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 PRINCETON, N. J 
 
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TWELVE CENTURIES 
 
 A brief outline oj the 
 
 Sufferings of the Hebrew race in Christian lands, together 
 with some account of the different 
 laws and specific restrictions under which they have, 
 at various times, been placed. 
 
 OFT HUMILIATED: NEVER UNHALLOWED, 
 
 Gustav Pearlson. 
 
 HULL: 
 
 James Lightowler, Albion Press, 32, Scale Lane. 
 
 1898. 
 
I 
 
 “ Not a single Christian people has kept itself clear from the reproach 
 of inhumanity to the Jews: to afflict them has been held a merit. The 
 times when religion has been most rife and the conscience most sensitive 
 have witnessed their sharpest scourgings,- Men and women, chivalrous, 
 and saintly, have denounced and wrung the Jew, almost in proportion to 
 their chivalry and sanctity, and this has endured almost to the present 
 hour. Richard Coeur de Lion, St. Louis of France, Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, Luther, Savanarola, Maria Theresa: yet how great is the debt of 
 civilization to these men so cruelly hounded ! ” 
 
 Prof. Hosmer, “ The Jews," jp. 139 , 140. 
 
 t 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 “ Ah me ! my words but demonstrate the poor 
 Rude soul of me thus daring to discourse, 
 
 So lowly in the presence of such greatness ; 
 
 But the great cause will justify my speech, 
 
 And put to silence all who dare suppose 
 My boldness will offend.” 
 
 “ Cervantes , in Trato del Argel." 
 
 The Jew of to-day occupies a position in the eyes of Europe perhaps 
 unique in history; at no time has a class been submitted to such a fierce and 
 searching examination. The attention of every grade of society is directed 
 towards him and he is rapidly becoming a cynosure of observation from all 
 sides. His ideals, habits, customs, traits, virtues, foibles, and defects are 
 being loudly discussed and various conclusions are arrived at. Metaphysicians, 
 sociologists, and thinkers are sinking the probe of inquiry deeply into the 
 causes which lead a people to isolate itself behind a cold, uninviting and 
 inaccessible barrier. Jewish separatism, it is contended, is a psychological 
 condition in diametrical opposition to the received iconoclastic tendencies of 
 the times ; a social enigma. Re-adjustment, assimilation, toleration, enforced 
 separatism, total extirpation are all among the antithetical anodynes prescribed. 
 It is viewed by many as an inexplicable phenomenon, an undesirable survival 
 of the Dark Ages, that a hounded and homeless race of martyrs who have for 
 nineteen centuries been the plaything of the winds should desire to preserve 
 their identity unimpaired. Of widely diverse nature are the theories of the 
 leaders of human thought anent the Jews ; whilst some ascribe to them every 
 flagrant vice and imperfection, and assert that they must inevitably be swamped 
 away by the surging tides of materialism and scepticism, others loudly impeach 
 Society, Christianity, Religion, for their cruel intolerance and suggest a 
 rapprochement. Should the Jew merge his identity into that of other 
 peoples ? Is he to be tolerated ? Has he a case against Society ? Is he to be 
 allowed to maintain his position of racial solidarity unimpugned ? Should 
 public opinion endeavour to divorce him from his past ? Is it in the best 
 interests of a state that a body of men, whose union is supernational and inter¬ 
 penetrates mankind, should preserve intact an organization which places the 
 considerations of its members before those of the governments in which they 
 reside ? Is their position defensible ? Is our own position defensible are but 
 a few of the numerous queries of varying accuracy which Europe is asking 
 itself. 
 
 Under these circumstances the phase of the case which I am about to 
 present should entitle me to a fair and patient hearing. I have no desire to 
 fashion or control opinion, and I do not consider it fair to gain a point by a 
 bare appeal to the emotions other than those which must spring up in the 
 reader’s own breast; but as a son of Israel and one anxious to subserve the 
 higher ideals of my race, I hold that I am committing no culpable act in 
 appearing before the bar of justice and submitting an authenticated statement 
 of bygone events which, I have reason to think, will answer the questions, 
 “ Whether the Jew shall preserve or surrender his national and theological 
 identity ? Is his past sufficiently glorious for him to indissolubly bind him- 
 
iv. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 self to it ? Has Christendom done her duty to him ? Has she been lavish of 
 her choicest gifts ? ” The thinkers of to-day stand between the past and the 
 future ; upon their decision depends much of the history of the present 
 century. To these I address myself. To these I say “you have hitherto 
 ignored the position that the unjust sufferings of a class or a clan can cause it 
 to weld itself into a closely cohering body ; once it has bound itself together by 
 ties of tender love and mournful sympathy, it ought not to hastily loosen 
 the bond which connects them with their ancestors, mitigates their sorrows, 
 and renders them tolerable, until the primary causes of them are to be for 
 ever eradicated. Such an assurance the Jew cannot receive ; if it were even 
 possible to give it, he would necessarily be very cautious in accepting it and 
 creeping out of the hard and impenetrable tortoise shell of tradition in which 
 he has encased himself.” Another word of vindiction! A community is a 
 number of units branded together for the better protection of the rights of the 
 individual; a state is formed with the same object in view, for the recognition 
 of the natural privileges of its members and the power of assuring them The 
 Jews are now an extra-national body and their close adhesion is better 
 calculated to serve their interests lest they be overcome in detail. 
 
 But my work is not an attempt at a solution, or a vindication of the Jewish 
 question. It is the outcome of the constant reflections of a Jew who realizes 
 (alas ! too clearly) what has been gradually dawning upon him since he first 
 pondered over the bitter and tear-stained chronicles that relate the dispersion 
 of his nation and the sequential misfortunes which overtook its members The 
 horrors of its past are realized in their fullest force and its future is regarded 
 with grave apprehension, for the Jew has been taught—too oft—that the lull 
 before the storm, has, in his history at least, been no misapplied term, and 
 temporary though prolonged—tranquility has ever been but as a prelude to 
 the most sanguinary calamities that have befallen him. He knows that 
 though he in one country enjoys immunity from the inhuman treatment meted 
 out to him in the Middle Ages, in another the sword of Damocles hangs over 
 his head. 
 
 My work is the wail, the dirge, the threnody of one whose highest ideals are 
 fully defined by the words “Jewish Patriot,” of one whose greatest flight of 
 ambition is to merit that glorious designation; such a one now wanders 
 through the crypts of history and mourns over the tombs of his martyred 
 fathers. 
 
 My work is the feeble voice of an Israelite whose burning and unquenchable 
 resolution is to imbue, in however small a degree, the unprejudiced thinkers, 
 those who applaud unflinching heroism in the face of the most calamitous 
 issues, those who admire intrepid courage in the face of the direst straits of 
 misery and unwavering determination when tested by the bitterest trials, those 
 who love nobility of character and single-mindedness of purpose, those who 
 love fearless and resolute resistance, when offered by a handful of heroes to an 
 infuriated and execrating mob, with an appreciation of—or at least, sympathy 
 P arent of reli gi°n, who in mediaeval ages became the detested step- 
 clnld of Europe. If I but succeed in causing these to acquire sentiments of 
 admiration for the superh heroism of the Jew, I have been amply rewarded 
 for my lucubrations ; for the cousummation I seek, is to arouse the regard of 
 all right thinking men for the Jews and their brilliant history. What a 
 history ! What an unbroken record of nineteen centuries of glory ! What 
 alternations of splendour and misery! Stately palaces by the Guadalquivir and 
 wretched hovels by the Rhine: Velvet and Brocades, Silks and resplendent 
 Jewels by the Tagus, Rags and Jew Badges by the Tiber. Who indeed can but 
 admire a nations’ story, many decades of which contain incidents before which 
 
 10 I 1 ? , c * ee< ^ s wrought in a century of Greek or Roman history are as 
 naught! J 
 
 I have given a very brief—though I trust succinct—account of the principal 
 sufferings of the Jews during the past twelve centuries. I have not attempted 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 v. 
 
 to do more: had I even desired to, it would have been impossible in the 
 compass of a single volume. It would require many tomes to faithfully 
 recount their pertinacity in refusing to divorce themselves from their 
 allegiance to that ancient and historic brotherhood, for the glory of which they 
 preferred to die. Dr. Jortin says, “ An account of the Jews who have been 
 plundered, sent naked into banishment, starved to death, tortured, left to 
 perish in prisons, hanged and burned by Christians, would fill many large 
 volumes.” 
 
 A record of Jewish steadfastness, matchless heroism, and fearless defiance 
 of death would, without doubt, rank foremost in the most illustrious chronicles 
 in the annals of the human race. No nation has ever produced such an 
 innumerable phalanx of martyrs nor has any race ever been subjected to such 
 an unabated and merciless course of persecution. The very words of religious 
 teachers, even of founders of creeds, have been construed into commands to 
 hound the Jew, to oppress him having been in all ages considered one of the 
 primal purposes of religion. In proof of this it must be borne in mind that it 
 was during periods of great religious revulsion his sufferings were the most 
 acute. “ When the nations were aroused to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from 
 dishonour, when the Cathedrals were raising gushes of devotion from the 
 popular heart, fixed in stone to stand for centuries, it was precisely then that 
 the faggots were heaped highest and the sword was the most merciless.” 1 To 
 do such a theme even a minute portion of the justice that, both its singular 
 import and undeniable moment condign, would require a much more trenchant 
 pen than mine. 
 
 Would that I could sing the sweetest paean of praise, recite the most 
 beautiful lay or the most glowing panegyric upon the unflagging and immens- 
 urate nobility.of these “ heroes of men.” Had I the tongue of a Cicero or the 
 pen of a Horace, were my words as sweet as the music of an ZBaolian harp, 
 could I, like the fabled Amphion, raise walls to Thebes with the music of my' 
 lyre, then could I express but an infinitesimal fraction of the towering admira¬ 
 tion with which these “ Kings of Martyrs ” fill my mind : alas ! I have but the 
 pen of an idealist with which to describe my love for the mute witnesses of 
 human falsity and ingratitude. 
 
 I have commenced my records from the beginning of the seventh century— 
 a time when Europe was gradually emancipating herself from the tyranny and 
 after-throes of Roman despotism. Were I to have dwelt upon events anterior 
 to this, it would be almost tantamount to chronicling the crimes of that 
 Empire against the Jews, that task I have reserved for a future volume in 
 which I shall endeavour to show the Jew under Greek, Roman, Persian and 
 Mohammedan rule. 
 
 Now that Zionism, the social question of the day and the possible solution 
 of the Jewish question, is being eagerly mooted in every part of Europe, the 
 time is propitious.for a word on behalf of the much maligned, but little under 
 stood, Jew. He needs a friend. Though Raymund de Penjaforte is no more, 
 he has emulous followers in Drumont and Pastor Deckert: if John of Capistrano' 
 no longer incites the mob to frenzy Dr. Stocker and Rector Ahlwardt perform 
 that duty. Has the Hebrew benefited because he has exchanged Dr. Eck for 
 Dr. Lueger ? and if the Canons of the Lateral! Council are now obsolete did 
 they harass him more than the monstrous “ May Laws ” or the decrees of the 
 “ Holy Synod ? ” 
 
 The trend of modern thought is for giving the Jew and his sufferings a fair 
 hearing, for the clerics and professors of modern Christianity are among the 
 most vehement denunciators of those of their predecessors who wrought such 
 barbarous deeds upon him, and the members of that great creed deplore the 
 cruel deeds of their ancestors with as much sincerity as the most patriotic Jew, 
 
 (1) Prof. Hosman, p. 139. 
 
vi. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 yet the vast majority of their historians discreetly (though very unjustly) slur 
 over the ghastly tragedies, it will be my purpose to relate, with indecent 
 precipitancy. The consistency with which the majority of the Middle Age 
 writers avoid giving a detailed and unprejudiced account of the massacres of 
 Jews which they must have witnessed, almost leads the student to infer the 
 existence of a tacit understanding which deterred them from handing down to 
 posterity a faithful record of the events so pregnant to society. The paucity of 
 their accounts is but one fault, the monkish gall often poured into their 
 writings, and the fiendish joy that elated them in describing Jewish sufferings, 
 overt admission of which is frequently made, forms the ground of a much 
 heavier indictment. Then the Jewish apologist is met with another grave— 
 though not insuperable—obstacle : he must be prepared to detect the flimsily 
 veiled malice of a “Matthew Paris” or the unmanly innuendoes of a 
 “ Gibbon, ” when once these are discovered he has no difficulty in confuting 
 their statements and so circumventing the impressions they are intended to 
 convey. 
 
 In concluding my unavoidably lengthy preface let me assure the reader 
 that the incidents referred to in the work are all substantiated by the most 
 reliable and trustworthy authorities, my information being culled from many 
 sources : seeking as I do utility and effect more than applause or credit for 
 originality, I have, whenever possible, let the historian himself speak ; 
 hence the numerous, and frequently lengthy, quotations. These will be found 
 not the least important feature of the work, and as the great majority of the 
 books cited are those of standard writers, they can be very easily verified by 
 reference being made to the passages indicated should the reader wish to take 
 the trouble. A few of the authors quoted are Professor Graetz (my principal 
 and most frequently cited authority,—for those who have not read his masterly 
 “ History of the Jews ” I quote Dean Stanley who places him high in the list 
 of those who have, through their laborious investigation rendered research 
 into Jewish History a now unnecessary labour,) Dr’s Zunz, Neander, Hallam, 
 Draper, Ranke, Hosmer, Adams, and Milman: Gibbon, Hume, Lingard, 
 Prescott, White, Strickland, Milner, Picciotto, Lindo, Jacobs, Bonnechose, 
 Foote and Wheeler, Bonnechose, Martin, and Abrahams ; and I feel convinced 
 that a book leaning on such solid tenons will carry with it an amount of grave 
 and irrefragable historic value. The language is simple rather than ornate, 
 for I desire to appeal to every shade of thought and every grade of knowledge. 
 
 I can only express the hope that my efforts, prompted as they are by the 
 deepest sincerity, will serve a dual purpose: to imbue the Jew with national 
 pride and a cognizance of his racial achievements, and to silence his carping 
 and cavilling detractors and rather fill them with sympathy by a recital of his 
 woes. Perhaps my book may tend to further cement the amity which happily 
 exists between the now no longer inimical creeds. If it succeeds in doing so 
 it has secured the consummation destined for it by 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 (1) Introduction to Vol. III., “ The Jewish Church.” 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Inscribe in words of purest gold. 
 
 The deeds of those brave Jews of old, 
 
 Let minstrel’s harp, and poet’s pen, 
 
 Sing paeans o’er these Kings of men. 
 
 Histories have been written of all nations, and man has paused in admira- 
 tion of the deeds of bygone heroes ; valour and courage have ever been the 
 themes on which bards and poets have sung their sweetest lays ; nobility ot 
 purpose, and resolution of mind when opposed to overpowering influences have 
 ever filled the mind with emulous appreciation; the deeds of great and brave 
 men have thrilled the soul, quickened the pulse of emulation and given zest 
 to every ennobling thought of which man is capable, while a recital of heroic 
 endurance has always fired the mind with the loftiest aspirations and the heart 
 with the grandest promptings. The deaths of martyrs have thrilled the heart- 
 strings of nations and moved Kmpires to tears. Who has not admired the 
 noble self-immolation of Leonidas and his three hundred patriotic Spartans 
 who bravely withstood the mighty hosts of Persia ? Who has not shed a tear 
 over the aged lolycarp, who when entreated by the Roman Proconsul to revile 
 God and save his life, begged to be instantly led to his death ? Who has not 
 lauded the praise-worthy steadfastness of Perpetua, who when being led to the 
 amphitheatre—together with her companions there to meet a Martyr’s death 
 —was compelled by the remorseless Romans to behold her babe, which had 
 een dragged from her. and in vain implored by her father to take compassion 
 upon her own offspring and offer sacrifice to the heathen Gods ? Who has 
 not felt a pang of sorrow for the brave martyrs of Lyons and Vienne whose 
 firmness under the most fearful tortures touched their very judges ? Every 
 phase of human history, every noble act ever wrought, every deed of self- 
 abnegation. every heroic effort, every instance of the patient endurance of 
 suffering, every martyrdom won by resistance and met with fortitude, has 
 been recorded by the pens of the patriot, the panegyrist, the historian, and the 
 scholar ; yet has the bloodiest page in the chronicles of man, the most ghastly 
 tragedy that stains the leaves of history, the most cothurnate chapter in the 
 annals of crime, remained untold, and the myriads of heroes, of dumb sufferers, 
 of voluntary martyrs, whose sorrows it would tell, their deeds have been 
 as a sealed book. It is this chapter I purpose to tell, for although the bitter 
 tragedy of a nation’s agony has not yet reached its climax, it will be salutary 
 to view, in all their lethal and incredible horrors the *• Middle Ages ” from 
 which the Jewish race has just so triumphantly emerged. In tearing away the 
 veil that overhangs the past, in revealing the awful misdeeds of mankind 
 against my people, in transporting my readers from this enlightened century, 
 when we in happy England are surrounded by every adjunct of civilization 
 and learning, into the fierce and barbarous days when that bloody Slogan of 
 Christianity, Hep ! Hep h rang from one end of Europe to another and sounded 
 the tocsin of massacre; into the days when that wild Catholic pibroch 
 heralded the decimation of the persecuted Hebrew race and tolled the death 
 knell of whole communties of God-fearing men ; into the days when hoary- 
 
 (i) Abbreviation of Hierosylma est Perdita (Jerusalem is lost). 
 
Vlll. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 headed and wrinkled old men, their brows furrowed by anxiety and their 
 figures bent with age were writhing on the rack in awful agony or hoisted in 
 mid-air by pulleys and their heart-rending shrieks were silenced with iron 
 gags ; into the days when tender and trembling women, the roseate flush of 
 beauty on their cheeks and the love of virtue in their hearts, were irrecog- 
 nisably mangled and mutilated for no other crime than that of birth ; into the 
 days when noble minded and patriotic youths, and beautiful and innocent 
 maidens in the first lovely bloom of adolescence entered the torture chambers 
 with a light elastic tread, and emerged in one short hour deformed and crippled 
 for life, pale emaciated invalids ; into the days, when little children were, 
 before the eyes of their agonized and horror stricken parents, rent limb from 
 Mmb or hopelessly maimed, I must most earnestly and distinctly disavow 
 any intention and disclaim any desire to hold one generation responsible for 
 the crimes of another, or to charge against the nineteenth century the criminal 
 misdeeds wrought in the fourteenth. I shall by no means attempt to hold up 
 to obloquy a creed so essentially Jewish in its ethics as Christianity. For that 
 great religion I. in common with my brethren in faith, entertain the greatest 
 respect, for not only is it based upon our sacred literature but its noble 
 teachings have done much to reform mankind. It is of the Church as a 
 hierarchy, and as a corporate body that I shall speak, even the past of the 
 Church I do not wish to criticise with the pen of a critic. It was not for 
 Christian vice, but for Jewish valour, that I searched the pages of history. 
 I do not seek to denounce the Christian but to exalt the Jew. It is not of 
 creed but of race that I speak, for my primary object is less to stigmatise 
 the persecutors than to laud the persecuted ; yet what can I do if it is from 
 the very records of Christian bigotry that I must draw my material. These 
 few preceding words will, I most anxiously hope, vindicate my objects against 
 any possible misconstruction, blit if the reader is so fierce a bigot as to regard 
 any reference to his civil history as a covert attack upon his religion he will 
 compel me to vindicate myself in different and more forcible language; by 
 telling him that it is an absolute impossibility for any historian living to refer 
 to the perpetrators of cruel massacres m eulogistic language or to panegyrise 
 the formulators of unjust and oppressive laws. 
 
 Through the long vista of history, through the labyrinths of the centuries, 
 the Jew sees his ancestors hated, despised, lampooned, pillaged, massacred, and 
 tortured with every species of horror that fiendish and unrelenting malignity 
 could devise and heartless barbarity execute. He sees them stretched on the 
 rack, rolled over sharp spikes of iron, locked in heated cages, manacled like 
 common felons, and branded with the infamy of the basest malefactors ; he 
 sees splinters of wood driven into their finger joints, and their teeth wrenched 
 out; he sees them hoisted by pulleys, and pining in dark and damp dungeons 
 vainly praying for one drop of water to slake their thirst, gawning the straw of 
 their cells until starved into gibbering madness; he sees them with red hot 
 plates of iron applied to their chests or seated in hot iron chairs suffering the 
 most excruciating agony ; by one monarch penned like diseased sheep into 
 crowded and pestilential ghettos, by another chased from country to country 
 like wild beasts of the forest. 
 
 He thinks of the days when cowled fiends and tonsured barbarians witnessed 
 with transports of hellish joy each single throe of some tortured Jew, of the 
 days when savage executioners and bloodstained tormentors heard with 
 delirious glee, and ferocious exultation, the piercing shrieks and pitiful prayers 
 of innocent and upright men, of the days when bishops—breviary in hand— 
 piously crossed themselves and devout monks repeated paternosters whilst 
 rapturously witnessing the torturers tearing out the eyes or amputating the 
 limbs of harmless and aged men, deep in the bowels of the earth beyond the 
 peer of human eye. He thinks of the death processions and autos-da-fe of 
 Seville, Barcelona and Madrid, of the funereal Pyres of Segovia, and Valladolid, 
 of the holocausts of Cuenca and Lisbon, of the Leibzoll, Poll-Tax, and Night 
 Pass, of the Dominican Whip, the Rouelle, and the Yellow Badge. Well and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IX. 
 
 bitterly may he reflect, for the blood of his forefathers has left its indelible 
 stain upon the grim and ghastly pages of history ; pages deformed by human 
 a ^ re ~ by deeds so monstrous that had all the tyrants, inventors of tortures 
 and heartless assassins branded by man as infamous, had all the fiends of the 
 
 n fi e v. m ° St aed ’ un ^ tec ^ to hound the Jew and render his very existence intoler 
 able they would have had no more harrowing stories to relate. Yet has every 
 monster at whose bare name men shudder added to his infamy by inflicting 
 fresh wounds on his lacerated body ; and for what ? for his invincible tenacity 
 for tne invulnerable firmness for the passionate and inalienable devotion with 
 which he has clung to his creed and his race. His is indeed a terrible story 
 he is an irrefutable witness to the perfidy of man, to the impotence of humanity' 
 to the falsity and ingratitude of the human race. Knowledge may spread its 
 beneficent wings over the universe, hush the strife of creeds and with it the 
 atred fostered by bigotry; science may shed its lovely rays and its beauteous 
 influences, from pole to pole; liberty may sound the brotherhood of man and 
 the supreme sanctity of humanity, yet the Jew will rise before them all and 
 like a jeering spectre laugh their achievements to scorn for he will point to 
 that imperishable testimony of man’s perfidity and baseness,—“ The brilliant 
 roll of Israel’s martyrs, heroes and patriots.” But his fathers have not 
 suffered in vain. “ The men of Treves ” and of “ Blois ” live in his memory ; 
 the heroes of Mentz, of Cologne, and of York have not immolated themselves 
 to P e ™ h fr° m tlle ann als of the Israelites, they have kindled an unquench¬ 
 able light in the heart of every Jew, a light which amid the sorest adversity 
 burns with undimimshed brilliancy, a light that the blazing fires of the 
 ‘ Quemadero ’ and the waters of Fribourg have alike failed to destroy the 
 hght of national pride. To generations yet unborn will be recited the'im¬ 
 mutable steadfastness of Judah’s Martyrs, in centuries to come the names of 
 bamuel Usque, Simon Maimi, Isaac de Castro Tartas, Don Cmsar Orobio 
 Gonzalo Baez Leonor de Vibero, Anna Xuares, Minna of Spiers, and the 
 legions ol Hebrew martyrs, whose names scintillate with undying lustre upon 
 the records of history, will ever cause Jewish hearts the world over to glow 
 
 Wlt J-J^! de : f ° r the J ew is as he was centuri es ago ; he shares the same ideals 
 as did his ancestors, he possesses the same ambitions and is oft repelled bv 
 the same hatred, for in Germany, the home of the reformation and the cradle 
 ol modern philosophy, in Russia, in Austria, in Morocco, is it not sought to 
 embitter his existence ? True ! the ffagie, the boot, and the thumbscrew are 
 no longer available, but is not a social crusade preached against him? Do 
 not the ghastly apparitions of religious bigotry and racial antipathy rear their 
 heads aloft, and incite men to hate their fellow men ! Does not Roumania a 
 country that gained the compassion of Europe by pretending to groan under 
 the heel of Turkey, a country emancipated from practical servitude in our own 
 times, and a land where equality should be regnant, refuse her dying Tewish 
 subjects admission to her hospitals ? _ J 8 J 
 
 Though the Jew lives in happy England he remembers that millions aye 
 tens ot millions of his ancestors, passed their wretched lives without one spark 
 ol joy without one happy moment, that millions of his co-religionists have 
 entered the beautiful and flower bedecked world within the halo of misery • 
 
 • he remembers that the fear of Dominican kidnappers hovered over their babv 
 cots the shades of terror—oft the funeral pall—over their youth, that miserv 
 and foul accusations filled the brightest years of their manhood, the shadow 
 ot the sword, and the horrors of the dungeon, their declining days. He 
 remembers that before the agonized gaze of his forefathers there ever loomed 
 the ‘ Iron Maiden ’ and the “ Rack ” and that their vision was blurred by 
 gyves and gibbets, chains and dungeons, he remembers that their arev 
 hairs and tear-bedimmed eyes have closed upon a miserable existence wit¬ 
 nessing the persecution and direst affliction of their children, who in their turn 
 have again ushered children into the world to crowd the foul-aired ghettos to 
 toil lor heartless Kings and to be denied the rights of human beings,-to be the 
 butt of every ribald jester, of every swine-herd of the lowest serf, to bear the 
 burden of misguided states, to be derided by the hooting mob, to be the 
 
X. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 victims of all the " tearers, branders and searers of human flesh, all the forgers 
 of manacles, the makers of chains, the builders of dungeons,” all the torturers, 
 assassins, and monsters execrated by posterity, to have their whining babes 
 and weeping children torn from them by fanatical monks, to be vilified and 
 slandered, to be twitted by the peasant, oppressed by the noble, and murdered 
 by the proletary. 
 
 The Jew has paid the full penalty for his unswerving loyalty to his creed 
 and his indomitable adhesion to his national traditions. His one joy was to 
 think of his past; his soaring mind burst open for him the gates of the ghetto, 
 the Judenstrasse could not imprison his soul ; the galling chains of abject 
 serfdom, the fetters of Church Canons were at times but puny trials of his 
 endurance, the strength and invincibility of which he knew, his one aim was 
 to emulate the heroism of his ancestors, his one hope to witness the restoration 
 of his past glories. Oh ! how fervently he prayed to once more tend the vine¬ 
 yards of Palestine, to prune its olives, to rest under its shady arbours, to pluck 
 its flowers, to sing praises on its plains. Oh ! how he longed to look upon his 
 tear-stained history, pregnant with so much pain and misery, as a repugnant 
 dream, as a frightful vision, far exceeding in possibility the most horrible 
 cruelties men could perpetrate. Alas! he dreamed in vain, he was ruthlessly, 
 awakened, his ideals were cruelly shattered, his story was to be the most 
 appalling of all stories. 
 
 His innate fortitude, his touching and invulnerable firmness, his dumb and 
 unprotesting suffering, his patient resignation to the will of his persecutors 
 have all encircled him with glory ; glory that will remain for ever untarnished, 
 glory that hatred cannot minimise, bigotry question, persecution lessen, or the 
 chimerical and malignant charges hurled against him darken. 
 
 Marvellous indeed ! and no less unique than marvellous is the fact of a 
 whole people willingly accepting martyrdom and suffering grief, pain and tears, 
 as a legacy, and yet clinging to that bequest with unparalleled tenacity. Let 
 Clio the Goddess of history search her tablets and show another such people. 
 
 The Church has abandoned her bellicose propaganda ; the struggle of the 
 middle ages, the highest ambition of saints and popes, emperors and princes, 
 to wipe out the memory of the Jew is now obsolescent : the proletariat of 
 liberty has sounded the funeral note of religious persecutions. In England at 
 least the elevating influences of education combined with the prevalence of 
 enlightened literature have conduced to materially affect the once myopic 
 views of the middle classes, and though the even-handed and impartial 
 administration of justice is not universal, the mere exhibition of its punitive 
 apparatus protects him from the onslaughts of the rabble. For the reason 
 just adduced the Jew enjoys protection of life and limb in a greater degree 
 to-day than at any previous epoch in the history of his dispersion. The 
 splenetic displays of the intolerant, once so potent, are now nugatory, so a 
 consideration of the records of the last few centuries, records so besmeared 
 with innocent blood, can only tend to increase the Israelite’s love for his 
 nation and ensure his closer adherence to his illustrious faith. I have already 
 in my preface disclaimed any intention of disparaging Christianity or any 
 desire to depreciate the characters of its formulators and votaries, but it is 
 from her history alone that I must demonstrate the endurance and the heroism 
 of the Hebrews. 
 
 The impregnable zeal with which the Jewish race have clung to their 
 religion and their national identity is indeed wonderful, even in times anterior 
 to those concerning which I shall speak. The Babylonian has taken him 
 captive, his proud ruler laughed to scorn the mite that dare oppugn itself to 
 his Mastodon arm, and now the precise site of Babylon is unknown and were 
 it not for the researches of scholars would never be broached. Assyria with 
 her teeming millions, Macedonia with her phalanxes, Syria with her huge 
 elephants, Greece with her vast and bellipotent hosts, Arabia with her deadly 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xi. 
 
 showers ot javelins, Idumea with her unerring bowmen, have all'invaded the 
 home of this handful of men. 1 ime after time has the Jew been trampled 
 under foot, yet, through his inexpugnable pertinacity he has not succumbed. 
 Oft has he been rent to pieces, yet, like the polyp each piece has lived on. 
 Rome, the eagle emblemed mistress of the world, the victor of a thousand 
 battles, the wiclder of the destiny of nations, the arbiter of the fate of races, 
 whose least smile irradiated mankind and whose frown clad millions in 
 habiliments of grief and mourning, with her mail-clad legions and her plumed 
 sons, her wild Vangioni, her mammoth catapults and her huge battering rams, 
 has sought to clog the very heart of her national existence (her religion) by 
 tearing out her heart string (the Temple), yet like the wondrous pollen when 
 planted elsewhere, Judaism has sprouted again and at last gained luxuriant 
 foliage. The very rites and forms so derided are faithfully exercised, a 
 rejuvenescence of the Hebraic cult ever being the principal result achieved by 
 the persecution of its followers. The mighty empires of history are gone, 
 their monuments built for eternity, decayed, crumbled, and then mixed with 
 the dust. Of all that have seen them the Jew alone survives to tell of their 
 glories. It is he who has seen the mighty thrones and puissant princes before 
 whom he trembled, totter and fall ; he has seen Satrap, Tirshstha. Archon, 
 and I ruimvir flash past his gaze like shooting comets, he has seen the purple 
 clad Caesars, those arbiters of his own fate, wield the sceptre and grasp the 
 diadem, nations trembling at their frown, and mankind submissive to their 
 dictates. 1 hen he saw their power wane and gradually pass away to the 
 domains of history while their might, their bravery, their heroism are now 
 only heard in the poem of the classicist or the lay of the minstrel. Then he 
 iemembers that he has outlived them all, that he is yet as young as ever 
 retaining all his pristine vigour, and to-day wields a potent influence over the 
 intellect, culture, wealth, and progress of Europe. 
 
 lo-day he reads of how his kinsmen were the slaves of the Church. 1 Servi 
 Camerae, Chattels of the Crown, he admits that these unequivocal designations 
 were no bold assertions, that they truthfully described his position in certain 
 lands, yet the only effect produced upon him is to fan his patriotism into a 
 greater flame. Such is the effect of coercion upon the Jew ! 
 
 Who would not suffer when contrasted with him ? Where not the " Horatii ” 
 brave? Yet they sink into oblivion when contrasted with the " Martyrs of the 
 Inquisition.’ Does not Joan of Arc dwindle into insignificance before Minna 
 of Speyer ? Was Nicias. was Quintus Curtius a hero when contrasted with 
 Samuel Usque ? Where is Dentatus ? Is he not dwarfed into obscurity when 
 we mention Simon bar Giora ? Where is Camillus when we pit John of Gischala 
 against him ? Where is Marius when considered with Barcochba ? Would the 
 admiration for the great Garibaldi be enhanced were we to compare his 
 patriotism with that of Ezekias, and is not the martyrdom of the noble 
 Giordano Ilruno less impressive when we rank against it that of Isaacde Castro. 
 
 In conclusion I can only reiterate my former words, that my book may 
 promote the interests of concord and the consummation of harmony and 
 fraternity between Jew and Christian. Such is the dearest wish of 
 
 GUSTAV PEARLSON. 
 
 (i.) Dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. 
 
CHAPTERS. 
 
 I.—Persecution of the Jews in England . 1-42 
 
 II.—Jewish Sufferings in France. 43-87 
 
 III. —Germany and the Jews .. 88-140 
 
 IV. —Excesses practised upon the Swiss Jews, in 1348 
 
 and 1349, on account of the Black Plague . 141-143 
 
 V.—Some Incidents in the History of the Belgian Jews 144-146 
 
 VI.—Persecution of the Austrian Jews . 147-154 
 
 VII.—The Vatican and the Jews.,. 155-182 
 
 VIII.—Canons and Councils . 183-204 
 
 IX.—The Jews in Spain . 205-249 
 
 X,—The Jews in Portugal.. 250-260 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 “ They wont into the Jewry and wounded and tore men too, 
 
 And robbed and burnt houses and many they slew.” 
 
 Robert of Gloucester. 
 
 HE history of the Jews in England prior to the Conquest rests on 
 no authoritative basis, therefore to give the date of their first 
 settlement is a difficult matter. Some writers suppose that a Jewish 
 immigration into this island took place during the Roman occupa- * 
 tion, but all are agreed that under the early Saxon kings they formed 
 an important element in the population and w r ere already formed into 
 communities, paying the greatest deference to their self-selected heads, 
 and acting in the most complete unison. Legislation affecting them 
 can be found as early as 740, when it was enacted by Egbright, 
 Archbishop of York, that “No good Christian shall break bread or eat 
 meat with a Jew”. This prelate also forbade those under his spiritual 
 jurisdiction to appear at Jewish feasts. Many other laws of a similar 
 nature were formulated about this period. 1 Thus we here find 
 nascent^ that spirit of persecution which growing with age terminated 
 in their final expulsion. The decrees of Egbright may be regarded 
 as the inception of that series of repressive laws which reached their 
 
 0-) ^ sample of these laws are the annexed paragraphs :_ 
 
 It is allowable to celebrate Mass in a church where faithful and pious ones 
 have been buried ; but if infidels or heretics or faithless Jews be buried it is not 
 allowed to sanctify or celebrate Mass. But if it seems suitable for consecration 
 tearing thence the bodies and scraping or washing the walls, let it be consec¬ 
 rated if it has not been so suitably. 
 
 If any Christian accepts from the infidel Jews their unleaven cakes, or any 
 other meat or drink and shares in their impieties, (i.e. religious observances) he 
 shall do penance with bread and water for forty days : if any make Easter with 
 the Jews he shall be cut off from the whole Church. If any Christian woman 
 takes a gift from a Jew or of her own will commits sin with them let her be 
 separated from the Church a whole year, and live in much tribulation and then 
 iet her repent for nine years ; but if a pagan, let her repent seven years. “ Laws 
 
 of the Church against the Jews.” “ The Jews of Angevin England,” p 2 
 Joseph Jacobs, B.A. 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 culmination in the times of Thomas a Becket and Stephen Langton ; 
 yet though it was found necessary at this early date to lay down 
 ordinances intended to cope with the turpitude of a people claiming 
 the free exercise of the most primitive rights of man, the systematic 
 and regular persecution of the Jews was of much later date, for they 
 cannot be said to have suffered any real oppression till near the 
 period in which the former of these two Archbishops held ecclesiastical 
 sway. 
 
 King Canute (in 1020) banished the Jews from his newly 
 subjugated kingdom without assigning any motive for this arbitrary 
 action. The exiles crossing to Normandy were allowed by the Duke 
 to take up their permanent residence in his Duchy and were—on the 
 conquest of England—permitted to purchase the right of residence for 
 themselves and their descendants. William treated his Hebrew 
 subjects with the most scrupulous justice and granted them not only 
 the free exercise of their religion but the rights of trade and commerce. 
 Had several of his highly lauded successors chosen to adopt his 
 equitable attitude towards that people, English history would have 
 considerably less bloody massacres and cruel extortions to deface her 
 pages. 
 
 William Rufus followed in his father’s policy and at times evinced 
 a distinct predilection for his Jewish subjects. This was the cause 
 of deep and openly expressed discontent on the part of the clergy who 
 were greatly mortified to see their hated adversaries held in high 
 estimation by the irreligious monarch. 1 
 
 During the reign of Henry I many open minded Christians, who 
 perceived the high character and superior mode of life of their Jewish 
 countrymen, evinced a distinct partiality for Hebrew ideals and 
 customs, a number openly avowing their preference for Judaism ; 
 monks were therefore despatched throughout the kingdom and 
 instructed to deliver denunciatory sermons inveighing against the 
 adherents of this creed, the stock charges against its members proving 
 never-failing themes for the tirades of these militant philosophers. 
 
 (1.) Not that these princes felt any partiality for a race of men everywhere 
 persecuted but because by protectingthem they consulted their own interests, 
 for the Jew was the slave of the sovereign, whatever he might actually possess 
 or subsequently acquire belonged to the Crown, and if he became an object of 
 value in the royal estimation it was on account of the profit which he continually 
 brought to the exchequer. Hence he was enrolled as the King’s property from 
 his birth ; he was suffered to dwell nowhere but in the royal cities or boroughs, 
 and only in some of them and in such particular quarters as were assigned for 
 that purpose. Rev. Dr. Lingard, “ History of England,” Vol. II., chap. 4. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 3 
 
 The fierce contest for supremacy waged between Stephen and 
 Matilda was fraught with much suffering for the unhappy Israelites ; 
 the cost of maintaining an expensive war had depleted the finances of 
 both antagonists and money became indispensably necessary. To cope 
 with this difficulty, recourse was had to the Continental expedient, 
 wringing it from the Jews. Periodical demands for vast sums were 
 made upon the wealthier Jews and those who were either unable or 
 unwilling to pay were expelled from the country and their lands and 
 properties confiscated. It is difficult to realise to what an extent this 
 was carried. 1 During the whole of Stephen’s reign they were subjected 
 to extortions and oppression. To give the former legal colour the 
 most false and horrible accusations were made against them; yet thev 
 found credence and the Jew found himself in the unenviable position 
 of having to either purchase peace or undergo punishment for 
 imaginary offences against religion and society, to both of which 
 institutions it was universally understood he was the bitterest and 
 most uncompromising of foes. 
 
 Till the year 1177 (Henry II’s reign) the Jews were not allowed 
 to bury their dead elsewhere than in London ; thus a Jew dying in 
 the extreme North, the corpse had to be conveyed to London and woe 
 betide the bearers did they chance to meet a cavalcade of knights on 
 the road. 
 
 Under Henry II the persecution of the Jews reached an acute 
 stage, cruel exactions of enormous sums of money was the order of the 
 day, their fictitious crimes proving capital pretexts for so serious an 
 abuse of power. The indigence of the Crown, the bigotry of the 
 cle ] gy and the rapacity of the mob co-operated and wrought the most 
 appalling misery among the unfortunate Jews : for had they been 
 proscribed by fate or condemned to drink the cup of sorrow to the 
 very dregs ; had the Hecates and the Furies combined to render their 
 existence intolerable the outbreaks against these hapless beings could 
 not have been more frequent or their oppression more methodical. 
 Every festivity, every public gathering, every assemblage of a gang 
 of roughs might be the signal for the brilliantly cultured mob of the 
 Plantagenet period to plunder, maltreat, and murder this unfortunate 
 race of people. Why should they not ? What was to restrain 
 them r* Were they not goaded into performing these cowardly acts by 
 the clergy whose influence was paramount and had they any reprisals 
 at the hands of justice to fear ? 
 
 During this reign a fatuous charge first brought forward in the time 
 of Stephen was resuscitated. In his occupancy of the throne, the 
 (1.) See Hallain in loco. ~ " 
 
4 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 I 
 
 Norwich community had been charged with the crucifixion and torture 
 of a Christian youth. There had been no evidence whatever to 
 suppoit this ridiculous charge, but what had evidence ever to do with 
 accusations against the Jews ? An eminent historian has well said, 
 “ The charges against the Jews increased in exact proportion to the 
 deciease in the Kingly finances”. William of Norwich became a saint 
 of world wide repute and Norwich itself a wealthy borough owing to 
 the influx of pilgrims desirous of witnessing the astounding miracles 
 this maityr performed in his tomb. St. Edmondsbury was not loth to 
 follow the lucrative example held out to it, for in 1160 its inhabitants 
 made this vapid charge a pretext for the indiscriminate pillage of the 
 local Jewish quarter. Henry’s exactions from his Jewish subjects 
 were endless, on one occasion he fined them 5000 marks and expelled 
 a large number of their body who would not submit to the arrange¬ 
 ment of periodically paying extortionate sums and in return being 
 allowed to live unmolested. 
 
 When in 1188 an expedition to the Holy Land was being formed, 
 a council at Northampton assessed the Christian population at £70,000 
 and the Jews alone at £60,000, but Henry died before these sums 
 could be levied, so they were for the moment safe. 
 
 At the coronation of his successor Richard I, the Jews, ever 
 patriotic to their sovereign, sent a deputation to Westminster Abbey 
 bearing costly presents to the newly crowned King. These Jewish 
 legates excited the avarice of his attendants by their sumptuous 
 apparel and were forbidden by the clergy to enter the precincts of the 
 Abbey “ lest they bewitch the king by their wicked spells,” it being 
 greatly feared that their presence would be an ill omen for the 
 prosperity of the reign. To what extent Richard I was bewitched 
 by the Jews is demonstrated by the bitter hatred he often 
 exhibited towards them. He was, though lax enough in the 
 practice of those virtues which constitute the essential qualifications 
 of a wise monarch, burning with Catholic zeal and treated the 
 unfortunate children of Abraham according to the dictates of his 
 confessor’s conscience. They were forcibly thrust into the Abbey by the 
 crowd and then brutally attacked for disobeying the order precluding 
 them from witnessing the coronation. The rumour quickly spread 
 that Richard had ordered a general massacre of the Jews in London 
 this was untrue, for though he had—at the direction of Baldwin, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury—refused to accept the presents proffered,’ 
 fearing it would portend misfortune to his kingdom, and instructed 
 his menials to eject the emissaries, he had certainly not ordered their 
 massacre. Notwithstanding this, an edict so palatable to the rabble, 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 5 
 
 who rapidly fell upon the Jewish quarter with axes, knives, clubs, 
 maces, sticks, stones, and every accessible weapon and maltreated, and 
 murdered its inhabitants, was not to be relinquished for the feeble 
 admonition of Ranulf de Granville, the Chief Justiciary, who at the 
 command of Richard had ostensibly attempted to stay the fearful 
 slaughter. How earnestly this functionary deprecated their pious 
 zeal is evidenced by the fact that he was unheeded ; for an entire day 
 and night bloodshed and murder were rampant, wherever a Jew was 
 seen he was instantly murdered. A number of the hated race—whose 
 only ciime Avas theii wealth repaired to the stronger houses in the 
 Jews’ quarter. “ These were surrounded by the roaring people and 
 were stoutly besieged from nine o’clock till sunset and as they could 
 not be broken into, owing to their strong build and because the 
 madmen had not tools, fire was thrown on the thatched roofs and a 
 terrible conflagration quickly broke out, which was fatal to the Jews 
 as they strove to put it out. The Jews were either roasted in their 
 own houses or if they came out of them Were received with swords . 2 
 The riots against the Jews and the reckless simony and sale of offices 
 with which Richard’s reign opened seemed alike to show the need 
 which Henry’s work had for his supervision ”. 3 
 
 Many Jews were called upon to abjure their faith, but Rabbi 
 Jacob of Orleans, the celebrated Tosaphist, who met a Martyr’s death 
 during the liot, counselled them to slay themselves rather than fall by 
 the. hands, of the uncircumcised ; this they instantly did. Richard, 
 desirous of making a show of indignation that Avould not interfere with 
 the cruel deeds 'in which he took such quiescent delight, issued a 
 proclamation forbidding any further excesses against the Jews, but not 
 before the mob had already sated both their religious ardour and their 
 rapacity, and weary from their exertions had desisted from the pious 
 woik of massacring them. Truly a most humane act when they had 
 been already plundered of all they possessed, even the very clothing 
 they wore; their wealth, which was described as incalculable, had fallen 
 into the hands of their theological executioners . 4 “Richard refused to 
 
 avk 1 ') ^h c 1 hai ' < ?’ 8 Proclamation debarring the Jews from entering Westminster 
 
 . obey at the time of his inauguration was a classification of persons greatlv 
 
 = n ^ the i ga ^n i ; y i the Lion ‘ Heai 'ted King. Strickland’s “Lives of the 
 (Queens of England, Vol. I., p. 199. 
 
 (2.) Joseph Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin England,” p. 102. 
 
 (3.) “ Stephen Langton,” p. 75. 
 
 (4.) Thus was the first day of the reign of the illustrious King Richard 
 distinguished by an event hitherto unheard of in the royal city, by the begin¬ 
 ning of the doom of the infidel race, and by a new zeal of Christians against 
 
 cited b Gm j e Jacobs 116 Cl ’° SS ° f ° hriSt ' “ ChroilicIes of William of Newbury,” 
 
6 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 irritate his subjects at the beginning of his reign by acts of severity in 
 favour of a hated people,” 1 but three of the mob were executed, one 
 because he had committed a culpable error and actually robbed the 
 house of a Christian, the other two, because having set fire to a Jewish 
 house, they did not prevent the flames from igniting the next house, 
 which was also the property of a Christian. This cruel massacre was— 
 to the clergy at least—a source of undisguised glee. Their intense 
 joy is voiced in the characteristic utterance of a contemporary 
 theologian and historian, who says “Blessed be God who has delivered 
 up the impious to death.” How different, how mournfully touching 
 are the few words of Ephraim of Bonn, 2 a Jewish martyrologist, 
 “ That Wednesday 20th, Sivan 4931,” he says, “was with willing 
 heart accepted as a day of mourning and fast by all the Congregations 
 in France and all the inhabitants of the Isles (England).” 
 
 “ According to the order of their Chief Rabbi and Teacher, Jacob, 
 son of Rabbi Meir, who informed them by letter that it was right, this 
 day was established as a fast for all their brethren, a fast more stringent 
 than that for Gedalyah, the son of Alikana, for it is a day of atonement. 
 May the righteousness of all those who sacrifice themselves in honour 
 of the Unity and Sanctification of the name stand Israel in aid for 
 aye.” How truly noble, how from the depths of a patriot’s heart, are 
 these few words crushed in despair and full of hope, in one ! 
 
 The deadly Slogan calling upon Englishmen to arm themselves and 
 participate in the destruction of the “ Enemies of God ” had been 
 sounded and right loyally did numbers of cities and towns that con¬ 
 tained Jews respond to its call. They glutted themselves with innocent 
 blood. In some districts not a single Jew or Jewish dwelling was 
 spared; their quarters were deluged with blood till the streets became 
 slippery. The people incited everywhere by the clergy to purge the 
 land of its Jewish unbelievers 8 performed the most unprecedented acts 
 of savage barbarity, even against defenceless women and children. 
 Ihroughout the country hecatombs of the unhappy Israelites were 
 hewn down without compassion , 4 grey hairs elicited no mercy, smiling 
 
 (I.) Rev. Dr. Lingard, Vol. II.. chapter 4. 
 
 (2 ) Translated by Mr. Shechter. 
 
 (3.) If the riDgleaders endeavoured to inflame the passions of the populace 
 by religious considerations, it was merely as a cloak to their real design of 
 sharing among themselves the spoils of their victims, and of extinguishing their 
 debts by destroying the securities together with the persons of their creditors. 
 —Rev. Dr. Lingard. Vol. II., Chap. iv. 
 
 (4.) Other cities and towns of the Country imitated the piety of the 
 Londoneis, and with equal devotion sent down their blood-suckers to Hell. 
 Winchester alone spared her vermin.—“ Chronicles of Richard of Devizes.” 
 
‘ ENGLAND. 
 
 7 
 
 childhood passed unpitied. The myriads of fanatical monks and friars, 
 who passed through England like a raging plague, preaching the 
 Crusade and the wholesale extermination of all heretics, exhorted the 
 populace to signalize their zeal for the faith by the pitiless slaughter 
 of the wretched Jews, and their fierce sermons produced the desired 
 effect, for they witnessed with hideous elation the unexampled atrocities, 
 with which the poor persecuted Hebrews were everywhere slain and 
 tortured. 1 The “Sicilian Vespers,” or the “Massacre of St. Bartholo¬ 
 mew could not have witnessed the perpetration of more revolting 
 cruelty than that to which the ill-fated race were subjected. On 
 February 6th, 1190, the mob entered the Jewish quarters of Norwich 
 and butchered the Jews in their own houses : children were dragged 
 irom their hiding places and slain in the presence of their parents. 
 
 A month later (March 7th,) the Stamford congregation met its 
 doom. It was the annual fair and a p>riest urging the mob to follow 
 the Crusade, they determined to slaughter and pillage the Jews for 
 their expenses. “They were indignant that the enemies of the Cross 
 of Christ, who dwelt there should possess so much when they had not 
 enough for the expenses of their Crusading journey. Considering 
 therefore that they would be doing honour to Christ if they attacked 
 his enemies whose goods they were longing for, they boldly rushed 
 upon them,’^slaughtering right and left without discrimination, neither 
 age nor infirmity nor sex nor dignity were spared. On March 18th, 
 the rabble attacked the Jews of St. Edmondsbury and killed all who 
 were unable to hide themselves, many were asked to change their 
 religion and thus save their lives together with those of their wives 
 and children, but this they resolutely refused to do, and paid for their 
 determination with their lives. The Jews who survived the outbreak 
 were a source of deep grief to the Abbot Samson, who petitioned the 
 King to issue a writ expelling the community from the town. This 
 petition was granted but it was stipulated that they should be protected 
 from assault when departing and that their goods should not be pillaged. 
 The feiocious abbot had it declared from every Church that anyone 
 taking in a Jew or giving him food or lodgings was to be excommun¬ 
 icated. 3 At Lynn the massacre was especially fierce and large ; horrors 
 too shocking to mention were perpetrated and not one Jew escaped the 
 
 (L) To the rough logic of the people it seemed absurd to go many thousands 
 of miles to light the enemies of Christ’' and yet to allow some of them to 
 live in peace at their own doors.—Joseph Jacobs. “ The Jews of Angevin 
 England. 
 
 (2.) I bid. 
 
 (3.) Ibid. 
 
8 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 fury of the assassins . 1 At Lincoln the terrified Jews were protected 
 by the Governor, who possessed more sense of humanity than zeal for 
 the extirpation of heretics. He made a determined attempt to stay 
 an outbreak such as those that were taking place throughout the 
 country. He addressed the citizens and beseeched them to return to 
 theii homes, but he was unheeded and they clamoured for the lives of 
 the Jews. These in vain offered to purchase peace at any terms, 
 offering priceless jewels and vast sums of money to those who were 
 thirsting for their blood, but they were not to be appeased, for they 
 were intent upon the destruction of their Jewish fellow-citizens. 
 
 Hiding all efforts to mollify the mob futile, the Governor ordered their 
 letieat to the castle, a command they were wise enough to obey. There 
 they conveyed their valuables and remained till the popular hatred which 
 the clergy had aroused against them, had somewhat subsided. At York 
 was enacted the most awful tragedy of all—the most horrible massacre 
 m Anglo-Jewish history. That indelible blot upon the fame of 
 England’s past was preceded by a fitting incident; the dwelling of a 
 Jew (Benedict of York,) who had died from the effects of the maltreat¬ 
 ment he had received at the coronation of the King), was sacked, his 
 property appropriated by the mob, and his wife and children and 
 relatives murdered as personal enemies of Christ. 
 
 This instance of enjoying a popular pastime excited no indignation 
 whatever, nor did such palpable cowardice elicit any extraneous 
 comment. Those murdered were only Jews and when their co-religion- 
 isus suggested restitution they were loudly laughed at, the idea beiim 
 considered most ludicrous. That a people who might be fallen on in 
 their own houses, tortured, plundered and murdered with impunity 
 
 should presume to think of demanding reparation for an injury was 
 certainly very droll! J J 
 
 When the crusading fever impregnated England, the pious brigands 
 -new of only one method of obtaining the necessary expenses, this was 
 to tall upon the Jews, pillage and even kill them if they proved intract¬ 
 able, although they had not given the slightest provocation. Professor 
 t.raetz instances a crusader who very narrowly escaped having his 
 name placed m the “ Calendar of Saints ” because a fellow crusader 
 murdered him to despoil him of the valuables lie had plundered from 
 u Jewish house and left with him for safe keeping. 
 
 During the dead of night a raging fire awoke the inhabitants of 
 lork and m the confusion a number of the citizens began to loot a few 
 
 i •" f . ^ ustlce b > r no mea *s approved of such deeds, but cunmn-h 
 
 , iwl Iie , d 111 thls that the iusoleuce of that perfidious people might 
 checked and their blaspheming tongues curbed.—William of Newbury 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 9 
 
 of the Jewish houses. This was the first result of a carefully hatched 
 conspiracy, formed by a number of influential persons 1 who desired to 
 obtain the expenses necessary for them to join the Crusade and at the 
 same time earn fame by oppressing the Jews. A number of the more 
 prescient Jews, notably Joachim a wealthy and pious man, perceived 
 however that the well matured plans of their adversaries had not yet 
 completed themselves and that much remained undone. They realized 
 by intuition that the terrible fire that covered the misdeeds of the 
 depredators was but a prelude to a lethal and organized attack upon 
 themselves and their co-religionists. For weeks past they had observed 
 the malevolent glances and sinister remarks of their Christian neigh¬ 
 bours and now they had serious misgivings as to their portent. The 
 envy of the higher orders, the fanaticism of the clergy and the 
 knowledge that the expenses of the impending Crusade had to be 
 obtained, created a furious resolution in their hearts, only to be gratified 
 by an attack upon the Jews. 
 
 They determined to destroy the Jews of York, then a numerous 
 and wealthy body in the city, possessing an academy of their own and 
 a noble library for its use , 2 or compel them to embrace Christianity as 
 an alternative. This option was but a ruse to give their crime a 
 religious colour, for their pent but ill concealed fury knew no bounds ; 
 they thirsted for the blood and riches of the heretical and opulent 
 Hebrews. The needy noble awaited their destruction, that all claims 
 against him might be obliterated ; the clergy saw in the murder of so 
 large and important a body of Jews an approach towards the system¬ 
 atic extermination of the race throughout the kingdom; the mob longed 
 for their money and valuables, but all decided, however different their 
 reasons, upon the death of the Jews. The sagacious mind of Joachim 
 saw now quite clearly that the fire in the Jewish quarter (for which no 
 ordinary reason had been assigned and doubtless the work of incendiaries), 
 angured very darkly for the Jews of York. The seeds of persecution’ 
 so fondly watered by Thomas a Beckett (now canonized) had blossomed 
 and produced a plenity of deleterious fruit. The intuitive Joachim 
 with his family, having warned as many of his compatriots as he could 
 without betraying his justly grounded suspicions, repaired to the tower 
 
 (1.) Many were induced to pay the expenses of the journey undertaken for 
 the Lord’s sake out of the booty taken from the Lord’s enemies, especially as 
 they had little fear of being questioned on the deed. The leaders of this 
 daring plan were some of the nobles indebted to the impious in large sums • 
 they were thirsty for the blood of infidels aud full of greed for°booty— 
 Chronicles of William of Newbury. 
 
 (2.) Historic towns, “ York,” p. 60. J. Eaine. 
 
10 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 where he placed his valuables. Within a few hours a handful of the 
 hated Jews were all that remained in the city ; for the majority, after 
 a useless attempt to assuage the rancour of their foes by offering them 
 huge sums of money and lavish presents, followed Joachim who had 
 permanently retreated to the castle. The Jews for the moment began 
 to entertain fond hopes that the fierce determination of the mob to 
 slay them, might, as in Lincoln, prove only an ephemeral fever into 
 which the people had been thrown by the Crusade-advocating clergy, 
 but fate had ordained it otherwise. Conceive their awful horror when 
 they discovered that the Governor was in clandestine negotiation for 
 their sunendei en masse and the price he was to receive was already 
 agreed upon. So convinced were they that the Governor would faith¬ 
 fully perform his promise that when he, on one occasion, left the castle 
 to visit the town they decided to close the gates, refuse him admission, 
 and await a siege. 
 
 Their ablest men then manned the walls prepared to sell their lives 
 and those of their dear ones only after a bitter struggle. The enraged 
 Governor on discovering that the Jews had possessed themselves " 5 of 
 Clifford’s Tower made instant application to the Sheriff of the 
 County for a body of soldiers to assist in retaking the Castle, and 
 after some delay and reflection he granted him an armed force. 
 The mob now assumed the attitude the Jews had suspected; those 
 who had not been either sufficiently expeditious or suspicious to fly to 
 whatever refuge the tower offered them, were hacked to death by the 
 maces and axes of the military and the rabble. Their goods were 
 plundered and their dwellings set ablaze. The Governor bringing up 
 more men to reinforce the besiegers, with the most fervid eloquence 
 incited them to demolish the fortress. To fan them into fury he 
 lecited the noble exploits of their heretic-hunting countrymen at 
 Norwich, Stamford and other towns. The siege was then commenced 
 in real earnest. The uncontrollable fury and dreadful yells with which 
 the maddened mob swarmed to the attack so terrified the Sheriff that 
 he m vam attempted to recall his permission for the assault, but the 
 cruel passions of the besiegers must now find a vent; no earthly power 
 could-still the fury he had himself assisted, by his action, in raising. 
 For six full days the beleagured men fought with that desperate 
 courage begotten of agony. - The clergy fanned the rabble into yet 
 hotter flame by encouraging their mad fury as holy zeal, promising 
 salvation to all who shed the blood of a Jew ; and they themselves, in 
 strange contradiction to the professions signified by the garbs they wore 
 j oined in the aff ray,of ten headingthe attack . 1 “ The unshrinking courage,’ 
 (1.) Chamber’s Miscellany. Vol. XVII. Article,‘‘The Jews,” pt 4.-~’ 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 11 
 
 tlic noble self-defence and heroic endurance of the hapless Hebrews could 
 little avail them against the wild excitement and immense multitude 
 of their assailants ; yet still they resisted with vigour. Accused as 
 they were of never handling the weapons or experiencing the emotions 
 of the warrior it was now shown that circumstance and not character 
 was at fault. That spirit of true heroism peculiar to their race in 
 the olden times might indeed appear crushed and lost beneath the 
 heavy fetters of oppression but it burned still, ready to burst into life 
 and energy whenever occasion demanded its display.” ^he besiegers, 
 who expected to find an easy prey, began to lose courage ; and their 
 ranks being thinned by constant desertions (for many anticipated that 
 with such an unusually large and organized force creating a riot and 
 disturbing the peace of the city, the tidings would inevitably reach 
 the ears of the King, who would doubtless inflict condign punishment) 
 the Governor was on the point of ordering the cessation of hostilities 
 and even enforcing it by arms if necessary. 
 
 The mob considering themselves baulked were about to disperse 
 when up rose a white robed monk, wl\o implored them with tears in 
 his eyes not to relinquish such a holy undertaking. Each morning of 
 the siege he had received the Sacrament, read Mass, sprinkled himself 
 with Holy Water, and conducted a special solemn service invoking the 
 aid of the Lord and begging him to deliver into his hands the few 
 heroic Jews who had opposed their steadfastness to the hatred of the 
 infuriated mob. The well aimed missile directed by a Jewish hand 
 cut off his fury-stirring eloquence for ever. Yet his zeal had given 
 his auditors fresh vigour and renewed their determination to overcome 
 the Jews. 
 
 The scene inside the castle was very different. Nothing daunted 
 so long as their provisions, which had been doled out very scantily, 
 had sufficed to save them from actual starvation, they made a noble 
 stand, and even now that ultimate hunger stared at them with her 
 basilisk eyes, they fought most gallantly, but the dearth of provisions 
 became so evident and the cries of their assailants so fierce that they 
 grew disheartened. For six days they had successfully repelled the 
 enemy, but the rabble still awaited their capitulation and rushed to the 
 attack with frantic cries : authority and organization there were none, 
 they gnashed their teeth and foamed like men bereft of reason, thirsting 
 for the blood of those whose only desire was to follow the religion to 
 which the founder of Christianity had so rigidly adhered. The Jews 
 now realized their position, they saw no alternative to death but baptism, 
 and, as may be imagined, they were not anxious to embrace the Religion 
 
 (1.) Chamber’s Miscellany. Vol. XVII. xVrticle, “ The Jews,” p. 4. 
 
12 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 of “ Love ” and “ Goodwill to all Men,” after having witnessed such 
 tangible proofs of its mode of propagation. 
 
 Matters had come to a crisis, further resistance could serve no other 
 purpose than to increase the fury of their foes, mercy was not to be 
 expected from them on other than one condition, and renounce their 
 allegiance to their ancestral creed they would not. An assembly was 
 therefore summoned to the Council Room there to deliberate as to 
 what was to be done. Rabbi Yom Tob of Tobigny, a pious white- 
 haired old man learned in the Talmud (of which he was a glossator), 
 who had come over from France to visit his English brethren, advised 
 them to kill one another. “ Men of Israel,” said this noble old hero, 
 “ the inscrutable God of our fathers, to whom none can say, “ What 
 dost thou?” desires that we should this day die for our holy religion. 
 Death is inevitable ! but it is left us to choose whether we will die 
 nobly as Jews or fall into the hands of the Gentiles and desert the 
 creed of our ancestors. Let each die as befits the scion of the House 
 of Abraham for the Law. For that Law which we have cherished from 
 the first hour it was given us, and the belief in eternal life which it 
 communicates, can we do less than die ? Do we desire for a short 
 extension of our span of life to be faithless to our race ? As we all 
 prefer a glorious death to an ignominious life, let us render back to our 
 God with our own hands the lives which he has given us. Did our 
 brethren in Frankfort and Spiers turn craven when death menaced 
 them? Did the men of Worms fear when the pikes of the Crusaders 
 were pointed at their breasts ? Let us die for the Law ! Posterity 
 shall behold its solemn truths sealed with our blood, and our death, 
 while it confirms our sincerity shall impart strength to the wanderers 
 of Israel. Death is before our eyes, we have only to choose an easy 
 and an honourable one. If we fall into the hands of our enemies, 
 which fate it is clear we cannot elude, our death will be ignoble and 
 cruel ; for these Christians, who picture the spirit of God in a dove and 
 confide in the meek Jesus, are athirst for our blood and prowl like 
 wolves around us. Let us escape their tortures and surrender, as our 
 ancestors have done before us, our lives with our hands to our Creator. 
 Our omniscient God calls for us. Children of the Patriarchs and 
 kinsmen of the Prophets, be not unworthy of the call. ? 
 
 The aged Rabbi, who wept bitterly as he spoke, then resumed his 
 seat and joined in the sobs of his auditors as they considered his words. 
 Though it was dear to them, they would not purchase life through 
 dishonour, for, to their undying glory and to the everlasting fame of 
 the Jewish nation, the vast majority (all except a few timid youths and 
 maidens) signified their approval of his suggestion and said that, though 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 13 
 
 it was a hard counsel, the Rabbi had spoken well. Then with touching 
 dignity the hoary-headed old patriot rose from his seat and ordered all 
 who disapproved of his plan to leave them and depart in peace. 
 To baulk the avarice of their implacable foes they burned their priceless 
 treasures. Those which were incombustible they buried out of sight 
 and immediately afterwards set fire to the portion of the castle in 
 which they were located. Then these noble spirits, high placed in the 
 scroll of Israel’s glory began—like the Zealots of old had done, when 
 they had witnessed the destruction of the Temple—to slay each other. 
 The nobler were accorded the melancholy distinction of receiving the 
 death stroke from the hands of the Rabbi, who was himself the last to 
 perish, after having slaughtered J oachim. Joachim had killed his beloved 
 wife Anna with a large square-bladed knife (the weapon all had used) 
 used for the slaying of cattle. On that fateful 17th day of March, 
 that day that has erected an imperishable monument to the grandest 
 promptings of the human heart, that day the story of which should for 
 ever hush the foes of poor tortured Israel, that day to find an equal to 
 which we search the histories of nations and find no compeer, each 
 father took his children, and amid wails and tears drew the knife across 
 their throats, then the same gory weapon, wreaking with the blood of 
 those dearest to him in life, was by the same hand sheathed in the 
 self-unbared bosom of her that gave them birth, ere it found a resting- 
 place in his own noble and heroic heart. Not a sound had betrayed 
 to the besiegers the awful scenes that had transpired ; for when they 
 at daybreak renewed the attack they beheld a few timid youths and 
 children rushing wildly upon the battlements, shrieking and wringing 
 their hands and entreating for mercy. The corpses they had cast over 
 the walls quickly told the fearful story their lips could not repeat. 
 The gates being opened to the victors on promise of mercy, the heartless 
 assassins piously crossing themselves poured through the gates and 
 murdered everyone, saying that it was wicked to keep faith with heretics. 
 
 “ The gentry of the neighbourhood, who were all indebted to the 
 Jews, ran to the Cathedral where the bonds were kept and made a 
 bonfire of the papers before the altar.” 1 
 
 The Compiler of the Annals ofWaverley in relating these frightful 
 events blesses the Almighty for thus delivering over an impious race 
 to destruction. King Richard on his return from Palestine, professed 
 to be deeply incensed at this terrible massacre, and to give colour to 
 his anger, the principal nobles implicated were constrained to fly to 
 Scotland for a brief period. He converted the properties of three of 
 the wealthiest of those who had fled (Robert of Ghent, Richard Malebys, 
 
 (1.) Hume, “ History of England.” Yol. I., p. 369. 
 
14 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 and Robert of Turnham,) to the Crown, and deposed the prime 
 instigator of the affair, the Governor of York from his office. 
 
 Notwithstanding that the King had so summarily punished the per¬ 
 petrators of these atrocities, afurther outbreak disgraced the bloody records 
 of English history. On the eighteenth of March, Bury St. Edmunds, 
 a town already rendered notable for its heretic-hunting zeal, stigmatized 
 itself by the atrocious murder of 750 defenceless Jews of both sexes. 
 Not one soul remained to bear in memory the sufferings of this martyred 
 community. This massacre, together with the preceding one at York 
 initiated a monstrous persecution of the Jews throughout England ; a 
 series of the most awful massacres, so awful that the most callous 
 reader involuntarily shudders when reminded of them, spread through 
 the country ; and this was done to perpetuate the fame of one who had 
 taught peace on earth and goodwill to all men. In a few towns the 
 citizens had sufficient acumen to recognize their financial utility and 
 most magnanimously sold their protection to the richer Jews. During 
 the fever of the Crusades the fiery warriors of the Cross incited by the 
 fanatical monks butchered the kinsmen of the Prophets and Apostles 
 without discrimination. Grey hairs were no protection, smiling infancy 
 did not avail, their moral and upright lives, their unswerving rectitude, 
 their staunch attachment to their race which might have moved the 
 heart of a Stoic, their heroism amid the most grievous afflictions, their 
 earnest prayers (prayer was ever the panoply of the Jew) did not damp 
 the ardour of their inexorable executioners. Infidel-extirpating 
 ardour did not wane when confronted with the tears of mothers, who 
 in the deepest slough of agony slew their own offspring, or the resolu¬ 
 tion of husbands, who had slain their own wives, preferring that 
 they should thus die, rather than fall into the hands of the lustful 
 Crusaders. The condition of the Jews at this time was indeed 
 pitiable ; a debauched monk or a drink-besotten friar had only to 
 utter a few words to throw the inhabitants of a town into a paroxysm 
 of uncontrollable rage against them ; “ the most palatable order 
 that could be given was for an attack upon the Jewish quarter,” 1 and 
 a frenzied mob was not to be restrained from indulging in this their 
 favourite diversion. Richard’s Crown officers, doubtless taking the 
 cue from his own apathy in the matter, generally resolved on prin¬ 
 ciple to be unfair to the Jews. Walter Mapes, who dispensed justice 
 on his behalf, when requested to swear to deal equitably to all, always 
 refused to promise the exercise of justice towards the Jews whom he 
 publicly and by name excluded from his oath. 
 
 (1.) Hume. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 15 
 
 John (1199-1216) at first treated the Jews most equitably and 
 even regarded them with a certain measure of favour, advancing 
 them to responsible posts, protecting them from insult and outrage, 
 and clearly defining their rights and liberties ; but this was when 
 he did not need money ! As soon as his coffers became exhausted, 
 he suddenly reversed his tactics and rendered their lives intolerable. 
 Chased from country to country like beasts of the forest, their 
 wealth, ever the cause of Christian cupidity, made them the cynosure 
 of John’s financial aptitude. 1 Inured to sufferings as they were, they 
 were yet to suffer agony both mental and physical, in the relation of 
 which we reach the very crux of cowardly oppression and systematized 
 tyranny. John, ever arbitrary and whimsical, declared the Jews to 
 be “ the King’s bondsmen ” and taxable at his royal will ; but not 
 before he had induced large numbers of wealthy Continental Jews 
 to settle in England, did he commence his periodical demands for 
 money. For the immigrants who, after a life-long oppression abroad, 
 had vainly hoped for peace on English shores, John’s despotic actions 
 proved a sad awakening indeed. Once on his shores he submitted 
 them to a series of unheard of extortions. 2 These he initiated by 
 imposing a tallage of 66,000 marks upon the unprotected sufferers, 
 and to terrify them into rapid payment of this large sum every 
 member of the ill-fated race in the country was without distinction 
 of age, sex, or position roughly dragged to prison ; the most cruel 
 and inconceivable tortures were ruthlessly applied to extract from 
 them the repositories of their supposed wealth ; many were maimed, 
 blinded, lamed and tormented beyond all conception; numbers died 
 under the indescribably horrid treatment meted out to them. 
 
 From one old man, Abraham of Bristol, was demanded the sum 
 of 10,000 marks, probably the amount levied on the community of 
 which he was the head. He refused to ransom himself at such a 
 price and was tortured in vain. Then the King ordered that one 
 of his teeth should be struck out each day until he paid it. The 
 
 (1.) An appeal was made to him to drive out the Jews, the petitioners 
 adding with unconscious humour that he should leave them' just money 
 enough to take them safely out of the country. The encouragement which 
 he had at one time given to this useful and despised race seems to have 
 offended many who afterwards took a fearful revenge.—“ Stephen Langton,” 
 by Edmund Maurice, p. 50. 
 
 (2.) The persecution of the Jews must have given a serious blow to trade. 
 That this persecution was more successful than the outburst that opened the 
 reign of Richard is clear from the account given by a contemporary chronicler, 
 who illustrates the impartiality of John’s oppressions by a picture of the 
 Cistercians and the Jews begging their bread in rivalry.— Ibid. p. 150. 
 
16 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 wretched man yielded on the eighth day. 1 In Bristol, however, the 
 anti-Jewish feeling was most acute; John had often stayed its on¬ 
 slaughts upon the Jews as a means of fining both parties. “While 
 the King made the Jews give him whatever he demanded, he took 
 care that no one else should injure them, for they were the most 
 profitable possessions of the Crown. Accordingly in 1177, the 
 burgesses of Bristol had been fined 80 marks for Sturmis the Jew, 
 whom they probably had slain.” 2 
 
 To John it was a mere bagatelle, and a very frequent occurrence 
 to present to any knight, who had succeeded in obtaining his favour, 
 the house and property of some unfortunate Jew, whom he would 
 especially turn out of his house and home. It was thus that he 
 fulfilled the loud and specious promises of protection he had made 
 to his Jewish subjects. 3 Fired by his ignoble example, the Barons 
 made most outrageous and murderous demands upon the now im¬ 
 poverished and in many instances homeless Jews. 0 
 
 “ The brave assertors of the ‘ Magna Charta,’ men who fought 
 for human liberty, did not scruple to plunder the Jews of London. 
 “ Their treasures were seized and their homes demolished.” 4 Their 
 adherents dragged the very tombstones from the cemeteries and 
 used them to repair the walls of the city (1210). 
 
 John did not interfere as he had done six years previously on 
 behalf of his London Jews. In 1204 he had written a sharp letter to 
 the Mayor and Barons of London severely deprecating the numerous 
 attacks upon that people, “I shall require their blood at your hands, take 
 an armed force if necessary to quell these riots,” but this was before 
 his contest with the Pope, and when he was not so sorely pressed for 
 money. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, applauded such 
 consummate bravery as heartily as his saintly predecessor, Thomas a 
 Beckett would have done. He, in conjunction with the King and the 
 unscrupulous Barons, harassed the Jews for years without cessation. 6 
 
 (1.) History of Bristol, p. 28, William Hunt. 
 
 (2.) Ibid. 
 
 (3.) John was hateful and contemptible in a degree, he deserted his father, 
 he deceived his brother, he murdered his nephew, he oppressed his people. 
 He had the pride that made enemies and wanted the courage to fight them. A 
 Knight without truth, a King without justice, a Christian without faith.—Dr. 
 White, “ The Eighteen Christian Centuries,” p. 290. 
 
 (4 ) Milman, “ History of the Jews,” Vol. III. p. 241. 
 
 (5.) The Magna Charta provided (article 29) “ that the body of no free man 
 may be taken, nor imprisoned, nor distrained, nor outlawed, nor exiled, nor 
 destroyed in any manner, and that the King shall not overcome him, save by 
 the judgment of his peers, or the Law of the land. And (article 30) that 
 justice be neither sold, delayed nor refused.” But of course the Jews were 
 not freemen nor was justice a privilege of which, they as heretics, could claim 
 the benefit. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 17 
 
 Stephen Langton decreed that “ Christians shall not hold commu¬ 
 nion with the Jews, or sell them food under pain of excommunica¬ 
 tion.” This prelate took an active part in promulgating the spirit 
 of tyranny that afterwards became such an important feature in the 
 English Church. The intolerant enactment referred to might be 
 regarded as England’s ratification of the Canons passed against the 
 Jews at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, one paragraph of which 
 loudly interdicted all commerce between Christians and Jews. John 
 added to their misery by, at about the same time, presenting many 
 of their finest synagogues to the Church, and their priceless Oriental 
 manuscripts became his munificent gift to the University at Oxford, 
 a town where long before the University was established, there had 
 existed Jewish Halls of Learning, in which Mathematics, Hebrew, 
 Medicine, Astronomy, and Science, were taught to Jew and Christian 
 alike. 1 
 
 In 1222 Stephen Langton summoned a Council which enacted the 
 most inimical laws against the Jews; in fact the chief aim of this 
 assemblage seems to have been to subvert humanitv. 
 
 During the minority of Henry III, the Regents found it necessary 
 to firmly handle the Jewish question ; they, though not releasing 
 them from the many restrictions under which they laboured, pro¬ 
 tected them from maltreatment. Yet they could not—however 
 benign their intentions—counteract the labours of the priesthood, 
 who inculcated enmity and injustice to the Jews as Christian duties. 
 The ordinary Englishman regarded the Jew as some sort of ravenous 
 animal, longing for the downfall of all non-Jews and elated at their 
 sufferings. The cataclysm of foolish charges born of hatred and 
 nursed by envious bigotry found universal credence. The Jews were 
 Child Crucifiers, Host Desecrators, Ritual Murderers, Usurers and 
 Fiends incarnate, thirsting for Christian blood. The mere utterance 
 of the term Jew was tantamount to expressing in words every species 
 and degree of depravity, hatred and heartlessness. The word was 
 shunned as unfit for modest ears and the persons unfortunate enough 
 to bear that name were to be allowed to live in verification of 
 Apostolic prophecy only. 
 
 (1.) The earliest stone houses were probably due to them just as at Lincoln ; 
 and at Oxford nearly all the larger houses which were afterwards converted 
 into Halls bore traces of Jewish origin in their names, Moysey’s (Moses) Hall, 
 Lombard and Jacob Halls. The Guildhall itself was owned in Henry Ill’s 
 time by Moses, the son of Isaac, from whom it is supposed to have come to 
 the King by escheat and he gave it to the citizens by his Charter.—“ A History 
 of Oxford,” pp. 22, 23. C. W. Boase. 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 The commercial classes envied their wealth but the lower orders 
 oppressed them on sheer traditional grounds. They were compelled 
 to wear a distinctive mark, a white cloth in the shape of two 
 tablets of the Law, upon their breasts. Jews attempting to enter the 
 country without permission were ill-treated and imprisoned. Henry 
 on his accession approved of the move of his Regents, who had 
 relegated to a number of the responsible burgesses of each town the 
 duty of shielding the Jews from injustice and oppression other than 
 such as was legalised. He gave the Jewish question his gravest 
 consideration, for he was prompted by motives of sheer expediency to 
 do so. He deplored the egregious persecution to which they were 
 subject throughout the kingdom and the seeming inability of the 
 State to repress it; he set himself to adjust their grievances and 
 remedy those glaring defects in his code which tolerated, or rather 
 directed, their infliction. The hatred with which the Jews were 
 regarded in the eyes of the Law was thus greatly relaxed ; and they 
 were the recipients of an inestimable concession, when they learned 
 that they were no longer amenable to the Clerical courts. Picture 
 a tribunal composed of a body of gloomy and bigoted monks, then 
 we can imagine how much justice a Jewish recusant might receive 
 at the hands of these prejudiced judges! Their joy was, however, 
 counter-balanced by the Royal order directing the rigid enforcement 
 of the law, which compelled them to wear the hated Jew Badge. 
 This was ostensibly for their protection, it being urged that if they 
 were compelled to wear a special outward token of their nation¬ 
 ality, no one would ill treat them and plead ignorance of the fact that 
 they were Jews ; but the results of this kindly protection amply 
 show that an ulterior motive prompted the measure ; for assaults 
 upon them were in no wise diminished, nor was reparation to be 
 obtained any easier than during the two preceding reigns. 
 
 Many Continental Jews lured by plausible promises emigrated to 
 England as their fathers had done in the reign of John. They 
 preferred to reside in a country that maintained a semblance of 
 justice, however faint, to being harassed in the different European 
 countries. They were at this time “ everywhere the objects of public 
 insult and oppression, frequently of general massacre.” 1 Their 
 superior commercial knowledge and influence was only an additional 
 menace to them-, for on landing many were immediately seized and 
 by order of the Warden of the Cinque Ports forcibly detained. They 
 were ultimately released after undertaking not to quit the country 
 
 (1.) Hallam’s “ Europe during the Middle Ages.” Vol. III. p. 354. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 19 
 
 without leave. 1 The ecclesiastical authorities—whose antipathy to 
 the Jews appeared invulnerable—were highly indignant at this act 
 of common justice. Notable among these was Hugh, Bishop of 
 Lincoln, who was particularly fierce in his enforcement of that edict 
 already referred to, which prohibited Christians from selling food 
 to the Jews. The latter were classed as irreclaimable infidels and 
 in perpetual excommunication for their heresy and the practice 
 of usury. The latter charge was very general and ever used as a 
 means of holding up the Jew to obloquy by stamping his callings 
 with infamy. The Jewish money-lenders performed a necessary 
 function in the kingdom, and as the risks they ran in granting loans 
 were colossal, they were compelled to charge commensurate profits. 
 They were encouraged, even compelled, by their sovereign to follow 
 this detested avocation, who, in the words of a historian, thus used 
 them as a sponge to drain the wealth of his subjects, which he might 
 the more readily squeeze periodically into his own coffers. European 
 history is full of this charge (strange charge since every other calling 
 was practically denied them by law) against the Jew, yet we rarely 
 hear voiced the rapacity of the “ Caorsini ” and the extortionate 
 interest they exacted. These usurers conducted a successful system 
 of money-lending for their employers the Popes ; their rate of 
 interest was incomparably higher than that of the Jews (5% per 
 month after the third month or about 45%, while the Jew generally 
 charged two pence per month on each pound or 10%), but the former 
 were very devout Catholics and the ramifications of Papal invest¬ 
 ment, therefore the Jews who had not been pronounced infallible by 
 a council suffered contumely better merited by their detractors. 
 
 In reviewing this reign Picciotto instances cases where the children 
 of Israel went from village to village and from town to town, vainly 
 begging for a little bread for which they offered large sums, till they 
 perished from sheer hunger and exhaustion. Happily the diabolical 
 law which prevented them from buying food was ultimately miti¬ 
 gated, although other outlets for the popular hatred against the 
 Jews were not closed. Had this fiendish enactment obtained for any 
 length of time the benighted children of Jacob would most certainly 
 have starved to death in whole communities. 
 
 Henry having clamorous demands upon his depleted exchequer 
 tried in vain every feudal abuse and art of oppression to replenish 
 his treasury, but found no better plan than to extract money from 
 
 
 (1.) Picciotto’s ,l Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History,” p. 12. 
 
20 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 the Jews. 1 To them he was the congener of John, and like 
 him plundered them when in need by every means in his power. 
 He was not loth in resorting to any expedient, however foul, to add 
 to his wealth by torturing and hounding them. In the year 1230 
 they were ordered—under threats of the direst punishment to 
 deliver up one third of their total movable goods to the needy ruler ; 
 to this cruel demand they had absolutely no option but to comply. 
 In return for the vast sums of money thus obtained, Henry magna¬ 
 nimously presented one of their handsomest Synagogues to the 
 Austrian monks resident in London. That body of licentious men 
 known as the “ Friars Penitent ” on another occasion finding them¬ 
 selves in want of a place of prayer dispensed with the formality of 
 a Royal presentation and quietly annexed another Jews 1 Place of 
 Worship. Those dispossessed made no appeal to the State knowing, 
 as a shrewd writer observes, “how rarely the Laws of England 
 interfered on behalf of the King’s Jewish subjects, though they 
 would have been somewhat rigidly obeyed had the sufferers been the 
 offenders. 11 
 
 In 1235 it was enacted “ that no Christian shall become servant 
 to a Jew, 11 this law doubtless sought to show those legislated against 
 their utter helplessness, and their dependency upon the lenity of 
 their Christian masters. 
 
 In 1236 the populace of Norwich rose, plundered the Jewish 
 community, and razed their houses to the ground ; hardly a single 
 Hebrew dwelling remained whole, so furious was the attack. 2 
 
 In 1239 an influential Templar named Geoffrey ordered a general 
 massacre of the Jews ; four months after the unequivocal wish of 
 that knight, they were appalled by an order bearing the Royal seal 
 commanding them to quit the country or as an alternative pay a sum 
 of 2,000 marks for no other reason, than that they were Jews and the 
 only victims whom Henry could, when in need, lay his hands upon and 
 successfully wring without interference of Pope, Clergy, and Barons, 
 who would, had the victims been other than Jews, most certainly have 
 restrained him from sucha cruel deed of shameless injustice. During the 
 latter part of his reign hardly a month passed without some 
 charge being lodged against them, some of them most ridiculous, others 
 absolutely impossible. Murdering expeditions into the Jewries were quite 
 common and to add to the misery of their wretched inhabitants, the 
 
 (1.) Hallam’s “ Europe.” Vol. III. p. 238. 
 
 (2.) When in 1236 a Jewish child that had been converted and baptized was 
 forcibly recovered by the Jews, and complaint was made of it, the Jews were 
 for a time imprisoned in the Castle.—“ History of Oxford,” p. 23. C. W. Boase. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 21 
 
 old and obsolete accusations of crucifying and circumcising Christian 
 children were brought forward, and although these indictments only 
 found birth in the minds of the lower orders and were only now 
 believed by the most credulous, they were attended by the same 
 financial results. Although the absurd charge had been invariably 
 disproved it was found a much better investment than the usury 
 accusation, it paid much better but it could not be worked too often. 
 
 The Jewish purse was drained for every royal function, for every 
 national festivity or contingency, yet they were not allowed to 
 participate in any of the rejoicings, their adherence to their ancestral 
 creed had deprived them of all right to be considered as human 
 beings. 1 How the Jew proved a haven of rest to needy princes 
 from the storms aroused by importunate creditors is shown by the 
 following incident :— 
 
 Immediately before the marriage of Prince (afterwards King) 
 Edward, who was lamentably indigent, it was fortunately discovered 
 on the suggestion of his nobles, that the Norwich Jews (note that 
 Norwich contained the richest body of Jews in England) had circum¬ 
 cised a Christian youth. The seven wealthiest Jews of that town 
 were formally arraigned before the indignant monarch and sentenced 
 to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. It is perhaps unnecessary to 
 state what became of their riches after the faithful execution of the 
 furious sentence ! 
 
 An accusation fraught with such a lucrative issue was not allowed 
 to fall into abeyance, A Jew resident in this same borough—a 
 borough ever responsive to every call for the malignant treatment 
 of the Jews—named Jacob, and of course exceedingly rich, was 
 charged with the same offence, but let us here admit to the credit 
 of Henry that he did not resort to this ruse, until he was sorely in 
 need of money and his resources had been drained by his incursions 
 into Scotland, leaving him unable to pay his marauders. The 
 puerility of the indictment was demonstrated by the medical evidence 
 adduced by the accused ; this established at once beyond all dispute 
 that circumcision could not possibly have been performed. The Bishop 
 of Norwich was thereupon appointed president of a tribunal composed 
 
 (1 ) “In 1240 two uncles of the Queen, Thomas, Count of Savoy, and Boni¬ 
 face, his younger brother, visited England. King Henry, out of complaisance 
 to his consort received and entertained them with such magnificence, that not 
 knowing how to support the charge by honest means he sent word to the Jews 
 that unless they presented him with 20,000 marks he would expel them all the 
 kingdom and thus he supplied himself with money for his unjust generosity. 
 —Strickland, “ Lives of the Queens of England.” Yol. I., p. 109. 
 
