History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)
TextSamuel Abulafia's death did not change the friendly relations between the king and the Jews. They remained faithful to him, and he continued to confer important distinctions on members of their body. They consequently came in for a share of the hatred with which the enemies of the king regarded him. The king resolved to put to death his detested consort (1361). Whatever the character of the queen, whether she was a saint or the reverse, whether or not she had deserved her fate, the method of her death must ever remain a stain on Don Pedro's memory. In spite of the animosity with which De Ayala regarded the Jews, there is no intimation in his chronicle that any of Don Pedro's Jewish favorites were concerned in this crime. It was reserved for a later period to invent fables identifying them with the king's guilt. A story was forged to the effect that a Jew had administered poison to the queen on the king's order, because she had insisted on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. A French romance, in which an endeavor is made to varnish the deeds and misdeeds of the French adventurers who fought against Don Pedro and the Jews, attributes the queen's death to a Jewish hand.
Don Pedro announced publicly, before the assembled cortes at Seville, that his marriage with Blanche of Bourbon had been illegal, inasmuch as he had been previously married to Maria de Padilla. He called witnesses, among them a few of the clergy, and these confirmed his statement on oath. Through the murder of Blanche, and its consequences, an opportunity offered itself to Don Henry de Trastamara to obtain allies for the dethronement of the king, and of this he was not slow to avail himself. The Bourbons in France and the king promised him aid, and allowed him to enlist the wild lances of the so-called great or white company, who, at the conclusion of the war with England, were rendering France insecure. The pope, displeased at the favors shown by Don Pedro to the Jews, also supported Don Henry, and placed the king of Spain under the ban.
To invest his rebellion with a tinge of legality and win the feelings of the people, Don Henry blackened his brother's character, picturing him as an outcast who had forfeited the crown because he had allowed his states to be governed by Jews, and had himself become attached to them and their religion. Don Henry carried his calumnies so far as to state that not only his mistress, Maria de Padilla, was a Jewess, but that Don Pedro himself was of Jewish extraction.
With the mercenaries of the "white company," graceless banditti, Henry crossed the Pyrenees to make war on and, if possible, depose his brother. At the head of these French and English outlaws stood the foremost warrior of his time, the hero and knight-errant, Bertrand du Guesclin (Claquin), celebrated for his deeds of daring, his ugliness, and his eccentricity, who, like the Cid, has been glorified by legend. The Jews consistently cast in their fortunes with those of the Don Pedro party, and supported it with their money and their blood. They flocked to its standard in the field, and garrisoned the towns against the onslaughts of Don Henry and Du Guesclin. The wild mercenaries to whom they were opposed avenged themselves not only on the Jewish soldiers, but also on those who had not borne arms.
The approach of the enemy compelled Don Pedro to abandon Burgos, the capital of Old Castile, and at an assembly of the inhabitants it was prudently resolved not to contest Don Henry's entrance. On taking possession of the town, where he was first proclaimed king (March, 1360), Henry levied a fine of 50,000 doubloons on the Jewish community, and canceled all outstanding debts due from Christians to Jews. The Jews of Burgos, unable to pay this large contribution, were compelled to sell their goods and chattels, even the ornaments on the scrolls of the Law. Those who could not make up their share of the contribution were sold into slavery. The whole of Spain fell to the conqueror in consequence of Don Pedro's neglect to concentrate round himself that portion of the population on which he could rely, or to buy over the free lances of the "white company," as he had been advised. The gates of Toledo, the capital, were opened to the victor, although Don Pedro's party, to which the Jews belonged, strongly counseled defense. Upon the Toledo community Don Henry also levied a heavy fine for its fidelity to the legitimate king. Don Pedro's last refuge was Seville, which he also lost.
