Joseph Karo was so full of the thought that he was called to play a part in Palestine, and die as a martyr, during the time of preparation for the Messiah as begun by Solomon Molcho, that he left Adrianople. He stayed for some time at Salonica, a place swarming with Kabbalists. At length, he arrived in Safet, that nest of Kabbalists, with a companion of like mind, Solomon Alkabez, a dull, spiritless writer, whose song of welcome for the Sabbath bride (Lecha Dodi) has become more famous than its author. At Safet, Joseph Karo experienced the joy of seeing part of his fantastic dreams fulfilled; he was ordained by Berab as a member of the Synhedrion. After Berab's death Karo dreamed of nothing but his future greatness; he was to bring about ordination, and to be recognized by the sages of Palestine and foreign countries as a patriarch and leader of the Jews in Palestine. He would educate the best Talmudists, so that disciples of his school only would be accepted. Everyone would do him reverence as the holy likeness (Diokna Kadisha), and he would work miracles. Like Molcho, he was to die a martyr's death, that the name of God might be hallowed; but his resurrection would soon afterwards follow, and he would enter into the Messianic kingdom.

All these advantages and prerogatives were to be won by a single achievement, which of itself would make the Jews into one great people, and gain him universal admiration. When his thorough commentary on Jacob Asheri's Code was completed, printed, published, and in circulation, when he had elaborated a comprehensive code of religious law grounded on that work, he would surely be acknowledged as patriarch and lawgiver in all Israel. His guardian angel had whispered to him that he would be made worthy to train many disciples and to see his writings printed and circulated throughout Israel. Even the supernatural worlds would ask, "Who is the man with whom the King of kings is well pleased, the patriarch of Palestine, the great writer of the Holy Land?" He would be enabled to publish his commentary, elucidations, and decisions without fault or error.

Devoted piety, fantastical imagination, and some degree of ambition inspired the author, who elaborated, for the whole Jewish race, the final code of religious law, destined to end all wavering, uncertainty, and antagonism of opinion. Kabbalistic enthusiasm combined with the Messianic hopes excited by Solomon Molcho, and the ceremony of ordination administered by Berab, gave Karo no rest, until by means of a comprehensive written work he had accomplished these hopes, at least so far as religious unity was concerned. Yet several decades were to elapse before the Jewish world received this gift, a colossal work which required years for its completion. Joseph Karo's astounding, incessant industry had to eke out lack of genius. Such a work could be accomplished only by religious devotion and inspiration united with a fantastic imagination. Of all his lofty dreams one only was actually realized, that he would be chief rabbi of Safet after Jacob Berab's death, and would be acknowledged as a rabbinical authority, the latter coming about only gradually. But his authority was not absolute; he had a rival in Berab's best disciple, Moses de Trani.

While the Jews of the East were rejoicing in a measure of peace and independence, and were able to indulge in Messianic speculations, and endeavoring, although by mistaken means, to bring about an ideal state of things, the Jews of the West were subjected to fresh persecutions instituted against them. The old accusations of their harmful influence upon mankind, their child-murder, their hostile attitude towards Christianity, which had ceased for a time during the excitement of the Reformation, were again heard. The bigoted ecclesiastical policy, espoused by those who sought to maintain their position against the ever-increasing strength of Lutheranism, reacted upon the Jews, and brought fresh sufferings upon them, principally in Catholic countries. To the old accusations was added a new one, which prejudiced also Lutherans against them. The Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, which had extended into England and Poland, had opened the eyes of many concerning religion and Christianity, and led them to find much that even the Reformers considered essentials of Christianity to be false, mistaken, and blasphemous. The Bible translated into most European languages gave thoughtful readers an opportunity of forming a religious system for themselves differing wholly from the dogmas of Rome, Wittenberg, or Geneva. In reading the Bible the Old Testament came before the New, and in the transition from one to the other many perceived that much in the two was irreconcilable; that the doctrine of the unity of God in the prophets was in direct contradiction to the doctrine of the Trinity propounded by the Church Fathers. Besides this, the Reformation had had in view not only religious freedom, but also political deliverance from the iron yoke of the princes, in whose eyes the people were nothing, of importance only for the payment of taxes and the forced service of bondmen. Now it struck not a few that the Hebrew Scriptures make the people the source of all power, and condemn the despotism of kings, whilst evangelical Christianity does not recognize a people, but only humble believers, whom it exhorts to bow the neck to the yoke of tyrants. The contrast between the Old and the New Testament, the one teaching active virtue together with a God-fearing life, the other glorifying passive virtue together with blind faith, could not be overlooked by eyes sharpened through deep research into the Bible.

Among the host of religious sects which the Reformation called forth in the first decades, there arose some which nearly approached Judaism, and whose adherents were stigmatized by the ruling party as half-Jews or Judaizers (Judaïzantes, Semijudæi). These found the doctrine of the Trinity a stumbling-block, and maintained that God must be conceived as an absolute Unity. Michael Servetus, an Aragonese, perhaps instructed by Marranos in Spain, wrote a pamphlet on the "Errors of the Doctrine of the Trinity," which created a great sensation, and brought him some faithful adherents; but he was burnt at the stake by Calvin at Geneva. The Reformers had retained the fanatical intolerance of the Catholic Church! Notwithstanding this, a sect of believers in the Unity (Unitarians, Anti-trinitarians) arose which rejected the identification of Jesus with God. In England, where Catholicism had been overthrown only by the whim of a tyrant, Henry VIII, to gratify his sensual desires, a religious-political party began to be formed, which proposed to take the Old Testament system of government and adapt it to English circumstances. It appeared to recognize only Old Testament types, and not to take any account of the praying brethren and sisters of the New Testament. Many kept the Sabbath as the day of rest appointed by God, but with their windows closed. Some eccentric Christians conceived a predilection for the Jews as the successors of the patriarchs, as the remnant of that people whom God had once favored with the fullness of His grace, as the direct descendants of the great prophets, on this account deserving the highest respect.

Among the innumerable pamphlets appeared one, a dialogue between a Jew and a Christian, in which the grounds of the Christian dogmas were overthrown by texts out of the Old Testament. Publications of this sort helped to make the Jews obnoxious to the Reformers, too. The adherents of the new faith in a measure simulated hatred of Jews in order to avert from themselves the suspicion that they wished to undermine Christianity, and set up Judaism in its place. The Jews, therefore, had enemies on both sides, and were soon compelled to relinquish the illusion that Catholicism was overthrown, and that the new religion was in sympathy with them.

When the peasants of South Germany, Alsatia, Franconia, and elsewhere, trusting too readily in the evangelical freedom proclaimed by Luther, attempted to throw off the yoke of their oppressors, the few Jews in Germany found themselves between two fires. On the one hand they were accused by the nobility and the upper classes of supporting the rebellious peasants and citizens with their money, and egging them on; and, on the other, the peasants attacked them as the confederates and abettors of the rich and the nobility. The fanatical priest, Balthasar Hubmaier, who had agitated the expulsion of the Jews from Ratisbon, was the adviser of the peasants of the Black Forest, and probably the author of the twelve written demands (articles) which the peasants had proposed. Instead of becoming milder and more humane by his apostasy from the Roman Catholic, he became still more fanatical as an adherent of the Anabaptist faith. He had no doubt excited the rage of the townspeople, who wished to free themselves from their debts to their Jewish creditors, and that of the peasants who desired to enrich themselves with the property of the Jews. The province of the Rheingau among other things demanded that no Jew should be allowed to remain in the district. The annals of the age of the Reformation thus continue to present year after year accounts of banishments, tortures, and restrictions. But, after all, times had improved. There were no longer sudden attacks, massacres, wholesale murders—simply expulsions, mere exile into poverty. Only events of deep and far-reaching effect can find a place here.

