Volume I Part 24 (2/2)

[2] Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom. vii. chap. 3.--Limborch, History of the Inquisition, translated by Chandler, (London, 1731,) book 1, chap.

24.--Llorente, Histoire Critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne, (Paris, 1818,) tom. i. p. 110.--Before this time we find a const.i.tution of Peter I. of Aragon against heretics, prescribing in certain cases the burning of heretics and the confiscation of their estates, in 1197. Marca, Marca Hispanica, sive Limes Hispanicus, (Parisiis, 1688,) p. 1384.

[3] Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii, p. 186.--Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. pp. 110-124.--Puigblanch cites some of the instructions from Eymerich's work, whose authority in the courts of the Inquisition he compares to that of Gratian's Decretals in other ecclesiastical judicatures. One of these may suffice to show the spirit of the whole. ”When the inquisitor has an opportunity, he shall manage so as to introduce to the conversation of the prisoner some one of his accomplices, or any other converted heretic, who shall feign that he still persists in his heresy, telling him that he had abjured for the sole purpose of escaping punishment, by deceiving the inquisitors. Having thus gained his confidence, he shall go into his cell some day after dinner, and, keeping up the conversation till night, shall remain with him under pretext of its being too late for him to return home. He shall then urge the prisoner to tell him all the particulars of his past life, having first told him the whole of his own; and in the mean time spies shall be kept in hearing at the door, as well as a notary, in order to certify what may be said within.” Puigblanch, Inquisition Unmasked, translated by Walton, (London, 1816,) vol. i. pp. 238, 239.

[4] Mariana, Hist. de Espana, lib. 12, cap. 11; lib. 21, cap. 17.-- Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 3.--The nature of the penance imposed on reconciled heretics by the ancient Inquisition was much more severe than that of later times. Llorente cites an act of St. Dominic respecting a person of this description, named Ponce Roger. The penitent was commanded to be ”_stripped of his clothes and beaten with rods by a priest, three Sundays in succession, from the gate of the city to the door of the church_; not to eat any kind of animal food during his whole life; to keep three Lents a year, without even eating fish; to abstain from fish, oil, and wine three days in the week during life, except in case of sickness or excessive labor; to wear a religious dress with a small cross embroidered on each side of the breast; to attend ma.s.s every day, if he had the means of doing so, and vespers on Sundays and festivals; to recite the service for the day and the night, and to repeat the _pater noster_ seven times in the day, ten times in the evening, and _twenty times at midnight_”! (Ibid., chap. 4.) If the said Roger failed in any of the above requisitions, he was to be burnt as a relapsed heretic! This was the encouragement held out by St. Dominic to penitence.

[5] Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, liv. 28, chap. 1.--See the canon of the 17th council of Toledo, condemning the Israelitish race to bondage, in Florez, Espana Sagrada, (Madrid, 1747-75,) tom. vi. p. 229.--Fuero Juzgo (ed. de la Acad. (Madrid, 1815,) lib. 12, t.i.t. 2 and 3,) is composed of the most inhuman ordinances against this unfortunate people.

[6] The Koran grants protection to the Jews on payment of tribute. See the Koran, translated by Sale, (London, 1825,) chap. 9.

[7] The first academy founded by the learned Jews in Spain was that of Cordova, A. D. 948. Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. p. 2.--Basnage, History of the Jews, translated by Taylor, (London, 1708,) book 7, chap.

5.

[8] In addition to their Talmudic lore and Cabalistic mysteries, the Spanish Jews were well read in the philosophy of Aristotle. They pretended that the Stagirite was a convert to Judaism and had borrowed his science from the writings of Solomon. (Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae, (Lipsiae, 1766,) tom. ii. p. 853.) M. Degerando, adopting similar conclusions with Brucker, in regard to the value of the philosophical speculations of the Jews, pa.s.ses the following severe sentence upon the intellectual, and indeed moral character of the nation. ”Ce peuple, par son caractere, ses moeurs, ses inst.i.tutions, semblait etre destine a rester stationnaire. Un attachement excessif a leurs propres traditions dominait chez les Juifs tous les penchans de l'esprit: ils restaient presque etrangers aux progres de la civilisation, au mouvement general de la societe; ils etaient en quelque sorte moralement isoles, alors meme qu'ils communiquaient avec tous les peuples, et parcouraient toutes les contrees. Aussi nous cherchons en vain, dans ceux de leurs ecrits qui nous sont connus, non seulement de vraies decouvertes, mais meme des idees reellement originales.” Histoire Comparee des Systemes de Philosophie, (Paris, 1822,) tom. iv. p. 299.

[9] Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. pp. 21, 33, et alibi.--Benjamin of Tudela's celebrated Itinerary, having been translated into the various languages of Europe, pa.s.sed into sixteen editions before the middle of the last century. Ibid., tom. i. pp. 79, 80.

