JEWISH AND MOORISH INTELLECTUAL ADVANCE FOLLOWED BY PHYSICAL DECLINE—THIS DECLINE THE CAUSE OF THEIR DOWNFALL—THE SPANIARD AGAIN RULER OVER SPAIN—THE INQUISITION ESTABLISHED—TO ESCAPE IT JEWS BECOME "NEW CHRISTIANS"—CHRISTIANITY NO HELP TO THE JEWS—THOMAS DE TORQUEMADA—THE TORTURES OF THE INQUISITION—A PUBLIC BURNING.

Physical decline follows mental advance. The nation that is devoted to learning is not the nation that worships a military life, or the pursuits of warfare. When the Mohammedans started on the enterprise of acquiring vast territorial possessions, there were few nations, if any, that could stand before them; when they were bent upon making intellectual acquisitions, there was no military body in Europe so poor that could not overthrow them. The military and patriotic virtues of the Arab-Moors had slowly passed away. Their original simplicity had been replaced by the extravagance of Oriental luxury, and their early devotedness to the Moslem faith had suffered much from their philosophical and scientific researches.[38] Internecine wars among themselves hastened their decline. Faster and faster their once invincible power slipped from their hands. Faster and faster advanced the Spanish hosts. Arab-Moor and Spanish Christian met at last on the plains of "Las Navas," (1213) and the great defeat which the Moslem army sustained here marked the beginning of the fatal hour. City after city, province after province, they were forced to yield. At last, all was lost, save the city of Granada, which stood alone to represent the Mohammedan dominion in the peninsula. And, for a time, it seemed as if that noble city, the city of the Alhambra, the pride of the Moors, would not only represent the Mohammedan dominion, and stay the victorious advance of the Spanish hosts, but also regain all that had been lost.

But the ancient valor was aroused too late. Ferdinand, of Aragon, had married Isabella, of Castile. Two of the most powerful crowns and armies were united, and unitedly they marched against the city of Granada.

Granada surrendered. On the second day of January, 1492, the last and ill-fated king of the Moors, Boabdil (Abu Abdillah,) met Ferdinand and his party at the entrance of the Alhambra, and presenting the keys of the city, thus he spoke in a loud voice and in sad accents:

"We are thine, O powerful and exalted king; these are the keys of this paradise. We deliver into thy hands this city and kingdom, for such is the will of Allah: and we trust thou wilt use thy triumph with generosity and clemency."

"We trust thy wilt use thy triumph with generosity and clemency." Did Boabdil have a foreboding of the infamous use the victor would make of his triumph? Did he really expect that his appeal for generosity and clemency would be favorably answered? If so, poor Boabdil, vain is thy hope, foolish thy trust. That hour in which the Christian cross replaced the Mohammedan crescent on the turret of the Alhambra, that hour when Christianity ruled again, and alone, in the peninsula, marked a climax in the history of cruelties and human sufferings. That hour, though the brightest in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was most fatal for Spain, most pitiful to Europe, most unfortunate for civilization, and most calamitous for the Jews.

During all these unfortunate years of struggle for supremacy between the Mohammedan and Christian hosts the Jews were not forgotten. Sad as was the lot of the Moors, that of the Jews were inexpressibly more miserable. The Moors were conquered by soldiers, the Jews by monks. The Moors fought against the military of Spain, the Jews were inhumanly slaughtered by the "militia of Christ." The Moors suffered the pangs of war, and the Jews writhed in agony under the tortures of the Inquisition.

Inquisition! Who can utter the execrable word without a shudder! Who can think of this blood-thirsty institution without heaving a sigh of relief that it lasts no longer! What Jew can think of it with dry eyes, without lifting his heart to God in thanksgiving that this blood-reeking tribunal is no more!

