Twelve thousand of Spanish fugitives sought shelter in Navarre, where, after a few years’ peace, they were again confronted with the alternatives of baptism or banishment. Most of them, worn out with distress and disappointment, adopted Christianity, and some of these converts returned to Spain.

Eighty thousand of the exiles crossed into Portugal and purchased permission to tarry in that kingdom for eight months, preparatory to their departure for Africa. King John II. even connived at the permanent settlement of some of them in the country. But the King’s tolerance was not shared by his subjects. ♦1481♦ John had already been beset with complaints of Jewish cavaliers being suffered to parade the streets mounted on richly caparisoned horses and mules, arrayed in fine cloaks and velvet doublets, and dangling gilt swords at their sides. Under his successor popular hatred obtained the satisfaction which had hitherto been denied to it. King Emanuel, a liberal but deeply enamoured prince, was forced to yield to the wishes of his superstitious betrothed,—the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,—who made the banishment of the Jews a condition of her acceptance of his suit; and he ordered the hapless people to quit his dominions. ♦1495♦ But, as though the measure of Israel’s woes were not yet full, the same King, yielding again to the pressure of love, caused all Jewish children of fourteen years of age and under to be torn from their parents in order to be kept in Portugal, and be reared in the Catholic faith. The scenes of agony which followed this diabolical edict would be revolting beyond endurance, but for their occurrence directly after the autos-da-fé. Many Jewish mothers, mad with grief and despair, slew their darlings with their own hands and then destroyed themselves. A contemporary writer concludes his description of these ghastly events with the characteristic comment: “It was a great mistake in King Emanuel to think of converting to Christianity any Jew old enough to pronounce the name of Moses.” In the writer’s opinion the age limit ought to have been three years.

Many Jews, afraid to face the perils of the unknown, shielded themselves from the storm under the cloak of conversion, and either remained in Portugal or returned to Spain to join the pseudo-converts left there, and for ages after supplied the hounds of the Inquisition with a healthy occupation. The State, of course, aided the Church in her lethal work; for dissent in religion is close akin to dissent in politics, and domestic discord is incompatible with vigorous expansion abroad.

Meanwhile Torquemada’s successor, Deza, surpassed the great Inquisitor in ferocity and energy. One of his confederates, called Lucero, was nicknamed even by his own associates Tenebrero, on account of the darkness and cruelty of his temper, which drove the people of Cordova to revolt. ♦1506♦ Immediately after Cardinal Ximenes became Grand Inquisitor, and, with his predecessor’s fate before his eyes, proved less savage. But what the Inquisition lost in height of iniquity was amply compensated by the extension of its activity over a new field—the vanquished Mohammedans—who were also permitted to choose between baptism and banishment; while the Morescoes, or Moorish converts, were treated in the same manner as the Jewish Marranos.

There were no fewer than thirty-four tracks by which the “foxes” could be run to earth. One of these was the eating of bitter herbs and lettuces at the time of the Passover. Every Christian was virtually a spy and an informer, sometimes unintentionally, more often with deliberate eagerness. Pedigrees were strictly examined, and those found tainted with Jewish blood were cruelly persecuted, or at least treated as social outcasts. Neither moral excellence nor even high position in the Church, accompanied by sincere devotion, was accepted as an expiation for the sin of birth. Detected heretics were punished by imprisonment, by exile, by ruinous fines, and by fire. And yet the pestilent sect, too clever to be convinced by theological reasoning or to betray its want of conviction, survived and flourished in secret—a vast freemasonry of passive unbelievers spreading its crooked subterranean passages in every direction under the very foundations of the Holy Office. Neither the penalties inflicted by the State, nor the tortures, even more terrible, of the Church availed against the treacherous tenacity of the eternal people. Persecution, which goads the brave to heroism, makes hypocrites of the timid; and these Marranos, compelled to pit their cunning against that of the Holy Office, developed all the unlovely qualities of those who lead a double life; who live a daily lie. They were forced to be false either to their God or to themselves. They chose the latter course. They aped their Christian neighbours in demeanour and dialect, participated in religious rites and sacraments which they abhorred, ate food which nauseated them, kissed relics which inspired them with repugnance, and sprinkled themselves with holy water which made them inwardly feel polluted. But the sad and sordid comedy could not always be maintained. The voice of conscience occasionally proved too strong even for the instinct of self-preservation, and many a Marrano ended a miserable life by a noble martyrdom. Again, the power of the blood, sometimes in the second or third generation, asserted itself, and the child or the grandchild of a convert, though he might be a priest or a monk, reverted to the faith of his fathers.

