Chapter V: Preface (5)

The arguments for the existence, unity, and incorporeity of God divide the Arabic philosophers into two schools. Maimonides naturally espoused the view permitting the most exalted conception of God, that is, the conception of God free from human attributes. He recognizes none but negative attributes; in other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is simply denying imperfection. The student knows that in the history of the doctrine of attributes, the recognition of negative attributes marks a great advance in philosophic reasoning. Maimonides holds that the conception of the Deity as a pure abstraction is the only one truly philosophic. His evidences for the existence, the immateriality, and the unity of God, are conceived in the same spirit. In offering them he follows Aristotle's reasoning closely, adding only one other proof, the cosmological, which he took from his teacher, the Arab Avicenna. He logically reaches this proof by more explicitly defining the God-idea, and, at the same time, taking into consideration the nature of the world of things and their relation to one another. Acquainted with Ptolemy's "Almagest" and with the investigations of the Arabs, he naturally surpasses his Greek master in astronomical knowledge. In physical science, however, he gives undivided allegiance to the Aristotelian theory of a sublunary and a celestial world of spheres, the former composed of the sublunary elements in constantly shifting, perishable combinations, and the latter, of the stable, unchanging fifth substance (quintessence). But the question, how God moves these spheres, separates Maimonides from his master. His own answer has a Neoplatonic ring. He holds, with Aristotle, that there are as many separate Intelligences as spheres. Each sphere is supposed to aspire to the Intelligence which is the principle of its motion. The Arabic thinkers assumed ten such independent Intelligences, one animating each of the nine permanent spheres, and the tenth, called the "Active Intellect," influencing the sublunary world of matter. The existence of this tenth Intelligence is proved by the transition of our own intellect from possible existence to actuality, and by the varying forms of all transient things, whose matter at one time existed only in a potential state. Whenever the transition from potentiality to actuality occurs, there must be a cause. Inasmuch as the tenth Intelligence (_Sechel Hapoel_, Active Intellect) induces form, it must itself be form, inasmuch as it is the source of intellect, it is itself intellect. This is, of course, obscure to us, but we must remember that Maimonides would not have so charming and individual a personality, were he not part and parcel of his time and the representative of its belief. Maimonides, having for once deviated from the peripatetic system, ventures to take another bold step away from it. He offers an explanation, different from Aristotle's, of the creation of the world. The latter repudiated the _creatio ex nihilo_ (creation out of nothing). Like modern philosophers, he pre-supposed the existence of an eternal "First substance" (_materia prima_). His Bible does not permit our rabbi to avail himself of this theory. It was reserved for the modern investigator to demonstrate how the Scriptural word, with some little manipulation, can be so twisted as to be made to harmonize with the theories of natural science. But to such trickery the pure-minded guide will not stoop. Besides, the acceptance of Aristotle's theory would rule out the intervention of miracles in the conduct of the world, and that Maimonides does not care to renounce. Right here his monotheistic convictions force him into direct opposition to the Greek as well as to the Arabic philosophers. Upon this subject, he brooked neither trifling nor compromise with reason. It is precisely his honesty that so exalted his teachings, that they have survived the lapse of centuries, and maintain a place in the pure atmosphere of modern philosophic thought.

According to Maimonides, man has absolute free-will, and God is absolutely just. Whatever good befalls man is reward, all his evil fortune, punishment. What Aristotle attributes to chance, and the Mohammedan philosophers to Divine Will or Divine Wisdom, our rabbi traces to the _merits of man_ as its cause. He does not admit any suffering to be unmerited, or that God ordains trials merely to indemnify the sufferer in this or the future world. Man's susceptibility to divine influence is measured by his intellectual endowment. Through his "intellect," he is directly connected with the "Active Intellect," and thus secures the grace of God, who embraces the infinite. Such views naturally lead to a conception of life in consonance with the purest ideals of morality, and they are the goal to which the "Guide" leads the perplexed. He teaches that the acquiring of high intellectual power, and the "possession of such notions as lead to true metaphysical opinions" about God, are "man's final object," and they constitute true human perfection. This it is that "gives him immortality," and confers upon him the dignity of manhood.

The highest degree of perfection, according to Maimonides, is reached by him who devotes all his thoughts and actions to perfecting himself in divine matters, and this highest degree he calls prophecy. He is probably the first philosopher to offer so rationalistic an explanation, and, on that account, it merits our attention. What had previously been regarded as supernatural inspiration, the "Guide" reduces to a psychological theory. "Prophecy," he says, "is, in truth and reality, an emanation sent forth by the Divine Being through the medium of the Active Intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty, and then to his imaginative faculty; it is the highest degree ... of perfection man can attain; it consists in the most perfect development of the imaginative faculty." Maimonides distinguishes eleven degrees of inspiration, and three essential conditions of prophecy: 1. Perfection of the natural constitution of the imaginative faculty, 2. mental perfection, which may partially be acquired by training, and 3. moral perfection. Moses arrived at the highest degree of prophecy, because he understood the knowledge communicated to him without the medium of the imaginative faculty. This spiritual height having been scaled, the "Guide" needs but to take a step to reach revelation, in his estimation also an intellectual process: man's intellect rises to the Supreme Being.

In the third part of his work, Maimonides endeavors to reconcile the conclusions of philosophy with biblical laws and Talmudical traditions. His method is both original and valuable; indeed, this deserves to be considered the most important part of his work. Detailed exposition of his reasoning may prove irksome; we shall, therefore, consider it as briefly as possible.

