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.

1492-1498 C.E.

The Jews of northern Spain, in Catalonia and Aragon, who turned their steps to neighboring Navarre, with the idea of seeking shelter there, were comparatively fortunate. Here at least was a prospect of a livelihood, and a possibility of looking round for other places of refuge. The Inquisition had met with courageous resistance from the rulers and the people of Navarre. When some Marranos, concerned in the murder of Arbues, the inquisitor, fled to this kingdom, and the bloodthirsty heresy-mongers demanded that they be given up to the executioners, the town of Tudela declared that it would not suffer such unrighteous violence to people who had sought its protection, and closed the gates against their emissaries. In vain did king Ferdinand, who had an eye upon Navarre, threaten it with his anger. The citizens of Tudela remained firm. A Navarrese prince, Jacob of Navarre, suffered for the shelter he gave to a hunted Marrano. The inquisitors suddenly arrested, imprisoned and sentenced him, as an enemy of the Holy Office, to shameful exposure in a church, where his list of offenses was publicly read out, and absolution promised him only if he submitted to flagellation from priestly hands. Several other towns of Navarre gave protection to the fugitives, and about 12,000 Castilian wanderers took up their quarters in Navarre. Count of Lerin probably received the greater number of these. But the Jews enjoyed only a few years of peace in Navarre; for upon the vehement urging of King Ferdinand, who followed the fugitives with bitterest enmity and persecution, the king of Navarre gave them the choice between wandering forth again and baptism. The greater number adopted Christianity, because there was only a short time for preparation, and no time for thinking. In the community of Tudela, so famous for steadfast piety, 180 families submitted to baptism.

Also those Castilian Jews were fortunate who, instead of indulging themselves in the vain hope that the edict would be recalled, did not stay until the last day, but made their way, before the end of the respite, to Italy, Africa, or Turkey. They did not lack the means of getting away. The Spanish Jews had such widespread repute, and their expulsion had made so much stir in Europe, that crowds of ships were ready in Spanish seaports to take up the wanderers and convey them to all parts, not only the ships of the country, but also Italian vessels from Genoa and Venice. The ship-owners saw a prospect of lucrative business. Many Jews from Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia desired to settle in Naples, and sent ambassadors to the king, Ferdinand I, to ask him to receive them. This prince was not merely free from prejudice against the Jews, but was kindly inclined towards them, out of compassion for their misfortunes, and he may have promised himself industrial and intellectual advantage from this immigration of the Spanish Jews. Whether it was calculation or generosity, it is enough that he bade them welcome, and made his realm free to them. Many thousands of them landed in the Bay of Naples (24th August, 1492), and were kindly received. The native Jewish community treated them with true brotherly generosity, defrayed the passage of the poor not able to pay, and provided for their immediate necessities.

Isaac Abrabanel, also, and his whole household, went to Naples. Here he lived at first as a private individual, and continued the work of writing a commentary upon the book of Kings, which had been interrupted by his state duties. When the king of Naples was informed of his presence in the city, he invited him to an interview, and intrusted him with a post, in all likelihood in the financial department. Probably he hoped to make use of Abrabanel's experience in the war with which he was threatened by the king of France. Whether from his own noble impulses, or from esteem for Abrabanel, the king of Naples showed the Jews a gentle humanity which startlingly contrasted with the cruelty of the Spanish king. The unhappy people had to struggle with many woes; when they thought themselves free of one, another yet more merciless fell upon them. A devastating pestilence, arising out of the sad condition to which they had been reduced, or from the overcrowding of the ships, followed in the track of the wanderers. They brought death with them. Scarcely six months had they been settled on Neapolitan soil when the pestilence carried numbers of them off, and King Ferdinand, who dreaded a rising of the populace against the Jews, hinted to them that they must bury their corpses by night, and in silence. When the pest could no longer be concealed, and every day increased in virulence, people and courtiers alike entreated him to drive them forth. But Ferdinand would not assent to this inhuman proceeding; he is said to have threatened to abdicate if the Jews were ill-treated. He had hospitals erected for them outside the town, sent physicians to their aid, and gave them means of support. For a whole year he strove, with unexampled nobility, to succor the unfortunate people, whom banishment and disease had transformed into living corpses. Those, also, who were fortunate enough to reach Pisa found a brotherly reception. The sons of Yechiel of Pisa fairly took up their abode on the quay, so as to be ready to receive the wanderers, provide for their wants, shelter them, or help them on their way to some other place. After Ferdinand's death, his son, Alfonso II, who little resembled him, retained the Jewish statesman, Abrabanel, in his service, and, after his resignation in favor of his son, took him with him to Sicily. Abrabanel to the last remained faithful to this prince in his misfortunes (January, 1494, to June, 1495).