The pseudo-converts of Portugal fared no better. In 1506 they were massacred, and their women were dishonoured in great numbers at Lisbon and in the open country. ♦About 1524♦ In the midst of these tribulations they heard of David Reubeni, who had arisen in the East to fulfil the ancient prophecies, and to bring about the ever-expected and ever-deferred liberation of Israel. David came over to Europe, declaring himself to be the brother of a Jewish prince reigning in Arabia, sent to solicit the Pope’s assistance for a holy war against the Mohammedans. Clement VII., a Pontiff too mediocre to excel in virtue or in fanaticism, yet an adroit diplomat, received the envoy in audience, and treated him with great distinction. David was acclaimed by the Roman and other Jews with enthusiasm, and was finally invited by the King of Portugal to his Court, whither he set sail in a ship flying a Jewish flag. At Lisbon David met with a magnificent reception on the part of the King and with frenetic applause on the part of the Marranos, who saw in him the promised Redeemer and the future King of Israel. But he was soon after expelled from Portugal, owing to the relapse into Judaism of a young Marrano visionary, Diogo Pires by name.

This “new-Christian,” excited by David’s mission, underwent circumcision and received mysterious and wonderful messages from heaven. He assumed the name of Solomon Molcho and fled to Turkey, where he was welcomed with open arms by his co-religionists at Salonica and Adrianople, communicated his Cabbalistic hallucinations through Eastern and Central Europe, ♦1530♦ preached the pleasures of martyrdom, visited Rome, in obedience to a divine vision, and made himself supremely ridiculous by prophesying multifarious calamities to the Eternal City. After an unsuccessful effort to win over the King of Portugal and Charles V., Solomon proceeded to Venice in order to secure the favour of that Republic, and there he narrowly escaped the effects of a poisoned draught administered to him by a brother-Jew. In the meantime some of his predictions, strangely enough, had come true. Rome was sacked by the Imperial troops and devastated by a flood, Lisbon was ruined by earthquakes, and a brilliant comet announced the approaching end of the world. Thereupon Solomon returned to Rome, where the Pope honoured him as a true, if mournful, prophet. But, whilst in Rome, he had another narrow escape—this time from the claws of the Inquisition—and was spirited away by the friendly Pope in the dead of night, only to fall into them next year at Mantua. ♦1532♦ There at last the poor self-deluded Messiah was accorded the crown of martyrdom which he had so ardently coveted. He was burnt alive. Solomon’s followers long refused to believe that he was dead; cherishing hopes of his miraculous escape and re-appearance. But he was dead in earnest.

David Reubeni was denied even this last honour. The Emperor Charles handed him over to the Spanish Holy Office, in the vaults of which he languished for three years and was finally killed in an obscure manner. An uncharitable and uncritical world has branded Solomon as a fool and David as a rogue. Nothing fails like failure. If an unsuccessful patriot is called an adventurer and an unsuccessful financier a swindler, an unsuccessful Messiah must submit to be stigmatised as an impostor.