Inquisition! Who knows its meaning better than the Jews? What people brought greater sacrifice to its bloody altars than they? Who has described it better than the Jew, Samuel Usque, the Jewish poet, whose lyre was silenced, and whose life was tortured out of his body by that very institution which he so eloquently and truthfully describes? "From Rome," he says, "a beast most monstrous, most ferocious, and most foul has come into our midst. Its very appearance strikes terror into every soul. When it raises its piercing, hissing, seething voice all Europe trembles. Its body is made of a composition of the hardest of steel and the deadliest of poison. In strength, in capacity for murder, in size and in speed it excels the fiercest of lions, the most poisonous of serpents, the tallest of elephants, and the speediest of eagles. Its very voice will kill quicker than the bite of the basilisk. Fire issues from its eyes, its jaws breathe forth flames. It lives from human bodies only. Wherever it comes, and though the sunshine in its noontide brightness, the densest darkness will at once set in. In its presence every blade of grass, every flower and blossom and tree, all wither and perish. Wherever it passes its pestiferous stench changes fertile valleys and luxurious fields and laughing meadows into unproductive deserts and howling wastes. Its name is The Inquisition."

It was born in the early part of the thirteenth century. Fanaticism was its mother; its father was St. Dominic, who also was the father of the Dominican Order, and so the Inquisition and the Dominican friars were natural brothers, and "par nobile fratrum," a noble pair of brothers they were. Pope Innocent III. stood godfather to it. I fully sympathize with all past and present humanitarians in their efforts to wean men from the pernicious belief in the existence of Hell, but I can not accept their claims that Hell never existed. Hell did exist, not 10,000 leagues beneath the earth, but on its very face. Hell existed wherever the Inquisition lived. And Devils there were, too, and their names were "Dominican Monks." This ferocious beast-child came into this world with a mission: to detect, punish and suppress Heresy, Free Thought, and every Religious belief save that of the Church of St. Peter. Under Dominican nursing and training, it grew and prospered, and rapidly acquired a relentless exercise of its mission. Its heart was killed, its conscience stifled. It was never taught the meaning of the words pity and mercy.

Scarcely was it full grown when it initiated its bloody career of 600 years of accursed life by a most cruel reign of terror in the southern provinces of France, where the presence and strength of the heretical Albigenses and where the Moorish and Jewish civilization from across the Pyrenees had made themselves felt. The reign of terror ceased with the extermination of almost the entire population.

At last it found its way into Spain, and in that country it entered upon a career so infamous that its deeds of ferocity, recorded upon the annals of History in letters of blood and fire, are not eclipsed by the combined cruelties of all mankind. Here lived and prospered thousands and thousands of Jews. When a holy war is waged against the infidel Moors shall the infidel Jews escape unscathed? When the Blessed Virgin crowns their zeal to their faith by giving them victory after victory over the Moors, will she not be wroth if the Jews escape? When the Moors are put to the edge of the sword, shall the Jews not be committed to the flames?

The cruelties of the Inquisition were not the first which were visited upon the Jews. Their second series of suffering in Spain began on the day when the Christian forces defeated the Moorish army upon the battle-field. The tolerance the Moor could afford to offer to the Jew, the Religion of Christ could not. In Aragon and Castile it was not a rare sight to see the fanatical populace, stimulated by the no less fanatical clergy, to make a fierce assault upon this unfortunate people—guilty of no other crime than that of promoting the prosperity of Spain and of adhering to their inherited belief,—breaking into their houses, violating their most private sanctuaries, and consigning them by the thousands to indiscriminate massacre, without regard to sex or age. Hatred of the Jews was for many centuries a faithful index of the piety of the Christians. Cruel laws were enacted against them. They were prohibited from mingling freely with the Christians, from following the trades and professions for which they were best suited by virtue of their high intelligence and thrift. Their residence was restricted within certain prescribed limits of the cities which they inhabited. They were held up to continuous public scorn, by being compelled to wear a peculiar dress, on which was sewed their badge of shame. Even in their executions they were branded, for a long time they were hanged between two dogs, and with the head downwards.