[10] The beautiful lament, which the royal psalmist has put into the mouths of his countrymen, when commanded to sing the songs of Sion in a strange land, cannot be applied to the Spanish Jews, who, far from hanging their harps upon the willows, poured forth their lays with a freedom and vivacity which may be thought to savor more of the modern troubadour than of the ancient Hebrew minstrel. Castro has collected, under Siglo XV., a few gleanings of such as, by their incorporation into a Christian Cancionero, escaped the fury of the Inquisition. Biblioteca Espanola, tom.

i. pp. 265-364.

[11] Castro has done for the Hebrew what Casiri a few years before did for the Arabic literature of Spain, by giving notices of such works as have survived the ravages of time and superst.i.tion. The first volume of his Biblioteca Espanola contains an a.n.a.lysis accompanied with extracts from more than seven hundred different works, with biographical sketches of their authors; the whole bearing most honorable testimony to the talent and various erudition of the Spanish Jews.

[12] Basnage, History of the Jews, book 7, chap. 5, 15, 16.--Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. pp. 116, 265, 267.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. i. p. 906;--tom. ii. pp. 63, 147, 459.--Samuel Levi, treasurer of Peter the Cruel, who was sacrificed to the cupidity of his master, is reported by Mariana to have left behind him the incredible sum of 400,000 ducats to swell the royal coffers. Tom. ii. p. 82.

[13] Sir Walter Scott, with his usual discernment, has availed himself of these opposite traits in his portraits of Rebecca and Isaac in Ivanhoe, in which he seems to have contrasted the lights and shadows of the Jewish character. The humiliating state of the Jews, however, exhibited in this romance, affords no a.n.a.logy to their social condition in Spain; as is evinced not merely by their wealth, which was also conspicuous in the English Jews, but by the high degree of civilization, and even political consequence, which, notwithstanding the occasional ebullitions of popular prejudice, they were permitted to reach there.

[14] Calumnies of this kind were current all over Europe. The English reader will call to mind the monkish fiction of the little Christian,

”Slain with cursed Jewes, as it is notable,”

singing most devoutly after his throat was cut from ear to ear, in Chaucer's Prioresse's Tale. See another instance in the old Scottish ballad of the ”Jew's Daughter” in Percy's ”Reliques of Ancient Poetry.”

[15] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 43.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 186, 187.--In 1391, 5000 Jews were sacrificed to the popular fury, and, according to Mariana, no less than 10,000 perished from the same cause in Navarre about sixty years before. See tom. i. p. 912.

[16] According to Mariana, the restoration of sight to the blind, feet to the lame, even life to the dead, were miracles of ordinary occurrence with St. Vincent. (Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 229, 230.) The age of miracles had probably ceased by Isabella's time, or the Inquisition might have been spared. Nic. Antonio, in his notice of the life and labors of this Dominican, (Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. pp. 205, 207,) states that he preached his inspired sermons in his vernacular Valencian dialect to audiences of French, English, and Italians, indiscriminately, who all understood him perfectly well; ”a circ.u.mstance,” says Dr. McCrie, in his valuable ”History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Spain,” (Edinburgh, 1829.) ”which, if it prove anything, proves that the hearers of St. Vincent possessed more miraculous powers than himself, and that they should have been canonized, rather than the preacher.” P. 87, note.

[17] They were interdicted from the callings of vintners, grocers, taverners, especially of apothecaries, and of physicians, and nurses.

Ordenancas Reales, lib. 8, t.i.t. 3, leyes 11, 15, 18.

[18] No law was more frequently reiterated than that prohibiting the Jews from acting as stewards of the n.o.bility, or farmers and collectors of the public rents. The repet.i.tion of this law shows to what extent that people had engrossed what little was known of financial science in that day. For the multiplied enactments in Castile against them, see Ordenancas Reales, (lib. 8, t.i.t. 3.) For the regulations respecting the Jews in Aragon, many of them oppressive, particularly at the commencement of the fifteenth century, see Fueros y Observancias del Reyno de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1667,) tom. i. fol. 6.--Marca Hispanica, pp. 1416, 1433.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom.

iii. lib. 12, cap. 45.

[19] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 43.--Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, pref. p. 26.--A ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled _Tizon de Espana_, (Brand of Spain,) tracing up many a n.o.ble pedigree to a Jewish or Mahometan root, obtained a circulation, to the great scandal of the country, which the efforts of the government, combined with those of the Inquisition, have not been wholly able to suppress. Copies of it, however, are now rarely to be met with. (Doblado, Letters from Spain, (London, 1822,) let. 2.) Clemencin notices two works with this t.i.tle, one as ancient as Ferdinand and Isabella's time, and both written by bishops.

Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 125.

[20] Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. p. 479.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, part. 2, cap. 77.

[21] Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap, 43. Vol. I.?21.

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