History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)
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Title: History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)
Author: Heinrich Graetz
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE JEWS, VOL. 4 (OF 6) ***
HISTORY OF THE JEWS
HISTORY OF THE
JEWS
BY
HEINRICH GRAETZ
VOL. IV
FROM THE RISE OF THE KABBALA (1270 C. E.) TO THE
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF THE MARRANOS
IN HOLLAND (1618 C. E.)
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
5717-1956
Copyright, 1894, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
_All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher: except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages in a review to be
printed in a magazine or newspaper._
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CULTIVATION OF THE KABBALA, AND PROSCRIPTION OF SCIENCE.
Progress of the Kabbala--Todros Halevi and his Sons--Isaac
Allatif and his Kabbalistic Doctrines--Adventurous Career
of Abraham Abulafia--He assumes the Character of Messiah
--Opposition of Ben Adret--The Prophet of Avila--Joseph
Jikatilla and his Kabbalistic Mazes--The Impostor Moses de
Leon--Forgeries of the Kabbalists--Origin of the Zohar--
Its Doctrines and Influence--Shem-Tob Falaquera--Isaac
Albalag--Levi of Villefranche--Samuel Sulami and Meïri--
Abba-Mari's Exaggerated Zeal--Jacob ben Machir Profatius and
the Controversy regarding the Study of Science--Asheri--The
Poet Yedaya Bedaresi _page 1._
1270-1328 C.E.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE, AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES.
Philip le Bel--The Jews of France plundered and banished--
Estori Parchi; Aaron Cohen; Laments of Bedaresi--Eleazar
of Chinon, the Martyr--Return of the Jews to France; their
Precarious Position--Progress of the Controversy regarding
the Study of Philosophy--Abba-Mari and Asheri--Death of Ben
Adret--Rabbinical Revival in Spain--Isaac Israeli II--
Samuel and the Queen Maria Molina--Don Juan Emanuel and Judah
Ibn-Wakar--The Jews of Rome--Robert of Naples and the Jews
--Peril of the Jews in Rome--Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, his
Satires--Immanuel and Dante--The Poet Judah Siciliano--
Leone Romano and King Robert--Shemarya Ikriti--Position of
Karaism--Aaron the Elder and the Prayer-Book of the Karaites
_page 46._
1306-1328 C.E.
CHAPTER III.
THE AGE OF THE ASHERIDES AND OF GERSONIDES.
Condition of Palestine--Pilgrims and Immigrants--Shem
Tob Ibn-Gaon--Favorable Position of the Jews in Castile
under Alfonso XI--Persecution in Navarre--Joseph de Ecija
and Samuel Ibn-Wakar--Increase of Anti-Jewish Feelings
--Abner-Alfonso of Burgos, Convert to Christianity, and
Persecutor of the Jews--Gonzalo Martinez--Fall of Martinez
and Deliverance of the Jews--Decline of the Study of Science
--The Study of the Talmud prosecuted with Renewed Vigor--
Jacob and Judah Asheri--Isaac Pulgar, David Ibn-Albilla--
The Provençal Philosophers Ibn-Kaspi, Leon de Bagnols, and
Vidal Narboni--Decline of the Study of the Talmud in Germany
--Emperor Louis of Bavaria and the Jews--Persecution by the
"Leather-Arms" _page 73._
1328-1350 C.E.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BLACK DEATH.
Rise of the False Accusation against Jews of Poisoning the
Wells--Massacres in Southern France and Catalonia--The
Friendly Bull of Pope Clement VI--Terrible Massacres in all
Parts of Germany--Confessions wrung from the Jews on the Rack
--The Flagellants as a Scourge for the Jews--King Casimir of
Poland--Persecution in Brussels--The Black Death in Spain
--Don Pedro the Cruel and the Jews--Santob de Carrion and
Samuel Abulafia--Fall of Don Pedro and its Consequences for
the Jews--Return of the Jews to France and Germany--The
"Golden Bull"--Manessier de Vesoul--Matathiah Meïr Halevi
--Synod at Mayence _page 100._
1348-1380 C.E.
CHAPTER V.
THE AGE OF CHASDAÏ CRESCAS AND ISAAC BEN SHESHET.
The Jews of Spain after the Civil War--Joseph Pichon and
Samuel Abrabanel--The Apostates: John of Valladolid--
Menachem ben Zerach, Chasdaï Crescas, and Isaac ben Sheshet
--Chayim Gallipapa and his Innovations--Prevôt Aubriot
and the Jews of Paris--The French Rabbinate--Revival
of Jewish Influence in Spain--The Jews of Portugal--The
Jewish Statesmen, David and Judah Negro--Rabbis and Clergy
--Persecutions in Germany and Spain--The First Germs of the
Inquisition--Second Expulsion of the Jews from France--The
Convert Pessach-Peter--Lipmann of Mühlhausen _page 136._
1369-1380 C.E.
CHAPTER VI.
JEWISH APOSTATES AND THE DISPUTATION AT TORTOSA.
The Marranos--The Satirists--Pero Ferrus of Alcala, Diego
de Valencia, and Villasandino--Astruc Raimuch and Solomon
Bonfed--Paul de Santa Maria and his Zealous Campaign against
the Jews--Joshua Ibn-Vives--Profiat Duran (Efodi)--Meïr
Alguades--The Philosophy of Crescas--Death of Henry III of
Castile and Unfavorable Change in the Position of the Jews--
Messianic Dreams of the Kabbalists--Jews seek an Asylum in
Northern Africa--Simon Duran--Geronimo de Santa Fé, Vincent
Ferrer and Benedict XIII--Anti-Jewish Edict of Juan II--
Special Jewish Costume--Conversion of Jews owing to Ferrer's
Violent Efforts--Disputation at Tortosa--The Jewish
Spokesmen at the Conference--Incidents of the Meeting--
Geronimo instigates the Publication of a Bull for the Burning
of the Talmud--Pope Martin V befriends the Jews _page 179._
1391-1420 C.E.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HUSSITES. PROGRESS OF JEWISH LITERATURE.
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
_page 221._
1420-1442 C.E.
CHAPTER VIII.
CAPISTRANO AND HIS PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.
Pope Eugenius IV, under the Influence of Alfonso de Cartagena,
changes his Attitude towards the Jews--His Bull against the
Spanish and Italian Jews in 1442--Don Juan II defends the
Jews--Pope Nicholas V's Hostility--Louis of Bavaria--The
Philosopher Nicholas of Cusa and his Relation to Judaism--
John of Capistrano--His Influence with the People is turned
against the Jews--Capistrano in Bavaria and Würzburg--
Expulsion of the Breslau Community--Expulsion of the Jews
from Brünn and Olmütz--The Jews of Poland under Casimir IV
--Capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II--The Jews find
an Asylum in Turkey--The Karaites--Moses Kapsali--Isaac
Zarfati--Position of the Jews of Spain--Persecutions
directed by Alfonso de Spina--The Condition of the Marranos
_page 248._
1442-1474 C.E.
CHAPTER IX.
THE JEWS IN ITALY AND GERMANY BEFORE THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN.
Position of the Jews of Italy--The Jewish Bankers--Yechiel
of Pisa--His Relations with Don Isaac Abrabanel--Jewish
Physicians, Guglielmo di Portaleone--Revival of Learning
among Italian Jews--Messer Leon and Elias del Medigo--
Pico di Mirandola, the Disciple of Medigo--Predilection of
Christians for the Kabbala--Jochanan Aleman--Religious
Views of Del Medigo--German Rabbis immigrate into Italy--
Joseph Kolon, his Character and his Feud with Messer Leon
--Judah Menz, an Antagonist of Del Medigo--Bernardinus
of Feltre--Jews banished from Trent on a False Charge of
Child-Murder--The Doge of Venice and Pope Sixtus IV befriend
the Jews--Sufferings of the Jews of Ratisbon--Israel Bruna
--Synod at Nuremberg--Emperor Frederick III _page 285._
1474-1492 C.E.
CHAPTER X.
THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.
Jewish Blood in the Veins of the Spanish Nobility--The
Marranos cling to Judaism and manifest Unconquerable Antipathy
to Christianity--Ferdinand and Isabella--The Dominicans,
Alfonso de Ojeda, Diego de Merlo, and Pedro de Solis--The
Catechism of the Marranos--A Polemical Work against the
Catholic Church and Despotism gives a Powerful Impulse to the
Inquisition--The Tribunal is established in 1480--Miguel
Morillo and Juan de San Martin are the first Inquisitors--
The Inquisition in Seville--The "Edict of Grace"--The
Procession and the Auto-da-fé--The Numbers of the Accused and
Condemned--Pope Sixtus IV and his Vacillating Policy with
Regard to the Inquisition--The Inquisition under the first
Inquisitor General, Thomas de Torquemada; its Constitutions
--The Marranos of Aragon--They are charged with the Death
of the Inquisitor Arbues--Persecutions and Victims--
Proceedings against two Bishops Favorable to the Jews,
De Avila and De Aranda _page 308._
1474-1483 C.E.
CHAPTER XI.
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN.
Friendship of Marranos and Jews--Torquemada demands of
the Rabbis of Toledo the Denunciation of Marranos--Judah
Ibn-Verga--Jewish Courtiers under Ferdinand and Isabella
--Isaac Abrabanel: his History and Writings--The Jews
of Portugal under Alfonso V--The Ibn-Yachya Brothers--
Abrabanel's Flight from Portugal to Spain--The Jews of
Granada: Isaac Hamon--Edict of Banishment promulgated by
Ferdinand and Isabella--Its Consequences--Departure from
Spain--Number of the Exiles--Decline in the Prosperity
of Spain after the Banishment of the Jews--Transformation
of Synagogues and Schools into Churches and Monasteries--
The Inquisition and the Marranos--Deza, the Successor of
Torquemada _page 334._
1483-1492 C.E.
CHAPTER XII.
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM NAVARRE AND PORTUGAL.
The Exiles from Navarre--Migration to Naples--King
Ferdinand I of Naples and Abrabanel--Leon Abrabanel--
Misfortunes of the Jews in Fez, Genoa, Rome, and the Islands
of Greece--The Sultan Bajazet--Moses Kapsali--Spanish
Jews in Portugal--The Jewish Astronomers, Abraham Zacuto
and José Vecinho--The Jewish Travelers, Abraham de Beya and
Joseph Zapateiro--Outbreak of the Plague among the Spanish
Jews in Portugal--Sufferings of the Portuguese Exiles--
Judah Chayyat and his Fellow-Sufferers--Cruelty of João II--
Kindly Treatment by Manoel changed into Cruelty on his Marriage
--Forcible Baptism of Jewish Children--Levi ben Chabib and
Isaac Caro--Pope Alexander VI--Manoel's Efforts on Behalf
of the Portuguese Marranos--Death of Simon Maimi and Abraham
Saba _page 357._
1492-1498 C.E.
CHAPTER XIII.
RESULTS OF THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.
GENERAL VIEW.
Widespread Consequences of the Expulsion--The Exiles--Fate
of the Abrabanel Family--Leon Medigo--Isaac Akrish--The
Pre-eminence of Jews of Spanish Origin--The North-African
States: Samuel Alvalensi, Jacob Berab, Simon Duran II--The
Jews of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis--Abraham Zacuto and Moses
Alashkar--Egypt: Isaac Shalal, David Ibn-Abi Zimra--The
Jews of Cairo--Selim I--Cessation of the Office of Nagid--
Jerusalem--Obadyah di Bertinoro--Safet and Joseph Saragossi
--The Jews of Turkey--Constantinople--Elias Mizrachi:
the Karaites--The Communities of Salonica and Adrianople--
The Jews of Greece--Elias Kapsali--The Jews of Italy and
the Popes: Bonet de Lates--The Ghetto in Venice--Samuel
Abrabanel and Benvenida Abrabanela--Abraham Farissol--The
Jews of Germany and their Sorrows--Expulsion of the Jews from
Various Towns--The Jews of Bohemia--Jacob Polak and his
School--The Jews of Poland _page 382._
1496-1525 C.E.
CHAPTER XIV.
REUCHLIN AND THE TALMUD.
Antecedents of the Convert John Pfefferkorn--Pfefferkorn and
the Dominicans of Cologne--Hoogstraten, Ortuinus Gratius
and Arnold of Tongern--Victor von Karben--Attacks on the
Talmud and Confiscation of Copies in Frankfort--Reuchlin's
Hebrew and Kabbalistic Studies--The Controversy concerning
the Talmud--Activity on both Sides--Public Excitement--
Complete Victory of Reuchlin's Efforts in Defense of Jewish
Literature--Ulrich von Hutten--Luther--Revival of Hebrew
Studies _page 422._
1500-1520 C.E.
CHAPTER XV.
THE KABBALA AND MESSIANIC FANATICISM. THE MARRANOS AND THE
INQUISITION.
Internal Condition of Judaism--Division in the Communities--
The Lack of Interest in Poetry--Historical Studies---Leon
Medigo's "Dialogues of Love"--Supremacy of the Kabbala--
Messianic Hopes--The Marranos and the Inquisition--Henrique
Nunes--The Traveler David Reubeni in Rome--Solomon Molcho
--His Relations with David Reubeni--Joseph Karo and his
"Maggid"--Clement VII--Molcho in Ancona and Rome--His
Favor with the Cardinals--Death of Molcho--The Enthusiastic
Regard in which he was held--Duarte de Paz--Paul III--
Charles V and the Jews--Emanuel da Costa _page 477._
1500-1538 C.E.
CHAPTER XVI.
STRIVINGS OF EASTERN JEWS FOR UNITY. SUFFERING IN THE WEST.
Efforts towards Unity--Jacob Berab proposes the
Re-introduction of Rabbinical Ordination into Palestine--
Successful Opposition of Levi ben Chabib--Joseph Karo--His
Connection with Solomon Molcho and his Messianic Visions--
Karo's Religious Code--Converts to Judaism at the Era of the
Reformation--Expulsion of the Jews from Naples and Prague--
Their Return to the latter Town--Dr. Eck--Martin Luther and
the Jews--Moses Hamon--Jewish Histories by Joseph Cohen,
the Ibn-Vergas, and Samuel Usque--Elegy of Samuel Usque--
Reaction in the Catholic Church; Loyola establishes the Order
of Jesuits--The Censorship of Books--Eliano Romano and
Vittorio Eliano--Fresh Attacks on the Talmud--Paul IV and
his anti-Jewish Bulls--Persecution of the Marranos by the
Inquisition in Ancona--Joseph Nassi--The Levantine Jews--
Expulsion of the Jews from Austria and Bohemia--Relations
of Pope Pius IV and V to the Jews _page 529._
1538-1566 C.E.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE JEWS IN TURKEY. DON JOSEPH NASSI.
Joseph Nassi's Favor with Sultan Solyman--His Friendship for
Prince Selim--Hostility of Venice and France to Nassi--
Joseph Nassi restores Tiberias, and is created Duke of Naxos
--The Vizir Mahomet Sokolli--The Turks, at the Instigation
of Nassi, conquer Cyprus--Rebellion against Philip II in
the Netherlands--Solomon Ashkenazi--Election of Henry
of Anjou as King of Poland--Ashkenazi negotiates a Peace
between Venice and Turkey--Gedalya Ibn-Yachya and Jewish
Literature in Turkey--Joseph Karo compiles the "Shulchan
Aruch"--Azarya deï Rossi--Isaac Lurya--The Jewish "Dark
Age"--Spread of the Kabbala--Lurya's Disciple, Chayim Vital
Calabrese--Death of Joseph Nassi--Esther Kiera and the
Influence of Jewish Women in Turkey _page 593._
1566-1600 C.E.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE JEWS IN POLAND.
Condition of Poland--Favorable Situation of the Jews in
that Country--Anti-Jewish Party in Poland--The Jewish
Communities--Judaizing Poles--Studies of the Jews--
The Talmud in Poland--Solomon Lurya--Moses Isserles--
The Historian, David Gans--"Zemach David"--Supremacy of
the Polish Authorities in Rabbinical Matters--The Jewish
Seminaries in Poland--The Disputations at the Fairs--
Chiddushim and Chillukim--Stephen Bathori--His Kindness
towards his Jewish Subjects--Sigismund III--Restriction
on the Erection of Synagogues--Jewish Synods--Vaad Arba
Arazoth--Mordecai Jafa--Christian Sects in Poland--The
Socinians or Unitarians--Simon Budny--The Reformers and the
Jews--Isaac Troki--"The Strengthening of Faith" _page 631._
1566-1600 C.E.
CHAPTER XIX.
SETTLEMENT OF JEWS IN HOLLAND. FEEBLE ATTEMPTS AT
ENFRANCHISEMENT.
Revival of Catholicism--Decay in European Culture--
Ill-treatment of Jews in Berlin--Emperor Rudolph II of
Austria--Diminution in the Numbers of Italian Jews--Pope
Gregory XIII--Confiscation of Copies of the Talmud--
Vigorous Attempts at the Conversion of Jews--Pope Sixtus V--
The Jewish Physician David de Pomis--Renewal of Persecution
by Clement VIII--Expulsion from Various Italian States--The
Censors and the Talmud--The Jews at Ferrara--Settlement
of Jews in Holland--Samuel Pallache--Jacob Tirado and the
Marranos in Amsterdam--Tolerant Treatment--The Poet, David
Jesurun--Moses Uri--Hebrew Printing in Amsterdam _page 650._
1593-1618 C.E.
CHAPTER XX.
THE DUTCH JERUSALEM AND THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.
The Amsterdam Jewish Community--Its Wealth, Culture, and
Honored Position--Zacuto Lusitano--Internal Dissensions
--The Talmud Torah School--Saul Morteira, Isaac Aboab, and
Manasseh ben Israel--The Portuguese Congregation in Hamburg
--The First Synagogue--Lutheran Intolerance--John Miller
--Jewish Colony in Brazil--The Chief Communities in Germany
--Persecution in Frankfort--Dr. Chemnitz--The Vienna
Congregation--Lipmann Heller--Ferdinand II's Zeal for the
Conversion of Jews--Influence of the Thirty Years' War on
the Fortunes of the Jews _page 676_
1618-1648 C.E.
HISTORY OF THE JEWS
HISTORY OF THE JEWS.
CHAPTER I.
CULTIVATION OF THE KABBALA, AND PROSCRIPTION OF SCIENCE.
Progress of the Kabbala--Todros Halevi and his Sons--Isaac
Allatif and his Kabbalistic Doctrines--Adventurous Career
of Abraham Abulafia--He assumes the Character of Messiah
--Opposition of Ben Adret--The Prophet of Avila--Joseph
Jikatilla and his Kabbalistic Mazes--The Impostor Moses de
Leon--Forgeries of the Kabbalists--Origin of the Zohar--
Its Doctrines and Influence--Shem-Tob Falaquera--Isaac
Albalag--Levi of Villefranche--Samuel Sulami and Meïri--
Abba-Mari's Exaggerated Zeal--Jacob ben Machir Profatius and
the Controversy regarding the Study of Science--Asheri--The
Poet Yedaya Bedaresi.
1270-1328 C.E.
The secret science of the Kabbala, which hitherto had assumed a modest
deportment and been of a harmless character, began to foment discord
in Ben Adret's time, ensnare the intelligence and lead astray the
weak. What it lacked in intrinsic truth and power of conviction, it
endeavored to supply by presumptuousness. It had already spread from
Gerona, its original seat, and from northern Spain by way of Segovia
to southern Spain, as far as the Castilian capital, Toledo, the Jewish
community of which had before strenuously opposed obscurantism. In the
city of Toledo the Kabbala won the adherence, among others, of one man
who, by his noble birth, his princely state, his high position, his
wealth and learning, gave it great weight. This man, whose influence
is even now not fully recognized, was Todros ben Joseph Halevi, of
the noble Toledan family of Abulafia (born 1234, died after 1304).
He was a nephew of that Meïr Abulafia who had been so obstinate an
adversary of Maimuni and rationalistic thought. Todros Abulafia took
as a model his uncle, who in his old age had laid his hands on his
head, and blessed him. When he grew up, he applied himself to the
Talmud and to secret lore; but he must have been a man of affairs,
too, for he obtained an honorable position at the court of Sancho IV,
and was in special favor with the wise queen, Maria de Molina, as a
physician and financier. By the Jews he was esteemed and venerated as
their prince (Nasi). When the king and queen of Spain held a meeting in
Bayonne with the king of France, Philip le Bel, to settle their mutual
hostilities (1290), Todros Abulafia was in the train of the former, and
received the most flattering homage from the Jews of southern France.
Todros, like his uncle, was a determined opponent of philosophy and
its devotees. He had no words bitter enough against the would-be wise
people who hold everything which appears incompatible with logic as
incredible and impossible. Even Maimuni, whom he highly respected, he
censured for undervaluing the importance of the sacrifices so greatly
as to explain them merely as a concession to the heathen propensities
of the people, and for calling the offering of incense an expedient for
purifying the air. He waged vehement warfare against the philosophy
which denies the existence of evil spirits, which to him was identical
with doubting the existence of angels. Having been initiated into
the secret science by one of the earliest Kabbalists, perhaps by
Jacob of Segovia, who formed a school of his own, Todros valued it
as divine wisdom, to uncover whose veil to laymen was fraught with
danger. The recognition of the secret doctrine by a person of so high a
position could not but produce some effect. His sons, Levi and Joseph,
likewise plunged headlong into its study. Two of the four Kabbalists
of his time, who developed the Kabbala, and extended its influence,
ranged themselves under the banner of Todros Abulafia, and dedicated
their compositions to him. These four Kabbalists of the first rank,
who established new theories with more or less success, were Isaac
Ibn-Latif, Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Jikatilla, and Moses de Leon, all
Spaniards. They obscured the mental light, with which men of intellect,
from Saadiah to Maimuni, had illumined Judaism, and substituted for
a refined religious belief, fantastic and even blasphemous chimeras.
