Chapter XVIII Effect of the Expulsion
A BRIEF REVIEW.—CURSE OF GOD VISITED UPON SPAIN.—THE CHURCH A FALSE PROPHET.—WITH EXPULSION OF THE JEWS AND MOORS SPANISH PROSPERITY CEASES.—SPANIARDS EXPERIENCE SOME OF THE SUFFERINGS WHICH THE JEWS AND MOORS HAD ENDURED.—SPAIN MAKES AMENDS.—THE MOORS LOST.—THE JEWS LIVE.
A few words more and our task is ended. A few words more and we shall bid a last farewell to unfortunate Spain, once so sunny, so prosperous, so intellectual, and so fair. A few words more and our goodly vessel, staunch and strong, will furl its eager wings and speed us straight across the foaming deep, and land us once again upon Columbia’s heaven blessed and freedom-kissed virgin soil. As we predicted, so it came to pass. Our journey back into the centuries of the past, and into foreign lands, and among foreign peoples, has proven a profitable one, and as memorable as profitable. Events and scenes, beautiful and loathsome, joyous and tearful, soul refreshing and execrable, followed each other in rapid succession. There was much, which, despite the most authentic historic sources, seemed fabulous, incredible, impossible. Men and women and the states of society and civilization in which they lived and played their parts, were described, which startled us for their peerless magnificence, for their marvelous intellectuality, scarce equalled even now, and led us to suppose that we were not dealing with facts, but with the imagination of some rich phantasy. And events and achievements were recounted which struck terror into our very soul, and caused the heart to rise in rebellion against the mind when it was asked to believe them as actual occurrences, and not as some distressing and revolting and blood-stained work of fiction. And yet all that was told, and all that was described, and all that was recounted was history, and true history, strange and incredible, marvelous and anomalous though it did appear.
Two races of men engaged our attention most, the Jews and the Moors. When first we met the Jews in the southwestern corner of Europe, we found them a prosperous community, large in numbers, loved and appreciated by their heathen neighbors, busily engaged in transforming Spain into a granery and into the garden spot of Europe, and contributing largely, by their high morality and intelligence, by their skill and industry to the nation’s prosperity.
With the advent of the power of Christianity in Spain, in the Sixth Century, a sad change took place. It marked the beginning of the martyrology of the Jews in Europe. Thousands were massacred, thousands were dragged to the baptismal font, thousands were forced to take the staff of exile. But not for long. A deliverer arose from the Arabian peninsula and hastened to their rescue. This Arabian people, agile in the use of arms, dexterous in the training of horses, capable of sustaining great fatigue and hardship, and, true to the Semitic race, intellectual and sagacious, had lived till late in the Sixth Century a peaceful, nomadic life. Suddenly they were awakened out of their religious and political inactivity by their great leader Mohammed, the prophet. He kindled in their hearts the fire of enthusiasm, and led them forth to establish throughout the world his faith and his dominion. Asia submitted, Africa submitted. The early dawn of the Eighth Century saw them, where the African continent protrudes boldly to meet the continent of Europe, casting wistful glances across the straits of Hercules, upon Andalusia’s beauteous lands. The exiled Jews and Christians, roused to rebellion by the religious and political tyranny of Spain, conspired with the Mohammedan invaders, and the portals of Spain were opened to the people of Arabia, and Europe to the creed of Mohammed. The exiled Jews returned to their country, and the baptized to their cherished faith, for the Arab-Moors tolerated both the Hebrew people and their faith. Moorish and Jewish skill and industry and intelligence united, and united they became—and they maintained that distinction for many centuries—the most prosperous and most intellectual people of Europe, at a time when the rest of Europe was numbed into a death-like torpor, mentally spell-bound, industrially entranced, politically enslaved, morally degraded and religiously fettered, by a corrupt priestcraft, to ignorance and superstition.
Eight centuries long Jew and Moor toiled side by side, and during all these centuries, the Jews, with some few exceptions, politically tolerated, and religiously free, arose to great wealth and commercial importance, clothed honorably high political offices, and occupied a social and intellectual position never equalled in Europe before or since.
