Chapter XVI · STRIVINGS OF EASTERN JEWS FOR UNITY. SUFFERING IN THE WEST. (continued 2)

The Jewish inhabitants of Constantinople soon felt the beneficent hand of Donna Gracia and her son-in-law. They assisted the poor, established houses of prayer and schools, and made endowments for teachers of the Talmud. But their benevolence was not limited to Spaniards and Portuguese, it extended to Germans and beyond the city of Constantinople.

When the news came that Pope Paul IV had imprisoned the Marranos of Ancona with the intention of burning them sooner or later, the heart of Donna Gracia felt a terrible pang, as a mother when her children are in misfortune, for she had taken them all into her heart as her sons and brothers. She did not give herself up to useless lamentation, but at once joined with her son-in-law in taking active steps for their relief. She first addressed herself to Sultan Solyman, entreating him to demand that at least Marrano Jews from Turkey, in Ancona on business, be surrendered to him, and had the happiness of seeing this request fulfilled. Sultan Solyman addressed a letter to the pope (March 9th, 1556) in the haughty tone which Turkish rulers, in the consciousness of their power, assumed towards the Christian princes, weakened by disunion. He complained that his Jewish subjects had been unjustly imprisoned, whereby his treasury had suffered the loss of fully 4,000 ducats, besides a still greater diminution of revenues on account of injuries to Turkish Jews. The sultan insisted that the pope should at once set at liberty all Turkish Marranos in Ancona, and hinted that, in case his representation meet with an unfavorable reception, reprisals would be made upon Christians dwelling in his dominions. Paul IV was most unwillingly compelled to submit, set free the Turkish Jews, and allow them to depart uninjured. The remainder, who had no powerful partisan, were, as has been said, burnt. The Jews resolved to be revenged on the pope, and hoped for the active aid of Donna Gracia and her son-in-law in accomplishing this purpose.

Duke Guido Ubaldo, of Urbino, had received the Marranos from Ancona in Pesaro, only because he thought by this means to bring the Levantine trade of the Jews to his own port. The community of Pesaro, therefore, sent a dispatch to all the Turkish communities which had commercial relations with Italy, requesting that they no longer send their goods to Ancona, but to Pesaro. The commerce of the Turkish Jews was very considerable; everything passed through their hands, they competed with the Venetians, and sent out their own ships and galleys. The Jewish Levantine merchants had hitherto made Ancona the staple port for the wares shipped from Turkey to Europe, in order to lessen the pre-eminence of Venice. In the first ebullition of indignation at the shameful deed of Pope Paul IV, many of the Levantine Jews agreed to the proposal of the Jews of Pesaro (Elul—August, 1556), and resolved to punish him severely by entirely cutting off the important source of revenue arising from the commerce of the Levant. But as this measure was practicable only if all Jews trading with Italy were privy to it, the participators in the arrangement at first only agreed not to carry on trade with Ancona for eight months (till March, 1557).

The Jews of Pesaro and the Marranos formerly in the Turkish dominions, of course, made every effort to effect a general movement to place the pope and his seaport under ban. But the resident Jews of Ancona, not Marranos, were afraid that their interests would suffer injury by the removal of the trade of the Levant to Pesaro, and they lost no time in sending letters to the Jewish communities in Turkey, entreating them not to make any binding agreement, because they would incur great danger, owing to the passionate disposition of the pope, who would certainly drive them into misery if he learnt that the Jews intended to be revenged on him.

All eyes were, therefore, directed towards Constantinople, for thither the representatives of the commercial towns of Salonica, Adrianople, Broussa, Ancona, and the Morea had sent letters requesting that the matter be well weighed, and their interests regarded. Donna Gracia and Joseph Nassi, of course, had the principal voice, and they were resolved from the beginning to punish the inhuman pope severely. They had instructed their agents to send the goods belonging to their house to Pesaro. The Portuguese and some of the Spanish communities in Turkey agreed to make a decided stand and prohibit trade with Ancona under threat of exclusion from Jewish commercial circles. But some opposition was made in Constantinople itself, many of the merchants fearing that their interests would be endangered by the preference given to Pesaro. The matter was, therefore, in the hands of the rabbis of Constantinople. If they unanimously considered that the port of Ancona was to be avoided out of regard for the danger which threatened the Marranos of Pesaro, their authority would fall into the balance, and settle the question. Gracia and Joseph, therefore, influenced the rabbis, so that they decided to pronounce against the pope.