After the conquest of Naples by the weak-headed knight-errant king of France, Charles VIII, the members of the Abrabanel family were torn apart and scattered. None of them, however, met with such signal misfortune as the eldest son, Judah Leon Medigo (born 1470, died 1530). He had been so well beloved at the Spanish court that they were loath to part with him, and would gladly have kept him there--of course, as a Christian. To attain this end, a command was issued that he be not permitted to leave Toledo, or that his one-year-old son be taken from him, baptized immediately, and that in this manner the father be chained to Spain. Judah Abrabanel, however, got wind of this plot against his liberty, sent his son, with his nurse, "like stolen goods," secretly to the Portuguese coast; but as he himself did not care to seek shelter in the country where his father had been threatened with death, he turned his face towards Naples. His suspicions of the king of Portugal were only too speedily justified. No sooner did João hear that a relative of Abrabanel was within his borders than he ordered the child to be kept as hostage, and not to be permitted to go forth with the other Jews. Little Isaac never saw his parents and grandparents again. He was baptized, and brought up as a Christian. The agony of the father at the living death of his lost child was boundless. It gave him no rest or peace to his latest hour, and it found vent in a lamentation sad in the extreme. Yet what was the grief for one child, compared with the woes which overtook the thousands of Jews hunted out of Spain?

Many of them found their way to the nearest African seaport towns, Oran, Algiers and Bugia. The inhabitants, who feared that their towns would be overcrowded from such a vast influx, shot at the Jews as they landed, and killed many of them. An eminent Jew at the court of Barbary, however, addressed the sultan in behalf of his unhappy brethren, and obtained leave for them to land. They were not allowed to enter the towns, probably because the pestilence had broken out among them, too. They could only build themselves wooden huts outside the walls. The children collected wood, and their elders nailed the boards together for temporary dwellings. But they did not long enjoy even this miserable shelter, as one day a fire broke out in one of the huts, and soon laid the whole camp in ashes.

Those who settled in Fez suffered a still more terrible lot. Here also the inhabitants would not admit them, fearing that such an influx of human beings would raise the price of the necessaries of life. They had to encamp in the fields, and live on roots and herbs like cattle. On the Sabbath they stripped the plants with their teeth, in order not to desecrate the holy day by gathering them. Starvation, pestilence, and the unfriendliness of the Mahometan people vied with each other in inflicting misery upon the Jews. In their awful despair, fathers were driven to sell their children as slaves to obtain bread. Mothers killed their little ones that they might not see them perish from the pangs of hunger. Avaricious captains took advantage of the distress of the parents to entice starving children on board their vessels with offers of bread, and, deaf to the cries and entreaties of the parents, carried them off to distant lands, where they sold them for a good price. Later, the ruler of Fez, probably at the representation of the original Jewish inhabitants, proclaimed that Jewish children who had been sold for bread, and other necessaries of life, should be set at liberty.

The descriptions by their contemporaries of the sufferings of the Jews make one's hair stand on end. They were dogged whithersoever they went. Those whom plague and starvation had spared, fell into the hands of brutalized men. The report got about that the Spanish Jews had swallowed the gold and silver which they had been forbidden to carry away, intending to use it later on. Cannibals, therefore, ripped open their bodies to seek for coin in their entrails. The Genoese ship-folk behaved most inhumanly to the wanderers who had trusted their lives to them. From avarice, or sheer delight in the death agonies of the Jews, they flung many of them into the sea. One captain offered insult to the beautiful daughter of a Jewish wanderer. Her name was Paloma (Dove), and to escape shame, the mother threw her and her other daughters and then herself into the waves. The wretched father composed a heartbreaking lamentation for his lost dear ones.

Those who reached the port of Genoa had to contend with new miseries. In this thriving town there was a law that Jews might not remain there for longer than three days. As the ships which were to convey the Jews thence required repairing, the authorities conceded the permission for them to remain, not in the town, but upon the Mole, until the vessels were ready for sea. Like ghosts, pale, shrunken, hollow-eyed, gaunt, they went on shore, and if they had not moved, impelled by instinct to get out of their floating prison, they might have been taken for so many corpses. The starving children went into the churches, and allowed themselves to be baptized for a morsel of bread; and Christians were merciless enough not merely to accept such sacrifices, but with the cross in one hand, and bread in the other, to go among the Jews and tempt them to become converted. Only a short time had been granted them on the Mole, but a great part of the winter passed before the repairs were completed. The longer they remained, the more their numbers diminished, through the passing over to Christianity of the younger members, and many fell victims to plagues of all kinds. Other Italian towns would not allow them to land even for a short time, partly because it was a year of famine, partly because the Jews brought the plague with them.