Maimonides laid down one rule of interpretation which, almost without exception, proves applicable: The words of Holy Writ express different sets of ideas, bearing a certain relation to each other, the one set having reference to physical, the other to spiritual, qualities. By applying this rule, he thinks that nearly all discrepancies between the literal interpretation of the Bible and his own philosophic theories disappear. Having passed over the domain of metaphysical speculation, he finally reaches the consideration of the practical side of the Bible, that is to say, the Mosaic legislation. These last investigations of his are attractive, not only by reason of the satisfactory method pursued, but chiefly from the fact that Maimonides, divesting himself of the conservatism of his contemporaries, ventures to inquire into the reasons of biblical laws. For many of them, he assigns local and historical reasons; many, he thinks, owe their origin to the desire to oppose the superstitious practices of early times and of the Sabeans, a mythical, primitive race; but all, he contends, are binding, and with this solemn asseveration, he puts the seal upon his completed work.

When Maimonides characterized the "Guide of the Perplexed" as "the true science of the Bible," he formed a just estimate of his own work. It has come to be the substructure of a rational theology based upon speculation. Maimonides cannot be said to have been very much ahead of his own age; but it is altogether certain that he attained the acme of the possibilities of the middle ages. In many respects there is a striking likeness between his life and work and those of the Arabic freethinker Averroes, whom we now know so well through Ernest Renan. While the Jewish theologian was composing his great work, the Arabic philosopher was writing his "Commentaries on Aristotle." The two had similar ends in view--the one to enthrone "the Stagirite" as the autocrat of philosophy in the Mosque, the other, in the Synagogue. We have noted the fact that, some centuries later, the Church also entered the federation subject to Aristotelian rule. Albertus Magnus uses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas joins him, and upon them depend the other schoolmen. Recent inquirers follow in their train. Philosophy's noblest votary, Benedict Spinoza himself, is influenced by Maimonides. He quotes frequently and at great length the finest passages of the "Guide." Again, Moses Mendelssohn built his system on the foundations offered by Maimonides, and an acute critic assures us that, in certain passages, Kant's religious philosophy breathes the spirit of Maimonides.[40]

The "Guide of the Perplexed" did not, however, meet with so gracious a reception in the Synagogue. There, Maimonides' philosophic system conjured up violent storms. The whole of an epoch, that following Maimonides' death, was absorbed in the conflict between philosophy and tradition. Controversial pamphlets without number have come down to us from those days. Enthusiasts eulogized, zealots decried. Maimonides' ambiguous expressions about bodily resurrection, seeming to indicate that he did not subscribe to the article of the creed on that subject, caused particularly acrimonious polemics. Meir ben Todros ha-Levi, a Talmudist and poet of Toledo, denounced the equivocation in the following lines:

"If those that rise from death again must die,
For lot like theirs I ne'er should long and sigh.
If graves their bones shall once again confine,
I hope to stay where first they bury mine."

Naturally, Maimonides' followers were quick to retort:

"His name, forsooth, is Meir 'Shining.'
How false! since _light_ he holds in small esteem.
Our language always contrast loveth,--
Twi_light_'s the name of ev'ning's doubtful gleam."

Another of Maimonides' opponents was the physician Judah Alfachar, who bore the hereditary title _Prince_. The following pasquinade is attributed to him:

"Forgive, O Amram's son, nor deem it crime,
That he, deception's master, bears thy name.
_Nabi_ we call the prophet of truths sublime,
Like him of Ba'al, who doth the truth defame."

Maimonides, in his supposed reply to the Prince, played upon the word _Chamor_, the Hebrew word for _ass_, the name of a Hivite prince mentioned in the Bible:

"High rank, I wot, we proudly claim
When sprung from noble ancestor;
Henceforth my mule a _prince_ I'll name
Since once a prince was called _Chamor_."

It seems altogether certain that this polemic rhyming is the fabrication of a later day, for we know that the controversies about Maimonides' opinions in Spain and Provence broke out only after his death, when his chief work had spread far and wide in its Hebrew translation. The following stanza passed from mouth to mouth in northern France:

"Be silent, 'Guide,' from further speech refrain!
Thus truth to us was never brought.
Accursed who says that Holy Writ's a trope,
And idle dreams what prophets taught."

Whereupon the Provencals returned:

"Thou fool, I pray thou wilt forbear,
Nor enter on this consecrated ground.
Or trope, or truth--or vision fair,
Or only dream--for thee 'tis too profound."

The homage paid to Maimonides' memory in many instances produced most extravagant poetry. The following high-flown lines, outraging the canons of good taste recognized in Hebrew poetry, are supposed to be his epitaph:

"Here lies a man, yet not a man,
And if a man, conceived by angels,
By human mother only born to light;
Perhaps himself a spirit pure--
Not child by man and woman fostered--
From God above an emanation bright."

Such hyperbole naturally challenged opposition, and Maimonides' opponents did not hesitate to give voice to their deep indignation, as in the following:

"Alas! that man should dare
To say, with reckless air,
That Holy Scripture's but a dream of night;
That all we read therein
Has truly never been,
Is naught but sign of meaning recondite.
And when God's wondrous deeds
The haughty scorner reads,
Contemptuous he cries, 'I trust my sight.'"

A cessation of hostilities came only in the fourteenth century. The "Guide" was then given its due meed of appreciation by the Jews. Later, Maimonides' memory was held in unbounded reverence, and to-day his "Guide of the Perplexed" is a manual of religious philosophy treasured by Judaism.

If we wish once more before parting from this earnest, noble thinker to review his work and attitude, we can best do it by applying to them the standard furnished by his own reply to all adverse critics of his writings: "In brief, such is my disposition. When a thought fills my mind, though I be able to express it so that only a single man among ten thousand, a thinker, is satisfied and elevated by it, while the common crowd condemns it as absurd, I boldly and frankly speak the word that enlightens the wise, never fearing the censure of the ignorant herd."