Once again fortune smiled on Don Pedro, after he was compelled to cross the Pyrenees as a fugitive, and leave the whole of his country in the hands of the enemy. The heroic Prince of Wales, called the Black Prince from the color of his armor, being in the south of France, undertook to come to the aid of the deposed monarch both for the sake of a legitimate cause, and in expectation of rich rewards in money and land. Henry de Trastamara was compelled to leave Spain (1367). The whole of the peninsula hailed the victor Don Pedro and his ally, the Black Prince, with enthusiasm, as it had previously rejoiced at the triumph of his brother and the wild Constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin. Soon, however, the scene changed. The Black Prince left Don Pedro, and Don Henry returned with new levies from France. The northern towns of Spain again fell before his arms. The citizens of Burgos opened their gates to the conqueror, but the Jews remained true to the unfortunate Don Pedro. Assisted by a few loyal noblemen, they bravely defended the Jewry of Burgos, and were subdued only by the superior strength of the enemy. They obtained a favorable capitulation, providing for their undisputed continuance in the town, but they were forced to pay a war indemnity of one million maravedis.
This time the Christian population was desirous of profiting by the revolt against Don Pedro. The cortes of Burgos represented to Henry that the Jews, having been favorites and officials under the former king, were largely responsible for the civil war, and that he should sanction a law to exclude them in future from all state employment, including the post of physician to the king or queen, and also from the right of farming taxes. To this Don Henry replied that such a practice had not been countenanced by any former king of Castile. He would, however, not consult with the Jews at his court, nor permit them the exercise of functions which might prove detrimental to the country. From this it is evident that Henry had no particular aversion to the Jews. Possibly, he feared that by oppressing them he might drive them to acts of desperation.
Don Pedro still counted many adherents in the country. Most of the Jewish communities remained true to him, and Jews served in his army, and fought against the usurper for the king, who to the last treated them with special favor. Even when in despair he was obliged to call to his assistance the Mahometan king of Granada, he impressed upon that monarch the duty of protecting the Jews. Notwithstanding this, the Jews endured indescribable sufferings at the hands of both friend and foe. Don Pedro being entirely dependent on the auxiliaries of the Black Prince and on those of the Mahometan king, his wishes with respect to the Jews were not regarded. The community of Villadiego, celebrated for its benevolence and the promotion of learning, was utterly destroyed by the English. The same evil fortune befell Aguilar and other communities. The inhabitants of Valladolid, who paid allegiance to Don Henry, plundered the Jews, demolished their eight synagogues, despoiled them of their treasures, and tore up the sacred writings. A period of shocking degeneracy followed. Wherever Don Henry came, he laid the Jews under heavy contributions, precipitating them into poverty, and leaving them nothing but their lives. The Mahometan king, Don Pedro's ally, carried three hundred Jewish families as prisoners from Jaen to Granada. Still worse was the treatment of the violent Du Guesclin. A prey to French Jew-hatred, he could not look upon Jews as his equals in party strife and war, but only as slaves who had dared draw the sword against their masters. The misery was so great at this time that many Jews became converts to Christianity.
The community of Toledo suffered most severely. In emulation of Don Pedro's Christian adherents, they made the greatest sacrifices for the defense of the town, and endured a long and frightful siege. The famine during the investment was so great that the unfortunates consumed, not only the parchment of the Law, but even the flesh of their own children. Through hunger and war the greater portion of the Toledo community perished – according to some 8,000 persons, according to others more than 10,000. At last, at Montiel, Don Henry defeated his brother, who had been abandoned by all his partisans (14th March, 1369). Don Pedro's end was tragic. When the brothers met, Henry is said to have hurled these insulting words in his face: "Where is the Jew, the son of a harlot, who calls himself king of Castile?" They then closed in a struggle. Don Pedro was overcome, and beheaded by his brother's general, Du Guesclin. Pope Urban V could not contain his delight on hearing the news of Don Pedro's death. "The church must rejoice," he wrote, "at the death of such a tyrant, a rebel against the church, and a favorer of the Jews and Saracens. The righteous exult in retribution." The humiliation and abasement of the Spanish Jews, which the papacy had so long failed to accomplish, was obtained unexpectedly by the civil war in Castile. At Montiel they suffered a defeat pregnant with consequences fatal to their future.