The intellectual degradation of the Jews in the following centuries
is to a large extent their work. They led astray both their own times
and posterity through designed or unintentional imposition, and the
injuries which they inflicted on Judaism are felt even at the present
day.
The least harmful of these four was Isaac ben Abraham Ibn-Latif or
Allatif (born about 1220, died about 1290). He no doubt owed his origin
to the south of Spain, for he was acquainted with Arabic. Nothing is
known of his history beyond the fact that he was on friendly terms
with Todros Abulafia, to whom he dedicated one of his works. His
writings, as has been said by one who came after him, seem to "stand
with one foot on philosophy and with the other on the Kabbala." But
Allatif only toyed with philosophical formulæ, their meaning does
not seem to have become known to him. He was not of a thoughtful
nature, and did not enrich the Kabbala, although he attempted to give
himself the appearance of following original methods, and avoided
the usual Kabbalistic expressions. Allatif started with the thought
that a philosophical view of Judaism was not the "right road to the
sanctuary," and that it was, therefore, needful to seek a higher
conception, but, instead of making the way clear, he concealed it by
empty allusions and unmeaning phrases. Allatif laid more weight than
his predecessors on the close connection between the spiritual and the
material world--between God and His creation. For the Godhead is in
all, and all is in it. In soul-inspiring prayers the human spirit is
raised to the world-spirit (Sechel ha-Poel), to which it is united "in
a kiss," and, so influencing the Divinity, it draws down blessings on
the sublunar world. But not every mortal is capable of such spiritual
and efficacious prayer; therefore, the prophets, the most perfect
men, were obliged to pray for the people, for they alone knew the
power of prayer. The unfolding and revelation of the Deity in the
world of spirits, spheres and bodies, were explained by Isaac Allatif
in mathematical formulæ. Isaac Allatif must, however, be considered
a clear thinker, when compared with his enthusiastic contemporary,
Abraham Abulafia, who endeavored to establish a new order of things by
Kabbalistic sophisms.
Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (born 1240, in Saragossa, died 1291) was
an eccentric personage, full of whims, and fond of adventures. Endowed
with a lively mind and with more than a moderate amount of knowledge,
he renounced the ways of common sense to throw himself into the arms of
enthusiasm. His whole life from his entry into manhood was a succession
of adventures. His father, who had instructed him in the Bible and
the Talmud, died when his son was a youth of eighteen, and two years
later Abraham undertook a journey of adventure, as he relates, in order
to discover the mythical river Sabbation or Sambation, and to become
acquainted with the supposed Israelite tribes dwelling on its banks, no
doubt with a Messianic purpose. His mind was in a constant tumult. He
wrestled for clearness, but fell ever deeper into mazes and illusions.
One thing, however, became evident to him, that the philosophy
with which he had much occupied himself offered no certainty, and,
therefore, no satisfaction to the religious mind thirsting after truth.
Even the trite Kabbala as commonly accepted, with its doctrine about
the Sefiroth, did not satisfy his soul, since both only nursed the
pride of knowledge. He, a Kabbalist, criticised the unsoundness of this
mystic theory so severely and correctly that it is surprising that
he should have conceived still more insane notions. Abraham Abulafia
sought after something higher, for prophetic inspiration, which alone
opens the fountain of truth, without traversing the laborious path of
systematic application.
At length Abulafia believed that he had found what his soul was
yearning for, and that through divine inspiration he had come upon a
higher Kabbala, in relation to which the lower mystical doctrine and
philosophy were only handmaids. This Kabbala alone, he maintained,
offers the means of coming into spiritual communion with the Godhead,
and of obtaining prophetic insight. This means was far from new, but
the firm conviction of its effectiveness and his application of it are
peculiar to Abulafia. To decompose the words of Holy Writ, especially
the all-hallowed name of God, to use the letters as independent notions
(Notaricon), or to transpose the component parts of a word in all
possible permutations, so as to form words from them (Tsiruf), or
finally to employ the letters as numbers (Gematria), these are the
means of securing communion with the spirit-world. But this alone is
not sufficient. He who desires to render himself worthy of a prophetic
revelation, must adopt an ascetic mode of living, must remove himself
from the turmoil of the world, shut himself up in a quiet chamber,
deliver his soul from earthly cares, clothe himself in white garments,
wrap himself up with Talith and Phylacteries, and devoutly prepare
his soul, as if for an interview with the Deity. Besides, he must
pronounce the letters of God's name at intervals, with modulations of
the voice, or write them down in a certain order, at the same time
making energetic movements, writhing and bending forward till the
mind becomes dazed, and the heart filled with a glow. Then the body
will be surprised by sleep, and a sensation will arise, as if the soul
were released from the body. In this condition, if it become lasting
through practice, the divine grace is poured into the human soul,
uniting with it in a kiss, and the prophetic revelation follows quite
naturally. This means of working himself up into a state of ecstasy
Abulafia certainly practiced, exciting his heated fancy to delirium. He
considered his Kabbala to be prophetic inspiration, by means of which
he alone could penetrate into the secrets of the Torah. For the plain
sense of the words and the simple practice of the religious precepts
were merely for the uninitiated, like milk for children. Experts, on
the other hand, find the higher wisdom in the numerical value of the
letters and in the manifold changes of the words.
In this way he laid down his Kabbala, in antithesis to the superficial
or baser Kabbala, which occupies itself with the Sefiroth, and,
as he gibingly said, erects a sort of Decem-unity instead of the
Christian Trinity. He lectured on his Kabbala in Barcelona, Burgos,
and Medina-Celi. So low was the general intelligence, that this
half-insane enthusiast found old and young to listen to him. Two
of his disciples, Joseph Jikatilla, and Samuel, alleged to be a
prophet, both of Medina-Celi, proclaimed themselves to be prophets and
workers of miracles. Abulafia appears, nevertheless, to have aroused
opposition in Spain, or at least not to have found any real sympathy;
he left his native country a second time, betaking himself once more
to Italy, where he reckoned upon stronger support. In Urbino for the
first time he produced prophetic writings, and alleged that God had
spoken with him. At last he conceived the mad idea of converting the
pope to Judaism (Sabbath-eve, 1281). The attempt cost him dear. He
was arrested two days later in Rome, languished twenty-eight days in
prison, and escaped the stake only through the circumstance that God,
as he expressed it, had caused a double mouth (or tongue?) to grow in
him. Possibly he told the pope that he, too, taught the doctrine of
the Trinity. After this he was allowed to walk about Rome in freedom.
Thence Abulafia proceeded to the island of Sicily, and in Messina
he met with a favorable reception, gaining six adherents. Here he
finally proclaimed that he was not only a prophet but the Messiah,
and set forth his claims in writing (November, 1284). God, he said,
had revealed to him His secrets, and had announced to him the end of
the exile and the beginning of the Messianic redemption. The gracious
event was to take place in the year 1290. Mysticism has always been the
ground on which Messianic fancies have thriven.
Through strictly moral deportment, ascetic life and revelations veiled
in obscure formulæ, perhaps also through his winning personality and
boldness, Abraham Abulafia found many in Sicily who believed in him,
and began to make preparations for returning to the Holy Land. But the
intelligent part of the Sicilian congregation hesitated to join him
without investigation. They addressed themselves to Solomon ben Adret,
to obtain information from him respecting Abraham Abulafia. The rabbi
of Barcelona, who was acquainted with Abulafia's earlier career, sent
an earnest letter to the community of Palermo, in which he severely
condemned the self-constituted Messiah as illiterate and dangerous.
Naturally, Abulafia did not allow this attack to remain unanswered,
but proceeded to defend himself from the denunciation. In a letter he
justified his prophetic Kabbala, and hurled back Ben Adret's invectives
in language so undignified that many thought the letter not genuine.
But his abusive retort was of no avail, for other congregations and
rabbis, who may have feared that a persecution might be the consequence
of his fantastic doctrines, also expressed themselves against Abulafia.
He was harassed so much in Sicily that he had to leave the island, and
settle in the tiny isle of Comino, near Malta (about 1288). Here he
continued to publish mystical writings, and to assert that he would
bring deliverance to Israel. Persecution had embittered him. He leveled
charges against his brethren in faith, who in their stubbornness would
not listen to him: "Whilst the Christians believe in my words, the Jews
eschew them, and absolutely refuse to know anything of the calculation
of God's name, but prefer the calculation of their money." Of those
who exclusively occupied themselves with the Talmud, Abulafia said
that they were seized by an incurable disease, and that they were far
inferior to those skilled in the higher Kabbala. Abraham Abulafia,
besides twenty-six on other subjects, composed at least twenty-two
so-called prophetic works, which, although the product of a diseased
brain, were used by the later Kabbalists. What at last became of the
prophetic and Messianic enthusiast and adventurer is not known.
His extravagant conduct did not fail to produce evil consequences, even
in his own time, and was as infectious as an epidemic. About the same
time there arose in Spain two enthusiasts, of whom one was probably
Abraham Abulafia's disciple. One of them made his appearance in the
small town Ayllon (in the district of Segovia), the other in the large
congregation of Avila. Both proclaimed themselves to be prophets, and
announced in mystic language the advent of the Messianic kingdom. Both
found followers. The adherents of the prophet of Avila related, that
in his youth he had been ignorant, and could neither read nor write;
that an angel, who appeared to him in his sleeping, and sometimes
also in his waking moments, suddenly endowed him through higher
inspiration, with the power of writing a comprehensive work, full of
mystical ideas, and a diffuse commentary (without which at that time
no fairly respectable book could be conceived). When the people of
Avila and remote congregations heard of this they wondered greatly. The
story excited extraordinary interest, and the representatives of the
congregation of Avila consulted Solomon ben Adret, the last commanding
authority of that time, as to whether they should accept this new
prophecy.
Himself a partial follower of the secret science, subscribing only
to the Biblical and the Talmudical miracles, the rabbi of Barcelona
replied that he would have considered the affair of the prophet of
Avila as arrant fraud, if trustworthy people had not attested its
truth. Still he could not possibly recognize him as a prophet, for he
lacked the principal conditions which the Talmud lays down as essential
to prophecy: outside of Palestine, prophecy is altogether impossible;
the age is not suitable for prophetic revelation, and the prophetic
spirit can not rest upon a perfectly ignorant person. It was incredible
that a man should go to bed an idiot and get up a prophet. The story
required the most painstaking and impartial investigation.
In spite of the warning of the most honored rabbi of the time, the
prophet of Avila pursued his course, and fixed the last day of the
fourth month (1295) as the beginning of the Messianic redemption. The
easily influenced and ignorant multitude made preparations for its
coming, fasted, and spent money lavishly in alms, that they might be
found acceptable in the Messianic kingdom, and be permitted to partake
of its bliss. On the appointed day, the deluded people, dressed as on
the Day of Atonement, hastened to the synagogues, and waited there
to hear the trumpet-blasts announcing the Messianic advent. But the
expected Messiah did not show himself, nor was there any sign of him.
Instead, they are said to have noticed on their garments small crosses,
for which they were totally unprepared, and which partly sobered and
partly terrified them. It is possible that some of the incredulous in
the congregation had fastened the crosses secretly on their garments,
either to practice a joke upon their credulous brethren, or to point
out to what end Messianic charlatanry was destined to lead them, and
thus cure them of their delusion. Some of the impostor's followers
are said to have gone over to Christianity in consequence of this
incident; others, to have been plunged into melancholy, because they
could not explain the presence of the crosses. What became of the
prophets, or beguiled deceivers, of Ayllon and Avila is not related.
Like Abraham Abulafia they were lost sight of, and have importance
only as the excrescences of a diseased state. It is possible that
another disciple of Abulafia, Joseph Jikatilla, who also was looked
upon as a performer of miracles, and had his dwelling not far from
Ayllon, played a part in the mad or deceitful pranks of the prophets of
Ayllon and Avila. Joseph ben Abraham Jikatilla (born in Medina-Celi,
died in Penjafiel, after 1305), heard, at the age of twenty years, an
exposition of the bewildering secret doctrine of Abulafia, and whilst
the latter still was in Spain, he composed a Kabbalistic book of his
own, in which he exhibits the same eccentricities as his master. He,
too, occupied himself with the mysticism of letters and numbers, and
with the transposition of letters. Joseph Jikatilla's writings are in
reality only an echo of Abraham Abulafia's fancies; the same delusion
is apparent in both. But far more influential and more pernicious
than these three Kabbalists, Allatif, Abulafia, and Jikatilla, was
Moses de Leon, whose ascendancy was felt both by his contemporaries
and posterity. Although a contemporary and fellow-specialist unmasked
his performances, Moses de Leon succeeded in introducing into Jewish
literature and thought a book which gave the Kabbala a firm foundation
and wide extension, in brief, raised it to the zenith of its power. The
question about Moses ben Shem Tob de Leon (born in Leon about 1250,
died in Arevalo, 1305) is only whether he was a selfish or a pious
impostor. His intention was certainly to deceive and lead astray, and
in this respect he appears much baser than Abulafia, who at all events
was sincere and naïve in his delusion. A sciolist, who had mastered
neither the Talmud nor any other subject thoroughly, Moses possessed
the skill to use deftly the little that he knew, to write easily and
fluently, to discover a connection between the most remote things and
verses of Scripture piled up in the chamber of his memory, and to
couple them with playful wit. Even the Kabbala was not present to him
as a system; he knew merely its forms and technical terms, and employed
them in a skillful manner.
Of careless prodigality, Moses de Leon expended everything that he
had without reflecting what would remain for the morrow; he made use
of the Kabbala which had come into fashion to procure for himself a
rich source of revenue. He led a wandering life, lived a long time in
Guadalaxara, then in Viverro, in Valladolid, and finally in Avila. At
first he published his intellectual productions under his own name
(about 1285). His writings, however, were not sufficiently noticed, and
brought him but little fame and money. Moses de Leon then hit upon a
much more effective means for opening hearts and purses. He commenced
the composition of books under feigned but honored names. If he put
the doctrines of the Kabbala, worn threadbare, to be sure, into the
mouth of an older, highly venerated authority, some imposing name from
the dazzling past,--taking care, of course, to make the coloring and
the method of presentation archaic--would not such a composition
be eagerly swallowed? Would he not be richly rewarded if he hinted
that he was in possession of so costly a treasure? Moses de Leon knew
well the credulity of those who devoted themselves with more or less
earnestness to the study of the Kabbala; how they eagerly sought for
every word which they were led to think originated from ancient times.
For, since the secret science had been promulgated, and had striven for
recognition, doctrines which sounded Kabbalistic had been fathered upon
old and illustrious names, and thus had found acceptance. But Moses de
Leon did his work much more cleverly than most forgers. He found the
most likely author for the secret doctrine, against whom there could be
little or no objection, in the person of the Tanaite Simon bar Yochaï,
who is said to have spent thirteen years in a cave, solitary and
buried in profound reflection, and whom ancient mysticism represented
as receiving revelations. Simon bar Yochaï was assuredly the right
authority for the Kabbala. But he must not be permitted to write or
speak Hebrew, for in this language the Kabbalists would recognize the
echo of their own voices. He must express himself in Chaldee, in a
half obscure language, peculiarly fit for secrets, and sounding as if
from another world. And thus there came into the world a book, the
book Zohar (brilliancy), which for many centuries was held by Jews
as a heavenly revelation, and was and partly is even now regarded by
Christians as an old tradition. But seldom has so notorious a forgery
so thoroughly succeeded. Moses de Leon well knew how to produce the
proper effect on credulous readers. He made Simon bar Yochaï appear
in splendor, surrounded by a halo, in the book Zohar, and impart his
revelation to a circle of select pupils (sometimes twelve, sometimes
six), "scholars who shine with heaven's light." "When they assembled
to compose the Zohar, permission was granted to the prophet Elijah, to
all the members of the celestial conclave, all the angels, spirits,
and higher souls to act in sympathy with them, and the ten spiritual
substances (Sefiroth) were charged with the duty of revealing to them
deeply hidden secrets, reserved for the time of the Messiah." Or in
another version: Simon bar Yochaï summoned his followers to a great
council, and heard the flapping of the wings of the celestial host, who
also had assembled to listen to the disclosure of mysteries till then
unknown even to the angels. The Zohar glorifies its author excessively.
It calls him the holy light, who stands higher than the greatest
prophet, Moses, "the faithful shepherd." "I swear by the holy heavens
and the holy earth," the Zohar makes Simon bar Yochaï exclaim, "that
I behold now what no other mortal since Moses ascended Sinai for the
second time has beheld, aye, even more than he. Moses knew not that
his countenance shone; I, however, know that my countenance shines."
On account of God's love for the writer of the Zohar, his generation
merited the revelation of truths till then hidden. As long as he who
illumines everything lives, the sources of the world are opened and
all secrets are disclosed. "Woe to the generation forsaken by Simon
bar Yochaï." He is almost deified in the Zohar. His disciples once
broke out into ecstatic praise that he had mounted the degrees to
heavenly wisdom, which none of his predecessors had done; and of him
it is written in Scripture, "All men are to appear before the lord,"
_i.e._, before Simon bar Yochaï. This extravagant glorification and
self-deification, sufficient to mark a forgery, are not without design.
They were to meet the objection, how the Kabbala, so long unknown, and
kept secret by the prudent Kabbalists--for they had hesitated to
impart any of it in writing--how this mysterious wisdom could all at
once come to light, and be revealed to every one's knowledge. The Zohar
frequently uses the following excuse: As the time in which Simon bar
Yochaï lived was especially meritorious and rich in grace, and as the
Messianic period was near, the veil which had concealed the book so
long could now be drawn aside.
There are certainly very few compositions which have exercised so much
influence as the Zohar, or which can be compared with it in regard to
the remarkable nature of its contents and form. It is a book without
beginning or end, of which it is unknown whether it once formed part
of a whole, whether the extant portions originally belonged to it,
or were added later, or whether at an earlier period more of it was
in existence. It consists of three principal parts, with appendices
and explanatory comments. The absence of form in this farrago made
it possible for certain portions to be imitated. It is so easy and
tempting to imitate its wild though sonorous style. Thus the forgery
was counter-forged. It is not positively certain whether the Zohar
is to be regarded as a running commentary to the Pentateuch, as a
theosophic manual, or as a collection of Kabbalistic sermons. And its
contents are just as curious, confused and chaotic as its form and
external dress. The Zohar with its appendages in no wise develops
a Kabbalistic system like Azriel's, neither does it unfold an idea
like Abraham Abulafia, but plays with the Kabbalistic forms as with
counters--with the En-Sof, with the number of the Sefiroth, with
points and strokes, with vowels, accents, with the names of God and
the transposition of their letters, as well as with the Biblical
verses and Agadic sayings--casts them about in eternal repetition,
and in this manner produces sheer absurdities. Occasionally it gives a
faint suggestion of an idea, but in a trice it evaporates in feverish
fancies, or dissolves in childish silliness.
The underlying principle of the Zohar (if we may speak of principles in
reference to this book) is that the historical narratives and religious
statutes of the Bible were never intended to be understood in a plain,
simple sense, but that they contain something higher, mysterious,
supernatural. "Is it conceivable," the Zohar makes one of Simon bar
Yochaï's circle exclaim, "that God had no holier matters to communicate
than these common things about Esau and Hagar, Laban and Jacob,
Balaam's ass, Balak's jealousy of Israel, and Zimri's lewdness? Does a
collection of such tales, taken in their ordinary sense, deserve the
name of Torah? And can it be said of such a revelation that it utters
the pure truth?" "If that is all the Torah contains," remarks Simon bar
Yochaï (or Moses de Leon), "we can produce in our time a book as good
as this, aye, perhaps better. No, no! the higher, mystical sense of the
Torah is its true sense. The Biblical narratives resemble a beautiful
dress, which enraptures fools so that they do not look beneath it. This
robe, however, covers a body, _i.e._, the precepts of the Law, and this
again a soul, the higher soul. Woe to the guilty, who assert that the
Torah contains only simple stories, and therefore look only upon the
dress. Blessed are the righteous, who seek the real sense of the Law.
The jar is not the wine, so stories do not make up the Torah." Thus
the secret lore of Moses de Leon naturally has free play to pervert
everything and anything, and give it the seal of sublimity, and in this
manner to promulgate a false doctrine, not only absurd, sometimes even
blasphemous and immoral. All laws of the Torah are to be considered
as parts and constituents of a higher world; they resolve themselves
into the mysteries of the masculine and feminine principle (positive
and negative). Only when both parts meet, does the higher unity arise.
Consequently, whenever any one transgresses one of the laws, he
obscures the brilliant image of the higher world.