This was Maimonides--he of pure thought, of noble purpose; imbued with enthusiasm for his faith, with love for science; ruled by the loftiest moral principles; full of disinterested love and the milk of human kindness in his intercourse with those of other faiths and other views; an eagle-eyed thinker, in whom were focused and harmoniously blended the last rays of the declining sun of Arabic-Jewish-Spanish culture.

JEWISH TROUBADOURS AND MINNESINGERS

A great tournament at the court of Pedro I.! Deafening fanfares invite courtiers and cavaliers to participate in the festivities. In the brilliant sunshine gleam the lances of the knights, glitter the spears of the hidalgos. Gallant paladins escort black-eyed beauties to the elevated balcony, on which, upon a high-raised throne, under a gilded canopy, surrounded by courtiers, sit Blanche de Bourbon and her illustrious lord Dom Pedro, with Dona Maria de Padilla, the lady of his choice, at his left. Three times the trumpets have sounded, announcing the approach of the troubadours gathered from all parts of Castile to compete with one another in song. Behold! a venerable old man, with silvery white beard flowing down upon his breast, seeks to extricate himself from the crowd. With admiring gaze the people respectfully make way, and enthusiastically greet him: "Rabbi Don Santo! Rabbi Don Santo!"

The troubadour makes a low obeisance before the throne. Dom Pedro nods encouragement, Maria de Padilla smiles graciously, only Dona Blanca's pallid face remains immobile. The hoary bard begins his song:[41]

"My noble king and mighty lord,
A discourse hear most true;
'Tis Santob brings your Grace the word,
Of Carrion's town the Jew.

In plainest verse my thought I tell,
With gloss and moral free,
Drawn from Philosophy's pure well,
As onward you may see."[42]

A murmur of approval runs through the crowd; grandees and hidalgos press closer to listen. In well-turned verse, fraught with worldly-wise lessons, and indifferent whether his hortations meet with praise or with censure, the poet continues to pour out words of counsel and moral teachings, alike for king, nobles, and people.

Who is this Rabbi Don Santob? We know very little about him, yet, with the help of "bright-eyed fancy," enough to paint his picture. The real name of this Jew from Carrion de los Condes, a city of northern Spain, who lived under Alfonso XI and Peter the Cruel, was, of course, not Santob, but Shem-Tob. Under Alfonso the intellectual life of Spain developed to a considerable degree, and in Spain, as almost everywhere, we find Jews in sympathy with the first intellectual strivings of the nation. They have a share in the development of all Romance languages and literatures. Ibn Alfange, a Moorish Jew, after his conversion a high official, wrote the first "Chronicle of the Cid," the oldest source of the oft-repeated biography, thus furnishing material to subsequent Spanish poets and historians. Valentin Barruchius (Baruch), of Toledo, composed, probably in the twelfth century, in pure, choice Latin, the romance _Comte Lyonnais, Palanus_, which spread all over Europe, affording modern poets subject-matter for great tragedies, and forming the groundwork for one of the classics of Spanish literature. A little later, Petrus Alphonsus (Moses Sephardi) wrote his _Disciplina Clericalis_, the first collection of tales in the Oriental manner, the model of all future collections of the kind.

Three of the most important works of Spanish literature, then, are products of Jewish authorship. This fact prepares the student to find a Jew among the Castilian troubadours of the fourteenth century, the period of greatest literary activity. The Jewish spirit was by no means antagonistic to the poetry of the Provencal troubadours. In his didactic poem, _Chotham Tochnith_ ("The Seal of Perfection," together with "The Flaming Sword"), Abraham Bedersi, that is, of Beziers (1305), challenges his co-religionists to a poetic combat. He details the rules of the tournament, and it is evident that he is well acquainted with all the minutiae of the _jeu parti_ and the _tenso_ (song of dispute) of the Provencal singers, and would willingly imitate their _sirventes_ (moral and political song). His plaint over the decadence of poetry among the Jews is characteristic: "Where now are the marvels of Hebrew poetry? Mayhap thou'lt find them in the Provencal or Romance. Aye, in Folquet's verses is manna, and from the lips of Cardinal is wafted the perfume of crocus and nard"--Folquet de Lunel and Peire Cardinal being the last great representatives of Provencal troubadour poetry. Later on, neo-Hebraic poets again show acquaintance with the regulations governing song-combats and courts of love. Pious Bible exegetes, like Samuel ben Meir, do not disdain to speak of the _partimens_ of the troubadours, "in which lovers talk to each other, and by turns take up the discourse." One of his school, a _Tossafist_, goes so far as to press into service the day's fashion in explaining the meaning of a verse in the "Song of Songs": "To this day lovers treasure their mistress' locks as love-tokens." It seems, too, that Provencal romances were heard, and their great poets welcomed, in the houses of Jews, who did not scruple occasionally to use their melodies in the synagogue service.

National customs, then, took root in Israel; but that Jewish elements should have become incorporated into Spanish literature is more remarkable, may, indeed, be called marvellous. Yet, from one point of view, it is not astonishing. The whole of mediaeval Spanish literature is nothing more than the handmaiden of Christianity. Spanish poetry is completely dominated by Catholicism; it is in reality only an expression of reverence for Christian institutions. An extreme naturally induces a counter-current; so here, by the side of rigid orthodoxy, we meet with latitudinarianism and secular delight in the good things of life. For instance, that jolly rogue, the archpriest of Hita, by way of relaxation from the tenseness of church discipline, takes to composing _dansas_ and _baladas_ for the rich Jewish bankers of his town. He and his contemporaries have much to say about Jewish generosity--unfortunately, much, too, about Jewish wealth and pomp. Jewish women, a Jewish chronicler relates, are tricked out with finery, as "sumptuously as the pope's mules." It goes without saying that, along with these accounts, we have frequent wailing about defection from the faith and neglect of the Law. Old Akiba is right: "History repeats itself!" ("_Es ist alles schon einmal da gewesen!_").

