Favored and promoted by the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, of Avignon, Paul of Burgos rose higher and higher; he became bishop of Carthagena, chancellor of Castile and privy counselor to the king, Don Henry III. His malice did not succeed in prejudicing the king against the Jews, or inducing him to bar them from state employment. Don Henry had two Jewish physicians, in whom he reposed especial confidence. One, Don Meïr Alguades, an astronomer and philosopher, he appointed, perhaps in imitation of Portugal, to the chief rabbinate of the various Castilian communities. He was always in the king's train, and it is probable that to some extent he influenced him favorably towards his co-religionists. The other was Don Moses Zarzel (Çarçal), who celebrated in rich Spanish verse the long wished for birth of an heir to the Castilian throne, borrowing the beauties of the neo-Hebraic poetry to do honor to the newly-born prince, in whose hands, he prophesied, the various states of the Pyrenean Peninsula would be united. The calm, as between two storms, which the Spanish Jews enjoyed during the reign of Don Henry was favorable to the production of a few literary fruits, almost the last of any importance brought forth in Spain. None of these works was epoch-making; they were useful, however, in keeping alive the spirit of better times, and in preventing the treasures of Jewish literature from being forgotten. Profiat Duran managed to make people forget his baptism and to settle down quietly in Spain or Perpignan, where he commentated Maimuni's philosophy, and some of Ibn-Ezra's works. He also composed a mathematical and calendarial essay (Chesheb-Efod) and an historical account of the persecutions to which his race had been subjected since the dispersion. His best work is a Hebrew grammar ("Maasé Efod," written about 1403), in which he summarizes the results of older writers, rectifies their errors, and even attempts to formulate the principles of Hebrew syntax.
A production of more than common merit was written by Chasdaï Crescas, now on the brink of the grave, his spirits shattered by persecution. He was a profound, comprehensive thinker, whose mind never lost itself in details, but was forever striving to comprehend the totality of things. His scheme for a work treating, in the manner of Maimuni, of all phases and aspects of Judaism, investigating the ideas and laws out of which Jewish teaching had gradually developed, and reharmonizing the details with the whole where the connection had ceased to be apparent, bears witness to the extraordinary range of his learning and the perspicacity of his mind. The work was to be at once a guide to Talmudical study and a practical handbook. Death appears to have prevented the accomplishment of this gigantic enterprise, only the philosophic portion, or introduction, being completed. In this introduction Chasdaï Crescas deals, on the one hand, with the principles of universal religion, the existence of God, His omniscience and providence, human free-will, the design of the universe, and, on the other, with the fundamental truths of Judaism, the doctrines of the creation, immortality, and the Messiah.
Crescas was less dominated by the Aristotelian bias of mediæval philosophy than his predecessors. It had lost its halo for him; he perceived its weaknesses more clearly than others, and probed them more deeply. With bold hands he tore down the supports of the vast edifice of theory constructed by Maimuni on Aristotelian grounds to demonstrate the existence of God and His relation to the universe, and, conversant with the whole method of scholastic philosophy, he combated it with destructive force.
While the philosophy of his day appeared to him thus vague and illusory, he considered the foundations of Judaism unassailable, and set himself to show the futility of the criticisms of the former. The acknowledgment of Divine omniscience led him to the daring statement that man in his actions is not quite free, that everything is the necessary result of a preceding occurrence, and that every cause, back to the very first, is bound to determine the character of the final action. The human will does not follow blind choice, but is controlled by a chain of antecedent circumstances and causes. To what extent can the doctrine of reward and punishment be admitted, if the will is not free? Chasdaï Crescas' answer to this is that reward and punishment wait on intentions, not on actions. He who, in purity of heart, wishes to accomplish good—which must, of course, necessarily follow—deserves to be rewarded, as the man who willingly promotes evil, deserves punishment. The highest good to which man can aspire, and the end of all creation, is spiritual perfection, or bliss everlasting, not to be obtained, as the philosophers imagine, by filling the mind with metaphysical theories, but only through the active love of God. This is the substance of all religion and particularly of Judaism. From this point of view it may with justice be said that "the world was created for the sake of the Torah," for the aim of the Law is to lead to immortality by means of ideas and commandments and the guidance of thoughts and actions.
Chasdaï Crescas, the first to distinguish between universal religion and specific forms, such as Judaism and Christianity, propounded, deviating from Maimuni's system, only eight peculiarly Jewish tenets. His just objection to Maimuni's thirteen articles of faith was that they were either too many or too few, inasmuch as they blended indiscriminately fundamental truths common to all religions, and teachings peculiar to Judaism.
Together with Profiat Duran and Chasdaï Crescas, Don Meïr Alguades, the Castilian chief rabbi, appeared, in the brief interval between two bloody persecutions in Spain, as a writer of philosophic works. He was not an independent inquirer; he merely translated the ethics of Aristotle (1405, in collaboration with Benveniste Ibn-Labi) into Hebrew, making the work accessible to Jews, who, in practical life, lived up to its principles better than the Greeks, who produced them, or the Christians, who, in the pride of faith and church doctrine, considered themselves above the necessity of conforming to the requirements of morality.
Throughout the reign of Don Henry III of Castile the life of the Jews was tolerable. The young but vigorous monarch severely punished Fernan Martinez, the prime mover in the massacres of 1391, as a warning against further excesses. He permitted the Jews to acquire land, renewed the law of his ancestor, Alfonso XI, and relieved his Jewish tax-farmers and finance administrators from restrictions. As soon as he died (the end of 1406) the affairs of the Jews again took an unfavorable turn, foreshadowing unhappy times. The heir to the crown, Juan II, was a child, barely two years old. The regency devolved on the queen-mother, Catalina (Catherine) of Lancaster, a capricious, arrogant and bigoted young woman, who imagined that she ruled, while she was herself ruled by her various favorites. The co-regent, Don Ferdinand, later king of Aragon, who was intelligent and kind, allowed himself to be guided by the clergy. By his side in the council of state sat the apostate rabbi, Solomon alias Paul de Santa Maria, another and more mischievous Elisha-Acher, in whose eyes Judaism was an abomination, and every Jew a stumbling-block. The deceased king, Don Henry III, had appointed him executor of his will and tutor to his heir; he consequently had an influential voice in the council of the regency. What a prospect for the Jews of Castile! It was not long before they were made to feel the hostile spirit of the court. First it exhibited itself in attempts to humiliate the more notable Jews who had intercourse with the court circle and the grandees of the kingdom, and occupied positions of distinction. The intention was to dismiss them from these positions with the reminder that they belonged to a despised caste.
An edict was issued (October 25th, 1408), in the name of the infant king, reviving the anti-Jewish statutes of the code of Alfonso the Wise. "Whereas the exercise of authority by Jews may conduce to the prejudice of the Christian faith," their occupation of posts in which they might possess such authority was forbidden for all future time. Every Jew permitting himself to be invested with official functions, either by a nobleman or a municipality, was to be fined twice the amount of the revenue of such post, and, if his fortune did not suffice to make up the required amount, it would be confiscated, and the delinquent become liable to a punishment of fifty lashes. A Christian appointing a Jew to a post of influence would also be punished with a fine. To insure the working of the edict, it was enacted that the informer and the court of law concerned in a case should secure each one-third of the confiscated estates. Officials were charged to make the edict known everywhere, and carefully to watch that its injunctions were carried out. It is impossible not to suspect the hand of Paul de Santa Maria in this decree. No one knew better than he the strong and the weak points in the character of the Spanish Jews, and he doubtless calculated that Jewish notables, in danger of losing their official employment and high social position, would go over to Christianity, while the faithful, excluded from intercourse with Christian society and from participation in the public life of the country, would suffer a decline similar to that of the German Jews.