Two rabbis, however, were opposed to this decision. As no unanimous decision was made in the chief community of Constantinople, the Jewish merchants of the other Turkish communities were spared the imposition of restrictions upon their trade with Ancona. In vain Donna Gracia, who regarded the question as of the deepest interest, demanded an opinion from the rabbis of the community of Safet, which enjoyed the highest authority among the Jews of the East, in the persons of its two representatives, Joseph Karo and Moses di Trani. The ban of the rabbis against Pope Paul IV was not put into action. Whilst the rabbis were still consulting, that which Donna Gracia and her adherents had been fearing to their great grief came to pass. Duke Guido Ubaldo, disappointed in his expectation of seeing his port of Pesaro become the center of the Jewish Levantine commerce, and attacked by the pope for his favor towards Jews, ordered the Marranos to depart from Pesaro (March, 1558). It must be accounted a great merit in him that he did not surrender them to the officers of the Inquisition. Most of the exiles sailed eastward in hired ships; but the pope's naval police lay in wait for them, and they escaped with difficulty. Some were taken prisoners, and treated as slaves. The skillful and humane physician, Amatus Lusitanus, a Marrano, who had resided for a short time in Pesaro, and then in Ragusa, restoring many Christians to life and health, was also obliged to quit Christian territory and take refuge in the town of Salonica, almost entirely peopled by Jews (1558–1559). This same year seems to have brought misfortune also to the Marranos of Ferrara, and the duke withdrew his protection from them, for the printing press of Abraham Usque was closed, and Joseph Nassi's brother, Don Samuel Nassi, was so badly treated by the duke, that he was obliged to call in the intercession of the Turkish court to enable him to remove to Constantinople in peace. One threatening glance from the infidel sultan had more effect upon Christian princes than the voice of justice and humanity.

The nearer Paul IV approached the grave, the more did he become incensed against the Jews. Two baptized Jews, named Sixtus Senensis, and Philip or Joseph Moro, at his command traveled through the Jewish communities situated in the Papal States and annoyed the Jews with their seditious sermons. The latter once forced his way into the synagogue at Recanate on the Day of Atonement (1558) with a crucifix, which the Jews regarded as an idolatrous image, and with violence placed it in the ark where the sacred Torah was kept. When the Jews turned him out for this insult to their sanctuary, he collected the furious mob round the house of God, and two Jews who had laid hands on him were seized and scourged by order of the chief magistrate. Pope Paul IV was most enraged against the Marranos and the Talmud. He tried to drive the former out of their most secret hiding-places Many pseudo-Christians of Spain and Portugal, unable to save themselves by flight, entered the orders, and, so to speak, howled with the wolves to escape being attacked by them. Paul IV, to whom complaints were made that Jewish Christians had joined the orders of monks, forbade them to receive Jews as members.