Such were the times of Santob de Carrion. Our first information about him comes from the Marquis de Santillana, one of the early patrons and leaders of Spanish literature. He says, "In my grandfather's time there was a Jew, Rabbi Santob, who wrote many excellent things, among them _Proverbios Morales_ (Moral Proverbs), truly commendable in spirit. A great troubadour, he ranks among the most celebrated poets of Spain." Despite this high praise, the marquis feels constrained to apologize for having quoted a passage from Santob's work. His praise is endorsed by the critics. It is commonly conceded that his _Consejos y Documentos al Rey Dom Pedro_ ("Counsel and Instruction to King Dom Pedro"), consisting of six hundred and twenty-eight romances, deserves a place among the best creations of Castilian poetry, which, in form and substance, owes not a little to Rabbi Santob. A valuable manuscript at the Escurial in Madrid contains his _Consejos_ and two other works, _La Doctrina Christiana_ and _Dansa General_. A careless copyist called the whole collection "Rabbi Santob's Book," so giving rise to the mistake of Spanish critics, who believe that Rabbi Santob, indisputably the author of _Consejos_, became a convert to Christianity, and wrote, after his conversion, the didactic poem on doctrinal Christianity, and perhaps also the first "Dance of Death."[43] It was reserved for the acuteness of German criticism to expose the error of this hypothesis. Of the three works, only _Consejos_ belongs to Rabbi Santob, the others were accidentally bound with it. In passing, the interesting circumstance may be noted that in the first "Dance of Death" a bearded rabbi (_Rabbi barbudo_) dances toward the universal goal between a priest and an usurer. Santob de Carrion remained a Jew. His _consejos_, written when he was advanced in age, are pervaded by loyalty to his king, but no less to his faith, which he openly professed at the royal court, and whose spiritual treasures he adroitly turned to poetic uses.

Santob, it is interesting to observe, was not a writer of erotic poetry. He composed poems on moral subjects only, social satires and denunciations of vice. Such are the _consejos_. It is in his capacity as a preacher of morality that Santob is to be classed among troubadours. First he addressed himself, with becoming deference, to the king, leading him to consider God's omnipotence:

"As great, 'twixt heav'n and earth the space--
That ether pure and blue--
So great is God's forgiving grace
Your sins to lift from you.

And with His vast and wondrous might
He does His deeds of power;
But yours are puny in His sight,
For strength is not man's dower."

At that time it required more than ordinary courage to address a king in this fashion; but Santob was old and poor, and having nothing to lose, could risk losing everything. A democratic strain runs through his verses; he delights in aiming his satires at the rich, the high-born, and the powerful, and takes pride in his poverty and his fame as a poet:

"I will not have you think me less
Than others of my faith,
Who live on a generous king's largess,
Forsworn at every breath.

And if you deem my teachings true,
Reject them not with hate,
Because a minstrel sings to you
Who's not of knight's estate.

The fragrant, waving reed grows tall
From feeble root and thin,
And uncouth worms that lowly crawl
Most lustrous silk do spin.

Because beside a thorn it grows
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarled branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.

The goshawk, know, can soar on high,
Yet low he nests his brood.
A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?

Some Jews there are with slavish mind
Who fear, are mute, and meek.
My soul to truth is so inclined
That all I feel I speak.

There often comes a meaning home
Through simple verse and plain,
While in the heavy, bulky tome
We find of truth no grain.

Full oft a man with furrowed front,
Whom grief hath rendered grave,
Whose views of life are honest, blunt,
Both fool is called and knave."

It is surely not unwarranted to assume that from these confessions the data of Santob's biography may be gathered.

Now as to Santob's relation to Judaism. Doubtless he was a faithful Jew, for the views of life and the world laid down in his poems rest on the Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash. With the fearlessness of conviction he meets the king and the people, denouncing the follies of both. Some of his romances sound precisely like stories from the Haggada, so skilfully does he clothe his counsel in the gnomic style of the Bible and the Talmud. This characteristic is particularly well shown in his verses on friendship, into which he has woven the phraseology of the Proverbs:

"What treasure greater than a friend
Who close to us hath grown?
Blind fate no bitt'rer lot can send
Than bid us walk alone.

For solitude doth cause a dearth
Of fruitful, blessed thought.
The wise would pray to leave this earth,
If none their friendship sought.

Yet sad though loneliness may be,
That friendship surely shun
That feigns to love, and inwardly
Betrays affections won."

The poem closes with a prayer for the king, who certainly could not have taken offense at Santob's frankness:

"May God preserve our lord and king
With grace omnipotent,
Remove from us each evil thing,
And blessed peace augment.

The nations loyally allied
Our empire to exalt,
May God, in whom we all confide,
From plague keep and assault.

If God will answer my request,
Then will be paid his due--
Your noble father's last behest--
To Santob, Carrion's Jew."