In Naples, where the Spaniards ruled, the ultra-Catholic party had long tried to introduce the Inquisition against the Marranos who resided there. When Charles V returned from his victorious expedition in Africa, this party tried to induce him to banish the Jews from Naples, because the Marranos were but strengthened in their unbelief by intercourse with them. But Donna Benvenida, the noble wife of Samuel Abrabanel, who was held in high respect by the Spaniards, so ardently entreated the emperor to revoke the decree of banishment, and her young friend, the daughter of the viceroy, so warmly supported her request, that he could not refuse them. It is also possible that Abrabanel's money may have had something to do with it. But a few years afterwards, Charles ordered the Neapolitan Jews to wear the badge of shame on their dress, and in case of transgression to suffer punishment in their person and property, or leave the country. They chose the latter alternative, probably by the advice of Samuel Abrabanel. They probably realized that persecution would not end there, but that it would form the prelude to harsher treatment. But this voluntary exile was turned into banishment, and every Jew who should venture to show himself again in Naples, was threatened with severe punishment (1540–1541). Many turned their steps towards Turkey, a few went to Ancona, under papal protection, or to Ferrara, under the rule of Duke Hercules II, who passed for a friend of the Jews. Those who emigrated by sea suffered much hardship, and many of them were taken by pirates, and carried to Marseilles. The Marranos who were living there did much for them, and King Henry II also treated them humanely. As he could not keep them in his country, he sent them in his ships to Turkey. Samuel Abrabanel also left Naples, although he was offered the exceptional license to remain there; but he refused to separate himself from the lot of his unhappy co-religionists. He settled in Ferrara, and lived there for about ten years. His noble wife, highly respected by Leonora, the daughter of the viceroy of Naples, now the Duchess of Tuscany, survived him.

A year later, the Jews of Bohemia experienced a milder, so to speak, more decent form of hatred. There had been many fires in the towns, especially in Prague. The Jews and shepherds were accused of having hired incendiaries. The Jews were also charged with having betrayed to the sultan the secret preparations for war against the Turks. The Bohemian diet therefore resolved to banish all Jews from Bohemia, and King Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, gave his assent. They were compelled to start on their exile with all their belongings (Adar, 1542), for of the numerous Jews of Prague only ten persons or families received permission to remain there. Many of them found their way into Poland and Turkey, then the two most tolerant countries. The innocence of those who had suffered death, and of the banished Jews, was established in the course of the same year. A few of the notables interceded for their recall, for they were more indispensable than trade jealousy, fanaticism, and the hatred of race would confess. Thus those who had settled near the Bohemian frontier were able to return to their home. But for this favor they were obliged to pay a tax of 300 schock groschen, and were ordered to wear a badge of yellow cloth as a mark by which they might be distinguished.

At the same time two persons of exalted rank and great influence, the one on the Catholic, the other on the Protestant side, attacked the Jews so mercilessly, that it is a marvel that they were not exterminated to a man. The cause of provocation in one instance was as follows:—About Easter, a peasant boy, four years old, from the duchy of Neuburg in Bavaria, was missed, and suspicions arose that he was with the Jews. After Easter the boy was discovered by means of a dog, and enemies of the Jews pretended to see signs of Jewish torture on his body. Upon this the bishop of Eichstädt caused certain Jews to be seized and dragged to his residence that they might be tried, and sent a request to the neighboring princes to seize the Jews in their domains. But the inquiry did not prove the guilt of the Jews. On this occasion Duke Otto Henry of Neuburg warmly espoused the cause of the Jews, and exerted his influence to oppose the bishop of Eichstädt. The latter moved heaven and earth to have them banished at least. A courageous writer, probably at the suggestion of the duke, boldly defended the Jews against the prejudice of Christians in a pamphlet. This publication, "Little Book about the Jews," the author of which was a Lutheran pastor (perhaps Hosiander), for the first time placed the whole falsehood and malice of the accusation of the murder of Christian children in a clear light. The author, who professed to have had much intercourse with Jews, and to have become thoroughly acquainted with their language, laws, and customs, declared emphatically that a shameful injustice was done to Jews by these perpetual accusations of child-murder. The wealth and the pure faith of the Jews were the reasons. On the one hand, avaricious and cruel princes, or impoverished nobles or citizens, who owed money to Jews, invented such tales in order to be able to use violence against them; and on the other, such fables were invented by monks and the secular clergy in order to make new saints and fresh shrines for the encouragement of pilgrimages. In the long period since the dispersion of the Jews among Christians, no one had asserted, till within the last 300 years, that they had murdered Christian children. These idle tales had become current only since monks and priests practiced so much deception with pilgrimages and miraculous healings. For the priests feared no one more than Jews, because the latter disregarded human invention, and understood the Scripture better than the priests, who, therefore, persecuted the Jews to the utmost, slandered them, and caused them to be hated. They even wished to burn their sacred books. Therefore, it was fair to assume that priests had invented the story of the murder of the child in the province of Neuburg. The author further points out that till the third century the Christians were accounted child-murderers and shedders of blood in the heathen world. The confessions of Jews themselves, which were quoted in confirmation of the accusations, had been made under torture, and could not be received as evidence.

Fanatical Catholic priests, especially the bishop of Eichstädt, saw with indignation that Jews, instead of being abhorred and persecuted, were glorified in this book, and hastened to efface the impression. Dr. John Eck, so notorious in the history of the Reformation, a favorite of the bishop of Eichstädt, was commissioned to write an answer, to prove the crime of bloodguiltiness, and to defame the Jews. This lawyer-theologian, with the broad shoulders of a butcher, the voice of a seditionist, and the disputativeness of a sophist, who had brought the Catholic Church, which he intended to defend against the Lutherans, into discredit by his vanity and his intemperate habits, this unprincipled disputant gladly undertook to belabor the Jews. In 1541 he wrote a hostile reply to the above-mentioned pamphlet, in which he set himself to prove "the evil and wickedness brought about by Jews in all the German territories and other kingdoms." He revived the old accusations against baptized Jews, patched together old wives' tales about the cruel nature of the Jews, raked up the false stories about Trent and Ratisbon uttered by Jews when undergoing torture, and added his own experiences to them. Eck was so shameless as to bring proofs of the cruelty of the Jewish character from the Old Testament. To cast infamy upon them he even slandered the Old Testament heroes held sacred by the church. In verbose language and with a false show of learning he maintained that Jews mutilated the children of Christians, and used their blood in the consecration of their priests, to assist their wives in child-birth, and to heal sickness; and that they desecrated the host. He exclaimed indignantly: "It is a great mistake that we Christians leave the Jews so much freedom, and grant them protection and security." Probably on the petition of Jews against these accusations, the emperor, Charles V, renewed their privileges, and declared them innocent of shedding the blood of Christians.

It is not edifying to find that Luther, the champion against obsolete prejudices, the founder of a new faith, agreed completely on the subject of Jews with his mortal enemy, Dr. Eck, who, with the same effrontery, had employed similar falsehood against himself. These two passionate opponents were of one heart and soul in their hatred of Jews. Luther had become greatly embittered with advancing age. He had lost much among his own followers by his obstinacy and persistent caviling, had disturbed the unanimity of those of the same way of thinking, and in his own camp created a breach which caused infinite harm to the Reformation for several centuries. His hard disposition had steadily gained the mastery over his gentle religion and humility, and his monkish narrowness could not at all comprehend Judaism with its laws, which brought forth and developed not the faith, but the morality and elevation, of man. He became enraged when his colleagues, Karlstadt, Münzer, etc., referred for example to the year of Jubilee, and the enfranchisement of the slaves and serfs. A pamphlet, in the form of a dialogue, in which Judaism was involved in a contest with Christianity, probably written by a Christian, was now sent to him; this was too much for him. Could Judaism be so bold as to think of measuring itself against Christianity! Luther at once set about writing a passionate, stinging pamphlet, "Concerning the Jews and their Lies" (1542), which, in spitefulness, exceeded the writings of Pfefferkorn and Eck.

