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

In Bavaria and Suabia, persecution was also rife, and the communities of Augsburg, Würzburg, Munich, and many others succumbed. The Jews of Nuremberg, through its extensive commerce, possessed great riches and grand houses, and were the especial objects of dislike to the Christians. Their destruction was so imminent that Emperor Charles IV freed the council from responsibility if they should be injured against its wish.

At length their fate was fulfilled. On a spot afterwards called Judenbühl (Jews' hill), the followers of the religion of love erected a pile, and all those who had not emigrated were burnt or killed. The council of Ratisbon did its utmost to save the community, the oldest in the south of Germany. For here also the mob demanded the annihilation or banishment of the Jews. The dukes of Bavaria, the sons of Emperor Louis, who favored the persecution of the Jews, had given the people permission in writing to "treat the Jews as they liked, according to honor or necessity, and banish them with or without justice." Margrave Louis of Brandenburg, son of Emperor Louis, one of the partisans of the rival emperor, Gunther of Schwarzburg, showed his religious feeling by giving orders to burn all the Jews of Königsberg (in Neumark), and to confiscate their goods. So inhuman were people in those days that the executioner boasted of his deed, and gave documentary evidence that Margrave Louis had commanded the Jews to be burnt. In North Germany there lived but few Jews, except in Magdeburg, but there, too, they were burnt or banished. In Hanover (in 1349) the flagellants were rampant. Outside of Germany, amongst the nations still uncivilized, there were comparatively few persecutions. Louis, King of Hungary, an enthusiast for his faith, drove the Jews out of his land, not as poisoners, but as infidels, who opposed his scheme of conversion, although he had given them equal rights with the Christians and privileges besides. The Hungarian Jews who remained true to their faith emigrated to Austria and Bohemia. In Poland, where the pestilence also raged, the Jews suffered but slight persecution, for they were favored by King Casimir the Great. At the request of some Jews who had rendered services to him, the king, after his ascent upon the throne (October 9th, 1334) confirmed the laws enacted nearly a century before by Boleslav Pius, duke of Kalish, or rather by Frederick the Valiant, archduke of Austria, and accepted by the king of Hungary and various Polish princes. Holding good only in the dukedom of Kalish and Great Poland, they were extended by Casimir to the whole of the Polish empire. Thirteen years later, Casimir altered the laws by which the Jews were permitted to lend money at interest, but we must not deduce that he was inimical to the Jews, for he expressly states that he made this limitation only at the request of the nobility. In the years of the pestilence, too, Casimir appears to have protected the Jews against the outbreaks of the misguided multitude, for the accusation of the poisoning of wells by the Jews had traveled from Germany across the Polish frontier, and had roused the populace against them. Massacres occurred in Kalish, Cracow, Glogau, and other cities, especially on the German frontier. If the number of Jews stated to have been killed in Poland (10,000) be correct, it bears no relation to the enormous multitudes who fell as victims in Germany. Later (1356) Casimir is said to have taken a beautiful Jewish mistress named Esther (Esterka), who bore him two sons (Niemerz and Pelka) and two daughters. The latter are said to have remained Jewesses. In consequence of his love to Esther, the king of Poland is supposed to have bestowed special favors and privileges on some Jews, probably Esther's relations. But the records, handed down by untrustworthy witnesses, cannot be implicitly believed.

At all events, the Jews of Poland fared better than those of Germany, seeing that they were placed on an equality, if not with the Roman Catholics, yet with the Ruthenians, Saracens, and Tartars. The Jews were permitted to wear the national costume and gold chains and swords, like the knights, and were eligible for military service.

As on the eastern frontier of Germany, the Jews on the western side, in Belgium, were also persecuted at the period of the Black Death. In Brussels a wealthy Jew stood in great favor with the duke of Brabant, John II. When the flagellants came, and the death of his co-religionists was imminent, this Jew entreated his patron to accord them his protection, which John willingly promised. But the enemies of the Jews had foreseen this, and ensured immunity from punishment through the duke's son. They attacked the Jews of Brussels, dragged them into the streets, and killed all – about 500.