Our troubadour's poetry shows that he was devotedly attached to his prince, enthusiastically loved his country, and was unfalteringly loyal to his faith; that he told the king honest, wholesome truths disguised in verse; that he took no pains to conceal his scorn of those who, with base servility, bowed to the ruling faith, and permitted its yoke to be put upon their necks; that he felt himself the peer of the high in rank, and the wealthy in the goods of this world; that he censured, with incisive criticism, the vices of his Spanish and his Jewish contemporaries--all of which is calculated to inspire us with admiration for the Jewish troubadour, whose manliness enabled him to meet his detractors boldly, as in the verses quoted above:

"Because beside a thorn it grows,
The rose is not less fair;
Though wine from gnarled branches flows,
'Tis sweet beyond compare.

A Jew true precepts doth apply,
Are they therefore less good?"

History does not tell us whether Pedro rewarded the Jewish troubadour as the latter, if we may judge by the end of his poem, had expected. Our accounts of his life are meagre; even his fellow-believers do not make mention of him. We do know, however, that the poor poet's prayers for his sovereign, his petitions for the weal and the glory of his country were not granted. Pedro lost his life by violence, quarrels about the succession and civil wars convulsed the land, and weakened the royal power. Its decline marked the end of the peace and happiness of the Jew on Castilian soil.

As times grew worse, and persecutions of the Jews in Christian Spain became frequent, many forsook the faith of their fathers, to bask in the sunshine of the Church, who treated proselytes with distinguished favor. The example of the first Jewish troubadour did not find imitators. Among the converts were many poets, notably Juan Alfonso de Baena, who, in the fifteenth century, collected the oldest troubadour poetry, including his own poems and satires, and the writings of the Jewish physician Don Moses Zarzal, into a _cancionera general_. Like many apostates, he sought to prove his devotion to the new faith by mocking at and reviling his former brethren. The attacked were not slow to answer in kind, and the Christian world of poets and bards joined the latter in deriding the neophytes. Spanish literature was not the loser by these combats, whose description belongs to general literary criticism. Lyric poetry, until then dry, serious, and solemn, was infused by the satirist with flashing wit and whimsical spirit, and throwing off its connection with the drama, developed into an independent species of poetry.

The last like the first of Spanish troubadours was a Jew,[44] Antonio di Montoro (Moro), _el ropero_ (the tailor), of Cordova, of whom a contemporary says,

"A man of repute and lofty fame;
As poet, he puts many to shame;
Anton di Montoro is his name."

The tailor-poet was exposed to attacks, too. A high and mighty Spanish _caballero_ addresses him as

"You Cohn, you cur,
You miserable Jew,
You wicked usurer."

It must be admitted that he parries these thrusts with weak, apologetic appeals, preserved in his _Respuestas_ (Rhymed Answers). He claims his high-born foe's sympathy by telling him that he has sons, grandchildren, a poor, old father, and a marriageable daughter. In extenuation of his cowardice it should be remembered that Antonio di Montoro lived during a reign of terror, under Ferdinand and Isabella, when his race and his faith were exposed to most frightful persecution. All the more noteworthy is it that he had the courage to address the queen in behalf of his faith. He laments plaintively that despite his sixty years he has not been able to eradicate all traces of his descent (_reato de su origen_), and turns his irony against himself:

"Ropero, so sad and so forlorn,
Now thou feelest pain and scorn.
Until sixty years had flown,
Thou couldst say to every one,
'Nothing wicked have I known.'

Christian convert hast thou turned,
_Credo_ thou to say hast learned;
Willing art now bold to view
Plates of ham--no more askew.
Mass thou hearest,
Church reverest,
Genuflexions makest,
Other alien customs takest.
Now thou, too, mayst persecute
Those poor wretches, like a brute."

"Those poor wretches" were his brethren in faith in the fair Spanish land. With a jarring discord ends the history of the Jews in Spain. On the ninth of Ab, 1492, three hundred thousand Jews left the land to which they had given its first and its last troubadour. The irony of fate directed that at the selfsame time Christopher Columbus should embark for unknown lands, and eventually reach America, a new world, the refuge of all who suffer, wherein thought was destined to grow strong enough "to vanquish arrogance and injustice without recourse to arrogance and injustice"--a new illustration of the old verse: "Behold, he slumbereth not, and he sleepeth not--the keeper of Israel."

* * *

A great tournament at the court of the lords of Trimberg, the Franconian town on the Saale! From high battlements stream the pennons of the noble race, announcing rare festivities to all the country round. The mountain-side is astir with knights equipped with helmet, shield, and lance, and attended by pages and armor-bearers, minnesingers and minstrels. Yonder is Walther von der Vogelweide, engaged in earnest conversation with Wolfram von Eschenbach, Otto von Botenlaube, Hildebold von Schwanegau, and Reinmar von Brennenberg. In that group of notables, curiously enough, we discern a Jew, whose beautiful features reflect harmonious soul life.

"Suesskind von Trimberg," they call him, and when the pleasure of the feast in the lordly hall of the castle is to be heightened by song and music, he too steps forth, with fearlessness and dignity, to sing of freedom of thought, to the prevalence of which in this company the despised Jew owed his admission to a circle of knights and poets:[45]

"O thought! free gift to humankind!
By thee both fools and wise are led,
But who thy paths hath all defined,
A man he is in heart and head.
With thee, his weakness being fled,
He can both stone and steel command,
Thy pinions bear him o'er the land.

O thought that swifter art than light,
That mightier art than tempest's roar!
Didst thou not raise me in thy flight,
What were my song, my minstrel lore,
And what the gold from _Minne's_ store?
Beyond the heights an eagle vaunts,
O bear me to the spirit's haunts!"

