The history of the Jews: From the war with Rome to the present time

The records of the Jews in Central Europe during this century are unusually scanty. They had been—nominally, at all events—expelled from various parts of it; and, though it is very probable that they were permitted, through contempt or compassion, to linger on in their old homes, yet they would be careful, as far as possible, to avoid notice. In Poland alone they seem to have flourished in prosperity and peace, and to have received large accessions of members from less kindly disposed countries.

But we hear something, nevertheless, of them. In Guelderland they were numerous, and lived securely under the protection of its rulers, particularly in the cities of Zutphen, Doesborg, and Arnheim. In the last-named city a Jew was even appointed the physician to the town; and decrees were issued prohibiting, on severe penalties, any ill-treatment of Jews in public or private. On the other hand, a singular fact occurred during this century, which seems to manifest the very opposite state of feeling. A noble lady of Guelderland having married a Jew, was regarded as an adulteress for having so done, and was burnt alive at Cologne for the offence. The Jews also were driven out of the neighbouring city of Utrecht in 1444; nor were they allowed to return to Holland until after the revolution of 1795. Commercial jealousy was probably the cause of this expulsion.

In 1453 there were Jewish riots in various parts of Silesia, and particularly in Breslau, where more than forty Jews were burnt. In the following year Ladislaus, King of Hungary, allowed his subjects to drive the Jews out of his dominions, seize on their houses and lands, and cancel all debts due to them. The only conditions he required of them, in return for this permission, was their making good to him the tribute which had been paid by the Jews. These outbreaks appear to have been caused (as was so frequently the case, both in previous and subsequent generations) by the influence of fanatical monks, who made the tour of Central Europe, denouncing the Jews as the enemies of God and man, and calling on all Christian men to avert the displeasure of Heaven by slaying and expelling them. A preacher named Capistran in this manner raised commotions in Silesia, and in Southern Germany Bernard produced the same disastrous effects. In Styria, late in the century, the people petitioned Maximilian to be permitted to drive the Jews out, as their Hungarian neighbours had done in the previous generation. They alleged the old charge of kidnapping and murdering children, and offered him 30,000 florins as a compensation for the loss of the Jewish tribute. We read that they were expelled accordingly in 1496. Similar expulsions took place in Mentz, Nuremberg, and Trent. In the latter place the accidental death of a child—attributed, as usual, to the Jews—was the cause of their banishment. But the mania for the removal of the Jews from all the countries of Europe—either because their presence was held to be like that of leeches fastening on the human frame and draining its life-blood, or because it was feared that the vengeance of Heaven would visit all those who offered shelter or kindness to its enemies—seems now to have taken the place of the thirst for their blood which distinguished the ages immediately preceding. The idea was quite as unreasonable and unjust, but a shade less horrible and revolting.

In Italy, as in previous generations, the Jews, if they did not receive the full rights of humanity, were at least treated with toleration, and even some degree of kindness. The demeanour of the popes towards them was, as before, very capricious—varying, in fact, with the religious convictions or state policy of each succeeding pontiff. In 1417, when the schism of the double papacy came to an end through the unanimous election of Martin V., the Jews marched, according to ancient custom, in the papal procession, with lighted torches, chanting Hebrew Psalms, and presenting to the newly-made Pope a copy of the Pentateuch. Martin V. received it with a benediction, and a prayer that the veil might be removed from their eyes, so that they might rightly understand the Law. He then issued a proclamation, in which they were dealt with mercifully and justly. Their synagogues, their form of worship, their privileges, usages, and institutions were to be respected, so only that they offered no affront to the Christian faith. No forcible attempts were to be made to baptize their children, and no one was to interrupt their festivals. With Pope Eugenius IV., who succeeded in 1431, the condition of things was changed. The stern and inflexible character, so forcibly exhibited in his dealings with the Council of Basle and the Eastern Church, was evinced also in his treatment of the Jews. By a bull, issued in 1442, he deprived them of most of the privileges which his predecessor had bestowed on them. He excluded them from almost every profession, forbade them to eat and drink with Christians, or to attend them medically in sickness, compelled them to wear their distinguishing badge, and declared void any bequests which Christians might make to them. His successor, the beneficent Nicolas V., who was elected A.D. 1447, pursued a wiser course. He published a decree forbidding compulsory baptisms, and warning all persons to abstain from offering insults or injuries to the Jews. During the rule of the remaining popes of the century, Calixtus III., Pius II., Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and Alexander VI., the Jews seem to have been little interfered with. Odious as is the character of the last-named pope, it must be recorded to his credit that he afforded shelter to the wretched exiles whom the cruelty of Ferdinand and the Inquisition had driven out of Spain, as we shall presently record.

In the chief Italian cities also the Jews were, on the whole, well treated. The Venetians, as we have seen, allowed them to open a bank in their city; and they appear to have been the first who did so. But it may be doubted whether any large amount of gratitude was due to them on that account. It is tolerably clear that the Caorsini, Lombards, and Florentines (as the native money-lenders were called), who had hitherto engrossed the trade, exacted such enormous profits that the change to the Jews must of necessity have been a commercial advantage. It was doubtless on this account that their establishment at Venice was speedily followed by their admission to Genoa, Florence, Mantua, Verona, and Leghorn—in fact, into all the leading Italian cities—their central seat of business being fixed at Rome.