But the Mohammedan power began to wane, and with its waning came the terrible change in the fortunes of the Hebrew people. With Moorish decline awakened the eagerness of the Spaniards for the provinces from which the Arabian invaders had driven them, and with it grew a most fanatical zeal for the expulsion from its territories of every belief save that of Christianity.
A desperate struggle ensued. Province after province the Moor was forced to yield to the relentless foe. At last all was lost. The Mohammedan power in Spain was crushed. The Moors and Jews were given the choice between baptism and expulsion. Hundreds of thousands of them feigned allegiance to the Church of Christ, and remained. Hundreds of thousands of them, true to their faith, parted heart-broken from the land that was dearer to them than their own life. The remaining baptized Jews and Moors were soon suspected of relapsing into their old faith, and the Inquisition was brought and burned them by the thousands, and thinned the ranks of the exile Jews. By far the greater number perished from cruelty, exposure, starvation, disease, in their search for a quiet spot where they might live or die in peace. Wherever the remainder of them was permitted to settle, thither they brought blessings43 verifying the promise of God: “They that bless thee will be blest.44
And so, too, was verified the other half of that promise: “They that curse thee will be cursed.” The curse of God has hung heavily upon Spain, ever since she had dared to lay violent hand upon God’s anointed, ever since she cruelly massacred, burned and exiled the most thrifty, the most industrious, the most intellectual people that ever trod her soil, and made her the glory of Europe and the pride of the world. For a short time only, lingered her prosperity after the expulsion of the people that had created that prosperity. The New World, the discovery of which the Jews and Moors had made possible, poured into the mother country a prodigious wealth, which hastened the ruin of Spain. It intoxicated the Spaniards, and when the sobering came, the effect was terrible. Had they had the skillful, and industrious and intelligent Jews and Moors to turn the vast treasures, which poured into Spain with every vessel, into useful channels, Spain would have maintained her position as leader in the commercial world, and Italy, and France, and the Netherlands, the new homes of the Jews, would never have seized it from her, and Spain would not have been to-day what she is. But, instead, it flowed into the coffers of the greedy and insatiable Church, and the richer the Church became the more terrible became its tyranny, and the greater the inducement for laymen to enter it. Convents and Churches multiplied with such vast speed, that early in the Seventeenth Century the Spanish historian enumerates upwards of 9,000 monasteries, besides nunneries, 32,000 Dominican and Franciscan friars, 14,000 chaplains in the diocese of Seville, and 18,000 in the diocese of Calahorra.
The State was completely in its power. Even Charles V and Phillip II, sovereigns not to be matched in any other country for a period of equal length, submitted cheerfully to the power of the Church, and thought it a blessed privilege to do so. It was Charles V’s great boast that he always preferred his creed to his country, and proved his boast by slaying in cold blood, in the Netherlands, over 50,000 peaceful, industrious, good Christian citizens for their religious opinions. The cannibal appetite of the Church had to be appeased, when the stock of Jewish and Moorish victims was exhausted, truth and knowledge-seeking Christians had to supply their places upon the quemaderos, and in the torture-dungeons of the Inquisition. Even with his last breath he commanded his son, Philip, never to show favor to heretics, to kill them all, to uphold the Inquisition as the best means for the establishment of the true belief. Philip II. proved himself worthy of his sire. He has written his services to the Church upon history’s records with flames of fire and letters of blood.
With amazing swiftness Spain’s once invincible power began to disappear, becoming weaker with every century, and to-day the population of more than 30,000,000 of people before the expulsion of the Jews and Moors has dwindled down to about one half of that number, while her neighboring countries have increased in numbers and prosperity. “So rapid was the fall of Spain,” says Buckle in his “History of the Civilization of England,” Vol. II, Chap. I, “that the most powerful monarchy existing in the world was depressed to the lowest point of debasement, was insulted with impunity by foreign nations, was reduced more than once to bankruptcy, was stripped of her fairest possessions, was held up to public opprobrium, was made a theme on which schoolboys and moralists loved to declaim, respecting the uncertainty of human affairs. Truly did she drink to the dregs the cup of her own shame. Her glory had departed from her, she was smitten down and humbled. The mistress of the world was gone; her power was gone, no more to return.”