The survivors from Genoa who reached Rome underwent still more bitter experiences; their own people leagued against them, refusing to allow them to enter, from fear that the influx of new settlers would damage their trade. They got together 1,000 ducats, to present to the notorious monster, Pope Alexander VI, as a bribe to refuse to allow the Jews to enter. This prince, himself unfeeling enough, was so enraged at the heartlessness of these men against their own people, that he ordered every Roman Jew out of the city. It cost the Roman congregation 2,000 ducats to obtain the revocation of this edict, and they had to take in the refugees besides.

The Greek islands of Corfu, Candia, and others became filled with Spanish Jews; some had dragged themselves thither, others had been sold as slaves there. The majority of the Jewish communities had great compassion for them, and strove to care for them, or at all events to ransom them. They made great efforts to collect funds, and sold the ornaments of the synagogues, so that their brethren might not starve, or be subjected to slavery. Persians, who happened to be on the island of Corfu, bought Spanish refugees, in order to obtain from Jews of their own country a high ransom for them. Elkanah Kapsali, a representative of the Candian community, was indefatigable in his endeavors to collect money for the Spanish Jews. The most fortunate were those who reached the shores of Turkey; for the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet II, showed himself to be not only a most humane monarch, but also the wisest and most far-seeing. He understood better than the Christian princes what hidden riches the impoverished Spanish Jews brought with them, not in their bowels, but in their brains, and he wanted to turn these to use for the good of his country. Bajazet caused a command to go forth through the European provinces of his dominions that the harassed and hunted Jews should not be rejected, but should be received in the kindest and most friendly manner. He threatened with death anyone who should ill-treat or oppress them. The chief rabbi, Moses Kapsali, was untiringly active in protecting the unfortunate Jewish Spaniards who had come as beggars or slaves to Turkey. He traveled about, and levied a tax from the rich native Jews "for the liberation of the Spanish captives." He did not need to use much pressure; for the Turkish Jews willingly contributed to the assistance of the victims of Christian fanaticism. Thus thousands of Spanish Jews settled in Turkey, and before a generation had passed they had taken the lead among the Turkish Jews, and made Turkey a kind of Eastern Spain.

At first the Spanish Jews who went to Portugal seemed to have some chance of a happy lot. The venerable rabbi, Isaac Aboab, who had gone with a deputation of thirty to seek permission from King João either to settle in or pass through Portugal, succeeded in obtaining tolerably fair terms. Many of the wanderers chose to remain in the neighboring kingdom for a while, because they flattered themselves with the hope that their indispensableness would make itself evident after their departure, that the eyes of the now blinded king and queen of Spain would be opened, and they would then receive the banished people with open arms. At the worst, so thought the refugees, they would have time in Portugal to look round, decide which way to go, and readily find ships to convey them in safety to Africa or to Italy. When the Spanish deputies placed the proposition before King João II to receive the Jews permanently or temporarily in Portugal, the king consulted his grandees at Cintra. In presenting the matter, he permitted it to be seen that he himself was desirous of admitting the exiles for a pecuniary consideration. Some of the advisers, either from pity for the unhappy Jews, or from respect for the king, were in favor of granting permission; others, and these the majority, either out of hatred for the Jews, or a feeling of honor, were against it. The king, however, overruled all objections, because he hoped to carry on the contemplated war with Africa by means of the money acquired from the immigrants. It was at first said that the Spanish refugees were to be permitted to settle permanently in Portugal. This favor, however, the Portuguese Jews themselves looked upon with suspicion, because the little state would thus hold a disproportionate number of Jews, and the wanderers, most of them penniless, would fall a heavy burden upon them, so that the king, not of an amiable disposition, would end by becoming hostile to all the Jews in Portugal. The chief men, therefore, of the Jewish-Portuguese community met in debate, and many gave utterance to the cruel view that they themselves would have to take steps to prevent the reception of the Spanish exiles. A noble old man, Joseph, of the family of Ibn-Yachya, spoke warmly for his unfortunate brethren; but his voice was silenced. There was no more talk of their settling in Portugal, but only of the permission to make a short stay, in order to arrange for their journey. The conditions laid down for the Spanish Jews were: Each one, rich or poor, with the exception of babes, was to pay a stipulated sum (eight gold-cruzados, nearly one pound) in four instalments; artisans, however, such as metal-workers and smiths, who desired to settle in the country, only half of this amount. The rest were permitted to stay only eight months, but the king undertook to furnish ships at a reasonable rate for transporting them to other lands. Those found in Portugal after the expiration of this period, or not able to show a receipt for the stipulated payment, were condemned to servitude. On the promulgation of these conditions, a large number of Spanish Jews (estimated at 20,000 families, or 200,000 souls) passed over the Portuguese borders. The king assigned to the wanderers certain towns, where they had to pay a tax to the inhabitants. Oporto was assigned to the families of the thirty deputies, and a synagogue was built for them. Isaac Aboab, the renowned teacher of many disciples, who later took positions as rabbis in Africa, Egypt and Palestine, died peacefully in Oporto; his pupil, famous as a geographer and astronomer, Abraham Zacuto, pronounced his funeral oration (end of 1492). Only a few of his fellow-sufferers were destined to die a peaceful death.

