The condition of the Jews in Sjiain continued to be favorable from near the close of the 11th centurj' (to which time we traced them in the preceding sec- tion) until the middle of the 14th centurj-, when the star of their fortune may be said to have' culminated. It is true, the ISIohammedan power was now on the wane, but then the Christian rulers felt not yet suffi- ciently well established in the peninsula to take severe measures against the Jews (Da Costa, Israel and the Geniiles, p. 189 sq., 224). A capitation tax was paid by the numerous synagogues, and presents were made to
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the infante, the nobility, or the Church; but in every other respect the Jews lived like a separate nation, framing and executing their own civil and criminal jurisdiction. It is true they had not here a Reshfjelu- tha as their authority, but a substitute was afforded them in the " rabbino mayor," the Jewish magistrate, who " exercised his right in the king's name, and sealed his decrees, which the king alone could annul, with the royal arms. He made journeys through the country to take cognizance of all Jewish affairs, and inquire into the disposal of the revenues of the different syna- gogues. He had under liim a ' vice-rabbin o mayor,' a chancellor, a secretary, and several other officers. Two different orders of rabbins, or judges, acted under him in the towns and districts of the kingdom." The first important danger that threatened them was in 1218, when a multitude of foreign knights and soldiers gather- ed together at Toledo preparatory to a crusade against the Moors. The campaign was to bo opened, as had been done in Germany, by a general massacre of the Jews; but, by the intervention of Alphonso IX, sur- naraed the Good, the attempt was in a great measure defeated, and the Jews continued to prosper, after a similar attempt made by the Cortes of Madrid had failed, until the middle of the 11th century. By tliis time the general hatred against the Jews had spread alarmingly in all countries of Europe, as we have al- ready had occasion to see, in consequence of the terror ■which the black death caused throughout that portion of the globe. They were now also in Spain confined to particular quarters of cities in which they resided, and attempts were made for their conversion. In 1250 an in- stitution had even been erected for the express puri:)ose of training men to carry on successfidly controversies with the Jews, and, if possible, to bring about their conver- sion. But very different results followed the bloody persecutions which were actually and successfully inau- gurated against them at Seville in 1391, 1392. These were the outbursts of priestly and popular violence, and had no sooner commenced in that city than Cordova, Toledo, Valencia, Catalonia, and the island of jNIajorca followed in its tram ; immense numbers were murdered, and wholesale theft was perpetrated by the religious rabble. Escape was possible only tlirough flight to other countries, or by accepting baptism at the point of the sword, and the number of such enforced converts to Christianity is reckoned at no less than 200,000. If the persecutions in Germanj^, England, France, and else- where had severely tried the Jewish race, these persecu- tions in Spain completely extinguished all hope of fur- ther joy, for they hit, so to speak, the very core of the Jewish heart, and form a sad turning-point in the his- tory of the Jews, and the 15th of March, 1391, forms a memorable day not only for the Jew, not only ibr the Spaniard, but for all the world ; it was the seed from which germinated that monster called the Inquisition (Gratz, Gesch. d. Juden, viii, 61 sq.). Daily now the con- dition of this people, even in the Spanish peninsula, grew worse and worse, until it fairly beggars descrip- tion. A.D. 1-112-1414 they had to endure another bloody persecution throughout the peninsula, and by the mid- dle of the 15th century we read of nothing but perse- cution, violent conversion, massacre, and the tortures of the Inquisition. "Thousands, were burned alive. 'In one year 280 were burned in Seville alone.' Sometimes the i)opes, and even the nobles, shuddered at the fiend- ish zeal of the inquisitors, and tried to mitigate it, but in vain. At length the hour of final liorror came. In A.D. 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict for the expulsion, within four months, of all who refused to be- come Christians, with the strict inhibition to take nei- ther gold nor silver out of the country. The Jews of- fered an enormous sum for its revocation, and for a mo- ment the sovereigns hesitated; but Torquemada, the Dominican inquisitor-general, dared to compare his roy- al master and mistress to Judas; they shrank from the awful accusation ; and the ruin of the most industrious,
tlie most thriving, the most peaceable, and the most learned of their subjects— and consequently of Spain her^ self— became irremediable." (See Inquisition in this volume, p. (501 scj.) This is perhaps the grandest and most melancholy hour in their modern history. It is considered by themselves as great a calamity as the de- struction of 'Jerusalem. 300,000 (some even give the numbers at 050,000 or 800,000) resolved to abandon the countrj', which a residence of seven centuries had made almost a second Judiea to them. The incidents that marked their departure are heart-rending. Almost ev- ery land was shut against them. Some, however, ven- tured into France, others into Italy, Turkey, and Mo- rocco, in the last of which countries they suffered the most frightful privations. Of the 80,000 who obtained an entrance into Portugal on payment of eight gold pennies a head, but only for eight months, to enable them to obtain means of departure to other countries, many lingered after the expiration of the appointed time, j and the poorer were sold as slaves. In A.D. 1495, king Emanuel commanded them to quit his territories, but I at the same time issued a secret order that all Jewish I chiklren under 14 years of age should be torn from their mothers, retained in Portugal, and brought up as Chris- j tians. Agony drove the Jewish mothers into madness ; they destroyed their children with their own hands, and threw them into wells and rivers, to prevent them from falling into the hands of their persecutors. Nei- ther were the miseries of those who embraced Chris- tianity, but who, for the most part, secretly adhered to I their "old faith {Onssim, A nussiin — " yielding to violence, j forced ones") less dreadful. It was not mitil the 17th j century that persecution ceased. Auios-da-fe of sus- pected converts happened as late as A.D. 1655 (Cham- I bers, s. v.). See Maruanos.