Had a traveler, like Benjamin of Tudela, journeyed through Europe in the latter half of the fourteenth century, with the object of visiting, enumerating, and describing the various Jewish communities, he would have had a dismal picture to give us. From the Pillars of Hercules and the Atlantic Ocean to the banks of the Oder or the Vistula, he would have found in many districts no Jews at all, and elsewhere only very small, poverty-stricken, wretched communities, still bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the plague-maddened populace. According to human calculation, the destruction of the Jews in western and central Europe was imminent. Those who had survived the pitiless massacre, or been spared a desperate suicide, had lost courage. Communal ties were for the most part rent asunder. The recollection of the scenes of horror through which they had passed long agitated the small number of surviving Jews, and left them no hope of better times. Lord Byron's elegiac lines —
"The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country – Israel but the grave,"
are applicable to the whole of the mediæval history of the Jews, but to no period more than to this. Western and central Europe had become for the descendants of the patriarchs and the prophets one vast grave, which insatiably demanded new victims.
It is remarkable that the Jews had become indispensable to the Christian population, in spite of the venomous hatred with which the latter regarded them. Not only princes, but cities, and even the clergy, had a mania for "possessing Jews." A few years after the terrible frenzy which followed the Black Death, German citizens and their magistrates hastened to re-admit the Jews; they soon forgot their vow, that for a hundred or two hundred years no Jew should dwell within their walls. The bishop of Augsburg applied to Emperor Charles IV for the privilege "to receive and harbor Jews." The electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, were bent upon curtailing the exclusive right of the German emperor to possess serfs of the chamber (servi cameræ), and upon acquiring the same right for themselves. Gerlach, archbishop of Mayence, especially exerted himself to wrest this privilege from Emperor Charles IV, his success being to no small extent due to the desire of the emperor to retain his popularity amongst the electors. At an imperial Diet held at Nuremberg in November, 1355, where a kind of German constitution, known as the "Golden Bull," was promulgated, the emperor conferred on the electors, in addition to the right of discovery of metal and salt mines, the privilege to hold Jews; that is to say, he yielded to them this source of revenue in addition to such sources as deposits of metal and salt. But it was only to the electors that the emperor conceded this right; he retained his rights over the "servi cameræ" living under the rule of the minor princes and in cities. The archiepiscopal elector of Mayence lost no time in utilizing the new privilege, and immediately employed a Jew to obtain others for him. Thus the Jews were at once repelled and attracted, shunned and courted, outlawed and flattered. They were well aware that it was not for their own sake that they were tolerated, but solely on account of the advantages they afforded the authorities and the population. How, then, could they be expected not to devote themselves to money-making, the sole means by which they were enabled to drag out a miserable existence?
In France, as in Germany, financial considerations induced the rulers to consent to the re-admission of the Jews. The embarrassments resulting from frequent wars with England, particularly felt after the captivity of King John (September, 1356), threatened to reduce this chivalrous land to the condition of a province of the English crown. Money especially was wanting. Even to ransom the imprisoned king the assembled States-General did not vote supplies, or they burdened their grant with heavy conditions. The third estate rose in rebellion, and encouraged the peasants to throw off the yoke of the nobles. Anarchy reigned throughout the country. At this juncture the Jews, with their financial skill, appeared to the dauphin Charles, who acted as regent during the captivity of the king, as providential deliverers of the state. A clever Jew, Manessier (Manecier) de Vesoul, actively negotiated the return of the Jews to France, whence they had been so frequently banished. The dauphin-regent had granted permission to a few Jews to return, but if the impoverished state or court was to reap any real benefit from such return, it was necessary that it should take place on a large scale. Hence, the plan which Manessier submitted to the prince was approved in every detail, and the return of the Jews for twenty years was authorized under the most favorable conditions. Neither the Jews nor their representative, Manessier, cared to take advantage of so important an offer without the consent of the imprisoned king. The plan was accordingly submitted to him for confirmation. At the instance of Manessier de Vesoul, the Jews at the same time laid before the king a memorial setting forth that they had been unjustly expelled from France, and that they could not forget the land of their birth. The imprisoned monarch then issued a decree (March, 1360), by which, with the consent of the higher and lower clergy, the higher and lower nobility, and the third estate, permission was granted to all Jews to enter France and reside there for twenty years. They were allowed to take up their abode in any part of the country, in large and small towns, villages and hamlets, and to possess, not only houses, but also lands.