Luther began by saying that he had made up his mind not to write anything further about Jews, nor against them, but because he had learnt that "this miserable, wicked people" dared entice Christians to join them, he wished to warn weak-minded men not to allow themselves to be befooled. Luther's principal argument, in proof of the truth of Christianity against the denial of the Messiahship of Jesus by the Jews, is written in very monkish style. Because the Christians, for more than a thousand years, had robbed them of all the rights of man, had treated them as evil beasts, had trodden them under foot, lacerated, and slain them: in a word, because they had fallen into distress through the harshness of Christians, therefore, they must be rejected, and the Saviour of the world must have appeared!

This is mediæval logic. But it exceeds the limits of indulgence towards the peculiarities of a strong character, when Luther, in his uncharitableness towards Jews, employs language such as was usual with those who burnt Jews at the stake. "Why should the Jews complain of hard captivity among us?" he says. "We Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom at their hands for nearly 300 years, so that we might well complain that they took us captive and killed us. And to this very day we know not what devil brought them into our land" (as if Jews had not dwelt in some districts of what is now Germany long before Germans were there). "We did not bring them from Jerusalem; besides that, no one keeps them: the country and the roads are open to them, let them return to their own land. We will gladly give them presents, if we can but be rid of them, for they are a heavy burden upon us, a plague, a pestilence, a sore trial." Luther, like Pfefferkorn and Eck, stated with malicious delight how the Jews were often driven out by violence "from France and recently from Spain by our beloved Emperor Charles (an historical blunder); this year also from the entire dominion of Bohemia, although one of their securest nests was in Prague; also from Ratisbon, Magdeburg, and many other places in my time."

Without appreciation of the heroic patience displayed by Jews in the midst of hostility, and untaught by history, Luther did nothing but repeat the lying accusations of the vindictive Pfefferkorn, whose falsehood and villainy had been palpably proved by the Humanists. In imitation of this arch-enemy of the Jews he wrote that the Talmud and the rabbis taught that it was no sin to kill the Goyim, that is, heathens and Christians, break an oath to them, or rob and plunder them, and that the one and only aim of Jews was to weaken the Christian religion. It is incomprehensible that Luther, who had taken the part of the Jews so strongly in the heat of the Reformation, could repeat all the false tales about the poisoning of the springs, the murder of Christian children, and the use of human blood. He also maintained, in agreement with Eck, from whom in other respects he was so widely divided, that the Jews were too prosperous in Germany, and in consequence had become insolent.

What is to be done with this wicked, accursed race, which can no longer be tolerated? asked Luther, and he gave an answer to the question which shows equal want of charity and wisdom. First of all the reformer of Wittenberg recommended that the synagogues be reduced to ashes, "to the honor of God and of Christianity." Next, Christians were to destroy the houses of the Jews, and drive them all under one roof, or into a stable like gypsies. All prayer-books and copies of the Talmud and the Old Testament were to be taken from them by force (as Luther's opponents, the Dominicans, had advised), and even praying and the use of God's name were to be forbidden under penalty of death. Their rabbis were to be forbidden to teach. The authorities were to prohibit the Jews from traveling, and to bar the roads against them, so that they must stay at home. Luther advised that their money be taken from them, and that this confiscated wealth be employed to establish a fund to maintain those Jews who should embrace Christianity. The authorities were to compel able-bodied Jews and Jewesses to forced labor, and to keep them strictly employed with the flail, the axe, the spade, the distaff and spindle, so that they might earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, and not live in idleness, feasting, and splendor. Christians were not to show any tender mercy to Jews. Luther urged the emperor and the princes to expel them from the country without delay, and drive them back into their own land. But anticipating that the princes would not consent to such folly, he exhorted the clergy and teachers of the people to fill the minds of their hearers with hatred of Jews. He observed that if he had power over Jews, he would assemble the best and most learned among them, and, under penalty of having their tongues cut out, force them to accept the Christian teaching, that there is not one God, but that there are three Gods. Luther even stirred up the robber-nobles against them. He had heard that a rich Jew was traveling through Germany with twelve horses. This Jew was known as the wealthy Michael, of Frankfort, the protégé of the Margrave of Brandenburg; if the princes did not close the road against him and his fellow-believers, Luther urged the robber-knights to do so, for Christians might learn from his pamphlet how depraved was the Jewish nation. These absurd charges Luther ascribed to a worthless convert, Anton Margaritha, the son of a rabbi of Ratisbon. He had become a Catholic, and being punished on account of calumnies, had turned Lutheran, and written a foolish book against the Jews, and from this book Luther had taken his unjust attacks upon them.

Shortly before his death he exhorted his hearers in a sermon to drive out the Jews:

"Besides all this you still have the Jews, who do great evil in the land. If they could kill us all, they would gladly do so, aye, and often do it, especially those who profess to be physicians—they know all that is known about medicine in Germany; they can give poison to a man of which he will die in an hour, or in ten or twenty years; they thoroughly understand this art. I say to you lastly, as a countryman, if the Jews refuse to be converted, we ought not to suffer them, or bear with them any longer."

In the reformer and regenerator of Germany, then, the Jews had almost a worse enemy than in the Pfefferkorns, Hoogstratens, and Ecks, certainly worse than in the popes till the middle of the century. But few heeded the words of those wretches, known to be sophists and liars, while Luther's uncharitable utterances were respected as oracles by the Christians of the new faith, and but too well followed out. As Jerome had infected the Catholic world with his openly avowed hatred of Jews, so Luther poisoned the Protestant world for a long time to come with his Jew-hating testament. Protestants became even more bitter against Jews than Catholics had been. The leaders of Catholicism demanded absolute submission to canonical law, but on this condition granted them permission to remain in Catholic countries; Luther, on the other hand, required their absolute expulsion. The popes often issued exhortations to spare the synagogues; but the founder of the Reformation insisted upon their desecration and destruction. It was reserved for him to place Jews on a level with gypsies. This difference arose from the fact that the popes occupied the highest rank in life, and dwelt in Rome, the metropolis of the world, the center of affairs in the four quarters of the globe; thus they had no eye for petty events, and usually left the Jews unnoticed because of their small importance. Luther, on the other hand, who lived in a petty country town and amidst narrow surroundings, listened to all the gossip against Jews, judged them by the measure of a country bumpkin, and reckoned up every farthing that they earned against them. He, therefore, was the cause of their being expelled by Protestant princes. In Roman Catholic states the Dominicans alone were their deadly enemies.

This hatred followed the Jews even into Turkey. If there were neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants, there were Greek Catholic Christians. Turks and Greeks lived together in the towns of both Greece and Asia Minor. The latter, who would not give up their arrogance, but dared not display it towards the ruling Turks, persecuted the Jews with silent hatred, and took advantage of every opportunity to draw upon them the persecution of the government. On one occasion some of them gave rise to a persecution in the town of Amazia in Asia Minor. They caused a poor Greek, who was in the habit of associating with Jews, and had been supported by them, to disappear, and then accused some Jews of having murdered him. Hereupon the Turkish cadis seized the accused, put them to the torture, and forced them to acknowledge the murder. They were hanged, and a respected Jewish physician, Jacob Abi-Ayub, was burnt (about 1545). A few days afterwards a Jew recognized the Greek supposed to have been murdered, induced him to tell how he had been made to disappear, and brought him before the cadi. The latter, justly incensed against the malicious Greek accusers, had them executed. A similar accusation, the falseness of which was brought to light, was lodged against a Jew of the town of Tokat at about the same time.