He went yet more thoroughly to work with the Talmud, of which not a copy was left in the Papal States or throughout the greater part of Italy, owners thereof being exposed to the heaviest penalty. The schools, for the most part, were closed. Had this condition of things become universal, great ignorance and stagnation would have spread among Italian Jews, and facilitated the great object of the pope—their conversion. But at this time a large school and an asylum for the persecuted Talmud arose in Cremona, a town of northern Italy, belonging to Milan. A Talmudist, Joseph Ottolenghi, from Germany, opened a school under the protection of the governor of Milan, teaching the Talmud and having rabbinical works printed. Every owner of a copy of the Talmud sent it secretly to Cremona, and thus very many were collected there, and thence exported to Germany, Poland, and the East. This scanty religious freedom the Jews retained also under the Spaniards, who were compelled to carry on war with Paul IV. After the pope had been obliged to submit to a disgraceful peace, he planned to have the Jewish writings in Cremona burnt. The Dominicans, who acted as the papal police, influenced the people, so as to be able to exert pressure upon the governor. Inflammatory papers were distributed in Cremona calling upon the people to kill the Jews (April 8th, 1559). A few days afterwards the governor was urged by two Dominicans, one of whom was Sixtus Senensis, a baptized Jew, to erect a pyre on which to burn copies of the Talmud, because it was said to contain nothing but blasphemies of Jesus. The governor did not choose to give credence to the accusations against the Jews without further confirmation, so two witnesses stood up against the Talmud (April 17th), a baptized Jew, Vittorio Eliano, grandson, by a daughter, of the Jewish grammarian Elias Levita, and a worthless German Jew, Joshua dei Cantori. By them the Spanish governor of Milan was convinced of the injuriousness of the Talmud, and gave orders to his soldiery to make a house to house search among the Jews of Cremona and in the printing offices, to collect all the copies they could find, and make a great fire of them. Ten or twelve thousand books were burnt on this occasion.

Vittorio Eliano, the malicious proselyte, very nearly came to grief by this burning of the Talmud, for the Spanish soldiery, having received orders to wage war upon the writings of Jews, troubled themselves but little whether the contents were Talmudical, or otherwise, and they very nearly burnt the Zohar, the Kabbalistic text-book, the especial favorite of the papacy. Since the enthusiasm of Pico di Mirandola, still more of Reuchlin, Cardinal Egidio de Viterbo, and the Franciscan Galatino, for mysticism, the most orthodox of the Fathers and Princes of the church believed firmly that the Kabbala contained the mysteries of Christianity. The order of extinction issued against the Talmud, then, did not touch the Zohar. In fact, it was precisely under Pope Paul IV that it was first printed, with the consent of the Inquisition, in Mantua. The Kabbala was to rise out of the ruins of the Talmud. Thus the printing of the book which caused more permanent injury to Judaism than any blow hitherto aimed at it was aided. From envy of the Mantuan publishers, a Christian publisher, named Vincent Conti, of Cremona, printed the Zohar at the same time, because the sale promised very large profits in Italy and the East, and he even offered to furnish a larger book in order to cast suspicion upon the Mantuan edition. The baptized grandson of Elias Levita, the venomous canon Vittorio Eliano, had charge of this Cremona Zohar, and he did not hesitate to write a boastful Hebrew preface to attract buyers, and to have his own name mentioned in connection with it. Whilst it was being printed, the Spanish soldiers were searching for Jewish writings in Cremona, and found two thousand copies of the Zohar, which they were about to cast into the burning pile. Vittorio Eliano and his partners very nearly lost their outlay and their profits, but another convert, the above-named Sixtus of Siena, commissioned by the papal Inquisition to help in destroying the Talmud in Cremona, restrained the fury of the Spanish soldiery, and rescued the Zohar. Thus the Talmud was burnt, and the Zohar spared for the time being. It was a wise instinct of the enemies of the Jews which led them to spare this poisonous spring in the hope that adherents of the Zohar would the sooner renounce Judaism.

Spread abroad by the press, the Zohar came to be considered a canonical book, and for some time was as much quoted as verses from the Bible, and treated on an equality with the Holy Scriptures in all Hebrew works not strictly Talmudical. But the love of the papacy for the Kabbala did not last long. A few years later the Kabbalistic writings were included in the catalogue of books to be burnt (Index expurgatorius).

Paul IV's hatred of Jews and their writings was not confined to Italy, but, nourished by the fanatical spirit aroused by him, extended far and wide. Baptized Jews were always the tools employed in these persecutions. One named Asher, from Udine, brought accusations against Jewish works in Prague, and the authorities confiscated them one and all, even prayer-books, and sent them to Vienna (1559). The Jewish ministers were obliged to repeat the prayers in the synagogue by heart. A fire which broke out at about this time in the Jews' quarter of Prague, and by which a great number of their houses were reduced to ashes, displayed the fanatical hatred of Christians towards them still more clearly. Instead of hastening to the assistance of the unfortunate people, and joining in their rescue, they threw helpless women and children into the flames, and plundered the goods of the Jews. And as if the measure of misfortune were not full enough, Ferdinand I, chosen emperor about a year before, commenced the expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Prague in real earnest.