His song meets with the approval of the knights, who give generous encouragement to the minstrel. Raising his eyes to the proud, beautiful mistress of the castle, he again strikes his lyre and sings:

"Pure woman is to man a crown,
For her he strives to win renown.
Did she not grace and animate,
How mean and low the castle great!
By true companionship, the wife
Makes blithe and free a man's whole life;
Her light turns bright the darkest day.
Her praise and worth I'll sing alway."

The lady inclines her fair head in token of thanks, and the lord of castle Trimberg fills the golden goblet, and hands it, the mark of honor, to the poet, who drains it, and then modestly steps back into the circle of his compeers. Now we have leisure to examine the rare man.--

Ruediger Manesse, a town councillor of Zuerich in the fourteenth century, raised a beautiful monument to bardic art in a manuscript work, executed at his order, containing the songs of one hundred and forty poets, living between the twelfth and the fourteenth century. Among the authors are kings, princes, noblemen of high rank and low, burgher-poets, and the Jew Suesskind von Trimberg. Each poet's productions are accompanied by illustrations, not authentic portraits, but a series of vivid representations of scenes of knight-errantry. There are scenes of war and peace, of combats, the chase, and tourneys with games, songs, and dance. We see the storming of a castle of Love (_Minneburg_)--lovers fleeing, lovers separated, love triumphant. Heinrich von Veldeke reclines upon a bank of roses; Friedrich von Hausen is on board a boat; Walther von der Vogelweide sits musing on a wayside stone; Wolfram von Eschenbach stands armed, with visor closed, next to his caparisoned horse, as though about to mount. Among the portraits of the knights and bards is Suesskind von Trimberg's. How does Ruediger Manesse represent him? As a long-bearded Jew, on his head a yellow, funnel-shaped hat, the badge of distinction decreed by Pope Innocent III. to be worn by Jews. That is all! and save what we may infer from his six poems preserved by the history of literature, pretty much all, too, known of Suesskind von Trimberg.

Was it the heedlessness of the compiler that associated the Jew with this merry company, in which he was as much out of place as a Gothic spire on a synagogue? Suesskind came by the privilege fairly. Throughout the middle ages the Jews of Germany were permeated with the culture of their native land, and were keenly concerned in the development of its poetry. A still more important circumstance is the spirit of tolerance and humanity that pervades Middle High German poetry. Wolfram von Eschenbach based his _Parzival_, the herald of "Nathan the Wise," on the idea of the brotherhood of man; Walther von der Vogelweide ranged Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans together as children of the one God; and Freidank, reflecting that God lets His sun shine on the confessors of all creeds, went so far as to repudiate the doctrine of the eternal damnation of Jews. This trend of thought, characterizing both Jews and Christians, suffices to explain how, in Germany, and at the very time in which the teachers of the Church were reviling "the mad Jews, who ought to be hewn down like dogs," it was possible for a Jew to be a minnesinger, a minstrel among minstrels, and abundantly accounts for Suesskind von Trimberg's association with knights and ladies. Suesskind, then, doubtless journeyed with his brother-poets from castle to castle; yet our imagination would be leading us astray, were we to accept literally the words of the enthusiastic historian Graetz, and with him believe that "on vine-clad hills, seated in the circle of noble knights and fair dames, a beaker of wine at his side, his lyre in his hand, he sang his polished verses of love's joys and trials, love's hopes and fears, and then awaited the largesses that bought his daily bread."[46]

Suesskind's poems are not at all like the joyous, rollicking songs his mates carolled forth; they are sad and serious, tender and chaste. Of love there is not a word. A minnesinger and a Jew--irreconcilable opposites! A minnesinger must be a knight wooing his lady-love, whose colors he wears at the tournaments, and for whose sake he undertakes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Jew's minstrelsy is a lament for Zion.

In fact what is _Minne_--this service of love? Is it not at bottom the cult of the Virgin Mary? Is it not, in a subtle, mysterious way, a phase of Christianity itself? How could it have appealed to the Jew Suesskind? True, the Jews, too, have an ideal of love in the "Song of Songs": "Lo, thou art beautiful, my beloved!" it says, but our old sages took the beloved to be the Synagogue. Of this love Princess Sabbath is the ideal, and the passion of the "Song of Songs" is separated from German _Minne_ by the great gap between the soul life of the Semite and that of the Christian German. Unbridled sensuousness surges through the songs rising to the chambers of noble ladies. Kabbalistic passion glows in the mysterious love of the Jew. The German minstrel sings of love's sweetness and pain, of summer and its delights, of winter and its woes, now of joy and happiness, again of ill-starred fortunes. And what is the burden of the exiled Hebrew's song? Mysterious allusions, hidden in a tangle of highly polished, artificial, slow-moving rhymes, glorify, not a sweet womanly presence, but a fleeting vision, a shadow, whose elusive charms infatuated the poet in his dreams. Bright, joyous, blithe, unmeasured is the one; serious, gloomy, chaste, gentle, the other.

Yet, Suesskind von Trimberg was at once a Jew and a minnesinger. Who can fathom a poet's soul? Who can follow his thoughts as they fly hither and thither, like the thread in a weaver's shuttle, fashioning themselves into a golden web? The minnesingers enlisted in love's cause, yet none the less in war and the defense of truth, and for the last Suesskind von Trimberg did valiant service. The poems of his earliest period, the blithesome days of youth, have not survived. Those that we have bear the stamp of sorrow and trouble, the gifts of advanced years. With self-contemptuous bitterness, he bewails his sad lot:

"I seek and nothing find,--
That makes me sigh and sigh.
Lord Lackfood presses me,
Of hunger sure I'll die;
My wife, my child go supperless,
My butler is Sir Meagreness."