At the same time he vented his hate on Meïr Alguades, the physician of the dead king. The queen-regent had no cause to injure this Jewish notable; only Paul could desire his ruin, because he was the mainstay of his opponents and the leader of those who held him up to contempt. With the object of procuring his downfall, a vindictive accusation was trumped up against him. While the queen-mother, with the infant king, was staying at Segovia, some priests charged a Jew of the town with having bought a consecrated host from the sacristan, in order to blaspheme it. They further stated that the holy wafer had worked such terrible wonders while in the possession of the Jew, that in fear and trembling he had delivered it up to the prior of a monastery. Whether this story was fabricated, or whether there was a grain of truth in a bushel of fiction, it is impossible to say; it sufficed, however, to attract the serious attention of the bishop, Velasquez de Tordesillas, who caused a number of Jews to be arrested as accomplices in the crime, among them Don Meïr Alguades. Criminal proceedings were formally commenced by order of the queen-regent, and Alguades and his fellow-prisoners were subjected to torture, and confessed their guilt. It is stated that in his agony Meïr Alguades made a confession of another kind—that the king, Henry III, had come by his death at his hands. Although everybody knew that the king had been ailing from his youth, Don Mëir—who must have been specially interrogated while under torture as to whether he had poisoned the king—was put to death in the most inhuman manner. He was torn limb from limb. The same fate befell the other prisoners. Still not satisfied, the bishop of Segovia accused some Jews of having bribed his cook to poison his food, and they also were put to death. At about this time one of the synagogues in Segovia was transformed into a church.
The troubled times, projecting shadows of a still more unhappy future, produced the melancholy phenomenon of another Messianic frenzy. Again it arose in the minds of mystics. The Zohar having adroitly been raised to the dignity of an approved authority, the Kabbala daily acquired more influence, although it was not studied in proportion to the zeal with which its authority was advocated. Three Kabbalists were particularly active in exciting the emotions and turning the heads of the people—Abraham of Granada, Shem Tob ben Joseph, and Moses Botarel. The first composed (between 1391 and 1409) a Kabbalistic work, a farrago of strange names of the Deity and the angels, of transposed letters, and jugglery with vowels and accents. Abraham of Granada had the hardihood to teach that those who could not apprehend God by Kabbalistic methods belonged to the weak in faith, were ignorant sinners, and like the depraved and the apostate were overlooked by God, and not found worthy of His special providence. He thought that the relinquishment of their religion by cultured Jews was explained by their fatal application to scientific study, and their contempt for the Kabbala. On the other hand, he professed to see in the persecutions of 1391, and in the conversion of so many prominent Jews to Christianity, the tokens of the Messianic age, the suffering that must precede it, and the approach of the redemption. Shem Tob ben Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob (died 1430) accused the Jewish philosophers, Maimuni, Gersonides, and others, of seducing the people to heresy and infidelity, and with being the real cause of apostasy in troubled times. In a work entitled "Emunoth" he made violent attacks on Jewish thinkers and philosophic studies generally, and taught that the salvation of Israel lies in the Kabbala, the oldest Jewish tradition, and the genuine, pure truth. The entire book is composed of grave charges against the more enlightened school of Jewish thinkers, and panegyrics of Kabbalistic nonsense.
These two men, Abraham of Granada and Shem Tob, though narrow-minded, were sincere, differing in this respect from Moses Botarel (or Botarelo), also a Spaniard, from Cisneros, in Castile, who pursued his course with fraudulent intent. He gave out that he was a thaumaturge and prophet; he announced himself even as the Messiah. He prophesied that in the spring month of 1393 the Messianic age would be ushered in by extraordinary marvels. Later on he wrote a work full of lies and delusions. In his pride and boastfulness, he addressed a circular letter to all the rabbis of Israel, declaring that he was in a position to solve all doubts, and throw light on all mysteries, that he was the chief of the great Synhedrin, and a great deal more in the same charlatanic strain.
As in the days of the oppression by the Visigothic kings, an asylum for persecuted Jews was formed on that portion of the African coast facing Spain. Many of the north African towns, such as Algiers, Miliana, Constantine, Buja, Oran, Tenes, and Tlemçen, were filled with Jews fleeing from the massacres of 1391, and with new-Christians anxious to get rid of the Christianity which they had been forced to embrace, but which they hated cordially. Almost daily there came fresh troops of refugees from all parts of Spain and Majorca. They transplanted to their new fatherland their intelligence, wealth, industry, and commercial enterprise. The Mahometan Berber princes, then more tolerant and humane than the Christians, received them without imposing a poll tax. At first the Mahometan population grumbled a little at so sudden and considerable an increase in the number of inhabitants, fearing that the price of provisions would be raised. When, however, the narrow-mindedness and selfishness of their complaints were pointed out to them by an intelligent kadi they were satisfied, and the Jews were allowed to settle in their midst in peace. The small Berber communities formed since the cessation of the Almohade persecution a century before, acquired greater importance through this immigration. The new-comers preponderated in numbers over the native Jews, so that the latter, to a certain extent, were forced to adopt the Spanish communal organization and the Sephardic ritual. The Spaniards, in fact, became the leading element in the old African communities.
The distinguished rabbi, Isaac ben Sheshet-Barfat, who had escaped from Spain and settled in Algiers, was recognized by the king of Tlemçen as chief rabbi and judge of all the communities. This he owed to the influence of one of his admirers, Saul Astruc Cohen, a popular physician and an accomplished man, who not only practiced his art gratuitously, but spent his fortune in relieving both Mahometan and Jewish poor. In the name of the king the local rabbis were forbidden to assume clerical or judicial functions without the authority of the chief rabbi, Isaac ben Sheshet. This in no way detracted from the esteem in which Ben Sheshet was held, and applications for the decision of difficult questions continued to pour in upon him. In Algiers he continued to oppose wrong-doing with the conscientiousness and impartiality that had always characterized him. Among the members of his community was a mischievous personage (Isaac Bonastruc?), who had considerable influence with the Algerian authorities. Actuated by self-interest he was desirous of stopping the daily increasing immigration of Marranos, and to this end persuaded the kadi to impose a tax of one doubloon on every immigrant. Finding that troops of fugitives continued to arrive, he set himself to work upon the selfishness of the community, so that they might oppose any further influx of their brethren. Fifty-five new-Christians, who had recanted, from Valencia, Barcelona, and Majorca, were waiting to land in the harbor of Algiers, but were refused permission by Jews. This was tantamount to throwing them on the mercy of Christian executioners. Such selfishness and injustice the chief rabbi, Isaac ben Sheshet, could not tolerate, and he laid the ban on the heartless Jews, who tried to escape the punishment. So determined was his attitude that, with the assistance of Astruc Cohen and his brother, the Marranos were ultimately brought safe to land. In Africa Ben Sheshet-Barfat worked for nearly twenty years, promoting the welfare of his co-religionists and the interests of religion and morality. His declining years were embittered by the persistent attacks of a young rabbi, Simon ben Zemach Duran, an able Talmudist, who had emigrated from Majorca.
Ben Sheshet was succeeded on his death by Simon Duran (born 1361, died 1444). The community of Algiers elected him on condition that he did not seek a ratification of his appointment from the king, probably because the authority derived by his predecessor from the royal confirmation had been too uncontrolled. Simon Duran, an accomplished mathematician and physician, was the first Spanish-Jewish rabbi to take pay. He publicly excused himself for doing so, on the ground of his necessitous circumstances. During the persecutions in Majorca a portion of his large fortune had been lost, and the remainder had been sacrificed in bribing the informers who threatened to deliver him as a Judaizing Christian to the Dominican Moloch. He had arrived in Algiers almost a beggar, and the healing art, by which he had hoped to earn a subsistence, had brought him nothing, physicians enjoying but little consideration among the Berbers. Subsequently Simon Duran justified the payment of rabbis from the Talmud. Were the abbots, bishops, and princes of the church equally conscientious?
