed against them, but at least he did not encourage them. He issued an edict to one bishop (of Würzburg) that the Jews should not be deprived of their privileges, and to another (of Passau) that they should not be tortured on the rack. But, in order not to be decried by his contemporaries or by posterity as a benefactor of Jews, he not only maintained the heavy taxation of Jews in his crown land, Bohemia, but from time to time increased it. He also ordered the Jews to be expelled from the archduchy of Austria within six months.

In this position, robbed by Catholics and Lutherans alike, trampled down or driven into misery, barely protected by the emperor, but taxed under the pretense of enjoying this protection, the ruin and degradation of German Jews reached ever lower depths. They were so sorely troubled by the cares of the moment, that they neglected the study of the Talmud, once their spiritual food.

The Jews of Italy fared even worse at this time, and they, too, sank into misery and decay. Italy was the principal seat of the malicious and inexorable, ecclesiastical reaction, animated with the thought to annihilate the opponents of Catholicism from the face of the earth. The torch of civil war was hurled from the Vatican into Germany, France, and the Netherlands. And as the Jews, from the time of Paul IV and Pius V, had been upon the list of heretics, or foes of the church, their lot was not to be envied. With the loss of their independence, their numbers also decreased. There were no Jews living in southern Italy. In northern Italy, the largest communities, those of Venice and Rome, numbered only between 1,000 and 2,000 souls; the community in Mantua had only 1,844; and in the whole of the district of Cremona, Lodi, Pavia, Alessandria, and Casalmaggiore, there dwelt only 889 Jews. Pius V, by nature a sinister ecclesiastic delighting in persecution, who treated Jews as the cursed children of Ham, was succeeded by Gregory XIII (1572–1585), who had been skillfully trained to fanaticism by the Jesuits and the Theatine monks. As regards Jews, Gregory was a most consistent follower of the cruelty of his predecessor. In spite of repeated warnings, there were still many Christians in Italy, who, in their blindness, preferred Jewish physicians of proved excellence, such as David de Pomis, or Elias Montalto, to Christian charlatans. Gregory was desirous of prohibiting their employment. He renewed the old canonical law that Christian patients were not to be treated by Jewish physicians; not only visiting Christians who transgressed this command with severe penalties, but also punishing the Jewish physicians if they ventured to prolong the life of a Christian patient, or even alleviate his sufferings. His severity succeeded. Another of Gregory's edicts referred not to one profession, but to the Jewish race in general. He placed them under the Argus eye of the Inquisition. If any of them maintained or taught what was heretical, i. e., obnoxious to the church; if he held intercourse with a heretic or an apostate, helped him or showed him sympathy, he was to be summoned by the Inquisition, and according to its verdict was to be condemned to confiscation of his property, the punishment of the galleys, or even sentenced to death. If, then, a refugee Marrano from Spain or Portugal was caught in Italy, and it was proved that a brother Jew had given him food or shelter, both might expect to be seized by the inexorable arm of the Inquisition of Italy. The anger of Pope Gregory XIII was poured forth also against the Talmud. The Jews were once more admonished to deliver up the Talmud and other works suspected of being hostile to the church. The Inquisitors and other spiritual authorities were appointed to institute search for these books everywhere. Anyone subsequently found in possession of them, even after declaring that the offending passages had been expunged, was rendered liable to severe punishment. Pope Gregory XIII's most zealous effort was directed to the conversion of Jews. This pope, who most heartily encouraged the Jesuits and their proselytizing school of thought, endowed a propagandist seminary of all nations – the curriculum included twenty-five languages – called the "Collegium Germanicum," issued a decree that on Sabbaths and holy days Christian preachers should deliver discourses upon Christian doctrine in the synagogues, if possible in Hebrew, and that Jews of both sexes, over twelve years of age, at least a third of the community, must attend these sermons. The Catholic princes were exhorted to support this vigorous attempt at conversion. Thus an ordinance of a half-mad, schismatic pope, Benedict XIII, issued in a moment of passionate excitement, was sanctioned, and even exaggerated in cold blood by the head of the united Catholic church, thereby exercising religious compulsion not very different from the act of Antiochus Epiphanes in dedicating the Temple of the one true God to Jupiter. It is characteristic of the views then prevailing, that the Jews were to provide salaries for the preachers, in return for the violence done their consciences! Like his predecessor, Pius V, Gregory spared no means to win over the Jews. Many allowed themselves to be converted either from fear or for their advantage; for Gregory's edicts did not remain a dead letter, but were carried out with all strictness and severity. The consequence was that many Jews left Rome.

The condition of the Jews in Rome was apparently altered under Gregory's successor, Sixtus V (1585–1590), who rose from the position of a swine-herd to the office of the shepherd of Catholic Christendom, and whose dauntless energy in the government of the Papal States stamped him as an original type of character. He allowed Jews to be around him, and harbored Lopez, a Jewish refugee from Portugal, who made various suggestions as to the improvement of the finances. He went still further; he issued a bull (October 22d, 1586), which did away with almost all the restrictions made by his predecessors. Sixtus not merely granted Jews permission to dwell in all the cities of the Papal States, but also allowed them to have intercourse with Christians and employ them as assistants in business. He protected their religious freedom by special provisions, and extended to them an amnesty for past offenses, i. e., for condemnations on account of the possession of religious books. Moreover, he forbade the Knights of Malta to make slaves of Jews traveling by sea from Europe to the Levant, or vice versâ, a practice to which these consecrated champions of God had hitherto been addicted. Pope Sixtus knew how to secure obedience to his command when it became law, and the Jews previously expelled now returned to the papal dominions. Under him the Jewish community at Rome numbered two hundred members. Finally he removed the prohibition which prevented Jewish physicians from attending Christian patients. The compulsory services instituted by his predecessor were the only ordinances that Sixtus V allowed to remain.