22 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 of priests and monks, to whom was relegated the duty of investi¬ 
 gating the case. These narrow minded gentlemen, whose casuistry 
 consisted in burning people and polemics in anathematising those who 
 dissented from their views, were not going to fetter themselves by 
 such trifles as the laws of evidence, when upon their decision depended 
 the liberation of a heretic. Nor did the amazing number of con¬ 
 tradictory statements the protagonist of this travesty made in his 
 purchased evidence affect in the least his calm and dispassionate 
 judges. Jacob was burned alive at the stake, as was also several 
 of his co-religionists, who had committed the flagrant crime of being 
 Jews of Norwich. The inevitable sequel, the wholesale confiscation 
 of their goods, added greatly to this awful murder of so many guilt¬ 
 less men. Compared to this flagitious crime of Henry’s the mulct 
 of 18,000 marks which he had inflicted upon the Jews of England 
 in 1232 and squeezed from them to the last farthing by every con¬ 
 ceivable species of cruelty and high-handed despotism, and that of 
 10,000 marks in 1234 also obtained through ruthless violence, torture, 
 terror and banishment, are perhaps insignificant. 
 
 The Jews of England had been frequently robbed and their 
 houses looted on the most flimsy pretexts—often without even these— 
 but the ignoble spectacle of a judicial massacre was, for England, 
 comparatively novel, for the riots these assassins indulged in were 
 against the theory of the law, though the legal representatives of 
 the Crown were often in collusion with the people ; this is, after 
 reflection upon the mild and infrequent punishment meted out to 
 the delinquents, obvious. 
 
 “Early in 1254 Eleanor received instructions from the King to 
 summon a Parliament for the purpose of demanding aid for carrying 
 on the war in Gascony, but finding it impossible to obtain a grant 
 Queen Eleanor sent the King 500 marks from her own private coffers, 
 as a New Year’s gift for the immediate relief of his more pressing 
 exigencies. Henry then directed his brother to exact from the luck¬ 
 less Jews the sum required for the nuptial festivities of his heir. 
 He also called upon the Jews to furnish the funds for the splen¬ 
 did festivities which he thought proper to ordain in honour of the 
 nuptials between his brother and the sister of his cousin. One Jew, 
 the rich Aaron of York, was compelled to pay no less than 400 marks 
 of gold and 4000 marks of silver ; and the Jews of London were 
 mulcted in like proportion .” 1 
 
 When one or two Jews had been accused of clipping coin (probably 
 not without some plausible grounds ; for the Jews are as prone as 
 (1.) Strickland’s “Lives of the Queens of England.” Vol. I. p. 254-263. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 23 
 
 any other nation to possess a few unworthy members of their commu¬ 
 nity), the direst barbarities were resorted to against them, though it 
 was well known that many of the nobles had been caught red-handed 
 in the act of sweating money, and that numerous Christians depended 
 for a livelihood upon this nefarious traffic, yet when the convicted 
 few—for whom every Jew in the kingdom had to suffer—knew that 
 the very air they breathed had to be purchased, we are inclined to 
 condone their offence. Though we pay no premium to crime we 
 must take cognisance of circumstance. 
 
 Shortly after this a dual accusation was made against the Jews. 
 They were charged with attempting to set London on fire and of / 
 plotting for the dismemberment of the kingdom. Comment upon 
 this vacuous charge is needless, its absurdity is as obvious as 
 its motive. We pass this puerility by and reserve our criticisms for 
 indictments that possess at least some slender shred of possibility. 
 Yet such stupid and senseless falsehoods as these were the cause of 
 the most harrowing tortures being inflicted upon the unhappy 
 Hebrews by the immaculate executors of justice who did not hesitate 
 to roast alive many of the unhappy people. Immense sums were 
 again rung from them under threats differing only in their fury. 
 
 A Jew of Hereford wishing to ensure his daughter against further 
 taxation paid 5,000 marks as a permanent relief. Another Jew, 
 Aaron of York, was judicially plundered of 30,000 marks in seven 
 years. The vastness of these sums is best realized when we bear in 
 mind that Robert, Duke of Normandy, made over his duchy and 
 coronet to Rufus for 10,000 marks yearly. 
 
 Hume, the great historian, sums the many exactions to which the 
 Jews were during this reign subjected to, in a succinct paragraph 
 of his solid work. 1 He says :—“ Our ideas scarcely come up to the 
 extortions which we find to have been practised upon them. In the 
 year 1*241, 20,000 marks were exacted from them : two years after 
 money was again extorted and one Jew alone, Aaron of York, was 
 compelled to pay above 4,000 marks. In 1250 Henry renewed his 
 oppressions and the same Aaron was compelled to pay him 30,000 
 marks on an accusation of forgery. The high penalty imposed upon 
 him, and which it is thought he was able to pay is rather a pre¬ 
 sumption of his innocence than of his guilt. In 1255 the King 
 demanded 8,000 marks from the Jews and threatened to hang them 
 if they refused compliance ; they now lost all patience and (through 
 their chief Rabbi, Elias) desired to retire with their effects out of the 
 kingdom. Henry delivered over the Jews to the Earl of Cornwall, 
 
 (1.) History of England. Vol. I, p. 360. 
 
24 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 that those whom the one brother had flayed the other might em¬ 
 bowel.” Continuing, the same author says :—“ One tallage laid 
 upon the Jews in 1243 amounted to 60,000 marks, a sum equal to 
 the whole yearly revenue of the Crown, and to give a better pretence 
 for extortions, the improbable and absurd accusation which has at 
 different times been advanced against that nation was revived in 
 England, that they had crucified a child in derision of the sufferings 
 of Christ. Eighteen were hanged at once for this crime though it 
 is nowise credible that even the antipathy borne them by the Chris¬ 
 tians, and the oppressions under which they laboured would ever 
 have pushed them to be guilty of that dangerous enormity.” 
 
 When Southampton, Derby, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, severally 
 petitioned Henry to sanction their forcible ejection of the Jewish 
 residents of their boroughs and also to preclude them from future 
 admission to those towns, he received the petitions very graciously 
 and granted what was asked of him. Henry made determined 
 attempts to effect the conversion of the Jews but was invariably 
 unsuccessful ; the many allurements held out always failed. Oxford 
 seems to have been a great centre of attention to him ; Boase tells 
 us that “there were preaching friars sent to convert the Jews and 
 Henry established a house of converts next to the Guildhall.” 
 
 Some of the rent, however, went to his other house of converts in 
 Chancery Lane, London. Above the synagogue in Fish Street the 
 “ Blue Boar Inn ” was an old Jewish dwelling which Henry also gave 
 to the house of converts in London. It was a penal, of rather capital 
 offence, for a Christian to accept Judaism ; thus, when a Deacon 
 had abjured the Christian faith for Judaism it was thought that he 
 had either lost his senses or was possessed by a demon. Whether the 
 motives by which he was prompted were sincere, or whether his 
 object was ulterior it is difficult to say. “ He was convicted before 
 a council and being first degraded was afterwards sentenced to the 
 stake by the secular court and burnt accordingly. Church and State 
 thus united in this judicial act by which a man was condemned to 
 death for an offence against religion.” 1 
 
 In 1256 there occurred an event perhaps unique in history. 
 Henry convened a Jewish Parliament at Worcester. The Sheriffs of 
 each town were ordered by Royal mandate to return the six richest 
 Jews residing in their particular borough and though these were to 
 represent the remainder of their co-religionists, their constituents 
 had no voice in their election, nor as the late learned Dean of St. 
 Paul’s says, with a touch of his gravest irony, were His Majesty’s 
 
 (1.) Dean Hook’s Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” Vol. II., p. 753. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 25 
 
 faithful Jewish subjects allowed freedom Sf speech nor were they 
 admitted to the rights of debate. The poor trembling Israelites 
 assembled on the date indicated with mingled sentiments of fear and 
 hope. Henry appeared before the unhappy Jews whom he had so 
 frequently and mercilessly fleeced and in lachrymose tones lamented 
 his depleted exchequer and asked them to advise him how to obtain 
 20,000 marks. Instantly perceiving his meaning, they informed 
 their troubled monarch that their wealth which he appeared to deem 
 absolutely inexhaustible had been drained by the barons, who omitted 
 no occasion of wringing large sums of money from them by the most 
 cruel of methods, and the constant demands he himself made and 
 never failed to enforce upon them. The King, however, paid no 
 heed whatever to their temperate protest against the harsh injustice 
 both he and his nobles had meted out to them, and proceeded to 
 nominate six members of this sinecure Parliament as his collectors, 
 informing his hapless victims that he held them responsible for the 
 production of this enormous sum. They made the most strenuous 
 efforts to procure it, vainly thinking that could they do so they would 
 permanently secure themselves by making this final sacrifice to his 
 rapacity, but owing to the vastness of the sum they did not succeed by 
 the stipulated date, and were therefore, together with the entire Jewish 
 Parliament and their wives and children cast into dark and damp 
 dungeons and their detained till the last penny had been wrung from 
 the Jews. This was mainly effected by confiscation. The whole 
 incident recalls the cruel deed of John who, when he imprisoned his 
 Jewish subjects forfeited their entire wealth to the Crown. During 
 the three years following this atrocious extortion, the colossal sum of 
 60,000 golden marks was squeezed from them, no enormity being too 
 gross for perpetration provided money could be obtained. This 
 amount is not inclusive of 8,000 marks their Royal protector dragged 
 from them under the threat of transportation to the wildest and most 
 boggy uninhabited part of Ireland. Had the Hebrews been able to 
 sow pence and reap marks they would still have have found it 
 impossible to meet the incessant demands made upon them by King, 
 Barons, and People, 1 who all vied with each other in their extortion 
 
 (1 ) To the great mass of the people the Jews during the whole of this 
 period were objects of the bitterest hatred. They looked on them as an 
 accursed race, who by adhering to the religion professed their consent to tne 
 great crime of their forefathers. Reports were continually circulated of 
 blasphemies uttered and cruelties exercised by them in derision of the Chris¬ 
 tian worship. Hence the protection (?) of the sovereign was not always a 
 shield to them against insult and oppression, and in times of riot or sedition 
 many of them fell victims to the rage of their enemies.—Rev. Dr. Lingard, 
 “History of England.” Vol. II., Chap, vii. 
 
26 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 tind oppression. The Barons, who had devoted all their lives to a struggle 
 foi freedom, who had sworn to protect the meanest from injustice, 
 who had pledged themselves.by binding oaths to the shielding of the 
 weak and the vengeance of the wronged, hounded the Jews to death, 
 considering them without the pale of human beings. Nothing marks 
 more eloquently in history the utter helplessness of the Jews. ^Denied 
 the simplest rights of human beings, refused permission to enter the 
 kingdom as other than the King’s “ Serfs,” the very assertors of 
 justice and liberty were their most pitiless persecutors. ' 
 
 An instance of the egregious injustice that characterised this 
 leign is furnished by the case of a Jew, Abraham of Berkhampstead, 
 who was charged with disrespectful treatment of the image of the 
 Virgin Mary and who after presenting Richard, Duke of Cornwall, 
 with 700 marks, was acquitted. 
 
 A most sciupulous and painstaking investigation into the property 
 and income of the Jews was next initiated to better enable Henry to 
 fiame his future exactions with reason. As a result additional sums 
 were torn from them by methods the reverse of gentle. But a greater 
 calamity was spieading fear in the hearts of the Jews, and ferocious 
 resolutions in the minds of their adversaries. A trite accusation, 
 the crucifixion of a Christian child was renewed against them 
 and the same proof as at Norwich was adduced. Hugh of Lincoln 
 became a canonized martyr and to avenge his unsubstantiated murder 
 ninety one of the Lincoln Jews were imprisoned in the Tower of 
 London, whither they had been conveyed in manacled batches. A 
 loyal inquiry proclaimed all the Jews of England privy to the deed, 
 and by some unknown and inexplicable process of logic convicted 
 tncm of complicity. As a result nineteen of the most respected and 
 learned Lincoln Jews were dragged to the gallows by wild horses, and 
 amid the cheers and the unfeigned joy of the spectators were hung 
 on a specially erected one. Ihe trial and sentence were, says 
 Dean Milman, the greatest proofs brought forward in support of a 
 story a great part of which contradicts itself. 
 
 Many unjust canons affecting the Jews were promulgated during 
 the last years of Henry’s reign. They must not have Christian 
 servants, they must not eat meat during Lent, they must not hold 
 theological arguments with the clergy, 1 they must not wound the 
 susceptibility of Christians by praying aloud in their synagogues, they 
 
 (!•) Wh y H 5s perhaps unnecessary to mention. The keen intellect of the 
 Jew found a wide scope in religious disputation. St. Jerome has accused them 
 of an inordinate love of argument which he is prudent enough to condemn. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 27 
 
 must not give their children Christian names, lest they elude the 
 persecution which was their patrimony ; and worst fate of all the 
 supervision of their morals was relegated to the clergy. “These,” 
 says Chambers, “men, who both professors of religion and peace 
 should have been the first to protect the injured and calm the turbu¬ 
 lent passions of the populace, were the constant inciters to persecution 
 and cruelty, believing by a most extraordinary hallucination that to 
 maltreat the Jews was the surest evidence of Christian zeal.” 
 
 Henry’s cruel persecution of his Jewish subjects reached its 
 culmination in their actual sale to his brother Richard, Duke of 
 Cornwall. Richard paid 5,000 marks for them and they and their 
 effects were made over to him for this sum. The agreement bearing 
 Henry’s seal is still in existence. He was further vested with plenary 
 power over their persons and properties. Richard being ultimately 
 pressed, but still loth. to part with his lucrative purchase, was com¬ 
 pelled to mortgage them. The unhappy mortgaged Jews, after 
 passing through many hands, being bought and sold like negro slaves, 
 became the property of their bitterest enemies, the Caorsini bankers, 
 before passing back to Henry. The purchasers invariably discussed 
 the probability of another general massacre of the Hebrews with 
 their vendors before buying, trusting that by pointing out the serious 
 risks they ran they might obtain them for a smaller sum. Richard 
 having become “ King of the Romans,” Henry next sold them to his 
 eldest son, Prince Edward, who sold them at a large profit to some 
 merchants of Dauphiny in France, but Henry eventually reclaimed 
 them. 
 
 Even now they had not drained their cup of sorrow to its dregs, 
 for during the prolonged and fearful tumult that arose from the 
 baronial defiance of the King, the turbulent factionaries would not 
 let the Jew escape unscathed. In 1263 five hundred of these woe¬ 
 begone people were roughly seized without any authority but that of 
 the barons and incarcerated in prison. The immense sums wrung 
 from the richer ones were the means of securing the dastardly Hugh 
 Dispenser a huge ransom. The remainder were despoiled, their wives 
 and daughters violated and themselves brutally attacked. “ Eager 
 for plunder and athirst for blood and finding that they were likely 
 to be disappointed in the object which had led them to range them¬ 
 selves on the side of the reforming barons and their great dictator, 
 Montfort, the populace raised a dreadful uproar in London against 
 the unhappy Jews. At the sound of St. Paul’s great bell a numerous 
 mob sallied forth led on by Stephen Buckrell, the Marshal of London, 
 and Fitz-John, a powerful baron. They killed and murdered many 
 
28 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 of the wretched people without mercy. “ The ferocious leader, Fitz 
 John, ran through with his sword (in cold blood) Kok Ben Abraham, 
 the wealthiest Hebrew resident in London. Besides plundering and 
 killing 500 of this devoted race, the mob turned the rest out of their 
 beds, undressed as they were, keeping them so the whole night. 
 The next morning they commenced the work of plunder with such 
 outrageous yells, that the Queen, who was then in the town, being seized 
 with mortal terror got into her barge with her great ladies intending to 
 escape by water to Windsor Castle.” 1 Leicester demanded a share of 
 the plunder with which the base poltroon, Hugh Despenser, had en¬ 
 riched himself ; and not to be outdone that town expelled its entire 
 Jewish community. “ No Jew,” wrote he in his testament to his sons 
 and descendants, “shall reside in Leicester to the end of the world.” 
 The Earls of Derby and Leicester committed the most dreadful 
 ravages—no excess being too gross—in these towns and the King 
 himself when ultimately granting a charter of liberty to the citizens of 
 London intentionally excluded the Jews, whom he claimed as his 
 hereditary chattels. He however gave them a moment for breathing, 
 and allowed those, who had fled to save their lives from the many 
 tumults against them, to return to their homes. With the exception 
 of the plundering of the Lincoln synagogue under the leadership of 
 Simon de Montfort’s son and some large depredations at Cambridge, 
 the English Jews for a few months lived unmolested, but their religious 
 and personal liberties were not rendered more secure ; the only advan¬ 
 tages were that they were assured of safety of life and limb, they were 
 not to be baptized by force, nor were their children to be kidnapped 
 with that end in view; the burglarious entering into synagogues would 
 not be tolerated, and singeing the beards of the Jews could not be 
 condoned. Thus their foes were curbed for three years. At the 
 expiration of this period further negotiations (these enumerated had, 
 of course, been purchased) might be entered into. This was distress¬ 
 ing to those orthodox Christians who gloried in evincing their insatiable 
 rapacity and carnage of the bloodiest type. Yet the day for achieving 
 glory by oppressing the Jews had not yet passed from the land and 
 with this comforting reflection in mind they looked forward to the day 
 when further lawlessness might be permissible. At the end of the 
 stipulated time it was declared invalid for a Jew to hold freehold 
 piopeity. Their prayers in the synagogues supplicating for a revoca¬ 
 tion of this tyrannical edict are said to have been pitful to hear 
 and to have moved even the mendicant friars—their bitterest 
 
 (1.) Strickland, ‘‘Lives of the Queens of England.” Vol. I. p. 270. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 29 
 
 traducers—to tears, but their entreaties against a law, which disposs¬ 
 essed them of almost all they possessed and impoverished them so 
 greatly that they would become penniless, were useless. The officers 
 of the Crown hastened to comply with their instructions and deprived 
 them of their lands, and the lands they held in mortgage for money 
 they had advanced to Christians were returned to their original owners, 
 the Jews receiving the principal without interest, and this during the 
 reign that had witnessed so much bloodshed to secure the recognition 
 of the rights of man. The King needed money to wage war against 
 his fierce barons. The Jews had to provide it. The barons needed 
 money to wage war against the King. The Jews again had to provide 
 it. Consequently each party punished them for supplying the other 
 with funds. After each battle general attacks upon the Jewries were 
 ordered. The King’s retainers attacked those living in baronial towns, 
 the baronial partizans attacking those living in the royal cities and 
 boroughs. Henry however can hardly be called worse than the remain¬ 
 ing Angevin Kings, for their external polity was often regulated by 
 the state of the finances of their Jewish subjects. 
 
 Simon de Montfort on one occasion having suffered a reverse 
 “ forced his way into Winchester, 1 gave it up to plunder, slaying all 
 the Jews he could find for they were always ” he said “ the King’s good 
 friends and hateful to the barons.” 2 
 
 The Jews it would appear were the sole panacea for the financial 
 ills of the Plantagenet monarchs. 
 
 The close of Henry’s turbulent reign was marked by the heaviest 
 oppression of, and exaction from, his Jewish subjects. Payments of 
 the most stupendous sums have again to be recorded. Many authentic 
 and contemporaneous historians marvel at their ability to exist amid 
 so many trials. Tovey in his Anglo Judaica tells us that they suffered 
 more in England than their ancestors in Egypt. Their inveterate 
 traducers, the Caorsini, usurious men sheltered by the Papal wings, 
 who deemed it proper to malign and oppress, even pitied them. But 
 the iron hand was not relaxed, and their poignant grief, their groans 
 under endless burdens, and the insufferable humiliations and indignities 
 
 (1) History of Winchester (H.T.S ) Dr G. W. Kitchen, F.S.A., p. 131. 
 
 (2.) The Winchester Jews favoured by William the Conqueror were an 
 important body unmolested even in the dark days of King John ; in the very 
 heart of the city stood the Synagogus Judaeorum and the district around it was 
 the Jewry. The citizens bore them no ill-will for on Richard s accession in 
 1189, when the general outburst against them took place and everywhere, as 
 a chronicler puts it, Englishmen thought well to immolate the Jews to their 
 father “ The Devil,” Winchester alone sheltered them. She spared her vermin. 
 —“ History of Winchester,” pages 78 and 107. 
 
30 
 
 PERSECUTION OP THE JEWS. 
 
 heaped upon them transcend human ken ; for in addition to the 
 constant demands, in obedience to which they were often peremptorily 
 commanded to give up one fourth, even one third, of their total 
 possessions to the Crown, they were heavily taxed individually, and as 
 local bodies. The Jews have had vast sums extorted from them in 
 every country of Christendom, but for a perpetuity of exaction, England 
 has a paramount claim to be considered foremost. 
 
 Jewish History during the reign of the priest-ridden Henry shows 
 a most heartrending continuity of crushing legislation, unjust canons, 
 and savage massacres. In his earlier years He was amenable to the 
 dictates of humanity, in contradistinction to those of the Church, but 
 when he wanted money he, like his predecessors, sucked the very 
 marrow of the Jews. He oppressed them mainly for want of money, 
 but his subjects from rancorous hatred and the lurking suspicion that 
 their wealth had not been altogether drained from them. Those two 
 old allies, bigotry and cupidity, have ever been the duumvirate that 
 has harassed the Israelite in every inhabited part of the globe. The 
 armour of the imbellic Israelite was prayer and oft have the clergy 
 without evincing the slightest evidence of sympathy declared that the 
 wild threnetic supplications of the Jews in their synagogues disturbed 
 them (the Christians) in their devotions. One prelate alone, Grostete, 
 placed a limit to this zealous persecution. When a number of Oxford 
 Jews were arrested on the preposterous charge of burglary_prepos¬ 
 
 terous because all were wealthy men—and without the barest shred of 
 incriminatory evidence imprisoned, his influence effected their liberation, 
 and though he called them despicable pariahs and denounced them in 
 , the most vituperative language, he would not pander to the morbid 
 cravings of the mob and instigate a wholesale massacre of the Jews at 
 Oxford. Yet although he did not resort to extremes by the 
 exercise of which his clerical brethren attained such repute and 
 popularity, he did not fail to accuse them in vehement language of the 
 trite charge of usury. As for the Caorsini, well! they were only the 
 ramifications ot speculative infallibility, who assisted starving papists 
 at most colossal rates of interest. Still this man (Grostete) would not 
 countenance any ebullition of the dormant hatred against the Jews, in 
 towns over which he had authority. 
 
 Upon the accession of King Edward I. (1272) the Jews soon 
 discerned that no alterations would be made in their treatment, not¬ 
 withstanding that he made the customary verbose—but no longer 
 plausible—speech in which he promised them his protection against 
 attack, foi the fmy of the people had in no wise waned. He proceeded 
 to an caily consummation of his promises by imposing a tallage upon 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 31 
 
 every Jew in the kingdom ; man, woman and child had to pay a large 
 tax. The execution of this decree, one carried out with unprecedented 
 vigour, was intrusted into the hands of a typical Middle Age bishop 
 and two cruel and bigoted friars. Such violence did those inexorable 
 men employ that the King himself was compelled to intervene and 
 lessen their fury by deprecating the use of unmitigated severity. 
 Edward was ultimately induced to slightly modify his first proclamation. 
 
 In 1275 he published his iniquitous “Statutum de Judaismo,” 
 which, under a canting cloak of hypocrisy professing a desire to wean 
 them from money lending, aimed at their complete degradation. It 
 enforced the law compelling all Jews to wear the hated yellow badge. 1 
 Although this method of distinguishing Christians from Jews had not 
 become obsolete nor had the clergy been remiss in enforcing its 
 observance, it was necessary to ratify it from time to time. Many 
 intolerant laws figured under this heading. Every effort of a Jew to 
 gain a livelihood was circumvented by some provision of this truculent 
 code, and in addition to their already multitudinous burdens, an extra 
 tax was to be levied in celebration of Holy Week. Jews might not 
 sell houses, lands, or any freehold property without the King’s consent 
 which had generally to be purchased. They were only to reside in 
 such towns as were under his immediate jurisdiction, their 
 emigration was to be prevented, in fact no effort that would 
 conduce to assure them of the inutility of adhering to a creed so un¬ 
 popular was neglected. The Dominicans redoubled their efforts to 
 effect the conversion of a sensible fraction of their hated prey ; but it 
 was to no purpose, the inherent steadfastness of the Jews was 
 unmistakably evinced ; the mutual sorrows of that unfortunate people 
 welded them still more closely into one cohering body and their 
 immanent fidelity to the historic and ancient race for which they 
 suffered so acutely has triumphed over the savage onslaughts of 
 Dominican fury. But the chronicle of bloody massacres is not yet 
 completed. The charge of coin-clipping was hurled against them 
 with appalling results and when Jews were concerned accusation meant 
 condemnation. They are indeed synonymous terms, for the student 
 of Jewish history will discover very few acquittals recorded in favour 
 of members of that nation, although he will find the indictments made 
 against them to be as numerous as they are frivolous. On this charge 
 all the Jews in England, young and old, rich and poor, were summarily 
 
 (1.) The Statutes of Edward I. “de la Jeuerie ” required both male and 
 female Jews over the age of seven years to wear a yellow badge in the shape 
 of the two tablets of the Law.—Kev. L. Cutts, B.A., History of Colchester in 
 his general survey of the position of the English Jews on page 123. 
 
32 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 arrested and after a not over scrupulous trial, 293 of the wretched 
 people were executed. The Jew-hating provinces gave vent to their 
 indignation at the crimes of these victims by murdering multitudes of 
 their kinsmen throughout the kingdom. They doubtless believed in 
 their guilt, the Jews were shut out from every honourable means of 
 existence by law, and punished for—in their despair—adopting less 
 honourable methods of procuring a living. Edward presented their 
 belongings to his courtiers with most astounding and prodigal liberality, 
 but the people thirsted for more Jewish blood ; they were not yet 
 satisfied. The most harrowing atrocities have to be recorded of this 
 period ; every, weird story, every phantasy that found birth in the 
 morbid imagination of any bigoted Christian found ready credence. 
 The miserable Jews were, without the slightest compunction, tortured 
 and murdered wherever they were met. Much as Edward had found 
 himself compelled to yield to the popular outcry against them, he was 
 constrained to interpose the authority of the State between the fanaticism 
 of the mob and the bodies of his Jewish subjects. Owing to the in¬ 
 numerable charges adduced against them in vindication of their ill 
 usage a commission consisting of a number of influential and unbiassed 
 persons had been appointed, and these were delegated to investigate 
 the assertions of their accusers ; they in their report clearly established 
 that all kinds of groundless charges were constantly being made against 
 the Jews, that punitive expeditions, bent on the pillage of the Jewries, 
 were quickly organised and that the wealthier members of that body 
 were terrorized into paying large sums of money under threats of being 
 accused of crimes, which the tentative blackmailers did not trouble to 
 specify. Monstrous ! so valueless was their protest or declaration of 
 innocence, so completely and helplessly were they in the hands of their 
 enemies, that they had to purchase silence for the perpetration of 
 crimes the precise nature of which they were ignorant of. It is of the 
 charge ever laid against the Jews of the Middle Ages, that we purpose 
 devoting an entire page to an excerpt from the works of a grave and 
 authoritative ecclesiastical historian, Dr. Augustus Neander. Having 
 seceded from Judaism, it is patent that he would not flatter the ad¬ 
 herents of that faith ; therefore his remarks are perfectly reliable on 
 this ground alone, apart from his high prestige as a scholar and a 
 cautious writer. He says, 1 4 ‘ Humours became current against the 
 Jews of the same description as have prevailed at all times against 
 religious sects, persecuted by popular hatred, as for example, against 
 the first Christians, who were charged with such crimes as flattered 
 the credulous fanaticism of the populace. It was said that they stole 
 
 (1.) “ General History of the Christian Church and Religion.” Vol. VII. p. 98. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 33 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Christian children for the Passover festival and after having crucified 
 them with all imaginable tortures used their entrails for magical 
 purposes. If a boy (especially near the feast of the Passover) was 
 missed by his friends, or if the corpse of a boy concerning whose death 
 nothing certain was known happened to be found, suspicion lighted at 
 once upon the Jews of the district, where the accident had occurred. 
 Men could easily discover what they were intent on finding, marks of 
 the tortures which had been inflicted on the sufferers. It might 
 doubtless happen too that enemies of the Jews or those that gloated 
 on their wealth would disfigure the discovered bodies in order to lend 
 the more plausibility to the accusations brought against the Jews. 
 Hence a boy so found might sometimes be honoured by the people as 
 a martyr and become the hero of a wonderful story. The most 
 extravagant of such tales might find credence in the existing tone of 
 public sentiment and seem to be confirmed by an investigation begun 
 with prejudice and conducted in a tumultuary manner. If at the 
 commencement of such movements wealthy Jews betook themselves to 
 flight, when they foresaw, as they must have forseen, the disastrous 
 issue to themselves, this passed for evidence of their guilt, and of the 
 truth of the rumours. If twenty-five affirmed on their oath that the 
 arrested Jews were guilty of the abominable crime this sufficed to set 
 the matter beyond all doubt and to authorise the sentence of death. 
 Whoever interceded on behalf of the unfortunate victim exposed him¬ 
 self by so doing to the popular hatred, which looked upon all such pity 
 as suspicious. In the year 1256 several pious Franciscans in England, 
 not to be deterred by the force of prevailing delusions, ventured to 
 take the part of certain Jews (accused of some abominable crime,) who 
 were languishing in prison and they succeeded in procuring a release 
 and saving their lives, but now these monks who had acted in the 
 spirit of Christian benevolence were accused of having allowed them¬ 
 selves to be bribed by money, thus, they lost the good opinion of the 
 lower class of the people, who ever after refused to give them alms.” 
 
 The theology of the Crusaders held good, the Jews were the murderers 
 of the Saviour, therefore they must receive Him or die. Every Jew 
 is the personal enemy of Jesus, “ Kill them ! ” “ Destroy the enemies 
 of Christ ! ” were the cries that rang through Europe; but the 
 report of the commission to whom Edward had relegated the duty of 
 examining the dealings of the Jews was not without effect, for it 
 temporarily neutralized these cries in England. He issued several laws 
 that tended—in a small measure—to ameliorate their lamentable 
 status. They were at least not to be threatened with false accusations 
 and were thus spared the other wise paramount necessity of buying silence. 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 All charges that had once been dispensed with could not be reopened 
 or used as a plea for high-handed outrages. The offence of no single 
 individual could be laid against the Jews of all England as heretofore. 
 But these concessions were no favours, they were what might have 
 been expected from less lauded monarchs, and do not palliate the con¬ 
 duct of their inveterate oppressor. Edward, says his biographer, 
 hated the Jews both on religious and economic grounds. 1 The few 
 concessions he made them were as evanescent as the former laws that 
 sought to protect them had been. 
 
 On the 17th November, 1278, all the Jews in England, men, 
 women, and children, were by the order of Edward suddenly and with¬ 
 out any warning, seized and hurried to different prisons. They were 
 then compelled to ransom themselves with huge sums. Five months 
 later (April 1, 1279), the Jews of Northampton were, on the fictive 
 charge of crucifying a Christian child, arrested, and a number of them 
 were torn asunder, their limbs being fastened to wild horses which 
 were suddenly driven in opposite directions, thus rending them piece¬ 
 meal limb from limb. The Waverley Chronicles relate this ignoble 
 act with undisguised glee. 
 
 In 1286 Pope Honorius IV. severely admonished the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury for permitting the English Jews to exercise too much 
 freedom, this he loudly stigmatized as a culpable dereliction of the 
 duties imposed upon all Churchmen by the provisions of the Fourth 
 Lateran Council. This Papal reproof was hardly necessary, for the 
 Archbishop was a most vigorous hunter of the Jews. He issued a 
 pastoral letter to the Bishop of London directing him to prevent the 
 Jews of that city from building any more synagogues. The palatial 
 magnificence of those already erected had long been a source of the 
 bitterest grief to these intolerant Churchmen. He obeyed his instruc¬ 
 tions with the greatest avidity and even desired to raze the existing 
 houses of prayer. The principal synagogue had stood in Lothbury at 
 the corner of Old Jewry, but it was destroyed in one of the periodical 
 riots in 1262, when it is stated that 700 Jews were killed. 2 The 
 prime source of this new oppression, the Pontifical Bull, did not con¬ 
 fine its virulent abuse to the subject of usury, it contained a most 
 bitter diatribe against the Talmud. The Pope wrote a learned tirade 
 bristling with Scriptural quotations, in which he unequivocally 
 denounced a book he had never read. He also heaped opprobrium 
 upon the Dominican monks, and compared the proselytising success 
 of the Christians to that of the Jews. Although the Jews sought no 
 
 (1.) “ Life of Edward I.” by Professor E. Toutt, pp. 160, 161. 
 
 (2.) “ London.” by J. W. Loftie, B.A., F.S.A., p. 100. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 35 
 
 converts, the voluntary adherents to that faith, whohad left Christianity, 
 amounted to a very substantial number, in fact an entire community, 
 consisting solely of Jewish neophytes, is said to have existed, but they 
 were eventually massacred, a fate which they fully realized they 
 could not elude. Despite the many disadvantages the number of 
 converts to Judaism had so increased, that a Papal rebuke had to be 
 administered to the already rabid Dominicans. 
 
 A Franciscan Professor of great repute, Duns Scotus, of Oxford, 
 openly urged the King to tear away the children of Jews from their 
 parents so that they might not perpetuate disbelief in Christianity, bnt 
 this cruel course was reserved for a later century and another soil. 
 
 Edward had been persuaded to concede a permission for the expul¬ 
 sion of the Jews resident in his French territories. 1 This act portended 
 badly for the Jews in England. They knew the banishment of their 
 Gascon brethren boded ill ; and indeed it was the precursor of their 
 expulsion from England, for since Robert de Reddinge, a Dominican 
 monk, had embraced Judaism, the members of that order had used the 
 incredible bigotry of the Queen Mother Eleanor as a lever for the 
 persecution of the Jews in her son’s domains. , They had fanned her 
 orthodoxy into uncontrollable and fierce hatred of that people. She, 
 obedient to her confessor’s behest, strained every nerve to render their 
 tribulation irremediable. She succeeded beyond her most sanguine 
 expectations, for she played so skilfully upon her son’s quiescent hatred 
 and rampant envy of his Hebrew subjects, that to her cunning mach¬ 
 inations, we might almost assign their final expulsion in 1290. She 
 personally fostered the hostility of the Christians against their Jewish 
 fellowmen and arbitrarily expelled them from the city of Cambridge, a 
 town that was her appanage, although its trade for over two centuries 
 had received an undeniable impulse from Jewish commerce. This 
 tyrannical measure was immediately executed, the Jews being ruth¬ 
 lessly ejected from their homes. 
 
 On the 16th April, 1287, a Council held at Exeter heard the many 
 complaints of the clergy against the Jews. The claims of the priest¬ 
 hood in regard to the latter were fully discussed. As the result of its 
 prejudiced and predetermined debates, it placed the unhappy Hebrews 
 under additional restrictions to those which already oppressed them so ‘ 
 heavily. 
 
 (1.) l ' He took this step in consequence of a miraculous escape which he had 
 from being struck dead by a flash of lightning which passed directly over his 
 bed and killed two of his chamberlains who were standing close by : as a sign 
 of his gratitude for this deliverance he is said to have banished the Jews.” 
 Rev. H. C. Adams, M.A., “ History of the Jews,” p. 166. 
 
36 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 Three weeks later, May 2nd,, every Jew in the kingdom was 
 arrested by Royal warrant, and in further pursuance of Edward’s 
 definite orders imprisoned. No motive whatever was assigned for this 
 despotic move, Edward not even attempting to offer any plea or pretext 
 in extenuation of his conduct. This was a repetition of a similar deed 
 of violence consummated some few years before, when the Jews were 
 placed under arrest and forced to purchase their freedom. As on that 
 occasion the Jews had to ransom themselves from their unjust detent¬ 
 ion, they had again on this. This sudden arrest, imprisonment and 
 ransoming of the Jews was a mode of revenue first inaugurated by 
 John, who was in this respect at least emulated by Henry III. 
 Edward’s motives are apparent, he wanted money. To wring it from 
 his subjects, he feared the barons ; to exact it from the monasteries 
 and the priesthood, he dreaded the Pope. The Jews had no mortal 
 being on earth to intervene for them, so he might with safety plunder 
 them and yet not lose the reputation he had won in the Crusades as 
 a valorous Knight. 
 
 In the earlier part of 1290, public clamour became so uproarious 
 and irrepressible that Edward had no option but to issue a decree order¬ 
 ing the final and irrevocable banishment of every Jew in the realm. 
 The clergy gratefully presented him with one tenth of their possessions, 
 he was furthermore to receive one fifteenth of the goods of the laity. 
 The Jews were ordered to restore the pledges of their Christian 
 debtors and quit the country before November 1st, of that year. The 
 fiat had gone forth. Before the feast of All Saints’ Day the Jews 
 were to leave the country. The King and Queen’s hearts had been 
 steeled against all appeals for a revocation of the fatal edict. Even 
 the young Queen who had not been so deeply prejudiced against them 
 as had her husband and his mother, was intimidated by the fremescent 
 voice of popular fury. The entire property of the expelled was seized 
 and confiscated to the State, A very small amount however, sufficient 
 to provide for their necessities, was remitted to them. 
 
 Edward, doubtless anticipating the sinister designs of those who 
 were to convey the Jews out of the kingdom, ordered that the invol¬ 
 untary emigrants should be transported out of his territories without 
 molestation, but in the words of Dean Milman, 1 “ A prince who 
 countenanced the worst passions of human nature by his actions, could 
 not very well counteract them by his proclamations.” 
 
 In every port where the Jews boarded the vessels w T hich were 
 to convey them from the land in which they and their forefathers had 
 been so eruelly oppressed, the land which they had entered with hearts 
 radiant with hopes of a tranquil existence, but where they had been 
 
 (1.) “ History of the Jews.” Vol. III., p. 262. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 37 
 
 so heartlessly degraded, every species of barbarities were perpetrated 
 upon them. Every artifice however reprehensible, every threat how¬ 
 ever cowardly, was utilized as the means of terrorizing the last farthing 
 left them by Edward’s whimsical mercy, out of the wretched victims 
 of public hatred. 
 
 The respite expired upon the first of November, but by the ninth 
 of October over sixteen thousand Jews (16,511) had left the country 
 so anxious were they to leave the soil from which they had been so 
 mercilessly hounded. They embarked amid universal torrents of abuse 
 but the rough jeers and coarse epithets of the Christian mob now no 
 longer troubled them. They had, by their own and their ancestors’ 
 bitter experiences, become inured to contumely. A gibe or a taunt 
 was very little indeed to a people that had witnessed nearly three 
 hundred of their co-religionists hanged like brigands upon the public 
 gallows, for having in their possession—this was but a rumour— 
 counterfeit money, although the Christians absolutely forced spurious 
 coin upon them, in their dealings, hoping thereby to accelerate their 
 doom. To those who had seen the vilest ruffians or the smallest 
 children pelting stones and dirt at bent and crippled old men, the 
 splenetic ejaculations of those who crowded the quays affected them 
 but slightly. Yet they were not to escape so easily. A captain of a 
 vessel upon which a number of Jews embarked, called at Queensborough. 
 He landed there ostensibly for a few hours, and was followed by his 
 passengers who little dreamed what was before them. As soon as the 
 tide began to rise the captain and his crew re-embarked, leaving the 
 Jews behind on a sandbank which they had, by some wily process, 
 been tempted to mount. They now perceived the monstrous project 
 of those who had assured them of a safe passage out of the country. 
 With tears in their eyes and with horror-palsied voices, they implored 
 the re-incarnation of Domitian, who commanded the ship, to have 
 mercy on them, their wives and their children. He replied with 
 derisive taunts and ribald jests finally recommending them to invoke 
 Moses, who had led their ancestors through the Red Sea to save them. 
 “ Eet them cry unto Moses who led them safely through the Red Sea,” 
 said the apache giving the order for the ship to sail. The unhappy 
 people were unheeded and the loud entreaties were soon without the pale 
 of human aid and the lashing victorious waves shortly engulfing them, 
 terminated their lives of anguish and pain. The captain recounted his 
 ghastly exploit so frequently, faithfully mimicing the Hebrew prayers 
 and supplicatory attitudes of his victims, and boasted so often of the 
 number of Jews he had murdered that he was ultimately executed. 
 But is this a solitary instance of inhumanity ? The seamen of the 
 Cinque ports plundered them of what little had been left them and after 
 
38 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 gagging the poor Jews flung them bound into the sea. How many of 
 these persecuted people were burnt, drowned, turned adrift, and 
 tortured during the few days of their departure ? How many crimes 
 against the Jews were hushed up ? How many cases of assassination 
 never came to light ? How many murderers w T ent unpunished ? No 
 historian can tell ! But if the furious people had felt any qualms of 
 conscience for their inconceivably despicable conduct towards an alien, 
 unprotected, homeless race of wanderers, these were stilled by con¬ 
 templation of the prospective spoil. They indeed received much of 
 their goods. The magnificent Jewish Libraries at Stamford and other 
 cities (sources from which many great Christian Scholars had not 
 been too proud to drink freely) were seized by them. Their debts to 
 the Jews had been declared cancelled. As for the King he was indeed 
 overjoyed, their wealth accumulated by years of industry and exercise 
 of talent was escheated to him, and he had almost reached apotheosis 
 in the eyes of the clergy. 1 The middle and lower classes soon 
 discovered that they had to bear the public burdens unassisted by the 
 money they might always extort from their Jewish neighbours. The 
 taxes levied upon them gave them some inkling as to what the Jews, 
 whom they had so execrated, had endured. 
 
 Any Jew found on English soil after the 1st November, 1290, was, 
 according to a State Proclamation, to be hanged. 2 
 
 After their expulsion the principal synagogue was seized by the 
 Fratresse cle Sacre (an order of monks so named). 3 Fifteen years after 
 their departure, Robert Fitz Walter, a knight, whose house it adjoined, 
 made an application that it might be given to him, and his request, 
 being accompanied with a douceur, was conceded him. Two hundred 
 years later it was transformed into a tavern. 
 
 The Jews, who during the next few centuries resided on English 
 soil did so at the risk of their lives ; but a handful appeared to have 
 braved the perils of discovery and taken up their residence in the land 
 from which they had been thrust. Queen Elizabeth, it would appear, 
 
 (1.) Edward’s great financial measure, the remorseless plunder and cruel 
 expatriation of the Jews was beheld by the clergy as a noble act of Christian 
 vigour. Among the plunder no inconsiderable portion had been Church 
 property, pawned or sold by necessitous or irreligious ecclesiastics. The king 
 had inflicted at once a heavy blow on the trade of the country and deprived 
 himself of a wealthy class, whom he might have plundered in a more slow and 
 productive manner without remorse, resistance or remonstrance. Dean Milman, 
 “ History of Latin Christianity,” Vol. VII. p. 53. 
 
 (2.) Prior to their departure the king made them the most specious promises 
 of wealth and honour if they would embrace Christianity and remain in the 
 country, but “ Edward promised, the friars preached in vain, nothing could 
 wean the Jews from their attachment to the Law of Moses.” “ Strickland.” 
 
 (3.) In 1291 the king granted the Cemetery of the Jews near York, known 
 by the name of Jewbury, to Robert de Newland and Alice his wife. “ Kaine.” 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 39 
 
 seems to have defied the decrees of the Council of Basle by retaining 
 a Jewish physician ; but Roderigo Lopez had to answer for that historic 
 and inexpiable crime, which was used to palliate every attack upon his 
 kinsmen, by being beheaded. He was accused of desiring to poison 
 the Queen and placed on his trial. The same gross and palpable 
 parody on justice so often enacted gave some sort of justification for 
 the execution of an eminent physician against whom absolutely 
 nothing had been proved. In 1655 the representations of the patriotic 
 Jew, Manasseh hen Israel, led to the summoning of a Council at 
 Whitehall at which Oliver Cromwell presided. The seven conditions 
 of resettlement submitted by Manasseh were approved by all except 
 the clergy and a few lawyers. 1 Cromwell cajoled the former into 
 giving their consent, assuring them that he would try to effect their 
 conversion. 
 
 In 1660 during the reign of Charles II, a goldsmith named Thomas 
 Violet presented a numerously signed petition to the House of Common 
 asking that the Jews might be expelled from England and their 
 property confiscated. Violet no doubt followed the 1290 programme. 
 During this reign they were so continually molested by the populace, 
 especially in London, that they were compelled to remind the King in 
 a public petition, of the promises made them by Cromwell. Charles 
 —that much maligned monarch—officially declared in public council 
 that the Jews were not to be attacked or their houses pillaged, and 
 assured them that so long as they continued to conduct themselves as 
 they were doing they should receive every protection against outrage. 
 Twelve years later (1673) an indictment was formulated charging the 
 Jews with meeting for worship in other than a Christian place of 
 prayer. So seriously did those indicted view the position, that they 
 anxiously presented a formal note to Charles insisting either on the 
 liberties granted them in 1655 being ratified (reminding him of his 
 promise to safeguard their religious and civil liberties as law abiding 
 citizens of their respective towns) or that he would at once appoint 
 favourable conditions for them to withdraw from the country ; so 
 resolute were they not to budge an inch from the teachings of their 
 religion. Their monarch was so incensed at the constant oppression 
 to which they were subjected that he took a very definite standpoint 
 on the question, so definite, that during the remainder of his reign 
 they were no longer molested. 
 
 In 1685, a long smouldering spark of bigotry burst forth anew and 
 thirty seven Jewish merchants were seized on the Stock Exchange 
 during the transaction of their business. They were informed that 
 
 (1.) " Hallam’s Constitutional History of England,” Yol. II. p. 316. 
 
40 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 they must consider themselves under arrest, for having failed to attend 
 any Church during the preceding twelve months. 1 The King being 
 petitioned summoned a council which, being wise enough to perceive 
 James’ attitude, decided to reprimand all who oppressed the Jews or 
 tampered with them in the exercise of their religion and faith. “ They 
 had behaved themselves as loyal and obedient subjects of the Crown 
 and these constant aggressions were most unwarrantable,” said James. 
 
 During the reign of his successor William III, five years after the 
 incident related, the Council of Jamaica, then (as now) a British 
 colony, forwarded a heavily subscribed petition, loudly urging upon 
 him the necessity and benefit to himself of empowering them to expel 
 the Jews from that island. William firmly declined to grant their 
 request and asked them to assign some reasons other than malice and 
 rivalry for their earnest entreaties. It is noteworthy that these were 
 not forthcoming. 
 
 Nothing notable seems to have occurred in the reign of Queen 
 Anne ; their progress was neither retarded nor advanced. But during 
 the reign of- George I we find their recognition as a corporate body in 
 legislation, where they were described as British subjects, truly an 
 appellation more worthy of manhood and toleration than that given 
 them by the Angevin monarchs who termed them the “ King’s 
 Bondsmen and Chattels”. 
 
 In 1740, during the reign of George II, an Act of Parliament 
 recognized all born on British soil from Jewish parents as British 
 subjects, thus abrogating the otherwise unavoidable necessity of a Jew 
 residing in the colonies, desirous of becoming a British subject, 
 receiving the Sacrament. 
 
 With their expulsion in 1290 ends the record of their public and 
 legalized persecution, but, as we have just seen, they laboured under 
 many serious disadvantages till long after their re-admission. It was 
 a decided revulsion in their favour that tended to procure this, but till 
 quite recently the inimical spirit against the Jews rankled in the 
 Christian breast. The struggles of the Jews for relief from the many 
 disabilities under which they were placed are exhaustively dealt with 
 by that patriotic Jew, James Picciotto, as well as by other Anglo- 
 Jewish writers. Tt would be a work of supererogation to treat of them 
 apart from any minute account and that is out of our present province. 
 
 (1.) By a statute of Queen Elizabeth non-attendance at any church for over 
 twelve months was rendered punishable at law, and as by some technical over¬ 
 sight the stipulated freedom of the Jews from religious laws had not been 
 mentioned, the circumstance of its existence was ignored. 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 41 
 
 A Naturalization Bill was passed in 1753, but so violent was the out¬ 
 cry throughout the country that it had to be repealed in the following 
 year. During the Mendelssohnian epoch all Jews had to pay an alien 
 duty however long they had resided in this country, and even when 
 born on British soil they were thus categorized, being regarded as 
 Germans, Russians, or members of the different nations from which 
 their ancestors had originally emigrated. The Naturalization Bill, 
 although granting the rights of English protection to those Jews 
 resident in England not less than three years, precluded them from 
 occupying any Government office or public post. They were not 
 allowed to enjoy the exercise of the franchise, though of course, they 
 were compelled to pay taxes. George II, confirmed the wise conclusion 
 of the two estates, but no sooner had his act become known, than 
 such a ferment arose and such volubly expressed indignation was 
 evoked, that to prevent riots throughout the kingdom, Parliament 
 had to pass a brief act repealing the one so distasteful to the constit¬ 
 uents of its formulators. Whether commercial rivalry or bigotry alone 
 prompted the nation to clamour for its revocation is difficult to say. 
 
 The history of the English Jews during the earlier portion of this 
 century is well known and does not need lengthy recapitulation here. 
 Ten times did a Liberal House of Commons introduce and carry a bill 
 which would have secured our co-religionists every municipal and 
 Parliamentary right ; ten times did the Conservative House of Lords 
 reject it. Many rights had indeed been accorded them but public out¬ 
 cry invariably rendered their instant abrogation imperative. In 1858 
 one of the last vestiges of oppression was swept away when Baron 
 Ferdinand de Rothschild took his seat as a member of the House of 
 Commons. Jewish worship was placed on the same footing as that of 
 other Non-conformists in 1855, but certain laws concerning the observ¬ 
 ance of Sunday, annoyed them till 1871, when they were declared to 
 be directed to Christians only. Thus every right has gradually been 
 conceded to the Jew; but there unfortunately lurks (though mainly 
 in the lower and more ignorant orders) the idea that he is the target 
 for malevolence and spleen. Many of our most gifted writers have 
 thrown a sop to the plebian craving for satirizing Jewish ideals and 
 customs. Still the anti-Jewish ideas of the Middle Ages are rapidly 
 fading before the glorious light of tolerance, and the sun of reason as 
 it advances dispersing its blessed rays all over the Universe obliterates 
 in a great measure the hereditary prejudices of the masses. The 
 wave of the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God has done 
 much in improving the condition of our brethren throughout the world. 
 Notwithstanding that, their status leaves much to be desired. The 
 
42 
 
 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 
 
 few street corner orators, or the market place rhetoricians, who know 
 no better way of revenging themselves on their Jewish acquaintances 
 for their talents than by bespattering them with abuse, no longer voice 
 the trend of public opinion. The Music Hall artiste, who could at one 
 time evoke the most boisterous hilarity and the most irrepressible mirth 
 with his Jewish glazier song, finds that he is echoing effete sentiments. 
 Our Christian co-religionists are rather commencing to recognize those 
 inimitable Hebrew characters, who scintillate with rutiliant beauty on 
 the pages of history, as truer types of the Jewish nation, than the poor 
 despised struggling glazier who is what the Christian has made him, 
 and who despite the aversion of his neighbours is withal a fitting type 
 for many a wealthier man to emulate. 
 
 In this blessed country, one of the first to accord us every right 
 and liberty, we are indeed happy ; here the Jew is assured of safety ; 
 he can in this enlightened land exercise his ancestral faith without 
 dread of punishment. He can partake in the social, political and 
 literary progress of his Fatherland without prejudice being directed 
 against him. He has indeed much to be thankful for. This noble 
 land has not been remiss in affording succour to many distressed Jewish 
 communities in the East. Nor has England had cause to rue her 
 enlightened policy. Has not every English Jew been grateful for the 
 incalculable benefits showered upon him with such a lavish hand ? 
 Does he not evince his gratitude in every sphere of life ? Is the 
 English Israelite less loyal or less devoted to the British Crown and 
 Empire than are her very own sons ? Does he not share, does he not 
 actively teach England’s ideals of freedom and her ambitions of ameli¬ 
 orating the sufferings of the weak and the oppressed ? Does he not 
 evince his tangible sympathy with every movement that has for its 
 object the benefit of humanity ? Has he forgotten his training of 
 nineteen bitter centuries when appealed to for aid ? And is he not even 
 foremost in every deed, in every movement that redounds to the credit 
 of Her Gracious Majesty’s illustrious Empire ? The munificent charities 
 of the late Baron Maurice de Hirsch, of our Rothschilds, Mocattas, 
 Sassoons, Goldsmiths and other philanthropists* whose liberality is 
 never restrained by considerations of race or creed and who give all 
 uniform equality, go far towards corroborating my assertions, and now 
 that the Jew is in England at least admitted into every walk of life, 
 and every shade and grade of society, reflection on the sufferings of 
 his nation’s martyrs, who gladly mounted the stake and the scaffold, 
 so that they might hand down to him their religion, sealed with their 
 lives’ blood, can only tend to cement the amicable sentiments between 
 those brothers in humanity—The Englishman and the Jew. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 43 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JEWISH SUFFERINGS IN FRANCE. 
 
 “The history of the Jews in the Middle Ages contains perhaps the 
 heaviest catalogue of crimes that can be laid at the door of men calling 
 themselves Christians.” 
 
 Coutter Morrison, “ Life of St. Bernard ,” page 157. 
 
 HE earliest French records extant clearly prove the settlement of 
 Jews in this country, as early as the days of the Cresars. Many 
 Jewish merchants had immigrated into Caul, even before the 
 downfall of the Jewish State. Whether driven thither by the tyrannical 
 Roman rule, or whether voluntary enterprise had caused them to form 
 themselves into communities and take up permanent •residence in France 
 is a question that has never been solved. They dwelt in the district 
 of Arles, but later on spread to the vicinity of Auvergne, Orleans and 
 Paris. They do not appear to have been regarded as a separate caste, 
 and no legislation having direct bearing upon them as exponents of a 
 creed existed. The manly Frankish and Burgundian warriors regarded 
 them as human beings possessed of natural rights, and permitted them 
 to live and think as they pleased. Until Gaul was Christianized, the 
 Jews enjoyed every possible right and liberty, but when Christianity 
 was planted upon its shores their visions of rest were cruelly 
 shattered. The story of the French Jew was to become a most 
 important chapter, in the record of Jewish sufferings; he was to 
 produce his quota to the long list of Hebrew martyrs, he was to be 
 legislated for with all the ferocity of Christian hatred. A great 
 historian has said ‘‘ The inception of the persecution of the Jews in 
 France is coeval with the establishment of Christianity in that 
 country.” It is certain that prior to that event they lived in complete 
 amity with the inhabitants. They practised medicine, cultivated 
 science, navigated the rivers in their own vessels, were employed in 
 agriculture, and pursued commerce without stipulation or hindrance. 
 In Marseilles, Beziers, and Narbonne, they, had by their qualities 
 
44 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 and their industry rendered themselves indispensable to the citizens. 
 The archives of many other cities and towns give us instances of Jews 
 holding the most honourable and responsible offices. 
 
 The baptism of Sigismund, who embraced Catholicism, is consider¬ 
 ed by many writers to be the initiation of Jewish sufferings on French 
 soil. Many Monarchs, Councils and Rescripts had oppressed them, 
 but it is outside the purview of this short volume to treat of events 
 occurring above twelve centuries ago, though it is sometimes necessary 
 to do so, as for instance when a precedent has to be found for any act 
 of oppression. 1 Let us therefore, as resolved, begin to chronicle the 
 oppression of the Jews in France from 615 A.D., and so bring our¬ 
 selves within the period originally marked out. 
 
 The Council of Paris (615) excluded the Jews from all military 
 and civil rank, and debarred them from occupying any posts that gave 
 them power over Christians. This decree was officially ratified by 
 Clotaire II, who, like Constantine the Great, was a matricide and an 
 assassin, but a zealous Catholic. The “ Council of Rheims” rendered 
 all further purchase of slaves by Jews impossible, though it did not 
 seek to impede the Christian trade in that traffic ; that of “Chalons” 
 further restricted their now encumbered commercial freedom. In 629 
 Dagobert issued an edict commanding the wholesale baptism of all 
 unbelievers in his' domains, under threat of instant banishment. A 
 great number of Jews thereupon sold their effects and left the king¬ 
 dom ; but heretic-hunting had not made sufficient progress in public 
 esteem at that early date, therefore many of them were but slightly 
 affected. As the Merovingian rule gradually became a mere sinecure 
 and the power in the hands of the “ Mayors of the Palace ” increased, 
 so did they enjoy greater freedom, and so were the Canons hampering 
 their liberties unheeded, if not at times altogether discarded. 
 Charlemagne was most tolerant towards the Jews; he, like his predec¬ 
 essors, perceived their value and his son Louis de Debonnaire was not 
 loth to follow in the path his liberal-minded father had pointed out to 
 him. The Jews were indeed delighted, they made untiring efforts to 
 maintain this desirable state of affairs, they rendered their brilliant 
 literature accessible to the higher orders of the clergy and the nobility. 
 Many of the former admitted the great advantages to be derived from 
 the study of Rabbinical literature. The great abbot Rhabanus Maurus 
 of Fulda eulogized their homiletical works and constantly adverted to the 
 vast profundity of Jewish exegetics. The reign of the Emperor Louis 
 
 (1.) In the chapter on Canons and Councils, I take a fleeting review of some 
 of these early persecutions. “ G. P.” 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 45 
 
 le Debonnaire'was a golden era for the Jews of his kingdom, the like 
 of which they never enjoyed in Europe whether earlier or later. 1 But 
 the spectre of bigotry at last began to raise her ghastly head. Agobard, 
 Bishop of Lyons (afterwards St. Agobard), made frantic struggles to 
 re-enforce the canonical laws against them. He made such desperate 
 and furious efforts to create dissension among the supporters of the 
 Jews and delivered such fiery and vituperative sermons against that 
 people, that it was found necessary to officially proclaim the king’s 
 protection of the Jews and to depose the frenzied prelate, who, after 
 creating schism in the Royal family by instigating the Princes to rebel 
 against their father and nearly involving the country in a civil war, 
 had to content himself by publishing oracular anti-Jewish pamphlets 
 and haranguing the lower orders. Prior to his deposition he had for¬ 
 bidden Christians in his diocese to labour for Jews, eat with them or 
 buy flesh or wine from them. Now he could only persuade them by 
 his writings and speeches. On one occasion he delivered himself of 
 the following impassioned exordium upon the Jews:—“ Separate, even 
 hide yourselves, oh brethren, from those who are clothed with curses as 
 a garment ; curses that penetrate into their bones, their marrows, and 
 their very entrails, as water and oil flow through the human body. 
 They are accursed in the city, and the country ; at the beginning and 
 end of their lives ; their flocks, their meats, their granaries, their 
 cellars, and their magazines are accursed ! ” 
 
 In 829 a synod of , Bishops assembled to discuss what means might 
 be adopted to mortify their hated enemies, but they were unable to 
 effect the humiliation of those they so bitterly detested and finally, 
 realizing their absolute impotency, resolved to wait for more favourable 
 circumstances. Charles the Bald continued his father’s clement attitude 
 towards the Jews, despite the machinations of Amolo, Bishop of Lyons, 
 who sought to effect their oppression as unsuccessfully as his predec¬ 
 essor had done. He framed a series of indictments against them (a 
 number of most grotesque and inept charges and suggestions, the 
 principal characteristics of which were malice and incoherency). He 
 laid the greatest stress upon the Church Canon which directed the 
 Christians to steal Jewish children for the purpose of Baptism. The 
 Council of Meaux (849) had solemnly bound itself to Amolo’s agenda 
 and was assured of the support of the Crown favourite Hincmar, who 
 pledged himself by oath to further their plans by every means in his 
 power. They presented as a result of their deliberations a petition to 
 the king, urging the necessity of the Canonical regulations against the 
 
 (1.) Graetz. 
 
46 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS 
 
 Jews but they—together with the entire anti-Jewish faction—were 
 disappointed : Charles indignantly rejecting the proposals of the raging 
 clergy. Utterly disconcerted they had to confine themselves to the 
 periodical publications of the most lying and calumnious pamphlets, 
 accusing the Jews of every imaginable crime and with mantic assertions 
 proving that if they enjoyed liberty the entire disintegration of 
 society and collapse of Christianity must inevitably ensue. Amolo 
 
 bitterlv lamented that the Jews were allowed unrestrained freedom of 
 
 «/ 
 
 speech. “ They even employ Christian servants,” said he, “ and I 
 frequently see their cows in the meadows”. Remigius who followed 
 Amolo in the episcopate of Lyons was more successful as a persecutor 
 than either of his predecessors had been ; he prayed the king to incite 
 the French Bishops to strenuous opposition to the Jews. His success 
 was due to the real existence of the “ Feudal System,” for with its 
 countless minor states, baronries, districts and vassalages, it exercised 
 a most nocent influence upon those he so bitterly hated. In 897 
 “ Charles the Simple,” departing from the even-handed justice of his 
 three predecessors, presented the entire property of the Jews of 
 Narbonne to the Archbishop of that district. Yet Charles knew their 
 value as indeed did many European Monarchs of that period, “ the 
 diligence and expertness of this people in all pecuniary dealings re¬ 
 commending them to Princes who were solicitous about the improvement 
 of their revenue.” 1 
 
 At Beziers the struggles of the priesthood were so successful that 
 its members themselves were satisfied. The Bishop of that city hated 
 the Jews still more fiercely than the Archbishop of Sens .who in 889 
 had expelled all .the members of that race resident in his Archidiocese. 
 On a certain Easter Monday the Bishop mounted the pulpit and thus 
 addressed the assembled citizens of Beziers, “ You have around you 
 those who crucified the Messiah, who deny Mary, the Mother of God ! 
 Now is the time when you should feel the iniquity of which Christ was 
 the victim. This is the day on which our Prince has graciously given 
 us permission to avenge this crime. Like your pious ancestors, hurl 
 stones at the Jews and show your sense of His wrongs by the vigour 
 with which you resent them.” His auditors rendered furious by this 
 harangue attacked the Jews with stones. They were compelled to 
 barricade their quarter of the town. The rabble was so pleased to see 
 the aflrighted people acting as if distraught, that it was resolved to 
 repeat the attack every Easter and establish it as an institution. It 
 thus became an annual diversion during Holy Week to rush into 
 
 (1.) Hallam’s “ State of Europe during the Middle Ages,” Yol. Ill, p. 354. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 47 
 
 the Jewish quarter, break every window with stones and cruelly maltreat 
 or even wound each member of the hated race they chancqd to meet. 
 No Jew dared to appear in the street during Easter Week. Had he 
 done so he would most certainly have been stoned to death. The 
 disgraceful spectacle of an annual and organized attack upon the local 
 Jewish quarter continued in uninterrupted operation until 1 1 GO, one 
 generation handing down the record of this ancient custom to the other. 
 Bishop Raymond of Trincavil undertook for a large sum of money to 
 stop the stoning. It was fortunate that the Jews were then able to 
 purchase peace. 
 
 At Toulouse the community had to submit to a most execrable 
 custom ; they were publicly whipped three times a year at Easter, 
 Whitsuntide and Christmas. This lambent custom was however 
 reduced to the whipping of the Rabbi three times a year and finally 
 varied to the thrashing of the President of the congregation once yearly. 
 A chaplain named Hugh obtained permission, on one occasion to 
 administer the castigation and struck the unfortunate man so violent 
 a blow with his clenched fist, that he instantly succumbed to the 
 injuries received. Finally a large tribute was accepted in lieu of the 
 continuation of this unmanly persecution. The inhabitants of that 
 town pleaded its supposititious betrayal to the Saracens, but Basnage, 
 and almost every French historian supports his assertion, has proved 
 this charge to be a great anachronism and the clumsiest one ever 
 framed. Even had it been a historical fact, it would have been grossly 
 unjust to punish one generation for a crime committed by their fore¬ 
 fathers centuries before. How much was it so, when the very evidences 
 they advanced were facts wrapt up in the impenetrable mists of a hoary 
 antiquity ? Beziers had not even an admitted lie to assign in palliation 
 of its cowardly treatment of the Jews. But the hatred of the clergy 
 and the periodical violence of the mob 1 were but mere bagatelles when 
 compared to later events. The Crusades which were to wreak such 
 misery upon the Hebrew nation throughout Europe were dawning. 
 The bitterest events in their tragical history were drawing nigh, they 
 were to be massacred with more brutality than they had ever exper¬ 
 ienced in their already eventful history. The bloodiest century of 
 their dispersion was fast approaching. “They were indeed entering 
 the darkest period in their long dreary chronicles of trial and sorrow, 
 for before the Crusades, though'often treated with cruelty and always 
 with contempt, the Jews of western Europe had frequently known long 
 
 (1.) As for instance in 1010, when Jews met their deaths at the hands of the 
 rabble, owing to the lying statements of a monk, who accused them of betraying 
 military secrets to a foreign monarch. 
 
48 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 intervals of comparative peace and happiness. Simultaneously with 
 the growth of the idea of fighting and slaughtering the infidels abroad, 
 still greater hatred was developed against the Jews at home. They were 
 miscreants as bad or worse than the Saracens, they were as rich, and 
 far easier and nearer to kill, all excellent reasons for slaying them .” 1 
 
 The Jews little realised the calamitous issue the Crusaders would 
 produce for them, yet the increasing rancour with which they were 
 treated must have presaged the direst misfortune and served as an 
 ominous note of warning. 
 
 “ In the Crusades, intolerance and implacability went hand in 
 hand, and the fancied authority of heaven for the infliction of punish¬ 
 ment sharpened and embittered the military character which was 
 already wild and furious. When the Crusader fixed the sign of the 
 Cross on his coat of mail and spurred his war steed on the plains of 
 Palestine, he sanctified bitterness and all the sympathy of Knighthood 
 disappeared. It behoved the champion of the Cross to wade through 
 seas of blood; the cries of women and the helplessness of children 
 could not mollify the vigour of fanaticism, vindictive antipathy was 
 the duty of Knighthood . 2 Thus the fanaticism raised by the Crusaders 
 was often directed against the Jews as personal enemies of Christ , 3 for 
 the knight was the servant of God bound with his good sword to 
 protect his honour and to extirpate all the enemies of Christ and his 
 Virgin Mother. These enemies were the unbelievers, more particularly 
 the Jew, whose stiff-necked obstinacy still condemned him. Every Jew 
 was as deadly a foe as if he had joined in the frantic cry of “ Crucify 
 Him,” “Crucify Him .” 4 
 
 “The Jews have crucified our Saviour, they must return to Him or 
 die ” was the cry that resounded throughout Europe. The Crusaders 
 assembled in France, and though its Jews there went through dread¬ 
 ful sufferings, the greatest sufferings were reserved for the pious 
 German communities. 
 
 Let us hear something of the character and purposes of the 
 Crusaders. “ Religious fanaticism was the chief motive of the Crusades, 
 but it was mixed with others. Chivalry had induced the love of 
 fighting and adventure ; and brave knights dreamed of carving out 
 kingdoms from the empire of the infidel. 
 
 The East was thought to abound in riches, the wealth of Ormuz 
 and India gleaned on the imagination, and sensuality was allured by 
 
 (1.) Prof. Henri Martin, Histoire de France,” p.p. 374-375. 
 
 (2.) Donoghue, “ The Church and Court of Rome,” Yol. I, p. 139. 
 
 (3.) Neander, “ Ecclesiastical History/' Vol. VII, p. 98. 
 
 (4.) Milman, “ History of the Jews,” Vol. 111. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 49 
 
 the fabulous flavour of Oriental wines, and the magical beauty of 
 Greek women. Avarice, ambition, and lust co-operated with faith. 
 The Crusaders were granted a plenary indulgence by the Pope 
 and at the voice of tlicir pastor, the Robber, the Incendiary, the 
 Homicide arose by thousands to redeem their souls by repeating on 
 the infidel the same deeds they had exercised against their Christian 
 brethren.” 1 A historian of the Crusades says, “The Crusaders abandon¬ 
 ed themselves to every species of libertinism. Virgin modesty was no 
 protection and conjugal virtue no safeguard. 
 
 Palaces and Churches were plundered to afford them means of 
 intoxication and excess, they committed crimes which made nature 
 shudder and were distinguished for their ferocity. They killed children 
 at the breast and scattered their limbs in the air.” 2 “ No barbarian, 
 no infidel, no Saracen ever perpetrated such wanton and cold blooded 
 atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ. Murder was 
 mercy, rape tenderness, simple plunder the mere assertion of a 
 conqueror’s right. Children were seized by their legs, some of them 
 plucked from their mother’s breasts and dashed against walls or 
 whirled from battlements. Others were obliged to leap from walls, 
 some tortured and roasted by slow fires.” 3 The remarks of the 
 preceding grave authorities need no comment. In Rouen (then an 
 English possession), all the Jews—men, women, and children—were 
 driven into a church and at the point of the sword offered the choice 
 of baptism or death. During the second Crusade they did not escape 
 so easily. The Jews of France had also to experience the dark 
 barbarities perpetrated upon their German brethren, “ a ferocious 
 persecution of that body had burst forth and the blood and tortures of 
 multitudes offered a tardy expiation for the crime, that their ancestors 
 had committed in Jerusalem more than a thousand years previously.” 4 
 Eugenius III absolved all intending Crusaders from paying their debts 
 to the Jews. Bernard, (afterwards St. Bernard), Abbot of Clairvaux, 
 also advised them to evade payment of their Hebrew creditors. 
 
 Another great prelate, Peter the Venerable of Clugny, made a most 
 violent attempt to fan the fanaticism of the Crusaders, which he feared 
 might become dormant, into the repetition of excesses against that 
 unfortunate race. 6 He dilated upon their natural perversity, their 
 
 (1.) Gibbon’s “ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. VIII, p. 104. 
 
 (2.) Mills’ “ History of the Crusades ” 
 
 (3.) Milman’s History of Latin Christianity,” Vol. IV. p. 188. 
 
 (4.) Draper’s “ The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. II. p. 22. 
 
 (5.) Among the most melancholy reflections it is not the least sad that the 
 gentle Abbot of Clugny, Peter the Venerable,” still to be opposed to Bernard 
 took the side of blind fanaticism. Dean Milman, “ History of Latin Christian¬ 
 ity,” Vol. IV. p. 896. 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 repellent and peculiar laws, their disbelief in Christ, in short every 
 piece of sophistical clericalism that had ever been used as a license to 
 murder the Jews and pillage their houses, was reiterated by this fierce 
 teacher of religion. “ Of what use is it ” he said “ for us to go forth 
 to seek the enemies of Christendom in distant lands, if the blasphemous 
 Jews who deride the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and scoff at His 
 Mother live in our midst. Still we must not slay these abominable 
 beings, because that is forbidden by Scriptural injunction. God does 
 not desire to utterly exterminate them, but like the murderer Cain, 
 they must be made to suffer the most fearful torments and live in 
 ignominy, an awful existence far bitterer than death, they are depend¬ 
 ent on us in misery and agony, they are filled with dread and are 
 accursed and must so remain till they turn to Christ for succour. Do 
 not kill these execrable and loathsome creatures but afflict them as 
 bitterly as you can.” Louis VII, though he did not detest them with 
 the feral hatred of the clergy, was yet bound to give effect to the 
 Papal bull absolving Crusading debtors of their obligations to them. 
 The acrimonious sermons of Peter foreboded the affliction to which 
 they were in all parts of Europe to be subject, the argument in favour 
 of pillaging them being universally popular, they (the Crusaders; could 
 enrich themselves, and provide weapons from one nation of infidels to 
 wage war against another. Besides the Turks were armed infidels and 
 very far away, and as Gibbon remarks, it was much easier to get at 
 the defenceless Israeli tish unbelievers. 
 
 Louis, who countenanced the wholesale and unjust seizure of Jewish 
 wealth and property, approved of the decree releasing the Crusaders 
 of their debts to the Jews, yet the Pope (Alexander III) reproved him 
 for his “ favouring them against the Word of God.” The reason 
 for the Papal reproof is perhaps better understood when we remember 
 that though Louis was lax enough in protecting their property, he 
 repressed with an iron hand any attempts at a general massacre of the 
 owners. Fortunately these all proved abortive during his reign, even 
 at a period when Germany was swimming in Semitic blood. On one 
 occasion, Bernard of Clairvaux, was the good genius of the German 
 Jews, though in France he had permitted every manner of commercial 
 chicanery and gross dishonesty to be practised against the resident 
 members of that race (it is suggested that this was an exigent : how 
 far the statement is true we are not in a position to say). He lent his 
 powerful influence to stay the frightful ravages and fiery fanaticism 
 the eloquent monk Rudolph had, with his poisonous facundity, created. 
 Ihis monk had escaped from his cloister and travelled through every 
 town and village in the German provinces most thickly inhabited by 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 51 
 
 Jews, “the Murderers of God and the vile slanderers of His Blessed 
 Mother.” Preceded by a banner upon which was inscribed “ Destroy 
 the Enemies of Christ,” his appearance was everywhere as unerring a 
 signal of death to the Jews, as if they were already bound to the stake. 
 They trembled and hid themselves at the bare mention of his name. 
 Bernard denounced this preacher of death as an outlawed son of the 
 Church, who had fled his cell, and were it not for his vast influence— 
 an influence infinitely greater than that possessed by any man in 
 Europe, for the Pope, the Monarchs and the nobility of every country 
 ever consulted and faithfully obeyed his slightest wish—Rudolph would 
 have continued to incite massacres of the race. As it was he was 
 compelled to retire to his monastery. His denunciator declared in the 
 most vehement tones that the murdering of Jews was subversive of 
 every moral principle. Good Christians should pray on every Good 
 Friday for their blindness to religion to leave them. They might be 
 harassed a little, but wholesale murder would never overcome their 
 obduracy. 
 
 The letter of the Archbishop of Mayence to St. Bernard laments 
 that “Rudolph delighted and emboldened by his success waxes ever 
 more violent and the Jews of these parts are likely to be entirely 
 blotted out.” From St. Bernard’s reply to the Archbishop, we cite 
 one paragraph, “ Does not the Church triumph more fully over the 
 Jews by convincing or converting them from day to day, than if she 
 once and for ever were to slay them all with the edge of the sword. 
 Is the prayer of the Church 1 appointed in vain, which is offered up for 
 the perfidious Jews from the rising of the sun to the going down of 
 the same, praying that the Lord will take away the veil from their 
 hearts that they may be lifted up from their darkness to the light of 
 truth. For if the Church did not hope that those who doubt will one 
 day believe, it would be vain and superfluous to pray for them.” 2 
 
 The reign of the next few monarchs following Louis III were 
 periods of unalloyed wretchedness to the Jews. In Paris and in many 
 
 (1.) The following prayer is contained and said at the present hour in the 
 Roman Catholic “ Missal.” Richardson’s edition, Good Friday Service, p. 332. 
 
 “ Let us pray for the perfidious Jews that the Lord God would withdraw the 
 veil from their hearts that they may also acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ 
 thy Son.” The flection or bending the knee in prayer as for all other heretics 
 is omitted in abhorrence of some imaginary insult offered to Christ.by his 
 judges. The prayer continues “ O Almighty and eternal God who deniest not 
 thy mercy even to the perfidious Jews, hear our prayers which we pour forth for 
 the blindness of that people that by acknowledging the light of thy truth which 
 is the Christ they may be brought out of their darkness.” 
 
 (2.) C. Coutter Morrison, 4i Life of St. Bernard,” p. 157. 
 
52 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 provincial towns they were compelled to reside in stipulated neighbour¬ 
 hoods, they were being constantly accused of the most frightful crimes, 
 these accusations invariably found credence and the Jews were 
 punished not only in France but throughout Europe. 
 
 When an Eastern Caliph persecuted his Christian subjects, those 
 who did not know the very name of this august tyrant, were charged 
 of being privy to his cruel oppressions. “ False as this rumour was it 
 became a pretext for the wide spread persecution of the Jews in 
 Christian lands .” 1 “ In France itself they were the object of so much 
 execration, that any act of cruelty to them was regarded as a merit¬ 
 orious deed. Nearly everywhere they were outraged and plundered 
 with impunity, the people barbarously taking vengeance for their own 
 sufferings on these hapless beings, thinking they honoured God in 
 persecuting them .” 2 The Jews were always being accused of insulting 
 and mutilating the host and the most preposterous fables were pro¬ 
 pagated and believed in to their injury in consequence. “ A Jew in 
 Paris had received in pledge a Christian woman’s best clothes. Easter 
 was drawing nigh and he refused to give up the articles (so it was 
 stated) unless the enemy promised to bring to him the “Host,” which 
 she was about to receive at Holy Communion. Refusing at first she 
 finally consented. The fact became known that a Jew had got 
 possession of the sacred host, it was instantly spread abroad that he 
 had thrown it into a cauldron of boiling water and that ever since the 
 infant Jesus had been swimming about on its surface beneath which 
 nothing would cause Him to sink. Crowds beset the Jew’s house, 
 people pretended to have seen the infant. The wretched Hebrews 
 were seized and in abject fear confessed all that they were ordered. 
 The supposed culprit was condemned to be burnt alive. The poor 
 creature regretted not having his book of the Gemara with him, think¬ 
 ing it would save him. They brought him his Gemara and burned 
 both it and him together .” 8 
 
 Throughout the country they were hunted about like beasts of the 
 chase, tortured, oppressed, and denied every human right. “ They 
 were sold, bequeathed or pawned by one baron to another, were given 
 in dowries and had lost every vestige of human freedom. No more 
 expeditious method of raising supplies existed for an impoverished 
 vassal of the Crown than to mortgage his Jews .” 4 Many lawsuits 
 could be instanced which illustrate the position my unfortunate 
 ancestors held. 
 
 (1.) Archer and Kingsford, “ The Crusades,” p. 18. 
 
 (2.) Emile de Bonnechose, “ Histoire de France,” Vol. I, p. 146. 
 
 (3.)’ Prof.*Henri*Martin, “ Histoire de France,” Vol. III. p. 83. 
 
 (4.) Dean Milman. 
 
FRANCK 
 
 53 
 
 In 1147 the Jew murdering fever attacked the country in a measure 
 beyond all suppression ; some victims, would have to fall into the 
 merciless clutches of its inhabitants before their fury could be appeased. 
 In Carenton a pitched battle took place, the Crusaders attacked the 
 those there with blind fury. The latter fell back into their houses, 
 which they at once barricaded to prevent the ingress of their relentless 
 opponents. The beleaguered Jews we are told fought like lions at bay 
 and killed such a number of their adversaries that the remnant by the 
 exercise of strategical skill sought access to a court in the rear of the 
 position occupied by the Jews, when oblivious to all dictates of 
 humanity or nobility to vanquished foes, they slew them to a man. 
 The hellish quest for Jews had however not ended, nor was their 
 barbarity satiated. The town of Sully was the theatre of more Jewish 
 agony. At Rameru the pilgrims of the Cross burst into the house of 
 the most prominent Jew in Europe, Jacob Tam (grandson of Rashi) 
 cast his large library, his valuable manuscripts and his beloved “ Scroll 
 of the Law” into the flames and dragged him to an adjoining field to 
 torture him to death. Knowing his reputation for learning and virtue 
 they resolved to avenge the death of Christ upon the venerable old 
 man. They made five horrible gashes in his head in vengeance of 
 the five wounds of Jesus. He was on the point of dying, when a 
 knight riding by, who knew his sterling eminence and piety, saw his 
 inanimate form lying in the ditch into which he had been cast, and 
 saved him from a terrible death. Had it not been for the kindly 
 offices of this knight, Tam would have perished. As it was he lived 
 to witness the levelling of the base and improbable charges against the 
 Jews of using the blood of Christian children for the Ritual of the 
 Passover Festival. Like a sleuth hound this barmecide accusation 
 has followed them through the centuries, never losing its trail, never 
 swerving from its path, notwithstanding the fact that it has been 
 oppugned by Popes, denied by monarchs, disproved by the greatest 
 thinkers. It has remained like a ghoul in the minds of the people. 
 It has been a foul ulcer in the side of history, from which Jewish blood 
 has gushed, aye poured like torrents. This monstrous lie has filled 
 the hearts of innocent men with apprehension, their steps with caution, 
 their very speech it has clothed in fear. It is an ignominious 
 survival of human credulity, an ignoble relic of priest manipulated 
 ignorance. It is that lie that has drenched the awful story of the Jew 
 with blood. It is that lie that has fermented the hatred of Christians 
 into deeds far exceeding in barbarity the actions of fiends. It is that 
 lie which is yet in many countries dinned into the ears of little children, 
 sowing the seeds of hatred and persecution in their susceptible minds. 
 
54 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 Though the lie has oft succumbed to inquiry its wraith is ever with 
 us. Though it had been oft bruited about in England, it found its 
 practical inauguration in Blois. A trifling incident terminated in a 
 most horrible massacre of his compatriots of them in that town. A Jew 
 was riding towards the River Loire intending to bathe his horse, which 
 growing restless veered around froip the water and being under no 
 restraint galloped olf. A churlish groom happening to witness the 
 incident resolved to pander to the sentiments of his Jew-hating master 
 by accusing the Jews of ritual murder. The details were soon 
 arranged, a halo of pious horror thrown around a palpable fabrication 
 and the story was given out. The Jew had murdered a Christian 
 child and thrown it into the Loire, after draining it of its blood. 
 Duke Theobald then ordered every Hebrew soul in the town to be 
 thrown into dungeons pending their trial, but his grasping covetous¬ 
 ness and insatiable love of money augured well—they imagined—tor 
 them. He had already agreed to accept their entire wealth, property, 
 and outstanding debts and grant them their freedom, but a much 
 feared and powerful monk insisted upon the most exemplary punish¬ 
 ment being visited upon the entire congregation, because one of its 
 members had been seen near the river on horseback. The whole 
 population clamoro'usly demanded the execution of the poor Jews. 
 Duke Theobald then ordered that those of Blois should to a soul, 
 suffer death at the stake. Thirty-four men, seventeen women and 
 many children were dragged bound upon a specially erected platform 
 and secured to stakes, in the presence of the foaming Christians who 
 firmly believed in their guilt. This was considered to be proven by 
 the “ Ordeal of Water.” The one who was primarily accused was put 
 to sea in a boat perforated with holes and of course the boat sank. 
 This was divine evidence of guilt. To prove innocence the boat 
 would have to float ; a process that could not be achieved by anything 
 less than a miraculous interposition. The priests clad in gorgeous 
 vestments now mounted the platform and urged conversion upon these 
 noble spirits. They were promised life, restitution of their possessions 
 and immunity from all molestation, if they would even feign to accept 
 Christianity. Now was witnessed an instance of that immanent 
 adherence to faith and people, which the most awful tortures have 
 ever failed to destroy. The martyrs of Blois persistently expressed 
 their unwavering resolution to die in the faith of their fathers. They 
 were temporarily dismounted from the platform and submitted to the 
 most unrelenting tortures, the priests crucifix in hand, being unremit¬ 
 ting in persuading them to abjure Judaism with their lips. Then the 
 maimed victims of human hatred and malevolence were carried back 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 55 
 
 to the stake and again admonished to accept Christ and life. They 
 remained firm and placid, their calmness astounding all assembled. 
 The torturers finally perceived the absolute inutility of their efforts, 
 the executioners were directed to kindle the flames and on that fateful 
 20th of Sivan, (26th May) 1171, while these heroes were reciting the 
 prayer which declares the unity of God, the prayer which they had 
 lisped out as happy children at the knees of their parents, the prayer 
 which had guided them through life in the tenets of their creed and 
 the prayer for the assertion of which every Jew is prepared to joyfully 
 shed his life’s blood,—“ Hear 0 Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord 
 is One,” they offered their holy spirits to the immutable Jehovah of 
 their ancestors, whose laws they obeyed and whose glory they honoured 
 at the cost of their earthly existence. 1 This heart-rending incident, 
 which should have moved the heart of Europe to tears, was witnessed 
 not with callous indifference but with the greatest rejoicings. The 
 taunts and jests of the people formed an appropriate accompaniment to 
 the loud voiced and baffled clergy, who infuriately tortured them 
 here and cursed them hereafter. So perished these unhappy children 
 of the Patriarchs whilst their brethren throughout Europe were in¬ 
 consolable. The bitterest grief prevailed throughout the Jewish world. 
 Fasts and penances were strictly observed and the ominous burning 
 was lamented with the most abandoned grief. Rabbenu Tam ordained 
 
 that this mournful day should be commemorated and just as the Jews 
 of France had annually fasted on the anniversary of the massacre in 
 London at Richard’s coronation, so did those of other countries 
 fast for many decades in honour of the Blois martyrs. But it had 
 gone forth that the Jews murdered Christians to procure their blood 
 for Passover. The calamity referred to above was a harbinger of untold 
 misery and a portentous omen of misery. It foreshadowed what the 
 Jews would have to endure from this inane accusation. The blood 
 accusation has ever hovered over the Israelites like a hydra-headed 
 flammivomous dragon pouncing upon them with unparalleled fury. 
 It carried in its cothurnate train massacre, murder, torture, plunder 
 and every kind of unmitigated misery, for despite the fact that their 
 literature had been searched and microscopically examined by prejudiced 
 clerics, and the innumerable occasions upon which this fabrication 
 had been disproved, despite the confessions of the few poorer spirited 
 Jews, who had succumbed to the blandishments of the priesthood, 
 despite the fact that every arbitrary contortion and wilful misconcep- 
 
 (1.) Their religious books were confiscated, and ultimately sold to the con¬ 
 gregations in the vicinity for 1000 livres. 
 