As if the Jews of Spain had not had enough enemies in the poor, indolent burghers and nobles, who regarded their opulence with so much jealousy, in the clergy, who cloaked their immorality with zeal for the propaganda of the faith, or in the upstart converts, who sought to disguise their Jewish origin by a show of hatred of their former brethren, there arose at about the beginning of the fifteenth century three new Jew-haters of the bitterest, most implacable type. One was a baptized Jew, another a Dominican friar, and the third an abandoned anti-pope. On these three men, Joshua Lorqui, Fra Vincent Ferrer, and Pedro de Luna, or Benedict XIII, the responsibility must rest for the events which directly conduced to the most terrible tragedy in the history of the Jews of Spain. Joshua Lorqui of Lorca assumed on his baptism the name Geronimo de Santa Fé, became physician in ordinary to the Avignon pope, Benedict, and, like his teacher, Solomon-Paul de Santa Maria, considered it his mission in life to draw his former brethren over to Christianity by every possible means. Vincent Ferrer, afterwards canonized, was one of those gloomy natures to whom the world appears a vale of tears, and who would wish to make it one. In saint-like virtue, indeed, he stood alone among the clergy and monks of his day. The pleasures of life had no charm for him; for gold and worldly distinction he thirsted not; he was penetrated with true humility, and entered on his work with earnestness. Unfortunately, the degeneracy and foulness of society had impressed him with the fantastic idea that the end of the world was at hand, and that mankind could be saved only by adopting the Christian faith and a monastic mode of life. Vincent Ferrer consequently revived flagellation. He marched through the land with a troop of fanatics who scourged their naked bodies with knotted cords, and incited the masses to adopt the same form of penance, believing that it would bring about the salvation of the world. Gifted with a sympathetic voice, an agreeable manner, and considerable eloquence, this Dominican friar soon obtained ascendancy over the public mind. When amid sobs he recalled the sufferings of Jesus, and depicted the approaching end of the world, the emotions of his auditors became violently agitated, and he could lead them to good or to evil. He had given up a high position at the papal court to lead the life of a flagellant and barefooted friar. This helped to increase the number of his admirers and disciples, for renunciation of position and wealth on the part of an ecclesiastic was without parallel. Ferrer, however, abused his power by the promotion of sanguinary deeds. He directed his fanatical denunciations not only against Jews and heretics, but even against friends who had helped to raise him from the dust. The terrible demoralization of the church is illustrated in this monk. The wrangling of three contemporary popes, each declaring himself to be the vicegerent of God, one of whom, John XXIII (1410–1415), had exhausted the catalogue of vices and deadly sins, a pirate, a trafficker in indulgences, an assassin, and a debauchee—all this did not so strikingly indicate the prevailing degeneracy as the fanatical excesses of one really pure, moral nature like Vincent Ferrer. The dove had become transformed into a venomous snake, the lamb into a rapacious beast. So much viciousness cannot be spontaneous in human character, in the adherents of Christianity; it must have been derived from the Christian teaching itself.
Unlike Wycliffe and other reformers, Ferrer did not raise his voice against the shortcomings of the church, but devoted himself to Jews and heretics, whom he hated as adversaries of Christianity and opponents of the infallibility of the pope. With pen and voice he opened a crusade against Jews, which he sustained for several years. His most vehement invective was aimed at the Spanish new-Christians, who during the massacres of 1391 had gone over to the church, but still largely conformed to Judaism. Partly from fear of incurring the severe punishment attaching to apostasy, partly won over by the fiery eloquence of the preacher, the Marranos made a contrite confession of faith, which Ferrer regarded as a great victory for the church, a triumph for the truths of Christianity, leading him to hope that the conversion of the entire body of Jews might be vouchsafed to him. By his influence with the people, who honored him as a saint, he was very useful to the kings of Spain in putting down popular risings during the civil wars without bloodshed. Encouraged by the consideration of the Castilian royal family, Ferrer craved permission not only to preach in the synagogues and mosques, but to force Jews and Mahometans to listen to his addresses. A crucifix in one arm, the Torah in the other, escorted by flagellants and spearmen, he called upon the Jews, "with a terrible voice," to enrol themselves under the cross.
Seraphic as he was, Vincent Ferrer was not averse to the employment of force. He represented to the Spanish rulers that the Jews should be strictly isolated, as their intercourse with the Christian population was calculated to injure the true faith. His suggestions met with too ready a response. Through him and the other two conversionists, unspeakable sorrows were brought upon the Spanish Jews; indeed, the years from 1412 to 1415 may be reckoned among the saddest in the sorrowful history of the Jewish people. Shortly after Ferrer's appearance at the most Christian court, the regent Donna Catalina, the Infante Don Ferdinand, and the apostate Paul Burgensis de Santa Maria, in the name of the child-king, Juan II, issued an edict of twenty-four articles (January 12th, 1412), the aim of which was to impoverish and humiliate the Jews, and reduce them to the lowest grade in the social scale. It ordered that they should live in special Jew-quarters (Juderias), provided with not more than one gate each, under pain of confiscation of fortune and personal chastisement. No handicraft was to be exercised by them; they were not to practice the healing art, nor transact business with Christians. It goes without saying that they were forbidden to hire Christian servants and fill public offices. Their judicial autonomy was abolished, not only in criminal cases, in which they had long ceased to exercise it, but also in civil disputes. The edict prescribed a special costume for the Jews. Both men and women were to wear long garments, in the case of males, of coarse stuffs. Whoever dressed in the national costume, or in fine materials, became liable to a heavy fine; on a repetition of the offense, to corporal punishment and confiscation of property. The wearing of the red Jew badge was, of course, insisted upon. Males were prohibited from shaving the beard or cutting the hair under pain of one hundred lashes. No Jew was to be addressed, either in conversation or in writing, by the title "Don," to the infringement of which a heavy fine was also attached. They were interdicted from carrying weapons, and might no longer move from town to town, but were to be fixed to one place of abode. The Jew detected in an evasion of the latter restriction was to lose his entire property, and be made a bondman of the king. Grandees and burghers were sternly enjoined to afford not the slightest protection to Jews.
It is not unwarrantable to assume the influence of the apostate Paul de Santa Maria in the details of these Jew-hating laws. They singled out the most sensitive features of the Jewish character, pride and sense of honor. Wealthy Jews, in the habit of appearing in magnificent attire and with smoothly-shaven chins, were now to don a disfiguring costume, and go about with stubbly, ragged beards. The cultivated, who as physicians and advisers of the grandees had enjoyed unrestricted intercourse with the highest ranks, were to confine themselves to their Jew quarter, or be baptized, baptism being the hoped-for result of all these cruel restrictions, enforced with merciless vigor. A contemporary writer (Solomon Alami) describes the misery caused by the edict: "Inmates of palaces were driven into wretched nooks, and dark, low huts. Instead of rustling apparel we were obliged to wear miserable clothes, which drew contempt upon us. Prohibited from shaving the beard, we had to appear like mourners. The rich tax-farmers sank into want, for they knew no trade by which they could gain a livelihood, and the handicraftsmen found no custom. Starvation stared everyone in the face. Children died on their mothers' knees from hunger and exposure."