The Church had proven itself a false prophet. “Once purge blessed Spain,” it preached to its credulous followers, “of the presence of the accursed Jews and Moors, and yourselves and your families will be under the immediate protection of Heaven. The earth will bear more fruit. A new era will be inaugurated, Spain will be at ease. People will live in safety, and gather in peace and in abundance the fruits of their handiwork.”
Such was the prophecy: but bitter its fulfilment. With the expulsion of the Jews and Moors large bodies of industrious and expert agriculturists and skilled mechanics were suddenly withdrawn, and there was no one to fill their place. The cultivation of rice, cotton and sugar, and the manufacture of silk and paper was destroyed at a blow, and most of it was destroyed forever, for the Spanish Christians, still intoxicated with their military and financial and social greatness, considered such pursuits beneath their dignity. To fight for the king and to enter the Church was honorable, but everything else was mean and sordid. Whole districts were deserted and have never been repeopled to the present day. The brigands soon occupied the places formerly so beneficially filled by honest toilers. In less than fifty years 16,000 looms of Seville, giving employment to 130,000 persons, had dwindled away to less than 300, and its population to one quarter of its former number. The mines stood idle until foreigners took pity of some of them. The others are idle still. A little over one hundred years ago the Spanish government being determined to have a navy, found it necessary to send to England for shipwrights; and they were obliged to apply to the same quarter for persons who could make ropes and canvas, the skill of the natives being unequal to such arduous achievements; and early in the eighteenth century they were obliged to import laborers from Holland to teach the Spaniards the art of making wool, an art for which in their glorious past they were especially famous.
The consequences of this industrial and agricultural standstill could not fail. Famine set in. The grandees murmured aloud against the State for expelling the Jews and Moors. The citizens of Madrid fell down in the streets famished and perished where they fell—so had famished and died the Jewish exiles—anarchy prevailed. Peaceful citizens organized themselves into bands and going in search of bread, broke open private houses, and robbed and murdered the inhabitants in the face of day—thus had been murdered the Jewish exiles. Verily God’s prophecy was fulfilled: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, in thee shall the families of the earth be blessed.”45
Spain’s intellectual decline kept steady pace with its political and industrial decay. No more is she the center of Europe’s learning. No more does her intellect shed luminous rays all over the world. The Moor and the Jew have fled her provinces, and darkness covers her lands, the shadows of night again brood stiflingly over her people. Her poverty has made her ignorant, her ignorance has made her intensely fanatic, and her fanaticism is, to this day, the enemy of all social and intellectual advance. For two centuries and more investigation likely to stimulate thought was positively prohibited. In the measure that her sister countries advanced intellectually she declined, and in proportion as they shook off the fetters of the Church, she cheerfully submitted to have them drawn tighter about her. Until the eighteenth century Madrid did not possess a single public library, and to-day the number of volumes in all the Spanish libraries cannot reach 500,000. The library of Cordova in the tenth century, before the printing press was discovered, counted over 600,000 volumes. The Government library of Paris and that of London count respectively over 1,500,000 and over 2,000,000 volumes. So late as the year 1771 the University of Salamanca, the most ancient and most famous seat of learning in Spain, publicly refused to allow the discoveries of Newton to be taught, and assigned as a reason that his system was not consonant with revealed religion. Buckle quotes from Spanish sources, an epistle which will illustrate the abysses of ignorance into which the Spanish intellect had sunk. About a century ago some bold men proposed that the streets of Madrid should be cleansed. The proposal was met with excited indignation. The question was submitted by the government to the medical profession. They reported unfavorably. They had no doubt that the dirt ought to remain. To remove it was a new experiment, and of new experiments it was impossible to foresee the issue. Their fathers having lived in it, why should they not do the same? Their fathers were wise men, and must have had good reasons for their conduct. The filth shall remain. And it did remain. And it did make Spain the, alas, too frequent victim of plague and cholera, and we now no longer wonder that a year ago, when the cholera raged in Spain, the people arose against the physicians for being asked to resort to medicines and cleanliness and not to Relics and Holy Water.
Intellectually Spain sleeps on, dreams on, receiving no impressions from the rest of the world and making none upon it. “There she lies,” says the historian, “at the further extremity of the continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representation now remaining of the feelings and knowledge of the middle ages. And what is the worst symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Though she is the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself foremost. She is proud of everything of which she should be ashamed. She is proud of the antiquity of her opinions; proud of her orthodoxy; proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil.”