The feverish eagerness for discovering unknown lands and entering into trading relations with them, which had seized on Portugal, gave practical value to two sciences which hitherto had been regarded as the hobby or amusement of idlers and dilettanti--namely, astronomy and mathematics, the favorite pursuits of cultured Jews of the Pyrenean Peninsula. If India, the land of gold and spices, upon which the minds of the Portuguese were set with burning desire, was to be discovered, then coasting journeys, so slow and so dangerous, would have to be given up, and voyages made thither upon the high seas. But the ships ran the risk of losing their way on the trackless wastes of the ocean. Venturesome mariners, therefore, sought astronomical tables to direct their way by the courses of the sun and the stars. In this science Spanish Jews had the mastery. A Chazan of Toledo, Isaac (Zag) Ibn-Said, had published astronomical tables in the thirteenth century, known under the name of Alfonsine Tables, which were used with only slight alterations by the scientific men of Germany, France, England and Italy. As João II of Portugal now wished to send ships to the Atlantic for the discovery of India by way of the African sea-coast, he summoned a sort of astronomical congress for the working out of practical astronomical tables. At this congress, together with the famous German astronomer, Martin Behaim, and the Christian physician of King Rodrigo, there sat a Jew, the royal physician, Joseph (José) Vecinho, or de Viseu. He used as a basis the perpetual astronomical calendar, or Tables of the Seven Planets, which Abraham Zacuto, known later as a chronicler, had drawn up for a bishop of Salamanca, to whom he had dedicated it. Joseph Vecinho, together with Christian scientists, also improved upon the instrument for the measurement of the altitude of the stars, the nautical astrolabe, indispensable to mariners. By its aid Vasco da Gama first found it possible to follow the seaway to the Cape of Good Hope and India, and thus, perhaps, Columbus was enabled to discover a new continent. The geographical knowledge and skill of two Jews, Rabbi Abraham de Beya and Joseph Zapateiro de Lamego, were also turned to account by King João II, who sent them to Asia to obtain tidings of his emissaries to the mythical land of Prester John.

Although King João thus employed learned and skillful Jews for his own ends, he had no liking for the Jewish race: he was indifferent, or rather inimical, to them directly they came in the way of his bigotry. In the year in which he dispatched Joseph Zapateiro and Abraham de Beya to Asia, at the instigation of Pope Innocent VIII he appointed a commission of the Inquisition for the Marranos who had fled from Spain to Portugal, and, like Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, delivered over those who had Jewish leanings, either to death by fire or to endless imprisonment. Some Marranos having taken ship to Africa, and there openly adopted Judaism, he prohibited, under penalty of death and confiscation, baptized Jews or new-Christians from leaving the country by sea. On the breath of this heartless monarch hung the life or death of hundreds of thousands of Jewish exiles.

Against those unfortunates in Portugal, not only evil-minded men, but nature itself, fought. Soon after their arrival in Portugal, a cruel pestilence began to rage among them, destroying thousands. The Portuguese, who also suffered from the plague, believed that the Jews had brought it into the country; and, indeed, all that they had suffered, the oppressive heat at the time of their going forth, want, misery, and all kinds of devastating diseases, may have developed it. A considerable number of the Spanish refugees died of the plague in Portugal. The population on this account murmured against the king, complaining that the pestilence had followed in the track of the accursed Jews, and established itself in the country. Don João, therefore, had to insist more strenuously than he otherwise would have done upon the condition that all who had settled in Portugal should leave at the expiration of the eight months. At first he put ships at their disposal, at moderate rates of transportation, according to his agreement, and bade the captains treat their passengers with humanity, and convey them whither they wished to go. But these men, inspired by Jew hatred and avarice, once upon the seas, troubled themselves but little about the king's orders, since they had no need to fear complaints about their inhumanity. They demanded more money than had originally been bargained for, and extorted it from the helpless creatures. Or, they carried them about upon the waste of waters till their stock of provisions was exhausted, and then demanded large sums for a fresh supply of food, so that at last the unfortunates were driven to give their clothes for bread, and were landed anywhere in a nearly naked state. Women and young girls were insulted and violated in the presence of their parents and relatives, and disgrace was brought upon the name of Christian. Frequently these inhuman mariners landed them in some desolate spot of the African coasts, and left them to perish from hunger and despair, or to fall a prey to the Moors, who took them prisoners.