It is almost impossible to give an idea of the abuse which the Zohar,
or Moses de Leon, practices in the interpretation of Holy Writ, and
how he twists the sense of the words. In the verse, "Raise your eyes to
heaven, and see who has created this," a profound mystery is supposed
to reside, which the prophet Elijah learned in the celestial school,
and revealed to Simon bar Yochaï; namely, that God had been unknown
and obscure before the creation of the world, in a manner existing,
and still not existing. He was the "Who" (the unknown subject). The
creation is part of His self-revelation. It was by the creation that He
first proclaimed Himself as God.
The Zohar is particularly concerned with that side of man which is an
eternal riddle to man,--the soul, its origin and end. Like the older
Kabbalists, the Zohar assumed the pre-existence of the souls in the
brilliant world of the Sefiroth. They are there wrapped in a spiritual
robe, and entranced in the contemplation of God's light. When the souls
are about to enter this world they assume an earthly garment, the body;
but as soon as they are to leave the earth, the angel of death divests
them of this earthly garment. If a soul lives piously and morally here
below, it receives its former heavenly robe, and can once more enjoy
the blissful ecstasy of God's presence; if not, particularly if it
departs from the world impenitent, it wanders about naked and ashamed
till purified in hell. The nakedness of the soul, paradise and hell
--depicted in fantastic, baroque, and terrible images--are themes
for which the Zohar often and gladly makes digressions. What happens
to the soul during sleep, and the shadows of life--sin, impurity in
small and great things--are likewise favorite subjects for discussion
in the Zohar, to which it frequently reverts, presenting them in the
greatest variety of guises and repetitions. One of the older Kabbalists
arrived at the notion that to the higher world, the world of light,
of holiness, and of angels, there was a sharp antithesis--a world
of darkness, of unholiness, of Satan, in short the principle of evil,
which was likewise developed into ten degrees (Sefiroth) at the
creation of the world. In spite of their opposite characters, the two
worlds are of one origin, forming opposite poles, and are in the same
relation to each other as the right side is to the left. Accordingly,
evil is called in the language of the Kabbalists the left or other
side. The Kabbalists gave another representation of the Satanic
empire. On the border of the world of light, the world of darkness is
situated, and encompasses it as the shell surrounds the kernel of the
fruit. Hence the Zohar metaphorically designates evil, or sin, with
its ten degrees, as shell (Kelifa). This side is the favorite topic
of the Zohar; for here it can apply its peculiar exposition of the
Scriptures. The ten Sefiroth of the left side, the Satanic kingdom, are
enumerated and denominated by names which savor of barbarism. The names
sound like those of the princes of the demons in the book of Enoch,
and are perhaps borrowed thence: Samael or Samiel, Azael, Angiel,
Sariel, Kartiel. The Zohar identifies all blasphemers and wicked
people with the evil principle of the "shells" (Kelifoth)--the first
serpent, Cain, Esau, Pharaoh, and Esau's empire, Rome, and the civil
and spiritual power of Christendom in the Middle Ages, which rested
on violence and injustice. Israel and righteous people, on the other
hand, belong to the world of light, the right Sefiroth. "He who goes
after the left side (sin), and defiles his actions, draws upon himself
the impure spirits; they attach themselves to him, nor do they ever
leave him." The laws of the Torah have no other object than to effect
and cherish the union of the souls with the world of light. Every
transgression of them brings the souls to the world of darkness, evil
spirits, and impurity. The Zohar coarsely represents the connection of
the souls with light or with darkness by the image of wedded union,
as, in general, it asserts the masculine and feminine principle in the
higher world, even in reference to the Deity. As long as Israel lives
in exile, the divine unity is deficient and disrupted; God will become
one only in those days when the Mistress (Matronita) will espouse the
King.
Moses de Leon would have left a gap, if he had not spoken of the
Messianic period--the keynote of the Kabbala--and determined its
date. In fact, the sudden revelation of the doctrine so long held
secret rests on the assumption that the time of the Messiah is near.
But here the forger betrays himself. Instead of indicating a period or
a year for the appearance of the Messiah approximating the age of Simon
bar Yochaï (in the second century), the Zohar, with its casuistical
playing with letters and numbers, demonstrated that it would happen in
the beginning of the fourteenth century, therefore in the lifetime of
the author. "When the sixtieth or the sixty-sixth year will pass the
threshold of the sixth thousand, the Messiah will show himself;" but
some time will pass before all nations will be conquered, and Israel
be gathered together. The Messiah will first be summoned to appear on
earth from his secret abode in Paradise, "the bird's nest," where he
has been dwelling in bliss since the beginning of the world. A bloody
conflict will then break out in the world. Edom and Ishmael (Christian
and Mahometan nations) will vehemently contend with one another, and
eventually both will be annihilated by a mightier conquering people.
Signs and miracles will presage the time, and the resurrection of the
dead and a general diffusion of the Kabbalistic knowledge of God will
constitute the end of the world. Moses de Leon intended to arouse
in the minds of his contemporaries the hope that they would behold
the time of the Messiah with their own eyes. He was perhaps as much
a victim to Messianic enthusiasm as Abraham Abulafia. Despite the
Zohar's endeavor to exalt rabbinical Judaism and its law, and by a
mystical explanation to give every custom, however trivial, a special
signification and higher import, it carps at and criticises the Talmud
and its method, though in an obscure, equivocal manner, and with the
most innocent air in the world. It represents the study of the Kabbala
as of much higher importance than the study of the Talmud, and even
of the Bible. The Kabbala has the power of soaring, and is able to
follow the flight of the Deity in His inscrutable guidance of things;
the Talmud, on the other hand, and its adherents, have clipped wings,
and cannot elevate themselves to higher knowledge. The Zohar compares
the Mishna (Talmud) with a lowly slave; the Kabbala, on the other
hand, with a powerful mistress. The former has to do with inferior
matters, with "clean and unclean," with "permitted and prohibited,"
with "what is and is not fit to be used." As long as this woman rules
with her "now pure, at another time impure blood," the union of the
Father with the Matrona (God with Israel) cannot take place. In the
Messianic period, on the other hand, when the higher knowledge will
awake, and gain the ascendency, the Kabbala will once more assert
its dominion over the slave (Talmud), as in the time of the lawgiver
Moses. The Zohar lastly compares the study of the Talmud with a rugged,
unproductive rock which, when struck, gives out scanty drops of water,
causing only disputes and discussions. The Kabbala, on the other hand,
is like a spring flowing abundantly, to which only a word needs to be
spoken to cause it to pour out its refreshing and vivifying contents.
When the Zohar or Midrash of Simon bar Yochaï was published, it aroused
the greatest wonder among the Kabbalists. They seized upon it with
avidity. Moses de Leon received vast multitudes of orders to send
copies. The question, whence all at once had come so comprehensive
a work of an old teacher of the Mishna, not a trace of which had
been known till then, was thus answered: Nachmani had exhumed it in
Palestine, had sent it to his son in Catalonia, by a whirlwind it had
been carried to Aragon or Alicante (Valencia), where it had fallen into
the hands of Moses de Leon, who alone possessed the original document.
The repute of the newly discovered Kabbalistic treasure soon spread
through the whole of Spain. The school of Abulafia at once gave the
Zohar the tribute of its acknowledgment, and considered it indisputably
genuine. Moses de Leon's wildest hopes were more than realized. There
were, of course, Kabbalists who doubted that the Zohar had originated
with Simon bar Yochaï and his school, but none the less did they pay
homage to the book as to a pure source for Kabbalistic theories. When
the Kabbalist Isaac of Accho, who had escaped the massacre that had
ensued upon the capture of that city, arrived in Spain, and saw the
Zohar, he was staggered, and became desirous of coming to the root
of the question, whether this alleged ancient Palestinian work was
really genuine, as he had been born and educated in the Holy Land, had
associated with Nachmani's pupils, and yet had never heard a syllable
about it. When he met Moses de Leon in Valladolid, the latter took a
solemn oath that he had in his house at Avila an old copy of the book
from the hand of Simon bar Yochaï, and pledged himself to submit it to
Isaac of Accho for examination. But Moses de Leon became ill on his
journey home, and died in Arevalo (1305). The veil around the origin
of the Zohar was wrapped still closer. Two influential men of Avila,
David Rafan and Joseph de Avila, had indeed discovered the simple
truth from Moses de Leon's wife and daughter. Moses de Leon had never
possessed the original copy, but had evolved it out of his own inner
consciousness, and had written it with his own hand. His wife frankly
related that she had often asked her husband why he published the
productions of his own intellect under a strange name, and that he had
answered that the Zohar would not, under his own name, have brought him
any money, but assigned to Simon bar Yochaï it had been a lucrative
source of income.
Thus wife and daughter, without being aware of the full gravity of
their assuredly unassailable testimony, unmasked Moses de Leon as a
forger. Nevertheless, the Zohar met with the unqualified applause
of the Kabbalists, because it supplied a want which would have had
to be provided for in one way or another. The Kabbalistic doctrine,
which had already gained so much weight, had hitherto been without
firm basis; it had no other authority than the very doubtful one of
Isaac the Blind. Now the dignified figure of a teacher of the Mishna
in communion with departed spirits and celestial hosts and angels
confirmed the truths which were not only doubted by many at the time,
but absolutely ridiculed. Should they, then, not cling to it and defend
it? What Moses de Leon put into the mouth of Simon bar Yochaï, "Many
will range themselves round the book Zohar, when it becomes known, and
nourish their minds with it at the end of days," actually happened soon
after his death. If the Zohar did not bring the Kabbalists anything
essentially new, it exhibited to them what they did know in so peculiar
a form and language, that they were wonderstruck. Everything in it
is contrived for effect, for illusion, and for fascination. The long
discussions which Simon bar Yochaï holds with his circle or with the
"faithful shepherd," have dramatic power, especially the scene in
which, in premonition of his speedy dissolution, he imparts once more
what he so often had proclaimed. Full of effect, and, upon minds
easily accessible to faith, of transporting and overwhelming influence,
are the oft-recurring exclamations in the Zohar: Woe, woe to those
who believe, or do not believe, or fail to respect, this and that.
Sometimes short prayers are interspersed, which, being elevated and
imaginative, are peculiarly fitted to fill the soul with mysterious
awe. Even the characteristic terms introduced instead of the usual
Kabbalistic forms are calculated to arouse interest by their double
sense. The author designated God and the higher spiritual substances
(Sefiroth) collectively or in their single parts and effects, as
father, mother, the prototype of man, bride, matron, the white head,
the large and the small face, the mirror, the higher heaven, the higher
earth, lily, apple-orchard, and so on. The pious were gained over to
the side of the Zohar, as it attributes to every religious custom and
every practice a higher import, a higher sanctity, and a mysterious
effect.
So a new text-book of religion was by stealth introduced into Judaism.
It placed the Kabbala, which a century before had been unknown, on the
same level as the Bible and the Talmud, and to a certain extent on a
still higher level. The Zohar undoubtedly produced good, in so far as
it opposed enthusiasm to the legal dry-as-dust manner of the study of
the Talmud, stimulated the imagination and the feelings, and cultivated
a disposition that restrained the reasoning faculty. But the ills which
it has brought on Judaism outweigh the good by far. The Zohar confirmed
and propagated a gloomy superstition, and strengthened in people's
minds the belief in the kingdom of Satan, in evil spirits and ghosts.
Through its constant use of coarse expressions, often verging on the
sensual, in contradistinction to the chaste, pure spirit pervading
Jewish literature, the Zohar sowed the seeds of unclean desires, and
later on produced a sect that laid aside all regard for decency.
Finally, the Zohar blunted the sense for the simple and the true, and
created a visionary world, in which the souls of those who zealously
occupied themselves with it were lulled into a sort of half-sleep,
and lost the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong. Its
quibbling interpretations of Holy Writ, adopted by the Kabbalists and
others infected with this mannerism, perverted the verses and words
of the Holy Book, and made the Bible the wrestling-ground of the most
curious, insane notions. The Zohar even contains utterances which
seem favorable to the Christian dogma of the Trinity of the Godhead.
The mystics dismembered the fair form of Holy Writ, indulged in mad
sport, and stupefied all sense for truth, but they were scarcely
more guilty in this respect than the so-called philosophers of the
time. Maimuni's attempt to bring Judaism and its religious literature
into consonance with reason, to give certain too realistic verses
of the Bible a philosophical, or at least a tolerable sense, and
place religious precepts on the basis of an intelligible, acceptable
purpose, encouraged half-learned men to explain everything and
anything in the same way. Hence the allegorizing of the Scriptures,
the Agada, and the rites, was carried to an incredible extreme. These
pseudo-philosophers divested the stories of the creation and of the
patriarchs of their historical character, and interpreted them as
philosophical commonplaces, in which they sported with Aristotelian
and Maimunist terms, as the Zohar with Kabbalistic terms. Abraham and
Sarah, for example, denote to the allegorists matter and form, Pharaoh
denotes vicious desires, Egypt the body, the land of Goshen the heart,
Moses the divine spirit, and the Urim and Thummim, which the High
Priest wore on his breast in the Temple, were the astrolabe of the
astronomers, with which they calculated time, longitude and latitude.
If there had been at that time any Jewish thinkers of the first rank,
they would have made serious efforts to put a stop to this childish
proceeding, whether Kabbalistic or pseudo-philosophical. But the age of
Ben Adret happened to be poor in great intellects. Even the two chief
representatives of the philosophy of that time, Shem-Tob Falaquera and
Isaac Albalag, were not above mediocrity, and were themselves tainted
with the current errors.
There were, however, certain men of bolder spirit, who from
philosophical premises drew conclusions endangering the stability of
Judaism. Like their predecessors, the Alexandrine allegorists, many
intelligent and consistent thinkers were induced at this time to
disregard the ceremonies of Judaism by assigning erroneous purposes to
religious precepts. As the ceremonies are intended simply to awaken
certain religious, philosophical, or moral feelings, they argued, it
is sufficient to call up these thoughts, to be penetrated by them,
to occupy one's mind constantly with them, while the observance of
religious customs is superfluous. Several members of this school denied
Moses' prophetic character, accepting him only as an ordinary lawgiver,
such as other nations had, and thus rejected the divinity of the Torah.
The pseudo-philosophers cast a doubt upon the very fundamentals of
Judaism, and thereby provoked a reaction injurious to free inquiry.
The chief authority of this allegorical school was a man of vast
erudition, but full of crotchets, who, without desiring it,
occasioned violent conflicts. This was Levi ben Abraham ben Chayim,
of Villefranche, not far from Perpignan (born about 1240, died after
1315). Coming from a respectable family of scholars, he was deeply
read in the Talmud; but he was more attracted by Maimuni's philosophy
and Ibn-Ezra's astrology, being a warm adherent of the belief of the
latter in the influence of the stars over human destiny. Of a volatile
rather than a solid mind, Levi ben Chayim had no perfect conception
of Maimuni's aims. To him Judaism resolved itself into philosophical
platitudes, which, preposterous and childish as they sound to us, were,
strange to say, regarded by the people of early times as profound
wisdom. Ben Chayim was the disseminator of that superficial method
satisfied with formulæ instead of thoughts. He composed two chief
works, one in verse, the other in prose, a kind of encyclopædia, in
which he applied the theory derived from Maimuni to all branches of
knowledge. In these books he translated the historical narratives in
the Bible into philosophical generalities, explained the standing
still of the sun on the occasion of Joshua's victory as a natural
occurrence, and in general, adopted any method of expounding which
depends on word-twisting. Levi ben Chayim repudiated the allegorical
interpretations of laws; in fact, he denounced the allegorists as
heretics, and desired to preserve the historical character of the
biblical narratives as much as possible. Like his prototype, Ibn-Ezra,
he tried to keep secret his deepest convictions, so that not even his
friends could fathom his ideas. This Judaism, disfigured by absurd
philosophical interpretations, was not only privately taught, but
preached in the synagogues.
The home of this pseudo-philosophy was the not insignificant
congregation of Perpignan, the capital of the province of Roussillon,
which belonged to the kingdom of Aragon. Although the Jews had no
enviable lot, and were compelled to live in the most miserable part of
the town, that assigned to lepers, they nevertheless preserved a taste
for science and free inquiry, and eagerly awaited the new theories
taught by the exponents and followers of Maimuni's philosophy. Here
poor Levi of Villefranche had found a place of refuge at the house
of a rich and influential man, Don Samuel Sulami or Sen Escalita,
whose piety, learning and liberality were praised beyond measure
by his contemporaries. "From Perpignan to Marseilles there is not
another who can be compared with Samuel Sulami in knowledge of the
Law, benevolence, piety and humility. He gives charity in secret, his
house is open to every traveler; and he is indefatigable in getting
books for his collection." He corresponded on learned topics with
Ben Adret, and took interest in the philosophical interpretation of
the Bible and the Agada. Even the rabbi of Perpignan was a friend of
free thought and a determined enemy of mummified orthodoxy and the
unreflecting faith of the literalist. This was Don Vidal Menachem ben
Solomon Meïri (born Elul, 1249, died about 1306), little celebrated
in his own time, but none the less of great importance. Though not of
commanding influence, he possessed an attractive personality. He had
what nearly all his contemporaries sorely lacked, moderation and tact.
These qualities are revealed particularly in Meïri's style. Nearly all
the Jewish authors of Spain and Provence wrote their prose and verse
in a redundant, bombastic style, as if the whole literary thesaurus of
the Bible were needed to express a meager idea. The much-admired model
of this time, the moral poet Yedaya Bedaresi, is so prolix in saying
the most ordinary platitude, that one has to peruse whole pages of his
apology, reflections, and miscellaneous writings before coming across
a tolerable idea. The style in vogue, a mosaic of Biblical phrases,
favored verbosity. But Don Vidal Meïri forms a glorious exception to
this practice, his style being terse and clear. In his commentaries
to the tractates of the Talmud which relate to ceremonial duties, he
proceeds throughout in a methodical manner, advances from the general
to the particular, arranges his material in lucid order, and seeks to
give the reader information, not to confuse him. Of a similar character
is Meïri's exposition of Holy Writ. The philosophers and mystics always
endeavored to find some higher meaning in it, the simple explanation
being too prosaic for them, and accordingly they put upon the Bible
their own extravagant nonsense. Not so Meïri. He certainly assumed
that there are many commands and narratives in the Bible which point
to something higher than the literal meaning, but the majority of them
must, he maintained, be taken quite literally. Meïri was naturally
dissatisfied with the extravagant mannerisms of the allegorists, but
it did not enter his mind to reject the good together with the bad, to
interdict learning because of its abuse.
These proceedings were not regarded quite so calmly by certain bigots,
dwelling in the city which had produced the obscurantist Solomon of
Montpellier, the proscriber of Maimuni and his compositions, and
author of so much dissension and evil. Although pseudo-philosophical
extravaganzas were not more dangerous than the follies of the
Kabbalists, the watchers of Zion nevertheless overlooked the latter,
and waged energetic warfare with the former, so that the philosophers
obtained more weight than they would otherwise have had. The bigots of
Montpellier well-nigh kindled the fire of discord in Jacob. The first
instigator of this ill-timed zeal belonged to that class of men who
mark off the province of faith according to an exact rule, denounce
every movement and opinion which transgress their limit as heresy,
and desire to have them rooted out with anathemas and scourges, where
possible with fire and sword--a class of men in whom fanatical zeal
cannot be separated from a kind of egoism. To this category belonged
Abba-Mari ben Moses, of Montpellier, or, as his aristocratic title
ran, Don Astruc En-Duran de Lünel. Of a respectable family, and of
great influence in the capital of Languedoc, Abba-Mari was certainly
not without culture, and he had great veneration for Maimuni and his
compositions; but he had irrevocably attached himself to the Jewish
creed as laid down by Nachmani, and was indignant if any one ventured
to consider it from the point of view of another system. He did not
object to miraculous tales; on the contrary, the more the better. The
conclusions of philosophy and science, which denied the possibility
of these miracles, in no way disturbed him. In the choice between
Moses and Aristotle, or between the authorities of the Talmud and the
upholders of philosophy, he was not for a moment doubtful to whom to
give the preference. To be sure, this narrow-minded point of view is
justifiable; but Abba-Mari wanted to thrust his opinion upon every
one else, and to persecute all who thought otherwise. Not only did he
hold in abomination the allegorical exegesis publicly preached, but he
reprobated the study of all profane literature as the cause of this
aberration. He regretted that the scourge could no more be brought into
requisition to silence those who filled their minds with such learning
as endangered religion.