But since Buckle penned these forcible lines, she has made a change. She has recalled the Jews, some five years ago, after 400 years of banishment. Her eyes have been opened at last, and she now seeks to repair her wrongs to the people she afflicted most. And prosperity will follow the re-entrance of the Jews. Spain will again be blest; it may take time, church tyranny will first have to be crushed and ignorance and superstition rooted out, but crushed and rooted out they will be. Her harbors on the Atlantic and Mediterranean will again command the commerce of both hemispheres. Her cities will again teem with people. Her towns will again flourish, her manufactures will again be skillful, the produce of her exuberant soil will again gladden the heart of mankind. Her inexhaustible mines, rich in all the precious and all the useful metals, her quarries of marbles and her beds of coal will again set the wheel of industry into busy motion. She will be blest again. She must be blest again, for such is the word of God. She has held out the hand of friendship to His anointed people, and they that bless them will be blest.
The Moors, Spain no more can recall. The Arab-Moors, such as they were in Spain, exist no longer. Their descendants roam as benighted Bedouins over those regions of Africa which their ancestors once illumined by the light of learning. Gone is most of their literature. The beautiful accents of the classic Arabic tongue are heard no more. Darkness, deep darkness, rules over the Arabian peninsula now. The history that their sires in Spain have made our civilization their debtor, reads indeed, to-day, like unto a fairy tale.
But the Jews live, and fulfill the glorious mission for which they have been scattered throughout the world. The people chosen by the Eternal Jehovah to be His priest people cannot die. The people that has seen the tidal waves of Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Rome roll over it and instead of engulfing it has lived to see them engulfed; the people that live after a thousand struggles, after deeds of heroic courage that Rome, and Athens, and Sparta, and Carthage have never equaled, outliving them all; the people that still lives, after eighteen centuries of persecution, and still is united, though scattered the wide world over, and though not held together by the ties of any fatherland, was never destined to be annihilated by any Church or by any race of men. The Jew is older than both, and will outlive them both. Time and death wield no power over him. Emerson spoke truly:
“This is he who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison bars would hold;
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock;
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet;
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o’er him an honoring vault.”
Such is the Jew. He is as indestructible as his religion, and as eternal as his God.
Farewell to Spain
Schoenes Land der Jugend Traeume!
Habe endlich dich durchzogen,
Ueberall nur Freude findend,
Herzlich war ich aufgenommen.
Schoen bist du und lachend woelbt sich
Ueber dir der blaue Himmel,
Dich umrauschen Meereswellen
Und dir ragen Bergesgipfel.
Auf den Feldern blueht der Weinstock,
Feigenbaeume decken Huetten,
Purpurn glaenzen die Granaten,
Und der Oelbaum strotzt in Fuelle.
Allzeit duften dir die Rosen
Und die Myrthen in dem Garten,
Gleich Orangen und Citronen
Bilden Waelder dir die Palmen.
Schoenes Land, das frohen Menschen
Steigert den Gesang zum Jauchzen,
Land des Weines und der Taenze
Und der anmuthsvollen Frauen.
Land der Dichter und der Ritter,
Und der muntren Volkessitten,
Land fuer Hohes sich begeisternd,
Und gefuehrt vom Edelsinne.
Einst, ja einst, da sangen mit euch,
Judas Soehne, euch zum Ruhme,
Waren eng mit euch vereinet,
Gleicher Sinn hat euch verbunden.
Sie auch stellten manchen Denker,
Der noch heut’ im Volke lebet,
Und ihr habt von eurem Namen
Vieles ihnen zu verdanken.
Sie auch stellten manchen Dichter,
Der in urer schoenen Sprachen
Liedere sang in allen Toenen,
Wie sie nur Iberien athmet.
Trefflich waret ihr gebildet,
Die Natur hat euch geschmuecket.
Doch, es waren boese Maechte,
Die euch falsche Wege fuehrten.
Jene boesen Maechte sind es,
Die euch das Verderben brachten,
Despotismus war die eine,
Fanatismus war die andre.
Schon in diesen wen’gen Blaettern
Hoert ihr eine Welt von Jammer.