Emperor Ferdinand was, in reality, a mild prince, who sincerely desired to maintain peace between Catholics and Protestants, but he had an invincible dislike to Jews. It was he who first introduced the tickets of notification, or permits, for the Jews of Austria. He made a regulation by which every Jew resident in Austria who went on business to Vienna, should at once on his arrival announce himself to the marshal of the district, and state what was his business, and how long he intended to remain in the place. To this restriction Ferdinand added others, and at length commanded the expulsion of the Jews with their wives and children, their servants and all their goods and chattels, from Lower Austria. This decree of banishment was delayed for two years, but they were finally compelled to withdraw from the country.

Emperor Ferdinand destined the ancient community of Prague to the same fate. What may have been the reason is either easy or difficult for us to conceive, according to our way of thinking. The congregation of Prague was in very evil repute among other Jewish communities, being considered low, unprincipled, violent, and quarrelsome. Such fierce disputes arose regularly about the appointment of rabbis and the choice of the president, that the chief rabbis of Germany and Italy, at the instigation of the emperor, were obliged to arrange a system of election for the community of Prague. The reason of this sad state of things was no doubt that, on the recall of the Jews after the expulsion of twenty years previously, only the worst, none of the well-disposed, members had returned. Christians were, no doubt, very much overreached by this rabble, but Christians of the lower class were probably not better nor more conscientious. Christians treated their own brethren with the greatest leniency, but required the practice of the strictest virtue and uprightness from Jews. Discussions about the second expulsion of Jews from Prague were long carried on, for even the archdukes then in the land were opposed to it; yet the banishment took place (1561). The exiles were attacked, and plundered by robber knights. But it was clear then, as after the first expulsion, that the Christians of Prague, or at all events the nobility, longed for the Jews. Scarcely were they driven out when steps were taken to recall them, and this policy was favored by the princes.

But Emperor Ferdinand refused the request to allow the Jews to return, on the ground, genuine or assumed, that he had sworn to expel the Jews from Prague, and could not break his oath. Thereupon a noble Jew of Prague undertook a journey to Rome to procure from the new pope, Pius IV (the Jew-hating Paul IV was dead), the absolution of the emperor from his oath.

This noble man was Mordecai Zemach ben Gershon, one of the noted Soncin family of printers, whose ancestor, Gershon, or Girolamo, Soncino, founded not only beautiful Hebrew, but also Latin, type, and published both rabbinical works and Petrarch's poems. Members of this family with great success carried on Jewish printing establishments in several towns of Lombardy, in Constantinople, and in Prague. Although Mordecai Zemach had borne gross insults to his honor from the people of Prague, and his married daughter, a second Susannah, had been accused of adultery by false witnesses, and sentenced by cowardly rabbis, he yet showed himself ready to make the greatest sacrifices for the good of the people of Prague. He undertook the journey to Rome amidst many dangers and difficulties for the purpose above stated, and his exertions were crowned with success. The pope, at that time invested with the power to bind and to loose, relieved the emperor of his oath, and the latter felt his conscience lightened. His son Maximilian (afterwards emperor) took the Jews of Prague under his special protection, and thus the decree of banishment was recalled. Jews were again allowed to reside in Prague and a few other Bohemian towns, and were also re-admitted to Austria. But they had a troubled existence even under the best of the emperors, such as Maximilian II and Rudolph, for the official hand of the Catholic Church was heavy upon them.