In Spain, the congregations of Catalonia, which, after those of Provence, supplied the first victims, conceived a plan to prevent the outrages of fanaticism. They determined to establish a common fund in support of their people who should become destitute through a mob or persecution. They were to choose deputies to entreat the king (Don Pedro IV) to prevent the recurrence of such scenes of horror. Other concessions were to be sought, but the plan was never carried into effect, owing to delay on the part of the Jews of Aragon, and also probably because too much was expected of the king. The Jews under Aragonian rule were still behind those in the kingdom of Castile.

In Castile also the Black Death had held its gruesome revelries; but here the population, more intelligent than elsewhere, did not dream of holding the Jews responsible for its ravages. In Toledo and Seville the plague snatched away many respected members of the community, particularly from the families of Abulafia, Asheri, and Ibn-Shoshan. The grief of the survivors is vividly depicted in such of the tombstone inscriptions of the Toledo Jewish cemetery as have come down to us. King Alfonso XI was amongst the victims of the insidious plague, but not even a whisper charged the Jews with responsibility for his death. During the reign of Don Pedro (1350–1369), Alfonso's son and successor, the influence of the Castilian Jews reached a height never before attained. It was the last luster of their splendid career in Spain, soon to be shrouded in dark eventide shadows. The young king, only fifteen years of age when called to the throne, was early branded by his numerous enemies with the name of "Pedro the Cruel." His favors to the Jews had a share in procuring him this nickname, although he was not more cruel than many of his predecessors and successors. Don Pedro was a child of nature with all the good and the bad qualities implied; he would not submit to the restrictions of court etiquette, nor allow himself to be controlled by political considerations. Through the duplicity and faithlessness of his bastard brothers, sons of Alfonso's mistress, Leonora de Guzman – the same who had unconsciously saved the Jews from imminent destruction – the king was provoked to sanguinary retaliation. The instinct of self-preservation, the maintenance of his royal dignity, filial affection, and attachment to an early love, had more to do with his reckless, bloody deeds than inherent cruelty and vengeance. The young king, destined to come to so sad an end, involving the Castilian Jews in his fall, was from the beginning of his reign surrounded by tragic circumstances. His mother, the Portuguese Infanta Donna Maria, had been humiliated and deeply mortified by her husband at the instigation of his mistress, Leonora de Guzman. Don Pedro himself had been neglected for his bastard brothers, and particularly for his elder half-brother, Henry de Trastamara. The first important duty of his reign, then, was to obtain justice for his humiliated mother, and degrade the rival who had caused her so much misery. That he tolerated his bastard brothers is a proof that he was not of a cruel disposition. His severity was felt more by the grandees and hidalgos, who trampled on justice and humanity, and ill-treated the people with cavalier arrogance. Only in these circles Don Pedro had bitter enemies, not amongst the lower orders, which, when not misled, remained faithful to him to death. The Jews also were attached to him. They risked property and life for their patriotism, because he protected them against injustice and oppression, and did not treat them as outcasts. The Jews certainly suffered much through him, not in the character of patient victims, as in Germany and France, but as zealous partisans and fellow combatants, who shared the overthrow of their leader with his Christian followers.

Shortly after Don Pedro had ascended the throne, when the grief caused by the death of King Alfonso XI was still fresh, a venerable Jewish poet ventured to address to the new monarch words of advice in well-balanced Spanish verses. This poet, Santob (Shem Tob) de Carrion, from the northern Spanish town of that name (about 1300–1350), a member of a large community, has been entirely neglected in Jewish literature. Christian writers have preserved his memory and his verses. Santob's (or as abbreviated, Santo's) poetical legacy deserves to be treasured. His verses flow soft and clear as the ripples of an unsullied spring, dancing with silvery brightness out of its rocky hollow. He had not only thoroughly mastered the sonorous periods of the Spanish language, at that time in a transition state between tenderness and vigor, but had enriched it. Santob embodied the practical wisdom of his time in beautiful strophes. His "Counsels and Lessons," addressed to Don Pedro, have the character of proverbs and apothegms. He drew upon the unfailing wealth of maxims of the Talmud and later Hebrew poets for his verse, and the sweetness of his poetry was derived from various sources.

