EXILES TRANSPORTED ON SHIPS—HEART-RENDING SCENES ON BOARD A SHIP—SET ASHORE ON DESERTED ISLANDS TO STARVE—STARVING JEWS GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN DEATH AND CHRISTIANITY—MERCIFUL ITALY—CRAFTY PORTUGAL—TORQUEMADA'S EDICT ECLIPSED—THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM PORTUGAL—A CONDITION—THE KING'S MARRIAGE—CONTRACT—FINAL EXPULSION.

Thus mournfully closed the last chapter. These are sad words, fraught with anguish and despair, yet however sad, however despondent and hopeless, however much of grief, and anguish and despair they convey, they befell the Jews of Spain, and they fail altogether, when they are asked to describe the sufferings and miseries which met the unfortunate exiles, everywhere, in their fruitless search for a quiet spot where they might live or die in peace. Ships stood ready in the harbors to carry nearly all of the banished 300,000 Jews whithersoever it suited the captains best. Into these ships the exiles were literally packed, crowded together without regard to sex or age, often mother torn from child, husband from wife, brother from sister, friends from friends, and, separated on the coast meant separation forever.

Words and the heart fail me to speak of the heart-rending cries of parent for child, and child for parent; of husband for wife and wife for husband; or of the wailing and lamenting, as Spain, the land of their birth, the home of their comfort and luxury and blessings, slowly faded out of sight and finally disappeared beneath the horizon.

And now begins a chapter in the history of Israel's suffering so frightful, so revolting that the pen and tongue recoil from dwelling upon it in detail. Before these sufferings, all that had been hitherto endured, faded into insignificance. And again it is avarice, and rapacity that bring these miseries upon them. The possession of the gold brought on their former sufferings, and now it is the want of it that opens their present miseries. Thou miserable gold! Whether ally or whether foe, ever thou wast the cause of Israel's untold sufferings! Because of thee, they had to purchase life, and because of thee they had to suffer death! The expulsion edict had prohibited the Jews, under penalty of death, from having money in their possession at their departure. And the Jews obeyed the mandate. What cared they for money when they could not enjoy it in their beloved Spain? What cared they for enjoyment, or even for life, when it was to be lived in distant and hostile lands? But the pirate captains and their heartless crews felt convinced, that the Jews must have large sums of money sewed up in their clothes, or concealed on their persons. No sooner were they on high sea, when men and women and children were ordered on deck, commanded to disrobe publicly, regardless of innocence of youth and modesty of sex. Many a virgin and many a youth, many a husband and many a wife dared to resist, not that they had money concealed, but for shame sake, and the raging billows rocked them into their eternal sleep for their resistance. Disappointed in their search, their thirst for gold was the more excited. Body after body they ripped open, before the eyes of the unfortunate exiles, in the belief that they must have swallowed their gold and precious jewels. And disappointed in this, there followed a scene, a more detestable and dastardly one the sun never shone upon. When the sailors had finally satiated their brutal lusts upon the innocent and helpless, and faint from terror and torture, and when the still surviving victims had been made to cleanse the ships from every trace of the blood of their friends and kin, they were seized and dropped into the ocean without a pang of conscience, and as unconcernedly as if the great God had created Jews for no other purpose but to appease the beastly appetites of inhuman sailors, and serve as food for the fishes of the sea.

And all this for the glory of Christianity! All this in obedience to the teachings of the Church! Heaven! Who can name the crimes that have been perpetrated in Thy name? What seas of human blood have been shed in the name of Christ, of Mercy and Love and Peace and Good Will! The Church had steeled the heart against every sentiment of pity and mercy. Feelings of compunction of remorse in the perpetration of crimes against the Jews, were taught to be the crime, and not the crime itself. The tear of sympathy wrung out by the sight of Jewish suffering was taught to to be an offense to be expiated by humiliating penance. Any one, it was taught, might conscientiously kill a Jew wherever he had an opportunity. The taste of blood, once gratified, begat a cannibal appetite in the people, and the more it was satisfied the more intense became its thirst for blood. Their zeal was not altogether unselfish; every Jew accused of heresy, or killed, cancelled—so the Church taught for the accuser one hundred days from his future purgatory punishment.