These cruel occurrences suggested to Moses Hamon, Sultan Solyman's Jewish physician, to obtain a decree from the sultan that an accusation against Jews in Turkey of having murdered a Christian, and other malicious calumnies, should not be brought before the ordinary judges, but before the sultan himself.

Hatred against Jews, restrained in Turkey, raged the more openly in Christian countries. The republic of Genoa for a long time had not suffered a Jew to remain more than three days within its boundaries. Notwithstanding this, fugitives from Spain or Provence from time to time were received in the town of Novi, near Genoa; they went in and out of the capital itself, and were suffered to remain there. In the party differences between the patrician families, the little community, repulsed by the one side, was taken up by the other. Most of them were intelligent artisans, capitalists, or physicians. But again the Dominicans stirred up the people against them, and roused the professional jealousy of Christian physicians. Contrary to the wishes of Doge Doria, the Jews were driven out of Genoa (April, 1550), and, heralded by the sound of trumpets, a proclamation was made that henceforth no Jews should be suffered. This expulsion from Genoa is of importance, because a clever Jewish historian was included in it, whose fate represents in miniature the painful lot experienced by the Jewish race on a large scale.

The vicissitudes in the life of the nations, as well as the changes in the life of the Jewish people, especially since their cruel expulsion from Spain and Portugal, and the heartless persecution of the Marranos, at length brought some clear-seeing Jews to the conviction that history is not ruled by chance, but that a higher hand guides it, bringing to pass destined events by bloodshed and tears. Since the time of the crusades, no century had been richer in changeful, almost dramatic, events than the sixteenth, when not only fresh continents were discovered, but when a new spirit began to prevail among mankind, striving after new creations, but always kept down by the leaden weight of existing systems. This wealth of occurrences taught a few thoughtful Jews, mostly of Sephardic origin, to trace the work of Providence in the apparently whimsical and irregular course of universal and Jewish history. They considered history a comfort to that portion of mankind which had been overthrown, overridden, and downtrodden by the tumultuous course of events. And what race stood in more need of consolation than the Jewish, a martyr people apparently born only for sorrow, always eating its bread in tears? Almost at one and the same time, three enlightened Jews undertook the task of studying history, and placing before the Jewish reading world its brazen tables. These were the physician, Joseph Cohen, the learned Talmudist, Joseph Ibn-Verga, and the poet, Samuel Usque. All three began with the same fundamental idea. The spirit of the prophets, which recognized in the course of historical events the fittest means for instruction and improvement, had come upon them, incontestably showing that Jews even in their degradation are not like the gypsy rabble, neither having nor knowing a history; that, in fact, they stood higher than those who wielded the scepter and the sword, the rack and the club, for the subjugation of mankind.

The greatest of these historians was Joseph ben Joshua Cohen (born at Avignon, 1496, died 1575). His ancestors had come from Spain at the great expulsion, his father Joshua emigrating to Avignon, and thence moving to Novi, in Genoese territory. For a while he lived in Genoa, and was expelled thence. Joseph Cohen had studied medicine, devoting himself both to the theory and the practice. He appears to have been family physician to the doge, Andrea Doria. His heart beat warmly for his Jewish brethren, and he was zealous in his endeavors to lighten their unhappy lot. He once exerted himself to obtain the release of a father and son, cast into prison by the heartless Giannettino Doria, nephew and presumptive heir to the doge. But he succeeded in delivering only the father, the son did not escape till the stormy night of Fiesco's conspiracy. At the last expulsion from Genoa (1550), the inhabitants of the little town of Voltaggio begged him to settle amongst them as a physician, and he lived there for eighteen years. But history attracted him more than the practice of medicine, and he began to search for chronicles in order to write a sort of universal history in the form of annals. He began with the period of the decline of the Roman empire and the formation of the modern states, and represented the course of the world's history as a struggle between Asia and Europe, between the Crescent and the Cross; the former represented by the then powerful dominion of Turkey; the latter, by France, which had set up Charlemagne, the first emperor of a Christian realm. He connected the whole of European history with these two groups of nations. He included all the events and wars of Christendom, and of the Mahometan countries in "The Annals of the Kings of France and of the House of Othman," the title of his historical work. In the history of his own times, which he either witnessed himself, or obtained from the experience of contemporaries, he is an impartial narrator, and, therefore, his work is a trustworthy source of information. The Hebrew historical style, borrowed from the best books of the Bible, renders his account most forcible. The Biblical language and dramatic style give a charm to the work, and raise it above the level of a dry chronicle.

Joseph Cohen introduced the history of the various persecutions of the Jews at the different periods when they occurred. His chief aim was to point out the justice of God in the course of history, showing how violence and cunning met with their desert, and were cast down from the height attained. He sympathized with the sorrows which he described; therefore, he often wrote with intense bitterness.

Very different is another historical work of the same period, upon which three generations, father, son, and grandson, were employed. Judah Ibn-Verga, Kabbalist and astronomer, a member of the distinguished Ibn-Verga family, related to the Abrabanels, had noted down in a book some of the persecutions which Jews had undergone in different countries and at various times. Solomon Ibn-Verga, who had witnessed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, and who for a time had pretended to be a Christian, and then emigrated to Turkey as a Marrano, added several narratives to his father's notes. He understood the Latin language, and so borrowed and added fresh material from various Latin documents. His son, Joseph Ibn-Verga, who belonged to the college of rabbis at Adrianople, completed the work by adding some of the events of his own times and the age immediately preceding, and then published the whole under the title of "Judah's Rod of Correction" (Shebet Jehuda). Joseph Ibn-Verga was also learned in Latin, and incorporated many narratives from Latin documents. This martyrology of the Ibn-Vergas, then, is not a unit, but a medley without plan or order, destitute even of chronological sequence. Imaginary conversations between Jews and Spanish or Portuguese kings are given as having actually taken place. But the Hebrew style is brilliant and graceful, without possessing biblical coloring like that of the historical works of Elias Kapsali and Joseph Cohen. Ibn-Verga sought (towards the end of the first part) to show the reason why the Jewish race, above all the Spanish Jews, were visited with so many intolerable trials, and found it in the preference once shown for the Jewish nation: "Whom God loves most He chasteneth most." But the chief sources of persecution were to be found in the division between Jews and Christians in the matter of food and drink, in the revenge taken by Christians for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in the offenses of Spanish Jews against Christian women, in the envy of their riches, and in the false oaths of which they were guilty. Ibn-Verga did not conceal the faults of his race; perhaps he exaggerated them. Joseph Ibn-Verga added a heartfelt prayer about the numerous sufferings which Israel had undergone, and was still enduring, the last causing the first to be forgotten. All the nations of the world were united in hatred to this race; all creatures in heaven and on earth allied in enmity against it; before a Jewish child began to prattle it was pursued by hatred and scorn. "We are despised like the lowest worms; may God soon fulfill His promises to His people."