The first consistent representative of the fanatical and persecuting Catholic Church, Pope Paul IV, was dead (1559), and the people of Rome cursed his memory and his system. The people flocked to the Capitol as in the old times of the Roman Republic, traversed the eternal city, set fire to the buildings of the Inquisition, maltreated the Dominicans and the bailiffs of that tribunal, tore down the arms of the pope, destroyed his statue, and rolled its head through the streets. With derisive laughter the Romans looked on while a Jew placed the cap that he and his brethren were compelled to wear on the statue of the very pope who had issued the order concerning it. But of what avail was this childish rage against the dead? The system survived its supporter for centuries. The Jesuits and the strict church party had got the upper hand in the Catholic Church, and each pope, willingly or unwillingly, was obliged to submit to them. It was under Pope Pius IV, one of the best high priests of Rome, that the principles of the council of Trent were turned into decrees which enslave the minds of Catholics to this very day.

A deputation of the Jews of Rome waited upon the newly-chosen pope to do homage to him, and described in touching words the sorrows which his predecessors had brought upon them. Pius IV promised them relief, and issued a bull for the Jews of the Papal States (February 27th, 1562), which was certainly to their advantage, but the milder regulations only made the restrictions still remaining appear the harsher. The introduction to the bull is interesting, because it brings to light the hypocrisy of the papal curia:

"The precepts for your conduct issued by my highly venerated predecessor, out of his zeal for religion, have (as we are told) served some who coveted your goods as a pretext for false accusations against you, and have been interpreted contrary to the intention of my predecessor, thus causing you to be vexed and disquieted. Therefore, we decree, in consideration that Holy Mother Church grants and concedes much to Jews in order that the remnant of them may be saved, and in accordance with the example of our predecessors," etc.

All that the new pope conceded, however, was that Jews of the Roman dominions beyond the city be allowed to doff their distinguishing mark, the yellow cap, acquire land to the value of 1,500 ducats, trade in other things besides old clothes, and hold intercourse with Christians, but not to keep Christian servants. This was about all that one of the best popes granted, or dared grant. More important to the Jews of Rome was the point that the accusations of transgressing the harsh laws of Paul IV were not heard, as well as the charge of misdemeanor against those who had not given up their copies of the Talmud. The Italian Jews also made an effort to obtain from the pope the remission of the interdict against the Talmud. But this question was in the hands of the cardinals and bishops sitting in the council of Trent, and to carry out their object the Italian communities chose two deputies (October, 1563). As the council only approved the list of forbidden books previously made out in the papal office, the opinion of the pope and those who surrounded him served as a guide in the treatment of Jewish writings. The decision of this point was left to the pope, who afterwards issued a bull to the effect that the Talmud was indeed accursed—like all humanistic literature, including Reuchlin's "Augenspiegel and Kabbalistic writings"—but that it would be allowed to appear if the name Talmud were omitted, and if before its publication the passages inimical to Christianity were excised, that is to say, if it were submitted to censorship (March 24th, 1564). Strange, indeed, that the pope should have allowed the thing, and forbidden its name! He was afraid of public opinion, which would have considered the contradiction too great between one pope, who had sought out and burnt the Talmud, and the next, who was allowing it to go untouched. At all events, there was now a prospect that this written memorial, so indispensable to all Jews, would once more be permitted to see the light, although in a maimed condition. The printing of the Talmud was in fact undertaken a few years later at Basle.

But even this slight concession was withdrawn from the Jews of the Papal States when Pius IV was succeeded by a pope who held gloomy, monkish, intolerant institutions in higher esteem than human happiness and human life, and who carried the ecclesiastical aims of Caraffa and his colleagues to their extreme consequence. Pius V (1566–1572) outdid his pattern, Paul IV, in love of persecution and cruelty. This pope hated Jews no less than he hated Swiss Calvinists and French Huguenots. They soon felt the severity of the new ecclesiasticism. Three months after his enthronement (April 19th, 1566), Pius V confirmed in every respect the restrictions which Paul IV had imposed on Jews; he even increased their severity, and disregarded the ameliorations of his predecessor as if they had never been granted. The former regulations, then, were enforced: exclusion from intercourse with Christians, prohibition to own lands, or to carry on any business except the trade in old clothes, compulsion to wear the distinctive Jew badge, and the refusal to permit more than one synagogue. But these edicts were not issued against the Jews in the Papal States only; they extended throughout the whole Catholic world. For at that day, in a period of spiteful reaction against Protestantism, the decrees of the pope made a far different impression from what they had produced previously, and found willing executors. Thus days of sorrow were again beginning for the Jews of Catholic countries.