Abba-Mari, however, did not possess sufficient authority to proceed
against Levi of Villefranche and his school. He addressed himself to
the most influential rabbi of the time, Ben Adret of Barcelona, and
charged that their perversities would accomplish the dissolution of
Judaism, if a restraint were not put upon them. He importuned Ben
Adret to exercise his great influence. The rabbi naturally found the
circumstance deplorable that "strangers had forced their way through
the gates of Zion." He exhorted Abba-Mari to organize a party to oppose
this extravagant movement, but positively refused his support, as he
did not like to interfere in the affairs of congregations abroad. Other
bigots, however, took up the cause, and hurried it to a crisis, among
them Don Bonafoux Vidal, of Barcelona, and his brother, Don Crescas
Vidal, who had moved to Perpignan, both highly respected and learned,
but as intolerant as Abba-Mari. Don Crescas made a proposition,
which met with much applause. The study of science, and the reading
of profane literature in general, was to be prohibited to Jewish
youths till their thirtieth year. Only men of mature age, "who had
filled their minds with the Bible and the Talmud, were to be allowed
to warm themselves by the strange fires of philosophy and the natural
sciences." Although Ben Adret did not feel disposed to take measures
against the study of science, he nevertheless considered it his duty
to persecute the provoker of so much animosity. He took umbrage at the
pious Samuel Sulami for granting a heretic shelter in his house, thus
giving him an opportunity to spread his pernicious views. He harassed
Samuel Sulami so unmercifully, and subjected his conscience to such
torment, that the man, not very remarkable for strength of character,
became shaken in his previous convictions. When a daughter of his died
he believed that it was a punishment for his sinfulness, and renounced
his hospitality to Levi. Many members of the congregation of Perpignan
bitterly resented the suspicion of heresy cast upon Levi, and as they
knew Ben Adret to be a man of stainless character, they vented their
dissatisfaction on the instigator, Abba-Mari, to whom they imputed
sordid ulterior designs and personal motives.
Abba-Mari and his allies, who felt themselves helpless without
powerful support, labored without intermission to inflame the zeal of
the Barcelona rabbinate, that it might forbid free inquiry and the
study of science. At the same time they promised the co-operation of
the whole congregation of Montpellier, which, being the chief one in
southern France, would draw other communities after it. Ben Adret and
his college, imagining from Abba-Mari's exaggerated description that
Judaism was in the greatest danger, were at last determined to take up
the matter, but desired first to sound the congregation of Montpellier
as to its feeling on the subject, and for this purpose sent a letter
to be read before the members in case they felt disposed to join them
in interdicting the study of the natural sciences. But as soon as the
proposed ban against the sciences became known, decided opposition
arose among the most important men of the congregation.
There was at that time in Montpellier a man, who by reason of his
family, position, wealth and knowledge, was held in high estimation
by his people, and who had imbibed a love for the sciences with his
mother's milk. Jacob ben Machir Tibbon, known in Christian circles
as Don Profiat, or Profatius (born about 1236, died after 1312), was
descended on one side from the celebrated Meshullam of Lünel, the first
to promote a revival of learning in southern France, and on the other
side he was related to the Tibbonides. From his birth he was taught to
look upon Judaism and science as twin sisters, dwelling together in
the utmost harmony. Like all educated Jews of his time, he was well
grounded in Jewish literature, the Bible, and the Talmud, practiced
medicine as his profession, but devoted himself with particular zeal to
mathematics and astronomy. His accurate observation of the inclination
of the earth's axis to the orbit was taken by later master astronomers
as the basis of their investigations. As he had acquired a knowledge
of Arabic, he was able to translate useful scientific works from that
language into Hebrew. His wealth of knowledge was not employed as a
means of gratifying his vanity or ambition, but he properly regarded it
as the distinction of man, enabling him to arrive at self-knowledge.
Jacob Tibbon maintained that in the happy time of the Jewish people
science had its home in their midst, but exile and suffering had
banished it, and its former exponents now had to become students in
order to learn the results arrived at by foreign nations. In his
scientific labors Jacob ben Machir had a very noble end in view. He
aimed at elevating his co-religionists in the eyes of the Christian
world, and silencing the sneers of their enemies, who tauntingly said
that they were destitute of all knowledge.
This man was now asked to assist in banishing science from the Jewish
world. If Abba-Mari wished to carry out in Montpellier his scheme of
holding the Jewish youth aloof from the study of the sciences, he was
bound to take Jacob ben Machir into consideration. For he was held
in high esteem by his congregation on account of his many excellent
traits and his meritorious achievements, and had the greatest influence
with the members entitled to a vote. Indeed, he was the first to whom
Abba-Mari disclosed the project, supported by the Barcelona rabbinate,
against the study of the profane sciences, and he reckoned upon Jacob's
co-operation. With impressive decisiveness, Profiat not only refused
participation, but pointed out the sad consequences of so serious a
step, and importuned him to omit the public reading of Ben Adret's
letter. Abba-Mari and his ally, Todros of Beaucaire, nevertheless
persisted in their determination, and summoned the members of the
congregation to an important conference in the synagogue on a Sabbath
(Elul-August, 1304). It was immediately apparent that the zealots had
deceived themselves, or had been too confident in their assertion that
the Jews of Montpellier would give unanimous consent to the interdict
to be laid on science. A portion of the congregation even abstained
from taking part in the deliberations, and Jacob ben Machir raised an
emphatic protest against the proposed enslaving of the intellect. A
violent discussion ensued, and the meeting dispersed without coming to
a resolution. Soon a party, consisting of advocates of science, and
of friends, adherents and parasites of the highly esteemed leader,
rallied round Jacob Machir, the most distinguished representative of
science. The obscurantists and the simple-minded attached themselves
to Abba-Mari, so that the congregation became a prey to division and
conflict. Each party endeavored to gain supporters, both within and
without the community.
It became a point of honor with Abba-Mari to bring the affair to a
conclusion conformable to his own views, for his defeat had exposed his
true position to Ben Adret and the Barcelona congregation. After the
unfavorable issue of the first deliberation in the synagogue, he hardly
ventured to answer the man whom he had assured of a unanimous adoption
of his proposal. He, therefore, worked very energetically in collecting
at least twenty-five signatures of members of the congregation, to give
Ben Adret proof that he did not stand alone in his extreme views.
It was no less a point of honor with Jacob Tibbon not to allow the
interdiction of science to come into force. For he and the Tibbonides
believed that the attacks were directed chiefly against their
highly-venerated ancestors, Samuel Ibn-Tibbon and Jacob Anatoli,
because the latter's book of sermons (Malmed) had been the first to
explain away Biblical tales and religious laws, and at that time
was used in certain quarters for Sabbath devotions. Ben Adret, at
Abba-Mari's instigation, did, indeed, treat Anatoli, the favorite of
the Tibbonides, with scorn. Of Samuel Ibn-Tibbon, the translator of
Maimuni's works, and propagator of his theories, the austere bigots
had not a good word to say. Judah ben Moses, his great-grandson,
consequently became the soul of what may be called the Tibbonide party,
which agitated against Abba-Mari's plan. To attract outsiders, the
Tibbonides gave out that the adversaries of science once more had in
view the denunciation of Maimuni and his compositions as heretical,
and that Abba-Mari wanted to take up the position of Solomon of
Montpellier. This was a very happy party manœuvre; it won over even
those who had shown indifference to the burning topic of the day,
for they thought themselves in duty bound to take up arms on behalf
of Maimuni's honor. The Tibbonide party, thus strengthened, sent a
trenchant and pointed letter to Ben Adret and the Barcelonians, to
ask them to reconsider their decision. It is true, they were not able
to offer any convincing reasons for the admission of science into the
Jewish curriculum; but the arguments which they set forth in its favor
were considered satisfactory in a superficial age. They appealed to
King Solomon's wisdom, "from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the
wall," which, they said, referred to nothing but natural science. From
the Talmud, too, reasons were adduced for the study of science. They
would not admit the validity of the reply that it was not intended
to interdict research generally, only to prohibit immature young men
from its pursuit. That, they said, was an evasion of the main point at
issue. For a man not familiar with science before his thirtieth year
was permanently incapable of engaging in its study, and in advanced
age could never retrieve the loss. The Tibbonides, moreover, protested
that they were branded as heretics, because along with the Torah
they paid homage to the profane sciences. They did not recognize the
superiority of any one in piety and orthodoxy. Lastly, the Tibbonides
exhorted Ben Adret and his college to bury the hatchet of denunciation
and discord. The spirited and defiant tone assumed by Jacob ben Machir
and his adherents greatly provoked the Barcelonians. The tension
increased. Bitter and caustic letters flew hither and thither. Both
sides labored to gain new adherents in other congregations, and to draw
over the waverers. The communities of Argentière, Aix, Avignon and
Lünel, through their representatives, declared in favor of Abba-Mari
and his followers. In Perpignan, the chief seat of the much-assailed
enlightenment, a relative of Abba-Mari agitated in his favor. The
latter was particularly desirous of securing the assistance of a man
who, by reason of his noble birth and highly honorable position, had
powerful influence in Perpignan and elsewhere. This was Kalonymos
ben Todros of Narbonne, thought to be a descendant of the house of
King David. Kalonymos did not at first appear inclined to take part
in the proscription of science; but Abba-Mari from the one side and
Ben Adret from the other assailed him with such pertinacity that at
length he promised his consent and co-operation. As the Tibbonide party
had also gained new adherents, Ben Adret himself shrank from pushing
the controversy to extremes, and decided not to issue the decree
of excommunication till at least twenty congregations had declared
themselves unequivocally in favor of it.
Whilst in southern France and Spain the balance was inclining now to
one side, now to the other, in the dispute about the admission of
scientific studies into Jewish circles, the German communities were
passing through a series of the most deplorable events, which drove to
Spain a man who spoke the deciding word in favor of the excommunication
and proscription of free inquiry. He was of high morality, rare
disinterestedness, of pure aspiration and sincere piety, and possessed
profound Talmudical learning, but was filled with the fanatical hate
of his countrymen against profane knowledge. The emigration of Asheri
or Asher from Germany to Spain inaugurates an unhappy period for the
Spanish and Provençal Jews in their efforts for the progress of culture.
Asher ben Yechiel (born about 1250, died 1327) of the Rhine district,
sprang from ancestors who centered their whole world in the Talmud. A
disciple of the celebrated Meïr of Rothenburg, Asher acquired the acute
Tossafist method, composed Tossafist works, but had a finer sense
of system and order than this school. After the death of his master,
whose corpse the unprincipled emperor, Adolph of Nassau, refused to
give up for burial without remuneration, Asheri was reckoned among
the most influential rabbinical authorities of Germany. A paroxysm
of persecutions of the Jews broke out in his time, far worse than
those during the crusades; it robbed thousands of innocent men of
their lives, or sentenced them to a lot worse than death. A civil war
raged at that time in Germany between Adolph of Nassau and Albrecht
of Austria, who were contending for the empty glitter of the German
crown. This strife promised impunity for audacious attacks on the Jews,
who were proscribed by the church and society, and an opportunity was
easily found. A report was spread that the Jews of the little town
of Röttingen (in Franconia) had desecrated a sacramental wafer and
pounded it in a mortar, and blood was said to have flowed from it. A
nobleman of the place, named Rindfleisch, took up the cause of the
host alleged to have been desecrated, declared that he had received
a mission from heaven to root out the accursed race of Jews, and
gathered a credulous, besotted mob around him to assist in his bloody
intentions. He and his troops first of all consigned the Jews of
Röttingen to the flames (7th Iyar-20th April, 1298). From this place
the rabble of slaughterers, under Rindfleisch's leadership, traveled
from town to town, always swelling their numbers with others of their
description, and destroyed all the Jews who fell into their hands, even
those converted to Christianity. Rindfleisch, impelled by audacity and
spurious enthusiasm, fairly forced the inhabitants of various towns to
ill-treat their Jewish fellow-citizens brutally. The great community of
Würzburg was completely blotted out (12th Ab-24th July). In Nuremberg
the Jews had at first fled for refuge into the fortress, but being
attacked there, too, they took to arms, and though assisted by humane
Christians, were overpowered at last, and all butchered (22d Ab-1st
August). Asheri's relative and fellow-student, Mordecai ben Hillel,
who had compiled a very important rabbinical work, fell at about the
same time, together with his wife and five children. Many parents, lest
their children from fear of death should renounce their faith, threw
them with their own hands into the flames, and plunged in after them.
In Bavaria the congregations of Ratisbon and Augsburg were the only
ones to escape the slaughter. In the first city, where they had the
right of citizenship from time immemorial, the mayor protected them
with great zeal. In Augsburg, too, the mayor and council defended them
against the destroyers, Rindfleisch and his horde.
This bloody persecution spread from Franconia and Bavaria to Austria,
swept away more than a hundred and forty congregations and more than
100,000 Jews, and lasted nearly half a year. The Jews of Germany all
trembled, and were prepared to meet destruction. This would certainly
have come if the civil war in Germany had not been brought to an
end by the death of Emperor Adolph, and the election of Albrecht.
The second Habsburger energetically restored the country to a state
of peace, brought to book the perpetrators of the outrages on the
Jews, and imposed fines on the towns which had participated in them,
on the ground that he had suffered losses in his purse through the
immolation of his "servi cameræ" and their goods. The majority of
the Jews baptized through fear returned to Judaism, apparently with
the connivance of the emperor and the representatives of the church.
The after-throes of this massacre were likewise bitter enough. The
wives of those who had perished could not authenticate the death of
their husbands through Jewish witnesses, as no men remained alive
competent to give testimony. They could appeal only to the statement
of baptized Jews, whose evidence was considered by many rabbis to be
invalid according to the Talmudical marriage laws. Asheri, however, was
sensible enough to unbend from this strictness, and allowed the widows
to marry again on the evidence of baptized Jews returned to Judaism.
Asheri did not feel very secure in Germany after this bloody massacre,
or perhaps he was threatened with danger on the part of Emperor
Albrecht. It was said that the emperor demanded of him the sum of
money which the Jews were to pay as ransom for the imprisoned Meïr
of Rothenburg, for which Asheri had become security. He accordingly
left Germany (summer of 1303), and traveled from one country to
another with his wife, his eight sons and grandsons, and on account
of his reputation, he was everywhere treated with the utmost respect,
especially in Montpellier, even before the breaking out of the
controversy. He finally settled in Toledo, the largest city of Spain
(January, 1305). With joy the illustrious German rabbi was installed by
the Toledo congregation in the vacant rabbinate. With Asheri the dismal
spirit of over-piety, so hostile to knowledge, entered into the Spanish
capital.
Asheri did not conceal his antipathy to profane culture. He could not
conceive how pious Jews, in southern France and in Spain, could occupy
themselves with subjects outside of the Talmud. With the utmost scorn
he discountenanced the very aspiration of the Spanish and Provençal
Jews on which they prided themselves. He thanked his Creator that
He had protected him from the baneful influence of science. He did
not give the southern Frenchmen and the Spanish Jews credit for
thoroughness even in knowledge of the Talmud, and maintained that the
German and northern French Jews alone had inherited wisdom from the
time of the destruction of the Temple. A man like this, incapable of
appreciating the sciences, and harboring enmity to everything not
in the Talmud, was bound to exercise an influence prejudicial to
knowledge. Next to him Solomon ben Adret himself appeared more or less
of a freethinker. Abba-Mari forthwith availed himself of the man, from
whom he expected effectual support for his party. He requested him to
express his views on the pending question. Asheri, of course, gave
Abba-Mari his unqualified approval, but was of opinion that he did not
go far enough, for the evil would not be eradicated, if the pursuit
of the sciences were allowed at a ripe age. The poison of heresy had
spread too far, every one was infected by it, and the pious were open
to the reproach that they shut their eyes to it. His proposal was
that a synod should be convoked, and a resolution be taken that study
was to be devoted solely to the Talmud, while the sciences were to be
pursued only when it was neither day nor night--that is, not at all.
This exclusive fidelity to the Talmud, which rejected all compromise,
advocated by an energetic man of pure character, made an overpowering
impression on the unsettled minds of Spanish Jews. Ben Adret himself,
who had hitherto always hesitated to lead the movement, all at once
declared that he was prepared to pronounce the ban, if Abba-Mari and
the prince, Kalonymos, would prepare it. An officious zealot, Samson
ben Meïr, disciple of Ben Adret, took upon himself to collect assenting
signatures from twenty congregations. Toledo was especially reckoned
upon, having been swayed by Asheri's mind, and next, Castile generally,
which as a rule followed the guidance of the head community.
How artificial and opposed to the sentiment of the majority this zeal
was, became apparent especially in the congregation of Montpellier,
styled the tower of Zion by Abba-Mari's party. In this congregation
the zealots did not venture to collect signatures for the sentence of
excommunication. As if in defiance, one of the Tibbonides announced
that he would give a reading from Anatoli's book of sermons on a
certain Sabbath, and immediately drew a numerous audience. Abba-Mari,
who had repeatedly boasted to Ben Adret of his mighty influence, and
had persuaded him that the whole congregation, except a few deluded
people, were on his side, now had to admit that Montpellier was not
to be reckoned upon in this affair. In the consciousness that their
party was in a minority in southern France, the two leaders, Abba-Mari
and Kalonymos, of Narbonne, made the ecclesiastical ban unexpectedly
mild, both as to wording and contents. First, the reading of works on
natural science and of metaphysical books only was to be prohibited,
all other branches of learning being expressly allowed. Secondly, the
writings of Jewish authors, even those dealing with natural science
or metaphysics, were to be excluded from the inhibition. Abba-Mari,
with a view to meeting his adversaries half-way, had made the proposal
to fix the period when the study of every department of learning was
to be allowed, not at the thirtieth, but at the twenty-fifth year
of the student's age. Ben Adret, however, who could not tolerate
half-measures nor brook retreat, had now become more severe. He who
formerly had to be driven and urged on, now became the propeller.
Asheri's influence is not to be mistaken. On the Sabbath of Lamentation
in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem, he and his colleagues
ordered the anathema against the study of the sciences to be read
amid solemn ceremonies, the scroll of the Law in the arms of the
reader (4th Ab-26th July, 1305). Whoever read any scientific book
before the twenty-fifth year of his age was liable to the penalty of
excommunication. The ban was to remain in force for half a century.
The philosophical expounders of Holy Writ were doomed in the hereafter,
and in this world subjected to excommunication, and their writings
condemned to be burnt. As no exception was made of scientific works
composed in Hebrew, according to the formulation of the ban, not
only Anatoli's book of sermons was exposed to proscription, but also
Maimuni's philosophical writings. Ben Adret and his college allowed
only the study of medicine, on the ground that its practice is
permitted in the Talmud. This was the first heresy-tribunal in Jewish
history, and Ben Adret was at its head. The Dominicans had found docile
emulators among the Jews.
According to the communal system in the Middle Ages, every congregation
was independent, and the resolutions of one congregation had no force
with another. The ban accordingly had validity only in Barcelona,
unless some other congregation confirmed it. Ben Adret, however,
labored to have it adopted by other congregations. The sentence,
signed by Ben Adret, his two sons, and more than thirty of the most
influential members of the Barcelona congregation, was dispatched to
the congregations of Spain, Languedoc, northern France, and Germany.
But the ban was not so readily adopted as the authorities of Barcelona
had flattered themselves it would be. Jacob ben Machir and his party
had already received notice that a blow was being meditated against
them, and accordingly made preparations for a countermove. They
resolved from the first to frustrate the effect of the ecclesiastical
interdict of the study of science. They drew up a resolution in
Montpellier which contained three important points. A sentence of
excommunication was to fall upon those who, out of religious scruples,
ventured to debar or withdraw their sons, whatever their youth, from
the study of any science whatsoever, regardless of the language in
which it was treated; secondly, upon those who presumed to utter an
irreverent or abusive word against the great Maimuni, and, lastly,
also upon those who presumed to denounce a religious author on account
of his philosophical system. The last point was introduced for the
sake of Anatoli's memory, which his opponents had vilified. Thus
there was ban against ban. Jacob Tibbon and his friends caused their
resolution in favor of science and its advocates to be announced
in the synagogue, and the great majority of the congregation of
Montpellier took his side. Party zeal, however, impelled the Tibbonides
to take an ill-advised step, which threatened to produce the same
evil consequences as had ensued at the time of the first conflict in
Montpellier with the obscurantists. As Jacob ben Machir Profatius
and others of his party had influence with the governor of the city,
they wished to secure his assistance in the event of their opponents'
endeavoring violently to carry the Barcelona interdict into effect. The
governor, however, explained to them that he was interested only in
one point: that the Jewish youth should not be prevented from reading
other than Talmudical works. He should strongly deprecate any attempt
to discourage the study of extra-Talmudical literature, because, as he
frankly expressed himself, he would not consent to their being deprived
through fear of excommunication of the means to potential conversion to
Christianity. To the other points he was indifferent.
Abba-Mari and his party were now in despair on account of the activity
of their opponents. As the resolution in favor of the unrestricted
study of science had been adopted by the majority of the community,
according to rabbinical law it was binding on the minority as well,
and therefore on their leader, and they could not legally stand by
the interdict of Barcelona. Thus the zealots, the provokers of the
conflict, had their hands tied, and were caught in their own net.
They did what they could; they protested against the resolution of
the Tibbonides, and advertised their protest far and wide. But they
could not conceal that they had suffered a defeat, and were obliged
to consult certain authorities as to whether the resolutions of the
Tibbonides were binding on them. Ben Adret was thus placed in an
embarrassing position. The party of Jacob ben Machir believed, or
wished to have it believed, that the prohibition of the rabbis of
Barcelona in reference to the study of scientific books, was meant
to apply to Maimuni's works, too. They obtained the credit of having
taken up the cudgels in behalf of Maimuni's honor, and of contending
for the glory of Judaism; whilst their opponents, Ben Adret included,
through their narrow-mindedness and obstinacy, were exposing their
religion to the scorn of educated Christians. The vindicators of
science seemed to be continually gaining in public opinion. There now
appeared on their side a young poet, whose eloquent defense, written
in a highly imaginative style, made a great impression. It gives a
faithful picture of the feeling and excitement which agitated the
souls of the champions of science, and, therefore, awakens interest
even in the present day. In a modest manner, but with manly spirit,
the poet tells Ben Adret truths which he never had the opportunity of
hearing in his own circle. This young poet, more famous through his
letter than through his verses, was Yedaya En-Bonet ben Abraham, better
known under the name of Bedaresi (of Béziers) and under the poetical
pseudonym of Penini (born about 1280, died about 1340). Yedaya Penini,
son of the bombastic poet, Abraham Bedaresi, had more talent as a poet
than his father. He possessed a lively imagination and overflowing
wealth of language, and lacked only restraining tact, and a dignified,
universally acceptable, uplifting aim for poetry. This deficiency gave
his poems the appearance of empty grandiloquence and artificiality.