Not many years afterwards the Inquisition was erected in Portugal at the instigation of Ignatius Loyola, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century there occurred at Lisbon an event which supplied it with a fresh excuse for persecution. A Franciscan monk of noble descent, Diogo by name, declared that by reading the Bible he came to the conclusion that Judaism and not Christianity was the true religion. Diogo was thrown into a dungeon; but, as he freely confessed his guilt, there seemed to be no occasion for torture. However, monks have seldom been governed by lay logic. Diogo was put to the rack in order to betray his accomplices. ♦1603♦ After two years of torture, varied with theological discussion, he was burnt at the stake in the presence of a large concourse of people, including the Regent. Diogo’s example invigorated the courage of the Portuguese crypto-Jews and caused many to denounce Christianity openly, regardless of consequences. Diogo’s martyrdom was celebrated by a young Jewish poet who, however, escaped the crown which his enthusiasm deserved by fleeing to Amsterdam. Another young Marrano poet also was induced by Diogo’s constancy to revert to Judaism. This revival of zeal for the old faith spurred the Holy Office to greater strenuousness on its part. At one time one hundred and fifty Marranos were arrested, tortured and threatened with cremation. The multitude of victims, however, was embarrassing to the Government. Moreover the Court lay under heavy pecuniary obligations to the Marranos, and the latter exerted themselves by might and money to procure the release of their brethren. They offered to Philip III. not only a gift of the sums due to them but, in addition, 1,200,000 cruzados (£120,000), and they also spent 150,000 cruzados among the King’s councillors in order to convince them of the justice of their cause. Philip III. was not deaf to a plea for mercy supported by so powerful an array of arguments, and he induced Pope Clement VIII. to pardon the prisoners. ♦1604♦ The Inquisition was reluctantly obliged to content itself with the semblance of an execution. The captives, clad as penitents, were led to the auto-da-fé in Lisbon, where they publicly expressed a hypocritical contrition for their sin and were rewarded with loss of all civic rights.

Five years later the Morescoes, or Moorish converts, were finally expelled by Philip III., while the Marranos endured and supplied victims for the grim altar of the Holy Office. Granada, Cordova, Lisbon, and other cities in both Spain and Portugal continued to be illuminated with the funereal flames of the autos-da-fé. As late as 1652 we find a distinguished Portuguese diplomatist of Jewish origin, Emanuel Fernando de Villa-Real, on his return from Paris, where he acted as consul of the Portuguese Court, seized, tortured, and burnt at the stake. ♦1655♦ Three years later fifty-seven crypto-Jews were on one day sentenced at Cuenca; the majority to corporal punishment and loss of property, ten to death by fire. In the same year twelve more wretches were roasted in Granada, and in 1660 sixty Marranos at Seville were led to the auto-da-fé, where four of them were strangled and burnt, and three burnt alive, while the effigies of those who had fled were solemnly cremated. Amongst the latter was the picture of Antonio Enriquez de Gomez, the popular soldier and dramatist, contemporary of Calderon, and author of twenty-two comedies which earned great applause in Madrid. The original of the picture had fortunately escaped to France, where he died five years after at the age of sixty.

Another large contingent of Spanish emigrants repaired to the ports of Santa Maria and Cadiz, and was conveyed by a Spanish fleet to the Barbary coast. They landed at Ercilla, a Christian colony, on their way to Morocco. But, long before they reached their destination, the desert tribes attacked them, plucked them of the little money which they had contrived to conceal on their persons before leaving Spain, massacred many of the men, violated many of the women; and the survivors, after untold hardships, and almost starving, retraced their steps to Ercilla and sought repose in baptism.

Many Spanish Jews found refuge in Turkey. Bayezid II., on hearing of their expulsion from Spain, is said to have exclaimed: “Do they call this Ferdinand a politic prince, who thus impoverishes his own kingdom and enriches ours?” The Turkish monarch’s speech may be apocryphal. It sounds far too modern and occidental for a Turk of the fifteenth century. Bayezid was probably swayed by religious rather than by economic considerations. The Jews are regarded by the Mohammedans as a “People of the Book,” and they have much more in common with them than with the Christians. Both sects believe in one only God, and reject the doctrine of the Trinity as polytheistic; they both practise circumcision; they both indulge in ceremonial ablutions and similar forms of external symbolism. Hence there has always existed a certain degree of sympathy between the followers of the Mohammedan and those of the Mosaic law. It is also probable that the Sultan was glad to emphasise Moslem benevolence by harbouring the victims of Christian barbarity.