Amid this tribulation the Dominican Ferrer invaded the synagogues, crucifix in hand, preached Christianity in a voice of thunder, offering his hearers enjoyment of life and opportunities of preferment, or threatening damnation here and hereafter. The Christian populace, inflamed by the passionate eloquence of the preacher, emphasized his teaching by violent assaults on the Jews. The trial was greater than the unhappy Castilian Jews could bear. Flight was out of the question, for the law forbade it under a terrible penalty. It is not surprising, then, that the weak and lukewarm among them, the comfort-loving and worldly-minded, succumbed to the temptation, and saved themselves by baptism. Many Jews in the communities of Valladolid, Zamora, Salamanca, Toro, Segovia, Avila, Benavente, Leon, Valencia, Burgos, Astorga, and other small towns, in fact, wherever Vincent Ferrer preached, went over to Christianity. Several synagogues were turned into churches by Ferrer. In the course of his four months' sojourn (December, 1412-March, 1413) in the kingdom of Castile, this proselyte-monger inflicted wounds upon the Jews from which they bled to death.
When, however, he repaired to the kingdom of Aragon—summoned thither to advise on the rival claims of several pretenders to the throne—and when through his exertion the Castilian Infante, Don Ferdinand, was awarded the Aragonese crown (June, 1414), a trifling improvement took place in the condition of the Castilian Jews. The regent, Donna Catalina, issued a new edict in the name of her son (17th July). In this document the Jews were still interdicted the exercise of handicrafts, but were allowed, under a multitude of conditions, to visit markets with their merchandise. The prohibition to hire Christian or Mahometan domestics was confirmed; but, on the other hand, the employment of day-laborers and gardeners for the fields and vineyards of Jews, and shepherds for their flocks, was permitted. The new law triflingly allowed Jews to trim their hair and to clip with shears, but not entirely remove, their beards; a fringe of hair was ordered to be left on the chin, and shaving with the razor was forbidden, as though the queen-regent and her sage counselors were anxious that Jewish orthodoxy should not be wronged. The new decree conceded the wearing of dress materials of a value of sixty maravedis (under the former edict the value had been fixed at half this sum), but imposed a funnel-shaped head-covering, to which it was forbidden to attach tassels. The vehemence with which the edict declaimed against the ostentation of Jewish women disclosed its female authorship. Under this decree, freedom of domicile was once more accorded to Jews. It is noteworthy that the new edict applied only to Jews, whereas its predecessor restricted Mahometans as well.
With the transfer of the fanatical Ferrer to Aragon, the communities of that kingdom began to experience trials and misfortunes. The newly-elected king, Don Ferdinand, owed his crown to Ferrer, for as arbitrator between the rival pretenders he had warmly espoused his cause, proclaimed him king, and united the populace in his favor. Ferdinand consequently paid exceptional veneration to his saintliness, appointed him his father-confessor and spiritual adviser, and granted him his every wish. Foremost among Ferrer's aspirations was the conversion of the Jews, and to advance it the king commanded the Jews of Aragon to give every attention to his discourses. The zealous proselytizer made a tour of the kingdom, vehemently denouncing the Jews in every town he visited. His intimidations succeeded in converting a large number, particularly in Saragossa, Daroca, Tortosa, Valencia, and Majorca. Altogether Ferrer's mission to the Jews of Castile and Aragon is said to have resulted in not less than 20,500 forced baptisms.
This, however, did not end the woes of Spanish Jews. Pope Benedict XIII had still worse troubles in store for them, employing as his instrument his newly-baptized Jewish physician, Joshua Lorqui, otherwise Geronimo de Santa Fé. This pope, deposed by the council of Pisa as schismatic, heretic and forsworn, deprived of his spiritual functions and put under the ban, projected the conversion of the entire body of Jews in Spain to the church, at that time the object of universal opprobrium. On the Pyrenean peninsula he was still regarded as the legitimate pope, and from this base of operations he used every effort to procure a general acknowledgment of his authority. He was not slow to perceive that the general conversion of the Jews would powerfully assist his design. If it were vouchsafed to him to overcome at last the obstinacy, blindness and infidelity of Israel, and to bring it under the sovereignty of the cross—would it not be the greatest triumph for the church and for himself? Would it not put all his enemies to shame? Would not the faithful range themselves under the pope who had so glorified the church? What better proof could he give that he was the only true pontiff?
To promote this scheme, Benedict, by the authority of the king, Don Ferdinand, summoned (towards the end of 1412) the most learned rabbis and students of Scripture in the kingdom of Aragon to a religious disputation at Tortosa. The apostate Joshua Lorqui, who was well read in Jewish literature, was to prove to the Jews, out of the Talmud itself, that the Messiah had come in the person of Jesus. The design was to operate on the most prominent Jews, the papal court being convinced that, their conversion effected, the rank and file would follow of their own accord. Geronimo carefully selected the names of those to be invited, and the pope or the king attached a punishment to their non-attendance. What were the Jews to do? To come or to remain away, to accept or to refuse, was equally dangerous. About twenty-two of the most illustrious Aragonese Jews answered the summons. At their head was Don Vidal ben Benveniste Ibn-Labi (Ferrer), of Saragossa, a scion of the old Jewish nobility, a man of consideration and culture, a physician and neo-Hebrew poet. Among his companions were Joseph Albo, of Monreal, a disciple of Chasdaï Crescas, distinguished for his philosophic learning and genuine piety; Serachya Halevi Saladin, of Saragossa, translator of an Arabic philosophic work; Matathias Yizhari (En Duran?), of the same town, also a polished writer; Astruc Levi, of Daroca, a man of position; Bonastruc Desmaëstre, whose presence was most desired by the pope, because he was learned and distinguished; the venerable Don Joseph, of the respected Ibn-Yachya family, and others of lesser note.
Although the Jewish notables summoned to the disputation were men of liberal education, and Don Vidal even spoke Latin fluently, none of them possessed that stout-heartedness and force of character which impress even the most vindictive enemy, and which Nachmani so conspicuously displayed when alone he encountered two of the bitterest adversaries of Judaism—the Dominican General De Penyaforte and the apostate Pablo Christiani. A succession of humiliations and persecutions had broken the manhood of even the proudest in Jewry, and had transformed all into weaklings. They were no match for perilous times. When Benedict's summons reached them, they trembled. They agreed to act with circumspection and calmness, not to interrupt their opponent, and, above all, to be united and harmonious, but they disregarded these resolutions, exposed their weakness, and eventually broke up into factions, each of which took its own course.
Duly commissioned by his schismatic master, the renegade Geronimo drew up a program. In the first place, proofs were to be adduced from the Talmud and cognate writings that the Messiah had already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The papal court flattered itself that this would bring about widespread conversion of the Jews, but, in case of failure, there was to follow a war of extermination against the Talmud on account of the abominations it contained, and the support it afforded the Jews in their blindness. Geronimo de Santa Fé accordingly composed a treatise on the Messianic character and Divinity of Jesus as illustrated in Jewish sacred writings. He collected all the specious arguments, the sophistries and text twistings which his predecessors had developed from their obscure, senseless, Scriptural interpretations, added nonsense of his own, declared playful Agadic conceits to be essential articles of faith, and refuted Jewish views of the questions discussed. He enumerated twenty-four conditions of the coming of the Messiah, and exerted himself to show that they had all been fulfilled in Jesus. His fundamental contention was that the Christians constituted the true Israel, that they had succeeded the Jewish people in Divine favor, and that the Biblical terms, mountain, tent, temple, house of God, Zion and Jerusalem were allegorical references to the church. An instance of his ridiculous arguments may be mentioned. Like John of Valladolid, he saw in the irregular formation of a letter in a word in Isaiah a deep mystery, indicating the virginity of Mary, and the realization of the Messianic period by the advent of Jesus. From another prophetic verse he expounded the immaculate conception of Jesus in so indecent a manner that it is impossible to repeat his explanation. This treatise, which blended the Patristic and the Rabbinic spirit, having been examined by the pope and his cardinals, was ordered to serve as the theme of the disputation.