He had inherited the defect of his father, inability to control the
superabundance of words by the law of beauty. He was too ornate, and
he moralized, instead of elevating and impressing. In his seventeenth
year Yedaya Bedaresi wrote a book of morals (Pardes), and in his
earliest years, whilst his father was still alive, he composed a prayer
of about one hundred verses, in which all the words begin with the
same letter (Bekashoth ha-Memin), and which his father, and perhaps
his contemporaries, admired, but which is nevertheless very insipid.
An admirer of Maimuni and Ibn Ezra, Bedaresi considered science and
philosophy of equal importance with Judaism, or, like most thoughtful
men of that time, he believed that the one contained the other.
Bedaresi conceived that his deepest convictions had been assailed
by Ben Adret's anathema, and that it had in reality been directed
against Maimuni's name, and, therefore, he could not restrain himself
from addressing a sharp rebuke to the excommunicators. As he lived in
Montpellier and was certainly attached to Jacob ben Machir's party, it
is quite probable that he wrote the defense of Maimuni and of science,
sent to Ben Adret, at their instigation (December, 1305, or January,
1306). This missive, like most of those written in this controversy,
was intended not only for the individual addressed, but for the Jewish
reading public in general. After Bedaresi had expressed his respect for
the upright, learned rabbi of Barcelona, he remarked that he and his
friends were not indignant about the ban, for science was invulnerable,
and could not be injured by the fulmination of excommunicators. They
were only hurt that Ben Adret should brand the Jewish congregations
of southern France as heretics and renegades, and expose them to
contempt in his message to many congregations and countries. Ben Adret,
he continued, had allowed himself to be taken in tow by Abba-Mari,
and had made a mountain of a mole-hill. From time immemorial, from
Saadiah's age, science was not only tolerated in Judaism, but cherished
and fostered, because its importance in religious knowledge was
indisputable. Moreover, the denouncers of heresy were not consistent;
they excluded the science of medicine from the ban, although this
science, like every other, had a side which was in conflict with
religion. How could they dare impugn the writings of Maimuni, whose
dazzling personality outshone all his great predecessors? At the end,
Yedaya Bedaresi observed that violent faction fights had broken out in
Montpellier. Did they wish to continue to foment party strife, that
the absence of unity among the Jews might occasion the Christians
unholy satisfaction? "We cannot give up science; it is as the breath
to our nostrils. Even if Joshua would appear and forbid it, we could
not obey him, for we have a warranty, who outweighs you all, Maimuni,
who has recommended it, and impressed it upon us. We are ready to
set our goods, our children, and our very lives at stake for it." In
conclusion, he invited Ben Adret to advise his friends in Montpellier
to relinquish heresy hunting, and desist from stirring the fire of
discord.
At the same time, furious disputes broke out in the church, between
King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but here the subject
of the dispute was not ideal good, not science and free research, but
purely dominion, power and mammon. There was war to the knife between
the chiefs of the two parties. The king accused the pope of heresy,
simony, covetousness, perjury, and impurity. And the pope released the
subjects from their oath to their hereditary king, and gave away his
empire. The Jewish hostilities had neither the same wide range, nor yet
the same bottomless wickedness.
Ben Adret and several who had signed the decree of excommunication,
Moses Iskafat Meles and Solomon Gracian, were so unpleasantly affected
by Bedaresi's letter, and feared its effect so much, that they hastened
to offer the explanation that they had in no wise animadverted upon
Maimuni's writings, whom they revered in the highest degree. They even
exhorted Abba-Mari's party to make peace with their opponents, to
vindicate their dignity before their common enemy. But the controversy
was now at a stage when it could no longer be settled peaceably. The
mutual bitterness was too violent, and had become too personal. Each
party claimed to be in the right from its own standpoint; neither could
consent to a compromise nor make concessions. Each adhered to its own
principles; the one sought to enforce the freedom of science, the other
protested that Jewish youth, before maturity, must be guarded from the
deleterious poison of knowledge. Whilst the adherents of Abba-Mari
were seeking legal decisions to prove the ban of their opponents
unauthorized, a sad event happened, which, like a whirlwind, tore
friends asunder, and dashed enemies against each other.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Philip le Bel--The Jews of France plundered and banished--
Estori Parchi; Aaron Cohen; Laments of Bedaresi--Eleazar
of Chinon, the Martyr--Return of the Jews to France; their
Precarious Position--Progress of the Controversy regarding
the Study of Philosophy--Abba-Mari and Asheri--Death of
Ben Adret--Rabbinical Revival in Spain--Isaac Israeli II--
Samuel and the Queen Maria Molina--Don Juan Emanuel and
Judah Ibn-Wakar--The Jews of Rome--Robert of Naples and the
Jews--Peril of the Jews in Rome--Kalonymos ben Kalonymos,
his Satires--Immanuel and Dante--The Poet Judah Siciliano--
Leone Romano and King Robert--Shemarya Ikriti--Position of
Karaism--Aaron the Elder and the Prayer-Book of the Karaites.
1306-1328 C.E.
Philip IV, le Bel, at that time the king of France, one of those
monarchs who made arrogant and unprincipled despotism familiar to
Europe, suddenly issued a secret order (21st January, 1306), imposing
the strictest silence, to the higher and lower officials throughout
his kingdom, to put all the Jews of France under arrest on one and
the same day, without warning of any kind. Before the Jews had fully
recovered from fasting on the Day of Lamentation in remembrance of the
destruction of Jerusalem, and as they were about to begin their daily
business, the constables and jailors appeared, laid hands upon them,
and dragged young and old, women and children, to prison (10th Ab-22d
July). There they were told that they had to quit the country within
the space of a month, leaving behind both their goods and the debts
owing to them. Whoever was found in France after that time was liable
to the penalty of death. What could have induced this prudent rather
than clerical prince so suddenly to change his sentiments towards the
Jews? It was certainly not clerical intolerance, nor was it yielding
to the will of the people. For the French, even in the Middle Ages,
were not bigoted, and it was not their wish to remove the Jews to free
themselves from usurers. Avarice was the first motive of this cruel
order. For Philip's feud with the pope, and his war with the rebellious
Flemish, had so exhausted his treasury, and had rendered necessary
so unsparing an extortion of money that, as the ballads of the time
scoffingly said, "The fowl in the pot was not secure from the king's
grasp." The king wanted to replenish his coffers from the property
of the Jews. Another circumstance is said to have moved him to this
hard-hearted resolution. The German emperor Albrecht, who at that time
was not on good terms with Philip, had demanded the surrender of the
kingdom of Arles; further, that he should deliver up Jesus' supposed
crown of thorns, and lastly, that he should acknowledge the authority
of the successor of Vespasian, Titus, and Charlemagne over the French
Jews, _i.e._, yield to him a portion of the hard-earned property of the
Jews. Philip is said to have consulted his lawyers, to decide to whom
the authority over the Jews appertained, and as they adjudged it to the
German emperor, the idea occurred to him to fleece the Jews of their
property, and to send his "servi cameræ" naked and bare to Albrecht.
Before the world the king covered his act of violence, inhuman as it
was unstatesmanlike, with the excuse that incredible outrages of the
Jews had rendered their expulsion imperative. That he had aimed at the
possessions of the Jews was shown by his relentless plundering. The
officials left the unhappy Jews nothing beyond the clothes they wore,
and to everyone not more than seemed necessary for a day's living (12
gros Tournois). Wagonfuls of the property of the Jews, gold, silver
and precious stones were transported to the king; and less valuable
objects were sold at a ridiculously low price. At the appointed time
(September, 1306), they were banished, about 100,000 souls, from the
country which their ancestors had inhabited, in part at the time of the
Roman republic, long before Christianity had spread into France. Some
who could not separate themselves from their property and the country
which they loved went over to Christianity. The whole congregation of
Toulouse is said to have been guilty of this cowardice, which scarcely
seems credible. The celebrated seats, at which so much intellect had
been displayed, the colleges of Rashi, Tam, and the Tossafists: Troyes,
Paris, Sens, Chinon, Orleans; the places in which a higher culture had
had its temple: Béziers, Lünel, Montpellier, whence the combatants
for and against science were plunged into common misery,--all these
schools and synagogues were sold to the highest bidder or given away.
A German or an English king might have destroyed the holy places of
the Jews--King Philip le Bel made a present of a synagogue to his
--coachman. An approximate idea can be formed of the sums which the
expulsion and robbery of the Jews brought in to the king, if it is kept
in mind that the sale of the Jewish goods in the house of the prefect
of Orleans alone brought in 337,000 francs.
How many of the refugees, reduced to beggary, fell victims to the
hardships of their journey cannot be known. The bitter plaints of
those oppressed by the heavy affliction sound mournful and touching
even at this distance of time. Estori Parchi, then a youth of many
accomplishments and noble heart, a relative of Jacob ben Machir, whose
parents had emigrated from Spain to southern France, thus describes his
sorrow: "From the house of study have they torn me; naked was I forced
as a young man to leave my ancestral home, and wander from land to
land, from people to people, whose tongues were strange to me." Parchi
at length found a resting-place in Palestine. Another fugitive, the
learned Aaron Cohen of Narbonne, poured forth this elegy: "Unhappy me,
I saw the misery of the banishment of the sons of Jacob, like a herd
of cattle driven asunder. From a position of honor I was thrown into a
land of darkness." The sudden turn of fortune which changed rich men
into beggars, and exposed the delicate and those used to the comforts
of life to bitter privation, filled the bombastic poet Yedaya Bedaresi
with gloomy reflections. In vivid colors he painted the trouble and
pain of life, and man's helplessness and nothingness. His "Trial of the
World" (Bechinath Olam), suggested by personal observation and bitter
experience, consequently makes a depressing and mournful impression,
and reflects faithfully the melancholy feelings of the ill-starred race.
The expulsion of the Jews from France by the stony-hearted Philip le
Bel did not come off without martyred victims. Those who transgressed
the time of grace, yet rejected solicitations to abjure their faith,
were punished by death. A martyr of this time, Eleazar ben Joseph of
Chinon, is specially famous. He was a learned, noble-minded man, a
correspondent of Ben Adret, master of many distinguished disciples,
among them the youthful Parchi, one of the last of the Tossafist
school. He was condemned to the stake, although no crime could be laid
at his door except that he was a Jew. With him died two brothers. The
expatriated Jews dispersed in all parts of the world; many traveled
to Palestine. But the majority remained as near as possible to the
French borders, in Provence proper, at that time partly under German
suzerainty, in the province of Roussillon, which belonged to the
Aragonian king of Majorca, and in that island. Their intention was to
wait for a favorable change of fortune, which would permit them to
return to the land of their birth. They had not speculated falsely.
King Philip himself was induced by avarice to unbend from his severity.
The vehement struggle in Montpellier about permitting Jewish youth to
engage in the study of the sciences, remarkable to relate, continued
after the banishment from France (September, 1306), and the mutual
hatred of the two parties was in no way abated by suffering. A portion
of the Tibbonide party had settled in Perpignan, which belonged to the
king of Majorca, who was no favorer of the Jews. At his command copies
of the Talmud were once more delivered up to the _auto-da-fé;_ but
as he hoped to gain some advantage by the settlement of intelligent,
industrious Jews, he suffered them. Abba-Mari and another portion of
the congregation of Montpellier at first took up their abode in the
town of Arles, but as he could not stay there, he, too, emigrated to
Perpignan (January, 1307). But the opposing party, which had influence
with the king or governor, endeavored to hinder his settlement in that
place. Abba-Mari's partisans, by making representations to the king,
succeeded in obtaining permission for him to live in Perpignan. Here
the controversy raged anew. Solomon ben Adret and Asheri, particularly
the latter, whose decision of character had acquired for him the chief
authority, again interfered. Asheri declared that he had given his
signature in a half-hearted manner to the decree prohibiting young
men from occupying themselves with profane studies; for, according to
his opinion, it was too great a concession to permit it at the age
of twenty-five. Science ought to be prohibited altogether, for it
inevitably lures on to unbelief. The defenders of science were to be
condemned without mercy, since the afflictions of exile had made no
impression on them, suffering had not broken their spirit of defiance,
and had not chastened their hardness of heart.
This view, that qualities prejudicial to Judaism were inherent in
science, gained supremacy after Ben Adret's death (1310), when Asheri
was acknowledged in Spain and in the neighboring countries as the only
authority in religious matters. Asheri, his sons and companions who
had migrated with him from Germany, transplanted from the Rhine to
vivacious Toledo that spirit of honest, but tormenting, narrow-minded
and intolerant piety; that gloomy disposition which regards even
harmless joy as a sin; that feeling of abjectness, which characterized
the German Jews of the Middle Ages, and they inoculated the Spanish
Jews with it. The free activity of the mind was checked. Asheri
concentrated all his mental power on the Talmud and its exposition.
His chief work was a compilation of the Talmud for practical use
(1307-1314). On all occasions he endeavored to enforce a difficult,
painful, and severe discipline. If any one desired to express his
thoughts on any department of knowledge whatsoever, he had to array
his subject in the garments of contrite orthodoxy. When the erudite
Isaac ben Joseph Israeli II, of Toledo, published an astronomical work
(1310), he had to adjust it to Talmudical standards, and introduce it
by a confession of faith, for only in this manner could he find grace
in Asheri's eyes.
At about this time, during Asheri's rabbinate in Toledo, prominent Jews
once more obtained influence at court. King Ferdinand IV (1295-1312)
had a Jewish treasurer named Samuel, whose counsels he followed in
political matters too. The dowager queen, Maria de Molina, who had
held the reins of government during her son's minority, with feminine
passionateness hated the favorite Samuel, who is said to have nourished
the enmity between mother and son. One day, when Samuel was in Badajos,
and was preparing to accompany the king to Seville, he was attacked by
an assassin, and so severely wounded that he was left for dead. It is
not known who instigated the deed. The king had such care and attention
devoted to Samuel, that he recovered from his wounds.
Don Ferdinand's death brought in its train a time of unquiet, of civil
war, and social anarchy for Spain. As the Infante Alfonso was still
a child in the cradle, several persons, the clever Maria de Molina,
the young queen-mother Constantia, and the uncles of the young king
contended for the guardianship and the regency, and provoked faction
feuds in the country (1312-1326). Donna Maria de Molina, who conducted
the government, did not extend her hate against her son's Jewish
counselor to the community to which he belonged. As in the lifetime of
her husband she had had a Jewish favorite, Todros Abulafia, so during
her regency she had a Jewish treasurer, Don Moses. When the council of
Zamora (1313) renewed canonical laws hostile to the Jews, the cortes of
Burgos demanded the exclusion of Jews from all honors and offices, and
the pope issued a bull that Christians were to be absolved from their
debts to Jews on account of usury, the wise regent submitted only in
part. She ordered that Jews should not bear high-sounding Christian
names, nor enter into close intercourse with Christians; but she most
emphatically declared herself against the unjust abolition of debts,
and published a law that no debtor could make himself free of his
obligation to professors of the Jewish faith by appealing to a papal
bull.
The regency of Don Juan Emanuel inaugurated an improvement in the
condition of the Castilian Jews (1319-1325). The regent was a friend
of learning, himself an author and poet, and was consequently held in
esteem by educated Jews. A Jew of Cordova, Jehuda ben Isaac Ibn-Wakar,
found high favor in his eyes, and probably acted as his treasurer. At
his solicitation Juan Emanuel once more invested the rabbinate with
penal jurisdiction, which the Jews had partly lost during the regency
of Maria de Molina, and had practiced only privately.
Jehuda Ibn-Wakar, however, was an admirer of Asheri, and, like
the latter, of excessive piety, desiring to have every religious
transgression punished with the utmost severity. When a Cordovan
uttered a blasphemy in Arabic, Ibn-Wakar asked Asheri what was to be
done with him, and the latter replied that his tongue should be cut
out. A beautiful Jewess having had intercourse with a Christian, Don
Juan Manuel resigned her to the punishment of the Jewish court, and
Jehuda Ibn-Wakar condemned her to have her face disfigured by the
removal of her nose, and Asheri confirmed the sentence.
The southern Spanish and Castilian congregations still lived in peace,
and in the undisturbed possession of their goods; on the other hand,
the northern Spanish, and still more the southern French congregations
were exposed to bloody attacks by fanatical hordes, which the church
had unfettered, and then could not restrain. Jews once more lived in
France. Louis X had recalled them nine years after their banishment
(1315). This king, himself seized by a desire to abrogate the
ordinances of his father and indict his counselors, had been solicited
by the people and the nobility, who could not do without the Jews, to
re-admit them into France. He accordingly entered into negotiations
with them in reference to their return. But the Jews did not accept
his proposal without deliberation, for they well knew the inconstancy
of the French kings, and the fanatical hatred of the clergy against
them. They hesitated at first, and then submitted their conditions.
These were, that they be allowed to reside in the same places as
before; that they should not be indictable for former transgressions;
that their synagogues, churchyards, and books be restored to them,
or sites be granted for new places of worship. They were to have the
right of collecting the money owing to them, of which two-thirds
should belong to the king. Their former privileges, as far as they
were still in force, were to be again extended to them, or new ones
conceded. King Louis accepted all these conditions, and granted them
also the right of emigration under certain restrictions. In order to
conciliate the clergy, he, on his side, imposed the conditions that
they wear a badge of a certain size and color, and hold neither public
nor private disputations on religion. Two high officials (prud'hommes,
auditeurs des Juifs) were appointed to superintend the re-settlement
of the Jews. Their residence in France was fixed for twelve years; if
the king should resolve to expel them again after the expiration of
that period, he put himself under the obligation to give them a year's
warning that they might have time to make their preparations. The king
published this decree, declaring that his father had been ill-advised
to banish the Jews. As the voice of the people solicited their return,
as the church desired a tolerant policy, and as the sainted Louis had
set him the precedent of first banishing and then readmitting them,
he had, after due consultation with the prelates, the barons, and
his high council, permitted the return of the Jews. The French Jews
streamed back in masses to their former dwelling-places, regarding
this event as a miraculous redemption. When Louis X died a year after,
and his brother Philip V, the Long, ascended the throne, he extended
their privileges, and protected them especially from the enmity of the
clergy; so that they and their books could be seized only by royal
officers. But they were not free from vexation by the degenerate
clergy, who insisted that the Jews of Montpellier, who thought they
could venture on certain liberties, should re-affix the Jew-badge on
their dress. At one time they accused the Jews of Lünel with having
publicly outraged the image of Christ on the Purim festival; at
another time they ordered that two wagonfuls of copies of the Talmud
be publicly burned in Toulouse. Such occurrences, however, were mere
child's play compared with what they had to endure from the bigoted
multitude.
Philip V had the idea, repugnant to the spirit of the time, of
undertaking a crusade to wrest the Holy Land, after so many vain
attempts, from the hands of the infidels. This enterprise appeared so
foolish to the discerning, that even Pope John XXII, the second of the
popes that resided in Avignon instead of at Rome, dissuaded him from
it. Nevertheless, the fancy, as soon as it was known, inflamed the
minds of the rude populace. A young man of excited imagination gave out
that a dove had settled at one time on his head, at another, on his
shoulder, and when he had sought to seize it, it had transformed itself
into a beautiful woman, who urged him to gather a troop of crusaders,
assuring him of victory. His utterances found credulous hearers, and
the lower people, children, and swine-herds attached themselves to him.
A wicked priest and an unfrocked Benedictine monk used the opportunity
to force their way to the front, and thus arose in northern France
(1320) a numerous horde of forty thousand shepherds (Pastoureaux,
Pastorelli, Roïm), who moved in procession from town to town carrying
banners, and announced their intention of journeying across the sea to
deliver the so-called holy sepulcher. Their attention was immediately
turned to the Jews, possibly because they wanted to raise money for the
purchase of weapons by robbing the Jews of their possessions, or a Jew,
as is related, had made sport of their childish heroism. The massacre
of the Jews by the shepherds (Gesereth-ha-Roïm) is another bloody page
in Jewish history.
Nearly all the crusading enterprises had commenced with the murder of
Jews; so this time. The shepherd-gangs which had collected near the
town of Agen (on the Garonne) cut down all the Jews they met on their
march from this place to Toulouse, if they refused to be baptized.
About five hundred Jews had found refuge in the fortress of Verdun (on
the Garonne), the commandant having placed a strong tower at their
disposal. The shepherds took it by storm, and a desperate battle took
place. As the Jews had no hopes of rescue, they had recourse in their
despair to self-destruction. The unhappy people selected the oldest and
most respected man of their number to slay them one after the other.