56 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 tion was made of their religious service, not the slightest incriminating 
 grain could be found to support this vacuous charge—one against 
 which the Jew shuddered more than his oppressor—in vain their 
 friends pointed to their Law which inculcated the most matchless 
 humanity, and appealed to the Rabbinic traditions which taught 
 the deepest sympathy even for dumb animals. This grim charge 
 has even m recent times been hurled against them with all the violence 
 of the Middle Ages and its baneful effects are but tardily disappearing. 
 
 Eleven years after the Blois tragedy (in 1182), when the Jews were 
 gathered in their synagogues in celebration of the Sabbath, the military 
 acting upon the instructions of Philip Augustus surrounded the sacred 
 edifices throughout the country, arrested the worshippers and imprison¬ 
 ed them. They were then informed that their property was confiscated 
 to the King and their Christian debtors had (on payment of one fifth 
 to himself) been released from discharging the claims of the incarcer¬ 
 ated. But though Philip had impoverished his wealthy Jewish subjects 
 he was not yet satisfied ; he published an edict ordering the entire 
 people to quit his domains by an assigned date. He had sought to 
 effect their tribulation by every conceivable means and had since his 
 fifteenth year characterized his reign by the most frightful persecution 
 of that people, 1 but now he played his last card. All fields, barns, 
 magazines, wine-presses and houses that had belonged to them were 
 by Royal proclamation declared to be the inalienable property of the 
 Kings of Frauce, They were allowed to sell their portable effects, 
 and by granting this concession Philip thought he had dealt most 
 equitably. In vain they appealed for him to annul this disastrous 
 decree of banishment and sent clandestine deputations offering large 
 sums of money for a revocation or even respite. The King was 
 adamant and even the entreaties of his more liberal-minded advisers 
 failed to arouse his diplomatic forethought much less his sympathy. 
 They pointed out to him how his predecessors had made tacit 
 recognition of their merits and with how much risk a scheme was 
 fraught, the execution of which accomplished the denudation of France 
 of her commercial classes. 2 They pointed out to him how while France 
 was in its infancy it had derived indisputable benefits from their 
 commerce. Their vessels had indeed ever found ready markets for 
 French produce in all the ports of the Mediterranean. But the 
 
 (1.) Emile de Bonnechose. 
 
 (2.) It was from the wealth of the Jews that Paris began to rear her fort¬ 
 resses and lofty edifices. Dean Milman, “ History of the Jews,” Vol. Ill, 
 p. 219. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 57 
 
 resolute Monarch unmindful of their services and their learning and 
 heedless of their protestations remained unmoved. Before St. John’s 
 Day the Jews must quit. Fortunately the power of the Carlovingian 
 Monarclis had begun to wane and his relentless mandate was practically 
 disregarded by the great majority of his feudatories ; in fact the 
 expelled Parisians were received in many provinces with every token 
 of sympathy for their harsh treatment, though in the royal districts 
 they were compelled to mournfully leave their homes, completely 
 beggared through inability to find purchasers for their few trinkets. 
 
 In 1191 Philip Augustus—ever their bitter foe—lengthened the 
 roll of Jewish martyrs on French soil by nearly one hundred persons. 
 The circumstances, briefly related, are these :—A brutal Christian 
 peasant waylaid an aged and highly respected Jew and belabouring 
 him with a cudgel commanded him to reject his faith. This, the white- 
 headed old man firmly refused to do, and after being most frightfully 
 mutilated by his murderer died in great agonies. The Hebrews 
 of Bray (in Champagne) were then an important body in the town 
 and demanded from the Countess the murderer’s delivery. She, highly 
 incensed at this atrocious murder, acceded to their request. They put 
 the assassin to death, but such oblique and distorted reports, and such 
 palpable perversions of what had transpired were conveyed to the irate 
 Philip—who was delighted to have a pretext against the Jews—that he 
 hastened to Bray in person and, with a troop of .soldiers encircled the 
 Jewish quarter to prevent the exit of its inhabitants. He then offered 
 them the alternative of death in acceptance of Christianity. Their 
 depravity it appears was not great enough to render them unable to 
 become good Christians. It is with justifiable pride we relate that not 
 one quailed before the awful ordeal nor did one heart grow faint when 
 confronted with death. Like the Jews of York who had less than a 
 year before immolated themselves, they unanimously decided to meet 
 death at each other’s hands. Yet the Holy Soldier of Christ, the 
 Warrior of the Crusades, seized nearly one hundred of them and offered 
 them up as a burnt offering to the wrath of his subjects. 
 
 Meanwhile a new crusade had been ordered by Pope Innocent III, 
 one of the most whimsically cruel and capricious of Pontiffs. He 
 
 (1.) The}^ had a large share in the restoration of learning and the cultivation 
 of science. Their schools abounded in erudite men and scientific expounders. 
 Through them many Greek writers were translated into Arabic, thence to be 
 rendered into the tongues of Europe and made accessible to the young 
 Universities of the West. Through them medicine was revived to become the 
 parent of physical science in general. They were universal translators, 
 publishers and literary correspondents, and almost the only representatives of 
 commerce. While superstition reigned elsewhere, they were comparatively 
 free from it. Prof. Hosrner, ‘ The Jews,” p. 140. 
 
58 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 directed a monk, Fulko de Neuilly, a dissolute and abandoned character 
 universally loathed for his debaucheries, to preach it in the North of 
 France. His noxious eloquence obtained for the Papal banner many 
 votaries, many of the French barons becoming inoculated with his 
 theatrically declaimed doctrines. He considered such a state of public 
 ferment as he had created most favourable for the harassing of the 
 Jews. All Christians when once they assumed the Crusaders’ Cross 
 were absolved of their debts to them. The more zealous of the barons, 
 even those who had sheltered the victims of Philip’s decree, now 
 expelled them from their baronries with equal determination. When 
 in 1198 Philip Augustus permitted them to lawfully re-establish them¬ 
 selves in every part of France the barons were astounded ; it was to 
 them inexplicable after his inveterate persecution of the Jews to re¬ 
 admit them. No doubt their commercial skill and financial aptitude 
 had made itself felt by its absence, although his pique against the Pojie 
 and his representatives in France could to his mind best be displayed 
 by favouring their hated enemies. He was sharply reprimanded by 
 Innocent III for what he in a very vigorous epistle termed his favour¬ 
 ing of the Jews. 1 “He was deeply grieved,” he said “that the 
 descendants of the crucifiers should be placed on an equality with the 
 heirs of the Crucified.” “ Can the son of a slave ” he argued, “ be 
 equal to the son of a free woman ? He had heard that the Jews in 
 France actually hired Christian servants, that they held property, 2 that 
 their liberty was now very great and that the Jewish community of 
 Sens had built a most beautiful ’synagogue the turret of which was 
 higher than any of the churches in that town.” 
 
 In 1208 a code was promulgated from the throne dealing 
 immediately with the Jews and their liberty, which was again placed 
 under many odious restrictions. 
 
 In 1223 on the accession of Louis VIII all interest upon monies 
 lent by Israelites was declared null. The sum borrowed was to be restored 
 in three yearly instalments. They were now by statute attached 
 to the soil like the villeins of England and thus lost their freedom 
 of movement through the cruel will of a despotic sovereign. Ever 
 forced to wander from land to land, to cross oceans and wildernesses 
 in quest of a livelihood and peace, they were now compelled to remain 
 
 (1.) Ibis says Rule (History of the Inquisition, p. 9.) “ means that he no 
 longer destroyed them on the credit of vulgar calumnies.” 
 
 (2.) In the twelfth century we find them not only possessed of landed 
 property in Languedoc and cultivating the studies of medicine and Rabbinical 
 literature in their own academy at Montpelier under the protection of the court 
 of Toulouse, but invested with civil offices. Hallam’s “ Europe.” 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 . 59 
 
 i 
 
 on the soil that had already witnessed so much of their bitter 
 degradation. The serf was assigned no worse humiliation. It is well 
 known that a deed exists which sets forth the sale by a Count of 
 Champagne, of his lands and Jews thereon attached. Their status 
 was indeed pitiable, they were ground into the very slough of despair. 
 In the South however their position was much better. Count 
 Raymond the Good protected his Jews, but was however severely 
 taken to task on that account by the Pope, who stigmatized his conduct 
 in favouring (i.e. protecting) the Jews as most reprehensible. Yet 
 even this most inimical of the Popes, who had it in his power to 
 embitter or render peaceful the lives of the Jews, was often compelled 
 to interpose and lessen the rigidity and merciless cruelty with which 
 they were treated. A cogent illustration of the shameful wrongs he 
 sought to redress is presented by an extract from the Constitute de 
 Judaeorum, a series of laws issued by Innocent III to shield them 
 from the fearful excesses of the Crusaders. 
 
 This code provided that they were no longer to be seized and 
 dragged to the baptismal font. They were not to be maimed, robbed, 
 or murdered without having been officially tried and sentenced for 
 some crime, they were not to be assailed with missiles or whipped 
 during their services in the synagogue, their cemeteries were not to 
 be desecrated, their dead were not to be exhumed or the corpses 
 insulted. Such inconceivable horrors had to be legislated for. But 
 their protection from lawlessness was not on grounds of justice or 
 humanity It was a retaliatory measure intended as a means of 
 mortifying the overbearing Jew-hating monarchs of Europe and their 
 vassals. It was an action quite compatible with the low character of 
 Innocent. Yet despite these provisions much Jewish blood was to be 
 shed within a very brief period from their promulgation. In 1209 
 the Pope entrusted a crusade of extermination against the Albigenses 
 to Simon de Montfort. Simon, his wife and son, had been the 
 most sedulous persecutors of the English Jews. The fury of this 
 extirpating mission was primarily directed against “ Count Raymond 
 the Good,” who was charged with favouring the Albigenses, that is, 
 not embruing his hands in their blood, and worse still with the flagrant 
 crime of intrusting the Jews with public offices. On the 22nd of 
 July the city of Beziers—already rendered egregious for its maltreat¬ 
 ment of the Jews—was stormed and 20,000 innocent people of all ages 
 were ruthlessly slain, babes at the breast fared no better than did their 
 parents ; 200 Jews lost their lives while a large number were made 
 prisoners and sold into slavery. Count Raymond was stripped of his 
 office, and compelled to swear before a Papal legate presiding over the 
 
60 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 Council of Avignon, (Sept. 22, 1209,) to no longer favour the Jews. 
 The word “favour” was in the eyes of the Church a term indicating the 
 accordance to dissidents from Papacy of the rights which they as law- 
 abiding citizens were entitled to exercise. Many violent resolutions 
 were adopted by this Council. The barons of free cities, it fulmined, 
 aie to entrust no office to the Jews. They must prevent them from 
 employing Christian servants, they must not be allowed to work on 
 Sundays, to eat meat during Lent, all this had been sworn to the 
 Pontifical Envoy “ Milo.” Raymond, naked and scourged, was 
 dragged before him and while in a supplicating posture with a sword 
 at his heart was forced to swear to discharge and humiliate his Jewish 
 ministers and friends. The Albigenses were still undaunted and 
 through the subsequent victories of Count Raymond, they were 
 once again promoted by their liberal-minded protector. Their renewed 
 elevation so enraged Alice de Montmorency (wife of Simon de Montfort) 
 that she seized all the Hebrews of Toulouse, where her authority was 
 recognised and imprisoned them, offering them the alternative of 
 martyrdom ill the acceptance of Christ. All children of less than six 
 years of age were by her order taken from their parents and forcibly 
 baptized. 1 These high handed proceedings were however deprecated 
 by her husband, who had promised them liberty of person and 
 conscience. It is note-worthy that the vast majority remained 
 resolute to undergo any fate rather than apostatize from Judaism. On 
 the 1st Av (7th July) 1217, the prisoners were relieved of their 
 suspense and to their great delight informed that they were free, but 
 their children, the vindictive Cardinal Bertrand decided, were not to be 
 returned to them. I hey fasted, mourned and performed all manner 
 of penance to avert Bertrand s evil decree, but their sorrow was 
 nugatory ; the fiat was declared irrevocable. He gave his Bishops 
 orders to compel the wearing of the “ Jewish Badge.” So zealously 
 did he enforce conformity to the canons of the various Ecclesiastical 
 Councils, that the Pope was compelled to request him to exercise some 
 little leniency. How many petty barons and liege lords of the King- 
 may have committed deeds of outrage, equal to that of Alice, which 
 History has considered too trivial to record ? 
 
 The Jews were not again officially molested till 1231, when the 
 “ Council of Tours ” reviewed their position and as the result of its 
 deliberations directed that all the persecuting laws of the “ Fourth 
 
 (1.) Similar events took place in 1219, also in Poitou, Anjou, and Brittany, 
 500 Jews joined the Church, over 3000 were slain by mobs, and some killed 
 themselves and their children. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 61 
 
 Lateran Council ” should be rigorously enforced. Simultaneously the 
 “ Council of Rouen ” passed many drastic ordinances that bore directly 
 against the Jews under its jurisdiction. The anti-Jewish feeling that 
 permeated these two Councils can be directly traced to the new 
 Crusade against heretics, so fiercely carried out by the instigation of 
 Pope Gregory IX. The Dominican monks had been invested with 
 plenary powers to hear all cases of heresy, or rather liberty of conscience 
 and conviction. The Jews were not nearly so cruelly treated as the 
 “ Albigenses,” the Mohammedan inhabitants of France and other 
 sects and creeds who denied the omnipotence of Gregory. They were 
 visited with every species of human suffering and tortured by every 
 diabolical instrument man could devise. Spain was the theatre of 
 their greatest activity. The Jews of France were, as we have already 
 seen, continually being accused of ritual murder and these accusations 
 were invariably attended with a parody of a trial and its concomitant 
 looting expedition. 
 
 In 1236 (July 10) there occurred an anti-Jewish outbreak, that 
 eclipsed all their previous sufferings on French territory. The Pope 
 had given an order for another Crusade. The warriors of the Cross 
 were massed together near Anjou and before proceeding to deeds of 
 intrepidity against the Saracen they resolved to perform a preliminary 
 exercise by massacring the defenceless Jewish heretics who were so near 
 at hand and so accessible. The barbarians fell upon all the Jewish 
 communities in the provinces of Anjou and Poitou and the city of 
 Bordeaux, committing deeds of the most unparalleled atrocity thinking 
 to compel them to discard Judaism. With what glowing pride do we 
 relate that but a very few of the more timorous accepted the gruesome 
 alternative to death. With a few exceptions all the communities 
 attacked firmly and obdurately refused the terms offered. In the 
 name of one who had said “ Thou shalt love thy enemies,” they 
 murdered thousands of human beings. In the name of one who had 
 taught honour to the aged they tore hoary headed old Jews limb from 
 limb. For the sake of one who had blessed little children, saying 
 “ Their’s is the Kingdom of Heaven,” crying babes were rent from 
 shrieking mothers and trampled under foot by the horses of these 
 savages. To perpetuate the glory of one who had revered the 
 humblest of women, they tortured pregnant women to renounce the 
 God of Israel. Over three thousand victims fell during the few days 
 (10th.—16th.) Their synagogues and houses were demolished and 
 their scrolls of the Law and Talmuds burnt. Louis IX (St. Louis) 
 no doubt connived at this awful deed, for he hated the Jews so 
 intensely, that he could not tolerate their presence. “ Louis loved all 
 
62 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 mankind with a boundless love except Jews, heretics, and infidels 
 whom he hated with a boundless hatred .” 1 He was the French Edward 
 the Confessor with the blood embrued hands of William the Conqueror. 
 
 He oppressed the Jews in an unendurable degree. 2 He character¬ 
 ized his accession by freeing all Christians from interest on the debts 
 due to them. In 1282 he officially recognized the rights of his great 
 vassals to consider their Jews as attached to the soil. “ His legislature 
 upon the Jews is characteristic of his peculiar nature.” For the 
 salvation of his soul, the soul of his father, and of all his ancestors he 
 acquits all Christians of one third of their debts to the Jews. Hence¬ 
 forth no debts shall be contracted. They shall abstain from all 
 lendings of money on interest and live by the work of their own 
 hands.” 3 This unjust series of laws was issued in 1284, but they were 
 comparatively mild when contrasted with those of the court of 
 Brittany under the presidency of John of Ploermel, by which it was 
 enacted that no Jew should be allowed to live in the country, all their 
 property was confiscated, their debts, annulled and the insecure 
 protection provided them against violence removed ; in short carte 
 blanche was practically given for the mutilation and assassination of 
 the hapless people. Thinking to aim a more deadly blow at them he, 
 in 1248, at the instigation of a renegade Jew, ordered a most vigorous 
 persecution of the Talmud and proscribed the entire Rabbinical 
 literature on the plea that it contained anti-Christological references. 
 Their valuable libraries containing priceless Oriental manuscripts were 
 burned to the ground and twenty-four cartloads of the Talmud 
 publicly made into a bonfire by the public executioner in the market 
 square of Paris. “ These writings were their standards, standards 
 venerated without abatement down to the present hour ; a veneration 
 almost universal and a principal cause why the Jews so sundered and 
 smitten have maintained solidarity.” 4 Before ordering the burning a 
 ludicrous show of justice had been made for a public disputation as to 
 the contents of this repository of Jewish learning had been ordered. 
 
 (1.) “ History of Latin Christianity,” Vol. YI. p. 800. 
 
 (2.) The Layman, said St. Louis, has but one argument against Jews and 
 infidels ; his good sword. Even clerks—unless profoundly learned—should 
 use none other. If you hear a man is an infidel do not dispute with him, run 
 your sword through his entrails and drive it home. He related with special 
 approbation the anecdote of a brave old knight who broke up a discussion on 
 the relative excellence of their law between some Catholic Doctors and some 
 Jewish Rabbis, by bringing down his mace and felling the principal Jew 
 teacher. “ History of Latin Christianity,” Yol. VI. p. 300. 
 
 (3.) “ Oxford Essays,” Dr. Bridges. 
 
 (4.) Prof. Hosmer. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 63 
 
 It was conducted on these lines : the accusers, renegade Jews and 
 Dominican monks, were to say whatever they desired without hindrance, 
 whilst the utterances of the Rabbis however were to be very brief, to 
 contain nothing impugning Christianity or offensive to Christian ears. 
 Thus the burning of the Book could be the only outcome of such a 
 mock disputation. 
 
 A French Crusade against the Talmud had now been inaugurated 
 and for three years it was waged with alternations of rampant hostility 
 and illegal toleration. The few brief interludes of peace were however 
 mainly due to the exertions of the humanistic Archbishop of Sens, 
 who interceded with St. Louis on its behalf. After his death Pope 
 Innocent IV, who had heretofore refrained from any actual condemn¬ 
 ation of the work in question, was induced by the importunities of his 
 fanatical legate Octo to ratify Louis’ edict for its proscription as a 
 heretical work. The Jews were disconsolate when they learned that 
 Louis’ dormant decree had received Pontifical sanction and fasted for 
 two consecutive days praying earnestly for the repeal of a decree which 
 robbed them of all the glamour of their national and synagogal life. 
 The same King taxed the Jews most heavily for the expenses of the 
 Crusade in which he took part. 
 
 In 1238 the mob of Paris sallied forth against the Jews assigning 
 no other motive for the deed than hatred. After the demolition of 
 the quarters assigned to them by Royal Charter they mangled and 
 murdered a large number of the hated Hebrews. 
 
 St. Louis gave a great amount of attention to the “ Jew Badge.” 
 He stipulated its size, shape and colour and instructed the Dominican 
 monks, to whose hands was relegated its enforcement to regard any 
 contravention of his saintly enactment as a personal insult. This mark 
 of infamy, which the Saint compelled every Jew in his dominions to 
 wear both upon his breast and back, was a piece of cloth in the shape 
 of a wheel. Women were not exempted from the uniform operation 
 of this edict, which originated as much from clerical prompting and 
 influence as kingly hatred. Alarm lest any Jew should be allowed to 
 appear in public unmolested was the primary cause of this law, it 
 being feared he might be mistaken for a Christian. If one of the 
 despised creatures had the hardihood to walk about without prominently 
 displaying this symbol of his turpitude, it was ordained that “ he shall 
 forfeit his coat to the first Christian who meets him.” If he on a 
 second occasion had the temerity to divest himself of this general 
 invitation to the rabble to fall upon him and belabour him with their 
 cudgels or clumsy fists he was to be fined ten livres. The money it 
 was further ordained was to be devoted to Christian purposes. 
 
64 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 Louis was a man of the most rigid and austere piety, so devout 
 that he heard two and generally three masses a day even when on a 
 sea-voyage. He was helplessly priest-ridden and his fervid hatred of 
 the Jews and all dissidents from Romanism was but the natural out¬ 
 come of his bigoted training and cult. To his Christian subjects he 
 was a veritable father and humane to a fault. “ Boniface VIII in 
 declaring his canonization called him the most Christian of all the 
 monarchs of France ; nay one of the truest Christians, Monarch or 
 Peasant, Europe ever knew.” 1 Wherever he might be, a hundred and 
 twenty poor persons received daily two loaves each, a quart of wine, 
 meat or fish enough for a good meal and a silver penny. Mothers had 
 an extra loaf for each child. Besides the hundred and twenty who 
 received out-door relief, thirteen others were daily admitted to the 
 palace and had their meals with the officers of the Royal Household.” 2 
 A panegyrist whose standpoint on human freedom and religious 
 toleration can best be understood by his eulogy of this fanatical man 
 says “ he was an ideal man, King, and Christian, who did honour to 
 France, Christianity, mankind, humanity and royalty.” 
 
 To the Jews he was an implacable foe, and a fierce persecutor, any 
 excesses against them when not actually held forth as laudable 
 examples were condoned as inculpable. His overt laxity in punishing 
 murderers of Jews combined with the dramatic eloquence of the 
 infuriate monks were the primary causes that led to an appalling 
 massacre of the Hebrew citizens of Orleans (1240). Not even the 
 customary offer of baptism was made them, all were mowed down. 
 Hoary headed old men, too feeble to walk, and helpless little babes 
 clinging in despair to the maternal breasts that could afford them so 
 little protection did not move these arrant cowards from their purpose; 
 for to show mercy to a Jew was the last extreme of heresy. The corpses 
 of the slain were left unburied, to be devoured by the dogs, or to rot in 
 the sun. 
 
 In May 1246 the Church Convocation of Beziers renewed many 
 odious laws against the Jews and added others. The Church perceived 
 that the great prevalence of Hebrew physicians and their employment 
 by the nobles and aristocrats tended to give them a status and 
 influence which their birth and disbelief precluded them from enjoy¬ 
 ing. Moreover it might conduce to giving them a species of moral 
 weight with those minds whose bodies their skill had benefited. It 
 was therefore stipulated that no Jew be admitted to the profession or 
 
 (1.) Guizot, “ Life of St. Louis,” p. 8. 
 (2.) Guizot, “ Life of St. Louis,” p. 124. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 65 
 
 practice of medicine and that any Christian employing a Jewish doctor 
 or surgeon should be excluded from the Church as a recusant. It was 
 furthermore laid down as a Church canon that “ No Jew shall leave 
 his home during Easter but shall pay on that festival an annual tax 
 for the maintenance of the Church and its dignitaries.” They were 
 forbidden to touch meat during Lent, and the wearing of the out¬ 
 rageous “ Jew Badge ” was regulated by a most whimsical series of 
 provisions. The restriction of the Jews from the practice of medicine 
 was one of the most egregious pieces of folly ever perpetrated. The 
 entire knowledge of all its higher branches rested exclusively with 
 them, as evidenced by the avidity with which Christian physicians 
 and surgeons ran to their lectures. In the words of Dr. Draper, they 
 almost monopolized the medical and surgical skill of Europe, and in 
 one century (the eleventh) nearly all the doctors in Europe were 
 Jews. They had indeed instructed many French surgeons who owed 
 their knowledge of practical and theoretical medicine and surgery 
 solely to Semitic tuition. Despite the fulminant Council of Beziers, 
 the vast majority, even of the most devout Catholics, did not disdain 
 to employ Jews and make clandestine use of their skill. 
 
 The saintly Louis’ bigotry was ever used as the lever to effect the 
 humiliation of his Jewish subjects, but in 1250 he was aroused into 
 such a pitch of fury by the taunts of his Crusading compeers, who 
 twitted the orthodox monarch with allowing infidel Jews to reside 
 in his kingdom, that he ordered—with the exception of a few specified 
 crafts—the banishment of all Jews in France. The merchants and 
 impecunious nobles were however unable to dispense with them, so for 
 once prudence and state-craft overcame hatred and fanaticism and 
 they were very shortly recognized as being legally resettled. The 
 bigotry of Louis though subdued by the sagacity of his ministers, had 
 not however become extinguished, it smouldered in his breast and four 
 years later the priest-ridden Saint repeated the edict of 1250 with much 
 more firmness. As invariably happened in all expulsions of Jews, their 
 synagogues, cemeteries, and a great amount of their property went to 
 fill the depleted coffers of their King. The monkish King was horrified 
 to again discover that the Jews were a sine qua non to the progress of 
 France. “ There seemed to be no resource but to acknowledge the 
 dependence of France on Jewish industry and wealth.” 1 Their com¬ 
 mercial and financial skill, their continental trade, their ability in 
 conducting all kinds of delicate or complex negotiations caused their 
 enforced absence to make itself felt so indubitably, that St, Louis had 
 
 (1.) Milman, “ History of the Jews,” Vol. III. p 216. 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 no option but to hasten and recall them. In the provinces distant 
 from Paris and those districts immediately administered by him, little 
 or absolutely no notice had been taken of his furious order, the rulers 
 of the different districts with general unanimity subordinating their 
 sense of duty to their liege lord to that of their aversion to accelerating 
 the ruin of their commerce and trade. The southern French commun¬ 
 ities had been slightly affected, but their recall to Paris and its 
 adjoining cities improved their financial and political status in a 
 tangible degree. Contemporary with the banishment of the Jews 
 from England by Edward, the Gascon communities had been similarly 
 treated and many ancient and historic Hebrew congregations were 
 irretrievably disbanded—communities which had existed for centuries, 
 and whose sole offence lay in their being Edward I’s subjects. These 
 poor wanderers were compelled to quit the homes of their youth and 
 visit many strange lands ere they found rest. 
 
 Philip III, the next monarch, had long been accustomed to extort 
 money from the Jews unfortunate enough to be under his rule, by 
 alternate fierce threats and anguine blandishments, and when he 
 ascended the throne his attitude towards the Jews showed no alteration 
 in its economic policy. He had ever been wont to raise the necessary 
 supplies for all his expeditions by means of those foul charges which— 
 as if by tacit consent—the Sovereigns of Christendom launched against 
 their Hebrew subjects. Philip codified and amplified all the repressive 
 laws St. Louis had addressed to the Jews. He laid especial insistence 
 upon the distinctive “ Badge,” against the degradation of wearing 
 which the Jews of France—particularly the Provencal communities— 
 had struggled so persistently. 
 
 Philip IV (le Bel) described by an authoritative biographer as 
 the most rapacious and cruel monarch who ever sat on the throne of 
 France, succeeded him. It was now the settled and recognized policy 
 of the French Kings to periodically squeeze money from the Jews and 
 the preceding observation of an impartial historian will intimate that 
 he was not remiss in upholding what French comity to European 
 States demanded. From the very first day of his reign lie displayed— 
 though perhaps with less bigotry than St. Louis—the greatest alacrity 
 in vigorously persecuting them. Yet though he publicly harassed 
 them he did not pose as an ardent hater of their religion or race ; it 
 was their wealth he desired to convert to his own coffers. He was not 
 content with the money dragged from foreign merchants on his shores, 
 or with the money wrung from the fruit of his subjects’ toil, he would 
 wring more from the Jews. It is quite true that he had limited the 
 power of the priesthood over their persons and deprecated their 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 67 
 
 depravity , 1 granting the Jews several minor concessions, but this he 
 knew would conduce to increase his prospective spoil. 
 
 On the 21st of January, 1306, Philip gave clandestine order for 
 their absolute expulsion. That of Louis IX had been the outcome of 
 a moment’s splenetic fury. Now it was a carefully deliberated, well 
 matured State measure. The King assigned no motive whatever for 
 this mad and impolitic deed. All the Royal bailiffs were apprised of 
 the edict and by a cruel caprice of destiny on that fateful day on which 
 so many disasters had befallen their race, when they were all assembled 
 in their synagogues and Rabbinical colleges, praying and fasting, 
 the Crown officers, who had not given the slightest inkling of their 
 privily despatched instructions, roughly pounced upon them and 
 dragged every Jewish soul in the kingdom to prison. So perfectly 
 had this move been planned and so carefully had the prisoners been 
 shadowed during the few months intervening from the secret issue of 
 the ferocious order to their arrest, that there was not one single Jew 
 or Jewess in the country who was not under lock and key on the 
 tenth of Ab. After the agony of several days’ cruel suspense, they 
 were told that within thirty days they must leave the kingdom. All 
 their wealth, property and goods were to be forfeited to the Crown. 
 It was a much more cruel banishment than that in England, for there 
 they were allowed to retain some fraction of their rightful belongings. 
 The majority of the banished Jews had seen none other than French 
 soil, it was endeared to them as the scene of their infancy, adolescence 
 and manhood. With it was attended all the sacred memories of 
 infantile innocence and youthful fervour. For ten centuries at least 
 they had been subjects of France yet not Frenchmen in name. “ The 
 anomalous position of the Jews in mediaeval Europe was due to the 
 intolerance of the Church, which rendered it impossible for them to 
 become citizens of their native country without abjuring their 
 ancestral faith.” 1 Throughout France their seats of learning had 
 spread light and culture. Their sedulous industry, their commercial 
 knowledge and their practical worth, had nourished many French 
 
 (1.) There can be no doubt that the Frankish clergy were in general sunk 
 low in character as in estimation. Philip, well informed doubtless of what he 
 might expect, demands authority of the Pope to punish by summary degradation 
 the incredible profligacy especially of the lower ecclesiastics, as well as to 
 interdict the unchristian occupations of the soldier bishops who indulged in all 
 the licence of the camp, drunkenness, gambling and quarrelling, and all the 
 ferocity of the field of battle, even bloodshed ; whether that of pagans or 
 Christians. “ History of Latin Christianity,” Yol. III. p. 14. 
 
 (2.) Joseph Jacobs, B.A., “ The Jews of Angevin England,” p. 1. 
 
68 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 provinces. 1 They had been the carriers of intellectual influence and 
 though driven into exile had accomplished their destiny. They had 
 silently deposited in France their ideas and sapped the credulity of the 
 higher classes. 2 They had lavished untold wealth upon their establish¬ 
 ments and synagogues, their beautiful vineyards and their well tilled 
 grounds (adequate proofs of their diligence) were all to be confiscated. 
 The edict was irrevocable, their loud entreaties were disregarded, 
 their bitter tears unheeded. The obdurate Philip did not consider 
 that France was their only home and what their abilities had done to 
 enrich his dominions and his hitherto scanty learning. Their wealth 
 had no attraction ; their protestations no success. One hundred 
 thousand men, women and children were expatriated by one stroke of 
 a madman’s pen and had to leave the country of their birth. Though 
 they had suffered much within its borders, although they had been 
 fleeced and maltreated by its inhabitants, they were yet loth to leave 
 their native land, the scenes of their childhood, but September 12, 
 1306, saw their departure. An authority cites the lament of one 
 noble youth who said, “ From the House of Learning have they torn 
 me. Naked was I forced as a youth to leave my ancestral home and 
 wander from land to land and from people to people whose tongues 
 were strange to me.” Another heart-broken Jew says, “ I, unhappy, 
 saw the misery of the banishment of the Sons of Jacob, who like a 
 herd of cattle were driven asunder. From a state of honour was I 
 thrust into darkness : from a rich man have I become a beggar and 
 though a weak man a homeless wanderer.” The departure of the 
 Jews was accompanied with inexpressible sorrows, their exodus was 
 embittered by the very people amongst whom they had been reared, 
 amongst whom they had passed their lives. Not one was there among 
 all the spectators who was moved by the least spark of humanity. 
 Not one breast was there penetrable by the tears of the harmless and 
 inobtrusive victims of a tyrant’s feral wish. Not one who would by 
 a kind word assuage the poignant anguish of fathers, forced to witness 
 the gipsy-like wanderings of delicate and weeping wives, of weary and 
 starving children, of soothing babes forced to partake in their parents’ 
 legacy of sorrow, and to die amid Christian contumely (for many 
 children perished from hunger, others from cold, quite naked, in their 
 mother’s arms) ; not one to lessen the tears of sons who saw their 
 
 (1.) The Jews held in their hands much of the trade of the world ; they 
 were in perpetual movement and commercial intercommunication. Locomotion— 
 for such is always its result—tended to make them intellectual. “ The 
 Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. II. p. 119. 
 
 (2.) Idem, p. 126. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 69 
 
 aged parents, wrinkled, grey and bent, who begged for one moment to 
 rest their trembling forms ; not one tear for mothers who heard their 
 starving, woe-begone children ask for rest, for food; yet thousands 
 there were to jeer, to jest, to taunt the hounded children of the 
 Prophets, to twit at their grief and loudly mock their pain. 
 
 The synagogues, that had witnessed so much of their grief and 
 heard so many of their prayers, were turned into churches. Louis 
 presented one Jewish house of prayer to a favourite postillion. “ The 
 Canon of Pisa with two Dominicans were sent to superintend the sale 
 of their stolen goods.” 1 These brought the State immense wealth, 
 the sale of Jewish properties in Orleans and district, alone produced 
 half a million francs. But the cruel injustice to which they were 
 submitted did not end here ; several invalids had been unable to leave 
 these tyrannical shores by the stipulated time. In the town of Chignon 
 several Jews and Jewesses, who were either too aged or too infirm to 
 walk and could not leave the country were seized and roughly ordered 
 to discard Judaism. A few were in such a state of collapse that they 
 died under interrogation, but many hoary-headed heroes resolutely 
 refused the terms of freedom offered them. Chief of these was Eliezer 
 ben Joseph of Chignon, a man of eminent repute, who had led a life 
 of blameless integrity from his cradle to his martyr’s pyre. His white 
 locks did not move his bloody-handed captors. Bound to the stake, 
 the red and angry forked tongued flames soon devoured the mundane 
 envelope that contained this old lion’s sonl ; it was soon free. One 
 more crime was added to the list of Christian ignominy, one more 
 lustrous jewel in the crown of Israel’s fame, in Judah’s diadem of 
 glory. A fair number of Jews had found comparative shelter and 
 protection in the smaller towns in which the Kingly influence was not 
 so directly potent, notably Perpignan. Phillip however fearing that 
 a handful might escape his fury ordered a thorough search for all Jews 
 whose existence had been hushed up. The officers of the Crown thus 
 ferreted out a round number, who by the acumen of their kingly 
 persecutor were subjected to the same fate as had been accorded their 
 brethren. They, by judicious offers of money and goods, had evaded 
 the command to quit the country. Thus in 1311 these, together with 
 a substantial number who had incautiously settled in a few out of the 
 way districts, were banished with unrelenting vigour. “It was indeed,” 
 says a contemporary chronicler, “ a most revolting spectacle to see so 
 many learned men, who had advanced and benefited France, proscribed 
 wanderers without a country or an asylum. 
 
 (1.) Dean Milman, " History of the Jews.” 
 
70 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 Louis X the next monarch was evidently quite anxious to reverse 
 or vary all the decrees of his august father ; his foibles he criticized 
 •with Zoilean tongue ; his laws he loudly condemned as impracticable. 
 It is advanced in his favour that he considered their political out¬ 
 growth and in what many noxious laws bearing upon the Jewish exiles 
 might culminate. He certainly was astute enough to perceive that in 
 many cities the commerce had sensibly diminished and that the 
 culture of the nation was not so high and—worst of all—in cases of 
 necessity, there was no body of people in the kingdom, who would 
 tamely submit to being periodically pillaged. He therefore sought to 
 encourage the resettlement of the banished Jews in France. His 
 motives are clear when we note the depleted state of Louis’ finances ; 
 his beggared nobles coincided with his views and hailed with glee 
 their resettlement. After concessions had been.obtained on the one 
 side and mild restrictions imposed on the other, they purchased for 
 twelve years the right of resettlement and many concomitant liberties. 
 At the expiration of this period they were to receive a full year’s 
 notice, if it were Louis’ intention to expel them ; this they knew 
 motives of state expediency would not permit. They returned in 
 multitudes overjoyed once more to see their native land. The beautiful 
 lines of Sir Walter Scott:— 
 
 Lives there the man with heart so dead, 
 
 Who never to himself hath said 
 This is my own my native land : 
 
 Whose heart within him ne’er hath burned, 
 
 As home his footsteps he has turned, 
 
 From wandering on a foreign strand. 1 
 unconsciously sear into the mind of the reader of this return. 
 
 Their old synagogues were restored to them, their schools, their 
 cemeteries, their valuable books ; they were allowed to demand and 
 retain one third of their previously uncollected debts : (for in the 
 turmoil of their expulsion and through the negligence of the Royal 
 bailiffs many had withheld Jewish money from the King), the remain¬ 
 ing two thirds were appropriated by Louis as the price of his generosity. 
 Louis only reigned two years and with the exception of the following 
 lamentable injustice meted out by the Church to the Jews of Toulouse 
 it was a period of comparative peace. “ Assuming universal control 
 the Inquisition of Toulouse laid its hands on books as well as persons; 
 and we find it stated that on November 28th, 1315 at the requisition 
 and mandate of Bernard Guy, two large waggon loads of Hebrew 
 books, being as many as could be found in searching the houses of the 
 
 (1.) “ Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto I. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 71 
 
 Jews, were drawn through the streets of Toulouse, with a procession 
 of servants of the royal court and a crier going before, who proclaimed 
 with a loud voice that the books, said to be copies of the Talmud, 
 contained blasphemies against Christianity and, having been examined 
 by persons learned in the language, were to be burnt: and they were 
 burnt accordingly.” 1 
 
 Philip Y (le Pong) pursued his brother’s lenient policy still further, 
 but the reigns of these two monarchs were but an ephemeral period 
 in the history of the French Jews. The young King, who only 
 unfortunately reigned six years, extended his equitable predecessor’s 
 liberal course to such a degree that many odious, if minor, restrictions 
 in theoretical operation were removed. The rigour with which the 
 Church had enforced the adoption of the hated Rouelle was consider¬ 
 ably diminished, and to the sensitive Jew this was no small boon. The 
 clergy and nobility inveighed most bitterly against Philip’s temperate 
 policy ; they availed themselves of many opportune occasions to molest 
 the Jews, who were unfortunate enough to be under their immediate 
 jurisdiction. Thus the congregation of Lunel was charged with 
 disrespect for Christian symbols on no stronger grounds than the 
 antipathy of an influential monk. In Toulouse a vast number of copies 
 of the Talmud were again seized and burnt as heretical and 
 blasphemous. 
 
 A charge of treating the crucifix with ridicule was now directed 
 
 against several Jewish communities. These unfounded and unproven 
 charges which had their primary origin in the poverty of the State 
 cost the Jews the tremendous sum of 150,000 livres. Such was the 
 amount of the fine they had to pay (apportioned between the different 
 congregations) for the crime of being the only available people at 
 hand in a time of national contingency. 
 
 Yet these unjust deeds and exactions were pure travesties on their 
 sufferings compared to the horrible story of the tragic rising of the 
 peasants in 1820. A vast and undisciplined horde of peasants, the 
 scum of South France, rose in arms with the idea of possessing them¬ 
 selves of what is historically known as the Holy Sepulchre. The 
 Virgin Mary had, it was averred, personally called upon several of the 
 leaders, begging them to lead the peasantry to Palestine, and then, 
 taking the form of a dove, flown away. Purporting to be divinely 
 inspired the ignominious dispersion of the Crusaders did not deter 
 them or quench their fiery ardour. They very rapidly grew into such 
 a fierce and formidable host as to cause the King and his court the 
 
 (1.) Dr. D. H. Rule, History of the Inquisition,” p. 40. 
 
72 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 gravest apprehension. Two ambitious and unscrupulous monks (one 
 of whom had been expelled his order for his infamous conduct) 
 pandered so adroitly to the incredible credulity of the ever growing 
 multitudes as to become their prime leaders. Their inordinate 
 ambition coalesced with the gullibility and belief of their followers in 
 every gross and palpable imposture to write one of the bloodiest 
 chapters in history. Before proceeding to attack the armed Saracen 
 infidels, they decided to vent their dogmatic rage against the wealthy 
 and defenceless Jewish ones. A logical line of hellish reasoning 
 appeared to palliate their inhuman resolution, nay even render its 
 perpetration a meritorious deed. The riches of the victims would be 
 devoted to a holy cause ; they would purchase arms therewith to 
 murder the Turks after their preliminary exercise upon the Jews. 
 The programme was faithfully executed as far as the murder and 
 sequential pillage of the latter had been agreed upon. The province 
 of Languedoc witnessed the first great ebullition of their immoderate 
 ardour. Whole communities were offered death or the still bitterer 
 alternative. Yet though thousands upon thousands of the wretched 
 people were slain after the most relentless torments and their goods 
 plundered, historians have failed to cite one instance of a community, 
 that rejected the religion for which they were persecuted with such 
 unremitting savagery. Most terrible was the fate of the Jews in 
 Verdun (on the Garonne). The humane governor of that town had 
 on the approach of the devastating host ceded the tower to them and 
 their co-religionists in the vicinity. Some five hundred souls were 
 enabled to obtain ingress. The baffled mob raised a regular military 
 siege and every detail of the memorable massacre at York 130 years 
 before (of which it was almost a repetition) was repeated. Bravely as 
 long as their strength lasted did they repulse their foes from the tower, 
 but by firing the gates it was finally stormed. The ferocious shepherds 
 were unable to contain themselves, they fell upon the exhausted and 
 defenceless handful of Hebrews, who were unfortunate enough to be 
 near the first breach the former had made, and with unprecedented 
 savagery and wild yells of exultation hewed them down without pity. 
 The main body having thus been slaughtered a pitched battle took 
 place between the few survivors and the shepherds, but what could 
 they hope to effect against such teeming multitudes of armed men ? 
 A number of the unhappy people threw down their children to the 
 victors, hoping thereby to elicit their sympathy, but as they saw them 
 instantly beheaded or their brains battered out against the walls before 
 their eyes, they quickly held a council to decide what course to adopt. 
 They resolved to baulk the fanaticism of their enemies by meeting 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 73 
 
 death at each other’s hands. The Rabbi selected a strong young man 
 to slaughter them and all willingly submitted themselves to his gory- 
 blade. Then he and the Rabbi dealt each other the death blows 
 simultaneously. Thus these heroes shed unquenchable glory upon 
 Israel’s escutcheon. It is by acts such as these that she proves her 
 divine mission. Her endless roll of voluntary martyrs defies the 
 comparison of the “ Calendar of Saints ” or the chronicles of the 
 bravest of nations. The seas of blood her sons have lost for her 
 prestige far exceed those lost by the much vaunted martyrs of the 
 Coliseum. That her sons have even been ready to die for her, is 
 Israel’s pride : that they were ever in the van of fame, her joy. A 
 number of the peasants were captured and imprisoned but the applaud¬ 
 ing populace clamoured so loudly for their release, that to have refused 
 the concession demanded would have’been the inception of a sanguin¬ 
 ary civil war. The Governor of Toulouse however made a determined 
 resistance to the example of the heads of other towns where Jews had 
 been massacred. He repressed the peasantry with no light hand and 
 punished their cruel excesses with such exemplary vigour that several 
 hundreds of trembling wretches ventured to leave the caves and 
 forests in which they had concealed themselves and foolishly enter 
 Toulouse. Alas ! poor Jews, all order, all restraint was openly set at 
 defiance. Before the troops, who had been instantly despatched to 
 quell the riot, arrived, all was over and the mutilated corpses of 
 hundreds of murdered men, women and children covered the streets, 
 their blood drenching the roads. During this fearful uprising against 
 the Jews (Geziras ho-roim) considerably more than one hundred 
 flourishing and long established communities numbering many 
 thousands of people were butchered like herds of diseased cattle. 1 
 Agouleme, Bordeaux, Agenlastel, Savasin, Guillan, Rabenstein, Gimort, 
 Audi and Albi are just a few of the many towns that witnessed the 
 perpetration of the most barbarous enormities. At this period chivalry 
 was in its very zenith of power and repute ; men would kill or be 
 killed for an unpleasant jest; a point of punctilio, a trifling dereliction 
 of etiquette could embroil whole nations in protracted and bloody wars, 
 but few and rare indeed the voices that deprecated—nay did other 
 than loudly commend—the awful outrages daily committed against a 
 weak and persecuted people. The siege and massacre at Verdun was 
 but one day’s work of the gory-handed soldiers of the Cross, whose 
 march of death through the beautiful towns and villages of France 
 
 (1.) In all Gascony only twenty escaped death. In Toulouse barely one. 
 The Jews of Sarasin commifted suicide in their terror. In Jacca on the fast of 
 17th of Tammuz 410 were slaughtered. 
 
74 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 has caused Solomon Ibn Verga to emit a shriek, that rings clearly to¬ 
 day in the ears of all Hebrews. His grief surcharged and lugubrious 
 “ Shevet Jehudah ” is indeed a gloomy yet truthful picture of Jewish 
 sufferings in the Middle Ages. 
 
 Strange as it may seem France had not by any means exhausted 
 her measure of horrors for her maligned and despised Hebrews, for in 
 1321 further massacres were instituted. A number of lepers, owing 
 to the sparsity of food and the imagined neglect and indifference 
 which the authorities felt towards their sufferings, sallied out of their 
 retreats in numbers and poisoned several wells. They were interrogated 
 in mediaeval custom upon the rack and confessed their sole and 
 individual guilt, but by suggestion amended the confession and added 
 that they had been incited by the Jews to avenge the injuries they 
 had received at the hands of the shepherds. Imagine a few men to 
 have committed some grave crime in London (though we are very far 
 indeed from advancing any observation tending to inculpate the Jews 
 of complicity in the poisoning of the wells, because no evidence exists 
 to that effect), and the entire English people throughout the world 
 wherever scattered and however upright their lives, are held respon¬ 
 sible ; tens of millions of its members have never seen or even heard 
 of the few evil members of the nation, but they are guilty with them. 
 A dispassionate and unbiassed mind would instantly taboo such a 
 ridiculous action as foolish and unjust, yet this was the chief phase of 
 the Jewish question in the Middle Ages. Truly an immoral but 
 characteristic aspect. Once this lying confession extorted from the 
 writhing lepers and all were satisfied. Those in authority contrived 
 to gain the willing ear of the kingdom, so that they might with 
 sufficient enormity punish the alleged but pre-ad judged instigators of 
 the well-poisoners. They had indeed concocted some hideous but 
 plausible tales that were well adapted to the political circumstances of 
 the period. 1 The most popular of these was that the Saracen monarch 
 had arranged that the Jews, whom he was known to befriend, were to 
 poison numbers of the French and so militate against the prospect of 
 victory in Philip’s contemplated Crusade, by reducing the numerical 
 strength of the country. This puerile story found general credence 
 and although it had no other foundation than in the ignorance and 
 ferocity of the people 2 they insisted on condign punishment being 
 meted out to the supposititious offenders. Throughout the South of 
 
 (1.) Speaking on the operation of the feudal system upon the vassals of the 
 barons and the lower orders at this period Morrison says, ( ‘ Life of St. Bernard,” 
 p. 84.) the Jew was always forced to put his stockings on his head and recite a 
 paternoster in the dialect of the place. 
 
 (2.) Bonnechose. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 75 
 
 France they were massacred by thousands. The province of Aquitaine 
 resounded with the shrieks of agonized Israelites, they were relent¬ 
 lessly tortured and slaughtered before the very eyes of that European 
 Minotaur, John XXII, who raised no finger in deprecation but even 
 gave them quiescent encouragement. Not content with waging war, 
 long and bitter, against the Talmud and its cognate literature, or with 
 sending to his cardinals and nuncios, who had plenary control over the 
 Jews, most truculent bulls enjoining their furious persecution, he 
 connived at their destruction en masse. With his own eyes he from 
 his window witnessed the burning and torturing of Jews. On July 
 10 (1321) the authorities of Chignon dug a deep ditch, raised a huge 
 pile and commenced to roast alive the terror-stricken Hebrews of that 
 town. They, gradually becoming reconciled to their fate, were 
 promised freedom and a written immunity from persecution, if they 
 would consent to the abjuration of their faith. They disdainfully 
 rejected the price asked them for liberty. One hundred and sixty 
 doomed wretches were then bound in couples—man and woman—and 
 flung headlong into the ditch in which an immense and roaring fire 
 had previously been kindled, joyfully singing Jewish hymns and praises 
 as if going to a bridal, as the forked tongues of fire encircled them. 
 Their little children and babes they themselves had thrown into this 
 fiery tomb to save them from the terrible fate of baptism. Their 
 calm and perfect resignation, nay their joyous ecstasy at being marty¬ 
 red, was even more affecting by its pathos than their tragic fate. Such 
 scenes were enacted throughout Aquitaine, in every town the Elect of 
 God were tortured and martyred without mercy or discrimination. 
 Their lot was indeed pitiable ; men already at the verge of the grave 
 were hurried into it ; children in the first hours of life were rent in 
 twain. No other nation has ever been persecuted with such bitter and 
 unremitting continuity. But who says the men aud women of Chignon 
 are dead ? They live to-day ! The hearts of the teeming ghettos of 
 Europe beat in appreciative and emulous response to the heroic 
 sentiments of their ancestors, triumphant even at the very hour of 
 death. The Mellah, the Judengasse, has its heroes. Your sons, Oh 
 Men of Chignon do not fear death ! Light the bloody pyres of Blois, 
 rekindle the devouring flames of the Quemadero ! Every Polish 
 village, every Russian hamlet will produce such martyrs to-day, that 
 to them the heroes of history in every nation shall be but compeers. 
 Within the breasts of the ragged Hebrew glazier, of the pale and 
 emaciated machinist, of the contemned and unromantic Jew hawker, 
 hooted and derided, hated and spat upon, beat the hearts of Israel’s 
 noblest scions. Would they pale before the dreadful ordeals which 
 were the daily affliction of the mediaeval Jews r 
 
76 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 The misery experienced by the persecuted Hebrews during that 
 period immediately following the holocausts of South France is beyond 
 description or adequate analogy. Philip peremptorily banished many 
 from the country appropriating their property to himself ; others he 
 had mercilessly tortured without limit. Jews were in danger in the 
 inmost chambers of their own houses which they generally barred. 
 Some quaking with apprehension hid themselves in cellars for days 
 together, gnawing their very clothing, so famished were they, yet not 
 venturing to quit their dismal retreat. In Spain at this period a 
 Christian could enter«the house of any Jew or Moor and murder his 
 wife and children before his very eyes at his own fireside, the father 
 or husband being compelled to witness this in mute agony 1 ; but in 
 France it was no uncommon thing to violently enter a Jewish house 
 and mutilate or even amputate the limb of its owner, his age being of 
 no avail and his entreaties falling useless upon savage ears. 
 
 Although the King had—even after the Aquitaine massacres— 
 frequently and clearly expressed his clear conviction that the absolute 
 innocence of the Jews on the charge of being accessory to the poison¬ 
 ing of the wells, fountains and rivers had been established, he yet 
 convened the Parliament to punish them and ratified their decree, 
 fining the few surviving congregations of South France a sum equal 
 to £47,000. The few wealthy Jews, who outlived the massacres, 
 were arrested and retained as sureties till the few impoverished 
 communities had produced this huge sum. We may perhaps better 
 realize the bitter sufferings the Jews were called upon to undergo when 
 we remember that onc^ wealthy Jews sold the clothing from their 
 bodies to contribute to the payment of this fiendish extortion. 
 
 In 1322 Charles IV ascended the throne and as an act of especial 
 clemency pardoned them for an offence they had not committed, as 
 his predecessor had admitted. This monarch demanded and obtained 
 under the fiercest threats £57,000 from the now beggared Israelites 
 of Languedoc. In 1348 great sorrows befel the Hebrew race in every 
 part of Christendom. The “ Black Plague ” which had with its awful 
 hand hushed the strife of man and by its lethal breath swept away 
 twenty-five millions of human beings ravaged almost every inhabited 
 part of the world. Originating in China—under the name of the 
 Asiatic plague—it travelled with horrible rapidity, leaving its blight 
 of devastation and disease wherever it had once implanted itself. Its 
 origin which is absolutely unknown was, with common consent, charged 
 against the Jews. Good logic indeed ! they were dying in hourly 
 
 (1.) Robert Ingersoll, “ Rome or Reason.” 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 77 
 
 batches with all the agonies and sufferings symptomatic of the Plague, 
 but that indisputable refutation of the diabolical lie did not stay their 
 vilifiers, who were anxiously seeking for some outlet for their misery, 
 some wretched people to vent their rage upon. Did not the Church 1 
 with indefatigable voice thunder forth that the Jews must be persecuted 
 as the vilest sect of heretics ? Was not this visitation of the Saints 
 (the plague has been ascribed by large numbers of scientists to natural 
 causes) on account of Christianity tolerating those who denied the 
 character of Christ its head ? These cogent arguments excited the 
 people of every degree into the most incredible frenzy and when in 
 some districts they saw numbers of Jews—owing to their abstemious 
 conduct and pure temperate lives, combined with the loving care their 
 sick received—recovering from the milder forms of the Plague, their 
 anger knew no bounds, they were frantic. In addition to the fulmina- 
 tions of the priesthood, a body of the most ignorant and criminal men 
 in Europe, 2 the belief was general and unquestioned in Christendom, 
 that the Jews had in revenge for their sufferings by some magic or 
 cabalistic process poisoned the air and thus vitiated every part of 
 France ; that they had poisoned the wells and rivers and that their 
 tentative object was to destroy all the Christian people in the world. 
 The most crude and absurd cock and bull stories of the methods they 
 employed were sedulously circulated and eagerly believed. The 
 Spanish communities had (so runs one of these ridiculous but deadly 
 stories) sent boxes of the most awful poisons to the French Jews by 
 means of accredited messengers. They were—it was given out— 
 composed of the most startling ingredients, skins of basilisks (animals 
 which never existed), Sacramental wafers, which the silly people 
 invested with the most wonderful and miracle-working puissancy, that 
 had been pounded in mortars or otherwise desecrated, hearts of 
 Christian children ritually crucified, entrails of bats and lizards and 
 
 (1.) And what about the character of the men who taught this ? •• Infamies 
 in the whole order.” The Monks black and white, the deacons, the abbots, the 
 bishops, the ordinary priests were noted for their spoiling of orphans, their 
 swindling of widows and wards. Their gluttoning and drunkenness were 
 chronicled in every township and were incapable of denial. Their dishonesty 
 became proverbial. The simplest peasant on hearing of a scandalous action was 
 in the habit of saying, “ I would rather be a priest than be guilty of such a 
 deed.” White, “ The Eighteen Christian Centuries,” p. 284. 
 
 (2.) There were no studies exacted from a priest or prelate. All that was 
 required was an inordinate zeal in the discovery of holy relics and an acquaint¬ 
 ance with the unnumbered ceremonies performed in the celebration of the 
 service. Morals were in as low a state as learning ; debauchery, drunkenness 
 and uncleanness were the universal characteristic both of Monk and Secular. 
 Of theological tenets of knowledge of History either sacred or profane, the 
 highest ecclesiastic was on the same level of utter ignorance and indifference 
 with the lowest of his serfs. “ Idem.” 
 
78 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 many other noxious components with which the greatest havoc might 
 be wrought. Could anything be more stupid ? yet the perverted 
 people firmly believed that the prevalence of the plague was due solely 
 to such compounds as these. Toledo was the principal seat of manu¬ 
 facture and export. Every movement of a Jew was, in consequence of 
 these foolish tales, misrepresented, his most innocent remarks were 
 made the subject of the most malicious and oblique exposition. Dearly 
 had he to pay for these idiotic accusations, the few congregations that 
 had survived the massacres of 1320 and 1321 were soon bathed in 
 their blood. 
 
 Any trifling reference to the plague was, says Foote and Wheeler, 1 
 the signal for renewed outrages against the people of Israel, whose 
 isolation and stricter dietary probably rendered them less susceptible 
 to the disease. Many Jews were physicians and were accused of using 
 their arts to destroy the Christians. As the plague spread through 
 Europe the ferment against the hapless Jews became more widespread ; 
 they were accused of poisoning the wells, and bags of offensive matter 
 were sometimes found in such places thrown there by Christians, who 
 sought a pretext for plundering the hated Hebrews. 2 The same 
 historians quote a German scholar, Hecker, who says, “The noble and 
 mean bound themselves by an oath to extirpate the Jews by fire and 
 sword and to snatch them from their protectors, of whom the number 
 was so small that few places can be mentioned where they were not 
 martyred and burnt. 3 On the 16th of May all the Jews of Basle, a by 
 no means inconsiderable number, were seized, bound, and flung into 
 an immense wicker cage expressly erected for the purpose and without 
 even a parody of a trial or sentence, men, women with babes in their 
 arms and children were remorselessly thrown into this box. Their 
 valued writings, their venerated “ Scrolls ” were thrown in with them, 
 also their phylacteries, praying shawls, and all their ritual accessories.” 
 This incident gives but a faint adumbration of what they were suffer¬ 
 ing in this year in Germany and Spain. As if by a tacit arrangement 
 all the Christian countries of Europe unanimously persecuted the poor 
 Jews till their wails and tears would have moved the Gorgons. What 
 had they done ? what was their crime ? They had clung to one 
 another through life with mournful and pathetic nidulancy ; their 
 gregarious actions had elicited the comment of their enemies. Through 
 life they had led careers of the most unexampled virtue and ejninent 
 
 (1.) Tn their powerful chapter of “ Crimes of Christianity.” “ Persecution of 
 the Jews.” 
 
 (2.) We have shown how insipid their contention is. 
 
 (3.) Ibid. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 79 
 
 piety, they had molested no one, they had worked for their wives and 
 children, they had met every just demand upon them. 1 All they asked 
 was to eat their bread in peace, to worship their God as their fathers 
 had done and to bring up their children in their footsteps, and they 
 only begged that they should not be dragged to the baptismal font or 
 handed over to the monks. 2 
 
 In 1360 the indigence of the country was so great and the dearth 
 of commerce and sparsity of enterprise so grave, that negotiations had 
 to be entered into for the return of the oft expelled, oft re-invited 
 Jews. They were concluded on terms tolerably favourable to their 
 interests} but they were compelled to pay an annual poll-tax of eight 
 florins a head. To a special and fair-minded judge was relegated the 
 duty of guarding them from those clerical and judicial injustices of 
 which they had so warrantable a dread. They were however compelled 
 to wear a distinguishing mark—a white piece of cloth in the shape of 
 a wheel—even the Royal favourite, Manessier de Vesoul (the French 
 Menassah ben Israel) was not exempted ; but this was purely a wise 
 concession to the dark minded and bigoted clergy, who a few months 
 previously had strangely enough urged their re-admission by law, 
 though of course large numbers of Jews had resided in out of the way 
 parts of the kingdom. It was their formal and legally recognized 
 admission into Paris and the royal provinces that was mooted. The 
 medical profession encouraged by the recognition of the clergy’s claims 
 upon the Jews vehemently denounced the Semitic doctors, protesting 
 that they had passed no scientific examinations. The King had there¬ 
 upon decreed that no Jew should practise medicine or surgery unless 
 licensed by an examining body; but the Church was to have no authority 
 over them; this counterbalanced all the mildly persecuting enactments. 
 The clergy had indeed displayed great malignity to them, they had in 
 the earlier years of their re-settlement, effected their submission to the 
 Law Courts, where the judges were invariably influenced by them, 
 but through the indefatigable exertions of their patriotic representative, 
 Vesoul, the Count d’Etampes was proclaimed permanent guardian of 
 the Jews. 
 
 When the baffled clergy published an ecclesiastical ordinance which 
 excommunicated all Christians, who furnished or even sold the Jews, 
 
 (1.) “In spite of the slanders of the learned and unlearned, the impartial 
 investigator will find the Jews in their business relations rather above than 
 below the level of common morality ; their faith in this, as in every other 
 department, requiring of them an ideal purity.” Dr. Herzfeld, “ History of 
 the Commerce of the Mediaeval Jews.” 
 
 (2.) This had grown so common that Pope Clement VI, at heart a humane 
 man, published a decree excommunicating all forcible baptizers. 
 
80 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 fire, water, bread or wine, the resolute governor of Languedoc—a 
 province in which the clergy were particularly cantankerous— 
 energetically made it known by counter ordinance that the most 
 uncompromising justice would be inexorably meted out to auy persons 
 under his civil jurisdiction of whatever rank, who menaced the Jews 
 or incited the people to violence against them. The next move the 
 raging priesthood made was so skilfully arranged that it necessitated 
 a general appeal to the Crown from all the Jews in the kingdom to 
 nullify it. They (the clergy) clung tenaciously to the anti-Jewish 
 decrees of the Lateran and various other Ecclesiastical Councils which 
 forced them to listen to Christological Sermons thrice yearly. The 
 then guardian of the Jews, the noble minded Marshal de’Audenham, 
 however secured the revocation, or at least disregard of these nocent 
 canons in 1868, the King making the unequivocal declaration, that 
 they were not to be hampered or in any wise restricted in the exercise 
 of their religious observances. Charles V found his Jewish subjects 
 of such sterling utility in every groove of learning and commerce, that 
 he, on his own initiative, added ten years to the period of residence 
 already assured them, and at different times made other and smaller 
 extensions of the term bringing up the entire time to about forty 
 years. He himself had money dealings with his Jewish subjects 
 borrowing large sums from them. On one occasion they gave him 
 one thousand livres for a prolongation of their prearranged period of 
 residence. This friendly King recognized the authority and confirmed 
 the nomination of a Chief Kabbi, who was to have jurisdiction in 
 penal causes as well as in civil and religious disputes. Manassier de 
 Yesoul was still however regarded as the official and political represent¬ 
 ative of the Jews in France. His diplomatic skill and tact, his 
 singular ability to successfully cope with every contingency, apart from 
 his sterling personal worth, rendered him a most unquestionable 
 -acquisition to the French Jews, whom he served with the heart of a 
 patriot and the brain of a statesman. It was his prompt wit and 
 intuition that tided them over many difficulties. After the death of 
 Charles, the Regent, Louis Duke of Anjou, whose interests for good 
 or evil were marketable, governed the country and his Israelitish 
 subjects were able to purchase a guaranteed immunity from attack. 
 Vainly thinking themselves safe from the murderous onslaughts of the 
 French rabble, in less than a month they learned how useless were 
 the assurances of a monarch without the concurrence of his nobles. 1 
 
 (1.) The power and contrast of the nobles proved a humiliating and danger¬ 
 ous contrast to the weakness of the throne ; a combination of provincial 
 dignitaries would at auy time outweigh the authority of the king and sometimes 
 even singly. The owners of extensive state threw off the very name of subject. 
 Rev. Dr. White. 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 81 
 
 A period of great drought, poverty and depression had driven the 
 country into a violent and morose state. The nobles owing to the 
 disordered state of their domains suffered equally with their people 
 and to add to the miseries that hung over them at this lugubrious 
 period, all orders of society were heavily taxed by the avaricious and 
 indigent Regent. 
 
 The Jews were blamed as the primal cause of all these inevitable 
 abuses emanating from the Regent’s maladministration ; everywhere 
 the nobles harangued the people and loudly assured them, that every¬ 
 thing would be set to rights if they would only demand their (the 
 Jews) expulsion from Trance. To mark their explicit disapprobation 
 of the race the people rose in arms (Nov. 16th, 1380), looted the 
 house of Manessier, where the records of the debts of the nobles had 
 been deposited for safety. They appropriated the accumulated 
 securities, then murdered a few Jews and tore the children from the 
 arms of the fleeing and weeping Jewish mothers in order to baptize 
 them forthwith. A large number of the hunted victims were killed 
 during their flight to the fortified chatelet. The Regent was furious, 
 but his fury was of no avail, his orders to the depredators to make 
 condign reparation was absolutely unheeded and might safely remain 
 so in the existing tone of the national feeling against the Jews. 
 Popular hatred had been wrought into too violent a fever for royal 
 mandates to root out the hatred which took form in ever recurrent 
 ebullition. The inefficacy of regal interposition however emphatically 
 it might denounce highhanded cruelty and outrage, is amply evidenced 
 by the fact that within four months after the outburst just referred to 
 (March 1st, 1381,) during the uprisings of the “ Maillotins ” through¬ 
 out the entire country, they felled large numbers of dews to the ground 
 with their death-inflicting cumbrous wooden mallets, and lest they 
 might have only been stunned slit their throats from ear to ear. They 
 passed a very precarious existence for the next few years carrying their 
 lives daily in their hands. The outrageous mulcts, by which they 
 were continually condemned to furnish the king with large sums of 
 money to carry on his belligerent policy, would be an undeniable reply 
 to the senile charge of usury, which they were far from practising, as 
 their monetary dealings were regulated by the different kings and the 
 profits that were to accrue limited by law. Money lending was the 
 only lucrative branch of business they were permitted to follow, the 
 avocation of usury was absolutely forbidden them by State legislation 
 and, as will readily be credited assiduously prohibited, by the Crown 
 officials. No sentient being will believe that they committed excesses 
 
 in a profession they did not follow, yet this indictment was being 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 constantly refurbished with new^ testimonies to add to the universal 
 odium in which the Jews were held. When a renegade Jew wdio had 
 chosen a short and summary manner of releasing himself from the 
 restrictions imposed upon his co-religionists and apostatised to 
 Christianity precipitately fled the country, it was sedulously given out 
 that his co-religionists had induced him to go to Spain and effected 
 his return to Judaism. Seven of the most influential Hebrews in Paris 
 were seized and imprisoned pending the formation of a tribunal. The 
 King had been coerced by the clergy into appointing a commission of 
 the most fiercely bigoted and openly professed Jew T -haters in the 
 kingdom, the victims were placed on the rack-priestly rogation—and 
 their limbs stretched; when in their unendurable agony they confessed 
 everything that was asked of them, barely knowing to what they had 
 affirmed. This anti-Semitic commission thereupon without hearing a 
 word in their defence, or bearing in mind that they had been selected 
 indiscriminately from among the richest members of the Jewish quarter, 
 ordered them to be instantly burnt at the stake : but the King not 
 desiring to proceed to such violent and bloody extremes commuted the 
 sentence, which he had not the courage to altogether revoke, and 
 decreed that they should be publicly scourged for three consecutive 
 Sundays in each of the public cross roads of the city and then 
 imprisoned as common felons until Denys Machault should of his own 
 free will return. For this mitigation of the death sentence passed 
 upon them by their judges they paid 18,000 frances. But the nation 
 was not satisfied, the pliant monarch, who was in a most melancholy 
 state of mind, was being constantly importuned by his confessor to 
 banish the Jews. Their enemies at Court vigorously seconded the 
 ever increasing efforts of this bigoted prelate, and accused the Jews of 
 all manner of silly things, many of which were quite impossible. The 
 puerile and credulous nature of these accusations eloquently mark the 
 dense and dark ignorance of the period. The clergy pressed for their 
 expulsion, the nobles held them as debtors, the people as fanatics, the 
 queen was won over and the advice of those few w r ise counsellors, who 
 represented the danger of depriving the country of the industry of 
 such a thriving and laborious community was overborne by more stern 
 advisers. On the 12th of September, 1394, the Day of Atonement, 
 and a day specially chosen by their vindictive foes, as a fitting occasion 
 to complete their humiliation, the fatal rescript was fulmined. The 
 protracted and unflagging exertions of their foes had secured the 
 triumph of their aims. All the Jews in France without distinction 
 were to leave the country. Their residence there was inhibited for 
 ever and this was to be entered upon the archives of the nation as a 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 83 
 
 wise and unalterable law. There was no ambiguity about this pro¬ 
 clamation. The king having weighed in his own mind the comparative 
 loss to his revenue, it was all over looked upon as a Christian act of 
 faith, as a monarch dispossessing himself of his own accord of his 
 most valuable source of income, thereby to serve the higher and more 
 idealistic aims of religion and moral rectitude. The Jews were allowed 
 to receive the debts due to them and to sell their properties. To our 
 mind this monarch was not averse to the Jews on personal grounds, it 
 was his vacillating and ductile mind, that could not resist the import¬ 
 unities of his advisers and favourites. As in the days of Philip le 
 Bel, thirty days were granted them to settle all their affairs and leave 
 the country. He at least took precautions to prevent their molestation 
 or their being robbed on their journey and strictly adjured his officers 
 to protect them from the violence of the mob, who imagined that they 
 could harass and pillage them as they had done at the last expulsion 
 ninety years before. No specific reason had been assigned by the King 
 for his granting the royal sanction to so unjust a course, because none 
 existed except the anger of the clergy at seeing a Catholic monarchy 
 the willing shelter of infidels and the indebtedness of the nobles who 
 had thought to relieve themselves of their justly incurred debts. 
 Many of the provincial counts and barons openly represented to the 
 Court their inability to dispense with their Jews. The Jews were 
 never formally recalled, although numbers re-settled themselves at 
 various times, gauging the temperament and influence of the several 
 monarchs that succeeded to the crown, and having no country where 
 they were less persecuted, risked being massacred by returning during 
 the reigns of those sovereigns, who as they fondly hoped might on 
 grounds of humanity or expediency ignore the edict of banishment. 
 In some districts they were allowed to live unmolested, from others 
 they were again driven, as from Lyons in 1446, where a substantial 
 number seem to have re-settled, braving the risks of discovery. 
 
 On April 7th, 1475, a Capuchin named Bernardinus of Feltre, 
 whose sermons (generally congruent with those of Capistrano and 
 others of that ilk) represented the imperative necessity of using every 
 method to persecute the Jews, set himself the gruesome task of emul¬ 
 ating Amolo, who may be regarded as his prototype. After ; strenuous 
 struggles in Italy, many of which however were abortive, he determined 
 to wreak his fanatical hatred upon the Jews of Trent, whose re-settle¬ 
 ment had in defiance of the Edict of Expulsion been tolerated by the 
 sagacious authorities of that town. His plan was skilfully and 
 adroitly laid. “ Before Easter,” said he, “ the perfidy of the Jews and 
 their diabolical doctrines will be laid bare to you.” Pie had taken 
 
84 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 steps to verify his vaticinations. The inhabitants of Trent on their 
 part eagerly awaited the realization of the prophetic outbursts, which 
 had been addressed to them by the occult seer. A lad named Simon 
 had been drowned, but by some sinister means the body had been 
 found in the cellar of a wealthy Jew. Knowing exactly what this 
 portended, he hastily apprized the Bishop of the diocese of the signific¬ 
 ant incident. The cleric’s remarks augured badly for the finder of 
 the body, which was conveyed to the Church and treated with the 
 greatest honours. Bernardinus, seeing his plans so successfully develop¬ 
 ing, arrived in the Church at the head of the clergy of the district and 
 loudly clamoured for the immediate arrest, interrogation, and im¬ 
 prisonment of all the Jews in the town, men, women and children. 
 This was ordered by the bishop, who seeing the value of Bernardinus’ 
 suggestions and the practicability of torture, placed a few on the rack 
 and stretched them. Whilst they were in this agonized state of mind 
 he fired off a whole fusilade of questions. The maddened Jews re¬ 
 cognized a letter which never existed, purporting to emanate from 
 Saxony and signed by a “ Rabbi Moses,” asking for a supply of 
 Christian blood to celebrate the next Passover and harshly upbraiding 
 the Trent Congregation for remissness in its despatch, they having 
 voluntarily undertaken to supply him as heretofore with that ritual¬ 
 istic necessity. Whether the Jews of Trent had a monopoly in this 
 valuable and indispensable commodity to the exclusion of all other 
 congregations was not stated in this garrulous and sensational missive. 
 One heroic man “ Moses of Trent ” endured the most excruciating 
 agonies, shrieking in Hebrew for God to endow him with strength to 
 bear his terrible agonies, but steadfastly refusing at each turn of the 
 lever to corroborate the untruthful confession of his weaker brethren. 
 The guilt of the Jews was considered to have been amply shown and 
 the entire body was ignominiously thrust from the town. The after 
 throes ot the charge were of a wider range than the scene of its 
 formulation. It went forth that the necessity of Christian blood for 
 the Passover had been clearly proven and many were the Jews who 
 answered with their lives for this base and monstrous falsehood, told 
 by a revengeful heart and believed by a bigoted brain. Its far-reaching 
 consequences were most apparent in Italy, where fortunately a heavy 
 hand repressed any tendency to vent the public spleen upon the 
 Israelite. 
 
 By 1615 so many seem to have resided in France, that a general 
 degree of expulsion was again formulated. After this incident the anti- 
 Jeyvish feeling appears to have grown less fierce and their presence is 
 again testified to by their being the subject of legislation in the reign 
 
FRANCE. 
 
 85 
 
 of Louis XIII. This king departed from the policy of his immediate 
 predecesors and not only gave'them the right of temporary residence, 
 but accorded them many privileges. In 1028 their rights were 
 registered, as also the Crown concession of permission to take up 
 residence in the country upon payment of 110,000 francs. They were 
 to pay this sum at every fresh occupancy of the throne ; yet with all 
 this they had many grievances that cried for redress ; their children 
 were frequently stolen, baptized and handed over to the monasteries 
 to be brought up in the tenets of the Christian faith. The old charges 
 were again brought into play, and they were annoyed to such an extent 
 that they found it necessary to appeal to the King for protection. 
 
 Louis XIV ordained that all Jews should pay a capitation grant of 
 2,000 francs annually for each family ; in return he granted them free 
 commerce in all his dominions. Forcible baptisms and conversions 
 were still however frequent. 
 
 Louis XVI treated them most graciously, he repealed the poll tax 
 and several other odious laws and restrictions that figured in the 
 French code ; but despite many concessions since 1550, the Jews of 
 Alsace and other districts had to pay a toll at every gate as if they 
 were so many dumb cattle, and their status was not much better than 
 it had been during some of the Carlovingian reigns. 
 
 There now sprang up many adventitious friends of the Hebrews, 
 men who admired their heroism and attachment to kin, and gave 
 thought to the many cruel persecutions their race had willingly under¬ 
 gone in every land and clime. The sapient Malesherbes was chief of 
 these ; he agitated for a consideration of their position and rights, as 
 provided by the different sovereigns who had recalled them, with the 
 result that in 1778 a Royal Commission—himself at its head—was 
 appointed. They laid down the germs of Jewish freedom, but though 
 they must be thanked for the inception and wide promulgation of the 
 noble minded movement, it was the Revolution and the reign of 
 Terror that accelerated the completion of their beneficent intentions, 
 because when so much was being done for human liberty, for once the 
 Jew was not to be calmly overlooked, as if outside the pale of human 
 commiseration. So we see that in England the time of the Magna 
 Charta agitation, that has been' so praised, was one of unmitigated 
 injustice to the Jews, whilst in France the Revolutionary movement, 
 initiated to relieve the French from the very identical evils, that have 
 been so loudly condemned, gave a thought to their Jewish fellow- 
 countrymen. But it is a feature of Jewish history that many of those 
 kings and rulers who are held up to the greatest and most universal 
 opprobium have often in singular contradiction to their own character 
 
86 
 
 SUFFEKINGS OF THE JEWS. 
 
 dealt justly to the Jews under their rule, whilst those who have been 
 held up as paragons of virtue for emulation have been their most 
 uncompromising foes. Instances of the former are Nero, Pedro the 
 Cruel, Ivan the Terrible, and numbers of others, and of the latter are 
 Constantine the Great, Louis IX, Richard I, Alfonso the Wise, and 
 many more. 
 
 What the humanistic Malesherbes had commenced was well 
 developed by that great friend of the human race, Mirabeau, in con- 
 , junction with a tolerant and liberal minded cleric L. Abbe Gregoire. 
 But it must not be imagined that the entire course of the Revolution 
 was one of smoothness and equable nature to the Jews, for in some 
 parts of France deeds of oppression seemed inseparable from the march 
 of progress. During the reign of terror when violent means to 
 suppress religion were in many parts of the country being employed by 
 the more radical of the Revolutionists, the Jews did not escape annoy¬ 
 ance in several towns, and though befriended as a race they were 
 persecuted as a creed. At Nancy the synagogue was entered by force 
 and wrecked ; the “ Scrolls of the Law ” were dragged from the Ark 
 and after being torn into shreds were amid shrieks of derisive laughter 
 thrown into a hastily improvised bonfire. 
 
 The members of this congregation were ordered to—in compliance 
 with the decision of the City Council—attend service at the Temple 
 of Reason (a building where a ribald and coarse prostitute was publicly 
 worshipped) and bring with . them their entire ritual apparatus to be 
 burned. The Municipal Councils of many towns ordered the Jews to 
 open their shops and stand in the markets on Saturdays. 
 
 On the High Festivals, city officials would often peremptorily 
 command Jewish agriculturists to mop, reap or perform other manual 
 labours. Rabbis and Bishops were imprisoned alike, it being erron¬ 
 eously thought that in the absence of the clergy the laity would be 
 easily coerced. 
 
 During the incipient period of the Revolution no thought was 
 given to the Jews, but their urgent representations showed that as late 
 as August, 1789, the inhabitants of Alsace had without the slightest 
 provocation made an organized attack upon the Hebrew quarter of that 
 city inflicting additional misery upon that already bitterly oppressed 
 community. The humane and free spirited Abbe Gregoire, one whom 
 we must count among the noblest of the Jews’ supporters, seized with 
 alacrity this splendid opportunity of urging the official recognition of 
 the Jews which so opportunely presented itself. Many times freedom 
 was within their grasp, but the dilatoriness of the legislative body 
 discouraged them. Cerf Berr the great Jewish patriot had induced 
 
FRANCE. 87 
 
 M. Dupont to press their case upon the attention of the National 
 Assembly and obtain them at least redress for their more immediate 
 grievances, but the marplot Jew-haters induced many purblind 
 deputies to tire the Jews by constantly deferring the consideration of 
 their case, assuring them that if this was done the “ Jewish import- 
 unites ” would cease altogether. They at last however triumphed and 
 were recognized as citizens of France, permitted the free exercise of 
 their particular form of religion and relieved from all disabilities and 
 specific legislation, no longer to be legislated for as other than sons of 
 France. The succeeding events are modern history to all. France 
 has not waned in prestige or lost in interest through removing the 
 stigmata that for so many centuries had held the Jews up to opprobium. 
 She has recognized that she numbers them among her most loyal and 
 devoted sons. The Hebrew race also is proud of its French members. 
 Their lives are irrefutable proofs that the consistent Israelite can be a 
 patriot and lover of his adopted country. France has not been remiss 
 in rewarding her Jews. In the vanguard of her Science, among the 
 first promoters of her Literature and her greatest savants, among her 
 most liberal philanthropists and her wisest scholars are the French 
 Jews to be found. She has been guided by the counsel of Jewish 
 Statesmen, her armies have been led to victory by Jewisli Generals, her 
 Navy commanded by Jewish Admirals, her honour among the nations 
 of Europe has been entrusted into the hands of Jewish Diplomatists, 
 her State finances have been regulated by Jewish Financiers ; in each 
 department of life, in every task high or humble entrusted to them 
 they have faithfully done their duty as becomes those honoured by a 
 natiou’s confidence. They have shown themselves to be true to race 
 and true to land—faithful Sons of Israel, faithful Sons of France, true 
 Jews, true Frenchmen. 
 
88 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Germany and the Jews. 
 
 “High above in Heaven’s regions, 
 
 Far and wide in Halls of Learning. 
 
 And where people meet together 
 Be my sacrifices published : 
 
 How my tender infants perished, 
 
 How their tortures laid me prostrate ; 
 
 Learn to know their deeds of horror— 
 
 We were crushed and rent asunder. 
 
 4 
 
 Until corpse by corpse lay buried.” 
 
 “ Selicliacited by Dr. Zunz. 
 
 LL nations and all peoples have, with varying asperity, persecuted 
 C'ppjl the Hebrew race and fulfilled the pious duty of confirming 
 —— prophecy. The fairest spots, the most serene scenes, have been 
 swamped with the blood of the Jews, and as if nature must have her 
 counterpart in mankind, the most heroic knights and princes, the most 
 gallant warriors and patriots have, by some hideous stroke of irony, 
 wrung and wronged the Jew with the most obdurate and remorseless 
 inflexibility. Under the stern old Roman Emperors, they experienced 
 many and strange vicissitudes. In one reign courted and honoured, in 
 the next spurned and contemned. The European monarchs have, in 
 the main clung with lethal pertinacity to the policy of Caligula and 
 persecuted them, yet they have always been allowed a moment, a 
 transient period, to resuscitate themselves after any of the numberless 
 anti-Jewish excesses with which mediaeval history is disfigured. 
 Germany has taken exception to this tacit international understanding. 
 Since Israelitish communities first settled there in any large number 
 until the present hour a period of absolute and continual peace has 
 been unknown to them ; for if the rack and stake are no longer 
 accessible, the press and platform form the bivouac of the anti-Semitic 
 faction, which is daily ramifying itself throughout the Empire. Let 
 us together review Judmo-German History, or rather take a fleeting 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 89 
 
 glance at the sorrows of the Jews on German soil. We shall see that 
 more Jews have been murdered in one decade, than in a century of 
 Autos da fe, and we shall also see that the repetition of these events is 
 only restrained by the cyclopean potentiality of German law. Prussia 
 has her embryo “ Rindfleisch’s ” and “ Hoogstraten’s,” but their nim- 
 biferous denunciations of the Jews are prevented by the law from 
 culminating in the desired deeds of violence. It is indeed lamentable 
 and an eloquent testimony to the poor Jews’ unfair treatment, that 
 the home of “ Lessing,” of “ Schiller,” of “ Kant,” of “ Dohm,” and 
 myriads of other ultra-humane writers, who have shed lustre upon 
 learning and humanistic philosophy should have been whimsically 
 selected by fate for the Jewish “ Phlegethon,” for Germany was a 
 veritable purgatory to them in the Middle Ages. Is it not one of those 
 inexplicable vagaries of fortune, that the land, from which the very 
 crux of modern Philosophy has gone forth, the land from whence 
 millions of the people were first liberated from all the misfortunes of 
 abject Pontifical slavery, should have hounded to death hundreds of 
 thousands of her most industrious subjects and drenched history with 
 their blood, because the popular outcry and the priest-manipulated 
 voice of the people demanded the persecution of faithful children who 
 sought to perpetuate the creed for which their fathers bad lived and 
 died ? The mediaeval Germans loathed the Jews as the personal 
 enemies of their Saviour and sought to visit upon one generation the 
 actions of another, no doubt desiring to verify the injunction of St. 
 Fulgentius. who said “ It is not lawful for a Christian to seek to be 
 revenged.” But we will proceed with our task. 
 