Suesskind von Trimberg's poems also breathe the spirit of Hebrew literature, and have drawn material from the legend world of the Haggada. For the praise of his faithful wife he borrows the words of Solomon, and the psalm-like rhythm of his best songs recalls the familiar strains of our evening-prayer:

"Almighty God! That shinest with the sun,
That slumb'rest not when day grows into night!
Thou Source of all, of tranquil peace and joy!
Thou King of glory and majestic light!
Thou allgood Father! Golden rays of day
And starry hosts thy praise to sing unite,
Creator of heav'n and earth, Eternal One,
That watchest ev'ry creature from Thy height!"

Like Santob, Suesskind was poor; like him, he denounced the rich, was proud and generous. With intrepid candor, he taught knights the meaning of true nobility--of the nobility of soul transcending nobility of birth--and of freedom of thought--freedom fettered by neither stone, nor steel, nor iron; and in the midst of their rioting and feasting, he ventured to put before them the solemn thought of death. His last production as a minnesinger was a prescription for a "virtue-electuary." Then he went to dwell among his brethren, whom, indeed, he had not deserted in the pride of his youth:

"Why should I wander sadly,
My harp within my hand,
O'er mountain, hill, and valley?
What praise do I command?

Full well they know the singer
Belongs to race accursed;
Sweet _Minne_ doth no longer
Reward me as at first.

Be silent, then, my lyre,
We sing 'fore lords in vain.
I'll leave the minstrels' choir,
And roam a Jew again.

My staff and hat I'll grasp, then,
And on my breast full low,
By Jewish custom olden
My grizzled beard shall grow.

My days I'll pass in quiet,--
Those left to me on earth--
Nor sing for those who not yet
Have learned a poet's worth."

Thus spake the Jewish poet, and dropped his lyre into the stream--in song and in life, a worthy son of his time, the disciple of Walther von der Vogelweide, the friend of Wolfram von Eschenbach--disciple and friend of the first to give utterance, in German song, to the idea of the brotherhood of man. Centuries ago, he found the longed-for quiet in Franconia, but no wreath lies on his grave, no stone marks the wanderer's resting-place. His poems have found an abiding home in the memory of posterity, and in the circle of the German minnesingers the Jew Suesskind forms a distinct link.

In a time when the idea of universal human brotherhood seems to be fading from the hearts of men, when they manifest a proneness to forget the share which, despite hatred and persecution, the Jew of every generation has had in German literature, in its romances of chivalry and its national epics, and in all the spiritual achievements of German genius, we may with just pride revive Suesskind's memory.--

On the wings of fancy let us return to our castle on the Saale. After the lapse of many years, the procession of poets again wends its way in the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song. Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked hat, the badge of the mediaeval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance looks into a distant future. Suesskind von Trimberg, to thee our greeting!

HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY

One of the most remarkable discoveries of the last ten years is that made in Paris by M. Ernest Renan. He maintains as the result of scientific research that the Semitic races, consequently also the Jews, are lacking in humor, in the capacity for laughter. The justice of the reproach might be denied outright, but a statement enunciated with so much scientific assurance involuntarily prompts questioning and investigation.

In such cases the Jews invariably resort to their first text-book, the Bible, whose pages seem to sustain M. Renan. In the Bible laughing is mentioned only twice, when the angel promises a son to Sarah, and again in the history of Samson, judge in Israel, who used foxes' tails as weapons against the Philistines. These are the only passages in which the Bible departs from its serious tone.

But classical antiquity was equally ignorant of humor as a distinct branch of art, as a peculiar attitude of the mind towards the problems of life. Aristophanes lived and could have written only in the days when Athenian institutions began to decay. It is personal discomfort and the trials and harassments of life that drive men to the ever serene, pure regions of humor for balm and healing. Fun and comedy men have at all times understood--the history of Samson contains the germs of a mock-heroic poem--while it was impossible for humor, genuine humor, to find appreciation in the youth of mankind.

In those days of healthy reliance upon the senses, poetic spirits could obtain satisfaction only in love and in the praise of the good world and its Maker. The sombre line of division had not yet been introduced between the physical and the spiritual world, debasing this earth to a vale of tears, and consoling sinful man by the promise of a better land, whose manifold delights were described, but about which there was no precise knowledge, no traveller, as the Talmud aptly puts it, having ever returned to give us information about it. Those were the days of perfect harmony, when man crept close to nature to be taught untroubled joy in living. In such days, despite the storms assailing the young Israelitish nation, a poet, his heart filled with the sunshine of joy, his mind receptive, his eyes open wide to see the flowers unfold, the buds of the fig tree swell, the vine put forth leaves, and the pomegranate blossom unfurl its glowing petals, could carol forth the "Song of Songs," the most perfect, the most beautiful, the purest creation of Hebrew literature and the erotic poetry of all literatures--the song of songs of stormy passion, bidding defiance to ecclesiastical fetters, at once an epic and a drama, full of childlike tenderness and grace of feeling. Neither Greece, nor the rest of the Orient has produced anything to compare with its marvellous union of voluptuous sensuousness and immaculate chastity. Morality, indeed, is its very pulse-beat. It could be sung only in an age when love reigned supreme, and could presume to treat humor as a pretender. So lofty a song was bound to awaken echoes and stimulate imitation, and its music has flowed down through the centuries, weaving a thread of melody about the heart of many a poet.

The centuries of Israelitish history close upon its composition, however, were favorable to neither the poetry of love nor that of humor. But the poetry of love must have continued to exercise puissant magic over hearts and minds, if its supreme poem not only was made part of the holy canon, but was considered by a teacher of the Talmud the most sacred treasure of the compilation.