The head of every Jewish family was, however, compelled, on entering the country, to pay a sum of fourteen florins (florins de Florence) for himself, and one florin for each child or other member of his family; besides this, he became liable to an annual Jew tax of seven florins, and one for each individual of his household. On the other hand, the emigrants were to enjoy extensive privileges. They were not amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts or officials, but had a special justiciary in the person of Count d'Etampes, a prince of the blood royal, who acted as their protector (gardien, conservateur), and whose duty it was to appoint investigating judges and commissioners, and to safeguard the interests of the community when endangered. Cases of misdemeanor and crime amongst themselves were to be tried by two rabbis and four assessors. From the decisions of this tribunal there was no appeal. The property of the convicted Jewish criminal, however, became forfeited to the king, to whom, in addition, the rabbis had to pay the sum of one hundred florins. For past misdemeanors and crimes the king granted them a complete amnesty. They were protected against the violence of the nobles and the petty annoyances of the clergy. They could not be forced to attend Christian services or discourses. Their furniture, cattle, and stores of grain and wine, as well as their sacred books, not merely the Bible, but copies of the Talmud also, were to be guaranteed against confiscation, so that the public burning of the Talmud at Paris could not be repeated. The amplest protection was given their trade. They were allowed to charge 80 per cent interest (4 deniers on the livre) on loans, and to take pledges, their rights upon which were safeguarded by a fence of laws. Manessier de Vesoul himself, the active and zealous negotiator of these privileges, was appointed to a high position at court. He became receiver general (procureur or receveur-general), and in this capacity was responsible for the punctual payment of the Jew taxes, his commission being nearly 14 per cent. The result of the granting of these privileges was that the Jews entered France in large numbers, even foreigners being permitted to settle there, or take up a more or less protracted residence.
The extensive privileges granted to the Jews excited envy. The Christian physicians, exposed to the competition of Jewish doctors, complained that the latter had not passed a public examination, and denounced them as charlatans. The judges and officials, without power over the Jews and having no opportunity for extorting money from them, complained that they abused their privileges. The clergy, indignant at the favored position of the Jews, but having no real grievance, complained that they no longer wore the prescribed badge. The feeble king allowed an order to be extorted from him, to some extent in contradiction of his own decree, by which only such Jews were to be permitted to practice medicine as had passed an examination, and all Jews, not excepting those even who enjoyed especial privileges (Manessier and his family), were to wear a red and white wheel-shaped badge (rouelle) of the size of the royal seal. Finally the Jews were re-committed to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and the earlier arrangements annulled.
As soon as the politic dauphin ascended the throne, under the title of Charles V, and adopted a strict system of government, to deliver himself from dependence on the States-General (May, 1364), he proceeded to assure himself of the sources of revenue possessed by the Jews. He restored the privileges partly abolished by his father, lengthened the period of residence by six years, and secretly granted permission to Hebrew money dealers to exceed the charge of 80 per cent on loans. At the instance of Manessier de Vesoul, always zealous in the interests of his co-religionists, the Jews were again withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, and committed to the care of their official protector, Count d'Etampes. The clergy, whose hatred of the Jews bordered on inhumanity, were rendered powerless. In the south of France, the heads of the church had threatened with excommunication any Christians who should trade with Jews, or provide them with fire, water, bread, or wine, and by this means, had so stirred up the fanaticism of the people, that the lives and property of the Jews were imperiled. To counteract this, the governor of Languedoc issued, in the name of the king, an ordinance informing the officials, both lay and ecclesiastical, that all who exhibited hostility toward the Jews would be unsparingly punished in person and substance.
During the reign of Charles V (1364–1380), then, the condition of the Jews was at least endurable. Manessier remained receiver general of the Jew taxes for the north of France (Langue d'Oyl), and the same functions were discharged by Denis Quinon in Languedoc. On the complaint of the latter that a few Jewish converts, in conjunction with the Christian clergy, had forced their former brethren to attend the churches to hear sermons, the king issued a rescript (March, 1368) severely prohibiting all such unseemly compulsion. Subsequently, Charles prolonged the period for remaining in the country by ten years, and later on by six more. All this was brought about by the indefatigable Manessier (1374). His zeal in the Jewish cause and the advantages the king derived from his exertions were rewarded by the exemption of himself and his family from every kind of tax, contribution and service to the crown (1375).