Once more Joseph Cohen had to enter trials in his "Annals of Persecution," once more to collect the tears of his people in his "Vale of Weeping" (Emek ha-Bacha). The ecclesiastical tyrant, Pius V, often gave the opportunity. Under the pretext that the Jews of the Papal States had infringed his canonical laws, he caused a number of them to be thrown into prison, and their books to be collected and burnt. The prosperous community of Bologna was visited with especial severity, the blow being aimed at their property. In order to have a legal reason for robbery, confusing questions upon Christianity were put at a formal hearing before the tribunal of the Inquisition; for example, whether the Jews regarded Catholics as idolaters; whether the forms of imprecation against the Minæans, and the "Kingdom of Sin" in the prayers referred to Christians and the papacy, and especially whether the story, in a work but little read, about a "Bastard, the Son of an Outcast," was intended to refer to Jesus.

A baptized Jew, named Alexander, had drawn up the points of accusation, and the prisoners were questioned upon them, under application of torture. Some of them succumbed to the pain, and confessed everything that the bloody tribunal asked them. Only the rabbi of Bologna, Ishmael Chanina, had the courage to declare even under torture, that if he should confess anything during the unconsciousness which might ensue from his sufferings, such confession would be null and void. As others, however, had confessed to slanders uttered by Jews against Christians, the papal curia had an excuse for its robberies. The rich and the upper classes were forbidden under the severest penalties to leave the town. But this foolish prohibition awakened in the minds of the Jews of Bologna the idea of leaving the place entirely and forever. By bribing the gatekeeper, they succeeded in escaping, with their wives and children, from the net spread for them, and fled to Ferrara. Pope Pius V was so incensed against the Jews for this act, that he informed the college of cardinals that all Jews were to be expelled from the Papal States. In vain some of the church dignitaries protested, showing how the Jews had been protected by the chair of St. Peter from time immemorial, that it had indeed pledged itself to shield the remainder of the Jews, in the hope that they might be saved. In vain did the commercial world of Ancona entreat the pope not to ruin by his own deed the commercial prosperity of the Papal States; his hatred of Jews stifled the voice of common sense, of justice, and of interest. The bull was issued (February 26th, 1569), that all Jews in the Papal States, except those of Rome and Ancona, should depart within three months; those who remained were to be reduced to slavery, and undergo even severer punishment.

There were at that time about 1,000 Jewish families and 72 synagogues in the Papal States, excluding Rome, Ancona, and Bologna. In spite of the misery which threatened them, almost all included in this decree decided upon emigration, and only very few became Christians. The exiles also suffered loss of property, because they had not time to sell their estates, and collect the debts owing to them. The historian Gedalya Ibn-Yachya alone lost over 10,000 ducats by his debtors in Ravenna. The exiles dispersed, and sought protection in the neighboring little states of Pesaro, Urbino, Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan. The Jews of Avignon and Venaissin, the only communities remaining on French territory since the expulsion of the Jews from France two hundred years previously, were also ordered to leave. The reactionary princes of the church had long cast malicious glances upon them, for they had been particularly favored by the officials of the Papal States under the humanistic popes, Leo X, Clement VII, and especially Paul III. The curia received its only income from this district through their commerce. The Jews of Avignon, Carpentras, and other towns, owned great wealth and property of all kinds, and held lands.

Most of the Jews of the Italian and French ecclesiastical territories, like all expelled from Christian countries, went to Turkey, and there met with the kindest reception, if they were able to get so far without being attacked and maltreated by the robber-knights of the Order of Malta. It seemed almost as if there were to be an end of Jews in Christian Europe. Hatred, persecution, and banishment reigned everywhere. In Catholic dominions the fanaticism of the papacy prevailed, and in Protestant countries the narrowness of Lutheranism, sunk from its former height to the level of a child's quarrel.

Both seemed to desire the enforcement of the oft expressed thought of the arch-enemies of the Jews, that Jews have no right to dwell in the West.