No more remarkable controversy was ever held. It occupied sixty-eight sittings, and extended, with few interruptions, over a year and nine months (from February, 1413, until the 12th November, 1414). In the foreground stands a pope, abandoned by almost the whole of Christendom, and hunted from his seat, anxious for a favorable issue, not for the glorification of the faith, but for his own temporal advancement; by his side, a baptized Jew, combating Rabbinical Judaism with Rabbinical weapons; and in the background, a frenzied Dominican preacher with his escort of flagellants, promoting a persecution of the Jews to give force to the conversionist zeal of Tortosa. The helpless, bewildered Jews could only turn their eyes to heaven, for on earth they found themselves surrounded by bitter enemies. When, at their first audience with Pope Benedict (6th February, 1413), they were asked to give their names for registration, they were seized with terror; they imagined their lives in jeopardy. The pope quieted them with the explanation that it was only a customary formality. On the whole he treated them at first with kindness and affability, the usual attitude of princes of the church when they have an end to attain. He assured them that no harm would befall them; that he had summoned them merely to ascertain whether there was any truth in Geronimo's statement that the Talmud attested the Messianic character of Jesus, and he promised them the fullest freedom of speech. At the end of the first audience he dismissed them graciously, assigned quarters to each of the notables, and gave instructions that their comfort should be cared for. A few prophesied from this friendly reception a successful issue for themselves and their cause, but they knew little of Rome and the vicegerents of God.
A few days later the disputation began. When the Jewish notables entered the audience hall, they were awe-struck by the splendor of the scene: Pope Benedict, on an elevated throne, clad in his state robes; around him the cardinals and princes of the church, resplendent in jeweled vestments; beyond them nearly a thousand auditors of the highest ranks. The little knot of defenders of Judaism trembled before this imposing and confident array of the forces of Christianity. The pope himself presided, and opened the sitting with an address to the Jews. He informed them that the truth of neither Judaism nor Christianity was to be called into question, for the Christian faith was above discussion and indisputable, and Judaism had once been true, but had been abrogated by the later dispensation. The disputation would be confined to the single question, whether the Talmud recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The Jews were consequently limited to mere defense. At a sign from the pope, the convert Geronimo stood forth, and, after a salutation of the papal toe, delivered himself of a long-winded harangue, abounding in Christian, Jewish, and even scholastic subtleties, and full of praise of the magnanimity and graciousness of the pope in endeavoring to bring the Jews into the way of salvation. His text, applied to the Jews, was a verse from Isaiah: "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword"—which disclosed the final argument of the church. In reply, Vidal Benveniste, who had been elected spokesman by the notables, delivered a speech in Latin, which evoked a compliment from the pope. Don Vidal exposed Geronimo's malignity in threatening the sword and other punishments before the arguments on either side were heard. The pope acknowledged the justice of the reproof, and said in extenuation that Geronimo had still the boorishness derived from his Jewish origin. The notables plucked up courage to petition the pope to release them from further controversy, giving as their reason that their opponent employed scholastic methods of reasoning, in which it was impossible for them to follow him, as their faith was founded not on syllogisms but on tradition. The pope naturally declined to accede to this request, but invited them to continue the discussion on the following day, and had them escorted to their quarters by officers of high rank.
Overwhelmed with anxiety, the Jewish notables and the entire community of Tortosa assembled in the synagogue to implore help of Him who had so often stood by their fathers in their hours of need, and to pray that acceptable words might be put into their mouths, so that by no chance expression they should provoke the wild beasts seeking to devour them. Serachya Halevi Saladin gave expression to the gloomy feelings of the congregation in his sermon.
For a time the controversy retained its friendly character. Geronimo quoted obscure Agadic passages from the Talmud and other Hebrew writings to establish his astounding contention that the Talmud attests that Jesus was the Messiah. Generally the pope presided at the disputations, but occasionally grave matters affecting his own position necessitated his absence. The maintenance of his dignity was threatened by the convening of the council of Constance by the Christian princes, which constituted itself the supreme court in the conflict between the three popes. Consequently, Benedict had to hold frequent consultations with his friends. On these occasions, his place was taken by the general of the Dominicans or the chamberlain of the papal palace. The proofs adduced by Geronimo in support of his statements were so absurd that it should have been easy for the Jewish delegates to refute them. But their words were wilfully misinterpreted, so that in several instances it was recorded in the protocol that they had conceded the point under discussion. A few of them consequently committed their refutations to writing; but they still met with arbitrary treatment. Some points raised by them were condemned as not pertinent to the discussion. The Jewish delegates, who had entered on the controversy with unwilling hearts, were exhausted by the talking and taunting, and were anxious to avoid retort. Suddenly the pope threw aside his mask of friendliness, and showed his true disposition by threatening them with death. Sixty-two days the war of tongues had lasted, and the representatives of Judaism showed no sign of their much-hoped-for conversion. Their power of resistance appeared to grow with the battle. So, in the sixty-third sitting, the pope changed his tactics. At his command Geronimo now came forward as the censor of the Talmud, accusing it of containing all kinds of abominations, blasphemy, immorality and heresy, and demanding its condemnation. A few new-Christians, among them Andreas Beltran (Bertrand) of Valencia, the pope's almoner, valiantly seconded this demand.
Geronimo had prepared, at the instance of the pope, a treatise with this purpose in view. He had collected all the extravagances accidentally uttered by one or two of the hundreds of Agadists figuring in the Talmud. Shameless malice or ignorance dictated manifestly false accusations against the Talmud. Thus, he stated that it permitted the beating of parents, blasphemy, and idolatry, also the breaking of oaths, provided that on the previous Day of Atonement the precaution had been taken to declare them invalid. Conscientiousness in respect to oaths and vows he thus construed as perfidy, and, like Nicholas-Donin, drew the conclusion that the Jews did not fulfill their obligations towards Christians. Of course, he revived the calumny of Alfonso of Valladolid, that the Jews cursed the Christians in their daily prayers. Every inimical reference in the Talmud to heathens or Jewish Christians, Geronimo interpreted as applying to Christians, a fabrication with disastrous consequences, inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews repeated these deadly charges without further inquiry. When the attacks on the Talmud unexpectedly became the subject of discussion, the Jewish representatives defended the arraigned points, but were so hard pressed that they split up into two parties. Don Astruc Levi handed in a written declaration, setting forth that he ascribed no authority to the Agadic sentences quoted incriminating the Talmud; that he held them as naught, and renounced them. The majority of the notables supported him. To save the life of the whole they sacrificed a limb. Joseph Albo and Ferrer (Don Vidal) alone maintained their ground, declaring that the Talmudic Agada was a competent authority, and that the equivocal passages had a different meaning from that ascribed to them, and were not to be interpreted literally. So the machinations of the pope and his creatures had at least succeeded in bringing about a division in the ranks of the defenders of Judaism.
The principal object of the disputation—the conversion of the Jews en masse through the example of their most prominent leaders—was not attained. All the means employed failed—the benignant reception, the threats of violence, the attack on Jewish convictions. An expedient, calculated entirely for effect, had also been tried, which, it was thought, would so mortify the notables that, dazed and overwhelmed, they would throw down their arms and surrender at discretion. The fanatical proselytizer Vincent Ferrer had returned from Majorca to Catalonia and Aragon, and, surrounded by his terror-inspiring band of flagellants, had renewed his mission to the Jews, amid dismal chants and fiery exhortations to embrace the cross. Again he succeeded in winning over many thousands to Christianity. In the great Jewish communities of Saragossa, Calatajud, Daroca, Fraga and Barbastro, the conversions were limited to individuals; but smaller congregations, such as those of Alcañiz, Caspe, Maella, Lerida, Alcolea and Tamarite, hemmed in by hostile Christians, who spared neither limb nor life, went over in a body to Christianity. All these proselytes were gradually brought, in small and large troops, to Tortosa, and conducted, at the order of the pope, into the audience hall, where, before the entire assembly, they made public profession of the Christian faith. Living trophies, they were intended to shadow forth the impending victory of the church, dishearten the defenders of Judaism, and press upon them the conviction that, as in their absence the Jewish communities were melting away, all resistance on their part was in vain. It is no small merit that Don Vidal, Joseph Albo, Astruc Levi, and their companions refused to yield to the pressure. The pope saw his hopes shattered. Not a single notable wavered, and conversions of large masses did not take place. The great communities of Aragon and Catalonia remained true to their faith, with the exception of a few weaklings, amongst them some relations of Vidal Benveniste. The council of Constance would soon meet, and Benedict would be unable to appear before it as the triumphant conqueror of Judaism—would have no special claim to preference over the other two competing popes.