The most original of the three historians, as well as of the three Usques, probably belonging to the same family, was Samuel, who had no doubt fled from the fire of the Inquisition in Portugal. He settled with his relations in Ferrara. Like Solomon Usque, known under his Spanish name of Duarte Gomez, he was a poet, but his muse did not occupy herself with foreign material, with imitations and adaptations, but created something original and peculiar. The brilliant and tragical history of the Israelite people had great attraction for him; it did not exist merely as a lifeless mass of learning in his memory, but lived in his heart as a fresh bubbling spring from which he drew comfort and inspiration. Biblical history with its heroes, kings, and men of God, the history subsequent to the Captivity, with its alternations of splendid victory and unhappy overthrow, the history since the destruction of the Jewish rule by the Romans, all the events and changes of these three periods were present to Samuel Usque's mind. The material gathered from many sources he transformed by the breath of poetry into a long, most touching lament and consolation in the Portuguese language, not in verse, but in elevated prose, more charming than a poetic garb. It is a conversation of three shepherds, Icabo, Numeo, and Zicareo, the first of whom laments with bitter tears the tragical fate of Israel since its appearance on the scene of history; the other two pour the balm of comfort into the broken heart of the unhappy shepherd, and show him that these sufferings are the necessary steps to the attainment of a glorious goal. Samuel Usque named this historical dialogue, "Consolation for the Sorrows of Israel." By his vivid picture of the Jewish past, he intended to give to the Portuguese fugitives in Ferrara and elsewhere, who had again attached themselves to Judaism, comfort in their great sorrow and suffering, and lead them to look forward to a happy future.

He represented the Israelite nation now as a mourning widow, wringing her hands in lamentation, and weeping day and night over the sufferings of her sons during thousands of years; now as a prophetess inspired by God, clothed in a radiant robe, whose eye pierces the darkness, and sees a glorious future, and whose lips utter wisdom, and pour balm on burning wounds. Though he was not a regular historian, yet no one has represented the principal features of Jewish history from the earliest times down to his own with so much light and life as Samuel Usque.

The external form of this historico-poetical dialogue is as follows: the shepherd, Icabo (or Jacob, the representative of the Jewish nation), laments in a lonely spot the misery of his flock, dispersed throughout all parts of the world, humiliated, and torn in pieces. "To what quarter of the globe shall I turn and find healing for my wounds, oblivion of my sorrows, and comfort in this grievous, heavy torment? The whole earth is full of my misery and my distress. I am like a poor, heavy-laden pilgrim in the midst of all the riches and delight of favored Asia. Amid the wealth of the gold of sun-burnt Africa, I am an unhappy, starving, fainting exile. And Europe, Europe! my hell upon earth! what shall I say of thee, thou who hast adorned thy greatest triumphs with the limbs of my flock? How can I praise thee, Italy, thou blasphemous and warlike land! Thou who hast fed upon the flesh of my lambs like a ravenous lion! Ye accursed pastures of France, which did furnish poisoned grass for my flocks to feed on! Thou proud, rough mountain-land of Germany, which hast taken my young, and dashed them in pieces from the tops of thy wild Alps! And you sweet, fresh streams of England, from you my flocks have drunk only bitter, brackish waters! Hypocritical, cruel, bloodthirsty Spain, in you voracious and ravening wolves have devoured, and still devour, my fleecy flocks!" The two shepherds, Numeo and Zicareo, attracted by the heartrending lamentations of Icabo, induce him by much persuasion to tell them his sorrow, and thus obtain relief for his burdened heart. But not without a struggle does he bring himself to do this. He then describes to his two friends the former splendor of his flock, and thus brings before their eyes the prosperous days of Israel. Then he passes to the trials which God's flock has had to endure. Icabo is at length induced by gentle persuasion to relate the history of his unhappy race in detail, first its adverse fortunes, and its exile during the existence of the first Temple; then, in a second dialogue, the bitterness endured, and the exile till the second destruction of the Temple by the Romans; and in a third dialogue, the sufferings of his people during the long exile; the first forced baptism which Sisebut, king of the Visigoths, imposed upon the Jews of Spain; the expulsion of the Jews from England and France, Spain and Portugal; the horrors of the Inquisition, which Usque had himself beheld; and lastly, the desecration of a synagogue at Pesaro (1552). In this manner does Icabo (or Samuel Usque) go through the long range of Jewish history. He concludes this summary of sorrows thus:

"Scarcely hadst thou ceased to drink of the poisoned cup of the Babylonians, which had well-nigh proved fatal to thee, O Israel, when thou wast revived to endure the torments inflicted by the Romans; and when this double misfortune, which so cruelly tore thee in pieces, was at an end, thou wert indeed still living, but fast bound to suffering and misery, tortured by fresh pangs. It is the fate of all created beings to experience change; only not thine, for thy unhappy lot is not changed, and has no ending."

The friends offer comfort and consolation to Icabo. They say:

"Sorrows, be they never so great and intense, have an object. They have been partly incurred by a sinful life and by backsliding from God and are intended to serve for the correction and purification of Israel. It is also a blessing that thy people is scattered abroad among all the nations of earth, that the wicked may not succeed in utterly destroying them. When the Spaniards drove thee out, and burnt thy people, God ordained that thou shouldst find a country ready to receive thee, where thou couldst dwell in freedom, namely, Italy."

The enemies who treated Israel so unmercifully were said to have received their punishment. The poet said of the Spaniards that Italy had become their grave; of France, that Spain had been its rod of correction; of Germany, that the Turks were its executioners, who made of it a wall against which to direct their cannon; and of England, that wild and savage Scotland was a perpetual thorn in its side. One great comfort was that all these sufferings, sorrows, and trials which came upon the Jewish race were literally announced and precisely foretold by the prophets. They had only served to elevate Israel, and as the prophecies of evil were verified, so they might trust that the prophecies of good would not remain unfulfilled.

The dialogues end with comforting prophecies in the feeling words of Isaiah. This edifying description served doubtless to sustain the Marranos in their newly-recovered creed, and to endure sufferings of every kind for it, even death itself.

Samuel Usque was of opinion that the sufferings of the Jewish people were soon to decrease, and that the long looked-for morning would soon follow the darkness of night. But the church showed him that this anticipation was ill-founded. He lived to see fresh tribulations arise in his immediate neighborhood, and a whole system of fresh persecutions put into practice, which the Jewish historian, Joseph Cohen, was able to record in his annals of Jewish martyrdom. These fresh troubles had their origin in the reaction which the Roman Catholic Church was ardently desirous to institute against the ever-growing Reformation. Two men strove at almost the same time, quite independently of each other, to re-establish declining Catholicism, and thereby laid snares in the way of the progress of the human race. A Neapolitan, Pietro Caraffa, and a Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, both men of zeal, and ready to take the initiative, began with self-castigation, and ended by reducing the minds and bodies of others to bondage. The worm-eaten papacy, supposed to be crumbling away beneath the laughter and derision of its opponents, for which its very friends had nothing but a shrug of the shoulders, was raised by these two men to a height greater almost than in the time of Innocent III and his immediate successors, because it rested, not on the tottering foundations of dreamy belief, but on the firm ground of powerful conviction and reckless determination. Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV, and Loyola, the founder of the order of Jesuits, so powerful to this day, were very much in earnest in impressing the minds of the faithful with the belief in the supremacy of the papacy and the pope's power to bind and to loose, both in heaven and on earth, they themselves being firmly convinced thereof. Caraffa re-established the discipline of the church which had grown lax, increased its severity, and placed a rod of iron in her hand. He introduced into the Catholic world at large the means which Torquemada, Deza, and Ximenes de Cisneros had employed in Spain to force Jews and Moors to become members of the church, namely, the stake. All who held a belief differing by so much as a hair's breadth from the papacy were to abjure it, or be burnt. Merciless force, which does not think, and destroys all independent thought, was to restore credit to the defamed church.