Santob's verses are not always of this gentle, uncontroversial character. He did not hesitate to speak sternly to those of his co-religionists who had become wealthy by the king's bounty, and he denounced the prejudice with which Spanish Christians regarded whatever was of Jewish origin. Even to the young king he was in the habit of indulging in a certain amount of plain speaking; and in his stanzas, more than 600 in number, he often drew for his majesty's benefit suggestive pictures of virtue and vice. He reminded the king, too, of promises made to Santob by his father, and bade him fulfill them. From this it would appear that our Jewish troubadour, who wooed the muse so successfully, was not a favorite of fortune. Little, however, is known of him beyond his verses, and we have no knowledge of the reception which his representations met at the hands of Don Pedro.

To other prominent Jews the king's favor was unbounded. Don Juan Alfonso de Albuquerque, his tutor and all-powerful minister, recommended for the post of minister of finance a Jew who had rendered him great services, and the king appointed Don Samuel ben Meïr Allavi, a member of the leading family of Toledo, the Abulafia-Halevis, to a state situation of trust, in defiance of the decision of the cortes that Jews should no longer be eligible. Samuel Abulafia not only became treasurer-in-chief (Tesoreo mayor), but also the king's confidential adviser (privado), who had a voice in all important consultations and decisions. Two inscriptions referring to Don Samuel, one written during his lifetime, the other after his death, describe him as noble and handsome, instinct with religious feeling, a benevolent man, "who never swerved from the path of God, nor could he be reproached with a fault."

Another Jew who figured at Don Pedro's court was Abraham Ibn-Zarzal, the king's physician and astrologer. Don Pedro was, indeed, so surrounded by Jews, that his enemies reproached his court for its Jewish character. Whether the protection he extended to his Jewish subjects was due to the influence of these Jewish favorites or to his own impulses is unknown. On opening for the first time the cortes of Valladolid (May, 1351), he was presented with a petition, praying him to abolish the judicial autonomy enjoyed by the Jewish communities and their right to appoint their own Alcaldes; he replied that the Jews, being numerically a feeble people, required special protection. From Christian judges they would not obtain justice, or their cases would be delayed.

Whilst the relatives of the young king were intriguing to arrange a marriage between him and Blanche, daughter of the French Duc de Bourbon, he fell in love with Maria de Padilla, a clever, beautiful lady of a noble Spanish family. It is said that he was formally married to her in the presence of witnesses. At any rate, he caused the marriage proposals to Blanche to be withdrawn; but the Bourbon princess, either of her own accord, or at the instance of her ambitious relatives, insisted on coming to Spain to assume the diadem. Her resolve brought only sorrow to herself and misfortune to the country. The nearest relatives of the king strained every nerve to procure the celebration of the marriage, and in this they succeeded; but Don Pedro remained with his bride only two days. The result of this state of things was that to the old parties in the state another was added, some grandees taking part with the deserted queen, others with Maria de Padilla. To the latter belonged Samuel Abulafia and the Jews of Spain. The reason assigned was that Blanche, having observed with displeasure the influence possessed by Samuel and other Jews at her husband's court, and the honors and distinctions enjoyed by them, had made the firm resolve, which she even commenced to put into execution, to compass the fall of the more prominent Jews, and obtain the banishment of the whole of the Jewish population from Spain. She made no secret of her aversion to the Jews, but, on the contrary, expressed it openly. For this reason, it is stated, the Jewish courtiers took up a position of antagonism to the queen, and, on their part, lost no opportunity of increasing Don Pedro's dislike for her. If Blanche de Bourbon really fostered such anti-Jewish feelings, and circumstances certainly seem to bear out this view, then the Jews were compelled in self-defense to prevent the queen from acquiring any ascendency, declare themselves for the Padilla party, and support it with all the means in their power. Dissension and civil war grew out of this unhappy relation of the king to his scarcely recognized consort. Albuquerque, who was first opposed to the queen, and then permitted himself to be won over to her side, fell into disgrace, and Samuel Abulafia succeeded him as the most trusted of the king's counselors. Whenever the court moved, Samuel, with other eminent grandees, was in attendance on the king.