In his disappointment he vented his spleen on the Talmud and the already restricted liberties of the Jews. At the last sitting of the disputation he dismissed the Jewish notables with black looks, from which they easily divined his evil intentions. Various obstacles prevented him from putting them into force for six months, when (May 11th, 1415) they were embodied in a bull of eleven clauses. The Jews were forbidden to study or teach the Talmud and Talmudic literature; all copies of the Talmud were to be sought out and confiscated. Anti-Christian works, written by Jews, especially one entitled "Mar Mar Jesu," were not to be read under pain of punishment for blasphemy. Every community, whether large or small, was prohibited from possessing more than one simple, poorly appointed synagogue. The Jews were to be strictly separated from Christians, were not to eat, bathe, or do business with them. They were to occupy no official posts, exercise no handicrafts, not even practice medicine. The wearing of the red or yellow Jew badge was also enjoined by this bull. Finally, all Jews were to be forced to hear Christian sermons three times a year—during Advent, at Easter, and in the summer. In the first sermon the Prophets and the Talmud were to be used to prove that the true Messiah had come; in the second, their attention was to be directed to the abominations and heresies contained, according to Geronimo's treatise, in the Talmud, alone responsible for their infidelity; and in the third it was to be impressed upon them that the destruction of the temple and the dispersion of the Hebrew people had been predicted by the founder of Christianity. At the close of each sermon the bull was to be read aloud. The strict execution of this malignant edict was confided by the pope to Gonzalo de Santa Maria, son of the apostate Paul, who had been taken over to Christianity by his father.
Fortunately, the vindictive schemes of Pope Benedict never came into active operation. While he was still engaged in tormenting the Jews, the council of Constance decreed his deposition. As he had obstinately opposed the advice of the king, Don Ferdinand, and the German emperor, Sigismund, to lay aside the tiara of his own initiative, he was abandoned by his Spanish protectors. The weapons he had employed recoiled upon himself. His last adherents were drawn from him by Vincent Ferrer's fanatical preaching. The flagellant priest not only exhorted the king of Aragon to renounce "this unfrocked and spurious pope," but he held forth everywhere—in the churches and the open streets—that "a man like this pope deserves to be pursued to death by every right-thinking Christian." Deserted by his protectors, his friends, and even his protégés, there now remained to Pedro de Luna, of all his possessions, only the small fortress of Peñiscola, and even here King Ferdinand, urged on by Santa Maria, the pope's creature, threatened him with a siege. In the end this ambitious and obstinate man covered himself with ridicule by attempting to continue to play the part of pope in his tiny palace. He appointed a college of four cardinals, and pledged them before his death not to recognize the pope elected at Constance, but to choose a successor from among their own body. When he died, his college elected two popes instead of one. Such was the infallibility of the church, into the pale of which it was sought to force the Jews. What became of the malicious apostate, Joshua Lorqui-Geronimo de Santa Fé, after the fall of his master, is not known. In Jewish circles he was remembered by the well-earned sobriquet of "The Calumniator" (Megadef). King Ferdinand of Aragon, who had always allowed himself to be influenced by enemies of the Jews, died in 1416. His death was followed, after a short interval, by that of the Jew-hating regent, Catalina of Castile, the instrument of Vincent's Jew-hunt (1418), and finally by that of Vincent himself (1419), who had the mortification to see the flagellant movement, to which he owed his saintly reputation, condemned by the council of Constance, he himself being compelled to disband his "white troop."
Although the chief persecutors of the Jews had disappeared, the unhappy conditions created by them remained. The exclusive laws of Castile and the bull of Pope Benedict were still in force. Ferrer's proselytizing campaigns had severely crippled the Spanish, and even foreign communities. In Portugal alone they met with no success. The Portuguese ruler, Don João I, had other interests to pursue than the conversion of Jews. He was then occupied in that first conquest on the coast of Africa, opposite to Portugal, which laid the foundation of the subsequent maritime supremacy of the Portuguese. When Vincent Ferrer petitioned King João for permission to come to Portugal in order to make the pulpits and streets resound with his dismal harangues on the sinfulness of the world and the blindness and obstinacy of the Jews, the Portuguese king informed him that he "might come, but with a crown of red-hot iron on his head." Portugal was the only refuge on the Pyrenean peninsula from the proselytizing rage of the flagellant preacher, and many Spanish Jews who had the means of escaping fled thither. Don Judah Ibn Yachya-Negro, held in high esteem by King João I, and, perhaps, appointed by him chief rabbi of Portugal, represented to him the horrors of enforced baptism, and the necessary insincerity of the professions of unwilling converts. The king consequently issued his commands that the immigrant new-Christians should not be interfered with or delivered up to Spain.
In other parts of Europe, where the fanatical Dominican had been, or whither reports of his deeds or misdeeds had penetrated, the Jews were forced to drain the cup of bitterness to the dregs. In Savoy, which Vincent Ferrer had visited, they were obliged to hide themselves with their holy books in mountain caves. In Germany, persecutions of Jews had always found a congenial soil, and they were promoted by the anarchy which prevailed during the reign of Sigismund and the sessions of the council of Constance. Even the Italian communities, though for the most part undisturbed, lived in continual anxiety, lest the movement strike a responsive chord in their politically distracted land. They convened a great synod, first at Bologna, then at Forli (1416–1418), to consider what measures might be adopted to avert the threatened danger.
Happily, at this moment, after a long schism, bitter strife and a plurality of anti-popes, the council of Constance elected a pope, who, though full of dissimulation, was not the most degraded in the college of cardinals. Martin V, who was said by his contemporaries to have appeared simple and good before his election, but to have shown himself afterwards very clever and not very kind, received the Jews with scant courtesy when, during his progress through Constance, they approached him carrying lighted tapers in festive procession, and offered him the Torah with a prayer for the confirmation of their sufferance. From his white palfrey with silk and gold trappings he answered them: "You have the law, but understand it not. The old has passed away, and the new been found." (The blind finding fault with the seeing.) Yet he treated them with leniency. At the request of Emperor Sigismund, he confirmed the privileges granted to the Jews of Germany and Savoy by the preceding emperor, Rupert, denouncing attacks on their persons and property, and the practice of converting them by force. The emperor, who may be accused of thoughtlessness but not of a spirit of persecution, thereupon issued his commands to all the German princes and magistrates, cities and subjects, to allow his "servi cameræ" the full enjoyment of the privileges and immunities which had been given them by the pope (February 26th, 1418). A deputation of Jews, commissioned by the Italian synod, also waited upon the now generally acknowledged pope, and craved his protection. Even the Spanish Jews appear to have dispatched an embassy to him, consisting of two of their most distinguished men, Don Samuel Abrabanel and Don Samuel Halevi. When the Jews complained of the insecurity of their lives, the attacks on their religious convictions, and the frequent desecration of their sanctuaries, the pope issued a bull (January 31st, 1419), with the following preamble:
"Whereas the Jews are made in the image of God, and a remnant of them will one day be saved, and whereas they have besought our protection, following in the footsteps of our predecessors we command that they be not molested in their synagogues; that their laws, rights, and customs be not assailed; that they be not baptized by force, constrained to observe Christian festivals, nor to wear new badges, and that they be not hindered in their business relations with Christians."