To regain possession of the minds which had striven to emancipate themselves, and to keep them in bondage, the Inquisition thought it in the highest degree necessary to watch the press. The press had brought mischief and schism into the church (so thought Caraffa and his associates); the press, then, must be gagged. Only what was approved by the pope and his followers was to be printed. Censorship of the press had been introduced by previous popes, but as anything had hitherto been obtainable by bribery, publishers had been able to print and disseminate seditious works against the existing church system, either with or without the knowledge of the clergy appointed to control such publications. The seditious controversial pamphlets in the Reuchlin quarrel, the famous "Letters," Von Hutten's shafts at the papacy, Luther's first pamphlets against the Romish Babylonian harlot, inflammable materials which, appearing in rapid succession, on all sides kindled the tow of which the church tent was woven, were the result of negligent censorship. This was now to be changed. The censorship was henceforth intrusted only to priests faithful to the papacy, and, either from conviction or from instincts of self-preservation, they exercised their office without leniency.

The Jews soon felt the effect of this fierce Catholic reaction, for they had no sort of protection, and owed their miserable existence only to neglect in the enforcement of the canonical laws against them. As soon as the church began seriously to put these hostile decrees into execution, the existence, or at least the peace, of the Jews was endangered. First of all the question of the Talmud was again raised, but not with the lukewarmness of forty years before. At that time Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans of Cologne could not hope to obtain a hearing before the papal chair for their proposal to burn the Talmud, but were obliged to have recourse to all sorts of ruses in order to gain over the emperor to their policy. Now a totally different spirit prevailed. The universal harm caused by the Talmud needed only to be hinted at by malicious converts for a decree to be at once issued against it. By such the fresh outcry against it was raised.

Elias Levita, the Hebrew grammarian, who had lived for a long time in the house of Cardinal Egidio de Viterbo, and had instructed many Christians in the Hebrew language, both personally and by his writings, and had also imparted to some a superficial knowledge of the Kabbala, left two grandsons, the children of his daughter, who were received in Christian circles. One of them, Eliano, had learnt Hebrew thoroughly, and was a proof reader and copyist in several towns of Italy; his brother, Solomon Romano, had traveled much in Germany, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt, and understood many languages: Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Arabic, and Turkish. Eliano, the elder, had become a Christian under the name of Victor Eliano, and was a priest, later even a canon. Solomon Romano was so indignant at this that he hastened to Venice to persuade his brother to return to the bosom of Judaism. But instead of converting, he himself became converted. A Venetian patrician, much attached to the church, set about bringing him over to Christianity, and what he began, a Jesuit finished. Solomon Romano was baptized (1551), and assumed the name of John Baptista, to the great grief of his mother, who was still living. He became a Jesuit and afterwards an ecclesiastical writer, wrote upon the mysteries of the Christian faith, a Hebrew and Arabic catechism, and other similar works. This grandson of the grammarian Elias Levita, with two other converts, Joseph Moro and Ananel di Foligno, not content with having forsworn their religion, appeared before the pope, like Nicholas Donin, to denounce the Talmud, and repeated the same slanders, namely, that the books of the Talmud contained abuse of Jesus, the church, the whole of Christendom, and that they hindered the conversion of the Jews in a body. Julius III was by no means bigoted, least of all was he inimical to Jews. But it no longer lay with the pope to decide upon the Talmud; this task devolved on the court of the Inquisition, that is to say, on the fanatical Caraffa, and Julius III was obliged to approve and sign the decree laid before him by the inquisitor general (August 12th, 1553)—another proof of the emptiness of the boasted infallibility of the papacy. Leo X had encouraged the printing of the Talmud, and the third pope after him decreed its destruction. The officers of the Inquisition invaded the houses of the Roman Jews, confiscated the copies of the Talmud and compilations made from it, and burnt them with special malice on the Jewish New Year's Day (September 9th), so that the Jews might feel the grief at the destruction of their sacred books the more keenly. The inquisitors did not wage war against the Talmud in Rome only. Copies were burnt by hundreds of thousands throughout the whole Romagna, in Ferrara, Mantua, Venice, Padua, and in the island of Candia, which belonged to Venice. The officers of the Inquisition in their fury no longer distinguished between the Talmud and other Hebrew writings. Everything that fell into their hands became a prey to the flames; they even seized copies of the Holy Scriptures. The Jews of all Catholic countries were in despair; they were robbed by this confiscation of the rabbinical books which contain the precepts of a religious life, and in which there is no word referring to Christianity. They, therefore, appealed to the pope to revoke the decree, or at least to permit them the use of these harmless rabbinical writings. Julius III agreed to this latter request, and issued a bull (May 29th, 1554) that the Jews be compelled, under pain of corporal punishment, to give up all copies of the Talmud, but that the bailiffs be not allowed to seize other Hebrew works, or vex the Jews. Transgressors of this decree were to be visited with severe ecclesiastical punishment. Henceforward all Hebrew books were subjected to inspection before they were published, lest they contain a shadow of reproach against Christianity or Rome. The censors were mostly baptized Jews, who thus had the opportunity of tormenting their former brethren in faith.

Matters became worse for the Jews after the death of Julius III, as the college of cardinals insisted that all henceforth elected to the papacy should belong to the strictest church party, if possible, be monks. Cultivated dignitaries, interested in humanistic studies, who loved the arts and sciences, if such there still were, had fallen into disfavor.

Marcellus II, the first of the reactionary popes, was succeeded in the papal chair by the bigoted and fanatical Caraffa, under the name of Paul IV (May, 1555-August, 1559). He retained in old age all the violence and passion of his youth, and framed his policy accordingly. He hated not only Protestants and Jews, but also the Spaniards, the most useful tools of ecclesiastical fanaticism; he termed them and the bigoted king, Philip II, "worthless seed of the Jews and Moors." Soon after his accession to the papal chair he issued a bull, by which every synagogue throughout the Papal States was ordered to contribute ten ducats for the maintenance of the house of catechumens in which Jews were educated in the Christian faith. Still more severe was his second bull against the Jews (July 12th, 1555), which enforced the canonical laws against them with great harshness. They were to remain shut up in Ghettos, and were to possess only one synagogue; the rest were to be destroyed. They were not allowed to employ Christian servants, not even wet-nurses, and were forbidden to have intercourse with Christians in general. Every Jew was commanded to wear a green cap, and every Jewess a green veil, even outside the precincts of the city. They were not to be addressed as "Sir" by the Christian population. They were forbidden to own real estate, and those who had any were ordered to sell it within six months; thus they were compelled to part with their lands, worth more than 500,000 gold crowns, for a fifth of their value. But the severest blow was that Jewish physicians were prohibited from attendance on Christians, though so many popes owed their health to them. Heavy penalties were attached to the infringement of this edict. These cruel measures were carried out with extreme severity, and confiscation of copies of the Talmud was not interrupted. Thereupon, many Jews forsook Rome, which had become so malicious towards them, and betook themselves to more tolerant states, but they were maltreated on the way by fanatical mobs. Those who remained in Rome were treated in a most undignified manner by the pope. First it was said that they had only made a feint of selling their lands, and had executed sham deeds of sale, and for this they were imprisoned; next the pope announced that those Jews who were not working for the common good should leave Rome within a given time. When the terrified Jews asked for an explanation of what was meant by "working for the general good," they received the Pharaoh-like reply, "You shall know at the proper time."

Paul IV compelled them to do forced labor in repairing the walls of Rome, which he desired to fortify against the Spaniards, of whom he had wilfully made enemies. Once he, whom the Jews not unjustly called Haman, impelled by his fierce enmity against them, commanded his nephew to set fire to all their dwellings under the veil of the darkness of night. The latter was about to carry out the order, though unwillingly, when he met the sensible cardinal, Alexander Farnese, who advised him to delay the execution of the inhuman deed that the pope might have time to consider. The order was revoked on the following day.