But, be the Sultan’s motives what they may, his action is certain, and highly creditable to his humanity. He welcomed the immigrants into his dominions, where they throve as long as the Ottoman Empire. In the golden age of the Osmanli the Jews of the Levant eclipsed their Greek fellow-subjects in wealth and rivalled their Turkish masters in display. ♦1566♦ All the physicians of Constantinople were Jews. A Jew became Duke of Naxos and lord of other islands in the Aegean, while another Jew was sent as envoy extraordinary to Venice. ♦1574♦ So great was Jewish influence over the Sultans Solyman and Selim II. that the Christian ambassadors were compelled to disguise their mortification, to court the favour and to solicit the mediation of the Jews of Stamboul. Under the circumstances the light of Zion, which had shone so bright through the clouds of adversity, was dimmed by the glare of prosperity.

But the harmonic curve of the woes of Israel was not to be broken. The Osmanli, who had filled Europe with the fame and the terror of their arms a few generations before, began to decay as soon as they ceased to conquer. An essentially nomad race, the Turkish found a sedentary life pernicious to its vigour. The Sultans sank into the soft dissipations of the harem, leaving women and eunuchs to rule the Empire and Janissaries to defend it. The Jews had reason to lament the decline of their lords. The yoke of tyranny began to weigh heavily upon their necks. Their opulence attracted the rapacity of the Pashas, and their impotence encouraged it. Fanaticism followed greed, and the Jews, among other forms of oppression to which they were subjected, were marked off from the true believers by a black turban—a badge which may still be seen in Turkey, as a survival of a necessity that exists no longer.

In that age of darkness and tribulation the hope of the Messiah flamed up again. In the middle of the seventeenth century the promised Redeemer made his appearance among the Turkish Jews in the person of Sabbataï Zebi, born at Smyrna in 1626. Sabbataï’s boyhood was spent in solitude and prayer; his early youth in Cabbalistic mysticism, in self-mortification and in a self-denial all the easier because Sabbataï was one of those happy, or unhappy, mortals who are born blind to the temptations of the flesh and to its joys. His strange life and even stranger ideas soon excited attention. Some pronounced the young man mad and others inspired. He regarded himself as the Messiah, and revealed himself as such in the year 1648, which, mystics had foretold, was to see the first dawn of the Redemption. The Synagogue excommunicated Sabbataï for his presumption. But many believed in the handsome and eccentric youth. Sabbataï’s belief in his own Messianic mission and the devotion of his disciples were confirmed by persecution. Banished from Smyrna, the prophet wandered to Stamboul and Salonica, gaining adherents, and he took care that the year 1666, which had been fixed as that of the Messianic era, should find him in Jerusalem. That city both by virtue of its traditions and owing to the condition of its Jewish inhabitants—impoverished by extortion and ground down by oppression—afforded an environment eminently favourable to miraculous display. Thence Sabbataï journeyed forth in triumph to Aleppo, and finally returned to his native city, where his new glory made the Synagogue forget his earlier condemnation and disgrace. At Smyrna the enthusiasm of Sabbataï’s followers reached the height of frenzy. The Messiah’s fame and the madness of his disciples spread to the furthest corners of the earth—Venice, Leghorn, Avignon, Amsterdam, London. The Rabbis of Prague and Hamburg were suspected by the Orthodox of being secret adherents of the Prophet of Smyrna, and excommunicated each other as heartily as if they were Christian sectarians. In all these centres of Judaism the Kingdom of Heaven was believed to have come, the belief being shared by Christian Millennarians, and the Western Jews abandoned themselves to an extravagance of excitement scarcely compatible with elementary sanity. At Hamburg the synagogue was converted into a theatre of corybantic exaltation, wherein stately Spanish cavaliers and grey-bearded men of business might be seen hopping, jumping and twirling solemnly about with the scroll of the Law in their arms. Not less remarkable was the behaviour of believers in the East. In Persia the Jews refused to till their fields or to pay tribute, for, they said, the Messiah had come. From all these quarters homage and treasure poured into the court of Sabbataï, who now was universally hailed as King of Kings, and signed himself, or allowed his scribes to do so, “I, the Lord, your God, Sabbataï Zebi.”