What could have induced Pope Martin to show such friendly countenance to the Jews? Probably he had some idea of checkmating by this means the Jew-hating Benedict, who still played at being pope in his obscure corner. The principal consideration probably was the rich gifts with which the Jewish representatives approached him. Although at the council of Constance no cardinal was poorer than Martin, and his election was in great measure owing to this fact, on the throne of St. Peter he showed no aversion to money. On the contrary, everything might be obtained from him if money were paid down; without it, nothing.
The Hussite Heresy—Consequences for the Jews involved in the Struggle—Jacob Mölin—Abraham Benveniste and Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob in the Service of the Castilian Court—Isaac Campanton, the Poet Solomon Dafiera—Moses Da Rieti—Anti-Christian Polemical Literature—Chayim Ibn-Musa—Simon Duran and his Son Solomon—Joseph Albo as a Religious Philosopher—Jewish Philosophical Systems—Edict of the Council of Basle against the Jews—Fanatical Outbreaks in Majorca—Astruc Sibili and his Conversion to Christianity.
1420–1442 C.E.
Meanwhile history received a fresh impulse, which, although coming from weak hands, produced a forward movement. The spreading corruption in the church, the self-deifying arrogance of the popes and the licentiousness of priests and monks revolted the moral sense of the people, opened their eyes, and encouraged them to doubt the very foundations of the Roman Catholic system. No improvement could be expected from the princes of the church, the jurists and diplomatists who met in council at Constance to deliberate on a scheme of thorough reform. They had only a worldly object in view, seeking to gloss over the prevailing rottenness by transferring the papal power to the high ecclesiastics, substituting the rule of an aristocratic hierarchy for papal absolutism. A Czech priest, John Huss, of Prague, inspired by the teachings of Wycliffe, spoke the magic word that loosened the bonds in which the church had ensnared the minds of men. "Not this or that pope," he said in effect, "but the papacy and the entire organization of the Catholic church constitute the fundamental evil from which Christendom is suffering." The flames to which the council of Constance condemned this courageous priest only served to light up the truth he had uttered. They fired a multitude in Bohemia, who entered on a life and death struggle with Catholicism. Whenever a party in Christendom opposes itself to the ruling church, it assumes a tinge of the Old Testament, not to say Jewish, spirit. The Hussites regarded Catholicism, not unjustly, as heathenism, and themselves as Israelites, who must wage holy war against Philistines, Moabites, and Ammonites. Churches and monasteries were to them the sanctuaries of a dissolute idolatry, temples to Baal and Moloch and groves of Ashtaroth, to be consumed with fire and sword. The Hussite war, although largely due to the mutual race-hatred of Czechs and Germans, and to religious indignation, began in a small way the work of clearing the church doctrine of its mephitic elements.
For the Jews, this movement was decidedly calamitous, the responsibility for which must rest, not with the wild Hussites, but with the Catholic fanaticism stirred up against the new heresy. The former went little beyond denunciations of Jewish usury; at the most, sacked Jewish together with Catholic houses. Of special Hussite hostility to the Jews no evidence is forthcoming. On the other hand, Catholics accused Jews of secretly supplying the Hussites with money and arms; and in the Bavarian towns near the Böhmerwald, they persecuted them unmercifully as friends and allies of the heretics. The Dominicans—the "army of anti-Christ" as they were called—included the Jews in their fierce pulpit denunciations of the Hussites, and inflamed the people and princes against them. The crusades against the Hussites, like those against the Mahometans and Waldenses, commenced with massacres of Jews. Revived fanaticism first affected the Jews in Austria—a land which, like Spain, passed from liberal tolerance of Jews to persecution, and in bigotry approximated so close to the Iberian kingdom that it ultimately joined it. The mind of Archduke Albert, an earnest and well-intentioned prince, was systematically filled with hatred against the "enemies of God." Fable after fable was invented, which, devoid even of originality, sufficed to drive to extreme measures a man of pure character, ignorant of the lying devices of the Jew-haters. Three Christian children went skating in Vienna; the ice broke through, and they were drowned. When the anxious parents failed to find them, a malicious rumor was set on foot that they had been slaughtered by Jews, who required their blood for the ensuing Passover celebration. Then a Jew was charged with a crime calculated to incense the populace to a still greater degree. The wife of the sacristan of Enns was said to have purloined the consecrated host from the church, and sold it to a wealthy Jew named Israel, who had sent it to a large number of Jewish communities in and out of Austria. The charges of Jewish murders of Christian children and Jewish profanations of hosts had not lost their charm in the fifteenth century, and their inventors could calculate their effect with accuracy. By order of the archduke, the sacristan's wife and her two accomplices or seducers, Israel and his wife, were brought to Vienna, examined, and forced to confess. The records of the case are silent as to the means employed to obtain the avowal of guilt; but the procedure of mediæval Christendom in such trials is well known.
Archduke Albert issued the order that in the early morning of the 23d May, 1420 (10th Sivan), all the Jews in his realm should be thrown into prison, and this was promptly done. The moneyed Jews were stripped of their possessions, and the poor forthwith banished the country. In the gaols, wives were separated from their husbands, and children from their parents. When from helplessness they fell to hopelessness, Christian priests came to them with crosses in their hands and honeyed words on their lips to convert them. A few of the poorer-spirited saved their lives by accepting baptism. The more resolute slew themselves and their kinsfolk by opening their veins with straps, cords, or whatever they found to hand. The spirit of the survivors was broken by the length and cruelty of their imprisonment. Their children were taken from them, and immured in cloisters. Still they remained firm, and on the 13th March (9th Nisan), 1421, after nearly a year's confinement, they were committed to the flames. In Vienna alone more than a hundred perished in one field near the Danube. Another order was then issued by Archduke Albert, forbidding Jews to stay thenceforth in Austria.
The converts proved no gain to the church. The majority seized the first opportunity of emigrating and relapsing into Judaism. They bent their steps to Bohemia, rendered tolerant by the Hussite schism, or northwards to Poland and southwards to Italy. How attached the Austrian Jews were to their religion is shown by the conduct of one clever youth. Having received baptism, he had become the favorite of Duke Frederick, afterwards the German emperor, but, although living in luxury, he was seized with remorse for his apostasy, and boldly expressed his desire to return to Judaism. Frederick exerted himself to dissuade his favorite from this idea. He begged, entreated, and even threatened him; he sent a priest to advise him; all, however, in vain. Finally, the duke handed the "obstinate heretic and backslider" over to the ecclesiastical authorities, who condemned him to the stake. Unfettered and with a Hebrew song on his lips the Jewish youth mounted the scaffold.