 The mad Crusades that drenched Europe in blood was the inception 
 of the organized massacres of Jews that abound in German history. 
 Hitherto they had been rare and sporadic. The wild warriors of the 
 Cross, raging against all infidels, hated the Hebrew race and creed 
 with the most indescribable fury. It was reserved for these heartless 
 monsters to saturate Germany with the blood of the Jews. To find 
 an age or instance comparable to those of the Crusades for Israelitish 
 misery, we must revert to the siege and conquest of Jerusalem by 
 Titus. The Jews, says Gibbon, had not felt a bloodier stroke since 
 the days of Hadrian. In 1096 when the first Crusaders were about 
 to set out on their romantic expedition, a monk arose and in most 
 impassioned and virulent language harangued them. “You arm your¬ 
 selves,” he said “ and go forth to slay the infidel Saracen, but you 
 leave behind you greater infidels unmolested. You clamour to destroy 
 those who do not worship Christ or believe in his Holy Saints, but 
 you spare those who actually deny both. Root out the enemies of 
 
90 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 God, the accursed Jews, then Mary will prosper you and give you the 
 tomb of her son.” Convinced by the crude logic of this fierce Church¬ 
 man of the inutility of searching for the Turks, while the Jews were 
 so much'nearer at hand, a vast number of the colossal horde, which 
 had assembled in Germany, banded themselves together to execute the 
 inhuman behests of their savage and gesticulating admonitor. They 
 selected as their leader one of their most despicable members, whose 
 merciless outrages on the surrounding villages and peasants were 
 invaluable credentials to the post, “ William the Carpenter.” They 
 then inaugurated, after a long and thorough Jew hunt, the bloodiest 
 epoch in mediaeval Jewish History. Their first serious move was to 
 surround Treves—a city possessing a large and ultra-orthodox Hebrew 
 community. Its members were agonized with dread. The doomed 
 men were fully cognizant of the bloody price they would be called 
 upon to pay for their cohesion to their faith. They assembled in their 
 beautiful synagogues, fasted and implored the God (for Whose Honour 
 they swore if necessary to die) of their fathers to protect them. The 
 scene was most heart-rending. Hoary and decrepit old men of patri¬ 
 archal mien, men whose lives had been spent in prayer and study, and 
 in the perusal of the Talmud and Holy Writings, men who had lived 
 lives of unsullied and unsmirclied integrity, and now when on the 
 verge of death, at the very brink of the grave, their courage did not fail 
 them, but they earnestly exhorted their younger brethren to make every 
 sacrifice necessary rather than tarnish the name of Jew. Others in 
 the full prime and virility of manhood, when the vigour of health 
 makes life doubly precious. Life was dear to them but they were 
 “Jews,” they were the descendants of the Holy Decemvirate of Patriots, 
 who were by order of Turnus Rufus rent limb from limb and flayed 
 alive as they stoutly refused to desert Judaism. They were the child¬ 
 ren of Rabbi Akiva, and of Rabbi Chanina Ben Teradyon. Women, 
 “ Women of Israel,” imbued the men with patriotic fire and did not 
 quail. Children also already possessed the innate heroism of the race 
 —nascent heroes. Truly a noble assembly—all solemnly pledged 
 themselves before the “ Holy Ark” to die for Israel’s honour. As the 
 cruel Crusaders offered them the alternative to death, and the gleam 
 of their awful weapons and the lupine tones of their voices heralded 
 their relentless purpose, then did they equal the heroes of Blois; 
 mothers seized daggers and plunged them into their daughter’s breasts 
 to prevent their violation by the consecrated soldiers of Christ. Maidens 
 of tender age and entrancing beauty fastened heavy stones to their 
 apparel and flung themselves into the sea, such was the terror with 
 which dishonour filled them, such their irrepressible repugnance to 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 91 
 
 baptism. Some who were dragged out of the water by the pilgrims 
 stabbed themselves on recovering consciousness. Many aged fathers 
 drew the knife across their wives’ and sons’ throats rather than they 
 should be violently converted. Many indeed were the “ Abrahams ” 
 who uncommanded offered up their firstborn upon the altar of patriot¬ 
 ism, many indeed the willing “ Isaacs ” who willingly emulated their 
 prototype ; but now alas none intervened, for every Jewish home was 
 a Mount Moriah. Yet a few of the weaker spirits—very few indeed 
 when compared to the immense number that remained unmoved— 
 wavered and ran for succour to the Bishop Enghilbert. “ Wretches,” 
 said he, “ your well merited punishment for rejecting Mary the Holy 
 Mother of God and her blessed Son has at last fallen upon you. You 
 yourselves destroy your bodies and souls for ever.” But for this 
 diandful of vacillating members, who in the terror of the moment 
 'feigned to accept Christianity and were therefore protected by the 
 Bishop, the entire community of Treves fell as Martyrs, for the 
 Crusaders with savage shrieks of horrid ferocity rushed upon those who 
 were willing to die but dared not take their own lives ; and slaying, 
 burning, violating, strangling, pillaging and destroying, the Soldiers 
 of Christ soon blotted out this ancient community. The people arming 
 themselves assisted the Crusaders in their frightful work. 1 
 
 The Crusaders passed on to Spiers ; here the most heartrending 
 scenes were witnessed. The Jews, who had documentary assurances 
 of liberty from the Emperor, were invited by the Crusaders to accept 
 Christianity ; they however firmly refused, even declining to consider. 
 “ This religion,” said they, neither fire, nor water, nor the sword, 
 nor torture shall draw us from it.” The agony of distraught men, 
 the misery and the tears of distracted women elicited no sympathy. 
 In the stern and unerring lights of history and humanity we see the 
 Knights and Crusaders. The name would cover with eternal disgrace 
 and infamy the most ferocious savage that crouches in a jungle or 
 roams across the wilds of Africa. Brave men indeed ! If the heart¬ 
 less murder of prattling children in the very arms of their parents, if 
 
 (1.) The people had no sooner arras in their hands then the}' turned them 
 against their first enemies according to the new code of Christ and of the 
 Church :—the unfortunate Jew. The frightful massacre of this race in all the 
 flourishing cities of Germam and along the Rhine by the Soldiers of the Cross 
 seemed no less justifiable and meritorious than the subjugation of the more 
 remote enemies of the Gospel.. Why this fine discrimination between one class 
 of unbelievers and another 1 shall zeal presume to draw distinctions between 
 the wicked foes of the Church ? the Crusaders would not go in search of foreign 
 foes of the gospel and leave in their homes men equally hateful, equally 
 obstinate, equally designated for perdition in this world and the next. 
 
 “ History of Latin ChristianityVol. IV. y. 20. 
 
I 
 
 92 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 the open violation and slaughter of innocent girls, if the burning of 
 innocent men and women, if the trampling under horses’ hoofs or the 
 flinging from high walls of harmless grey-headed old men constitute 
 bravery or nobility, then we with unhesitating and unwavering 
 conviction claim that the Crusaders were the bravest, the noblest men 
 history has ever known. A fortunate few of the Spiers’ Jews, whose 
 worldly endowments prompted the godly bishop, Allebrandus, to 
 shelter them, outlived the awful day of the slaughter, but the bulk of 
 the community (a community which possessed State documents 
 purchased at enormous cost and only recently ratified assuring them 
 of immunity of attack) were left to the mercy of the Knights of the 
 Cross. Bravely did they defend themselves, desperately did they 
 fight, but what is the power of an insignificant handful against an 
 armed and armoured host, skilled by long practice in the lambent art 
 of spilling human blood. The desperate courage and resistance 
 displayed by the Jews only tended to further exasperate their ruthless 
 foes, but at last from sheer exhaustion they ceased to defend themselves 
 and ? fell to a man (Sunday Iyar 23rd. May 18th. 1096) under the 
 death-blows of their conquerors. The murderers were searching for 
 trophies of war and amid the bloody scenes of cowardice and martyr¬ 
 dom, there rang the death cry, the “ Shemah” from every Jewish lip. 
 They died repeating with their last gasp of breath those sacred words 
 which form the fraternal bond, the “ Kismet ” of the Hebrew race 
 
 wherever dispersed, that sacred sentence which links the Jews one to 
 another, despite nationality, colour, clime, costume or language. Had 
 the inhabitants of Morocco attacked the Jews in their crowded 
 Mellahs instead of the Crusaders the Judengasse, had the wild Asiatic 
 hordes or the fierce Kurds rushed upon the scattered Jewish commun¬ 
 ities in their dusky territories, had the swarthy Mohammedans or the 
 gaberdined Italian mobs slaughtered the dispersed children of 
 Melpomene, bad the fierce Arab fallen upon the Jews beneath the tall 
 palm trees of Araby, or the passionate Spaniards upon the pious 
 Castilian communities, had the leering Mongol fallen upon the Hebrew 
 clans in China or the wild African savage upon the Abysinnian 
 congregations, the same grand confessions of faith would have accom¬ 
 panied their dying gasp. Amid the frightful scenes of dead, dying 
 and wounded, no groan, no lament, no reproach, was heard against 
 cruel destiny ; with their escaping breath there rang from every throat, 
 “ Hear 0 Israel, The Lord is our God, The Lord is one.” Agonized 
 fathers stood firmly over their maimed children, who repeated after 
 them with lisping innocence word by word this doctrine of Judaism, 
 till their souls left their mortal and afflicted clay and were wafted aloft 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 93 
 
 by the sweetest zephyrs to “Him” for Whose Law they had died. AL 
 the Jews discovered having been massacred, they proceeded to their 
 synagogues and “ Houses of Learning,” the scenes of so much Jewish 
 devotion, and having desecrated the “ Scrolls of the Law ” and the 
 Holy Books proceeded to burn the places of worship amid the un¬ 
 restrained delight and joyful exclamations of the spectators, who 
 thronged to the scene as if to a tournament. They saw before them 
 the inevitable and condign punishment of disbelief and obduracy. 
 After the lapse of eight days the mob, furious at being balded by the 
 Bishop secreting them in his palace, demanded their surrender. 
 Their wily protector, who had sought to effect their conversion by the 
 circumambient process of loudly demonstrating his Christian love in 
 withholding them from the Crusaders, formally asked them to submit 
 to baptism or accept the only possible issue of their foolhardy and 
 maudlin obstinacy. The poor Jews, who now found that they had 
 only been sheltered for the furtherance of ulterior and sinister motives, 
 were forcibly disarmed upon their refusal to receive Christ and placed 
 outside the gates of the episcopal palace. Many of them disappointed 
 their enemies by seeking voluntary death at each other’s hands, pre¬ 
 ferring thus to die like heroes than to be slaughtered like lambs by the 
 fierce Crusaders, and ere the savage troops and populace surrounded 
 them they lay senseless and weltering in their life’s blood. The 
 remainder were seized and dragged head downwards through the 
 streets and then stunned and bleeding, borne into the church. When 
 they recovered their senses, they were brought before the despised font and 
 offered life for baptism or death for obstinacy. With the halberd 
 already at their breasts and the knife pressing against their throats, a 
 small number feigned a belief in Christianity. That their new belief 
 was simulated was clear even to their persecutors. The vast number 
 of the Jews however—practically the whole body—remained unmoved 
 and preserved their ever unswerving constancy to their martyred race. 
 They were quickly slaughtered in cold blood. Simcha Cohen, a noble- 
 minded lad, who had seen his father and seven of his brothers murder¬ 
 ed before his terriffied eyes, thirsted for vengeance and quickly 
 bethought himself of a plan. He professed a belief in Christianity and 
 was led to the baptismal font. There before the impressive array 
 of bishop, priests and other Church dignitaries, clad in the most 
 sumptuous garments, stood the trembling Jewish lad, repeating with 
 his mouth what his heart stamped as perjury, but he was seeking 
 revenge though cognisant of the consequences. As the sacrament was 
 about to be administered, he suddenly drew forth from the folds of his 
 blood-stained garments a gleaming knife and before any one could 
 
94 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 perceive, much less circumvent, his purpose, buried it deep in the 
 heart of the Bishop’s “Nephew,” (an old Catholic euphenism for sou,) 
 who had gloated over the tortures heaped upon the Jews. He was 
 immediately hewed down by a score of axes and his body flung into 
 the street already thick with the unburied corpses of murdered Israel¬ 
 ites. Eight hundred martyrs unrecognizably battered, mutilated, and 
 stripped naked were buried after the departure of the Crusaders to 
 the next Jewish town. 
 
 On Sivan 2nd, (May 26th, 1096,) the community at Worms—one 
 of the oldest and noblest in Europe—discovered that they were en¬ 
 compassed by the Crusaders ; the terms by which they might save 
 their lives were quickly made known to them ; they were to accept 
 Christianity and live unmolested even protected, or if they rejected the 
 offer they were to be butchered like their brethren in Treves and Spiers 
 without mercy. With that indescribable joy do we recount their 
 answer and verify the anticipations the reader has doubtless formed. 
 Not one accepted the offer, to a man they decided to die. They spat 
 the Crusaders in the face and asked them to hasten with their bloody 
 work. Numbers were slaughtered, numbers died at each other’s hands. 
 The bridegroom killed his bride, the mother cast her babe into the 
 flames, the father killed his daughter saying that it was better that 
 she should go to the bosom of Abraham than be defiled by the 
 Crusaders. The dying confession of the martyrs was, “ Our Lord is 
 One” and all was over. Does not the Jew’s heart beat with joy, does 
 not his breast swell with pride ? for he is proud that he is of the 
 nation that is first in the martyrology of the world. He may hold 
 advanced opinions, as a writer has aptly said, he may question the utility 
 of rabbinic legislature formulated in different times and under other 
 conditions ; but that is the theological Jew ; it is of the national Jew 
 that we speak. Let the reader therefore not be surprised when we 
 claim all Judaism to beat with one heart and to be actuated with one 
 impulse. They blotted out this community centuries old, to a man, 
 not sparing grey hairs, women’s tears, or children’s shrieks. 
 
 Afterthis unrelenting massacre they were not glutted, but proceeded 
 to Mayence, an ancient and flourishing community. This it was pre¬ 
 determined to entrap by stratagem and thus have at hand every Jewish 
 soul in the city, young and old, rich and poor, all without distinction, 
 and then should they refuse to abandon Judaism, massacre them pro- 
 miscously. The conspirators were the Archhishop of Mayence, But hard, 
 and his sanguinary brother Count Emmerich. These two depraved 
 aud bloody minded men made a clandestine conspiracy to effect this 
 end. As soon as the Crusaders entered the town, the arch-prelate 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 95 
 
 asked the guileless and trembling Jews to the number of nearly 1400 
 to hide themselves in the vaults of his palace until the Crusaders had 
 left the town and the fanaticism of their auxiliaries, the inhabitants, 
 had subsided. They unwittingly accepted this offer with the deepest 
 and most sincere protestations of undying gratitude. Praying to their 
 God, fasting and weeping, they crouched in dread in the vast cellars 
 and subterranean passages anxiously awaiting the departure of the 
 Pilgrims. This alas, my poor ancestors you were not ordained to see! 
 The Archbishop’s brother surrounded the palace with a most powerful 
 and impenetrable guard, giving them however secret instructions not 
 to impede the entry of the besiegers by raising a single finger in 
 defence of the imprisoned Jews who lay huddled together in the 
 cellars. Apprising the guard of his ruse, the knight brother now 
 fulfilled his part of the contract by placing himself at the head of the 
 Crusaders and demanding the instant surrender of the infidel inmates ; 
 this was unnecessary. Emmerich, who had played his part to perfec¬ 
 tion, entered with his followers and there, within that beautiful palace 
 and amid gilded porches and panelled walls were committed atrocities 
 at the recital of which the most hardened would pale; deeds so revolt¬ 
 ing, that even those inured from childhood to scenes of blood and 
 carnage would shudder. Let it suffice when we say that the allies of 
 Titus, the wild Yangioni, never dreamt of such deeds. Fathers were 
 seen to pass the blade across the throats of their infant children to 
 save them from the more horrible fate of becoming Christians, mothers 
 to stab their daughters and thus deliver them from the sensual embraces 
 of their foes, stalwart sons were the executioners of their own parents, 
 men’s hands were dabbled in the blood of their younger brothers and 
 sisters. Awful indeed were the scenes within the grim cellars of the 
 palace on this fateful Tuesday, 3rd Sivan, (May 27t l h), 1096. Over 
 four hundred hapless beings met death at each other’s hands, whilst 
 nearly one thousand were most cruelly mangled, burned and mutilated 
 to death with maddening agony. A forlorn hope of sixty souls who 
 some days before had distrusted the Archbishop and immured them¬ 
 selves in the vault of a church were dragged to light and asked to 
 discard their creed or die. Fifty-six instantly and unhesitatingly chose 
 to die. It is of the remaining four that we cite a most pathetic passage 
 from Graetz.” 
 
 “ Two men and two little girls, Uriah and Isaac with his two 
 daughters were induced by fear to accept baptism, and truly their 
 repentance drove them to a heroic but terrible deed. Isaac killed his 
 two daughters on the eve of Pentecost in his own house and then set 
 
96 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 fire to the dwelling ; then he and his friend Uriah went to the 
 Synagogue, set fire to it and died in the flames.” 1 
 
 Another body of Crusaders entered Cologne. The congregation in 
 that town had been established by Roman Jews long before Christianity 
 had existed, yet this town was to become the theatre of one of the most 
 painful events in a history already possessing such a surfeit of tragedy. 
 The Jews quickly prepared themselves for the worst : the innocent 
 community assembled in their synagogues, clad in the white garments 
 worn on the Day of Atonement. Their prayers, their moans, their 
 floods of tears rent the air. The parents blessed their children in the 
 ancient Hebrew formula; the children vainly attempted to assuage 
 the heartrending grief of their parents. Alas, Jewish brother ! I fear 
 to further describe the scene. Let the Christian reader imagine that 
 his loved ones, his parents, his children, are to be murdered and 
 violated before his eyes, and that he is powerless and compelled to 
 witness it; he can then draw himself a picture of this scene. The 
 oldest and most revered congregation in Germany, perhaps in Europe, 
 were preparing themselves for voluntary martyrdom. But, oh, un¬ 
 dreamt of joy ! their wildest and most extravagant phantasies never 
 led them to imagine, their loudest and most profuse thankfulness to 
 realize, that they were not to die. The burghers of Cologne, indurated 
 as they were to scenes of horror, paused before permitting the cruel 
 consummation of the besiegers’ flagrant intentions. They, with the 
 consent of their humane Bishop, Hermann, of blessed memory, hid the 
 Jews in their houses, and when, on the first day of the Feast of Weeks, 
 Sivan 6th, (May 30th.) 1096, the maddened Crusaders burst into the 
 Jewish quarter, howling for Jewish blood with eyes inflamed with 
 fanatical fury and tongues literally hanging out of their mouths, they 
 found it empty ; with two solitary exceptions every soul had fled. 
 One fiery old Jew thirsted for the glory of falling a Hebrew martyr. 
 All his life he had prayed and fasted to be afforded an opportunity to 
 add one small laurel to Judah’s heavy and tear-laden crown of martyr¬ 
 dom. Rabbi Isaac was now about to see his life’s wish fulfilled and 
 should he fly ? should he fear ? His co-religionists implored their 
 venerated teacher to come to the wide haven of rescue so providently 
 opened to them. He refused to hear the entreaties of the Jews and 
 their Gentile protector alike. The holy man quietly assuming his 
 phylacteries, engaged in his morning prayer and impatiently awaited 
 what all knew was inevitable. At last the fierce bandits surged 
 around him and momentarily restrained the fury they felt when they 
 saw him so placid, but when they learned that humanity had for once 
 
 (1.) “ History of the Jews.” Vol. III. p. 310. 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 97 
 
 thwarted spiritual zeal, they disregarded his bent form and wrinkled 
 face and dragged him with cruel violence into a distant church where 
 they in voices of thunder held up the crucifix and demanded that he 
 should prostrate himself to it or at least kiss it. Rabbi Isaac spat 
 upon it and, instantly repeating the “ Shemah,” was beheaded on the 
 spot by the sword of the nearest Crusader. So perished one whose 
 memory will for ever live in the hearts of all true Jewish patriots. 
 
 Not a congregation within their reach did the inflexible Crusaders 
 spare. 1 A community might have existed for centuries, it might have 
 seen dynasty after dynasty, Kings crowned and dis-enthroned, Monarchs 
 born and been the first to congratulate them on their coronation ; it 
 may have seen their royal oppressors flourish, then fade and die. It 
 might have deluded itself that at the hands of a successor they might 
 obtain amelioration. In one short day it was wiped out of history, 
 and the few crowded streets in which generation after geneneration of 
 men had lived, hoped, pined and died, was a wreck of masonry piled 
 with mangled corpses. “ The Rhine,” says an eminent historian, 
 was thick with the corpses of murdered Jews. All the cities of the 
 Danube, of Austria and Hungary resounded with the cries and swam 
 with the blood of Jews, the vast number of them scornfully rejecting 
 all terms fairly spitting and cursing the images and crucifixes held up 
 to them for idolatrous adoration. “The Lord is our God” was in one 
 their answer and their dying utterance for they were immediately 
 hacked to pieces or severed piece-meal. Sad indeed is the story of the 
 Jews, breathing in one the most frightful horrors and the most 
 unflinching heroism. Baulked in Cologne the ignoble troop continued 
 their Jew hunt in quest of further prey. Town after town was visited 
 and the same scenes of blood repeated. Jews were ripped open, 
 disembowelled alive, torn asunder by wild horses driven in opposite 
 directions, their flesh scraped off their bones, sawn in halves head 
 
 (1.) “ The rear of the Crusaders was pressed by a herd of two hundred 
 thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with 
 their devotion a brutal license of rapine, prostitution and drunkenness. Of 
 these, and of other hodes of enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfare was 
 against the Jews, the murderers of the ‘‘ Son of God.” In the trading cities of 
 the Rhine and the Moselle their colonies were numerous and rich and they 
 enjoyed under the protection of the Emperors and the Bishops, the free 
 exercise of their religion. At Verdun. Treves, Mentz, Spiers, Worms, many 
 thousands of that unhappy people were pillaged and massacred. Nor had they 
 felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was 
 saved by the firmness of the Bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient 
 conversion ; but the more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the 
 fanaticism of the Christians, barricaded their houses and precipitating them¬ 
 selves, their families, and their wealth into the rivers or the flames, disappointed 
 the malice, or at least the avarice of their implacable foes.” Gibbon, “ Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Vol. VIII, pages 104 and 108. 
 
 G 
 
98 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 downwards, cast into immense cauldrons of boiling oil, their teeth 
 dragged out one after another till brilliant men became raving maniacs 
 through unendurable agony, yet they were not recreant to the sacred 
 trust confided in them by their ancestors. 
 
 Who dare say the Jew is not brave, not noble, that Judah is not 
 the most heroic of nations and in patient resignation, endurance and 
 unflinching courage a pattern for all peoples ? If such be the voice of 
 mankind I oppugn the opinion of the whole world and maintain with 
 unwavering firmness that they are wrong. Enter into the lists of 
 glory, ye historians of nations, tilt with me the Jew in the joust of 
 fame, ye chroniclers of heroes. I defy you all to emerge successfully, 
 yet I court your comparison. You scions of illustrious houses, show 
 me old bishops calmly dying at the stake ; I show you little children 
 begging for martyrdom, athirst to further glorify Hebrew records. 
 You show me armour clad knights or belted and spurred cavaliers or 
 brave old veterans, who spent their lives on the field of glory, who 
 died sword in hand, nation in heart, fighting gallantly for the honour 
 and freedom of their fatherland ; I point to white-haired old veterans 
 who never saw the field of battle or heard the din of war, to patriots 
 who died foi their nation, yet knew not how to wield a sword, who 
 knew nothing of war. Their aim was not to avenge their people’s 
 wrongs nor was the open plain the theatre of their nobleness of soul. 
 Their aim was to mitigate the sufferings of their brethren, to die for 
 the unsullied prestige of their race, the scene of their everlasting glory 
 and expiring moments was the synagogue and the “ House of 
 Learning.” You tell me of your women, Oh patriots and historians ! 
 who were expatriated, who suffered quietly the most shameful indig¬ 
 nities, who died for honour, pride and repute, I contrast them with 
 the timorous Jewish maidens, tender, young and beautiful, who defied 
 the Leviathan of persecution, Torquemada himself, who unassuming 
 and modest were roused into very Deborahs and Judiths when asked 
 to recant. Will you argue, oh Christian ? dare you beard me ? shall 
 we set Isaac Tartas against Laud or Cranmer, Gonzalo Baez against 
 Wycliffe or Ridley, Leona de Vibero against Joan of Arc, as noble 
 martyrs and allow the world to tell which was noblest ? Truly when 
 the Jew unfolds Israel’s scroll of fame, when he ponders over the 
 mighty exploits of his fathers, how they walked to the tomb with a 
 light and joyful tread, greeted death with a song and torture with a 
 smile, when he thinks of their courage not in the field of action, not 
 in martial exploits, but on the martyr’s pyre and in the synagogue, 
 when lie remembers that they met death not in burnished and crested 
 helms, in shining mail and armour, not in steel corslet and impenet- 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 99 
 
 rable chain, but in Talisim and Tephillin, that their war cry or rather 
 word of defiance was not Mighty Rood, or St. Jago and Victory, but 
 “ Hear Oh Israel,” he has indeed ample cause for pride and joy. 
 Rome in the past has vaunted of her sons, but now she must be silent 
 before Judah. 
 
 When the Crusaders reached Neus (Tamus 1st, June 26th, 1096), 
 the Jewish community had prayed and fasted in the synagogue for two 
 whole days in the hope of atoning for some sin they thought they 
 must have committed, in reality their very foes tells us that they had 
 led lives of blameless and unsmirched honour, of virtue and kindness, 
 of sympathy for the suffering and forgiveness to their tormentors. 
 Alas ! the innocent doves were pounced upon by the screeching 
 vultures, for no other reason than that they were the seed of Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob. The monks in the camp heard confessions and 
 offered each Crusader the right to release a certain number of souls 
 from purgatory for every Jew he murdered. The obedient auditors 
 fortified by their exhorter’s fervent words, devotedly crossed them¬ 
 selves, heard Mass, received the Sacrament and Benediction and 
 prepared for the morrow’s work of the extirpation of heretics. Of the 
 gross, corrupt and irreligious character of the Crusaders I have said 
 enough ; of the character of the German Jews, honest, truthful and 
 upright, I have also spoken ; then imagine these foul and licentious 
 men prescribing what was the right form of religion to men whom 
 they could never soar high enough to emulate. Rabbi Samuel Ben 
 Asher, the great Talmudic commentator, a man who merits a place of 
 honour in the Pantheon, assembled the Neus’ Jews in their synagogue 
 and harangued them with all the fervour of an Israelitish patriot. Oh 
 joy ! to a soul they approached the Ark and then and there pledged 
 themselves to give up their lives now reclaimed, and rejecting the 
 price of freedom died. In some few towns a determined and desperate 
 resistance was made ; the Jews never sought distinction in the battle 
 field, but when their repute was at stake, or the lives of their dear ones, 
 they were never wanting in courage. 
 
 The Crusaders after much searching found a clue to the refuge of 
 the Jews of Cologne and sought them out in their hiding places. 
 Many in the agony of terror had ended their lives in the lakes and 
 bogs. A learned man, Samuel ben Zechiel, set an example to the 
 others ; he killed his young son in the water and pronounced a 
 benediction to which the lad said “ Amen ” ; the lookers-on pronoun¬ 
 ced the words “ Hear 0 Israel ” and threw themselves into the water. 
 
 The massacres were as I have said, not confined to Germany ; 
 Bohemia also was stained with blood. Wherever a Jewish community 
 was found it was blotted out of existence. 
 
100 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 An obsidional onslaught was made upon Ratisbon where the Jews 
 were grievously outraged. Wherever the corpse of a murdered Hebrew 
 was found, it was insulted, paraded through the town, or otherwise 
 treated with contumely ; whenever a living Jew was found his life was 
 demanded. 
 
 In Prague hundreds of Jews were seized and dragged to the 
 churches, where they were forcibly baptized by being violently 
 immersed. Wratislav the Bohemian ruler summoned all the wealthy 
 Jews in the country together and said “You brought none of 
 Jerusalem s treasures to Bohemia ; Vespasian cast you penniless over 
 the globe. You entered Bohemia naked ; so you must leave it.” 1 He 
 then gave his officials orders to plunder them forthwith. 
 
 On, on, went the Crusaders like a bloody avalanche, like a sirocco 
 of death, marking its unimpeded course in the blood of the seed of 
 Abraham of whom God had said “ In thee shall all the nations of the 
 earth be blessed,” on it passed, disregarding age, or sex, or infirmity, 
 on passed the corps of executioners imbruing their hands in the blood 
 of my ancestors, on alike to cruentate the history of Europe with the 
 gore of defenceless and inoffensive men and to write in letters of 
 imperishable brilliancy the story of Judah’s glory. 
 
 Sleep on ye martyrs of Germany. Your sons are proud of your 
 radiancy in the glittering crown of Israel’s fame. Your effulgency 
 lights up to them paths of intricate darkness. In Russia and 
 Roumania to-day by that touch they—your persecuted children— 
 grope through the tortuous mazes of their bitter life. The gleam of 
 your seeds renders sufferable to them the greatest sorrows, for your 
 memories are for ever green. Who says you sleep ? you live ! you 
 will ever live in the memory of Israel. Eight hundred years have 
 elapsed since the veil of terrestrial life was drawn over your clay, since 
 you surrendered back without a murmur your undefiled ghosts ; but 
 in 800 years more the lamp of Israel’s love for her fathers will burn 
 with equal luminancy. Let Christianity boast of her children, let 
 Rome vaunt of her heroes, and Greece point to her roll of patriots. 
 The Jew outshines them all, he impugns the claim of any nation or 
 race to equal the deeds of his ancestors. Beyond all possibility of 
 human denial he claims for them the highest pedestal of glory, for 
 were there a tower of honour the word “ Hebrew ” would be emblazoned 
 on its highest pennon ; for is there a cup of sorrow and tribulation ? 
 Israel has drunk thereof most deeply of all mankind. 
 
 When the Crusaders entered Jerusalem they massacred all the Jews 
 who had not hidden themselves. Their horses waded through blood 
 (1.) Graetz, Vo], III, p. 312, 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 101 
 
 reaching up to their saddle girths. They then set out in search of the 
 remaining Jews, whom they drove into the largest synagogue and 
 having barred the doors and trampled on the sacred scrolls set fire to 
 the building and burned every soul in it, July 15th, 1099. 
 
 All these horrors were but the achievements of the First Crusade ; 
 the second heaped additional miseries upon the Jews. Rudolf, a 
 fanatical monk, who had first been a man of the most profligate 
 character, escaped from his cell and preached death to all infidels and 
 deniers of Christ. He was possessed of an unsurpassed and most 
 impassioned eloquence, he understood harangue and rhetoric and knew 
 well, how, by acrimonious illusions, theological asperity and foul 
 accusations, to fan antipathy to the Jews, into the most irrepressible 
 fury. Crucifix in hand he travelled on his inhuman mission, inciting 
 the inhabitants to murder the unbelieving Jews, who vilified the 
 Saints and blasphemed the sacred wafer. It was an awful time for the 
 German Jews. It was then that a Jew of Treves, who on account of 
 his pious and upright life, was called Simon the Pious, was seized on 
 the quay side just as he was embarking for Cologne. Placed in 
 manacles he was brought before the chief of the detachment of 
 Crusaders and commanded to secede from Judaism. Simon undaunted 
 made reply that his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before 
 him had all been devout Jews and ever ready to die for their creed 
 and nation and that he was resolutely prepared to meet the fate from 
 which they would not have shrunk if in his position. He was threat¬ 
 ened and eventually tortured but firmly reiterated his decision to die. 
 Finding further threats or torments useless, they mutilated the brave 
 captive in a most shocking manner and when he had succumbed to his 
 injuries, his corpse was cast overboard. It was then that a woman 
 who, if ever there was a Calendar of Jewish Saints, would rank amonsr 
 the foremost names, Minna of Speyer was seized, starved for two 
 whole days, and then fainting for hunger laid upon the horrible rack 
 and during the alternations of her agony and threats of the iron mask 
 asked to save her life and forswear her allegiance toiler faith. At the 
 very name of this most awful form of torture, the brawniest ruffians 
 and most gigantic men have shuddered and wept; but Minna was no 
 craven, she withstood all, she was invincible. Fitting theme for the 
 loftiest paeans of praise, she alone would prove Israel’s claim of allegi¬ 
 ance to nation under all straits. 
 
 As in the first Crusade when the Jews could contrive to conceal 
 themselves they were safe ; but when a foolhardy few ventured to 
 leave their hiding places, they were invariably pounced upon by the 
 pilgrims who laid regular ambuscades to entrap them and then cruelly 
 
102 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 tortured and murdered them. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne 
 ceded them the town of Wolkenburg, which they had purchased for 
 an immense sum and found it necessary to serve them with arms, so 
 desperate were the attacks of their besiegers. 
 
 On the 22nd Adar, (24th February,) 1147, their untiring per¬ 
 secutors on some untenable and insipid pretext made a most murderous 
 attack upon the town of Wurtzburg, and butchered all the Jews they 
 could find, llie house of the Rabbi, Isaac Ben Eliakim, a man so 
 pious and virtuous that he was honoured even by Christian bishops, 
 was burst into and the venerable and gentle old man—a man who was 
 never known to utter a harsh word or a reproach—was discovered 
 seated at his table studying a holy book ; a fierce Crusader ran up to 
 the old man. He without a tremor calmly continued to peruse the 
 book upon which he was intent, not even raising his eyes or attempting 
 to quit his seat, though the room that was ever filled with his Jewish 
 pupils was now filled with bloody murderers and the roof sanctified to 
 shelter the homeless and to charity and peace was now the scene of 
 inhuman deeds, his cheek did not blanch or his heart fail him, and 
 theie he sat till the pilgrim ran his pike through the martyr’s heart. 1 
 
 Many were the martyrs that fell in 1147, many the babes plucked 
 fiom theii mothers breasts and rent in twain. With none to restrain, 
 the monk-incited citizens fell upon the Jews and slaughtered them 
 light and left. 'Ihe fateful events of 1096 were repeated with this 
 difference ; in the first Crusade many cities held aloof from assisting 
 or abetting the Crusaders, in the second Crusaders and Burghers were 
 in coalition to utterly exterminate them ; instead of the lapse of fifty 
 years alleviating their sorrow it only increased its intensity and 
 rendered it more acrid. Had it not been for the providential inter¬ 
 vention of St. Bernard 2 the primal object of the Crusade might have 
 been discarded and a Crusade of extermination against the Jews alone 
 in place of Jews and Turks been preached, so strongly had Rudolf 
 re-lit the torch of persecution and so recrudescent had these massacres 
 become. \\ e have already spoken of St. Bernard and shown how his 
 great influence was wielded to counteract the facundity of this militant 
 heretic-hater. We can imagine how differently the history of this 
 peiiod would have read had this good man not interfered ; as it was 
 
 (1.) Graetz III. 
 
 (—) Had not the tender mercies of the Lord.” says a contemporary Hebrew 
 
 chronicler, •• sent that priest none of thy children would have survived. It is 
 indeed true that the fierce crowds, who angrily surrounded the adored abbot 
 execrating his action in depriving them of their favourite Rudolf, were as his 
 biographer says, stilled into tardy submission by the only man capable of 
 ushmg them in Europe, would have probably murdered any other cleric 
 living had he attempted to do the same.” 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 103 
 
 Menfcz, Cologne, Worms, Spiers and Strasburg were bathed in the 
 blood of murdered Jews. 1147 was a replica of 1096 for the German 
 and Austrian Jews. The Emperor Conrad had taken no steps to 
 protect his Jewish subjects. 
 
 Under the Emperors immediately succeeding him the position of 
 the Jews was sometimes acute, sometimes tolerable, but always un¬ 
 enviable ; some proceeded to the greatest extremes against them. 1 
 Frederick Barbarossa declared them to be his body slaves. This was 
 the punishment meted out to persons guilty of high treason. He 
 vindicated this high-handed action by claiming to be a lineal successor 
 of Titus. Yet though he treated them so unjustly, he protected them 
 from outrage and saw the few rights he granted them fairly exercised. 
 Still he could not assure them absolute immunity from injury. There 
 occurred in his reign an event that marks with great cogency the 
 lamentable untenability of their position. We cite the passage from 
 Graetz (III 431). “ The infamous invention that the Jews used 
 
 Christian blood found greater credence in Germany than elsewhere, 
 and whenever the dead body of a Christian was found princes and 
 people immediately laid the murder at the door of the Jews. A ship 
 containing Jews was proceeding from Cologne to Boppard, and after 
 it there sailed another with Christian passengers. The latter found a 
 Christian woman dead in Boppard and forthwith they jumped to the 
 conclusion that the Jews of the first ship had slain her. The 
 Christians immediately pursued and overtook them and having called 
 upon them to submit to baptism, on their refusal hurled them into the 
 floods of the Rhine.” Yet no wholesale massacres were allowed in 
 territory under Royal surveillance : Frederick suppressed in its 
 inception any attempts at a general uprising but under his lax and 
 indolent successor, Henry YT, when practically unrestrained, they broke 
 loose upon all the German and Austrian Jews murdering whole com¬ 
 munities en masse. This massacre, however, was fortunately not a 
 protracted one like those in 1147 had been. The German Jews 
 suffered the rigid enforcement of all the decrees of Popes and Councils 
 with which the Church worried the Jews of all Christendom, but no 
 serious calamity is again to be found till 1235 (January 23rd,) A 
 Christian body, doubtless waylaid by brigands, was found between the 
 towns of Baden and Bischofsheim. A most unskilful and flimsy charge 
 
 (1.) They had illustrious precedent. Otho the Great had exacted an annual 
 tribute from the Jews in his dominions and as a mark of special favour under¬ 
 took to present to the church of Magdeburg part of his revenue from the Jews ; 
 in 981 he presented the Jewish community of Merseburg to the bishop of that 
 diocese. 
 
104 : 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 was immediately formulated accusing “the Jews”—a most comprehen¬ 
 sive term !—of having murdered a Christian. Had a Christian been 
 actually seen committing the murder he might—in accordance with 
 Middle Age notions of justice—have been imprisoned or fined or even 
 not punished at all. The Jews of Baden had lived in the province 
 unmolested for years, and were well known to possess much wealth 
 within easy access, so the entire communities of Bischofsheim and 
 Baden were summarily arrested and imprisoned. Four of the most 
 aged and venerated members of each body were led to the market 
 place and publicly tortured to such a degree, that they in their insuffer¬ 
 able agony admitted whatever they were ordered to. This passed for 
 conclusive evidence of their guilt. They were then executed on the 
 following day (Jan. 24 th.) To the eternal shame of Germany was the 
 same dismal fate meted out to every Jew and Jewess in custody. All 
 kinds of idiotic calumnies were laid against the Jews. Charges incoh¬ 
 erent and stupid were nevertheless invariably believed and" we have 
 yet to see one of these accusations which, even when irrefragably 
 disproved, was not followed by some injustice varying only in nature. 
 Duiing many reigns they lived in a veritable hell, taxed and ground 
 down, plundered and denied the rights of human beings. One Jew 
 could never appeal to the Crown. The Jews were a body and taxed 
 and legarded as such, A Jew had no rights, but all the Jews in 
 Germany might unite in presenting a petition to the King. Their lot ' 
 was unenviable enough ; every step was shadowed, every word was 
 analysed. To enter and loot a Jewish house was so venial a matter 
 and of such frequent occurrence that many tribunals would take no 
 cognizance of it. Jews were murdered daily and publicly, 1 yet unless 
 actuated by some ulterior motive, Justice, that is in its German form, 
 let the miscreants go unpunished. 
 
 To draw a vivid picture of the German Jews in the Middle Ages is 
 a gruesome task indeed. The grand castle of Nu rein burg standing 
 massive and awful through the centuries hid beneath its frowning 
 battlements many scenes to hear of which would agonize the Jew to- 
 day : its mural solidity and its grim heavy structure have silenced to 
 the world the dying groans of numberless members of that ill-omened 
 lace. Misery, torture and oppression have ever found their first 
 victims among the Jews, for they were unprotected. At one period 
 the entire Jewish people resident in Germany were declared to be the 
 liody slaves of the Germano-Roman Empire, a position somewhat 
 
 No fanatic monk set the populace in commotion, no public calamity 
 
 f u. n° e ’ . n A^ troc l° U8 or extl * avag ant report was propagated but it fell upon 
 tiie heads of this unhappy caste. Milinan. 
 
GERMANY 
 
 105 
 
 analogous to the serfs. In Germany in fact, till the very dawn of the 
 nineteenth century their position was distinctly defined. They enjoyed 
 no rights and privileges except those any whimsical Emperor might 
 choose to grant them for the moment : they had no effectual protect¬ 
 ion, the absence of which emboldened the people to rob and wrong 
 them with impunity. No public disaster, no national contingency but 
 the persecuted Jews were tortured, burned and robbed; a father might 
 be compelled to witness the violation of his wife or daughter and yet 
 be powerless to punish the perpetrator, had he but dared to speak he 
 would have been instantly struck to the ground. The whole nation 
 was being continually aspersed and every member of it twitted and 
 jeered at. This was done in the hope that some incautious Jew would 
 be goaded into a verbal retort, and if, in self-defence, he injudiciously 
 uttered a few sharp words he would be forthwith arraigned for insult¬ 
 ing the German citizens. An avalanche of mammoth falsehoods 
 together with numerous extravagant and insipid charges was invented 
 to warrant the deeds of outrage and violence, and religious ardour was 
 used to give them the appearance of veracity. Confined within their 
 narrow and pestilential ghettos they emerged on other than stipulated 
 hours at the cost of their lives. If a prominent Jew appeared abroad 
 on a Catholic festival it was the signal for an attack upon all his co¬ 
 religionists. On the Jewish festivals it was customary for the mob to 
 arm themselves with whips, leather thongs, cudgels and staves, enter 
 the synagogues, stop the service, mimic the proceedings and whip the 
 worshippers, till they left them in a state of thorough prostration and 
 collapse. At their bare entry on a Day of Atonement or New Year, 
 many swooned away from sheer fright, those who stood impassive 
 were flogged until their assailants from pure exhaustion, were con¬ 
 strained to desist. The invasion of synagogues during the Day of 
 Atonement was a source of deep lamentation to the Hebrews. The 
 synagogue was their only house of refuge, there they had ever sought 
 solace from their mundane anxieties ; there they taught and prayed 
 and fasted, and now that their very inmost fortress was invaded they 
 knew not where to fly. Had any other body of men of naturally high 
 sentiment undergone the treatment, their every finer feeling would 
 have been blunted, and their every moral perception deadened. 
 Throughout the entire Empire of Germany a programme of persecution 
 was carried out. In Bavaria twelve thousand Jews were massacred in 
 one day. Compared with such a deed, the immense additional taxes 
 imposed upon them become insignificant, also the fact that they were 
 very heavily taxed for the Crusades. During the internal dissensions 
 with which factious parties rent Germany into huge camps, breathing 
 
106 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 death to each other and ever seeking bloody reprisals, the records of 
 the Jews are written in tears. They were often allowed to accumulate 
 Avealth in one town, then deprived of it and sent to another on some 
 flimsy charge, there to be dealt with in the same Avay, In 1226 the 
 good city of Mecklenburg proceeded to the last extreme and expelled 
 the whole Jewish community with every mark of popular disfavour. 
 Breslau immediately followed in its footsteps ; thus were the Jews 
 banished from two cities in which they had, for centuries resided, yet 
 to none could they appeal fpr aid or justice. Frankfort, the scene of 
 so much Jewish misery, expelled them in 1241, as did Munich in 1243. 
 It was, says Foote, an organized Jew hunt from place to place. 
 
 The strife of the Guelphi and the Ghibellini that distracted 
 Germany, and in fact tore the larger part of Europe till the accession 
 of Rudolph of Hapsburg, was the indirect cause of the perpetration of 
 the direst atrocities against misfortune’s favourite child—the Jew. 
 Ihousands upon thousands of martyrs fell every year. It is a matter 
 of impossibility to give in a brief and incomplete glance at Jewish 
 persecutions such as this is, even the faintest glimmer of the hundreds 
 of German massacres and outrages against that people. Let it suffice 
 to say that in many towns, on a minor festival or even on an ordinary 
 Sunday to appear in the streets after six at night was an offence that 
 was very severely punished. In Strasburg for instance, no Jew was 
 seen out of the ghetto at night for centuries. In Coblentz, Sinzig, 
 Erfurt, ’ Weissenburg, Armstadt, Magdeburg, Dessau and many other 
 towns Jews were martyred in very large numbers. In some towns 
 they were caught, bound and roasted alive. The inhuman perpetrators 
 were so proud of their achievements that they ever after added to 
 their names, the title of Juden Bratter (Jew Roaster). No man dare 
 assume this noble and coveted distinction unless he had roasted alive 
 at least one Jew. We extract a passage from the “ Crimes of Christ¬ 
 ianity.” 1 “At Frankfort all the Jews in the city (it appears that 
 they had been re-admitted) were put to death, except a few who 
 escaped to Bohemia. Wherever the Jews were not burned they were 
 banished and being compelled to wander about they fell into the 
 hands of the country people, who persecuted them with fire and sword. 
 At Ulm all the Jewish inhabitants were burnt. In Mayence twelve 
 thousand are said to have been cruelly massacred. In Eslingen the 
 Jews anticipated their oppressors, for perceiving that death was inevit¬ 
 able the whole congregation to a soul entered into their synagogue and 
 having hid the Torah set fire to it, and refusing to quit the burning 
 buil ding were burned to death—truly a most touching suicided 
 (1.) Page 156. ” 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 107 
 
 Hundreds of Jewish Boadiceas burned both themselves and their 
 children, believing that a noble suicide was preferable to baptism and 
 an ignoble life. Often when a congregation was surrounded and 
 commanded to apostatize from Judaism, not one soul vacillated, each 
 went willingly to his death. Not every nation can show in its annals 
 instances of entire communities numbering hundreds, voluntarily and 
 with pathetic unanimity courting death to elude dishonour. “ Oppress¬ 
 ed by the nobles, anathematised by the clergy, hated as rivals in trade 
 by the burghers ; in the commercial cities despised and abhorred by 
 the populace, their existence is known rarely in chronicles of protective 
 edicts, more often of their massacre.” 1 At Strasburg during a time of 
 pestilence and disease, aggravated by the filth and corruption of the 
 peasantry, but imagined to be a divine visitation, the burghers thinking 
 thereby to appease God 2 chained the entire Jewish community, exceed¬ 
 ing two thousand three hundred souls together, and at a given signal 
 dragged them into their own cemetery, where the graves of their 
 sleeping fathers were opened and the lately buried corpses insulted in 
 the most sickening and filthy manner. This was but preludial to a 
 far darker tragedy. An immense scaffold had been erected, and this 
 they were compelled to mount. It was raised to a great altitude to 
 prevent their leaping down, they were then told either to renounce the 
 Hebraic creed or die. Not ten out of the 2,300 captives failed in the 
 cruel ordeal, the remainder unhesitatingly and unanimously resolved 
 to die. So many sweet and fragrant flowers in the garden of Judah 
 were doomed to a fiery death. The scaffold was soon in one giant 
 flame, and these martyrs reciting the sublime confessions of the Unity 
 gave up their pure and unblemished lives unsmirched and untarnished 
 for the glory of their nation, offered up to fanaticism, the Moloch 
 of the human heart. Their bravery is as inimitable as their memory 
 is immutable and imperishable. A few young girls whose tender years 
 and luxuriant beauty proved too touching a spectacle to a small 
 number of the spectators were dragged from the scaffold and caught 
 as‘they fell, but were instantly murdered by the mob. 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1283, a dead child was found in Mayence ; 
 it was instantly given out that the Jews alone were responsible and 
 the populace at once surrounded the Jewish quarter and massacred its 
 residents in large numbers and when glutted with blood they pillaged 
 the houses. On the same day an armed attack was made upon the 
 surprised community at Bacharach where twenty six Jews were heart¬ 
 lessly murdered. 
 
 (1.) “ History of the Jews,” Vol. III. 
 
 (2.) Markham, “ History of Germany,” page 195. 
 
108 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 On the 11th of October in the same year a lying accusation was 
 made that the Jews had bought a Christian child, crucified it in 
 mockery of the Passion, and used its blood for the Passover service. 
 Local circumstances were adduced which irrefutably disproved this 
 mad indictment, but without any pretence at a trial or sentence, the 
 mob fell on every Jew found in the district of the town where the 
 indictment had been made and murdered them with indescribable 
 ferocity. The remainder fled for safety to their synagogues which 
 were barred to prevent the ingress of their foes. Nothing daunted 
 the foaming mob procured some fiery liquids and quickly set both the 
 building and its trembling inmates ablaze, thus intone instance 
 loasting alive nearly two hundred fellow human beings among whom 
 were many women and children. The inexorable Commanches were 
 most hilarious and in transports of joy, for they were convinced that 
 they had won the eternal respect of the clergy and nobles; so it proved 
 loi no word was said against their fiendish crime. Beautiful yet 
 mournful is the description of how when one congregation was in 
 danger almost every community in Germany fasted, prayed and wept 
 for their straitened brethren. Such a tale contains the grandest 
 elements of pathos and draws the truest picture of Jewish sentiment 
 and shows how the link of eternal brotherhood binds together millions 
 of persecuted homeless outcasts and wanderers into one common body. 
 After a general rising against the Jews, one congregation that had 
 escaped pillage would always succour another that had been less 
 fortunate. One would almost imagine that the German Jews held 
 their goods in common ; in so brotherly a manner did they treat their 
 unfortunate kinsmen. One congregation would often sell a fourth of 
 its possessions to relieve another in trouble. Charity in its most un¬ 
 ostentatious and sincere form has however been a characteristic trait 
 and with their collateral virtue—unflinching heroism—they are well 
 equipped to enter into the arena of public admiration, they will not 
 be disparaged or depreciated by comparison with any nation. 
 
 The community at Rothenburg was so panic stricken at the light¬ 
 ning succession of disasters that had befallen their brethren throughout 
 Germany, that in conjunction with several communities in a similar 
 frame of mind, they resolved to quit the inhospitable soil of Germany. 
 Though exceedingly wealthy they left the greater part of their 
 possessions (mainly property that was inconvertible into money) 
 behind. The leader of the Exodus in search of peace was Rabbi Meir 
 of Rothenburg. He was idolized by the entire body of German Jews 
 and not undeservedly, his vast and profound knowledge of Rabbinic 
 and Hebiew literature, his suave and affable manner, his noble and 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 109 
 
 patriotic character might well have endeared him to his co-religionists, 
 for his every effort in life was directed to assuage their sufferings. 
 The rendezvous was Lombardy and while Rabbi Meir and those with 
 him were awaiting a second batch of sufferers, who had left the cities 
 of the Rhine, intending to take ship for Palestine, an event transpired 
 that marred all their projects for freedom. The Bishop of Basle 
 happened to be passing through Lombardy when one of his train, an 
 apostate Jew, recognized Meir and apprised his master of the plan, for 
 he had perceived the purport of his appearance in Italy. The Rabbi 
 was arrested and handed over to the Berman Emperor Rudolph, who 
 imprisoned him in a tower in Alsace, but the influence and sterling 
 worth of the old man to which his captor was no stranger, accounts 
 for the fact that he suffered no ill-treatment at the hands of his jailers. 
 Rudolph’s motive for this untoward lenity to one of his prisoners is 
 lucent; he, being cognizant of the prisoner’s great power among the 
 Jews, dreaded that should he ill-treat him, the wealthy Servi Gamerae 
 would leave Germany en masse and he knew that if this were done, it 
 would indubitably tend to diminish his revenue. The residue of Jews 
 who had escaped the massacres deplored the fact that one of their most 
 revered heads was immured and with typical Jewish practicability 
 offered the Emperor 20,000 marks to order his liberation and grant 
 them a few stipulated privileges ; these requests however were of sub¬ 
 sidiary interest to them ; their main petition was for the release of 
 the distinguished prisoner. Rudolph accepted their terms and money 
 but Meir was not set free. The Rabbi’s sagacity and forethought 
 taught him that were he to quit his cell, it would become an established 
 means of extorting money from the Jews by every petty princeling, 
 every chief of a band of marauders seizing Rabbis and holding them 
 at a ransom, so the aged patriot never again saw the sun of freedom, 
 but died in voluntary captivity after many years of willing detention. 
 After his death Rudolph kept his corpse disinterred thinking to drag 
 more money from those who lamented his unhappy death. So fabul¬ 
 ously large was the sum demanded that for fourteen years the body 
 remained unburied until the richest Hebrew in the country beggared 
 himself and purchased it from the mercenary monarch. In return 
 Alexander Winpfen only asked that his body might be buried next to 
 that of the honoured Rabbi. An incident of this nature needs no 
 comment, it has but to be mentioned. 
 
 In 1289 the awful onslaughts of the rabble, generally fomented by 
 accusations made with most specious figments, extended to Franconia. 
 In the town of Rottingen a butcher named Rindsfleisch professed to 
 have received a divine command to extirpate the Jews in Germany. 
 
110 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 He had since childhood possessed a penchant for Jew-hunting and 
 anxiously sought to efface the nation from history and to obliterate the 
 very memory of the word Jew. Finding his reputation growing 
 apace, he quickly repeated the charge that the Jews of his particular 
 town had insulted the “ Host” by pounding it to crumbs in a mortar 
 and that the outraged deity had bled most profusely and performed 
 the full complement of miracles usual on these occasions. On this 
 imbecile pretext he directed his corybantic followers to burn at the 
 stake every Jew in the town and despite their loud cries for mercy 
 and their piteous protestations of innocence, the entire community at 
 Rottingen were martyred in punishment of a crime they had never 
 committed (7th., Iyar—20th., April 1298). This bloody massacre 
 inaugurated a fearful and far reaching persecution of the Jews which 
 lasted nearly six months and blotted out of life about one hundred 
 and fifty communities in all parts of the country. With simple tears 
 of commiseration, Rindsfleisch recited the story of the Passion, and 
 how the Jews had slain the Lamb of God, to the peasants and villagers 
 and implored them to slaughter the desecrators of the consecrated 
 wafer. The martyrdom of no less than 100,000 Jews was the result. 
 The troop of executioners, who journeyed from town to town, from 
 village to village, forced the inhabitants to arm themselves with axes, 
 knives, flails and staves and assist in the extermination of their Jewish 
 fellow men. So general was the dreadful movement, so formidable 
 weie the dimensions it assumed, that every Jew in the country was in 
 hourly expectancy of death. Everywhere the mob triumphed : and 
 over whom did they triumph ? Over helpless women, over voiceless 
 babes, over toothless men ; on these did they slake their thirst for 
 Jewish blood. It was a most propitious time for Rindfleisch, inter¬ 
 necine strife and discord shielded him from the visitation of retribution 
 and when the Sacramental wafer was said to have been insulted or 
 outiaged, the fanaticism of those in power condoned the cruel massacres, 
 that weie the inevitable sequel. Had the leader been endowed with 
 prophetic foresight, he could not have selected a more fiendish pretext 
 or one that was better adapted to thrill the nation with horror. 
 Several towns that had been granted the legal enjoyment of Burgher- 
 ship were among the list of murdered congregations. In not one 
 town were the exhortations of the leader, whom the greatest dreaded 
 to oppose, unheeded. The poor nidulant Jews clinging to one another 
 with all the tenacity of despair were tortured/burnt and mutilated to 
 death without mercy or discrimination. Age, sex, condition, all alike 
 were unpitied. The congregation at Wurzburg, one of the largest, 
 wealthiest, and most strictly orthodox, was destroyed to a man, not 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 i 
 
 even a child of three days’ old was spared. Old men too helpless to 
 hide, too feeble to w T alk, were beheaded or disembowelled in their beds. 
 Those of the assassins who had discovered the hiding place of wealth 
 decamped with it after pointing out the Jewish houses to the main 
 body (12 Av., 24th July, 1298). Ten days later (22nd Av, August 
 1st.,) the fortress of Nuremburg to which the Jews of that city had 
 fled in terror, was assailed with all the strategy and engines of military 
 attack. Bravely did the beleaguered Jews fight, their intrepid courage 
 and leonine valour attracted a fair number of the burghers to aid 
 them ; but even with these timorous and half-hearted auxiliaries, the 
 vast numbers of their assailants enabled them to finally overpower the 
 Jews, who, small number that they were, held out to the last gasp. In 
 Augsburg the mimetic citizens re-enacted this dark tragedy : the 
 Jewish streets swam with the blood of innocent men. The Ratisbon 
 and Munich communities stood nobly to their faith : husbands slew 
 their wives, fathers their own sons and daughters, mothers cast their 
 frightened infants into the flames and immediately followed them to 
 death. The horrors of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem were transcended in 
 many German towns. The swarms of slaughterers may have had 
 hearts, but there existed one word by which the softest could be petri¬ 
 fied, by which the tear of commiseration could be disdainfully swept 
 aside and the very hand extended in succour to the dying and suffering- 
 drawn back in horror, that word was “ Jew.” Had the termination 
 of the Civil War not ensued, no German Israelite would have survived 
 the terrible outbreak of 1298. Fortunately the coronation of Albrecht 
 turned the minds of the populace into political channels ; thus their 
 theological studies (i.e. the whereabouts of wealthy and valetudinarian 
 Jews, who, too weak to defend themselves, might be robbed and slain) 
 were neglected. Albrecht inaugurated his reign by inhibiting the 
 splitting open of Jewish skulls and other popular pastimes exercised 
 upon that people. 
 
 In 1336—within forty years of the bloody massacres under 
 Rindsfleisch—a new expedition for the butchery of the Jews was 
 formed. Two knights gathered together a band of some five thousand 
 peasants, who had been rendered savage by the addresses of the clergy 
 who thundered forth commands to revenge the death of Christ and 
 disbelief in Christianity upon the Jews. Having armed themselves 
 with hatchets, pikes, pitchforks and other weapons, they were har¬ 
 angued by one of the Knights, who purported to have been commanded 
 by Christ himself to avenge his five wounds upon the German Jews 
 and wipe out his sufferings in their blood. The sign of Membership 
 in this bloody campaign was a leather badge worn round the arm from 
 
112 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 which the persecution is known as that of the “ Leather Arms.” Till 
 the end of 1337 the most dreadful massacres of Jews took place. 
 Alsace, the cities of the Rhine, and Suabia—all thickly populated 
 with Jews—were ravaged without mercy. Not even the alternative 
 of baptism was given them, so bitter had the butchers become. Every 
 where they destroyed their own children to prevent their enforced 
 secession from Judaism. Had it not been for the timely intervention 
 of Louis the Bavarian, who captured and beheaded one of the prime 
 instigators and leaders, the nation would have been eternally rooted 
 out of Germany, but luckily the death of one of the two “ Leather 
 Arms” led the second to disband his army and thus avoid the fate of 
 his colleague. In the afore-mentioned provinces and districts the 
 massacres had thus ceased, but in Bavaria, parts of Austria, Moravia 
 and Bohemia the self constituted avengers of the crucifixion were not 
 to be quelled and the number of poor Hebrews, who paid the cost of 
 being Jews with their lives is beyond computation. So rife and 
 systematic, so general and protracted, had these executions of entire 
 congregations become that it would be a fallacy for any writer to 
 attempt to make even a bare enumeration of the hundreds of com¬ 
 munities that were martyred, of the thousands of heroes and patriots 
 who were slaughtered like sheep, of the myriads of children destroyed 
 by their own parents, who swore that they should escape from the 
 clutches of the Church. We will give one instance however. The 
 nobles and burghers of the city of Deckendorf in Bavaria determined 
 to slaughter their Jews. They could vent their fanatical fury on them 
 as heretics, gain their wealth as booty, and free themselves from the 
 debts their impeenniosity and corruptness had incurred. The trite tale 
 of a wonder working, loudly protesting, 1 outraged “ Host” that had 
 been pierced by the knives of the Jews, and had bled copiously w r as 
 refurbished. The profuse flow of blood from the outraged divinity 
 must be avenged, the honour and prestige of Christianity was at stake. 
 Arrangements for a massacre en masse were made with a knight named 
 Hartmann, who, stationing himself and his mercenaries in a contiguous 
 village, awaited the pre-arranged signal,—the tolling of the Church 
 bell. This brazen tongued witness sounded the dolorous knell that 
 was fore-doomed to be the funereal note of the poor and inoffensive 
 pariahs, whose crime lay in their form of religion and in their wealth 
 and defencelessness. The Jews of Deckendorf were already moribund 
 with fright, for all around them were deadly foes and they knew that 
 
 (1.) Can the reader fancy a deiparous loaf, or a piece of bread assassinated 
 and loudly demanding justice, yet how many thousands of lives have such 
 tales cost ? 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 113 
 
 their fanaticism could only be slaked by the shedding of Jewish blood, 
 their cupidity by the theft of their goods and the pillage of their 
 quarter. Not one hand was uplifted to stay the consummation of 
 their awful purpose, not one voice was raised to objurgate the maddened 
 deeds of the relentless butchers ; all were against the Jews, as if the 
 very elements were in coalition to obliterate their memory. Every 
 Jew in the city, man, woman, child, adult or infant, was soon bathed 
 in his life’s blood and became the victim of Christian savagery. 
 
 In 1342 Louis the Bavarian ordered a poll tax of a florin on every 
 Jew and Jewess in the Roman Empire. 
 
 In 1348 all the Jews of the Upper Rhine were banished by decree 
 of the “ Council of Alsace,” called to consider what was to be done 
 with them. 
 
 During the years 1348, 1349, the German Jews went through the 
 direst miseries ; so awful were the persecutions, that they are almost 
 without parallel even in German History. It was like a new Crusade. 
 The charge lodged against them that they had poisoned wells, fountains 
 and even rivers, hoping thereby to accelerate the Black Plague, was 
 universally believed. This indictment has already been animadverted 
 upon in the preceding chapter, where an attempt has been made to 
 show the culpable credulity evinced : for the Jews suffered from the 
 plague together with the Christians, though owing to their abstemious 
 lives and hygienic precautions, less severely than their neighbours. 
 
 Disregarding all positive evidence to the contrary, the Jews were 
 here, as in France, held responsible. Communities that had been 
 practically wiped out of existence were again virile and again attacked 
 with every circumstance of massacre, the full complement of horrors 
 transpiring. 
 
 Like the fabled Phoenix, from the ashes of one community there 
 sprang up another, and congregations that were deemed destroyed and 
 their identity irretrievably lost, worshipped their God and followed the 
 rites of their murdered fathers. The Strasburg community (wiped out 
 in 1298) was by a vote of the Town Council destroyed by fire. Their 
 devotional and Synagogal requisites were treated with contumely and 
 destroyed. The property of the martyrs was divided among the 
 burghers. Sadder indeed was the fate of the Jewish community at 
 Worms. Its members had won golden opinions by its probity and 
 rectitude. The Catholic Bishops held them up to their subordinate 
 clergy, when reproving their rampant excesses, as models for 
 emulation ; moreover it had existed before Germany was known to the 
 world as a civilized country, being coeval with that of Cologne. It had 
 sustained many fierce onslaughts and had nearly succumbed during 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 the Crusaders’ march through the country, but its days were numbered. 
 A hasty meeting of the Town Council was convened and it was 
 gravely proposed, as the only method of stemming the fearful ferment 
 against the Jews in that town, to burn them alive to a man. To the 
 everlasting shame and infamy of Germany, this barbarous proposition 
 was received with general assent and it was solemnly resolved to put 
 it into immediate effect. The horror stricken Jews, who had fasted 
 for two days in succession, were in the slough of misery. For weeks 
 past violent efforts had been made both by blandishments and threats 
 to seduce them from their adherence to Judaism, the primary cause of 
 all their sorrows. Like true scions of the nobility of history all the 
 exertions of their foes were in vain ; they even refused a request that 
 they should seriously consider their position and withhold their answer 
 for a few days. But when the decision of the Town Council was 
 conveyed to them the love of life became strong, and delegating their 
 Rabbi, a very old and feeble man, and the principal elders, in all 
 twelve men, to wait upon the Council and implore their mercy, they 
 abandoned themselves to the deepest grief. With weary hearts and 
 tear-bedimmed eyes the poor sons of a persecuted race started on their 
 vain errand; an errand they should have known from their own history 
 was useless. Their trembling forms and sobs, as they begged the 
 fiendish Council for mercy rendered them the butt of the most flippant 
 and wanton sallies of heartless mirth. Their wild entreaties, that 
 would have touched the most cruel Bedouin nomad, were ridiculed. 
 “ Dog of a circumcised Jew,” said one councillor to the Rabbi, “ thre° 
 days hence and we shall slay you.” Finding their prayers of noeffeci 
 they sorrowfully withdrew and wended their steps home to the Jewish 
 quarter, where their disconsolate co-religionists had submitted them¬ 
 selves to unheard of austerities, hoping to propitiate God by their self 
 inflicted sufferings. Learning that the Emperor Charles IV had 
 coolly disclaimed all responsibility in the risings against the Jews 
 throughout the country and left the citizens to the exercise of their 
 own will, the Jews of Worms unanimously resolved to thwart the 
 vengeance of the burghers and on the 10th., Adar (1st., March) 1349 
 simultaneously set fire to their dwellings and voluntarily burnt them¬ 
 selves to death, thus destroying at one blow their lives and property, 
 together with the hopes of butchery and plunder the city was cherish¬ 
 ing. A German historian computes that 420 was the number of 
 suicides and prolicides. A neighbouring community being in similar 
 straits resorted to the same awful method of obviating the inevitable 
 doom of wholesale destruction, July 29th., (Tammuz 10th.,) 1349. 
 This congregation (Oppenheim), though neither so ancient nor so large 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 115 
 
 as that at Worms, its heroic prototype, was wealthy, orthodox and by 
 no means unimportant. The German people, however, it is only fair 
 to relate, firmly believed in the guilt of the Jews, i.e., that their 
 machinations had created, or at least contributed to create, the scourge 
 that was depopulating the country. In the next chapter, reference 
 will be made to an incident that enhanced the belief in that fatal 
 opinion. In Wurtemburg a large pile was raised and every Jew and 
 Jewess found in the town was bound, cast upon it and burnt to ashes. 
 This spot was for centuries known as the “Jew Roasting Hill,” and 
 the citizens were ever ready to recount this exploit by which they had 
 won fame and popularity. In Munich the raid was made in the dead 
 of night, and the Jews were slaughtered whilst asleep in their beds. 
 Augsburg, Ratisbon, Wurzburg, Dessau and Zinjen—all of which 
 congregations had been attacked during the massacres of 1298—were 
 mercilessly slain on their firmly refusing to desert Judaism. The 
 Magdeburg community were surrounded on the Sabbath in their 
 synagogue and after having been frightfully tortured were finally slain, 
 August 10th., Ellul 15th., 1349. Throughout Hanover they were 
 destroyed with pitiless and unabating fury. A son of the Emperor, 
 Louis, Margrave of Brandenburg, issued an order calling upon all loyal 
 Germans and faithful Catholics to burn the Jews of Konigsberg— 
 which was under his jurisdiction—and destroy their goods. His order 
 was faithfully obeyed, had he called upon his subjects to protect them, 
 it is questionable whether they would have shown a similar amount of 
 loyalty. In Bavaria the inhabitants of the towns and villages were 
 absolutely goaded by Ducal pressure into deeds of rapine and butchery. 
 The Duke issued an order which was publicly read in every market 
 place to the beating of a drum and proclamation of a herald, advising 
 the massacre of all Jews and declaring himself to be greatly desirous 
 of such a course being followed. His brother, whose dominions also 
 contained a large* number of Jews, advocated similar treatment in an 
 address to his peasantry. The Jews of Breslau were suddenly surprised 
 and pounced upon by strategy, they were quickly hacked to pieces, not 
 one soul, adult or infant escaped. In Erfurt 3,000 were murdered in 
 cold blood while several hundreds perished in the adjoining villages. 
 The large community of Mayence was wiped out to a man, 6,000 
 victims fell to the fury of their foes. Everywhere they were, amid the 
 hideous tintamar, hewn down without scruple. At Frankfort a 
 desperate and organized resistance was made on the jart of the Jews, 
 elsewhere they allowed themselves to be killed like sheep in a slaughter 
 house. The mob was soon lessened by two hundred, who had become 
 billets for the Jewish weapons, but reinforcements from the villages 
 
116 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 outlying Frankfort soon arrived and after a desperate sally on the 
 assailants, the Jews found that resistance was of no use and that they 
 were unable to cope with such a number. Then gathering together 
 all the inflammable matter at hand, they set their quarters in flames 
 and thus became their own executioners, yet their own deliverers. 
 These are but a few instances of what the Black Plague cost the Jews 
 of Germany. Throughout Austria, Hungary, Suabia, Bohemia and 
 Moravia they were burnt and slain like rabid dogs. At Speyer the 
 streets were so full of murdered Jews and the corpses of those, who 
 had taken their own lives out of sheer terror, that their bodies were 
 contemptuously thrust into barrels containing pork and rolled into the 
 river. New communities were being expelled, and their goods 
 confiscated daily, and almost every town that banished them decreed 
 that one hundred years must elapse before they should be readmitted ; 
 yet many of these towns learned their helplessness, when deprived of 
 them by their own cruelty. They were the commercial classes and 
 represented the trade and culture of many a German city, that soon 
 rued the course it had taken. The Archbishop of Mayence strenuously 
 exerted himself to secure their re-settlement in larger numbers than 
 heretofore. 
 
 The Jews of Germany had lost almost every vestige of human 
 liberty. We find an eloquent instance of this fact in Dean Milman's 
 “ History of Latin Christianity ,” where we read (VII, 35) of an Arch¬ 
 bishop of Mentz, who dictated to his Emperor the terms of accession. 
 “Among the stipulations, the Emperor was to make over the Jews of 
 . Mentz (the Jews of Mentz were the serfs of the Emperor) to the 
 Archbishop. After the anti-Jewish fever of the Black Plague had 
 subsided, another Jewish scourge arose in the Flagellants, a number 
 of fanatics who marched through every part of Germany preceded by 
 banners and crucifixes shouting till hoarse, “ Death to the Jews and all 
 infidels.” Their particular form of ritual was to flog themselves with 
 leather thongs in atonement for their sins, which were no doubt very 
 great, till their backs were lacerated and streams of blood gushed from 
 their many wounds. Their march was fraught with untold misery to 
 the Jews, whose extirpation, they boldly declared, was their unalterable 
 purpose. They had learned how to concoct the most ludicrous and 
 absurd stories concerning the Jews and how to surround them with a 
 glamour of religious horror and send a thrill of bitter indignation 
 through their auditors. Did a Jew speak ? He was summoning demons 
 and vampires to poison the wells. Did he not speak? He was 
 meditating how to steal some Christian child for Passover. Did a Jew 
 appear in public ? He was seeking to betray the Christians. Did he 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 117 
 
 remain at home ? It was the Saints that had confined him to his bed. 
 Did a Jew educate his children? It was so that they might detect the 
 flaws in Christianity. Did he not educate them ? It was because he 
 was not possessed of the finer feelings. In fine every Jewish word, 
 gesture, action, or even thought, was a crime that could only be wiped 
 out in blood. Such was the position at Frankfort (which appears to 
 have become again thinly populated by Jews) and other towns. Jews 
 were residing in many of the towns at this period from which they had 
 been expelled during the plague. How they were re-admitted is not 
 clear, yet their position must have been unenviable, and on the whole 
 untenable. 
 
 In 1384 new outrages occurred. The entire Jewish population of 
 Nordlingen was massacred and the congregation at Augsburg impris¬ 
 oned and held at ransom for 20,000 florins. Several Saints were 
 added to the Calendar at this time, they were either persons, who had 
 been found dead or disappeared, and suspicion had fastened upon the 
 Jews. Trials begun with malice and conducted with hatred established 
 their guilt, but that fact does not prevent the Catholics to this very 
 hour calling upon “blessed William” and “blessed Simon” and 
 “ blessed Werner the Martyr ” and several other people. 
 
 In 1421 when the German Army under the Emperor Sigismund 
 set out for Bohemia to meet the Hussite champion, JohnZisca, whole 
 regiments of soldiers fell upon the few weak, dis-membered and suffer¬ 
 ing communities, who were just beginning to rear their heads from the 
 dust and re-organise themselves. “We are going to slay the enemies 
 of Christ in Bohemia shall we then spare them in Germany ? ” Such 
 was their irrefragable logic. “ If we rout the Hussites, we shall blot 
 out the very word Jew from the history of Europe.” This was no 
 idle threat for they had firmly determined to complete what the 
 Crusaders had so successfully begun—the annihilation of the whole 
 body of German Jews. So seriously did the terrified Israelites view 
 this threat, that the Rabbi of Mayence, 1 Jacob Mollin, one of the most 
 pious Jews of the fifteenth century, ordained rigorous fasts throughout 
 the country. It was during the “ Ten Penitential Days,” that the 
 fear of attack was most acute. On four alternate days after the Feast 
 of Tabernacles, every German congregation observed most rigid fasts. 
 Prayers and supplications were offered up throughout Germany. 
 Many of the Spanish communities evinced sympathy for their appre¬ 
 hensive brethren, whose plight they deeply lamented, by instituting 
 
 (1.) Mayence was ever a hotbed of Jewish persecution. As early as 1012, 
 the Jews of that city had been expelled by order of the Emperor Henry. 
 
118 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 similar fasts and holding special services. The ultimate revulsion of 
 political events turned their fear into calm, for the precipitate and 
 ignominious flight of these doughty warriors from before the army of 
 Zisca, blind though he was, prevented them from executing their cruel 
 and bloody intentions. Many of the erstwhile threateners of the Jews 
 came to the very doors of those they had execrated, begging for a piece 
 of bread which was not refused the starving and tattered villains. 
 
 The rejoicings of those who deemed their escape from massacre the 
 direct intervention of Heaven, baffles all description, yet the agony of 
 mind which they had endured renders the whole affair a most 
 melancholy one. So certain had they been of death, that the Jewish 
 husbands and fathers had arranged for their wives and children to be 
 put to death on the giving of a certain signal, preferring this rather 
 than that they should be dragged to the churches by the monks, who 
 had made frantic efforts to aggravate the evil opinions the enemies of 
 the Jews already entertained of them. 
 
 In the same year the burghers of Cologne, where a small bruised 
 Jewish community appears to have survived, assembled in meeting, 
 resolved to oppugn the decree of the Emperor, who had been acquaint¬ 
 ed with their intentions, and banished the Jewish residents. This 
 unjust action had no origin other than in their bitter antipathy to the 
 Jews and to infidels in general. Jews had been settled in Cologne 
 since the Roman invasions of Germany and no misconduct had ever 
 been charged to them ; on the contrary their whole career had been 
 most exemplary. The town gained its point against the Emperor, 
 whom it had often defied with impunity. 
 
 In 1431 the town of Lindau was the scene of a tragedy in which 
 the Jews were the victims. They had been accused of murdering a 
 Christian child for ritualistic purposes. The fact that the boy had 
 been temporarily secreted by the formulators of this foul charge was 
 not considered to be of sufficient cogencv to tie the hands of the 
 people. They clamoured for blood and hastily proceeded to tie all the 
 Jews of the town to stakes and burn them to death. The child after 
 being thus revenged was set at liberty. The inhabitants of Ravens- 
 burg on learning of the Lindau atrocity, immediately discovered that 
 they also had a martyr to Jewish cruelty in the shape of a similarly 
 murdered child. The distracted Jews were driven into their synagogue 
 and their egress provided against. Lighted brands were then thrown 
 into the crowded edifice and in a few moments a loyal community was 
 transformed into a heap of charred corpses and their synagogue a 
 wreck of masonry. Ravensburg must have been in constant 
 communication with the next town Oberlingen, for within a few days 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 119 
 
 of the receipt of intelligence of the tragedy perpetrated in the former 
 city, the Jews of Oberlingen were burnt at the-stake without trial, 
 sentence, or even indictment. 
 
 The period immediately following the Hussite war saw a transition 
 « in the strategy of the Jew-liunting world; the “ Host desecrating” 
 charge was to be allowed to fall into temporary desuetude, as also the 
 fountain poisoning” calumny, it being discovered that the “ Eitual 
 Murder by Crucifixion ” charge always worked the people into greater 
 frenzy. 
 
 In 1450, (October 5th,) Duke Louis of Bavaria, one of the dead¬ 
 liest foes Christian Europe ever pitted against a weak and scattered 
 nation, seized all the Jews throughout his domains and immured them 
 in damp and dark dungeons there to await the communication of his 
 will. After cruelly torturing them by means of studied delays, and 
 refusals to acquaint them with his intentions, he—after his prisoners 
 had suffered four weeks’ inexpressible anguish of mind—released them 
 on receipt of 30,000 gulden for which he sold them their lives. He 
 also robbed them of their property and jewellery, with which however 
 his victims gladly parted to save their heads from the axe. His next 
 move was to promulgate a decree ordering the expulsion from his 
 territories of those he had stripped ; a decree that was promptly put 
 into execution. It is fortunate that Louis' power did not extend over 
 a large area ; had it done so the Jews unfortunate enough to live 
 under him would have fared very ill. 
 
 The attacks upon and expulsions of single communities generally 
 left the greater number of the German Jews unmolested ; the honour 
 of persecuting almost every Jew in the country was reserved for an 
 Italian monk “ John of Capistrano.” His influence was as unbounded 
 as his eloquence was impassioned. He had been “ Overseer of the 
 Jews” in Naples ; his principal duty consisting in trumping up false 
 charges against that people and punishing them with the most pitiless 
 cruelty ; his nominal function was to enforce the wearing of the Jew 
 badge. This fierce and fanatical Franciscan travelled through the 
 greater part of Europe on his self-constituted errand of inciting the 
 people. His errand makes his universal power and popularity 
 explicable. In Germany he wrought the greatest havoc upon the 
 Jews; the ashes of persecution, though still warm, were now stirred 
 into the most intense heat. Every reverse a Christian army might 
 sustain, every disaster or misfortune that ever came to a Christian 
 nation or community he—with tears of passion and fanaticism in his 
 eyes—attributed to Christendom’s culpable dereliction in not persecu¬ 
 ting the Jews with sufficient persistency ; every public trouble, every 
 
120 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 calamitous occurrence was due to them. The German Israelites 
 trembled at his very name and he was not inappropriately styled “ The 
 Jews’ Scourge.” Some towns were so convinced of the truth of his 
 aspersions upon the Hebrew race, that they laid down the most ferine 
 laws with which to regulate the existence of “their” Jews. Ratisbon 
 icndeied it an offence punishable at law for a Christian midwife to 
 attend a Jewish woman. No success was great enough to appease the 
 consuming hatred that the splenetic Capuchin evinced towards his 
 victims. The parity between himself and the Bishop of Wurzburg 
 was, together with his inducements, the cause of the prelate’s revoking 
 an edict he had issued granting “his ” Jews plenary liberties, and of 
 his expelling them from his large diocese. This was indeed a bitter 
 blow, for enticed by the specious promises of this man, many Jews 
 had. emigrated to his diocese from different parts of Germany. 
 Capistrano reserved his great coup de mam for Silesia, to the clergy of 
 which he had been deputed by the Pope to address himself on account 
 of their gross debauchery and crime. 1 The entire clergy of Christendom 
 was vitiated by every species of depravity and sin at this period, but 
 Silesia appears to have possessed for leaders in religion the greatest 
 criminals in Europe. 
 
 In Bieslau Christian debts to the Jews were numerous and large, 
 but on Capistrano s suggestion a very simple method to obviate their 
 discharge was resorted to. Enquiries were instituted as to which of 
 the Jews in the town kept the bonds of the remainder for safe keeping. 
 It was elicited from a garrulous servant that his master Meyer had a 
 large number of these documents ; a judicious gift led this servant to 
 conoboiate a charge that his master had by surreptitious means 
 contrived to procure a “ Host,” which he had stabbed, outraged and 
 then pounded in a mortar until the blood poured from it in a large 
 quantity. This speculative charge was deemed sufficient to warrant 
 the seizure and detention of all the Jews in the town together with 
 theii wives and children. Before any evidence had been heard on 
 either side the entire Jewish quarter was confiscated to the city. Bonds 
 
 (1.) At no time in its history had Christianity more reason to be ashamed 
 o its lepiesentatives than during the fourteenth and succeeding century. The 
 Papacy had become a perfect hotbed of vice, the contagion of which spread 
 over the entire clergy and was taken up even by the lowliest friar. Besides this 
 there arose a most passionate strife between Pope and Anti-Pope, between one 
 college of Cardinals and another, dividing the whole of Christendom into two 
 huge camps and adding war to the evils by which its whole extent was 
 distracted.. It was only natural that the clergy should infect the lay world 
 with their immeasurable dissoluteness and vice. The degenerate inhuman and 
 degraded Christian communities of this period presumed to treat the virtuous 
 and pious Jews as outcasts and accursed of (Tod. “ Graetz,” Vol. IV. 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 121 
 
 of debt to the value of 15,000 florins were destroyed. Having thus 
 assured themselves that they could not fail to profit by the case they 
 proceeded to hear it. A tribunal was formed with John of Capistrano 
 at its head. Being a past master in the art of demonstrating the 
 guilt of Jews brought before him, he employed an erotetic process, 
 that could not possibly fail to produce the desired confessions ; he 
 ordered the oldest and most infirm of the prisoners to be stretched on 
 the rack. Maddened by the excruciating pain of the torture—the 
 infliction of which John himself superintended—the poor old men 
 blurted out all kinds of incoherent confessions of crime they had not 
 committed. They had certainly either been terrified into insanity 
 during their imprisonment or become so under the protracted torture. 
 Everything they were asked they quickly admitted, every suggestion 
 made to them of further guilt they affirmed directly the rack was 
 pointed to. When Capistrano told them that this was the second 
 “ Host ” they had insulted they could not deny it. When they learned 
 from this Basileus of Israel’s foes for the first time that they trad 
 tortured a Christian boy to death, they remembered the whole incident. 
 John’s forethought in profiting by their sufferings on the rack by 
 letting his fertile imagination furnish him with indictments manufact¬ 
 
 ured in the very presence of the arraigned was attended with the most 
 tragic results. Hurled from the fangs of a Hyrcanian tiger and bathed 
 in the poison of the deadliest cobras, these foul and death bringing 
 charges, against a people, whose laws inculcate, nay loudly command, 
 the exercise of humanity to the most insignificant creature, were 
 firmly believed by the peasantry of the surrounding villages, who 
 hastened to send their Jews to Breslau ; upwards of three hundred 
 Hebrews from the neighbourhood were thus sent into the city under 
 heavy escort, there to share the fate of their fore-doomed brethren. 
 
 The deliberations of this farcical tribunal resulted in sentence of 
 death being passed upon nearly fifty of the wealthiest of the prisoners, 
 who were selected on the principal of “ No bonds, no complicity,” and 
 in the “ Salzring” were on June 2nd, 1468, publicly burnt to death to 
 the delight of the spectators. Rabbi Phineas determined to die by his 
 own hands rather than by those of the common executioner, but having 
 no weapon hanged himself in his prison. All children under seven 
 having been handed over to the monks, the parents were expelled from 
 Silesia. John had the delight of seeing the inhabitants of three other 
 Silesian towns burn their Jews ; several were content with stripping 
 them of all but their clothing and banishing them. The Emperor on 
 hearing of Capistrano’s successes expressed his unfeigned delight and 
 ratified the earnest request of those towns, that no Jew should be again 
 
122 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 allowed to reside in Breslau or the neighbourhood. “ The Jews,” he 
 wrote to the Emperor, “have at last received the long delayed punish¬ 
 ments their heinous crimes merited.” The torvous Capuchin left 
 Germany after witnessing the pillage and expulsion of the Jews of 
 Olmutz and Brunn and went to Poland with the intention of effecting 
 the revocation of a charter granted to them by Casimir IV, which 
 conceded the rights of residence, free trade and religion, and securely 
 shielded them from outrage at the hands of the clergy, who were 
 severely admonished by the Emperor and forcibly restrained from 
 inciting the people to attack them. The departure of the Franciscan 
 from Germany in no way allayed the hatred of the people or alleviated 
 the ever increasing miseries of the Jews. 
 
 A conspiracy was entered into by two Jew-haters ; Bishop Henry 
 of Ratisbon, their most implacable foe, and Duke Louis were the names 
 of these two formers of a malignant compact. At first extortions of 
 vast sums by threats of lying accusations satisfied the venal Louis, 
 but the Bishop advocated fiercer treatment, money could not satisfy 
 his unbending and inexorable severity to the Jews who fell under his 
 sway. He. was noted for the exemplary punishment he meted out to 
 Christians, who committed any infraction of the laws of the Lateran 
 Council against the Jews. A Christian surgeon who had bled a Jew, a 
 midwife who had covertly attended a Jewish woman and a female 
 sei v ant who had accepted a situation in a Jewish household were 
 among the objects of his bitterest vengeance. Henry’s whole con¬ 
 ception of religion was the hunting down of Jews and other heretics : 
 this was he held the duty of every good Christian and the crux of all 
 faith. 
 