The sufferings of the exiled Jews who left Portugal in ships are related by an eye-witness, the Kabbalist, Judah ben Jacob Chayyat, of a noble and wealthy family. The vessel on which he, his wife, and two hundred and fifty other Jews, of both sexes and all ages, had embarked, left the harbor of Lisbon in winter (beginning of 1493), and lingered four months upon the waves, because no seaport would take them in for fear of the plague. Provisions on board naturally ran short. The ship was captured by Biscayan pirates, plundered and taken to the Spanish port of Malaga. The Jews were not permitted to land, nor to set sail again, nor were provisions given them. The priests and magistrates of the town desired to incline them to the teaching of Christ by the pangs of hunger. They succeeded in converting one hundred persons with gaunt bodies and hollow eyes. The rest remained steadfast to their own faith, and fifty of them, old men, youths, maidens, children, among them Chayyat's wife, died of starvation. Then, at last, compassion awoke in the hearts of the Malagese, and they gave them bread and water. When, after two months, the remainder of them received permission to sail to the coasts of Africa, they encountered bitter sufferings in another form. On account of the plague they were not permitted to land at any town, and had to depend upon the herbs of the field. Chayyat himself was seized, and flung by a malicious Mahometan into a horrible dungeon full of snakes and salamanders, in order to force him to adopt Islamism; in case of refusal, he was threatened with death by stoning. These continuous, grinding cruelties did not make him waver one instant in his religious convictions. At last he was liberated by the Jews of a little town, and carried to Fez. There so severe a famine raged that Chayyat was compelled to turn a mill with his hands for a piece of bread, not fit for a dog. At night he and his companions in misery who had strayed to Fez slept upon the ash-heaps of the town.

Carefully as the Portuguese mariners strove to conceal their barbarities to the Jews, their deeds soon came to light, and frightened off those who remained behind from emigrating by sea. The poor creatures, moreover, were unable to raise the necessary money for their passage and provisions. They, therefore, put off going from day to day, comforting themselves with the hope that the king would be merciful, and allow them to remain in Portugal. Don João, however, was not a monarch whose heart was warmed by kindness and compassion. He maintained that more Jews had come into Portugal than had been stipulated for, and insisted, therefore, that the agreement be strictly carried out. Those who remained after the expiration of eight months were made slaves, and sold or given to those of the Portuguese nobility who cared to take their pick from them (1493).

King João went still further in his cruel dealings with the unhappy Spanish Jews. The children of from three to ten years of age whose parents had become slaves, he ordered to be transported by sea to the newly-discovered San Thomas or Lost Islands (Ilhas perdidas), there to be reared in the tenets of Christianity. The weeping of the mothers, the sobbing of the children, the rage of the fathers, who tore their hair in agony, did not move the heartless despot to recall his command. Mothers entreated to be allowed to go with their children, threw themselves at the king's feet as he came out of church, and implored him to leave them at least the youngest. Don João had them dragged from his path "like bitches who had their whelps torn from them." Is it to be wondered at that mothers, with their children in their arms, sprang into the sea to rest united in its depths? The Islands of San Thomas, whither the little ones were taken, were full of lizards and venomous snakes, and inhabited by criminals transported thither from Portugal. Most of the children perished on the journey, or became the prey of wild beasts. Among the survivors it happened that brothers and sisters, in ignorance of their relationship, married each other. Perhaps the king's barbarity to the Jews must be accounted for by the bitter gloom which mastered him at the death of his only legitimate son.

After the death of João II, who sank in wretchedness into his grave (end of October, 1495), he was succeeded by his cousin Manoel, a great contrast in disposition to himself--an intelligent, amiable, gentle-minded man, and a lover of learning. There seemed some prospect of a better star's rising upon the remnant of the banished Jews in Portugal. King Manoel, finding that the Jews had remained in his kingdom beyond the allotted time only from fear of many forms of death upon the ocean, gave all the slaves their freedom. The money which, beside themselves with joy, they offered him for this, he refused. It is true that his ulterior motive, as Bishop Osorius tells us, was to win them over to Christianity by clemency. The Jewish mathematician and astronomer, Abraham Zacuto, who had remained in Lisbon, having come thither from northern Spain, where he had taught his favorite science even to Christians, was made chief astrologer. Zacuto served the king not merely in the latter capacity. Although a man of limited understanding, unable to rise above the superstition of his day, he had sound knowledge of astronomy, and published a work upon that science, besides preparing his astronomical tables. He also invented a correct metal instrument for measuring the altitude of the stars, to replace the clumsy and inaccurate wooden one used hitherto by mariners.