In the meantime, the devastating war broke out between the fierce Hussites and the not less barbarous Roman Catholics, between the Czechs and the Germans. A variety of nationalities participated in the sanguinary struggle as to the use of the cup by the laity in the eucharist. Emperor Sigismund, who found it impossible to subdue the insurrection with his own troops, summoned the imperial army to his standard. Wild free-lances, men of Brabant and Holland, were taken into his pay. From all quarters armed troops poured into the Bohemian valleys and against the capital, Prague, where the blind hero, Zisca, bade defiance to a world of foes. On the way, the German imperial army exhibited its courage by attacks on the defenseless Jews. "We are marching afar," exclaimed the mercenaries, "to avenge our insulted God, and shall those who slew him be spared?" Wherever they came across Jewish communities, on the Rhine, in Thuringia and Bavaria, they put them to the sword, or forced them to apostatize. The crusaders threatened, on their return from victory over the Hussites, to wipe the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Jewish fathers of families true to their faith gave orders that, at a certain signal, their children should be killed to avoid falling into the hands of the bloodthirsty soldiery. Letters of lamentation over the threatened disaster, calling upon him to implore the intervention of heaven, were addressed from far and near to the illustrious rabbi of Mayence, Jacob ben Moses Mölin Halevi (Maharil, born 1365, died 1427), the most pious rabbi of his time. His arrangement of the synagogue ritual and melodies is used to this day in many German communities, and their colonies in Poland and Hungary. Jacob Mölin ordered a general fast, accompanied by fervent prayer, and his instructions were circulated from one community to another throughout the land. The German congregations forthwith assembled for solemn mourning and humiliation, and fasted during four days between New Year and Atonement (8th–11th September, 1421), and for three successive days after Tabernacles, the observance being as strict as on the most sacred fast days of the Jewish calendar. It was a time of feverish tension for the German Jews. In their despair they prayed that victory might be vouchsafed to the Hussites, and it seemed as if their supplications were heard. For, shortly afterwards, the imperial army and its mercenary allies assembled near Saatz were stricken with such terror at the news of Zisca's approach, that they sought safety in disorderly flight, disbanding in all directions, and hurrying home by different routes. Famished and footsore, a few of the very men who had vowed death and extirpation to the Jews, appeared at the doors of their houses, begging for bread, which was gladly given them. Privation had so reduced the fugitives that they could not have harmed a child.
The Dominican clergy commissioned to preach against the Hussites did not cease to foster Catholic hatred of Jews. From their pulpits they thundered against heretics and Jews alike, cautioning the faithful against holding intercourse with them, and consciously and unconsciously inciting to attacks on their persons and property. The Jews flew for help to the pope, Martin V—doubtless not with empty hands—and again obtained a very favorable bull (23d February, 1422), in which Christians were enjoined to remember that their religion had been inherited from Jews, who were necessary for the corroboration of Christian truth. The pope forbade the monks to preach against intercourse between Jews and Christians, and declared null and void the ban with which transgressors had been threatened. He recommended to Catholics a friendly and benevolent attitude towards their Hebrew fellow-citizens, severely denounced violent attacks upon them, and confirmed all the privileges which had from time to time been granted by the papacy. This bull was, however, as ineffectual as the protection which Emperor Sigismund had so solemnly promised the Jews. A persecuting spirit continued to animate the Christian church. The monks did not cease to declaim against the "accursed" Jewish nation; the populace did not refrain from tormenting, injuring and murdering Jews; even succeeding popes ignored the bull, and restored the odious canonical restrictions in all their stringency. Turning a deaf ear to both pope and emperor, the citizens of Cologne expelled the Jewish community, perhaps the oldest in Germany. The exiles took up their abode at Deutz (1426). In the South German towns, Ravensburg, Ueberlingen and Lindau, the Jews were burnt because of a lying blood accusation (1431).
The literary work of the German Jews was, as a consequence, poor and inconsiderable. Anxiety and persecution had deadened their intellect. Even in Talmudical study the German rabbis hardly rose above mediocrity, and gave nothing of consequence to the world. Some rabbis were installed by the reigning prince; at least Emperor Sigismund commissioned one of his Jewish agents, Chayim of Landshut, "to appoint three rabbis (Judenmeister) in Germany." Under such auspices, appointments were probably determined less by merit than by money. For a college, in which students were prepared for the rabbinate, a heavy tax had to be paid, notwithstanding that the instruction was given gratuitously. Besides Jacob Mölin, only one name of importance emerges from the darkness of this period, Menachem of Merseburg, or, as he was generally called, Meïl Zedek. He wrote a comprehensive work on the practice of the Talmudic marriage and civil law, which the Saxon communities adopted for their authoritative guidance. He, at least, departed from the beaten track of his older contemporaries or teachers, Jacob Mölin and Isaac Tyrnau, who attached value to every insignificant detail of the liturgy. By and by Menachem of Merseburg was recognized as an authority, and an excellent regulation drawn up by him received universal assent. Among the Jews at that period, marriages took place at a very early age; girls in their teens were hurried into matrimony. According to Talmudical law a girl, under age, who had been given in marriage by her mother or brothers and not by her father, was permitted, on attaining her majority, in her twelfth year, and even much later under some circumstances, to dissolve her union without further ceremony than a declaration of her intention to do so, or the contracting of another marriage (Miun). Menachem of Merseburg felt the indecency of so sudden and often capricious a dissolution of marriage, and he decided that formal bills of divorce should be required.
The literary achievements of the Spanish Jews during this period were not of a higher character; they exhibited unmistakable signs of decay, notwithstanding that their situation had become more tolerable since the death of the bigoted and wanton queen regent, Catalina, and the fall of the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, and his Jewish accomplices. Don Juan II—or, rather, his favorite, Alvaro de Luna, to whom the management of the state was confided—stood too much in need of the assistance of Jewish financiers during the frequently recurring civil wars and insurrections to do anything to offend them. Hence, during his reign, restrictive laws against the Jews seem to have been enacted only to be broken. Jews were again admitted to public employment, regardless of the fact that such appointments had been sternly forbidden both by kings and popes. An influential Jew, Abraham Benveniste, surnamed Senior, distinguished for his intelligence and wealth, was invested with a high dignity at the court of Don Juan, and was thus in a position to frustrate threatened persecutions of his co-religionists. Also Joseph ben Shem Tob Ibn-Shem Tob, a cultivated and fruitful writer, proficient in philosophic studies, was in the service of the state under Juan II. On the one hand, the cortes did not fail to remind the king that by his father's laws and by papal decrees the Jews were excluded from public offices, and, on the other hand, Pope Eugenius IV, successor to Martin V, strained every effort to humiliate the Jews and harden their lot, even forbidding Don Juan to befriend them; but these representations were of no avail. To the cortes of Burgos the king replied evasively that he would cause an examination to be made of the laws promulgated in regard to the Jews by his father, and of the papal bulls, and he would take care to observe everything calculated to promote the service of God and the welfare of the state. Against the pope's interference with his crown-rights he entered a protest.
This king gave permission to the no less noble than wealthy rabbi, Abraham Benveniste, to hold a meeting of delegates from various communities in the royal palace of Avila (1432). These delegates were to bring harmony into the state of moral and religious disorder caused by the attacks of the masses in 1412–1415. The smaller communities were without teachers, the large ones without rabbis and preachers. Many of them had been reduced to poverty, and the richer members were unwilling to contribute to the support of religious institutions. Evil ways and denunciations by the unscrupulous had acquired the upper hand, because the representative men and the few rabbis did not venture to punish the evildoers. Abraham Benveniste, therefore, framed a statute (the law of Avila), which compelled people to establish schools and colleges, to introduce order into the communities, and to punish miscreants. Juan II confirmed this statute.
The literature of the Spanish Jews, however, was powerless to recover itself. Despite the calm succeeding the storm, it seemed to wither like autumn leaves. The decline was most marked in the department of Talmudic study. After the emigration of Isaac ben Sheshet and the death of Chasdaï Crescas, no Spanish rabbi obtained more than local authority and reputation. The only upholder of the traditions of the rabbinate was Isaac ben Jacob Campanton, who lived to be more than a hundred years old (born 1360, died at Peñafiel 1463); but he produced only one work (Darke ha-Talmud), which exhibited neither genius nor learning. Still, in his day, Campanton passed for the Gaon of Castile. Neo-Hebraic poetry, which had blossomed so profusely on Spanish soil, faded and drooped. Of those who cultivated it during this period only a few are remembered—Solomon Dafiera, Don Vidal Benveniste, the leading speaker on the Jewish side at the disputation of Tortosa, and Solomon Bonfed. The most gifted was the last. He was ambitious to emulate Ibn-Gebirol; but he possessed little more than the sensitiveness and moroseness of his great exemplar, like him imagining himself to be the sport of fortune, with a prescriptive right to lamentation.