Rastlos jagten schwarze Wolken,
Euren Himmel zu umnachten.
Doch es nahen nach den Stuermen
Endlich jene lichten Zeichen,
Die die neue Zeit verkuenden,
Alte Schaeden auszugleichen!
Ja, sie nahen, jene Geister,
Fuer die Wahrheit sich zu muehen;
Ja, sie nahen, jene Maenner,
Die fuer Menschenrecht ergluehen.
D’rum sei alles Leid vergessen,
Bruedern ziemt es, zu vergeben,
Ob der grossen Geisteswerke
Wollen freudig wir vergeben.
Ob der grossen Geisteswerke,
Die wir danken euren Gassen,
Unserer Geschichte Glanzpunkt,
Seit wir Judas Land verlassen.
Moege eure Kraft sich sammeln,
Wohlstand eure Wege schmuecken,
Wissenschaft und Kunst erstarken,
Frieden euer Land begluecken.
NOTE.—The German Poems, at the end of Chapters XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., are selections from Dr. M. Levins’ “Iberia.”
The poetic selections on pages 133, 134, 135, are from the writings of Gabirol. Ha Levi is the author of the first selection, and Moses ben Ezra of the second selection on page 136.
Footnotes
1 Consult Wall’s History of Infant Baptism.
2 For full account of the teaching of the Church during the Dark Ages concerning the suffering in hell, see Lecky’s “History of European Morals,” chap iv.
3 “Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History.”
4 For detailed description of the “Great Mezquita,” see Conde’s “History of the Arabs in Spain,” Vol. I, Chapter XXXIV, and Coppee’s “Conquest in Spain,” Book X, Chapter V; for “Belief and Worship,” see Conde, and Irving’s “Mahomet,” appendix to volume I.
5 Koran, part of Sura II.
6 Talmud Babli in Sotah 13a, speaks of a similar supernatural light at the birth of Moses.
7 Proverbs, i:21.
8 Ezra, ix:9.
9 Talmud Babli Sabbath, 11 a.
10 Exodus xxv: 31-36.
11 Lucile, Pt. II., Canto I., St. 20.
12 Talmud Babli Sabbath 23b.
13 Talmud Babli Sabbath 119b.
14 Ps. xxiii. 4.
15 Talmud Babli, Pessachim 87 b.
16 Romans xv:28.
17 “Confessar la region cristian y bantizarse, o ser decalvados, azotados, lanzados del reino y conficados sus bienes.” Codex Visigothorum xii., tit. iii.
18 Lecky’s Rationialism in Europe, (pages 270-271) vol. 2, chap. 6, and also the following from Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella (p. 192), vol. 1:
“Under the Visigothic 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, than they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the most pitiless storm of persecution. One of their laws alone condemned the whole race to slavery: and Montesquieu remarks, without much exaggeration, that to the Gothic code may be traced all the maxims of the modern Inquisition, the monks of the fifteenth century only copying, in reference to the Israelites, the bishops of the seventh.”
19 Council of Beziers, 1246 A. C.; Council of Alby, 1254: Faculty of Paris, 1301.
20 For details see, Graetz’s “Geschichte der Juden,” volume 5 and 6; Jost’s “Geschichte des Judenthums,” volume 2 and 3, chapters xxiv-xxvii; Drapers’ Intellectual Development of Europe, volume 2, chapter iv.
21 For full information consult “History of Medicine,” by J. F. Payne; “Geschichte der Arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher,” by Wustenfeld.
22 In Germany and England not until the fifteenth century, and hence their backwardness till then.
23 A copy of this Arabic work is preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford, bearing a date of transcription corresponding to the year 1342.
24 T. Moore’s “Life of Sheridan,” Vol. 2 Chap. iv.
25 Sometimes, not without surprise, we meet with ideas which we flatter ourselves have originated in our own times. Thus our modern doctrines of evolution and development were taught in their schools. In fact, they carried them much farther than we are disposed to do, extending them even to inorganic and mineral things. The fundamental principle of alchemy was the natural process of development of metalline bodies. “When common people,” says Al-Khazini, writing in the twelfth century, “hear from natural philosophers that gold is a body which has attained to perfection of maturity, to the goal of completeness, they firmly believe that it is something which has gradually come to that perfection by passing through the forms of all other metallic bodies, so that its gold nature was originally lead, afterward it became tin, then brass, then silver, and finally reached the development of gold; not knowing that the natural philosophers mean, in saying this, only something like what they mean when they speak of man, and attribute to him a completeness and equilibrium in nature and constitution—not that man was once a bull, and was changed into an ass, and afterward into a horse, and after that into an ape, and finally became a man.”