The old man picked out a muscular young assistant in this ghastly
business, and both went to work to rid their fellow-sufferers of their
miserable lives. When at last the young man, after slaying his aged
partner, was left alone, the desire of life came strong upon him; he
declared to the besieging shepherds that he was ready to go over to
them, and asked to be baptized. The latter were just or cruel enough
to refuse the request, and tore the renegade to pieces. The Jewish
children found in the tower were baptized by force. The governor of
Toulouse zealously espoused the cause of the Jews, and summoned the
knights to take the approaching shepherds prisoners. Thus many of them
were brought in chains to the capital, and thrown into prison. But the
mob, which sympathized with them, banded together, and set them at
liberty, the result being that the greater part of the congregation
of Toulouse was destroyed. A few seceded to Christianity. On the
capture of the shepherds near Toulouse, the Jews in the neighborhood,
who had been granted shelter in Castel-Narbonnais, thought that they
were now free of all danger, and left their place of refuge. They were
surprised by the rabble, and annihilated. Thus perished almost all
the Jews in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, Gascogne, Toulouse, Albi,
and other towns of southern France. Altogether, more than 120 Jewish
congregations in France and northern Spain were blotted out through
the rising of the Shepherds, and the survivors were so impoverished by
spoliation that they were dependent upon the succor of their brethren
in other parts, which flowed to them in abundance even from Germany.
The following year, too, was very unfortunate for the Jews, the trouble
again beginning in France. This persecution was occasioned by lepers,
from whom it has its name (Gesereth Mezoraim). The unhappy people
afflicted by leprosy in the Middle Ages were banished from society,
declared dead as citizens, shut up in unhealthy quarters, and there
tended after a fashion. Once, when certain lepers in the province of
Guienne had been badly provided with food, they conceived and carried
into effect the plan of poisoning the wells and rivers, through which
many people perished (1321). When the matter was traced back to the
lepers, and they were examined under torture, one of them invented,
or somebody suggested to him, the lying accusation that the Jews had
inspired them with the plan of poisoning the waters. The charge was
generally believed; even King Philip V had no doubt about it. Sometimes
it was asserted that the Jews wanted to take revenge for the sufferings
experienced at the hands of the Shepherds the year before; again, that
they had been persuaded by the Mahometan king of Granada to cause the
Christians to be poisoned; or it was suggested that they had done it
in league with the Mahometan ruler of Palestine, to frustrate the
intended crusade of King Philip. In several places Jews were arrested
on this accusation, unmercifully tortured, and some of them burnt
(Tammuz--July, 1321). In Chinon a deep pit was dug, fire kindled in
it, and eight Jewish men and women thrown in, who sang whilst dying.
The mothers had previously cast in their children, to save them from
forcible baptism. Altogether five thousand are said to have suffered
death by fire in that year. Many were banished from France, and robbed
by the heartless populace. Philip was convinced later on of the untruth
of the accusation; but as the Jews had been accused, he seemed to think
that the opportunity might be used to swell the treasury. Accordingly,
the congregations were condemned by Parliament to a penalty of one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds (Parisian); they were to apportion
the contributions among themselves. Deputies (procureurs) from northern
France (de la langue française) and from Languedoc, met and enacted
that the southern French Jews, decimated and impoverished by the
previous year's massacre, were to contribute forty-seven thousand
pounds, and the remainder was to be borne by the northern French Jews.
The wealthiest Jews were put under arrest as security for the payment
of the fine, and their goods and debts distrained.
In the same year a great danger threatened the oldest of the European
communities. Misfortune came upon it the more unexpectedly as till
then it had tasted but little of the cup of misery which the Jews of
England, France and Spain so often had to drink to the dregs. It was
because Rome did not belong to the pope, but to the families of Orsini
and Colonna, to the Ghibellines and Guelphs--the great and minor
lords, who fought out their party feuds in that city--that the Jews
were left untouched by papal tyranny. It was well for them that they
were little considered.
At about this time the Roman Jews had made an advance in material
welfare and intellectual culture. There were some who possessed houses
like palaces, furnished with all the comforts of life. Since the time
when, through the concurrence of favorable circumstances, they had
tasted of the tree of knowledge, learning and poetry were cherished
by the Italian Jews. The seeds which Hillel of Verona, Serachya ben
Shaltiel and others had scattered, commenced to bear fruit. When the
flower of intellectual glory in southern France began to decay through
the severity of Talmudical rigorists and the bloody persecutions,
it unfolded itself in Italy, especially in Rome. At that time the
first rays of a new cultural development, breaking through the gloom
of priestcraft and the rude violence of the Middle Ages, appeared
in Italy. A fresh current of air swept the heavens in Italy in the
beginning of the fourteenth century, the epoch of Dante, thawing the
icy coat of the church and of knightdom, the two pillars of the Middle
Ages. A sense of citizenship, the impulse towards liberty, enthusiastic
love for science, were the striking symptoms of a new spirit, of a
striving for rejuvenescence, which only the emperor, the embodiment
of rude, ungainly knighthood, and the pope, the incarnation of the
stern, unbending church, failed to perceive. Every greater or lesser
Italian lord made it a point of honor to encourage art and science,
and patronize poets, artists and learned men at his court. Nor were
the Jews overlooked at this juncture. One of the most powerful Italian
princes, Robert of Anjou, king of Naples, count of Provence (Arelat),
vicar-general of the Papal States and for some time titular lieutenant
of the Holy Roman empire, was a friend of science, a warm admirer also
of Jewish literature, and consequently a protector of the Jews. Several
Jewish littérateurs were his teachers, or at his instance undertook
scientific and theological works.
Either in imitation of the current practice or from sincere interest
in Jewish literature, rich Jews, who played the part of small
princes, invited Jewish authors into their circle, lightened their
material cares by liberal support, and stimulated their activity by
encouragement. Thus it came to pass that three Jewish Italian men of
letters had the courage to compete with the Spaniards and Provençals.
These were Leo Romano, Judah Siciliano, and above all the poet Immanuel
Romi, who once more ennobled neo-Hebrew poetry, and raised it to a
higher level. The Roman congregation at that time displayed exceptional
interest in Jewish writings. Of Maimuni, the embodiment of science
for them as for the rest of the Jewish world, they possessed the
copious Religious Codex, and the translation of his "Guide;" but of
his luminous Mishna commentary, composed originally in Arabic, only
those parts which Charisi and Samuel Ibn-Tibbon had done into Hebrew.
The representatives of the Roman congregations, to whom probably the
poet Immanuel also belonged, wished to have a complete edition of the
work, and sent a messenger to Barcelona to Ben Adret expressly for the
purpose of procuring the remaining parts. The affair was not so simple
as the Roman Jews had imagined. The greater portion of the anxiously
desired commentary of Maimuni on the Mishna, on account of peculiar
difficulties, was not yet rendered into Hebrew. The greatest obstacle
was the circumstance that the Spanish Jews, except those in Toledo and
in the neighborhood of the kingdom of Granada, had forgotten Arabic.
Ben Adret, who wished to oblige the Roman congregation, endeavored
to get the required portions translated into Hebrew. He encouraged
scholars, learned both in Arabic and the Talmud, to undertake this
difficult task, and Joseph Ibn-Alfual and Jacob Abbassi of Huesca,
Solomon ben Jacob and Nathaniel Ibn-Almali, the last two physicians
of Saragossa, and others divided the labor among themselves. Jewish
literature is indebted for the possession of this most valuable work of
Maimuni to the zeal of the Roman congregation, of Ben Adret, and these
translators.
The Roman community was roused from its peaceful occupations and
undisturbed quiet by a rough hand, and awakened to the consciousness
that it existed under the scourge of priestcraft and the caprice of its
rulers.
It is related that a sister of the pope (John XXII), named Sangisa,
had repeatedly exhorted her brother to expel the Jews from the holy
city of Christendom. Her solicitations had always been fruitless; she
therefore instigated several priests to give testimony that the Jews
had ridiculed by words and actions a crucifix which was carried through
the streets in a procession. The pope thereupon issued the command
to banish all the Jews from Roman territory. All that is certain is
that the Jews of Rome were in great danger during that year, for they
instituted an extraordinary fast, and directed fervent prayers to
heaven (21 Sivan-18 June, 1321), nor did they fail to employ worldly
means. They sent an astute messenger to Avignon to the papal court
and to King Robert of Naples, the patron of the Jews, who happened to
be in that city on state affairs. The messenger succeeded, through
the mediation of King Robert, in proving the innocence of the Roman
Jews in regard to the alleged insulting of the cross and the other
transgressions laid to their charge. The twenty thousand ducats, which
the Roman community is said to have presented to the sister of the
pope, silenced the last objections. The Jews of Rome entered their
school of trouble later than the Jews of other countries. For that
reason it lasted the longer.
Whilst King Robert was residing in southern France, he seems to have
made the acquaintance of a learned, genial Jewish satirist, Kalonymos
ben Kalonymos, and to have taken him into his service. This talented
man (born 1287, died before 1337) possessed solid knowledge, was
familiar with the Arabic language and literature (which was very
remarkable in a Provençal), and in his youth (1307-1317) translated
medical, astronomical, and philosophical writings from that language
into Hebrew. Kalonymos ben Kalonymos was not merely a hewer of wood
and drawer of water, an interpreter in the realm of science; he had
intellect enough to make independent observations. Disregarding
the province of metaphysical speculation, he was more interested
in pure ethics, which he especially wished to inculcate in his
co-religionists, "because neglect and ignorance of it leads men to all
kinds of perversities and mutual harm." He did not treat the subject
in a dry, uninteresting style, but sought to clothe it in attractive
garments. With this end in view, Kalonymos adapted a part of the Arabic
encyclopedia of science (which was in circulation under the name of
"Treatises of the Righteous Brethren") for a dialogue between man and
beasts, giving the theme a Jewish coloring.
In another work, "Touchstone" (composed at the end of 1322), Kalonymos
ben Kalonymos held up a mirror for his Jewish contemporaries, in which
they could recognize their perversities, follies, and sins. To avoid
giving himself the appearance of an irreproachable censor of morals, he
enumerated his own sins, more in satire than as a confession. Kalonymos
whimsically satirized even Judaism. He wished he had been born a woman,
for then he would not have had to bear the burden of six hundred and
thirteen religious laws, besides so many Talmudical restrictions and
rigorous ordinances, which could not possibly be fulfilled, even when
a man tried with the most exacting conscientiousness. As a woman,
he would not have to trouble himself with so much reading, to study
the Bible, the Talmud, and the subjects belonging to it, nor torment
himself with logic, mathematics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. By
and by Kalonymos' satire grew deeply serious. The degradation of his
Jewish co-religionists, and the bloody persecutions occasioned by the
Shepherds and the lepers, dispelled his mocking humor, and satire was
changed into lamentation. In Rome, which King Robert assigned to him as
a place of residence, Kalonymos, having been furnished with letters of
recommendation, obtained entry into a joyous, vivacious, imaginative
circle of men, by whom he was stimulated to write a peculiar parody.
He composed a treatise for the Jewish carnival (Purim), in which he
imitated the tenor and spirit of the Talmud, its method, controversies,
and digressions, with considerable wit. It is a fine parody, exciting
laughter at every step, and one can not tell whether it was intended
as a harmless carnival joke or as a satire on the Talmud. Kalonymos
occupied a position of importance in the Roman congregation. Handsome
in form, of abundant accomplishments, solid character, all his
excellencies enhanced by the good opinion of King Robert of Naples,
he was everyone's favorite. The Italian Jews were proud of him. But
Kalonymos was not a true poet, still less an artist.
Much more gifted, profound, and imaginative was his older friend
and admirer, Immanuel ben Solomon Romi (born about 1265, died about
1330). He was an anomaly in the Jewish society of the Middle Ages. He
belonged to that species of authors whose writings are all the more
attractive because not very decent. Of overflowing wit, extravagant
humor, and caustic satire, he is always able to enchain his readers,
and continually to provoke their merriment. Immanuel may be called the
Heine of the Jewish Middle Ages. Immanuel had an inexhaustible, ready
supply of brilliant ideas. And all this in the holy language of the
Prophets and Psalmists. Granted that the neo-Hebrew poets and thinkers,
the grammarians and Talmudists, had lent flexibility to the language,
but none of Immanuel's predecessors had his power of striking from
it showers of sparkling wit. But if, on the one side, he developed
the Hebrew language almost into a vehicle for brilliant repartee,
on the other side, he robbed it of its sacred character. Immanuel
transformed the chaste, closely-veiled maiden muse of Hebrew poetry
into a lightly-clad dancer, who attracts the attention of passers-by.
He allows his muse to deal with the most frivolous and indelicate
topics without the slightest concealment or shame. His collection of
songs and novels tends to exert a very pernicious and poisonous effect
upon hot-blooded youth. But Immanuel was not the hardened sinner, as
he describes himself, who thought of nothing but to carry on amours,
seduce the fair, and deride the ugly. He sinned only with the tongue
and the pen, scarcely with the heart and the senses.
Though he often indulges in unmeasured self-laudation, this simple
description of his moral conduct must still be credited: "I never
bear my enemies malice, I remain steadfast and true to my friends,
cherish gratitude towards my benefactors, have a sympathetic heart,
am not ostentatious with my knowledge, and absorb myself in science
and poetry, whilst my companions riot in sensual enjoyments." Immanuel
belonged to those who are dominated by their wit, and cannot refrain
from telling some pointed witticism, even if their dearest friends are
its victims, and the holiest things are dragged in the mire by it.
He allowed himself to be influenced by the vivacity of the Italians
and the Europeanized Jews, and put no curb upon his tongue. What
is remarkable in this satirist is that his life, his position, and
occupation seem to have been in contradiction with his poetical craft.
In the Roman community he filled an honorable position, was something
like a president, at all events a man of distinction. He appears to
have belonged to the medical profession, although he made sport of
the quackery of physicians. In short, he led the domestic life of his
time, a life permeated by morality and religion, giving no opportunity
for excess. But his honorable life did not prevent him from singing
riotous songs, and from writing as though he were unconscious of the
seriousness of religion, of responsibility and learning. Immanuel
was acquainted, if not on intimate terms, with the greatest poet of
the Middle Ages, the first to open the gates of a new epoch, and to
prognosticate the unity of Italy in poetic phrase. Probably they came
to know each other on one of Dante's frequent visits to Rome, either
as ambassador or exile. Although their poetic styles are as opposite
as the poles--Dante's ethereal, grave, and elevated; Immanuel's
forcible, gay, and light--they, nevertheless, have some points of
contact. Each had absorbed the culture of the past; Dante the catholic,
scholastic, and romantic elements; Immanuel the biblical, Talmudical,
Maimunist, philosophical, and neo-Hebraic products. Both elaborated
this many-hued material, and molded it into a new kind of poetry. The
Italians at that time were full of the impulse of life, and Immanuel's
muse is inspired by the witchery of spring. He wrote ably in Italian,
too, of which a beautiful poem, still extant, gives evidence. Immanuel
was the first to adapt Italian numbers to the neo-Hebraic lyre. He
introduced the rhyme in alternate lines (Terza rima in sonnet form),
by which he produced a musical cadence. His poems are not equally
successful. They are wanting not in imagination, but in tenderness
and grace. His power lies in poetical prose (Meliza), where he can
indulge in free and witty allusions. In this style he composed a host
of short novels, riddles, letters, panegyrics, and epithalamia, which,
by clever turns and comic situations, extort laughter from the most
serious-minded readers.
In one of his novels he introduces a quarrelsome grammarian of the
Hebrew language, a verbal critic who takes the field in grammatical
campaigns, and is accompanied by a marvelously beautiful woman.
Immanuel enters into a hair-splitting disputation that he may have
the opportunity of coquetting with the lovely lady. He suffers defeat
in grammar, but makes a conquest in love. Immanuel's description of
hell and paradise, in which he imitated his friend Dante, is full of
fine satire. Whilst the Christian romantic poet shows gravity and
elevation in his poetical creation, represents sinners and criminals,
political opponents and enemies of Italy, cardinals and popes, as
being tortured in hell, metes out, as it were, the severe sentences of
judgment day; his Jewish friend, Immanuel, invents scenes in heaven
and hell for the purpose of giving play to his humorous fancy. Dante
wrote a divine, Immanuel a human, comedy. He introduces his pilgrimage
to heaven and hell by relating that he once felt greatly oppressed by
the burden of his sins, and experienced compunction; at this juncture
his young friend Daniel, by whose untimely death he had lately been
deeply affected, appeared to him, and offered to guide him through the
dismal portals of hell and the elysian fields of the blessed. In the
chambers of hell Immanuel observes all the wicked and godless of the
Bible. Aristotle, too, is there, "because he taught the eternity of
the world," and Plato, "because he asserted the reality of species"
(Realism). Most of all he scourges his contemporaries in this poem.
He inflicts the torment of the damned upon the deriders of science;
upon a Talmudist who secretly led a most immoral life; upon men who
committed intellectual thefts, and upon those who sought to usurp all
the honors of the synagogue, the one to have his seat by the Ark of
the Covenant, the other to read the prayers on the Day of Atonement.
Quack doctors are also precipitated into hell, because they take
advantage of the stupidity and credulity of the multitude, and bring
trusting patients to a premature grave. His young, beatified guide
goes with him through the gates of Paradise. How the departed spirits
rejoice at the poet's approach! They call out, "Now is the time to
laugh, for Immanuel has arrived." In the description of paradise and
its inhabitants, Immanuel affects to treat his theme very seriously;
but he titters softly within the very gates of heaven. Of course, he
notices the holy men, the patriarchs, the pious kings and heroes of the
Jewish past, the prophets and the great teachers, the poets, Jehuda
Halevi and Charisi, the Jewish philosopher Maimuni. But next to King
David, who fingers the harp and sings psalms, he observes the harlot
Rahab who concealed the spies in Jericho, and Tamar who sat at the
cross-roads waiting. Dante excludes the heathen world from paradise,
because it did not acknowledge Christ, and had no share in the grace
of salvation. Immanuel sees a troop of the blessed, whom he does not
recognize, and asks their leader who they are. "These are," answers
the latter, "righteous and moral heathens, who attained the height of
wisdom, and recognized the only God as the creator of the world and the
bestower of grace." The pious authors, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
on seeing Immanuel, darted forward to meet him; each one thanks him for
having expounded his writings so well, and here older and contemporary
exegetists come in for their share of Immanuel's sly satire.
Neo-Hebraic poetry, which began with José ben José, and reached its
zenith in Ibn-Gebirol and Jehuda Halevi, attains its final stage of
development in Immanuel. The gamut had now been run. After Immanuel,
the Hebrew muse became silent for a long time, and it required a fresh
and powerful stimulus to awaken it from slumber to new energy. Verses
were, of course, written after his days, and rhymes polished, but they
are as far removed from poetry as a street-song from a soul-stirring
melody. The fate of Hebrew poetry is illustrated in Immanuel's career.
For a long period he was popular, every one sought his friendship, but
in old age he fell into neglect and poverty. His own statement is that
his generosity dissipated his means. He was as much derided as he had
formerly been praised. He left Rome with his family, traveled about,
and found repose at length at the house of a wealthy, influential
friend of art (Benjamin?) in Fermo, who interested himself in him, and
encouraged him to arrange the verses and poems written at different
periods of his life into a symmetrical whole.
The praises which Immanuel bestows on his own productions, and his
boast that he casts the old poets into the shade, certainly tend to
produce a bad impression. Nevertheless, like every expert in his
profession, he was far removed from that repulsive vanity which
perceives its own depreciation in the recognition of another. To true
merit Immanuel gave the tribute of his warmest praise, and modestly
conceded precedence to it. Not only did he extol the highly honored
Kalonymos, basking in the sunshine of the king's favor, with the most
extravagant figures of speech, but he praised almost more heartily the
poet Jehuda Siciliano, who lived in straitened circumstances. He gave
him the palm for poetical verse, maintaining his own superiority in
poetical prose. But for Immanuel, nothing would have been known of this
poet. Poor Siciliano had to waste his power in occasional poems for
his subsistence, and was thus unable to produce any lasting work. With
glowing enthusiasm Immanuel eulogizes his cousin, the young and learned
Leone Romano, Jehuda ben Moses ben Daniel (born about 1292), whom he
calls the "Crown of Thought." In paradise he allots to him the highest
place of honor. Leone Romano was the teacher of King Robert of Naples,
and instructed him in the original language of the Bible. He knew the
language of learned Christendom, and was probably the first Jew to pay
attention to scholastic philosophy. He translated for Jewish readers
the philosophical compositions of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas,
and others. Leone Romano composed original works of exegesis, set
forth in philosophical method. Greatly as his contemporaries admired
his learning and intellect, which had achieved so much when he had
scarcely arrived at man's estate, he exercised no influence whatever on
posterity.