Another captain was somewhat more merciful; whether he had to expiate some of his tenderheartness by humiliating penance, ecclesiastical history has neglected to record. He set all his exiles on the shore upon a desert coast, leaving the weak and the suffering pitilessly a prey to wild beasts and to starvation. One of these unfortunate deserted exiles who survived, tells us how he saw his wife perish before his eyes, how he himself fainted with exhaustion, and upon awakening beheld his two children dead by his side. For weeks, roots and grass furnished their food. Each day brought fresh miseries and fresh graves. These were days such as Shakespeare speaks of:

Mothers, unable to bear the pining of their children, struck them dead, and then took their own life. Whole families folded themselves in loving embrace, and while thus embracing ended their life with their own hand. When the wild beasts came upon them, the exiles plunged into the sea, and stood shivering in the water for hours and hours, until the beasts retreated. Wearily they made their way onward, until, at last, they beheld the joyous sight of human settlements. Exhausted, they lay along the coasts, wasted by suffering and disease, and half demented from starvation. Down to the shore came the priests, and holding a crucifix in the one hand, and provisions in the other, the unfortunate Jews were given the choice between Christ and starvation. The flesh was stronger than the spirit. They begged for the bread, and ate at it ravenously, after the few drops of baptismal water had cleansed their soul from the foulest stains of infidelity. "Thus," says a pious Castilian historian, "thus the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in the end an excellent remedy, that God made use of, to unseal their eyes, so that, renouncing their ancient heresies, they became faithful followers of the cross." How many hundred days of purgatory punishment were cancelled for this pious utterance of the Castilian, History again neglected to record.

Another ship load was cast out by a barbarous captain upon the African coast, where the African savages pounced down upon them, and abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties. The men and youths they sold into slavery, the defenseless women were brutally ravished; the children at their mothers' breasts, the aged and the sick and the infirm were mutilated and tortured and murdered by the thousands.

Another ship load landed in the harbor of Genoa. A graphic picture of their sufferings is given by a Genoese historian, an eye witness of the scenes, which he describes as follows:

"No one," says he, "could behold the sufferings of the Jewish exiles unmoved. A great many perished of hunger, especially those of tender years. Mothers, with scarcely enough strength to support themselves, carried their famished infants in their arms, and died with them. Many fell victims to the cold, others to intense thirst, while the unaccustomed distress, incident to a sea voyage, aggravated their maladies. I will not enlarge on the cruelty and the avarice which they frequently experienced from the masters of the ships which transported them from Spain. Some were murdered to gratify their cupidity, others forced to sell their children for the expenses of the passage. They arrived in Genoa in crowds, but were not suffered to tarry there long, by reason of the ancient law, which interdicted the Jewish traveler from a longer residence than three days. They were allowed, however, to refit their vessels and to recruit themselves for some days from the fatigue of the voyage. One might have taken them for spectres, so emaciated were they, so cadaverous in their aspect, and with eyes so sunken; they differed in nothing from the dead, except in the power of motion, which, indeed, they scarcely retained. Many fainted and expired on the mole, which, being completely surrounded by the sea, was the only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched emigrants. The infection, bred by such a swarm of dead and dying persons, was not at once perceived; but when winter broke up, ulcers began to make their appearance, and the malady, which lurked for a long time in the city, broke out into the plague in the following year."[42]

More fortunate were the exiles that landed upon the shores of Naples. Its king, Ferdinand I., was a prudent sovereign, a distinguished scholar, and, unlike the other rulers of Europe, he had succeeded in keeping his power above that of the Church, and his heart free from the inhumanity and bigotry of the clergy. He opened his kingdom to the Jews, made the great Abarbanel, formerly in the service of Isabella, of Castile, one of his cabinet officers, and personally defended the Jews from an attack of the clergy and of the populace, who held the presence of the Jews accountable for the plague which was then raging, as elsewhere in Europe, in Naples.