Under King Manoel, in whose reign Portugal's domains were enlarged by acquisitions in India and America, the Jews were able to breathe awhile. It appears that soon after ascending the throne he issued a command that the accusations against them for murdering children should not be recognized by courts of justice, since they were malicious, lying inventions. Nor would he allow the fanatical preaching friars to utter denunciations against them.

Very short, however, was the gleam of happiness for the Jews under Manoel: the somber bigotry of the Spanish court changed it into terrible gloom. No sooner had the young king of Portugal mounted the throne than their majesties of Spain began to entertain the idea of marriage relations with him in order to turn an inimical neighbor into a friend and ally. They proposed marriage with their younger daughter, Joanna, who afterwards became notorious on account of her jealous disposition and her madness. Manoel lent a willing ear to the proposal of an alliance with the Spanish court, but preferred the elder sister, Isabella II, who had been married to the Infante of Portugal, and had soon after become a widow. Isabella had strong repugnance to a second marriage; but her confessor knew how to overrule her objections, and made her believe that if she consented she would have opportunity to glorify the Christian faith. The Spanish court had marked with chagrin and vexation that the Portuguese king had received the Jewish and Mahometan refugees, and King Manoel's friendly treatment of them was a thorn in their flesh. Ferdinand and Isabella thought that by falling in with the Portuguese king's wishes, they would attain their end. They, therefore, promised him the hand of their eldest daughter upon condition that he join with Spain against Charles VII, and send the Jews out of Portugal, both the native and the refugee Jews. The conditions were very disagreeable to King Manoel, who was on good terms with France, and reaped great advantage from the wealth, energy, intelligence, and knowledge of the Jews.

He consulted with his lords and council upon this question, fraught with such importance for the Jews. Opinions upon it were divided. Manoel hesitated for some time, because his noble nature shrank from such cruelty and faithlessness. The Infanta Isabella spoke the deciding word. She entertained fanatical, almost personal hatred against the Jews. She believed or was persuaded by the priests that the misfortunes and unhappiness which had befallen King João in his last days were occasioned by his having allowed Jews to enter his kingdom; and, nourished as she had been at the breast of superstition, she was afraid of ill-luck in her union with Manoel if Jews were permitted to remain in Portugal. What dreary lovelessness in the heart of a young woman! Irreconcilable strife of feelings and thoughts was thus raised in the soul of King Manoel. Honor, the interest of the state, humanity, forebade his proscribing and expelling the Jews; but the hand of the Spanish Infanta, and the Spanish crown were to be secured only by the misery of the Jews. Love turned the balance in favor of hate. When the king was expecting his bride to cross the borders of his kingdom, he received a letter from her saying that she would not set foot in Portugal until the land was cleansed of the "curse-laden" Jews.

The marriage contract between Don Manoel and the Spanish Infanta, Isabella, then, was sealed with the misery of the Jews. It was signed on the 30th of November, 1496, and so early as the 24th of the following month, the king caused an order to go forth that all the Jews and Moors of his kingdom must receive baptism, or leave the country within a given time, on pain of death. In order to relieve his conscience, he showed clemency in carrying his edict into effect. He lengthened the term of their stay until the October of the following year, so that they had time for preparation. He further appointed three ports, Lisbon, Oporto, and Setubal, for their free egress. That he sought to allure the Jews to Christianity, by the prospect of honor and advancement, was so entirely due to the distorted views of the times, that he cannot be held responsible for it; as it was, only a few submitted to baptism.

Precisely Manoel's clement behavior tended to the greater misery of the Jews. Having ample time to prepare for their departure, and not being forbidden to take gold and silver with them, they thought that there was no need to hurry. Perhaps the king would change his mind. They had friends at court who were agitating in their favor. Besides, the winter months were not a good time to be upon the ocean. The majority, therefore, waited until spring. In the meantime King Manoel certainly did change his mind, but only to increase their fearful misery. He was much vexed at finding that so few Jews had embraced Christianity. Very unwillingly he saw them depart with their wealth and their possessions, and sought ways and means to retain them, as Christians, of course, in his own kingdom. The first step had cost him a struggle, the second was easy.