Although the German and French Jews appeared to revive after their dreadful sufferings, it was only a material revival; their spirit remained dead. Their intellectual powers had disappeared. In France, where, during more than two centuries, from Rashi to the last of the Tossafists, the study of the Talmud had been carried to its most flourishing point, and where remarkable acuteness and intellectual depth had been developed, the new emigrants exhibited so astonishing an ignorance that they were obliged to commence their studies anew. The indulgences of the kings, John and Charles, certainly spoke of rabbis who should be invested with authority to try Jewish criminals; but there was not a single profound Talmudist among them; indeed, according to the avowal of contemporary writers, not more than five of even mediocre attainments. The only devotee of Talmudical study, Matathiah ben Joseph Provenci, has left nothing in writing to testify to his ability. Held in such esteem by Charles V that he and his family were exempted from wearing the distinctive badges prescribed by law, and apparently related to the receiver general, Manessier de Vesoul, Matathiah was in the best position to deal with the prevailing ignorance. He re-established a college at Paris, assembled pupils, expounded the Talmud to them, ordained them to rabbinical offices, and caused copies of the Talmud to be written. In consequence of his energy and his comparatively great learning, he was chosen by the newly established French communities to the office of chief rabbi and chief justice in civil and penal cases, his appointment being confirmed by the king. His school had to supply the communities with rabbis, but his pupils enriched rabbinical literature by their contributions as little as he himself. Even Provence, once so fruitful of Jewish literature, had become intellectually impoverished.
In Germany, where the rabbis had once been so proud of their traditional knowledge, the Black Death, with its attendant persecutions and banishments, had so thinned the ranks of the Jews that extraordinary intellectual decay had set in. The illiterate and the superficial, in the absence of better men, were inducted into rabbinical offices. This mischievous practice was vigorously opposed by Meïr ben Baruch Halevi, a rabbi, who, in his time, passed for a great authority in Germany (1370–1390). Rabbi at Vienna, as his father had been before him, Meïr Halevi (Segal) ordered that no Talmudical student should exercise rabbinical functions unless authorized by a rabbi of standing. Until then it had been the practice for anyone who felt able and willing to assume the rabbinical office without further ceremony, or, if he perchance settled in the neighborhood of his teacher, to obtain permission from him. As from the time of Gershom of Mayence there had always been great Talmudists in Germany, public opinion counteracted the abuse of this liberty; for had an unqualified person arrogated to himself the exercise of rabbinical functions, he would have incurred general derision and contempt. After the Black Death, however, this deterrent lost much of its force through the scarcity of Talmudists. The order of Meïr of Vienna, that every rabbi should be ordained, that he should earn the title (Morenu), and that, without such preparation, he should be precluded from dealing with matrimonial matters, marriages and divorces, was dictated by the exigencies of the times, not the presumptuousness of its author. The insignificance of even the most respected of the German rabbis of this period is apparent from the fact that not one of them has left any important Talmudical work; that, on the contrary, they all pursued a course productive of mental stagnation. Meïr Halevi, his colleague Abraham Klausner, and Shalom, of Austria, rabbi at Neustadt, near Vienna, devoted themselves exclusively to writing down and perpetuating the customs of the communities (Minhagim), to which, formerly, but very little attention had been given. They and their disciples, Isaac Tyrnau of Hungary, and Jacob Mölin (Maharil) have left behind them nothing but such insipid compilations. If the Austrian school, which at this time preponderated, was so wanting in intellectuality, how much more the Rhenish, from which only names have come down to us.
Through the disasters that resulted from the Black Death, the memories of old times had become so obliterated that the Rhenish rabbis found themselves compelled, in consequence of differences of opinion on points of marriage law, to convene a synod, exclusively for the purpose of restoring old regulations. At the meeting at Mayence (15th Ab–5th August, 1381) a few of the rabbis, together with some of the communal leaders, renewed the old decisions of Speyer, Worms and Mayence (Tekanoth Shum); as, for instance, that the childless widow should be released, without extortion or delay, from the obligation of marrying her brother-in-law, and should receive a definite portion of the property left by her husband. Among the rabbis who took part in this synod there is not one name of note.