—“Conflict between Religion and Science,” by Draper, Chap. IV.
26 Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” Book I, chap., 8, Conde’s “History of Spain,” II., chap., 88.
27 Fauriel’s “Historie de la Poesie Provencal,” chapter xiii.
28 “Conquest of Spain,” by Coppee, Book x.
29 This and the following selections are taken from Miss Emma Lazarus’ translations in “Songs of a Semite.”
30 Translated by Prof. E. Lowenthal.
31 Translated by Mrs. Magnus. The above poetic translations are for the most part selected from “Songs of a Semite” by Miss Emma Lazarus.
32 Cyril has the title of “St.” now; when first we met him, instigating his monks to kill the learned Hypatia, he was only Bishop Cyril. That noble and humane act together with his commendable zeal for throttling science and rational research has won for him the honored title of “St.”
33 As a careful study of Eisler’s “Vorlesungen Ueber Juedische Philosophie des Mittelalters,” and Renan’s “Averroes et Averoisme,” and Joel’s “Verhaltniss Albert des Grosseu zu Moses Maimonides,” and “Spinoza’s Theolgo-Politischer Traktat auf Seine Quellen’s Geprueft,” and Haarbruecker’s translation of Schahrastani’s “Religions Partheien Philosophen-Schulen,” will readily prove.
34 Jeremiah xxix: 5-8
35 “Christians and Moors of Spain,” by C. M. Yonge, chapter x.
36 For details see Copee’s “Conquest of Spain,” volume II chapter VIII and Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” volume I, chapter VIII.
The Jews were the most skillful physicians, the ablest financiers, and among the most profound philosophers; while they were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of natural science. They were also the chief interpreters to western Europe of Arabian learning. But their most important service, and that with which we are now most especially concerned, was in sustaining commercial activity. For centuries they were its only representatives. By travelling from land to land till they became intimately acquainted both with the wants and the productions of each, by practising money-lending on a large scale and with consumate skill, by keeping up a constant and secret correspondence and organising a system of exchange that was then unparalleled in Europe, the Jews succeeded in making themselves absolutely indispensable to the Christian community, and in accumulating immense wealth and acquiring immense influence in the midst of their sufferings. When the Italian republics rose to power, they soon became the centres to which the Jews flocked; and under the merchant governments of Leghorn, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, a degree of toleration was accorded that was indeed far from perfect, but was at last immeasurably greater than elsewhere. (From Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe,” part II, Chapter VI.).
From the port of Barcelona the Spanish khalifs had carried on an enormous commerce, and they with their coadjutors—Jewish merchants—had adopted or originated many commercial inventions, which, with matters of pure science, they had transmitted to the trading communities of Europe. The art of book-keeping by double entry was thus brought into Upper Italy. The different kinds of insurance were adopted, though strenuously resisted by the clergy. They opposed fire and marine insurance, on the ground that it was a tempting of Providence. Life insurance was regarded as an act of interference with the consequences of God’s will. Houses for lending money on interest, that is, banking establishments, were bitterly denounced, and especially was indignation excited against the taking of high rates of interests, which was stigmatized as usury—a feeling existing in some backward communities up to the present day. Bills of exchange in the present form were adopted, the office of the public notary established, and protests for dishonored obligations resorted to. Indeed, it may be said, with but little exaggeration, that the commercial machinery now used was thus introduced. (Draper’s “Conflict between Religion and Science,” Chapter XI, pg. 317-318)
“The isolation in which the Jews were forced to live, and the prohibitions long continued, against acquiring real estate, directed their speculations toward commerce and manufactures, in which they soon obtained incontestable superiority.... Nothing is more curious to study than the commercial condition of that nation which had no territory of its own, nor ports, nor armies, and which, constantly tacking about on an agitated sea, with contrary winds, at last arrived in port with rich cargoes and immense wealth. The Jews traded because it was rarely permitted them to employ themselves in any other way with security. While the multiplicity of toll-houses and the tyranny of the feudal lords rendered all trade impossible except that of the petty tradesmen of the market-towns and cities, the Jews, more bold, more mobile, were dreaming of vaster operations, and were working silently to bind together continents, to bring together kingdoms. They avoided the highways and the castles, carefully concealing