Equally as fortunate were those who landed upon the coasts where the Turks held dominion. Sultan Bajazet received them cheerfully, provided for them humanely, and directed their intellect and industry into useful channels. "Do they call this Ferdinand, of Spain, a prudent prince," asks the Sultan, "who can thus impoverish his own kingdom and enrich ours?"

Nearly 150,000 souls made their way, by land, to Portugal, whose king, John II., dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to allow his greed to triumph over his creed. He granted them a passage through his dominion on their way to Africa, and the permission of an eight months' stay in his realm, in consideration of a tax of eight dollars a head, which immense sum he levied from the native Portuguese Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella threatened, and Torquemada incited the Portuguese clergy, but John II. had over a million of dollars to quicken his conscience and to wage war if necessary, and expecting it, he instantly put such of the Jewish exiles who were manufacturers of arms and miners to work. But his clemency was of short duration. It soon gave away to the most frightful era of the exiles' sufferings. When the news reached the homeless exiles of the atrocious crimes inflicted upon their brethren on their way to the African coasts, by inhuman captains and heartless crews, seeing nothing but cruel death before them, whether going or whether remaining, they preferred meeting death in Portugal, to exposing themselves to the inhumanity and beastly lusts and tortures of barbarous pirate sailors and African savages, and listlessly awaiting death, and praying for it, they remained after the time purchased for their stay had passed away. To their misfortune the plague broke out in Portugal and raged with deathly fury. Immediately the church arose, held the Jews responsible for the visitation of the plague, and lashed the populace into a relentless fury, because of the visitation of the plague, and the breach of contract on the part of the Jews. The king's creed awoke again simultaneously with the re-awakening of his greed. He issued an edict which threw even that of Torquemada into the shade. All Jewish children below fourteen years of age were torn from their parents' arms, dragged into the church, baptized; those under three years of age were given to Christians, to receive a Christian education, or in other words to be raised as slaves; those between three and ten years of age, were put on board of a ship and conveyed to the newly discovered, unwholesome island of St. Thomas, called "Ilhas perdidas," "the isles of perdition," which was colonized by Portuguese condemned criminals, to fare there as best they could. Those between ten and fourteen years were sold as slaves. Then, indeed, the cup of the their affliction was full to the brim. It was a stern truth which Lenau uttered, when he said:

The Jews have experienced fully the unequaled skill of the Church in administering pain. Mothers cast themselves at the feet of the tyrants and pitifully begged to be taken with their babes; they were heartlessly thrust aside. Hundreds of mothers mad with despair, ran behind the ships as they carried off the idols of their heart, and perished in the waves. The serene fortitude, with which the exile people had borne so many and such grievous calamities, gave way at last, and was replaced by the wildest paroxysms of despair. Piercing shrieks of anguish filled the land. Childless and broken-hearted they now sought to leave the land, but they were told that they had forfeited their right, and they were given the choice between baptism and slavery. Thousands, after enduring all they did, after leaving their beloved Spain and all their wealth and ease, submitted to baptism now, in the hope of being reunited with their children. Thousands were sold as slaves, yet prior to their being sold, they were submitted to tortures, cruelties, outrages too revolting, too repulsive, too heart-rending to be here narrated.

Terror seized upon the native Portuguese Jews, when they helplessly beheld the cruelties to which their Spanish brethren were subjected. They knew they, themselves, could not escape the wrath of the Church much longer, and they thought of flight, and well had it been for them had they made their escape then. While they were making secret preparations, John II. died, 1495. He had been afflicted, on the very day when the ships, laden with the Jewish exile children, set sail for the isle of the condemned criminals, with a strange, painful malady, and had lingered ever since.

His own promising son and successor preceded him into the grave. His cousin Manoel ascended the throne. He was the counterpart of his predecessor, kind hearted, a promoter of learning, eager to further the interests of his country by discoveries abroad and by commerce at home. Immediately he disfranchised the Jewish exiles sold into slavery, promised to recall the condemned children, and issued an edict, in which he commanded kind treatment to the Jews, and prohibited accusations against them. In their great joy the native Portuguese Jews sent an embassy to him, offering him large sums of money, voluntarily as a token of their gratitude. The king thanked them, reassured them of his good will, but refused to be paid for human kindness.