The Roman society which promoted science and poetry may be said to
have included also the grandson of a Roman emigrant who took up his
abode in Greece, Shemarya Ikriti (Cretan) of Negroponte (flourished
1290-1320). He stood in close relation with the Roman community and
King Robert. Familiar with Talmudical literature, as he probably was
rabbi in Negroponte, he devoted himself to philosophical speculations,
and was, perhaps, well read in the Greek philosophical literature
in its original language. In his youth, Ikriti, like many of his
contemporaries, occupied himself with translations of philosophical
works. Later on he conceived a plan of practical utility, in which
he thought he could turn his knowledge to account. He sought to
smooth over the difference between the Rabbanites and the Karaites,
and lastingly to reconcile the sects at enmity with each other
for centuries, "that all Israel may once more be united in one
fraternal bond." Shemarya of Negroponte was the first, perhaps the
only Rabbanite, who, if he did not extend the hand of reconciliation
to Karaism, at least showed a friendly disposition towards it. He
recognized that both parties were in error; Karaism was wrong in
rejecting Talmudical traditions unconditionally; but the Rabbanites
sinned against truth in placing the Talmud in the forefront, and
overlooking the Bible. In Greece there may have been Karaites at that
time who had come from Constantinople. To these Shemarya Ikriti
addressed himself to incline their minds towards union with the mother
community.
For the difficult task of bringing discordant faiths into harmony,
much intelligence and energy were required, and Shemarya could
furnish only good will. He was not deficient in knowledge, but his
mental grasp was not sufficiently powerful. At the instance of King
Robert, who interested himself in Jewish literature, he wrote a
commentary on the Bible, and forwarded to him, with a dedication, the
books first completed (1328). It read as follows: "To our noble king
Robert, adorned like King Solomon with the crown of wisdom and the
diadem of royalty, I send this exposition of the cosmogony and the
Song of Songs." His Biblical commentaries were set forth with great
diffuseness, covered a great range, and were not calculated to appeal
to the Karaites, and draw them over to the side of rabbinical Judaism.
His attempt at reconciliation miscarried, perhaps was not made in the
proper spirit; for there was a disposition on the part of some Karaites
to treat his overtures favorably, and his efforts would not have
failed, if they had been conducted with skill. Nevertheless, Ikriti was
held in such esteem in his time that the Roman congregation took an
interest in his labors, entered into correspondence with him, while the
Karaites assiduously read his works, and in later times considered him
a member of their own party.
Karaism was still dragging itself along in its decaying, stiffening
form. Internal schisms remained unaccommodated. Different Karaite
congregations celebrated the festivals at different times: the
Palestinians, according to the observation of the new moon, and the
extra-Palestinian congregations, in common with the Rabbanites. Their
extremely severe marriage laws were not finally settled even at this
epoch. Karaism at that time had three centers--Cairo in Egypt,
Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire, and Sulchat (Eski-Crim) in the
Crimean peninsula. Some importance was possessed by Aaron ben Joseph
the Elder, physician in Constantinople (flourished about 1270-1300). He
came originally from the Crimea, made extensive voyages, and acquired
a knowledge of medicine and philosophy. Aaron I also made himself
intimate with Rabbanite literature to a degree that few of his sect
attained. He made use of Nachmani's commentary on the Pentateuch, and
from this circumstance arose the mistake of later Karaites, that Aaron
had sat at Nachmani's feet. His familiarity with Rabbanite literature
had a beneficial effect on his style; he wrote much more clearly and
intelligibly than most of the Karaite authors. He was even disposed to
accept the tradition of the Talmud.
He completely fixed the Karaite prayer book (Siddur Tefila), hitherto
in an unsettled condition, incorporating into it hymns written by
Gebirol, Jehuda Halevi, Ibn-Ezra, and other Rabbanite liturgical
poets. Aaron himself possessed very little poetical genius, and his
metrical prayers, with which he enriched the prayer book of the
Karaites, have no great poetical merit, but by the admission of hymns
written by Rabbanites into his compilation, he showed that he knew
how to appreciate the devout sublimity in the prayers of the Spanish
Jews, and that he was not altogether devoid of taste. If Shemarya,
of Negroponte, had undertaken to effect a reconciliation between
the Rabbanites and the Karaites in a more intelligent and energetic
manner, there can be no doubt that Aaron would willingly have offered
his assistance, provided, of course, that he had known of Shemarya's
attempt. There was not wanting among Karaites a strong inclination for
union. Owing to the activity of Abraham Maimuni II, a great-grandson
of the renowned Maimuni, who had succeeded to the post of Chief
(Nagid) of the Rabbanite communities in Egypt after the death of his
father David, an important Karaite congregation in Egypt on one day
openly acknowledged the teachings of the Rabbanites. In Palestine,
too, frequent conversions of Karaites to Talmudical Judaism took
place. On this account the rabbis of the time were more favorably
disposed towards them. On the one hand, the strict Talmudist Samson
of Sens denounced the Karaites as heathens, whose wine was not to be
partaken of by orthodox Jews; on the other hand, Estori Parchi, who
had been banished from Provence, and who, emigrating to Palestine, had
settled in Bethshan, recognized them as co-religionists, led astray by
erroneous notions, but not to be rejected.
CHAPTER III.
THE AGE OF THE ASHERIDES AND OF GERSONIDES.
Condition of Palestine--Pilgrims and Immigrants--Shem Tob
Ibn-Gaon--Favorable Position of the Jews in Castile under
Alfonso XI--Persecution in Navarre--Joseph de Ecija and Samuel
Ibn-Wakar--Increase of Anti-Jewish Feelings--Abner--Alfonso
of Burgos, Convert to Christianity, and Persecutor of the
Jews--Gonzalo Martinez--Fall of Martinez and Deliverance of the
Jews--Decline of the Study of Science--The Study of the Talmud
prosecuted with Renewed Vigor--Jacob and Judah Asheri--Isaac
Pulgar, David Ibn-Albilla--The Provençal Philosophers
Ibn-Kaspi, Leon de Bagnols, and Vidal Narboni--Decline of the
Study of the Talmud in Germany--Emperor Louis of Bavaria and
the Jews--Persecution by the "Leather-Arms."
1328-1350 C.E.
The Holy Land was once more accessible to its children. The Egyptian
sultans, into whose power it passed after the fall of Accho and the
expulsion of the Christians, were more tolerant than the Christian
Byzantine emperors and the Frankish crusading kings. They did not
hinder the coming of Jewish pilgrims who desired to lighten their
over-burdened hearts by praying and weeping over the ruins of the past,
so rich in recollections, or at the graves of their great men there
interred; nor did they oppose the settlement of European exiles, who
again cultivated the soil of the land of their fathers. The long, firm,
yet mild, reign of the Mameluke sultan, Nassir Mahomet (1299-1341),
was a happy time for the Jews who visited Palestine. Whilst under the
rule of the Christian governors of the country no Jew was permitted to
approach the former capital, at this time Jewish pilgrims from Egypt
and Syria regularly came to Jerusalem, to celebrate the festivals, as
in the time when the Temple shone in all its splendor. The Karaites
established special forms of prayer for those who went on pilgrimages
to Jerusalem: at their departure, the whole congregation assembled to
give utterance in prayer to the bitter-sweet emotions connected with
Zion. The immigrants who settled in Palestine engaged in agriculture.
They came to feel so thoroughly at home there that the question was
mooted whether the laws of tithes, of the year of release, and others
ought not to be again carried into effect. In consequence of the
freedom and tolerance which the Jews were enjoying, many enthusiastic
spirits were again seized by the ardent desire to kiss the dust of the
Holy Land. Emigration to Palestine, especially from the extreme west,
became very common at this time.
A pupil of Meïr of Rothenburg, named Abraham, a painstaking copyist
of holy writings, considered his dwelling in the Holy Land a mark of
divine grace. Two young Kabbalists, Chananel Ibn-Askara and Shem Tob
Ibn-Gaon from Spain, also traveled thither, probably to be nearer
the source of the mystic doctrines, which fancy assigned to this
country, and took up their residence in Safet. But instead of obtaining
fresh information upon the doctrines of the Kabbala, one of them--
Ibn-Askara died in his youth--introduced new features of the science.
Shem Tob ben Abraham Ibn-Gaon, from Segovia (born 1283, died after
1330), whose teacher in the Talmud had been Ben Adret, and in the
Kabbala Isaac ben Todros, was a zealous adherent of the secret science,
and described even Maimuni as a Kabbalist.
The congregation of Jerusalem was at this time very numerous. A
large portion of the Rabbanite community led a contemplative life,
studied the Talmud day and night, and became engrossed with the secret
lore of the Kabbala. There were also handicraftsmen, merchants, and
several acquainted with the science of medicine, with mathematics and
astronomy. The artistic work of the famous calligraphers of Jerusalem
was in great demand, far and near. Hebron, too, possessed a vigorous
community, whose members engaged chiefly in the weaving and dyeing of
cotton-stuffs, and in the manufacture of glass wares, exported in large
quantities. In the south of Palestine, in company with Mahometans,
Jewish shepherds again pastured their flocks after the manner of the
patriarchs. Their rabbi was also a shepherd, and delivered discourses
upon the Talmud in the pasture fields for such as desired to obtain
instruction.
Although the Holy Land was the goal of ardent, longing hearts, yet
it was no more a center for the dispersed of the Jewish race than it
had been for a long time previous. It could not produce an original
leader of any sort, and lived upon the crumbs of culture dropped by
the Jews in Europe. The Kabbala, studied in Palestine since the time
of Nachmani, was an exotic plant which could never flourish very well
there, and degenerated into rankest superstition. The Holy Land did
not even produce a Talmudical authority of widespread renown; also
for earnest rabbinical studies it had become dependent upon Europe.
The leadership of Judaism in the days after the death of Ben Adret
and Asheri remained with Spain, not as formerly Aragon, but Castile,
where the family of Asheri and their views prevailed. Here lived
Talmudical authorities whose decisions were considered final. Here was
still to be found, if not a flourishing state of science, at least
appreciation of scientific research. In Castile, under the rule of the
powerful and intelligent Alfonso XI, the Jews were in so prosperous a
condition that, compared with other countries in Europe, this period
may be called a Golden Age. Several clever Jews in succession, under
the modest title of ministers of finance (Almoxarif), exercised an
influence upon the course of politics. Not only the court, but also
the great nobles, surrounded themselves with Jewish counselors and
officers. In place of the humble, servile bearing, and the degrading
badge which the church decreed for the Jews, the Jewish Spaniards
still bore their heads erect, and clothed themselves in gold and
silk. Dazzled by the glitter of this favorable state of affairs, some
recognized the fulfillment of the old prophecy, "the scepter shall not
depart from Judah," which Christians had so often employed in their
attacks on Judaism.
It is scarcely to be wondered at, if the Spanish Jews were unduly
elated because of the promotion of a few from their midst to state
offices. Such prominent public men were for the most part a protecting
shield for the communities against the avaricious and turbulent lower
orders of the nobility, against the stupid credulity and envy of the
mob, and the serpent-like cunning of the clergy, lying concealed but
ready to attack the Jews. Jewish ministers and counselors in the
service and the retinue of the king, clothed in the costume of the
court, and wearing at their sides the knightly sword, by these very
circumstances, without special intercession, disarmed the enemies
of their brethren in faith and race. The impoverished nobles, who
possessed nothing more than their swords, were filled with envy of
the rich and wise court Jews; but they were compelled to stifle their
feelings. The masses, guided by appearances, did not venture, as was
done in Germany, to ill-treat or slay any Jew they chanced across, as
an outlaw and a pariah, because they knew that the Jews were held in
high favor at court. They often overrated their influence, believing
that the Jews at court could obtain a hearing with the king at any
time. Even the haughty clergy were obliged to restrain themselves
so long as Joseph of Ecija, Samuel Ibn-Wakar, and others, were in a
position to counteract their influence.
If the Castilian Jews compared the condition of their brethren in
neighboring countries with their own, they must certainly have felt
exalted, and entitled to be proud of their lot. In Aragon, at this
time united into one kingdom with the islands of Majorca and Sicily,
the persecuting spirit of the church, which Raymond de Penyaforte had
stirred up, and Jayme I had perpetuated by means of oppressive laws,
was rampant. In Navarre, which for half a century had belonged to the
crown of France, the hatred against the Jews burned with a frenzy
hitherto to be met with only in Germany. The last of the Capets,
Charles IV, was dead, and with the accession of Philip VI to the French
throne the House of Valois began. It is noteworthy that even Christians
believed that the extinction of the lineal successors of Philip le Bel
was retribution for his merciless expulsion of the Jews from France.
The people of Navarre strove to separate themselves from the rule of
France, and form an independent state. It is not known in how far the
Jews stood in the way of their project. Anyhow it is certain that
suddenly, throughout the whole country, a bloodthirsty enmity arose
against the Jews, prompted by envy of their riches, and fostered by the
monks. A Franciscan, named Pedro Olligoyen, made himself most prominent
in goading on the deluded mob against the innocent Jews. In the large
congregation of Estella a most horrible massacre began on a Sabbath
(23d Adar-5th March, 1328). The infuriated mob raised the cry, "Death
to the Jews, or their conversion."
In vain did the Jews attempt to defend themselves in their streets;
the inhabitants of the city, strengthened by troops from other places,
besieged them, and took by storm the walls which surrounded the Jewish
quarter, breaking them down and slaying almost all the Jews of the
city. They also set fire to the Jewish houses, and reduced them to
ashes. The description by an eye-witness of his own sufferings gives
only a feeble idea of the horrors of this savage massacre in Estella.
The murderers had slain the parents and the four younger brothers of
Menachem ben Zerach, then barely twenty years old, afterwards a scholar
of commanding influence. He himself was wounded by the murderers and
knocked down, lying on the ground unconscious, from evening till
midnight, beneath a number of corpses. A compassionate knight, a friend
of Menachem's father, searched for him beneath the pile of corpses,
took him to his house, and had him carefully tended till he recovered
from his wounds. Similar scenes of barbarity were enacted in other
parts of the country, especially in Tudela, the largest community in
Navarre, and in the smaller ones of Falcos, Funes, Moncilla, Viana
and others, but nowhere to so frightful an extent as in Estella. Over
six thousand Jews perished in these massacres. Only the Jews of the
capital, Pampeluna, appear to have escaped these savage attacks. The
people of Navarre at length succeeded in their desire; their country
was separated from France, and obtained a king of its own, Philip
III, Count of Evreux and Angoulême. As soon as he was crowned, the
relatives of the murdered entreated him to mete out justice. At first,
Philip prosecuted the guilty persons in real earnest; he ordered the
ringleaders, the Franciscan Pedro Olligoyen and others to be cast into
prison, and laid a fine upon the cities in which these crimes had been
committed. But, in course of time, he liberated all the imprisoned, and
remitted the fine as an act of grace. He took good care, too, not to
let the stolen property and the possessions of persons without heirs
escape him; they had to be surrendered to him, just as in Germany.
There was no objection to the Jews' being slaughtered, but the royal
treasury was not to suffer loss on that account. This king and his
successors imposed new burdens upon the wretched people. The Jews of
Navarre now began to sink into degradation like those of Germany.
The sun that was shining upon them in Castile at this time was,
strictly speaking, only a false sun, but its glimmer, compared with the
gloom wherein the congregations of other countries were steeped, gives
at least momentary pleasure. Alfonso XI, as soon as he came of age,
and obtained the sovereignty (1325-1380), had two Jewish favorites,
Don Joseph of Ecija and Samuel Ibn-Wakar. The former, whose full name
was Joseph ben Ephraim Ibn-Benveniste Halevi, had a pleasing exterior,
understood music, and knew how to ingratiate himself with those in
power. At the recommendation of his uncle, the king had made him
not only minister of finance (Almoxarif), but also his confidential
counselor (privado), whose opinion he highly valued. Joseph of Ecija
possessed a state carriage, knights accompanied him as an escort on
his journeys, and hidalgos dined at his table. On one occasion the
king dispatched him on a very important and honorable mission which
almost cost him his life. He was besieged by the citizens of Valladolid
in the palace of the Infanta, and they demanded his surrender with
tumultuous clamor. Some of Joseph's retinue succeeded in escaping from
the city, and they hastened at full speed to the king, to whom they
related what had taken place. Alfonso rightly considered this a revolt
against his sovereignty. He marched rapidly against Valladolid, and
summoned the knights of Old Castile to join him. For the sake of his
Jewish favorite, he besieged the former capital of his kingdom, burnt
many houses, and would have destroyed the place entirely, had not more
moderate persons intervened, and explained to the king that the people
were not so much embittered against Don Joseph as against Don Alvar
Nuñez, whose influence was most hateful to them. Don Alfonso thereupon
condescended to remove Alvar from his public offices, whilst Don Joseph
continued in favor with the king.
The other favorite of King Alfonso was his physician, Don Samuel
Ibn-Wakar (Abenhuacar). This man had a scientific education, was an
astronomer, and perhaps the astrologer of his master. Although he
occupied no public office, and took no part in state affairs, yet,
through the favor of the king, he possessed very great influence. There
existed between Don Joseph of Ecija and Ibn-Wakar the jealousy which is
common among courtiers who bask in the rays of the same sun. On account
of their rivalry, these two favorites sought to injure each other, and
thus they and their co-religionists incurred the hatred of the people.
Some wealthy Jews, probably relying upon the favorable position
of their friends at court, carried on money transactions in an
unscrupulous manner. They extorted a high rate of interest, and
mercilessly persecuted their dilatory Christian debtors. The king
himself encouraged the usury of the Jews and Moors, because he gained
advantage therefrom. The complaints of the people against the Jewish
and Mahometan usurers grew very numerous. The cortes of Madrid,
Valladolid and other cities made this point the subject of petitions
presented to the king, demanding the abolition of these abuses, and the
king was compelled to yield to their entreaty.
The minds of the people, however, remained embittered against the Jews.
The cortes of Madrid thereupon called for several restrictive laws
against the Jews, such as, that they should not be allowed to acquire
landed property, and that Jewish ministers of finance and farmers
of taxes should not be appointed (1329). Alfonso replied, that, in
the main, things should continue as they had been before. Don Samuel
Ibn-Wakar rose even higher in the royal favor. Don Alfonso intrusted
him with the farming of the revenues derived from the importation
of goods from the kingdom of Granada. He, moreover, obtained the
privilege empowering him to issue the coinage of the realm at a lower
standard. Joseph of Ecija now became jealous and offered a higher
sum for the right of farming the import-taxes from Granada. When he
thought he had supplanted his rival, the latter dealt him a severe
blow. Ibn-Wakar succeeded in persuading the king that it would be more
advantageous to the people of Castile to carry the protective system
to its uttermost limits, and prohibit all imports from the neighboring
Moorish kingdom (1330-1331).
Whilst the two Jewish courtiers were striving to injure each other, the
enemies of the Jews were busily at work to imperil their reputation
and the existence of all the Castilian congregations. They inflamed
the minds of the people by representing to them that, owing to the
depreciation in the value of money, brought about by the farmer of the
coinage, Ibn-Wakar, the price of the necessaries of life had risen,
these articles being exported to the neighboring countries, where they
were bartered for silver, which had a higher value in their own land.
The enemies of the Jews also brought the influence of the church to
bear to arouse the prejudices of the king against all the Jews. Their
champion was a Jew, who no sooner had embraced Christianity, than he
became a fanatical persecutor of his brethren. This was the infamous
Abner, the forerunner of the baptized and unbaptized Jew-haters, who
prepared, and at length accomplished, the humiliation and banishment of
the Spanish Jews.
Abner of Burgos, or as he was afterwards called, Alfonso Burgensis de
Valladolid (born about 1270, died about 1346), was well acquainted
with biblical and Talmudical writings, occupied himself with science,
and practiced medicine. His knowledge had destroyed his religious
belief, and turned him not only against Judaism, but against all
faiths. Troubled by cares for his subsistence, Abner did not obtain
the desired support from his kinsmen in race. He was too little of a
philosopher to accept his modest lot. His desires were extravagant,
and he was unable to find the means to satisfy them. In order to be
able to live in ease and splendor, Abner determined, when nearly sixty
years of age, to adopt Christianity, although this religion was as
little able to give him inward contentment as that which he forsook.
As a Christian, he assumed the name of Alfonso. The infidel disciple
of Aristotle and Averroes accepted an ecclesiastical office; he became
sacristan at a large church in Valladolid, to which a rich benefice was
attached, enabling him to gratify his worldly desires. He attempted
to excuse his hypocritical behavior and his apostasy by means of
sophistical arguments.
Alfonso carried his want of conscientiousness so far that not long
after his conversion to Christianity he attacked his former brethren
in faith and race with bitter hate, and showed the intention of
persecuting them. Owing to his knowledge of Jewish literature, it
was easy for him to discover its weak points, employ them as charges
against Judaism, and draw the most hateful inferences. Alfonso was
indefatigable in his accusations against the Jews and Judaism, and
composed a long series of works, in which he introduced arguments
partly aggressive, partly defensive of his new faith against the
attacks upon it by the Jews. In his abuse of Judaism, the Hebrew
language, in which he composed with much greater ease than in Spanish,
was made to do service.
Alfonso had the brazen impudence to send one of his hateful writings
to his former friend, Isaac Pulgar. The latter replied in a sharply
satirical poem, and pressed him close in his polemical writings. The
Jews of Spain had not yet become so disheartened as to suffer such
insolent attacks in silence. Another less renowned writer also answered
Alfonso, and thus a violent literary warfare broke out.