their real opulence and their secret transactions under the appearances of poverty. They went great distances for rare products of the remote countries, and brought them within reach of well-to-do consumers. By wandering about and traveling from country to country they had acquired an exact acquaintance with the needs of all places; they knew where to buy and where to sell. Some samples and a notebook sufficed them for their most important operations. They corresponded with each other on the strength of engagements which their interest obliged them to respect, in view of the enemies of every sort by whom they were surrounded. Commerce has lost the trace of the ingenious inventions which were the result of their efforts; but it is to their influence that it owes the rapid progress of which history shows us the brilliant phenomenon in the midst of the horrors of feudal darkness. Insensibly, the Jews were absorbing all the money, since this was the kind of property which they could acquire and keep safely.... For more than five hundred years, it is in the history of that nation that we must study the progress of commerce and the more or less venturesome attempts through which it has risen to the rank of political power.... The Jews were the depositaries of the finest cloths known, and they traded in them at immense profits: they extended the use and at the same time the demand for them into castles and into abbeys. They also engrossed the trade in jewelry and in gold and silver bullion. Feudalism disturbed these lucrative occupations less than one might suppose: the lords put upon them strict conditions, but they had the good sense to treat them with respect. Besides in the midst of the general terror which continually hovered around all highways and all travelers, the Jews, armed with safe-conducts, traveled all over Europe without inquietude, and in the tenth and eleventh centuries disposed like sovereigns of all the commerce of France. At that period, they had already greatly simplified commercial proceedings, and their correspondence would have done honor to the most able merchants of our great cities.
The appearance of the tradesmen of Lombardy, Tuscany, and other parts of Italy completed the work of the Jews and gave an energetic impulse to the commerce of the middle ages. The latter, from that time, traded in everything, and put in circulation real and personal property, such as horses, lands and houses. The historian Rigord goes so far as to say that the Jews were, at that time, real proprietors of half the kingdom.... It is also claimed that it was at this time that the first Bills of Exchange appeared, the invention of which some trace to about the seventh century, and others, only to the middle of the twelfth. It is a point which has not yet been cleared up, and which is not of so much consequence as some have supposed. The date of such a discovery, even if it could be authentically fixed, would be of interest simply as a matter of curiosity; but it appears destined to remain forever in doubt. It is thought, and with reason, that the invention is rather due to the Italian traders than to the Jewish brokers of this time, the latter not having had occasion as soon as the others to devote themselves to trade between different places, which probably suggested the idea. The very name of Letter of Exchange, which was primitively Italian, seems to indicate their true authorship; and the first city where they were used, Lyons, then the entrepot of Italy, is a further indication. It is probable that the Lombards and the Jews had an equal part in inventing them, and divined, from the beginning, the important consequences from their use.36a These ingenious contrivers later entered into a strife, and the history of the Italian republics of the middle ages is full of the debates which arose between them on the subject of privileges which some wished to exercise to the exclusion of others. We see the Jews become intendants, stewards, procurators, bankers, and even agents in marriages, according as they are more or less forcibly driven from all the regular commercial positions by the bulls of the Popes or by the jealousy of competitors. Everything thus contributed to narrow them down to a vicious circle, from which they can only escape by usury and money negotiations. When envy has forced them to abandon a city, the interest of the inhabitants calls them back; their capital has become so necessary to their industrial cities that the orders of the authorities are disregarded to prevent the Jews carrying it elsewhere. Moreover, soon houses for loaning money are started even in the villages; and the Jews of Tuscany direct from a central point a multitude of branch-houses of their establishments at Florence and Pisa. Their opulence and their magnificence surpassed imagination, and aroused against them fanatical adversaries. We know the history of that famous Bernardin de Feltre, who carried his enthusiasm so far as to preach a crusade against them, and who on every occasion showed himself their most implacable enemy. He