But, again had destiny decreed that a woman was to play an ignoble part in the tragic history of the Jews. A marriage was proposed between Manoel of Portugal, and the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain. Manoel was rejoiced with the proposal. Already he saw himself in the near future King of United Spain and Portugal, and of the entire New World. But Satan stepped between, dipped his pen in gall, and writing the marriage contract, demanded as one of the conditions, the immediate expulsion from Portugal of all the Jews, both natives and exiles.

The king hesitated. The fanatical daughter of fanatical parents persisted, argument made her more vehement. Torquemada might well be proud of his pupil—the possession of vast empires, and of the most powerful crown of Europe tempted, and the tempter conquered. He had purchased his right to the princess of Spain at a sacrifice of thousands and thousands of lives, and with the destruction of the very pillars of his nation's prosperity.

On the 30th of November, 1497, the marriage contract was signed, and on the 20th of the following month appeared the edict of the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal.—The scenes of mourning and wailing and heart-rending cries which resounded in Spain, re-echoed in Portugal, only the more painfully, because of the terrible knowledge they had since acquired of the meaning of the word "Expulsion."

Manoel soon regretted his signing away his most industrious, most intelligent and most prosperous citizens. But the marriage contract held him fast, and the Spanish queen kept a watchful eye on him, and Torquemada upon both. The prospective vast empire, and the Spanish crown still dazzled his eyes. He planned a strategy. He thought he could force the parents to embrace Christianity, and to remain, if he once succeeded in getting all their children into his power, and into the Christian faith. He gave secret orders for the repetition of the atrocious crime of having all children under fourteen years of age seized from their mothers' bosom and fathers' arm, dispersed through the kingdom to be baptised and brought up as Christians. The secret became known. Portugal again re-echoed the wails of stricken ones. Frantic mothers threw their children into deep wells or rivers. Mothers were known to take their babes from their breast and tear them limb from limb, rather than to resign them to Christians. They would rather know the bodies of their children in the grave, and their released spirit in Heaven, than have them adopt a faith into which Satan sent his friends for their schooling. With all the parents' opposition the king's order was executed. Many accepted baptism, but not enough to please the king, and to wreak vengeance upon them for thwarting his wishes, he revoked his edict, seized all who had not yet fled and sold them as slaves.

But Israel was not yet forsaken. Italy, which had now become the seat of European learning, and had become very prosperous through the commercial and industrial zeal of the Spanish Jews, to whom it had offered refuge, and also Turkey, bade the Portuguese fugitives a hearty welcome. What Spain and Portugal rejected, they knew how to value. Even some of the Popes, Clement VII and Paul III. (I rejoice to give them credit for it), favored their stay in Italy. They had learned to appreciate the services of the Jews. The flourishing Italian and Turkish Jewish congregations ransomed their brethren, and enabled them to settle in Ancona, Pesaro, Livorno, Naples, Venice, Ferrara and elsewhere, and the blessing of God rested upon whatever city the Jews were permitted to settle.

Many of the Portuguese Jews settled, and became prosperous, in the Indies, in Southern France and in Hamburg. Others settled in the Netherlands, and became especially prosperous in Holland. From Holland large numbers of the descendants of the Portuguese and Spanish exiles entered England, through the intercession of Menasse ben Israel with Oliver Cromwell, and from England and from the Indies and from Italy they entered the United States, into the land where tyranny is known no more, and persecution is fettered fast. Here dwell Christian and Jew side by side, peacefully, lovingly, aiding each other, uniting with each other in the blessed work for which religion exists on earth, and in the spreading of the great principles of political and religious liberty. Here, where Christian extends the hand of fellowship unto Jew, and the heart of the Jew beats as loyally American as that of the Christian, solemnly they pledge: