by Will Durant
Their expulsion from Spain has been described above, as vital to the history of that country. In Portugal their crucifixion was renewed when Clement VII, at the urging of Charles V, allowed Portuguese prelates to establish the Inquisition (1531) for the purpose of enforcing the practice of Christianity upon the novos cristãos—mostly Jews who had been baptized against their will. The severe code of Torquemada was adopted, spies were set to watch the converts for any relapse into Jewish religious observances, and thousands of Jews were imprisoned. Emigration of Jews was prohibited, for their economic functions were still necessary in the Portuguese economy. To prevent flight, Christians were forbidden to buy property from Jews, and hundreds of Jews were sent to the stake for attempting to leave the country. Shocked by these procedures, and perhaps swayed by Jewish gifts, Clement abrogated the powers of the Portuguese Inquisition, and ordered the release of its prisoners and the restoration of confiscated goods. His bull of October 17, 1532, laid down humane principles for dealing with the converts:
Since they were dragged by force to be baptized, they cannot be considered members of the Church; and to punish them for heresy and relapse were to violate the principles of justice and equity. With sons and daughters of the first Marranos the case is different; they belong to the Church as voluntary members. But as they have been brought up by their relatives in the midst of Judaism, and have had this example continually before their eyes, it would be cruel to punish them according to the canonical law for falling into Jewish ways and beliefs; they must be kept in the bosom of the Church through gentle treatment.51
That Clement was sincere appears from a brief issued by him on July 26, 1534, when he felt death upon him; it instructed the papal nuncio in Portugal to hasten the release of imprisoned converts.52
Pope Paul III continued the efforts to aid the Portuguese Jews, and 1,800 of the prisoners were freed. But when Charles V returned from his apparently successful expedition against Tunis he demanded, as reward, the restoration of the Inquisition in Portugal. Paul reluctantly agreed (1536), but with conditions that seemed to King John III to nullify his consent: the accused must be confronted with the accuser, and the condemned should have the right of appeal to the pope. A fanatical convert helped the inquisitors by placarding Lisbon Cathedral with a defiant announcement: “The Messiah has not yet appeared; Jesus was not the Messiah; and Christianity is a lie.”53 As such a statement was clearly calculated to injure the Jews, we may reasonably suspect an agent provocateur. Paul appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the procedures of the Portuguese Inquisition. It reported:
When a pseudo-Christian is denounced—often by false witnesses—the inquisitors drag him away to a dismal retreat where he is allowed no sight of heaven or earth, and least of all to speak with his friends, who might succor him. They accuse him on obscure testimony, and inform him neither of the time nor the place where he committed the offense for which he is denounced. Later on he is allowed an advocate, who often, instead of defending his cause, helps him on the road to the stake. Let an unfortunate creature acknowledge himself a true believing Christian, and firmly deny the transgressions laid to his charge, they condemn him to the flames, and confiscate his goods. Let him plead guilty to such and such a deed, though unintentionally committed, they treat him in a similar manner under the pretense that he obstinately denies his wicked intentions. Let him freely and fully admit what he is accused of, he is reduced to extremest necessity, and condemned to the dungeon’s never-lifting gloom. And this they call treating the accused with mercy and compassion and Christian charity! Even he who succeeds in proving his innocence is condemned to pay a fine, so that it may not be said that he was arrested without cause. The accused who are held prisoners are racked by every instrument of torture to admit the accusations against them. Many die in prison, and those who are set free, with all their relatives bear a brand of eternal infamy.54
Though harassed by political developments, and the danger of losing Spain and Portugal as Leo had lost Germany and Clement England, Paul did all that he could to mitigate the Inquisition. But day by day the terror went on, until the Portuguese Jews found, by whatever desperate device, some escape from their hosts, and joined the Jews of Spain in seeking some corner of Christendom or Islam where they might keep their Law and yet be allowed to live.
III. THE SECOND DISPERSION
Where could they go? Sardinia and Sicily, where Jews had lived for a thousand years past, were included with Spain in Ferdinand’s edict of expulsion; by 1493 the last Jew had left Palermo. At Naples thousands of the fugitives were welcomed by Ferrante I, by Dominican friars, and by the local Jewish community; but in 1540 Charles V decreed the expulsion of all Jews from Naples.
Genoa had long had a law limiting the entry of additional Jews. When Conversos arrived from Spain in 1492 they were not allowed to stay more than a few days. A Genoese historian described them as “cadaverous, emaciated specters with sunken eyes, differing from the dead only in retaining the power to move.”55 Many died of starvation; women bore dead infants; some parents sold their children to pay for transport from Genoa. A small number of the exiles were received into Ferrara, but were required to wear a yellow badge,56 perhaps as a precaution against the spread of disease.
Venice had long been a haven for the Jews. Efforts had been made to expel them (1395, 1487), but the Senate had protected them as important contributors to commerce and finance. A considerable part of the Venetian export trade was carried on by Jews, and they were active in the import of wool and silk from Spain, spices and pearls from India.57 For a long time they had, of their own choice, occupied the quarter named after them—the Giudecca. In 1516, after consultation with leading Jews, the Senate ordained that all Jews, except a few specially licensed, should live in a section of the city known as the Ghetto, apparently from a foundry (getto) existing there.58 The Senate ordered all Marranos or converted Jews to leave Venice; many Christian competitors urged the measure, some Christian merchants opposed it as threatening the loss of certain markets, especially in Islam, but Charles V threw his influence into the scale, and the expulsion decree was carried out.59 Soon, however, Jewish merchants crept back into Venice; exiles from Portugal replaced the expelled Marranos, and Portuguese became for a time the language of the Venetian Jews.
Many Iberian exiles were kindly received into Rome by Pope Alexander VI, and prospered under Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III. Clement allowed Marranos to practice Judaism freely, holding that they were not obligated by any compulsory baptism.60 In Ancona, the Adriatic port of the Papal States, where the Jews were a vital element in international trade, Clement established a haven for professing Jews, and guaranteed them against molestation. As to Paul III, “no pope,” said Cardinal Sadoleto, “has ever bestowed upon Christians so many honors, such privileges and concessions, as Paul has given to the Jews. They are not only assisted, but positively armed, with benefits and prerogatives.” 61 A bishop complained that Marranos entering Italy soon returned to the practice of Judaism, circumcising their baptized children almost “under the eye of the pope and the populace.” Under pressure of such criticism Paul re-established the Inquisition in Rome (1542), but he “took the part of the Marranos throughout his life.”62
His successors, caught in a reaction against the easy ways of the Renaissance, turned to a policy of making life uncomfortable for the Jews. Old canonical decrees were again enforced. Paul IV (1555–59) required every synagogue in the Papal States to contribute ten ducats ($250?) toward the maintenance of a House of Catechumens, where Jews were to be instructed in the Christian faith. He forbade the Jews to employ Christian servants or nurses, to take Christians as medical patients, to sell Christians anything but old clothes, or to have any avoidable intercourse with Christians. They were not to use any but the Christian calendar. All synagogues in Rome were destroyed but one. No Jew might own realty; those who had any were to sell it within six months; by this plan Christians were enabled to buy 500,
000 crowns’ worth ($12,500,000) of Jewish property for a fifth of the actual value.63 All Jews remaining in Rome were now (1555) confined to a ghetto where 10,000 persons had to live within a square kilometer; several families occupied one room; and the low level of the quarter subjected it to the periodical overflow of the Tiber, making the region a plague-stricken swamp.64 The ghetto was surrounded by grim walls, whose gates were shut at midnight and opened at dawn, except on Sundays and Christian holydays, when they were closed all day. Outside the ghetto the Jews were compelled to wear a distinctive garb—the men a yellow hat, the women a yellow veil or badge. Similar ghettos were established in Florence and Siena, and, by papal edict, in Ancona and Bologna—where it was called “Inferno.” 65 Paul IV issued a secret order that all Marranos in Ancona should be cast into Inquisition prisons, and their goods confiscated. Twenty-four men and one woman were there burned alive as relapsed heretics (1556);66 and twenty-seven Jews were sent to the galleys for life.67 It was, for the Jews of Italy, a ghastly twilight to a golden age.
A handful of Jewish refugees slipped into France and England despite the excluding laws. Nearly all Germany was closed to them. Many went to Antwerp, but only a few were allowed to stay more than a month. Diogo Mendes, a Portuguese Marrano, established at Antwerp, ranch of the bank that his family had founded in Lisbon. By 1532 he was so successful that the Antwerp Council arrested him and fifteen others on a charge of practicing Judaism. Henry VIII, who employed Mendes as a financial agent, intervened, and the thirteen were released on payment of a heavy fine—the “final cause” of many such arrests. Other Jews passed on to Amsterdam, where they would prosper after the liberation of Holland from Spain (1589).