 Other matters were it appears subsidiary to this great and 
 unequivocal doctrine. Is it to be wondered that the ignorant lower 
 orders of the European nations, who were hopelessly and helplessly 
 priest-ridden should hate and hound the Jews, when almost every 
 pulpit in Christendom lauded their tormentors as exemplars of Christian 
 faith and zeal and deprecated those who had moral courage enough to 
 disparage their more vigorous brethren from the dreadful cruelties and 
 outrages they were being continually impelled to commit ? The clergy 
 of Gei many especially thiev\ their auditors into such violent paroxysms 
 of fanatical rage, that they were oft themselves alarmed at the fury they 
 had aroused ; often the people were unable to contain themselves and 
 would during the service wildly rush forth upon the Jewish quarter. 
 Hard indeed was the lot of the Jews, few their defenders, many their 
 calumniators. 
 
 ihe Bishop of Ratisbon was determined to strike a fatal blow at 
 the life of* the Jewish community in that city by persecuting its 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 123 
 
 octogenarian Rabbi. His was to be the inception of a plan the 
 consummation of, which would entail the deletion of every Jewish 
 congregation in Europe. The pious and learned old man, Israel 
 Brunna, was charged by a vile Jew, who had apostatized from his 
 faith, with having by some ruse obtained a Christian child of seven 
 years of age. This he had fattened and then crucified in mockery of 
 Christ’s sufferings. Rabbi Israel was arrested and the local clergy 
 demanded his instant execution without trial or sentence, and would 
 have enforced their wishes had not the City Council interposed. The 
 terrified renegade finding that the community had made represent¬ 
 ations to the Emperor, retracted his fabrication although not from 
 any moral scruple ; Yayol was banished “ lest he fall into the hands 
 of the revengeful Jews.” The undaunted Bishop altered his plan of 
 campaign and resolved to use the fever caused by the martyrdom of 
 
 “Blessed Simon the Martyr,” i.e. Simon of Trent, as the lever for 
 effecting the ruin of this the most honoured community, next to 
 Worms, in Germany. Wolfkan, a heartless Jew, who had embraced 
 Christianity and had voluntarily transformed himself into that nocuous 
 and inexplicable anomaly, a converted Jew, was suborned to come 
 forward with all that series of inane charges which forms the armament 
 and armoury of these hybrid wretches—wretches, because to desert a 
 weak camp in order to curry favour with a stronger one can only be 
 described as the action of a wretch. His sole and unsupported state¬ 
 ments were deemed of sufficient weight to cause the stationing of 
 soldiers at the different exits of the Jewish quarter to prevent any of 
 its inhabitants from escaping. The intentions of Bishop Henry 
 became more perceptible, when every Jew and Jewess in the city, high 
 and low, rich and poor, was seized, imprisoned and tortured to confess 
 the guilt of innumerable crimes. The whole Jewish quarter was 
 confiscated, a number of the prisoners executed and the whole 
 community of Jews in Ratisbon would most certainly have met with 
 a similar fate had not the Emperor, who resolved on political grounds 
 to thwart the machinations of Henry and Louis, ordered their instant 
 release fand the immediate restoration of all goods taken from the 
 Jewish quarter to their rightful owners. It is true that much gold 
 was expended to procure even a hearing of their case, but the 
 Bavarian Jews had given large sums for the release of their co¬ 
 religionists in Ratisbon. The wound had been healed in one spot, but 
 it broke out with equal virulency in others, for many small towns near 
 Ratisbon, itself for the moment calmed, cruelly persecuted “their” 
 Jews. Dettingeu saw the execution of many on the flimsiest charges. 
 Passau followed its example and murdered “its ” Jews. A consecrated 
 
124 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 Host, so the citizens asserted, had been outraged by some Jews, who 
 purchasing it fiom a diunken sacristan had pounded it in a mortar. 
 All the customary wonders had attended the assault, against which the 
 indignant Host had signified its disapproval by pouring out blood, and 
 the wafer on being discovered gave many signs that implied a command 
 to punish the guilty miscreants. The Bishop proceeded to requite the 
 Jews foi the perpetration of this impossible crime. He imprisoned as 
 many as he could find and none of those so arrested ever emerged 
 from captivity. Some he sentenced to be beheaded on the murderer’s 
 block by the common executioner, some he burnt to death by heaping 
 lighted fagots upon them and the remainder were by order of this fiend 
 torn in pieces with red hot pincers. So satisfied were the inhabitants 
 of Passau of the justice of their bishop’s action, that they, in order to 
 perpetuate the memory of his zealous vengeance, erected a magnificent 
 church on the spot of the executions, declaring that their having done 
 so would testify their readiness to avenge any insults offered to their 
 symbols. Ratisbon took heart again, the enthusiasm of the burghers 
 in Passau encouraged them. They manufactured a story that some of 
 its Jewish inhabitants had aided their co-religionists of the latter 
 town' in the fearful crime, for which they had just received such 
 exemplary punishment. They were, they alleged, privy to the whole 
 affair. Fortunately they had not forgotten the firm attitude of the 
 Empeior during the recent outrages in that city, therefore those 
 accused of immediate instigation only were arrested. Representations 
 weie made to Frederick, who instantly despatched a command order¬ 
 ing theii immediate liberation. The City Council sent many emissaries, 
 who all implored him for the honour of religion to sanction the 
 punishment of the imprisoned, i.e., their torture and decapitation. 
 The legates inveighed bitterly against the depravity of all Jews in 
 general and gravely assured Frederick, that were the overwrought 
 feelings of their fellow citizens not allowed its natural outlet, a general 
 upiising would be imminent. Blandishments, arguments, covert 
 threats, all were unavailing ; Frederick however vernal he might be 
 would not countenance murder.. He forbade the torture or ilf usage 
 of Jews whilst in prison, inhibited their execution or unlawful arrest, 
 and fined Ratisbon, where disorder seemed endemic, 10,000 gulden for 
 theii disobedience of his orders. The delegates were compelled to 
 subsciibe their names to a document, which solemnly pledged them to 
 treat the Jews of the city with equity and fairness. The disappointed 
 deputies returning to Ratisbon informed the imprisoned Jews, that 
 they were free, if they would pay that very fine for which their unjust 
 sufferings had been condoned. Although they gasped for freedom, 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 125 
 
 some having been in confinement nearly three years, they replied that 
 the sum in question was far in excess of their belongings and they were 
 thus compelled to languish in dungeons until after the expiration of 
 another two years, when they were released. Events of this description 
 were so frequent in after years that they aroused no comment. Seeing 
 that it was customary for bands to burst into the synagogues on tho 
 Sabbath, brandish knives in the faces of the affrighted worshippers 
 and terrify them by other means, their lot was not favourable to their 
 advancement in any sphere of life. Pent up in narrow and unhealthy 
 lanes, contemned, hated, and hounded down, it needed very little 
 provocation to murder a Jew. Alas ! how many of our brethren have 
 perished in the most frightful agony on the rack or the Iron Maiden, 
 with the Jewish confession on their lips and clinging patriotism in 
 their hearts, whom history has mercifully hidden from the view of their 
 sons ! How many of the bloodstains on the instruments exhibited in 
 prisons of the Middle Ages as relics of barbarism are those of Jewish 
 children is beyond the reach of human ken. 
 
 The Jew’s pride in his history is no rhodomontade. Christians 
 are indeed struck with admiration, when they remember the glorious 
 exploits of a weak and scattered people, that has produced more heroes 
 than all the mighty empires of the past, than the sons of Lelex or 
 Romulus, or than the thousand portalled cities of the Pharoahs. Our 
 glory has not been achieved in battle fields alone but in dungeons and 
 torture chambers, Jewish patriots have not only died like Judas 
 Maccabeus, sword in hand, but at the stake, surrounded by the 
 devouring fagots lit by human bigotry ; in swamps into which they 
 had been thrown ; in deserts where they were left to perish for thirst 
 and their flesh to be torn by the jackals and hyenas. What a glorious 
 history is that of Israel! what other nation but ours can point to such 
 a lacerated existence, sustained by “ Amor patriae ? ” What nation can 
 show such a galoxy of parents to whom love of their children has been 
 subsidiary to that of pride of race and national glory ? Let any nation, 
 not a small decimated one like the Jewish, but a vast empire, submit 
 to the massacres, torments, insults, restrictions and sufferings, the Jew 
 has undergone but for one century, and if that empire, though it 
 contained millions of souls does not dwindle into an insignificant 
 province, known only for its dearth of learning, if that nation still 
 survives intact, still loyal to its own identity, still steadfast in the 
 cause for which it has suffered, then it will merit an inscription 
 written in goldefi letters upon the highest minaret of fame. What 
 then must we say of a weak struggling people, without centre, without 
 friend, persecuted by every nation, hated by all, a nation thousands 
 
126 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 of whose members have been foully murdered in one day, a nation 
 which has vainly sought the refuge allowed the very panthers and 
 jackals that prowl the forest, a race the history of which has covered 
 the lecords of men with shame and infamy, fearlessly upbraided Popes, 
 Empeiors, Kings and Cardinals by the bare unfolding of its tear- 
 stained chronicles? What of that Nation? the nation that has 
 survived all this and yet not lost its spirit, but is to-day both young 
 and old, hoary but not tottering, that is yet the pioneer of every action 
 that is good, ennobling and humane ? Is not the story of such a people 
 meet to be inscribed with jewelled letters upon the golden tablets of 
 gloiy ? hat of a race any one of whose nineteen centuries of 
 dispersion taken singly is sufficient to render it ineffaceable from the 
 Scioll of fame ? M hau of a scattered race that has preserved such a 
 unity of custom and such a concensus of national thought, that has 
 never been attained by nations under common guidance and one ruler ? ' 
 What must we say of that nation, my nation ? 
 
 During the reign of the Emperor Maximilian, the German Jews 
 passed a most chameleonic existence ; at one moment he vigorously 
 defended them against oppression and calumny, at another he took a 
 most active part in harassing them. “ During a certain period of his 
 leign, ^says a curite, “ they were in such constant expectation of the 
 martyr’s death that a special death confession, “ Vedui,” was drawn 
 up foi . such cases, so that the innocently accused when summoned to 
 apostatise could seal their confession with death and joyfully sacrifice 
 themselves for the one God. The expulsion of communities, which 
 though moribund through affliction had existed for centuries, was one 
 of the most unjust actions this ductile ruler was induced into ratifying. 
 
 Halberstadt, a community possessing a Rabbinical College at 
 which several hundreds of students were taught and maintained, was 
 one of the first to suffer. The expulsions of Jews from German cities 
 and towns during the years 1596-8 were more frequent than they had 
 been even in 1492-6. Magdeburg, Colmar, Anhalt, TJlm, Nordlingen 
 were some of the principal. Nuremburg in expelling “ its ” Jews and 
 forfeiting the Synagogues, schools, property and personal effects of the 
 victims, vas but following the established rule, for the majority of 
 cities that expelled them not only confiscated all they possessed, but 
 its inhabitants even seized and desecrated the Hebrew cemetery, so 
 desirous were the iracund people of wounding the Jews in their most 
 vulnerable part—the veneration of their departed. In 1499 Ratisbon 
 pi omulgated a regular system of oppression by which it was sought to 
 drive the already distraught Israelites to deeds of despair that would 
 meiit their punishment. The bakers of the city formed a contract to 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 127 
 
 supply no Jew with bread whatever the amount offered for it, the 
 millers pledged themselves to sell them no flour, the lawyers to accept 
 no suit in which a Jew was to be defended. The friars paraded the 
 street and squares of the city, publicly vituperating them and exhorting 
 the people to molest and annoy them. The City Council forbade the 
 Jews to enter the markets, or to purchase food during certain specified 
 hours ; in short every injury and insult that could be inflicted by a 
 large body of men upon a feeble minority was practised. One hardly' 
 knows whether to reprobate the clergy, who repeatedly assured all Jew 
 tormentors of salvation, or the ignorant populace who used these 
 clerical monitions as warrants for their excesses. 
 
 In 1505 three most unscrupulous and scheming men, possessing 
 the lowest characters and imbued with the most virulent hatred of the 
 Jews, determined to heap further opprobrium upon them by vilifying 
 their literature. They were fortunate enough to discover an unnatural 
 man, born of Jewish parents, who possessed a superficial knowledge of 
 Hebraic literature. Hoogstraten, by ignoring the beautiful tropes and 
 metaphors of the tralatitious Talmud, wrote several slanderous works, 
 vehemently accusing that work of blasphemy, the inculcations of magic, 
 and many other defects. John Pfefferkorn, in superintending the 
 preparation and publication of these works had, as his primordial 
 object, decided to revile the Jews and thus be instrumental in causing 
 their renewed oppression ; this end he thought could be best acceler¬ 
 ated by wilfully perverting the Rabbinical writings and translating 
 obscure and effete passages in the Talmud with sophistical gloss, as 
 also obfuscating by philosophic figments the myriads of humane and 
 ennobling teachings and dicta. In suggesting the measure of punish¬ 
 ment that had best be meted out to the calumniated, the maligners, 
 desiring to propitiate a few orthodox Catholics, who though anxious 
 for the Jews to enter the fold, still discountenanced inhumanity, made 
 the following admission :—“ The Jews are however to a certain extent 
 human beings.” A book published by this clique of vagabonds in 
 1509 was most fittingly called “ The enemy of the Jews.” In this 
 venomous work the immediate and wholesale pillage and expulsion of 
 the Jews was insisted upon as a religious and social necessity. Who¬ 
 soever treated the heretic Jews well would be burned in the lowest 
 regions of Hell ; those who oppressed and traduced them were 
 “ Christ’s devoted followers.” By this characteristic standard, fidelity 
 to Christianity was adjudged, but the philo-Pfefferkorn party were 
 only giving local expression to the trend of European thought on the 
 Jewish question. The most degrading occupations only, such as that 
 of scavengers were to be permitted them, they were not to hold any 
 
128 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 post or be admitted to the professions or trade guilds ; the violent 
 seizure and public destruction of all copies of the Talmud was 
 commanded with the most truculent insistence ; it was sheer pusillani¬ 
 mity to tolerate the existence of books which impugned the character 
 of Ohiist. Ihe exertions and theories of Pfefferkorn and his adjuvant 
 libellers procured for them a large and influential party. So potent 
 did this body of corporate menacers become that the congregation at 
 Frankfort were, whilst celebrating “ The Feast of Tabernacles ” in 
 their synagogue suddenly interrupted by the entry of a body of City 
 Councillors and prelates, who informed them that the Emperor 
 Maximilian had invested Pfefferkorn with plenary power to seize all 
 copies of the Talmud and burn them ; they were therefore commanded 
 to deliver up all copies of the work on the ground that it contained 
 blasphemies on Christ and Christianity and was subversive of true 
 religion. They also expressed themselves as intent upon burning all 
 copies delivered of this work—a work from which the greatest 
 philosophers, jurists, theologians, historians, physicians and scientists 
 have been compelled to draw—in the market square. It is true that 
 Maximilian had been cajoled by his priest-ridden and anile sister into 
 granting this permission to the Jewish Jew-hater, yet he should have 
 informed himself of John’s reputation and Hebrew knowledge; he also 
 should have perceived the ulterior motives that prompted Pfefferkorn’s 
 party. . The Jew’s firmly refused to obey this mandate and impugned 
 its validity on the ground, that the Emperor himself had conceded to 
 them the rights of their religious observances and these they contended 
 would be seriously tampered with were the Talmud to be condemned. 
 The Archbishop of Mayence on being appealed to strongly forbade his 
 clergy to side with the anti-Talmudists ; Pfefferkorn however had the 
 support and sympathy of the Dominican monks, who strained every 
 muscle to effect the realization of their ambition, that is to witness the 
 condemnation and burning of, not only the Talmud, but the whole 
 vast fabric of Hebrew and Rabbinic literature. Yet his gigantic 
 struggles and the assistance he received from the Dominicans were 
 alike unavailing, for, though a censorship of the Gemara was 
 established, it failed to discover anything in that plasm of Jewish 
 thought of a deleterious nature, therefore all copies of the Talmud, 
 which had been sequestrated were, by order of the Emperor returned 
 to the original owners. 
 
 In 1510 Brandenburg attacked its Jewish residents with the 
 chimeiical accusation, that had already cost such torrents of blood. 
 They had (so it was stated on the unimpeachable authority of a Middle 
 Age mob) purchased a ‘‘Host” from a sacristan and had insulted it 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 129 
 
 with impunity ; the incensed wafer after being stabbed performed 
 some hundreds of miracles. The Bishop of the diocese—a veritable 
 Deza—needed no more, his life-long ideals were on the eve of consum¬ 
 mation. He immediately despatched a sworn courier to the Elector 
 Joachim, who was absent at the time, but who, on learning the meaning 
 of the accusation levelled against the Jews, ordered the instant arrest of a 
 large number. These were chained like galley slaves and led through 
 the streets to be reviled by the mob. The triumphal march over, the 
 prisoners, who were not informed of the charge laid against them, were 
 led to prison without trial. Joachim ordered thirty to be racked; 
 after they had been relentlessly stretched upon the terrible frame, he 
 offered them an easier and less painful end, if they would but abjure 
 their religion. He solemnly conjured them to save their own bodies, 
 assuring them that his decision to burn them, should they remain 
 obstinate, was inexorable. Two of the prisoners spared themselves 
 the horrible death to which they had been sentenced by dying with a 
 lie on their lips, but the remainder disdained to purchase their lives 
 by the degradation of their national honour ; they firmly refused to 
 prostitute their ancestry and on July 19 (Tammuz 6th), 1510, were 
 bound to the stakes erected in the public square and surrounded by 
 thousands of heartless spectators, who eagerly scanned the faces of the 
 firm and unmoved Jews, vainly seeking some token of trepidation and 
 impatiently awaiting the first throe of agony ; but a few moments and 
 the closing scene of this brutal tragedy was enacted. Amid the lurid 
 flames, surrounded by the red angry swirl of the forked and glaring 
 fires, perished these men sweetly chanting Hebrew songs, as if going 
 to a bridal or some joyous festival. “ Answer us for the sake of those 
 who went through fire and water for the sake of Thy Name.” So 
 prays the Jew ! Who can impugn his claim to recite that prayer ? 
 Dearly has he purchased that right. Thirty martyrs in one day ! 
 Thirty Jews who sealed their confession of faith with their life’s 
 blood ! Thirty more links in the golden chain which binds not only 
 an acentric people into one cohering community, but a glorious past 
 with a glorious future. It is not without cause, 0 Israel ! that thou 
 pointest to thy sons whose life’s blood was freely given for thy prestige. 
 Alas that thou didst need their lives to testify to thy honour ; could 
 not their pure unsullied lives, their untarnished fame, their unsmirched 
 character have all proclaimed thy fame, their immutable fidelity and 
 constancy thy mission ? But in a record of blood and a story of tears 
 what is to be found other than a plethoric roll of Martyrs ? 
 
 In February 1542 new misfortunes befell the Bavarian Jews. In 
 the town of Eischstadt, a Christian had suddenly disappeared ; no 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 clue was discoverable excepting the foolish one that his blood was 
 doubtless required by the Jews,” who were unable to ordain their 
 Rabbis without Christian blood. The offshoot of this declaration was 
 that the Bishop of the diocese, in which Eischstadt lay, ordered the 
 immediate imprisonment of every Jew in the district under his tyran¬ 
 nical sway. This being accomplished he sent a pastoral to the rulers 
 and ecclesiastics of the adjacent provinces, earnestly exhorting them 
 to take emulous cognizance of his step, but he had over-estimated his 
 strength. His arbitrary action evoked a shoal of pamphlets, many of 
 which demonstrated with admirable lucidity the malicious motives and 
 absolute disregard of truth and plausibility the anti-Jewish party 
 evinced. Against these the Protestant clergy of the country directed 
 a huge fusilade of vituperation fiercely accusing the Jews of every vice 
 and defect known to mankind. Such acrimony attended the inter¬ 
 change of these antithetical dicta, that the leading spirit of the 
 Reformation, “ Martin Luther himself, found it necessary to define 
 his attitude towards the Jewish question. This he did by publishing 
 a book, or rather a tissue of the most arrant and palpable falsehoods 
 and perversions, which was characterized as much by a lack of all 
 human instincts, as the author’s reprehensible ignorance of the subject 
 on which he presumed to deliver himself in such an authoritative way. 
 The treatise “On the Jews and their Lies,” a Pugio Fidei Redivivus, 
 was written with such intense and undisguised ferocity, that it sounds 
 more like a vigorous and general invitation to Christendom to repeat 
 the frightful Jew massacres of 1096 and 1147 than a polemical work. 1 
 There was but one way to remedy the crying abuses of Christianity—a 
 creed which then took self-aggrandizement and intrigue as the policy of 
 its propagators. This was to destroy every synagogue in Germany, a 
 deed which would redound to the credit of that country; no Jew was to 
 pray, no Rabbi to preach, no Teacher to instruct. All the wealth of the 
 Jews, so ran Luther’s truculent programme, was to be confiscated and 
 
 <y * ln Church of Christ ” strongly defends Luther against the 
 
 attacks of the Romanist writers and is rather inclined to gloss over his faults ; 
 but he says of Luther’s standpoint towards the Jews (Yol. I. page 510), “He 
 treated them kindly till he found them obstinate and argumentative and then 
 he wrote with some severity against the Jews and their falsehoods. He thinks 
 it useless to discuss the Christian mysteries with them ; their prejudice and 
 hardness are so great. He would rather employ arguments against them drawn 
 u ciicumstances during fifteen hundred years past, which were such as 
 
 had been predicted by Jesus Christ and evidently showed the auger of God 
 resting upon them. Nothing was to be expected from them till softened by 
 their calamities ; they should listen to the proofs that the Messiah was come. 
 He is ready to sanction, not only stopping their revilings of Christ and his 
 religion, but even depriving them of their books, pulling down their synagogues 
 and compelling them either to labour for their substance or quit the country.” 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 131 
 
 applied to pious uses, e.g., the support of baptized members of the 
 Hebrew race. Those who were pagan enough to refuse the means of 
 grace were to be treated without mercy, they were to be ostracised 
 from society, of which they were the foremost and earliest Constructors, 
 and driven like lepers into barns and stables, there to be debarred all 
 communication with Christians, whom they vitiated by their very 
 speech. This formidable array of suggestions on how to best oppress 
 them by no means exhausted Luther’s list ; he went on to advise that 
 no Jew should be allowed to travel, but was to be attached to the soil. 
 They were to assist the peasants in the field, they were to plough and 
 reap. Their wives might disport themselves by spinning wool for the 
 clothing of good Christians, but to pray to the God of Israel was a 
 capital offence worthy of death. This was of course only what he 
 recommended to prevent the decrepitude of Society. “ The Jews 
 revile the Sacrament; blaspheme Christ, the Apostles and all religion, 
 they stab and crucify Christian children.” In this furious strain he 
 superaddcd to all those antiquated fables with which the Christians of 
 300 years ago were wont to condone the persecution of the Jews. Had 
 Luther possessed the power of a Torquemada or a Valdez, not one Jew 
 in Germany but would have been either forced into the acceptance of 
 Christianity or burnt at the stake ; fortunately his voluble tirades 
 against them fell unheeded upon the ears of the sovereigns who 
 espoused the Lutheran tenets. They regarded his diatribes against 
 his hated foes as vapid abuse, but in the plastic minds of the people 
 he succeeded in implanting the bitterest antipathy to all things Jewish. 
 “ Know, dear Christian,” said he, “ that after the devil thou hast no 
 bitterer foe than the Jew, who is intent upon being a Jew.” Yet this 
 man with his mind steeped in the blindest prejudices and seeking to 
 impregnate mankind with that prejudice was the founder of a Church 
 destined to be as vast as that of Rome herself. Hatred, the most 
 intense, cavilling, the most despicable, are words that best denote the 
 tenor of Luther’s attitude towards a hounded people, whom he, as a 
 champion of religion and the abjugation of priestly domination, should 
 have been the first to defend. Against the flagrant vices of Popery 
 and Catholicism, he freely aimed the poison barbed arrows secreted 
 
 (1.) £ “ The labouring serfs who gave their vote were not much inferior in 
 
 education oi refinement to the ordained serfs, who canvassed for their favour. 
 Abbacies, priories, bishoprics, parochial incumbencies, and all cathedral dignities 
 were held by a body distinct from the feudal gentry. If some stop had not 
 been put to the aggressions of the priesthood, all the lands in Christendom 
 would have been absorbed by its insatiable greed, all the offices of the State 
 would have been conveyed to sacerdotal holders, all Kings would have been 
 nominated by the clerical voice alone, and freedom and progress would never 
 have had their birth.” Dr. White, page 220. 
 
132 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 in his never depleted quiver ; yet against the inhuman hatred of a 
 homeless race, against the Canons and restrictions which denied to a 
 scattered people the rights of mere existence, he never raised his voice. 
 The sufferings of millions of persecuted people was no fitting theme for 
 his fervid eloquence ; dogmatic quiddities and quibbles were greater 
 fields of distinction. Compared with doctrinal issues the liberty of 
 the kinsmen of the prophets and apostles was a mere bagatelle. But 
 his voice was raised on the Jewish question, to render their lot more 
 insufferable, to ripen contempt into hatred, satire into violence, enmity 
 into fanatical ebullition ; for these and towards these ends he wielded 
 his ponderous influence. 
 
 In 1595 a Jewish physician, who held a court appointment, was 
 charged with having wilfully poisoned his master, the Elector Joachim. 
 This was purely a reprehensible subterfuge by the consummation of 
 which it was thought that the wholesale banishment of the Jews from 
 Berlin would appear warrantable. There was not the slightest iota of 
 evidence to establish the accusation. Lippold was therefore tortured 
 to admit the veracity of this accusation which he had so firmly denied. 
 In his agony the words desired to incriminate him were forced from 
 his lips. The expulsion of all the Jews in Brandenburg was the out¬ 
 come of a lie dragged from a tortured man. Brunswick, adopting a 
 similar ruse, expelled its Hebrew subjects in the same year. The 
 banishment of Jews from German States, provinces and cities is of 
 such amazing frequency throughout this century that it is impossible 
 in a small work to refer to more than a fraction of them. 
 
 A hundred years rolled over the heads of the German Jews, but 
 their lot was as bad as ever, and their history continued to be a list of 
 men and women oppressed and despised, tortured and slain. The gnome 
 of Christian hatred and the grinning ghoul of religious bigotry each 
 reared itself aloft, and with their eldritch shrieks froze the poor 
 Hebrew s blood within him. It would have been anomalistic for a 
 Jew to cross a street without being pelted or hooted after. Frankfort 
 and Ratisbon, two pioneers in persecution, two veteran afflicters of 
 the Jews, formulated a long series of laws which almost defined to 
 what extent Jews were human beings and to what extent wild beasts. 
 
 A Jew was not to speak loudly for two reasons, firstly it would be the 
 arrogation of a privilege, which was not granted to infidels, secondly 
 it might disturb the ruminations of Christians. Jews must not emerge 
 from their congested streets unless they can assign a satisfactory reason; 
 after nightfall they could not appear abroad under any circumstances. 
 In the public places which they were allowed to frequent they were to 
 deport themselves with the greatest solemnity, two must on no account 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 133 
 
 walk together. They must not talk whilst in the neighbourhood of 
 the Town Hall or a Church, Laws were passed for nearly every word, 
 movement and gesture of the Frankfort Jews; 1 what time they were 
 to retire, on what days and on what hours they might buy food, what 
 clothing they should wear. In fine were Mazas, Sing Sing, Newgate 
 and Pentonville to be closed and the indwelling criminals released 
 upon ticket of leave, no more hideous or degrading conditions could 
 be imposed upon them. The continuous and legally instituted per¬ 
 secution of the Jews in Frankfort again culminated in a general out¬ 
 cry and uprising against them. Although the Burgomaster only 
 possessed the power to expel any single family at will, without assigning 
 any other cause than the gratification of his personal caprice, many 
 influential citizens all members of the several corporate trades, 
 petitioned him for the early expulsion of every Jew in the city. Their 
 machinations for the attainment of this end were thwarted by the 
 Jews producing Royal charters, granted them, for a consideration, by 
 various sovereigns, but the zeal of 1348 imbued the lower orders. 
 Every starved and worthless loafer, every ragged vagabond took up 
 arms, and at a clandestine meeting appointed a certain “ Vincent 
 Fettmilch,” a confirmed fanatic, as leader of the cause. The arrange¬ 
 ments for a regular attack upon the Jewish quarter had been conducted 
 with such secrecy that the Jews had no knowledge of the gathering 
 cloud upon their gloomy horizon, that was to burst over their heads. 
 The preparations of the infuriate Frankfort pastry cook’s plans had 
 not sounded one warning note. 
 
 Ellul 27th, (September 12th), 1614, was the day appointed for their 
 execution. It was the Sabbath. Attired in their best, they proudly 
 assembled to read their Torah, to forget for a moment their bitter 
 tribulation, to commune with their prophets and men of God. Though 
 each present had drunk deeply from the cup of sorrow, though each 
 knew what adversity was, they triumphantly read the records of their 
 past glory. Joy was depicted on every face, as with strained ear and 
 bated breath, they eagerly caught every accent of the Chazan (pre¬ 
 centor). It was truly a noble assembly, each heart throbbed for all, 
 all hearts throbbed for one. Suddenly they were perturbed by the 
 most uproarious thundering at the door of the Synagogue, the hoarse 
 vociferations, the oaths, the missiles which poured into the sacred 
 edifice, all told them that the ghetto had been raided. On all sides 
 fierce and unbending forces met them. The more stalwart Jews 
 quickly armed themselves and determined to sell their lives only after 
 a bitter resistance, but their assailants, who outnumbered them by at 
 
 (1.) The Frankfort Ghetto consisted of 190 houses in a street 12 feet wide ; 
 this had to accommodate 10,000 people. 
 
134 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 least ten to one, soon had the Jews at their mercy and cruelly butchered 
 them. Many who were unable to secrete themselves were slaughtered 
 in cold blood, their houses robbed and destroyed, their sacred buildings 
 razed to the ground, their Scrolls of the Law torn into fragments. All 
 that night carnage and savagery continued until the next morning, when 
 the murderers weary of their work ceased massacring. The mangled 
 bodies, which had been stripped naked, the charred forms of the poor 
 Hebrews did not attract any attention. The local authorities posted 
 up a public notice 1 absolving the mob from all blame. The Jews who 
 survived the fearful onslaught considered themselves fortunate to be 
 allowed to leave Frankfort penniless, and, though Fettmilch, who 
 proudly styled himself Hainan II, had instructed his followers to place 
 every obstacle in their way, with their lives. The more liberal Town 
 Council at Worms beheld with genuine regret the great popularity of 
 one Dr. Chemnitz, who had gradually acquired sufficient influence to 
 defy, and even usurp, their authority. His programme which advoc¬ 
 ated the persecution and expulsion of the local community was the 
 prime cause of his eminence. He initiated his anti-Semitic campaign 
 by harassing the race he detested. Compelling the Trade Guilds to 
 give compliance to his instructions, he prohibited their members from 
 employing or serving members of the Jewish faith. He prevented the 
 milkmen from selling milk for the use of Jewish children. Every 
 action that could possibly tend to injure the Jews was unhesitatingly 
 resorted to. He, at last, assembled all who sided with his views in the 
 market square and there harangued them. The result was that the 
 Jews were ordered to quit the city within one hour. Knowing that 
 protest would only tend to further incense their foes, they on April 
 20th (22nd., • Nisan), sorrowfully left their homes. Their noble 
 
 synagogue building that had stood for a thousand years was hastily 
 demolished, the cemetery desecrated and the tombs destroyed. So 
 great had been the disorders in the two cities of Frankfort and Worms 
 that ten days after the expulsion of the Jews from the latter city, the 
 Elector Frederick Louis led an armed force into it to prevent any 
 t lei nsim,. Nine months later they were readmitted to both these 
 cities and Fettmilch hanged, thus meriting in more than one sense the 
 agnomen he claimed. In Frankfort the old regulations concerning 
 the Jews were rescinded and a fresh code drafted. They were more 
 minute and in many portions much worse than those they superseded. 
 Only a stipulated number were allowed to reside in the city and not 
 more than twelve couples might marry in the year. 
 
 (1.) A notice was placed on a certain bridge in the city stating that Jews 
 and dogs were not to cross it. Napoleon indignantly demanded its removal 
 the mstant he saw it. 
 
I 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 135 
 
 In 1630 the Emperor issued a decree directing the compulsion of 
 the Jews to attend sermons in which the superiority of Christianity 
 was to be pointed out to them. Any Jew absenting himself from 
 Church to escape the weekly sermon was to be fined. This sovereign 
 interested himself very much in the schemes of the clergy for their 
 conversion, but the methods he employed do not argue very eloquently 
 in favour of his mildness. Yet when the folly of his cause was pointed 
 out to him by the State Councillors he revoked his tyrannical enact¬ 
 ment much to the delight of the Jews, who invariably fell asleep in 
 their pews ; so we see that this svstem of forcing religion down their 
 throats so strongly inculcated by Gregory XIII failed, for once at least, 
 to effect its purpose. 
 
 January 15th, 1670, saw a revival of the long dormant charge of 
 crucifying Christian children with the intention of using their blood 
 in the Passover service. The only evidence was that a Christian child 
 had disappeared. There wanted three full months to the Passover, 
 yet the calumniators ignoring this, assiduously proclaimed that a 
 Hebrew pedlar, Raphael Levi, had murdered the child at the instiga¬ 
 tion of the Metz community of Jews. This congregation was so highly 
 esteemed for the moral worth and upright lives of its members, that 
 King Louis XIV had held it up as a model for the emulation of the 
 citizens. Several baptized renegades came forward and supported the 
 accusers and averred that Levi was guilty. They furthermore asserted 
 that to celebrate a Passover or ordain a Rabbi without Chriftian blood 
 was in direct contrariety to the provisions of the Talmud. Poor Levi 
 was racked to admit his guilt, in vain he protested his innocence, his 
 touching entreaties to be confronted with witnesses of the alleged 
 
 • • o 
 
 crime, his logical disproofs of the foul allegations were alike disregarded, 
 he was sentenced by the Parliament of Metz (the city possessed its own 
 jurisdiction) to be racked till he expired in agony. The martyr main¬ 
 tained his innocence to the last; the community made strenuous efforts 
 to exculpate him from the charge, but Raphael had fallen into the 
 hands of those to whom justice was no creed. Alas ! what folly-! they 
 were attempting to drag an unblemished lamb from the pen over which 
 hovered hungry eagles, who were waiting to swoop down upon it. At 
 a later period the congregation of Metz had a yearly tax of twenty 
 thousand livres to pay. Their number was not to exceed five hundred 
 families and they laboured under many disgusting restrictions. In 
 
 Strasburg for over four hundred years no Jew dare appear in the streets 
 
 after nigh-tfall, 
 
 nor dare one of another town remain 
 
 over night. 
 
 Throughout the province of Alsace they were trampled under foot. 
 The resident Jews dared not absent themselves from this hell without 
 
136 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 permission which had to be bought. The very cattle they killed were 
 , nofc fc0 exceed a certain number. “ Besides poll taxes, trade taxes, 
 house taxes, contributions to churches and hospitals, war taxes and 
 exactions of every sort under any other name, they were obliged to pay 
 protection money to the King, for protection they did not receive, 
 tribute to the Bishop of Strasburg and to the Duke of Hagenau, besides 
 lesidence taxes to the nobles in whose feudal territory they dwelt.” 1 
 “ Tlie Privilege of residence did not descend to the eldest son, but had 
 to be purchased from the noblemen, as if the son were a foreign 
 applicant for protection. They had to win the good opinion not alone 
 of the Lord, but also of his officers by rich gifts on New Year and on 
 othei occasions, whence could they procure all these moneys and still 
 support their synagogues and schools ? ” 2 
 
 Many professional blackmailers studied Jewish literature for years 
 with the intention of harassing its votaries and extorting money from 
 them under threat of publishing sophistical perversions of the Talmud. 
 The clergy wrote out false receipts for the benefit of Christian debtors 
 to the Jews, and these being entrusted to accredited persons were 
 given to those desirous of swindling the Jews. Feeling against them 
 was so intense that representations were made to the King begging 
 him to expel them. A Magistrate, who by a singular verity of nomen¬ 
 clature was named M. Hell, appears to have been the prime instigator 
 of the application. He slandered the Jews with such militant zeal, 
 that to prevent a general massacre of those whom he attacked, it was 
 necessary to imprison him. He had published a book calling upon 
 Olnistendom to extirpate the Jews for the crime of murdering God. 
 
 In the whole of Alsace, indeed in all the German departments of the 
 Upper and Lower Rhine, the people were so embittered against the 
 Jews that a general massacre and scenes such as were witnessed in the 
 Middle Ages might ensue. In taprooms the question of slaughterino- 
 them was often discussed.” 3 
 
 A petition presented in 1787 on the accession of Frederick William 
 II throws a light upon the position of his Jewish subjects in a century 
 when culture was making rapid progress and when the rights of 
 freedom and the outraged liberties of men were being gradually 
 recognized. It contained a full list of the many cruel taxes to which 
 they weie subjected. Ihey were compelled to purchase the commonest 
 and most damaged porcelain for the highest prices from the State 
 factories and this was derisively known as “ Jew ” porcelain ; they 
 
 (1.) Graetz, Vol. V, p. 369. 
 
 (2.) Ibid. * 
 
 (3.) Ibid. 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 137 
 
 were compelled to pa}" heavy contributions to the Royal merchants by 
 giving vast sums for the maintenance of their works ; of benefits 
 they received none. A petition presented in 1801 shows that their 
 sufferings had not been minimized. 1802 and 1803 saw a material 
 improvement in their condition, owing to the presentation of a 
 succession of petitions and the humanising influences of several broad¬ 
 minded writers. The hideous and degrading poll tax, 1 by the operation 
 of which the Jews, like dumb cattle, had to pay a certain amount 
 when journeying, even in a neighbouring village, was in several 
 provinces totally expunged from the statute book. In fact so many 
 enlightened princes began to question the justice of hounding their 
 subjects for no other reason than their opinions, that their traducers 
 were struck with dismay. “ What will be the result,” they asked, 
 “ if the Jew is placed on the same level as the Christian P He will soon 
 oust him from every sphere of life.” They were more contented with 
 Frederick William III, who decreed that no Jews were to receive 
 honourable or responsible posts. The main plan was to vivify all the 
 vile slander of the Middle Ages in pamphlet form, they refurbished the 
 old libels and inundated Germany with them. One corybantic writer 
 asks, “What were the most wealthy Jews or their fathers twenty or 
 thirty years ago ? ” Hawkers who crawled about the streets in ragged 
 clothes annoying the passers-by with importuning them to buy some 
 yards of Potsdam hair or ribands, or rustics who, under the pretext of 
 
 trading, stole into Christian dwellings and often did damage to the 
 
 ► 
 
 contents thereof.” The course of treatment prescribed is atavistic to 
 an alarming degree. “ Not only must the Jews again be enclosed in 
 a ghetto and be placed under a continual police supervision, not only 
 should they be compelled to have a spot of noticeable colour upon the 
 sleeves of their coats, but in order to prevent their increase the second 
 male child of each Jew should be castrated.” But these litterateurs 
 lived a little too late ; their programme was out of date. How crest¬ 
 fallen they were when one State after another emancipated its Jewish 
 inhabitants, how chagrined when Frankfort, which had obstinately 
 
 (1.) The most disgraceful degradation and humiliation of the Jews consisted 
 in the Poll Tax, an impost known in countries outside Germany. It existed 
 principally in Central and West Germany in the districts of the Maine and the 
 Rhine, where diminutive States bordered close on other diminutive States of 
 the extent of a square mile and where turnpike after turnpike at short intervals 
 presented themselves. Tf a Jew took a journey for one day he would pass 
 through different ferritories and at the border of each would have to pay a poll 
 tax. A Jewish beggar accompanied by his young son once exhibited his poll 
 tax bill, which amounted to half a florin for six days’ travelling, the sums 
 which he had had to pay in various places. Very often the tax amounted to a 
 few Kreutzers which only the poor, who were not exempt from it, felt as a 
 burden and. they even had to surrender to the public office the farthings 
 obtained by begging. Graetz, Vol. V. page 493. 
 
GERMANY. 
 
 138 
 
 struggled to maintain the old regime, was so straitened for money 
 that it was compelled to sell to the Jews the rights of religious and 
 civil liberty. As each year passed some petty princeling, some noble 
 mitigated in his dominions the severity with which “ his ” Jews had 
 been treated ; every month saw some barbarous custom relegated to 
 the limbo of history. In many towns the old bigotry remained ; in 
 
 Strasburg for instance, where the citizens complained to Napoleon of 
 the liberties of the Jews. 
 
 In 1811 Hamburg and the remaining “ Hanse Towns,” in 1812 
 Mecklenburg, and shortly after Prussia, released the Jews from the 
 serfdom under which they had for so many centuries groaned. Bigoted 
 Saxony became the cynosure of the remaining States, nothing could 
 induce her to emancipate her Jews. < Their position was quite intoler¬ 
 able, their residence, marriage, travelling, praying, in fact every action 
 was ancillary to a code of laws subversive of all humanity. She alone 
 resisted the abrogation of the debasing poll tax, when almost all other 
 provinces had conceded it. The troubles of the Jews had not yet 
 ceased, the ever recurrent outbursts of fanatical hatred had still to 
 cause havoc. Shortly after the liberation of their Jews, many towns 
 revoked the rights of citizenship so recently conferred. The voice of 
 Frankfort, the seat of Jewish persecution, rang throughout Germany 
 Its shrill weird voice rose like a note from a hideous phantom aud 
 awoke the Jews, who were so jubilant over their newly attained 
 freedom, from their visions of peace. The flame-belching dragon of 
 Jew hatred had been mortally wounded, but when he fell he was inert 
 not dead, he yet could emit many ear-splitting shrieks, he yet could 
 All his adversaries with tremor, rise again he could not, his blood was 
 flowing fast, though he had not succumbed. The Leviathan would 
 spend his last breath in a horrible roar, that roar the Hep » Hep » 
 persecution we shall shortly refer to. 1 * 
 
 In 1815 Lubeck and Bremen emancipated the resident Jews • 
 they had been two of the last and tardiest to do this and now thev 
 bitterly regretted it. They had partially amended the fallacious deed 
 by withdrawing the rights granted. shortly after the promulgation. 
 
 A Ug ’ L1St 1 1819 ’ alld fclle few foIlowin g days witnessed the familiar 
 spec acle of an attack upon the Jewish quarters of Bambur<>- 
 
 Wurzburg, Meimger and several other towns ; students, tradesmen’ 
 loafers, members of the various guilds, in short a heterogeneous crowd 
 fei upon the Jews and molested them, looted their shops and ransacked 
 and demolished their houses. The Jews took up arms to defend 
 tflernselves and many were seriously wounded and several killed on 
 bo h sides. So grave had been the outburst at Wurzburg that, had it 
 not been for the timely intervention of the soldiery, not one Jew would 
 
139 
 
 THE JEWS. 
 
 have survived it, as it was the urgent representations of the citizens 
 ended in the expulsion of the entire community. Within a week from 
 the Wurzburg disaster the rabble of Frankfort, where hatred of the 
 Jews was indigenous, fell upon those parts of the city almost exclus¬ 
 ively peopled by them and wrought much mischief. “ Hep ! Hep ! ” 
 the rallying word, the bugle note of this persecution heralded the 
 pillage and maltreatment of the Jews. Contingents of troops had to 
 be drafted into the riotous town before the storm, so long brewing, 
 subsided. How little the soldiers repelled the onslaughts of the mob, 
 or rather, how far they gave them overt encouragement is witnessed 
 by the fact that during an anti-Jewish riot in Heidelberg, the city 
 guard prompted by its Governor passively witnessed the scenes 
 presented for their delectation. In Darmstadt and Bayreuth fierce 
 attacks were made upon the Jewish residents. In Diisseldorf ominous 
 marks were found upon the doors of the Jewish houses, accompanied 
 by threatening and denunciatory notes pinned to them, which greatly 
 terrified the Jews, “ Death ! Destruction to the Jews.” “ The Jew 
 shall die like a dog,” and similar exclamations were inscribed upon 
 them. In Carlsruhe this was particularly frequent. “In the territory 
 of Baden,” says an authority, “the hatred was so intense that no Jew 
 dared to appear in the streets, until an armed force appeared. 
 Patrols swept through the, whole province of Baden and every small 
 town and village was made responsible for the attacks of certain of 
 their members upon the Jews, therefore its fever gradually subsided. 
 Even yet to occasionally storm the Jewish quarter, to invade a 
 synagogue and tear the scroll of the Law to shreds was not sufficient 
 to satiate the ineradicable desire to ill-treat the Jews. Whilst the 
 specific policy of the fourteenth century was to kill them outright, 
 that of the earlier portion of the nineteenth was to demoralise them 
 by means of odious restrictions and untruthful aspersions. The 
 prevalence of anti-Jewish literature alone sufficed to achieve that end. 
 Our chief authority cites a passage from the book, “ Mirror of the 
 Jews,” which says. “ Let the children of Israel be sold to the English, 
 who could employ them in their Indian plantations instead of the 
 blacks. In order that they may not increase the men should be 
 emasculated and their wives and daughters lodged in houses of shame. 
 
 The best plan would be to purge the land entirely of this vermin by 
 exterminating them as did Pharaoh (so much for the historical 
 knowledge of Hartwig Hundt and the people of Meiniger, Wurzburg 
 and Frankfort) by driving them from the country.” 
 
 In 1840 the Damascus charge of “ritual murder” against the Jews 
 reached Rhenish Prussia, for in the town of Julich, a little girl had 
 besmeared herself with blood and following the instructions of her 
 
140 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 prompters boldly accused a Jew and his wife of attempting to murder 
 her. She added that she had witnessed the murder of an old man 
 whose blood they quickly cupped. As this event took place in 
 dangerous contiguity to Passover, a thorough and searching enquiry 
 was instituted with the result that the girl finally confessed under a 
 severe cross-examination that the statement was a gross calumny, 
 planned by some persons who had paid her to make the lying charge. 
 The girl and her prompters were adequately punished. How different 
 would have been the result if in place of an intelligent and unbiassed 
 trial the accused had been placed upon the rack and tortured to confess 
 their guilt ? Here we will end the outline of the sufferings of our 
 brethren, though their sufferings in Germany have by no means ceased. 
 What with the recent Buschoff ” case and the heartless expulsions 
 from Konigsberg and Memel, they seem ever recrudescent. 
 
 Of the present position of the Jews in Germany it is difficult to 
 speak. The purling stream of liberty has done much but has still 
 much to effect in that country. The Jews there seem in a stage of 
 constant transition. Anti-Semitism is a force still to be reckoned 
 with ; its presence has been anything but nugatory ; its particular 
 system is to attribute every evil to the Jews. “ It is,” says Mr. 
 Joseph Jacobs in his valuable Jewish Year Book, “ a curious combination 
 of intolerance, envy and Chauvinism.” Its leaders should be the 
 most powerful argument against it. At the puny efforts of our German 
 detractors we laugh. The mighty Empires of the ancient world have 
 attempted to sweep us out. Popes, Emperors, Sultans, Caliphs, Kings, 
 all have sworn to wipe out the Jew. We see how they have succeeded. 
 Princes and generals with immense armies, with power, with influence, 
 all have failed. Shall we then fear the anti-Semites, a set of men of 
 whose private lives we are daily hearing more ? It is true that the 
 embroglio of Society affords a large scope for the machinations of these 
 scroyles and vilifiers, who have made of their bigotry a political factor, 
 but they have to contend with the adverse criticism of the culture of 
 Europe, which loudly condemns any approach to racial or religious 
 antipathies. 
 
 In this chapter we have not aimed at completion, we have but 
 been able to adumbrate the sufferings of the German Jews through 
 eight weary centuries. We have not spoken of the Massacre of Jews 
 at Erfurt, (1221), Frankfort (1241), Weissemburg (1270), of the 
 massacres of Xanten, where three hundred were murdered, Rosenheim, 
 Dessau, Mannheim and numerous other towns. We have not spoken of 
 one tithe of the outrages, false accusations, oppressive laws, cruel 
 expulsions and confiscations under which they groaned ! 
 
SWITZERLAND. 
 
 141 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Excesses practised upon the Swiss Jews in 1348 and 1349 
 on account of the Black Plague. 
 
 0 Hecates ! 0 Harpylae ! 
 
 What have my race e’er sinn’d ’gainst ye ? 
 
 f HE most beautiful casket oft contains the deadliest poison ; the 
 most bejewelled robe oft covers the most corrupt heart. The 
 history of Switzerland, a country that seemed to breathe peace and 
 freedom, calls this apothegm to mind. Beneath her beautiful 
 scenery, how have the innocent suffered ! every beautiful vale and 
 glade has mutely witnessed the shedding of guiltless blood, every 
 romantic crag, every lofty peak in that picturesque land of poetry has 
 heard the shriek, every one of her lovely woodlands, every magnificent 
 landscape has been the grave of some martyr. The tourist crosses the 
 Alps and is struck dumb with surprise at the inapproachable beauty of 
 the wild and rugged scenery ; yet does he know that it is but the 
 merciful lapse of the centuries that prevents him from hearing the 
 surging multitudes leading noble men to their unmerited death ? In 
 its place he sees the lovely rose or hears the musical sighing of the 
 winds. 
 
 Of doubly grave importance is the history of the persecution of the 
 Swiss Jews, for from that country it went forth to the peoples of 
 Europe that they had admitted (it was not stated under torture), that 
 their religion distinctly inculcated well poisoning, child crucifixion 
 and the several charges, which in the dreadful year 1348 caused the 
 wholesale massacres of the French, German, Spanish, Belgian, and 
 Italian Jews, as primordial tenets of Judaism. 
 
 Directly the charge of poisoning the wells and hastening the 
 approach of the Black Plague had been promulgated, Amadeus, Duke 
 of Savoy, imprisoned a number of Jews resident in Chillon and Chatel. 
 In order to extort a confession of guilt (or at least complicity), three 
 Jews and a Jewess were racked. They became most prolix in their 
 
142 
 
 FALSE CHARGES. 
 
 statements, owing to the intense and excruciating agony they had 
 endured, and admitted having perpetrated crimes, which, were the 
 subject not so dolorous, would most certainly create ridicule. What¬ 
 ever they were asked they affirmed and even supplemented the 
 statements of their interrogators, fearing that if they did not invent 
 fables the tortures would be repeated. Their fears were well founded, 
 for a week later the youngest Jew and his captive mother were again 
 placed on the rack. They admitted having poisoned numerous wells 
 in Italy and Spain, though it was well known to the commission of 
 judges, that neither of them had ever crossed the confines of 
 Switzerland ; yet all the prisoners were as a result of these lying 
 confessions burnt alive at the stake by order of the Duke, who 
 personally superintended the massacre. The Savoyard Jews were 
 treated in the same way, meeting martyr’s death almost to a man. 
 Throughout Switzerland they were legally sentenced to be burnt to 
 death. In many towns the inhabitants before binding their Jews to 
 the stake tortured them to make them confess the committal of some 
 imaginary crime, which existed only in the minds of the maddened 
 interrogators. At Chastelard, Zafingen and Berne, all confessed what- 
 ever was suggested to them and on these admissions, extorted by the 
 rack and the blazing fire, it went forth that the Jews were self accused 
 well-poisoners. At Berne a Jew was heavily loaded with chains and 
 sent under a strong guard from town to town, it being everywhere 
 officially proclaimed that both he and his co-religionists had caused 
 the plague by which all Europe was convulsed. This was done to 
 incite the towns through which the convoy passed to massacre them. 
 Zurich burnt its Jews en masse, firmly believing in their complicity in 
 the acceleration of the Black Plague. Tribourg drowned the entire 
 community after binding them in pairs. During the same month 
 (September, 1348), the Town Council of Constance sentenced the Jews 
 under its jurisdiction to be broken on the wheel limb by limb, assigning 
 as a general reason the great number of their wicke’d deeds. The 
 method of slaughtering upon the wheel is to smash the hands and 
 arms, thighs, legs and feet upon the especially erected wheel, round 
 which the victims were strapped, with a ponderous iron bar wielded 
 by a brawny executioner. In mercy for the sufferers a blow on the 
 chest {coup de grace), which immediately kills, is given. At Schaffhausen 
 the whole Jewish population, rich and poor, high and low, were 
 roughly seized by order of the municipal authorities and after being 
 bound to a number of stakes erected in the public square, fagots were 
 piled around them and they were roasted alive. A similar doom befel 
 the Hebrew congregation of St. Galien, the entire body falling as 
 
SWITZERLAND. 
 
 143 
 
 martyrs. At Lindau and Uberlingen the very children were burnt 
 together with their parents. At Basle was enacted the darkest tragedy 
 of all. The entire congregation of Jews numbering many hundreds 
 were compelled to enter a colossal wickerwork cage into which were 
 cast all their communal and personal belongings ; and the order being- 
 given and the torches applied, the whole was soon a heap of ashes— 
 so much for the religion of love and humanity. Throughout 
 Switzerland, the Savoy, and the Geneva districts, the Jews were either 
 burnt or broken on the wheel. A few contrived to elude the watchers 
 and fly to the caverns among the hills, where they fed on roots and 
 barks until they died in delirium from thirst and exposure. 
 
 After the frightful holocaust of Basle Jan. 9th, 1349, the local 
 authorities contented themselves with exiling a few of the most 
 prominent ringleaders of the massacre, but the inhabitants of the 
 town indignantly insisted upon their recall. The demand was conceded. 
 The Council of Basle which re-modelled and re-enforced the canonical 
 provisions against the Jews (September 1434) had good cause to select 
 this notorious town for the seat of its bigoted deliberations. 
 
 It would seem as the very irony of fate that the Congress should 
 have assembled in Basle, says the Jewish Chronicle of September 3rd, 
 in its able article on the Zionist Congress, “ for is not,” it continues, 
 “ Basle in Switzerland and did not anti-Semitism break out in a very 
 pronounced form a few years ago, when through persistent agitation 
 Shechita (ritual slaughtering) was prohibited in this country. ? ” So 
 we see that hatred of the Jews still lurks in Switzerland. 
 
144 
 
 OUTRAGE UPON JEWS. 
 
 XX xx A Xx A Xx XX A A Xx XX XX A Xx XX A Xx Xx XX Xx A Xx 
 
 XX XX XX XXXX X/ XX X/ XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX 
 aAAaaaaaAaaAaaaaaaaaAAa 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Some Incidents in the History of the Belgian Jews. 
 
 I see them yonder of their eyes bereft, 
 
 And there their mangled limbs in twain are cleft; 
 Beneath the winepress are their bodies drawn, 
 
 Crushed, drowned, or with harsh sallies asunder sawn. 
 
 Eleazer , in his li Elegy on Zion." 
 
 f UR indictment of this country is, as our last chapter, very short, 
 but its brevity does not minimize the terrible excesses that are 
 vouched for by many historians of unimpeachable authenticity. 
 Had the period of Jewish residence there been a longer one or the 
 communities of Jews larger and more numerous, there is not the 
 slightest doubt, but that Belgium and Switzerland also, would have 
 had more of the terrible Middle Age massacres of Hebrews to stain 
 by no means bloodless chronicles. 
 
 During the progress of the Black Plague, for the Active guilt of 
 effecting which so many communities throughout Germany, France, 
 Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries of Europe were deleted from 
 existence, the Belgian Jews did not escape. The populace of Brussels 
 loudly asseverated their determination to avenge their sufferings upon 
 the Jews, whom they held directly responsible for the prepollency of 
 the ravaging scourge. Several influential Jews who were in high 
 favour at Court had succeeded in averting the consummation of the 
 furious resolution seething in the minds of the people. They obtained 
 a mandate from John II, commanding that the Jews should be un¬ 
 molested, but his son the Prince Royal assured the leaders of the mob, 
 that his voice alone would amply suffice to shield them from his 
 father’s vengeance and he strongly urged them to slaughter the 
 Brussels Jews. The citizens were not remiss in availing themselves 
 of the laxity with which they had been assured their crime would be 
 treated. Following the course so strenuously advocated by their 
 youthful admonitor, they pounced upon the Hebrew quarter of the 
 
BELGIUM. 
 
 145 
 
 city and dragging the whole community of above five hundred members 
 into the most public streets, with unsheathed sword and uplifted axe, 
 the demoniac men gloated over the sufferings of their defenceless and 
 persecuted fellowmen, hacking them to pieces with their murderous 
 hands. The air was rent with the shrieks of wounded and the groans 
 of the dying ; so perished five hundred innocent human beings. 
 Some twenty years later (1370), the city of Brussels was the theatre 
 of more outrage. A Jew named Jonathan of Brussels—so the story 
 which all good Catholics are enjoined to believe with perfect faith and 
 without further inquiry runs—was commissioned by the Jews to 
 procure a Sacramental Wafer they, having determined to appease their 
 wrath against the Christians by insulting and then pounding it in a 
 mortar. He bribed John of Louvain, a very poor Catholic, to purloin 
 one from a contiguous church for the sum of sixty louis d’or. John 
 in pursuance of his undertaking stealthily crept into the Church of 
 St. Catherine and broke into the sacristv. He removed the “ Host ” 
 together with the pyx that contained it and gave them to Jonathan 
 the Jew. The chronicle which relates this villainous fabrication is 
 frequently interpolated by requests that the good Christian reader will 
 receive all related as truth, for “ Charity believeth all things ! in 
 Jonathan conveyed the inestimable treasure to the synagogue, where 
 the Jews of the city already apprised of the ceremony to be performed 
 had assembled. The pyx was solemnly opened and the Sacred Host 
 elevated, when it was profaned and blasphemed. It was then secreted 
 for their further delectation on the approaching Good Friday. On 
 that day the whole Jewish population of Brussels, men, women and 
 children, assembled in the synagogue to witness the awful desecration 
 of the sacrament about to take place. The Host was first stabbed by 
 the elder Jews, who used their knives, when lo ! blood poured freely 
 from the gashes inflicted, but the Jews remaining unmoved and 
 unaffected resolved to continue the dreadful deed, until at last becoming 
 weary they dispersed and returned to their homes. 
 
 Of the numerous German communities that made application for 
 the wounded host, Cologne was awarded the honour of becoming its 
 recipient. To a woman who enjoyed the unsuspecting confidence of 
 “the blasphemers ” was relegated the duty of conveying the wounded 
 but now convalescent divinity to that town. She had however unknown 
 to her co-religionists turned Catholic and during the night preceding 
 her intended departure, her hitherto inert conscience reproached her 
 so loudly for her complicity in the fearful transaction that, she 
 
 (1) See Milrnan in loco 1883 edition of “ History of the Jews.” 
 
 J 
 
146 
 
 OUTRAGE UPON JEWS. 
 
 immediately roused the Bishop of the diocese and acquainted him with 
 the whole affair. All the Jews discoverable were at once arrested and 
 as a preliminary cruelly tortured in punishment of their misdeed. 
 Then followed the trial, the part of the chief prothonotary being 
 played by the rack. Learning that they would remain bound on the 
 frame till they made plenary confession, the maddened victims repeated 
 the lying confession dictated to them by their judges, who were nearly all 
 ecclesiastics. The dreadful sentence was passed more quickly than the 
 evidence had been extorted. All the Jews in Brussels, large and small, 
 young and old, were to be seared with red hot irons, tom with fiery 
 pincers and then burned alive. The wounded Host, which no one 
 was allowed to see, was supposed to be contained in a sealed box. 
 This was for centuries borne through the town in a yearly procession 
 in which hundreds of priests, monks, friars, and high Church dig¬ 
 nitaries took part. Till within the memory of some of our readers 
 this shameful display was annually made, attended by all the pomp 
 and pageantry of a religious celebration. Dark rumours accused the 
 woman informant of having been no Jewess but a courtesan and an 
 unscrupulous liar, who was hired by the bishop—himself privy to the 
 transaction—to thus justify his outrage, by asserting her connection 
 with an affair which in all probability never occurred. “ The picture 
 of their sufferings as they writhed on the stake is exhibited with horrid 
 coolness or rather satisfaction in the book of the legend. And this 
 triumph of the faith supported—it is said—by many miracles is to the 
 present day 1 commemorated in one of the first Christian cities in 
 Europe.” 2 
 
 (1) This was written in 1829. 
 
 (2) Dean Milman, “ History of the Jews,” Yol. III. 
 
AUSTRIA. 
 
 147 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Persecution of the Austrian Jews. 
 
 Thy faithful sons whom thou in love hast owned, 
 
 Behold ! are strangled, burnt, and racked and stoned ; 
 Are broken on the wheel ; like felons hung, 
 
 Or living into noisome charnels flung. 
 
 Eleazer, in his “ Elegy on Zion." 
 
 ERE, as in Germany, it is with the Crusaders that the Jews 
 enter into the wide arena of suffering. To locate the various 
 cities and towns referred to has been in this and also in Chap¬ 
 ters II and III a question of some consideration to us, owing to the 
 difference of the political arrangements then existing to those now in 
 vogue. We have for instance referred to Alsace in the German chap¬ 
 ter ; our rule has been to adapt ourselves to the historical circumstances. 
 Under the above heading we shall also treat of Bohemia and Hungary. 
 
 The Crusaders after their awful slaughters of the German Jews 
 traversed Austria and Bohemia with pitiless cruelty, everywhere 
 signalizing their approach by the most horrid and wholesale outrages. 
 Numbers terriffied beyond all measure professed to have abjured Juda¬ 
 ism, others were dragged to the font and forcibly baptized. A few 
 influential prelates, courtiers and nobles, bitterly deprecated the terrible 
 deeds wrought under their very eyes, but they were powerless to stem 
 the overwhelming tide of blind fanaticism. 
 
 In 1098 a large number of Bohemian Jews, who had with the pike 
 at their breast accepted Christianity, availed themselves of the Emperor 
 Henry TV’s permission to discard the hypocrital cloak, the adoption of 
 which had saved their lives, but so furiously did Pope Clement III 
 declare his word to be void, that Wratislav considered himself safe in 
 plundering them of all their belongings and ignominously thrusting 
 them all out of the country. 
 
 In 1231 the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council were ratified at 
 
 Tours and many fiendish measures throughout Austria were the direct 
 outcome of the “Code.” Frederick I, Duke of Austria, treated his 
 Jewish subjects with great consideration, but his attitude towards 
 
148 
 
 PERSECUTION IN 
 
 them was regulated by state-craft rather than considerations of 
 humanity. At a later period Vienna set all Austria the example of 
 legally degrading the Jews. The Council of that city decreed that 
 they should all wear a high pointed horned cap in the shape of a cone, 
 in addition to the badge prescribed by the canonical statutes concern¬ 
 ing the Jews, (12G7.) In 1279 a Council at Ofen, consisting chiefly 
 of Hungarian delegates, approved of a long code of truculent laws 
 dealing with the Jews. “ No Jew,” it was ordained, “ was to hold a 
 post of public trust or honour.” Any noble or churchman employing 
 a Jew in the management of his affairs was to be severely reprimanded, 
 a Bishop or any high ecclesiastical functionary would be suspended 
 from the exercise of his clerical privileges. Failing to discharge the 
 Jew after this, he was to be expelled from the Church. This law, laid 
 down to provide for the several degrees of relationship between Church¬ 
 men and Jews with such finical exactitude, shows the dependency of 
 the former in all monetary matters upon the skill and adeptness of 
 their Hebrew servants. A Noble or any private person would not be 
 admitted to Holy Communion, if he held commerce with Israelites, and 
 in extreme cases he might be placed under the Anathema of the Church. 
 The question of a Jewish badge for Hungary was fully discussed, and 
 it was finally decreed that every Jew of either sex, residing on Hun¬ 
 garian soil, should be compelled to wear a distinctive mark of red 
 saffron colour on the left breast. The shape was to be that of a wheel 
 and to appear without it—being an infraction of the Law—was to be 
 severely punished. Poland, also represented on the Council by several 
 prelates of high standing, adopted the drastic decisions of Ofen. Both 
 these countries had hitherto accorded, not alone to the Jews, but to all 
 dissidents from Catholicism, the most complete toleration and religious 
 latitude, neither of them ever evincing racial antipathy and this sudden 
 transition of feeling towards members of different creeds has been 
 universally ascribed to the increasing and indefatigable exertions 
 of the “ Friars Penitent,” whose influence was daily growing more 
 marked. 
 
 In 1232, King Andreas of Hungary was, together with the King 
 of Slavonia, compelled to swear, never to place any of their subjects 
 professing the Hebrew faith in public offices. Andreas bitterly resented 
 the Papal decree (which also directed the vigorous enforcement of the 
 Jew Badge), and only when his throne was perceptibly tottering and 
 his hold over the Magyar nobility was daily growing weaker, was he 
 coerced into taking the desired oath before the Legate of Gregory IN. 
 
 In 1329 Ladislaus IV formally ratified the programme of the 
 “ Council of Ofen.” In 1340 Louis King of Hungary proceeded to 
 
AUSTRIA. 
 
 149 
 
 the last extreme and, from no other motives than those of religious 
 narrow-mindedness, expelled every Jew in his domains. Fortunately 
 the neighbouring States were not in favour of such arbitrary measures. 
 Louis had offered to revoke his mandate if the Jews would embrace 
 Christianity, but with the lofty spirit of self abnegation, which is the 
 indubitable characteristic of the race, they chose to submit to expatria¬ 
 tion by the tyrannical decree of their despotic sovereign rather than 
 renounce their ancestry. 
 
 In 1349 the “ Black Death” cry against the Jews, accusing them 
 of poisoning the wells and fountains reached Austria. In September 
 of that year the population of Krems, where a large and ancient com¬ 
 munity of Jews existed, banded together with the inhabitants of the 
 adjacent villages and flung themselves upon the Hebrew quarter. 
 The poor trembling Jews, seeing the fierce faces of their scowling foes, 
 who were panting for their blood, assembled in their houses, and vol¬ 
 untarily setting fire to them, arrayed themselves in their praying gar¬ 
 ments (Talisim) and in one frightful holocaust wrenched away the 
 prey from the crowds that beset them. The small neighbouring 
 community of Stein finding itself in similar straits also kindled a large 
 fire in the synagogue and destroyed itself. Have the sons of Israel 
 testified their allegiance to their nation with their blood ? Let their 
 detractors answer me ! Did my ancestors pale when flames enveloped 
 them in the garments of imperishable fame and immortal glory ? 
 
 In Vienna the Jewish quarter was encompassed by the rabble and 
 matters had come to such a pass, that the whole body entered the 
 synagogue to consider what was to be done in this their last strait. The 
 tears, shrieks and lamentations of the mothers, who in despair dashed 
 out the brains of their children, the agony of the men who witnessed 
 the terror of their distraught wives and daughters, was indeed awful. 
 The Rabbi, a noble old man bent with study and wrinkled with a^e 
 a man whose patriarchal mien and patriotic heart might have melted 
 the soul of a tyrant, harangued them in impassioned and heartrending 
 language and urged them to strike the inevitable blow. Acting upon 
 this advice they slew each other to a soul. 
 
 On April 18th, 1389, Prague saw a savage attack upon the Jewish 
 residents in that city. A vapid and impalpable charge, that a few 
 Jewish children had thrown dirt at a priest, who was bearing the con¬ 
 secrated wafer to a dying person, was the ostensible cause, but the real 
 origin was of a very different hue. The priest with great assiduity 
 loudly shouted in the street that the children had been instructed by 
 their parents to thus profane the Host. A huge and savage mob bent 
 on vengeance invaded the Jewish quarter and offered the inhabitants 
 
150 
 
 PERSECUTION IN 
 
 the choice between death or the acceptance of Christ, but the Jews, 
 many of them perhaps deemed incapable of an heroic act or noble 
 thought, many of them hawkers and followers of other despised avoca¬ 
 tions, set posterity an example of valour, that is well worthy of their 
 admiration ; they unanimously rejected the price asked for life. Not 
 one soul in that vast concourse of doomed men, whose tenure of life 
 could now be measured by a hair, sought to prolong his existence by 
 perjury. Swarming multitudes were bathed in their own* blood. Scores 
 of heroic prolicides, fired by the example of their aged Rabbi, stabbed 
 their wives and children ere they committed suicide. White haired 
 and venerable old men, men whose high character and unstained repute 
 had ever been the theme of their very,foes, whose vast learning and 
 erudition apart from their eminent piety, had awed their own co¬ 
 religionists, enveloped their proscribed bodies in their Talisim (pray¬ 
 ing shawls) and said “The Rock ! His work is perfect”, and with these 
 words breathed their last. 0 Men of Israel, what are the deeds of the 
 nations to you ? What interest have we in strangers ? Does not our 
 own glorious history eclipse every other ? Yet how few of us take 
 cognizance of it, we read of every nation and people but our own. We 
 might also slightly vary the awful words addressed to Cain and say, 
 “ The voice of the blood of thy brethren cries to me from the earth.” 
 Who of our modern Jewish youth ever thinks of this dreadful scene 
 in Prague; where for a whole day and through the following night the 
 blood of thgse, who thrice daily proclaimed the Divine Unity of God, 
 streamed in the streets like a river that had overflowed its banks ? 
 How many of us ever reflect on that blood, and on that day when the 
 very cemetery was polluted and the bodies of our fathers, who had 
 (finding rest only in the tomb) slept for years, were disinterred and 
 scornfully thrown to the dogs as foul carrion ? What of that fateful 
 18th April, when the piles of Jewish corpses that barricaded the streets 
 were stripped stark naked and then flung into a huge bonfire. What 
 about the day when the synagogue, a building that had stood for 
 centuries and ever witnessed the harrowing vicissitudes of its sons, was 
 demolished in one short hour ? What about that fearful banquet of 
 blood ? I ask, 0 Christianity, so thirstily quaffed by your loving 
 votaries ? Show your bloody records! produce your chronicles stained 
 with the blood of my compatriots, hide not nor seek to minimise nor 
 deny, the stirring heroism of those glorious patriots and sons of Israel, 
 who have been hounded, tortured and slain in thy name and in the 
 presence of thy cruentate symbols from the sons, who thirst to hear 
 the dulcet accents that shall tell them the deeds of their forefathers. 
 0 hide it not from them ! unload thy sinful bosom to those who so 
 
AUSTRIA. 
 
 151 
 
 bitterly realize that every right they enjoy, every privilege accorded 
 them, every dulcifying note in the melody of their peaceful lives has 
 been but bartered to them for the lives of their ancestors. 
 
 During the Hussite wars the Austrian Jews suffered the most acute 
 misery, the Catholic troops marking them out for special maltreatment 
 and classing them as adherents of the courageous Czech. The report 
 that the Jews had supplied the Hussites with money and arms was the 
 installation of-a fierce and widespread persecution from Bavaria to 
 Bohemia. Bloody indeed for the Jews was the march of the Catholic 
 hosts through Austria, and hecatombs of Hebrews fell victims to the 
 insatiable thirst for innocent blood. Why should we deny the charge ? 
 Is it not like the labours of Sjsyphus to disprove a calumny upon the 
 Jews? It was with outspoken but'consistent regret, that the Dom¬ 
 inican monks of Austria witnessed the gradual cessation of what was 
 in itself but an ebullient and temporary outburst of rage. To do them 
 injury the clergy, ever fruitful in device had for once at least no need 
 to tax their devilish ingenuity and cerebral fecundity, for a propitious 
 circumstance put into their hands the necessary lever to arouse the 
 waning desire for slaughter from its lethargy. Some Viennese children 
 went to play upon the ice, this unfortunately broke and three of them 
 were drowned. To comment upon this dolorous occurrence to the 
 detriment of the Jews was not enough, they fired off the old dual fusi- 
 lade of “ Bitual Murder ” and “ Host Outraging.” Of the first it was 
 sedulously bruited about, that the three children had been murdered 
 to supply blood for the impending Passover ; concerning ‘the second, 
 the community at Ems was charged (by tools of the monks; with pur¬ 
 chasing a sacramental wafer from a woman, having free access to the 
 sacristy, and on their stabbing it much blood gushed from the wounds. 
 A Jew and Jewess of Ems were despatched to Vienna and there 
 tortured to confess their guilt and then killed. On the 23rd May, 
 (14th Si van) 1420, all the Jews under the rule of the Archduke Albert 
 of Austria were by his command seized and imprisoned. Their entire 
 possessions, clothing excepted, were confiscated. “ In the gaols wives 
 were separated from their husbands and children from their parents. 
 The more resolute slew themselves and their kinsfolk by opening their 
 veins with straps and cords or whatever they found handy for the 
 purpose. The spirit of the survivors, was broken by the length and 
 cruelty of their imprisonment ; their children were finally taken from 
 them and immured in cloisters. Still they remained firm and, on the 
 14th March, (9th Nisan,) 1421, after nearly a year’s confinement, 
 they were committed to the flames.” 
 
152 
 
 PERSECUTION IN 
 
 In Vienna alone more than a hundred perished in one field close by 
 Eidelberg on the Danube. A further order was then issued by Arch¬ 
 duke Albert, forbidding Jews to stay thenceforth in Austria. How 
 attached the Austrian Jews were to their religion is shown by the 
 conduct of one clever youth. “ Having received baptism he had 
 become the favourite of Duke Frederick, afterwards the German 
 Emperor, but although surrounded by every luxury, he became seized 
 with remorse for his apostasy and boldly expressed his desire to return 
 to Judaism. Frederick exerted himself to dissuade his favourite from 
 this idea. He begged, entreated and even threatened him, he sent a 
 priest to advise him ; all however was in vain. Finally, the Duke 
 handed the “obstinate heretic and backslider” over to the ecclesiastical 
 authorities, who condemned him to the stake. Unfettered and with a 
 Hebrew song on his lips, the Jewish youth mounted the scaffold.” 1 
 
 The Jew-denouncing, man-hounding excursion of John Capistrano 
 through Europe led him into Austria at an early date. In Bohemia his 
 eloquence resulted in the furious persecution of many Jewish commun¬ 
 ities. In Silesia whither he had been despatched to reclaim the clergy 
 from the frightful licentiousness and debauchery of their lives, his 
 virulent facundity taught the people of the towns and villages to be 
 continually finding bleeding Hosts scattered over the country roads 
 abutting the centres inhabited by Jews. The invariable and ineludible 
 fate of the burning of those suspected was as sure as the absence of all 
 trial. 
 
 In 1542 the Jews of Bohemia were by decree of the National Diet 
 expelled the country ; a number of untenable pretexts, accusing them of 
 “ misdeeds ” in vague and general terms, was assigned for this cause. 
 
 In 1559 a heartless incendiary kindled a fierce fire in the Jewish 
 quarter of Prague ; none attempting to save the burning piles. They 
 were offered, together with a large number of their inmates, as a pro- 
 pi tiary offering to the God of the Christians. The Prague mob seized 
 those of the women and children that had become insensible throu°;h 
 terror and flung them into the fiercest part of the fire. The year follow¬ 
 ing, the Emperor Ferdinand 2 issued a code of anti-Jewish laws 
 stipulating the rights and burdens of the Jews with finical accuracy. 
 In 1561 he expelled large numbers of Jews who had been allowed to 
 
 (1.) Graetz. 
 
 (2.) It was he who first introduced the tickets of notification or permits for 
 the Jews of Austria. He made a regulation b) r which every Jew resident in 
 Austria, who went to Vienna on business should at once on his arrival announce 
 himself to the land Marshal and state what was his business, and how long he 
 intended to remain in the place. Graetz, vol. iv., page 63. 
 
AUSTRIA. 
 
 153 
 
 resettle in the various towns from which they had been expelled. They 
 were not again expelled from Austrian territory until 1670 when n 
 general banishment took place. ’ 
 
 The Empress Margaret, having on one occasion recovered from a 
 serious accident, knew of no better way to thank Heaven than to obey 
 the instructions of her confessor by constantly dinning into the unwill¬ 
 ing ear of her royal spouse the paramount necessity of expelling the 
 unbelieving Jews from his country. Loth as he was the Jesuit-ridden 
 woman prevailed, as had done Kunigunde over Maximilian. By pro¬ 
 clamation of the Court heralds the Jews were directed to at once quit 
 Vienna ; to the remaining Jewish communities of Austria was granted 
 a brief respite. The victims of this fierce decree showed that they had 
 purchased the inalienable right of residence and also that they had been 
 compelled to pay an extraordinary tax of 10,000 florins annually to 
 the Crown, in addition to annual sums of money euphemistically called 
 . rese ^ fcs fco fche Emperor ; ” but his determination, or rather that of 
 his wife s confessor, was irrevocable. Leopold converted the synagogues 
 and houses of learning into churches and sold the Ghetto for 100,000 
 florins. A dearth of commerce was the result and it made itself so 
 painfully obvious that Leopold was heartily glad to allow the Jews to 
 resettle in his domain, to which they immediately flocked after fifteen 
 years absence from their homes. 
 
 The Austrian “ War of Succession ” was another period of grave 
 anxiety for the Jews, now under the rule of that versatile woman Maria 
 Theresa. Because the contemporary Prussian monarch refused to tole¬ 
 rate the open murder of members of the Hebrew race, he was called a 
 Jews protector, an agnomen of the most contemptuous description. 
 Ihe Austrian Jews were accused by the public voice of posting their 
 Royal friend, as to the plans and dealings of the Austrian army Those 
 of Moravia were fined 10,000 Rhenish gulden in punishment for this 
 offence and informed that, were the money not produced in six days, 
 every Jew found in Moravia on the seventh would be slaughtered. After 
 strenuous exertions had been made to render the issue of this threat 
 nugatory, the Empress intervened and prevented the consummation of 
 this outrage; as a counter-balance to this she published an order which 
 decreed the banishment of the Moravian and Bohemian Jews. Ruth¬ 
 lessly indeed was the mandate executed. Prague expelled its Jews in 
 the depth of winter and over twenty thousand human beings were 
 compelled to wander from town to town nomad-like, ere they could 
 procure rest and food owing to the existence of a fiendish order, which 
 forbade Christians giving the wanderers any assistance. Maria Theresa 
 was induced by several of her trusted advisers to discard the practice 
 
154 
 
 AUSTRIA. 
 
 of periodically expelling Jews from different centres as being a policy 
 antagonistic to the best interests of her State. She retaliated upon her 
 own action by imposing heavy restrictions upon them. Only one son 
 in each family was allowed to marry. The constant tension and appre¬ 
 hension under which the Austrian Jews of this period lived was more 
 hateful and degrading than the severe attacks of the rabble in the 
 preceding reigns. 
 
 In 1782 the Prague anti-Jewish party published a vile and calumn¬ 
 iating pamphlet, which set forth every charge made against the nation 
 during the past seven centuries. Its publication, the Emperor Joseph 
 II foresaw was fraught with such danger to the Jews, that he ordered 
 its suppression before it had been broadly disseminated : Yet even 
 under his reign, a reign in which many liberties and concessions were 
 granted them by the tolerant Emperor, who sowed the seeds of future 
 complete liberty for the residents of Austria professing the Hebrew 
 faith, and till a much later period, the Jews of Austria, Moravia and 
 Galicia, together with those of other provinces were heavily taxed, as 
 a distinct body, for every imaginable article they possessed and the 
 concession of every right they did not enjoy. In addition to a Jew r 
 Tax on candles, wine, meat and wax, a tax upon every Jew either 
 entering or leaving Vienna was made. Those entering the city were 
 compelled to register themselves and account for their presence. They 
 were under the supervision of the police and treated like convicts on 
 license. Joseph II, among other rights conferred upon the Jews, 
 permitted them to enter their children in the Christian schools and to 
 shave themselves ; hitherto they had been forced by law to grow beards. 
 The larger part of their emancipation dates from his “ Edict of Toler¬ 
 ance (Jan. 2nd, 1782).” 
 
 During the reign of the Emperor Francis II, the advice of Metter- 
 micli, the Prime Minister, was the cause of many evil provisions being 
 formulated against the Jews. As in Germany, certain narrow, cramped 
 and unhealthy streets were in each city and town assigned them for 
 residence; these they might only emerge from on stipulated couditious. 
 In certain of the larger Bohemian towns they might only stay over 
 night. In others they were not allowed to enter even for an hour. 
 
 We will now close this brief outline, but we cannot do so without 
 adding that the banal doctrines of anti-Semitism have spread their 
 blasting wings over Austria, a country whose attitude to her million 
 Jews is a matter of grave importance to all interested in the Jewish 
 question. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 Ob, sad and miserable lot ! 
 
 Oh bitter servitude and sore, 
 
 Of which the ill is more and more, 
 
 The good existeth not. 
 
 Oh, life of purgatorial woes, 
 
 Ilell that within this world is placed. 
 
 Evil with not a solace graced ; 
 
 Strait whence no issue shows, 
 
 • Symbol of how much pain can be 
 
 In all the deepest pains combined. 
 
 Cervantes. 
 
 S °F ever men had power to stay the hands of oppression, if ever 
 
 _. human voice could be raised to obtain humane treatment for the 
 
 despised and the suffering, to mitigate the sorrows of the down¬ 
 trodden and successfully deprecate the outrage of the defenceless, that 
 power was wielded, that voice possessed, by the Popes of Rome. * 
 
 “ From the Tiber goes forth a voice heard further than that of the 
 Caesars, from the Vatican rolls thunder louder than that of the 
 Capitol.” Whether those, who ruled in the name of the Cod of Love 
 and Humanity and judged nations and kings from the chair of Peter, 
 were aroused to indignation by the awful sufferings of the Parent, 5 
 whose illegitimate offspring they were and whether they used their 
 vast influence to assuage or minimise it, it is the purpose of this chap- 
 tei to ielate, llie earliest Pontiffs did not treat the Jews differently 
 to theii other subjects ; they did not inculcate their persecution as a 
 religious tenet, as did many of the Popes in the Middle Ages. The 
 State policy of the Vatican was opposed to the marking out of the 
 Jews as a separate caste. Gregory I (The Great, 590-604) was a man 
 of mild disposition. To those of his Bishops who showed a tendency 
 to ill-treat the Jews, he addressed vigorous briefs, denouncing their 
 actions as anti-Christian. “Peter, Bishop of Terraco, had consented 
 to a species of persecution of the Jews in his diocese by permitting 
 them to be molested in their festivities and to lie more than once 
 dii\en fioin the places in which they celebrated them. Gregory wrote 
 
156 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 to Peter to condemn the practice and to give his decisive opinion, that 
 the Jews should not be in the least molested, that they ought to be 
 won over to the faith by the sweetness of Gospel preaching and by the 
 denunciations of Divine judgment against infidelity, and that these 
 were Christian arts and methods, while. those of a different nature 
 tended only to harden and disgust the human mind. 1 To Virgilius 
 and Theodorus, Bishops of Marseilles, he wrote respecting the per¬ 
 secuting methods made use of against the Jews. He again bore 
 testimony against the compulsory practices and declared how sorry he 
 is to find that many of that people had been brought by violence 
 rather than by preaching to the baptismal font. “If a Jew is brought 
 thither by necessity not by the sweetness of the word, returning to his 
 former superstition, he dies in a worse state than that from which 
 he seemed to be regenerated. Preach frequently to them that they 
 may desire to be changed through the love of what they hear. Thus 
 your desire of saving souls will be accomplished, and the convert will 
 not return like the dog, to his vomit. Preach that their dark minds 
 may be illuminated and that under God, they may be brought to real 
 regeneration.’’ He also wrote to Parcusius, Bishop of Naples, complain¬ 
 ing of the violence done the Jews in driving them from their 
 solemnities. 2 Together with these briefs he issued another prohibiting 
 his clergy from using false weights or robbing the peasantry by 
 defrauding them out of their produce. “ He would not,” he says, 
 “ have the Church defiled by base gains.” Gregory was however 
 greatly mortified to discover that his well matured plans to effect their 
 apostasy from Judaism produced no tangible result and severely 
 punished a number of Christians in Sicily, who had in direct opposition 
 to his wishes embraced Judaism. The president of the Jewish 
 community in the town was flogged and the synagogue demolished by 
 his orders. To some of the Italian Bishops, who were for hounding 
 down the Jews he said, “ the cities from which you desire to expel 
 them have been their homes long before Christianity was founded.” 
 “ They may,” decreed he on one important occasion, “ leave their 
 property to their children.” 
 
 Benedict VIII (1012-1024) rendered Rome an inestimable service, 
 according to Bower. 3 He saved the city from a terrible storm. In 
 this he saw a manifestation of Divine wrath and heavenly disapproval 
 of his allowing heretics to reside in the eternal city, so he resolved to 
 appease the Deity by beheading a number of Jews. This being done 
 the storm abated and gradually ceased. 
 
 (1.) Milner’s “ Church of Christ,” Vol. VII, p. 45. 
 
 (2.) Ibid. 
 
 (3.) “ History of the Popes, Vol. II. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 157 
 
 / 
 
 Benedict IX (1033-1044) was a most implacable foe of the Jews 
 and did not hesitate to practise any excess or injustice upon them. 
 
 His criminal character precluded him from experiencing any regret 
 for his actions. 1 
 
 Gregory VII (Hildebrand 1073-1086) took a more definite stand¬ 
 point on the Jewish question than perhaps any preceding Pope. He 
 decreed (1078) “ that no Jew shall hold any official & post in any 
 Christian Kingdom.’" He addressed a sharp letter to Alfonso, King of 
 Castile, soundly rating him for employing members of the Hebrew 
 faith in State offices and as he had heard—he was shocked to repeat 
 it—surrounding his person and filling his court with the enemies of 
 Christ and Christendom. He bitterly censured a few of the more 
 tolerant Spanish Bishops, who befriended them, and in a vigorous 
 epistle asked them if they desired to enthrone Satan and worship in 
 his Synagogue. “ This Pope was,” says a writer, “on the other hand 
 far more satisfied with William the Conqueror, King of England, and 
 Duke of Normandy, who ratified the decision of the congress in Rouen, 
 that the Jews were not only prohibited from keeping Christian bonds¬ 
 men but also from having Christian nurses.” 
 
 Innocent II (1130-1143) seems to have been in a degree humane 
 to the Jews. A French writer in describing the procession that went 
 to congratulate him on his triumphal entry into Rome says “ Troops 
 of knights and crowds of people pressed to see the procession, but 
 strangest of all, even the wretched persecuted Jews of Paris came 
 fonvard and offered to the head man of their persecutors a copy of 
 their ‘ Law covered by a veil. “ May God Almighty take away the 
 veil which is on your hearts,” was the reply of Innocent. 1 
 
 Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) was for a mild policy towards 
 the Jews, his treasurer was a skilful Jewish financier, Yechiel ben 
 Abiaham. Alexander was deposed for political reasons and another 
 Pope enthroned; this usurper was also in his turn dethroned and 
 Alexander recalled. When on his official entry into Rome, the Jew r s 
 not unmindful of his past kindnesses went out to meet him bearing 
 emblazoned banners and Scrolls of the Law in their arms walking 
 under silken canopies, he was deeply moved by the manner in which 
 
 rtjy ln ! * 033 Counts of Tuscoli had the boldY^sYYd^te~to 
 the Papal dignity Theophylact, a boy twelve years old belonging to their own 
 family. He called himself Benedict IX and gave himself up to every species 
 
 °rl^TL e l C T S ^ d u 0f COUrse this en ffi rone ment of mean profligac^mThe 
 Chai. of St. Peter had by reason of the relation of the Papacy at that timp tn 
 
 the W estern Church the most baleful influences on the condition of Christian 
 
 life especially in Italy. Dr. Neander, “General History of the Christian 
 Church and Religion,’ Vol. VI. p. 42. * cmnstian 
 
 (1.) See Morrison, “ Life and Times of St. Bernard,” p. 157. 
 