One day Don Pedro's enemies, at their head his bastard brothers, succeeded in decoying him, with a few of his followers, into the fortress of Toro. His companions, among whom was Samuel Abulafia, were thrown into prison, and the king himself was placed under restraint (1354). Whilst a few of the loyal grandees and even the Grand Master of Calatrava were executed by the conspirators, the favorite Samuel was, strange to say, spared. Later on he succeeded in escaping with the king. Having shared his royal master's misfortune, he rose still higher in his favor, and the esteem in which he was held by the king was largely increased by his successful administration of the finances, which he had managed so as to accumulate a large reserve, of which few of Don Pedro's predecessors had been able to boast. The treacherous seizure of the king at Toro formed a turning point in his reign. Out of it grew a fierce civil war in Castile, which Don Pedro carried on with great cruelty. In this, however, the Jewish courtiers had no hand; even the enemies of the Jews do not charge the Jewish minister with any responsibility for Don Pedro's excesses. The bastard brothers and their adherents endeavored to seize the chief town, Toledo. Here Don Pedro had numerous partisans, amongst them the whole of the Jewish community, and they contested the entrance of the brothers. One of the gates was, however, secretly opened to them by their friends, and they immediately attacked the quarters in which the Jews lived in large numbers. In Alcana street they put to the sword nearly 12,000 people, men and women, old and young. But in the inner town they failed to make any impression, the Jews having barricaded the gates and manned the walls, together with several noblemen belonging to the king's party (May, 1355). A few days later Don Pedro entered Toledo. By his adherents in the city he was received with enthusiasm, but he dealt out severe retribution to all who had assisted his brothers.

Samuel Abulafia, by the wisdom of his counsels, his able financial administration, and his zeal for the cause of Maria de Padilla, continued to rise in the favor of the king. His power was greater than that of the grandees of the realm. His wealth was princely, and eighty black slaves served in his palace. He seems to have lacked the generosity which would have suggested employing some portion of his power and prosperity for the permanent benefit of his race and religion. He certainly "sought to promote the welfare of his people," as an inscription tells us; but he failed to understand in what this welfare consisted. Against injustice and animosity he protected his brethren, promoted a few to state employment, and gave them opportunities for enriching themselves, but he was far from being what Chasdaï Ibn-Shaprut and Samuel Ibn-Nagrela had been to their co-religionists. Samuel Abulafia appears to have had little sympathy with intellectual aspirations, or with the promotion of Jewish science and poetic literature. He built synagogues for several of the Castilian communities, and one of especial magnificence at Toledo, but not a single establishment for the promotion of Talmudic study.

The Abulafia synagogue at Toledo which, transformed into a church, is still one of the ornaments of the town, was, like most of the Spanish churches of that period, built partly in the Gothic, partly in the Moorish style. It consisted of several naves separated from each other by columns and arches. The upper part of the walls is decorated with delicately cut arabesques, within which, in white characters on a green ground, the eightieth Psalm may be read in Hebrew. On the north and south sides are inscriptions in bas-relief, reciting the merits of Prince Samuel Levi ben Meïr. The community offers up its thanks to God, "who has not withdrawn His favor from His people, and raised up men to rescue them from the hands of their enemies. Even though there be no longer a king in Israel, God has permitted one of His people to find favor in the eyes of the king, Don Pedro, who has raised him above the mighty, appointed him a councilor of his realm, and invested him with almost royal dignities." The name of Don Pedro appears in large and prominent letters, suggesting that this prince, in intimate relations with the Jews, belonged, one may say, to the synagogue. In conclusion, the wish is expressed that Samuel may survive the rebuilding of the Temple, and officiate there with his sons as chiefs of the people.

This large and splendid synagogue was completed in the year 1357. For the following year the beginning of the Messianic period had been predicted, a century before, by the astronomer Abraham ben Chiya and the rabbi and Kabbalist Nachmani, and, a few decades before, by the philosopher Leon de Bagnols. As this prophecy was not literally fulfilled, many Jews began to regard the eminence attained by Samuel and other leading Jews as a suggestion of the scepter of Judah. It was a dangerous aberration, whose pitfalls were fully appreciated by Nissim Gerundi ben Reuben (about 1340–1380), rabbi of Barcelona, the most important rabbinical authority of his day. Justly fearing that the belief in the coming of a Messiah would suffer discredit by the non-fulfillment of such prophecies, he preached against the calculation of the end of the world from expressions in the book of Daniel.

