It was the month of March in 1492, a year of incomparable moment for Spain, for Europe, and for the world at large. That year witnessed the capitulation of Granada, and the downfall of the Mohammedan Empire in the West; a victory for the Cross which was received with hearty thanksgivings throughout Christendom as a providential compensation for the loss of Constantinople. The same year saw the departure of Christopher Columbus, under the flag of the Spanish monarchs, on that memorable voyage which was to result in a triumph wherein the whole of mankind had reason to rejoice. The same hands which signed those two glorious treaties now affixed their signatures to the edict that banished the Jews from the land in which they had lived longer than their persecutors, which they had loved as much, and adorned more than they.

The end of July was fixed as the limit for their preparations. They were permitted to liquidate their possessions and to carry away the proceeds in bills of exchange, but not in gold or silver, for an existing law forbade the exportation of precious metals from the country. The consequence of the edict was that the Jews were forced to sell or barter away some of their effects at a nominal price, and to leave the greater portion behind them. If contemporary witnesses are to be believed, a house was seen bartered for an ass, and a vineyard for a suit of clothes. In Aragon the property of the Jews was sequestered by the authorities for the benefit of their creditors, and the people constantly reviled for their excessive wealth and usury were found to owe more than they possessed!

The last months of the Jews’ sojourn in Spain were spent by the priests in frantic efforts at conversion. But those who had opposed an adamant firmness to temptation when they had much to lose, could not be expected to yield when reduced to beggary. The consciousness of suffering for the Idea brought with it an exaltation that shed a halo over their misery. This affliction also was a fatherly rod, to be borne with fortitude; an ordeal to be endured as a test of faith; a humiliation that contained in it a promise of future glory. The God of their fathers, who had led them out of the house of bondage and fed them in the wilderness in the days of old, would not suffer his children to perish. The waters would again be divided for them, and the sea made dry land. This last expectation, confidently encouraged by the Rabbis, proved vain when the exiles reached the coast. But failure did not shake the faith of the children of Israel. The severer the martyrdom, the greater the certainty of beatitude. Scattered and scorned though they were, the day would dawn when they would once more be gathered under Jehovah’s parent pinion. The light of Zion still shone in the distance undimmed.

Thus, poor in worldly possessions, but rich in hope; defenceless, yet strong in faith, they journeyed from all parts of the country to the frontiers: the healthy and the sick, old men bending over their staffs, little footsore children tottering by their fathers’ sides, and infants clinging to their mothers’ breasts. Venerable Rabbis and scholars, delicately nurtured maidens, young gentlemen, yesterday proud cavaliers, to-day penniless and broken-spirited paupers—they all dragged their weary limbs in various directions: some north, others south; one group to the east and another to the west. Many a wet eye followed the melancholy processions, and many a warm Spanish heart melted to pity, but no hand was held out to the wanderers, no word of comfort was addressed to them: the fear of God restrained many; the fear of Torquemada more. The time of year added to the sadness of the spectacle. Andalusia was bathing in the exuberant beauty of a Spanish summer; the sky smiled blue and bright overhead, the earth was spangled with flowers beneath, the birds warbled blithely in the trees and bushes, the air was sweet with the scent of orange blossoms; Nature seemed to hold a carnival of joy in mockery of the misery and heartlessness of man.

The banishment of the Jews from England at the close of the thirteenth century was mere child’s play compared with their expulsion from Spain at the close of the fifteenth. The Jews who left England had only been in the country for two centuries; those who now left Spain had lived there more than twelve. The English exiles had borne small part in England’s greatness; the Spanish Jews had served the state in the highest capacities, had won universal fame in art, science and literature, and had become to the rest of the world’s Jewries an exemplar of that harmonious combination of piety with culture which was nowhere, outside Spain, so prominent a feature of mediaeval life. And in quantity as in quality the Spanish banishment far surpassed its English prototype. The exiles from England amounted at most to sixteen thousand; those from Spain were computed at least as one hundred and sixty thousand. Some accounts even raise them to five times that number. It was a movement on a scale comparable only to that of the exodus of Israel from Egypt, with the sole difference that, whereas the Jews had dwelt in Egypt as strangers and bondsmen in the land, in Spain they had become in many respects Spaniards. But the crime, augmented by a similar crime against the Moors, brought its penalty with it. Even accepting the lowest estimate as nearest the correct one, the price in skill, industry and intelligence, which Spain—despite her recent military achievements and her budding power beyond the seas—had to pay for the gratification of her religious fanaticism cannot easily be calculated; but it can be seen to this day. The same yoke which crushed the alien and the infidel could not but cramp the native and the Christian. Freedom of thought, speech, or action was dead. Intellectual culture was soon to be succeeded by monasticism, and material prosperity by mendicity. Meanwhile the value of Ferdinand and Isabella’s Hebrew subjects could not but have been realised immediately on their departure. The Spanish Government, prompted by the Spanish Church, had said to the Jews: “Be baptized or be gone!” The Jews went, and the life of Spain went with them. Stately mansions fell into mossy decay, rich cornfields and vineyards were turned into waste land, busy and populous cities were suddenly silenced as by a magician’s black art. In return, Spain nursed the cold comfort of having served the cause of the gloomy and bloodthirsty monster that the age called God.

Nothing throws a clearer light on the spirit of the times than the comments of contemporary writers on Ferdinand and Isabella’s suicidal policy. The Spanish historians join in a chorus of indiscriminate panegyric; the Spanish poets sing pæans to the triumph of the Faith. Foreign spectators, while deprecating the severity of the methods employed, have nothing but praise for the motive. They all applaud the deed as a sacrifice of temporal to spiritual interests. It is true that Ferdinand’s treasury was the richer for the confiscated property of the Jews. But, though lust for plunder may be regarded as the mainspring of his own policy, it was not the primary motive of the Dominicans, nor had it any share in Isabella’s conduct. This amiable princess has laid her soul bare in the confession: “In the love of Christ and his maiden mother I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms.” The expulsion of the Jews, like the autos-da-fé, was a crime committed principally por amor de Dios.