A choice was given them to escape these sufferings and degradations by entering "the religion of love unto all men." Thousands upon thousands of Jews availed themselves of this only alternative, and became feigned converts, or "new Christians," as they were called. They amply regretted the change later, but at present it seemed to them an almost justifiable step. The preceding chapters have acquainted us with the character of the Spanish Jews, with their high intellectual attainments, with their lofty demeanor, with their high social and political and industrial and commercial standing. Think of them now asked to sacrifice all these advantages, because the iron-handed and iron-hearted brute force of the priests so wanted it. Feel as they must have felt, when they were asked to exchange their mansions of elegance and refinement for the wretched hovels of the Ghetto; to lay aside their garments of silk, and their ornaments of grace and beauty and costliness, and don the gaberdine of disgrace; to drop the reins of the world's commerce which they held in their hands, and, instead, take a pack upon their back and wander from house to house, an object of ridicule and shame, and jeers and maltreatment. Think as they must have felt and thought and you will think less harshly of their feigned change of faith.

For a time all seemed bright. The "converts" were especially honored. They were appointed even to high ecclesiastical and municipal offices; their sons and daughters married into noble, and even royal families.

The few drops of baptismal water did not, however, change the character of the Jews. Their prosperity was as great as before, and, unlike the credulous and superstitious Spaniards, they failed to see any reason why they should lavish their worldly goods upon the Church. They preferred to do their own "taking care of," and their own "praying for" their soul. This was their crime. Their superior skill and industry, and the superior riches which these qualities secured, and their high standing in the community, aroused the priesthood's envy and covetousness. Thus the charge arose that the converts had relapsed into their old faith.

The charge was not unfounded. The allegiance to the Church was that of compulsion, and it never was anything else, except a masked external allegiance. The heart, soul, conscience, mind, continued Jewish, and as fervently so as ever before. This "scandalous spectacle of apostates returning to wallow in the ancient mire of Judaism," was the pretext by means of which the Dominicans sounded the alarm. And the Inquisition came to cure them of their back-sliding.

Castile, the kingdom of Isabella, had till then refused admission to the Inquisition. At one time its introduction was recommended, and the whole populace arose in rebellion. Isabella herself trembled at the very mention of it. But in an evil hour Thomas de Torquemada, "condemned to infamous immortality by the signal part which he performed in the tragedy of the Inquisition," became her confessor. That man—if "man" I may name him—that vilest blot upon the history of religion, of Spain, of civilization, was the fiend incarnate. His very name still represents the superlative of maniacal fanaticism. He labored hard to infuse into the pure mind of the noble hearted Isabella a fanaticism as fiendish as was his. And still she recoiled from the thought of introducing the monstrous slaughtering institution in her domains. Torquemada brought the weight of the entire church to bear upon her conscience, and still she refused. The fiend was not yet baffled. He influenced her husband, the crafty and greedy Ferdinand of Aragon, to advocate his cause. The husband prevailed.

On the 2nd day of January, 1481, the Inquisition commenced operation in the city of Seville, with Thomas de Torquemada as Inquisitor General of Castile and Aragon. A few years later it found its way into every prominent town of Spain, and confined itself everywhere almost wholly to the Jews. The severity, and savage alacrity of it, may best be learned from the appalling fact that during the eighteen years of Torquemada's ministry an average of more than 6,000 convicted persons suffered annually from this cruel tribunal by burning, or by condemnation to life long slavery, or by endless torture, making an average of nearly seventeen a day, and the entire number punished during its existence in Spain, from 1481 to 1808, amounted to 340,000 persons.[39]

All this to protect the interests of religion. All this for offenses so trivial that our blood boils with indignation at the very thought of the heinous cruelty. It was sufficient to burn a "convert," as a relapsed heretic, upon the mere accusations of crimes such as these: That he wore better clothes or cleaner linen on the Jewish Sabbath than on other days of the week; that he had no fire in his house on the Jewish Sabbath; that he ate the meat of animals slaughtered by Jews; that he abstained from eating pork; that he gave his child a Hebrew name—and yet he was prohibited by law, under severe penalties, from giving a Christian name—that on the Day of Atonement he had asked forgiveness; that he had laid his hands in blessing upon his child's head, without the sign of the cross, and numerous others, equally as harmless. Most of the charges did not even prove a relapse, their observance being, for the most, either purely accidental or the result of early habit, or, what was most frequently the case, pure invention. No better chance existed for wreaking vengeance, on a Jew. A simple accusation, even anonymously, sufficed. For the accused there was no safety against malice; no facing the accuser, who perhaps, was his bitterest enemy; no trial; no cross-examination; no justice. He was put under arrest and conveyed to the secret chambers of the Inquisition, where, cut off from the world, he remained, sometimes for months, in complete ignorance of the nature of the charges preferred against him. Once there, the famous words of Dante may be well applied to him: "Lasciate ogni speranze voich'entrate." "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

At last he would be summoned before the Inquisitors and asked to confess. And well for him if he plead guilty. It is true, he will be convicted, but he has escaped the tortures which are well nigh beyond the power of endurance, and which will soon force a confession, true or not true, or which, even if endured, cannot save him, as he will nevertheless be convicted on the strength of positions of the accuser.