158 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 they testified their loyalty and gratitude to him. He was one of the 
 few Pontiffs who did not demand payment of a “ Jewish tax ” and 
 when it is remembered that he lived during a period of fervent political 
 broils our opinion of his commendable liberality and broadness of mind 
 can only be enhanced. Pie was alas but an oasis in a vast desert. 
 Tyrants more cruel than the “ Thirty ” of Athens or the “ Ten ” of 
 Ancient Rome followed him and meted ont very different treatment. 
 Innocent III (1198-1216), a man “ whose cruelty would have done no 
 dishonour to the blood gained-escutcheon of Nero,” and whose ambi¬ 
 tion transcended that of Gregory VII, perhaps the haughtiest autocrat 
 who ever sat in the chair of Peter, was a veritable monster to the Jews. 
 Whilst aiming at.their complete and irremediable degradation, he yet 
 realized that which many .of his predecessors had failed to do, namely 
 the inefficacy of obtaining Jewish converts to Christianity by means 
 of forcible baptism, i.e.,'dragging them through the streets by sheer 
 violence into churches, where they were baptiz'ed with the dagger 
 pointed at their breasts and in cases of powerful resistance gagging 
 them. Innocent knew that the neophytes invariably returned to 
 Judaism on the first opportunity, a course which greatly impugned 
 the spiritual value of the sacred immersion. He therefore desiring to 
 convert them en mas.se prohibited this, as likewise entering- the 
 Synagogue on Sabbaths and festivals and whipping the inmates with 
 leathern thongs. Innocent, taking cognizance of the frightful cruelties 
 the Crusades were practising upon the French communities of Jews, 
 wrote ordering them to discontinue the ghastly outrage of exhuming 
 the corpses of members of that race. This was not on grounds of 
 humanity, for as Wilks (a Papal Historian) says, “He instituted a 
 Crusade against the Albigenses, butchering them by tens of thousands, 
 with every circumstance of atrocity.” He crowned Don Pedro as 
 Pedro II, King of Aragon, but not before exacting from him a promise 
 to relentlessly persecute all heretics under his sway. The Jews of that 
 country anticipated a bitter proscription and persecution would arise 
 from this monarch’s visit to Rome and after assembling in their 
 synagogue praying and fasting, they went to meet him on his return 
 bearing the Sepharim’ (“Scrolls”) in their arms, but for once their 
 fears were unfounded. Pedro treated them as equal with his Christian 
 subjects. Innocent—an ironical misnomer, an inexplicable vagary 
 of nomenclature—bitterly upbraided Alfonso, King of Castile, for his 
 lack of Christian zeal ; he had allowed the Jews every right enjoyed 
 by Christians and had—he heard with sorrow—advanced them to 
 posts of honour and trust. If this continued and they were not 
 deprived of their trusts and offices, he would have no alternative but 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 159 
 
 to excommunicate him. This Pope also wrote a passionate letter to 
 Philip of France vituperating him for his culpable laxity in the 
 administration of the ecclesiastical laws against them. Philip had 
 already made France one seething hell for the Jews. Innocent wanted 
 him to make it a vast grave-yard, or rather charnel house, for 
 according to the literal interpretation of several Apostolical briefs, the 
 Jew^ and all unbelievers forfeit the right of Christian burial. “ It 
 offended his sight, wrote the Pope, “ that some princes should prefer 
 the descendants,of the crucifiers to the heirs of the crucified Christ, as 
 if the son of a slave woman could'ever be equal with the son of a free' 
 woman.” He despatched another bitter letter to the Count de Nevers 
 in 1208, because he would not countenance a system of Jewish' 
 persecution in his territory. “ The Jews,” he said, “ must* wander 
 about the earth like the. fratricide - Cain, 1 they are fugitives and 
 vagabonds and are to be covered with insult.” They were not to be 
 protected by any* good Christian, their fate was to be constant 
 servitude. “ Christian princes must remember that it is most shameful 
 to facilitate their dealings with Christians.” Innocent continues with 
 several most malicious and untruthful-assertions and his letter on the 
 whole is couched in the anti-Jewish spirit of the age. He did much 
 to instil the spirit of judicial burlesque into trials in which Jews were 
 concerned and, in the words of an eminent Jewish historian, was the 
 
 fiist Pope to thoroughly direct against them the full exasperation and 
 severity of the Church. 
 
 One of their bitterest foes, he presided at the Fourth Lateran 
 Council, which so persecuted the Jews of Europe, enforced the wearing 
 of a distinctive “Jew Badge,” compelled them to pay tithes to the 
 bishops of the dioceses in which they resided and threatened to 
 interdict any Christian who held intercourse with them. “ Everythin^ 
 provoked his wrath against them ; he begrudged them the very air 
 and light and only a delusive hope restrained him from openly preach¬ 
 ing a Crusade and a war of annihilation against them.” 2 To the 
 monstrous and splenetic canons of the Lateran Council under his 
 presidency, we refer in Chapter VII. Here we will content ourselves 
 with saying that the 1,200 prelates, who assembled from every part of 
 Christendom, almost to a man acquiesced in his opinions as to the 
 imperative necessity of extirpating Jewish unbelief by rendering its 
 following odious. Though he might not be termed the primal origin¬ 
 ator of the Jewish badge he systematized it, and as almost all "the 
 clergy submitted to his spiritual guidance, it became an established 
 part of the clerical policy. So much for Innocent III. 
 
160 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 Gregory IX (1227-1241), “a zealous persecutor of the Jews,” 
 issued many Bulls against them. He had commanded the Talmud to 
 be burned, which was done by the Chancellor of Paris in the year 
 1230 before an assemblage of clergy and people. Thirteen years later 
 Innocent IY ordered another general confiscation and burning of it. 
 He addressed many angry missives to bishops who had shown acts of 
 kindness to Jews. His ramifications, the Dominican monks, making 
 the many vapid charges laid against the race by Innocent III their 
 shield, accused them of the most outrageous crimes varying from 
 obstinacy to persuading, by cabalistical conjurations, demons and 
 vampires to devastate Europe by poisoning the rivers and wells or by 
 sending earthquakes. Gregory’s pontificate saw the firm inception of 
 the Inquisition ; its theatre was France and the victims of this 
 theological abattoir the Albigenses. Gregory however placed limits 
 upon his hatred to the Jews. During the frightful massacres of that 
 race in 1236, he despatched a brief to the French, deprecating the 
 inhumanities so ruthlessly perpetrated. “Your country-men,” he 
 wrote, “ instead of arming themselves body and soul for a war which 
 was to be carried on in the name of the Lord, instead of manifesting 
 in their behaviour so much the more fear and love to fight in his case 
 have executed godless counsel against the Jews. They have not 
 considered that they must derive the evidences of the Christian religion 
 from their archives, and that the Lord will not reject his people for 
 ever. Not considering this they, have acted as if they meant to exter¬ 
 minate them from the earth, and with unheard of cruelty have 
 butchered 2,300 human beings of all ages and both sexes and in 
 extenuation of this atrocious crime, they pleaded they had done so and 
 threatened to do worse, if the Jews would not accept Christ.” In 
 1239 he again convicted the Talmud of blasphemy against the Church 
 and published an encyclical to the monarchs of all Christian countries 
 ordering that their officers should on the first Sunday in Lent enter 
 the Synagogues and compel the surrender of all books of the Gemera. 
 
 They were to be again examined by a baptised Jew appointed for 
 that purpose, and should he verify the accusations made against them, 
 they were to be burnt. The pursuance of the story of Gregory’s further 
 opposition to the Talmud enters into the History of the Jews in 
 France. 
 
 Innocent IV (1243-1254) was a man of different calibre and 
 although he never thoroughly divested himself of his personal 
 peccadillos, he did not permit them to obscure his views on the Jewish 
 question. He possessed sufficient acumen to perceive the origin of the 
 constant maltreatment to which the Jews were everywhere subjected 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 161 
 
 and determined to remove the nominal cause. Concerning the many 
 fictitious crimes of which they were being constantly accused, he issued 
 a bull (1247) in which was calmly set forth the purpose, nature and 
 effect of these charges- He critically discusses the standpoint of the 
 Jewish law upon the “ritual murder” and reviews the principal 
 accusations of that century, showing how they had all been either 
 withdrawn or disproved. “ The Jews living under Christian princes " 
 he writes, “ are in a worse plight than were their ancestors in Egypt 
 under the Pharaohs. They are oft driven to leave in despair the very 
 lands in which their fathers have dwelt since the memory of man. 
 They are starved, plundered, tortured and murdered without trial, 
 sentence or confession.” He sums up their qualities and faults with 
 sober and impartial mind, stigmatising all who oppressed them as 
 unchristian and expressing his abhorrence of the high-handed outrages 
 upon them in France and Germany. Much conjecture has been made 
 as to the purposes that prompted Innocent; every possible reason has 
 been stated except humanity and attachment to even-handed justice, 
 as opposed to wholesale and savage massacres or legalized inhumanities. 
 The popular impression was that he had been bribed by the Jews ; 
 the untruthfulness of this asseveration is shown by the tone of the 
 epistle, and its alternations of sympathy for their sufferings and anger 
 at their faults. Was it so fortuitous an occurrence that an occupant 
 of the apostolical chair should evince traits inculcated by the New 
 Testament? Innocent improved the.position of the European Jews 
 very greatly, but what was the voice of one Pope, practically in exile, 
 when pitted against the reverberations from those of the many, who 
 had thundered forth threats and imprecations against all heretics, 
 until Jew persecution had become ingrained in the mind of almost 
 every papist ? 
 
 Clement IV (1265-1271) was another Pope who issued bulls 
 against Jews. In 1266 he, on being informed that Moses Machmanides 
 had beaten Pablo in a formal and royally appointed disputation upon 
 the dividing lines between Judaism and Christianity and published a 
 learned pamphlet explaining his argument, commanded King Jayme 
 to remove all Jews from public offices and all posts of honour and to 
 mete out very severe punishment to that “ arch villain, who, after 
 taking part in a religious discussion, had actually published a pamphlet, 
 as if to dedicate a trophy to his heresy.” This Pope however took 
 the ground that the Jews were not to be slain, maltreated, baptized by 
 force nor prohibited from practising their particular form of worship. 
 
 Gregory I (1271-1276) often shielded the Jews from injustice. He 
 also found it necessary to repeat the statements of Innocent as to the 
 
 K 
 
162 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 charges of ritual murder, crucifying Christian children, poisoning wells, 
 invoking spirits, etc., and fulminated against forcible baptisms of the 
 Jews. 
 
 -Clement V (1304-1316) seems to have joyfully witnessed Philip le 
 
 Bel’s cruel expatriation of his Jewish subjects; and coalesced with him 
 
 desiring to partake of the booty. Speaking of the “ interminable 
 
 avarice of both Pope and King,” who, when the capacity of Christian 
 
 contribution was exhausted, sought fresh prey, White says (p.p. 314- 
 
 31.5), “ The. honourable! pair hit upon an excellent expedient and the 
 
 Jews were offered as a fresh pasture for the unimpaired appetites of 
 
 the “ Father of Christendom ” and the eldest son of the Church. 
 
 < 
 
 Philip hated their religion but seems to have had a great respect for 
 the accuracy of their proceedings in trade, so to gratify the first he 
 stripped them of all they had ? and to prove the second, confiscated the 
 monies he found entered, in tneir books as lent on interest to Christians. 
 He was found to be a far more difficult creditor to deal with than the 
 original lenders had been and many a baron and needy knight had to 
 refund to Philip the sums, with interest at twenty per cent, which 
 they might have held indefinitely from the sons of Abraham and 
 repudiated in an excess of religious fervour at last. But Clement was 
 the thrall and abject slave of Philip, a fact which minimises the 
 gravity of his complicity.” 
 
 John XXII (1316-1344), who gave his assent to the massacres of 
 the Jews at Chignon and other places, was not alone the enemy of the 
 Jews, but of everybody who would not buy his friendship. He was 
 too mundane to expel the Roman Jews as he was petitioned to do, but 
 what he dared not do through expediency he resolved to accomplish 
 by bigotry. His sister Sangisa suborned a few priests in his favour 
 and induced them to swear that they had seen a body of Jews in a 
 synagogue treating a cross with disrespect 
 
 Pope John, without permitting the Jews to exculpate themselves, 
 immediately issued a Bull ordering the banishment of the Roman 
 Jews from the Province (1321). Full of sorrow, the innocent men 
 decreed a rigorous fast and assembled in their synagogues, but Count 
 Robert of Naples proved their guiltlessness of the charge, through the 
 confession of one of the accusatorial priests to this friend of the Jew r s ; 
 and a Hebrew emissary, who had been despatched to the Papal court, 
 obtained a hearing through Robert’s influence and confuted the 
 calumnies *of the Clique. It took 20,000 golden ducats to mollify 
 Sangisa’s asperity and after receiving this stipulated ramollescence she 
 condoned their residence in the Church States. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 163 
 
 ♦ i 
 
 Clement \I (1344-1352) issued a bull prohibiting Christians from 
 murdering Jews without accusation, trial or sentence, a practice so 
 constant as to necessitate Papal interference. He also forbade 
 Christians to whip them in the streets or drag them to the font. As 
 ' similar bulls had* been issued by the predecessors of Clement, their 
 bare repetition shows with lamentable certainty, that they had all 
 failed to cope with the deadly hatred these'humane men sought to 
 remedy. Clement’s bull failed to produce any sensible alteration in 
 the sad status of the Jews. ’ More loyalty, to the Papal commands was 
 invariably testified when their persecution was enjoined. Urban Y 
 (1362-1370) and VI (1378-1389) hav,e both left records of their fierce 
 detestation of the Jews. The former on being apprised of the death 
 of Pedio the Cruel at the hands of his brother’s executioner expressed 
 himself as delighted beyond measure. „ “ How glad I am,” he. said 
 “that the heretical Jew favourer has tjeen-punished for his crime.” 
 
 John XXIII (1410-1417), who paved the way to his position by 
 poisoning his predecessor, Alexander V, and described by Neander 1 as 
 the most abominable of all the Popes, was consistent in his persecut¬ 
 ions, for he not only displayed the most frowning and irreconcilable 
 hostility to both Judaism and her suffering sons, but bitterly impugned 
 the humanistic decrees of such tolerant and humane*Popes as Alexander 
 III and Innocent IV. He ordered every form of oppression which he 
 thought might turn them from the Law of Sinai. Poor tortured 
 Isiael! in another part of the world they were being hounded to death 
 because they would not believe in Mohammed. 
 
 Martin Y (1417-1431), a man who would permit any crime or any 
 good deed for cash paid on application, as a concession sold the Jews 
 their natural rights. They, through their emissaries, complained that 
 they had no protection of life or,limb, that their ■ synagogues were 
 constantly being polluted and their property annexed by the officers of 
 the Church and State. He issued a pontifical brief, bearing date 
 January 31st, 1419, which said, “ Whereas the Jews are made in the 
 image of God and a remnant of them will one day be saved, and 
 whereas they have besought our protection we, following in the foot¬ 
 steps of our predecessors, command that they shall not be molested in 
 their synagogues ; that their laws, rights, and customs shall not be 
 assailed ; that they shall not be baptized by force, constrained to 
 obseive Christian festivals nor to wear new distinctive badges, and 
 that they shall not be hindered in their relations with Christians.” In 
 1422 the Jews bought another bull from Martin, as their sufferings 
 
 (1.) “ General History of the Christian Church and Religion,” Vol. VI. 
 
164 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 had not decreased in the slightest. This one differed from the preced¬ 
 ing one he had sold them in being addressed mainly to the monks, 
 who were everywhere cursing and slandering the Jews. “ These 
 vilifications must cease,” he wrote. To those Bishops who had inter¬ 
 dicted Christians for dealing with Jews, was conveyed the Papal 
 assurance that they were not ostracised from the Church. He 
 received deputations of Spanish, Italian and German Jews and granted 
 them their chartered liberties. To the German rulers he wrote 
 ordering them to grant the “ chamber serfs ” human rights. 
 
 When the haughty and schism-creating Cardinal, Pedro de Luna, 
 became Pope, he displayed such extraordinary zeal for the conversion 
 of the Jews en masse, that he inaugurated a regular polemical crusade 
 in which he sought to win them over to the Faith of which he was at 
 that time so characteristic a representative. 1 
 
 Eugenius IV, (1431-1447) was a most vigorous hunter of the Jews. 
 One of his earliest measures was to issue a bull rescinding the nominally 
 protective decrees granted them by different occupants of the Papal 
 chair and revising, that is intensifying, the severity of the Canonical 
 laws against them enacted by the Fourth Lateran and other Councils. 
 He had observed the skill and celebrity of the Jewish physicians, and 
 that the laws inhibiting them from following their calling were prac¬ 
 tically disregarded by the Christians, who employed them, and there¬ 
 fore he declared anew, that “ No Christian shall, under pain of 
 ecclesiastical ban take medicines prepared by Jews, submit to their 
 treatment or even consult them or any person professing the religion 
 of Moses.” Other decrees were, that “ No Christian shall eat, drink, 
 bathe or sleep with a Jew, live in a house inhabited by one or hold 
 any communion with them.” Jews were to hold no public offices or 
 positions of trust, and all good Christians were solemnly adjured to 
 instantly dismiss those in their employ. It was an infraction of this 
 cruel code “ for the suppression of Jewish arrogance,” if a Jew or 
 Jewess left the squalid quarters assigned to the race, and offended the 
 eyes of Christians during “ Holy Week.” This Pope also issued 
 orders prohibiting the erection of new synagogues and upbraiding the 
 Jews for the lavish construction of the existing ones. When one of 
 these heretical fanes was being repaired it was particularly forbidden 
 to ornament it. One of Eugenius’ laws enacted that any Jew guilty 
 of making a disrespectful expression concerning the Virgin Mary or 
 any of the Saints, (an expression of course including Thomas a Beckett, 
 Louis IX, and the earlier Jew baiters, Hilary and Agobard), was to be 
 severely punished by the civil tribunals. The clerical courts were to 
 
 (L) For an account of this crusade see chapter IX. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 165 
 
 confiscate his every earthly belonging to the Church, that is the Papal 
 treasury. The blind and bigoted intolerance of Eugenius towards the 
 Jews is seen by his varying considerably the punishment of a Christian 
 guilty of blasphemy. After he had been adjudged guilty, the censure 
 of the Church was pronounced on him. Some prefer to regard this 
 flagrant disparity as an instance of his power of discrimination. “ He 
 absolutely forbade a Christian to stand in any relation to a Jew, 
 declared Jewish testimony against Christian miscreants invalid, and 
 forbade any Christian to kindle fires for them on their sabbaths. He 
 made indefatigable efforts to render the lives of the Jews insufferable.” 
 This is spoken of his attitude to the Jews of all Christian Europe 
 generally; to those under his immediate rule he gave special attention, 
 which found expression in a code of forty-two articles, each one either 
 denying s'ome natural right or heaping some new misfortune upon 
 them. Some of the Spanish Bishops, of whom several pitied the 
 Jews, were addressed in an autograph pastoral and urged to steel 
 themselves against mercy and other weaknesses of flesh and blood, and 
 strictly administer the Canonical laws against them. So faithfully 
 did these obey the behest of their infallible master, that the King of 
 Castile found it necessary to intervene and mitigate their zealo us obedience. 
 
 Nicholas V. (1447-1455) was a relentless foe to the Jews. His 
 programme for their humiliation was identical with that of his 
 immediate predecessor and exemplar, Eugenius. The mode of realising 
 this desideratum was perhaps more systematic and better matured! 
 The Jews of Italy were declared amenable to the monstrous “ Jewish 
 Code, hitherto addressed to the Castilian communities. It was this 
 Pope that entrusted that Neapolitan Boanerges, John of Capistrano, 
 with the supervision of the rigorous practice of his fierce anti-Jewish 
 laws and invested him with plenary powers. How the heartless 
 monster fulfilled a mission so much to his taste need not be here 
 described. We have but to look at the cowardly and splenetic manner 
 in which he, mainly by vilification,-oppressed the Polish Jews, who 
 had for years lived unmolested and even received tangible marks of 
 Royal favour. John poisoned the mind of Casimir the Great, who 
 finally fell a victim to monachal duplicity and blandishment, high and 
 liberal-minded as he was. 
 
 In 1451 Nicholas published fresh .canons against the Jews— 
 especially those of Spain—the motives of this new onslaught was to 
 assure himself, that notwithstanding the lapse of time since his first 
 brief on the matter, his savage enactments had not fallen into 
 desuetude. One of his steps was to officially approve Eugenius’ * 
 
 revocation of Martin V’s Bull, which accorded the Jews some semblance 
 of justice. 
 
166 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 Sixtus IV (1471-1484), perhaps the most venal and eertainly one 
 of the most criminal and profligate Popes that ever occupied the ponti¬ 
 fical throne, sanctioned by bull the official and permanent establishment 
 of the “ Ploly Inquisition,” an institution which in the name of religion 
 and the G-od of Love and Mercy shed more blood and caused more 
 oceans of tears than Caesar or Pompey, and an institution of blood 
 which will for ever stand forth as the stern and inexorable Arraigner 
 of Christianity, for all the foul and monstrous deeds of horror and 
 savagery and for all the diabolical outrages upon human liberty, that 
 could be performed by men transformed into demoniac torturers and 
 inhuman executioners. Sixtus IV like Eugenius 1 excluded the Jews 
 from almost every profession and certainly every grade of society, 
 which might advance their political status. The few Jews, who 
 appeared to give Sixtus so much unrest through their high charactered 
 lives, their domestic virtues, the purity and simplicity of their faith 
 and their patience under suffering proved a glaring contrast to the 
 criminality of Rome. “ At Rome itself the capital of intellect and 
 religion, such iniquities were perpetrated on every side that Protestant 
 authors themselves consent to draw a veil over them for the sake of 
 human nature. 2 The crimes and wickedness of the Papal court was 
 one of the features by which it was marked. Women of high rank 
 and infamous character placed the companions of their vices in the 
 highest offices of the church and seated their sons or paramours on the 
 Papal throne. Spiritual pretensions rose almost in proportion to 
 personal immorality, and the curious spectacle was presented of a 
 power losing all respect at home, by conduct which the heathen 
 emperors of the first century scarcely equalled ; of Popes alternately 
 dethroning and imprisoning each other, of sometimes two Popes at a 
 time. 3 
 
 Alexander VI, “the most depraved and wicked of mankind, whom 
 no earthly ruler had equalled in profligacy and the coarser vices of 
 cruelty and oppression, a bloodthirsty ruffian ; ” Julius II, who, despite 
 the ecclesiastical law which forbade all Christians to consult Jewish 
 physicians, appointed Simeon Zarfati, a learned Jew, as his physician 
 in ordinary ; and Leo X the deist, who, during the Dominican crusade 
 against the Talmud and cognate literature, ordered an inquiry into 
 the statements of Pfefferkorn and Hoogstraten, thus frustrating their 
 sinister designs, but at a later period burnt Reuchlin’s defence of the 
 
 (1.) The Council <4 Basle declared Eugenius a simonist, perjurer and 
 irredeemable heretic, a firebrand of discord, a waster of the goods of the Church, 
 a rebel against God. “ Legge,” p. 80. 
 
 (2.) Dr. White. “ The Eighteen Christian Centuries.” p. 220. 
 
 (3.) Ibid. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 167 
 
 Talmud as heretical, and again reversing his chameleonic policy and 
 recommending its wholesale publication together with the work it 
 defended ; all were content with the Lateran programme and made no 
 fresh provisions against the Jews, bnt administered those already extant. 
 
 Clement YII (1523-1534) befriended the Marranos; who fled into 
 Italy from the terrible and fiery massacres of their race, but his motive 
 was said to be ulterior, for he hoped thereby to mortify Charles Y, 
 then his most implacable foe. His bull prohibiting forcible baptism, 
 (the constant repetition of this bull shows its inutility), was nullified 
 by the local promptings of his Nuncios and Cardinals at the different 
 European Courts. Clement had appointed a commision to inquire into 
 the treatment of some twelve hundred imprisoned Marranos with the 
 result that he recommended their release, his advice however was 
 unheeded and they languished in their dungeons. 
 
 Paul III (1534-1550), who issued a bull of excommunication and 
 deposition against Henry YIII, appears to have been at heart a very 
 humane man. Like Alexander III he was actuated in his attitude 
 towards the Jews by motives of justice. He urgently pressed for a 
 relaxation of the inhuman treatment meted out to the Marranos and 
 manfully oppugned himself to the solicitations of Hon Joao, King of 
 Portugal, who sought the repeal of Clement YII’s bull, which he 
 feared at some future time might stay the bloody hands of his 
 inquisitorial executioners and thus lessen the vast sums, which flowed 
 into his royal coffers through the hands of his faithful torturers. In 
 December 1535 Paul, touched to the core by the indescribable suffer¬ 
 ings of the Marranos, of which he had been apprised by a Jewish 
 legate, insisted upon the liberation of a number of these Jews, who 
 had for years been immured in the fortresses and dungeons of Portugal. 
 Don Alfonso, a confirmed hater of the Jews and a favourite son of the 
 “ Holy Office ” was forced into tardily releasing eighteen hundred of 
 his Jewish prisoners, men, women and children, whose sole crime lay 
 in the adhesion to their ancestral tenets. The course of political 
 events exercised a most baneful effect upon the Papacy in regard to 
 its position on the Inquisition. As Paul gradually fell under the 
 influence of the Emperor Charles, that monarch in reward for the 
 battles he'had won for the Papacy loudly clamoured for the re-establish¬ 
 ment of the Inquisition in all its pristine power, and Paul—the power 
 to refuse was no longer in his hand—a man who had evinced the 
 deepest sympathy with the horrible miseries of the Iberian Jews who 
 were being roasted almost daily in batches, had much against his wish 
 
 to concede to Charles the reward he claimed for his services, and 
 'granted a bull establishing and ramifying the institution of blood in 
 
168 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 different parts of Europe, thus complying with the Emperor’s dearest 
 wishes. Alexander III, Clement YII and Paul III, all sounded 
 dissonant notes in the history of the Papal treatment of the Jews, but 
 their successors oppressed them the more for that very reason. Paul 
 made many merciful encumbrances upon the brief forced from him, 
 and exerted his private influence to ameliorate the Marranos’ dreadful 
 sufferings, and to mitigate the fiendish severity of the Inquisition 
 itself which appeared blind to every dictate of humanity and to delight 
 in witnessing, like Urban VI, the awful burning, racking, and tearing 
 of heretics, i.e., those who called into question the Divine inspiration, 
 guidance, and spiritual supremacy of the Apostolic office. As soon as 
 Paul III found that he possessed sufficient influence to free himself of 
 the untiring importunities of the heretic-hunting monarchs of Europe, 
 he sequestrated the Portugese Inquisition and impugning the validity 
 of his own bull, which he submitted had been granted with compunc¬ 
 tion, relegated the consideration of the question to a selected committee 
 of fair minded and impartial Cardinals. The report of this commission, 
 the members of which thoroughly discussed the sufferings of the 
 Marranos, gave the honest and ingenuous Pope a moral ground for the 
 official revocation of the bull Charles had cozened from him. Since 
 its very issue, he had made overt efforts to circumvent its effect but 
 had failed. We have already seen that although a bull enjoining the 
 humane treatment of the Jews was almost invariably disregarded, one 
 inculcating their persecution was always received with the most joyful 
 and submissive obedience. This knowledge forced itself upon the Jew 
 befriending Paul, who often deplored his inability to repress the furious 
 persecutions of the Jews under his jurisdiction. 
 
 Julius III (1550-1555) ordered the confiscation and public 
 destruction of the Talmud. He was far from fanatically inclined, 
 but his office was really a sinecure, for the administration of the Papal 
 chair had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, an institution which 
 possessed paramount power over Popes and Princes alike. He merely 
 attached his seal to the already drawn up bull, which was implicitly, 
 obeyed, and the familiars of the Inquisition bursting into the houses 
 of the Roman Jews, ransacked and rummaged every recess, seeking 
 for the “deleterious and pernicious ” work and declared it the property 
 of the Holy See. Not content with removing the copies of the Talmud, 
 the very prayer books were seized and—to mortify their original 
 owners--kept until the Jewish New Year, when a public bonfire was 
 ignited and thousands of valuable Hebrew and Oriental books and 
 manuscripts burnt. Rome was not the only scene of a literary auto- 
 da-fe ; throughout Italy such vigorous and unflagging search was made 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 169 
 
 that not one Gernara was to be found there. At Venice, Pisa, Mantua, 
 Padua, Vecchia and even Crete, immense loads of copies of the Talmud 
 and other Rabbinic works were seized, confiscated and burnt. The 
 censors of the Holy Office regretted that they might burn the volumes 
 only and not their “ accursed ” owners. Owing to the spiteful and 
 international seizure of every hook in the Hebrew language, even the 
 Bibles, matters came to such a pass that Julius issued a rescript in 
 which he severely censured those who “for the gratification of personal 
 animosity, had not sought to discriminate between the works offensive 
 to Christianity and those which contained no deleterious matter.” He 
 appointed a tribunal of Censors—all baptised Jews—who were to 
 examine every impeached volume and to pronounce an opinion upon it. 
 How these hybrid cowards used their newly acquired authority to 
 mortify their former co-religionists one is ashamed to tell. Every tree 
 has a rotten branch, every branch has a rotten twig ; better for the 
 tree, better for the branch, if it be lopped off too early to injure the 
 trunk. In 1554 it was declared a misdemeanour punishable by public 
 flogging for Jews to withhold or conceal their books from monks or 
 familiars. 
 
 Paul IV (1557-1554) was a re-incarnation of Innocent III with a 
 dash of John XXII’s criminality. 1 He had been a Dominican Monk 
 and nurtured in a hot bed of fanaticism. r Ihe bigoted Caraffa, when 
 termed Paul IV, did not permit his ebullient hatred against Jews, 
 Protestants and Mohammedans by any means to subside “He would 
 sit for long hours and pour forth torrents of stormy eloquence against 
 the Protestants and Mohammedans and that generation of Jews, the 
 . scum of the world.” 2 He framed a code of laws which the keeper of 
 a menagerie of dangerous beasts would consider inhuman, foi the 
 beasts would be allowed to inhale the fresh air occasionally. Paul 
 hardly allowed the Jews to do that. Were they not atheists ? By some 
 astounding process of sophistry, he held that for the inexpiable crime 
 of crucifying Christ, for which they were personally responsible, it was 
 his bounden and Christian duty to render their lives a literal hell on 
 earth. He celebrated his inauguration to the pontifical throne by 
 levying a fine of ten ducats yearly upon every Jewish congregation in 
 
 (1.) The court at Avignon became the most voluptuous in Christendom. It 
 was crowded with knights and ladies, painters and othei artists. It exhibited 
 a day dream of equipage and banquets. Ibe Pontili himself delighted in female 
 society, but in his weakness permitted his lady, the Countess of Turenne, to 
 extort enormous revenues by the sale of ecclestiastical piomotious. letiuich 
 who lived at Avignon at this time speaks of it as “ a vast brothel ” ; his own 
 sister had been seduced by the Holy Father, John XXII. Draper, Intellectual 
 Development of Europe,” Vol. II, page 94. 
 
 (2.) Ranke, “ History of the Popes,” Vol. I, page 217. 
 
170 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 the Romagna and the Papal States. Sixtus IY had exacted a tax from 
 the brothels of Rome. Paul IY exacted one from the Jews of Rome. 
 “From 1143 the Jews had to pay 1130 pieces of gold annually towards 
 the cost of the Roman sports. Another very iniquitous tax was the 
 levy made on the Jews of Rome for the support of the house of 
 Catechumens, which may be compared to the compulsory attendauce 
 of Jews three times a year at Christian sermons against Judaism. 
 The Jews felt themselves fortunate when Sixtus , Y fixed the total 
 annual tax at twelve giuli a head on all males between the ages of 
 sixteen and sixty. Before that time the Popes simply extorted what 
 they could.” 1 “ On the continent at this time, the Jews were taxed 
 when they entered a market, and taxed when they left it. They were 
 only permitted to enter the market place at inconvenient hours and 
 the Church ended by leaving the Jews nothing to trade in but money 
 and second hand goods, allowing them as a choice of commodities in 
 which to deal, new gold or old iron.” 2 During the fifteenth century 
 the lot of the Roman Jews had been most terrible. “ On Monday the 
 first day of the Carnival, at least eight Jews were forced to present 
 themselves at the Porto Populo to open the footraces. Half clad, often 
 in heavy showers of rain, whipped and jeered at, they were compelled, 
 amid the wild shouts of the mob, to cover the whole length of the race¬ 
 course, which was about 1100 yards long. Occasionally the poor 
 victims succumbed to the exertions and fell dead on the course. On 
 the same black Monday of the Carnival the Fattori (lay heads), the 
 RaTbis and other leading Jews were forced to walk on foot at the head 
 of the procession of the senators from one end of the Corso to the 
 other, offering a'ready butt for the insults and derision of the assembled 
 crowd. Towards the expenses of these entertainments the Jews had 
 also to contribute.” 3 
 
 In 1555 Paul IY, issued a Bull, which assailed the Jews with un¬ 
 relenting harshness. The Roman Jews in particular suffered the 
 grossest indignities. Every town in the Papal territories was ordered 
 to set about the instant demolition of the synagogues. One in each 
 town only, the oldest, was to be left to the Jews, who were now for¬ 
 bidden-all intercourse with Christians. They were not allowed to 
 employ the latter. The Christian herdsmen left the flocks of their 
 Jewish masters untended, so faithfully was this bull obeyed. Every 
 •Israelite was ordered to assume a distinctive mark, a green cap, 
 infinitely more degrading than the hated yellow badge, which the 
 
 (1.) Israel 
 (2.) Ibid. 
 (3.) Ibid. 
 
 Abraham’s. M.A., ‘-Jewish Life in the Middle Ages,” page 46. 
 
THE VATICAN ANI) THE .TEWS. 
 
 171 
 
 Church had forced them to attach to their garments. .Jewesses, young 
 and old, were compelled to wear a long disfiguring veil of similar 
 colour, and Christians were ordered not to address Hebrews of either 
 sex with the respectful words, “ Signor,” “ Signora,” or any others of 
 similar import. These two words were specially withheld from them, 
 it being a contravention of law to so address them. Every profession 
 and every art was closed to them ; fitting legislation for a man, who 
 asserted his authority as God’s representative on earth and declared 
 himself able to depose any monarch and hand over his country to a 
 foreign invader. 1 Paul IV also declared Jews to be ineligible for 
 admission to the trade guilds. Old clothes and iron were the only 
 goods in which they were allowed to deal. A few miserable streets 
 were told off for their residence and the ghetto was crowded to 
 suffocation, “ 10,000 souls in less than one square Kilometre.” Alas ! 
 a crowned monk could so dispose of the lives of kinsmen of the 
 Prophets ! The ghetto gates were closed at sunset after which no Jew 
 was allowed to emerge. A small stipulated number were annually 
 permitted to marry. The papal monition besought all believers to have 
 no communion with Jews or Saracens and before concluding with a 
 word against Jewish physicians, in whose hands lay the entire medical 
 skill of Italy, and to whom he forbade the further practice of their 
 profession, he issued a furious order commanding them to instantly 
 dispose of their lands within six months. It was now made illegal for 
 a Jew to hold real estate. Their lands to the value of 500,000 crowns 
 realized but one fifth of that sum, the wily purchasers knowing full 
 well that the vendors would perforce accept any terms offered them. 
 And what of Rome itself ? It bitterly persecuted the Jews. But what 
 of the Popes of those few centuries of bitter misery for the Jews ? 
 “What society has been torn by more civil dissensions or suffered more 
 disruptions than the clerical ? What nation has been more divided, 
 broken up or varied than the ecclesiastical nation ? The national 
 Churches in the majority of the countries of Europe have been in 
 almost constant strife with the court of Rome. Councils have risen 
 against Popes ; heresies have been innumerable and inextinguishable 
 and schisms have incessantly prevailed. Nowhere has there Teen so 
 much diversity of opinion, so much bitterness and fury in contest, so 
 much splitting up of power. The internal existence of the Church, 
 the dissensions which have broken loose within it and the revolutions 
 that have shaken it have been perhaps the greatest obstacle to the 
 triumph of that theocratical organization it has striven to impose on 
 
 (1.) Legge, “ The Temporal Power of the Papacy,” page 122. 
 
172 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 society.” 1 “ The Church was torn by contending factions often three 
 Popes at one time and council arrayed against council. Every nation 
 was disgusted with its own priesthood, and enthusiasm burning out 
 amid the general confusion into the wildest excesses of fanaticism and 
 vice, and yet a total incapability of any country to devise means of 
 amendment.” 2 These two preceding quotations show the state of the 
 Church which punished the Jews for their heresy and fastened every 
 defection from Christianity upon them, a fact which is shown by such 
 statements as the following, “Rome was full of atheism and with an 
 instinct as to the origin of the mischief everywhere spreading, the 
 Pope published bulls against the Jews of whom a bloody persecution 
 had arisen, and ordered that all their Talmuds and other blasphemous 
 works should be burnt.” 3 We shall now let history give some account 
 of the heads of the Church, “ The Popes who poisoned their guests, 
 like Alexander VI, slew their opponents, like Julius, or led the lives 
 of intellectual epicures like Leo X.” 4 “Of the twenty four Popes, who 
 occupied the apostolic throne during the century and a half which 
 followed the destruction of the Carlovingian house, two were murdered, 
 five were driven into exile, four were deposed and three resigned. 
 Some attained the tiara by arms, some by money, others again by the 
 influence of priestly courtesans, whilst one at least was self appointed. 
 One of these heirs of St. Peter entered upon his infallibility before he 
 had attained his twelfth year. This was Benedict IX who a few years 
 later fell in love, and in order to marry sold the Popedom to the Arch¬ 
 priest John, who took the name of Gregory VI. Disappointed in his 
 hopes of marriage, Benedict again claimed the tiara which he had just 
 sold. Meanwhile some of the nobles had elected a rival, who took the 
 name of Sylvester III, the High Church party supporting the one 
 whose only claim was that of purchase. Another Pontiff of this period 
 received a posthumous seutence of deposition, his corpse being dis¬ 
 interred for the purpose. Another, Judas-like, received a bribe to 
 recognize the patriarch of Constantinople as universal bishop.” 1 During 
 a very disgraceful period of the Papacy “ Rome became the seat of 
 every species of corruption. The Markgrave, Adalbert of Tuscany 
 combined with the vicious Roman women, Theodora and her daughter 
 Marozia, acquired an influence which operated disastrously even on the 
 election of the Popes. The papal throne was stained with crimes 
 which, had their been the least susceptibility for such an effect in the 
 
 (1.) Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe,” p. 172. 
 
 (2.) White. 
 
 0*0 Draper, “ Intellectual Development of Europe. Vol. II, patm 93.' 
 (I.) White. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 173 
 
 spiritual life of the nation, would have served beyond anything else to 
 deprive the papal dignity of the sacred character with which it has 
 been invested.” 2 These two quotations are enough, though more could 
 be given, to show what type of men ruled the Jews and prescribed for 
 them their religious duty. Not alone the high personal characters of 
 the Hebrews but their services to learning should have silenced them. 
 u The Church was the seat of monastic ignorance and barbarity, the 
 Synagogue was the place of science and civilization. In Christianity 
 every scientific effort was condemned as the work of Satan by the 
 officials of the Church as well as by the people. In Judaism the 
 teachers and leaders of religion themselves promoted science and 
 endeavoured to elevate the people.” 3 
 
 In 1559 the ancient Jewish Rabbinical seminary and library of 
 Cremona was, by order of the Pope, destroyed. To a bigoted and 
 raging monk, Sextus of Sienna, w T as relegated the duty of razing the 
 building, and right faithfully did he discharge his mission. He pro¬ 
 nounced the whole library of twelve thousand ponderous tomes, as 
 offensive to religion, i.e., Christianity, and gave peremptory orders for 
 their immediate destruction. “ Had he not been finally restrained,” 
 says a learned historian, “ he would not have spared a single Hebrew 
 Book, for he regrets that ‘the avarice and weakness of princes tempted 
 them to spare the Jewish literature from the flames.” Paul, through 
 the medium of his spies and informers, ever sought for pretexts to 
 imprison the Jews on all sorts of pretended infractions of his monstrous 
 “ Laws for the regulation of the Jews and the restraint of their abuses.” 
 Numbers he fined, others he forced to labour gratuitously by repairing 
 and strengthening the walls and defences of Rome. Many eminent 
 and learned Hebrews unwilling to longer remain in Rome under such 
 worrying and minute restrictions attempted to leave the city, but they 
 were roughly assailed as they emerged from the ghetto gates. Paul 
 would have done honour to a Dominican monastery, and had one to 
 divine by his laws his nationality and profession, the divination would 
 be a fifteenth century German Bishop. Not content with closing 
 every avenue of knowledge and industry to his Jewish subjects he 
 ordered his nephew to fire the Jewish quarter with a torch the follow¬ 
 ing night, when it would be closed and the inhabitants barred in. 
 The “ nephew ” had no alternative but to obey the orders of his father and 
 had not the few indignant Cardinals, who loathed the persecuting 
 intolerance of Caraffa, loudly protested against this monstrous project. 
 
 (1.) Legge, “ Temporal Power of the Papacy, p. 34 and 35. 
 
 (2.) Neander, “ Ecclesiastical History,” Vol. VI, p. 29. 
 
 (H Graetz, 
 
174 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 they would certainly have been burnt in their very houses, as had been 
 the Jews of Worms two centuries earlier. His wily action in not 
 formally re-enacting the decrees of his predecessor in regard to the 
 Marranos induced many of that hounded and tortured body of men, 
 who had fled from witnessing the daily holocausts of their brethren in 
 Spain and Portugal, to settle in Italy ; but he gave clandestine orders 
 commanding the arrest and examination by torture of many hundreds 
 of these hapless and persecuted beings resident in his territories. In 
 1555 the sequestrations and ultimate confiscation of all their property 
 and personal effects followed. Few ever emerged from the foul 
 dungeons into which they had been dragged in punishment for their 
 indomitable attachment to the God of Israel and the Law He had given 
 on Mount Sinai. On one occasion the bloody-minded Paul in a 
 paroxysm of fanatical rage seized over a hundred Marranos, Portuguese 
 and Turkish. 
 
 The latter had a puissant partisan, the Sultan, who, in a note 
 couched in language the most unequivocal and unmistakable, demanded 
 the release of his subjects forthwith, thus the infuriate viceregent of 
 God on earth was baulked of a by no means inconsiderable part of his 
 prey and his victims were reduced in numbers. The remaining 
 Marranos he left to languish in dungeons and subterranean vaults, 
 withholding from thmn with studied brutality the knowledge of their 
 fate. After a lengthy incarceration the Vicar of Christ offered those 
 who would consent to repeat the Catholic confession of faith, if not 
 absolute freedom, at any rate their lives. Those who refused were to 
 be burnt alive at the stake. Nearly thirty firmly and resolutely 
 refused to give voice to the lie with which some of their fellow prison¬ 
 ers purchased their lives, and on the 15th., May 1556, they were 
 publicly burnt crying, “Hear’O Israel, The Lord is our God, The 
 Lord is one.” Answer me all ye who siiig your strains on the courage 
 of heroes and attune yoyr panegyrics upon the achievements of men ! 
 Is not the glorious deed I tell meet to be placed on the highest rung 
 of the ladder of fame ?• Shall not these thirty men be placed in the 
 Pantheon ? Shall not the stylus of Calliope inscribe upon the golden 
 tablet of its mistress, the wondrous bravery of my ancestors and sing 
 paeans of praise to their glory ? 
 
 Had men of adamant, had the panthers and jackals of the forest, 
 the very Gorgons, witnessed this dreadful wholesale slaughter, they 
 would have intervened, but the Roman monks were delighted to witness 
 the frightful agonies of their hated foes, for they gloated with fiendish 
 glee over their terrible sufferings. So cruelly were the Italian Jews 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 175 
 
 oppressed by the Pope, Cardinals, * 1 2 3 clergy and people, that when a 
 renegade Jew at the head of a hastily gathered mob, violently burst 
 into a synagogue on the Pay of Atonement, flung the “ Sepher ” from 
 the Ark and placed a huge crucifix with the image of a bleeding Cod 
 upon it, the Wardens of the Congregation (Recanate) were publicly 
 flogged by the monks with the most excessive cruelty, until their 
 blood streamed over the garments of those who administered the unjust 
 chastisement; for turning the baptized Philip Mero out of the fane. 
 
 Pope Paul III erected a most palatial residence for the use of those 
 Jews, who became baptized of their own volition and promulgated a 
 bull compelling the different communities to maintain their renegades. 
 This was a severe law—although the offering of inducements to Jewish 
 cowards certainly tended to defecate Judaism—and one perhaps more 
 degrading than any other of the cruel laws to which they had to submit. 
 Paul made it part of his eventful life’s work to hunt the Jews with 
 unremitting fury. Nearly every prominent Hebrew community in 
 Europe experienced either the direct consequences or the after throes 
 of the many persecutions of the race he set on foot. He was never 
 weary of harassing them nor was his fecund mind ever devoid of means 
 and myrmidons to effect their oppression. He surrounded himself 
 with a galaxy of baptized Jews and always found employment for them, 
 such as “ Censorship of the Talmud,” lectures to their former co¬ 
 religionists on the superiority of a creed, the heads of which were often 
 pirates, traffickers in indulgences, libertines, assassins, or poisoners, 
 and the supervision of the Canonical laws against heretics ; in short 
 “ Satan always finds some work for evil hands to do.” This Pope 
 appointed many Jews “ familiars of the Inquisition.” 
 
 Pius IV (1559-156G) furnishes a timely contrast to the dark 
 minded, fierce, brooding* and capricious Paul. During the ephemeral 
 liberty which the Jews for a lpoment enjoyed, they could breathe more 
 freely. This lacuna in the persecution of the. Italian Jews is to be 
 accounted for. During the infliction of the most cruel tortures, the 
 most inveterate .tormentors have always allowed a moment’s relaxation 
 
 (1.) As for instance in such a case, Cardinal Santaseverina in his piemoirs 
 upbraids .the consistory of Cardinals (Curia) for their opposition to him He 
 proudly says, “ Thby forget how I have persecuted heretics, and how I have 
 hindered the Jews and their Talmud.” Ranke’s, ' l History of the Popes,” Vol. 
 Ill, page 270. ’ , 
 
 Another Cardinal—Bolognetto—plans seven items for the restoration of 
 the hagiarcy, we give three :—- 
 
 1. Restoration of Papal authority. 
 
 2. Persecution of heretics. 
 
 3. Reformation of the Clergy, methods of restraining the licentious lives 
 
 of scandalous priests. Ranke, Vol. Ill, p. 253. 
 
176 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 of the rack or a temporarily discontinued infliction of the Spanish 
 boot; not to ease the agony of the sufferer, but either to nerve the 
 prisoner for greater and renewed pain, or to save the flickering spark 
 of life. So it is in the history of an oppressed people. Were it not 
 ordained by a prescient Providence that cruel persecutions should have 
 alternations of concession a nation would soon be blotted out of the 
 page of history. So much for this hiatus ! 
 
 In 1562 Pius gave an audience to the representatives of the Roman 
 Jews and as a result of their earnest representations granted them a 
 decretal, revoking many of Paul’s cruel institutions affecting their 
 brethren. Of course he hampered his concessions with many restrict¬ 
 ions, in some few instances rendering them absolutely nugatory, but 
 his just and clement rule of four years presents a pleasing antithesis to 
 that of his intolerant predecessor. 
 
 Pius Y (1566-1573) one of the fiercest and most vindictive of 
 bigots known to history gave the question “ Of the Jews and their 
 abominable heresies ” a high place in his agenda. Pius (afterwards 
 canonised) was possessed by an innate love of religious persecution in 
 all its forms, and torturing was his penchant. In the very first year 
 of his shameful pontificate he fulmined a Bull in which every concession 
 and natural right ever granted or sold by his predecessors to the Jews 
 was declared null. This arbitrary despot governed them with a tyran¬ 
 nical hand and made the most whimsically cruel ordinances against 
 them. The programme of Innocent III, his exemplar, was refurbished. 
 He ordered the re-assuming of the “green cap,” which had fallen into 
 desuetude during the reign of Pius IY, and the Jewish veil, which the 
 Italian females of that race had for four years doffed, had again to be 
 worn. Pius, like Paul IV, forbade the Jews to employ Christian nurses, 
 midwives, doctors, surgeons or servants of either sex. He allowed only 
 one small and scantily appointed synagogue in each city and shut them 
 out from all avocations other than that of dealing in old clothes and 
 iron. This Pope laid the most puerile and untenable charges against 
 the Jews, accusing them of hating the Christians in their hearts and 
 thinking them to be idolators. He imprisoned many of his Hebrew 
 victims and made a huge bonfire of hundreds of copies of the Talmud, 
 the publication of which Leo X had so strongly recommended. But 
 the fact of Leo X being a mere deist may have had something to do 
 with this. The prisoners were examined as to the teachings of the 
 Talmud and the Rabbins, and worried to make some incriminating 
 remarks. This failing, the prisoners were ordered to be removed to 
 the torture chamber and again “ Examined.” Several died in agony, 
 others made most prolix and wonderful statements. The Rabbi 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 177 
 
 Chanina of Bologna had the courage to declare, even when under 
 torture, that if he might confess anything during the unconsciousness, 
 which would follow his sufferings, such confession would be untruthful 
 and worthless. As however others had confessed to slanders uttered 
 by Jews against Christians, the Curia had a plea in defence of its 
 outrages and excesses. Saint Pius having dragged out the desired 
 confessions on the rack now proceeded to avenge them. His first move 
 was to order all the wealthy Jews not to attempt to quit Rome until 
 he made his pleasure known to them, but the sentinels of the city, as 
 amenable to the blandishments of Jewish gold as the Popes themselves, 
 connived at their secret egress. This so enraged Pius, who had counted 
 on their being safely trapped, that he ordered the Jews of all the Papal 
 states to quit their homes within three months ; those who remained 
 would be sold into slavery by public auction (1569.) The Roman 
 Jews together with those of Ancona were alone exempted from the 
 decree of banishment. Thus no less than seventy-two communities of 
 Jews were compelled to tearfully quit their homes. So vast a number 
 of innocent and harmless people were expatriated by the whim of a man, 
 whose brains were addled by bigotry. The concession that those who 
 abjured Judaism were to be allowed to remain affected very few, they 
 almost to a soul preferred expatriation to apostasy. They would not 
 prove recreant to the creed for adhering to which they were so cruelly 
 persecuted. These exceptions—Roman Jews, those of Ancona and the 
 acceptors of Christianity cast doubt on the charges 1 (Magic, hating 
 Christians and ruining the Ecclesiastical states.) Two reasons were 
 assigned for the exception, one that of a Pope, the other that of a 
 politician. The first was that he retained them in his capital, so that 
 Christians by seeing them might be put in mind of the passion of the 
 Son of God, and that the Jews themselves might become less wicked 
 by being in the neighbourhood of the Holy See. 2 The other and true 
 reason was that they were useful in carrying on the trade with the East 
 and in replenishing the Papal exchequer. 3 The expulsion of the Jews 
 from Avignon and Venaissin both under the jurisdiction of the clergy, 
 
 (1.) Graetz. 
 
 (2.) ‘‘The Court of Rome from its cradle and insusceptible of reform was 
 strong in proportion as the ignorance of the people was great. It appears from 
 a decree of the eleventh session of the Council of Lateran, that some ecclesiastics 
 derived an income from the stews, and Innocent VIII had found it necessary to 
 renew by a bull published in April, 1488, tbe institution of Pius II forbidding 
 priests to keep butcheries, taverns, gaming houses and brothels and to be the 
 go-betweens of courtezans.” Legge, “ The Temporal Power of the Papacy,” 
 page 80. 
 
 (3.) Graetz. Vol. iv., page 629. 
 
 L 
 
178 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 then a most vicious and evil body of men, 1 soon followed ; and the 
 inhuman manner in which it was conducted rendered many wealthy and 
 learned men, men who had done service to Literature, Art, Science and 
 Philosophy, homeless and impoverished. St. Pius was instrumental, 
 or rather the leading spirit, of inducement to the Venetian Doge and 
 “ Council of Ten’s ” passing a barbarous resolution in favour of the 
 expulsion of the Jewish residents in Venice. Owing to the friction 
 which existed between Turkey and Venice, all the Turkish Jews in 
 Venetian waters—mainly Levantine Merchants—were imprisoned, and 
 the decree issued that was to banish the native members of the Hebrew 
 faith. In 1573 after the Turkish victory over the Venetians, this 
 expulsion was declared of non-effect and Jew T s were allowed to resettle, 
 the Venetian state appointing a clever Jew to treat for them with 
 Turkey, which was also represented by a Jewish Ambassador. During 
 the entire pontificate of the truculent Pius, the Italian Jews, particul¬ 
 arly those unfortunate enough to be domiciled in the Church States, 
 were sunk in the very slough of misery. They were living in—next 
 to Spain—the most bigoted country in Europe, and after being declared 
 personal enemies to Christ and the Catholic Church, their lot was most 
 unenviable. Pius taxed his Jews most heavily, but in this he was 
 following the international etiquette of Europe. In Ranke’s “ History 
 of the Popes” (vol. Ill, page 151) we find among other items in the 
 Papal revenue,—“ From the malefactors of Rome 2000 scudi, from 
 imposts or contracts 8000 scudi, tithes of ecclesiastical States 3000, 
 double tithes of the Hebrews 9855 scudi.” We can see how large this 
 sum was by remembering that all Milan only paid 40,000 scudi. 
 
 Gregory XIII (1573-1585) followed in the footsteps of his black¬ 
 hearted predecessor. He had already as a Jesuit won golden opinions 
 among the members of that order for his fierce hatred of all heretics. 
 He fenced the Roman Jews around with a code of the most Brahmin- 
 ical minuteness regulating their every action by law. He vented his 
 gall against those Christians, who allowed themselves to be attended 
 by Jewish physicians, notwithstanding the fact that they represented 
 almost the whole medical skill of Europe. He rendered it criminal for 
 Jews to even speak with one of the myriads of their unhappy and 
 hounded brethren proscribed by the “ Holy Office,” and threatened any 
 one “ wicked enough ” to assist a wretched co-religionist, with trans¬ 
 portation, the galleys, or in “obstinate” cases, which were very frequent, 
 
 (1.) This was during the very period in which Neander tells us, the clergy 
 were commanded “ not to frequent the public houses for the purpose of drinking 
 or to get drunk away from them, not to appear with the marks of intoxication, 
 not to keep dogs and falcons, not to come to the altar with side swords or spurs 
 on.” 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 179 
 
 the stake or strangulation. Gregory made it culpable to be in poss¬ 
 ession of the Talmud, and appointed commissioners to search for copies 
 of that proscribed work and to burn them. It went hard with those 
 found studying them, they were cruelly punished. Gregory’s great 
 innovation was to attach a large bull to the gates of the ghetto, for¬ 
 bidding in the most forcible language the possession or reading of the 
 blasphemous Talmud or the criticism of Catholic doctrines and customs. 
 Hugo Buoncompagni had been long before his transformation into 
 Gregory XIII, a most rabid and ultra-energetic conversionist, and 
 showed himself much more solicitous for the spiritual than the 
 physical welfare of his Jews. His plan was not torture or forcible 
 baptism, but sermons in which the sufferings of themselves and their 
 ancestors, together with their prospective sufferings were to be ex¬ 
 patiated upon, and thus to move them to accept the Gospel and “ grace 
 everlasting in the blood of the Lamb.” The most eloquent preachers, 
 men capable of raising clouds of rhetorical dust, were engaged at the 
 most liberal salaries, which the Jews had themselves to pay. Every 
 festival and on certain Sunday they had to assemble, and their ears 
 were examined on entering the churches, for they were suspected of 
 stopping them with cotton. Overseers were appointed to see that the 
 Jews remained awake during the two hours’ sermon delivered to them. 1 
 All Jews over twelve years old who absented themselves were heavily 
 fined. So cruelly did Gregory persecute them that many left their 
 homes of their own accord. 
 
 Sixtus Y. (1585-90.) varied his predecessor’s enactments upon the 
 Jews, and allowed them free and unrestricted residence in the 
 Ecclesiastical States, as also the rights of free commerce. He forbade 
 the Knights of Malta when travelling from Europe to the Levant or 
 vice versa , to make slaves of Jews found en route, a practice to which 
 these consecrated champions of the Faith had hitherto been addicted. 
 The order of Gregory XIII compelling Jews to attend conversionist 
 sermons was not interfered with, for the reason that Sixtus was unable 
 to venture so far as to abrogate every law in operation against them. 
 The Roman Jews had much to thank this Pope for. He sold them 
 for 2000 Scudi a permission to reprint the Talmud, but he arranged 
 for the deletion of certain passages, principally in tractate “ Gittin,” 
 objected to by a censor, who advised Sixtus to expunge them. Sixtus 
 no doubt desired to adopt Pius lY’s attitude upon the Talmud, Pius 
 had laid it down that it was fallacious to condemn the entire Talmud, 
 but imperative to remove certain extracts, which might be construed 
 into derogations of Catholicism. 
 
 (1.) Israel Abrahams, M.A. “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages,” page 417. 
 
180 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 Clement VIII (1592-1605) proceeded to the last extremes of 
 oppression. From his accession he had revealed a most inflexible 
 hatred of the Jews, and in 1598 he published a ferocious edict banish¬ 
 ing them from the States of the Church. Like Pius V. he excluded 
 certain nominated communities from being expelled ; those of Rome, 
 Ancona, and Avignon. These he legislated for with all the fury of 
 Paul IV. They were not to leave their ghettos—a few unhealthy 
 streets—after sunset, or appear in public on Christian festivals. They 
 were not to read or even own copies of the Talmud, a provision which 
 also applied to the expurgated editions, and all works of Rabbinical 
 casuistry. On the representations of the Milanese bishops he expelled 
 the Jews from that province, in which Draper tells us nearly every 
 priest had not only purchased his preferment, but lived with a concu¬ 
 bine. The morals of the Roman clergy were certainly no better 1 and 
 the words of Nicholas of Clemangis, who had long before written a 
 caustic and grief-stricken book. “ The Corruptions of the Church,” 
 were as true in Clement’s pontificate as they had been in Inno¬ 
 cent VIII.’s 2 
 
 In 1593 the capricious tyrant expelled the Hebrew residents of 
 Lodi, Pavia, and Cremona, for no other reason than that they were 
 heretics. The Jews of Ferrara were likewise to have been banished, 
 but the Duke and the nobles of that city, realising the value and 
 moral worth of its so fiercely hated inhabitants, absolutely refused to 
 obey Clement, and in direct defiance of his orders gave them a docu¬ 
 mentary promise of five years unmolested residence in Ferrara. 
 
 Innocent XI (1676-1689) laid very great stress upon the import¬ 
 ance of the sermons instituted by Gregory. When he was informed 
 that the involuntary auditors placed cotton wool in their ears, when 
 in church, spat, laughed, chatted with each other and otherwise—in 
 
 (1.) Men of the most criminal character. “ Poverty, chastity, and brotherly 
 kindness ” were the sworn duties of the richest and most sensual, and most 
 unpitying society which ever existed. White, page 318. 
 
 (2.) Neander, in summing-up Nicholas’ contentions says, (Vol. IX., page 84,) 
 “ He goes through the several orders and offices of the Church for the purpose 
 of pointing out the corruption of them all. He describes the worldly pride and 
 state of the Cardinals, who when they had been raised from the lowest rank and 
 from the humblest offices to that highest dignity, as, for example, from the 
 condition of grave-diggers, wholly forgot what they once were and looked down 
 upon all the other spiritual offices of the Church with disdain. He reproached 
 them with their luxurious habits of living, accused them of grasping at all the 
 benefices, of practising simony.” 
 
 “ The scandalous lives of the priests, he says, “ many taken from the 
 plough make them both offensive and sources of corruption to the communities.” 
 They could very often not read and oft did not know the alphabet let alone 
 Latin. Brought up without learning in idleness, they busied themselves in 
 looking out for their pleasures feasting and sporting. 
 
THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 181 
 
 the opinion of Cardinal Barberini, marred their own prospects of 
 salvation—he forbade the delivery of the sermons in Church and 
 ordered them to be given in unconsecrated buildings. “ All in vain,” 
 wrote the Cardinal, “ though we send an inspector to strike those who 
 interrupt, the incredulous Jews will not be converted.” 
 
 Sequent upon some frightful outrage upon Jews in Podolia, where 
 the trite and foul charge of murdering a Christian child and using its 
 blood for the passover ritual had been again vivified, Pope Clement 
 XIII (1758-1769) found it necessary to appoint a commission—over 
 which he himself presided —to make a thorough and impartial inquiry 
 into this vexed and oft reiterated indictment. Like Innocent IV he 
 came to the conclusion that the charge was a malicious and ignorant 
 calumny and unworthy of the credence of any sentient being. 
 
 Shortly before the French Revolution the Pope issued a bull against 
 the Jews. “ Jews and Christians,” one paragraph of it reads, “are 
 forbidden to play, eat, drink, hold intercourse or exchange confidence 
 of ever so trifling a nature with one another. Such shall not be allowed 
 in palaces, houses or vineyards, in the streets, in taverns, in neither 
 shops nor any other place. Nor shall the tavern keepers, innkeepers, 
 or shop proprietors permit any intercourse between Jews and Christians. 
 The Jews who offend in this matter shall be fined ten scudi or be 
 imprisoned, Christians incur a similar fine and corporal punishment.” 
 
 In 1825 Pope Pius VIII counteracted the effect of Napoleon’s 
 liberation of the Jews being felt in Italy by plunging them into the 
 
 darkness of the Middle Ages. This roaring bigot made them quit their 
 mansions and villas and penned them into a dingy and squalid “Jewish 
 quarter.” The distinguishing mark prescribed by the “ Council of the 
 Lateran ” had again to be worn in a conspicuous position and the 
 “Sermons” were re-instituted and attendance at them enforced by law. 
 
 Pius IX (1846-187<S) during the early portion of his eventful 
 occupancy of the Papal Chair showed fitful gleams of tolerance and 
 perspicuity of vision, but towards its close the latent spirit of mona- 
 cliism asserted itself, and he evinced the bitterest hostility to the Jews, 
 whom, despite Maguire’s remarkable statements upon his clemency 
 towards them, 1 he often wronged. His hands were somewhat tied by 
 the current of political events, yet the “ Edgar Mortara” case, together 
 with some of his personal remarks are signs of his fanatical sentiments. 
 
 In 1858 a Jewish family residing in Bologna was visited by some 
 Familiars of the Inquisition and had the mortification to witness the 
 removal of one of its members, a lad aged six, who was forcibly taken 
 
 (1.) Life of Pio Nono. 
 
182 
 
 THE VATICAN AND THE JEWS. 
 
 from them. It appears that a Catholic servant in their employ had 
 effected the clandestine baptism of the boy when a baby in arms, by 
 covertly conveying him to a church and submitting him to a priest. 
 Edgar was immured in a cloister and, notwithstanding the indefatig¬ 
 able efforts of his agonized parents, who left no stone unturned to 
 procure his release, they never saw him again. The French govern¬ 
 ment, Napoleon III himself, protested against this shocking kidnapp¬ 
 ing, but nothing availed, the Pope was indefeasible. The unbending 
 Pius who had like Pius VIII forced the Roman Jews back to the 
 crowded ghettos, was not to be induced to order his liberation. The 
 boy was reared on the approved monastic principles of the period, and 
 was irretrievably lost to his family and his nation. 
 
 Of Leo XIII aud his specific attitude towards the Jews, it is diffi¬ 
 cult, perhaps impossible to write. On the one hand the particular 
 policy he pursues towards them is clement and sympathetic. He is 
 against all forms of persecutions whether religious or civil . 1 On the 
 other it might be pleaded that his powers are both limited and vigor¬ 
 ously defined. 
 
 Let us trust that those who follow him will be imbued with the 
 tolerant spirit of the age, and that they will wield whatever religious 
 or civil influence they may possess in the grand causes of liberty of 
 conscience and freedom of thought. 
 
 (1.) Cardinal Vaughan in a recent interview. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 183 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 “O God, the proud are risen against me. and the assemblies 
 of violent men have sought after my soul ; and have not set Thee 
 before them .—Psalm Ixxxvi., 14. 
 
 f E shall presume to take licence and survey a longer period in 
 this chapter than we are entitled to do ; for it is better to err 
 on the side of giving too much information than on that of 
 giving too little. 
 
 Let us commence with a few words on the Council of Elvira, 304 
 a.d. Three of its Canons, (16, 49 and 50,) concern the Jews, and 
 show the terror with which the hagiarchy of Spain regarded the 
 relationship of Jews and Christians. The first of these declares it 
 punishable, by excommunication for five years, for Christians to give 
 their daughters in marriage to Jews and other schismatics. The 49th 
 canon orders the agriculturists of the peninsula professing the Christian 
 faith to no longer permit their produce to be blessed by Jews or even 
 in the Hebrew formula. “ Should any person presume to do so after 
 this interdiction, let him be entirely ejected from the Church.” Canon 
 50 declares that, “If any person whether clerical or one of the faithful 
 shall take food with Jews, he is to abstain from our communion that 
 he may learn to amend.” 
 
 A sentence in Canon 78, also refers to the Jews. It prohibits 
 Christians from holding sexual intercourse with Jewesses or pagan 
 women, as if it was permissible to do so with Christian women. The 
 Council of Yannes, (in France,) 415, forbade the clergy, both regular 
 and secular, to attend at Jewish festivals or at banquets given by 
 members of that faith. Not satisfied with this inhibition, the “Council 
 of Epaone,” 517, at the direction of Bishop Avitus extended this 
 prohibitive canon to the laity, thus thinking to seriously impair the 
 connection existing between the two creeds. 
 
 “ The third Council of Orleans,” held in 538, renewed this law. 
 Apparently it had fallen into desuetude and the decree of a Council 
 was requisite to secure its obedient observation. 
 
184 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 “ The fourth Council of Orleans,” (545,) forbade the Jews to receive 
 Christians into their faith or to appear in the public squares during 
 the “ Holy Week.” The reason assigned shows beyond refutation the 
 anti-Jewish feeling of the French Clergy, “ because their appearance is 
 an insult to Christianity.” Childebert I was evidently struck with 
 the beauty of this canon, for in 554 he issued a royal decree ordering 
 the entering of this fanatical law into the Frankish constitution. 
 King Chilperic, a bloody bigot, who forced many Jews at the edge of 
 the sword to feign apostasy from Judaism, ratified the decrees of the 
 “ Council of Macon,” which among several other intolerant enactments 
 stipulated that “ No Jew shall hold any military, civil, or official 
 position.” The decree forbidding them to appear in public during 
 Easter Week was again confirmed, perhaps to give legal colour to the 
 many deeds of high-handed violence, which invariably followed a 
 disregard of it on the part of the Jews. Not content with anti-Jewish 
 legislation as it stood, a new and whimsical paragraph was inserted in 
 the decrees of this narrow-headed Council, for it resolved that “No 
 Jew shall seat himself nor demean himself other than reverently in the 
 presence of a priest. 
 
 The “ Third Council of Toledo” 589, convened by Reccared the 
 first Catholic Visigothic King devoted two paragraphs to the Jews 
 (14 and 24.) The first of these forbids Jews to have Christian wives 
 or mistresses ; all children already born of such connections were to 
 be baptized. Jews were not to possess or circumcise Christian slaves 
 nor hold judicial offices. The second prohibits under a fine of six 
 ounces of gold the Jews from siuging the psalms of David at Jewish 
 funerals. 
 
 In 615 the “Council of Paris ” re-ordained the decrees of Macon 
 and added many new and capricious provisions, notably one that no 
 Jew was to hold any position of trust whatsoever. 
 
 Sisebut, in 612,ordered that Jews were to have no Christian servants 
 and conjured his subjects to rigidly adhere to the code of Reccared. 
 “ At this period the Jews had attained unexampled prosperity in the 
 peninsula ; they were to a great extent the cultivators of the soil, which 
 rewarded their patient industry with the most ample return and often 
 the administrators of the finances for which they were well qualified 
 by their knowledge of trade. Bigotry, envy and avarice conspired to 
 point them out as objects of persecution. Laws were passed of which 
 the spirit may be comprehended from the preamble. Laws concerning 
 the promulgation and ratification of statutes against Jewish wickedness, 
 and for the general extirpation of Jewish errors.” 1 Sisebut made the 
 
 (1.) Milman. “ History of the Jews.” 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 185 
 
 most savage laws against that people; he thus terminates his decrees: 
 “May the King, who dares to abolish these laws, incur the deepest 
 disgrace in this world and the eternal torments of hell in the flames 
 of purgatory in the world to come.” 
 
 A few of Sisebut’s fiercest decrees were:—“That the Jews may not 
 celebrate the Passover or any of their Sabbaths or festivals according 
 to their usage.” “ That the Jews may not contract marriage or 
 perform the rites of interment according to their own customs nor may 
 they practise circumcision.” “ That the Jews make no distinction of 
 meats.” He provided, as had Reccared, “ that a Jew was incapable of 
 bringing an action either civil or criminal against a Christian until he 
 “received the grace of baptism.” A Jew might not even give evidence 
 in a case, as his appearance in a public court was invalidated, as also 
 his right to purchase or circumcise slaves, though the whole nation 
 were unable to dispense with them in their fields, houses and places of 
 business. Not content with making laws obviously intended to destroy 
 the practice of the Jewish faith in his dominions, he proceeded to the 
 last extreme of tyranny and ordered all the Jews, who refused baptism, 
 almost the entire number, to leave his kingdom. 1 After taking such 
 steps as rendered their departure impossible, “ Ninety thousand Jews 
 were compelled to receive the sacrament of baptism, the fortunes of 
 the obstinate infidels were confiscated, their bodies were tortured, and 
 it seems doubtful whether they were permitted to abandon their native 
 country. The excessive zeal of the Catholic King was moderated even 
 by the Clergy of Spain, who solemnly pronounced an inconsistent 
 sentence, “ that the Sacraments should not be forcibly imposed, but 
 that the Jews who had been baptized should be constrained for the 
 honour of the Church to persevere in the external practice of a religion 
 which they disbelieved and detested. Their frequent relapses provoked 
 one of the successors of Sisebut to banish the whole nation from his 
 dominions and a Council of Toledo published a decree “ that every 
 Gothic King should swear to maintain this salutary edict.” 2 Although 
 as we have seen, vast numbers had been imprisoned, tortured, and 
 murdered with the King’s approval, many were compelled to emigrate 
 from the Gothic empire and seek homes elsewhere. France, at that 
 
 (1.) The intolerant spirit wnich could find neither idolaters nor heretics was 
 reduced to the persecution of the Jews. Gibbon, “ Decline and Fall.” Vol. V. 
 
 (2.) The various orders of expulsion issued by the Visigothic Kings were 
 not always thoroughly carried into execution. “The tyrants were unwilling to 
 dismiss their victims, whom they delighted to torture or to deprive themselves 
 of the industrious slaves over whom they might exercise a lucrative oppression. 
 The Jews still continued in Spain under the weight of the civil and ecclesiastical 
 laws, which in the same country have been faithfully transcribed in the code of 
 the Inquisition.” Gibbon’s, “ Decline and Fall,” Yol. V, Page 106. 
 
186 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 time fairly tolerant to dissidents from Christianity, received them most 
 cordially. When in 621 Sisebut died, the vast majority of those who 
 had accepted Christianity joyfully reverted to their former creed. 
 
 The “Fourth Council of Toledo” (683) under the presidency of St. 
 Isidor, Bishop of Seville, gave a great amount of attention to those 
 Jews, who having involuntarily accepted Christianity had immediately 
 after Swintila’s repeal of Sisebut's laws returned to Judaism, and 
 enacted that they should be violently withheld from the practice of 
 Jewish customs. Among other monstrous decisions, it was decreed 
 (Canon 60) that the Jewish children were to be torn from their 
 unbelieving parents and immured in monasteries, there to be brought 
 up in the Christian religion, the tenets of which they were to learn 
 from the monks. Canon 58 bitterly upbraids those bishops, ecclesi¬ 
 astics and laymen, who had sold their protection to the Jews, calls 
 them Anti-Christ’s sons, and declares it right that they should be 
 severed from the body of Christ who make themselves patrons of 
 Christ’s enemies. 
 
 Canon 59 reads,—“ Many who have been formerly elevated to the 
 Christian faith are now known, in contempt of Christ, not only to 
 practise Jewish ceremonies, but have even dared to practise the abomi¬ 
 nation of circumcision. By the advice of our most pious and religious 
 prince, Sisenand the King, this holy synod hath declared that such 
 transgressors, being apprehended on the authority of the prelates, shall 
 be recalled to the true worship according to Christian doctrine, so that 
 those who will not amend of their own accord may be compelled by 
 sacerdotal correction. Should such persons as they may have circum¬ 
 cised be children of the above, they shall be taken from the society of 
 their parents, and if slaves, they shall be liberated in compensation for 
 the injury.” It would appear from this that the Jews tenaciously 
 clung to the creed of their ancestors. Another savage paragraph of 
 this code enacted that any convert—one of those who had during 
 Sisebut’s furious persecution professed to abjure Judaism—discovered 
 holding intercourse or even conversing with one of the seed of Abraham 
 was to become a slave, and moreover the Jew sufficiently depraved to 
 commit the flagitious crime of giving food or shelter to his suffering 
 kinsman was to be scourged in the market square. These provisions 
 were for those who had fallen prey to either the fanaticism or the 
 greed 1 of their Catholic masters. Yet in strange contradiction to ite 
 
 (1.) The wealth which they accumulated by trade and the management of 
 the finances invited the pious avarice of their masters ; and they might be 
 oppressed without danger since they had lost the use and even the remembrance 
 of arms. “ Gibbon.” 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 187 
 
 principal ordinances the Fourth Council of Toledo had asserted that 
 men ought not to be compelled to believe, because “ God will have 
 mercy on whom He will have mercy and whom He will He hardeneth;’’ 
 but as already said, it took care to add a number of laws, one of which 
 abrogated Swintila’s permission to the enforced converts to return to 
 their creed for, “ As they had received the Blessed Sacrament, the 
 Holy name of God would be blasphemed and the faith disgraced by 
 their falling off.” 
 
 Canon 65 reads,—“ By command of the most excellent Lord and 
 King Sisenand, this Holy Council has decreed that Jews and their 
 descendants are not to hold public employments, as scandal would 
 thereby be given to Christians : therefore provincial judges together 
 with ecclesiastics are to prevent their fraudulently obtaining such 
 employments and their succeeding therein. Should any judge tolerate 
 such proceedings, he is to be excommunicated the same as for sacrilege, 
 and the person that obtains the office shall be publicly scourged.” 1 
 
 Chintilla, a man after the mind of Sisebut, made it one of the first 
 of his royal duties to convene the Sixth Council at which was con¬ 
 sidered “Means for the extirpation of Jewish abuses, (638).” It was 
 decided, (Canon 3,) that Jews and all others who refused to embrace 
 the Christian religion were to be banished from the Yisigothic empire, 
 and also in thanking God that he had given them a sovereign* so burn¬ 
 ing with Catholic zeal, enacted that “whosoever in future shall obtain 
 the sovereignty shall not ascend the throne till he has sworn not to 
 permit the Jews to infringe this holy faith, and in no wise to be 
 seduced either through neglect or cupidity to favour their perfidy.” 2 
 Thus we find a monarch professing the Christian faith, solemnly 
 swearing to persecute ; and promising not to permit those who had 
 been terrified into nominal apostacy to revert to their still secretly 
 observed creed. 
 
 (1) Lindo’s translation which we use almost exclusively in quoting Canons. 
 
 (2) We give the full Canon from Lindo's solid “ History of the Jews of Spain 
 and Portugal; ” a work to which we are greatly indebted. “The inflexible 
 treachery of the Jews has, by piety and divine grace, been overcome, for inspired 
 by the most High God. our most excellent and Christian prince, inflamed with 
 ardour for the faith, together with the clergy of his kingdom, has resolved to 
 destroy their prevarication and superstition to the utmost, by not permitting 
 residence of any person in the land who is not a Catholic. For which zeal we 
 give thanks to the Almighty King of Heaven, that he has created so illustrious 
 a soul and endued it with wisdom. May he grant him a long life in this world 
 and everlasting glory in the future. We therefore now decree and confirm what 
 has hitherto been enacted in general synod respecting the Jews, seeing that all 
 requisite for their salvation has been done with circumspection. We now declare 
 all such edicts to be valid.” 
 
188 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 Chindasvinto, who had obtained the throne by usurpation, secured 
 the support of the clergy by ratifying the Canons of the “ Ninth Council 
 of Toledo,” Canon 20 of which strictly abjures all baptized Jews to 
 observe the Fasts and Festivals of the Catholic Church under pain of 
 flogging, (651.) 
 
 Chintilla had forced the Jews in detail to sign a document renounc- 
 their “ Jewish malpractices ; ” and the converts, who had reverted to 
 Judaism at the very first opportunity, had been severely handled, yet 
 they remained staunch to Judaism and its teachings. During the 
 reigns of the few preceding monarchs, the clergy had had the upper 
 hand in the administration and could often by their intrigues, the 
 monarchy being elective, crown or depose a monarch. Chidaswinth, 
 however, was the first to successfully liberate himself from the 
 trammels, with which they had harassed his royal predecessors, and no 
 doubt desiring to mortify the clergy (whom it was his policy to openly 
 defy) risked the flames of purgatory and rescinded the stringent laws 
 against forced converts from Judaism. The “ Tenth Council of 
 Toledo,” (656,) renewed the persecution of the Jews, and denounced 
 those of the clergy who either sold their slaves or their protection to 
 Israelites. 
 
 Receswinth at once entered upon a violent crusade against his 
 Jewish subjects as also all other heretics. His gall was mainly directed 
 against the converts to whom his father had conceded liberty of con¬ 
 science. He convoked an assembly of ecclesiastical dignitaries and 
 directed them to deal rigorously with the Jews, more especially those 
 who had formerly feigned (to save their lives) to be Christians. In his 
 speech from the throne to the assembled prelates he says, “It is because 
 I have learned that my kingdom is polluted by them as by an epidemic, 
 that I denounce the life and behaviour of the Jew^s, for while the 
 Almighty has entirely freed the country from heresy, a disgraceful 
 desecration of the Churches still continues. This shall either be 
 reformed by our piety or rooted out by our severity. I mean that 
 many of the Jews still persist in their old unbelief, while others though 
 purified by baptism have relapsed so deeply into the errors of apostasy, 
 that their blasphemy seems even more abominable than the sin of 
 those, who have not been baptized. I adjure you herefore to decree 
 against the Jews without favour or respect of persons some measure 
 which shall be agreeable to God and to our faith.” 1 Right royally did 
 the “ Eighth Council of Toledo ” obey the behest of Receswinth. The 
 
 Christian neophytes were compelled to remain Christians and formallv 
 
 1 */ 
 
 (1) Prof. Graetz, vol. Ill, page 104. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 189 
 
 abjure their former creed. Many attempted to flee the country, but 
 all means of egress were closed and impassable. Although they were 
 not expelled the country, the numerous anti-Jewish decrees of the 
 different and preceding anti-Jewish councils were re-enacted. 1 No Jew 
 was to hold public trust or to appear as a witness against or be pro¬ 
 secutor of a Christian. They were not to possess Christian servants or 
 enjoy any civil rights. The furious Receswinth, finding all his per¬ 
 secutions and councils unable to restrain the clandestine observance of 
 the Jewish religion, prepared a document which he compelled every 
 Jew in 1 oledo to sign 2 —those who attempted to hide themselves were 
 severely punished—in which they accepted Christ as their Master and 
 deplored the blind obstinancy that had withheld them from keeping 
 their promise to Chintilla, and solemnly promised to henceforward 
 guard against further relapses into Judaism, and eschew Jewish fasts, 
 feasts and customs, the circumcision of their male children, distinctions 
 in food, eating unleavened cakes on passover and many other specified 
 crimes. They were compelled to swear by the Trinity that they 
 bitterly regretted having—immediately a new monarch had mounted 
 the throne—reverted en masse to their former belief, and that they 
 attributed their numerous relapses into their abominable folly, as purely 
 due to their perversity and stiffneckedness. The Jew taxes, however, 
 were not remitted, for, as Graetz observes, “ the treasury could not 
 afford to lose by their change of faith.” Despite the Argus-eyed 
 monks, the many dangers and the unflagging persecution which beset 
 them, they did not waver in their faith nor did their steadfastness 
 desert them; they devoutly clung to their religion and in secret followed 
 every Jewish custom as they had formerly in public: therefore in 655, 
 
 (1) Book XII, Title II, of the Visigothic Code “ Lawson Heretics and Jews.” 
 Paragraph IV. “No Jew is in any manner to revile or abandon the holy 
 Christian faith, which the saints received by baptism. No person shall impugn 
 it by word or deed nor attack it either secretly or overtly. No one shall hide 
 himself to avoid receiving it ; nor shall any person secrete one that he may 
 escape. No Jew shall in future think to return to his errors and excommunicated 
 religion. No one shall imagine, utter or by any act publish the deceitful religion 
 of the Jews which is contrary to that of Christians. No one shall attempt by 
 force to infringe or to murmur against the Christian establishments. No person 
 shall harbour any one acquainted with the said prohibitions nor delay giving 
 information against the persons, who hide one and the place where he is 
 secreted. Whoever transgresses what we here ordain shall receive the punish¬ 
 ment the law enacts.” The King, Don Receswinthus, paragraphs II and III 
 prohibit the Jews under the severest penalties from celebrating the Passover, 
 Sabbath or any Jewish festivals or their marriage with Jews or according to the 
 Jewish ritual. Paragraphs VII to VIII forbid circumcision and distinctions of 
 food. Paragraphs IX and X declare a Jew’s witness invalid, because “those 
 who are faithless to God cannot be true to man” and also “infidels should not 
 be believed with Christians.” 
 
 (2) See Delastro’s “ Jews in Spain.” ad locum. 
 
190 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 he, by the advice of the higher clergy, promulgated an ordinance com¬ 
 manding the Jews to spend both Jewish and Christian festivals under 
 the superintendence of the fanatical monks. All over they were 
 harried and robbed on grounds identical with those which have 
 furnished every anti-Semitic crusade from first to last. 1 
 
 Wamba, a pliant tool in the hands of the nobles and clergy, who 
 had thrust the crown upon him, a man who finally succumbed to his 
 monastic longings and entered a monastery, was the next king, and 
 obediently to the hortative utterances of the priesthood drove almost 
 the entire body of Jews from his kingdom, 672. 
 
 His successor Ervig, whose mode of obtaining the throne we had 
 better not too rigidly inquire into, seems by some curious form of 
 Dalai-Lamaism to have inherited his anti-Jewish prejudices. He 
 called the “ Twelfth Council of Toledo ” to consider the “ execrable 
 perfidy of the Jews.” This conciliary gathering approved of a 
 ferocious code of laws, the object of which appears to have been to 
 goad the Jews into desperation. Assembling the principal courtiers 
 and ecclesiastical dignitaries to the council, he harangued them on the 
 godlessness of tolerating the Jews. “ With tears streaming from my 
 eyes,” he said “I implore this honourable assembly to manifest its zeal 
 and free the land from its degeneracy ! Arise ! Arise ! I cry unto 
 you ; put to the test the laws against the apostacy of the Jews, which 
 we have just promulgated.” The cruel and bigoted Council, then 
 placing the royal programme before it, began its deliberations and 
 finally ordered a policy startling but not novel. It was ordained that 
 all Jews in Spain—a numerous and already ancient body—their 
 families and Jewish servants, must within twelve months offer them¬ 
 selves for baptism, otherwise their property would be confiscated. 
 Should they persist in refusing to appear when summoned by a priest, 
 they were to receive one hundred lashes upon the naked body ; the 
 skin was to be torn off their heads and foreheads, and they were then 
 to be ignominiously thrust from the country. Any Catholic hiding a 
 Jew or possessing a servant of that denomination was commanded to 
 deliver him up to the demand of any priest, it being laid down that 
 “the duty of distinguishing Jew's belongs solely to priests.” 
 
 Bishops had to muster and upbraid the Jews upon stipulated days 
 and furnish all male Hebrews with a book “ against their errors.” 
 Magistrates were not to try any “ matter of Jewish transgression ; ” 
 this was reserved for priests. 
 
 “That Jews shall not abstain themselves nor withhold their children 
 or slaves from baptism.” 
 
 (1) “ History of Spain.” G. Watts, page 225. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 191 
 
 “ That Jews shall not celebrate the Passover as accustomed, nor 
 dissuade any one from the Christian faith.” 
 
 “That Jews shall not presume to observe the Sabbath or any 
 festival of their religion.” 
 
 “That Jews shall not work on the Lord’s Day, nor on other 
 specified days.” 
 
 “That Jews shall make no distinction of food.” 
 
 “ That Jews shall no more marry near relations.” 
 
 “ That Jews shall not dare to defend their religion to the disparage¬ 
 ment of ours, nor flee anywhere to avoid the faith, nor shall any person 
 harbour such.” 
 
 “ That Jews shall not read books abhorred by the Christian faith.” 
 
 “ That no Christian slave shall belong to Jews.” 
 
 “That unconverted slaves of Jews receiving the Christian faith 
 shall receive their freedom.” 
 
 “Any person having a Jew in his service shall deliver him up on 
 the demand of any priest.” 
 
 “ That a Jew arriving from any other province or territory of our 
 dominions shall without delay present himself before the bishop or 
 priest of the place, and what is proper he shall observe.” 1 
 
 So runs part of Canon 9. 
 
 Jews already converted came in for a much more terrible code, for 
 a system of supervision which outdid all its predecessors was addressed 
 to them. They were summoned to the “Church of the Holy Virgin” 
 at Toledo, and the previously ratified laws were read out to them ; 
 they were each compelled to possess a copy that they might not plead 
 ignorance of their existence. These books stated that “the crafty Jews 
 having eluded all previous laws against Judaising,” it was necessary 
 to stringently enforce the present code. This provided that any Jew 
 blaspheming the name of Christ, rejecting the sacrament of “ Our 
 Lord’s Supper ” or profaning the Holy Trinity was to lose his liberty 
 and be presented to a Christian master. A similar punishment was 
 meted out to those Jews who worked on a Christian Sabbath or any 
 Festival of the Church. Circumcisions of Jewish children were 
 attended with the most awful punishments ; the father was to be 
 mangled and forfeit his liberty by being sold into slavery, the mother 
 was to have her nose cut or burnt off, and her property was to be 
 confiscated. To fast on the day of Atonement or the ninth of Av, 
 observe the New Year, New Moon, Tabernacles or any other festival of 
 the Jewish Calendar was punishable by transportation in chains, the 
 
 (1) Lindo. “ The Jews of Spain and Portugal,” page 22. 
 