The fanatical Pope Paul IV thus ill-treated the Jews, but he raged with even greater fury against the Marranos in his dominions. Many, compelled to become Christians in Portugal, had found an asylum in Ancona, and received an indemnity from Pope Clement VII guaranteeing that they should not be molested by the Inquisition, but might confess Judaism. The next two moderate popes, Paul III and Julius III, had confirmed this privilege to the Marranos, convinced as they were that baptism, enforced by violence, could have no sacramental significance. The more violently the Inquisition now introduced into Portugal proceeded against the Marranos, like that in Spain, the more fugitives took refuge in Italy. They settled, with the property rescued, in Ferrara and Ancona, trusting in the privileges assured to them by the head of Catholic Christendom. But what did the vindictive Pope Paul IV care for an assurance of safety granted by his predecessors, and for a time tacitly recognized by himself, if it was in opposition to his notion of orthodoxy? His perverse spirit could not suffer those to live as Jews who had been sprinkled with baptismal water. Paul, therefore, issued a secret order that all the Marranos in Ancona, already numbering several hundreds, should be thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition, a trial of their orthodoxy instituted, and their property sequestered (Elul—August, 1555). This was a severe blow to the Marranos, some of whom had been there for half a century, and had lulled themselves into a dream of security. Even those Marranos who were Turkish subjects, and were dwelling only for a short time in the flourishing seaport because of their trade with the Levant, were included in the accusation of Judaizing, and imprisoned, and their goods confiscated, as a matter of course. The furious pope thus cut off a considerable source of his revenue at the moment when he was about to plunge into a costly war with Spain.

But very few Marranos succeeded in escaping from the bailiffs of the Inquisition. They were all received by Duke Guido Ubaldo, of Urbino, and quartered in Pesaro, because he was then at enmity with the pope, and thought to transfer the trade of the Levant from Ancona to Pesaro by means of the connection of the Marranos with Turkey. Duke Hercules II, of Ferrara, also offered the Portuguese and Spanish Jews, from whatever country they might have fled, an asylum in his dominions, and formally invited them thither (December, 1555). Among those who escaped to Pesaro was a man then held in high repute, the celebrated physician Amatus (Chabib) Lusitanus (born 1511, died 1568), a sensible and intelligent man, a skillful physician, a noted scholar, and a man of equal conscientiousness and amiability. As a pretended Christian he had borne the name of João Rodrigo de Castel-Branco. He appears to have been driven from his home by the introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal. He had been for some time in Antwerp, then the most important city of Flanders, afterwards visited both Ferrara and Rome, but had permanently established himself at Ancona (about 1549), where he had openly assumed his family name of Chabib, and Latinized it under the form of Amatus Lusitanus. Although he openly professed himself a Jew, he was frequently summoned to the court of Pope Julius III to attend him in sickness. Sufferers came to him from far and near. The art of healing was to him a sacred office, which he fulfilled with his whole soul in the endeavor to prolong human life. Amatus was able to take a solemn oath—by God and His holy commandments—that he had always labored purely for the welfare of mankind, had never concerned himself about compensation, had never accepted valuable presents, had treated the poor without fee, and made no difference between Jews, and Christians, and Turks. Nothing ever hindered him in his devoted calling, neither family considerations, nor long distances. Amatus had many disciples of his art who were attached to him, and whom he regarded as his children. In his young days he had written medical works so highly esteemed that they were often printed during his lifetime. The greatest interest was excited by his seven "Centuries" (each dealing with a hundred cases of illness), in which he minutely described his remedies and their effect, and gave the characteristics of his patients. These "Cures" procured for him very extensive fame during his lifetime; they were frequently printed in Italy, France, Germany, and even in Spain, and were used by other physicians as text-books. Amatus received an invitation from the king of Poland to come to his court in the capacity of his private physician, an invitation which he did not accept.

This benefactor of mankind, the ornament of his time, was obliged to flee like a criminal from Ancona to Pesaro, and afterwards to journey even further, because he refused to make a ridiculous confession of faith before the bloodthirsty Inquisition of Paul IV, and did not wish to expose himself to the risk of death at the stake. More than a hundred Portuguese Marranos, unable to flee, had to pine in the dungeons of the Inquisition until their sentence was announced to them. This was to the effect that those who penitently made confession of the Catholic faith should be set at liberty, but be carried to the island of Malta, and forfeit all honors and dignities. Sixty Marranos agreed to this hypocrisy, but twenty-four of them, among them an aged woman, Donna Maiora, remained firm in the faith of their fathers, "The Lord our God is one God," and were burnt at the stake (May, 1556). Most of those to be transported to Malta escaped, and took refuge in Turkey. A cry of horror was heard from all Jews when the news of this shocking catastrophe was spread abroad. The sentence was as illegal as cruel, because, as has already been said, the religious freedom of the Marranos in Ancona had been solemnly confirmed by three popes in succession. The Portuguese Marranos in Turkey were completely stunned by this blow administered to their fellow-sufferers. They bethought themselves of means by which to be revenged on the insanely cruel pope. The peculiar position of the Jews in this century made it possible for them to entertain the idea of a struggle with their malicious enemy in the chair of St. Peter. A union of all the Jews of the East might furnish the means.

There lived at this time a noble Jewish lady, an ornament to her sex and her people by her grace, her intelligence, her character, and greatness of mind, one of those beings whom Providence seems to place in the world from time to time that the likeness of man to the Divine Image may not be quite forgotten. Donna Gracia Mendesia was a name which her Jewish contemporaries pronounced only with admiration and love. Blessed with ample means, which she expended wisely, and only for the benefit of others and for the elevation of mankind, she commanded an influence equal to that of a princess, and reigned over the willing hearts of hundreds of thousands. She was called the Esther of her time. But what anguish of mind she was obliged to endure before she dared openly to call herself Gracia (Hannah)! The waves of meanness and wickedness surged around her, but could not sully the purity of her soul. Born in Portugal (about 1510, died about 1568), of a Marrano family named Benveniste, she was married under the Christian name of Beatrice to a rich participator in the same unhappy fate, one of the house of Nassi, who had taken the baptismal name of Francisco Mendes. He had founded an extensive banking business, branches of which extended through Flanders and France. The German emperor and ruler of two continents, Charles V, the king of France, and many princes besides, were debtors to the house of Mendes. A younger brother, Diogo Mendes, was head of the branch bank at Antwerp. When the husband of Beatrice died (before 1535), leaving her with one daughter named Reyna, and the terrible Inquisition, introduced into Portugal, threatened danger to her property and the lives of herself and her child, she betook herself to her brother-in-law at Antwerp, accompanied by a younger sister and several young nephews. She furnished poor Marranos with the means to flee from the fires of the Inquisition. The sums which pseudo-Christians paid to the emissaries and creatures of the pope to frustrate the Inquisition, went through her hands and her brother-in-law's. The Mendes family acquired a high position in Antwerp, where there were many Marranos. Mendesia's young, handsome and clever nephew, João Miques, associated with the first people in the city, and was much beloved by Maria, ruler of the Netherlands, formerly queen of Hungary, sister to Charles V.

Beatrice was by no means at ease in Antwerp. Affection for the religion in which she had been born, and which she was compelled to deny, and horror of the Catholic faith forced upon her, made Flanders just as hateful to her as Portugal. She longed for a country where she could freely follow the impulses of her heart, glowing with love to Judaism. She, therefore, importuned her brother-in-law, the head of the banking business, who had married her sister, either to go to Germany, or elsewhere, with her, or pay over her share of the property. Diogo Mendes fixed a time for this removal, but died before it arrived (1540–1546); he also left a widow and a daughter, Gracia the younger. This was the beginning of sorrowful days for Mendesia. She was recognized by her brother-in-law's will as the head of the widely-extended business, but could not settle the affairs of the house quickly enough to enable her to follow the wish of her heart, and betake herself to some tolerant land, where she could openly confess herself a Jewess. Besides, Charles V, in his covetousness, cast an eye upon the large property of the house of Mendes. An accusation was made by the imperial attorney-general that the deceased Diogo Mendes had secretly practiced Judaism. It may also have become known that he had supported the antagonists of the Inquisition by word and deed. It was, therefore, decreed that the whole of his property, being that of a heretic, should be forfeited to the exchequer. The order was issued that the goods and account-books of the house of Mendesia be seized and sealed. But the widow Mendesia succeeded in satisfying the avarice of the officials for the moment by bribes and the advance of a large loan. But it was impossible for her to leave Antwerp without exciting suspicion against herself and endangering her property still more. Thus she was obliged to remain there in great distress of mind for more than two years, until the loan was repaid by the emperor.