He raised the question in council whether the Jews could be brought to baptism by force. To the honor of the Portuguese clergy it must be said that they expressed themselves as opposed to this. The bishop of Algarve, Ferdinand Coutinho, cited ecclesiastical authorities and papal bulls to the effect that Jews might not be compelled to adopt Christianity, because a free, not a forced, confession was required. Manoel, however, was so bent upon keeping the industrious Jews with him, that he openly declared that he did not trouble himself about laws and authorities, but would act upon his own judgment. From Evora he issued (beginning of April, 1497) a secret command that all Jewish children, boys and girls, up to the age of fourteen, should be taken from their parents by force on Easter Sunday, and carried to the church fonts to be baptized. He was advised by a reprobate convert, Levi ben Shem Tob, to take this step. In spite of the secrecy of the preparations, several Jews found it out, and were about to flee with their children from the "stain of baptism." When Manoel heard it, he ordered the forced baptism of children to be carried out at once. Heartrending scenes ensued in the towns where Jews lived when the sheriffs strove to carry away the children. Parents strained their dear ones to their breasts, the children clung convulsively to them, and they could be separated only by lashes and blows. In their despair over the possibility of being thus for ever sundered, many of them strangled the children in their embraces, or threw them into wells and rivers, and then laid hands upon themselves. "I have seen," relates Bishop Coutinho, "many dragged to the font by the hair, and the fathers clad in mourning, with veiled heads and cries of agony, accompanying their children to the altar, to protest against the inhuman baptism. I have seen still more horrible, indescribable violence done them." In the memory of his contemporaries lingered the frightful manner in which a noble and cultured Jew, Isaac Ibn-Zachin, destroyed himself and his children, to avoid their becoming a prey to Christianity. Christians were moved to pity by the cries and tears of Jewish fathers, mothers and children, and despite the king's commands not to assist the Jews, they concealed many of the unfortunates in their houses, so that at least for the moment they might be safe; but the stony hearts of King Manoel and his young wife, the Spanish Isabella II, remained unmoved by these sights of woe. The baptized children, who received Christian names, were placed in various towns, and reared as Christians. Either in obedience to a secret order, or from excessive zeal, the creatures of the king not only seized children, but also youths and maidens up to the age of twenty, for baptism.

Many Jews of Portugal probably embraced Christianity in order to remain with their children; but this did not satisfy the king, who, not from religious zeal, but from political motives, had hardened his heart. All the Jews of Portugal, it mattered not whether with or without conviction, were to become Christians and remain in the country. To attain this end, he violated a solemn promise more flagrantly than his predecessor. When the time of their departure came closer, he ordered the Jews to embark from one seaport only, that of Lisbon, although, at first, he had allowed them three places. Therefore, all who wished to go, had to meet in Lisbon--20,000 souls, it is said, with burning grief in their hearts, but prepared to suffer anything to remain true to their convictions. The inhuman monarch allowed them lodgings in the city, but he placed so many hindrances in the way of their embarkation, that time passed by, and the day arrived when they were to forfeit life, or at least liberty, if found upon Portuguese soil. He had all who remained behind locked in an enclosed space (os Estaõs) like oxen in stalls, and informed them that they were now his slaves, and that he could do with them as he thought fit. He urged them voluntarily to confess the Christian faith, in which case they should have honor and riches; otherwise they would be forced to baptism without mercy. When, notwithstanding this, many remained firm, he forbade bread or water to be given them for three days, in order to render them more pliable. This means did not succeed any better with the greater number of them: they chose to faint with starvation rather than belong to a religion which owned such followers as their persecutors. Upon this, Manoel proceeded to extreme measures. By cords, by their hair and beard, they were dragged from their pen to the churches. To escape this some sprang from the windows, and their limbs were crushed. Others broke loose and jumped into wells. Some killed themselves in the churches. One father spread his _tallith_ over his sons, and killed them and himself. Manoel's terrible treatment comes into more glaring prominence when compared with his behavior to the Moors. They, too, had to leave Portugal, but no hindrances were placed in their way, because he feared that the Mahometan princes in Africa and Turkey might retaliate upon the Christians living in their domains. The Jews had no earthly protector, were weak and helpless, therefore, Manoel, whom historians call the Great, permitted himself to perpetrate such atrocities. In this fashion many native Portuguese and refugee Spanish Jews were led to embrace Christianity, which they--as their Christian contemporaries relate with shame--had openly scorned. Some, at a later period, became distinguished Rabbinical authorities, like Levi ben Chabib, afterwards rabbi in Jerusalem. Those who escaped with their lives and their faith attributed it to the gracious and wondrous interposition of God. Isaac ben Joseph Caro, who had come from Toledo to Portugal, there lost his adult and his minor sons ("who were beautiful as princes"), yet thanked his Creator for the mercy that in spite of peril on the sea he reached Turkey. Abraham Zacuto, with his son Samuel, also was in danger of death, although (or because) he was King Manoel's favorite, astrologer and chronicler. Both, however, were fortunate enough to pass through the bitter ordeal, and escape from Portugal, but they were twice imprisoned. They finally settled in Tunis.