192 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 property and goods of the criminal passing to the lord of the soil. 
 Observances of the Talmudic and Rabbinical injunctions were punish¬ 
 able by whipping and imprisonment. A Christian who received a 
 present from a Jew to hide his practice of Judaism was to be banished 
 from the country ; one who embraced the Jewish religion was to be 
 put to death. Converted Jews—the clergy knew their sincerity— 
 might not bequeath their properties or goods to their children unless 
 they had received baptism, “but the most extraordinary fact in all this 
 history is that not only were these laws ineffective in the conversion 
 or extirpation of the Jews, but that there were Christians who embraced 
 Judaism.” 1 It would be impossible to give here the full code, but we 
 add a few more of the enactments passed by this Council. “Should a 
 Christian receive a bribe from a Jew, he was to be fined thrice the 
 amount together with the sum received ; should he harbour or connive 
 at the flight of one of these proscribed men, he was to be flogged and 
 his property confiscated. The Jew who read the Talmud, or the 
 Midrash, or polemics against Christianity, or allowed his children to 
 do so, was to be punished by the infliction of one hundred lashes upon 
 the bare back ; should the offence be repeated he was to be banished. 
 Jewish slaves as we have seen, were on declaring themselves believers 
 in the Christian doctrine set free, Christian slaves were forthwith 
 absolved from obedience to their heretical masters. No Jew might 
 receive or hold any office by which he might have authority over, or 
 constrain a Christian, except in certain cases when power might be 
 granted by the feudal lord. In such a case if he abused the law, he 
 was punished by the forfeiture of half his goods, or by flogging, and 
 the noble who had granted him power to perform even permissible 
 acts was liable to a heavy fine, and in default of payment to the same 
 ignoble and degrading punishment. No Jew might be intendant, 
 house steward, or general overseer. Should a bishop, priest or any 
 ecclesiastic commit the property of the Church to a Jewish intendant, 
 his personal property was to be confiscated. If he was an irreclaimable 
 favourer of Jews, he was to be burnt. No Jew dare travel from one 
 town or province to another without reporting himself either to its 
 clerical or secular authorities. They were to be forced to eat, drink 
 and communicate with Christians, they had to obtain certificates of 
 good behaviour, 2 without which they might not leave the town of their 
 residence. Passports had also to be obtained and endorsed by the local 
 
 (1) Milman Yol. Ill, page 250. 
 
 (2) This system of granting certificates to Jews was one of the greatest 
 annoyances of the German Jews at a later period. The Rabbi’s had to be 
 renewed every three years. This meant a triennial bribe to the clergy. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 193 
 
 priests. On the Jewish Sat bath and holy days they were all to 
 assemble before the bishop. He was to appoint women to look after 
 wives and daughters. 
 
 The spiritual person who took a bribe to relax his vigilance was 
 to be degraded and excommunicated. Whoever protected a Jew 
 against his spiritual overseer was to be excommunicated and pay a 
 heavy fine. No civil judge could act in any case of this kind without 
 the concurrence of the priesthood.” 1 The foregoing quotation alone 
 would irrefutably prove that the sentiments by which the most 
 Christian Twelfth Council of Toledo was actuated, were those of the 
 fiercest bigotry and the bitterest hatred against the Jews. The 
 members of this assembly were impregnated with an insatiable desire 
 to humiliate them in every conceivable manner: but this was at a time 
 when the specific norm of Christianity to all dissidents from its 
 distinctive dogmas, was to either poison or assassinate them. The 
 clergy and nobles had been solemnly conjured to stringently administer 
 these laws and report every convert who in their cognisance had 
 contrived to elude the vigilance of the overseers and evaded the per¬ 
 formance of the stipulated duties. The passport law proved the most 
 vexatious of all the restrictions, for the more brutal of the clergy took 
 quiescent delight in placing every obstacle in the way of those apply¬ 
 ing for the valuable document, yet they might be purchased for a 
 consideration from that body of venal and corrupt men, the Spanish 
 clergy of the seventh century. Despite all the rabid provisions of 
 this code, Judaism did not succumb to the ceaseless onslaughts made 
 against it, proscribed though it was. 
 
 The Jewish converts, who had been terrified into a nominal renun¬ 
 ciation of their creed, were so devoutly attached to it, that they were 
 again assembled in the churches and compelled to publicly swear and 
 subscribe to a third confession of faith, and also to lament their latest 
 relapses into the errors from which nothing on earth could tear them— 
 the preceding two confessions had been made under Chintilla and 
 Receswinth. 
 
 Egica, nominated King by Ervig (687,) the last of the Visigothic 
 Kings of Spain, outdid all his predecessors in the violence with which 
 they had delighted to testify to their proselytising zeal. This worthy 
 scion of a murderous dynasty of usurpers, assassins, regicides and 
 fanatics, this re-incarnation of Sisebut, declared it illegal and punish¬ 
 able by confiscation for Jews or Judaising Christians, that is 
 involuntary Jewish converts, to hold land, houses or manner of 
 
 (1) Milman. 
 
194 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 property, to trade with the Christians of Africa, or to hold any 
 communion with them. The Mohammedans however of that and other 
 parts of the world proved friends to the Jews in their sorrows, and 
 often shielded them from the persecution and tyranny of Christian 
 Kings. “They showed an example of tolerance, such as never found 
 imitators among those who claimed to be of the purer faith.” 1 Egica 
 desiring, for economic reasons, to put the first of these laws into 
 practice, ordered the Treasury to seize all the real estate belonging to 
 his Jewish subjects (692.) 
 
 In the same year the “Fourteenth Council of Toledo ” was convoked, 
 when its members were amazed to learn—and from no less reliable a 
 source than the mouth of the zealous and impeccant King—that the 
 Jews had conspired to massacre his subjects, destroy the monarchy and 
 hand over the land to their friends and secret allies, the infidel 
 Saracens. 2 Bitterly did the most Christian monarch deprecate that 
 those new Christians, already infamous for the wicked profanation of 
 their oaths in church, and for having shed the precious blood of Christ, 
 should be permitted to pursue their schemes unrestrainedly. Goaded 
 to frenzy by the royal reproaches showered upon them, they proceeded 
 to guard against the possibility of Judaism or its observance taking 
 any further root in Spain, by decreeing that all children of Jewish 
 parentage were to be kidnapped and thus severed from their unbelieving 
 parents, “ lest they share their eternal punishment hereafter.” “ They 
 were ordered,” says Basnage, “ to be imprisoned in monasteries and 
 taught the truths and beauties of that improvement on the Jewish 
 revelation, which demanded the kidnapping of children.” 
 
 The “Sixteenth Council of Toledo” also gave much of its attention 
 to the Jews, and devoted several of its canons to means for their 
 reformation, and to lamentations for their stiff-neckedness and 
 contumacy (694.) 
 
 The “ Seventeenth Council of Toledo” (695) enacted (Canon 8)— 
 “ By command of our most pious King Egica, who, inflamed with zeal 
 for the Lord and impelled with ardour for the Holy Faith, not only 
 wishes to avenge the insult offered to Christ’s cross, but to prevent by 
 severity, the ruin they had savagely engaged to bring on his country 
 and people, that the perjurers themselves and their posterity be 
 deprived of all their property and possessions, the same are confiscated 
 to the National Treasury ; that they be deprived of their homes in all 
 provinces of Spain and be subjected to perpetual slavery under those 
 
 (1.) G. Watts. “History of Spain,” page 10. 
 
 (2.) The Jews had at least much cause to complain of Christian rule under 
 which they had been so grievously oppressed and plundered. Watts, p. 4. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 195 
 
 he may assign them to, and so remain for ever. Nor shall any 
 opportunity by connivance be offered them of recovering their liberty, 
 while they continue obstinate in their unbelief, for they are branded 
 with numberless transgressions.” Other paragraphs of this canon 
 order the Jews to sign bonds, not to elude the observance of Christian 
 customs or follow the “ perfidy ” of their ancestors. “ We further 
 decree that their children of both sexes, of seven years old and upwards, 
 are not to reside or associate with their parents, but their owners shall 
 give them to be brought up by faithful Christians, keeping in view 
 that the males are to be united in marriage with Christian women, and 
 the females married to Christian men.” 
 
 We will now again revert to France, for that country appears to 
 have during the period elapsing between the ninth and seventeenth 
 Toledan Councils, closely copied her exemplar’s system of finical 
 restrictions against the Jews. We have already spoken of the 
 Council of Paris, which in 615, decreed that “No Jew shall bring an 
 action at law against a Christian until he receives the grace of baptism 
 from the Bishop,” and also of King Dagobert who drove all disbelievers 
 in Christ from his country. The Canons and decrees of the following 
 few centuries enter however so closely into the History of the French 
 Jews, as to enable us to speak here of the year 1178. In this year 
 William, Governor of Montpellier, especially begged in his testament 
 that no Jew should be admitted to any corporate office. At this period 
 it must have been a most necessary injunction, for despite the bitter 
 denunciations of the priesthood and the fanatical harangues of the 
 monks, who sought to fan the bigotry of the peasantry—their great 
 lever—into deeds resembling those of the contemporaneous German 
 burghers, many petty vassals, governors of districts and feudal lords, 
 had to submit their offices and the administration of their territories 
 into Jewish hands ; and although loudly deploring such a breach of 
 faith in others invariably found themselves compelled to avail them¬ 
 selves of Jewish clear-headedness and sagacity. 
 
 In 1179 the Council of the Lateran under Pope Alexander III, (in 
 opposition to whose wishes the Jews of Bologna had been guiltlessly 
 banished) discussed the position of the Jews in general at great length. 
 This council was mainly characterized by a mass of intrigue, almost 
 every proposition and vote had some ulterior motive behind it. Many 
 of the most confirmed Jew-detesting prelates were amongst the three 
 hundred representatives of twelfth century Christendom. Fearing the 
 publication of some cruel laws, the Jews ordered most painful fasts 
 and austerities offering up special prayers in their synagogues. So 
 apprehensive were they throughout all Europe that the Council had 
 
196 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 cast a maleficent glance in their direction. They were gratified but 
 surprised to learn that their social rights—or rather the restrictions 
 upon them—alone had been discussed. They were however forbidden 
 to employ Christian servants, nurses or labourers. These again were 
 under threat of Anathema forbidden to work for Jewish employers. 
 The many grievances under which the Jews of Europe—especially of 
 France—laboured at the time of this Council can be readily gleaned 
 by the few prohibitive decrees which sought to save them from absolute 
 extirpation at the hand of Christians. It was ordained that Christians 
 were not to violently drag Jews into churches, and despite their loud 
 protests forcibly baptise them, that the synagogues were not to be 
 pillaged or the worshippers whipped during the performance of Divine 
 service. This was for ages the most popular form of monkish diversion, 
 the looting and even burning a synagogue on the New Year or day of 
 Atonement, or the milder course of vigorously flogging the assembled 
 worshippers with leather thongs being regarded as an innocent, inculp¬ 
 able and even devout recreation. 
 
 In Spain the Council of Coyaca 1079, had enacted by its sixth 
 Canon—“That no Christian shall reside in the same house with Jews, 
 nor partake of their food : whoever transgresses this decree shall 
 perform penance for seven days or refusing to do it, if a person of 
 rank, he shall be excommunicated for a year ; if of an inferior degree, 
 he shall receive 100 lashes.” 
 
 On the 30th November, 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council was 
 convened and presided over by that haughty and intolerant executioner, 
 Innocent III. This assembly of clergy formulated canons which 
 humiliated and degraded the Jews so effectually, that the lapse of 
 several centuries was necessary to heal the cruel wounds inflicted on 
 that memorable day. The prelates had almost to a man been reared 
 in the tempestuous seas of persecution and blind fanaticism, all were 
 ancillary to its president, the Arch-enemy of all Jews and heretics, i.e., 
 disbelievers in his own divine selection, so what necessity to recount 
 its stipulations ; all that was cruel, cowardly and oppressive in the 
 “Jew codes” of Reccared, Sisebut, Egica and Dagobert; all that 
 monks, whose zeal wrought them into frantic vituperation against 
 those who swerved a hairs-breadth from their bigoted views, had 
 demanded ; all that degraded Kings, who by systematized tyranny and 
 legally instituted persecution had sought to wreak their misfortunes 
 upon them, had ordered, were marshalled before this foaming Council, 
 who hurled them at the Jews, clothed with the authority of Canons of 
 the Church : in the Visigothic, Byzantine and other codes they had 
 not infrequently been but the temporal decrees of sovereigns. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 197 
 
 Monarchs, clerics and State officials alike were adjured to exercise the 
 strictest surveillance over their respective Jews, lest they should observe 
 Talmudical customs. Should they do so the various degrees of punish¬ 
 ment for addressing the God of the Patriarchs and of the founders of 
 Christianity, and Mohammedanism were laid down with punctilious 
 nicety. As in the code of Egica, the clergy were invested with 
 practically unlimited power over the Jews, and owing to the very 
 remote prospect of an appeal to a tribunal, the influence they used was 
 despotic. The ignorant awe and crude logic of the people on the one 
 hand, and the utter antipathy of the higher clergy on the other, 
 precluded the hated Hebrews from the protection of those, who were 
 occasionally ordered to restrain the licentiousness, the criminality, and 
 the seditionary proclivities of the Catholic clergy ; the dissolute and 
 shameful lives of the monks, and the venality, rapacity and lust of the 
 various orders just as much as their terrible outrages upon the Jews. 
 “ The sins of the Jews must distinguish them from believers,” said 
 Innocent. “ Did not Moses prescribe for them a special dress ? ” No 
 doubt the fanatical Mohammedan Caliph Hakim who had ordered his 
 Hebrew subjects to wear a rope in the place of a girdle and a huge and 
 hideous bonnet in the place of a turban, was called to memory by the 
 cruel Pope. This same Church Council decreed that all above the age 
 of twelve y^ars were to wear a broad green badge on their hats and 
 Jewesses above the same tender age a similar distinctive mark in their 
 bonnets. “ Provincial councils, State Assemblies and Royal cabinets 
 were immediately formed to consider as to the exclusion of the Jews 
 from all honours and offices and also to determine on the colour, or 
 length, and breadth of the Jewish badge with pedantic thoroughness, 
 whether it should be a badge square or round in form, of saffron, 
 yellow or some other colour on the hat, or on the mantle. As this 
 symbol of Judaism was a provocation for the mob to insult the wearers 
 and to bespatter them with mud, it was also a hint to the ignorant 
 populace to fall upon, illtreat, and even kill them ; and it afforded an 
 opportunity for the better class to treat the Jews as the lowest of man¬ 
 kind, to levy contributions on them, or to exile them from the land.” 1 
 Thus we see that religion, when established on the basis of oppressing 
 those who dissent from its particular .tenets and dogmas, could without 
 hesitancy frame a code of laws and regulations as violent and savage 
 as those of a Hadrian or a Caligula, when aided in its enforcement by 
 military strength, and with political aims to serve. The paramount 
 asteism of this Council in professing to feel a regard for the numerous 
 grievances under which the wretched Israelites laboured renders their 
 decrees whimsically cruel. Adverting to the Jew badge and the 
 
198 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 argument that Moses had covertly ordained it, an eminent historical 
 scholar says, “ It was a precaution as feeble as this statement is false, 
 the sage provision really secured that the Christian stones should reach 
 the heads for which they were intended.” 
 
 The Council of Oxford (1222) summoned and presided over by 
 Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, was ‘‘called to rectify 
 some of the evils of the Church;” simony, impurity, usury are all 
 provided with fit punishment. “ Let there be in every dean’s district 
 two or three men having God before their eyes, who at the command 
 of the Archbishop or his official may denounce to them the public 
 excesses of prelates, priests and other clergy,” was one of its utterances. 2 
 This council gave a great amount of attention to the English Jews, 
 who were in so oppressed a position that they had to periodically 
 purchase from the Kings permission to trade. No doubt their nidulant 
 characteristics together with their inalienable attachment to their creed 
 was the source of bitter grief to that ecclesiastic. He could the more 
 readily submit the Jews to his malignant programme, and better 
 aetrencate their religion on account of the tractable boy King Henry 
 entrusting at that period almost the royal prerogative into his 
 counsellor’s hand. Langton had shown himself a frantic Jew-hater, 
 and his roaring fanaticism found an outlet in the decrees of this council. 
 
 The Canons of the Lateran Council (1215) were almost all ratified 
 for adoption in England, this being a formal confirmation of their 
 validity and adoption in this country. 
 
 Some of the principal Canons added were (1) “ That no new 
 synagogue shall under any circumstances be erected, nor shall any 
 decorations adorn those already in existence.” 
 
 (2) “ That the Jews were to give tithes to the clergy, pay an 
 annual and additional tax to the Church and be vigorously constrained 
 to wear Jew badges, but a different one prescribed by the famous, or 
 rather infamous Council, from whose debates they sought their pabulum; 
 a woollen stripe four fingers in length and two in breadth. It would 
 be about twelve inches by six. The colours were to be most strikingly 
 different from the garments to which they were affixed, a blue garment 
 a red badge, a white garment a black badge.” 
 
 “ To prevent the mixture of the Jewish men and women with 
 Christians of each sex we charge by authority of the general Council, 
 the Jews of both sexes to wear a linen cloth, two inches broad, four 
 fingers long, of a different colour from their own clothes on their upper 
 garments before their breast and that they may be compelled to this 
 
 (1.) Graetz, Yol. iii, page 588. 
 
 (2.) “Life of Stephen Langton,” page 150. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 199 
 
 by ecclesiastical censure. And let them not presume to enter into any 
 Church and to lodge their goods there. If they do let them be 
 corrected by the Bishop.” 
 
 The next Canon to this deals with the English clergy. “ Whereas 
 some do, which we cannot speak without tears, spend their ecclesias¬ 
 tical revenues in building houses on lay fees for their sons, nephews, 
 nay for their concubines, and so misapply the goods of the church 
 designed for the^use of the poor. Now we decree that those who are 
 suspected to do this, or to give money for the doing of it, be punished 
 at the discretion of their superior, unless they make their purgation 1 
 at his discretion.” 2 
 
 Stephen Langton’s inflexible hatred against the Jew r s does not 
 appear to have jet been sated, even by the disgraceful decrees of the 
 Council over which he had so worthily presided. He issued an order 
 inhibiting, under threat of ecclesiastical ban, intercourse with persons 
 of either sex professing the Hebrew faith. He also forbade Christians 
 to supply them with food and provisions, but for once the State inter¬ 
 fered and exhorted all Englishmen to disregard the decretive utterance 
 of Stephen. 
 
 Closely following the “ Council of Exeter ” (1227) the Council of 
 Narbonne forbade Jews to lend Christians money on interest, a most 
 extraordinary ordinance, seeing that by far the majority of the 
 legislators w 7 ere heavily indebted to the very men they sought to 
 oppress. They w r ere not to frequent the public buildings, or appear 
 in the streets during “ Holy Week.” This decree was, before the 
 rising of the Council, altered into a paragraph forbidding them to quit 
 their houses during Easter. They w r ere also ordered to pay a heavy 
 Church tax for the support of the clergy. Three years later 1230, 
 the Council of Rouen fearing a decadence of anti-Semitism solemnly 
 ratified the Anti-Jewish code, and urged the various clerics to super¬ 
 intend its enforcement. “ The Council of Tours ” re-enacted the law 
 that Jews were not to appear as witnesses against Christians, because, 
 as a certain narrowMieaded bigot had once said, “ If the dews are false 
 to God how can they be true to man ? ” Good ratiocination indeed ! 
 
 In 1235 a Council of English prelates strictly forbade those 
 Christians, who in defiance of the ecclesiastical provisions, still worked 
 for employers of the Jewish denomination. Many of those, who openly 
 avowed their preference for Hebrew masters, were bitterly reprobated 
 for their godless tendencies. 
 
 (1.) This was at the time when some of the more upright of the Cardinals 
 were making noble but useless attempts to suppress the debaucheries, incests, 
 concubinages and corruptness of the Roman clergy. 
 
 (2.) Dean Hook, “ Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” vol ii, page 750. 
 
200 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 In 1246 the Church conference of Beziers, taking painful cognisance 
 of the skill and influence of the Jewish physicians, forbade them from 
 practising their healing arts, although—with the exception of the 
 Arabian doctors—the entire higher medical and surgical skill of Europe 
 was in their hands. These myopic and jealous churchmen adjured all 
 Christians to take no medicines from them, nor in any wise submit to 
 their treatment however trifling. “ No member of the religion of 
 Moses shall physic a Christian. ” This same Council again declared 
 the Jews ineligible for appointment to any military, civil or govern¬ 
 ment post, or to any position of trust ; they were again forbidden to 
 quit their houses during “Passover Week,” “lest Christians be 
 annoyed by their appearance.” Other decrees prohibited Jews from 
 employing Christian nurses or servants, or to sell meat or wine to 
 members of that faith. The Jewish “Church payments” were revised 
 and a sliding scale of ecclesiastical charges prepared. 
 
 “ At this period Spain and France were full of learned Jews and 
 perhaps partly by exerting upon the highest classes with whom they 
 eame into contact too much influence, for the physician of a Christian 
 prince was very often the rival of his confessor, and partly because the 
 practice of medicine as they pursued it, interfered with the gains of 
 the Church, 1 the clergy took alarm and caused to be re-enacted the 
 ancient laws. The Council of Alby 1254 prohibited all Christians 
 from resorting to the services of an Israelitish physician. It would 
 appear that these enactments had either fallen into desuetude or had 
 failed to be enforced. The Faculty, at last awakening to the danger of 
 the case, caused (1301) a decree to be published prohibiting either man 
 or woman of the religion of Moses from practising medicine upon any 
 person of the Catholic religion. A similar course was also taken in 
 Spain. At this time the Jews were confessedly at the head of French 
 medicine.” “ It was the appointment of one of their persuasion, 
 Profatius, as regent of the “Faculty of Montpelier” 1300, which drew 
 upon them the wrath of the faculty of Paris. The animosity of the 
 French ecclesiastics against the Jewish physicians at last led to their 
 banishment.” 2 
 
 In 1268 the House of Commons forbade Christian money lenders 
 to lend money to Jews, and in 1270 forbade the latter to purchase 
 property from Christian landlords. So bitter was the feeling against 
 the Jews that when (in 1286) a wealthy Jew of Hereford celebrated 
 the marriage of his daughter by a magnificent feast, Bishop Swinfield 
 issued a pastoral letter threatening to excommunicate any Christians 
 
 (1.) Sale of Relics, etc. 
 
 (2.) Dr. Draper, Vol. ii., pages 124-125. 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 201 
 
 who attended. The Council of Vienna 1267 presided over by a Papal 
 Nuncio confirmed en masse the main decisions of Innocent III and the 
 different Popes, who had upheld the legalised oppression of the Jews, 
 proceeding to the most violent extremes on its own account, and its 
 session marks the installation of new troubles for the Jews. It 
 precluded them from holding any post whatever under a Christian, 
 from using the public baths, frequenting the public promenades or 
 receiving admission into Christian inns. Thus a benighted Jewish 
 traveller might amid the most frightful storm be committing an illegal 
 action by appealing for a night’s shelter for himself and his beast. 
 Vast sums were demanded for accommodation, but it is fortunate that 
 the eloquence of Semitic ducats was convincing enough to move the 
 soft-hearted, guest-pillaging, murderous German hosts of the Middle 
 Ages. Why should it not ? Were not the very Popes, Kings, Cardinals, 
 and Bishops, who passed anti-Jewish laws, amenable to its blandish¬ 
 ments ? Christians were by this Council forbidden all intercourse 
 with Jews ; these were again forbidden to sell meat, wine or wax and 
 commanded to wear a most hideous and disfiguring head-dress, a high 
 pointed and horned cap somewhat like a large cone. It was doubtless 
 feared the badges and veils already ordered to be worn might not 
 plainly enough mark them to their enemies, and the amount of Jewish 
 contribution to the Church was again stipulated. 
 
 The Council of Ofen (1279) was convened for the purpose of 
 defining the position of Jews, and other nonconforming bodies resident 
 in Hungary and South Poland, these countries being represented by 
 their principal Church functionaries. Laws showing a marked parity 
 with those of the Viennese Council were drafted ; it being decided to 
 preclude Jews and other non-Christians from government employ and 
 all responsible posts. A severe reprimand was administered to those 
 Bishops, who entrusted the adjustment of their finances to dissidents 
 from Romanism, it being ordained that such recreants from the faith 
 were to be suspended from the exercises of their priestly prerogatives. 
 A solemn anathema was moreover pronounced against those laymen, 
 who refused to instantly discharge the Jews in their service or to quit 
 the employ of all Jewish masters in whose employ they had been 
 hitherto engaged. The badge for the Hungarian Jews was altered 
 into a red wheel, something similar to the rouelle which St. Louis had 
 introduced into France for the deeper degradation of the Jews in that 
 country ; it was to be worn upon the left breast of the outer garment, 
 and to be seen without it constituted an offence which was ordered to 
 be summarily and effectually dealt with. Whatever we think of this 
 Council we cannot but prefer its ingenuousness to the duplicity of 
 
202 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 that presided over by Innocent III, which aggravated its criminality 
 by professing a solicitous fear that Christians might, in its absence, 
 assault them and plead ignorance of their faith in extenuation of their 
 lawlessness. 
 
 In England shortly before the expulsion of 1290, the Parliament 
 again discussed the Jewish questions, and inter alia came to the follow¬ 
 ing decisions :—(1) “ That the law compelling Jews to reside in no 
 other than royal boroughs and cities be more strictly enforced.” This 
 was a cruel ordinance since the Jews resident in towns under baronial 
 jurisdiction were both numerous and long established. (2) “ That 
 they be forbidden to follow the business of money lending.” This was 
 indirectly effected by reducing the rates of interest to sums barely 
 covering the expenses of the necessary legal papers. (3) “ That the 
 Jews were to pay a further tax of threepence annually for every Jewish 
 person above twelve years of age ; ” this fell due in Holy Week. It is 
 noteworthy that the legislative body took no part in the ultimate cruel 
 expulsion of the English Jews. 
 
 In 1321 the Paris Parliament laid a fine of 150,000 livres upon 
 the Jews of France for committing a crime of which the King, and 
 many of those who had supported the infliction of the mulct, had openly 
 declared them absolutely innocent ; the poisoning of wells and the 
 acceleration of the Plague of Florence. The most representative Jews 
 were imprisoned ; their goods and the debts due to them sequestered, 
 pending the payment of this collosal sum which a Jewish conference 
 had to procure by apportioning the amount amongst the different 
 provinces inhabited by members of the Hebrew race. 
 
 In 1329 the Spanish “ Cortes” accepted a series of laws affecting 
 the Jews, which were thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of religious 
 intolerance and social antipathy. These were so impracticable and 
 suicidal to the State, apart from all their injustice, that Alfonso XI 
 declared himself unable and unwilling to ratify provisions that would 
 unquestionably tend to impoverish his court and kingdom. It was 
 sought to deprive the many sagacious Jewish statesmen and scholars 
 of Alfonso’s court—upon whose wisdom he placed the burdens of 
 state—of their high offices. “ They were indispensable,” he said, “to 
 the welfare of the throne ; ” he therefore disregarded the allocution of 
 Innocent III against Jewish statesmen. 
 
 The Cortes of Madrid had been rebuffed, but it did not lose courage; 
 its perseverance is evidenced by a strongly worded address to the 
 Crown, at a later period emphatically asking, in the name of the 
 nobility of Spain, the adoption of a code approved by its members, 
 which in deploring the fact that the evil and conceited people “ the 
 
COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 203 
 
 enemies of God and of Christendom ” are allowed to become Crown 
 officials, to be admitted to Court, to farm and collect the State 
 revenues, decided that they ought not to hold government posts. 
 They were not to appear abroad attired in costly silks and rich brocades, 
 riding gorgeously caparisoned steeds, as was their wont, 1 nor to reside 
 outside of a ghetto into which they where to be cooped. They were 
 furthermore to renounce their Spanish and family surnames and to 
 wear a Jew badge as prescribed by the various Church councils. Don 
 Henry, who exceedingly regretted the intense jealousy so eagerly 
 shown by the nobles and court dignitaries, had not sufficient influence 
 to do otherwise than concede some of the popular demands so loudly 
 and imperatively urged upon him. He selected from their proposals 
 those he considered the most venial, and decreed that Jews were to 
 discontinue the use of Spanish patronymics and assume the “ Badge.” 
 At a later period he was constrained to allow Christian debtors to 
 cancel one third of the sums due to their Jewish creditors, together 
 with the interest due on the total amount; the remainder, however, 
 was to be returned to the luckless lenders before an appointed time. 
 
 In 1385 the Cortes of Valladolid evidently anxious to thoroughly 
 and systematically oppress the Jews under its jurisdiction, asked that 
 the “ Lateran ” laws should be received into the legislature. “ Most 
 painful is it,” they said, “that good Christian nurses do attend Jewish 
 children.” These, it was begged, should, for a repetition of that offence 
 be publicly whipped, a course that would prove an effectual deterrent. 
 Jews were not to live with Christians. Don Juan, a man thoroughly 
 and helplessly saturated with the spirit of Jewish hatred, acceded to 
 their requests. 
 
 In 1388 the “Council of Palencia” enacted that “Christians must 
 not dwell within the quarters assigned to Jews and Moors, and those 
 already residing in them are to move therefrom within two months 
 after the publication of this decree in the Cathedral, and if they do 
 not they shall be compelled by ecclesiastical censure.” 
 
 In 1434, (September 7,) the “Council of Basle,” which had assem¬ 
 bled, among other things, to reform the manifest abuses of the Church, 
 and the shameless vice and profligacy of its representatives, decided to 
 more strictly administer the canonical restrictions upon the Jews. Not 
 content with penning the Jews into certain unhealthy streets, com¬ 
 pelling them to wear a disfiguring mark, refusing them intercourse 
 with members of other faiths, denying them admission to the various 
 learned professions, for which their talents so well fitted them, and 
 
 (1.) For an account of the different sumptuary laws against the Jews see 
 Mr. F. D. Mocatto’s " The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition,” 
 
204 
 
 COUNCILS AND CANONS. 
 
 rendering their tenure of public posts illegal, it ordered that Jews, 
 whatever their proficiency or attainments,should not under any circum¬ 
 stances be admitted to academic or collegiate distinctions, that they 
 should be compelled, at certain appointed times, to attend sermons in 
 the various churches which aimed at their conversion by representing 
 to them the punishments they were doomed to undergo both here and 
 hereafter. Truly extraordinary ! The crimes, robberies, adulteries, 
 and incests of the clergy of this time were so terrible, that they had to 
 be admonished by the legates of the Pope with closed doors, yet they, 
 so immeasurably superior to the Jews, were deeply concerned in the 
 after punishment of the latter for their heresy, that is, hourly worship 
 of the one omnific God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 
 
 In 1514 the Synod of Paris University, condemned as heretical 
 and infidel—favouring the works of a distinguished German writer 
 Eeuchlin, who had defended the Talmud and the Jews, because he 
 could not understand why the German monks should drag copies of 
 that work from the shelves of their owners and make public bonfires of 
 them. Leo X, Pope and crypto-atheist, who had before the com¬ 
 pletion of his seventeenth year enjoyed the revenue of six rectories, 
 fifteen abbacies, one priory and one Archbishopric, 1 ultimately declared 
 the Talmud a work fit for dissemination. 
 
 In 1550 a Council of Genoese Physicians, envious of the success 
 and popularity of the Jewish practitioners of that city coalesced with 
 the Dominican monks of Genoa and unitedly pandered to the bigotry 
 of the people so adroitly, that they constrained the Doge Doria, much 
 against his will, to expel them from that city and proclaim by trum¬ 
 peters in all the public squares, that Jews were no more permitted to 
 reside there, nor was any petition for their future settlement permissible. 
 The Jews of Naples had been expelled forty six years earlier. 
 
 Many of the Councils following this period, and a relation of their 
 various ordinances,belong rather to the histories of the different nations 
 in which they legislated, and are in the majority of instances germane 
 parts of their records, and not often themes that would lead us to con¬ 
 tinue this chapter. They are often of purely local interest and wielded 
 no influence over other Jews, nor did they very much affect the legis¬ 
 lation of their Christian masters, with perhaps the exception of the 
 smaller German States, who rapidly adopted the oppressive codes of 
 those who formulated any species of new or more abject cruelty. In 
 following the Prussian example at a later period of lessening their 
 burdens, they were distinctly less enthusiastic. 
 
 (1.) See Legge, “Temporal Power of the Papacy,” ad locum. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 205 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 “ In its internal government, Spain was, during all this time, the 
 most despotic, and intolerant country in Europe. No where were Jews 
 and heretics of all kinds more cruelly persecuted.”—“ A General Sketch 
 of European History ,” E. A. Freeman , D.C.L. , L.L.D., p. 255. 
 
 lOpIHE Jews have resided in Spain from the very earliest times, their 
 existence, organization, and customs, being* referred to in many 
 State Archives. Historians refer to the Spanish Jews at periods 
 anterior to the advent of the Christian religion. Jews are supposed 
 to have founded Seville, Toledo and other important Spanish cities. 
 “ From the time of the Emperor Hadrian who had transported 50,000 
 Jewish families into Spain the race had wonderfully increased.” 1 They 
 were remarkable for their dexterity and skill in all commercial enter¬ 
 prises and their loyalty to their monarch was as notable as the unswerv¬ 
 ing steadfastness with which they clung to their faith. Though their 
 principal establishments were at Seville, Toledo, Granada and other 
 great cities, they ramified throughout the Pyrennean peninsula, 
 everywhere building synagogues which were models of architecture. 
 As in France prior to the introduction of Christianity, no sentiment 
 other than that of amity influenced the relation of Jews and Spaniards. 
 For the former it was a second home, and, though assisting to build 
 up the country by their sedulous and unflagging industries and their 
 incontestable talents, they were glad that they, then chased from their 
 own garden home, had found a haven. They were indeed loyal subjects 
 and on many occasions, in time of war fought gallantly side by side 
 with their Spanish brethren displaying conspicuous bravery and joy¬ 
 fully shedding their blood for Spain. To the Spaniard the Jew was 
 a homeless but wronged wanderer, devoted to any country that granted 
 him rest and a human being with his virtues, with his faults; therefore 
 he—free from all the baneful trammels of religious intolerance— 
 extended to him the hand of fellowship and right gratefully did. the 
 Jew return the grasp. “ In the days of their prosperity they main- 
 
 (1.) Draper, “ The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Yol. ii. page 28. 
 
206 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 tained a merchant marine of more than a thousand ships ; they had 
 factories and consuls on the Tanais. With Constantinople alone they 
 maintained a great trade. This trade ramified from the Black Sea 
 and Eastern Mediterranean into the interior of Asia, it reached parts 
 of India and China, and extended along the African coast as far as 
 Madagascar ; even in these commercial affairs the singular genius of 
 the Jews shines forth .” 1 Under the earlier heathen and later Arian 
 rule, the Iberian Jews enjoyed every imaginable privilege and freedom, 
 they partook of the culture of the land, and rendered their vast learn¬ 
 ing in Theology, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Medicine, Astronoihy and 
 History accessible to many ancient scholars, who were not ashamed 
 to recognise the well from which they had so deeply quaffed ; in fine 
 the position of the Jews in Spain prior to the inception of Christianity 
 in that country,—that is before that most Catholic and Yisigothic 
 madman Reccared ascended the throne—was one of great prosperity, 
 analagous to that of the Jews in France under Louis le Debonnaire 
 and his high-minded consort Queen Judith. A great historian speak¬ 
 ing of the Jews of this period says “ It was in Spain that the golden 
 age of the Jews shone with the brightest and most enduring splendour. 
 We are certain that the Jews under the enjoyment of equal rights and 
 privileges rivalled their masters or rather their compatriots in the 
 advancement of wealth, splendour and cultivation ; though they had 
 their full share, or perhaps as more intelligent, a disproportionate 
 share, in their highest and most confidential offices; they had 
 perpetual intercourse with their brethren in the East, we may safely 
 infer that by land along the North of Africa, and by sea along the 
 course of the Mediterranean, their commerce was pursued with 
 industry and success. They had risen but to be trampled down by 
 the fierce and unrelenting tread of oppression and persecution. The 
 world, seemed to have entered into a taoit agreement to allow them 
 time to gain wealth, in order that it might plunder them when that 
 wealth was acquired.” A few excerpts from historical writings have 
 been given bearing upon their status and abilities shewing that it was 
 reserved for the adherents of a religion which teaches love and peace 
 to abolish liberty of thought. 
 
 “ Under the Yisigothic empire the Jews multiplied exceedingly in 
 the country, and were permitted to acquire considerable power and 
 wealth, but no sooner had their Arian masters embraced the orthodox 
 faith, then they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the 
 most pitiless storm of persecution. One of their laws alone condemned 
 
 (1.) Draper. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 207 
 
 the whole race to slavery, and Montesquieu remarks without much 
 exaggeration that to the Visigothic code may be traced all the maxims 
 of the modern Inquisition, the monk of the fifteenth century only 
 copying, in reference to the Israelites, the bishop of the seventh.” 1 
 
 Under the rule of the Mohammedan Caliphs of Spain their position 
 was equally as high as it had been under the Arian Kings ; their 
 culture was unquestionable. It has been truthfully said that whilst 
 Europe was sunk in darkness and barbarity, it was Jewish and 
 Mohammedan scholars, who were accelerating science and learning in 
 the Universities of Spain. “Their common Oriental origin produced 
 a similarity of tastes to a certain extent not unfavourable to such a 
 coalition. At any rate the early Spanish Arabs were characterized 
 by a spirit of toleration towards both Jews and Christians, “ The 
 peoples of the Book,” as they were called, which has scarcely 1 been 
 found among later Moslems. The Jews accordingly under these 
 favourable auspices not only accumulated wealth with their usual 
 diligence, but gradually rose to the highest civil dignities and made 
 great advances in various departments of letters. Their schools in 
 Cordova, Granada, Toledo and Barcelona were crowded with numerous 
 disciples, who emulated the Arabians in keeping alive the flame of 
 learning during the deep darkness of the Middle Ages.” 2 
 
 A short and general outline of some of the principal events in the 
 history of the persecution of the Jews in Spain beginning with the 
 massacre of Granada, 30th December, 1066 will now be given. 
 
 The primal cause of this horrible affair was the burning jealousv 
 with which the inhabitants of Granada regarded the influence of Don 
 Joseph Ibn Nagrela, who had in succession to his father been appointed 
 Vizier to King Badis. He was one of the noblest and most devoted 
 servant that a Spanish monarch had ever possessed, but his enemies at 
 Court bruited it about that he had a treasonable understanding with 
 an Almerian prince, who was expected daily to invade the country. 
 Perhaps the mob which swarmed around the palace of Don Joseph 
 were not to blame, for fanned by the nobles, who sought his death, 
 they readily believed whatever was told them. 
 
 Joseph was captured and although he had been so esteemed by his 
 co-religionists, as to have been appointed Nagid of the Community, at 
 the age of twenty-four, ten years previously, he was crucified upon the 
 gates of the city in punishment of a crime in proof of which no 
 evidence had been proffered. An indiscriminate slaughter of the Jews 
 
 (1.) W. H. Prescott, Yol. i. page 191. 
 (2.) Ibid. 
 
208 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 in the city was then indulged in, and rather more than fifteen hundred 
 families were ruthlessly butchered. The blood of those who daily 
 proclaimed the existence of the One God, deluged the streets like a 
 river which had overflown its banks. Men were heartlessly and with 
 revolting barbarity ripped open and dissembowelled to see if they had 
 swallowed precious stones or coins. Numbers of the women were 
 outraged and their babes wrested from their arms and either flung 
 from high windows or their brains dashed out against the stone walls. 
 The towns and villages near Granada caught the miasma of slaughter, 
 for in several of them cruel massacres were the popular order of the 
 day. The after throes of this onslaught were very severe; the 
 merchant princes who had in one day become paupers through plunder; 
 the learned professors, scientists and savants, whose houses had been 
 burnt down ; the artisans and mechanics, whose tools had been spite¬ 
 fully destroyed ; all wandered about without bread or shelter. 
 
 In 1108 a horrible butchery of Jews in Toledo occurred. Archbishop 
 Bernard’s taking the cross seems to have been a tocsin for the numbers 
 who were flocking to the armies of the Crusades. So fierce was the 
 attack that the Babbins were slain in the synagogues whilst at prayer. 
 
 In 1135 the King of Navarre presented the Jews of Estella to the 
 citizens of that place, in grateful recognition of services rendered. It 
 was a very usual mark of high favour for Christian sovereign to present 
 a noble, or city, with Jews, and allow them to squeeze what they would 
 out of them. 
 
 At this time when Germany was drenched with the blood of the 
 thousands of murdered Jews, who fell under the swords of the 
 Crusaders, Spain depended for almost her very existence as a factor 
 in the Council of Europe upon the talent, learning, and enterprise of 
 her Hebrew subjects. They had reached one of the highest points in 
 their history, and their culture and refinement was certainly the 
 greatest in Europe. Jews filled the highest State offices, their poets, 
 philosophers, logicians, writers, scholars, and physicians were admitted 
 the greatest in the country. The popularity of one Hebra-Spanish 
 folklorist and musician, Abraham Ibn Sahal, was so great that a 
 petition asking that the Spanish people be restrained by law from 
 singing his songs was presented. Their general position left nothing 
 to be desired until the year 1148, when the wild Almohades (a sect of 
 Mohammedan fanatics) invaded Sj^ain like a devastating epidemic and 
 town after town succumbed to their superior numbers. Throughout 
 the Province of Andalusia, then thickly populated with Jews, the 
 synagogues were everywhere demolished. Buildings that had stood 
 from time immemorial did not survive the wholesale demolition of 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 209 
 
 synagogues conducted with such savage and unpitying zeal. The 
 Rabbinical and secular Jewish academies were all closed and their 
 libraries burnt. The Jews (that is those whose efforts to flee the 
 country of their birth were intercepted) were compelled to profess the 
 adoption of Mohammedanism or die. Many Jews and Jewesses were 
 sold for slaves and transported to the Mohammedan provinces of 
 Africa. Under Alfonso VIII the Jews had again advanced to a 
 position of great honour. The Court was filled with Jewish ministers, 
 diplomatists and scholars, the State offices were filled by many persons 
 of that denomination, the armies were oft marshalled by Jews, the 
 universities were resplendent with their attainments, and envoys to 
 the different European Courts were frequently orthodox Jews, who 
 abandoned not one jot of Talmudical Judaism 1 : the Jews in Spain 
 were on the whole most enthusiastically attached to their creed nor 
 has the flame of their patriotism been ever extinguished, even in the 
 breasts of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews at present in England. 
 
 When (in the reign, and through the mediation, of our Henry II) 
 peace was concluded between the two Kingdoms of Castile and 
 Aragon the monarch of the former was presented with the revenues 
 derived'from the Jews of Estella and Eavines. 
 
 In 1189 Toledo, perhaps the first town in Spanish Jewry, was the 
 scene of a riot which terminated in the cruel murder of several Jews, 
 and the wrecking of a number of houses in the Jewish quartei. It 
 was the direct outcome of a bigoted harangue delivered in the market 
 square by a most violent fanatic. 
 
 During the fierce and stubborn resistance, which the Castilian and 
 Aragonese monarchs offered to the everywhere victorious Almohades, 
 the Jews of these Kingdoms, as well as those of Leon, suffered most 
 severely ; in 1195 numbers of ^Hebrew soldiers willingly fought for 
 the fatherland they so loved and shed their life’s blood in the Spanish 
 ranks, in common with their Christian brethren. Immediately after 
 the irruption of the fanatical Almohades, thousands had abjured, or 
 rather professed to abjure, their creed ; thus many of the Spanish 
 Hebrews were nominal Mohammedans frequenting the mosques, but 
 privately conforming to the Jewish ritual. Strange indeed ! In Spain 
 
 (1.) The Jews still held the highest and most honourable position, they were 
 long defended by the wise policy of the Kings both in Castile and Aragon from 
 the implacable animosity of the Clergy. They were the most enlightened class 
 in the kingdom ; they were cultivators and possessors of the. soil; they where 
 still not seldom ministers of finance, their fame as physicians was geneially 
 acknowledged, and deservedly so, for they had in their own tongues, or in 
 Arabic, the best books of the ancient writers of medicine, and by their inter¬ 
 course with the East no doubt obtained many valuable drugs unknown in the 
 West. il Milman,” Vol. iii, page 353. 
 
210 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 they were being persecuted and told that all their sufferings were 
 solely due to their stiffnecked refusal of Mohammed. In Germany 
 and France, they were at the same time being persecuted and told 
 that all their sufferings were solely due to their stiffnecked refusal of 
 Christ. It was to the nominal Mohammedans, who were truly 
 despondent, that Moses Maimonides, outwardly a devout Mohammedan, 
 addressed his celebrated letter of consolation, which was also intended 
 for the secret Jews of Africa. 
 
 Alfonso the Wise during the earlier part of his reign showed a rare 
 liberality of mind to those who differed with him in religion, but at a 
 later period he exerted every nerve to reduce the Jews to the lowest 
 rung of the social ladder. No doubt finding it politic to curry favour 
 with the Clergy, he formulated a rancorous code of laws which sought 
 the bitterest degradation of the Jews. The code contains several 
 conclusions arrived at by some extraordinary and inexplicable process 
 of reasoning, for instance, “the Jews are allowed to live, so that they 
 may remind good Christians that the vengeance of Heaven is ever 
 directed against “ that race of crucifiers.” In a most erudite perora¬ 
 tion to his learned and recondite disquisition, the narrow-headed King 
 admits that “ At one time they were beloved by God but owing to 
 their frightful criminality in refusing to receive Christ they were 
 scattered all over the world.” No doubt considering it his inalienable 
 duty to personally punish their culpable misbelief in not accepting the 
 divinity of Christ, he almost laid down the amount of air a Jew might 
 inhale. One of his most savage enactments was that any Christian 
 who embraced Judaism was to be put to death. The process of execu¬ 
 tion in this Christian country, Prescott tells us, was to savagely plunge 
 a long dagger into the throat of the victim and literally sever his head 
 from the trunk by a violent method of wrenching it out. His 
 monachal highness prohibited the Jews from employing Christians as 
 labourers, servants, nurses, or in any sort of employment ; they were 
 not, he ordained, to erect any new synagogues, nor hold communion 
 with Christians. Any Jew or Jewess who failed to affix the prescribed 
 mark of infamy to the hat or head-dress was to be punished, the former 
 by receiving ten lashes with a scourge, the latter by paying a fine of a 
 similar number of gold pieces. Jews were not to leave their quarters 
 during Holy Week nor their houses on Good Friday. Jews and 
 Christians were not to eat, drink, bathe, sleep, nor reside together, 
 Jewish physicians were prohibited from attending Christian patients 
 by a drastic law, which threatened them with a heavy punishment did 
 they do so. Yet though Alfonso hated the Jews and Judaism with 
 the bitterest intensity he was not so oblivious to the dictates of 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 211 
 
 humanity, as not to raise his voice and deprecate the cowardly violence, 
 which was so natural an offshoot of the fiery and murderous bigotry 
 fondly fostered by the clergy in the ductile minds of the populace. 
 Their spiritual guides ever sought pretexts for the affliction of the 
 Jews. Thus Alfonso prevented his subjects from illtreating the Jews 
 to too great an extent, by interlarding his outrageous code with various 
 protective measures, which conceded to the Jews the most natural and 
 primitive rights. The code could only rouse the very fanaticism which 
 a few of its paragraphs sought to suppress. Alfonso ordained that the 
 Jews were not to be involuntarily dragged into churches and baptized, 
 also that their synagogues were not to be desecrated, nor were process¬ 
 ions of monks and priors to enter them on the Day of Atonement and 
 other high festivals in order to place a crucifix in the Ark, and 
 harangue the terrified Hebrews on the immaculacy of Christ. The 
 Jews, however, were forbidden to hold any court or government post, 
 yet Alfonso had no alternative but to surround himself and often— 
 owing to the gross corruptness of his own officials—rely on the guidance 
 of talented and faithful Hebrew ministers of State. He bitterly 
 inveighed against the Jewish physicians and, in vituperative language, 
 ordered his subjects not to entrust their bodies to them ; yet his own 
 body physician was a Jew whom he rarely permitted out of his sight, 
 indeed a singular anomaly ! a man forbidding his subjects to avail 
 themselves of talents without which, and persons without whom, he 
 himself could not exist. 
 
 The Cortes of Tarragona, held in 1233, gave some attention to the 
 Jews, and forbade their free intercourse with Moors. 
 
 Thibaut I, King of Navarre, appears to have treated the Jews 
 justly, for in 1234 Pope Gregory IX upbraided him and ordered him 
 to compel them to dress differently from Christians. This action was 
 something after the style of Innocent III, who had soundly rated 
 Alonzo, the Castilian King, for some acts of kindness shown to Jews 
 and Moors in his kingdom. 
 
 In 1262, a large number of Jews were slaughtered by a mob at 
 Assuna, a town in Andalusia. Three Christians had thrown a dead 
 body into a Jewish house and accused the inmates of the murder ; 
 every Jew discovered was massacred. The Jews despatched legates 
 to the King and it was ultimately established that a certain Juan de la 
 Vera desiring to obviate the necessity of paying a debt to a Jew, 
 
 exhumed a corpse with the aid of two friends. The grave was. found 
 newly opened. 
 
 In the same year the Infanta, Donna Constance, was married to the 
 Navarrese Infante Don Pedro and received the Jews of Gerona as her 
 marriage portion. 
 
212 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 The Aragonese Jews were in a worse plight than those of Castile. 
 King Jayme I, who had been brought into contact with, and imbibed 
 many of the notions of, the royal Castilian monk, was so well inoculated 
 with Alfonso’s virus against the Jews that lie declared them his private 
 serfs. Yet he did no more than most of the European sovereigns who 
 looked upon “their” Jews as a body who could only appeal or be 
 legislated for en masse and who were the chattels and bondsmen of 
 their respective sovereigns. Added to this Jayme’s father confessor— 
 of whose purifying offices he had paramount and constant need—was 
 the frantic Raymond de Penjaforte, third General of the order of St. 
 Dominic, and one of the darkest and most brooding fanatics known to 
 history ; not only was he an ascetic, but a merciless heretic hunter. 1 
 
 He was ever dinning into Jayme’s royal ears the awful depravity 
 of not so circumscribing the lives of the Jews and Mohammedans in 
 his Kingdom as to leave them no resource but to receive Christianity. 
 Raymund, (afterwards a Saint), was so exceedingly anxious for the 
 conversion of the Jews that he established Hebrew academies for the 
 monks, who were thus to be enabled to controvert the Jewish heresy 
 from its own literature. St. Raymund compelled the most learned 
 Jew in Aragon, Rabbi Moses Nachmanides, of Gerona, (Ramban) to 
 appear before the King and hold an argument with a baptised Jew on 
 the Talmud. The disputation lasted several days, Nachmanides from 
 the first presenting the better case. 
 
 King Jayme, giving him a private audience, and, presenting him 
 with three hundred maravedis, remarked that he had never heard so 
 unjust a matter so skilfully defended. Rabbi Moses thus incurred the 
 fierce hatred of the entire Dominican order by having circumvented 
 the endeavours of their general. But Raymund issued an order to all 
 the Jewish communities of Aragon commanding them to enter into 
 argument with the amphoteric friar Pablo Christiani. The Jews had 
 to pay for his tour, deliver their Hebrew books up to his attendant 
 friars, and assemble in their synagogues to listen to his sermons. 
 Finding all these efforts to eradicate Judaism futile, recourse was had 
 to another plan. Nachmani was arraigned for controverting the 
 teachings of the Church and banished, although he was over seventy 
 at the time. Had Jayme not intervened, the Dominicans, who made 
 determined struggles to be appointed his judges, would without a 
 doubt have condemned him to the stake. 
 
 In Valladolid (1280) Alfonso, finding himself in want of money to 
 pay a visit to the French King, had the entire Jewish community 
 arrested and imprisoned. They were compelled to give him 2000 
 maravedis daily till his return to Spain. 
 
 (1.) See De Castro, “ The Jews in Spain,” ad locum. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 213 
 
 In 1290 an assessment of the Jews was ordered, and they were 
 taxed at three maravedis a head yearly. 
 
 At a Cortes of Valladolid, held in 1293, many false charges were 
 made against the Jews, but Don Sancho practically ignored them. 
 
 “In 1299 Philip le Bel, as regent of Navarre, ordered that the 
 ordinance of St. Louis, King of France, respecting the Jews should be 
 observed in Navarre and that only the sum lent should be repaid.” 1 
 
 When a Castilian King entered a Town that possessed a Jewish 
 community his body guards had to receive twelve maravedis (120 
 deniers) for each Scroll of the Law in the Synagogue. 
 
 “ The people who through a bigoted veneration for the priesthood 
 were led to believe the Jews as the authors of every public calamity, 
 were always ready to wreak their vengeance by attacking the Jewries, 
 plundering the houses, butchering the inmates and enriching them¬ 
 selves at the expense of the wealth and lives of the Hebrew people.” 2 
 
 During the reign of Alfonso XI Jews again occupied the highest 
 and most honourable offices of the State and were not unfrequently 
 Court dignitaries. They were prominent in every department of 
 letters, culture and science, 3 and that at a time when Spain herself was 
 signally deficient in genius and learning ; they enjoyed every privilege, 
 but in some parts of Southern Spain, in Aragon, and in Navarre, their 
 position was often insufferable, always unenviable. The acrid 
 harangues of the clergy, the dicacity of the nobles, ever threw the mob 
 into dangerous ferments. The Pope and his Cardinals were far away 
 and the former could only take action after a massacre of Jews had 
 taken place, by issuing an apostolic admonition. The unfairness of 
 the laws in the two latter kingdoms anent the Jews is patent to the 
 most superficial thinkers. 
 
 (1.) E. H. Lindo, “ The Jews of Spain and Portugal, page 116. 
 
 (2.) Lindo. 
 
 (3.) They cannot reasonably be denied to have contributed largely to 
 experimental and practical science They were diligent travellers in all parts 
 of the known world, compiling itineraries which have proved of exteusive use 
 in later times, and bringing home hordes of foreign specimens and foreign drugs 
 that furnished important contributions to the domestic pharmacopeias. In the 
 practice of medicine indeed they became so expert as in a manner to monopolise 
 that profession. They made great proficiency in mathematics and particularly 
 iu astronomy, while in cultivation of elegant letters the revived the ancient 
 glory of the Hebrew muse. This was indeed the golden age of modern Jewish 
 literature which under the Spanish caliphs especially, experienced a protection 
 so benign although occasionally chequered by caprices of despotism, that it 
 was enabled to attain higher beauty and a more perfect development in the 
 tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries than it has reached in any 
 other part of Christendom. Prescott’s, Life of Ferdinand and Isabella,” 
 Yol. i, page 192. 
 
214 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 The years rolled on, the Jews owned and tilled the soil, were the 
 agents of commerce and cultivators of the arts, in particular they were 
 the physicians of the country . 1 “We find eminent Jews residing in the 
 Courts of their Christian princes, directing their studies, attending 
 them as physicians, or more frequently as their financiers. For this 
 last vocation they seemed to have had a natural aptitude; and indeed 
 the correspondence which they maintained with the different countries 
 of Europe, by means of their own countrymen, who acted as the 
 brokers of almost every people among whom they were scattered 
 during the Middle Ages, afforded them peculiar facilities both in 
 politics and commerce. We meet with Jewish Scholars and States¬ 
 men attached to the courts of Affonso XI, Alfonso X, Peter the Cruel, 
 Henry II and other princes. Their knowledge of astronomy recom¬ 
 mended them in a special manner to Alfonso the Wise who employed 
 them in the construction of his celebrated tables . 2 ” They were the 
 most industrious and therefore the most wealthy people in the Spanish 
 Kingdom ; this condition continued in spite of the enmity of the 
 clergy, popular bigotry, and the adverse legislation of Cortes and 
 Parliaments . 3 
 
 In 1304 King Ferdinand addressed a letter to the Jews of his 
 kingdom insisting on their annual and regular payment of thirty 
 deniers, “ which you have to give in memorial of the death of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ when the Jews crucified him.” 
 
 In 1313 the Council of Zamora decreed :— 
 
 1. * Henceforth no Jew shall hold a post or dignity from Kings or any 
 secular prince, and shall resign those they now hold.” 
 
 2. “ They are not to be admitted into frequent association with Christians, 
 lest from the intimacy they adopt the errors which they do not under¬ 
 stand. 
 
 3. That Jews may not serve as witnesses against Christians nor claim the 
 benefit of the Law. 
 
 4. That no Christian woman, either temporarily or otherwise, act as wet 
 nurse to them or rear their children. 
 
 5. That Jews are not to appear in public from the Wednesday of Passion 
 Week until Saturday, and on Good Friday are to close their doors and 
 windows the whole day not to mock the sorrow of Christians for the 
 Passion. 
 
 6. That they wear an ostensible sign that they may be distinguished and 
 separate among Christians which is right and practised in other States. 
 
 7. Notwithstanding their learning and reputation they are not to practice 
 medicine with Christians. 
 
 (1.) Prof. Hosmer, p. 153. 
 (2.) Prescott, Yol. i. p. 1 ( J3. 
 (3.) Dr. Harris Rule, p. 92. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 215 
 
 The five other paragraphs upon the Jews 
 
 1. Prevents Jews from inviting Christians to their meals, gatherings or 
 feasts and Christians from eating or drinking with them. 
 
 2. Compels them to pay tithes on their lands. 
 
 3. Commands that synagogues enlarged beautified or erected, shall be 
 restored to their former state. 
 
 4. Forbids their taking interest from Christians. 
 
 5. Forbids them to work publicly on Sundays for themselves or their 
 employers. 
 
 The repetition of such laws by Council after Council shows how 
 completely the Christian masters were admitting their inability to 
 dispense with Jews in every sphere of professional, mercantile, and 
 trade activity. 
 
 In 1315 the “ Cortes of Burgos” decreed :— 
 
 Canon 4. Henceforward no Jew or Moor shall be called by Christian names; 
 any that may be are to be tried as heretics. 
 
 5. Christians are not to live with Jews or rear their children; the judges 
 of towns and places where it occurs are to make examples of those per¬ 
 sons that do it, the same as on those who break their religion. 
 
 The Council of Salamanca convened in 1322 decreed :— 
 
 Canon 1. That infidels (Jews and Moors) are not permitted to be in 
 churches during divine services, particularly while Mass is performed. 
 At its commencement they are to be expelled or locked up by the 
 sacristan in a private place until it is ended. 
 
 2. Christians who are present at the marriages or funerals of Jews or Moors 
 are to be excommunicated. 
 
 3. Forbids the appointment of Jews or Moors to public posts. 
 
 4. Christians are not to employ Jews as physicians, surgeons or apothecaries 
 nor to take their medicines. 
 
 When Alfouso XI shortly after this council ascended the throne, 
 the Jews made complaint that the clergy encouraged the Christians to 
 defraud them of their debts by excommunicating those alcaldes who 
 enforced their payment to the Jewish creditors. 
 
 He censured the clergy and stigmatised their action as shameful. 
 Cortes of Valladolid, (1325.) 
 
 On the 23rd of Adar (5th, March) 1328, a number of friars of the 
 town of Estella, where an exceedingly large community of Jews existed, 
 paraded the streets bearing aloft a huge crucifix and crying “ Death 
 or Baptism for the Jews, which shall it be ? ” Ascending the steps 
 of a church the leader, Pedro Olligoyen, delivered a most fiery and 
 fanatical oration, calling upon the Jews to either instantly accept Jesus 
 or die, together with their wives and families. The terrified Jews 
 precipitately fled to their quarter which they at once barricaded with 
 furniture dragged from their houses, but the mob, reinforced from the 
 surrounding villages, quickly demolished the ramparts so vainly defend¬ 
 ed, for the besiegers bringing forward high ladders scaled the walls 
 and leapt over. 
 
216 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 Then with the most unpitying savagery they murdered every Jew 
 found. A few noble spirits determined to sell their lives very dearly 
 and only after a bitter struggle, but what could the unshrinking 
 courage of a handful of distraught men, unskilled in war, untutored 
 in the art of battle, avail against the teeming multitudes of armed 
 assailants, who amid scenes of the wildest excitement and disorder 
 spent their awful fury in mutilating the bodies and hacking the corpses 
 of the few valiant men who had resolved to die like heroes. The piles 
 of corpses of the Jewish martyrs, 1 charred and stripped naked, filled 
 the streets of Estella, whilst not one Jewish house remained. 2 Each 
 one was quietly set ablaze as soon as its most valuable contents had 
 been removed. Many a son lay beneath the corpse of his father ; 
 many a husband near that of his wife. Six thousand mute and 
 shrouded witnesses arraign Christianity ! What a ghastly picture ! 
 What an unanswerable indictment is each bleeding corpse ! For a 
 whole day and night the terrible scenes had been witnessed undis¬ 
 turbed ; the inhabitants of Estella past into the Jewish quarter 
 robbing, pillaging, slaying and burning everywhere, until the hideous 
 piles of murdered Jews showed that there was none left to slaughter. 
 
 o 
 
 The following day when order had been partially restored, it was found 
 that not one Jewish dwelling had been spared and that not above 
 twenty Jews, who had hidden themselves in cisterns, had escaped. 
 This horrible and inhuman massacre was but the inception of a 
 thorough Jew-hunt throughout Navarre, for the Christian clergy ever 
 holding up the laudable zeal and noble enthusiasm of the Estebans, 
 presented their monstrous deeds as models for emulative consideration. 
 Similar deeds of terror and rapine were urged by these representatives 
 of the Christian religion. Tudela, Falcas, Funes, Moncilla, Viana 
 and many other towns swam with the blood of Hebrew martyrs, who 
 willingly died for Judaism. Some Jews had their tongues cut out 
 or slit in two, others were blinded, lamed, burnt and disembowelled, 
 but everywhere they were found steadfast and unwavering in their 
 faith. Fathers witnessed the blood of their children stream in the 
 gutters, whilst sons had to see the agonised and last throes of their 
 parents. What indeed can humane men say in palliation of a system 
 which has ever urged those, who blindly relied on its guidance, to shed 
 the blood of myriads of innocent men in the name of a God of mercy ? 
 
 In 1335 a Council at Salamanca endeavoured to destroy the 
 medical practice of the Jews among Christians, asserting:—“That 
 
 (1.) Estimated at 6000. Basnage, a very judicious and careful historian, 
 gives the same number. 
 
 (2.) See Da Costa, “ Israel and the Gentiles,” ad locum. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 217 
 
 under the pretext of surgery and medicine, they craftily insinuated 
 themselves with the people to the injury of the faithful, it prohibited 
 Christian women nursing the children of unbelievers. All correspond¬ 
 ence in writing with them was interdicted to the faithful. The penalty 
 for any of these acts was excommunication. The Jews in every town 
 were to reside in a separate quarter to be called the Jewry. They 
 were not to live in the vicinity of a church or cemetery. Christians 
 who leased houses to them in such situations incurred excommun¬ 
 ication.” 1 
 
 The jealousy that existed against the Jewish statesmen is well 
 testified to by an incident which occurred in 1336. Alfonso the 
 Castilian Monarch had given Gonzalo Martinez, Grand Master of the 
 order of Alcantara and Minister of the royal palace--a man who had 
 sworn to annihilate the Jews—plenary power to punish certain Hebrew 
 Court favourites, whom he (Martinez) had charged with a number of 
 Active conspiracies against the King. Don Joseph of Ecija and Don 
 Samuel I bn Wakar were, together with their wives and families, 
 imprisoned and tortured to gratify the hatred of Alfonso’s Haman. 
 Both these Jews succumbed to the fiendish tortures to which they had 
 been subjected. When the Moors declared war against Castile, and 
 the coffers of Alfonso had been exhausted by the prodigality of the 
 Christian successors to those who had so judiciously and thriftily 
 husbanded the royal resources, the fecundity and inventive genius of 
 Gonzalo found a ready solution of the difficulty of recuperating the 
 strained finances ; nothing less than to expel the entire body of Jews 
 in Old Castile—men, who had been settled there before the Spaniards— 
 and confiscate their wealth. He expatiated at great length upon the 
 certainty of their Christian debtors making lavish gifts to the crown 
 conditionally to their being absolved of their debts to the Jews. But 
 his startling suggestions for the successful replenishing of the royal 
 exchequer did not receive the assent of the King. The Archbishop of 
 Toledo himself on behalf of the clergy strongly opposed the programme 
 of the Court favourite, but solely on political grounds, saying that the 
 Jews were, and had been at all times, an inexhaustible treasure to the 
 Kings. Gonzalo’s councils were luckily unheeded and he himself a 
 few years later suffered capital punishment for sedition. 
 
 in 1344 Bishop Villanona of Palma fined the Jews of that town 
 150,000 deniers for harbouring two Germans, who had accepted 
 Judaism of their own volition. 
 
 (1.) Lindo. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 In 1347 the Cortes of Segovia compelled the Jews of that city to 
 build houses for their residence in a certain district, and forbade them 
 to reside outside of it. 
 
 In the years 1348-1349 the cry of the “ Plague of Florence” cost 
 15,000 Jewish li\es in Spain. Toledo appears to have been the scene 
 of the greatest massacre. 
 
 “Peter IV of Aragon in 1349 held a “Cortes” at Barcelona, 
 while theie at the dedication of St. Maria de las Nieves. A large mob 
 assembled and, notwithstanding the 'royal presence, attacked the Jews 
 with great insolence and daring. It was not without difficulty that 
 the riot was suppressed.” 1 
 
 Duiing the progress of the Black Plague, Spain was ravaged from 
 one boundary to another, but the Jews were rarely blamed, as they 
 weiein almost every European country; and in the few congregations 
 of Catalonia, their sufferings were not nearly so acute as in those of 
 Germany and France. Pedro the Cruel, sensible of the fidelity of his 
 numelons train of Jewish dignitaries and courtiers, successfully 
 shielded them fiom the machinations of the monks and the clergy 
 who were ever seeking—through the mob over whose plastic and 
 callov minds, they wielded so unlimited a sway—to bring about the 
 recrudescence of the scenes at Granada, Viani, Moncilla and other 
 towns, by constantly citing bloody assaults, savage massacres, and 
 muiderous exploits as praise-worthy ebullitions of Christian zeal and 
 enthusiasm. When, in 1350, the Cortes of Valladolid petitioned Don 
 Pedro to place certain restrictions upon the defined and oft ratified 
 liberties which the Jews enjoyed, he refused their consistent request. 
 His Queen Blanche de Bourbon entertained the most bitter hatred of 
 them and continually and openly expressed her ineradicable hostility 
 to them. Fortunately the influence she possessed was not great 
 enough to suborn the royal ear and her proposition, ceaselessly dinned 
 into his head, to expel the Jews from Castile, was unheeded. The great 
 influence of Samuel Allavi and others of the large number of Jewish 
 courtiers and officers with whom Pedro had surrounded himself 
 lend creel all the cajolery and blandishments of Blanche’s party abortive. 
 When however Pedro’s power had through various acts of maladminis¬ 
 tration sensibly decreased, the Pope placed him under a ban, 
 stigmatised him “a favourer of Jews and heretics ” and decreed his 
 deposition. His fierce brother, Henry of Trastamara— the French 
 King having aided him to organise an army—then placed himself at 
 the head of that vast multitude of banditti, outlaws, escaped criminals, 
 
 (1.) Lindo. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 219 
 
 pillagers and adventurers, known to history as the “ White Troop ” 
 and invaded the territories of Pedro, proclaiming a holy war for the 
 extermination of the Jews and assuming as a token of his mission the 
 symbol of a white cross. “ Pedro is worse than a Jew,” said they. 
 The Hebrews showed the most signal and exemplary loyalty, levying 
 troops, garrisoning cities, throwing up ramparts and fortifications 
 around the more accessible towns, and fighting, with what even 
 Blanche’s party, their bitterest calumniators, admitted to be leonine 
 bravery. It is certainly true that the Jewish Castilian regiments were 
 amongst the first who repelled the savage attacks of Henry’s general, 
 Bertrand de Gfuesclin and his wild mercenaries. 1 Henry charged the 
 protection of the Jews as a capital crime against his brother, but the 
 Jews sensible of the favours, or at least just treatment meted out to 
 them, rallied round his flag, provisioned and accoutred his army, and 
 crowded his forces. When, after a sanguinary battle, Pedro’s troops 
 were compelled to evacuate the city of Burgos, Henry proclaiming 
 himself King, determined to revenge the assistance the Jews had 
 given his opponent by fining them 50,000 doubloons. Christian 
 debtors were delighted to learn that debts to Jewish creditors were 
 declared null. The Jews of Burgos impoverished, first by their 
 sustained and expensive defence of the town, and then by the loss of 
 their outstanding debts, had to sell the ornaments of their Scrolls of 
 the Law : even then, the amount not having been raised, many were 
 seized, sold into servitude, and shipped off to Barbary, and other parts 
 of Africa. In Toledo, the Jews of the city defended with the most 
 conspicuous gallantry the positions which they were appointed to 
 protect, but Pedro’s army was daily dwindling into a mere insignificant 
 and disorganised band, owing to the numerous desertions of his 
 terrified soldiers, and it finally fell into'Henry’s hands. The Jewish 
 community here were punished for their loyalty in the same manner 
 as had been that of Burgos. After the ultimate fall of Seville, Don 
 Pedro was compelled to make a clandestine departure from the 
 country. 
 
 In 13G0 a frightful massacre of the Jews in Miranda del Ebro was 
 brought to the notice of the King of Castile. Don Pedro the Cruel, 
 sensible of what they had done for him, punished the perpetrators 
 with sickening cruelty, roasting one in an oven, boiling another in 
 a cauldron, and executing eight with the axe. 
 
 In 1367, Pedro presiding over the Cortes of Burgos, rejected several 
 petitions which were inimical to the Jews, Pedro no doubt remembered 
 
 (1.) See Dr. H. C. Adams, “ History of the Jews,” ad locum. 
 
220 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 that in one of his battles against his fratricidal brother one third of 
 his whole army were Jews. The Jews in Spain at that time numbered 
 about a million. 
 
 In 1367 he again stood on Spanish soil, and determined to assert 
 his claims. Having gathered together his adherents, he discovered 
 that the Castilian Jews had remained true to their lawful monarch. 
 This so enraged the White Troop and Henry's other auxiliaries, that 
 they committed many savage excesses upon the different Jewish 
 colonies in the towns occupied by their party. At Valladolid the 
 soldiery entering the synagogues (eight in number and all most stately 
 edifices) destroyed the Scrolls of the Law by tearing them to shreds, 
 throwing them down in a heap, and making a large bonfire of them! 
 The Hebrew congregation at Villa Diego was absolutely wiped out by 
 the English auxiliaries under the Black Prince, a man looked upon as 
 a most noble amd immaculate redresser of wrongs and represser of 
 abuses. Pedro’s own allies reimbursed themselves for the outlay 
 occasioned by the expedition by attacking and pillaging the Jewish 
 
 quarters in every town they entered ; one—a Mohammedan prince_ 
 
 took three hundred Jewish families into captivity. In Toledo at this 
 period their condition was so dreadful that over 10,000 perished from 
 sheer starvation, some ravenously gnawing the parchments in the 
 Synagogues, others the flesh of their own children. Henry eventually 
 vanquishing his brother and executing him, contemptuously calling 
 him “The Jew,” succeeded in dislodging his brother’s party, or at 
 least its influence, in Spain. Addressing his ministers and support¬ 
 ers, the usurper expressed himself as struck by the unswerving 
 constancy and loyalty they had displayed throughout the trying times. 
 
 “ Such subjects, ’ he said “ a King must love and reward because they 
 maintained to their death a proper loyalty.” Don Henry however 
 averse he might be to conceding the clamorous demands of the clergy 
 anent his Hebrew subjects, had to mollify them by ordering occasional 
 debates between Jewish and Christian theologists. At the outset the 
 representatives of the former were generally severely admonished, and 
 commanded to say nothing derogatory to Christian sentiment, that is, 
 logically examine the doctrines of the New Testament or patristic 
 literature. Notwithstanding this, they were very often victorious in 
 these debates ; the different Hebrew communities were being constantly 
 requested to produce a champion, who should single-handed and with¬ 
 out any preparation, David-like face a number of learned Bishops— 
 casuistical Goliaths who for months previously had arranged their 
 questions. The Jewish Biblical slingers found their “six smooth 
 pebbles ” in the doctrines of Trinitarianism, Intercession of Saints, 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 221 
 
 Vicarious Atonement, Papal Infallibility, Original Sin, and in the 
 crimes of the Church and its representatives. 
 
 Don Juan I, readily fell before the adroit machinations of the anti- 
 Semitic party, which his father (Henry) had manfully withstood, and 
 granted many petitions from legislative and judicial bodies tampering 
 with the liberties granted them by charter. 1 
 
 At the Cortes of Toro held in 1371 petitions were presented, one 
 of them asking that the “ enemies of the faith ” who alas dwelt in the 
 country might be humiliated and degraded, compelled to quit all 
 honourable posts, wear Jew badges, etc. The petition was refused. 
 
 In 1375 a number of Jews were murdered by Mohammedans in 
 Granada, through jealousy of Isaac Amoni the King’s physician and 
 his great influence 2 
 
 In 1380 King Juan I of Castile, declared at the u Cortes of Soria ” 
 that Rabbis, Elders and Chiefs, were to have no jurisdiction in civil 
 and criminal cases arising between Jews, under a penalty of six 
 thousand Maravedis. When he was petitioned to forbid Christians to 
 nurse Jewish and Mohammedan children he ordered :— 
 
 “ That any Christian nursing the child of a Jew or Moor should be fined 
 six thousand maravedis to the Exchequer; but they may live with them; 
 they may have people to cultivate their land and to accompany them 
 from one place to another; otherwise they might be illtreated or 
 murdered.” 
 
 In 1384 John ordered :— 
 
 1. That Jews and Moors shall not be permitted publicly to work or sell 
 anything, or cultivate their lands on Sundays and Christian holidays, 
 but in their houses they may, provided it is done without noise and not 
 exposed to view. 
 
 2. That Jews and Moors are not to live or associate with Christians. 
 
 The Cortes of Saragossa held in 1385 devotes fourteen paragraphs 
 
 to the Jewish question. 
 
 The Cortes of Briviesca held in 1387 devotes two. 
 
 In 1391 a bigoted and cruel hater of Jews and heretics, Ferdinand 
 Martinez, Archdeacon of Seville, harangued a mob on the crimes and 
 misbelief of the Jews, reprobating their hardened infidelity in the 
 public square. It had been his practice to constantly stir up the 
 fanaticism of the mob against them, but now (March 15th) he publicly 
 
 (1.) In some towns and districts “Jews were forbidden to act as physicians, 
 bakers, millers ; they were prohibited from selling bread, wine, oil. flour in the 
 markets. No Jew might be a smith, carpenter, tailor, shoemaker, currier or 
 clothier for Christians. He might not sell them shoes, doublets or any other 
 article of clothing. He might not be carrier or employ or be employed by 
 Christians in any profession or trade whatsoever.” Israel Abrahams, M.A., 
 page 241. 
 
 (2.) See Da Costa, “ Israel and the Gentiles.” 
 
22 2 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 goaded them to massacre the “ heretics,” assuring them that it was 
 the very essence of religion, and the crucial test of their faith to 
 assassinate Jews and pillage their houses. 1 “ Force them,” he cried 
 “ to abjure their dreadful errors or slay them.” Martinez threw the 
 ignorant and credulous Jew-hating populace of Seville into such a 
 dangerous and uncontrollable paroxysm of fanatical anger, that the 
 Governor of the city, Don Juan Alfonso, who at first attempted to 
 restrain them, was compelled to hastily conceal himself or he would 
 have been murdered ; all law, all order, was at an end. The entire 
 mass of people armed with knives, daggers, axes, maces, poniards, 
 flails, and every species of warlike instrument, precipitated themselves 
 upon the Jewish quarter, hacking and hewing right and left without 
 mercy or discrimination. The tottering step of infirmity and the 
 crying lisp of childhood could not protect the aged or the infant from 
 the wholesale butchery ordered by this .cut-throat and murderous 
 Christian Archdeacon. The synagogues and Houses of learning were 
 burned to the ground, the Scrolls of the Law, synagogal parchments 
 and sacred books, received similar treatment. Not a street that was 
 not piled with bleeding corpses, not a house that was not looted, not a 
 chamber that did not witness some sickening tragedy, either brutal 
 mutilation, or more merciful murder. Four thousand Jews of all ages 
 and sexes were put to death. “Amid the yells of the savage mob and 
 the groans of the dying was heard the voice of the Archdeacon 
 encouraging them in these horrible scenes of carnage and extermin¬ 
 ation. The entiie Jewish quarter was enveloped in one immense 
 flame ; the King, Henry III, was a boy of eleven years old and his 
 Council of Regency was not powerful or determined enough to do 
 anything but deprecate such high handed and pitiless deeds of 
 massacre and plunder. Martinez continued to denounce Jews and 
 exhort his auditors to murder them and annex their effects, for there 
 was no curb that could restrain his poisonous and death-heralding 
 allocutions against the Jewish heresy, and within three months from 
 the awful slaughtei, Ferdinand Martinez, teacher of religion and 
 servant of Jesus, ordered a second and more effective invasion of the 
 Juderia (The Jewish quarter). On June 16th, the populace of Seville, 
 armed to the teeth, were marshalled by their bloody inciter, who 
 giving the word of command, led them into the streets inhabited by 
 Jews and then set about the regular and systematic slaughter of that 
 proscribed people. Aged men at the point of death were bound to 
 
 - 1 i-r-i - : —< :_____• ' i i ' 
 
 i . ----—» IJ -‘ ■ ■ ' • t-i 1.. . . u .,. J _ _ . . .. _ ' 
 
 (1.) See Mr F. D. Mocatto, ■* The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the 
 Inquisition. 
 
 (2.) Lindo. !. j ,J? i>n? J . r 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 223 
 
 beds and their houses set on fire. Wives and children were beheaded, 
 strangled, burnt or scalded in the presence of their husbands and 
 parents. Infants were flayed alive in their cradles ; Jewish blood 
 gushed into every part of the city. Those who were not butchered 
 were sold as slaves into Morocco and Granada. Many to save their 
 wretched lives feigned abjuration of their religion, overt adherence 
 to which meant instant butchery. Of the thirty thousand souls 
 professing the Hebrew creed in Seville barely one hundred remained. 
 Even then, the lust for the blood of the Jews had not been satiated ; 
 the appetite of the provinces had rather been whetted, for at Lograno, 
 Hueti, Burgos, Ocana, Ecija, Carrion and over sixty other populous 
 towns, the frenzied mobs, often led by bishops or lower orders of the 
 clergy, heartlessly massacred the Jews, plundered their houses and set 
 their quarters in flames ; destroyed their synagogues or converted 
 them into churches. At Ascalona so ferocious were the mob, who 
 fairly howled aloud for Jews to murder, and so painstaking and 
 thorough a search was instituted, that absolutely not one single Jew 
 or .Jewess, man, woman or child remained alive or escaped slaughter. 
 Cordova, one of the largest Hebrew communities in the entire Spanish 
 peninsula, and one that had done much to elevate learning and culture, 
 enjoyed no immunity from the terrible onslaughts made upon the 
 Jews in every part of the Kingdom, for the mob taking arms murdered 
 multitudes with the most wanton atrocity ; every species of cold 
 blooded and inhuman barbarity being practised ; a huge number 
 were in several synagogues surrounded with knives presented at their 
 bared breasts, commanded to embrace Christianity, so sadly was that 
 creed in need of proselytes. 
 
 On the massacres of 1391 instigated by Archdeacon Ferran 
 Martinez, Dr. Lozano, an authority cited by Lindo, says, “ The people 
 went so riotously and resolutely to each of these places, so eager for 
 plunder, so prepossessed by the voice of the Archdeacon, that they 
 might conscientiously rob and kill that people without respect to the 
 laws, or fear of judges or ministers, plundering, robbing, and murder¬ 
 ing that the narrative is horrifying. Every city was a Troy. The 
 shrieks, lamentations and groans of those who saw themselves ruined 
 and destroyed without a crime, elicited the pity of those not concerned 
 in the deed ; consequently the cruelty and rage increased. Finally, 
 notwithstanding the judges proceeded to institute inquiries and punish, 
 it was useless ; for it seemed highly improper to chastise or destroy a 
 city or whole town to restore and save a Jewry, and the more so where 
 the riot was caused under the pretext of religion, and maintained by 
 the Archdeacon as being rightly done. 
 
224 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 On the 17th Tammuz (June 20th) the populace of Toledo, a city 
 containing the largest, wealthiest, most cultured and patriotic body of 
 Jews in Spain, and one of the first corporate Hebrew bodies in Europe, 
 took weapons and fell upon them slaying, torturing, and burning 
 without pity or cessation. It was one of the most dreadful massacres 
 of Jews in the history of Europe ; men’s throats were slit from ear to 
 ear, their noses were sliced from their faces, their tongues were cut 
 out or slit. Some were so cruelly crushed beneath tremendous weights 
 that their brains bespatted their murderers, others’ ribs could plainly 
 be seen. Yet they refused to desert their creed ; they met death and 
 torture with the fortitude of heroes. This was the third massacre of 
 Jews in Toledo. So much for Castile ! 
 
 In the kingdom of Aragon the gentle but powerless King, Juan I, 
 was quite unable to repress the many fierce and bloody risings against 
 the Jews in his kingdom, however much he might deplore them. It 
 is a curious feature in the history of the Spanish Jews, that at the 
 very times when they were being slaughtered in myriads their learned 
 men were in high favour at Court and wielded vast influence which 
 was often used for the amelioration of their unfortunate brethren. 
 The province of Valencia (like that of Aquitaine in France) pioneered 
 the slaughter of the unhappy Israelites. The city of Valencia in which 
 lived considerably more than five thousand Jews, so ruthlessly fell upon 
 and so cruelly and fiercely hacked them to pieces or forced them to 
 receive the Sacraments and accept Christian belief, that, as in Ascalona, 
 not one person following the Jewish religion remained to testify that 
 for ages Jews had lived and died martyrs to their religion. From one 
 boundary of Aragon to another, every town, every village resounded 
 with the death cries and the agonised groans of the defenceless seed of 
 Abraham, who had not felt such a bloody onslaught since the days of 
 the Crusades. In the larger towns streets were thick with the bodies 
 of martyred Jews, who, disfigured and stripped stark naked, lay for 
 days unburied decaying in the sun, whilst in the forests to which huge 
 loads of Jewish corpses were conveyed by death carts in lieu of burial, 
 the wolves, hyamas, and jackals made their gruesome repast and 
 held their midnight revels. Of the numerous and populous Aragonese 
 Jewish colonies, one alone escaped attack, Murviedro, where doubtless 
 the Jewish inhabitants were either indispensable or the Christians not 
 impregnated with conversionist zeal. Meanwhile abroad similar 
 frightful scenes were everywhere enacted. In Palma the principal 
 town of the Island of Majorca, for instance, an organised troop of 
 roughs and sailors improvised a rude crucifix from a cudgel (August 
 2nd, Ellul,) and invading the Jewish section of the town with cries of 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 225 
 
 “ Death to the Jews, the murderers of God,” sated their fiery fanat¬ 
 icism by massacring over three hundred of the unhappy race. On the 
 5th August, (Ellul 4,) a violent outbreak against the Jews of Barcelona 
 assumed so dangerous a proportion that the Governor had to secrete as 
 many as possible in the citadel of the town. Temporarily baulked, an 
 indignant rabble quickly surrounded the nearest synagogue, it being 
 the Sabbath. The assembled Jews, nearly 200 in number, were 
 executed in the vicinity of the edifice. After this excellent exploit 
 they reinforced their numbers, whom they equipped with crossbows 
 and other weapons ; they then commenced to besiege the citadel with 
 all the circumstance of war. The Jews fought manfully, but their 
 cowardly foes finding all efforts to reduce the citadel vain, resorted to 
 a most disgraceful and ignoble act. The entire, building was fired and 
 the exits guarded to prevent the too early egress of the imprisoned 
 Israelites. The entrapped victims, sorrowfully realising that deliver¬ 
 ance was as impossible as the appearance of humanity in their 
 besiegers, calmly resigned themselves to their fate. By far the larger 
 number met death at each other’s hands, the younger from the elder 
 and the most honourable at the hands of the Rabbi, who (like Rabbi 
 Yom Tob of York) was the last to die. Many voluntarily flung them¬ 
 selves over the battlements, being instantly shattered to fragments. 
 A few went forth determined not to die without a struggle, but the 
 vast hordes of yelling and screaming ruffians, against whom they had 
 been rash enough to pit themselves, soon hacked them to death. Many 
 to save themselves when the very pike was at their breast feigned to 
 accept Christianity and thousands were, against their own volition 
 baptized. In Barcelona alone eleven thousand were converted but vast 
 multitudes disdained the terms and met the fate of martyrs. Barcelona 
 had thus not one Jewish survivor in what had been next to Toledo 
 and Cordova, the largest Jewish colony of Spain. In Catalonia a few 
 of the extremely wealthy Jews were fortunate enough, in return for 
 vast sums, to obtain protection from the nobles, who hid them, their 
 wives and children in their castles, but with the exception of this 
 exceedingly small number, (about thirty families were thus shielded), 
 and the large numbers who received Christianity, every Jew in that 
 city was put to the sword. In Gerona very few saved their lives by 
 perjury ; inflamed by the heroic death of their Rabbi and Dayanim 
 (Rabbinical Assessors) they were, almost to a man, martyrs. The Jews 
 in Lerida shortly afterwards showed themselves to be equally noble ; 
 here also only a mere and insignificant handful deserted Jndaism for 
 the now truly saving creed. In the city of Aragon the Jews, making 
 a timely offer of their entire wealth to the Court for protection, 
 
226 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 escaped ; the offer being accepted. But the once wealthy community 
 that had to purchase its existence by the sacrifice of all its possess¬ 
 ions was completely beggared. The towns inhabited by Jews became 
 everywhere seas of blood 1 ; the few congregations that survived were 
 crushed in spirit and terrified at the slightest word. So demoralised 
 had they become by oppression, and so terrified at a word that they 
 lost all manhood and sense of resistance. 
 