At length the hour of deliverance seemed to be at hand, when she might leave Antwerp, and proceed to Venice. A story circulated that her nephew, João Miques, had fled to Venice with her daughter Reyna, for whose hand several Christian noblemen had sued. Perhaps this was a story sedulously spread by the Mendes family so as to afford a pretext for their journey to Venice, and that no hindrance might be interposed. But this precaution was not successful. After her departure, Charles V again gave orders that her property, so far as it lay within his dominions, should be seized, because the sisters were secret Jewesses, and Mendesia the elder (as she was called) was compelled to pay large sums to avert this fresh calamity.

But misfortune, greater than any that she had yet experienced, was in store for her at Venice, from a quarter whence she least expected it, namely, from her younger sister. The latter, as reckless and scatter-brained as the elder was prudent and sedate, demanded her share of the property and her daughter's, to do with as she pleased.

But Donna Mendesia neither could nor would agree to this, she having been made sole manager of the property, and also guardian of her niece, still under age. Chafing at this guardianship, and probably guided by evil counselors, the younger sister took a step which turned out to her own disadvantage. She informed the Venetian government that her sister was about to emigrate to Turkey, and take with her all her wealth, there to resume her adherence to Judaism, while she herself and her daughter desired to remain Christians; and she asked the Venetian authorities to assist her in obtaining possession of her property, in order that she might use it as a good Christian in Venice. The rulers of Venice, seeing the prospect of a rich prize, did not hesitate to take up the accusation, cited the accused to appear before the legal authorities, and arrested her to prevent her flight. Her ill-advised or worthless sister also sent an avaricious, Jew-hating messenger to France, to take possession of the property there belonging to the Mendes family. This envoy, thinking himself insufficiently paid for his errand, denounced the younger sister also as a secret Jewess, and the French court confiscated the Mendes property in France. King Henry II also held himself exempt from repaying his debt to the family. The unfortunate Mendesia was meantime endeavoring to divert these blows aimed at herself and her property. Her nephew, João Miques, gave liberal assistance to prevent losses and to set his noble relative free. Either he or his aunt found a way to induce Sultan Solyman to embrace their cause. Such immense riches were about to be brought into his dominions, and the Venetian Republic, which existed only by his forbearance, dared deprive him of them? That roused his fury. His private physician, Moses Hamon, a Jew who hoped to win the hand of the rich heiress Reyna for his son, had disposed the sultan in favor of the Mendes family. A special messenger of state (Tshaus) was sent by the Porte to Venice, with instructions that the imprisoned Marrano was at once to be set free and allowed to depart unhindered for Turkey with all her property. In consequence of this a difference arose between the court of Turkey and the Republic of Venice, which afterwards led to animosities. An important part was thus thrust upon this poor lady against her will.

In the meantime she succeeded—no one knows how—in finding a place of refuge in Ferrara under the protection of the liberal-minded Duke Hercules of Este, where she resided for several years (about 1549 to 1553) under her Jewish name, a blessing and a comfort to her fellow-sufferers for their faith. Here she was able for the first time to exercise openly and freely her sublime virtue, her lively sympathies, her generosity, her genuine piety—in a word, all the nobility of her heart. Her wisdom and prudence were of great service to the Marranos in Italy. The poet Samuel Usque, who dedicated his beautiful work to her, spoke of her with enthusiasm and deep respect. He makes his Numeo, who plays the part of consoler in the dialogues, utter among other grounds of consolation for the sufferings of the Israelites, that they had met with unexpected help from this good woman:

"Who has not seen Divine Mercy reveal itself in human form, as it has shown, and still shows itself to thee a shield and defense against thy wretchedness? Who has not seen the heartfelt compassion of Miriam over again in the sacrifice of her own life to save that of her brethren? Or the great wisdom of Deborah in ruling her fellow-men? Or the infinite virtue and holiness of Esther in protecting the defenseless? Or the memorable exertions of the chaste widow Judith in order to deliver the besieged from terror? The Lord hath sent her down in our days from the midst of His holy angels, and united every virtue in one person, and for thy happiness it is that He hath placed this soul in the lovely form of the blessed Jewess Nassi. She it was who, at the beginning of the dispersion (of the Marranos), gave strength and hope to thy perishing sons, made hopeless by their want of means to escape the fire, and encouraged them to go forth on their pilgrimage. With bountiful hand did she succor those who had already set out on their wanderings in Flanders and other parts, and who, weakened by poverty and overcome by the perils of the sea passage, were in danger of getting no further, and strengthened them in their need. She did not withhold her favor even from her enemies. With her pure hand and her heavenly will has she freed most of this nation (of Marranos) from the depths of endless misery, poverty, and sin, led them into safe places, and gathered them together into obedience to the precepts of the true God. Thus did she become thy strength in thy weakness."

The two editors of the Ferrara Spanish Bible, Abraham Usque and Athias, who dedicated it to "Her Highness the Señora Donna Gracia," described her invaluable services in a few words:

"We desire to dedicate the translation to your Grace, as the person whose deserts among our people will always occupy the foremost place. May you be pleased to accept it, to favor and protect it with the spirit which has always favored those who have asked help of you."

As she protected all three of the Usques, this eulogy may sound partial from their lips; but all, even the most conscientious rabbis of the time, were full of her praise, and wrote with equal enthusiasm, if not elegance, of her virtues:

"The noble princess, the glory of Israel, the wise woman who builds her house in holiness and purity, with her hand sustains the poor and needy, in order to make them happy in this world, and blessed in the world to come. Many are they whom she has rescued from death, and lifted up from the abasement of a worthless life, when they were languishing in a dungeon, and were given over to death. She hath founded houses wherein all may learn the law of God. She has given to many the means whereby they may not only live, but live in plenty."

After Donna Gracia Nassi had become reconciled to her sister, who probably saw that she endangered herself by assuming an antagonistic attitude towards Gracia, after she had seen her sister's child, the beautiful young Gracia, betrothed to her nephew Samuel Nassi in Ferrara, and after she had provided like a mother for all the members of her family, she carried out her long-cherished intention, and betook herself to the Turkish capital to escape the many annoyances to which she was subject in Christian territory. Her gifted nephew, João Miques, who was betrothed to her daughter Reyna, and who had undertaken long journeys to Lyons, Marseilles, Rome, and Sicily on business affairs, had by his adroitness prepared a good reception for her in Constantinople. With skillful diplomacy, acquired by intercourse with Christian statesmen, he obtained a hearty recommendation to Constantinople from M. de Lansac, the ambassador at the French court, with whom the Mendes-Nassi family had been at enmity, and so met with a favorable reception there. In Constantinople, João Miques made open avowal of Judaism, assuming the name of Joseph Nassi, and marrying his wealthy cousin Reyna. He did not go thither alone, but took with him a great following of 500 persons, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Jews. He made his appearance there as a prince; his tact, his knowledge of European affairs, and his wealth, procured him an entrance into the court circle, and secured the favor of Solyman. But his noble mother-in-law remained the principal manager of the large property of the family.