I shall spare you a recital of the tortures, of the sufferings endured in the deepest vaults of the Inquisition, where the cries of the victims could fall on no ear save that of the tormentors. It is difficult to realize that these iron-hearted and iron-handed henchmen, who thus eagerly, passionately, with a thirst for blood that knew no mercy, with zeal that never tired, devoted their whole life to cruelties such as we encounter here, could have been human beings, much less ministers of Christ. I shall spare you and spare myself a recital of these sufferings. I shall not speak of the tortures by rack and rope, and fire and water, how the victims' joints were dislocated, how every bone in their body was broken, how the body was roasted over a slow fire. I cannot speak of these tortures. I can only refer you to "The History of The Inquisition," by Don Juan Antonio Llorento, whose records are authentic, as he himself was Secretary to the Inquisition; or to Mosheim's "Ecclesiastical History," or to Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," volume I, chapter VII. To endure all these tortures, and live, was thought positive proof of Satanic life, and the strongest ground for burning. Nearly all plead guilty to whatever they were accused of, and to more, too, after a short experience with the rack. And confession brought public burning.

This was the last scene in the bloody tragedy, so wrongly named "Auto De Fe" ("Act of Faith"). It was a gala day for the town in which it was enacted. The proudest grandees of the land acted as escorts to the ecclesiastical henchmen. The royal party seldom missed this pompous ceremony, and not infrequently heaped fagots on the blazing fire with their own hands. A military escort led the unfortunate victims, clad in coarse yellow garments called "san benitos" garnished with a scarlet cross, and with hideous figures of devils and flames of fire. And a horrible appearance they presented, emaciated, lacerated, crippled, dazed by the light and fresh air which had been denied them for months.

The pyre is lighted. The flames shoot up. The victims writhe in agony.

Lo! a fierce wind arises. For a moment it blows the flames from the bodies. One of the victims speaks. It is Antonio Joseph, the Jewish celebrated author and classical dramatist of Portugal, where the performance of his dramatic pieces draws tears even to this day. Thus the venerable sage speaks:

"I own I belong to a faith which you yourselves acknowledge to be of Divine origin. God loved this religion, and He, according to my belief, is still attached to it, while you think He has ceased to be so; and because your belief differs from mine, you condemn those who are of the opinion that God continues to love what He formerly loved. You demand that we should become Christians, and yet you are far from being Christians yourselves. Be at least men, and act towards us as reasonable as if you had no religion at all to guide you and no revelation for your enlightenment." "Osseitaro barbaro" ("clip his beard"), some of the spectators shout, and immediately one of the executioners besmears his venerable beard, by means of a long brush, with pitch and turpentine, and sets fire to it. One more cry, "Sh'ma, Yisrael, Adonay Elahenu, Adonay Echad" ("Hear, O Israel, the Eternal, Our God is One"), and the flames have done their work, amidst the rapturous applause of the spectators, and amidst the pious ejaculations: "Blessed be forever the goodness and mercy of the Holy Inquisition. Blessed be the Holy Trinity, the sister of the Virgin Mary." Not a tear among the spectators. Father, mother, husband, wife, child, relatives, friends, all are eye-witnesses to this bloody sacrifice, and yet from them not a sigh of regret, nor dare they be absent, nor dare they abstain from applauding, that would fasten suspicion upon them, and condemn them to a similar fate. A confiscation of the convicted possessions ended the mournful tragedy.

Such was the clemency and generosity for which Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings, entreated. Praised be God, now and forever, who has emancipated us from the clemency and generosity of the Church.