pursued them everywhere as usurers thirsting for the blood of the people, and, to ruin their establishments, he conceived the idea of opposing them by the formation of those houses of loaning on pledges, which are called monts-de-piete. At the beginning, everything was free in them, and the sums lent were without interest. Moreover, their success was prodigious, and most of the cities of Italy had their monts-de-piete, which were one day to surpass in usurious exactions the boldest operations of the Jews.... However these monts-de-piete could not fill the place of the establishments of the Jews, and this circumstance proves with what shrewdness the latter had truly divined the wants of the money circulation. Although monts-de-piete loaned money almost without interest, the formalities which it was necessary to undergo in order to have a right to their help, the inevitable delays in their administration, the necessity of proving the legitimate possession of the articles pledged, and above all, the obligation on the part of depositors to make known their names, soon kept away borrowers, who could obtain funds at any time, in secret and without formalities, from the Jewish bankers. Rich and poor, lords and villeins, hastened to them, and their credit was so great at Leghorn, in the times of the Medicis, that the saying became proverbial: “It is better to beat the Grand-duke than a Jew.” Pope Sixtus Fifth had opened again to them all the sources of wealth which his predecessors had closed; their goods were even exempt from every toll, the sacra monte della pieta ceased to compete with them, when the Christians in charge had surpassed the abuses of their rivals. After ten years of its existence, the monts-de-piete had become what they are to-day, open pits under the steps of misfortune rather than asylums to escape it.... Everything then seems to warrant the belief that the Jews exercise a notable influence on the course of political economy in Europe, by keeping in charge, in the midst of feudal anarchy, the commercial traditions destined to become perfected and refined in the atmosphere of the fifteenth century. It is to the persecutions of which they were victims that we are indebted for the first attempts at credit and the system of circulation. They alone, perhaps, by concentrating on trade in gold and silver an attention which the prejudices of their contemporaries prevented them from giving to anything else, prepared the way for the great monetary revolution which the discovery of the mines in America and the establishment of European banks were to accomplish in the world. Thus the luminous trace of the future shines and is preserved, in the midst even of the darkest events.
36a—“History of Political Economy in Europe,” by Jerome Adolphe Blanqui Chap. XV.
37 Conde’s “History of the Arabs of Spain,” volume III, chapter XXVI.
38 Coppee’s “Conquest of Spain,” Vol. 1, Chap. V, pp. 441-442.
39 There is a Roman Catholic periodical entitled La Bandera Catholica (The Catholic Banner) which is published in Barcelona, Spain; and on July 29th, 1883, it published an article which caused one almost to think he was living in the sixteenth instead of the nineteenth century. The writer of the article imagines the burning stake is a thing of the near future. He says, “Thank God, at last we have turned toward the times when heretical doctrines were persecuted as they should be, and when those who propagated them were punished with exemplary punishment.
The establishment of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition must soon take place. Its reign will be more glorious and fruitful in results than in the past, and the number of those who will be called to suffer under it will exceed the number of the past. Our Catholic heart overflows with faith and enthusiasm, and the immense joy which we experience as we begin to reap the fruit of our present campaign exceeds all imagination. What a day of pleasure will that be for us when we see the masons, spiritualists, free thinkers and anti-clericals writhe in the flames, of the Inquisition!”
We also read in another article of the same Roman Catholic paper that during the time of the existence of the Inquisition, from 1481 to 1808 in Spain alone there were 35,534 men and women burnt alive, and, 93,533 condemned to other punishments, because they differed in opinion from the Romish Church.
40 The first Jew came to America with Christopher Columbus. His name was Louis de Parres. He was one of the 120 companions of Columbus, and the only one, who understood the Shemitic languages. He and Rodrigo de Gerez were the first white men whom Columbus set on shore. (See “Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen von Prof Sophus Ruge.)
41 alludes to the fact that Torquemada was in constant dread of assassination, and that he always carried the horn of a unicorn with him, believing that it would save him.
42 Prescott: “Ferdinand and Isabella,” Volume I, chapter xvii.
43 Cf. Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe”, vol i. chap. vi.
44 Genesis xii: 3.
45 Gen. xii:3.