Alfonso of Valladolid, however, did not content himself with polemical
writings; he boldly presented himself before King Alfonso XI, and
laid his accusations against the Jews before him. He raked up anew
the remark of the Church Father Jerome and others, that the Jews had
introduced into their book of prayer a formula of imprecation against
the God of the Christians and his adherents. The representatives of
the Jewish community in Valladolid, probably summoned by the king to
justify themselves, emphatically denied that the imprecation originally
leveled against the Minim (Nazarenes) referred to Jesus and his
present followers. Alfonso, however, would not admit the validity of
this exculpation, and pledged himself to prove his charges against
the Jews in a disputation. The king of Castile thereupon commanded
the representatives of the Valladolid community to enter upon a
religious discussion with the sacristan. It took place in the presence
of public officials and Dominicans. Here Alfonso Burgensis repeated
his accusations, and was victorious, inasmuch as, in consequence of
this disputation, King Alfonso issued an edict (25th February, 1336)
forbidding the Castilian communities, under penalty of a fine, to use
the condemned prayer or formula of imprecation. Thus the enemies of the
Jews succeeded in winning over the king, who was really well-disposed
towards the Jews. More ominous events were to happen.
King Alfonso was not very constant; he transferred his favor from one
person to another. He took into his confidence a man unworthy of the
distinction, named Gonzalo Martinez (Nuñez) de Oviedo, originally
a poor knight, who had been promoted through the patronage of the
Jewish favorite, Don Joseph of Ecija. Far from being grateful to his
benefactor, he bore deep hatred against him who had thus raised him,
and his hostile feeling extended to all Jews. When he had risen to
the post of minister of the royal palace, and later to that of Grand
Master of the Order of Alcantara (1337), he revealed his plan of
annihilating the Jews. He lodged a formal charge against Don Joseph and
Don Samuel Ibn-Wakar, to the effect that they had enriched themselves
in the service of the king. He obtained the permission of the king to
deal with them as he chose, so as to extort money from them. Thereupon
Gonzalo ordered both of them, together with two brothers of Ibn-Wakar,
and eight relatives with their families, to be thrown into prison, and
confiscated their property. Don Joseph of Ecija died in prison, and
Don Samuel died under the torture to which he was subjected. This did
not satisfy the enemy of the Jews. He now sought to destroy two other
Jews, who held high positions at court--Moses Abudiel and (Sulaiman?)
Ibn-Yaish. He implicated them in a charge, pretending all the while
to be friendly towards them. Through their downfall Gonzalo Martinez
thought to carry into effect his wicked plan against the Castilian Jews
without difficulty.
The Moorish king of Morocco, Abulhassan (Alboacin), whose help was
implored by his oppressed co-religionists in Granada, had sent a very
large army under the command of his son, Abumelik, over the straits
to undertake a vigorous campaign against Castile. On the reception
of this news, terror spread throughout Christian Spain. King Alfonso
forthwith appointed Gonzalo Martinez, Master of the Order of Alcantara,
as general in charge of this war, and invested him with plenary power.
But funds were wanting; at the deliberation on ways and means of
procuring them, Gonzalo propounded his plan for depriving the Jews of
their wealth, and then expelling them from Castile. By this means,
large supplies of money would flow into the royal treasury; for all
the Christians who were dunned by the Jews would willingly pay large
sums of money to rid themselves of their enemies. Fortunately this
proposal met with opposition in the royal council, and even from the
most prominent clergyman in Castile, the archbishop of Toledo. The
latter urged that the Jews were an inexhaustible treasure for the king,
of which the state should not deprive itself, and that the rulers
of Castile had guaranteed them protection and toleration. Don Moses
Abudiel, who obtained information concerning the council held to decide
on the weal or woe of the Jews, advised the congregations to institute
public fasts, and to supplicate the God of their fathers to frustrate
the wickedness of Gonzalo. The latter marched to the frontier against
the Moorish army, and secured an easy victory. It happened, fortunately
for the Spaniard, that the Moorish general, Abumelik, fell pierced by
an arrow, and his army, filled with dismay at this event, was defeated
and put to rout. The vainglory of the Grand Master of Alcantara now
attained a high pitch. He thought to obtain such great importance in
Spanish affairs that the king would be compelled to approve of all
measures proposed by him. He was, indeed, filled with that pride which
precedes a fall.
The feeble hand of a woman was the cause of his downfall. The beautiful
and sprightly Leonora de Guzman, who had so enthralled the king with
her charms that he was more faithful to her than to his wife, hated the
favorite Gonzalo Martinez, and succeeded in making the king believe
that he spoke ill of him. Alfonso desiring to learn the real truth of
the matter sent a command to Gonzalo to present himself before him
in Madrid; he, however, disobeyed the royal command. To be able to
defy the anger of the king, he stirred up the knights of the Order of
Alcantara and the citizens of the towns assigned to his government,
to rebel against his sovereign, entered into traitorous negotiations
with the king of Portugal and with the enemy of the Christians, the
king of Granada. Alfonso was forced to lead his nobles against him, and
besiege him in Valencia de Alcantara. In mad defiance, Gonzalo directed
arrows and missiles to be aimed at the king, which mortally wounded a
man in the vicinity of Alfonso. But some of the knights of the Order of
Alcantara forsook their Grand Master, and surrendered the stronghold to
the king. There remained nothing for Gonzalo except to yield. He was
condemned to death as a traitor, and was burnt at the stake (1336), and
thus ended the man who had sworn to annihilate the Jews. The Castilian
congregations thereupon celebrated a new festival of deliverance, in
the same month in which the evil plans of Haman against the Jews had
recoiled on his own head. Alfonso again received the Jews into his
favor, and raised Moses Abudiel to a high position at his court. From
this time till the day of his death, Alfonso XI acted justly towards
his Jewish subjects.
It may be thought that, under these on the whole favorable
circumstances, the Jews occupied themselves with their intellectual
culture, which had already developed its full blossom; but it was not
so. Castile in particular, and all Spain, at this epoch, were very
deficient in men who cultivated Jewish science. The Talmud constituted
the only branch of study which intellectual men attended to, and even
here there was no particular fertility. Decrease in strength manifested
itself even in the study of the Talmud. The most famous rabbis of
this period had so great a mistrust of their own powers that they no
longer dared take an independent view of anything, and relied more
and more upon the conclusions of older authorities. They made it very
convenient for themselves by slavishly following Maimuni's Code in
practical decisions, deviating from it only in such particulars as
Asheri had objected to. The latter had pretty well succeeded, if not
in altogether destroying the inclination of the Spanish Jews to engage
in scientific inquiry, at least in bringing science into disrepute, and
thus weakening its study. The distinguished supporters of philosophy
henceforth no more came from Spain; the few that came into prominence
were from southern France. These were Ibn-Kaspi, Gersonides and
Narboni. Asheri and his sons, who inherited his hostility to science,
in causing the view to become general throughout Spain, that a man
should not engage in higher questions concerning Judaism and its
connection with philosophy, did not consider that by this means the
spirit of the Spanish Jews would become enfeebled and incapacitated
for Talmudical investigations, too. The Jewish sons of Spain were
not so well suited for the study of narrow Talmudism as the German
Jews. Prevented from occupying themselves with science, they lost
their buoyancy of spirit, and became unfit for the studies permitted.
Even their pleasure in song and their poetical talents died away.
Occasionally a poem was still produced, but it consisted merely of
rude and unimaginative rhymes. In time they were no better than the
German Jews, whom they had before so greatly despised. Even their prose
style, on which the Spanish Jews had formerly bestowed so much care,
degenerated for the most part into spiritless verbosity. The charming
writer, Santob de Carrion, who as early as the time of Alfonso XI had
clothed his thoughts in beautiful Spanish verse, was a solitary poet,
whose song awoke no echo.
The eight sons of Asheri, his relatives, who had emigrated with
him from Germany to Toledo, together with his numerous grandsons,
dominated Spanish Judaism from this time onwards. They introduced
a one-sided Talmudical method of instruction deeply tinged with a
gloomy, ascetic view of religion. The most famous of the sons of Asheri
were Jacob (Baal ha-Turim) and Jehuda, both intensely religious,
and of unselfish, self-sacrificing dispositions; they were, however,
limited to a very narrow range of ideas. Both were as learned in the
Talmud as they were ignorant in other subjects, and possessed every
quality calculated to bring the decay of religion into accord with the
increasing sufferings of the Jews in this third home of their race.
Jacob ben Asheri (born about 1280, died 1340) was visited by bitter
misfortunes. His life was one chain of sufferings and privations; but
he bore all with patience, without murmur or complaint. Although his
father, Asheri, had brought much wealth with him to Spain, and had
always been in good circumstances, yet his son, Jacob, had to suffer
the bitterest pangs of poverty. Nevertheless, he received no salary as
a rabbi: in fact, he does not appear to have filled that post at any
time. As with all the family of Asheri, both sons and grandsons, the
Talmud constituted his exclusive interest in life; but he displayed
more erudition than originality. His sole merit consists in the fact
that he brought the chaos of Talmudical learning into definite order,
and satisfied the need of the time for a complete code of laws for
religious practice.
Owing to his German origin and to his residence in Spain, Jacob Asheri
became familiar with the productions of the different schools and
authorities in their minutest details. He was thus well suited to
control this chaotic mass and reduce it to order. On the basis of the
labors of all his predecessors in this field, especially of Maimuni,
Jacob compiled a second religious code (in four parts, Turim, shortened
to Tur, about 1340). This work treated solely of religious practice,
that is, of the ritual, moral, marriage and civil laws. He omitted all
such things as had fallen into disuse since the destruction of the
Temple and because of altered circumstances. With the composition of
this work, a new phase in the inner development of Judaism may be said
to begin.
Jacob's code forms part of a graduated scale, by means of which it
can be ascertained to how low a level official Judaism had sunk since
the time of Maimuni. In Maimuni's compilation thought is paramount;
every ritual practice, of whatever kind, whether good or bad, is
brought into connection with the essence of religion. In Jacob's
code, on the other hand, thought or reasoning is renounced. Religious
scrupulousness, which had taken so firm a hold of the German Jewish
congregations, inspires the laws, and imposes the utmost stringency
and mortifications. Maimuni, in accepting religious precepts as
obligatory, was guided entirely by the Talmud, and but seldom included
the decisions of the Geonim as invested with authority. Asheri's
son, on the contrary, admitted into his digest of religious laws
everything that any pious or ultra-pious man had decided upon either
out of scrupulosity or as a result of learned exposition. In his
code, the precepts declared to be binding by rabbinical authorities
far outnumbered those of Talmudic origin. One might almost say that
in Jacob Asheri's hands, Talmudical Judaism was transformed into
Rabbinism. He even included some of the follies of the Kabbala in his
religious digest.
Jacob's code is essentially different from that of Maimuni, not only in
contents, but also in form. The style and the language do not manifest
the conciseness and lucidity of Maimuni's. Notwithstanding this, his
code soon met with universal acceptance, because it corresponded to
a want of the times, and presented, in a synoptical form, all the
ordinances relating to the ritual, to marriage, and civil laws binding
on the adherents of Judaism in exile under the rule of various nations.
Rabbis and judges accepted it as the criterion for practical decisions,
and even preferred it to Maimuni's work. A few of the rabbis of that
age refused to forego their independence, and continued to pronounce
decisions arrived at by original inquiry, and therefore paid little
heed to the new religious code. The great majority of them, on the
other hand, not only in Spain, but also in Germany, were delighted to
possess a handy book of laws systematically presenting everything worth
knowing, making deep, penetrative research superfluous, and taxing
the memory more than the understanding. Thus Jacob's Tur became the
indispensable manual for the knowledge of Judaism, as understood by the
rabbis, for a period of four centuries, till a new one was accepted
which far surpassed the old.
His brother, Jehuda Asheri, was on a par with Jacob in erudition and
virtue, but did not possess similar power of reducing chaos to order.
He was born about 1284, and died in 1349. After the death of his
father, the community of Toledo elected him as Asheri's successor in
the rabbinate of the Spanish capital. He performed the functions of his
office with extraordinary scrupulousness, without respect of persons,
and was able to call the whole community to witness that he had never
been guilty of the slightest trespass. When Jehuda Asheri, on account
of some small quarrel with his congregation, resolved to take up his
abode in Seville, the entire community unanimously begged of him to
remain in their midst, and doubled his salary. In spite of this show of
affection, he did not feel comfortable in Spain, and in his will he is
said to have advised his five sons to emigrate to Germany, the original
home of his family. The persecution of the German Jews, during the year
of the epidemic pestilence, probably taught them that it was preferable
to dwell in Spain. By reason of his position in the most important
of the congregations and of his comprehensive rabbinical learning,
Jehuda Asheri was regarded as the highest authority of his age, and was
preferred even to his brother Jacob.
Seeing that even the study of the Talmud, so zealously pursued
in Spain, had fallen into this state of stagnation and lassitude,
the other branches of science could not complain that they made no
progress, or were not attentively cultivated. The study of the Bible,
Hebrew grammar, and exegesis were entirely neglected; we can recall
hardly a single writer who earnestly occupied himself with these
subjects. Owing to the energetic zeal of Abba-Mari, the interdict
of Ben Adret, and the pronounced aversion of Asheri, reasoning had
fallen into disrepute and decay. The truly orthodox shunned contact
with philosophy as the direct route to heresy and infidelity, and
pseudo-pious people behaved in a yet more prudish fashion towards
it. It required courage to engage in a study inviting contempt and
accusations of heresy. The Kabbala, too, had done its work, in dimming
the eyes of men by its illusions. There were but few representatives of
a philosophical conception of Judaism in those days; these were Isaac
Pulgar, of Avila, David Ibn-Albilla of Portugal, and Joseph Kaspi of
Argentière, in southern France.
Levi ben Gerson, or Leon de Bagnols, was more renowned and more
talented than any of these. He was also called Leo the Hebrew, but
more usually by his literary name Gersonides (born 1288, died about
1345). He belonged to a family of scholars, and among his ancestors
he reckoned that Levi of Villefranche who had indirectly caused the
prohibition of scientific study. In spite of the interdict of Ben
Adret forbidding the instruction of youths in science, Gersonides was
initiated into it at a very early age, and before he had reached his
thirtieth year he was at work at a comprehensive and profound work
upon philosophy. Gersonides was gifted with a versatile and profound
intellect, and averse to all superficiality and incompleteness. In
astronomy he corrected his predecessors, and made such accurate
observations that specialists based their calculations upon them. He
invented an instrument by means of which observations of the heavens
could be made more certain. This discovery filled him with such ecstasy
that he composed a Hebrew poem, a kind of riddle, upon it, though he
was an unpoetical man, and had his head filled with dry calculations
and logical conclusions. He also wrote works upon the science of
medicine, and discovered new remedies. At the same time he was held in
very high repute by his contemporaries as a profound Talmudist, and
inspired by his love for systematic arrangement, wrote a methodology of
the Mishna.
Maestro Leon de Bagnols, as he was called as a physician, fortunately
did not belong to the Jews of France proper: he successively lived
in Orange, Perpignan, and in Avignon, at this time the home of
popedom. Therefore, he had not been a sufferer in the expulsion of his
co-religionists from this land; but his heart bled at the sight of the
sufferings which the exiles were made to undergo. He moreover escaped
from the effects of the rising of the Shepherds, and the subsequent
bitter calamities. At about the same time, his fertile powers of
production began to put forth fruit, and he began the series of
writings which continued for more than twenty years (1321-1343). None
of his writings created such a sensation as his work on the philosophy
of religion (Milchamoth Adonaï). In this he set forth the boldest
metaphysical thoughts with philosophical calmness and independence, as
if paying no heed to the fact that by his departure from the hitherto
received notions upon these questions, he was laying himself open to
the charges of heresy and heterodoxy. "If my observations are correct,"
he remarked, "then all blame leveled against me, I regard as praise."
Leon de Bagnols belonged to a class of thinkers seldom met with, who,
with majestic brow, seek truth for its own intrinsic value, without
reference to other ends and results which might cause conflict. Levi
ben Gerson thus expressed his opinion upon this subject: Truth must be
brought out and placed beneath the glare of open daylight, even if it
should contradict the Torah in the strongest possible manner. The Torah
is no tyrannical law, which desires to force one to accept untruth as
truth, on the contrary, it seeks to lead man to a true understanding of
things. If the truth arrived at by investigation is in harmony with the
utterances of the Bible, then so much the better. In his independence
of thought, the only parallel to Gersonides among Jewish inquirers
is Spinoza. Unlike many of his predecessors, he would not look upon
science as a body of occult doctrines designed for an inner circle of
the initiated. He moreover refused to follow slavishly the authorities
in philosophy regarded as infallible. He propounded independent views
in opposition not only to Maimuni and Averroes, but also to Aristotle.
Leon de Bagnols did not establish a perfect and thoroughly organized
system of the philosophy of religion, but treated of the difficulties
which interested the thinkers of the age more incisively than any of
his predecessors.
In spite of his great ability, Gersonides exercised very little
influence upon Judaism. By the pious, he was denounced as a heretic,
because of his independent research, and his ambiguous attitude towards
the doctrine of the creation. They took the title of his chief work,
"The Battles of the Lord," to mean "Battles against the Lord." So much
the warmer was his reception by Christian inquirers after truth. Pope
Clement VI, during the lifetime of the author, commanded his treatise
upon astronomy and the newly-invented instrument to be translated into
Latin (1342).
Of a similar nature was another representative of philosophical Judaism
of this age, Moses ben Joshua Narboni, also called Maestro Vidal (born
about 1300, died 1362). His father Joshua, who belonged to a family
in Narbonne, but resided in Perpignan, was so warmly interested in
Jewish, that is to say Maimunistic, philosophy, that in spite of the
interdict hurled against all who studied the subject, he instructed
his son therein when he was thirteen years old. Vidal Narboni became
an enthusiastic student. He divided his admiration between Maimuni
and Averroes, his writings consisting chiefly of commentaries upon
their works. His travels from the foot of the Pyrenees to Toledo and
back again to Soria (1345-1362) enriched and amended his knowledge. He
was interested in anything worth knowing, and made observations with
great accuracy. No calamities or troubles succeeded in damping his
zeal in the inquiry after truth. In consequence of the Black Death,
an infuriated mob fell upon the community at Cervera. Vidal Narboni
was compelled to take to flight with the rest of the congregation; he
lost his possessions, and, what was more painful to him, his precious
books. These misfortunes did not disturb him; he took up the thread of
his work where it had been interrupted. He accomplished no entirely
independent or original work; he was a true Aristotelian of Averroist
complexion. Narboni conceived Judaism as a guide to the highest degree
of theoretical and moral truth: the Torah has a double meaning--
the one simple, direct, for the thoughtless mob, and the other of a
deeper, metaphysical nature for the class of thinkers--a common
opinion in those times, Gersonides alone demurring. Narboni, too, gave
expression to heretical views, that is, such as are contrary to the
ordinarily accepted understanding of Judaism, but not with the freedom
and openness of Levi ben Gerson. He rejected the belief in miracles,
and attempted to explain them away altogether, but defended man's
freedom of will by philosophical arguments. Death overtook him in the
very midst of his labors when, advanced in years, he was on the point
of returning to his native land from Soria, on the other side of the
Pyrenees, where he had spent several years.
Though the Karaite, Aaron ben Elia Nicomedi, may be reckoned among the
philosophers of this time, he can scarcely be admitted into the company
of Levi ben Gerson and the other Provençal thinkers. His small stock of
philosophical knowledge was a matter of erudition, not the result of
independent thought. Aaron II, of Nicomedia (in Asia Minor, born about
1300, died 1369), who probably lived in Cairo, was indeed superior
to his ignorant brother Karaites, but several centuries behind the
Rabbanite philosophers. His thoughts sound like a voice from the grave,
or as of one who has slumbered for many years, and speaks the language
of antiquity, not understood by the men of his own day.
Aaron ben Elia was not even able to indicate the end aimed at by his
work, "The Tree of Life." Without being himself fully conscious of his
motives, he was guided in its composition by jealous rivalry of Maimuni
and the Rabbanites. It vexed him sorely that Maimuni's religious
philosophical work, "The Guide," was perused and admired not only by
Jews, but also by Christians and Mahometans, whilst the Karaites had
nothing like it. Aaron desired to save the honor of the Karaites by his
"Tree of Life." He sought to detract from the merits of the work of
Maimuni, and remarked that some of the statements to be found in the
book had been made by Karaite philosophers of religion. Notwithstanding
this, he followed Maimuni most minutely, and treated only of those
questions which the latter had raised; but he sought to solve them not
by the aid of philosophy, but by the authority of the Bible.
The history of this period, when dealing with events in Germany, has
nothing but calamities to record: bloody assaults, massacres, and
the consequent intellectual poverty. Asheri and his sons were either
deluded or unjust when they preferred bigoted Germany to Spain, at that
time still tolerable, and cast longing looks thitherwards from Toledo.
From the time of Asheri's departure till the middle of the century,
misfortune followed upon misfortune, till nearly all the congregations
were exterminated. On account of this state of affairs, even the study
of the Talmud, the only branch of learning pursued in Germany with
ardor and thoroughness, fell into decay. How could the Germans gather
intellectual strength, when they were not certain about one moment
of their lives, or their means of sustenance? Their state in a most
literal way realized the prophetical threat of punishment: "Thy life
shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night.
In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even
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