The blood of the Maccabean heroes victorious over Antiochus Epiphanes again fructified the old soil of Hebrew poetry, and charmed forth fragrant blossoms, the psalms designated as Maccabean by modern criticism. Written in troublous times, they contain a reference to the humor of the future: "When the Lord bringeth back again the captivity of Zion, then shall we be like dreamers, then shall our mouth be filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing."

Many sad days were destined to pass over Israel before that future with its solacement of humor dawned. No poetic work could obtain recognition next to the Bible. The language of the prophets ceased to be the language of the people, and every mind was occupied with interpreting their words and applying them to the religious needs of the hour. The opposition between Jewish and Hellenic-Syrian views became more and more marked. Hellas and Judaea, the two great theories of life supporting the fabric of civilization, for the first time confronted each other. An ancient expounder of the Bible says that to Hellas God gave beauty in the beginning, to Judaea truth, as a sacred heritage. But beauty and truth have ever been inveterate foes; even now they are not reconciled.

In Judaea and Greece, ancient civilization found equally perfect, yet totally different, expression. The Greek worships nature as she is; the Jew dwells upon the origin and development of created things, hence worships their Creator. The former in his speculations proceeds from the multiplicity of phenomena; the latter discerns the unity of the plan. To the former the universe was changeless actuality; to the latter it meant unending development. The world, complete and perfect, was mirrored in the Greek mind; its evolution, in the Jewish. Therefore the Jewish conception of life is harmonious, while among the Greeks grew up the spirit of doubt and speculation, the product of civilization, and the soil upon which humor disports.

Israel's religion so completely satisfied every spiritual craving that no room was left for the growth of the poetic instinct. Intellectual life began to divide into two great streams. The Halacha continued the instruction of the prophets, as the Haggada fostered the spirit of the psalmists. The province of the former was to formulate the Law, of the latter to plant a garden about the bulwark of the Law. While the one addressed itself to reason, the other made an appeal to the heart and the feelings. In the Haggada, a thesaurus of the national poetry by the nameless poets of many centuries, we find epic poems and lyric outbursts, fables, enigmas, and dramatic essays, and here and there in this garden we chance across a little bud of humorous composition.

Of what sort was this humor? In point of fact, what is humor? We must be able to answer the latter question before we may venture to classify the folklore of the Haggada.

To reach the ideal, to bring harmony out of discord, is the recognized task of all art. This is the primary principle to be borne in mind in aesthetic criticism. Tragedy idealizes the world by annihilation, harmonizes all contradictions by dashing them in pieces against each other, and points the way of escape from chaos, across the bridge of death, to the realm beyond, irradiated by the perpetual morning-dawn of freedom and intellect.

Comedy, on the other hand, believes that the incongruities and imperfections of life can be justified, and have their uses. Firmly convinced of the might of truth, it holds that the folly and aberrations of men, their shortcomings and failings, cannot impede its eventual victory. Even in them it sees traces of an eternal, divine principle. While tragedy precipitates the conflict of hostile forces, comedy, rising serene above folly and all indications of transitoriness, reconciles inconsistencies, and lovingly coaxes them into harmony with the true and the absolute.

When man's spirit is thus made to re-enter upon the enjoyment of eternal truth, its heritage, there is, as some one has well said, triumph akin to the joy of the father over the home-coming of a lost son, and the divine, refreshing laughter by which it is greeted is like the meal prepared for the returning favorite. Is Israel to have no seat at the table? Israel, the first to recognize that the eternal truths of life are innate in man, the first to teach, as his chief message, how to reconcile man with himself and the world, whenever these truths suffer temporary obscuration? So viewed, humor is the offspring of love, and also mankind's redeemer, inasmuch as it paralyzes the influence of anger and hatred, emanations from the powers of change and finality, by laying bare the eternal principles and "sweet reasonableness" hidden even in them, and finally stripping them of every adjunct incompatible with the serenity of absolute truth. In whatever mind humor, that is, love and cheerfulness, reigns supreme, the inconsistencies and imperfections of life, all that bears the impress of mutability, will gently and gradually be fused into the harmonious perfection of absolute, eternal truth. Mists sometimes gather about the sun, but unable to extinguish his light, they are forced to serve as his mirror, on which he throws the witching charms of the Fata Morgana. So, when the eternal truths of life are veiled, opportunity is made for humor to play upon and irradiate them. In precise language, humor is a state of perfect self-certainty, in which the mind serenely rises superior to every petty disturbance.

This placidity shed its soft light into the modest academies of the rabbis. Wherever a ray fell, a blossom of Haggadic folklore sprang up. Every occurrence in life recommends itself to their loving scrutiny: pleasures and follies of men, curse turned into blessing, the ordinary course of human events, curiosities of Israel's history and mankind's. As instances of their method, take what Midrashic folklore has to say concerning the creation of the two things of perennial interest to poets: wife and wine.

When the Lord God created woman, he formed her not from the head of man, lest she be too proud; not from his eye, lest she be too coquettish; not from his ear, lest she be too curious; not from his mouth, lest she be too talkative; not from his heart, lest she be too sentimental; not from his hands, lest she be too officious; nor from his feet, lest she be an idle gadabout; but from a subordinate part of man's anatomy, to teach her: "Woman, be thou modest!"

With regard to the vine, the Haggada tells us that when Father Noah was about to plant the first one, Satan stepped up to him, leading a lamb, a lion, a pig, and an ape, to teach him that so long as man does not drink wine, he is innocent as a lamb; if he drinks temperately, he is as strong as a lion; if he indulges too freely, he sinks to the level of swine; and as for the ape, his place in the poetry of wine is as well known to us as to the rabbis of old.