The stir which the enforced conversion of the Jews caused in Portugal did not immediately subside. Those who had submitted to baptism through fear of death, or out of love for their children, did not give up the hope that by appealing to the papal court they might be able to return to their own faith, seeing that, as all Europe knew, Pope Alexander VI and his college of cardinals, as base as himself, would do anything for money. A witticism was then going the rounds of every Christian country:

Vendit Alexander Claves, Altaria, Christum;
Emerat ista prius, vendere jure potest.

Rome was a market of shame--a hill of Astarte--a mart of unwholesomeness--but there the innocent, also, could buy their rights. The Portuguese new-Christians now sent a deputation of seven of their companions in misery to Pope Alexander, and they did not forget to take a purse of gold with them. The pope and the so-called holy college showed themselves favorably inclined towards them, especially Cardinal de Sancta Anastasia took them under his patronage. The Spanish ambassador, Garcilaso, however, was instructed by their Spanish majesties to oppose them. Despite his influence the affairs of the Portuguese Jews must have taken a favorable turn, for King Manoel decided to make concessions. He issued a mild decree (May 30th, 1497), in which he granted amnesty to all forcibly baptized Jews, and a respite of twenty years, during which they were not to be brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition for their adherence to Judaism. It was said that it was necessary for them first to lay aside their Jewish habits, and accustom themselves to the ways of the Catholic faith, for which they needed time. Further, the decree ordered that, on the expiration of this term, a regular examination should be made of those accused of Judaizing practices, and if the case was decided against them, their goods should not be confiscated, as in Spain, but given over to their heirs. Finally, the decree ordained that those baptized physicians and surgeons who did not understand Latin might make use of Hebrew books of reference. Practically this allowed the enforced Christians to live in secret, without fear of punishment, as Jews, and to retain all their books. For, who, in Portugal, in those days, could distinguish a book of medicine from any other work in the Hebrew language? The students of the Talmud could thus follow their favorite researches and studies under the mask of Catholicism. This amnesty benefited the Portuguese Marranos, but not those who had immigrated into Portugal, by a clause which Manoel had inserted out of deference to the Spanish court, or, more particularly, to the Spanish Infanta Isabella. For she insisted that the Marranos who had fled out of Spain into Portugal should be delivered over to the Moloch of the Inquisition. In the marriage contract between the king of Portugal and the fanatical Isabella (August, 1497), it was expressly set down that all persons of the Hebrew race coming under condemnation of the Inquisition, who sought refuge in Portugal, must leave within a month's time.

Thus many thousand Portuguese Jews became pseudo-Christians, but with the firm resolve to seize the first opportunity to get away, so that in a free country they might openly practice a religion only the dearer to them for all they had suffered for it. Their souls, as the poet Samuel Usque writes, had not been stained by the baptism imposed on them. There were some Jews, however, who had refused baptism with all their might. Among them was Simon Maimi, apparently the last chief rabbi (Arrabi mor) in Portugal, a scrupulously pious man; also his wife, his sons-in-law, and some others. They were closely imprisoned, because they would not forswear Judaism, nor observe the rites of the church. To bring them to conversion, Simon Maimi and his fellow sufferers, official rabbis, were most inhumanly tortured. They were immured up to the neck in their prison, and left for three days in this fearful position. When they nevertheless remained firm, the walls were torn down; three had died, among them Simon Maimi, whose conversion was most important, because his example would have influenced the others. Two Marranos imperiled their lives to secure the corpse of the pious martyr, that they might inter it in the Jewish burial-ground, although it was strictly forbidden to bury the Jewish victims of Christian sacrifice otherwise than by the executioner's hands. A few Marranos secretly attended their deeply-lamented saint to his last rest, and celebrated a mourning service over his grave. Manoel permitted the few remaining Jews to depart not long after, probably on the death of Isabella, the instigator of all his barbarities to the Jews. She died at the birth of the heir to the thrones of Portugal and Spain, August 24th, 1498, and the Infante died two years later. One of the remnant dismissed was Abraham Saba, a preacher and Kabbalist author, whose two children were baptized by force and taken from him. The companions of Simon Maimi and his sons-in-law remained in prison a long time, were afterwards sent to Arzilla, in Africa, there condemned to work at the trenches on the Sabbath, and died at last a martyr's death.

Eighty years later, Manoel's great-grandson, the adventurous king, Sebastian, led the flower of the Portuguese people to fresh conquests in Africa. In a single battle the power of Portugal was broken, her nobility slain, or cast into prison. The captives were carried to Fez, and there, in the slave-market, offered for sale to the descendants of the barbarously treated Portuguese Jews. The unhappy Portuguese nobles and knights were, however, glad to be bought by Jews, as they well knew the mild and humane nature of the followers of the "God of vengeance."