But the Messiah’s reign was brief and his end inglorious. Sabbataï resolved to repair to Constantinople that he might proclaim his advent from the very capital of the East. He was not unexpected. In the Straits of the Dardanelles Turkish officers arrested him, and took him fettered to Stamboul. The landing-place was crowded with a multitude of believers and others, all eager to behold the man who had filled the world with so singular an epidemic. Among the latter class of spectators was a pasha who welcomed the Redeemer with a vigorous slap in the face. The treatment subsequently meted out to poor Sabbataï was in harmony with this reception. He was thrown into prison, and nothing but the Grand Vizier’s unwillingness to create a new martyr saved him from death. Finally he was summoned before the Sultan. After a short audience, the Messiah issued forth from the Padishah’s presence a turbaned Mohammedan, and his name was Mehmed Effendi.

But even this catastrophe failed to break the spell which Sabbataï’s personality had cast over the minds of men. The masses clung to the hope which he had raised for ages after his death. Some of his adherents, including his wife, imitated his example and embraced Islam. The sect of these Hebrew Mohammedans, under the name of Dunmehs, or Converts, still endures at Salonica and other cities of the Ottoman Empire, and among them the belief prevails that Sabbataï is not really dead. They form a body apart, knit together by ties of consanguinity, detested by their former brethren in the faith as a sect of apostates and suspected by their new brethren as a sect of hypocrites.

The further decay of the Ottoman Empire, which brought humiliation to the conquerors and kindled the desire for national rehabilitation among their Christian subjects, however, brought peace and commercial prosperity to the Jews. ♦1717♦ Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in her account of the policy and the manners of the Turks in the eighteenth century, gives a glowing description of the Jewish colony of Adrianople.

“I observed,” she says, “that most of the rich tradespeople are Jews. That people are in incredible power in this country. They have many privileges above all the natural Turks themselves, and have formed a very comfortable commonwealth here, being judged by their own laws. They have drawn the whole trade of the empire into their hands, partly by the firm union amongst themselves, partly by the idle temper and want of industry of the Turk. Every Bassa has his Jew, who is his homme d’affaires; he is let into all his secrets and does all his business. No bargain is made, no bribes received, no merchandizes disposed of, but what passes through his hands. They are the physicians, the stewards, and the interpreters of all the great men. You may judge how advantageous this is to a people who never fail to make use of the smallest advantages. They have found the secret of making themselves so necessary that they are certain of the protection of the Court whatever Ministry is in power. Even the English, French, and Italian merchants, who are sensible of their artifices, are, however, forced to trust their affairs to their negotiation, nothing of trade being managed without them, and the meanest among them being too important to be disobliged, since the whole body take care of his interests with as much vigour as they would those of the most considerable of their members. They are, many of them, vastly rich.”

At the present moment the Jews, thanks to the profound incompetence and sloth of the Turks, the unpopularity, disunion and unrest of the Christian rayahs, and their own superior ability and concord, thrive in many parts of the Sultan’s dominions, still preserving the speech of their Spanish persecutors.

A few of the refugees from Spain found their way into France and England, while some of those who were subsequently persecuted in Portugal drifted to Holland. But a large number of Spanish Jews set sail for Italy.