But if the amount of interest they demanded was not so exorbitant as that of the Caorsini, it was still enough to be a heavy burden on all classes.[145] Towards the end of the century the celebrated Bernardino di Feltre was stirred up to preach publicly against their exactions, and the terms on which Christians stood with them, at Piacenza. It is curious to read the language he employs, which is a strange mixture of the most truly Christian and the most utterly unchristian sentiment. He regards the Jews simply as if they had been wicked men, towards whom Christian charity must be felt and shown, but whom it is the duty of all Christian men to shun and condemn. No Christian, he says, ought to employ a Jewish physician; no Christian ought to be a guest at a Jewish feast—the risk of moral contamination is too great! ‘Yet,’ he adds, ‘in defiance of these obstacles, which the law, no less than duty, enjoins, Christians had recently resorted in crowds to a Jewish marriage feast which lasted eight days; and it was notorious that whenever Christians were attacked by illness they resorted to a Jewish physician!’ The mob, as might be expected, understood very little of his refined distinctions. They interpreted his words as an exhortation to make an attack on the Jews. They rose accordingly, and hanged and tore in pieces all they met with.[146]

He employed, however, more reasonable means of rescuing his countrymen from the clutches of the Hebrew usurer than these. He set up banks, at which a lower rate of interest was required than that demanded by the Jews, but at the same time sufficiently remunerative, provided the debts contracted were faithfully discharged. These he called Monte della Pieta. They met at first with very decided success in the chief Italian cities, and particularly in Mantua, Brescia, and Padua. In the last-named place they so engrossed the money-lending business that the Jews were obliged to close their own bank. There can be no doubt that the scheme was both commercially and philanthropically wise. Yet, after all, it did not prosper. Possibly the publicity of the dealings with Bernardino’s banks was not acceptable to borrowers, who might wish the fact of their having been obliged to borrow to be kept secret. Possibly those who would fain have been customers were too deeply involved in debt to the Jews to be able to break loose from them. Possibly it was the effect of long habit, which men are ever unwilling to depart from. But, whatever may have been the cause, the scheme, after a brief period of success, began to languish, and in some places altogether failed.

It was revived later still in the century by the celebrated Girolamo Savonarola, who professed his object to be the same as that of Bernardino—rescuing his countrymen, and especially the poor, from the ruinous exactions of the Jew money-lenders, whom he denounces in the most unmeasured terms, as that ‘most wicked set, the enemies of God.’ Not contented with this harsh language, he obtained a decree of the State, ordering them to quit Florence within the year.

It may not be amiss, at this point of history, to inquire how far the severe language and harsh treatment with which even really good men among the Christians of the Middle Ages were wont to assail the Jews, had any reasonable justification or excuse. There were some men, as we have seen, with whom the prejudices of their brother Christians had little or no weight; who were capable of regarding the Jews as the children of their Father in heaven, and as such their brethren, though, doubtless, their erring brethren. They might rightly, in such men’s eyes, be the subjects of entreaty, warning, perhaps punishment, but never of hate or contempt. But they who were thus raised above the convictions of their age were very few. And there were others—men of the highest character, whose devotion to God’s service and love for their fellow-men cannot be questioned—men like Louis IX. of France, Peter of Clugny, Savonarola, Martin Luther, Cardinal Borromeo—who regarded the Jews with horror and detestation, as persons beyond the pale of charity, who were simply to be crushed and trampled out.[147] How are we to account for men like these so viewing them? Was the character of the Jews in the Middle Ages such as really to merit a condemnation so unqualified? Is the portraiture of the Jew given by our great dramatist[148] a true one? Shylock is depicted as sordid, vindictive, without mercy and without natural affection. Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?

What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile, but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse.[149] As it has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves. Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not the very noblest—that the world has seen. Whatever great qualities humanity may possess, it is by men of this race that they have been exhibited in their highest development. If we ask from what nation has arisen the ablest legislator, the most far-seeing statesman, the wisest philosopher, the most chivalrous warrior, the greatest monarch, the most Heaven-inspired poet, we must answer, in every instance, From the nation of the Jews. Nor is it to individuals alone that this applies. What struggle for national independence was ever more gallant than that of the Maccabees? Which among all the countless nations, overthrown by the military genius of Rome, ever resisted so long, or with such fatal effect, her illimitable power, as the defenders of Jerusalem? But, no doubt, centuries of oppression had their effect in deteriorating the nobler, and developing the meaner, features of the Jewish character, until the Jews became at last almost—though not quite—what their persecutors believed them to be.[150] Shut out from every nobler pursuit, forbidden the career of the statesman, the soldier, the artist, the author, or the physician, except within the narrow bounds of their own despised race—they were driven to the one sordid trade of money-getting, and compelled even in that to practise the extremity of exaction and rigour, or else—subject as they were to continual lawless plunder—they could not have lived. If they were at any time disposed to show mercy, no one believed it to be anything but a subtle scheme for securing some worldly end. Treated systematically as the outcasts of humanity, what wonder if they often really became so?