 The Portugese communities were, owing to the influence of the 
 King, Don Joas I, safe, for he distinctly forbade, under severe punish¬ 
 ments, any excesses against the Jews and quickly restrained those 
 prelates whom he most suspected of stirring up the people to attack 
 them. Immediately the vigilance of the Spanish clergy, their most 
 implacable foes, had been relaxed, large numbers of those, who, to 
 save their lives and the lives of their wives and children, had purchased 
 life with a lie on their lips, escaped across the frontiers and settled in 
 the Moorish Kingdoms of Granada, Morocco, Tunis, Fez, or Portugal, 
 where they were able to exercise their religion. Those who coulcf not 
 contrive to escape had to appear externally as Christians, attend 
 masses, go to' confession, celebrate the Catholic feasts, fasts and Saints’ 
 days, but at heart they were Jews and in secrecy were rigid adherents 
 to every minute Jewish ordinance. “ Goaded by cowardly persecution,” 
 says Watts, “the proselytes groaned after deliverance, many even 
 dared to renounce the profession of a faith they never held, for they 
 had maintained the practice of Jewish rites in private.” This class 
 of proselytes, a very important factor in the Spanish population and 
 society, were termed Marranos (Damned) and were the principal sect 
 against which the relentless and inhuman arm of the monstrous 
 Inquisition of Blood was directed. Of the vast numbers that accepted 
 Christianity, some were actuated by the most reprehensible motives, 
 several wished to mortify relatives, others were thirsting for admission 
 to, and promotion in, the Roman Hagiarchy. Paul de Santa Maria 
 was one of these. He was a Rabbi, who before assuming that very 
 euphuistical appellation had to content himself with the less musical 
 and more tribal one of Solomon Levi. Desiring to ingratiate himself 
 in the favour of the clergy, he did so by foully calumniating his 
 suffering brethren. Knowing that a word might easily relume the 
 now flickering torch of massacres and bloody orgies, he still traduced 
 them with such asperity, that he was ordained a priest and with un- 
 
 (l.) Llorente, a cautious and trustworthy Spanish historian, estimates the 
 number of Jews who perished under the fury of mobs in 1391 at upwards of 
 100,000. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 227 
 
 heard of rapidity, Archdeacon of Trevinjo and Canon of Seville. 
 Don Henry III, King of Castile, showered favours upon him and 
 recommended him to the attention of the Pope, but the brutal apostate 
 attempting to incite a massacre, was restrained from doing so by 
 Cardinal Pampeluna. The intriguant Paul however used his favour 
 with Henry to obtain the deposition, and witness the humiliation, of 
 many of Henry’s most faithful Jewish ministers and officials. 
 
 During the minority of the Castilian monarch, John IT, the Queen 
 Mother, Donna Catalina, and Don Ferdinand assumed the reigns of 
 government. The erstwhile Rabbi Solomon Levi sat next to him in 
 State Council. As a primary move in his machinations—though his 
 royal and priest-ridden victims were pliant and willing accessories— 
 all the Jewish Court officials and grandees were removed and degraded. 
 This trinal body issued in 1408 a series of Laws, the preamble to which 
 informs us that, “Whereas the exercise of Authority by Jews may con¬ 
 duce to the prejudice of the Christian faith, it is necessary to forbid 
 them to hold any public post whatever, lest they have authority over 
 the Christian subjects of the King.” Any municipal.or provincial 
 body, any responsible noblemen, placing a Jew in a position of trust 
 was to pay a heavy fine ; the Jew accepting the post was to be fined 
 a sum so fabulous that, its impossibility of payment being patent to 
 the lambent legislators, an alternative of confiscation of all goods and 
 fifty lashes on the bare body was substituted. One-third of the sum 
 raised by such confiscation was to go as the reward of the court pass¬ 
 ing the sentence, and the informer who set the machinery of this 
 legalized outrage in motion. Solomon ever on the alert to discover 
 an opportunity for the persecution of his former co-religionists deter¬ 
 mined to judicially murder Don Meir Alguades after the same style 
 as Don Samuel Levi, the faithful, innocent, servant of Don Pedro. 
 Don Meir who was perhaps the most influential and representative 
 Jew in Spain, had been the body physician and intimate friend of the 
 deceased King, Henry III ; he was now arrested and imprisoned 
 under the following circumstances :—the Queen Regent and Solomon 
 being in Segovia a certain Jew was charged with having purchased 
 from a needy sacristan a sacramental wafer intending to blaspheme and 
 outrage it, but ere the Jew had drawn his knife to stab the “ Host ” 
 it performed the full complement of stock miracles ; torrents and 
 rivers and oceans of blood had gushed from it, though it did not 
 affirm that the trembling Jew, who had in haste and terror taken it 
 to a monastery, was guilty. Bishop Velasquez de Tordesillas gave— 
 or professed to give—his credence to this extraordinary story and 
 
228 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 imprisoned a number of Jews. 1 Don Meir Alguades was designedly 
 included in the number though it is obvious that he could not possibly 
 have any connection with a crime perpetrated in a town so far re¬ 
 moved from his residence as Segovia was. 
 
 All were formally arraigned on a charge of sacrilege and placed on 
 their criminal trial. The judges resolved to convict, and placing 
 every prisoner under torture, 2 Don Meir and his fellow victims 
 admitted their culpability ; the former during a very vigorous turn 
 of the rack admitted having poisoned his royal master Henry, though 
 the cause of his death was well known even to the judges. He was 
 most cruelly tortured and then torn limb from limb ; the remaining 
 Jews also met their deaths by being rent in pieces, but the revolting 
 spectacle never touched the brutal Solomon, the prime instigator of 
 the vapid and Active accusations. It was thought to be a fitting 
 sequel to seize the principal synogogue in Segovia and turn it into a 
 church ; but the zealous bishop of that city was not yet contented ; 
 he suborned his cook to allege that certain Jews had attempted to 
 bribe him to poison his godly master, and on this unfounded, unprov¬ 
 ed and mendacious pretext a number of the most representative and 
 pious Jews in Segovia were barbarously executed, or rather murdered. 
 The Mohammedan States and the Berber princes continued to kindly 
 receive such Jews who had of their own volition fled their own perse¬ 
 cuting country. These daily emigrating from Spain and Majorca were 
 permitted to settle in Moorish territory, and numerous Hebrew 
 congregations sprang up in Northern Africa, but the vast majority 
 who remained in Spain and the Marranos or “ New Christians ” num¬ 
 bering at that time at least 200,000, who had to save their lives pro¬ 
 fessed a disbelief in Judaism, soon discovered a new scourge in the 
 person of a torvous and ascetic Dominican friar, Vincent Ferrer (after¬ 
 wards Canonized), whose life’s mission was to endeavour to foist 
 monasticism upon the entire human race as the only means of obtaining 
 salvation and immortality. He was possessed of the most irrestible and 
 winning eloquence and, though sincere in his vacuous theories, master 
 
 (1.) Some of the incidents in this monstrous transaction recall the deed of 
 that Almoxarif (or State Treasurer), who in a time of great want purchased 
 from the King the ten wealthiest Jewish families in Spain for 800 lbs. of silver, 
 racked them to death and confiscated their wealth, thus realising a handsome 
 profit on the investment. 
 
 (2.) How valueless the confessions of Jews whilst under torture were is seen 
 by the case of two brothers ; Judah and Samuel Ankoah. These young Jews 
 had, whilst on the rack, confessed the theft of two of the royal goblets and on 
 the third day after their public execution as thieves, the goblets were accident¬ 
 ally found in the possession of one of the Palace servants who owned having 
 stolen and hidden them. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 229 
 
 of all those rhetorical arts and wiles, by which the minds of men are 
 captivated and their wills dominated. Like the flagellants of an earlier 
 period he led a train of friars, a body of roaring fanatics throughout 
 the country, everywhere preaching with a voice of thunder and tragic 
 gesturing, the speedy arrival of the Millenium, his followers lashing 
 and lacerating their bodies with knotted cords as a penance till the 
 blood streamed from their wounded backs. Ferrer had resigned the 
 very highest posts in the Church to which the Pope had appointed 
 him and wandered about as a barefooted friar, denouncing vice, and 
 with it the listless toleration of heresy, in the midst of Christianity. 
 His influence was absolutely unbounded and when he resolved to use 
 it as a lever for the heaping up of additional miseries upon the Jews, 
 their position could not have been enviable. Whilst in Spain a few 
 humane monarchs ever tried to protect them by their rigorous and 
 evenhanded punishment of anti-Semitic excesses and the determined 
 repression of outrage, the clergy, who had absolute sway over the 
 minds and actions of the public, counteracted the efforts of their 
 sovereign, exercising their paramount influence to procure results 
 diametrically opposed to humanity. It was truly anomalous for a 
 King to heap honours upon Jews, make them his court mathematic¬ 
 ians, 1 physicians, astronomers, marshals, major domos, intendants and 
 other officials. Jayme I of Aragon studied ethics and metaphysics 
 under Jewish scholars at the very time of the bitterest tribulation of 
 the Aragonese Jews. 
 
 St. Vincent decided to devote himself to the denunciation and 
 active persecution of Jews and heretics ; considering this to be the 
 first duty of a Christian possessing such influence that he could 
 suppress a fierce political or religious uprising by a letter, or create 
 one by a sermon ; after having done service here he would, he decided, 
 win further laurels by reforming the crying abuses of the Church : 
 speak against simony, the concubinage of the clergy and their greed 2 
 and ignorance. He compelled Jews and Mohammedans alike to attend 
 the mosques, and crucifix in hand, roared threats of damnation and 
 hell against all infidels. 
 
 (1.) Alfonso the Wise who employed many learned Jews in the compilation 
 of the famous Alfonso Tables. 
 
 (2.) These reverend divines who inculcated Christianity with a battle axe 
 in their hands quarrelled with the barons for portions of land. They seized the 
 incomes of Churches and abbeys. Bishop and Baron strove with each other 
 who could get most for himself out of the property of the church. The layman 
 forced his serfs to elect his infant son to an abbacy or bishopric and then 
 pillaged the estate and stripped the lower clergy in the minor’s name. “ The 
 Eighteen Christian Centuries,” page 37. 
 
230 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 Shortly after his inception of this anti-Semitic crusade he pointed 
 out to the bigoted queen mother and regent Donna Catalina and her 
 co-regent Ferdinand, in governing Castile and persecuting the Jews, 
 the absolute and paramount necessity of rendering intercourse, 
 whether commercial or social, between Jews and Christians illegal. 
 Assisted by the apostate Solomon Levi—Paul de Santa Maria—they 
 promulgated a series of laws (1412) which were calculated to realise 
 Vincent Ferrier’s ambition to drive the Jews into Christianity and 
 restrain the New Christians (Marranos) from their wicked Judaising 
 and also sate the hatred of Paul who was eagerly and impatiently 
 awaiting the bitterest humiliation and mortification of his suffering 
 race. The first paragraph alone of the Code teaches us how much a 
 Saint of the Roman Catholic Calendar, an apostate Jew and asuppos- 
 itiously wise ruler could tolerate dissent from their own views on 
 religion and protect a homeless people, whose industry and skill alone 
 had prevented the corrupt and rotten fabric of Castilian monarchy, 
 ever shaken by anguine and intriguant clergy, debauched and piratical 
 nobles, and seditious and rebellious subjects, to the very base, from 
 falling and had ever been the mainstay of Spanish commerce, the 
 founders and pioneers of her culture and learniug and the staple cause 
 of her supremacy and power. The Jews throughout Castile, it was 
 ordained, were to reside in specially indicated quarters, (Juderias ;) 
 these were to possess only one gate which was to serve for both ingress 
 and egress ; thus anyone living in the remotest part of this al fresco 
 gaol would have to enter by this particular gate and traverse the entire 
 distance; and anyone residing outside of the pestilential quarter was, on 
 due conviction, that is on the report of any person, to have his goods 
 confiscated and was also subject to a public flogging of fifty lashes. 
 
 The judicial autonomy for the settlement of civil and venial 
 criminal cases with which they—knowing what a trial in the ordinary 
 courts meant—had invested their Rabbins, was removed, all disputes 
 between Jews having to come before the cognizance of the secular 
 tribunals. They were debarred by this tyrannical code from practis¬ 
 ing medicine or following any handicraft whatever ; they were to 
 have no business or ordinary dealings with Christians. Any Jew 
 convicted of shaving, clipping his beard, or cutting the hair of his 
 head was to receive one hundred lashes, which punishment was to be 
 publicly administered. Those who might presume to wear the Spanish 
 costume, or any garb of fine texture were, for the first offence to be 
 heavily fined, and for a repetition their entire goods were to be 
 confiscated. Both sexes were commanded to attire themselves in long 
 coarse robes of dark and repulsive colours upon which were to be fixed 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 231 
 
 a large red badge which was to be the brand of all Jews and un¬ 
 believers resident in the most Christian kingdom of Castile. Jews 
 were especially directed to avoid the professions of physicians, surgeons, 
 apothecaries, nurses and lawyers, as also the trades of grocers, barbers, 
 innkeepers, and vintners. No Jew, it was also decreed, might wear 
 swords, daggers or similar arms. The laws concerning “ the Jewish 
 heresy ” addressed to Christians were little short of official instructions 
 to fall upon and oppress them by every means in their power. Any 
 Jew addressing a Jew verbally or by letter as “Don” was to be 
 heavily fined for his culpable misdemeanour. 
 
 The nobles, magistrates, alcades and municipal authorities, as well 
 as the citizens, were explicitly and severely adjured to raise no finger 
 in protection of a Jew. They were also directed to watch that they 
 did not infringe the laws which prohibited them from carrying 
 weapons with which they might protect themselves. A direct invit¬ 
 ation to massacre them after the style of the Crusaders was not 
 necessary, the council rightly realising that they could safely relegate 
 that task to the clergy, who though they led lives of the most shame¬ 
 less profligacy and vice, as their own historians admit, possessed vast 
 influence and so invariably used it to the detriment of the Jews, that 
 almost all the Jews’ sufferings on Iberian soil are due to their cowardly 
 machinations. The highest ecclesiastical leaders preached tte extir¬ 
 pation of the Jews from the pulpit. By this outrageous code of 1412 
 it was also provided that they were not to travel from one town to 
 another. Any Jew who might disobey this law was not to be executed 
 or sold into slavery, but his property was to be seized by the State and 
 he was to become the bondsman of the King. All these cruel laws 
 were not allowed to become inoperative ; they were executed with the 
 most inhuman severity ; baptism was the only loophole of escape. 
 Nor were they aimed at the middle classes of Jewish society alone ; 
 those grandees of the Castilian court, whose influence many lordly 
 hidalgoes desirous of some royal concession, had thought wise to 
 propitiate : those stately physicians, merchants, bankers and members 
 of the various learned professions who were very numerous were in no 
 wise exempted from the equable operation of this code. The result 
 was that the poor Jews were reduced from positions of wealth and 
 influence to the most abject and penurious misery. Having reduced 
 the hated people to the lowest rung of the social ladder and heaped 
 upon them the hatred of the court and nobility and the vengeful 
 bigotry of the clergy and people, Vincent Ferrer took a pastoral tour 
 throughout Castile visiting every town inhabited by Jews, and entering 
 the synagogues accompanied by a contingent of monks, bearing aloft 
 
232 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 fiery crucifixes, lie thundered, with dramatic fervour and studied arsis, 
 against the obstinate refusal of the Jews to deify one of their number. 
 Doubtless deeming a comminatory appeal to their interests of more 
 efficiency than a panegyric on the value of the salvation and 
 redemption he so industriously and vehemently extolled, he assured 
 them that the obdurate continuation in the wicked Jewish creed would 
 entail additional sufferings, while a formal abjuration of the same 
 would not only render every restriction nugatory but ensure their 
 speedy advancement in whatever profession or craft they desired to 
 excel. 
 
 Large numbers finding escape from Spain impossible entered the 
 Catholic Church, but many remained firm. What had Friar Vincent 
 achieved ? It would perhaps be safe to say that during the terrors of 
 his four months’ earnest ministration, that is, Jew-converting exped¬ 
 ition, not one hundred out of the vast multitudes who abandoned their 
 ancestral faith did so in sincerity. It is hardly possible that sentient 
 men would of their own volition exchange a creed containing all the 
 essential ingredients for the moral reform of mankind as well as the 
 noblest, most humane, and just doctrines, for one which pays a 
 premium upon blind and unreasoning faith, which it exalts over acts 
 of virtue and one the spiritual representatives of which were till the 
 times of Martin Luther at least, the greatest criminals, despoilers of 
 orphans, robbers of widows, libertines, poisoners, and assassins in 
 Europe. St. Vincent’s only real achievement was the great augment¬ 
 ation of that vast body of Marranos or secret Jews who, under the 
 euphemistical appellation of New Christians adhered with scrupulous 
 care to the Judaism of the Bible and the Talmud. 
 
 In 1405 the “ Cortes of Madrid,” under the Presidency of the 
 King, Henry III, reviewed the legislation upon the Jews and some¬ 
 what modified it, though it did not abrogate any important law as 
 will be seen by this :— 
 
 “ Jews and Moors are to wear an ostensible sign or badge, and if 
 found without it or placed out of sight they are to forfeit their clothes 
 but to avoid being hurt by Christians they need not wear it while 
 travelling ; but on their arrival at their destination, they are, as well 
 as ten days after the publication of this ordinance in the capital, and 
 within thirty days after it is published in the capital of each diocese : 
 nor are they to wear slashed hose or flowing robes. All privileges 
 and laws to the contrary I hereby revoke and annul,” 
 
 When immediately after Henry’s death the Dominican monks in¬ 
 duced his relict to issue an order expelling the Jews the intended 
 victims dissuaded her from insisting on its execution by giving her 
 50,000 crowns. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 233 
 
 In 1414 two of the bitterest foes of the Castilian Jews left that 
 Kingdom ; Don Ferdinand, who through the intercession of St. 
 Vincent received the crown of Aragon, and the Saint himself who 
 now directed his attention to the spiritual requirements of the Jews 
 of that Kingdom. Sequent upon this Donna Catalina, in the name 
 of the youthful King, submitted the code of 1412, under which the 
 Jews were so bitterly groaning, to a slight revision, a revision in 
 which the number of feminine foibles and peccadiloes evince the 
 absence of any male coadjutors in it. Jews were still debarred from 
 entering any profession or following any handicraft, but they might, 
 under multitudinous restrictions, attend the markets and expose their 
 wares for sale. They might also trim their beards and clip their hair 
 a little, but this must not be done with scissors ; shaving with a 
 razor was declared punishable at law, as was also omitting to grow 
 a row of hair on the chin. They were allowed to wear certain less 
 coarse clothes for dress than those they had been previously directed 
 to use ; but to compensate for this concession a high cone-shaped hat 
 was to be worn. 
 
 In Aragon, Vincent Ferrer was, of course, as unimpeded as he had 
 been in Castile, and his frantic denunciations of, and incitations to 
 persecute, the Jews created still more unwilling, unbelieving, and dis- 
 pising votaries of a creed, which appeared so extraordinarily anxious 
 to disseminate its doctrines, as not not to hesitate from resorting to 
 every species of violence to obtain members. 35,000 forced apostates 
 from Judaism, and whole multitudes from Mohammedanism were the 
 chief recommendations of Vincent to canonisation. 
 
 Pope Benedict XIII, a man who had been excommunicated and 
 deprived of his temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, now conceived the 
 idea—simultaneously with his physician, a baptized Jew, Solomon 
 Lorqui, who sported the name of (Jeronimo de Santa Fe—of convert¬ 
 ing every Jew in Spain to Christianity. Wonderful how the ideas, if 
 not the ambitions, of these two degraded men synchronised. The 
 Christian, who claimed to be the sole Vice-regent of God, as did two 
 other equally debased men—was disowned (except in Aragon where 
 he maintained a semblance of Papal authority which did not cross its 
 border line), was barely recognised as a Christian by his own creed. 
 The Jew, who had from ulterior motives embraced the creed whose 
 first duty it was (in this century at least) to hound and hunt his 
 suffering brethren like beasts of the forest, was never spoken of in 
 language other than that of the greatest detestation. Yet these two 
 crafty men were going to drive myriads of honest, upright, patient 
 men into the nominal profession and practice of a religion, which if 
 
234 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 judged by these two proselytising representatives, would have little 
 indeed to commend it. We must not however censure the schismatic 
 Benedict too severely for his ambition, for he thought by realising it, 
 to reconcile himself for his past misdeeds with the body of the Church 
 and also to win eternal fame by consummating, what endless numbers 
 of prelates before him had solemnly sworn to do, and as solemnly 
 failed, to convert the Jewish race to Christianity. Benedict now 
 abetted by King Ferdinand, Vincent Ferrer and his troop of followers 
 opened the campaign by summoning a number of the principal Rabbins 
 and Talmudists in the kingdom to enter with his greatest theologians 
 (prompted and tutored by the Israelitish apostates with whom the 
 Papal court abounded) 1 into a formal debate upon the relative merits 
 and claims to scriptural authenticity, as well as the doctrines of 
 Judaism and Christianity. Thus over twenty of the most influential 
 and learned Hebraists in Aragon, whose names had been submitted by 
 Geronimo de Santa Fe (alias Solomon Lorqui,) were commanded by 
 royal edict and under threat of severe punishment to present them¬ 
 selves and declare their readiness to proceed with the disputation. 
 This was mainly conducted on the Christian side by the baptized Jew, 
 who was a skilled Hebraist and a deeply versed Talmudist ; till near 
 the end of 1415, all together nearly two years, nearly seventy sittings 
 having been recorded. When the Jews were for the first time ushered 
 into the audience chamber they realised the melancholy status of their 
 people. All had been brought about by the baptized recreant, who, 
 anxious to insinuate himself into the Papal favour, urged that the 
 Talmud admitted the Incarnation and Messianic character of Christ. 
 The Pope, Church dignitaries, and secular nobility, gorgeously attired, 
 viewed the few trembling Jewish patriots with lofty disdain. Those 
 of Tortosa, the theatre of the debate, and of all Aragon, assembled in 
 their synagogues and devoutly prayed and fasted imploring God to 
 avert what, they intuitively felt, would prove a grave disaster. The 
 Jewish party were restrained in speech and argument, whilst the 
 Christian one quoted all the myriads of Rabbinic paradoxes, witticisms, 
 metaplasms, satires and ambages, as the essential tenets, nay the very 
 crux of Judaism, crudely and cruelly distorting and obliquely inter¬ 
 preting almost every syllable of those writings into all manner of 
 irrecognizable shapes and forms. Had the Rabbins of the Talmud— 
 a work which readily lends itself to misconstruction—only foreseen 
 
 (1.) Christendom’s favouring renegades was of the greatest service to the 
 Hebrew race, for it helped Judaism to despumate her ills and diseases ; every 
 tree has its daddock. The blackmailing Jewish apostates were the daddock of 
 Israel. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 235 
 
 the indescribable misery and persecutions some of their expressions 
 would have caused their benighted descendants, they would most 
 certainly have expressed their ideas in closer language. 
 
 Finding that after all his specious arguments and pains to convert 
 them, not one of the representatives wavered, he closed the disputation, 
 dismissed the Jews with an angry scowl and revenged himself by 
 issuing a ferocious bull against the entire body of Spanish Jews. If 
 he .could not convert them he could by his temporal power—like 
 Vincent Ferrer, who still paraded the Juderias, crucifix in hand, 
 urging the mob to themselves convert the Jews—publish orders 
 against them, which would most effectually degrade them. No Jew 
 was to study the Talmud and cognate literature. Any work calling 
 the truths of doctrinal Christianity into question was not to be read ; 
 the owner rendered himself open to a persecution for blaspheming 
 Christianity and calumniating its tenets. One small and simple 
 synagogue alone was to be allowed in each city, the remainder were 
 to be demolished. This last law was evidently intended as an 
 improvement on that of Alfonso X who had decreed (1261):—“The 
 Jews may not enlarge, elevate or beautify their synagogues.’ 1 Benedict 
 relegated them to ghettos ; they were forbidden to eat, drink, or bathe 
 with Christians under the severest penalties. Commercial intercourse 
 with members of the superior creed was invalidated. They were not 
 to hold posts under the crown whether civil or military ; all handi¬ 
 crafts were indicted to them, as was also the practice of medicine and 
 surgery. The “ badge ” was renewed as a canon of the Church and 
 “ not content with having ordered and witnessed the seizure, confisca¬ 
 tion and public burning of the Talmud, the bulwark of his antagon¬ 
 ists/’ he directed that they should be compelled to listen to sermons 
 urging their conversion thrice yearly. Gonzalo, son of the apostate 
 Solomon Levi, was appointed to supervise the consummation of this 
 last injunction. 
 
 In the first sermon—to be delivered during Advent—-the appear¬ 
 ance of the Messiah in the person of Jesus was to be proved to them 
 from Isaiah and the Talmud. The second—during Holy Week—was 
 to be devoted to an exposure of the contents of some portions of the 
 latter work. This sermon, or rather diatribe, was prepared by the 
 Jewish convert, Joshua Lorqui. The last sermon—to be delivered 
 during the summer—was to be in proof that the sufferings of the 
 Hebrew people were due to their wicked rejection of Jesus Christ and 
 their equally wicked adhesion to the blasphemous and heretical Talmud 
 which, they were assured, was the sole cause of their hardened infidelity. 
 The decree of the Council of Constance (for which curiously enough 
 
236 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 the Emperor Sigismund made the Jews defray the expenses of session) 
 irrevocably deposing Benedict as a creator of Schisms rendered the 
 prolonged and stringent administration of his brutal bull difficult, and 
 ultimately impossible. St. Vincent Ferrer, in vehement language, 
 exhorted all Spaniards to pursue the “ wicked spurious and unfrocked 
 Pope ” to the death, and King Ferdinand and Paul became his 
 bitterest foes. 
 
 In 1443 when the merciless and violent bull of Pope Eugenius IV 
 was heaping so much misery upon half the Jews of Europe, Alvarez 
 de Luna, the Royal favorite, urged his master, Juan II, now ruling in 
 person in place of his bigoted heretic-hunting mother, to in a measure 
 nullify the effects that document hoped to obtain by deprecating and 
 punishing the numerous armed attacks upon the Spanish Jews, which 
 were so natural an outcome of the Pope’s commands. 
 
 The representatives of the terrified Castilian Jewish communities, 
 who were in haste despatched to Juan, evoked the opinion that the 
 laws and constitution of Castile permitted the residence and protection 
 of Jews and Moors on its soil but did not tolerate armed onslaughts 
 upon them. True ! they must suffer for their heresies, but not by 
 being pillaged and attacked by Christian mobs. 
 
 During the reign of Henry IV, of Castile, the Jews received fairly 
 humane treatment; they were in fact so well protected against outrage 
 and the hatred of the clergy, that many Marranos who had professed 
 to apostatise—and some of them had even entered monastic and 
 clerical orders—and yet secretly conformed to the rites of Judaism, 
 living on vegetables, were emboldened to disdainfully fling aside the 
 hateful mask by which their very lives were preserved and return to 
 the open practice of the religion of their fathers. In this reign an 
 accusation was lodged against certain Jews who were at once im¬ 
 prisoned. They were charged with having torn the heart out of a 
 living Christian child after having cut pieces of flesh out of it. 
 
 King Henry instituting an impartial and searching examination 
 into the matter, the charge was proven to be absolutely without the 
 barest shred of foundation. 
 
 A new misfortune for the Jews arose in the person of Alfonso de 
 Spina resident in Salamanca. Though he did not possess the un¬ 
 bounded influence and eloquence of either John of Capistrano or 
 Vincent Ferrer, he was able to wound them in their most vulnerable 
 parts. Not content with writing truculent books which loudly 
 inculcated the extirpation of all dissidents from Christianity whatever 
 their form of heresy, he strongly advised the seizure and forcible 
 baptism of Jewish children and the wholesale persecutions of all who 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 237 
 
 demurred from his plans. From the pulpit and the very altar steps, 
 he called upon the King “In the name of the Apostles” not to connive 
 at the Jews eluding those exercises wisely imposed upon them by the 
 different anti-Semitic Canons of the Church. The nobles he bitterly 
 denounced for “ criminally favouring ” the Jews, that is, meting out 
 to them equitable treatment and giving them common rights with 
 Christians. The Clergy were reprobated for their laxity and remissness 
 in the monachal supervision of the infidels. Alfonso refurbished all 
 the old libels born of credulity and believed by cupidity. They were 
 stealers, branders, and crucifiers of Christian children ; host pounders, 
 outragers and desecrators, users of Christian blood for the Paschal 
 night, haters of mankind, and in fine guilty of every crime his fecund 
 mind and splenetic bigotry could lay against them. The mantic 
 Alfonso foresaw that if the Jews were not speedily relegated to eccles¬ 
 iastical supervision the downfall of Europe was imminent. This 
 summons to the Priesthood of Spain couched in such frantic language 
 bore instant fruits, fbr directly following the publication of his book, 
 “ Fortalitum Fidei,” a monk of Medina del Campo, crucifix and 
 breviary in hand, ordered an instant massacre of the Jews in that 
 town. No call of a superior was ever obeyed with more vigour and 
 determination, for the entire populace, arming themselves, fell upon 
 the Jews and burnt them alive after having horribly sacked their 
 quarter. Their houses were razed ; their synagogal requisites burnt, 
 together with the owners, (November 1460.) Don Henry was bitterly 
 opposed to the constant massacres of Jews which were of such frequent 
 occurrence in his Kingdom, yet he ratified a code prepared by his three 
 chief ministers, one of whom (Don Pacheco) was of Judaic origin. It 
 was really a repetition of the code of Donna Catalina and the Court 
 Saint with the exception that the exclusion of Jews from practising as 
 apothecaries doctors and surgeons and their confinement in ghettos 
 were more stringently enforced. 
 
 In April, 1468, the Jews of Sepulveda were collectively charged 
 with the torture and crucifixion of a Christian child. Their Rabbi, 
 Solomon Picho, a bent and white-haired old man, was, by a remarkable 
 consensus of opinion, pointed out as the prime instigator. The Bishop 
 of the diocese, Juan Arias, a Jew, the moment he heard of the charge, 
 which had a very strong appearance of having been formulated by his 
 myrmidons, acting under secret instructions, instantly ordered a 
 number to be taken to Segovia and punished ; some were burnt at the 
 stake, others were hung on the gallows. 
 
 In 1470, the numerous partisans of Isabella, took up arms in 
 Valladolid her capital and attacked the “New Christians.” Though 
 
238 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 Henry was anxious to prevent another massacre of Jews staining the 
 records of his reign, he could not—and did not—punish the instigators 
 or ringleaders of the last attack in his kingdom. 
 
 On March 14th, 1472, a barbarous slaughter of Marranos in 
 Cordova was the direct result of a venial incident. They had -been 
 accused of disrespect to a picture of the Virgin, which was being con¬ 
 ducted through the city with very great pageants nnd solemnity by a 
 noble lady under a beautiful silken canopy. A ruffian in the crowd 
 anxious to cause a tumult addressed the teeming multitude, who 
 flocked to the market square, and with impassioned invective exhorted 
 them, to avenge the gross contumely—very probably refusal to kneel 
 to it in adoration—with which the sacred emblem had been treated. 
 A few moments later the Cordovan Jewry was aflame, the rabble 
 going from house to house butchering, pillaging, torturing, and leav¬ 
 ing the fire to complete the vengeance. So irresistible and over¬ 
 whelming had been the attack and so numerous was the mob, that 
 the resident military who had attempted to stay the frightful 
 slaughter, which continued for two days and one night without inter¬ 
 mission, were compelled to desist from defending the Jews and betake 
 themselves to flight. Many Jews contrived to escape but these 
 fugitives were hunted like wild beasts of the chase ; wherever they 
 were seen the most horrible death inevitably awaited them. 
 A few Cordovan Jews who had by the greatest of fortune contrived 
 to escape from that city and find temporary refuge in the vicinity 
 were quickly hunted out and slaughtered with the most appalling 
 cruelty. Some were smoked out of caves by means of fires being 
 kindled near the entrance of those supposed to contain Israelites ; in 
 others they were walled in. An organized Jew-hunt from town to 
 town, everywhere attended with the most sickening atrocities, culmin¬ 
 ated in a huge attack on the Hebrew residents of Seville. The 
 standing case against the Marranos, against whom the fury of this 
 campaign was primarily directed, was that whilst outwardly professing 
 a belief in Christianity they not only in private failed to practise its 
 injunctions, but distinctly entertained the greatest antipathy towards 
 it. It had been noticed that though the vast majority of these new 
 Christians contrived to elude the laws which enforced the baptism of 
 their children, the few who did bring them to the font invariably 
 wiped the waters off on their return home. They firmly refused to 
 partake of lard, pork, or any foods prepared by Gentiles. On the 
 Passover they abstained from all but vegetable foods. They circum¬ 
 cised their children, fasted on the 9th of Av., contributed liberally 
 towards the support of the synagogues and their officials and were in 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 239 
 
 many respects identical with the professed Jews, whose abominable 
 heresies they had sworn to abstain from practising. These were the 
 principal causes of the massacres of the Christian neophytes through¬ 
 out the peninsula, yet the reader, even after reading this excerpt from 
 the catalogue of their crimes, will barely condone their wholesale 
 slaughter as inculcated by the bishops, monks and clergy of the 
 country. At Seville so determined and irrepressible was the attack 
 upon the Jewish quarter that the military had the greatest difficulty 
 in preventing it from taking a still more serious turn than it did, 
 January 1473. 
 
 In 1474 (May 16th), the command of Don Pacheco, who was now 
 in open rebellion against the King, to enter the houses of the secret 
 Jews in Segovia, slaughter the inhabitants and annex their property, 
 was obeyed. Whole troops of citizens armed to the teeth burst upon 
 them unawares, destroyed their quarters and butchered everyone of 
 the poor Jews with the most fiendish barbarity. They, by the accept¬ 
 ance of the Church euphemism of “ New Christians,” had sought to 
 prolong a wretched existence forfeited by heredity to the very system 
 which had magnanimously permitted them to live so long without 
 exercising its indisputable prerogative. 
 
 At this time the Spanish Jew groaned under the heaviest of taxes. 
 Among other things “ they had to pay for the King’s dinner ; they 
 were subjected to a hearth tax ; they had to pay for every act of their 
 lives, for leaving and entering towns, for passing through gates or 
 traversing bridges, for crossing the frontiers of diminutive states, for 
 buying or selling, for marriage or sepulture. The tax collector stood 
 by the sexton and stopped the burial till his fee of two florins was 
 handed to him, In Granada the Jews had to pay an alfarda or 
 strangers’ tax, in 1480, though the Jews were far older settlers in 
 Andalusia than those who imposed the tax.” 1 In many Spanish towns 
 they had been strictly forbidden to use the public promenades. 
 
 In 1482 the Municipal Councils of Guifuscoa and Toledo passed 
 such percicodes of laws against the Jews of those towns that Queen 
 Isabella had to demand their instant revocation. 
 
 In 1492 the blow, so long impending, fell. That fierce bigot 
 rightly surnamed Ferdinand the Catholic, together with his spouse 
 Isabella, the priest-ridden, decided, upon the earnest representations 
 of Friar Thomas de Torquemada, the Inquisitor General, a Domini¬ 
 can, who had in his eighteen years of office burnt nearly eight 
 thousand Jews at the stake as relapsed, impenitent, and obstinate 
 
 (1.) Israel Abrahams, M.A., in his Jewish Life in the Middle Ages,” a 
 work to which I am indebted for much sound information. 
 
240 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 heretics, and the clergy, grandees and nobles of the country, to banish 
 the Jews whom the populace were now weary of slaughtering. Neither 
 Ferdinand nor Isabella, admits Prescott, had they been left to the un¬ 
 biased dictates of their own reason, would have sanctioned for a 
 moment so impolitic a measure which involved the loss of the most 
 industrious and skilful portion of their subjects. The case against 
 the Jews was that they had secretly encouraged the conversos or “New 
 Christians ” in their clandestine attachment to Judaism ; burning, 
 impaling and imprisoning them, all had proved ineffectual. 
 
 Marranos had been seen using different table linen and garments 
 on Sabbaths, and were known to bless their children on Friday nights, 
 to kill cattle and poultry with special implements, to ask forgiveness 
 of each other on the Day of Atonement, and otherwise signify a belief 
 in Hebrew superstitions. 
 
 The Jews were dazed by the blow and when they realized their 
 position their cry for mercy resounded through the peninsula. “The 
 State was begged to thrust them forth from the soil and thus extirpate 
 the wicked heresy which the Holy Office had failed to do. The 
 unifiction of Spain by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and 
 the subjugation of Granada placed the Jews of nearly the whole 
 peninsula under their decree.” 
 
 Not only did this heartrending edict fail to elicit the commiseration 
 of the nation but the masses even beheld it with transports of wild 
 joy. The public mind and morals were trained by the Church, and 
 the bigotry fostered by the clergy, together with the envy of the 
 wealth and influence acquired by patient industry and talent during 
 many centuries combined to render the horror stricken Jews objects 
 of popular hatred. The endless denunciations of heresy and the fury 
 aroused against infidels by the long and costly seige of Mohammedan 
 Granada created a national callousness to the sufferings of non- 
 Christians. At this unpropitious moment Jewish simulations of 
 Christianity were not rare, and viewed with much suspicion; unfortu¬ 
 nately many of the pretended acceptors of the newer faith unwittingly 
 betrayed their covert attachment to Judaism. This enraged the clergy 
 who became insistent and clamorous, all the old lying calumnies were 
 refurbished. Jewish physicians were popularly believed to poison 
 Christian patients ! Jews were Host insulters ! Jews stole boys and 
 girls for the purpose of crucifying them ! Jews commit every possible 
 and impossible crime in the catalogue of human iniquity ! 
 
 They had in the majority of cases, through their thrift and know¬ 
 ledge risen to sound positions and attained social eminence. They 
 were admittedly the most educated class in Spain, partakers in its 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 241 
 
 progress, large contributors to its prosperity and they loved their 
 country with unspeakable fervour. All this was forgotten and blotted 
 out in one day. . They were to be ignominiously banished from the 
 scenes of their childhood, from the land of their birth, from the lovely 
 Castile of their ancestors, from the Spain which they had for many 
 centuries enriched, adorned and served. They were to be heartlessly 
 thrust out with a mark of infamy set on their foreheads : for no other 
 crime than attachment to their race. 
 
 But one reason was assigned for the inexorable act of expulsion, 
 which enjoined (March 31st, 1492), that the Jews must under pain 
 of death, within four months, vacate Castile, Aragon, Granade, 
 Sicily, and Sardinia, those of Andalusia had already been expelled. It 
 was that those openly professing the Jewish faith secretly encouraged 
 the Marranos to relapse into their old errors. It was solemnly proved 
 that open and secret Jews alike circumcised their children, lit candles 
 and blessed bread on Fridays, abstained from lard, pork, and Christian 
 foods, assembled together in cellars, stables and garrets for prayer, 
 and to read the law on Sabbaths and Jewish festivals ; that the Jews 
 gave Marranos copies of the Talmud and taught those, whose parents 
 were too apprehensive to do so, the tenets of Judaism, supplied them 
 with meat slaughtered according to a certain form, and prepared by a 
 curious ritual process.. They secretly contrived, despite the thousands 
 of aleit spies and minions of the Holy Office who dogged their every 
 step, to supply the New Christians with greens and unleavened bread 
 during the Feast of Passover, and also sent them loaves of bread 
 hollowed out in such a manner as to allow of the secretion of phylac- 
 teiies. Numerous other devices, it was attested, were resorted to by 
 the avowed Jews to maintain and urge the secret Jews to remain true 
 to their faith, and for no other crimes than these, their sympathy for 
 their tortured fellow Jews, and their refusal to renounce Judaism 
 their expatriation was decided upon, the plastic bigot Ferdinand con¬ 
 senting to an act which ruined his empire. Thus wasone of the greatest 
 crimes ever known in the History of Europe, the outcome of a man 
 whose apparent purpose in life was to further the aims of religion 
 and its concomitant virtue, humanity. Over half a million human 
 beings were cast out of the country of their birth, out of the country 
 which their fathers had almost alone, built up by their industry and 
 culture, qualities which had been indisputably theirs since their 
 earliest settlement there. They were to be allowed to take only such 
 goods with them as were free export ; gold, silver, or money in any 
 form was not to be removed. The reason assigned for this unjust 
 provision was that all measures, even the Holy Inquisition, having 
 
242 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 been tried to dissuade the Jews from maintaining those wavering 
 Catholics the Marranos in their constant and obstinate relapses into 
 Judaism and the practices of those abominable customs enjoined by 
 the Jewish heresy in vain, they had themselves invited measures of 
 the severest nature. Those who embraced Christianity might remain 
 in the country. 1 “ Within the short term fixed by the edict, the 
 Jews sold and disposed of their property for a mere nothing. They 
 went about begging Christians to buy but found no purchasers ; fine 
 houses and estates were sold for trifles. A house was changed for an 
 ass, and a vineyard given for a little cloth or linen.” 2 During the 
 whole time heralds proclaimed in every town and place that the 
 expulsion of the Jews had been irrevocably decreed, and any person 
 professing the religion of Moses found on Spanish soil after the 31st 
 July, 1492, would be executed. 
 
 To better impoverish the Jews the government professed that they 
 were indebted to the different nobles and corporations and sequestrated 
 their properties till they had procured acquittals from the pseudo 
 creditors (who had been instructed in the part by the court officials) 
 for these imaginary debts. Speaking upon this, a writer satirically 
 observes, “ Strange indeed ! that the balance should be found against 
 a people who had been everywhere conspicuous for their commercial 
 sagacity and resources.” Fray Tomas de Torquemada, the grand 
 Inquisitor, instructed the clergy to force them into Christianity by rend¬ 
 ering them hungry and penniless. All Christians and Marranos had 
 already been enjoined to abstain from affording shelter or protection 
 to Jews, but their cup of suffering was full when he sequestered their 
 debts in Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, nullified the bills against 
 the monasteries and clergy and cancelled all debts due to them by 
 Christians. The Dominican friars, to whom the work of conversion 
 was mainly relegated, paraded the streets and public squares expound¬ 
 ing the doctrines of Christianity and thundering forth both argument 
 and invective against the Hebrew heresy : but their endeavours were 
 counteracted by the Jewish Rabbins, who compared the persecutions 
 . of their brethren to those which their ancestors had suffered under 
 Pharaoh. They encouraged them to persevere, representing that the 
 present afflictions were intended as a trial of their faith by the 
 Almighty, who wished in this way to test them. The wealthier Jews 
 
 (1.) “ There were found but very few when the day of departure arrived who 
 were not prepared to abandon their country rather than their faith. This 
 extraordinary act of self devotion by a whole people for conscience sake may be 
 thought in the nineteenth century to merit other epithets than those of perfidy, 
 incredulity, and stiff-necked obstinacy.”— Prescott. 
 
 (2.) Lindo. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 243 
 
 gave their sympathy practical form in the generous relief of their 
 poorer brethren. Monks entered the synagogues and—crucifix in 
 hand—urged the Jews to save themselves by turning to the sympathetic 
 bosom of Holy Mother Church, who, for the sake of Jesus would 
 pardon their past infidelity and remove their sorrows. Their fiery 
 seimons had as little effect upon the Jews as the minatory remarks 
 with which they uttered their perorations; each one urged his 
 companion.. “ If they let us live we will live ; if they kill us we can 
 but die, said they. The Rabbis had all along exhorted their hearers 
 to show the steadfastness and submission that had ever characterised 
 their forefathers and begged them not to fail in this test of their faith 
 and determination. Had the monks and clergy of Spain but known the 
 effect of every single word that fell from the lips of the Spanish Rabbins 
 between the months of March and July, they would instantly have 
 discontinued the futile and frenzied efforts by which they thought 
 to drive the Jews, if they possessed but one human weakness, into the 
 arms of the Church whose representatives hounded them with such 
 unrelenting ferocity. “ Dear Brothers,” said they, “ let us be strong 
 for our religion and the teachings of our fathers against enemies of the 
 Jewish name and worshippers of images and pictures. We will not 
 break the covenant of the law and the commands of the Lord, which 
 Moses our teacher received on Mount Sinai and revealed to us. Let it 
 better be upon the heads of another generation if it is to be. We will 
 go forth from our homes and from the scenes of our childhood our 
 manhood and our old age in the name of the Lord of Hosts.” Still 
 they determined to make an effort to dissuade Ferdinand from enforc¬ 
 ing the edict. Don Isaac Abarbanel, Statesman, poet, and patriot, 
 a man whose name is familiar to every historical student and reputed 
 to be of Davidic stock, a man who had enjoyed the confidence of 
 successive sovereigns, whom Ferdinand and Isabella had summoned to 
 their Court eight years before, and whose services availed them largely 
 while he farmed the royal revenues, this white haired patriot found his 
 way into the Audience Chamber, knelt before them weeping, wailed and 
 foi mercy on his nation offering to give 600,000 golden crowns. 
 Again he returned; but we will hear his own voice ‘*1 wearied myself 
 to distraction in imploring compassion ; thrice on my knees—the 
 learned and noble Don Isaac on his knees to Ferdinand—I besought 
 the King. Regard us Ferdinand, use not thy servants so cruelly. 
 Why do thus to thy servants ? Rather exact from us our gold and 
 silver, even all that the house of Israel possesses if he may remain in 
 his country. I likewise entreated my friends the King’s officers to 
 allay his anger against my people. I begged the counsellors to advise 
 
244 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 the King to repeal the decree, but as the adder closes its ear with dust 
 against the voice of the charmer, so the king hardened his heart 
 against the entreaties of his supplicants and declared that he would 
 not revoke his edict for all the wealth of the Jews. The Queen at his 
 right hand opposed us and urged her Royal consort to continue what 
 he had begun. We exhausted all our power for the repeal of the 
 King’s sentence but there was neither wisdom nor help remaining.” 1 
 
 As the day fixed for the departure grew nearer the terrible grief 
 of the poor Jews, who barely realized that they .were for ever to quit 
 their beautiful Spain, grew more poignant and the more copiously did 
 the tears of the terrified people flow. Probably no sublimer and more 
 pathetic scene was ever witnessed in human history than when the 
 poor people wended their way to the Jewish cemeteries as if to seek 
 solace among the tombs of their sleeping fathers. In many towns the 
 idea of quitting their dear dead was so intolerable that they tore up 
 tombstones and bore them away when they could not find Moors 
 willing to hide them temporarily. In Vittoria the town authorities 
 entered into a bond that it should not be entered or molested but 
 remain as it stood. In return for this they received the adjoining 
 grounds. In Segovia the congregation assembled three days prior to 
 their departure and rent the air with their heartbreaking lamentations. 
 No cognizance was taken of how the Jews had served Spain century 
 after century. The universities had shone with their wonderful learn¬ 
 ing, the arts and sciences had been faithfully served, the liberal 
 professions adorned, the muses honoured, commerce and trade had 
 derived almost everything from the Jew. This was not thought of— 
 no account was taken of the great and good men, patriots, scholars, 
 artizans, mechanics, and agriculturists. But paralysed “with horror 
 as they were, very few entertained the idea of a renunciation of the 
 creed of their forefathers, for leaving their synagogues, in which they 
 had spent many happy hours together, free from all the memories of 
 their outside sorrows, living again in the glorious past, the homes 
 which had been sanctified to love religion and charity, the cemeteries 
 which held their sleeping ancestors, they nobly resolved to seek a shore 
 where they could again worship the God of Abraham without fear of 
 punishment. 
 
 The Jews being forbidden to remove their monies were compelled 
 to hide what little they could unperceived in the bridles, harnesses 
 and saddles of their horses. In every port and place of embarkation 
 officers had been appointed with strict instructions to vigorously 
 
 (1.) Quoted from Dr. Rule. 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 245 
 
 search the Jews and assure themselves that they were left too penniless 
 to reject the grace of salvation. It was indeed touching to see how 
 the poor exiles, who had resided in Spain centuries before their per¬ 
 secutors, clung together and with what intense devotion they stood by 
 one another in their trouble. The wealthy Jews defrayed the expenses 
 of the departure of whole shiploads of their poorer brethren. 
 
 When (in July 1492) they quitted their homes they each made 
 their way to a designated port. The poorer tramped on foot as far as 
 possible, the richer had horses and mules, while the young and weak 
 travelled in carts. The horrors that befel them are beyond all 
 description. Numbers of the weaker fell dead with exhaustion. Some 
 fell from hunger and were left on the road to perish. Many quitted 
 the world, and many entered it, yet a Catholic historian gravely re¬ 
 marks that there was not a Christian who did not feel sympathy for 
 them and entreat them to accept baptism and return to the inhospit¬ 
 able country from which they had been expelled. Vast numbers already 
 expiring refused to desert Judaism, a small hungered and dying few 
 turned to Christianity to save, not their souls, but their lives. 
 
 Many Jews we read perished at sea by wreck, disease, violence or 
 fire, and many more by famine, exhaustion or murder on inhospitable 
 shores. Many were sold for slaves, many were thrown overboard by savage 
 captains. Parents were compelled to sell their children for money to 
 buy food. “ On board one vessel full of exiles a pestilential disease 
 broke out ; the captain landed all on a desert island where they vainly 
 wandered about in quest of assistance. Heartrending tales were told 
 by the survivors. A mother, carrying two infants, walking with her 
 husband, expired on the road. The father overcome with fatigue fell 
 fainting near his two children. On regaining consciousness he found 
 them dead from sheer hunger and buried them in the sand. “ My 
 God ! ” exclaimed he, “ my misfortunes would drive me to abandon 
 Thy Law, but I am a Jew and will ever remain so.” 1 
 
 A number of the emigrants who had sought to make their way 
 through Italy were allowed to temporarily debark and rest upon the 
 quay of Genoa. The law here forbade Jews from remaining longer 
 than three days in the city. The sufferings of the wanderers were 
 witnessed by a learned Professor of that town, who thus describes the 
 frightful scenes he saw: “ No human being could behold the sufferings 
 of the Jewish exiles unmoved. A great many perished of hunger, 
 where a crust would most certainly have saved them, especially those 
 of tender years. Mothers with scarcely strength to support themselves 
 
 (1.) Lindo, page 290. 
 
246 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 carried their famished and naked infants in their arms and died with 
 them. Many fell victims to the cold, others to intense thirst, while 
 the unaccustomed distresses incidental to a sea voyage aggravated 
 their maladies. I will not enlarge on the cruelty and the avarice 
 which they frequently experienced from the masters of the ships which 
 transported them from Spain. Some were murdered to gratify their 
 cupidity, others forced to sell their children for the expenses of the 
 passage. They arrived in Genoa in crowds, but were not suffered to 
 tarry there long by reason of the ancient laws which interdicted Jews 
 from a longer residence than three days. One might have taken them 
 for spectres, so emaciated were they, so cadaverous in their aspect and 
 with eyes so sunken. They differed in nothing from the dead except 
 in the power of motion, which indeed they scarcely retained, many 
 fainted and then expired upon the mole, which being completely sur¬ 
 rounded by the sea was the only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched 
 emigrants. Here lay around a perfect swarm of dead and dying Jews.” 
 
 Terrible indeed was the fate that had befallen the homeless sons of 
 Jacob and sad was their lot. Where could they go, whither could 
 they wend their weary steps ? The gates of Europe were practically 
 closed upon them. Germany was a vast slaughter house to the Jews ; 
 from England and France they had been thrust out; Italy, full of revolt 
 and sedition, was flowing with the blood of her noblest sons. Weary 
 and sad The majority timidly rapped at the portals of Turkey. The 
 sectarians of the Crescent, though they too had oppressed the Hebrew 
 race had at times shown fitful and intermittent gleams of commisera¬ 
 tion unknown to Christian rule. Right graciously did the Sultan 
 Bajasid receive them, for he perceived in them the backbone of a 
 country and a means of regenerating his own dominions by the immig¬ 
 ration of thousands of learned men, physicians, scholars, scientists and 
 tens of thousands of artisans, handicraftsmen and astute tradesmen 
 and upright subjects, victims of an ungrateful country’s heartless 
 bigotry. “ Ferdinand and Isabella,” said he to his ministers, “ call 
 themselves wise rulers, yet they have impoverished their country to 
 enrich ours.” 
 
 But all the exiles were not so fortunate as to find a home. Stories 
 that horrify the most callous reader are again related of their awful 
 sufferings; they were everywhere pursued by the most relentless cruel¬ 
 ties and inhumanities; the cowardly emissaries of Torquemada dogged 
 them from town to town, inflicting upon them every species of savage 
 barbarity and then calmly witnessing their harrowing sufferings, offered 
 them peace if they would but renounce their sinful errors. A number 
 of Jews not knowing where to wander disembarked at Algiers, but 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 247 
 
 the heartless, merciless inhabitants shot at them with their poisoned 
 arrows and slew hundreds of them as they stepped upon the quay. At 
 Oran and Bugia they were informed that, though they might not 
 under any circumstances enter the towns, they would be permitted to 
 rest for a few days outside of it. Thankful for even this they erected 
 crude wooden huts outside the walls, the children collecting the wood 
 and the parents nailing it together ; but the colony outside of the 
 second town was destroyed by fire and after this the unhappy Hebrews 
 had to sleep upon the ground and live on the roots, barks and herbs 
 which they were fortunate enough to find. On the Sabbath they tore 
 them up with their teeth. A number of Jews from Barcelona had 
 chartered a ship and received from the captain of the vessel a written 
 assurance of just treatment, but no sooner were they well out at sea 
 than he compelled them to alight upon a small uninhabited and isolated 
 island from which he knew they could not be succoured and would 
 starve to death, for he had already cast their provisions overboard. 
 In one port a young Jewish girl was violated before the eyes of her 
 parents, the outrager cutting her throat “ lest she should conceive and 
 give birth to a Jew.” Many captains determined to prolong the 
 voyage and thus force their Hebrew passengers to purchase food at 
 most enormous prices ; the ship went to and fro between the same 
 ports for several months, the Jews not being allowed to disembark. 
 Others, who had lost the little money which they had contrived to 
 secrete about their persons, or had been robbed, commited suicide in 
 the madness produced by a slaking thirst, while the brutal sailors 
 tantalisinglv held up flagons of water. “Believe ” said some, “or die.” 
 Hundreds who bad been deprived of every particle of clothing died 
 from sheer cold accelerated by the shame of indecent exposure. Several 
 ships purchased by exiles were set in flames by the crews they had 
 engaged immediately they had left the quays, the sailors swimming 
 ashore. Others were leaked or sunk by a number of huge weights 
 being cast upon them. The captain of one Castilian vessel resolved 
 to bind all his passengers and cut their throats with the large square- 
 bladed knife of the Babbi, after the manner of oxen, on the ground 
 that it was his plain and unmistakable duty to bloodily avenge the 
 shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, for which they were by heredity 
 responsible, but being mollified by the Babbi’s argument that accord¬ 
 ing to the captain’s own creed, Jesus had died for sinners and did not 
 desire their death, he was softened into strippiug them all naked, 
 throwing some of them bound with ropes overboard aud casting the 
 remainder upon a desert island. 
 
248 
 
 THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 At Salee nearly two hundred famished Jewish children were decoyed 
 on to a strange ship, the crew of which had promised to give them 
 each a piece of bread. Directly they were secured they were thrust 
 below deck and the vessel moored her anchor, sailing off to carry them 
 to Africa, there to sell them as slaves to the blacks. The heartrend¬ 
 ing cries of the children, who understood that they had been deceived 
 and the wails of their parents, who stood upon the quay vainly en¬ 
 deavouring to catch a last glance at their dear ones, were most awful 
 to hear. 
 
 Whenever a Jew fainted for hunger a monk would come to him 
 holding bread in one hand and a crucifix in the other. Many lay on 
 the sands ravenously gnawing the roots they had found in the fields. 
 “ Happy should we have been ” cried one heartbroken Jewish poet “ if 
 the grass had been long.” One woman driven frantic by the moans 
 of her dying babe weeping for food, seized a huge stone and struck 
 him dead. One inhuman monster, a captain, stripped his Hebrew 
 passengers stark naked and cast them on a barren and uninhabited 
 island. Many were devoured by the wild beasts ; to save themselves 
 they dashed headlong into the sea, some perished, but others remained 
 in the water till the beasts quitted the coast. Some, we read, remain¬ 
 ed in this wretched condition for five days before they had the courage 
 to end their own miseries. 
 
 The report having been spread that some Jews had swallowed 
 precious stones and gold coins, the inhuman Arabs as well as the 
 Christians ripped them up alive with horrible violence and examined 
 their entrails, while yet in a living state. Huge numbers of the 
 emigrants were bound and flung overboard head foremost for no other 
 reason than that the crew delighted to see the agonized faces of the 
 parents or children. The officer of a vessel from Navane laid hands 
 upon a handsome Jewish maiden intending to violate her, but hei 
 mother quickly seized her, and threw her and also her sisters into the 
 water, then the Jewish Boadicea sprang into her daughteis biiny 
 grave. Vast numbers of Spanish Jews died from the different plagues 
 that were then devastating Europe, in addition to the hordes so cruelly 
 murdered, burnt, strangled, and starved to death. 
 
 Here ends the sufferings of the Jews who made open profession 
 of their faith. Those secret Jews, who under the names of “Marranos” 
 or “ New Christians ” made covert practice of Jewish rites and gave 
 clandestine adhesion to the Mosaic doctrines, remained behind only to 
 provide fresh fuel for the horrible fires and butcheries of the Inquis¬ 
 ition, whose work it now was to purge the land of its secret Jews and 
 drag them to the stake to perish in its Autos-da-fe. This was not 
 
THE JEWS IN SPAIN. 
 
 249 
 
 always an easy task, for not only were the highest posts in the State 
 filled by Marranos, not only did the monk’s cowl and the bishop’s 
 mitre often cover the praying shawl and phylacteries of the Jews, but 
 Royalty itself was at times related to them. 
 
 Finding it impossible in these few pages to give anything like an 
 adequate description of the establishment, career and fall of the 
 Inquisition, we have refrained from doing more than merely refer 
 to its existence. Its history from a Jewish standpoint will, we 
 sincerely hope, find expression in a future and much shorter work. 
 “The Jews of Spain in the Fifteenth Century ” in which the characters 
 of Ferdinand and Isabella and their attitudes tow r ards the Jews (their 
 policy being so bound up in that of the Holy Office) will receive the 
 fuller treatment which it would be unwise to attempt to give here. 
 
250 
 
 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 But ask of those who Israel scorn, 
 
 Would they for faith a badge have worn ! 
 
 fOHlHE first settlement of Jews in this country was contemporaneous 
 tftK with the establishment of Jewish Communities in Spain. They 
 were for centuries unmolested and enjoyed the greatest tranquility. 
 Some Sovereigns advanced them to the highest offices in the gift of 
 the State. Portugal was often an asylum for the Jews of other count¬ 
 ries, who having suffered persecution in the lands of their birth had 
 found shelter on Lusitanian soil. The Jews were in each town a cor¬ 
 porate body possessing autonomy and certain prescribed judicial and 
 legislative powers. They were however amenable to the Chief Rabbi, 
 a State official, and his seven provincial Rabbins (Ouvidores.) It was 
 quite common for kings of Portugal to confer upon the capable and 
 learned Jews, who abounded in the kingdom, positions of the highest 
 trust and responsibility ; even to admit them into their most secret 
 councils. It was one of the bitterest charges of Pope Gregory IX, that 
 King Sanclio II appointed Jews to various public offices. This 
 Monarch and his predecessor had protected them against the hatred 
 of the Catholic clergy, and in recognition of this, they and their des¬ 
 cendants furnished every Royal Portuguese vessel on leaving port the 
 first time with an anchor and a cable of sixty fathoms. One of the 
 charges made by the clergy to the Pope against King Denis was “that 
 he does appoint Jews to the highest posts in the Kingdom.” Alfonso 
 IV, Dom Pedro, and Dom Ferdinand all shielded the Jews against the 
 fierce animosity of their enemies, though they were compelled to make 
 concessions to the clergy, whose influence was often greater than any 
 sapient monarch could successfully cope with. 
 
 Dom John, though he had ordered “ that their rights and privi¬ 
 leges should be respected,” sequent to the publication of Pope Boni¬ 
 face IX’s bull, confirming the one granted by Clement VI in 1348, 
 which had forbidden Christians from “ molesting the Jews in the 
 
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 251 
 
 exercise of their religion, desecrating their cemeteries and imposing on 
 them other taxes than those to which Christians are subject,” ratified 
 the decree of the Cortes of Evora in 1391 and ordered :— 
 
 “That all Jews in my dominions shall wear a red star having six points, 
 the size of my royal seal on the breast of the outer garment at the pit 
 of the stomach in such manner as to be visible.” 
 
 The son of Dom John I, Duarte, decreed in 1438 :— 
 
 “ That no Jew or Moor shall hold any office in the household of the king, 
 queen, infantes, noblemen, or prelates.” 
 
 “That neither Jews nor Moors shall have Christian boys or girls in their 
 service for hire or gratis.” 
 
 “ That no Christian woman may enter the warehouses or shops of Jews or 
 Moors unless accompanied by a Christian man. 
 
 “ That no Christian woman shall enter the Jewry by herself under pain of 
 death.” 
 
 A curious provision of a Cortes held at Santarem in 1451, was, 
 
 “ That Jews and Moors shall not be permitted to wear silk dresses.” 
 
 Seventeen years later a Cortes held in the same town, ordered :— 
 
 “ That Jews and Moors shall not be permitted to reside without their Jewries 
 and Aljamas and that they shall be compelled to wear the signs enacted 
 by law.” 
 
 In 1473 a Cortes of Lisbon, desiring to restrain the Catholic 
 clergy from farming their benefices out to Jews, resolved :— 
 
 “ That Jews shall not be permitted to recover revenues belonging to the 
 Church. Those Christians who encourage this shall be severely 
 punished.” 
 
 At a Cortes of Evora held in 1481 immediately after the accession 
 of John II. he was presented with a long petition of which the follow¬ 
 ing is a paragraph :— 
 
 “ Sire, it seems to our people that in regard to the dresses of Jews, Moors, 
 and their wives, your Highness might order that they should wear their 
 sign and dress as formerly on such manner that they may be known as 
 Jews or Moors wherever they are and thereby confer a great favour on 
 your vassals. We also notice Jewish cavaliers mounted on richly 
 caparisoned horses and mules in fine cloaks, cassocks, silk doublets, 
 closed hoods, and with gilt swords so that it is impossible to recognise 
 them.” 
 
 John made reply :— 
 
 “As to the clothes of Jews it it right that they should be of the same 
 description of cloth as I have ordered other men to wear, but they may 
 not wear silk and are only to wear woollen. They are to wear the 
 customary sign of a star, according to the form of the ordinance, on 
 the pit of the stomach.” 1 
 
 Wc will now revert to the year 1382. The first foe of note to seek 
 means for the oppression of the Jews in Portugal was Leonora, wife 
 of Don Ferdinand, who became regent on the death of her husband. 
 This woman, who by her overt craftiness, duplicity, and worthlessness 
 of character was shunned by her own relations, and who by her wiles 
 
 (1.) Lindo, page 317. 
 
252 
 
 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 and unscrupulous ambitions plunged the country into a long and sang¬ 
 uinary Avar, had during her earlier years urged the King to gratify her 
 inordinate hatred against that people by excluding them—as also the 
 Moors—from all public offices and declaring their future tenure of 
 such as unlawful. When after his death, 1382, she ascended the throne 
 as Queen Regent, she graciously received a deputation from the city 
 of Lisbon, praying for the imposition of important restrictions upon 
 its HebreAv residents, and upon those of the whole Kingdom, and 
 immediately removed all Jewish public servants from the posts in which 
 they had shown such fidelity to the State. 
 
 When, in 1492, the Jews had been so barbarously banished from 
 Spain and Navarre, the Portuguese King John II received a deputation 
 of thirty Rabbis headed by the pious and learned Chief of the Spanish 
 communities, Isaac Aboab, asking his permission to permit their co¬ 
 religionists to pass through his territories in search of a haven ; this 
 lie, on payment of a capitation tax, graciously conceded them. Each 
 adult person without exception Avas to pay eight golden cruzadoes. 
 Artisans, armourers, smiths, and all skilled mechanics might take up 
 permanent residence in the Kingdom and one half of the tax was to be 
 remitted to them. Eight months was the period fixed for their sojourn 
 in Portugal ; at the expiration of this time the State would provide 
 them Avith ships for their departure at reasonable charges ; they would 
 also be allowed to purchase all provisions and necessities. Those who 
 Avere found on Portuguese soil after eight months would be sold into 
 slavery, as also all who failed to produce documentary evidence of hav¬ 
 ing paid the stipulated charge for admission to the country ; thus 
 considerably over twenty thousand Jewish families availed themselves 
 of these terms. When the stipulated time had expired the King—like 
 EdAvard I of England—insisted upon their humane treatment and safe 
 conveyance to Avhatever destinations they chose, but the captains of 
 the vessels set John’s orders at defiance and indulged in the most feral 
 and Avanton atrocities at the expense of their passengers. Those Avho 
 were either unable or unwilling to pay more than they had arranged 
 were most grossly maltreated. A favourite ruse for the extortion of 
 the last farthing from the wretched JeAvs. was to unnecessarily prolong 
 the voyage and refuse to land them at any port. As their supply of 
 food Avas exhausted they forced them to purchase bread and water at 
 the most monstrous rates. A handful of precious stones was in several 
 instances exchanged for a meal. Many famished, holloAv-cheeked, 
 sunken-eyed wretches, whose wan figures and pinched faces betokened 
 that they were rapidly perishing from sheer hunger, gave their clothes 
 for a scanty meal and were then cast naked upon unhealthy islands to 
 
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 253 
 
 succumb to the cold. It was very common to rob the emigrants of 
 everything they possessed, and turn them adrift or set them upon 
 African islands naked and hungry, leaving those who were not seized 
 by the Moors and sold for slaves to perish from sheer hunger and cold. 
 Young girls were violated before their parents’ eyes, whilst men were 
 shamefully and indecently exposed before their wives and daughters. 
 One vessel was four months upon the open sea, for not a single port 
 would hear of its admission. It was however, boarded and plundered 
 by a pirate cruiser, which conveyed it to a Spanish port (Malaga.) 
 Here they were prohibited from landing and, with a whimsical refine¬ 
 ment of cruelty, also from setting sail in search of a more hospitable 
 haven. Provisions they had none nor were any permitted to be 
 supplied to them, for the Catholic clergy of Malaga had firmly resolved 
 upon their being coerced into accepting Christianity ; a number of 
 dying creatures who had been too weak to further withstand the 
 horrible trials they were being subjected to, submitted to the terms, 
 the acceptance of which the heartless priests had starved them into, but 
 the great majority with unwavering firmness expressed themselves as 
 resolutely determined to perish by hunger or thirst, if no other altern¬ 
 ative than the renunciation of their creed was offered them. Touched 
 by their pathetic unanimity and noble heroism, a few humane Malagese 
 contrived to supply them with small pittances of bread and water, 
 despite the orders of the clergy. After a two months’ mission during 
 which the starving crew of emaciated victims of Christian brutality 
 had to listen to endless sermons exegetical expositions, and harangues 
 in which the merits of Jesus Christ and his apostles were extolled, the 
 disheartened conversionists had no option but to permit the ship to 
 put out to sea ; but no port would allow them to disembark, until at 
 last one was found that was charitable enough to permit them to erect 
 a few crude huts outside the town in some adjoining fields. Here 
 they were again harried to accept Islamism. The Mohammedan 
 measures of conversion were for once more drastic than those employed 
 by the sectarians of the Cross at Malaga. 
 
 Many Jews who lingered in Portugal were, when apprised of the 
 terrible barbarities perpetrated upon their kinsmen, too terrified to 
 ship for abroad ; they were seized by order of the King immediately 
 after the termination of the period of grace, and either sold to African 
 slave dealers or presented to such of the Portuguese nobility as ex¬ 
 pressed themselves desirous of owning them. All Jewish children 
 between the ages of three and ten were—so Dom John decreed—to be 
 wrested from their parents and transported to the Island of St. Thomas, 
 there to be instructed in, and brought up to the practice of the Christian 
 
254 
 
 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 faith. This island was used as a prison for the most depraved and 
 incorrigible criminals in Portugal on account of its being full of alli¬ 
 gators, wild and ravenous beasts, poisonous snakes, lizards, and every 
 species of venomous reptiles. Agonised fathers rent their clothes, 
 and tore out their beards in their frantic lamentations, mothers wept 
 till the poignancy of their grief might have filled a stone with sym¬ 
 pathy, children vainly implored not to be severed from their parents ; 
 but the inhuman monster who sat on the throne of Portugal was 
 oblivious to all considerations of mercy or justice. A callous scion of 
 a callous dynasty, one of a heartless race of Jew-burners, infidel 
 extirpators, what was the cry of women and children or the anguish 
 of fathers against religion and state-craft ? Should compassion warp 
 the mind of a Statesman ? Should Jews be pitied when they obstin¬ 
 ately refused to relinquish the practice of their damnable superstitions? 
 Many heart-broken women begged to be allowed to leave all and 
 accompany their children. One wretched Jewess from whom seven 
 children had been wrested hid herself in the vicinity of a Church and 
 when the King came out of it, after hearing Mass, after praying to his . 
 God for mercy, flung herself wildly at his feet and bathed them with 
 her tears madly entreating him to restore her one of them, even the 
 youngest. The infamous brute laughed boisterously and directed his 
 men-at-arms to instantly drag the disconsolate woman out of his sight. 
 This was done to the delight of the interested onlookers. Some 
 mothers baulked the Church of its prey by dashing out the brains of 
 their children against walls, others bound them to their breasts and 
 leaped into the water or fled into the mountainous districts where they 
 hid till they died from cold or starvation. 
 
 John’s successor, Don Emmanuel, received the daughter of Ferd¬ 
 inand and Isabella in marriage upon undertaking to expel from his 
 country all Jews and Mohammedans; this was an express and explicit 
 condition imposed by the royal parents of the bride and eagerly insisted 
 upon by their daughter. “ I will never,” she wrote to her Kingly 
 lover, “set foot in Portugal till the land has been cleansed from its 
 accursed Jews.” King Emmanuel had no option but to give effect 
 to their wishes and his promise by decreeing that all Jews, even those 
 resident in his Kingdom from birth, and whose families had been estab¬ 
 lished for centuries, as well as Moors should, within ten months quit 
 the country or forfeit their lives; after their execution their properties 
 and goods were to become the possessions of the informers. The lengthy 
 respite of ten months had been granted because the King was loth to 
 permit so much learning, wealth, and industry to quit his shores and 
 he moreover hoped for huge baptismal results. 
 
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 255 
 
 He was however greatly mortified to see the widespread prepar¬ 
 ations for departure ; the Jews everywhere evinced an unmistakable 
 determination to leave home and fatherland rather than turn craven 
 and recreant to their creed. He, on the advice of his minsters, resolved 
 to direct a blow against them which would leave them no option but 
 that of receiving Christianity. This plan was to secretly kidnap all 
 the children of Jewish parents who had not passed their fourteenth 
 year and convey them to the Churches where they were to be baptized 
 by force. Delighted with his scheme he issued clandestine orders to 
 all municipal authorities April (1498), commanding them to enter the 
 houses of the Jews resident in the town under the administration, 
 drag their children from before the eyes of their parents and carry 
 them to the font. A few Jews surmising that some sinister plot was 
 in progress sought protection in flight. This information coming to 
 the royal ears enraged Emmanuel so deeply, that he ordered the 
 instant and public carrying out of his decree ; those to whom the 
 execution of the monstrous mandate had been entrusted did not scruple 
 to over-obey him by arresting all >under twenty one, thus thousands of 
 youths and maidens were seized. The emissaries of the Crown were 
 bathed in the tears and deafened by the moans of the inhabitants of 
 the Jewish quarter. The children had to be severed from their 
 parents by sheer violence ; the parents had to be chased off with rods 
 and whips so fiercely did they cling to their offspring whom they would 
 never more see. Some goaded into madness, threw their sons and 
 daughters into wells, battered their brains out against walls, or 
 strangled them, finally destroying themselves. The learned Bishop 
 Osorio, who was an eye witness of what he relates, says, “Emmanuel’s 
 order could not be executed without causing the most affecting scenes. 
 It was a horrid and wretched spectacle to see tender children torn 
 from the arms and breasts of their distressed mothers, and fathers, 
 dragged about to force them from their arms. To hear the cries, 
 sighs, groans, lamentations, and female shrieks that filled the air was 
 dreadful. These wretched mortals were doomed to suffer further 
 calamity and misery. Those who were desirous of quitting a country 
 where they had met such barbarous treatment were not permitted. 
 The King was so determined on making converts of this people that 
 he resolved to induce them by rewards, or compel them by necessity 
 to embrace Christianity.” Another contemporary ecclesiastic and 
 historian tells us that :—“ Many were dragged to the font by the hair 
 and many fathers robed in sackcloth, with dejected heads and with 
 cries of anguish accompanied their children to the Altar to protest 
 against these unjust and inhuman baptisms.” Isaac Ibn Zachira, one 
 
256 
 
 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 of the most learned and influential Jews in Portugal, a man of vast 
 wealth and great piety, slew his children with his own hand and then 
 took his life. With the exception of the few children whose heart¬ 
 rending cries had so melted some good Christians, that they mercifully 
 hid them in their cellars, every Jewish child in the kingdom of 
 Portugal was either baptized by the King’s orders or slain by its 
 parents. The juvenile sectarians of Christ received monastic names 
 and were transported to strange towns there to forget that they had 
 ever been Jews. Blood-curdling stories of agonised parents and dis¬ 
 traught children are told by historians who witnessed these atrocities. 
 Don Emmanuel’s next move was to recall his promise permitting the 
 Jews to quit Portugal from the three ports, Lisbon, Oporto, and Setu- 
 bal, and allow them no other place of departure than Lisbon ; but he 
 did not issue his countermanding and ignoble order until within a few 
 days of the expiration of the period allotted to them, thus compelling 
 all in readiness for departure—they having already purchased vessels 
 and provisions at Oporto and Setubal—to set out for Lisbon and rend¬ 
 ering their emigration by the stipulated time a practical impossibility. 
 They were now obliged to return to the capital from all parts of the 
 country and Lisbon became so crowded with them that they were like 
 sheep in a pen. The motive for reducing the number of ports of 
 embarkation by the inhuman and wily Emmanuel was that by compel¬ 
 ling all to come to Lisbon the limited time would expire, numbers 
 would be unable to leave and thus forfeit their freedom. To 
 render their helplessness more crushing and disheartening, Emmanuel 
 gave covert orders to his officers to oppress and harass the Jews by 
 granting them inadequate—and often no—lodgings and food ; thus 
 many were compelled to sleep on the highways. In fine the King 
 made their departure before the fateful October, 1497 a rank imposs¬ 
 ibility. The Jews, who had already experienced so many vicissitudes, 
 steadfastly assured their Christian tormentors that they were prepared 
 to suffer every imaginable affliction rather than relinquish their race 
 and their creed. Twenty thousand Jews were'assembled in Lisbon. 
 Immediately the prescribed day of grace had passed the royal officers 
 seized the vast majority of this number who had been unable to depart, 
 and dragged them into a huge barrack called the Os Estaos, which 
 had been previously greatly enlarged for their reception. They were 
 locked up in different stalls, the majority of which were used as cattle 
 lairs. Here they were informed that they were now slaves of the 
 Crown and that their royal owner could do with them whatever he 
 deemed expedient; but he was merciful and only wished to release 
 them from their darkness and save them from the future punishments 
 
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 257 
 
 that would be meted out to them if they did not repent of their wicked 
 disbelief in God. / “ Only confess the Christian creed,” said he, “ and 
 I will lavish both wealth and riches upon you, but reject my offer and 
 you will see how I can steel my heart and have you punished, then 
 baptized and assuied of salvation. Jhis offer having been firmly, 
 and with the exception of a small number, who seceded from their 
 invulnerable fellow-sufferers, unanimously refused, he ordered that 
 they should be starved for three days. Previous to the enforcement 
 of this tyrannical order they had daily received a most scanty and 
 carefully measured pittance of bread and water, yet their indomitable 
 spirits remained unbroken, and, though many miserably perished 
 during the three awful days of starvation, large numbers still held out. 
 Some who were unconscious muttered in their delirium, as if addressing 
 their persecutors, and declared themselves determined to cling to 
 Judaism at all hazards. Frightful indeed w r ere the scenes that 
 transpired ; fathers saw their children die from sheer starvation, pray¬ 
 ing to God for a piece of bread or a single drop of water. Priests 
 clad in sumptuous vestments stood outside the stalls and heartlessly 
 derided their bitter sufferings. Children saw their dead parents 
 dragged out of the barracks by the feet and trailed along the ground 
 like infectious carrion to be flung into an unhallowed grave into which 
 numbers of corpses were hourly thrown ; yet many stood out. 
 
 The scoundrel Emmanuel, finding all these fearful outrages against 
 God and Man inutile, lost all self control, and in a moment of awful 
 fury ordered the Jews to be dragged from their prison church, some 
 were dragged by ropes, others chased along with whips, the most 
 obstinate were seized by the hair of the head or the beard. Many 
 Jews, seeing escape from baptism impossible, voluntarily maimed them¬ 
 selves by rushing upon the roofs of the houses and flinging themselves 
 upon the ground. Others eluding the vigilance of their guards 
 strangled themselves or leaped into wells. 
 
 The corpses of these suicides were burnt to terrify the survivors. 
 The few who escaped baptism with unbroken limbs and their religion 
 uninjured regarded it as a merciful interposition of God. Numbers 
 of Jews who had during the awful persecution of Emmanuel professed 
 Christianity were being continually tortured for having negligently 
 shown that they gave secret adherence to Judaism, or in other words, 
 had been too unskilful to conceal their attachment to that Law from 
 which all civilized religion is derived. Several Rabbins, who had 
 staunchly refused to receive baptism were singled out for special and 
 frightful punishment. They were sentenced to be walled up to the 
 neck between the church walls and deprived of everything but a little 
 
258 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 water, to be given each day in stipulated quantity ; for three days 
 they were to remain in this fearful position and none were to release 
 them. At the end of this fiendish ordeal they—on recovering 
 consciousness—were found to be unwavering in their conviction and 
 prepared to suffer any death however cruel. Simon Maimi and three 
 other Portuguese Rabbis of equal repute, (who it was thought would, if 
 converted, impel the others to follow their example,) were then stretched 
 on the rack, but finding that they were immutable they were ordered 
 to be racked to death, and expired in heart-rending agonies. A 
 sworn band of secret Jews boldly exhumed the corpse of the poor 
 Rabbin and conveyed it to a Jewish cemetery. Here in the dead of 
 night the cloaked men laid their leader to rest with Hebrew rites. 
 Had they been discovered, the gory hands of the Church would have 
 laid them by the side of Maimi. The remaining Rabbis all met 
 violent deaths at the hands of Christianity. 
 
 Ten years later great numbers of new Christians had—imagining 
 the Dominican zeal to be relaxed—taken less than their usual 
 precaution and thus forfeited the lives of themselves and the remaining 
 secret Jews of Lisbon. They were detected celebrating the Passover 
 in their inmost chambers, a keen watch having been set. Amongst 
 those discovered were many who were considered to be exemplary 
 Catholics, regularly attending mass, frequently going to confession 
 and wearing crucifixes. To add to the certainty of their fate the 
 populace of Lisbon had been wrought into a state of dangerous 
 fanaticism through the priestly fraud of a Dominican, who exhibited 
 in Church a crucifix with a piece of dark'Coloured glass in its side ; 
 upon this a light, skilfully concealed, had been made to play. The 
 glass was supposed to represent the wound in the side of Jesus caused 
 by a spear thrust, and the Virgin Mary, it was believed had appeared 
 in a glow of fire. “ A Miracle ! A Miracle ! ” cried the people. This 
 occurred on the Sunday following the Passover (April 19th, 1506.) 
 One man among the assembly smiled and satirically observed that as 
 it was a period of great drought it would have been both more 
 beneficial and providential to all concerned had the Virgin chosen to 
 manifest herself by water. His remark cost him his life for the crowd 
 recognising the speaker to be a Marrano dragged him from the church 
 to the market place and put him to death ;• a similar fate befel his 
 brother, who stood loudly and disconsolately weeping over his body 
 which was ultimately burnt. A monk in the church of St. Domingo 
 mounted the pulpit and implored the people to fall upon and 
 slaughter the “ New Christians,” who he assured those assembled, 
 heartily despised Christianity, derided its sacred mysteries and were 
 
THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 259 
 
 guilty of secret adhesion to Judaism. Two other Dominicans collected 
 a crowd and with cries of “ Heresy ! Heresy ! ” offered, crucifix in 
 hand, an indulgence of a hundred days from the flames of Purgatory 
 to every Christian who would kill a Jew or a Marrano. A number of 
 foreign vessels were then lying in the Tagus and troops of Dutch, 
 French and Danish sailors thirsting for blood and spoil, joined the 
 rabble of Lisbon, and determined to massacre the Jews. They were 
 again addressed by a monk who cried out that it was that accursed 
 race alone, who were responsible for the deadly pestilence that was 
 causing so much havoc in Portugal in 1506. The origin of all the 
 misfortunes of Portugal and of Europe were traced to these 
 “ blasphemers of the Holy Mother of Gfod, w T ho publicly appear, missal 
 in hand, and cross themselves ; but in secret pray in the accursed 
 phylacteries.” This was enough, the mob, goaded into roaring frenzy, 
 was headed by John Mocho and Fratre Bernardo, both monks of the 
 order of St. Dominic, who fiercely incited the rabble of at least 10,000 
 degraded and cruel ruffians to the most disgraceful deeds. 
 
 Llorente, a secretary to the Court of Blood, says of this massacre, 
 (Critical History of the Inquisition) .*—“ They slew and mangled their 
 victims casting many while still alive into the fires the negroes and 
 vilest rabble had kindled at the church doors to which they kept 
 constantly adding fuel. On the Monday the numbers of the mob 
 were considerably increased from the surrounding villages ; the 
 massacre and butchery of the new Christians was continued, their 
 houses were broken open, whole families being murdered. The merciless 
 wretches dashed out the brains of infants against the walls ; pregnant 
 women were thrown from the windows on the pikes of those below ; 
 women were outraged and virgins violated, such were the horrors 
 committed in the capital of Portugal on that day. One woman fear¬ 
 lessly drew from the belt of a monk a knife he carried and when he 
 attempted to outrage her, she stabbed him in the heart. On the 
 Tuesday the deeds of horror were renewed ; the mob were equally 
 eager for blood and plunder but were almost exhausted. All who were 
 discovered were murdered ; many Christians only from resembling 
 Jews were sacrificed ; private animosities eagerly seized the opportunity 
 of wreaking vengeance. Sanctuaries were desecrated and the poor 
 suppliants were dragged from the crucifixes they embraced to be 
 immolated with the others. Plunder was not lost sight of ; the sailors 
 took their booty on board their vessels, weighed anchor, and sailed 
 away from the port. Thus for three days Lisbon was completely in 
 the hands of a lawless infuriated populace.” 1 
 
 (1.) Cited by Lindo. 
 
260 
 
 THE JEWS IN PORTUGAL. 
 
 This terrible description, eloquent as it is, only adumbrates the 
 horrors of these three horrid days when Alecto spread her bloody 
 Pallium over the sunny soil of Lusitania. Men went from house to 
 house seeking Marranos in every nook. 
 
 Numbers of men and women, boys and girls, were dragged out of 
 barns and cellars where they had vainly hoped to conceal themselves, 
 others had hid in garrets, outhouses, stables, on roofs and every place 
 where they might for a few brief moments delay the doom which was 
 so inevitable. The methods of butchery were varied according to the 
 predominant caprice of the different parties, who were industriously 
 scouring the town for Jews ; but the instant one was discovered, it 
 mattered not, however aged and grief stricken, or however young and 
 terrified, a horrible death was the invariable sequence. Some Jews 
 who had thought to save themselves by flight to Christian Churches 
 were seized and tortured to death in a manner positively revolting. 
 Altogether three thousand and some hundred victims perished during 
 these terrible days of butchery. 
 
 To follow the chequered career of the secret Jews in Portugal must 
 as in Spain form part of our task in the chapters on the Holy Office 
 in “The Jews of Fifteenth Century Spain and Portugal.” It would 
 be a matter of absolute impossibility to sketch even meagrely so 
 intricate and diffuse a theme in so brief a chapter. 
 
 JAMES LIGHTOWLER, PRINTER, 32, SCALE LANE, HULL. 
 

 
 
 
 
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DS141.P35 
 
 Twelve centuries of Jewish persecution 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00055 3968