Those fugitives who sought asylum in regions of Islam not directly controlled by the Turkish sultan fared little better than in Christendom. Jews trying to land at Oran, Algiers, and Bugia were shot at by Moors, and several were killed. Forbidden to enter the cities, they built an impromptu ghetto of huts put together from scraps of lumber; one hut caught fire, and the entire settlement, including many Jews, was consumed. Those who went to Fez found the gates closed against them. They squatted in the fields and lived on herbs and roots. Mothers killed their infants rather than let them die of starvation; parents sold their children for a little bread; pestilence carried off hundreds of children and adults. Pirates raided the camp and stole children to sell them as slaves.68 Murderers ripped open the bodies of Jews to find jewels they were believed to have swallowed.69 After all these sufferings the survivors, with incredible courage, and under endless disabilities, developed new Jewish communities in Moorish North Africa. At Algiers, Simon Duran II repeatedly risked his life to protect the exiles and to organize them into some security. At Fez, Jakob Berab became the most famous Talmudist of his time.
Under the Mameluk and Ottoman sultans the Spanish refugees found humane acceptance in Cairo, and soon rose to leadership of the Jewish community. Selim I abolished the old office of Nagid or prince, by which one rabbi had appointed all rabbis, and had controlled all Jewish affairs, in Egypt; thereafter each Jewish community was to choose its own rabbi and manage its own internal concerns. The new rabbi of Cairo, David ibn abi-Zimra, a Spanish immigrant, ended the Seleucid method of chronology which the Jews of Asia and Africa were using, and persuaded them to adopt (as the Jews of Europe had done in the eleventh century) a calendar that reckoned by the year since creation (anno mundi), tentatively fixed as 3761 B.C.
Wherever the Sephardic or Iberian Jews went they acquired cultural—often political—leadership over the native Jews. In Salonika they became, and remained till 1918, a numerical majority of the population, so that non-Spanish Jews who came to live there had to learn Spanish. Under this Jewish hegemony Salonika was for a time the most flourishing commercial center in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Sultan Bajazet II welcomed Jewish exiles to Turkey, for they brought with them precisely those skills in handicrafts, trade, and medicine which were least developed among the Turks. Said Bajazet of Ferdinand the Catholic: “You call Ferdinand a wise king, who has made his country poor and enriched ours?”70 Like all non-Moslems in Islam, the Jews were subject to a poll or head tax, but this exempted them from military service. Most of the Turkish Jews remained poor, but many rose to wealth and influence. Soon nearly all physicians in Constantinople were Jews. Suleiman so favored his Jewish physician that he freed him and his family from all taxation. Jews rose to such prominence as diplomats under Suleiman that Christian ambassadors had to court these Jews as an approach to the Sultan. Suleiman was shocked by the oppression of the Ancona Jews under Paul IV, and remonstrated against it to the Pope (March 9, 1556); he demanded the release of such Ancona Jews as were subjects of Turkey, and they were freed.71 Gracia Mendesia, of the Mendes banking family, after practicing philanthropy, and suffering insult and injury, in Antwerp, Ferrara, and Venice, finally found peace in Istanbul.
The Holy Land, under Turkish rule, received again the people that had first made it holy. As Jerusalem was sacred to Christians and Moslems as well as to Jews, only a limited number of Hebrews was allowed to live there. But at Safed, in Upper Galilee, the Jews grew so rapidly in number and cultural prestige that Jakob Berab tried to establish a Sanhedrin there as a ruling congress for all Jewry. It was a bold conception, but the Jews were too divided in space, language, and ways to permit such a unification of rule. Nevertheless, in Jewish prayers throughout Islam and Christendom, Yahveh was supplicated to “gather the dispersed .... from the four corners of the earth”; and at Yom Kippur and Passover the Jews everywhere joined in the hope that sustained them through all tragedies: “Next year we shall be in Jerusalem.”72
IV. THE TECHNIQUE OF SURVIVAL
The ability of the Jews to recover from misfortune is one of the impressive wonders of history, part of that heroic resilience which man in general has shown after the catastrophes of life.