Don Samuel exercised too decided an influence over the king to avoid making enemies. Even had he been a Christian, the court party would have devised schemes to bring about his fall. Attempts were made to stir up the Castilian population against the Jews, particularly against the Jewish minister, not only by Don Pedro's bastard brother, Don Henry, and Queen Blanche, but by all formerly in the king's service. Don Pedro Lopez de Ayala, poet, chronicler, and the king's standard-bearer, has given us, in one of his poems, a picture of the feelings of the courtiers for favored Jews: "They suck the blood of the afflicted people; they lap up their possessions with their tax-farming. Don Abraham and Don Samuel, with lips as sweet as honey, obtain from the king whatever they ask." Samuel's fall was desired by many. It is even said that some Toledo Jews, envious of his good fortune, charged him with having accumulated his enormous wealth at his royal master's expense. Don Pedro confiscated Samuel's entire fortune and that of his relatives, 170,900 doubloons, 4,000 silver marks, 125 chests of cloth of gold and silver and 80 slaves from the minister, and 60,000 doubloons from his relatives. According to some writers, an extraordinary quantity of gold and silver was found buried under Samuel's house. Don Pedro ordered his former favorite to be imprisoned at Toledo and placed upon the rack at Seville, in order to force him to disclose further treasures. He, however, remained firm, revealed nothing, and succumbed under the torture (October or November, 1360). His gravestone recites in simple phrase how high his position had been, and how his soul, purified by torture, had risen to God. Concerning Don Pedro, the inscription has not a single condemnatory expression.

Samuel Abulafia's death did not change the friendly relations between the king and the Jews. They remained faithful to him, and he continued to confer important distinctions on members of their body. They consequently came in for a share of the hatred with which the enemies of the king regarded him. The king resolved to put to death his detested consort (1361). Whatever the character of the queen, whether she was a saint or the reverse, whether or not she had deserved her fate, the method of her death must ever remain a stain on Don Pedro's memory. In spite of the animosity with which De Ayala regarded the Jews, there is no intimation in his chronicle that any of Don Pedro's Jewish favorites were concerned in this crime. It was reserved for a later period to invent fables identifying them with the king's guilt. A story was forged to the effect that a Jew had administered poison to the queen on the king's order, because she had insisted on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. A French romance, in which an endeavor is made to varnish the deeds and misdeeds of the French adventurers who fought against Don Pedro and the Jews, attributes the queen's death to a Jewish hand.

Don Pedro announced publicly, before the assembled cortes at Seville, that his marriage with Blanche of Bourbon had been illegal, inasmuch as he had been previously married to Maria de Padilla. He called witnesses, among them a few of the clergy, and these confirmed his statement on oath. Through the murder of Blanche, and its consequences, an opportunity offered itself to Don Henry de Trastamara to obtain allies for the dethronement of the king, and of this he was not slow to avail himself. The Bourbons in France and the king promised him aid, and allowed him to enlist the wild lances of the so-called great or white company, who, at the conclusion of the war with England, were rendering France insecure. The pope, displeased at the favors shown by Don Pedro to the Jews, also supported Don Henry, and placed the king of Spain under the ban.

To invest his rebellion with a tinge of legality and win the feelings of the people, Don Henry blackened his brother's character, picturing him as an outcast who had forfeited the crown because he had allowed his states to be governed by Jews, and had himself become attached to them and their religion. Don Henry carried his calumnies so far as to state that not only his mistress, Maria de Padilla, was a Jewess, but that Don Pedro himself was of Jewish extraction.

With the mercenaries of the "white company," graceless banditti, Henry crossed the Pyrenees to make war on and, if possible, depose his brother. At the head of these French and English outlaws stood the foremost warrior of his time, the hero and knight-errant, Bertrand du Guesclin (Claquin), celebrated for his deeds of daring, his ugliness, and his eccentricity, who, like the Cid, has been glorified by legend. The Jews consistently cast in their fortunes with those of the Don Pedro party, and supported it with their money and their blood. They flocked to its standard in the field, and garrisoned the towns against the onslaughts of Don Henry and Du Guesclin. The wild mercenaries to whom they were opposed avenged themselves not only on the Jewish soldiers, but also on those who had not borne arms.