Segregation was not the worst indignity; they were happier and safer with one another than amid the hostile crowd. Poverty they could bear, since they had known it for centuries, and it was not their prerogative; indeed, they were more likely to be proud of their occasional wealth than conscious of their immemorial indigence. The unkindest cut of all, however motived, was the badge or distinguishing garment that marked them off as the despised and rejected of men. The great historian of the Jews writes bitterly:
The Jew-badge was an invitation to the gamin to insult the wearers and to bespatter them with mud; it was a suggestion to stupid mobs to fall upon them, to maltreat them, and even to kill them; and it afforded the higher class an opportunity to ostracize the Jews, to plunder them, or to exile them. Worse than this outward dishonor was the influence of the badge on the Jews themselves. They became more and more accustomed to their ignominious position, and lost all feeling of self-respect. They neglected their outward appearance.... . They became more and more careless of their speech, because they were not admitted to cultured circles, and in their own midst they could make themselves understood by means of a jargon. They lost all taste and sense of beauty, and to some extent became despicable, as their enemies desired them to be.73
This is exaggerated and too general; many Jews retained their pride, some gloried in the splendor of their dress; we hear again and again of Jewish girls renowned for their beauty; and the Jüdisch, which in the sixteenth century evolved as a jargon of German with Slavic and Hebraic borrowings, was developing a vigorous and varied literature even as Graetz wrote his History of the Jews. But in any case the supreme crime of those centuries was the deliberate degradation of an entire people, the merciless murder of the soul.
Part and basis of the crime was the exclusion of the Jews from almost all occupations but commerce and finance. For reasons already summarized,74 and because a tithe of agricultural produce was demanded by the Church, Jews more and more withdrew from cultivation of the soil; and finally they were forbidden to own land.75 Since they were not admitted to the guilds (which were formally Christian
religious organizations), they could not rise in the manufacturing world, and their mercantile operations were hedged in with Christian monopolies. By and large, in their dealings with Christians, they found themselves limited to petty industry, trade, and moneylending. In some regions they were forbidden to sell to Christians anything but secondhand goods. After the thirteenth century they lost their invidious pre-eminence in finance. But their fluid capital, their international languages, their international connections through scattered relatives, enabled them to achieve a high place in the foreign commerce of the Christian states. So prominent was the Jewish role that those countries which excluded them lost, and those that received them gained, in the volume of their international trade. This was one—not the main—reason why Spain and Portugal declined while Holland rose, and why Antwerp yielded commercial leadership to Amsterdam.
It was a saving consolation that the Jews, in their internal affairs, could be ruled by their own laws and customs, their own rabbis and synagogue councils. As in Islam, so in Jewry, religion, law, and morality were inextricably one; religion was held to be coextensive with life. In 1310 Rabbi Jakob ben Asher formulated Jewish law, ritual, and morality in Arabaah Turim (Four Rows); this replaced the Mishna Torah (1170) of Maimonides with a code in which all the legislation of the Talmud and the rulings of the Geonim were made obligatory on all Jews everywhere. The Turim became the accepted guide for rabbinical law and judgment till 1565.
The disasters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries disrupted the social organization of the Jews. The rabbis, like the priests, suffered a high mortality in the Black Death. Persecutions, expulsions, and a fugitive life almost put an end to Jewish law. The Sephardic Jews found it difficult to accept the language and customs of the Jewish communities which offered to absorb them; they set up their own synagogues, kept their own Spanish or Portuguese speech; and in many cities there were separate congregations of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, or German Jews, each with its own rabbi, customs, charities, and jealousies.76 In this crisis the Jewish family saved the Jewish people; the mutual devotion of parents and children, brothers and sisters, provided a haven of stability and security. These centuries of disorder in Jewish mores ended when Rabbi Joseph Karo issued from Safed his Shulchan Aruch (Venice, 1564–65); in this Table in Order the religion, law, and customs of the Jews were once more codified. But as Karo based his code chiefly on Spanish Judaism, the Hebrews of Germany and Poland felt that he had paid too little attention to their own traditions and interpretations of the Law; Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow added to the Table in Order his Mapath ha-Shulchan (A Cloth for the Table, 1571), which formulated the Askenazi variations on Karo’s mostly Sephardic code. With this emendation the Shulchan Aruch remained till our own time the Justinian and Blackstone of orthodox Jews. To say of a Jew that he obeyed all the precepts of the Shulchan Aruch was the summit of Jewish praise.